A New Regular Routine
Days of waiting had passed and you had found yourself giving in to the tug making you gravitate towards the dungeons another time. By now you were aware of why it was happening, and thus had given up completely in fighting against the pull dragging you along, down the stairs and past the guards into the hallway. You only stopped when you heard a voice speak that you hadn’t heard this far.
“—That is all which we have found out.”
There were no guards around as you crept closer still, steps silent against the stone floor.
“Surely you cannot be serious,” someone spoke, and you recognized that deep, almost velvet voice anywhere.
Loki?
“My soul. Connected to that of a Midgardian.”
Quiet steps accompanied his short sentences, words coming out like disbelieving huffs of air, and you halted as you listened to his familiar sounding reaction—it was almost eerily similar to your own, non-believing and equally believing, merely hoping it to not be true.
So Aldís’ theory had indeed been proven correct.
“Yes,” the gentle voice replied, “We have thoroughly discussed your predicament as well as the Midgardian’s condition—It is true.”
A poorly veiled, dragged out sigh escaped the Prince and you cold literally feel him squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw in devastation.
“...I know, mother,” he mumbled, barely audible for you to hear while his steps sounded like an elephant stomping through the room in comparison.
Oh god. The Queen was here?
Apparently she was projecting herself into his cell again; right this very moment. Your feet stumbled back automatically, taking it as your cue to leave, as to not accidentally eavesdrop in on their conversation. With horrid realization you tuned in on every of your steps, listening to how they left behind a small, tiny noise sounding more like heavy percussions ringing in your ears, your breathing appearing much too loud for you to further remain undetected.
After your last encounter with him turned out surprisingly smoothly, you didn’t want a single accidental instance to prompt him to go back on what little progress you had made. Especially not after knowing that there most likely was no exact cure to heal you, to sever your connection.
With these thoughts thundering deafeningly in your mind you held your breath, squeezing yourself further into the stone wall as if trying to merge with it—missing the little tug tearing through your mind in your frenzy.
There was an agonizingly long pause in which you started to struggle keeping your breath in, hands gripping onto the stone for support.
“If you may excuse me,” the Queen spoke, gentle and soft, but with a familiar tint of amusement lacing her calm voice, “My absence has not gone unnoticed, so I must bid you farewell, my dear.”
“Until later, mother,” came his surprisingly soft reply.
A moment of silence passed, water drops twisting their way through cracks carved into the ceiling falling down and hitting the stone ground with a quiet noise. You resigned yourself to waiting a while longer, just to make sure, before carefully placing your foot one more step into the direction of the staircase leading back out of the dungeons—
“She has left.”
The sudden exclamation, which was most likely directed at you, made you trip over your feet in a haste, barely catching yourself against the wall before your body could tumble to the floor. With slightly reddened cheeks, feeling terribly embarrassed for being caught red handed, you decided to trudge into the open room—it was too late to escape unnoticed, after all.
You hesitantly lifted your gaze from the floor to find the Prince with the ghost of a smug grin crossing his face, no doubt because of your abashed behavior. Still, having heard the topic of their conversation as well as feeling the distress seeping out of him you tried to not give in to his childish attempts of provoking a reaction out of you.
“I...I didn’t mean to intrude,” you mumbled, raising a hand to your face to briefly shield you from his gaze. But as his gaze still seemed to pierce you still, you decided to cut to the point instead.
“So she told you?”
He dropped the smirk.
“Yes.”
The two of you spent a long time without speaking a single word; you having decided once more to rest on the ground with your legs crossed, while he almost defiantly continued to stand. There was something burning inside of him, questions buzzing around his mind so loudly but cluttered all the same, rendering you unable to separate the words from each other. You noticed that his stare was directed at the floor rather than you, so you waited for the noise in his head to spew out of his mouth—in sentences and questions you could actually reply to.
“How much,” he began, hesitating in his mind while his face appeared more made of ice than ever before, “How much experience did you have prior to the incident on Midgard regarding your mind related abilities?”
His inquiry sounded more like a demand for answers than an actual question, but the newfound knowledge concerning your connection and the little stories told to you by Aldís still echoing through your head prompted you to reply to his hellishly cold words with a smile.
“Not much,” you responded, immediately delving into an explanation of how and when you had come to use them before. As your mostly one-sided conversation continued on, he started interjecting here and there, asking you to elaborate on certain parts. All the while he tried his best to pass it off as mere interest into the unknown even though you undeniably felt that it was mostly genuine curiosity and partially the desperate need to fill the silence.
It was as though he was attempting to deceive himself, rather than you.
You felt how his thoughts ran wild despite his unmoving, stiff posture, felt how the gears in his head shifted while he attempted to form the next question, the one you had vaguely felt burning him deeply since you had descended the stairs.
“Are you...certain that you hold memories of mine?” he spoke, words lingering heavy in the air after having been crafted so very carefully, and the uncertainty and fear dwelling inside of him elicited a frown on your face as your body slumped with his unshed emotions.
“Yes,” you replied, with as much confidence as you could muster, faint remnants of his memories replaying in front of you while you bit your lip.
“How much so?” His voice grew quieter.
“One hundred percent.”
By now his thoughts have turned into a blaring, jumbled mess, bouncing so restlessly that bits and pieces managed to reach you despite the weakened barricade he apparently had created to keep his mind from directly leaking into yours; penetrating, roaring static dripping like poison into your consciousness.
He was doubting you all the while believing you.
He doubted your words despite his own body physically forcing him to accept them as the truth, memories in his head fighting against abilities he had possessed for centuries and never questioned before.
