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Chapter Text

She’s been waiting for this for more years than she cares to remember, waiting for the moment Odin finally dies and she can come home. Waiting for the moment she can rip his precious kingdom to shreds for what he’s done to her.

The portal opens slowly, too slowly, and from the other side, she hears swirls and glimpses of raised, angry voices. She hears something about treason, something about someone named Thor, but the words are blurred and morphed together enough that they fade out into the mist.

Hela expected to see many things when she finally came through, but her eyes land on a black-haired boy in black and green holding Gungnir, standing over Odin.

“You see what you did?” Odin is yelling, “You will unleash death upon us all!”

The boy throws a glance at her, but he doesn’t falter. “You were going to bring Asgard to ruin!” he yells back.

“And when have you ever cared for the safety of Asgard?”

“Ah,” he crows, smiling. It’s a nasty smile, showing all his teeth. “No, I have only cared to rule, but who will there be to rule if all subservient are dead? Thor was right about one thing – you are an old man and a fool.” Whoever the boy is, he radiates power, and his hands glow green when he flicks them upward, ripping a portal midair. The whipping of the air in the chamber blows her hair across her face, and Hela watches with part confusion, part smugness as the boy throws him through.

“Who are you?” he asks, turning back to face her. His grip on the spear is tight, as though leaning on it for support.

“Who am I?” Hela repeats. She should have expected no better. It has been well over a thousand years, but she just came home. She didn’t think the first person to see her would ask who she was. How could they not have been waiting for her, too? She’s wanted nothing more than to come back – has everyone forgotten all about her?

“I am Hela. Odin’s firstborn.” She looks upwards, to where the paintings used to lie. They’re in the throne room, but it’s covered over. He hid everything about her, didn’t he? As though she didn’t even matter. She never mattered to anyone though, did she? “Who are you?”

“I am Loki.” His eyes are green. They’re narrowed in wary suspicion, but Hela feels the flickering in his life, his exhaustion. He’s injured.

“Kneel,” she orders, “Before your queen.”

“Perhaps we can come to an arrangement.”

He sounds like Odin. Infuriatingly like him, like who he became.

“Oh, can we?” Hela asks instead, lips quirking into a humorless smile.

“You are another hidden relic locked away until you are of use to him,” the boy – Loki – is that her brother why else would he think he has claim to the throne – says. “You would hardly be the only child our father cast out into nothing. Say, perhaps we could… rule together?”

Hela laughs. She doesn’t know if she’s more amused, surprised, or incredulous. She thought she may have a younger sibling, one she’d kill on the spot. Can’t say she won’t, still, but so long as he won’t get in her way.

“What is it that you want?” Loki asks. “What happened to you?”

“Odin and I bathed realms in blood and tears. I was his executioner. The moment my ambition outgrew his, he banished me.”

“You seek conquest,” Loki supplies, “When Asgard’s army lies in ruin, our cities heavily damaged, our place in the Nine Realms in question because of our father and brother’s idiocy.”

What happened without her? It doesn’t matter. “Where did you think he got all this gold?” Hela asks, gesturing to the throne behind him, “If not through conquest? If there is a threat to Asgard, I will destroy it.”

Loki’s eyes narrow. “I do not seek war.”

She’s about run out of patience. She’s waited over a thousand years for this – she isn’t going to wait any more. Fine. If the idiot little brother Odin wanted her to have wants to die, she has no problem killing him. (Her replacement, the one Odin wanted, not her, never her, she was just a tool.) Hela brushes her hair back, her crown settling over her head. She jerks her spears into her hands. “Hand me Gungnir,” she orders sharply.

“I don’t think so.”

Hela throws a spear at him, Loki dodges, firing a blast of magic at her that she ducks into a roll to avoid. Hela grabs the end of his spear, twisting it out of his hands. He smacks into the wall ungracefully before hitting the floor.

Hela throws a spear at him again, and Loki flicks it aside with a touch of magic.

Sorcerers.

They never play fair.

Killing him will change nothing, but she’s so angry she doesn’t care.

Loki’s halfway to his feet when she reaches him, summoning another spear to stab him. He summons a pathetically small dagger and rams it into her gut. Hela yelps, flinging a spear at him for good measure. It drives its way through his gut, pinning him to the floor, and Hela thinks she should feel something at that, but she just feels sick.

That’s her brother. She didn’t want him. Doesn’t know him, but he was brave and smart enough to stand up to Odin, and that says something about him.

The pain of her own injury is sharp and grounding and her vision sharpens the way it always does. She wants to lash out, to hurt him, but (that wouldn’t change the emptiness in her heart, that he grew up without even knowing her, that – it wouldn’t change anything) there’s no point.

Hela rips the blade out of her, throwing it onto the floor next to Loki. He’s glaring up at her, eyes wet with tears. Her skin twists and warps and forcibly knits itself back together. The pain fades out, but it’s still burning.

“As Odin’s son, I thought you would be more resilient,” Hela supplies, crouching beside him. She could leave. Just move on and let him die. Doesn’t know why she won’t, when that would be so much easier, but he has his own quarrel with Odin, and she has – questions. He’s a sorcerer. He’s powerful. He’s useful if he’ll actually listen.

Actually, if keeping him alive is enough to spite Odin, that’s a reason enough to spare him.

She wraps her fingers over the hilt, yanking it out.

Loki gasps, pressing his hand over the hole. Blood is rapidly staining his hands. She thought he’d heal faster. “Normally would not be after I banished the All-Father,” Loki snips back, “Or after fighting Malekith.”

 That is fair. Still. Weak. Hela rolls her eyes. “I assume you will request a healing potion?”

“If I may.”

“I’m sure the healers can attend to you if you don’t dawdle.”

“I can’t go there,” Loki says stubbornly. “They believe me to be dead. If they find me, I’ll be sent back to prison.” He jerks like he’s trying to sit up, and Hela just grabs his arm from sheer annoyance, hauling him upright. He’s light. Lighter than she thought. (Hela hasn’t touched anyone in years.)

“Why were you in prison?” Hela asks, balancing his weight when he crashes into her side.

“Much like you, I imagine. I wanted the throne too much.”

Maybe Odin really hasn’t changed.

***

She was going to take Loki to his room, fetch whatever he needed, and leave. Would’ve if the walk through the palace didn’t feel like walking somewhere entirely different and if the bedroom Loki pointed out to her wasn’t her own.

The halls here are the same, even if there have been a few changes.

This is her room.

It is.

She’s made this walk hundreds of thousands of times.

But when she steps inside, it looks different.

The black and green everywhere are the same, but instead of the shelves littered with her many molds and paintings and the weaponry she made herself, and lay there so decoratively, it’s a bookshelf. Hela never reads. The room smells different. The blankets are – she thinks they’re the same, and Hela summons a spear to her hands and hurls it across the room.

Loki hisses faintly at the movement. “Is that necessary?” he hisses out through clenched teeth.

Hela drops him on her bed. 

This is her room. It’s her room, but it’s his now, and Odin must’ve given it to him to erase all memories of her. Loki’s her replacement. He’s everything Odin wanted her to be, and she wants to stab him for it. It wasn’t his fault, though.

She was everything he made her to be.

“Apologies if my book collection offended you,” Loki grunts, “Oh, was it the dust? I haven’t been here for some years.”

Hela hasn’t slept in a bed for years. She doesn’t even remember what it feels like. She wants to cry. She wants to scream. She wants to ransack the room and turn it to ash and stone.

This was supposed to be hers, and Odin threw every last memory of her away, hadn’t he?

“Where’s the healer’s wing?” Hela hisses.

It’s a good distance off, and she hopes he’ll last that long – her spears have a laced magical potion in them, which causes fast death.

Maybe it’d be better if he didn’t. Then she could burn the palace to the ground and rebuild it anew in her image, not Odin’s. Not her brother’s, who everyone remembers instead of her. Like she was nothing.

The place is the same, but she’s been away so long, she nearly loses the way a dozen times over before finally making it back to her – to their room.

When Hela finally makes it back, the life flickering through his veins is strained and fluxing.

His face is pale even in the dim lighting. There’re a few ever-burning candles on the walls, though Hela suspects it’s something that was changed after… whatever he said about going to prison. He’s out of his armor, though he must’ve magicked it away, because she doubts he could’ve taken it off. He’s wearing the same dark green that Hela used to wear when she was little. Thankfully, they at least look too big to have ever been hers, or she probably would just stab him.

Hela crosses the room to her – his – their – bed, ignoring Loki’s muttered commentary about how he thought she’d gotten lost. She hasn’t had to use these things in forever. Doesn’t remember how it works. Hela can heal from a stab wound in minutes, even a near-fatal one through her heart.

She can’t die. Doesn’t know why Loki can.

He’s watching her, warily, and she feels the flickers of his magic as he braces to lash out, the way he’s stubbornly clinging to life, even if he’s pushing at the edges right now. He’s scared. Hela can’t say how she knows more than she ever has, but she has always known. He should be. She remembers a time when everyone on Asgard looked at her with respect instead of fear, though.

“Hurry up,” Hela snaps, “You’re bleeding on my mattress.”

“This is my room,” Loki argues.

“It was mine, brother dear.”

Loki’s still hesitating. “I’m not going to stab you,” she huffs, sitting on the edge of her bed next to him. It still has enough pillows that it feels fake, and she wants to touch them. It’s so soft. Hela hasn’t sat on anything other than rock in – in centuries.

Loki’s hands are shaking. Hela watches him, numbly, as he tugs up the end of his shirt.

His skin is light. Hela can’t tell if he’s just pale, or if it’s actually light, or if it’s the contrast against the blackness of his hair, but it’s a white-washed paleness that reminds her of her own. The mark of her spear is a bit messier than she imagined. Definitely bloodier. And… he has a second stab wound that looks equally unpleasant, though hers is the only one turning black around the edges.

The holes run through him, and he somehow still managed to stand even though he wasn’t healing.

He’s stubborn.

He’s an idiot.

The holes are wide enough that she could probably stick her finger inside if she tried and – why is she thinking about this? She’s not trying to hurt him.

Hela snaps the top off the magic vial – she should’ve paid more attention to her studies about these, probably, but it never really seemed important, though she has no idea how it works or what it’s supposed to do – and dumps the glowing green stuff over him.

“Thank you,” Loki says, like all of this makes perfect sense.

Hela tosses it across the room.

The glass shatters when it hits the floor.

When was the last time someone said thank you to her, and looked at her with an overwhelmingly drowning level of gratitude? (Like she could actually help?)

The green… stuff soaks into his wounds, doing whatever it’s work is. Hela can’t stop staring at it. She hasn’t seen another person in – in a long, long time. She hasn’t had someone trust her with them injured in even longer.

She has never had a sibling before. She remembers a time from a lifetime ago that she wanted one, just because it often felt so lonely as an only child. Fenris was all she had.

The lighting’s dim, and his skin is blood-covered, and Hela wonders – stupidly, childishly, why is she thinking about this – what it’d look like if it wasn’t. He’s grown now, and Hela never even got to see him born. She never saw it when he was a baby. Would she have held him if she was still here? Would she have helped him if he was hurt? Would she have helped him bathe? That’s one of her first and only memories of her mother – she didn’t have to but she did, because she cared about Hela, and then she died. Would Hela have taught him to fight? He wouldn’t be so overwhelmingly sloppy if she had. Would she have taken care of him? What would that have been like?

No.

No, this is stupid. Hela’s not his mother.

She’s his sister, and mostly, she’s a queen. She’s the Goddess of Death. She doesn’t have time for that.

For anyone.

“So, after you’ve conquered the cosmos,” Loki asks, his voice quiet, and Hela’s gaze snaps to his face, “What will you do? When there’s nowhere left to spread?”

“There will always be rebellions to put down. Battles to fight.”

“The people of Asgard won’t accept you as their queen.”

“Then I will fight them, too.” She’s come so far. She won’t let anyone stop her, not now. Not – these were her people, the ones she fought for. How could they turn on her, too? How did the Valkyrie? Everyone?

