Work Text:
He isn’t scared.
+++
Their return to Asgard is about as well received as Loki expects. Thor is the welcome victor, savior of the realm, celebrated. Loki is the lost son of Odin, villain, murderer, and not half as welcome as his older brother. Just that he isn’t Odin’s son, and he isn’t Thor’s brother. And with few exceptions there isn’t anybody who cares enough to pretend otherwise.
The words directed at him are brief, for nobody bothers to remove the muzzle and let him reply (not that he would), and Odin’s proper judgment won’t be upon him for a while.
He isn’t scared.
Loki tries to avoid looking at the familiar faces surrounding him, but when he does, Odin looks grim and sad and disappointed, altogether. And behind Frigga’s guarded expression Loki can see that she wants to embrace him like the mother she still feels she is, and tell him she’s glad he’s home, despite everything, and that all will be well in the end. She doesn’t, and Loki is grateful for that.
It’s so much easier.
+++
Thor insists to personally escort him to the prison they have prepared for him, as if it matters, and really, it doesn’t. His brother doesn’t say a word as they walk towards the cell and then into it, not even when he removes the muzzle and the cuffs around Loki’s wrists. He doesn’t have to ask why he isn’t more careful; he already knows his magic won’t do anything for him in here. He can feel it.
He isn’t scared.
Thor shuts the door behind him and leaves, looking even more miserable than he has since they left Midgard. Loki rubs his reddened joints, and wonders if it is guilt plaguing his brother, or something else entirely. But again, what does it matter.
He looks around the scarcely candle-lit cell. There is a bed in one and a table and a chair in the other corner, stone walls surrounding it all, no windows. The door is made of shimmering steel, looking grotesquely pretty in the candle light.
Loki looks at the walls a little closer as he walks over to the bed, and what he felt before is confirmed when he sees the countless runes that are carved into the dark stone. They bind his powers perfectly, and he realizes how drained and tired and hungry he feels.
Settling onto the bed he gently rubs his jaw. When he gets out they will pay for this ten times over, he thinks, bitter, full of hatred. There are schemes unfolding in his mind already, plans for revenge, for glorious mischief. But those can wait a night, or two, because even mischief tires, and if he will have anything at all the next few days, it is time.
He lies down and closes his eyes, letting all the thoughts of hate and malice and revenge slip from his mind for a moment. The next, he’s asleep.
There is nothing but comforting darkness. It surrounds him like a warm pelt, lulling him in, and he feels safe, he feels at ease. He’s alone here, he realizes, finally alone.
He stares into the darkness without seeing, but there is nothing he desires to see, so it’s good. All is good.
Loki takes slow steps forward, heading further into the nothingness ahead of him.
He can’t tell how long he walks before the black suddenly fades and walls start to build up around him. They aren’t recognizable at first so he doesn’t really care, and he walks and walk and walks. Until at some point he looks around and the walls have become painfully familiar.
Asgard.
The intimacy of it all makes him stop and look more closely. The warm comfort of darkness is gone and he feels cold suddenly, cold and exposed and vulnerable. To what, he doesn’t know.
He starts walking again, slowly. He knows these halls, and they seem to grow more details with every step he takes. He remembers the chambers behind the closed doors. Odin’s. Thor’s. His.
But his memories were warm and this, despite the perfect recreation it appears, is repellent and hollow and menacing.
He looks down at his feet as he walks faster, and after a few steps he notices something odd; his steps make no sound. None whatsoever. He realizes he doesn’t hear his breath either. He doesn’t hear anything at all.
He starts walking again, looking sternly ahead, not at his feet and not at the doors that start showing up next to him. The walls are growing taller, the darkness fading away. It leaves Loki colder every second, and he wants it back, the darkness, the comfort.
He looks behind himself, but it’s gone, the dark. What is left of it all is the loneliness, the empty hallways of his past and never his future. The locked doors. The lack of sound and the lack of breath… The lack of anything alive.
At least it’s only him, here. He’s alone and that is good, he thinks. All is still good.
Until the voice rips his ears apart.
Loki screams. He wakes as he tumbles from his bed onto the cold floor of his cell, and he screams and holds his hands over his ears and he screams. And only when his voice gets stuck in his throat he realizes that there is no voice and there is no pain and he screamed for nothing but a dream.
