Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 Desperation. 

A shaking finger rose in the stillness, reaching to the blood dripping down pale, bony shoulders. Fingers slipped in the hot damp there, and a body—pale as a damp-skinned creature bred for darkness—trembled: a bone-deep shudder against the pain.

It didn’t settle; it rattled, like a madman behind bars.  It gibbered, wild in the darkness.

Freshly bloodied fingers slid down slowly, passing from torn skin to bruised to unbroken.  A steadying inhale as long fingers fell to slide across the cold, rough stone he huddled on.  Ancient runes gleamed from cold red blood in the lightless void.

 It froze in the bones and clawed at his chest—a panicking beast, uncontrollable. How often it had driven him to the edge of that abyss himself—to howl, and never stop howling with the darkness, the filth, the pain, the agonies—

His lips would have moved with the runes as he drew them in blood, naming with a familiar tongue, but unbreakable threads of bewitched gold crossed in and out of the tender flesh—bruised and swollen with abuse.

He hadn’t thought, in the beginning—he hadn’t realized what punishment would be his due. He had fought against the thread as they’d struggled to hold him down—his voice a rising frenzy as the threads were pulled tight, his words cut off. Even once the words were gone, he’d snarled, ripping deeper cuts from where the needle had pierced. Those tears were deeper now, but he no longer fought the silence; silence was his listener; darkness, his watcher.

Red like finger paint against the sky, dripping. He couldn’t muster the strength to rise, so he drew lying on his side, his eyes shut—it was too dark to see anyway.

He’d found the spell in another millennia—another lifetime ago, in his idle wanderings, and he hadn’t thought of them in centuries. When he’d wondered, what it would be like . . . to be him.

He hadn’t known. Hadn’t known the depths to which he would be sent, hadn’t known what cruelty he would face. What abyss, reaching upwards with fingers of madness.  

He’d miscalculated the depths of their hate, the depth of their fear.  He’d miscalculated.

His magic had been bound, of course—the cuffs binding his crossed wrists held his power as surely as the threads bound his lips. He felt the drain of it in his very soul: he shivered with the constant pain of it, as if his very veins were constricting to strangle him from the inside out.  A never-ending drone beside the wounds of the flesh. 

He hadn’t known the depth of the darkness, so far down—deeper than the abyss. Because then—yes, even then—there had been some distant hope that help would come.

It never came.

Watching, as if in a fog, as Thor—his golden, shining not-brother—bound his wrists (his magic writhing under the restraints) and tongue (his words still fumbling, returning from that terrible prison of his own mind) and watching him with mournful eyes before turning away.  Loki had screamed and wept, but his cries hadn’t reached his throat, let alone his not-brother’s ears.

“A lesson, for far you’ve allowed yourself to fall. A punishment and a lesson for the death and cruelty you have unleashed.”  He thought he heard the All-Father’s voice in those words, though he could not remember them spoken.

And mother, embracing him.  “Everything the All-Father does is for a purpose.”

But that wasn’t then.  That wasn’t now.  No—his mother was but a silent shadow, clinging to his shoulders briefly, wordless and weeping.  Her hands burned on his frozen skin—he was too numb to move, too cold.  Lost in any icy mist. So tired. So cold.

The madness cackled out of the darkness with the echo of his mother's words—the laughter sounded only vaguely like his once had, twisted almost beyond recognition. In the distance, he thought he heard weeping.

Yes, a purpose. A purpose of muffled screams and streaming blood in the stead of a three-day banishment for the slaughter of hundreds.

Everything for a purpose.

It was a strange concept, to bind one’s magic. For an innate sorcerer such as he, magic was thought—naught but an illusion become reality, driven forward by the strength of one’s life force and will.

And desperation.

The hand returned to the fresh blood, coming away dripping towards the floor again.  Another rune.  Another.

And you have made me truly desperate. 

Finished, he raised his hand and breathed in as deep as he could, preparing himself for the backlash of energies as he drew what pieces of himself he could collect together.

Desperation. Filled with that last thrill of will—the fire cracking the frozen land, the panting panic breaking dazed insensibleness—he lashed out.  A flash like lightning blinded the blackened walls, shocking the place into silence. And there, deep alone in the darkness, Loki slumped against the runes, still as the dead.

Chapter Text

Loki gasped a breath as one who is half-drowned: sharp and desperate.

His eyes shot open, expecting darkness, and he immediately went still—staring at the gold-veined ceiling, cast with a soft amber glow from the early morning radiance.  The blankets had fallen down to his waist, but he wasn’t too cold, nor too warm despite the morning air against his bare chest. He didn’t move at first, didn’t blink—fearful that the vision would go away as he panted, fingers white as they clenched the blankets as if to keep him from tumbling into the air and disappearing entirely.

He knew this ceiling well, even after all these years.  Could trace the nonsensical patterns in the ceiling like a child watching clouds, following beasts and heroes and creatures caught ageless in the swirls.

That long-ago time felt impossibly distant, like the memories of a stranger: of padding his way down to Thor’s quarters once he’d moved from the nursery, at times panting with the anxiety of a still-clinging nightmare, at others hiding a grin at the thought of mischief and night adventures.  He didn’t know how often he’d fallen asleep beneath this very ceiling, curled next to his brother after whispering late into the hours of the night. It was decades later before those late-night visits slowed, and then vanished entirely.

But that was centuries ago. A lifetime ago, when he thought he may have known such concepts as love, and consideration, and Norns-cursed hope.

Had any of it been real at all?

His vision blurred, his eyes stinging from the strain of remaining open, and he blinked at last—two trembling drops leaking from their confines and tracing down cool tracks to his hairline. The darkness behind the lids was too long, and he blinked with rapidness driven by brief panic to clear his vision again.

The ceiling didn’t vanish.

