~Chapter Two~ A Rapid Descent

Loki trudged along the wide alabaster paved path, his expression sour and brooding, not taking in the beautifully manicured gardens he passed. It had taken him a good twenty minutes before he had managed to escape Thor's clutches, and the entire time he had endured an endless torrent of his brother's plans for the refurbishment of his hall, his face set in a rictus of petulantly attempted sincerity. Loki's poorly concealed surliness had been lost on Thor, however, immersed as he was in his grand plans. Loki kicked angrily at a stray tussock of grass growing between two stones; trust Thor to turn the destruction the boars had wreaked to his own advantage. To re-furnish his hall with more elaborate articles than before, order finer hangings for the walls and new furs for the floors; he would probably even request the sons of Ivaldi to forge special decorative shields and weapons to adorn his already laden walls.

Loki snorted, shaking his head as he put on a little burst of speed to jog lightly up the great curved stone steps up to the bronze inlaid doors of the great library of Asgard, with which he was well familiar, his feet scuffing dryly against the smooth stone. It was one of his sanctuaries, and could almost always be relied upon to guarantee him shelter from whatever or whoever he wished to leave behind. As far as he knew Thor had never even set foot in the library since their briefly enforced instruction there as children, let alone thought to seek him out there, and Loki wondered idly whether Thor even remembered that it existed; he had high (and not entirely unfounded) hopes that he didn't. Regardless, the library was where Loki often retreated to when in need of a quiet think, or a place to hole up in, away from the brash boisterous attention of his brother and, more importantly, the condescending and ill-masked discontent of their father. Indeed, when life troubled him most, Loki would withdraw to the library and immerse himself in the reality obliterating balm of other's thoughts and tales, calming himself with the temporary respite of shedding all his cares to become someone new in a microcosm where demoralising disappointments and fiascos didn't happen with such regularity. It was from these tales that he took comfort and hope, although such fragile flickers of emotions were all too easily dashed apart on the rocks of Odin's unforgiving disapproval, and in them that he found solace with other lost souls whose endings had eventually come right – regardless of their fictional or biographical states.

Loki sighed as he made his way to the distant corner that he had claimed as his own and that had become his constant haunt. It was a comfortable little nook that he had found on his first foray into the library when he was a great deal younger, situated in a tucked away bulge of the immense building. It was one of the smaller reading alcoves that were set into the walls at intervals, and had a round table with a couple of high-backed chairs adorned with plump cushions, and a large glassed window that filled it with light and warmth on sunny days.

Once there, Loki threw himself into his preferred chair, his posture sagging until he was slumped with his chin resting on his chest, not even bothering to summon a book from the shelves. In the short walk from the entrance to his alcove his thoughts had followed a progressively deepening downward spiral until he no longer thought solely of his frustrated plans of the day, but of the futility of all his efforts when he was measured against Thor. Uncountable past failures rose up to swamp him with an unceasing barrage of disappointment and inadequacy, wrapping him in their cold embrace and dragging him further and further down to the deeper, darker recesses of his soul. He was never going to win; never to triumph – he wasn't fated to do so. Thor was. Thor was destined to do great things; their father regularly pronounced it – and who was to know better than him? He had drunk from the well of Urd; he was King of the Gods; the Allfather! Loki wasn't destined for greatness and acclaim. Even in the smallest of matters such as this trick – he was doomed to failure. He wasn't even spared in that either. He wasn't allowed a quiet failure; it was always the big events that exploded in his face in a spectacular catastrophe that invariably led to Odin telling him he was a dishonour, not only to their family and himself, but to all the gods; Æsir and Vanir alike. Apathy lay upon Loki in a thick depressing sheet. Reading was beyond him – even as an escape from the emotions that were plaguing him; he could not bring himself to do anything except be – and at that moment even that feel like a tall order.

As he sat, a pall of gloom settling over him like a raincloud and a venomous melancholia seeping out from him to fill the alcove until it felt much darker and colder than it was, an old god, weighed down by his woollen clothes, came shuffling along, his face split in a gummy beam. Loki's eyes barely flickered to him as he came up and sat with a happy sigh in the chair opposite. It was Fróði, the learned keeper god, and head librarian.

