Chapter Text
‘You can’t just ignore it all the way there,’ Loki points out in his most ostentatiously reasonable tone, crossing his arms over his chest as he watches Thor unlace his boots. ‘We need to at least come up with a plan for when the Midgardians decide to throw me to the wolves.’
‘We already have a plan,’ Thor reminds him, shooting him a wide smile as he looks up. Loki rolls his eyes. ‘Besides, I thought you liked wolves.’
‘I like them when they’re not trying to dismember me,’ Loki responds sourly. ‘And dazzling the puny mortals with your new lightning abilities is not a plan.’
Thor sighs and hangs his head briefly before he pulls off his boots. His muscles are weary from days without sleep, dashing from one end of the ship to the other overseeing the construction of dormitories and living spaces, organising supplies, cataloguing what’s been lost and what needs to be found. He keeps a number in his head all the time now, three figures: the tired few that make up the nation of Asgard. He’s so proud that they got here at all he could burst, but every new problem brings with it a reminder that Thor had given up the throne once before, even if it was to his thrice-damned, silver-tongued snake of a brother, and he isn’t sure how much he’d really wanted it back.
Also, his eye socket itches, and if Loki had given him the courtesy of five minutes alone before following him to his quarters after dinner, he would have been able to scratch it by now.
‘Then what would you have me do, brother?’ he asks, a little more seriously. He pauses in his undressing and leans sideways against the wooden beam of the bedframe. He can’t summon the energy to do much but gaze up at Loki, who looks a little startled at his sudden acquiescence but recovers quickly.
‘We should approach them on good terms, first,’ he begins, the scheming glint in his eye growing sharper by the second. ‘Greet them graciously, and offer them something they need. We must be careful not to imply remorse for past actions. We don’t want them to think they can just demand whatever they want of us in recompense.’
‘You slaughtered hundreds of their number last time we were on Earth and now we return in spades, begging for refuge,’ Thor reminds him flatly. ‘They can demand whatever they like.’
Loki’s eyes narrow.
‘And if they demand revenge?’ Loki snaps. ‘If your loving mortals demand my head on a spike, brother?’
Thor can’t help an incredulous snort at that, even as it makes Loki’s hands clench into fists as he launches off the wall with an angry jerk. Thor catches his wrist at the last second and holds him there but Loki refuses to look at him. Thor bites his lip, his mouth twitching with the effort not to smile. His head on a spike! Of all Loki’s melodramatically improbable fancies, that might be Thor’s favourite.
Thor contemplates him for a moment, almost too tired to envision the mental gymnastics Loki must have had to go through in order to reach the conclusion that Thor would happily hand him over to people who wished his death. What must it be like to have Loki’s brain? To be so quick to take offense that not even a lifetime of adoration could reassure you: to remain convinced, always, that you must not be wanted where you are.
‘Then we will go somewhere else,’ Thor says calmly, stroking his thumb over Loki’s exposed wrist. His pulse jumps and scatters, although Loki keeps his breathing carefully controlled. ‘There are other planets, brother. An entire galaxy of them, I hear.’
Loki’s eyes flicker to him and then away, the corner of his mouth twitching unwillingly. Thor takes it in, holds it, keeps it. It’s been a long time since Loki felt free enough in his presence to let himself smile truly and not as part of a trick, even if he still attempts to keep it hidden.
‘And you think the people would be content with such a bargain?’ Loki murmurs, raising an eyebrow. He leans back against the wall and Thor lets go of his wrist with a final squeeze.
‘Perhaps I would not couch it in such mercenary terms,’ Thor frowns, stretching his arms out before him and groaning at the fuzzy relief. The double-edged language of state functions rolls through his head, the sly formality that always slipped more easily from Loki’s mouth than his. ‘I would say that they take all of us or none of us. What have we left but our loyalty to each other, the sanctity of our state?’
Loki lets loose a low, mocking whistle and Thor swats at his hip. Loki dodges out of reach, the smile full stretched across his mouth now, teeth glinting.
‘Oh, so you have been paying attention,’ he grins, keeping tauntingly out of Thor’s reach. ‘We’ll make a king out of you yet, brother.’
‘I don’t need any tips from you on that score,’ Thor snorts, standing up and pulling off his cloak, unfastening the straps of his jerkin. Loki grins and leans his head against the wall, examining his nails with the kind of studied insouciance that led Thor to pick him up and dunk him in lakes when they were children, just to see him squawk in surprise.
‘Sorry, remind me again – out of the two of us, who got to be king first?’
‘Only because you were impersonating Father!’ Thor objects.
‘The method by which I arrived at the throne is of no consequence,’ Loki dismisses. ‘You’re just annoyed you didn’t get there first.’
‘I would have,’ Thor complains. ‘If you weren’t such a slippery, conniving little –’
‘Beloved brother?’ Loki finishes, widening his eyes sweetly.
‘Probably going a bit far,’ Thor says, pulling off his jerkin and making short work of his trousers, leaving them in a pile next to the bed while Loki watches. He clambers beneath the covers in only his underwear and his eyes are already closing against his will, heavy with exhaustion. ‘Now get in or get out, I don’t care which, just make sure you turn out the light.’
‘Is that bed even big enough for two people?’ he hears Loki ask sceptically before a short pause, the soft clicking of the light switch, and then a sharp poke to the spine.
‘Move over, then,’ Loki mutters irritably in response to Thor’s surprised noise. ‘Only you would invite someone to share your bed and then protest when they require you to make room for them.’
‘I wasn’t inviting you to share my bed,’ Thor mimics sleepily. ‘You’re here, I’m here, bed’s here. Time for sleep. Just made sense.’
‘Does it?’ Loki asks under his breath, and then, sharply: ‘Did you even remember to take your eyepatch off? You know you’ll be sore in the morning if you don’t let it –’
‘Shut up, Loki.’
Thor’s body remembers, even if he wouldn’t have known to admit it, just how Loki likes to be held, and so while Loki is still rummaging and sighing, throwing pieces of leather armour out of the bed and sending tendrils of sly magic out to drift along the seams of Thor’s eyepatch and test the limits of his patience, he turns over and lays an arm firmly across Loki’s middle, pulling him backwards with a sigh. Loki goes still under him and then Thor can almost feel him decide not to go, and as tired as he is, as murky as this memory will be tomorrow, it makes something almost childishly happy light up in his chest.
‘Oh, alright,’ Loki mutters, relaxing minutely with the very definition of bad grace. ‘You’ll only sulk tomorrow otherwise.’
Thor makes a humming noise of assent and falls asleep with Loki’s slowly moving chest under his palm.
---
It doesn’t seem like such a clever idea the next morning when Thor is woken by the distant sound of someone hammering on the door.
