[ It takes him a little by surprise, the force of her orgasm, the look of her head back and wild, the noise she makes. A very pleasant sort of surprise, certainly, even as he knows the moment she's finished he'll be a hair's breadth away from his own.
There are worse things.
Loki watches her for as long as he can tolerate it before he buries his face in her exposed neck and breathes in deeply. He's surrounded by the smell of her perfume, by the smell of their bodies together, by the fainter scents of blood and dirt on their skin, and finds he doesn't mind any of it. He moves his face so that his forehead is resting on her shoulder as he withstands a shudder along his spine, warning him he doesn't have much time before his own nerve endings give up the ghost.
One arm remains wrapped around her while his free hand comes up to her cheek and he tilts his head again to kiss her, sweet yet devouring, as his body begins to shake. ]
[ Alexandrie doesn’t know if she believes in the Maker, but she believes in this. Wonders, as she tries to revive muscles gone weak with release so she can hold him through his own, if he has temples in his world. If there are fires lit for the God of Tricksters, if they sing him songs, murmur prayers, shake open sure and settled hearts in his name.
Wonders in her own shaken heart, as she seeks to sate the urgent hunger in his kisses with the press of open mouth and tongue and shaky hand pulling at the back of his head, if she had called him from the Fade with all the nights she’d wept alone, with her sighs of longing. It had not rung in the four corners of the world, not been any voice but hers; but Andraste once had sung her lover back to her. Andraste once alone had been enough.
If the time comes that he cannot kiss for gasping, she will press her cheek to his and make his name a sacred sound when she calls it hoarse and quiet at his ear; if not, then she will answer kiss for kiss and let it pound in her heart and hope he hears it in her skin, in the way she tries to hold all of his body now with hers. ]
[ When he's finished shaking and falling apart to the sound of his own moans and her voice echoing his name in his ears, the feel of her around him and fingers tangled in his hair, Loki leans back with his arms behind him to keep himself upright. His body would like nothing more than to lay down, curl her into his arms and sleep that way; his mind is terrified that she'll disappear the moment he allows his eyes to close.
So instead he watches her, breathing hard in the aftermath that has left him a little lightheaded. It could just be whatever has changed about him, after falling through a hole in reality from this world's place of dreams, dreamers, magic, and gods, but he's just fine placing the blame squarely at Alexandrie's feet, thanks.
If she told him that she might have summoned him from beyond the Fade he wouldn't laugh at her. Considering he's laughed at just about anyone else who has told him that he is a figment, a matter of dreams, that's perhaps saying something.
One hand comes up to cup her cheek. He's still at a loss for words, something that happens so rarely it should probably be marked on calendars like an eclipse of the sun. ]
[ The hand that had tangled his hair is putting it to rights now, slow and languid motions that match with the weight of Alexandrie's boneless collapse against his chest. She tilts her head up to look at him when he touches her cheek and lifts her other hand to cover his.
She is—
She doesn't know what she is. A creature with a body that wants to be curled into his arms and slept with that way; with a mind that thinks if she does she'll open her eyes in Hightown, the body curled with hers will be Gwenaëlle's, and she will wake her dearest friend with the kind of wretched convulsive sobbing that leaves her empty and raw.
She cannot tell if the dampness beneath the cheek that rests on him is only mingled sweat or if she is crying again until a distinct drop rolls from the corner of her eye and across the bridge of her nose. She closes her eyes and curls her fingers into his hair, around the edges of his hand. Tries to listen only to the sound of his heartbeat, the slowing rise and fall of his breath beneath her. Turns her head for a moment to kiss his chest to ward away any thoughts he might have of her unhappiness. ]
[ She remains on his chest and even though she kisses his skin she won't look at him and his mind begins to spiral. In order to attempt to cut that off instead of silently falling through all the worst cases he can conceive of, he sighs and leans all the way back until his spine is flush with the bedding again, and just holds her.
Breathes in, out. Listens to the sound of the two of them there, the muffled sounds of the camp around them. Nighttime is falling and he wonders idly if someone will come and reclaim this tent or if circumstance will leave them be. His fingers go back to spirals and runic patterns on her spine.
