Chapter summary: They travel to Jotunheim in search of glory and justice. They return with a war, a realm on the brink of collapse, and a mad king who speaks only to a brother long dead.

WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
PROLOGUE / no water

.

The crown slips. It shatters. Rubies spray across the floor, beads of blood bright on its surface.

It had been hollow all along.

.

.

.

Once, when Thor was young, he encountered a strange woman in the dead of night. He cannot recall the events clearly now, but the strange, eerie unrest she stirred inside of him lingers for many years hence. When he recounts the tale to his companions (all of whom were asleep during the event in question), they laugh and call it a most grand story indeed. "You have spent too much time with the Silvertongue," Fandral chortles. "Or were you far into the mead when you saw this woman? Perhaps you saw her in the bottom of your tankard?"

Despite their easy, casual dismissal of his recountings, he could not shake the feeling that he had forgotten something important...

Thor remembers the beginnings and ends, but the moral, if any did exist, are lost. He remembers sitting by the fire. Volstagg's snores shake his tent, broken only by the quiet rustling of the forest in the darkness. He prods the flickering fire with a stick; a spray of embers showers the air, and a piece of wood crackles. He warms his hands over the fire, blowing between them. Their quest had been successful. Tomorrow, they will journey back to Asgard, where they will be welcomed with a feast and the worship of the kingdom. Yet tonight, Thor cannot sleep. A strange foreboding has seized him in its grasp.

It is dark.

The fire flickers.

Gradually he begins to become aware of a faint, quiet weeping. "Who goes there?" he calls to the darkness, but is answered only by the misery that hobbles out of the gap between the trees and dribbles across the underbrush. Before Thor fully comprehends his actions, he is on his feet and fumbling through the undergrowth, driven by a preternatural urgency. Brambles scratch his exposed skin and draw thin welts of blood. Twigs crack beneath his feet, clumsy in the darkness. The birds do not sing tonight, and the moon shines far overhead, cold and impersonal. The weeping fades in and out of hearing, just on the periphery of silence. Sometimes it sounds like he is heading farther away, like he is only walking around and around in a circle—Norns, if Loki was here, he would know how to… he would say…

There! He hears it again, retreating to the right. The trees begin to thin. It quickly becomes so loud that he is not sure how he ever missed it, mixed into the sound of the quietly babbling stream.

Thor breaks through the underbrush.

There is a woman kneeling on the side of the riverbank. Her back is to Thor, her head bowed. Her hands are in the water. A small pile of clothes is crumpled next to her.

The fire flickers.

"How do you fare, good woman?" Thor calls cautiously.

She turns; her face is strangely moon-like, white and austere. Her eyes are a dark colour, unfocused as though she is staring at some point just to the left of Thor's shoulder, but no one is there.

"My lord, you are out late to-night."

"I heard your distress."

"I am washing the funeral clothes of my son, who is soon to be buried."

Thor grimaces. He can now see the limp white cloth in the water, translucent and rippling with a gossamer texture in the fast-flowing water. White froth is swept away; then, a thick, dark ink-like cloud pollutes the clear water, almost as though the white tunic is bleeding.

"Allow me to aid you," Thor requests.

"That is kind of you, my lord," she demurs. "But it is not necessary. I am but a poor peasant woman."

"What is the name of your son?"

The fire flickers.

"Ah…" The woman's smile curls the corners of her lips but the rest of her face remains static. Thor suddenly feels unsettled. There is something wrong with her, with this river, this sky of dark steel… "He is known as Loki Odinson."

Bemused, "Nay, I am the elder, Th—"

"I know who you are, Thunderer. You asked for the name of my son."

Thor's hand goes to the pommel of his sword. He takes two steps forward until he looms over the crouching woman. "What jest is this?"

She straightens, her white dove-like hands unclasping the cloth. As he watches, the white begins to resemble a corpse's face, drained of life, eyes wide beneath the fast-flowing river, mouth open in horror, fish nestling in and out between the dark hair. Thor makes a strangled sound and stumbles away.

She takes one step forward with a fluid, unnatural grace, almost boneless in its constancy. Thor draws his sword with a rasp of steel and levels the tip at the base of the woman's chin, hard. A small trickle of blood coats the steel. Flesh dimples inwards at the point of the sword. She stops moving. Opens her mouth again, and this time, her voice gnashes like the five-metre waves dashed to pieces on the jagged shores of the northern sea.

"Do you dare to know the future?"

"Speak clearly or not at all."

