"Odin continues to bring me new friends," Loki watched as new prisoners walked down the hall in shame. Their hands cuffed together and bound to the chain around their waist and the chain around the person in front. "How thoughtful."

"The books I sent," Frigga looks to her son hoping that even though he's confined in a cell, a cell that actually has furniture and more than any prisoner could ever dream of having, he would at least be thankful for all that she provided for him. "Do they not interest you?"

"Is that how I'm to while away eternity, reading?"

"I've done everything in my power to make you comfortable, Loki."

"Have you? Does Odin share your concern? Does Thor?" He turned from his place at the cell's window. Eyes angrily glaring at the woman who raised him, the woman who became his mother after Odin slaughtered his entire race. "It must be so inconvenient them asking after me day and night."

Frigga frowned at his words. It seems he's not thankful for having a bed in his cell. The cell he built for himself by his own hands and actions. "You know full well it was your actions that brought you here."

"My actions," he scoffed and sat down on one of the few seats he was given. "I was merely giving truth to the lie I had been fed my entire life, that I was born to be a king and my son to be the crown prince of a kingdom that'll never exist because of Odin."

"A king? A true king admits to his faults. What of the lives you took on Earth, the planet your son was born and raised? What will he think of those faults you don't think of as wrong?"

 "A mere handful compared to the number that Odin has taken himself." Loki stood up and walked away from his seat seeing Frigga nearing him.

"Your father--"

"He's not my father!" Something in Loki snapped. He didn't think of that man his father, he was just a warden of the prison he has been locked up in all his life. Always comparing him to Thor, always thinking less of him and forcing him to be the person he never wanted to be. 

"Then am I not your mother?" Frigga folded her arms around herself, hoping the next words that leave his mouth are not what she thinks they are.

"You're not." Loki waves his hands through hers making her mirage in his cell disappear. 

The past year that he's been in this room has felt like an eternity already. Watching as prisoners from all over the nine realms walk in and few of them walking out, where? Loki doesn't know. All he knows is that he hasn't been able to speak with Percy at all since his attack on New York. He made a promise to himself that he would at least write to him while he has the time, but in the year he's been in prison, a quill and parchment are one of the things Loki could never manage to receive.

No amount of bargaining, or trickery, or any of the sort would the ability to speak with his son be granted. Even when he asked politely to his mother a month after he was locked up, she said he couldn't. It was absurd, but it made sense. As a child, Loki always wondered why the prisoners were never able to send letters or even receive them. Odin said to him, "If they sent letters, they speak with their comrades. If they speak with their comrades, they plan attacks. If they plan attacks, they could escape and bring chaos back to more places than the place we apprehended them." It was a stupid law and Loki sadly saw the logic in behind it.

After three hours, to Loki it felt like days, a guard appeared in the corner of his cell's window. "You have a visitor."

"If it's my brother, send him away," Loki closed his eyes laying on the bed he was given. (He was very thankful for the bed but he didn't want to say he was appreciative of it, Thor was the one to give it to him.) "I don't wish to talk with him."

The guard didn't listen to his words and opened the secret door that leads into the cell. It was small. About three feet tall and two feet wide, just big enough for a guard to pass through and follow his orders inside the room. This time, it was to let someone in, though for a short time.

Loki didn't see who came through, only knowing when they came inside when he heard the door close and footsteps stumble their way in. Curiosity finally getting the better of him, he opened one eye and saw his son. Black curly hair and green eyes, wearing a Stark industries hoodie, and his favorite pair of blue Adidas sneakers. He stood shyly in front of where he came in, patiently waiting for Loki to acknowledge his presence.

"Percy?" He sat up and cautiously made his way to his son. He hesitantly placed one hand on his shoulder making sure he wasn't a mirage like his mother but finding that his hand didn't pass through and instead rested on the dark blue fabric of his hoodie. Loki smiled and brought him closer to him in a hug. Not long after the hug did Loki realize that Percy was there. In Asgard. Not Earth. He pulled his son away from him and looked to Percy, "You're here? How?"

