Pandemonium
Kate watched Loki grow more and more sullen, more bitter, as Thor’s coronation day grew closer. She just watched, not really knowing what to say, how to make it better. Thor was arrogant and hot-headed; Loki was right that he wasn’t suited to rule. Maybe one day, but not yet. But Loki… he was a whole different kind of arrogant. He was smart and he knew it. He could get anyone to do anything and he knew it. He was right and he knew it. It got to his head in a way that she could tell was unhealthy. Too smart for his own good, she’d heard Frigga say once. Accurate.
They were saved from Thor’s coronation by the biggest mess they’d seen in years, a distraction to everyone. It all went downhill from there.
“What are you doing?” she hissed at Loki as he prepared to leave with Thor and his friends to the realm of the ice giants. They’ve gone mad, the lot of them. “You’ve gone mad,” she shook her head. Then, of course, she said, “I’m coming with you.”
“Have you lost your mind?!” he paused to look at her, anger in his eyes, then returned to stuffing knives in various hidden places on his person. “Absolutely not. You’re to tell father the moment we’re gone.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
The whole thing had been his idea, despite what Thor thought. She knew it. He knew it. “What are you playing at?”
“Just do it, kitten,” he sighed. “As soon as we’re gone.”
Kate nodded.
***
Loki came back shaken. She’d never seen him this way. Even Thor’s exile – although it put a smile on his lips – didn’t change the haunted look he had in his eyes. It wasn’t obvious, not really. But Kate had spent too much time with him not to notice that something was very, very wrong.
She’d mostly tried to disappear in the background during the whole thing, lest the Allfather remember that there’s a Midgardian in their midst, and send her back to earth together with Thor. Maybe she should have insisted to come with them, although her instinct for self-preservation knew that Loki was right to leave her behind. But if she’d been there, maybe she’d know why he was acting this way. Maybe she’d know what was wrong. Maybe if she’d stuck to his side afterwards, ignoring that look in his eyes that meant nobody should come near him if their life had any meaning to them at all, whatever it was that happened with Odin wouldn’t have happened. But she was busy trying to disappear in the background, and so she’d only heard that there was some altercation, that Odin had fallen into the Odinsleep.
With Thor gone, Loki had taken the throne.
In another time, that would’ve made Kate happy. Happy for him. Now, it just made her more anxious.
“What’s going on?” she caught up with him in a hallway, making his way to his room.
“Leave me be, Kate.”
“Tell me what’s going on with you,” she insisted, hurrying her steps to match his long stride.
“Leave. Me. Be.” His shoulders hunched a bit, just for a moment, bracing against an invisible attack. Then he straightened, shaking it off. He was a king, through and through. He wouldn’t be bothered by the likes of her. A stance to frighten any person with sense, even just watching it from behind like Kate did as she tried to catch up with him. It should’ve frightened her, as well, but it was too late to start being afraid of him now.
“Loki Odinson,” she reached for his arm, “stop and tell me what happened.”
He tore his arm out of her fingers with a violence she’d only seen reserved for others, turned to her, finally stopping.
“I’m not him.”
“Not who?”
“Odinson.”
“What?”
“Laufeyson. That’s who I am. A Frost Giant’s unwanted offspring, left to die. A pawn for Odin. A monster. I’m the monster they tell children about at night.”
He said it with a steely resolve, but his eyes were swimming until he blinked it away.
“So go away, Lady Kate. I’ve got a role to fill.”
“A monster?” Kate repeated, trying to process the information. A foundling baby, picked up by a king. Raised as a prince, but always found wanting. It all made sense now. Why Thor was favored. Why Loki never quite could fit in, not that he’d made many attempts to try in the time she’d known him. Kate wasn’t sure how many attempts he’d made before, though.
He shrugged, as if that was a confirmation, then turned and continued walking.
She watched him for a moment, anger coming to a slow burn, bubbling out. “A monster?” she called after him.
He paused again, clearly irritated, turned, “Yes. You’ve heard the stories. I was the one who told them to you.”
“So you’re a monster because you come from a realm of monsters, am I getting this right?”
“Finally, the little kitten is catching up,” the venom was dripping from his voice. The smile he had for her didn’t reach his eyes.
Now her eyes were swimming, putting the image of him out of focus until she blinked the moisture out, down her cheeks. “What am I, then? What am I, you damned fool?”
***
She found them plotting Thor’s rescue in one of the rooms, and for a brief moment she thought they might actually harm her in an attempt to keep their plan secret. It took longer than expected to convince them to take her with them. She was Loki’s, after all. Loki’s what was unclear, but they all knew where her loyalties lie.