He wants to ask if she's also afraid that this isn't real, that something terrible is going to happen, but the possibility exists that she isn't and won't be until the idea is introduced, and so he keeps quiet. ]
Even if this is real, even if she sleeps in his arms and wakes in his arms, what happens then? What happens when they have to dress, have to leave the tent, have to part?
For all that they had shared— the waking dream of it, the intensity, the look in his eyes, his claim that she was stuck with him— this man is not bound to her the way she cannot help but feel she is to him, sewn to him with thread spun of fear and loneliness and wishes and love. She does love him. This him. And he isn't hers. It doesn't matter that so much is the same, he isn't hers. They have only just met. She cannot possibly mean to him what he means to her and it makes her limbs tighten around him again in her anticipation of loss.
That is the same too. The old fear that still has roots around her bones. She had shrieked at her husband long ago because of it. Now it is soft when she speaks it. ]
I am afraid that I mean little to you. That I am only the grieving wife of someone very like you and you feel no such tie to me and will not stay. Or that I have dreamed this, and you are not real at all.
[ He feels real, but so did the dream shared by the Gallows. The loss, the rebellion. Her children.
Even softer, then: ]
Do you think me a weak and foolish woman? To admit so soon, so readily, I could not bear your loss?
[ Loki's fingers on her back still their movements before he moves it to settle, palm wide, between her shoulderblades. ]
If I have any control over it, I will stay by your side. I will strive to grant you the forever you've asked of me.
[ That is easier to say he knows because he feels very little control over anything at this point in time. That doesn't feel good, exactly, but he can recognize the truth of it. ]
I don't know how to convince you of my reality. [ It feels like a heavy, impossible thing in his chest. In a world where dreams walk into reality, how does one convince another that they're not just a dream? Especially when they're unsure of themselves? ] Or of what even the possibility of you would mean to me. [ That someone loved him, once, a version of him and then himself in turn. It would warm and haunt him by turns to know that and to be removed from it. ]
But know this: I could never think you weak or foolish.
[ The Loki she married is so often circuitous. He plays with words, turns them in his hands. Builds castles of them with secret corridors for truth to dart through out of sight. Shines oblique light across his meanings, winds through the land of conversation like a meandering river with tricks and turns, delights in the cleverness of it all.
Then, sometimes, strikingly direct. Unadorned and unwavering with no back corridors for her fears to hide in; words that she can lean against with the full weight of her uncertainty and know they will not move.
This is almost of a voice, and so she trusts him. Nods where she rests against him and becomes heavy and loose again, free to let her hand go back to slowly carding through the hair that is not pressed against the pillow. To let it wander to trace the shell of his ear, find the corner of his jaw, run down the length of his nose. To touch him merely for the sake of touching him. Because she wants to. Because she can.
It is the blue of evening now, and she tries to wriggle slightly closer, reach to find the blanket and pull it more snugly around them to ward off the chill that is coming to touch the sweat on her skin and take the warmth they'd made.
[ Her touch is so gently, so exploratory, that it brings a soft sort of smile to Loki's face. When is the last time he allowed anyone to be gentle with him? When was the last time he thought he deserved it?
He's not sure he does right now, honestly. ]
It's... it doesn't bother me, exactly.
[ He sighs, settling underneath her and the blankets. It's a complicated thing, isn't it? But she's asking and he feels no particular need to lie to her about it. A strange thing, that, and one he will turn over in his mind... later, maybe. ]
It is a reminder. That I am not what I was raised to believe I was. That I'm not Asgardian but Jotun, an ice giant. [ A scoff. ] Not a particularly large one, however.
[ There is a kind of gratitude in Alexandrie, for the dark.
She misses seeing him— the shifting beauty of his eyes with their blues and greens and sharpness and innocence, self-satisfaction and confidence and hesitance and wonder; the little private game of new-and-old she is playing with the shapes of his body, the way his hair curls, all the little fleeting expressions and the ones that form and stay.
But she likes the way it draws them close and makes speech softer, as if they were being mindful of the resting sun. The way difficult words come easier, spoken into the small space without worrying about what they might see in the other upon the hearing. And she likes the other ways it makes her see; how it means she learns him with fingertips and breath. The curve of his collarbone, of throat, of chin, of shoulder. The places where she can find the beat of his heart. Untangling the scent of him from battle and blood and leather and the ones she knows as her own and trying to breathe only that.
