Loki's Little Mischief - Ch 36

Loki's Little Mischief - a Loki X OC Romance
~Chapter Thirty Six~ Unworthy

          With the opening of his doors to Káta, Loki relaxed his seclusion very slightly. The handmaidens could now come and go about their duties, but it was up to providence whether they found him in a silent, brooding mood – in which case he would ignore them – or a towering fury, in which case he was liable to throw things at them until they left.
          The handmaidens did not who Káta was, only that there was a girl who came and went, and that the Prince was likely to be at his most docile while she was present. This had not been the case to begin with. Despite Loki’s repeated attempts to distance himself from Káta, he was yet to erase his possessiveness of her, and the first time a handmaiden happened upon them together his fury and the accompanying outpouring of enraged seiðr had been such that the girl had fainted clean away from pure terror.
          Káta had rebuked Loki for the severity of his reaction, which had involved his turning into a human torch of blazing wildfire, and revived the girl, who had then fled at the flaming look that still filled Loki’s eyes. On all subsequent occasions he never said a word, but merely remained where he was – sitting or standing – glowering sullenly until the handmaidens had left, and earning gently reproving tuts from Káta.
          In this vein he refused to tell the einherjar and Valkyrie guards to let her pass if she came to the causeways, his desire to keep her his own as strong as his desire to push her away. Káta had stoutly ignored the latter wish, and after climbing the tor on three successive visits, each time arriving half frozen at his rooms, and on the last nearly being blown off the stone by a gale, Loki finally relented, and would come to bring her up when he felt her arrive at the bottom of the tor. Her stubbornness simultaneously confounded and thrilled him. He aided her with varying amounts of reluctance and willingness; disinclined to help Káta come to him, but loath to put her through the freezing and potentially life-threatening ordeal she insisted upon executing if he refused to bring her up with his seiðr. Even so, a tiny part of him did miss the result of her climbs, for even in his state of confused deliberation, he could not deny how beautiful the sight of firelight flickering across the bared skin of her shoulder and back was.
          Loki’s internal debates did not lessen with Káta’s return, but she did not pursue the topic of his father any further, and for that he was grateful. It was relaxing, in a strange sort of way, to have her in his chambers, near him, humming to herself as she did some little thing or other, coming across her reading in little nooks, or singing on the balcony to the birds that fluttered down, harmonising with their own songs. At such times he was able to forget for a few sweet moments the chaos of his insides, and gain some slight respite.
          Her presence made it easier for him to want to keep her near him, selfish as the desire was, and the many layers of protest against his retaining her friendship were hushed by his blind wish not to lose something as precious as her presence. In this matter, he acknowledged that he was being wholeheartedly selfish, but her own enjoyment in being there, and the fact that she continued to return served to slightly alleviate his concerns about how detrimental he was to her, even as thoughts of denial hovered in the back of his mind like midges in a meadow. If anything, her presence now made his decisions harder to form, but his mind was calmer, and he found that he experienced less turmoil when she was near. With her return, however, that part of him that fretted over her in her absence had finally quietened with a pleased sort of hum of satisfaction.
          Káta knew she couldn’t address the problem of Odin with Loki. Not now. The audience with the Allfather had begun to open up a gap between them, and guilt assailed her every time she thought of all their arguments, which she knew had only served to widen it. She felt ill whenever she remembered, knowing that if she had been able to control her anger and frustration better things might not have degenerated as much as they had, furious with herself for not seeing the damage it caused before it was too late.
          With the cessation of their arguments, however, Loki had begun to return to his usual self a little more. Shelving the issue of his father as was his wont, he was happier to ignore the problem than feel the frustration and self-loathing that thinking about it caused, turning instead to the far more important issue of Káta and her perplexing desire to return.
          Káta began to notice the way he stared at her, analysed her, his expression at once bewildered and calculating whenever she smiled at him. It bemused her, his sudden scrutiny, and whenever she caught him watching her, her smile always seemed to widen of its own accord, half questioning, inviting a reply from him. But all she ever received were ever deepening frowns of evaluation, his attention inside his mind rather than in the moment.

