A/N: So, Thor is basically consuming my life. Well, to be more exact, Loki is, but seriously, I'm turning into a crazy person waiting for The Dark World to come out. I've got a countdown on my phone and everything. So, what do I do when I'm fangirling so hard I almost forget to eat? Write fanfic! This is a brief little thing, more of a character study type deal, and I don't know if similar things have been written - probably have, I'm guessing - but I hope some folks will like it all the same. Thanks for reading :D *goes off to sit in corner and cry waiting for November 8*

Her feet felt heavy as she walked, possibly heavier than they had ever felt before in her long life. She walked through many halls, ones that grew darker with each turn, and the atmosphere was thick with pure desolation and hopelessness. Such a thing was appropriate, however, for the most wretched dungeon in all of Asgard.

Frigga, Queen of Asgard, was eyed subtlety by the guards who were escorting her to the cell of their most notorious prisoner. She would be his first, and most likely only, visitor.

She wore a cloak that shielded most of her face from their view. Nobody knew of her whereabouts, not Odin, Thor, or even Heimdall. She made sure to shroud herself from his view before she left the palace. Something she had taught someone else how to do quite some ago, and now regretted. But regret was not hard to come by these days.

For one so innately full of love and light, the heaviness around her was hard to bear. These dungeons were where the most reviled and revolting creatures were tossed away to rot, and the very stone walls around her seemed to vibrate with the eons of despair that they had contained. It seemed to be an almost living, breathing thing, like a beast that hid from sight and feasted on the unending torment of the wretched souls.

Frigga almost could not bear to put her foot forward one more time. It was worse than she had anticipated. She didn't want to see him like this. Not in here. Not in his current state of anger and unreason.

But she had to come. She had to see him. She kept walking.

It wasn't until she had been led to the bowels of the structure that they reached a heavily magically and physically guarded door. It led down a hallway, then to another, even more guarded door, which led to one more door. It was even darker here, and yet more suffocating. Her chest was painfully tight, and the ache in her chest would only worsen when she walked through the final door.

With all of the will that was within her, she placed one foot forward, then the other. And found herself looking upon the son that used to be the light of her life. Now he was the most hated of all prisoners, a traitor, a killer, a liar, a thief.

And all it took was one look upon his pale face, and her heart broke all over again.

He had no magic here. The cell had been magically enforced by Odin himself. There was no escape. There was only time and thought, and a miserable excess of both.

And now, today, there was her.

He knew Odin and Thor would never come to visit him. Why would they? All was as they wished it to be. He was locked away without a second thought, out of the way, inconsequential.

But why was she here?

The doors to the dungeon where his cell lay literally never opened. His meals were conjured to him thrice daily, from where he did not know, and the rest of the cell was self-cleaning and magically maintained, rendering any sort of contact with another being unnecessary. So when he heard those huge doors creak open, it was the first sound he'd heard in ages other than his own voice or the sound that his teeth made when he chewed his food. It was strange. Stranger, however, was when a cloaked figure came into his view. But he knew it was her long before she let her hood down.

When her gaze met his, it was immediately evident why she was here. He refrained from voicing his automatic reaction, which was to tell her that she was wasting her time and to go home to her precious little Odinson. Sentiment meant nothing to him anymore, and had not for a long time. Even Thor surely knew that now.

But he said nothing. He simply stared at her, this woman he'd called Mother his whole life without knowing the truth, and sat with his back to one of the four walls of his cell, waiting for her to speak.

He felt nothing.

She wanted to fall into tears at the sight of Loki. His image from this moment would be eternally burned into her memory.

It wasn't due to any terrible physical manifestation of his imprisonment. His hair was a bit unruly and he was quite thin, but he had always been thin. He still appeared healthy.

It was his eyes. They told his story as loudly and clearly as any spoken voice could have, and it was then that she knew that it was all true, what everyone said about him and she refused to believe.

The little boy that she'd raised from near-birth, the adolescent that she'd nurtured, and the man that had been her pride was gone. He no longer inhabited the body of her son. What remained was... wrong. Abhorrent. Unbelievable.

She stepped as closely to the cell as she could. Inside she was trembling, but on the outside she was perfectly stable, other than her eyes. Just as Loki's eyes told his story, she knew hers did as well.

