Disregard for the Dead
None of Loki’s private possessions were burned.
Feelings within Thor swarmed and ricocheted off of one another: from confusion, to horror, unbridled rage, then confusion once more.
The younger prince's room was exactly as it was, as it had always been, since the days before the two of them had all learned of his lineage... A room so impeccably clean, it made Thor’s every moment inside it noticeable, as if the room itself could tell there was an intruder from his large and worn boots imprinting on the rug, to his scarred hands moving over the unmarked surface of his brother’s desk. Or the way his coarse fingers brushed against the sensitive spines of Loki’s private library. It was strange being within his brother's chambers and not also being annoyed at Loki’s incessant reprimand for not taking his shoes off before entering, to not mess up his bed by laying on it, or that he handles his private collections too roughly – they were just books, for Valhalla’s sake –
But now there was only quiet. Thor wishes he would be able to hear those complaints again. A glaring face with his nose wrinkled, and a barrage of spitfire insults about Thor’s muddy hunting boots on his pristine white fur rugs…
Rugs made from the skins Thor had brought as gifts to him after hunting trips. Loki was funny in how he always turned his nose up at anything Thor gave him; but he also never let Thor touch those items ever again. You'll just ruin them, he'd say.
It is tradition for all of these things to have been burned. His books, his rugs, his clothes, his many jewels and ointments. These were all important possession of Loki’s. He deserved to have them in Valhalla; and he would make anyone kiss the face of Mjolnir if they thought his little brother wasn’t there, waiting.
For his possessions to not have been burned alongside him…was as if saying he was never worthy of having them while alive. And thus, did not deserve them in death.
This entire room, as untouched as it was, spoke as if his death did not matter.
Thunder cracked overhead and reverberated in his ears, but it was nothing in comparison to the sounds of discourse within his own mind.
He needed to speak with his father about this. There must have been some mistake.
His footsteps moved on their own while his troubled mind raced, falling one after another towards the throne room doors, and his arms pushed them open before even giving thought to what he was going to say.
“Ha! My son, back so soon? Did you forget something?” The jovial teasing would have been welcoming on his moods before, but now it only seemed to be cruel.
You were always the favored son, came Loki’s voice. Son of Odin, it sneered. Thor pushed away the unwanted invading memories as forcefully as he could. “Why do his personal effects remain in this castle? Why were they never burned?”
Odin’s surprise and confusion were evident in his now frowning face.
“Whose?”
Every single courtesan wanted nothing more than to leave.
Five minutes felt like five hours when you feel the static of the air on the hairs of your neck, and see ripples of it dancing across any unfortunate to be wearing bronze that day.
But neither Gods were backing down from their ensuing argument that shook the halls with every bellow.
“You think the boy would’ve wanted us to burn books! HIS books!? Have you gone mad in your grief? He would never forgive us as soon as he found them in Valhalla! He would far prefer them saved for posterity; preserving the knowledge and keeping them for anyone’s use is how he lives on!”
The Alföðr made a point. There were few things Loki hated more than coming across deliberate book-burning tactics in historical texts, or hearing of them through risk-taking travelling merchants who had landed on warring planets. He would more likely prefer them donated to the minds of young seekers knowledge… Whether the knowledge in question be forbidden, or otherwise. Perhaps best to receive such donations would be the colleges of seidr in Loki’s more favored realm, Vanaheim or Alfheim.
“You finally see now, don’t you,” unhidden exasperation in his voice, and a tired hand rubbing his temples “That’s why —”
“Then why have they not been donated,” Thor asks.
Silence filled the Halls.
“You claim to know what Loki would have wanted best, yet in two whole years, Father, you have not fallen through with any such plans.” He squeezes the hilt of Mjölnir. It’s not meant to be seen as threatening; merely a stress mechanism Loki noticed and teased him about it in their younger centuries. “Father… Why do you delay?”
“Why did you not stay long enough for his funeral rites?”
The pain which never healed in Thor’s chest seemed to hollow itself even more from the reprimand and reminder. Aye, Thor also largely felt responsible for the absurdity of the current situation. He should’ve been here, as Loki’s older brother and the eldest prince: overseeing arrangements, completing burial rights, caring for… Caring for the body.
But nay, he was a coward. He had already attended one funeral, and left the second for his father to take care of. A father who was already losing his sense of self from the death of his wife. He needed to right this wrong.
