Loki's worst moment, Loki's best moment...

Magic & Mead

Chapter Eleven: Fathers & Forgiveness

King Gullveig's visit!

Loki's mouth fell open in horror. His father had agreed to let him join Thor today in the meetings to prepare for the visit. He shot up out of the chair, knocking it over in his haste. Back in his bedchambers he waved his hand over the bedside table to see the exact time. If he hurried he would not be too late after Thor. But he would have to really hurry.

At least he didn't need to be in his formal attire. He ran to his wardrobe and grabbed the first pants and tunic his hands fell on – brown leather and maroon with small silver accents, at least it didn't clash. The armored boots weren't yet put away so he grabbed those and yanked them on as quickly as he could. He smoothed his hair back with his hands, took a quick glance in the mirror over his dresser, and declared it good enough given the circumstances.

Then began the race through the palace. His legs actually gave out on him on the last flight of stairs down in the private wing, and he tried but failed to catch himself. An Einherjar emerged from the shadows of the landing to help the young prince to his feet, but Loki pushed him away. "I'm fine, I'm fine!" he called, already limping around the corner. He didn't think he'd hurt himself, but a muscle in his left calf – most likely the soleus, he recalled from Eir's lesson – had clenched up for some reason and was a bit painful, but it didn't get worse or prevent him from walking, like the other muscle cramps he sometimes got.

He entered the throne room from the side entrance, using a corridor that connected the public and private areas of the palace, but it was empty save a token presence of guards. He realized he didn't actually know where Thor was meeting their father; he'd just assumed Thor would know and they'd go together after their lessons. But then he noticed the Einherjar at the door to the study standing at particularly sharp attention. The door was closed. He tried to keep the limp from his gait as he hurriedly crossed the gleaming expanse, right in front of the throne, and tried very hard to look like he was supposed to be there as he approached the Einherjar blocking the door. Which should be easy because he was supposed to be there, but somehow still felt like he wasn't.

The guard hesitated, but at the last second before Loki would've had to come to a halt in front of him he stepped aside and Loki grasped the doorknob and smoothly entered, rather pleased with himself.

Whoever had been talking fell silent and five pairs of eyes – or rather, four pairs and his father's single eye – focused squarely on him. Loki froze. His father, his brother, and three advisors including the trade advisor stared back at him, all in their very finest of fine formal garb. Odin's face, half obscured behind his gleaming horned helmet and eye patch, was particularly expressionless in his stare. And Loki knew what that expressionless stare meant. Trouble. His mouth went unbearably dry and he tried to lick his lips. Loki thought he should speak first, to try to explain himself, but his father beat him to it.

"What are you doing here, Loki? Thor said you were ill."

"I…I was. But I'm feeling better now. And I thought…I thought I should join you. But Thor didn't dress up before so I didn't think I needed to, and…I…I can go change." Loki felt his cheeks coloring. His father sometimes made him tongue-tied, especially when he looked ready to pass judgement on all of Asgard, but he couldn't recall ever doing this badly.

Odin approached him steadily, face still impassive, looking down at Loki through a single lowered eyelid. He passed Gungnir from his right to his left hand, and before Loki could consciously wonder what that meant, his father was right in front of him, grasping the hair at his neck and leaning down. Loki froze stiff again. He could feel Gungnir brush his right arm and fear flooded through his body. He desperately wanted to catch Thor's eye but he could see nothing more than the unyielding armor over his father's broad chest.

The hand on his hair disappeared after no more than a few seconds, and Odin straightened up and took a step back. "Gullveig and his advisors will be meeting us here any minute, and you come here sick from drink?"

It took another moment for the shock to fade before Loki responded, and even then it was a feeble, "No, I…" that he found himself unable to complete.

"Go back to your chambers and stay there. I don't want to see you at the feast tonight or at any of the rest of the festivities in honor of Gullveig's visit."

"But…I…" The words slipped out before he could stop them, and he felt like he was burning with shame over them. Loki had learned early on that arguing with Odin All-Father did not make things better, and in fact frequently made them worse.

"Go now, Loki."

His father was already turning away, and it was only then that Loki was finally able to see Thor again. He was about to say something. Loki quickly shook his head at him, hoping no one else would notice. There was no reason for them both to get in trouble. Thor still looked conflicted when Loki said, "I apologize, Father. I won't disturb you further." He turned to leave, catching Thor looking down guiltily at his feet on the way out. He hoped Thor would make a better effort at hiding his feelings than that, or they'd still both wind up in trouble.

