cozy-the-overlord

[cozy-the-overlord]

Hurt Feelings

Summary: After Loki awakens on Svartalfheim, inexplicably and frustratingly alive and without any sort of plan to speak of, he decides to pay his adoptive father a visit.

Word Count: 5,506

Pairing: N/A

A/N: A little while ago I made this edit because it had been living rent-free in my head since the day Halsey's new album dropped. And then I wrote this.

(Also -- I do want to make a point of saying that the stuff involving the Odinsleep in this fic is an idea I got from a Loki meta post I read years ago. For the life of me, I could not find the post to credit them, so if any of you know the post I'm talking about and can send it to me so I can credit them properly, I'd appreciate it!)

Thank you so much for reading!!

Warnings: Suicide/suicidal ideation (I interpret Loki's "death" in The Dark World as an intentional-but-unsuccessful attempt on his part), miscarriage/fertility issues, grief/loss

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae @whatafuckingdumbass @the-emo-asgardian @imnotrevealingmyname @electroma89 @lokislittlesigyn @moumouton4 @theredrenard @justdontmindmetm @lostgreekgod @naterson

If you want to be tagged, feel free to send an ask/message :)

Read it on Ao3!

The palace was in an uproar. He supposed that was to be expected, what with the aftermath of an invading attack that left a gaping hole in the side and destroyed half the military, not to mention the crown prince turning traitor and the queen … well, the picture was painted clear enough. The cause didn’t really matter as much as the effect – in the chaos of the moment, no one was paying attention to the rogue Einherjar, limping in from the mountains.

Loki felt slightly crazed as he hurried down the halls. More than slightly, perhaps. He passed a gaggle of serving girls dragging baskets of laundry behind them and fought the urge to cackle in their faces. Poor fools. They didn’t realize a madman was in their midst. Run run, little girls, save yourselves from the beast, the monster in prince’s garb. His chest throbbed beneath his tattered leathers.

He had screamed when he woke up on Svartalfheim, screamed until his throat tore and his mouth flooded with blood. It wasn’t fair. He had executed it so perfectly, Loki’s heroic end, saved his brother and avenged his mother in one fell swoop, tied up all the loose ends and then the curtains could fall, and he could let himself fade to black and finally know peace. Thor had even held him in the end, cradled him almost like a child, and for a moment he did feel like a child again, a little boy toddling after his big brother in some alternate reality where nothing ever went wrong and his love felt warm and safe instead of a guilty stab of betrayal through his weary beating heart. His fear bled out with the rest of him. He closed his eyes in his brother’s arms and felt something like happiness. The end of Loki Laufeyson. Perhaps when he opened them again, she’d be there, waiting.

But Valhalla had to spit him back out.

His boots should have clicked on the marble floor, but beneath the shining visage of his golden Einherjar armor was only soft leather soles. A band of guards rounded the corner, huffing beneath their helmets with the exhaustion of men run ragged through the night. Loki pressed his nails deeper into his palm as they passed. The staff he held was not truly there, the same trick of light and magic as his armor. But they said nothing as they hurried along, too absorbed in their own troubles to spare him a second glance. He stifled his chuckle. Truly, he was the only one in the palace who might have been capable of noticing something amiss.

Well, he and …

Loki swallowed. Best not to think of it.

He had no plan. What was there to do? He hadn’t expected to draw breath again, hadn’t bothered to hatch an escape. Once the sting of finding himself alive had worn off, Loki had stumbled to his feet in a sort of blurry haze. What to do? Where to go? What was the point?

I’ll tell Father what you did here today.

Of course. Of course.

It was all Odin’s fault. The thought sliced through the fog with a piercing clarity. Odin was behind it all – every miserable breath Loki had ever drawn came back to the All Father’s plotting. It had all started with him, perhaps it must end with him too. Loki stumbled back up the hill with new purpose. Thor’s stolen skiff lay abandoned where they had left it. Kin-slaying was a far cry from the heroic sacrifice he had envisioned, but then again it wasn’t proper kin-slaying, was it?

Your birthright was to die. If I had not taken you in, you would not be here now to hate me.

Such a benevolent god, his false father. How soon had he come to regret his self-serving benevolence, Loki wondered? Perhaps the moment he dumped a squalling Jotun babe in his wife’s arms and realized what it was that he had dragged home.

It mattered not. Loki was going to bring this tale to an end.

He recognized the Einherjar stationed outside Odin’s quarters – Ulric, a fixture on the king’s guard since Loki was a small boy, whisps of his greying hair peeping out from beneath his helmet. Loki puffed out his chest with a bit of Einherjar swagger.

“I must speak with the All Father.”

Ulric frowned down at him – the old goat had always been a bit of a sourpuss. “The All Father is not to be disturbed.”

“It’s urgent.”

The frown deepened. All at once Loki thought of a long-forgotten dinner, back when his feet still dangled in the air when he sat at the table, when he had whispered to Thor that Ulric looked like a bedraggled Nidavellian cat. His brother had laughed so hard that he spat his cider spat out through his nostrils. Loki pushed the memory away. It left him feeling cold.

“Leave your message with me, then,” Ulric was saying. “I’ll see that he gets it.”

“I’m sworn to deliver it myself.” An improvised detail, but Loki knew it was a good touch. He stepped forward, dropping his voice lower. “It involves the prince.”

Ulric was at a loss. Loki could see it in his eyes – he was a loyal man, and a devoted follower of Odin, one who would rather fall on his sword than disobey a command from his beloved All Father, but he held a man’s honor in the highest regard. A bit of a contradiction, that, but Loki rather felt the irony was lost on him.

“He’s not here …” he said at last. “He’s in the Queen’s chambers.”

Loki started a bit. “The Queen?”

“Yes. He asked not to be disturbed, but I know him to be desperate of news of Thor.”

Under normal circumstances, Loki might have bristled at the assumption that Thor was the prince of whom he spoke, but he felt too shaken to be annoyed. He forced himself to bow.

“Thank you, sir.”

His chest was aching again.

A confrontation in Frigga’s chambers was not what he had envisioned. Perhaps it would be best, though – after all, she was all there was standing between Odin and him by the end. There had to be something symbolic that their ending would come through hers, the final snap of thread holding it all together. Yes, that was it. This would be good. This would be closure. This would be what he needed. Loki wasn’t sure why he was trembling.

His feet carried him down the halls more by their own accord than at any direction from him. He knew this path well. How often had he sought out these rooms throughout his youth, in need of guidance or instruction or comfort or company? Loki had been a lonely child, after all. He hid behind his mother’s skirts for far longer than most found acceptable of a young boy. And she had always been happy to hide him.

You might want to take the stairs to the left.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. That thing would never draw breath again. He avenged her. He avenged her.

It didn’t matter.

He passed another gaggle of giggling maids – what they were tittering about, he didn’t quite catch. There wasn’t exactly much worth tittering about, if you asked him, but Loki supposed he wouldn’t know. It seemed the maids where always a flurry over something. Like in the weeks leading up to Thor’s botched coronation, or those after Odin feasted the kings and queens of the other realms for nearly a month. Or … or when Frigga revealed she was pregnant with her third child. Loki’s blood turned to ice in his veins.

Different maids had tittered in the halls then, and Loki had been little – barely having begun his formal tutoring. The word “pregnant” had meant nothing. He hadn’t understood the significance of what they were telling him. It was by design, thanks to the web of falsehoods and half-truths his so-called parents had weaved around the Queen’s growing belly. No, all he was allowed to know was that Mama had a baby inside her, and when it came out it would be his little brother. Thor had been ecstatic when he learned the news, practically vibrating with questions as he bounced across the room.

“What’s his name? When will he get here? Does he like me? Will he look like Loki? Was I in your tummy, Mama? Was Loki?”

Norns, what had she said to that? Loki couldn’t remember. He wondered if he might have seen her discomfort, had he known to look for it. Did she glance at Odin, panic sparking in her eyes as her tongue reached for the lie? Had it been there in front of him the whole time? But he had been small – disgustingly small, too small to realize. He remembered the formal announcement in court, how the whole room had buzzed in anticipation when his father (for he was still his father then) declared that the Queen was with child. He remembered being confused. Hadn’t she already been with child? Children, in fact? She was with him, and with Thor – didn’t they count?

It was an upsetting ordeal all around. Loki did not like watching his mother’s belly expand, like it housed some horrible creature waiting to claw its way out. Frigga tried to help him adjust – she encouraged him to lay against her stomach as she read aloud during their nightly storytime, just as he always did, but the feeling of tiny limbs thrashing beneath her skin distressed him to tears, no matter how she tried to reassure him that it was only his baby brother saying hello.

“I don’t want a baby brother!” Loki had sobbed, clinging to her thighs like a vise. “Get rid of it! I don’t want it!”

He would get his wish.

Loki would never forget that dinner, how his mother’s fork had come clattering down to the plate as she lurched forward, the way she gasped his father’s name in a tight, smothered sort of voice that sounded nothing like her at all, how his father had yelled – no, screamed – for the guards and everything collapsed into chaos, how Loki’s body had seemed frozen to his seat when they dragged her away from the table and he realized with a lump in his throat that the front of her skirt was soaked through with crimson.

He hadn’t slept that night. The nursemaids had put his brother and him to bed with placating promises and consolations, but no amount of reassurance could erase the sight of his mother’s bloodless cheeks against the table, or the piercing sound of his father’s terror. Loki lay stiff as a board, breathing quickening as the darkness pressed in around him. Odin All Father was not supposed to be afraid of anything. What did it mean then, that he had screamed at the sight of Mama on the table? What happened to her? Was she … was she …

Eventually it had all become too much.

It was past bedtime, but Loki crept down the halls all the same, bare feet numb against the freezing marble. He had to go find Mama. He had to know she was alright.

But when he pushed open the heavy door to her quarters, he was shocked to find only his father, hunched over her writing desk like a statue, head buried in his hands. He only barely looked up when Loki toddled into the room.

“What are you doing up?” his voice was sharp, hoarse.

“I—” Loki felt petrified in place. He glanced towards the door to his mother’s bedroom, closed with no light behind the crack. “I can’t sleep …”

The sound was painfully small.

His father grunted, already looking away. He shifted in his seat and reached for something laying beside his foot – a bottle, Loki had realized dimly, empty in the flickering candlelight. “You need to stay in your room, Loki.”

