Hey Lunchies! Warning! Loki does trip the collar, here... Be aware! And Enjoy!
"Loki… my son."
Loki's eyelids fluttered open to see a golden haze had come over his cell. Frigga was back.
"What are you doing here?" He blurted.
"Loki." Frigga smiled a soft, sweet smile. "You know what's coming."
With a groan, he pulled himself to a sitting position. "What?"
"I wanted to say goodbye, my dearest." Frigga sat on the bed beside him, and brushed the dark strands of hair from his face.
"It won't help." Loki sighed.
"I love you, my son…"
"I'm not."
At those words, a sword ran through Frigga from behind, and Loki jumped up in horror, to see Algorim, the Kursed, standing behind the queen with a bloodied sword. "No!" He blurted, falling to his knees next to his mother. "Mother, I'm sorry, you're right. I was wrong. I'm sorry. I love you, Mother, please…" He rambled on, although it was too late.
Frigga was dead, and she would never hear his apologies.
Loki awoke in tears, someone shaking his shoulder.
Someone was touching him. In a panic, he scrambled off the lumpy mattress, and launched himself away from whoever it was.
"Hey, take it easy, okay?" A soft, hushed voice spoke up. Loki shook his head, clearing it. Now he remembered.
He was banished.
On Midgard.
With the Plant-Girl – Payton.
Heaving a sigh of relief, he picked himself up off the floor, gathering his shattered dignity around him, and turned his attention to the little mortal before him. "Oh, I'm sorry…" He murmured, only half-sarcastic. "Did I wake you?"
She nodded, an understanding look in her eyes. "You were having a nightmare."
"Obviously." Loki sighed, and flopped bonelessly onto the excuse-of-a-mattress. "I think I figured that one out."
"You don't have to be mean…" Payton pointed out. "I was just trying to help."
Loki felt a twinge of remorse at those words, and lowered his eyes submissively. "My apologies."
"Okay, I guess it's like four in the morning…" Payton sighed, and rubbed her eyes. Loki was suddenly struck by how adorable she looked when she was sleepy. "So, I guess I'm going back to bed."
He nodded, and leaned back against the pillows, his mind whirling, as she climbed the staircase.
She had come down to help him. Of her own volition, the goodness of her heart. To him. Not Thor. Not someone worth the effort. Him.
Why? That was the real question. Why in the world was this mortal, that he'd only met the day before, being so kind to him?
He hadn't done anything that had merited it, besides maybe healing the cut on her hand, but she'd been kind to him, even before that. Also, he was sort of healing her for his own purposes. If the cut got infected, and she died, as mortals were likely to do, there would be no one to feed him. No one to make sure the Avengers didn't come down and slaughter him.
There was also the matter of her brother. Loki knew she knew who he was, what he'd done. And, while all the deaths in the invasion were technically on his hands, Payton's brother was one of very few of the murders he'd done with his own hands. Sure, Loki hadn't done any of them, but it's not like she knew that.
…Did she?
No. There was no way for her to know.
But it would explain so much.
He could understand her kindness, if she thought he was a victim.
He didn't want to think he was a victim, though, so it certainly wouldn't do for her to think so.
Maybe she was simply too stupid to put two and two together? No, he'd seen the horrified, terror-stricken look she'd given him when she first laid eyes on him.
There was suddenly a sinking feeling in his stomach, as he remembered that look on her face. Something had changed, though. She'd figured something out, perhaps.
What in the world could change a woman from obvious disgust, to unconditional kindness?
Unless she knew about the Master…
Was it something akin to love? In the same way Frigga had loved him the moment she clapped eyes on his infant form, she'd somehow decided to love him, already?
Stupid.
There was no way. Loki was not loveable. He wasn't even a baby, so he wasn't cute, anymore.
Whatever this mortal felt towards him, it was not love.
It was obvious. She knew something.
Grinding his teeth together, he sat up, and pulled on his boots. He had to find out what had tipped her off. Silently, he crept up the staircase, and into Payton's darkened studio. This was the only place she'd been, before she started being nice, so the answer had to be in here, somewhere. The rising sun cast a golden hue over the glass room, and illuminated the beautiful works of art, all over the walls. To be honest, it was quite beautiful, in its own simple way. It had nowhere near the grand, dazzling scale of the halls of Asgard, but all the same, it was lovely. The oranges, pinks, yellows splashed over his skin, the walls, and the paintings, and as the golden orb peeked over the horizon, Loki knew he'd never seen a more beautiful sight.
Midgard, he realized, had its own innate, hidden beauty, but not an in-your-face, obvious kind, like Asgard's. It was in the subtleties, the hidden crevices.
Blinking there at the beginning of a new day, Loki felt more at peace than he'd felt in a long time. Tired, perhaps, but the breaking of the dawn had a strange symbolism. It was a new day, and anything could happen.
Masking a smile, he bent over the papers on Payton's desk. Drawings, funny caricatures on all of them. She'd told him she was an illustrator for children's books, and he realized, she was good. The little people she'd drawn in all manner of poses, dancing through the papers, captivated his imagination, and he found the smile widening, as he flipped through the pages.
Still, he had to focus. Payton could know what had happened to him in the void, and that simply would not do.
There was a strange rectangle, with a string attaching it into the wall, and the letter "HP" written on its surface. Loki ran his fingers over the smooth surface, in an attempt to discern what the purpose of it could be.
No clues there, so he flopped down in her chair-with wheels, and began spinning himself around in discouraging circles.
How did she find out?
He was suddenly aware that he was standing directly behind him, and he immediately stopped spinning, coming face-to-face with a rather irritated Payton.
"What are you doing, in here?"
