Disclaimer: So, this year has been putting me through a high speed spin cycle so far and I didn't have the inclination to write as a result of it all. But school is over now, so hopefully I'll have more time to get chapters out a bit faster.
The first day Loki was announced as advisor to the King and Queen went about as well as could be expected. Many came to protest directly, others sent missives. Some were worrying, as diplomats sent threats of sundering their long alliances with Asgard if the viper should stand by the throne to whisper his lies to those who sat upon it, but many others were simply empty threats. Thor did his best to soothe who he could, and firmly but calmly shut down the rest. Those that remained unmoved by his words he would need to deal with another way.
"So Loki, this is your first day to dispense advice." He said when the day was done and he was left with the threats that were not so easily ignored or calmed.
"You have read them out to me with great care brother, and you have yourself a problem." Loki replied, though he had in fact sat at Thor's side and read the words himself to ensure he knew them well. "You wish for me to advise, but these allies don't agree." He pointed randomly. "Midgard knows only of me through history, so tell them the stories are exaggerated, or if such lies don't sit well with you, tell them of when I suffered the serpent who's venom ate away at me and then tell them of the hundred years in the cell of darkness and dirt...let them believe one happened after the other. Perhaps it would satisfy them."
"Lies already." Thor murmured before he nodded. "And of Alfheim and Nidavellir?"
"Queen Alistaria likely protests because she is expected to." Loki said. "I could perhaps with an escort go to her personally-the escort would only be to show me the way. I fear not the Light Elves. I could speak to her myself and assure her all is well...the Dwarves though, that's a different matter." He touched his lips briefly. "Perhaps if you told them the same tale you told the humans, they would be satisfied. I am blind now, harmless..." His mouth took on a bitter twist. "There is nothing to fear from me but the sharpness of my words."
Thor shared a glance with Sif. "I will consider this advice in due turn. Do you have one in mind to escort you to the elf Queen, or shall I choose on your behalf?"
"Who would I choose but those I could trust not to harm me?" Loki spread his arms. "Yet you are King, and have better things to do and certainly I could not ask our mother, though she would surely love the excuse to visit their fine realm. Perhaps Volstagg or Fandral would take the task?" He paused to chuckle. "Though Fandral would likely flirt with all the elven maids and cause a worse problem than I...so perhaps not."
"Volstagg is enjoying a happy and well deserved retirement." Thor said. "I wouldn't ask this of his old bones, but Fandral can behave himself well enough." Thor's tone turned more severe. "But you owe him an apology, brother. The way you acted before to him, though I blame you little for it with your mind having been so addled."
"I will speak to him of it and assure him of my sincere distress that he and I would ever be other than friends." Loki assured Thor with a bow. "I know you received a letter no doubt scathing from Karnilla. Why have you not mentioned her?"
"Karnilla concerns me very little." Thor replied. "Balder can handle her. You know how she feels about you, but it will pass as all of her tantrums do."
"Such a thing to say." Loki quirked a smile in amusement.
"Speaking of Balder." Sif spoke up. "Perhaps he would like to go. If any could soothe the elves, it would be he."
"Balder is better served where tempers are not so easily soothed." Loki responded. "Though he certainly isn't going to lie on my behalf. I doubt he even can."
Thor sat back on the throne and stared at his younger brother, who he believed couldn't see his intense and thoughtful gaze. "Once you were Asgard's primary diplomat. Do you think you could serve in that role again, in spite of this handicap?"
Loki arched a brow. "I was of the impression that Balder, though King of Nornheim, was serving Asgard in that capacity. How does he do that and still serve Nornheim as King, by the way?"
The looks of contempt that settled onto Sif and Thor's faces would have given plenty of answer if Loki could let on that he could see them. Instead he simply cocked his head and waited.
"Karnilla treats our brother like a prized pet." Thor said at last. "He does not rule, and has evidently all the free time he could ever want. I was surprised as you when I discovered that doesn't really appeal to him."
Loki snorted and groped about to find the throne and a place to sit, though he nearly chose to land in Thor's lap for entertainment's sake before his brother pushed him to the arm of the throne instead. "Is that contempt for Karnilla or arrogant Balder I hear in your voice?"
Sif sighed. "Balder isn't arrogant any longer and he hasn't been for quite a few centuries. Why are we on this topic?"