“I’m sorry … I was just …” But an excuse never came to mind. He swallowed, glancing at the dark bedroom again.

“Is Mama going to be alright?” his voice came out in a rasp, like he was about to cry. Stupid baby …

Odin closed his eyes. Back then, he had still been in the prime of his life, but that night Loki remembered thinking he looked like a weary old man. He sighed. “Yes. Yes – your mother will be quite fine. She just needs to sleep. As do you.”

Loki recalled nodding out of instinct more than anything else. He stared at the fringed rug on the floor, shivering in his nightclothes. “Yes, sir …”

The rest was hazy. Odin hadn’t taken him back to bed – that much he was certain of. He must have called a servant or someone, perhaps ordered a light sleeping draught for him as well, to see that he slept through the night. All he remembered is that Odin wouldn’t look at him.

At the time, Loki had assumed it was because of what he had said about the baby. Odin wasn’t present when Loki had begged his mother to get rid of it, but he was certain Frigga must have told him what he said. He must have blamed him for it. In retrospect, this was likely just projection on his part. Loki had blamed himself for his mother’s miscarriage, spending the next several weeks wracked with guilt over his words, convinced that he had killed the baby and nearly killed his mother. No wonder Odin wanted nothing to do with him.

It hadn’t been until at least a month later that Frigga had taken him into her lap and told him a secret. “My womb is very sick,” she said, regarding him very seriously. “It doesn’t hold babies the way it should. Your little brother was the fourth baby I’ve lost like this. When I was pregnant with Thor, I nearly lost him too.”

Her voice never wavered – Norns, the strength that had to have taken, so soon after yet another horrific loss, to lay it bare in a child’s terms just so that he would understand that it was not his fault. But as with every moment of his childhood, her kindness was tempered with deceit.

“What about me?” he asked, looking up at her as he pressed his cheek to her chest. “Did you almost lose me too?”

Frigga pressed a kiss to the top of his head, so that he could not see his face. “You were my gift from the Norns,” she whispered against his curls. “Carrying you was the easiest thing I ever did.”

In front of him. The whole time. He was just too small to realize.

That had to be why Odin could not bear to look at him, though. How disgusted must he had been, drowning in grief for his lost trueborn child, when the little monstrosity he picked up as a glorified war prize came hobbling in seeking his comfort?

Your birthright was to die.

Loki huffed a laugh beneath his helmet. Bitter, old man? Angry that I lived instead of all your wretched little spares? You have no one to blame but yourself.

The door to his mother’s chambers was the same as it had always been. It was a warm oak, sparkling with little silver rivets that had always reminded him of the stars. Loki stared at it for a moment, paralyzed. It no longer loomed over him the way it had as a child, but it seemed to have grown far heavier.

If he closed his eyes, he could picture the light crackling into the hall as he heaved the door open, and she’d still be there, her honey curls cascading down her shoulder as she thumbed through some new spell-book, and she’d look up at him and smile, oh Loki, I was just thinking of you – here, come look at this, and he’d sink into the cushions next to her as she explained this new discovery she was fascinated with, and perhaps he might press his cheek against her shoulder as she did – remember when he used to do that? Or before, when he used to crawl into her lap and cling to her dress like an anxious little possum? The others would make fun of him, he remembered – are we to call you Loki Friggason? – but she always wrapped her arms around him just the same.

“Boys here grow up too fast,” she mused once, holding him beside the sparring pit as they watched Thor clunkily practice his lessons with a wooden stick. Odin had been there too, watching from the other side of the pit. Even in the earliest days, he always came to watch Thor practice. “Some days I fear I’ll blink and you’ll both be gone.”

Loki had been confused. “Gone where, Mama?”

“I don’t know. Far away from me.” There was a commotion in the pit – Thor’s practice sword, clattering to the ground as he lost his balance lunging at his instructor. Odin called out something that Loki couldn’t quite hear. She sighed. “But that’s a long way off yet, thankfully.”

He frowned. “I don’t want to go far away,” he declared, a desperate insistence beneath his voice. His eyes prickled with tears at just the thought. “I’m going to stay with you forever.”

Frigga exhaled a soft laugh. “That’s a lovely thought.”

Loki opened his eyes, and the voices faded back into memory. I’m going to stay with you forever. He wondered if she had thought of that promise the night on the Bifrost, the night he let go.

I suppose we were all lying about something.

The door stood, unchanging. Loki breathed in, then exhaled through his teeth. None of it had been real. No point in wasting tears on it now.

He dropped the illusion, exchanging his false spear for a dagger whose blade would not shatter on impact. Breathe. Breathe. The door was locked. No matter. The lock clicked beneath his spell. His heart was pounding in his chest. He took one last breath, then stepped into his mother’s room.

It still smelled like her. Norns, it smelled like her. Warm and fresh, like new sprouts in the garden on a pleasant spring day – it was her, it was like she was there. He could believe it, that perhaps she was just working in the back room, and would be out to greet him once she heard the door. The sofa was the same, as was her little writing desk in the corner with its wooden chair. Her bookshelves still lined the back wall, heavy with their papered fruits, spell-books ordered in the same organized chaos that she always left them. The only difference was the figure silently silhouetted at the window.

The king stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the smoking ruins of the garden below. He did not turn as Loki entered, didn’t even flinch. The door fell closed behind him with a heady thud. Loki stood in the foyer, stock-still as a statue. This was the moment, to rush him from behind and plunge the dagger in his spine before he had even bothered to look up, but for some reason Loki’s limbs wouldn’t move.  

“I wondered if you might come.”

Irritation startled him out of his stupor. “Did you now?”

Odin nodded. “We had to keep your cradle in here, you know,” he said. “You’d fuss through the night if you weren’t with her.”

Loki was rooted to the floor. His head was spinning. He had been prepared for fury and violence, biting words that tasted like poison on his lips, not … quiet reminiscing. The king continued blithely on. “I had feared that our story would not be believed, what with the suddenness of it all, but no one ever questioned that she was your mother.”

Am I not your mother?

There were tears pooling in the corner of his eyes, hot and angry.

You’re not.

Loki spat. “How convenient.”

“Perhaps it was.” Odin hummed. He stretched his shoulders back, grunting at the crackling of bones beneath his cloak. “The sleep is coming on again. I can feel it.” He huffed a sigh, shaking his head. “Twice in less than half a decade. Perhaps I am getting old.”

Loki scowled. “Do you want my pity, then? Is that it?” He stalked across the room, acid burning his tongue with every step. “Shall I pen an elegy? The mighty King Odin, collapsing under the weight of his failings—”

Odin was shaking his head. “You would not understand—”

“If all you intend is to speak down to me, at least do me the courtesy of facing me as you do.”

To his surprise, he did as he was asked. Loki started a bit when he turned – he had not seen his false-father since his sentencing. What was that, a year ago? Odin seemed to have aged several hundred in that time. Wane and weary, he regarded Loki with lifeless eyes. His gaze landed on his chest.

“… was that him?”

Loki didn’t need to ask who him was. His throat was suddenly very tight. He nodded.

“And he’s …?”

“Dead.”

Odin jerked his head, a brief nod. “Good.” Abandoning the window entirely, he made his way to the other side of the room, where Frigga’s writing desk sat abandoned across from her sofa. “One less failing to weigh me down.”

Loki swallowed. His mouth tasted bitter. “Don’t tell me you’re finally remorseful,” he snapped as he followed him. “Now, of all times?” Of course he would do this. Of course he would find a way to take Loki’s last chance at triumph and turn it into an opera on his own suffering. Loki ought to have stabbed him the back when he had the chance.

Pulling out the chair, Odin scoffed. “You think I haven’t always been remorseful? That I’m proud with what you became?”

Loki was seeing red. “What you turned me into, you mean?” he retorted. “Or what you always knew I was? Tell me, my liege, what was it you were hoping for? How might I have earned your pride?”

The king closed his eye, as if this was some nagging fly he was too tired to swat. “Must we do this now?”

Loki laughed humorlessly. “What else is there to do here?”

He huffed, a sound that under different circumstances Loki might have almost mistaken for a chuckle, but it faded as quickly as it appeared. Instead, he let out a sigh.

“I wish I had told you the truth,” he said, turning his eye back towards Loki. “Truly. I’ll wish that until the day I die.”

Loki tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He might have believed him, too, somewhere in another universe where the All Father was capable of sincerity. “But you didn’t.”

“I thought—”

“You thought I was a monster.”

Odin sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose. Weary old man. He did look truly pitiful. “You’ll never believe me, will you? No matter what I do. If I had told you the truth from the beginning, perhaps then I could look at you and know that you believe me when I say I loved you truly as my son.”

“Perhaps.” Love. Loki wanted to spit the word, but he hadn’t the energy. He pictured a reality where he had known the truth, where the hands that clung to his mother’s skirts were blue and ridged. The thought was sickening. “But it wouldn’t have changed why you took me in the first place, would it? It wouldn’t have changed what I am.” Loki scoffed at  the idea. “What more would it have done, than eased your conscience?”

“What would you have had me do, then?” Odin snapped. The sound was a relief. “Left you to die?”

“YES!” he yelled, so loud that Odin jumped. He shook his head, smiling bitterly even as his vision went blurry. “Would that not have been better for us all?”

For the first time in his memory, the All Father appeared at a loss for words. He opened his mouth, only to close it again, crumbling back into the chair as if his legs had given out. The sight should have been more satisfying than it was. Instead, Loki only felt sick.

For a moment, the room was silent. When Odin finally looked up again, his voice was gravelly. “Why did you come back here?”

“I told myself I’d kill you.” His chest felt hollow.

A heartbeat passed.

“Then why haven’t you?”

Two heartbeats. Three.

“… I don’t know.” The words came out in barely a whisper. What was he doing here? What did he want? He sank down onto the sofa, letting the cushions engulf his thighs as they always did. It felt so much emptier alone.

Boys here grow up too fast.

Would he ever stop longing for the lie?

“When you first brought me back to her—” he wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the sound of his voice, Odin or himself. “… how did she respond?”

“Frigga?” Odin leaned back in the wooden chair, gaze distant. “She had been surprised, of course. You were … extremely unexpected. But she bonded with you very quickly. After all, only a year earlier she had had her third miscarriage. Neither of us expected she’d be able to have another child.”

