InsaneJournal

A man with a mustache and suspenders popped up from behind the counter. “WELCOME TO THE GENERAL STORE!”

Cue a young woman sweeping the floor. “IF WE DON’T HAVE IT WE’LL ORDER MORE!”

Man: “WE’VE GOT BOXES AND BROOMSTICKS!”

Woman: “TEA BAGS AND TOOTHPICKS!”

Man: “CANNED GOODS AND SPICES!”

Woman: “POISON FOR MICES!”

Man: “MICES?”

Woman: “MEECES?”

Both (in unison): “AND A RANGE OF FRESH CHEESES!”

Loki pinched the bridge of his nose. He recognized that, all things considered, this week was much less traumatic than the previous few, but the singing was beginning to grate on his nerves. Not to mention the fact that some of the songs would stick in his head hours later. He even caught himself humming and mentally sing-narrating his own activities earlier that morning. He had half a mind to spend the rest of the week in his room.

Or maybe Julia could create a spell to make him forget how much he despised spontaneous singing; something which he’d developed since the last cursed karaoke evening. Which was a pity because at heart Loki loved a good song and dance.

But he didn’t need to know the deeply personal and secret emotions of others. Because once a thing was spoken—or sung—it could rarely be unheard.

He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his slacks and turned his attention to Julia. “What are we looking for exactly?”

Man: “SUGAR OR FLOUR?”

Woman: “A CLOCK THAT CHIMES ON THE HOUR?”

Man: “WE’VE GOT THAT!”

Woman: “AND MUCH MORE!”

Both (in unison): “HERE IN THE GENERAL STORRRRREEE!”

Loki shot Julia a hurried look. The sort that suggested they get what they needed and leave before Loki stabbed someone.

---

Alarm bells went off in Julia’s head, blasting over the sound of music. It was easy to explain the tension and irritation in her body as a result of the singing happening around them, and Julia did her best to block out both sounds, picking up candles and examining them as though trying to discern if the method used to create them would fuck with the delicate circumstances that made the spell work correctly.

This was how she got Marina killed.

Julia wasn’t using Loki as bait, but she was using him. There was nothing about her actions, her motivations, that wasn’t shitty and selfish. She knew that because her shade, the one Loki had provided for her, made sure she wouldn’t feel proud of herself for agreeing to this.

Who did he even want to erase? James’ memories of Julia had been erased. It was a shitty thing to do and yet, at no point did Julia ever try to get him back. No really. And sure, Julia had other shit going on at the time but if she were being honest with herself, she hardly ever thought about him anymore.

If she were honest with herself, it’d been for the best.

But Loki? She didn’t know. She didn’t know if the spell was even going to work on him. He was a god and Julia was not interested in taking another power up from him to try and balance the scales between them.

All of her doubts and second thoughts remained boiling just below the surface when one of the shop goers tried to pull her into the dance number and Julia had to struggle a little to rip herself out of their grasp with a glare.

She stepped closer toward Loki, her shopping basket full. But it took the entirety of the musical number before the clerk would even ring them up, let alone before they were even able to exit the store itself.

When they finally left, Julia muttered, “Jesus Christ.”

They weren’t taking any risks. Julia grabbed Loki by the hand and started pulling him along through town without asking. Her shorter legs had to move faster to compensate. This would be easier to accomplish back on campus where hopefully none of their own would break out into song.

She avoided eye contact with the god or saying much else to him the entire walk back.

---

The music from the village had been following Loki ever since he’d stepped foot on its quaint little Main Street. He had the impression that the more it bothered him, the more likely the townsfolk were to continue singing. He was still embarrassed by the picnic table dancing that occurred when he was trying to have a serious conversation with Mobius. It made it incredibly difficult for Loki to put together his thoughts about everything, let alone his emotions. Not to mention it made simple dialogue impossible. Forget hearing anything the other person said, getting a word in edgewise was like trying to grasp stardust.

But if listening to a few cheesy songs would help Loki get something he wanted, then he was willing to bite his tongue and do his best not to stab one of these poor naive simpletons. They were little more than two-dimensional caricatures of real people anyway. Hel, maybe they weren’t even real.

