Chapter 8

Toki had followed his Papa's voice down a stone pathway and soon found himself in a large, incredibly well-lit chamber with posters of planes and famous pilots like Amelia Earhart decking the stone walls. There was a large work table in the middle of the room that was completely bare, a simple bed in the back with twelve stuffed animals waiting to be played with, and a simple shelf full of children's books and art supplies.

On top of the golden wood shelf was picture. Daddy Nathan was standing next to Papa Charles who had a light hand of ten year old Toki's shoulder. Eleven year old Skwisgaar, who was only slightly taller than Toki peaked out from behind Daddy Nathan. Uncle Magnus had his hand slung over Uncle Pickles' shoulders with ten year old Murderface glaring at the sight from the opposite side of the picture. There was something off about the picture, like it had been altered in some way but Toki couldn't figure out how.

"Papa, ams you in here?" There was no answer. Toki walked in the chamber and looked around. There were no secret doors and Papa was not the one who lurked under beds to tease him, that was Daddy's job because he didn't wear expensive suits and could afford to dirty his clothes. Where was Papa Charles? He could have sworn that he heard his voice calling to him. "Papa?" Once again there was no answer, so he tried calling for his other parent. "Daddy?"

"Sindre," came a soft male voice from behind Toki, causing the ten year old to jump. He turned around and there was no one was in the chamber with him. They must be in the pathway.

Toki clutched his clown doll closer to him. "Who says thats? Ams Skwisgaar? Nots funny Skwisgaar. I tells Uncle Pickles you tries to scare me." He looked out in the shadowy pathway expecting to see a blonde head glinting in the darkness and shaking in laughter, but there was no one.

"Sindre, do you hear me?" repeated the voice and Toki yelped in fear, shutting the solid wooden oval chamber door and locking it before retreating to the bed and gathering the plush toys to him in comfort. Once hidden safely behind the fortress of cotton stuffing, he waited to hear the voice again.

/ / / / / / / (o. }=\ \ \ \ \ \ \

It had been over a week since Sindre's outburst and retreat into his own mind and during that time Loki and Hagar took care of him. Holding a comatose man who had been a baby that had ripped from his womb only days ago to his mind was an experience that should by all accounts have been should have broken a lesser man, but Loki had seen far too much in his life, even been through too much, for this to be a foreign concept. He knew of realms where in one Midgard day, a child would be born and grow to adulthood. He supposed he could treat this situation as such or see it as an opportunity to treat his child as the baby he had been denied.

Hagar had been called away by his father, so Loki was left to attend to his baby by himself. Loki hummed a childish as he cut and brushed Sindre's long brown hair and then twisted the soft strands into a long braid. "You have such beautiful hair, Sindre," he complimented. "I'm surprised your father allowed you to grow it out. Then again, he did like those… hair bands I think they were called. I'm half surprised he didn't grow his out as well but maybe it wouldn't look too good with those tight suits that he favored."

Sindre simply blinked at him.

Loki sighed before retrieving the washing bowl from the night stand and running the damp cloth over his child's limbs. When he yanked Sindre's torso and night shirt up to get to his back, Loki actually dropped both his son's body and the wash cloth in horror. He didn't know how he had missed them when Hagar had changed the boy's clothes but there were distinct, straight scars ran in a crisscross pattern up and down the tanned skin. "Oh, Yggdrasil…" He turned the child to his side so he could look at them clearer. It was clear none of the scars were fresh, in fact they all appeared to be several years old and many almost matched the boy's tan skin but it was clear from their varying colors and the amount they were most likely done over a long period of time.

Loki's vision flashed immediately a dark purple and red. Who did this? Who had harmed his child? Why had his father not protected him? "Who did this Sindre?" he growled. "Who hurt you?"

Sindre once again did not respond.

"Was it Reverend Wartooth?"

Sindre's body suddenly flinched and it suddenly dawned on Loki that these scars most likely held the reason for his unresponsiveness. It was a coping mechanism. The thought of how long his child had to have been in that madman's care to have accumulated these scars almost made him throw up.

Swallowing the acid in his throat, he carefully began to inspect every inch of his child. The right palm of Sindre's hand had a deep scar as well and there was the faintest binding rune that had been carved on the bottom of his left foot. When he inspected his child's sex organs, he discovered a lingering feeling of magic beyond the scrotum. His child had used his magic to do something and he prayed to the sacred ash tree that it was not to repair any further abuse. It was everything he'd been dreading. Covering his child back up, he gathered the stiff body to him. "Never again; I swear I will never let any harm you."

There was still no response. The child didn't trust him enough to leave the safety of his mind. He would have to assume another, more familiar form to get the boy to trust him; he knew what form that would be, the boy had been calling for him after all, but Loki wouldn't like it. But after seeing the scars on his child's flesh, he doubted he would come out for anyone else. This would be the quickest, easiest way.

