Work Text:
Seeing any new prisoners struggle for their freedom was nothing new to Loki. He barely batted an eyelash as he watched the newest prisoner: a young woman, kick and scream as the guards threw her into the cell across from him. Once the guards left, the young woman sat up on the floor with her legs crossed and her expression incredibly sullen. Now that Loki could get a closer look at the woman, he saw that she had [hair length/style] [color] hair, and she wore a black trench coat, a white button-down shirt, jeans, and military boots. The girl looked up at Loki, her expression holding no emotion or acknowledgment whatsoever. She then stood up and collapsed onto what served as her bed (basically a cot) and stared up at the ceiling.
Several days passed, and the woman didn’t speak a single word in that time. That changed, however, when Loki heard a familiar voice coming from the woman’s cell:
“How have you been faring, [Name]?”
Loki immediately turned around to face the cell across from him, and saw none other than Frigga standing before the young woman–whose name, evidently, was [Name].
[Name’s] blank expression didn’t change. “Well, considering that I’ve been wrongfully accused of murder and treason, my best friend betrayed me, I'm a falsely convicted fugitive, and not to mention that I’m sentenced to eternal boredom in this tiny box...I’d say that I’m faring quite well.”
Frigga let a sad smile cross her face. “You’ve come a long way since your days of living on the streets of Vanaheim.”
“If you consider being wrongfully imprisoned and ostracized by my loved ones ‘a long way’, then I’m fully inclined to agree with you,” [Name] countered. “But no one cares if I’m right, and at this point, neither do I.”
After a moment of thoughtful silence, Frigga cupped [Name’s] cheek in her hand. “I knew your mother, before I married Odin,” she recalled fondly, before looking upon [Name] with the same fondness on her face. “She was just as intelligent and unwavering in her beliefs as you are now.”
“If you knew her, then you should know fully well why I can’t exactly feel any daughterly connection to her at the moment, All-Mother .”
Frigga’s expression hardened. “She was your mother. Do not take things such as a mother’s love for granted.”
[Name] barked out a harsh laugh. “I’m an orphan, remember? I can’t take such a thing for granted if I’ve never felt it in the first place,” she snapped, before gesturing to Loki in the cell across from her. “At least your son over there had the luxury of knowing what a mother’s love felt like, even if it wasn’t from his birth mother.”
To end the conversation, [Name] swiped her hand through Frigga, and the holographic projection slowly melted away until it had vanished entirely. Less than a minute after, a guard arrived and tossed a square-ish backpack into [Name’s] cell, simply stating, “A gift from the All-Mother.”
[Name’s] brow furrowed as she opened the backpack, and her eyes widened as she pulled out various notebooks and writing tools. “These are my...” She sighed and put all of the notebooks and writing stuff back into her backpack except for a leather-bound notebook and a pencil and eraser, opening it and immediately beginning to write in it.
For a few days after that, [Name] also began receiving books and small amenities from Frigga, but none of this concerned Loki too greatly until [Name] spoke to him for the first time:
“Can you offer me some constructive criticism?”
Loki turned around to face [Name], who was holding up her green notebook and looking at him expectantly. “If you say yes, I’m just going to read it to you, and you can interrupt me anytime you want to comment on something.”
Loki quirked an eyebrow. “And why should I do this for you?” he queried.
An irritated huff left [Name’s] lips. “I need a second opinion,” she answered simply. “I can tell you’re well-read, and the other inmates look like they want to murder everyone here, you and me included. This is a dungeon, after all.”
Loki gazed at her for one long moment, before sighing and gesturing with his hand for [Name] to begin. Her eyes brightened as she opened her notebook and began reading. As [Name] read from start to finish, Loki unwittingly found himself enraptured by her voice: how she gave each character their own individual personality and how she described different scenes and moments in her story. He was so mesmerized by [Name’s] own “silver tongue”, that he forgot to offer any criticism on her story.
So when [Name] finally finished, she mirrored Loki’s raised eyebrow from before. “You didn’t make a single comment,” she noticed. “My writing can’t possibly be that good.”
“I liked your voice,” he stated simply.
Both of [Name’s] eyebrows went up. “Um...thank you?”
