Loki (fiorvalr) wrote in noexits, @ 2021-11-08 08:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, marvel (tv/movies): loki laufeyson, the magicians: julia wicker, → week 024 (nyc 1983) |
NYC '83 | Day 1
Loki and Julia finally have a parlay for the first time since Loki returned her shade. The result is a Word As Bond contract.
Loki flipped her hair over her shoulder just after entering the cafe. Her expression was pure annoyance. No surprise there. This was New York City. Not only was it her least favorite city in all the cities of the universe. Save for, perhaps, Sakaar City (although to be fair that city at least had memorable personalities and cheap entertainment.) Hence the disguise, of course. Because even though everyone was saying it was 1983, Loki decided to err on the side of caution. As was appropriate seeing as how she’d decimated a large portion of New York in another year — timeline? whatever — and made an entire planet of enemies. But so far no one seemed to be mentioning anything about alien attacks or superhero teams or gods from another realm. So, perhaps Loki was safe. Regardless, this was the form of the day. If nothing else maybe it would make her less recognizable to certain people at Derleth who had begun to grate on her nerves. And it had been a long time since Loki had allowed her hair to be let down. To really treat herself. And truth be told she enjoyed the attention. Particularly the attention she received in this knee length green dress and stiletto heels. She quickly surveyed the room — quaintly Midgardian — and then swooped into the seat across from Julia. Picked her out with an eagle eye, of course. Or a snake’s eye, if one wanted to be more bestially correct. Loki let out an exasperated sigh just as the waitress scurried over from the counter. “What can I get you?” “Whatever the strongest liquor you have in stock,” Loki reached into thin air and removed George’s credit card. Ah, dear George. So kind. So high. So naive. The waitress stared, her mouth agape. “This is a cafe. We don’t serve alcohol.” “What?” “Also it’s not even three o’clock yet…” “What do you serve?” Loki pursed her lips. “Coffee?” “Well, get me the strongest coffee you have in stock.” The waitress gave Loki a look and then hurried off. Loki turned her attention to Julia, exasperation quickly swept away and replaced with a smirk. A smirk that was the same no matter what face she wore. “Sorry I’m late. What is it they say here? Midtown traffic was a bitch.” Julia found herself staring. Next to her was a leather portfolio, the kind of carrying case artists and designers used to travel with their work. It was easier to hold magical contracts and sketches of other spell ideas in such a case, and thanks to the decade they were now in, not everything was digital. Items that could be harder to come by in her time, something as mundane and simple as chalk, could be found in bodegas with relative ease. None of that explained the woman sitting across from Julia. Not that she wasn’t attractive, or Julia wasn’t flattered. She found herself blinking slightly, not entirely certain what to say. Loki hadn’t shown and Julia began to question if he was going to. New spell or not, she wouldn’t have been entirely surprised if he decided to back out after all. Her eyes went to the clock and then the woman seated in front of her. Then there was that smirk. One could follow her expression in real time from confusion to putting the pieces together to, “Loki?” Julia did not exactly know what to make of this development. There was a swirl of confusing and conflicting emotions. It would have never happened just a few weeks prior, before her soul was completed. Maybe she would have laughed at the absurdity of it, or flirted openly. But this Julia was temporarily short circuited. Unsure of herself. At least in this. Was this something he did or something that happened to him? And was it rude to ask? (Because this version of Julia did, on some level, care about being rude. Not without good reason.) So she asked, “...You good?” And left it at that. If Loki wanted to tell her, fine. If not, great. They had other things to focus on and she would do her best to stop glancing at Loki and instead turn her attention to the portfolio where she carefully put a large sheet of artist’s paper between them and set a few sharpies down on the table next to them. “Hmm?” Loki raised both her brows at Julia. Fingernails, freshly manicured in black and somehow looking more sophisticated than gothic, tapped on the table top. She was a little anxious. A little antsy. Maybe she had had too many mimosas. Maybe she was just nervous about being in New York City. Or maybe it was just the drama of last week (and the week before and the week before) finally catching up to her. Whatever the reason, her thoughts hadn’t been entirely focused on the moment. And when Julia looked at her like a stranger and then as though there was something wrong with her, Loki just gave her a bland expression of confusion. “What?” Loki