Henrietta watched the god of lies as much as she could for the next four days, after Filip Greer had left. The latter called on her twice and checked over Loki twice, each time commenting on the severity of his bodily damage which was only within the power of time and rest to fix.

"It's beyond me," Filip said with some regret, after checking over Laufeyson's head again, "this level of destruction. I doubt he'll wake up soon, and if he does, he must have remarkable dexterity."

Henrietta had rubbed her face, then nodded, trying to be understanding. Filip looked at her with a softened face and moved from Loki to put a hand on her shoulder.

"Have hope, Henrietta. I've contacted the blacksmith, and though he's out of the country, he'll be back soon to negotiate. He was quite interested that we need Odin's Quarts… but in a professional manner. He enquired about particle concentration and size… I didn't say anything about, you know."

He flicked his head at Laufeyson, whose lips were pressed together with many thick, coarse lines of metal thread, and they both repressed a shudder of quiet horror.

"I told him it was Asgardian metal. Thread. Said it was a project of mine and that I needed something I can cut it with. He seemed more than happy to work with me, Jorgen was."

"Thanks, Filip," Henrietta replied and tried to smile. "Whatever would I do without you?"

"You'd be in a pretty complicated situation, that's for sure," he replied with a laugh. "Well, I'll leave you to it. Don't sit by him all day long."

They looked at Loki, who still showed no signs of life, though he was breathing.

"Get some air. Have you worked on your book?"

Henrietta almost laughed. "How can I, when Layden's like this?"

"You're right. Well, I need to go, but call me as soon as he wakes up."

Most of the time, Henrietta spent in the spare bedroom, sitting on the chair by his bed and thinking very hard. One moment, she felt like throwing her arms around the god of mischief's chest and weeping; the next she felt as though she should cast him out, turn him over to the authorities, though that option would be far too cruel to be allowed. Facts remained that this being, lying still upon the bedsheets, had killed hundreds without a second thought. He had killed Uncle Haldanson, her dear, dear, friend and guardian.

Her uncle hadn't even gotten to see her graduate; he hadn't even gotten to see her go on her first date. She had often imagined his rough, grumpy face frowning as a boy came to collect her for an hour or two, then the boy cowering as an over-two-metre tall man with daggers and swords in his belt suggestively brandished an axe and told him politely that she is to be back before dinner.

But he wouldn't ever do that, and it was this being's fault. It was Loki Odinson's fault.

She would hate him, she would suppress tears of anger as she turned from him to look out of the window into the garden, unable to look at him. She would cry out questions and accusations in whisper, then turn to behold him with eyes flashing in her face… and then the anger would be reduced to mere flickers of candle, as she looked at his face. As she looked at his lips, sunken cheeks, burn scars distorting his flesh and remembered how dull and hollow his eyes had looked in that park.

Then, she would remember how they used to flash, how they darted and picked out details out of the world which were even hidden to her. His smile would be white and sharp, his attention would be almost wholly on her, if he wasn't in a mood to dwell on the dark things which he kept in his heart. How she longed to be young again, how she longed to be a lot shorter and more stupid and naively trusting once more. Then, she would be able to shout with happiness as he appeared and bury her face into his coat, and be devoured in an embrace and a laugh in return, deemed his little sprite, then be whisked off for a day of laughter and mischief and send her poor uncle's heart into palpitations when the god of tricks neglected to bring her back until after dark.

If she had none of these memories and feelings, she would have been closer to indifferent and treated him simply out of kindness and necessity to preserve her own conscience; but she had loved him, Odin knew she had loved him with every fibre of her being since she was two, which was why she felt rage instead of apathy at moments, and the rest she spent making sure he was comfortable and cold.

Henrietta knew he was a jotun; she had fished it out of his head when she still read minds freely and without guilt, for he kept this thought almost always on his mind, as though he was sucking on a particularly sickening sweet which he could neither spit out nor dissolve. She knew he valued cold and couldn't stand heat over a certain point, and it was why she often wept when she passed the cold cloth over his poor, scorched skin. He had been tortured, no doubt; and no doubt for his crimes.

