Inbox (Caldera)

[coldsong]

"Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Attack while they are distracted.

Kindly leave a message."

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[coldsong]

[Loki's jaw twitches, too, but in his case it's an attempt to swallow back laughter, which would be partly a tease and partly real bitterness. Isn't it always the way, when he tries to be gentle, when he tries to be sincere, no one wants it?

Well. Too bad. Loki either lays it all on the line here, now, or never. It's no easier for him than it is for Solas, but that, at least, means they understand one another's tendency to contrarianism.

He follows the elf, looking around as he goes, observing. The place is not unlike strongholds in Asgard, though the palace of Valaskjálf itself was more...ornate. Gaudy, by comparison. Loki was accustomed to that in his youth, thought it grand and beautiful, but now even the memory of the gold feels strangely vulgar.

He walks through the hustle and bustle of dream-people, neither ignoring them nor really acknowledging them. They are not here to be acknowledged, or so he assumes. They're memory, color and light and motion, like one of his own illusions.]

You know me well. [He says finally, with a wry smile at the comment about his nature.] But you haven't known me long.

[This is still Loki's dream, in his mind, even if Solas' power is shaping it, and so after a moment he steps away, toward the bridge but not quite up to it. He raises a hand, and the sky above goes black, wind peeling away the clouds and shredding the light, until what looms there is the vast dome of a strange night sky.

Until that, too, is pierced and marred by something else, a veritable floating nation of steel and uru and chrome. Thanos' ship was neither the most beautiful of its kind nor the most advanced, but it was by far the biggest and best-armed.

Loki's heart is already pounding, rapid with the memory of terror and pain, but it doesn't show on his face. Not yet.]

The Sanctuary II. [He says quietly.] The warship of Thanos, the mad Titan, and the flagship of his armada. Any skies that saw this ship would soon be choked with ash. The Black Order came only to destroy, never to take prisoners, and never to show mercy.

I was there when they culled Nak D'Thuru and destroyed all six colonies. The Olara hadn't even discovered space travel, but they died all the same, by the hundreds of millions. There...were...so many. [His breath hitches.]

I cannot even give them the dignity of remembering them all. All those people. Men. Women. Children. Infants.

[goethbeforethefall]

Fear climbs the walls of Loki's mind like clinging vines, and Solas observes it with a carefully-held calm, tight in his fist. He is too old to let another's demons find their claws in him, but these are no warped spirits of terror and grief, no shrouded sorrows weeping. These are memories, shades of old emotion wrought new in a living mind, rather than reflections from the Fade.

And they are terrible. A city in the sky, of the sky, raining genocide down upon all who their shadow falls upon.

"Why?" He asks, helpless before the senseless waste of it all. Hundreds of millions. An impossible number, so plainly stated; half of all of Thedas would make so many, if only barely, "What cause could necessitate such slaughter?"

Mad Titans he thought he knew, but this is a different matter entirely.

[coldsong]

"When he was young," Loki answers, his voice quivering around the edges like the strings of a harp, "His world perished. Overpopulation, he thought. Starvation followed war, followed thirst, followed more starvation. He begged his leaders to cull the population. Kill half to save the rest. They refused and exiled him."

He gives a raw laugh, turning slightly to look at Solas without putting his back to the looming ship, as if he's afraid to fully look away even knowing it's a memory he's conjured himself. "And I understand it. The bitterness of having one's best efforts turned away again and again and again, only to be thought of as nuisance, a mischief-maker, a fool, a monster. I understood him all too well. He could never let it go. He would prove to the universe that he was right, no matter the cost."

"Half of all life, on every planet, everywhere. They started like this. The ship. Old-fashioned weaponry. War." A ragged breath. "But he was looking for something, an ancient artifact, to make the process more efficient. My father, my king, Odin--he owned a piece of it once. The Tesseract."

"I fell from Asgard, and the children of Thanos found me, and I told them where I had come from, and that was the start of my undoing." Every element of the memory Loki has conjured freezes in place, as if he's holding it there.

The elements Solas has brought in remain as lively as he chooses, but it's as if Loki is holding everything as it is with every ounce of will he can muster, lest it dissolve into something worse. The memories of what happened next.

