18.5 BONUS Disappeared
It’s not like he expected them to get back early. He just didn’t think they would be this late. Thor didn’t necessarily approve of the Valkyrie and Loki’s little jaunts to these seedier planets and stations, but more often than not they bring some extra funds to the ship, which he can’t turn his nose up at. And these outings served to let off a little steam among the two least stable members of his council. He feared keeping Loki on too tight a leash would only lead to renewed fighting, or Loki wanting to leave him. He doesn’t think he could take Loki leaving him now.
The Valkyrie is the same, seeming like anything might push her over the edge, send her straight back to drinking her life away on some backwater. If allowing them their misadventures meant they came back…so be it.
Thor glances at the time again and sighs.
As the hours tick by with no sign of them, Thor grows more and more anxious.
“Now you know how I felt,” Bruce says, when Thor seeks him out. “When you guys didn’t come back from that castle.”
“The castle where that queen nearly stole our magic?!”
“Oh right,” Bruce looks up from repairing some electrical circuits. “I guess that’s not going to make you feel much better, is it?”
He’s pacing in front of the windows when Heimdall returns with the food supplies.
“Your majesty, I wouldn’t be too concerned-”
“I feel that something is wrong.”
Heimdall listens patiently. “Do you truly feel that something is wrong, or are you just worried?”
“I feel that something is wrong. They sometimes stay out late, yes, sometimes days, but they’ve never failed to check in. They’ve never missed a deadline, and the Valkyrie said she didn’t intend for them to spend the night.”
Heimdall is quiet for a few moments as Thor’s heart beats fast in his chest.
“I believe you might be right, your majesty,” He says finally and Thor’s tenuous hold on calm shatters.
Heimdall cannot see them, not precisely, but he knows for sure now that they are not held up by their own accord.
“A being of tremendous power cloaks them,” He says. “My sight has not been the same since Ragnarök. Perhaps once I would have been able to see around this, but now,” He sighs. “I cannot.”
“A being of tremendous power?” Thor paces, lightning sparking at his fingertips. “Who, who could-” It dawns on him then, the possibility that perhaps they had escaped Sakaar too easily, but he doesn’t say it out loud. Not yet. “I will go first to the gambling hall, you start at the-”
“No, your majesty,” Heimdall says. “You must stay here. If someone has kidnapped the Valkyrie and your brother that makes it even more dangerous for you to go rushing off into the unknown. You will remain here until we have a better grasp of the situation.”
“You can not expect me to sit by while my brother is in danger-”
“I did not say that. I just believe we should not go in blindly. And I think we should pull the ship back from this station. There’s a moon not too far away, we can orbit there.”
“Leave?” His voice cracks.
“We get the people away, and we take a pod for any rescue attempt. Alright, my king?”
Thor reluctantly agrees. He watches as the station grows smaller and smaller, feeling something akin to guilt. Abandonment. He’s abandoning them.
He knows he is not but it still feels that way.
He wishes there was something he could hit, but there is nothing.
“My king,” Heimdall says, finding him brooding before the windows. “We are being hailed.”
Of course, of course, they had escaped far too easily. He should have seen this coming, should have prepared just as much for the Grandmaster catching up to them as Thanos. Thor had been so terrified of Thanos, once he had understood the implications behind the Titan’s power and his brother’s connection to him, that he had failed to anticipate this calamity.
He could only hope it was not a fatal mistake.
“Wow, Sparkles, I lo-ove what you’ve done with the place!” The Grandmaster says brightly. “I mean, it’s a little crowded, but the gardens? Fitting that space with fake greenhouses? That’s just ingenious, just brilliant, really-”
“Enough!” Thor booms from his seat at the head of the hall. “Where are they?”
“Whew, straight to the point, no small talk, not even a ‘how’ve ya been’, ‘what happened after we ruined your planet’, nothing?” The lightning travels down his arms and through the chair. Thor takes a trembling breath to try and get himself under control. Heimdall’s hand is heavy on his shoulder. “Fine, Sparkles. King Sparkles. They’re alive, if that’s what you’re so worried about.” He puts his hand into a pocket and retrieves a flat disk. A tap and an image appears in the air.
