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coldsongIt takes a couple weeks before Loki bothers to ask anything about Cricket. He strikes the god as beneath notice, young and vulnerable, more of a follower than a leader. Neither aggressively good and noble, nor tricky and wicked enough to keep pace with him. In short, there is nothing Cricket has or is that interests him, and he treats him much like the furniture: he will do him no harm, he will even spare a moment to consider his maintenance, but he’s not looking for his friendship or affection.
That changes one afternoon when he wanders in to find the boy curled up in a chair, red-eyed and teary. He immediately looks around for Harley, or even Alec. Someone with a bit more of a heart than he should manage this. But no one else is available, and by the time he realizes that, Cricket has noted his presence and is giving him a glare of death.
That kind of challenge cannot go ignored, so he sighs and folds his arms. “Are you injured?”
“Do I fuckin’ look injured?” the kid snaps back, and Loki is surprised by the sharpness.
He tilts his head. “No. No more than usual, at any rate.”
Cricket’s not sure if that’s a reference to his leg braces or something else, but his scowl deepens, before Loki adds: “I feel that if I ignore your distress at this point, it might upset our hostess. If you want nothing to do with me, by all means say so and I’ll leave you alone, but you must promise to tell her I tried. On the other hand, if there is some way I can assist, get to the point at once so I can stop wasting time.”
It’s an abrasive way to offer help, but Cricket sort of halfway approves of the practicality. He grunts, but his expression softens a little. “Ain’t nothin’ but nightmares. I reckon a god don’t understand that kind of thing.”
Loki weighs his options, because he’s been handed an easy out. After a moment, he heads for the kitchen and retrieves two cups of chocolate milk, bringing one to the kid, and sitting across from him. “You would be surprised. I have many nightmares, but few regrets.”
That’s probably a lie.
Cricket considers the cup and takes a sip, uncurling a little. “I don’t need you feelin’ sorry for me.”
“No, I imagine not. Don’t worry, I have very little compassion within me to begin with; I will spare none where it is not wanted. But I’m curious.” That is not a lie. Loki sips his chocolate milk the same way he would champagne at a party.
His candor earns a bitter laugh from Cricket, but also an answer: “You kinda remind me of him, is the thing. The man that killed me. Dark hair slicked back like that, pale eyes, all refined and perfume-y and actin’ like everyone’s beneath you. I don’t like you, and I don’t like that she likes you, but it ain’t my place to say so.”
“Yet you’ve said so,” Loki points out. “To me. Is it my presence that has you worked up?”
“Nah. Just the memory. And thinking about how I can’t go back.”
The god hesitates, sobering, and taps his fingers against his glass. He doesn’t need this boy’s favor. He has nothing to gain by being kind here. Civility is enough. But at last, reluctantly, he says: “Then we have something in common. This man, how did you run afoul of him?”
Gradually, over glasses of chocolate milk, the story unspools. Illegal moonshining, a vendetta with a federal deputy between Cricket and his friends and employers. A big distillery in the woods, and his best friend Jack’s poor judgment, resulting in a bust, and Cricket’s capture, but not Jack’s.
A slow walk through grass and branches, over uneven gravel. One man, smelling of expensive cologne, walking too close behind him. A secluded, overgrown alcove. An arm around his throat, squeezing the air from him. Desperation, blind struggling, a snap, and darkness.
The description of Cricket’s last moments leaves Loki pale, horrified and shaky not because of compassion or kindness, but because of how closely they mirror his own. He collects the empty glasses and flees to the kitchen with them to regain his composure. Cricket follows, tread stiff and uneven, what with the leg braces.
It’s a dangerous moment, with the god standing at the sink, back to the boy. Loki could lash out easily, and maybe the antiviolence field would stop him, or maybe not. In a way, he wants to, that old burning rage and madness tickling his veins. No one would stop him. Not until it was too late.
“Guess we do have something in common,” Cricket says, watching him.
Loki glances back out of the corner of his eye, seeing the small, vulnerable figure standing in the doorway, and the fury melts away. No, he had best save his spite for his own murderer, anyway. He takes a breath and turns. “You have no idea what became of this man, who killed you?”
Cricket shakes his head. “That’s what kills me. Don’t want Jack to do nothing stupid, like go and try gunning him down. He’d do that.”
“Yes,” Loki says, although he’s thinking of Thor, not a stranger. “Yes, he would.”
“Just...the thought of him taking out the Bondurants, too…” Cricket folds his arms around himself. “Keeps me up nights, you know?”
