Thor finds Loki to thank him for helping to put together the decorations for the party
and they finally have a talk..
⚠
Serious family stuff
The benefit of arranging the party venue was that you had a prime chance to carve out your own space to retreat to, or at least a space for lounging while the party proceeded to be Most Excellent. The music was throbbing in the background, but a stump -- one that Fandral had arranged here weeks ago as part of a hangout -- had been fashioned into a recliner. Magically, of course. Because for all the bells and whistles that Loki had hung, adorned, and willed into being… what was one more selfish, minor spell to have somewhere to kick his feet up? If this excess of spellcasting did tip him headlong into old, bad habits, then he was at least comfortable for the ride down. Besides, given that same excess of spellcasting, he was tired.
Tired, and perhaps sorely out of practice. It did feel… maybe not good as much as overdue to stretch his arcane prowess, but even so the toll was felt. The burning within was enough of a hint that just because he’d done this for altruistic reasons, it didn’t absolve him of prior sins. He pushed back at it, but the crackle of flame still made itself known. His magic was stolen, not given. He still wore the body of his victim, and saw the face of the small boy peering at him from the crowd.
He let his head rest back on the recliner and took in a deep breath. His gaze was cast upward. The canopy of the Void was blanketed in a false sky. Asgardian constellations twinkled overhead in as best an approximation as Loki could recall them. A gradient of pink flushed out from behind a mountain (which he had promised Thor) until it blended into the navy blue of night above. Trees had been transmuted into decorations, some of which carried torches. And because all of the Asgardian elements had been so tame, so had a dance floor been manifested in part of the clearing. It lit up, taking its lightshow cue from the music.
Trickery. All of it. It was his realm and his specialty.
Hopefully Thor liked it.
‘You can’t fool him forever.’ The ghost, which had perched itself on a stump beside Loki’s recliner leaned in. The black void of its eyes stared, as it always did. ‘You do know why it is that I’m still here?’
“Because Derleth is a cycle of nightmares that occasionally lets up?” Loki asked. He knew he was asking a manifestation no one else could see, but he felt too drained to fight to ignore it.
It stared back. It tilted its head.
“Just leave,” Loki groaned. He didn’t even notice someone else coming up to him from the main commotion of the party.
Thor froze in place like a deer caught in the headlights, startled by what had been said to him… or at least he thought was directed at him. Just leave. Jaw slackened, he glanced down at the phone in his hand, then back up at Loki, trying to reconcile why. Loki had certainly done a lot to help with the party, and was now resting… maybe he was just tired? Maybe he just didn’t want to talk to anybody right now. In any case, it was difficult not to think he was somehow at fault.
“Alright, Loki, “ he muttered. “I’m sorry to bother you. Maybe later?” and he turned to leave, masking his sadness. Here he thought he was making some headway into developing a relationship with this Loki, but it seemed that the time wasn’t quite ready yet.
The voice stirred Loki from his upward vigil and debate with his inner demons. His brow furrowed and he lifted his head to look…
Only to see Thor turning to walk away.
“Wait! Not you!” He wasn’t sure if he was much company in the present moment, but there was a recognition that Thor was someone he meant to talk to. “I was talking to myself,” Loki explained, voice flat in a way that came from speaking a truth that bore so much ironic humor that it nearly felt exhausting.
“And, wouldn’t you know, I find myself difficult at times.” The expression on Loki’s face was apologetic, and he truly felt sorry for giving Thor a reason to think him cross. “Grab a seat, if you’d like.”
Thor first looked over his shoulder when he heard his name, then turned around completely to examine Loki more closely. Talking to himself? Was he drunk? He didn’t sound drunk. He debated this in his head for a few moments before coming closer again, smiling awkwardly. “I don’t find you difficult.” Then again, this was the most interaction he’d had with him in person since… well, since bumping into him at the karaoke party weeks ago, when the second campus was around.
There weren't any chairs nearby, but that didn’t matter… Thor just plopped himself down on the ground nearby the recliner where Loki was sitting. “I thought maybe you could show me how to do this copying and pasting?” He showed off the phone in his hand as evidence. “I haven’t had time to practice much, but I’d like to learn.”
