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WHO: Loki and Thor
WHERE: Heropa #011 roof
WHEN: The evening after arrival
WHAT: who even knows with these two
WARNINGS: [loki having a mental breakdown voice] sentiment

[Loki had parted from Thor as soon as they'd arrived at their assigned lodgings, citing a need for a shower. Which was the truth, but Thor had also been adamant about attempting to contact Heimdall as soon as he could.

Loki did not want to be around for the aftermath, because he's awful at anything resembling having to comfort another person, and he already suspects that there is no Heimdall, no Valkyrie, no Bruce or Asgardian or ship at all out there to contact.

After all, if there was, why hadn't they arrived the same way he and Thor had? This is not the same Earth as the one they'd been seeking.

He elects to leave Thor alone to deal with this new wave of grief, purely out of a desire to avoid discomfort and not to give him respectful space, honest. But after enough time has passed and Thor hasn't yet come back down, Loki finally takes to the roof to...

Well, he's not entirely sure what. But he had the foresight to take a keg of good Sakaarian booze with him before they'd been stolen here, and now seems as good a time as any to break into it.

He makes sure the door to the roof stairwell latches with an audible click, so that Thor knows he's here, and stands carefully several feet behind where Thor is sitting.]

Any luck?

[But he already knows the answer.]

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[ He doesn't expect to be pulled back to the Statesman, the last vestige of the Asgardian people. With the Bifrost destroyed outright, it would take Odin's strength and his skill in the dark magics to open such a gateway between worlds — and Odin is gone.

He doesn't expect the ship to have made the journey so far, so quickly — that merely calling out would bring the ship into the bright evening sky, with Banner and the Valkyrie and Heimdall himself coming down the gangplank, with the Kronan Korg and the freed Sakaarian slaves and the survivors of Asgard's decimation pouring out to huddle and celebrate and grieve under the blanket of Midgard's stars.

He doesn't expect silence, either.

Heimdall, I know you can see me, as he could see Thor on Sakaar, on Earth, on Muspelheim and Jotunheim and every realm in between. Heimdall, I know you're there. Help me see. Help me see Asgard. But even as he repeated the request, the name, two and three and five and nine times, he never felt that same sense of a light trembling in his chest, the ache behind his eye(s) that was the gift of Heimdall's eyes. Never heard the voice of his dearest remaining friend, or the sweep of stars beneath his travel, or the comfort of seeing his people alive, and safe.

The only tremble he feels is the heaviness of his heart, and the ache in his eyes are of tears, and of the piece freshly missing, and a body trying to force water from a socket that has already been burned and sealed by the black flame of Hela's blade.

Staring out over the other little Midgard houses, its sky muddied and stars weak for its heavy air, Thor's hands feel distant and separate from him as he strokes the feathers of his father's raven — he thinks this one is Muninn, but he could never tell them apart as a child, and had forgotten to make the effort as he grew. The other, probably Huginn, paces the roof's edge, saying nothing. Memory and thought seem distant, too, pieces of him all cut apart and laying close together, but not quite touching — a sense of grief beginning to coalesce like darkening clouds.

Loki's voice; the pieces snap back together, and the breath Thor draws is muggy from the Florida evening, but it feels cold in his lungs, and the world draws into sharper focus. He blows the breath back out and lets the raven down, uncrossing his legs, unfolding upward, getting his feet steady beneath him in the turn — a turn wider than before, for the blind side.

The fingers of his right hand flex, aching for something to throw — instead he reaches up scrubs them through his shorter hair, and shakes his head. ]

No answer.

Edited 2018-06-19 03:47 (UTC)

[Loki steps forward until he's at pace with Thor, looking out at the Heropa skyline, and for a moment doesn't say a thing. There's no response that seems adequate; nothing that the silence can't say even better.

But Loki has always had limited patience for silence, and lies are his trade. Even ones that serve no purpose except, maybe, to comfort.

Even just a little would be something.]

