Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel, Elder Scrolls, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Final Fantasy, Harry Potter, or anything else that finds its way into these pages. No disrespect intended, only homage, no profit made, only entertainment intended. If you're a fan, read it, if you don't like it, stop reading. Simple as pie.

Rating: M for Mature.

Spoilers: Few but possible throughout the comics and the entire MCU, although I don't know yet whether the MCU will even come into play here. Currently we are long, long before any of that takes place.

AN: "Dybbuks" and "Dybbuk Boxes" actually are a matter of Jewish religious belief – since they involve the Tree of Life it was easy for me to relate them to the Norse myth of Yggdrasil. Cultural appropriation is how cultures are formed. One caveman got tired of running around nude and skinned a deer and turned it into a loincloth and next thing you know they're all doing it – thus was the birth of fashion. In any event, I love the Dybbuk story and it will make a much more important return later on.

Chapter Five: Misunderstood

There's a song I was listening to, up all night.

There's a voice I am hearing, saying it's all right

When I'm happy and I'm sad, but everything's good.

I'll just do it again, I'm just misunderstood.

- M!ssundaztood" by P!nk

"Father!"

Thor came barrelling into Court, scattering the line of petitioners like bowling pins, his blue eyes wide and his expression frightened. "Father, Father, Loki stabbed me!"

Odin held up a hand. "You are not bleeding, my son. Slow down a bit and tell me the story."

"T-th-there was this pretty snake on the f-floor, see? Bright green with black and gold diamonds. So I picked it up, see? And all of a sudden Loki popped out of it and yelled "Surprise!" and s-s-stabbed me right in the chest!" Thor said. He wiped snot from his nose with the back of his hand.

"Thorvald, how many times must I tell you not to go 'round picking up strange animals?" Odin said in exasperation. "Especially if they're black, or green, with green eyes and any hint of gold? Those are almost always your brother."

Loki came skidding into the Court at that moment, carrying a knife. Odin glowered at him. "What have you to say on the matter, Lodr?"

Loki held up the knife and plunged it into the palm of his other hand. The blade collapsed against it. "It's a fake knife, Father."

Odin turned his gaze back to Thor and raised a questioning brow.

"Well… I didn't know that. Looked real enough when he was stabbing it at me," Thor said, shamefaced.

"Thorvald Illdr Odinson, you have disrupted my court over a child's prank. You should be ashamed of yourself," Odin said. "Lodr, jumping out of animal form and stabbing your brother with a knife – false though the knife may be – goes beyond the realm of harmless mischief into the realm of the malicious. You do not want to be malicious, do you?"

"No, Father," Loki said, gaze averted.

"Go to your bed and lay down, and do not get up until I myself come and tell you that you may rise. The fright you gave your brother was real and had real consequences. You must pay for them. Thor, I am forgiving your disruption of Court proceedings as you were in a state of panic, but if it happens again you will be punished the same."

"The boys bowed and left as dismissed, and Court gradually began to reform. Frigga leaned forward from her chair to the right and slightly behind Hldskjalf and spoke in a low voice. "Odin, I have never known Loki to pull anything like a malicious prank before… and so soon on the heels of his getting out of infirmary? I think he's acting out."

"I know he is, my dear. From Hlskjalf I saw the whole thing. I know why Thor was so frightened – the knife may have been false but the expression on Loki's face was quite real. He was angry. Angry enough to want to kill, if not quite angry enough to actually do so."

"Should we send him to a Sanitarium for treatment?" Frigga said. "It could do him good."

"Nonsense, he's a child. A few hours and it will be as though nothing ever happened. He will be fine. I'll just keep an extra close eye on him in the meanwhile."

Frigga sat back, her furrowed brow all the doubt she felt able to express.

In his room, Loki faced a problem. He had to go to bed per his punishment, but on the bed was clean bedding… put down by the same servant who violated him. He didn't want anywhere near that bed.

He was an obedient child. There was no sense in not being obedient, as his father would know if he disobeyed, either by seeing it if he was seated in Hldskjalf or Huginn and Munnin would tell him if he was not. Loki climbed into the big canopied four-poster and pulled the covers up over his shoulders.

The sheets should have smelled fresh and at least faintly of the rose-smelling detergent the laundry used on the Royal linens. Loki didn't smell fresh, rosy sheets. He smelled nervous man-sweat and strong body odor. Instead of the warm, cozy weight of the coverlet he felt the press of cold, clammy flesh. His little mind was once again assaulted with the thoughts, feelings, and memories that flooded him when the servant lay hands on him in the storage closet, and he felt again the pain of violation. It was torture, laying here, in these sheets, with these memories. He wondered how long his father would force it upon him. He cried into the pillow as time ticked away.

Odin did not leave him in torment for long. In no more than an hour he came into the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. He did not look at Loki, but toward the door, as though he wanted to leave.

"I trust you will not attack your brother again, joking or not," he said.

"No, Father, I will not," Loki said.

"Good. Your punishment is done, you may play, but I would like one further word with you, if that is all right."

"All right, Father."

"I know… that you are an uncommonly bright child, and I know your memory is infallible. It will be difficult, if not impossible, for you to forget what occurred today, despite what I told your mother. Nevertheless, I do not wish to send you to a Sanitarium because in Asgard those places are geared toward the care of adults, and I do not wish you further traumatized by well-meaning healers who do not know the proper way to deal with a child. Therefore, I am going to tell you something I have learned over the long years of my life, and if I impart no further wisdom to you in yours I shall be happy if you take this one nugget to heart. Linger not in memories of what is past. It will destroy you. I know it is hard. The past has great power, all the power of the evil Dybbuk poisoning Yggdrasil. But you, too, have great power, my son, and like the sorcerers that keep the Dybbuk contained so that they cannot poison Yggdrasil, so you can contain the evils of your past so that it cannot poison you."