“Thor is my brother,” she said. “And Loki…” she shrugged, not quite sure how to explain it. “He said I’m a monster,” which wasn’t strictly true, but he might as well have.
“He shouldn’t be on the throne,” she added after the silence stretched. “I love him, but he shouldn’t be on the throne.”
In the end, what tipped the scales was the fact that they didn’t actually want to hurt her, and the best way to make sure she wasn’t ruining their plan by telling Loki of it, was to keep her with them at all times. It suited her just fine. Also, she was in the room when Heimdall summoned them all, there was nowhere to go after that except answer his summons together.
***
It was strange being on Midgard without Loki. It was wrong. It was where they went together, to hide away, to forget, to party, to have fun. Now she was there with Thor’s friends and it was everything but fun.
They’ve landed outside a desert town, making their way in the heat in full Asgardian clothes to find Thor, who presumably was somewhere in the town. Kate tried to keep the Asgardians off the road, but mostly failed. She considered it a success she managed to convince them to get on a sidewalk rather than challenge an approaching pickup truck. She wasn’t quite sure who would win that kind of a challenge, and they had no time to waste on figuring it out.
“Found you!” Volstagg announced, knocking on the glass door when they’ve reached a house near the edge of town and spotted him through the door. He was dressed in jeans, a tshirt and a checkered shirt on top. It took Kate a moment to reconcile the image with her big brother the warrior, but the two quickly meshed together. The others in the room just stared at them.
It was a bit of a mess of introductions and shocked stares.
“We’re here to take you home,” Fandral said.
“You know I can’t go home; my father is dead because of me. I must remain in exile.”
“Is that what he told you?” Kate asked.
“Who?”
“Loki,” she rolled her eyes. Who else would be telling him something like that? And what was Loki up to? Something was going with him. Kate wondered whether Thor would help her figure it out, or just make it worse.
“Thor, your father still lives,” Lady Sif said, and Kate watched the anger start boiling in her brother’s eyes, and decided he was just going to make it worse.
Everything went spectacularly wrong minutes later when The Destroyer arrived. They’ve split up, getting the people to safety, giving the warriors space to fight. They’ve cleared everyone they could and met up behind a building, watching in morbid fascination as the automaton burned through the town. Then Sif pinned it down, and Kate took a proper breath. It got stuck in her throat when the machine started moving again. Morbid fascination turned to fear.
“Go,” Thor said, watching his friends scatter. Kate couldn’t look away from it. “Now, run,” a hand on her shoulder, his, tearing her away, pushing her and another woman – Jane? She thought her name was Jane – away from the danger.
“Thor wait,” everyone else did as they were told, already running.
“Go, Kate. You’re not safe here.”
She wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him that something was wrong with Loki. That he wasn’t being himself, wasn’t being rational. She wanted to tell him that she was happy to see him. She wanted to hug him. She wanted to ask him how he’d found Midgard, compare impressions. They were never very close, Thor and her. Not like she’d been with Loki. But he was her brother, and the world was burning around her, and she wanted to-
“Go!” he pushed her away. Kate stumbled, “I’m right behind you,” and he was. For a few moments they were all together. And then he was gone, diverting his route to get to Sif.
They were falling back, all but Thor.
“No wait,” they pulled her back with them, but he didn’t come. Her stupid brother didn’t come. “Wait!” she said again. They stopped.
“What’s he doing?” Jane took the words right out of Kate’s mouth.
“Oh no, oh no no no no…” both of them. Both of them have lost their minds on the same day. This wasn’t happening. She wasn’t just going to have to watch them fight each other like this. Damn them both, the idiots. “No you idiots stop it,” but they didn’t hear her. Sif glanced at her, just for a moment, then back at the scene unfolding ahead of them.
Thor was talking, saying something to The Destroyer, stepping closer as he spoke. The fire died behind the metal shield. Kate released a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Finally, sanity.
A moment later Thor was flying in the air, thrown across the road by the machine.
“No!” Jane reacted first, running before Thor’s body hit the ground.
Kate couldn’t breathe. This wasn’t happening. Loki didn’t just kill his brother. Didn’t just kill her brother. This wasn’t happening. She couldn’t run to his body; her feet wouldn’t move. They stayed rooted to the ground and she watched as he and the woman spoke, then he closed his eyes, stopped moving.
This wasn’t happening.