It hurt you, how every new question appearing in his head felt like a knife to the chest, a flame leaping to devour the body, breath taken from the lungs leaving you as well as him behind growing weaker and breathless, and you started to almost ring for air.
“Hey,” you breathed, clutching your coat as if it would aid you in filling your lungs with the oxygen they desired, “I’ll find a way to solve this. I promise, I will—“
“How,” he interjected as he took a step forward, teeth bared but eyebrows drawn together in obvious distress, “How do you think you might help me? You have no idea what—“
He paused.
“You do know. You have heard me again, have you not?”
You gave a sheepish nod, prompting him to heave a dragged out sigh through his nose in response, glancing to the side as to not meet your questioning, worried gaze.
“I,” you began, hand clutching the coat turning to a clammy, nervous fist, “I can give memories back. And I will do my best to do so.”
While speaking you had decided to omit his family on purpose—at least for the time being. Omit, how his brother fought for him, figuratively as well as literally to enable him to retrieve the memories from you, against his father’s definite will.
It would not do well with his false remedies twisting his beliefs into negatives.
“Do you really wish to be in here with me?” His voice was strained but cold,as he stood unmoving—so still you couldn’t even catch him breathing.
“Not really,” you answered truthfully as always, watching how his shoulders relaxed while his expression hardened all the same.
“But I really want you to have them back. They are yours after all, and if it helps the both of us I’ll gladly enter the cell with you.”
You noticed a hint of a genuine smile, vanishing as quickly as it had graced his pale, harsh expression, and it made you slightly smile to yourself before stirring the conversation back to lighter topics.
———
You kept the newfound tradition.
By now you had descended the stairs down into the prison on multiple occasions, visiting Loki as he almost eagerly awaited your return. It could do nothing but sadden you further, feeling how he secretly clung to your visits like his only lifeline as no one else but his mother seemed to come by, to keep him company in his eternal solitary confinement. You obviously knew about the King’s restrictions, but you didn’t know how you might be able to tell him without triggering his memories—it was still a topic you decided to avoid. At least for the time being.
Slow progress was being made and you felt it; though the fact that he started calling you Midgardian rather than mortal and you appreciated it, didn’t set the bar to being a decent person to a reasonable or even desirable height. He kept answering the multitude of questions you flung at him with grace, the annoyance masking what he thought of as vulnerability getting thinner each second you spent near each other. After a while he even began freely asking about what seemed to bother him, starting discussions which may just have been lasting too long into the night—sitting in the dungeons, who could tell?
If it weren’t for Ragnarr looking after you at times, you would probably just set up camp in front of the Prince’s cell.
And so it was that Ragnarr had once more found you sitting cross legged on the floor, Prince Loki across from the barrier in his chair leaning forward on the silky blue cushions.
“And you can really speak all languages?”
The astonished tone in your voice rang through the long hallways leading through the prison and Ragnarr watched Loki give a barely veiled chuckle—an improvement to when they had first brought him back in chains. By now the Prince’s laugh didn’t carry any hint of hostility anymore, only genuine amusement.
“It is called ‘Allspeak’,” he elaborated, “Accurately, it might rather be described as a tool than a language, creating a bridge between listener and speaker.”
With your chin pushed up on your hands you watched him in fascination, listening intently to every word he spoke, eagerly soaking up the new information to satisfy your curiosity.
“You are perceiving my words as if spoken in your native language, although I never change vocabulary, dialect nor pronunciation. However, to me you appear to be speaking Asgardian.”
“I am?” you voiced, mouth agape.
“Yes. Not every citizen on Asgard can speak it,” he continued, casting a glimpse at the figure approaching behind you, “Only those close to the royal family have had the access to learn it.”
The words died on your tongue as you turned around to follow his gaze and caught Ragnarr striding closer with crossed arms and a bright smile on his lips which made you spring to your feet in response.
“That late already?” you exclaimed, brushing off your clothes with a slightly disappointed expression while Loki gently rose from his seat. Ragnarr’s smile deepened further while he gave a quick nod, fascinated by your exaggerated frustration as you took a couple of sluggish steps into his direction. With quick farewells to the both of them you headed for the entrance, up the stairs and back into your room to have your usual, regular evening meal with Aldís.
Spending time with the Prince having friendly conversations had an incredibly calming effect on you, heartbeat slowing along with your breathing while the jumbled mess of thoughts raging inside your mind cleared almost completely. Spending time away from him just made you all the more aware of the fact that something of you was missing—a gaping, inexplicable hole only to be filled by his presence.
———
After another day spent relaxing and catching up with Aldís as well as exchanging news regarding the Prince, you learned that she had indeed discussed her theory with the Queen, who had successfully proven it correct. Once Aldís had left for you to rest, you happily and tiredly settled in the more than just comfortable bed, pulling the blanket all the way up to your chin.
Few light filtered through a gap between the dark curtains and casted a serenading glow on your surroundings.
The painting of the Royal Family got hit by the ray of light, gently accentuating Loki’s face and your eyes were once more drawn to his sharp features—seeming more strikingly peculiar then ever in contrast to the radiating warmth of the other three family members, emphasized even further by the differences in color.
You squinted your eyes in thought, examining it.
The King, Queen and Thor were drawn primarily with warm tones, even the blue of the Queen’s clothes having touches of orange mixed in to appear more inviting. Meanwhile, Loki gleamed in cold hues; black mixed with cold, icy blue, piercing green and even the yellow in his clothing was almost deliberately appearing more green, more cold.
It was, most likely, indeed a deliberate choice by either the artist or the commissioner. But why?
Analyzing the painting managed to lull you closer to sleep, picture remaining behind your closed eyelids while you fell into calming darkness.
Unfortunately, your sleep didn’t last long.