While Henrietta believed in redemption and consequences, to be treated so cruelly wasn't ever something she was going to tolerate. Imprisonment for the rest of his life was enough. For a being so intelligent to be confined inside his head, forever to revel in memory until he was sick of it, and forsaken, was enough. He didn't need to be put through Hel before death; not when he had already been through it.

And just when Henrietta had begun to deliberate the possibility of him never waking up, his eyes had fluttered open. They were far away, confused, his blinking slow and costly.

Henrietta watched with her breath held as his breathing became livelier and irregular, gaunt chest rising up, pausing, falling. The fingers tangled in the covers twitched, and then so did the rest of him.

When his eyes began to move over the ceiling and travelled towards her, she forgot everything about him she had ever held in contempt; she gave a cry and threw herself at him, holding him tight and kissing him. She heard his breathing stop when she had wrapped her arms around him, then restart again when she kissed him on the cheek. He wasn't feverish, there was hope.

She sat back to look at him, smiling, then kept it on her face even though she fell into his eyes; those eyes had all the sadness of the world within them. They were never like this. They were never this sad, never this hopeless, never this hurt.

One thought led to the next, as she took his hand and thumbed circles within it, talking to reassure him, and she remembered why he had been put through what he had.

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

His eyes had clouded over, then he had relapsed into resignation, and Henrietta - who never read minds now, for it was no more than trespassing on private grounds to her and she didn't like to do it - didn't need to delve into his thoughts to guess what ran through his. It wasn't regret of such bad deeds - it was blame directed at fate, anger that her uncle simply happened to be there when he went on his mad spree; but also hopelessness, so thread-bare and nonexistent; horror, founded on the thought that someone he trusted would leave his soul alone.

But Henrietta was not cruel. She was angry at him, so terribly angry, but she didn't wish him hurt, so she took his hand and did her best to reassure him until he drifted off to sleep again, though hurt tried to poison her mind and words, something which she exiled for the moment.

The god of lies drifted in and out of consciousness during the next three days. A day after he had awoken, Filip came with a brass chisel and nail, and after two hours of sweating and cursing under his breath managed to get the shackles off Loki's arms and legs.

"The one around his neck I won't try," he said. "It's better if it's unlocked the proper way - I doubt it will be free from magical properties, and it will do him no harm if we try and wrench it off. I'll ask Jorgen about it… I'll tell him it's related to this project of mine, though he may get curious. Though it's worth a try…. Perhaps he knows where to get a key for this kind of thing."

After checking Loki over, he left, deeming his life and pulse stable enough for him to come and visit in a few days to see how he's getting on.

As to Loki Laufeyson, he would often wake for fifteen to twenty minutes at a time, in random intervals in which he slept, apparently soundly and dreamlessly. When he did, he would make no attempt at communication, simply staring at Henrietta, his eyes turning from accusation to despair, to something which almost seemed like being pleased to see her, to rage so fierce his eyes flashed, to placid resignation, as though someone was accidentally pressing the wrong buttons inside him and changing his mood so frantically it was worrisome and uncanny. Still, Henrietta tried to make the best of the situation and kept up a steady stream of dialogue whenever he woke, to turn both their thoughts from the harsh reality of the situation and reassure him that all was as well as it could be.

Usually, she changed his clothes whilst he was unconscious, but when she entered the spare bedroom with a box of her uncle's old shirts she had gotten from a cupboard under the stairs, she found him awake and with enough energy to turn his head towards her as she came in.

"Good morning," she said, almost smiling to see him responsive. "I see you have more energy today. That's good… perhaps I don't need to be so worried about getting that quartz, so soon."

She had told him pieces about what Filip and she planned to do, so that he could finally talk and get the chains off his neck, so this quartz was no news to him, though he didn't react upon receiving the news, merely dropping his eyes then shifting them to the window.

He didn't give her an answer when she spoke - of course he didn't - and watched her as she placed the box on the floor then straightened, his eyebrows raised and his eyes sullen.

"These are my uncle's clothes," she said with equal politeness. "They're slightly too big for you…"

She took a cotton shirt out of the box and spread it out in the air for him to see. It wasn't slightly too big, it was far too big, sized XXL, whereas the being staring at her with his eyebrows raised wasn't much above an M with barely any flesh on his bones.

