Posted to Tumblr, because I was avoiding work. The prompt was:
Last time I saw you, I said that it hurt too much to love you. But I was wrong about that. The truth is it hurts too much not to love you.
P.C. Cast, House of Night
Somewhere in between the firmly cast shadow of winter's moon and the whisper of promise in spring's green, she lingers.
Somewhere in the depths of the pool of pixels of light, she languishes…
And he waits.
He knows that she is there, he feels her presence. Even in his cell, he feels…rotting in putrified muck…left, forgotten…he recalls his station, so long ago now.
Was it a year ago?
Five?
Ten?
Minutes, years, hours…they run together, spilling into nameless hues and liquid shame.
He chastised her for coming. He knew not her purpose. He did not bother to ask. He did, he recalled with a very slight blush, laugh at her.
How preposterous that she should condescend to such an interview! How shameful a recurrence, when he told her to leave repeatedly. But the fates, blind as they were, chose not to hear his mirth. Instead, they taunted him with her presence.
"You are foolish, Jane Foster. You, with your science. You, with Thor's favor. Why are you here?"
"Because I was told you could help."
"Help," he sneered.
"Yeah. Thor said…"
"Thor! Do not speak of him to me, mortal."
And so it was. She did not speak. She did not speak, but still she came.
At first he was amused at her persistence. And then it transformed into annoyance. How long could she continue to sit and stare at him thus? Foolish, stubborn mortal. He smirked at her sitting there on the floor outside of his cell.
Yet there he was, on the inside of his cell, she was forever looking inward.
"Tell me what you need," said he, many weeks following.
"I need to navigate without the Bifrost…I need to know how to get home."
"The Bifrost…?"
"Is broken," she simply said.
He recalled having smiled at this. He recalled her returning that smirk, but not wavering in the least. She would not be deterred, not to be circumvented from the task at hand…
"And if I had this stone…this thing you call an Infinity Stone, it would lead me home?" she breathed after many hours of wordplay and evasion on his part.
"But how would you obtain it, Jane Foster? The alternative…"
"I know what the alternative is," letting him out of his cage was not an option. "Why so much hatred, Loki?"
"Hatred is what everyone sees when they see me," he said. "Hatred is who I am."
"No it's not. It's who you want to be…"
He had no idea who he wanted to be. And the blood on his hands flowed freely. His eyes, cracked with emotion and tears and no sleep, they stung.
He had sent her on a fool's errand with the Warriors Three. The Bifrost had no entrance to Midgard, so they attempted to get her home through other branches, through a quest for an Infinity Stone.
Before, he had his ire. Before, he had his pain. And now, now…he had his hands. They held nothing.
He sat against the wall. He was loathe to admit how much he anticipated her presence. She was his only means of companionship, and though Prince Loki needed no one, he needed her.
Captive.
Criminal.
Miscreant.
"Loki?"
He looked up and saw her…cloaked as she was in white…he smiled softly. "Jane Foster."
She went to the glass, and placed her palm on it. "I'll be back," said she.
"Why does it hurt, Jane?" foolishly he uttered these words. Why, indeed, simple child.
"What hurts?"
"Love. Worse than hate."
He spied a tear glistening in her eye's far corner, threatening expulsion, damaging salt. "I don't know. But maybe because you are there, and I am here."
He nodded, not caring to reply.
So a sin simple in song, choking a reality of effervescent power, he waited.
You are there, I am here…
Those words sunk into his mind, took root, and bloomed a blossom of inky blackness…
"She hasn't returned, Loki," Thor had said.
"No."
"You love her," he said to his brother's back.
No answer.
And he heard him leave…
And he was alone.
She visits in his dreams, so much that he detests his opening eyes.
To never have touched her…
Never caressed her face…
Never tasted her mouth…
Nor felt her beneath him in the quaking night, panting, desperate for now.
Death would have been preferable.
And in his dream…
"Jane…Last time I saw you, I said that it hurt too much to love you. But I was wrong about that. The truth is it hurts too much not to love you."
"Oh Loki, stop," she laughs.
And she is forever just beyond his grasp, tantalizing his mind with her eyes, her touch, her voice, lulling him into infinity.