Chapter 6:

Sometimes, Odin thinks, to his great shame and guilt, that it would have been better had he and Frigga never adopted Loki.

Every time the thought floats through his mind, his chastises himself inwardly and immediately, horrified at his own selfishness.

But it's at moments like these when such thoughts assault him, and he wonders despairingly how things could have come to this.

He remembers vividly the first time he and Frigga laid eyes on Loki, then barely more than a newborn, abandoned by his birth parents and left to die, out in the literal cold of winter.

Loki had been such a beautiful baby, and as the years had passed by, had grown into an even more beautiful young boy. He'd always been such a sweet kid, shy and quiet and almost painfully polite. Painfully nice to everyone he met, oddly mature well beyond his years. And that all made sense, when it became all too obvious just how astonishingly, brilliantly intelligent he was.

Even in those relatively normal times, though, Odin had never been able to find any common ground with his middle and adopted child.

Where with Thor, his eldest, and Baldr, his youngest, he'd always been able to easily relate, where he saw so very much of himself in his two other boys, athletic, strong, natural leaders the both of them, with outgoing and engaging and charismatic personalities, Loki was exactly the opposite. Withdrawn and almost purely intellectually driven. Loki had never shown any prowess or desire towards athletics, didn't like to socialize, hardly ever spoke, and when he did, it was usually to talk about mathematics or science or some such. Loki was a boy who found himself most content sitting quietly in his room and reading.

Odin remembers one time taking the boy outside to try and toss the ball with him, the way he frequently did with Thor and Baldr, and the blank, almost confused expression that had been across Loki's face the entire time. Harder still had been just his general lack of ability. He couldn't run very fast, couldn't jump well, had terrible hand/eye coordination. Odin recalls how he'd kept dropping the ball, and how the whole thing had come to an abrupt and horrible halt when, growing frustrated with his adopted son, Odin had thrown the ball hard and fast at him. He'd thought and hoped Loki would snap out of whatever indifference gripped him about the whole affair and catch the ball, but instead, the velocity had proved too much for him, and he hadn't been able to react in time, the thing instead slamming hard into his face and knocking the then seven year old flat onto his back.

Odin can still hear the terrible and broken sobs which had filled the air then as Loki lay unmoving upon the ground. He'd gone rushing to his son's side, and found him with his nose bloodied and an already ugly bruise forming across the bridge of it, marring his pale skin.

He'd been filled then with so much regret and anger at himself, telling himself he should have known better. That Loki had always been fragile, and what the hell was wrong with him, throwing the ball so hard to his little boy.

He hadn't tried anything like that with Loki since, and in the seven years that had passed, the two of them had only seemed to grow further apart.

It hadn't been long afterwards that the first signs of mental health problems began in his middle son.

At first, he and Frigga hadn't believed it to be serious. Had thought it was just another quirk of Loki's, deriving from his genius intellect. Of course he was bound to act a little odd at times. When you were that smart, you just weren't like other people.

But it had quickly grown evident that something more was wrong. Loki acting more and more erratic and unpredictable, becoming frighteningly paranoid and anxious.

When Loki had one day come to both of them, crying violently and claiming that he was being followed by people who weren't there, the both of them knew the situation was beyond anything they had feared, and it hadn't taken long after that for them to start bringing their son to mental health professionals, psychiatrists and other doctors, trying desperately to find out what was wrong, and how to help their boy.

It was only a short time longer before Loki had been diagnosed by a number of different doctors as suffering from the early stages of schizophrenia, though specifically it had taken a number of years for them to pin down precisely what form.

To say it had been devastating would have been a vast understatement.

At first, neither he nor his wife had really been willing to accept it, and the other boy's had been too young to understand.

Foolishly, they'd all tried to go on for a time as though nothing had changed at all. Something they'd been warned against repeatedly by every doctor they'd seen. They were told it was only going to get worse for Loki, and that in turn their own lives were going to grow exponentially more difficult.