          “Why do you always return?” Loki had been watching Káta as she sat in a puddle of sunlight on his balcony, the lap of her skirt filled with flowers that she had brought with her, while she deftly picked through them, interlacing their stalks into a thick garland.
          Káta smiled faintly as she glanced at him, amusement in her eyes. She threaded the final stalk, turning the long flower chain into a circlet, and held it up, examining her handiwork for a moment with a pleased smile before she set it down, giving him her undivided attention. “Because I care,” she replied simply.
          Loki gazed at her blankly, dumbfounded.
          Silence hung between them longer than it seemed possible, as though the world had been frozen. But then Loki stood abruptly and swept into his rooms.
          Káta’s heart was thudding. Her response had been natural and truthful – it was a truth she had long been aware of throughout her regard for Loki – but this was the first time she had spoken it openly in so many words, and it seemed to have taken Loki by surprise as nothing else had. She had spoken thoughtlessly, but his reaction to her words, simple as they were, brought home to her just how powerful they had been. He was not used to people caring; not about him.
          She got up after a few moments, flowers and flower petals falling in a shower from her skirts, and followed Loki in. He sat with his back to her by the distant circular table she had sometimes dined at, his chair dragged around from its usual place so that he faced the wall, his feet resting on the grate of the fireplace.
          Káta knew it was best to leave the prince to his thoughts. She crossed to his desk where his half of their carved birds stood, and laid the flower wreath around it on the table, quietly leaving.

          Loki sat in his chair as the day turned to evening, and then the evening turned to night, unmoving, unsure exactly what it was that he was feeling. He had been tempted to turn around when Káta had come in from the balcony, but fear of disappointment had held him back.
          Eventually, when only the faintest of cinders remained in the hearth, he stood, turning to gaze balefully about his empty room. The moonlight came in through the window that his desk was set before, and puddled his things in silver.
          Cross and confused as he was, it did little detriment to his powers of observation, and noticing the flower wreath, he crossed to it, his curiosity greater than all else.
          He stood before his desk, regarding the wreath seriously, and his chest tightened at the sight of the carved bird that it encircled. The memory of he and Káta joining their respective halves of the carving in Vanaheimr blossomed before his eyes, and he was astonished to feel a wetness welling in his eyes.
          He reached out, gently lifting the wreath so that it lay draped across his palm, and examined the fragile linking of the flower stems, recalling the effort Káta had put into its construction. Her attentiveness to the task had engrossed him, her expression of calm concentration one he would never tire of. He turned the wreath over, letting the petals slide between his fingers, tickling his palm. The flowers had already begun to wilt a little, and Loki gently closed his hand over them, looking up with unseeing eyes. How was it that he could ever be worthy of her?
          A flash of black fury darted into his mind, and his fingers tightened, crushing the delicate interweaving of blossoms, and he bowled the bird of the desk with a violent swipe of his fist. He stood there, fuming and rigid, absent from location and memory, his mind choked in darkness.
          Eventually, awareness began to seep back into him, and he was astonished to find that his cheeks were wet with his own tears. The darkness began to recede from his mind, and he looked down at the crushed flowers in his hand, recalling what he did in his anger, and dropped the crumpled garland, rushing over to the corner that he had knocked the carving into, scrabbling about on the floor on his hands and knees, and sending things flying in his haste to find it.
          Eventually he spotted the carving in a corner, and pounced on it, relief flooding his mind and heart before being replaced by terror. The bird had been all but cracked cleanly in two by its impact with the stone wall. The break ran down the centre, opening up a crevasse that ran through the bird’s breast and heart, a single vein of wood branching the divide.
          Loki knew what it meant, because the truth was already all too plain in his heart. He broke things – damaged things, precious things, and he could not be trusted with them.
          A little moan of aching dissent came from his lips, and he quickly reunited the pieces, fixing them with seiðr. The bird now whole once more, he clutched it to his chest as he stumbled towards his bed, falling to his knees, unable to let go of it, and unable to let go of Káta, pained by his own weakness.



