Author's Note: Thank you so much to girlsix and 'a review' for reviewing, omg it means so much that you guys took the time to let me know what you think! I hope everyone likes this chapter! :)
CHAPTER XII
Reconciliation
. . .
"What?" This query passed Persephone's lips at such a low volume that Demeter had to strain her ears to hear it.
"I have received correspondence from Thor," she prefaced. "Or, rather, your father has and he has relayed it to me."
"Saying what?" she demanded.
"The prince's friends are scheduled to be executed next week for treason. Evidently he learned of your involvement in the matter and thought perhaps you might aid him in persuading his brother not to kill them."
"Why would he think that?"
Demeter shrugged, shirking any pretense of inside knowledge. "I have not seen the letter. I know only that he requested your presence because he thought for some reason you might be useful to his cause. There must certainly be desperation in his plight, for why else would he turn to you?"
"Yes," she murmured, "And why would he turn to me unless he thought there was even the slightest possibility that Loki might heed my word… What did father say to you about it?"
"He wanted me to tell you earlier…"
"When did he receive this message?" she interrupted.
The elder woman paused, and Persephone felt instantly enraged.
"It was long ago, wasn't it?" she growled.
"A few days – I didn't tell you because I did not want to tempt you!"
Persephone laughed acrimoniously and began pacing. "So their time is nearly spent, then?"
"Not nearly – there are still a couple of days before the date is set."
"I must leave soon, then – tomorrow."
"You must first inform Thor of your intention to go. He has assured your father that you will be under his care and that no harm will befall you. Zeus does hold him in quite high esteem, and so I think he must be trustworthy."
"Thor is everything Loki is not."
"That is what they say, and that is the sole reason why I am allowing you to go."
"Allowing me? Allowing me?" she echoed, nearing hysterics. "Was it not you who said just hours ago that I am a woman grown? You do not allow me anything – my decisions are mine and mine alone. I did not leave captivity to relinquish my freedom here as well."
Demeter suddenly looked a decade older and deeply hurt. She teetered a bit where she stood, as if her aged legs were rebelling against her. Tears glistened in her light eyes.
Persephone did not yield. "You are a foolish old woman who clings to the past because the present has nothing to offer. I have degenerated into something that you would not be proud to call your daughter."
"No," she refuted. "I am proud. You have become strong, like your father, though you may not realize it. I… I was never strong, merely persistent…"
Upon seeing the woman on the brink of collapse, she leant her her arm and softened her tone. "Perhaps I too am persistent," she said more mildly.
"I can only hope," she replied. "I suspect you are, which is why I do not think success is out of reach. Persistence is sometimes more valuable than strength in matters of the heart. Strength begets pride, and pride begets heartbreak… I find that Asgardian king beyond abhorrent, but you clearly see some opportunity for redemption in him, as does his brother."
"I fear I am on the brink of self-immolation even if I do not try," she told her plainly.
"So then you must go."
. . .
Persephone returned to Asgard, head hung low like a prodigal daughter and wrapped in a purple shawl. It was unlikely, she thought, that anyone would recognize her, but still she did not wish to take the chance.
Thor was there to meet her at the gates, looking every bit the same apart from a few new wrinkles around his eyes, likely caused by worry.
"Thank you for coming, My Lady. Asgard has fallen in to dire straights since your departure," he greeted. They immediately began walking at a brisk pace into the palace, their surroundings flying by around her in a sparkly blur of color.
"I've been informed," she replied, averting eye contact so that she would not have to answer for her duplicity. She was ashamed.
Thor was kind enough to ignore what was apparent between them. "Sif and the Warriors Three have been in the dungeons since the very day you left," he informed her.
"When are they set to be executed?"
"Tomorrow," he answered gravely. "You must speak with my brother tonight – I hope perhaps that if you explain to him precisely what happened, he might see reason. He valued his conversations with you, I think, and I pray that he might hear your advice because he certainly will not hear mine. He still thinks I wish to steal the throne from him."
