AN: Ljota is mine. Violet (whom you will meet later) belongs to Violet Verner (look her up here on , she's brilliant and has a few more stories involving one of both of our characters, including Fix You, which we co-wrote). Other members of the Family (which you will meet later on) belong to various of our mutual friends. Other than that, all credit to the creators and owners of the franchises off of which this is based.

"Some birds are not meant to be caged, that's all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild."
— Stephen King

"Hey, Jotunn!"

I paused mid-step at the sound of Nari's voice. Oh, joy. Here we go again.

"Why the hurry, Frosty?" Vali added, stepping up beside his brother. Somehow the child never grew tired of that insult.

I turned then, resigning myself to a repeat of every single afternoon for as long as I could remember. Except for that one time we went to Midgard, and — thank the Nornir — I could escape them for a brief spell. It wasn't that they got to me, with their unbelievably unimaginative taunts and their crude, empty threats; I just got tired of hearing the same things day after day. I almost wished there were a better bully around, just so it would at least be interesting.

"Afternoon, Vali, Nari," I said politely, furnishing myself with a superior smirk. I didn't feel like being superior today. I just wanted to cut myself off from the world for a while. Maybe forever. The world wasn't really that great a place.

"Going to run off to your dear father again now?" I swear Nari had said the exact same thing to me the previous day. He always seemed to forget that Loki was his father, too.

"He's a monster, you know. You are, too." Ah, Vali. So young. So thoroughly useless at being interesting. As if your Aesir blood somehow cancels out the Frost Giant in you two?

"So I have been informed. Now, if you will excuse me, I would like to get past."

I pushed past Vali. Nari stuck out his leg to trip me, and the illusion — which, as always, he had mistaken for me — melted. I had gone around them, invisible, as I did every day. I am nearly convinced they were doing the whole thing for the sake of ritual more than for the sake of actually bullying me. Either that, or they really are as stupid as they look.

"He doesn't really love you, you know," Nari called after me. "He only mollycoddles you because he knows it's his fault your mother died."

He — what? Outwardly, I ignored him, as if it was just another of his foolish attempts to hurt me. But — although I hate to admit it, even now — this one had succeeded. My father never talked about the Midgardian he had loved. If anybody so much as came close to mentioning the subject, he grew cold and distant and wouldn't speak to anybody, sometimes for days. I told myself that he loved me, that he cared for me more than anything — but I couldn't help wondering if Nari was right. If I was nothing more to Loki than a means to self-redemption, atonement for my mother's death. I wondered what he would have done to me if she had lived.

I stopped halfway down the stairs to the dungeons, remembering the events that had led to this particular imprisonment.

Late afternoon on this side of Asgard. Squinting, I shielded my eyes against the sharp light that slanted off the innumerable turrets of the palace I would never consider my home. As I approached the main gate — I made a point of always coming in through the front door — the noise of another argument reached my ears. Thor was berating my father again; I wondered what the latter had gotten up to this time.

As it turned out, he hadn't actually done anything at all. Thor was holding out a somewhat battered copy of a Midgardian book on Norse Mythology, which looked rather amusingly incongruous in my uncle's hand. I recognized it as the book my father kept on his shelves. It had been there for as long as I could remember, and we took it out sometimes to scoff at the illustrations and characterizations.

Unfortunately, I also recognized the illustration on the page Thor was thrusting in front of my father's face. The Slaying of Baldur. Oh, no. Not good.

"Baldur, Loki! It says right here you're going to kill him! Just for fun! Give me one good reason why I shouldn't have our father lock you up right now!"

"Well, there is the bit where I haven't actually done it, brother dearest," my father pointed out wearily. "Are you really going to imprison me — again — just because some foolish Midgardian thought I was going to commit murder?"

Thor wouldn't be so easily swayed. "The Midgardians have been right about everything so far! Angrboda? Sif's hair? Sleipnir? They all came true!"

"So you would let me rot away in prison for eternity, in a self-righteous attempt to prevent the inevitable? What a kind and loving family I have. Ah, good afternoon, Ljota," he added, seeing me. "Just having a little brotherly chat here."

I raised my eyebrows. "So I see. Are they actually going to imprison you for a murder you haven't committed but are apparently destined to? Why would you kill Baldur, anyway?"

"I haven't the faintest idea. Baldur's a bit of a bore, but certainly not worth killing."

"That's what I thought. Fairly preposterous, as ideas go, isn't it? Even by your standards."

Thor was glaring at both of us. "We shall see what Odin has to say of this," he declared, striding toward the throne room. My father and I exchanged glances (half-amused, half-worried), shrugged, and went after him.

Odin, of course, was of the same mind as Thor. "I cannot take chances," he said firmly. "My primary concern must be the safety of Asgard. I cannot permit such a threat to remain free."

I sighed and watched my father walk away from me in shackles.

In the dimly lit stairwell, I echoed that sigh and continued down. They had tried to keep me from visiting my father, the first few times he was imprisoned during my life. They had given up when I consistently spent all day and night at the top of the stairs in protest. I've been called stubborn and headstrong. I prefer the term persistent. Or tenacious. Tenacious is a good word.

