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Loki wakes- no, that isn’t the right word. Loki is yanked into existence, screaming loud enough to wake the gods, eyes shuttered against the too-bright Midgardian light. Loki’s body is what humans call female; it is tiny and weak and utterly defenceless against the world it has been thrust into.
Thor is born a few years later, and Loki (morgana, that is what this body is called, morgana) knows him instantly, even with his mortal shell.
morgana knows him, because for the first time since she drew breath, she does not feel alone.
~
they grow up together, like siblings, laughing and squabbling together, and it is not unlike a childhood of forever ago, a childhood they have only hazy images of which fade with every passing day, until they are barely children still and arthur, Thor, arthur says, “do you remember?” and morgana just shakes her head, the uncomfortable weight of something forgotten sitting heavy on her shoulders.
they crawl into bed together, because they do not yet know what it means to sleep next to another person; they are only desperately longing for something they have never known but can almost find, curled together in each others’ arms, an innocent embrace.
~
the second time they share a bed is far from innocent. arthur is fifteen and he has killed his first man, watched him bleed at the tip of his sword and the light dim in his eyes, and he cannot stop shaking. morgana holds him tight and strokes his hair and whispers platitudes she knows he doesn’t hear and when that doesn’t work, she kisses him.
it is something she remembers – the warmth of his mouth against hers, the slide of their bodies, the way he sobs when she sinks down onto him – but it is not something she knows, and afterwards, when she has taken him to pieces underneath her and he is quiet and at peace, she squeezes her eyes shut and reaches for the memories that are almost within her grasp, but when she looks, she only has arthur.
~
they grow older and older, but as well as growing up they grow apart and something in morgana aches, the part of her that whispers in the night of another world, a better world, of a tree whose branches reach into the heavens, of the palaces of the gods drenched in blood, and morgana always wakes weeping, a sharp, bitter longing clawing at her throat.
and then everything is shattered and reformed and shattered all over again and morgana burns with a fierce, righteous hatred that is familiar and not all at once, for this man she called- calls- will always call brother.
~
the battle, when it comes, is a disappointment. it is only death and death and yet more death and it does nothing to dispel the ache in morgana’s chest, to break the chains which have restrained her from the day she was born.
the battle, when it comes, is entirely predictable, and morgana’s skin prickles with a familiarity she is long used to but still no closer to understanding.
and then she runs arthur through with her blade and watches him choke on his own blood with an empty kind of satisfaction that lasts until he reaches up with almighty, inhuman strength and stabs her in the heart.
they crumple together on the ground, a parody of an embrace, their foreheads almost touching.
“arthur,” morgana manages, but the first syllable comes out mangled and only the second is really audible over the noise of the battle, and shocked recognition brightens arthur’s eyes.
“You,” he whispers, like he can scarcely believe it, and his face cracks in a smile she hasn’t seen in far, far too long. he presses that smile into her mouth, her cheek, her neck, his ragged breath tickling her skin.
“You,” she echoes, and smiles back at him as the horn is blown and the world is split asunder.