Loki had a problem.
Frowning deeply, he paused within the wooden frame of the bedroom door, supporting his depleted body with one hand, securing a towel around his waist with the other. He had showered, and though it had been no magical cure, he did at least feel better for having done so. His joints still ached and walking took more out of him than running ever had, but no longer did he feel slimy as an eel from cold fever sweats, which was a great step toward feeling half-alive, rather than half-dead.
None of that altered the fact that a problem remained: a practical, fairly avoidable problem with which he now had to contend. Loki balled the fabric of the towel in his fist, clenching his jaw as he swallowed.
Oh yes, he indeed had a problem. He did not have any clothing.
Loki had not thought to pack a bag. Never before in his life had such a thing been necessary, except, he imagined, in childhood, before he had learned to cast illusions or store items in the pockets between dimensions. That had been several hundred years ago, too long to retain any significance in his memory, and Loki doubted he had been the one packing the bags even then, when there were servants to do such things. Or perhaps his mother had laid a hand to the task.
The ultimate result was the same: Loki could not recall a time when things - whatever he might need - were not in easy, almost instantaneous reach, and though the work of honing his magic had been laborious, there was no questioning that he had become at least a bit spoiled in the years since its mastery.
Loki grumbled across the darkened room and perched himself on the edge of his bed, releasing the towel and letting gravity do the work of keeping it draped across his lap. His fingers had gone stiff from holding on so tightly and remained bent, just as his spine curved forward under the weight of his body, though he felt hollow inside. His entire form had adopted a concave appearance. Even breathing was more like dragging unwilling air into his lungs.
Showered or not, this anemic state would hang on him for some time. The first bout, when Strange's initial barriers were set in place, had left Loki sickly for about a week. After that, the wound which the operation had inflicted upon him seemed to heal, and he regained access to some of what first seemed lost, not unlike an limb recovering motion and strength after the trauma of injury.
The first time had been considerably worse, actually. To lose magic, it turned out, was a kind of desanguination, and Loki's body had gone nearly physically numb from the shock of being drained of so much at one time. Stirring up the memory, as he did now, made him go hot and cold all over, but at least it was something he could feel.
Small victories...
Loki closed his eyes and told himself it would be wiser expending energy solely on problems which he could solve. Dressing himself, for example. Raking in a deep breath, he switched on a table lamp, brightening the little blue bedroom, and picked up the clock which stood squat at the corner of the table.
Nine-thirty. Thor was unreachable by now, provided he had not already short-circuited the meeting with Ross and Strange by punching a hole through either of them. Loki sighed, looking down at himself. The sigh became a thorny chuckle and he shook his head. There was humor in this, somewhere, but he was glad to be alone, laughing into a vacuum.
All right. Clothing. Scraping together a bit of dignity would go a long way toward keeping him sane until Thor returned with news.
Loki skimmed a palm over his slick, wet hair, cradling the back of his skull as it came to rest there. For a moment he remained like that, silent and still, thinking. With a blast of air through his nose, he threw his hand to the side, carrying his hair with it, which curved snake-like around his neck. Thrusting forward that same hand, he turned his palm upward and stared into it.
But of course, nothing happened. Loki clenched his fist with a sting of embarrassment for even making the attempt.
There was no chest of drawers in the room, no obvious places to store clothing, which was odd, but the room was exceedingly small. In fact, when Loki had split the single bed into two, it had placed both all but flush against the east and west walls, minus a pair of tiny nightstands on either side.
He twisted around and stared down the rest of the room. This was only a puzzle, was it not? He could solve a puzzle, even if his brain felt like it was full of burlap. Probably. What did he have to work with?
The only clothing in his possession were the pajamas which he had conjured the previous night. They were now damp with sweat and beginning to smell like something pickled, and washing them by hand would take too much time. By the time they were dry and wearable, Thor would have returned.
But… Loki tilted his head. Thor had brought a bag with him, had he not? The clothing would be ill-fitting, but it was better than nothing at all, which was the literal description of Loki's alternatives.
So it had come to this: dressing like a drifter in Norwegian fishing village. He might as well be human.
Loki rose to his feet, tightening the grip on his towel as he circled to the center of the space, in the lane between the two beds. The towel was not strictly necessary; he was the only one in the apartment. But with the strong likelihood of Strange checking in at some point during the meeting in New York, it seemed wise to keep something wrapped around him. Although truthfully, Loki was rather tempted to let go and give the doctor a clear view of his good opinion. It was unfortunate that he had just given Thor instruction on curbing his impulsive temper.
He scanned the room with the narrow eyes of a cat on the hunt. Were I Thor, where would I haphazardly scatter my worldly possessions?
To that, the answer came quickly. Loki got down on his knees, carefully, lowering himself until his cheek touched the floor and he could peer beneath his brother's bed. A satisfied smile spread across his face as the metal fixtures of Thor's travel bag winked at him like stars in a darkened sky. Loki stretched out and dragged the canvas backpack into the light. Salvation!