The darkness didn’t close in. The pain didn’t return.

Loki brought a hand up to his face, scrubbing away shaming dampness though there was none to see. His fingers were too broad and thick, the palms too callused as they moved down to strangely-shaped lips.  But they trembled despite himself as they traced his slightly opened lips, and he gasped in a breath—a blessedly easy, bloodless breath—through his mouth as he felt no strings there—no thread, no blood, no pain.

If more tears fell then, he did not notice them.

Loki shuddered, his hand pressed against his lips, squeezing his eyes against the memories—but the darkness behind his lids held no respite, only screams.  He opened them again and, after taking a moment longer to collect himself, began to rise.

He reeled slightly, bringing a too-rough hand to his head.  It didn’t hurt, exactly, but he felt as if he didn’t quite fit the space between his ears.

Which made sense, considering the circumstances.

Loki rose slowly the rest of the way, bare feet settling down on the fur rug at the edge of the bed. He stepped forward to the mirror on the wall, staring.  Even expected, the sight was . . . somewhat of a shock.

He’d appeared as Thor before—illusion was his métier, after all—but this was something else entirely.  He had brought a hand to his chest without realizing it: a too-thick chest, and a too-broad arm. A foreign heartbeat thudded too strongly against his ribs: even the too-warm blood in his veins seemed like an alien element, though his mind shied from inspecting such sensation further.

The mirror looked strange to him: slightly too low in his vision, for his bro—not brother was a full hand taller than he.  And Thor himself looked strange, staring back at him with an expression that the Golden Son of Asgard would never bear.

His hand had raised on its own to his chest, his eyes were comically wide on his reflection, foolish tears dampening his cheeks.  Had Loki been himself, he would have laughed out a mocking retort for the oaf’s stunned expression, for his hunched shoulders, for his pale expression that didn’t fit on the golden prince’s face.

Hard hands pushing him forward into forced deference. He’d been the one to bind him with chains, still his tongue, lead him through streets filled with mocking eyes to the cold one who looked down with a single eye and a birthright of pain and cold, cold, cold—

Thor, why didn’t you come?  Why did you never come?

The paleness doubled—Thor’s strange face washing out to whiteness, and Loki felt himself staggering.

He managed to the toilet before he was ill—his stomach heaving, his hands trembling to hold himself up. Tears squeezed from his eyes, and cutting sobs scratched his acid-burnt throat, and found himself choking for breath.

Weak.

Unloved not-prince, no-one’s son, Forgotten. Who would have come for such refuse?

He slid sideways to the floor, slumping down, wheezing, strange hands pulling too-short hair that ended above the shoulders. He gasped at phantom pains slashing down his back, cutting across his face, burning his hands and feet.

Couldn’t—breathe—

Black spots on his vision. The sharp cut of a needle piercing his lips, drawing the thread tight.  Blood soaking his back. Weeping hunger and aching thirst. Fists and flames and words and darkness that never ended.

Traitor. Coward.

A god of lies, a voice cackled in his head, and he shuddered at the sharpness of it—razor-edged and bleeding. Oh, and they so eager join in with that darkness, cutting him so deep until there was nothing left but silence and blood as he choked on life and screamed and screamed but heard nothing but laughter all around him, choking him to breathless silence.

They’d stripped him of everything—his pride, his name, his being. What was Loki, but nothing? Not even a breath on the wind: they’d taken his words as well.

He couldn’t fight the words, the laughter—not without words and laughter of his own. 

He managed to crawl away from the basin, finally catching his breath as he slumped just inside Thor’s bedroom. Fingers hovered over his threadless lips as he wiped sweat from his brow with another frantic hand, pushing damp hair from his eyes as he fought to compose himself.

In. Out. Breathe.  Breathe. Breathe.

Breathe, you mewling, worthless recreant!

Slowly his breaths slowed, the black spots faded, the panic settled into a distant gibbering rather than a ceaseless howl.

He seethed out a mirthless, breathless chuckle in a too-deep voice.  Even now, he crawled and shivered in dust.

Worthless.

His time in the darkness loomed—his mind fluttering about in puerile fear that this respite was a dream, or only deeper madness.

But no—He was Loki, and this was the greatest trick of all.

And oh, what a fine joke this was!  Loki, silversmith, trickster, mother of monsters and most hated of the gods, golden and shining like a polished sepulcher in the sun. And Thor Odinson, Thor the golden, Thor the beloved, trapped in the most hated flesh of his own enemy, rotting in darkness.

Thor’s body, shivering and weeping on all fours like a coward.

Loki clamped down the sudden urge to break down into tear-springing laughter, pushing hair back from his eyes and wetness from his cheeks.

A thread of a breathless giggle whispered from his throat despite his care, and he clamped a hand over his mouth, the hair on the back of his stolen neck raising at the sound of it.

The mirth passed as fast as it had risen, and he lowered the stolen hand and leaned back against the wall, feeling, suddenly, utterly clear-minded. His clever mind spun like the intricate workings of a clock. Like an elaborate wheel, pulling at tattered memory and confused cotton balls of thought and memory and nightmare and weaving it into a thread sharp enough to cut.

Idly tracing the unbloodied, stolen lips, he considered, tears on his cheeks already forgotten.

What was his last clear thought?  It felt years away. Before the chains, before Midgard, before . . . him.

He remembered falling.

Loki clamped down firmly on those thoughts, stopping himself cold before he began to laugh again. Or weep. At times he hardly could tell the difference.

Slowly, he drew himself upright, brushing Thor’s sleep clothes of imaginary dust and ignoring the foreign shaking of the powerful legs.

Control.  He wasn’t Loki any longer.  No—Loki the nameless, Loki the forgotten, Loki the ergi, was locked deep away. And for now, he needed to keep him that way. Because he was Thor.  And Thor, with his expected heroic elegance, would be the one to free Loki, nurse him back to help, and then allow him to flee.