"You will live, Thor Odinson, only to bury all of your family. Your actions will become the dirt that covers their faces, and they will be remembered by naught but the worms that squirm between their lips. Your arrogance, your pride, will be your downfall. You will live…and long for death."

Her eyes are calm and cold like the waters of a dead lake.

"When the time comes…" And that voice comes from the earth itself, from the trees that rattle their metallic leaves together (the clanging of shields before a charge), the stream that wails in maternal lamentation (running red with the screams of the dying), the sky that looms far overhead with a frowning disposition (the Allfather, high in his throne above the world…). "…when the time comes, son of Odin… remember that heroes bring only death in their wake."

His tongue is thick in his mouth but he says, "I am strong enough to withstand what is necessary. For the good of Asgard."

"Perhaps…" the woman whispers, and for the first time, her eyes fix directly onto Thor. His skin begins crawling; he is flayed alive under her stare. "…but what of those you love? Your father? Your mother?" She licks her lips slowly. He realizes with horror that her teeth are pointed like the needled leer of a deep-water fish. "Or, your brother…? Will he pay the price in your stead?"

Terror grips him, rooting him to the spot.

"You will have a single choice to make. When you are desperate, little boy, remember how to run."

Thor trods back to camp, alarmed and unsettled, but in the morning he will not remember the woman at all. His boots are gone. His feet are torn. His sword is broken in twain. He stares blindly into the darkness and tries to remember what he had seen… something important… he should…

Red hands…

His footprints lead around in a circle. There are no rivers in these woods. There is no water.

The fire is dead.

.

.

.

.

.

Sing, O Muse—

Who will the Mad King kill today?

It does not matter.

He has already killed the only ones who mattered.

.

.

.

.

.

Thor does not remember a time without Loki, although he was almost three centuries old when Loki was born. He has a vague recollection of his mother calling him to her bedside. The chambers had been dim, smelling of rich oils and hazy smoke, his mother dressed in gossamer silks. She cradled something to her bosom. "Be cautious," she warns, as she places the small bundle into Thor's petrified arms, "Your brother is fragile."

"My… brother?"

Frigga smiles softly, tiredly. "His name is Loki."

And the first thing Thor thinks is: Loki is incredibly ugly. His face is red and wrinkled, small round lips pressed tightly together, blue-green eyes blinking up at Thor with a distantness that told Thor he could not see very well yet. But if Mother says this is to be his brother, then Thor shall simply be the very best big brother. Even if Loki looks quite odd.

Loki does grow out of the redness and wrinkliness, though he always looks different from all the other Asgardian children, Thor included. His colouring was closer to that of the Vanir than the As, and he was ever a silent, solemn child. He also grew sick very often; many days Thor would venture into Loki's chambers and find his little brother curled on his bed, cheeks flushed with fever and eyes glassy. Many nights Thor heard his parents murmur worriedly behind closed doors, and when Thor is older he will realize how many times Loki was close to death. His constitution was fragile; he was sick often; thus, he did not go outside often, nor did he participate in strenuous activities. Thor would watch his companions take their younger siblings on adventures, teach them to fend for themselves, and feel a tiny prick of jealousy deep in his heart (which he quickly smothers because Loki could not help being sick).

Loki's winters were spent on his mother's knee, watching her weave tapestries with graceful, clever fingers, strands of red and gold and black coming together to form hazy images of the future. "What does this mean?" he would ask, and Frigga would smile and card her fingers gently through Loki's untamed black locks and say, softly, "My love, it is not your burden to know." So Loki would fall into silence, leaning into her touch and watching with a half-lidded, sleepy eye, as monsters of renowned fame and terror inked their way onto white cloth, slain by Asgardian heroes or slaying in turn.

Loki was a happy, gentle child. He liked to pluck flowers from Mother's garden—a feat only he could get away with; not even Thor would survive her wrath intact—and weave flower crowns, which he would proudly present to Thor. Thor wore them proudly til they fell apart. But others were not so kind. Loki said nothing about the little pushes, the little shoves, the whispers behind shrouded hands. He says nothing even as he finds the flower crowns he gifted to Thor's first companions (the jealous, the gluttonous, the wrathful) carelessly trampled into the dirt. He says nothing, but he remembers.

One autumn very long ago, Thor begins to shoot up in height until he reaches Odin's chin. Loki kicks his heels absently back and forth from his perch on the edge of the bed, and splays his hand over Thor's shoulder blade with utmost concentration. He looks up to see Thor looking at him in amusement.

