"I wish to see my son," the elderly King demanded of the guards before him. The stern faces never changed, but the older of the two-a haggard looking man with a long scar crossing from just below his left eye to the tip of his chin-stood a little straighter.
"We are under strict orders from the King not to let anyone through these doors until he has had a chance to see the prisoner for himself," the man said in a sturdy voice.
"Is that so?" the patriarch asked with a raised, white brow.
"Indeed, my Lord." Again, no change in expression-his voice didn't change from its monotone bass either.
"My son has chosen loyal guards for his brother...but it pains me to know that such precautions must be taken to detain my youngest." The white-haired man shook his head slowly, a saddened expression coming over his face. "Has Thor restricted even his father from seeing the...prisoner?"
"Aye, Allfather."
Odin closed his eye and sighed, clasping his hands behind his back. "That I feared. Very well. Please send someone to alert me when the King is through with my son. I will come immediately."
"Of course, Allfather," the oldest guard said. In unison, the two raised their hands to touch their breastplates, nodding their helmeted heads to Odin as he turned away.
"Such discourse in my Kingdom, and I have not been the Elder King for more than a moon," Odin muttered, shaking his head slowly once more as he made his way back to his chambers. The knowledge of Loki's detainment sat heavily on his heart, and it weighted his feet so that he shuffled along slowly. How he longed for Loki to understand...Perhaps Thor could shed some light on Loki's dim perception?
The guards stepped aside dutifully and bowed deeply as the golden-haired King strode down the long hallway, his red cape billowing out behind him. His face was set in a stern, unyielding expression.
The door leading to the prison cells opened of their own accord, and Thor stepped into the cold room, shuddering slightly at the temperature change. Several torches lit as he strode down the aisle between the two rows of cells on either side of the room. When he reached the end of the hall, he turned to the right and gazed down at the prisoner crouched there at the back of the cell.
"Brother," Thor said in a voice that matched his expression.
Loki remained silent, glowering up at the King. He had no option to do more than that, really.
The muzzle Thor had placed on him on Midgard had remained in place except for when he was served his meals. As a result, he sat, and he glowered.
"You have the power to end this," Thor said. "You have but to swear fealty to me before Asgard, and all can return to how it was."
The raven-haired male rolled his eyes and sat back against the far wall of the cell. This conversation had become perfunctory. All Loki had to do to dissuade Thor from reasoning with him further was to not react.
However, Thor apparently wanted to take this in a different direction for a change. "Jane has been asking about you." Heimdal and many other Asgardians had worked tirelessly to return the Bifrost to working order, and Thor had recently been able to finally visit Jane.
Loki's eyes widened slightly, and his gaze hardened his eyes to chips of ice as he looked up at Thor. The muzzle faded away at Thor's behest, and Loki's sneer of contempt was visible.
"Do you think I care? Did you hope to coax a rise from me by invoking your precious Midgardian?" he spat. "I do not care about your mortals. They are weak. Pitiful."
Thor raised a golden brow at that. "I seem to remember five mortals besting you in battle. I also recall you once trying to rule Midgard; did you hope to wield an army of pitiful weaklings?"
Loki's glare became less effective as indignation and anger slipped into it. "I would have been a great King! Greater than you ever will be."
Thor sighed in frustration and shook his head. "Loki, you really must stop this."
"I haven't done anything," Loki sniffed. "I can't even use a chamber pot on my own. You've made sure of that."
Thor's blue eyes hardened, and he clenched his jaw. After a moment, he continued. "You must stop with these delusions. You were meant to be a King, but that opportunity has passed. The Frost Giants will never accept you as their king, and I am King of Asgard."
"Of that I am perfectly aware," Loki sighed, looking away from his brother.
"Then why do you persist? Why must you defy me? Do you find pleasure in being kept like a dog? Chained and muzzled?" Thor's voice had taken on an almost desperate tone, and he had clenched his hands into fists with the intensity of his emotions.