He's seen how shaken they left Felassan, the blur of fire and water. He has no desire to re-experience them, and he's not cruel enough to force anyone else to see them in the first place.

[goethbeforethefall]

"That is..."

Insane. Shortsighted. Illogical. Solas knew from harsh experience, what it was to live in a society with a curtailed population; in an immortal people's world, unchecked population growth was death itself, in the form of new life. But the answer to that was not... this. It could not be this.

Or perhaps it was, in another form?

Slowly at first, and then more rapidly, the black, star-speckled night sky overtakes the white-blue mountain vista. The people fade, the turrets and the valleys are swallowed up in enshrouding shadows, and eventually even the ground beneath their feet is nothingness. Only the star-city, the ship that sails between worlds, remains, sustained by Solas' willingness to allow it, and Loki's nascent, cloying horror. This is his mind, after all, and his right to dream within it.

He considers it, this death-bringer, this shadow of world's end, and thinks to himself, Ah, the Dread. I will recognize you, if I see you again.

"The Titans," He says, and as if in answer to their name they rear up out of the dark.

Massive edifices of stone and magma, their eyes glowing copper-green, orange-fire, white-hot or red luminescence, brought forth from their burning interior lives. They shoulder up through the crust with geological slowness, the green of their cloaks rising and receding like a beating heart. Ten years pass in the space of time it takes to understand what they are looking at, and ten more for that rock-hewn face to turn and look at them, and frown, much displeased.

"My people were born of magic. Of fleeting emotion, and all the changeable, immutable meanings of thought. We were Spirits," Solas continues, and from behind them comes a massive spirit, larger than any dragon, but a pale filigree of a being, spindly and lace-like, its wings a tracery of roots, or veins. The glow of it is as if some unclean overpaint of the world has been scratched away, to reveal the bright metal beneath, pure and shining, "And out of curiosity we wandered the world, seeking out its corners and points of interest. And one day, one of us found a Titan's wound, and the first of the elves was born. The raw material of our transformation was blood; a Titan's blood."

The great pale spirit floats as effortless as a mote of dust, and the Titan bends its mighty head. Made tiny by distance, lying between these two collosi, a miniature elf breathes its first wrenching gasp. Even as the Spirit bends closer to examine this miracle, the Titan rears back from it, shaking its head in disgust.

"As you may imagine, the conflict soon seemed inevitable."

[coldsong]

The hell of it is that for all the illogic, the madness, the reckless selfish determination to win and the delusion that he was doing what he did for the good of all, Thanos wasn't entirely wrong. Excessive population growth is death, but nature tends to have its own way of curtailing it, and where it does not, it's up to a people to develop methods more humane than a lottery of murder.

A grain of truth makes a lie, or a delusion, so much more compelling.

The landscape changes, and while Loki has walked between worlds in darkness greater than this, he has also fallen through airless space and suffered for it, and his mental state is slightly unbalanced right now. While he does not protest the change, he does reach out and grip onto Solas' arm and shoulder as if he needs something steady to hold onto.

He doesn't panic, doesn't protest, but possibly the fact that he relinquishes enough dignity to shrink into Solas' side says something.

It's a strange relief when the Titans appear. Does every world have its story of primordial entities like this? Fire and ice meeting in a scream to create Ymir? Uranus and Gaia and their gory children? Loki is more akin to these otherworldly entities, perhaps, than he is to the Aesir that raised him.

"Every living body that is born is born from water and earth and blood," Loki says softly, watching the tableau play out. "None of us, in my universe, know from whence comes the spirit. It seems you have the answer."

But yes. Conflict would be inevitable, unless the Titans could be convinced to see the elves as their children, as well.

[goethbeforethefall]

"Spirits arise from the dreams and emotions, the memories of those who live," Solas replies, his tone quiet and even, each word strung together with its neighbors in a lulling cadence; what Beleth would call his story-telling voice, "Most begin as a mote of ire, or curiosity, or fright. Wisps, we call them."

And as he spoke, they flocked around them, a cloud of smoky fairy-lights, little living sparks that bobbled through the air, as curious as a basket of kittens, peering at and touching everything.