          “Ah! Just the god we were looking for!” Balli cried from his place at a table surrounded by his usual friends, standing to greet Thor as he entered the mead hall.
          “What is it that you wish of me, Balli? A drinking competition? Surely you remember how poorly you fared in our last match.” Thor replied, grinning as the other gods joined in with guffaws at the memory.
          “No, no, no, something much simpler than that,” Balli said quickly, “we were hoping you might have information about this rumour going around about Prince Loki.”
          “Oh?” Thor asked interestedly, sitting down and pulling over a huge tankard of mead. “What would that be?”
          “He’s been seen with a woman,” Balli said eagerly. Thor paused, an eyebrow raised, interested for the first time. “Höðr said he saw him with a girl in the corridors a while back, but you know how impressionable he is,” Balli flicked Höðr a patronising grin, while Höðr seized the nearest loaf of bread from the table and threw it at Balli’s head indignantly.
          “I can hear you know!”
          Balli chuckled.
          “Finish your tale, Balli.” Thor prompted, a little impatient that his drink was to be thus disturbed for so long.
          “Well,” Balli said conspiratorially, pulling over a handmaiden, who sat on his lap with a giggle, “Skálphæna here is one of Loki’s handmaidens, and she and the others all have seen this girl coming and leaving and staying in Loki’s chambers. She’s the only one who can control him when he has his fits.”
          Thor eyed the girl on Balli’s knee. “Is this true?”
          She nodded, flushing. “Yes, my Prince. She was very kind to me.”
          “What does she look like, this woman? You are sure it was not Loki in disguise?” Thor had been subject to that particular ruse more times than he wished to count.
          “I’m sure, my Prince. She had long dark hair and golden eyes. I came in, and the Prince became angry that I had seen them together, and he got so angry that I fainted; he used his…his…powers,” she shuddered.
          “What did he do with them?” Thor asked curiously.
          “He set himself on fire.” Skálphæna whispered. “It scared me terribly. But she calmed him down, and woke me up, and helped me out. I swear by Odin it’s true, your highness, I swear.”
          Thor frowned down into his tankard, faint memories of a dark haired girl with golden eyes surfacing along with books; lots of books. His brow furrowed even more, and then suddenly the memory returned to him. Loki and the girl had been together in the library – and they had been getting along together rather well, if he remembered rightly. He grinned. “I’ve seen him with her before, Balli,” he said, draining his tankard.
          Balli crowed with delight, and he and the other gods set to talking over the matter, a few disgruntled individuals handing over money from lost bets. Thor, meanwhile, was thinking.

          Thor strode through the corridors towards Loki’s Halls. His brother had been on his mind often of late. Ever since the disastrous audience with their father concerns had begun to rise in the back of his mind, and he was unused to feeling anxious. It troubled him the way flies troubled a horse, and he had not been sure how to deal with them, which troubled him still further. Of course, it was not unusual for Loki’s audiences with their father to follow such a trajectory – in fact, it was actually the norm. But it had been a long time since one had happened, and in the intervening time even he had noticed Loki’s extra irregularities and absences.
          Now, however, everything had fallen into place. Women troubles explained it all. Thor couldn’t help but chuckle as he walked along. The very thought of Loki having women troubles was so terribly unlikely he had never thought to entertain it. But now that he thought on it, it really was to be expected. As far as he knew Loki’s experience with women was minimal, and thinker as his brother was, Thor thought it safe to assume that his little brother was overthinking the matter, and had probably dug himself into a deep hole of complications as a result. He couldn’t help but feel quite proud of Loki, at last diving into the vast pool of manly pleasures that there were to be afforded by the female sex, and an extra surge of pride and happiness swept him up at the thought that they might be able to bond over the matter.
          Although he was not one for retrospection, whenever Thor thought back to their childhood, he could not help but wish that the friendship he and Loki had shared then could have survived through the years into their adulthood. His friends were all very well, as were his elder brothers, but there was nothing quite like having a sibling your own age, and he had always cherished the bond between he and his little brother. He missed looking out for Loki the way he had done when they had been in their infancy, and now perhaps the opportunity was returning for him to look out Loki again.
