ᴊᴜʟɪᴀ ᴡɪᴄᴋᴇʀ (juliawicker) wrote in noexits, @ 2021-05-24 17:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread/narrative, marvel (tv/movies): loki laufeyson, the magicians: julia wicker, → week 013 (body swap) |
Day 2 | Body Swap
Loki isn't just mortal. It appears he's his alternate self from week eight, the Derleth that was and wasn't. And his alternate self? Has more information about that week and the faculty and students that were there. Julia is intrigued. Loki does his best to develop an alliance and withhold as much information as possible.WARNINGS None
This week had not been kind to him. And it was easy to blame the fact that he was in a mortal body; powerless, fragile, and forgettable. Yes, of course, those aspects of his current disposition did bother him, but they weren’t the real source of his perpetual consternation. Loki was far more complicated than to allow a simple body swap to get the better of him. He could survive one week. Mentally, at least. But it was the emotional aspect which plagued his thoughts.
Because he still wasn’t convinced that he was alive. And not just because he was thrust into a strange and unfamiliar world moments after he literally did die. But because he felt empty. He’d finally reached a point in his life where he thought he’d found himself. When he and Thor were finally on the same side. When he actually felt like a brother and not an afterthought of Odin—a pawn in his father’s quest for ultimate power among the realms. For a brief and oh-so-fleeting moment, Loki felt like a true son of Asgard. And then it was taken from him. And he woke up here.
Emotionally heartbroken and alone.
And who could he talk to about that? Nobody.
“Julia?” Loki stepped through the thick brambles and overgrown bushes. Some stickers caught on his pant leg and he nearly ripped the hem of his slacks trying to get them out. He tried to bypass the brush as much as possible. But if it wasn’t the forest clawing at his heels it was the stones and the sticks and the uneven ground disrupting his balance.
This damn human body.
“Julia?” he called out into the trees, clutching his satchel bag to his side. The academic look really wasn’t that bad on him. It had an awkward, endearing quality to it. But, if the items Loki had found in his possession were true, his alternate self wasn’t entirely as bumbling as he appeared. Apparently there was a bit of mischief in every version of himself. And Professor Loki Odinson, as he learned to be his alterego’s name, was no exception.
Julia had been tempted. There were a lot of feelings wrapped up with being a dryad among her trees. She’d earned the levity, a moment not to think about one of her worst crimes among a fairly impressive list of terrible crimes.
Julia had a presence that was much larger than she was, and so it was surprising when she approached them, she was just an inch or so shorter than he was. An improvement over the foot of difference between them previously. Even mortal, Julia managed just seeing him at eye level.
“You look good,” she said. He looked sadder than she could tell why. That concerned her. She thought about reassuring him, less than a week left, except she didn’t know if it would be less than a week left. They had before, but Rick’s experiment had also made her question if they would return to their old selves after this.
So instead she chose a different tactic.
“What did you find?”
Whenever she felt like shit, distracting herself with research always helped. It made her feel like she still had agency, even as a tiny, insignificant speck in the universe. She could always do something. Maybe that had been the problem all along. Julia doing something.
Julia put her hand on his shoulder and carefully guided him through the trees into a small clearing where the terrain would be more even beneath him. There was a giant tree root at the end of the area which provided a pleasant, natural bench if he even wished to sit.
Loki made a face. “Omniscient? No. Omnipotent? Sure. But usually I just do it to scare the hell out of people.”
It worked really well when he was a snake. Pity he couldn’t have turned into a snake this week. That would have been preferable to the ginger-blond hair and the scruffy face. Also he wouldn’t have had to listen to any of those annoying Avenger-types.
There was a lull between them before she pointed out that he looked good. He thought about making a sarcastic comment. He had so many in his bag of witty remarks, after all. But decided he wasn’t in the mood. “You look … tall.”
It was neither a compliment nor an insult. Loki wasn’t the type to necessarily judge a person’s attractiveness based on their physical appearance. He’d already decided on their first meeting that she was interesting to him. Mostly because of her magic, but also because she didn’t respond the same way as other people. She had a calmness that didn’t make sense and a general disinterest that just made him want to try and get her attention.
But he’d been too busy pestering Earth’s Greatest Heroes in Planet Vegas to really try and understand Julia better. Maybe it was time to change that. She was clearly one of Derleth’s more powerful people.
He followed her to the clearing, but didn’t sit. “I found some of my alterego’s belongings in my possession. I’ve been going through them and I think we have reason to be concerned about one or more of our residential companions.”
Loki canted his head to the side. “Do you remember ever seeing me like this before?”
There were occasional jabs at one another on the network but nothing serious, more like jests than real accusations that one of the abductees among Derleth were responsible for everyone else being there. The secret mastermind behind it all.
(Probably Rick.)
