Flawed Design

“The Queen is dead.”

Loki stared blankly through the glass barrier that sat between him and the guard that had been deemed the bearer of bad news. It took a moment for the words to sink in and though it broke him inside, he kept a composed mask upon his features. Rather than allowing the emotions that were trying to claw their way to the surface show in the presence of another, he simply nodded in acknowledgement to what had been spoken. The guard took the nod as his cue to leave, departing as quickly as he had come.

Emerald hues turned away from the retreating guard and towards the interior of his cell instead. The book he held in his hands was placed down on the table beside him and summoning his strength, he stood from the chair that he sat upon. Feet carried him towards the center of the room, back turned entirely upon the glass that kept him isolated from the outside world.

“Frigga is the only reason you are still alive and you will never see her again.”

His hands balled into tight fists at his sides and with a jerky outwards motion of his arms, a surge of magic sent the items around him flying into the surrounding walls. The emotions he’d done so well containing around the guard finally burbled forth. Tears prickled at the brim of his eyes, knuckles turning white from how tightly curled his fists were and though his nails dug into his palm, he hardly noticed.

She was gone. His mother was gone and neither Odin nor Thor had the decency to tell him themselves. Nay, they sent a mere guard to inform him of the Queen’s death. By blood they may have shared no relation, but a mother was what she had always been to him and Loki hadn’t even been able to attend her funeral. In a fit of rage, another surge of magic sent the items flying once more. This time, the force of the impact caused splinters of wood to break off the table he’d set his book upon. The leg of his chair snapped but remained attached by the tiniest sliver of wood. Books, the very ones Frigga had given him to occupy his time, were strewn about the floor.

“The books I sent, do they not interest you? I've done everything in my power to make you comfortable.”

“Have you? Does Odin share in your concern?”

Loki finally willed his feet to move once more, but it was only to cause more destruction. The books were picked off the floor one by one. They had certainly served their purpose. They had kept him entertained. They had passed the time. But now? Now he simply had no more desire to read them. Nimble fingers tore the pages from the spine, littering them across the floor before forcefully chucking what remained against a nearby wall.

She had always done everything in her power to make him comfortable, to make him feel loved, even though she had known of his true origins from the start. Not once had she ever made him feel like an outsider, not even after all the destruction he had caused upon the mortal’s realm. Even then, she still continued to do the little things a mother would for their child, whereas Odin had always done the opposite. Where there should have been warmth and compassion, there was coldness and indifference, which simply became even more prominent when he’d been brought back to Asgard.

Frigga had not wanted him executed for his actions upon Midgard, whereas Odin seemed he would’ve found it justified.

“Then am I not your mother?”

“You’re not.”

Unable to be upon his feet any longer, Loki fell back against the wall behind him and slid to the floor. His gaze was unfocused upon the floor in front of him as he relived their final conversation. She’d been so calm, even after he’d lost his temper about Odin. Perhaps because it was something he did quite often. It was the look she’d given him in that last moment that tore at him inside though. How he wished those had not been his parting words with her, that their final conversation had been on a better subject. Most of all, he wished it had actually been her that he had been conversing with, not an illusion.

“You might want to take the stairs to the left.”

Though there was much he wished for in their final conversation, the thing he desired most was to go back in time and take back what he’d said to that monster. There was not a doubt in the raven-haired male’s mind that he had played a hand in her death with those simple directions.

His lips parted, allowing an anguished scream to pass through them. The scream told of the rage he felt over the way he’d been informed that she had passed. It told of the pain that ripped him apart inside over losing the person that had meant the most to him, leaving him truly alone. Most of all, it told of the regret he felt over the hand he’d played in her death and of the way they had left things before her demise.

At long last, the scream died and his cell became quiet once more, though the messy state it now sat in spoke of the countless emotions that had been stirred inside him.