The Man in the Iron Mask

“You have NO IDEA!” Loki screamed at me before throwing a branch across the clearing. “I was so worried! I thought you were gone – just like that! Gone!” He sighed rather loudly as if to make a point before walking in the direction he’d thrown what was supposed to be our firewood, returning a moment later and conjuring a fire with his healing hands. Apparently, I’d died. Technically, anyway. I hadn’t managed to get much out of him before he’d started screaming at me for being an irresponsible so and so. Perhaps if he’d told me what those things were in the water and just how potent their poison was, I wouldn’t have jumped from the canoe and would be sporting a bruise across my face instead of temporary paralysis in my leg. Loki didn’t see it like that.

“So what are we going to do, now that there’s no way back to Earth and we can’t stay here?” Loki lifted his head, his eyes showing just how exhausted he really was.

“Why can’t we stay here? I can think of something to say… some part-truth… and we can go back to the city and just deal with one another until you expire. Which won’t be long if you continue to be so reckless.”

“I would never be happy again… and neither would you.”

“I might.” I imagined him leering over my corpse one day in the future. But no, there was something else in his tone. He hadn’t meant it like that. “Maybe you would, too. ‘Never’ is such an infinite word, love.”

“I know what I mean when I say it.”

“I don’t believe you do.” I was about to launch into him, but he shook his head. “No, don’t. Don’t you dare. It’s something I’ve said before but you know what? Things aren’t always dark. I sometimes smile. Perhaps you’ve seen me. But I once screamed ‘never’, too, when someone said I’d again find happiness.”

“You’re a prince of Asgard, Loki, and some sort of God I’ve gathered. Any misery that has been bestowed upon you has been because of your own foolish actions.” A single tear rolled down his cheek and his hand ghosted my leg where there was still a mark from the sea creature that had bitten me.

“I knew a girl once, when I was younger. She and I were… well, I think you get that part. She was bitten once, too, but I hadn’t known how to save her. I had to sit and watch her die as the poison consumed her, all because I asked if she’d wanted to go for a swim where it was forbidden. And she’d followed, because I’d asked her. That was the only reason she’d have done it. In her heart, she was always good.

I stayed with her until she told me she couldn’t feel my hand in hers, and I watched until her eyes stared past me and her skin began to pale. I cried enough to fill the seas. I swore to myself right then and there that I would study harder, and I would learn how to save a life. I would learn these spells and I would never be helpless again.

Thor told me at her funeral as her body sailed over the horizon that I would find happiness again one day, and I’d argued with him just as you’re arguing with me. So listen to me when I tell you that things can always get better. For once, my brother was right.”

“But you’re not happy. Not now. Things didn’t get any better in the end of this story.” Loki smiled a tiny smile, his eyes averting to the ground.

“It would certainly appear that way. But no, things got better. Things are better.” Loki picked me up and sat me closer to the fire that was now roaring with heat as the sun started to set, knowing I couldn’t walk there myself. “You’re not that bad, really. I think sometimes, I find it hard admitting that to myself, let alone to you.”