A/N: There's a reason this story is rated M… and its not just the gratuitous sexy times Jane and Loki will have in what my brain has decided to be "part three" of this story (we're in the middle of part two for anyone who's wondering). It's also because there's going to be a lot of darkness. And at least some of it can be found here. If you completely and utterly object to the thought of Loki having interactions of a sexual nature with anyone but Jane, skip straight on down past the second break – there's mention of a tree. You're safe from there.
His wedding night.
Loki was unsettled. Sex, he had no trouble with. After all, mortals told myths about him having giving birth to Sleipnir (though he suspected, if Jane Foster was anything to go by, Midgardians could probably recognize genetic engineering for what it really was now). He was a god of chaos and mischief and even ancient legends spoke of his capabilities in terms of seduction. The thought had even crossed his mind that night in Tromso, seeing Thor's beloved mortal dressed in his colours. The irony would have been enough to sustain his amusement for years, and he doubted that even the seemingly virtuous Jane Foster would have turned him down that night.
No, it was the fact that this was expected of him. Usually, he had something to gain or a desire to seduce. There was usually mischief to be had, or chaos to be caused, or social norms to be violently upset. This time, it was his very scripted part in an ancient ceremonial tradition. It went against everything he represented. Worse even, his every instinct was to revile the fire demon, to escape from her claw-like grasp and flashing, golden gaze. The idea of touching her, skin-to-skin, was starting a revolt in every molecule of his being.
He suspected it was the frost giant in him that was so utterly repulsed by her. Ice, wary of the potential for destruction, evaporation, under the fire of her natural form. Certainly, he found her distasteful personally, but that sort of personal qualm had never been a problem before, provided that what he stood to gain was worth the energy of hiding his true feelings. Here, he stood to gain power, to maintain freedom, to finally catch and hold the upper hand. But perhaps the knowledge that if he failed to play the part he would almost certainly be confined to the dungeons, or worse, was fighting against him.
Loki stood alone in the bedroom Phyre had chosen as her own. The softly-coloured stone of the palace went well with the filmy fabrics and curtains the demoness had hung about the room. Splashes of ochre, crimson, gold, and damask brought a warmth to the room. The hangings wavered in the evening air that pushed into the space, heavy with the scent of jasmine and hibiscus. With his eyes half-lidded, Loki felt as if he were trapped in the middle of a flame, such was the colour and movement of the textiles. Somewhere behind him there was a bed, piled heavy with luxurious bedclothes of silk and spun starlight, a technique mastered by the Alvar centuries ago. He was a king awaiting a queen, and though the surroundings supported that, Loki had never felt as low as he did now.
Even as his thoughts and feelings waged war with necessity, his supposed wife slithered into the doorway of the room. She was a vision of exotic beauty, her dark hair pinned up by a single, crimson hibiscus bloom, clothed in nearly transparent robes of red and gold. She was a lithe sliver of flame, though her eyes suggested a raging wildfire. Her nails dragged slowly down the stone doorway as her tail swung back and forth with an impatience no other part of her betrayed.
"Lie back and think of Asgard," a young voice echoed in Loki's mind, as his lips tilted into a smirk. Early in his life, among the first of those who fell to his charms, had been the innocent beauty who had murmured faint platitudes as he had let her tumble into a bed. He remembered rising from her, forcing her to open her eyes and register his existence properly.
"What are you saying?" he had asked her, his voice condescending and amused.
She had stared up at him with soft, violet eyes that seemed to hold him in awe and fear. "Lie back," she whispered, in a tone full of hushed embarrassment, "And think of Asgard." He had regarded her with studiously inscrutable eyes for a long moment, prompting her to continue. "My… my mother," she stuttered, hands frantically smoothing skirts that had risen just a little too high for the propriety he had forced her to surrender a full ten minutes earlier, "She knew that I would… attract attention, looking like I do."
"Beautiful," he had intoned, stating the fact for what it was, "Yes."
He had watched the blush rise into her cheeks with a mild sense of triumph. "She… she told me to do my duty. You are…" she stared at him with the terrified gaze of a trapped animal, "You are a royal prince of Asgard."