Loki’s voice was flat. “So I was a replacement.” He supposed he had known that in his heart, ever since he learned the truth. Why else would Frigga have taken in some half-dead Jotun reject, unless she had been desperate to soothe her own grief?

But Odin was firm. “You were a gift,” he said, in a tone that left no room for argument. “She wholeheartedly believed she was meant to be your mother.”

You were my gift from the Norns.

Loki looked away. He felt his father’s gaze on him, and hated how small it left him feeling. Spare me your pity. When Odin spoke again, his voice was soft.

“To tell the truth, I’d often forget that you didn’t come from us. You’re so much like her.”

He hated that he was crying. He felt his face crumbling, felt the tears bubbling over and leaving slimy frigid tracks down his cheeks, and he hated it. He hated feeling everything.

Why can’t I just hate them?

He wished he had known. He wished he had never found out. He wished Odin had never laid eyes on him. He wished he could still call him father. Laufeyson. Odinson. Friggason. None of them fit, and yet he clung to each in some violent way. Pathetic.

 A cough startled him from his thoughts – across from him, Odin had gone very pale. He grunted, leaning forward with his hand pressed to his beard. “Damn it all.”

The realization hit him like the flat side of a sword. Despite everything, despite the tears still wet on his cheeks, Loki couldn’t help but laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

Odin heaved a breath, listing in his chair. “Frigga – then with Thor’s damned plotting—” he grunted again and grabbed at the chair arm. “It all sped it up, I imagine.”

It was too absurd. What were the odds? Loki shook his head, smile bitter on his lips. “It really does kill you to have to speak with me, doesn’t it?”

The king did not answer. Instead, he only gasped as he tipped forward, the chair creaking as it tipped with him – he would’ve fallen over had Loki not rushed to his side. His chest seared in pain as he propped the old man up. Why had he done that? Loki hadn’t the slightest idea. Some part of him, hovering above his body, laughed at the irony. You come here to kill him, and here you are cradling him. Some assassin you’d make.

Odin was mumbling to himself, words slurring together. “Can’t happen now – not now – with the realm in shambles—”

There was something satisfying about his distress. Childish, he knew, but Loki relished in it all the same. For once, he was not the one weeping and desperately clinging. “I’m afraid you reap what you sow, my king.”

Odin looked up at him. His pale eye was wide and frightened, almost pleading, and it seemed to cut right through him. “Loki—”

Loki shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’m not sure what you want me to do about it. You condemned me, remember?”

But the king said nothing more. One last desperate exhale, and then his eyes were slipping closed, his head rolling back on his shoulders as his weight went slack and his body limp. Loki cursed, bracing himself against the floor to hold him up – damn, the old bastard was heavy – twisting his torso as the chair tipped over so he might lay the man down on the floor properly. Odin said nothing. Loki exhaled through his teeth, running his fingers back through his hair.

Well, now what?

If left here, alone and without the care and treatment of the healers, Odin could easily die. A perfect murder, one in which Loki could walk away from completely unimplicated. But walk away to where? It seemed he was meant to live now, as inconvenient as that reality was. He could disappear somewhere, melt into the folds of the galaxy at large, find safety hidden beneath a new name. But … could he really?

He looked up, at the tower of shelves and spell-books that loomed over the two of them, his mother’s pride and joy. Frigga’s presence seemed to loom with it. Loki sighed. She was not his mother, not really, but try as he might, he could not wrest the title from her ghost. Try as he might, he could not stop loving her as one.

And he could not leave her husband to die on her bedroom floor.

Loki huffed, pushing himself to his feet with more effort than it should have taken. He supposed he should go to the kingsguard. He could dawn the same mask he had worn when he arrived, go to Ulric in a frenzy and say that when he had gone to deliver his message he had found the All Father unresponsive on the carpet. Yes, that would have to do – he could slip away in the madness that would ensue upon the realization that the king had gone into Odinsleep so soon, with no heir to name regent. Loki exhaled a bitter laugh. Oh, how he wished he could stick around to witness that power grab.

Although … Loki paused. Perhaps he should stay. He looked to the window, at the bloodred sunset cutting through the sky. There were consequences to living, too – ones that he had known he would not have to face should he meet a heroic end.

There will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can’t find you.

He shivered.

Perhaps … they would not seek him out on Asgard, not if Asgard believed him to be dead. Even if they did not believe the tale of his demise, surely they would not think him fool enough to hide in such plain sight.

And with no heir to name regent … Loki’s eyes drifted back to Odin, still and peaceful in his slumber. He smirked.

Now there’s a thought.

…

Ulric breathed a sigh of relief when Odin strode back into the throne room, as cool and collected as ever. He had started to worry – the All Father had given him strict orders to be left undisturbed, but it had been several hours and given the state of things he had begun to fear that perhaps it was a mistake leave him alone and unguarded.  

“Your majesty—” The king silenced him with a brisk hand.

“Prince Loki is dead,” he said. “Killed in battle on Svartalfheim.”

Ulric felt his fellow Einherjar stiffen beside him. This was news indeed. Odin spoke very little of his fallen son, but they all could tell that the matter had always weighed heavily on his soul. And who could blame him? To have a child betray you so deeply … Ulric thought of his own young sons and shivered.

He tried again. “Your majesty—" but the king only brushed him off again.

“It’s of no matter,” he said, but clearly it was – he stood before the throne, staring at it as if it were some violent beast lay ready to strike. Ulric swallowed.

“What is to be done, my liege?”

Odin was silent, lost to the labyrinth of his thoughts. It was only a moment though before he came to, shaking his head and clearing his throat.

“We are to move forward,” he said finally, mounting the steps and taking his seat upon it. “After all, we cannot afford to wallow forever.”

[cozy-the-overlord]

On the sixth day of cookie-mas my true love gave to me:

A spread of chocolate chip cookies

This is technically the last day of cookie-mas, although I do have one more bonus baked good tomorrow~~~~

On the first day of cookie-mas my true love* gave to me:

two batches of Taylor Swift’s chai cookie recipe

[cozy-the-overlord]

Hurt Feelings

Summary: After Loki awakens on Svartalfheim, inexplicably and frustratingly alive and without any sort of plan to speak of, he decides to pay his adoptive father a visit.

Word Count: 5,506

Pairing: N/A

A/N: A little while ago I made this edit because it had been living rent-free in my head since the day Halsey's new album dropped. And then I wrote this.

(Also -- I do want to make a point of saying that the stuff involving the Odinsleep in this fic is an idea I got from a Loki meta post I read years ago. For the life of me, I could not find the post to credit them, so if any of you know the post I'm talking about and can send it to me so I can credit them properly, I'd appreciate it!)

Thank you so much for reading!!

Warnings: Suicide/suicidal ideation (I interpret Loki's "death" in The Dark World as an intentional-but-unsuccessful attempt on his part), miscarriage/fertility issues, grief/loss

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae @whatafuckingdumbass @the-emo-asgardian @imnotrevealingmyname @electroma89 @lokislittlesigyn @moumouton4 @theredrenard @justdontmindmetm @lostgreekgod @naterson

If you want to be tagged, feel free to send an ask/message :)

Read it on Ao3!

The palace was in an uproar. He supposed that was to be expected, what with the aftermath of an invading attack that left a gaping hole in the side and destroyed half the military, not to mention the crown prince turning traitor and the queen … well, the picture was painted clear enough. The cause didn’t really matter as much as the effect – in the chaos of the moment, no one was paying attention to the rogue Einherjar, limping in from the mountains.

Loki felt slightly crazed as he hurried down the halls. More than slightly, perhaps. He passed a gaggle of serving girls dragging baskets of laundry behind them and fought the urge to cackle in their faces. Poor fools. They didn’t realize a madman was in their midst. Run run, little girls, save yourselves from the beast, the monster in prince’s garb. His chest throbbed beneath his tattered leathers.

He had screamed when he woke up on Svartalfheim, screamed until his throat tore and his mouth flooded with blood. It wasn’t fair. He had executed it so perfectly, Loki’s heroic end, saved his brother and avenged his mother in one fell swoop, tied up all the loose ends and then the curtains could fall, and he could let himself fade to black and finally know peace. Thor had even held him in the end, cradled him almost like a child, and for a moment he did feel like a child again, a little boy toddling after his big brother in some alternate reality where nothing ever went wrong and his love felt warm and safe instead of a guilty stab of betrayal through his weary beating heart. His fear bled out with the rest of him. He closed his eyes in his brother’s arms and felt something like happiness. The end of Loki Laufeyson. Perhaps when he opened them again, she’d be there, waiting.

But Valhalla had to spit him back out.

His boots should have clicked on the marble floor, but beneath the shining visage of his golden Einherjar armor was only soft leather soles. A band of guards rounded the corner, huffing beneath their helmets with the exhaustion of men run ragged through the night. Loki pressed his nails deeper into his palm as they passed. The staff he held was not truly there, the same trick of light and magic as his armor. But they said nothing as they hurried along, too absorbed in their own troubles to spare him a second glance. He stifled his chuckle. Truly, he was the only one in the palace who might have been capable of noticing something amiss.

Well, he and …

Loki swallowed. Best not to think of it.

He had no plan. What was there to do? He hadn’t expected to draw breath again, hadn’t bothered to hatch an escape. Once the sting of finding himself alive had worn off, Loki had stumbled to his feet in a sort of blurry haze. What to do? Where to go? What was the point?

I’ll tell Father what you did here today.

Of course. Of course.

It was all Odin’s fault. The thought sliced through the fog with a piercing clarity. Odin was behind it all – every miserable breath Loki had ever drawn came back to the All Father’s plotting. It had all started with him, perhaps it must end with him too. Loki stumbled back up the hill with new purpose. Thor’s stolen skiff lay abandoned where they had left it. Kin-slaying was a far cry from the heroic sacrifice he had envisioned, but then again it wasn’t proper kin-slaying, was it?

Your birthright was to die. If I had not taken you in, you would not be here now to hate me.

Such a benevolent god, his false father. How soon had he come to regret his self-serving benevolence, Loki wondered? Perhaps the moment he dumped a squalling Jotun babe in his wife’s arms and realized what it was that he had dragged home.