She lowered the shirt and glanced at him, expecting some sort of reaction. He did react - he scoffed, then turned his face towards the ceiling. Henrietta sighed, put down the shirt, then sat on the bed by his legs.

"I know they're hardly to your taste, but I don't think current circumstances allow you to be picky."

He didn't react. Henrietta would have thought the ceiling was far better company or a welcome sight than she was, if she didn't know how huge this being's ego was and how it suffered due to what position he was in.

She tried to appease it - she doubted he would react kindly to her dressing him, now that he was awake. She had to get used to it in the beginning too; she was used to him being the provider, protector, everything was initiated by him. Now, she had to be the one upon whom he was reliant, for the present at least.

She sighed. "Can you lift your hands?"

Silence. Henrietta pursed her lips, then folded her arms, displeased. "Loki of Asgard."

He kept his eyes on the ceiling, though she saw them change from anger into something which was only missing tears, his breathing slightly torn and heavy, and her heart softened.

"I'm afraid that if you don't show me you can move, I'm going to have to dress you myself," she said gently. "And I don't think you would like that."

When still he did not move, she searched for his hands under the covers and tried to extract one from beneath it; she did, except it immediately travelled back under them snappishly, as soon as she let go of it.

She glared at him, her temper rising.

"Can you stop being so childish? If you can move your hands, good. You can dress yourself. I'll leave the shirt on the bed, or better yet, the box, and you can pick something out which you don't turn your nose up at. Just a brief reminder, that these are my uncle Haldansons, so you don't deserve them at all, yet do with them what you wish. I expect you'll set them all on fire, as is your usual solution to all your problems."

Her plan worked: his eyes flashed and he whipped his face around to face her, the sheets moving as he balled his hands into fists under them.

"What is it? It's the truth. It hurts, doesn't it? You especially." Now that she started, she couldn't stop, all those things she had wanted to say to him running off her tongue. "The god of lies. The person who has been your undoing is you; the person who has been my undoing is you! Now, the most you can do is make an effort to communicate and put on the dratted shirt!"

His chest moved up and down as he pierced her with his eyes, his mouth twisting as he scowled beneath the black threads.

"You can speak, you don't need your mouth for that," she reasoned for him. "Where are your sparks and illusions? I used to adore them, and now they may come in useful. They can speak for you, or at least tell me what has happened to you, what made you kill all those people in New York and laugh whilst doing so! You made me think you're cruel and have no heart, that I've been wrong to be your friend for all these years! " she cried, tears springing up in her eyes. "Why don't you speak? Come, shout at me, defend yourself! Speak, once-friend, now foe; speak, Loki of Asgard!"

Loki sat up furiously, almost tearing the cushions as he clawed his hands into them to remain upright. They both froze in some sort of mad stand-off, unbreathing and unblinking, challenge and fury in each look, tears of rage and sorrow present in both, but visible only on Henrietta's face.

Holding Loki's gaze was like calmly trying to look at a huge glacier whilst standing in a small, wooden boat in the arctic; the knowledge of it soon meeting it and crashing it into splinters if the boat didn't stop spiked like its jagged edges horrifying to the core. Many would have cowered and cried out with fear and shielded their eyes, for he had every piece of ice in his eyes which made up a jotun's heart, at present, a terrifying sight.

However, Henrietta was Haldanson's niece, and it would have taken a lot for her to be silenced by such fury, even though she felt her bone marrow freeze and heart quiver. She was ready to claw back and snarl, though she still held control over herself, for she had practised it over the years to channel and contain her curious wanders into the minds of others.

But she was surprised, startled out of her fury, because Loki Odinson broke first. He began to quiver; his fists loosened, his form stooped and he slumped, his head hanging, his chest heavy with sorrow. His fury had ebbed away into the void of helplessness.

Henrietta smeared her angry tears away and realised what the matter was.

"You cannot," she said, voicelessly. "Not even a little. Your sparks are gone?"

The god of lies folded his arms around himself and shut his eyes, as though his stomach pained him. Henrietta moved forward, then laid a hand on his shoulder, clutching it tight, thumbing circles in the loose fabric of his shirt.

A long silence passed, during which Loki's arms loosened and lay still in his lap. Henrietta took one of them in both of hers firmly. Loki looked up at her; his hair was dishevelled and long, uncut black strands were draped at the pale of his taut skin and hung down to his waist.

