Next chapter! Viola!

God bless,

Anonymitea64


One of Loki Laufeyson's most prized talents was the sharpness of his mind and tongue. Or, rather, his sub-talent which stemmed from this sharpness of mind, coupled with no hesitancy of gauging people who irked him with a few well-chosen words: his natural ability to send beings into a state of crazed obstinacy of beating out their exasperation out onto his face and stick sharp objects into his torso. But, alas - what could he do about his genius? It was a gift of his and it would simply be a shame for it to go unpractised.

And he was always of this opinion until life threw him into a crucible of Hel and he encountered a few beings who surpassed even his own deviation from the path he, perhaps, should have trodden upon.

A pleasant conversation with Odin was all well and good, and Loki grew his heart into stone well enough to withstand the old man's cutting words. How he wished he could kill him, as he was informed of his birthright. How he wished he could watch him burn in a fire of equal heat and torture which he had created for him. Oh, how Loki wished he could kill the man he once called Father, as his sentence was spoken and he was confined within four walls for the rest of his life in this world. His veins frothed with the desire to outstretch his hands, not only the sharpness of his tongue, and get an opportunity for his pupils to constrict into two dagger points which he would simultaneously assault this wanton occupying Asgard's throne, as he was taken down into the dungeons.

He even cursed his mother, which led to torment which surpassed physical, after he had allowed himself to seek comfort within her hands, the hands which had turned into an illusion and reminded him of the thing he feared and hated most, knowingly or not: Loki Laufeyson was forsaken, alone. All were against him, never would he smile again without stones crushing his chest into a bloody slab of tissue.

And Henrietta Knott…

Loki gritted his teeth, then shakily snapped the book he was holding shut. He tried to tell himself that he hadn't thought of her as he tore that city down. He tried to tell himself that, despite recollecting strange pieces of feeling that made his heart feel alive, he hadn't cast them aside for power and some sort of made chase of control and fulfilment. He tried to contain himself, rage and fury crawling over every inch of his skin, making him tremble and his veins stand out on his neck and forward.

A smile, an untouched laugh of a girl, her soft hand on his face, so long ago, then later, when she could think; when she could ask him what was on his mind; when she could kiss his cheeks and be his one companion, one who he did not irk with slashes of knives but with pokes of soft fingers and impish grins.

Oh, I do like you, Loki of Asgard.

The book was obliterated as it struck the wall, its spine cracking and the unspoiled pages now furled and crumpled miserably beneath it, as it lay desolate and unwanted at the base of his prison. Loki's chest heaved up and down as he stood in this torpid state of turmoil; the echoes of his yell of rage still curled off the walls of his cell; somewhere behind his spine emotions gathered, as foetid as sludge: black resentment, bitterness, wild fury, sharp blame. He was an embodiment of the worst, a plague, a forsaken being of sin and twisted lies and mind, and yet… Odin, how cruel fate was, how it cursed and damned him! He, for all his thick masks of apathy and madness, could still feel that soft weight of that child who used to love him, that soft weight when he had carried it as it slept on his chest and shoulder, honest and trusting, tearing sobs from his chest and pulling tears of delicate overwhelm from his eyes.

Loki hated, he hated, he hated! He hated all, all! He wished to burn and destroy and descend Asgard into the very Hel he was placed in! He wished to steal breath and still hearts and make them feel his rage with more than just their hearts, but with their empty veins!

But he was locked up. Mocking, rich pieces furnished his cell. A golden bowl with delicious, sweet grapes stood on a polished table. A god, it all seemed to be saying, raising its eyebrows at him quizzically, you're a god, you say? And yet look at you. You're not much more than a dog locked up in a cage; you're no more than a criminal, torn from the spires of paradise into the echoing void of the craters below it. Where is your power? Where are your words? Where is your purpose, now?

Loki obliterated everything with his sparks, until even his bed was splintered, filling his nostrils with an acrid stench of destruction. How ironic. Wasn't that exactly what Odin had said? Wherever he went, there was nothing but destruction, and death.