Loki knows, but he says nothing for a moment. Then: “Well. I cannot return to my home, but I can visit yours. What would you have me do?”
The boy’s eyes widen, and he swallows with a click. “Y’ain’t gotta do nothin’ for me.”
He’s tempted, though, and Loki can see it in his face.
“No,” the trickster says. “But it would be my pleasure. I will not expect a favor in return. What was the man’s name?”
“...Rakes. Charlie Rakes.” Cricket worries his lip. “Can you make sure the Bondurants are okay? And Miss Maggie? Especially Jack…”
“I can. And I will.”
Cricket thinks of Jack, and how Rakes beat him half to death just outside Cricket’s own home, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. About the local deputies whispering that he almost pulled a gun on him after he was unconscious, and what was that about, was he gonna shoot the kid in cold blood? He thinks about a man tortured in the woods to make an example of him, and then about himself, killed for the same reason. And he thinks about Forrest Bondurant.
“It ain’t the violence that sets a man apart,” he tells Loki, quoting. “It’s the distance. How far he’s prepared to go.”
“I am prepared,” says the god, and smiles.
Cricket crosses the room, reaches out, and shakes his hand.
That changes one afternoon when he wanders in to find the boy curled up in a chair, red-eyed and teary. He immediately looks around for Harley, or even Alec. Someone with a bit more of a heart than he should manage this. But no one else is available, and by the time he realizes that, Cricket has noted his presence and is giving him a glare of death.
That kind of challenge cannot go ignored, so he sighs and folds his arms. “Are you injured?”
“Do I fuckin’ look injured?” the kid snaps back, and Loki is surprised by the sharpness.
He tilts his head. “No. No more than usual, at any rate.”
Cricket’s not sure if that’s a reference to his leg braces or something else, but his scowl deepens, before Loki adds: “I feel that if I ignore your distress at this point, it might upset our hostess. If you want nothing to do with me, by all means say so and I’ll leave you alone, but you must promise to tell her I tried. On the other hand, if there is some way I can assist, get to the point at once so I can stop wasting time.”
It’s an abrasive way to offer help, but Cricket sort of halfway approves of the practicality. He grunts, but his expression softens a little. “Ain’t nothin’ but nightmares. I reckon a god don’t understand that kind of thing.”
Loki weighs his options, because he’s been handed an easy out. After a moment, he heads for the kitchen and retrieves two cups of chocolate milk, bringing one to the kid, and sitting across from him. “You would be surprised. I have many nightmares, but few regrets.”
That’s probably a lie.
Cricket considers the cup and takes a sip, uncurling a little. “I don’t need you feelin’ sorry for me.”
“No, I imagine not. Don’t worry, I have very little compassion within me to begin with; I will spare none where it is not wanted. But I’m curious.” That is not a lie. Loki sips his chocolate milk the same way he would champagne at a party.
His candor earns a bitter laugh from Cricket, but also an answer: “You kinda remind me of him, is the thing. The man that killed me. Dark hair slicked back like that, pale eyes, all refined and perfume-y and actin’ like everyone’s beneath you. I don’t like you, and I don’t like that she likes you, but it ain’t my place to say so.”
“Yet you’ve said so,” Loki points out. “To me. Is it my presence that has you worked up?”
“Nah. Just the memory. And thinking about how I can’t go back.”
The god hesitates, sobering, and taps his fingers against his glass. He doesn’t need this boy’s favor. He has nothing to gain by being kind here. Civility is enough. But at last, reluctantly, he says: “Then we have something in common. This man, how did you run afoul of him?”
Gradually, over glasses of chocolate milk, the story unspools. Illegal moonshining, a vendetta with a federal deputy between Cricket and his friends and employers. A big distillery in the woods, and his best friend Jack’s poor judgment, resulting in a bust, and Cricket’s capture, but not Jack’s.
A slow walk through grass and branches, over uneven gravel. One man, smelling of expensive cologne, walking too close behind him. A secluded, overgrown alcove. An arm around his throat, squeezing the air from him. Desperation, blind struggling, a snap, and darkness.
The description of Cricket’s last moments leaves Loki pale, horrified and shaky not because of compassion or kindness, but because of how closely they mirror his own. He collects the empty glasses and flees to the kitchen with them to regain his composure. Cricket follows, tread stiff and uneven, what with the leg braces.
It’s a dangerous moment, with the god standing at the sink, back to the boy. Loki could lash out easily, and maybe the antiviolence field would stop him, or maybe not. In a way, he wants to, that old burning rage and madness tickling his veins. No one would stop him. Not until it was too late.