“You’re correct... I should not have ever left you alone in this. I’ll arrange to take care of the rest immediately.” The crimson cape flaps with the sharp turn of his body towards the throne room doors, steeling himself for the task ahead so to be done as soon as possible.
“No!” The sound of Gungnir striking the ground resounded in the halls. Thor looked over his shoulder in bewilderment. “No, you shall not. I shall take care of them alone.”
What?
“Why the Hel not?! You've had your time to do this. Now let me handle it — as I should have! It’s a simple matter of sorting his possessions so they may be burned to Valhalla. As for the books, temporarily relocating them in the palace library would do for now, until we finish negotiating with schools of magic in the other realms. Why, some of those books I know for sure originated from the library. Loki just absconded with them to his chambers centuries ago. It’d practically be like returning them —”
“For Valhalla’s sake, just ignore them!”
Ignore them!
Sparks flew from his tongue and his bellowing words shook the halls from within as the storm crashed against the castle with all its might. Dust fell from the columns, and light fixtures swung and threatened to crashed all around.
“Have you no love in your heart? Have you no respect for the dead? A dead son no less! I know I wasn’t there for Loki’s, but I did see off mother and we made sure all of her possessions would leave with her. Her jewelry, her favorite weapons. The gifts we’ve all given unto her for the past millennium! How was I to know you would not do the same for the boy she had made her own?” Thor despairs. Truly, he had no idea he would have to submit the Alföðr to reason over a conversation of traditions that should have never needed to happen. Something was wrong. “Have you not the faintest idea how it looks to have made a sendoff of mother’s possessions the same day as her pyre, but skip Loki’s for entire years? Have you no care left for him at all!” Why was everything so wrong?
“You will not keep making a disturbance in these halls, boy!”
He had forgotten the courtesans entirely, and surveyed with pity their deeply bowed heads and stiff postures.
He turns back to Odin, “Then send the court out!”
Several heads nodded in unison in response; respectful mutters of it not being of any trouble, anything for the royal family, and even a few stoves forgotten to be turned off, but Gungnir's thud against the floor silenced all.
“You are the only one I should be sending out. You’ve been banished, lest you’ve forgotten! I showed mercy in your return after committing treason; not binding you and stripping you of your strength once more, and this is how you repay me?”
Thor grits his teeth, but holds his glaring eyes steady.
They keep that way for a while, but Odin inevitably motions for the court to leave. They do so as swift as they are thankful for the dismissal.
The golden doors of the throne room close before either of them speak again.
“Did you love him, or not,” Thor speaks a bit too softly.
The response was silence once more, and he was swiftly growing tired of it.
“Did you love your son, or not?”
“Thor,” Odin finally responds, but Thor's rage was too far gone to let him continue.
“This is not a hard question -”
“Keep gripping that hammer, boy, and I’ll have to take it from you,” said Odin darkly.
Thor hadn’t even noticed Mjölnir was unholstered, his hands tightly grasping her at the ready. But Thor did notice the unsaid threat.
“Then come and take it from me,” he countered, holding the head of it in center of his flat palm. The Alföðr could simply call her to his hand, and it would be over.
But Odin made no move to do so.
“Leave.”
“Not until you take her from me. And my title as god, prince, and Odinson. I have no desire for such things anymore,” he ends it, now switching her position in his hand so he would be holding out Mjölnir's hilt towards the throne, readily surrendering it.
There was a moment of pause - Consideration? Hesitation? – before a mirthless laugh followed. “You would want to be parted from your favorite toy so badly?”
Loki
The sharp rise of this singular thought shocked Thor as much as his father's words did.
Mother gave me enchanted daggers from Alfheim! So I don’t even want your silly toy, huffed child Loki, sticking out his tongue for good measure.
“Keep holding onto the shaft of your favorite toy so much, and people will begin to talk,” Loki teased in their youth amidst Thor's developing nervous habit that would follow him well into adulthood.
“Do you think your favorite toy will be enough?” he mocked before the brothers put their plan against the Dark Elves into action.
Thor would still have had trouble connecting the dots together through the grief, confusion, and high tension over his mind, were it not for the briefly shifting eyes of the Alföðr, trying to mask all trace of the flash of fear leaving his face. But it was too late now.
For King Odin Borson had never felt a moment of fear in his life.
“Catch.”
Thor hurled the indestructible force of a dying star at a body ill-equipped to stop it.