Beneath

Chapter Forty-Six – Escape

"Put that away, Loki. Your time among the mortals has made you uncivilized."

Loki held his position.

"I thought we had declared a truce. I don't go breaking into your house and threatening to kill you with your own weapon."

The elf had a point. From Brokk's perspective, this looked bad, and Loki had come here needing something from him. But brinksmanship was nothing new between the two of them.

"I hadn't realized I was such a scintillating topic of conversation," Loki said, straightening up and pointedly slipping the blade back through the leather loops at his thigh. "You were so engrossed in it, I feared you dead."

"So you decided to test your theory by slitting my throat?" Brokk asked with a slowly widening grin, still not having otherwise moved. He glanced down at the dagger resting against Loki's thigh as Loki took a step back, still inside the ring of burning candles. "And thievery, Loki, tisk tisk. Your list of crimes just keeps growing, doesn't it?"

"You startled me. And I'll return them before I leave. Probably. They're beautiful," Loki said, relaxing a little, though his guard remained up. There was something familiar about this exchange now, agreeably so. Brokk had always kept him on his toes. He could almost forget everything that had happened since Thor's botched coronation.

"I won them in a bet on Ljosalfheim. The Light Elves always overestimate themselves. I should introduce you to the elf who created them. Though now might not be the most appropriate time." Brokk stood, and Loki cautiously backed up further, stepping outside the ring. Brokk looked down at one of the candles and blew; every cobalt blue flame died instantly.

"What dark magic are you toying with these days, Brokk?" Loki asked, merely as an indulgence. Brokk had always cultivated an air of mysteriousness around himself, so Loki tried to ignore the voice in the back of his head that whispered that there was something suspicious going on here, particularly with this supposed conversation about him, which was possibly no more than Brokk's idea of a jest. He had to remain on alert – he had learned through a number of painful experiences in his younger years that Brokk could not be fully trusted in anything except putting himself first – but whatever the elf was up to was none of his concern. Loki had something to accomplish here, and he wasn't leaving until he had done so.

"A relatively recent discovery. I would call it…escape. Escape from the body, escape from the physical realm, into the slippery pathways of the spaces in between. It's…life-changing, what one can find out there." Brokk looked back down at the idle white candles between them for a moment, then back up at Loki. "Would you like to give it a try?" he asked, his eyes narrowing and his mouth drawing into a smile that looked positively sinister and every bit the stereotype of the dangerous and crafty Dark Elf.

Loki ignored it; Brokk also like to cultivate fear in everyone around him. "Perhaps another time. I've brought you something I know you're going to like," he said, deliberately relaxing his posture, crossing his wrists in front of him so that his fingers did not brush the grips of the daggers.

"What's that?" Brokk asked, his eyes roaming up and down Loki's length, settling on the leather satchel he carried.

Loki instantly regretted not having concealed it. Even better would have been sending it to join the suitcase and other things, but he'd feared the effect of the changes required to do that on the contents of the glass vial inside the satchel. He settled for ignoring where Brokk's gaze had fallen, and ensuring that he did not react in the slightest to it. "A challenge, of course. A very difficult one. And when I thought of who in all the Realms might have the power and skill to succeed in this challenge, I came up with one name."

"You haven't forgotten how to flatter with that silver tongue of yours, have you?" Brokk said, his smile softening a bit.

"Unfortunately, she wasn't available, so I came to you instead," his face a mask of friendly dry humor.

Brokk stared at him a moment, then broke out into hearty laughter, and suddenly before him was the Brokk Loki had first befriended, centuries and centuries ago, in another lifetime. "They say you've changed, Loki, but you haven't. Perhaps it's everyone else who's changed. Come, sit. Tell me about your challenge. True challenges are so few and far between these days. And sometimes things that appear to be challenges turn out to be far simpler than you could ever have imagined in your wildest dreams. Come, come," he said, beckoning Loki back inside the circle, to the bench, where Brokk sat on the right.