‘Apologies, your majesty,’ a voice calls. ‘But there’s been a –’
‘I’ll be out in a minute,’ Thor pulls his mouth away from the pillow to yell before slumping back down with a groan. Loki makes a hissing noise somewhere close by and Thor reaches out a hand to clumsily pet the nearest part of him in apology, which is either an elbow or a weird, bony part of his shoulder.
Thor sighs, rolling over and getting a face full of Loki’s tangled hair. It smells like honey. What the devil has Loki been using on it? Without much to trade or money to buy, they’re restricted to rationing soap that’s barely suitable for use on the hardened skin of soldiers, never mind Asgardian royalty, but he should have known Loki would have weaved a way around that for the sake of keeping up perfumed appearances. He pushes his nose obstinately into the side of Loki’s neck and fastens his arm around his waist again, keeping his eyes tightly shut. Maybe if he just stays here for a while, the problem will go away on its own. Or at least will not be so loud.
‘No,’ Loki says flatly.
‘No what?’ Thor mumbles, refusing to open his eyes until Loki starts struggling out of his grip.
‘No to – to everything,’ Loki says in what sounds like abject despair, before heaving a huge sigh and sitting bolt upright. He gives an irritable twitch of his hand and his armour appears from nothing, flowing carefully and quickly over his body like quicksilver as he runs a hand over his hair and smooths it as one would with a brush. He throws Thor a quick glance over his shoulder and blinks.
‘What?’ he asks warily.
‘And you say you’re not a witch,’ Thor teases, stretching, head pillowed on his arms. Loki’s eyes dance over every exposed part of Thor, his gaze critical and heated with annoyance.
‘You say you’re not an idiot,’ Loki snipes, clicking his fingers and grinning triumphantly when Thor gasps at the sensation of cold water plunging over his body although the sheets remain dry. He splutters, holding up his arms and seeing no droplets.
Loki’s smile has softened slightly when he looks up. Every hair is perfectly in place; no one could have known he was sleeping less than five minutes before. Thor feels the irrational desire to yank him back down and mess up his hair again, just to prove it really happened.
‘It looks like magic to you because you don’t understand it,’ Loki tells him, standing up and heading for the door. ‘But really it’s just science. Any of your precious mortals could tell you that.’
‘Nope, I’m pretty sure it’s magic,’ Thor calls to his retreating back.
Loki ignores him, murmuring a good morning to whoever is waiting outside the door and slipping past quietly without even a backward glance. Thor sighs and gets out of bed.
‘What are we looking at?’ he asks Heimdall when he arrives on Level B, just outside the western dormitories. They’ve constructed a kind of rudimentary living space meant for recreation, bolstering communal connections: there are scattered throws and blankets seating elders, and children playing in small groups while their mothers and fathers talk quietly. Loki had been the one who pointed out that it was going to take at least a year for them to get to earth, and if the people had nowhere to gather and relax in the meantime, Thor was going to have a mutiny on his hands before they got a quarter of the way. Thor privately wondered if Loki had made this point just so that Thor would categorise maintenance of the grapevines on level C as top priority, but it gave people something to do as well as actually producing wine at the end, so he’d let it go.
The boy who was sent to rouse him flashes Thor the same wide-eyed, vaguely judgmental look he’s been giving him the whole way here. Thor couldn’t get a word out of him: when he’d emerged from his quarters, the lad only shook his head and started off at a pace designed not to permit much conversation, leaving Thor completely mystified.
‘If my task is complete, Lord Heimdall,’ the messenger asks stiffly, and Heimdall waves a hand. The lad gives Thor a microscopic bow of acknowledgement and shoots off at the speed of someone bursting with either illicit knowledge or a severe need to visit the bathroom.
Heimdall raises an eyebrow.
‘Damned if I know,’ Thor shrugs. ‘What’s going on? I’ve got office hours at nine.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call it that,’ Heimdall mutters. ‘No one knows what it means but you.’
‘You know what it means now,’ Thor grins, clapping Heimdall on the back. ‘And ‘two hours every day when I sit on the throne and listen to people complain about their neighbours’ is too long.’
That was a little unfair; they didn’t always complain. But the ship was fairly small for an entire nation of people, even if they were now a severely diminished nation, and everyone was crammed into such close quarters than squabbles were breaking out on every level, regardless of how well supplied or tended. The people of Asgard had lived in a land of luxurious plenty, and they weren’t used to being told that they had used up their hot water ration for the day before they’d even had time to wash their hair.
‘House Arnar has given insult to House Magnus again,’ Heimdall tells him grimly.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Thor sighs. ‘What’s that, the third time this week?’
Heimdall gives a slight nod.
‘What did they do now?’
‘The youngest Magnusson was discovered desecrating the Arnar house crest, at which point the eldest Arnarsson chose to take offence. By headbutting him.’
‘Do I want to know how he was desecrating it?’
‘I don’t think so, your majesty.’
‘Can’t leave them alone for five minutes,’ Thor mutters, and then dashes off in short order once he spots the troublemakers in question: Leif Arnarson just breaking out of the hold a nervous guard had on his arms and launching himself at Einarr Magnusson, who had been glaring so hatefully it was a wonder the air between them didn’t catch on fire. Einarr still had the black eye from when Leif had last got at him, throwing himself over the table when they’d seated themselves within earshot of each other at dinner two days ago. Thor is starting to think they might be doing it on purpose, out of sheer restlessness. Whatever it is, the bruises aren’t stopping Einarr’s lip curling in insolent invitation.
Thor heaves an internal sigh and swoops in between them to neatly pick Einarr up around the waist, holding him just out of reach of the other boy. Leif halts within a bare inch of Thor’s chest, but only just, his eyes darting past to glare at Einarr. Thor raises an eyebrow and Leif scowls, cheeks flushing as his hands bunch into fists at his sides.
‘I think that’s enough, don’t you?’ Thor asks him, trying to emulate the kindly but firm tone his minders had taken when he had fought with Loki as a child.
Of course, it hadn’t worked back then, either.
‘His brother killed my brother,’ Leif shouts in his face. Thor blinks and Einarr makes an angry noise, which dies out with a squeak when Thor tightens his arm absentmindedly around his waist.
‘I remember, you told me last week,’ Thor says mildly. ‘We’ve had this conversation six times. Doesn’t that seem like too many for a boy of nearly eighteen?’
‘He deserves it,’ Leif says in a lower voice, one that crawls with hate. He won’t take his eyes off Einarr’s face. For the first time, Thor feels a stirring of uneasiness. He’s been relegating this particular grievance to the stress and strain of relocation, the lurching dread of not knowing what a new world would bring. But Leif doesn’t look mindlessly angry or afraid: he’s got a target, whether or not it’s just for convenience’s sake. If Thor wasn’t holding Einarr away from him, Leif would already be upon him again, and until he can be made to forget that desire, the situation will not change.
‘That is not for you to decide,’ Thor says sternly, and is caught off guard when Leif snorts. ‘What? You think you could decide better, do you?’
