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The prisons on Asgard are old. Very old. They were built a long time ago and hold many secrets. Asgard has locked away many in its long history, once they’d decided that sending all their convicts to the headman was a bit too bloody. And once they’d seen a few too many of the condemned be brought back by twisted black magic, enchanted by their once-princess in her attempt to seize power.
Executions lost their shine. Now they were reserved only for the worst crimes and the rest disappeared into the dungeons to live out their lives.
Some were eventually released, once they’d proven their but many died down there. Some by the ravage of time, some by the hands of others (a particularly common occurrence in the crowded holding cells), some by their own as the years of isolation facing them become too great a burden to bear.
Where there is so much death, mingled with so much magic, there are bound to be ghosts.
“You’re to be eternally confined here-”
“I gathered that, thanks ever so much,” he snaps at the guard. Loki’s blood still boils after his confrontation with Odin. He is tense and snappish as the cowed guards remove his chains, keeping his gaze low. It is as if they are afraid, despite the intricate spells woven throughout the prison that thoroughly bind his power. It would be far too much work for Loki to murder the guard with his bare hands and it would yield him nothing except more severe punishments. And he’s honestly too tired to even contemplate it. He’s not had proper time to rest since…
“There are fresh clothes, a bath, through there,” the captain says. He’s supervising, watching as the younger guards unlock the chains. “Though I don’t really give a damn if you let yourself rot in filth. Food will be provided twice a day. It’s sufficient, though probably not what you’re used to, your highness,” The meaningless title spits from his lips like an insult. “Not what you used to get, not like up there.” Loki says nothing. He keeps his gaze straight forward, making sure nothing shows on his face. The guard finishes with the chains, exchanges a strange glance with the captain. “Do you require any medical assistance?”
“No,” Loki answers. They must have seen a glimpse of the lingering bruises, maybe the scars. They exchange another glance but say nothing else about it. “Get out,” he commands and surprisingly they listen, departing his cell without a backward glance.
He watches them as they set the shields on the cell, the shimmering walls that seal him in.
Then they are gone and Loki is entirely alone, which he will more or less be for the rest of his long life if Odin is to be believed. Four thousand years is a long time. Loki is not about to surrender those years, not fully. Eventually, he’ll start to plot, start to think of some way to end his confinement.
But for now, the exhaustion, built up over weeks, months of unrelenting action, takes precedence.
For a few moments, he does nothing but sits with the weight of where he is. He is wrapped in protective spells, trapped in a cocoon of magic and security. As much as it suffocates him, it’s also protection. Loki feels a certain sense of relief. Thanos would never stand against Asgard’s full might, would never waste the resources to come after him here. He, for the first time in over a year, is truly out of the Titan’s reach. Beyond his control, and his vengeance.
He’s not sure how he feels about that.
He manages to bathe, to change out of his bloody, sweaty clothes - how long had he been wearing them? he can’t even remember - and into the clean clothes left for him. They’re his own, he recognizes. He wonders who picked them out of his drawers, if his rooms are still intact, so far above in the palace. They probably are. What else would they do with them? They’re likely considered cursed now. Odin wouldn’t force a guest to stay in his disgraced son’s old bedroom, with its taint. He pictures his room sitting empty, gathering dust.
He falls asleep, on top of the covers, still unable to make sense of the confused mess of emotions inside of him.
Loki wakes disoriented, confused. The white walls and soft glowing lamps make no sense to him for a minute, then a moment later he remembers it all, passing through the portal, his failure on Midgard, condemned forever in the prison beneath Asgard. His cell comes back into clearer focus, the soft golden lighting and darkened halls beyond. He flops back down on the mattress, and crawls under the covers, pulling them over his head.
Hours pass. Probably. Loki doesn’t bother to check. Days could pass, he wouldn’t know. He’s still too exhausted to care. He sleeps on.
He is woken by a whisper of magic.
“Did you really have to make it more difficult?”
Loki lowers the covers to look at his mother. “You’re not really here.”
Frigga folds her arms. “Of course not. Look at me, I’m transparent.” She is. He can see straight through her, to the chair at the other side of the cell and beyond to the fires burning in the hall. The guards pass by with barely a glance at him. “They won’t be able to see me.”
“So they shall just report that I’m talking to myself and that will just further confirm in everyone’s heads that I am insane.”
“You didn’t help yourself on that account, with that performance,” she says darkly. “Though I know you’re not mad.”
He sighs. “I am.”
“Loki-”
“You’re wasting your time. And I thought I was never to see you again? Odin made that quite clear.”
