Loki scraped his thumbnail across the brow of a soldier attempting to hold onto him and pressed his thumb into the man's eyeball. Einherjari armour was well-designed, there were few vulnerabilities for Loki to exploit. And Loki was half-dressed and unarmed as the six of them man-handled him. He had no qualms about exploiting every dirty move in his repertoire.

To Loki's glee, the soldier howled with pain. Loki hooked his foot around the back of the man's knees, but before Loki could flip him onto the ground, the two soldiers from the back of Loki's guard grabbed onto him. One of them aimed a solid punch into Loki's back. Loki responded by dislocating the man's forefinger.

For all his efforts, he couldn't avoid his fate. The party moved, slowly and inexorably, towards its final destination — the old, half-abandoned corridor at the base of the palace.

More soldiers were stationed there, shifting impatiently from foot to foot before an unlocked cell door.

'What are you waiting for!' shouted the soldier who commanded Loki's guard.

They flung open the cell door and scurried to the side. A moment later Loki himself was flung through the opening and into the cell. By the time Loki jumped back onto his feet, however, the lock was firmly on the door.

'Enjoy the rest of your night, your highness.' The commander grinned and motioned for his men to leave.

Loki straightened himself as much as he could, tucking in his shirt and smoothing his hair. There was no point in throwing himself at the cell's thick metal bars as if he were a rabid beast. No amount of effort would shift them. Besides, three Einherjari soldiers remained behind and were presently staring at him. The first step to a successful escape was to wait until your guards were occupied elsewhere.

'Who might you be?' Baugi asked.

Loki turned and laughed. Of course Tyr had put him in the cell right next to Baugi's.

The frost giant came up to the bars that separated their cells and rested his head against one of the bars.

'You know me, Baugi,' Loki replied in a dry tone.

'Your voice is familiar.' Baugi frowned and it was a long moment until he spoke again. 'You sound like the prince of Asgard.'

'I do, don't I?' Loki had the beginnings of half a dozen self-deprecating jokes at the tip of his tongue, but he wasn't in the mood for any of them, so he simply shrugged.

While Baugi threw one questions at him after another, Loki wiped away the blood pooling on his lip, palpated his aching ribs and glanced at what he had to work with. His cell was better furnished than Baugi's. The dining table, the leather chairs, the wide daybed looked no different to the pieces you could find in the guest quarters for visiting dignitaries. Prisoners of noble birth were allotted some comforts in their captivity.

Loki sunk onto the bed and rested his feet on the armrest. He supposed he ought to have been grateful for this concession, he had been held in more dismal prisons and remembered those miserable days clearly, but the set up here reminded him too starkly of the cell his father had thrown him into after his attempted conquest of Midgard.

Eventually, Baugi realised he would get no answers and left Loki alone to his thoughts. He tried to focus on solutions or at least on listening in on his guards in hope of gleaning any shred of additional information. But the soldiers outside had little to say to each other and instead of searching for a way forward, his mind turned constantly to past. Again and again, he mulled over everything he could have and should have said before the council.

----------------------------------------

Minutes stretched to hours and Loki was on the verge of drifting off when commotion out in the corridor jerked him back to full alert.

When he propped himself up on his elbows, he found his mother staring at him. Her eyes wide, she started to say something, then shook her head. Loki bit into the inside of his cheek and waited for Frigga to take in the sum of his true features. As far as he knew, she wouldn't have seen him like this since he was little more than a newborn. It took some adjusting to.

After a long, awkward moment, he sat himself up fully and broke the silence. 'You should've told me.'

Einherjari soldiers lingered behind Frigga; Loki expected they were to report everything they heard. It would be foolish to stray from the story he had committed to earlier.

'I'm sorry, Loki,' Frigga said. 'You father thought it better you didn't know.'

'But you disagreed, yes? You should have taken matters into your own hands. You are his wife, not his thrall.'

Frigga turned to the soldiers. 'Unlock the cell for me and retreat to the end of the hall. I wish to speak to my son alone.'

'Our orders—'

'Let me into the cell, good man. I absolve you of any responsibility should something befall me in there.'

Whatever the political situation in Asgard, Frigga still carried enough authority to send even the Einherjar into a flurry. The sergeant quickly produced the keys and opened the cell door for her.

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'Lock it.' She pointed to the lock once she was inside the cell. 'I'll call out when I need you.'

She waited until the soldiers had fallen back and out of sight before she all but ran over to Loki. 'You are right, I should've stood up to your father,' she said. Her hand trembled lightly as she reached out and lifted up his chin. 'What have they done to you? Your lip is bleeding.'

Loki slid his hand across his lips. 'It's only a split lip, it must have just reopened.'

'You can speak freely,' Frigga said. 'I left a light ward in the hallway, even if they hear us conversing, they won't be able to make out the words unless we shout at the top of our lungs.'

'I'm fine. I gave as good as I got.'

'Loki –

'Leave it, mother, please,' he cut in. 'And let's discuss how I came to be your son later too, hopefully when I am not in a cell. What's happening out there? I take it they weren't daft enough to appoint you regent.'