‘Better than you,’ Leif retorts, finally looking back at Thor and paling slightly when Thor raises an eyebrow.
‘Yes,’ Thor says, gesturing to the entire situation. ‘Because that’s been going so well for you so far.’
Leif’s mouth tightens and he pointedly doesn’t say anything.
Thor sighs and sets down Einarr, who is red with humiliation by this point, and holds his hand out to keep Leif at arm’s length, even as the boy narrows his eyes and readies himself to launch again.
‘For the love of Odin, calm down,’ Thor snaps, and then sighs. He was this young once, he was this eager to prove himself. He has to be patient.
He tries again.
‘Whatever is between you, it must be settled. We are too few in number to squabble among ourselves – think of your love for Asgard, for your mothers. Surely they don’t wish to lose more sons to a blood feud that began before they were even born.’
It had been like that between a few of the oldest families, back on Asgard: disagreements that went so far back no one could even remember the source, men that had never spoken but spat at each other in the street. In general, Odin hadn’t been tolerant of feuds which muddied his warriors’ sense of loyalty to one another, but in the most extreme of cases it usually got worked out in the midst of battle anyway: either they killed each other or came home as tightly bound as brothers. Thor had never known two families to fight quite like Houses Arnar and Magnus, though; to hear his nursemaid tell it, that particular feud had sprang into existence with the first tentative unfurling of Yggdrasil’s roots.
But they don’t have room for that now. They can’t have learned nothing from Hela, from what she showed them about Asgard’s past – they can be more than bitterness, and fighting, and senseless slaughter. They have to be.
‘This must be an end to it,’ he says shortly, looking between the two of them before he turns to Leif. ‘It’s terrible that you lost your brother and I’m sorry for it, but fighting with Einarr isn’t going to bring him back, and he wouldn’t want you to waste your time. Get over it.’
Leif doesn’t look at him but his lips thin with irritation. Einarr crosses his arms over his chest, staring down at the ground. Thor restrains the urge to roll his eyes.
‘Not all of us had brothers like yours,’ Leif says after a tense minute, betraying the complete lack of self-preservation that Thor has suspected for some time. ‘My brother was honourable and strong, not like that snake you call –’
‘I’m the only one who gets to call him a snake,’ Thor interrupts, irritated. He resists the urge to fold his arms defensively across his chest, very aware of Heimdall and the guards standing only a few feet away, as well as the small family groups that have been watching the altercation unfold like it’s a primetime spectator sport. He continues hastily: ‘By which I mean, Loki is a prince of Asgard and you will treat him with the respect he deserves.’
There is a perfect, judgmental silence. One of the guards coughs delicately.
‘Anyway, this is all beside the point,’ Thor declares, deciding that he will drag them back to the point by any means necessary. He gestures to the guards, who quickly pry themselves off the wall and pretend like they weren’t smirking and enjoying the show. They’re all currently suffering from a stunning lack of professionalism on account of how they were all promoted from ‘farmhand’ to ‘royal guard’ about a week ago: the entire palace guard had fallen to Hela’s sword as well as the army, and frankly Thor had had to make do with what was left. At least they seem to have figured out how to pull their swords from their sheathes without cutting themselves now. ‘We’ll have to put you on different levels until I’ve decided what’s to be done.’
‘Ground-breaking strategy,’ Einarr mutters as they’re led away in opposite directions. ‘Really original.’
Thor stares after him in betrayal: he’d seemed like the one with slightly more sense than a bilgesnipe.
‘They’re not going to stop of their own accord,’ he predicts once he and Heimdall are alone. Thor could almost respect Leif’s bull-headed attitude if he hadn’t known how that kind of thing usually ended. It was so easy, when you were that young and headstrong and proud, to feel every slight as if it were a permanent wound upon your honour, and to decide that restoring it was the most important thing: to let the pursuit of that honour poison you and hold you back, and make you less than you could be.
Thor also knew that it was hard to admit at the end of it all that that was all just a bunch of stupid words and that you’d been an idiot, and needed your head soaking.
‘You do not think separating them will accomplish your goal?’ Heimdall asks.
‘That’s only going to stop them so long as they wish to be stopped, and Leif in particular has let this consume him, you can see it. I think Einarr is only reacting to him, he’s got no grievance of his own.’
‘I am inclined to agree.’ Heimdall hesitates before he speaks. ‘I am not prone to meddle in the lives of those I see, but I would have this bloody contract come to an end. I have seen a hundred men fall under its influence; there are less than a dozen members left to either of those families.’
‘I remember watching Ragnar Magnusson put out Njal Arnarsson’s eye in a pub brawl when I was twelve,’ Thor muses. ‘I think I cheered him on.’
Heimdall snorts.
‘Time makes fools of us all,’ he says.
‘Pretty sure it doesn’t make a fool of you,’ Thor says, looking at him sideways. He checks the time and swears. ‘I really have to run, but – Heimdall.’
Heimdall’s eyebrows raise in question.
‘If we can bring them together before one of them kills the other,’ Thor says earnestly, ‘then it will serve as an example. The people dearly need a reminder of what makes Asgard great, after what they’ve just been through.’
‘A noble plan,’ Heimdall says, smiling slightly, and Thor allows himself to feel a moment of reassurance that he might not be doing the worst possible job. ‘How do you propose to do that, exactly?’
‘Let me get back to you on that one,’ Thor mutters, and claps Heimdall on the back before he runs off to perform his duties.
---
‘It’s all very well for you to say they need to make up, but would you, in their position?’ Loki asks him later. He’s lounging on Thor’s bed picking from a small bowl of dried fruit and nuts, throwing them one by one into the air and catching them in his mouth. It’s hypnotising; Thor lost five minutes watching him do it before he remembered he came in here to change. ‘If someone killed me?’
‘Is that really a fair comparison?’ Thor asks, flinging a set of throwing knives across the room irritably in search of a missing boot. ‘I think if someone went after you with a hatchet the way Einarr’s went after Leif’s, odds are good you deserved it, and anyway you’d leave them without the motor skills or probably the appendages necessary to try it again.’ He takes a deep breath and restrains the urge to scratch the hell out of the healing skin under his eyepatch. ‘Also, if you’re going to leave all your stuff here, why don’t you just use the drawer I left empty for you rather than just leaving it all on the floor? I tripped over your stupid cape this morning and nearly took my other eye out.’
‘I think you just answered your own question there,’ Loki says dryly.
‘Of course! How could I forget,’ Thor returns, making a triumphant noise as he finally locates the other boot. ‘Your favourite pastime after stabbing me: watching me trip over your possessions.’
‘You’re just so good at it,’ Loki says, so earnestly that Thor turns to look at him. He tries for a valiant second to be angry but can’t manage it in the face of Loki stretched out on his bed, unrepentantly mussing up the sheets with his delicately arching feet and smirking at him as if he knows exactly what Thor is thinking. Which is odd, because for that single suspended moment, Thor isn’t at all sure of what he’s thinking, or what he’s going to do next.