It was also a really good excuse to start a conversation with somebody who he’d been wanting to talk to since he arrived.
“You don’t find me difficult because I haven’t given you the chance to see how difficult I can be,” Loki answered, and he carefully averted the still-piercing glare of the ghost just beyond where Thor sat. “Infamously so, me. Very difficult.” His tone betrayed the words, but it was just because the trickster was practiced at misleading. He sounded cheery, as if someone had flipped the switch from his flat tone just a second ago.
“And you have come to the right place. Asgard would have been improved with phones, you know. By the time Odin’s ravens reach someone, one simple text would have solved the whole matter.” In the midst of his unasked opinion, Loki reached into his toga and withdrew his phone. It begged the question of where and how it was stored, but he gave no hint towards the answer. “Do you have yours, or am I merely demonstrating?”
Something was the matter, Thor could tell by the way Loki’s tone of voice suddenly changed, but he could only guess the reason. Was Loki still hoping to avoid interacting with him? Or was he tired from all the magic he performed? Thor played along, though, shoving away his concerns if only because he didn’t feel close enough to ask what was wrong. “If you say so,” he replied with a smile. “I do not want to argue with you, not at our party, not ever.”
It had been billed as Thor’s party, but he included Loki because without his magical help? It wouldn’t have been nearly as cool.
“I do!’ Thor raised his hand and wiggled the phone he was holding. “I don’t think I could learn any other way.”
He leaned close, looking over Loki’s shoulder to observe the instruction, but was only paying nominal attention. Thor wasn’t as clever as Loki, but he knew how to be sneaky too. He already figured out how to cut and paste on his own. It took a while, but Loki’s descriptive feather touches really helped him understand what needed to be done. However, Thor feigned ignorance as a ploy to have some close bonding time.
Before Loki could begin, Thor told him, “Everything looks amazing. I’m in wonder at your magic. It truly is marvelous. Especially the sky. As difficult as you may call yourself, you’re more so an artist.”
“Ah, getting in close,” Loki observed, as he instinctively leaned away a few inches as Thor encroached on his space. It wasn’t a lack of trust in Thor. Thors were notoriously trustworthy, after all. It was just the sort of prickly nature he felt right now that made him want some distance. A few inches would have to do.
But Thor’s compliment cut off the first part of the lesson, and Loki turned to look at Thor more directly. He was quiet, measuring his words and trying to figure out how he felt about the night as a whole. The whole thing was contradictory in his mind. It was hard to be proud of one’s work when a sin of the past kept looming and crowding out his peace of mind.
“I paint pictures and tell stories,” was the reply after a moment. He raised one hand, thumb and pointer half-framing the Bi-Frost as it stretched out across the illusionary sky. “Mother taught me. If you mean any such kind words, surely it’s to her credit.”
Thor maintained eye contact , his crisp blue eyes meeting Loki’s emerald green, sincere but a little intense at the distance they were at. He broke that contact to glance up at Loki’s hand gesture, confused at first what he was doing, but then realizing with a soft smile and a slow blink.
“If your Mother was anything like mine, then she is an amazing spell-weaver indeed. I know very little about magic, but I imagine you’d have to be an amazing pupil yourself to keep up with her. It’s sweet that you’re humble, but accept the compliment for what it is. The sky here? Tells a story of home. Our home. It’s breathtaking.”
“And if your mother is anything like mine,” Loki volleyed back, ”then she is a force that would make even the All-Father himself stop dead in his tracks to listen. Everyone always assumes father is the one to be feared. Not so.” He exhaled a sigh and let his hand drop back to its side. The Bi-Frost wasn’t real, but it tricked even his own mind in moments of unfocus.
“Fine, I’ll take the compliment. But, you should know that in most worlds out there, Thors and Lokis historically argue. As siblings do.” He didn’t look at Thor. It was easier to keep staring upward, and to not think on how this Thor looked so similar and yet not. The voice, though… the voice was the same. “I can’t count the number of times I fell out with Thor. It seems so odd to me that any Loki would be happy with the Frost Giants, but it seems even stranger to imagine one so…” Loki squinted. He fished around for the right descriptor. “Exuberant.”