Loki eyed the candles as he stepped over them again and took a seat on the soft red and black cushions. Once upon a time, he'd spent large chunks of time here, perusing Brokk's odd collection of books and enchanted objects, when he'd felt the need to escape for a while from his life in Asgard. Thor's friends were lauded, accepted now even among Odin's advisors. Loki's friends – former friends – some of them, anyway, were reviled, Brokk so much so that he was forbidden to step foot on Asgard, and Loki was forbidden to see him. Of course, Thor had never felt it necessary to arm himself among his friends, as Loki had done here.

"My father and I got into another spat," Loki began, and Brokk nodded in sympathetic understanding. Many conversations here had begun the same way, and this was what Loki hoped to cultivate: no urgency, no desperation, just another family argument. "You know he's long been irritated with the ways I use magic, and after what happened on Midgard…" Brokk, he figured, must know about that, since he'd mentioned his time there among the mortals.

"Failure rarely occurs in so epic a form as that."

Loki grit his teeth, calmed the surging anger before responding. "A miscalculation. And external factors that were not up to me. It doesn't matter now. Father was angry with me, and placed an enchantment directly on my body. It punishes me every time I use magic for something he wouldn't approve of. He seeks to control me as though I were a youth. It's intolerable, Brokk, but it's impossible for me to remove it. His magic is strong. If anyone can remove it's you, but it wouldn't be easy."

"Always playing games. There's no need for that here. This is indeed an interesting challenge. And not without risk. Especially to me. Your father despises me already. If I interfere in this-"

"He will never know. We aren't exactly on speaking terms anymore, and who else is going to tell him?"

Brokk sat back and looked at him for a moment. "All right, I'll consider it. Is there a mark?"

"There is."

"Show it to me."

Loki nodded and leaned down to pull off the boot. It would be a relief. His foot had been swollen so badly this morning from yesterday's abuse that putting it on had been a ten-minute exercise in near-torture. One hand around his heel and one around his ankle, he gave an experimental tug and grimaced. Then in his peripheral vision he saw blue flame leap upward. He released the boot and jerked up toward Brokk, his right hand going for the dagger, when he saw one of those Svartalf fire needles leaving Brokk's hand, aimed for his throat. Loki drew the dagger with his right hand and moved to intercept the dart with his left, but in an unpleasantly familiar moment it burst into flame right in front of him before he could bat it away.

Loki instinctively closed his eyes and arched back as flames licked up toward his face. He struck blindly with the dagger where Brokk should have been, but never felt it meet resistance. He felt little bursts of magic all around him, too rapid to identify or even distinguish one from the next.

He felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder and struggled to open his eyes but failed, struggled to move away but failed, struggled to lash out with magic of his own but failed. He felt like he was underwater and drowning.

"Your father isn't the only one who's angry, Loki."

His eyes popped open then, or rather, it was as though they'd never been closed. They were simply open now, though it was too dark to see anything but shapes. His nostrils flared as he sucked in a quick breath of air gone stale. Air that was not of Svartalfheim, nor was it of Asgard, nor of Midgard, nor of any other realm. Air that was uncomfortably recognizable. His eyes began to adjust to the lower light, and he steeled himself to show no fear. He knew exactly where he was, though he'd never known its name, if it had one. Names seemed of little import in this place, where it seemed only one individual had an actual name of his own. Thanos.

/


/

It was Sunday at the Pole, a day of rest for most of its inhabitants. Jane had found people chatting in the galley over warm cookies that Zeke had made, discussing a novel Jane hadn't read in the greenhouse, a debate about existentialism that made Jane's head hurt in the lounge, a basketball game going on in the gym, and planning for a fire drill in the conference room. She finally found Selby in the Music Room, playing something hauntingly beautiful and vaguely familiar at the electronic piano.

He hadn't heard her come in and the keyboard was turned so that his back was mostly to her, so she let the door quietly ease closed behind her and waited.

"That was beautiful," she said when he finished, his fingers still lingering lightly over the keys.

Startled, he whipped around to face her.

"What was it? I kind of recognized it." She crossed the room to stand beside him.

He swallowed visibly. "Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. First movement. That's the one people recognize. My favorite is the third, actually, but…"

"Oh, okay, yeah, I've heard of that. I'd love to hear the third movement."

"Uh, well…no, actually, I can't stay. I have to go pick up my laundry," he said, already rising from the chair.