"Loki."

He said nothing. He didn't even blink. He merely continued to stare at her.

"I have been... clinging to a foolish hope that what Thor and others say is untrue." She took a deep breath and had to look away from his gaze. "I have refused to believe that the son that I love with all of my heart is gone. And yet I look into your eyes now, and I see nothing but... hollowness. Death. Emptiness."

She forced herself to look into his eyes once more. A moment of silence passed before she spoke again, this time with unmasked emotion in her voice. "Do you not love? Can you not love, Loki?"

He said nothing still. He blinked and inhaled.

"Have you ever loved? Is this the son I raised, this... disgraced shell that sits before me now? Was I merely blind all those years?"

She knew the answer to her question, and surely Loki did as well. As proof, she plucked a tiny, dead flower from her cloak. It was a sad, shriveled up thing, and it was a testament to how gentle her hands were that it didn't disintegrate at her touch. She placed it in the palm of her hand and held it out for her son to see. He eyed it with disinterest.

"This flower," she began shakily, "is the first piece of magic you ever created, Loki. It was early one morning, in the palace gardens. You were with me, as you always were in those days. You were so small... and innocent. I was sad that day, a bit of old pain I care not to remember. You noticed, and to bring me cheer, you looked at a flower and concentrated on it as hard as you you held out your little fist to me, and when you opened it, floating just above your palm was a beautiful, golden rose. Identical to the one you had been concentrating so hard on. It was perfect. The most perfect bit of magic I had ever seen from a child so small, and for their first time producing magic. The flower didn't die. I kept it for years."

Her gaze upon the flower strained as she continued. "Then, the day you fell... I found it like this. I thought that it meant you were dead. Now, I fear that it means something worse." She turned her eyes back to Loki, who was still watching her intently. "You are lost. You are not the son that I raised. You are not the boy that spent his every day and every night at my side, whom I spent years teaching and nurturing. Do you remember nothing of those days? While Odin favored Thor, it was I who favored you. Or did you never notice this?"

He remained impassive.

"And Thor, for all of his flaws and how he may have mistreated you in those days - he loved you like he loves no one else. He has mourned your death twice, Loki - once when we all thought you dead, and now again, as you appear to be utterly without soul and conscience."

Loki's eyes met hers once more. Still dead. Still empty. "And yet," she continued, "Thor's pain will never be but a fraction of the anguish that you have brought to my heart."

She closed her hand around the dead flower and withdrew it, emotion threatening to overtake her. "I cannot look at you, whom I have loved and cared for from your earliest days, and believe that you are forever lost to us. Yet you give me nothing else to believe in. No hope for you or your soul. And for what, Loki? For what? To prove a point? To cause the deepest of pain in the hearts of your family, who will always love you despite the terrible deeds you've done?"

He appeared to her so vacant and empty that she wondered if he was even truly listening. But she continued to stare into his uncharacteristically cloudy green eyes and speak. "Loki. I plead with you - please, please give this up. Repent. Come back to us. Redeem yourself. It is the only way. You will spend the rest of your days inside this cell if you do not." She then paused and added, "Or is this what you wish for? To be locked away while every day my heart breaks because my son is wasting away in the deepest, darkest dungeon in all of Asgard?"

She stepped closer to the cell, brushing its magical barriers, her tone pleading. "Loki... don't you see? A part of me is locked in there, with you. Just as a part of me has fallen each time you have. Do you not know this?"

She had to stop speaking for a moment, keep her composure in check before she lost it entirely. Loki, of course, had no change in expression. A long moment passed before she spoke again. "You should know, Loki," she said quietly, "that Odin now sees the errors of his actions. He regrets withholding the truth from you. And he regrets how he openly favored Thor. We both blame ourselves for what you have done. I more than him. I have spent hours in thought, sorting through the past, trying to understand what I should have done differently. It is... the curse of a mother. To blame and punish herself for each mistake made by her child. And also to never give up hope that one day, as impossible as it may seem... my son will come back to me."

She looked into Loki's eyes one last time. She couldn't bear to stand here any longer.

Frigga had turned her back to the cell and was starting to walk away when Loki finally spoke. His tone caught somewhere in between incredulous and mocking.

"What hope is there for me, Mother?"

