Catalyst For Pain
Crys is starting to think that perhaps getting involved with the issues of the Asgardian Royal family is not a good idea. Something may go horribly wrong for her, and all for the reason that she just wanted a few answers about the younger prince. There are millions of reasons why she should stay as far away from the royal family as she could, and also countless reasons why she had done exactly that for the past few centuries. Yet here she was sitting within the confines of the weapons vault, waiting for over an hour. This time, she was completely visible as she awaited the god of mischief to strut through the doors. If he’s actually gonna come, that is. The only basis that she actually had to lean on was only her assumption that maybe Loki would be smart enough to figure out what he needs to do.
After what seemed like forever for her, Crys had begun hearing footsteps from outside the vault. From the sounds of it, the footsteps were too light for it to be a guard, so there was a high chance that it could be Loki. The doors then open and shut swiftly, causing Crys to take a small peek from where she sat just to see the god of mischief cautiously making sure that the doors were closed properly. Once she was certain that it was indeed the vexing prince, she decided that it would now be a good idea to reveal herself. “Looks like we’ve crossed paths once more.”
“What are you doing here?” Loki questioned, his voice dangerously low as he slowly made his way to the middle of the room. “Whoever you are, I advise that you reveal yourself now.” He articulated, his previous nervousness seeming to be disappearing completely. Not wanting to waste any more time, Crys decided to stand up from her position. “You.” He chuckled mirthlessly.
“Yes, me.” She said with a lofty smile as she walked over to the front of the casket, parallel to where Loki was standing. “Relax, I haven't come here to start any fights.” Crys said, attempting to reassure him as she raised her hands in mock surrender. “I just came here to talk to you.” She added as she very quickly put her hands back down. “Just talk.”
“Fine, then.” Loki uttered, a sliver of a smirk flashing on his face for a split second. Crys couldn’t seem to connect the confident yet conscious man that was standing in front of her to the man that she met earlier who seemed to panic over his skin turning blue. “The Ice Fairy herself wants to talk to me, I see.” Loki says, causing Crys’ brows to shoot up. What the hell did he just say? “The notorious troublemaker who is known all throughout the nine realms.”
“...You know who I am.” She observed, shock evident in her tone. Her own surprise back at Jotunheim must have made her sloppy as she quickly recounted those events in her head. She was doing SO well with staying low and some prince just had to ruin it for her. “I’m guessing that I have made it painfully obvious?”
“You have.” He answers, somewhat enlivened. “And I guess from your reaction, the majority of the people you face haven’t figured this out like how I have.” He said, causing her head to perk up. She could already tell where this was gonna go. “It would be quite a shame, don’t you think, if suddenly word just spreads to everyone. You know, such as the little governments that you take pride in taking down?”
“I could sense an empty threat when I see one, Loki.” Crys said, attempting to dismiss his statement. “You’ll do no such thing.”
“Oh really, now?” He laughed, staring at her with great amusement painted all over his face. Since when were his eyes so incredibly green? Crys thought to herself offhandedly. “All I need to do is to feed the right people the right information. That was your saving grace, was it not?” Loki said, his green eyes gleaming with frivolity. “You were always shrouded in mystery, and you relied on that mystery to take people down.”
“You wouldn’t be saying any of this if you weren’t after something.” Crys noted as she carefully took a few steps closer to the god. “So, what is it then? What are you trying to achieve with this conversation?”
“Some answers, perhaps?” He said, his tone gradually returning to its previous seriousness. “I would like to know what sort of spell you cast on me back on Jotunheim, explain yourself.”
“Alright.” She mused as she pursed her lips togethers. “There was no spell, I didn’t do anything.” She added quick, her tone blunt. “I only attempted to do something that I have done many times before, something very similar to what that frost giant did to one of your friends.” As a small demonstration, she raised one of her palms to show a thin layer of ice coating her fingers. Forming into a ball in the middle of her hand, it bursted into tiny little sizzling snow particles. “Just like that, except it was supposed to explode on your arm.” She told him, putting her hand back down. “It didn’t have the desired effect, obviously.”
“Clearly.” Loki agreed non-convincingly, eyeing Crys with suspicion. “If what you said was true-”
“You don’t want to believe me?” She asked, interrupting the prince with a wide grin.
“It’s not that I don’t want to.” Loki corrected her, rolling his eyes. “It’s just that I simply don’t.”
“Sure, whatever you say.” She said, still somewhat amused. “Just a small reminder that I can only give the answers that I have, which unfortunately is not that many at the moment.” She said as her lips pressed together into a smirk. She then notices that Loki is staring at her once again, this time with a more thoughtful and contemplative eye.