Loki eyed his brother for a moment, then smirked. He leaned forward so he balanced on the balls of his bare feet and was less than a foot away from Thor with only the cell bars separating them. His shackles clinked metallically as he did so, and he ignored them. "Because it is all I have left," the Prince hissed. He wheezed a laugh, shaking his head slightly. "You have beaten me, but I am not broken. Don't you see? You have taken everything from me, but nothing at all."
"I don't under—"
"Of course you don't, you oaf," Loki interrupted, which brought a spark of annoyance to Thor's eyes. "You are all about brute strength, and fighting, and your precious hammer. You never cared for the details." He chewed his lip for a moment, contemplating leaving Thor with that bit of thought to mull over. However, he decided it would be more rewarding to see Thor's immediate reaction. "My dignity."
"What?" Thor asked, grimacing.
Loki rolled his eyes in exasperation. "How thick can you get?' he muttered. Then he sighed and clarified in a bored tone of voice, "I will not kneel before you, oh Great Thor, because I still have my dignity. And until the day I lose that, you will not quell my reluctant spirit."
Thor was silent for a long moment as he thought that over. Then, as if it took a great amount of effort, he rose and turned away from the cell.
"I take that as an invitation, then," Thor said in a dignified voice. He turned his head and nodded gravely. Two guards in full outfit walked down the hall, leaned their staffs against the dividing wall of the cells and opened Loki's cell door.
"What are you doing?" Loki asked, frowning as the guards filed into the cell.
"What is necessary," Thor said with a sigh. "Strip him. If he tries to escape, do whatever it takes to recover him."
The guards gave no notion of acknowledgement, but they continued with their work. They reached forward and unlocked Loki's shackles from his wrists as well as his ankles. As a single unit, the pair yanked Loki forward and tore his robes from him, tossing the material aside.
"Unhand me!" Loki snarled, trying to push at the guards, but to no avail. "Stop! Stop this instant!" His eyes blazed with rage, and he began to gather a spell together that would incinerate the men where they stood, but in a fraction of a blink of an eye, the younger of the two had retrieved his staff and held its point-which also served as a spearhead-to Loki's pale throat.
The man did not speak-he didn't need to. The message was perfectly clear to Loki: Use magic, and he would learn just how painful it was to die by an Asgardian's hand.
Once Loki released the energies he had been gathering, the men returned to work, using small daggers to rip at the thicker parts of his clothing. When they finished, Loki crouched naked on the floor of the cell, his wrists and ankles once again bound.
"Is this your master plan?" he taunted. "To embarrass me in front of your guards?" He laughed defiantly at Thor, who had remained silent during the whole procession.
"Not at all," Thor said. "But while you choose to be treated like a dog, I believe it is fitting to play the part to its fullest."
Loki's eyes flashed with indignation, but he said nothing. He seethed silently as Thor and the guards withdrew from the cell, locking it.
"Is this the only key?" Thor asked the senior of the guards.
"Aye, your Highness."
"Good. No one but I will open this door for any reason. Understood?"
The two guards saluted Thor by bracing their arms across their breastplates and bowing their heads obediently.
"Come. Your relief has arrived. Go, eat and rest." Thor lead the two guards from the room, and the door to the dungeon-like room swung shut. The torches burned themselves out before long, leaving Loki in darkness and silence.
"Well, isn't this just lovely?" he muttered to himself.
"Wake up." Once again, Loki blinked his eyes open to face the scarred guard. He had placed a tray on the floor with a bit of food on a plate. With a shove, the tray slid under the bars of the cell and came to a halt before Loki.
"This is different from the gruel you people have been feeding me," Loki mused as he picked the plate up. There was a slab of meat from some unfortunate creature as well as a vegetable, and even a slice of honey cake. "How thoughtful of my brother."
"Not Thor," the guard corrected.
"Oh? Then whom have I to thank?" Loki took a bite of the meat and savored the flavor. He had become quite tired of the tasteless, colorless slop he had been forced to eat.
"The Allfather bade us give you this meal. I would have gladly served you the regular prison food, but Odin took pity on you." The guard watched Loki for a moment, then grimaced. "You can't accept such a small kindness as your father giving you decent food?"