Where didn’t matter. Loki’s only consideration was that it was away.

This spell wouldn’t last forever, especially with his own body’s weakened state. He didn’t have time for sentiment, for weakness.  The spinning gears of his clockwork mind added a ticking sound—counting down, it seemed, teasing to stop at any moment, yet ticking on to eternity.

Like the pain-distanced snap of the lash.

Oh, how familiar a beat. Its steady rhythm had lulled him to gentle darkness more oft than his mother’s voice—its caress more familiar than a lover’s. Its breath drew a chill down his spine, catching in his throat.

Enough!

Loki tore his hand away from his lips, forced the bend in his spine to straighten, and moved to the mirror again.

The blond mountain of a man there hardly looked like his not-brother: washed out, pale, panic-sweat soaking his hair and slicking his chest, his breath still quicker than it should be.

Loki visibly drew himself together, a scowl compressing strange lips (reveling in the motion—the lack of agonized tugging, the lack of blood). He lowered his (Thor’s) hand from his chest and lifted his chin in a way that felt unnatural to him, but looked right in the mirror.  Thor didn’t skulk, after all (didn’t tremble).  Thor didn’t hide in the shadows and flinch at the coming of footsteps. Thor was prince, in a way that he’d never been.

And he would never wear the haunted expression staring back at him.

Loki forced a smile, trying it out, but the smile looked like a black parody of anything resembling happiness. Thor’s smile was brainless: a reaction without a thought, as many of his actions were.  He adjusted the unfamiliar lips.  A full grin—no, Thor never showed so much of his teeth: he looked ready to bite rather than laugh.  Another adjustment: the expression he used when trying to flatter someone—his silvertongued smile, as Thor called it.  Loki wiped that one off his face even as it formed, so awful did it appear.

He gave up for now, staring back with weary eyes.  He couldn’t think of anything to smile about at the moment anyway.

He always acted better with an audience, anyway.

Loki looked back at the reflection critically, glancing down at his arms with a nose-wrinkle of disgust. Thor smelled like ale beneath the sweat, his hair was a tangled mess, and . . . he needed to use the lavatory. Loki grimaced, running a hand through ale-tangled hair.

There was nothing for it.

Despite the discomfort of the particulars, the bath was a blessing.  Thor had probably washed the day before, but in Loki’s mind it had been (Months? Years? Decades? Centuries?) of blood and sweat and tears matted together in filth. He sank into the depths, the heat finally acting to sooth away the last of the tremors that shook him, the hysterics seemed to soak away with the filth. He shut his eyes and allowing himself to imagine himself here, not just this illusion of freedom. 

Because he was here, but not all of him.

Any trace of his magic was completely absent.  It was not an unusual feeling: his magic had been restricted since he’d first been clapped in chains upon his capture on Midgard.  But the startling thing was that while he missed it on an intellectual habit—he’d reached for it instinctively as soon as he’d awoken—he didn’t feel it any more.  Not the quiet shiftings of leylines nor the soft thrumbings of power brushing against his thoughts—but neither the empty nothingness, the gaping hunger as he found it blocked, the trembling of his fingers as he stretched for what little could bleed through the binding.

No pain, no negative effect, save its simple absence.  It was just . . . gone.

It left him feeling strangely liberated, yet also . . . empty.  And despite his brother’s strength, horribly vulnerable.

What fool would trust to strength of arms, after all?

Well, he was Loki. Whatever tools were given him, he would make best use of them as was his way.

Loki dressed with a care absent from any of his not-brother’s usual routine, taking care to align his appearance with the God of Thunder without a line of fault. His hair was carefully combed, a braid above his right ear pulled back—neat, but not too neat, in Thor’s habitual manner.  The armor went on easily enough, after adjusting to the unusual bulk and slightly different shape compared to his own.  It took some searching to find Thor’s right boot—it had somehow managed to bury itself deep under the bed, and Loki had had to get down on the floor to crawl under . . . only to be met with consternation when he found his stolen shoulders were too broad to fit.

It took him a half a second to decide to simply lift the solid oak bed with a single arm while he retrieved the boot, but it was a half a second too long.  He sneered at himself and swallowed up the stifled thrill of fear at his mistake, clutching the boot in thick hands--and not only because he was becoming as stupid as the golden oaf as he settled into his form.

It was mistakes like this that he could ill afford, he rebuked himself as he pushed Thor’s foot inside the errant footwear with unsteady hands. He had to be Thor—to look like him and act like him, yes, but to fit these without error he had to conform his mind to think as he might.

To think as Thor, without fear or judgment or ill will from his chattering, vacuous sycophants.  To watch with guileless eyes, to smile without mockery or disdain to the fools that followed.

Loki straightened the scarlet cape—but then unstraightened it slightly, as years of walking behind his not-brother had made him aware of the way Thor wore it unconsciously slightly to the left, as if to make more room for his swinging arm.

He inspected his flawless reflection critically, making a few last adjustments before raising his chin and looking into the mirror to see Thor Odinson, Thunderer and Beloved Golden Son of Asgard.

The sight made him still, made his sick heart stutter to a halt.  Those blue eyes looked straight back at him, watching.

Loki licked his lips, taking a step forward, raising a hand to rest against the reflection’s, meeting the gaze with one of wondering loss.

How many nights had he screamed through his sealed lips, crying for him?

Brother, please.

Memories of whispered late nights in this very room, hushed snickering and the taste of sweet meats stolen from the kitchen.

Blue eyes, right before him, welling with unshed tears.

He vaguely remembered Thor’s begging words, calling him home.

He’d screamed, shredding his soul, exhausting his mind—screamed from behind a prison of light and pain.