Maybe they're just out of range. [As if there's anything in the Nine Realms that could be out of range of Heimdall.]

[ A lie, given in kindness. Such is rare from Loki, but not unheard of — like the fading fruit of a sickened tree, showing less and less as the years go by. It is not sweet, or nourishing, but it is meant as a gift all the same. ]

There are dark places even Heimdall cannot see. The shrouded plains of Svartalfheim, where the Aether was buried... and any time you wished it, I hear. [ If it had been Thor alone, or Loki alone, that had been stranded here, the words would be accusatory. As it was, for as much as Loki can be unpredictable, Thor cannot come up with any reason why he would strand them both on a human world cut off from the people they'd both risked everything to save.

Instead, his words are quiet, and low — as though taking that fruit and splitting it in two, so the lie can comfort them both. ]

This is a strange realm.

Edited (WHEN U FORGET UR BRACKETS FOR UR BRACKETS) 2018-06-19 16:51 (UTC)

[Loki exhales slowly, because even if Thor's words aren't meant as an accusation, they still faintly filter through that way. After all, he's right to doubt. Loki's reputation for untrustworthiness began far before his fall from grace.

But he also hears the concession for what it is, and even that is more than Thor might have offered a week ago. They've both come an impossibly long way in an impossibly short amount of time.]

Certainly unlike any Midgard I've encountered. [A weak joke. Obviously they've only known the one.]

If there's a way back, you'll find it. You always do.

[And that, at least, isn't a lie. That's what Thor does.]

Finding another Devil's Anus would be really useful right about now.

[ But the sky above them bears no portals, no tears, no clear exits to other realms — and unlike most times Thor's been unceremoniously dumped on some foreign world, they didn't fall out of the sky to get here in the first place. But there exists two sides to every doorway — so long as a door exists, it can be opened.

The stars are faint. He crosses his arms, though not for cold; there are too many constellations missing, and fractured, and the world seems all the more lonely for it. ]

Which one do you like better?

[He shrugs noncommittally, keeping up the feigned light-hearted tone of the conversation as long as Thor seems to need it.

The largest difference between them is that while Thor never stops trying to accomplish something, Loki changes what he tries to accomplish to suit his circumstances. That way, he has never truly failed.

They've been here only less than a day, but Loki thinks he could find a way to be content here. He'll have to. He'd done it on Sakaar.]

At the least, this one seems less likely to want me dead.

[ He doesn't mean to, but the way he puts it makes Thor laugh — the air catching on his teeth and cutting his lips into a half-smile. It isn't funny. ]

I think our family has gone through enough conquests by now, don't you? Between us, and Hela, and father before her. We can spare this realm that burden.

[ We, he says, and us — for wasn't it Thor that had originally wanted to conquer Jotunheim, after the sabotaged coronation? Wasn't it Thor, who was always sent at the helm of Asgard's army to bring the Nine Realms back into line, when they grew restless and threatened Asgard's power? It had seemed the right thing to do, then — long before they knew how Asgard came to possess that power.

Odin was a conqueror king, and he'd passed that down to all three of his children. ]

It may be easier to settle our people here instead.

Edited 2018-06-19 18:15 (UTC)

[He casts Thor a quizzical look at us--it's true they'd all been raised for empire, as much as Odin might have insisted otherwise, but it's still surprising to hear Thor admit as much. Still surprising for the amount he's grown to manifest itself.

After all, he's known Thor for centuries, and all of this has only spanned a decade.]

If they'll have us. [Since attempting to settle by force would rather contradict Thor's new philosophy.]

I suppose since... I haven't done anything, they might. Perhaps this little misadventure might turn out for the better after all.

[Provided, of course, Heimdall and the rest of the Asgardians are still out there, and not separated in another universe entirely. Loki doesn't have much hope for that, but he's not the king anymore. He's not the one who needs it.]

[ The question in Loki's eyes is met with lips pulled in a hard line, an incline of his head. It may have only been a recent revelation, but Hela, and everything she represented — all the rot of her, of Asgard, of Odin's past — it had been a hard blow. Even with two eyes, he'd only seen half the picture before. Maybe not even that much.

