Chapter Text
Friday, August 23rd, 2019
37 days to the incident
How odd, thinks Loki as he crouches down to inspect the hole in front of him that’s crawling with snakes. There are no snakes like this here. He doesn’t know exactly where here is but that doesn’t matter because the part of his mind that’s still somewhat lucid is aware that he’s dreaming and dreams don’t follow the same logic that rules the waking world. Which is why he’s suddenly lying on his stomach, drawing closer to the snake pit. His presence seems to alarm the animals and who can blame them, really, he thinks, because humans suck, they suck a lot more than snakes because snakes can spit venom at people they don’t like and that’s a huge asset. They hiss at him, crawling over one another in panic when they spot him looming over the pit, and then they come for him, sneaking towards him. He knows he should be afraid but he isn’t because if they bite him, he’ll probably die and that wouldn’t be the worst thing. He creeps closer, leaning forward and then down into the hole. The snakes seem to grow larger when he approaches. Their eyes turn a gleaming crimson and their fangs grow too until they’re at least twenty inches long. Loki’s eyes widen in awe when he catches sight of the blood dripping from them. He leans deeper into the hole, deeper, deeper, deeper, and he’s so mesmerized that he doesn’t realize the tapping on his shoulder. He pushes himself over the edge and slides into the pit on his stomach but before the first snake’s fangs can bite into his hand, someone grabs him up by the shoulders and yanks him up so violently that he hears the bones in his neck crunch.
The dreamscape blurs at the edges as his mind scrambles awake, you fell asleep, you pathetic little twat, oh shit, no, please, NO, and then his eyes fly open, the livid glare of his philosophy teacher swimming into focus. The first thing Loki thinks is that he isn’t quite sure whose eyes are more terrifying but if someone pointed a gun to his head demanding an honest answer, he’d probably choose Mr. Stokes over the creepy vampire snakes.
Mr. Stokes glowers down at him, arms folded across his flannel-clad chest that makes him a walking stereotype. “Are we boring you, Mr. Odinson?”
Yikes. Loki glances down at the text they are studying and tries to stifle the yawn that’s coming with little to moderate success. “To be perfectly frank,” he sighs. “Yes.” He clears his throat for good measure. “A little.”
“Freak,” hisses the bulky guy named Carson—such a moronic name, ugh—who sits next to him.
“Alright then,” Mr. Stokes announces in that awfully condescending voice that he always resorts to when he speaks to Loki because he knows damn well that Loki’s mind is quicker than his and it probably irks the shit out of him. “If you are so bored out of your wits by my explanations, then why don’t you teach your classmates about the material?” A challenging smile creeps onto the man’s lips as he holds the whiteboard marker out to him.
Loki swallows. Not because he couldn’t possibly explain what Plato has been trying to illustrate with his allegory of the cave. Hell, he is sure he could deliver a far more entertaining interpretation of the ancient text than Mr. Stokes, if not for the tiny little detail that he’s been drinking before school and his father’s three-hundred dollar booze is now sloshing around in his empty stomach in mocking, nauseating waves.
Loki glances up at the clock, realizing to his dismay that it’s not even ten o’ clock in the fucking morning. Another day, another fuckup. He is quite used to those by now, so why not add one more to the list, right? He grabs the pen and rises from his chair. Challenge accepted. Thankfully, his legs are only a little wobbly and he decides that this is a good omen.
The class begins to giggle as he skulks towards the board and he hears another string of whispered expletives, none of them particularly original. It’s an accomplishment, really, he thinks not for the first time, to be so fucked up that you even stand out in a philosophy class full of High Schoolʼs nerdiest.
Loki glances at the whiteboard. Mr. Stokes has actually defined allegory in a scribble as if it’s some fancy term people have never heard of before. His eyes flit to his teacher, who is under the impression that he’s intelligent just because he can recite other scholars’ interpretations of all the very smart and very dead philosophers who apparently soaked up most of the intelligence available in the universe during their lives, leaving very little for modern times.
