Work Text:
Loki came in shortly after Heimdall had left. For all a truce seemed to have been drawn between them, Loki still avoided being in his presence most of the time. And the Hulk's. And most of the other Aesir. And Thor's, except when he came to throw in his two cents in the worst way possible, like now.
He'd been sitting with his head in his hands, the short spikes of the ragged cut prickling at his hands, the ghostly absence of his hair an anti-weight on his head.
"What is it now?" Loki demanded, arms folded, leaning insolently against the doorway. "Not still pining over your precious hammer, are you?"
That hurt, and Thor took it out in a hot glare that sent sparks across his vision. Loki's eyes widened slightly, but he let no other visible sign of his alarm -- if that's what it was -- show. "Well, what then?" he demanded, aggrieved.
"Hogun, Fandral, and Volstagg are dead," Thor said in a flat voice.
Loki hesitated for a moment, before he said briskly: "Well that's not news, is it? We knew that. If they're not on the ship then they pretty much must be dead, and if they'd been alive when we returned to Asgard they certainly would have come running at your call. Did you truly think they weren't?"
Thor flinched as though the words had been hammer blows, merciless and blunt. "There still might have been a chance!" he snapped. "They might have been with Heimdall, or…" he trailed off. That had been a forlorn hope and he'd known it.
He took a deep breath to steady his voice before he went on. "She murdered Volstagg and Fandral almost immediately on her arrival on Asgard," he said. "Hogun wasn't there -- he led the army against her, later. She murdered him too. They never stood a chance against her, not a bloody chance!"
"Well, I hope you're not blaming me for this," Loki said defensively.
He did, a little. Loki's cowardice in the face of Hela's advance had given their sister a straight shot back into Asgard, and thus to the seat of her power. If he hadn't done that, if they had been able to keep her and fight her on Earth, then maybe... maybe things would have been different.
Different, but necessarily better? Maybe not. It had taken time to get over the shock of losing Mjolnir, time and practice to find alternate ways to access his power. Time and distance and loss to learn how to let go, to understand the need to destroy Asgard to save it. If he'd faced her then, he might well have died, for he would not have retreated; and Hela might have found her way to Asgard anyway, just the same. Without the aid of Valkyrie, of the Hulk, without the Grandmaster's ship they might not have been able to save as much as they had. So maybe not.
They'd never know now.
"No," he said.
"Well then," Loki said, as though that were the only thing that mattered. To him, it probably was. He shrugged, a cool and careless motion. "They died in honorable combat, a warrior's death and all that, feasting as we speak in the halls of Valhalla no doubt, so on and so forth.
"Really though, not much of a loss," he added. Thor shifted around to glare at him as he continued blithely, "Thinking on it, I had barely been on the throne for three days -- legitimately! Received by the Queen of Asgard's hand, no less! -- before they were plotting to overthrow me. Here you're already in such a tenuous position, trying to be king out here away from Asgard and everything, that I can't help but think you're better off without them. Especially that Hogun, he -- "
Thor interrupted him with a growl. "Loki," he said. "You are my brother, and I am glad beyond sense that we are reconciled once more, but if you don't shut up and piss off in the next five seconds, I really am going to be an only child."
Loki's face took on a tight, angry expression. "Fine," he snapped. "Enjoy your solitude, O king."
He walked out.
He didn't enjoy it.
Thor found an observation gallery and stared out into space at where Asgard had once been, brooding. They'd died to save Asgard, and in the end he hadn't even been able to do that for them. A hundred years they'd ridden at his banner, following him from the brash boy he'd been into the man he'd become, and he hadn't even been there.
He mourned for Fandral's dashing courage, for Volstagg's hearty laugh, for Hogun's quiet and steady hand. And, more than anything else, he mourned that he didn't miss his friends more than he missed his fucking hammer.
It was shit. It was stupid, but he'd been away from the Warriors before -- quite long stretches of time, sometimes. Hogun would sometimes travel to his home on Vanaheim to visit his people there; Volstagg was often occupied with his family and Fandral with his latest conquest. Thor knew how to live without them, to go about his day without them, to fight and drink and work and talk without them. He knew how to be without them, but he didn't know how to be without Mjolnir.
Ever since the day of his majority the star-hammer had been at his side; he felt naked without its weight… no. He'd rather have gone into battle against ten thousand of Surtur's minions naked than be without Mjolnir; he felt amputated, reaching and reaching for something that just wasn't there. Every move was unbalanced, every step and blow staggered and off-center for the loss.
Mjolnir had seen him through a hundred battles, a thousand grueling days, had aided and protected him through all of it. It had been a part of him. This new Thor, who he was without Mjolnir… he didn't know. He might have come to grow into it, in time. But to have it wrenched from him so suddenly --
In a way Mjolnir had just been the first casualty in Hela's murderous campaign. Volstagg and Fandral had been next, struck down without a warning. Hogun at least had fought back, from what Heimdall said, although it had been no fair contest. Heimdall hadn't said if their ends had been quick. Heimdall hadn't said if they'd suffered. Heimdall hadn't said if they'd died in pain, in fear, in despair at knowing that without them their people had no protection, since Thor himself was gone. Heimdall hadn't needed to.
Thor didn't even dare to wish he'd had the chance to see his friends one last time -- not after fighting through the horde of draugr on the bridge, and knowing how Hela had made them. It was all too horrifyingly possible that he had seen them again, and hadn't even noticed.
