Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/515587.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M, Multi
  Fandom:
      The_Avengers_(2012), Thor_(2011)
  Relationship:
      Loki/Thor, Loki/Odin
  Character:
      Loki, Odin, Thor, Frigga, Original_Character
  Additional Tags:
      put_the_fic_down_and_walk_away, seriously_don't_read_it, jesus_christ
      what_is_wrong_with_me, Rape, non-con, Incest, filial_incest, Fraternal
      Incest, no_it's_okay_because_they're_not_related, well_it's_still_rape_so
      no, a_mara_is_kind_of_like_a_succubus, perverting_norse_mythology_for_my
      own_needs, written_in_gchat_and_edited_by_a_monkey, it's_all_Howl's_fault
      for_using_that_'daddy_no'_graphic, Underage_-_Freeform, the_moral_of_the
      story_is_that_asgard_needs_sex_ed, and_telling_lies_is_bad, wet_dreams,
      Transformation, Possession, Demons, Magic, bad_books, forbidden
      knowledge, this_is_why_it's_important_to_listen_to_your_mother, have_i
      warned_everyone_sufficiently_yet, please_don't_read_this, 2012_is_year_of
      write_whatever_the_fuck_i_want, whatever_the_fuck_i_want_becomes_more_and
      more_disturbing, author_needs_to_see_a_therapist, characters_really
      really_need_to_see_a_therapist, thor_is_made_of_meat, odin_allfather_is
      kind_of_a_shit_parent, you_are_going_to_regret_reading_this, author
      mysteriously_still_not_banned_from_using_the_english_language, marvel_do
      not_approve_of_this_and_neither_does_norway
  Stats:
      Published: 2012-09-18 Words: 10614
****** A Little Knowledge ******
by apiphile
Summary
     A summary of the plot: teenage Loki's secretive behaviour and
     Asgard's lack of sex ed cause major, horrible problems.
     A summary of the reasons you shouldn't read this: it is basically a
     trigger warning made into a fic. SERIOUSLY DON'T READ IT.
Notes
     I JUST SAID DON'T READ IT.
See the end of the work for more notes
There are few entities in the universe who are able to claim that they
discovered ejaculation and shape-shifting in the same day: Loki Laufeyson might
choose to conceal the fact, but he is among their number.
He wakes from a dream he only remembers fragments of, bright shining fragments,
hot wet fragments, to find he has wet legs and, rather more to his concern, is
a mouse.
Consequently, after a few minutes of sitting quivering in a patch of slowly-
drying semen on his bedsheets and hoping that no one comes in, it is the mouse
thing that sticks in his mind and not what he assumes is another unfortunate
accident of the sort he thought he’d grown out of by now. Loki isn’t quite sure
of the precise moment that he stops being a mouse, only that suddenly he isn’t
one anymore, and his bed is still wet.
He hides the sheets in the laundry and does what any overly-curious youth does
in the face of a newly-discovered skill: he tries to repeat it. Had Loki
encountered ejaculation and shape-shifting separately, he might perhaps have
devoted this morning to the fine and noble art of masturbation, and none of the
following would have occurred: as it is, he is about to make one of a series of
mistakes.
Being of a naturally secretive bent, Loki tells no one about either discovery,
and creeps away to the gallery of artefacts in order to concentrate on muscine
experiences.
The gallery of artefacts is long and vaulted and technically out of bounds for
the majority of Asgardians, even princes, but Loki has always been interested
in what’s forbidden to him, and in this regard at least he is supported by his
brother’s sense of adventure. He is familiar with the gallery of artefacts and
its cold alcoves: no one comes down to it, and it is the perfect place to
ensure privacy. He has already spent many a contemplative hour staring
transfixed at the glowing blue cube which holds pride of place among the war
relics.
On the morning he awakes as a mouse the gallery is again deserted, and Loki
gives himself two hours in which to pace and think about the particular
physical sensation of being not-man. He has no idea how long it will be before
someone comes looking for him, but the most frequent searcher is always his
brother, and unless Thor has wriggled out of it, he is in captivity to a tutor
for the morning, trying to learn the lore that Loki has already memorised.
Other thoughts and sensations flash through his head: he grows very cold for a
while, but this is something that comes to him in the night, when he has fears
of being a monster, and he knows it is meaningless. He grows somewhat lighter
between the legs for a while, but aside from alarming him he pays little
attention to it and focuses again on the sensation of being not-man. The
smallness he remembers particularly: the vastness of the world, which has
always given him pause even as he learns that he is of the line that should
rule it. Then there is the shape of his back, which is quite different, and the
loudness of the world, and the greyness of the world, and the stench of it –
A small black cat steps sedately from a pile of Loki’s clothes, and trots with
its tail in the air through the gallery of artefacts.
It is here that Loki Laufeyson loses his head somewhat. A sensible course of
action would be to accustom himself to his new form, to investigate the
possibilities of his newfound skill, and to test both what other forms he is
capable of and rather crucially how long it takes to wear off. Instead, he is
so giddy with the possibilities of transformation that he bolts from the
gallery, leaving his clothes in an ungainly heap, and scurries into the first
passageway that he encounters.
Pubescent, over-excited, and more assured of his own intelligent than
experience has given him opportunities to explore, Loki unleashes a storm of
poor decisions. He races through under floor spaces and between walls, moving
too quickly to take in the architecture or the route that he is taking,
concerned only with this new-found freedom and the power it gives him to side-
step every carefully-imposed rule.
He passes through the Library of Forbidden knowledge, knowing now that he is
capable of returning to read whatever he pleases; he prowls past the armoury
with little interest – weapons are more Thor’s area – and slips as graceful as
a small black shadow into the next available open maw.
Loki finds himself now in some sleeping quarters. He has no idea to whom the
quarters have been granted, but, as he sidles under the bed without so much as
lowering his fluffy black tail, he is almost certain they do not belong to the
two who have entered.
There is a guardian of the artefacts, who is removing his armour, and there is
a maiden of the kitchens, and she is helping him. On some other day Loki might
be bored with the antics of servants – they are beneath him and their chatter
is mindless and irritating – but today, on this day of discovery and new
worlds, he is curious to see what such people say when they believe they are
truly alone.
The maiden of the kitchen says, “Do you have to go back soon?”
The guardian of the artefacts says, “No one goes down there, who’s going to
miss me?”
Loki finds this dull, but now that he is beneath the bed he is also quite sure
that the appearance of a small black cat in the room will cause comment. Cats
are bad omens: he is therefore somewhat unsurprised that his own ill-favoured
face and body have chosen this beast to mutate into. He remains frozen beneath
the bed, peering up at the half-naked guardian and his half-naked maiden.