          Loki’s doors loomed along the corridor ahead, and Thor strode up to them, pushing at the great slabs of wood, and parting them as easily as though they were as light as silk curtains.
          He passed through the antechamber, and into the main hall, which was as gloomy and austere as it had ever been, the huge dining table that ran down the centre of the room unused. Thor glanced at the long benches that ran down the sides of the table. The benches in his own halls were polished smooth and shining from use, but Loki’s looked as though they had never been drawn out from beneath the table. The hearths to either side were cold and empty, clean of the ashes from the last fires lit in them, and Thor wondered just how long that had been. Loki was not one for entertaining, but perhaps that was about to change.
          He escaped the oppressive silence of the hall, and passed through the anteroom beyond, pushing the doors into Loki’s private chambers wide.
          “Brother!”
          Loki looked up at the sound of Thor’s voice, frowning, and briefly contemplated disappearing as Thor advanced on him, his arms spread wide. He had been trying to read a book at his desk, but had eventually given up, and merely sat there, regarding the crushed flower wreath where he had dropped it the previous night.
          Thor came up on him from behind, pulling him bodily from his seat and spinning him around, knocking the chair over as he did so, and clasping him in a tight bear hug.
          “Get off me, Thor!” Loki snarled, his face squashed uncomfortably against the muscle of his brother’s shoulder.
          Thor released Loki with a genial laugh, and Loki dropped back to his feet, scowling as he straightened his wrinkled clothing, although to be fair it had already been thoroughly unkempt before Thor’s greeting. “I hear you have been seen with a certain young lady,” Thor began, ribbing Loki with one elbow.
          Loki’s frown deepened, and his expression became shuttered. “What?” he spat.
          “Oh, come now, don’t deny it, brother!” Thor exclaimed, giving Loki a manly clap on the back. “Balli’s been talking with your handmaidens.”
          Loki cursed fluently for a moment.
          Thor laughed. “Don’t be so sour; you can’t expect to keep these things to yourself, you know. And I remember seeing you two together at the library!” he added triumphantly. “You were getting quite close then, if I recall correctly.” Thor winked hugely.
          Loki sighed and rolled his eyes, turning to sit back down. “Go away, Thor.”
          Thor smiled, and patted Loki on the shoulder. “It’s natural not to want help when things go wrong your first time round, and if you ever want to talk about it, I’ll be here.”
          Loki turned in his chair and shot Thor a quizzical glance, his mood lightening a little as he thought of the hilarity that Thor giving relationship advice would be. Besides that, it had been a long time since Thor had helped him do things.
          Thor seemed to notice his brother’s change of mood. “That’s the spirit! And remember; there are always plenty more fish in the sea.”
          Loki’s brows contracted into a disapproving frown, and his mouth pursed. “I’m not seeing anyone,” he said firmly, turning back around in his chair and folding his arms stubbornly.
          “Oh? Are you not now?” Thor stooped, scooping up the crushed flower wreath from the floor and dangling it in front of Loki’s nose. “Then I suppose you’ve just taken up making flower wreaths in your spare time?”
          Loki snarled, and snatched the garland back, pressing it possessively to his chest.
          “Had an argument, eh?” Thor patted Loki on the shoulder again, and Loki returned the gesture with a black look. “It’ll blow over. They always do.”
          “I am in no mood to humour you, Thor. Go away before something bad happens,” Loki said curtly.
          Thor raised his hands in surrender, well used to Loki’s rebuffs, and sure that his brother’s extra grouchiness stemmed from this disagreement he had had with this woman of his. “You can always talk to me, remember that,” he said, turning cheerfully enough to leave.
          He crossed to the doors, and Loki turned to glance speculatively at his brother over his shoulder. A handmaiden entered, and Thor gave her a playful wink and a squeeze on the way out, leaving her blushing, and Loki disgusted.
