truly_desperate (truly_desperate) wrote in momadness_log, @ 2022-10-06 14:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | marvel: loki odinson, the magicians: quentin coldwater |
Who: Loki & Quentin
What: A chat about looming threats and magic
When: Evening, October 6, 2019
Where: Asgardian streets
Warning/Status: None
Status: Completed via Gdoc
The orange of the sun set was starting to paint the street in a warm color. The air was crisp with a fresh breeze. It was getting colder. Yet, the Asgardian monarch hardly cared. Short sleeves and linen trousers. That was all he wore as he watched his people. Some of them adapted to the life among Midgardians quickly, others were still clinging to their own traditions. Two young boys dashed past him, almost crashing into him on the way. Loki’s eyebrows shot up and he almost had a stern cough on his lips.
“Ex-” That was how far he got before a woman who he supposed was their mother followed in their trail.
“I am so sorry, your Majesty,” she said in a rushed manner. Then she almost screamed. “Arne, come back! Stop chasing your brother!”
Loki opened his mouth shortly, blinked and then shook his head. He doubted they would have behaved around Odin this way. Times had certainly changed.
—
"Ah, the impetuousness of youth."
This from Quentin, who was not quite thirty yet and could appreciate the irony of acting like an old codger—especially when he'd actually been one once. He turned to grin over at his fellow street stroller, which was about the time he figured out who he was talking to and nearly tripped over his own feet.
The stack of books he'd been carrying went flying.
And then stopped in midair.
Q did a small but quick tut which made them swirl around for a moment before settling back in his waiting arms. He sent a pink cheeked smile of contrition in the king's direction. "Uh, sorry, your majesty. I don't really make it a habit of just talking to royalty without going through the proper channels. Deposed and former, I'd probably make an exception, since I'm the latter, but who knows. Anyway, yeah…"
—
At first, Loki’s eyebrows raised. Then the corner of his lip quirked up and settled into a smile. The man amused him. Flustered reactions always did. He leaned towards the man, his tone quickly dropping into the comfort zone of chitchat.
“You are quite right though… about the children. Unruly. Not that I was any better… I just knew how to hide it well and who not to do it in front of.” And he wondered if the last bit wasn’t still true; the children after all had suffered no consequence.
—
"My mom said I broke everything I touched." Q shrugged, but the memory stung. He'd missed his own father's funeral, and his mother relished in pointing it out whenever she could. That whole sequence of events was a continuous string of nightmares that he was very careful to push aside to the dark corners of his mind. A street in the middle of New Asgard was the last place he needed to embark on any kind of self-reflection.
Shifting the books to one arm let him free up a hand, which he offered out. "I don't think we've met, which is understandable, because I don't live here and I'm really only here for Cath's and now this history circle that one of the bartenders told me about at the wedding the other day and now I have all these really cool books to read about the Nine Realms. But anyway, hi, I'm Quentin. Coldwater. Quentin Coldwater."
—
The man didn’t stop talking, did he? A prattle of information and one had to pick and choose the relevant parts. It made Loki chuckle. He was quick to dismiss any oddities he spotted as a mortal thing. But one of the young scientists had sounded quite similar this morning during her brief.
“Loki Odinson,” he said as he shook the hand he had been offered. A Midgardian greeting he had learned. “But I have a feeling you might have guessed that… now, I hope you haven’t picked out Bjorn Swefelson’s description of the Nine Realms. I can recommend making a long winding bow around that one. The man was later found to be in the employment of Alfheim during a time where Alfheim was deep entrenched in a civil war and at odds with almost all of the other realms. An unbiased history of the Nine Realms is what it’s called. Don’t ever trust a history book which claims to be unbiased, I say. Everyone knows that there is no unbiased account of history.”
—
Q had never been the kind of person who judged someone by the caliber of their handshake (his own was probably super limp-noodley; honestly, he wasn't sure why he'd himself had offered in the first place), but there was no mistaking the strength of Loki's grip. Once freed, his hand went back to support the borrowed books. He had the grace to look slightly abashed. "You're feeling was pretty on point, but I gambled on being polite as the correct social etiquette when meeting Asgardian royalty."