"Well now, young Loki, and what has you in such a mood that you look like you've been deboned?" He enquired after pushing around in a pocket and producing a pair of slightly fluffy fake teeth carved from ivory that he inserted into his grinning mouth.

Loki twisted his mouth slightly, and looked to one side, his nostrils flaring, determinedly remaining slumped – refusing to be drawn out from his fuming lethargy even by the diverting spectacle of Fróði sputtering and wiping his tongue for pocket fluff.

"Ah, I see." Croaked Fróði, his voice witteringly happy, and yet full of sympathetic understanding. "It's your brother, isn't it?" He said, shrewdly, his rheumy eyes suddenly sharp and bright. Loki sighed a long drawn out breath, closing his eyes for a long time as though just the action of breathing was a fierce effort. Finally he nodded curtly. "Mmm." Fróði's voice was canny, his eyes keen. "So what's he been up to, then?"

There was a long silence, broken eventually by Fróði leaning forwards at the prince's lack of responsiveness and giving him a prod in the ribs. Loki spasmed upwards in his chair like an eel out of water, his face twisting into a reluctant grin and looking a great deal younger and more carefree for a few precious moments. However, the instant he escaped Fróði's reach, his face became sullen and burdened once more.

"Fine." He ground out, his teeth clenched, his hands grasping the arms of his chair with such force that his already pale knuckles gleamed white like sun-bleached bones, and the wood creaked in protest. Fróði clucked with vague amusement at his success, while Loki straightened his posture and tugged at his clothes, his eyes preoccupied. "It's…not so much something that he's done," he finally began with great difficulty, "it's more that…he – I mean, I – oh! I don't know!" Loki flung himself backwards in his chair once more with alarming violence, frowning heavily, his mouth set in a grim line, and his hands grasping his skull with such force that the tendons stood out.

Fróði watched in solemn silence whilst Loki calmed once more, whose hands slipped to his lap as he resumed figuring out the train of thought that he had attempted to relate. Eventually, the head librarian's patience was rewarded with the young god unfolding his taut frame and leaning forwards, one long fingered pale palm outstretched in an unconscious plea.

"Why is it that everything – everything – always works out for him, Afi?" He asked, his green eyes for once free of all barriers and as confused and helplessly pleading as a child's. Fróði pursed his withered lips thoughtfully; encouraged by Loki's use of the epithet he usually called him by when happy and comfortable. Loki, however, continued on, the words rushing out of his mouth in a tumbling torrent, the banks of restraint and protection that had kept them back broken. "He's always favoured by our father, he's favoured by practically every single god or goddess in this whole dammed city, he can do everything, he never puts a foot wrong – huh – unlike me." Loki spat the words out venomously, and for a moment a streak of pain and disgust flittered across his face. Fróði winced slightly at the bitterness of the expression so inappropriate on one as young as Loki's face, and yet it was an expression that he had often there; most often after a confrontation with Odin. Furthermore, whilst Fróði knew the disgust to be directed at Odin and Thor, the full brunt of it was centred on Loki himself. Years of mistreatment and falling short of Odin's standards had led to a bitter self-loathing that, try as he might, Fróði had yet to alleviate. Loki's thoughts too seemed to have been derailed onto the tangent of his father, and the lack of approval he gained from him. "There's nothing I can do in father's eyes that he will ever accept! Anything I do is compared to Thor, and what I have achieved is somehow found to be wanting! Even when I've put my all into it! Even when I have exhausted every single resource available to me, and Thor has just done whatever he felt like – I always fail! It's always my fault! I've never put in enough effort! And Thor's always rewarded! He's always praised! Even his halls are the most extravagant of all the halls in Valhalla; father's said so a thousand times!" Loki's face was scrunched up with resentment and jealousy laced his words. "And even when one of my tricks seems to go to plan, Thor always manages to recover quickly from it and end up in an even better position than before! Why?! Why does nothing I do – nothing I try – ever go right for me?! Never?!" Loki gazed at the head librarian, the only confidant he had in the entire city, his un-guarded eyes vulnerable and questioning – clear green windows into his bleak miserable soul.

