I know dark clouds will gather around me
I know my way is rough and steep
Beautiful fields lie just beyond me
Souls went deep on this old street

I'm going there to meet my mother
She said she'd meet me, when I come
I'm only going over the same street
I'm only going over home

Dying, it turns out, doesn't feel quite like anything else.

After Svartalfheim, Loki thought he had a reasonably good grasp of it, especially considering he never did understand what kept him alive. There was pain, a great deal of it, and his body going cold and heavy as his vision turned gray and then dark; and then he'd woken, still cold, still in pain, and resoundingly alone.

There is pain this time, of course; fear, which is new, and wrenching grief, which is not, although the precise flavor of it is different (and he hates Thanos all the more, that this is the death he got, not the neatly heroic one on Svartalfheim, Thor's arms cradling him as everything else bled away).

But the waking, this time, is different. His body feels weak and drained, as if he is finally beginning to recover from a serious illness, but there is no pain. He can breathe again, easily, and for several long moments he does nothing else, simply focusing on the feeling of it and the fact that he can.

He becomes aware, gradually, of more sensations: the sun is warm on his skin, but not hot enough to be uncomfortable, no searing brightness against his closed eyes. He can feel grass under his fingers, and a light breeze playing with his hair. A few more moments, and he realizes it is not only the breeze. A hand is stroking his hair, so gently it almost makes him want to weep. It has been a long, long time since anyone has touched him with such tenderness, not in a way he knew he could trust—

The pieces come together, finally, and Loki's eyes fly open. Frigga is gazing down at him, her face haloed by the sunlight in her golden hair, and at the sight, Loki's eyes flood with tears.

"I'm sorry," he manages. "I'm—so sorry. It was my fault. I told him—I told the Kursed where to go. Take the stairs to the left. I didn't think—"

"Oh, sweetheart," she says. "You could not have known about the Aether, or that I would protect it myself. The blame for my death lies with Malekith and the Kursed, not with you."

Loki turns his head, unable to look at her. "I am still sorry. More than I can say. For that, and—my last words to you—" He swallows hard. "I'm just…sorry for everything. I wanted to make you proud, once. I'm sorry I wasn't the son you deserved."

"Oh, Loki." Her hand passes over his hair again, slow and grounding. "You have always been my son, and I have always loved you. Nothing you said or did could change that. And I am proud. I can see a great deal here in Valhalla, the past and present alike, and I have watched you these past few years. I saw your last stand aboard the Ark. Darling, I am so, so proud of you."

Loki chokes, his eyes burning not just with guilt now but with shame and renewed grief. What a fool he was to think he could deserve Valhalla, where he might see his mother again. This can only be Hel, mocking him with illusions of what he can never have, tormenting him with false kindness so his own mind can punish him by forcing him to confront the truth of his worthlessness.

Frigga draws her hand away as if sensing the shift in his mood, and Loki's insides lurch with an awful rush of fear because he does not want to see what the illusion was hiding. But she takes his hand and says, "Can you sit up? I think it would do you good to see where you are."

Can't I pretend for just a little longer, Loki wants to say. He moves to sit up and immediately needs the arm she slides around his shoulders for support. There is still no pain, only weakness, and with Frigga's help he props himself up against the sun-warmed tree behind him. She keeps her arm around him, and after a moment Loki lets himself lean into her side.

Wherever he is, it certainly doesn't look—or feel—like Hel. A vast meadow stretches away into the distance, as far as he can see, bounded on one side by a forest so vibrant and open he can imagine no scenario in which it could be dark or unsettling. The sun is brighter than he remembers, somehow without hurting his eyes or threatening the headaches that plagued him during Asgard's summers. Everything he can see is green and palpably alive—all except the great golden hall off to the right, perhaps half a league away, which reaches up so high its top is obscured by clouds. From the angle of the sun, it should cast an enormous shadow, but there is none to be seen.

"Valhalla is so much more than the stories," Frigga murmurs. "There are eternal battles, for those who want them, but no one is asked to fight—or to watch the battles—who does not wish to. There are feasting halls, of course, and peaceful places—gardens, forests, observatories where you can watch all the stars across the universe whenever you want, libraries containing all the knowledge of the Nine Realms and beyond. Or you can speak to the greatest mages of the past yourself and learn new magic beyond anything you've ever imagined. And Valhalla is only one afterlife of many—you can visit others whenever you wish. All of that awaits you and more, when you are ready for it."

He looks back at Frigga, eyes wide. "How…?"

