[Open] The Boys Are Back In Town

[thorndergod]

WHO: Thor, Anders, Open to any!
WHAT: An open log, gonna put up prompts for people as they come up, or people can pop a prompt in for me if they want either dude.
WHEN: Early-to-mid whatever December is
WHERE: All over the place
NOTES: None at the moment.

[Hit me up on Discord at Nadat#4647 or Plurk at Nadat if you'd like something!]

Comments

[thorndergod]

How can he just sit there? How can he calmly be going about everything as if it is all right, disguised yet again as a human? Everything has changed and Loki is still being... Loki.

Thor's fists clench. It doesn't help that he doesn't know what he wants, and that it feels like everything is aflame. He has fought the qunari for what feels is his whole life, and the man that has tried to kill him most often is qunari, shouldn't that be lining up to form some tidy answer?

"How long?" he finally growls out. Realizing the question may not fully make sense, he tries again. "Did you know? Have you been..." Been hiding it, pretending, shapeshifting always just to continue the ploy?

[hwaaaitsme]

Loki's whole demeanor shifts as Thor growls out his questions. He goes stiff, his attention fixed firmly on his book, and a slow scowl overtakes his face. There is a dangerous sort of silence, then, lingering as Loki considers what to answer, if he should answer at all.

Ultimately, the shape his rage takes is sarcasm--that is unusual for something of this level of importance, but the scathing quality of it is very much in tune with his mood.

"Oh, only a few years now," Loki sneers back at him and snaps his book shut. "I converted and decided--why not become a brutish monster just to torment you, Thor? I am so powerful a mage that one day I just decided to become Qunari rather than, I don't know, anything else I could have possibly done with such power?"

[thorndergod]

Just weeks ago Thor would have fully given into his anger and fought with Loki, welcomed a clash that the city would remember for Ages. The temptation is there still, calling his name as his nails press into the flesh of his hand, but for once a little bit of thinking prevails and it call his attention to Loki's words rather than voice. Brutish monster. Loki is calling what he himself is a brutish monster. Proud, vain, perfectionist Loki. It isn't that Thor disagrees about what qunari are that has him standing there, paused. He finds the description accurate. But that Loki sees himself as that and actually voices it drains the fight from Thor's body.

Qunari are awful, wretched creatures that should be wiped off the face of Thedas. Loki is qunari. But Thor does not want to see his bro-- Thor does not want to see Loki killed. And he does not want Loki to be seen as monster or creature.

And further, the words mean Loki hadn't known.

Thor's shoulders slump as he sinks back against the wall of Loki's room, not able to meet the... not able to meet Loki's eyes. He doesn't know how it's not possible that Loki hadn't known, but both of their parents, no. Both Odin and Frigga, who are human and not qunari, were and are powerful mages. They're not Loki's parents. There's no way his mother's corpse wouldn't have revealed something to them, or the likely demon that had come after her death wouldn't have taunted them if she'd been qunari, and there is no way the heir of House Asgard could have been anything save human.

But they'd done this. Or someone had done this. What matters is that it had been done to Loki, not by Loki.

"You are not a brutish monster," Thor mutters, defeated. Here he is, trying to actively think about Loki as qunari, view him as that, and his heart just can't accept it. This is Loki. Maybe not his brother, but his something.

[hwaaaitsme]

"Aren't I!?" Thor's sudden shift has pulled a sympathetic and violent peal of anger from Loki, he has taken up the rage Thor abandoned and, oddly, its target has not changed. Loki gestures at himself, at the form he has always worn, and a look of disgust and livid anger settles on his face. He rises and approaches Thor, all but spoiling for a fight.

"We have both seen it, brother," Loki hisses his tone just this side of mockery. "The twisted, corpse colored, horned thing that I truly am. I am a Qunari--a mindless, frothing creature that drags itself through the desert and dresses in rags, playing at being a person. I am good at it, apparently--the facade even had me fooled!

"I neither want nor need your pity, Thor. Call me what I am and be out with it!"

[thorndergod]

Now he looks at Loki, really looks at him, studies the all-too-familiar mage in front of him as if he can see some sort of gap or hole, some flaw, some giveaway. There's nothing there. The illusion is perfect. Thor reaches out to touch Loki's shoulder, feeling it underneath his palm. He's solid. He feels the way he's always felt. It is a lie, but it is a lie that Thor is not ready to let go of and he shakes his head.

