Frost and fire ((For Reynard))

[coldsong]

It is nigh-impossible to track a Spirit, even for a being like Loki, who is in some ways related. Until the storm ended, he had little hope of catching up to Reynard, unless Winter Itself wanted him to. And frankly, Loki didn't want to work at it too hard.

Wanting something too much leaves you at a disadvantage when it appears before you.

He's been waiting, thus, with the trophy the Eliksni gave him to carry, fully prepared to carry out his task but maybe taking a bit longer with it than they expected. Blaze's friends won't thank him for that, either, probably, but for his own sake he needs to know more. There are loose threads to be pulled together here. This crisis was not, he thinks, merely Reynard flexing his might. Nor was it a simple invasion by an alien force. How they were related to one another remains a mystery, and Loki has a gnawing feeling there's something more at play he is missing.

For one thing, it doesn't make much sense for another Nexusite to have shot Blaze in the back of the head in the midst of a battle.

His is the kind of madness that demands a full explanation for everything, inasmuch as one can be gleaned.

(No. You took me for a purpose. What was it?... TELL ME!)

And so, as soon as success seems like a possibility, he searches for Reynard. Outside the season, he won't be, Loki assumes, quite so evasive. At least not physically evasive. Chances are he'll still have the power to talk in circles in much the way Loki does.

But maybe he'll be gratified to see the god wearing his Jotun skin, still, even though the season has shifted.

Comments

CW: gore/heat injury

[coldsong]

The quiet after Reynard laughs is strange. Like something around them holds its breath. Even the wind pauses, not a hair stirring on either of their heads.

Loki just looks at him, red eyes opaque, the set expression on his face makes him look like he could have been carved out of slate and stone.

"No." He says at last, softly, and looks up at the branches over their heads. "No, of course you do not. You cannot disparage that which you know nothing about save a few words from my lips. And yet you are as quick to laugh and shrug it off as anyone I've ever spoken with, human or no."

"Would you like to hear? Or see? Perhaps that is where I go wrong when I attempt to explain myself. Perhaps instead of saying 'here is where I was injured' I should show the scars, or the images of the injuries being inflicted, moment by excruciating moment. Would you like to hear my screams as my bones were literally burning beneath my skin? Smell the steam as it emerges from the wounds? I could show you."

"I could show the Nexus at large. And then it would be their trauma, and no longer my own. But until then, no one will tell me how to feel again, nor belittle my words, nor suggest I should be over it already, less than a decade later with my torturers still at large in the universe."

"No. Not even you. Reconsider your words."

[shardofwinter]

Stone doesn't scare Reynard. Partly because stone doesn't try to scare anyone. Mountains and caverns and rock, molten or tumbling, impress upon others what has been impressed upon them. That's why he likes mountains. They stand, unabashed and unwavering in what they are and what they've been through, and refuse to pity the fool who doesn't respect that.

The face of blue stone staring at Reynard now incites a bit of strange fondness. Those words still feel young, but not irritatingly so.

"They wouldn't care," he half-whispers, half-croaks. "They would pity it and their mouths would dance with pretty platitudes like water dancing on hot coals, to say whatever they think is 'good'. Not honest. Not heartfelt. Just parroted niceties that are as unsatisfying as the deaths of your torturers will be."

Another swig, another sigh, but his smile is softer now. Bittersweet. "You are a god, Loki. Whatever you experienced will have befitted a god. I am as good as a man. My pains were not dramatic scenes suited to legends and myths. Mine were slow, and numerous, and relentless, and deep. Shared by millions upon millions of people, so they were insignificant in the grand scheme of things. There is nothing special about rotting with corpses, or starving, or bleeding, or having every part of you broken in every conceivable way like every other poor sod in line. I could show you, too, but it would be dull. A hundred million people could show you the same things. The same pain. The same suffering. The same few ways of dealing with it."

"No," he whispers. Clearing his throat, he continues, "I can't tell you how to feel. But I've treated you the same as everyone else. Passed down what I was told that I found to be truth."