She smiles, a little sadly. "Is it so hard to believe that you would have a place here? That it would be somewhere good?"

Yes. "I suppose," Loki says hesitantly, "I did technically die in battle."

"So you did," she agrees, "although I think you'll find Valhalla interprets battle rather more generously than the living do. Many here earned their rest without ever dying violently. For you, there can be no question. You remember the prayer, don't you? This is Valhalla, where the brave live forever. And darling, you fought so hard, and you have always been so very, very brave."

Loki's eyes fill with hot, humiliating tears. "But I failed. I—I tried, I did, but—none of it was any good. I gave him the Tesseract and I let him use me to hurt Thor again and I couldn't—I tried. I couldn't save any of them. I saved them from Hela and I came back to Thor and it was all for nothing."

"Oh, darling," Frigga says.

Now that he's started, he can't seem to stop. "Even after he called my bluff with the Tesseract, I knew the Hulk couldn't beat him but I thought if I had a little more time, I could come up with a plan, and—I couldn't. When it mattered most, I couldn't find a way out. The best I could do was buy Thor a few more minutes and then I went after Thanos with a knife. There was almost no chance but I thought—if he wasn't expecting it, if I was fast enough, I could still do this one good thing, and—I failed. He used me to hurt Thor again. It was all for nothing. My life, even my death—it meant nothing." He wipes at his eyes, not sure when he started properly weeping but too damned weak to stop.

Frigga rubs his shoulder. "Everything ends, sooner or later, even gods. Even the universe. Everything ends. That doesn't make any of it pointless while it lasts. Some of the loveliest flowers in my garden bloomed only once in their lives for a few days before withering. Their beauty was not pointless because of its brevity, and every part of their life cycle was a small, crucial piece of the garden, from the sprouting seed to the fallen leaves and blossoms returning nutrients to the soil and feeding back into the cycle. Each one is a ripple that affects the lives of small creatures like birds and insects, that in turn affect others—and how much more true that is for people, who speak and laugh and cry and love, and touch other lives far beyond their own."

Loki knows she means it as comfort, but he can only hear it as—not that, and his shoulders hunch inward. "After what I did on Midgard and Jotunheim—after Asgard fell to Hela and then Surtur under my rule, and I drew Thanos to Asgard's remnant because I couldn't bear to leave the Tesseract behind—I should think my death would be a relief to anyone who hears of it."

She pulls him against her side, arms warm around his shoulders. "And none of us can change what has already taken place. But what about the centuries of joy you brought me? The times you saved Thor and your friends, whether by your silver tongue or your quick thinking in battle? The tricks you played for the children on the Ark, just to make them laugh? When I lived, I believed that no act of kindness is ever wasted, no matter how small it may seem, and now I know it to be true. There is no cosmic scale, calculating the balance between good and bad—but the good you have done is just as important. And as for the rest…how much of your actions were not yours alone, beginning as they did with the words and actions of others? Your father's and mine, for not working harder to aid the Jotnar after their defeat and to stamp out prejudice on Asgard? For allowing you and Thor both to grow to manhood believing the Jotnar were mindless monsters and hearing only of the glory to be found in destroying them, and somehow still expecting you to understand they were people? For not ensuring that you could trust our love for you, not giving you a foundation that would not shatter in moments when you learned the truth? For hiding that truth from you as if it was something shameful? For hiding the truth about Hela? And what Thanos did to you—that is not your fault."

"But I made it easy for him," Loki whispers. The rest is still too raw to confront head-on, not yet. "I was—I was so angry. I wanted to hurt Thor. I wanted Midgard."

"And Thanos pulled you from the Void, half-broken already," Frigga says gently, "shaped you into what was useful to him, and sent you with the promise of still more destruction of your body and mind if you failed him. And even then, my child, I know your cleverness. If you had truly, truly wanted to conquer Midgard and carry out Thanos's will, I do not doubt that you would have done it much more effectively."

Loki swallows, unable to look at her. He wants to believe it, especially when his own memory of that time is a blur of rage and pain, but that is exactly why her words are difficult to accept. And even if he does— "I still failed, at the end. I thought—maybe I could save Thor, maybe I could even save everyone who was left. But Thanos won, and I failed. What is there to be proud of in that?"

"You said it yourself," Frigga says. "You tried. That matters. But I am thinking of something much more fundamental. Think about it. How different would it have been, if you had died in truth when you fell from the Bifrost, or when the Kursed struck you down on Svartalfheim?"