The Destroyer was walking away, she followed it, not thinking. Odd that it was easier to follow the machine than take the few steps closer to Thor. She followed it and spoke under her breath, “What have you done, Rei? How could you?” Kate thought she saw it pause, just briefly, at her words, but it was so brief it might as well have been a trick of her mind.
Then it did pause and turn, as Thor’s hammer came flying through the air and Thor himself was wrapped in lightning. There was a moment of joy, pure, undulated joy when Kate realized her brother was going to be fine, and not only that, he got his hammer back. The moment turned into pure horror when she realized they were going to be facing off again.
“No, you idiots.”
Of course, they didn’t hear her.
It didn’t take long, and Kate was grateful. Her already frayed nerves couldn’t have handled watching the fight for long, and she wasn’t the kind to look away. It didn’t take long, and when Thor appeared from the dark grey storm cloud he’d created, Kate felt relief like she hasn’t in a very, very long time. They lived.
“-you normally look?” she caught the end of Jane’s question, the look she had in her eyes while looking at Thor. The smile he had for her. Huh. Interesting. She missed parts of the conversation going around her, too absorbed in processing this new information.
“Do you want to see the bridge we spoke of?”
The newcomer that has appeared with a group of identically dressed man, Son of Coul, tried to speak, “Wait, I need to debrief you,” but Thor paid him no attention. A moment later he disappeared, flying on his hammer with the woman in his arms, going to the Bifrost.
She exchanged an eyeroll with Sif.
“I’ll tell you what you want to know, Son of Coul,” Kate said. She wanted to go home, but she wasn’t ready to watch yet another round of Thor and Loki fighting. Not so soon. She’d let them fight it out and come back when they’ve both got it out of their systems. Try to talk some sense into Loki. Try to calm Thor down. Maybe now with this Jane in the picture, it would be easier. She was already working on what she’d say to each of them, as she made her way with Son of Coul (Coulson, he told her, not Son of Coul) to the back of his car.
“Follow them to the Bifrost site,” Kate said. “I’ll talk on the way.”
The road was grating on Kate’s nerves, each bump a sharp stab in her gut. It wasn’t pain; she wasn’t in pain. She just had a terrible feeling. Somewhere in the universe, the brothers were either already fighting, or preparing to fight. She spoke to Coulson through the distracted haze of a hundred different scenarios going through her mind, each one ending in blood, if not in death. She didn’t really think they’d kill each other. Not really. But there was a whole range of in-between.
When they reached the bridge, Thor and the warriors were gone. Jane and the other people were still there, standing around, not really doing anything.
“If you think of anything else…” Coulson said, and gave her a card. She glanced at it, curling her fist around it. Then he was gone, and she was left alone with Jane and the other two. She didn’t even get their names.
“They said they have to go back,” the woman who wasn’t Jane spoke.
“Heimdall,” Kate stood in the middle of the circle. She didn’t yell, she knew he’d hear her. “Heimdall come on,” they were probably fighting. Right now. It was a bad idea to stay behind. She needed to get there. She needed to get there and make them both see sense. Make them stop.
“He didn’t hear them before,” Jane said. “Thor called him several times, but he didn’t hear.”
“But they’re gone.”
“Yeah, the colorful beam took them.”
“So he heard them. Heimdall!”
Nothing.
This was bad. This was very, very bad.
***
They were there the whole night. Kate called for Heimdall until her voice was hoarse. He didn’t hear. Then the bridge disappeared, and while Kate’s stomach dropped to the ground in horror at the implication, the worst pain she’d ever felt in her life hit her. It coursed through her entire body, pulsing with her heartbeat, flowing through her veins. White-hot, blinding pain. A sound escaped her throat, but she couldn’t hear it. All she heard was the pounding of her own heart, fast and erratic.
Slowly the world came back into focus, the pain dulled, focusing around a loss.
“Kate?” she turned her head towards the sound of her name. The women were kneeling around her, Jane with her own pain, Darcy with concern. The man stood a step behind, forehead creased in worry. She tried to focus on them, their faces, but they swam in and out of focus as the tears poured, unbidden, down her cheeks.
Loss.
Kate had never realized the awareness she had of them. Never really paid any mind to it. She just knew where they were if she stopped to pay attention to the information. Knew that they were alright, knew when they weren’t, as rare as those occasions were. And now one was gone. Loki was gone.
She couldn’t breathe.
The Bifrost was closed. Everyone she’d ever known were on the other end. Heimdall wasn’t answering. Loki was gone. Did Thor kill him? He couldn’t have. He wouldn’t have.
But Loki was gone.
She couldn’t breathe.