Darkness There, and Nothing - CH. 0 - Mea Culpa, Sea Culpa

Author's Note: so this idea came to me in a dream, which normally doesn't work for me, but this time it did. Yay! So here's the first chapter of my Loki fic. Just so we're clear, although no obvious female love interest appears in this first chapter, I just want to be clear that this fic is not slash. I'm trying some very new, very different things for me with this fic. So the female protagonist and love interest is more of a secondary character and my main focus will be on Loki's point of view (and Thor as an outside observer looking in). I hope you guys enjoy what I've got planned. Let me know what you think. Hugs!

Soundtrack: I got the idea for a soundtrack from the genius Alydia Rackham. I don't normally tell people what I listened to for a fic, but it worked for her, so why not? For the first scene, I listened to "Knowing You by Heart" from The Little Princess (1993) and "Love Theme" from The Dark Crystal. For the second scene of this fic, I listened to "Here without You" by Three Days Grace, "Dark Waltz" as sung by Jackie Evancho and Haley Westenra, "First Snow" from the film The Fountain, and "Skyfall" by Adele (not necessarily in that order).

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Darkness There, and Nothing…

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Prologue
Mea Culpa, Sea Culpa

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Thor strode to the long table in the currently empty Great Hall—empty, that was, save for his mother. The lamplight burnished her long hair as it tumbled about her shoulders, reflected off the slender golden chain about her throat. The moment Thor's boot-steps echoed off the smooth stone floor, Frigga turned to her firstborn with beseeching eyes.


"Well?" His mother asked softly when the Asgardian prince settled onto the bench beside her. She reached out and clasped his large hand with her slender one. "Did you learn anything? You two have always been so close; did he say anything to you?"


The prince bit back a sigh. His mother and brothers had asked him to take on the heavy task of spying on Loki, his foster brother, in an attempt to discern something in regards to what Loki had done on Midgard and before, in Asgard, during the king's time in the Odinsleep. After receiving bizarre reports of the second prince's behavior, the king and queen had deemed it prudent to discover more—if it was possible. So they had sent Thor.


"He…spoke to me," Thor murmured. Which was fairly astonishing in and of itself. Loki hadn't said a word to anyone in the six months he'd been imprisoned in Odin's dungeons, except to make a few innocuous requests of Frigga. "But the things he said…" Thor shook his head. It's your fault, damn you! Yours…and mine…"I did not understand him."


Frowning, Frigga took both her son's hands in hers and gently squeezed. "Tell me what happened, dearest. Perhaps I might be able to make sense of things."


Loki had always been close to their mother, Thor acknowledged silently. Perhaps she had the right of it. Clearing his throat, Thor began, "I went to the dungeons as we'd agreed. All was silent, except for the sound of a pencil against paper…"



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Scritch-scritch-scritch.


The gentle scrape of charcoal against parchment was the only sound in the vast corridor, save for the crackling of the torches in their wall sconces and the snap of flames in the hearth of one of the cells.

Most prisoners of Asgard's king couldn't lay claim to a fireplace, or a sumptuous, four-poster bed draped in emerald and black, or a table with a blown-glass oil lamp. Most prisoners weren't given books, sheaves of paper, bottles of ink, the finest quill pens, and sticks of charcoal to amuse themselves with during the long days of their captivity.

But then, most prisoners weren't Loki Odinson, second prince of Asgard.

Thor watched Loki from the shadows beyond the torchlight. His younger adopted brother bent industriously over the black-wood table, sketching something. Dark brows knitted together, lips pressed into a thin white line, Loki worked almost feverishly at a drawing his brother couldn't see. Pale fingers grasped the stick of charcoal so forcefully that Thor was surprised it didn't snap in his grip.

Loki leaned closer to the table, his hair spilling like ink over his shoulders and across his brow. The Asgardian noticed that his younger brother had actually bitten his lower lip so hard in concentration that a pearl of blood had risen up on the flesh.

Suddenly Loki stopped, jerking to a halt as if frozen. He stared down at the sketch, brow furrowed, face utterly bloodless. Emerald eyes blazed with something that might have been madness…or anguish. The charcoal pencil fell from his fingers to hit the floor. He swallowed audibly; Thor heard it even from where he stood. A trembling fingertip stretched out to caress down the length of the parchment in a strange pattern.

Thor frowned. The guards had spoken to Odin and Frigga about this odd behavior, and neither king nor queen could account for it. Balder, Tyr, Víðarr, and Hermod had considered it Thor's duty—as the eldest—to investigate. So here he was, and the utter desolation on Loki's face astonished him. The guards had said nothing about that. What was the drawing of—what could it be of—that it moved Loki this way? Thor was about to open his mouth to call out to his little brother, forgetting momentarily the need for silence and secrecy, when Loki lunged to his feet, snatched up the drawing, and making three quick strides to the hearth, cast it into the flames. Then he half-crouched, half-fell before the fireplace to watch the paper burn to ash and smoke.