His education thus far has been of the great wars Asgard has waged against the
other realms (there have been many), the new lands discovered by their
ancestors (there have been many), and the heroic deeds done by those who came
before them which should never be forgotten (there have been an inexcusable
amount, which is why Thor is still sitting with his tutor trying to force it
into his affable but not overly-intelligent head). There has been a great deal
of so-and-so begat so-and-so, and so-and-so son of so-and-so, but very little
on the matter of how this begetting was achieved, or how a man comes by sons.
Certainly no one has ever taken Loki aside and spoken to him of desire, and if
they’ve told Thor his brother has finally discovered an ability to keep his
mouth shut. Loki flattens his currently very small body against the floor and
cranes his neck to watch as the maiden of the kitchen and the guardian of the
artefacts kiss. After they kiss, and before they inadvertently progress his
sexual education to a significantly higher level than it has previously
attained, the guardian of the artefacts says, “By the nine realms, woman, I
love you,” with such passion in his voice that Loki nearly lets out a startled
sound.
He remains pressed to the floor as the woman in question comes to her knees and
takes the organ of generation – which Loki has always found a rather confusing
name, and which Thor and Loki privately agreed is probably called that because
it generates piss – into her mouth. He is entirely unsure as to what she hopes
to achieve by this, but the guardian seems to be both delighted and pained by
it, and soon clutches the top of the maiden’s head.
The sounds they make are quite unearthly. Loki wonders if they have been
possessed by some sorcery or other that is making them behave this way, but
then he recalls the voice of the guardian as he choked on his I love you and
knows that whatever has them in its grip is not malevolence but some great kind
force which he has yet to encounter.
When at last some great event occurs – Loki is not sure what but he sees the
maiden’s throat working as if she is swallowing something, and wrinkles his
nose at the idea that she must be drinking the guardian’s piss - they
eventually pull apart from each other, and the guardian stoops to kiss his
maiden as she kneels before him as if he is a king. Loki watches in some
fascination at the sudden tenderness and the satiety that infuses their
movements as they dress and giggle and touch each other.
When they leave he rolls onto his back – it’s surprisingly comfortable – and
stares up at the underside of the bed in great confusion. Who knows what other
mysteries of adulthood he is likely to uncover if he continues his spying? And
who knows how troublesome they are likely to prove to his clearly incomplete
education?
Loki takes what he believes to be the very rational decision to sneak back to
the Library of Forbidden Knowledge and fill his mind up with as much as he can,
to take the edge off any further surprises. This decision is slightly impeded
by his inability to remember quite how he got here or indeed where exactly
“here” is, but he knows from his adventures with his brother that when lost and
bewildered in a strange part of Asgard the most fruitful course of action is
often to pick a direction purely at random and keep moving until one finds
something one recognises.
With this in mind he slinks out from under the bed, and inserts his tiny cat
body into the first crevice that looks promising.
The young prince is just getting his bearings in the space between to walls
which he believes to be somewhere outside the armoury, when all at once the
space is a lot smaller, his back hurts, and he is abruptly rather cold. It
takes only a second or two for him to realise, even before he looks down at his
hands, and it makes no difference: he is stuck.
A small slinky black kitten is perfectly designed for creeping through the
hidden corners of Asgard: a boy, no matter how much narrower than his brother
he is and no matter how lithe and practiced at slipping unseen into forbidden
rooms, does not have the flexibility nor the lack of mass to squeeze through
the same gaps. Loki’s shoulders, slim though they are, are too wide for the
dusty groove in which he finds himself. He might conceivably squirm free where
he turned sideways, but his expansion has been too swift: he is stuck, unable
to move his arms, bent double, and quite, quite naked.
Loki uses this opportunity to delineate the limits of his vocabulary by using
every single swear word and oath he knows.
When he has exhausted his supply of foul language, he squirms, wriggles, and
bucks against the confines of the wall, to little avail. He mainly succeeds in
scratching and scraping his sides, and in stirring up an inordinate amount of
dust.
After this Loki indulges in a brief crying fit and some self-pity, as there
doesn’t seem to be a lot else he can do and he’s quite sure no one is going to
look for him inside a wall, if they actually notice that he’s missing before
dinnertime.
This proves to be a bad idea, as Loki has no way of reaching his own face to
wipe away the snot when he gets into some acutely self-pitying sniffling, and
this just makes him feel worse. He tries to concentrate on being small, and
feeling small, and the sensation of smallness, but his mind is more interested
in the twin trains of thought: I will never get out of here, and no one will
ever talk to me the way he did to her, a thought which has had little solid
point of comparison before but which has, he knows, been around in essence for
quite some time.
Instead of squirming about, or concentrating on the sensations of mouse or cat,
Loki finds himself dwelling on this. He could attempt to reason out what cause
there is for such effusive affection: how did the maiden of the kitchens so
bewitch the guardian of the artefacts. Is this a power anyone can possess?
But he does not. Already dusty, cramped, and sorry for himself, Loki only
thinks about how low and rotten he feels, how low, how low and small and
miserable, like a worm.
In fact he feels so low and rotten and miserable and wormlike that it takes him
a while to realise that he is no longer stuck, and is in fact coiled up on the
floor, bristling and moist, and indeed possessed of every characteristic of a
worm.
It is far from ideal: the one thing no one has ever said about a worm is that
it is a swift mover, but it is better than being stuck inside a wall, and Loki
makes his way back to the gallery of artefacts as quickly as the body he has
acquired will allow him. There is something in the thrumming of the earth below
that allows him, in this form, to find his way across it.
The way is long, and he only just makes it into the gallery before he is
significantly larger, naked as a newborn, and trapped in the gallery as the
guardians change shifts.
Much to his dismay, someone has removed his clothes.
Loki is still trying to determine how best to escape his predicament – he is
exhausted, and becoming somewhat wary of changing his shape – when the door
opens and with a relieved hulloo, Thor shouts, “THERE HE IS!”
“I can explain –“ Loki says hastily, remembering after a moment to cover
himself with his hands.
“Where have you been?” Thor shouts, bounding down the steps in a whirlwind of
enthusiasm – he is not given to soft voices or to black moods – to clasp his
brother by the shoulders. “We thought something had happened to you! Your
clothes –“
“Yes,” Loki says, looking down at himself a little pointedly. “Where are they?”