Focus on the goal, he repeated to himself.

Julia had been right a few months back when she stopped Loki from removing his shade. He hadn’t been in a good place then. He’d been hurt and aching. He’d been experiencing emotions he’d spent his life ignoring. The pain didn’t improve over time, although it did soften a little. But it was still there. And the harsh memories of what he went through with Fandral made his desire to broaden his emotional experience practically null. Removing his shade would have masked those feelings. It would have saved him the agony. But it wouldn’t have helped him.

When Mobius—a different Mobius—arrived after another disappeared, Loki realized that the same could happen with anyone. And if a different Fandral returned, it wasn’t fair for Loki to hold any animosity towards him.

And erasing his memories was a totally reasonable response to that, right?

Loki didn’t pull away when Julia took his hand. He liked how it felt when their fingers were entwined. It took him back to that evening they spent on the beach. Hadn’t that been the first and last time they’d held hands? The night Loki decided not to give her the shade he’d retrieved in Fillory. The night he’d asked her what she’d want if she could have anything in the world.

To kill the trickster god.

Well, one down. One to go.

“Is there a reason you’ve refused to look at me since we met at the general store? Do I have something on my face or do you think I’m going to force you to break out in song?” Loki asked when they were finally back on campus grounds.

---

“What?” The question seemed to snap Julia out of her own head, and half to answer him, half to prove him wrong, she forced herself to make eye contact with him. See? No problem.

Except she couldn’t hold it long and went back to looking elsewhere.

“No, it’s fine.”

Loki had been the one to break a shadeless Julia out of the Matrix, and part of her inability was the guilt she felt for her reaction and the way she treated him afterward. Why had she been willing to draw plans to take off with Carver but leave Loki behind? Possibly because she didn’t trust Loki’s moral compass, in that she suspected despite all his bluster, he had one. Loki would get Natasha involved, and others and then what?

But now that Julia was reunited with her shade, she had to contend with what she’d been willing to do. Worse than that, she had to contend with what she was willing to do now.

“I mean…” Okay, it wasn’t fine. “I don’t even know if this is going to work. You’re a god, I’m a hedgewitch. And even if it does work we don’t know the reset won’t undo it all anyway.”

But that was the part Julia needed to know: if she could do it, if it would work. So she was willing to experiment on someone who had sort of become her friend. Loki wasn’t especially good at friendship but Julia knew he was trying, which again, made her willingness to use him worse.

She hated herself just then. She couldn’t escape the feeling that if she looked Loki in the face long enough he’d see it, and then he’d hate her, too.

She’d kept a hold on his hand and continued leading him onward. The hand holding wasn’t necessary, it was just the piece of connection she’d allowed herself. Holding his hand didn’t require looking him in the eyes.

When they entered a classroom, Julia locked the door behind them. And despite expressing her doubts if the spell would even work, she went about clearing desks and chairs, pushing them to the edges of the classroom to try and prepare the spell anyway. Chalk was at least a plentiful resource on campus, and Julia began to draw out symbols on the floor for their ritual space.

“If it does work, you aren’t going to remember we even cast this spell together. But if you’re anything like other gods I’ve met you might feel the patch there, on your memories. One was able to sense mine and rip it off pretty easily so… I guess we’ll call that problem three; it works but you undo it because you’ve forgotten why you wanted it done in the first place.”

Julia remained focused on her work, continuing to set up the space.

---

Everyone seemed to know exactly how Loki would react and feel about things happening around him. Which was funny because Loki couldn’t even say that about himself. Mobius had pointed out that his entire existence had been devoted to Loki. He knew all there was to know about Loki. Natasha, too, seemed to have gleaned some secret insight into him over the last few months. Even more so since their extended time in the real world. Then there were the other Lokis themselves, who seemed to know exactly what type of Loki he was and how he’d respond to circumstances around him. Were they all correct? Perhaps. But if they were then they had a better understanding of Loki than Loki did of himself. Because he didn’t know how he was apt to react. Particularly where Julia was concerned.

