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Recovery is slow. Administration is tedious. But after six months, Loki has used his Odin-shaped glamour to finally clean up the household accounts and ferret out most of the grifters. The growing surplus in the treasury is gratifying, and it is a relief to turn his eye to more long-term planning.
Thanos is still out there, and even though Loki’s nightmares tell him that preparation is useless, he still works to shore up Asgard’s defenses, still searches for ways to at least slow the inevitable defeat even if he cannot stop it.
The archives are useless. Go back more than 1500 years and all that’s extant are genealogical records, though it’s clear there was once more. Loki can’t help but berate his slumbering father whenever he’s struck with insomnia.
In other words, often. You could even call it a hobby.
“If you had spent half the time doing real work that you have clearly spent in purging the library, Asgard would be utterly invincible, its people completely free of poverty, its neighbors well fed and peaceful, and the universe free from all want. Where is all the universe did you hide those records? You short-sighted, niggardly, ice-cold, selfish old man! Did you just burn everything?”
Loki paced the small room as he ranted. “Do you have any idea what’s out there? You must. What possible good can this ignorance do? What are you hiding? It must be more than just the neutered pet you brought back from Jotunheim—you’ve purged everything!”
Loki turned to face the Allfather directly. “And those dolts you call advisors—where did you dig them up? And I use that phrasing deliberately—they think so slowly they might as well be corpses. Was that deliberate on your part? Did you figure that as long as your advisors were idiots then you could just get away with whatever you wanted? What’s the point? Why have a council at all? Unless of course you delight in sitting in that ill-fitting chair so long every day that your ass falls asleep. And of course I can never try to concentrate on other things while they speak, because every once in a while they say something so spectacularly stupid that they require a response before they waste money on some idiotic scheme. This morning one of them insisted I needed to raze Frigga’s gardens to make way for yet another practice field. As if there aren’t enough already. They will be growing flowers in Helheim before I approve that project, let me tell you.”
Loki threw his hands up in disgust. “Their minds are stuck in wagon ruts hundreds of years deep. We cannot just do what we have always done—it will not be enough.” He rubbed at the healing wound on his chest in a gesture that was fast becoming a nervous tick. Now that it had finally begun to heal, it itched constantly.
Odin slept on, placid countenance deflecting every barb, every plea.
Loki sank down into his chair, fear writ large in his eyes. “Don’t you understand, you slow, stubborn, old warhorse? He will come. I know this to be true as much as I know that I am not you. Father, he has been in my head, torn it to pieces and put them back together in the order he preferred. Made me question everything I thought was real. Turned me into his retriever and pointed me at those squishy mortals. What can I possibly do to stop him?”