“No matter,” Thor says, clapping him on the shoulder enough times that Loki
begins to worry it will bruise, “we’ve found you now, hahhah, you must try
better at these pranks of yours, you know! Only come and eat.”
“Clothes,” Loki repeats, his mind in turmoil.
===============================================================================
All through the evening Thor worries at him like a dog with a bone, asking
what’s on his mind until Loki wants to scream. He is annoyed his preoccupation
is noticeable, as much as he’s annoyed that Thor can’t leave well enough alone.
He smoothes the furrows from his brow with an effort of will and distracts
everyone with talk of Thor’s inability to retain a single saga in his head, and
with that the meal is past.
He engages in his weekly experiment of asking for an audience with his father,
but to very little surprise is granted none.
“Odin is a very busy,” his mother says. “You must remember that he has a
kingdom to run and a peace to maintain with our neighbours, and many petitions
to hear. He cannot be always around to answer to you.” She sighs, and while he
does not bother to hide his disappointment and lack of sympathy for the burdens
of a king, Frigga squeezes his shoulder – the same that Thor slapped – and
says, “I can answer many questions you may have for your father, you know. I am
not without wisdom.”
“Yes, mother,” says Loki. He considers asking is it normal to wake up and find
you have become a mouse, but he is quite sure she wouldn’t believe him. He
considers asking why if he is so busy does he always have time for Thor, but
last time he asked that she was very hurt by it. He even briefly considers
asking how do I make him talk to me in that voice, but then he would have to
explain to her how he came to the knowledge of that cracked and passionate
declaration of love, and he is already sure that it is some dirty,
dishonourable, hidden thing he must speak of to no one.
“Is there something you want to ask?” Frigga asks, examining his face.
Loki composes his features into a rueful smile and closes off every last trace
of what lies beneath it. “No, mother,” he says, with a sigh. “I only wanted to
see him.”
“You are far from alone in that,” says Frigga, but she releases him with an
unwanted kiss to his forehead. “And,” she adds, “you are quite dirty. Perhaps a
bath.”
“Mother.”
When the time comes for him to sleep, Thor follows him to his room. This is not
in itself unusual: for more years they slept in one room than they have yet
slept apart, and Thor still assumes that he is given unimpeded leave to enter
Loki’s rooms and talk at him whenever he pleases, a belief which Loki does not
share and has taken great pains to avoid the consequences of. Anything he
wishes to be unfondled by Thor’s occasionally clumsy hands has to be hidden
quite securely to save it from being swept up in the course of some
gesticulating recounting of an adventure that Loki, likely as not, was also
there for.
For a moment Loki guesses that his brother has come to interrogate him about
his “prank”, and ask where he went and why he didn’t let Thor in on it (as if
Thor has ever been capable of keeping a secret). But his golden-headed brother
only sits heavily on Loki’s bed and says hesitantly, “There is something I must
ask you.”
“Now?” Loki asks, meaning it is very late.
“If you can answer me I shan’t need to trouble mother or father about it,” Thor
says, apparently not hearing him.
Loki takes a deep breath, and does not quite succeed in suppressing the thought
that of course Thor may trouble their father with as many inane questions as
cross his unfathomably empty head. But he sits beside his brother and says with
as much solicitousness as he can fake, “Of course I shall help you if I can.”
“Today,” Thor says, and Loki can tell at once that he has put aside his
original question to pursue something else, “with that tutor. We learned of the
great queen of ... oh, somewhere ... and how she seduced this warrior... the
... I forget his name, but she seduced him, and he changed all his plans and
gave up his attack on her kingdom and everyone laughed at him for a coward and
a fool.” He frowns. “I didn’t wish to appear a fool to that tutor, he thinks I
am a fool already –“
He is right, Loki thinks, but he says nothing.
“—so I couldn’t ask him, but what is this ‘seduced’? It sounds a very powerful
magic and I shouldn’t like someone to pull that on me.”
Loki says with little relish, “I don’t know. I shall discover it,” and makes a
vague note to himself that when he invades the Library of Forbidden Knowledge
he will make a point of looking for the word amid whatever other sorcery and
magic he can uncover. For in truth, the ability to make a man change his plans
on the turn of a heel and give up his attack on kingdom would be greatly
useful, and who knows what other powers it this seduction might enable?
Thor fidgets uncomfortably on the bed.
“What were you going to ask me?” Loki says, impatient to be allowed to sleep.
“I have asked it –“ Thor begins, because he seems to lack Loki’s more acute
ability to realise precisely how transparent he is.
“Pssh,” Loki says, “That was not what you meant to ask.”
Thor clears his throat with great awkwardness, and Loki wishes he would just go
away and let him sleep. It has been an exhausting day, and his muscles are
protesting now, particularly his chest and stomach, which he assumes is because
he spent several hours crawling on them in the form of a worm. It isn’t a
problem he’s really encountered before, so he can’t be certain.
“It concerns the organ of generation,” Thor says hesitantly, at which point
Loki realises that what he should have done was to lie his brother out of his
room with whatever fabrication was most effective and then possibly barricade
the door with furniture just to be on the safe side.
“What in the nine realms --?” he says, instead. “Did you trap it in something?”
Thor looks appropriately wounded by this accusation, as he seems to have
conveniently forgotten the time he tried to piss into Ulaf’s bedroom through
the window and Ulaf closed the shutters on it.
“It has developed a mind of its own,” says Thor in a conspiratorial voice.
Loki stares at him for a very long moment, and then very carefully moves to the
opposite end of the bed, in case whatever is wrong with his brother is
contagious: whether this means some terrible affliction of the organs of
generation or whether this is merely his overbearing idiocy Loki does not yet
know. “What do you mean?” He says at last. “Is it talking or something?”
“Not yet,” Thor says with great concern. “But it stands up on its own and I am
fearful it will start to walk some day soon.”
Loki says, “I don’t know how to disenchant things yet.”
“Did you do this?”
“NO! Thor, why would I ... curse ... that? There’s probably just something
wrong with it. Ask ... someone else. Or –“ it comes to him in a great burst of
inspiration, “I’ll find out. When I find out about ‘seduce’. You needn’t worry.
But go away, I want to sleep.”
His brother rises from the bed with a thoughtful nod of the sort which has
tricked several of their tutors into thinking that Thor is actually paying
attention, and seizes Loki in one of his exuberantly close embraces. They are
suffocating and rib-bothering at the best of times, but tonight there is an
additional discomfort.
“Thor,” Loki says with a great sigh.
“What?”
“It’s happening now. Put me down.”