"If they live long enough, if they are fed according to their natures, they will grow in power and complexity. I was an ancient Spirit of Wisdom for many millenia, long before ever I was as I am now," Solas gestures then at the great pale spirit, its eyeless head crowned with buds of light, wings waving vaguely in an unfelt wind, "The Titans objected to the embodiment of Spirits, of course; they had their own forms of magic, and jealously guarded the Lyrium which was its medium. Perhaps that is fair: it is their blood, if they can be said to bleed. But it is also true that this raw material of creation was in places no harder to find than any other mineral, though of far greater value."

The scene shifts through time again, green waves washing the Titan's disapproving sides as springtimes flow by, and one elf becomes several-many, and a miniature village is built, grows, thrives. Children are born, from the union of flesh rather than any kind of Titan-blood, but still the mountain rumbles with dissatisfaction to see its parasites thriving.

"By the time we were a true civilization, it would have been nearly impossible to completely give up Lyrium, in all its potent forms," The Titan, glaring down at the little city, heaves itself up, opens wide its mouth, and everything comes out, a wet-solid mass of molten stone, a volcanic conflagration. The screams, even at this scale and distance, are viscerally terrible, a scene of death and chaos, "I had hoped once, at least at first, that they intended the first deaths a message, rather than a statement of intent. The Titans were not a naturally warlike people...But it became clear, over time, that there could be only one punishment sufficient to such brazen, continued theft."

Death. The complete genocide of Solas' people, if necessary, and the more harshly the Titans pressed the Elves, the more ferocious their defense, and the more impossible peace became. That the Titans were in the right held no bearing; the Elves would not simply lie down and die, nor would they cease to make more of themselves. And so, the noose of fate wedged ever-tighter.

"...And so, I was asked to create a weapon."

[coldsong]

Dreams. Emotions. Memories. But if these are born from the minds of the living, from whence do the living come? He looks at Solas curiously, wondering if this is a chicken-and-egg situation, but loath to interrupt the flow of the tale. Were the to pause and compare notes, Loki would have a lot to say about aspects of self as he understands it, as he was always taught. Hugr, hamr, fylgja, hamingja; different from the Wisps he describes, but perhaps also strangely akin.

How, then, does a Spirit of Wisdom grow, aside from feeding on further wisdom? It explains a lot about Solas. If the material that forms the base of what you are is understanding, you would never stop wanting to understand more.

He stills once again as the tension from the Titan builds, fidgeting slightly, uncomfortably, as if he can guess, or sense, what's coming. It is still devastating when it comes, and he flinches in a way that Solas will never have seen him respond in the waking world: a jolt as if he wants to help, or flee, and knows neither is possible. Fire...

He has to look away, and his hand is heavier on Solas' shoulder once again. Still, he nods and does not interrupt.

[goethbeforethefall]

Solas holds up his hand, and the dagger comes into being there like a spark of blue fire set to stone. It is beautiful and deadly, as pragmatic as a tooth and implausibly-shaped such as to be more art than weapon. But it is sharp.

"A blade, a lyrium dagger, sharp enough to sever the body from the mind and divide even a soul against itself. The Wolf's Fang."

Below them, that selfsame light blooms out of the village, and the Titan hisses, and bends to strike again, but then stops. For a moment it stares down, transfixed, and then sighs and leans back again. It is a strange, unsettling death, not at all violent, more as if the Titan has simply decided it is not worth bothering and is simply lying down to sleep. It sighs the sigh of an old man sinking deep into his favorite armchair, and from that sigh flows— life.

Pure life. Red and flowing and angry. Virulent and fecund and deadly, cancerous life. It buzzes like an infinite swarm of enraged bees, like a thunderstorm of gnashing teeth, like one great bloodshot eye, looking for somewhere to feed.

"The dagger was designed to sever the Titans from their will, from all emotion and capability for thought. I considered it a mercy, at the time, the only mercy that could be offered— but I miscalculated," Solas continues, as the red haze finds purchase in treetops and stone, spreading like a black oilstain, poisoning, killing, and mutating everything it touches, "The Titan's wounded minds, now enraged, did not pass from their bodies into death. Instead, they became a blight upon everything they touched, conquering, consuming, and multiplying wherever they went."

