Chapter 8
When Loki was heaved away again, it was from Brunnhilde’s side. The guards grabbed him and pulled him out from under her, jerking her awake as her face hit the cold hard ground. He was gone before she could even protest.
Brunnhilde groaned as she sat up, wiping some of the grime from her face before leaning back against the wall. A shiver ran through her as she remembered that the last time she had been sitting here, she had been kissing Loki.
Actually kissing him. The infuriating, quirky, sarcastic, endlessly frustrating god that Brunnhilde somehow loved. And now he was gone again.
When the doors opened again, Brunnhilde perked up, but Loki was not with the guards that entered the cell. Panic clawed at her stomach when the guards seized her roughly and started to drag her back.
“No,” she cried out hoarsely, and much to her surprise the guards halted. However, it soon became clear that they had had no intentions of taking her away again. Instead, they were merely holding her back. Much to Brunnhilde’s satisfaction, it seemed the guards had learned to take her out early on as to not become a problem. But why were the restraining her now, when Loki was supposed to be returning, not being taken away…?
“Oh,” Brunnhilde breathed when she saw.
Another wave of guards had entered, this time bringing a body with them.
“Loki?” she whispered.
He was awake but he wasn’t okay. His hands were chained and metal covering was clamped over his mouth like a muzzle. Brunnhilde jerked against the guards’ restraining hands, but to no avail as his hands and neck were chained to the wall. He glanced at Brunnhilde when she spoke, and his eyes were tired and sad and scared. She stumbled over to him and dropped down beside him when the guards dropped her and exited the cell.
“What…” she gasped. “Why would he… Loki…”
He just shook his head at her.
When a guard came with food, Brunnhilde turned desperately to Loki, who was watching it hungrily. Once again, he shook his head, looking pained. Brunnhilde tried everything she could think of to get it off, but the muzzle stubbornly remained.
“Tell me your godliness gives you the power to resist starvation and dehydration,” Brunnhilde mumbled wearily as she sat down next time, staring at the other wall.
Loki gave an unconvincing half-shrug.
“Thank you, by the way,” she said suddenly.
Loki gave her a questioning look.
“For not telling him where the Tesseract was,” Brunnhilde elaborated. “Even when I… you know. He had me.”
Loki nodded and looked away.
Brunnhilde was quiet for a long time, feeling that conversation was pointless when the other person couldn’t talk. Eventually, she glanced down to where Loki’s hand was lying limp in the dirt. Silently, she reached down and intertwined her fingers with his. Loki didn’t make any acknowledgment except for closing his eyes in near relief and giving her hand the smallest squeeze.
And for a moment, Brunnhilde didn’t care that they were stuck in the same hellhole that they’d endured for months and she didn’t care that they were starving and she didn’t care that this place smelled worse than Sakaar’s underground and she didn’t care that there was no end in sight. All she cared about was Loki’s hand wrapped around hers.
=•=
The only times Loki was let out of his chains was when he was taken to Thanos or the guards came to let the prisoners relieve themselves. Even then, the muzzle stayed on at all times, or as far as Brunnhilde knew. When his wrists were allowed out of their chains, Brunnhilde winced at the pink, raw skin underneath. Still, she knew that small pain must’ve been nothing to the desperate thirst and raging hunger he must have been experiencing. Although he made no noise, Brunnhilde could see the need and despair in his eyes when the food and water came.
“Most of us can stand about 100 hours with water,” Brunnhilde remarked softly as she sat next to him one time. “How long can you stand?”
Although the question was mostly rhetorical for Loki’s advantage, Brunnhilde couldn’t help but desire an answer. She thought it must take something more than lack of food and water to take down a god--or even simply Loki, stubborn as he was. Still, she had seen some of the mightiest fall from their lack of basic needs and knew that it could sneak upon anyone. One moment they would be alive and present, and the next just gone. And there was nothing you could do.
Pushing down her swelling anxiety, Brunnhilde decided that she couldn’t just wait around for Loki--and by extension, all of them-- to die. It was time to put Loki’s plan to use.
Only one problem-- Loki hadn’t told her any beginnings of his plan before he had been muzzled.
=•=
“Alright, so this might take a while, but in the end, you’ll get your point across,” Brunnhilde said unsurely as she told her idea to Loki.
Loki sighed through his nose and have her a questioning look.
“Look, it’s time for us to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and get the hell out of here,” Brunnhilde told him in a low voice. “Any plan you have-- any start of a plan-- let me hear it. Or, see it, I guess.”
Loki sighed again but nodded. He closed his eyes and concentrated, his brow furrowing slightly. There was a soft breath and then his illusion took over Brunnhilde’s world.
The dingy cell vanished, replaced by a bright, beautiful location. She was standing in a green meadow that was full of colorful flowers and sat underneath a cloudless blue sky. Brunnhilde blinked slightly, trying to adjust her eyes from the dull grays of the cell to the bright hues of the nature around her. A sweet, heavy scent filled her nose and a gentle breeze caressed her skin. Brunnhilde wanted to lose herself in the bliss.
“Where… are we?” she asked.
“Technically, still in our cell,” Loki said behind her. When Brunnhilde turned to look at him, she saw that he was no longer muzzled or chained or dirty or too skinny, but instead the full, handsome man that Brunnhilde almost hadn’t remembered existed. “But in our minds, we’re in a place that I found a while back on one of my… adventures. It was always this beautiful, all the time, no matter what. I had difficulty re-finding it quite a couple times, but…” he spread his arms.
“This is amazing,” Brunnhilde breathed, looking around. “It’s all so amazing! How… it’s just…” she laughed in awe, “wonderful!”
Loki paused, an odd, almost hopeful expression on his face. “Really? You think so?”
“Of course!” Brunnhilde exclaimed, but she tore her eyes away from the beautiful scenery and forced herself to focus. “But down to business. This plan of yours... “
“Alright. I’ve been thinking it over, and I think it just might work,” Loki informed her, a small smile on his face. “Listen closely…”