#how selfish are my aunts deciding he should stay in a cage for a few more days

[merlinsear]

My mom’s cousin in Florida passed away suddenly last week. She had no other living family, so my mom and her sisters are the closest family members. My mom has spent days trying to find a home for her cousin’s poor dog, who has been anxious and depressed in the local animal control shelter (and in a few days he will be fair game for any random person to adopt). My mom finally found someone who would take great care of him, and suddenly my aunts are protesting because “what if our cousin has a will and leaves everything to the dog but a stranger has him? Would they get the money?” Not only is that a plot out of a mediocre romcom, but how dare they stay silent for days and then suddenly start this shit. Time is ticking and this poor terrified and sad dog would have been going to a new home tomorrow morning and they stalled the whole process with their bullshit.

[andtheywereroom-mates]

imprisoned

“Loki, son of Laufey—”

The god in question is knelt upon a raised platform, chained and bloody, bound at his wrists, feet, and neck and restrained by two unmoving guards before a crowd of furious Asgardians. He’d been beaten before he was brought here, Dagny is sure, probably tortured for information that he could not give. She strains against Sigyn’s vicelike grip trying to assess the damage, panic rising in her throat like bile.

“For your crimes against this Realm—”

A general cry erupts in the hall, mixed voices of both support and denial from the surrounding crowd, though Loki’s face betrays nothing. Undeterred, the representative presses on.

“—you have lost your right to trial. Your fate will shortly be decided. Take him away.”

The two guards drag Loki roughly to his feet. Dagny opens her mouth to scream in protest, but a hand is pressed to her mouth and an insistent, irresistibly strong arm crosses her body, dragging her out of the crowd whose frenzy has reached an even higher pitch. She is powerless against Sigyn’s strength; for all that she is half a goddess, she cannot compare to the real, full-blooded thing. She does not see what becomes of her father as she is pulled from the hall.

Sigyn releases her in a side corridor, and Dagny shoves her away, shaking, eyes wild. “Why did you do that? I need to get back in there, he needs me!”

“No.”

“Fuck you!” Dagny screams in an uncommon display of irreverence. “No? My father’s in danger and you expect me to—?”

Sigyn is implacable, blocking her re-entrance into the hall. “Your father entrusted me with your safety, and right now, that means getting as far away from here as possible. We have to go.”

“We have to help him, who knows what they’ll do, he couldn’t have done this, there’s no way—”

“Dagny . . .”

“My father and uncle may have had their differences, but he couldn’t . . . he couldn’t have . . . not this!” Dagny’s hands are balled in ineffectual fists, battering against Sigyn’s shoulders as if against a wall of stone. “Please, you have to believe me! He needs my help!”

“Dagny,” Sigyn grabs her wrists in steady hands, a pillar of strength as Dagny’s life collapses around her. “Calm yourself. I can get you to him. But we need to be smart. First, I need you to breathe.”

Dagny does so, deep and grounding, fighting with everything she has to keep the tears from spilling over, to reign in the hysteria that has a vice around her heart. As soon as it seems that she is once again in control of herself, Sigyn releases her.

“It is imperative that we stay out of sight. I can get you to see him, but we don’t have much time. And afterwards, you’ll have to leave this Realm.”

Dagny cannot find it within herself to argue, all her thoughts bent upon her father and reaching him by whatever means necessary. Everything else could wait.

*

Deep in the bowels of the palace resides the dungeon, with its dark hallways and glowing barriers. This is not the first time that Sigyn has seen her husband in one of these cages, but that does nothing to soften the blow as she steps from the shadows of a hidden passageway towards his cell. Before she can truly assess the damage that has been done to him, a solidly built body steps in front of her, blocking her path.

“Brunnhilde,” Sigyn says, assessing the last of the Valkyrie who stands before her. Her arms are crossed, eyes narrowed as she, too, sizes Sigyn up, as if she could discern her motives simply by looking at her.

“Sigyn,” Brunnhilde replies, softening. She glances over her shoulder, though there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. “Listen, I know things can’t have happened the way they’re saying. But it’s complicated. If you take him, we can’t guarantee anyone’s safety—”

“I know. That’s not it. It’s Dagny. She needs to see him before I can convince her to get out of here.”

The Valkyrie throws another look over her shoulder. “I can buy you some time, but that’s it.” She looks past Sigyn’s shoulder to where the young Lokidottir is hiding in the shadows. Her expression seems almost sad. “Make it fast.”

Sigyn nods as Brunnhilde steps aside, moving down the corridor to keep watch for them. She crosses to the cell in a few short strides, her hand finding purchase in the stone to release the hidden mechanism that would open the magical barrier and allow access. She nods her head quickly, and Dagny rushes past her into the cell, offering a quick ‘thank you’ as she passes.

*

Inside the cell, Loki is bound against the wall in a sitting position, shackles at his neck and wrists. He’s half slumped in on himself, head lolling down and to the side, his long, tangled hair obscuring his face. He is bloody and bruised, barefoot and dressed only in a torn shirt and pants. It is not the worst he’s ever looked, but it’s certainly the worst his daughter has ever seen him.

“Papa?” Dagny says, kneeling before him. Her voice sounds small, like it did when she was young. She suddenly feels like no more than a child in the face of overwhelming unfairness, of her world dissolving beneath her feet.

