Chapter 2:

He wakes, and he is in Hel.

The sky above him is naught but a mass of swirling black smoke and burnt fire. Blurred and bled together colors he cannot distinguish from one another, his focus gone and ruined as it spins relentlessly, refusing to still.

The ground beneath him is hard and unyielding, the air heavy with the smell of soot and ozone and the cloying metallic copper of blood. And it is cold. Near suffocating in its oppression.

For a moment, though, none of this registers.

None of it matters.

He is dead.

He is in Hel.

And finally, the agony of his wretched existence has come to an end.

For a moment, relief floods him like a breaking damn, for the freedom he has gained from suffering.

He has wanted to die for so very long.

But as the moments pass in seeming eternity, and his eyes stay fixed and unmoving on the sky above, there is a sense gradually of clarity and feel.

He can feel.

Too well, he can feel.

Too well, he can see, and hear, and taste.

And all too abruptly then, it comes crashing in.

Pain.

And no… no, that isn't right.

That isn't right, even for those condemned to eternity in the halls of Hela herself.

Hela, who he'd thought would come and wrap him in the inescapable embrace of her arms, and pull him under into the land of the dishonored dead. Into a land of pure shadow and depthless cold. A land where nothing matters, nothing is, nothing feels or hurts or does.

A place of nonexistence, which is where Loki belongs. It is where he wishes now to be.

But he can feel, and he cannot remember any journey from there to here. He cannot remember any path.

Only the panic of knowing death upon him, the desperate struggle for his magic, and the eventual release of yielding to his fate.

And then, only darkness.

Nothing else.

And there should have been something more.

Something more.

And as the most vicious and sudden of open palmed slaps, the sky above at once comes into focus, sunless and bleak as of permanent twilight, and the ground beneath him is hard and cold and somehow shifting as sand.

The air is frozen and choking in his lungs, and focus narrows onto a wash of drowning pain, his body racked and destroyed by it.

He curls in on himself, and then he rolls, and he sees the black wastes beneath him, and the pain rips through to his core, turning then to panic.

He pitches forward, a strangled, ragged gasp tearing from his throat as he scrambles across the sand on hands and knees, and he falls, crumpling to his elbows, crawling forward a small space more before bile is forcing its way, hot and burning, up from his roiling insides and into his throat.

He can't stop it, and it explodes out, past his lips, a broken gag following with it as his entire frame stiffens and convulses and shudders with the expulsion.

Again, he vomits, violent and sick, and it doesn't escape his eyes, that what he vomits is near pure blood.

And like water escaping through a sieve, what pitiful strength he'd used to move that small distance drains from him in rapid time, and he sinks down, limp and defeated, until his face is pressed to the earth, and he lies like a pig on his belly, helpless and exposed.

A thin groan slips past his lips, and his lids, heavy as stone, fall shut, a warm dampness at their corners.

He cannot move.

Only lie still, and let his face twist with the agony of being, with the pain which runs through him like a lance, and he lets his mind wonder why, why, why wasn't he dead!?

Oh, what it is to be so truly the failure that he cannot even succeed in ending his own miserable, worthless existence.

And like a wave, despair comes crashing down upon his head as an impossible weight, and he cannot keep the sound of it away, a single, brittle sob falling past his blood smeared teeth.

It is all he allows himself, before he lets seething rage consume him. Before he latches to it as a drowning man would the side of a skiff, and finds in it, as always he has, his escape from what it is to be him.

His hands reach and fingers dig with bruising, tearing pressure along the sides of his head, digging into locks of hair and ripping.

And open his mouth falls, and from it does he scream.

Twisted and broken and cracked, and for any who's ears it falls upon, they would not think it a man, nor any kind of a god. Only some poor and dying animal caught in a trap of pure malice. Some wretched beast who cannot escape its own, awful state even by chewing through its flesh, through its fat and muscle and bone. Cannot escape even by tearing its own body free of its caught limb.

Loki screams, and then he lifts his face to the sunless, starless sky, and he cries out in words built and breathed in the most pure and incorruptible of hatreds.