“I wonder of Odin’s fate,” Loki says, “That such monsters are his heirs.”

“I’m not a monster.” She can’t even say why that stings so deeply. “I am the Goddess of Death.”

“That’s all either of us can be.”

“And you are too weak for one.”

Loki’s gaze snaps to hers again.

She thinks he’s hurt. That’s a strange concept altogether. “So,” Hela replies flippantly, “Tell me of this… war Asgard is facing.”

“I know little of it,” Loki admits, “I was imprisoned throughout most of it. The Dark Elves attacked, and… we lost our – we lost our mother.”

Hela’s brows raise. “Frigga?”

Loki nods, staring up at the ceiling.

“Oh, good riddance,” Hela grumbles, “She was so annoying; Odin –”

She dodges as Loki throws a dagger at her head. It hits the wall on the far side of the room. “Do not you dare,” Loki hisses, trying to push himself upright, “Speak of my mother in that way again.”

“You cared about her,” Hela realizes, staring. That hurts, too. She doesn’t even know why.

Everything had changed when Frigga came into the picture. Hela loathed her for it. Odin had started changing then, and everything had started changing, and then Hela got thrown to the side in favor of her and the child Odin apparently wanted.

He wanted Loki.

He didn’t want Hela.

“She was my mother.”

Fury claws inside her chest, icy and burning. “Ah, yes, because you were the son he wanted.”

“Odin never wanted me,” Loki hisses. “He stole me from Jotunheim. I’m not Asgardian.”

“You’re adopted?” She hadn’t guessed. He looks like her. They have the same skin color. Only, Loki’s hair is maybe the slightest bit blacker, and curly. Hela’s is straight enough that she can’t do anything with it. That used to annoy her to no end.

“Would you cease repeating everything that I say?” Loki demands, irked.

She feels empty. The hurt is burning and itching deep inside of her. Hela doesn’t know why she even cares. Maybe Loki is her brother, but she doesn’t know him. It shouldn’t matter what he thinks of her, how much he hates her.

That’s why he feels so cold. No Asgardian should feel like that – they’re warm by nature. Hela’s temperature has always been a little… colder, presumably from her link with death, but she doesn’t know. Doesn’t really matter. He doesn’t look Jotun, though, and he’s… Did Odin hide that from him? Is that why he’s so angry?

And why do they look so similar? Did Odin spell him after her?

Did he want another version of her to fail and hurt all over again that badly? Like once wasn’t enough?

Maybe he’s living in her shadow as much as she is in his now.

Hela touches his wrist, lifting his hand. Studies the markings of the veins on his arms and hands and the curve of his nails and the lines on his hands. Things she should’ve known long ago.

They look so much like her own, except his nails are maddeningly clean and hers are jagged and black.

Hela remembers watching them fade black so long ago, as she got older, and grew into her powers, and killed.

She stands, pushing Loki’s arm aside and pulls the dagger out of the wall that nearly took her head off, throwing it across the room again at the target-practicing-area that she hung up there when she was 500 and Loki apparently got to keep his entire life. It’s covered with more scratch marks and dents than she remembers, but it was hers and now it’s his and Odin had the absolute perfect decency to give her own genetic code and body and rewrote Loki’s own with them.

Hela laughs. She wants to laugh until she cries. Kind of thinks she might.

She wants to gut Odin. Slowly.

Maybe Loki is a little bit more of her child than she thought.

She thought about having children before, but it always felt so… inconvenient. She never wanted to get married or whatever people do. Not after Odin and Frigga.

But Odin turned Loki into her… what?

What’s that called, anyway?

“You lack vision,” Loki says from behind her, pushing himself up. “If the public revolts, there will be no one left to rule. With how close Asgard is to war, they can’t afford a leadership change, and you’ve missed the last thousand years of history.”

Hela turns back to him, cocking an eyebrow at him. “What do you propose, brother?”

Loki stumbles to his feet, wincing visibly and tucking his shirt back in. “I will continue to impersonate Odin, while you, dear sister, catch up in the time you missed.”

She is going to stab him again.

***

The bed is so, so soft. Soft enough she thinks she could sink into it through to the floor and stay buried in a pile of feathers. The room is dark and quiet, though, and after a thousand years of being trapped in a void of nightmares, Hela’s mind doesn’t stay caught up.

When she sleeps, she dreams. Dreams of the day the Valkyrie she fought with turned on her, the day Odin sent them in to kill her. They were her friends. She didn’t want to fight them, but they tried to kill her, and she didn’t have a choice.

She remembers the burning as someone ran their sword through her chest. Remembers lashing around and stabbing them, and when something touches her shoulder, Hela flicks a spear in their face instinctively.

They flicker and vanish out.

Hela inhales a few times, propping herself up.

Loki.

Oh, yes, this is his room, too, but that doesn’t mean he can just walk in on her sleeping.

The version of him she stabbed was an illusion.

Sorcerers.

“Perhaps next time, I should pour water over your head,” Loki supplies, “It seems far less lethal.”

“Oh, perhaps I should just stab you.”

“Well, I never asked you to leave me alive,” her little brother says sweetly.

She’s starting to like him. Too much. It really doesn’t matter what he is to her, but – but nothing. She has a mission, and that will always come first.

“I have been subjected to far worse forms of torture,” Hela replies with a near-eye roll.

“Really?” Loki asks, “Odin let that happen to you?”

“Well, I assure you, they paid for it dearly. Or, they will.” Hela killed most of the people who hurt her herself, assuming Fenris hadn’t already ripped them to shreds. Odin was the worst though. He – he always has been. She can handle pain.

She can’t handle isolation, being trapped in an eternity of nothingness, having no one and being forgotten.

“Where did you send the All-Father?” That Loki was able to portal like that, even injured, was impressive. She hasn’t met many sorcerers in her life, and that was the most she’s seen anyone do.

“Midgard. The same place he sent Thor when he banished him.”

“Thor?”

“He’s my older brother. And he’s an idiot,” Loki replies, and well, considering how idiotic he is, Hela has to reluctantly understand that. Loki’s the younger of the two. It’s no wonder Odin had him so – whatever in all the Nine Realms he did to him. Besides, she’ll admit she’s curious. Her brothers lived an entire life without her, and she wants to know what it was like for them.

(She wants to know how Loki was able to defeat Odin, how he could do what she always wanted to and was never able to.)

“It was two years ago, the day of his coronation. The Frost Giants infiltrated the palace, and Thor went to Jotunheim for vengeance, against Odin’s wishes. He stripped Thor of his powers and banished him to Earth.”

“How lovely,” she drawls, “He hasn’t changed as much as I thought.”

“Thor came back,” Loki adds, and he sounds so bitter, “Still the perfect child, even though it was me who restored peace when he was away.”

She can see it now – the hurt, the desperation for approval, the need to mean something. He wants to matter, just like she does. Maybe they are more alike than she thought, too. “When I was young, every king had an executioner. Not just to execute people, but also to execute their vision. But mainly to execute people. Still a great honor.” She hesitates, looking up and down her little brother. “I was Odin’s executioner. And you, if you wish, I offer you that ranking.”

Loki does that smile-thing he did earlier, which is blatantly fake and borderline feral. “I’m honored. Thank you,” he says, “But I’m not interested.”

Hela laughs incredulously. There is a minute where she is almost certain he is joking, but his smile fades into something sharp and tense. Hela knows that face, has seen it a thousand times on people right before she drove a spear through their gut. They’ve been there already. “How else would you intend to rule beside me?”

He looks away, biting his lip. Momentarily speechless.

“What are you the god of, again?”

Loki’s head snaps back up to meet her eyes. “Chaos. And lies, depending on who you ask.”

She smiles again, rubbing at her wrist and readjusting her position. “It does not sound like your reputation is to be overly trustworthy.”

Loki’s grin is totally fake. It looks more like a snarl than a smile.

Hela shakes her head, amused. “Maybe the biggest lie you’ve ever told yourself is that you want to rule.”

He jerks, blinking. “Of course I want to rule. The throne is my birthright.”

“Oh, is it?”

His face falls. Loki isn’t playing. Not now. “I was born to be the king of Jotunheim. Then I became the king of Asgard.”

“Oh,” Hela replies, “It sounds like you have one choice ahead of you then. Reveal my presence to Asgard, crown me as your heir, Father, and I will let you live.”

“I never said I want to live.”

She swears, he keeps asking to get stabbed again. Hela’s getting certain if she wants to. “What is it that you want?”

“Odin locked you away to be forgotten until you were of use. A weapon. He did the same with Thor and I.”

Hela doesn’t like how raw that feels. She can’t remember a time where someone had been able to look at her, see her through all the walls she’s so painstakingly built around herself just to hide it because weapons don’t have feelings. Emotions are such a pesky thing to be drowned over, but she understands.

She was abandoned and forgotten, too.

“What is it that you seek?”

“I will rule the Nine Realms, and when I have conquered those, I will begin with the cosmos.”

“But what will that give you?” He’s being earnest now, a wild swing of emotions, and yet one too sincere to be feigned. Hela can tell fake emotions from real ones. It’s not a thing she has ever been able to explain to anyone else, for all that she tried. Her connection with death gives her a feel with reality and the emotions of others. Some might call it empathy, but she would not. That would be a weakness, and weakness would not have allowed her to stand as Odin’s executioner. “What will you gain from it?”

The answer is simple. It always has been, and now yet more. “My name will never again be stamped out of all those kingdoms beneath my rule. And when I’m done, the cosmos will know fear.”

“It was Odin who took your life from you, and you wrought out your vengeance on them?”

“Why not?”

He looks away again, lips parted. “You have a chance to be a queen, Hela. To rule. But will you bring them fear and the desire to stamp out your name forever, or be the one who brings them peace?”

Anger flares to life in her chest, icy and wild. “Peace is a lie.”

“We can make it so it’s not.”

We.

She’s not alone anymore.

Not trapped in the darkness of Helheim, screaming her lungs raw at the sky and begging someone to come back, someone to remember her. To never be forgotten again.

It occurs to her, then, what he’s really doing.

“You’ve avoided my question. What is it you seek, brother?”

He sighs. “Recognition. I don’t want to be a shadow or forgotten again. The same as you, I imagine.”

Hela loathes how right he is. “How can the god of chaos fear chaos? How can you fear war?” She shakes her head, standing. She’s running out of patience. “I don’t need your help.”

“Wait.” Loki jolts upright, diving forwards to grab her sleeve. His face tenses at the sharp move, and she looks up at her little brother.

(Hers. Odin gave her him. He took everything from her. But he gave her Loki.)

“Don’t go.”

“Why?”

“You’ll destroy all of Asgard. They won’t accept you. That’s not a kingdom worth ruling.” There’s a desperation in his eyes, and Hela knows it’s way more personal than that.

He doesn’t want to be alone.

Neither does she.

Hela sits back down, huffing a sigh. “Fine. But you better think of a good excuse for why you banished me… father.”

His expression scrunches in annoyed amusement. “I will work on it. But don’t call me anything ridiculous in public.”

“Only if you do nothing ridiculous. And I am growing tired of waiting to claim my throne.”

He looks away, but this once, he doesn’t argue.

***

Hela loathes sleeping in the same room as another. Loki isn’t trustworthy, but he won’t attempt to kill her. He’s made that clear repeatedly. He’s grown attached to her over the few days they’ve been together. Weak.

He is…

Very weak.

Way too emotional.

Hela finds that lets her trust him easier. But she’s slept alone every night for years, the hard rocks digging into her side and body. Collapsing onto her (not Loki’s it isn’t his this was hers it was meant to be hers, but it’s theirs now, and she hates that she’s almost okay with that) bed at night feels like a dream come true.

She gave Loki a pillow from the bed, and a blanket, just from how cold he is. He’s not the only one who’s always cold. Hela is, too. She thought it was from being on Helheim alone so long. Still sticks on Asgard. Some nights are cold. Nights where all she can hear is the screams of her enemies, the blood on her hands.

Hela doesn’t sleep well.

Loki doesn’t either.

