𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐑 𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 even one felt there was nothing else to fall back on there was always , despite doubt , ROUTINE.
awaken long before the sky would harken the coming sun and ponder whether the bed was truly your own. ease in to the startling calm of your body as your muscles ease from their tightly wired fright of dreams you could not recall , and take solace that you are alone in the prelude to dawn.
stumble your way to your private chambers and take stock of what is there for you. lights that one might only switch to turn on , pipes that drew warm water despite the incessant chill , soaps and scents to drive off the cold sweat and grime you felt yourself lathered in though you had cleaned the night before. sigh as a weight falls upon your shoulders at the sight of your own reflection. — there a man stood that felt himself most foreign to you.
his mind was yours yet you felt yourself still slumbering elsewhere in the dreams that clung to memories of ancient things. his body was yours and despite it , you felt yourself too old and too tired for its youth. his scars were yours , his hair was yours , his eyes were yours — only you had a single eye now. one that stared back at you with shadows haunting its depth.
there , thor stood taking a good and long , hard look at the man in the mirror. ( he looked so much like father now. ) goosebumps riddled down his skin , and thor's lips pressed thin. ( ... too much like father. )
he wondered what jane might think of wound , were she here to see it. perhaps she would have found it unsightly , the way other mortals blessed with peace might. or perhaps he would have felt her hand against his cheek , her eyes drinking him in all the same as words of love fell from her tongue like spring rain to a parched field. and she might do so in the same way mother had done with father , before ... — but thor blinked the thought away with a grimace , followed by a scowl.
what fool he was , to want her ... and more so to have lost her.
buoyed by frustration ( and the broiling heat of an even deeper self-resentment battering his veins ) thor swiped at his nose and locked his jaw tight. better then , to cast her from his mind ( an impossible task ) and forget the sound of her , the feel of her , the taste and sacred solace of her — ... at least in this moment. for it was his eye that stared back in the mirror's reflection , and no longer her grace to shelter thor from the newfound chill of his father's legacy lingering over him / all around him / creeping into the recesses of him through the gouge in his skull—
heat laced his breath as it flared his nostrils. fingers curled around the steel of the faucet handle. beating heart slammed into his fourth and fifth ribs.
—SNAP.
water sprayed from the bathroom sink. the cold splattered across thor's cheeks. stumbling backwards from the shock , thor slammed his hand into the back wall to catch his own weight.
his palm dented through the stone.
thor stilled. water splattered across the mirror , the stone floor and the sink. he reached for towels folded in cubbies in the wall. a hasty fix , but a fix nonetheless to quell the burst of water that continued to spray. in his hand was the faucet handle , snapped clean off and mangled between his fingers. he turned and assessed the damage to the wall , finding that though it was a smaller issue than that of the sink , it was certainly not damage he could - or should - have done by way of a start.
( thor flipped his hand from palm to back , back to palm. )
.... not as a mortal , anyways.
kneeling , thor made to address the water spray by way of the piping — and when he reached to shut off the water's flow it was with a practiced carefulness in his touch , as though the mortal metals were made of delicate gossamer than steel. the flow stopped , thor rose and turned to the door instead , mind thrumming with ceaseless thought , heart pounding anew. — and in his mindless motion tore the door from its hinges.
. . . thor blinked.
swallowed.
grunted , and then placed it delicately aside.
careful , careful , to not slam the door into the wall and bring the stone to rubble and dust. laid it to rest there as though it were delicate as human flesh and blood , then backed away from the door and the newfound hole in the wall.
no , this was not the might that a mortal human possessed. this was strength of many thousands of mortal men all together , kept carefully under strict watch and lock and key outside of the raging fires of battle.
his storms still eluded him. this form was still yet weak in ways that thor could not quite put to words. but this—...? this was beyond his father's enchantment. this was something new.
. . . like a light in the dark or a beacon at sea one name flashed in thor's mind as the most integral person that would and must know.
@mischiefmodig / drabble !
(bc i sure don't trust tumblr to not eat this in submissions)
𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐁𝐋𝐀𝐙𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐇𝐀𝐃 taken to the skies above, lighting the darkness with streams of light, Thor had known well that it was a sight he wanted to behold with his brother. So certain was he, after all, that Loki was sequestered away in some far off corner. Likely with his nose in mountains of tomes, toiling away at a chance for breaking their enchantment, and for escape; utterly blind to the beauty of this realm, from the mountains to the snow to the very stars above. Especially for all of his many castigations of the seasonal festivities.
