Friendly Fire
“Majesty!” The Valkyrie rounds the corner. “We’ve got a big problem.” Thor drops the screen containing the records of the plant production in the greenhouses that he had been consulting and turns towards her. “They’ll be on us in five minutes,” She gasps. “Ravagers.” Thor cursed. For all the troubles they’ve met on their journey thus far, the one he had feared most had, until now, not yet befallen them. Ravagers, pirates, out to pilfer their meagre supplies. It appeared that they had finally caught up, smelled the desperation and poverty coming off the shattered Asgardians and sought to profit.
“How many?”
“Three ships, but one is the flagship,” She says as they move swiftly through the halls. “So. A lot.”
“Have you summoned-”
“Heimdall and Loki are waiting for us, Heimdall snagged a Sakaaran sword for you from the armory. Plus, we have the Sakaarans, and the half dozen Asgardians I’ve been training. Should be a piece of cake. And Bruce is waiting in the wings if we need him.”
“Good. If we can take care of this ourselves, without the Hulk, that’s for the better.” When they arrive at the airlock, the only way onto the ship, the others are already gathered, including several, very nervous young Asgardians.
“Calm down,” The Valkyrie says sharply. “We practiced for this.” She draws dragonfang.
“Besides, it will just be a couple Ravagers,” Loki drawls, flipping one of his knives. “Barely a challenge at all.”
“Should be fun,” Thor says, smiling.
“The shields are up, your majesty.” Heimdall hands him the sword. “They’re firing but their guns are relatively weak. They appear to be a boarding party, as the Valkyrie predicted.”
“We just need a show of strength,” She says. “Keep them in this corridor, prevent them from getting into the rest of the ship, until they decide we’re not worth the trouble.” She hits a button and the airlock chamber closes. “The rest will back off if they start hearing stories of lightning and magic.”
“And swords.” Thor smiles back at her.
“So give it all we’ve got, that’s the plan then?” Korg asks, hefting his club over his shoulder.
“And make it dramatic.” Loki keeps flipping his knives, grinning.
“Sounds like it’ll be a party,” Korg says brightly. “Though don’t know about dramatics…” There’s a shuddering boom.
“Get ready,” Valkyrie tells her young soldiers.
The porthole is blasted open and the fight starts.
They’re wildly outnumbered but they’re also Asgardians, four practiced and old Asgardian warriors backed up by the enthusiasm and fear of the youths and the hardened experience of Sakaaran former gladiators, facing dirty, starving, rough Ravagers. Their combined skill, brutality, and magic push the pirates away, not letting even one get past the airlock chamber. Lightning flashes throughout the corridor, illuminating them in eery blue glows.
A stream of blood shoots over the floor as Loki wrenches his knife from a Ravager’s throat.
“Watch it, lackey,” Valkyrie shouts, but she’s smiling. “You’re getting blood on my leathers.”
“My lady, behind you!” The Valkyrie turns at the shout of one of her charges. There’s a Ravager bearing down on her, and she raises her sword to block his blow.
The young soldier, too far away, picks up a weapon that one of the Ravagers dropped. Thor sees it all in slow motion. The Valkyrie takes a step back, just barely out of danger, as the young warrior raises the weapon.
“No, wait!” Thor cries, but it is too late. The warrior fires, but his aim is off. He strikes the Valkyrie instead. She crumbles without a sound. Horror dawns on the young man’s face. The one he had been aimed at is taken down by Korg, smacked across the head with his massive club.
Things happen fast then. Thor’s lightning strikes out, far more precise that the weapon’s aim, frying the Ravagers who close in on the vulnerable Valkyrie. Loki is there in a moment, dragging her out of the way, and out of sight.
The fight ends not long after, the Ravagers pushed back by the force of the Asgardian rage. They prove they are not the easy marks the Ravagers thought they would be, and the pirates retreat. Thor instructs Heimdall and the warriors to deal with the bodies, and rushes from the hall.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” The young man who shot the Valkyrie cries. “ I didn’t mean-”
“It was an accident,” Thor reassures him. “We’ll talk about this later.”
He finds the Valkyrie, still limp, with both Bruce and Loki leaning over her. His heart sinks into his stomach.
“No-” He gasps.
“She lives,” Loki says quickly. “And does not seem to be physically injured. Though she will not wake.”
“Her pulse seems normal,” Bruce says, fingers on her neck.
“I don’t detect any abnormalities.” Loki places his hand on her forehead. “Nothing.”
“But she won’t wake?”
“No. We should get her to the infirmary. Damn, I’m glad I told you guys to buy a brain scan from that last hospital,” Bruce says as he takes her feet, Thor her head and shoulders. Loki hangs back.
“Are you coming, brother?”
“I’m going to retrieve the pistol. Perhaps it contains some clue.”
The Valkyrie’s form feels very heavy, a dead weight on Thor’s shoulder.
When the Valkyrie opens her eyes, she’s back on her ship. The Warsong. On Sakaar.