"What do they know of darkness?" Loki rasped to the fire. One hand lay on his knee, gripping so tight his knucklebones stood out stark against the flesh. "What do they know of the choking blackness of the void? What do they know of isolation? Nothing." He bowed his head. A tremor shivered through his tall, lean frame. "Nothing at all."

"Loki?" Thor could remain silent no longer. Stepping from the shadows of the prison corridor into the sienna light of the flickering torches, he approached the transparent ensorcelled glass that separated his younger brother from the outside world.

Loki's head whipped around. Something savage flashed across the pale face before the pseudo-Æsir smoothed his features to careful blankness. He rose slowly to his feet. The blackness of his shirt and trousers, with only the deep emerald green tunic to alleviate the darkness, made him seem even paler than normal. Almost sickly. Loki arched one knife-thin black brow at his foster brother.

"Come to keep me company, Brother?" A small smile played at the corner of Loki's mouth. "Come to ease my loneliness?"

Thor scowled. Any touch of sympathy or concern he'd felt evaporated like night mist in the morning sun at his brother's words. "Do not mock me, Loki. I came merely to see what mischief you might be getting up to."

Slender but powerful shoulders lifted in a nonchalant shrug. "Another coup, as you can plainly see," his younger brother replied with a familiar—and irritating—smirk. "Even within the walls of the stoutest prison, a man can conquer the world." A shadow appeared to flit across emerald eyes. Loki's arrogance seemed to falter, and the smirk wilted at the edges. "Yes…with loyalty and conviction, or even merely with desperation at his side…or perhaps madness…"


"You're not clever," Thor snapped. There was something about Loki's words that left him unsettled. He let that unease morph into anger buzzing like hornets in his blood. "What would you know of loyalty?"


With another mercurial shift of temper, the other prince spun on his heel with a wordless snarl and paced the length of his cell. Every movement snapped and jerked with edgy tension. Thor suppressed another surge of unease. Until his incarceration here in Asgard, Loki had never been so…changeable. So quick to spin from one mood to another. When rage had taken him in the past, there had always been a build-up, some signs of warning. Not this rabid fury that seemed to spring from nowhere.
Perhaps the Midgardian known as Banner had been right all those months ago when he'd claimed Loki was mad. Like a bag of cats, he'd said. And mayhap Loki had truly succumbed to actual madness…


Desperation…or perhaps madness…


"What do I know of loyalty?" Loki asked softly. Rage—and something else, something dark and cold and terrible, something Thor did not wish to examine too closely—gave the mild words a razor's edge. "When have I ever stolen something truly precious to you, Brother?"


"You tried to kill me, Brother. I deem my life very precious, thank you."


To his amazement—and fury—Loki scoffed at the accusation.


"Let us say I did," Loki hissed, reminding Thor that his brother had never actually admitted that he'd tried to kill the crown prince during his exile to Midgard. "What of it? It was a conflict betwixt the pair of us, no one else."


Now it was Thor who scoffed. "So those innocent people whose homes you destroyed—"

Loki held up a sharp finger. "Homes, you said. Was anyone killed?"


Thor lifted a brow and folded his arms across his broad chest. "I was. The Destroyer's blow broke my neck. If not for Mjölnir's returning to my hand, I would have died. What say you to that?"


"I say that my point has been made: I attacked you, and no other person. The Destroyer only attacked Sif and the Three because they sought to interfere with it, which you allowed. I kept the combat between the two of us. I never killed someone in an attempt to get at you. I kept it between the pair of us, involving no one else!"


"I involved no one else!" Thor protested.


"Liar!" Loki roared suddenly, with enough venom that Thor actually stepped back from him. The guards shifted restlessly. Thor tried to speak, but now whatever words had been festering inside his brother spewed forth, and would not be halted by anything Thor could do.


"It's your fault, damn you! Your fault the Chitauri…" Loki dropped back against the white stone wall of his prison and slumped to the floor, defeat etched in every line of his face, every angle of his body. "Your fault…and mine. The slaughter, the pain, all that innocent blood…all of it for naught, and all because you couldn't let me alone."


Thor took a single step toward his brother. His shaking hands convulsed into fists. Rage and disbelief twined together in a thorny tangle in his breast. "Let you alone? Let you alone?" Thor's voice rose to a leonine roar with every word. "Let you butcher helpless Midgardians, slaughter countless innocents, so that you, in your arrogance and callous disregard for life, could rule Midgard? I should have let you destroy an entire world, all so that you could be their king?"


