homecoming part ii
May 24, 2014 11:19:44 GMT -5
Post by Loki Odinsson on May 24, 2014 11:19:44 GMT -5
The cupola ceiling over the bath had been clad in engraved bronze millennia ago at the behest of whoever had initially inhabited the suite, some prince or princess whom time had forgotten. The records held firm that Odin’s father was the first lord of the realm, and before him there had been nothing but darkness, but the stones of the palace put the lie to that. Records and stories and statues lied all the time, but some of them also told the truth.
The bronzed ceiling hadn’t changed in all that time, though. Laying on one’s back in the bath and looking up, all the little creeping-vine engravings were the same as they had ever been. They curved around each other in the same way, the same half-suggested hidden faces appeared in the same corners.
The bath itself was also polished bronze and set into the floor. Loki hadn’t been able to use it as a child; he was too afraid of drowning in it when he was too small to wash himself and had to be lead to one of the unattached bathrooms where the tub sat above the ground. Once he was a little older, he’d become furiously insistent on being allowed to draw his own bath in his own room. First there was the mundane embarrassment of being unable to bear water too warm without feeling dizzy and sick, and then, when he was a little older, there was the way his body had a bad habit of changing on him without his permission. After Sleipnir’s birth, he had experienced such a spasm of terror at the prospect of having to explain having a striped lower belly to any woman he lay with in the future that he’d ended up locking the door to his chambers and retching in the sink. After he’d cleaned up the sick on his own, he undressed and investigated his body as thoroughly as he could until he was satisfied that there was no sign of pregnancy while he was in in this shape. From that point on, Loki was prone to fits of rage at any servant who presumed to help him bathe.
He didn’t have to worry about that this time, of course. No one knew he was here save his mother, which allowed him the privacy to bathe after traveling, with his entire body striped and blue besides and no one the wiser.
Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. If he wanted to, he could pretend he was younger and unbloodied and that when he went down the steps that connected his turret to the rest of the palace, everything would be the way it had always been.
No, he realized. It had a chance to be better.
Loki lifted one of his hands as though reaching for the ceiling, the way he sometimes had in the past. His blue skin looked unspeakably alien against the familiar setting, and violently reminiscent of another unhappy self-examination in the same room, only a year earlier by his reckoning but decades to everyone else’s. He glamoured himself in a hurry.
What if his mother was right? What if it had been thirty years for him as well?
On the other hand, did it matter if it had been? Loki had survived, somehow, either way. He had, he reflected, a rather uncommon gift for it. Learning to put oneself together again was one of the first things he’d sought to learn in private. It had saved him from mutilation at the hands of the repo man at the Ruby- and thank heavens for that, Loki thought. He’d been a mumbling grotesque for a long while as his lips healed after the dwarves had attacked him in exchange for cheating them out of payment for Sif’s hair; the prospect of facing that forever was unspeakable.
When he rose from his bath, Loki found his personal accoutrements exactly where they should have been. Even glamoured, his reflection above his dressing table was enough to knock him back to the reality of the situation. The Loki of the past would never have had such a casual, relaxed stance. He certainly would never have let his hair grow to his shoulders again, and especially not while letting it fall loose and in waves instead of so pomaded as to be straight and stiff against his head. Because of this, the Loki of the past had inconveniently not left anything for his future self to tie it back with. He had, however, left behind an unused and indeed still- useless shaving kit, which he had purchased solely to leave on a table where it might be noticed if he had anyone in his room in the hopes that it would be assumed he shaved his face, rather than the truth that he was beardless with no effort on his part. The only utility he’d ever found for it was to hold his hair taut and scrape a few inches from the ends instead of using shears, but he had no intention of doing that tonight.
He vacillated for a few moments over what the best approach for preparing to see the All-Father might be. He could always pretend to be the same Loki the All-Father had refused to save at the last moment, but that felt too much like concession. If he was going to be some kind of returned hero to his people, then damn him, he was going to look good while he did it.
He was interrupted by the sound of someone rapping on the door.
“Who in the- yes, yes, I’m coming-“
Loki hurried to the wardrobe to find the dressing gown he was almost certain he’d left behind and called for the visitor to wait. It was probably his mother, or maybe his brothers’ terrified little nursemaid. As far as he knew, they were the only ones in the palace who knew he was there.
When he opened the door, however, there was a wide-eyed pubescent boy with the physique of a potato standing there, breathing heavily and smelling faintly of horse.
Loki raised an eyebrow.
The boy didn’t move.
“...yes?” Loki said tentatively.
“You’re alive,” the boy said in a low, breathless voice.
Oh. “Indeed I am,” said Loki, smiling smugly.