“This isn’t right,” She says quietly to herself. But as soon as she says it, the reasoning behind the feeling dissipates like smoke. Why wouldn’t it be right? She’s been on Sakaar for decades, centuries by now. She shakes off the odd thought and takes up her bottle.
She gets herself right to a good, manageable level of drunk and heads out through the trash piles towards downtown, to collect on a debt. The boss still owes her from the other week.
But when she arrives at the tower, something’s off again.
Since when have the Grandmaster’s little companions looked so grey? The Valkyrie watches them as they pass. It’s not just their clothes, it’s their eyes, grey and tired and drained.
“Gast must be some mood,” She says to herself. She arrives at his usual office, only to have Topaz tell her to go to the Grandmaster’s private suite overlooking the area. He doesn’t usually start the fights this early, but she shrugs and skips off without a second thought.
“One-four-two, come in, come in!” The Grandmaster seems like his usual affable self. “Have a drink!”
“Got anything stronger?” She asks when he hands her a glass of bright turquoise liquid.
“Sorry, all I got.” The Valkyrie normally doesn’t pay much attention to the masses of sycophants and courtesans that mill about the Grandmaster, but this time they’re kind of hard to ignore, lurking just at the edges of her vision. She’s hyperaware of their presence, but can’t see any of their faces. It makes her feel unsettled again, like something is wrong with her place among them.
“Starting the fights early, Gast?” She says to distract from it.
“You know me, can’t ever wait for the fun to start! Now, what are you doing here? You only come to the fights when you want something from me,” He says with a coy smile.
“You still owe me, from the other week.”
“Right! Right!” He claps his hands. “Of course, Scrapper. Now, let’s see…which was it?” He takes up his drink and swirls it, tapping his chin pensively. “Was it the Kree you brought me? He was a fighter, lasted almost fifteen minutes against my champion before being crushed into dust. Or the girl who had already been bought and sold over and over on Knowhere before she fell here, and you brought her right to me. She lasted three months, before one of my guests got a little too jealous of her other ‘clients.’ Snapped her neck with one hand.”
“Gast…?”
“Or! Or! The one who broke his femur when he landed and you slapped an obedience disk on him anyways, and we ended up using him as chum during a melee. That was a bloody scene. Or that one with the heart condition, oh, maybe that one wasn’t your fault, you couldn’t have seen that coming…heart just stopped right there, the second you zapped him with the disk. Gave him over to the scavengers for food. Did you know, his people believe that if the corpse is consumed by another living being, the ghost will spend the rest of eternity wandering around, starving and never able to find rest or satisfaction. Isn’t that interesting.”
“Gast what are you doing?”
“There was that Xandarian that I took a special liking too. He lasted…well, he lasted a long time. You remember, don’t you? You saw him, towards the end. Saw how much his soul had been torn and violated, and you weren’t even surprised when he was found at the base of the tower two weeks later, all crumpled and mangled-”
“Stop!” She’s rooted to the spot. All she wants to do is run, but she’s trapped there.
“Or the mage, oh you know how I love mages. She wasn’t happy about it, but I was peckish, wasn’t I? She just shrieked when she realized what I was planning to do to her magic, and then next time you saw her she was just a burnt out shell, kept around so I could feed off her power until she was drained. Or, the Vanir warrior. He almost recognized you, didn’t he? He could tell you were Asgardian, he was just on the edge of it, figuring out who you were. You thought about cutting his throat and getting it over with, watched his twitching body below you on the ship, but then you decided you wanted the money more, money to buy more booze, to lose yourself, forget about the grief and the guilt, about the blood on your hands. You were drunk as a skunk when you watched him fall in the arena and felt relief.”
“Why are you doing this? Gast, what are you-”
“I’m just reminding you of who you really are. A murderer. Oath-breaker. Slaver. You can ignore the blood, wash it away, tell yourself you’ve changed, you’ve gone back to being a proper Valkyrie, serving the Asgardian throne, but in the end you’re nothing but a Scrapper.”
“How did you…how could you know that-”
“You’ll break your oaths. You’ll leave them to die, leave the rest of your people to suffer, to go extinct, and then you’ll find a new planet to drink yourself to death on.” She tries to take a step back, but then he grabs her wrist. “Relax, One-Four-Two. The fight’s about to start.” He drags her to the window and the projection of his face starts. “Good citizens of Sakaar! We bring you a, ah, very special presentation tonight. We have…the King of Asgard himself!” The gates open and out walks Thor, looking just as he had during his original fight on Sakaar. “Now, a special twist this week, Sakaarans. The King will be up against my beloved champion…and whoever wins will be tortured to death live tomorrow night! We’ll stack the stadium for this one, folks!”