“Ah yes, to me as well, but well…I don’t particularly care.” She waltzes over to the bed and sits. The covers don’t indent at all. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
The breath catches in his throat. “No.”
“Loki. I thought you were dead. We all thought you had…” She stops, calming herself. “My dear, I know there must be more-”
“Leave me alone,” he says, turning his back.
“You can tell me anything.”
“Leave me alone.”
Frigga sighs. “I will return.” Her voice is already fading. “Get some rest, my love.”
Loki sleeps again. Still. He does little else for the first few weeks he is imprisoned. He had underestimated how exhausted his body and mind had been. He sleeps like the dead, barely noticing the cycles of time around him, only waking to eat the meals brought to him and when Frigga comes to visit. He gathers the strength to bathe every few days, too vain to let himself languish in filth, as the guard had implied. (And the feeling of being unwashed reminds him of a period of time that he would rather bury down deep.)
Despite his best efforts to forget, he dreams of horrible things. The Void. The new darkness he found beyond. He wakes choking on his own screams, with his hands raised in front of him to conjure a spell. There’s no magic behind it, there can’t be, with the bindings woven through the prisons, but the words are on his lips. It takes him a long time to calm down from these nightmares, pacing back and forth around his cell and willing himself to believe that those trials are behind him.
Frigga visits again and again, and brings books, and only sometimes brings up the topic of what happened to bring him to attacking Midgard.
“I just want to know-”
“Why? You just want to know why?” Loki snarls. “Is that what you were going to say. What if there is no why? What if there is no higher reason, what if I’m nothing more than the monster they all say.”
“You are not a monster.”
“But I am a villain.”
Frigga huffs. “Loki. I am trying to understand.”
“For the last time, there is nothing to understand. Leave me alone.”
Later than night, Loki wakes from his nightmares as usual. The fires beyond the walls of the cell provide just a flicker of soft light.
There’s a shadow, silhouetted against the barrier.
Loki sits up. “Who’s there?” But it’s already gone. There’s the lingering presence of something, a trace of the shadow, but nothing more.
Loki doesn’t sleep much the rest of the night.
Frigga returns the next day, bearing more books.
“You know this one is a textbook, right?” He picks up a slim volume in the center. “A particularly dry one at that.”
“Well, you look tired, more than usual. I thought you might need something to help you sleep.” She smiles. “Really, I grabbed it by mistake, my apologies. But you do look more tired than usual. Are you all right?”
The last thing he needs is for his mother to start prying further into his mental and physical state with the same fortitude that she does with what happened after he fell from the bifrost. “I am fine,” he insists. “Why do you keep bringing these things? You think that you can bribe me into…into what exactly?”
“I’m not trying to bribe you.”
“I won’t tell you anything.”
Loki picks another fight to avoid the truth. He’s good at that: Avoiding the truth.
That night, when he’s just on the edge of sleep, he hears a sound. But this sound did not come from the hallways outside, it couldn’t be the patrolling guards. No, it came from inside his cell. A soft thump.
Loki opens his eyes. He sees nothing in the semi-darkness, not even a shadow this time. He listens closely, strains to hear anything, but there’s nothing. He closes his eyes again, lays down to face the wall. A minute of silence and then the soft thumping sound again. He surges up, furious.
“Who’s there?” he calls. There is still nothing, only the soft golden lights of his cell and the fires beyond. He waits a moment, eyes straining as he tries to make out anything in the dim light.
It’s the books. The small stack of books his mother had brought him. He gets up, watching as another book teeters at the top, then tips over onto the floor, seemingly by no hand at all. Loki approaches, frowning.
“Hello?” he calls again. The top book again lifts up and drops down on the pile with a soft thud.
Loki narrows his eyes. “I do not know who you are, or what you want, but you’d best leave before I’m forced to banish you.” He’s not sure he has the power within him now to banish the spirit but hopes the threat is enough. The book does it again, lifting up and dropping down. “Show your-”
The book flies across the cell, slamming hard into the opposite cell wall. The pile of books collapses and the subtle pressure of a presence vanishes.
Loki has never been afraid of ghosts, but now, in his cold and quiet cell, a chill travels down his spine.
“Fine,” he says to nothing. Then he turns and goes back to bed. It takes him a long time to fall asleep, but finally he does and sleeps late into the next day.
“How are you feeling?”
Loki opens his eyes. His mother’s shimmering form looks down at him.
“Your projections are getting stronger,” he says. “Working your way through Odin’s spells?”
“As you know, habitual passage through spells of shielding does make it easier each time,” she says, taking a turn around the room. “Though, you should know the spells intended to keep things in are far stronger than those designed to keep people out. You won’t find escape through magic.”
