literature

Thor- The Science of Lies No. 38

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THE DAMNED

Jane broke her leg when she was a child.  It had been a total accident. For the first time ever, she rode her bike without training wheels.  She got too bold and tried to ride over that dirt patch all the bigger kids played on.  The doctor said it was a hairline fracture- nothing to worry about- but if she’d fallen at even a slightly different angle, she could have snapped her femur right in half.  Jane hadn’t known what any of that meant, all that mattered to her was the pain.

It was the worst she ever experienced in her life before now.  Now, she understands that she’s never known what pain is.  

She’s confined to a room too cramped for her liking.  It really says something about how life in Asgard has affected her; this room is actually the size of a football field.  It’s just that the regular room she shares with her husband is the size of ten footballs fields.  After a while, the difference becomes stark.

Said husband has been by her side for nine hours.  Ceaseless, never sleeping or growing tired.  Just holding her hand and stroking her hair and assuring her that it will be okay.  She will be cured if he has to tear the realms apart to make it happen.

She doesn’t doubt that Thor would do it either, she just wishes he wouldn’t.  She is so unworthy of that kind of devotion.  If she was stronger, she’d tell him that, and she’d tell him why.  She tells herself that it’s the threat of breaking his heart that keeps her quiet.  Really, it’s just because she’s a coward.  

It’s also because she feels like a rabid dog is trying claw and bite it’s way out of her chest, and the pain has sealed her mouth shut (even breathing now is pure agony). But even in perfect health, she’d never tell the truth.

Thor leaves her only once, right when she thinks she’ll go to sleep.  He knows the time is coming.  They all do.  They might not say it, they might even tell her that Eir will surely have a cure any day now, like she’s a child who needs to be consoled with a stuffed toy.  It’s nothing but hot air.  There is no cure for this.  Jane knows it.  They all know it.  Loki knows it better than all of them.

His illness progresses on the other side of the wall.  Sometimes, Jane can hear him breathing, gasping, coughing, choking.  These walls are so thin for being Asgardian made.  His sickness is baffling, even more than Jane’s is.  Her, they can explain away with her prior status as a Midgardian.  Maybe Idunn’s apple didn’t really cure her of all human ills.

But then, how is it that Loki is sick?  How can he exhibit all the same symptoms Jane does and more?  He who has never been sick a day and is a Prince to boot.

It’s a mystery.

A mystery that will die with them.

Perhaps it’s for the best.

When Jane is alone- Thor is called away by a pair of guards who need help with an attempted prison break- she sinks into her bed.  It’s so damn comfortable, and somehow, that hurts too.

She opens her mouth.  Wheezes.  There’s a blade running through her throat.

She can’t speak a word, and so she uses her brain.

'Loki?' she calls out.  Her thoughts are her best friend in the world.  They can never make her hurt.  ’Loki?  Can you hear me?’

There’s grunting and groaning on the other side of the wall.  This must be torture for him.  If Jane could, she would smile.

'Is this what you wanted?' she asks him.  He can hear her.  She knows he can.  ’I wouldn’t leave Thor for you, so this is what I get, huh?’

More groaning, and bedsheets shifting.  Is he trying to sit up?

'You were never happy with him.'

'So you're going to kill us both.'

'Tell me you will be mine.'

'We've already had this discussion.  Many many times.'

'You always say no, and yet you always come to my bed.  Why is that?'

That’s a good question, and Jane doesn’t know what it says about her that she hates him for asking it more than she hates him for killing her.

'This is the most attentive Thor has been in years,' she ‘says’.  There’s no point in hiding this sort of thing from Loki.

'Well, I'm glad to see I've salvaged your marriage if nothing else.'

That almost sounds like the old Loki, the one who charmed her in spite of his laundry list of crimes and character defects.  The one who got her into this mess in the first place.

'You know that I couldn't have gone with you even if I wanted to.'

Loki has been on house arrest for years.  His magic restricted, he had only his mind to figure out all the little loopholes in his punishment and find that he was still capable of potion making, and of slipping things in her food at a routine banquet.  

He moves again, and this time, it’s slow and steady and so very sad.

'We could have tried.'

He sounds so like a kid that it breaks Jane’s heart.  There is something so genuine there that she never could have expected from him.

'And how many times have you tried to break your bonds without luck?'

He doesn’t answer.  He groans at another wave of pain that Jane can feel through their link.  It doesn’t hurt her like her own pain does.  It rolls over her like a wave, producing a gentle buzz that actually might sooth her.  Until Loki’s body relaxes, and he moans, and Jane feels that like pain this time.

'Then this is the only way,' he ‘says’ 'The only way we can be free.'

He coughs.  A real cough that Jane hears through the link and through the wall.  It gets her in the chest, right in the side of her heart that is for Loki.  That side has slowly consumed the side she had saved for Thor.  It’s a loss that she has yet to mourn.  

He’s a sad man, that Loki.  Tragic.  Maybe that was what drew her to him.  He is a man with nothing.  His mother is dead, his friends have left him, he brother can barely look at him. 

In the same vein, she is a woman with nothing.  She’s lived much longer than she was meant to.  Her friends are dead, her family non-existent.  Even her husband barely knows her, if he ever did.

Somehow when she wasn’t looking, Loki became her lifeline.  He became the only one who understood, who knew the need for more than this that she did. She always knew he’d be the death of her.

Though her arm is burning, she finds the strength to raise it, pressing it against a wall that appears to be made of razor blades.  This spot is warmer than the rest, like his hand is over hers.  She hopes it is.

'I still don't love you.'

Somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, she thinks she hears him laughing.

'You don't have to.'

No, she doesn’t.

That dog in her chest is crawling with it’s claws out into her throat.  It arms around her throat and it squeezes.  She can’t her Loki’s voice in her head anymore.  She can’t feel him at all.  She can’t feel anything.  Not even the pain.  She’s so numb, that she can move her lips again.

Her eyes start to close, and when they do, she’s smiling.

This was a request from cariebishop.

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