“Guess we do have something in common,” Cricket says, watching him.
Loki glances back out of the corner of his eye, seeing the small, vulnerable figure standing in the doorway, and the fury melts away. No, he had best save his spite for his own murderer, anyway. He takes a breath and turns. “You have no idea what became of this man, who killed you?”
Cricket shakes his head. “That’s what kills me. Don’t want Jack to do nothing stupid, like go and try gunning him down. He’d do that.”
“Yes,” Loki says, although he’s thinking of Thor, not a stranger. “Yes, he would.”
“Just...the thought of him taking out the Bondurants, too…” Cricket folds his arms around himself. “Keeps me up nights, you know?”
Loki knows, but he says nothing for a moment. Then: “Well. I cannot return to my home, but I can visit yours. What would you have me do?”
The boy’s eyes widen, and he swallows with a click. “Y’ain’t gotta do nothin’ for me.”
He’s tempted, though, and Loki can see it in his face.
“No,” the trickster says. “But it would be my pleasure. I will not expect a favor in return. What was the man’s name?”
“...Rakes. Charlie Rakes.” Cricket worries his lip. “Can you make sure the Bondurants are okay? And Miss Maggie? Especially Jack…”
“I can. And I will.”
Cricket thinks of Jack, and how Rakes beat him half to death just outside Cricket’s own home, and he couldn’t do a thing about it. About the local deputies whispering that he almost pulled a gun on him after he was unconscious, and what was that about, was he gonna shoot the kid in cold blood? He thinks about a man tortured in the woods to make an example of him, and then about himself, killed for the same reason. And he thinks about Forrest Bondurant.
“It ain’t the violence that sets a man apart,” he tells Loki, quoting. “It’s the distance. How far he’s prepared to go.”
“I am prepared,” says the god, and smiles.
Cricket crosses the room, reaches out, and shakes his hand.
(no subject)
Date: 2018-10-31 02:44 pm (UTC)That’s probably not comforting to her, though. He takes another bite of pie, then sets his fork down. “There is a Nexus of worlds--a sort of dimension of its own, located in a hub of hundreds of thousands of other worlds and planets.” Infinite other worlds, actually, but he’s not sure he wants to try to explain the concept of infinity to any human that doesn’t already have a grasp of quantum mechanics.
“I have been living there for a few weeks, and there I met Cricket. He is dead here, but appears to have been sent there rather than to any sort of afterlife. We share a home with a mutual friend. I cannot say we are dear to one another; in point of fact he has told me he dislikes me, but we have experienced similar injustices. He asked me to come check on you.”
Maggie’s eyes are wide, and she reaches awkwardly for the one stool they keep behind the bar, because she needs to sit. If he was looking for a more gratifying reaction, this is it. Forrest is just unfazeable.
Some small part of her thinks the ‘he dislikes me’ part makes it all more believable, though.
“You’re… from the afterlife?”
“Well...an afterlife, at least. Not one of the more popular ones. People do visit the Nexus while still living, as well.” He is inordinately pleased by her shock, honestly, and goes back to eating his pie brightly.
“Mn! He spoke of you kindly, for the record. He told me you were always very kind to him and that you ‘understood’, although he did not elaborate on the latter part.”
She looks a little flattered, but also like she might cry, at that. It’s certainly a more entertaining response. “But he’s… okay? I mean he’s not unhappy?”
Aw. Well...Loki doesn’t like to admit he has soft spots, but he sort of does. They’re well armored, but for a fraction of a second he wonders if anyone will mourn him like that. In any case, his smile fades to something more gentle. “He has a home and friends, work that suits him, and he makes blackberry moonshine that even I find adequate. And I have a refined palate.”
“He has bouts of homesickness, I think. But he is as well as can be expected, and seems likely to get better still, with time.”
Maggie’s expression softens some, at these words, and he might be more fondly remembered if he brought this kind of news to people more often. “That’s… good. That sounds like him. He’s missed, here.”
“The woman we live with seems to regard him as a younger brother. I think he will be fine in her care. Ah, and she is an aerial dancer, among other skills and interests. I think that reminds him of conversations with you, as well.” There is nothing lecherous or patronizing in the way he says this. The reason that there is none of that is because he’s half picturing Harley’s reaction if he was ever a jackass to her about her history.
She blushes, just a little. “I’m not a dancer, anymore. Here is better.”
Forrest comes shuffling back with paper and pen, planning on writing where he can keep an eye on Loki. The bullet fragments remain in the office, carefully put into an empty medicine bottle and set up on a shelf.
