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Loki had once longed for a moment when the storm would clear from Thor’s mind. He’d wished for his brother to pause, to think, to consider those around him for more than a passing second. Now, staring into the deep, calm eyes of his older brother, Loki felt his teeth grind against each other so forcefully his jaw creaked.
“What do you mean, ” Loki mustered, voice carefully level, “you want to hear them out?”
“It’s only right,” Thor reasoned amicably. He spread his hands out over the map of the star region they currently inhabited. “We came to their lands, opened communications with their people without permission, and looked to take part of their natural resources.”
“For our own survival!”
Thor shrugged. “They need to survive too.”
Loki sputtered, glancing behind him for support. But the human doctor was no help, wringing his hands in his lap uselessly, and Heimdall did not shift so much as a muscle from his guard at the door. Beyond the navigational quarters, Loki’s sharp hearing could pick up the continued chittering and screeching of their insectoid interlopers. Valkyrie was nowhere to be found; Loki’d seen her herding the rest of the Asgardian survivors deeper into the ship, intent on protecting them should fighting break out. The navigator told Thor these were peaceful people when they opened a channel to the planet’s surface; Loki is going to kill the man as soon as this mess is cleaned up.
“They entered our ship without permission,” Loki tried. Thor blinked and Loki had a moment’s satisfaction--reminding his older brother of the harm which may come to his people never failed to gain a reaction--before he sighed and shook his head.
“They stopped when we offered an armistice in order to engage in peace talks,” Thor countered.
Thor’s deep rumble was perfectly even, loud enough to be confident without booming enough to grate on one’s eardrums. The gold of Odin’s eyepatch glinted in the light when he turned his head, the grown-out bristling hairs on his scalp turning golden brown. His breathing was slow and deep when Loki felt his own speed up agitatedly in contrast. Loki’s own muscles were cramped with the need to do something. Never before had he believed he would wish Thor’s bull-headedness would return to the forefront but this new Thor--this calm, peaceful creature--was nothing like his brother used to be. Thor had changed much since their father’s death, and even more since Ragnarök; Loki had heard Doctor Banner refer to his temperament as ‘Buddhist,’ whatever in the Norns that meant. To Loki, it meant that Thor was slower to anger and excite, but also that he did not seem to take threats seriously anymore.
For a moment silence sucked all the air out of the room. Neither of their captive audience designed to break the brothers’ staring contest. Then, at his wit’s end, Loki spat out his last trump card, the ace up his sleeve.
“They came to us with an armed battalion and asked you to bow. ”
Surely that would gain a reaction. Surely Thor could not deny that was what had happened. Surely he would agree that a son of Odin bowed to no one. Surely the god of thunder would not stoop so low.
But, to Loki’s everlasting gall, Thor nodded and dropped his hands, open-palmed, to his sides. “Yes, they did.”
“And? ”
“And what, brother?” Thor’s brow pinched, his lips twitching.
“And you cannot possibly be considering actually doing it!” the skin along Loki’s shoulders prickled at the mere idea. Something dark and swirling and mad, something he had not indulged in since the death of his mother, spiked in his soul. Thor would not bow--Thor could not bow.
“It is the only way to ask them to consider our plight. We need food and water, especially for the families left aboard.” Banner gave an audible wince at that, and Loki sneered at him even as their common worry crippled him too. The remaining Asgardians were resilient, but it had to be said that their version of the Midgardian flu had ravaged their children. “They have not asked for a trade, or for slaves, or for more than our respect, Loki.”
It is not respect they want, Loki thought, seething. Fire licked at his heart, an old, almost forgotten heat which leapt at the tiredness in his brother’s voice. It is your degradation before them.
“Besides,” Thor placated, “it’s not like I’ve never had to bow before a king before.”
The slow spread of Thor’s smile, its ragged edges, and the false calm in Thor’s eyes stayed Loki’s tongue until they’d found themselves back in their designated meeting hall. Heimdall and Banner were present as the rest of their welcoming party; Thor did not trust strange aliens fully, and certainly not enough to expose his weakened people to them. There was hope for his big brother yet, Loki supposed.
“Your Majesty.” Thor stepped to the head of their small party and stood for a moment as if made of stone. Then, perhaps a little too unceremoniously, Loki’s brother dropped to one knee, folding his arms over his bent knee and lowering his head in deference. The crazed animal in Loki’s chest howled, snarling with the savage need to cover the vulnerable, exposed skin of the back of Thor’s throat. “We welcome you and honor you.”
They were outnumbered four to one. Loki’s fingers twitched, his knives ready to spring into being. The hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end; the air in the ship seemed more frigid than usual. Behind him and to his right, he felt more than heard Heimdall shift onto the balls of his feet. Banner’s breath was steady but shallow.
More chittering manifested. The aliens of the planet Thor’s infernal navigator steered them to looked like oversized praying mantises, all bulbous eyes and serrated appendages instead of arms and hands. They stood a foot taller than Heimdall himself, lilac and indigo chitinous armor encasing their thoraxes. A weaker man’s stomach would roil at the sight of them, but Loki was a god. He bared his teeth instead.
