BOOK TWO. After being manipulated and kidnapped by Restitution, Anna + Loki narrowly escape with their lives only to be separated by Odin. Stuck on Earth with Jane Foster, Anna finds herself missing the one man she thought she would always hate.
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LOKI PACES HIS TINY CELL, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. It takes all the patience he has not to fling the chair into the shimmering golden forcefield, demanding to be told what is happening in the palace above, but instead he waits. Impatiently.
The feeling is something akin to torture, of which he is all too familiar. While his body has endured many hardships - in his time with Thanos and the Other as well as during his stay with Restitution - it is the torture of the mind that always inflicts the most pain. Physical pain is fleeting and easily endured. Fear. Uncertainty. The darkest corners of one's own mind are the truest and most severe forms of torture.
He hurt Anna. He let his temper get the best of him, something that rarely happens, and he injured her. The look on her face when she stepped away from him. The tears on her face. His heart ached at the memory. He had caused her pain and revealed to her his true monstrous nature. Surely she could not argue with what was said about him now. No, he deserved her hatred more than anyone else's, and yet - it was her regard for him that matters most. Should she hate him it might be more bearable than trying to wrap his mind around why and how she could possibly love him, but it would still be the worst sort of torture he would ever endure.
And endure he must. For her.
Anna is better off without him, just as Frigga is. He loves his mother dearly, but he hated seeing the pain in her eyes each time he disappointed her. With Odin, it was easy. Loki was always a disappointment, so there was never any sense of failure. But with Frigga, it was impossibly different. She thought so highly of him, loved him in spite of his flaws and his shortcomings, and he could not possibly deserve her affection.
His thoughts flickered to the day he fell from the Bifrost. He attempted to destroy Jotunheim, to prove his worth to Odin, but Thor returned to stop him. Shattering the Bifrost, they both fell. Both he and Thor should have died that day because of his foolishness, because of his eagerness to prove himself to the father who never loved him and never could.
Odin caught them.
Loki swore he could've done it, he could've rid the world of the monsters of Jotunheim - of his heritage - and followed in his father's footsteps as a great ruler of Asgard. The way Odin looked at him in that moment, staring down as he held Thor, at told Loki, "No," was more than he could bear. Realization that he could never win his father's love rippled through him like a shockwave, so he let go.
He should have died in the abyss, but instead he landed in the void. Half-dead, he arrived on that gods-forsaken rock filled with rage, resentment, and a thirst for revenge. Thanos tortured him, yes, filling his mind with ancient knowledge while adding fuel to the fires of his hatred, but he needn't have done so much. Loki wanted to destroy Asgard even before the torture. Before the control. He wanted to see Odin suffer as he had suffered.
Frigga saw him, the day Thanos awarded him the scepter and along with it the might of the Chitauri army. Her mind reached out to him as she searched the cosmos for remnants of her beloved son, and he heard her voice calling his name even as he stood in front of Thanos and the Other. In his rage, he ignored her - pushed her away - telling her that it was not a good time.
In reality, it was her presence that softened his heart. He left soon after and arrived on Midgard to steal the Tesseract from S.H.I.E.L.D. Had she not found him, had she not reminded him of the one thing he still loved, perhaps he would have been successful in his quest to claim Midgard as his own. As it were, he was too weak to complete his task to retrieve the Tesseract.
He is still too weak. Weak enough to care for Frigga. Weak enough to fall in love with Anna. Weak enough to push both away yet crave their affections with all that is in him.
His thoughts flickered back to the Other and the threats he had made before Loki lead the invasion of Midgard. They echoed through his mind day in and day out.
If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he can not find you. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.
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It would not be long before Thanos found him and inflicted his wrath upon Loki. He would not allow Anna or Frigga to be present when that happened, so he knew he must push them from his heart and his mind in order to keep them safe.
They were the only things that mattered to him, the two anchors tethering him to sanity and to the man he once was. Without them, he would be lost.
Now Playing: "The Way I Do" by Bishop Briggs.
***** AUTHOR'S NOTE
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(The Wattys are coming soon! Let's go, #TeamLanki!)
