Red In The Snow : 3

3.
Why Do You Not Run?

 

“You have eyes, huntsman, but you cannot see. He is the one. I see an end to darkness.”

So said the great Odin Allfather. So said Balder of the prophetic fever-dreams. Thor had doubted the Allfather before, but never his gentle brother Balder. The promise was this: with the death of the trickster Loki, and the events that his hand would set in motion, the Nine Realms would be safe from the Great War.

From darkness would come an end to darkness. In a way, it all made sense. But why must his hand be the one to wield that power?

He trudged on through the thickening snow. It didn’t take long for his trained eyes to see the lean figure standing between two birch trees. Even now his heart ached at the familiar silhouette.

“Can you not see me, brother?” he called heavily.

Slowly, Loki turned around. The constant cold had brought out the Jotun in his eyes, which gleamed a bright carmine.

Thor walked up to him. “Why do you not run?”

“I cannot run from you.” Loki’s voice was a whisper. “I would much rather run to you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

Loki pulled his otter pelt closer around his slender shoulders. “Why? Because I am capable only of lies?”

“Because I have been tasked to kill you. And with the eyes of Heimdall upon me, who answers to our father and all the ruling Aesir, I cannot walk away.” Thor hefted the hammer.

“Then, my dear brother, we must part ways.” Loki moved away. Thor paused, allowing him the few seconds it might take to flee- to fly - to shapeshift and slip away like the wind, like he’d done so many times before.

Instead his step-sibling knelt in the snow and shed his pelt. The pale hands reached up to unfasten the hooks of the snug leather collar.

“Just making it easier to remove my head as proof,” he said.

“No.”

“If you must do this anyway, brother, why delay what is your duty?”

“Loki…I…”

“Thor.”

“I…I can’t.” Thor’s massive shoulders shook as tears ran down his face.

The brilliant red eyes glittered like pools of blood. “Do it.”

“No, Loki.”

“I love you.”

I love you. Such sweet words in times of joy. Such cutting words, ridged and flaying, in a time like this.

Sobbing, Thor lifted the Mjolnir to his face and let his tears run down the steel surface. Never had it felt so heavy in his hand. He looked up to the skies - to all who might be witness - and cried out.

“See what you would have me do! What I will do to save you, cowards who dare to call themselves gods and rulers; who send a brother to kill a brother. I bid you bear witness!”

A thin shaft of light broke the dark skies as Loki’s frost charm crumbled. It shone on the blue that crept up over the trickster god’s neck and cheekbones, revealing his frost giant nature. The abandoned Jotunheim runt, the lost prince who walked between two worlds and belonged in neither, now to die as he was born.

Thor swung the mighty hammer.

~