nine_realms | Welcome To Asgard

Loki frowns a little in thought.

"And what was it worth?"

Did he honestly have to explain? "You weren't there for that?"

Giving a surprised scoff of a laugh, he questioned, "Is that why you thought I'd died?"

"I... Yes. So what did happen to you?"

Ow. How could he explain this? Would his alternate turn on him, knowing the truth? "...I think you are better off, not knowing."

"Ah, but now I am curious and I will not let you go until you tell me," he may be teasing.... or maybe not.

His alternate's cheerful grin, drew a more rueful smile out of Loki. He needed to speak to someone, without illusioning himself, anyway. Too long had he used Odin's guise while interacting with all others. While the subject matter was disheartening, Loki craved the social time.

"He left me on Svartalfheim, and wandered back to Midgard to bash his way to glory."

"My chest hurt viciously. After a long while, I managed to heal myself. Then it was easy to find a path back to Asgard."

Now they were getting to territory that was unnerving. Well, if this alternate hated him too, so be it. Loki would speak his tale. He was tired of hiding. Never had he imagined that stealth could be this aggravating.

"You went back to Asgard? Why?"

But he thought he already knew. He thought it was what he would have done, if he'd recovered...

"...I wanted ...to know the truth." Loki admitted in a tone both brittle and tentative. This was clearly a topic of great pain.

"Thor had said... the Allfather had mourned, when we were upon Midgard. Yet Odin himself had always favored Thor, before he abandoned me entirely."

This subject hurt. Loki didn't like addressing it. Both because it gave his alt ammunition against him, and because Loki would rather look away from this pain. "I wanted to know the truth."

His tone turning quietly seething, Loki continued. "I wanted to see just how much the old butcher gave a damn. If he'd lied to me... or to Thor."

Loki listened quietly, trying not to show his own emotions.

His voice was quiet and a little tense.

"And what did you discover? What was the truth?"

"Not an answer enough, only further questions," Loki snapped, clearly distraught over what he had learned.

"I played the part of an Einerjar, just returned from Svartalfheim to break to him the news of Loki's death."

"He found me out. I don't know how. I don't know where my mistake lay. But he knew. And I could not allow myself to be recaptured. If I failed Thanos again, then what was left of my family would pay for it."

Fidgeting in earnest now, Loki looked shaken. His cheeks sunk as he pursed his lips, displeased with the retelling of this tale.

"We fought. I did my best not to kill him, which was a mercy he didn't deserve. And he toppled to the floor, anyway." Frustration and a bit of helpless bemusement line his tone at that. The whole fiasco had made no sense, and Loki was flummoxed in the fallout.

"The Odinsleep," the Trickster seethed. "He fell into another Odinsleep. Because not once can he manage to stay awake for matters of importance!"

Well, it felt good to get it out, anyway. Loki was crying before he'd even noticed. He scrubbed at the tears angrily.

"I thought he was faking. I bided my time, expecting him to rise, but nothing happened. He just... lay there. Still, and I was afraid I had somehow killed him..." Loki drew a labored breath, clearly under a great deal of strain.

"Until I checked him, and he was asleep, and Thor was on Midgard, with no one else to take the throne." Loki's jaw clenched in anger.

"There were no witnesses. The throne had to fall to me. And it would be easy, to utilize it to send the Aether to Thanos, keeping myself out of his clutches until I had appeased him."

Loki almost mirrored his twin's emotions now as he spoke. Anger and annoyance and concern, although in milder doses since he had not lived it. But he could imagine it going that way and Odin's avoidance yet again when confronted by his younger, wayward son.

Loki gritted his teeth.

And Thanos... That was a name he didn't want to hear again.

He closed his eyes briefly, then sighed when the other Loki finished.

"So you... have the throne there," was all he said for now, but he sounded weary and not all that happy about it.

"Technically." Loki's voice held the sort of serious, measured calm that it usually bore when he was anything but calm.

"I bear the throne beneath Odin's guise. The power is mine, but not any acclaim. I am merely a figurehead, until he awakens and I... find some method of escape."

Right now, Loki wanted an escape from living itself, sadly. The gaining of the throne, in spite of all its annoyances, had still prevented him from further attempts at suicide. He had to save Asgard, and Thor. While he swore that he had no care for Odin, this was his mother's Realm, and he could not let it fall to ruin.

He felt bad for his brother, though. Watching him mourn was guilt-inducing, whether or not Loki planned on being dead by the end of all this, anyway.

"Then do you think it was a mistake to go back, to have confronted him?"

Thor had already thought him dead. If he'd just disappeared then that would have been the perfect escape.