“Turns out that I have heavily overestimated you then.” Loki commented as he walked closer and closer until they were face-to-face, making Crys to realize the massive difference between in height between the two of them as she had to look up to meet his eyes once more. Loki then began to tilt his head ominously as he began sneering. “You’re nothing but a scared little girl that does anything to hide from the reality of the universe. You’re a terrorist.”
“Do not make me slice your throat where you stand, Loki.” Crys threatened slowly, her fists clenching.
“That’s Prince Loki to you.” He snickered, his eyes twinkling with a sick sense of victory.
“Prince?” The Ice Fairy scoffed harshly. “Are you still so certain about that?”
“What are you trying to insinuate here?” He asked as he glared down at her, his humor disappearing.
“What I’m trying to say here is…” Crys began, her lips curving up to a brutish smirk. “That maybe it is not me who is scared and hiding from reality.” She told him sharply, as she looked up at his unreadable expression. “I know you didn’t expect to speak with me so you must have come all the way down here for something else entirely.” She watches as his brows begin to furrow while he stays silent. “I mean, we both know it.” She stepped aside to gesture at the Casket of Ancient Winters. “Go ahead then, Loki.”
If looks could kill, Crys would be a thousand times dead by the time that Loki begrudgingly plodded his way towards the casket. She steadily walked over to the side, eyes trained on Loki’s fingers that were shakingly inching its way to the relic. When the god finally grabbed onto the artifact, he gasped when his fingers started turning blue and when it began spreading to his arms. Turning her attention to his face, Crys could clearly see a flurry of emotions streak through, way more than she can count and none of them good. He ended up letting go of the casket before it could spread even more, and even then he still kept staring at his hands like it was his first time setting his eyes upon them.
Crys was starting to see the obvious contrast to how Loki seemed to be as of right now and compared to Crys herself felt when she first found out that she wasn’t actually Asgardian all those years ago, maybe she had pushed a little too far.
“Are you happy now?” Loki snarled, his glare fixated on her expressions as if to discern whether or not she was somehow pulling a trick or not. In the end, he found no signs of deception. Crys was unable to answer his question, not really knowing what to say to him. If there was anything to say in this situation. Sighing heavily, Loki turned back to the casket as if it had turned his life upside down, it probably did.
“My already subpar respect for Odin just plummeted all the way down to Hel.” Crys grumbled under her breath, not intending for anyone else but her to hear but Loki’s sharp ears caught that she had muttered something .
“What was that?”
“I said that you are now officially the mix of the two things that I hate most in all of the nine realms.” Crys said without thinking. Yet for some reason, it made me care even more , she finishes in her head. “Aren’t you glad?” She finally asks. “Finally finding the truth about yourself?”
“I was hanging onto the final thread of normalcy until you snipped it.” He said, his tone brusque. “What did you expect?” He snapped. “That I would’ve been grateful because you have enlightened me and then owe you my life for it?” His voice was bitter and rough with emotion that she didn’t expect to see. “You could never have been more wrong.”
“You have no idea who I am-”
“You have no idea who I am either!” Loki bit out aggressively. “What makes you care so much anyway?”
That question caught Crys off-guard, despite the fact that she has already been asking herself that exact same question for the past few minutes. “I thought I could’ve gotten something out of all this.” She told him, lying through her teeth as she was unwilling to admit that she doesn’t actually know how to answer. “It seems that I was wrong.” Crys is very well aware of how abrasive she’s acting and she is starting to doubt that decision.
Abruptly looking away from her, Loki dubiously walked back to the ancient relic and hesitantly grabbed at its sides. This time, however, he lifted it up slightly from its display platform. Breathing heavily, His skin began to turn blue once again and Crys watched as he did nothing at all to break it off from spreading. The fairy then started to hear footsteps from outside causing her to silently retreat to the nearest pillar. She could still see Loki from where he stood, and he could still see her as well while whoever would walk in won’t be able to. She pondered on whether or not she should tell Loki that someone was on their way, but it was too late. The big doors opened.
“Stop!” Crys heard the Allfather call out to Loki. Turning back to the god of mischief, she saw that cerulean blue had managed to spread all the way up to his face. Along that fact, his eyes had also switched to blood-red and some kind of marks could be seen etched onto his skin. From what she could see, Loki visibly freezed when he heard his father’s voice.
“Am I cursed?” Loki asked Odin, not moving an inch since the king barged in. Glancing at the prince’s face, Crys could already sense the urge of wanting to leave the two of them alone in the room, but at the same time she was unable to without being seen by the Allfather.
“No.” The strained voice of the Allfather replies back.
“Then what am I?” The deafening sound of Loki placing the casket back down rang throughout the entire room. His movements were slow and quite tentative, that much she could tell.