Neither of them are the same as they were, centuries ago, a decade ago. Perhaps they are both better for it. ]

If they'll have us. [ The smile is a little fonder, a little more genuine. ] I don't know if it will be easy, but I'm not worried.

[Loki gives him a sardonic smirk. There's a ghost of his old bitterness, there, but only a ghost; the rest of it is genuine good humor. Even fondness, if you were inclined to look hard enough.

It's a strange feeling, not being bitter, but it's not an uncomfortable one. Almost nostalgic, though he'll never admit to it.]

Of course you aren't. There's nobody in the Nine or beyond that could say no to Thor Odinson.

[ It's familiar and nostalgic and Thor can't help that he laughs, a sharp crack of sound in the night air — a noise that chases both ravens into flight, black streaks of ink on a lighter sky. The laugh is genuine and not, a relief and not, and it pushes at the strain of his feelings and the storm in his heart in a way that only seems to sharpen the ache. ]

Loki, we both know that's not true. People tell me no all the time.

[Loki scoffs, and in it there's just slightly more bitterness and slightly less fondness.

Some things take a while to get past.]

Yes, and then you ignore them, which amounts to the same thing.

[How much have you truly been denied anything, he doesn't say.]

I have. Countless times.

[ Loki's honest bitterness is like a foul tonic — painful, poisonous at too-large doses, but like this is only shock enough to clear the senses. His strange, fractured mood doesn't feel any steadier, but the spark of levity is gone. ]

I have been trying to do better.

[Loki simply looks at Thor for a long moment, his expression carefully neutral--but the shifting of his hands, an old fidget, betrays his unrest.

He's stepped in it again, he can tell. The point in coming up here was to make Thor less upset, not more. He makes sure all the storm is smoothed from his voice before he speaks.]

You have been.

[And it's purely the truth, this time. Thor has been better, has done better, has grown since even the week before--what was it he'd said back on Sakaar? Life is about change.

Thor embodies that; Loki does not. It is--ironically, for a god of chaos--not in his nature.

At least one of them is doing something right.]

Edited (i'm drunk and i did it right the first time) 2018-06-21 05:50 (UTC)

[ He has been. But perhaps it is not enough. Perhaps it will never be enough. Weeks and months and years cannot hope to wipe away the errors and the grievances of centuries — but maybe centuries more will.

They should have millennia ahead of them, but so much has changed so quickly, and so much has been taken, and so much lost, that every expectation for the future seems wane and fragile.

The silence hangs; the only sounds are those of the unfamiliar world around them, and the low calls of their father's ravens overhead. Thor glances up, watching their flight like shadows against the clouds.

He doesn't know what to say, and so — for once — doesn't. ]

[There was a time when such a silence between them would hardly be uncomfortable. But in the years that have passed they don't understand each other nearly so easily as they once did, and Loki is caught worrying that he's misstepped.

He could simply leave it at that. They've had much worse misunderstandings, if that's even what this is. But--if Loki truly does want to change, then he can't. Shouldn't.

That anxiety stretches over the silence like a soap bubble, and Loki can't resist the urge to pop it.]

You know, I had the forethought to--borrow some of the Grandmaster's, ah, private selection when I took his security codes. Seemed a shame to just leave it there.

[He rocks back on his heels with feigned innocence as he says it.]

[ He pivots, just so, so he can look at Loki without craning his neck in the turn. A slight pause before he speaks. ]

... Did you take his whiskey or his wardrobe.

[ There is only one acceptable answer here, Loki. The look on Thor's face is very clear: if he pulls out a golden fucking bathrobe, he and the robe are both getting struck by lightning, like, fucking instantly. ]

[A peculiar grin spreads over his face. One might even call it mischievous.]

Yes?

