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Heimdall knew precisely what would happen when he chose to help Thor over his king’s orders. And he has no regrets.
Odin did not even muster fury as he read the sentence of banishment. Only a bitter, grieving disappointment.
“Thousands of years you have served my reign,” the king says. “Only to betray me now.”
“It is not a betrayal, my king,” Heimdall says. “I acted to protect the realm.” Perhaps soon Odin would understand. He would see the error of courting such war, he would come to accept what Heimdall, and Thor, had done and reverse this judgement. Even if Odin did not come to see their reasoning, perhaps he would at least realize that he had lost everything through his decisions. In the wake of his wife’s death, his sons’ betrayal and abandonment, and his closest advisor’s banishment, perhaps his loneliness and pain would cause him to reconsider his actions.
But now the king only looks down at Heimdall with steel in his eye.
“Go,” Odin says as he turns away. “Get out of my sight. You are hereby banished from Asgard from now until the end of days. Escort him out of the palace.”
The Einherjar comply silently. Like machines.
Heimdall doesn’t look back.
He is banished from Asgard with little more than the cloak on his back. He has some time before Odin will have mustered the will and the energy to check that he has left, so he remains in the realm. He barters for some basic supplies from a farming family near the outskirts of the capital, then takes to the woods, hiking deep into the foothills of the mountains with nothing but the chirping birds for company. He makes camp as night begins to fall. He thinks for a while, watching the flames of his campfire burn, about where to go. It has been millennia that he has been tied to the throne of Asgard, serving as the Watcher and gatekeeper. He has a galaxy of opportunity before him and is bound to no duty.
Old habits are hard to break. He is not prepared to leave Thor to fend for himself during the Convergence. What comes after is an overwhelming array of possibilities. Setting that aside, Heimdall turns his gaze to the dead realm to which the princes had absconded with the human woman and the aether.
What he sees brings him up short.
Thor and the human woman are nowhere to be seen. Loki is alone. But it does not appear that Loki has betrayed Thor, or escaped him. Loki is not standing triumphant, not plotting or slipping away into the night to escape. He is stumbling, barely keeping on his feet. There is bewilderment and pain on his pale face. He looks around him, searching for something. Heimdall cannot hear what he says, his voice stolen by the wind, but his lips seem to be forming the shape of his brother’s name. His hand is clutched over his chest. Heimdall looks closer. There is scarlet covering his hand. As Heimdall watches, he loses his footing and falls. It takes him several minutes to gather the strength to stand and walk again.
Heimdall looks for Thor. He finds nothing.
He opens his eyes. He has a moment’s hesitation - going after Loki will likely compromise his current place of safety. It will bring him back into conflict with Odin, which is unwise. On the other hand, it is a clear way to return to the fight against Malekith, which Heimdall cannot deny he desperately wants. He only wishes he was a little bit younger, and had his sword, so he could help Thor take proper revenge on the monster that killed his queen. But he can aid Thor in other ways, or perhaps acquire a new weapon before the last battle.
But first, he has to save Loki’s life.
Heimdall has to move quickly. Loki in his vision was so pale he looked grey, stumbling and shaking. His clothes were dark with blood. He doesn’t have much time. Heimdall makes his way to where they had vanished, and thanks to the Norns manages to slip through a thinning in the space between realms caused by the Convergence. There are many of these thin places now, holes in the realms. They no longer need Loki’s magic or arcane knowledge of the hidden paths to slip through. When one knows where to look, it’s almost easy now.
The air of Svartalfheim is bone dry and seems to keen with the ghosts of all who perished there. The wind whips, the sky dark in the aftermath of the storm. The sand stings at Heimdall’s face as he quickly moves across the plain.
He checks his bearings several times. The features of this place are dark and foreboding, but stretch endlessly on. But he looks and assures himself that he and Loki are moving towards one another. Loki is slowing down. A bad sign, but helpful nonetheless. The last three times Heimdall checks, he has not moved more than a hundred feet from a jagged, distinctive peak. He finds it in the skyline, and hastens towards it.
