[Trigger warning: Self-harm]

As soon as the new Loki series clip was released, I zoomed in on his naked arms and thought there were scars there. There has been a theory going around tumblr and twitter for the longest time that Loki always wears long sleeves because he self-harms and I embraced it from the beginning but I never dared to write anything along these lines. Now, with the first teaser out, I kind of had to. And, for everyone who knows me, I had to make it Dark World.

I don't know if I should say "enjoy" but this is what my brain came up with. And please do not read this if you think it might trigger you. I would not want that.

Loki had settled into his rather uncomfortable prison armchair with his mind focused on a book when he heard the guard walking towards his cell, heavy footsteps followed by the metallic chink that their golden armor made when they walked. Well, focused was probably the wrong expression. The books Frigga had sent him did not engage his mind in a way that would have demanded his full concentration, but he had made it a habit of appearing to be absorbed in them whenever the guards made their rounds anyway. They walked by his cell thrice a day and Loki knew they would report to the Allfather every night how his wayward adoptive son was faring in the dungeons of Asgard. He also knew that his safest bet was to have Odin convinced that, at least for now, Loki had resigned himself to the prospect of whiling away eternity reading, which was why he did not bother to glance up from the pages when he noticed the guard's presence.

Until Loki sensed that, this time, something was different. The guard was not merely approaching his cell in order to glance at him and then be on his way. Instead, he walked up close to the pane separating Loki from freedom, the pane pulsating with the Seiᵭr of old that prevented him from wielding even the simplest of magic, his helmet tucked under his arm.

Almost against his will, Loki did look up from his book and faced him.

"Prince Thor sent me," whispered the guard. "He sent me to tell you that the Queen is dead."

As soon as the meaning of the guard's words registered with him, an icy hand grabbed Loki's heart and squeezed it violently. He froze in shock, his world shattering to pieces, but then he nodded, almost without realizing it, and the guard turned away.

Loki was alone again, alone as he had been every day for the past year and maybe even longer than that—certainly, very certainly longer than that—but this time, alone was so much worse because … Because … Loki rose from the chair and placed his book on the little glass table beside the chair, any rational thought drowning in raging waves of emotion. Sadness. Hopelessness. Loneliness. Fear. Guilt. If Frigga no longer lived, he would remain trapped in the dungeons forever, locked away in the cold underbelly of the Realm Eternal, because there would be no one left to truly attempt to alter his sentence. If Frigga no longer lived, there would be no one left to love him.

Loki did not know but still somehow understood that Frigga had still loved him even after he had fallen from grace and attacked Midgard, violating every oath of protection the Aesir had ever sworn. He somehow understood that she would not have given up on him but that he had pushed her away all the same, telling her that she was not his mother even though he had craved her comfort as much as a creature dying of thirst craved the tiniest drop of water. She had been willing to give it to him, had been willing to cater to his needs instead of blindly accepting that her son had turned into a war criminal of his own accord, and yet he had pushed her away. It had cost him a lot but he had pushed her away because … Because what? Because he was hurt? Because he did not believe he deserved her love?

Do you deserve her love? asked a voice that rose from the depths of his damaged mind so suddenly and so unexpectedly that Loki startled. He was somewhat aware that his own thoughts were playing tricks on him but the voice seemed so real that the words died on his tongue when he opened his lips to speak.

You should have been there, fighting by her side, continued the voice. Fighting for her. Instead, you told them where to find her. You let her die.

"No," Loki whispered.

You killed her!

Loki choked on a sob. "No."

It is your fault that she is dead. Yours alone!

"Noooo!" Loki screamed.

You killed the only person who ever loved you. The only person who will ever love you!

"You need to be quiet," Loki whispered.

Oh, do I, now? The voice snickered. Are you so weak that you cannot live with what you have done?

"You need to be quiet," Loki repeated, louder this time. "You need to be quiet! You need to be quiet!" He was shouting now but he did not care because his emotions were submerging him and he just wanted to run far, far away to escape them—and his own mind and the dungeons and everything else, really—but at the same time, he knew that he could not because he was confined to that place and the voice did not stop with its nerve-wracking accusations and he could not silence it and he gasped and he groaned and his head threatened to explode but then, suddenly, he could feel his magic rising up from deep inside of him despite the inhibiting glamour cast over his cell and before he even knew it, the furniture in his sparsely equipped cell exploded into pieces.

