Entry tags:

hel, loki

Når du ved helgrindi står skal eg fylgje deg
Who:​ Nish and Jocelyn
What:​ Old friends reconnect over alcohol and dreams. ​
Where: Nish’s apartment, 502
When: Evening, May 3, 2017

gdoc complete!



Once they’d devoured their takeout and finished stowing the last of Josie’s possessions in Nish’s office, she cracked open a bottle of wine for the two of them. Nearby, her pure white cat Bear was sitting on the counter, watching the two wineglasses being filled with the deep red liquid.

“My boyfr- ex-boyfriend gave me this bottle, while we were still dating,” she said, correcting herself with a little sigh of frustration. “I’d been saving it, but...I think it’s time to let go.” She lifted one of the glasses to Josie, a sad smile on her lips, “to making the same mistakes all over again,” she said, tapping her glass to her friend’s and downing the whole thing at once, pouring herself another glass right away.

Jocelyn winced internally at Nish’s toast, and raised her glass again after the first toast. “To making better mistakes.” She took a long drink, savoring the deep red wine. She glanced at her friend, whose glass was already refilled. “If it’s going to be that kind of night, I should get comfortable. Mind if wash up and get into pajamas?”

Nish smiled and nodded, “sure,” she said, setting her glass down, “I’ll do the same. Bathroom’s over there; there’s extra towels in the linen closet if you want a shower,” she said, pointing across the dining room. “Be careful of Bear, he likes to watch,” she added with a wink.

“I should have known. If anyone was going to have a voyeur for a cat, it would be you…” Jocelyn commented as she disappeared into the bathroom, shutting the door firmly behind her, just inches before Bear could slip into the room with her.

Nish headed to her own bedroom and got changed into a more comfortable outfit of tank top and pajama pants, tying her hair back in a ponytail and then padding back out to the kitchen on bare feet to retrieve the wine and set it on the coffee table in front of the TV. She took a long bracing drink from it, draining half of her glass again, and then got up again, seeking out another bottle of some other red and bringing it and the corkscrew out to the livingroom with her.

Ten minutes later Jocelyn was clean, makeup scrubbed off her face, and hair washed and braided. She slipped into her pajamas, a silky spaghetti top and matching shorts in chocolate with a pattern of teal and salmon swirls. She smiled, enjoying the feel of the fabric against her skin. As it usually did, the moment of joy only lasted until she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

She sighed, and hung the towel over the bar, then took a deep breath and went to rejoin her friend.

“All right. Now I’m ready to get serious,” she said, reclaiming her glass of wine.

Nish watched her coming, shifting on the sofa so that she could sit down next to her, crossing her legs and turning towards her. She couldn’t help her eyes from roaming her face, tracing the horrible scarring that marred her once flawless skin, a frown coming out that she didn’t try to hide. “Yeah,” she said, lifting her glass as if in salute, “now we get to compare notes on the terrible relationships that left us both scarred, in different ways.” She took a long sip of wine as a delay tactic, and then met her eyes. “You got a good settlement, I hope,” she said, falling back on thinking like a lawyer, when thinking like a friend hurt.

“Settlement?” she frowned, momentarily confused, “Oh...the restitution.” She shrugged. “It’s a decent amount, but I’ll never see most of it.” She drained her glass and reached over to snag the bottle. “His assets aren’t enough to cover the whole thing, and now that he’s in prison, the rest’ll piss in little drops and dribbles out of his prison pay for the next 20 years before I have a prayer of seeing another big chunk. They don’t pay their workers for shit, and 50% of shit is still shit.”

“Bastard,” Nish muttered. “That's the trouble with assholes,” she grumbled, draining her glass again. “They so rarely have any money.” She paused and set her glass down, shrugging with a wry grin. “At least the ones I represent at least have enough to pay me.” She reached for the bottle and drained the rest into her glass, taking the second bottle from the coffee table and opening it with the expertise of a functional alcoholic.

“I didn't get much out of Stephen either, besides his ass in prison,” she said, sitting back with her newly filled glass. “And nightmares.” One of the most frightening had been just after she'd moved to Pax, that ended with him burying her alive.

