mjolnir_retriever | (no subject)

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[From here.]

The lawn outside Milliways is not much more private than the main bar, though it's more open and significantly less populated. But it's a more congenial place for a serious talk, and there are private places. You've just got to travel a ways to get to them.

Luckily, that's something Mjölnir is good for!

Loki wanted to come on a quick flight over to the mountains, right? It's fine, Thor's flown plenty of humans this way. (No, he doesn't snatch Loki up without warning or anything. But Loki knows perfectly well what the come on, grab hold, we're going thataway body language is like, and also what Thor looks like when he doesn't plan to take no for an answer.)

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That was more breathtaking than usual. As in, when they come to rest on the mountaintop, Loki breaks into a fit of coughing. Without any pretense, even. (Though he does still want to remind his brother that a little forbearance is called for. He can't take the usual pummeling, or return it in kind.)

"--Excuse me." He wipes his mouth. "So, ah, we are gathered here today to...?"

(Thor has no plans on pummeling him!

...No, really, Thor has active plans to not pummel the extremely fragile borrowed human body that Loki or this shadow of Loki is stuck in, regardless of provocation. As opposed to the usual no-plans-but-there's-always-an-option-for-arguing-with-fists.)

He doesn't let go of Loki immediately when they land, but his grip transitions from carrying Loki along in flight -- comfortable, habitual from a thousand times when it was the practical option -- to half-supporting him while he coughs. That's much less familiar, and his brows have drawn together with worry.

But -- yeah. (And there's that spark of irritation again. He smothers it down. No one knows how to annoy like a sibling, their mother sighed so many times. Don't give him such a reaction, Thor. He hasn't even let himself think about what he'll tell her about this.)

"What were you thinking, brother?"

It bursts out of him. But pained as it is, it's wholly sincere as a question. What WAS Loki thinking? At any point, with any of that? And what does he remember of it now?

"What was I thinking when?"

He should stop provoking Thor. He knows it. And Thor's not the only one hearing their mother's voice right now. But even if he knows when to stop, it's just so hard to.

And...just as Thor's question was sincere, Loki's isn't entirely insincere. "What was I thinking when," he asks again, quietly. "Where do you want to begin?"

Thor's jaw works for a moment.

Then, low: "You speak as if you remember nothing."

Does he remember nothing?

(How faded, how long-ago, is this echo? It doesn't matter, but it does.)

"I remember--" He rubs his face. What does he remember? What does he want to remember? What's in his interest to remember right now? "I remember--I remember our father asking if you wanted a skiff of your own to fly. Do you remember that? Probably not, it was just another glorious sunlit day with presents, and there have been so many sunlit days and presents since then. But of course he asked you first. Do you want one, son? Think you're ready for it?" Even though, Loki doesn't say because he doesn't need to, Loki was always the better pilot.

"Is that what you want to know? Do you want to know the last thing I remember before waking up here? I remember falling. I remember that."

Thor swallows.

Do you remember lying to me? Do you remember trying to kill--

Even Thor can sometimes stop himself from playing too far into Loki's hands.

"What else?"

No, Thor doesn't remember that. He remembers that they both got skiffs; he remembers that they raced them, whooping. They both nearly wrecked them so many times. He finally did wreck his, dodging an illusion-mountain Loki threw in the way of a real one, and they were both punished. They fought about it, and later they laughed about it.

Loki remembers -- remembered -- must have remembered? came to remember? -- so many things so differently.

In Loki's memory, even stretched thin by the circumstances, there's an eternity between Odin's question to Thor (and Thor's brilliant smile and shout, and Odin's smile, and the way he'd ruffled the golden hair) and his turning to Loki and saying--something. What about you, son, probably. You two can race. An eternity in there. You could live a whole life in that gap, waiting for your turn.

"What else? What do I remember after falling? It's--it's not clear." He pauses (one beat, two, long enough to set his face, pale, bleak, not so long that Thor can formulate another question) and turns back to his brother. "I've heard...I've heard that dead people come here."

Roughly: "Yes."

But Loki hasn't.

"But not like this."

