and when I wake tomorrow I'll bet that you and I will walk together again

[laevisilaufeyson]

Who: Loki Laufeyson, Kobra Kid
Where: The lighthouse
What: Ill-advised peace offerings?

Counting out the passage of time through normal means and in normal ways again is... uncomfortable. Loki knows how many days he's spent here, haunting the lighthouse, but that stretch of time is meaningless without the falling of the guillotine's blade. So long he spent in the dark, existing only in the stretches of time between the falling of the drops and the inevitable retreat back into the shell of himself. That was living then, living through every moment of the agony, hating it, wanting to die, but it wasn't existing. It wasn't quite nonexistence either, merely a suspension of self, but without those moments, those long minutes in which his head had been empty of anything but the blinding, nauseating pain, to delineate quanta of time, something is lost.

Loki hates that it's so. Hates that without the punishment, without the inevitability of his revenge and his demise, twofold, without the promise of prophecy, he has nothing.

The more he thinks of it now, though, the more he wonders. Wonders if it wasn't all as nonsensical as he'd thought it was. If his taunts hadn't been correct. If they hadn't locked him away for eternity, not for the stretch of time until Ragnarök – which might never be; who knew? Perhaps in their fear and foolishness they'd doomed him to be nothing but spaces between until Odin aged and fell, and his son Thor, and his sons, all until the name Loki Laufeyson was little more than a margin note in a history book, forgotten, sustained by the box's magics for all of time.

Perhaps. Who really knows?

It isn't likely that Loki will any day soon, but he is content. Content to sit and listen to the sea rush in and out, on and on. Feel it in motion, ripples of energy soothing the edges of a tattered mind. To think about what it might be like to give up. Hide here.

What it might be like to try harder. To burn it all down and shout his rage to the heavens until someone, someone comes to pluck him from this place and wring all his long years out of him like an old washing-cloth. Death doesn't frighten him. He just can't decide whether or not he really wants it.

Yes. No.

It's a shame that it hadn't worked before, his blind rampage. Then there would be no issue. He still doesn't regret, and never will regret, having done it. Having tried. Having hurt people, frightened them. Having failed to hurt or frighten them. Having failed to kill some when he had the chance. None of it, none of the deaths, none of the destruction – how could he feel guilt when it's all meaningless? When it all began long before Loki was born? Why should he feel guilt for what he was made to be?

Perhaps he should try it again. Snap their fragile little necks this time. All of them. Hundreds. Thousands. Whatever the price he must pay for the eye to turn to him and his own world to end.

It's just anger talking, of course. Just the feeling of futility. Why would he want to destroy this microcosm opportunity has granted him, all these pawns to move about, rats to run through mazes? Why end it all when he can watch?

Just as long as he's left more or less alone, it should all be fine, for a little while at least.

Comments

[goodluckkobra]

Kobra still hadn't managed to track down the dude from the box. It wasn't as if he wasn't afraid of the guy. He was clearly powerful and psychotic. It was just that he was also clearly in pain and trapped. Kobra didn't like the idea of that. He didn't like anyone being trapped after everything he'd fought for.

None of that stopped him from rationalizing this trap, though. He knew he was trapped here, somewhere deep down, but he didn't want to think about it, so he dressed it up like it didn't matter or like he didn't care. It didn't invalidate his new friendships. It just meant that a fully-aware Kobra would probably fight a lot harder than he had so far to get out.

Figured, of course, that box-guy--Loki, Sharon had called him--would be in the creepy-ass lighthouse, right? Her warnings really hadn't persuaded him. For all he knew, she'd trapped Loki herself.

Once he'd caught a glimpse of dark hair at the top of the lighthouse, he'd walked straight there without a thought. Sure, this place was creepy, but he was chasing after someone potentially creepier.

He hopped up the stairs fast enough, not really trying for stealth. At the top, he stood, looking at Loki. "Hi."

[laevisilaufeyson]

Not trying for stealth is wise. Wise, because Loki's immediate reaction isn't defensive. Piqued, yes, irritated, but not defensive. Curious, too, once he parses the registers of the voice, once they trigger something in his vast and cluttered memory. The boy. The boy from before, the one he thought about tearing limb from limb. The one he's quite sure he threatened, which usually works.

How is it that nobody in this place seems to be afraid of him, even – particularly – those who ought to be?

“If you've come to grovel you needn't bother; I don't plan on killing you today either. Yet.” Loki speaks without turning his gaze from the sea, or the blur out there which must be the sea. A calming presence, but also a dilemma. Even blinded he ought to have been able to leave. Ought to have.

Wasn't.

“The girl either. I'm not in the habit of killing children.” Which isn't to say it doesn't happen, or that he'd feel particularly bad if it did, simply that he doesn't generally do so intentionally. Children do as they're told. Adults, ostensibly, reason. Adults choose.

