milliways_bar | (no subject)

A few moments later, Baldur approaches her almost hesitantly. He's carrying two tankards - there's really no other word for it, really - of hot chocolate, both the appropriate size for 15-foot-tall deities.

He's still more comfortable around her when he's her size, after all.

"Hel? I thought... you looked cold. And since you introduced me to chocolate, I thought perhaps you might like me to return the favour somewhat."

"Oh."

She blinks up at him from her seat on the floor...the chairs just aren't big enough, after all, and after a few seconds she offers the faintest of smiles,

"Thank you. I...I'd like that."

He smiles, carefully setting the tankards down and sitting across from her, also on the floor. Not too close, because, well, it wouldn't be proper, and he doesn't want to discomfit her with too much proximity.

If he's not sitting in her lap, she wouldn't notice. She's used to R&R, and they don't exactly have "proper" distance between them,

"How have you been? It has been a few days..."

And then Loki talked to her. Without her expression changing, she flinches deep inside.

"I've mostly been crafting," he says honestly. The Bar had been willing enough to take a gold ring in exchange for certain supplies, and Baldur has been keeping himself busy. Not that it's been difficult.

"That's nice."

Hel can sew. And, at this point, make swords. That's about all, though.

"What are you crafting?"

"I am attempting," he says, with a self-deprecating smile, "to make a flower of beaten metal. An experiment, of sorts." He chuckles. "I'm not very good at it yet."

"Oh!"

She perks up, just a bit. Beating metal is, after all, beating metal,

"You may not have the coals hot enough...if they're too cold its actually harder to work the metal than if you don't have it hot at all."

"Warm is worse than cool, then?" He nods, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. "That... doesn't make sense to me, but then I don't know as much about metalwork as you seem to."

"I learned how to make swords, a while back."

She nods,

"It has something to do with the way the metal gets flexible and then not...I don't understand, really, but that's what the Dwarves told me."

And she takes a polite sip of her drink as well; spicy and strong, not sweet at all.

He nods, considering.

"Well, the Dwarves would know. I'll try it with hotter coals next time."

"There is one here. Not from our worlds, but he is here."

She waves her hand about, oh, mid-calf height on the two of them,

"Good luck with your flower."

"I may have to seek him out and ask his advice, then."

He smiles.

"Thank you."

A pause.

"...if it isn't an imposition, may I ask how you've been?"

"I have...been."

She looks into her drink as though it holds answers. It doesn't; just chocolate and chili and cinnamon.

"My father is still here."

This is not a good thing. This is not a bad thing. It is painful, and awkward, and she really wishes there was someone to curl up on and cry into the shoulder of.

Instead she looks at her drink.

"...he doesn't understand, does he?"

Baldur doesn't understand completely, either, but he understands a little, at least. From what Hel has said, Loki doesn't understand at all why he upsets her.

"He..."

She falls silent after that one word. The last conversation, if you could call it that, she had with her father was one of pain beyond what she'd known in all of her long life.

It didn't hurt so much when Odin threw her down the tree.

Or when she finally landed.

He hesitates, then reaches out and covers her hand with his own.

He doesn't notice, nor does he much care, whether it's her living hand or not.

Both of them are gloved, as she isn't warm enough yet to un-glove the right hand. So the difference is only in the birdlike delicacy of the dead hand as verses the comfortably solid nature of the living.

"He said I hate him. That I am frightened of him. That...he said, 'Hate, you see, is one way to twist love. You, I think, have an entirely different twisting.'"

She can't move, doesn't dare move, lest she frighten or upset Baldur. She is, after all, twisted and a monster. Even her father says so. The dead eye of Hel can not cry. It, however, is the one that she keeps turned away from him. The living eye, traitor that it is, spills over without sound.

He hesitates for a moment, and then he leans forward, biting his lip and lifting his other hand to very gently brush the tears from her cheek.

Softly, he says, "your father, the father who knows you, does not believe such things, Hel. The Loki who is here now is young, he doesn't know your mother or your brothers or you yet. He will, and he will love you. I know he will, because I've seen it, I've seen that Loki." Very quietly, he adds, "sorrow is not fear, nor is it hate. Confusion is not fear or hate. You have a right to be confused by his words, to be hurt by them, much as I wish it was otherwise. And I'm sorry he upsets you like this. But the Loki who knows you loves you."

"I just don't...I don't know any more, Baldur."

She doesn't move except to close her eye when he brushes the tear away,

"I just don't know. Everything is...everything is all twisted up inside."

She isn't the only one who doesn't know.

"I'm sorry for your pain," he says quietly. "If... if you would have me give you a few moments' peace, as I did before, I will. Or anything else that might help, even if just for a moment."

"You are too gentle to be one of us."

She tells him, a faint hitch in her voice,

"I think...I think I need to wait. To understand it, and part of understanding is pain. Thank you."

"Even the Norse need gentleness sometimes."

He nods, still covering her hand with his.

"As you wish. I'll not press anything on you, but the offer remains open."

"I don't know how to react to you."

She sets her cup down and takes his hand with hers, both gloved, to look at it as though she had never seen a hand before.

In some ways, she has never seen a hand like his before. One as large as her own, but not related to her. A male hand so big.

It allows her to not look at his face,

"You are different from what I expected. I don't understand you."

He looks down at their hands, expressionless for the moment.

"I don't understand you, either, and you're not at all what I expected, so perhaps we're even on that score."

After a pause, he asks softly, "is it bad, my being different?"