Author's Notes: Decided on something a bit different for the formatting this time, because I thought it might go a bit better toward describing Loki's state of mind. :|a I'd also like to add a warning to this chapter, because it's a bit darker than most of the other chapters, so heads up for that.


Intervention - Chapter 11


Time was a thing with little meaning. This he had learned in the interim between Thor's visits, the endless stretches that might have been hours, or days, or weeks. The only measurement was the pause between one labored breath and the next, the space between the morbid pulse of his own heart and the chanting of his thoughts for it to end, end, end. He had gauged his life in these things, these meaningless tokens, and he had come to see that time was for people with places to be. Time was for crafting plans, for cultivating allies. Time was for schedules and duties, for expectations and hopes.

Time, Loki had come to see, was a thing out of place in the bowels of the earth, where it signified nothing and marked even less.

And yet the swollen threat of forever, the infection of it seeping through his every waking thought, had been mitigated somewhat. It had been kept at bay when at intervals his brother had come to break the mindless, helpless sameness.

Time was a thing with little meaning, but now there was one mark more to measure it by: his wrist made a vivid throb in time with his heartbeat, dull and steady. There were no colors- was nothing, any longer, save the dark. But the eye of his mind had decided upon a color all the same.

It was red.


There had been a handful of promises, in the beginning. He had crafted them his mind, chiseled them as though from marble, each careful curve hard and unyielding. They had been the lines he would not cross, the things things he would not do, the scraps of dignity he would not relinquish, not here where he had so little of it to spare.

"Do not tolerate Thor's foolishness," he had told himself- and in the beginning, he had held to the words rigidly. But as the long nothingness crept by, he found that he had redefined tolerance bit by slow bit. First he ceased interrupting his brother's words, failing to skewer inane tales with the ridicule they deserved. Then he began to ignore the fact that Thor placed hands upon him, that his touch was unsettlingly welcome in this place where all else caused pain.

"Do not demand any boon, for you will receive none," Loki had determined. And yet this promise, too, had been eaten as surely as his skin, sloughed off beneath the relentless trickle of venom. He had not asked Thor, which made the loss of this small scrap of pride all the more unbearable. He had asked the All-father, of any he might have begged- had thrown his pleas upon the ears of one who had once been known as the Maddener, as the Terrible One. He had asked for the most simple of mercies, the oldest of mercies, and he had been denied.

He might have known. He might have held his tongue.

He might have asked his brother to do the same, to end this, before the god of thunder was cast from this place.

"Do not think on things beyond these walls. It will yield nothing but pain." He had fared no better here than at any of the rest, for the sound of voices in his prison, the sound of the mortals concocting their absurd plan, had reminded him that there was a place beyond these walls where all carried on with their lives. These people were affected not by the fact that Loki Laufeyson had been sealed from the world; they knew not of him, and cared much less.

He thought of other places often: the palace in Asgard, the hideaways he had crafted for himself on Midgard. He found that his suppositions became caught on small details, dwelt there and refused to be removed. A tree in the gardens where he used to sit when he was small. The smell of the library, filled with the spice of old books. The tasteful fall of silk that made the drapery in his newest place of residence. The All-father's banquet hall, its table laden with legs of mutton, with smoked cured sausage, with poached cod, with meatcakes, with meringues and curved cakes, with sweet red cheese and coarse brown bread.

He told himself that they were weakling's fancies, but he could not bring himself to stop.

And so he carried on breaking his promises to himself, one by one.


The throb of his wrist was a living thing; when he shifted, he could feel the bone shift with him, shards of hurt. He was no stranger to pain, but this was a new pain, and so it preoccupied him, took his attention.

It consumed him, and as it did, as the incomprehensible darkness loomed above and his nerves began to scream with the unceasing sameness of it all, it occurred to Loki that perhaps the humans' partial rescue had wrought him something, after all. For in this spot where his wrist was bound, the anchoring must be less stable than all the rest. It had been pressed in, not secured; he need only apply pressure the other way to remove it.

He began by twisting- by an attempt to pry it free. It this way, there was some leverage to be used, some force that could be salvaged from the rock. He crafted a slow pendulum, a blood-soaked clock- a steady rocking, back and forth, punctuated by sparks of agony as the bone ground together. The world was pain, bright in his eyes and sharp in his arm. His wrist grew wet, the forearm slick and warm.