It mattered not. Loki was going to bring this tale to an end.

He recognized the Einherjar stationed outside Odin’s quarters – Ulric, a fixture on the king’s guard since Loki was a small boy, whisps of his greying hair peeping out from beneath his helmet. Loki puffed out his chest with a bit of Einherjar swagger.

“I must speak with the All Father.”

Ulric frowned down at him – the old goat had always been a bit of a sourpuss. “The All Father is not to be disturbed.”

“It’s urgent.”

The frown deepened. All at once Loki thought of a long-forgotten dinner, back when his feet still dangled in the air when he sat at the table, when he had whispered to Thor that Ulric looked like a bedraggled Nidavellian cat. His brother had laughed so hard that he spat his cider spat out through his nostrils. Loki pushed the memory away. It left him feeling cold.

“Leave your message with me, then,” Ulric was saying. “I’ll see that he gets it.”

“I’m sworn to deliver it myself.” An improvised detail, but Loki knew it was a good touch. He stepped forward, dropping his voice lower. “It involves the prince.”

Ulric was at a loss. Loki could see it in his eyes – he was a loyal man, and a devoted follower of Odin, one who would rather fall on his sword than disobey a command from his beloved All Father, but he held a man’s honor in the highest regard. A bit of a contradiction, that, but Loki rather felt the irony was lost on him.

“He’s not here …” he said at last. “He’s in the Queen’s chambers.”

Loki started a bit. “The Queen?”

“Yes. He asked not to be disturbed, but I know him to be desperate of news of Thor.”

Under normal circumstances, Loki might have bristled at the assumption that Thor was the prince of whom he spoke, but he felt too shaken to be annoyed. He forced himself to bow.

“Thank you, sir.”

His chest was aching again.

A confrontation in Frigga’s chambers was not what he had envisioned. Perhaps it would be best, though – after all, she was all there was standing between Odin and him by the end. There had to be something symbolic that their ending would come through hers, the final snap of thread holding it all together. Yes, that was it. This would be good. This would be closure. This would be what he needed. Loki wasn’t sure why he was trembling.

His feet carried him down the halls more by their own accord than at any direction from him. He knew this path well. How often had he sought out these rooms throughout his youth, in need of guidance or instruction or comfort or company? Loki had been a lonely child, after all. He hid behind his mother’s skirts for far longer than most found acceptable of a young boy. And she had always been happy to hide him.

You might want to take the stairs to the left.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. That thing would never draw breath again. He avenged her. He avenged her.

It didn’t matter.

He passed another gaggle of giggling maids – what they were tittering about, he didn’t quite catch. There wasn’t exactly much worth tittering about, if you asked him, but Loki supposed he wouldn’t know. It seemed the maids where always a flurry over something. Like in the weeks leading up to Thor’s botched coronation, or those after Odin feasted the kings and queens of the other realms for nearly a month. Or … or when Frigga revealed she was pregnant with her third child. Loki’s blood turned to ice in his veins.

Different maids had tittered in the halls then, and Loki had been little – barely having begun his formal tutoring. The word “pregnant” had meant nothing. He hadn’t understood the significance of what they were telling him. It was by design, thanks to the web of falsehoods and half-truths his so-called parents had weaved around the Queen’s growing belly. No, all he was allowed to know was that Mama had a baby inside her, and when it came out it would be his little brother. Thor had been ecstatic when he learned the news, practically vibrating with questions as he bounced across the room.

“What’s his name? When will he get here? Does he like me? Will he look like Loki? Was I in your tummy, Mama? Was Loki?”

Norns, what had she said to that? Loki couldn’t remember. He wondered if he might have seen her discomfort, had he known to look for it. Did she glance at Odin, panic sparking in her eyes as her tongue reached for the lie? Had it been there in front of him the whole time? But he had been small – disgustingly small, too small to realize. He remembered the formal announcement in court, how the whole room had buzzed in anticipation when his father (for he was still his father then) declared that the Queen was with child. He remembered being confused. Hadn’t she already been with child? Children, in fact? She was with him, and with Thor – didn’t they count?

It was an upsetting ordeal all around. Loki did not like watching his mother’s belly expand, like it housed some horrible creature waiting to claw its way out. Frigga tried to help him adjust – she encouraged him to lay against her stomach as she read aloud during their nightly storytime, just as he always did, but the feeling of tiny limbs thrashing beneath her skin distressed him to tears, no matter how she tried to reassure him that it was only his baby brother saying hello.

“I don’t want a baby brother!” Loki had sobbed, clinging to her thighs like a vise. “Get rid of it! I don’t want it!”

He would get his wish.

Loki would never forget that dinner, how his mother’s fork had come clattering down to the plate as she lurched forward, the way she gasped his father’s name in a tight, smothered sort of voice that sounded nothing like her at all, how his father had yelled – no, screamed – for the guards and everything collapsed into chaos, how Loki’s body had seemed frozen to his seat when they dragged her away from the table and he realized with a lump in his throat that the front of her skirt was soaked through with crimson.

He hadn’t slept that night. The nursemaids had put his brother and him to bed with placating promises and consolations, but no amount of reassurance could erase the sight of his mother’s bloodless cheeks against the table, or the piercing sound of his father’s terror. Loki lay stiff as a board, breathing quickening as the darkness pressed in around him. Odin All Father was not supposed to be afraid of anything. What did it mean then, that he had screamed at the sight of Mama on the table? What happened to her? Was she … was she …

Eventually it had all become too much.

It was past bedtime, but Loki crept down the halls all the same, bare feet numb against the freezing marble. He had to go find Mama. He had to know she was alright.

But when he pushed open the heavy door to her quarters, he was shocked to find only his father, hunched over her writing desk like a statue, head buried in his hands. He only barely looked up when Loki toddled into the room.

“What are you doing up?” his voice was sharp, hoarse.

“I—” Loki felt petrified in place. He glanced towards the door to his mother’s bedroom, closed with no light behind the crack. “I can’t sleep …”

The sound was painfully small.

His father grunted, already looking away. He shifted in his seat and reached for something laying beside his foot – a bottle, Loki had realized dimly, empty in the flickering candlelight. “You need to stay in your room, Loki.”

“I’m sorry … I was just …” But an excuse never came to mind. He swallowed, glancing at the dark bedroom again.

“Is Mama going to be alright?” his voice came out in a rasp, like he was about to cry. Stupid baby …

Odin closed his eyes. Back then, he had still been in the prime of his life, but that night Loki remembered thinking he looked like a weary old man. He sighed. “Yes. Yes – your mother will be quite fine. She just needs to sleep. As do you.”

Loki recalled nodding out of instinct more than anything else. He stared at the fringed rug on the floor, shivering in his nightclothes. “Yes, sir …”

The rest was hazy. Odin hadn’t taken him back to bed – that much he was certain of. He must have called a servant or someone, perhaps ordered a light sleeping draught for him as well, to see that he slept through the night. All he remembered is that Odin wouldn’t look at him.

At the time, Loki had assumed it was because of what he had said about the baby. Odin wasn’t present when Loki had begged his mother to get rid of it, but he was certain Frigga must have told him what he said. He must have blamed him for it. In retrospect, this was likely just projection on his part. Loki had blamed himself for his mother’s miscarriage, spending the next several weeks wracked with guilt over his words, convinced that he had killed the baby and nearly killed his mother. No wonder Odin wanted nothing to do with him.

It hadn’t been until at least a month later that Frigga had taken him into her lap and told him a secret. “My womb is very sick,” she said, regarding him very seriously. “It doesn’t hold babies the way it should. Your little brother was the fourth baby I’ve lost like this. When I was pregnant with Thor, I nearly lost him too.”

Her voice never wavered – Norns, the strength that had to have taken, so soon after yet another horrific loss, to lay it bare in a child’s terms just so that he would understand that it was not his fault. But as with every moment of his childhood, her kindness was tempered with deceit.

“What about me?” he asked, looking up at her as he pressed his cheek to her chest. “Did you almost lose me too?”

Frigga pressed a kiss to the top of his head, so that he could not see his face. “You were my gift from the Norns,” she whispered against his curls. “Carrying you was the easiest thing I ever did.”

In front of him. The whole time. He was just too small to realize.

That had to be why Odin could not bear to look at him, though. How disgusted must he had been, drowning in grief for his lost trueborn child, when the little monstrosity he picked up as a glorified war prize came hobbling in seeking his comfort?

Your birthright was to die.

Loki huffed a laugh beneath his helmet. Bitter, old man? Angry that I lived instead of all your wretched little spares? You have no one to blame but yourself.

The door to his mother’s chambers was the same as it had always been. It was a warm oak, sparkling with little silver rivets that had always reminded him of the stars. Loki stared at it for a moment, paralyzed. It no longer loomed over him the way it had as a child, but it seemed to have grown far heavier.

If he closed his eyes, he could picture the light crackling into the hall as he heaved the door open, and she’d still be there, her honey curls cascading down her shoulder as she thumbed through some new spell-book, and she’d look up at him and smile, oh Loki, I was just thinking of you – here, come look at this, and he’d sink into the cushions next to her as she explained this new discovery she was fascinated with, and perhaps he might press his cheek against her shoulder as she did – remember when he used to do that? Or before, when he used to crawl into her lap and cling to her dress like an anxious little possum? The others would make fun of him, he remembered – are we to call you Loki Friggason? – but she always wrapped her arms around him just the same.

“Boys here grow up too fast,” she mused once, holding him beside the sparring pit as they watched Thor clunkily practice his lessons with a wooden stick. Odin had been there too, watching from the other side of the pit. Even in the earliest days, he always came to watch Thor practice. “Some days I fear I’ll blink and you’ll both be gone.”

Loki had been confused. “Gone where, Mama?”

“I don’t know. Far away from me.” There was a commotion in the pit – Thor’s practice sword, clattering to the ground as he lost his balance lunging at his instructor. Odin called out something that Loki couldn’t quite hear. She sighed. “But that’s a long way off yet, thankfully.”

He frowned. “I don’t want to go far away,” he declared, a desperate insistence beneath his voice. His eyes prickled with tears at just the thought. “I’m going to stay with you forever.”

Frigga exhaled a soft laugh. “That’s a lovely thought.”