looked down at her chest, ensuring that the low cut of her dress wasn’t accidentally exposing something. “Is there something on my face? Why are you looking at me like I have three heads?” The waitress hurried over and set a cup in front of Loki. “Double espresso.” Loki gave a fake smile. “Delightful.” The waitress ran off again. And then the proverbial light bulb went off. “Oh! I see. It’s not on my face, it is my face.” Loki laughed. “I’m incognito. The Big Apple and I have a history and you can never be too careful. I’m also in a mood. Getting a little weary of the toxic masculinity that I’ve invited into my life. Not my masculinity, of course. There’s nothing wrong with my masculinity. It’s always teetered a bit on the in-between, if you know what I mean. Of course, there’s an entire philosophy about it among the Nine Realms, but I never bought into any of it really. I wouldn’t call it my natural form, just my more instinctual one. It’s probably the result of being surrounded by so many demanding and disappointing male influences.” Which was a monologue that seemed to come out of nowhere and didn’t really offer any explanation for why she looked the way she did. But it might have given some insight into Loki’s emotional state. Cleary refrains of I’m fine, I’m fine were well off the mark. “I’m fine,” she replied. Cue another smile. Lipstick was blood red. “I’m a shapeshifter. You knew that, right? Well, we’re on the same page now.” Loki took a sip of the espresso and leaned forward to look at Julia’s pen and paper arrangement. “Looks like you’re going to draw my portrait. No candles or tarot cards or mystical stones? I thought there would be more pomp and circumstance.” Julia watched Loki carefully. I’m fine. In that way, she did look like her old self, taking the god in and thinking very cautiously about how she wanted to proceed. Were they friends? And if not, why was she doing this? What did a god ever need from her? And if they were, shouldn’t she ask Loki more about whatever it was they were clearly anxious about? But if they were friends, and she scared Loki off trying to lure them into conversation, then she’d lose the opportunity to keep Loki to their word. It was a delicate situation because Loki was delicate. As delicate as her manicure and as delicate as her perfect lipstick application of blood red lipstick. “Okay,” she said, appearing to take the god at their word, almost too easily. That wasn’t the battle Julia wanted just then, not with the blank sheet of horizontal paper between them. “It’s contract magic, it’s the wording and the details that matter.” She started with uncapping the first sharpie and freehanding two perfect circles, next to each other and centered on the page. It would have been impressive to an artist or a graphic designer, but to a magician it was merely a requirement of being able to perform written magic. “These circles are where our names go. The blank space around the circles are where we write the terms. When we come to an agreement, we each place a drop of blood in our circles, next to our name and then place our hands on top to seal the deal.” Of course it wasn’t so simple. Magic never was. For when Julia wrote her name in the first circle, it wasn’t the roman characters J-U-L-I-A that she used. Instead she named herself in overlaying symbols; the constellation over her birth, placed in an equilateral triangle. To anyone else, it looked like Julia was doodling, but to those who understood magic, it immediately read as the very concept of Julia. In the second circle, Julia named Loki in the same style of symbology, creating a new constellation out of trickster runes, protected by a crescent moon that looked a little like the horns of their helm. “Make sense so far?” she asked. She then became to write the contract precisely in sacred geometry, but only the first part. The contract is only void in the case of one or both parties disappearing from Derleth with the accompanying official disappearance notification over the network. Death, nor time rewinding or resetting does not void this Word As Bond. Julia paused to let Loki look over her work so far. Truth be told, all other anxieties aside, Loki was a little nervous about being in such close proximity to Julia. Loki wasn’t afraid that Julia would harm her. Oh, no. They were beyond that stage in their relationship—whatever that was exactly. And it was not to say that Loki had been purposefully avoiding Julia, although she had been careful to give the hedgewitch a wide berth since returning her shade. It was more nervousness about things unspoken and uncertainty about where they stood with each other. Because when it was broken down to the bare facts, Loki didn’t really know Julia. Or, at least, she didn’t know this Julia. Julia with a complete soul. Julia with real feelings. And while their relationship before had been something Loki might have wanted to explore further, she didn’t know anymore what had been real and what had simply been exploitation on both their