Chapter Text
When asked about fear, many had to take a moment to think about what they considered to be their biggest fear. Perhaps it was heights, or spiders, or ending up in a crowded room with no clothes on. Some people had to take years to realise what their biggest fear was, and even then it was usually because it had been realised. Loki didn’t have to think, didn’t have to take a moment. He felt it every day.
He felt it with every whip on her back, every crack of it whistling through the air. He could hear her screams, her begging. How she screamed for him, for his help, her freedom, for her life in some cases. Her sobs ricocheting off the walls which had previously been stained with his blood, and now with hers. That was his biggest fear and it was present to him every waking moment. He knew what her shaky breaths felt like, how her chest heaved and burnt for breath, how her entire body trembled and shook from fear.
But the worst thing was that after two years, two years of constant pain, diplomatic negotiations and begging even, the pain stopped.
He woke up, bed sheets tightly wrapped around his waist and sweat coating his skin. There was a jarring emptiness in his mind, where sobs had so well occupied, a painful reassurance of her continued life. There was a horrifying peace, a lack of pain upon his skin which crawled from the feeling of blood sliding down it, but not his. There was nothing.
That was the worse moment of his life.
When he couldn’t hear her, feel her, couldn’t know if she truly was alive or not. After so many days of such intense pain, a lack of pain felt like a nothing. A death.
When Amora came in the morning, to wake him, the room had been destroyed. The bed was in splinters, completely shattered, every single curtain had been ripped to shreds and the glass shards on the floor were coated with blood which still leaked from Loki’s foot. Tears were still tracking down his face and falling constantly on the dirty floor, which had feathers coating it in almost every conceivable area, the blood standing out clearly on their delicate white. He held his left arm close to his chest, staring at nothing, waiting for some sort of sign that she was well, waited for hope. Waited for fear.