Of course, it was not as if Thor could truly blame him.
The mountains of this Arcanus Isle and their distant snowy peaks reminded him of the highlands of Asgard. Only it was that Thor's eye, for what sight it still bequeathed him, could no longer marvel at the distant heights of their homeland from the tallest spire of the palace. (It nauseated his soul that the marvels of such things were naught but scattered stardust somewhere beyond time, and beyond space.)
For this, the gaiety that surrounded them perhaps was but a shallow, fleeting tide. It was not as though it rectified the great gravity of the truth of time. Nor the deep urgency that cut like wind through both sovereign, knowing their people were long elsewhere, traveling across stars that neither could yet reach...
Yes, as Thor found himself surrounded by the festivities of this realm, beckoned into the fold of this planet's people, he found Asgard's absence a thorn that stabbed and ached in his heart. In the faces of the Aercon, he saw the faces of their people that had survived. In the music and boisterous wonder of the surrounding revelry, he found himself reminding himself once and once more again that Asgard remained, even as a pale penumbra of its former might.
Perhaps someone wiser might be at peace with that. For had Father not said, as all wise kings (or perhaps as all wise men) might, that Asgard was not a place, it was a people?
Thor had once supposed, as the stars had beckoned light upon this realm, that Odin was right.
Yet still did the newest king find himself yearning for more than their lot. His primordial heart beat with the defiance and the pride of an achronic monarchy. One as old as the very farthest reaches of time. And so he found that he was not satisfied with what a wise man might. It was not peace that had drawn what spare fragments of old to his chest with his hands shaking. For although Asgard was a place and a time finite, dead in a shattering of light and cosmic dust.... There were pieces of it that remained.
Loki had been beside him that day.
But what the prince did not know (nor did Thor wish to tell him, so unnerved by the revelries as Loki seemingly remained), was that, unbidden and unspoken, Thor had returned to the Traverse Trove. For Thor had found his ire whet by the fires of a new hope that sparked. He had searched, and in his search he had found small scraps and shambles of Asgardian make. Like lost things, they had found their way back to the hands born to hold them. Mangled and broken, dirties and just barely a form of itself... yet Thor still recognized each piece as his own. (Like him, it had survived. It now persisted.)
It was in this defiance of fate, foolish or impractical as it was, that Thor took up the mangled pieces. In the earliest dawn of the days, he had taken flight to the Trove and searched through the wreckage and rubble. At the end of these long hours, his hands bore the dust and grit and grime of searching high and low through the remnants of distant realms. His knuckles and fingers bore dried blood from the nicking of mortal skin upon twisted scrap metal, but his palms were filled with the sparks of hope that lit his own heart aflame.
It was in a labor of love that his nights had long been spent toiling over the small pieces of Asgard that had defied the odd late into the midnight hours. His hands straightened twisted things, mended shattered wreckage through the heat of flame and sparks of a hammer. His fingers untangled the twisting knots of this once beautiful thing, restoring it to its glory and pride as best as he could. With each passing hour, each cut and bruise, his humble offering.
It was on the last of the nights the stars fell from the sky, as the revelries that had taken the Isle came then, to their swan song, that Thor found the object of his long labor restored.
Thor looked upon it, and saw that it was indeed, good. (And what joy it was to create anew what Death had stolen. —Was that not the nature of rain? To cleanse? To heal? To begin life anew?) Satisfied with at least this small work, Thor had wrapped it carefully and hidden it well, tucked securely in a small satin pouch, and nestled in the sanctity of his inner coat pocket.
...To wrangle the God of Mischief from his abode on this such cheery night was no small fear unto itself. But some small effort of painstaking argument and countermeasure was far worth the strain as Thor beckoned Loki not to the isolation of their rooftops, but to the highest peak of a hillside that overlooked The Clearview District. Here, the wind blew with a cheery fervor, carrying with it the brisk scent of the cold snow that lay in mounds all around them. From here, as vines tangled up the walls of the nearby stairs and overhanging ruins of an age long passed, the skies were clear and theirs to behold.