He chuckled at Loki's adroit observation. "Don't I know it. Fortunately, there are no 'unbiased' titles in this stack, but just because it's not in the title doesn't mean there won't be a sprinkling of color commentary and told-by-the-victor slants. Einar seems pretty cool, though. I don't think he'd steer me too wrong. Or the others in that group, for that matter. I'd never say no to recommendations from one of the standing rulers, though. Were you ever into history and stuff? I'm fascinated by the magical aspect of everything."
—
“Magic, hmm?” Loki had tucked his hands behind his back as he had nodded in agreement with Quentin’s own thoughts. An intelligent conversation was something to treasure. Sadly, he had found that not everyone in Asgard was able to lead one. “Are you a sorcerer yourself?”
—
"We call ourselves Magicians in my world, but yeah. The thing with the books just then, how I kept them from falling? That was my kind of magic." Q gave a single shrug, even though this was a topic he could spend hours on if the flood gates were open. He wasn't sure what kind of audience the Asgardian king might be, however, and he didn't want to cause some kind of diplomatic incident by boring the monarch to death. "It still works here for some reason, but I've been trying to see if I can use some of this universe's spells and stuff while I'm here. I haven't had much success, but I've been able to adapt some things into the type of magic I use, which is really cool if you're into the theory of magic at all."
—
"You are a studious one, aren't you?" Loki said. His lips quirked upwards in amusement. The question was purely rhetorical. "I can hardly fault you… for a century or two I lived in the library myself. History… magic… so much more. Only fools would keep their eyes shut to the wisdom of our ancestors." But there was one thing that Quentin mentioned which made Loki curious. "Tell me, though, why did you doubt that your magic works in this world?" He had never even considered that there was a world out there in which his magic stopped working. Even with everything crazy that went on. That had never occurred to him.
—
It wasn't the scathing accusation that many people might take it for, which left Quentin with the ability to shrug once again. "That's one word for it. Another is nerd, which I'm okay with, since it fits pretty well." He was already nodding his agreement and about to chime in that this was usually what he did with his time as well, and that he couldn't agree more with that idiom. That was before the Big Question was dropped, however, the one he could really get going on if someone wasn't careful. "Okay, so…"
That was about the time when Q realized that the books were pretty heavy, and this was potentially a very long explanation. "Do you mind if I ask you a question first? Or put these books down somewhere before I drop them?"
—
“Of course…” For a moment, he hesitated. He wasn’t one to invite just anyone into his house. But he was enjoying the conversation and since he had started to exchange his magical practices with Dresden, the idea of adapting the magic from other worlds had fascinated him. It was an avenue full of potential. “My house is just over there… I could offer you some coffee and a space to put your books.”
—
To say that Quentin's face lit up before he could school it into something a little more sedate would not have pushing the realms of disbelief in the slightest. "Yes, please! That would be great. I basically lived on coffee and Adderall when I was in undergrad. We won't discuss what I lived on at Brakebills. That was the magic school I went to. But I might be giving you spoilers for what we were waiting until I got to your place to talk about."
This artless prattle got them up to the aforementioned house and to the door, where Q waited more or less patiently at the door and tried not to gawk like a tourist. It wasn't the first time he'd been inside one of the homes in New Asgard, but he'd most definitely not been inside the royal variety.
—
Loki’s home was by now far removed from the standard houses of Asgard. The reality gem had allowed him to alter furniture and walls to his choosing. So when he pushed open the doors, it revealed a house with Asgardian accents and decor. In Loki’s mind, the house of a king should look like a king lived in it. It was as much about status as it was about his own preferences. But it wasn’t a perfect recreation of an Asgardian residence either. The kitchen on the left had mostly remained untouched and some of the furniture were clearly from Midgard.