Loki's rage stilled like magma setting. He looked about him, cold in his chest and the pit of his stomach and in the splinters of the furniture, then despair and helplessness crept through his veins and clutched at his throat.

"All eternity," he muttered breathlessly, as he limped over to the wall and slid down next to it, his blasted, damaged back barely keeping him upright as he panted. "All eternity."

What he wanted, he didn't know. It was as though he had forgotten what he had aimed for in the first place. His mind was a muddle of slippery objects, objects bearing labels like: destiny, memory, touch; consequence, error, pain; morals, values, gain.

His eyes narrowed as he rootled in his ravaged mind. What was it that Loki sought? What was it, besides power and satisfaction of recognition? There must have been something. There must have been something…

He whimpered and clutched at his temples, feeling as though his head was falling apart. As though there was a physical being pushing on its walls and laughing, moving about every piece, every block of his mind around to its will. He felt as though something else had created this mess. It wasn't his, this chaos in his brain and chest, it wasn't… it couldn't be… it felt foreign and strange, as though that oaf Thor had been in his room and thrown everything about, out of its place, to spite him.

But this wasn't Thor, no. This was something far more sinister, something which he couldn't fathom and organise, something which didn't belong in his head. Loki clutched at his throbbing throat, then closed his eyes and tried to descend into himself, touch and feel the burned and bleeding parts, find the scattered keys to the different rooms organising his head, observe both the damage and reparations - or rather, the change - time had created.

But he couldn't. All he found as soon as he closed his eyes was a sharp, cold pain, something which sent electricity sizzling the raw inside him; he jerked awake with a gasp and furled his fingers deep into the fabric of the sides of the coat he was clad in, seeking, seeking, always seeking and finding… nothing.

He had sought for so long, he had forgotten what he had begun to search for in the first place. Perhaps then, when this mad hunt began, the end goal was tangible and clear; now, all he wished he could find was a place to find a recluse. Something which brought him away from the tangible, from the pain, away, away, away, away to a place from which...

From which Hattie Knott came from?

"No," Loki muttered to himself, assuming a stone-cold facade, which, as usual, was tinged with sardonic and selfish humour. "Hattie Knott is gone, so are you. She'll be free to do what she wants and go to Hel with me after."

No, she wouldn't go to Hel, a voice chuckled in his head. Even in the afterlife, you will find nothing but emptiness and cold, that will penetrate even your jotun skin.

Loki laughed, then. His laugh was scraping and cold, and an insight to the beginning of his inevitable descent into madness.

Some three weeks after the beginning of his imprisonment, and after Frigga had finally left him to succumb to his punishments and thoughts and the furniture had been restored from his outbursts, Loki looked up from his book to find Ahlan the Jailer watching him.

He met his eyes - dark and cold like the bite of steel - and watched a smile equally sharp and tinged with relish of grief unfold on his scarred face. This man was taller than Thor, had a build which could rival the god of thunder (particularly his developed shoulders) dark hair hanging around his face and growing out the lower part of it, and oh, Loki often watched him with a placid mask hiding the twisted thoughts of infliction he directed at him. They weren't usual inflictions. They were awful inflictions. Malefic ones.

Loki turned his attention back to his book, thinking Ahlan would get bored of him and go, as was usually the case, for he had other prisoners to torture. The reason Loki wasn't getting tortured was because Frigga had begged it out of Odin, and the latter, the majestic, splendid, merciful ruler he was, agreed to spare him of it. At least for a little while.

Ahlan the Jailer slowly stepped through the golden barrier which imprisoned him. He wandered about for a few moments, taking a look at the books piled on the table - he took one up, flicked at a page leisurely, then chuckled and placed it to the side.

Loki watched him. He had neither the energy nor the patience to engage in taunting which he, undoubtedly, would end up on the lower step of, since he was the one behind bars.

"So, Laufeyson," Ahlan started, looking up at him from the book he placed to the side, then flicked his eyes over the rich, gleaming furniture and crimson bed covers. "A nice little place you have here."

Loki smiled, though it didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Indeed," he replied, then languidly flicked a page and trained his eyes on the paper. "It's kept quite pristine. And in fact, I'd like to keep it that way."