“You…you can’t, that’s not…”
“Fair? Who cares about fair on Sakaar? You certainly didn’t.” The Hulk roars. The Valkyrie has never been afraid of the Hulk before. She had a certain affinity for him. But now she knows fear of the Hulk. And knows that even if he wins, he’ll only die too, and Bruce Banner with him, while the Sakaaran crowds cheer for the spectacle. “While you watch the show, don’t you want to sample some of the goods? I’ve got a new favorite, he’ll probably burn out pretty quickly and I’ll have him publicly executed for being boring, but for now he’s still spry, and really down for anything because, like all the others, he knows that on Sakaar, there is no saying no.”
“Gast-”
“Here he is now!” He grabs the arm of a man dressed in a sheer yellow robe. The only splash of color among the gray courtesans. Loki. His face is pale but his lips are very red, and his eyes are very green as he looks at her with desperation. No, not desperation. Disappointment.
“You won’t help us.” His voice sounds far away. “You’ll let us die here because you’re too bitter and cold and heartless to care. You’ll watch Thor died in the arena, and me slowly drained, worn down by rape and abuse, and all manner of other ugly things, drinks and drugs and people using my body until I jump again and this time I have a more permanent end.” He blinks slowly at her. “Even if you didn’t care for the throne, we were still people, alive, breathing, hurting people. But then again, you’ve never held anyone’s life in much regard, have you?” She manages to yank her arm out of the Grandmaster’s grip and stumbles back.
The Grandmaster wraps his arms around Loki instead. His hands wander, slipping lower as he sucks on Loki’s neck. Loki’s eyes never leave hers as before her eyes his soul withers, the Grandmaster sucking out his life and his magic, his hands slipping beneath his robe.
“The Queen of the Dead…” Loki’s voice whispers after her as she turns and runs.
They lay her out, flat on her back, on one of the small cots in their infirmary. Thor hovers as Bruce uses their nearly new scanners to image the Valkyrie’s skull.
“Nothing. Everything looks normal.” Bruce shakes his head at the image on the screen. “Weird. What kind of weapon would cause unconsciousness without leaving a mark? And why-”
“I suspect it’s the kind of weapon that would be helpful if you wanted to capture someone alive, and undamaged.” Loki sets the odd pistol on the counter. “Though I was under the impression that Ravagers didn’t deal in slavery.”
“Maybe for hostages?” Thor asks.
Loki shrugs. “Perhaps. I think it’s more likely they just grabbed whatever they had to hand. Some superstitious pirate probably thinks of it as his ‘lucky pistol.’ And there are always rogue Ravager factions, still flying the banners but rejecting the codes and banished from the community. Unclear.”
“I think we should wait a while,” Bruce says. “The brain scans don’t show any swelling or bleeding, I’ll keep checking those and her vitals. It’s possible she’ll just wake up in a few hours, especially if it was supposed to be used to capture slaves or hostages. Doesn’t seem like they’d want to kill their hostages, right?”
“I agree,” Thor says. “We wait. Keep monitoring her, and hope she wakes on her own.”
They wait a full twelve hours. There is no change.
She runs, and runs, and runs, and she doesn’t know how but the scenery changes before her as she flees. She doesn’t stop, not even as the trash heaps of Sakaar turn into a desolate grey wasteland. She runs on a single path laid out in the midst of rocks and only stops when her legs give out. The Valkyrie falls to her knees.
“Welcome,” A voice says from the shadows. “I’ve been waiting for you.” The Valkyrie staggers to her feet and keeps running. Out of the corner of her eye she sees a giantess, sitting by the side of the path, and she does not spare the woman a passing glance as she runs. “You’ll come back,” The giantess’s deep voice echoes behind her. “They always come back.”
She runs until she smacks, headlong, into another body. The crash knocks her onto her back.
“Brunnhilde!” The voice is sharp. Familiar.
“Ortlinde?”
The last captain of her division, a severe woman who nonetheless cared fiercely about the Valkyries under her charge. She glares down at her. “Get to your feet, Brunnhilde, it is time. Face the Goddess of Death on your feet.” She holds her hand out and Brunnhilde takes it and allows herself to be pulled up. She is suddenly dressed not in her dark Sakaaran leathers, but her silver and blue armor, like all of her sisters. With them, she mounts her horse and as the wings beat at her legs, she remembers all that happened here. Hela. The black blades raining down on them. Hela’s magic, destroying them, tearing them apart.
She doesn’t move.
She is as frozen as she was while the Grandmaster listed the sampling of the souls she had sold on Sakaar, just watches from the back of her horse as her nightmares come to pass. When it is over, she dismounts and staggers forward.
“What have I done?” She cries. “How could I leave? I should have died here, the Valkyries should have died with me, what have I done?” She begins to weep, falling to her knees.
“Coward,” A very, very familiar voice says. “Traitor. Oath-breaker.”
“Sigrún…” Brunnhilde opens her eyes and Sigrún stands before her a corpse. There’s a gaping hole in her chest, and her armor is near black with blood. It’s streaked in her long blond hair as well, and dripping from her mouth.