“Please, you can place your books on the table…” he said as he entered his house. Despite being one of the bigger residences, it couldn’t rival an Asgardian house. For Loki’s standards, it was tiny. But he could hardly justify the grandeur of a palace when people had demands left and right. So he had compromised and by now he had adjusted.
“And how do you like your coffee?” he asked as he stepped into the kitchen area. The open floor plan still allowed him to continue his conversation with Quentin while he busied himself in the kitchen. At first, he had frowned upon it. The prince who was used to having his servants prepare his food saw no need to see the work area of the kitchen in his daily life. Sadly, he was his only servant and suddenly the view into the dining area had its use.
—
Quentin was no real stranger to New Asgard's homes or, indeed, palaces. He'd lived and been ruler in the latter, after all, although his reign had been admittedly brief. So while he didn't gawk outright the moment he stepped inside Loki's place, his eyes certainly roamed appreciatively at the marked uptick in regal splendor.
He set the books down where indicated and followed Loki a respectful distance. The place wasn't palatial, but it seemed kind of rude to wander in low-key awe. His attention snagged on the wall of books in what appeared to be an office, and he nearly tripped over his own feet while his palms began to itch with the desire to run in there and dive right in.
"Uh, black is fine. I mean, good. Yeah, it's good. Sometimes I do things to my coffee, but most of the time I can't be bothered." Quentin chuckled, but mostly at the word salad coming out of his mouth. "Is—do you mind if I ask how much of the stuff in your home is original to Asgard? Einar and some of the others told me what happened to your world, and I'm sorry for that, truly. I had something really similar almost happen to a place I loved.
"Which in a roundabout way, actually leads me to the question I was going to ask you: do you know where your magic comes from?"
—
“You do things to your coffee?” Loki said drily. He cocked his head to the side and the comic grimace on his face suggested that he imagined anything but milk and sugar. He was amused mostly but a good opportunity to tease was not to be passed on lightly.
He started to pull out mugs from the cupboards and set them on the counter. He spoke to the coffee maker as he answered. It was Midgardian and while he would like to claim that Asgard’s coffee was better, his taste buds sadly disagreed with him. If they ever had the chance to go home, he would take the coffee maker with him. “My mother learned it from the witch coven that raised her, I learned it from her,” Loki said. For him, it perfectly answered the question. He had never thought about it more deeply.
—
"Oh, y'know, cream, sugar, whiskey, rum, Kalhua—the usual." Q laughed, coloring slightly at the teasing and his own ridiculous answer that was no less true. He'd done a lot of self-medicating on top of his doctor recommended-medicating, and he was currently in a place where he could joke about it, albeit in a self-deprecating way. If he pointed out his own shortcomings first, it took the sting out of someone beating him to it.
The succinct answer wasn't exactly what Quentin was after, but it didn't really come as a surprise. He let out a musing hum of acceptance with a small nod that probably went unnoticed since Loki was facing the counter. "Okay, so in my world, there's this thing called The Wellspring in a land called Fillory. We don't really know where the Wellspring originates from, aside from the Old Gods creating it eons ago."
Q waved a hand dismissively. If he got started on the origin story, he might never shut up about it. "Anyway, this Wellspring is where my magic comes from. It's the only known magical source in my universe. Granted, I've never met any aliens or anything, so who knows on that count, but all of the humans and talking animals from other worlds I've encountered get their magic from the Wellspring."
Here's where he got a little antsy, and it showed in the way he shifted his weight from foot to foot and rubbed the back of his neck. "And we know that for sure, because I screwed up pretty badly doing what I thought was a good thing, and the Powers-That-Be shut off the Source, which shut off magic for the rest of the known universe."
—
Loki was about to tease back when Quentin continued to speak. And. Did. Not. Stop.
"Ah, if we ever find a source, I know who not to let close," Loki said. Despite his words, the hum they held was warm and gentle. Loki’s own plans often led to less than wishful side effects. Sharon's change and her reaction to his confession was the latest in a long line of misguided actions.
