Chapter Text
The Asgardian sun was sinking in the sky, and Loki was lying beneath it, bleeding. He stared upward in shock for a moment, finally groaning and running his hand over his face. He rolled over, feeling cracked ribs ache inside of him before the magic in his bloodstream healed his internal injuries and spread to the surface of his skin, knitting the tears cleanly and leaving only trace amounts of blood behind to indicate there had been an abrasion.
“Damn it,” he muttered, sitting up and brushing little pieces of forest floor from his clothes and hair. He looked up toward the remaining stub of the tree branch that had broken under his weight when he’d tried leaping from it, intending to safely descend from the high branches of the trees and return to the ground. The broken branch had landed next to him when he’d fallen. His gaze slid to it and he gave it a sour glance.
“Was I too heavy for you? I should take that as an insult.” He looked to the bright red orb in his hand—so he had managed to retrieve that, at least. Good, he hadn’t fallen the equivalent of three stories for nothing. Lucky enough, he supposed, that there had been other branches beneath him to break his fall. And rip his clothing. Tch, bother.
Gathering himself and the three other apples he had managed to collect, he bit back the verbal abuse he had prepared against tree branches that broke under people who weren’t really even all that heavy and made the journey home.
“Welcome back,” his mother said as he walked through the doorway, followed promptly by, “The hell happened to you?”
“Climbing,” Loki said simply, dropping the satchel with the apples inside on the dining room table. “Brought you something. I’m fine. Don’t worry.”
She glanced at the satchel. “What’s this?”
Loki opened it up and reached inside, pulling out one of the fruits of his labor. The scarlet of its skin seemed to luminesce in the dim light of the setting sun coming through the window.
“Known colloquially as an apple of Iðunn. Among magicians anyway. I’ve been waiting for them to ripen; they don’t retain their properties for long afterwards. Take one; it’s good for you. Good for longevity.” He tossed one to her and she caught it, giving him an all too familiar look of weary but fond bewilderment. He merely smiled, taking one of the apples for himself and heading for the bath.
Sinking into the hot water, he took a slow bite of the apple. As his teeth sank into it, its skin turned gold under his fingers, its illusion of normality vanishing upon being breached. He watched it, pleased. There were so rarely opportunities to come across items imbued with old magic. He took another bite.
There was a single knock on the door, and his mother’s voice came muffled through the wood.
“Loki.”
His eyes flickered over to the door.
“Yes?”
There was a pause, briefly. “They came today.”
Loki’s teeth stilled against the skin of the apple. He slowly pulled it away from his lips. “Was there any trouble?”
He imagined his mother shaking her head. “No. Not this time. But you know, you have to be careful, right?”
“Yes, mother, of course. You remind me every time.”
“And I’ll keep reminding you. I know how smart you are and that you wouldn’t do anything reckless, but I’m going to worry about you anyway. Comes written in the job description.”
Loki smiled at that. “Thank you. I’ll lay low for a while. I promise I’ll be careful.”
“Good, good. Well. Enjoy your bath.”
He heard her return to the kitchen, and a shadow fell over his features. So they were on their rounds again. The Inquisition. Mage murderers—Witch hunters, they called themselves—whose work in disappearing potential magic users was infamous. Whenever they made a visit nearby, he had to keep his guard up at all times. It wasn’t that he had a problem refraining from using spells, but were he to sustain an injury, like today, and by instinct not think twice about it, his body would heal nearly instantly and unmistakably by the influence of magic. His magic was his immune system and would leap naturally to his defense. Carelessness on his part could result in capture and death.
He realized after a moment that he had been frowning, lost in thought. He refocused on the apple, juice collecting in the crater left by his bites. A bead of it was readying itself to spill over onto the skin. Loki’s tongue darted out and licked it up before it could hit the water.
They came sporadically, without warning, scouring the land for any trace of their fearsome wicked witches. The Inquisition era had begun within Loki’s lifetime, starting after the end of the Great War, in which the autocratic monarchy of Asgard had crushed its longtime rival-enemy and southeastern neighbor Jotunheim. The war, which had raged for years and years, came to its devastating conclusion with the utter elimination of the kingdom of Jotunheim and all its people.
The Inquisition used words like “protection” and “the greater good” as a front for hunting down and killing of mages, but Loki was smart enough to know that its true purpose was to find any remaining mages who had fought on Jotunheim’s behalf and finish the job once and for all. Fear mongering tactics utilizing people’s religious, superstitious fears of those who wield magic was, though underhanded, a convenient and depressingly easy method of carrying out this final task.