'With all the misfortune that has recently befallen my family, they say they did me a kindness in not heaping the stress of governing upon me as well.' Frigga scoffed, then ducked her head so Loki couldn't see her face, but when she spoke again, her simmering fury was obvious. 'There will be no regent. The council has decided to vote on all decisions among themselves. Loki, had I known —'

'They decided to stage their coup in the middle of the night precisely so you wouldn't know until it was too late. Don't blame yourself on that account. But now that we are where we are, it's hard to argue against the council's decision. They governed often enough when father fell into Odinsleep before and Thor left no instructions to the contrary.'

'Agnar and Tyr will dominate the council.'

'I know,' Loki replied. 'Are there any signs of father waking?'

'No.'

Loki glanced to Baugi's unmoving form in the other cell. Frigga's warding probably didn't extend to him and there was no telling if the frost giant slept or only pretended to. Still, Loki had to ask. 'And Jotunheim?'

'Too early to say I think, but there are rumours of heavy casualties.'

Loki pondered if Tyr and Asgar would consider it treason if they were to find out that at this moment Loki wished the complete failure of the Asgardian campaign in Jotunheim. As unkingly as it was, the resulting loss of Asgardian lives had become a tertiary consideration. The simple fact was that as long as Laufey believed Thor could be the key to negotiating an agreement between Asgard and Jotunheim, he had an interest in keeping Thor alive. But if the battle-plans worked out in Asgard's favour and Laufey faced an Einherjari army ransacking his capital, he might well kill Thor out of spite.

Still, it could be worse. Half the universe could be dead.

'Loki,' Frigga said, her voice barely above a whisper, 'would you be honest with me? Is there any truth at all to what Tyr has said?'

All the grand gambles of war and politics fell away and the spans of centuries withered into nothing at that question. Loki was a child again, peering at his mother's soft eyes. She had always had the power to coax the truth out of him when no one else could. And frankly, sometimes Loki too tired of the lies he cloaked himself in.

'I showed the frost giants how to enter Asgard,' he replied.

He would have been content to finish the confession there, but Frigga remained silent, waiting for him to go on until the full truth was exposed. Another familiar trick.

Loki sighed. 'I was certain Thor wasn't ready to be king so I planned to let in a few frost giants into the palace and disrupt the coronation. At the last moment, I changed my mind and decided I should trust father's judgement on this. I thought all was well, but once the frost giants knew where the portal was, they only had to find another sorcerer to open it for them.'

He clasped his hand together and pressed his fingers down until his knuckles ached. His mother was usually quick to reward his candour with a hug or some similar sign of affection even as she metered out his punishment. Yet she now sat unmoved, her lips drawn into a thin line.

'Is that all?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'I don't think so. You haven't been yourself, even before the frost giant attack.'

Loki raised an eyebrow and stifled a wince as pain throbbed through the right side of his face. 'What do you mean?'

'I have been trying to put my finger on it for days,' Frigga replied. 'You are quieter for one. I had expected to find you in a furore, but... Loki, I don't know, there were times when you gave us all such weary, melancholic looks I wondered if you had done something terrible.'

Of course, she noticed. I could never keep up a lie around her for long.

'Such as treason?' he asked with a grimace.

'No. Not that.'

Loki hoped she would elaborate, but his mother instead cocked her head, clearly anticipating his reply.

'Do you remember how I had a bad reaction to a spell on the morning of Thor's coronation?' he said. When Frigga nodded, he pulled himself upright and paced the width of the cell. 'My magic wasn't right after that spell, it was only starting to recover in the last couple of days. It's not a pleasant thing for a sorcerer to endure. Thor's coronation weighed on me too and then the frost giants... well, I'm not surprised I've come across oddly.'

'What spell was it? You never did explain.'

Loki froze mid-step and turned to face his mother. The temptation to confess was over-whelming. He held his breath, the first words of the truth on the tip of his tongue, but his chest ached with anxiety.

True, back the first time around, she had never turned away from him, even after Midgard. But she had died not knowing half the things he had done. He had never admitted before today his part in the frost giant incursion during Thor's coronation. Worse yet, were the things he had done after her death. If he were to tell her the truth, he would have to explain how he had faked his death, subdued his father and impersonated him for two years. He would also have to explain his part in Thanos' madness.

Even a mother's love had limits, surely? Besides, this was a different time-line – a time-line Loki had already muddled. It was possible that everything that had happened since he had played with the past had changed Frigga's attitude to the world, including to Loki himself.

No, he didn't dare to take the risk.

Loki let out a strangled chuckle. 'There are some spells a man doesn't feel comfortable discussing with his mother.'

'Is that so?' Frigga's incredulity was palpable.

'Don't, just don't,' he responded. He had to wonder if frost giants were capable of blushing, because his cheeks burned. On the other hand, he supposed his discomfort at this awkward lie worked in his favour, his mother would take it as proof of his embarrassment about dabbling in these sorts of questionable spell-work. 'It was a foolish whim and I won't be trying it again.'

Loud rapping against the cell bars startled both Frigga and Loki. The sergeant had tired of waiting for Frigga. Her ward on the hallway worked in both directions, they couldn't make out his words, but his demeanour and tone conveyed enough.

'I can break you out of here,' Frigga muttered.

'What then?' Loki asked as he pulled his mother into an embrace. 'The palace is filled with armed men, I won't get far like this. Can you get me out of this collar?'

She ran her hand along the metal band and sighed. 'This needs a key.'

'Then leave me here until you've found it. Please take care though, don't give Tyr a reason to turn against you too.'

Frigga wrapped her arms tighter around Loki.