ÉNOUEMENT

HARBINGER

BALDR IS RUIN and he is cursed to always remember.

The fates were cruel in choosing his path, he thinks. His name means shining day but he beckons darkness. He was his parents' golden child but cost them everything.

His first death was the harbinger of Ragnarok and every death after has been equally devastating.

He is gifted in dance and song, and so weaves tales of pain and forewarning in his performances. His take on Odile won him first place in his school's talent show and earned him endless praise. The shards of glass that pierce his heart each time he takes the stage are almost enough to make him stop, to shout into the bleary-eyed crowd what he is, and what he will bring upon them.

Almost.

Each time he is reborn he clings to the hope that this time it will be different.

He is always disappointed.

He is sixteen now, born in the age of glass screens and glazed eyes. He finds no joy in their music or their dance, but he clings to it because it is all he has. He misses home.

Loki does not speak to him. He catches them watching, sometimes, green eyes murky and unknowable. Sigyn offers him a smile each time she passes him, but stays by Loki's side. Baldr longs for his own wife's embrace.

She was one of the lucky ones. She accomplished her soul's duty in her first life, when Asgard was yet golden.

So Baldr searches for his purpose alone.

If his duty were destruction he would have passed into the heavens long ago, and this knowledge is all that keeps him sane.

"Hey, Baldr!"

He startles and turns to face the person who has called his name.

It's Anna, eyes alight and cheeks flushed. She's the dance team captain and one of the brightest people he knows. She's just gotten out of class, it seems, backpack slung over her shoulder and folder tucked under her arm.

"Hey, Anna," he greets. "What's up?"

"You're coming to the wings place with us after the performance, right?" Anna asks. "I know you don't have a car so I was wondering if you needed a ride."

Baldr bites his lip. "You know how I feel about being out with people."

He used to love making merry in his father's hall. He thrilled in the mead, the laughter, the joy of good company.

No longer.

Anna frowns. "It'll be the dance team. That's it. And even if something happens, we've been friends long enough that I know how to help with your anxiety attacks, yeah?"

He doesn't respond.

She hesitates. "Right?"

He recognizes the tightness around her eyes. He has seen it a thousand times before in the people he meets in each life.

I am about to give up, it says. I am about to stop trying.

Baldr never blames them. His burdens are nearly too heavy for him to bear, and he would not ask innocent souls to lighten the load.

"Next time," he lies, and darts down the hall before Anna can say anything else.

He learned his lesson long ago.

The first life after the fall, he was born in Denmark, close to home but not nearly close enough. He had a mother, a father, and two brothers.

On his fifth birthday, he found his mother swaying from a clothesline that had been strung up on a tree, indigo bruises on her neck. His father followed shortly after, murdered by thieves. He never knew what became of his brothers, because he drowned at fourteen, wrapping weights around his wrists and plunging into the depths, gulping water and praying for it to be quick.

Each time the deaths come quicker. He made it to sixty, once. A woman radiant in looks but aching with the sorrow of those who had loved her and lost their lives. Baldr had warned them, but the pleas had fallen on deaf ears.

One day soon, he thinks, he will slip in a moment of weakness. Anna's innocent intentions will lure him into that car, and he will laugh and forget himself just long enough for the curse to rear its head. The car will flip, or burst into flames, and he will have stolen more souls before their time.

On his way out the school doors he catches sight of Loki, pale and beautiful as they always are. Baldr feels a pang of loneliness, and his hands twitch toward them. Hello, his heart says. I have missed you.

What he would give to laugh with his sibling again, when jokes were still jokes.

Baldr almost opens his mouth to greet them. He imagines those emerald eyes going wide and filling with hope. Hope like he hasn't seen in Loki since they were children. Perhaps the little god would grant him a smile, a real one. Not the ugly, twisted ones they had worn in their final days.

He had always loved making Loki smile.

The memory of a poison spear in his heart brings him back to himself, and he rushes past without a word.

The Liesmith cannot hope. That is their vice. This truly is a different world, for Baldr to have forgotten even that. Loki is, like everything else, something to leave in the past.

In his fourth life, he married a man with eyes that glistened like crystals and a laugh that reminded him of Frigg. It helped, for a while, to help him forget the pain of his wife. It ended as it always did, and he's forgotten his lover's name. Even now, though, Baldr can't forget those eyes. Eyes that bulged out of their sockets when  they'd become trapped under their fishing boat, drowning slowly.

Baldr hopes that once his soul's purpose is complete, his memories will be taken too. He knows that if he enters Valhalla knowing all that he does, he will never be able to look upon the face of his wife again. Too much fear lurks there now, and Baldr can no longer think of love without pain.

He is the golden god, and those who get too close will burn.