Blazing lights streaked across the sky, bright even to Thor's eye, and carrying with it the colors of the many galaxies. There was no greys or browns in the display above, but swirling circlets of golds and greens, and such wonders of the universe, unchanged and infinite, balmed the heart of wayward sovereign. (And what more was that, despite all odds, despite all reservations, he shared this sky with Loki at his side. A wish lost over a decade of tribulation now granted as though the stars had heard heart's desperate pleading.)
❝ Loki, ❞ Thor said, turning to his brother as the comets continued their display, ❝ I have something for you. ❞
It was near comical how younger brother's brow did furrow, surprise dawning across his features and nestling deeply within the crease above his nose. "...You have something... for me?" he asked, and Thor found his teeth snagged at the inside of his cheek as he nodded in turn.
❝ Yes. ❞ It was with some childish effort that Thor tried not to smile, and yet the corners of his lips tugged upright into the ghost of it, lingering just a moment as the weight of the gift burned against his breast. ❝ You see, this realm has something of a tradition. One of granting gifts... Or, so I have heard. ❞
"Ah. Yes. That asinine tradition. Something to do with glad tidings and all of this frivolous nonsense. Of course you would want to partake."
For just a second, just a small, inconsequential moment, Thor found his next words tied and knotted in his throat. A tangled web of things yet to say, and within the wake of such reproachful sentiment, Thor found that his words all but unraveled upon his tongue entirely. Sensing Thor's disquiet, Loki settled the bristling quills of himself with a short huff and scuffing turn of his heel through the snow.
"... I said it's asinine not insufferable," he scoffed, and his breath fogged in the space between them. A gesture in the swift, rotating flair of his wrist. "Come then. Do not leave me in suspense, Brother."
Haltingly. ❝ Ah. Yes, ❞ and with the word, his hands procured the small velveteen pouch, just barely as large as the size of Thor's palm, and tied closed with a thin silver twine. No words then were spoken as the weight of the object within was passed from Thor's hands to Loki's. Only a watchful, attentive eye that followed the dip of Loki's gaze as it settled upon the pouch, the slight bounce of the bag as it was weighed with some small curiosity, and the careful undoing of the string as the bag was opened to finally reveal its contents.
A golden sphere surrounded by nine rings, simple in design but ornate in its fixture, for the rings were embossed only with the etchings of runes. One for each of the Nine Realms.
To tap upon this sphere was to cast it to unfurl, with each ring rotating above and beside and within one another, each orbiting the center-most sphere - Midgard - at the pace of each of the realm's solar rotations.
The largest ring - Asgard's - was what held this small design securely in place, and upon this outer ring, a fixture where a strong chain should be, but a silver cord (matching the drawstring of the pouch it was kept in) was strung instead.
An Asgardian time keeper.
Pride bloomed in the chest of the brother to bequeath such a fine (and more importantly: working) object. So small, yet it was in itself now a rare and valued treasure. A sacred thing. One that Thor found was enough to find that his breath caught squarely in his throat at the sight, and his eye flickered from the time keeper to the face of the one who could now call the relic its owner.
❝ It was all I could find in the rubble. ❞ He didn't need to state which rubble, or where. ❝ Nor were all of the pieces there in the first place, but it is here, reforged and whole, Brother. And, now yours. ❞ a pause. Finally, finally, Thor allowed his lips to curl upright in something of a small grin, teasing and perfectly placed that even his brother could not steal.
❝ To keep you from losing yourself completely to your studies here. ❞
𝐓𝐇𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑 𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐖𝐄𝐃 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄 warning , shaking the earth and skies apart . the great winds howled as they beat against the laboratory's facades , and greater rains flooded the ill begotten seas . hefting mighty jarnbjorn in one large hand , thor SLAMMED the butt of its head into one of the reinforced doors . electricity crackled and jolted up the axe head , curling at thor's fingertips and crawling up his forearm .
the lighting bringer just smirked .
K K K K KKKKRACK - A - BOOM !
pale blue lightning danced along the corridor , a herald to THE THUNDERER'S BOOMING STEP . it lanced through the next door , thrusting thick plumes of smoke and splintered metal every which way .
in the name of all those who had been taken , his brother most of all , there would be no standing in the way of THOR'S VENGEANCE .