"You think he valued his conversations with me?" she asked quickly and with profound astonishment.
"Yes… I have not had the luxury of seeing it for myself, but I have been told that you have become quite a different woman since falling under his charge. I truly think – through his own vanity – that he has either intentionally or unintentionally fashioned you into someone who he respects, if not cares for…"
He had walked her all the way to the door to Loki's cursed chambers, and there they lingered, whispering. "I would not burden you with this task unless I have already tried all that is within my power that would not result in civil war. You are my friends' last hope. I promise you that I will not let him injure you in any way – you have diplomatic immunity, but I will protect you should it ever come to it. You need only yell for help and I will find you at once."
She swallowed heavily in anticipation. "Alright," she agreed. She had faith in Thor – he was incredibly noble, especially when contrasted so directly with his brother.
Her trembling hand hovered briefly over the brass doorknob in paralyzing fear; the last time she had entered this room, unspeakable evils had occurred. "Wish me luck," she murmured almost inaudibly, before twisting the knob and plunging into the point of no return.
The wood made a noise as the door opened, and Loki whirled around to face her before she was even halfway through the threshold. He looked to be completely on edge. His hands were raised, as if he intended to use some sort of sorcery to assault her. His expression shifted from a look of furious worry into one of furious surprise.
"You," he hissed, voice caustic as acid. "What sort of vile trickery is this?"
"You are the trickster, not I," said Persephone fluidly. She conducted herself – to the best of her ability – with a forced air of composure. In reality, her heart leapt with both fear and affection the moment she laid eyes on his well-sculpted visage.
The door fell closed behind her with a crisp click, sealing them off from the outside world. Thor did not know that Loki had enchanted his chambers so that no sound would escape; should she scream, her pleas would fall upon deaf ears.
"I warned you never to return," snarled Loki menacingly, walking towards her with purpose.
Her feet held firm against the inclination to back down, even as she felt his hot breath on her forehead. "It is I who started the uprising, not Sif and her comrades. I have come to beg you to spare them their lives."
He threw his head back and let out a bark of laughter, which was somehow one of the most wicked and disquieting sounds that had ever reached her ears. "Oh, this is rich… Has my brother summoned you? He must be truly desperate – all this for a woman he claims so ardently to love as only a sister? I wonder how his beloved Jane Foster would feel about this…"
"It is I who started the uprising," she repeated, unfazed. "It is… It is I who must be… It is I who must be punished."
Her blatant hesitation did not slip past his notice. "What's the matter?" he taunted. "Has my brazen little princess so quickly lost her resolve?"
This nickname he had bestowed upon her – 'little princess' – made her skin crawl. He uttered it as a curse.
She did not meet his gaze, instead turning her attention to the rug beneath which she had been incarcerated less than a month past. "I am to blame," she muttered quietly.
"I'm sorry? What was that?" demanded Loki.
Her eyes bore into his with renewed intensity. "I am to blame."
He stepped back from her, seemingly agitated by this newfound self-assurance. "Do not flatter yourself," he spat. "It is ludicrous to think that you – someone so insignificant, so feeble-minded – could possibly pose any threat to my regime. No, you merely provided Sif with a justification to enact the treason she has been itching to commit from the moment I was crowned. You were but an excuse."
"Surely you who has taught me everything I know must understand that the 'excuses' are the most dangerous components of any plan for destruction."
He sniggered humorlessly once more at the notion that she could have wrought destruction upon him.
"You think yourself clever?" he mocked. "You are not. You are nothing. You are a canvas upon which others may project their own values – any sense of self you have allowed yourself to feel is but an illusion of the most pathetic breed! You have begun fraternizing with Thor, it seems – have you come to hold stake in the fate of the people of Asgard? Have you come identify with the ignoble tribulations of the groveling Midgardians? Because evidently you share his grievous belief that I may yet be redeemed!"