He gently laid his child back on the bed and retreated from the small room to his own quarters where he stood in front of the mirror and stared at himself for the first time since he was abducted. His dark brown hair was longer, almost black from the lack of sunlight to bleach it. His skin was almost as pale as fine porcelain, it would have been interesting even beautiful but spider webs of veins were visible around his eyes and forehead. His green eyes were shadowed and clouded. It was no wonder why his brother's friends called him weak. He was a pale shadow of the laughing bartender with the loving lawyer husband.

"Please, forgive me Charles," he prayed to the man he still hadn't taken time to properly mourn.

Loki watched himself in the mirror as his jaw lowered and his shoulders became slightly broader; his hair moved a little further up and changed to short auburn brown; green eyes darkened to a hazel and narrowed; then everything was completed when his limbs gained another four inches and his green Asgardian clothes transformed into a tailored suit with light shoulder pads. Loki cleared his throat and then tested his voice, "Hello."

There it was; that soft masculine voice that used to greet him in the morning. Loki was certain he'd need to see kidnap a therapist to deal with both the issues he would acquire from wearing his dead husband's face and to help his son with his emotional trauma. Now that he had the form his son would trust, how best could he use it? He couldn't wear the form for too long, someone would notice and blow his cover. It was also clear that the two had built an entire life, inner jokes and memories that Loki knew nothing about while he had been trapped so Sindre would be able to detect something was off eventually.

So he'd have to make sure this illusion would count. He only prayed it would work.

He tried to match the soft determined gait he had heard across the apartment floor every morning as he entered his son's room. Sindre was just where he left him, his eyes staring at nothing. "Time to get up now," he called out in the octave of his dead husband's voice.

After a few seconds, there was a faint sound, "Papa?" Frost blue eyes met hazel in confusion. "Ams it you?" Loki almost wept for joy that he had achieved a response and so quickly.

"Yes and no. I am… checking on you from in-between planes of existence…"

Strangely muscular arms wrapped around his torso quicker than Loki could blink. His child was hugging him. "I misses you Papa. Why didn'ts you comes homes? Why you leaves me behinds?"

Loki thought fast on his feet. "I am dead, little one. The fact that you can see me now is a miracle. Tell me, why have you retreated into your mind?"

Sindre's body began to shake. "Nos, Papa! Don'ts leaves mes alone agains. Daddy don'ts cares abouts Toki anymores. He ignores mes and thens when leaves me in house alones. Says Toki ams worthless. Then big blond man falls from skys and says he takes me tos you, but yous not here. Insteads there ams weirds mens who says they throws me in dam mads house. I scareds Papa."

Loki let the boy sob against him with some awkward, gentle pats to the boy's back. Toki… Charles had named their child Toki? And who was 'Daddy?' Had Charles moved on… Loki tried to force the jealousy and betrayal that stung at his eyes. He'd been gone for over twenty years to Charles. It would be hard to imagine anyone, especially a species with such a short life span, going that long without intimacy.

"Papa?" Sin… Toki called. "Ams you missing us toos?"

"Yes, little… Toki. But you are safe here."

"Safe?" Toki repeated, frost blue eyes blinking in fear as long, calloused fingers twisted in loose strands of brown hair and pulled in distress. Loki tried to focus on something besides the betrayal in his gut by noting Sind… Toki seemed to have inherited his hair- so fine it escaped its bands. "Withs people who lies to mes ands woulds threatens mes?"

"Your… uh… bearer will not allow that to happen."

Toki tilted his head like a puppy trying to decipher a command. "Bearers… Whats you means?"

"The man with the…uh… the dark brown hair who is watching over you is the man who gave birth to you, Toki," Loki supplied somewhat nervously.

"Mans cants gives birth, Papa," Toki argued. So Charles never told Toki about his other parent.

"Your bearer is not completely a man, uh… although he… um… calls himself one."

"Oh," Toki replied. For several minutes everything was quiet.

"Are you alright?"

"I nots completely mans eithers," the boy confessed and suddenly the lingering magic around the boy's sex organs clicked in Loki's head. It wasn't to repair damage, the boy had used his magic to hide his hermaphroditic nature. His boy really was almost a copy of Loki himself. "So I ams nots a freak?"

"It's not common but… it does happen." Loki refrained from mentioning that Aesir children with two sex organs always died in their childhood. That had been one clue in Loki's adult years that he was adopted from another race.

Toki smiled. "I's nots a freak…"

"No, you are not… at the very least, you are not alone," Loki replied before he could stop himself from giving the boy false hope. He then untangled his husband's form from the boy's arms. "Toki, I must go. Your bearer will look out for you now that I cannot."

Toki attempted to reach out and pull him back. "No, don't leaves mes! I needs yous!" Tears were streaming like raindrops on a window pane down the boy's face.

Loki shook his head slowly. "You have everything that you need. You will be fine." He disillusioned his form slowly, mimicking a ghost that was fading away before walking out the chambers and leaving the boy sobbing on the bed. With a mixture of relief and guilt, he shrugged off the form and returned to his normal self before noticing Hagar sitting on a bench against the wall.

"I see you got him to come out of his mind," the old servant whispered in a voice that could barely be heard above the sobs, his tone neutral but his gaze disapproving.

