faderift | [CLOSED] You hate my bad behavior

Meeting Astarion's gaze, Loki shakes his head a little bit.

"I wouldn't tell you that. Truth be told, I don't know if there's good in this world that needs to be protected; I just know that I don't want to fall under the heel of Corypheus and his plans towards godhood."

He has no plans on ratting his friend out. It wouldn't improve anything, by his measure; it wouldn't get Astarion the help he might need to make new connections here or feel that his time and energy are worth it. If anything it would likely ostracize and isolate him. And while it might be a slight boon to Loki's reputation amongst certain parties, he wouldn't feel great about it.

That might be more important, actually, than whether or not it would gain him anything.

"This world is too big, honestly; too fractured by politics and dislike between elves and humans and dwarves and qunari. By the same measure, it is also too small. Too disconnected from other worlds and realities and technologies. And of the supernatural elements involved, at least half of them are actively trying to kill Thedas."

He takes a breath, lets it out loudly. Slumps his shoulders a little.

"It's the people that matter. Individually moreso than in a group." In a group they're frustrating, terrified, dangerous. "Natives and Rifters alike. I'm not saying don't hurt, or be angry, or watch your own back." A shrug. "I don't even know if I'm making much sense right now."

It earns something cautious, that uncombative acknowledgment. Tames Astarion as surely as an offered hand, the tighter line of his brow slacking by almost imperceptible degrees, shoulders rounding. When he blinks, it's slow. Trusting.

Wary, but trusting.

There's something to be said for how it's all too new to Astarion. Seven months fresh into agency— into Thedas itself— and the world itself might as well be fallen snow for how little of a trail he's left within its broad, otherwise unexplored expanse. And with the shadow of his own past looming, the footprints he's tried to follow are...

Well.

"...it makes sense."

"People are, on the whole, terrible. Predictable in their terribleness, selfish, self-centered," Loki takes a breath and rolls his eyes, "but you can sometimes find individuals who aren't wholly terrible. And sometimes they go and surprise you, in either direction.

It's bullshit, I get that. This war is also bullshit." He shakes his head. "But I'm glad to know you, at least.

Take that how you will."

He thinks, but doesn't say, that it's harder for those who have found themselves in this place who aren't from this place. An uncertainty, an unknowing when it comes to what's available to them. It's easy for natives to run, to flee into the darkness or the night or whatever, but harder for Rifters who don't know where to go, what the languages or customs are, and are still struggling to figure out the lives they've been thrust into in the first place.

It's harder to trust in, that promise.

Not because it isn't pretty enough, or that Loki himself doesn't appeal— he does, he always has, and there was as much strain to be found in Wycome as their was comfort, for having him so perpetually near. For knowing how touching even the loveliest rose with well-entangled roots only leads to the worst sort of thorny bite, if one isn't prepared for it.

Maybe before the news of Lady Alexandrie's displeasure, things would've been different, but now...

Well.

He tightens his hold on the reins just so, leaving the animal to tug idly against its own bit.

"You won't tell the others about this, will you."

"I have absolutely no reason to."

Not entirely true, but. He has no reason to see it through, to put Astarion in that position, to involve others in his personal strife.

"And I don't want to, furthermore. So, no. I won't tell the others." Not even his 'wife', if Astarion is wondering. "Unless there's someone you want me to tell, I'm keeping all of this to myself."

He glances Astarion's way and then looks back at the path with a toss of his hair. "I may be new to friends but I am not new to betrayals."

"...thank you."

Low, when it comes. Barely audible over the steady hoofbeats thumping away as they press on, all too easily missed if Loki opts not to tip an ear towards the elf following along just at his side.

There's no excuse to be made, after all. And even if there was one, Astarion isn't inclined to fumble his way through using it as a shield: a troublemaker without an airtight alibi of any sort might as well lie down and roll over— suspicion will always run to them like a magnet regardless.

But in that vein, something tugs at him.

"Your betrayals? Or someone else's?"

He almost misses Astarion's thanks, and spends the next several seconds silently wondering if he'd imagined it up entirely before his companion speaks (again?) and Loki has to take a deep breath and consider just how honest he plans on being right now.

"Oh, mine." Does he sound proud of it? Not really. Is it complicated? Not really. "Rather often and seldomly from the front. Thus the whole...being new to friends includes being new to not stabbing people in the back."

Very honest? Apparently?

“In my experience it’s always been the opposite.”

Astarion had never chosen to turn on the people who entrusted their hearts to him, but that never truly absolved him of their downfalls, either.

“The ones who try to make themselves your allies are the ones who also then choose to bite.”

But Loki knows that by now, given the scope of their conversation thus far.

“What was it that changed your mind?”

"Everyone bites," he counters. People lash out, hurt others, act selfishly all the time. "It's just that the allies are closer and thus hurt more when they break the skin."

Loki gives Astarion a half-smile.

"I saw the end. The projected and expected turn of events for my entire life, and I decided I didn't want it."

“You...saw the end?” Brow knitting, head cocking to one side as though trying to grasp exactly what he’s being told.

“Is that a metaphor?”

Self reflection? A near-death experience? ...Or something else entirely.

"I told you about the people controlling their Sacred Timeline," Loki says with a shake of his head. It is not, unfortunately, a metaphor. "They had this... reel, I suppose, like a film or some other thing, that showed me my entire life as it had been dictated by them. Every failing, every betrayal, the death of my mother, my own death.