Loki opened his eyes, and the voices faded back into memory. I’m going to stay with you forever. He wondered if she had thought of that promise the night on the Bifrost, the night he let go.

I suppose we were all lying about something.

The door stood, unchanging. Loki breathed in, then exhaled through his teeth. None of it had been real. No point in wasting tears on it now.

He dropped the illusion, exchanging his false spear for a dagger whose blade would not shatter on impact. Breathe. Breathe. The door was locked. No matter. The lock clicked beneath his spell. His heart was pounding in his chest. He took one last breath, then stepped into his mother’s room.

It still smelled like her. Norns, it smelled like her. Warm and fresh, like new sprouts in the garden on a pleasant spring day – it was her, it was like she was there. He could believe it, that perhaps she was just working in the back room, and would be out to greet him once she heard the door. The sofa was the same, as was her little writing desk in the corner with its wooden chair. Her bookshelves still lined the back wall, heavy with their papered fruits, spell-books ordered in the same organized chaos that she always left them. The only difference was the figure silently silhouetted at the window.

The king stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the smoking ruins of the garden below. He did not turn as Loki entered, didn’t even flinch. The door fell closed behind him with a heady thud. Loki stood in the foyer, stock-still as a statue. This was the moment, to rush him from behind and plunge the dagger in his spine before he had even bothered to look up, but for some reason Loki’s limbs wouldn’t move.  

“I wondered if you might come.”

Irritation startled him out of his stupor. “Did you now?”

Odin nodded. “We had to keep your cradle in here, you know,” he said. “You’d fuss through the night if you weren’t with her.”

Loki was rooted to the floor. His head was spinning. He had been prepared for fury and violence, biting words that tasted like poison on his lips, not … quiet reminiscing. The king continued blithely on. “I had feared that our story would not be believed, what with the suddenness of it all, but no one ever questioned that she was your mother.”

Am I not your mother?

There were tears pooling in the corner of his eyes, hot and angry.

You’re not.

Loki spat. “How convenient.”

“Perhaps it was.” Odin hummed. He stretched his shoulders back, grunting at the crackling of bones beneath his cloak. “The sleep is coming on again. I can feel it.” He huffed a sigh, shaking his head. “Twice in less than half a decade. Perhaps I am getting old.”

Loki scowled. “Do you want my pity, then? Is that it?” He stalked across the room, acid burning his tongue with every step. “Shall I pen an elegy? The mighty King Odin, collapsing under the weight of his failings—”

Odin was shaking his head. “You would not understand—”

“If all you intend is to speak down to me, at least do me the courtesy of facing me as you do.”

To his surprise, he did as he was asked. Loki started a bit when he turned – he had not seen his false-father since his sentencing. What was that, a year ago? Odin seemed to have aged several hundred in that time. Wane and weary, he regarded Loki with lifeless eyes. His gaze landed on his chest.

“… was that him?”

Loki didn’t need to ask who him was. His throat was suddenly very tight. He nodded.

“And he’s …?”

“Dead.”

Odin jerked his head, a brief nod. “Good.” Abandoning the window entirely, he made his way to the other side of the room, where Frigga’s writing desk sat abandoned across from her sofa. “One less failing to weigh me down.”

Loki swallowed. His mouth tasted bitter. “Don’t tell me you’re finally remorseful,” he snapped as he followed him. “Now, of all times?” Of course he would do this. Of course he would find a way to take Loki’s last chance at triumph and turn it into an opera on his own suffering. Loki ought to have stabbed him the back when he had the chance.

Pulling out the chair, Odin scoffed. “You think I haven’t always been remorseful? That I’m proud with what you became?”

Loki was seeing red. “What you turned me into, you mean?” he retorted. “Or what you always knew I was? Tell me, my liege, what was it you were hoping for? How might I have earned your pride?”

The king closed his eye, as if this was some nagging fly he was too tired to swat. “Must we do this now?”

Loki laughed humorlessly. “What else is there to do here?”

He huffed, a sound that under different circumstances Loki might have almost mistaken for a chuckle, but it faded as quickly as it appeared. Instead, he let out a sigh.

“I wish I had told you the truth,” he said, turning his eye back towards Loki. “Truly. I’ll wish that until the day I die.”

Loki tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He might have believed him, too, somewhere in another universe where the All Father was capable of sincerity. “But you didn’t.”

“I thought—”

“You thought I was a monster.”

Odin sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose. Weary old man. He did look truly pitiful. “You’ll never believe me, will you? No matter what I do. If I had told you the truth from the beginning, perhaps then I could look at you and know that you believe me when I say I loved you truly as my son.”

“Perhaps.” Love. Loki wanted to spit the word, but he hadn’t the energy. He pictured a reality where he had known the truth, where the hands that clung to his mother’s skirts were blue and ridged. The thought was sickening. “But it wouldn’t have changed why you took me in the first place, would it? It wouldn’t have changed what I am.” Loki scoffed at  the idea. “What more would it have done, than eased your conscience?”

“What would you have had me do, then?” Odin snapped. The sound was a relief. “Left you to die?”

“YES!” he yelled, so loud that Odin jumped. He shook his head, smiling bitterly even as his vision went blurry. “Would that not have been better for us all?”

For the first time in his memory, the All Father appeared at a loss for words. He opened his mouth, only to close it again, crumbling back into the chair as if his legs had given out. The sight should have been more satisfying than it was. Instead, Loki only felt sick.

For a moment, the room was silent. When Odin finally looked up again, his voice was gravelly. “Why did you come back here?”

“I told myself I’d kill you.” His chest felt hollow.

A heartbeat passed.

“Then why haven’t you?”

Two heartbeats. Three.

“… I don’t know.” The words came out in barely a whisper. What was he doing here? What did he want? He sank down onto the sofa, letting the cushions engulf his thighs as they always did. It felt so much emptier alone.

Boys here grow up too fast.

Would he ever stop longing for the lie?

“When you first brought me back to her—” he wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the sound of his voice, Odin or himself. “… how did she respond?”

“Frigga?��� Odin leaned back in the wooden chair, gaze distant. “She had been surprised, of course. You were … extremely unexpected. But she bonded with you very quickly. After all, only a year earlier she had had her third miscarriage. Neither of us expected she’d be able to have another child.”

Loki’s voice was flat. “So I was a replacement.” He supposed he had known that in his heart, ever since he learned the truth. Why else would Frigga have taken in some half-dead Jotun reject, unless she had been desperate to soothe her own grief?

But Odin was firm. “You were a gift,” he said, in a tone that left no room for argument. “She wholeheartedly believed she was meant to be your mother.”

You were my gift from the Norns.

Loki looked away. He felt his father’s gaze on him, and hated how small it left him feeling. Spare me your pity. When Odin spoke again, his voice was soft.

“To tell the truth, I’d often forget that you didn’t come from us. You’re so much like her.”

He hated that he was crying. He felt his face crumbling, felt the tears bubbling over and leaving slimy frigid tracks down his cheeks, and he hated it. He hated feeling everything.

Why can’t I just hate them?

He wished he had known. He wished he had never found out. He wished Odin had never laid eyes on him. He wished he could still call him father. Laufeyson. Odinson. Friggason. None of them fit, and yet he clung to each in some violent way. Pathetic.

 A cough startled him from his thoughts – across from him, Odin had gone very pale. He grunted, leaning forward with his hand pressed to his beard. “Damn it all.”

The realization hit him like the flat side of a sword. Despite everything, despite the tears still wet on his cheeks, Loki couldn’t help but laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

Odin heaved a breath, listing in his chair. “Frigga – then with Thor’s damned plotting—” he grunted again and grabbed at the chair arm. “It all sped it up, I imagine.”

It was too absurd. What were the odds? Loki shook his head, smile bitter on his lips. “It really does kill you to have to speak with me, doesn’t it?”

The king did not answer. Instead, he only gasped as he tipped forward, the chair creaking as it tipped with him – he would’ve fallen over had Loki not rushed to his side. His chest seared in pain as he propped the old man up. Why had he done that? Loki hadn’t the slightest idea. Some part of him, hovering above his body, laughed at the irony. You come here to kill him, and here you are cradling him. Some assassin you’d make.

Odin was mumbling to himself, words slurring together. “Can’t happen now – not now – with the realm in shambles—”

There was something satisfying about his distress. Childish, he knew, but Loki relished in it all the same. For once, he was not the one weeping and desperately clinging. “I’m afraid you reap what you sow, my king.”

Odin looked up at him. His pale eye was wide and frightened, almost pleading, and it seemed to cut right through him. “Loki—”

Loki shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’m not sure what you want me to do about it. You condemned me, remember?”

But the king said nothing more. One last desperate exhale, and then his eyes were slipping closed, his head rolling back on his shoulders as his weight went slack and his body limp. Loki cursed, bracing himself against the floor to hold him up – damn, the old bastard was heavy – twisting his torso as the chair tipped over so he might lay the man down on the floor properly. Odin said nothing. Loki exhaled through his teeth, running his fingers back through his hair.

Well, now what?

If left here, alone and without the care and treatment of the healers, Odin could easily die. A perfect murder, one in which Loki could walk away from completely unimplicated. But walk away to where? It seemed he was meant to live now, as inconvenient as that reality was. He could disappear somewhere, melt into the folds of the galaxy at large, find safety hidden beneath a new name. But … could he really?

He looked up, at the tower of shelves and spell-books that loomed over the two of them, his mother’s pride and joy. Frigga’s presence seemed to loom with it. Loki sighed. She was not his mother, not really, but try as he might, he could not wrest the title from her ghost. Try as he might, he could not stop loving her as one.

And he could not leave her husband to die on her bedroom floor.

Loki huffed, pushing himself to his feet with more effort than it should have taken. He supposed he should go to the kingsguard. He could dawn the same mask he had worn when he arrived, go to Ulric in a frenzy and say that when he had gone to deliver his message he had found the All Father unresponsive on the carpet. Yes, that would have to do – he could slip away in the madness that would ensue upon the realization that the king had gone into Odinsleep so soon, with no heir to name regent. Loki exhaled a bitter laugh. Oh, how he wished he could stick around to witness that power grab.

Although … Loki paused. Perhaps he should stay. He looked to the window, at the bloodred sunset cutting through the sky. There were consequences to living, too – ones that he had known he would not have to face should he meet a heroic end.

