Hello again! Thank you to anyone who's reading this, and I hope you're enjoying it so far. Just a note on formatting and the progression of the story: any italicized chapters are part of the backstory/prologue. All of the regular-type chapters are the story, occurring in real time. This is the first backstory/prologue chapter, and it takes place several weeks before Chapter 1. You'll get intermittent sections of the prologue spliced throughout the first half of the story, so be ready, and remember about the italics! :-) Anyway, please read on! Reviews and PMs are welcome.
Loki had been in the dungeon for two days before anybody was allowed to see him; he had been considered to be too volatile before.
He did not know this, of course.
He only knew the three stone walls of his cell and the iron lattice-work door that had been enchanted just like his fetters to keep his natural power subdued and to inhibit any expulsion of magic. He only had begun to learn the faces of the guards and their rotation times, which let him discern with surprising accuracy the time of day. They were quite punctual, after all. He watched them change, a new guard at dawn, at noon, at dusk, and at midnight, and he reminded himself that somewhere, beyond this cell, time was passing.
That was the only thing that kept him quiet. Knowing that the moon still moved, the suns still shone, and the stars still formed constellations gave him a sort of solace that made him silent. It didn't provide peace, but it offered a promise for good behavior.
At dawn on the second day, immediately following the rotation of guards and the security check, the sound of footsteps echoed its way down the hall, the reverberation reaching Loki's cell with little difficulty. He looked up, a mixture of confusion and interest playing havoc with his mind. As far as he knew, nobody save the guards was allowed into the dungeon. And if a guard was coming down the hall so shortly after rotation, something was amiss.
He itched to rise and look through the bars on the cell door. His savage curiosity burned as the footsteps drew nearer, passing all other prisoners and honing in on him. Any other would have grown anxious at the certainty of destination, but Loki knew that he had done nothing – literally, nothing – in the two days he had been there. What could a guard possibly want with him?
A shadowy form came to a stop by his door, veiled in the ashy void left where the torchlight didn't reach. He surveyed it with unmasked apathy; shorter and slighter than most guards, though the stance was intimidating nonetheless. A flicker of a nearby flame cast a nominal amount of light over the figure for only a second, but it was enough for Loki to discern the distinctly feminine build. His stomach clenched at the realization. You.
"Come now," he said silkily, "you need not hide."
At his invitation, the figure took a step forward.
"Lady Sif," he acknowledged politely, inclining his head like a gentleman.
The Shieldmaiden took a breath, her fists clenching and unclenching. She looked like she wanted to wring his neck; the thought of it struck more fear into Loki's heart than any trained guard ever could have done.
"Loki." Her voice was unusually small, and it immediately set him on edge.
He stood and took a cautious step toward the grated door, scrutinizing her face. "Why Sif," he said, more surprised than he let on, "are those tears?"
In response, she roughly wiped them away, like they had offended her somehow, and refused to meet his eyes. They both knew that she never cried. It didn't need to be said that Sif hadn't shed a tear publicly since she was a child and Thor had beaten her unfairly in a training exercise. And if she had cried since, she only did so behind the closed, locked, and barred doors to her chambers, with her head under her pillow so that no eavesdroppers could hear. Or, very, very rarely, on Loki's shoulder.
Loki hadn't tried to touch the cell door since it had been enchanted by the mage-smiths of Svartalfheim, but, when he laced his long fingers through the metal frame, nothing happened. He was grateful, though he also hated the door more than anything in that moment – that moment when he should have been on the other side of it, letting Sif either pummel him into the ground or collapse into his arms. Whichever she chose, he would have taken it gladly if it stopped her tears.
"How observant," she replied, an artificial chill in her voice.
He reached through the bars as far as he could before his manacles caught with a clank. She graciously stepped forward, close enough for him to touch her, and she placed her wrists into his hands. He stroked them with his thumbs gently, a sharp grin slashing across his face. "I would have imagined you would have squelched all this . . . sentiment." He let his voice hiss and stab with every syllable, hoping it would hurt her as much as it hurt him.
"Oh, don't," she spat, sniffing through her hot tears. "Don't you dare put on that front with me. You and I know each other. That is not you any more than this –" she gestured fiercely to her wet cheeks – "is me. And if you think I wouldn't cry about this, then you are a fool. These tears are for you, you imbecilic prince, because, to get you to return home, you needed to be defeated, gagged, and hauled back by your brother." She pulled a hand away and scrubbed at her cheeks again, leaving a pink streak from her calloused knuckles. "And because, to keep you here, we had to chain you up in prison like a dog."
His face darkened. "Sif, you know that I do not belong here." He didn't mean prison, and he could see that she knew as much.
"And you see, that's the worst of it," she said, "because I don't care if you're a Jotunn or an elf or a dwarf or a human or –" She stopped, words growing thick and angry in her throat. "When you fell from the Bifrost, the commoners mourned you. I had never seen them mourn with more passion or more sincerity than they showed for you. And not one of them mourned more than your family. Your family, who knew – not because you showed them as you showed me, but because they never cared about your origin. You were their family, and they mourned you as such."
For a moment, Loki remained silent, her words reaching into his soul and stirring something there, though he knew not what. "And you?" he finally asked coldly.
She offered him a smile so full of grief and bitterness that it almost pained him to look upon it. "I mourn still."
"Why?" he spat. "Surely no one else has given me a second thought since they dumped me down here. Why would you care?"