“Yeah… when Rob came to visit me, he did ask if there was something in the water back home, because the two of us were making such ‘braindead choices’ when it came to men.” She took another deep drink. “I love him like a brother, but Rob can be a real ass sometimes.” She smiled. “He was grinning when he said that, so I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean it. Good thing, too. It’d have been a real pain to get out of bed and beat him up.”

Nish laughed and drained half of her glass again, starting to get the slightest buzz, though one shared bottle wasn't nearly enough to get her even tipsy. “I think I'm swearing off the whole gender,” she decided all at once, smiling at her. “So far, all of my bad relationships were caused by dick. I think I should find myself a nice girl-toy and settle down for a while.” She was only half serious, grinning as she said it, but the more the idea took root the better it sounded.

“Although, I swore off relationships after James, and look where that got me,” she said bitterly. “I just got dumped about two weeks ago,” she added in explanation, an ironic smile tugging at her lips. Rafe had been...she was still puzzling out what that was. She'd fallen so fast and so hard for him she practically had whiplash from it. And the inevitable crash at the bottom had left her almost as broken as James had, though they'd been together for almost two years. She finished her glass and poured another from the new bottle.

Jocelyn silently held out her glass to be topped off as well. “I guess I should be happy. I only had one shitty ‘relationship’ - if you can even call it that. We’d gone on like...6 dates?” She sniffed. “Should have trusted my gut and gone home, and damn the weather.”

“Jesus,” Nish muttered, “that was after six dates? Thank god it didn't go on any longer than that. That's messed up.” She'd been with Stephen for years. It had started out good, great even, but the last year or so of their relationship had been hell. She could at least take some comfort in the fact that Josie had been spared the prolonged agony of an ongoing abusive relationship, even if it had ended in agony of a completely different kind.

“Well, at least we're both still here,” she said, raising her glass at her in salute. “To exes in prison,” she said, downing her third glass like it was water.

“To exes in prison,” Jocelyn echoed, drinking most of the glass. “And may they rot there.”

They killed a third bottle between them, Nish drinking most of it, and then she set up the futon in the living room for Josie to sleep on before dragging herself to her own bed and passing out.

* * *

She was back in the cave. Loki was lying on the stone, bound by his wrists and ankles with the entrails of his own sons, writhing in agony as yet again the acid from the coiled snake above him dripped onto his face. Sigyn wasn’t there to catch the drops, and so each one hit his face without respite, each one eating away at his flesh a little more, though his body struggled to heal itself.

From the tunnel beside him, the only entrance to where he now lay, he heard footsteps. Not the loud clomping of the various gods as they came to gloat over him, but a softer, almost whisper of a sound. He turned his head, craning his neck to see his visitor, but they were just out of range of his sight.

She had been walking for quite some time. Her realm was large, and she had taken it upon herself to walk the bounds of it, seeing what there was to see. But she had saved this for last - this cave beyond Náströdr. When she started walking, she had been young, and bewildered...and angry. She was older now, if such a thing had a meaning in this realm beyond life, and she was no longer bewildered. And anger? Perhaps she was not quite so angry anymore.

She paused in the entranceway, bare-footed, one hand resting against the cold stone wall for a long moment, poised on the brink of indecision.

The source of the sound did not enter the cave, and Loki growled low in his throat in frustration. “Come closer, whoever you are, so I can see you,” he demanded, twisting in his bonds, but still not able to move enough to see his visitor. He knew who it was not - it was not Sigyn, he knew the sounds of her footsteps better than anyone’s. It was not Odin or Thor or Tyr, or any of those other traitorous gods who had bound him down here. His mind moved through all of the possibilities, the quiet watchfulness of the nameless visitor starting to grate on his nerves. “Show yourself!” he demanded, his voice echoing in the chamber.

She slipped into the cave, kneeling at his head and reaching to pick up the bowl resting nearby. She was young in form - almost child-like, even after all these years- and dressed in a simple linen dress. He face was divided, fair and pale on one side, dark and decaying on the other. Saying nothing, she held the bowl above his face.

Loki’s eyes widened when she came into view, holding the bowl above him to mercifully catch the poison dripping on him. “Hel…” he whispered, his voice infinitely softer, gentler, once he saw her beautiful face. “My daughter…” he had no other words. He hadn’t seen her since the gods took her from him, sent her to her realm to guard the dead for them. A tear formed in his eye as unfamiliar and unwelcome emotions suddenly roiled within him at the thought of her, his distant daughter, coming here to care for him.