They'd suggested medications, which they'd said would help control Loki's symptoms, but which weren't what anyone would call a cure. They told them there was no cure. Not really. That it was something Loki was going to suffer from for the rest of his life.

That had led to them explaining about people who suffered from acute schizophrenia, and how very often their life expectancy wasn't estimated to be very long, for a number of factors.

Frigga had run from the doctor's offices that day, sobbing and horrified, and Odin had had to run after her.

The opposite had occurred when they'd suggested institutionalizing Loki.

Odin's wife had lost hold of her temper, rare as it was to see at all, and she'd screamed herself hoarse against even the idea.

Only that had been four years ago, and it was becoming more and more evident every day that neither of them were equipped to take care of Loki. Not really. Not anymore.

Loki was going insane. There was no other way to say it. Ugly as it was.

The boy was fourteen now, but he was less capable of taking care of himself now than he had been at seven, eight years old. Something only exemplified in the fact that Odin was, once again, tasked with giving his son a bath.

The responsibility alternated between he and his wife and Thor. Baldr was still too young they thought to really be left with such a burden, though some days they really didn't have a choice.

At the moment, Odin finds himself near to tearing his own hair out in frustration and anger.

Loki is crying with the same abandon and conviction of a very young child, shaking violently and thrashing as Odin tries once more to remove the boy's clothing.

Finally, he loses it, grabbing hold of Loki's sticklike arms and shoving them down at his sides with more force than is necessary.

"God DAMN IT, Loki!" He snaps, voice rising loudly. "Would you hold still!?"

He regrets it immediately as he watches Loki flinch back, his wails only growing worse, his body trembling more viciously.

Odin has no idea what's wrong, what's causing Loki to react this way.

He's given his son countless baths in the past, several years, and he's never had this reaction before.

If Frigga were here, he would ask her to come in and take over. But she's out of town on a business trip, and Thor's off visiting friends. Odin already knows Baldr wouldn't be any help. He's often as lost when it comes to Loki as Odin himself is.

Growling in frustration, he sucks in a deep breath, trying to calm himself as he looks away from his son, shaking his head.

A few moments later, regaining his composure, he turns back to Loki, reaching up and wiping at the boy's cheeks with his rough thumbs.

"I'm sorry." Odin tells him, trying to keep his voice soft. "I didn't mean that."

Loki isn't looking at him now, his bright, green eyes cast down, wet and red with tears.

Odin's heart aches horribly at the sight of him.

Loki looks so small.

The boy had always been undersized, but he still remembers what Thor looked like at fourteen, nearly big as Odin himself, broad shouldered and heavily muscular. And even Baldr, at twelve, though much shorter than Loki, outweighs his adopted son by a good twenty pounds.

Loki is a waif, rail thin and slender. He looks like a stiff breeze could knock him over, and it only makes Odin wish he could protect his young son all the more.

"Loki," he tries. "what's wrong honey? Do you not want to take a bath?"

For several, long seconds, Loki says nothing, until finally he shakes his head, still keeping his eyes down.

"No, you don't want to take a bath, or not that isn't what's wrong?" Odin presses.

Loki wipes clumsily at his eyes with the back of his hand, again shaking his head.

"I want to take a bath." He finally answers, voice brittle and small.

Odin frowns, reaching out and rubbing his hands up and down Loki's bony shoulders.

"Then what is it?" He asks again.

Loki sniffles, once more wiping at his eyes. He's so young, and yet he's suffering so much.

Some days Odin can hardly stand to look at him.

"I d-don't… don't want you to see." The boy mumbles out after a moment.

Odin's brow creases in confusion, slight unease uncurling in his stomach.

"… Don't want me to see?" He asks. "You mean you don't want me to see you naked? Loki, you know you don't have to be shy. I've seen you lots of times. You remember, yes?"

Loki hesitates a long, few seconds, before vaguely he nods, still looking away.