===============================================================================
Ever-mindful of the horror of finding himself trapped within a wall, Loki
enacts his plan of sneaking into the Library of Forbidden Knowledge through
less elaborate means and a closer starting point. He loiters at the well-sealed
entrance and with as much casual indifference as he can affect – lest someone
spot him – he thinks hard on the nature of mouse. He contemplates the bigness
of the world and the smallness of mouse, the sensation of whiskers and the
nimbleness of feet, and is only mildly put out when he finds himself a frog.
It is easy enough, in such a miniature form, for clamber laboriously beneath
the door and propel himself in a series of impressive leaps towards the books.
It is harder to gather his thoughts and concentrate once more on the nature of
Asgardian, the bigness of his usual form, and the importance of being or at
least appearing clothed.
This takes some effort, and to his annoyance he is clad not in his own clothes
but in Thor’s habitual garb, but he does eventually succeed in regaining his
usual form, and some kind of attire. Loki, giddy in the presence of towering
stacks of heavy books gilded with intricate gold and silver patterns, cannot at
first decide on which volume should benefit from his attentions first.
In the end his eye is drawn to the shelves which stand in shadow, behind a
grille of iron framework painted in gold leaf. It is Loki’s experience – so far
in his life – that whatever is most worth having is usually the thing no one
wants him to have, and he suspects this extends to knowledge, too.
The grille itself is easy enough to open with a very simple unlocking spell,
one of the first he learnt: Loki has yet to wonder why it is that the security
measures of Asgard are so easily circumvented by an inexperienced sorcerer like
himself: so far he has just assumed that royal blood makes everything easier,
although doors do not seem as willing to open to Thor.
Among the darker books, which are not gilded but carved with rough sigils in
their heavy wooden covers, Loki inhales and peers about him, moving not by an
understanding of the titles that tower above his head but rather by a hazy and
grey-edged instinct, which draws his head this way and that. He stretches out a
hand, withdraws it, and reaches again for another volume.
Show me something I need to know, he thinks, and reaches a third time, with his
eyes shut.
His fingers slide over the smooth wooden spine of a book that is thicker than
his arm. The tips of Loki’s fingers fall into the grooves of unreadable carved
sigils, and while he has no idea what they say, a jolt of something runs along
his arm and seals his hand about the book, pulling it from the self and into
his arms.
Loki folds into a cross-legged scholar’s sitting position with the book spread
across his knees as naturally as a dog lying down. He finds that while he
cannot read what is written, by running his fingers over the unusual, slightly
greasy vellum where the dark brown ink lies, he finds words forming in his head
and a cool certainty freezing the bones of his arms. His blood slows, and his
breathing quickens.
The words, the concepts that run through him are smoky and intimidating at
first: there is the clash of metal on metal, the arts of war – there is the
deep red of the war-followers, the sensation of blood in the back of his
throat, and the hoarse cries of the carrion birds. His arm shakes with the
force of battles imagined and remembered by the flesh of the book, and Loki
realises as he turns the page that he knows full well what manner of vellum it
is written on.
The next page is more joyous: he can taste roast flesh in his mouth, and he
salivates at the memories, licks his lips and swallows his own spit. It is a
golden-feeling page, a warm and welcoming page that cradles his belly and
reminds him inexorably of Thor’s friend – supposedly his friend, too – the
ever-ravenous Volstagg.
Loki lingers over this page until he makes the association with the tubby and
affable Volstagg, at which moment he snorts and turns it over. There is nothing
to be learned from self-indulgent idiots like him.
The third page returns to the battlefield, but now there is no hot and
desperate, sore-throated and rage-limbed fight. There are only the dead, lying
blackened and inert upon the ravaged landscape. Even the wolves have left. Loki
tastes ashes on his tongue, and in his sinuses and lungs he can feel the
suffocation of earth pressing on him, the sound of strange syllables ringing in
his head.
With trepidation Loki recalls his father’s long-ago tales of the grim sorcerers
who raised the dead from their graves and made them walk as unstoppable,
unthinking soldiers until such time as Odin and his fellows braved the terrors
of the night to strike down the wicked men and take from them their necromantic
texts. He turns the page, but the taste of ashes remains.
He presses his fingers eagerly to the strangely iridescent ink of the next page
– the vellum is not of the same shade as the last section, either – and feels
nothing but cold, and an odd sort of comfort. Loki cannot bear to hurry through
these four, odd-hued pages, but only rubs the sigils first with his fingers,
and then with the whole of his palm, his heart quietened and his breathing
softened, until he has reached the end of the pages and knows that he has
learned nothing.
Impatient, his knees aching from the weight of the book, Loki skims his fingers
across the golden cast of the next page. The ink here is once again the deep,
dark brown of spilled blood: his skin tingles as it touches the sigils, and as
he hand-reads the not-quite-words, it is as if another hand is reaching up from
within to touch his fingers. The sensation increases as he continues: indeed,
it is more that he reads the hand onto his wrist than that he attains any
knowledge from the book.
Loki begins to sweat. The library feels warm: it smells strange and familiar at
once. Although he is alone he cannot shake the sensation that a hand is
caressing his forearm, ignoring his imagined clothes, and a voice is murmuring
in his ear, so closely that he can almost feel the lips and breath against his
head.
He licks his lips. The words are indistinct, but if he strains, leans into the
voice, and into the imagined hand – his fingers unconsciously stroking the page
– he feels he can understand them a little better.
At first there are syllables he does not understand, but which make his lips
tingle with the desire to repeat them. They cycle through his mind, over and
over, like simple chimes of a bell. That they are magic is unquestionable.
Loki breathes the first syllable without meaning to, and the sensation of touch
slides from his shoulder to wrap itself around his throat like a warm hand,
pressing into his skin. He is not usually given to the appreciation of touch –
Loki sulks and squirms when his brother attempts his unnecessarily tight hugs,
and as a young boy once bit his mother for holding him for too long – but this
is different. As he caresses the page, the page caresses him.
The words that are muttered in his ear in the mockery of a soft and beautiful
voice become clearer as he murmurs the second syllable. The simple cycle sounds
like a song, now, and the cadences if not the exactness of the strange sounds
are as familiar as a lullaby. The hand about his throat slides up over his
mouth and leaves his lips tingling.
Under the insistent repetition of syllables – Loki whispers the third aloud in
the silence of the library – and the attentions of a hand which is only “there”
in the sense of the ghostly impressions it leaves upon his body (prying his
lips apart to touch his tongue as if searching for something), he now has the
idea he his being asked a question.