Thor hadn’t heard. For centuries, he had never heard.

Why didn’t you come? I begged you to come.

He couldn’t make himself form the words—memories of sharp thread aside, the words themselves were swallowed up in searing light.

The moment passed.

Now, his mind horribly exposed in the morning light as it had been in the sharp moments of lucidity, he knew perfectly well why Thor hadn't come.

Who would come for you, monster?

Loki drew back, Thor’s face cold and expressionless as it never was meant to be.

Thor wasn’t here. He wouldn’t come. He never had, except to compel with force, to subdue, to overcome and drag him forward in chains.

Know your place, brother.

His place. As if obedience had earned him anything more than punishment and degradation. As if loyalty had ever earned him anything other than dismissal, cleverness anything but jeers and mockery.

Thor knew nothing of his place.

(He had no place.)

Loki turned away.

Mjolnir he left by the bedside—there was not even a passing thought for him to make the attempt to lift it.  He turned to the door and put a too-large hand on the brass doorknob.

And stopped.

Hesitation was not in Thor’s nature, but none were watching now.

Beyond that door were those who hated him.  Those who had lied to him and cast him out.  Those who had forgiven Thor for a massacre of hundreds  after a punishment of a mere three days, but who were content to leave him in agonies through time that lost its meaning in its pain.

More than content—they had demanded it!

With a sudden snarl, he twisted and slammed his fist into the pillar beside him.

It crumbled, so delightfully satisfactorily that his other fist followed suit with a grunt, slamming into ageless marble and this time clean through the stone.

He froze, one arm still flung out.

What in Hel’s name was he doing?

Loki straightened quickly, brushing dust from his cape and hands.  He straightened Thor’s tunic, straightened his cape—and then unstraightened it again.  He automatically began to slick back his hair, but no—a glance in the mirror showed a flushed face, a one of passionate and familiar rage.

For the first time, the reflection in the mirror indeed looked truly like his brother.

He straightened Thor’s features, but the flush remained.

This was a challenge he had not foreseen.  The chemical balance of aggression and wrath in his blood—it was an unexpected find, and one that made him feel on the knife’s edge of lashing out at the next unfortunate who crossed his path.

Was this how Thor felt when enraged?  He felt as if he could shove all of Asgard into a ball of flesh and squeeze out drops of blood between his fingers.

It was positively thrilling.  Simply de-lightful.

This he would have to handle with care.

The door slammed open and Loki whipped around, clenching teeth around the automatic snapping words at the interruption to his solitude.

“Ho! Jumpy, my friend?” Fandral laughed, raising his hands as if to ward off a wild boar.  “Why, I think the mighty Thor has truly been affrighted!”

Loki held back a scathing vituperation with effort, mentally checking himself. In some ways this might be harder than simply having his lips sewn shut.

The very thought made his lips twang with the too-recent memory.

Loki smiled with an effort he was confident didn’t show. His audience had arrived.

“My friends!” he said, opening his arms and forcing himself not to start at the booming voice that came from his chest.  He caught Fandral’s arm in the warrior’s grip, catching his shoulder with a laugh. The touch felt strange under his fingers—when had he last touched another without fear or intent of harm? He couldn’t remember. He pulled back from the touch as soon as he felt was natural, his fingers curling as if burned. “What would you expect, for you to come barging in here like stampeding bilgesnipe at this early hour!”  He forced himself to likewise clasped Sif on the shoulder, not lingering, but meeting her eyes without a tremor in his face.

Thor was always such a simple, tactile being.  He spoke as much through touch—clasping, grabbing, bruising, striking—as through his clumsy words.

Loki proved himself worth of his title Liesmith a hundred times over for not shuddering in disgust at the touch, and managed not to clutch his hands to his chest when he pulled backwards.

“Early? ‘Tis well past dawn, and past the time of our planned meet,” Fandral eyed him and wrinkled his nose. “Did you wash?”

“I mere matter of the decision of wearing last night’s fine dining.  A small matter, but worth the washing rather than wearing it all day,” Loki lied smoothly, but then caught himself even as the words flowed from his mouth, his heart thudding at his mistake.  No. Thor would laugh and push back, not excuse himself and let the conversation wash by him.  He opened his mouth to correct the error, but Sif was staring past him.

“Did you do that with your fists?” she stared at the shattered column behind him.

Loki fought to keep the blood from draining from his face.  Thor did not pale. He flushed in rage, in passion, in cheer.  While he hadn’t seen it often, he knew he even flushed in fear.

With Loki, ever pale, only growing paler beside him, like a smaller star being swallowed by a massive sun.

Loki turned away, fumbling. He had not prepared for this. In truth (which he rarely told), he hadn’t prepared for this nascent plan to even work--his actions had been more than half maddened.  He still felt half-trapped in darkness—could still feel the chains and pain and agony.  The very thought made him want to tremble once again.

But Thor didn’t tremble, save for--perhaps--in righteous rage.

A day or two to compose himself would be beneficial.  To reflect, and to plan.  He hadn’t truly thought this plan to succeed; more likely, he’d expected a backlash to deliver blessed unconsciousness for a brief spell.

Though, in all honesty, his mind had been to scattered to consider a step behind desperation.

He needed time to scheme.

Loki had often disappeared for days in dark corners of the library without being missed, but Thor was not one whose absence would not be noticed.

The smile dropped from his face as soon as it was able, but he caught the glance between Thor’s friends.

Oh? They were concerned for his dear brother, were they? Poor Thor’s world had a spot of shadow, did it, and all of Asgard was rallied in search of a decent floor lamp to banish it away.

It was another tool for him to make use of.

He turned slowly, not bothering with the smile this time.

“My friends,” he said soberly, seeing Thor's deep, sad eyes as an outsider even as he looked through them from the inside. “I intend to approach the All-Father in behalf of my brother.”

