A Whole Bunch of Loki's

The Unloved - Request by Loveforkiki

(Warning: This story mentions verbal and physical abuse from a parent.)

It was the bruises that first caught Loki's attention.

Typically, it was far from his nature to notice things about the maids, at least things beyond what typically driven sexual attention is drawn to in certain physical areas, but the bruises running up her arm caught his eye and intrigued him into action.

Usually servants would go ignored, but he somehow felt compelled to talk to her and know the story of what happened to give her those marks.

She usually kept to herself, keeping her head down as she stayed out of the way the best she could while still trying to work.

There were people who knew her casually and would have brief conversations, but she was more than content with a polite smile of greeting and otherwise silence.

This was how she had learned to cope before her father had sold her to the royal family.

"She ain't worth much," he grumbled, shoving her forward with a harsh press against her shoulder blade, "but she can cook right good for ya."

Throughout the entire conversation with the black-market salesman, she kept silent.

It wasn't a surprise that he was finally getting rid of her, it seemed that he had always had a distaste for his own daughter which only worsened when her mother couldn't take it anymore and left one night, never looking back and not bothering to take her suffering child.

He wasn't a typical drunkard, though he did enjoy a drink every now and then, it seemed that his vice was a ferocious temper that would flare up over nothing and she would more often than not be on the receiving end of a lash-out.

To begin with it was verbal, harsh insults that gradually got worse, cutting deeper and deeper until they started to affect any confidence she had in herself, all her self-image and self-worth drained with the passing years.

As his temper grew, his impulses got worse and soon verbal turned to physical.

Bruises built up, occasionally bones were broken and all over the smallest of things.

It wasn't long before her once vibrant self turned into nothing but a wilted flower who was too afraid to speak lest she put a foot out of line, the people within the community around her gave pitying looks, but did nothing to help.

After her mother had left, he would go out at night to prowl the local taverns in hopes of finding someone to share a bed with, using any money earned by either his low paying carpentry job or her seamstress work to gamble or pay for company if he were unsuccessful in scoping out a lady.

It was precisely due to money that he ended up dragging her to the shadiest part known to the Asgardians who lived around the market, the one area only select few people went and others knew wholeheartedly to avoid.

Her father was a less than stellar man, but she never thought that he would stoop so low as to offer her as payment.

It seemed as though she was the only way for him to repay the debts he had built up with the stranger he was meeting in the alley, a tall and stocky man with a voice that reminded her of a monster's growl.

She wasn't sure who this man was, beyond being a guard, or what his connection to her father was aside from the built up debt, but somehow he managed to pull some strings and get her a job in the palace in order to pay off her father's debts.