parts. Because Loki knew she wasn’t innocent in anything that happened to her. And, in many ways, was complicit in the crime Julia committed against her. Hence Loki attempting to play the good old fashioned ‘water under the bridge’ routine. Because otherwise they’d have to have a serious conversation about what had happened. As for Loki’s motivation for agreeing to perform this spell with Julia, well, she had her reasons. Reasons that she might consider revealing if asked directly. But if no questions were asked then she’d leave it up to Julia’s imagination. If nothing else, maybe it could be seen as some kind of added apology for having kept a piece of her soul hidden away in his room for weeks on end. Loki watched with a keen, unblinking eye as Julia drew the circles and named them. Loki was good at making a show of disinterest, but she was always attentive. Especially when magic was involved. Even more so when said magic included a blood contract. The contract is only void in the case of one or both parties disappearing from Derleth… Loki pursed her lips in a firm line. In essence, forever. At least in Loki’s case. Because this was the only realm in which she existed. “Yes.” Or … “What if one of us disappears and then returns later either with or without our memories of having been in Derleth? Either from our current points in time relevant to our original universe or from an earlier or later stage.” She sipped her espresso, leaving a red print of her lips on the cup. Julia gave Loki a look and thought about what she would say next. “Usually, in a Word as Bond, magicians don’t explain their wording or their reasoning, because each party tries to leave technicalities to slip through.” Julia was guilty of that herself, but of course Martin Chatwin had known every trick Julia had deployed and thought it only made things more fun. But Julia wasn’t trying to trick Loki. (This time.) “I gave disappearance as an out because it seemed unfair to hold another version of us to the same standard that might be from entirely different circumstances. But if we die during one of the weeks here, or when we reset, I don’t want that to be an out. As long as both of us remain on Derleth, we remain bound by the contract.” Julia inched the piece of paper toward Loki. “Check my work and see if you think that logic holds up?” This was what made the Word as Bond so complicated. It was usually a time consuming spell with each party pouring over the different meanings of words, making sure they weren’t agreeing to something they’d never intended to in the first place. Every tiny detail about the spell had to be perfect and right. “If you disappear and come back and remember everything, I guess that’s your one ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.” Not many people had come back like that. Wolf? For a small time. It struck her as more unstable and certainly rare, at least from her limited experience so far. “Getting out of jail is never free,” Loki said, her tone decidedly more serious than it had been up until that moment. The last time Loki had been imprisoned, the cost of escape had been too high. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but it had been the worst decision of her life. The one that set her on an even darker path. Albeit ultimately the same decision led her towards a small form of redemption, but that didn’t change the pain she carried around for that single moment. Not to mention the guilt. She pushed her mug aside and brought the paper closer to her side of the table. She cast a cautious look in Julia’s direction, mind rumbling over the concept of technicalities, but in the end decided that it was either 1) worth the risk, or, 2) not one of Julia’s motivations to deceive her. Loki may not have known Julia’s intentions completely, but she didn’t think the hedgewitch would try to entrap her. Not again. Maybe that was naïveté on Loki’s part. Or maybe it was just her falling for another one of Julia’s tricks. Maybe she wanted that. She inspected the paper and the terminology for a full two minutes without saying anything. Then she pushed it back across to the opposite side of the table. “It holds up.” Was Loki being suspiciously accepting of this contract? That was to be seen. “So, what is it that you want to add to this contract? What are we agreeing to hold each other to?” Julia watched Loki carefully. She felt strangely guilty for preferring Loki like this. It was easier to see the god as a person instead of a threat. Her lips remained sealed shut, even as her mind played back memories, real and fake, of her past encounters with gods; Our Lady Underground’s kiss (fake), Renard’s face (real), Loki in the moments before Julia betrayed him (also real). She wondered how real this form felt to Loki, and why couldn’t reality ever be as comforting as the fantasy. Julia didn’t realize how, over the course of sitting there with Loki, the tension in her shoulders and body had slowly evaporated. “I’ll show you,” Julia said. She picked up the sharpie and