Fandral breathed out a heavy breath, glancing at Sif.  “Yet again?” he asked.

Volstagg sat on the corner of the desk, leaning heavily against its edge and frowning at him. Loki eyed him, silently considering how long the undeserving furniture could hold up beneath such abuse. “And what do you think will be different from the time before this, Thor?” the massive man rumbled through his beard. “And the time before that?  And the time before that?”

Loki kept his reaction from his face . . . but again, he shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course Thor had already approached Odin for his dear, pitiful brother. He held back a sneer. For what?  Mercy?  Thor was indeed a fool. A sentimental fool.

Worse—an incompetent sentimental fool, as his efforts had been quite clearly fruitless.

As if Odin could be moved on the behalf of his unloved not-son.

A hand touched his arm and he jerked away from it without thinking, and Sif withdrew, eyebrows raised, but she didn’t reply.  Loki muttered a string of oaths inside his head, his teeth clenching as he fought to steady his breathing.  He had to get control of himself.

“I—I cannot but try,” he said, Thor’s clumsy tongue stumbling, his mawkish voice—so much warmer and lower than his own—cracking slightly.  But it sounded well enough: it suited his image, no matter if it was intentional or not. It was something Loki, prince of lies even when denied princedom of all else, could spin for his own use.

Sif and Fandral’s eyes flicked back to the broken pillar, but didn’t press.  Of course—violence was Thor’s way.  He himself had seen hundreds of walls smashed through by Thor’s fists in a bout of his rage or another.  He’d felt the pounding himself, when he wasn’t fast enough to duck out of the way after one of his better (or worse) bouts of mischief.  It was with no small bemusement that he found himself resorting to the same mindless outlet as soon as he found himself in his not-brother’s form.

It took his best attempts to get his brother’s friends to suspend the day's plan and to take leave of him. More than once did they clasp his arm in some sign of fellowship (Comfort? Sympathy? Pity? Certainly not common concern for the lowly traitor.), their words meant to cheer, to comfort.  Volstagg threw his arm around his shoulders and Sif let her hand linger over his arm as they spoke—words of kindness, words of friendship.

The touch was alien, even from before his fall.  So easily did they touch each other, look at each other, speak.  He’d watched from the outside, but from this new perspective he found himself claustrophobic from the unfamiliar attention (something ached in him at the easy touch) and furious at their continued idiocy and thrice-cursed loyalty (loyalty that was as alien to him as their concern).

Loki escaped before he found himself ill again.

The memory of their touch burning him even through the layers of his armor he’d chosen, he set out down familiar golden halls that had never felt so strange.

At first he didn’t recognize it—caught away in his thoughts, cunning designs twisting around the dark terror that drove him, making every moment of darkness with each blink of his eyes into a jolting fall into the abyss.

He had determined his destination when he recognized what was wrong.

Servants bowed, sparing an extra moment from their tasks for a smile at his face. Members of the court nodded respectfully at him—the einjerjar saluting smartly, meeting his eye squarely, many murmuring Thor’s name as they bowed a hair lower than protocol dictated.

Loki had to keep himself from shying away from the glances, now that he noticed, waiting for the expected glance, frown, and the choice between a suspicious glare as he passed or a silent dismissal.

Yet if they knew what he really was, how quickly would even that mistrust and weak tolerance turn to open hatred?

How much had it already done so?

He wanted to snarl at all of them.  He cursed himself that the best he could do at the moment was to keep his expression blank, hoping for a hint of grimness as Thor was wont to bear when on a mission he considered particularly noble.

He had always known he was a shadow to the presence of the sun that was Thor, but a creature such as he felt exposed in the false skin he wore.

No less of a lie than your life, monster.

The thought brought a stutter to his step that he couldn’t stop, and he sought to hide it by adjusting his cape needlessly—pausing to nod at two citizens of Alfheim that called to him as they passed by as he did so.

At last, he reached his first destination.  He’d meant to spend the walk here building ice around himself to ready himself for this confrontation, but the journey to his mother’s—not-mother’s—rooms had left him jittery.

Nonetheless, Thor should not be seen lingering.  He corrected his posture—raising his chin and straightening his back from the cringing pose he wanted to curl into (that he knew his own pitiful body was curled into, shivering and sobbing and broken)—and let himself into Frigga’s rooms.

Loki knew his not-mother. The sun was not long risen, but he had expected to find her seeing to the runnings of the palace, as per her duties alongside her husband’s running of the realm of Asgard itself. It was with consternation that he found her office empty, her maids absent, the rooms empty and still. He was beginning to wonder if some duty had called her thence when he caught sight of her sitting on the balcony, hands clasped on her lap, looking out into the heavy rain turning the garden outside to greyness.  Low thunder rumbled in the distance.

Loki felt a mix of fury and sorrow, so thick that he struggled to swallow, composing himself again before he spoke.

“Mother,” he intoned, allowing Thor’s voice to carry an appropriate measure of solemnity.

Frigga started, but hid it with the centuries’ experience of a politician.  She rose smoothly, her mask in place, her appearance that of a perfect queen.  But her eyes were tired, the redness of her cheeks pale for this time of year.

“Thor. When did you become so light of foot?  I didn’t hear you enter.”

Loki cursed himself, reminding himself to thump around like a drunken bilgesnipe when he walked, for so it was with Thor.  “I called for you. Your mind was far afield,” he prevaricated smoothly.

Frigga’s gaze narrowed, and she considered him closely as she rose with her liquid grace. Her hand clasped his, too small and delicate against the calluses that were not his.  He ached to push her away, scream at her. To deny her and laugh at her pain and tears.

To fall on the floor and wet her feet with his own tears, for surely no one would have mercy on him if not for the queen of Asgard.

“Are you well, my son?”

