The first time Loki lifts Mjolnir, his only thought is that it feels wrong. Too heavy; and the power itches inside it and sends darting, crackling tendrils along his arms, the air around him heavy with the promise of lightning, vibrating. The magic folds to his will with a palpable reluctance, pulling him, reaching out, a force of barely constrained chaos searching for his destruction. He retches convulsively, fingers tightening against the cool shaft though he wants nothing more than to let go; and when he lifts his head at last trembling and brings his hands into the air, the cold hard eyes of Odin above him weigh more than the hammer beneath his straining arms.
The thought lands, heavy, in his stomach, as if the silent agreement of all present had filled it, a hollow of unspoken sentiment. It should have been Thor.
He studied magic on his own time for years, but as time went on the burden of being the heir fell upon him like ever-tightening chains, every day filled with sparring and statecraft and the preparations for his ascension to the throne. They all know he has never wanted it, was never meant for it; the spare brought out only when the original was too damaged for use. He does not find the time for luxuries any more, though in the depths of his heart he knows he could. But there is a bone-aching weariness in his soul, and nothing stirs up any passion. He knows his duty, and he cannot care.
Thor sits in the garden, hands upon the bright threads of wool he does not see. The shuttle clicks softly beneath his hands. (The finest in all of Asgard, they said, more famed than even the lady Frigga his mother.) They do not stop even as his head turns slightly at the soft pad of feet behind him, and Loki sinks to the ground with a sigh. It has been months since last he visited, and there was no reason not too; but it had lain in the dark corners of his mind like food spoiling more with each passing hour, and he could not bring himself to go. It was only the peculiar buzzing in his mind, the itch for battle that was not his own, that persistent force of the hammer which claimed him as it’s (second-chosen) master that compelled him at long last to make his way to this quiet place, as if somehow here he could escape.
“Something is troubling you,” Thor says at long last, when the breathing beside him has evened out and Loki lies still upon the ground.
“I picked up Mjolnir today.”
For the first time, the hands hesitate. So quickly, he would not have noticed, save that it has never happened before. The answering voice is quiet when it comes. “Oh,” Thor says at last. And then, compelled by curiosity and something else, some more burning desperate need, “What did it feel like?”
“Horrible,” Loki says, shivering, wanting to rip it out of his mind and fling it into the farthest reaches of the dying star from whence it came. “It doesn’t want me. But it won’t go away.”
“I’m sorry,” Thor says, acid on his tongue. The looks on his face he has never learned to guard, and it speaks now of jealousy and resentment. “It must truly be terrible, to wield one of the greatest weapons in the nine realms.” The movements of his hands are precise and controlled, adding to the colors of flame that dance through the shining tapestry.
And Loki can’t explain, can’t explain how wrong it feels, because who would believe him? He cannot even articulate to himself why it is this way, or why he is so scared.
So he does not try. “What’s that a picture of?” he asks, bored and sharp, eyes tracing intricate patterns. It amazes him, what Thor can do with soft-spun thread, magic warm and deep-edged like his brother winding itself about the ever-more finished piece, settling itself on his tongue like honey. It is not the fate he would choose, but sometimes he thinks it would fit him more than that which he must now bear.
Thor grins, thin and wide and humorless. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he says, words cutting and cruel. Knowledge is that which Loki lusts after and which spins ever from his reach. If he could know the paths to come, he could not be so lost.
Thor scoffs. “You think this is power,” he says harshly. “It is not. You know nothing.”
And you know everything. Or something close, at least.
The first battle he uses Mjolnir, it takes him, strange and wild. For so long he holds back, holds on, if only barely, but perhaps it is something he sees, or a sudden cry that comes out across the rest, or merely the fact that it does not end; but when he at last comes to himself the battle is over and there is a smell of ozone in the air. He lies alone within a field of bodies, burnt and smashed into pieces beyond recognition. He does not remember anything, only a wild sort of ecstasy and the storm (which had been calling to him/it as he/they danced and it was destruction, and death, for they could not build, could not work in harmony for anything of good) and he wondered if it was like two stones lashed to each other rolling down a mountainside, crushing the world (each other) in its wake. He was never meant to have this.
The sun hung low in the sky as he pulled himself up, and Mjolnir was nowhere in sight, but he could feel it calling. Insistent and uncompromising, sated for the moment, a slow warmth that traveled through his veins even now. (And his mind saw horror, and nothing but horror, and he was alone among it) and their minds hummed with battle and destruction and joy.
He visited Thor the next day, in the soft gardens where the sun always shone and he was never cold. He and Thor played with fine words sharp as crushed diamonds, twisting them against old scars and watching the blood seep out to decorate the ground and the thin petals of small bright fragrant flowers.
Nothing changed, but the coronation day lived in time before him, ever-present. Things had ceased to have meaning, and he could no longer remember what it felt like to run away.
“What are you going to do?” Thor asks one day, when the sun is big and warm and summer lights the grasses. “When you are king.”
“I suppose I shall rule,” Loki answers at last. He laughs, hollow. Bitter, if he could remember what bitterness felt like. What anything felt like at all.
“So start a war,” Thor says, or perhaps that is only a twisted imagining, a faded memory. What lives sharp and clear is the first time they enter the vault, young and thoughtless and fearing nothing for they are invincible and have not yet learned. When Odin tells them of the old war against their enemies the giants, and their place as a beacon of hope amongst the stars. When Thor looked at him with bright eyes and grinned.
And later, when they are alone, he says to Loki, “I’m going to wield the hammer into battle and (hunt the monsters down, slay them all)”
And they had all believed him.
And the day passes with revelry far into the night, and then he is king, and Odin succumbs at last into sleep, confident (perhaps) that the kingdom is safe in his absence. And Loki visits Thor for the last time, in the bright garden where the sun always shines and it is always warm. Thor is weaving a pattern of ice-blue, and the dark-blue of shadows against them, but in his fingers a bright trail of red has been added to the cloth. Loki stands behind him and watches for a slow, silent moment, to the entrancing, neverending motion.
“Goodbye, brother,” he says at last, cupping Thor behind the neck, and Thor’s fingers work without end. He closes his eyes. Unsurprised, yet perhaps (Loki would like to think) sorrowful, in some small manner. He will have to be, for Loki cannot feel anything himself. He is like ice, and even the sun cannot melt him.
“Goodbye,” he answers at last, and Loki drops his hand away.
He leads them, Asgards finest warriors all, across the rainbow bridge, past Heimdall who cannot stop him, only watch him with (eyes that see too much, like Thor) and let him pass. Down into the cold air of Jotunheim, battle upon their lips, bright and hot as blood. And he is in the lead, Mjolnir singing, for they know of what will come.
The battle-fury leaves him at the foot of king Laufey’s throne, knocked to his knees in the cold snow, blood caking his hair and bedecking his skin like rubies. A cold strong hand grips tightly on his arm, and they watch as soft color falls away to reveal the darkness beneath. At last, Loki feels his first thrill of horror, but it is mixed with spreading calm. A dagger of ice pierces his side.
He feels warm.