“Father,” she murmured. All this time, she thought she’d have so much she wanted to say to him. So many questions to ask. Now that she was finally here, she couldn’t think of a single one. So she sat, in composed silence.

His arms moved, but restrained as he was they couldn’t move much. He wanted so badly to touch her, his only daughter, but as closes as she was she might as well have been in another realm for all he could do. Instead he grit his teeth, not allowing the tear in his eyes to fall, pushing back that emotional weakness that he seemed to have in abundance, but she seemed to have been blessedly born without.

“You look well,” he said, managing a smile that pained his horribly scarred flesh. Already it was beginning to heal again, the absence of the poison allowing it a rest from the torment. His eyes roamed her face again, taking it all in as if he may never see her again, which, he mused, was a distinct possibility. At least until Ragnarok.

She considered this. "Well enough,” she agreed. Certainly, better than the others of her kin, the sons of Loki. See Narfi here, used to bind his father. And Vali, now a wolf. And of course, Fenrir, her brother...bound through trickery.

It was possible that Jörmungandr was in a better estate than she - she had not yet found him to find out. Perhaps she would ask the squirrel, Ratatoskr, when next she saw it.

He smiled at her again, and this time it didn't’ hurt as much, the skin healing and scarring over as fast as it had been damaged. “You were always my favourite,” he said, though his sons with Sigyn held that secret warm place in his frozen heart for their own. “Of all my children, it was you I mourned for when the gods took you away. You who I tried the hardest for them to reconsider. But...you have done well in your new realm. Ruling over the entirety of Helheim, when your brother only has the seas of Midgard, and…” he paused, thinking of Fenrir. The irony that now he shared his son’s fate while at the binding he had secretly thought it was for his son’s benefit was not lost on him. “Fenrir...will have his time. But you...you will survive Ragnarok, my daughter. Of you I am the most proud.”

She gazed down at him. Privately, she doubted that what she said is true. The gods of Asgard were cruel, certainly, but she could not claim that they were foolish. Were she truly her father’s favorite, she would not be alive to sit here with him - it would have been her who served as his shackles instead of Narfi.

But who was she to deny her father his falsehoods, if they gave him comfort? There was little else she could do for him, after all. The tantalizing possibility that she might escape the Twilight of the Gods, she vowed to put out of her head. False comfort was for the dying and the imprisoned - she had no need for it.

“I hear he still curses your name,” she said, softly.

Loki allowed a low, cold laugh. “I’m sure he does,” he agreed. “He has always railed against the words of the Norns and of his fate. He believes I did not do enough to save him, when he is right where he is supposed to be. As am I.” He understood now, a little of his son’s anger, now that he too was bound. Knowing the eventual outcome of history, of Ragnarok, did not do much to comfort them in the present, but to know that there will one day be an end of it.

“Tell me, beautiful daughter, what news of the outside world?” he asked, his eyes shining as he looked on her face. “I have so few visitors now.”

She sat and spoke with him for long hours, telling him of her realm, and of the snippets of news she had heard from beyond its boundaries. She recognized the need he had for company, and for as long as she could, she tried to oblige him.

Finally, the bowl grew heavy with the caught venom, and her arms trembled from the strain of holding it in place for so long. She and her father’s wife had never been close, but now she silently praised Sigyn for her willingness to take up this unpleasant task.

“I’m sorry, Father. But I must go,” she said, surprised to hear regret in her voice. “The bowl is full, and I have left Éljúðnir empty for far too long.”

Loki enjoyed listening to his daughter’s voice, soothing him with her presence and the lack of poison dripping on his face. But as always with any good thing, it ended too soon, and she began speaking of leaving. He frowned, but knew that she was right; she had her own realm now, and he could not keep her from it. “I understand,” he said, his words to her gentle, a tone not many have ever heard coming from the lips of Loki. “I will cherish this visit, daughter, for as long as I am here. You have done a great kindness to me.”

He watched her get up, but before she could remove the bowl he spoke again. “If you could…” he hesitated to ask this, the words of a desperate man trying to outfox his own destiny. “Is there a way...to take me with you?” he asked her, his eyes catching hers with the frightening desperation of one begging for death.