Thor tossed his head back and laughed. “You saw my mother in that video. Everybody rushed to my aid to clean up our mess the moment they heard she was on her way.” Such was her reputation throughout his universe… her wrath would not only be laid upon Thor, but to those who aided and abetted his shenanigans.
This was good… bringing up his video in natural conversation. Thor had wondered what Loki thought about it, but since the decision to have this toga party came the day after the watch party, Thor didn’t have the time, and frankly was a bit nervous to ask. “Argue. Yes, I’m sure Lokis and Thors do. After all, Uatu mentioned how Lokis keep things interesting.” An image at the very beginning even showed a Loki freezing a Thor with the Casket of Ancient Winters, so he no longer had this idealistic view of what having a sibling might be like.
Shrugging, all Thor could say about the exuberant comment was, “That’s my Loki. He’s the only one I knew… until now.” He gave Loki a smile, but then shifted to a more serious mood. “I wondered how you would react. Especially at the start. Uatu…he made it sound so important that for every Thor there was a Loki, but here I am. The exception. A… deviation. I always wondered whilst growing up as an only child what it would be like to have a brother or sister, and now I wonder if that’s because I should.” Thor scrunched his face, hoping this made sense.
“I saw her,” Loki agreed. “Yet, I’ve never had a full-scale clean-up out of sheer fear of her. That was impressive.” But the subject bled into others, and Loki realized that there wouldn’t be evading some of the harder things to explain. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to get into all of it tonight --
No, that was a lie. He was sure. And he didn’t.
But there were some things he felt he could tell Thor in an attempt to explain more about himself.
“My brother and I fought. In the grand scheme of everything between us, I would say the time spent getting along might be outweighed by how much I sought to hurt him and take away things he loved. That you didn’t have a Loki from the start perhaps means you didn’t have an extended period of growing pains wherein someone was getting stabbed, magicked, or cranially affected with heavy weaponry.” Loki gave Thor a look, sideways and quiet. “I’m a third attempt. Let’s not concern with how or why tonight, but I am the third in a line… and it’s because things went wrong twice. Hopefully not a third time, but the verdict is currently out.”
At the time, Thor was terrified of his mother’s wrath upon finding out he’d directly disobeyed, but now he could laugh. It all worked out in the end, didn’t it? In a talk with the other Loki, he was told something about how Thors always came out on top, and he hadn’t thought much about it before, but in a way Loki was right. Frigga knew he’d done wrong, but decided he’d learned his lesson… though he did get chastised when they returned to Asgard but that was mostly because mom was upset that she had to cut her own vacation off short.
It was a lot for Thor to process the whole stabbing, magicking, cranially affecting with heavy weaponry part, which is when he realized that this wasn’t some small sibling disagreement but a real deep problem. This rivalry that Odin set up between Loki and this version of himself was bad…. really bad. Worse than what he first imagined. His heart was broken. Alright, maybe Loki had done some bad things, but Thor, without knowing how his alternate self reacted, sympathized and felt sorry… especially when Loki looked like he was working hard to become better.
Which, evidently included three tries? Confused, Thor opened his mouth to interrupt and ask what he meant, but Loki shut down the question before the words escaped, and his lips snapped closed. This forced him to really think about what he said next… simple but heartfelt.
“You can practice with me.”
Loki let his head lull back, reclined and faced Void-ward. His expression softened at Thor’s reply.
“There was something I told my Thor before,” he started, “That he’s the biggest, sweetest idiot in the whole Nine Realms. I felt like never could I go so far that he wouldn’t accept me back. Even if the rest of Asgard would wish it so.”
There was a gesture, loose and without Loki looking. He waved at Thor with one hand. “You sound like him. I’ve missed him so much. But I suppose we’re all here, missing someone…” The hand settled back down and Loki sighed. “Have you ever played video games, Thor? You should come to the roof of the Peaslee one day. I have a whole set-up. It’s one of my favorite things from Midgard.”