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Loki wasn’t entirely certain it would work. The window of time was very short, and the Tesseract did have a mind of its own, of sorts. If it decided it didn’t want to work with him, or even just took time to think about doing so -
It was a better option than the ship, though, which was a great deal further away. And Surtur certainly wasn’t wasting time rising out of the Eternal Flame in all his blazing, destructive, glory. The end of the world. Of Asgard, anyway. And here he was making it happen.
Didn’t quite manage it with Jotunheim. Second time’s the charm?
The trouble, it turned out, didn’t come from the Tesseract itself. It came from Surtur, half out of the flames, turning his head to look at Loki.
He really should not have waited to make sure the Eternal Flame worked as expected. That, in retrospect, had been his real mistake.
At least he hadn’t missed the ship in returning, though it wasn’t exactly a graceful landing; he crashed into the floor on what seemed like one of the lower levels and ended up sprawled on a grate. He thought he might have screamed. It was hard to say, given that when he blinked a substantial amount of time seemed to have passed.
He rolled to his side, just swallowing back a shout as blackened skin peeled away. He really did not want to look down; feeling the blisters on his face was enough and that was nothing to the hand he’d flung up to protect it.
Frost giants and fire giants. Not a good combination, as it turned out. Loki giggled a little, swallowed a few times, and tried to stand.
He made the mistake of putting his hand down to push himself up, and blacked out. When he came back around it was to the mildly horrifying sight of white finger bones gleaming through where burnt skin had sloughed away. “Marvelous,” he murmured, and put his head back down on the ship floor. He could feel the engines somewhere underneath, so at least they were moving, and he couldn’t hear any explosions.
Must have worked, then. Asgard was gone though her people still lived. Thor - one-eyed Thor, King Thor - would have his throne by now, whatever that throne looked like. Loki wondered vaguely what Thor would think had happened. Would he believe Loki dead in the conflagration? Or run off on his own?
He wondered if anyone would come down here anytime soon, or if he would just end up lying here like so much charred meat until infection set in. How very ignominious.
Loki sighed and closed his eyes. If he wasn’t going anywhere, he might as well stop trying to stay conscious.
“Is it dead?”
“Looks dead to me.”
Loki came around to someone poking him and groaned. He intended to swat them away but even moving his arm slightly made muscle scream in protest, locked tight. He hurt, almost everywhere, and he suspected the places he didn’t hurt were probably more of a problem.
For a moment, he half thought he was on Sanctuary; for another he thought he was hallucinating.
Right. Surtur. Hela. Asgard burning.
Him burning.
“I’m not dead,” he said. The poking stopped.
“Oh,” one of them said, sounding disappointed. “Almost?”
“No,” Loki said, and tried again to get up. It did not go well. He banged his head against the ground to make it through the waves of pain without howling.
“That doesn’t look good,” said the other one. Or at least he was fairly certain it was the other one. Their voices sounded strange, distorted, which might be an effect of those peculiar masks Sakaarans wore or might be something wrong with him.
Loki gritted his teeth. “Help me,” he said. There was a long pause, and what Loki thought might be some whispered debate. Loki’s mouth felt as dry as bone and he could feel himself shivering. That seemed bad, considering that he’d definitely been very, very burnt. “Norns, please,” he rasped.
“All right, all right,” one of them said. “If you insist.”
They weren’t gentle. When one of them grabbed onto his right arm to lever him up, Loki heard himself make a high pitched, extremely undignified noise before everything went entirely black. He drifted in a bit later to hear, “found him above the engine room” and in a slightly more familiar voice, “oh, I know who that is! Thor will probably want to know.”
Yes, Loki thought vaguely. Thor. That’s a good idea.
He was sick. One of those childhood fevers he’d gotten so often, except he wasn’t a child now. He couldn’t stop shivering, and for some reason someone had taken all of the blankets. Probably Thor, except Thor wouldn’t do that, not when Loki was sick. And wouldn’t Frigga have put them back by now?
He opened his eyes to slits and turned his head a little to the side.
Thor was sitting there. Except his hair was all shorn off and one of his eyes was gone. Presumably he wasn’t wearing an eye patch just for the hell of it, anyway.
“Thor?” Loki said. It came out as more of a slur, though: Thorrrr.
“Mmhm,” Thor said. He did not look pleased.
“Where’s…” He trailed off, frowning. The word escaped him for several beats. “Blanket? Cold.” Very coherent. Marvelously done.
“That’s ‘feverish’,” Thor told him. “You idiot.”
Loki frowned at him, perplexed. “What did I do?”
Thor shook his head. “I thought you’d died. Again.”