She will miss, she thinks when he replies, the blankets in summer. The way her husband's comfort was far too warm, and the way it became hers because all of her comfort was him. ]
[ In the dark the parts of him that bristle and feel... afraid, frankly, of this topic of conversation — one which he has not had with anyone, even his brother — settle a little. He can pretend he's unafraid, eyes blinking in the dark, soothed by her touch. ]
It would matter to them.
[ It's almost funny, how he was not accepted by Asgardians as one of their own (mostly because of his own behavior, he supposes, but also because he wasn't) but also probably wouldn't have survived very long on Joutenheim either. Unless they, or Laufey, suddenly developed a tolerance for small giants with magical abilities.
Seems unlikely, to him. ]
Considering my biological father left me to die, it would probably matter a great deal.
[ There would have been no welcome for her husband among the Qunari either. Par Vollen would have had him chained and collared. His horns tipped, his clever words taken with muzzle, sewn up with thread, or pulled from him by the root. He would never be alone. If found alone, killed. A saarebas— a dangerous thing.
She does not think they would keep him now. Not as he had grown.
He could have gone to the Vashoth when he knew, if he had wished it— the life of a mercenary— but he had been raised a human, would be an outsider there as well.
And this man; no welcome at his birth, little enough as he grew. Outside, always. They are made alone everywhere they go.
Maybe if he could not belong to the world, the world belonging to him was the closest thing there was. If love would not give, he would take with fear. Had she not chosen the same?
Alexandrie wriggles herself upwards along Loki's body until she can settle again with her head against his, nose against his cheek beside his ear, hand coming up to settle against the other side. Breathes there, thinks I will be your home from somewhere so deep in her chest that it makes her eyes water, though she does not cry.
[ What is the saying? A child who is shunned by the village will burn it down for warmth? It definitely applies to this Loki, even though he attempted to destroy all of Jotunheim instead of just a village, and he'd be entirely unsurprised to find that other versions of himself are very much alike in that regard.
Alexandrie shifts, climbing his torso, and he moves his arm aside to allow her to make herself comfortable once more. Once she's settled his hand returns to fingers against her spine, though this time they're still. No patterns, no distractions. Just the sound of her breathing and his, the feel of her breath warm against his skin.
Her question surprises him; complex in its simplicity. Not what happened, or even why, but what did it mean? That her voice is hoarse makes him worry he's been too forthright, telling her these things, but.
But.
There's something to be said for sharing even the darkest parts of oneself. Of hearing someone else's voice in response to the terrible things he's done, and not hear judgment. Concern, perhaps, which is an odd and complicated feeling, but not judgment.
He swallows. ]
I told myself it was to prove my loyalty. To Odin, my father. To Asgard. That if I orchestrated their downfall while Odin slept, he'd have no choice but to finally see me, regard me as worthy in the same way that Thor was regarded as worthy.
[ He hesitates. Takes a breath. That is not what she asked, exactly. ]
It was revenge. In a very nice package, mind, with quite the bow, but still. For being abandoned, left to die. For being not good enough to keep.
[ The word 'considered' was probably supposed to go in there somewhere, right? ]
She had thought so often of vengeance, but she had never gotten Rolant. His two cronies who had laughed with him she had. One killed in a duel of her orchestration, one ruined so thoroughly he'd fled the court. She'd thought she would be happy, but she wasn't. Vicious, manic, drunk on the power she'd been denied perhaps, but not made whole. She thought she would, if she could get Rolant. He'd burned to death in the civil war and she had been so angry, so denied.
All these years later she'd found him living, having faked it all. Thought about it again, and felt nothing. Knew it wouldn't matter. Ripping out the heart that made her nothing would not undo what he had done. ]
Did it work?
[ It is gentle, careful, because she knows his answer. Knows its bitter taste. Knows it is the same as hers.
Gutting someone else has never stopped the bleeding. All it means is everyone dies. ]
[ Loki scoffs, as if the idea itself is ridiculous. Perhaps it is.
It occurs to him that Odin's acceptance of himself is simply a memory of a recording from the TVA, not even a memory of his own making. It twists in his chest, brings his breathing up short. ]
Definitely not.