Loki is back on his feet when Heimdall finally sees him in the flesh. His breath comes wheezing and short. He stops when he sees Heimdall moving towards him, wavering.
Loki almost looks shocked for a moment, but quickly hides the expression behind a mask. He attempts another step towards Heimdall but stumbles, falling on one knee. His hand is clamped over the massive wound in his chest. Blood drips onto the ashen sand.
“So that’s it then?” Loki rasps through bloodless lips. “You’re here to finish it? Finish me off?” His breath crackles, wheezes on the exhale. It would not take much. Honestly, as little as a single shove, to cast him into one of the many shallow crevices. He doesn’t have the energy to move forward on the flat plane, let alone climb his way out of a hole. He will surely bleed to death in hours, having lost the energy to save himself. Even as Heimdall watches he starts to slump, his eyelids flickering with exhaustion.
He has enough energy to shy away when Heimdall approaches, enough self-preservation to flinch away from what he assumes is going to be a killing blow.
“Calm,” Heimdall says. He reaches out and grips Loki’s shoulders, keeping him upright. “I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to help you. You’re going to have to trust me.”
Loki looks at him like he’s gone mad. And perhaps he has. But before he can think on it more, Loki suddenly doubles over and coughs, spewing dark blood onto the ground. A shudder passes through him. The amount of weight Heimdall is supporting doubles as Loki goes limp, breathing in pained, rasping gasps. His torso spasms as he gags, splitting up more black-tinged blood and bile. He lets out a cry of pain and jerks in Heimdall’s arms.
“Hush,” Heimdall says. “Stay calm. And hold on.”
Loki holds to consciousness for another second, blinking up at him with an owlish, young expression on his face. He looks confused, unbelieving. Then his eyes roll back in his head and he goes completely limp.
He first makes sure that Loki is not in immediate danger of death. He had stolen a few healing stones before his treachery had been revealed and makes quick use of them to hold Loki to life. He slings Loki’s body across his shoulder and seeks shelter. Luckily, Loki has collapsed not far from a rocky outcropping, dotted with caves. Heimdall quickly carries him up the slope and finds them a hidden corner near the mouth of the cave, where air and light filters in. He stretches out his cloak; the only sick bed he can provide.
He has to cut Loki’s tunic off his body. It is sticky with blood and a dark unidentifiable substance. The wound is ragged, passing all the way through his torso to a nasty exit on his back. By some miracle it seems to have missed the spine, though he will have to wait until Loki wakes to test further, make sure his nervous system has not been disrupted.
He has to leave the cave then, to gather water and wood for a fire. He checks again, while he is out, to see if Thor and Jane have reappeared in his vision. They have not.
When he returns, Loki is still breathing, though it is still dangerously slow and shallow and his brow is furrowed with pain. He does not stir as Heimdall methodically cleans both sides of the wound and bandages it. He worries over the clear poison running through Loki’s system. The veins of his neck and the backs of his hands are darkened, bulging. There are no herbs to make an antidote on this dead world. He can only hope that cleaning the wounds and letting the healing stones do their work will buy Loki’s body enough time to purge it from his blood.
When his work is done, he attempts to turn his gaze towards Thor yet again, but finds the elder prince still out of his sight. Then he settles in to watch, and wait.
Hours later, Loki finally stirs. He blinks his eyes open, looking around wildly. There’s a name on the edge of his lips, one that he doesn’t quite say aloud. Then he spies Heimdall and stills, a cool mask slipping into place over his features.
“How are you feeling?” Heimdall asks calmly.
“I am not dead.”
“That is not a feeling.” Heimdall rises and ignores Loki’s flinch as he kneels next to him and gently pulls back the blanket, peeling off the bandage. The wound still gapes, sluggishly leaking blood. But it looks better than it did before and no longer coated with the odd dark substance. He replaces the bandage and sits back.
Loki watches him with sharp eyes the whole time. He is tense, quivering with pain and anticipation.
