The come to Odin talk
The clouds fly past Thor, lightning flying down all around him in his rage. He lifts his hammer skyword and down from the heavens rains colour, glorious and godly. The bi-frost carries him away, away from midgard and away from the information he had just received. Or so he secretly hoped, but the problem roots around in his brain on Asgard just as it did on Midgard, leaving him with only one choice. To confront the problem head on, convince himself to be brave as he always has been. So as the rainbow of the bi-frost fades away in front of his eyes, and Heimdall appears before him, he doesn’t stop to say hi, only zips past him toward the palace in determination.
He doesn’t see it, but Heimdall gives him a knowing nod in passing.
When he lands, bending at the knees, he can see a few startled birds fly away from a statue in front of him. One startles so bad that it promptly defecates on the golden statue of himself, the one eye of the clean Odin statue next to it judging silently. Thor scoffs, tromping off into the equally golden halls. A few people stop to say hi, but all their joys at seeing the crown prince back fade quickly after realising he’s not in a very polite mood. The scowl on his face says it all, and he has no problem manoeuvring through the halls as everyone who sees him rushes to get out of the way.
All except the guards in front of the throne room's doors, who look like they would still rather be anywhere else than in front of Thor when he’s raging. Thor doesn’t even have to ask, and he doesn’t stop walking, so the guards swing the doors open wide to allow him to pass through.
All heads in the room turn, Thor having just interrupted an obviously very important meeting. He can see generals and nobles, a face he recognizes every other seat or so as important, and his father at the top of the table glaring at him with vague annoyance. Nonetheless Odin nods to his son and announces him.
“Thor, my son. What brings you here? Were in the middle of a meeting.“
“We need to talk.” Odin huffs and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I will call you up after the meeting is over, were barely halfway thro-“
“Now.”
Odin is visibly taken aback by Thor raising his voice at him, even daring to interrupt him. But he trusts that his successor has good reason to do something of this magnitude of disrespect, so he dismisses everyone in the room but Thor with a wave of his hand, and powerful people of all sorts go scurrying out of the room like mice.
There's a moment of silence in which Odin tries to discern what the problem is with his eyes, pulling context clues from Thor’s stance and face, but is thoroughly stumped. He’s planned out his son’s life, moulded him into someone he could understand, someone he could control, yet the level of anger in his perfect creation was never meant to be directed back at him like this. It’s meant to be guided by his finger, a point and attack situation he can use however he wants whenever he wants.
This is very much not that. Anger laces Thor’s words and vibrates down his body, his hands shaking no matter how firm his legs are planted into the ground.
“When were you going to tell me?”
Immediately thousands of untold truths come to Odin’s mind, many of them worse to explain than others. Either way, he’s not delighted to find that Thor has gotten wise enough to realise he was lying about anything at all to him.
“Tell you what my son?”
“About Loki!”
Odin does everything in his power to resist face palming right there. He can’t help but think “well, THAT really narrows it down…” He says, as exasperated as ever,
“What has Loki done now?”
Thor's face goes red, and he takes a few steps forward, pointing his finger straight at Odin.
“Not what Loki did, what you did to him! What you did to his children!!!”
“Ah,” a wave of relief passes over him. “Is that all?” Thor splutters.
“Is that… is that all!!! What do you mean is that all??? What you did to them was horrible!”
“What we did to them, Thor. What we did.”
“That was not me! Loki uncovered my memories I KNOW that it was you! You made me do that! You locked Loki away! You told me he was on a mission but he was chained in a cave! You put him there!” Odin sighs and leans his face into his hand.
“Is that what he told you? That I made you do that? Son, it was on my orders, but the only spell I used on you was the one that clouded your memory. You took part in that little clean up willingly, and for good reason.”
Thor stops his advance.
“What?”
“Yes it all went rather smoothly actually. After I got that update on the prophecy from the Norns-“
“What prophecy!”