She didn’t realize that until she hears the sound, sharp, loud, and scuffling.

Hela jerks, summoning a spear and rolling over, and is already halfway out of bed when she realizes it’s just Loki. He’s hidden under a pile of green blanket, and he’s not just turning over. The sound is quiet, strangled, and definitely a bit distorted, but it sounds…

Hela would not classify that as good.

She has had nightmares before, but she will never wake from them. Never so violent fashion. Never enough to wake someone nearby – except Fenris. He was always on her, licking her face and hair until Hela shoved him off, and he’d curl around her, letting her rest on his fur.

But Fenris is gone.

All she has is Loki.

And Hela is overwhelmingly more bitter about that than she should be.

How is she supposed to react to someone having a nightmare? Should she wake him? Is that normal? He did do it for her once. He’s brought her food or whatever she needs to survive. It’s so much better than what Odin did for her for the past many centuries.

Hela tosses the spear across the room next to Loki’s head. Not the best awakening, but he did scare her, too. She about gutted him, but she’s been waiting to spear him again, anyway.

He jerks back to wakefulness, green eyes snapping open. He’s breathing in deeply, more of a strangled gasping than actual breathing, like something’s crushing out the air in his chest.

“Relax,” Hela grouses, “No one’s out to murder you.”

Loki shifts, settling back down, but his body is wound with tension, and his eyes are wet. Is he crying? How can someone weep so freely? Shamelessly? In front of people? Hela would never shed a tear in anyone’s sight. “Forgive me for disturbing your beauty sleep,” Loki snaps. He yanks the blanket back up in a failed attempt to cover his head.

Hela sighs, easing herself to the floor beside him. She sits there, watching him, waiting for – something. She doesn’t know what to say to him. Hela has always struggled with people. It feels worse now, somehow – after her banishment. People are so different. She doesn’t like people. She never has.

But Loki sat by her when she dreamt, too.

He’s still crying.

Hela sits there watching. Uselessly. Always useless.

What does she say? What does she do?

But the fear, Hela understands. He’s been hurt, and so has she.

“Who is it?” Hela inquires.

Loki’s eyes flicker towards her. He licks his lips. “I have seen things beyond Asgard and the Nine Realms,” he whispers. “There is another out there, sister. It will reach Asgard, and we must be prepared for when it finds us.”

He speaks solemnly, enough that Hela is immediately certain he experienced a part of this threat firsthand. “Humor me,” she requests. She’s lying beside him now, somewhat propped on her elbow to watch. It’s nice to hear a voice again, even if she frequently loses track of what he’s speaking of.

“His name is Thanos,” Loki whispers. He blinks at the wetness in his eyes – Hela sees it glistening in the flickering candlelight. “He seeks to destroy half the universe.”

Of the enemies she’s fought, that’s by far the most outlandish. “Under what reason?”

“He claims it’s a mercy.” He closes his eyes, exhaling. “He wanted me to be one of his. It – they – um –”

They harmed him. Hela is confident in that, and she’s impressed by the bubbling anger in her chest. Loki has made efforts to help her. No, this isn’t sentiment – Hela would not have something ad childish as sentiment towards anyone. Their deal is strategic only.

“He searches for the Infinity Stones,” Loki continues, “I was to bring them to him, and I failed.”

“You fear him,” Hela notes off-handedly. For Loki, it does not overly surprise her, but she still did not expect it.

He exhales sharply, breath shuddering. “He is formidable.”

“Was it battle when he harmed you?”

“Not entirely.”

He was tortured, then. A blunter confession than Hela anticipated – she would never admit to something of that nature. She wouldn’t tell anyone of such a weakness, but Loki seems key on his reliance on others. “I will kill him,” Hela promises flippantly, head dropping onto her pillow. “And vanquish his army. It seems a sufficient consequence for harming a prince of Asgard.”

Loki’s body twitches at her side. “And if you failed –”

“I do not fail, brother.” She will never settle on anything short of victory. That’s what made her so successful as Odin’s executioner. She wouldn’t have survived if she didn’t always win. She was shaped into a weapon and weapons might outdo their use and work, but Hela is nowhere near that time. The day she fails is the day she dies.

But that was a life of which Loki knew nothing, because Odin shaped him to replace her, to take the place that Hela tried to claim as her own and failed. Loki is different from her though. He’s –

It doesn’t matter what Odin made him to be. Loki is something of his own choice, and he belongs to their Father no longer. Loki chose Asgard, like Hela did, and he belongs to her now.

She’s never had that. She doesn’t have friends. Hela hasn’t had anyone for years, and she longed for the day she finally came home.

But this is not her home. Odin made sure of that. He took every piece of her and remade it into Loki, hiding all else that remained.

Hela will remake it once more, rebuild until it’s the Asgard she remembers. The one she bled and waged wars for. The one she thought her and Fenris would be to hell and back, but when she went, she went alone, because Odin killed him.

(She won’t let anyone do the same to Loki.)

(Not Odin. Not Thanos. Not Thor when they find him.)

She’s getting soft. But she did expect to wake into a world where she was loved and the people would follow her against Odin if they had to, where they longed for her return. Not to one where she was forgotten.

Her arm is around her brother, though Hela doesn’t remember moving. He’s cool through their thin tunics. Jotun – his body temperature is colder.

Loki rolls up against her like this is natural to him, pressing his back against her chest. Hela’s mother used to hold her like this. When she was young and scared and needed reassurance. Years ago, before she died.

What? No, she is not going to cry.

She is not Loki’s mother – she’s his sister and what binds them together is not a thing either of them are proud of. And yet, to them both, it’s all that matters.

He was meant to be a means for an end and a new beginning. A return.

Now, he’s so much more.

Loki’s breathing evens out, and Hela lets her own calm. Her brother’s hand is pressed over hers, not exactly clinging, but when has it been since she held someone’s hand? Odin, sometimes, but not for years.

How can Loki sleep like this? She could stab him.

Someone’s glad she’s here. Not someone who remembers her, but still, someone.

It hurts. It makes her angry, too. If Odin made him to be her, she’ll do good and well at making sure he is. He cast them both out, but he couldn’t keep them from finding each other. She’ll have to thank him for that if she sees him again.

Her chin is on her brother’s head, and she feels the softness of his hair on her skin. Fenris’s was rough. Hela sighs. She misses Fenris. He was easy. She could still swear Loki has much the same glint in his eyes, though. The mischief. The chaos.

At least Odin made Loki Asgardian instead of wolf, or she’d have to find and gut him for giving Thor a wolf pet like he did her. Not as though the allfather treated Loki any better than he did Fenris.

Tonight, she doesn’t plot vengeance or conquering. Tonight, she mourns. All the years taken from her. Fenris. Her mother. Her army. Her friends. The Valkyrie, who tried to kill her after she fought and bled for them, on naught bot Odin’s orders. For the life she could have spent went Loki and how much that could have meant to them both. For how much she wanted it.

(For how much… he does.)

Her eyes mist over with wetness and Hela curses herself furiously. She’s not going to cry. She hasn’t cried in decades. There’s been nothing but an empty, open wound in her heart, and tears won’t bring back the life taken from her.

At least she’s safely out of Loki’s sight. That’s the only relief.

But still, when her breath shudders, Loki’s hand tightens over hers. She thought he was sleeping. It’s almost relieving that he’s not. She’s being weak. Loki is rubbing off on her.

She wants this to stay. To last. She wants that more than she wants to fight.

(She want’s Loki – she doesn’t want to keep being the weapon Odin forged her into. But he never gave her a chance.)

The candle lighting flickers across the room, the wall across from them. It’s lulling, drawing in sleep by watching the dancing shadows. She used to sleep with this.

A lifetime ago.

But always alone.

Not anymore.

Chapter Text

“What,” Hela spells out slowly as if speaking to a three-year-old who can scarcely understand a word of Asgardian, “In Odin’s name are you writing?”

“Precisely,” Loki grins with enough cheer it is terrifying, “I am writing. In Odin’s name.”

Hela’s eyes narrow on the paper he hasn’t stopped scribbling on with his feather. “Is this a play?”

“No. It’s a script. Of how you’ll become queen.”

“Then why are you writing it?”

“I suspect we may have to rehearse it a few times.” He magics his feather away and hands her the parchment.

Hela takes it from him, brows slowly rising in disbelief. “Absolutely not.” She crumples it and throws it in her brother’s face.

“Well, it would work.” The grin doesn’t slide.

She’s going to smack him. Or spear him. “This is not how I speak.”

“Then, how do you speak?” How dare he look curious?

“To start with, I would not step through a portal to Asgard saying “hi, people who haven’t seen me in a thousand years, I hope somebody missed me’.” She glowers.

“What were you planning to say?” Loki asks, spreading his hands in probably fake curiosity.

“And I cannot imagine Odin saying “my idiot son”, unless he was speaking of you.”

Loki’s expression scrunches. That hit a nerve, Hela thinks. “Doesn’t matter,” he shrugs, “He’s about to die. Are you ready to become queen?”

“I will be very much relieved not to call you ‘Father’ in public,” Hela admits grudgingly. “And how would we make this appear real?”

Loki smirks. “Magic.”

Hela hates how impossible it is to argue with flawless logic. “Do you truly expect this not to end in a bloodbath?”

“I hope it will not, sister. For if it does, we may have to rethink our arrangement.” Loki extends a hand to her.

Hela blinks at it, confused. She’s supposed to, what? Take it? “I suppose so.” Truthfully, Hela doesn’t need him anymore. Or at least, she will not, but he’s a sorcerer, and… he’s her brother. She has to be grudgingly honest that she has a soft spot for him that she dearly wishes she didn’t have.

“Am I just going to just keep standing here and uh –” Loki looks down, wiggling his hand at her.

Hela follows his gaze. “What am I expected to do?”

“Never mind. You made it awkward?”

“Me?” Hela stares at him, brows raised in incredulousness. She cannot believe him.

“It’s a custom on Midgard. Everyone knows that. Well – actually, it’s a more recent custom. I – I did not always know that. There was a time – when Thor and I first visited, it was not a custom yet.” He exhales. “Sorry, I keep forgetting how long you were cut off from other worlds.”

Hela’s lips press together, and she tries to quell the frustration bubbling in her chest. She understands that. It comes with a stinging hurt, anyway – she should never have been there. She lost her entire life thanks to Odin.

But Loki stripped him of his powers and sent him to Midgard, where he can live the remains of his life among mortals. Hela will not deny finding smugness and relief in that. Though she also cannot help being angry. It seems a fitting end, but she wishes he weren’t alive.

“You will have to rethink my entrance,” Hela tells him.

“Oh, I have,” Loki promises, “You’ll have to rethink your first choices, too. What was Asgard like, in your time?”

It’s so… strange to be able to speak of this. Somehow, Hela never thought Asgard would be so different when she returned, but the palace she walked into was nothing like she remembered. “When I was younger, we did not have nearly as much gold as we do now,” Hela answers, “It was… different. Less beautiful. Though, I must say, Odin’s taste of gold is horrendous. A bit here adds beauty, but too much is –”

“Lame,” Loki supplies, “Yes, so I would tell him. Maybe we can do a bit of… recoloring.”

Starting, she’s going to rip down those paintings Odin slapped over the ones that once were.

If Odin’s going to erase her, she’s more than willing to erase him, too. Maybe they should replace them both with something of her and Loki in a decade or so. The paintings changed throughout Hela’s life, too.

“We need a lot more black,” Hela decides.

“And green,” Loki adds, attempting to un-crease the parchment. “Sister, I must say, you have an impressive fold. May I ask you not to repeat?”

“You can’t magic something to replace it?”

“Well, I could, but that would be a waste of paper.”

Hela will grudgingly admit she misses seeing parchment, too. She hasn’t had anything to write in in a long time, and her fingers itch to hold feathers every now and then. It’s another aching sort of longing, deep in with the hunger that will never go away.

She longs to see the sun.

To finally be truly free.

“I will make my own lines,” Hela tells him flatly when she sees the feather’s white end moving again.