Perhaps that was not the most honoring thing to do, though, because a second later the translator--a mantis smaller than the rest by at least five inches--said in broken all-speak, “His Majesty is considering an end of this armistice.”
“We ask that he refrains,” Thor replied, taking a calculated risk to glance up before bending his gaze to the ship’s floor again. An undercurrent of tension ran through his brother’s words, but their leader stood firm and calm when a wave of aggression ran through the alien force before him. The disgusting creatures shifted and clicked their mandibles agitatedly. “If we cannot continue peace talks and agree on some form of trade, I ask that we be given time to vacate your planet’s vicinity. Our goal is to prevent any bloodshed.”
“You do not offer enough for a trade.”
“Our king bows to you!” Loki snapped, quite surprised by his own outburst. Thor’s head whipped towards him, a single hand, palm up, signaling him to stand down. But Loki’s patience was gone. “Is that not what you asked for? Is his-- our --supplication not enough to fulfill your greed?”
Their leader, twice as large as its followers, screeched and stamped its triple jointed legs. The translator snuffled, clicking angrily. “You disrespect His Majesty our Chosen King!”
Then they made their fatal mistake: three of their guards surged forward, pacing towards Thor where his brother still bent his knee before them. His brother, who had asked for nothing more than the safety of their people. His brother, whose newfound peace made him so very vulnerable to those in whom Loki recognized his own violent nature. They moved for Thor.
“No,” Loki seethed, “ you have disrespected mine.”
Seiðr flowed through Loki’s veins since he was born; it came as second nature to him, allowing the God of Mischief to use magic at his leisure and without conscious effort. Now, seiðr whirled through the air around him, green and gold sparks causing the very atmosphere to shudder; the ship rocked beneath the force of Loki’s rage. A thoughtless spell surrounded Thor in green shields but Loki did not take the time to search his brother for a reaction: he simply darted forward and struck. The guards parted like water flowing around him, sharp slashes creating gashes behind the joints of their legs and toppling them. The insects' armor was no match for his Asgardian weaponry and, swinging low to avoid the parry his foe offered, Loki slipped in close and slid his blade between the joints of what passed for their leader’s throat. Bluish blood, the consistency of tar, blurted out of the wound and the thing screamed, sounding human, but Loki was too far gone to care. He shoved, his strike powered by his own strength and that of his seiðr. He snarled, feeling his lips peel away from white, sharp teeth, and did not stop until the tip of his blade burst from the other side of the insect’s throat. Then Loki twisted, whirling away quickly; his spin levered the thing’s head directly from its shoulders, splattering blood and gore as it sailed through the air. Bulbous eyes still twitching, the head landed, bounced thrice, and rolled to rest at Thor’s feet.
Loki landed in a crouch beside his brother, who still knelt as if frozen in shock. Their unwelcome visitors were frozen too, uncomprehending as their chitters finally fell silent. Heimdall had rushed forward to cover Thor’s other side, at the ready should the violence continue. Banner’s skin had taken on a green hue as he clenched his fists. At Loki’s assessing glance, the doctor pressed his lips into a thin line and inclined his head fractionally. Your move. Loki acknowledged his message with barely a blink.
Loki let his snarl fade into a wide smile as he straightened from his crouch. He lay a gentle hand on Thor’s shoulder. “It seems your people have better things to worry about than how much or how little respect my brother, our king, pays your dead monarch. Now,” and Loki let the madness clawing at his ribs to seep into his voice, let his seiðr swirl at his fingertips, his grip tightening on his brother’s shoulder, “get out of here before I decide to repay your disrespect tenfold.”
He knew not what kind of monster he appeared then, but it was evidently the kind that sent enemies scrambling for cover. His smile did not slip from his lips as they fled, although it dimmed and softened when Thor rose to his feet beside him.
“And Father thought I wasn’t fit to lead peace talks with other Realms,” Thor quipped, the first he’d spoken since Loki’s attack. He nudged the insect’s head with a boot and raised a brow at Loki. His brother shrugged loose limbs.
“Those weren’t peace talks. They meant to demean you and harm us, nothing more.”
“We are worse off still; we have no supplies to show for this debacle.”
“We are in the same position we were before this useless excursion, you mean.”
That barb had the desired effect; Thor smiled. It was still too tired, too ragged and too old for his brother’s young face, but Loki would take it over the nauseating image of Thor on his knees. “With the added mess of alien blood on our floors, yes, Loki, we are back to square one.”
“Ah, but I think you’ll find a few dead bodies are just what we needed to liven up the place!” Loki snapped his fingers, summoning the king’s head to his hands--grimacing as blood spilled onto his boots and gloves--and heft it up so its eyes stared at his brother. “A gift for you, my king!”
Thor’s disgusted laughter was enough to let the rage and seiðr in Loki’s veins settle, to let the mad creature beneath his skin to retreat into the dark cavern of his heart and curl, warm and dark, around the image of Thor’s smile. Loki’s brother might have changed since their last adventure, but Loki had to admit he wasn’t the only one; there was no way the beast in Loki’s skin would ever let another being force Thor to kneel without dire consequences.