Warnings/Notes: None that I can think of unless the idea of being bound makes you uncomfortable. Also, timeline wise this might be rough because I know Loki's age is like a little over 1,000 in marvel cannon so he's a little in this piece and I did take liberties with Eris' storyline (mainly the children she produced and her fight with Zeus). I looked for errors as best I could. Let's hope it worked out. Fulfillment of a prompt in which someone wanted to see Eris the Goddess of Greek Mythology and Loki together in some capacity.
Summary: Misery loves company and there were no two souls more full of wretchedness than Eris and Loki.
Parched.
That was the word Eris had been searching for as her tongue pushed against the cold, metal restraint magically sealed to the lower half of her face. Her eyes squeezed shut as she tried to block out the sensation as it only made her feel weak.
She'd been without the sustenance of discord and strife for so very long that she could now feel the swell of her belly as though it were aching with hunger and a dryness in her throat akin to thirst. The ambrosia that deigned her immortality left her alive but weak since she was not allowed to practice her craft. It was a slow death that she had been relegated to for a near millennia and it was just now, finally, starting to wear her down to nothing.
Her prison was a frigid, crystal coffin on that lonely drifting rock known as Pluto. Her restraints kept her arms crossed at her chest while gold chains wrapped themselves down her body to shackles cinched tight around her ankles. The only company she had was the stars and a monthly visit from Nike who would swoop down to see that her bonds were still as secure as the day Hephaestus had molded them to her skin. After an inspection was completed where the two women simply stared at one another Nike would seal the barrier around Eris' coffin that warded off other beings and vanish into that dark sky above in a bolt of resplendent light.
Each time she had visited Nike had never expressed any pity for her chained compatriot and if she had Eris would never stoop so low as to beg for release, even as her body fiercely ached every waking moment for the opportunity to manipulate and cloy its way into the heart of another being. She needed the emancipation that only her powers could bring, but until Zeus freed her from her imprisonment the goddess would remain in her solitude as she quietly went mad.
It wasn't that the world known as Earth—her toy that she gleefully missed with all its imperfections and easy manipulations—was without discord. It's just that she could not directly feed off the burning, all consuming hatred it created amongst the people from where she was. Barred and bound within a confined sarcophagus prison, all she could do was stare listlessly into the universe from beneath the crystalline wall above her.
"So you can watch time pass, but never be a part of it," Zeus had said when they had sealed her inside. He'd then slain her daughters before her as part of her punishment and she had to watch as they burst apart and were absorbed by the countless stars above her.
She would whisper her remorse over her children for eons even though she was the only that could hear her cries of mourning. It was as cruel as it was kind to look up at the dark landscape and be reminded of their faces in those dim silver lights above.
In her exile on Pluto, after she had finally cried her last tear and was too tired to scream anymore, she had grown used to the inevitable stretches of silence wasted between Nike's visits. She'd counted the stars, the days by the rotation of the dwarf planet, and the time it took between Nike's visits. She'd held debates within herself until sleep was the only thing she could manage anymore. The attempt was to make her solitude seem like sanctuary even under the layers of metal that bit into her olive toned skin and chaffed her body when she made even a small quiver of movement.
She was meticulous in her upkeep of time so that when there was the groan and pop of the barrier surrounding her prison breaking before Nike's appointed visit a chord of fear struck through her body. Nike did not deviate from her schedule and no one else knew where she was being imprisoned aside from the Greek pantheon.
Perhaps Zeus has decided to kill me after all, she thought as she lolled her head to the side preparing to glare at the Olympian at his return to her eternal prison. Her bitter hatred dissipated into shock though when the tall, lithe form of Loki Odinson walking along the side of her tomb appeared.
His horned helmet gleamed under the little visible light from the sun, his cape made just a whisper of a sound as it followed behind him like a green serpent, and he held a golden scepter in his left hand with a blue jewel at the top emanating an ethereal glow. He ran his fingers from the bottom of her crystalline coffin to the top where her face was and paused to look down at her. His blue eyes met her dark obsidian ones in a gleeful manner.
