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CHAPTER IV

Education

. . .

Soon, Loki began a daily habit of making trips to feed his prisoner, like a zookeeper. He might have considered the duty beneath him, but this task was not something he could delegate. The interactions between the two were always short and often wordless. They communicated primarily through their eyes; Persephone's reviled him like he was the most deranged creature the universe had ever seen, and his green ones shone brightly with arrogant smugness.

After a week or so, she was starting to look every bit the part of a distraught captive. Her face and hair were unwashed, and her cheeks had hollowed – though he brought her food, he did not linger to see if she consumed it. Evidently, she did not. Her once tanned skin had grown pallid, and all in all she appeared quite sickly. He was almost ashamed that he had let such beauty wither, but he found a new sort of beauty in her macabre transformation.

She had hardened. She was docile when he had taken her and she was docile still. She did not challenge him, and in fact she hardly ever spoke. But there was a feral quality to her now that had not existed before – there was a silent defiance in the lines of her face.

He found he quite liked it, actually. It intrigued him. So, now that he seemed to have broken her, he decided to show mercy – to end his experimentations and try something new. He thought perhaps that he might like to see what strange thoughts he could extract from her enigmatic little brain. She might even give him a clue to blackmail Zeus with. Since she did not, after all, provide the sort of collateral he had anticipated, he figured he ought to try to make some use of her. She should at the very least provide him with entertainment.

His generosity began with a washing basin.

Her shock was evident in her expression when he brought it to her, but still she did not speak – not even to thank him. He did not press her for gratitude; when she did engage with him, he wanted it to be entirely by her own volition.

As the days passed, so too did the magnitude of his gifts. They progressed all the way to new garments, and soon, miraculously, she looked just as she had when he first saw her. But her silence remained bewitchingly impenetrable.

It was only when he brought her books that he was finally able to breach her stoicism.

She held the leather-bound texts in shaky hands, running her tapered fingers over the spines with a sort of regal delicacy that could not be taught. Her straight brows knitted together in bewilderment, she whispered, "What is this?"

"Books," he said dryly, stating the obvious. He tried not to let an air of triumph seep into his tone. "You are literate, aren't you?"

"Yes…" Her voice was hoarse from lack of use. She looked into his eyes, those blue gems surprising him with their intensity. "But why?" It wasn't just a question about the books – it was about all the other gifts, too. It was so unprecedented that she could not allow herself to trust it.

He shrugged nonchalantly, as if he hadn't really spent any measure of time thinking about it. "I supposed you might like something to keep you occupied, and the books should at least do something to remedy your deplorable intellect; I find stupidity to be a most appalling vice. As for the other items I brought you, you were starting to look offensive. You might be here for longer than expected, and I should not like to torment my eyes and nose whenever I am forced to be in your presence."

If she was insulted or upset, she did not let it show; in fact, she softened her cagey demeanor. "You have not yet heard word from my father?" she asked.

Loki countered her question with one of his own: "Does he truly care so little for you that he has not yet noticed your absence?"

Persephone looked at the filthy floor, crestfallen. "I do not know my father well," she admitted. "I have only met him a handful of times. But I did not think I was of such obvious insignificance that he would make no effort to retrieve me."

He was startled and disappointed by her frankness. He had hoped she might prove to be a challenge to decipher. Even so, he continued, "One would think that your mother, the queen, might have some sway in his decisions."

She looked at him again, straight in the eyes. He was no longer accustomed to having people speak to him so directly, and he found it somewhat unnerving. Clearly, she thought them to be of equal status, despite her circumstances. He was surprised to find that this did not bother him. "My mother is not the queen," she said bluntly.

This was new information – Loki smirked in self-satisfaction. He knew this would be a useful exercise. "She's not?" he probed.

"No. My mother, Demeter, is a princess – my father's wife is Hera, and she detests all of her husband's bastard children. They wander around the castle, their mere presence a constant insult – they are nothing more than an inescapable reminder of my father's infidelity. She makes no effort to conceal her loathing for them, which is why my mother did not permit me to live alongside her." She recounted this tale scornfully, as if she resented the fact that she'd never been given the opportunity to interact with her kin. Furthermore, she did not seem to approve of her father's many trysts.