"Can you get them back?" she asked, keeping her eyes fixed on their hands. "Your magic?"

Loki brought a finger up to his lips hesitantly, traced a few threads, then a shudder rolled through him and he let his hand drop again.

"Ah, I see. When your lips are undone, you'll do so."

He glanced up at her, and she fell into his eyes, once so blue and brilliant, now worn and faded, the hue of a sick man confined to his death bed. Despite all, despite every word she had spoken aimed to sever her betrayed feelings from him, she felt the thread of connection taut and strong between them, something linking their hearts through their eyes and their veins, something which even calamity committed couldn't sever.

Loki hesitated, then brought a hand up to her chin and lifted it gently. Henrietta felt the rays of the sun leaking through the window on her face, and realised he did it so he could see her eyes catch their rays. She longed to hear him speak, and even considered reaching out to his mind so that she could hear what it was he was thinking; was it similar to what he had said when they had met those times, when she was younger? Was he thinking that he was right, her grey eyes had broken hearts as he had said; his, by refusing him what he needed most?

She bowed her head and his fingers slipped from her chin.

"Was I right? About your magic returning as soon as your mouth is open?

He nodded. She breathed a sigh of relief, almost drooping in relief. "That's good. Oh, that's…"

She stopped, remembering his mad laughter and the screams which followed, as he used his sparks. The death and destruction which had followed, the blood her heart had bled when her letter to Mr Stark was answered, that yes, he had been stopped and taken into custody, imprisoned. Then she remembered how, many years before that, he had constructed things for her pleasure, tricked policemen, pedestrians, then teleported away with her, laughing giddily, his sparks viridescent, flashing, violent and yet harmless, meant only for her glee.

She looked back up at him and found that he had looked away. She nodded, patted his hand twice, then let go; but he moved and trapped her hand within his long, scarred fingers, his grip very strong for one who could barely move half a week ago.

They looked at one another. Henrietta paused, then gently but firmly extracted her hand from his. She felt as though she was pulling his ribs out by doing so, as he looked at her, desperate, pleading, almost urging her to see reason, and yet she couldn't help but run from him and what he had done; from the way he had destroyed everything they had built within one another from when she was five years old.

"Change your clothes, Loki of Asgard," she said quietly, on the verge of tears. "I will be back in a few moments."

She made to stand, but Loki's grip turned to iron and a sound of pain escaped her; his eyes flashed, then subdued into something cold and raw and hurt, and he let her go, his fingers curling on empty air.

Henrietta watched him turn away, watched his jaw set, then quitted the room hastily, biting her lip to block the flow of tears building up behind her eyes.


Loki was left alone, again, and once again curses flooded his mouth and tainted his tongue, but he couldn't spit them out as he was used to; of course he couldn't, his lips were sewn shut!

But they didn't go away, as his thoughts stumbled into dark tunnels and cried out in rage. They bubbled and frothed in his mouth, down his throat, into the pit of his stomach, making him twist uncomfortably and grit his teeth. He had read Henrietta's eyes, after she had attempted to break out of his hand, and hadn't seen admiration, he hadn't seen anything which he so loved to see when she was still young; Loki had seen pity.

Pity! something in his lungs roared, smashing and overturning furniture and glass ornaments in the palace of his mind. Loki Laufeyson, the god of lies, trickery, the Silvertongued, the Lie-smith, the Cunning, was being pitied by a mortal relation of a banished being!

Loki's chest heaved up and down; when his eyes came back into focus, he saw that the veins upon his arms had stood out, filled with seething rage. He was dependent upon her, this foolish girl, was he? She and her insipid friend intended to rescue him, like a damsel in distress out his prison of flesh and thread?! Fools, ignorants, blithering idiots! Let them, let them cut, let them obtain, and then let them drown in their own blood as he spoke his thanks in the language of daggers and steel!

How unwise were they to sever his gag made of metal. If only they knew what thoughts and hopes he cherished, how black and malignant they were, their sanctimonious little eyes would burn into crisps inside their sockets and they would be left as helpless and blundering as they deemed him!