"Eris, you look…uncomfortable." He was smirking and Eris' fingers flexed into the air as she squirmed under his azure gaze.
She hadn't seen Loki of the Norse Pantheon since long before her own banishment from Olympus and the meeting had not been pleasant. Their games against one another had nearly cost both of them their lives. He was, therefore, an unwelcome presence and anxiety over his renewed interest in her kept Eris vigilant as he circled around her. Her fingers curled around the fabric of her gown in tight fists in a weak attempt to steady herself and stave off the tremors of fear that ran along her body when Loki came to a stop near her face again.
"Close your eyes." He ordered as he brought his scepter aloft the case and pressed the tip of it over where her heart lay.
Eris' eyes widened as it glowed blue and only just shut them before a loud cracking could be heard as the translucent lid fragmented and fell away from her body. She blinked up in confusion as he stepped back, satisfied with his work.
"I will release you," he said when she'd gotten over the apparent shock that he'd kept her alive—for the moment. "But I require your expertise in a few matters as compensation." He moved his scepter over to her mouth and she flinched in pain when the metal heated above her lips before he yanked the now useless binding off her face.
She shivered at the sensation of the cold wind touching her overtly sensitive lips. It felt ticklish, but in an unpleasant way as though a thousand needles were pricking her. She waited for Loki to release the rest of her shackles, but he'd set aside his scepter and helped bring her into a sitting position still completely bound. He sat aside her with one hand on her back as he held a flask to her lips. She jumped away from him until his grip on her back tightened in a silent show of dominance.
"Its ambrosia," he said sounding impatient with her suspicions of him. "You'll heal faster with it." When she still did not open her mouth, Loki brought the flask up to his own mouth and drank. He made a sarcastic show of the gesture before holding it up to her again. "If you'd prefer to remain in misery I'll happily leave you now, but if you want to hear my proposal you must drink this."
Eris did not trust Loki, but as the sweet scent of ambrosia wavered up her nose she found herself relenting to his logic, albeit in a hesitant manner, as her lips parted. As the nectar poured down through her body, warming her to the core, she closed her eyes and hummed in pleasure. It did not ease the entirety of her pains, but it alleviated them for the time being and for that, she was grateful.
When she had emptied the flask, Loki tossed it aside and resumed standing while Eris slurped every last drop of the remaining contents around her mouth. She stared up at him as her mind churned with questions that she knew he was patiently waiting for her to speak.
"What is it you require?" Her voice sounded grated as the chords strained in her throat after having been in disuse for so long.
"Midgard." He pointed out to the faint blue orb in the distance. "I will take it for my own and bring it's populace to their knees."
"Ah, so…someone didn't get the throne after all." Eris wheezed as she felt herself hacking into a laugh.
"I did not want the throne!" Loki screamed in her face and she stilled at his trip-wire aggression. His nostrils flared as his breath warmed against her skin in large puffs. "I never wanted the throne…" The anger in his eyes churned with madness before returning to their normal, mischievous state. "I wanted to be equals with my broth—with Thor." He let out a grunt as he straightened himself back up to his full height. "Midgard has no one ruler and I have no home. We are a fate matched for one another."
"Why do you need me?" Eris' and Loki's talents were not dissimilar. It was what had made their first meeting so volatile. Two artful, malicious persuaders pitted against one another never did bode well.
"I know you thirst for the kind of chaos that will befall the human race as they attempt to thwart me," he said walking around her coffin again as she strained to keep him in her line of vision. "You can be the change I need to set their heroes against one another. You're talents could sway the course of victory in my favor."
"Yet you alone will reap all the glory?" She raised an eyebrow at him at his idealized conquest and coughed as the dryness of her throat continued to dissipate under the healing effects of the ambrosia. "I see no profit in it for me."
"The return of your powers is not enough?" Loki smirked at her. "I know you cannot even swat away an insect on your skin right now let alone topple the empires of Midgard as you did of old."