‘What would you do?’ he asks after a minute, out of sheer curiosity. ‘If someone killed me?’
‘I’m surprised you’re even admitting such a thing might be possible. Aren’t you supposed to be a god or something?’
‘Humour me,’ Thor says, rolling his eyes. ‘God or not. What would you do?’
‘I’d tear the skin from them in strips while they still lived, and force them to eat every scrap,’ Loki says calmly, then blinks at the expression on Thor’s face. ‘Sorry, was I supposed to lie?’
‘That’s … very specific,’ Thor says blankly.
‘I’ve had a lot of time to think it over,’ Loki points out. ‘When I was incarcerated, and so forth.’
‘Which time?’ Thor asks as innocently as he can, and catches it between his teeth when Loki throws a raisin at him. He grins as he chews and Loki pokes out his tongue, for a second looking all of twelve years old. ‘Also, weren’t you in prison for trying to kill me at least one of those times?’
His voice is teasing but he regrets the words almost immediately for the way Loki’s hands tighten around his bowl. This is coming too close to the things they still don’t talk about – that honestly Thor doesn’t think they need to talk about, because everything is different since Loki came back. He doesn’t need Loki to reassure him that Loki never really wanted him dead. Oh, Thor can believe that Loki dreamed of it, that he pinned his hopes on it, that if you excavated Loki’s body you would find that desire lodged like a splinter at the very base of his heart – but every fight they’ve ever had has ended with Loki pulling his punch at the last second. He’s had a hundred chances and blown every one, even though he is quick and clever and a hardier combatant than their storytellers give him credit for. Thor never learned to be cautious when Loki beckoned to him, because something told him he didn’t need to be. Even if Loki were not carefully avoiding his eyes now, Thor would have recognised the truth in that.
‘A habit I grew out of,’ Loki says after a long moment, his mouth twitching slightly. His eyes flicker to Thor’s soft grin and then away with a small frown, but he doesn’t look ready to spring up off the bed anymore either.
‘Perhaps House Arnar and Magnus will overcome their quarrel yet, then,’ Thor says warmly, and Loki snorts, looking much more like himself.
‘I wouldn’t bet on it. The warriors of Asgard aren’t exactly known for their forgiving natures.’
‘No, but we are known for our loyalty to the kingdom, and right now the kingdom comprises of about five hundred people hurtling through space at ten thousand light years an hour in a metal box, so I’ll be damned if I let two idiots who haven’t even finished puberty yet bring it down from the inside,’ Thor says, all in a rush. He pulls in a deep breath, frowning.
Loki stares at him for a surprised second before he starts to sit up and gets lazy halfway, propping himself up on his elbows. He’s so bony Thor’s surprised he doesn’t poke himself in the eye with his own shoulder.
‘I think they call that overidentifying, back on Midgard,’ he tells Thor with faux-sympathy. His eyes are glittering with amusement. ‘I saw it on the television.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Thor snaps. He sits down hard on the edge of the bed and Loki doesn’t bother to move an inch, letting his knees poke Thor in the back. He even draws one of them up so he can do it more effectively. Thor reaches behind him and grabs Loki by the thigh to keep him still, his thumb scratching against the warm leather. Loki makes a disgruntled noise but doesn’t move. ‘What do you know about conflict resolution?’
‘That’s not what you need here,’ Loki says confidently, lying back again, his hair spreading across the pillow. Thor lets go of his leg and twists around to stare uncomprehendingly at the brief arch of Loki’s back as he settles back into place. He’s not sure how Loki always ends up taking up so much space in here when it’s Thor’s room, but it’s probably something to do with how Loki is usually already in here when Thor gets in. Does he ever actually spend any time in his own room?
‘Oh no?’
Loki grins at him so sharply that a spark jolts through Thor’s entire body: the thrill of one of Loki’s sinuous, wicked plans gliding into motion.
‘Nope. What you need is good old-fashioned manipulation. And as it happens, I –’
‘Think yourself an excellent teacher, yes, yes,’ Thor interrupts, shoving Loki’s legs over so he can sit on the bed properly and reach over to steal an almond from Loki’s seemingly never-ending bowl. ‘So go on,’ he says, grinning as Loki scowls, ‘what exactly would you recommend?’
---
‘Tell me again how this isn’t conflict resolution,’ Thor says. Loki spelled them invisible so they can watch his experiment unfold from a nearby corner without worrying about prying eyes, but Thor is less worried about that than Einarr and Leif getting through the day without killing themselves or each other, to be honest.
They watch the two boys struggle to walk in a straight line across the dining hall, their hands looped firmly behind each other’s backs and held in place by magic. They’re covered in bruises from falling down midway through previous attempts, which Thor had felt guilty about right up until the moment in the second attempt when Leif had started trying to scratch Einarr’s eyes out with his one free hand, yelling out curses of pain and rage as he did so.
‘Because we’re not making them talk about it,’ Loki explains, watching as Leif deliberately sticks out a foot in front of Einarr and they both go tumbling to the floor, already wrestling and scratching at each other. The woman walking behind them elaborately rolls her eyes and kicks them until they roll out of the way. ‘We’re just humiliating them in public until they decide to get along in order to make it stop.’
‘That’s definitely on the tyrannical end of the manipulation scale,’ he murmurs, just to see Loki twitch out of the corner of his eye. ‘Making them feel each other’s pain is a particularly gruesome touch.’
‘And it’s going to work,’ Loki says with relish. ‘Look, they’re already stopping.’
Thor doesn’t believe him, but when he turns, Loki’s right: Einarr and Leif are already lying back in a heap on the floor, chests heaving. Einarr’s lips are moving furiously in some rant they stand too far away to hear. Leif doesn’t exactly look happy but he isn’t springing back on top of Einarr immediately either, which is more progress than they’d made in the last hour.
‘Can you,’ Thor starts, but quiets when Loki puts his hand on Thor’s arm gently, a finger flickering to his lips: yes. Loki starts to smile, his eyes sharp with concentration as he pulls the words towards himself, and after a second he laughs delightedly.
‘Excellent,’ he says, grinning at Thor as he squeezes his arm. Thor blinks at him, struck by the ridiculous thought that this is the first time he can remember Loki reaching for him rather than the other way round since they came onto the ship. Longer than that, even – Loki has not reached for Thor first in years, and now his long fingers curl as casually around Thor’s wrist as if they don’t go a day without embracing. As if Loki might touch Thor anytime he likes.
Thor’s next words come out stuttering and oddly breathless.
‘What – ah. What do you hear, brother?’
‘They’re insulting us,’ Loki grins, too wrapped up in eavesdropping to notice Thor’s distraction. ‘Extensively and creatively. Oh, the things they’d do if they weren’t stuck together, the havoc they’d wreak, the punishments they intend to rain down upon us, blah blah blah –’
‘And inciting two of my subjects to hate me is good how, exactly?’