Ahlan raised his eyebrows.

"Really? You were never a scrupulous one, before you still had any hope of retaining a title for yourself."

Loki stopped his fists from clenching, though it took him an effort to do so, and showed his teeth as his face muscles worked into a wider smile.

"I have never felt the need to keep my floors free from blood before," he said calmly, looking up at him suggestively. "So I suggest you pay heed to your surroundings, Jailer. It would give the servants a fright if they saw your head jammed into the fruit platter when they were called to clean your entrails off my floor."

Ahlan only laughed, rolling his heavily-clad shoulders. "Always so violent. If you were my son, perhaps I would be proud at where your thoughts go, Laufeyson, I'll give you that. But since you have been introduced into the higher ranks, after your miserable wretch of a self was picked up off the steps of Jotunheim by the Allfather…"

Loki clutched his book so hard, he tormented the pages.

"... More was expected of you. An un-warped sense of justice. A speck of honour or two. But you failed."

Ahlan sank down onto Loki's bed. Loki considered - if he beheaded the Jailer, would he still get fruit delivered to him after breakfast? Loki was very fond of grapes. They were smooth and round and sweet and reminded him of what wine tasted like.

Ahlan nodded. "You failed quite spectacularly, actually. It should be marked with some sort of stamp of excellence... I don't think anybody has yet stooped so low as the bastard prince of Asgard."

Loki decided he liked grapes too much, though fire now coursed through his lungs and his back stiffened and flared most irritatingly. "What do you want," he said coolly, smoothing the pages with a scarred thumb.

"Me?" Ahlan smiled. "I want nothing. I do not have a will, here. I am assigned to babysit all you drooling toddlers who couldn't behave. What my superiors, what the Allfather wishes, I do."

Loki chuckled, then shut the book and placed it to the side. He stood and folded his hands behind his back.

"I'll tell you what, Ahlan," he murmured, smiling, then travelled towards the fruit bowl and lazily picked up a heavy branch loaded with crimson, glistening fruit. "Perhaps if you were wise enough to aid me in my so-called little slip-up…"

Loki dangled the fruit into his mouth and snatched a few grapes with his teeth. After swallowing, he continued.

"... You wouldn't be a dungeon dog today, with about as much regard from Odin as the rest of us, shut up in our little kennels."

Ahlan watched him without a change in his strange, steel smile.

"Oh, I don't know about that," he murmured, watching as Loki picked a few grapes off the branch and began popping them into his mouth, apparently completely at his leisure. "But I do know that I certainly wouldn't have the pleasure of being your personal torturer. And in this case, I do."

Loki paused with the empty branch in his hand, his mind ticking, but before anything could happen the entire floor gave way.

He felt the firm slipping out from under his feet, then air rushing against his form and face, panic strangling him, before landing with a crack on hard, stone flags, in the dark, on his right leg.

He cried out, but his leg was unharmed - it was his back which didn't comply with his vitality. Electricity jarred through it, stiffening his lower spine, sending pain shooting up and down it and rendering getting up completely out of the question.

He cursed darkly and generously, clutching at his back, his nostrils flared and fury romping with alarm somewhere in his chest. Loki snarled and looked up. It was dark. A placid drip, drip, drip was coming somewhere to his left, but he couldn't see.

He tried to calm his nerves, but failed. Panic seized his limbs and arrested his breathing. The burns on his back began to sear, though it was nothing but cold in the shadows of wherever he had fallen into. Loki felt something icy grab hold of his chest and squeeze, wiggling its thumb in his throat as his eyes darted around in panic.

He remembered an equally horrible place. He remembered the feeling of burning on his back, the horror of it never coming to an end, knowing that it would not have time to heal before his flesh was seared again, as he was bent and shaped into submission by the Mad Titan.

Loki trembled. Fear blended with trepidation, weaving terror, weaving dread, weaving dark spots in his vision which he could barely distinguish from the shadow before him.

Get up, something screamed from within him, get up and fight.

