Lovers and Other Cruel Things

I'll tell you of lovers and other cruel things,

Of cold hearts devoid of emotion.

If I can still grasp at the joy that it brings,

I'll teach you to fly on the ocean.

Coming to was not a transition; at first he was awake, and then he realized he was awake, and that he didn’t know how long that had been the case. He was suspended at first, almost as if he were two Lokis – his body, lying in the bed, and his mind, hovering perhaps a foot above it. Neither doing much of anything except lying there, which was quite pleasant. Gazing lazily above himself, Loki saw the blind-eye bottles that always greeted him at the dawn, hanging by their necks and tinted with rose gold, chock full of stolen trinkets. He heard them chime together, buffered by the slight breeze through the open window. He knew these things. The smell of sanded wood, the sea. Someone’s light breathing beside him. his covers, his cushions, his shelves of treatises and treasures. He was home.

And yet, he also felt as if there was a war on. I should not be here, Loki thought, I should be- I was-

He remembered that he had been at a party. A gaudy, baubled celebration. There was a storm.

He remembered realizing he was going to die.

Loki shot upright; he couldn’t breathe. He was in agonizing pain – searing pain from the gashes across his upper arms and torso, and he didn’t understand how he hadn’t felt it before. Every part of him was screaming or aching with pain, but most importantly – he couldn’t breathe. He clutched at his throat, gasping, making little tearing motions, scraping skin under his nails. Someone grabbed him from behind.

“No!” he screamed, slamming an elbow behind himself and striking something solid. There was an “umph;” Loki struck out again, but whoever it was grabbed his arm. “Calm down, Loki,” he was told, by a voice right at the nape of neck. “It’s alright, now. You’re safe.”

“No,” Loki moaned, desolate. He was floating away again, the cold was taking him. This man who he had trusted was going to kill him. He didn’t want to die. The room was hazing over, spinning around. “No… no…”

“It’s alright, Loki,” his father told him, stroking his temple. “It’s alright, it’s alright… calm down.”

Father was here.

Loki was in his bedroom, he realized he knew this now. His father had held him in his arms since the day he was born, and he was safe there. Close to blacking out again, he closed his eyes and let his head loll back, he relaxed his body and focused on his breaths – they came hard and fast, and there was a nasty noise being made when they did. He tried to cough it away.

“It’s alright,” Laufey repeated, and started to lay his son back down on the stacked pillows. “You’re alright now. You’re alright. Loki, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Loki croaked. He tried to take stock of himself. It seemed there were bandages over most of his upper body. The pain faded when he stopped thrashing about but it was still there, pulsing. His hair was pasted by sweat to his forehead, but he was cold. Bone cold. Loki swallowed and that hurt too. Everything hurt.

He gratefully accepted water when it was handed to him. His fingers were shaking, and he seemed to get it everywhere except in his mouth. Laufey eventually had to take hold of the glass and help him, pushing Loki down, though, when he tried to rise to make it easier for himself. "Don't get up," he cautioned, "you still need a lot of rest."

When Loki was settled again, Laufey put the glass down on the nightstand and sat leaning forward, with Loki’s hand pressed against his cheek and his elbow on his knee. He gazed intently at his son, his countenance showing sorrow and relief at the same time. Loki, head now clearer, was able to hold his gaze, despite his fatigue. 

Loki wanted to ask how he could possibly be alive, and back in his own bed, but his father obviously also wanted to have his piece, so he stayed quiet for the moment. Laufey struggled for a while before he could get any words out.

“Perhaps I shouldn't... no. You ought..." Laufey grimaced and decided just to come out with it. "I’m so sorry, Loki,” he whispered. “You were the only one.”

Loki's eyes widened but he only blinked, and nodded. He was, he realized, still in shock. He felt nothing – or, at least, he did not feel enough. He was alive. But they were all dead. Rie and Lucian, the fishermen’s sons who’d wheedled their way aboard to celebrate the achievements of an aristocrat they held nothing but contempt for. Abra and Alba, the twins. Niccolo himself was, too, dead. Loki didn’t even know why he had been invited, but he’d suspected it was because Niccolo’s baby sister had liked him.

She was dead too now.

And Skadi. Skadi was dead.

Skadi was dead.

Loki began to cry. The tears became heavy sobs, and before he knew it, he was weeping uncontrollably. “I’m sorry,” he moaned, pulling back his hand so he could hide his face in it. “I’m so sorry.”

“It… It’s not your fault, Loki,” his father told him, squeezing his shoulder.

“It is,” he cried, shoulders shaking with grief. “It is my fault. She- she didn’t even want to go. I made her.” He had been nervous.He hadn’t wanted to be alone. What had he done?

“Oh…” his father sighed. “I’m sure… I mean… What was her name?”

Loki sniffed, then froze. “What?” he said. 

“Well, I-”

“What? You said-“

“I don’t know who it was that you lost.”

Eyes wide, Loki blinked. “Skadi… was… not on the boat?”

“What? No!”

Loki’s outburst ended as abruptly as it had begun. “Dio mio.” he flopped back down and sighed, gratitude flooding through him and tears already forgotten. “She lied to me. I’m going to kill her. I thought…” he shook his head weakly. “I should not be so thankful, when so many people are dead.”

