Lost in the Woods

Chapter 3

Loki was pacing his cage when Frigga came to see him. She stood on the other side of the glass and watched her adopted son stalk the small space like an imprisoned predator. His long legs ate up the short distance quickly and with every turn she saw the lines between his brow grow deeper. There was an unpleasant twist to his thin lips that had appeared sometime in the past month. Loki didn't know it, but the queen came to his cell often to watch him sleep. In those few quiet moments she could pretend he was her sweet tempered child again, curled up on the grass beneath the orchard branches.

However with this waking Loki, there could be no illusion. His features, once softened with youth were now the hard characteristics of a man, made pronounced by his starved form. Her heart ached to see dark shadows clinging to his collar bones, tracing the lines of his rib cage. The wrap around shirt that hung off his bony shoulders was untied, and as the fabric moved she was able to see glimpses of his sides where the skin was mauled. His wounds must still be severe, because the blanket in the corner appeared unusable; stiff with dried blood. She made a note to ask the warden to replace it.

"Loki?" she voiced, after a long silence.

At first Frigga thought the demigod didn't hear her. His stride never faltered and he didn't once glance her way. She opened her mouth to call out his name again, but was cut off by his sharp tone.

"I wondered when you would visit." His voice was creaky with disuse, but it still held a thread of the smoothness he was known for. Even down and beaten the Silvertongue wasn't below impudence.

The queen reached out and ran her fingers along the glass dividing them. She wanted to embrace him, squeeze the darkness out of his heart. "I meant to come sooner, my son. And then I heard about what you're doing to yourself... I couldn't believe you were still fighting so hard."

Loki paused for a moment in his pacing. Confusion flickered across his face. "What makes you think I would ever stop fighting you?" he sent a dark looked her way, then returned to his march. "Just because you catch the wolf doesn't mean you can tame it."

Frigga sighed inwardly. "We aren't trying to tame you Loki, we just want you to understand the value of life. We've tried to teach you, but you constantly defy us."

Loki grinned, his teeth appearing sharp and white in the dim cage. "Teaching me? Was that what that beating was for? I never knew the education system in Asgard ranked whips as a reinforcement method."

"We didn't know what to do with you!" she exclaimed. "Criminals have been hung for far less than what you did."

Loki appeared thoughtful at that. His voice was wistful as he spoke. "I would rather you had hung me. Death would be less painful than waking up every morning to peel strips of skin the length of ribbons off my back."

She winced at his bluntness, feeling something churn inside her.

Loki sniggered, sensing her discomfort. "So, the golden heir doesn't wish to see me now." He stopped pacing and sank gracefully to the ground, crossing his long legs beneath him. "It seems Ive finally frightened him away."

Frigga shook her head. "Thor loves you Loki. You're more than a brother to him, you're like his other half. He mourns what you are."

"What I am?" Loki sneered, "What I've become? Oh how horrid for him to have to be associated with me!"

"Loki!" Frigga cried, "I don't mean it like that!"

The demigod snarled back that she meant every word, then stood and returned to his pacing. "I have no desire to speak with you."

Frigga's face crumpled. She placed both her hands on the glass wall, trying to reach out to him. "Loki, please I can't bear to see you so aggrieved. I won't leave you like this!"

But her adopted son ignored her. It was like he had thrown up a mental barrier between them and her pleas went unanswered.

Finally, after an hour of begging the unresponsive prisoner to acknowledge her, a guard stepped in and asked her to leave. She cast one final, teary glance at Loki's stony face before hurrying back up to the golden halls of the palace.

More time passed. Excruciating time. Endless time. Immeasurable.

His visitors ground to a halt until the only faces he saw were the warden, his guards and the wrinkled, disapproving expression of the nurse. Her diagnosis never changed; "underweight, unresponsive and border anaemic. Not suited for solitary."

His wounds scabbed over, but the demigod scratched at them relentlessly until they bled again. If they reopened, they wouldn't heal. He didn't heal - he wouldn't be sealed away in some lightless casket, awaiting his inevitable execution.

Dread was constantly lodged in the back of his throat - terror of the isolation box. Being locked in a small, dark, soundless space kept him borderline psychotic. Loki sometimes felt like he was watching himself from a distance, seeing the paranoid figure crouched in the corner become a mere shadow of who he was. As his anxiety grew, his ability to sleep dwindled. Insomnia took over, colouring the loose skin beneath his eyes and sending tremors incessantly through his hands.

His body shrunk, any fat reserves diminished until his muscle tone started wasting away. The metal bands clamped to his wrists grew loose, rattling and chafing against the bone. However no matter how much he clawed at them, trying to prise them over his skeletal hands, the charmed steel wouldn't budge.

Eventually Loki began to consider death as a long lost friend that would soon be in contact. His demise appeared inevitable. Whether by rope, axe or slow decline, the trickster would die. He didn't particularly want to starve in his cell until his last breath grew too painful, but neither did he want some stagy, public execution at the hands of the Aesir Order.

Either way though, being locked away in an isolation chamber until everyone's memories of him dulled was not an option.

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