[Loki and Frigga] a horrible future

[st_ratagem]

Loki's sleep patterns had never actually normalized again since hearing about Thanos from Thor. He'd simply adapted to the new normal, which was that he rarely got more than four hours of sleep at a time and spent the rest of his 'sleep' time studying his medical books, stargazing, or (as of recently) calling and controlling ice.

It was peaceful enough, and he barely even missed the sleep anymore. He'd even learned to ignore the loud thump that was Valkyrie squirming herself out of bed and onto the floor, on occasions when she slept in his room to avoid the ghost in hers. More impressively, he ignored it even when she did it from the same bed he was in. (Sort of. He ignored the noise but eventually hauled her back in... for his comfort, of course, not hers. The woman slept like a rock, she didn’t care.)

Tonight he was reading a rather fascinating text, more history than epidemiology but possessed of interesting concepts nonetheless, not expecting any kind of interruption.

The bed depressed ever so slightly with a third weight at the end of it. The light of the lamp sitting at Loki's end caught the regal gold epaulets and the armor corset adorned by the ghostly visitor, as well as the glint of composed concern in her blue eyes. "You've not been sleeping."

If not for the weight shifting the mattress, Loki might have responded with something like enough that I shouldn’t be hallucinating. Waking dreams weren’t worth shock, even when they were someone he was unlikely to ever stop missing. (And regretting, one of his rare real regrets.) But the actual movement, the actual presence changed things.

His head jerked up from his book and Loki stared. Frigga. Mother. “I’m... getting enough. It’s manageable.” Illusions and hallucinations didn’t have weight, but he tested anyway, shifting to try and touch her shoulder. “If this is a psychotic break I might not mind it.” Not this time.

Frigga responded in kind, lifting her hand to touch fingers with her youngest. They connected, solid. Warm. She merely smiled--graceful, knowing, yet sad.

Loki closed his eyes, took a breath, let it out, then opening his eyes again. It was that or weep like a child. Useless to try and control emotional reactions, really, since Frigga arguably knew him better even than Thor, but she’d also understand his need to do it.. “Hello, Mother.”

Frigga's smile grew in warmth at Loki's voice, and her soft eyes glistened. In her son's heart, she always knew he was his mother, and now she could see him once again in a place where he would speak it.

"Loki. My love."

Loki had a complicated relationship (at best) with touch. Often it was to be fought or avoided, sometimes to be tolerated, rarely actively sought or offered. Most times, the hand-touch would have been enough, even with his mother.

Not this time. He shifted again to put himself next to her, wrapped his arms around her, and buried his face in her shoulder. She was dead, he knew it. Absent Inn interference, there was no way around it, and this wasn’t an arrival date. But she was also present, and he was comfortable enough to admit to himself that he’d only add to his little regret-pile if he didn’t take opportunities.

But he was still himself, so what he said into her shoulder was, “You’re not here just to critique my sleep habits, I hope.”

And Frigga, still herself, smiled wryly where Loki couldn’t see as she embraced him tightly.

“Had it been my duty.” She spoke, turning her head meaningfully towards the warrior woman who slept soundly. She’d always jested with Odin in confidence that she long-awaited the day their sons would be wed and she could turn over her tendencies to hover in the background—at least slightly.

“You’ll be waiting a long time if you expect Valkyrie to take it up.” His tone was a hair more fond than he exactly wanted it to be, but the only other person to hear it was his dead mother. “Though she does have a Thing about duty.”

“There’s an eternity left for me.” Frigga leaned back, cupping Loki’s face in her hands, relishing the chance to touch him once more.

“Oh. Loki. There’s so much to say.”

An eternity left for her. Of course there was, she was dead. She probably would need to wait that long, too, all things considered. Ah well, at least when he’d said he was managing it hadn’t been a lie.

The reminder that she was dead was also a reminder of how she’d gotten there, and Loki turned his head away. “I’m... sorry. For my part. I told them to take the left.” The left, straight to her. He’d hoped the dark elves would run into Odin, or at least cause some general mayhem before the einherji mowed them down. He just... hadn’t thought of the worst case. And even if he had that might not have stopped him.

Frigga lowered her hands, laying one over the other on her lap. She listened to Loki speak, attentive and composed as she ever was.

“I know.” To everything.