"Oh. Well, can we meet somewhere afterward and talk? I wanted to…you know, explain myself. And what's really been going on here. And apologize for all the-"

"Jane, I really have to go," he said, fidgeting with his fingers and circling around her to head for the door.

"Okay, but when can we meet?" she asked, following him in confusion. The air was so dry and cool it wasn't as though his clothes were going to sour from a few extra minutes left in the washing machine.

"I, uh, I don't really think that's such a good idea, after all." His hand was already turning the doorknob.

"Selby, wait. What's wrong?" They stood in the open doorway, her hand on his arm.

He looked down at her hand and shrugged away. "I really don't think that's a good idea. Look, this has been working just fine the way it is. You keep to your business, and I'll keep to mine. I don't want to get tangled up in the stuff you're involved with. I don't want…just stay away from me, okay, Jane?"

Jane stared at him in open-mouthed shock, and rather than waiting for an answer he turned and hurried away. She felt like something was shriveling and dying inside her. Finally she'd been about to work things out with Selby and rid herself of the guilt she'd been carrying once she'd realized everything bad she'd thought about him had been no more than a manipulation crafted by Loki. Finally she'd been about to tell someone the truth. The whole truth. She'd even wanted to ask his advice on how long she should wait for Loki to come back, and how she should address his disappearance, and when she should contact SHIELD. She'd wanted a confidante. She needed one. Clearly he already knew something – maybe Loki had told him something – and he didn't want to know any more.

She stepped back into the silent room, stared at the four walls, the empty chairs, the instruments on their stands and in their boxes. She went over to the keyboard, sat down, and started tapping out the melody to Heart and Soul. It was lifeless and empty next to Selby's Moonlight Sonata and she stopped after ten notes.

She felt suddenly, overwhelmingly, crushingly alone. Anger flashed through her. It was Loki's fault. He'd deliberately separated her from everyone here, especially the person she had the most in common with. He'd made her world shrink from just this patch of ice to just him. She'd started to break free of him, then she'd found out who he really was and again he'd become the center of her very small world. And now he was gone.

She wasn't alone, of course, not really. Not anymore. She'd re-established some of the earlier tentative friendships and they along with newer ones had been growing. It wasn't like she wanted Loki here. It wasn't like she needed him. But no one here – no one anywhere, not even SHIELD – would understand. Not the isolation and inability to escape that was the South Pole in winter. Not the humiliation over having been made a fool of all that time. Not the terror of living two doors down from Loki and not being able to tell anyone. Not the gut-clenching feedback-loop of emotions set off after he nearly choked her to death. Not how confused and unsettled she was, when she felt like she should be single-minded, after every despicable thing he'd done. She detested him. She feared him. But she also worried about him now. For his life. For his fate in Asgard. For his relationship with Thor, and his mother and father. She was curious about him, and had only become more curious after he left yesterday. Who was he, who had he been, who had he become, and how? Why was he so full of anger? How many of all those things written about him were true?

It was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to be over. It was supposed to be The End. She would help Loki leave. Thor and his father would deal with him, and Jane would get on with her life and her work without having to worry about anyone potentially wanting to kill or maim her. Loki left, and he probably wasn't coming back. More than likely he'd made it safe and sound, and she would soon get on with her life, somehow, eventually. But somehow she'd expected to be happier about it.

/


/

Loki stared with unblinking eyes at the harsh rocky landscape that seemed to hang unsupported in the cold black emptiness of space, absent any normal structure of a realm, seemingly absent any atmosphere, although he'd never had any trouble breathing here. He turned his gaze on Brokk, who stepped gingerly over the rocky ground and peered up a familiar staircase that curved away from view, lit from underneath with glowing blue lights.

He felt all the weight of the curse that was his very existence come crashing down on him. This was what he'd risked some new Midgardian version of travel through Yggdrasil for? This was what he'd pushed himself and Jane so hard for? This was what he'd given himself up to Thor and let himself be hauled back to Asgard for? To be dragged right back here? Full circle. The place of his demise. The place of his rebirth. Or was that the bridge? Or the Weapons Vault? Or Odin's bedside? Or the throne of Asgard? Or a pile of rubble in Stark's tower in New York?