The boy lost his balance and almost staggered backward, but caught himself in time.
“Begging your pardon, my lord- I heard the water running and I thought there was a- a ghost or something. Your ghost, actually, my lord-“
“You weren’t sent here?” Loki said.
“No, my lord. I heard the water and came poking around-“
Loki grabbed him by the shirt front and pulled him inside, shutting the door behind them. The boy stumbled again and looked around at everything wonderingly.
“Do you work here?” Loki demanded. Most of the royal household staff were young and only came to work in the palace for a few years; it was only the cooking staff that stayed on for decades, eager to show and perfect their culinary skills. Asgardian lifespans did not lend themselves to the concept of a lifetime of servitude. It wasn’t surprising to find an entirely different host of servants than he’d left behind, which was just as well for Loki’s current needs.
The boy nodded. He had a lot of sandy-colored hair that fell over one eye as he did so, which he pushed back again. “I’m off duty right now, my lord. I wasn’t shirking.”
“The stables, I presume.”
The boy nodded again, dislodging his hair once more, and tucking it back in exactly the same way.
“How’d you guess?”
“The smell, for one thing.”
“Haven’t had a bath yet today, my lord.” His voice was still in the process of changing; it cracked midway through bath. He grinned cheerfully. “Not like you, my lord!”
“Indeed,” Loki said dryly. “Do you... often come this way?”
“I was on my way to the kitchens, my lord. I wanted to see if they had any leftover tarts. Gynna usually gives them out to anybody who asks this late.”
There was a long pause, during which they just stared at one another.
“...I can’t believe I’m really talking to you, my lord,” the boy managed to squeak.
Loki sighed.
“Well, try not to make a commotion of it. So far only my mother knows I’m here.”
“Oh- oh, of course, my lord,” the boy gushed. He went even pinker in the face, very suddenly, and looked very pleased with himself for being privy to this news.
Loki felt a headache coming on.
“I’m Ragnbjörn, by the way, my lord,” the boy said suddenly, extending a plump hand in cheerful greeting. “Ragnbjörn Sigmarsson. But you can call me Rambi. Everyone else does, even Katla.”
“Who is Katla,” Loki said wearily.
“Oh! She’s the stablemistress,” Rambi replied.
He was still holding out his hand. Loki glanced at it and gave it a small shake.
“Well, Rambi, this has been pleasant enough, but I was in the middle of something-“
“This is... this is amazing,” Rambi interrupted, eyes sparkling. “Wait until I tell the others-“
“What did I just say?”
Rambi looked appropriately chastened, and he gave a small, apologetic bow.
“I’m sorry, my lord, but it’s just-“
He sucked in a hard breath between relentlessly grinning teeth. Loki stared.
“You’re you, I mean,” Rambi blurted. “I thought it was honor enough just getting to shoe your mount-“
This prompted Loki’s turn to suck his teeth, though less enthusiastically than Rambi had.
“I never thought I’d actually get to-“
Loki was vaguely reminded of running into Alex Regan at Starbucks, though Alex had been merely awkward in his delight, understandable and rather endearing. Rambi made him feel embarrassed just by existing.
“How’d you survive?” Rambi asked, eyes widening.
“I’m sure the All-Father will come up with a good story for it later,” Loki said darkly, striding toward the door and starting to gently push Rambi toward it.”But for now-“
Rambi seemed to suddenly be aware of how little Loki was wearing. He blushed enough to look like a red potato instead.
“Oh- oh, begging your pardon, my lord, sir- please do forgive me- though if I’m frank, my lord, you did bring me in here yourself-“
This gave Loki some pause, though not enough to prevent him from making a dismissive noise and tugging the boy toward the door again.
“Well, now I’m asking you to leave again.”
“Right away, my lord, of course,” Rambi said, nodding emphatically and stumbling backward over his own feet. His hair tumbled over his eyes again, and this just made him start apologizing again.
Loki sighed.
“Just go, will you?” he said, pointing at the door.
“Right- yes, my lord. I’m sorry, my lord-“
“Now.”
Rambi stared at him like a deer facing a hunter’s arrow and fled, leaving Loki to stand there, alone and disoriented. He’d known boys like Rambi before- boys who were probably young men by now, who had been little younger than Thor and Loki themselves but gaped in admiration at everything Thor did and pried for more firsthand tales of his accomplishments. Nobody had ever cared so much about Loki- or, if he were completely honest with himself, at least no one in Asgard had.
But still. It was...
He couldn’t quite put a word to it. He felt not quite awake. Everything was exactly as he’d ever wanted it to be.
All he had to do now was face Odin.
In the meantime, he dressed and returned to his mother and the babies, sitting morosely beside the cradles and staring down at them.