Neither had the tales of what happened to those the Inquisition took prisoner escaped Loki’s ears. Preceded by a “trial” wherein the accused was formally branded guilty, the prisoners were shortly thereafter tortured via medieval methods until their life expired. While Loki, of course, despised the entire affair, he had no desire to die such an ugly death at the hands of such a crude institution, and thus he had no plans to antagonize the Inquisitors.
As it turns out, sometimes fate just fucks you.
Going out in public at all that week, in hindsight, was probably a mistake. But he was a good son, and good sons accompany their mothers when they go out shopping. And sometimes get distracted and go look at throwing knives while their mothers purchase food and other actual essentials. Well, he never said he was perfect.
The store was one in a long row of them, all part of an outdoor shopping arcade where the variety ranged from groceries to artisan crafts. Loki stood in front of the shop, inspecting the knives sitting on the table just outside of it while his mother browsed across the street from him. Blade designs ranged from plain to exquisitely ornate and varied in handling and shape, both of which affected the way the knife was thrown and its aerodynamic properties. Each set of knives was suited to a certain kind of individual’s preferences.
There was something right about a blade small enough to hide inside his clothes. Everything Loki was, his magic and identity, had to remain a private affair—maybe, then, it was just a natural inclination toward the secret possession of deadly talents. In any case, while he certainly held a partiality for ostentation, the quiet beauty of a knife fit his personality well. He had a small collection of his own, stored within the pocket of non-space occupied by and accessed via his magic.
He took one of the knives between his fingers, turned it over in his palm, felt its weight and imagined flinging it through the air and downing a distant target. The thought brought a faint smile to his lips.
He sensed the presence of malice before the words registered as someone came up behind him and said, a little too close to his ear, “The Inquisition is in the area, you know.”
Loki’s eyes narrowed. “So I’ve heard.”
He heard a short, humorless chuckle as the person behind him smirked. “I’m surprised you’re not home avoiding them. I’m sure if they saw you they would have some questions about those eyes of yours.”
Loki rolled said eyes. “Perhaps you’re unfamiliar with the genetics of those outside of your own inbred bloodline, but green eyes aren’t so inconceivable as you seem to think,” he retorted, stepping out from the interloper’s shadow.
Facing him, Loki saw that it was young man a few years his senior whom he saw incidentally on such occasions as this when he was forced to make contact with other people. Certainly, he couldn’t be the only one, but unlike most who found Loki suspicious, this particular individual lacked the decency to be quiet about it. He rarely actually spoke to Loki, but the times that he had were all subtly unfriendly and his words always carried some implication that Loki was one among the ranks of evil, demonic witches. Whether or not Loki had at some point gotten careless and done something to give rise to such impressions, he was of the opinion that this man was an idiot and promulgated rumors out of spite and a general unhappiness toward the absolute valuelessness of his own life.
“That’s quite a sharp tongue you’ve got. What is your name?”
“Lucretia,” Loki said, the lie slipping from his lips like quicksilver.
“Lucretia?” the man repeated, blinking. “That’s a girl’s name. What, are you a woman?”
“Perhaps if I were, you would summon with your minimal brainpower the decorum you might exhibit before a lady,” Loki snapped.
The air changed slightly. There was a stronger element of menace now coming from the other.
“Maybe we should find out now, and save them the work,” the lout said, backtracking to the witchcraft accusation. He reached out and grabbed Loki’s wrist before he could put sufficient distance between them, taking into his other hand one of the knives lying on the table. Loki made a sound of protest, trying to pull his arm away, but lacking the physical strength that many young, magicless men possessed, he could not break free.
The man brought the knife to Loki’s palm, holding it point down, not yet breaking the skin. “Do witches bleed red?” he said. Delighting in this. Sick bastard. Without warning he yanked Loki forward by his wrist and pressed the knife against his throat. A gasp caught and stilled beneath the blade.
“They say that witches don’t die when you drown them. Wonder if they’re capable of bleeding out like men.”
Loki let out a harsh sound of derision. “You expect me to believe you’ll commit murder in such a public place for the sake of confirming your superstitions? You truly are an idiot.”
“Try me,” said that hateful smile.
Loki growled, stepping backward and with his free hand swinging out and meeting the aggressor’s face in an open-handed slap. (Not a punch. A punch would start a fight, and invite a crowd.)
“Release me,” he commanded, coldly. “Now.”
The other man, whom Loki had quickly grown to detest, blinked in surprise, as if he was only now registering that he had been struck. Then he smiled again, as if Loki had done something to amuse him. He slowly loosed his grip on Loki’s wrist, and Loki immediately jerked it away.