His thoughts swam, growing muddied in space and time.

Brokk called out a greeting, bringing Loki back to the here and the now.

He didn't bother looking around, assessing his surroundings. There was no point. There was no escape. He couldn't flee from this place; he wasn't even really in this place. He was sitting on a cushioned wooden bench in Brokk's dwelling on Svartalfheim. If he concentrated hard enough, he could almost feel the cushions beneath him. But perhaps he was merely imagining it.

If he was going to make it out of here, it wasn't going to be through physical strength; his body wasn't here. His mind was here, his consciousness, and while it was subject to manipulation he knew how to guard against that.

"You've made some new friends, have you, Brokk?" Loki asked, finally taking a step forward of his own. He blinked, and felt a familiar weight settle over his body, atop his head. Yes, his mind, thus far, at least, was his own. He now wore his armor and leather and horned helmet. Everything from the point of the horns to the tip of his fingers to the toe of his boots was an illusion – a projection of his own mind – but it was a comfortable illusion, and one in which he felt at ease and could project confidence, whether he actually felt it or not.

Brokk turned back toward him. "You offered me a challenge. Thanos offered me a realm."

Loki allowed every bit of his scorn to show on his face. "Why does that sound familiar? I hope you didn't choose Midgard. It isn't worth the trouble. Although there's a mortal there called Bruce Banner you should seek out if you did choose Midgard."

"I've no desire to possess such a childish realm, the most backward and ignorant of all the Nine. What does it have to offer me? What did it have to offer you?"

Loki had his reasons – and simple opportunity – but he wasn't about to discuss it with Brokk. Besides, right now he was better off keeping his silence and listening. Learning.

"It doesn't matter anyway," Brokk continued. "I turned him down. I don't want a realm. What would I do with one? What dreadful work that must be. I want power. My kind of power. Raw power." He began looking around again.

Loki's eyes shifted to the side as one of those enormous creatures slithered past, through nearby rocks. "And the nameless one thought my ambition little," Loki muttered, just loud enough for Brokk to hear. Loki had wanted both. And then he thought perhaps that was actually where he'd gone wrong. Once he had the tesseract, he could have done anything, gone anywhere, left the Nine Realms far behind for good. But instead of fleeing with the tesseract to learn to master it, to write a new destiny for himself, he'd done exactly as he'd been instructed, ensuring a mammoth portal opened up and letting in a useless, mindless, and unnecessarily destructive army he didn't fully control.

Why? He had left. He'd let go of Gungnir by his own choice, because he never wanted to see Asgard or those two faces ever again. And yet he'd chosen to stake his claim on one of the Nine. The one of the Nine on which Thor had already staked a claim. He hadn't hidden himself from Heimdall then; he hadn't thought they yet had any means to reach him, and he wanted to rub his subjugation of Midgard in their face. But he'd also known that someday, someday – for the Aesir and the false Aesir both were very long-lived – Thor would come. Perhaps even Odin, his false father to face him just as he'd faced his true father in the Ice War. Rulers of realms testing each other on a battlefield. Equals. It was a grand image. It had been replaced by one of Thor hauling him up from a shallow pit of debris and closing manacles over his wrists.

"You have returned."

Loki's heart quickened from the pace it had settled down to, but he betrayed no other sign of surprise. He lowered his head slightly and angled it slowly, deliberately to the right, his eyes peering out coldly from underneath the lines of the helmet. Brokk was giving this subservient creature some kind of bow, while the creature himself stared at Loki. If his face wore an expression of surprise, Loki could not detect it. Detecting anything at all on that half-concealed and almost corpse-like face was difficult.

"I brought you a gift."

"He does not require gifts. You know what he requires," the one who called himself only "The Other" answered.

"Isn't this part of it, though? You wish him to suffer, do you not? You can keep him here as long as you want. Forever, if it pleases you. Although I suppose my library will eventually become unusable as his body rots on my sofa. You could torment him for a time, then use him as a bargaining chip."

