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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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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