"You are Loki." His voice is as dull as his gaze as his focus slips, before he brings it back and repeats himself more forcefully. "You are Loki. The mage who impressed our--" --no. Saying that Loki had impressed Frigga, even with the correction of 'our' to 'my,' would be patronizing. She'd known. She'd had to have known. "A mage who has impressed many with his cunning. Who was loved by my mother."

And that's such a big thing right there. That Frigga had loved Loki was indisputable, and she'd never loved anything lesser. House Asgard's slaves respected her and she'd never been cruel, but she'd never been actually warm to them.

"I do not pity you." He thinks. He's nearly certain. "You are... You are qunari. Somehow. But you are Loki."

Thor straightens, finding his backbone again as he faces Loki. As he faces his brother. What has this changed? Everything, yes, but also nothing. Loki is still Loki.

"I do not pity you," he now says with absolute certainty. "That you are good at illusions is nothing new. We know you are not human now, but what does this change? All it means is that it is certain you will never be heir of House Asgard, and I cannot find a problem with that."

It means Loki won't gain from killing Thor, now. It means a lot more than that too, but he is trying to find the silver lining here because he has realized he is not capable of rejecting Loki.

[hwaaaitsme]

Everything Thor says is washed away when he stumbles, when he reminds Loki of Frigga. Thor's hand rests heavily on his shoulder and, all at once, the weight of it seems infinite. Loki feels faint; the color has drained from him alongside his ire. Thor is being encouraging, or that is what his face says, but Loki cannot hear him over the sudden rushing in his ears.

My mother. Not our mother.

The distinction is so cutting Thor might as well have stabbed him.

He had tried so desperately to save her, he had been bathed in ichor and failed. Thor had resented him for that as well, but that was a loss they shared. But now they don't. Frigga is not his to claim, especially in death.

His whole relationship with her--the one person who loved him truly--it was a lie. It was a horrible trick.

Why?

He looks very faint and, in truth, if Thor's hand had not been on him he might've collapsed.

Why?

He will never get to ask, will he? She never spoke of it, not once. She lied for decades, to this very face, but why? As a joke? As a cruel gambit? To what end?

Loki does not realize panic has taken him, or that his heart is racing and irregular, that he has recoiled into himself, or that his hand grips Thor's arm with force enough to drive his fingertips to draw blood had his skin been exposed.

He is consumed with that question.

Why?

[thorndergod]

His brother is panicking and terrified, and the last straggling strains of anger and suspicion break. Thor grabs Loki and holds him close, tight. He cannot guess what part of this has Loki most troubled, but it doesn't matter.

"I have you," he says firmly. What a mess their House has become, but how much worse would it be if he didn't have Loki? Stabbings and all.

"You are Loki of House Asgard, and I do not care what you look like." What matters is who his brother is, and Loki has never hidden that. The scheming, manipulative murderer is his scheming, manipulative murderer.

[hwaaaitsme]

Suddenly he is being embraced, crushed against Thor's chest so tightly he thinks he heard himself creaking. For a fleeting moment he thinks that Thor is attacking him and, in that moment, he doesn't care if he is. That passes, as Thor avows him, as Thor, of all people, welcomes him into a family he already belonged to--but does not belong to in the slightest.

Loki swallows thickly as his panic calms, crushed under the weight of Thor's arms, and tries to muster some indignation. He can't find any and, in the end, just offers up:

"Our," he corrects and repeats himself again. He could ask Thor the question that consumes him--Why?--but Thor is not so much older than he is. Thor will not know. There is only one person living who would and he is behind enemy lines.

[thorndergod]

He frowns in confusion at the word, unable to search Loki's face for clarification while hugging him. That is no cause to let go. After a few moments his own correction comes to him and Thor has to face something else. If Frigga was as a mother to a qunari, how would that make her less Loki's? He cannot call Loki brother and deny him the parent that loved him.

Thor takes a deep breath and nods. "Our mother." That doesn't change anything about her either. She had loved. And possibly lied. ...Probably, actually, considering her skill set compared to Odin's. Had she lost a child and replaced him? Did Odin even know? Was that the reason Odin had always been somewhat cold to Loki, or is it that Odin simply suspected the child wasn't his?

Did it matter?

Thor is back from the greatest defeat he's ever suffered, involved in a war that has already (temporarily) claimed his homeland. There is so much ahead of him still, and his brother is beside him. In the grand scheme of everything in Thor's life, he can't find that the 'how' and 'who' matters.

He gives Loki a warm thump on the back before straightening and releasing the smaller man. A tiny bit of amusement crinkles his eyes as he looks Loki over.

"Even as a qunari you are smaller than me, brother. You should have eaten more of your vegetables."