He stares at the opposite wall of his prison as his breath slowly calms and the panic fades. A dream, a dream, he whispers and a tired laugh escapes him. A dream. Because it couldn’t be, it couldn’t, they could never reach him here. It was just a dream.
He isn’t scared.
Loki lies down again and wraps the blanket around him, pulling his legs up a little, and he closes his eyes and sleeps and dreams.
A pain filled wail echoes off the walls a few minutes later.
+++
Nobody bothers to see why he screams, not after the second and not after the fifth time. There is no sixth because when he thinks about trying again, there is a sound by the door and a silver tray with food and water is passed inside. The guard is gone as quickly as he appeared.
Loki gets up from the bed and picks it up, sets it down next to him as he returns to his sitting position in the corner, leaning against the wall. He eats and drinks without being hungry or thirsty, but he’s tired and drained and he needs energy.
He isn’t scared.
He thinks about the dream and the voice, and the pain. He forces the memories of it all –and along with them the wish to sleep- out of his mind and tries to think about something else.
+++
He forces himself to move around, just enough to keep him doing something, to keep him awake. But while there is enough space to occupy his tired body, there is nothing for his thoughts. There is nothing to really let him forget.
And as the memories grow stronger, Loki grows restless.
He wants his power; he wants his spells and his magic. He wants to have something safe, something familiar he can protect himself with. He curses the runes in the walls of his prison and he curses the Allfather and he curses the Thunderer and he curses all of Asgard.
He curses his promises and Midgard and the pathetic mortals.
He isn’t scared.
+++
Nobody cares to enter his cell until three days have passed and another pained scream fills the corridors.
+++
It is Thor to come first.
Of course it is.
As he enters, Thor is surprised to find every available candle lit at such late hour and he attempts to ask what this is about. Then his eyes fall on the figure on the floor.
Loki’s skin is paler than ever, his green eyes dull and empty and the grayish lines under his eyes try to compete with his haggard face about what makes him look sicker. He looks so much like a drained, withering corpse that Thor’s heart stops, until he can see that, yes, thank god, Loki’s chest still heaves and falls slowly.
“Loki…brother, what have you done!?”
The god of mischief (god, really, he feels nothing of that anymore) laughs, his voice a thin memory of the silver tongue it once held. He sounds so broken and weak it makes the Thunder God flinch, but he stands unmoving, staring down at Loki.
“Have you gone mad, brother? Have you not eaten and slept?”
Loki can hear the anger and shock and the utter worry in Thor’s voice.
He turns his head away before the latter can properly creep into his ears.
“Why, with this marvelous bed and delicious meals, should I deny myself the pleasure of either two…” he rasps, voice thin and hoarse. It cuts him deep that he doesn’t sound half as condescending as he’d like to, but he neither has the strength to try better, nor does he really care.
He has to stay awake.
His concentration already slips so fast that he almost forgets Thor is there when he doesn’t answer for a while, and he’s reminded of the fact only when his older brother gathers his aching body in his arms and heaves him onto the bed.
That he can’t protest wounds Loki’s pride so deep he suddenly wants to scream, ironic as it is. He doesn’t though, but as soon as he sits he pushes at Thor and shifts away as far into the corner of his bed as possible.
“You had your victory already; can you not leave me in peace even now…?” Loki spits at him, half-heartedly. As much as he hates Thor and as much as he wants him to leave, he can’t afford to waste his energy on him. Not anymore.
“Loki…” Thor looks at him, hurt, sad, angry, worried. Even a little scared. And, Loki realizes, helpless. It’s a rare look on the other’s face, and it almost – almost - makes Loki smile with triumph.
At least he’s not the only one.
“Rest, brother, I beg you…” Thor says quietly. He gets up and leaves, looking back once before the door closes behind him, leaving Loki with his bed and his candles and this waking nightmare.
He leans his weary head back against the cold wall, his eyes burning enough to gather tears. They hurt too much to keep them open, and so he closes them for a few seconds, careful to not fall asleep.
Outside he can hear Thor’s voice roaring through the halls as he shouts at the guards and demands explanations. Loki laughs weakly and then the voices fade away and his mind is somewhere else.
Rest, Thor had said.
You will not rest until you have suffered the price for your failure, his dream answers.
Loki can feel the tears run over his cheeks slowly, and he takes a deep, deep breath.