But Loki's knees gave way. His torso slammed against the rock beneath him, hands sliding to the sides, already slippery with sweat. He felt the smoothness of the rock with his cheek as he gasped, terror raking through his body, knowing, knowing that something was going to happen which would send him begging and screaming.

Footsteps approached him; a dark laugh was heard.

"Your words are empty," Ahlan chuckled, his heavy boots going thunk, thunk, thunk against the thick stone. "Your threats… your pledges… you in general."

It took an immense effort for Loki not to cry out; to keep silent though every tendon and fibre in his being screamed for him to flee. But Loki had forgotten; he didn't need to move to retaliate. He had his magic, he had his tricks…

Loki froze, his right hand extended in vain. His insides turned to jagged ice, because his sparks did not come.

"Especially here," Ahlan continued, standing just beside him as he panted and tried to heave himself up. "In this place, magic is forbidden; all who use it are silenced, here. Within them it is sealed."

All broke loose. Loki sprang, erect, his back screaming, then was knocked down with a rough blow to his forehead. He staggered back and stumbled, feeling a trickle of blood seep down his face. His mind screamed in question: what had happened? How did he become so helpless, so weak? How did he fall so low in his own eyes?

He tried to fight and struggle, but in vain he did, rendered disheartened to keep fighting, for what was the point? His existence was nothing but a string of punishments and torture, he was isolated, and his one pledge was disregarded, his pledge to see, to feel upon his chest and shoulder once more.

His assaults were knocked as though he was naught but a wild child, his steps easily overtaken, his limbs and back assaulted. He received a blow to the head - thick metal clanged against his skull; Loki felt his knees give out, and then blackness devoured his consciousness as he plunged into unfeeling.


Loki opened his eyes.

For a few instances, he couldn't fathom where it was he was in. It was dark. Perhaps if he wasn't a jotun, he would have thought it was cold, but he was and thus felt nothing but strange jets of heat rippling around his ankles and knees.

Then he realised he couldn't move. Heavy, clanking shackles bound his limbs and attached them to his neck, which a heavy choker gripped. He was kneeling, his hands pulled above his head; oh, his back. His back…

He was even denied the feeling of wetness filling his eyes as everything was torn from him. Only a hollow feeling of despair filled his soul as he shook, staring at the floor. His face felt strange. Heavy. As though the despair was pulling down his lips.

Loki looked up as a ray of yellow light broke through the darkness, then as many others lit up the room dimly. The room was giant and hollow, built of stone. It must have been below the palace dungeons, for it was crude even for prison standards; the lamps weren't shaped, the chains connected to the walls were heavy and lumped together, stray links hanging like earrings and clinking as the strange, hot breeze stirred them.

Loki felt his fingers twitch, then flicked his eyes upwards and beheld Ahlan the Jailer, holding nothing but a torch in his huge hand. Loki flinched from the glare and the heat.

"Well," Ahlan said. "Doesn't this look altogether a better sight, Jeehl?"

Jeehl, a rather smooth-skinned young Asgardian guard, with shining eyes and blond tresses hanging around his head, did not speak. But he didn't share Ahlan's sadistic pleasure, looking upon Loki with something short of pity in his well-guarded eyes.

"Yes, captain."

It was an automated reply, which Loki took no notice of, for he was gazing with a crazed obstinacy of the flickering flames which Ahlan held, his pupils quivering.

Ahlan chuckled, then leaned down to look him in the face.

"Well, Laufeyson?" he murmured, raising his heavy eyebrows. "What now? Will you not speak? Will you not try to spit your way out of the situation you are in?"

It was at that moment that the strange gleam in the Jailer's eyes was interpreted. Because Loki, pulling back his lips in a snarl, found that he couldn't part them. A sharp pain, like thousands of small stabs and pinpricks roved over his mouth, as though it was being pulled apart in many directions.

And then Loki realised. This had happened once before when he had fraternised with some dwarves. His lips were sewn shut.

Ahlan laughed as he froze, as his breathing began to quicken. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't talk; he couldn't talk!

"Oh, Laufeyson," Ahlan smoothed his brown beard and shook his head solemnly, almost in pity. "What use are you without your tools?"