What do you want?
It has been Loki’s policy in the last couple of years – ever since strange
things started happening to his body in the night, culminating in the mouse
incident – to lie automatically when asked this. There is no concise answer,
and everything that sounds honest also feels shameful, pathetic – the request
of a weakling desperate for mercy. There is no place for weakness in Asgard:
the worst thing anyone may say of a man is that he is a coward.
The hand strokes the roof of Loki’s mouth with what feels like two fingers.
Loki is perplexed by both how enjoyable this invasion is and by how impossible
it is to either think clearly or keep his fingers from tracing the sigils on
the nearly-forgotten page below him. He shapes the fourth of the syllabic cycle
in his throat alone, and for a second it is as if lips have been placed against
his cheek in an approving kiss.
What do you want, beautiful prince?
Loki shudders the length of his back and finds he has tilted his head back.
There is no one behind him, but if he closes his eyes it is as if he leans back
into a warm, soft body of no particular sex.
Do you want love?
Love, Loki thinks desperately, as his lips chew out the fifth of the six
syllables. Love is for weaklings and weakness is the seed of death. Strength is
immortality. Remember your lessons. He cannot quite focus on the terror and
ashes of untimely death which this same book has visited upon him, but he
manages to conjure up the idea: I don’t want to die.
The voice in his mind, or the idea of a voice that springs from the unceasing
cycle of six simple strange syllables, has become something close to a purr,
and Loki’s heart rattles his ribs with the intensity of its beats. He breathes
deep and low, and his skin is taut and hot and aching for the presence of this
imagined hand.
Mostly he wants it to go on touching him.
Do you want power?
Yes, Loki thinks. Yes, I want power. I want the power to make people do
whatever I want. Yes.
The hand is so far down into his throat now that Loki would gag on it. He knows
if it were his hand he would be retching by now, but instead the soft, firm
pressure of unreal fingers inside his neck only makes his skin hotter and his
limbs heavier and his desire greater.
Say it, purrs the voice in his head. There is a second hand. The pressure of
this hand coils itself around his organ of generation without regard for the
illusion of clothes in which he had clad himself. What will you give?
The second hand makes it even harder to think. He rises towards it, his breath
stifled by the idea of a fist within his throat, and to his own distant disgust
finds himself whimpering.
Will you give me your love, beautiful prince?
Loki whimpers again, and thinks rather more clearly of the ashes and silence of
the dead. The sixth syllable is on the very tip of his tongue, and his hips
have taken on their own life, pushing his organ of generation against whatever
sorcery is clutching it. His mouth aches with the desire to say I will give you
anything.
Will you give me your beautiful body, little prince?
He swallows, and somewhere in the library a door opens. It takes an
unconscionably long time for the noise to reach his mind and push him into
acting on it: pulling his hand from the page is one of the hardest things he
has ever done, and there is no question of adopting a different shape in order
to hide. Loki only closes the book as quietly as he can, and clutches it to his
chest as he flattens himself against the shelves in the deepest depths of the
shadowed section.
As the door closes again, Loki holds his breath and tries to will his heart to
beat more quietly. He’s not entirely sure what will happen if he’s caught
holding a book of this nature to him like a shield, but he’s certain it would
be pleasant or dignified and it will almost definitely incur Odin’s ill-favour.
Loki presses his cheek against the shelves and waits with a thundering pulse as
the door opens a second time, and a weak snatch of conversation drifts to him.
There are no words, only the sense of idleness and indifference that comes from
speech that spans the gulf between royal blood and servile.
“—you see him,” finishes the first voice, and the second says something in the
affirmative. The door closes.
He counts to fifty, and with tense limbs and great patience eventually unsticks
himself from the shadows. The library is empty. His thighs are wet.
Again? Loki thinks. He supposes it is his good fortune he has not miraculously
assumed another shape, although that would have been useful this time. He
replaces the book from where it came, his arm tingling one last time as he
releases it, and moves further into the dark amongst the volumes.
He has no obligation to his brother, Loki thinks. He said he would find out, he
said nothing about when he would discover this business of seduction. He has
too many other questions, more now than he had before. He owes Thor no
explanation, and if he is caught in the library he will be in for it.
But Loki pushes on into the black silence of the deepest shelves, and with his
lip caught in his teeth he reaches at random for another book.
What do you want? whispers an echo in his head.
===============================================================================
After he eats that evening, Loki attempts once again to secure an audience with
his father, and his mother sighs and shakes her head. Thor, however, is eager
to explain all about his discoveries of the day. Apparently, in Loki’s absence
(he was searched for, his mother tells him sternly, and just because he is
clever does not mean he is allowed to miss his lessons), Thor has been inducted
into a higher level of knowledge about the Nine Realms, and he is enjoying the
brief experience of knowing more than Loki.
“—and they come in the night, and they sit on your chest, and they make you
dream terrible things,” Thor says, with his mouth full. He has returned for
further helpings, as he always does.
I dream terrible things without anyone’s help, Loki thinks, watching his
mother’s face out of the corner of his eye. He cannot be sure if her aspect has
become colder or if he is only worried that it has.
“But,” Thor continues, waving a bone expressively about, sending the dogs
running back and forth in an ecstasy of anticipation, “Father bound one in her
own skin – his own skin – the skin of the thing – and placed it in a book of
evil things, and made it so that it can be read – only by a sorcerer, of course
– and all the knowledge of the mara is in there, you just have to know how to
command it. That’s what he said.” He looks pleased with himself.
Loki picks up a piece of bread from his place and pretends to chew on it. He
hopes the draining feeling he is experiencing does not show on his face.
“They grant wishes,” says Thor.
“They strike bargains,” Frigga corrects. “If your tutor thinks that is a wish
he is a fool. They exact a high price for the things they give and their gifts
are as worthless as Fair Folk gold.” She looks at Loki for what Loki judges to
be an unnecessarily long time, and he frowns at her in feigned confusion and
goes back to breaking his bread into smaller and smaller fragments.
“All the same,” says Thor.
“All the same,” Frigga says sharply, “there is a reason the library of
forbidden knowledge is forbidden.”
Loki looks sideways at his brother and catches his eye casually. Thor has
little concern for whether or not things are forbidden. He cares only for
adventure, glory, and the moments that make his heart beat faster: Loki,
meanwhile, feels he can take or leave glory, but finds Thor’s thirst for it
quite useful at times. He wonders if his brother would care to find the
imprisoned mara after all.