[coldsong]

For a moment, as the Titan sinks back down, Loki dares to hope this is the end of it, and that it's a good end. After all, what price would any man pay to spare his people such breathtaking violence? A little mind-control to spare both sides of the war the wholesale slaughter that must otherwise result? A cheap price, in terms of ethical violations. Even Loki, whose mind has been gripped and mutilated by his own enemies before, would consider it worth congratulating Solas on his victory, if that was what this is.

But it's not. The flood of red rage that follows makes him grimace. Hugr, hamr, fylgja, hamingja. There are many moving parts within a soul, and splitting one from another can make a terrible thing even worse.

"And you were forced to contain it, then?" He asks softly, not at all sure of his guess. Could such a thing be contained?

[goethbeforethefall]

"Indeed," The glance Solas offers him is measured, "United by the struggle, and the political will of its leaders, Arlathan blossomed."

And, true to the word, the red recedes, drawn in one abrupt sweep down and in, as if it had all be sucked away by some impossible straw. Light and breath resumed, and the village became a city once again, and then a citadel, and then the sprawl of shining towers abruptly blossomed up and out and all around them, climbing the world in every direction, whole castle-sized manors rising into the sky with a butterfly's grace. Everywhere there were birds and spirits flitting about, artworks of painful beauty, and the elvhen peoples walked the streets in a thousand disparate glories, strange and lovely.

"...But it was a rotten fruit, spoiled from within by our own greed. Still, at first it seemed that all lay well, and we prospered. It was victory enough. But of course, the truth about those who have more than anyone could want, who lift themselves above all others, and claim for themselves the title of a god, is that there will never be enough," Solas continued. And the people, they began to change too; taller, more uniformly pretty, trends shaping flesh and fabric both. There was no ugliness permitted in Arlathan, and across every cheek and brow there crawled runes and lines and swooping designs, ink in a thousand colors both subtle and bold, but no face bare among them, "They enslaved us, who had been their brothers and sisters, their children and loyal followers. They claimed the names of gods and claimed true immortality. There was a time when no death was more likely for one of us than to be committed to the foundation of some great work, in blood-sacrifice."

Though, whether that was a testament to the greed of the so-called gods, or to the otherwise very great safety of their protected garden of a civilization, it could not be said— or perhaps the two were one and the same, an agonizing ouroboros of life and death.

"In the end, they made their excuses; that it was for the good of the people, in some way or another, and came to peace with it. Except for me. And after I rebelled, they grasped for ever-more power, and their thoughts turned to the Blight. They thought they could control it. Wield it. Master it."

His tone makes it clear enough what he thinks of that. Solas' rage is not usually so quiet, but these memories were ten millenia dead, though the snarling teeth of it has not left his heart.

"I tried to warn them, calling upon an old friend. Someone I had known, and had loved, for thousands upon thousands of years— one of their own number, their leader and queen. When she questioned them... They killed her. I tried to warn them. And I failed."

[coldsong]

"Nothing like a common enemy to unite a people," Loki says grimly, already anticipating the dark side of this blooming civilization. All too much like the Aesir under Odin's leadership. A people of immense skill, art, intellect. A people expanding to grasp the resources of other worlds, drawing tribute from the conquered and gilding their own culture with it, as if it was their birthright.

His gaze is wistful as he watches Arlathan thrive. Surely there must be a way for such glory to be earned, in all the universes in the multiverse? He's never seen it. The talk of gods makes him glance askance at Solas again. Their understanding of divinity is so different, and he's not sure which of them has the right of it sometimes. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. But the thought of it shifts the landscape of the dream, the skies opposite the vision of Arlathan opening up, shimmering golden and azure as the palace of Valaskjalf swims into view. Also a pinnacle of a civilization's achievement. Also rotten from within. And within its golden walls there is a man, powerfully built, but with flowing grey in his hair and beard. He is missing an eye, but there is no sign of weakness in him in spite of that as he sits on his radiant throne, with a spear in his right hand. And because this is Loki's mind, the emotions tied to this man, Odin All-Father, can almost be tasted in the air. Complicated. Love, admiration, betrayal, contempt, hatred, frustration; yawning, aching loss.

They blend in the air with Solas' rage, like the hot and cold fronts clashing when a storm brews in the sky.