But the material flopped lifelessly in his hands and inside he found only air. Loki shuddered in disbelief and his heart sank, forming a knot in his gut. Had the bag only ever been full of maps? Where was Thor keeping his clothing, in the kitchen drawers?
With a hiss, he cast the bag aside, and rocking back on his heels, Loki inhaled deeply to catch his breath from the exertion. His chin dipped. He looked down at himself, into the grizzled eye of the scar at the center of his chest, watching the discolored skin pulsate in time with his heart.
The sour taste of bile rose to the back his throat. His eyes moved from his chest to the towel in his lap, and then down the length of his legs, coming to rest on his bare feet and the bluish color beneath of his toenails. He shivered. With a laugh dripping with pure disgust, almost a wretch, Loki threw his gaze away from himself, shaking his head. Whatever fragmented hint of comedy he thought he saw moments ago, it must have been a delusion, a remnant of his fever.
Come and see Prince Loki of Jotunheim, naked as the day he was born and subsequently cast on a frozen rock!
He despised everything: Strange and Ross and New York. He hated Norway, too. Everything smelled of salt and fish and it was nauseating. Earth was a prison. Once he had run where even the gods dared not walk, in the corridors between worlds, passageways which boggled the fully sane. Entire planets reached toward his outstretched hand and Loki could pull them to himself in an instant, covering distances beyond the speed of the Bifrost in a single step. It was an existence which contained no barriers; the universe belonged to him.
And what had his universe been reduced to but a few square feet of Manhattan real estate? Now, it was even smaller than that: a claustrophobic collection of the molecules which comprised his body. Loki hated the way he his skin felt, knowing it was where he came to an end.
He have to have been a glutton for pain, thought Loki, as he masochistically lifted his palm once more, but magic, he had learned, was perniciously addictive. To separate the physical from the metaphysical was to cause a kind of bodily chaos, a panic, and it responded with acute distress. It demanded it be given what it was so convinced it needed to keep the heart pumping, the brain firing. Where is it? Where has it gone? Where is the thing which I cannot do without?
His hand began to quiver under the strain, with veins bulging in his arm. Loki's vision blurred, his stomach rolled, but he pushed his conscious further and further inward, into the recesses of what was starting to feel like a vast, interior cavern. An blood-chilling emptiness. His pulse had an echo.
There had to be something left. If only he delved deeply enough, he could find it. It was only sleeping. He would wake it up!
Loki began to see spots before the rapidly dimming backdrop of the bedroom. He squeezed his eyes shut against them, but they remained, and his head started to throb.
"Find it…" He heard the growl of his voice as though it was coming from somewhere far separated from himself. "Find it, you worthless-!"
With a sharp pain at the back of his skull, Loki cried out. The cavern caved in upon itself. The floor beneath his legs seemed to vanish, reappearing seconds later as it struck his forehead and, like a bell, set his ears rang. Fresh pain wracked his body from head to toe. It was searing agony, like fire. He spat the taste of blood from his mouth.
Loki screamed in pain, a roar of pure, boiling rage, bestial and base. Yet the cry inside would not be outdone. It screamed all the louder, more determined than before. Where is it? Why did you stop? Find it! Give me what I need!
His breath came in ragged pulls. Loki knew he would tear himself apart if he delved any deeper. He slid his palms across the floor, trying to claim some semblance of balance, inching toward the wall.
He rolled onto his back, opening his eyes to the ceiling. The colors transmuted from shades of gray to blurry browns, and slowly, very slowly, the world came back into focus. His body flattened out along the floor.
His breath was still far beyond his ability to catch it, pulsating through him in uneven heaves. Loki had no choice but to endure the frantic, internal shriek. Perhaps madness was indeed setting in, because he could almost literally hear it now: like a desperate child, like an infant's high-pitched wailing. And what did a child want, except his mother? Loki swallowed, nearly choking. The Mother. The mysterious force which kept the child alive, fed him, kept him warm, loved him. And what if the mother did not come when the child cried? An infant did not have the capacity understand. To not be instantaneously gratified was to plunge into the despair of utter abandonment.
He clenched his teeth. Strange did not know what he had taken, but he hated him for it, as intensely as he had ever hated any creature. Even this void was only a temporary state, Loki concluded that his hatred would remain far beyond the human's pathetically short lifespan.
Loki did not care that he could not walk between worlds nor pull clothing from inter-dimensional pockets. Damn all of that. Let Strange keep it. But his magic was all of that remained of his mother and to lose that…
~You might want to take the stairs to the left.~
Bitter, petty words. A few seconds of weakness, and the cost?
~Did she suffer?~
Loki squeezed his eyes shut and turned onto his side.
As a child, he would stretch a hand forward, listen to her instruction, and delve into the germinating magic within. If nothing happened, when there was only a void at his fingertips, then Frigga would take his hand and fold it in her own, center his scattered, boyish mind, and show him the way. The magic she had to share was ancient, and Loki, who had already begun to suspect that he might never match his brother in brute force or his father in severity, wanted nothing more than to be his mother's perfect student, to make someone in his family proud.