[ He remembers how he'd felt, in that moment. Devastated, empty, like none of it had mattered, like he hadn't mattered. He closes his eyes and remembers the rushing silence of the abyss before the wormhole, and how he'd been willing to let that be it. Allow his story to end there.
Then it hadn't. Because Lokis are survivors, or perhaps because he was too weighted with the glorious purpose of proving himself worthy. To Odin, to everyone.
The words 'I tried to die' are on the tip of his tongue but he can't bring himself to say them. He hasn't tried since then, not really, but something about that acceptance of the nothing that may follow never really leaves him. He survives, and he fights, but that little part of him is never truly gone. ]
[ She strokes the side of his face, and nods against him, and her heart breaks because his did. Because she knows there is a spot of numb silence that lives in him. That wakes with him, and walks with him, is waiting when he laughs.
They had crawled out of it together, she and her husband, blinking into the sun of what it meant to have given their hearts to someone who wanted them. What it had meant to be loved. What it had meant to let themselves be loved.
Here in the dark she tightens her hold and presses her lips to that space just in front of this Loki's ear and silently promises she will go back for him. She would go back a thousand times.
And he had told her where to find him when they met. That his truth is in his leaving, that he is still left there. It is living in his name.
Tender, and careful— so careful— when she reaches. ]
[ He's not sure, anymore, if his eyes are opened or closed. Blinking in the dark does nothing to diffuse the feeling of emotional vertigo, or make it any easier to tell, so he shifts away just enough to turn onto his side and face her. He can make out the vague shapes and planes of her face, here in the encroaching dark of this tent, and moves his hand to keep hers against his face.
It's quiet outside and warm in here, beneath the blankets and tangled up in her, but he feels cold and a little hollow. Like there is a fire that can't quite reach the corners of the room it's lit within.
That fire is, of course, the redhead in his arms. ]
It seemed... more honest. Thor is Odin's son; I am not.
I don't know, [ he says, and his voice is tired. A small bit afraid. If he is not Odin's son or Laufey's son, then whose is he? Is he no one's at all? Maybe it's foolish to be this concerned with a naming convention, but that doesn't make it any less important in his personal cosmology. ]
[ Her hand moves— tracing along the side of his face to smooth the hair at his temple, back again to his cheek, and she leans to brush her nose against his. ]
[ Can she promise him that she would, no matter what? Even if he's less... pliant than he is now? Less honest?
Possibly as much as he can promise her forever, he realizes. Asking would do nothing to soothe him. They have no control over the future, he knows that. They can only control how they respond to it, and possibly poorly at that. ]
You're too kind. [ It sounds like a joke but it isn't. ]
[ She winces into closing her eyes at what feels like a withdraw; too far. She'd pushed too far. ]
And I am not always now.
[ Even softer, slightly pained: ]
Is it kind, do you think? To see you and to be so desperate to be close, to be wanted, to be held, to be loved again, that I will press my hands into every wound I think you have to show I know you?
I have thrown myself upon you with my weight of years, and tried to press them into hours so I might have you not in future, but right now. Have pulled a flower open because I wept with want of its bloom, I—
[ He opens his mouth but all that comes out at first is a huff of breath before he leans in and kisses her nose.
He had told Mobius that no one was completely good, or evil, and he thinks of that now. Kindness, and unkindness, are not quite the same dichotomy but it feels... similar. Even murderers can be kind. Even the gentlest soul can do harm. ]
What do I really know of kindness? [ He asks her honestly. ] Too much and I distrust it. Turn away from it.
I'm unused to it.
Besides which, you didn't promise me kindness. You promised me honesty, and you promised me now, and as much as I don't want to sour you on me I'm terrified that if I don't, something else will, and I'll be even more unprepared for it than I am in this moment.
[ She said she wanted forever, and he thinks he wants that too. Is afraid of what it will mean if he isn't granted it. If he has it only for a moment just to have her turn away. ]
I'm a sharp and dangerous thing. I've cut you on purpose and now without even intending and you've done me no harm.
[ More trust than there has been, in the matter of Alexandrie's heart, is still a tenuous and fragile thing; so much moreso, here, with him. With how she'd pressed it into his hands faster than thought, believing it already there.
