[A grin spread on Loki’s bloody mouth as he forced himself up and out of bed, clutching at his sides for the pain in his lung. Good. Blood. He hoped it hurt. Things are starting to come together very quickly, now. Very quickly indeed.]

I hope you enjoyed this little game, svartálfr, because it’s going to come to an end very soon, now.

You’ve trifled with the wrong snake. And you’re about to get the venom.

[Turning from the scene, the Deceiver cupped a hand around his mouth and leaned against the frame of the bed as he called for his husband,]

Balder! Balder, come quickly!

andashingwarrior:

Very well, but don’t be too fast to judge the situation, this is all I beg of you.

[Unwrapping the rug a dagger became visible, crusted - flaked blood on the blade. Fandral held it before Loki so the injured man could see without moving too much. There was no reason for him to worsen his wounds any further.]

Do you know this dagger Loki? Does it belong to someone you know maybe? Or have you seen one like this before… This is what he gave me to deliver but actually he also left something else behind, something that might lead us to Sigmund!

[Reaching out, Loki took the blade in his hands and ran a thumb over the blade. He had seen it before. Somewhere. But the herbs and sedatives in his system had his mind clouded and for the life of him, he could not remember. Perhaps it was the blade that had been put in his back. The blood could have been Sigmund’s though — but even then, it would be a matter of finding to whom the blade belonged, because such decorated weapons were hardly a common find on the belts of petty thieves and ruffians.]

It is familiar to me. But I cannot place a name on it. My memory fails me.
What else have you brought?

Make it quick — I have news for you as well.

(Source: gothicrealm)

[Jaw setting and breath finally coming in hitched little bursts, Loki forced himself into being all right. He had to — if only to redeem himself in those final moments of the encounter. Think. Think think think.

Just beside the bed, on the nightstand, sat innocently a roll of parchment and a quill sticking out of an inkwell. Perfect. Now he only had to bide some time.]

Tell… Tell him that his father loves him. Tell him that I am sorry and that it is my fault and that…

[Predictable phrases one after the other, and he rattled them off for quite some time as his hand slipped in the darkness beneath the sheets, slithering like a serpent towards the quill. Further and further it got until he felt it in his fingers and with a short, subtle burst of magic, he gifted the ink upon the tip with a useful bit of enchantment.]

Tell him… tell him that when I find his captor, they will not be able to recognize the body.

[Slam. Right into the bicep, the tip of the quill gets buried in fabric and flesh with a wet sort of sound. Bullseye. And even if the intruder strikes back, the ink in their arm will be enough to bring the search to an end.]

andashingwarrior:

[Just looking at Loki was painful, his pain obviously visible, his grief written on his features… but Fandral had to deliver this message, as well as the second the rat had unconsciously left behind for them. Making his way over next to the bed he kept his voice low, not only to not startle Loki but also to make sure any additional ears would not catch what he had to say. One could never be sure enough when dealing with a sorcerer.]

Is Balder nearby? I would like him here for both this ‘present’ as well as some news I got to deliver. Important News.

[He hoped Loki would understand, would see that his face showed a tiny smile at the corners of his mouth. It was hard keeping it together actually, Sigmund was within grasp if they acted now and played the cards correctly and if something set Fandrals mood high it was a successful hunt.]

[Quite honestly, Loki didn’t have the energy to conjure much of a front. His witty tongue and cool demeanor were gone and all he could do was offer the warrior before him a long, pensive look before shaking his head.]

I do not know where Balder has gone. He cannot be far. I assume he has been having discourse with the watch regarding the constant intrusion.

Tell me now and if it kills me, let it kill me. But do not make me wait now that you have thrust the gravity of it upon me. Tell me outright.

[Loki appeared worse for wear, indeed, naked from the hips up and wrapped with gauze treated in herbal solutions to help the knife wound in his back heal up. He’d managed to prop himself up against the pillows and the headboard of his bed, but only just that, and quite recently, too, for when Fandral entered, he appeared out of breath, holding an arm over his stomach and a hand over his chest to placate his aching and damaged lung.]

I know of… of whom you speak. But… please, weigh with great care that which you are about to display — I haven’t the heart to see such nightmarish things that would bode ill for my son’s health or well being.

[Pausing in his speech here or there with an unhappy cadence, Loki tended to a fresh wound upon his mouth, vertical and smoothly cut, as if with a very sharp blade.]

[With the knife pulled away, Loki was left only with the psychological damage of the feeling of icy blood trickling down his lips and onto his pillow. How pathetic he was — the most powerful sorcerer in all the nine realms, able to crumble kingdoms and unhinge the very order of the cosmos… and yet he was paralyzed with terror when a blade was put against his mouth.

So fragile.]

Y-Y-Y —
Y-You… give me —
Wh-Where is he… 

thirdsonofasgard:

xpermafrost:

thirdsonofasgard:

xpermafrost:

thirdsonofasgard:

He is not. You must not give in to those thoughts.

…Find Thor. Ask… ask him for help.

…You are certain you would trust him with this? I ask only because I know the blow ‘tis to your pride, to ask help of anyone you hold in such little esteem.