Fróði sighed, carefully considering his reply; Loki was rarely so open in discussing his problems, most often remaining stuck in unhealthy brooding silences for several weeks before shrouding the matters that plagued his innermost thoughts in a cover of mischievousness and trickery. When conversations between them became this open, Fróði knew he had to tread as carefully at lightly as possible across the fractured skin that was the young god's trust and mental state; all previous ones had ended up in furious denial or brow-beating frustration with Loki storming out. Loki's troubles with his brother and father, and everything he did in his life were so interlinked and entwined that to talk of one issue was always to drag along a whole host of others to follow on the heels of any discussion. What made matters more difficult was that Odin's unstinting dislike of Loki was rooted in a secret that had been kept from Loki for so many years that most had forgotten it.

"King of the Gods, Odin may be, Loki, but that does not mean he is without flaws and prejudices." Fróði paused ostensibly to take a breath, but really to give himself a few more moments to pick his way through the gauntlet of eggshells that lay before him. "What he deems worthy is not all that can be worthy. He doesn't value you because he doesn't know you; he does not see your worth, because your worth is in areas beyond his ken. Thor is less complex than you; he is like his father – they are both quick to anger, and Thor, like Odin in his youth, is arrogant. Odin does not understand you because you are cast in a different mould to him. He makes no effort to understand you, because it is easier not to – to simply decide for himself what he thinks you are and judge you from that; he does not want you to be more than he deems you to be. It is not right and it is not just, nor fair to you, but that is how things are." The old god leant forwards and tapped Loki over his heart, the young god's desolate eyes following the movement. "But trials make you stronger, if only you can look at them in the right way; your heart beats with a firmer will. And remember that while Thor is given everything without effort, you have had to struggle and fight. It makes you stronger in a way different to Thor's muscle. Brawn is not always the key to everything, and your brother still has much to learn. Even if you don't appear to get any results, never forget that everything you have been through has benefitted you in some way – even if it is unseen and unknown, the change is still there, and one day you will know it." Loki's unimpressed po-faced expression told Fróði everything he already knew, and he could already see the young god's barriers re-erecting themselves in his clear green eyes. "No one is perfect, you know." Fróði said gently. Loki snorted and stared down at his long fingers which were drawn into fists.

"Thor is." He muttered. Fróði frowned.

"Look at me, Loki." Fróði leant forwards, determined that if nothing else, the troubled young god would take this message to heart at least, and there was something in his tone that forced Loki to lift his head and eyes. "You are much more than your father has ever thought you to be, or ever wished you to be. What he thinks of you does not define you; we are to be what we wish to be, if only we have the strength to do so." The old god remained staring into Loki's eyes for a few moments until finally the prince blinked and broke the contact. His eyes had clouded over with anger once more, and with its return, his fury had obliterated his earlier openness. He gave a non-committal sigh that was clearly a dismissal. Fróði nodded, half to himself, half to Loki, got up and shuffled away, encouraged to think that Loki might at least have listened to him for once by the lack of a disagreeing outburst. Past experience told him that it was useless to try to talk the young prince around when he had such a forbidding expression in his eyes.


In the coming days and weeks, Loki's depression remained about him like an odourless miasma. It filled the space about him, and his prolonged presence in a room with others would gradually lead to it affecting the mood of all those present, though he never spoke a word, remaining in a sullen silence – his eyes at once wounded and burning with anger, and very occasionally the faintest glimmer of well hidden confusion. He refused to speak or answer any question put to him, instead falling into a resentful silence, his jaundiced eyes clouded over and brooding. All attempts at conversation with him were met with a blank hateful glare that soon stopped even the most insistent of souls, and if he did reply it was only to utter cruel rejoinders that always hit their intended mark with stunning accuracy.