began mapping out the magical cosmology of the request.It did not ban Loki from removing their shade outright, but it did lay down conditions. Loki would contact Julia in the event of; figuring out how to remove a shade, attempting to remove a shade, the accidental or purposeful removal of their shade by another. After contact, Loki would be required to give Julia an hour to respond before Loki could, if it was by their own hand or by choice, go through with the act. The contract didn’t ban Loki from ultimately doing whatever they wanted, only forced the trickster god to give Julia time to respond or to talk them down. When she was finished-- yes, there was one loophole Julia had written in, located in the word respond which did not detail or promise how she would choose to respond-- she pushed the paper to Loki to look over her work. “That’s what I want. If you want something in return, you can add it. Otherwise, we can sign it as is, if you’ll agree to it.” She didn’t think Loki would. It asked everything of him. It didn’t even require Julia to respond, if she let the hour pass. But perhaps she showed more of her hand than she’d meant to. Because in essence, the contract suggested a level of care and concern for Loki. It was all real to Loki. The face. The deception. The facade. Changing the way she looked didn’t change who she was. She was still Loki whether she was in this form or any other. Whether she was blue skinned and red eyed or a snake slithering through the high grass. Whether she was young or old. It made no difference to her. It was all impeccably real. They were all Loki. Which explained why she and Sylvie and Baby Horns and the alligator could all exist without finding each other even remotely peculiar. It wasn’t the appearance that made a Loki, after all. It was everything else. She continued to watch with an attentive gaze as Julia laid down the rules and the formalities. She was keeping track in her mind; tallying the pros and cons, constantly weighing and re-weighing her motivation for even considering Julia’s contract. Two months ago Loki would have laughed at such a venture. Then again, two months ago Loki might have argued that she was missing part of her soul as well. She might have confessed to believing that part of her soul died when Thanos choked the life out of her. That she wasn’t whole. That maybe she never had been. But that was two months ago and Loki knew better now. She also knew that she couldn’t trust herself. The fact that she’d even asked Julia how to remove a shade was proof that somewhere along the line she’d lost control. And she needed someone to keep her in check. Someone she knew was capable of standing up to her regardless of the nature of their relationship. Someone who could trick her. Someone who could kill her. Loki crossed one long leg over the other at the knee, the hem of her dress slinking up her thigh. “Before I add my concession, I want you to tell me why this is so important to you. Why do you care what I do or don’t do with my shade? And don’t tell me it’s because you fear for the safety of everyone else. That’s all very righteous and heroic, to say, but I think we know each other well enough to admit that given the right opportunity we would, generally speaking and special circumstances aside, put ourselves before everyone else. So, why do you want this contract with me? How does it benefit you?” “I fear for my safety,” Julia said. The question had touched a nerve, but trickster gods usually did. Next to Julia was a cup of coffee, black, completely untouched. The waitress had not checked on her, had not spoken to her, and only barely skittered close to the table to provide Loki the bare minimum of service. Whatever had happened before Loki arrived had scared her away. Julia had made it clear that her services were not wanted and that she wanted space. Julia fit into the time period well enough. Her black t-shirt and cigarette pants did not stand out in any meaningful way, and her faux snakeskin boots were inspired by styles of this era. If anything, her makeup might have been too natural, her hair not quite big or teased enough, but it wasn’t her appearance that had kept the waitress at bay. It was definitely something she did or said. “Is that what you want me to say? Because if I say I care about you, that would be bullshit, right?” She’d had some version of this conversation with Quentin before, before Q had been hospitalized and received professional help. Julia crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Honestly, I’m surprised you’re even considering this. You gave me back my shade and then… nothing. Sort of felt you were only interested in a version of me you knew, factually, you couldn’t trust. I thought it was me, at first, but now I’m pretty sure that’s a you thing.” Julia frowned thoughtfully. “You want to know why I’m doing this? Because it’s something I actually can do here. I’ve been here longer than anyone else and I can’t figure out how to get out of this mess. I can’t change