Disclaimer: not mine, no money
suggested music: "Dust in the Wind" by Kansas, or "Verdamp lang her" by BAP
Warning for char death, torture, mention of bullying, and implied rape. Also: no plot, just a bit of lawyering.
Precedents
The first decade or two, Loki could measure time by the growing of his hair. The greasy, tangled strands hanging in his face, brushing his shoulders, then his chest, then hips were the only sensation other than the cold metal cuffs that bound his hands and feet to the wall and the taste of that horrid muzzle. The cell was dark, completely walled shut and sealed with magic. No guards checking in on him, no scurrying or squeaking of rodents to break the silence. A god did not need food, or drink, or air.
At first, the fallen trickster kept making plans how he would spin everything in his favour at his trial. He'd talk them around, assure them all he had done was for the benefit of Asgard.
Later, he planned how to beg. Later still, he'd ask for swift execution. Some time after his hair had reached its final length, he began to understand what the Other had meant by „longing for something sweet as pain".
His dreams did not surprise him any more. Gone were the days when he had jumped at percieved movement in the dark, faint noises, or tiny spots of light, wondering whether something had come for him or they were mere hallucinations. Those had always been the latter, but he did not remember that any more. Gone were the nightmares of battling Thor, being pinned under Mjölnir, unable to move, his brother's friends laughing at him. Standing in front of all the children in the training ground being admonished by the weapons master that he was too scrawny for swords. Or that one did not tattle about damaged books, stolen food, whatever. Or that one did not hit a girl, even had she shoved him in the mud which she certainly had not.
Dreams of volcanic eruptions and planets ripped apart. Supernovae in wide empty space. The Other's stinking breath. That white-bearded man telling him to stand back a step behind Thor. A knife sliding over his wrist. Sobbing to exhaustion.
Those days were long past. He was a god. Dreams were nothing. Even the weakest of fairies could control them. He had made a conscious effort. From dreaming himself in a cool forest, sitting in the soothing moss, he had progressed: the mosse's tiny leaves, their structures. Fractals; the structure of atoms. The strings of the universe, binding, twisting, like the Norns spun, wove and cut them. He was making progress – to what, he did not know, but a goal was there.
However, it seemed unimportant. He did not yearn or strive anymore.
The new vision disturbed him greatly. It felt like a huge setback. There were … voices? And touches? Blinding light hitting his eyes, burning into his brain. Did he scream?
Frantic chatter, something cool and dark covering half his face in blessed darkness, then unimaginable pain again as if someone was wrenching his arms from their sockets. The nauseating taste and smell of festering flesh when the muzzle was removed. Being dragged or carried, water, magic, the half-forgotten smell of soap. Loki tried to retreat to his happy place, but the assault on his senses kept his mind in touch with his body. It was sobbing and shaking.
After quite some time the former trickster decided he had no choice but to go along with this new dreamworld until he'd find the source and a way around it. Loki opened his eyes. The room was dimly lit and mildly familiar: gilded walls, decorative columns, the canopy of the double bed he was lying in, his mother's dressing table … Another childhood memory then? But he could also see his arms and hands folded on his chest, skin and bones, but an adult man's. Puzzling.
A rustling of dresses, and a motherly blond woman hovered over him. Not Frigga though, at least he thought not. Rounder in the face, and somewhat plump.
„Majesty," the woman whispered. „You are awake, finally." She bowed her head respectfully. „I'll have some food brought right away. Shall I also send for the steward?"
The second sentence did not register with Loki. Something in his mind screamed in terror at the mention of food. One did not eat in dreamworlds, nor with fairies, goblins, or in the realm of the dead, one didn't, never-ever. The simple act could bind the soul to that place.
The horror must have shown on his face, but the woman drew some wrong conclusion.
„It's all right, majesty, your mouth is fully healed. You should be able to swallow some broth or thin gruel. It would do you well: help restore your voice. But if you don't feel up to it yet, I shall feed you once more."
Feebly, the emaciated god tried to protest, but no sound left his long-unused mouth, and he could barely move his hands. The woman lifted the lid from a bowl on a side table, hovered one hand over it and the other over his stomach. A flash of green magic light, and Loki's stomach cramped around the teleported food, nausea making him gag, unsuccessfully trying to vomit. He had been fed like this before, when out cold for days drained by blood magic, and during a bout of tonsillitis in his childhood. Never had it been that bad.
The healing woman (Why was Eir not there?) helped him turn to his side and curl in, rearranged the blanket, then mercifully allowed him to drift back to sleep. He was trapped. Voluntarily or not, he had eaten already.
Weeks of slow convalescence followed. Healers and servants helped Loki regain control over his limbs, build up a minimum of muscle and eat on his own. From their chatter, he gleaned some information about his surroundings.
The lead healer was Sigyn. (Of course she looked familiar. He'd had a crush on her when they had both studied alchemy and witchcraft.) Married now, a mother of two and quite filled out – not that it suited her ill – she had followed Eir as goddess of healing when the older woman had passed away.
Odin, too, had given in to old age; an unworthy death for a warrior-king. Frigga, as faithful wife, had joined her husband on his pyre.
Long before, Thor had given up his claim to the throne as well as his powers, to live as a mortal in Midgard with the woman he loved. Not a problem for succession, since a younger golden prince had been born shortly after Loki's incarceration: Balder the Beloved.
The beautiful boy had been brought up the center of attention of all Asgard, the joy and delight of his father's old age, his every wish fulfilled. Shortly after his quite recent inthronisation, Balder the Brave (as he then demanded to be called) had led a party to Vanaheim, to woo a noblewoman named Nanna, and had abducted her when she'd turned him down.
Locked in the royal quarters with no access to weapons, or so much as a fork or needle, lady Nanna had one day managed to reach a branch of mistletoe from the window, and murdered Balder in their bed with a stake. (The very bed the god of mischief was now recovering in, he had to assume. Well, someone had changed the bedding.)
The woman was incarcerated now, awaiting trial. Vanaheim was threatening to cut all ties. General Volstagg had died in Balder's skirmish, and a number of Einherjar guards later on, defending the palace from attacks by lady Nanna's extended kin. So much had happened during his time 'away', as steward Theoric tactfully put it. Loki was king now. It had been six hundred years.
Awaiting trial, too, were Hogun, Sif and general Fandral, at least from the moment on when the new king of Asgard had inquired after „those traitors, who deserted back then, before Laufey's last attack". But that could wait.
Despite his attendants' daily assurances, Loki still was not sure this was reality. Everything so far had been plausible. Such a course of events was one he could as well imagine in his dreams. To be sure he was out of his cell for real, he needed to see something so weird and outlandish he could never make it up on his own, and there was one place for such things, a planet whose inhabitants had never ceased to surprise him.
The king's desire to visit Midgard before engaging in anything else evoked sheepish looks, but of course the courtiers consented eventually. For some reason, they insisted on a magic forcefield.
Midgard was nothing like he remembered it, and nothing like he would have expected. No flying cabs nor instant teleportation devices. No public news broadcasting from nearer worlds like Alfheim, whith one of Thor's numerous offspring as anchorman.
Instead, ashes, grit and dirty snow were blowing through weatherworn ruins under low-hanging clouds, radiation assaulting their forcefield, evoking a faint blue glow. Every now and then, a minor earthquake rocked the planet – it had not settled yet after the latest and last world war's bombardement. In the distance, a volcano erupted, acidic ashes adding to the inhospitable environment. Some hardy lichen clung to a broken wall, under the protection of some shards of curved plexiglass.
Loki would never have imagined this. The king of Asgard wept. He was stranded in reality.