“You should have died here. You were a coward who fled, instead of facing death with your sisters. You ran instead and left Hela to slaughter us all. You betrayed the oaths you made a thousand years ago, turned your back on Asgard, traitor, cheat, murderer-”
“That’s alright, isn’t it?” A deep, feminine voice cuts through Sigrún’s. “After all, why be loyal to a throne that betrayed you?” Hela herself strides into view now, her black hair loose. “Odin sent you to die. Odin made your lover hate you for doing the sensible thing. It is the throne, not you who is wrong. Poison.”
“No, it was you who ruined everything! You are the monster-”
“I am only the monster Odin made me. Just like you.” Hela smiles at her, brushing Sigrún out of the way. She offers a hand to the Valkyrie, pulls her up as Ortlinde had. “Aren’t you the same? A weapon, a sword, an executioner. Just like me. Except…I have the good graces to do it quick. A swift beheading, a knife to the heart. You make them suffer before you finally fell them. Sell them, trap them, and then after months, years, when all that they have left to do is beg for the end, that, that’s when you finally execute them.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You and I are the same, Valkyrie. And you will be the start of a new order. My order. And together we’ll break the throne.”
“I think we should maybe be concerned.”
“Banner, I believe that’s an understatement.”
“It doesn’t seem like she’s going to wake up on her own. There’s very little brain activity, but her pulse rate keeps racing. It’s enough that I think she might be dreaming, but without the corresponding brainwaves and eye movement…it’s not possible.”
Thor sighs. “What do you think we should do?”
Bruce shrugs. “I don’t know. Other than maybe make for the nearest port with a hospital equipped with something like a neurology unit? I’m out of ideas.”
“I have an idea,” Loki says from his perch on the counter. He has been quiet so far during this status update.
“You know how your ideas make me nervous, brother.”
Loki gives Thor a withering look. “It’s a possibility, I think there were even some on Midgard that were working on technology to do this.”
“What what is ‘this’ exactly?” Bruce asks warily.
“We convince her to wake up.”
The dead lay at her feet, all the Valkyrior, her sisters. She is the last Valkyrie again, no longer Brunnhilde. Just the Valkyrie, an anonymous symbol, soon to be even further stripped down to Hela’s Valkyrie, a Valkyrie for the dead-
She blinks her eyes and instead of the dark plains of Helheim, she’s on Asgard. Standing just outside the throne room, by the looks of it.
“Valkyrie. Brunnhilde.” She turns. Loki stands before her, looking whole and hale, and dressed in his usual black leathers. “We have to go. It’s time to wake up.”
“Go where?” She asks. “I was bound to serve the throne. I’m meant to be here.”
“Yes. Of course. And you’re doing a fine job. But it’s time to wake up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t listen to him.” Hela strides into the hall, her long cape dragging behind her. “The snake. Silvertongue, god of lies, prince of the Void.”
Loki has gone pale. He affects his best mockery of a smile. “Sister…”
“Oh no, you will call me ‘your majesty.’ And you’ll kneel this time. I am the queen, after all.”
Loki rounds on the Valkyrie. “This isn’t real. It’s just your memories, and mine, twisted together. You’re asleep, you know this, you have to wake up-”
“Silence, snake!” Hela waves her hand and Loki doubles over, clutching at his mouth with a soft cry. When he rights and his hands drop from his face, the Valkyrie sees his mouth has been stitched shut with thick black cord. Hela grabs the collar of his shirt, dragging him forward. “Well? Aren’t you coming? You are the chief of my guard after all.” The second Hela speaks the words, it becomes real and she remembers it.
“Of course.” She follows the siblings into the hall.
It is strewn with blood and corpses, stripped of all its gold and finery. Hela’s reign, the Queen of the Dead. As the Valkyrie walks forward, her clothes turn black and shred. She becomes one of the dead guards, a distorted, profane Valkyrie.
Hela drags her brother forward, towards the throne.
“Can’t have another challenger. You’ll help me won’t you? Like you did with the other.” Loki’s eyes raise and he makes a choked, horrified noise through his sewn shut lips as he sees Thor’s corpse, hanged above the throne. Thor swings from a rope in the ceiling, arms and legs bound and neck at a twisted angle. Loki turns back to the Valkyrie, eyes pleading.
“We’re two of a kind, aren’t we, Lady Valkyrie? Destroyers. Breakers of the throne.”
She hears another voice in her head, Loki’s. Wake up, wake up, WAKE UP.
Hela’s holding another rope in her hands, already tied into a noose. Loki’s hands snap to his sides, bound by magic. Hela hands the noose to the Valkyrie.
“You’ve always hated the throne, haven’t you? Ever since that day, Odin sent off the Valkyries, intending for you all to die by my hand. He knew and he sent you off to be slaughtered. We can end this, end Odin’s whelps. Break the throne.” Loki is desperately shaking his head. The Valkyrie feels nothing.
She slips the rope over his head as he shakes it back and forth, pleading with his eyes. She tightens the rope and steps back.