[But he doesn't bother keeping up the pretense; they're both in a mood that there's no point in agitating. So he procures a glass from... somewhere, hands it to Thor, and sits down next to where a bottle and another glass have already manifested themselves.

He grins crookedly and lifts his glass in invitation.]

[ He takes the glass as if he doesn't expect it to turn into a raw goat's bladder, or at least is good at pretending it won't, and settles down beside his brother with a familiar sense of ease.

Once they are both seated, the flutter of wings grows louder as both ravens immediately dive back down, one landing right next to the bottle, the other perching dainty on Loki's shoulder.

They are, after all, Asgardian birds, and there is no Asgardian that can resist a good drink.

Thor is trying not to smile. ]

[Loki scratches the one on his shoulder under the beak, smiling with rare sincerity.]

Hello, Huginn.

[While he's occupied, the bottle up and pours itself, because Loki is nothing if not a showoff.

Thor better grab the glass before Muninn takes advantage.]

[ He doesn't; the king never drinks first. The raven — is it Muninn? shit — hops onto the bare skin of his arm, keeping her wings partially outstretched for balance as she sidles toward his wrist. His arm remains steady, unburdened, but his attention isn't on the bird tasting (testing) his liquor. ]

How long did it take them to recognize you?

[ To know it was Loki wearing their father's face. To allow Loki to remain in their father's throne. Thor caps the question by taking his own first gulp. The taste is strange, fruit and grain distilled together, haphazard, but the burn comes slow, and strong.

They've had better, but it's what they have now. ]

[Loki laughs, once, in a way that might even be sheepish.]

Almost immediately, I'd imagine. Animals are always harder to fool when it comes to illusions. Normally they're not what I need to worry about, but...

[He shrugs mildly, like they aren't talking about the time Loki pretended to be both dead an the King of Asgard for four years.]

In the end, it didn't make a difference. I suppose I'm grateful.

[ Thor downs most of the drink in one go, but leaves the last of it for the raven — she practically has to climb into the glass to get it, one foot clinging to the rim and one to Thor's hand, but he keeps her steady.

He hadn't had the time to react to it, then. Not chasing after the visions of Ragnarok, not in the face of their father's death, not in the destruction of Asgard, not in the threat to all life, not in the causing of it all. In all that time, Thor has been running at the single problem, greater than him and Loki and every rotten thing about their family; there has been so little time to think, and to consider, and to piece things together.

Muninn's eyes look much bigger through the glass. ]

You weren't there when I spoke to the wizard, [ he realizes, but it's not the suddenness of realization that surprises him, but how calm he feels in its wake. Pieces, very slowly, falling into place, ] were you?

[Loki just raises an affronted eyebrow.]

That Midgardian posturer? No, mercifully.

[He's actually still fairly stung from that entire interaction, because he is nothing if not one to hold grudges, but he pretends he isn't by busying himself with his glass.]

I was waylaid by a rather crude spell, if you remember. Why?

He mentioned something. About our father. I'd forgotten it until now.

[ He pulls Muninn out of the glass, fingers combing through her feathers and pinching the damp feathers to keep the liquor from drying. ]

After he'd broken your spell, the Wizard said Odin had chosen to remain in exile, on Earth. With me scouring the cosmos for the remaining Infinity Stones, and with you, Loki, on Asgard's throne, he chose to remain on Earth.

[ The grief is still there — the grief has nowhere to go. For all that this past week has revealed so much of Odin that Thor could have never seen in his long life, for all the mistakes Odin has made and how so many had suffered, for so long, for such different reasons, it batters against the long centuries of peace, of what felt like a golden age of kindness and youth, and no matter how he tries to slot the pieces together, the end picture is never one of resentment, nor of hatred. Only regret, for what Thor had not known and could never have addressed, never fixed — only remorse, that they can never make things right when so much is destroyed.

Loki's faults and wrongdoings seem so small in comparison.

The grief is still there — but the tone of blame he carried on the other Earth, on Sakaar, is gone. ]

... Perhaps they knew as much.

[Loki freezes.