Loki gave her beguiling smile, and gestured at the paintings around him. "It's the most beautiful room in the house." That wasn't a lie, but it was skillfully evading the question. Thankfully, it worked.
"Thanks." She gave him a half-smile. "But I'd really prefer it if you stayed out of here. It's my workspace, and you've already messed up my drawings."
Loki glanced down at the stacks of paper he'd been looking through. "Sorry." That one was a lie. He'd gladly do it, again.
Wait a second. She hadn't ordered him out. She could've said "Get out," and he'd have to, or brave the collar. But she hadn't. Instead, "I'd really prefer it."
She was consciously refraining from giving him commands, because she didn't want him in pain.
This was… lunacy, on her part, but that was the moment it truly sank in. She didn't want him as a slave. Not only that, she wasn't going to treat him as one. He was her equal, in her eyes.
Her equal.
Loki jumped to his feet, staring down at the little mortal in wonder. What he'd never found from his "family", a mortal was now offering him freely? He didn't understand.
"Lady Payton…" He began, for once, fumbling for words. "Why?"
She frowned in confusion. "Well… I kind of have a method in this madness, actually. I'd rather people not mess it up."
"No, not about your work." He quickly moved past her so his offending person was no longer in her workspace. "Why are you so kind to me?"
"I don't know that I've been particularly nice…"
"Oh, but you have." Loki insisted, fiddling with his fingers. "You… you… I don't even know where to start."
"How about breakfast?" Payton raised an eyebrow in amusement. "You can go ahead and get some cereal, it's in the cupboard over the sink. I'll be right there; I just need to put these back in order."
Obediently, Loki trotted into the kitchen. After a moment's hesitation, he identified the sink, and opened the cupboard above it, revealing several garishly colored boxes therein. At random, he pulled one out, and skimmed the front.
That was when he realized he couldn't read English.
Huffing a sigh, he set the cardboard box down on the counter, and picked a dish from the adjacent cupboard. He turned around, and was just about to discover what, exactly, this "cereal" was, when he accidentally jogged his elbow on the cupboard door behind him. The dish was sent flying from his grasp, and, with horror, he recalled what would become of him, if he broke any of the mortal's belongings.
Quickly, he went to catch it before it hit the tiles, but it was too late. It exploded into a thousand tiny shards all over the kitchen floor.
Loki was frozen for half a second, surveying the damage, before the thin silver band around his throat sent wave after wave of agonizing pain into him, and he fell, screaming and convulsing, to the floor.
Payton had heard the dish shatter, and, at first, she only rolled her eyes. She couldn't expect the Trickster to do everything perfectly, and what was one dish, anyway?
When she heard the screams, her eyes widened in horror.
That was right. He wasn't supposed to break anything, or it would trigger the collar. Quickly, she dropped her papers, and raced into the kitchen, where she found Loki, thrashing and rolling in a sea of porcelain shards, and clawing wildly and the collar.
What was she supposed to do?
How was she supposed to make it stop?
It was immediately obvious that the demonstration in the throne room was no more than a shadow of what would really happen, were he to break the stipulations. This was a thousand times more severe, and seemed to be getting progressively worse, and already, he was unable, even, to scream, his jaws locked together, and a thin trickle of blood sliding down his chin, as he stared at her with half-crazed, agonized eyes.
"What do I do?" She demanded of the ceiling, already aware that he couldn't answer her. At least, she could get him away from the shards of porcelain, so she grabbed him under the armpits, and dragged him, still thrashing, into the dining room. He was heavier than he looked, and he wet himself halfway through the sea of porcelain.
Just as she got him onto the wood flooring of the dining room, however, he went completely limp, and Payton realized he'd passed. The collar stopped glowing, so she assumed it had turned off. In shock, she plopped down on the floor next to her incapacitated guest and ran her hands through her hair.
That had obviously been an accident. That torture, the pain had kicked in, even though there was no way it was his fault. This was barbaric. They had to find some way to get that collar off, before he killed himself with simple accidents.
"Thor?" Loki groaned, his eyelids fluttering open.
"Guess again." Payton sighed, reaching up onto the table for a paper towel.
With a pained moan, the Trickster sat up, and focused his gaze on her. "I-I'm sorry about the plate."
"I should be the one apologizing." Payton sighed, and pressed the paper towel to his jaw, wiping up the trickle of blood. "No one deserves that."
"But…" Loki protested. "I should've been more careful…"
"Maybe so, but even though you weren't, that shouldn't have happened. We have to find a way to get that thing off of you."
Loki stared at her in shock, who-knows-what running through his mind. "There'll be nothing stopping me from killing you, then."
Payton raised an eyebrow. "You gonna kill me?"
"How would you know?"
Payton stood up, and placed the paper towels back on the table. "I don't. I just got a feeling."
"Sentiment…" Loki muttered, then noticed the puddles around him, and blushed scarlet.
"Don't worry, I think some of Phil's clothes are still around here, somewhere." Payton assured. "You needed a shower, anyway. I'll try to get some clothes for your own, this afternoon, sound good?"
Loki looked up at her in shock. "You're not angry?"
"It wasn't your fault."
Loki glanced down at his hands, still mortified.
Payton stuck out a hand to help him up, an encouraging smile on her face. Gingerly, he took it, and stood, seemingly in a daze. "Go ahead, get in the shower, and throw out your dirty clothes so I can wash them."
"You'll wash them?" Loki blurted. "But I'm…"
"New to the planet?" Payton finished for him, the smile turning a little mischievous. "Do you even know how?"
"No…" Loki admitted. "But you can teach me."
"Maybe some other day." Payton nodded towards the staircase. "A day you didn't get knocked out by a taser collar."
TheOnlyHuman.