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Honesty
The younger prince, looking tired but determined, walked alongside the queen through the halls of the Asgardian palace. At first it seemed that the silence would last until they reached the healers' (in fact, Loki was truly hoping that), but the sound of only their feet on the floor was soon punctuated by the queen's warm voice.
"Loki?" Frigga asked softly.
Loki bit his lip and hesitated before even bothering to answer her. "Yes?" he asked in a tense voice.
Frigga looked at her son carefully as she said, "You're going to have to tell me the truth about this situation. Just because I am having the healers do what they can for her doesn't mean that I will do anything more without knowing who she is."
Loki's step faltered for a moment. Who was Noir? "…She's… a… friend," he murmured. "A close friend."
Silence except for their footsteps on the marble floors.
Frigga pinched her lips together for a moment, deciding how to proceed. "…Thor and Marron told me some things, you know."
Loki's feet ceased to move as he stopped and stood in the middle of the hall, staring at her in shock. "Thor—Marron—what?"
Frigga couldn't help but try and hide her wry smile at the bafflement on Loki's face. "Loki, I went to find Thor and found him in the room of the neko informant… Lady Marron. I met her once wandering the halls, and I saw her at the ball," she said simply.
Loki's brow knit in slight confusion. "Oh… alright… er…"
"They told me that Marron is a neko and that you and Thor had been hiding her in the palace for several days before she was kidnapped at the ball. However, they wouldn't tell me why you would do such a thing as help a neko."
Slowly, Loki glanced from his mother to the hall they stood in. He still needed to get to the healers—to know Noir was going to be alright. "All that is true," he conceded with trepidation. He took a few steps down the hall again, and Frigga fell into step beside him as they continued walking. "They didn't tell you about the other girl?" he asked tensely.
"No, they did not, claiming I had to ask you about the rest of it. Why would you help a neko? Who is Marron, and who is the girl in your room?" Frigga pressed.
Loki sighed. "They're both friends. I became friends with them quite a while ago, and…"
"And?" Frigga repeated when Loki trailed off.
"…I insisted that they stay in the palace when Father set the decree that the nekos were to leave the city. I didn't want them to go," Loki told her in the same small voice he had used when he was younger when he told Frigga he was sorry for pulling a nasty prank on Thor.
Frigga decided to relent for a moment, sensing Loki's underlying worry and stress. She would ask more when they found out the state of Loki's friend.
They reached a pair of double doors, and the queen opened them, nodding for Loki to enter before her. He did so, and with the queen trailing behind him, he strode in and got directions to the neko girl's room from a healing apprentice.
Tersely thanking the young woman, Loki turned away and down the hall he had been directed to. A terrible kind of fear building up inside him, he slowly walked down it and headed to the room with the door open a crack. He was only a few steps from being able to step inside when he was stopped.
"Your Majesty," an elderly woman said quickly, scurrying up to the side of the prince. "She's in a delicate condition, that neko girl." She looked up at Loki from owlish eyes set over a bulbous nose. "I think it best not to disturb her now."
Loki's heart tightened and began hammering harder against the inside of his sternum at the tone of the healer… she sounded like she was standing by someone's deathbed, the respectful hush of delivering tragic news. "Is she awake?" Loki demanded in a whisper.
The healer shook her head. "No, my prince. She will not wake."
Loki felt like the world serpent was constricting around him, trying to crush him in on himself. "…Will… she…" he almost couldn't bring himself to even speak through the crushingly tight feeling encircling him from head to toe. "Is she going to make it?" he asked harshly.
The woman dropped her gaze and shrugged helplessly. "We… are not sure. But the odds are not favorable."
"Then why can't I see her, if she's not going to make it anyway?" Loki hissed, hating the very idea.
The healer had no answer. She reluctantly shuffled aside and let Loki enter the small ward.
Loki entered, his steps slow as he saw the figure on the bed, still and pale. He swallowed and approached, kneeling at her bedside to look at her. Noir's eyes were closed, and her breath was hardly more than a whisper. They had replaced her rugged black tunic and breeches and boots with a simple white dress, similar to the ones Loki had cast spells on to look like ball gowns for that fateful night. A flexible tube trailed from a container of liquid to the inside of one of her elbows. Loki let out a slow, shaky breath and let his forehead drop to the soft white sterile sheets as he closed his eyes and begged silently for her to be alright.
Outside the room, Frigga conversed with the healer. "Why is it so uncertain whether she will or won't live?" she asked quietly.
"She has lost far too much blood, my queen, and we can't mix Aesir blood with a neko's. It would kill her more surely than the blood loss itself."