“So?” Heimdall says. “How do you feel?”
“Why haven’t you killed me yet?” Heimdall inclines his head. “Why not? You had me right where you wanted me, I wouldn’t have - I couldn’t have fought back, and there wasn’t-” Loki cuts off, looking up at the ceiling. Heimdall waits but Loki offers nothing else.
“I did not intend to kill you.”
“Why not? That was what was supposed to happen.”
“Was it?”
“I thought…I thought I had died. I was supposed to have died.”
“Tell me what happened. I know nothing after Thor broke you out of prison. What happened?”
Loki looks at him again. “You did not see?”
“The aether clouded you, and Thor and Jane from my sight.”
Loki swallows. “I killed it. That monster that…the one that murdered…” He cuts off, shuddering. Heimdall does not press him to continue. He knows to whom Loki is referring. “And I was supposed to go with it. It was a trick - a calculated one. Thor was upset, but of course, that’s why I didn’t tell him about it beforehand. I do not know how I survived.” His breath comes hard and he shakes his head. “Where’s Thor? Where did he go?”
“I don’t know. I still cannot see him. Malekith-”
“Has the aether. The plan worked. We extracted it from Jane but…it was not destroyed. Malekith took it within himself and fled. I was focused on the Kursed creature, I don’t know where he went.” Loki’s eyes drift shut. “You’d be wise to check Midgard. Though I cannot tell you for sure.” He takes one deep breath, face twitching in pain. “So? I have given you the information you seek. Are you not going to kill me now?”
Heimdall frowns. “No, Loki, I am not going to kill you. Why are you so intent upon your own death at my hand?”
“Are you really not? Is it not what I deserve?”
Heimdall has nothing to say to that, it surprises him so much, Loki’s calm certainty that he deserved to die. While he tries to think of something to say, Loki just stares at him.
“Hm.” Loki frowns. “That’s what I thought. You’re thinking about it.” I am not- Heimdall opens his mouth to protest but Loki keeps talking before he can get in a word. “It is what I deserve. Death. That was Odin’s original intention for me. The axe. I deserve it for the lives I took on Midgard. For the way I betrayed Asgard.” His voice hitches. “But she stopped it. She was the only reason I did not meet the executioner and the king’s justice when I was brought back. She was the only reason I still lived.” A tear drips down his cheek, falling onto the cloak. “And she is gone. So justice has come to claim me. I should have known it would be you.”
“You are feverish and in pain, Loki. You are not thinking clearly.”
“This is the balance, is it not? I threw off the scales of justice by surviving, and the universe took her life. I was supposed to join her, I was supposed to die because it’s not right,” he snarls through gritted teeth. “It’s not right that I am alive when she is dead.”
“You don’t truly believe that, do you?”
Loki scoffs. “Perhaps not. Perhaps you’re right, at least about the scales of the universe. They likely do not care so much for small lives like mine. But I do know that you should execute me. I do deserve death. I saw the look in your eyes, when Thor brought me back in chains. You want to do it. Odin will approve the execution, you know he will, especially after this last escape. Would you prefer I was on my feet? Cut my head off while I stand, like a man. I may be able to stand in a few hours, you can do it then.”
“That is not what this is.”
Loki’s eyes shine. “It should be. What is there left for me? I have ruined all I touched. I have poisoned everything in my life. I am evil." His voice breaks. "I am just the monster the Kursed was, I deserve to meet the same fate. I should have met the same fate, I was supposed to die.”
“I will not continue to listen to your suicidal-”
“I am not suicidal, I am merely trying to remind you of what I am. I am trying to remind you of your duty to the throne that you have clearly forgotten, to eliminate threats and criminals.” Loki pants. His hand comes to press at the wound in his chest. He must be in quite a bit of pain, but does not otherwise show it. His voice remains even, clear. His eyes are focused and sharp. Heimdall frowns. “I have committed crimes that cannot be forgiven. You must see that I deserve execution.”