"You thrice wicked and cruelest of trios!" He screams, voice pitched high and shattered. "You awful and cunning and kindles creatures who would dare to call yourselves Ladies! You, who's hateful fingers weave the fates of men and gods alike!" He forces himself to his knees, hands coming down and burying in the black sand, fingers curling through it and lifting, tossing it with all his strength across the barren land. "You leave me to this!? You dare!? You wretched, arrogant, soulless pits who calls themselves the Norns! I damn you to your misery! I condemn you to the everlasting despair of knowing your own end and the knowledge of your powerlessness in it, of ever being able to alter its course!"

He waits, then. Half expecting, half praying that in this place of nothingness, where on his knees he sits, they will strike him down for his display of hubris and goading, insolent insults.

But the fates have never been so kind to Loki Liesmith. Loki of no place, son of no one.

Only his own voice echoes back at him from barren desolation.

It is only him here.

None else.

As ever…

He is alone.

/

It is his magic which had kept him from Hela's arms.

His magic, which in his panic and fear he had thought was failing him. His magic, which, because Frigga's own hadn't saved her from near the same wound, he had believed it impossible for him to succeed where his Mother had failed.

He had forgotten his power.

Had let the belief's of others blind him to his own capacity. Again.

But his was the name linked as that of the most powerful sorcerer in Asgard, excepting that of the AllFather himself.

Frigga, Queen of the Aesir, may have taught him the foundations of controlling his seidr, but it had been long past since he had surpassed her in skill, low as others were to admit it. And low as he was to acknowledge himself her better in any way, even when she had praised him for just such, so very long ago.

He had forgotten his power, and not understood in his panic and fear its seeming refusal to his call had been instead his subconscious focus of it towards repairing the damage his body had suffered.

He understood this only when at last, after he had spent himself screaming at the heavens and cursing the existence of himself and the Norns alike, he had collapsed in exhaustion, and glimpsed the torn leather of his armor, and beneath it, the healing pink of an already forming scar where the Kursed monster had run him through, dried and flaking blood about it.

And he had laughed.

He had laughed until tears had streamed, free and unceasing down his dirtied cheeks. Until the pain of his mercilessly jostled, still tender wound had ached so viciously, he thought he would again throw up.

And to no one but the whistling wind did he whisper of how it was Loki who is truly Loki's worst enemy.

And then he had laughed again, and forced himself to bend down and wrap his arms about himself and squeeze until his vision grew blurred with the agony, and his teeth had grit together. Until he could no longer tell if the tears down his face were those of ironic mirth deranged bitterness, or rather truly by nothing more than the physical torment of his self-abuse.

For oh, now, Thor would never forgive him, and Loki Liesmith, Loki of the Silvertongue, Loki the trickster and the Mischief maker, could never make him believe. Could never convince his older brother he had never meant for any of this, and that as the first time he had tried in desperate pain to end his life, this too had been in earnest. For though this time he hadn't meant to die…

He hadn't meant to not die either.

And Thor would think it some trick. Some betrayal. And what love he'd seen in his brother's eyes before the world had faded from his consciousness, he knew would harden and shrivel to nothing when his continued existence was found out.

Even that parting comfort, the promise of Thor's love, was to be denied him.

And Loki had torn his hair at the thought, and screamed, and laughed, and wasted what precious strength he had in unleashing wave after wave of pure magical energy onto the surrounding, faceless land, rending craters fifty feet deep and twenty or more wide.

And then, so suddenly, it was only then he consciously realized that Thor was gone.

That he had left, and taken the girl with him.

Left Loki there, all alone. Left his body to wash away with the sands and be forgotten, as he had been in his cell in Asgard.

Forgotten and unwanted, as he had been his whole life.

And a bitter rage had taken him then, and he had cursed Thor's name for the betrayal and unleashed stronger blasts still, destroying the land around him until it was nothing but a pockmarked ruin. Until that rage had bled to desperate despair, and he had felt the panic bubbling up inside his chest, his breaths beginning to come fast and shallow, like he couldn't ever get enough air. And his eyes had stung, sharp and painful, and he had begun walking, frantically, he stride quick and jerky as he had turned his head left to right, looking, looking, looking as he cried out Thor's name, certain, certain that he must be mistaken. That Thor would never abandon him. He would never leave him alone like that. He wouldn't, because he had promised. As children, Thor had promised, and Loki could still hear the words upon the air as he cried Thor's name.