She was a blind spot. Both good and bad for Loki. He was at least aware of that, although he sometimes dismissed his own awareness because there was no fun in continuously towing the line of caution. Despite their ups and downs, Loki still liked Julia. He felt a kinship with her that he didn’t with the others. Even with the Lokis. In another world, another life, they might have even been the same person. In many ways, Julia was more Loki than Loki.

He wasn’t oblivious though. He understood that Julia wasn’t entirely true. Likewise he recognized that if she was helping him it was because it was also helping her. That selfishness went both ways with them. And while he may not have worked out exactly how erasing a few of his memories might benefit her, he was not under the illusion that she was indulging his request out of the goodness of her heart.

Because neither of them were good. Not really.

Loki laughed when she initially spoke of her reservations about the spell not working. His fingers instinctively tightened around her hand. “It’s not entirely on you. I know a little bit about magic and enchantments as well, you know. You don’t have to lean completely on your own abilities. We have my powers to assist your spell.”

Granted, Loki had never tried to purposefully remove his own memories or someone else’s, but he knew he was capable of extracting and intensifying them from others. This was merely the opposite, right? How difficult could that be?

He followed Julia into the classroom. His hand had just gotten used to being attached to hers when she let go to begin moving the desks around to make a space. His lips turned into a quiet frown from the sudden lack of warmth in his palm, but he shook it off with a shrug and rolled his head from one side to the other, cracking the joints his neck. He kept his distance until she began chalking symbols on the floor.

And then more concerns about the spell not working. As if failure were the worst possible outcome here.

“Hello,” he said, his tone mocking. “Trickster God here. I have a bit of experience in mental manipulation. And if there’s anyone I’m best at manipulating, it’s myself. I’ve been doing it for over a thousand years, after all. There’s nothing I want more than to believe my own lies.”

That last sentence was spoken with a heavy measure of solace. It might have been the most truthful statement he’d ever made.

“If I want to believe something, then there’s no stopping me.” Loki paused. “And if it doesn’t last through the reset, we can try again. And if it still doesn’t work? Well, maybe we’ll have given my conscience a few days without suffering. And that’s not nothing.”

They would just have to keep others from prying into his mind and discovering the false web they’d woven.

“Just tell me what you need me to do.”

---

Julia was kneeled on the floor in order to draw the symbols needed for the spell. When she straightened up, her expression was thoughtful. She needed this. She needed to know if she could keep her memories after Derleth. This experiment was the first step in exploring the connection between Derleth, magic and memory.

She thought about Marina, in the aftermath of Reynard, when she did her best to mop up blood from the floors and had no idea what to do about the bodies in her apartment; the bodies of her friends she’d gotten killed.

She wished Marina was here. (A thought Julia would never admit to Kady.)

“What memories are we removing, how do you want them altered, and how do you want to explain the time you spent helping me cast this spell? This memory is tied to the memories we’re changing so, you can’t keep this one either.”

Julia had a way of looking at people, it wasn’t precisely lying. Her eyes were sad, perhaps even innocent, but they didn’t betray what she was really feeling: ambition. She needed this spell to be a success, but tried to keep her expectations tempered.

---

The moment of truth. Granted, it might not work. In fact, it probably wouldn’t work. Not if Derleth had any real control over them. It had been directing them for months, organizing all of these unexpected and unexplainable shifts in time and space. Not to mention the random weeks in the Void when Derleth seemed to try and get back at them. Like the week when people were super tall and teeny tiny.

If those were the consequences for stealing a furniture store what would Derleth do to them for trying to erase their memories? More importantly, did Loki care?

He crossed his arms over his chest and exhaled a soft sigh. “Fandral.”

Loki chewed on his lower lip. He didn’t need to explain it to Julia. It wasn’t really her business. And she probably knew anyway. Or at least understood. That last altercation between Loki and Fandral had been very public.