“Oh, but this one is perfect,” Loki protests, stifling a smirk.

Hela’s eyes narrow at her brother warily. Why is he writing so tiny and squeezing words into the side-margines? Who writes like that? Her eyes skim halfway over a half-written line of “I’m Hela goddess of death and I’ll do what I want with your realm, peasants”. Hela tries snatching the parchment, grabbing the edge and yanking.

Loki yelps as his feather does something stupid across the page.

Hela laughs.

Something ups itself from the floor behind her, yanking one of her feet out from under her. She catches herself with one hand on the desk and flips upright. Well, actually, she doesn’t remember who moved first, but then they’re tackling each other.

Loki hits the desk, and then rolls them both across it, landing on the floor with a thump.

Hela grabs his shoulders and flips him off, fully determined to win, when she hears footsteps in the hall. A passing guard, probably. But they still need to avoid an alert.

“Hide,” Loki warns, scrambling upright and vanishing his feather and ink.

Not that someone very rudely intruding in their room couldn’t be hidden. Hela could stab them. She would gratefully do so. This is her room.

But Loki’s insistent on no killing, so she steps over whatever menace her brother abandoned on the floor and yanks him into the bathroom. The room’s still small. Not that it needs to be bigger. It looks almost the same – actually. A bit more green, Hela thinks. There are also some suspicious water stains on the ceiling that were not there when she left – to her recollection.

She’s hardly been in here for years, and her chest constricts sharply. This was taken, too, given to Loki – she remembers…

(Moments, little things, like being in here, reminds her of her mother.)

(Then Odin took and gave all of this to Loki. This was her space. Her room.)

She hears the door creaking open in the next room.

They stand in the darkness, and Hela releases her brother’s arm when she realizes she’s still gripping it. (What would he have looked like when he was small? He’s young, but he’s grown now. Did he look even more like her when they were little?)

“Why are we in the bathroom?” Loki asks after a long heartbeat when the door shuts again.

“No one would look for us in here.”

“It’s obvious you didn’t know Thor and I when we were little.”

Her head snaps back around. (That’s what she wanted that’s the only thing she ever wanted, to get to have a family, to be seen and recognized to be remembered to have Loki.) “Why?” Hela asks instead, “What did you do?”

“Truthfully, most of it is too embarrassing to discuss.”

Hela pushes the door open, double-checking their room door is shut. It is, thankfully. No more scuffles, clearly.

“Looking back at it, I honestly feel bad for Mother.” Loki’s light footsteps follow her.

“I trust I can blame you for the water stains,” Hela comments dryly.

“I hid a spray bottle. Under the sink. Where no one could find it.”

How do you not find something under the sink? Hela turns back, appraising him with a newfound level of disbelief. “You truly are the God of Mischief.”

“Well, I try to live up to my name.” He exhales, sounding worn. He still sways somewhat, and Hela is not fully convinced he is healed from when she stabbed him.

(She stabbed him. She stabbed her brother. She stabbed Loki. She can’t believe she did.)

His words carry a weight, tired and worn – he has tried. He has tried a lot to be what was expected of him. No doubt nurtured and exploited just like Hela herself. She is angry on her brother’s behalf. They really are the same. Odin well made sure of that.

“That’s all there is for any of us.”

***

“Have you thought of what you will do once I take the throne?” Hela inquires, looking at her little brother. It’s daytime, and Loki told her with no small amount of humor that he’s started the illusion of Odin’s unnecessarily fancy ‘death’.

In essence, her brother is going to announce to all of Asgard – via illusion, of course – that he’s about to turn into golden sparkles, and since Thor isn’t here to take the throne, and Loki is dead, he’s giving it to his firstborn Hela who he hid from existence for centuries. And then he’ll ‘die’ before he needs to worry about the fallout, and dump the rest of the mess in Hela’s lap.

“It isn’t as though you have not thought of what you would say every day if you could return,” Loki had snipped when she tried to argue.

Which is fair. She has. She knows what to say.

And it will be nothing ridiculous like “hi, missed me?”

Loki blinks. “Of course I have.” He shifts forwards, leaning his elbows on his knees. “You are aware of the war between Asgard and the Dark Elves, yes?”

“Naturally, considering it’s half of what you’ve been talking about for the weeks I’ve been here.” Still waiting. It feels like it’s been – perhaps far longer than it truly has, because Hela finally has… someone. Her life is no longer filled with voices of the dead. It has life. A life. Loki’s life – and he’s real. It’s none of the fantasies she spent years sifting through, lost far away on Helheim. Lost with nothing but clouded, darkened sky and jagged rock.

Her body would not let her die, but the amount of food she could get there was scarce. For most, it would never have been enough to survive, and she’s so hungry. She hates that she’s so hungry.

If Loki has noticed how hard it is for her to keep food down, or to eat, he hasn’t said anything.

But he still feeds her. That’s more than Odin has done in so far over a thousand years.

“So, perhaps you go to their world to finish the fight, and you find me there.”

“You’re going to turn our life into a live play?”

He shrugs. “Why not?”

He’s still full of unexpected.

Hela shakes her head with semi-fond adoration.

“First, may I ask,” Loki inquires. “Why do you want the throne?”

The question floors her. It’s obvious, and yet… not. “It’s my birthright.”

“But, what will you do with it?” He’s playing curious. Hela knows Loki well enough to know there is something else he is playing at. Something… deeper. “Once you conquer all the Nine Realms?”

“I have always asked Odin why stop at Nine,” Hela answers, “When the entire cosmos lies in front of us.”

“And what, once you have conquered all the cosmos? What will that give you?”

She will never live that long. Hela is fully aware of that, and Loki must as well. But what she wanted most was – was to be free. Of Odin. Of everything. She never wants to be trapped anywhere again. She remembers how Odin chained her, stunted her, held her back from what she was meant to because she was just his weapon.

He cast her aside and forgot she was his own daughter.

That’s why.

Because she will not be treated as nothing ever again.

“Freedom,” she answers finally, “Freedom from control. And a chance to choose my own path.”

“You’ll replace one tyranny with another,” Loki says quietly, “To do to everyone else what was done to you.” He looks away, though the vulnerableness in his eyes pulls at her heart.

She curses there’s a part of her that wants to listen to him. She’s getting soft.

“I’m almost ready, sister. Pick me up on Svartalfheim?”

“I’ll be waiting.” Darling, her mind supplies, though Hela shies away from voicing it. She is not thinking at all on how deeply she considers that true. Fenris was such once as well. Her dearest friend.

Hela stands. Loki straightens from where he is seated at their desk. Air whistles around them, energy pooling and a wormhole forming in front of her. A portal. “You’re ready, sister,” he promises, “They’re waiting. Go. Claim your throne. And undo everything Odin made us.”

A wave of nearly giddy excitement rushes up, clamming her nerves.

Hela steps through it, slowly, carefully, deliberate and wary. Loki did not know of her, and she cannot expect anything different from the rest of them. She expects to be stabbed, for drawn weapons, but when she steps through, it’s to an awed, hushed crowd.

Unfamiliar faces. There is hardly a single one she can mark as familiar. It aches, but this is home, and Hela smiles. “Kneel,” she says, “Before your queen.”

***

Walking through the streets of Asgard, freely, is foreign. She has been trapped away for so many centuries that she can’t remember what it was like to be free. To be a princess. To be a queen.

The people are wary, and she can’t help the bitter “I honestly thought you would be glad to see me,” that slips out. None of them are.

Loki is waiting.

Fenris has waited longer.

Hela prowls over every inch of the palace, first, steering far from Odin’s room and what she hears from the servants belongs to Thor. She is not ready to think of her brother who Odin wanted in her stead.

She cannot shake the smugness that Odin is dead to the world.

It finally feels like Hela can let him go, too.

And here she is, a thousand years later, a queen once again. First, Hela will assess their state with the rest of the Nine, and then, she will find Thanos. There is nowhere in the cosmos which he can hide from her. But to do that, will mean an army.

Most of the items in the Vault have very little use, she rapidly discovers. Hela cannot imagine what anyone would do with such things.

The only worthwhile items here are the Tesseract and the Eternal Flame.

Loki is going to whine about how she is ruining his home, no doubt, when she breaks a hole in the Vault floor and drops into the nether parts of the palace.

These, these people she remembers. These are her friends, her history – even if their dead, decayed faces and green-glowing eyes are all she can see of them now.

“Fenris, my darling, what have they done to you?”

Fenris stands in front of her, towering, silhouetted black against the shadowed interior. Eyes glimmering bright and green and familiar, staring down at her.

Her best friend, the only creature she was ever soft enough to care for, whom she relied on.

Fenris.

Norns, she is a queen, and she will not cry like a baby, even if she’s in the shadowed depths beneath the palace.

Hela cries, anyway.

***

“Gatekeeper,” Hela greets evenly, staring at Heimdall where the man stans, as still and stoic as ever, hands on his sword. She carries Gugnir now, and it feels right in her hands. “Send me to the world of the Dark Elves. I wish to see the damage my brothers” she spits the word out with an overwhelming level of scorn “have wrought on this world.”

He looks at her for a long, heavy moment before he rises, turning away and plunging his sword into the bifrost’s center, and the machine whirls to life.

Heimdall says nothing to her. He does not acknowledge her, and a twisting, gnawing fury churns up inside of her.

“Tell me, Heimdall,” Hela asks at last, with barely restrained fury. Her hands are icy, twitching to feel metal and weapon. “All those years, I was on Helheim, alone, did you see me? Did you remember?”

“I was sworn to obey my king,” he answers, unemotional. Dead.

There is a moment where she considers, genuinely, thrusting her spear through his heart just to see if it would bleed, but then she remembers “to do to everyone else what was done to you” and somehow, that is enough to stay her hand.

Hela pats Fenris’s neck, motioning him forwards, and he leaps into the bifrost.

***

The world is dark and desolate. Worn with war, indeed. There is no life that she can see, though Hela knows there remains a few residual life forms on the world. Perhaps enough to repopulate and to continue their race someday.

But the air tastes with death. Not the type in war, not the thrill of the movement of fighting, but the heavy, forever oppressive, life-altering gloom and emptiness.

Hela sees little to salvage in this world. It is not worth spending time here.

“So, you met Heimdall?”

Hela looks over her shoulder to where Loki stands, leaning against a crooked mountain, arms crossed. His hair is messier than usual, blowing across his face instead of way-too-cleanly combed back. The one thing she has learned about Loki is that he is completely nuts when it comes to anything hair related.

Fenris barks, head lowering with a prowling hiss.

“I knew Heimdall before my banishment. Pleasant fellow.” Her level of sarcasm is reaching a whole new level.

“Did I fail to mention where I was king for a short time?” Loki inquires. “Previously?”

“Dearly,” Hela replies. She heard something of it when she was trying to catch up on Asgard’s more recent history, but it was not an event she ever learned details about.

“When Thor was banished, he went into Odinsleep, and I received the throne for a short time. It was only a few days, but Heimdall – he had good reason, certainly, but he committed treason on multiple occasions. He did it again with Odin, shortly thereafter. I am the only reason he is still alive, and I cannot say he warrants death, but we must be wary of trusting him.”

“I take it you’re concealing us from his sight?”

“I cloaked all of us since your arrival. Heimdall should see nothing.”

“I see you have it all covered. There are seven realms yet to visit. Come.”

Fenris turns his head warily as Loki approaches, but doesn’t move to eat or bite, since Hela hasn’t labeled him as a threat. This is familiar. It’s been gone from her life for so long.

She can’t wait for a real fight.

***

To say the palace needs remodeling is a severe understatement. It needs major recoloring. Most of Loki’s suggestions are go-to no-no’s, and the guards or high-ranking officials keep interrupting their bickering session with other important information and questions.

She wants to fight, yes, but she hasn’t seen her own home for so long, Hela barely recognizes it any longer.

It’s the beginning of the first full day of her queenship when a group of younger people, who are definitely in her brother’s generation enters the room. A red head, another man who clearly has far too great an appetite, and a girl with long, dark hair who ought to be a leading member of the Valkyrie on sight if they still existed.