"Apologies." Loki turned his head toward her and fought an amused look at how uncomfortable she looked. Sitting on a hard throne for even half the day couldn't be enjoyable in her state of pregnancy. "Let's see, I asked one question and then another. You wish for me to be Asgard's diplomat, but Balder fills that role. Might we also have forgotten that I committed to Ragnarok but a century past? Those who protest my position at your side may protest far more violently if I were to venture away from it, and a blind man is no challenge for a coward to draw blade upon."
It didn't matter that he wasn't actually blind, or that he had been practicing his forms in secret, or taking walks with Sleipnir past the training grounds to watch the warriors-and shield maidens-practice. He hadn't seen real battle in a century, he had to be careful about building muscle lest it be remarked upon and regardless of anything else, a smart assassin was a quiet one and Loki didn't have the same keenness of hearing that a truly blind person might. His only advantage there lay in that the assassin would assume Loki couldn't see them coming and so may approach him from the front.
"You wouldn't be without guarded escort, brother." Thor pointed out.
"And how am I to trust my guard wouldn't decide the realms were better off without Ragnarok's herald?"
Thor and Sif exchanged a glance to which Loki had to pretend to be unaware-but oh the tells people gave away when they thought he couldn't see them.
"It seems to me, brother" Thor said, turning back to him. "that you have absolutely no trouble speaking of Ragnarok, but a greater difficulty in saying why you committed to it in the first place. Why don't you-"
"Ha!" Loki pushed off the arm of the throne and nearly stumbled on his robe for the sake of theatrics. "No no, I walked into it myself, but you'll not trick me into boasting, Thor."
"Then don't boast. Tell it plainly and to your King."
"Would you command it of me?" Came the question in a bland tone.
"Would it make a difference if I did?" Thor replied, mimicking Loki's tone.
"You could command me, and perhaps I would even tell you, but I'd promise you that this love I have felt blooming for you in my blackened heart would shrivel thereafter."
"Then tell your Queen." Sif spoke and Loki half-turned back toward her without fully looking her way. "There is no love lost between us to shatter if so commanded by me."
"There was once, Sif." Loki replied softly. "But you, as ever, chose Thor." He turned away and shrugged slightly. "I'll sooner cut out my tongue, or submit to Dwarven awl and leather to sew my lips again before I would speak on it."
"Why?!" Thor snapped before he forced himself to moderate his tone. "Why, Loki? You were angry at-at the Allfather, so I can understand why you wouldn't tell him, but why do you still refuse to speak of it now?"
Loki smiled thinly. "Angry? Alright, here's something for you, brother. I was angry I failed. Angry I was caught. Odin never deserved the answers. Not for raising me as a tool. A tool that didn't even fulfill its purpose. A tool he discarded the first chance he got, and would have left to rot forevermore, but then he gave up the throne to his firstborn, and his firstborn eventually remembered-"
"Loki." Thor cut him off with a surprisingly even tone. "Father loves you, even if he is very bad at showing it. He's been trying harder of late to be a good father. One of the reasons he stepped down from the throne was because he wanted to be a better father instead of a good King."
"A good King has more mercy and would have at least killed me rather than leaving me to lose my mind. One and one and one again. So long I forgot how to count any other way."
"Why did you try to commit Ragnarok, Loki?" Sif spoke up again, trying to bring the discussion back on topic.
"For reasons you would never understand." Loki turned away and called his guiding cane to his hand with his magic. "If it's any consolation, even if I could see, I wouldn't try again. Not until it really is time."
"What does that mean, brother?" Thor asked, but Loki just started walking away. "Loki, what does that mean?! 'Not until it really is time'? Loki!" But Loki would not answer, and for reasons of his own, Thor chose not to pursue it further for the time being. Still, it was a clue, and it certainly wasn't the end of the discussion.
Odin was standing at one side of the hallway as Loki exited, and it was hard for the trickster to ignore him. It was true that he was no longer the frightened child-mind that Thor had extracted from the cell near Mimir's Well, but that didn't mean he wasn't wary. He hadn't been lying in what he'd said to Thor that Odin considered him nothing more than a tool, for that was the truth as he knew it.
"Loki."
Even his voice was enough to set Loki's teeth on edge and his hand tightened on the guiding cane as he resisted the urge to turn and face the older god.
"I have nothing to say to you."
"Oh, I believe you've plenty to say." Odin replied drolly. "But fortunately, as do I." Loki heard him step closer. "You've recovered from your imprisonment well."
"By your standards, mayhaps." Loki finally turned to face Odin, purposely focusing on the right of him instead of trying to make eye contact.