By that point, I had already been removed from the timeline but not erased, exactly, just... pushed aside. Had I wanted those things I'm not sure they would have been accessible to me anyway, but the point is. I didn't want those things. I wanted a different life. One where I was more than just a stepping stone to someone else's heroic stories."

“And you believed them. Those people that took everything from you.” It isn’t harsh, Astarion’s tone, though his expression runs painfully tight. Creased through his brow in obvious confusion. “The ones who supposedly erased you.”

He wants to think Loki’s too clever to fall for a trick so simple in design; there has to be something else, some other reason why he'd believe it to be true, but...

“They could’ve been playing you for a fool, given their grasp of time. Making you believe whatever suited their purpose.” His attention drifts, falling back towards the path ahead.

“My master thrived on it, you know. Watching minds bend to his coaxing logic. All false promises. Feigned need. It was in his power to simply take whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted it— but there was always entertainment to be found in twisting otherwise stalwart hearts piece by uniquely convincing piece.”

"I believed them. Because they were able to capture me, subdue me, knew things about me that I had never told anyone, shared with anyone. Because they possessed some of the strongest magics and artifacts that I knew of, at the time, and had rendered them all useless. Because they were vast, and many, and appeared to be the greatest power in the universe.

It wasn't just a handful of people, or just one man. I've fallen for the lies of one man before, and I wasn't tempted to do it again. There were tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people working for them."

Loki frowns a little, rolling his shoulders. "The scope of it is difficult to imagine, and even harder to describe. The place I saw was...larger than Val Royeaux. It was massive, and I saw people erased from time right in front of me for daring to argue. None of my magic worked there at all, at any point, and I could be trapped in the same five-second loop for as long as they desired.

There was no reason not to believe them." A sigh. "And then I met someone who wanted to destroy them, who had lost everything just the same as I had only much sooner, and I aligned with them."

He doesn’t really know what to make of it, everything Loki confesses. Not because it’s overwhelming, or that he doesn’t buy it, just—

When it comes to power beyond power, all Astarion knows is that deception seems all the more likely. Who better to promise truths unspoken than the one who holds your strings, hoping to steer you as they please?

Maybe that isn’t the case. Maybe what Loki hoped to avoid is as true as the air they breathe now, or the earth beneath their horses’ hooves. But whether it is or it isn’t, there really isn’t any way of knowing anymore, and Astarion isn’t daft enough to go putting his foot in someone else’s experiences.

Well— not for anything other than a decent laugh, and truth be told, he’s not in the mood at present.

Nothing’s really all that funny.

“But you’re free of all that now.”

Edited 2022-01-04 12:05 (UTC)

"Yes," Loki says, and there could be more conviction there. A firmer stance, a more solid affirmation that it's all behind him. But part of him is worried that it isn't; that something will happen and the TVA will come streaming into Thedas through timedoors and then...

And then what? He doesn't actually know. But his expression is hesitant, pensive, as he considers that.

"At the very least, I definitely hope so." He looks from the path to Astarion again. "I wouldn't wish them on anyone here."

There’s a lightness to Astarion’s tone when he meets that deep, pensive pain with a mild inquiry. Something soft as a nudge to the side— or what stands for it, given the fact that they’re not within reach of one another.

“Not even Corypheus?”

Loki snorts, breaking out into a smile. He appreciates what Astarion is doing, here.

"Okay, I would gladly sell Corypehus and his entire retinue to the TVA for a potato. A small one, even."

He shakes his head. It'd be nice, but terribly unlikely. "What will you do once we're back in Kirkwall?"

"And now we've the perfect plan to deal with them both should the worst come to pass." He asserts brightly for a moment. A flicker of a joke, sparked only to ebb a split-second later, once Loki's question finally settles in.

"I don’t know, exactly. Lick my wounds, perhaps. Continue fighting over scrap coin in Kirkwall as always, waiting for a chance to get my foot in the door— provided it doesn’t get stepped on first by our resident Hightown peeresses."

Which, given the relation of one of them to Loki himself, Astarion adds, quickly:

"No offense, of course."

Loki waves a hand. "None taken. I don't think she dislikes you enough for all of that, besides," he adds after a beat of thinking about it. "She is not a particular fan of The Game, though she is quite skilled at it." Imagining that Alexandrie would interact with her peers just to keep Astarion down socially is... difficult.

Not impossible, but Loki doesn't think it's likely.

"What is it you want from the denizens of Hightown?" Just more power, a better place to live? Loki imagines there are ways to obtain either.

"Both." He breathes, sharp. "Everything. Anything."

From where he sits on horseback, he lifts one gloved hand, curling his fingertips around nothing at all until they constrict— demonstratively— into a fist of sorts.

"The more wealth one has, the more power one has, the more control they have over everything that surrounds them."

And control is what Astarion wants, more than anything else he could possibly conceive.

In light of Astarion's answer and how much sense it makes, Loki feels a little foolish for even having asked. He desires control over his own life above all else, Loki imagines, even if those aren't the words used. All of that feels impossible, to him anyway, when they could disappear at any moment but he understands. It's the one thing that Astarion has been denied, time and again.

Of course, that would be desirable.

"What do you need for that, other than the financial aspect?"

[CLOSED] You hate my bad behavior

we're in good company with one another clearly

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I am so sorry to drop this exposition on you while you're threading talking about the tva w/sylvie

it’s all good! <3

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