Chapter Text
He wondered if this was Laufey’s revenge.
He wondered if Jotunheim’s King was laughing at him from Helheim’s dank halls, triumphant at last. After over a thousand years, his vengeance had finally come to pass.
All it had taken was Odin’s one moment of mercy - a senseless, unthinking, foolish mercy - in a place where none should have been given.
He wondered if Laufey had known the misery and destruction it would bring. He wondered if there was a reason Laufey had left it to die.
He wondered if Laufey had wanted Odin to pick it up.
And Odin had been taken in by the cries and carried the snake into his home.
How Odin had been a fool.
He should have seen it. All those times he had caught Laufey’s face in the child’s, from the curves of his cheek to his smirk, he should have realized. All the mischief, the lies, the trickery, how they had only grown as the child aged – it should have been proof. Yet Odin had let the affection in his heart overrule those misgivings, those worries. And he had let himself be lulled into complacency, believing the child as harmless as any other.
Now see where his weakness had brought him, all these years later: crumpled at the foot of his own throne, Gungnir fallen from his hand, as weak in body now as he had been in heart.
He could hear Gungnir raised off the floor, hear the soft footsteps as they made their way up the stairs. Then he could see it. He could see Laufey’s vengeance, staring down at him with blank, impassive eyes – eyes Odin had gifted it, eyes Odin had let deceive him time and time again.
Laufey’s spawn stared with its false eyes as Odin felt his body giving way to the Odinsleep.
His final Sleep.
He knew he would not wake from it this time.
But he didn’t have to be a seer to know what would happen. With Odin’s spear, Laufey’s spawn would take Odin’s throne, wear Odin’s face, command Odin’s people. And when Thor returned, it would fulfill its father’s vengeance and wipe the line of Odin from the Nine.
He wondered if Laufey thought it worth his life and those lost to the Bifrost’s power, just to see Odin - to see Asgard – brought so low.
Odin stared up at the snake he had cradled to his breast, the vengeance wrapped in Ás skin that he had coddled for a thousand years. With all the strength he could muster in his last breath, he snarled, “Laufey would be proud.”
As his eye fought to stay open, he saw bright green eyes widened, lips part, body flinch back. He thought he saw hurt cross its false face. A hurt he thought he had seen so long ago in Asgard’s vault, when Odin’s heart had been soft.
But of course, that hurt was a lie.
It should be pleased. It was Laufey’s retribution. Laufey’s wrath. Laufey’s hatred and destruction and revenge given form in skin and bones.
It could not hurt.
Odin could not hurt it anymore.
Odin closed his eye.