It was not until he managed to reduce eight minor goddesses to anguished tears in a matter of minutes that Frigg took the matter in hand with a serious consideration. Loki being churlish was nothing to be surprised at, in fact it was to be expected – he was often rude and could be spiteful and vindictive when the mood took him, it was just how he was, and he regularly fell into short periods of sourness –, but he had never before exuded such unbridled and indiscriminate hate with such constancy. It did not matter who it was that came across his path, all were subjected to the full force of his ill-temper, and felt the harsh stinging lash of his tongue. Furthermore, as part of his nature as the god of lies and trickery he was well aware of the soft spots that each individual had, and sometimes hid, and was ruthless in his exploitation of them, fashioning each insult or jibe with its own particular sting to cut deepest where it hurt most, and cause the utmost pain or distress.

Odin was kept carefully in the dark of Loki's newfound and inexplicable unpleasantness, for Frigg knew that a confrontation with his father when in such a state would lead only to a worsening of Loki's behaviour, and the speaking of many things that would have been better left forgotten or unsaid and unmeant. Frigg had a strong understanding that words, once said, could never be taken back – no matter how genuinely they wished to be rescinded – and that words and thoughts said and made in anger were worse still and did the most damage, even if their only intent had been to temporarily hurt.

Once Loki caught wind that his mother was involving herself in the matter, he took judicious steps to remove himself from the strongest areas of her influence, and avoided her at all costs. He had no intention to give any account for his behaviour, and did not want her questions, kindness, or involvement in the matter; it was not as if she would understand it or how he was feeling in any case. His absence at meals was noted by all those that had had to sit closest to him with a distinct relief, for they were all tired of occasionally glancing up to find his haunted eyes burning into theirs, radiating malevolence, and being constantly on edge, waiting for the inevitable put-down that he so exquisitely timed – never quite enough for them to engage him in an argument, but often stretching their nerves to breaking point. They could deal with his tricks well enough, in fact there were times when they were quite amusing and the trickster god could be pleasant to be around, but this was completely different. His disappearances in this could not be hidden from Odin, but the king of the gods was unconcerned at his younger son's absence from table having always considered him peculiar in his ways, and pleased to be rid of the sight of him – for meals were the one time that he could not imagine and wish away physical reminders of Loki.

As a result, Loki found himself spending his entire day either in the library – lounging in his chair with such apathy that had Fróði not known better, he would have taken the young god to be one of those that had lost control over their body –, or tucked away in the most obscure of places – up long disused towers, scaling walls to sit in sheltered corners of the roofs of the various halls of Valhalla, or resting in the shadows of the peaked ceilings of unused rooms, his long slim frame draped along the great beams that formed the rafters as he stared up at nothing with blank soulful eyes, struggling with the conflicting inner turmoil that burned in his soul. Fróði had been right in his assumption that Loki had taken his words to heart, even if he hadn't initially given any indication of it, thinking hard on the matter and turning it over and over in his mind. The resulting discord of his intense brooding had escalated to such a point that he was at war within himself, his mind consumed by the matter, and he was making himself ill; torturing himself from the inside out. His already spare frame became emaciated – for he did not bother to catch up on those meals that he missed –, his face a gaunt skull, his skin dry and taut and loose in all the wrong places, with angry eyes that burned with a worrying feverish brightness, deeply set in darkly shadowed sockets, gazing out through lank brittle hair. His clothes hung off his shrunken frame poorly, and his muscles lost their tone like a horse stabled too long and were eaten up as his body attempted to protect itself against the enforced starvation; his very fingers were no more than bones encased in skin. Those that knew him would not have recognised him, but for his colours, and those that did see him were at once horrified and fearful when they did recognise the walking skeleton that glanced fleetingly at them before melting quickly away.