"Does it hurt?"

"No," Thor says, grinning and ruffling Loki's carefully arranged hair. Loki swats his hand away with a scowl. "It will be your turn soon enough."

True to his words, Loki eventually becomes tall enough to rival Thor in height. He grows taller, older, colder. He wields daggers the length of his forearm, and when those fail, his hands alight with the seidr that came to him easier than breathing.

Thor hears the malicious whispers. He punishes those foolish enough to say those words in his presence (but a wicked, spiteful voice buried deep inside of him feels ashamed that Loki could not wield a sword, as all his companions could. Even Sif, who was a maiden.) Though he always did his best to stifle such feelings, some part of it must have shown on his face, because Loki's smiles lose their genuine nature around him and he becomes closed off, though courteous. Thor hates it, hates himself sometimes, but in the blink of an eye the seasons pass. They grow older and apart. Events are forgotten. The feelings remain.

Thor goes on quests with his friends. In the beginning, Loki accompanied them. His skill in seidr and his quick, analytical mind have gotten them out of many close calls. But then he comes less and less, always looking stiff and uncomfortable, shoulders tense as though in preparation for a blow. Eventually, he stops altogether.

Soon, those firelit nights huddling together by the fire are a faint, distant memory.

Falling is a slow affair. By the time he realizes what has happened, it is far too late to stop.

.

.

.

Thor's last memory is this: a sword, thick and heavy with frost, sliding without resistance into Loki's chest. Loki's eyes open wide in confusion as blood splatters in a wide arc over clean white snow. "Oh," he mouths, his hand coming to gently touch the rapidly bleeding wound. His brow scrunches in confusion. "...oh." Taking a step backwards, he braces himself against the stone and tries to get up, but he only slides down the rock face when his legs abruptly give out.

…no.

It cannot…

Thor begins trembling. He feels cold inside, his hands numb with the realization of a horrible mistake. The Jotun in front of him laughs and laughs and laughs, even as Thor bellows and tears him apart, laughs even as his head impacts the ground before the rest of his body—and then Thor is running, past the field of Jotuns, towards his brother.

He half falls, half skids the last few meters, stumbling to a stop in a spray of snow and dropping to his knees. "LOKI!"

Loki grins. His teeth are bloodstained, his eyes white with pain and a strange eternal sunlight. "Y-You truly are loud en-n-nough to wake th-the dead…" His face contorts and he coughs, the movement causing something to tear and the blood to flow faster down his hands, dribbling down his elbows and pooling in his lap. "Maybe t-tr-try again… nngh... in a few… m-moments…"

His hand, long and slender-fingered, is splayed over the massive wound that starts at his stomach and rips all the way up his chest, blood pooling and spilling to the ground. Thor is scrabbling at it in terror. He's seen mortal wounds before—has given them to his enemies with nary a thought—but never on Loki, never his little brother. Loki shudders as Thor lowers him onto his back, cradling his head. "It is… not so b-b-bad…Really…d-do not look so…" Thor rips off his cape and presses it, hard, against the wound. Loki chokes on a scream. He cannot see the red on the red. Swaddled in Thor's clothing, he looks so small. "…so g-gl-gloomy, Thor… tis but a… s-scratch…"

"Everything will be alright…"

Thor's hand presses down tighter on the wound, but it is to no avail. Loki's face convulses with pain. Blood spills out his lips and down his chin, wetting the snow. "S-Stop it, b-b-br-roth…er… you are… h-h-hurting me…"

"Loki…" Thor's hands tremble as they grip Loki's like a lifeline. His eyes are filled with terror and despair. His arms tighten around him, his hands slipping off the wound. They both know. "Please... I am sorry… I am so…"

Loki's eyes begin to droop shut, his head lolling to the side. His face is white as the snow. His expression is unfocused, pale, alien.

"D-Do not…it is m-my… all m-m-my…"

Thor rests his forehead against Loki's. Loki's face is blurry. He can't see him anymore, no matter how much he blinks. "You are not alone… I am with you… I…"

"T-T-Th...or..."

His heart thumps once, hard.

The second beat never comes.

His hand drops.

"No…"

Then there are hands, pulling him away… "We must go!" Hogun yells hoarsely in his ear, but Thor has eyes only for Loki, who lies on the snow far away, strangely small… his eyes are now staring coldly and blankly into the sky above Thor's head, his lips still twisted into that wry smirk that says it is only a joke, you oaf, and you fell for it again…no, he cannot go yet, what if Loki wakes to find himself alone in this alien land? No, no… do not touch me! Loki! "We must go!" Loki! "Allfather, take him!" Loki! "We cannot go back for… for the…"

NO!