"You're right, I don't know what happened to you." His face pinches, grimacing in preparation for his own words. "But I know suffering. I know it well. Time, Death, Suffering. My three age old companions. I have watched, given, taken and experienced them all. And what use is experience if you can't share what you've learned?"

[coldsong]

"I know they wouldn't," he says, and some of the tension leaches out of his frame, like a silent sigh. "But they would suffer, and bear the scars. And perhaps they would remember me, then. A divine wound that bleeds through every attempt to bandage it."

"I do not need pity, or compassion, but I will have respect for my pain." Somehow. He's not sure how.

The mask of stone dissolves, and the Jotun features look softer again. His eyes are hungry, hurt, but wary. "Beautiful pain is no more enjoyable to suffer, I think."

But this is real, this conversation. It feels like the realest one that has passed between them. If the currents of reality were spinning around them for the duration of their talk in the ice cave, the same are still now. There is no grandeur here, but there are two people trying to understand one another across a gulf of disparate experience, and for a moment Loki feels like the veil has been torn. Just a little.

He didn't expect an apology, anyway. This is better.

"I respect your suffering," he says quietly. "No less so because it is common to many. No less so because it is uncommon to me."

He looks down. "I held the candle to billions of deaths. My moral compass may not point to the same north as others' do, but that sits ill with me. And when I failed to deliver still more to my unasked-for master's feet, I was told...I was threatened. And I believe the threat. How am I to take ownership of myself when part of me expects at any moment to see him coming for me once again?"

"You would be heard. So would I. I am afraid, and tired of it, and sick of having my sins benevolently forgiven when what I ask is that they be understood."

Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.

"But I will try to hear you, if you will speak with me."

[shardofwinter]

One of the cruellest truths is that revenge smells sweet but tastes of ash in every way but to speak of it. To tease it provides some small relief. Reynard won't begrudge Loki that, but watches the god with the quiet watchfulness of one waiting to see if Loki really believes what he's saying.

Somewhere, between the hurt and bitterness, there's a hope in what the trickster says. A hope that he can get what he seeks. Reynard's not sure he has that anymore.

Something Loki says tugs his mouth back into a smile. "Some sins, when they're forgiven, just show how little they're understood. A forgiveness from someone who doesn't understand, really understand, means nothing."

His head falls to look at the bottle rolling between his hands. "What can I say? Would I tell you of my many sins, my miracles? My lifetimes? A hundred hundred Reynards by a hundred names?" He shakes his head and sighs. "There's too much of my life to share it all, and too raw a painful beginning to start at the start."

"I would say, though, that I've been free and captive, and freedom comes with enemies. Whether you make them or meet them." He eyes Loki and offers him the bottle again. "You know who yours are. You might assume he's always coming for you. But that doesn't stop you from taking ownership of yourself. No one else controls that. Believe that much, at least."

[coldsong]

Somewhere deep down where even Loki himself is not ready to acknowledge, is this: it is not only revenge against Thanos that drives him. His moral compass, as he says, points only to where it will, but even in his worst rage he would never have sought the death of half the universe. He...thinks. He hopes. Dear, Norns, he hopes.

His memories have holes. They swim up through murky waters and flash in and out of his consciousness like sharks in a stormy sea. He remembers torture. He remembers resisting. He is not sure whether he resisted before the first Cull he witnessed, or after. And he is not sure enough of himself at that time in his life to trust that he would have tried to say no, or stand apart from the Order, rather than bargain for his own interests and watch as millions burned.

He doesn't know. He doesn't remember. He only remembers the disruptor fire and the screams. How reliable even is that? There was a time he swore Thor had thrown him from the broken Bifrost and laughed as he fell into darkness.

Vengeance, he will swear, is his right and his motivation, but there is guilt, also, and if a Trickster has any sworn enemy, guilt is it.

He claims he needs someone else to understand. Possibly he needs to understand, himself, as well. He is forever an existential disaster. He may not be without hope after all, though. He has yet to declare defeat.

"Ah," he says quietly, and without the sly amusement that often colors his voice. "But I have more time than most to listen."

