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tangledmelody · 1 month ago

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The Beast of Asgard - Loki Laufeyson x Reader/Female Original Character

A canon non-compliant fic heavily inspired by Disney's beauty and the Beast. Featuring gothic vibes, sexual tension, and my personal favorite character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Read onward if you're looking for something with a slow burn, mutual pining, and eventual explicit themes. (Yes, this is shameless self promotion. I like seeing the little numbers on ao3 go up- sue me.)

Written in first person POV with a named female OC intended to be interpreted as a reader insert. There are references to her backstory and thoughts, so I wouldn't consider this a true reader insert.

This fic eventually delves into darker themes, including but not limited to: vivid depictions of mental anguish and anxiety, implied and referenced mental illness/anxiety, panic attacks, sexual harassment, general misogynistic themes, and eventually explicit and detailed sexual content. Said sexual themes will include dream sex (including scenes where one party is unaware that said dream has actual, real world consequences), dubious consent potentially interpreted as non-consent, and general debauchery.

Sorry for the clunky formatting. I haven't used Tumblr in many years.

CHAPTER ONE - Winter's Call

Word Count: 2,582

I once asked my father to define the difference between a house and a home.

“A home,” he had said, voice deep in that reverent tone he sometimes used when he was lost in thought, “is full of love.”

He had sighed then, gazing longingly at the portrait hanging above the fireplace. My mother was always the first to greet visitors and that hadn't changed after death. Her eyes had been painted as stoic pools of blue and her mouth was rendered as a thin straight line. It was a near perfect likeness of her, but it missed all the things that had made her so beautiful in life. There are so many details of a person's life that a portrait cannot capture, and so many stories that a eulogy cannot sum up.

My mother was a force of nature. She was stubborn and proud and most of all she was kind. She was kind when it mattered and she was kind when it didn't. She had told me once that kindness counted the most when it didn't matter. That when you choose to be kind, even when there are no consequences for choosing not to be, that those are the moments that define a person.

My mother was the glue that held our family together. Now that she is gone the pieces of our family portrait have started to fall out of the frame. My father is starting to fray at the edges. His corners have started to curl inwards- away from mine. We are two moons without a planet, and we have lost the one thing keeping us within the same orbit.

If mama was here… she would know what to say. She would have greeted me when I tumbled through the doorway. Her arms would have been open and warm and inviting. But most importantly, her eyebrows would have crinkled together in that peculiar way that they always had when she was concerned. She would have held me for as long as I needed her to, and somehow she would know, just as she always did, when I was ready to pull away. And then, just like she always did when I was upset, she would pour me a cup of steaming hot tea and we would sit in silence until I was ready to form words again.

Except she isn't here. And my father isn't here. And I am alone.

It's a rather unfortunate thing to be alone with one's thoughts in the dead of night. Particularly when one's thoughts are full of fear and anger and *panic*.

I rip my gaze away from my mother's portrait, still covered in the bolt of gauze-like, black fabric that I had draped atop it so many years ago. She cannot help me now. I have to get through this on my own.

. . . . . . . .

My thoughts are still too loud.

I stand - too suddenly, haphazardly and jerky. My feet have grown numb and I stumble forward on my leaden legs. My limbs carry me to the door, movements stilted, as if I am a marionette. I am a doll on strings, not fully aware of my movements, not really questioning them at all. Something inside me tells me to leave, and I listen- foolishly and recklessly. But I do listen.

My thoughts are full of everything and nothing. I am a rabbit, a deer, a prey animal- stumbling across the threshold, eyes wide, head swiftly turning left to right. My coat, brown and soft and downy, hides my body from the harsh winter. It is a camouflage I don't remember donning. Had I ever taken it off?

The wind whistles through the empty streets as I slip out of the dimly lit cottage I call home. It grazes against my cheeks- a bitter reminder of the sudden drop in temperature. I step onto the snow covered streets, grateful that the moon illuminates them from above. My footsteps form a staccato rhythm, boots crunching noisily over the freshly lain blanket of snow.

I watch my breath form icy clouds as I venture farther from home. My footsteps disappear quickly as I walk. The biting cold seeps through my coat and I pull it tighter against myself. I am a smudge of brown against a stark white canvas. I stick out against the landscape. I am as obvious against the snow as the colorful buildings of the village that surround me.

