Chapter 29:
Odin lands them directly within the Observatory, and the old King isn't at all surprised to find Heimdall there, staring down at them from his dais, hands rested lightly upon the hilt of his sword, expression passive as ever.
As he'd feared it, he can feel his own strength greatly taxed from energy expended, bringing them here, and he struggles a moment not to show it, gripping hard round the shaft of Gungnir, using its own strength to hold him steady.
Thor removes himself quickly from Odin's hold, stepping forward, already brandishing Mjolnir threateningly towards the gatekeeper.
"What have you done with my brother!?" He nearly roars, thunder booming in the distance with his rage.
Heimdall, expectedly, shows no reaction, merely gazing back towards the Crown Prince with uncaring eyes.
"Thor." Odin reaches out, placing a heavy hand upon his son's shoulder, halting his momentum.
Thor turns, looking back at him, features twisted both in impatience and distress.
The All-Father takes only a moment to spare him an acknowledging glance, before moving his eyes to the Gatekeeper, stepping forward, around Thor.
"Heimdall," he addresses the Gatekeeper, voice cold and unyielding. "You will tell me now what you have done with Loki. Do so, and you have my word I will not put you to the ax for this act of treason."
Heimdall's face remains impassive, expressionless.
There is a long stretch of silence, and Odin can feel Thor's tension beside him. The thrum of his power, barely restrained.
"I serve only to protect Asgard." The Gatekeeper at last speaks.
Anger sparks hot and blinding in the All-Father.
"You serve me, your King!" He snaps, voice rising, cracking through the air with his own might. "You will tell me what you have done with my son!"
"He is no son of yours." Heimdall replies, voice unmoved and calm. "Rather the son born from a race of monsters, so monstrous himself even they knew 'twas better to be rid of him. You would in your foolery make him King of Asgard. I have acted only to protect this Realm from your own folly. To rid Asgard and the other Realms of the curse that is Loki Laufeyson. I have done us all a boon in this. You may not yet understand, but in time, you will come to realize the truth of my words and actions."
Odin feels sick.
Around him, the world seems to spin and tilt, and within, thought and emotion rages in battle with one another. Consuming fury and paralyzing fear.
Heimdall has not yet done what he says he has. Odin must… he must believe that.
"Tell me now where my son is!" He demands once more, dismissing purposefully every word from the Gatekeeper's lips. "Tell me, and I will make your death a painless one."
Heimdall grins, an expression wholly unnatural and almost ugly upon such a normally stoic visage.
"You contradict yourself, All-Father. You are not thinking clearly." He says.
"I think clearly enough to see the evidence of your own madness!" Odin spits in return. "You truly believe you will get away with this?"
"I already have." Heimdall says without inflection.
"Bastard!" Thor roars suddenly, stepping towards the Gatekeeper, Mjolnir once more raised in threat.
"Is that not a title more appropriately given the wretch who tried to claim you as brother?" Heimdall goes on, eyes flicking to Thor.
The sky tears open, thunder rolling in deafening power across the expanse, lighting flashing in blinding, successive explosions and rain pouring in a flood from the clouds, pounding the roof of the Observatory and the bridge beyond, leading to the city.
It is only Odin's hand, clamping with crushing tightness round Thor's thick wrist which stays his attack, pulling his son back towards him.
"FATHER!" Thor growls in a voice near loud as the elements around them.
Odin shakes his head.
"Go!" He shouts back to be heard over the crash of rain and thunder. "Find your brother! Search for him and bring him to safety!"
"But Heimdall…" his son begins to protest, for a moment, worry flashing in his burning eyes.
And again, Odin shakes his head.
"I shall deal with him! Now go!"
Thor hesitates only a moment more, for an instant his face twisted in anguish, before at last he turns, twisting Mjolnir in a tight arc before letting her carry him from the ground, shooting faster than the eye from the observatory.
Odin has every faith in his eldest to find Loki. He has to.
Heimdall is giving nothing, and the All-Father knows better than to expect him to crumple. If nothing else, the Gatekeeper has always been grim in his unbending will.
And as Odin fixes his remaining eye upon the taller god, glowing with the gathering of his power, Heimdall's all-seeing gaze fixed as unwavering upon him, he knows his own task now is grim indeed.
One of them shall not be leaving here with their life.
It matters not.
For this act of treason, for this betrayal against his son, Odin will make Heimdall pay.
/
"You're going to make him throw up." Someone says from up above him, the voice distant and muffled through the ringing in his own ears and the suffocating pain burning from his core.
He clamps his eyes shut, trying to force back the tears stinging at their backs as nausea turns his stomach and the taste of copper fills his mouth.
"So?!" Another voice snaps. It belongs to the man who's just sunk the tip of his boot into his abdomen, Loki thinks dimly.
"So he's going to drown on his own bile." The first voice says, boredly. "How do you think Tyr will respond to that? Or better still, Heimdall?"
"Eh, what do they care?" Asks the second man. "They want him dead anyway, do they not? And besides, Try said we can do whatever we please with him."
"Whatever we please so long as we do not kill him!" The first replies hotly. "If you continue to kick him in the stomach as you've been, he's going to vomit and choke to death on it. It will have no where to go but back down his throat and into his lungs with that muzzle covering his face."
"Then should we not simply remove the muzzle?" The second goes on.
The first scoffs.
"If you fancy Loki's serpent tongue twisting your thoughts against you…"
A booming laugh erupts through the room, amusement laced through the sound.
"Take a good look at him, my friend!" The second replies happily. "Do you think the runt has any strength left in him to play word games?"