‘Don’t you see, brother?’ Loki turns his body into Thor, lowering his voice but still watching with satisfaction as Leif actually snorts with laughter at something Einarr says. Thor tries to concentrate on what he’s saying, and not on how every nerve in his arm is alive and thrilling to the gentle weight of Loki’s hand. They’ve been sleeping in the same bed for more than a week now: how can this small touch leave Thor so tongue-tied? He must be overtired, or tense. The workload must be getting to him. ‘Their hate for us will bring them together! It gives them a common enemy. You can’t hate someone you spend every moment commiserating with – or rather, you can, but it softens over time into something you might begrudgingly call affection, and then it becomes difficult for you to pinpoint how you could ever have hated him without knowing too that –’
‘Where the hell are you getting all this?’ Thor interrupts, totally at sea. ‘That’s not – they’re not being affectionate. Not by any yardstick I’m aware of! Leif tried to pull one of Einarr’s ears off earlier, remember? He only stopped because he passed out from the pain? And then – wait,’ he pauses suspiciously, zeroing in on how Loki is stubbornly refusing to look at him. ‘Who are you really talking about?’
Loki whips round to give him a furious look, his cheeks flushed.
‘God, I don’t know,’ he says, too loudly, throwing his hands up jerkily. A couple of people close by look round, startled, at the sudden noise from an apparently empty corner. Thor sets his hands lightly on Loki’s shoulders to try and steer him away, only to pull them back with a hiss not five seconds later when Loki’s eyes flare and the leather goes smouldering hot under his palms. He winces and covers it badly, praying Loki’s voice doesn’t carry when Loki spits at him: ‘Who could I possibly be referring to, d’you think? Where might I possibly have learned how very easy it is to resent one who should be a brother to you, and then again how maddeningly easy to love him, and how inextricably the two might come to be entwined over the years –’
‘Alright, alright, I take your point, you don’t need to write me another play about it,’ Thor snaps. Loki turns away from him in disgust, with a sharp gesture of the hand that gives Thor the feeling he might find an insulting picture stuck to his back later. Or perhaps a KICK ME sign.
‘The play wasn’t for you,’ Loki says irritably. ‘You were never meant to see it.’
‘Well, you were putting it on for everyone in Asgard multiple times a day for months, so perhaps you should’ve –’ Thor starts, and then notices the way Loki’s arms are crossed punishingly tight over his chest and the line of his shoulders, so taut you could bounce a coin off them. He takes a deep breath and blows it out in one long stream. He has been trying hard not to hurt Loki by mistake since they cobbled together this fragile new truce of theirs: it would be very, very stupid to do it now on purpose.
‘What I mean is, this is great,’ Thor says abruptly. ‘This was a really good idea, and I’m glad you helped me. Thank you.’
Loki stares at him. He looks around them as if checking for hidden cameras.
‘Are you ill?’ he asks, looking baffled. ‘Are we being watched?’
‘You needn’t act as if I am always so ungrateful,’ Thor says, feeling his cheeks flush. ‘I’ve thanked you for your help before, brother.’
‘Yes, and those moments have gone down in infamy as having been directly followed by one of us trying to kill the other, I believe,’ Loki reminds him warily, but at least he’s stopped looking like he’s about to stab Thor with the sharpest implement to hand to distract from how close he is to crying.
‘Should we go and help them up?’ Thor suggests after a cautious pause, not sure what else to say. Loki hadn’t kept his hand on Thor’s arm for two minutes before Thor had somehow said something to offend him. It’s difficult not to feel wary, for all the tension has been diffused a lot faster and with a lot less attempted murder than usual.
‘And undo all our good work?’ Loki scoffs. He clasps his hands behind his back and watches Leif and Einarr, who aren’t looking at each other but are still muttering feverishly, with hatred in their eyes. ‘They can work it out between themselves. It will be a bonding experience. Besides, don’t you have to go and help the engineers with that localised power failure near the greenhouses?’
‘Oh, shit,’ Thor hisses, and takes off at a run.
---
Loki’s plan proceeds uninterrupted by anything as arbitrary as ethics or practical considerations. Thor starts to feel really bad right around the sixth day when he spots Leif and Einarr limping out of the baths, pale and still plastered together, wearing matching uncomfortable expressions.
‘Bonding experience,’ Loki reminds him lightly before Thor can even say a word, and drags him back to his quarters by his belt for a catnap before anyone else can stop him in the corridor with a question or ask a favour or simply the time of day.
‘It’s because you make yourself so available to everyone all the time,’ Loki tells him when they’re back in Thor’s rooms, in a tone of voice that suggests Thor might be losing brain cells at the rate he grants attention to his subjects. Loki isn’t the one lounging about, for once: their roles are reversed, with Thor lying in bed blearily watching Loki rummaging around the room looking for something. ‘If you had a little mystery about you, they wouldn’t feel so free to assume they can just stroll up and drag a twenty-minute catch-up out of you every other day. You have to make them work for it. For fuck’s sake, where is my quarterstaff, I swear I left it in here somewhere –’
‘Can’t you just –’ Thor makes a little limp wavy gesture with his hand to indicate Loki should throw magic at it.
‘I have just –’ Loki makes an irritable matching gesture. ‘I think it’s stuck on something.’
He scowls down at the pile of detritus that covers their floor. That covers Thor’s floor. It’s Thor’s floor, Thor’s room. Loki has his own quarters, although Thor is just now realising that he has never been there or seen any evidence that they actually exist.
Loki tuts and kicks aside something that lands with a foreboding crash. Thor reasons if it was anything important then Loki would have spelled it unbreakable in anticipation of this exact situation, and doesn’t bother to lift his head.
‘How long do you think we need to keep Leif and Einarr together?’ he asks sleepily. ‘If it goes on much longer I think they’re going to become co-dependent, and then we’ll have an entirely different set of problems.’
‘Another few days, I should think,’ Loki says. ‘Give it time to really sink in. Although they’ve been warming up to each other even faster than I had hoped.’
‘I know, they haven’t punched each other in days!’ Thor says, as enthusiastically as he can with his eyes shut and minimal movement of his facial muscles. ‘The part where they’ve started tucking their hands into each other’s back pockets is a bit undignified, but in general it sets an example about how important it is for us all to get along. I think it makes a good story, don’t you? I heard someone saying that at dinner yesterday. Two boys torn asunder by opposing family loyalties, brought together when Asgard was at its lowest. Who knows, maybe the people will even pass it down to future generations.’
The thought makes Thor smile even as his face protests. He would enjoy more stories being told about what a thoughtful and wise king he had turned out to be, instead of quite so many about all the keg stands he used to do when he was a teenager.
‘Ah, yes,’ Loki mutters. ‘Who could forget to give a shit about what the great people of Asgard think?’