At least part of everyday would be spent in his alcove of the library, reading only if he could muster the energy to (which was not very often), generally just sitting in his chair. Every day, Fróði, with his uncanny knack for knowing when the prince was about, would appear, shuffling along with a gummy smile. Sometimes he would say nothing, and merely sit and keep the preoccupied young god company in as companionable silence as was possible with Loki radiating discontent, and other times he would chatter away about various scraps of gossip or information that popped into his head, not expecting any reply, refusing to be doused by the prince's dull spirits. For all his lively banter, however, Fróði watched the young prince's decline with anxious eyes. Each day more of the flesh seemed to have been stripped away from Loki's body, and his skin hung in dark bags beneath his eyes from countless sleepless nights. Fróði had never seen him in such a condition, and he did not want to think just how long the prince could continue in such a manner, god or not – there were some things that all bodies required, mortal and immortal, and they couldn't last long without them.

They did not revisit the root of Loki's problems again. Fróði knew that it was something that Loki was working at coming to terms with, attempting to adjust his thoughts and feelings, and failing to successfully do so several times a day – as evidenced by either a sharp hurtful remark to the understanding head librarian, or by his stormy departure from the library (which more than once drew scandalised glares from Fróði's wife Berghildr– a termagant woman that all feared with just reason – although Berghildr's heart was not really in it, for she was just as concerned about Loki as her husband). Fróði bore Loki's insults with a calm equanimity, understanding the impotent fuel of frustration that fired them, and also too that they were made with no real sincerity, but more as a venting of his anger.

Loki was a good deal more grateful for Fróði's presence than he would have ever put into words. It was a blessing to know that there was at least one other beyond himself that knew and, though Loki did not know this, understood much better than Loki himself understood, what he was feeling. Fróði's reliability, too, was something that he depended upon heavily; to be able to arrive in the library and wait only a few moments before he appeared was one of the few stable things Loki could cling to, and he clung to it with the ferocity of a drowning man. Fróði's constancy was rock firm, and knowing that he would always be there gave Loki comfort in his darker moments, and provided a welcome reprieve that helped him resurface when feelings of his own overwhelming inadequacy threatened to swamp him. Loki also found that he trusted Fróði, implicitly; for Fróði had never broken his word to Loki in all the years they had known each other, and he kept all that Loki had ever shared with him as secret as the young god desired. All this combined to form an unconditional solidarity that Loki had never found in any other person his entire life, and it was a feeling of such peace to be able to rely on another and trust them as much – more – than he trusted himself.

His daily struggle to bring peace to the irreconcilable contents of his head and heart was little aided by the fact that so much of what he felt and knew was too tangled for him to fully understand. It was like his mind had become a quagmire that he was stuck waist deep in, and he knew he either had to cross it or be sucked down. Fróði's presence was soothing, except when his nerves were raked raw by his failed attempts, and his temper fit to burst, his patience shattered. Loki did his best in every attempt to fit the pieces together in a way that made sense or pleased him, but it was like working with a puzzle that was missing half the pieces, and every effort came to nothing and ended in crushing failures that drained away a little more of his hope and stamina each time.

Beyond the jealousy, and guilt of the jealousy, and bitter anger with his father and brother, and self-loathing that he turned in on himself, and his attempts to reconcile who he wanted to be with who he was, Loki fought his loneliness. Fróði was the only being he had ever spoken candidly with his entire life, and Loki felt his heart burdened with so many secrets that there were times when he wanted to scream with frustration. He wanted to share the contents of his wounded soul, and yet he also wanted to keep his problems to himself – his weaknesses –, shut away where they could not be seen, and where – hopefully – they could be forgotten. None of what he truly felt could ever be shared with any of the members of his family; he was too different from them – a race apart, almost –, and none of them had ever fully understood him. They understood what small parts of him he allowed them access to, that he created and displayed for them, but beyond that, he was locked to their entry. Comprehension of his inner self was never going to be within their grasp (there were times when he wondered whether it would ever be within his own grasp), and Loki wondered whether there would ever be anyone that he could share the entirety of his weighed down soul with; a person who would not judge him for his dishonourable thoughts and feelings, but merely accept and understand them and him and be content. As yet, he was finding it difficult to do so for himself, and his hopes of finding another who could do what he himself was failing to do every single day were non-existent.