“I imagined you might. Still best I say it, though.” He’d never have another chance, after all, and that was one of very few apologies he’d ever really wanted to make. Had he been permitted to attend her funeral, he might have whispered it then.

Loki clasped his own hands together, absently rubbing his left middle finger as if twiddling a ring. (He’s never worn rings, they made that particular habit too obvious.) “So. Should I believe this is a social call? Visiting me in my new larger and better-populated prison?”

Her chest fell slowly with a soft exhale, and Frigga turned her head towards the greater room as if taking stock of it--though her eyes were distant, looking through everything. "Taking one's place in the next life gives one perspective. Knowledge of what has been and what will be. To look back on one's life and see the light one casts. And the shadows."

Frigga turned her gaze back on Loki, cupping his cheek and brushing back the long strands of black she'd run her fingers through so many times. "I loved you fully. That has never changed. I let myself believe love was enough to offer in place of the truth." Her face the picture of equanimity, even as the glistening in her eyes fell down her cheeks. "I was wrong. For that, I cannot apologize enough."

"It's hindsight, now." Loki shrugged very slightly, not disrupting his hands or hers. "I've had some time to think, as you may know." 'Knowledge of what has been and what will be' said she knew that he'd had a good three years of peace and pleasantry ruining Odin's precious realms while wearing the old man's face. Time to rest and think, a little forced to think from being confronted by that face in every reflection.

"At the time, I saw only that my identity was a lie, which meant I had nothing to rely on." People assumed that liars and illusionists didn't care about truth or reality. Frigga, who'd taught him... not quite everything, but all of his foundations, knew better than anyone that it was often the opposite. You had to know what was true in order to mask it properly, and you had to know what reality was in order to convince people it wasn't. "Later, I saw that there were so many little things that might well have been easier had I just known. Paths I could have walked if I'd known. The lie's not as important as what was taken from me by it, and Odin, at least, would have been entirely content to let me live and die ignorant and crippled. That I don't forgive. Him, anyway. You?" He looked her over, as if evaluating, then shrugged again. "You were complicit, but you've never been a question."

Another breath. Frigga drew Loki in to press a kiss to his forehead, warm and lingering. "You were my greatest love. You and your brother." She sat back, hesitant to remove her hand from her youngest's skin. But she did, lowering it back to her lap. There still was still so much to say. And yet...

She stood, folding her hands in front of herself. She felt her time growing short. "Come with me."

Ghosts didn't happen for no reason, and the way of the universe was 'put something in, get something out'. Time with his mother (however brief, though it would always have been too brief) was certainly getting something out, so it was time to pay his end. Loki stood when Frigga did, weaving a few threads of magic to change his clothes to something more suitable for going somewhere - black, not exactly casual, shoes instead of bare feet. And, given the going somewhere, he spared a glance at Valkyrie, still sleeping like a rock, as if her status would have altered in the slightest. It had not, of course, so he turned to face his mother more fully. "To business, then."

The moment her son faced her, the room had already shifted. Gone were the pastel blues and golds of Loki's room, and gone was Valkyrie. Frigga and Loki stood in the shadows of the unfamiliar place. Around the corner, there was light--though it was cold. Sterile. Silent.

"Come." Frigga repeated, following the light's source.

Loki was tempted, more than a little, to ready a knife or two. Small ones, up his sleeves, just in case... but while Frigga was as tricky as he was (or almost so, since she lacked both his tendency to malice and unconcern for morality) she wouldn't lead him into an ambush. If he needed a knife, he'd have time to pull one.

He did step quietly, though, when he followed her. This wasn't a trap, but there was no sense being stupid about it.

Frigga turned the corner and into the light, and she stopped to face something just out of Loki's sight as he followed steps behind. One of her hands tightened over the other, and her queenly mask strained against the weight of her own emotion.

The hands clasping, the suppressed emotion, both of those were like warning signs: even though Frigga undoubtedly knew what waited in that cold light, knowing didn't help. The last few steps to come level with her and see what she saw were nightmarishly difficult, but Loki took them anyway. Whatever others thought of him, he was no coward and he would face....

