Chapter 2
The price for his crimes upon Midgard, and Asgard before that was a thousand years spent in a sealed cage beneath the earth of Odin’s throne. It seemed a small thing to pay, and he hadn’t even been disowned.
***
There were comforts to be had in admitting one’s own monstrosity.
For once, he knew exactly what he was—ugly monstrous frozen blue—and exactly where he stood—at Thor’s feet, at Odin’s feet, a stolen relic, nothing more --. No more shame. No more despair while faintly clawing to be better better better and good enough for the Allfather’s table.
The war on Midgard was his idea, entirely. Broken and shivering at Thanos’ feet, barely grasping at straws for the slightest morsel of long-lost pride, and the first thing out of his lips were war, glorious war. The old Thor would have been proud. Odin had loved the old Thor as much as the Allfather loved the new one.
War, glorious war, for the promise of a pretty blue cube—Thanos wanted the Tesseract, but Loki cared not. I am a monster. Monsters were wont to destruction for destruction’s sake. This was reason enough.
He said as much during the farce of a trial when Thor first dragged him back to Asgard by the scuff of the neck. Odin aged with guilt, and Loki laughed the night away. Thor was horrified.
You lack conviction, a mortal once said. But Loki had nothing but conviction. Rule Midgard? Not the priority.
Here was a truth: Loki Laufeyson served no one save himself. In the aftermath of the debacle in Midgard, Loki Laufeyson knew himself a monster, irrevocably and wholly, and learnt to embrace it utterly. It was a relief to simply be. Thanos still did not have his pretty blue cube. There would be no regrets, no apologies, nothing but bared fangs and empty defiance traipsing at the edge of an unwelcoming tomorrow.
Thor once asked: Who controls the would-be King?
Nobody controlled the never-be King. He volunteered. Midgardians would call it finding himself. Some mortals, like Stark, would call it fucking hilarious.
***
Here was another truth: Loki Laufeyson had always been one unforgiving sonuvabitch.
***
When Thor came next, it was to summon—push pull drag—the chained and collared Loki for judgement before Odin’s throne. Again. How nostalgic. He had played the chained criminal often enough within enough lifetimes that walking like a chained beast down these halls felt almost normal.
The natural state of villainy, perhaps, was at the feet of the goodly heroes.
“Have care in how you speak to Father, Loki,” Thor said at the doorway, leaving Loki with the common guards. The crown prince had to take his place first. Loki gave a mocking bow and stayed silent after Thor’s departing back.
When Loki strode into the hall minutes later, it was to the cold stares of the courtiers and the lords, the warriors and the maidens. He discomforted most, disgusted some, and bewildered others. There were few who held him in true, abject fear, and these were the wise ones he took note of.
Odin called it an audience, but Loki knew better. It had always been a show and his showmanship had to be learnt somewhere. Look, good men and women, at the wayward Prince! Look how it pranced in chains! That Frigga Allmother was not in attendance was small mercy, indeed.
So if the bow he swept in front of Odin’s throne was comically theatrical and bitingly insulting, it was expected of Loki the Trickster, Loki the Coward, Loki the Jester Price with a hollow crown. There were a small burst of outrage from Tyr and his merry band, but they were quaint enough to be ignored.
“Allfather,” he said, drawled, bleeding arrogance and rudeness, and looked on expectantly.
Thor shot him a look. Have care, it said. Loki batted his lashes and looked away. No, no, I will have none.
Upon his dais and throne, Odin Allfather still made for a fearsome figure, golden glory glaring with the fury of burning suns. But to some, to those who had spent a lifetime with both man and King, the crevices around his eyes and the stiff set of his mouth spoke only of age and weariness and sorrow deep.
Thrice Gungnir struck against the golden dais to call for silence. “Loki,” the Allfather said. “Loki Odinson. You have violated your sentence.”
No, no, not an Odinson. He bared his teeth. “So what of it?”
There were two types of criminals to pass these chambers—Loki, and everyone else. Only one would have the audacity to speak to the King thus.
The pause stretched uncomfortably before Gungnir clunked. “Then where have you secreted Fenrir?”
“I know not where Fenrir is, Allfather,” Loki said, stretching his hands out, palm up, feigning innocence. Mirth danced in his voice.
Whispers swept through the hall. The quiet hum of slowly building tension bounced off silvery gold walls. Warriors muttered to each other and maidens whispered behind their handkerchiefs. Lies, they whispered uncomfortably. There were few within these halls who could forget the circumstances of the wolf-beasts’ birth and captivity, and fewer still who could forget what Fenrir meant to Loki and Loki to Fenrir.
It seemed almost cruel, to force a father bind his child. Yet, another word lucked in the mind of the masses. Ragnorak.
Cruel choices, to be made by cruel Kings, for Kings could not always be kind. So the Allfather drew himself up, and seemed to have lost a millennia of age in a moment. “The truth, Loki. I will have the truth, boy.”
“The truth?” And the wicked smirk upon Loki’s lips twisted into a wretched, jagged, scar. His laughter had never sounded more like chalk on cracked edges. Somewhere, Thor grimaced. “The truth is I can find him, blood of my blood, seed of my loins, if you bind me to the task, Allfather.
He could not say, yes, yes, I know where that miserable creature is, miserable like his father, because perhaps he did but perhaps he did not, and sometimes the truth was a flip of the coin, a breathe in the fog.
“Then by the will of Odin,” the Allfather thundered, and power rolled off his throne in waves, “And by the cuffs you wear, the collar you wear, I bind you, Loki Odinson, to this task. You will find Fenrir. You will bring him back to Asgard. Thor shall go with you. And when you come back, this current trespass will be forgiven, and you will serve the rest of your sentence. I decree it thus.”
And this was the end of this.
***
There was an echo of the Void within the Tesseract, enough that Loki could not bear to touch it once he had it.
The Tesseract was a fickle and whimsical thing, older than Odin, strange in its ways. It promised. It showed. It cajoled. It warped. It was not meant for the hands of mortal man, of any being who lived linearly in three-dimensional folds. It was to a cube as a cube would be to a square—similar, but something more.
Loki touched the Cosmic Cube once on Midgard before handing it to the Doctor and the Hawk. It showed him the Infinity Gems.