They were different hands, but it's too late now by far for her to take it back, and every moment she believes he holds it precious in his chest next to his own means she is safe again forever and every moment she does not is one in which her body knows she is abandoned. That it isn't the same, won't be the same, he does not love her, will not love her—
But the simplicity of a kiss for her nose and she is quiet again. Able to listen to him speak without the rising howl of wind behind it.
She takes a breath, long and deep, looks at him as if even in the darkness he could see the firmness of her truth in it. ]
I have held the blade that sometimes bleeds; have chosen it, knowing it will, and chosen it with joy.
[ Softer, then: ] I am not afraid of what you are. Only afraid that you will see I bleed and turn away to save me in a way I do not wish for.
I will not ask for trust, but I will ask for this: that you will not leave me when I love the parts of you that you cannot. That you will not leave me when you fear I will leave you and your only choice in it is when.
[ Something Loki is learning, here, in the dark, with Alexandrie Lucette Seraphine Arienne d'Asgard, is that being seen? Is akin to having a spotlight on one's soul, when it's been content and furious to hide in the shadows.
It is hot and bright and terrifying.
Her words cut him to the quick because it is what he would do — leave her in anticipation of being left, turn away because he's hurt her too greatly and surely, surely, she will tire of him and his shenanigans.
He's tired of them.
Loki can feel her gaze upon him in the dark, waiting for his answer. ]
Du har mitt ord. Even if I am afraid, I won't turn away from you. [ A breath, shakier than he'd like. Can he do this? Will he manage to keep his word? ] But I can't promise I won't be afraid.
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There are worse things.
Loki watches her for as long as he can tolerate it before he buries his face in her exposed neck and breathes in deeply. He's surrounded by the smell of her perfume, by the smell of their bodies together, by the fainter scents of blood and dirt on their skin, and finds he doesn't mind any of it. He moves his face so that his forehead is resting on her shoulder as he withstands a shudder along his spine, warning him he doesn't have much time before his own nerve endings give up the ghost.
One arm remains wrapped around her while his free hand comes up to her cheek and he tilts his head again to kiss her, sweet yet devouring, as his body begins to shake. ]
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Wonders in her own shaken heart, as she seeks to sate the urgent hunger in his kisses with the press of open mouth and tongue and shaky hand pulling at the back of his head, if she had called him from the Fade with all the nights she’d wept alone, with her sighs of longing. It had not rung in the four corners of the world, not been any voice but hers; but Andraste once had sung her lover back to her. Andraste once alone had been enough.
If the time comes that he cannot kiss for gasping, she will press her cheek to his and make his name a sacred sound when she calls it hoarse and quiet at his ear; if not, then she will answer kiss for kiss and let it pound in her heart and hope he hears it in her skin, in the way she tries to hold all of his body now with hers. ]
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So instead he watches her, breathing hard in the aftermath that has left him a little lightheaded. It could just be whatever has changed about him, after falling through a hole in reality from this world's place of dreams, dreamers, magic, and gods, but he's just fine placing the blame squarely at Alexandrie's feet, thanks.
If she told him that she might have summoned him from beyond the Fade he wouldn't laugh at her. Considering he's laughed at just about anyone else who has told him that he is a figment, a matter of dreams, that's perhaps saying something.
One hand comes up to cup her cheek. He's still at a loss for words, something that happens so rarely it should probably be marked on calendars like an eclipse of the sun. ]
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She is—
She doesn't know what she is. A creature with a body that wants to be curled into his arms and slept with that way; with a mind that thinks if she does she'll open her eyes in Hightown, the body curled with hers will be Gwenaëlle's, and she will wake her dearest friend with the kind of wretched convulsive sobbing that leaves her empty and raw.
She cannot tell if the dampness beneath the cheek that rests on him is only mingled sweat or if she is crying again until a distinct drop rolls from the corner of her eye and across the bridge of her nose. She closes her eyes and curls her fingers into his hair, around the edges of his hand. Tries to listen only to the sound of his heartbeat, the slowing rise and fall of his breath beneath her. Turns her head for a moment to kiss his chest to ward away any thoughts he might have of her unhappiness. ]
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Breathes in, out. Listens to the sound of the two of them there, the muffled sounds of the camp around them. Nighttime is falling and he wonders idly if someone will come and reclaim this tent or if circumstance will leave them be. His fingers go back to spirals and runic patterns on her spine.