Which reminds Thor that he is shortly going to be late to go and professionally give a shit about what the great people of Asgard think.
‘I need to get up,’ Thor hears himself say, and then lies completely still and doesn’t move. ‘I’ve got – stuff to do. Things.’
‘Hmm,’ Loki murmurs dubiously. ‘Which particular thing is it now?’
‘Office hours in ten minutes,’ Thor grunts, then levers himself up with application of more effort than it took to heft Mjolnir. In a minute or so he might even manage getting out of bed.
‘Why do you call it that, anyway?’ Loki asks. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask. I can’t make sense of it. You’re not even working in an office. Of all the idiotic Midgardian terms to have picked up –’
‘It was how Jane referred to the times when her students would visit her for advice,’ Thor explains over him loudly, cracking his neck from side to side. ‘It seemed fitting.’
‘Fitting,’ Loki echoes, sounding more than a little sceptical. He bends down with a reluctant look on his face to check underneath a discarded pair of trousers, and then stops pretending any interest at all and props himself against the wall instead, asking, in a voice so casual he might as well openly state how much he cares about the answer: ‘What happened with Jane anyway?’
‘She deserved more than I could give her,’ Thor says simply. ‘More time, more attention, just – more.’ He barks out a laugh and scrubs a hand over his face, remembering the rueful look she’d given him. ‘She told me it was like being with someone who was already married, and that she cared for me deeply but couldn’t sell herself that short.’
Loki’s mouth twitches a little.
‘And who were you supposedly married to, in Jane’s imagination?’ he asks, in a carefully controlled voice.
‘Asgard, I suppose,’ Thor answers, a little nonplussed. He frowns. ‘I assumed she meant theoretically. Or perhaps she was speaking of the Avengers! I do love them dearly.’
‘I see,’ is all Loki replies, blank-faced, and then after a few minutes more quiet rustling in which Thor falls back asleep sitting up, suspiciously: ‘When’s the last time you actually slept properly? You look even dopier than usual.’
‘Yesterday,’ Thor reminds him, eye opening wide and itching in the bold light. He rubs it irritably and gestures to the bed. His eyepatch is somewhere on the bedside table and he starts groping around for it without looking. ‘You were here and everything. Bit surprised you don’t remember.’
‘You came in late and left before I woke up,’ Loki reminds him. ‘I don’t know if you even touched the sheets before you were up again.’
‘Well, I’ll be sure to touch them tonight,’ Thor says gamely, dragging himself out of bed and groaning as he stretches. He drags himself over to Loki just to see his unimpressed expression in close-up and there’s a weird moment where it seems like there’s a gap waiting to be filled – like one of them should be doing something that isn’t just staring at each other – but then the moment breaks, Loki turning back to his search with an irritated tsk. Thor swats him lightly on the shoulder and leaves.
‘So Loki does have your ear,’ is the first thing Heimdall says to Thor when he arrives at the throne. He murmurs it in his usual softened rumble but it hits its target: Thor had been wondering when this was going to come up.
He rubs his beard and really, really wishes he’d gotten more sleep before he had to have this conversation.
‘He doesn’t have my ear,’ he protests, scratching the back of his neck and avoiding Heimdall’s eye. The waiting queue of subjects are starting to look a bit impatient, probably in part due to the gallery of spectators set up along the far wall. Korg waves at him cheerfully from his seat next to Valkyrie, who sits sprawled over a bench peeling an apple with a switchblade. She’s still maintaining after several weeks of impeccably punctual attendance that she only comes to these things ‘for a laugh’, but Thor could have spotted her interest a mile away. It makes sense, in a way; she spent a long time on the run from Asgard, and now she’s back she wants to make sure it stays in one piece.
Either that, or she really does just enjoy watching Thor make a royal idiot out of himself, pun intended. At least Korg, who is sat with a notebook in hand ready to take notes on how the monarchy is doomed to fail for his next pamphlet, pretends to pay attention even when Thor isn’t tripping over his words.
Hulk is sat at Valkyrie’s feet and taps her on the knee as Thor watches, demanding an apple slice in a grumbling tone. Thor gives him ten minutes before he gets bored and stomps off somewhere to go and get played on by small children like a sentient jungle gym.
‘Loki gave you advice about Leif and Einarr, which you heeded. The people are taking notice,’ Heimdall continues serenely. There’s a glint of something sharper than simple teasing in his eye. ‘What else would you have me call it?’
Thor sighs and walks to the side, out of earshot of everyone else in this damn hall, motioning Heimdall to join him. Heimdall follows after a pause just long enough to convey his reluctance.
‘I’d say that my conversations with Loki are private and it’s not like you to butt in where you aren’t welcome,’ Thor says quietly. Heimdall doesn’t say anything or look chastised in any way, but Thor didn’t really expect him to: he kept the people safe from Hela when Thor couldn’t, and it’s a testament to his strength of character that his concern for them remains even when the responsibility no longer rests in his hands. Thor can’t think of a better system of checks and balances than Heimdall’s wary eye, especially in combination with the collective brain and brawn of Valkyrie and Hulk. ‘Loki’s advice was sound and I wouldn’t have followed it if I believed him to be acting out of malice. As little as he may be liked on this ship, Heimdall, he isn’t stupid. I’d be a fool if I didn’t at least listen when he offers me the benefit of his wisdom.’
It clearly requires a huge effort for Heimdall to keep his face blank at the idea of Loki possessing any wisdom the rest of them might want to hear.
‘And,’ Thor continues, then sighs. ‘Look, you and I both know Loki’s made mistakes. No, look, I know, I do – that’s putting it lightly, yes, alright. But he came back when he didn’t have to, Heimdall. I left him on Sakaar with no strings attached, nothing to pull him back to us, and he came anyway.’
‘Nothing except you,’ Heimdall tells him with the kind of direct look that reminds Thor yet again of how far his vision extends.
Thor spreads his hands and lets his eyes go as wide and honest as he can, although it doesn’t work quite as well with his particular stature and build. Loki had always been better at the earnest supplication thing than he had, even if he was faking it ninety five percent of the time.
‘Does it matter why, exactly? Whatever his reason, he made that choice knowing his welcome wouldn’t be warm, and he did it anyway. If it’s for me then – then let it be me that keeps him on an even keel.’
Heimdall looks about two seconds away from rolling his eyes, but he looks like he might also be restraining a small grin. Thor continues, encouraged. ‘I can’t convince you that he doesn’t have mischief up his sleeve, because er, you’ve met him. But if he came back because of something I did then doesn’t that mean he wants to keep his place here? Does it matter why he wants to help, so long as he does?’
‘Loki’s help usually has an expensive price tag attached,’ Heimdall muses, at which Thor can’t help but give a small nod, even as he’s thinking that he’s happy to pay it so long as Loki will stay. ‘And he has been inconstant before.’
