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]

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.