He wants to ask if she's also afraid that this isn't real, that something terrible is going to happen, but the possibility exists that she isn't and won't be until the idea is introduced, and so he keeps quiet. ]
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Even if this is real, even if she sleeps in his arms and wakes in his arms, what happens then? What happens when they have to dress, have to leave the tent, have to part?
For all that they had shared— the waking dream of it, the intensity, the look in his eyes, his claim that she was stuck with him— this man is not bound to her the way she cannot help but feel she is to him, sewn to him with thread spun of fear and loneliness and wishes and love. She does love him. This him. And he isn't hers. It doesn't matter that so much is the same, he isn't hers. They have only just met. She cannot possibly mean to him what he means to her and it makes her limbs tighten around him again in her anticipation of loss.
That is the same too. The old fear that still has roots around her bones. She had shrieked at her husband long ago because of it. Now it is soft when she speaks it. ]
I am afraid that I mean little to you. That I am only the grieving wife of someone very like you and you feel no such tie to me and will not stay. Or that I have dreamed this, and you are not real at all.
[ He feels real, but so did the dream shared by the Gallows. The loss, the rebellion. Her children.
Even softer, then: ]
Do you think me a weak and foolish woman? To admit so soon, so readily, I could not bear your loss?
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If I have any control over it, I will stay by your side. I will strive to grant you the forever you've asked of me.
[ That is easier to say he knows because he feels very little control over anything at this point in time. That doesn't feel good, exactly, but he can recognize the truth of it. ]
I don't know how to convince you of my reality. [ It feels like a heavy, impossible thing in his chest. In a world where dreams walk into reality, how does one convince another that they're not just a dream? Especially when they're unsure of themselves? ] Or of what even the possibility of you would mean to me. [ That someone loved him, once, a version of him and then himself in turn. It would warm and haunt him by turns to know that and to be removed from it. ]
But know this: I could never think you weak or foolish.
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Then, sometimes, strikingly direct. Unadorned and unwavering with no back corridors for her fears to hide in; words that she can lean against with the full weight of her uncertainty and know they will not move.
This is almost of a voice, and so she trusts him. Nods where she rests against him and becomes heavy and loose again, free to let her hand go back to slowly carding through the hair that is not pressed against the pillow. To let it wander to trace the shell of his ear, find the corner of his jaw, run down the length of his nose. To touch him merely for the sake of touching him. Because she wants to. Because she can.
It is the blue of evening now, and she tries to wriggle slightly closer, reach to find the blanket and pull it more snugly around them to ward off the chill that is coming to touch the sweat on her skin and take the warmth they'd made.
After she does so, with a quiet curiosity: ]
Do you hate to be cold?
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He's not sure he does right now, honestly. ]
It's... it doesn't bother me, exactly.
[ He sighs, settling underneath her and the blankets. It's a complicated thing, isn't it? But she's asking and he feels no particular need to lie to her about it. A strange thing, that, and one he will turn over in his mind... later, maybe. ]
It is a reminder. That I am not what I was raised to believe I was. That I'm not Asgardian but Jotun, an ice giant. [ A scoff. ] Not a particularly large one, however.
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She misses seeing him— the shifting beauty of his eyes with their blues and greens and sharpness and innocence, self-satisfaction and confidence and hesitance and wonder; the little private game of new-and-old she is playing with the shapes of his body, the way his hair curls, all the little fleeting expressions and the ones that form and stay.
But she likes the way it draws them close and makes speech softer, as if they were being mindful of the resting sun. The way difficult words come easier, spoken into the small space without worrying about what they might see in the other upon the hearing. And she likes the other ways it makes her see; how it means she learns him with fingertips and breath. The curve of his collarbone, of throat, of chin, of shoulder. The places where she can find the beat of his heart. Untangling the scent of him from battle and blood and leather and the ones she knows as her own and trying to breathe only that.