Loki hadn't made a mistake. He hadn't. He merely regretted his choices. But also, he would not have changed them. ...Right? After a long moment of contemplation, he pursed his lips.

"I did what I had to, to learn what I wanted to know." Loki let out a sigh, frustrated and saddened by this situation that seemed so very set against him. Whatever choices he made, at this point, he would never have the family he wished for. That knowledge hurt deeply.

He had a throne. He had power and riches, but no love or respect.

No. Loki refused to look here; it was a pain too deep to consider.

"I made the best choice I could. That I failed and learned nothing, is regrettable. I would still do it again. But I would do it better."

"And what would you do to change it and make it better?"

Of course he was interested for himself as much as for his alternate.

"I don't know what I did wrong," Loki snapped back, indignant as his alternate was forcing him to admit it.

"That he knew was the flaw. I could have learned something, if he hadn't known."

"You brought it up," Loki pointed out at the snapping, seemingly keeping his own composure but his eyes were sharply fixed on the other Loki.

"Odin has known... us for our entire life. Of course he would have picked up something. He may seem to be failing but he is perhaps paying more attention than we would like."

"At your prompting," Loki defended with a look of hurt indignation. He then fell silent to listen to his alternate's explanation.

"And what does that say?" the Trickster mused. "That he looks, but doesn't..."

Drawing a breath, he fell silent and closed his eyes, clearly trying to calm himself.

"This room," he quietly chose to admit, "I have not seen its like in some time."

"Maybe he looks but he doesn't care, unless he can use what he sees," Loki continued with some obvious bitterness.

Then he glanced around his room at the last words.

"Can you not go back to it or has it changed so very much?"

Loki's lips rippled a little, with hurt annoyance. Leave it to his alternate, to speak the words that Loki felt so viscerally, within his own heart. It was as having his own internal monologue, instead of a conversation. It gained him nothing, only further grating on his wounds.

The thought angered him, and it startled him when the resultant tears spilled down his face, with a quiet sob. Anger was safe; it let him cry, without weakness or acceptance.

The Trickster hadn't wanted to think about his family lost. He had wanted to focus on this room, and this feeling of home. But it was a lie, as ever, and all his carefully constructed lies were falling apart again... He needed his laughter and denials to conceal the pain. This would not do; he could not think straight, like this.

Forcing his attention back to the room, Loki pursed his lips and quelled his tears by sheer determination alone. They left his eyes shining with hard, cold, aimless rage, but he managed it.

"I cannot return there, yet. It would seem too suspicious. The room is closed." He shook marginally, then employed an illusion to hide it, as well as the tears in his eyes.

"None go there."

As if he could hide that hurt from himself and of course Loki recognised his own pain.

His first instinct was also to hide it or ignore what he had observed and move on - whether to shared anger or laughing it off - but why should he hide it from himself? Why should either of them have to here?

Loki reached out then, reaching for his twin's wrist.

"Stop," he said gently. "We are alone... You do not have to pretend with me in here."

Not fighting the hold on his wrist, Loki hunched his shoulders, locking eyes with his alternate. "And if I want to?"

The assertion was mostly a lie. While Loki honestly didn't want to take a closer look at this pain, concealing it was also bothersome. He simply had his pride, and didn't like the idea of revealing his pain, even if they shared it.

Loki chuckled softly. "I know you want to. We are ... perhaps not the same, exactly - but I believe we are similar enough that I can tell what you are thinking even before you are thinking it."

The hold was brotherly, as he would grip arms with Thor. It wasn't meant to be a restriction, more of a reassurance.

Of course he wanted to. Months it had been, of sitting upon that throne, continually unwanted, unrecognized, and mourned.

With quiet breaths, Loki allowed himself to cry. The tears were forced out of him by resentment of Odin, but beneath that fragile lie, he wept for what his life had become. He would not grip his alternate's arm back, pretending to fight this, even as he gave in to it. Pride could be an odd thing, at times.

"...There is nothing left for me, there," he breathed out, after a long pause.

"Then do not stay. Change it."

Loki was not surprised. Even if he gained the throne and could be himself he knew he still would not be satisfied completely. Ruling would grow tiresome, as would the casual disrespect he'd already taken note of from those on Asgard - even his so-called friends - when he had been briefly King. And that had been legitimate. He had been given the rule by succession. He hadn't underhandedly stolen it, even if certain circumstances he may have encouraged had made it fall into his lap.

But he liked things to be fluid and changeable. It would be far too dull to be stuck in one place - and even worse to be stuck under one mask. Particularly that being the face of Odin. To maintain that he would have to act like him and he knew that would grow only annoying over time. Oh, at first it may be fun to fool people and have the position but soon... Well, obviously his alternate was unhappy.

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