“I know what you’re thinking, boys,” Frigga says with another of her sighs,
“and I know you won’t pay any mind to my warning, but hear me: you will not
break into the library in search of this mara. They are not as you expect. They
have no respect for the person of an Asgardian nor any other being. They would
bind you and bewitch you, you sweet young things, and your father and I would
have to see you off to the underworld before you had the chance to attain
greatness.” She leans across the table and points at Thor’s face with a stern
finger. “This is no game, no happy adventure chasing wild beasts. They are
clever and they are wicked, and this was cleverer and wickeder than most.”
“Yes, mother,” Thor says, sounding wounded and offended. “I have no wish to
fight magical beasts, I am no sorcerer.”
“And Loki –“
“Yes, mother,” Loki echoes, throwing a lump of bread at his brother. “I will
save my great battles until I am good enough to win them.”
Frigga says, “Very good. A mother lives through her sons. Would you have my
life cut short with mourning?”
Loki all but rolls his eyes. “No, mother.”
His mother smiles faintly, and squeezes his hand. “Now, be gone from here a
while, I must speak to your brother.”
Loki might some other time have taken umbrage at this dismissal, but for the
look of discomfort on Thor’s face that says plainly he has made some unhidden
mess of his sheets or some other error for which a gentle reproof is in order,
and one to which Loki has no wish to bear witness.
His brother and mother so occupied, he thinks that now, surely, if he cannot
have his audience with his father he can at least see what it is that keeps his
father so busy that he cannot make a moment’s peace in which to see his son.
Loki finds that the art of transforming his body into that which is small,
fast, and agile is much easier now.
He flies, his tiny compound eyes surveying the route to his father’s quarters,
and not a soul sees him or cares for his presence as he goes. The life of a fly
is no majesty, he thinks, but it is a great convenience to enter into.
His father’s quarters, the private dominion of the king of Asgard, are almost
as forbidden as the armoury, library, and gallery of artefacts, and as their
only desirable content is one which he must be visible to in order to fulfil
his wishes, Loki has been circumspect about sneaking in before now.
When he inserts himself into the seclusion of his father’s quarters he finds
his tiny fly legs tremble, and he is mid-way through scolding himself for his
pathetic nervousness when he falls out of the air, fully-Asgardian once more,
naked as a newborn, and unceremoniously ripped from his enchantment.
“Loki!” Odin shouts, in more surprise than anger. He follows this with a
variety of oaths, some of which Loki has not heard before, and adds, “Get up
off the floor.”
Odin does not ask how he came to be here, or where his clothes are. He only
frowns deeply, and at stares at Loki as if Loki is a particularly troublesome
stain upon his favourite cloak.
Loki, meanwhile, is beginning to remember exactly how his audiences with his
father are likely to go.
“I had feared this would happen,” Odin says at last, scowling around his
eyepatch. “For how long have you been able to transform yourself like this? Why
did you tell no one?” He does not, as he might with Thor, reach out and shake
Loki by the shoulder, only draws his (unblemished) cloak around him and stares
through his son as if he is not there.
Loki finds he is not much inclined to answer either question truthfully. He
only shrugs, and says, “I’m sorry I disturbed you, father.”
Odin only says, “Mm,” and frowns at him more deeply.
It is now that two recently memories arise at once, like twin flames shooting
up from a fire as it is kicked, and collide within Loki. The first is that
shamefully-observed, crack-voiced utterance from the guardian of the artefacts,
a hoarse I love you spoken with all the passion and broken sincerity that Loki
has seen in the main exhibited by Volstagg towards food. The second is the
whispering not-voice that arises from the remembered cycle of syllables which
still spiral through his head: what do you want?
phyls, Loki mumurs, barely moving his lips.
“What have you been up to, boy?” Odin asks, pointing at him. “You’ve been
hiding something.”
uness, Loki says, quite sure now that this is the worst possible thing he could
do and unable to stop himself. The golden-warm feeling in his throat is back:
he recalls the guardian of the artefacts and the maiden of the kitchens with
the startling clarity of a renewed dream.
“When did you learn this, mm?” Odin says, in the abrasive, abrupt voice he uses
when he’s failing to not be angry despite some minimal effort. Loki is familiar
with it, although it is usually used about rather than directed at him.
ashlams Loki whispers, backing slowly away. He has almost forgotten that he is
naked.
“Tell me,” says Odin, advancing on him with small steps. “You have
transgressed, boy, but you shan’t be punished if you speak the truth now…”
trame, says Loki under his breath. Hah, shan’t be punished. There is no need to
punish him.
He lifts his hands up as if to ward off a blow, and Odin says, “Lower your
hands, boy, I’ll not strike an unarmed child. When did you come by this and for
how long have you been keeping secrets from us?”
eadis, Loki mutters, his tongue moving without his command. He scrabbles,
briefly, at his own lips, trying to subdue them before any further words escape
from him. He is not sure that Odin can hear them: certainly his father only
frowns all the more.
“You are under some enchantment,” Odin concludes. “This must be undone. When
did you come to this state, my son –“
phthons.
Loki feels abruptly even more light-headed, and as if he is watching himself
from a great distance, but through his own eyes. The sensation of dislocation
and emptiness and of falling back into his own body over and over make him feel
sick: not in the stomach, but in the mind. He is dizzy, and tries to clutch at
the wall. His hands, however, disobey him, and reach out to Odin instead. His
feet are steady upon the floor, though Loki feels as if he is riding a wild,
bucking horse.
Though he is an unwilling passenger in his own body, he finds he can still feel
– perhaps better than before – the texture of Odin’s cloak as his palms touch
it, and slide unimpeded to unlace his breastplate. He can feel his bones grind
together when Odin seizes his wrist and pulls his arm away so hard that he is
afraid it will pull from his shoulder.
“What,” Odin says, staring at him in confused rage, “in the nine realms do you
think you are doing, Loki?”
He can also feel the strain and scream of his muscles as his body leans in
against this grip, plastering him to Odin’s armour almost as closely as Loki
plastered himself to the shadowy shelves of the library of forbidden knowledge.
He can feel the cool metal touching his chest as Odin releases his arm, and as
his body winds itself about his father almost like smoke made flesh, and he
hears his voice saying – in a horribly familiar purr – words that he has no
intention of speaking, whose meaning he deplores:
“Anything you want, o king of Asgard. Anything you want.”
“I don’t want this,” Odin growls, trying to push him away, but Loki notes with
despair that his father’s hands do not seem as strong as he had imagined.