She said the words as if they explained themselves, and though Loki knew exactly what she meant by them, he fully intended to draw out her torture. "And so?" he prompted patiently, his long fingers tracing nonsense patterns upon her bare ankle.
"And…" she stuttered, her eyes glancing wildly at his hand upon her skin, "I… My mother said I am not to turn you down. You or…" A faint moan escaped her lips as Loki slid his hand further up her leg, dragging her skirts up with it as he tapped lightly against the soft skin behind her knee. He had no desire to hear his brother's name at present, only to hear her admit his power over her.
"My lord," she whimpered softly, fear in her voice, "Please, just… just have your way. Let this be done."
"And have you lie back and bear it, as if this were merely your duty?" he had purred, "I think not."
She had looked absolutely terrified for a moment before he had leaned down into the space between her legs. He had spent the next hour introducing her to exactly what it meant for one to have a silver tongue, and when she had finally lain back, it had most certainly not been to think of Asgard.
"I wondered," Phyre's voice pulled him from his reverie, "Why you made no move upon me in the treasure room." She took slow and careful steps towards him, as if approaching a skittish horse. "I wondered, because I had heard the tales of wicked Loki, seducing whomever he so chose." Her hips swayed in a way that a lesser man would have found hypnotic; the flimsy fabrics she wore accentuated the shadows of her slender curves, rather than concealing them. "I wondered, on that day and the few I allowed to pass before tonight why… and how… you managed to keep yourself at bay," her voice carried a note of self-assuredness, as if she had never been resisted in such a way. A fact that was possible, if what Loki could remember of Muspell's culture held true.
She had slipped into his space now, her tail curling around and behind his legs. A single, claw-like finger slid across the chest piece of his armour. "So I realized," she said lightly, her gold eyes staring up him with impish glee, "That the stories must all be lies."
Loki could not help the sound that escaped his throat. It came out as a growl, full of spite and fury. He was too overwhelmed emotionally to hold back the surprise her accusation had sparked as it challenged his very nature.
Her eyes glowed predatorily as she stepped closer, the single finger joined by the rest of her hand as she smoothed it across the hardened leather's surface. "I realized that perhaps Loki, the great artist of seduction, was nothing but a story created by those who wished to be more important than they are," her lips hardened into a cruel smirk. "Perhaps his attention is held by something else? Men, maybe? Or horses," she mused, eyes dancing with silent laughter, "I've heard that one too."
Without a moment of thought spared to process the fact that she was playing his own game, Loki found his hand grabbing hold of her own. He dragged her wrist backwards, freeing himself of her touch. "You have no idea what I am like," he snarled, violence in his eyes.
"Oh," she purred, "But I do so want to find out."
And though he'd had no previous inclination to do so, Loki found himself showing her.
It was with a jolt of consternation that Loki awoke to find the slender creature next to him slipping out of bed and into a scarlet robe. "Where are you going?" he demanded, though his voice sounded more like an entreaty in his ears. He was suddenly filled with a strange sense of shame and confusion.
Phyre's touch, even glamoured, had a violent heat to it. She had melted him, burnt him, and still they had come back for more. There was nothing loving or tender about it, simply the war of sensations. Frost versus flame fighting for dominance.
"Kingdoms do not run themselves," her voice carried a mocking tone to it. "They need the guidance of their empress to even exist." She threw a glance of indifference towards him, her eyes sliding away from him, as if she had spent all the desire and interest she'd had last night. "No need for you to trouble yourself," she continued, "I have a firm hold of things. Perhaps you should simply rest."
And just like that, Loki realized that he had completely failed to gain the upper hand, or even a tiny measure of control. Instead, he had lost his one trump card. In melting under her, he had satisfied her curiosity and sated her demand that all eyes be upon her. His indifference was what she had found intriguing. She desired only to possess and once that was achieved, she relied solely on her existing power to maintain that possession. She would expend no further effort upon him now.
That much was evident when she stalked from the room without a backwards glance. Wedding ceremony complete, curiosity satisfied, the fiend continued on her determined path to power.
Loki blinked slowly, letting the fact that he had slipped up simply because she had baited him process fully. Taken together with his failure to appropriately use Jane Foster, he could come to only one conclusion. He had apparently become absolutely useless when faced with women.