“I don’t want to forget him completely. I just want to forget everything that happened with him after Disney World.” Disney World was a good memory. It hadn’t gone downhill until after that. Loki just wanted to forget the anger and the animosity. He wanted to live his life without the guilt of ruining a 900-year-old friendship. “We can use the carnival to fill in the gap for today. Make me believe that’s where I was. I spent the day playing fair games and eating cotton candy.”

Although the idea of losing the memory of doing magic with Julia was a little bittersweet—he’d already learned a lot from her since arriving in Derleth—he knew she was right. If the spell was to last longer than a day he couldn’t remember any of it. Especially not the casting.

---

Julia nodded.

She really was an asshole. She could try to justify it; Fandral wasn’t even here, Loki had asked for this, it could potentially help a lot of people if they wanted to hang onto their memories at Derleth. It didn’t mean her shade would ultimately let her believe those things. Yet she continued anyway.

“Okay.” At least she looked less casually willing to experiment on Loki than she’d seemed on the network. She took a centering breath and then directed Loki where to sit on the floor of the classroom over one of the chalk outlined sigils.

She thought of the words Marina said to her before Marina had performed the very same spell on Julia in her recent past. Now whenever her eyes flashed back to the bloody aftermath of the attack, of the dead bodies Marina helped her clean up, Julia could hide her impending panic attack with a swallow and barely a wince.

Julia nodded to herself. She was fine. She could do this. No second thoughts.

“This is going to be okay easier if you’re sleeping. Do you… want to try to fall asleep or do you want me to use a spell?” The classroom was not the most comfortable. Julia looked uncertain. A spell over a spell, it altered the circumstances, added another level of complication neither of them needed. But Julia was also confident she could get it right, make the correct adjustments.

She stood up and stepped toward Loki, placing her hands delicately on his shoulders. If he didn’t want to move she had exactly zero desire or power to make him, so her motions to direct him were little more than a fragile suggestion.

Once he was placed north of the chalked out markings on the floor— at least it was north as far as she could tell, this place didn’t look exactly have a real sun or magnetic north to guide them— she gestured vaguely for him to get comfortable, or try to.

Julia had not exactly brought pillows.

---

I can’t sleep in front of people I don’t trust. That little voice in his head protested. And he didn’t trust Julia. Then again, what was the worst she could do to him? She’d already murdered him once. She’d already made him question his ability to have feelings for other people. She’d already proven to him that he was the most egocentric, self-obsessed narcissist in the known universe. (Who else would keep another person’s soul hidden under their bed because it made them feel like a better person?) They were beyond the simple black-and-white barrier of trust.

And some things—like removing the deep cavernous pit of guilt and despair he felt when he thought of how he’d treated Fandral and how Fandral had treated him—were worth putting one’s faith in another backstabbing power-hungry sorceress.

If you couldn’t trust your own kind, after all, who could you trust? And while Julia may have been mortal and Loki a god, they were crafted from a similar mold.

Falling asleep, however, was never simple. Sleep didn’t come naturally to Loki. It hadn’t for years. And even less so since arriving in Derleth. Because when he closed his eyes he remembered those last flickering moments aboard the Statesman. He remembered the horror in his brother’s face and the cold, uncaring glare of the Mad Titan. Worst of all he remembered his own foolishness. And his own fragility.

Even gods didn’t live forever.

Loki allowed Julia to guide him into the position she needed in order to cast the spell. He lay on the ground, staring upward at the cheap commercial ceiling of the classroom. There were holes in the polystyrene material. Possibly from the manufacturer. Possibly from students throwing pencils at the ceiling until they stuck.

Loki inhaled deeply, calming the sudden flutter of his heart. A pinprick moment of worry and hesitation that this wouldn’t work. Or worse, that it would result in something else. Like Loki losing all of his memories. But then he decided that wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he would be a better person if he could start from scratch.

Not Loki Laufeyson.

Not Loki Odinson.

Not the God of Mischief.

Just … Loki.

He turned his head and caught Julia by the wrist, forcing her to look at him before beginning the spell. “If it doesn’t work. If, for some reason, it goes wrong. Badly wrong. Don’t try to fix it.”

Loki held her gaze for a moment until he was certain she understood what he meant. Then he let her go and closed his eyes.