"So you believe that something similar must be in this world because, otherwise, your magic should not work?" he said as he finally rested against the counter, waiting for the coffee maker to finish. It was an interesting thought. One he could neither deny nor confirm. But Loki's curiosity had latched onto it nonetheless.
—
Quentin’s baseline anxiety gave a fun little spike, prompting him to mutter, "You try dealing with an asshole goat god," before remembering his audience. His head shot up, expression contrite. "Ember. One of the gods of Fillory. He and his brother were about to destroy Fillory. They didn't care about the Wellspring or what its destruction might mean to the rest of the universe. So, I, uh, killed Ember. Not that all gods are assholes! Just…most… of them… where I'm from, at least."
He coughed and turned away a little as he found the table suddenly fascinating. "But, no. I don't think this universe uses my Wellspring. I'm still not sure how it works, but I can still feel the magic from my world. I've been around people who use magic here. I can tell it's different, especially since I can't do their spells. I've been trying to adapt them instead, but it's like translating hieroglyphics into Sumerian by way of ancient cuneiform."
—
One of Loki's eyebrows shot up at Quentin’s muttering. The man seemed to catch himself in time. "Ah, most gods are assholes… hmm… you might find that a controversial opinion around here…" He winked at him before he turned to switch off the coffee maker and prepare its brew.
"Your magic, what does it feel like? Is it the same as in your world?" The trickster god had many more questions but they would have to wait for later.
—
Were it not for that wink, Quentin would have thought himself in deep shit for sure. As it was, he had the slightly heady feeling of having dodged a rather unfortunate bullet.
(His thoughts skittered off briefly in the direction of god-killing bullets and how the use of one had set Eliot off on the treacherous path he was on now, with the Monster in the deep recesses of his mind.)
He couldn't quite keep himself from shivering a little, a new, but also constant worry pulsing through him. At the very least, Loki’s questions helped distract him. "So, I didn't know I was magical at all until just a few years ago. I'd always wanted magic to be real, for life to have something more to it than just…life, y'know?"
Forgetting himself completely—as he was wont to do when warming to a subject—he wandered toward the kitchen counter and situated his hip against it. "So when the PTB shut off our access to magic, I—we could all feel it. Everything was a little less bright. Hope was… well, it didn't really mean as much anymore. My friends and I fought really hard to bring it back once we found a way, and then this soul-sucking organization called The Library waltzed in and decided they knew best how to manage this wild, wonderful thing. So then there we were, trying to free magic all over again."
His lips pressed together as his back prickled with phantom sensation, making him squirm a little. "When I came through the portal, I could tell it worked, that what we'd—what I'd been willing to do actually freed up the Wellspring for everyone. I don't know if it's tied specifically to me, Eliot, and Margo, or if it's just a quirk of the unknowable portal, but yeah. We can still do our magic here."
—
Loki carried the two mugs to the dining area as he listened to Quentin’s explanations. He had never known a world without magic. For him, it was like gravity: a simple aspect of the universe. Scientists didn’t know why either existed but both followed a certain order. And Loki had witnessed either’s impact on the world on a daily occurance. In the same way, he could understand the devastation that followed if that magic suddenly ceased to exist. It was ingrained into Asgardian life and technology. And while it wouldn’t quite kill him the way the loss of gravity would, Loki himself had built his identity around it. He couldn’t imagine himself without his sorcery. If it died, a part of him would die too.
“So…” he started as he pushed one mug over to Quentin. He then pulled a chair out for himself and sat down at the dining table. “You think that the Wellspring has… uhm, become available in this world now? Or could it be that it started to reside in you and you have brought it with you?” He was still trying to catch up on the concepts that had been laid out in front of him. He wasn’t quite sure he understood it. At the same time, he wasn’t quite sure Quentin understood it either. His ramblings seemed disorganized more often than not.
—
Once again, Quentin had followed his unexpected host where he led and sat after Loki, taking his social cues where he found them. His mouth quirked at another random memory. One of the last times he'd chosen to take his cues from his god it was Bacchus, and he'd gone out of his mind on some kind of godly ecstasy. Something told him he wouldn't repeat that experience with Loki.