"No!" Loki roared back, surging to his feet. Wild-eyed, the prince yelled, "I was trying to save them!"

"Save who? The Midgardians? You mowed them down without a thought, without one regret!" Venom had been building up in Thor as well. He didn't know how long it had been fermenting inside him—since learning of Loki's betrayal? His attempt to steal the Asgardian throne? Since he'd murdered Coulson?—but he would spill that poison now, and let Loki drink it to the dregs. "You're a liar, a murderer, a traitor! You attempted to save no one except yourself, Laufeyson!" Loki jerked, recoiling as if he'd been stabbed. "Who were you trying to save, and for what?" Thor demanded, voice dripping derision. "Hmmm? Answer me if you can! And tell the truth for once!"


At first he thought Loki would fly at him, attempt to hurl some spell despite the transparent shielding protecting him and dampening Loki's magic. For several heartbeats, a twisted expression of half-mad—rage? Pain? Turmoil?—twisted Loki's face. His eyes burned green as rushlights at twilight. But he didn't try to attack his foster brother. Instead, he merely trudged back to the table and slumped heavily into the chair. He dropped his head into his hands. Sighed.

"Yes…I know I am a murderer, Brother. How well I know it. Do I despise myself for it? Do I mourn the blood on my hands?" Loki lifted his head, draping his arms across his thighs. His hands dangled limply between his knees. He scoffed softly at his brother. "You've already decided that. What hope is there of changing your mind? I tell you there is none. And a liar…so is the man you and I both called 'Father,' yet you don't hold it against him. As for treachery, well, my loyalty belongs to another. That's all there is to it, I'm afraid."

"To who?" Thor demanded. "To Thanos?"

A bitter, humorless smile twisted Loki's mouth. "No. He will die one day, by my hand, for what he did to…" The anguished expression he'd worn when studying the burned drawing returned. Something cold pulsed like an ache in Thor's chest. What made his little brother look like that? "…to them," Loki concluded in a voice that was nearly a whisper.

Baffled now, the anger draining away to leave him slightly numb and out of breath, the golden-haired prince demanded, "To who, Loki? Who are you talking about?"

When Loki lifted his head to look at Thor, Thor found himself speechless. The look of bitter, icy hate in his brother's eyes was like a blow to the belly. Even in the midst of their battles on the Bifröst and Stark Tower, there had never been this deathly-cold loathing in his little brother's eyes.

"Your ignorance excuses nothing," Loki spat. "Their blood is still on your hands. On the hands of Thanos and his Other. And," here his voice dropped to a broken rasp, "and on my own." Turning from his bewildered audience, he added softly, "I know my sins well. They are carved into my flesh and bones. Go from me, Thor. Torment me no longer."


"Loki…" But his brother did not turn back. Feeling as if something vital was even now slipping from his grasp, Thor murmured, "I will be back to finish this later, Brother. I will expect an answer to my question." With an oddly heavy heart, the crown prince turned and strode away.

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Bewildered, Frigga listened to her son's recitation to the end. Shook her head.

"I…I don't know what he could mean, who he could mean." Tracing the silky smooth grain of the table with the tip of one finger, frowning, she shook her head again. "I cannot fathom what Loki means, except that…perhaps he somehow blames you for the deaths of the Midgardians during the conflict."

Thor scowled. "It was hardly my fault he decided to invade with an army of savage Chitauri ready to slaughter anyone they came across. He'd have to be mad to blame me for that."

In a voice as soft as falling snow, Frigga murmured, "Perhaps…perhaps he truly is mad."

The scowl melted from Thor's face and he sighed. Pressing his mother's hand in tender reassurance, he said, "Don't worry, Mother. I will go back to him tomorrow and see if he'll speak to me again. Maybe we can discover something."

"What hope is there for Loki, Thor?"

He didn't know. But if there was hope for his brother, Thor vowed silently that he would find it.

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Author's Note: so…that's my prologue. What do you guys think? Let me know! I love reviews/critiques, and I love to hear from my readers. Have a nice day, you guys! Hugs to everyone!


Concerning the Titles: The chapter title refers to two things—the song "Hellfire" in Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the Latin phrase used in that song. "Mea Culpa" literally means "my mistake," and "sea culpa" means "your mistake," but it can also be translated as "my fault"/"your fault." So the title of the prologue is literally "My Fault, Your Fault." The title of the fic is a quote from Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven." It actually goes something like, "Here I flung wide the door…Darkness there, and nothing more."