Loki sank to his knees, surprised at this sudden surge of power but defeated nonetheless. Defeated and alone, his heart physically hurting inside his chest.

Is that supposed to accomplish anything? sneered the voice. You lost the only person who never gave up on you.

"Stop," Loki whimpered. "You are not even real."

Oh, I am real, said the voice. I am as real as your failures. I am as real as your inability to save anyone, be it your mother or your own wretched soul.

With that, the voice fell silent and Loki's chest yawned open. He felt empty, drained really, but, at the same time, there were all these emotions bubbling up inside of him, hissing like the poisoned green waters in the depths of Hel, and how could that be the case anyway, that he was feeling so much and nothing at all at the same time?

This needs to stop, Loki thought to himself but he was so numb that he had no access to his paralyzed mind, no access to his emotions, no access to himself. He was so numb that he no longer knew what he was doing when his gaze roamed along the debris in his cell, his eyes fixing on a shard of glass that had once been a part of the surface of the little table by his armchair. Funny how things break, a thought rose inside of him. Funny how things whole can suddenly burst asunder with no hope of ever becoming whole ever again. He crawled towards it on all fours, no longer thinking, and he picked up the shard with trembling hands.

It is your fault that she is dead.

Loki let out a muffled cry and then he rolled up his sleeve and drove the shard deep into his arm. His skin split open and the stabbing pain he felt when it did was deeply gratifying and liberating, and it calmed everything down at last.

The raging emotions, which he had been unable to access anyway, stilled.

The unbearable feeling of numb emptiness gave way to something he had not felt in quite a long time.

Relief.

Loki knew that this was wrong. He knew that the pain should have been punishment—or at least that was what he deserved, did he not, for letting Frigga die; for having told her that she was not his mother when all he had ever wanted was for her to wrap her arms around him and protect him from himself; for being such an intractable miscreant that was, by all accounts, impossible to trust and even more impossible to love—but it did not feel like punishment.

In that moment, it felt like a tremendous relief.

Which was why Loki drove the shard into his skin again and again and again, savoring the pain as he watched his blood ooze out of the wounds and spill over his arms and legs and onto the floor, its warmth caressing his skin before it pooled into an ever-increasing sea of red beneath him that soaked his green pants, turning them almost black.

Loki bathed in the sensation for a while—a good long while, possibly—before his conscience stirred awake and reminded him to cover his tracks just in case anyone else was going to pay him an unexpected visit that night. Now that Yggdrasil had granted him access to his telekinetic powers, he expected to have no difficulties to cast an illusion of himself neatly groomed in a perfectly undisturbed cell, reading books and whatnot.

He turned out to be right.

Once the illusion was in place, Loki slid down the wall, turning the glass shard in his hands as he fixed his gaze on the skin on his left forearm that was now densely covered with yawning wounds. His first instinct was to try to heal them now that his magic seemed at least somewhat restored.

It would have been easy, maybe too easy and too pleasant and too, well, too how things had been before. Numb. Meaningless. Dull. Mediocre. Painless.

Painless, yes, that was it.

The prospect of a continuing existence in the dungeons was so terrifying because, up until now, it had been painless and Loki's lips parted in amazement when he realized that this was what had disturbed him the most. Pain was what the folk of all the Realms feared the most and feared in all sorts of ways. Physical pain. Emotional pain. Spiritual pain. Financial pain. They believed—as Loki undoubtedly had when he had grown up—that pain was a calamity.

It was a calamity, Loki was sure of that, or at least it must be, it had to be, but, at the same time, pain was what he had grown accustomed to during his time with the Titan—and possibly even before then, yes, surely before then—and it was what he had grown fond of in a weirdly disturbing way. Pain was the only thing he thought he knew, really knew, and now that he had rediscovered it, had rediscovered raw pain, he found himself unable to even try to utter a healing spell. Instead, he watched the blood congeal into a clumpy dark-red mass on his arms and legs and on the floor, repulsed and fascinated all at once.

Loki had spent close to a year in the dungeons, convinced that he had lost all control over his fate, his life, his emotions, but now he had regained some of that control. He was holding it in his very hands, control in the form of a bloodstained shard of glass, and he knew that it would remain a part of him and that he would never let it go. Not even if Odin let him out.

In that moment, Loki knew that he would not let go of that shard of glass for as long as he lived.