          He turned back around, flinging himself back into his chair with a snort. “Get out!” he spat, and with a squeak of fear, the girl scurried away, a glimmer of eagerness in her eyes as she followed the God of Thunder out.
          For all his sullen exterior, however, Loki had paid close attention to Thor throughout their conversation. The idea that Thor wanted to help him was as perplexing as it was refreshing, and he allowed himself a brief moment of lamentation for the lost simplicity of their childhood, way back when before things had had to become complicated by such things as duty and position.
          Thor’s parting had set off a new series of cogs and wheels spinning in his mind, however, and despite the disgust that his behaviour with the maid left in him, Loki could not deny the fact that there was something interesting about the matter. Thor had always broken certain rules that he himself never had – fraternising with the serving girls for one – but had never been brought up on it the way he had with his mischief.
          Their father was always berating him for not being like Thor, and loath as he was to think of it, Loki could not help but wonder whether imitating Thor and his behaviour would get him the same sort of reprimands that he already received. Curious, at least for the sake of experimentation, he decided to grapple with the next handmaiden to come in. An image of Káta floated across his mind, and he could feel the bird carving where it pressed into his leg, for he had stowed it in his pocket upon waking; his conscience burned in a way that it had not for a very long time. But Loki shrugged the notion off, the thought of earning his father’s love and respect holding up a tantalising flicker of hope that he was too used to chasing to abandon now.

          Káta returned to see Loki the following day, and was confronted with the sight of him agitatedly striding back and forth, twisting something that she eventually recognised to be the bird carving in his hands. He paused and opened his mouth to speak a number of times, but each time words seemed to desert him, and he would return to his pacing.
          Káta sat in her accustomed chair, waiting patiently until he had gathered his thoughts sufficiently to speak.
          “If you place any value on yourself, you will leave me. I…I ruin things. Precious things.” Loki had spent the entirety of the night trying to think of what to say to Káta, to warn her about himself, and yet words still deserted him, fleeing from his intentions as though in protest. He thrust the carving at her, urging her to take it with his eyes.
          Káta frowned, looking between him and the carving, her eyes wide with bewilderment. “I place a high value on myself; and that is why I stay. Because I see that value in you. And you don’t ruin things.” She folded his fingers back over the bird, pushing his hand back to him, held in hers.
          Loki shook his head emphatically, shoving the carving back towards her. “Take it!” he commanded, his voice rough and husky with raw emotion. “You’ve got to take it! I can’t – I can’t have precious things! I taint them; I’m not worthy of them!”
          Káta wrapped her hands more tightly over Loki’s, desperate to stop him. “It is there, Loki,” she insisted gently. “You just can’t see it. You don’t see yourself through your own eyes; you see yourself through your father’s – just as everyone else does.”
          Loki stilled, gazing at Káta with a mixture of terror and disagreement.
          “What other people think of you doesn’t matter. None of us are perfect. But we have to accept ourselves for who we are. Some things can be changed, others can’t. But we have to be able to see ourselves clearly, otherwise we’ll never know who we really are. We’ll spend our lives chasing someone else’s dreams otherwise – someone else’s ideas of who and what we are. You have to see yourself as yourself. You have to see your own uniqueness; it’s that – that spark that makes us special. It’s our differences that make us extraordinary, and worthy of all that we wish for, not our similarities. You belong to you and you alone, and you have to love what you see.”
          “Love,” Loki snorted bitterly.
          “To love is to forgive,” Káta replied gently. “To forgive is to accept the wrongs that you have done, the parts of yourself that you are ashamed of. Acceptance is different from condoning; if you accept you do not ignore your darkest self – you acknowledge it, and acknowledge the fact that it no longer has to define you. That you shape your own destiny; not others, not your own past self. You. In that moment, in the present, you can decide to be whatever you wish to be. Do whatever you wish to do.
          “That is the power of love; loving yourself. It heals that which hurts most – that which you think has no salve. It does not make you complete; but it gives you the opportunity to become so. Until you love yourself, you won’t see your own value. Until you see yourself through your own eyes, you won’t be able to forgive and accept who and what you are; and you will never see just what you could be.”