“You’re not used to getting compliments?” Loki inquired.
“Well...” [Name] gestured to herself. “I’m not exactly what you’d call ‘striking’. Kind of plain, really. Not that it matters,” she added. “True beauty comes from within, as cliche as that sounds.”
“I suppose that statement wouldn’t apply to my situation, then,” Loki commented. “Far from it, actually.”
“You are on a life sentence,” [Name] pointed out. “But you’ll manage. You seem like the resourceful type.”
Loki nodded slightly, but then he said, “Tell me another story.”
“Wait, what?”
“Tell me another story,” he repeated. “As I said earlier, I enjoy listening to the sound of your voice.”
[Name] gazed at Loki thoughtfully, before standing up and saying, “Here’s a story from when I tried to rob an outdoor market in Alfheim. It was actually quite eventful, with rabid dogs and a strangely large amount of live chickens...”
From then on, the days of Loki and [Name] were no longer boring. More often than not, Loki would ask to be told a story, and [Name] would spin a story for him. Some of them were about real-life events, some were completely made up, ranging from stories about traversing sewer systems to fake legends about fantastic beasts, stories of foreign worlds and religions, and tales of morally grey heroes and villains with a code of honor. For two people living the life of prisoners, it was surprisingly nice.
One day, instead of asking for a story, Loki asked for something different.
“Why are you here?” he asked one day. “What did you do wrong?”
“You first,” [Name] retorted. “I’ve told you plenty about myself, whereas I know absolutely nothing about you, aside from the fact that you're the adoptive son of Frigga.”
Loki glared at her for a moment, before heaving a defeated sigh.
“I tried to conquer Midgard,” he finally responded. “I wanted a kingdom to rule, and I failed spectacularly.”
“Oh, people try to conquer Midgard all the time.”
Loki lifted his head to face [Name], who looked incredibly nonchalant about his response.
“They waged two world wars over it,” she informed him. “You're not the first one to try this sort of thing.”
“You're being remarkably casual about all this,” Loki observed.
“Try ‘jaded’,” [Name] corrected him. “I've seen a lot on my travels. It's very difficult to surprise me now.”
“What about you ?” he asked. “Why are you here?”
“Never miss a beat, do you,” [Name] muttered. “This is going to take a while,” she warned him.
“Take all the time you need,” Loki replied. “It's not as if we're leaving the dungeon anytime soon.”
“You're not wrong,” [Name] conceded. “Anyway, my best friend Cerise was the king's daughter, and she was very power-hungry. Even if she was incredibly close to the king, it wasn't enough for her. She wanted to rule.
“Cerise had an older brother named Alaric,” [Name] continued. “Naturally, this meant that he would inherit the throne instead of her. One day, a rumor spread that Cerise had killed the king. Initially I didn't believe it, but on the day before the coronation, Alaric showed up at my doorstep and basically confirmed that she did, and that he was going to sentence and execute her as soon as he was crowned king.
“However, on the day of Alaric’s would-be coronation, everyone discovered that he'd been killed, too. That meant Cerise was to become the queen. After she was crowned queen, she summoned me to the castle. Cerise knew that Alaric had told me about his plan to kill her, but I didn't know that she knew until much later. She claimed that I was the one who killed the former king and her brother, and that she'd sent guards to search my house for the murder weapon. And they found it: a bloody knife hidden under my bed.
“Cerise sentenced me to death, and I turned tail and ran, marking my new status as a runaway fugitive. I've been traveling between the Nine Worlds, evading the authorities, and committing smaller crimes–not murders, as I went, because if people thought I was a criminal, I might as well live up to the title. The Vanaheim authorities finally caught up with me, but decided to leave me at the mercy of the All-Father and toss me in here instead. The end.”
“So we've both been wronged at the hands of someone close to us and denied the justice we very much deserve,” Loki remarked. “Although your story is on a...much smaller scale than my own.”
“Well, I just wanted to clear my name of false charges, not conquer Midgard,” [Name] pointed out. “But like I said earlier, I don't really care. I've seen and lost too much to properly care about anything at this point.”