“Of course not,” Loki says, frowning. He hadn’t quite realized that and assumed his mother was finding it easier because of her familiarity with Asgard’s general protection spells. He hadn’t thought they might not be as strong. His thoughts drift to forces far outside their atmosphere…then to the strange things happening in his cell.
“What is it?”
“Nothing,” he snaps. For once, she lets it drop.
That night the sense of a presence returns. A shadow, vanishing before his eyes. Loki slowly gets out of bed to stand in the center of the cell.
“Show yourself,” he demands. “Stop this game and show yourself.” A book falls from the top of the pile, thudding onto the floor. Loki holds his ground. He fears no phantom but is not about to let it run amok in his cell night after night, disturbing his sleep. “This ends now,” he says quietly. “Show yourself.”
“It’s not a game, your highness,” the ghost’s voice whispers in his ear. “I thought a sorcerer of your reputation would know that.”
“Oh? And what do you think you know of my reputation?”
The ghost laughs. “I know all. The walls whisper your secrets to me.”
“Go haunt someone else. I am uninterested.”
“I think you will be.” The ghost's presence is fading. “I can tell you of Odin’s sins.”
That piques Loki’s interest. He says nothing as the ghost vanishes, but there is an unspoken invitation to return. He has faith he will see the ghost again.
The prisons do not perfectly follow the patterns of night and day. It is meant to disorient the prisoners, to keep them from understanding how long they had been imprisoned, or for even finding too much comfort and security in the regular cycle of the day. It also keeps them from coordinating with outside actors who might assist them in escape.
But Loki knows when it is night now. Because at night, the ghost appears. And Loki welcomes it.
Loki is waiting, patiently, when he feels the presence seep into his cell.
“Who are you? Why are you here?” Loki asks.
“I’ve haunted this prison for a long time. It’s more my home than yours.” The ghost’s voice is a whisper in his ear. Like it’s coming from behind him even though the shadow is before him. “I suppose it will be fully your home soon enough. You’ll be like me someday. Nothing but a shade.”
“Who are you?”
The ghost seems to laugh. “In time. For now, just know that I knew your father a long, long time ago.”
Loki’s nightmares get worse. It takes him longer to remember where he is when he wakes. It takes longer for the panic to leave him.
He begins to feel like there’s something twisted, sour, inside of him. A ball of malice in his chest. It dogs him all day and night, making him feel poisoned, sick. He picks at his food when it arrives and instead of picking fights with his mother, he gives her curt, monosyllabic answers, if he’s not ignoring her completely.
The spirit, on the other hand, is chatty.
Quickly, he begins to open up a bit. In his eerie whisper, he tells Loki of the other spirits in the prisons, of the guards and their covert movements and secrets. It appears that two of them are having an affair. Fascinating.
It’s all vaguely entertaining, as something to do. He doesn’t mind so much when the ghost appears to whisper to him in the dark. It’s better than silence. It’s better than the nightmares, and it’s better than fighting with his mother.
One night, a little while after the ghost had begun appearing with more regularity, Loki is laying on his side in bed, watching the ghost drift back and forth. Its form is more solid. There still aren’t clear features, but the shadow is more defined in a human shape.
“My name is Hakon.”
Loki had been on the edge of sleep and blinks to attention. “What?”
“You asked who am I, some time ago. I think I’m ready to answer.”
“Ah.”
“I knew the king once. We were actually quite close.”
Loki sits up carefully, watching the ghost. “Oh?” he says simply, to urge the spirit on.
“Yes. Odin and I were quite close once. Brothers in arms, when he was young. We were friends when he was crowned. And then it all fell apart. He betrayed me, locked me away down here for being so bold as to question his decisions. And perhaps,” The spirit’s features are becoming more clear. Its grin is feral, bloodthirsty. “I was equally guilty of betraying him.”
“Tell me more.”
Hakon does. None of it comes as entirely a surprise; his tales of his exploits with Odin are not unlike what was told to them as children, with added darker details of their conquests that had been excised for young audiences. There is something else he’s leaving out, something he’s talking around, and Loki waits patiently in the hopes that more secrets will be revealed. Secrets he can use.
Loki drinks up the tales greedily and that is his fatal mistake.
He begins to see the danger in the spirit. A warning sounds somewhere deep within his mind. He has spent too long indulging He wishes for access to his magic. A simple spirit like this could be banished with little effort. But he has no magic, not here, so he has to keep listening to the spirit.