Loki began to shake. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't obey him; he was left to toss like a trussed-up bird, his attempts at freedom futile.

Ahlan glanced at the torch he was holding. Loki did too.

"I've heard that jotuns are immune to cold," Ahlan remarked. "But they despise the heat rather awfully."

Odin, Odin, Odin, Odin…

Loki emitted a series of strangled cries from his lungs, which only came out as a mangled noise of helplessness through his nose.

"Hm." Ahlan shrugged. "I suppose it only leaves us to find out if it's true."

Loki saw nothing but orange and heat. He heard nothing, staring at the flames unblinking, his vision pulsing, things tearing inside him as Ahlan brought the torch closer… closer to his skin…


When Loki's eyes fluttered open - the number of times they had done so, and he had found himself half-dead and yet unable to die, his skin searing and his physical form broken, he couldn't count - he was not in the dungeons. He could scarcely believe it, couldn't believe it. There was… light. Odin, there was daylight before him. It was fresh and unspoiled, straight from the sun, straight from the outside.

Loki breathed. He breathed in, out, then in and out again. The daylight didn't change. A pebble shifted from the weight on his lungs and dropped from them.

He flexed his fingers, one by one, wondering whether they were answering to him. But softness greeted his touch, enveloping his hands in comfort and tenderness. Was he dreaming? Was he finally dead? Was this perhaps a small mercy before he was again plunged head-first into flame and liquid agony?

But no; nothing of the sort happened. Something cool passed over his forehead, over his neck. It was so soft, so tender, Loki made a broken sound of longing, relief, blinking.

"Oh! Oh, thank Odin…"

Loki's mind floated back from where it wandered. His eyes scoured detail: flowers on the walls; a white-painted ceiling; a wrought lamp still and unlit to his left.

And before him was a woman. Her hair was ebony and braided down her back, her face oval and thin, her eyes grey and huge and… his? His! They were his!

He stared at her, slowly unravelling within completely, delving into the depths of them, seeking, demanding, longing. It was her! It was her! It was her!

Henrietta Knott blinked furiously as she watched him, pressed a fist to her mouth, then cried, "Oh, you're awake…!"

And she flew at him. He felt her head on his chest and shoulder, a flowery scent in his nostrils - a fresh, crisp scent - and arms around his torso, so tight, so delighted!

He tried to open his mouth to tell her, to cry out and whisper words of recognition and seek reassurement, to express his inexorable exaltation of seeing her alive - oh, alive! - and then… remembered; his lips were closed and mangled and so was he.

"Oh, Loki of Asgard," Henrietta whispered, clutching him tight, then placed a kiss on his cheek, making him want to break down wail like a newborn. "I thought you'd never wake up. That I would live to see you waste away and never speak another word to you…"

He tried desperately to lift his hands to return the embrace, but he couldn't move a muscle. Each one felt as though it was laden down with lead, trapped beneath an invisible boulder. After a moment, just after he registered her heart beating very close to his, unwittingly restarting it and coaxing it to drum to the same steady rhythm, she sat up and looked at him.

He observed her; it was all he could do, and she smiled at him. She smiled at him, tears rolling down her cheeks, then she took one of his hands. He felt it, smooth and warm and vibrating in his own calloused one and shut his eyes for a moment to try and taste the sensation, feeling traces of warmth in a chest which was always so hollow and cold.

"We found you in a park," she was saying, thumbing circles in his palm. "You were chained… There was a lot of green light, and flashing, and out of this gathering of sparks you fell out. I won't ask you what happened, you'll tell me about it later. After we found you, my friend mended your bones, and we brought you here, to my house… Uncle Haldanson's house."

And that was when his hand became empty again. Loki opened his eyes to see what prompted this hasty punishment, and found she was looking away from him. Her face… it was hardening. Her tears for him were stopping.

He watched with something near horror as she wiped them away and beheld him as though he was a stranger. A stranger! He wasn't a stranger, he was Loki! He was her Loki of Asgard!

