faderift | closed | date but not date-date (UNLESS...)

Entry tags:

loki,
mobius

closed | date but not date-date (UNLESS...)

WHO: Loki, Mobius
WHAT: Dinner and a drink, with some odd canon update shenaniganry
WHEN: a wednesday in early drakonis
WHERE: Kirkwall, evening, a tavern called ~The Innocent Magpie~
NOTES: after this conversation

It's fine. It's all fine. Nothing Loki has said about himself, and nothing Sylvie has said about him, will deter Mobius from making good on Loki's offer of food and drink. Even if, in all technicality, it had been Mobius' idea first for the vague flirtation around the bonfire.

He hasn't spoken to Provost Stark about the events that had been described. It's tempting. He might have to, just to get another perspective on the whole thing. But he tries not to let it bother him. Whatever happens to their enemy, he knows that Loki is making a conscious choice to be better. And if he can't give someone a chance, then...what's the point?

It does amuse him that he keeps getting drinks with people with no real effort involved. Though perhaps Loki and Sylvie have...similar tastes? Astarion mostly just wanted to suss him out and not say no to a free drink. However he feels now is anyone's guess. He arrives at the ferry dock at the Gallows right around the appointed time. He can see the boat on its way, and he's eager to meet up with Loki.

Who doesn't show. And doesn't show. And doesn't show. He's willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but once the ferry arrives, he boards reluctantly and takes out his crystal.

"Ferry's leaving in a second. Where are you at?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"One doesn't usually enjoy working for someone under duress," Mobius points out with a little laugh. "Can I ask what your brother is like? It didn't sound like you had very good opinions of your family, earlier."

The whole adoption thing leading to trying to pull a Corypheus thing.

"Mostly it was my father that I was angriest with. My brother and I rarely see eye to eye, but I do lore him deeply."

Loki sighs a little, trying to think of how best to describe Thor to someone else. "Where I am dark, my brother is light, quite literally. He's large, and blond, and boisterous. He's incapable of subterfuge, much to my chagrin."

"Polar opposites. That's cute. Must've been a pain in the ass to grow up with." He scoffs lightly. "Also sounds like he'd get on famously here. Not that I'd wish that on you. Or him, I guess is what I mean."

"He would, I think." Loki is quiet a moment after that, considering what it would mean for his brother to be here. Any iteration, really, that had grown up alongside Loki, might also have lived through his death. How's would he explain himself? Would Thor believe him?

He sighs. It doesn't matter now, perhaps.

Perhaps it never will.

"...Shit, I'm sorry." Even if some of the memories are good, he's gone and reminded Loki of things he doesn't have now, can never have unless a certain brother of light falls out of the sky. And aren't things complicated enough? "I'm usually a little better at this than...this."

"It's alright, really." Loki shakes his head and offers Mobius a small smile. "Imagine it's usually a bit less complicated, these conversations, with people who call this land their home. There's no need for apologies."

"Still." Loki's not wrong. And at least it's not the barrage of invasive questions Mobius has taken to give Rifters; they're past that initial stage already.

"But if I'm gonna say some crap that makes the evening a little less light, I think you should know. I haven't asked Provost Stark anything. About what you mentioned at the bonfire." Because that had been Loki's suggestion, after all. "And I don't have any plans to. In case you were wondering."

Loki tilts his head to one side, frowning. That's not at all what he
Expected Mobius to say, or decide for that matter.

"I'm sure you can guess what I might ask. Why not?"

"Couple reasons. Partly I don't want to drag someone else into it, especially not my boss. No idea how he feels about whatever he knows, but just coming up to someone and asking point blank about a terrible event that I, under normal circumstances, wouldn't know about feels pretty rude. But also?"

He leans closer, giving Loki a searching look for a long moment. "I haven't known you to lie to me yet. And I'm pretty good at picking up on that. That...that's not something you pluck out of thin air and make up to tell someone. Maybe Stark would be able to give me more context, maybe he'll soften the blow, maybe he'll just confirm everything you said. But I don't need him to. I mean, yeah, outside context would be nice, but I don't doubt that it happened. The only thing I might doubt is if you're up-playing your involvement or downplaying the reasoning behind it."

The scrutiny is no more comfortable for its familiarity. He wonders what it is, exactly, that Mobius sees when he looks at Loki so closely. Is it something he could put into words or just... an understanding, a feeling about the collection of atoms in front of him?

He's not going to ask. But he does wonder.

"I don't think I'm doing the former." The latter, however... He takes another drink.

The implication is clear. In a way, it makes him feel...a little better? Because if it's something more than 'because I was mad I was adopted', then it's probably a better reason. A more reasonable...reason. Not that there's a good reason at all to do what was done, but--

"Do you want to chase me off? I mean, pretty nifty defense mechanism, see someone get too close so you deploy the worst information about yourself."

Loki pauses in his drinking, just long enough for it to be clear that it was done purposefully, and then drains the tankard in one go.

Catching his breath loudly afterward, he frowns a little bit and then... shrugs.

"It would be easier, than having you find out later when we are already friends. This way, I know how much it'll... hurt, for lack of a better word."