He doesn't believe that Reynard will take him up on it, but it's worth pointing out. He takes the bottle when it's offered to him and looks it over dully, a bit worn out by the conversation. "And I am still working out what 'self' to own. You present me with another conundrum, friend. Both past and future are uncertain, to me."

This time he takes a longer drink from the bottle before handing it back. "Remind me to bring you an Asgardian ale some time."

[shardofwinter]

Reynard remembers everything... Or so he thought. There are some very specific gaps in his memory. Things to ask Winter to reveal, one by one. Each time wondering whether he wants to know, since each thing revealed is a torturous affair. Sometimes forgetfulness is a blessing.

But Reynard doesn't want to know because he's afraid of not knowing. He's afraid of why he doesn't know. Why does his perfect memory fail him on such particular occasions. He has a suspicion, and that's perhaps worse again. Does he find out? Confirm his theory despite the painful struggle involved? Or does he leave well enough alone? After all, what does it matter, in the end?

"I always chose to confess to criminals over priests. Men who understood over those who preached." With a smirk, he asks, "What would confessing to a god mean? Would I be breaking my habit or continuing it?"

"I'm afraid I go for quantity over quality during Spring." He manages a wry smile. "But I give the confusion is all year round."

[coldsong]

Loki knows what put holes in his brain, and why, and resents it bitterly. He was not aware when the Scepter was given to him that the Mind Stone would affect him as well--that it had, in fact, already begun to affect him--but at that point his resistance had been ground down by torture anyway. He remembers the feeling of something nipping away at his mind, the whole time he held the staff. Remembers craving contact with the scepter, wanting to be touching it constantly, needing the closeness even when it sat in the lab aboard the helicarrier. An addiction that was forced upon him.

He knows full well what the Mind Stone can do now, and what it did to him, but not where exactly it did it. That's maddening.

Perhaps that's another thing they have in common, though.

Loki blinks at the comment about confession, and the morose look falls away into a real smile. "I would say that depends upon the god. In my case, probably continuing it."

It's absurd, and probably risky, that he covets this individual's attention. He cannot trust Reynard, and yet he knows at this point he will continue to seek him out and pick at that distrust to see what's underneath.

"If your metabolism is roughly human at this time of the year, a few sips ought to give you eight or ten hours of blissful oblivion and a hangover that will make you think you've died and gone to Hel. Otherwise, it's quite nice."

He's quiet a moment, then says, "I do not know if you require it. I assume a being so ancient and canny has his own means of avoiding trouble, but should you find you need sanctuary in the warm seasons, from the wrath of the Nexus at large, I will provide it. As repayment for your hospitality to me this last Winter."

[shardofwinter]

That gets a snort. "I thought as much."

Loki isn't a god of judgement and wrath like so many. There is a grit and dirt to his myths that shows even through the princely shine of this incarnation. God of outcasts indeed. If there is to be a bridge between Reynard's world and that of the divine, a liar and an outcast is surely it.

"It won't be worse than the hangover I get in Spring. It might be a comparatively pleasant distraction," he grumbles. Oblivion certainly sounds good right about now.

He eyes Loki with a gaze that would be suspicious if he had the energy to so much as pretend at wariness. "Careful now. Offers like that to me will get you enemies here."

[coldsong]

Grit and dirt and some rather scatological humor. Some of which he cannot deny or squirm away from the punchline of. His wrath is not unheard of, perhaps, but generally speaking he does try to avoid judgment. It only ends, in his case, with hypocrisy and finger-pointing. Best to just...accept. Retaliate if it's warranted, harass or tease if it's entertaining, but accept.

"Well, don't tell Thor when I bring you a bottle, and plan for the hangover."

He raises an eyebrow at the uncertainty and gives him a wry smile, shaking his head. "Different from the enemies I would earn on my own? At the risk of sounding sentimental, it feels right to make the offer. Not in the sense that it is good or kind, but in the sense that it is fitting."

[shardofwinter]

These kindnesses... Offers of ale and sanctuary. It sits uncomfortably with Reynard. This isn't a woman he's seduced, or a person he's charmed. Loki knows him, as much of him as anyone else knows, except for Hazel. Yet still he offers.