He had nothing but time. He had only time, that meaningless thing, until the end of days. Had he been able to reach with his face, he might have rubbed venom upon his wrist- might have rid himself of the hand, if not the shackle. He might have sacrificed pieces of his own body, one by one, to be free.

But bound as he was, he could not reach.

He began to pull, when he felt that he could bear it no longer- straight upward, brute force of which Thor would have been capable. He had tried it time and again, when yet some strength remained to him- and then, as now, it was a gesture borne not of calculated reason but of the first creeping tendrils of panic.

He had learned, early on, that it was inadvisable to open his mouth without care. He had felt the acid take his tongue, eat at the soft, wet flesh inside him. And yet Loki yanked at the shackles that restrained him, mindless as any animal, and he opened his mouth to scream.


Calm came when he had exhausted himself. Calm came, and with it a dull sort of lethargy that suffused his bones, slipped down within him like the serpent crouched above. His face was wet, and his arms and legs; his tongue burned, and swallowing felt as though he had a mouthful of glass. What remained of his lips were pressed together, now- locked against the intrusion of the poison- and Loki found himself hoping that his body would repair itself quickly, that he might at least be spared the creep of the poison down to his stomach.

He hated them to pass the time- hated them bitterly, with none of the focused intent, none of the planning that he had put into the task years before.

He hated Sif, with her golden hair gone to coal, with her superior glances and her mistrusting ways, with her mouth near his brother's ear, whispering ever what he most wanted to hear.

He hated the warriors three, one and all- vain, insipid Vandral, and cold, unfeeling Hogun, and dull, corpulent Volstagg.

He hated the woman who was not his mother, hated the gentle touches she had spared him in his youth, the caresses and words of encouragement, the way she had combed his hair when yet he was too small to do it himself. He hated that she had left him here, had done nothing to ease his suffering. He hated that, in the end, she had cared for him as little as all the others.

He hated the man who was not his father, the man who had consigned him to this place with not so much as a backward glance. The man who had left him here, denied him mercy, made no pretense at loving him any longer. He hated that the All-father had not admitted to the lie centuries before. He hated that the deception had gone on for so long. He might have prepared for it, had he known.

He hated his brother's mortal companions, so gullible, so incompetent. They styled themselves warriors, styled themselves heroes, and yet they rushed in, hoping blindly for the best. They might have taken the time to learn of the situation. They might have ceased when he tried to stop them. And yet they had not, and here he was now. They lay dead, near certainly; somewhere, their bodies bled upon the earth in payment for defying the will of the All-father. Somewhere, their life ran out in punishment for sparing an enemy undeserved kindness.

Foolish creatures. Foolish, compassionate, hopeful creatures. Loki would never understand why his brother favored them.

And finally Thor. Oh, how he hated Thor. He had years of practice doing it- years of practice hating his brother's perfect, golden form and his brash, good-intentioned stupidity. He hated the way the man's eyes had still looked at him reprovingly, as though even at the end, he might yet change his mind. He hated the unthinking strength, the unconscious arrogance, the off-handed tokens of affection. He hated how damnably gentle his brother had been in the time when all others had abandoned him to this place. He hated that Thor had not listened to him- not now, when it would have made more impact than ever before.

But more than all of those things, he hated that his brother was not here.


There was a sound in the darkness, a rumbling noise both low and insistent, but Loki did not pay it much mind. He had begun to hear strange things, of late- snatches of voices that fluttered around him like moths' wings, too indistinct to form something coherent. They whispered through the cavern, filled the spaces where there was nothing at all, surged and faded in his ears like waves at the shore of the sea.

They could not be real. This the prisoner who had once been the god of mischief knew. They echoed in the darkness like fragments of a waking dream, his mind's way of providing for him something bearable in the wreckage of what reality had become.

They had come now and again when before his brother was away for an unusual stretch of time- had joined him there in the dark. They were tones he knew, cadences he knew, occasionally even the soft peal of laughter. They were his false family and his supposed allies. They were his brother's companions and his father's soldiers. Once in a while, he could hear Thor, voice confident and undaunted, somewhere in the distance.

They rose and fell at the edge of his hearing, and when he thought on them, he could not decide whether they were a comfort or a torment. They simply were- and when the new sound came to join them, unobtrusive and steady, he paid it no mind.

It was not long before the vibrations began to accompany it, and when they did, he wondered what other diversions his mind had yet to provide.