Hakon finally speaks of the events leading up to imprisonment, though still frustratingly without any specificity. “I should have known Odin wouldn’t have taken well to the betrayal, not so soon after…” He turns and Loki can see the faintest smile on his face. “I was hoping he’d kill me. I was hoping for the axe so I could find my way to Hel. But no. Instead he locks me away, much like he locked you away. But I wasn’t given such luxuries as a comfortable bed, as proper food, secret visits. I was left in the dark, for centuries, left to plan my revenge. Even after I died, after I wasted away, I was still focused on revenge. Of course, my options became much more limited once I no longer had a body, my more refined plans had to be set aside. I’ll take what I can get now.”
“I confess, I have little idea how you would gain your revenge on Odin without a body-” The second it passes his lips, he realizes. The spirit has a body at its disposal. It’s clearly been getting more powerful while Loki has ignorantly been allowing him in. The warning bells chime with increased urgency. “What have you done?”
“I can’t believe it’s taken you so long to figure it out. Truly, I’m stunned. I would have expected more from one of Odin’s children. From Frigga’s pupil. Truly shocking. Though I suppose you’ve had quite a bit on your mind. Such darkness. Such pain. I’m sure it’s clouded your judgment, what you’ve been through.”
He rifles through spells to banish spirits, all of them useless without his magic. He considers calling for the guard but knows they will not be able to even see the threat. They will think him mad. His mother would be able to help but she would have to come in person, not as a shade, and she would never make it in time. Not with how quickly Loki feels power concentrating on the long-dead Hakon.
Loki gets to his feet, shaking. “How dare you-”
“It’s like kindling for a fire. You know that. You should have realized I was a threat a long time ago. It’s too late now. Far too late.”
Loki surges forward, enraged, forgetting his lack of magic, his entrapment in the small cell. He thinks only to defend himself, but the ghost moves faster. A cold touch to his forehead and he falls back, blacking out before he hits the floor.
He dreams of New York. Of being high up on the top of a tower, watching chaos below. There’s something he should be doing, some part of the plan he’s supposed to trigger, but instead, he stands on the tower, watching the Chitauri fight. He looks up at the sky. It’s so blue and bright, not a single cloud visible. Such a peaceful day for such death and chaos below. The wind is a chill on his face.
He comes to slowly, flat on his back. He cannot move. There is a weight pressing down on him, heavy on his lips. So heavy, it’s making it hard to breathe.
Loki blinks his eyes open to his destroyed cell. He fights to move and still finds himself pinned down.
“Let me go,” he snarls.
“No.” The ghost comes further into view, a more solid shadow on top of him. “You’re going to let me in.”
“Fuck off.”
“Such coarse language. What does Asgard teach its young about manners these days? You’ll let me in. You’ve no choice. Just like you didn’t notice me feeding off your power, you didn’t notice how you’ve been slowly letting me in for days.”
The ghost’s face feels very close to his. Loki turns his head to the side and breathes in hard through his nose.
“Let me in, little witch,” the ghost whispers. “I just want to have a body back, just for a little while.” Loki can feel his probing power now. He tries to shield his mind but nothing he does works. His body stiffens as the struggle against his will and the ghost’s begins. “Let me in,” the ghost almost coos.
“No,” Loki snarls again. His body spasms, head dropping violently back onto the floor.
He doesn’t know how long the struggle goes on. The ghost worms its way into him, tracing along every nerve ending. He groans, trying desperately to fight back. Hakon simply hushes him and when Loki opens his mouth to protest again, the ghost slips inside, slithering down his throat. Loki gags, chokes. Spasms. His feet scrabble against the floor as the ghost invades him, filling him up.
The fight leaves him slowly. His struggles grow weaker. He grows tired, so tired.
That’s it, the ghost says again, this time inside his head. Loki’s eyes roll back in his head. He sees only whiteness, a haze across his vision. With a final shudder, he goes limp and still.
The ghost blinks his eyes open and rises gingerly.
“Been so long since I had a body,” he says to himself as he runs his fingers over his torso.
You’re still a body in a cage, Loki hisses in his head. What is your plan? You won’t escape from the dungeons.
“I don’t need to escape,” he says. “Not yet. I need to speak to Odin.”
Odin will not come here.
“You’re right about that, but Frigga will come, will she not? She has for weeks.” Loki says nothing to that, remaining silent and taciturn. “I’m sure I can convince her to summon Odin for me. We just have to wait. I can have patience. After this long…I can have a little bit more patience.”
- - -
Frigga goes to a private corner of her workroom and closes her eyes. She’s worn a path through the magics, one she carefully reinforces and shields on her way down to the prisons. She’s careful to make sure she’s not leaving any gaps for any escape attempts.