There will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can’t find you.

He shivered.

Perhaps … they would not seek him out on Asgard, not if Asgard believed him to be dead. Even if they did not believe the tale of his demise, surely they would not think him fool enough to hide in such plain sight.

And with no heir to name regent … Loki’s eyes drifted back to Odin, still and peaceful in his slumber. He smirked.

Now there’s a thought.

…

Ulric breathed a sigh of relief when Odin strode back into the throne room, as cool and collected as ever. He had started to worry – the All Father had given him strict orders to be left undisturbed, but it had been several hours and given the state of things he had begun to fear that perhaps it was a mistake leave him alone and unguarded.  

“Your majesty—” The king silenced him with a brisk hand.

“Prince Loki is dead,” he said. “Killed in battle on Svartalfheim.”

Ulric felt his fellow Einherjar stiffen beside him. This was news indeed. Odin spoke very little of his fallen son, but they all could tell that the matter had always weighed heavily on his soul. And who could blame him? To have a child betray you so deeply … Ulric thought of his own young sons and shivered.

He tried again. “Your majesty—" but the king only brushed him off again.

“It’s of no matter,” he said, but clearly it was – he stood before the throne, staring at it as if it were some violent beast lay ready to strike. Ulric swallowed.

“What is to be done, my liege?”

Odin was silent, lost to the labyrinth of his thoughts. It was only a moment though before he came to, shaking his head and clearing his throat.

“We are to move forward,” he said finally, mounting the steps and taking his seat upon it. “After all, we cannot afford to wallow forever.”

[cozy-the-overlord]

that took way too long

[cozy-the-overlord]

Hurt Feelings

Summary: After Loki awakens on Svartalfheim, inexplicably and frustratingly alive and without any sort of plan to speak of, he decides to pay his adoptive father a visit.

Word Count: 5,506

Pairing: N/A

A/N: A little while ago I made this edit because it had been living rent-free in my head since the day Halsey's new album dropped. And then I wrote this.

(Also -- I do want to make a point of saying that the stuff involving the Odinsleep in this fic is an idea I got from a Loki meta post I read years ago. For the life of me, I could not find the post to credit them, so if any of you know the post I'm talking about and can send it to me so I can credit them properly, I'd appreciate it!)

Thank you so much for reading!!

Warnings: Suicide/suicidal ideation (I interpret Loki's "death" in The Dark World as an intentional-but-unsuccessful attempt on his part), miscarriage/fertility issues, grief/loss

Tags: @lucywrites02 @gaitwae @whatafuckingdumbass @the-emo-asgardian @imnotrevealingmyname @electroma89 @lokislittlesigyn @moumouton4 @theredrenard @justdontmindmetm @lostgreekgod @naterson

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Read it on Ao3!

The palace was in an uproar. He supposed that was to be expected, what with the aftermath of an invading attack that left a gaping hole in the side and destroyed half the military, not to mention the crown prince turning traitor and the queen … well, the picture was painted clear enough. The cause didn’t really matter as much as the effect – in the chaos of the moment, no one was paying attention to the rogue Einherjar, limping in from the mountains.

Loki felt slightly crazed as he hurried down the halls. More than slightly, perhaps. He passed a gaggle of serving girls dragging baskets of laundry behind them and fought the urge to cackle in their faces. Poor fools. They didn’t realize a madman was in their midst. Run run, little girls, save yourselves from the beast, the monster in prince’s garb. His chest throbbed beneath his tattered leathers.

He had screamed when he woke up on Svartalfheim, screamed until his throat tore and his mouth flooded with blood. It wasn’t fair. He had executed it so perfectly, Loki’s heroic end, saved his brother and avenged his mother in one fell swoop, tied up all the loose ends and then the curtains could fall, and he could let himself fade to black and finally know peace. Thor had even held him in the end, cradled him almost like a child, and for a moment he did feel like a child again, a little boy toddling after his big brother in some alternate reality where nothing ever went wrong and his love felt warm and safe instead of a guilty stab of betrayal through his weary beating heart. His fear bled out with the rest of him. He closed his eyes in his brother’s arms and felt something like happiness. The end of Loki Laufeyson. Perhaps when he opened them again, she’d be there, waiting.

But Valhalla had to spit him back out.

His boots should have clicked on the marble floor, but beneath the shining visage of his golden Einherjar armor was only soft leather soles. A band of guards rounded the corner, huffing beneath their helmets with the exhaustion of men run ragged through the night. Loki pressed his nails deeper into his palm as they passed. The staff he held was not truly there, the same trick of light and magic as his armor. But they said nothing as they hurried along, too absorbed in their own troubles to spare him a second glance. He stifled his chuckle. Truly, he was the only one in the palace who might have been capable of noticing something amiss.

Well, he and …

Loki swallowed. Best not to think of it.

He had no plan. What was there to do? He hadn’t expected to draw breath again, hadn’t bothered to hatch an escape. Once the sting of finding himself alive had worn off, Loki had stumbled to his feet in a sort of blurry haze. What to do? Where to go? What was the point?

I’ll tell Father what you did here today.

Of course. Of course.

It was all Odin’s fault. The thought sliced through the fog with a piercing clarity. Odin was behind it all – every miserable breath Loki had ever drawn came back to the All Father’s plotting. It had all started with him, perhaps it must end with him too. Loki stumbled back up the hill with new purpose. Thor’s stolen skiff lay abandoned where they had left it. Kin-slaying was a far cry from the heroic sacrifice he had envisioned, but then again it wasn’t proper kin-slaying, was it?

Your birthright was to die. If I had not taken you in, you would not be here now to hate me.

Such a benevolent god, his false father. How soon had he come to regret his self-serving benevolence, Loki wondered? Perhaps the moment he dumped a squalling Jotun babe in his wife’s arms and realized what it was that he had dragged home.

It mattered not. Loki was going to bring this tale to an end.

He recognized the Einherjar stationed outside Odin’s quarters – Ulric, a fixture on the king’s guard since Loki was a small boy, whisps of his greying hair peeping out from beneath his helmet. Loki puffed out his chest with a bit of Einherjar swagger.

“I must speak with the All Father.”

Ulric frowned down at him – the old goat had always been a bit of a sourpuss. “The All Father is not to be disturbed.”

“It’s urgent.”

The frown deepened. All at once Loki thought of a long-forgotten dinner, back when his feet still dangled in the air when he sat at the table, when he had whispered to Thor that Ulric looked like a bedraggled Nidavellian cat. His brother had laughed so hard that he spat his cider spat out through his nostrils. Loki pushed the memory away. It left him feeling cold.

“Leave your message with me, then,” Ulric was saying. “I’ll see that he gets it.”

“I’m sworn to deliver it myself.” An improvised detail, but Loki knew it was a good touch. He stepped forward, dropping his voice lower. “It involves the prince.”

Ulric was at a loss. Loki could see it in his eyes – he was a loyal man, and a devoted follower of Odin, one who would rather fall on his sword than disobey a command from his beloved All Father, but he held a man’s honor in the highest regard. A bit of a contradiction, that, but Loki rather felt the irony was lost on him.

“He’s not here …” he said at last. “He’s in the Queen’s chambers.”

Loki started a bit. “The Queen?”

“Yes. He asked not to be disturbed, but I know him to be desperate of news of Thor.”

Under normal circumstances, Loki might have bristled at the assumption that Thor was the prince of whom he spoke, but he felt too shaken to be annoyed. He forced himself to bow.

“Thank you, sir.”

His chest was aching again.

A confrontation in Frigga’s chambers was not what he had envisioned. Perhaps it would be best, though – after all, she was all there was standing between Odin and him by the end. There had to be something symbolic that their ending would come through hers, the final snap of thread holding it all together. Yes, that was it. This would be good. This would be closure. This would be what he needed. Loki wasn’t sure why he was trembling.

His feet carried him down the halls more by their own accord than at any direction from him. He knew this path well. How often had he sought out these rooms throughout his youth, in need of guidance or instruction or comfort or company? Loki had been a lonely child, after all. He hid behind his mother’s skirts for far longer than most found acceptable of a young boy. And she had always been happy to hide him.

You might want to take the stairs to the left.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. That thing would never draw breath again. He avenged her. He avenged her.

It didn’t matter.

He passed another gaggle of giggling maids – what they were tittering about, he didn’t quite catch. There wasn’t exactly much worth tittering about, if you asked him, but Loki supposed he wouldn’t know. It seemed the maids where always a flurry over something. Like in the weeks leading up to Thor’s botched coronation, or those after Odin feasted the kings and queens of the other realms for nearly a month. Or … or when Frigga revealed she was pregnant with her third child. Loki’s blood turned to ice in his veins.

Different maids had tittered in the halls then, and Loki had been little – barely having begun his formal tutoring. The word “pregnant” had meant nothing. He hadn’t understood the significance of what they were telling him. It was by design, thanks to the web of falsehoods and half-truths his so-called parents had weaved around the Queen’s growing belly. No, all he was allowed to know was that Mama had a baby inside her, and when it came out it would be his little brother. Thor had been ecstatic when he learned the news, practically vibrating with questions as he bounced across the room.

“What’s his name? When will he get here? Does he like me? Will he look like Loki? Was I in your tummy, Mama? Was Loki?”

Norns, what had she said to that? Loki couldn’t remember. He wondered if he might have seen her discomfort, had he known to look for it. Did she glance at Odin, panic sparking in her eyes as her tongue reached for the lie? Had it been there in front of him the whole time? But he had been small – disgustingly small, too small to realize. He remembered the formal announcement in court, how the whole room had buzzed in anticipation when his father (for he was still his father then) declared that the Queen was with child. He remembered being confused. Hadn’t she already been with child? Children, in fact? She was with him, and with Thor – didn’t they count?

It was an upsetting ordeal all around. Loki did not like watching his mother’s belly expand, like it housed some horrible creature waiting to claw its way out. Frigga tried to help him adjust – she encouraged him to lay against her stomach as she read aloud during their nightly storytime, just as he always did, but the feeling of tiny limbs thrashing beneath her skin distressed him to tears, no matter how she tried to reassure him that it was only his baby brother saying hello.

“I don’t want a baby brother!” Loki had sobbed, clinging to her thighs like a vise. “Get rid of it! I don’t want it!”

He would get his wish.

