of shadows in darkness that i used to own

i. when the wrath comes

The kingdom of Asgard, rich in gold and resplendence as it is, is a paradise to shadow.

To the prisoner Loki, the shadows are invaluable tools—tools to gauge the passage of time, each shifting in seconds to be hoarded like precious gold, smelted into insight. The shadows are something which he, fettered and bound and stripped down to rags, can claim as his own.

He sits, spine arched against the unyielding crystal that encloses the small holding cell, hands clamped in metal bracers and held stiff before his body. He rattles the short length of chain connecting them, just to hear the sound. He releases a long breath.

Loki's punishment was decided even before his brother led him home.

His eyes trace the enclosure. The walls are lit in limpid rings by torches in stone brackets pointed to the ceiling. He watches them flicker with a kind of hushed malice, birthing an army of shadows. They flock to Loki like prey, though he has not the freedom to bid them dance. Writhing their antipathy, the shadows circle endlessly. They whisper to Loki what he already knows.

(You have no power here.)

Friends to the shadows are the voices, low tones uttered by armored guards who stand just outside the metal doors of the room. Loki thinks they, too, might be of use to him, if only their owners had something of importance to say.

During the long stretches he designates 'night', the voices cease. Sound diffuses into darkness, leaving only the snicker of fire and the hot throb of Loki's pulse in his teeth.

He measures five cycles of thrumming noise succeeded by stark-stretching silence, five days dissolving to nights, before the first disturbance deviates the pattern: an abrupt tinny screech of chrome and crystal; the groan of an opening door. Footsteps, rapidly approaching.

His loyal shadows storm the intruder with such a vehemence that Loki cannot authenticate its features. The door creaks shut. His intruder treads lightly to the enclosure and frees the lock with a soft click; then steps into the torchlight.

He freezes when he sees her: the warrior Sif, towering before him, her face livid in the aura of breathing flame. For a fleeting instant he thinks to move, to somehow resist.

(Futile, hiss the shadows.)

With a practiced flourish, she rips him from the wall by the neck and throws him into the ground.

Sif towers over him, curled on his side, bound arms uselessly bowed as if to protest. The plates of armor that are her hallmark have been abandoned for more practical nightclothes; Loki finds the will to curl his lips, behind the fetter that masks them, behind the florescent familiarity of pain. They are leveled at least in one way, here within this cell.

Yet Loki's hands remain clasped, while Sif's freely roam. Her fingers scourge the skin of his sides, beneath the rags that hide his ribs. She presses vitriol into the base of his spine, trails her nails in deep and twists. Loki's breath pulses a curse in his throat. Their eyes meet.

Lying blue against the floor, Loki is subjugated by her rage. His face is slated cold and clean, even as the force of her wanting shakes to his core. In this cruel arena, Loki flashes the only weapon he has: a look of indisputable dispassion.

Shadows streak Sif's face, swarm into her open mouth. Loki's laugh, behind the mask, is a suffocated sob. Her dagger comes from nowhere, hollow point to a hollow column, scraping ice across the vein that feeds his heart. A warning.

Sif shoves him back against the wall and mounts him, sweeping his bound arms over his head in a fluid motion. Loki growls into the metal, face upturned like a roaring beast. She slams her hips into his own.