The Dybbuk was something Loki only just barely knew of, evil spirits that poisoned not the actual tree of Yggdrasil that grew in the Palace's courtyard, but the spiritual tree of Yggdrasil that flowed through the Nine Realms and held them together. They were said to be incredibly powerful and insanely wicked, the embodiment of pure evil, worse than most beings that were actually known as demons. He found the topic interesting, but the metaphor his father made of it was slightly confusing.

"Do you mean… I have to lock my memories up in Dybbuk boxes?" Loki said. Dybbuk boxes were the sacred containers, carved from wood of the actual tree of Yggdrasil, that the Sorcerer Supreme of Asgard and all the Masters kept under guard.

"In a sense," Odin said. "Keep them at the back of your mind, where you don't think about them all the time. Bury them under happier thoughts. Keep busy. It won't be easy, I'm not saying it will be. But if you try very, very hard, you can do it. You can put this pain, this humiliation, this rage… behind you. It will certainly shape you – everything that occurs in life shapes us, there is no way that this cannot. You don't have to let it ruin you."

"I understand, Father."

"Good. You may go play now, or whatever you wish. You may, if you desire, pay a visit to your Hunt Club. I said you could join it when you were older and wiser, and I daresay you are both now, though this is quite a bit sooner than I expected you to be either. But I still expect you to exercise great caution when hunting, and don't go after anything too grand just yet, all right? Not alone."

"All right, Father."

Loki climbed out of bed, but Odin did not rise. "I have also decided that you are ready for proper tutoring," he said. "You've done very well under your mother's tutelage, but your mind needs to stay busy, and it is more than ready for more intensive study than your mother can provide you. ...And, as you so closely resemble your mother in so many ways, doubtless I will also have to provide you with more than just the basics of education, but a magical education as well, so I will seek out magical tutoring for you. There is just one thing I wish to know. Do you wish to keep going with your 'job,' my boy?"

Loki thought about it. What happened didn't have anything to do with Migelo and his errands, and staying away from this room for a few hours each day could only be a good thing. "Yes, Father. If that's all right with you."

"It is. It will serve to keep you busy, so it is quite all right with me."

Odin got up. "I wish there were more I could do to help you through this, my boy – it is a long, dark road to healing and no doubt about it. Seek comfort in your mother and don't be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Just please, don't take it out on your brother. He is too young to understand your pain."

"Right."

"I am also going to put out a call for someone with the power to keep you and your brother safe when I cannot see you and Huginn and Munnin are otherwise engaged. Somewhere out there is a Nord with the power to keep an eye on you at all times."

"Someone who won't hurt us?" Loki said.

"Someone all of us can trust," Odin said.

Odin returned to the throne room and sat upon the throne. In only a few minutes he sat forward, concerned. Someone just came through the Bifrost Bridge, at the Observatory outside the city – someone he did not recognize. They presented papers to the Guardian, so they were legal, but despite being a Nord they were foreign. As previously hinted there were two varieties of Nord, Aesir – native to Asgard – and Vanir, native to Vanaheim. They were genetically the same race but their powers generally acted differently and Vanir had a diversity of appearance not native to Aesir, who were universally blond, blue-eyed, and heavily muscled (even the women, to an extent). This particular Vanir was a giant of a Nord, as much as eight feet in height, dark of skin and hair, with a pair of hawkish eyes that seemed to look on things from a great distance. He was young, probably not yet two thousand years of age, which meant that physically at least he was not yet considered a full grown adult although he may well have been a soldier since the age of five hundred, but he carried about him an air of gravitas that many an older Nord failed to achieve. He left the Observatory, entered the Valhalla gates, and headed straight for the palace, taking long, purposeful strides. It did not take him long to reach Odinhall. Odin hushed the Court and raised his hand to call the line of petitioners off as the giant entered the Throne Room.

"You enter the presence of Odin Alfadir, King of Asgard, stranger, what have you to say to me?" he asked.

"Your Majesty asked for someone who could keep an eye on his children at all times," the stranger said./

Odin's eyes widened momentarily, but he remained guarded. "I have not yet made my wishes known. How did you come to learn of them?" he asked.

"I heard you say it to your son."

"You… heard me?"/

The big man nodded slowly, head down, then up, then back to center.

"How?"

"I hear and see everything, Your Majesty."

"Everything?"

"Everything."

"You came from Vanaheim, I presume?" Odin said.

"Another slow nod.

"You can see and hear normal conversations in a secure dwelling… from Vanaheim?"

"Yet another slow nod.

"How far does this ability function?" Odin asked.

"As far as the omniverse stretches, Your Majesty."

"That is a potent ability. Does it not become… overwhelming?" Odin asked.

"I have learned to cope," the stranger said.

"If only what I can ascertain for myself about your power is true, then you have all the power I need to keep my boys protected when I myself cannot do so. The problem that remains to me is, can you be trusted?"

The stranger shrugged, just a slight lifting of one great shoulder. "I cannot tell Your Majesty so. That is something only you can decide."

"What is your name?" Odin said.

"Rig-Heimdall."

"Rig-Heimdall," Odin said. "Will you, right here, right now, swear to me an oath of fealty, and swear that you will protect my children with all your power, and see that they never come to harm under your watch if you have any ability to stop it?"

The nobles of the Court and all the petitioners gasped almost as one. An oath such as this was no minor thing. Any oath made to the King of Asgard was an oath bound my ancient magics and one that had to be upheld – you were literally helpless to do anything else. Everyone watched to see what would happen now.

"I knew it would come to this," the giant said. He took a knee. "I do so swear, My King."

"Then rise and serve me, Ser Heimdall," Odin said. "My children's lives are in your care."