‘So have I,’ Thor says immediately. ‘And look, Loki hasn’t asked me for anything since he got here. I think he just wants –’ and here he pauses for a second, because he can’t make himself give that part of Loki up to someone who doesn’t respect him, not even to assuage Heimdall’s suspicion: can’t make himself say that Loki just doesn’t want to be alone, that mostly Loki seems to want unfettered access to him, and that Thor thinks for once there might not be anything more complicated than that behind Loki’s scheming. It feels like too big of a thought to even look at directly, never mind to say out loud. ‘He just wants to be part of Asgard again. He isn’t as inconstant as you think him, Heimdall. After all, neither of us are children anymore, or even stupid young fools.’ He pauses. ‘Now we’re slightly older fools.’
Heimdall actually cracks a grin at that, even if it’s only for a second. Thor seizes it with both hands, his voice going warm and persuasive.
‘The long and short of it is that he gave me good advice, Heimdall. Everyone knows he’s clever, even though he hasn’t always used it to good ends. If I can trust him to help, that will benefit everyone, and we sorely need as much help as we can get, let’s be honest.’
Heimdall’s expression wavers like a coin deciding on which side to fall, but after a moment of consideration he nods.
‘I am satisfied that you are not bent to his will to the detriment of the people,’ is all he says, with a small nod. Thor waits but nothing else is forthcoming so he smiles, a little nonplussed. He feels like he just won a race and got given the consolation prize instead of a trophy.
‘That’s great then,’ he says, clapping him on the back with a grin. ‘Glad we got that straightened out.’
‘But,’ Heimdall continues calmly, ‘I am afraid I am not the only person aboard the ship with reservations about Loki’s place here.’
‘What?’ Thor says, blindsided.
‘Your majesty,’ a woman’s voice breaks in. Thor turns to see a tall woman wearing loose trousers and a long hooded shirt, whose blonde hair was cut close to her scalp. It hurts Thor a bit to look at it. Why do people cut their hair so savagely short when they don’t have to?
She’s smiles at him expectantly, and Thor’s brain throws up a name out of nowhere.
‘Gilda,’ he says a bit too loudly, praying he’s right, and is relieved when her smile broadens. ‘Gilda, of House Raynor. Yes, I remember you well.’ He doesn’t, but she doesn’t have to know that. ‘What can we do for you today?’
Her smile fades as her eyes flick to Heimdall and back to Thor. Unease churns in Thor’s stomach. If the people are unhappy enough with Loki’s presence to threaten a dispute, he’s not sure what he’s going to do. He definitely can’t say half of what he’d just said to Heimdall to her. There are so few answers that he can diplomatically give without just making it sound like he’s letting Loki walk all over him, which seems unfair. Who’s doing the walking changes by the day.
‘You’re concerned by the presence of Loki on the ship?’ he asks kindly, going over to take his seat on the default throne. Gilda watches him silently, eyes wary. ‘I can understand such a complaint, considering Loki tricked the people in such a way, and for so long, but I can assure you –’
‘Oh, we knew it was Loki,’ Gilda says in a breezy tone of voice. Thor blinks at her, startled.
‘You … knew it was Loki,’ he repeats slowly.
Gilda looks at him as if he’s a particularly dim breed of cattle.
‘With all due respect, your majesty,’ she starts, her mouth quirking as if to suggest the actual respect due might not turn out to be a huge amount, ‘the Allfather had never before devoted so much time and effort to the theatrical arts that he forgot to conduct the annual census, or let the army fall into such sloth that they wrecked half their equipment running drills while still soused.’
Her voice is so dry by the end of her sentence that Thor has to bite his lip hard not to laugh. Gilda pauses, and then seems to give up any sense of respectful restraint as a bad job.
‘There were also quite a lot of statues and parties and such,’ she points out. ‘And he was wearing a robe most of the time.’
Thor put on a face like he was pondering her words deeply but he already knew he couldn’t argue with any of that. It had taken him less than five minutes to surmise how Loki had tricked him, but he had assumed Loki might have been doing a better job of convincing the populace than his own brother. Apparently not.
He frowns.
‘If you knew, then why did you not send for help, or gather yourselves in secret and form a rebellion?’
He pauses as soon as the words are out of his mouth, wondering whether or not it was a particularly good idea to encourage his subjects to rebel against a monarch they disliked.
The amused gleam in Gilda’s eye suggests it’s nothing she hadn’t already thought of, in any case, so Thor shelves the thought for now.
‘If I might speak plainly, your majesty,’ she says, at which Thor restrains himself from saying that she hadn’t seemed to have any trouble doing that so far. He nods.
‘It seemed unwise to argue with or attempt to overthrow a regent which we knew to have intended genocide against the people of Midgard,’ she continues smoothly, apparently oblivious to the sudden queasy feeling that comes over Thor. ‘Loki seemed harmless enough while we played along, but that was no guarantee of our safety if his plans were disturbed.’ She smiles wryly. ‘And they were not such horrible plans, after all.’
‘Harmless enough,’ Thor mutters under his breath. ‘Right.’
‘I quite liked the play, after a while,’ Gilda adds helpfully.
‘But now,’ Thor starts, stomach still turning, ‘now that Asgard is free from Loki’s rule, and safe under mine – now the people have chosen to come forward with their concerns?’
Heimdall shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye at the rise of Thor’s voice. Thor bites the inside of his cheek. He mustn’t be a king who responds belligerently to his people when they come to him with valid complaints: then they’ll stop coming to him at all, and resent him in private. That isn’t the foot on which he wants to begin his reign.
It’s just that he’s already had this conversation once today and he’d much rather go off and bash something really, really hard with his lightning than have it again, especially when he can tell Valkyrie is grinning at him even when his eyes are fixed on Gilda.
‘Now there is a sizeable contingent of the people that believes Loki is not to be trusted to remain aboard the ship, your majesty,’ Gilda tells him with admirable evenness. ‘He has done nothing but lie and cheat his way through the realm, and the Allfather himself did not trust him.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Thor says in a low voice. He realises he’s sitting forward on the throne and makes himself lean back, place his hands calmly on the softly glowing arms.
‘He was impersonating the Allfather while Odin himself rotted away on Midgard,’ Gilda gets out through gritted teeth, ‘so I think we might be able to assume that –’
‘Father loved Loki,’ Thor interrupts, his voice as calm as he can make it, which is possibly not very calm at all. ‘He accepted his faults, as do I. And I will not tolerate any insult given to him in my presence.’
He hears Valkyrie mutter something that sounds like ‘oh my god’, although it’s difficult to tell with her hand covering her face like that. Hulk is guffawing loudly, probably at Valkyrie’s reaction rather than what Thor is actually saying, but it definitely isn’t helping the atmosphere either way.
‘Yes,’ Gilda says in clipped tones. ‘And then there is that.’
Thor frowns.
‘What do you mean by that?’