Oh, Loki thought, memory bleeding back in. Right. That.
“Well,” he managed to croak. “I didn’t.”
“No,” Thor said, and now he sounded downright angry. “Apparently instead, by the looks of it, you just gave Surtur a hug.”
“I did not,” Loki objected. “There was…no hug involved. Just a bit of…trouble with timing.” Thor’s glare was somehow worse even with half the eyes to do it with. Loki blinked at him a couple of times. “You really seem…very upset about this. I’m…touched.”
Thor’s jaw shifted and he stood up. “You’re lucky the Sakaarans found you,” he said. “When Korg brought you to me you were a good way past half-dead.”
Loki blinked. “Oh,” he said. “How long has it been?”
“A week since the battle,” Thor said.
“Oh,” Loki said again. That was…a long while. Experimentally, he tried to lift one of his hands and found that bending his elbow made his skin do something…unpleasant.
He thought he might have fainted again. At any rate, when things cleared Thor was gone, which was disappointing.
Better get used to that, he thought a little unhappily. Things are going to change. Thor is a king, now. Can’t be seen consorting with known traitors.
Even traitors who were also saviors of Asgard. That could probably still get messy. Asgard didn’t need messy, not right now.
Should have stayed where you were, lying in the guts of this ship, Loki thought morosely, but he didn’t really think that was the best option.
He fell back asleep quickly. A lot of his dreams featured Surtur chasing him and trying to give him a hug. Loki blamed Thor.
He woke up next to a large, green face looming over him. “Puny god,” it said, and Loki heard himself make an embarrassing “eep” noise.
“Hulk,” Thor said, “don’t tease. At least not right now.”
“Huh,” the Hulk said, but he moved back. Loki scowled at nothing. His head still felt full of fuzz, but at least this time he remembered immediately where he was.
“Don’t you have kingly things to do?” He asked, trying to decide if he dared try to move, or look at himself.
“Asgard doesn’t need constant minding,” Thor said. Loki wondered if he imagined the silent unlike you. “You look better.”
“That’s a relief,” Loki mumbled. He did try lifting his hand again, remembering how it had looked before and a little worried about what he’d see.
Well. He had his skin back, though it still looked raw. Felt it, too. He almost missed the nerve damage.
“Were you trying to get yourself killed?” Thor asked, an unexpected edge in his voice. Loki blinked.
“No, actually,” he said. “I seem to have outgrown that particular urge. Lately.”
Thor made a peculiar sort of strangled sound. “Puny god bothering you?” The Hulk said, with a disconcerting amount of menace.
“That’s one word for it,” muttered Thor.
“Please don’t unleash your - green friend on me,” Loki said, and if he meant it to sound dry it came out a little too plaintive.
“Hulk does what Hulk wants,” he said, belligerent. “Not what Thor wants.”
Oh, Loki almost said, so he gets his name. That seemed like a rather stupid thing to be worried about at the moment. His mind didn’t seem to be working quite right in general. “Did you drug me?” He asked Thor.
“Not personally,” Thor said. He still didn’t sound happy. “But yes, you are drugged. Of necessity. You would not be happy without it.”
“I’m not happy with it,” Loki complained, knowing he sounded petulant and not quite able to care. Thor sighed, but something in his expression softened a little.
“The healers say you are mending well.”
“That’s good,” Loki said. He frowned at Thor. “You have an eyepatch now. That’s new.”
Thor’s lips twisted a little. “You said that the last three times you woke up, too.”
Loki blinked. “Whoops.”
Thor shook his head. “Go back to sleep.”
Loki closed his eyes obediently, though he frowned when he realized he’d done it.
“I thought you were dead,” Thor said quietly. “You didn’t come back, and I thought you’d been swallowed by the flames. I thought I had sent you there for it to happen, believing that you would manage to slip away, as you always have. I hoped that maybe you had found some way out and just gone your own way, but I saw no ship escaping.”
Loki opened one eye. “Did you mourn?” He said, with a small and crooked smile.
“Yes,” Thor said. The simplicity of his answer took Loki off guard. “Whatever your faults, Loki, you are the last family that I have.”
“Oh,” Loki said in a small voice. “Well.”
Thor patted the bed next to his shoulder, which was probably a good thing despite how much Loki wanted something more direct. ‘Healing well’ was not ‘healed.’ He turned, and Loki closed his eye again.
“You said I could be more,” he blurted out. Thor was quiet for so long that Loki thought he’d left.
“I did,” he said.
Loki swallowed. His throat still felt a little raw, scorched from hot air. “I’d like to try.”
More silence. Loki’s stomach sank a little.
“You came back,” Thor said finally. “That’s a start.”