He hid his mild interest well; he shared a certain solidarity in her plight of being an unwanted outsider. Playing dumb, he continued to interrogate, "Your mother, then – do you think she has noticed your absence?"

She nodded vigorously. "Certainly. She was always very protective – I have no doubt that she is searching for me as we speak." Oddly enough, any sense of hope was conspicuously missing from her tone. She seemed to (rightfully) doubt that she would ever find her.

Loki was struck with a brilliant idea, and he was immensely thankful that he had decided to show kindness to the fallen princess. He had received crucial information, information that would greatly facilitate his plan. He'd been trying to manipulate the wrong parent – and if he'd learned anything from his mostly-unpleasant experiences with women, it was that they were the key to making a strong man's will crumble. He needed to appeal to her mother, not her father – Demeter would take care of convincing Zeus to meet his terms all on her own.

Persephone noticed his contemplative silence and observed him with unabashed curiosity. She wondered what she could have said to evoke such meditation. His gaze flitted back to hers and she quickly looked away with a scowl, uncomfortable that she had been caught staring. He grinned wolfishly when he noticed the pink tint in her cheeks.

Having pity on her, he decided not to draw attention to it – it was quite possible that she could supply him with further intelligence, and he needed to be on his best behavior if he had any chance of coaxing it out of her. He had already distanced himself from her quite severely, and all he could do now was continue to bribe her; the gifts seemed to be serving their purpose. She had confessed to him so freely that he had begun to suspect she was actually growing fond of him.

Little did he know, though, Persephone was not in fact warming up to him. That said, he was the only living being she had any contact with, and she was effectively starved of social interaction. She was growing desperate in her isolation, desperate for anything to make her feel less like a caged beast. Loki spoke in pretty script even when he derided her, but his sophistication could not mask the utter barbarity of his actions. She had been reduced to dire lowliness. Words poured from her mouth as if they could mitigate this truth, as if the act of speech was the only thing tethering her to her sense of self.

Thinking only of her immediate distress, she did not see through his attempts to prod her into divulging some shard of serviceable information.

. . .

Persephone devoured every book Loki supplied her with. Time started to pass with increased speed as her mind gradually expanded. He restricted his selections exclusively to historical and philosophical texts; no novel or anything he deemed similarly frivolous would ever find its way into her dank cell. The tomes began to accumulate, and soon enough she had her own crude library in the corner by her cot.

On a subconscious level, both Persephone and Loki knew that what he was giving her was something far greater a few ratty old books. In fact, he was giving her a gift so valuable that it vaguely dismayed him. He was giving her knowledge; he was giving her power.

He told himself that it was because ignorance repulsed him, and this was true. It was a scourge in the palace and he was confronted by it every waking moment. But why should it make any difference to him if his prisoner was uneducated? It didn't. He simply did not think that he should have to suffer further idiocy when he dealt with her – she was already in such a disadvantaged state that it seemed rather harmless to give her something to read. May it never be said that he was not a magnanimous sovereign.

Because he understood well that once a slave became educated, he ceased to be a slave, and he could then no longer be ruled. And on some level, he was aware that in feeding her knowledge he was relinquishing a certain type of superiority over her.

Persephone soon came to learn this, along with many other theories. She enjoyed everything she read, the philosophy especially. When he ran out of Asgardian texts, he gave her Midgardian ones that he begrudgingly professed to be, "Not utterly worthless." These pleased her the most because they contained names and words that were familiar.

Each time he delivered something new, she nearly bubbled over with questions about what she'd just read. She didn't like to try him and she knew her unbridled inquisitiveness tested his patience; oftentimes he would not answer her. Sometimes, though, he would discuss the scholarly arguments with her or elaborate on historical events. Usually his answers merely begot more questions.

It was only in these instances that the desolation of her own predicament faded briefly into the background.

His outlook on these matters was often very different from hers, which made for heated but good-humored disputes. It puzzled her that he should recommend texts that directly contradicted his own opinions, but she was glad for it. His philosophy was just as twisted as she would have expected it to be.

What he was doing to her was a complex sort of torture. He gave her the tools to grasp the nature of oppression while he oppressed her; she read of freedom while she was in chains. She no longer endured physical discomforts, but she was now presented with psychological ones. Her eyes had been opened and she saw not a silver lining, but an infinite abyss. Now more than ever, she wondered why? Was it not enough to keep her against her will in this cave? Was he so nefarious that he would not stop until every aspect of her being suffered for a perceived wrong that she herself had not even committed?

