The first thing he sees is white.

His brother turns and leaves, footsteps echoing against the ancient stone floors of the crypt, before his tongue could form the words—how? Why? Why would—before he could even think them. The first thing he sees is white—bleeding into the corners of his eyes, edging closer and closer until it becomes harder and harder to see his brother's disappearing figure—

The first thing he sees is white.

There is a dull roaring in his ears, crawling up his spine, so close and so immediate that he can taste it at the back of his throat.

He steps forward, collapses, his hands flattened against the magicked mesh of the cage. After a moment, he thinks he can smell flesh burning.

He is in the summer of his youth, and he is getting an impromptu martial lesson from his mother, of all people. How absolutely perfect it is—all he needs right now is for Thor to walk in. Or worse, Sif.

"It's your footwork," Frigga says, lifting her skirts daintily so he can see her feet perfectly balanced, one pointed away from the other at a right angle. "Sigurd tells me you don't listen to him when he says you should learn to stand firm. Well, I am telling you now to stand firm."

They are in the Allfather's chambers, the guards dismissed and his mother's loom unattended. In his hands is one of the broadswords that Frigga keeps stashed in the bedposts; he holds it clumsily. He is at the age where bones grow long before the body knows what to do with them, and his mother facing him makes for a far more graceful swordsman than he.

"I'd rather that I didn't have to."

"No one wishes that more than I." Frigga says. "But one cannot always do what one wishes. Go."

She taps his sword with her own, lightly, and he stares back at her, aghast.

"I will not." He replies. "You're my mother. And my queen. And a lady."

"According to Sigurd, Lady Sif thrashed you and your brother most soundly last week." Frigga smiles. "Perhaps you would do well to fight more against ladies."

"Sigurd should have his tongue cut out." But he complies. He strikes. He is not Thor; he does not rain down a relentless volley of blows and simply keep going until his opponent is down, he does not have that same elemental streak of force within him. He has long known that to be the case—he has long learnt to wait for his openings.

His mother is no less of a swordswoman than legend attest that she had been a thousand years ago. She is light on her feet—the sword seemingly weightless in her hands, though his arms are beginning to ache—she twirls and she twists, and she seems to dance more than she seems to fight. But Frigga is of the Vanir, Frigga Great-Heart, Frigga the warrior queen of a warrior king of a warrior realm, and soon his mother has her sword at his throat.

She tilts her head to one side. "Hmm."

He is breathing hard. "What?"

"Pardon." She amends firmly. "I have enough trouble already with Thor offending the diplomats, I don't need you learning bad manners as well."

"Pardon." He amends. "Well?"

"Sigurd is right." She says. "You are better moving than you are still."

He lowers his sword. "You were testing me."

Something clangs in his chest. It is a low, ugly thing, and it is a thing he has tried in vain for the past few years to beat into submission. To force himself to focus on the brightness of Thor's smile when it lights on him instead of the way the world reorients itself to focus on his golden brother. To forget the pride in his father's smile when he looks upon his firstborn son and remember instead the rising cadences of his brother's laugh. To remember, to remember—you are bright and golden and warm and good, instead of I wonder what that is like.

Lately, when it clamours in his chest in the dark of night, when it crawls its way slowly up his throat to choke him in sleep, he wonders idly if there is something very wrong with him.

There is a beat, in which his mother's eyes soften, and she lowers her sword. "We all have our strengths, Loki."

"Clearly." His tone is clipped.

"Loki," she says softly.

Lately, the creature in his chest has grown larger, grown stronger. Lately, on hot nights and in bright days, on the open ring of the training ground, in the golden halls of his father, he has begun to forget the sound of his brother's laugh. Lately, when all eyes turn to Thor in the great hall, when he sees his father clap a hand against his brother's shoulder, when he sees his mother press a kiss against Thor's cheek, his fingers have begun to tingle. At night, he dreams of fire at his fingertips, of a dagger through the ribs, of golden hair cast in the dark, and he wakes shaking. In the day, his fingers tremble around his sword, and he is beginning to fear what he will do.

