Sorcha's Secret World, Part one.

Chapter 33, The Godfather.

It was four o'clock in the morning according to the alarm clock. We had gone to bed early, both of us bone-tired, but when I turned around, Loki wasn't there.

That in itself wasn't unusual. Loki was a bad sleeper at the best of times. Often he'd go to bed at the same time as I would, just so I could fall asleep in his arms. Sometimes he'd sleep for a few hours himself and get up then, other times he'd sneak out of the bed once I fell asleep.

Loki would curl up in his favourite chair and read while listening to music with his earphones in or watch old movies he'd seen hundreds of times.

He'd come back to bed just before dawn, just so he could kiss me awake before the alarm clock had a chance to go off.

As you can tell, dear reader, considering he hadn't believed in love before he met me, he was a natural at this whole 'boyfriend'-thing.

When he did sleep, Loki would often have terrible nightmares and would wake me up with his screams, cries and pleas for mercy, his eyes unseeing while he sat up, seemingly awake.

I had learned the hard way not to touch him if that happened because unaware of his surroundings or who I truly was he'd mistake me for an enemy and hurt me.

Loki always felt absolutely terrible about it the next morning. I never got angry or upset with him. It wasn't his fault, he wasn't really awake, he was reliving his past in his dreams. It broke my heart.

But that night I was worried about him so I put on a t-shirt and followed him down the stairs. Loki was sitting where I thought he'd be, but he wasn't reading. He was lost in thought, staring ahead of him in the distance.

"Are you alright, love?" I asked him softly.

Loki was startled. "I didn't see you there!"

I took the book out of his hand and put it away, then sat on his lap. I ran my fingers through his hair.

"Are you still worried about the baby?"

"Perhaps a little", Loki shrugged it off but I could see he was lying.

"You lost your self-control a bit today, didn't you?"

He shrugged again, uneasy.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Loki said acerbically, "but I know you well enough that you'll just work your vile magic on me and I will end up telling you everything. I always do. No matter how much I try to guard myself, I'm an open book to you." he looked at me accusingly. I ignored it, we both knew there wasn't any magic, vile or otherwise involved.

"What happened to your parents, Loki? Who killed them?" I asked instead. It was the one missing piece of the puzzle. Who had attacked Jotunnheim the day Loki was born?

He rubbed his brow with his fingers and winced.

"The Jotunn weren't a peaceful race," he began in his deep voice.

"They weren't the monsters Asgardians would have you believe they were either, or so I learned much later.

They were fearsome, but they were few, and that fact was to the benefit of the other realms. They were no real threat.

Until my mother married my father, that was. Fárbauti was brilliant. Fiendishly clever, hot-tempered and passionate, a cunning strategist, and a military leader without peer."

"It sounds like you take after your father," I said.

"Perhaps," Loki smiled at the thought.

"When my father became the leader of the Jotunn armies, suddenly nothing seemed impossible, even the rule of Midgard. Perhaps even that of the other realms. If the Jotunn would have gained dominance over any of the other realms they would have brought about an era that would have made the Ice Age seem practically balmy.