“Oh yes, I keep forgetting I made you forget. I had had my suspicions for a while about Loki, always sneaking off to places he shouldn’t be sneaking off to, coming back with a big smile on his face. Well the prophecy just cemented my guess, but you should be grateful I acted when I did. The Norns prophesied that his children will one day cause Ragnarok! Couldn’t as well let that stand now could I? I told you, you agreed something should be done, I didn’t tell you they were his children of course you would have gone and gotten attached but that accursed snake had to go and call out for him when I threw him to Midgard so of course you just had to figure it out. I raised you to rule, and that was just a taste of what it’s like. If you can’t even handle that then I think it may be time to go back to-“
Once again Odin is interrupted. Thunder peels throughout the golden hall, and a flash that nearly blinds Odin touches down not even feet away from the edge of the open room. The guards, however important their jobs might be, value their lives a bit too much to enter the room the king of the gods and his next in line are quarrelling in, and so they tip their helmets farther down on their heads and pretend nothing is happening. But inside, unmistakably is the roar of the power at Thor's fingertips, anger a little too potable for his regular temper tantrums. The smell of burnt metal and petrichor comes wafting through the cracks in the doors. If they were to even try to open the doors now they would get a large shock.
Odin stares in awe as his son erupts into fury, pure rage crackling through the energy emitting from him. He had gotten up from his throne and in a flash pushed his fingertips onto Thor’s forehead, exactly as he had the day he locked Loki away. The whole thing is getting too messy, more worry than it’s worth. He’d thought Thor could use this as a learning experience, grow from the pain just like he did at his age, but he can see now that that notion was wrong as Thor’s anger only grows.
“YOU WOULD THROW MY MIND AWAY AT A WHIM? TRASH MY HEAD WITH MAGIC YOU CALL BENEATH EVERYONE ELSE? AGAIN?!?!?!? LOKI WAS RIGHT! OF COURSE LOKI WAS RIGHT HE’S ALWAY BEEN RIGHT ABOUT YOU HASN’T HE? HASN’T HE!”
It didn’t work. His erase memory spell had not worked. He did not hang himself from the world tree with a spear sticking out of his side for NINE days and NINE nights just for his spell to be countered by one of LOKIS! He had forbade the boy from magic, only indulging him when frigga saw fit to teach him enough to keep him safe and hidden from any prying eyes, but the little brat had gone and found a way of fully eclipsing Odin’s magical power with his own, even under his watchful eye. Unacceptable.
“Now Thor this is childi-“
“NO! I’VE SEEN IT! SEEN A FRACTION OF IT FIRSTHAND RIGHT HERE! I WILL NOT ALLOW YOUR HONEYED WORDS TO PERMEATE MY MIND ANY LONGER! I’M DONE!”
And at Odin's feet Thor throws a small, ornate knife. The one Odin had given him when he promised him the throne. The one Loki had looked at with such spite when Thor had rushed to tell him. So many memories flip on their heads, revealing a new point of view to Thor that he had been unable to see before. Little stares and disappointed talks aimed to kill any notions of independence. Punishments that left Loki far worse off than Thor, sometimes even bruising or not healing for weaks. And over it all the expectation that Loki keep quiet and go with it, no matter the injustice against him.
“You will not poison me any more. I think you’ll find I can stand without your puppet strings.”
But as Thor swings Mjölnir and his feet leave the ground, a warpath set back to Stark towers, he still has doubts in his mind about the legitimacy of that statement.
(At Stark towers)
Tony and Loki had been pinning down locations and information on a cork board all day. Avengers filtered in and out of the room every now and then, checking on their progress and bringing them snacks and extra printer paper. Jarvis had made many covert attempts at getting them to rest, and Bruce less so covertly so. But after hours and hours of sleuthing and thousands of calculations, they had tracked the object of their work down to two spots. Thrown over a couch in exhaustion, lolipop in his mouth, Tony says,
“Our last two possible options. He has to be at one of the two. Option one, about 3,000 miles to the left of Hawaii…” Loki shakes his head no.
“He would keep his head somewhere farther North. Nowhere tropical. He is a giant snake, but he’s descended from purely Jotuns. Colder is better. Although by the time he had to make that decision I doubt he had much of a choice in the matter. Too big.”
“I’m sorry, how big did you say he is again? I’m just having a lot of trouble believing he’s been that big for that long and literally no one has noticed.”
“Were gods, Stark. We can do whatever we want. And people have seen him. Where do you think the legends come from?”
“Well at least that makes some sense. Anyway, the final location is… Norway? Actually that kinda makes sense…”
Tony doesn’t get to finish his sentence. In storms, (if Loki is to believe the rumours), America's entire ass and Natasha. Tony says,
“Somebody’s in a hurry! We were just having a major discovery here!”
Steve rebutts with,
“Somebody needs to shut up!” Loki stifles a chortle and Natasha pushes past Steve, face grave.
“Both of you be quite!” Steve huffs and crosses his arms, and Tony flits to suave hero mode at the sternness in her voice.
“What's wrong?”
A pause.
“We found Barton.”