nine_realms | Welcome To Asgard

"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.

"Change it?" he scoffed.

Because of course it would be so easy to change his species, that he might be better accepted. To bring back his mother, and have any family to love him at all. Even telling Thor he was alive, would be a gamble he was likely to lose. It was over.

"Do not tell me you have given up...," he hadn't let go of Loki's arm and now he gave it a squeeze - possibly a little too tight a squeeze as if trying to wake himself up.

Trying to wrench his arm away in response, Loki snapped back, "I can't very well, can I? Do you think he's going to take the throne, while I go my merry way? I would have to explain Odin. Thor would lose me again. ...No."

Fuming now, Loki looked bitter. "And yet there is no hope, for any of it. Only for them."

"So are you caring what Thor thinks? Of what he'd do?" Loki lets him pull away but is watching him closely.

"What?" Loki gaped at his alternate. Of course he cared; Thor was the last person who the Liesmith could honestly prove had love for him. Odin, he did not think had any care left. Frigga was gone. Sif had ever been a lost cause.

After Frigga... Loki did not want to make such a mistake again. He would not hurt those that loved him. Not unless there were no other paths.

"I am sure you would be clever enough to come up with a story that would not disappoint Thor... He wants to trust us. You know that. He would not turn his back so easily," Loki reasoned.

"He left me there, last time; he would have no trouble doing so, again," Loki insisted.

Of course, Loki had been trying to run Thor away, at that point. But even knowing it was his own fault, the abandonment had still hurt. It had still proved that Thor had been willing to walk away.

"Where?" He suspected what he meant but wanted to hear him say it.

Or maybe it was something else. Something this other Loki had gone through that was different.

Bitterly, Loki sighed and looked away, his heart aching. "The dungeon. Where else?"

Loki sighed as well.

"There must be other ways around that. After all that we did for him and his mortal, you should be able to convince him to let you go free."

Odin might not be able to be convinced, but surely Thor would show a bit more compassion, especially finding his beloved little brother had survived.

As long as he didn't think that Loki had planned his 'death'.

"If he sees me alive," Loki insisted indignantly, "he will accuse me. You know this. No words will convince him otherwise. Just as before. 'The Liesmith has lied again'. Words do not stand in my favor."

"What can he accuse you of? His mistake for thinking you dead? That he did not check thoroughly enough?"

"That I put him through months of grief. That I illusioned my death, then watched him mourn. There is nothing for me to return to," the other Loki insisted.

Why did he have to explain such grueling information to his alternate? Why didn't his alternate understand? He had understood Svartalfheim!

Loki frowned at him - at himself. "Then tell him otherwise. Stop being so negative."

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