Cold metal hearted love story!

Chapter Tw0- until the day that Asgard falls

When Thor, son of Odin, is brought into the world, Asgard sings his name.

He is young and beautiful and filled up with life and hope and possibility, and the stars seem to call out to each other in joy at the coming of the new king. He is Prince of Asgard, Prince of his people, Prince of Thunder and Lightning and Storms, and his blood thrums with purity and power.

The Nine Realms praise his very name, rejoice at his birth, and give thanks for his very existence.

When Loki, son of Laufey, is brought into the world, Jötunheim screams with war.

Loki, too, is young and beautiful and filled up with life and hope and possibility, but far too soon it is stripped out of him. His ice cold planet howls with rage as its people fall and do not rise, and the King roars and leads his men into a battle he does not win. He is Prince of Jötunheim, Prince of a dying planet, Prince of Fire as his people die filled with ice. His blood crawls with pain and fear and loss.

The Nine Realms do not bother to learn his name, spit at his birth, and curse his very existence.

His mother dies cradling his small, vulnerable body to her bloodied chest.

His screams echo in that cold, cold temple for hours. Days. Just as Death begins to hiss at the edges of his vision, his tiny body starved and trembling, a man appears. He has been told of this young Prince's existence by another who sees far in the Realms, and the man has come to collect his prize.

The man does not pause to spare any sorrow for the pitiful sight he finds. He does not hesitate to pry the frozen fingers of a dead mother open and scoop out the treasure held tightly within their grasp. The man does only what he wants, and what he wants is a Prince of Fire and Frost and Jötunheim, and that is what he gets.

The man shows no mercy or remorse, for he is not really a man at all. He is an Æsir, King of Asgard and soon to be King of many Realms, and he has no love to be lost for the Jötnar. He has no sympathy for monsters and no pity for the dead. There is no space in his small, shrivelled heart for his enemy, and he does not care to distinguish between adult and child. They all fall at his hand and at his sword, and at the hands and swords of his many men, of his brutal army, and he has no tears to shed.

There is blood on his hands, but now there is a child, too, and that tiny, defenceless child can do nothing but squirm and wail and cry as those hands grip tightly to dark blue skin and take.

The Æsir takes Loki away from his mother, from his home, from his planet. Everything Loki knows is forgotten, ripped away by magic too powerful for his young, fragile mind to overcome, and Loki is torn apart and put back together and made anew into what the King of the Æsir wants. Loki is still just a child, a motherless babe, when he is unmade by a heartless man; it is the first time, but it will not be the last.

The King takes his memories and his mother, his nature and his name. The King takes and takes and takes until there is nothing left, and when Loki is nothing but an empty shell soaked with tears, the Æsir carefully pieces together the necessary parts to forge a tool to fulfil his desires.

Loki's destiny is shaped by the hands of a callous king who knows no bounds. His mind may forget it, but his magic does not. His seidr screams as his mind is twisted and torn apart, as all traces of family and home and love are shredded and burned, as his very skin is corrupted and turned pale and unnatural and wrong. Loki's magic, still so fresh and new and weak, is helpless in the face of such a merciless onslaught. It quivers and cries and calls out for help, but none hear its trembling pleas. So young and already so wounded, Loki's magic tightens around his heart and mind and soul and swears to protect the young mage no matter what. His seidr wraps around him like a shield and promises that no harm shall ever befall him like this again.

Loki's magic swears a vow of justice, a vow of vengeance, a vow of revenge. Fluttering and frail and fragile, it slips unnoticed across the skin of the mighty King of Asgard, and in touches so light as to be almost nonexistent, it brands the Æsir with a mark of hatred and fury and pain. Scored across the king's skin in invisible ink is a promise that will never be broken:

I will hurt you like you hurt me, I will tear you like you tore me, I will break you like you broke me until the day that Asgard falls.

For a moment, the runes glitter under the torchlight as Odin the Great hides Loki away in the depths of the palace, the young Jötun just another of his many secrets and many sins. Then the runes fade and the spell dissipates, noticed by none save maybe the Norns themselves, and Loki's seidr, exhausted and spent, hums from the depths of his newly shattered mind.

Loki was once whole and beautiful and filled with hope and love and possibility, but he is none of that any more. He has been picked apart and preyed upon and abused for the power he holds. Loki does not know it - will not know it for a thousand years - but his blood still burns with the bond of the Frost Giants; still pulls at the power of Ancient Winters. There may be fire in his fingers but there is still ice in his eyes and while all but Odin may be deceived by pretty illusions and shameless lies, the magic in his soul knows.

Knows the white skin is mere trickery, knows the words of love are hollow lies, knows the eyes of the King of Asgard hold nothing but war.

The day will come when the curse slips free, and until that day Loki's seidr will watch and wait and whisper beware, King of Thievery and Treachery, God of War and Death, Ódinn, son of Bor... your undoing shall be mine.

Oh, Odin... you hurt the wrong person >:)

Woo hoo, here we go, new FrostIron fic because apparently I'm going to fail my exams and who even needs A Levels anyway? :D

I have no idea how long this will be. Let's go find out :P