She finds her son still in bed. The cell around him is in disarray. Furniture upended, the books she brought torn and scattered. She frowns. Even as a prisoner, Loki was tidy. He liked his space neat.
She approaches the bed, rests a hand on Loki’s shoulder. He wakes with a start, even at the faint trace of her touch.
“Are you all right?”
“I am fine,” Loki snaps, rising. He keeps his back to her.
“What happened?”
He doesn’t respond for a moment, clearly collecting his thoughts. “I lost my temper,” he settles on.
Temper is something she understands. Though Loki has always tended to blow cold in his fury. Destruction of property was more Thor’s game than his. But it is true that much has changed. An outburst would not be a surprise. But there still seems like there is something off about the whole situation.
Frigga purses her lips. With just a touch of magic, small enough that Loki wouldn’t detect it around the spells already soaked into the stone of the prison, she reaches out to feel her son’s mood.
There’s a whisper. A whisper of something old. The heavy, dingy weight of a soul far, far older than her youngest son. Something else is here.
She smiles. “Well. You’ll have to pick everything up yourself. I’m certainly not going to help.” She passes her hand through the bedpost, playing it off like a joke. Loki - or rather, the something else - plainly relaxes.
Much later that night, she returns. The cell is still in disarray, the books and bed linens strewn across the floor. Loki's asleep on his side, curled around himself. The expression on his face is pained. He twitches, shuddering, as if trapped in a dream. Frigga reaches out a hand, hovering over her son’s shoulder. She uses just a touch of magic to reach out again, still trying to keep under the radar. She feels the older soul, turns it over in her mind. It’s stronger now, clearer. Another spirit, slipped under her son’s skin.
Anger. Indignation. She spends another moment quietly examining the state of the possession. It’s thorough, worked over days. How could I have missed this? The binding spells on the cell must have muted the presence of the spirit, her senses dulled by distance and distraction. She had to hold her own spellcraft together to even appear in the prisons; it hadn’t left much concentration to notice such a subtle spirit. And Loki had, of course, never mentioned it. Nothing to be done about it now; she just needed to figure out how to get the spirit out. As tempted as she is to furiously banish it here and now - she knows she cannot. This possession was too complete. Such a violent exorcism would either fail or kill the host - an unacceptable outcome. Something more complicated was in order.
Loki - the spirit - stirs and she takes that as her queue to leave. Frigga breaks her illusionary form and opens her eyes in her physical body, looking at her own walls.
She turns on her heel and goes to find her husband.
“Husband,” Frigga announces herself at Odin’s door.
Odin had just been about to retire to bed. The steely tones in his wife’s voice tell him that bed is likely far off now. “Yes?”
“You know I visit our younger son.”
Odin sighs heavily. He does. He’s known for quite some time that she has flaunted his explicit command, and he has also known better than to challenge her. “And you know how that vexes me.”
“I do,” Frigga acknowledges. Her expression turns grave. “As much as it vexes you, you now need to know: something is seriously wrong.”
Odin listens to her account without emotion, keeping himself calm and collected. “A presence, you say? You use such words to avoid saying what you really believe - a ghost in the prisons.”
Frigga nods tightly. “Yes. A ghost.”
“And you believe that a ghost is possessing Loki?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“I’m not sure, but there are plenty of candidates. It is old. Very old. Powerful, for a spirit. The possession is very thorough.”
“Well.” Odin stands, begins to pace. “You are truly certain?”
“Yes.”
Odin is still processing. He wants to laugh at his wife’s assertion, wants to declare it all impossible and foolish, that such a thing could happen in the heavily warded prison cells - but he has always trusted Frigga in all matters of magic and witchcraft and the look in her eyes tells him she is quite serious. “Fine. What do you propose doing?”
Frigga smiles, a fierce glint in her eye. It reminds Odin of “An exorcism, of course.”
When Frigga leaves Odin, she then goes to find Thor. She feels strangely calm, even though a dark spirit is currently holding her youngest child prisoner. It is perhaps because she has a plan now, she has an outlet for her protective outrage.
Thor is newly returned, barely cleaned up from the journey. He smiles at her entrance, opening his mouth to greet her, but before he can say anything, she interrupts him.
“I need your help.”
Thor closes his mouth, covering his surprise. “Of course, anything, mother-”
“It concerns your brother.”
The easy smile falls from his face. “If you’ve come to try and convince me-”
“Your brother has apparently fallen prey to a wayward ghost haunting the prisons and become possessed by said ghost. I need your help to perform an exorcism.”
This is a dire situation. Very serious. The look on Thor’s face is quite funny.