“If you're taking the time to indulge me with your life story and regale me with your adventures, then you must care about me to some degree,” Loki objected.
“Why do you care if I care about you?” [Name] asked suspiciously.
“Have you considered that I've begun to care about you to some degree, as well?”
[Name] blinked. She had not been expecting that. She'd merely thought that Loki only saw her as a way to cure his boredom. Then again, he could just be screwing with her.
“You're the god of lies. How do I trust you're telling the truth?” [Name] finally asked.
“I suppose you'll just have to wait until we're out of this dungeon,” he responded coolly. “As I am nowhere near the Casket of Ancient Winters or any Frost Giants, I'm afraid I can't do anything at the moment.”
“Wait, why do you need the Casket of Ancient Winters?” [Name] asked, her brow knitted in confusion.
Loki spread his arms grandly. “I am Loki Laufeyson: a Frost Giant abandoned at birth and taken in by Odin out of pity after the war between Asgard and Jotunheim.”
“And touching the Casket or another Frost Giant reveals the blue skin and red eyes?” [Name] guessed. Loki nodded, and [Name] shrugged. “Okay, I believe you.”
Loki raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You believe me. Just like that.”
“I do,” she replied simply. “It explains why you and the rest of your family look nothing alike, as well as why you hate Odin so much, aside from the fact that he never gave you the throne.”
After a moment of silence, Loki laughed. He actually laughed . It was very unnerving.
“I forget how perceptive you are, love,” he recalled once he finally stopped laughing like a maniac.
[Name] shrugged again. “What was it that Frigga told you? ‘You’re always so perceptive of everyone but yourself’?” She laughed slightly. “I guess she was always right about you.”
Loki’s lips curled up in a small smile. “Yes. Yes she was.”
Then came the news of Frigga’s death.
A guard came one day to Loki’s cell and told him something that [Name] couldn’t hear. The guard then came to [Name’s] cell and informed her that Frigga had been killed. Once the guard left, [Name] opened a book under the pretense of reading it, but she was just able to watch from over the top of the pages as Loki turned his back to her and used his magic to trash his cell.
Finally, after a few days, Loki suddenly asked her, “Tell me something beautiful. Please.”
[Name] looked up from her notebook to see Loki’s cell in chaos and himself in a state of total abandon. In other words: he was a complete mess.
[Name] let out a tired sigh and opened another one of her notebooks. She flipped a few pages until she found the one she was looking for. And then she began to sing:
“ Hush your cries, close your eyes,
Stay with me
Let's just dream
Quietly
Of what might be
Calm your fear
I'll be near
To you I'll cling
Rest my friend
Time can mend
Many things
I don't know the answers
Tomorrow's still unknown
But I can make this promise
You won't be alone... ”
When [Name] finally finished, she looked up to see Loki smiling sadly. “I told you that you had a beautiful voice, love,” he murmured.
After that, [Name] didn’t see or hear from Loki again for a very long time.
Roughly two years passed since Thor arrived and offered Loki vengeance for his mother’s death. Since then, [Name] had only heard bits and pieces of what had been happening outside of her cell. The Battle of Sokovia on Midgard, for one thing. [Name] had also gotten word of the impending threat that was Hela Odinsdottir and Ragnarok.
Subsequently, a man with a red cape suddenly opened a portal into her cell and told her, “I’m only doing this as a favor to someone else. I'm sick and tired of Asgardians.”
“I'm actually from Vanaheim,” [Name] corrected him.
He rolled his eyes and gestured to the portal, and [Name] scrambled to shove all of her current possessions into her backpack as fast as she could while the caped sorcerer waited patiently. [Name] finally finished packing, and with a reassuring nod from the sorcerer, she stepped through the portal. She suddenly found herself aboard a ship of sorts, populated by war-beaten Asgardians, Thor (who had an eyepatch? What happened while she was still in prison?!), and…
Loki.
When he caught sight of [Name], a genuine smile spread across his face as he crossed the ship and immediately wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace. [Name] slowly returned the hug and looped her arms around his neck, burying her face in the curve between his shoulder and neck. [Name's] eyes suddenly widened when she felt Loki’s warm breath on her ear:
“Welcome back, love.”