“I am not going to take your life, Loki.”
“I killed Thor, don’t you remember? For a moment, it was done, he was truly dead. I froze you into a block of ice and stole the throne and attempted to destroy the Jotnar and tried to conquer a realm under Asgard’s protection. Admit that I am irredeemable. Admit that the best thing to do is to escort me into death.”
“No.”
“If I would have won, if I had ruled Earth, I would have presided over the slaughter of civilians. I would have sought the rest of the Nine, until I was at Asgard’s gate.” He cuts off with a wet, painful sounding cough.
“Loki. Stop attempting to provoke me. It will not work.” Heimdall stokes the fire. “And it is not very convincing, my prince.”
Loki’s mouth tightens into a line. “Kill me. You know it is the right thing to do.”
“It is not the right thing to do,” Heimdall says after some consideration into the words. “You deserve life, if only because there is still breath in your lungs, and blood pumping in your veins. You deserve to try again, to live and attempt to make right your wrongs. If that is not enough, there is also the fact that Frigga would have wanted it.” Loki gasps in a breath, mouth twitching at her name. “You know she wanted you to live. Not only for sentiment, not only because you are her son and she loved you, but because she saw that there was a spark of hope left. She looked at you in chains and she saw not the monster you seem to think you are - that so many others see you as - but a young man who had done wrong but may yet grow to be something more.” Heimdall turns to face Loki fully. “We spoke of it often in the last year. Her hope. She did despair, on occasion. Many did think you were beyond redemption and tried to convince her of it, but she never believed them. Sometimes she feared she was being naive but…she always held hope for you. Just as when we believed you were dead, she always held hope that you would somehow find your way back to her.”
“I can’t,” Loki says through gritted teeth. “I can’t come back. I can’t be what she wanted. That Loki is dead. All that remains is for this corpse to finally be stopped and burned.”
“I am not saying you have to be exactly as you were, or a perfect version of what others thought of you. You shouldn’t try to be what Frigga wanted. You should only be what you are.”
Loki shifts on his makeshift bed, gasping in pain. He shuts his eyes for a moment, riding out a spasm that travels through his chest. Heimdall watches carefully. He relaxes again with a weak cough and blinks his watery eyes open.
When he speaks again, his voice is worse. It has lost its clear and direct quality. It is now rasping and faint, and holding so much pain it makes Heimdall’s heart ache. “And if what I am is the thing that destroyed the bifrost, killed its brother, sought to conquer and exterminate? What if what I am…is the monster? Would Mother not have wanted the monster to be defeated, to protect my victims? She was…” His voice hitches. “She was a good queen. She would have wanted to protect Asgard over my wretched self. She wouldn’t fault you for seeing the reality that she could not and slaying the beast before I have the chance to…to…to hurt again.” Loki coughs. Heimdall sets water in a pot over the fire to boil. He has a single packed of dried tea that might ease the cough somewhat.
“A problem: I do not think that is who you are. I do not see you as a beast either, and I don’t think your mother was naive to have hope for you. Those are things that you did, that stemmed from hurt and anger. You will always live with the consequences of your actions, like with the pain and anger that fueled them. But I believe that Frigga saw all the things you had forgotten about yourself. I think she believed you could live with the knowledge of what you are, what you had done, and could find something of yourself again. The operative word is live. So no, I will not kill you or allow you to seek death yourself. Stop asking me.”
Loki seems to be turning this over in his mind. “I do not understand.”
“You don’t have to, not right now. You are still mortally wounded, after all. Give yourself some time to recover from your wounds, and perhaps you will see things more clearly.”
“It was meant to be a heroic sacrifice. And end for the songs. I would have died well.” Loki turns his face away. “It would have been something of a consolation, for Thor. And a relief for everyone else. I am not…I cannot…”
“It doesn’t matter.” The water bubbles and Heimdall pours it into a small bowl, adds the meagre leaves of tea. They begin to color the water a deep red. “For what it is worth, Loki, I forgive you. For my part, for what you have done to me, I forgive you.”