Tears gathered in her eyes but she did not let them fall; his words stung greatly, true enough, but she knew that they were uttered in a twisted sort of self-defense.
"No," he continued, a bit calmer. He seemed almost to be speaking to himself as he paced. Loki moved around quite a lot as he spoke, she noticed, as if the corporeal activity somehow helped his mind to function.
"Thor has brought you here for naught – he knows I cannot be redeemed. He wishes only that I release his friends so that he may join them in their battle against me. It is he, after all, who shall be king when I fall. Perhaps even you are working in concert with him – I would not put it past you, given how fickle your loyalties seem to be. Look how readily you forsake your own homeland in favor of the one in which you were prisoner. Has the mighty Thor charmed you with his oafish magnetism? I would not blame you, you are but a woman – and oh how they swoon before him."
"Thor has no wish to displace you," she insisted, ignoring this pitiable insecurity and willing him to understand. "He wishes only to see his childhood friends escape the blade."
"Then he wishes in futility. Sif and the Warriors Three must be executed, if for no other reason than to prove a point – it is merciful enough that I do not slaughter Asgard's army in droves, as I have perfectly just grounds to do."
"Think what 'just grounds' you father had to execute you, and still he did not," she pointed out heatedly.
Loki turned to glare venomously at her, teeth bared and fists clenched tightly enough to draw blood. "All the more reason to slice their heads off with a blunt axe."
"Odin was a beloved king. You might benefit from putting aside your loathing for him and follow some of his examples."
"I will never be beloved – there is no point in trying."
"I disagree! You have the ability to be quite charismatic when you want to be – I think you might be able to win them over yet."
"Then you are an even larger idiot than I thought."
At this, she huffed in frustration – the first palpable display of emotion she had thus far shown. "I am trying to help you, Loki! You think everyone is conspiring against you, but in reality Thor and I are trying only to save you from yourself!"
"I did not ask for you 'help'!" he shouted, nostrils flaring. "Nor do I want it! When will you get that through your thick skull? Honestly, I think you're even duller than my brother! You are worthless – you are unworthy of the time I have spent on you! I neither value nor desire your trivial insight!"
He stopped for a moment to catch his breath and ratchet down his fury. When he continued, his voice was deathly calm.
"It is my own fault, that you have begun to act with such recklessness," he said. "I have squandered my attention on you and given you the false impression that your opinion is somehow meaningful. You were but a way to pass the time, a tawdry plaything meant to serve as a passive audience for my most frivolous musings. You think because you have read a measly collection of books that you are an expert on ruling? You are wholly unqualified to offer me any sort of advice, and in fact it angers me that you are foolhardy enough to even presume to!"
"I think you'll find your cruel words do not cut me as they once did," she told him in a low hiss. "You cannot deflect a discussion of your own shortcomings by insulting me."
He rushed to her at once and momentarily looked as if he might strike her; however he refrained, opting instead to lean his face in inches from hers. She could see every fleck of color in his irises and every minuscule pore in his flawless complexion.
"You think you see through me so easily," he ridiculed. "You do not."
"Loki," she pleaded, fingers floating in the air just above his wrists. "Everything I have learned about human nature I have learned from you – I know you know that ruling through fear does not prevent a revolution, but merely staves it off for a time."
"When that time comes, then, perhaps it will mean the permanent ruin of this awful realm."
He made a move to walk away from her again, but she caught his wrist before he could. He froze in his tracks, slowly turning his sights to her small hand on the leather of his sleeve. His expression morphed from a look of irritation to one of surprise. When he finally seemed to settle on a reaction, he considered her with an odd mixture of bewilderment and uncertainty, as if he did not understand the nature of this unexpected physical contact.
"It does not have to be this way," she said sincerely, before he could speak. "Eventually you will have to prove yourself no longer – eventually you will be forgiven. You need only bide your time until then. And you can – I know you can. You are cunning enough. The worst is already over."
He tore his gaze away from her hand to look her squarely in the eyes. His frown fell away and his features relaxed into a blank expression. "Why?" he murmured almost imperceptibly.