“That’s it, dear, serve your queen. End the sons of Odin, once and for all.” Hela waves a hand and the rope snaps up, pulling Loki’s body roughly up to join his brother’s. Loki dances on the rope, body twitching and spasming as he chokes.
The spasms slow, then stop. The body swings at the end of the noose.
The Valkyrie blinks and nothing makes sense.
“Do you really think this will work?” Bruce says from his position at the Valkyrie’s head.
“Loki seemed to think it would.”
“Loki says that about a lot of things.”
Thor turns to Heimdall, leaning against the wall. “What do you mean by that?”
“Nothing against Loki, my king,” He says. “But the prince worries me sometimes. He has too much confidence in his own magic. He believes he is strong enough to bring her out of the coma, but it’s possible he could make it worse, or become trapped in it with her.” Thor touches Loki’s head. “I’m just providing the worst case scenario. And advising that you perhaps have a serious talk with your brother about his use of magic lately.”
“Heimdall-” He doesn’t get to finish because at that moment Loki sits up with a ragged cry. He gasps for air, clutching at his throat. Thor holds him up with a steadying hand on his back. Loki is too out of breath to speak.
Bruce reads the Valkyrie’s vitals, checks the scan, and shakes his head.
“No change.”
Loki finally catches his breath and rests his head on a trembling hand. “It’s no use,” He gasps, voice rough. “She wouldn’t listen to me, didn’t believe me. I couldn’t get her out. I’m sorry, brother.”
“It’s alright,” Thor says, rubbing his back. “We’ll think of something.”
“There is something, your majesty,” Heimdall says. “What I came to tell you. There’s a captive.”
“A captive?”
“Yes. One of the Ravagers was merely knocked unconscious during the fight. We’ve bound him and locked him in…well we’ve locked him in a supply closest, lacking the usual dungeons. It’s possible he might have some information as to the nature of the weapon.”
“He might not,” Loki croaks.
“I agree with Heimdall,” Thor says. “It’s worth a try.”
The corpses dangle above the throne, knocking together as the ropes creak. The Valkyrie cannot take her eyes off them.
“Ah, that’s better,” Hela says, taking her place on Hliðskjálf. “Now I’m the only one. Just like you. Just the two of us, together for the rest of eternity.”
“No,” The Valkyrie says quietly. “No, we are nothing alike.”
“Did you not just hang your prince? But don’t worry, it’s not like he was really a person, the animal my father decided to take in as a pet-”
“No.”
“Oh, Brunnhilde,” Hela says. “It doesn’t matter how much you protest, how much you want to believe you’re a pure and noble servant of the crown. You know, deep down, that it is true. You and I are exactly alike. I pass on my mantle to you, Queen of the-”
“Stop it!”
Hela descends the throne. She grabs the Valkyrie’s arm but her grip is almost gentle, that of a lover. “Come.” She takes her underneath the palace, descending deep into Odin’s vaults. At the very bottom, there is a pyre.
Sigrún already lies there, still and silent now.
“Isn’t this what you always wanted?” Hela says. “That you had burned with her? We’ll all burn together. It will be beautiful.” Orange flame licks up the sides of Sigrún’s body, consuming it. Hela smiles sweetly as she pushes the Valkyrie onto the pyre.
“Unless you’re advocating-”
“I am not advocating.”
“Okay, guys, you know it really freaks me out when you have weird half-conversations like this,” Bruce says. “What are you advocating? Or not advocating?”
“Loki is implying that he believes we have no other means of procuring the answers from this Ravager captive is through means of torture but I am not advocating for that course of action.”
“Perhaps the threat of it will be enough to loosen his tongue,” Loki says. “We could promise to let him go, though it’s unclear how we would accomplish that given the rest of his fleet seems to have abandoned him here.” Loki runs long fingers through his hair.
“Remember when Odin would just drag prisoners before him, didn’t even have to say anything before they spilled all their secrets, they were so intimidated by the throne.”
“I dare say I remember that quite clearly,” Loki says bitterly.
Thor doesn’t even process Loki’s words because as soon as his own are out of his mouth, an idea is forming. “But if we could make Asgard return…”
“I do believe Surtur was very thorough…”
“No!” Thor says, grabbing his brother’s shoulders. “It doesn’t have to exist…it just has to look like it exists.”
“So now you have time for my illusions?”
“Yes,” He says plainly. “We could use them. Recreate the throne room as best we can, or at least the atmosphere of it. We’ll make ourselves look like gods again and he’ll cower before us, as thousands did before Odin.”
Loki looks thoughtful for a moment. “I can do that.”
“I suppose it’s worth a shot,” Bruce says.”
The Valkyrie falls now, back onto the flaming pyre and then through. Her back hits the dusty dirty of a gray world. Hot flame surrounds her and she slowly gets to her feet. The flames make a perfect circle around her, entrapping her in a ring of fire.
“Welcome back, my lady,” That deep feminine voice says. “You were gone a long time. But then again, I suppose you weren’t.”