          Káta gazed into Loki’s overwhelmed eyes with gentle earnestness for a few long moments, and then quietly left with an encouraging pat of her fingers on his.

          Loki was in his study when he heard the faint sound of approaching footsteps echoing in the hall beyond. They were light and brisk, and definitely female, and he wondered why it was that Káta was returning. His study was where he had stored all of his sketches of Káta, and he had retreated there after their conversation, idly leafing through his drawings as he meditated on what she had said. Her definition of love was so contrary to his own that it seemed ludicrous that such a dichotomy could even exist, but even as he examined his own ideas regarding the concept he found that they had somewhat changed from what they had formerly been. When or how this had happened, he did not know, nor was he entirely sure exactly what his convictions had transformed into, but they seemed sweeter, and less painful than his prior beliefs. He had been on the brink of further investigating this curiosity, but now, distracted by her unexpected return, his thoughts had scattered.
          He turned with a mixture of questioning and eagerness as she entered, wondering what it was had brought her back when it had seemed clear that she was happy to leave him alone with his thoughts for the rest of the day.
          A handmaiden stood in the doorway, startled by the swiftness of his movement.
          Loki stared at her, frozen.
          The handmaiden seemed equally surprised to see him as he her, but she shook it off and dropped a quick curtsey. “Apologies, Prince Loki, I did not know you were in here.”
          Loki watched her, his eyes narrowed, faint thoughts of his experiment returning to him. “What’s your name?”
          The girl, whose eyes had been fixed on the floor between them looked up in surprise, meeting his eyes for the most fleeting of moments before she lowered her gaze once more. “Tófa, Prince Loki.”
          Loki made to take a step towards her, but his body juddered to a halt before he had moved more than half a pace. He remained where he had stopped, locked in his own body, the breath coming in and out of his lungs but not seeming to give him any of the sustenance that he required from it.
          He studied the waiting handmaiden, whose expression of confusion was growing the longer the silence stretched between them, and Loki allowed his eyes to drift away from her to the walls of his study. His sketches of Káta were everywhere, stuck to walls, rolled up in drawers, and covering table tops. Her eyes were repeated over and over again, all of them gazing at him with such earnestness, with such trust, the trust only she had ever granted him, that Loki knew at once that he would not be able to betray even the mere memory of her. Everything that Káta was, the handmaiden was not, right down to the expression of distaste that he had seen when she had met his eyes.
          “Go.”
          Tófa frowned, meeting his eyes again, and again he saw the aversion that mingled with her confusion in them.
          “Go!” Loki bellowed, the words ripping out of him.
          The handmaiden did not wait for a third injunction, but seized her skirts and ran from him all too eagerly, leaving Loki to fall into a chair as he crumbled from within, hiding his face in his hands.
          He shuddered with revulsion as the thought of Káta ever finding out what he had been entertaining entered his mind. After all that she had made him feel, all the goodness, all the light she had helped him see, he had been about to forsake her and all of it on a mere gambit; to satisfy his curiosity. He hated himself with a passion for it. He wanted to erase every memory of Káta, every feeling they had ever shared, he didn’t want to have to battle with himself any more, to feel himself torn in half at the mere thought of her. It all hurt too much, and his struggles were not about to come to anything. She had thought he could love, love himself, that he could forgive and accept and acknowledge the darkest parts within him, but she had been so much more than wrong. He was not designed for love. Not to give, nor to receive it; he knew that now. All thought and memory of her had to go if he were to ever have any peace.
          He tore savagely at himself from the inside, pulling himself apart at the seams in a wild whirlwind of self-loathing and disgust, determined to inflict as much pain as possible to pay for the betrayal of her trust, to in some way atone for his own immense unworthiness. It felt as though long trails of barbed string had been wrapped over and over around and about his heart, and he was ripping them out now, one by one, at first slowly but then faster and faster in his desperation, and the more pain he felt, the more it spurred him on.