"Is it still possible for her to live? Can her body not produce enough blood to sustain her?" Frigga pressed.
"It is possible, my lady… we know that nekos are often more resilient than Aesir because of their body's speed… often their bodies are able to regenerate skin or blood faster than Aesir…but… it will take time. We're not sure she has that time. She will need to be kept here. Our other concern is that she will not wake. We have tried many potions to revive her, and they have had no effect. We can't find any traces of poison in her blood, so we can't understand why she's in this state."
Frigga frowned slightly, recalling the book on Loki's floor open to a blood purifying spell, and the cloth covered in some sticky liquid. "She may have been poisoned, but a spell was used to remove it from her body."
The healer raised her eyebrows. "A difficult spell… And if that's the case, then it's possible that part of the poison was already being broken down by her body and working its way into her system. If we knew the type of poison, we might still be able to reverse the effects…" she paused with a thoughtful look. "It really is such a blessing and a curse for the nekos to have such a high metabolism. It means poison works itself into their system so much more quickly."
"I may be able to have a way to find out what it is that she was poisoned with," Frigga said quickly. "And perhaps an antidote can be devised. Other than that, can anything be done?"
The woman nodded. "It appears that whatever the poison is, it has put her into a coma of sorts. All that can be done for her is to keep her company, provide her with outside stimulus, and perhaps her body will want to wake up more quickly in order to respond."
Frigga nodded. "I'm sure Prince Loki would not mind providing her company." She nodded to the healer and stepped into the room to see her son kneeling next to the neko girl's bed, holding her hand despairingly. "Loki?"
He immediately stood, letting go of her hand and scrambling away from the bed. "Y-yes, mother?" he stammered, obviously embarrassed.
Frigga shook her head with a sigh and sank into a chair leaning against the wall. "She's fallen into a coma of some kind."
Loki said nothing, his eyes flicking momentarily back to the unconscious girl on the bed before returning his attention to his mother. "How?" he asked hoarsely.
"Loki, you performed a blood purifying spell on her, did you not?" Frigga inquired.
Loki absently chewed the inside of his cheek nervously as he nodded.
Frigga nodded. "Good. It stopped her body from taking in any more of it than she did. It did some good, Loki," she commended. "But because the healers can't find out what poison it was in her blood, they're not sure what antidotes to use."
Loki stood up straight. "The cloth that I wiped the poison away with should still be in my room—can they find out what it is by taking a sample from-?"
Frigga was already nodding approvingly. "I'm certain they can. We'll get that attended to right away."
Loki forced a weak smile. "And then, once she receives antidote…?"
Frigga felt her shoulders fall a little. "She's lost far too much blood."
Loki drew his brows together. "But… they can transfuse blood when someone's lost too much—"
"They can't transfuse Aesir blood with that of a neko," Frigga said patiently. "They don't keep neko blood on hand, Loki."
The prince allowed himself to carefully drop to the bed, sitting half a foot away from Noir's waist. He looked forlornly at her, wondering why everything had to be so blasted complicated. "So… they can't do anything about the blood loss," he murmured. "And she… can't recover from that?" he asked quietly, fighting back the crack in his voice that came anyway.
Frigga lifted her shoulders. "It's possible… but…"
Loki swallowed and began absentmindedly tracing shapes across the bedsheets with a fingertip. "Right," he murmured. He sighed, not quite wanting to look at his mother right now. Suddenly he wanted to tell her everything. Suddenly he wanted to tell her all about his inner turmoil and the feelings he harbored for Noir and how much she truly meant to him. But he couldn't do that. Not yet. First she needed to know everything else. "Mother…"
Frigga didn't answer, waiting patiently.
Loki licked his lips, preparing himself to tell the whole story. "I first met her about three weeks before the first skirmish. Long before the rebellion started."
And then Loki explained as best he could about meeting her once and again two weeks later. About hearing the guards talking about capturing a neko and worrying it was her, and about using the tracing spell to find her (though he omitted the part where he, she and Blanc sprang Marron from prison). About spending the night at her home (Frigga took a bit of reassuring that nothing improper had happened between any of them whilst he stayed the night in a room containing two young men and two young women). Then about coming back the next day and hearing about the decree, of deciding he couldn't let her leave, about bringing the two girls to the palace, of Thor finding out, of hiding them, and of taking them to the ball… and of realizing they had been kidnapped. Of Thor getting Marron from the prison (once again omitting parts of the story: he didn't tell Frigga he had disguised himself as a guard and put a young boy in potential harm's way to find out if Marron or she were in the prisons). And then of finding out that she had not managed to escape the rebel base with Marron. Frigga only interrupted a few times, to clarify or ask questions. And soon he had come to the end of the story… or rather, what he hoped desperately wouldn't be the end of the story, but the stopping point for now.