And that doesn't mean a thing about whether Loki's alive or not, in the void between realms, outside of that door. Not a thing.

Loki presses his lips together, glances away again, wraps his arms around himself. "I remember falling," he repeats softly. As if he's clinging to it as a last thread. A last connection to life.

Another heartbeat or two--that's probably enough time for it to sink in, and he doesn't want to overdo it--and he squares his shoulders and forces a little laugh, turning back to Thor. "But go on with the interrogation, brother."

"I want to help you."

It comes out a little harsher than he intends.

That's much more the conversation Loki would like to be having, yes.

He looks down, swallows. "I--I know. I shouldn't be--" Fill in the blank with whatever you want to hear, Thor. Square shoulders again. Confession. "I'm just trying to stay here as long as I can. I'm not sure there's anything else for me. All that, back in the bar, it's just...I know it's not going to add up to much. But I have to try."

"But what happened, brother?"

....dammit. Okay, fine, they'll have this conversation. The mountaintop setting is appropriately dramatic for little family talks, after all.

"I had a plan," Loki says. It seems like a good place to start.

Where else would you have a brotherly chat but somewhere with bleakly epic vistas, really?

Thor doesn't say, you always do. He only listens, silent for now, emotions naked on his face as they nearly always are: heartsick, loving, drinking in the sight of Loki even now, braced for what's next.

"I wanted--I wanted to show you--show father--that I could--" The image comes into his mind so clearly now that he breaks off, a little taken aback: the throne-room, Asgard, Odin seated. The way Odin takes up space in that throne room, the spear in his hand. His gaze on something far out of reach.

Loki wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve. Then he catches the gesture, grimaces, glares at Thor. Damn it, he had been in control of this conversation just a minute ago. "Asgard would have seen that I am born to be a king!"

"By that? Lying to me? Trying to destroy Jötunheim?"

Yeah that didn't take long. His voice is rising.

"No one doubted you!"

Jötunheim. He mouths the word, briefly confused and not sure why. It's nowhere as clear a memory as some others. A moment ago he could almost smell the throne room, but his mind has to scramble after Jötunheim.

"They always doubted me. You just never saw it. It never suited you to see it." That's very familiar ground, bringing back a hundred more distinct memories, and he feels properly himself again. "And yes. Yes, I would have destroyed Jötunheim. And so would you have!"

That moment of confusion is heartbreaking. This can't be Loki, not wholly -- but neither is he wholly not Loki, because every snapped word, every precise and accusatory syllable, is utterly his brother in a fury.

But that last accusation hits close to home, not for its truth but because it's so close to what Loki hissed last time, in that last fought Thor has gone over a hundred despairing times in his mind.

"No! I would not have!"

"Oh, riiight." Now he's sure of himself again. "Right. Of course. You've been softened. Tamed. Taught a lesson. Love, just flowing through every vein, you'd never start a war just because someone said you couldn't do it."

There! There's another memory, so clear now. Sitting on the steps. If it's any consolation, I think you're right. About the frost giants, about everything. But there's nothing you can do about it without defying Father. And Thor's after it as soon as the words are out, all Loki had to do was sit and look So Surprised and say No, no. Just too easy.

It's so funny, and so clear--this must be the fever coming back, everything that he does remember is coming in almost more vividly than living it, brilliant colors and bright lights--that he can't help laughing. "...Oh, Thor." It turns into a cough.

You wanted your brother, Thor; you wanted him to push back. This is Loki, far more than the weak and coughing human with his wide-eyed imploring.

There's no enjoyment in this satisfaction, but it's there all the same.

"I was foolish. Yes. I've learned better. But I would have faced them on the field of battle. Not that!"

(Don't give him such a reaction, Thor. Too late -- he's been having one-sided arguments and pleas with his brother's memory for months, and they're all ready to burst out.)

He's still weak and coughing, though. He waves a hand at Thor--give me a moment, brother--and leans back against a boulder. It's very cold between his shoulderblades. Right. Okay. "Tell me the difference, will you? What's so much better about facing them on the field of battle? For that matter, what makes your approach a battle and mine not?"

Edited 2017-03-15 22:50 (UTC)

Thor stares at him.