"I will have none of that if you control the entire population." Her gaze narrowed. "Your stranglehold on them will douse my needs as easily as they will swell in the initial foray." She leaned forward even as the chains bit into her skin. "I. Need. More."
Loki cocked his head to the side as his smile grew wider.
"Family is a funny thing," he said with his gaze locked on hers. "A pressure point whether for the good or bad." He stood still and looked up at the stars above them. "Did Zeus slay your daughters before you?"
Eris took in a shuddering breath and sat up straighter, refusing to answer as the horrified faces of Dysmonia and Atё being struck through their hearts by Zeus' thunder bolts replayed again in her mind. The scorching lightning had shredded through their bodies like paper until there was nothing left of them except dust.
"I have an army at my disposal." Loki continued on. "A fraction of which I'd be happy to send with you in a war against your pantheon if that is what you crave. They've left you to die out here…rot as it were for what was it, the Trojan War?" He was smirking with mirth that stretched his pale, drawn face in an ugly manner. "Do you crave retribution for your daughters, Eris?"
"I crave Zeus' head on a platter!" She seethed struggling against her bonds as the anger that had been locked away poured out of her as she found herself closer to freedom. The stopper she had placed on her emotions breaking like a dam in her body. "He put a permanent death to my children! Ones who he had welcomed when their purposes suited his own quarrels and then scattered them like grains of sand among the stars so their tendrils of power could remain adrift in the universe."
Eris looked up at the sky and felt only sadness at the sight of the winking silver specks above. She's failed them by playing a game that divided the Olympians as well as the mortals and never stopped to think for a second that they would have to pay for her crimes. She'd give anything now to take back her actions if it meant her daughters could be returned to her once again.
"Then you'll have it," Loki said in a whisper bringing her back to the present. "And the mortals will bow to you as the goddess you truly are. All of that power flowing through your veins again…" He brushed back a stray hand of her coal colored hair and the goddess willed herself not to flinch as she looked deep into his eyes to find deceit in his proposal.
She found none. Only a reflection of her desires melded into his.
The same thirst for more, the need to break bonds, to shatter these pathetic mortals to their very core, and to make this world—this universe—into one where they were no longer portrayed as villains but glorified as conquerors. They could be their own heroes by rewriting the story. For the need to be feared, if not adored, was the most tempting desire of all for two of the most despised beings in the entire universe.
"Release me." Her hoarse voice came out in a whisper. "And I will help you plunge this world into darkness." Loki smirked as he backed away from her and held out his scepter to her restraints.
The metal heated, burning her skin as his own magic broke through Hephaestus' and she strained to keep her mouth shut as harpy like screeches of pain threatened to spill from her lips. She focused on the thought of how her daughters' agonizing deaths had been far worse than what she was suffering to keep her from crying out as the dueling powers rippled across her body.
Hephaestus' magic was unyielding in its strength, but Loki's was savage in its intent and in a burst of blue light the metal shattered like glass all the way down her body. Eris let out a cry of relief as she slowly stretched her aching limbs.
I'm free, she thought feeling dizzy with the idea that this was not a dream but her waking reality. She brought her arms out before her and then drew them back towards her chest again when she noticed dark runes crossing her body where Loki's and Hephaestus' magic had burned for supremacy. She ran her fingers over the raised scars in fascination until Loki crouched before her.
"Allow me," He said setting aside his scepter and resting his hands upon her arms. She shivered as a chilling sensation radiated from his hands and swept over her whole body. It lasted for a mere moment in time and yet Eris felt like she had walked through the cold halls of the underworld itself when he stepped away from her. She looked down at her skin and was unsurprised to see that it had faded to its original unblemished sheen under his care.
"Come, we have much to do." He extended one of his hands towards her and curled his fingers around hers in a vice grip when she had accepted his invitation.
It was in that moment that Eris felt a sense peace because misery loves company and there were no two souls in all of creation that held as much wretchedness in their bodies as the Goddess of Discord and the God of Lies.