Perhaps his words had been too smooth. He fumbled, struggling to cover himself without visibly shuttering his face.

He chose to dive into the issue, intent on distracting Frigga’s perceptive gaze with his aims. “I go to speak with Father about Loki,” Thor’s voice said.  “I will not stand on this any longer. I shall not.”

Frigga moved forward, wrapping her arms around him without a word and resting her head beneath his chin. He felt a shock, and rushed to return it before his hesitation could be noticed, refusing to let himself feel, to think.  Her strong shoulders that had lifted him, taught him the art of seidir and the dagger, felt tiny in Thor’s broad embrace. Breakable. He let her go, carefully placing her at arm’s length before releasing her.  His borrowed heart felt like it was bleeding.

How would she recoil if she knew what lay beneath the flesh?

How had she not recoiled the thousand times past?

“My son,” Frigga soothed, reaching up to touch his face.  Her expression was gentle, but beneath it he saw a hidden flood of grief, and he felt his rage soften.  “Why would this time be different?  Your father is adamant—your brother’s punishment will be meted out as he judged, with chance of consideration in a hundred years’ time.  Until then, we are held by laws as any other.”

Well he remembered the ruling. In 100 years there would be nothing left of him.

“But how know we of his well-being?  Or his security? Oftimes has Loki escaped from our own dungeons—we cannot hold one of his mind or ilk.”

“It is for this purpose your father has sent him elsewhere,” Frigga said—the obedient wife reasoning over her grief.

“To whence?” Loki asked, hiding his desperation as the purpose of this visit came to fruition. “What place to keep the trickster?”

What place? Where is that darkness, that empty nowhere?

A place of damp stone and cold whispers. Nidavellir? Oh that his not-father might pick a place so obvious.

Even within Yggrdrasil, there were worlds beyond the Nine Realms. And in the black spaces in between, monsters bred.

How appropriate that it was thence that he had fallen.

“I know not,” Frigga said, looking down.

Loki swallowed, trying for casual interest. “Have you scryed for him?” At Frigga’s quick look, Loki hastened. “I—Oftimes have I come upon my brother as he cast his eye out to the realms.”

“You would have me act against your father’s command?” Frigga said, but Loki knew her well.  He waited, and she looked away again.  “He is hidden from me.  Some sorcery hides him from my sight, and Heimdall is sworn to silence.”

Loki turned away, clenching a fist at his side.  They were both silent, the thunder rumbling in the distance.

There was nothing here. His mother knew nothing.

So she sat alone and mourned in sight of the rain.  The sorry sight suddenly turned to sharp loathing.

As if she could suffer more than he!  She, who of anyone should find the power to act?

What mother could leave him like this?

He hid a shudder, a part of him scrambling with desperation to stifle the flare of loathing into victimless anger that tasted like hollow despair. No. No. He hated enough, but he could not hate his mother.

He put his clever tongue to use, using the thick emotion he could not hide as a mask for another grief. “I am troubled over his fate, mother.  A villain he may be.  Mad, it is certain.  But he is still my brother.” Oh, how the words made him want to vomit.

Frigga didn’t answer at first, a hand wrapped around herself, the other over her lips as she looked into the storm.  Then, a thin voice from the woman he had once seen as the strongest creature in the nine realms (oh to return to such a day!): “The council has spoken.  Your father but upholds the judgment of the Thing.”

“I will speak to him,” Thor’s voice repeated, and Loki felt grateful to be able to rely on his brother’s obstinacy and simple modes of speech.  His earnest nobility was an easy mask in this case to wear—providing him reason with no logic.

He knew it well. After all, how many times had he muttered over the unceasing tide of Thor’s will once set?

Frigga nodded vaguely, hands clasped in a self-comforting manner. “Then let us break fast together first,” she said. “It has been too long, and if you are to Midgard once more, then allow me to enjoy the presence of my eldest for a while.”

Loki opened his mouth to refuse, but found himself without the heart to do anything but accept. They spoke little, he grateful that the sober mood of his mother allowed them to take comfort in silence, and he used the excuse of eating to keep his face downward so she would not see the glistening in his eye and the slight tremble of his hands as the first food in months passed through his lips.

Almost, he could imagine another scene in his mind--that of the younger prince and his mother the queen, quietly sitting--content in each others' company. He ached to reach out to her, to cry for her until she answered like a mother to a child's bedside, soothing away imagined fears.

But he kept his eyes down, missing her all the more for her closeness.

Chapter Text

Thor’s first sensation was disorientation, followed by a spike of all-encompassing agony that led to a bolt of wild, howling rage. He staggered to his feet—it seemed far too difficult a task, for some reason—and opened his mouth to challenge the darkness, bound hands or no.

Whatever foul enemy had come upon him unawares to bind him, he would face it and lend it proper lesson of the treatment of a Son of Odin.

But instead of a bold roar of challenge, the words caught on a shock of tearing pain from his lips, and blood flooded his parched mouth. He gagged on the bitter liquid, reeling—his weakened legs (sorcery?) giving out beneath him. A shock of pain radiated out from his knees as they struck merciless stone.

Shaking hands rose to his lips, freezing in a shock of horror at agony of even the lightest touch. His stomach lurched at the intensity of it, and he panted sharply through his nose before he dared try again. He traced the swollen flesh, feeling the tight X’s pulling his lips together. Eyes wide with rage in the darkness, he brought his fists together to pound against the wooden door he began to see in the dim light filtering beneath it. His fists slammed once, twice with a wordless roar from his throat—but the door barely shuddered and his roar cracked like broken branches in a storm: a sound of desperation that for a moment he didn’t register as coming for himself. He thumped against the solid door, but it didn’t even shake. It might as well as been made of uru.