He feels, too, the heat and dryness of his father’s lips as his are pushed
against them, with a skill that Loki knows is none he will ever match: he feels
his father’s hair beneath his fingers as he clutches at his head, and he feels
the unwelcome thickening of his organ of generation as his body, without his
permission, clings to Odin like a vine.
These things disturb him enough, but it is the last sensation which causes Loki
to shout internally and beat at the walls of his own mind with whatever frantic
energy he can muster: something insubstantial but strong slips from between his
lips, over his tongue, and into his father’s mouth.
Loki is sure this is the nadir of his existence until his father wrenches him
from him like some unwanted article of clothing, and throws him against the
wall with a strength that cannot possibly be his own. After this, the situation
only gets worse.
Father, help me, Loki shouts, but his mouth only forms a terrible smile, and
his eyes half-close, and even through the fraction of sight that remains he can
see that Odin is no longer himself.
“Corrupt,” Odin says with a terrible sneer. “I always knew it. You are nothing
but evil. Filth, and desecration. I should have cast you out, not taken you in
to corrupt everything you touch.”
No, Loki shouts, but his mouth says, “Don’t pretend you don’t like it.”
“You have bewitched me,” Odin growls, and that sounds a good deal more like his
father. This is of little comfort to Loki, who is quite sure that if anyone has
bewitched Odin, it is not him and his child-level sorcery, and who is still
very conscious of his nudity and more so now that his father’s hands are upon
him.
Odin seizes him by the shoulders and shakes him violently, pulling him closer.
Loki shouts no, but the word doesn’t escape his mind. He can still feel his
lips smiling obscenely, the golden hand within his throat twisting at him and
keeping his limbs limp and passive.
Father, no, Loki screams again. He tries to force himself to kick, to struggle
until this terrible enchantment has passed from them both – this strange re-
enactment of some other tryst, he assumes – but his muscles do not so much as
twitch.
He feels the heat of his father’s breath, the bruising firmness of his grip,
and the unpleasantly soft skin of his organs of generation against his leg.
Loki feels rather more the tooth-cracking smack to his cheek, and the violent
shake that accompanies the words, “WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?”
I’m not doing anything, Loki howls, but his mouth won’t obey him and the look
in his father’s eyes is frantic and crazed as he hits him a second time: Loki’s
throat constricts and he murmurs in the same hateful, unwanted purr, “Because
you want to do it, Allfather. This is what you want.”
“STOP,” Odin shouts, and he turns Loki’s unnaturally unresisting body onto its
face. Loki is presented with a faceful of floor, the dirt and dust that even as
clean a place as Asgard cannot help but accumulate from the soles of men’s
boots thrust into his eyes, his mouth, his nose. He grizzles to himself in his
own mind, but as his legs are pulled apart hard enough to wrench his hip, his
mouth only says:
“Go on.”
No don’t, Loki whines to himself, don’t go on. Stop, please stop, father, stop,
please, I’m sorry, stop, stop…
It hurts. This is the only memory he will allow himself afterwards: that it
hurts. Loki inhales dust and filth from the floor and thinks about the pain of
his father’s hand pushing his head against the stones. He thinks about the pain
in his legs, pushed further apart than is natural. He thinks about the pain
from his arse, and promptly forces himself to forget it.
It almost covers for the hateful, shameful, horrifying thing that has happened
to his organs of generation.
The pain is such an all-pervading distraction that for a moment Loki is not
aware that he is crying. Whatever is in control of his body still speaks with
his mouth, and imprisons his ability to fight or to flee, but it has given him
back his tears in what seems to him an additional act of cruelty rather than
the weakening of its hold. He sobs into what rapidly becomes a small pool of
snot beneath his face, into which is face is rubbed.
“Are you satisfied?” Odin bellows, and there is a moment of blessed release.
“Are you satisfied, you gorgon, you she-demon, you sorceress?”
Why are you – Loki thinks, before the pronoun catches up with him and his eyes,
filled with tears and dirt and aching from their mistreatment, widen in
horrible understanding.
As if to confirm this, he has bestowed upon him the fleeting image of his
father bent over a strange blackened imp with knotted hair and a laughing
mouth, his arse bare and his hair not white but wheaten as it must have been in
his younger days, his beard scanty, and his hands holding down the head of the
mara just as he had held down Loki.
“Brave, brave Allfather,” sneers Loki’s mouth, as his eyes and nose continue to
stream. “Afraid of a poor little mara.”
“I’m not afraid of you, witch,” Odin pants, as the terrible scene plays out to
what Loki desperately hopes is where it ended, because he has a wretched
premonition that if this does not end soon he will be skinned and made into a
book.
“Phyls, uness, ashlams, trame, eadis, phthons,” Loki hears his own voice say in
a soft, silken whisper. “The cuts I will give you will not bleed but they will
rip your heart from you all the same and however you use my body I will come
for you and strew the soft parts of you with suffering that you dare not even
name. Phyls, uness, ashlams, trame, eadis, phthons, Odin Allfather of Asgard,
Odin blackened be thy name.”
There is one final sensation of falling into his body from an unsurvivably
great height, and Loki chokes on the control of his own lungs, slithers
forwards on the slippery mess of his own snot and tears, and humps his body
into an uncomfortably small ball.
Behind him he can hear a sound so alien that he dares not look to see the
source. It sounds like the unceasing whine of a frightened dog, but it emanates
from his father’s body, and he cannot countenance the idea of Odin afraid.
With a shuddering breath, Odin says, “Get out.”
“Father –“
“GET OUT.”
“It wasn’t me, I didn’t mean—“ Loki begins, unfurling and beseeching his
father’s bright red face with outstretched hands.
“GET OUT,” Odin roars. “DO NOT SEEK TO TOUCH ME. GET OUT.”
It takes Loki two or three tries to get to his feet and make the door without
stumbling. His legs are his to control once more but feeble and filled with
pain, and each step he takes hurts him somewhere deep in his middle.
“Get out,” Odin repeats, and when Loki turns to beseech him again he sees the
most horrifying sight of the night so far: his all-powerful father backed into
a corner with his hands raised before him as if something is flying for his
face. “Get away from me. Get out.”
Loki scurries with ungainly, uncoordinated steps from his father’s quarters and
blocks his ears to the deeply unsettling sound of the Allfather sobbing.
===============================================================================
By the time he attains his rooms again Loki has encountered once more his
clothes. He finds the supposed solace of solitude comforts him as little as a
slap to the face, and with the comparison is temporarily paralysed by unwelcome
recent memory.