Julia hadn’t taken any of them seriously. Not unless there was some kind of real tangible evidence, and if there were? It wouldn’t help without a plan, something to act on. That didn’t make the dryad disinterested in anything Loki had to say. Her hopes just weren’t especially high.
She looked him up and down, and shook her head. Recognize him? No.
“Do you mean at Derleth? The week we were faculty and students?” But it was a large campus. Much larger than the small slice of buildings they had now, city blocks of buildings and properties with thousands of students and hundreds of professors, not to mention adjuncts and TAs.
“My memories are pretty hazy besides the people I directly interacted with that week.” Some of the people she did remember had disappeared. It wasn’t a stretch to assume some of the people here now might also have been there as well.
Which begged the question: Was Professor Loki in his body back in that other version of Derleth?
And, if so, why did Loki have this other Loki’s satchel bag and laptop? And what was he supposed to make of the documents he’d found on it? Documents which confirmed to him that Professor Loki was not merely a simple professor. He was a plant. A sort of clandestine operator investigating Derleth, its residents, and the activities on campus for something. Loki hadn’t determined what that something was as of yet, but he still had a lot of information to go through.
“Okay.” Loki paced in front of Julia. “From what I can gather there’s another Derleth, similar to this one, but different. More functional. Larger. And less confined in scope and space. According to my alterego—I really should come up with a good name for him, but I digress. According to the documents on his computer there were various experiments being tested out on the campus of the other Derleth. I wasn’t there, but maybe you can confirm this for me. But it sounds as though some of the experiments had the potential for distorting the mold of space-time. Okay, whatever. That’s not special. Everyone’s tried that at least once in their life, right?”
He stopped mid-pace and turned to face Julia. “But what if it’s more than that? What if it has something to do with us. It’s not like anyone here is your average bump-on-the-log—” He paused, realizing she was sitting on a tree root. Then he shrugged it off. “—human. Even the weakest of us has something peculiar to offer. Strength, power, intelligence, technical intuition. What if one of our alternate selves was purposefully trying to hoard us here? Remove us from our own universes and into this pedantic pocket preschool for a specific reason. Harness our abilities, perhaps. Or, exchange places with us. That’s what I would do if I found out another version of me was a better looking and incredibly powerful being. And if we can become them, as I am now or you were a few weeks ago, who’s to say they can’t become us?”
It wasn’t a stretch to imagine the damage someone could do in one of their bodies, either in their own dimension or another. And while Loki didn’t know if he’d intentionally received Professor Loki’s belongings as a warning or a clue—Loki was loathe to trust any version of himself because pathological lies were his speciality—or if he’d received them by accident, he did feel that it was worth investigating. He didn’t like the idea that someone in their company could be playing them for fools. And he liked being someone else’s prisoner even less.
“There were multiple projects there,” Julia said. “At least two, maybe more. Tilly and I created the network we’re using. I used magic to make it unhackable. But the magic on that world was extremely sketch. Jaskier might know more. He… lost it. I still don’t exactly know what that was about.”
Her hands folded in her lap, Julia looked down at them. Her brows knit together in thought. “The problem is you could be right, but so could a handful of other theories. This place takes people out of time right? My initial theory is the Derleth we were on was this Derleth. Alternate versions of ourselves were somehow responsible or in the wrong place when whatever happened, happened.”
She looked up at Loki and shrugged apologetically. She didn’t think her theory was any more right than his, if she were being honest.
“And if someone is responsible it’s either Rick or someone trying to frame Rick. But then you’d have the motivation wrong, because Rick basically believes there is no better version of himself and has zero interest in the rest of us. Although he’s starting to believe it’s another Rick, so…”
Julia wasn’t shooting him down, nor was she trying to poke holes in his developing theory. She just needed something a little more.
“Either there’s someone responsible and they need to make a move and reveal themselves, or we wait. At least until we can find out more. Was there anything else?”
But another Derleth might be worth entertaining. Perhaps that was a place he could rule over. Perhaps that’s where he could finally be the king he was meant and born to be.
“Rick is too obvious. He’s the red herring that shows up in Act One.” Loki shook his head. “No, if someone is behind all of this they wouldn’t be so conspicuous.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “If it were me, and I’m fairly certain it’s not but honestly it could be, I would choose a position that’s more unexpected. And I’d be friendly. I’d want people to think I was a good guy so they would trust me. Like that girl with the big red hair. Or one of the medical doctors. Everyone trusts their physician implicitly, after all. Or I would bank on the fact that in my other universes people trust me. Or respect me. Someone people look up to and admire. Like Stark or Captain Feathers.”
But that wasn’t enough to convince Julia. She needed more. Loki chewed on his lower lip in thought. Then he glanced back at her.
“I’m a spy.” He smirked. “Well, this version of me is. I trust you won’t spread that around. But beneath a mountain of digital essays on Tom Stoppard plays, I discovered files on various individuals at the other Derleth. So clearly there was something that somebody was after. And what are we all truly after in the end?”