His father gave a very small smile. “I feel the same way. But this is a time to be thankful for what we have, as well as for grief. These things go hand in hand.

“Skadi is fit and well,” Laufey continued. “She has been at your bedside day and night, but I sent her away because she got so tired she kept crawling in next to you when I wasn’t looking. You were very sick.

"You've been asleep a few days, now. You were…” Laufey glanced away. “We didn't know... Anyways. You should not be so surprised that she deceived you into going out alone, Loki. She is, after all, your sister.”

Loki gave a small laugh. He didn’t realize what an effect it would have on his father; his head swung around, his piercing gaze suddenly returned. He looked as if he’d just heard the voice of God himself. Laufey, Loki was realizing, had been terrified.

“Father,” he asked, finally. “How…?”

Laufey sighed.

“There was nothing we could do for you that night,” he explained. “We could hear the storm, but it was peaceful here. An empty, heavy night. Everyone was waiting at the pier; we were worried, of course. But, of course… it would have been such a risk to send anyone out then… There was no moon.

"By the early hours of the morning, the ship hadn’t returned, and we all knew what had happened, but nobody was going to say it. Your sister was so brave, Loki, she kept me together. Although of course I pretended it was the other way around. Anyways… At dawn, we finally could send people out. But by that time, anything that was left of the ship was already being washed back to the shore. So we formed search parties, and we went out, looking for… Well, the ship had already sunk, but… There were, things… wood, you know, whatever floats, and… and bodies. There were bodies in the water.

"I didn’t know what I feared more, Loki. Having you lost out in the depths… never being able to bring you home again… or seeing you there, face down, dead. Seeing my little boy..." 

Loki, who had been wailing like a baby only moments ago, watched, stunned, as his father gritted his teeth against tears that he could not stop. Loki had never, ever, seen his father cry before. Laufey’s own father had died several years ago, his mother following soon after in her grief, and they had been buried together. And Laufey had not wept once.

Laufey did not cry with joy when his wife came home after years of unexplained silence; nor with sorrow when, days later, with tears in her eyes herself, she explained that she must leave again.

Loki didn’t know what to say.

Laufey huffed and wiped his eyes before ending the silence himself. “It was less than an hour we were out there,” he continued. “It felt, of course, like centuries. Your sister had refused to go home when I ordered her to, so we were together when I heard them calling for me. I knew immediately what it was – I grabbed her and ran as fast as I could over to the outer beach, and as I ran I prayed. I don’t know what for, I knew what I was going to see, but I was praying nonetheless.

"I got down to the shore again, and there were a dozen people, and Silas Lane, with you in his arms. Half dead and torn near to shreds, but somehow with breath in you still."

Laufey went straight on, obviously trying to avoid thinking too much about it. Loki was feeling incredibly guilty for almost being murdered. "After that we took you to one of the houses on the beach, where the doctor could come quickly and we could get you warm. And then home, as soon as the journey would not endanger you. Your friends are coming around this evening and I'll wake your sister up soon. Your mother is also going to be here in a few days. I suppose that's all there is to it.

"My God, Loki, there are no were words for what I felt when I held you then. He said he’d found you on the shore, just lying there… waiting for somebody to come along. I, I… it was a miracle”

Loki was solemn but, characteristically, he couldn’t stay silent. “No, it wasn’t,” he told Laufey. There was the end of it, and he knew the beginning. In between, there was only one path that could have been taken. “It was a sea-person.”

“Loki,” Laufey snapped, something akin to anger in his voice. “Such things are for children.”

“They are absolutely not,” Loki argued. “Everybody knows they’re real! Everybody! They killed a whole boatful of people, and I saw it! I know what is was I saw.”

Laufey grasped Loki by the shoulders and growled. “Loki,” he warned.

“And I know what mother is too,” Loki finished.

Laufey went still. “Loki,” he said, in a very low voice. “Listen to me. I am not calling you a liar. And I am not saying you are wrong. I believe you. But such things must not be spoken of, ever. For your sake and theirs.”

Loki blanched in surprise.

“Your mother and I have always loved each other very much. Sometimes that made things harder. Because I would and did go to great lengths to protect her… and in the end that meant for the most part that we could not be together.

I’m not telling you what to do, Loki. I don’t know the whole story – frankly, I was hoping that you didn’t either, or that you’d dismiss it all as some sort of… fever dream – and I don’t want to. But obviously there’s something that runs in our family, and someone out there-“

“It’s not like that,” Loki insisted, but his father just raised a skeptical eyebrow and went on. “-And I know the last thing you’d want is to endanger her by fuelling an ensemble of vengeful villagers with fantastical stories you’d started.”

Loki didn’t respond for a while but eventually he lowered his gaze in silent acquiescence. And then, because this was a time for confessions and he trusted his father and he was tired of this secret weighing him down, he said out loud, “Your ‘someone’ is a ‘he’… and I wouldn’t hold much interest if it weren’t so.”

Laufey sat back and tapped the chair’s wooden arm with his forefinger. “To each his own,” he said. “Your mother, with one exception, holds no interest in the human race.”