          Loki appeared abruptly before Káta in her room with a surge of angry air. It had been three days since they had last spoken. Káta had felt it prudent not to push Loki on the matter, but to give him space and privacy, and so had kept to her rooms at Mærsalr.
          “Why? Why do you keep doing this to me?” Loki demanded.
          “Doing what, Loki?” she asked, mystified and frightened by the angry confusion of his expression and aggression of his question. He looked deranged, wild in a way that she had never seen him before. His hair and clothing were dishevelled, his eyes wide with a constant kaleidoscope of flickering emotions, and he spun on the spot as though his body had to maintain a perpetual motion in accord with that of his mind. She had had high hopes that he might have taken her words to heart, but she had never expected them to result in such a reaction as this.
          “Why do you tell me these things? Why do you always insist on telling them to me?!” Loki raged bewilderedly, more to himself than to her, storming up and down, all the damage that he had done to himself in the intervening time brimming up and spilling over into his expression.
          Understanding came to Káta like a breath of air. “Because I care about you.” She said simply, earnestly trying to meet his wild eyes as he raged back and forth before her, tossing his head like an uneasy horse. He refused to meet her eyes, however, but Káta persevered, some part of her aware that this was her last chance. “I care about you enough to tell you the truth, even though the truth hurts. The truth hurts more than all the lies sometimes, Loki. But that’s because honesty is what we need to hear, not what we want. It has to be said. It demands to be said; to be heard. You’ve got to hear it, Loki.”
          “I don’t want to hear it! I don’t have to hear it! I don’t care! I don’t!”
          Káta leapt to her feet and seized Loki by his forearms, stilling him for the first time. “But don’t you see?” she cried, gazing desperately up into his face. “You do care! If you didn’t care you wouldn’t mind hearing it, but you do care, and that’s why you don’t want to hear it; because it hurts. It hurts to care.”
          Loki’s head dropped, and all the fight seemed to suddenly drain out of him. “Then I don’t want to care about anything at all,” he muttered. “I’ve had enough of caring…I’ve had enough of hurting.” His voice ached with the agonies of his past.
          Káta released him as though repelled by some sort of force and drew back a step, her heart stinging. “Sometimes you’ve got to risk everything you have to get everything you dream of,” she said slowly, the ache of her own heart tinging her words now. “I would rather hurt than feel nothing at all. If temporary pain is the price of joy that I will be able to remember for the rest of my life, then so be it. That’s a risk I’m willing to take. One good memory is enough to bring light in the darkness of a thousand bad ones. That is my choice…I can’t make yours for you.”
          It was becoming hopeless, Káta knew. It was as though Loki was steadily sinking underwater, and she was desperately swimming between him and the surface, breathing the air from her lungs into his to preserve him, as all the while he sank ever deeper. And each time she returned there was less air in her lungs to give to him, and he needed it ever the more the deeper he fell. She was not sure what Loki would make of her words, or even whether he had heard them at all. But it didn’t matter. There was no more she could do. No more she could say. She knew that now was the moment when she had to let go of him, and trust that he would find his way. They could argue about it until the end of the world, and it would not change his opinion. She had said all she could say. It was up to him now.
          He gazed at her for a long moment of stillness amongst the previous chaos of his movement. His eyes were burning into hers with a whirlpool of emotions that all flashed by so quickly she was unable to name them all, only be sucked in by them, drawn into the confused turbulence of his gaze and all that it contained; the wildness, the fear, the pain, the hope, the resistance; the utter mayhem of it. And then he was gone.

          Neither Loki nor Káta attempted to see one another over the proceeding days. It was as though they had reached some kind of unspoken agreement; some wordless decision had been made for them to take a respite from one another, and to both it came with a distinct feeling of relief.
          Loki, his mind awash with the red mist rising from the self-destruction he had begun, felt as though he was at last able to think clearly for the first time in weeks. The pain made him see clearly, it sharpened his focus until it had a knife’s edge, and there was no denying the conclusions that he came to with it, carving into himself as he decided. He knew, whatever else any other part of him wished to think, he knew that Káta was precious to him. He had seen her hurt, by himself and others, and he could not stand the thought of the pain she would experience when she found out what he really was. He knew that he would never be able to forgive any pain he put her through because of her own good-hearted stubbornness, not now when he had the very tools to prevent it. His course of direction was clear.