Thor, sitting on a bench by the wall, staring into space, hands pressed together. It was certainly Thor, close to the one Loki had gotten used to: short hair, oddly dark when Loki knew his brother to be blond, and mismatched eyes. But there were differences, starkly obvious to Loki as much as to Frigga - he and Thor had been inseparable most of their lives. If Loki knew anyone, he knew Thor, and this... wasn't Thor. All his brightness was gone, the warmth that Loki had always associated with his brother. Gone was the ready smile, the boisterous energy, the determined sunny optimism. The cheerful insistent stupid act. Even in a second or two Loki could tell that this Thor on the bench, whatever else he was, was someone he personally understood much better. Tired and cold, moving forward by will and inertia rather than desire.

Without realizing he was doing it, his hands twisted slowly around each other. "Mother. What is that?" It was a stupid question only on the surface.

Frigga remained silent. She wanted to go to her firstborn as desperately as any other. She yearned to provide comfort and a knowing word. But she would not reach him, nor would Loki. Taking another breath, she kept her eyes ahead.

"That," She stilled her hands, "Is your brother. In his heart of hearts."

“I can tell it’s Thor. There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I meant what happened?” Annoyance and snapping was a defense mechanism, not that there was anything that could defend against the living breathing corpse on the bench.

Frigga turned towards Loki, leveling him with her gaze. "You've known. Do you wish to see?"

That meant only one thing, which should have been answer enough, enough to not have to see. But one more look at Thor on his bench wearing the face of a man with nothing left.... “I think I have to. Yes.”

He didn’t want to. Norns, he wanted anything else. But if he wanted to really know, he probably had to see.

At Loki's word, embers began drifting down, and the cold light became swallowed by the shadows. Frigga stood, now silhouetted by a distant nebula. The fires of devastation raged around them, but they were untouched.

The Asgardians that littered the ground at their feet were not so lucky.

And there, another Loki stood in the midst of it all, surrounded on all sides by the forces he'd once aligned himself with, now come to collect.

Loki watched almost dispassionately, ‘politely interested but not engaged’ as events unfolded nearly as Thor had written them. Nearly, but not exactly: Thor’s little book had left out Thanos holding the Power Stone to Thor’s head, torture to make Loki give in. Successful torture, as keeping the Tesseract for himself proved not to be worth Thor’s suffering.

Thor’s reaction had also been left out. You really are the worst, brother or You really are the worst brother, whichever it was, they were both true. Left out because Thor felt guilty for saying it, almost certainly.

The Hulk, fighting, failing, being sent away. The final pitch to Thanos for alliance over death. That ludicrous stab, equally confusing to him watching as it had been to Thor. Choking. Final defiance. And then the sickening snap of his future self’s neck following by the corpse being dropped before bound Thor as if to shove his face in it.

Loki had stood outside his own life and watched it happen too many times to care much about his future self. His attention was on Thor, not what to him was just a broken puppet.

Thor made almost no noise, just a muffled word recognizable as NO at the neck-snap. He stared emptily while Thanos fluster, And then when Thanos and his Children departed, breaking the spells that held his bonds together... he crawled. Bleeding from the mouth, clearly badly wounded, while the ship tore itself apart around him, Thor crawled to Loki’s corpse and clutched it.

A man with nothing left.

Loki, the not-dead-yet one, took careful steps through the destruction and knelt before the brother who couldn’t see him. “...oh.”

A rumble shook what was left of the cabin, and Frigga approached from behind her sons. The rumbling grew, and the roar of the warping spaceship itself was drowned by a cacophony of explosions that swiftly began to approach.

“Loki.” She spoke, managing to be heard above the destruction, signaling their need for departure.

“No.” The events hadn’t touched him so far, he’d stay as long as he could. If he’d been up to standard, he’d have been looking around, taking things in, trying to find something Thor had missed by being... occupied. But he wasn’t doing that. Loki was watching Thor do nothing.

Thor had said he’d grieved each of his previous deaths. Loki had been... skeptical was one word. Sarcastic was another. Why should Thor be anything but relieved he was gone? In the dark world there had been a reaction, but then his human’s need to escape, not to mention Thor’s own, had finished that. Loki had assumed the feeling was no more than an initial flinch: sharp for a second then fading almost immediately in the crush of other things.

This, though. This was Thor, insistent on charging into all things, too straightforward to lie, cheerfully loaded with responsibility... doing nothing. Weeping on a corpse, paying no attention to his own injuries or the fact that the ship was basically several explosions held together by failing artificial gravity. Choosing, by inaction, to die rather than leave.

