"Petrus," you whispered to your son, gently shaking him. "Petrus, wake up."
"Mommy?" your four-year-old says with a yawn. You take off the covers, pick him up in your arms, and carry him over to his closet.
"Shh. You need to get dressed."
"But why?"
"Because need to leave." Still sleepy, Petrus lets out another yawn, rubbing his eyes as he does so. You scramble through his closet, throwing down whatever suitable and comfortable clothes you could find.
"Please put something on."
"Does Daddy know?"
"No, but it doesn't matter. I really need you to get dressed." As your son moved too slowly, you got down on your knees and rushed a shirt over his head. Stuffing his arms into another jacket, you wasted no time.
"But Mommy—"
"Shh. We need to be very quiet once we leave the room."
"Can I bring Mr. Snuffles?" You smile. Your son never left the palace without bringing his stuffed animal. One good thing about Loki: he did almost anything to see Petrus smile.
"Yes, go ahead." With new-found energy, your son skips along to his bed, his black curls bouncing with him.
You sigh. You had wished for your baby to be a spitting image of Tom, something to bring you comfort, something to cause envy to sink further into Loki's heart and remind him that the person he was nurturing was the one he allowed to slip away from you. But, as if to punish you, your son was a mix between the two: Loki's black hair, smile, and intelligence, Tom's curls, eyes, energy, and laugh. It was as if your feelings, whether previous or current, were blended into one, your son made of love.
If only he knew the love of his father.
Petrus returns to you, Mr. Snuffles fast in his hand. Picking him up, you hold him close to your chest and kiss his head.
"Absolute silence now, Petrus." With that, you slowly open the door and run with silent feet.
Earlier that day, you had prepared a boat on the water, and to that you made your way. You had planned this escape for years, calculating every detail in your head. Preparation started a year ago, you getting up in the middle of the night, seeing if Loki woke up and his reactions, both physical and verbal, if such. At first, he was controlling, getting up to accompany you wherever you were going, but soon retreated, only giving you a kiss before you left the room.
You did feel guilty to some degree. A week after he told you the news of Tom, he let you out.
"I don't understand," you had said as he's loosening your bonds. "I thought I had to love you first."
"How can you love me like this? And how could the child develop healthily in chains?" Your arms finally fall to the ground, so numb that you can hardly lift them.
He didn't move you to his room until two days later, letting your arms readjust and become mobile.
"This is where we sleep."
"We?"
"Yes. So if anything happens, I'm right there. And for the child to know that we're trying to work together."
"I'm not sleeping with someone I'm not married to."
"Fine."
Within the hour, he had forced you to fix that.
But as the baby grew inside you, you could sense his rage towards you disappear, his focus concerned on the developing child. Sometimes, during the day you would catch him admiring cribs and cradles and searching for fairy-tales in the library. In secret, Thor told you that Loki was digging up his baby clothes and toys and had even asked him if he still had his old things. Whenever you would get morning sickness, he woke up too and would rub your back until you feel back asleep. Slowly, you felt yourself dipping your toes into the pool of feelings you once had. Instead of having him force you to him, you found yourself inching closer and closer to him each night, allowing his arm to wrap around you with ease. You found yourself letting his lips linger near yours instead of immediately snatching away. And when you cried, instead of shooing him away, you let him be there to comfort.
Yet, the throbbing pain of losing Tom remained in your heart, unmovable from deep within. No matter how caring of a father he could be, there was no denying that you wanted Tom. You craved his hold, a little more each time Loki took you in his grasp. You craved his stories, his jokes, his kindness, his recitations of poetry, everything and all his essence, you simply wanted him. The one person who would, without a doubt, make you feel better taken away by the person who now comforted you.
It drove you mad, the battle between moving on and holding on, loving now and loving then. You had to get out of Asgard, had to get back home, back to the life you once knew, back to no Loki and raise your child the best way you could. And sure, Loki was the only father Petrus had ever known, but that wasn't the father you wanted for him, not someone who took away the one person who could have executed the job more than perfectly.
