Valhalla was never silent. Even in the coldest hours of night, when the golden braziers burned low and the mead horns were empty, a faint murmur lingered under the high-arched ceiling, the whisper of wind through a dead forest. It was the echo of warriors retelling their deaths to one another, of shields clashing in remembered glory, of ghosts drinking to battles they would fight again come morning.
Loki sat alone at the far end of a long oak table. The benches around him were full of men and women in Armor, faces flushed from endless drink, voices hoarse from songs of slaughter, but none looked his way. He was a figure both part of the hall and apart from it, as though the shadows themselves were his only true companions the true definition of lonely.
His cup sat untouched. He was not here for drink, nor for the hollow comfort of the Einherjar's laughter. He was here for the memories, those unbidden and unwelcome ghosts that always found him when Valhalla grew too loud.
And tonight, they came bearing Gabriel's face.
Gabriel had been innocent, if truth be told. Even Loki could admit that now, though he had tried, oh, how he had tried, to paint the archangel as just another betrayer in a long list of them. Gabriel had not left because he was bored, nor because Loki's company had lost its charm. The truth was heavier. The war had been nearing, factions were already forming, and Heaven, once a single boundless realm, was proof enough of the coming fracture.
Nine layers. That was how it stood now. Once, the angels had roamed freely between them, like starlight drifting between clouds. Now? Boundaries had hardened into walls. The higher the layer, the closer to the Throne, and the fewer who could pass. Gabriel and his siblings, the Archangels, still carried the rare privilege of moving across all layers. But for the rest, the sky was closing in.
The mortal realms were forbidden entirely.
Azaizel had tried once..... well that would be a story of another time Loki thought, that could wait for another time. Not even the Einherjar's thirst for war-stories deserved that tale tonight.
Gabriel had been needed at home. Desperately. And those moments when Loki had caught him staring into space, when Loki's pride had twisted the silence into rejection, those had been the archangel looking not away, but upward, into the vast lattice of Heaven. Every glance had strained him, dimmed the bright flame in his eyes. That dimming was not neglect, it was cost which Loki took for boredom.
Loki's fingers tightened around the cup. They had been kindred spirits, he and Gabriel, in ways few could see. Each had siblings who outshone them in the eyes of their fathers.
For Loki, there had been Thor, the golden warrior, all thunder and triumph. Thor was Odin's son by Gaea, the Earth herself. A child born of union between sky and soil, draped in prophecy from birth. And then Baldr, radiant, flawless Baldr, firstborn of Frigg, Odin's most beloved wife. Odin's love for Frigg had eclipsed all else, and so to appease her for the birth of Thor, he doted on her son more than any other.
Loki, son of Farbauti by Laufey the Queen of frost-giants of Legends yet raised in Odin's house, he had watched it all from the shadows. He had been more talented than any of Odin's sons when it came to magic, craft, and cunning. More adaptable, more imaginative, more dangerous. But his gifts were never celebrated as Thor's strength was, nor as Baldr's beauty. To Odin, such talents were tools, useful, but suspect. Tools to be wielded, then locked away.
So Loki had been third in his father's regard. Not because he lacked worth, but because worth was measured in ways he could not match without ceasing to be himself. And for Loki, that was the deepest wound: to be unmatched, yet unloved.
Gabriel had understood that. Perhaps more than anyone else.
In the High Choir, Gabriel had Michael, the unshakable shield, Heaven's general, and Lucifer, the morning star, radiant and terrible in his perfection. Between them, Gabriel was the quiet one, the messenger, the one who moved unseen while others claimed the glory. He, too, had known what it was to live under shadows so bright they burned this in fact was why he neglected the core pillar of his aspect to wander around looking to collect all lost truths, wisdoms and researching all kinds of magics, all in the hopes that someday he would be on the spot light like Lucifer, reliable like Michael.
And that, perhaps, was why their friendship had taken root so easily. No pretence. No need to explain why silence was sometimes safer than speech. No surprise when a jest turned bitter, or when a victory tasted hollow.