Probably.
Hopefully.
He sipped at his coffee without tasting it very much as he considered the question. One of the possible answers made him chuckle. "I don't think our friend group can handle one more person with insane powers. But, no, I don't think it's me. Or in me. I thought a lot about it when I first got here, and even though I'd gotten a supercharge a few hours beforehand for a long story I won't bore you with—or I'll save it for a later day, who knows. Regardless, I'd already burned through all that before coming through the portal, so that's not it. Sorry, I don't really have an explanation for it, but magic rarely does. We just attempt to subject it to our will and get frustrated when things don't work the way we think it should. And if that's not an allegory for life, I don't know what is."
—
Insane powers - he wondered what counted as insane powers in his opinion. Until a few decades ago, Midgard had frowned about the notion of magic and aliens.
Loki chuckled. “As much as I would like to say magic is and does make us special…” He trailed off, instead expanding on the sentence with a gesture. He shrugged, hands open… a sign that he disagreed with Quentin’s assessment. He had an infinity stone inside of him and if he had learned something, then it was that it hadn’t stopped him from struggling… hadn’t stopped him from making stupid mistakes. In a community of extraordinary beings, he was slowly starting to learn that he wasn’t that special. It was one of the worst lessons in life.
“So… what are your plans forward?” he asked. It was as much to get the information as it was to distract himself from his own thoughts.
—
While he couldn't really read anything into Loki's gesture, he thought he had some idea what it meant. Quentin snorted once and shook his head. "Oh, I was disabused of the notion that I was in any way special in my early days, but it took me an embarrassingly long time for that fact to really get hammered into my head."
He bought himself another few seconds of considering his answer by downing about half his mug of coffee. In the end, there didn't seem much point in obfuscating. "I'm trying to find a banishment spell." Q sighed and set down his mug. "It's not really going all that well."
—
Now Loki could have come up with a lot of ideas of how the young mortal might have chosen to proceed. A banishment spell was part of none of them. He quickly acknowledged Quentin’s first statements with a nod and then proceeded with the questions. He had many.
"And what exactly are you wishing to banish?" There was a tinge of apprehension in his words. The need to banish something usually meant a threat was around.
—
Quentin's mouth pulled to one side. He suddenly felt very stupid for having mentioned it in the first place. But he'd been at his wits end for months, having exhausted nearly all the books at the Mortuary and having long chats with Nico. He'd wanted to approach the other magic users around, but hadn't yet—either out of his own foolish pride or his desire not to burden anyone with his self-appointed mission.
"There's a… Monster. With a capital 'M'. Long before the dawn of man, the gods created a two beings. A brother and sister. But they were too powerful. They could kill gods. Delighted in suffering. A few master magicians trapped and killed the sister, sacrificed her, and took her power for their own, becoming gods in their own right. The new gods banished the Monster, and he stayed that way for thousands of years until—" guilt churned the coffee to acid in his stomach, and he swallowed down the bile in the back of his throat—"until we accidentally let it out. And now I've been trying to find a way to banish it again without… without hurting the person he's in."
—
Loki opened his mouth and shut it again. The tale sounded as if it was told by a child. Monster with a capital M. Naturally. But just because the nomenclature limped behind Loki's standards did not made the tale a falsehood. Midgard being the breeding spot of a Celestial sounded equally as made up and yet, it posed a very realistic problem.
He licked his lips. "Just to clarify, in which world exactly did you release it?"
—
"In mine," he admitted. "Well, my universe, if we're being pedantic. But…but he's here now. Not out. We'd know if he was. The Monster always left a trail of bodies in his wake." Quentin flashed to the time he was Brian and the incident with the ice cream truck. He shuddered and closed his eyes tightly until sparks flew across the darkness.
The memory and half a dozen more scorched through his mind. He started to pick up his mug, but his hand was shaking too hard. If he couldn't help Eliot, he wasn't sure what he would do. "And god help us all if he gets out again."