Cue a dramatic pause. “Power.”
Before she was merely trying to be supportive, but she didn’t bother trying to hide her excitement at more information. “How many files do you have?”
Julia would claim she was more interested in knowledge but, as the old adage went…
“Who are you a spy for?” Julia asked, because that was curious as well.
So many questions.
But he had her complete attention now.
His lips curled in a knowing smirk. Almost serpentine, but not quite. “I thought that might get your attention.”
And it wasn’t as though he’d picked Julia out at random to share this information with. Most people probably saw his network commentary as frivolous and fragmentary. But there had been a distinct and cultivated plan behind his interactions. He was searching out allies. People who potentially had commonalities with himself. Who might join him in whatever quest he went on, once he learned more about Derleth. People with power. Companions he thought he might be able to form a like minded group with. Those who understood being on the wrong side of a battle for all the right reasons.
He had hopes that Julia might be one of those people.
“Quite a few. More than enough to be intriguing. As for who my alterego has been working for, well, I think I might keep that to myself for the time being. Until I’m satisfied that your interest is…” Loki paused. “Appropriately self-serving.”
Unless that was what he wanted?
“I’ve done a lot of fucked up things,” Julia said. “I’ve tried to do it for the right reasons and the wrong reasons. Me being self-serving is the last thing you want, unless you like the idea of being stabbed in the back. We don’t have to trust each other, I can deal with that, but I have worked hard not to be a monster. I’d like to keep it that way.”
Not a monster anymore, at least. Julia watched Loki carefully, trying to determine what it was he wanted.
But Julia had a point. He didn’t know her or the extent of her powers. And while he wanted someone he felt he could side with, he didn’t know if she was the right person to align himself beside. She was an unknown entity. But Loki preferred her unfamiliar qualities to the known ones of his enemies.
Of which he had more than his fair share here in Derleth.
Loki swung the satchel bag to his front and opened up the main pocket. Then he leafed out a few pieces of paper. ‘I couldn’t figure out how to get the information off the screen. This tech is so ancient it might as well be a stone tablet. So I took notes on a few of the more interesting people.’
That being said, he planned to go through all the documents and make handwritten hardcopies in the event that the laptop disappeared at the start of the next week. He handed her the slips of paper. ‘And for the record, monsters don’t bother me.’
Some of the information she remembered on the pages-- public information about the different personas and ages people had taken on at Derleth. Some of it were details she’d forgotten or had gotten foggy in her mind, but came into sharp relief.
The good stuff, if there was any, she suspected he was hanging onto. Handing the pages back, Julia gave him a look. He reminded Julia so much of Marina. It should have hurt that she was dead, but that part of Julia’s humanity was missing. She did miss Marina, sometimes. The were still some complicated feelings left.
“Why would you trust anyone?” Julia said, quoting her first mentor.
Were it not for his mother—beautiful, accepting, nurturing Frigga—he wouldn’t have even sat as close to the throne as he did.
Or, he supposed, as he used to.
This not-death made everything so much more confusing.
When she returned the papers he slipped them back into Professor Loki’s satchel bag. Then he tucked the wild wavy curls of his hair back behind his ear.
“Anyone? I don’t trust just anyone.” Loki rolled his eyes and for a moment it looked as though he might just wave off her question. But then he pursed his lips and stared off into the forest behind her. “But I, too, have done a lot of fucked up things for all the right and wrong reasons. And if I’ve learned anything from that it’s that sometimes, especially when you find yourself at the shit end of another bad decision, it helps to have someone to confide in. Someone who has more faith in your ability to make a better choice the next time than you do.”
Loki shrugged. “And even gods get lonely.”
But, she also needed to keep him close. She needed to discover for herself if he was a real god or not. She needed to find out if there was a way to kill him, herself, in a way that she could manage.
There was also a quieter desire for his words to be true. Didn’t devils work in truths?
“Fine,” Julia said. Her divided thoughts found a near compromise. “Bring me more of your notes next time and we’ll talk.”
No, he didn’t think so. It probably had more to do with the fact that he simply wasn’t himself in Derleth, regardless of whatever body he was in. Which could explain why he was fixating on these documents and this so-called mystery—potentially made up by his own desire to have something to do—instead of working through whatever emotional dilemma was plaguing him.
You know, like death.
Loki always needed a problem. He needed a task to focus on. When left to his own thoughts and feelings he was a mess. Like after the death of his mother.
But Julia didn’t say no. And while he didn’t know if that meant she was willing to work with him, it was a start.
Loki nodded. “I’ll do that.”
He closed up the satchel and started back the way he came, but stopped just at the edge of the clearing. He glanced back at her with a discerning smile. “I really do like the trees, by the way. In case you didn’t believe me the first time around.”
Then he headed back into the forest in the direction of the main campus drag.