anything. I can’t make anything better here. So I look for things I can do and this is it. This is what I got. Sorry, it’s not much.” She never said if that was the real reason, only a reason. It was probably some combination of everything she said, but sometimes she wasn’t sure which reasons won out more than others. “So why are you doing this?” she asked. Afterward she regretted it. She regretted a lot of the things she said-- pretty sure it’s a you thing-- but her anger could get the better of her, with or without a shade. She was trying to coax him into this, after all, not push him away by insulting him or questioning him too closely. The it’s a you thing got a rise out of Loki. She was careful not to respond too much, but the response was there. Subtle, but tense. A sharply raised brow. A stop to the tapping nails. Even the crossed leg stopped its little bounce over her knee. She stilled very quickly. The muscles in her face slackened to a resting calm. And she listened to the rest of Julia’s semi-frustrated monologue with a clenched jaw. When Julia finally finished, Loki stared at her with that hard blue gaze for a long wordless minute. She only blinked once, exactly halfway. Thirty seconds. When the minute was over she looked away, turning her attention to the handwritten menu above the countertop. The tuna fish on toast was appealing but probably wouldn’t mix well with those earlier mimosas. There were a dozen different responses she wanted to say: I don’t want you to say anything other than the truth. Is caring about me bullshit? You’re right. Maybe it is a me thing. I have no intentions of hurting you. But Loki was trying not to fall back on her usual bad habits. And her quick temper was one of them. Her anger and her spite had gotten her nowhere in life. And it wasn’t helping her in Derleth either. “I was giving you space. By way of an apology and my own guilt. And, to be honest, I didn’t think you’d want me intruding on your new start.” Loki uncrossed her legs and smoothed down her dress in an uncommon display of insecurity. “And I’m doing this because I no longer trust myself to make rational decisions. Existing in Derleth has been a terror on my feelings. It’s put me in conflicts I’ve never had to deal with before. And I don’t have the emotional intelligence to properly react to these new experiences.” And Loki knew that if she were ever unburdened from her shade she could be an uncontrollable horror, both to herself and others. “In return I want the thing you love second best.” Loki turned so her legs were under the table. She placed her arms on the table and faced Julia directly. “In the event that you lose your shade, either because you forgot to remove it before the reset or it’s taken from you by another force or individual or entity or if you misplace it for longer than a week, I want the thing that you cherish second best. Not what you believe is the second most important thing to you, but the thing that actually is. Regardless of whether you’re conscious of it or not.” “So if you find a way to get a hold of my shade and keep it away from me for a week, you get the thing I love second best,” Julia said. Whether Loki had intended for that kind of loophole or not, Julia’s life experience told her to listen carefully for them. “What if the thing I love second best isn’t here? Or what if it’s a person who is here? You want Quentin? I sign this and he’d just become yours in the event I die one week and lose my shade during the reset?” Being mad at Loki wasn’t helping. It was probably where the second best demand came from. Because until then, she was doing him a favor. At least, if she could take everything he said at face value. She exhaled slowly, trying to release her frustration. “What I needed was a friend. Even Rick dropped by. And maybe I have no right to ask that of you after what I did, but… I felt abandoned. And I tried to act like I didn’t give a shit, like I didn’t even notice, but I did.” She met Loki’s eyes. “What do you actually want?” “No.” Loki folded her fingers together. “You wrote into your part of the contract that if I attempted to remove a shade I’d have to inform you. Ergo, I would not be able to knowingly or intentionally remove your shade without you already knowing about it. But if you want to be more clear on that, by all means, add the fine print. I have no desire to be in possession of your shade.” There were nights when Loki woke up imagining she could still hear Julia’s shade calling to her. She couldn’t, of course. Julia’s shade was nestled back where it belonged. It was merely Loki’s subconscious taunting her; the guilt of what she’d done continuing to grate on her own soul. In some ways, Loki missed having the shade. It was difficult to be lonely when it was around. At least she’d always had someone’s attention. But the pleading and the heartbreak in the shade’s voice from being locked in captivity had eventually become too much. At least Loki had a decent chance of sleeping through an entire night these days. After