They are bound back to back, hands at their sides. They are gagged and blindfolded. Loki’s head is bent at an odd angle, resting on the Valkyrie’s shoulder. For a heart stopping moment, Thor can’t tell if they’re breathing, but then he can see the rise and fall of their chests, slow, too slow.
Loki’s head tosses. The Valkyrie shifts.
Thor’s rage explodes.
The Grandmaster leaves them to ‘think it over.’
Thor cannot stop sparking, leaving little bolts of lightning trailing him as he paces.
“Your majesty,” Heimdall says. “We have no where near the amount he is asking for. And without the ship-”
“Asgard will be vulnerable, even more vulnerable. Yes, I know.” Thor stops in his tracks. “I don’t know what to do. What do we do?”
“I don’t know if it will work,” Heimdall responds, his voice eternally calm. “But I have an idea.”
Together, they piece together a plan. A rescue. Heimdall barely even argues when Thor insists on being the one to go in after them.
He slips down the narrow corridor, listening to the sound of the imperial guns as they strike the station’s metal. He pauses, for a moment, when they falter, but another boom shakes the entire station and he’s off again.
The door isn’t even locked, the Grandmaster had been so confident in his power. It opens easily under his hand, revealing a tired but grinning Valkyrie.
“To answer your previous question, majesty, we’re fine, but the Grandmaster has been keeping us under some pretty heavy sedation, to explain his highness’s sudden tongue-tied…ness.” The Valkyrie sounds equally tongue tied, words rambling and slurred, but instead of commenting on that, Thor goes to check on Loki. His brother’s pupils are as round as saucers, black swallowing the green almost entirely. He blinks up at Thor with a mixture of confusion and awe, like he’s not sure Thor is even really here. Thor doesn’t even really think about doing it, just automatically wraps his hand around Loki’s neck to cradle his head. Loki leans into it, still looking up at him with confusion, and Thor can feel how his pulse beats erratically under his palm.
“Hm. Very heavy sedation, indeed.”
Loki is nearly free now, but makes no move to rise as Thor cuts the last rope around his ankles.
“I think there are supposed to be ceremonies for this sort of thing…” He remembers his own, of course. (He doesn’t remember the few days following, but that’s another story.) They had attended another, their cousin, the heir to the Vanir throne. How far both ceremonies were from this dingy space station, with their fancy clothes, the drinking, the feasting. They have none of that here. Nothing but themselves, a ragged collection of their people on a stolen ship. Thor can only hope it’s enough. “But you’re the crown prince now, Loki.”
Thor kisses his forehead, a benediction, as if it could replace a crown.
There’s always a crash, after the adrenaline. Thor’s comes when they’re finally on the shuttle, as Heimdall pilots them back towards the Ark. Thor wraps them both in his arms, kissing the top of Valkyrie’s head, the side of Loki’s. They feel solid and warm, and they breathe against him and feel so alive. Thor relaxes for the first time since the thought that they had been gone a long time had crossed his mind.
“Don’t you two ever, ever do that to me again.” He holds them in his arms for a long time, then lets them sleep off the drug, lying together on the floor of the shuttle. Thor gives them his cape as a blanket, tucking it carefully around them. He spends the rest of the trip counting breaths and trying not to cry.
It’s still early by the Ark’s circadian rhythm, but the three of them are all exhausted enough to go to bed. Loki and the Valkyrie sleep almost constantly, working the drug out of their systems, and once Thor finishes dealing with some administrative issues relating to their hasty departure, he’s ready to join them. He hasn’t really slept since they were kidnapped and with the crash of adrenaline, he’s exhausted. He crawls into bed and the lights turn out and it starts to feel normal again.
“Don’t scare me like that again.”
“It’s not like I really had a choice,” Loki whispers back. “I didn’t mean to. Not this time, at least.”
“I know you didn’t,” Thor sighs.
Loki shifts awkwardly, but it brings him closer. “I am sorry,” Loki whispers. “It was my fault, if I hadn’t…on Sakaar…”
“It wasn’t. Really, Loki, it wasn’t. It was his fault, all of it.”
Loki’s next inhale is a little unsteady. “I can be…such a fool sometimes.” Thor says nothing in response to that, just presses a bit closer. When Loki doesn’t shy away, he drapes his arm over his back and they fall asleep like that.