milliways_bar | (no subject)

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After This Hel enters the bar from the lake door, the heavy red cloak wrapped tightly around herself.

She isn't upset, not really. She's just confused.

If the Aesar aren't all bad, what does that mean for her?

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Archie looks up as she passes. Expressions don't show quite as well on her face, but sometimes Archie can tell when something is wrong. Especially with one of his friends.

"...Hel?"

"Helgi."

Her response is quiet and calm. Yes, she's confused. That doesn't mean that she wants to share particularly. She's not good at that.

He won't pry, he understands not wanting to share, but he will be there.

"Er... how have you been faring?"

"I have been worse."

She has. There are lots worse things than a confusing conversation with another god.

"And yourself?"

Surely there is.

"I'm doing well. I've been doing my best to keep my eye for any troubles, that's about all really."

"I have none that need Security."

She assures him. Unfortunately relatives can not be jailed just for existing, so she's speaking only the truth.

"I am glad of that, my dear. Though in truth, I had just missed your company."

He smiles up at her a little.

"I have been around."

Just antisocial. And confused. She found a place warm enough to spend time without freezing.

"I know."

He'd have been terribly distressed if he found out that she had left without saying goodbye again.

She nods, once. She won't do that. The next time she leaves will be the last.

Somewhere, deep inside, she knows that.

She isn't the only one that knows it, and he worries for her. He knows though, that she prefers her quie, an dis content to let her speak if she will. He will be there to listen.

After a time she settles down onto the ground, and orders hot chocolate. If nothing else it can warm up her hand.

And perhaps at that he remembers, and a warming spell is cast surreptuously. He wonders if she'd also like a cushion.

A falcon alights near Hel. Probably one she's seen before. Not certainly, but probably.

She knows her father no matter what shape he sees fit to wear. Her left eye sees only death and souls after all.

However, she also knows better than to speak with him when he has not done so first.

Loki looks at Hel. "Have you learned yet?"

She just stares at him.

Because as a conversation starter goes, that's just stupid.

Loki tips his falcon head. "See, now you're supposed to ask what you're supposed to learn, at which point I go off on some wild tangent. And then we have a strange conversation and you learn something from it, or decide to hate me more, or maybe both." He pauses. "I heard Baldur is here."

"I'm a god."

She points out, slowly,

"I do what I want to."

Its one of the very few things that she's firm on.

"He is."

Loki sighs.

"And that's the problem with us. We only do what we want to. Not what we need to, or what we should, except when we want to. I think I'll make a point to do some things I don't want to, just to buck the trend. Like, for instance, trying to talk to my future daughter who apparently hates me because I'm not her father yet."

She stares at him again.

And honestly considers hysteria.

But she's just been out and had a coherent, if woeful, conversation with a god of Asgard.

She's cold. She's wet. She hasn't even had a chance to order something hot to hold, drink, or curl up in.

So she just stares.

Loki looks at Hel.

"Hmm. No, you don't hate me. You care for me, I frighten you, but you don't hate me."

He hops away a moment.

"Hate, you see, is one way to twist love. You, I think, have an entirely different twisting. I have no doubt that in time, I'll hate a great many people, that were once friends and allies."

He looks at Hel again.

"What do you need?"

She's silent for a long time.

What does she need?

What does anyone need?

Comfort, friendship, love, acceptance.

"Ramon. I need Ramon. Or Random."

Loki looks at her more closely.

"Your friends. Yes. Friends who don't damn you with prophecy. Friends who allow the future to come as it will."

He turns away.

"Vildi þessi Ég andsetinn svo sem vinátta."

"Perhaps you will, here."

She says in response,

"That is your choice. Opportunities abound."

And the hatred of self that came so close to disappearing, that she's worked at and scraped a hole out of where there is pride, it slinks back. She shouldn't feel this way. She does.

Who do gods pray to?

Loki pauses, as if reviewing the conversation.

"Sorry. I didn't... Mean for it to come out that way. Best to just ignore me, I think. For the cleverest of all gods, I do and say a lot of stupid things."

He looks at Hel, then the door.

"I won't leave yet. But I'll leave you be. Better for you to be strong, then for me to keep tearing you down like this. Go to your friends. I'll make some of my own, then."

He looks back at Hel.

"If you wish to talk to me, just say my name. But don't do it because I've made you feel guilty. Don't ever do something because of that. Don't question yourself. Well, not because you're guilty. In fact, question everything, but not from guilt. Take it from me on this."

She nods, a jagged motion of her head that is almost exactly the way that meat shudders when a serrated knife is dragged through it, and then she turns and walks back out into the cold.

She doesn't feel it right now.

Loki flies off. If he's cursing himself, it doesn't show.

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