He rises, clad but not shod, and slips as quietly as a spectre on aching legs
to his brother’s room. Thor is no more given to complaints about the invasion
of his privacy than he is given to understanding why others might value theirs,
and in this moment Loki is almost grateful.
When he comes to his brother’s room, Thor has stretched himself across the top
of his sheets but failed to yet climb under them, using Thor’s impeccable logic
which states that if he is on the bed but not in the bed he can neither be
shouted at to go to bed but nor can he be dragged unwittingly into sleep. Loki
has on several occasions pointed out that this is breath-takingly stupid but
tonight he is profoundly glad to find him still awake.
"What happened to you?" Thor demands, sitting bolt upright immediately, and
Loki curses his own transparency. He should be able to wander in here without a
single soul suspecting, and he is disheartened to find that even Thor can see
all is not well.
"Nothing happened to me," Loki says as smoothly as a potentially ruptured
inside and a mind in ruins will allow him. "What did mother want?"
Thor looks momentarily embarrassed, but rallies almost at once. "Nothing
important. What do you mean, nothing happened to you? Your face is a bruise."
Loki reaches automatically to touch his own cheek, and it is sore to his
fingers. He shakes his head. "Nothing, it is nothing."
"You're hurt."
"You mustn't tell anyone." Loki grimaces and says in the best conspiratorial
whisper he can muster, "I was exploring somewhere I shouldn't, if anyone finds
out I'll be in trouble, and if you get me into trouble I'll get you into
worse."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Thor says indignantly, but he frowns in evident concern
all the same. "Brother, your face is badly hurt, are you sure you cannot ...
construct some lie that will allow it to be healed? Mother will not like to see
you like this."
"I can hide it," says Loki with absolute confidence.
Thor settles himself on his bed again and pats the mattress in a companionable
invitation that Loki both does and does not want to take. "Where were you?"
"In the Library of Forbidden Knowledge," says Loki, who has already learned at
so tender an age that the essential component of a lie is a tiny fraction of
the truth.
Thor snorts a laugh and once again resumes his look of concern at the damage to
his brother's face. "How did you come by such injury in a library, Loki? Did a
book fall on your face? What can possibly happen in so calm a place?"
"You'd be surprised," Loki says under his breath. "Mother did say it was
forbidden for a reason." He pauses, already contemplating the remainder of the
fenced-off books with a kind of grim determination, "And she was right."
"You have had some great adventure," says Thor, which Loki feels is not the
best way of describing the result of his visit to the library, "and I was not
invited! Pah, am I not your brother?"
"Well then you could have had a bruised face instead of me," says Loki,
carefully.
"How came you by it?" Thor says. "For I might not, I am stronger than you."
Loki opens his mouth to spit out a cheerful, teasing lie and finds his head is
empty of any such thing. Something ugly uncurls inside Loki's stomach and
spreads through his chest, seeping into his mind as it whispers yes, if you
were stronger none of this would have happened. If you were Thor none of this
would have happened. If you weren't you, Loki, if you were him.
He swallows his sudden loathing and forces the least convincing laughter he has
ever forced.
"Brother," says Thor with a furrowed brow, for even he cannot be taken in by
this meagre falsehood.
In desperation Loki casts about for something with which to distract his
brother from the cause of his injuries and the empty absence of a good lie: he
falls back on the maiden of the kitchens and her all-distracting technique, and
kisses Thor with sudden passion that he is disquieted to find is not wholly
manufactured.
Thor does not scrabble at him or push him away, but he does not stop frowning,
either. He only cradles Loki's head with his hands quite gently, and kisses
without rancour or revulsion until Loki himself begins to feel uncomfortable.
When it is over with he gets to his feet and runs without a word.
===============================================================================
The Tesseract deposits Loki and Thor directly into the dungeons of Asgard, and
as Thor leaves Loki, muzzled and defeated, to be locked away alone, he says, "I
had hoped better of you."
Loki says nothing, and not only because he cannot speak.
He stands without moving for eight or nine hours, and it is only when Odin
Allfather comes to him in an hour Loki judges to be the dead of night that he
comes to the front of his cell and smiles beneath his muzzle.
"What do you have to smile about?" says Odin. "You have dishonoured Asgard and
wrought shame upon us all, you have murdered and sought to comfort the enemies
of all life, you have broken your mother's heart --"
Loki traces with his fingertip in the air the runes for she is not my mother.
"She raised you," says Odin, "she is your mother."
She is not my mother, Loki repeats, with the same unfriendly smile beneath his
muzzle. You are not my father.
"I am your father," Odin says, in a voice that would reduce giants to trembling
children, "even after all you have done."
Loki laughs underneath his muzzle. No sound escapes from it, but he is sure
Odin can see him laughing, and with tired, bloodshot eyes sunken into his face,
he fixes his gaze upon the Allfather of Asgard.
If you were my father, what YOU have done would horrify them, he scrawls, his
finger crackling with blue fire as it moves through the heavy disenchantments
of the air. Should I tell them?
"No one would believe you," says Odin, drawing himself up. "Loki Liesmith."
Well, Loki takes the time to spell it out in the alphabet of a child, and you
wonder why I didn't believe you when you said you loved me just as much as him.
Odin leaves without another word, and Loki can't find much pleasure in the way
the old man's head droops as if he is carrying the world on his shoulders.
===============================================================================
He is surprised, but not very, when Thor returns to the cells a few days later.
His muzzle has by now been removed, for the only visitors he has have no fear
of his lying tongue.
What time of day it is Loki can no longer tell. Time passes slowly underground,
and he has other thoughts to occupy him besides the passing of time. His plans
are not yet complete. The gauntlet must be taken.
Thor leans against the cell wall in plain unhappiness and says, "This is my
fault. You fell into the Void and this is what became of you."
"I was always like this," says Loki, though for the life of him he cannot
understand why he should comfort Thor's guilty conscience.
"No," says Thor, and like the enormous meathead he is - Loki leaps out of the
way - he punches the wall. "No. No you were not. You and I were friends, once.
I have tasted goodness in you."
The phrasing makes no sense. Loki begins to laugh. The pain of failure,
coursing through him since he first fell, spikes and spirals and turns his
nerves to a swaggering chorus of demon voices. He laughs again.
"I swear it," Thor grumbles. "I have had it from your lips."
Loki sighs, and presses his face against the wall that divides him from his
brother's perplexed anger and self-recrimination. "It was not goodness you
tasted. It was violation. Go look to your father. And leave me to die as you
should have."
End Notes
     Well I hope you're pleased with yourself.
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
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