“Who are you?” She roars, spinning until her eyes alight on the giantess, sitting at her own, far smaller fire, roasting something on a spit. “What do you want from me?”
“I want nothing from you. You are the one who has interrupted my peace on the road to Hel.”
“The road to…” The Valkyrie shakes her head, clearing it. She feels more coherent than she has in a long time. She remembers most things, at least. The escape from Sakaar. Ragnarök. The Ark. “Hel. Am I dead?”
“No. You are asleep. And you will sleep until they can wake you.”
“They?”
“The King of Asgard. The Prince. The Scientist. The Watcher.”
“King…Thor…right. But so this…this is all just a dream?”
“You are far too old, Valkyrie, to believe that dreams and the path to Hel are mutually exclusive. And you have committed far too many crimes to believe you would not end up here eventually. One way or the other.”
She closes her eyes. “No.”
“What, my lady? You believed you would find your way to the Halls of Valhalla? You dared to hope, that you would see your sisters ride towards you on their winged horses, welcome you with open arms to the halls of feasting and laughter and contests? You thought you would drink yourself to death on that planet, with funds earned from selling innocents into slavery, into death, and you would go anywhere but here? You broke your oaths, Brunnhilde. You belong here.” The wind is cold on her face despite the flames licking at her.
“It’s not fair, it’s not fair. What of Odin’s oaths? I did nothing but remain loyal to the throne, remain loyal to Odin, and he just sent us all to our deaths, left me with nothing!” Her voice has climbed to a shriek. “My sisters dead, my lover, my hope, my purpose. I didn’t even have my name, that was stripped from me too. So I left and I fell to Sakaar like everything else falls to Sakaar and I did what I had to do to survive. Would you have preferred I let myself be taken to the fighting pits, used my skills honed by my training as a Valkyrie to murder the other fighters, bathe in their blood, is that what you’d prefer I’d done?”
“You caused far more death, bringing the Elder his champions. Letting others, the weaker, fall to the scavengers to be fed upon. And further deaths of souls, the ones you sold to him for other purposes-”
“It wasn’t my fault,” She says, hands gripping the side of her head. “It wasn’t my fault.”
“It was. And then your king returned to you and you sold him to die in the arena. You knew what was happening to the prince and you ignored it, you would have watched them die without remorse.”
She lets out a sob. “Yes. Yes, I was going to watch them die. I didn’t care. But then…but then I couldn’t. I didn’t. That’s real, I remember that. I didn’t let them die, I didn’t let Gast or Hela kill them. Thor was crowned king and I have served him well.” The giantess is quiet for a long while. “Say something, you bitch,” The Valkyrie says roughly.
“You will not want to hear what I have next to say.”
“What? Will you pronounce your sentence, further insist that I am bound for Hel? Who are you? Why do you hold such power?”
“I am not but a seer, little Valkyrie. I sit here, on my own, and sometimes I have people like you to talk to. I will not further insist that you will go to Hel upon your death, Valkyrie. I see many things and you may yet have the time for redemption, before the End.”
“That sounds good then,” She says. “Why should I not want to hear it?”
“I see many things. Many possible pathways that time can travel. There is one in which you will play a vital role to ensure Asgard’s future. You will be queen.”
She laughs. “What? Me and Thor? But-”
“No. You will not marry Thor.” Her heart sinks. That means…
“Okay. Loki then…” They were both broken in the same places, after all. Shattered puzzle pieces that might fight back together. And if Loki was king that would mean…that would mean Thor would be dead, so they would truly be alone together in the universe. No home, no family, but they’d at least make a matching pair.
“No. Not Loki.”
She takes a ragged breath. “What? They…they…how?”
“I cannot tell you for certain. They will meet much peril before the end.”
“You said…you said I would have time for redemption. Could I have time to save them?”
“No. You will be the queen and they will be…away. You will be the new Queen of the Dead. You will be without.” The Valkyrie reeled back, stopped by the flames. Hela’s twisted, smiling, evil face smiling at her, holding Gungnir, appearing as a reflection.
“What did you just say?”
“The Queen of the Dead. The Valkyrie Queen of the Dead.”
Her eyes are brimming with tears. “How much more can I expect to lose?”
“Much.”
“Damn you. Damn you, damn you, damn you!” She shrieks. “No, no, I won’t do this again. I won’t.”
“You must. For Asgard. If you ever want to see your sisters, your lovers, your friends, your family, in the halls of Valhalla, you must be prepared to give everything away for the good of Asgard. Once more.” She drops to her knees.
“It’s not fair. It’s not fair.” She screams, and the howl of grief torn from her throat lasts for a long time.
The three of them, dressed in their finest, arrange themselves in the hall.
“Are you ready?” Thor looks up at Loki on his left side. He nods.