"Yes, I did," Loki whispered back then gestured for the servant to follow him to his own chambers where he shut the door to avoid his act from being blow. "I take it, you have a problem with my methods?"

"Loki… I have known you since Odin brought you home in his arms. You have always despised being lied to by your father, yet you are doing it to your own child. Do you not see that this will end badly?"

"It will not," Loki hissed. "I will not assume Charles' form again." Even as he said it, he heard a small voice in his head whispering doubts but he quickly squashed them down.

"Yes, you will. If you chose the easy way once, you will do it again," Hagar argued. "Also, what is to stop that child from talking about a visit from his dead father and being finally labeled completely mentally unstable? Do you know what your father could do to him?"

"It will be awhile before I allow him to venture out of my sight for very long and by then I will convince my child it was all just a dream, a trick of the mind to help him deal with reality."

Hagar shook his head sadly. "Lies on top of lies. Your silver-tongue fools everyone but yourself and that boy is more like you than you know, Loki. This is one day back fire on you."

/ / / / / / / (o. }=\ \ \ \ \ \ \

Blue eyes stared at the sleek metal stand across from him, caressing the black and white object it held with loving detail but he did not make any movement to pick it up. Despite the tragic loss of their manager and friend and the kidnapping of their family member and rhythm guitarist, the acting head of the Crystal Mountain Records, Damien Cornickleson, was threatening to sue them for breach of contract because they had failed to provide a new album within the two years stipulated. So, reluctantly, the remaining four had retreated to the recording studio but had failed to come up with anything.

Yet, since Toki had vanished, Skwisgaar's mind didn't seem to hold any more music and his fingers had frozen over the simplest of cords. Somehow, his playing had lost his power. Dr. Twinkletits claimed anxiety was the reason for this strange occurrence. Whatever it was, everyone in the band had started to feel it. Nathan's voice had lost its persuasiveness and strength that rivaled Lucifer no matter how much he screamed. Pickles, after they had gotten him back from the police, could not sit behind the drum case without having some kind of medical emergency where he nearly overdosed on something. Without Toki around, he'd somehow lost his immunity to drugs. Even Murderface couldn't stay in the recording studio for five minutes without ranting about something and storming off to hide in his room.

"I sorrys Toki," Skwisgaar whispered to the empty room. "I sorrys Is ams sayings mean things. Comes homes."

"Dude, you knaw 'e can't 'ear you. 'E ain't dead." Skwisgaar looked up to see Pickles in the doorway, swaying on his feet. The word 'yet' lingered behind the sentence like the odor of a deceased stink bug.

"What ams wes a doings?" Skwisgaar asked.

"Wha'cha mean?" Pickles asked as he staggered over to the stark white bed and fell across it on his belly.

"Wes ams takings orders from dildo guy because we donts haves no Charles anymores. But cants play withouts Toki. Sparks ams missing."

"Yeah, the kid was a better guitar player 'an we gave 'im credit fur, even if it was that a(guitar riff)hole Magnus who taught 'im. 'E made you out do 'im."

"Then whys we listens tos da dildos? I don'ts feels likes da playing 'til we haves Toki homes ands ins…" Skwisgaar's voice trailed off and his eyes suddenly got hysterically wide. If Pickles were high at the moment, he'd probably think he was hallucinating how wide they got. "No, ams nots… Is miss-thinks."

The inner discovery was completely lost on Pickles, who was face down on the fur blanket petting it mumbling about ice cream. Obviously whatever drug he'd taken before coming into the room had finally kicked in.

It was minutes later that Nathan showed up, black framed glasses perched on his nose as a large first clutched some papers. "This is bulls(guitar riff)t!"

"What ams?"

"Those gays in the car said one of the men who broke into the house was the one who kidnapped Toki but no jack off in the police or even the FBI know who the dildo is."

"Donts you means 'guys'?"

"No."

"Oh. That ex-plainickles its." After a minute of silence interrupted only by Pickles muttering about someone touching him and his father, Skwisgaar finally said, "So whats we dos?"

"I'll tell you what you boys do- nothing."

The air was sucked out of the room and the two people conscious turned bleach white in shock to see a familiar figure step out of the shadows. Clothed in a cotton shirt, leather jacket, and black jeans with a black motorcycle helmet under his arm was a man they had cremated several months ago. "I'm home now and I'm going to find our son."

To Be Continued…

PLEASE COMMENT!

Thank you for your reviews:

Guest- Well… kinda.

Bloodpocky- They will get along but Toki doesn't like it when people lie to him either.

Super Lizard- Yeah. Before Dethcamp and the last episode, I saw Magnus as a silent guy who was bordering on mental instability like the rest of 'em. Glad you love the story!

Sweet sexy loli- Thanks. I try!

Watergoddesskasey- Thank you!

Iewuciukaz- I'd love that! And Pickles is one of my favorite characters because he has such depth hidden under all the booze and rock star mentality.

P.S. DON'T FORGET TO VISIT MY DEVIANT PAGE!