He continued pounding as he could—demanding an audience with his captors even while whatever spell ensorcelled him made his head grow light. Before he could react, his knees slipped on the slick dampness of the stone floor, and he found his bound hands too slow to catch himself before he fell chest-first to crash onto the floor.

Agony raced up his chest as broken ribs shifted, grating against each other. More blood on his tongue, and a sudden shock as he realized he wasn’t getting enough air.

Fury shifted to white rage as he forced himself to breath furiously through his nose, trying to slow his frantic breath. Somewhere close, someone was wheezing—a choking gasp catching at each breath. He tasted bile on his tongue, and a frantic thought of the condition of his lips made him swallow frantically. The blood hitting his stomach made it churn violently, and instinct made him curl in on himself. White spots flashed in the darkness behind his eyelids, and everything faded away in a cacophony of agony and rage.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The face was hideous, with breath that smelled like blood. Blood-seeped teeth, pale skin like some creature that had been bred for the deepest, foulest pit, eyeless, four-fingered hand reaching toward him. He reared back, chains biting into his flesh but he didn’t care. He didn’t care because all he needed is to flee. Terror beyond imagination flooded him, the monster in front of him disappearing in a haze of agony as he shook his head, wanting to scream, wanting to scream . . .

Thor flinched awake, the incomprehensible, pure panic from the dream jolting him to pained wakefulness that immediately sent his head spinning, his lungs gasping, his limbs trembling. He panted, blinking blindly in the darkness, feeling shaken to the point of battle-shock.

Such fear. It was such that he had felt that he might throw himself on a blade if only to end it. That he might cast himself down and just beg. That he might swallow himself up in nothingness, and just to stop.

That he might cast himself into a void, to simply cease to exist.

Thor inhaled sharply, blinking again and forcing back this alien, horrible thing. He was Thor, and he was not afraid, and had never felt such fear. Such a strange dream could be attributed to some spell.

Even as this thought formed in his mind—his heartbeat felt too loud in his ears—he felt himself drifting, the hardness of the stone beneath his sweat-chilled brow fading into hazed greyness of weakened stupor. After a moment Thor realized his direction and shifted, the absence of rage making it harder to stay alert, but allowing thought to recognize that he did, indeed, need to think.

He found himself curled slightly on his side, shivering against a biting cold that seemed to have numbed him to all except pain. His lips burned as if on fire, and his wrists throbbed beneath the cuffs as if they were broken.

His bones ached.

He felt feverish. Poisoned or bespelled, for certain. His own body dragged with a weight and beyond memory, and the pain made him lightheaded and his memory blurred and uncertain. He struggled to focus, though thoughts slipped through his muddled mind like the bumbling fingers of an infant.

Thor, you idiot. Stop and think! Loki’s words echoed through some familiar memory: a recording of his voice—frustrated and impatient—as it had echoed at him a hundred thousand times in their lifetimes. The memory stung like a fresh wound, and he pushed it away, struggling to orient himself.

He knew the sting of physical wounds well, and as he shifted slightly he felt the pull of scabbed wounds over his bare back—dampness made the cold sharper.

He had been beaten (that was obvious), and with a cruel intensity that made his thoughts grow pale and distance, as if they were trying to slip again to unconsciousness. He forced himself to still, blinking in the almost-blackness as he struggled to retain wakefulness.

What purpose was there in beating an unconscious captive? What purpose was there in any of this? None had come to gloat, or to delight over his weakened state. His mouth was parched, his stomach sick with hunger, his throat thick with the taste of his own blood.

How long had he been down here?

So cold.

The trembling made his teeth chatter, causing unpleasant tremors against his too-sensitive lips.

He slowly raised his chained wrists, fingers curling toward his lips, but stopped short of touching—remembering the horrible feeling of swollen flesh, the agony of the whisper of touch, and perhaps Thor Odinson trembled but a moment at the memory.

He knew of what appearance it would take, after all. He’d seen the same with Loki, after his dealings with the dwarves so many centuries ago. How his brother had swayed as he rose to his feet, lips shredded and blood staining down his pale chin and dribbling onto his dark tunic, eyes dazed and horrified.

The memory stilled him.

He struggled to raise his head, but then immediately let it fall again as flashing lights burst behind his eyes in the almost-complete darkness. He lay in damp filth: it was too dark to see what it might have been, but the whole place reeked of bile, blood, and worse. He wished to be able to breathe through his mouth; the scent made him ill.

Squeezing his eyes shut in lieu of further attempts at moving, Thor pressed his mind for answers, wringing each thought out like individual drops of water from a slightly-dampened cloth.

The obvious answer was the dwarves.

While he had not seen them for some fortnights, their presence on Asgard had been more consistent of late.

. . .

This was, of course, due to their involvement with the imprisonment of his brother.

Yet . . . what business would a son of Nidavellir have in . . . this?

(What is this? . . . Where am I? . . . How did I—did . . . ?

. . .

Why?)

What would they gain in seizing a prince of Asgard?

Furthermore, how had they managed to take him . . . without his awareness?

Let alone the rest of the palace?

(Heimdall. Father. Mother . . .)

Thor struggled to keep his thoughts from fading to vagueness, fighting to remember anything of note.

His last memories were of dallying until the early hours of the night with the warriors three and Sif, drinking and sharing tales of heroics from his latest sojourn on Midgard. He’d returned to his rooms—drunk, verily, yet not unusually so—and straightaway fallen into slumber. He remembered no strangers, no strange looks—verily, the last word he had known from any of the solid folk of Nidavellir had been . . .

Had been . . .

. . . In truth, he couldn’t recall. Perhaps even centuries since he’d been involved in their business, besides those as dictated strictly by his father. And his father had spoken of no villainy upon his return, which he would have assuredly done had their any change between the two realms.