Stand firm, Loki, they say. He hears: run.

When he pulls his hand back from the mesh, he finds that his skin is charred, blood running through the cracked flesh and down over his arms in slow, indolent, red trails. He wonders, idly, how deep he would have to cut to get to the blue.

The roaring climbs, a dull rush of blood in his ears, and there is a tingling at his back, a phantom crawling up the length of his spine, as if there are bugs beneath his skin that he needs to claw out with his nails, as if there are hands grasping at the inside of his skin, as if, as if, as if—

I have no mother, his own voice whispers to him sweetly. I have no mother.

When he screams, the cage shudders.

Frigga, for all her courtly dignity, does an impressive impression of a bilgesnipe.

"Soren," Thor says, with the imperiousness of precocious eight year olds the realms over, "says bilgesnipes can only be slain with a spear thrust through the belly."

Beneath the covers, Loki kicks his brother's foot. He is forever speaking of nonsense whenever their mother comes to tell them their story. Logically, Loki knows that he is much too old for stories. At his age, the elven-kings of the ancient worlds have already killed their first man and already regale the banquet with tales of their bravery, and dwarven princes have already crafted their first blade. Loki knows, logically, that he should be using this time to decode the books he had stolen from the darker corners of the library—but these visits are growing scarcer. It is because of this that he does not resent Thor his clumsy attempts at keeping their mother longer—he feels, in some corner of himself, a grasping desperation that he does not like. Stay, he wants to say. Stay a while longer.

"Soren," Frigga says primly. "Was thrown from his horse on the last hunt."

Loki looks up at his mother through his lashes. "Volstagg says he was banished from court for impudence."

Thor's mouth gapes open. "Where was I?"

"Hanging off some other idiot's every word, probably." Loki turns his attention back to his mother. "Volstagg says he rushed in front of father at the hunt, and killed the boar when he should have afforded first blood to the king."

Thor makes an outraged noise, while Frigga looks at him appraisingly.

"What is the first covenant of our realm?" Frigga asks finally.

"Pax Asgardia," Thor says immediately.

"And the first covenant of our king?"

"First," Loki says. "Among equals."

"Peace through Asgard." Frigga says, and reaches forward to tuck a strand of hair behind Thor's ear, rearrange the lapel on Loki's robe. "Peace through benevolence. Through the knowledge of one king, who is wise enough to allow every man to be his equal. But never forget: he is still first."

"But if the Norns wished for Soren to slay the boar first—"

"The Norns do not wish for anything. That is why they are Norns." Frigga says lightly. Something starts in Loki's chest, something that latches on to the gentle cadences of his mother's words. "A king is only king when his men and women accept his kingship. When they know that he can never be replaced except by one he appoints himself. He must always be first."

"When I'm king," Thor declares. "Every man shall have his reward if he wins it. We shall race to the finish, all of us! Let none of us hold back, king or no. It will make us stronger, to be first when we earn it, and no other time."

"Do you think they would ever compete truly against the king, brother?" Loki asks lightly.

"Soren did." Thor retorts. "When I am king, every man shall be as brave. Father was wrong."

Loki stares at his brother, at the sloping lines of his nose, at his round cheeks, the soft golden hair nestled against his neck. He meets his mother's gaze.

"Now," Frigga says. "Shall I finish the story of the hero Ingvar, or shall I leave you two to bed?"

Tell me, Loki thinks, what happened to the bilgesnipe. Tell me what happened to the boar.

They bring back the creatures in chains, and he is sitting in his cell, watching and laughing. This is the closest he's gotten to a show in more than a year.

The guards keep them opposite his cell, and he could almost smile, could almost roll his eyes at the level of incompetence these hallowed halls have chosen to tolerate in recent years. And he is not even thinking of the guards.

One, he counts. Two, three, four, five.