His mind goes a thousand places at once, flickering through as many emotions. The news itself catches him off guard, of course, and for a brief, embarrassing moment he feels a swell of hope. That Odin could truly have forgiven his trespasses, that his final acknowledgment of Loki as his son had been considered and premeditated, and not an old man's instance of regret on his deathbed. That he had truly left it all in the dust a long time ago.

But, of course, that's impossible.

Loki knows why Thor is bringing it up, and in such an indirect way. Thor wants to convince Loki that their tension is all manufactured, and knows that it needs to be Loki's conclusion if it's anyone's at all.

It's a good effort. Loki's even grateful, though he'll never admit it. But he's also smarter than that.

It's only a second of hesitation before Loki brings his glass up to his lips as if Thor hadn't said anything at all.]

More likely he saw an opportunity for a scapegoat. If I ruled well, then his reputation is untarnished, and he enjoys a nice retirement. If I ruled poorly, he only need return and expose the impostor for what he is, and all his missteps will instead be mine.

[He doesn't quite manage to keep the bitterness out of his voice. But he tries.]

[ He doesn't see Loki's reaction, but he feels the weight of that pause, hears that pain in his voice — like a cold line of fat in a cut of roast meat. And there are things Thor could say in reply. He could argue in defense of their father, he could argue in defense of Loki himself, urge his brother to make peace with the conflict of their upbringing, and upbringers, and all it entails.

But those wounds and those knots in Loki's thinking have had decades, centuries to gnarl and coil the way they have — blunt arguments like Thor had always tried before have so rarely worked. He can only pull on the loose, fraying pieces, and let the chaos settle after. (And maybe, one day, Loki will take on the task himself.)

Thor reaches for the bottle, and pours himself another drink. ]

Then it's good he never got the idea. If he'd thought you'd damage his reputation, he might have entombed you in the new fresco.

[ ... okay maybe there's a little resentment. ]

[At first Loki just looks over at him with an incredulous expression, because what kind of idea is that? But then realization dawns--it's too specific to have come from nowhere. And Loki had no real idea what had happened between Thor and Hela before Loki had arrived with the Statesman.]

Is that what he did to her?

[The "her" he means is obvious, of course. The doubt in his voice is likely obvious; it goes without saying that Loki has plenty of baggage when it comes to Odin, but that's still beyond what Loki would expect of him.

Of course, he hadn't expected Odin to exile Thor, either, those years ago, when it all went to shit.

Loki turns back away without waiting for an answer, trying to disguise his horror as disdain.]

Pleasant.

[ He tilts the bottle in gesture, offering to refill Loki's own glass, even as he speaks. ]

She'd torn up the old one. The one that they changed, like, five times when we were growing up. [ He places down the bottle; Muninn balances easy on his cup-bearing hand, wetting her beak in Thor's drink as he speaks. The ceiling imagery had of course changed several times — to age the princes, and celebrate the modern Asgard. ] Their whole bloody, gruesome history was there the whole time. Under the floors and in the walls, and ceilings, just disguised by paint and tapestries.

[ Even Loki's illusions had not hidden anything so well as their parents had their older sister. ]

His solution to every problem was to cover it up or cast it out.

[Well, that's less literal than he'd first assumed, but that's still interesting information.

He hums as he holds out his glass to Thor for a refill, as if he's processing the information.]

Or to bury it, I suppose.

[At least you were only banished for a few days, Thor. Loki's smile isn't entirely wry, at least.]

He's quite the success rate, hasn't he?

[ There's something that could be said about being a good man, or a good father, or a good husband, or a good king, and how Odin had ordered and ranked his list, and how some of those seemed to be hastily scribbled into the margins after centuries of mistakes.

There's something to be said for Odin and Hela waging such a long, long war to build Asgard's empire, for Odin to disguise the history of it, and for the whole built-up nation of it to be destroyed within a week of his death.

He hums, gazing towards the stars. ]

Two successes in a bajillion years isn't the worst.