My father was sitting in his cell as always, reading a book. He's developed quite a library in that cell. He's in there so often it's almost a second home.

He looked up at the sound of my approach, shifting his hand to hold the book open on his lap. "I bid thee good afternoon, Lady Ljota," he joked. "How was your day?"

I wasn't exactly in the mood for jokes. Demigoddess of mischief I may be, but I am not immune to dark moods. "Fine," I snapped, sitting down with my back against the corner pillar of his cell.

He frowned. "Why do you get angry when I ask that?"

"Because," I grumbled. "Because it was fine and that's it. If anything noteworthy had happened I would tell you. But it never does. Every day is just another day full of stupid. Another day of pointless classes and brainless asses." I didn't even bother smiling at the rhyme. "There's just no point in your asking, and I get tired of saying fine, day after day, to yet another inane and meaningless question." I leaned my head back against the pillar and closed my eyes, trying not to get too angry.

In retrospect, that little tirade probably answered his question quite well. Clearly my day had not been a good one.

"Hm. Bored?"

"Mm." I didn't bother saying more. He knew me well enough.

"It occurs to me," he said after a pause, "that our days while I am imprisoned are not so very different than those we pass while I am free. We continue to spend the vast majority of our waking hours discussing the idiocy of the wider world."

"The main difference," I pointed out without opening my eyes, "being that we cannot run about the palace wreaking havoc and mayhem whilst you are trapped in that box of yours."

"Perhaps not," he agreed. "But we can try." As he spoke, his voice shifted — it now sounded as though he were sitting right next to me. And when I opened my eyes, he was. His illusion-self, that is. He looked quite real, but I knew that if I touched him, he would dissolve.

"Oh yes, that would be such fun," I sighed sarcastically. "If I — or anyone — so much as poked you, you'd be gone. What's the point?"

"It would be better than sitting in here all day. I can control the illusion over a great enough distance to run all about the palace. We can at least still plot together."

"It wouldn't be the same." I didn't tell him the real reason I didn't want to pull pranks with him today — that I was just generally angry and wasn't sure whether I could really trust him — but he knew something was wrong.

"What is it, Ljota?" he asked, letting the illusion melt away and looking at me through the glass once more.

I shrugged, not feeling like talking to him anymore. "Nothing."

"Ljota. Talk to me. What's happening?"

Mollycoddling. That word had stung. It kept playing over and over in my head. Was that really what my father was doing? "I —"

"Yes?" he prompted me, the frown deepening.

"I'm just tired of you!" I burst out suddenly. "I'm tired of you watching my every move! Alway trying to protect me, to keep me safe, but I don't need it anymore! I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself! Why can't I do anything without you? I'm always with you, even when you're in prison! It's ridiculous!"

After a moment of shocked silence, my father pointed out quietly, "You're the one who comes to keep me company. I never asked that of you."

"Yes, I came! Out of loyalty to you! Because I felt I should! If it weren't for you, I would be free — I could do anything I wanted! Anything! But no, I'm stuck here in the palace, always keeping safe, always tucked away behind closed doors, never doing anything worth remembering — because of you! These tricks, these jokes, they're all just distractions to keep me away from the real world, to keep me safe, and all because you still feel guilty about my mother!"

He paled visibly at that. We never talked about my mother. When I was very young, he had told me — in a cold, distant voice — only that my mother was a Midgardian and that she had died. The rest, I had learned from the other children or from Thor. Even Sigyn had filled in a few details, but she didn't like to talk to me much.

As my father continued to sit perfectly still and silent, his face terrifyingly white, I felt a certain amount of remorse for what I had said. But I wasn't about to admit that, certainly not to him. Instead, I tilted my chin. Tenaciously.

"I'll prove it to you, then," I informed him. "I'll prove to you I can look after myself. And if you still doubt me after that, I have no reason to call you father anymore." Somewhat melodramatic, yes, but I was angry.

I snatched my book from the ground and stalked away and up the stairs. Back in our chambers, I huffed angrily at the air and lay on the floor, looking up at the ceiling but not really seeing it.

I had never been so angry at my father before. We'd had our disagreements, of course — usually very violent ones that resulted in the destruction of several rooms — but it had always been the two of us against the world. We were all we had. Thor didn't hate us as much as he pretended, but he had no qualms about getting my father thrown in prison time after time, for minor or imagined offenses. Sigyn, my stepmother, resented my father, but dared not speak against Odin. Odin himself never paid me much mind, but as he was the one who kept imprisoning my father, I did rather despise him. The rest mostly either ignored me or taunted me.

And now I had rejected my father, too. Not that I regretted it, exactly — no matter how much we lied and deceived our way out of trouble, our policy had always been complete honesty with one another, and what I had said was the truth. And I would prove it to him. I would show him that I was no longer a child.

But the image of his face, pale and speechless at the gibe about my mother, kept hovering behind my eyelids. Perhaps I should not have said that, but his reaction made me think there must be at least some grain of truth behind it, and so perhaps my father really did view me as nothing more than penance for his crime.

And so my thoughts spun around each other in disorderly circles, confusing and dizzying me, until I fell asleep.