Title: The Song of Silver Bells
Author: Yami no Kaiba
Fandom: Thor
Rating: PG
Pairing: Thor/Loki, Mjölnir/Loki
Length: 1,355 words

Summary: Only he can hear the song.
Disclaimers: Marvel Comics and any of its subsidiaries/partners owns the personality-characters and the conceptual universe they exist in. (Mythology of course owns the characters themselves.) I'm borrowing them for light fun and fan purposes that have nothing to do with earning anything.
Note: Filled for norsekink. Original posting and prompt here.

*---*---*Then---*---*

His brother is a fool.

Sitting in the rafters of Father's personal armory, Loki looked down to where Sif and Balder were laughing at Thor's struggling attempts to lift Father's legendary hammer. Mjölnir did not budge from the stone table it rested on, even as Thor's impressive muscled arms bulged at the effort.

The Hammer was enchanted - powerfully so. In its forging it had been given power, but in its naming it had been given life and soul. Loki could hear its mystical song day in and out. It practically shouted at the crack of each dawn when the sun touched it's eastern face, singing the tales of victory, of battles fought while it was held in Father's hand. And at night the shouting waned with the sun to a low lullaby, gently soothing all in the kingdom to sleep with its promise of protection to one and all.

And once every winter, when Father slept, it stopped singing to whisper its secret. In the coldest day of the Asgardian winter, Loki was told what he'd need to feel to lift Mjölnir and take it in hand.

It sung like clockwork, always there. Loki could not remember a day he could not hear that song. He'd asked once, if his brother could hear it, and at the surprised and worried face Thor had given, he'd known his brother's answer. It was a song only he, Loki, could hear. He thrilled to it every day, despite how distracting it could be when he studied, for it made him feel special, knowing without having to try that his fated weapon was waiting for him.

A fresh bout of laughter came from below, as Thor tugged so strongly on Mjölnir's haft that his sweaty palms slipped and he fell backwards off the stone table and onto the floor.

Loki smiled as Mjölnir's silvery laugh blanketed the conversation of the other's. Green eyes tracked their departure from the hall, waiting for the solid oak door to close before he slipped off the rafter to fall lightly with a whispered spell to the stone table below.

One lithe, pale hand reached out to stroke the haft, soothing the sound of silver bells to a whispered hopeful question.

"No, Mjölnir," he ruefully replied, shaking his head and stilling his hand. "While I love and covet you with all my heart, we both know that's not the love needed to hold you."

Let his brother struggle for vain glory in hopes of being his idea of 'worthy' their father had promised was all that was needed to wield Mjölnir. His brother was too self-centered and arrogant, too focused on being a strong warrior of the Realm bathed in glory and adulation of his deeds, to find what was needed to hold Loki's lady.

*---*---Now---*---*

His brother was going to die, and all of the Nine Realms were going to die with him.

And for once, it wasn't Loki's fault at all - which was why the giant light monster with it's enormous girth and seven eyes, that fed upon the magics of life and death itself, was going to win and kill his brother and all of the Worlds protected under the branches of Yggdrasil.

His brother, whom Loki hated with all his heart, was going to die because he was stupid and attacked a magic eating monster with a magic powered hammer.

Now Mjölnir lay feet away from his hand while the monster's own brought his brother nearer and nearer to its maw, her silvery song broken and cracked as her life had been swallowed in strips at every ever-weakening blow his brother had struck.

Staggering forward those last few steps, Loki fell to his knees without grace to lay his hand once more on the weapon that his brother had stolen from him all those years ago.

She laughed brokenly under his touch in a disjointed jangle. He tugged and could not lift her.

"Mjölnir, please," he begged, tugging again. "If only this once, if only to protect the Nine Realms from their destruction, let me lift you!"

No response, only empty silence, a cessation of a silver song he'd heard all his life. His throat tightened, as despair sunk his heart like a stone in his chest.

Lowering his head, closing his eyes in the defeat he'd been struggling lifetimes to deny all that had trespassed on his person, Loki bit his lip to the quick and opened his heart to the truth. "For Thor," he breathed, hand tightening on Mjölnir's haft.

A crack of thunder. A bolt of green lightning that dazzled all.

Gale-force winds tugged his black hair about in every direction. Hail dashed against the barren earth. Clouds and eyes the muddy green of sudden hail storms opened to the sight of his brother's, his heart's only love besides himself, life in mortal danger.