After twenty minutes, you finally hit the caves, finally at the portals. Petrus had fallen asleep along the way, but that was only for the better, ensuring that he remained quiet. Picking him up, you run into the depths.
Your blood runs cold when you hear a voice.
"Going to hunt your midnight snack this time?" Reluctantly, you turn around, seeing the green eyes that haunted you in your nightmares, in reality and in your unconsciousness.
"Did it really have to come to this?"
"I can't stay here. We can't stay here."
"So I get in trouble for taking his father away, and now you're supposed to get away with the same crime?"
"You're not his father."
"I raised him!"
"Then by that same argument, Odin is yours!" Loki hushes, trapped in thinking.
"How does it feel? You took away the love of my life, and you didn't even feel the least bit sorry. At least I feel some pity for you."
"You're taking both of you away from me."
"How could say that you love me when you let Tom die? How can you love me but take my happiness?"
"You told me and did the same thing."
"Is revenge the only thing that matters to you? My god, Loki, what will it take to satisfy you?"
"Do you love me, (Y/N)? Really, truly love me, after five years under my care and nurture?" You shook your head.
"I can't forgive you, Loki."
"Then neither can I." Without warning, you feel a blade run through your stomach. You look up at Loki, now so close that you could see the tears running down his face. Your bottom lip trembled, finally seeing how much he tried to rekindled the love you had at first.
"You were the only one that made me feel loved," he whispers as he slowly retrieves the dagger. He strips Petrus from your arms as you gently lower to the ground.
"Then why?"
"Because love is not in your nature anymore, just like satisfaction is not in mine."
"How are you going to explain this to my son?"
"Don't worry about that. Worry about your last words."
Instead of something meaningful, you screamed, letting the years of rage that was bubbling inside of you out and echo in the caves, letting your son wake up to see you in pain and slipping away, letting him know in your final seconds that this is what his father did and passing on the same message you had kept telling yourself for five years:
Run.
***
A/N: And...scene! (Maybe sad endings will be our always.)
**ANNOUNCEMENTS**
So good news and bad news:
BAD NEWS:
Please don't kill me when I say this: I will not be doing a continuation of "Music of the Night." Not that I don't love Phantom (because I do), but it was literally just substituting Loki in for Erik. And I feel that if you're going to do that, then might as well just read the book and/or watch the movie. (If it were an imagine inspired by the song, apart from the literal plot-line, then that would be okay.) It does so much more justice than I can ever do. Plus, I know I wouldn't want other people doing that to my work, so I don't want to do it to someone else's (even if Le-roux is long gone). And I don't want that hanging in my conscience.
Additionally to that end, right now, I am so backed up on continuations and separate requests (for this book, the Insecure book, and the Avengers Preferences, I can't keep up. Something just has to go, so that will be it.
***Which also means, until further notice, REQUESTS ARE CLOSED.***
GOOD NEWS:
As soon as I finish "Without a Word," I will be turning one of the requested continuations into a book. (I leaked it a few days ago on my message board but since removed it. Let's see who was paying attention.) And I'm really excited for this one because it is definitely one of my favorite imagines and I'm so glad it was requested by a lot of people.
Last final is in 8.5 hours, so I'm almost free for the summer. Which means more updates, which means the hiatus is almost officially over, which means requests will hopefully be opened again soon!
Which means more Tom and Avengers, and who doesn't love that?!
Sorry again for the readers who were really looking forward to that. (I'm already expecting my inboxes to be filled with hate and "how could you"s.) But this was really bothering my conscience and the more I thought about writing it, the bigger my headache got, and the guiltier I felt. But hopefully finishing a book and starting a new one will make up for it!
UPDATE June 27, 2018: For those who want an alternate/continued ending, check out the SECOND imagine book on my page!