Loki tries to push their conversation from his awareness.
Despair uncurls in the pit of his stomach for how he's forced to acknowledge the truth in his assailants words.
Gods, but he hurts. He can barely remember to force himself to breathe through the pain.
Even if they were to remove this cursed gag, he would have no strength to speak now. Not even strength to beg their mercy.
They've been beating him what seems an eternity now, taking turns between putting their boots to his ribs and fists to his face. Crushing hard wood staffs against his shoulders and back.
At times he's found himself blacking out, only to be pulled back to consciousness with smelling salts, and the beatings resumed.
And with the pain, Loki finds his thoughts circling back to bleak hopelessness.
Father… no… no… Odin… Odin has resigned him to this. He cares not for him, then. Likely he never has. And Loki, in his pathetic, pitiful need for the All-Father's love, was blinded to that truth. Again. Again.
Oh, but he wants to die.
Why can they not just end his miserable, worthless existence already? Why must his suffering always be prolonged? Why must it continue so ceaselessly?
He's brutally pulled from his spiraling thoughts when he feels rough hands on him, hauling him up off the ground.
He doesn't have the strength to struggle anymore, and can do nothing as he feels his arms yanked up above his head, the manacles trapping his wrists hooked onto the ceiling, until his toes are barely brushing the floor.
The pressure along his wrists and down into his shoulders is immense, and he feels fresh tears well in his eyes at the sharpness of it, barely managing to swallow down a whimper as it aggravates his already bruised and battered joints.
He keeps his eyes away from the men, slipping down to stare at his bare feet, and he tries to think of someplace else.
Only the task seems impossible. This is all too familiar.
And unwanted, his thoughts turn towards the last time he was bound so, and Thanos there, touching him, false caresses of comfort and invasive, meat hook fingers…
"Eh, I've had a better thought anyway." The men's voices come back to him. "We've beat on him enough for now. He's hardly responding anymore as is."
"Oh, and what idea is this of yours?" Another asks, glee heavy in his tone.
Loki jerks and flinches away when he feels hands on his face, fingers fumbling at the back of his skull, where the muzzles latch connects.
Seconds later, and he feels the powerful relief of the gag being pulled from his mouth, the metal depressor freeing his tongue as it's dragged away, the sharp edges of the contraption no longer digging painfully into the thin skin of his face.
Blood and saliva mix together, sticking stubbornly to his lip and the muzzle both, before snapping free.
The men laugh, and Loki keeps his eyes away still.
"Have you any words for us, Silvertongue?" One of them asks, close.
Loki says nothing. He isn't even certain his voice is there anymore. Raw and strained as his throat feels from all the screaming he's done behind the gag.
"I guess that's a no then." The same man goes on, slapping Loki lightly across the cheek in some mockery of fondness. Loki turns his head from it, it being the only option left to him.
"Tell us this idea of yours." The man from before goes on again.
"Well, he's a frost giant, is he not?" The first asks, though it's hardly a question.
Loki feels himself tense, sickening dread churning in his gut.
"Aye. That's what they say." The other replies. "Though I've never seen another frost giant so pathetically small."
"Heh, well, Loki's always been something of a freak. 'Tiss hardly a shock that even in his heritage he should be so grotesquely deformed."
The other man chuckles softly.
"True words indeed."
"What then would be most painful to a creature of frost and ice?" The first continues, and whatever dread Loki had felt before, it worsens tenfold in that moment.
He cannot help his struggling in his bonds then, pulling weakly and uselessly at the manacles.
Only there is little point anymore. He's long since spent what little strength he'd had.
"Do you mean heat?" Asks the second man, though from his tone he's already guessed it.
The first confirms it with enthusiasm.
"Indeed!" He replies. "There's a branding iron in the room over. Of course, we'll want the beast's skin bare for greater effect."
Dread turns to outright panic then, his struggle to break away resuming in earnest as Loki feels strong fingers take hold the material of his tunic, beginning carelessly to tear at the threads holding it together.
"Well, don't stop there." One of the other guard's interjects suddenly, when the tunic's been torn away completely, leaving Loki's torso bare. "Let's see the rest of him."
"Whatever for?" Asks another, sounding genuinely bemused.
The other laughs sharply.
"Haven't you ever wanted to see a frost giant's cock?"
"I can't say I particularly ever have." The other replies flatly.
Loki feels ill.
"Well, of course it won't be like seeing a proper one. Just look at how scrawny he is! Not even the proper size of an Aesir man."
"Everyone knows Loki isn't a real man at all, whether god or giant." Someone else sneers. "We've all heard the rumors. Of how he lays with other men. And what proof more do you need, than him being a practitioner of magic? Such a womanly craft!"
There is a smattering of murmurs and laughter about the space, and Loki closes his eyes, skin heating with the familiar feel of humiliation. Of knowing his own, sorry shame.
He's known it all since he was only a boy. Been reminded of it often enough.
And his struggles cease then.
There's little use in it but to amuse his tormentors further.
There's little use in anything now.
Perhaps if he's lucky, they'll kill him before Heimdall can toss him back to the void.
Before the mad Titan again finds him…
He pushes their voices out, keeping his eyes closed, his face turned away.
It's all he can do anymore.
He wishes suddenly, powerfully, that Thor would come. He wishes his big brother would come and rescue him.
He knows Thor won't. Knows all his wishes never amount to anything.
Knows he's never been worth saving to anyone.
But he's good at this particular game, he remembers, and ignores those ugly certainties.
He's always been good pretending at something other than the truth.
/
AN: As always guys, thank you so, so much for your support and reviews! It means absolutely everything!