Odin's expression was hard to read, which was about typical from what Loki remembered of him. This was not the Odin who had been trying to treat his children better. This was the Odin Loki knew, the calculating old man who considered the angles. The man who might just see through Loki's ruse and realize he wasn't as sightless as he pretended.
"Your vision will no doubt return in time." Odin said at last, debunking that assumption-or at least playing along with the act. "If it does not, you will learn to adapt."
"How kind." Loki spat. "Fortunate for me Thor isn't like you and won't have me locked away in a room like you did to Hodr, or leaving me to rot in that cell for the rest of all time."
Odin frowned, though to what exactly Loki couldn't say. "You commit a crime such as Ragnarok, and yet you rail against your family for the lack of mercy shown you?" The former King said at last. "Have you truly learned nothing from your imprisonment?"
The cane handle splintered in Loki's hand, it having not been made to withstand Asgardian-level strength. He ignored the scratches the broken material gave him, as the injuries were minor and would mend before too much blood was spilled. If only it wasn't so fragile he would consider attempting to crack Odin over the head with it.
He lowered his head slightly, sightless-seeming eyes focusing directly on Odin in his temper. "You were hoping I would die." He stated through bared teeth. "You've never forgotten what I really am beneath this more pleasant appearance, and my brother has told me some interesting things about my...species. Things you would have known...like what isolation does to Jötnar."
"I knew." Odin admitted with no sign of remorse or regret what so ever. "I also knew from your small size that you weren't fully Jötun, and that you have a godhead which no other member of your particular kind of giant happens to enjoy. I knew you would likely survive in some state."
The cane handle broke completely and its remains clattered to the floor. Loki threw the broken bit in his hand at Odin, though his wild attack was easily ducked. "And that I wouldn't starve?!" He hissed. "You would have left me to my madness for eternity if you'd had your way!"
Odin looked back at Loki in impassive silence, and Loki bit his tongue until it bled to keep from continuing to scream at him in hopes of getting a reaction. When Odin continued to hold to his silence, Loki forced himself to turn away. He started to stalk off before he remembered he was supposed to be blind and forced himself to fumble for the wall. Odin's silence was in itself telling, and Norns as his witness, Loki was going to make him pay for it!
Night had fallen, food had been delivered to Loki's room and the tray taken away again when he was through with it. Now that he was interruption free, barring Thor or Sif deciding they needed to take up his time, he could concentrate on a plan for revenge.
If he was a monster, and there was little doubt that he was, then who had made him into one but the strongest monster in all the Nine Realms? How had Odin brought the realms to heel in the first place? If Loki remembered his history correctly, the only realms Asgard hadn't gone to war with had been Alfheim, Midgard and Nidavellir, and given how irascible the Dwarves were, if there hadn't been a war it was only because it would be too easy to kick them over or threaten to bury them alive in their own caverns.
The point of the matter was that Odin was even less diplomatic than Thor was trying to be now and had won the realms mostly through force. Loki at least had that point in his favor. After all, he had raised an army for Ragnarok on charm alone. Well, that and a heaping dose of false promises, but he was a God of Lies, so what did they expect?
He stared at his worktable now, or rather, what was sitting on it. Dried ingredients for spells and potions. Most of them had gone bad in the century he'd been imprisoned and so he would need to get fresh ones, but of what remained useful would it be enough to use against the once Allfather?
After taking stock of what remained viable, Loki uttered a frustrated sigh and put his head in his hands. No. Nothing he had would work. He wasn't even certain that if he had all fresh ingredients that any combination would be sufficient. He would need something more powerful, but also something subtle, for he had no intention of jeopardizing his position as Thor's advisor. No, it had to be something that couldn't be pinned on him. Maybe a powerful sleeping draught. Odin was surely overdue for an Odinsleep by now, so Loki would simply be helping him along. Then he just wouldn't wake up again. Yes. That could possibly work, and no one would think anything out of the ordinary.
Loki smiled to himself. He would definitely need fresh ingredients, for the plant he had in mind as the primary ingredient needed to be alive until the moment of harvest, which meant Loki would need to collect it himself and carefully for it to have the correct potency. He would need to plan it carefully. After all, blind men didn't go wandering about. But it wouldn't be too hard, he would simply need to plan it carefully and perhaps leave an illusion in his place just in case. Soon. Soon Odin would learn a valuable and fatal lesson in why Loki was not one to cross.