Loki would never forget that dinner, how his mother’s fork had come clattering down to the plate as she lurched forward, the way she gasped his father’s name in a tight, smothered sort of voice that sounded nothing like her at all, how his father had yelled – no, screamed – for the guards and everything collapsed into chaos, how Loki’s body had seemed frozen to his seat when they dragged her away from the table and he realized with a lump in his throat that the front of her skirt was soaked through with crimson.

He hadn’t slept that night. The nursemaids had put his brother and him to bed with placating promises and consolations, but no amount of reassurance could erase the sight of his mother’s bloodless cheeks against the table, or the piercing sound of his father’s terror. Loki lay stiff as a board, breathing quickening as the darkness pressed in around him. Odin All Father was not supposed to be afraid of anything. What did it mean then, that he had screamed at the sight of Mama on the table? What happened to her? Was she … was she …

Eventually it had all become too much.

It was past bedtime, but Loki crept down the halls all the same, bare feet numb against the freezing marble. He had to go find Mama. He had to know she was alright.

But when he pushed open the heavy door to her quarters, he was shocked to find only his father, hunched over her writing desk like a statue, head buried in his hands. He only barely looked up when Loki toddled into the room.

“What are you doing up?” his voice was sharp, hoarse.

“I—” Loki felt petrified in place. He glanced towards the door to his mother’s bedroom, closed with no light behind the crack. “I can’t sleep …”

The sound was painfully small.

His father grunted, already looking away. He shifted in his seat and reached for something laying beside his foot – a bottle, Loki had realized dimly, empty in the flickering candlelight. “You need to stay in your room, Loki.”

“I’m sorry … I was just …” But an excuse never came to mind. He swallowed, glancing at the dark bedroom again.

“Is Mama going to be alright?” his voice came out in a rasp, like he was about to cry. Stupid baby …

Odin closed his eyes. Back then, he had still been in the prime of his life, but that night Loki remembered thinking he looked like a weary old man. He sighed. “Yes. Yes – your mother will be quite fine. She just needs to sleep. As do you.”

Loki recalled nodding out of instinct more than anything else. He stared at the fringed rug on the floor, shivering in his nightclothes. “Yes, sir …”

The rest was hazy. Odin hadn’t taken him back to bed – that much he was certain of. He must have called a servant or someone, perhaps ordered a light sleeping draught for him as well, to see that he slept through the night. All he remembered is that Odin wouldn’t look at him.

At the time, Loki had assumed it was because of what he had said about the baby. Odin wasn’t present when Loki had begged his mother to get rid of it, but he was certain Frigga must have told him what he said. He must have blamed him for it. In retrospect, this was likely just projection on his part. Loki had blamed himself for his mother’s miscarriage, spending the next several weeks wracked with guilt over his words, convinced that he had killed the baby and nearly killed his mother. No wonder Odin wanted nothing to do with him.

It hadn’t been until at least a month later that Frigga had taken him into her lap and told him a secret. “My womb is very sick,” she said, regarding him very seriously. “It doesn’t hold babies the way it should. Your little brother was the fourth baby I’ve lost like this. When I was pregnant with Thor, I nearly lost him too.”

Her voice never wavered – Norns, the strength that had to have taken, so soon after yet another horrific loss, to lay it bare in a child’s terms just so that he would understand that it was not his fault. But as with every moment of his childhood, her kindness was tempered with deceit.

“What about me?” he asked, looking up at her as he pressed his cheek to her chest. “Did you almost lose me too?”

Frigga pressed a kiss to the top of his head, so that he could not see his face. “You were my gift from the Norns,” she whispered against his curls. “Carrying you was the easiest thing I ever did.”

In front of him. The whole time. He was just too small to realize.

That had to be why Odin could not bear to look at him, though. How disgusted must he had been, drowning in grief for his lost trueborn child, when the little monstrosity he picked up as a glorified war prize came hobbling in seeking his comfort?

Your birthright was to die.

Loki huffed a laugh beneath his helmet. Bitter, old man? Angry that I lived instead of all your wretched little spares? You have no one to blame but yourself.

The door to his mother’s chambers was the same as it had always been. It was a warm oak, sparkling with little silver rivets that had always reminded him of the stars. Loki stared at it for a moment, paralyzed. It no longer loomed over him the way it had as a child, but it seemed to have grown far heavier.

If he closed his eyes, he could picture the light crackling into the hall as he heaved the door open, and she’d still be there, her honey curls cascading down her shoulder as she thumbed through some new spell-book, and she’d look up at him and smile, oh Loki, I was just thinking of you – here, come look at this, and he’d sink into the cushions next to her as she explained this new discovery she was fascinated with, and perhaps he might press his cheek against her shoulder as she did – remember when he used to do that? Or before, when he used to crawl into her lap and cling to her dress like an anxious little possum? The others would make fun of him, he remembered – are we to call you Loki Friggason? – but she always wrapped her arms around him just the same.

“Boys here grow up too fast,” she mused once, holding him beside the sparring pit as they watched Thor clunkily practice his lessons with a wooden stick. Odin had been there too, watching from the other side of the pit. Even in the earliest days, he always came to watch Thor practice. “Some days I fear I’ll blink and you’ll both be gone.”

Loki had been confused. “Gone where, Mama?”

“I don’t know. Far away from me.” There was a commotion in the pit – Thor’s practice sword, clattering to the ground as he lost his balance lunging at his instructor. Odin called out something that Loki couldn’t quite hear. She sighed. “But that’s a long way off yet, thankfully.”

He frowned. “I don’t want to go far away,” he declared, a desperate insistence beneath his voice. His eyes prickled with tears at just the thought. “I’m going to stay with you forever.”

Frigga exhaled a soft laugh. “That’s a lovely thought.”

Loki opened his eyes, and the voices faded back into memory. I’m going to stay with you forever. He wondered if she had thought of that promise the night on the Bifrost, the night he let go.

I suppose we were all lying about something.

The door stood, unchanging. Loki breathed in, then exhaled through his teeth. None of it had been real. No point in wasting tears on it now.

He dropped the illusion, exchanging his false spear for a dagger whose blade would not shatter on impact. Breathe. Breathe. The door was locked. No matter. The lock clicked beneath his spell. His heart was pounding in his chest. He took one last breath, then stepped into his mother’s room.

It still smelled like her. Norns, it smelled like her. Warm and fresh, like new sprouts in the garden on a pleasant spring day – it was her, it was like she was there. He could believe it, that perhaps she was just working in the back room, and would be out to greet him once she heard the door. The sofa was the same, as was her little writing desk in the corner with its wooden chair. Her bookshelves still lined the back wall, heavy with their papered fruits, spell-books ordered in the same organized chaos that she always left them. The only difference was the figure silently silhouetted at the window.

The king stood with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out at the smoking ruins of the garden below. He did not turn as Loki entered, didn’t even flinch. The door fell closed behind him with a heady thud. Loki stood in the foyer, stock-still as a statue. This was the moment, to rush him from behind and plunge the dagger in his spine before he had even bothered to look up, but for some reason Loki’s limbs wouldn’t move.  

“I wondered if you might come.”

Irritation startled him out of his stupor. “Did you now?”

Odin nodded. “We had to keep your cradle in here, you know,” he said. “You’d fuss through the night if you weren’t with her.”

Loki was rooted to the floor. His head was spinning. He had been prepared for fury and violence, biting words that tasted like poison on his lips, not … quiet reminiscing. The king continued blithely on. “I had feared that our story would not be believed, what with the suddenness of it all, but no one ever questioned that she was your mother.”

Am I not your mother?

There were tears pooling in the corner of his eyes, hot and angry.

You’re not.

Loki spat. “How convenient.”

“Perhaps it was.” Odin hummed. He stretched his shoulders back, grunting at the crackling of bones beneath his cloak. “The sleep is coming on again. I can feel it.” He huffed a sigh, shaking his head. “Twice in less than half a decade. Perhaps I am getting old.”

Loki scowled. “Do you want my pity, then? Is that it?” He stalked across the room, acid burning his tongue with every step. “Shall I pen an elegy? The mighty King Odin, collapsing under the weight of his failings—”

Odin was shaking his head. “You would not understand—”

“If all you intend is to speak down to me, at least do me the courtesy of facing me as you do.”

To his surprise, he did as he was asked. Loki started a bit when he turned – he had not seen his false-father since his sentencing. What was that, a year ago? Odin seemed to have aged several hundred in that time. Wane and weary, he regarded Loki with lifeless eyes. His gaze landed on his chest.

“… was that him?”

Loki didn’t need to ask who him was. His throat was suddenly very tight. He nodded.

“And he’s …?”

“Dead.”

Odin jerked his head, a brief nod. “Good.” Abandoning the window entirely, he made his way to the other side of the room, where Frigga’s writing desk sat abandoned across from her sofa. “One less failing to weigh me down.”

Loki swallowed. His mouth tasted bitter. “Don’t tell me you’re finally remorseful,” he snapped as he followed him. “Now, of all times?” Of course he would do this. Of course he would find a way to take Loki’s last chance at triumph and turn it into an opera on his own suffering. Loki ought to have stabbed him the back when he had the chance.

Pulling out the chair, Odin scoffed. “You think I haven’t always been remorseful? That I’m proud with what you became?”

Loki was seeing red. “What you turned me into, you mean?” he retorted. “Or what you always knew I was? Tell me, my liege, what was it you were hoping for? How might I have earned your pride?”

The king closed his eye, as if this was some nagging fly he was too tired to swat. “Must we do this now?”

Loki laughed humorlessly. “What else is there to do here?”

He huffed, a sound that under different circumstances Loki might have almost mistaken for a chuckle, but it faded as quickly as it appeared. Instead, he let out a sigh.

“I wish I had told you the truth,” he said, turning his eye back towards Loki. “Truly. I’ll wish that until the day I die.”

Loki tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He might have believed him, too, somewhere in another universe where the All Father was capable of sincerity. “But you didn’t.”

“I thought—”

“You thought I was a monster.”

Odin sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose. Weary old man. He did look truly pitiful. “You’ll never believe me, will you? No matter what I do. If I had told you the truth from the beginning, perhaps then I could look at you and know that you believe me when I say I loved you truly as my son.”