It didn't matter then that the sheets were made of silk and starlight, they felt intolerable upon his skin. Remaining still seemed impossible. The need to recover some fraction of his power raced through his veins insistently. The desire to wash any trace of the demoness from his being was urgent. Simply being himself was excruciating.
Loki felt he must have somehow discovered hell.
There was a skeletal tree in the farthest corner of the garden. This particular corner was tucked artfully behind a corpse of magnificent spruce that obstructed all view of the deadened thing from the palace. It seemed shameful, this thing that was once a tree. Little more than bleached bones, long stripped of all bark or moss. It was smooth as stone, and as equally lifeless. Yet upon it perched a raven of uncanny magnificence.
The bird watched the world with keen eyes. Feathers blacker than the darkest night soaked up the light, drawing in the eye. Its massive beak was sharp and cruel, though its talons shone with a deadly intent of their own. What one truly needed to fear from this raven, however, was the same thing one must fear of all ravens: their tongues.
"Loki," the creature greeted, its voice a hoarse caw, "You've made terrible mistakes."
Loki stared at the wretched bird with deadened eyes. He had sought it out with a sense of trepidation and uncertainty. He was not on good terms with his adopted father, and he suspected that his familiars would share the sentiment.
The raven shuffled its feet upon the branch, ruffling its feather as it moved, "You are still so young. So foolish." It cocked its head at Loki, "Did you really believe you could beat the Empress of Muspellheim at her own game?"
"It was my game first!" Loki exclaimed angrily, biting his tongue when the words echoed in his ears. The statement was childish, at best. It suggested an immaturity that Loki had long denied, so intensely focused had he been upon seeing the trait in Thor.
The raven shook its head, fluttering its wings as if to sweep the words from the air, "The question now, is what must you do to repair this mess?" The raven fixed him with an inky glare. It turned its head this way and that. "Hmm?" it prompted, "What must you do?"
"Must?" repeated Loki, his tone bitter, "Why must I do anything?"
The raven fixed him with a glare. "Because a usurper sits upon the throne of Asgard. No son of Odin would…"
"But I am not a son of Odin," cried Loki. His features were downcast, the anguish in his eyes evident to any who cared to see.
But Huginn did not care to see. He spread his wings and lifted from the branch. And he promptly walloped the prince of Asgard with the heft of his pitch-black wings. A ragged screech ripped itself from the bird's throat, frustrated anger evident in its harshness. "I care not about the past," he shrieked, "For that you should have sought Muginn!"
When Loki finally dared to raise his face from behind the protection of his upraised arms, Huginn was once again calmly perched upon the bleached bones of the ancient tree, preening himself now as if he had not just struck a member of the royal house of Asgard. After a long moment, the animal raised his head. "It is up to you who you choose to be," he said cryptically, "But know that Odin does not stir, and that greater forces are at work. The fate of the worlds hangs in the balance. And as long as a usurper sits on Asgard's throne, that fate shall be bleak indeed."
Loki glared hopelessly at the bird. "So I'm supposed to save the universe?" he sputtered resentfully. "You do realize that I'm the one who's supposed to end it?"
The raven eyed him skeptically, "So you believe the mortal's stories now?" Loki found himself evading the creature's gaze. He listened as the bird sighed. Talons skittered across the hardened wood as the raven hopped sideways across the branch so as to be nearer. Loki looked up to find the raven staring deep into his eyes. "You are no artifact, Loki," the bird said softly, "You have a will and a power all your own. You must simply learn to direct them properly." With that, the bird pushed off of the branch, taking flight in a nearly silent brush of feathers.
Loki's eyes followed the raven for a long moment before he shook his head. "And that was even less helpful than I had hoped," he snarled, his agitation only increased. Because he knew what Huginn wanted. He knew because deep down, it was what he had also wanted from the moment he set foot back in Asgard. So, guilt and insecurity held in check, Loki went to see his mother.
A/N: I'm terrible. I promised you all Jane and then I produce… this. I'm appalled at myself. But… it makes everything that has yet to come work. Jane will show up next chapter. I swear it.
p.s. you should all leave reviews. I feel like no one is reading this thing. Did I really lose all your love with the plot turn?