Loki crashed out of his mad reverie to realise that he was upon his knees on the covers, and that he had ripped the shirt Henrietta had left upon the bed to shreds along with the bedsheets.

He froze, then looked at them, at the mangled strips of fabric in his fists and around him, then dropped them and pressed the base of his palms to his eyes. He was once again forsaken, though this time not only by others around him. His senses were forsaking him, one by one, and vile coils of serpents replaced them, hissing in his head, into his ears, blackening his blood, poisoning his thoughts, blocking out the rays of light he should have delighted in ever since he had left the dungeons of the Asgard palace. He was helpless and terrible, and so much of it was his doing, his doing!

He would have cried out to Odin, as he used to when nothing else would listen, but now Odin had forsook him too. He had nobody but his own vile, repulsive self to turn to, nobody but himself, and he hated himself, he hated himself to the point of nausea and the taste of bile.

And that was where he was wrong, for he was not himself; he knew not what resided in him ever since he had let the electric blue of the tesseract touch upon his soul and move everything within his head to its own accord. He knew not, even though he was no longer under its influence, that he was far from free, and it had all been ascertained in the dungeons, as Ahlan burned him into submission and tore every strip of humanity and dignity away from him with his torch.

The morning of the day he had somehow been mercifully plucked from his prison, Loki had wished for death deeper than ever before. He hadn't looked up in long months, not even when Ahlan had arrived to inform him of a short break in the heat and a change of activities to darkness and starvation, for he wouldn't be undoing his lips for a long time, as he had done before so he could gulp down fluid and swallow lumps of meat which verged on indigestible.

Loki's sanity had been hanging on a thread; any more, and he would be reduced to a jibbering, snivelling wreck, but a wreck one could not recognise by sight, for it would be in his mind this would happen, his countenance and body too frozen into stone to be labelled as a madman upon sight.

"But, don't worry," Ahlan had chuckled, then flashed his teeth at Jeehl, who had looked as though his heart had finally hardened into stone as the rest of the guards of the dungeons had, when they spent too long in them, "we will be back soon, and then we can have a nice, long chat about what you've been doing in the meantime."

Loki hadn't heard him, for he had begun to be oblivious to sound, and destroyed by his thoughts, which began to play the role of a tyrant; he began to hear and see things which did not exist, see his mother dying whilst he stood there motionless, unmoving, encased in black ice as she called for him to come to her; he began to see a twisted beast, monster, great and blue as his biological father, with red eyes covering its skin, its hands taloned and bloody with black, dripping it everywhere - watching him as he tore apart cities, as he ravaged the halls and gardens of his youth, murdering with a smile of glee, as he fed on the cries of children.

Then, the monster would turn to him, from a small shape in a fluffy, pink coat and yellow, water-proof boots, which stared up at the monster in horror, and chuckle.

"You," it would say in its horrible voice, Loki's very own voice, low and grating like steel and tripled, "Look at yourself, Laufeyson. This is what you are."

Then it would turn back to small Henrietta and leer.

"Look at your friend, Knottie… Isn't he just the way you imagined him?"

Loki didn't scream at them in reply any more, with his voice shrill and hoarse from terror and denial, from begging Henrietta not to listen, that it wasn't him, that he was over here, that he wasn't like that. Unbeknownst to him, a sickness, something twisted and vile had started to creep into his mind, sending his body thinning and growing weaker by the day. He became twitchy, and pain was becoming every object, all the vicinity in his world; he forgot sunshine, he forgot feelings; there was nothing about him but a black pit, and he was falling endlessly within it, so deep that there was no speck of light visible whenever he turned to find but a star in the dark.

Once or twice, the thought that he was becoming deranged crossed his mind, as did the awareness that if this continued, he would suffer worse than physical pain. Oh, how funny that Odin had this planned, that he was capable of such sadism: Loki would see his mind deteriorate and live within it, a prison in itself, for Odin had forbidden Death to call his name.

Loki Laufeyson furled his hand into the material of the shirt he was wearing, trying to subdue the throbbing of his heart. After his head stopped swimming, he lifted it off the rags and mess he made, then looked about him, at the flowered wallpaper, at the soft old, carpets, at the pink curtains hanging on the window behind which birds sang; at the sane, firm setting he had been placed in, somehow torn from that black tunnel, thrust into something different. Perhaps a Hel of lesser pain, but a Hel nevertheless, for now he had an additional four mountains to move and he was hardly able to sit up, let alone begin to attempt to push them out of his way.