A muscle in her jaw tightens and her eyes flicker again to Heimdall.
‘It has been suggested that – it is thought that – perhaps that you yourself are not an impartial judge of whether or not Loki intends to betray us again, your majesty,’ Gilda says, clearly choosing her words very carefully.
‘You don’t think I’m impartial?’ Thor asks, blinking. ‘I transported Loki back to Asgard for war crimes myself. In chains.’
‘And if you might permit me to ask, your majesty – when he got free, how hard did you fight to get him back in them?’ Gilda asks silkily, one eyebrow raised. ‘I also seem to remember there was some confusion about how exactly Loki was freed in the first place.’
Thor opens his mouth and then shuts it again, restraining the urge to shift uncomfortably in his seat.
‘Quite,’ Gilda says. Then, for the first time, she looks a little uncomfortable, as if she wishes she didn’t have to say what came next. ‘But there’s also, ah.’
She gives a discreet cough and looks at Thor expectantly.
‘What?’ he asks, mystified.
Gilda hesitates.
‘Oh, hell,’ Heimdall mutters, the first words he has spoken since Gilda began her supplication. Valkyrie snorts out an incredulous laugh, and when Thor turns to look at her, a fair few of the people waiting for an audience are smirking or looking otherwise amused. It occurs to Thor that this might not have been the best place to have this conversation, and then also, as he catches at the subtle gleam of satisfaction in Gilda’s eye hiding under the discomfort, that he has underestimated her quite significantly.
‘What?’ Thor demands warily, unable to remain silent. ‘Will no one –’
‘There have been – reports,’ Gilda continues, a slightly pained note in her voice at having to spell it out, ‘that Loki shares your quarters at night, your majesty.’
‘Um,’ Thor says, and then realises he doesn’t have an excuse, because he never expected to need one. ‘Well. That’s. I mean, that’s. Not relevant here, I don’t think.’
There’s a general murmur of disbelief from the assembled crowd, along with Valkyrie’s renewed crowing. Thor grinds his teeth. He is going to annihilate her in the practice ring tomorrow, he thinks, even as a voice in the back of his mind reminds him that he hasn’t managed that in two weeks of sparring and he’s unlikely to start now.
‘I mean,’ Thor rallies, scrambling for an explanation, ‘that doesn’t, we’re not –’
‘Whether or not there is any truth to the rumours,’ Gilda speaks over him, ‘the situation remains that Loki is a liability and that you, your majesty, might not be capable of reviewing the facts with a clear head. Not that we blame you, my king. After all,’ she says with such gentleness that Thor might not even have recognised it to be deadly, if he couldn’t see her face, ‘if you could keep a clear head, it wouldn’t really be love, would it?’
Thor’s eyes widen with outrage as Gilda watches him silently, her lips turned up in a slight smile, her head at an angle none of the other waiting subjects can see. Thor shuts his mouth.
‘I will take your concerns under advisement,’ he says through clenched teeth.
Gilda curtseys before him gracefully and almost floats through the exit without another word, obviously incredibly pleased with herself. As well she should be: she’s leaving enough whispers in her wake to keep the rumour mill grinding until they reach earth.
Thor drifts through the rest of the hour in a haze that only lifts when every waiting supplicant has been heard. Heimdall takes his leave to do a patrol of the ship, ferreting out minor misdemeanours, and then it’s just Thor, Korg and Valkyrie sprawled across her bench. Hulk got bored and wandered off about half an hour ago, thumping and singing out of tune all the way down the corridor.
‘Well,’ Valkyrie says into the dead silence, ‘you can’t exactly blame them.’
She only shrugs unrepentantly when Thor glares at her.
‘Sorry, but it’s true. He is a war criminal.’
‘I wouldn’t mind as much if I thought that’s what this was actually about,’ Thor says indignantly, ‘but the look on her face – I think this is personal. Loki did something to her.’
‘What a shocker.’
‘I mean something to her, not just the stuff he’s done more generally,’ Thor snaps. ‘Korg, tell me I wasn’t imagining it.’
‘Nope,’ Korg agrees. ‘Doesn’t really matter why though, does it? Everyone and their mum heard it. It’ll be all over the ship by now.’
‘Which is exactly what she wants,’ Valkyrie says thoughtfully. ‘She’s out to get Loki, and she seems to think you’re to be lumped in with him, which to be honest –’ Valkyrie casts a hand over to Thor and sighs as she waves it up and down in general resignation, ‘– welcome to the fucked up-ness. She’s got your number.’
‘I’m so lucky to have such helpful advisors,’ Thor tells her as she grins back, cheeks gone round and cheerful. ‘So very lucky, and not at all wondering why I didn’t just leave you on Sakaar.’
‘You couldn’t have gotten off that planet without me holding your hand and you know it,’ Valkyrie snorts. ‘And anyway, calm down, I didn’t say it was doomed or anything.’
‘What do you mean?’ Thor asks, the weight in his stomach cautiously lightening. ‘You have a plan?’
Valkyrie ignores him in favour of grinning widely at Korg, who looks behind him and then back to Valkyrie again. He points a finger at his chest and mouths who, me?
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Valkyrie asks.
‘Er,’ says Korg. ‘Can’t vouch for that, I’m afraid. Although I was thinking –’
‘I, personally, would love to know what everyone is thinking,’ Thor says loudly.
‘PR campaign!’ Valkyrie turns to him, making some kind of fast waving gesture with both her hands that Thor vaguely recalls seeing in Earth musicals. He frowns. This doesn’t seem the right time for musical theatre.
Valkyrie sighs when he only blinks at her with a total lack of comprehension. ‘Didn’t you pick up anything useful on Midgard? We need to improve Loki’s image. Smarten him up a bit, make him stop wearing so much green and gold, run him around doing a few good deeds and kissing a couple of babies and there you have it, the people are happy, Thor’s happy, everyone’s happy.’
‘What does kissing babies have to do with anything?’ Korg asks, sounding completely mystified. ‘I was more thinking, y’know – get him to muck in with the rest of us, show everyone he’s not as high and mighty as he thinks. I’m not sure we should be letting him near babies.’
‘He definitely won’t be happy, whether we get him to kiss any babies or not,’ Thor says, already grinning at the prospect of the truly petulant scowl this is going to inspire. ‘Especially not about the green and gold part.’
‘Would he rather be unhappy about his wardrobe choices or would he rather be tossed out of the airlock?’ Valkyrie asks pleasantly.
‘Right, right,’ Thor says, and then Valkyrie and Korg put their heads together and start plotting, which starts out impressive and quickly takes a turn for the absurd once Korg sets himself to drawing pictures of Loki doing various good deeds around the ship, and Valkyrie starts doing impressions.
It’s only as he’s leaving to go and deliver the bad news to Loki that Thor realises none of them ever actually asked him whether there was any truth to the rumours, and not once did it occur to him to tell them there wasn’t.