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Witch Hunt
I had never felt such pain.
It was as if I had been buried deep beneath the sea and there was nothing left but pain. People would talk to me, but I could not hear them. They touched me, led me away, put me into bed, but I did not feel it.
The only thing that registered was the sheer loss. In the last moment, I had felt him again and now there was nothing, not even a little pull of magic.
It felt as if a part of me had been cut out and now I was bleeding out until I would inevitably succumb. In those first few days, I felt like I might die and follow Loki any moment. I longed for it. I just wanted to see him again, touch him again, hear the sound of his voice once more and I did not care if we would see each other in Hel - anything would be better than to have him dead and me, still alive.
I spent days, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling without actually seeing anything else than Loki's face, the desperation and the defeat of those last moments.
My eyes stung, but tears would fall no longer. I could not remember when I had last had even a drop of water and I did not particularly care, either.
I slept, but dreaming was not much more pleasant than being awake. When I did sleep, I did not see his fall, but I dreamed of all the times before, when we had been happy, and it was even worse torture.
One morning - it was impossible to say how much time had passed, if two days or two centuries - I woke and was not alone. I did not turn my head to see, simply opened my eyes and found the ceiling just as I had every time before, but there was a change in the air.
"You have to get up eventually."
The clear, cold voice pierced evenly through the cloud around me and I turned my head to see. Mother was clad in black and she was unhealthily pale, apart from the deep, dark rings beneath her eyes. She looked as if she had not slept in days.
My voice was hoarse and every word I spoke felt like my throat was scratched open, but I managed to get the words out, anyway. "I don't think I ever will."
She stepped forward. There was no trace of a smile on her face, there was not even the littlest bit of pity. She looked sternly on me and she stopped so closely to the bed that I had to turn my head again to look at her.
"Thor told me everything that happened," she said. "Every word Loki said."
I closed my eyes tightly when she said the name. Maybe, if I did not see, everything would become less real. Maybe she would stop talking.
"He called you his love," Mother continued and now, her voice was shaking slightly. "And you did not negate it."
It felt, strangely, like this was the time to laugh. One would have thought that with Loki dead, such secret would be kept forever. I had never been that lucky.
Of course, the first words directed at me were not ones of consolation but an accusation. Perhaps it was better that way. Perhaps they would smite me dead for the shame and this would finally end.
"Why should I?" I breathed out. "We loved each other more than anything else."
My mother's jaw clenched tightly and then she suddenly broke. Her eyes watered and she plopped down on the bed next to me. Her hand grasped mine and she shook her head in sorrow.
"Your father is more angry than I have ever seen him," she told me with a shaking voice.
"I am past angry," I responded. "But I ought to be. He made him fall."
"Loki let go-"
"And why," I retorted. Odin's last word to Loki was still echoing in my mind, that final, defeating 'no'. If I had seen a point in it, I might have gotten terribly angry at him.
Mother's thumb stroked over the back of my hand and she shook her head yet again. "Please tell me, that you did not act on it-"
This time, I could not help the tiny laugh that escaped me. "Loki and I... were united in every way but in marriage."
She pulled her hand away and I had to laugh again. I had always feared the moment we would have to tell her and dreaded the judgement. Now, it seemed ridiculous to be afraid and her scandalized look was amusing.
"How could you?" she whispered.
The question had burnt inside me so many times in the past, but now the answer seemed so astonishingly simple that I wondered why I had ever fought with myself.
"I loved him," I said. "And as it turns out, we were always right. The only bond between us was one of our own making and I refuse to apologize - Mother, I loved him so much."
She clasped my hands again and watched me avidly. We stared at each other for a long tense moment and then she nodded at me. "Before you face your father," she said. "There is something you need to know."
Mother had barely finished her explanation when they came for me. It left me just enough time to put on decent clothes and square my shoulders.
Mother was ushered away and they put me in chains; dragged me through the palace and into the throne room like some common criminal. I did not once protest. I did not speak at all. There was no point fighting soldiers who mindlessly completed their tasks.
The man I had to fight was not mindless, he was everything but and he had made an entirely too intricate plan for the lives of his children. Something, I decided, that he would from now on have no say in anymore.
It was for that very reason that when they tried to make me kneel before Odin, I did fight. So vigorously, in fact, that they did not manage to bring me to my knees. They recoiled at my threat to melt the chains and turn my magic at them. Each and every guard paled visibly at my words and I turned my eyes to Odin on the throne.
"You forget your place," he announced, standing from his throne. "You are disrespectful."
My hands clenched tightly into fists in their chains. "You have lost all respect I once harboured for you," I retorted. "I won't kneel and I won't bow - not for someone like you."
He descended the stairs with grave, heavy steps. It was as if the whole realm shook with each of them. The guards lowered their eyes, some even stepped back at his approach, but I refused to be intimidated.
He wanted to be the king before me, but all I saw was my father and I hated him with a passion previously unknown to me.
"Do you know the pain you could have spared us?" I demanded. "The burden you could have taken from our shoulders had you just spoken the truth?"
By now, Odin was directly in front of me and glowering. It was the face that had always stunned me into silence, that had made me obey no matter how much I disliked the orders. It was this look that had made me agree to marry when I did not want to; the face I had seen in my nightmares when I feared that people might find out about Loki and I.
I did not want to be bound by it any longer.
"I will not take the blame," he yelled. "For the incestuous relationship you indulged in!"
Such revelation was too much even for the Einherjar and I squared my shoulders as they whispered to each other. Maybe they could add a few new words of insult to the catalogue already reserved for me.
"You refer to family," I said. "To blood - but Loki and I were not bound by such and you never let us be family - I wondered why, why you wouldn't let us play together, why you did not want us to study together. But today I learned the truth."
