Chapter Ten

Dear Loki...

The whispered words moved through his mind like a soft caress and he lifted his head.

They moved through him like a prayer.

Someone was praying to him.

He looked around, as if expecting someone to be playing a cruel trick on the Trickster God, but he knew better than that. Someone, a very certain someone, was praying to him. He was a prideful and boastful God.

Darcy, his ever present and annoying peace of heaven and hell, was praying to him.

Dear Loki...if you don't move your gloriously burdened and answer me...Amen.

Loki didn't think twice. He reached out through time and space for the woman who was praying to him and then she was there. Kneeling on the hard ground with her head bowed, her hands clasped together beneath her chin. The vision of true innocence praying to her God.

He pondered on the thought, wondering how in all of her annoyance and dim wit she had found the path that would lead directly to him.

"Your prayers have been answered, child." Loki said, the tone of his voice smooth. "Now what do you want?"

Was he mocking her?

Darcy looked up and nearly sent herself backward on her ass. Because this was not her bedroom. He really could do that time travel stuff. Praying had actually worked. Wowzer. But he was still in chains with that monster mouthed snake gaping over him.

Darcy stood and nearly jumped the distance seperating them. How could his father do this? That wasn't what a parent was about. "I've about had it with his Odin highness."

Loki stared down at her dark head. He was silent before he responded. "That makes two of us." He frowned when she grasped the length of chain in her hands and gave it a hard tug. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to help you escape."

He felt his lips twitch at the innocent and blunt truth with which she spoke.

Darcy yanked and then felt her feet sliding. She was moving, but the chain wasn't. She really couldn't see the end of it, but there was enough length that was pulled taunt from somewhere, keeping his arms stretched out in front of him.

She looked up at the gaping mouth filled with razor sharp teeth and the two enlongated fangs. From this position she was staring directly up into its mouth. She swore it looked like it was going to gobble them up at any moment. Just like before she saw a drop of liquid form on one fang before the weight of gravity sent it sound.

One shoulder of Loki's leather overcoat already had twisted holes, testament to the venom eating through to his skin. She reached up with her hands automatically, forming a small bowl with her hands. She was a human and she didn't see this as justifiable punishment. What had Loki done that was so terrible?

Loki cursed and his long fingers circled her slender wrists and jerked them down but the single drop landed on the outside of her thumb and Darcy cried out.

"You fool! Why would you do that? That is like pure acid to your skin." Loki turned her hand over, his thumb smoothing over the outter edge of the wounded skin. She didn't have rejuvinating abilities like he did. Her body wasn't going to heal like his.

"Because you don't deserve that." Darcy said. The side of her hand was burning and the venom had left a tiny sized crator where it had peeled away her skin. "You can't just...like, poof out of here?"

The smile he gave her was tight. "I'm afraid not."

His lip curled in a silent snarl when another drop of venom landed on his cheek instead of his shoulder.

Darcy could feel tears gathering in her eyes at the sight. And she didn't cry. She never cried. She'd seen the damage earlier and while she'd come to the conclusion that his body healed, that didn't mean he was shielded from the pain each time.

"I'm going to use Thor's hammer to knock Odin a whole new set." She swore.

The chit was insane. But he could feel laughter building in his chest. "If you could lift Thor's hammer, which you cannot."

"Can you move out from under that thing?" Darcy asked, pointing at the monster snakes head.

"I can move towards the slack of the chain, but he will follow."

Horror crossed Darcy's face at the thought that thing was alive and mobile. Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

His expression soured when he saw the tears in her eyes. "Do not cry for me, Darcy Lewis. I do not want your tears."

"I'm not crying. I'm only human, you know." She yanked at the chain again.

Loki didn't understand this small human. Why did she feel such sentiment towards him? She wanted to help him. And even in his pain...he found himself enlightened in her presence. She almost made him forget the pain until each drop brought the memory back to his mind.

There was no shelter from the venom. Darcy had contemplated shrugging out of her jacket but she knew it wouldn't hold up under the venom. So she watched as another drop hit his cheek, another followed minutes later on his shoulder.

Maybe it was the after effects of PMS horomones that was making her emotional. Whatever it was, Darcy could feel tears gathering in her eyes again. There was no disguising the blunt pain everytime it hit him. And she could do nothing to stop it.

"Dammit, I want to help."

Loki turned his head at her watery admission and cursed beneath his breath as the scent of tears rose up. There was nothing she could do. That was the simple truth. He lifted his hand, intent on sending her back to her own realm before she did cry. Because he did not want to see her face stained with tears.

"Valhalla help me." He whispered and rose from his knees. He lifted one arm and then dropped it on one side of her shoulders so that she was in between the chains holding his arms and then wrapped them around her slender shoulders. "Stop crying, Sigyn. This very instant." He ordered her. His gut clenched and he stood there awkwardly, his arms wrapped around her slender frame.

He shifted back a step with her in his arms and the snake followed his movement, but she was positioned away from the painful poison.

"There is nothing you, nor I can do." He assured her softly, grimacing at his words and the way he attempted to pat the back of her head. "Now stop crying. Please." He added the last word in disbelief at his own self that he'd just begged a mortal.

"What's that?"

Her muffled words reached his ears and he set her back from him slightly. He winced at her tear stained cheeks but couldn't bring himself to brush the reminder away. "What's what?"

Darcy pointed to an off white thing in the distance.

"The skull of a fallen warrior, no doubt." Loki was sure there was more than one, a reminder of all those who hadn't taken their punishment as they were meant. Relief filled him when she pulled out of his arms. She sniffled, but she wasn't crying anymore. Those tears, though few they had been, had made him feel far too vulnerable.

Was that how Thor had felt on earth?

She didn't leave his sight, just stooped over and picked up the remainder of a thick skull between thumb and forefinger. She frowned and then looked at him.

He frowned and returned her stare.

His heart clenched in his chest when she lifted her hands over his head from where he kneeled on the ground. A drop of venom fell but instead of burning through his skin, the inside of the misused skull took what was meant for him.

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