There was the miniscule space of a moment during which Loki thought he would walk away and be molested no further. It was rudely shattered when he heard, “You won’t defend yourself with magic, you’re too smart for that. But I wonder, what would you do if you had a split second to decide whether she lives or dies?”
Loki went cold. He spun around, and made a connection between two observations. The first was that this brute was no longer looking at him. The second was that he was facing Loki’s mother, who was just emerging from one of the vendors. The throwing knife was still in the man’s hand. And the next five seconds played out like an explosion in space.
The man saw the alarm on Loki’s face, relished in it. Said, “Let’s find out.”
Loki shouted, “Don't—”
The knife was loosed and flew through the twenty meters of air between them and his mother.
Loki reacted, and in doing so sealed his fate with a crushing defeat.
His mother looked up in time to see the swiftly moving knife collide into a shimmering barrier of air in front of her and freeze, vibrating with the trauma of the abrupt seizure of movement, and fall to the ground, harmless.
There are instances when time slows, or stops, and during this frozen moment Loki’s vision blurred and the world became a deafening silence pounding in his ears. His eyes met his mother’s, hers filled with a dejected horror, and slowly, slowly, his gaze traveled over the hazy images of suddenly quiet onlookers and stopped on the face of the man whose wide eyes echoed Loki’s own shock.
Then, the surprise slowly gave way to triumph.
The man smiled.
Loki’s mind blanked and he ran.
His mother arrived shortly after he retreated into the no-longer-safety of their home.
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, his mother’s own voice clipping the end of his words: “Oh, Loki, what have you done?”
She dropped everything in her hands and rushed over to him, tremblingly reaching out to him and wrapping protective arms around his neck.
“I’m sorry, Mother. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
After a minute, she pulled back and looked him in the eye, desperation covering her gently aging features.
“You have to go, Loki. Tonight. Now.” His mother squeezed his shoulders, urgency mixing with emotion in her wide eyes. “Disappear immediately, or they’ll take you away.”
Loki, his trembling hands loosely gripping her forearms, said in barely more than a whisper, “You must denounce me, Mother. Say that I bewitched you as part of my ruse. Tell them you never knew what I was, that you would never have taken me in if you had known I was a devil-worshipping witch-”
“You stop that right now,” she said, her voice suddenly stronger, freer of the moment’s rising panic. “Do not ask for the last thing I do as your mother to be condemning my own son. Now get ye gone, my dear boy, before they come after you with torches.”
The tears behind Loki’s eyes ached to fall, but alas, he would not cry in front of the mother he may never see again. They hugged, holding each other tightly for an instant, and then Loki tore himself away. “Goodbye, Mother,” he said.
And the green-eyed witch fled into the twilight.
Loki was proud of two things: his magic and his cleverness. Both were as useful for getting him into trouble as for getting him out of it, and while his confidence in them was well-earned, Loki was a single man up against an entire band of men who were specifically trained to hunt him down, capture him, and exterminate him.
His first priority was to forge a trail away from his mother’s home—at the very least, if he was captured, he could try to downplay the connection he had to her. Harboring a witch was punishable, he knew. He would either have to lie his way around the worst case scenario, or he would have to make himself so enticing that his head alone would satisfy them.
He wasn’t very surprised when he didn’t make it far, not really. There were so many of them, and they were so well prepared, obviously having received the tip-off already. He knew the woods better than they and managed to evade them for a while. He considered using the tree tops as part of his route, but discarded the idea when he figured it wouldn’t give him the distance he needed fast enough, and if they noticed him, he would be trapped. The cruel truth, he discovered, was that, in a time when brawn and violence trumped cleverness and thoughtfulness, he never stood a chance.
They appeared in front of him, a couple of them on horseback, blocking his path and swiftly vanquishing whatever hope he’d had of eluding the Inquisition. One of them stepped forward, eyes locked on Loki’s frame, all authoritative sternness and free of mercy.
“Stay put, witch. You can cooperate and come with us or we can drag you to your trial by your hair.”
Loki’s stance stayed rigid, and they closed in on him slowly. One of them produced from within his robe a long, very thin wire, thin as fishing line but shining faintly with the color of moonlight. Loki went cold inside. He recognized it, born of the necromancy of Svartalfheim, woven from hair and cursed to trap magic, rendering the victim helpless before the wielder of the bind…
There was a decision to be made within the next fraction of a second and Loki was already vaulting into action. A sharp rotation of his wrist produced a small throwing knife, summoned by his magic from nonexistence. He twisted his body around, his arm following through with his movement and flinging the knife into the throat of the Inquisitor who stood nearest to him. He immediately followed the trajectory of his knife, leaping over the body as it fell backwards to the ground, he fled for his life.