Not that he had died. But it was real. “No.”

There was not a moment of notice as the air swelled and a searing white light consumed everything that was. The Statesman was no more. Every soul on board was no more—save for one.

Then, darkness. Silence.

Slowly, the dim lighting of Loki’s room returned, illuminating patches of familiar blue and gold, chasing away the void of deep space.

Loki found himself kneeling on the floor in his room after the explosion. He inhaled a deep breath, held it, then let it out. Control breathing, control emotion, and he needed the control. Screaming or weeping out of seemingly nowhere wouldn’t do him any favors, and he had a suspicion that distress-noise would rouse Valkyrie the way self-inflicted head injury didn’t.

It took a full minute or two of carefully-regulated breathing before things settled to a point he felt he could do something else. He rose to his feet and returned to the bed to make sure everything actually was still intact there. It didn’t even occur to him to look and see if Frigga was still there.

“Loki.” Frigga’s soft voice broke the renewed silence, standing feet away before her son with that melancholic grace. She seemed to cast a light of own, though it was dimmer than before. There wasn’t much time left.

Without missing a beat, Loki switched course and stepped into Frigga, pulling her into a hug. At some moments, and this was one of them, the only thing a man really wanted to do was cling to his mother. It didn’t actually help a lot, but... it did a little. Just a little.

Without reservation, Frigga hugged her child back. Her body remained warm, though parts of her were beginning to fade. She could hear the call of her ancestors--of her husband--to join them once more. It was an act of pure will to remain with her son that much longer, to feel his weight in her embrace.

"From the moment I first held you in my arms, I loved you fully." She drew back, eyes bright with pride. "The rest is immaterial."

He believed her. Frigga was never a question, and that was why she was much less... difficult... than Odin had been. Her fading was pronounced, in places. No surprise, her task was done. “I’ll miss you, Mother.”

"Take care of each other. Be kind to each other." Frigga faded into faint shimmers of light, her smiling face disappearing last.

"The sun shines upon you, my sons."

Loki watched her vanish, steeling himself to appear calm. Self-control was going to be immensely important for... a while. More than usual. Though once Frigga was entirely gone and the pain and grief settled back on him completely, he had to acknowledge he was going to have to find some outlets. The last time he’d felt anything like this, he’d tried to destroy Jotunheim and then himself.

Even had it been the best of times, even if it was the last request of his mother.... “Caring and kindness aren’t exactly my nature,” he murmured to the empty space, then returned to bed, intending to stare at the ceiling until morning.

At some point during the night, Valkyrie reached a moment of slight lucidity to turn towards the heat of the body beside her, feeling for the solid mass. Her hand squeezed his hip with a bit more force than strictly necessary, but it lightened when her brain registered his presence. "You're back." She murmured, her dark hair falling over her shoulder.

She’d noticed he was gone. Loki felt, absurdly, a little warmed by that even while he noted not as rock-like as I thought. Another deep breath, as subtle as he could make it, smoothed any sign of distress from his tone when he murmured, “Yes.” Valkyrie took her guardian of the throne business seriously, and he... didn’t want her to worry.

What he did want was to curl closer to her and press a kiss to her shoulder, reassuring himself that she was as warm and alive as she seemed.

Valkyrie sighed as she was drawn in, a lilt of pleasant surprise to her soft voice, though she wasn't conscious enough to question it. "I dreamt...of you. His Majesty. ...Adrift." She shifted closer, her forehead finding his, craving further confirmation of his physicality.

“I’m here.” That was too close to a future truth, and the effort required to seem calm spiked sharply for a moment. He still didn’t succeed completely, as his arm slipped around her to pull her closer, inviting more of the confirmation or reassurance they both seemed to want.

Murmuring again, the words that came out of Valkyrie's lips weren't quite intelligible. Her consciousness was leaving her once more, satisfied with Loki's presence. She shifted further up, finding a comfortable place against the prince with her chin atop his head, hands loosely circling around his upper back

He wasn’t going to sleep, he was almost sure of it. But Loki closed his eyes anyway and sighed a little. Whatever else was or would be, being in the arms of a warm, living Valkyrie who noticed when he was gone was much, much better than staring at the ceiling.

Eventually, though, he actually did sleep.