I had never seen him hesitate before, but now he did not speak and I took it as a confession. Not that I had thought Mother would lie to me. My voice rose with every following word.
"You always planned for this - for me and Loki to be bound by marriage, isn't that right? Because raising a Frost Giant is not enough, they aren't to be trusted. What better way to ensure loyalty than to give your daughter away, put her on the Jotun throne - that was the plan was it not?"
His silence, in that moment, was too much to bear.
"Talk to me!" I yelled, momentarily stunned by the sound of my own shout.
He took a few deep breaths, his good eye focused on the marble floor at my feet. There was no trace of shame or sympathy when he finally looked up at me, his expression was as stern as ever.
"You are right," he said. "That it was my plan to unite our kingdoms - but I would have never given you to anyone dangerous. Loki was my son-"
"Spare me your lies," I retorted. "You'd have given me to anyone who suited your needs, dangerous or not. And now you shame me for doing exactly as you wanted, just because it wasn't by your orchestration."
We glared at each other and it was hard to say who of us was angrier. Odin turned on his heel and strode back to his throne, but his fury was less threatening to me than his calm demeanour had been. I did not fear his wrath. There was no punishment he could bestow upon me, not even death, that would truly hurt me.
"Loki committed treason," Odin said when he had reached the top of the stairs. He did not turn to me. "He attempted to murder the king."
"I refuse to believe that."
"You aided him." His voice shook as he yelled and the guards next to me flinched slightly at the sound. "You would deserve death."
"So do it!" I pleaded. "Call me a witch and burn me, I do not care! Not about Asgard, not about you - everything I cared about fell from the edge of the world and died!"
Odin turned with a swoosh, sat down on the throne and slammed Gungnir, leant against the stool, down on to the floor. The clank echoed loudly through the length of the hall.
"You are not worthy of such relief," he announced. "Banishment has served your brother well. I hope it will suit you, too. You will be stripped of your magic and sent to Midgard. You may return when you see the wrong of your way."
My stomach dropped at his words - to be stripped of magic was to have the last bit of me taken away that still felt like myself. It made the tears rise in my eyes, but I refused to let them fall.
Instead, I held my head high and looked the king dead in the eye. "Then you will never see me again," I told him.
That did not seem to bother him very much, or at the very least, it did not deter him. At a wave of his hands, the guards took up the chains again. They did not drag me this time, perhaps out of fear, and let me walk at my own pace. I left the throne room with the certainty that I would never enter it again.
It took three days until they were sure they could send me off. The Bifrost was destroyed and no one yet knew how to repair it, but that apparently did not deter Odin from his plan. His desire to have me off the realm was so strong that he was obviously willing to go to extremes.
The king had used these days to investigate the objects of the vault in regards to their magical power. He would have to combine a few to gather enough power to send me away. Mother refused to tell me which objects he would channel, if because of ignorance or because of fear what I could do, I could not tell.
Mother came to escort me to the Rainbow Bridge and very sternly send the guards away. She did not cry again and yet she had a defeated air around her. Personally, I felt queasy, and the closer we got to my departure, the harder my heart was pounding, but I refused to let her see it. I smiled when she came to me and hugged her tightly.
"Just strive to be better," she urged me as we walked. "He won't keep you away for long... Thor got back after three days-"
"I am not Thor," I answered. "And I will never again strive for Odin's approval. I should rather think this will kill me than bring me back to honours."
Mother suddenly gripped on to me, so tightly that it stung harshly. I would arrive on Midgard with bruises on my arms. "Don't say such things!" she said. "We cannot lose another child!"
Perhaps I was a monster, but I could not bring myself to act on sympathy. At the very least, I could have told her not to worry, promised her to take care of myself, that she would not lose me.
I did not say any of those things. It was not the truth - she would inevitably lose me, if now or in fifty years, for when I was mortal she would live long after I had died. Right now, I did not have patience for anything that was not the truth.
"You have already lost me," I told her. "But know that I never meant to hurt you."
She recoiled, shaking her head at me. Her mouth opened and closed, yet no words escaped. Terror shone in her eyes, but I held my head high. What good would it do, to break down in tears and make vows of everlasting love and memory, when neither of us would ever see fruition.
Odin marched onto the bridge, accompanied by a whole league of Einherjar. Two of them grabbed me when the king had marched past and lead me along. They stopped at the very edge of the bridge where Heimdall was waiting, staring into the nothingness that had once been his observatory.
They positioned me in front of the king, who kept glaring at me. It truly was no wonder that we had become they way we had, with a father like that.
He stepped forward and his hands curled around the cuffs that bound my arms. I gritted my teeth as the magic seeped from me. I fought, inwardly, as hard as I could, tried to stem myself against the sensation, but it was no use. My resistance broke like floodgates and from one moment to the other, I was empty.
My legs were suddenly weak and I swayed, trying to keep standing. When I raised my head again, Odin looked me dead in the eye.
"Any last words?" he demanded.
"None for you," I retorted.
He stepped backwards and reached out a hand for one of the guards to hand him Gungnir. He slammed the spear hard onto the ground.
The pull started behind my navel. It twisted and tore at me, as a hook leading me along. The sensation spread, first through my abdomen, then through my whole body. The cuffs fell from my wrists and with them the last trace of my magic. The scenery swam before my eyes until everything was drenched in black. It felt as if I was spinning, pressed together and pulled apart at the same time.
I was being shot through space, hopefully making my way as surely as possible towards Midgard.
As you've probably gathered, next chapter we will jump straight into Avengers ;) Until then - if you reviewed, it would make me very happy!