He tried to swallow, but his mouth had gone dry.
Frigga's magic had been his only true, material connection to Asgard. What could not be his by blood had become his by rite of passage, and Strange had no right to steal from an entire race what his mother had given him to protect. He tightened his fist until his fingers ached.
He would never belong to Asgard, but he would always carry was Frigga had given to him. Or so Loki believed.
~Did she suffer?~
In the end, Loki had not been able to save her. He could only avenge her, and then spend a veritable eternity cursed, wondering if the culprit he should have exacted vengeance upon was himself.
For a long while, Loki lied there, wrapped in his towel, recovering from the shock of pain until it subsided and felt more like resting. He could have fallen to sleep if he gave himself the time, but some sound or another roused him, and once his eyes opened, they remained so. The sun was coming through the window full force by now, illuminating the room, casting shadows beneath the bed he faced, which happened to be Thor's. He did not feel peaceful, but his mind slowed to a less ragged pace Memories of Frigga came and went, in and out, like the water that surrounded the archipelago which Loki could literally hear in the distance.
He thought about New York, across much larger waters, and what might be happening. Was the meeting still going on? Loki detested being in the dark. Could they see him now? Perhaps they would take pity.
Oh, but no, that thought did not sit well. Like a pinch between his ribs, Loki bristled at the idea, smiling a grim smile. He would not give them the satisfaction; no, he would rise and face what remained of the morning, wrapped in his towel if that was all he had, or perhaps trade it for a blanket.
"I mean, really," he murmured to himself, still half-smiling, "Where was I going to go, anyway?" If his mother were there, Loki thought of how she would have laughed along with him at that. They had always shared a dark sense of humor.
Still, it was a challenge to rise immediately. The floor had become surprisingly comfortable. It felt good to have something solid beneath him, and there was strength left to gather.
He peered beneath Thor's bed, noting the balls of dust. Far too many of them. He sighed. No wonder his brother snored. It was a godly feat that he could breathe at all.
But… Now, what was this?
Loki examined the slatted wood which supported the mattress, or rather, on something which seemed not to belong, something like a box, attached to the framework of the bed. It stretched for nearly the entire length. It even dangled a little, with some gapping above.
Sitting up with enough swiftness to make himself dizzy, Loki pushed through and circled to the other side. His eyes grew wide. His smile grew wider.
What he had discovered was a drawer.
The tiny room had no need of closets and chests for storage, because the storage itself was part of the bed. How infuriatingly clever, or simply infuriating, but Loki's heart was fluttering in his throat.
He knelt, draping the towel across his knees, and hooked his long fingers beneath a pair of notches that served as handles. He gave it as strong a yank as he could, revealing the most lovely sight Loki was certain he had ever laid eyes upon: layers upon layers of denim and cotton, overwashed and faded, a veritable shine to Thor's lazy Midgardian fashion sense. Loki nearly bowed his head in prayer.
It was all going to be too big, but it did not take much rifling until he found cotton pants - sweats, but not quite so bulky - with a drawstring. Loki hastily threw them on, leaving behind his towel once and for all, pulled the string taught and tied a knot. It draped a bit awkwardly, but at least his hands were finally free. He picked a t-shirt at random and threw it on, as well.
His breath quickened from the exertion. Loki sat on the edge of Thor's bed, facing the window, with his chest rising and falling quickly, but his cheekbones ached from satisfied smiling. Small victories indeed.
Through the slats of the window blinds, he could see the mountains beyond the fjord. Everything was glittering: the flecks of precious minerals in the stone; the snow caps and the white, veiny tendrils that hugged the face of the rock; the water, as waves mimicked with miniature peaks of foam. The day was exceptionally bright, enough to make his eyes water, but it suddenly looked so pretty that Loki kept staring. And the air was probably frigid, but the sun cast warm lines over his body, and Loki drank it in. Or tried to.
In New York, Thor's meeting had to be well underway. Loki was rarely at these sessions which centered on his fate, but it was all too easy to imagine Ross and Strange attempting to bear down in his brother, as if in any other situation, they might be equally matched. He smirked. Oh, what Loki would pay for a front-row seat to that beating. But the meeting was not war, but a war of words. It was a mind game, a minefield. If Thor could keep his head cool, then there was a fair chance all would be well, but if not… It was so obvious to Loki why they had to keep him at a safe distance, even without his arsenal of tricks.
Thor was on his own. Loki felt his throat tighten and he absentmindedly scratched the center of his palm.
His brother was no fool, he knew that; he believed that, but Thor was so far away and Loki felt… Damn it all, not everything had to be complicated: he simply did not want to be alone. If what belonged to Frigga had truly been drained from him, then Thor was the last connection to something beyond his own skin that Loki retained.
He looked down into his open palm, so full of nothing.
And with a heavy sigh, he squeezed it shut.