Loki pressed his face against the weaving of the net, attempting anything painful that would prevent the memory from playing. But it was no use. It had broken through the bonds which had held it imprisoned for so many years, and now it was smashing through to the fore.

"His hands."

Loki, four years old, was standing in the hall belonging to his grandfather. His grandfather, one of the Aesir gods, held Loki's hands in his and was turning them over and feeling them. Loki's mother, Laufey, hovered behind her father, watching anxiously.

"His hands," the Aesir spoke, frowning slightly. "They are strange."

"How so, Father?" Laufey asked, attempting a cheery tone but failing miserably. Her voice broke; she knew the conclusion her father would ultimately come to. "They are merely a child's hands."

"No," the Aesir said, his voice a chill sound. "They are not. They are the hands of a beast, of a base creature."

Laufey moved forward, her motions displaying her distress. "Father, Loki is but a child. What exactly do you think –?"

"Lies!" the Aesir shouted. Closing his fingers around Loki's small wrists and lifting the boy into the air, he flung him away. With a crash, Loki hit the unyielding wooden wall and fell limply to the ground. A whimper escaped from between his gritted teeth; but he knew better than to cry out, even at this young age. His mother had trained him well.

"Father!" Laufey screamed, involuntarily jerking forward, but she, also, knew better than to rush to Loki's side. This was a critical moment for her and her illegitimate son. The acceptance of the Aesir would decide their future.

"He is jotun!" the Aesir yelled, turning to shout at his daughter. "He is of jotun blood! It would have been bad enough if his father was Aesir – but at least then I could have accepted the two of you into my home! But jotun –" he snarled, his expression a mixture of rage and disgust. "No. There shall be no jotuns in this family. Laufey, you will abandon the boy, or I will abandon you!"

For a moment, Laufey stood as still as stone, her eyes pinned on her father's face. Then she ran past him and dropped to her knees beside Loki, still lying where he had fallen. "Then you will have to abandon me, because I will not leave my son."

Loki, dimly conscious, felt his mother's soothing arms gathering up his broken body. The banishment her father was pronouncing on Laufey, on the both of them, was barely registered by Loki as his mother lifted him up, shot a glance at her father, and left his house forever.

Never to return.

Hyperventilating, Loki jerked out of the reminiscence. Sweat poured down his face. That was the memory he hated, the memory he feared. The rejection had forced Laufey to live on the borderline of Jotunheim and Midgard, stigmatized for life. The rejection had been at the foundation of Loki's interaction with the rest of the Aesir gods. This memory had shaped him, formed him. At times, it had subconsciously driven him.

Loki opened his eyes and stared down at the ground. He tensed and relaxed his muscles. The position the net had forced him into was very uncomfortable. And he wanted to get out of this trap.

The flashback had, unexpectedly, given new energy and determination to Loki. He needed to get out of this trap, he needed to steal back Brisingamen and return to Sigyn. He needed to ensure that his mother's life of suffering, suffering she had endured for him, wouldn't be wasted.

And that thought brought him back to Skadi's words about breaking his promise.

Loki splayed his fingers on the net strands. He wondered if there was any way he could summon a bit of fire to burn through the cording, for there was no other way he was going to get out. He would have to come dangerously close to breaking his oath to Odin, for although fire wasn't specifically mentioned in the wording of the vow, it had been insinuated often enough for Loki to have abstained from using it all these years.

"Leave the kindling there, Loki."

Laufey's tired voice reached Loki as he was trotting back to their home, his arms filled with sticks broken from the fallen branches of the trees dotting the border of Jotunheim and Midgard. The six year old boy stopped and obediently dropped the kindling in a messy pile. Then he sprinted the short distance to where Laufey knelt by the entrance to their home.

Laufey smiled at her little son as he came up before her, breathless from the exercise of gathering wood. Small and skinny, Loki's eyes showed all of his bustling energy and his cleverness, what would later be realized to be only the tip of the iceberg of his capabilities. The boy reached out to the small fire his mother was tending and laughed as the flames rose up to touch his skin. Laufey watched the fire and her son for a moment, a deep grief in her eyes that was dusted with silent joy.

Grasping his shoulders in her work worn hands, the goddess looked into her son's poison green eyes, where he saw the sadness in hers. Her voice was quiet but firm when she spoke. "Baby, I want you to be careful playing with fire. Fire and ice don't mix, Loki. They were never supposed to."

"But Mama," Loki said, wrinkling his brow in confusion. "Fire doesn't hurt me. It's my friend."

"I know," Laufey said soothingly, rubbing her thumb across his cheek. "But sometimes friends betray us. I don't want you to feel that pain, Loki." She smiled wearily. "I just need you to promise me you'll be careful around fire."

"I guess," Loki muttered, hunching his shoulders. Laufey sensed his disappointment and shook him gently.

"It's for your own safety, son. Fire and ice are not essences that should ever be mixed."

"You told me that they're responsible for life," Loki reminded her solemnly. "Fire and ice mixing, that is."

"They are," Laufey said with a nod. "And the essence that is life was once formed by the mixing of fire and ice. But life...despite the foresight of the Norns, despite the watchfulness of the Allfather, life is unpredictable. Fire and ice shouldn't mix again, Loki. Trust me on this."

Loki closed his eyes and focused his mind on his fingertips, pressed up against the netting. He focused his mind on the energy concentrated in his flesh, hoping he still knew the difficult action. He needed to convert that energy into flame – or at the very least, heat – to burn through the ropes.

His fingers began to heat up, changing from their pale color to a deep red. The net strands began to darken as the heat from Loki's fingers began to burn through them. Then fire broke out over the skin of his hand, scorching through the net.

Loki grinned as the net turned to ash. With his shield arm, he gripped the upper part of the net as the bottom part burned out, leaving him enough room to slip through. Grasping the remaining netting, he swung down and dropped easily to the floor, landing in a crouch. His right leg faltered underneath him as pain shot through his leg, but he balanced himself by planting his hands against the ground.

Clenching his fingers into a fist to put out the flames, Loki slowly rose, glancing around his surroundings. The corridor was dark, and it was hard to see. The trickster was just taking a minute to allow his eyes to adjust when he heard footsteps, coming from the direction of the main passage.