Loss and Loki

Chapter 13

"Go fish." I voiced slyly, fixing Greg with a smirk as I idly waved my cards around with a victorious confidence. He dropped the hand that had been pressed against his brow and frowned at me as he flitted his gaze to my hand of cards.

"Something tells me you don't exactly know how to play poker." He muttered tiredly, slapping his cards down in front of him.

"Straight." He announced with a wry grin and a jovial glint shining in his umber hues. I bit my cheek and frowned, feigning deep thought and faint irritation.

"Gay?" I replied, still keeping my cards against my chest as I beamed innocently at him, shifting my position so I was sat with one knee raised and the other leg out in front of me. The guard let out a weary groan and squeezed his eyes shut, massaging his brow as if the very sight of me was spurring the beginnings of a horrific headache.

"Didn't you say your boss loved gambling or something? How do you seriously not know anything about poker?" He queried incredulously, his imploring gaze surveying me with a look that bled with lost respect. I pulled an impassive face and raised my eyebrow dubiously.

"Your boss is a Norse god. Shouldn't you know everything about the legends? " I voiced dryly, slapping my cards down in a perfect fan with a telling smirk creeping over my lips.

"Royal flush...dickhead."

His eyes widened as the words processed and he immediately leaned towards the splayed hand of cards with a slackened jaw. I suppressed a laugh and slid the Ace of spades into my hand The card face pointed at his disbelieving stare.

"Course you know poker." He muttered, rolling his eyes. I just grinned victoriously, agitating him further. Especially now since he had no chips to lose as a material buffer, so his dignity took a direct hit. He could do nothing but watch me drag it across the floor for myself. Like I hadn't enough already.

"Course I do." I reiterated brightly, flicking the ace through the bars at his face.

He gave me a weathered look, then. A look that seeped through a faint glimmer of fondness and possibly admiration at a push. His eyes held a rare kind of luxury that I was suddenly obsessed with; a friendliness that promised endearment, but at the same time, the melancholy glint that refused attachment, that apprised the farewell that would soon come.

How clever of him... I always liked the pessimists. We both knew we'd never meet again and so we had a mutual civil attitude towards each other that was...disposable in a way, crumbling into nothing as soon as I departed. And I would.

I was suddenly broken out of my speculating by a loud explosion and the faint sound of screaming. I glanced around, surprised but still kept a vaguely unimpressed look on my face. It sounded near but I could not possibly identify where I was or what it was.

"Probably my fans." I muttered absent-mindedly as I got up to stand. There was a second explosion, closer this time at the same time Greg let out a weak laugh. And in that moment I was struck with an irrefutable tug at the back of my mind that something was off.

My gaze flitted to the guard fast enough to catch a wary glint in his guilt-ridden gaze, before he blinked and wiped it away in a millisecond. And then everything clicked at the same moment as the third explosion.

"Oh my God." I scoffed with a breathless laugh, curling my hands around the bars as I stared him down, my knowing gaze ordering his knowledge to spill over.

"Technically yes. One of them." He muttered dryly, avoiding my gaze as he struggled to his feet under my heavy stare. He scratched the back of his neck as more screaming ripped through the cursive grasp of the quiet and ricocheted dangerously off the whitewash walls.