Insult him, growls the voice in his head he’s begun to refer to as just that—The Voice, in capitals—which makes him cringe every time he catches an ad for the eponymous casting show on TV because his voice sounds far worse than the worst candidate who comes to the show under the delusion that they can sing. It’s a growl, sort of a mix of Scar and Hannibal Lecter but with a posh British accent, which is weird and also kinda creepy because the actor who plays Lecter looks so much like his Dad.
I won’t. That’ll only get me into more trouble, Loki hisses inwardly. The Voice isn’t real, he knows that. It’s probably a part of his psyche that he suppressed if the whole id-ego-superego thing holds true, which he thinks is highly probable. It doesn’t matter. Whatever The Voice is, it is just inside his head.
Until it suddenly comes out. Well, it doesn’t come out per se but Loki’s arm moves even though he can’t remember telling it to reach for the whiteboard cleaner thingy and wipe away what the teacher wrote. “Alright, let’s start with a less simplistic approach to the text, shall we?” Loki asks and his voice suddenly almost sounds like the The Voice.
Shit.
This can’t be good.
The eyes of Mr. Stokes, who leans against his desk to enjoy the show, narrow behind his glasses and Loki smirks at him before he turns towards the dumb bunch of lame ass teenagers sitting in front of him. He knows that most of them are only waiting for him to mess up so that they can later taunt him and shove him in the hallway, and call him all those unoriginal things like freak, nerd, emo, slut, string bean or fag as if he’s never heard any of those before. “Since our beloved teacher here has refreshed your knowledge of allegories, we should now ask ourselves which abstract or spiritual meaning is represented through the concrete form of the cave. Any ideas?”
The students snort their contempt.
“Well, I’m going to tell you,” Loki says as he draws the scenery onto the board, talking like The Voice, and feeling truly powerful for once because The Voice isn’t a weak pathetic little shit like he is and if he can become The Voice, his teachers and classmates can’t harm him anymore. “These people that are trapped here, poor souls,” he mock-sighs and taps on the figures he drew with the marker, “are confined to a very specific perception of the world, namely the shadows spilling into the cave from the outside. Since they sit in darkness, this is all they see and they believe that what they see is real; that these shadows are actual objects and not just shadows of objects. The prisoners grow up in a reality they believe to be the truth even though it’s not the truth because truth is a matter of perspective. The people inside the cave can only see those shadows and those outside can see the sun. Plato makes it sound as if that’s the higher truth that the ignorant people in the cave can’t see but there’s more to this. The things is,” he pauses, tapping the whiteboard marker against his chin, pretending to think very hard, “there is no truth. The notion of truth is a bunch of bullshit.”
“Mr. Odinson, this is not what Plato—”
“Oh, pardon me, I didn’t know you knew him, sir,” Loki snarks. “Damn, you look really good for your age.”
The teacher’s cheeks redden with anger and his voice sounds like the creaking of thin ice shortly before it breaks. “Mr. Odinson—”
“What? We’re all prisoners. There’s no people outside the cave who know the truth. There is no one perception of reality, which means that there is no reality. Everyone has their own perception and most people are too ignorant to ever understand that.” Loki looks at the other students who hate him so much and whom he probably hates even more. “You are those prisoners and this state, this town, this school here is the cave, chaining you to your own ignorance—”
“Mr. Odinson!!”
“—by perpetuating meritocratic, homophobic, ableist ideologies instead of encouraging you to think for yourselves and allowing you—”
“MR. ODINSON!!!” Mr. Stokes yells and takes a step towards him as if he’s going to try to shut him up with physical force if necessary. “That’s quite enough.”
“Someone can’t take criticism.” A giggle slips past Loki’s lips. Whoops. Where did that come from?
There’s a pause, a quite dramatic one. Mr. Stokes scrunches up his nose. “Do I smell alcohol on your breath?” he asks harshly and that question brings Loki back down to earth faster than the speed of lightning, instantly taking all the magic away. It’s like being hilariously shitfaced and then suddenly having to barf.
