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Post by Fandral on Mar 26, 2014 13:18:57 GMT -5
Fandral stormed into one of the other rooms in order to get as far as he possibly could from Loki.
He sank himself into the first place he could sit and looked down at his hand. It was shaking. He steeled his nerves and willed the anger away as far as he could get it.
But he hadn't thought of this in centuries. He had assumed that meant it no longer plagued him. Apparently it only meant he had forgotten to tend the wound so that it healed properly.
He was the last person who should have tried to confront Loki on repression.
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Post by Loki Odinsson on Mar 26, 2014 13:52:12 GMT -5
Loki paced the floor. He glanced down at his hand; it was blue as ever. He swore under his breath, but the glamour didn't flicker and spread down his arm as it usually did on command.
He was probably overwrought, he conceded to himself. It had happened before and, knowing himself, would happen again.
He felt, more than ever, as though he were standing on the edge of yet another chasm, this one separating him from everything that might have been and never could be now.
It was not that it was Fandral, really. Fandral had very little to do with it personally; it was that it had been anyone at all- someone who wasn't bound to him by blood, or at least in the name of family, who could have served as some kind of bridge into the kind of emotional comfort that had always seemed to come so easily to other people, never to Loki.
He stopped. This train of thought was itself dangerous, reducing the wounded man in the next room to an abstract someone - and Teja, too, for that matter.
But that was ridiculous- he'd met and spoken to and been smiled at by pretty Midgardian girls for months before he'd met Teja...
He approached the threshold, stopped, and turned back with a groan.
How much of himself was a hollow response to what he was trying to be for others?
But wasn't even his supposed true self just an aspect of something fixed, eternal, and doomed?
He thought of the window and the pavement again.
He went to check on Fandral instead.
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Post by Fandral on Mar 26, 2014 13:57:54 GMT -5
Fandral, his one hand gripping his other, looked up wordlessly when he heard him enter.
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Post by Loki Odinsson on Mar 27, 2014 0:05:13 GMT -5
"...I don't know what I'm going to do," he said blankly.
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Post by Fandral on Mar 27, 2014 1:14:05 GMT -5
Fandral rubbed at his face, feeling sheepish.
"About what?" he asked.
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Post by Loki Odinsson on Mar 27, 2014 1:15:28 GMT -5
"Anything, really," he admitted, sitting beside him on the end of the bed.
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Post by Fandral on Mar 27, 2014 1:17:41 GMT -5
He looked down at his hands with a barely vocalized laugh.
"Heavens, Loki.... what happened to you that we didn't notice?"
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Post by Loki Odinsson on Mar 27, 2014 1:22:04 GMT -5
Loki dropped back against the bed with a resigned, exhausted sound.
"I am an idiot," he muttered.
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Post by Fandral on Mar 27, 2014 1:26:02 GMT -5
"Generally," he said shortly.
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Post by Loki Odinsson on Mar 27, 2014 1:28:01 GMT -5
"And even discounting that, what was there to notice," he said dully.
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Post by Fandral on Mar 27, 2014 1:48:01 GMT -5
Fandral glanced down at him with a rueful smile, then back to his hands.
"You had an eagerness for affection that was hard to miss," he said gently. "Once you'd had the opportunity to make yourself useful you were surprisingly fond of being the center of attention. I should have noticed then you had to be envious of Thor, he is always the center of attention - but you got so much mischief done when no one was looking at you and it was so generally impressive, I assumed you preferred it that way."
He didn't lean back or encrouch upon Loki's personal space at all, but he angled his body just slightly to the side, turning his head, though not to look back at him.
"Do you- do you recall, you've done so much better, or worse, since then that perhaps it's been eclipsed in your mind, but do you remember at the feast in Breidablik following the Norn alliance - that damn Norn lordling who boasted he was superior to Thor because all Thor's skill came from that hammer. And being the crown prince he really risked getting us all in a lot of trouble, so you suggested a drinking context settle it; whoever ceased drinking first, lost. And those enormous horns of mead were brought in, and it began, and mid drink, when the veins in Thor's neck bulged, that Nornr started coughing, and then choking as he dropped the horn and bees flew from it and from his mouth?"
He started laughing.
"I saw you touch the horn. You have... had... a gentle touch. I think I might have been the only one. You can do that without a touch now, though, can't you?"
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Post by Loki Odinsson on Mar 27, 2014 1:53:34 GMT -5
Loki's expression went utterly flat.
"You sound as though you want me to touch something else."
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Post by Fandral on Mar 27, 2014 1:56:38 GMT -5
Fandral turned reddish, looked away and started coughing.
"It certainly occurred to me at the time, it was a very long time ago-"
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Post by Loki Odinsson on Mar 27, 2014 2:01:39 GMT -5
"If you cared so much," said Loki, without much strength or feeling, "why didn't you say a damned thing for me when we returned from Thrym's hall?"
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Post by Fandral on Mar 27, 2014 2:04:38 GMT -5
"I was a coward."
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