"I kinda hijacked a ride on uncle Thor," Percy smiled. "He didn't notice until we were already here and decided that I could stay."

"One of the few, very few, actions I'm thankful for my brother for doing," Loki lead his son to the edge of the bed and sat down with him. "How are you? I haven't seen you in so long and you've grown much."

"I grew like three inches since New York, but Tony and Pepper put me in training courses at SHIELD," He retold the most important facts about the past year. "So I'm learning hand to hand combat and beginner weaponry training with Natasha after school--oh! I'm in public school now. I have a few friends but I'm the closest with only one kid that I have for the majority of my classes.."

Percy rambled on talking about whatever came to mind first, and Loki loved hearing about everything and anything that came out of his mouth. He took interest in all the topics his son bounced from. Training to school to London and everything in between. But of all that he said, Loki focused on two things: 1) Percy was attending public school, and 2) he had a friend. They were so simple. Nothing strange or out of the ordinary that set them apart from the other events he listed, but the fact that they were ordinary made Loki happy. It was a small sliver of that normal life Percy had so long ago and he hoped he could keep it for as long as he could. 

"Also, I met your mom," Percy shook Loki out of his thoughts. "She taught me more magic and stuff so that was cool."

"She did?" Loki asked. "What did she teach you?"

"Beginner stuff but it was cool!" Percy smiled. "I can move things and create a duplicate mirage of it and lots of other stuff I can't remember. She also taught me how to read the books in the library because I don't know what language it is so it's kinda hard to learn when you don't know what it says."

"That's good," He ruffled his sons' hair. "Make sure to practice when you return back to Midgard, you don't want to lose what you've learned from a lack of practice. And before you leave, ask to take some books with you so you can keep learning. I know my mother wouldn't mind having a few novels missing from her extensive library."

"Really?" 

"Positive." Loki stood up from his seat and walked to the small bookshelf where he kept the small number of books he had. "As a matter of fact, you can have this one." In his hand was a red leather-bound novel that still had a bookmarker peeking out from the top. It was a decently sized book, but it had loose papers folded in between sections and on the inside of the covers.  

"What is it?" Percy opened the book and read the pages he skimmed over. 

"I was going to give it to you when you were a bit older as a birthday gift, but since you're already learning, I'll give it to you now. It's my old spellbook," Loki flipped through the pages and gave a light smile at the memories still etched in the worn-out pages and scratched cover. The cracks in the spine and the blotches of ink seeped through the pages when there was too much on the quill. The dents and unintentional folds of the cover and pages from the many days and nights of practice on the book and the poor objects that were the target. "I recorded all the spells I learned from my mother and the books she forced me to learn from. Wrote the ones I knew best and the ones I could not for the life of me understand; but along with spells, I added hints and advice so that when I practiced, it was easier for me to get it right.

"I want you to have it," He handed it to his son. "So that you can learn and when you have trouble, I can help you even if I'm not there. " 

The door that allowed Percy to enter opened and they both knew that it was time for Percy to leave, his time to see his father over. They stood up from the bed and Loki walked him to the exit, giving him one last hug, hoping this wouldn't be the last time he held his son. "I'm gonna miss you, dad."

"Me too, Percy," Loki said and hugged him tighter. "Be good while you're here, and be good to Stark when you return, alright?"

Percy nodded his head and walked out of the cell, waving a 'goodbye' to his father from the other side of the nearly invisible barrier before being escorted back up to the palace. The leather-bound book held in a deathly grip against his chest. 

words: 1748

A/n   As promised! A chapter published on Monday! I hope you all liked this chapter, it was one of my favorites while writing The Dark World Arc so far, loved the interaction between Loki and Percy and how soft he can be with him. Ugh! co cute. Anyway, next update will probably be next Monday as well because I'm working on another chapter for this book and two of my other books as well (also because of school, but we shan't talk about that.) Hope you loved the chapter!!!

Till next time,

~Kitty