"No, Thor! Someone grab him..."

Blue, on all sides. Jotuns laugh. Ice falls. His fingers brush against Loki's sleeve. As lightning explodes from his body and consumes them all, Thor thinks: if this is to be his last memory, it would be better to die after all.

.

.

.

.

.

He lives.

He wakes in the infirmary, Eir hovering over him with a calm, cold expression. "You are awake, Prince Thor," she says coolly. Sif, sitting in the wooden chair beside his bed, seizes his wrist in a vice grip. She is smiling. She has no eyes and no tongue. Her face is a carious ruin. He flinches back but she notices not. Her eyes are gone, after all.

"Thor, you are awake! Let us go see everyone!"

She pulls him out of bed. Worms squirm beneath her skin.

"Come! This way!" she says.

"Everyone is excited to see you," she says.

"Here we are," she says.

They stand before a row of carved rocks.

.

.

.

Frigga's eyes are tinged red when she says, "Your brother waits."

That desperate, last hope proves futile when she pushes open the door to reveal Loki's body laid upon a bed. There is no mistaking that he is dead.

"I... I do not understand..." his voice is so small. "Loki should not have... such a simple attack... he cannot be..." A sob wrenches itself out of his chest. "Mother... how can this be?"

Thor curls around him and buries his face against Loki's neck, refusing to move. He falls silent. Frigga's attempts to extricate him from his brother prove futile, and he only places his ear where a heart should beat and just breathes. He is numb inside, that kind of awful stillness that comes when one has cried so much that there is nothing left to give. He holds the cold, stiff body, and is entirely empty.

Centuries ago, when Loki was still small, they used to lie like this.

"Give me the cloth," he says to the servant. She hastens to obey, and Thor gently dabs at the blood congealed over Loki's face. It takes several to soak away the blood staining his mouth, and with each careful stroke Thor feels something inside of him trembling, revealing bloodless white flesh. The plates and leather had been torn clean from his left shoulder and arm, but miraculously the skin beneath was unblemished. He unbuckles the crushed clasp to Loki's armour, pulling off the shredded breastplate—and freezes.

"More water." His voice is a harsh croak. "Now."

When the door shuts, Thor places one hand against Loki's waist and turns him over as gently as he could, trying to cause as little damage as possible (but it is too late, always too late). It is an undignified posture, face down on the rough metal slab.

Thor traces the tip of his fingers over Loki's back. He is trembling inside, but on the outside his face is calm and smooth.

Three stab wounds from behind.

The third left a sliver of steel glinting inside, shorn off from the slats of the armour Loki wore. Thor pulls it out.

Asgardian steel.

.

.

.

"Being King is not about who has the biggest hammer," Loki snaps, a bit ironically, considering he was the one to gift Thor with Mjolnir on his thousandth name-day. "You have never sat in on the administrative councils, have you? Do you know how much goes into governing the kingdom? If you became King tomorrow, you would run our economy to the ground and start skirmishes with all the neighbouring realms."

Thor grins and slings his arm over Loki's shoulders. "But I will have you."

Loki stops, a strange expression on his face. "I... may not always be here to support you," he says slowly, each syllable forming strangely in his mouth. "When that time comes... you must be ready for the inevitable. You must know who you can trust. Those that are close to you are often the first to betray you. That is something you must always remember."

.

.

.

Father sleeps.

Mother weeps.

Thor breathes.

The crown on his brow is weighed with the blood of a thousand jotuns, vengeance for his brother's suffering and his own foolish pride. It is not heavy enough. It is too heavy. It pushes him down into the throne, shackles him to this prison. He pulls off his crown, that circlet of thorns, and stares at his distorted reflection. Red rubies, little beady eyes, embedded in flimsy gold. Red, again. He is beginning to hate the colour.

Thor has never considered the topic of mortality. Though he and his companions had encountered many dangerous situations, they were always able to emerge victorious, beaten and battered but ultimately triumphant. He had attributed it to their skill and prowess...he should have known that their luck would have run out eventually.