"I'm sorry?"
"Why?" he repeated, only a decibel louder. "Why do you wish so desperately to help me?"
She gave him a fierce look from beneath her thick eyelashes as her heart beat perilously fast against her ribcage. "You know why," she said in an equally hushed tone.
He flitted his eyes to the point of contact once more and tugged his arm from her grasp; her hand slipped away as if it had never been there to begin with.
"Yours is the most pitiful sentimentality I have ever known," he sneered without meeting her passionate stare.
"Not sentimentality," she rebuked fervidly. "Love."
As soon as the word had left her tongue she wished she could stuff it back down her throat. She resisted the urge to cover her traitorous mouth with her hands. The word hung in the air, baiting and untouched.
His emerald eyes pierced hers, indecipherable emotions swirling in them. He seemed to be reading her face, searching for signs of betrayal.
He didn't want her love – he didn't know what to do with it. Love was something repulsive, something that always wronged him in the end. It had done nothing but hurt him; it was meant to be a bolstering force, but it only cut him down. The more people he loved, he told himself most adamantly, the weaker he became. In the past, this wretched sentiment had clouded the one thing he did possess, the one thing that made him better than everyone else: his intelligence and his logic. And he would not allow himself to be reduced to a bumbling child seeking affection ever again.
She knew he felt this way; her terrible secret was already exposed, so she figured she might as well cocoon herself in a veil of confidence in her declaration. She ghosted her fingertips over his cheekbone, barely touching him, and matched the concentration in his gaze.
"I have said before that you must surely be an idiot, but I fear I must reiterate this estimation if you harbor any legitimate feelings for me," he told her plaintively after some prolonged moments. There was a rare, transitory flash of something akin to remorse in his eyes.
"Yes, I would be an idiot to love you," she agreed firmly. "And yet here I stand." Her thumb lightly traced the hollow of his cheek. She marveled at how anyone's face could be so without flaw.
"Even you, a doomed and hopeless idiot, must know that I will be your demise."
"Yes," she agreed again without budging.
"Why?" he asked again, voice cracking with a peculiar sort of desperation. He finally angled his face into her touch, blinking in unsynchronized rapidity.
She smiled sadly, tears cascading down her cheeks as her eyes squinted. "If I knew, perhaps I might be able to rectify my idiocy."
He smiled back in equivalent sadness, the corners of his mouth faltering as they maintained the effort. Wearily he sat down on the nearby edge of his bed, her hand never leaving his cheek as she remained standing before him. When he still did not speak, she sank to her knees as though she were worshipping him and brought her other hand up to cradle his chin.
"In earnest, though," she began tenderly, "I admire your intellect. You may often use it to wreak great devastation, but it is impressive nonetheless. I think that if you may forget the pain of your past, you could do equally great good with your brilliance. You need only try."
He smiled again with that same air of unhappiness. "It is not just my pretty face?" he drawled in jest. "The other children used to tease me so."
Her own smile broadened. "You appearance is no mark against you, I will admit."
"I knew it," he joked.
With the reluctance of a mere boy, he gradually mirrored her actions by putting his right hand on the side of her face. His thumb caressed the impossibly smooth skin beneath her lower eyelashes, brushing away the dampness of her tears. She released him and instead held his hand in place with her own, urging him on. His demeanor was just as gentle with her now as it had been that fateful day in the library.
His gaze darted to her lips, as though wordlessly asking for a permission he knew he did not need; she squeezed his hand and felt the pulse in his wrist jump ever so slightly. He drew closer. Again she felt the warmth of his breath on her face, and again she felt her blood turn to molten lava – this time for an entirely different reason.
Author's Note: I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry to end it there! What do you think of Loki? In character? How about Persephone? Also when Loki references the destruction of Asgard, that's hinting at Ragnarok, which is like the Asgardian apocalypse that is, in mythology, started by Loki. Please review ;)
