faderift | [CLOSED] You hate my bad behavior

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

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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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