She will miss, she thinks when he replies, the blankets in summer. The way her husband's comfort was far too warm, and the way it became hers because all of her comfort was him. ]
Does that matter? [ Clarification: ] The last.
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It would matter to them.
[ It's almost funny, how he was not accepted by Asgardians as one of their own (mostly because of his own behavior, he supposes, but also because he wasn't) but also probably wouldn't have survived very long on Joutenheim either. Unless they, or Laufey, suddenly developed a tolerance for small giants with magical abilities.
Seems unlikely, to him. ]
Considering my biological father left me to die, it would probably matter a great deal.
[ A beat. ]
I killed him. Later, of course, not as an infant.
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She does not think they would keep him now. Not as he had grown.
He could have gone to the Vashoth when he knew, if he had wished it— the life of a mercenary— but he had been raised a human, would be an outsider there as well.
And this man; no welcome at his birth, little enough as he grew. Outside, always. They are made alone everywhere they go.
Maybe if he could not belong to the world, the world belonging to him was the closest thing there was. If love would not give, he would take with fear. Had she not chosen the same?
Alexandrie wriggles herself upwards along Loki's body until she can settle again with her head against his, nose against his cheek beside his ear, hand coming up to settle against the other side. Breathes there, thinks I will be your home from somewhere so deep in her chest that it makes her eyes water, though she does not cry.
After a moment there, a little hoarse: ]
What did it mean to you, to do so?
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Alexandrie shifts, climbing his torso, and he moves his arm aside to allow her to make herself comfortable once more. Once she's settled his hand returns to fingers against her spine, though this time they're still. No patterns, no distractions. Just the sound of her breathing and his, the feel of her breath warm against his skin.
Her question surprises him; complex in its simplicity. Not what happened, or even why, but what did it mean? That her voice is hoarse makes him worry he's been too forthright, telling her these things, but.
But.
There's something to be said for sharing even the darkest parts of oneself. Of hearing someone else's voice in response to the terrible things he's done, and not hear judgment. Concern, perhaps, which is an odd and complicated feeling, but not judgment.
He swallows. ]
I told myself it was to prove my loyalty. To Odin, my father. To Asgard. That if I orchestrated their downfall while Odin slept, he'd have no choice but to finally see me, regard me as worthy in the same way that Thor was regarded as worthy.
[ He hesitates. Takes a breath. That is not what she asked, exactly. ]
It was revenge. In a very nice package, mind, with quite the bow, but still. For being abandoned, left to die. For being not good enough to keep.
[ The word 'considered' was probably supposed to go in there somewhere, right? ]
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She had thought so often of vengeance, but she had never gotten Rolant. His two cronies who had laughed with him she had. One killed in a duel of her orchestration, one ruined so thoroughly he'd fled the court. She'd thought she would be happy, but she wasn't. Vicious, manic, drunk on the power she'd been denied perhaps, but not made whole. She thought she would, if she could get Rolant. He'd burned to death in the civil war and she had been so angry, so denied.
All these years later she'd found him living, having faked it all. Thought about it again, and felt nothing. Knew it wouldn't matter. Ripping out the heart that made her nothing would not undo what he had done. ]
Did it work?
[ It is gentle, careful, because she knows his answer. Knows its bitter taste. Knows it is the same as hers.
Gutting someone else has never stopped the bleeding. All it means is everyone dies. ]
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It occurs to him that Odin's acceptance of himself is simply a memory of a recording from the TVA, not even a memory of his own making. It twists in his chest, brings his breathing up short. ]
Definitely not.
[ He remembers how he'd felt, in that moment. Devastated, empty, like none of it had mattered, like he hadn't mattered. He closes his eyes and remembers the rushing silence of the abyss before the wormhole, and how he'd been willing to let that be it. Allow his story to end there.
Then it hadn't. Because Lokis are survivors, or perhaps because he was too weighted with the glorious purpose of proving himself worthy. To Odin, to everyone.
The words 'I tried to die' are on the tip of his tongue but he can't bring himself to say them. He hasn't tried since then, not really, but something about that acceptance of the nothing that may follow never really leaves him. He survives, and he fights, but that little part of him is never truly gone. ]
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They had crawled out of it together, she and her husband, blinking into the sun of what it meant to have given their hearts to someone who wanted them. What it had meant to be loved. What it had meant to let themselves be loved.
