Trials
Chapter Four: Audience
Loki's eyes drifted slowly down to the trampled ground, willing it to open up and swallow him whole. This was all a bad dream. A terrible, awful, horrible dream. Any minute now, he would wake up and it would be time to go get into position to begin the endurance segment. Sorkvir would be announcing his triumph in each trial, and he would race up the stairs to the platform to take his final oath and the crowd would clap and shout their enthusiasm and Mother and Father would… Father, Loki thought, and even though a second earlier he wouldn't have believed his horror and humiliation could be any worse, now it was. Despite his desire to hide his face from the realm, he couldn't stop himself from lifting his head and turning it toward his family. Father was looking down; Loki could almost see the waves of shame rolling off him. Thor was looking at him, ducking himself down as though attempting to hide. Mother was looking right at him, lips parted as though to speak, and Baldur was beside her, whispering in her ear, though she did not seem to hear. Father was as still as could be.
Tyr passed by him, back toward the arch that led to the equipment rooms. He was leaving. It was over. Sorkvir was climbing down from the platform. It can't end like this, Loki thought, desperation growing inside him. It just can't! Sword still in hand, he followed Tyr, picking up his pace to a jog to catch up with him just under the stone arch. Sorkvir hurried over also, and Ossur and Elaugur were there waiting.
"Tyr, wait. How did I break the rules?"
"You used magic. Trickery. This is not the way of an Asgardian warrior."
"But I fought you well. And all I did was make a little light. If I could defeat an enemy that way, why wouldn't I?"
"You are an Aesir, Loki. You fight with strength. With courage. With skill. With weapons. Not with tricks."
"But I'm also supposed to show something of myself here, what I can-"
"Loki, stop. My word is final. What you did out there was not what you were taught. You have failed. And I am personally disappointed in you."
Loki pushed past the sting of those words. "But I-"
"Don't make things worse," Sorkvir said, putting a hand on Loki's shoulder and squeezing hard enough that he could feel it through the thick leather there, making the cut underneath sting. "Go home, Loki. We'll have to discuss how to handle this. No one has ever failed the Trials before."
They started to leave. Ossur, his first trainer, who'd meant so much to him as a boy on the cusp of his youth because he treated him the same as Thor even though at nine years old he technically shouldn't have begun his training as a warrior yet, lingered there under the arch. "I'm sorry, Loki. You were doing really well. I was proud of you." Ossur gave his arm a quick squeeze and left, too.
And Loki was all alone.
/
/
He didn't stay that way for long. The light tapping of the low heels favored by his mother against the ancient worn stone filled him with a sense of dread. He looked behind him, and thought about fleeing. His mother, the arena, the city, the entire realm. But that was just a childish fantasy. He was Loki Odinson, he had just defeated the great Tyr, and he did not run.
She rounded the corner then, and while he didn't run, he couldn't quite bring himself to look her in the eye, either. She stopped right in front of him; he could see the emerald green silk of her shoes peeking out beneath her matching gown.
"Oh, Loki," she breathed out quietly on a sigh.
He looked up then, and saw her sad smile for just an instant before she wrapped her arms around him and drew him in close, heedless of how he dampened her gown with sweat and perhaps even a few drops of blood. He didn't precisely return the embrace, but now matching her height, he merely rested his cheek against her shoulder. Her hand came up and stroked his wet black hair.
They stood there for a long time in complete silence, even Mother's hand on his head going still. He could have stood there enveloped in the softness and warmth and love and strength of her arms for all eternity, and perhaps a few years ago he would have tried to, but he was a man now, or would be in a few days. A man, but not a warrior…if it was possible for an Aesir to be one and not the other in the first place.
He extricated himself from her embrace and took a step back. "I suppose we should go," he said, fighting to keep his voice natural.
"I suppose so," she said with a nod.
They turned to leave. Loki saw her arm coming up to reach around his shoulders and angled his next step a little further from her side; Frigga's arm went smoothly back to her side.
"Have dinner with me?" she asked as they mounted horses for the return to the palace.
The servants kept their eyes lowered and Loki studiously avoided looking at them. They were both men, and they, these servants who cared for the family's horses, had both qualified as warriors. Loki, their prince, had not. The first rumblings of anger and resentment began to simmer in his belly.
"Loki? Dinner?" Mother prompted.
"Sorry, Mother. I…" Dinner… He closed his eyes for a moment, his riding posture remaining perfect. The feast. A feast had been planned, to celebrate his achievement. Servants would now be scurrying around, clearing place-settings, storing food, notifying esteemed invitees that there would be no feast. Because he had failed. But I did not fail, Loki again protested. There was no one here to protest to, though. He glanced at his mother. No, he thought, not her. He would be the laughingstock of Asgard if he got his mother involved. His father, though… He dreaded it. Father must have been humiliated by the declaration of failure. But surely he would not agree with it. He'd seen what Loki had done, how it was Loki's sword tip that had wound up at Tyr's chest. Father could talk to Tyr. He could make this right. It wasn't always easy having a king for a father, but in this instance it would be helpful.
"I'll have dinner sent up to our dining room, all right?" Frigga asked.