"Hello, sprogs," he said, sighing. "I hope you haven't been too much trouble in my absence."
Loki leaned a little closer over Balder the Bitty in particular, and whispered, "Between you and me, I think Mother's had enough of that already."
The bronzed ceiling hadn’t changed in all that time, though. Laying on one’s back in the bath and looking up, all the little creeping-vine engravings were the same as they had ever been. They curved around each other in the same way, the same half-suggested hidden faces appeared in the same corners.
The bath itself was also polished bronze and set into the floor. Loki hadn’t been able to use it as a child; he was too afraid of drowning in it when he was too small to wash himself and had to be lead to one of the unattached bathrooms where the tub sat above the ground. Once he was a little older, he’d become furiously insistent on being allowed to draw his own bath in his own room. First there was the mundane embarrassment of being unable to bear water too warm without feeling dizzy and sick, and then, when he was a little older, there was the way his body had a bad habit of changing on him without his permission. After Sleipnir’s birth, he had experienced such a spasm of terror at the prospect of having to explain having a striped lower belly to any woman he lay with in the future that he’d ended up locking the door to his chambers and retching in the sink. After he’d cleaned up the sick on his own, he undressed and investigated his body as thoroughly as he could until he was satisfied that there was no sign of pregnancy while he was in in this shape. From that point on, Loki was prone to fits of rage at any servant who presumed to help him bathe.
He didn’t have to worry about that this time, of course. No one knew he was here save his mother, which allowed him the privacy to bathe after traveling, with his entire body striped and blue besides and no one the wiser.
Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. If he wanted to, he could pretend he was younger and unbloodied and that when he went down the steps that connected his turret to the rest of the palace, everything would be the way it had always been.
No, he realized. It had a chance to be better.
Loki lifted one of his hands as though reaching for the ceiling, the way he sometimes had in the past. His blue skin looked unspeakably alien against the familiar setting, and violently reminiscent of another unhappy self-examination in the same room, only a year earlier by his reckoning but decades to everyone else’s. He glamoured himself in a hurry.
What if his mother was right? What if it had been thirty years for him as well?
On the other hand, did it matter if it had been? Loki had survived, somehow, either way. He had, he reflected, a rather uncommon gift for it. Learning to put oneself together again was one of the first things he’d sought to learn in private. It had saved him from mutilation at the hands of the repo man at the Ruby- and thank heavens for that, Loki thought. He’d been a mumbling grotesque for a long while as his lips healed after the dwarves had attacked him in exchange for cheating them out of payment for Sif’s hair; the prospect of facing that forever was unspeakable.
When he rose from his bath, Loki found his personal accoutrements exactly where they should have been. Even glamoured, his reflection above his dressing table was enough to knock him back to the reality of the situation. The Loki of the past would never have had such a casual, relaxed stance. He certainly would never have let his hair grow to his shoulders again, and especially not while letting it fall loose and in waves instead of so pomaded as to be straight and stiff against his head. Because of this, the Loki of the past had inconveniently not left anything for his future self to tie it back with. He had, however, left behind an unused and indeed still- useless shaving kit, which he had purchased solely to leave on a table where it might be noticed if he had anyone in his room in the hopes that it would be assumed he shaved his face, rather than the truth that he was beardless with no effort on his part. The only utility he’d ever found for it was to hold his hair taut and scrape a few inches from the ends instead of using shears, but he had no intention of doing that tonight.
He vacillated for a few moments over what the best approach for preparing to see the All-Father might be. He could always pretend to be the same Loki the All-Father had refused to save at the last moment, but that felt too much like concession. If he was going to be some kind of returned hero to his people, then damn him, he was going to look good while he did it.
He was interrupted by the sound of someone rapping on the door.
“Who in the- yes, yes, I’m coming-“
Loki hurried to the wardrobe to find the dressing gown he was almost certain he’d left behind and called for the visitor to wait. It was probably his mother, or maybe his brothers’ terrified little nursemaid. As far as he knew, they were the only ones in the palace who knew he was there.
When he opened the door, however, there was a wide-eyed pubescent boy with the physique of a potato standing there, breathing heavily and smelling faintly of horse.
Loki raised an eyebrow.
The boy didn’t move.
“...yes?” Loki said tentatively.
“You’re alive,” the boy said in a low, breathless voice.
Oh. “Indeed I am,” said Loki, smiling smugly.
The boy lost his balance and almost staggered backward, but caught himself in time.
“Begging your pardon, my lord- I heard the water running and I thought there was a- a ghost or something. Your ghost, actually, my lord-“
“You weren’t sent here?” Loki said.