Loki’s leaning against the side of the throne, and immediately straightens when they enter.

“My queen,” the way-too-big one says, “With respects, may we ask how it is that none knew of your birth until yesterday?”

Hela waves a hand impatiently. “Clearly, your belove benevolent king spelled the cosmos into forgetting all that we did together.”

“Can we ask a way to verify –”

“My friends,” Loki speaks up, stepping forward. “There is no need. I am certain she speaks the truth.”

“Oh, who are you?” Hela queries, leaning forwards. Loki has never mentioned friends, and Hela questions if this is a matter of politeness versus reality.

“I’m Fandral,” the redhead speaks up, “This Volstagg, and Sif.”

“They’re warriors,” Loki answers, “Members of the army, except higher ranking. They served alongside Thor and I as we grew up.”

To be looked on with caution, then – their loyalty is no doubt to Thor, not Hela or Loki.

“Nevertheless,” she answers, standing, “You asked for proof, and I’ll give it to you.” She aces down the throne’s steps to where the painting stands in the center of the hall. “It lies here.” She flicks her wrist, drawing a spear and flinging it upwards at the ceiling. Cracks spread across it, and she throws a few more, until the ceiling breaks and falls, debris crashing downwards onto the floor below.

There. As she remembers it.

“Odin and I drenched civilizations in blood and tears. The moment my ambitions outgrew his, he cast me out. Hid me away.” She shakes her head, disgusted. “The secrets he couldn’t erase, he covered up.” But that is enough on her. She needs to know more about these people. “As warriors, do I have your loyalty to the crown?”

The three of them exchange glances before slowly lowering themselves to one knee, hand over their heart. It’s a promise, one Hela can no longer believe. She never used to be so distrusting of people. Odin broke that in her.

“What is Loki doing here?” Sif asks. There’s a fire in her. Fire is good. Hela likes that, though it can also be a threat. Something she must be wary of.

“Is there any place else he should be then at his queen’s side?”

“The All-Father sentenced him to the dungeons. A life sentence.” Sif’s eyes dart past her to Loki.

Her brother is looking at her. His face is blank, but there’s a flickering fear in his eyes. His eyes show so much of his soul. He’s afraid. Does he truly think that little of her? That she should respect any choice Odin has ever made? “If Odin trained another of his children into a killer and complained when he surpassed him, I will gladly grant him freedom.”

And Loki called these people his friends?

Sif throws Loki another look. It looks pointed, an echoing whisper of a conversation they had once before.

Fandral bows to her again, thanking her for giving them time, and a few other mumbled thanks before the three of them leave almost fast than they came.

“So,” Hela asks with overwhelming dryness, “These are your friends?”

“They’re Thor’s friends,” Loki answers quietly, “They… they helped Thor break me out of prison. It’s… a long story, but… they did help me, though I believe they think I set this up.” That leaves a very long messy story that Hela quite frankly does not have the energy to inquire into.

Odin has not changed whatsoever, for all he claims to be a benevolent king now. Hela has many questions of her brother’s childhood. He has many of hers, too, no doubt.

“It’s – late,” Loki ventures finally, “If… we have nothing else to attend to, I would like to go to the gardens for a while.”

Hela’s mother used to, from time to time. Loki did that, too? “You spend time in the gardens?”

He nods, eyes distant. Wistful. Hurt. “My – my mother had an area there. Somewhere she would spend time sometimes when she needed to be away. I would always find her there.”

Frigga. He means Frigga.

Hela spent a lifetime hating her, but for Loki there’s nothing but love. Because Frigga wasn’t key in what ruined his life.

She swallows her bitterness, anyway.

***

It’s good to be out in the air here. The sun is setting now, and Hela has missed sunsets. She never saw them on Helheim, and those rare times she was able to see the flickering golden rays, it was only brief. It lacked color. It lacked life. She had long forgotten the vibrance of the real world.

It looks different now. All the plants are different. The patch that once belongs to Hela’s mother overgrew when she was still a child, and there are no traces of it now.

Loki’s sharp intake of breath has Hela turning. He’s staring, wide-eyed, at one of the fountains in the center of the garden. A bench sits in front of it. Hela doesn’t remember if it’s the same or not – her memories of this area are too… hazy. Fogged over with loss of time.

“Did someone stab you again?”

Loki slowly lowers himself onto the bench, arms wrapping around himself. His eyes are wet. Hela slowly sits beside him, half on the seat, ready to stand, awkward and entirely uncertain if she even belongs seated here. “I used to sit here.” His voice is quiet. “At night sometimes. When I was little. My – my mother and I. She used to do these little bits of magic for me. Right here. Turn a flower into a frog, cast fireworks over the water… It all seemed so impossible then. But she said I could do it, too, because… I could do anything.” He exhales heavily. “But I guess she was wrong. I couldn’t save her.”

Hela has memories of this, too. There were some flowers that her mother would like. A long time ago. Certain… planets. Hela had liked them back then. She doesn’t much care now.

Her heart still aches.

Loki inhales shakily. He’s crying. Hela tries not to watch. How he can do it so freely, she will never understand. “Do you remember your mother?”

Hela hasn’t talked about her in thousands of years. Her and Odin scarcely spoke of her. There was no point, when she was ripped from both their lives so sudden and abruptly. There was no point discussing how her mother was gone, and Odin declared war on all the Nine until her death was avenged and he was the victor of it all.

Maybe he wanted freedom from fear.

Hela doesn’t care. He met Frigga, and he replaced Hela’s mother with her, replaced Hela with Thor. And Loki.

Well, no – he tried to make Loki into her, and locked him away when he succeeded too well.

“Yes,” Hela answers curtly, “I do.” I was several hundred years old when she died, but that wasn’t enough to forget what she was to me, that she was probably the only person who truly loved me. She died, even if she was a Valkyrie, the best there ever was, even if she was the All-Father’s wife and childhood best friend.

Even though she was my mother.

And I couldn’t stop that.

“It started with a prison riot,” Loki confesses lowly, hugging himself tightly and rocking just a bit. “I sent the Dark Elves right to her. I thought – I thought – but they got her. I wouldn’t have cared. If it was anyone else. But I did it and they got…”

How she had thought the same. For decades, centuries, thought if she had listened better to her mother in their training sessions, no matter how playful they had been, then she could have done something. “It was their sword, even if it was your word,” Hela tells him, anyway, “You’re the God of Mischief. It’s not your role to decide who lives and who dies.”

Loki makes a quiet sound, head lowering, hair falling forwards over his shoulder and hiding his face from view. “I still got her killed. That – was my doing.”

To Hela, Frigga is what ruined her life. She came in, and Odin married her and changed everything about himself because that was more important than the life he’d always lived and Hela. But to Loki, she was his mother and he loved her, even if that’s not an emotion she can even fathom. Hela spent years hating Frigga.

“What was she like?”

“She was… the queen of Asgard.” Loki shakes his head, blinking and wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. “She was good. Purely decent. She… was the kind of person you’d want to believe in you.”

“Did she?” Hela asks.

Loki sighs. “Well, she did. While it lasted.”

“Your mother and I never hit to each other well.”

“You knew her?”

“Briefly.” Hela shrugs. She thinks of all the times they argued, of all the times Frigga thought something was beneath her, that there was something Hela should or shouldn’t do. That she wasn’t neat enough, that she didn’t sit eloquently or whatever gibberish she thought of for the day. “She did not understand what I was. I’m not a queen, or a monster. I’m the Goddess of Death.”

Loki’s head dips in a nod. “You’re not a monster, Hela. But you are a queen.”

“She didn’t think I was. That I was worthy. She wanted Thor. So she could raise her own son in my stead.”

“I’m sorry,” Loki tells her quietly, “She was not… I do not remember her being that way with either of us.”

Of course not. Because they were her children. Hela wasn’t.

“What… What was your mother like?”

How does she begin to express this? That her mother was the fiercest of the Valkyrie, that she was a fighter, but that wasn’t enough to save her? That Asgard did not then have the army or means to protect itself? That it had suffered so much at the whims of the other realms before it grew from its ashes? That it was her mother who made her who she was, and how Hela can say freely that she was perhaps the only one whom her mother truly loved?

These are not things for words.

“She was a Valkyrie,” Hela answers, “From the days where they remained loyal to the throne.”

“Whatever happened to her?”

“It was the beginning of Odin’s conquest. She was caught in the crossfire. Asgard was attacked, and… I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t.”

Just like Loki. They were truly meant to be one.

He was meant to be her.

“Oh,” he says softly, “I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head, accepting the apology, but still uncomfortable nevertheless. “I was young. Five hundred. About.” She never forgot that day. That year. Even if it’s been many centuries since. She would have been about half Loki’s age then. Perhaps. She knows, roughly, how old her brother must be. Not his exact age. “Do you know your birth date?”

He exhales. “I know what they told me, but that’s the day Odin stole me from Jotunheim. Laufey may know, but he’s dead, and Jotunheim is… um…”

“In shambles?” Hela guesses.

“Courtesy of me.”

She’s almost proud. Loki, she has begun to realize, is the closest to her heir that she will ever have, because Hela cannot ever imagine having a child of her own. She would like to be a mother. (She wishes she could have raised Loki as her own.) She cannot ever imagine calling anyone her husband.

Hela is not one to rely on people. She never has been, and she never wants to. Someone to continue her name, her legacy is different than… that. Loki and Fenris are the only family she needs.

“I thought the Valkyrie had always served the throne? Thor and I were still quite young when they disappeared.”

The Valkyrie always bring up a swell of hot bitterness. Naturally, Odin would have to hide the truth, too – he couldn’t tell everyone what happened. Hela realizes, now, that they may have been spelled to forget her. “It was perhaps a century after I was banished. I found a way out, and tried to break through the wards he had on the paths between realms. He sent the Valkyrie in to stop. Years I fought with them, and they turned on me the moment he said the word.”

“You killed them all?” Loki guesses. He looks so young. Vulnerable. Is he even an adult yet? Hela can’t tell. But he’s definitely barely cutting it, if that.

“That is why I trust no one. It’s only time before all these people do the same.” She looks across the gardens, weary. She’s so tired. Hela thought she could step through that portal, reclaim Asgard, and everything would be fine from there on out. Now, she’s just tired. So tired, as though she hasn’t been sleeping for weeks and weeks and months and years until Odin’s magic was finally stripped from him and Hela broke through the portal to come back home.

She thought they would be happy to have her back, to reclaim their role as the highest in the Nine.

But no one is, because no one remembers her.

Loki’s right. What is she fighting for?

Her life means nothing. It never has.

“I won’t.” She turns her head to look at him. The sun is setting now, slowly sinking over them and the garden is mostly shadowed now. A few torches have turned on along the wall opening into the garden. The dancing flames throw a golden-orange hue across Loki’s face. It makes him look even paler. Younger. But his eyes are haunted in the shadows with something far outgrown his time.

Thanos.

Hela’s lips press together tightly. A bit longer, and she will find him.

But to trust one. Somehow, so deeply –

“Won’t you?” Hela asks, because she’s starting to realize that’s the thing she fears the most. She doesn’t know how she could run him through with her spear again, even if he were to try to kill her, because she doesn’t want him to look at her with such a raw, gutted fear again.

She is definitely going soft.

Her mother was soft with her, too. She rarely smiled. Except at Hela.

“I betrayed my mother, my brother, and my father. I want to do better with you. I have a chance to start over with someone, and… I want to take it.”

She trusts him. She trusts his word, but one day, their interests will align no longer. That is a promise. Like her and Odin.

“I wish you could’ve been here. That you grew up with Thor and I – I think we would have been happier. But then I might have betrayed you, too.”

You won’t. The words blur in her mind, unspoken, unbidden, because she’s too afraid to say what comes with it.

“For the first time in my life, I have the chance to do something right, and I want to try.” He’s picking at his left palm. Hela thinks she saw Frigga do that. Is he nervous? He looks like it.