"I'll always be with you Loki."

Thor was only hiding someplace. Had only sought shelter from the raging winds of Svartlheim, from the way it flung sand to sting in your eyes. He was hiding someplace, to protect the woman, for she was only mortal, and weak, and Loki smiled at the thought Thor would consider him strong enough to be alright out there, on his own, until the storm had passed.

Thor had always believed in his strength. And Mother. Even when no one else had.

And so he looked and looked, and he called Thor's name.

Because Thor would not leave him here alone, even if he thought Loki was dead. Even if he thought so.

Only now, here he sits on his knees, surrounded by nothing but black wastes and a starless sky, and he knows Thor is gone. He couldn't find him.

Thor left, and he is alone.

It makes his throat hurt, and his heart pound in something too like terror, and so he forces his thoughts away from that. Away from all of that.

He knows, somehow, if he does not focus, he may be trapped forever in this place.

Trapped forever…

Left alone…

… Am I cursed?

Left to die on a frozen rock…

… No.

… But both of you were born to be Kings.

Your birthright… was to die…

What am I…

… You are my son.

You were knee deep in Jotun blood, why would you take me…

You were an innocent child…

No, you took me for a purpose…

… If I had not taken you, you would not be here now to hate me.

Hate, hate… hate!

And now Loki thinks of Odin.

He thinks of him, and inside, he feels himself go rigid with hate.

His hands curl until his fingernails bite into the flesh of his palms, his teeth hard together, and for a moment, he grows deaf with a consuming buzz, powerful in his ears, and he sees only black round the edges of his sight.

For a moment, he is bleak with desire for revenge.

For Odin to pay.

To pay for all of this. All of this is his fault!

Because he only wanted for Odin to see… to see him, for once. To see him, see he could be just as good a son as Thor. Just as good. Just as strong. Just a noble and right.

He only tried to make Odin see, and he wouldn't. He wouldn't even look. And everything… everything he ever told him, everything he ever said, ever promised and swore and claimed… it was nothing, nothing but lies! For a thousand and more years, only LIES!

And how came he to be called Liesmith and trickster, when Odin's scheming exposed Loki's own as nothing more than mere child's play?

Or maybe it was only his own, pitiful desperation to believe he could ever be loved that blinded him to the AllFather's deceptions. He, who is said to possess the ability to see through any untruth, and yet he could not see it of his own, entire existence.

Could only sense something desperately wrong with him, and chose instead to believe the assurances of his parents than listen to the doubts in his own, confused mind.

Oh, but he wishes for Odin to pay.

Only… he can't think how. He can't think how. Odin is so much more powerful, he knows this. He could never kill him, and he tells himself it is only through lack of power he cannot.

This he almost believes.

But still, he wishes him to pay, somehow.

And what now does Loki have to lose, he wonders. What more can he lose?

There is nothing, and so then, he thinks, might it not be a blessing, were he to end his life by attacking the AllFather directly?

If even he thought Odin held any care in his heart for his bastard, stolen son, would that not in itself too be a kind of revenge?

If Odin were to end his life by his own hand?

If he thought Odin held any care for him at all…

But he has nothing to lose, and so what difference does it make? He has no home anymore. No place anywhere. No family. No friends. Only enemies on all sides, who will hunt him down and add still further torture to his already miserable existence.

By clinging to this life, he has lost the one companion he might still have salvaged for himself in Thor, and lost his only place of refuge from the torments of the monsters out there great as he.

Oh, but…

Loki's eyes go wide with dawning thought. The excitement of possibility surging of its own volition, hot in his chest.

His body winds tight suddenly, a kind of nervous energy taking him, anxious and eager.

And slow, a smile spreads across his lips.

Oh, but if he could make this work, then…

Then still he might find for himself a kind of existence worth living.

Still he might save himself from the awful disappointment of the one being left who might at all care for him, who still held enough trust in him to give him any kind of chance, and have for himself a place of protection from any who would seek his further pain.

Perhaps, even… he might do better by Thor in this.

To be to him the Father he always wished for himself…

He could do this for them both, he thinks.

And in that, perhaps, to Mother he could make recompense. For in that, would she not be proud?

If he could do this for both himself, and Thor?