“No, my lord. I heard the water and came poking around-“
Loki grabbed him by the shirt front and pulled him inside, shutting the door behind them. The boy stumbled again and looked around at everything wonderingly.
“Do you work here?” Loki demanded. Most of the royal household staff were young and only came to work in the palace for a few years; it was only the cooking staff that stayed on for decades, eager to show and perfect their culinary skills. Asgardian lifespans did not lend themselves to the concept of a lifetime of servitude. It wasn’t surprising to find an entirely different host of servants than he’d left behind, which was just as well for Loki’s current needs.
The boy nodded. He had a lot of sandy-colored hair that fell over one eye as he did so, which he pushed back again. “I’m off duty right now, my lord. I wasn’t shirking.”
“The stables, I presume.”
The boy nodded again, dislodging his hair once more, and tucking it back in exactly the same way.
“How’d you guess?”
“The smell, for one thing.”
“Haven’t had a bath yet today, my lord.” His voice was still in the process of changing; it cracked midway through bath. He grinned cheerfully. “Not like you, my lord!”
“Indeed,” Loki said dryly. “Do you... often come this way?”
“I was on my way to the kitchens, my lord. I wanted to see if they had any leftover tarts. Gynna usually gives them out to anybody who asks this late.”
There was a long pause, during which they just stared at one another.
“...I can’t believe I’m really talking to you, my lord,” the boy managed to squeak.
Loki sighed.
“Well, try not to make a commotion of it. So far only my mother knows I’m here.”
“Oh- oh, of course, my lord,” the boy gushed. He went even pinker in the face, very suddenly, and looked very pleased with himself for being privy to this news.
Loki felt a headache coming on.
“I’m Ragnbjörn, by the way, my lord,” the boy said suddenly, extending a plump hand in cheerful greeting. “Ragnbjörn Sigmarsson. But you can call me Rambi. Everyone else does, even Katla.”
“Who is Katla,” Loki said wearily.
“Oh! She’s the stablemistress,” Rambi replied.
He was still holding out his hand. Loki glanced at it and gave it a small shake.
“Well, Rambi, this has been pleasant enough, but I was in the middle of something-“
“This is... this is amazing,” Rambi interrupted, eyes sparkling. “Wait until I tell the others-“
“What did I just say?”
Rambi looked appropriately chastened, and he gave a small, apologetic bow.
“I’m sorry, my lord, but it’s just-“
He sucked in a hard breath between relentlessly grinning teeth. Loki stared.
“You’re you, I mean,” Rambi blurted. “I thought it was honor enough just getting to shoe your mount-“
This prompted Loki’s turn to suck his teeth, though less enthusiastically than Rambi had.
“I never thought I’d actually get to-“
Loki was vaguely reminded of running into Alex Regan at Starbucks, though Alex had been merely awkward in his delight, understandable and rather endearing. Rambi made him feel embarrassed just by existing.
“How’d you survive?” Rambi asked, eyes widening.
“I’m sure the All-Father will come up with a good story for it later,” Loki said darkly, striding toward the door and starting to gently push Rambi toward it.”But for now-“
Rambi seemed to suddenly be aware of how little Loki was wearing. He blushed enough to look like a red potato instead.
“Oh- oh, begging your pardon, my lord, sir- please do forgive me- though if I’m frank, my lord, you did bring me in here yourself-“
This gave Loki some pause, though not enough to prevent him from making a dismissive noise and tugging the boy toward the door again.
“Well, now I’m asking you to leave again.”
“Right away, my lord, of course,” Rambi said, nodding emphatically and stumbling backward over his own feet. His hair tumbled over his eyes again, and this just made him start apologizing again.
Loki sighed.
“Just go, will you?” he said, pointing at the door.
“Right- yes, my lord. I’m sorry, my lord-“
“Now.”
Rambi stared at him like a deer facing a hunter’s arrow and fled, leaving Loki to stand there, alone and disoriented. He’d known boys like Rambi before- boys who were probably young men by now, who had been little younger than Thor and Loki themselves but gaped in admiration at everything Thor did and pried for more firsthand tales of his accomplishments. Nobody had ever cared so much about Loki- or, if he were completely honest with himself, at least no one in Asgard had.
But still. It was...
He couldn’t quite put a word to it. He felt not quite awake. Everything was exactly as he’d ever wanted it to be.
All he had to do now was face Odin.
In the meantime, he dressed and returned to his mother and the babies, sitting morosely beside the cradles and staring down at them.
"Hello, sprogs," he said, sighing. "I hope you haven't been too much trouble in my absence."
Loki leaned a little closer over Balder the Bitty in particular, and whispered, "Between you and me, I think Mother's had enough of that already."