“We will find Thanos,” Hela answers, “We can begin there. Exterminating the deadliest threat to the Nine will be a good way to spread our name.”

Loki’s head slowly lowers onto her shoulder. She nearly jumps at the contact, but it’s gentle and warm, and she has a good view of his hands. He can’t stab her like this. “He won’t be easy to defeat.”

“Darling, in all my years of war, there has never been an opponent I could not defeat.”

“I thought the same. Trust me. I tried.”

“And I defeated you.” She quirks an eyebrow at her brother.

“I was wounded. It wasn’t what I’d call a fair fight.”

“Care for a rematch?”

His head slides deeper onto her shoulder. “No.” Wind rustles her hair, blowing Loki’s against her face. It’s soft. It reminds him of Fenris somehow, when her wolf would rube his nose on Hela’s chest and beg for snuggles. Soft. Safe.

Home.

(Darling.)

“I did learn to do the magic my mother did. You wanna see?”

“I clearly have nothing better to do.”

Loki smiles a little, raising his hand palm glowing green. An illusion flickers to life over the fountain in front of them. Fireworks, multicolored, falling in shadows of the rainbow, the explosions softer than real ones, but a close mimic, nevertheless.

It is beautiful.

It’s… nice, seeing color again. (And it means a lot, too, that Loki is willing to share this little bit of his mother with her. Something sacred to him. Something Hela would never share with another. That she could never.)

And they just sit there for a while, Loki’s head pressed to her shoulder, beneath the million twinkling stars.

Chapter Text

Over the days and weeks they know each other, Hela’s coming to pick up on a number of her brother’s absurd habits. He will spend forever in the bathroom. Hela blames Frigga for his hair obsession. She rarely brushes her own.

He has a horse. He… is really close with his horse. He and Hela go out for a ride across Asgard, just to see their kingdom, as she and Odin once did. It feels like things are coming full circle now, changing somehow – she took Odin’s son as her own, and she’ll use that to tear him apart.

Loki hates feasts as much as she does.

He loves plays. He is obsessed with them. Hela is not appreciative of his writing skills.

And Loki hates space. He said something about the void when she asked, blurting an incoherent series of mumbles when Hela tried asking what upset him about the night sky. He fell into space is the only thing she gauges, and that it has something to do with Thor, which clearly does wonders to increase her opinion of her other brother.

He talks about Thor sometimes. He loves him, and Hela cannot fathom that.

Also, some of Loki’s suggestions for recoloring are completely insane. She will not paint the ceiling of the throne room green and yellow, or stripe the pillars rainbow colored. They’re pillars, not a bridge. He still hasn’t let that one go.

Definitely the God of Mischief.

He continues having nightmares about Thanos, and Hela constantly has nightmares where she awakes back on Helheim and Loki is a dream. It’s his absence that she fears more than anything, she is begrudgingly beginning to realize. Almost more than his betrayal.

He’s scared of fire. Flinches at the sight of torches sometimes. Hela tried confronting him about that. He mumbled something incoherent about space and fled. Which she’s adding to the list of reasons to murder the Titan for, naturally. Or should it be methods this time? Hm.

Fenris and Loki… like each other. Or at least, they have a truce. Fenris came over to him slowly when they came down to the stables, cautiously sniffing him out. Loki petted his nose, and ever since, they’ve slowly crept over to each other when no one watches. It’s unnerving. Fenris hasn’t licked him yet, though, or Hela would have to reconsider who his rider is.

Heimdall continues to be quiet, opening the bifrost to dispatch them to places once in a while when they ask. Loki has some sort of history with the Dwarves. They aren’t happy to see him, nor he, them.

Sif and the Warrior’s Three make themselves scarce. Hugan – the fourth of the bunch – has returned from wherever he was, and Hela could care less, but Loki tells her in worried, fleeting passing that their silence worries him.

Loki, also, does not mind paperwork. Or any of the stupid meetings which being queen allegedly means she has to attend. Hela decides she doesn’t like any of Odin’s council members. She’s tempted to stab every single one. Her brother tells her with a smirk that he feels the same.

Also, she realizes, the reason her idiot brother was limping was not because he was still injured by the Dark Elves, Odin, or her. It was because he stabbed his foot open on glass, didn’t bother getting it out, and though he could whine about it when his body healed them inside. Idiot – Hela has had that happen to her, too. She healed with a full dagger in her gut once, and Odin had to take her to the healers to pry it out.

They tried to keep her under with seidr. It didn’t really work. That was… extremely unpleasant. Thankfully, Loki manages to get it out without too much complaint, just a lot of grumbles and winces.

Jotunheim and Midgard are the only two realms they have yet to visit. Loki tells her there’s not much to see on Jotunheim, and Asgardian presence would likely result in the massacre of the remaining few people there. He has history there. Hela doesn’t want to drag him back, either. Whether he was left to die there or not, it bears… heavy history for him.

Midgard is… the greatest concern. Hela has no desire to slaughter half of the mortals in Thanos’s stead as she knows she would if they were to go there. The larger problem, Loki explains, is the Avengers. And Thor. Thor is on Midgard at present – Loki sent him off at some point when she was still cooped in their room. He had to get him out.

Conquering Midgard will lead to bloodshed, unlike their agreements with Vanaheim, Alfheim, and Nidavellir. They were… uncertain about Hela’s rule, but none objected.

Hela’s still uncertain what to do on Midgard. The mortals pose no threat. They’re… mortals.  Loki has past experience there, which works to her benefit, but she remains undecided.

And, of course, right before she has a chance to go there, the problem blows up right in her face.

***

Some days are passably good.

Some are neutral, some are plain bad, and some are something from beyond a nightmare of things that could have ever happened, like the day she held her mother’s body and begged her to wake up but her eyes stayed dead and closed forever.

The Goddess of Death was born right there.

Hela’s still mid-dressing and trying to brush her hair (Loki insisted. Her hair does not look like a messy horse tail, and she is going to prove him wrong forever) when one of the servants comes to the door, breathlessly telling her that they’re under attack.

“It’s Prince Thor,” the maid says breathlessly, “He’s in the throne room.”

“And he got through all the Einherjar without being stopped?” Hela rolls her eyes, throwing her mostly combed hair out behind her and shouldering her cape. “Never mind. I will deal with him myself.”

The maid looks scared as Hela passes, but she doesn’t care.

Loki will be there. Loki said he was going there to wait for her arrival, after he finally finished getting ready following a long, fitful, nightmare-filled rest. If it can be called ‘rest’.

Loki will be there, and Loki will be hurt if she doesn’t hurry.

Hela skids into the throne room, taking several fancy shortcuts. This would be a good time to have Mjolnir. She doesn’t have to shove the doors to the throne room open, because they’ve already been smashed fully through by some imbecile who thought it was to his comfort.

“ – that all I am to you?” a deep voice is yelling.

Thor. Hela saw him in the paintings, and she recognizes her younger brother’s long blond hair, horrendous gray armor, and even more appalling blood-red cape. Well, the color’s good – at least it wouldn’t stain from blood. He just makes it look ridiculous.

Hela would appreciate it more, if not for how he has Mjolnir in his hand and Loki’s throat in his other, their brother’s back pressed against the wall as Loki tries to pry the hand off. “Let go, Thor, let –” Her brother’s voice is strangled, choked. And – he’s crying.

Again.

She doesn’t know what happened while she was gone. She also doesn’t care. A wave of raw wild fury alights in her veins, and Hela doesn’t call a warning. She hurls a spear at Thor. It caches him in the shoulder, flinging him to the ground, and Loki crashes to his knees, gasping, hands going to his throat. Their brother hit the floor somewhere in the middle of the room, and Hela ignores him altogether, running to Loki’s side.

It's a strange, foreign feeling. To go to someone to check over, to have someone at her side that she needs to check over, to have someone whom she cares for enough to.

Loki collapses into her when she’s close enough, in reaching distance, face buried on her chest, body shaking. Trembling.

(She thinks of Fenris, whining as he escaped Odin’s chains, curling in her arms as though she were enough to protect him. As though she could protect anyone.)

“Are you hurt?” she asks. Is this what she’s supposed to say? Hela hasn’t clung to anyone in such a manner in so long she can hardly remember what it would be like. But the one thing she does know, doubtlessly, is that he’s terrified of Thor. Why, she can’t imagine, when he looks like so little a threat to her, but Hela isn’t the one who loves him.

She would be happy if he died.

She wants to kill him herself, if only for what he did to Loki.

“Yeah, I’m okay. I’m okay.”

Liar. He’s still shaking and clinging to her cape like the fabric alone might save him.

A shuffling behind her has Hela straightening, arm wrapping around Loki and pressing him into her side, spinning and yanking a spear into her hand. Thor is standing, glowering, Mjolnir clutched in his hand, even if there’s a blood spot on his armor form where she stabbed him a second ago.

“So, you’re Thor?” Hela asks, cocking her head.

“Another trick of yours, brother?” Thor asks. He’s allegedly the God of Thunder, and hearing one sentence from him, she sees why. He sounds like thunder. He carries it well. Or, it carries him.

Loki doesn’t speak. He’s still gripping a handhold of her cape, breathing hitching and unsteady. He shifts a little, making a move to stand, but he doesn’t carry through.

“Who are you?” Thor demands, when their brother remains silent.

“I’m surprised it so far into the palace without one of your friends telling you of me,” Hela snarks bitingly.

“If you were real, why did I never hear of you? And where is Odin? Did you kill him?” He’s glowering, as though that may be something she could consider a challenge.

She laughs, incredulous. “You concern yourself with him over Loki? What brother are you?”

Thor’s face darkens, eyes darting between them.

Loki is shifting behind her, slowly standing. He’s still half behind Hela, and she’s more than willing to keep him there. She wants to keep her idiot little brother behind her to keep any weapon points away from him. If she has to lug him back into their bedroom as he bleeds to death again, she will go insane.

“Well, truthfully, killing Odin would have been my pleasure, but Loki beat me to it. He will live out the rest of his days in a place where he no longer holds ties with any of us. Where we can finally be free of him forever.”

Thor flings Mjolnir at her. Hela raises her hand, catching the hammer, digging her nails into it and wrapping her magic around it, crushing.

“That’s – not – possible,” Thor says, panicked, trying to pull the hammer away.

Hela’s hand tightens with a burst of seidr, exploding the weapon into a thousand pieces of rock. It hits the floor, crackling with lightning. “Darling,” Hela purrs, “You have no idea what’s possible.”

For a moment, they stand frozen, then both her brothers dive for Gugnir.

Loki reaches the throne first, spinning the weapon and aiming the end at Thor, even if his face is paler than it ought to be and his hands are shaky. “Don’t,” he orders, “I don’t want to fight you, brother.”

Thor pulls back, chest heaving, eyes wild with rage. “You would betray me again?”

Loki’s hands waver. His green eyes are wet, though he doesn’t tear his eyes from his brother. “No.”

Thor stalks a step forwards, though Loki doesn’t fire. “The last time you held that weapon, you let go even though I begged you not to. You tore our family apart. And now, you make me think you died, again, all because you wanted the throne?”

“This isn’t about the throne!” Loki yells back furiously. His face is wet. Is he still crying? He’s good at acting as though he isn’t. It’s unnerving.

“And here all you would say was it was your birthright,” Hela interjects with a light laugh.

He looks towards her and shakes his head slightly. “Thor,” he implores, “Don’t. Hela is the rightful heir to the throne. She’s the only one able.”

“I’ve had enough of your tricks, Loki. Put it down, and I’ll let you live.”

Hela doesn’t know if he’s bluffing, or if this is reality but no one will ever threaten Loki again.  She stalks forwards towards Thor, lifting him by his neck. He struggles against her, trying to pry her hand off, but his grip is wrong, and he clearly knows nothing about how to break chokeholds. Hela slams him into the wall, feeling a smug satisfaction when something cracks. She’s not sure if that was him, or the drywall. “And I have had my fill of your chatter.” She rips another spear, making to stab him, when a hand grabs her wrist.