+++
He manages a whole week, with the meals they bring him. And although he still wants to rip Thor’s heart out whenever he sees him, the other god cares enough to make sure he gets more than enough to eat, and Loki is grateful for that (although he never tells him so).
But it’s still a week and still no sleep and despite Thor’s now almost daily visits he knows that it’s helpless.
He can’t hide and he can’t run. He can barely even move anymore. His body aches whenever he dares to try, and his head is a throbbing mess.
Thor begs him to tell him what is happening, he begs Loki to let him help. They can get a healer, a sorcerer, farther will know what to do! he promises, over and over.
Loki’s only answers him with silence, for he knows what Thor doesn’t.
His promises are but empty lies.
+++
When the hallucinations start, he tries talking to himself and the walls and at times he feels like the runes are talking back. He knows them by now, knows how they bind his powers. He also knows they don’t bind powers that aren’t his.
Thor keeps asking him what is wrong, keeps telling him how worried they are, and that whatever Loki is doing to himself, he has to stop.
Loki doesn’t answer. Out of pride, yes, but he also knows that whatever he told now, be it truth or lie, they wouldn’t let him out.
He knows, for that, it’s too late.
+++
There is no darkness anymore, not at the beginning and not at the end.
He doesn’t walk anymore, either. He runs.
When he turns around there is nothing but empty halls, but he knows better, he knows he’s not alone.
He tries to open the doors, his own, Odin’s, Thor’s. They are all locked, mocking him in his loneliness, in his helpless attempts to hide.
There is no mischief here, no lies, no sorcery, nothing. His wits can save him no more than strength can.
He wants to scream for help, but he realizes that he can’t. One can’t scream without a mouth.
You can’t breathe without one either - and suddenly, he’s terrified.
He can’t breathe.
He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe.
He brings his fingers up to his face to scratch it open, scratch his skin away where his mouth should be, but as he digs his nails into his pale skin the voice cuts through him, again, and with such force it knocks him down on his knees.
His hands fly to his ears, and for the lack of a mouth he screams inside his mind, he screams and wails and cries, and it’s not even pain anymore.
It’s despair.
Slaughtering, cruel, black despair.
He wakes screaming, tears damp on his hollow cheeks. He curses himself for his weakness, for the few minutes his body betrayed him with sleep.
And as he weeps hopelessly in the darkness of his cell, he realizes that it doesn’t matter.
A day, two, even a whole week.
He can’t run.
+++
Loki regrets. All of it. But he knows that even if he asks for forgiveness, asks for mercy, there will be none. So he keeps running.
He can hear the voice when he’s awake now, too. Not as prominent, but it’s there, in the back of his wrecked mind.
And when Thor finds him on the floor after another week, nails bloody after scratching at his temples and his ears, weeping openly, Loki knows, truly knows ( for the first time since he has returned to Asgard) that he has lost.
He hears Thor calling his name, hears him calling for the guards. He has brought Loki medicine, he says, that will help. And after he lays him down on the bed, the frail, broken, lost brother he still loves too dearly, he helps Loki drink the liquid he’s brought with him. Loki can’t tell if it’s sweet or sour anymore, but he drinks without question (because it won’t help anyway), slowly, until he has swallowed it all.
And then, as Thor sits next to him and he can feel the sleep-inducing poison dispersing in his body, he wants to laugh. He does laugh, in his thoughts, as his limbs grow numb slowly and he knows what awaits next. He laughs and laughs and laughs.
He can see Thor’s hopeful eyes and gentle smile, hear his dark voice promising just rest and now sleep and Iet this madness end, brother… And then his face blurs and the laughter fades into nothing, and as Loki’s eyes fall shut the darkness feels comforting and warm and safe.
And then he is asleep.
There is no darkness. There are closed doors and empty halls and a shattered mind, and Loki cries and screams and (finally) begs.
“Anything, anything, anything.”
The voice that answers is cold and blistering, quiet and loud. It rips through his body and it cuts him open, before it puts him back together and it cuts him up again, and Loki chokes on his wailing thoughts.
“Spare me your begging, pathetic god. There is nothing you can give us. You own nothing, you are nothing. You have failed us and you will pay for your failure. You will pay, you will pay, you will pay, you will pay…”
And as his mind cracks he realizes his mistake.
His biggest, his utmost, his most fatal mistake.
He should’ve been scared.
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