“You’re my son.” The old man says, prompting Loki to finally turn and look him straight in the eyes.
“What more than that?” Loki gritted through his teeth, Crys noticed that his skin faded back to how it was quite quickly. The god of mischief glowered at his supposed-to-be father as he cautiously made his way to the area at which Odin stands, to where Crys couldn’t see. “The Casket wasn’t the only thing you took from Jotunheim that day, was it?”
“No.” Odin answered. “In the aftermath of the battle, I went into the temple…” The Allfather heavily starts off. “And I found a baby. Small for a giant’s offspring.” He added as Loki let out a sigh of some sort of disbelief at what he was saying. “Abandoned, suffering, and left to die.” Hearing this almost broke Crys’ frozen heart, no child deserved this. “Laufey’s son.”
“Laufey’s son.” Loki repeated bewilderedly, as if trying to make some sense of that term. Crys had just now realized what had happened; no matter how irritating or vexing she may find the god of mischief to be, his whole world just changed in a split second with two lousy words. Just like that, his name changed, his birthright changed, and most especially, who he was changed. Furthermore, she was a catalyst for this.
“Yes.” Odin said under his breath, so low that Crys could only slightly hear him with how far away she was.
“Why?” Loki shakily asked. “You were knee deep in Jotun blood, why did you take me?”
“You were an innocent child.” Odin tries to say, but Loki wasn’t having any of it.
“No.” He said abruptly, interrupting his adopted father. “You took me for a purpose, what was it?” Odin said nothing. The silence was roaringly loud inside the vault until Loki finally snapped as he started letting the rage, confusion and all the other emotions that he was hiding just mere moments ago all out. “TELL ME!” He shouted vehemently, in such an intensity that the Ice fairy had trouble believing the famed silvertongue was capable of.
“I thought we could unite our kingdoms one day.” Odin answers finally. “Bring about an alliance, bring about a permanent peace… Through you.”
“What?” Crys could hear Loki say, his voice sounding weak.
“But, those plans no longer matter.”
“So I am no more than another stolen relic.” Loki started, his tone sore and inflamed. Crys would love to see Odin try and charm his way out of all this mess. “Locked up here until you might have use of me.”
“Why do you twist my words?” Odin asked, but Loki seemed to choose to ignore the question.
“You could’ve told me what I was from the beginning!” The god pointed out indignantly. “Why didn’t you!?” He asked him quickly after. Crys can hear a sense of undisguised rawness in his voice and begin to wonder once more if there was a way so that she could leave the room and never have to think of this pair ever again.
“You’re my son.” Odin told him, his voice not wavering in the slightest. “I wanted only to protect you from the truth.”
“Because I’m the monster parents tell their children about at night?” Loki posed. This caused Crys to think back to earlier that day, when she and Loki were just nonchalantly fighting Frost Giants without care of whatever may happen to them after, if they do survive. No, No! I am not gonna suddenly develop any pity or sympathy for these Jotun and Asgardian fools! She reminded herself, trying to get it more into her head. “No, no. You know, it all makes sense now!” She heard a thud as Loki took a step closer to Odin, though she wasn’t sure if they were the same sound. “Why you favored Thor all these years! Because no matter how much you claimed to love me, you could never have a frost giant sit on the throne of Asgard.”
Crys could hear a little bit of muttering and mumbling from the old man before complete silence envelopes the room. Before she moved from her position to take a look, Loki began to shout. “Guards!” Something must have happened to Odin. “Guards, please, help!” Crys pressed herself onto the pillar even more when she heard more people come rushing in, then rush out as fast as they entered, she presumed that they brought the Allfather along with them.
The doors shut. Loki and Crys were alone in the weapons vault again. Deeming it safe enough, she steps out of her hiding spot. The god gaped at her as if he was just now remembering that she was standing back there the whole time. It seems that they were both sloppy with emotion that day. “You heard nothing.” Loki told her flatly. Not really in the mood to argue, she just nodded.
“Look, Loki. I should’ve-”
“No.” He said, cutting off anything she was just about to say. “Whatever you were gonna say, save it.” He told her, then tilted his head downward as if to size her up. “However, I do have a proposition for you.” He claimed, surprising Crys with its suddenness and also confusing her with the fact that he wanted to talk more after all that happened that day. “Meet me at the main balcony of the palace at midnight.”
“I have a feeling that you’re up to no good.” She commented, a faint smile on her face. “I’ll consider it.”
Loki turns to leave the room but falters. “I hate to ask but, I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t found out yet.” She chuckled out, referencing all the digging he did on her. She’s starting to see a tint of humor in his green eyes again. “My name is Crys.”