Loki's attention turns back to Solas fully when he speaks of the Blight, and he shudders. No, that's madness however you look at it. "A thing that might be possible, perhaps, but would be an abomination, even were they to succeed."

And a personal affront to Solas, he thinks, given his feelings about the origins of the Blight. No, were he in his position he would have waged war against these gods, too.

"I am sorry for your loss." It's stilted, uncertain, but he means it. Their leader and queen? Betrayals here abound.

[goethbeforethefall]

Solas opens his mouth to speak. Shadows flicker; a woman, the shining blade in her breast. The cruel twist of a man's mouth, his face sculped and handsome and perfect and ugly. The bow-curve of chains, the bruise of a manacle, the—

He masters himself, and the dream steadies.

"She was my friend, once," He says, only, as flat and unfeeling as the placid surface of a deep and icy sea— and as full, "For their crimes against The People, and for what they had done to Mythal..."

They rise up, then, looming over Solas and Loki, tall and cold-eyed and sneering. Elgar'nan in his sun-crown, seated upon a throne, Andruil, cruel and savage huntress, grinning with sharpened teeth and her dark hair tightly-braided, Ghilan'nain, pale an strange and hypnotic, hidden behind veil and mask, June with his hands stained from blood-sacrifice, and Syaise beside him full-figured and blooming with seeming-youth, and her eyes a thick-seething void. The twins, Falon'din and Dirth'amen, specters of death, gimlet-eyed, in gold and silver armor. Solas raised a hand and they all flew back and away, and the world...

...the world went strange. It rippled, like it was being seen through the surface of a pond, quavering, and made distant.

And everywhere... the elves began to decay, to age as they had never before done.

To die.

"I did not have the strength to kill them; any one of the Evanuris had me outmatched. But their arrogance was their downfall. I tricked them, trapped them, and placed them behind a veil which I drew up between the world of the waking, and of the dreaming. What I did not anticipate was that in doing so, I would become the cause of death for every elf alive, and any born since. They became mortal. And I... I fell into a dark and dreamless recovery."

[coldsong]

With his own blade, Loki realizes. They killed her with the blade Solas made.

He thought he had reasons to be bitter at the Aesir, at Odin--and he does--but not like this. Grasped and misused at every juncture; if it were Loki, his hurt and rage would be uncontainable. A living thing unto itself. His heart aches, burns, but: "Their crimes against the People, against Mythal, and against you," he says quietly. Solas' reasons for his actions cannot be solely altruistic. There is only so much insult a person can take, and it is better, Loki thinks, for him to acknowledge that than to allow Solas to pretend he is a rock with no feelings on his own account.

"You don't have to pretend you carry no scars from this. Not here. Not with me." There are details Loki is not even privy to. That glimpse of chains tells him as much, and he doesn't need to know them to offer compassion. Approval even, of the emotions, whether or not the actions Solas followed through with were morally right (he rather thinks they were, but he's biased). He is entitled to his hurt, as Loki is entitled to his own.

And then: a trick. A trap. A smile flickers across the godling's face, and the distant wind-and-bells sound sings for a moment. The smile fades as he understands the price, however; he nods his understanding. This is the trickster nature: you trip yourself up with every transgression. More often than not it's worth the risk.

It's not for Loki to say whether the cost was fair, this time. For all that his kind are long-lived--Aesir easily live five thousand years, and Jotnar can live twice that--he is accustomed to the spectre of mortality. All things being equal, he too will age and die some day. Such was not the case for the elves of Solas' world, evidently, and for him to say it's not so bad would be an affront.

Instead, he sighs and murmurs, "Eiðbróðir. Our experiences are universes apart, yet the more I learn of you, the more I feel akin."

[goethbeforethefall]

At first he wants to refute it, and Solas' snort is a bitter laugh and the child of a sneer, both in one. What they had been to him is... complex. Brothers-in-arms, compatriots, kin and self-kind, long before they became enemies, slave-master, and he...

...But he shakes his head as the years slowly melt by, the world changing as the decades slip silently into centuries, the ages moving across the land in flashes and climbing vines. The elves had endured the Evanuris' conceit, and Solas' arrogance, and Tevinter's cruelty, and Orlais' empire, and even their own foolishness. The descendants of Elvhenan were no longer his responsibility.