It took some convincing, to get him here. Thor still doesn’t quite believe his mother, though he knows that she is their greatest sorceress. But she also may be blinded by grief, by a mother’s love. Perhaps what she sees as possession is only the madness that he had witnessed on the bifrost, then on Midgard. Perhaps it was just the darkness that had consumed him when he sought the throne and fell into the void, and Frigga is only now seeing it.
She hadn’t even argued with him that point when he brought it up. Just raised an eyebrow at him and waited patiently until he agreed to come and help her with her scheme.
And so that’s how Thor finds himself in the one place in Asgard he vowed never to go. The fires in the hall cast long shadows. The prisoners in the common cells jeer as he passes, their voices fading as he walks down the hall, towards a brightly lit private cell flanked by guards at the end of the hall. He dismisses the guards with a nod.
“Loki.”
His brother’s head snaps up, in a way that’s slightly unlike him, but Thor instantly dismisses the thought as his mother’s paranoia getting to him. He still does not believe her assertion, even as he agreed to play a part in this exorcism. He assumes that she will be proven wrong and finally accept that the Loki she raised will never return, once she sees that there is no ‘possession’ going on.
Thor feels his own stab of grief as Loki turns, his familiar pale features for a moment looking just like the Loki he once knew. Then his lips press into a stern line and his eyes grow cold.
“So you finally deign to visit your younger brother, the one whom you locked away down in this pit.”
Well, Loki certainly sounds like himself.
“I came at the request of Mother,” Thor says. “Who worries for you.”
“Oh?” Loki’s brow raises, a flicker of uncertainty. “Worries for me? Whatever for?” Thor glances around the cell, and Loki catches him looking. “Really. Even while imprisoned for all eternity, my mother still takes issue with the state of my chambers.”
“It’s out of character, you must admit.” Loki’s apartments have always been cluttered, yes. But this level of disorganization, no. Each object always had its place. And is that a smear of blood…
“You yourself keep saying that I have…irreparably changed. That the brother you knew is dead,” Loki snaps.
Thor had become a bit suspicious at the state of his chambers, but that suspicion falters. “True. The brother I once knew…he did not return from the Void.”
Loki’s gaze remains cold and even. “So you have given him up for dead? Even when I stand before you?”
Thor hesitates. It’s easier to claim Loki is dead when he cannot look in his eyes. “Yes,” he forces himself to say. He reminds himself of the bite of the dagger the last time he extended an olive branch.
“So why did you come, then, Thor?” Loki spits. “To see your handiwork? To gloat, perhaps? To gawk at an animal in a cage.”
“I came at Mother’s request, as I said, to assuage her concerns, I now see this is pointless…” He turns to go.
“Thor.” Frigga snaps from where she is hidden in the shadows. “A moment longer, please-”
Still stung, impatient, frustrated, Thor turns back to the cell, ready for Loki to prod him further, but Loki’s expression falters. He shudders, raising a trembling hand to his face.
Thor frowns. “Loki?”
Loki suddenly falls to his knees. “Thor, you fool, you fucking fool.” The cold contempt is gone from his voice. “You fucking fool, help me.”
Thor cannot hide his shock, frozen in place at the change, but Frigga moves quickly, sweeping from the shadows and using a spelled key she produces from her skirts to allow them into the cell.
“Quickly, Thor, bind him.”
“You don’t have much time,” Loki chokes out. “I cannot suppress him much longer. I need…help-”
“You were right,” Thor gapes. “I cannot believe it, you were right.”
“Of course I was,” Frigga says. “Quickly. Come. You need to help me hold him down.” She hands him thick cords that she conjures from thin air. Even to Thor’s untrained senses, they are soaked in power, woven with binding spells.
Loki doesn’t even put up a perfunctory resistance. His eyes are closed tight and he breathes slowly and evenly, like he is in deep concentration, or suppressing pain. Probably both.
Thor quickly binds Loki’s wrists one at a time to the bedposts as he kneels on the floor. He barely finishes tightening the final knot before Loki shudders again, and something about him subtly shifts.
“You will regret this,” the spirit possessing his brother says calmly. It still sounds just like him and yet not. “I was planning on letting him fade away quietly once I was done with this body, but I don’t think I will make it so easy or quick after all.”
“Who are you?” Thor growls. “How dare you-”
“Odin will know me,” the ghost in his brother’s form says. “You may know of me, Queen Frigga, though we’ve not met.”
“I am uninterested in your riddles,” Frigga says coolly. “I have narrowed down the list of suspects in the last few hours. You are a traitor to Asgard, then. An…old advisor to the king, I assume? Perhaps one who participated in a rebellion?”
“One who served our true lady.”
“Ah,” Frigga says. “Hakon.”