You're a fool old man in a fool realm, he thinks. If Odin had wanted to really hammer it home that he is no longer a prince deserving of a prince's solitude and a prince's comfort, who can be displayed like cattle in front of the worst scoundrel of the universe—well. There are safer ways to go about it.

Loki meets the eyes of the creature in the front. He picks up a book—a treatise on the stars that he had loved well when he was a child—and never breaking his gaze, slowly rips out a page. He balls the papyrus in his hand, and pitches it at the glass mesh of his cage.

It disintegrates.

If he can't escape, of his own accord, then perhaps someone else should.

It takes two months, before the creature understands.

He counts the days in his head, numbers trickling through—one, two, three, fourteen, twenty seven, forty two, fifty nine, sixty two—and scene.

The explosion begins inside the creature.

This is how the cage works. It has taken him more than a few ruined books in order to stumble upon this revelation—the cage can do nothing except keep your magic buried inside you. Trample it into the ground, round it up into a hard kernel nestled in your throat, and keep it there. It does not kill you. It does not cripple you. All you need to do, really, is to sacrifice your own flesh and push it out. No magic can remain imprisoned without a vessel. And Loki has never been one to sacrifice the light at the end of the tunnel for an immediate inferno.

In seconds, the cage is a broken, smoking thing. Loki sits back, and waits.

Every time he tries to speak, his mouth fills with blood.

Sif's fingers are shaking as she picks at the thread. Her fingers are thin, delicate enough for the work, yet Thor's hands holding his head steady is as firm as a mountain. They do not speak. Loki does not wince, does not react, and his teeth slowly bite into his tongue.

"I'm sorry." Sif whispers, her fingers slick with his blood. "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, I'm—"

There are a thousand things he wants to say. Your mother is a powerful woman. Send my apologies to her. He is already thinking what he can say—when he can speak—to brush over this indelicacy, to make the court forget, to wipe the memory clean from their minds. A king cannot be humiliated as he was humiliated today. A king must always be first.

"If she is not your mother, Sif—" Thor's voice is low with anger, that slow building unrelenting rage building beneath the surface, and Loki feels his brother's fingers twitch against his throat—he is wishing for a sword. "If she was anyone else, I would—"

"She is not my mother." Sif says. The blood is beginning to dry on her hands, and her voice is quiet and cold. "Not after today. From now on, I have no mother."

He opens his mouth, and the wounds reopen, blood pouring into his mouth in a bitter flood, and down his chin. No, he wants to say. Do not. Do not do it. If you are truly sorry for me, Sif, do not break with her. Do not drag this out longer. Do not, do not—

The doors to his chambers open. His mother stands at the other side, still wreathed in her ceremonial gown. He feels Thor and Sif tense at his side, Sif's fingers gripping ever harder around his wrist. He alone sees how tight Frigga's hands are gripped, how white her face is. How close his mother is to tears.

He makes a gesture. His brother stands first, slowly, hackles rising. Sif follows. He does not miss, and he thinks that his mother cannot either—the way they skirt around her. The way Thor stares straight past her.

The doors close behind her. In a rush, she stumbles forward, her skirts dragging behind her, her gown soiled by his blood. Her fingers are light around his mouth.

Mother, he wants to say. Mother, why—

"This is my fault." She says, and he has never heard his beautiful, stately, dignified mother sound so wretched. "This is my fault. My boy. My boy."

If there had been one thing he had always been sure of, if there had been one thing he had always known deep in his soul—it is that his mother would love him until he dies. His father can give Thor all the weapons in the armoury, all the proud words due to a future king, all the court can lavish Thor with the attention he so deserves, and Loki would be content with his lot because he knows he always has a refuge. He had known, with all the certainty of a child, that his mother would love him, and know him, and smile where others disdain, and laugh where others hiss. This he had always known. But before now, he had always been a child.

Now he knows. Frigga is not only a mother. Frigga is also a queen.

First among equals. But a king is first.