Because it's fitting, though... Perhaps that's the only reason he could understand. Something being done because it is Proper in a Natural way. Yes, that he can accept, and he finds an unnoticed tension slipping from his shoulders.

"Thank you." Despite his resolve to accept it, there's still hesitance in his voice.

He looks to his hands and the near-empty bottle in them. "In all my time walking my world, and the Nexus, I've seen a great many people with a great many talents and skills. From what I can tell, the only task I am not easily ousted from is in bearing witness. If you want to share your story to someone who won't forgive, because I have no right to, then I will listen. I don't promise I can understand, but I can listen, and remember."

[coldsong]

Loki offers, and he offers with eyes open. Winter doesn't play favorites, he's been told, and he may well find sorrow and destruction next time it rolls around. And in the meantime, Reynard himself is unabashedly difficult and contrarian. He may well regret leaving himself open to some unpleasant turn later on, but he was just advised to take ownership of himself rather than giving it to those who have mistreated him--or might mistreat him in the future.

He smiles at the thanks and gives a somber nod. That costs a person like him, like Reynard. He will not push his luck with a 'you're welcome'.

He'd take his leave now, in fact, except then the Spirit makes his own counteroffer, and his breath catches in his throat. His eyes closer briefly, and he swallows, and then nods. "Yes."

"Please." Perhaps not now, while he's still recovering and also heading toward drunk, but Loki would like nothing more than for someone to just listen.

[shardofwinter]

Gods, men, beasts, plant and stone... They're all just husks for different spirits. For all that Loki is a powerful being, a prince, a warrior, a sorcerer, a schemer with the power to inflict all manner of terrifying realities, he's also still a spirit curled inside a body. Just as Reynard is now. Though the Winter spirit fears for his body, his mortality, it affords him the unique opportunity to go beyond his bounds. He can help Winter souls, and Winter's lessons, outside of Winter.

Besides, he's always been at a disadvantage outside Winter. Always a poor man, a weak man, a hunted man. How is involving himself with gods any different?

So Reynard nods and takes a swig of his drink. The deal is made. Partly for himself. It feels infinitely better to make an exchange of offers than to owe anyone anything.

"I know you can't tell when the air is thick with Spring, but give it some time before you make good on that. For both our sakes."

[coldsong]

"I can tell when the air is thick with pollen," he says dryly, opening his eyes. "I suppose that's not quite the same."

The hint of stone is long gone from his face, replaced with a hint of wary brightness. They've made a deal, for no reason so simple or pure as kindness or friendship. But their backs are occasionally to the same wall, and in the end perhaps there is something of kinship between them whether Loki likes it or not. "Yes, I was getting the impression you're suffering the aftereffects of the change of seasons. On a bender to compensate?"

Honestly, he can't disapprove. "I will seek you out again in a few weeks, then, assuming I don't land in worse trouble than I anticipate. And if possible, I'll bring you an Asgardian mead."

[shardofwinter]

'Aftereffects'. Reynard closes his eyes and breathes slow and steady for a moment. There's no way for anyone, even Loki, to understand. The meagre explanations he can offer barely come close, but trying and failing to get across such a wretched state of being is too close to home to try attempting right now. He'd only struggle and fail, and be frustrated at his own inability to share something so tangible.

"Sedation is the only way to get through this." He opens his eyes and finishes the bottle, scowling as he realises the last drop has gone down his throat. Onto the next, then. "Try not to get lynched. I'd like that mead."

[coldsong]

"My apologies," Loki tells him, mild but sincere. He's not sure quite what's going on in the man's head, but clearly coming from Winter to Spring is more difficult than a mere hangover.

There's no point in elaborating on the sudden flicker of compassion he feels, though, and so he merely sits back and watches the last drop of rum vanish, then gives Reynard a wry nod. "Best of luck, then."

He gives a brief, lazy stretch like a cat's, and then levers himself to his feet. "As long as the antiviolence field holds I'll be fine. Be as well as you can be, then, until we meet again."