Loki freezes, eyes wide as saucers. “What?”
“I forgive you.” It had been a slow realization, this forgiveness. It hadn’t been a clap of knowledge, or a shock of clarity. It had just been a slow building of acceptance and forgiveness. Heimdall had forgiven Loki for what he had done on the bridge, for the betrayals and the lies. He looks at Loki and wants no vengeance, no punishment. He wants him to heal and to learn to live with the pain and regret, and one day become the person Frigga knew in her heart he could be. Not the prince that he had been, he could never return to that. But a man who had hurt and been hurt, but who could face his actions, the pain he had caused, and live.
Loki’s eyes are filling with tears, though he tries to hold them back. “Why?”
“Because I do. Not everyone will, but I forgive you. I hold you no ill will. I hope in turn you can forgive me for lying to you about the circumstances of your birth. And for not being there to help when you learned the truth. For leaving you to face that frightening truth alone. And for not stopping you when you were in pain, and out of control. In that I failed, not just Asgard, not just Thor, but you. I failed to help you and I hope that you will forgive me for it.”
Loki is speechless, gaping at him. Silence reigns in the cave, except for the crackling of the fire and the wind whistling past the rock.
The tea is slowly steeping, cooling. Heimdall checks the wound again.
“I should clean your wounds. There are still traces of the poison left at the surface.”
Loki, ghost white, tolerates him sitting him up and unbinding the wound. He winces when Heimdall peels back the sticky bandages, but otherwise says nothing. He doesn’t even look at him.
In silence, Heimdall cleans the last of the strange black residue from Loki’s wound and wraps it tightly. Loki obediently drinks down the tea Heimdall’s prepared, then buries his face in his hands. The only sign that he has started crying is the occasional shudder that passes through him, the little hitches in his breath.
Loki doesn’t say he’s sorry. Heimdall does not ask him to, because he realizes he doesn’t need to hear it. It doesn’t matter.
When he’s finished wrapping the wound and pinning the bandage in place, Heimdall takes Loki in his arms. He seems suddenly young again, and if Heimdall closes his eyes and sees with his heart, it is like he is carrying the child to bed who fell asleep asking endless questions about the stars, or embracing the young adventurer returned from his wanderings. Heimdall is not Loki’s parent. But he did have a part in raising him, in caring for him, ever since Loki was an infant being carried in from the cold. And for that, he holds a certain amount of responsibility, one does not fade with his dismissal from royal duties nor that he has any intention of ever relinquishing.
“I forgive you,” he says gently. Loki makes a quiet noise in his throat. “I forgive you.”
They stay like that for a long time, until Loki stops crying and drifts off to sleep, breathing noisily but steadily.
The sky lightens at the mouth of the cave. Dawn.
“Can you stand?” Heimdall asks.
Loki stirs, sits up gingerly. “I believe so.” His voice still sounds rough and he winces when he pulls a shirt over his head, but his color is better and he rises when he’s dressed, even if it is a bit unsteady.
“Good.”
“Where are we going? You know I won’t be dragged back before Odin-”
“We are not going back to Asgard,” Heimdall says casually. Loki raises an eyebrow. “No, I am quite thoroughly banished from Asgard. Isn’t it curious? That the two of us should find ourselves together. I, who have been told directly by the king, to never pass into the realm Asgard again, and you, who the king condemned to be forever locked beneath her palace, never to leave it? Curious.”
Loki’s brow furrowed. “Banished? Why?”
“Who did you think engineered your escape from prison? You didn’t think Thor did it by himself, did you?” Loki appears to have nothing to say in response to this. He merely gapes at Heimdall like a fish. Heimdall gathers his cape from the ground, shakes it off, and wraps it around his shoulders. He extends a hand to the prince. “Shall we?”
“And where are we going?” Loki takes his hand, allows Heimdall to support him under the elbows and help him limp towards the mouth of the cave.
Heimdall grins. “Midgard. We’re going to find your brother.”