Again, Odin rubs up and down the boy's shoulders, hoping the motion is reassuring.

"Then what is it?" He asks once more.

Another, long pause, and then finally his son speaks, almost too softly to hear.

"… The bruises." He says.

Immediately Odin feels his stomach churn sickeningly, a wave of fear and horror washing through him.

"Bruises?!" He asks, alarmed. "What bruises?"

Loki doesn't answer, only his eyes well up with tears, his frame beginning once again to tremble.

"Loki, what bruises!?" Odin demands, his hands gripping more tightly over the boy's shoulders.

"Th-the b-bruises on my-my back."

Without hesitation, Odin spins Loki round, lifting up his shirt.

He feels his breath catch, his throat closing up.

Across the pale and bony expanse of his son's lower back are grotesquely deep bruises, blue and purple and black, no more than a day old.

It looks like someone's taken a baseball bat and struck with full force against his boy, and Odin feels suddenly, overwhelmingly nauseated, his mind screaming with confusion and terror.

For a moment, he can do nothing but stammer, words failing him miserably as he tries to pull his wildly running thoughts back into order.

Loki is crying in earnest now, shaking uncontrollably as his arms fold over himself, as if trying to hide.

"Loki, wh-who… who did this to you?" Finally Odin manages, turning his son back towards him. "Tell me who did this."

His son still won't look at him, his thin chest heaving with gasping breathes as he continues to cry.

Odin feels sick with fear.

"Loki…" he demands again. "tell me."

"… I d-don't want to get in t-trouble." Loki moans miserably, hiccupping with his sobs.

"Loki, honey, listen to me." Odin says, lowering his head, trying to catch the boy's eye. "You aren't going to get in trouble. You did nothing wrong."

He feels his own heart sinking as the implication of Loki's words really register. His son, he realizes, is afraid to talk to him. Doesn't trust him not to get angry. As if Loki at this point could logically be held responsible for any of his actions.

Odin wonders then in dismay what it is he's done to make Loki feel so afraid of him. When the boy usually talks so freely to Frigga and his two brothers.

"Loki, please," he entreats one time more. "I need to know what happened."

It takes nearly a minute longer, but finally his son starts to talk, voice brittle and wobbling as he works through his tears.

Odin feels himself in a state of horrified shock as Loki at last reveals to him that it wasn't anyone who gave him the bruises. At least, not anyone real. It takes Odin longer than it should for him to figure that out, as his son details for him the description of a man, one who appears often to Loki, telling him to do bad things to himself, threatening, Loki says, to hurt his family if he doesn't obey.

Loki tells him the man instructed him this time to take up one of Thor's cricket bats and hit himself with it across the back, and Loki had done just that, repeatedly.

It's may be the first time then that Odin is certain, truly certain, that he and his wife can no longer care for Loki themselves. That, in all likelihood, the boy is going to have to be institutionalized.

The realization is near suffocating to him, and he can barely hold himself together, even as he desperately tries to reassure his son that it's alright. That everything is going to be alright.

It's all he can do to keep from breaking down into his own sobs when, still trembling and crying, Loki throws himself forward, clinging to his father with a wretched desperation, blubbering brokenly.

"You aren't going to s-send me away Papa!?" He cries raggedly. "You aren't going to send me away?!"

"No," Odin had told him.

No, he'd said, and lied.

He and Frigga had held out for as long as they could. Nearly three years more before they at last succumbed to the overwhelming demands Loki's illness had placed on their entire family. When it had started to become clear that Loki's presence was growing detrimental to their ability to focus on Baldr, and worse still, detrimental to Baldr's safety…

After the fire at Asgard, they'd known it was the beginning of the end. Known they couldn't continue lying to themselves, or to their son.

It had taken a while for them to find the right place, and the right doctors. They'd moved from England to the US, to New York, for the sole reason it was here where the best facilities for the mentally ill could be found.