"No, thank you, but I'm not hungry. I need to speak with Father."
"Your father has gone to a meeting. I'll send word that you wish to speak with him. But Loki, you need to eat and drink."
"I'll send for something. Don't worry about me, Mother, I'll be all right."
She gave a bracing smile. "You ask the impossible. I'm your mother, and that will never change, whether you're nine or nineteen or nine hundred. Worrying about you is an unavoidable corollary."
They said nothing for the rest of the ride back. Ensuring his mother would hear, Loki told the servant who took their horses to send up dinner, even specifically requesting pheasant. Like his supposed inability to lift the log, this was all for show, in this case to assuage his mother's concern; he didn't think he would be able to eat anything, even if he'd had the desire.
He bade her a quick goodbye and hurried inside, then ran up the many flights of stairs to his floor. He could feel the burn in his legs by the time he got there, and a long soak in the bath would have felt like bliss, but instead he merely rinsed off, cleaned the handful of cuts Tyr had inflicted, broke a couple of healing stones over them to mend the skin quickly and without scarring, and got into fresh clothing. He slicked his hair back, looked at himself in the mirror, and told himself that everything was fine, that he would talk to his father, and he would work everything out. "I'll show them," he told his reflection. "All of those people who left thinking I'd failed. They saw me best Tyr. They already know the real truth. They saw it. Father saw it." He took a slow deep breath and went out to his antechamber to wait.
He'd just sat down when the door started to open. "Not now, Thor," he said even before his brother's blond head peeked inside.
"You're back!" Thor exclaimed, stepping inside and heading for the chair opposite Loki, because "not now" in Thor-speak apparently meant "Come in, make yourself comfortable."
Loki sprang up and put himself between Thor and the chairs, throwing an arm around his shoulders and trying to push him back to the door. "I mean it, Thor, not now. I'm waiting to speak with Father."
"Oh, all right. But I can stay. Do you want me to stay? I came by earlier. But you weren't back yet."
Loki shook his head. Thor looked a little nervous, or perhaps uncomfortable, and the whole thing felt a little strange, and Loki didn't want to deal with him right now. Father first. Getting things right first. "No. It's between me and Father. I have to do it myself."
Thor nodded and allowed Loki to guide him to the door – Loki was under no illusions that he was indeed being "allowed" to do it, for shoulder-to-shoulder Loki lacked the strength to make Thor go anywhere he didn't want to go.
"Come tell me how it went after," Thor said.
"Yes, yes. Go." And then he was gone, door closed. And Loki realized why the visit had seemed so odd. Thor hadn't touched him once. Not a hand on his arm or his shoulder or the back of his neck. Not a playful punch or kick or swipe. Thor had always been free with physical signs of his affection toward him. The fact that just now he had not done so told Loki that he was embarrassed. Of course he is. He got all those people to come, and look what happened. But he'd given a good performance, and once the situation was resolved, Thor and everyone else would forget ever having heard the word "fail." Loki nodded to reassure himself of this against the opposite message some other portion of his brain was insisting upon.
Loki grabbed a book and sat down again, thinking in turn of all the other people who'd been there. Baldur, who looked up to him and had been so excited to go to his Trials. Jolgeir, who he looked up to and who was almost like family. Eir, to whom he could take absolutely any question and receive a serious answer. Uncle Villi and Aunt Jora, and Uncle Ve and Aunt Luta…who'd come from Vanaheim. He groaned. With the crowd he'd forgotten all about his father's family's presence; they always kept a certain distance from Father in public, to avoid attracting attention, as his mother had once explained it. They would have been sitting somewhere unobtrusively, and Loki had never looked for them or noticed them as he'd greeted others. At some point he would have to go see his uncles and aunts, and deal with that failure, too.
/
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Two hours later, a knock came at the door. Loki sat up with a start, the open – and forgotten – book on his lap falling to the floor. He left it and went to the door. Mother stood there.
"Your Father's meeting is over now, Loki. He's in his study upstairs."
Loki nodded and searched her face for some clue to what might be awaiting him, but she gave no indication. "All right," he said, stepping out and closing the door behind him.
"How are you, my darling?" she asked as they headed up the stairs together.
"I'll be all right, Mother. Don't worry about me."
"I will always worry about you. The unavoidable corollary, remember?"
"-able corollary," Loki joined in on the words he hadn't exactly heard for the first time that day.
"Yes, I see that you do."
"I know. And thank you, Mother. But really, I'll be fine."
She wrapped her arm around his, and here, in the privacy of the floors where they lived, here he could allow it. An Einherjar opened the golden doors and they passed through; Loki squeezed Frigga's hand and stepped back from her. "Let me do this on my own."
Frigga looked down for a moment. Loki could tell she wanted to stay with him. But in the end, she simply nodded.
Loki gave her an appreciative smile and continued on to his father's study. He knocked, heard the gruff "Come in," and entered.
/
In the next chapter, Loki gets his conversation with his father, and we also find out a bit more about what Thor thinks about all this. This story is solely from Loki's POV, so all we'll get of what Thor's thinking is what Thor says and does, and what Loki thinks Thor's thinking.
Comments/questions/thoughts?