weeks of restlessness. But Julia wasn’t done. Far from it, it seemed. And so Loki kept quiet, waiting for her to finish before deciding how to respond. “Why are you angry at me?” Loki asked. “You’re essentially asking me to sign away control of my soul to you. My free will where my own shade is concerned. My choice to be capable of learning and understanding and feeling emotion. Or my choice to not be capable of those things. This is my supposed goodness, if I have any, and my villainy we’re wagering over. Because we both know that if I don’t agree to this and if I decide to remove my shade, then I have committed myself to the darker side of my ego. That is a lot of power to hold over me. And you’re mad because I’m asking for the second most important thing to you in return?” Loki frowned. “You have used me twice for your own gain. In return I did the worst thing I could possibly do. I kept your shade. My feelings over that entire scenario are very confusing. Very mixed, you could say. But I truly felt, and still do feel, incredibly ashamed for what I did. You have friends here. I didn’t think I was one of them.” Of course, none of that, lovely as it might have sounded, answered her last question. What did Loki want? Loki didn’t know. She pushed her chair backwards, but didn’t stand. “Perhaps this was a fool’s errand.” Julia frowned, feeling her anger evaporate. Anger didn’t serve either of them. “I was trying to be your friend,” Julia said, “the best I knew how, the best I was capable of.” Maybe it sounded pathetic after the fact. She did murder him, after all. The words sounded a little pathetic when she spoke them outloud. What was the friendship of a shadeless person worth? Not much. “I didn’t write the contract to take away your choice, your free will, or hold any real power over you. I wrote it so, if it came to that, I had time to talk you down. What you’re asking for in return is too vague and too unknown. There could be consequences neither of us can foresee. Ask for something else. This won’t fall apart if you don’t want it to.” Julia looked at her coffee, but didn’t move to drink from it. She reached across the table and put her hand over Loki’s. There were small tattoos on her fingers; a triangle, a crescent moon. She wore thin silver rings and her fingernails were clean, trimmed and unpainted. “I’m sorry I hurt you. But I do not want to see you hurt yourself. I do care about you, what I did to you. You can choose to believe that or not.” Julia squeezed Loki’s hand gently before releasing it and returning to her side of the table. The first week with her shade had been a raw emotional hell. She was better, or good at pretending she was better. The screaming of her shade had quieted to a dull aching whimper that rarely if ever actually stopped. “So what do you want to do?” she asked. “Do you want to walk away from this?” “I do believe you.” Maybe she shouldn’t have. Maybe Loki should have been combative about her death out of spite or self pity. But those were exactly the kinds of responses she was trying not to fall back on. She wanted to be different. She wanted to be better. A different kind of Loki. Like the one Sylvie and Mobius knew. A Loki whose initial instinct wasn’t to blame other people for their own problems. Or, even better, a Loki who wouldn’t find themselves in those kinds of problems in the first place. But she knew Julia was telling the truth about trying to be her friend and apologizing for liking her. Loki knew that because she’d spent so much time with Julia’s shade. The only thing Loki wasn’t certain she fully believed was that Julia cared about her. Hadn’t Fandral just said that it was impossible to care about her? That had wounded Loki deeply. Struck right down through the muscle and marrow and into whatever existed deep within Loki’s core of consciousness. It hurt her even more when compounded by all of the terrible choices she’d made since arriving in Derleth. Like keeping Julia’s shade. Deceiving the other Lokis. Killing Dan. Reigning terror upon Dunwich with an army of martians. There was a lot weighing on Loki’s soul. It wasn’t a wonder she didn’t want it anymore. And that weight made her question how it was possible that anyone could really care about her. She wished Julia had left her hand upon hers just a moment longer. All of the affection in her life felt so fleeting. And while she hadn’t really made a show of it lately, Loki had been avoiding touch. Which made Julia’s comforting hand a welcome reprieve from his self-imposed renouncement of physical contact. But the questions still lingered. What did she want? What was she going to do? Loki turned her attention upward, letting her gaze get lost in the tiny punctures of the drop ceiling. It was partly to better think through her options, but also to avoid showing too much emotion. She could already feel her eyes beginning to water and knew there was a glossy film to her gaze. But Loki was too arrogant and too stubborn to cry in public. She reached into an invisible