Another Sleepless Night [Oneshot]

Another Sleepless Night

Odin lacked the mastery of the magic arts that his wife and younger son boasted, but as king of Asgard, he had access to every treasure and enchanted trinket in Asgard's vaults. There were several items within adequate for his purposes. Yet despite the precautions he had taken, he crept through the halls of his own palace with the trepidations of a first-time thief. A sense of calm only returned for him when he was well past the last set of guards and stood outside his son's prison cell.

The lamps out in the frigid corridor between the cells were dimmed in this late hour, but Loki's cell remained brightly lit. He must have fallen asleep while reading. He lay on top of the blanket on his bed, fully dressed, with his boots on and a book flipped open beside him. Odin smiled. He knew his pose; he had found Loki sprawled out in the same manner so many times before.

As he had then, he now watched Loki's chest rise and fall. Loki's face was half-buried in the pillow, but as far as Odin could tell, Loki was in good health. The cell was orderly, filled with fine, wooden furniture from Loki's old chambers and a neat stack of books sat in the corner. Likely, a growing one. Frigga would not leave Loki without the comfort of fresh reading material. Like the furniture, Loki's clothes were remnants of his previous life. And like the furniture, they still seemed in good condition. If they were creased, it would have been from Loki sleeping in them.

Of course, the cell lacked certain base things: privacy, natural light, fresh air. But it was a cell and Loki was a condemned criminal.

Condemned by Odin himself, to be precise. If his will prevailed, Loki would never again have the dignity of full privacy nor the base diversion of seeing sunlight. Odin wondered sometimes – most nights – if it would have been kinder to expedite Loki's end. Odin's own father would have done just that. No doubt neither Frigga nor Thor would ever forgive him for such a sentence, and Odin himself was uncertain if he would be able to face himself in the mirror again. But he could also see old Bor's argument: Loki's life had ended the day Odin passed his sentence – his days down here were only a mockery of life. Odin's sentimentality only prolonged Loki's torment.

Loki turned and in shifting his left arm, he pushed the book off the bed. It landed on the floor with a solid thump. Loki didn't stir; he had always been a heavy sleeper.

A new possibility stirred in Odin's mind. He glanced around. Having spotted no one in the vicinity, he stepped through the shimmering barrier that kept Loki contained. The experience was akin to running through a torrent of winter rain, save that one emerged on the other side fully dry.

Inside the cell, the air was colder and stale, and a familiar magic hummed softly. Loki's magic, undoubtedly, which stoked Odin's curiosity. The cell dampened Loki's abilities, he should not have been able to perform a single meaningful spell. Odin stripped the bulk of the magic away.

Illusions. Odin sighed; he ought to have guessed. Loki was a master of illusions and would have been able to conjure them even with his magic weakened.

Odin stripped away the rest, save the magic he had woven himself to hide Loki's Jotunn parentage. The cell stank of stale sweat. The neat pile was now a haphazard mess and peppered with loose, singed pages. Much of the furniture too bore signs of fire damage or was deeply gouged. Loki himself was still fast asleep, but on top of a stained and rumpled sheet, one corner of which was tangled around Loki's bare foot. His thin blanket lay across the room, on a low ledge by the magical restraining barriers.

Shaking his head, Odin crept towards his son's bed. It had to have been weeks since Loki had touched a hairbrush and he was in dire need of a haircut. There were no more fine clothes or leather boots either. The tunic was still in the dark green Loki favoured, but it had been made of the same coarse linen fabric every other prisoner on Asgard wore. The trousers, too short for Loki's long legs, were standard prison issue. Again, Odin realised, he should have known. He had himself ordered that his son be treated as an ordinary prisoner and issued presentable clothing only when he was brought out to hear the judgement on his misdeeds.