faderift | tonight, we burn it (but not all of it)

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tonight, we burn it (but not all of it)

WHO: All of Riftwatch is invited
WHAT: A burning of things/ideas for the New Year
WHEN: Mid-Wintermarch (nowish)
WHERE: The Gallows main courtyard
NOTES: Mobius' post inviting one and all to come burn stuff (but no bodies or large fabrics or explosives, s'il vous plait.

It's not exactly raining but it is cold on the island housing the Gallows this night. There's fresh snow on the mountains viewable beyond Kirkwall, and earlier in the week there was even snow in the city proper —typical for this time of year.

The bonfire is in the middle of the courtyard, with some benches and seating pulled far enough away that stray flames shouldn't pose a problem to anyone seated there. Adrasteia is also on hand, with several large barrels of water and buckets placed near every building entrance within sight. Just in case.

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Loki looks at Mobius. Friend-shaped, but not a friend. He could lie. He could shrug and say it's because someone convinced him of it, once, and then he continued to behave as if it were true. Which wouldn't be wrong, exactly, would it?

But it wouldn't be entirely true either. "Because I've been Corypheus, to a different world; only routed at the eleventh hour, before I could cause even more damage."

"No."

It's a simple thing to say, steady and calm and looking at Loki very patiently. It seems a simple thing to say, because he can't possibly look at someone like Loki and see the monster tearing the world asunder. It's the drink talking, or mere hyperbole from his deteriorated emotional state.

But Loki believes it, doesn't he?

"You're not like that. How can you say that? What could you possibly have done to make you make a comparison like that?"

"I could tell you. But then you wouldn't be my friend." Loki inclines his head like this makes the most sense ever. "And that would be both patently ridiculous and very sad, very sad indeed."

He gestures for the bottle. Gimme.

"I am. Or I was. You can ask the Provost. He'll probably tell you all about it." A beat. "He's the head of research anyway, so you might as well. I have a feeling you'd fit in there."

Now that sounds a bit more like a petulant drunk answer. "You're not even going to remember this conversation in the morning," Mobius says with a light roll of his eyes.

And another drink on his end. But then hands it back over, fine, gosh.

"I'd rather hear it from you than someone else." If that makes any difference.

"I have many years of experience drinking. I'm not blackout drunk yet." He'll remember this, or at least most of it, just fine.

Which is not a great thought or truth, honestly, but here we are.

Loki takes the bottle back, eyes narrowed, but doesn't drink again. Yet. "I tried to subjugate an entire planet because I found out I was adopted." Okay, now, time for a drink.

"Because--" He blinks several times. "Because you're adopted?"

Rest assured, it's a very serious charge to make against oneself, but the reasoning supplied seems so patently ridiculous. This must be a joke. "You got so mad at your family that you stormed off and tried to rule a whole world?" Has he got that right?

"Ridiculous, right?" The expression Loki has on his face isn't exactly a smile, isn't exactly a grimace either. "I suppose it could be more nuanced than that; after years of being convinced I was a monster and then having evidence to support I'd been one from conception, I went onward to behave accordingly. But when you get down to the core of it..."

He tilts his head and raises his eyebrows. "I got so mad at my family that I stormed off and tried to rule an entire world, yes."

He shakes his head. "That's not--" What, true? The point? Relevant to the situation right now?

And if it is true? If it's true, and he's been nothing short of Corypheus himself, and now he's here and repentant, what does that mean for their enemy? Is that someone you can even try to rehabilitate? (No. No, he's from so long ago, stewing in this madness, there surely is no turning back. Right?)

Is this, perhaps, the point of bringing Loki here, beyond this other-family and other-self?

Another shake of his head, breaking his gaze to the ground beneath them like it might ground him better. "That's not the core of it. It's more than just being mad and throwing a temper tantrum. You acted a monster because you were treated as such. Nature and nurture, that's..."

If it's true, it also makes me angry for Loki, and that feels dangerous if he's so far out of his depth here. "What happened?" Quiet. Simple. What happened when he tried this global takeover? (How bad was the damage? How many dead? What was the end goal he was trying to reach, and what happened to that?) What happened when he was forced to stop? What happened to change him?

So, not so simple.

Oddly, perhaps, he didn't expect Mobius to agree with the point that he'd acted monstrously because he'd been treated as a monster by others. Odd because it would make sense that the Mobius he knows, the one from the TVA who knew Loki inside and out, would make that argument. Odd because this one is not the same, but has the same heart, from the sound of it.

I met a variant of you, he imagines telling the Mobius he knew first, and it was strange and wonderful at the same time.

Loki shakes his head, once, to clear the thought and recollect himself into the present, into Thedas, into this night with the dwindling fire. "My brother aligned himself with the heroes of that planet. They came together and stopped me, captured me, put my attempts to overpower them all under heel." Another swig. "Things after that get strange, so perhaps that part of the story is better situated for another night."

"Oh," he says with humor in his voice but not on his face, "is that when it gets strange."

This also might be the best night for it. If Loki is going to be loose of lip and tongue, if he might regret what's been revealed come the morning.

"What did you think you were doing? When you did what you did. What was ruling a world going to get you?" Other than power and wealth. Emotionally, what was the goal?

"...perhaps I should say 'that's when it gets harder to explain'." A shrug. He doesn't want to tell this man that his first friend in centuries is just another version of him from another reality. That probably won't go over well, right?

"They'd have to recognize that I was... that I meant it. That I was worthy." Another drink. He offers it back after this one. "Conquest is something my people, the people who raised me, were very good at, you see. And I had never been good enough."