Loki had set the plate back on the tray and pushed the food away contemptuously. "I do not want anything that bastard has to offer," he sneered.
Anger flashed in the guards' eyes, and a low growl passed his scarred lips. "You might want to reassess that assumption of the Allfather. His father before him was a great man who took pride in his son. I believe the word bastard more adeptly describes you. After all, you grew up as a bastard of Laufey—"
"Laufey was not my father," Loki snarled. His skin took on a grayish tint as his anger affected his body, and he pulled against the chains that shackled him to the wall. "I have no father. Not Odin, and not Laufey. I would rather call myself the offspring of Hel herself before I called either of them Father."
"Your father has done nothing but love you since the day he found you," the guard said, shaking his head. "And this is how you repay him." He reached under the bars and took the tray back, standing and leaving Loki alone once more.
...since the day he found you...
"Damn it, Loki, pull yourself together!" Loki snarled, squeezing his eyes shut and curling in around himself. He hadn't been given any more clothing, and on top of being cold, he was hungry. "It shouldn't bother you so much..."
But it did. It bothered him more than he wanted to admit. His eyes stung with the beginnings of tears, and he bit his lip to staunch them. No one wanted him...not Laufey, not Odin...no one appreciated him. Twice he had been abandoned. Granted, the second was technically his own fault...he had, after all, vanished into a black hole. But no one had gone looking for him...no one even bothered searching. Not until he had gone after Midgard. And even then, the Avengers had only wanted to find him so they could detain him, and send him back to Asgard.
"Look at you," he spat. "Cowering in a cell, feeling sorry for yourself. You are a god! You are better than this."
"And you are mad as a buck in rut."
Loki jumped in surprise, and then grimaced, baring his teeth at the white-haired man standing just outside his prison cell. "What did you say?"
"You're mad. Talking to yourself like that, people will start to think you have lost your sense."
The sneer that—as of late—seemed to be a constant presence on Loki's lips returned, and he sat up as straight as he could. "As if they don't already," he said. "Why are you here, Odin? What more could you possibly do to me?"
Odin seemed to consider that for a moment, and then he said, "Well, I have already given you a home, a family who loves you, a kingdom who would gladly love you, and a brother who literally went to the ends of existence itself to find you and bring you home." He shrugged stiffly and sat upon a chair that one of the guards brought in. "I do not know what else I can give you."
Loki's eyes settled on the Allfather's withered form, and his sneer vanished. "I only ever wanted to be Thor's equal," he said numbly. "But you always loved him more than I..."
"No, Loki," Odin sighed. He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. "It is not that I loved Thor more than you. I love you both dearly—you are my sons; how could I not? No, the truth of the matter is that I knew you would both aspire to greatness. And I wanted you both to go about your own destinies as you would. Nothing would stop my ambitious boys—especially not the fact that one of them was different from the other."
"Your words are nonsense," Loki said. "I do not understand."
Odin shook his head slowly. He looked tired, and old. Loki had never considered Odin frail, but if one word were to describe the Allfather's presence at that very moment, that would be the one. "I did not tell you of your true heritage because I did not want you to believe you were any less than your brother. Thor is King only because his ambitions taught him lessons that yours did not. If I had told you what you were when you were a boy, you would have grown up doubting yourself. You would have compared yourself to your peers and family, just as you are now. That is self-destructive behavior, my boy. And it is dangerous."
Loki closed his eyes and turned his face away from Odin. "You think I don't know that?" he asked darkly. "I know your reasoning. You spout it like scripture. What I don't understand is...is..."
"What Loki, what is it that you don't understand?"
The raven-haired prisoner shook his head and tightened his hands into fists. "Everything!" he exclaimed. "The words...I understand them, but it just doesn't make sense."
Odin was silent for a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. "Son, you are confused...and so very lost. I hope that in time, you will find yourself again. I hope that all will be as it once was...in time."
The Allfather stood slowly, the groaning of his knees becoming audible in the silence, and he walked away from the cell in a very dignified manner. A guard came to retrieve the chair, and then—once again—Loki was left to the silence of his thoughts.