He clenched his jaw, then tore off his shirt, fury fuelling his strength which his ability to regenerate returned, scattering buttons over the sheets. He just managed to place his feet on the floor and sit on the bed to try and stoop and fish around in the box for a shirt to don, when there was a knock on the door and Henrietta entered.

"Are you done-?"

She paused. Loki watched her, ready to bite and hurt should she attempt to wag her finger at him. Her eyes moved over the torn sheets, shirt, buttons, then settled on him as he panted, alive but very miserably so, sitting on the bed. He dared her to speak; then felt his stomach give a jolt as he matched her now-adult, astonished face with the small, darling one in his memory and realised that it was the same person. She knew him. She had loved him like a brother. And, oh! Loki had loved her too, and fates help him, he still did, with every inch of his wrecked and wretched form.

He bowed his head to try and keep his entrails in place as bitterness flooded his mouth.

But Henrietta didn't say anything. Loki looked up to see her removing the ruined fabric off the bed, calm and silent though her face was pink; then realised that he was yet to put on a shirt.

He stared at her, feeling the warmth being sucked from his face as a little flame of hope and realisation was kindled in his breast.

She felt embarrassed by his indecency, did she? Oh dear, oh dear indeed. Loki only had his shirt off; his trousers were intact. He was hardly indecent, not by this age's standard… Hm. Could it be that she found him attractive?

Somehow, this thought roused him, and he no longer felt pathetic; his stomach stopped quivering and he breathed out a sigh of relief as his intestines relaxed. If he was capable of making a woman blush, then there was - oh, there was! - hope for him yet.

"Stop smiling like that," Henrietta murmured as he directed his eyes at her, almost afraid he had been wrong. "It's not funny."

He hadn't been wrong, and it was very funny. Knowing her, she had probably absolutely no idea what it was like to love with both fire and heart. Perhaps even no idea what it was like to kiss, or hold another's hand with pink cheeks, let alone peruse a male abdomen at her leisure.

Loki watched her without moving, then fancied he saw the corners of her own lips turned up, even though her eyes darted everywhere but at him. She was smiling because he was gleeful; he was smiling because he was right. She had absolutely no idea, her first love was yet to be had, she was pristine as a lily.

Darling little fledgling.

When she exited to dispose of the ruined cloth and returned with fresh sheets, his eyes found hers; and her face glowed so hot that she had to turn away for a moment, her eyes tightly shut.

"Loki of Asgard, put on a shirt."

Hm… no.

Instead, he sighed sharply through his nose, which - as he thought - made her turn to look at him, then he raised an eyebrow and tilted his head at her: embarrassed, my dear?

How wonderfully she blushed! How her dark lashes swept over the two, huge lakes she had in her face!

Then he took her in, all of her: her slight, elegant frame, black hair in a braid past her waist, the little curls which had escaped from hear forehead and brushed her high cheekbones; her petite nose and red lips, which he couldn't have imagined a more vivacious shade of crimson.

His heart gave a funny jolt; he felt a pang of embarrassment as he registered his thoughts, but then his common sense reassured him: Henrietta was neither a child, nor related to him. She was a grown woman, now, though Odin only knew what age she was - mature, had a will and judgement of her own, and she was completely unspoiled.

Perhaps it was just as well that he had been away as she reached adulthood. Perhaps he would have ruined this little flower, if he had been free; but now, he was free. Loki felt another flame spring up beside hope, in his breast, and that was excitement. What a strange and yet familiar feeling it was, he thought, as he watched Henrietta working.

I haven't ruined this lily, he thought, but now, I can tickle its petals and teach it about what being an adult is really like.

But his scheme and its effect was ruined when Henrietta paused on her way to the door, bit on her lip, dived into her uncle's box, threw a shirt at his head with a 'put something on, you rascal', then began to change the bedsheets with her back to him, as he clawed it off his face and stood with a huff, with the sullen intention to do everything but he was told.


Hello! There may be some time before the next update arrives... but it will. Enjoy, review!

God Bless,

Anonymitea64