Chapter 1
The Allfather stood proud as he searched the hall subtly, unaffected by Frigga’s attempts at silent comfort. He studied the warriors, glanced at every dark shadow and everywhere else besides.
Finally, he looked at Loki.
Naturally.
Loki could only shrug, watching warily as Odin restrained himself from allowing the true depth of his upset to show.
For naught, it appeared, as whispers grew among the gathered warriors despite his control.
“Where is he?” Volstagg muttered out of the side of his mouth.
“He said he’d be along,” Loki murmured in response, his hand twitching against his fine clothing as he avoided running it along his hair to make absolutely certain that it was completely under control. There was no need to project how helpless he felt- it was doubtless the warriors were already aware of his nerves.
Not that anyone would really notice- unless they suspected him of something.
Sif shook her head, realization settling on her face.
“What?” Volstagg whispered furiously.
“He wants to make an entrance,” Sif complained, but she seemed amused enough that Loki figured she would have helped him had Thor asked her to before. She was only so upset because she hadn’t had a hand in it.
Fandral huffed, watching the king. “Well, if he doesn’t show up soon, he shouldn’t bother. Odin looks like he’s ready to feed him to his ravens.”
Loki glanced at his agitated father, before turning his head to Fandral, wordlessly reminding Fandral to stop fidgeting. “I wouldn’t worry,” he said calmly, shoving down his own worries. “Father will forgive him.”
Loki faced Odin once more, his face unreadable. “He always does.”
Loki watched uneasily as Odin and Thor’s argument only increased in intensity. Before too long, if they remained uninterrupted and only continued building up steam, they would explode. Loki wouldn’t pretend he had an idea what exactly would happen, but he could imagine.
He knew the both of them- and their tempers- too well.
“While you ‘wait’ and be ‘patient’, the Nine Realms laugh at us!” Thor bellowed, his muscles bulging with how tensely he held his body. “The old ways are done. You’d stand giving speeches while Asgard falls?”
“You’re a vain, greedy, cruel boy,” Odin spat furiously, his single eye aglow with his passion and his white beard trembling with the strength of his emotions.
Where was Frigga?
No one could intervene the way she could, could defuse tempers the way she could, compromise and induce apologies and genuine communication the way she could.
Thor flinched slightly before he gathered himself again. “And you are an old man and a fool!” He shouted, his grip on Mjolner continuously flexing and adjusting. The familiar tick was a sure sign he was prepared for battle- even if it meant fighting his own father.
Loki cringed, frantically trying to think of how he could interrupt- or at least, get them to Frigga, or Frigga to them, before either of them did something they would regret.
He knew it was futile. He had no time to make a plan, much less play it out. Why did his brother and father have to have such short fuses? Loki couldn’t run damage control if he wasn’t able to plan ahead. Everything always escalated so fast- even Loki could only do so much.
Especially when neither of them liked to listen to Loki.
Loki scanned their surroundings, praying to the norns he’d find a suitable distraction until the two were able to calm down.
(Part of him was only grateful the ire wasn’t directed at him. The rest of him was utterly sick and disgusted by the thought.
Norns, he hated conflict.)
And then everything stilled suddenly as Thor’s insults registered, Loki’s hurricane of thoughts suddenly dissipating into a blanket of mist.
Thor blinked in shock, clearly stunned at what had come out of his mouth. He looked halfway between apologizing and backing it up with worse things, but in the end he did neither. He simply stood there, frozen.
Like Loki, he held his breath, unwilling to even twitch in the hopes that Odin’s fury would pass over him like a cloud that hardly even blocked the light of the sun.
Odin spoke slowly, softly. His words hung precariously in the air, like a dwarven hammer balanced on a thread of spider’s web. Perfectly controlled and balanced, but liable to fall and demolish everything in the vicinity at the slightest shift.
“A fool, yes!” He mused, tasting the insult, and Loki held himself back from flinching once more, his heart stuttering. Thor got his insufferable pride from someone- and it was certainly not their (relatively) even-tempered mother.
And then Odin’s voice struck, faster and deadlier than any snake Loki had ever seen. “I was a fool to think you were ready,” he snarled. Loki half expected to see black venom trickling from Odin’s lips.
Loki couldn’t bear to think what he would say or do next- he couldn’t think at all. His mind was entirely blank. No words or tricks or anything could help this.
And yet, he was alarmed to discover his feet moving without his permission anyway, carrying him closer to his king father, looking up at him imploringly, opening his mouth to speak in the hopes that he could save Thor.
He could never live with himself if he didn’t, he accepted that. He would do anything- any debasing of himself to sate Odin’s fury. Begging, tears, anything.
Except before he could draw in a breath, Odin turned to face him, more livid than Loki had ever seen before (how was that even possible?) and growled at him, beyond speaking.
Beyond thinking.
Beyond reasoning entirely.
“You,” he hissed, advancing on Loki as the young god stumbled back, almost tripping on his own feet in his haste to stay out of Odin’s reach Odin’s path.
Thor made a sound of protest when Odin snatched up Loki, but did not speak yet, watching in the same passive horror that Loki had claimed previously.
How ironic.
Loki couldn’t imagine a world where Thor speaking up would make anything better, for any of them, but he selfishly wished Thor would. He desperately wanted Thor- anyone- to interrupt, to save him, to calm Odin down, to stop this madness.
It would never happen. Loki knew, for all his young mind cried out in protest, begging for safety. He was a fool and he knew it, but everything around him faded entirely out of his awareness as Odin squeezed Loki’s neck.
Loki tried to remind himself that Odin wouldn’t kill him. He wouldn’t.
He wouldn’t.
Would he?
His world zeroed down until it was only on Odin’s weathered face, his hands belatedly fluttering up and around his throat, prying at Odin’s meaty hand and trying to free himself far too late.
He was going to die.
Loki struggled harder, clawing at Odin’s hand, before going limp. There was nothing he could do.
If Thor was saying anything- if anyone was even there- Loki didn’t know. All of his awareness was limited to his father and the sensations overloading his body as Odin strangled him.
He looked into Odin’s single piercing eye, dark and distant like he was enemy scum Odin was finally eliminating after centuries of vengeful plotting.
“It was your fault, wasn’t it?” Odin snarled. “It always is, you parasite,” he continued as Loki’s vision began to swim.
“FATHER!” a voice screamed.
Absently, Loki noted that it wasn’t him- it couldn’t be.
So who was it?
“For the sake of Frigga, I will not kill you,” Odin decided, “As I have not before. But,” he growled, “You will never return. You will not destroy this family any more, with your deceitful, villainous, cursed tongue!”
He gripped Loki’s hair with the other hand suddenly, pulling his face up to meet his as Loki lost the strength to hold it up himself. “I curse you,” Odin said low and furious. “I curse you with all my power as Allfather and with the might of the norns. Above all else, I curse you that your magic might be severed from your very soul.”
As Odin spoke, golden beams of light began shooting out of Loki’s chest as his vision turned entirely black.
Despite having no air, Loki registered that he had begun to
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“Have you ever seen readings like this before?”
“No, sir.”
“Figure it out. I need to know inside and out exactly what is going on before I get my shoes on in the morning, tomorrow.”
“...Sir?”
“What is it.”
“A call coming in from Agent Coulson, sir. I- I think he may know something about these readings. Sir, do you want-”
“Give me the thrice-cursed phone, agent.”
...
“Nick.”
“Excuse you, Coulson?”
“I think we found something that might interest you.”