“You’re quite clever.”
“There are a limited number of deceased traitors with the sort of power to carry something like this off. And even less who would reference…her.”
“I did not betray Asgard. Odin did that himself when he turned away from the true path.” Loki - Hakon - smiles, the grin stretching his face into a mockery of amusement. “Oh, and I’ve seen into your son’s mind. He betrayed Asgard far, far worse than I - or even Odin himself - ever did. Far worse than even you know, thunderer. Of course, it wasn’t precisely his fault, but still, he has most certainly brought more doom to your doorstep than even I.”
“I don’t know what you think-”
“Hush, Thor,” Frigga commands.
“What now, Vanir witch? Going to attempt an exorcism? Do you still have it in you, your majesty?”
“I do,” Frigga says calmly and then her magic explodes around them. Thor is momentarily blinded by the force of it. He only has raw, untrained magic of his own, but even he can appreciate the terrifying strength of his mother’s power.
It stops, leaving Hakon gasping. “You can’t banish me, woman! Your son let me in. Let me feed off his power.” He laughs mockingly. “For days, I bore my way into his body. You should have trained him better, witch - ah!” His speech turns into a cry as Frigga attempts the exorcism again.
“You have failed!”
It is failing. It’s not working - Frigga tries a third time, straining with all her might. It seems to Thor as though the spirit has only gone stronger. He watches with horror as the magic fades a third time, the bonds strain nearly to the breaking point. He rushes forward, ready to hold him down, to reinforce the bonds, but Frigga stops him.
“Don’t.”
“Ceding defeat already, witch?” Hakon gasps. “Face it. This body is mine.”
Surprisingly, fury fills him. A protective instinct he thought was long dead. Thor starts towards him, pulling out of Frigga’s grip. “I will not let you have my brother-”
“Thor!” Frigga says harshly. “Trust me,” Frigga pulls harder on his arm. “We need to fall back.”
Loki - or rather, the spirit possessing him - nearly breaks the cord binding one wrist. He laughs, a more ragged sound than any Thor has ever heard his brother make.
As they make their retreat Thor is still stunned by how wrong he had been to doubt his mother. And he’s left wondering what more he could be wrong about. The comment about Loki betraying Asgard sticks with him.
The worry drops off his mother’s face when they’re around the bend, smoothing into calm determination. “We’ll wait here. It will be over soon.”
Thor stops short, failing to understand her abrupt change in mood. “What? What do you mean? Mother, we have failed, do you mean to leave Loki to that…spirit?” This was all madness.
Frigga just smiles. “Trust us, my son.”
Odin makes his way into the prisons without haste. He knows Hakon will be waiting for him. He steps into the destroyed cell, carefully picking his way over broken furniture. Hakon looks up, ceasing his efforts to tear through the cords binding him to the bed frame.
“Finally.” Hakon grins in Loki’s body. “You’ve grown old.”
“Indeed I have. You’ve grown bitter. More than when I last saw you.” Odin stops a few paces from his prisoner. “What do you want, Hakon?”
“You know what I want.”
“Something about revenge, I expect.”
“Revenge, yes. And I want to die. I want to be free of this trap, I want to go to Hel so I can-”
“There is nothing trapping you here but yourself, Hakon. You’ve long known that and yet you cling to the walls of this prison, to the bones of your own prisoners.”
“Or perhaps I will remain in this body a bit longer. You clearly care not for this prisoner that you once claimed as your son.” Odin says nothing, pacing in a semi-circle. “But you do. I know you too well, my king. I know when you’re using harshness and rage to mask your true feelings. So I do have a powerful hostage.”
“I cannot allow you to do this. I should have banished you long ago when I first realized your spirit had clung like mold to the walls. I thought you were harmless - that you would eventually fade, or let go.”
“And then you locked away your son. A perilous mistake on your part, king. A powerful sorcerer, by his own right. One who is angry, and in pain, and willing to listen to an old man spinning tales. He never even knew what was happening until it was far too late.”
“You will let him go, Hakon. You will let my son go.”
“So you claim him again as your son? I meant what I said to your wife,” Hakon cackles. “Your son betrayed you worse than I ever could. He let secrets go to the most perilous enemy. Thanos is at the door, king, the Mad Titan knocks at the door and you have been blind to your own doom!”
The threads, all the little hints, weave together. Frigga had been insisting for a long time that there must have been some force behind Loki’s vanishing and reappearance, even Thor had alluded to it. There had been stirrings, in the darkest parts of the universe. He should have seen it. In his anger, he had refused. Another failure.
He holds himself together, staying grim and composed. “If you will not go of your own accord, I will banish you, spirit.”