          It felt as though he was cutting himself open and pulling out that which kept him alive – throwing it away – but much as it hurt to distance himself from Káta, that pain was nothing to what he would feel when she eventually realised who and what he was; the betrayal that she would feel with that realisation. He knew he would see it cloud over her beautifully trusting golden eyes; he knew it just as he knew that the sun would rise at dawn. And he could not bear that. He had seen it in the eyes of practically every single person he had met in his life, and he knew that she was the one person he could not see it happen to. Because that really would destroy him. He knew what he was. He knew he couldn’t expect all that he yearned and wished for from Káta, because he knew that he was not worthy of it. And it was better, less painful, if he stopped it now, himself. It would be better for her.
          He crossed to his desk, and pulled out a fresh piece of paper, settling down to write a note to Káta.

          “You have to stop.”
          Káta frowned. She had received Loki’s note asking her to come, and they had barely reappeared in his rooms before his baffling injunction. “Stop what?”
          “Coming back,” Loki said firmly. He was determined not to look at her. “I-you…you’re better off without me.”
          “No, Loki. I’m not.” Káta’s voice was as firm as Loki’s own, and she marched around to stand in front of him. He kept his eyes fixed on the wall above her head. “I’m not going anywhere. I won’t stop coming back. I won’t leave you alone. I promised, remember? You asked, and I promised.”
          Loki trembled a moment, doing fierce battle with his will, and then allowed his eyes to slide to meet hers. “Why?” the question escaped him, unbidden and against his will, even as he desperately yearned for the answer.
          “Because I care for you.” Káta felt like a parrot, endlessly circling on the same sentence, but it was all she could think of it say, because it was the truth; it was the highest truth that inhabited her body, paramount to all others. “I care.”
          The words seemed to incite some sort of fury in Loki, for he spun away with a snarl. “Why? Why, why, why, why, WHY?!” he bellowed. “Why should you care about me? Look at me! Can’t you see what I am?!”
          “That’s not who you are!” Káta cried desperately, moving to seize Loki’s hands, but faltering as he flinched violently from her touch, turning from her to quickly stride several paces away; a safe distance between them. Káta clutched at herself in his absence. “You’re worth more than that! You are worthy!”
          “I AM NOT WORTH ANYTHING!” Loki screamed at the ceiling, tearing at his tunic and shredding the fabric as though he wished to rip his heart from his chest and end his unceasing frustration once and for all. “I AM NOT!” he glanced at her, and the self-loathing in his expression stopped Káta’s heart. He was filled with an unbending hatred, poisoned and turned against himself. “You can’t mean it…any of it. It’s all lies. I’m not meant to be cared for. I meant to be hated. Don’t you understand? Any good that comes into my life dies; I touch it and it turns to ash. And I can’t see it happen to you!” The agonised words were screwed out of him now, at the end of his world. “Can’t you see? This is my last good act. Go. You’ve got to go!” he was on the verge of disintegration from the pressure he was exerting on himself.
          “Loki, I –” she was desperate to say it, every instinct in her heart and mind was screaming at her to just let it out, because he needed to hear it; now. Now more than ever. The three words she had been unable to bring to say to herself ever since she had realised them when they had been on the roof of Valhalla together. Because she had realised then the same devastating truth that now stopped her from speaking them. Because she knew it would destroy their relationship if she said it now. She couldn’t give in; not yet. He was too fragile; too brittle at the moment. And a wrong move on her part would destroy everything that they already had; everything that she wanted them to have. And she was not willing to lose his trust. “I won’t come back, if that’s what you want.” She said shakily. “But I’ll always be here if you need me… Even if you don’t, I’ll be here,” she whispered, shredding her heart with frustration as she said it, and swallowing the immense knot of pain that had risen up from her gut and was now trying to choke her. “That’s my heart’s truth,” and then she was gone.