“Stay still for a moment, this will be easier.” Loki closes his eyes and the green light washes over them. It smooths out the weariness and strain, lengthens their capes and conjures embroidery and ornamentation to their tunics. Heimdall still has the bifrost sword, and he keeps it drawn, the massive blade resting on the floor before him. The hall itself transforms, looking golden and shining and impossibly large for the comparatively small space. It creates a feeling of being in a massive palace, like you could step off and be outside in Asgard, though it is impossible. They’re still floating on through space. It’s a eerie feeling. Loki conjures an approximate facsimile of Gungnir in Thor’s hand.
“Nice touch, brother.”
“I try.”
“Well,” Bruce says, sounding a bit faint. He stands off to the side. “If this is what Asgard used to look like-”
“Please, it’s barely a tenth of the opulence of what Asgard was.”
“Well,” Bruce says again.
Thor bangs the staff and it even makes a sound as it impacts the floor. “Brother, your illusions are uncanny.”
“Thank you,” He says, sounding indifferent but out of the corner of his eye, Thor can see the corner of his lip twitch in pleasure.
“Bring in the Ravager.”
Two of the young soldiers, including the one who had shot the Valkyrie, who seemed to be making up for his error by being particularly brutal to their captive, drag the captured Ravager before their throne. The pirate is forced to his knees, glancing up at them with wide eyes.
“Well if we knew things were this fancy aboard this ol’ thing, we’d’ve come for you sooner,” The Ravager says. “Then again, ya did kill all my friends.”
“And we will kill you,” Thor says, leveling him with a stern look. “Unless you can tell us what we need to know.”
“I won’t say anything about my crew!” He gasps furiously.
“Like we care about your crew,” Loki drawls. “You’ve seen but a fraction of our power, you believe we cannot deal with even a full Ravager crew.” The captive swallows.
“We want to know about the weapon you brought with you,” Thor says.
“We brought a lot of weapons, not that they did any good against bleeding magic-”
“This one,” Heimdall says and gestures at Bruce.
“Oh, right.” He brings forward the pistol and shows it to the captive. Thor sees the Ravager’s eyes grow minutely wider at the sight of it.
“We want to know how it works,” Loki says. “And how to reverse its effects. And before you decide to answer…” Loki removes his hand from the back of Thor’s chair and holds it in a circle with his other. Between his hands forms a glass orb. The colors in it shift from black to grey to violet. It drops into one hand and he holds it out. “There are some that call me the god of lies. My magic, projected into this crystal, will be able to tell when you are lying. A lie, and you live out the rest of your days on this ship. They will be few.”
“Now,” Thor says. “What do you know of this weapon?”
“Nothing-” Loki’s ball goes entirely black.
“A lie. Shall we make this a practice run? The next words out of your mouth will be the real game.”
“Alright! I don’t know exactly how it works, but the guy who used it was particularly fond. He bragged about it enough, ‘least. It turns the mind against itself. Affects every species differently. He liked to turn it on people and see what it would do.”
Loki’s crystal turns purple. “A truth.”
“Our friend sleeps, and will not be woken,” Heimdall says.
“Oh, that’s boring. He’d be real disappointed at that. Is she at least having nightmares? He always hated that one, cuz they just lay there ’til they starved to death, lest he woke ‘em.”
“And he could wake them?” Thor asks, too eager.
“Sure, ‘specially if they just slept. Used a machine, but I swear, I don’t know what it did. He said…he said it was part of them and you just had to interrupt-”
“An organic molecule,” Bruce mutters. “But if I reverse the…yes!” He takes off down the hall, the others all blinking in surprise after him.
Thor shifts on the throne. “Apparently, you’ve been a great help. Asgard is in your service. We’ll leave you at the next port, what you do from there is none of our concern. Provided, of course, that we are able to wake our friend.”
“You should,” Loki says, vanishing the crystal. Thor wonders if the thing really existed or was just another one of his brother’s uncanny illusions. “Tell your friends about us. Tell them what fate awaits them, should they dare accost Asgard, even now.”
The Ravager grins. “Now, I don’t know if you’ll be wanting me to do that, highness,” He says. “See, I’ve heard a bit of a rumor floating ‘round. A bounty. For a dark haired sorcerer, ‘bout fittin’ your description. And the one offerin’ isn’t one to cross.” Thor feels a flash of anger. Loki has gone very still and very pale at his side.
“Take the prisoner away!” Heimdall booms. The young soldiers drag the Ravager back. “He was bluffing.”
“Perhaps,” Loki says simply, stepping off the raised platform. Once they are alone he lets the illusion drop, and the Ark is transformed back to its simple metal interior. “We should go check on Bruce.” He walks away without another word on the matter.
When the Valkyrie runs out of breath for the scream, she opens her eyes.
The giantess is gone. The ring of fire sputters and dies. Instead, she is surrounded by corpses. Hundreds of corpses. Corpses of the Valkyrie. Corpses of fighters and whores from Sakaar.
Some of the rotting bodies are wearing clothes of the most modern Asgardian styles. Her blood runs cold as the implication dawns on her.
A raven perches on the closest, picking flesh off the torn and bloody torso. It lets out a sharp caw, then hops over to her.