He was just slipping out of the throne room the way he'd first entered when he heard the light ringing of his mother's laughter; he peered from the shadows of the doorway and saw her walking in from the main entrance on King Gullveig's arm, three advisors Loki had seen at the feast trailing politely behind. Loki glowered at them. How was he supposed to know Gullveig was arriving a day early, turning today's meeting formal? And how was he supposed to know that among Gungnir's many magical abilities was detecting hangovers? He watched until they disappeared into the study and the Einherjar took his place in front of the closed door. Then he did as he was told and returned to his chambers, limping in body and spirit.

/

/

Back up in his chambers, Loki soaked in the bath until his skin wrinkled. When he finally got out he felt marginally better – physically much better. His soleus muscle had relaxed, his stomach had fully settled, and only the minor headache remained. He downed two glasses of water then pulled on the nightclothes his mother called celadon and he called light green.

He set about tidying up the antechamber and bedchamber, what the servants hadn't already taken care of quickly while he'd crept away for a few minutes. He scrubbed at the scorch mark on the wall, then gave a try at magically reducing it further, and was encouraged to be left with only the tiniest of marks, undetectable if you weren't looking for it, and no trace of energy disturbance at all. The chipped marble was another matter. He didn't know how to fix that with either magic or chisels and mortar.

Finally he sat down to start over on his poem, in the playroom that was now a study but that still sometimes deserved to be called a playroom despite all his protests to the contrary. Tonight it was all work, though. He was hungry and tried not to think about it, then took the opposite tack, channeling his longing for food into a longing to be a droplet of water and be a part of the Grand Falls. It seemed a bit overly dramatic to his ears, but by the time he was finished he felt it met all the technical requirements and had a certain artistic merit as well.

With a certain amount of pride he closed the booklet with the new version of the poem, stood up from his desk, and started to walk toward his balcony. He didn't make it. Instead he stood glued to the floor a few steps away from it, staring at the far wall opposite the door. The thick marble wall that was unexpectedly marred by a dinnerplate-sized hole some two feet up from the floor. Loki stared in wide-eyed shock for a long moment, then remembered the unexplained injury to his right hand. He lifted the hand up to stare, blinking, at first his palm, then the wall, then his palm, then the wall. I did that? he asked himself again and again, even though he knew there was no other explanation. He didn't know if he'd made fire or gathered some other form of energy, but he'd tried conjuring fire once before on a simple candle, and after days of exhausting himself for hours on end a flame had finally sprung up. Unfortunately the flame had been twice as big as the candle and Loki had burned his face so badly the scars took nearly a month to fully heal.

Loki crept toward the hole. The marble was blackened around the edges. He peered through, and he could see just a little into the storage room beyond, one of a few small rooms that separated his and Thor's chambers. Whatever had been on the shelf behind the wall there was gone. He didn't worry about that room, though; only the servants went in there, and it was not among their duties to report his activities. The days of nursemaids were long gone. His side of the wall was another story. He stared at it with a solid frown. He was going to have to learn how to repair marble, one way or the other. In the meantime, he pushed a chest-high bookcase a few feet to the left and covered the evidence of whatever it was precisely that he'd done.

It was getting late, but having slept half the day away Loki wasn't tired. There was still something he needed to do – two things, actually: make a less perfunctory apology, and find out the precise terms of his punishment. Besides, he was getting so hungry he didn't think he'd be able to sleep, anyway.

He opened the door to his chambers and stuck just his head outside. "Jolgeir?" he called tentatively, voice barely above a whisper.

"It is Thidrek, my prince," the guard on duty said a moment later, looking eerie and fearsome in the flickering torchlight.

"Ah, good evening," Loki said. It was later than he'd realized; the guard shift had already changed. "Could you let me know if my parents have returned?" he asked meekly, all thoughts of ordering guards around gone.

"I shall inquire immediately," Thidrek said, fading back into shadow, not for the first time leaving Loki impressed. Thor thought they were creepy.

A few minutes later a knock came, Thidrek informing him that the king and queen had just returned. Loki threw on a matching celadon/light-green robe and a pair of simple leather slippers, took a deep breath, and made his way up the stairs and through the vestibule, to the ornate gold double doors which opened to the royal chambers that occupied the entire floor. The guards were expecting him and stepped aside for him to enter; Loki nodded his thanks.

With trepidation he fought to keep a lid on, Loki wandered from room to room, finally hearing voices from his father's dressing room. He turned toward it. He stopped short when he realized they were talking about him.

"-telling you you're overreacting. I was sixteen the first time I got drunk on mead."

