A Falling Bluebird

Hollow

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When Loki's eyes slowly cracked open, there was frost on his cheeks and warm fingers on his hand, voices murmuring softly in the background. He felt utterly spent, as if each emotion to ever exist in his body had been sucked out, leaving him hollow, but somehow in a good way. Almost peaceful.

He was vaguely aware that his body hurt. It was at a distance, through what had to be emotional exhaustion. Despite that, he felt rejuvenated compared to the bone-deep weariness remembered from just before falling asleep.

"Luke," Moth said in their soft voice and brown eyes came into view. "Do you feel better?"

"Define 'better'," He replied, but with none of the usual venom and slowly shifted himself into a sitting position, back leant against the wall. When he moved his arm, he winced and bit back a surprised yelp. Bringing the offending appendage to his face, he examined it. On his right hand, where his pinky finger should have been was a neatly bandaged stump. Adrenaline and the shock of seeing Thor alive must have stopped him from realising sooner.

A small fist came to rest on his shoulder and he made to shrug it off, but Hon Dör's voice stopped him. "At least you didn't lose the whole hand...?" She said, sounding almost nervous.

Loki snorted. "I can still fight, it's not important."

"Not important...?"

He glanced over at her cracked mask and felt his lips curl gently upwards. "Not important. I know a warrior, Týr, who lost his entire arm in battle and has yet to give up the sword."

"I do not want to go to your Nine Realms if we get out of here."

A laugh burst from his mouth and Loki bit it back, but couldn't control his smile. "Too crazy for you?"

"By far," Hon Dör replied, chuckling. "The Kursed? Racism? Amputation being normalised? No thank you."

"Then I hope you find a way to wherever it is you're from. And to your brother."

She hummed noncommittally. "Maybe not."

Moth glanced over at her from where they knelt, bandages still in hand and keen eyes scanning their patient for anything else that required tending. But now they were looking at Hon Dör, concern evident in the lines of their face. "Why?"

"I... Was Royalty. In Andromeda," She sighed, leant her head back against the wall. "One of the lesser families, from one of the lesser worlds. When the Mad Giant attacked and enslaved us, I rebelled."

Something about that name... But Hon Dör was speaking again with a heavy voice.

"I only made it worse. He slaughtered my people in retaliation for even the slightest indiscretion. Me and my brother, we fought Him, but were thrown into space. You know the rest."

"Why attack him? The small masked one?" Moth had a look close to awe on their face. "If you both fought against the Giant."

Hon Dör sighed and her head dipped forward again, until her chin rested on her chest. "My brother... He didn't rebel with me at first. If I had complied, then he believed his negotiations would have worked. That there would have been fewer deaths." Her thumbs twisted in her lap, looping each other. "I was... Angry, I think. If we had worked together from the start, then our home wouldn't have been enslaved at all." Then she laughed, a soft huff of breath. "How about you, Moth?"

"Me?"

"No, the wall." There was a smile behind that mask, Loki could hear it. A sad smile, trying to gloss over what she had shared. "You said something about a... Colony?"