“Is it?” He’s not trying to be unpleasant, just mildly curious. “What is it about this place that you like?”
“People are more… honest. Straightforward?” She can’t say there’s less violence here, after what she’s seen, but it is less careless somehow. The Bondurants don’t engage in violence without cause.
“I had best not stay long, then. Honesty is not my forte.” He sips his coffee. “You might be comfortable in the Nexus. I wouldn’t say it’s always honest, but there is a fundamental sense of peace and generosity, from what I have seen. Accidents do happen, though.”
She looks a little surprised and confused by his first comment, because she lacks the mythological familiarity Forrest apparently has. “Is it… a dangerous place?”
“Anyplace can be.” Forrest rumbles, settled at the nearby table writing.
“Purportedly,” he says, “violence is not possible. There is some sort of magic to prevent it, however from what I have heard other residents say, that magic is somewhat fallible. And of course, one will run into beings that are far from human there. That may or may not intimidate you; it doesn’t bother me.”
“What kind of not human?” She looks alarmed by the idea, even now.
Oh, now he wants to just come out and tell her he’s the god of lies. That would lack subtlety, though. “All sorts. I have seen a human man bonded to an alien symbiote, a dinosaur, some sort of plant elemental...and of course there are a number of gods there.”
“I think… maybe I’d rather stay at home.” She isn’t sure about all of what he’s just said, but it’s alarming whether it’s true or just metaphorical somehow.
Forrest gives a grunt and a nod, because he approves firmly of staying at home.
He looks amused, setting his fork down on the plate, pie now all eaten. “Understandable, I suppose. But keep it in mind.”
“Is that an invitation?” She smiles awkwardly.
“Does that matter, if you are inevitably going to decline it?” He smirks. “I’m not here for that sort of social nicety, but I will say, I think Cricket would welcome a visit from any of you. And Harley seems to appreciate company. So, make of that what you will, and I will leave you a method for contacting him.”
“‘Preciate that.” Forrest rumbles, because although he doesn’t want his family stumbling into some unknown place, he doesn’t want to shut that door, either.
“Thank you.” Maggie says politely.
Loki’s manners remain refined and pleasant as he finishes his coffee, and while he’s been given the pie, he pays and tips for the coffee politely. It takes him a moment, because he has to fish change out of his pockets and check the dates on the coins. Once Forrest is finished with the letter, Loki stands and smoothes his clothes with the evident intention of leaving. “I’m not prepared to give you a PINpoint at the moment, but I’ll be back in the morning. If you need me for some reason in the meantime, you’ll have to pray to me.”
He doubts that’s likely. Humans are disinclined, in his experience, to switch deities at the drop of a hat. Still, he departs without further explanation, walking off into the woods, and they won’t see him again for the rest of the day.
The next morning is fairly quiet, but one of their regulars brings in a newspaper to show Forrest. Mason Wardell appears to have died the night before. No foul play is suspected; some screams were heard in the neighborhood in the late evening, but there was not a mark on his body, and while the coroner’s verdict is still pending, the consensus is he died of a stroke or heart attack, the screams merely a last-ditch attempt to get help before it was too late.
Forrest reads the article over thoroughly, and looks deeply satisfied. He has a second letter, from Jack, because he did sit down with him and explain things. He serves Loki coffee without being asked, and offers breakfast.
Loki doesn’t show up until after Forrest has read the article, but he looks exactly the same as he did the day before, and he’s got a copy of the paper, himself. He wants to show off his work, at least. Maybe start a scrapbook.
He sits down like he fully expects to be welcomed, and Forrest doesn’t disappoint, although he’s mildly surprised by the coffee. “Well.” He smiles. “I see you’ve read the news. I would like a few biscuits to take home to my roommates, but aside from that...yes, why not? I’m partial to sweets. Pancakes?”
“Pancakes’re easy enough.” Forrest nods, and moves to get the ingredients for batter. He’s moving much easier today, although he’s still got an unhurried, efficient way of moving.
“Can’t say th’news’ll be unwelcome, around here.” There’s going to be a lot of locals enjoying the newspaper, today.
Loki looks catlike in his pleasure. It’s so rare his work is appreciated. This has been awfully gratifying. “It was simple enough. Did I mention I can shapeshift? I believe he thought there were ghosts coming for his soul at the end there.”
Further details aren’t necessary, he imagines.
“Hmmm. Might still be.” Forrest shrugs, willing to leave such ideas as justice in the afterlife open. After all, Cricket seems to have been given a second chance, so maybe there’s some fairness in the world.