pocket and removed one of her daggers. Then she sliced it across her left palm, cutting through the skin and drawing blood. She reached out as though to let a drop of blood fall without adding anything to the contract, but then pulled back. Loki picked up the marker and wrote in her own conditions. Namely that if Julia should ever need to go in search of her own shade again while they were still confined to the Derleth anomaly — be that in Derleth itself, one of the many realms Derleth brought them to, or some other fabric of space reachable through other means — that she would take Loki with her. And that she would allow Loki to help her retrieve her shade, regardless of the danger it might pose. Loki was careful to copy the same wording Julia used for her description. That it would be void if they disappeared, returned to their worlds, and wouldn’t hold any other version of themselves responsible for upholding the contract. Then she squeezed a drop of blood beside her name and placed her uncut palm upon the paper. “Your move, Miss Wicker.” She was surprised by the sudden change, and read the terms Loki set carefully. Julia could have argued that finding her shade a third time would be impossible. Twice was already— but Julia understood Loki’s intention and she smiled despite herself. That was all the pause she needed. Julia had come prepared, producing a small (likely illegal) switchblade from her pocket. She pricked her thumb and let a single drop of blood land on the circle with her name on it. When both their palms were pressed down on the paper, it made a slight sizzling noise. Julia caught the faint whiff of burned paper, the palms of their own hands, when turned over, would appear branded at first by the naming marks, before slowly fading to invisible but present. The blood and the blades were too much for the waitress. Even as Julia put her small blade away, she was taken aback by the fearful tears in the waitress’s eyes. “You both need to leave.” It was supposed to sound like a demand, but the waitress trembled at whatever Satanic ritual they were performing. Julia, perhaps starting to feel a little guilty about how she’d acted earlier, complied first by pulling out her purse to pay. “No,” said the waitress. “I don’t want your tainted money. I don’t want anything from a Satanist!” It was exactly the wrong time for Julia to lose it, but who could blame her? She tried not to snicker, but in trying to suppress it, only made her begin to laugh harder and she quickly took the contract and slipped it into the leather portfolio. “We’re leaving,” she tried to say by way of apology but, she’d missed much of the Satanic Panic of the 80s, and she certainly hadn’t expected it from a New Yorker. Maybe the waitress was a transplant. Julia shared a guilty, secretive smile with Loki before standing up and offering her free hand to the goddess. Loki suppressed a full grin when Julia pricked her finger and placed her palm upon the paper, agreeing to the terms. Instead the right side of her lips turned slightly upward. Loki didn’t think she would disagree, but if she had then Loki would have settled for nothing in return. Because, in truth, anything she might have wanted from Julia — truly wanted — Loki didn’t want to get through fine print in a contract. That would feel like losing. Whatever Loki wanted from Julia, whatever she wanted from anyone, she wanted to gain freely. She wanted to earn. Loki was about to say something when the waitress returned looking both horrified and indignant. Loki raised an inquisitive brow, confused by this outburst. “Perfect,” Loki said. “Because this is the worst substitute for a mimosa that I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t dream of paying for it.” But she picked up the mug and finished it off anyway. Then she licked her palm, gave the waitress a taunting wink, and turned her hand around to expose it fully healed. No sign of any blood. She slipped the dagger back into its mystical hiding place and adjusted her gold necklace which had moved slightly askew. Loki paused for a moment when Julia extended her hand. Her blue eyes narrowed thoughtfully before she brushed her hair forward so it fell in front of her shoulders. It was longer than normal. Straighter, too, as though pressed with a hot iron. With a healthier sheen than when she was in her usual form. She gently placed her hand in Julia’s like a debutante being escorted to the dance floor and stood up. In her heels she was a good deal taller than Julia, but not as tall as in previous weeks. And while her physique might have been delicater on the outside, it had more bite. Loki as a woman was equal parts more confident, more untrustworthy, and more fragile. “This cafe is a bore anyway. And next week we might all turn into turnips. Let’s go somewhere more fashionable. Or at least with better drinks.” Loki returned Julia’s knowing smirk and entwined their fingers together. “Come on, Conscience. Time to remind myself why I never visited Midgard much in this decade.” |