“Perhaps.” Love. Loki wanted to spit the word, but he hadn’t the energy. He pictured a reality where he had known the truth, where the hands that clung to his mother’s skirts were blue and ridged. The thought was sickening. “But it wouldn’t have changed why you took me in the first place, would it? It wouldn’t have changed what I am.” Loki scoffed at  the idea. “What more would it have done, than eased your conscience?”

“What would you have had me do, then?” Odin snapped. The sound was a relief. “Left you to die?”

“YES!” he yelled, so loud that Odin jumped. He shook his head, smiling bitterly even as his vision went blurry. “Would that not have been better for us all?”

For the first time in his memory, the All Father appeared at a loss for words. He opened his mouth, only to close it again, crumbling back into the chair as if his legs had given out. The sight should have been more satisfying than it was. Instead, Loki only felt sick.

For a moment, the room was silent. When Odin finally looked up again, his voice was gravelly. “Why did you come back here?”

“I told myself I’d kill you.” His chest felt hollow.

A heartbeat passed.

“Then why haven’t you?”

Two heartbeats. Three.

“… I don’t know.” The words came out in barely a whisper. What was he doing here? What did he want? He sank down onto the sofa, letting the cushions engulf his thighs as they always did. It felt so much emptier alone.

Boys here grow up too fast.

Would he ever stop longing for the lie?

“When you first brought me back to her—” he wasn’t sure who was more surprised by the sound of his voice, Odin or himself. “… how did she respond?”

“Frigga?” Odin leaned back in the wooden chair, gaze distant. “She had been surprised, of course. You were … extremely unexpected. But she bonded with you very quickly. After all, only a year earlier she had had her third miscarriage. Neither of us expected she’d be able to have another child.”

Loki’s voice was flat. “So I was a replacement.” He supposed he had known that in his heart, ever since he learned the truth. Why else would Frigga have taken in some half-dead Jotun reject, unless she had been desperate to soothe her own grief?

But Odin was firm. “You were a gift,” he said, in a tone that left no room for argument. “She wholeheartedly believed she was meant to be your mother.”

You were my gift from the Norns.

Loki looked away. He felt his father’s gaze on him, and hated how small it left him feeling. Spare me your pity. When Odin spoke again, his voice was soft.

“To tell the truth, I’d often forget that you didn’t come from us. You’re so much like her.”

He hated that he was crying. He felt his face crumbling, felt the tears bubbling over and leaving slimy frigid tracks down his cheeks, and he hated it. He hated feeling everything.

Why can’t I just hate them?

He wished he had known. He wished he had never found out. He wished Odin had never laid eyes on him. He wished he could still call him father. Laufeyson. Odinson. Friggason. None of them fit, and yet he clung to each in some violent way. Pathetic.

 A cough startled him from his thoughts – across from him, Odin had gone very pale. He grunted, leaning forward with his hand pressed to his beard. “Damn it all.”

The realization hit him like the flat side of a sword. Despite everything, despite the tears still wet on his cheeks, Loki couldn’t help but laugh. “You can’t be serious.”

Odin heaved a breath, listing in his chair. “Frigga – then with Thor’s damned plotting—” he grunted again and grabbed at the chair arm. “It all sped it up, I imagine.”

It was too absurd. What were the odds? Loki shook his head, smile bitter on his lips. “It really does kill you to have to speak with me, doesn’t it?”

The king did not answer. Instead, he only gasped as he tipped forward, the chair creaking as it tipped with him – he would’ve fallen over had Loki not rushed to his side. His chest seared in pain as he propped the old man up. Why had he done that? Loki hadn’t the slightest idea. Some part of him, hovering above his body, laughed at the irony. You come here to kill him, and here you are cradling him. Some assassin you’d make.

Odin was mumbling to himself, words slurring together. “Can’t happen now – not now – with the realm in shambles—”

There was something satisfying about his distress. Childish, he knew, but Loki relished in it all the same. For once, he was not the one weeping and desperately clinging. “I’m afraid you reap what you sow, my king.”

Odin looked up at him. His pale eye was wide and frightened, almost pleading, and it seemed to cut right through him. “Loki—”

Loki shifted uncomfortably. “Well, I’m not sure what you want me to do about it. You condemned me, remember?”

But the king said nothing more. One last desperate exhale, and then his eyes were slipping closed, his head rolling back on his shoulders as his weight went slack and his body limp. Loki cursed, bracing himself against the floor to hold him up – damn, the old bastard was heavy – twisting his torso as the chair tipped over so he might lay the man down on the floor properly. Odin said nothing. Loki exhaled through his teeth, running his fingers back through his hair.

Well, now what?

If left here, alone and without the care and treatment of the healers, Odin could easily die. A perfect murder, one in which Loki could walk away from completely unimplicated. But walk away to where? It seemed he was meant to live now, as inconvenient as that reality was. He could disappear somewhere, melt into the folds of the galaxy at large, find safety hidden beneath a new name. But … could he really?

He looked up, at the tower of shelves and spell-books that loomed over the two of them, his mother’s pride and joy. Frigga’s presence seemed to loom with it. Loki sighed. She was not his mother, not really, but try as he might, he could not wrest the title from her ghost. Try as he might, he could not stop loving her as one.

And he could not leave her husband to die on her bedroom floor.

Loki huffed, pushing himself to his feet with more effort than it should have taken. He supposed he should go to the kingsguard. He could dawn the same mask he had worn when he arrived, go to Ulric in a frenzy and say that when he had gone to deliver his message he had found the All Father unresponsive on the carpet. Yes, that would have to do – he could slip away in the madness that would ensue upon the realization that the king had gone into Odinsleep so soon, with no heir to name regent. Loki exhaled a bitter laugh. Oh, how he wished he could stick around to witness that power grab.

Although … Loki paused. Perhaps he should stay. He looked to the window, at the bloodred sunset cutting through the sky. There were consequences to living, too – ones that he had known he would not have to face should he meet a heroic end.

There will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can’t find you.

He shivered.

Perhaps … they would not seek him out on Asgard, not if Asgard believed him to be dead. Even if they did not believe the tale of his demise, surely they would not think him fool enough to hide in such plain sight.

And with no heir to name regent … Loki’s eyes drifted back to Odin, still and peaceful in his slumber. He smirked.

Now there’s a thought.

…

Ulric breathed a sigh of relief when Odin strode back into the throne room, as cool and collected as ever. He had started to worry – the All Father had given him strict orders to be left undisturbed, but it had been several hours and given the state of things he had begun to fear that perhaps it was a mistake leave him alone and unguarded.  

“Your majesty—” The king silenced him with a brisk hand.

“Prince Loki is dead,” he said. “Killed in battle on Svartalfheim.”

Ulric felt his fellow Einherjar stiffen beside him. This was news indeed. Odin spoke very little of his fallen son, but they all could tell that the matter had always weighed heavily on his soul. And who could blame him? To have a child betray you so deeply … Ulric thought of his own young sons and shivered.

He tried again. “Your majesty—" but the king only brushed him off again.

“It’s of no matter,” he said, but clearly it was – he stood before the throne, staring at it as if it were some violent beast lay ready to strike. Ulric swallowed.

“What is to be done, my liege?”

Odin was silent, lost to the labyrinth of his thoughts. It was only a moment though before he came to, shaking his head and clearing his throat.

“We are to move forward,” he said finally, mounting the steps and taking his seat upon it. “After all, we cannot afford to wallow forever.”

[cozy-the-overlord]

USA Cultural Regions Map

[cozy-the-overlord]

About Loki, it’s said:

Loki has a common feature on his figure of trickster, in comparision with others like him: he always provides. Just as Prometheus gave fire to humans, Sammael gave the apple of knowledge to Adam and Eve, and the Raven gave the world light, Loki, under the name Lóðurr, has the power to provide to your mind of your deepest desires. Simply, he has the power to give and take, and he’s the only one with the power to give back what he has taken.

[cozy-the-overlord]

[cozy-the-overlord]

On the fifth day of cookie-mas my true love gave to me:

a batch of pfeffernüsse cookies!

I actually made the dough for these yesterday, which made today super easy! Also the picture makes these look wildly similar to the wedding cookies, but they’re much bigger and not as spherical

On the first day of cookie-mas my true love* gave to me:

two batches of Taylor Swift’s chai cookie recipe

[cozy-the-overlord]

Because Im approaching 100th drawing of Astarion (I'm at 82) I made this little gif

Im obsessed ? Nahh

Not at all

[cozy-the-overlord]

On the fourth day of cookie-mas my true love gave to me:

4 dozen+* peanut butter cookies!

I didn’t plan to have these in my original lineup but my grandmother kept bringing them up every time I mentioned all the cookies I was going to be making this year so I decided to add them for her

On the first day of cookie-mas my true love* gave to me:

two batches of Taylor Swift’s chai cookie recipe

[cozy-the-overlord]

On the third day of cookie-mas my true love gave to me:

three dozen Mexican wedding cookies!

I actually bought almond extract this year (in years past I haven’t bothered) and OH MY GOODNESS IT SMELLS SO GOOD

On the first day of cookie-mas my true love* gave to me:

two batches of Taylor Swift’s chai cookie recipe

[cozy-the-overlord]

On the second day of cookie-mas my true love gave to me:

my grandmother’s special Christmas butter cookies

as well as some cursed Christmas cookie cupcakes because Cozy can’t do math right and added way too much margarine in the first batch

On the first day of cookie-mas my true love* gave to me:

two batches of Taylor Swift’s chai cookie recipe

[cozy-the-overlord]

On the first day of cookie-mas my true love* gave to me:

two batches of Taylor Swift’s chai cookie recipe

[cozy-the-overlord]

Oooooooh thanks for the tag @electroma89!! Here’s a Christmas present I bought for a friend the other day and belted into my car for no real reason

Tagging @lokislittlesigyn @naterson @loki-hargreeves @loki-wants-an-army and anyone else who’d like to do it!

Tagged by @buckstattoos to share a random photo from my gallery. You get an apple from the volunteer work banquet a few weeks back

Tagging @donttelltheelff @aintgonnatakethis @jimothystu @eddiestach87 @lostinthelxghts @buckybarnesss @morrison-the-ii and @howiehamlin show me your photos this is a threat (it is not theres absolutely no pressure just like to be a menace sometimes k bye 💜)