I walk past my home, past the little garden that had died out a month ago. I pass the stained white fence- paint chipped from all its years of use. My feet take me toward the library. It was my sanctuary once, not so long ago. But now- now I cannot stand to look at the pale blue building.

. . . . . . . .

My breath quickens to form short panicked gasps. My fingers, frozen and unyielding, clamber at my face. I touch my cheeks, my nose, my chin- looking for any and all evidence that proves that I am *here*. That I am *safe*. That I am *alive*.

My head turns back toward the village houses, unbidden. They have transformed into barely visible specks scattered across the winter horizon.

I am the only one brave enough to face the storm- or the only one stupid enough.

I turn away from the village, and in doing so I turn away from the memories. I have to shut them out- have to keep walking- to keep moving. I can no longer afford to stand still. Not when my thoughts are rattling against my skull, crashing violently from one moment to the next.

I can barely recognize the way the landscape shifts and changes as I continue blindly forward. I can focus only on putting one foot in front of the other. My thoughts are too loud to focus on anything else. I am pushed forward by instinct alone.

I keep walking.

When I’m far enough from the village that I lose sight of the lights shining through the windows of my neighbor’s houses I break off into a run.

My heart pounds in sync with the sound of my boots crunching over the field of twinkling snow. The wind throws fat white flakes of snow into my eyes. The world around me blurs. I am half blind in the dark.

I keep running.

. . . . . . .

Moonlight flickers through the branches above me as I run deeper into the unknown. Branches snap underneath me as I go- harsh and loud against the silent night. I lurch forward, unsteady and unsure on this new terrain. I run with my arms held up over my head; branches slide and snap over my coat, some of them carving light scratches into my skin.

I don't even know what I'm running from, but everything in me screams to move, to run as fast as I can. So I do. I keep running.

I am exhausted. I keep running.

. . . . . . . .

I am brought back into myself with the harsh sting of a branch hitting tender flesh. I reach up with one hand, cupping my frozen cheek with numb fingers. The sticky sweet scent of blood wafts through the air as I bring my hand away.

My legs stutter, as I clumsily slow to a stop. The trees are so close together that I have lost sight of the moon. The forest here is dense- a tangled tapestry of trees and bushes and scattered foliage. Everything is messy and wild and so *unfamiliar*. It aches.

My muffled heartbeats roar in my ears as I struggle to catch my breath. I fold myself in half as I desperately try to force my lungs to work.

My mind returns to me slowly; my thoughts return to me all at once.

It occurs to me now, that I am standing in the middle of the woods, half frozen and utterly lost, that this was a bad idea. A terrible idea in fact. The realization that I have absolutely no idea where I am makes the air around me feel colder, or maybe I am only now realizing just *how* cold it is now that I have finally stopped moving.

But he is not here. He is not with me.

*I am safe*.

. . . . . . . .

I twist desperately trying to find a landmark, anything that I can follow to take me home, and am terrified to see that my footsteps have already disappeared underneath the falling snow. There is a field of nearly identical trees in every direction. I am cold and I am exhausted. I have nowhere to go. I don’t even know where I am.

I think of my father and how he is doing on his journey- wonder if he is on his way home yet. Will he make it back early only to find that I am not there? Will he even realize that something is wrong- or will he even care? I think about my neighbors and how most of them probably won't realize that I've gone missing. I think about the library with its cozy alcoves and the occasional potted plant peeking through the shelves- a place of refuge turned into a grim reminder.

My hands ball into fists as the memory twists. He has made so many things unbearable- turned so many cherished memories into something bitter and unpleasant.

I barely register the way my palms ache as I dig my nails into the tender flesh- can barely feel the icy cold as it rises up to greet me.

The icy shock of snow hitting my knees jolts me out of my thoughts, the bitter cold seeping through my skirts. I adjust myself, so that I can pull my knees to my chest.

It's quite possibly the stupidest thing I could be doing right now, but I don't care. I'm cold. I'm angry. And I'm frightened. I have nowhere to go, no refuge from the weather. I'm lost and hopeless and quite possibly going to freeze to death-

And I don’t care.

I cry until my lungs collapse underneath the weight of the sound. I don’t know how long I sit like that for- knees clenched tightly to my chest, curled up onto the frozen earth. My neck aches when I move to look at the night sky above me.