Loki laughs nervously. “Your sense of smell must be off, sir.”
Mr. Stokes flashes him a scornful grin that says ‘You’re busted’ better than those words ever could. “I think it is time that you and I had a chat with the principal.”
Loki’s shoulders slump.
The last thing he hears before he leaves the classroom is someone calling him a freak once more.
It takes his Mom almost an hour to arrive and Loki tries his very best not to doze off again under Principal Acker’s merciless eyes. The expression on Frigga’s face when she enters the office is inconsolable, truly inconsolable. It’s so inconsolable that Loki thinks whoever coined the expression must have been thinking of her face in this very moment when he came up with it.
“Excuse me,” Frigga says to the principal before flicking a glance at him that is, wonder oh wonder, not of the oh-what-have-you-done-this-time variety. Instead, it articulates concern, maybe even pity, and Loki tries to burrow into the cushion of the seat he is sitting in. “I couldn’t come sooner. What is the matter?”
“Your son fell asleep in class and insulted both his teacher and his classmates under the influence of alcohol,” says the principal, eliciting a sigh from Frigga. “Consuming alcohol on school grounds is a violation of our code of conduct rules and—”
“I didn’t consume it on school grounds.” Loki shrugs. “There’s nothing in our code of conduct that says ‘It is prohibited to enter the building after you’ve had a few drinks for breakfast’.” Another giggle comes out. Damn.
Principal Acker’s eyes almost pop out of his head. “Mr. Odinson, you’re skating on thin ice here. You disrespected and insulted your teacher, calling him a homophobe.”
“Is that true, Loki?” Frigga asks and there’s so much disappointment in the sound of his name.
“If I remember correctly, I said he was perpetuating homophobic ideologies. That’s not quite the same as calling him a homophobe. You can perpetuate ideologies unwittingly because you’re ignorant. Which was exactly the point. If Mr. Stokes knew the material he’s—”
“Are you questioning the intelligence and the subject-specific expertise of your teacher?” The principal glowers at him.
Loki knows that things could still go somewhat smooth if he just said no. If he showed a little humility, maybe fabricated an apology. “What expertise?” he snarls instead. “He sent me to the board to show me up because he assumed I hadn’t been paying attention—”
“You were asleep,” Principal Acker reminds him.
“It’s not as if I haven’t read this allegory before,” Loki protests, to which the man raises both of his eyebrows.
“He used to read a lot,” Frigga confirms. Used to. Before he discovered that alcohol is far more useful in the escaping-your-own-thoughts department.
“And then he dismissed my interpretation just because it doesn’t suit his limited worldview,” Loki continues. “Wouldn’t a good philosophy teacher encourage critical thinking instead of trying to stifle it just because he finds someone’s intelligence threatening?”
“So what you’re saying is that you are more intelligent than your teacher? Is that it?”
“Well, obviously.” Nope, Loki doesn’t like it when things go smooth. Not since The Voice started talking to him.
“Alright then, if you think you’re so smart, you’ll be taking advanced physics instead.” Principal Acker’s face scrunches up in a grin.
“Physics?” Loki straightens in his seat, his heart sinking to the bottom of the sea faster than an anchor iron.
“Advanced physics.” The principal turns to Frigga. “Mrs. Fjörgyndottir, your son is expelled from Mr. Stokes’ philosophy class and suspended from this school for ten days,” he decides and Loki can see the imaginary judge’s gavel he’s pounding onto his desk.
“That’s not fair,” Loki mutters under his breath as he follows his Mom to her car. “Every fucktard can figure out physics. They’re not gonna hate me any less in that class either. It’s probably gonna be even worse because figuring out physics takes less than a third of the time it takes to figure out philosophy and why didn’t he just paint a target on my fucking back?”
“Stop cursing,” Frigga admonishes him.