He was broken out of his maudlin thoughts by a clatter that shook the table under him. Head snapping back, he tensed for an attack -- but it was only Valkyrie, standing arms akimbo with a bottle in her hand, and seven more on the table in front of him, the source of the racket. Some of the bottles were large, some small, all garishly colored -- of course any ship of the Grandmaster's would be loaded with alcohol, among other depravities.
Valkyrie gave him a small, joyless smile, ripped off the top of the bottle she held with her teeth, plunked it down in front of him, and plopped down on the bench opposite. She picked up another of the bottles and took a long pull, her face scrunching with distaste, and gasped as she put it down and met his eyes.
Taking the unspoken message, he picked up the bottle she'd served for him and took a swig of his own. It burned like fire, astonishing in its pain, a far cry from the mead of Valhalla and yet just as potent. He managed to keep from choking it all over the table, for fear it would eat through the metal table, and swallowed.
"Hurts," Valkyrie whispered, and her tone was on the border of mocking, but her eyes held a deep and understanding pain. "Doesn't it."
He took another drink; rather than growing numb to it, the second swallow was even worse than the first. Maybe he'd stripped off a layer of his throat the first time.
"Yes," he said.
They sat and drank all through the night-cycle. The Valkyrie walked with him down the corridor to his quarters, singing an off-key drinking song that had been out of favor in Asgard for centuries, and poured him into his bed.
In the dark silence of his cramped quarters Thor rolled over in the bed, and put his hand out towards the night-stand to reach for the solid presence of Mjolnir, a steadfast promise of safety and fortitude in even the strangest of venues. His searching hand felt nothing, and fell away cold.
Thor rolled over onto his stomach, and buried his sobs in his pillow.
It was hard to say which contributed the worse to his headache the next morning, the drink or the weeping. It put him in a foul mood, working his way grimly through a stoup of stale, dusty-tasting water to combat it. The other Asgardians knew him well enough to avoid him, and the non-Aesir on the ship all took their cues from them.
All except one. A chalice that Thor vaguely recognized seeing last in 'Odin's hands clanked down loudly on the table beside him, and a moment later a body folded into the chair opposite. Thor looked up, ready to snarl, but the tang from the open cup met him first: it smelled of Loki's headache-remedy, often made as an apology the morning after for whatever mischief he'd gotten up to the night before.
Thor considered warning Loki off again; if he took the peace offering, then that meant he forfeited the right to peace and quiet. But he didn't really want to be alone, not really. He sighed and took the chalice, grimacing as he drank.
Loki nodded once, and then launched breathlessly into his next monologue. "Don't expect me to mourn for Hogun. He was a stuck-up prig, and I hated him exactly as much as he hated me."
Thor ground his teeth. No hangover remedy was worth this. "Loki --" he began.
"But," Loki interrupted him, stressing the word over Thor's objection. "But, I admit... that Fandral did have a kind of... tacky charm. At the very least, he was always good for a laugh. Even if the laugh was on him. Which it usually was."
The mockery stung across his raw nerves, twanged and made him want to snap back. But he stopped himself this time -- it might very well be that open, sincere sympathy might scrape the wound even more raw.
The thought occurred that of all the people on this ship, there were none save Loki who had been as close to the Warriors Three as Thor had. And he thought too that for all his typical flippant scorn -- the same way he'd always handled emotions that pressed on him too closely -- Loki might be mourning too.
Who was he to censure others for the shape of their grief, who had wept long hours into his pillow last night for the lack of a hammer?
"Yes, it was," Thor said slowly, and saw a certain tension go out of Loki's jaw. "Usually because of some prank you pulled."
Loki sniffed. "He was a better sport about it than Sif," he sulked. "Fandral never broke eight bones in my hand over a minor jape."
"Mm, you brought that one on yourself," Thor said, half burying his smile in the drink. It was strange to think of Sif. Heimdall had said she was out of Asgard when Hela arrived, by Loki's orders. No doubt he'd sent her away for the same reason he'd exiled Heimdall -- they knew him too well, and would be the hardest to fool -- but it was strange to think that he might well have spared her life.
"I am sorry he is dead..." Loki's voice faltered for a moment, and then he deliberately sharpened his voice. "If only because countless wenches all over the Nine Realms will now be short on alimony payments. And Volstagg.... was a crude, gluttonous boor, but I will not deny his ebullient nature." He added reflectively, "I always wondered what his wife saw in him, since she was clearly out of his league, but he was revoltingly devoted to her."
"Maybe that was it," Thor said. He wasn't sure whether Gudrun had made it off Asgard, or not. He should find out, spend more time among the survivors. He'd learn all their names, before the end.
"And he was always a good father to his daughters," Loki said, half to himself. His glower sharpened on nothing and he added spitefully, "Better than some people, anyway."
"Mm," Thor said. He dearly did not want to talk about their father, not to Loki, not today. He roused himself from his funk with an effort to redirect the conversation. "Do you remember that one time on Alfheim when Volstagg tried to capture a unicorn as a present for his daughter?"
"Oh, I remember." Loki's face twisted in a wicked smile. "The poor thing looked absolutely mortified, and who can blame it?"
Thor couldn't help but laugh at the memory of Volstagg bouncing around the clearing, insisting to all that he had it all in hand, while the four of them stood around and laughed themselves sick over it. "Maybe if he hadn't insisted on trying to ride it..."
"And to think people call me cruel," Loki said.
They spent a long time talking, reminiscing the good days -- and worse days -- spend with the Warriors together. And Mjolnir, of course, a presence always there in memory. It hurt, it hurt, but it was better than feeling nothing at all.
The wound wasn't healed. It would be a long time healing, and ache for even longer after that when pressed. But at least when he reached out, there was something there.
~end.