Loki sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. "…I think she managed to escape when the soldiers went to invade the base. But… she said she was stabbed. Something about Blanc and a map and her mother…" Loki shook himself. "She came to me and asked for help, but soon she fell unconscious. And then I did all I could for her."
Frigga said nothing for a long moment, trying to process all the information. Everything made so much more sense now. Marron, Thor, Loki… "Her name is Noir, isn't it?" she asked quietly.
Loki glanced up in surprise. "What?"
Frigga smiled slightly. "The night of the ball, you were dancing with her, and she was disguised as Aesir. So was Lady Marron. I asked Marron who she was, and she told me she was a friend named Noir."
Loki lightly squeezed Noir's hand. "Chatte Noir Voleuse. That's her name." Disconnectedly, he realized he hadn't once used Noir's name while telling his story. Perhaps it was some feeble attempt at protecting her. He wasn't sure. Now it didn't matter, though.
"Chatte Noir Voleuse," Frigga repeated to herself.
There was a relapse into silence, and then Frigga left to Loki's room to retrieve that washcloth with the remains of the poison on it.
00000
Frigga returned to the healers' wing and explained to those caring for the neko that she had something that may be able to help with treating her. The washcloth Loki had used to mop up the poison was passed off, and she was assured they would tell her what it was in five minutes.
The queen seated herself at a table in the center of the room where families or friends would wait to see their sick or injured loved ones. She waited impatiently for the results. She wanted this neko girl—Noir—to recover. For Loki's sake. For Marron and Thor's sake. But mainly for Loki's sake. It was so obvious how much he cared for her, so easy to see the pain in his eyes when he asked about how she was doing, the tenderness in his voice when he explained their relationship as "friends", and the soft affection he touched her limp hand with. For Loki's sake.
Five minutes passed.
If Noir did not mend, she feared what might happen to Loki.
Ten minutes passed.
Where were the healers? Didn't they understand it was of utmost importance that they find the problem and fix it as soon as possible?
Fifteen minutes passed before someone approached the queen with a troubled expression and explained the situation. Frigga, disbelieving, covered her mouth with her hand at the news. Then she bowed her head and blinked rapidly, a sinking feeling dragging her heart down, down, down…
"My queen?"
"You're dismissed," Frigga waved her hand at the healer, and she shook her head. For Loki's sake. For Thor and Marron's sake, too. But mostly for Loki's sake.
Thor and Marron. They needed to know about this. Frigga gracefully stood and began to walk towards the door and to Marron's room, realizing she had to be the one to tell them of all that had happened—they didn't know about Noir, did they? No, they couldn't. She would have to tell them.
Frigga froze mid-step as a thought struck her.
Wait.
Marron.
Frigga quickened her step.
00000
Loki wasn't sure how long it was that he merely sat by Noir's side on the bed, stroking his thumb over the back of her cold hand and reminiscing about the few short days they had spent together, wishing she would wake. But soon enough there was a pair of healers striding into the room, cautiously looking between their prince and their patient. Loki quickly stood and backed against the wall when he caught sight of the women, and he cleared his throat.
"Yes?" he asked curtly.
"We merely came to check on her," one woman said gently, smiling softly at Loki and crossing over to Noir's bed and taking her hand to check the pulse in her wrist.
"Did you find anything on the poison?" Loki asked quickly.
The other healer cleared her throat—that same healer with the owlish eyes and bulbous nose. "We did, actually."
"And?" Loki immediately asked, finding that he had to force himself to not step forward towards the healer, and even then he found himself leaning forward slightly.
The woman smiled weakly. "Well. There isn't anything to be done for it."
Loki blinked. "Wh—is there no antidote? Will she-?"
"There was a mixture of contaminants," the woman still attending to Noir supplied. "Two poisons were found on the washcloth that Queen Frigga brought."
"The first was what the layman would call bloodbath," the other woman explained. "Alchemically altered slime of giant leeches is what it technically is. Its effects are what caused her so much blood loss. It slows down the blood's coagulation. Your friend here didn't suffer any major damage to her internal organs—only a nick to the kidney. It would have stopped bleeding quickly enough, and the damage would be reparable if that was all. But the weapon she was stabbed with was coated in bloodbath, so… the bleeding didn't stop as it should have. She would have surely bled out if she had gone any longer with the poison in her system."
Loki felt his legs get as heavy as lead, and he managed to shakily sit in the chair against the wall. "So… it caused her to bleed more than she should have," he repeated. "But since it got out of her system quickly enough, it's not a problem anymore? She's not losing blood anymore?"