She paused, halfway from standing, though not in the least bit surprised by the question. This was why she had hesitated to come. “They say that my brother asked you the same question, once.” She sighed, and set the bowl down, brushing the fingers of her good hand lightly against his face. “And I fear I have no more pleasant an answer for you than you had for him. Forgive me.”

And with that, she rose and walked silently out of the cave, before he could reply.

Loki silently watched her go, having expected such an answer. He was fated to die at Ragnarok, not here, alone in this dark cave. But he couldn’t be faulted for attempting escape from his torment, even if that escape was to death.

“I do,” he whispered, though he knew she was beyond hearing.

He listened to her receding footsteps as the first drop of poison fell on his newly healed skin, burning and eating away at it, drawing yet another earsplitting cry from him, its echoes filling the chamber and following his daughter as she left him behind.

* * *

The futon shook and Jocelyn jolted awake, breathing heavily, heart lodged in her throat. Then Bear marched up in front of her to plop down, purring loudly. She took a deep breath and sat up, groaning as she clutched at her head. Clearly, the third bottle had been a mistake - her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton and barbed wire.

“Sorry kitty, but you’ll have to go wake up the other one,” she said, scratching the car behind his ears. “I don’t know where your food is.” She blinked repeatedly and stretched, trying to clear her head. There was a kink in her neck, from where she had passed out the night before. The light outside the window was the washed out blue and pink of pre-dawn - far too early to be awake.

“Well,” she muttered. “I guess I’m not getting back to sleep.” She swung her legs over the edge of the futon, standing up and padding over to Nish’s office to fish out some clothes.

The office was a fair size, dominated on one wall by a large window, another taken up by a computer desk. Bookshelves filled to bursting covered most of another wall, filled with legal volumes and fiction and other reference books, and Bear’s litter box sat in one corner.

All around the room, leaning against the computer desk, the bookshelves and any available wall space, were completed paintings of Nish’s dreams. Several were dedicated to various angles of the cave, of a faceless man lying on the stone slab, of the snake above him, the bowl of venom, the bonds on his wrists made from his own son’s entrails. Another was of Asgard, the shining city of the gods, another of a hawk clutching a nut in its talons, another of a dark shadow with eyes in the center, offering the choice of two dark paths.

Bear wandered into the room with her, rubbing up against her leg affectionately and purring, and then heading out again, towards Nish’s room in the hopes of waking her up so she could feed him.

Jocelyn had half noticed the paintings the night before, when she and Nishka were moving her luggage up to her apartment, but she hadn’t really paid attention to them at the time. Now, drawn by some instinct she couldn’t name, she moved to take a closer look at them. They seemed, almost familiar, somehow. She just wished she could put a finger on how...

But where would I have seen them? They’re originals, not prints… she wondered, as her head pounded from the hangover. It had been years since she had drunk that much in one sitting. At least she didn’t have to drag herself into work after a night like that. Poor Nishka.

She stood there for a minute longer, then went to go shower, hoping that the pounding water would help clear the fuzz out of her head.

* * *

Nish opened her eyes, the dream still lingering in her mind as she stared up at the ceiling. It had been the old dream of the cave, but different. Someone new had been there.

’My daughter,’ Loki said, answering her silent question. ’My beloved daughter, Hel. Nish frowned at that, though slightly amused.

“You named your daughter ‘hell’?” she asked quietly, not loud enough to be heard outside her door. She could feel his smile, but also understood what he'd said.

’It was a perfect name for her,’ he said, ’my daughter, Queen of Helheim.’ Nish was quiet for a long time, and then finally spoke her mind.

“She's in Josie, isn't she?” she murmured into her pillow. “I dream of Freyr when Rafe is with me; Josie suddenly appears out of nowhere and I start dreaming about Hel? And don't even get me started on your fucking bastard son…”

’Nish…

“Is everyone in my life part of your…family ?” she demanded. He didn't answer, and she lay in bed for a good long while brooding over what she'd just learned. Long enough to hear movement outside her door, the shower running and then shutting off. Finally, Bear found his way in to her room and jumped up on the bed, purring and batting at her face with one paw. She smirked and pet his head, giving in and getting up, leading him into the kitchen to feed him.