"I thought about it. It surprised me. Made me reconsider things." He can admit that much. That the information almost did what Loki wanted it to, nearly cost him a potential friend. "But I'm still here. Because I want to be. I like having a little faith in people."

"That is something of a constant with you, isn't it? Having faith. In people." Now that his tankard is empty Loki has nothing to really hide behind. "I don't dislike it." He just... worries. About misplaced faith. In himself, in others. What do the repercussions look like if he grants the wrong person a little grace?

Well. Loki can imagine. He can also imagine that sitting around worrying about that aspect of interacting with other sentient beings leads nowhere useful. So he has to let that go.

"I'm glad it didn't work."

"Faith in the Maker only goes so far." Mobius gives an amicable shrug. Faith is a constant with him, in so many different ways. "We can't rely on Him to do everything--or anything, technically, since His throne is empty, but the point is, we have to do what we can. People. Most people just want what's best for themselves and everyone else around them; I believe that. And those who have done wrong..."

He gives a motion to indicate Loki, for instance. "Regret, repentance. Second chances are important. I'd be a hypocrite if I wasn't about second chances and fresh starts."

Loki smiles at that, not displeased with the idea of a fresh start. A second chance. To love, to care for others, to make decisions that do less harm than the ones he'd made before.

"I'd raise my glass to that, if I had a glass, or even just if this had alcohol in it still." He twists in his seat and catches the eye of one of the staff; once their tankards are both full again, Loki raises his in a toast.

"To second chances, and fresh starts."

Loki has a good, infectious smile. And the insistence of a toast has Mobius laughing. It's a good one, though, something he can definitely get behind. Loki didn't ask to be here, but he's here, and he's going to make the best of it.

(Or he'd better. There are multiple people that will give him some form of hell if he doesn't.)

"To new friends and new opportunities."

Is it still clinkies if the tankards don't clink?

It's more like sloshies, actually.

After the tankards make contact Loki takes a long draft, exhaling as he sets the container down on the table. "Back home, we would smash the stoneware on the ground after a good drink. But I got kicked out of a few places for doing that when I arrived, so I've grown out of the habit, I suppose."

A one-shouldered shrug.

"Have you made many new friends already?"

"Yeah, I think they'd look down on abusing their drinkware and making a mess." That's cute, though. He kinda wishes he'd seen that.

He considers the question and mirrors Loki's shrug. The amount of friends doesn't matter so much as quality, of course. "Some. Not sure I'd say many, but most people aren't exactly here to make friends."

"Quite the shame." What, that people don't want to clean up after you, Loki? Either way, he shakes his head a little.

"No, I Imagine they're here because they have to be, for one reason or another." Some people are fine not making friends. A portion of natives don't talk closely with Rifters, Loki's learned. But the rest of them? Have to live here. Adjust. Get used to things.

"You have to be here, but you've made some friends here." An observation. Maybe mostly with other Rifters, like Astarion, but friends nevertheless. "Ones you haven't chased off, too. So you're definitely doing something right."

Loki believes himself to know the common denominator between himself and his friends: a core of need, the sort of thing that has driven some of them to be a bit more monstrous than others. He loves his friends; he loves his friends. It's complicated. But that's all hard to articulate, and so Loki doesn't, opting instead to nod along as Mobius speaks.

"It's more friends than I'm used to."

"I imagine you've changed since coming here." And changed even before coming here. "Not an easy task. But I'm glad. Nothing about transitioning to a new world with new rules and customs and in the middle of a war and basically being told you can't go back, you've got some dangerous magic in your hand, and also you definitely have to live and work here or face consequences can be easy, but it's gotta be easier with someone by your side."

"Change is inevitable. Enacting it is hard." Dangerous magic in your hand has Loki looking at his palms, hands which could summon a blade covered in fire right now with only a thought, or a dagger, but he knows that's not what Mobius means. Mobius means the Fade Shard, something that Loki considers a vague nuisance most days and a strange tether to this world on others.

He had on gloves, but eating in them always feels... unclean, so he had taken them off once the food arrived.

He thinks of Alexandrie, who can't use her arm, can't paint. Has he been by her side? He would like to say yes but mostly he has been chasing his own desires in the boundaries he's set with his love for her. But he can't heal her body, or change what time is doing, has done. He thinks of Sylvie and the fact that they can't keep their hands off of each other. He thinks about how his entire plan in Thedas has been to survive from one moment to the next, make as few enemies as possible, try to live as comfortably as possible. He thinks that friends make things more comfortable.

He loves his friends.

He closes his palms and tilts his head a little. "When you do the same things and lose it all you have to start thinking differently, or there's nothing to be done."

"You'll find yourself in a ditch of your own making," he agrees, far more interested in watching Loki than in his own meal. What is he thinking? About said dangerous magic, certainly. But that can't be all. Loki's lived with magic all his life, and a little something like a touch of the Fade can't be enough to fuck it all up.

"Starting over lets you do and learn things you never got to before. Change is the hardest thing anyone will ever do, and you don't always get a choice about it. But it can be worth it. It can be so worth it. Even better when you get the chance to grow with people you care about. People who care about you."

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I always forget the gloves

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