All of the Inquisitors took off after him save one. This man strode over to the now lifeless body and plucked the knife from its neck. He turned it over in his fingers, the faint green glow of magic dissipating. His lips curved upward and he murmured, “I see that the trial is no longer necessary.”
Loki ran. He could hear them following close behind him. Stealing a look over his shoulder, he counted two of them gaining on him to his right, and with a quick motion of his hand he threw up a force field that caught one of them in the face and chest, knocking the wind out of him. As that pursuer fell, Loki put all of his effort into making his legs move faster. He leapt over a large root sticking up from the ground and veered off between the trees.
He could feel the Inquisitor carrying the enchanted wire drawing nearer, could feel his flesh repulse its aura as the Inquisitor cast it his way. Loki realized, with fast-consuming dread, that it had found the signature of his magic in the air. With the length of it still wrapped around his attacker’s hand, it would pursue him until it touched him, at which point it would trap him, making any more running away impossible.
With this bleak awareness emerging to consciousness, he attempted to conjure up another force field, but the wire pierced straight through the magic, dissipating it into so much mist that was harmless to as the hunter ran through it. His magic rendered useless, he put all of his energy into running, the forest around him racing by in a blur until—
Until another Inquisitor darted out in front of him, cutting him off. Loki cried out, startled, thrown off balance for the briefest of moments—long enough for the wire to make contact with his back, and immediately it wrapped around his entire body. He found his arms being forced behind him, could feel its invisible presence bind his wrists together.
Loki cursed, his legs giving way, and he stumbled to the ground. In an instant they were upon him, and by the end of his next breath he was surrounded. They pinned him with their stares, variously sneers and glares, coldly victorious.
“You gave us quite the chase, witch,” said the booming voice of who Loki safely presumed to be their leader. He stepped forward, a man of intimidating height and an even more menacing muscular frame. The light of the dying sun behind him and Loki’s eyesight frantically trying to bounce back from sheer panic, it wasn’t until he stepped forward that Loki could make out his blond hair and startlingly blue eyes.
Loki’s eyes dropped to the forest floor, rage building behind them. He felt a hand fist in his hair and hissed when his head was yanked back, tilting his face toward his captor’s. Their eyes met, Loki’s brimming with defiance, holding the man’s blue stare.
“What an unusual color,” the deep voice said. “There have been rumors of a witch with eyes green as emeralds, with an exceptional talent for subversion. It’s quite a feat to have escaped capture for so long.”
“I heard that he bewitched countless humans so that he could hide amongst their numbers, protected inside of a human society,” one of the other Inquisitors piped up from behind him.
“I heard that he seduced a whole cavalry to avoid arrest,” another laughed. Loki huffed irritably. Haughty bastard.
The blond man’s mocking gaze didn’t leave Loki. His smugness pervaded his voice as he spoke his next words: “Well, one story I know to be true is that, of his entire race, the son of the king felled by my father’s hand and the brother of the crown prince felled by mine was the only one in history born with eyes of such a color. And that young prince, the only royal whose corpse could not be recovered, presumably escaped that day.”
Loki’s face, in a moment of weakness, revealed the shock of this revelation. “You are Thor Odinson,” he realized aloud.
Thor Odinson, first son of the king and heir to the Asgardian throne, smirked. “And you are Loki Laufeyson, the last of the Jotun, and the last drops of that monster’s wicked blood flow through your veins.”
Loki thrashed in his grip and against the invisible wire that bound him. “Let me go,” he snarled, “or I shall guarantee that each of you come to regret your pitiful existences.
Thor’s tireless smirk only deepened, and he twisted his grip in Loki’s hair so that Loki’s spine bent backwards, neck straining to accommodate the odd angle that the man towering over him demanded.
“I have finally found you, the last Jotun, and believe me, I am looking forward to at long last ending your sorry existence, witch.”
On the last syllable he released his iron grip, and Loki fell to his side, panting. Thor looked down at him coldly for a half a beat more before turning away and commanding, “Bring him.”
Loki snarled, repelling their touch, but he alone could not fend off so many men. Their hands found his forearms and his body and they were not gentle. He reacted indignantly, and one of them had the audacity to backhand him across the face before pulling a seal from his sleeve—another damnable commodity from Svartalfheim, no doubt—and pressing it to Loki’s exposed collarbone. The anti-magic screamed through his body, echoed in the scream that was torn from his throat. His eyes rolled back in his head and he blacked out.