“Not ready,” It says. Her heart feels like it is beating very fast, though if she is dead, why does it beat at all? “Not here.”
“What are you talking about?” She holds up an arm and the raven flaps it’s wings, landing on her forearm.
“Not here. Not ready. Queen of the Dead.”
“I am not the-”
The raven screeches. “Will be.” It shivers, shaking out its filthy feathers. “Brynhild, Dead Queen.”
“Stop!” She shakes her arm violently and the bird, shrieking in offense, flies off to a dead tree. It perches there, on the thin and dried branch, and turns its back to her.
“It was not the creature’s fault.” The Valkyrie spins around, seeking the source of the voice. “It merely said what it knows.” Behind her, among the bodies, stands Queen Frigga, as the Valkyrie had last seen her on the day she finally fled Asgard. “Or thinks it knows.”
“This is impossible. Now I know it’s just a hallucination,” She says. “It’s been a thousand years. And you would never…you would never be in Hel, of all places.”
“You’re right. I’m sure you’ve heard the tale of my death from my sons, you’ll know I died well, and in battle at that. So I am, indeed, feasting in Valhalla.”
“Then how are you here? You have not denied being a hallucination.”
“Nor have I confirmed it. But I will tell you: I am a hallucination. And I am not.”
The Valkyrie laughs grimly. “I…hate witches, your majesty. Is it an oath you swear when you receive your powers of foresight? To only speak in riddles and in circles? Would it kill you to speak plainly for once? Ah, well, I guess you’re already dead.” Frigga walks up to her, and the Valkyrie holds her ground. “Are you here to confirm it all as prophecy?”
“There are many paths the future might tread. Yours - and my sons’ - is particularly obscured from me. The giantess spoke what she believes is the truth. As did the raven. I will not tell you it is a lie, nor will I tell you it is all truth. The future is never set in stone. There is one thing that is true: you could be all that they say.”
The Valkyrie laughs again and this time it is more like a sob. “The Valkyrie Queen of the Dead.”
Frigga says nothing, just holds out her arm for the raven, which takes its place, chirping as she strokes its feathers. “Perhaps it is not so bad as you believe,” She says. “One more thing, lady.” She looks the Valkyrie straight in the eyes. Her eyes are so, so blue. She smiles. “It’s time for you to wake up now.” She drives the heel of her hand into her forehead, just like Loki had when he pried the vision of the last battle with Hela out of her head. She falls backward-
-and then she’s sitting bolt upright, gasping for air.
“Whoa, whoa. We got you,” Bruce’s voice, Bruce’s hands steadying her.
“What the fuck?” She croaks, taking in the too bright lights of the ship’s infirmary. “What the fuck!”
Thor is before her, his eyes as horrifyingly blue as his mother’s. “You’re awake now, this is real. You’ve been unconscious almost a full day,” Thor says very carefully. “You were hit by one of the Ravager’s weapons, but Bruce managed to figure out how to reverse the affects. You might still feel a bit off for a while, so take it easy.”
“Do you remember anything?” Loki asks from behind her. She has to crane her neck to see him, leaning on the counter.
“I don’t…” She swallows. “I remember nothing.” He looks at her for a long moment, then nods.
She entirely ignores both Bruce and Thor’s fussing, and drags herself out of bed. She commandeers several bottles from the ship’s bar and sits in front of the wide window on space and looks out at the stars.
The Queen of the Dead… She can’t get the words to stop echoing in her head, so she drinks and drinks, until the stars blur before her.
“They’ll be annoyed if they worked so hard to wake you, only to have you fall back into a coma of your own making.” Loki sits beside her.
“You think I don’t know my own limits?”
“No, I think you know your limits. I also think that you’re lying about remembering what happened.” She turns to look at him and for a moment sees black thread, thick corded rope around his neck. Then it’s gone and she turns back to her bottle and the stars. “God of lies, right? I used that one on the captive earlier, to get him to tell us how to release you from sleep. I can’t really tell when someone’s lying or not, not with any certainty. I am semi-decent at reading people. And the expression on your face every time you look at me is particularly telling.”
“So that one was you? With Hela, on Asgard? Not a dream or a vision or a hallucination, that was you trying to wake me up?”
“Clearly it didn’t work,” He says with a little half smile. “Look. You don’t have to talk about it. But if you want to…”
“Unlikely.”
“Fair.” He moves to rise and she jerks, grabbing his arm.
“Nonetheless. Stay. Have a drink, lackey.” She hands him a bottle. “Highness. Your highness.” She laughs. “Stay.” He takes the bottle from her hand and watches as she gets uproariously drunk.
The next day her hangover headache makes her crotchety and sharp tongued, especially to the one who shot her, which she’ll have to apologize for later when her mood’s improved. But the drink’s done it’s job. It’s blurred the edges of her visions, made them seem distant and surreal.
Like it always did, the drink washes away the blood, the guilt, and the grief.
But sometimes she can hear it like a whisper in her mind.
The Queen of the Dead.