Loki's lips pressed into a thin line but he otherwise maintained his proud, unaffected stance. Apparently I somewhat underestimated how upset he was after our last falling out. Loki pictured himself slicing Brokk open and emptying his body of its contents. Slowly.

"Do you think we have nothing better to do with our time than torture him? He is nothing. An embarrassment. A failure. A boy who still believes himself to be a king. We owe him unending pain, but he is bothered little by physical pain. His agony will come from other hands. Hands he fears even more than ours."

I fear nothing! he thought, even though he knew it wasn't entirely true. He did fear what could happen to him here, if he became truly trapped – though it was hard for him to imagine that he wouldn't eventually be able to find some means of gaining his release. He feared no other hands, though, and controlled his growing desire to unleash a verbal assault in hopes of learning who exactly they believed he feared. He had learned the hard way that antagonizing The Lesser would not improve his circumstances, even if it had at times been highly enjoyable, almost a game.

"Their children may fear them, lord of this land, but grown Aesir have no special fear of the Frost Giants, no more so than the Fire Giants, or a Light Elf and his arrow, or a Dark Elf and his scimitar."

Frost Giants… Something hard and heavy formed in his stomach and sat there, growing. He felt the muscles of his face stretching and pulling taut. He had forgotten. Of course they knew. They'd asked, and he'd answered like a blubbering child. They knew everything. What they hadn't gotten from his lips, once he'd gotten hold of himself after his "rescue" from the abyss, they'd gotten from his mind as they sifted through his memories like grains of sand through fingers. But how did Brokk know? What did Brokk know? None of this was making any sense.

The Other approached Brokk with a suddenness that Loki recognized well. He hoped his supposed "friend" was about to suffer tremendously.

Instead the creature merely drew close, letting Brokk feel his breath. "He has given you a plan. Do you ignore it? He admires initiative. But he insists on obedience."

"Of course I will obey," Brokk said with another of his little bows.

Obsequious little toad.

"And yet you doubt us. Perhaps you need proof?" Suddenly The Other whirled and drew up to Loki's side almost as though to a magnet, with no clear movement of legs, wrapping a clawed thick hand around Loki's left wrist. "Show us, King of Lies."

Loki glared at him obstinately and refused to be intimidated. He was taller. He was stronger. He was a king. He was a god.

"What- What is-" Brokk stuttered out.

Loki turned his glare on Brokk, and saw that he was staring at Loki's arm. He looked down in time to see the silver mail armor disintegrating along with the green cloth over and under it – not the gold armor or clothing he'd had on a moment earlier – and his skin turning dark blue. He tried to twist his hand away from the grip of…the Frost Giant who held it, for it was no longer Thanos's lackey whose painful grip held him in place. Cold sank into his bones as the landscape turned to solid ice, but quickly retreated from his arm as the ghastly blue flesh spread. "Release me!" he demanded, a slight quaver in his voice that he detested, when no amount of tugging at his arm helped. The Frost Giant stared down at him, so much larger, making him feel so small, and grinned. He remembered his knives, and pulled one from its hiding spot, thrusting it into the giant's chest in a flash. The giant didn't react at all, while Loki's eyes were stuck on his right hand, which had now turned blue, too. Something about his face felt different; he knew the helmet was gone, but this was something else. His eyes went wide in sudden terror as his hand flew to his forehead and found not the smooth face he'd grown up with but the ridged thickened brow of a Frost Giant. His left wrist was released so suddenly that he stumbled backward and fell, clawing at his face, digging sharpened nails into the skin that did not belong there, that could not be there, that was not him-

His fingers hit hard metal. They flew up and found the horns. They dropped down and found smooth, undamaged skin.

Rage consumed him. At how easily and quickly he'd been manipulated. At his humiliation. At being made a fool of. At being exposed for what he was in front of Brokk. He lunged up from the rocky ground at The Putrid One and charged him, only to pass right through him and nearly stumble to the ground again. He clung hard to the thread of rationality that now reminded him that his body existed here only as much as the creature before him allowed it to. It was not currently within his power to cause the bodily harm he desired. Currently, he repeated to himself.

"This is his true form. He is despised for it by those who claim to love him," the creature said with a sneer of disgust. "Do you understand now?"