"Just because you did something foolish and dangerous doesn't make it right. And Loki is only fourteen." His mother's voice was angry, and it startled him to hear his name spoken in the midst of that anger, even if it wasn't currently directed at him.

"That's not-"

"And Loki is not-"

"I know what Loki is, Frigga. And what he is not. But he's fine now, you said so yourself. No harm has come of it. Let him blunder about in his folly of youth. Loki isn't a little child anymore. You have to stop treating him like he's going to break."

The voices – his mother's now, still angry – were getting steadily louder, approaching his location. He took several quick steps backwards, but realized he wouldn't make it out of the sitting room he was in before they emerged, so he reversed course and walked confidently forward, with no time to think about the strange things he'd overheard.

"Father, Mother," he greeted, having missed whatever they'd said at the end.

"Loki!" Frigga exclaimed in surprise. She cast a quick nervous glance at Odin that Loki probably wouldn't have noticed had he not overheard what they'd said, then rushed forward to throw her arms around him. She just as quickly pulled back and held him by the shoulders at arm's length, examining him carefully, then lifting his right hand to inspect it.

"I'm fine, Mother," he said, hoping to preempt any more of this, highly conscious of his father's heavy gaze. His mother was still in her dark blue gown and dripping with sapphires, while his father had already shed his outer layers and was in a dark blue tunic and leather pants.

"Father," he began, sidestepping her; thankfully she dropped her arms and permitted it. "I wanted to sincerely apologize for interrupting your meeting this afternoon. I thought that I should still try to attend so I could observe and learn, but I should have asked about the nature of the meeting before just showing up, and with the condition I was in I never should have gone in the first place. I'm sorry I embarrassed you."

"You're a child, Loki, You made a child's mistake," he said after a moment.

Loki bristled at these words. He wasn't a child. He hadn't been technically a child by the Asgardian definition since he'd turned ten and become a youth. In less than six more years he would become a man. But there was technical and then there was perception. If you were several thousand years old, fourteen must seem little different from infancy, only without the diapers, even though his father had just said otherwise to his mother. His youngest tutor had recently celebrated his 100th birthday, and the other tutors still called him a youth.

"But your apology is that of a young man. It is accepted," Odin said after a further moment's thought and heavy gaze, to Loki's immense relief.

Frigga spoke up. "No more mead for you or Thor until you're 20, do you understand me?"

"Yes, Mother," he said with a bobbing nod. "I don't think I'll drink it again ever."

His father chuckled at this. "We'll see."

Whether his father believed him or not – and Loki did mean it – he was just glad the mood had lightened. He hated it when his father was angry with him. But then he realized his mother had mentioned Thor. He had no idea how much she knew about what had happened, and could only hope Thor wasn't in trouble too now. He had to worry about himself before he could worry about Thor. But perhaps he could keep things light a bit longer in the meantime.

"Father, would you tell me, please, what kind of magic you used to know why I was sick?"

Colossal mistake. All levity disappeared from Odin's face. "No magic was necessary, Loki. My nose was sufficient for the task."

Loki felt faint with humiliation. What he would've given to turn into a chisel-toed mole so he could dig his own hole straight through the marble floor and disappear.

"You're all better now, though, yes?" Frigga hurriedly put in. "You were breathing poorly before."

"I was?" Loki asked, grateful for the distraction from his father telling him in his All-Father way that he'd stunk. He didn't remember having any problems breathing. "Yes. I feel fine. Just…"

"What? What is it, Loki?" she asked, creeping forward again.

"I…I don't know the conditions of my punishment. May I send for something to eat?"

"You haven't eaten anything? All day then? Of course you can send for something. I'll do it myself."

"After indulging in such excess, it may be good for him to know its opposite," Odin said.

"He was sick! He must eat."

"Of course he must. I was simply making a point." Frigga huffed and excused herself, and Odin continued. "There are no further conditions, Loki. Your mother tells me you've endured your own punishment, and I have enough familiarity with that to know you will have learned from this experience. Do not leave the private wing of the palace until the festivities are over and Gullveig is gone the morning after tomorrow. Beyond that you may do as you wish. But I expect you to behave more responsibly in the future."

"I will, Father, I promise."

"Good. Now you go on back to your chambers. Your mother will have ordered you a feast for ten by now," he said with one of those gentle smiles Loki cherished.

"All right. Father…"

"Yes?"

"Did you ever make such a childish mistake?" Loki asked, his open face the picture of innocence.

Odin pursed his lips and Loki could tell he was trying to hold back laughter. His father offered his hand, and Loki eagerly clasped it. "I know it's difficult to believe, but I was a child once too, Loki."