“Is that all you’re gonna say?” Loki asks when that’s all that comes out of her mouth for a few steps down campus because this new brooding-in-silence type of method she’s been testing out to make him talk lately is quite unnerving.
“What do you want me to say?” Frigga asks back. “You get drunk before school, you insult—”
“I am not drunk,” Loki protests. “I have my wits together more than anyone else in this fucking building.” He clears his throat when her nostrils flutter. “In this building. And I didn’t insult him. I just stated facts.”
Frigga doesn’t say anything else until they’ve climbed into the car and she’s slammed her door shut. “Tell me what happened this morning, Loki,” she says softly, her benign blue eyes piercing into him. “What was so horrible that you decided to have alcohol for breakfast?”
There’s disappointment in her tone, yes, but mostly it’s sadness and, for fuck’s sake, pity. She’s pitying him. Why can’t she just be angry? The Voice hates pity with a passion. “There’s nothing to tell,” Loki snaps even though a part of him longs to tell her about how much the bullying hurts and how alone he feels every time he enters that building full of students. How alone he feels all the time. He wishes he could tell her that and maybe she would give him a hug if he did, wrapping him up in her arms and stroking over his head like she did when he was little but you don’t deserve a hug, you pathetic little fuckwad, no, no, keep it the hell together. “He hates me. He’s been looking for a reason to kick me out all along.”
“Then why did you give him one?” Frigga asks and the question comes as a complete surprise.
“To prove a point?” Loki asks back but that doesn’t sound quite right.
There is another long silence. Frigga starts the engine and pulls away from the curb. “You know, the more I think about it,” she begins softly, briefly searching for his gaze before her eyes travel back to the road, “the more I get the impression that you are alienating people on purpose just to prove to yourself that everyone is, as you say, hating you. You want people to push you away, don’t you? I have no idea why but you used to do the very same thing to your brother. You angered him on purp—”
“Leave Thor out of this,” Loki replies in that soft growl that isn’t quite his voice and Frigga flinches from the sound, a sharp gasp escaping her mouth. Here’s another thing, or rather, another person that The Voice hates with a passion. His shithead big brother.
“I’m sorry,” Loki gulps when the anger is withering away again at the sight of Frigga’s sad eyes. The sadness in those eyes is killing him. “I am sorry, Mom.”
“You don’t need to be sorry,” Frigga says, after a while. “I’m not mad at you. I’m sad.” No shit, Sherlock. “Because you’re obviously in a lot of pain that you can’t express and it’s also quite heart-wrenching for a mother to realize that her son finds his life so unbearable that he feels the need to numb himself before he can even go to school.”
“There’s no need to go all shrink-y on me, Mom,” Loki snarls because, for some weird ass reason he doesn’t understand, he can no longer deal with people showing him compassion and it drives him crazy, oh yes, it does, it makes him want to reach into his head and tear out his mind and rip it to shreds with his bare hands. It makes him want to strangle himself and crush his own throat or claw out his own eyes or rip open his skin and yank it away from his bones because he just doesn’t understand this Loki that has come to hate everything and is such a wretched little fuck-up next to his fucking college football star of a brother. He feels an all too familiar urge in his fingertips and his hands begin to tingle with anticipation.
They drive on in silence, that particular, very unnerving kind of silence in which you can almost feel the air molecules buzz with the tension that is building up between two people.
“If you don’t want to talk to me,” says Frigga when they almost reached their disgustingly wealthy suburban neighborhood, “perhaps we should consider a therapist.”
There you go.
A therapist.
The fuck.
Well, of course she would suggest a therapist, wouldn’t she, because there’s clearly something wrong with you and they’d better fix you, freak. Weirdo. Whacko. Freak. Screwball. Loon. Nutcase. Freak.
Freak. Freak. Freak. Freak. Freak. FREAK. FREAK. FREAK. FREAK. FREAK. FREAK. FREAK.
When Frigga slows the car to a stop at a red light, Loki removes his seatbelt, bolts out of the car and runs as fast as he can.