—
Loki swallowed. He had a history of looking down at everyone around him and maybe a few years ago, he would have heard a mortal talk about a threat and scoffed at it. Midgardian issues did not need to be feared. But Loki died. He could still feel it. The portal had rescued him, given him another chance. And Loki knew that Asgard’s new home was heading towards an expiration date. Wherever he looked there were threats he could not take on on his own.
“Well, this god at least will…” he muttered. His thoughts were elsewhere and he leaned forward. “So, where exactly is it then? How do you know it is in this world?”
—
Wariness turned the coffee in his stomach to ice. He'd been honest before now, open in a way he'd really only been with Eliot. There was potentially a problem with keeping things so insular, but Quentin knew a little about Loki from this universe. One needn't read too far into recent history for the king's name to pop up, and not in a very flattering light. There was also the small matter of the overall theme of the god's character over the length and breadth of Norse mythology.
But that wasn't really fair.
Q may have had plenty of experience with the whole "gods are dicks" thing, but he knew a whole lot more about fucking up and needing/trying to make things better after said fuck up. That said, however, Eliot wasn't around to sign off on Quentin spilling his worst secret.
He carefully pushed his mug away with an apologetic shake of his head. "I'm sorry, I can't. I've probably already said too much, wrecked Pandora's box pretty much irreparably. You just caught me in a chatty mood, I guess. I should—" he stood slowly. "Uh, I should probably get out of your hair. I'll—I'll figure something out."
—
The change in demeanor was abrupt. Loki’s brows twitched at the excuses that were laid out to him. This wasn’t how he had expected the situation to go. Why had he changed his mind so quickly? Loki’s mind raced, jumping from one thought to the next. He had asked about the fiend’s whereabouts. A logical question in the god’s mind. It was hard to destroy something if you knew not where it was. A thought shot through his mind… what if one of your other selves would have asked that question. Suddenly a question of innocence became one of malicious intent. He had never quite trusted them because, historically, he had broken people’s trust without batting an eyelash. Sharon’s trust only recently.
After a pause that was a little longer than any conversation usually harboured, Loki wetted his lips, ready to jump into an explanation of how he did not wish to use the monster and only wanted to defend his people. He stopped mid-air. His own past put him in a conundrum. Quentin was studious. He clearly had heard the stories about him. It rendered any defense meaningless. Would he believe anything another version of him would say in this situation? No. He was no fool.
So he swallowed and stirred the conversation into waters that were unfamiliar to him. The words that followed were quietly spoken. His fingers kneaded his hand in a way that hinted on the turmoil within. “Of course, I understand,” he said and pushed his chair away. He rose to his feet as well. “Don’t forget your books.”
—
"Thanks," Q mumbled, eyes trained on the ground, before going back to the table near the door and retrieving his small tower of books. He wasn't sure if the king had even heard him, and if he had, did he really believe Quentin meant it? It's not like he would have blamed him if he didn't.
He pulled the door open, but paused before going to it. "It's not you," he pushed on the back of a deep sigh. A dry, almost-sob of a laugh left him as he shook his head, and his face settled into a certain kind of resigned-to-misery smile. "We have to protect the people we love, right? Even if it sometimes means holding back. I'm—I'm sorry, Loki. I hope you understand. Thanks for the coffee and the chat. It was… it was fun while it lasted. I…genuinely hope we do it again sometime."
—
Loki had believed he had the situation figured out. It turned out, he didn’t. He stared at the man with a frown before he noticed that maybe that wasn’t all he should be. “Of course… hopefully, one day we can compare our ideas of magic,” Loki said. It was a sweet sentence… a platitude. While in hindsight, he would agree with the notion, at the point it was spoken it was a sentence that served only the purpose to end the conversation with a friendly undertone. Loki’s mind was elsewhere. If Quentin’s worries rang true, then not only the people Quentin loved were in danger, Asgard was too. The trickster god would rather see Asgardians work on the issue while it was still one he might be able to contain. He would rather not entrust the bookish young mortal with the fate of the world. Loki needed to contact his brother.