[Loki's jaw clenches. This is more of Thor's sentimentality, he knows. The obvious interpretation is Odin's two successes are the both of them, his sons if not all his children, which is an idea so laughably false that all Loki wants to do is make Thor justify it so he can tear it apart.

Go on, Thor. Tell him how the son Odin disowned could possibly be considered a success.]

Well, I suppose there's you, if that can really be considered a success. I'm afraid the other is beyond me.

[ The twist of confusion to Thor's face is too quick, too natural to be affected humility; his sole eye narrows, head canted to one side, for the unspoken question — you think I meant me?

But it would have been a fair conclusion to draw, five years ago, ten years ago — for the hundreds upon hundreds of years before. He shakes his head. ]

... The first was marrying our mother. [ He's doesn't stress the our, but its presence alone is emphasis enough. ] The second was bringing you to Asgard.

Everything else... [ He waggles his hand, ehhhh, uncertain. ] ... but those ones he got right.

[Loki opens his mouth, then closes it.

Thor's having him on, somehow, he knows it. What he's suggesting is so preposterous Loki can't even begin to argue it. So, rather than rising to the bait, he leans back and spreads his arms, an insincere invitation. The kind of gesture he performs like putting on armor.]

By all means, then, enlighten me. How can bringing a liar and a traitor into the House of Odin be anything like a success? It was him who damned me, if you remember.

[ As far as liars and traitors go, it's hardly as though Loki's the only one. It wasn't Loki that slaughtered everyone in the palace to seize the throne, or swore to destroy all their people in order to take claim of all worlds—that was the true firstborn. It wasn't Loki that erased people from history, who covered up invasions and massacres and built a kingdom on the bones of the dead and slaughtered—that was their father.

And maybe speaking of the ills of others would be enough to show Loki that he wasn't the worst, but as Thor takes another drink, he wonders if any amount of comparing evils can really do any good. ]

I remember seeing our people, beaten and terrified, caught on a thread at the edge of certain death. Seeing the straight path of bloodshed that Odin could not stop, that I could not stop, that the whole of Asgard's armies could not stop, that would not stop until all people in all the realms would bow or perish to the rule of Odin's firstborn. Seeing the light of all that is good in all the cosmos begin to flicker, on the verge of snuffing out.

[ He speaks it all toward the stars, the despair he'd felt mere hours before now, watching the last stand on the Bifrost — half-blind and helpless to stop anything. It had not lived long, but the terror Thor felt then was greater than any he'd ever felt in his life — one he hoped was one that had never existed before, and would never exist again.

He turns then, gaze and attention away from the cosmos, and claps his empty hand against Loki's collar — forcing him to meet Thor's eye for this, and not hide away from what he has left to say. ]

I remember seeing you, brother, the Twilight Savior of Asgard, creating the one path that could save our people from annihilation. The only way we could have won. Even if I had managed to get into the vault myself, and placed Surtur's Crown in the Eternal Flame, it would be executing every last soul on the planet to preserve all others. Asgard isn't a place, it's a people. It would not still exist without you.

Worth more than a House, don't you think?

Edited 2018-07-11 00:14 (UTC)

[Loki swallows as he meets Thor's gaze, momentarily--and rarely--at a loss for words. The hand on his neck, warm and horribly familiar, grounds him as his thoughts blur together like wheels in mud, struggling to string together something coherent.

His eyes flicker down as he tries to force an unconcerned smirk on his face--something to convince he isn't as affected by Thor's words as he truly is, and along with that the storm of disbelief and resentment that is inevitable, because it's never been in Loki to be unambiguously happy or grateful about anything.

It's a long, long time before words come to him again. He doesn't want to dare to hope that Thor is being sincere, but when has Thor ever not been? Isn't that simultaneously his greatest strength and greatest fault? But to reconcile his sincerity with the meaning of his words is not something Loki is capable of right now. He can't remember ever being spoken of so highly.]

As I recall, all of that was still your idea.

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