Back in his chamber, Loki leaned back into his bed, a leather clad volume falling from his fingers. He had tried to sleep but had not been able to find his way. He had tried to read, but it was no use; he knew not for how long he had sat there staring at page after page, but in all that time not a single word could he now remember. Instead, the fading bruise on the woman's wrist sat heavily just behind his eyes.
For less than a second had he seen it peeked out of the end of her shirt cuff, yet he was certain that his eyes had seen correctly. It had not come from her capture. She had offered almost no resistance. It was days old already, yet the shape of a hand etched in black and blue had still been clear.
It should not matter. To the Alfather she was a means to find a gap in the defenses. Loki had thought she would be a danger to the little unsanctioned trips he took to other realms, and followed along to look into the matter with the good little soldiers. So why could he think of nothing else but that bruise, and those eyes, widened in fear?
'Stop this!' Loki thought to himself.
This was becoming absurd. He reached for his book and flipped back through two chapters of yellowed pages. He had gotten to the climax, the point of not only this tome, but the point of the entire collection. He'd spent over an hour in his search around the library to find it, combing through shelf after shelf for this last installment. Now he had it, and... and his mind's attention was not being held in the least.
Fine. He would complete his task, this night, then he would find some peace of mind.
Or rather, return to the amount that he usually had.
She was just a human, and if the others learned the location of his road, there would be real trouble.
He made his way back to the cell. He contemplated trying a... different angle than he had earlier. One that he knew would not be approved of, but then, no one else would be around; her guards would wait outside.
The guards stepped to a lose attention at the sound of his steps, waving him on without another glance. He waited for the glyphs to burn and pull apart for him, then stepped in. As he crossed the room's threshold he pulled on an illusion of a type that he very rarely used; one shaped by the contents of the viewer's own mind.
He said nothing, eyes narrowed her way as he waited. He knew not what her fear was; it could be spiders, or snakes; clowns or dogs. First he would need to know, then he could exploit it.
Before he had opened the door, the mortal had been muttering something, now obviously in her sleep. She looked at him with groggy eyes, slowly blinking up at him from where she laid. Her eyes grew wide, the whites red around their edges.
"Aaron..." She said, repeating in a clear voice what she had been muttering. She shook her head back and forth, limp hair flying around her head. "No - no, you can't be here. Don't come - don't come near me, not anymore..." She said, cringing down.
She feared not some insect or animal, but one of her own.
Loki continued to slowly walk forward, and again asked how she had come to be in Asgard.
"You're not Aaron. You're one of them, aren't you? I can't tell you how I got here. I can't."
One of them? No, he never would be, not really. It was something he just knew, just as he knew how to weave illusions. Illusions, lies, to never be trusted. Suddenly he was sick of it all, and let the latest one - apparently someone else's face - fall away.
"'One of them' ? I am just as out of place here as you." He said, limbs folding to rest down on a chair. He leaned his head against the backing of the chair, and with closed eyes again asked; "Tell me how..."
"I told you -"
"do let me finish." Loki said, though without the usual cocktail tones of sarcasm, that flare of anger, or hint of condescension. "Tell me how you came to have those bruises on your arms."
"Well I did fall, and then went rolling across that fancy rock yard." From the flare of fire in her voice, Loki would have bet the little mouse was glaring at him.
"I am not a fool. Those, though still dark, are fading, and must be days old. You have not been here long enough to have acquired them." Though if his original theory had been correct, it would have been possible. As it was, it was not feasible that a mortal could climb down that cliff face, let alone try to swim to the city.
Not with those thin arms.
"Why should I tell you? Like you care anyway."
"Why?" Why indeed. "Why? Because I am here, because you have yet to tell anyone else; if you had whatever authoritarians are in your world should have done something about it once the first set that branded you.
Because we are both here, neither of us ether able to sleep or wanting to, and a room in the dark of night may yet yield true words. Truth, or release." Loki said, opening blues eyes to look at her as he finished.
"You're strange, you know that?"
"So I have been told." He said. She looked away from him, down at the floor, and around the bare room. She pulled at the cuffs of her sleeves and a loose thread on the ends of her blue pants. She shook her head; so she was not going to answer him then.
Or so he assumed, then she started to speak softly, but in a rush, the words tripping over themselves like water in a stream.
"It's been going on for so long that it was just part of life now - just something that sometimes happened, and I'd long ago accepted it. Afterwards he would always be so sorry and apologetic and everything. Then - then this last time, something was different. Maybe I was different, maybe I'd done something wrong too many times, but when he came at me - I saw murder in his eyes. He'd never looked at me like that before. When he tried to grab me, I... I hit him on the head with the closest thing, a coffee cup that shattered against his head. It made him loosen his hold on me a bit, and I got loose and ran away.
I remember running, and I remember him coming, following me. I remember wanting to be somewhere else - anywhere else, and then I was. I was here." She finished, now looking straight at Loki.
Loki sat still. This was why humans could not be trusted to govern themselves. They murdered, scarred, and maimed each other. No one had been watching over this young woman. No one had stopped this Aaron.
"Thank you, for sharing this secret with me." Having spoken, and finally knowing why, Loki closed his eyes as his tired mind finally allowed him to sleep.
A/N Oh Loki, how could you fall asleep in a prisoner's room? The rumors, the rumors~
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