Chapter 2
The sheer boredom began to set in for the trickster by the 3rd week in the dungeons. Not only had Loki read his books through once, but 5 times. And it wasn’t like he had many people to talk to. Just the horrible guards. Alastor made sure Loki felt the Boredom as quickly as possible. The unwelcome gurgle from his stomach rattled his frame. Alastor had stuck to his word, and Loki had barely eaten in the last few weeks. What little he was fed from other guards who took pity on him, he was saving and rationing out to himself cautiously. Oh, how he longed for someone to talk to him.
As if on cue, he heard the sweetest voice from behind him.
“My dearest Loki,” her voice brought calmness over the trickster’s soul.
“Mother,” Loki replied, tears almost filling his eyes.
“You look so pale,” her voice filled with concern. Her head tilted to the side as she looked upon him with sadness muddled in her eyes and distinct forgiveness within them too. “I have done everything in my power to make you comfortable.”
Moving across the cell, Loki said, “Have you? Does Odin share your concern? Does Thor? It must be so inconvenient for them asking after me day and night.” Loki’s voice took on a tone of sarcasm.
Frigga barely bristled at his words, instead calmly pointing out that: “You know full well it was your actions that brought you here.”
Loki raised a hand dismissively. “My actions? I was merely giving truth to the lie I had been fed my entire life. I was born to be a king.”
Frigga continued without a beat, “A king? A true king admits his faults. What of the lives you took on Earth?”
Loki huffed, “A mere handful compared to the number that Odin has taken himself.” Loki’s back faced Frigga as he took up a wooden cup in his hand.
Frigga shook her head in dismay. “Their lives were no different from yours.”
Loki barked a laugh. “That’s not what Odin and Thor believe Odin Will not humans here because they're below us and Thor goes down there to be worshiped By them”
“They were innocent lives you took, Loki, and a punishment is only fitting for the havoc you so needlessly brought onto them.”
“Although your father took--” Frigga began, but Loki immediately turned around in a fury, slamming his hand onto the nearby table and shouting, “He’s not my father!”
They stared at each other for a moment as Frigga pursed her lips, her golden hair shining in the light.
“Then am I not your mother?” she whispered.
Loki paled, taking a small step back. “You’re not,” he affirmed.
Frigga shook her head, a deeper sadness than before entering her eyes.
“You’re always so perceptive about everyone but yourself.”
Tears emerged in Loki’s green eyes as an apology formed on his tongue for everything that had happened, everything that would come, and for all that he was, but when he reached for her hand his hand passed through her illusion and the sting of hurt laced through his veins for days.
It was another week later when the nightmares got worse. Often Loki found himself shouting at no one. He would awaken with his heart racing, and breathing heavily. He’d lie awake with only the gold magical barrier lighting up his space as the memories lingered at the edges of his vision until Alastor came by, presumably hours later, with the sludge for porridge. Loki never mentioned them to anyone, but it wasn’t like he had anyone to tell either. He was just another prisoner of Asgard’s realm, an outsider, and a misfit. There wasn’t anyone to talk to, He almost wished there was someone to talk to. It would certainly make his imprisonment that much more bearable. Instead, he had shades of darkness, old memories locked away in his brain, and the loneliness that threatened to overtake him. It also meant he had a lot of time to ruminate over his life, his mistakes, his faults, and his betrayals--both the ones inflicted upon him and those that he had created. He would spend hours rethinking old conversations and playing out all the variables regarding new ones. He found himself praying for his mother to return, but she never did. He didn’t know it then, but it would be the last encounter he ever had with her.
The day it happened began as uneventful, Loki awoke from another hellish nightmare in which he ran, away from the six-fingered hands of the Other and their torture only to be re-captured and tortured worse than before. Regardless, it was absurd and left him distraught and shaking all the same. He had spent the last few hours before dawn broke staring up at the dark ceiling, wishing that something.
would force its way into the castle so that the stones above would just end his misery for him. Its beat having to stare at ceilings with his vision blurring as he wept to himself softly enough that no one would suspect a thing. Breakfast came, then disappeared. Alastor was still horrible, some other prisoner whined about not getting enough porridge and things went on as they will in life. It was only near lunchtime that the ruckus began.
At this time, Loki was tossing a cup into the air while catching it with ease as he lay on his blankets in the bed within his cell. It started with noise, a series of groans, and an… explosion of sorts. Upon hearing this, Loki sat up from his bed and approached one of the walls of his room, curiosity mixing with apprehension. Within his line of vision, he saw the breakout of multiple prisoners, their footsteps clambering one after the other as they took off with noise down the hall. Loki couldn’t help but roll his eyes at how amateur they were in their high spirits with their newfound freedoms. Loki’s gaze narrowed considerably when the creature who appeared to be the one breaking out of the other prisoners slowly walked by his cell. The creature gazed with mistrust upon the trickster, stepping up close to the golden shield, with Loki glowering a smirk right back in their direction. The creature, large and dark like a silhouette with spiky horns upon its face and armor, approached cautiously, gazing over Loki’s more lavish cell and taking in his position. Its blue eyes locked with Loki’s green as it raised a swollen hand as if to break the iridescent shield, only to growl lowly and turn away at the last second.
Loki’s brow quirked as he raised his chin at the retreating figure’s back, “You might want to take the stairs to the left.” This will lead him out of the castle and away from the people and away from mother, Loki thought to himself.
With a final look back at the trickster, the creature retreated from the dungeons into the grand halls of Asgard beyond.
Mischief managed, Loki returned to a book that he flipped through mindfully. Not mere moments later, Loki could faintly hear Thor’s friends and Thor himself speaking to the low-life and fighting with them. Loki tried not to convey his anxieties, but even if he had, there wouldn’t have been a free soul around to see them.
He read on, page after page, even if he’d already read this book days before, it kept his mind at bay and the memories hidden behind his eye sockets. With reading, he could escape even temporarily,
Whereas with alertness he could not maneuver an exit from these ever enclosing four walls.
It was hours later when a helmetless guard approached his cell. Previous guards in the hours before had managed to gather some prisoners back inside their cells--the ones who hadn’t perished in the fights that had broken out earlier, at least. When the guard, nameless and practically faceless, told Loki the news that his mother was dead, he felt the world drop out from under him. Loki could feel his heart beating so fast against his chest that it felt like it smashed Because even if she wasn’t his true mother, she was the closest thing he ever had to that. She was his hope; she was his world, even though he only realized it when she was gone. When she was gone and the world was lesser without her in it and Loki would never have the chance to right his wrongs with her, he would never have the chance to be hugged by her one last time, he would never get to tell her how much he did love her even if he wanted nothing to do with her love. He felt he didn’t deserve it because he was a frost giant and a monster, and monsters don’t deserve love and anyone to care about them. None of this would matter in the end because she was gone and Loki was left with the pieces he didn’t realize were already barely holding him together. None of this would have caused such pain and grief to settle into his bones if it weren’t for his realization with quick ease that the creature he had advised on the way to the exit had instead killed his mother. The regret and remorse that pooled within his soul were almost too much to handle. How could this have happened? To him, this just proved even more that he was just a monster and that’s all he ever was, and couldn’t even do one thing right. So, after Loki’s rage self-destructed his cell and the lights went out, he barely thought anything of it. It felt only fitting for the rest of his world to be physically pulled out from under him. If this wasn’t the end for him, it sure felt like it was. And with his newly acquired grief, Loki wasn’t surprised to find himself hoping it was so he could right the wrong that had been done to his mother, if only in his subconscious.