They had made themselves very clear, indeed, on that count.

"The People of the current day regard Fen'Harel as a god of lies, trickery, and betrayal," He says, only, and then sighs and lets go the urge to guard himself from it; in all ways it feels unnatural to simply speak his secrets, thus, but it is too late. A foolish impulse, to cringe away now— perhaps Lavellan has at last broken him of some measure of his cowardice, "I have been reading. Your own reputation is not much different. Yes. I was hurt by the Evanuris, betrayed by them; we had been compatriots, once, fought for the People's survival, and their freedom. Yet it is the stories they told of me that survive, though they themselves do not. Without the help of a very clever mortal woman, it would have been my downfall."

Beleth, and her sharp-edged stratagems, a hidden blade from a direction no one thought to look. The perfect scion, the exemplar, kind-voiced and Just, who never offended where she could make an ally, and who suceeded whatever task she bent her will towards... Yes, she was deemed safe, and worthy, by all. And by her brilliant strategy, and her love for Solas, he had been spared the worst of their hatred's consequence— though not all.

"Lethallin. If ever I have the chance to share a world with your Mad Titan, I will do what I have done to all such tyrants," Solas promises then, and turns at last to face Loki, and to look at him with the vow solemn in his eyes, "I do not fear those who name themselves Gods."

[coldsong]

"Stories are the lies that matter the most," Loki says, half as if he's musing out loud, half as if he's repeating a truism he's told himself for centuries. "Sometimes telling them enough makes them true, in the end."

"The Trickster appears in the shadows at the edges of all the great tales, passed from one generation to the next. Reviled and mocked, a monster, a clown, a spark of audacious inspiration that steals fire from the gods and brings it to the hearths of mortals. We unbalance the status quo. We fracture boundaries, burn bridges; we exist to cross lines."

"They say I lie beneath the earth, bound for my crimes, with a serpent dripping venom into my eyes," he adds, with a kind of gentle amusement coloring his voice. "That my writhing causes the ground to quake. That some day, I'll break free and sail a ship made from the nails of the dead to Asgard to bring about the downfall of the gods."

"I never planned to do anything of the kind, naturally. But some of what you've read is probably true."

The years unfurl around them, light and shadow passing across the land like clouds, and Loki changes with them. A young man on horseback, pride shining in his eyes. A woman with raven hair, draped in emerald silk, with a red rose in her hand. A green snake, a laughing child. A blue infant in the snow, cheeks glittering with rime and icicles from tears.

And for a moment, distantly, there is the sound of him screaming, desperation and pain too vivid to be faked. Ashes and gore on the wind.

He shakes himself and looks at Solas, eyes unguarded, wet and red and candid as splashes of blood on the ice. "I only ever wanted someone to care," he says.

"Felassan...I fear he caught glimpses of some of the worst of it. Those Veilwalker creatures. I would not have...I would never have shared that much on purpose. Not to anyone. But I wanted someone to care, to see the villain and victim intertwined."

"That's why I asked, or invited, or offered this exchange, whatever it is. Is that what you wanted, too?" The dream-state tells him what Lethallin means, with at least some of the connotations attached, and in spite of the grimness and weight of the matters at hand, he smiles a little.

[goethbeforethefall]

The years performed their terrible dance, and in a moment, Solas had seen all of Loki's childhood pass by in a strange reverse, time decaying in reverse until he sat small and fat-limbed and helpless in the snow. It was a neat piece of manipulation, if indeed it was that— and Solas was not immune to the effect even as he noted the potential of its purpose. But even that brought a smile to him; how alike they were, even in this, they two mirrored selves, trickster-gods from worlds apart.

And Felassan, he thinks, has seen a great deal worse than torture. But he merely nods recognition and says nothing. No words can heal such wounds; time alone, and the fortitude to endure.


"I am often accused, unjustly, of not caring," He says, carefully. Solas steps near, near enough to touch if Loki reached out— he does not himself stretch out his hand, too reserved by far. But now he is nearby, and no longer does he keep his hands clasped behind his back, only folded respectfully, where they can be seen, "It was only Beleth who seemed to recognize that the problem, in truth, was— is that I care too much."