Loki stirs weakly, lifting his head to meet her gaze with bruised, red-rimmed eyes that instantly soften with recognition when he realizes who it is before him.

“Dagny,” he rasps through parched lips, voice hoarse from — what? 

Screaming, probably, though Dagny quickly pushes such a horrifying thought from her mind. She reaches out a hand to comfort, soothe, only to withdraw it with a hiss when it meets the metal of the shackles, her fingers blue and burned. Her eyes narrow as she realizes: the shackles are heated. Not that much, not enough to harm anyone but those of Jotun blood, whose sensitivity would make them nigh-unbearable. Her resolve steels into flint at her core, everything within her hardening with a hatred she didn’t know she was capable of. 

Dagny calls on the ice in her veins, swirling frost encircling her fingertips, staining them that familiar blue, and reaches towards the shackles once more, this time with intent. She can cool them, temporarily, to a manageable level. It won’t last, but it should offer at least the smallest bit of relief for her father. The only thing she can offer him.

Loki sighs, not quite with relief, but with the absence of pain. It’s a sound that Dagny recognizes; he’s made it often enough.

“Dagny,” he repeats, softer this time, eyes full of some unnamable emotion.

“Papa,” she says again, forcing a reassuring smile onto her face.

“What are you doing here?” His green eyes blaze into hers, intense despite how weak he seems. He strains slightly against his shackles as he attempts to sit up, to focus on her, to regain some semblance of parental control. “You can’t be here, it’s not safe; where is Sigyn, where—?” He winces against the restraints as his wrists twist within them, already rubbed raw.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Dagny rushes to reassure him. She knows they don’t have much time. “Aunt Sigyn brought me here, she’s standing watch, we’re leaving soon, I promise I’ll go, I just—” she bites her lip, fighting back tears. She will be strong, for him. She’ll be strong for them all. “I had to see you.”

Loki stills, eyes tight. Before he can open his mouth to say anything, to defend himself, to assume that Dagny could ever doubt him, she rushes on.

“I know you can’t have done this, father, I know you,” Dagny’s eyes burn with conviction, and Loki could almost cry with the fierce pride and love he feels for his daughter. The only person in his life who had never, even for a second, believed anything but the best of him. And now . . .

“I’m so sorry,” his voice breaks and he sags, defeated. “I’m so sorry for everything. My daughter. My beloved.” Tears well up, unbidden, in his eyes, as he imagines the future that may now await her. He should have kept her far away from Asgard, far from all of this. He’d hoped that the Realm could change, that things would be different, but he’d had Thor at his side then, he’d never counted on this. “I wanted to protect you from all that I was. I tried so hard to atone for my past. But I couldn’t. I’ve failed you. Forgive me.”

“No, father, that’s not true!” Dagny’s heart is a bird in her chest, fluttering and frantic, screaming and caged. Angry tears prick at the corners of her eyes as she trembles with repressed sobs. “You’ve worked so hard. You’re innocent! We’ll prove it. We can. We will!”

Loki seems not to hear her; he looks at her with tender, faraway eyes. “Zabuza will look after you, I know, like one of his own. We’ve had our differences, but he loves your mother. And she will be so happy to have you with her. You’re so loved, Dagny, you will be so loved.” 

“Papa, stop it,” Dagny sobs, “Don’t talk like that.” 

But what can he say? All Dagny wants with all her heart is for her father to tell her that everything will be okay. He can’t. They both know it won’t be.

He can’t even reach out to embrace his child, restrained as he is. All he can do is give her a weak, teary-eyed smile.

“You will be safe, my love, and that’s what matters.”

But what about justice? she thinks, angrily, What about the truth? Surely these things matter too.

“You can’t just give up.” She tries for strength, but her voice is hushed and strained. “We could run. You could escape. You don’t have to do this.”

Loki looks pained, but still he tries to smile. There may have been a time he would have done just that — saved himself, consequences be damned — but the days of such selfishness are long since past. Dagny had changed everything for him.

“I can’t escape without putting you and the rest of our family in danger,” he says, gently. “And that is something I won’t do.”

A sound comes from behind them; Sigyn tapping on the forcefield barrier of the cell. They’re running out of time . . .

“Papa . . .” Dangy is suddenly afraid, so much more afraid than she’s ever been in her life. She tries desperately not to show it, but she’s sure it must come through in her eyes as they rove over her father’s face, suddenly certain that this is the last time she will see get to see him. He seems to be doing the same, memorizing each of his daughter’s features as if they weren’t already branded on his mind.

“It’s alright, Dagny,” he says — a lie, they both know it — but she is grateful, nonetheless. “You must go. I’ll be fine.”

Dagny leans forward, wraps her arms around her father’s battered torso, knowing full well that he would return her embrace if he could. She buries her face against his shoulder just as she would when she was small, after a nightmare. But there is no waking from this. No soothing reassurances to ease her back into a dreamless sleep. Loki leans his head against hers, turns his face to smell her hair and kiss the top of her head. His daughter. His child. His only.

“Go,” he whispers, and she pulls away, nodding, wiping her eyes. Sigyn has opened the cell once more, is waving her frantically forward. Just before she is pulled from the cell, Dagny turns back to her father, frantic.

“Papa, I love you, I’ll free you, I’ll fix this, I promise!”

Then the barrier is shut between them.