Loki grinned up at him and his face turned stern, but it was only mock-stern, and Loki broke into laughter.

His father tugged on his hand and they made their way back through the maze of rooms to the golden doors. "Good night, Loki," his father said, releasing his hand.

Loki spontaneously threw his arms around his father. "I love you, Father. I'm sorry I disappointed you today."

Odin returned the hug after a brief moment of surprise. "It's already forgiven, Loki. We needn't speak of it again. Unless you repeat the mistake."

"I won't. I swear it, I won't," Loki said, face pressed to his father's chest. He promised things often, and sometimes meant them and sometimes not. He swore things rarely, and almost always meant them. This he now meant a thousand times over.

"I love you too, Son. Even when you make mistakes. Never doubt that."

Loki basked in that like warm sunshine after a gray mountain winter, so rarely were such words heard from his father's lips. Aglow with the light of his father's love, he returned to his chambers where Frigga soon arrived followed by a servant bringing up hot leftovers from the night's feast – not enough for ten but instead all carefully selected to be gentle on his stomach. Full of giddy affection Loki hugged her with abandon and she laughed and let him cling, conscious that he was indeed no longer a little child, and this type of cuddling with him would soon be no more than precious memories.

Loki ate his late supper with gusto and consciously pushed aside all his worries until the next day, which for once he found easy to do, because all that mattered was right with the realm.

/

Some of my long rambling-ish thoughts:

This is quite possibly the fluffiest I've ever gotten in anything I've ever written, but it's in there deliberately. I wanted to show that the relationship between young Loki and Odin which looked very loving in the movie Thor - that this relationship really did exist. (Okay, Odin did say something pretty weird and potentially damaging with the "both of you were born to be kings" thing, but doesn't he sound warm and loving when he says it? More bad coming from good intentions? I don't know what exactly he was meant to be trying to say in the movie [that he thought would come off as positive instead of quite possibly making one son really jealous]. But never fear, I have my own interpretation of it in Beneath actually, hahaha, though it is very very very near the end.) In any event, I wanted to show that yes, Odin does genuinely - and deeply - love Loki, but that he's not good at showing or discussing his feelings and he relates better to Thor for a number of reasons including that Thor, like Odin, needs less verbal and physical acknowledgement of feelings whereas Loki thrives on overt affection and needs it to feel secure - Odin isn't good at giving him that.

Loki's "nightmare" version of that overheard conversation between Frigga and Odin (in which yes, they're talking about him being Jotun, and Frigga's concern that with him still young and growing, they really don't know what effect things like this will have on him. The same as an Aesir, or not?) along with Thor feeding Loki crackers is found in "Ch. 21: Breakthrough," in Beneath.

A couple of you have asked why they don't want Loki studying magic; I'll answer here for one I couldn't respond to and any others who may have wondered. There's a reason for it...and the answer is found in the endless backstory in my head. (I may need some mental health care, I'm not sure.) Loki doesn't know the answer and that was his POV so for him it's essentially a typical teenager's "why don't they let me do X?" It goes back to an incident when Loki was three, and if I ever write it up it'll be titled Like Any Other Child, it's mentioned on my profile now. The answer is also kind of hinted at in the hole-in-the-wall and candle bit above, and in this line from Ch. 10: "And if he knew how to heal [headaches] with magic, he'd also know how to cause them with magic." Which sounds kind of disturbing (and is, a bit, because he thinks of it so quickly!) but isn't meant to be "oh, Loki is evil!" It's kind of a natural child's/teen's still-trying-to-figure-out ethics and morality kind of thing. I mean, if when you were a kid you knew how to like snap your fingers and give headaches to someone who was annoying you to death, might you have done it? You're not killing the other kid, all he/she has to do is pop a couple of Tylenol, no biggee, right? So the idea then also is that while Loki could do a lot of good with magic, he could also do quite a lot of serious bad, intentionally or unintentionally, without understanding the consequences.

And finally, jacquelinelittle, I enjoyed all your poems but you totally made my day with this one (it's in the reviews). This is truly fabulous and I'm honored. Maybe this is what Loki wrote for his next assignment. Pasting it here for broader reading pleasure, from Viking poet jacquelinelittle who must sip from the Mead of Poetry:

"Well, poetry is useless. I can't see why I should bother."
Or so I did lament to my drunkard of a brother.
He sighed and he swore mead would make it very easy.
But three barrels for a single man can make your stomach queasy.

And now I've really gone and reneged on my promise not to write massive Author's Notes here...sorry!