Brokk nodded slowly, staring hard at Loki, while Loki stared daggers back at the both of them and began to consider how he was going to talk his way out of this. Apparently they thought too little of him to bother with torturing him – the words were far enough past now that they held no sting. He would be nothing for them, less than nothing for them, if it meant he would be released from this place. There was pride and then there was pure stupidity. And if they wished to somehow release him to some band of Frost Giants, well, none had wandered into this land of rock and night, and there weren't likely to be any on Svartalfheim, either. Frost Giants never left Jotunheim, not without help, not since losing the Ice Casket. The lackey had spoken of a plan. Loki didn't think much of his plans, after how the last one had turned out. He could not be placed in the Frost Giants' hands here, except through manipulation of his mind, and they weren't interested in that, beyond the little demonstration. Outside of this land, absent the scepter, they had no power over him or anyone else. That meant he had only Brokk to fear. And he did not fear Brokk.

As Loki's confidence grew, he watched Brokk lean in close to The Other – Loki had always detested being close to him, for his breath reeked of death – and speak something in lowered tones that Loki could not hear even when he tried. He had no ears here; he supposed he heard what he was permitted to hear. The Other then placed a hand against Brokk's forehead and the Dark Elf disappeared.

Loki's confidence faltered. Brokk was back in his body, in his home, in Svartalfheim. Sitting next to his own body. His empty body. His vulnerable body.

The Other turned toward him, and Loki caught a flash of red mouth and teeth. He'd never known for certain if that was actually blood in the creature's mouth or not. He hadn't cared to look closely enough to attempt to find out.

"I've told you enough. I won't be answering any further questions until you answer some of mine. What is this place? Who are you? You haven't even given me a name."

"We have no need of names here. We speak for our master."

"So you are not the master?"

The creature shrank back as if offended. His movements were strange and unsettling in no way Loki could put a finger on. "I am a trusted servant to the master. Some have called me 'The Other,' when they have felt the need for a name."

Loki scoffed at that. He was fast losing his patience with this disgusting creature who'd plucked him from an eternity in dark and airless abyss. "If you aren't worthy even of a name, then I'll call you Nothing, for that is what you must be."

His host, his savior, was unfazed. "As you wish, Loki Odinson," he said, emphasizing the family name.

Loki clenched his fists and energy crackled there.

As host and savior became captor, Loki called him many other names, from the insulting to the purely vulgar, and those hadn't bothered The Other either. When he finally learned the name Thanos he insulted him as well…once and never again. Loki learned to play their game, to stand his ground right up to a line he learned to recognize, and then to give in, or at least to appear to, and the captive became the ally. The scepter was crafted to his specifications, and was placed in his hands.

"You will succeed," Thanos said, when Loki climbed the smooth twisting stairs to come before him for the second and last time. "Or you will long for death."

Loki started to respond, but the tall creature with the dark violet face, gleaming white teeth, and eerily glowing blue eyes was already turning back around. Loki had never seen a throne room in which the king faced away from his supplicants. Thanos, of course, clearly did not see himself as a mere king. The lackey was bowing. Loki would never bow to anyone again, or kneel, or swear fealty of any sort that put him beneath anyone else.

He followed The Other back down the stairs. He gathered tendril after tendril of energy emitted by the tesseract, extending even here, now that he knew what to look for, now that he'd seen it and felt it up close on the shadow visit to Midgard The Other had helped him make. When he'd gathered and knotted enough of them together he forced them into coherence and, trembling from the effort, he pummeled the door until it gave way – just a crack, but a crack was all he needed.

"You failed. You failed him."

"I failed? Your army failed. You overestimated the Chitauri."

"We had endless numbers of Chitauri eager for the conquest. All lost. You underestimated the might of that little world."

"How was I to know how far they'd advanced?" And how far they've advanced indeed, Loki thought, an image of Jane suddenly coming to mind, in the moment she'd first shown him what came to be known as Pathfinder, out on top of the DSL. It was ugly and vulgar to think of her while here; her image did not belong here. He forced it aside.

"You were unfocused. You did not lead as you should have."