Loki tried to tell her. He stopped his lungs mid-swell and tried with all his might to sit up, to move; all he managed to do was twitch to the right, let alone take her hand or shake her shoulder.

Henrietta bowed her head once, somehow knowing what was on his mind. "Forgive me. By all rights, I should be treating you as though you're a criminal."

What? What?

She must have read the expression on his face and nodded. There was a dry smile on her face, a very faint one, and Loki read something in her eyes he knew all too well.

"You… killed my uncle, Loki Odinson. When you tried to take over this city, remember?"

Loki's heart sank so low that he felt it almost being split upon his ribs and made a shattered sound of pain, then shut his eyes and grew limp against the covers, sapped out of the little strength he had. That's right. He forgot, down in the dungeons, where there wasn't a speck of light to watch to mark the passing of time. Who was he to blame now? Who was he to take his anger out on? Here, there was no Odin. There wasn't even an Ahlan. There was only Henrietta. Perhaps this was all a cruel dream? No, he wouldn't ever be able to dream up a room so soft and Knottie as she was now, because he had not yet seen her as a woman.

And now, he was going to be forsaken again. If not harmed physically, he would be arrested to suffer within himself, unable to call out for aid, unable to move and save himself. He was completely and utterly at the mercy of the girl who was once the only reason why he still breathed freely; now, the woman who would view him as everybody else did. Oh, damned horror. Accursed horror…! There was no end to this! He was trapped between two Hels, one personal, one physical, and each fought to claim him, pulling at his limbs with hooks, disregarding his pleas, his begging…

"By all rights," Henrietta's voice jarred him out of his wallowing, and he once more felt something very pleasant and cool passing over his skin. "I should be taking revenge on you. That's how the honour is in Asgard. One kills your father, you go and kill him."

She traced his forehead, his cheeks, then cooled his eyes. She ran the wet and cold down his neck, across his collarbones, then took his palms and began to smooth his dry skin with the cloth.

"But I don't think you could be destroyed any more than you are already, so I'll leave revenge for another time."

Loki opened his eyes, his chest beginning to move up and down as he swallowed repeatedly. Still, he didn't cry, couldn't cry. Perhaps he wasn't worthy of tears, just as Odin had made him unworthy of death - forbade Death to call his name, rendering him trapped in existence until he thought otherwise.

Henrietta wasn't looking at him, still working on his palms with her lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed. Loki begged her to turn, urged her to turn to look; she must have heard him. Was she reading his mind?

Her eyes fixed on his, and for a small moment, something in those two pools of silver in her face mirrored his.

"You suffer. You have walked through places not many ever have, full of darkness and pain," she murmured, putting the cloth to the side. "And yet there is no remorse in your eyes for your deeds which sent you there."

Loki felt both his hands being taken, his chains and shackles jingling. She put them together, enveloping them in her own, her small ones, then pressed this bundle of entwined hands and iron to his chest; a comfortable weight, against all odds, for there was warmth in it and Loki had gotten used to the weight of the metal on his limbs.

"Hush, now," she said softly, breaking one hand free to run across his forehead and brush the hair out of his eyes. "Rest, Loki Odinson. You are tired and weary. Your bones are brittle and your muscles exhausted."

Loki's breathing regulated, as did his heartbeat. She thumbed his cheek, then urged him to be calm with half a smile, before her face returned to hurt and became cold again.

Loki feared she would go, she would leave him; but she seemed to understand and kept smoothing his forehead. Oh, foolish, benevolent girl! She always understood him. She always knew, even if he hadn't uttered a word or thought a conscious thought, what it was he wanted. She knew when to take his hand, when to endure his prods, when to snap him out of wallowing with a mischievous, irksome word or two. His little friend. His once-friend.

"Sleep, now," she whispered, one hand still at his chest. "You will wake again, and again we will speak then."

Loki didn't think he'd sleep; he didn't want to sleep, this was as far away from Hel as he would ever get. But he felt his eyelids growing heavy to her murmur, and when she began to brush her thumb over his eyelids, a ripple of restful pleasure came through him, and it wasn't long before he had sunk once more into darkness.