She sighed quietly, a rare gesture for Sif, who believed that sighs and giggles were for girls, not for women, and especially not for any woman worth her weight in salt. Then, in a voice so soft that it might have been a whisper, she said, "I knew a man once – a remarkable man. We spent our childhood together, playing jokes and causing mischief in the court. We were best friends. He would pull my hair, and I would punch him in the face." A tiny grin rose to her lips at the memory – one which she apparently recalled with fondness, though Loki could only remember the number of black eyes he had suffered at the receiving end of her fist.
"One day, he learned something," she continued. "It changed the way he looked at himself. He suddenly thought himself vile, as if a bilgesnipe were living inside his skin. This hatred killed the man I knew quite some time ago. A different being has since taken him over, stealing his face and his voice, making him do the unthinkable. His form stands before me, taunting me with his expressions and gestures twisted into something loathsome, and I wonder if I will ever see him again." She hesitated, chancing a glance up at his face. "I mourn the loss of the man – not his body, but his being."
The idea cut him – straight down to the bone – and he wondered if maybe there was a small chance that it could possibly be true. That perhaps, he had changed. But that feeling left as quickly as it had come.
He dropped Sif's hands and paced the cell once, suddenly and unexpectedly agitated. "Sif," he growled, "what am I?"
"It matters not –" she began, but he cut her off.
"Answer the question!"
Sif let out a small, short breath of mild irritation. Then, after a long hesitation, she glanced around to be sure they were out of anybody's earshot and muttered, "You are a Frost Giant of Jotunheim."
"And is this not the heart of my true race?" he demanded icily, as if to back up his own question with further proof that he was born with snow in his veins.
She was silent for a moment, and when she said, "No," he could practically smell the lie on her.
He scoffed and turned away.
"You're different, Loki," she tried, pressing her hands up against the bars, imploring him to understand that, when she looked at him, she still saw the boy with the bruising black eyes – the lanky adolescent camped out in the library – the man who could impress her to bits with a magical wave of his hand (though she would never show it, of course). "You are not like them."
His entire body ignored her, though he listened still. But, at the same time, he wanted to clamp his hands over his ears and curl up into a ball on the ground as he had done once when he was a child and Thor's friends had told him the scary stories of Frost Giants. They had been hideous stories – even for adults, the darkness didn't fade, despite the years. Even the name of the race sounded brutal, no matter which variation one chose; Jotunn was just as bad as Frost Giant. And Loki got to claim both.
"You know the stories," he muttered darkly to Sif. "You used to sit with your knees pulled up to your chest, face buried, but we all knew you listened. Do you remember?"
Sif felt her face grow warm at the memory. Not long ago, she would have considered it fondly, laughing at how girlish she was when she was young. Loki would have smiled, and Thor would have clapped her on the back, declaring that she has certainly outgrown such tendencies. But today, she was embarrassed. If only she had known. If only he had known. She liked to think that she never would have been so afraid; whether that was the truth, though, was uncertain. Would she have feared Loki too, had she known? The thought made her shudder with revulsion.
"I remember," she replied, her voice cracking. At the sound, a nearly imperceptible smirk twitched at Loki's lips before it fell from his face once more, proving to her that her best friend and god of mischief was still there; he might be buried deep, but he was there. "You used to tease me when I was frightened."
A mirthless smile rose on his lips. "Ah yes. I seem to recall you chasing me through the palace on more than one occasion, threatening me with dismemberment." He arched an eyebrow at her, a shadow in his gaze.
She leaned up against the bars, realizing that she had stopped crying, though her cheeks were still damp. She never had been able to cry properly around him; he simply wouldn't have it so. "And I seem to recall," she returned, "that you only got away twice – once because my mother caught me and the other because you managed to get into a room and lock the door behind you."
Though he gave a short laugh, his face didn't become any more cheerful. He drew a deep breath, eyeing her curiously. Finally, he said, "Did you ever think – even for a second – that I was not of Asgard? That I was not like you and Thor and everybody else?"
"No." She didn't have to think over their history together to know that the news had been as much of a shock and surprise to her as it had been to Thor, who had been raised calling Loki "brother" and thinking nothing of it.
"You would stake your life on that?" When she looked at him, uncertain, he added, "It happens to be quite important to me."
Sif hadn't lied. She had truly never found anything to be excessively odd about Loki. Except – "There were moments when you seemed . . . peculiar," she told him. "Not foreign, but different. Like how, in the winter, we would all wrap up in furs and still shiver, but you seemed perfectly comfortable in naught but a heavy cloak. There was never anything more overt than simple things, such as that."
"You never wondered?" he challenged, shifting those intimidating green eyes up to her. Only they didn't blaze as had become his usual. They seemed to plead instead. Plead for her honesty.
"No." And she meant it.
"I suppose," he said, resting a hand on the bars, "if you had, you wouldn't be here."
She hesitated, and then she responded, "I suppose not." He shot an indignant glance up at her, but she just shrugged. "Neither would you."
For a long moment, he looked as if he was going to reply; his mouth opened and closed, his brow furrowed slightly in concentration as he arranged the words precisely how he wanted them. It was unusual for him to have to think about it, so, naturally, Sif slowly grew concerned. Just as she was about to ask him if she had upset him, he let out a miniscule sigh and said, "Perhaps you're right."