The song of silver bells rang out as he raised his hand clutching Mjölnir to the green clouds above, for the first time in eons heard by all.

Mjölnir sang of love and life, of jealousy and spite, of darkness and betrayal, of madness and despair. She sang all this and more, of hope and redemption, of a future yet uncharted.

And Loki sang with her - and struck the creature with magic that went deeper into the fabric of reality then life or death.

He struck with the magic that had formed the universe itself, the magic of creation.

The world blanked white.

*---*---After---*---*

Thor's eyes fluttered open, to be greeted by worried green.

Loki couldn't help but smile down on his brother as relief swept through him like a bubbly wine. "Thor," he whispered. Then relief was quickly chased away by frustration as he punched his brother in the arm. "You stupid brother!"

Thor yipped in surprise, hand automatically traveling to cradle the flesh he could already tell would bruise. "Loki?"

"What in Hel's name were you thinking, using an enchanted weapon against a magic eating monster?!"

Thor blinked, quizzical, "I... it ate magic?"

Loki, aghast, clenched his teeth to keep the snide remarks unsaid at his brother's obvious confusion. "You," he strangled out, and pointed an imperious finger in Thor's face, "will never, ever go into battle like that again without me, do you hear me Thor?"

"...Loki, I'm a grown warrior - I'll go into battle when and how I please."

Loki punched him in the other arm. "Never. Again. You call me, Brother. Even when we are at odds, you call me." Loki growled low in his throat, then stood up from the crouch he'd been maintaining at Thor's side. He reached an opened hand down in offering, "Now get up - your mortal toys are pounding on my shields, and I'm sure you'd scold me something fierce if I electrocuted one of them."

Thor, after a little hesitation, took the offered hand for the tug upwards. Once on his own two feet, and patting himself down, Thor looked about the blasted ground with a furrowed brow before turning once more to Loki. "Where's Mjölnir?"

Loki felt his mouth thin, as his eyes looked over Thor's shoulder. "Mjölnir is no more, Thor. The magics that sustained her were drained too far by your reckless tactics. She was dying when I picked her up while you were unconscious. All I was able to do was use her one last time."

At Thor's dawning look of realization and the beginnings of devastated loss in those blue eyes, Loki sighed.

Reaching behind his back, Loki unhooked a hammer the same shape and heft of Mjölnir from his belt and brought it forth to offer to Thor. "This is Björgleif, Thor. Born of Mjölnir's body and the creature's magics."

Thor sucked in a startled breath, eyes trailing up in disbelief to Loki's own. A shaking hand reached out and gripped the hammer's haft.

Loki felt the prickle of tears and the beginnings of a weary smile stretch his lips, as the sound of tiny silver bells sang a wondrous song of discovery.

--Fin

Author Notes:
1) The meteorological explanation for the green tint to a hailing storm is that there is a different level of light refraction through ice than water, which causes the color difference between a hail storm and a rain storm.
2) If I did it right - which I might not have - Björg*leif should mean something like "to save, to help, to deliver out of need or danger * one who comes after, heir"

*---*---Later---*---*

Odin, cheeks red with rage, pushes himself off his throne. "BOY! What's this I hear of you killing my precious Mjölnir!"

Thor tries not to cringe - it's been centuries since Father was so incensed he forgot Thor's name. "Well, ah... I didn't mean to." he turns without thought to look at Loki, an appeal for help in his eyes.

Loki's eyes dance as he attempts to stifle giggles behind his hand. Right, of *course* Thor's brother would find this too amusing to intervene.

"You. Didn't. Mean. To."

Oh, so not good - Odin had never repeated anything in chopped up words before. And noticing that the skin around Father's uncovered eye was twitching in spasms didn't leave him to feel comforted at all.

As the mortals said, he was doomed. "Verily, Father."

The butt of Gungnir pounded the dais before the spear head was pointed in his direction. "You're not to leave Asgard again until Loki has pounded some sense of strategy and tactics into you!"

In the face of Father's anger, Thor reigned in his groan of dismay. Just the thought of the piles of books from the last time his tutors had tried doing the same thing in his youth made him flinch.

Another glance at Loki's shaking form, and his tensed muscles relaxed minutely as a weak smile attempted to break through his attempt to look contrite and chastised.

It would all be worth it, just for this moment of cheer on his brother's face.