The first few years of Loki's confinement had been the most difficult. He no longer kept track of the years, though, and while he guessed he had been imprisoned for at least a decade, the only numbers he was certain of were that it had been five years after his disastrous attempt to rule Asgard that this latest and longest imprisonment had started and that during that time, other than the guards who brought him food and the occasional new shirt and trousers, he had received precisely one guest, though said guest had visited multiple times. Only Thor checked in on the caged prince to make sure he was still breathing a few times a year and he did not visit because he cared, but because he needed to know that Loki was still contained if he was alive.
Those first few years had been spent in anger and resentment, conjuring up schemes to get out of his imprisonment and take vengeance on those who put him there. Plans, however, backfired when no one ever entered the cell and when even the mildly daft Thor never trusted that the Loki he saw was the real Loki and not an illusion. He turned his attention to the few books that had been left in his cell, sent there by his mother as her last act of love for him. He read them so often that the pages became fragile and separated from the spine, so often that the plots were more ingrained in his memory than even the faces of the people he once knew. He begged his brother for more to read on his short visits, but Odin refused to let most of Asgard's library venture into Loki's cell and Thor was left with little option but to ask Jane what Midgardian books were suitable to bring back for his brother. Loki embraced the new stories without hesitation.
It was somewhere around his fifth year confined that he stopped counting days and keeping track of time. This was also around the same time that he read The Book- the story that Jane warned Thor he would either love or hate. The story that Made Him Think. The book he would read over and over again until the pages fell out of the tattered paperback and he lovingly paced them back in their places each time.
Hamlet. The crown prince who never saw the throne, who acted on faith that the ghost of his father would lead him to the truth, who acted out of anger and pain and vengeance. Loki found a character who, on some level or another, he could understand. He dissected every word. He begged Thor for more of the stories of Shakespeare and the few times Thor remembered his request, he brought him Macbeth, King Lear, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Loki devoured the words as though his life depended on it. In a way, it did.
As he sat re-reading Macbeth for at least the tenth time, his pencil notated pages barely legible through his cramped handwriting, an unfamiliar visitor approached his cell. He glanced up from his book and barely noticed that it was not Thor before nearly dropping the book in surprise.
The figure was clad in a long purple robe belted above the waist, the body clearly female, her face covered by a deep hood, only her mouth and chin visible. Even her hands were hidden from view, clasped together in front of her, shielded by long sleeves.
"Come to gape at the caged animal?" when no response came, he continued, his voice hoarse, barely above a whisper. Years of no one to talk to kept him quiet even when he had a visitor, "And you are...?"
"I come with a message from the Witch."
Loki sat up a little straighter and set his book aside. The Witch was legendary. Everyone heard of her one way or another, but no one ever saw her. There had been speculation that Frigga had been the Witch, but messages and interventions came from the Witch long after Frigga's death. Others thought it was surely Freyja behind the Witch stories, but she steadfastly insisted she had nothing to do with the messages and little miracles that sprang up in Asgard when the need was most dire.
"And what message do you have from the Witch?"
"Queen Frigga, lives."
Loki scrambled to his feet, "How? Where is she? Can I see her?"
The woman said nothing as she left. Loki paced his cell, restless and frantic, trying to think just how the woman all of Asgard saw sent into the next world, everyone but him, was living. He could come to no conclusion other than that the Witch was playing a cruel joke and hated him as much as everyone else did. He sank to the floor, picked back up his book, and softly cried behind the pages, an illusion carefully in place to make sure no one could see his grief. Of all the things that he had hardened himself against, reminders of Frigga's death and Odin's refusal to let him attend her funeral still deeply stung.