If you will not ask him for me, I will do it myself.

No, no, I shall ask…you are certain you will be so unable to accompany me? 

I will try. But if I fall ill or… worse.. then I expect you to leave me behind.

thirdsonofasgard:

xpermafrost:

thirdsonofasgard:

He is not. You must not give in to those thoughts.

…Find Thor. Ask… ask him for help.

…You are certain you would trust him with this? I ask only because I know the blow ‘tis to your pride, to ask help of anyone you hold in such little esteem.

If you will not ask him for me, I will do it myself.

thirdsonofasgard:

He is not. You must not give in to those thoughts.

…Find Thor. Ask… ask him for help.

(Source: xpermafrost)

What if Sigmund is already dead?

It was a profound sense of terror that engulfed Loki as the knife broke skin. No. Nonononono — not again, please, not again. It was smoother than when he tore the twine out and shredded the flesh there. It cut easier — slicing right through as if through butter or cooked meat. His eyes slammed shut, tears dropping quite easily as his whole body quaked. Fight back. Do something. Coward.

But all he could hear was the collective laughter of every smiling face in Asgard. Pointing. Laughing at him. An awl tearing through his mouth. Leather rasping through fresh, gory holes. And then running. Running until he could no longer move — and then tearing. Ripping. Shredding. Pulling. Breathing. Bleeding. Screaming.

He wanted to call out for someone, but he had no one. He wanted to beg the knife away. But he dared not speak.

Sigmund’s shoes — yes, he was conscious of them. But for all the flaws in Loki’s deranged mind, he couldn’t bring himself to care. All that mattered was that knife against his mouth. Cutting his mouth. Scarring it.

This torture was worse than death.

I fear I will only slow the company down.

The healers say the knife grazed a lung.

It was an angry affair. The result of one scheme too many gone sour because of Amora’s annoying pining for Loki’s elder brother. They’d fallen into argument — having only just escaped with their lives and their freedom — in which Loki had, as usual, lost his temper.

“If you could but cut that festering tumor on the side of your heart that yearns for that brutish fool, then perhaps you could be of some remote use beyond a pretty pair of legs and an ample bosom with which to distract the enemy, you brainless harlot!”

It escalated rather quickly. Immensely so, in fact. Words this way and that, and soon (Amora’s) things were being thrown across the chamber to smash and break against walls. And, when things reached their peak — when the both of them were out of breath and beyond reconciliation, Amora said the one thing that she should never, ever say to Loki Laufeyson, god of strife.

“You are jealous that I give my attentions to Thor over you. You’re nothing but a child whining for his elder brother’s prettiest toy.”

And Loki was on her — a blur in the air for all the rage that carried him across the room and up and against Amora. He’d pinned her arms above her head, against the wall, and he hovered so close that she could feel his icy breath against her mouth and cheeks.

“A toy’s a toy is a whore is a toy,” he hissed. “You’re nothing.”

“Whores get paid for what they do, Loki. I do this for pleasure.”

And, that night, Loki had no greater pleasure than ruining his brother’s prettiest toy, again and again, angrily and with all the passion of his hatred for that older man.

Amora didn’t walk straight for three days following and Loki didn’t have a single care to offer her in that respect. Seeing her limp, he would simply laugh to himself and say, “A toy’s a toy is a whore is a toy.”

The sunrise was slow and painful that morning in Asgard. The color, like blood in water, spreading out into the sky bright red and pink and orange as the spiny horizon bore it out into life. Birds perched in the trees surrounding the hall called Gladsheim, Odin’s golden hall, and it was yet too early for even the cocks to crow in the small farmlands outside the main city.

All was silent. All was deathly, deathly silent. That is, until one of the guards stationed above the main gate to Odin’s hall sounded his lonely horn.

“Bar the gates! The Trickster comes!”

Einherjar took up their arms at the gate and on the ramparts and arrows were knocked to bows, drawn back as far as muscular, powerful arms could bear them. And duly so.

For the Trickster had come, indeed. Gone for three hundred years, thought bound and tied and forever stored away where he could do no harm… now he came not with a flourish of magic and rage. Not with an army of undead or jötnar at his back. No. He came alone. Naked. Wounded.

Gravely so, in fact — his face scarred almost beyond recognition at the profound acidity of the venom that had dripped into his eyes and down his cheeks like tears for the millions he had brought to suffering, reversed for the sake of revenge. His eyes, once green and bright, were now a pale white, glazed over with scar tissue. And his body, once lithe and nimble, was crippled and broken, shriveled and wilted.

And for every soul in Asgard, there came a sword to greet the Serpent to his adoptive home. Save but one.

“Raise the gates! Drop your weapons!”

It was Thor.

Just as it had been Thor to cow his younger brother into submission — to beat him against the rock against which he was tethered with his son’s entrails, it was Thor, and Thor alone who welcomed Loki.

“Welcome home, little brother,” he said, after having run to the collapsed jötun on the front steps of his kingdom. He took his cape from his shoulders and draped it over that crippled, silent, and blinded figure. “Your punishment is ended.”

And Loki never sinned… or spoke, again.