She didn’t see Loki move, and didn’t expect it to see his still-pale face when she turned her head, but there he is, Gugnir still in his other hand.

He’s stopping her.

He swore himself to her, too, and Hela’s been given enough orders on who and who not to kill. From him, from Odin, from everyone. She’s been waiting for this. Fearing this. Counting for it. “Is this you betraying me?” Hela asks. Inside, she’s just cold.

“Please, let him go.” Loki asks softly. He looks raw. Gutted.

Hela has had many people plead with her to spare someone’s life. Back when she was Odin’s weapon. She’s never hesitated. It feels different, with Loki. To be looking at him. She never wanted him to look at her like this again. “You already swore your allegiance, brother.”

“My oath was dependent on your refraining from slaughtering all of Asgard.”

Hela jerks back, throwing Thor to the ground. She swings around, spear gripped tightly in her hand.

Loki exhales shakily, readjusting his grip on Gugnir. Is he truly planning to fight her? He looks as pale as a ghost and like he’d fall if she pushed him. Hela honestly doesn’t know if she should be amused or just impressed. “I don’t want to fight you. But I can’t let you do this.”

“Choose your next move carefully,” Hela warns, slowly stalking around him in a circle. She doesn’t want to fight him/ She couldn’t kill him before, and she knows she would never be able to bring herself to do it now. There is a part of her, for however traitorous or childishly sentimental it is, that will never be able to let him go.

He’s her brother.

He’s also more than that.

He could have been – is, a little bit – her child, too.

Except that she never got to raise him.

(She should have.)

Loki slowly circles so he’s in front of Thor, no matter how her brothers were trying to slaughter each other minutes ago. It’s a stand-off, and Hela hates stand-offs. They’re too slow. She can’t handle slow. Never got to have that as Odin’s executioner.

Hela moves first, swinging her spear at him. It clangs against Gugnir, and he swings it back. She ducks, spinning around and summoning another spear. The force of it sends him stumbling, and she reaches up with her other hand to rip the weapon away. It clatters across the floor, clanging. He ducks into a roll, mid-rising as her blade levels at his neck.

Loki freezes, hands raised, unmoving. “Fine,” he says flippantly, “Kill us both.” In that moment, with how tired and drained he looks, Hela doesn’t even think he would fight.

Hela has never in her life stayed her hand at killing anyone. Because she couldn’t hold back. She was Odin’s weapon. But Odin is gone and Hela’s finally free. She gets to make her own choices. She’s not his any longer.

She can choose her own path.

And if she doesn’t want to kill Loki, she doesn’t have to.

Loki had the throne. He could have done the same. He could have outed her, turned her people on her, called Thor – even if she’d have killed them both – but he still chose to turn the throne over and grant her queenship when… he could have had the chance to be free for the first time in his own life, too. He was going to be, until Hela ruined that for him, the same way Odin once did her.

The same way he caged her like an animal for wanting freedom. For being the very thing he made her to be.

She is not Loki’s mother, but she sure can be a better sister than Odin was dad.

“Of all my years as executioner,” Hela offers amiably, “I have never met anyone who so blatantly flirted death.”

“It was my birthright.”

“Did Odin tell you that?” Hela can’t hide her incredulity. She knows he treated Loki badly, but this tops the list.

“Among others.”

Add it to the list of people she will bring her wrath on. Hela looks down, flicking the spear out of existence.

Loki exhales, almost relieved, but his tension still hasn’t drained. Does he trust her that little? Still? Although, she will begrudgingly admit, Hela has not done much to earn his trust.

She looks at Loki, and then all three of them dive for Gugnir at once. Thor reaches it first, and Loki is a second after. He tackles Thor like the idiot he is, trying to wrestle the weapon away. Thor rolls over, kneeling him in the gut and Loki falls sideways with a grunt.

Hela tackles him after, because at this point, why not? Both of her brothers are idiots. Thor flips her over, sprawling across her to grab the weapon. Hela grunts, shoving at him. At this angle, she could swear he’s way heavier than he ought to be. She can’t move. “Get off my leg!” she yells.

Thor grunts when she punches him in the side, grabbing the weapon and trying to roll away. Hela grabs a handful of his hair and yanks. From the volume of his shriek, she would have thought he was being murdered.

Loki’s snort is cut off by a wheeze – she’s pretty sure Thor ended up mostly on top of him. Oops.

Thor’s fist slams into her gut hard enough to knock her breath out.

Loki scrambles over her, diving for Thor again before he can try to blast Hela through the floor with the spear. “Is it too much to ask,” he grunts, knee slamming ungracefully into Thor’s chest. “That the already shattered remnants of my family stop trying to kill each other? My mother is dead. How much more would insist on taking from me?”

Thor’s eyes are riveted on his brother’s face, hands on Loki’s arms. She’s a little unclear if they’re still fighting, or if this is meant as some kind of ridiculous truce.

Hela wriggles away from them both to peel herself off the floor.

“What did you do to Father?” Thor demands.

“Hand me Gugnir,” Loki requests.

“Tell me what you did to him!” Thor yells, jerking upright. Loki nearly topples from where he had himself ridiculously balanced half atop his brother.

“Slaughtered him and threw his body into space,” Hela snips, which is precisely what she wishes. “You missed the funeral. Pretending he even had one.” She brushes her hair back with a touch of seidr, black crown rising, voice sharp and curt. “I offer you an ultimatum. Return to Midgard and never return, or die. Unless you would prefer to swear yourself to me.”

“Brother,” Loki tries softly, shifting back and crouching on the floor in front of him. “Odin lives, but you must think your next move carefully. I don’t want to fight you. Either of you.”

Thor shakes his head, shoving their brother off-balance and standing again.

Hela throws another spear at him, lodging into Thor’s shoulder, though he twists away and rips the blade out. He rolls to his feet again, batting aside the spear she hurls his direction.

A blast of green magic hurls Hela into the wall, and Thor hits the one opposite her. “Stop!” Loki yells loudly enough that she grudgingly thinks for the first time, she actually listened. He slowly lowers his hands, panting and glaring. “Enough. Thor, for once in your life, think with something other than your fists. I know you grieve Mother, and I know I made you believe Father was dead. I’m sorry. I thought you were on Midgard and would hear nothing until… we could make Asgard into a better world.”

Gugnir lies innocently in the center of the room. Good placement.

“No. This, this was about you.” Thor steps forwards from the wall. “You made me believe you were dead. Again. And then I returned to Asgard to find Hela on the throne.”

“Would you like the long story, filled with gory details? Or the short one?” Loki asks.

“Short,” Thor orders, “How could you do this to me again?”

Hela’s brows rise. Since when was any of this about Thor? “Loki disposed of Odin. Quite impressive, I might add. Must’ve grown weak in his old age.” She shrugs. “Might as well. Asgard will be reborn in my image. As for Odin, if he will live the rest of his days without posing a threat to my kingdom, I will let him in peace. Which, I must add, is better than he did for either Loki or I. But he gave me my best weapon. My sorcerer. My brother.”

Loki’s emerald eyes jump to hers, and a series of fluxing emotions flicker in them.

“Is that what he is to you?” Thor asks, rounding on her. “A weapon?”

Hela laughs. She honestly doesn’t know if she’s more amused or angry on Loki’s behalf. “When has he been more to you?”

Thor takes a few angry steps forward. “Loki is my brother.”

“Oh, is he? When have you treated him as such? When you let Odin lock him away in the dungeons? It may have been every day while you visited him. Perhaps when you strangled him two minutes ago?”

“It was Loki’s own actions that lead to his imprisonment,” Thor scowls.

“My actions?” Loki laughs. He’s bitter. Furious. A familiar level of furiousness, too, because Hela harbors same every time she thinks of Odin. “Yes. Certainly. Quite clearly, it was purely my actions.” He’s shaking. Hela doesn’t think that has anything to do with Thor.

“You came to Midgard with an army, threating war and tried to claim the world by force. And would have handed the Tesseract off to the Chitauri, knowing they could have taken it anywhere to cause even more damage. You know that is what those creatures do.”

The Tesseract. It was for Thanos.

Thanos tortured him. He forced Loki to work for him. And Odin imprisoned him for this? Even the word, the names are enough to set him off. Hela has dodged the topic of Thanos mostly because she knows her brother is far from ready to see him. He panics every time it comes up. Hela has seen that, the fear, the shaking, the paleness and how he flinches away every time he sees the night sky, how his breathing spikes whenever a door locks, how jittery he is in dark rooms.

Their own is different, probably solely because of its familiarity.

And then Odin had thrown him into the dungeons. Because just like her, Loki’s ambitions outgrew the All-Father’s. He and his cursed need to help.

“Loki,” Hela asks, irked, “May I stab him? I tire of his chatter.”

“I think you should get something bigger than a sword.”

“Killing me will not change what you did to Midgard.”

Loki’s fingers twitch. His lips part, jaw working like he’s trying to find words, but they evade him. “It wasn’t me!” he yells finally, whipping out a dagger and flinging it at the wall not so far from his brother’s head. It lodges hilt deep, and Loki wheels around. He does well at making it look like a storm-out. He’s fleeing.

Running. From whatever memories are tearing him apart. From Thor. Who let Odin imprison his brother for crimes that weren’t his own, as though Odin in his younger years had not done incomparably worse than Loki ever has or could, even if it were of his own freewill.

Hela loathes how much concern she feels for him. It’s overwhelming, smothering until she can hardly think of anything else. She needs to follow him, to see if he’s alright, but Thor is still here, too, and a lingering threat until he has been neutralized through one means or another.

“All this time,” Hela says, evenly, voice low, “Did you never ask, or do you merely not care?”

“Ask him what?”

He is an idiot. “Your fortunate my alliance with Loki hinges on your survival.” Hela breezes past him in search of Loki, though he’s in the darkened shadows of the far end of the room, sinking onto the floor, exhaling heavily. “You were right about one thing,” she tells her little brother sweetly, kneeling in front of him, “You saved all the Nine Realms by preventing our brother’s kingship.”

“Oh,” he huffs. “I know.” Loki’s hands raise, trembling, gripping his hair. He’s shaking.

And Hela has no idea what to do.

She could use Fenris. He was always the one who she went to when she needed comfort, or who came to her when either of them needed it. he could often sense that somehow. He would always know where to find her, where she was and when she needed him, even if it meant sneaking through places he shouldn’t have.

Fenris would know what to do.

Hela’s not a wolf. She’s not going to jump and lick and snuggle until her mistress feels better.

And Loki is her little brother.

What does she do when someone is panicking? Short of stabbing them, for that is her usual response. “Hold together,” she asks, begs, actually, because for the first time in forever, Hela is terrified.

“I tried to stop it.” Loki’s voice is a hoarse, barely whisper. “I tried. As hard as I could. I just… couldn’t.” He lowers his forehead to her shoulder.

Norns, what now? Hela hasn’t been held in a long time. Fenris would snuggle with her, prowl and lick her, curl around her. Odin has carried her on a few occasions when she was badly injured, but those were rare and merely from necessity. (There were times, rare and few between where he would embrace her, and tell her she did well, and Hela loathes how badly she wants to hear that again. She hates him. She wants to gut him slowly and painfully until he’s felt some shred of the pain that he's put her and Loki through.)

Loki’s breathing is still all wrong. Hela… understands this, a little bit, because she has dreams of Helheim which she wakes in constant, perpetual terror from until she remembers she’s in her room with Loki. It’s only thanks to each other that they don’t bring half the palace down on instinct.

“Breathe,” Hela orders him flatly. “You will suffocate. I don’t know what you’re doing with your lungs, but you are going to die if you stop breathing.”

He groans. It sounds like a whimper. “I know. I know.” Loki’s hands lift, arms wrapping around her back. He’s hugging her.

What does she do?????

Hela tries to just grip his shoulder and pray that it actually works because she’s probably as lost and terrified as he is. But Loki’s hair is an absolute mess, and he’s obsessed with keeping it perfectly straight, so would he appreciate her attempts at fixing it? Her mother used to stroke her hair when she was little. Or comb it. Hela hardly remembers, but she knows it felt nice, and when she does it, Loki melts into her hand.