These questions scratched at the inside of Persephone's throat, begging to be voiced. But he would never hear them, because she valued her life more than her liberty. The books distracted her from the injustices committed against her while illuminating new ones at every turn.

. . .

Loki came to find that he actually looked forward to his meetings with the girl who lived beneath his floorboards. She posed no threat, and so he was able to share his thoughts openly with her, as he might with a horse or some similarly inanimate creature; though she did respond, she never uttered even so much as a word against him. It allowed him the opportunity to communicate with someone in a relaxed state, which had become a rarity for him.

He was fully aware that the reason she did not refute him was rooted in the instinct of self-preservation, like the obedience he inspired in other areas of his reign. Still, there was a sort of comfort in being able to share his opinions on the nature of governing without explicit judgment.

Internally, he knew she was surely judging him. An entirely new, fierce spirit slowly displaced the dullness she'd been condemned to before. He could see it lying beneath the surface, itching to be freed. He had attempted several times to provoke her into revealing it, but thus far he had not been met with any success. Truthfully, he found it indistinctly fascinating to see how much an individual could change in so short a time – she had proved quite easy to train. In mere weeks, had made her company into something that he could at least tolerate. He knew not if he was exceedingly skilled or if she was exceedingly malleable.

The history books he'd given her had also provided Persephone with a new basis for understanding Asgard and how Loki's rule was something quite unique. From what she gathered, his ascension to the throne was shrouded in much interfamilial turmoil. He never spoke of these relations, of course, which she concluded was actually more telling than if he had. They were noticeably absent from his musings, and when he referred to his predecessor it was by the name 'Odin,' not 'father.'

She never questioned him about these slips; there was something sinister in the way he spoke of Asgardian culture that she did not want to unleash. He seemed to regard these people as if he were separate, apart from their civilization but still defined by it.

One day, she posed an inquiry that she considered innocent enough. "Do you have any siblings, My Lord?" She had taken to referring to him by this title because she could stomach nothing more formal.

"I have a brother," he said impassively. "Surely you must have heard of Thor, even in Olympus."

She nodded, features contorted in thought. "You are the eldest?"

Not answering her question, he replied, "It is far more intricate than that." And then he had left, his abruptness alerting her to a peculiar sort of underlying turbulence.

What Persephone was eventually able to glean by weaving together various disjointed threads of information was that there had been a great deal of conflict surrounding which of the Odinsons would wear the crown of Asgard, and Loki had come out on top through mysterious and dubious means. She found this unsurprising.

. . .

Thor was cleverer than Loki gave him credit for, this he knew. It provided him with a distinct advantage because he was able to try to unravel is brother's schemes undetected. He made no mention of the inordinate amount of time he noticed that his brother spent alone in his bedchambers, but he surveyed him silently, from the shadows.

His initial thought was that Loki was having an affair. This was an innocuous enough crime, given his existing repertoire, and the realization would not have troubled him.

But no – there was absolutely no evidence that there was anyone else with him when he slunk away, and he always entered and exited his room unaccompanied.

To Thor's chagrin, this forced him to assume that something more disreputable was transpiring. The idea to search his Loki's chambers crossed his mind, but he knew that the consequences of being caught would be disastrous.

Make no mistake of it: Thor did not fear Loki. But they were just barely reconciled, and the thought of doing anything to jeopardize this without any tangible evidence that something was amiss weighed heavily on his soul. Thus far, his brother's rule had been peaceful enough, and he seemed to treat his kingly duties with much care. The loss of their parents seemed to truly and deeply sadden Loki, and the notion of severing his last remaining family tie was unthinkable to Thor. But still he could not shake his skepticism. He lived under the impression that Loki's return to wickedness was imminent – inescapable, even – and that he would eventually be required to subdue him for the safety of the realm.

He wished this was not so, but the trickster king was volatile – that much anyone could see. He could only pray that in allowing him to reign he prolonged the calm that preceded this looming clash.

Because to stop Loki this time, he would surely have to kill him.

Author's Note: Please review and let me know what you think!