"How easy it is to say such things while hovering here among your rocks. What do you want from me now, anyway? I held up my end of the bargain. I made it to Midgard. I scattered her heroes. I opened the portal and let your force through. I was prepared to give you the tesseract, had the Chitauri succeeded."

"And yet we do not have it, do we? You failed, Jotun. We should have known you would fail. You have failed at everything you've ever attempted. You are unworthy of his time, but he made you a promise. Others will ensure your suffering. You failed. You will long for death."

Before Loki could bite out a response, The Other was again right in front of him and he was willing himself not to flinch as he watched the gray six-fingered hand come to his cheek in a mockery of a caress. The pressure was gentle but the contact lit up his nerves, sending pain signals screaming up into his brain and down into his spine. He reached for a knife and his mind produced one, but of course it and his hand passed harmlessly through Nothing. The pain came in waves crashing endlessly one on top of the next until he lost track of time and began to drown in it. He clamped his jaw down even tighter, not even feeling it over the continuously firing nerves, refusing to scream, refusing to give Nothing the satisfaction. It will end. It will end. It will end it will end it will end…

Loki felt his head swaying forward, his body threatening to follow, and jerked himself back upright. His eyes sprang open at the same time as his arms shot forward to strike. But there was nothing there. He looked around him and for a moment couldn't recognize where he was. Then he knew. Brokk's dwelling. His library. His wooden bench, his red and black cushions. His circle of blue and silver flames.

He stared at the candles and narrowed his eyes. Brokk was gone. And there had not been yellow candles with silver flame there before, only white ones with blue flame. He drew in a slow breath, still a little shaky although the pain had faded, and let it out again, steadier now. Blue flame he hadn't seen before. He knew how Brokk used the silver flame.

He stood and approached the line marked by the candles. He reached out a hand, and as soon as his fingers met the perimeter, he met resistance. He pushed against the invisible wall and felt the familiar give, for it was soft, almost spongy, but soft did not mean breakable. Not even Thor's strength would be able to force these magical walls – this magical cage – to give way. Loki knew; he and Brokk had tested it on Thor once, and he'd driven himself to exhaustion and a minor injury trying to escape. Under different circumstances, Loki might have laughed at the irony that he himself was now caged by this magic. He was in no mood for laughter. He reached out with magic to try to force the wall to part, then to try to knock over a candle, then to try to blow out a flame. It didn't work, and he'd known it wouldn't, but couldn't resist trying. The enchantment was on the outside, beyond his reach.

He walked the interior perimeter, circling the bench, then standing on it and reaching above, then levitating a bit higher until the wall curved inward and met in a domed roof at the ceiling, testing the cage for weakness. He found none, of course. He'd come to Brokk for a reason. Still, Brokk was arrogant, even more so now that Thanos and his lackey were dangling "raw power" of some sort before him; Loki could almost imagine it was the tesseract, but there was no way Odin would ever let that off of Asgard again. Arrogance… Loki let his eyes drift closed for a moment. Arrogance leads to miscalculations.

He drew his brown cloak around him and fell still. He readied himself for escape.


/

My apologies for slow responses to reviews on the last chapter and likely this one – I'm out of town right now and have limited internet access. I deeply appreciate every single review, and I will respond, it just might take me a little longer than usual this next week or so.

Did you notice, at about 52 seconds, there's a brief glimpse of Loki's back in the early Thor 2 trailer? I got so ridiculously excited when I spotted this after many viewing (which I'll admit, focused mostly on Loki's more obvious appearance at the end, and Thor's distressing "when (not if) you betray me…"

Previews from the next chapter: Unfortunately, all I can really say without being completely spoiler-y is that Loki and Brokk have a rather unfriendly confrontation. If you happen to want more of a spoiler, let me know, and I'll send you one via PM (though again I may be a bit slow to respond, sorry!).

And excerpt:

Loki merely watched him, and the two large Dark Elf warriors who'd followed him into the library.

"But first things first." He turned to the elves at his side, in full black and tan battle garb, black leather helmets, black leather boots with silver spikes protruding from the toes, black leather gloves with similar spikes at the knuckles. "We're going to take you to Asgard, and when things get bad enough, they'll deliver you to Jotunheim themselves."