He wants to say that it makes no difference at all, that death renders everything pointless no matter when it arrives, but under his mother's steady gaze he finds he does not want to and is unsure whether he believes it anyway. He would have given much for just a few more moments with her in life, after all, and anything he says about his own death, she can prod him to rethink by applying it to hers.

So—what difference would it have made? When he opened his hand and fell from the Bifrost, he had meant to die, wanted to die, because anything else seemed impossible. If it happened quickly enough to spare him the horrors of the Void and Thanos's realm, death still would have been what he expected—and after, it would have been a far greater relief. On Midgard, he was fighting to stay alive mostly out of spite, instinct, and the knowledge that visible hesitation would bring far worse punishment than death, but if he had failed badly enough—if, for instance, the Hulk had ripped him in two rather than simply smashing him repeatedly into the floor—he would have welcomed the escape death offered, as long as he was sure the Titan could not drag him back again.

And after—well, he had cursed Odin, over and over again, for shutting him away to feel himself descending further into madness, instead of mercifully executing him. He is nearly certain that after a century in that cell, or possibly far less, he would have lost all resemblance to himself, unless he found the nerve and the means to end his own life first (and more than once while he withered in Asgard's dungeons, he'd considered opening his own veins with his teeth so he could stop the nightmares and the endless solitude chewing away at his sanity).

He'd fully expected Svartalfheim to end in his death, one way or another; he'd wanted revenge on the creature who killed his mother, but it would have been no bad thing if he'd simply died in the attempt. More than anything else, though, he had determined he would never return to that cell. If he'd actually survived all of it and helped to defeat Malekith for good, he would have tried to escape or provoked Thor into killing him. That it was the Kursed who impaled him felt right—he didn't have to make Thor hate him even more, and instead he got to die good, having saved Thor and utterly destroyed Frigga's killer. He can still remember the overwhelming relief as his vision grayed out and his life drained away, because he was dying loved and he had a chance to see his mother again, both of which he'd given up as impossible.

But then of course he woke up and woke up alone, and he'd seized the opportunities that came to him because survival was his oldest habit, and at some point in the intervening years…he'd stopped wanting to die. Put that way, it seems monstrously unfair, that Thanos should kill him at last when Loki had finally begun to escape him in mind as well as body, when he'd finally begun to relearn what wanting to live felt like.

Then again—it isn't only that, is it? He could have died fighting Hela and her forces, very nearly did die raising Surtur (and what a bitter irony that is, that only the Tesseract got him back to the Commodore in time and then drew the Titan straight to him), and he'd thrown himself into those battles fully knowing the risks because he had a reason to do so. Face-to-face with Thanos again at last, his luck ran out the way he'd somewhat suspected it would eventually, but it was much the same, wasn't it? He could have fled, probably, and instead he made a choice and stood his ground. He fought, stalled for time, and finally died, all to protect Thor and to give the Valkyrie a few more precious minutes to get away with half the remnant. That…is not nothing.

"I suppose," he says slowly, "I found something worth living for, and that made it worth dying for. There was…meaning to it, dying for something instead of dying because I could no longer see the point in anything else."

She presses a kiss to his forehead. "Yes, but darling, I am not only thinking of what your life and death meant for others. Not…" She smiles, but her eyes are touched with sadness. "Not whether Odin's stolen relic was useful to Asgard after all. Do you understand?"

He wants to say that he does, but he can see in her expression that she already knows the truth. "What else is there?"

Frigga cradles his face in both hands. "After everything that has happened over the past several years—after your very identity was shattered, after a fall through the Void that would have damaged anyone's sanity and your time with Thanos that was worse, after Midgard and a year buried alone in Asgard's dungeon, after all the anger and pain, the hopelessness and self-loathing—you accepted all of who you are. You found your way back not just to your home and your family but to yourself. My stubborn, clever, brave boy. And I am so very proud of you for that."

Loki blinks at her, too startled to protest. Maybe it shouldn't matter, because death is death no matter when it comes, but now that she's said it he finds himself thinking—if he'd died before, especially on Midgard but any of the times he tried or simply did not care, it would have been a relief. He would have said that nothing of value had been lost; would have said that Loki was dead already and all that remained was a shell full of rage and pain, a monster that no one could love.

Instead—he had healed enough to die as himself. As…everything that makes him who he is, everything that makes him Loki. Child of Asgard and Jotunheim, God of Mischief, brother of Thor—all of it. He died as himself. It's entirely distinct from dying a hero, and the idea that the two are in any way equivalent in worth seems almost laughable.