All you have to do is stop. The voice is a clarion-call, Beleth's clipped tones, the rough Dalish burr wearing through her usual high tones.

"...I suppose my purpose was the same for you as it had been for her. I am the hand that caused the ongoing genocide of my people. Worse: I have willingly chosen to allow it to continue, though at their behest. Perhaps it was foolish to hope that that would drive anyone away, no matter how vividly-told the tale. Many centuries stand between myself, and Wisdom."

[coldsong]

Sometimes there is a fine line between emotional honesty and manipulation. Empathy is powerful. It would take a more callous soul than either Loki or Solas to be blind to the pathos of a lost child in the snow, and they both know it. But it's true, whether it's manipulation or candor. He was this. He was also a vicious conqueror once, for a short, unwilling while. People are complicated, and trickster-gods are the most complicated of all.

There is something almost childlike in Loki's question: Is that what you wanted, too? Are we, really, so alike? Can I give you this piece of what you need, and be given the same in return?

He can't offer to slay Solas' demons, though he would if he could. For the most part, they seem to be already slain. Loki might have the fortitude to play the long con Solas did, to make sure they go down and stay down, but the work is done now, and all that is left is approval or reproach--or neither, which is what Loki is best at giving. No judgment, but an easy and open understanding.

"Seeing the greater picture, the long sweep of time and causality, will inevitably make a person seem callous," he says softly, thoughtfully. "I loved Thor, but I would have thrown him under the wheels to protect Asgard. I thought I had to. I would have ground Midgard under my heel to save the rest of the universe. It was short-sighted, perhaps wrong-headed, but it wasn't a lack of love. I understand."

"Humility doesn't come easy to those of our ilk. We see what must be done and do it in spite of our own wishes, and sometimes someone has to take the responsibility from our hands, even if that involves breaking a few fingers. Someone has to tell us to stop." He gives Solas a smile that's sad, apologetic, and nothing short of tender.

Thor did try, with him, but the timing was bad. He was being listened to. He couldn't stop. It was too late.

Loki's hands come up to rest on Solas' upper arms. Perhaps the prelude to a reassuring embrace, perhaps the prelude to him shrinking into himself, leaning into the elf for the protection he offered a moment ago. He isn't sure, himself. "I know what I am and what I've done and why I've done it. I have no place to pass judgment on you. You can't drive me away like that. I can hold your every flaw, eiðbróðir, and love you the more for it. Never doubt that."

[goethbeforethefall]

No, Loki would not long stand against Elgar'nan, just as Solas could not defeat him alone, and though his protective intent colors the air, it is a folly. Tyranny rarely begets friends, and it was always Elgar'nan's habit to focus all power into his own hands, all strength. A fool's gambit, ultimately— and Solas, thinking himself clever, had forgotten the power of many hands to subvert such things, in time. Perhaps that is the truth of the offer Loki is holding out in both hands, his palms chafing dry and warm, or the memory of warmth, against Solas' skin.

But Loki will not be driven away. Not by horrors, or mistakes, or his own arrogance. What, then? Deliberate murder? Unlikely. Betrayal? Equally, just so.

"You are insufferable," He informs Loki, in a longsuffering spirit, and with halting motions, lifts his own hands to grasp Loki's arms in turn, a mutual hold. It is a concession, an admission of defeat, to accept the nebulous offer, "Impossible."

There is an air of yet more manipulation in this, the earnest, emotional plea, a coin of loyalty banked, to be spent later... But he cannot mind it. He would do the same. Just as Loki would throw his own brother to the millstone, should the cause be sufficient to the purpose, and both be called a villain for it.

"Many things are easier for me, in the Fade," He says, though it is obvious by now, and why, "Love, not least of all. What do you intend to do, having forged such a connection?"

Don't make him say it.

[coldsong]

This time, the stilted insults just make Loki laugh, in soft musical notes. A giggle, like a schoolgirl who has been complimented. "And yet," he points out, "you suffer me. Here you are."

