the waste land

claricechiarasorcha:

meghaltow:

Can we just take a second

to appreciate

the fact that

Thor

has Loki’s horn motif

engraved

in his vambraces?

A sign to commemorate a fallen comrade/brother in arms/friend. If you notice in Lord of the Rings, Aragorn took Boromir’s vambraces after he died, and proceeded to wear them for the remainder of the series.

THIS IS GREAT YOU GUYS, OKAY?

Oh goddamit reblogging again in half an hour because FEELS and FIC and OH MY GOD CLARICE WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING.

With no body to consign to the waters of Asgard’s cradling sea, the ceremonies of mourning and memory can never be truly complete. Loki has fallen from the edge of the realm, but he had not done so laid in the longboat of his forefathers and forebears – whether they were so in name or in blood. He had not been accompanied on his way by offering and sacrifice, and for that Thor knows his brother’s ever-restless spirit will not lie still: even now, even when he most needs the peace he perhaps never knew in life, in his elder brother’s shadow.

When Thor lays down his own head in the lengthening evening he remembers the eyes: wide and weeping above the gaping tear in reality itself. And then, too, he remembers his fingers. Long and clever, held steady by the carved gold of his vambraces, letting go of the Allfather’s staff. All promises made upon Gungnir are binding unto forever. And Loki had let go. In that, Thor himself feels he himself might never know peace. He feels perhaps it is only fair, only just, only what he deserves.

It is in the small hours after the feast of Loki’s last farewell that he comes to him, that small and stout form. There is sorrow in that truth; until the rainbow bridge is repaired, the kaleidoscope turned back to blazing life, this master artisan will not be able to return to Svartálfaheimr except by the dark ways that cannot be easily risked with all paths so darkened and disturbed by the loss of the Bifröst.

But the tale of Loki’s true part in that has not been told; it aches instead in the heart of father and son, and the dwarf is little other than deferent as he moves forward to offer his condolences to the crown prince. He is distant cousin to Brokkr, Thor knows, but the debt owed has been repaid. And one will not speak ill of the unquiet dead.

“I would honour your fallen brother,” he rasps into the silence, Asgard a glittering starscape before them. “I would give you a gift to accept in his stead.”

“I am undeserving of such gifts. They should have been given over to Loki himself upon his last journey.”

Thor keeps his eyes turned ahead and so does not see; still, when the blacksmith turns his head, Thor imagines his dark eyes shine like obsidian rendered glittering and smooth by the pressure of heat and ages. “If they will not accompany him, my lord, let allow him to always accompany you.”

Two turns of the moon later, they are laid in his hands: shining and smooth, the curve of horn and memory. In that, he can remember the curve of Loki’s lips, both in false smile and real. Some do battle, others do tricks, he had said, all those days ago.

But he had never thought they would do either without the other.

The gifted vambraces strap tight, strong shield over forearm and wrist. Tightening his fingers about Mjölnir, Thor drives his muscles to first flex, then relax; they move with calm ease beneath the weight and potency and protection of his brother’s memory. His lips move in something not quite a smile, more a promise given over to the inevitability of eternity.

“I always will fight, for you.”

The great moon has barely waned a quarter when the Allfather’s summons come to tell Thor that now there there shall be deeper truth in those words than he had ever dared hoped for. And he tightens his fingers about Mjölnir’s trembling haft, and prays for the strength to gift Loki the peace he so deserves to know at last.