But his mother says it matters, and she is proud of him for it.

Ordinarily, Loki thinks he might argue, or deflect, or quickly change the subject, but here and now—it is not so difficult, somehow, to see that what she has said is true as she believes it, and then that she might even be right. The idea feels like an enormous weight lifting off his shoulders, the sudden relief so great it is almost dizzying.

"Oh," he says, and his voice sounds very small.

She leans her forehead against his. "You'd only just begun your journey back to wholeness, and it's terribly unfair that you didn't get to continue it. But darling, you chose to start that journey. That you made the choice you did—that you healed enough to be capable of making that choice—it matters."

Loki's eyes are stinging again, but only with grief and exhaustion this time, not choking shame. "I wanted to stay," he says. "I meant to, this time. For Thor, but…for myself, too. And I just—I wish…" He doesn't finish the sentence; there seems little point, and no words feel big enough to say what he means.

"I know," Frigga says quietly. "I know. I won't say it was right or fair, or that it all happened for a reason. You both should have had long, peaceful lives. But even now, the future is not set. There may still be a way back for you. And even if there is not, when you are stronger you will be able to visit the land of the living, if you wish it."

"I'm so tired," Loki says. "Why am I so tired?"

"It's perfectly normal," Frigga assures him. "It is something else the stories never told us, but violent death is…wearying for the soul. It takes a little time to recover, just as a living body needs time to heal from illness or injury, and it means that even the most ferocious warriors begin their time here with rest and peace. For now, little one, all you need to do is rest. Valhalla is not going anywhere, and neither am I." She squeezes his hand. "You are safe here."

And he knows, with an unshakeable certainty he has never before experienced, that it is the truth. This is no trick, no illusion; finally, after everything, he is safe and at peace. Loki exhales, the last of the tension leaving his body, and lets his eyes fall shut. Here, there will be no more nightmares.

I started writing this pretty much immediately after I looked up Infinity War spoilers, a couple days before I even saw the movie (and seeing the movie was basically a matter of wanting to get it over with and get the full context for everything, even though I really wasn't excited about it anymore). The whole point was just to make myself feel better about what actually happened in canon, to reassure myself that even in canon my favorite character was okay even if he wasn't alive, so I could move on and focus on AUs and fix-it fics instead of being upset about IW all the time and trying not to hope that Avengers 4 would fix it.

Specifically I needed to address the idea that Loki's death rendered his life and his journey pointless, because that's...something I tend to struggle with, in fictional and real-world contexts alike-the sense of pointlessness and accompanying hopelessness in general, not just where death is concerned, although that tends to make the whole issue even more intense. Like, my beloved little dog was diagnosed with kidney disease in March and I have no way to know how much longer he'll be alive (which I think is a big part of the reason Loki's death, and my worry about it before I knew for sure, hit me so hard-my feelings about that are all tangled up with similar feelings about my dog, and it was all happening at the same time), and my instinctive response is basically "then what is the point? what's the point of anything if it doesn't last and we're all going to die anyway?" (As I mentioned in the notes for "the quiet things that no one ever knows," I struggle with the concept of death in general.)

That automatic response of mine is deeply unhealthy in any context, so this fic was one way to combat it, another way to say that what we do matters even if we never see the results or our actions seem to have no effect in the scheme of things. For Loki-look, I love him a lot. His death would've hurt no matter what, but it hurt more because it didn't need to happen at all, and because it happened just when he'd finally started to turn his life around. But I was incredibly proud of him after Ragnarok, I'm still incredibly proud of him now (on the AO3 version of this fic, I linked to a couple of my Loki meta posts on Tumblr, so if that sounds interesting, I'm 100indecisions on AO3), and I wanted to focus on that, on why his journey mattered even when it ended.

...so why did it take me this long to finish a fairly short fic that I meant to finish immediately after IW and that I intended to use to reconcile myself with canon as a precursor to focusing on AUs, and then I kept not finishing it and not finishing it and in fact went ahead and wrote a fix-it fic ("I am a time bomb ticking away the hours to blow your world apart") just a couple weeks after IW instead? Especially when I would've felt better about this fic if I could have tossed it on the internet with the excuse that I wrote it over a weekend? I...really couldn't tell you. But hey, at least it's finally done and I can focus on other AUs and fix-it fics again.

The title of this fic is from "Wayfaring Stranger"; I'm most familiar with Dark Dark Dark's version.