Only the guilt had continued to weigh so heavily on Odin that he'd found himself unable to even visit Loki until now, after Frigga and Thor and even Baldr had harassed him into doing it. Frigga told him Loki believed he didn't love him, and hearing that, Odin hadn't been able to keep away any longer.

Still, the memory of Loki sobbing violently, clinging to him pitifully, then to Frigga, then to Thor, begging them not to put him in this place, impresses itself relentlessly on Odin's mind.

He thinks he may be sick with regret as he looks at his boy now, sitting across from him on the floor, cross legged, working it seems mindlessly on a jigsaw puzzle.

Loki has barely spoken a word in the near hour Odin has been here, but when he has, Odin could hardly fail to notice the slight slur to his son's words, nor the distant, almost glazed look to his eyes.

Loki's been drugged with some sort of medication. It's only too obvious. His reactions are slow, his awareness, though more and more in recent years fractured and inconsistent, now seems skewed in a different way. Like he's walking through a fog, his thoughts slowed and numbed. There's none of the razor sharp intelligence that's always been clear, even in his son's fits of delusion.

Odin's teeth clench, his hands tightening over his knees. He parallels Loki's posture and stance, also sitting cross legged on the floor of his room. He'd hoped by adopting the same position, he would keep Loki from feeling intimidated.

But Loki's so out of it, he doubts it even registers to his boy.

"Loki," he starts quietly.

Loki doesn't look up.

"Loki, son, look at me." Odin says again, reaching out this time and touching his son's birdlike wrist softly.

Slowly, Loki's head comes up, his unfocused eyes gazing back at Odin with barely any recognition.

Odin feels his stomach churn.

"They've put you on some new medication." He states, not even a question. Loki just blinks at him confusedly. "Loki, what have they got you taking?"

Another long, few seconds pass, Loki blinking at him. The corners of his mouth are crusted with dried saliva, his face gaunt and pale. He looks sick, and Odin can barely stand it. He begins then to wonder if this is where Loki belongs at all. If maybe he and Frigga shouldn't make a go of bringing Loki back home to live with them. Of course, Baldr has just started high school, and that would make things decidedly more difficult, but…

"The bad people went away." Loki's slurred and soft voice disrupts his thoughts.

"Hmm?" Odin questions, momentarily confused. "What did you say?"

"The bad people." Loki repeats, blinking slowly again, his tongue coming out to lick at his dried, chapped lips. "Dd-Dr. Banner said it would make them g-go away and leave me alone, and they did. The bad people don't talk to me anymore."

Odin's eyes sting painfully, and he has to swallow thickly before finding himself able to say anything in return.

"That's good son. Th-that's very good."

Loki smiles sluggishly at him, eyes staring almost blankly.

Odin is going to have to have a talk with Dr. Banner. Ask him what the hell he's got his son taking.

"I… I'm better now Papa." Loki says suddenly. "I'm better and c-can come home now. Can't I? Can't I come home now to Asgard?"

Odin's heart sinks like a stone into the pit of his stomach, and in an instant, his eyes fill with the threatening tears. He turns his face away, wiping viciously at them.

He can't keep lying to his boy. But he doesn't know how to tell him the truth either.

And so instead he settles for a little of both.

"We've moved to the United States Loki." He says, forcing himself to turn back to his son and look him in the face. "Asgard was back in England. But… but you'll get to come live with us in our new home soon. Okay?"

Loki's brow creases in dismayed confusion, like he doesn't understand Odin's words at all.

"Asgard?" He asks. "Isn't home Asgard?"

Odin shakes his head, his chest feeling tight.

"Not anymore son. We live in Brooklyn now. In New York. That's where you'll come live with us. Soon. Alright?"

"…P-promise?" Loki asks then, and he sounds so scared, Odin wants nothing more than to take him into his arms and never let him go.

Instead he nods his head, praying that he hasn't just told his boy another, awful lie.

"I promise son. You'll be home with us."

"I want to go home." Loki says.

"You will Loki." Odin answers again. "I promise you will."