Thor’s lips twitched slightly—causing a jolt of pain from his face that made him fight a pained grimace that wanted to follow, which would only have compounded the problem. He forced his lips to relax, such as they could, and swallowed. His tongue was dry and mouth bitter with blood both old and new.

That business with Loki and the crafters had been . . . unfortunate, but it was long since forgotten by all involved, except in jesting recollection. Indeed, the act had hardly shifted the dynamics between Nidavellir and the Golden Realm even immediately after. The dwarves had always been proud and stubborn, but Loki had made a bargain, and while he had weaseled from the worst of it, it had been a lesson he had needed to learn. The dwarves had demanded it, Asgard’s honor had upheld it, and Loki had, for once, had to face the consequences of his actions.

Looking back, Thor recognized that this was one particular lesson that his clever brother had refused to learn, time and time again.

Afterward, Loki had disappeared for . . . in all fairness, he couldn’t recall how long. Weeks? Months? Nay, it had to have been no more than a few days. The black prince had slunk back in as if he were never gone—pale as ever, but the thread gone without a sign and his tongue only honed sharper for it, that glint in his eye like ice. He’d never spoken of it, so far as Thor knew, though taverns had roared with laughter and the court had tittered behind their hands over the tale of the deceitful prince’s fate for decades after, though never when the prince was at hand.

No doubt due to his current circumstances, Thor wondered for the first time how his brother had managed to break the threads. Loki was a masterful sorcerer, true, but his words had been bound and the threads heavily enchanted. Surely he had fled to . . . to . . .

. . . to some fellow magic-dealer to do the deed.

That he couldn’t think of a single one of the skill and inclination to aid the second prince was irrelevant. His mother and father had been restrained—held back from interfering with foreign affairs brought upon Loki’s head by his own too-clever tongue. As for others . . . the time was long hence, and even if he remembered the Enchantress wiping tears of mirth as Loki fled, and retelling it over one of the great tables during his absence with grand reenactments . . .

There were certainly others that Loki could have gone to. Surely.

Thor’s head ached. The cold cut into the wounds on his back. He thought he felt blood trailing down from his shoulders—the floor already wet with it.

His current condition made him . . . a bit more sympathetic to the memory of his brother’s pale looks, the tears that slipped shamefully from his eyes as he rose trembling from the bloodied marble to meet the shocked faces of the assembled Aesir, which soon transformed to riotous mirth before he fled from their presence—his delicate hands bloodied as they clasped over his lips as if he could hide his shame.

He could almost hear the laughter. It roared in his mind, pressing against his ears, and he shook away the pain-fuzzed memories, finding himself staring in incomprehension at the hands before his face, barely visible in the darkness.

His sight was dull and grey from pain and shadow, but the lightest outline of the trembling fingers before him was familiar, but not his own.

Long, thin. Pale, he knew, even without light to see, and delicate for elaborate gesticulations—fingers flicking and weaving as if dancing on the air as he called down illusions.

Loki’s hands.

Thor blinked and furrowed his brow, recognizing the muddled state of his thoughts, which seemed to be growing worse with the shivering cold that made his bones ache. His eyelids felt drawn down with lead.

The hands didn’t change, even as he brought them closer. This was no illusion, no delusion.

And then, his current state—obscured by disorientation, pain, and darkness—struck him like Mjolnir to the head.

LOKI.

His hands flew to his face—the pain on his lips shocking him to further awareness, as blood-slick hands traced a too-narrow nose, sharp cheekbones, a pale brow, narrow chin. No rough catch of beard on his cheeks, no ruddy warmth.

His own flesh felt like a cooled corpse.

Loki!

He snarled—blood flooding his mouth again as he staggered upright, his fingers curled in rage before him as he realized that he was cursed indeed, and by one he would call kin.

Thrice-cursed fiend and villain! Honorless, loathesome, venomous serpent! Thou coward—faithless, loveless wretch! I would murder thee even now!

The words screamed to be shouted—to be roared from the rooftop. The silence in their stead was terrible and black, dripping silence like eternity.

He swayed, and a weakling’s legs—thin and unsteady—gave way beneath him, his rage insufficient to support him. Thor gritted his teeth, fingernails digging into the filth on the stone.

He slammed his fist against the floor—once, twice, thrice. He felt a jolt of satisfaction with the shock of new pain as something snapped in his fist (Loki’s fist)—an alien throat stifled a cry at the pain—but weakness kept him from continuing his abuse. He slumped back against the wall, panting small breaths through his nose, his head swimming.

A bare moment later he was slumping forward, panting harshly, the fingernails of Loki’s uninjured hand digging into his shoulder. He’d forgotten about the wounds on his back.

Thor slumped back to the floor, his rage making him, if possible, weaker. His head swam; his stomach turned with nausea. His heart pounded behind his eyes.

No—Loki’s heart.

He drew his hands up to his chest—his heart seemed to be beating too quickly, but there was another strange feeling there. Something weak and fluttering, tattered like a shredded wound. The feel of it made him inhale sharply, cupping Loki’s uninjured hand over his bony chest.

The pain there was strange, unusual and unfamiliar, like an injury to an organ that Thor didn’t recognize. Yet as he turned his mind to it Loki’s whole body shook, and he recoiled from it—dizzy from the agony of the merest brush that sent a net of pain through his veins from crown to toes like a gasp of acid.

He panted, shuddering anew, recoiling from this phantom web even as it tightened around him.

The agony faded after a time—blending into the background noise of pain until it was almost unnoticeable. Drawing himself together, Thor dragged himself on his elbows to the door, gritting teeth against the grinding of tender ribs—and began to pound the restraints against the thick wood. He would be heard. Loki’s treachery could not be hid, and Thor would return vengeance three-fold upon him. This cowardly betrayal was the last of a hundred bitter wounds—and one that Thor could not forgive.