“You can’t. All the pain wrapped up in this body, it’s better than any anchor to a body, even you cannot banish me alone, All-Father. ”
“No,” Odin says softly. “No, you’re right, I cannot do it alone.”
The spirit of his own friend narrows his eyes warily. “I’ll kill this form. I’ll do it, and you’ll be down another child-”
The bonds tear and Hakon surges to his feet, lunges towards him, hands extended like claws. Odin removes the masking illusion covering his staff and swings it in front of him, gathering all his magic to banish the ghost. Frigga had laid the foundations for the exorcism, he merely has to trace over her work, fueling it with his own anger at his old friend, his own protectiveness over his son. There is an inhuman shrieking sound as the light grows and grows, blinding him-
The bright light of the power fades, leaving Odin feeling drained and weary from the expenditure. He leans heavily on his staff as the cell comes back into full view. Loki keeps his feet for a moment, breathing hard and looking straight at Odin with clear, shocked eyes. Then he wavers and collapses.
Odin doesn’t move fast enough to keep Loki from falling hard to his knees but does manage to make it to him before he pitches forward. He tosses the staff aside, letting Loki lean heavily on his shoulders.
“He’s gone,” Loki gasps, shuddering. That much is clear. The dark presence has vanished, leaving behind nothing but exhaustion.
Odin nods. “Obliterated. His soul’s fate is for the Norns to decide.” Loki shudders violently again and without even thinking of it, Odin finds himself comforting him. He rubs his back in a soothing circle, hushing him. “You are…you’re safe now.” The words are pulled from him by a paternal instinct that will never quite go away. Shame, for his blindness both to the spirit’s slow invasion and the Titan’s, follows in its wake. “You’re safe.”
Loki shakes his head, tears filling his eyes. “No. He told the truth.” His breath hitches. “I have betrayed Asgard. To him.” He turns towards Odin with wide eyes that are agonizingly young. “I owe him a great debt now. He will come to collect.”
Odin knows the rumors of the Mad Titan well. Too well. This situation is dire, far more dire than the ghost of Hakon reappearing. But still, he shakes his head. “We will protect you. I will protect you.”
Loki tries to pull away. Odin doesn’t know what else to do but let him. He struggles to get to his feet, stumbles towards the bed to lean on a bedpost.
Odin rises as well, feeling old and weary and entirely inadequate. He should go summon Frigga. He’s long had no idea how to deal with his sons, that much is certain. His mind is already turning towards the practical contingencies for the Titan’s return when he knows he should say or do something to comfort his child.
His child whose body and soul had been wrung out by the ghost.
His child who had likely been tortured by the Titan for months - the full year? - while they had no idea he was screaming in the darkness.
Loki’s shoulders shake. He trembles.
“We will deal with Thanos,” Odin says firmly. He reaches out to him, brushing his shoulder. Loki shies violently away and Odin recoils. “It will be all right,” he says quietly. “We will deal with the Titan, I swear it.” Loki shudders. “I…I will send in your mother.”
Odin turns to leave but hesitates a moment more. “Loki. I am…I am sorry. I did not mean…” He sighs wearily. “I was very angry. And I should have…I should have done so much of it differently. We…will talk later. Truly this time. I will listen. I have made many mistakes.”
Loki doesn’t turn around. But he nods. It might be a start.
Frigga returns soon after Odin leaves, rushing into the room in a storm of relief and worried apologies. Loki barely registers her words as more than a quiet, steady comfort. She helps him back to bed, sits with him until he falls wearily into unconsciousness.
Loki sleeps for a long time. When he wakes, she is still there, sitting in a chair and reading a book.
“I suppose you’re going to say that I should have told you.”
“No. I wasn’t going to say that.” She sets the book aside. “I do wish you had told me, but I understand why you did not.”
“I made a grave magical error. I didn’t even notice when he began his work to possess me.”
“Oh, Loki. It wasn’t your fault. The spirit was able to bore in through cracks that we - that I should have seen. I am sorry.” Her eyes are glistening with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”
“What are we going to do? About the Titan?” Loki smiles and it hurts. “I owe him a considerable debt.”
“That remains to be seen. You must rest first, recover your strength. There will be time for you to tell us what we can. And then we will face this new challenge together. All of us. Thor has already begun sounding the warning across the Nine Realms, but he said he would return as soon as he could, if you will see him.” She reaches forward and wraps her hand around his arm. “I’m so, so sorry.”
He returns the gesture, folding his cold hand over hers. They’ve got a long way to go but for the first time since he stood in the vault and felt his world crumble, Loki feels like he might have the will to walk it.