"She's not losing blood anymore, but she's lost a significant amount," The woman bending over Noir confirmed as she straightened and turned to peer at her prince. "And the other problem is… the other poison that got into her. They call it devil's honey," she said bitterly.
"Devil's honey," Loki repeated, the words meaningless to him. "What does it do?"
"Well," she said with a sigh. "It puts you into a coma. And the poison got itself well-established and partially into her system."
Loki felt like the world serpent was trying to choke him again. "Which means…? Will she wake? Is there a cure?"
"There's no antidote," the woman sighed as she looked down at the unconscious Noir and slightly adjusted the tube protruding from her arm, tethering the neko to a bag of fluids. "Normally, in a strong individual, the effects last only two to six days. But if the victim's body can't fight it off, can't process it fast enough, then… they don't wake."
00000
As Frigga told Marron and Thor what she knew and what news the healers had given on Noir's condition, she felt her heart tighten bitterly.
Marron had brought her knees up to her chest in the armchair, staring at the queen with huge, pleading eyes and a pale face. "So—Noir—can she-?"
Thor was pacing stormily around the room, brow furrowed in deep concern and his arms crossed in something like anger at the situation. "Marron, of course she can," he assured immediately. "We know Noir. She would never let something as trivial as a stab wound and deadly poison beat her."
Marron flinched, and Thor immediately stopped pacing, realizing that probably wasn't the right thing to say.
"Sorry," Thor apologized miserably. "I was just trying to—
"It's fine," Marron murmured, shaking her head. "I'm just… we don't know if she can pull through, and—"
"Noir is strong," Thor proclaimed. "Mother, you said strong people can wake from the effects of devil's honey in a few days, correct?"
"Right," Frigga nodded.
"But Noir's weak right now," Marron whispered.
Frigga took a deep breath and looked at Marron carefully, deciding how to share her idea—the idea that had so suddenly struck her on the way here. The simple and clear idea. "Marron, Noir is weak from blood loss. Now, normally the healers can transfuse the blood of another into a person with blood loss. But," she lifted a finger. "they do not keep neko blood on hand. They can't mix an Aesir's blood with that of a neko. But…" the queen trailed off meaningfully and looked pointedly at Marron.
The girl's amber eyes widened even further, this time something like hope mingling with the sorrow. "They—they need a neko's blood, and then Noir would stand a better chance?"
Thor's head suddenly shot up, and he looked wildly from his mother to his friend. "Why—Marron, you're a neko!" he informed her excitedly.
Frigga and Marron paused, glanced at each other in exasperation, and then threw Thor unimpressed looks at his only now deducing that.
Thor blinked. "…What?" he asked helplessly.
"That's my point in telling you that," Frigga forced a smile at her son. "Marron's blood may be able to save Noir. At least, it'll give her a fighting chance."
The hopeless and fearful look vanished from Marron's face, and she leaped to her feet. Her eyes had filled with determination, hot and sharp as a newly-forged blade. "Then what are we waiting for? Noir needs help." She turned and strode purposefully towards the door.
Frigga couldn't help but sigh in relief and smile, following the girl, while Thor, slightly stunned at Marron's sudden confidence, trailed after.
Note from LoquaciousQuibbler: Whew! This is so up-and-down! Maybe it's good—wait—no, it's bad—wait, there's a chance! AAAUUUUGGGHHH WHATSA HAPPENING?!
Lol so yes… I found it kind of amusing how you all thought that as soon as Frigga arrived, all would be well. Heheheh am I ever that nice? There's still more to come. The poisons, Noir falling into a coma, being too weak to properly fight the effects unless Marron can save her… Meep!
Disclaimer: the two poisons I mention in this chapter, bloodbath and devil's honey, are not of my own making. I spent quite a while perusing the internet for fictional poisons and venoms and such… I managed to stumble across a page describing the poisons, venoms, powders, and other such accoutrements of assassination used in the roleplaying game Tunnels and Trolls. Of that long list, I selected devil's honey and bloodbath to be what the nekos' weapons are dipped in. This has been something planned ever since I decided Noir was going to be stabbed. I also did plenty of research on where I could have Noir stabbed… so she was stabbed kind of under her ribcage, and the blade barely nicked her kidney, which would cause excessive bleeding which would stop shortly thereafter if it hadn't been for the bloodbath in her system. That neko metabolism, though ;) I do my planning. There was totally a reason I had that information mentioned way back during the battle meetings in Chapter 21 heheh.
I hope you all found some enjoyment in this chapter :P I love you all, and thank you for all the support! You are amazing!
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