That’s actually what made it awkward, so, thank you, Loki.

Hela rolls her eyes, but she can’t quell her own racing heart. This is ridiculous. Ever since she met Loki, she’s been nothing but mush, and she used to be the coldest, unshakable person on Asgard.

“Thanos is nothing against the armies of Asgard,” Hela promises firmly, “If he dares approach our home, he will die. Do not fear.”

It’s not just Thanos whom her brother fears. It’s… everyone. He has endured a lot. Hela never feared Odin. Well, she did, but it was not like this. It was never a crippling, consuming fear through which she could neither think nor act. Not like it is with Loki. Except that it’s Thor he fears just as much.

And his friends. Probably all of Asgard.

“You don’t know him,” Loki argues, shaking his head. “No one does. When I was there, in the Void, I tried to fight him. I wasn’t strong enough, and he took… everything.”

“You were alone then,” Hela replies, “You won’t be again.” She means that, actually. Because she will never let him be alone again.

He said that… it wasn’t his fault. He has said enough of Thanos, and Hela has seen enough to know what he means. Or at least she thinks she does.

“It won’t matter if he gets another Infinity Stone.”

“We have one of our own, do we not?” Hela asks.

“The one that I was to give to him in exchange for Thor’s life.”

What? Hela rocks backwards, staring at him, dumbstruck. “All of what you endured was to save that fool?”

“I suppose one could say that.”

Never a clear answer. There is no clear answer, is there? Loki spent what was clearly months at the hands of the mad Titan, and his truth from reality has blurred enough that she doubts he remembers much of what occurred clearly anymore. Not as though Hela faults him for it – she cannot remember what transpired exactly that lead up to her attempt at overtaking the palace anymore, either.

She just knows that she had been angry, and Odin had announced his marriage to Frigga, and a new age of peace to the Nine.

And that she was so, so angry.

“I did whatever he asked of me to stay alive, and… I shouldn’t have.” Loki lowers his hands, sighing. He’s still trembling.

Hela pulls back from him a little, looking up at a quiet shuffling behind them. Thor is standing there, hair flopped messily across most of his face, but he still looks… raw. Gutted. Apparently, no matter how much he and Loki fight, he still has enough common sense to care for his little brother, no matter how minorly that may have mattered as of late.

“Would you like to give your brother the graphic explanation of what happened?” Hela asks. “Or may I stab him and be done here?”

“No stabbing.” Loki shifts, lowering his hands, knees drawn up to his chest. He’s so good at being tiny. It’s disturbing. What would it take to make someone try to pretend they don’t exist? Hela has never been one to do that – she’d always rub her existence in the face of anyone who doesn’t want to be reminded. “It – it doesn’t matter anyway.”

It matters to me, Hela wants to snap back, but she’s not going to blur out her greatest vulnerabilities so someone can use them against her. She cares about Loki more than she cares about the throne. It’s not something she likes – it’s just becoming a fact of her existence, and one she has to learn to adapt to just as everything else.

Instead, she offers a thin smile and rises. “Thor,” she replies, “I made my decision. Either remain with us, or return to Midgard. And if you speak a word of Odin’s whereabouts, neither one will keep you safe. Loki does not want war with you. I trust you will for once consider your brother’s wishes.”

Thor’s eyes lower to Loki again. His hands clench, and for a second, Hela is fully expecting him to try jumping her with nothing but his fists, but he does nothing. “There was a time I believed that we would fight side by side forever.”

“I as well.” Loki looks away. “But I guess things don’t always play out the way we imagine.”

“No,” Thor says evenly, “They do not.”

Loki climbs to his feet, finally daring to lift his head, and when he does, his eyes don’t tear from his brother’s face. “I know that it means nothing. But I want to say that I am sorry. For everything I did to you.”

“You’re right. It doesn’t. You cannot say that when you stripped our Father of his powers and sent him to Midgard to die.”

“He did the same to Hela and I. He did the same to you.” He looks at Hela, like she may have something to add. Oh, she has plenty to add, but this is Loki’s burden. “Perhaps he will learn the lesson he wished to teach you.”

“That is not your decision to make!”

Loki’s hands drop. He looks frustrated, but he’s holding himself together even while on the brink of sanity uncharacteristically well. “I had a chance to be free for the first time in my life. How could I not take it?”

“You were free.”

“Free to be your shadow? To be mocked by all who willed it? Caged? No. I was never free, Thor. Neither was Hela. Your freedom is on Midgard. Hela and I have what we always wanted. We’ll take care of the Nine while you’re away.”

“You think I would entrust you with it?”

“Thor, the throne is Hela’s. Nothing will change that. You said yourself you don’t want it. That you chose to go to Midgard.”

Thor had been on Midgard the entire time. That’s why Loki hesitated to advise her anything on the realm. He was scared of Thor. Or of what Hela would do to him. She actually isn’t surprised about that. Everything her brother does is for a reason, reasons which he rarely explains.

“Earth is… different. The mortals don’t live long enough for us to ever rule that world from here. But you wanted it. You can keep them at peace.”

“When you have you ever cared for peace?”

“When have I ever wanted war? And don’t say New York.”

Thor sighs. He’s still angry, but some of his expression softens. “I am glad you’re alive,” he says at last.

Loki’s smile is more sad than sincere. “I’m flattered.”

“If you truly need this, I will grant it,” Thor says, as though he were capable of even being an excuse of a threat to Hela. “But tell me where you sent our father.”

Loki deflates just a little. “Very well. I will show you, but first, we have an appointment on Jotunheim.”

“Loki –”

“What we do with my kingdom is my choice,” Hela interrupts, “Asgard has begun its rebirth. Nothing Odin does will change that.”

“If you ever need us, we’ll be there,” Loki vows. “I’d ask you to invite me to your wedding, but I think Jane would just hit me again.”

“I would hit you first,” Thor tells him seriously, and their little brother laughs.

“Before you go, I – I want you to know. No matter what happens. I still love you. I always will.”

***

Loki’s hand curl around the edges of the Casket. He looks jittery, constantly shifting on his feet.

Hela side-eyes him, finally just giving in altogether. “Are you well?” she demands. They’re about to go to Jotunheim, and now is not a good time to be getting tied up with his past, but she knows Loki’s got a complicated history with it.

“Yeah. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

Hela rolls her eyes. Liar. “Heimdall, when you’re ready.” She does not trust him in the slightest, and he is the one who brought Thor here, but with that out of the picture, there is one less reason to worry about Asgard’s people turning on them. They follow Thor, and learning that he was not wholeheartedly against them was enough to quell any possible rebellion.

The Bifrost turns on, yanking them forwards. It’s just the two of them, because anyone else would be seen more of a threat to the Jotuns than a peaceful agreement, which is what Hela intends.

She never knew that war.

She bears no hatred for the Frost Giants, unlike all of Asgard.

Jotunheim is cold. The air nips at her skin instantly, chilling her to the bone, but they’ll only be here for a few minutes.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Loki queries softly.

“You wanted peace.”

“Yeah. I do. I just don’t know if negotiating with these monsters is a good idea.”

“They’re not all monsters, Loki.” Hela brushes the snow aside, walking forwards towards where she sees the throne up ahead.

Dozens of Frost Giants surge forwards, weapons raising.

Hela raises her hands in a gesture of attempting to calm them. “I am Hela, queen of Asgard and of all the Nine,” she introduces, “We have not come to you in war.”

“Bold of you to set foot on Jotunheim after what you did,” the king accuses, standing. It’s too dark to see. Dark, like Helheim. Cold, like Helheim. She tries to banish those thoughts with the mere fact she’s not alone, and Loki is at her side. But she can still see enough to know that the king is young. He must be one of Loki’s brothers.

Does that make him her family, too?

“You’re right,” Loki answers shortly, “It is.”

“My brother and I have begun a new age of Asgard,” Hela answers, “As part of the Nine Realms, you are under our control, and our protection. So, for as long as you do not threaten us, any of the rest of the Nine, we’re returning the Casket to you.”

Loki magics the Casket back into his hands, setting it in the snow with a thump. “Rebuild your world,” he says shortly, “We’re giving you a second chance. I ask only that you take it.”

“That’s overwhelmingly generous of you,” the sarcastic remark throws back – definitely Loki’s little brother.

Hela looks over her shoulder, smirking. “Perhaps we merely need to clean some of this trash out of our vault,” she tells him sweetly, and the bifrost carries them away.

***

She will never be ready to stand in front of Odin again, but here she is, in some backwater, unseen alley on Midgard, standing several meters from their father, Loki a silent shadow at her side.

“Why have you come here?” he demands, as though he has the right to ask anything of her.

“Bold of you to demand anything from me.” Her heart flutters, throat tightening, an unwanted pressure of hurt and rage burning in her chest. Odin raised her, cared for her, trained her – and he chained her, caged her, held her back. She was his sword. She sees, now, that she was never anything more to him, even if he is so much more than that to her.

He always has been.

She wants to stab him. To rip him apart from every means of existence, to tear every shard of his existence from the memory of all who inhabit the universe, so no one will ever speak his name again.

But she will not, because she isn’t Odin. She won’t fall to his level of cruelty, if only just to spite him.

“Tell me,” Hela asks, slowly walking forwards, “After all that I did in your name. Why did you cast me out?”

“Your way was cruel, and ruthless.”

It’s an honest answer, one that does no more to tamp her rage. He would dare say this to her, when he is the one who created the monster he now fears? He is the one who exploited her need for vengeance upon her mother’s death. He is the one who created her into exactly what she is now. Hela had not craved for causing – witnessing – death when she was young. Odin made her this way. “Any more than yours?” she asks instead, feigning a sweet smile, even if it bears nothing but the cold brutality with which he raised her, with which he had always wanted her to be.

“I saved all the Nine from your ruthlessness –”

“No. You had your throne. You had your glorious little kingdom, so you threw away your sword, forgetting she was your own daughter. So ,I will do the same to you. Loki and I are finally free, and with our freedom, we will remake the Nine into something you will never have a part of. I grant you more than what you gave to all of us. A chance to live out your days here in peace, while you remain dead to the world. The one thing you gave me was Loki, and that alone is why you live.”

It's fitting, she thinks, in a humorous, dark way – that Odin will spend his time on Midgard, the world he chose over his own son. Because Loki had not mattered to him, either. All that time Loki spent in the dungeons, he can have a taste of that now, here – though he has far more freedom than he ever gave any of them.

She wonders how long it will take for Thor to realize this, but their brother walks a different path, and he has made a different choice than herself and Loki. Where he goes, is up to him. (Even if there is a small part of her that’s waiting, waiting for the day he finally comes home to stay.)

Odin looks from her to Loki, as though her brother would be any more receptive of his words than she. “Loki, you will side with this murderer?”

Hela wants to laugh in his face.

Loki’s expression barely twitches, though she knows that he is struggling with facing Odin. That was why he did not wish to do so alone. “All I ever wanted was your love. You gave me Hela’s instead. So. Thank you.”

“I will remake Asgard into something so great that your name will be forgotten entirely. And I will do so with Loki by my side. As we always should have. Farewell, Father.” She wheels around, boots scraping on concrete.

Hela walks away without looking back. The bitterness is not lost, and neither will it ever be, but she finally feels…

Free.

***

“How,” Thanos rasps, blood pooling over his hand where it’s pressed against his neck. “How could you…”

Loki doesn’t feel anything, anything short of a bubbling relief so great he thinks he’ll cry the instant he’s out of eyeshot of Asgard’s army. Thanos is dead. He’s dead, and his army defeated. The remaining few will be taken to prison on Asgard, which feels oddly fitting, though it will be through far better treatment than he ever got from them.

And then, finally, the cosmos will know peace.

“You were right,” Loki says, standing and magicking the blood off his hand and dagger. “I alone could never defeat you.” He steps back from the body as the Titan’s life fades away, returning to his sister’s side in all her white glory. “But I’m not alone, and I never will be.”

THE END =)