I flinch as the cold air hits my face. Twin trails of tears under my eyes carve icy rivers into my cheeks and they fall, one by one, onto the snow-capped forest below.

I watch as birds carve a frantic path through the air. I feel a surge of jealousy go through me when I realize that I’ll never be able to find my way through the forest as quickly as they have. I wonder if they can even see me from their vantage point in the trees or if the forest has swallowed me whole.

. . . . . . . .

Time has been moving in strange ways today. I can’t decide whether I’ve lost minutes or hours in the forest.

My chest aches. My lungs feel like they are coated in ash.

I can no longer feel my face. I’ve long since lost the feeling in my fingers and toes.

I am pulled out of my thoughts by a flash of green light. The vibrant light stands out against the muted, ink-stained landscape around it. I have to force myself to look away from the shining light. It shimmers before fading out- shifting hues too quickly for me to name any particular one.

It leaves a raven behind.

The bird tilts its head left and right. It gazes at me slowly, like it’s assessing me. Two beady eyes focus on me- an eerily human gaze staring at me in the dark. It evaluates me for a tense moment before it throws its head back and screams. The sound pierces through the still quiet of the snowy evening and I can’t shake the thought that it sounds almost human. Perhaps I am closer to death than I thought.

The raven focuses one beady eye on me and launches itself in my direction. My eyes widen instinctively and I feel my muscles clench as I throw my arms in front of my head to protect myself. The raven screams again, puncturing the air a second time. The sound is too close. It rattles me to my core.

The air is a cacophony of noise as the raven closes the distance between us. Its wings beat furiously against the air, and it pushes cool gusts of air towards me. Finally, it lands on the ground a few feet in front of me. Its head is tilted to one side and it’s watching me again.

I find myself leaning forward. I’m surprised to realize that its eyes are a deep, shadowy green. I push myself up onto my feet to look closer at the dark bird. Its feathers reflect the colors of the forest around it in the Moonlight. Green, and black, and brown colors shift on the surface of its feathery body.

I do my best to stand up slowly. This bird is the closest thing I have to company and I don’t want to risk scaring it away. To my surprise, the raven doesn’t fly away.

“You’re lucky.” I sigh and stretch the tension out of my arms and legs. I flex my fingers experimentally. I wish I had thought to grab gloves when I left the house earlier.

“You get to fly wherever you want. Just like your friends did.” I look at the raven again, and even though I feel a bit silly for complaining to a bird I keep talking.

I shift my weight into a crouch, being careful to keep my knees off the ground this time. The consequences of the cold feel more dangerous to me now that I realize just how vulnerable I am. I rest my elbows on my knees and lift my head to rest my chin in my hands. “I guess it doesn’t matter anyways.”

I am not a bird, and I cannot fly, and maybe I’m just a little bit delirious right now. What does it matter if a bird finds me a fool? A bird will not judge me by human standards, and even if it did- I will probably be dead soon anyway.

And if this isn’t a bird? If it’s some figment of my imagination- what then? That would explain its odd coloring, and its strange demeanor.

Perhaps I’m the one that’s truly strange- applying human emotions to a bird, but I swear it looks curious. The bird tilts its head in the other direction and I swear that it is about to speak before it launches itself into the air. Perhaps the cold is affecting me more than I thought because I push myself off the ground in a flurry of flying limbs and tangled fabric in order to follow behind the raven.

The bird flies at a slow enough pace that I can follow, even with my half frozen limbs. Its wings blend into the night air almost perfectly, and I have to squint to differentiate the raven from the trees around it. The muffled crunch of the snow underneath me is the only sound as we move onward.

The trees gradually thin until they disappear altogether. In their place, a castle looms.

The raven disappears into the night sky. The only hint that it was ever there in the first place is a muted flash of green light.

. . . . . . . .

Interested to read more? I recently posted the second chapter over on AO3. The Beast of Asgard - Loki Laufeyson x Reader Insert

#loki laufeyson #loki x reader #mcu loki #loki x female reader #Loki x original female character #ao3 writer #Beauty and the Beast vibes #Gothic atmosphere #slow burn #contract marriage #eventual smut #please I have so many ideas for this fic I would love feedback

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