Here in the dark she tightens her hold and presses her lips to that space just in front of this Loki's ear and silently promises she will go back for him. She would go back a thousand times.
And he had told her where to find him when they met. That his truth is in his leaving, that he is still left there. It is living in his name.
Tender, and careful— so careful— when she reaches. ]
And Laufey's son, more than Odin's?
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It's quiet outside and warm in here, beneath the blankets and tangled up in her, but he feels cold and a little hollow. Like there is a fire that can't quite reach the corners of the room it's lit within.
That fire is, of course, the redhead in his arms. ]
It seemed... more honest. Thor is Odin's son; I am not.
I don't know, [ he says, and his voice is tired. A small bit afraid. If he is not Odin's son or Laufey's son, then whose is he? Is he no one's at all? Maybe it's foolish to be this concerned with a naming convention, but that doesn't make it any less important in his personal cosmology. ]
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[ Her hand moves— tracing along the side of his face to smooth the hair at his temple, back again to his cheek, and she leans to brush her nose against his. ]
But I will hold you, as you learn.
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Possibly as much as he can promise her forever, he realizes. Asking would do nothing to soothe him. They have no control over the future, he knows that. They can only control how they respond to it, and possibly poorly at that. ]
You're too kind. [ It sounds like a joke but it isn't. ]
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[ She winces into closing her eyes at what feels like a withdraw; too far. She'd pushed too far. ]
And I am not always now.
[ Even softer, slightly pained: ]
Is it kind, do you think? To see you and to be so desperate to be close, to be wanted, to be held, to be loved again, that I will press my hands into every wound I think you have to show I know you?
I have thrown myself upon you with my weight of years, and tried to press them into hours so I might have you not in future, but right now. Have pulled a flower open because I wept with want of its bloom, I—
[ A bare whisper, now: ]
I cannot think it kind.
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He had told Mobius that no one was completely good, or evil, and he thinks of that now. Kindness, and unkindness, are not quite the same dichotomy but it feels... similar. Even murderers can be kind. Even the gentlest soul can do harm. ]
What do I really know of kindness? [ He asks her honestly. ] Too much and I distrust it. Turn away from it.
I'm unused to it.
Besides which, you didn't promise me kindness. You promised me honesty, and you promised me now, and as much as I don't want to sour you on me I'm terrified that if I don't, something else will, and I'll be even more unprepared for it than I am in this moment.
[ She said she wanted forever, and he thinks he wants that too. Is afraid of what it will mean if he isn't granted it. If he has it only for a moment just to have her turn away. ]
I'm a sharp and dangerous thing. I've cut you on purpose and now without even intending and you've done me no harm.
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They were different hands, but it's too late now by far for her to take it back, and every moment she believes he holds it precious in his chest next to his own means she is safe again forever and every moment she does not is one in which her body knows she is abandoned. That it isn't the same, won't be the same, he does not love her, will not love her—
But the simplicity of a kiss for her nose and she is quiet again. Able to listen to him speak without the rising howl of wind behind it.
She takes a breath, long and deep, looks at him as if even in the darkness he could see the firmness of her truth in it. ]
I have held the blade that sometimes bleeds; have chosen it, knowing it will, and chosen it with joy.
[ Softer, then: ] I am not afraid of what you are. Only afraid that you will see I bleed and turn away to save me in a way I do not wish for.
I will not ask for trust, but I will ask for this: that you will not leave me when I love the parts of you that you cannot. That you will not leave me when you fear I will leave you and your only choice in it is when.
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It is hot and bright and terrifying.
Her words cut him to the quick because it is what he would do — leave her in anticipation of being left, turn away because he's hurt her too greatly and surely, surely, she will tire of him and his shenanigans.
He's tired of them.
Loki can feel her gaze upon him in the dark, waiting for his answer. ]
Du har mitt ord. Even if I am afraid, I won't turn away from you. [ A breath, shakier than he'd like. Can he do this? Will he manage to keep his word? ] But I can't promise I won't be afraid.
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I am afraid too.
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What do you do, to stop feeling afraid?
[ Is there a cure? Probably not. But everyone does something. ]
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