Foolish, ridiculous, sentimental woman.

How could she stand there and speak this way to him, after all he'd done? Was she truly that idiotic? How could she believe the words coming from her own mouth?

The only thing that she was correct about was the fact that Loki, as she had known him, was gone. In his place, a god who knew his purpose, knew his power, and knew far more of the Nine Realms than any of his supposed "family" ever would. The day would come when his time in this cage would come to an end, through one way or another. This was merely a pause in his plans. A time for him to refine his mind and simply prepare for his next move. Whether it came in one year or many, he would be ready all the same. Impatient but disciplined. There was no other way to survive.

And he would not be distracted by the outpouring of imbecilic emotion from the woman before him. He was, however, mildly fascinated by it.

But then, Frigga opened her mouth and spoke once more. And for a short, terrible moment in time, Loki very nearly forgot why he despised her.

She smiled sadly. At least he'd finally spoken. "There is hope for you, Loki, because I love you. I love you every bit as much as a son borne from my own womb, and I always shall. I shall always hold on to even the faintest of hopes that somewhere, underneath the ugliness and the jealousy and the chaos of your mind... that there is still my son, and that I will see him again someday. And until I do," she paused, "I will continue to live with the pain that you've caused. There is no worse pain that a mother can feel. And yet I still love you. Unconditionally."

She had said all that she came to say, and all that she could bear to say. She turned, and the huge steel door opened with a loud grumble. She left.

He nearly forgot why he despised her, because he realized he'd never truly despised her at all.

He watched her leave as bewilderment washed over him. She was a fool to say what she had, but she had been irrefutably truthful. There was no dishonesty or manipulation in her words, only truth and love. And the love truly was unconditional, as she'd said. He furrowed his brows and stared down at his hands, lying oddly tensed in his lap, and wondered how he felt no true malice towards her.

She had lied alongside Odin, after all. She had aided his deception and said nothing as Loki tried desperately to achieve equality with Thor, when all the while she knew he never would.

And then he knew. Somehow, somewhere underneath the anger and numbness that he'd wrapped up his soul in to block out all sentiment and weakness from his mind, underneath the truth and the lies that swirled together and blended to create who he was today, locked behind a mental and psychological cage of denial and cruelty, the unspoken truth lay.

She was his mother. She had been his teacher. His guide. His safe, accepting place of safety when he discovered as a child that he did not fit in. The one who saw in him gifts that nobody else did, talents for magic and intellectual arts that she nurtured and treasured.

He remembered that golden flower. Remembered making it bloom to life with his childish mind, and how excited and full of pride he'd been. Magic became his passion in that simple moment. And his mother his greatest ally.

He had never hated her. Not once, for a single moment of his existence. And she claimed, just now, to love him more than she loved Thor, if not in those exact words.

And yet, she'd just walked out of this dungeon, leaving him to continue rotting away in solitude and scorn. It was what she had always done. Submit to her King, stand idly by and do nothing as the son she supposedly lived and breathed for was constantly cast aside, punished, repudiated, and cheated of the honor and praise that he was entitled to. She claimed to know of Loki's brilliance and this nonsense of who he truly was inside, and yet when had she ever actually stood up for him and fought for him?

It was all words, all sentiment, nothing that was truly real. She was just like them, Thor and Odin, truly.

It was then, as Loki clenched his jaw and felt his hands curl into useless fists, that he decided that he hated Frigga most of all.

He hated her most for the mere truth that he loved her. And he hated her all the more for loving him too.

The darkness and the heaviness did not leave Frigga as she walked out of the dungeons. It followed her, echoed with every beat of her hurting heart, and surrounded her like an aura as she walked back into the light. She knew that it would not leave.

As long as Loki languished in that wretched prison, so would a part of her. She did indeed bear the curse of a mother, a burden that she could only bear alone. She spoke only truth to her son, but she doubted that it did her any good. He truly was utterly lost. Completely beyond her reach.

In her hand she still clutched the dead golden flower. She allowed herself one single tear to escape her eye, though many more wished to have the same luxury, and she let it fall before she pulled her hood back over her head and headed home.

Half of her heart was empty, and it would remain empty until the day Loki came home. She would forever hope for that day, but she no longer believed that it would come.