Loki remembered the last night they had spoken. Not the night Gabriel left, not physically, but mentally and emotionally . No, this was earlier, when the war's scent was still far but growing stronger.
They had sat on the steps outside Valhalla's great gates, looking out over a plain washed in silver moonlight. Gabriel had been quieter than usual, gaze tilted toward a sky Loki could not see.
"You're somewhere else," Loki had said.
Gabriel had smiled faintly. "Always."
"you have grown tired of my company, and its time to leave me behind." it was hard not to miss the self mocking tone in his words as though to say 'what did i expect, i am a tool to everyone'.
The smile had faded. "If I leave," Gabriel had said, "it will not be because I tire of you."
"You take me for a fool i see" Loki had murmured, though his voice lacked the usual venom.
Gabriel had not looked away from the heavens. "I don't want to make promises I can't keep. Not to you."
That had been the closest Loki would get to farewell. The next time he had sought the archangel, Gabriel had grown distant and shortly after he left, drawn back into the spiral of his family's feud. And Loki, for all his cunning, could not follow or more accurately he resented that Gab had found it beneath him to the seek help of a mere trickster like him.
The braziers flared in the hall, dragging Loki back to the present. A warrior across the table laughed too loudly, spilling mead. A skald in the corner plucked a harp with fingers clumsy from drink. The warmth of Valhalla pressed in, heavy, almost suffocating.
Challenges had never daunted Loki, not when he had been cast into Odin's court as an outsider, not when Thor's shadow loomed over every hall, not when the Nine Heavens themselves began to fracture. He could stand against the contempt of gods, the suspicion of kings, the hatred of mortals. But this? This absence? This slow, gnawing erosion of something rare and unspoken? That was the sort of trial no trickster could outwit or maybe he was just too broken to outwit it.
He rose from the bench, the scrape of wood lost in the din. He left the cup untouched.
Outside, the air was sharp, crisp with the scent of snow on the wind. The night sky stretched above Valhalla like a vast black canvas stitched with silver stars. Loki walked the perimeter of the hall, boots crunching over frost-hardened ground, until he reached the old stone wall overlooking the valley.
From here, he could almost imagine seeing what Gabriel had once looked for, the distant shimmer of Heaven's borders, the glow of its higher layers. He imagined the archangel's eyes dimming as he stared too long into that light, and for the first time in years, Loki felt the echo of that dimming in himself.
He spoke aloud, though no one stood near. "You should have stayed."
The words were not an accusation. Not entirely. More like a fragment of truth, tossed into the cold, to see if it would vanish or echo back.
It did not echo it had too much resentment to do so.
Valhalla had a way of swallowing grief, of muffling it under the endless rhythm of feast and battle. Loki had thought it might do the same for this. But Gabriel's absence was not like other losses. It was not a sword-thrust, clean and final. It was a splinter, small, buried deep, impossible to dig out without tearing something vital.
Perhaps Gabriel had meant to return after the war. Loki could not bring himself to believe that. The wound in his heart would not let him, he needed a target for his hate and Gab would be that outlet.
The wind shifted, carrying with it the faintest trace of something not of Valhalla, ozone and incense, the scent of a realm far above. Loki inhaled sharply. For a heartbeat, he thought perhaps....
No. Just memory playing tricks.
He turned from the wall, pulling his cloak tighter, and made his way back toward the hall. The night's chill lingered on his skin, but inside, a different cold remained.
Valhalla would wake soon enough. The warriors would rise, eager for their daily deaths. The skalds would sing, the mead would flow, and Loki would play his part: the sly word, the well-placed jest, the cunning that set friend against friend in harmless mischief. He would be unfazed, as he had always been. That was what they expected but from today they would release that Loki was Gone.
But somewhere, in the high, unreachable layers of Heaven, Gabriel would walk among his own kind, eyes perhaps still dimmed by the cost of seeing too much. And neither of them would speak of what had been left unsaid.