He is empty now. Now, he soaks up the cold, preternatural rage that seeps into the ambient air and fills the missing holes in his chest. He will exact his vengeance in blood and flesh. He will… he will kill them all, and maybe then that terrible, burgeoning pain of guilt-shame-sorrow will…maybe he will… he…

If only he had… if only he had not… if only Loki had held on for a few minutes more, perhaps he would…

Ten minutes, maybe less. That would have made all the difference. He can almost pretend that this is nothing more than a fever dream, but as he sleeps, the world distorts around him. When he wakes, he cannot recognize this world anymore.

.

.

.

"Who, in Asgard, may I trust to be loyal?"

"Those who have always supported you will continue to do so."

"Then I may trust them to be loyal to Asgard... or to myself?"

Heimdall's golden eyes are inscrutable in the darkness.

"Are those not one and the same, my lord?" he murmurs.

.

.

.

Thor stands in front of the assembled Asgardian army. They are in full ceremonial armour, and in the light of the rising sun, appear to be ablaze. The death knell tolls thrice from the Tower.

"To war, then," he whispers.

.

.

.

Father sleeps.

Mother sleeps.

Thor reigns.

He speaks to the shadow behind his right shoulder and pretends not to see his counsellors shift uncomfortably in front of him. Red eyes. Red hands. Blue bodies lay neatly on the floor, shoulder to shoulder, a vast, impenetrable river. When he dreams his hands are never clean.

In the days to come, Thor will understand what Loki was trying to tell him all along: that power is paid for in the currency of blood.

His friends no longer meet his eyes.

.

.

.

"Laufey has sent forth—"

"No."

"But—"

"I shall not hear it."

"Thor…" Sif says hesitantly. She flinches a little when he turns to look at her, as though she cannot recognize the coldness (the terror) written over his face. They had bled together, sweat together… but he has changed. He has left them behind. "The troops are restless. They long for peace—to come home. It has been years, and…" she trails off when Thor's eyes flash dangerously, the throne room shaking with the rumbling skies.

"War does not end simply when one side grows tired of it. Laufey should have thought of that before he…"

"Loki would not have wanted you to be like this. He had wanted peace."

The fire sputters.

Porcelain shatters.

"Loki is dead," Thor says in a quiet, deathly voice. It would have been better if he had raged, had screamed. At least Sif would know what to do with him then. His voice is level, matter-of-fact, like he is simply reciting a well-known fact. It carries the cadence of a child saying their bedtime prayer. Something cold goes down her back. "He does not want for anything now, and I will not stop until I have the head of every frost giant on his grave. You would do well to heed my orders, Sif, and to cease questioning my decisions."

When she looks at him again, she sees no sign of her childhood friend, only a ruthless king.

"Tyranny suits you ill," she whispers.

"The throne suits me ill. I only realized too late."

"…it will be as you wish, sire."

The door echoes as it shuts.

The fire sputters.

The fire is dead.

.

.

.

Father sleeps.

Mother sleeps.

Thor sleeps.

The Mad King reigns.

A bloodstained helmet with curved horns rests beside him.

.

.

.

Loki leans against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, a wry smile on his lips. His clothing and hair are soaked, like he had been dipped in the ocean. A long sword runs through his chest and pins him to the wall. His feet are bare. They dangle in the air.

"Does it hurt?"

"No," Loki says, grinning with bloodstained teeth. "It will be your turn soon enough."

.

.

.

Thor stands with his back to the door. He hears it slide open, the brief sliver of illumination from the torches in the hallway casting a thin slice of yellow across marbled floors.

"So…" he murmurs. "It has come to this."

He turns.

There are tears in their eyes, but their faces are hard. He has known, deep inside, that they would try something like this. After all, they were once his dearest companions… he knew them like the breath that sputtered in his lungs. Yet it did not quell the sting of betrayal.

There is no further talk.

Thor raises Mjolnir, and prepares to die.

.

.

.

long live the king

long live the king

long live the

.

.

.

.

.

end of prologue

.

AN: I am so very sorry for being gone so long. Last year was not a good year and I had to deal with a lot of extenuating circumstances that prevented me from writing much; the little I choked out was of poor quality and not really up to standards. I don't want to be morose and whine on and on about how difficult life was, etc, but please know that I really did try my best, and would have written if it were possible. I did have the chance to read the reviews and encouragement everyone left; you don't know how deeply I cherish you all, but I do immensely.

The reason for this new story is that I am trying to transition back into writing a bit more. It is more experimental in nature, so there are some things that work and others I need to work on. I would appreciate your thoughts, even if it's just "you're weird and so is your writing," which, to be fair, I already know.

night xx