The characters in this story do NOT belong to me. All rights reserved.
3: The Red Queen—
He coughed roughly, feeling the blood from his cut throat slide up over his tongue. He had screamed for days on end, each drop of acid causing his cries to shake the very walls that held him. After a time he stopped the screams. The burn didn't hurt him as much then. The pain was so familiar by then that it didn't shake him any longer. He would watch the green fall into the carved out section of his chest with dull, lifeless eyes.
He didn't need to scream. Screaming was pointless.
There was a spell, some sort of magic that surrounded the cave that made Loki's stomach tight. He had gone without food or water for longer than any man or god could have gone. He figure Odin would do something like this, making it so his body quit working but his soul lived on to be kept in this prison—making it so his skin formed back where the poison hit so it may be burned again. The daft old fool, he thought. I don't need food. I don't need the sun, or the clean air. I can endure any pain so I don't need relief. Oh, you blasted fool.
Loki licked his cracked lips with his dry tongue. He followed one of the drops down from its point to his red and rotten skin. It landed and sunk, carving him a bit more. Loki just stared at the etched flesh. He blinked and blinked, finding it hard to kept his dark eyes open. He stared down at the bloodstained cloth that covered him. So red, he thought.
A sound made his eyes spark. He watched the door of his cell open and the queen Frigga walk through.
She wore white, shining white. Guards walked in with her, both holding a hand close to her shoulders. She batted them away. They bowed and left, shutting the door behind them.
Frigga moved without a word to his side. The glow around her was blinding. She stopped, leaving a wide length between the two.
Is your feet to sacred to stand in the blood of your own son, Loki thought. You spoiled bitch.
Frigga stared at him, looked down at him. Her neck held cold sweat from the heat of the cave and she dabbed at her skin with the backs of her fingers. "Loki."
His name sounded cold in his ears. "My queen."
Frigga frowned deeply. "Your mother. Not a queen, not to you."
Loki looked away at this. You're not my mother, he thought. You never were. "What have you to say to me?" he muttered.
He watched Frigga swallow, her aged skin tightening under her chin. "I wanted to see my boy." Her voice came out shaky.
Loki twisted his wrists in the hold of his chains. He saw the fear in the queen's eyes, the distain she held for him. "I'm not your boy."
Frigga's chest rose and fell as she studied him. "Your brother wants to see you, but he says you think too ill of him." She stopped and took and step back as a drop of blood rolled off his split chest and onto the floor.
He sighed at the mention of his brother, the air he took in burning his dried nose. "I think ill of all of you," Loki said, his teeth clenched.
The queen's chin trembled as she wiped quickly at her sagging eyes. She whispered, "When did this happen? All of this—"
Loki stayed still, head throbbing, mind numb. Blood rose to the top of his throat as another drop landed in the valley of his chest. It spread over his tongue and covered the backs of his teeth. He swallowed. "When you lied to me, when you all lied to me."
Frigga sniffed and shook her head. "We never."
"And there another lie," Loki's voice came out cold. "My entire life was lived in the shadows you held me in. I always wished to be a part of the family, to truly be your son, and a brother to the others—but every time I tried, I was pushed away."
"You are a part of this family, Loki!" Frigga cried shaking her hands at him.
"Then why do you stand away, as I am burned and scared? Why don't you set me free, set your son free?" he hissed.
He watched Frigga sob into her hands as she looked away from him. "I know why you keep me chained—you fear me. You've seen what's inside of me, you've seen that evil. It kills you, doesn't it, that you raised it for so long."
"No!" Frigga yelled and cried harder.
"Yes!" Loki roared, the cave shaking under his voice. "You raised a monster! The blood on my hands are also on yours and you will never clean it off. You can deny all you want and you can bury this little secret, but the fact that you made me will stay with you till you're dead in the ground, you pitiable bitch!"
Loki leaned his head back and spat, blood spraying from his pale lips.
Blood covered Frigga's gown and face, white slowly turning red. She placed a hand up to her cheek and wiped at the hot drops on her skin. A retched scream escaped her as she tried to pat the stains off her clothes. She turned away and fled. She scaled the slope and wrenched the door open, a dotted trail of blood following her.
Loki watched as she pushed past the guards and disappeared, far away from the prison, from him, leaving him alone.
Frigga comes for a visit.