He lets his shoulders relax, lets his head roll forward to rest his forehead against Solas' shoulder, and closes his eyes for a moment. There are no words for what it means to him that Solas would see the full depth and breadth of the horror that was Thanos, and immediately threaten to undertake his destruction, should the opportunity arise. One hopes to the Norns that an opportunity does not arise, in fact, but forgive Loki if he takes just a moment to fantasize about it, about watching the Black Order dissolve into stone and feeling truly safe for the first time in over a decade.

But it is merely that; a fantasy. The reality is that they are here in Caldera, and their demons are not. Which is the point of origin for this discussion. They bear scars, both of them, and they are hidden to all but their most intimate friends--which is fine as far as it goes, but even their most intimate friends are not other trickster-gods.

"It's impossible to know whether we will feed into one another or keep one another in check, at any given time," he suggests. "But knowing where one another's bruises are may at least give us a warning when Caldera starts prodding at them. I would break myself and others to save worlds, to spare lives. You would do the same to shatter chains. We may need to be prepared to tell one another to stop, and think, and find a better way."

They were built without brakes, the both of them. The connection they have forged, as Solas phrases it, isn't exactly a substitute, but love of any kind is a good reason to refrain from dying, to refrain from doing something that cannot be undone.

"I intend to protect you from yourself, as needed," he says with another little laugh. "And allow you to do the same to me, whether I like it or not."

"Everything else can come with time," he gives a nod without lifting his head, nudging his shoulder like a cat. What form of love is this? Who knows? Does it matter? It's there, like the aurora overhead, shifty and luminous and a little eldritch, green and violet and searing blue.

[goethbeforethefall]

Solas is not often hugged.

That is a lie: he is hugged frequently, and indeed far moreso than he has ever before been, in his entire life. Solas is no longer the lonely, starvling creature he had been, untouched for millennia by any hand who did not wish him harm. Beleth saw to the end of that long, aching time, and he is more whole for it. But aside from her welcome embrace, it is still rare.

And everything is so raw in the Fade, so easy and emotional and close-by. So comfortably honest— and comfortably obfuscating.

Loki leans in, and Solas cannot move, either to draw back again (which would be wiser, surely) or to mirror the gesture appropriately. For a moment or two, he simply stands there, and Loki speaks into the shaded space between them, and he breathes in the startling warmth of the moment. It is unspeakably precious.

I intend to protect you, Loki says, and Solas knows he means it to the heart and bone of him, but takes it with a soft sound, like a man with a knife in his gut, and breaks. All at once, he has let go of Loki's arms and has instead wrapped him tightly 'round like a forlorn child. A squeezing, wrenching, clinging, scraping, clutching, covetous grasp, with his nose turned into Loki's hair, and the Fade gone still and sharp and remote all around them, memories fading away into nothingness, whisping away as if it were only snow on the wind.

"You are an idiot," He lies, with his hand on the back of Loki's neck. The other is a fist in the back of his shirt, and his power is a grip no less firm, painting every moment as viciously, vividly real.

Does he think he can defang a wolf with love alone? Of course. Of course. There is nothing else that ever truly has.

[coldsong]

He should not be surprised. Of course the two of them feel things similarly, every emotion sharp as a blade, ice and fire and the blaze of light on untempered snow. Of course Solas would feel it as keenly as Loki, hunger for empathy, longing for care. Nurturing and protection are not made for creatures such as they; all the more reason, then, that they should give such care to one another, if they can. And Loki can. He knows he can. God of Outcasts; they see themselves in me, and I in them. All of us alone, together.

He feels himself wanting to lean in, curl up as small as he can against the elf and take shelter from his own fears; a split second later, Solas is wrapped around him, holding onto him like he's something precious, and the seidr-threads that stitch up the patchwork of Loki's self--hugr, hamr, fylgja, hamingja--absolutely sing with recognition, like a harp whose strings have been plucked.

Oddly, suddenly, the shadows of fear and trauma are the least important things in the world. Kinship, understanding, that's everything he wanted. He surprises himself next, making a low, happy, purring sound in response to being told he's an idiot. Mmhmmm... He knows. Obviously.

"I'm here," he says, and without the backdrop of the Fade perhaps it would be a nonsensical thing to say. "I'm here now."

Defanging was never the point, you see. The point was to embrace the fangs along with the rest of the wolf, as it should be. Wolves belong in packs.