Nothing else comes before him. Nothing else will eclipse him. Not even a headstrong young warrior. Not even a son. He realizes now, that he had been very, very young.

Everything has its limits. Even a mother's love.

"Never again." She whispers, the sound raked out of her throat, her fingers against his throat. "Never, never again. I'm so sorry. I'm—"

Sif's voice plays in his head. I have no mother.

He watches his mother consideringly. Let's see, then, he thinks. Let's see this promise through.

I killed my mother.

He blinks. The furniture in his cell are upended, and he doesn't quite remember how that happened. His arms feel heavy, his breath wheezing through his lungs, as if someone had knocked the air out of him.

He closes his eyes, and what comes to mind isn't his mother's hands in his hair, or the whisper of her skirts on the floor, or her lips kissing his eyelids closed after a story in the hush of night. What comes to mind is the muted fury in his brother's face, the tension coiling in his hands, the twitching of his fingers, his brother's lips pressed tight. If you are not my brother. If you were anyone else—

I killed your mother, he corrects himself. And then, he thinks, a chill settling into his bones—

I killed your mother. Do you know?

They tear the magic from his flesh. The muzzle bites into his skin, his screams behind the steel stifled back into his mouth. When they follow the strands of seidr in his cells back into its source, he screams. His spine contorts, his legs thrashing underneath him, his teeth biting into his tongue, his mouth flooding with blood. Somewhere, in the distance, he thinks he hears a woman scream.

In the silence afterwards, the first thing he sees is white.

The world is punctuated by the painful beat of his breaths, a large warm hand against his neck. There is a lingering hollowness in his chest, as if the mage had ripped out his heart and left a comical hole in his chest for all the world to see. Loki Silvertongue, as empty as his lies.

"Get off of me." He whispers to Thor.

They drag him to his feet, and as he is pulled away, he finds enough strength to open his eyes. The first thing he sees is white. And then he sees his mother's blue eyes, so like her son's. He smells the familiar scent that lingers on her gowns—rosewater with a hint of jasmine. Some part of him, some low cowardly part that would go begging to Odin and Thor if they so much as looked at him longs to lean into her hand at his cheek. Loki closes his eyes, imagines his hand around the throat of that weaker thing, and imagines eking every breath out of the coward, leaving nothing of that taint behind.

Never again, is it?

"I have no mother," he says. He pulls the trap closed—if there is one thing he has learned, it's that even a mother's love has its limits. Even the most long-laid prophecies have a way of coming true.

"Help me save us all." His brother says, and he laughs, because what else is there to do? He stares past the cage at his golden, beautiful brother, catching every detail hungrily: the fall of his cape, the curl of his hair, the weary line that has begun to carve itself between his eyebrows. His gaze drops to his brother's clenched hands.

You will kill me, he thinks. When you find out.

Loki thinks of the easy oblivion of blood, and wonders how Thor will do it—a sword to the neck, execution style? Perhaps his good brother would give him a trial. Perhaps it will be a noose; something clean, something quick—

He almost laughs again. If there is one thing that they all tend to forget, it is that Thor's rage is slow, but when kindled it will level worlds. It will be the hammer. It will be Mjolnir, the sure, easy blow against his skull; perhaps Thor will crush his windpipe. Perhaps he will cave in Loki's ribcage. Something blunt, something brutal. How fitting it is, what a poetic end to this wretched saga—there is a story on earth, of a man who had lead his brother into the field. Cain killed Abel with a stone, Loki remembers, and became the father of the humans. Some things are perennial; the hate between brothers, the death of one's father, the love of one's mother. Some things are perennial, and Loki wonders if perhaps the story would have been different if it had been discovered that Abel's hands were not clean either. Loki wonders if then, perhaps, fratricide would not be the worst crime in the story. Perhaps then, Cain would not be such a blight.

"When do we start?" He asks, and thinks of the easy oblivion of Mjolnir. He thinks of the final blow against his temple, and smiles.

Loki stands firm. He decides not to run.