This is like demanding tell me, brother, what makes water more nourishing than hydrochloric acid, or tell me, brother, why is murder bad? How do you answer something so basic, so self-explanatory?

"What jest is this?"

NOT A GOOD ONE.

"You're a talented liar, brother. You're full of tricks. But you're a warrior of honor."

Loki wheezes, somewhere between a laugh and another bout of coughing.

"Optimist." When was anything as cold as this rock at his back? He's never minded the cold. "--I could be. A warrior of honor."

"Speak plainly."

"Plainly? Me Loki. You Thor. Honor good. Destroying planets bad." He rolls his head to look out at the view from the mountainside. It's awfully small. "...How long has it been? In Asgard?"

Maybe he should have thought to wonder about that sooner.

Edited 2017-03-16 12:39 (UTC)

Low, and rough, Thor admits, "Nearly a year."

He'd have to calculate to know better than that. Asgardians notice time in days, and in decades and centuries, and everything in between tends to get sort of hazy. But: nearly a year. No word, no sign of Loki, and no Bifrost to aid with that or anything else.

(For the very first time, Loki doubts, just faintly, that he is really himself. It's a thought process that goes like this:

Ha, Thor missed me.
Did I miss Thor?
No, he's so predictable that you can always just imagine yourself a Thor to argue with, you don't need a real Thor.

Except he can't remember spending nearly a year arguing with Thor in his head.

...Well, that's wormholes for you, right? Do funny things with time. You Thor, me Loki.

Me Loki.)

Loki (who is definitely 100% Loki, glad we sorted that out) realizes he's been silent a little too long, thinking a little too long, staring down at the buildings a little too long. He shakes himself and laughs. (It turns into another coughing fit. Possibly all this fresh mountaintop air isn't quite the thing for someone with the flu.) "That's barely a heartbeat, brother. You can't even have noticed I was gone."

He's not fishing for reassurance. Loki would never.

Edited 2017-03-17 11:34 (UTC)

It cuts through his anger and outrage and confusion in a way that earlier wide-eyed frailty didn't: the reassurance Loki is definitely not fishing for, the silence before it, the coughing fit that takes over from a laugh as if it's catching Loki by surprise, too.

Thor steps in to put a hand to Loki's shoulder. Low, rough now with affection rather than anger or grief, he says, "Don't be an idiot. Who could annoy me like you?"

Is it cold up here? It's not for Thor, it never would be for Loki, but for a human body he's not sure, now. Loki -- Harry's body -- is really not looking so great.

Human bodies don't usually feel this hot to the touch. It is cold, and Loki is shivering, but his face and throat are clammy with sweat.

It's his instinct to play it up a little, he should hold Thor's gaze, stifle a trembling lip, reinforce Thor's sympathy, something like that, but he's just too tired to think it through. Just...leaning here will have to do. And coughing some more, again unplanned, which makes him catch at Thor's arm for support. And then try to push it away crossly. He doesn't mind losing control of a scene--it can be exhilarating--but right now he doesn't even know what he wants and everything is wrong in the wrong ways and it's not exhilarating at all.

Loki wipes his mouth. "I'm annoying myself right now. There--there has to be something better than this body."

Edited 2017-03-17 19:16 (UTC)

Thor breathes out, a rueful puff of a sigh.

We'll find it -- but can they? Sometimes it's so hard to remember that this isn't fully Loki, and sometimes it's impossible to forget. Right now, it's hard to remember.

"You and me, brother. We'll manage something."

And that's true no matter what: if Odin's sons are together, what can stand against their combined might?

He holds out an arm, letting Mjölnir drop to its strap from his other hand, ready to twirl up momentum. "Come."

Right now the combined might of Odin's sons is just Thor plus a deadweight--a damp and coughing deadweight. But that's not going to stop them!

The flight back down sets off more coughing, and when they get inside, Loki's table of tissues and science looks to him more like a mountain to climb than a fortress of security. Ugh. None of the parts seem likely to come together into anything, and he's losing track of what some of them were for in the first place. But damn it all he's going to make it work.

Something. Make something work.

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