That puts a different flavor on all of this. He takes the bottle but doesn't drink, rolls it slowly between his hands. "Then were you really acting like a monster? Or were you just acting like the rest of your family?"

Which might then make them also monsters, depending. It doesn't sit well with him. Surely more context is needed to make it clearer.

"Is there truly a difference?" He knew better, is his point. Knew that it would cause suffering on a grand scale, and he didn't care, was too focused on what he wanted and what he thought all of it would gain him above all else. "Which I suppose answers your question."

He presses his lips into a thin line, folds his hands in his lap, and leans back a little. "A lot of people died, and that was that planet's first real exposure to life from beyond their own shores, and my brother got to be the hero." He bows in his seat.

"Your brother, who might have tried the same thing if he hadn't felt good enough?"

That doesn't make it okay. Far from it. He's just trying to get a better idea of where Loki stands--where he stood in the world he came from, with the family he betrayed and misses, even though it sounds like in a way he did what he should have done, and shouldn't care to associate further with monsters in their own right.

"And then you changed your mind about the whole thing. You really see yourself in a deranged darkspawn magister?"

"...I don't know." Loki frowns at Mobius, at the fire, at his hands. "I don't think he's ever had doubts that he was great."

Which is a difficulty, for him. How do you relate to someone who appears perfect, the ideal specimen of your people, when you feel relegated to shadows and subterfuge and remaining in the background? But he loves his brother, with all his failings nonetheless. And he misses him, and his mother, and...

Yeah.

"I was shown the path I was expected to continue downward and decided I wanted something different." He tilts his head, shakes it a little. "There's a difference, I think, between wanting to become a god and knowing one is one." So that is part of it. "In his position, I would probably have been fine with taking over Tevinter and leaving the rest. I don't think he cares about the end, I think it's gone beyond that point."

There's feeling worthless, of course, and lashing out because of it. But there are few in Thedas who could claim to take that feeling and become a conqueror for it.

Does that make Loki dangerous? Does it make him a threat? What of the man that told Mobius that he wouldn't care to leave unless he could take a treasured few people with him?

"I think the end is the point. The end of all things. After touching the Golden City and blackening it to ash for hubris and want of power and getting cast out, one might hold a grudge against a god that did that to them." Once again: cool motive, still murder. "Neither of you are gods, though."

.........Unless.

"Are you?"

"You're probably right." A frown; Loki had not considered that some version of an armageddon would be the direct desire of a war such as this, but it makes a lot of sense. The people involved don't seem to be fully interested in just obtaining more land, they want all of it, and there's a certain sense of salting the earth, perhaps, as they go.

Or maybe Loki is just morose, and drunk, and thinking about endgames.

"I'm definitely not a god now. I'm rather human." Still. He looks at Mobius with a level expression. "Whether or not I was one before, well. Does that matter as much?"

Does it matter when he's terribly wonderfully human?

"It would...give you a vastly different perspective. It--are you saying you were a god of your realm? Like Sylvie? Is that why you could travel to other worlds without crossing the Fade?"

Terribly wonderfully human is definitely one way to put it.

"Technology is how we traveled to other worlds; technology so powerful and impressive it may as well be magic." But, Loki nods. "I was a god. All of our people were, major and minor alike." Which says quite a bit about himself and Sylvie, all at once. "She said you weren't thrilled with the idea."

"She said a lot of things that I wasn't sure I believed. Her people were gods, too, supposedly." He shakes his head. "I don't understand how that works. How can you have a whole people that are all gods? Who are your subjects, then? How can you have minor gods?" Maybe it's an elven thing? They've got a number of gods. Could any of them have been called minor, though?

"People from a different world, who have skills and talents that seem otherworldly, who are then understood to be god-like. It didn't start with either Sylvie or myself; it likely won't end there." He gives a one-shouldered shrug. "I wasn't there at the start of the practice; I'm sure to some consider Asgardians just to be aliens and nothing more."

"That doesn't..." Answer fucking anything, Loki. "Other people thinking you have the skills of a god doesn't make you a god." Probably. Is that how it works? No, because that insists that any mere mortal could then be elevated to godhood. "And it sounds like you guys sucked as gods anyway."

What with the conquering and all that.

"No, what makes you a god is the belief of others. That's it, not much else. You could have the intelligence of a rock and the aptitude of a bored toad, and if enough people believe, you are that thing they believe in." Was Andraste mortal before she became the Bride of the Maker? "I never said we were good at it."

Well...yes but...but that's different. (No it's not.) (Is it?) (No.) "What makes you a god is that you're a god. Corypheus isn't a god because he's corrupted enough souls to possibly call him such."

Mobius shakes his head, trying to wrap his head around it, what makes a god a god. The Maker would still be the Maker even if all of His children turned their backs on Him. "Is that why you became a monster, then? Enough people believed that of you, so a monster you became, just to prove them right?" Because his family treated him that way. What family does that to their own child? Even one not of blood. "And does that mean you are not a monster now? Because I highly doubt anyone here thinks of you as one."

"When you're talking about monotheistic beliefs it's a little different. One god did everything, made everything. It might not matter who believes.

When there are more consciousnesses involved it gets complicated."

Loki rolls his eyes. "I don't want to argue my existence with you. Thedosians don't, on the whole, enjoy statements that disagree with your worldview or the teachings of your Chantry. I'm not saying any of that is wrong; only that elsewhere it's different."

Just gonna. Skip right on over whether or not he's a monster still.

Edited 2022-01-28 09:06 (UTC)

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