[goodluckkobra]

There's a little snort Kobra can't quite hold back and then he moves to lean against the railing next to Loki. "Well, that's good, 'cause I died already and I wasn't a fan. I like to mix it up. New experiences and all that."

He doesn't get defensive about being called a child, either. He doesn't feel dismissed. It's just that this guy is obviously super-old. Compared to him, everyone here is probably a child. It's not like Sharon, who's got less than a decade on him and is all condescending with her stupid face. Oh, right.

"So, my nemesis said I should be super fuckin' scared of you and that you're all malicious and evil." He pauses. "But then it seems to me like you were the one who was trapped and tortured in that rock thing."

He looks at Loki's eyes. "Are you okay?"

[laevisilaufeyson]

“They can't both be correct?” Loki turns his head to look at the boy – young man, whatever he is by his own assessment – with mild curiosity. A return from death isn't surprising; he's known it to happen before. The response, however, is.

“Perhaps I deserved my punishment.” Not like that, he knows. Not like that. Even given the scope of his crimes it's extreme. Such is the lot of a traitor to a community as tight-knit as Asgard's. Long lives ended, old bonds broken... there may be little value to any of them, little real worth in something as nigh-eternal, but there is so much capacity for pain. Emotional and, as Loki has learned, physical.

He turns his gaze back out to sea. His eyes are better, he can focus on shapes now, but they're still doubled and blurry and there's a comfort in that. In near-blindness, for a time.

“I've lived through worse.” A lie. “I'll carry on living. Long after you and your friends die, I'll still be alive, so I'm afraid you'll have to forgive me if I can't see why it should matter to you.”

He pauses, and a faint smile rises to his lips. “Nemesis -- whom, I wonder? I wonder also: do you know the meaning of the word?”

[goodluckkobra]

Kobra listens, nodding a few times as Loki speaks. He really doesn't think both are possible, because good guys don't torture. He would kill Korse if he could, sure, but he wouldn't torture. Whoever put Loki in that box was a bad guy.

He rolls his eyes. "Don't be stupid." Maybe not the smartest thing to say to a super-powerful dude or whatever, but Kobra's not always the smartest guy. "No one deserves that kind of punishment."

He turns his head to look at Loki more closely, leaning over a little. This guy totally pings his weirdo-radar, but that can be a good thing sometimes.

He doesn't mention Sharon, though. He doesn't know how Loki will react. She made it sound like they were enemies or something and he wants more facts before he touches that situation. Running into danger is one thing, but running in between enemies is a whole new can of worms.

[laevisilaufeyson]

"Perhaps not, but bad people cannot do bad things to other bad people? The universe is hardly so clean-cut. Justice is only a concept." Loki turns back to the sea and presses out against the boundaries of his magic just there, well before the horizon. He doesn't know what it is, this blockage, but he means to break it someday all the same.

"Though to that end, I will tell you what nemesis means. It is a name, the name of a goddess of the Greeks, long ago. Her name comes from the word nemein, a verb: to distribute what is due. Nemesis, you see, is the distributor of divine wrath. What is just." What is said to be just. Words are wind.

But wind does do its own harm. "You must take care when you use this word. Perhaps you set yourself on the wrong side. Perhaps her wrath is just -- you see? You set yourself up to lose."

He sucks momentarily on his lower lip, running his tongue over the hidden scars there, buried under illusion but still tangible. "Admittedly, sometimes this is preferable."

[goodluckkobra]

After a moment of silence, Kobra snorts. Man, he's just learning all sorts of life lessons here. "Shit, you're smart. I'll have to start calling her something else, I guess. I don't want to set myself up for failure or extreme evil or anything."

Of course, the irony of it all is that back where he's from, a lot of people do think his enemies are just. "I do get that justice is subjective, though. Back where I'm from, a lot of people see me as a terrorist, but I'm fighting for them, too. I fight for what I believe is justice and I just have to hope that they understand some day."

He pulls himself up to sit precariously on the railing. What's his life if not a series of risks?

[laevisilaufeyson]

"And if that justice happens not to benefit you more than the alternative, I'll be incredibly surprised," Loki responds, though his tone isn't at all judgemental. That's how people are. The only people who take offense when he speaks this way are those who are invested in believing otherwise, those who concern themselves over such ridiculous things as whether not what they're doing is right

There is no right. Right is an idea, no universal constant, no inviolable natural law. What it is is socially cohesive, and the value in that is boundless.

Nobody likes to think that they believe a lie, though. Whatever he may be and whatever he may do, Loki does have an intimate and uncomfortable understanding of this principle.

"Still, the words are convenient; yes. Justice. Belief. They do sound better than the alternative." The tricky part is getting other people to believe. It's of no concern to Loki, though, whether or not this boy succeeds, should he ever go home. Just another something. Another chain of events. Another revolution.

There have been so many of those. There will be so many more.

[goodluckkobra]

"Well, yeah, because I value my freedom and everyone else's over drinking the Kool-Aid and pretending that being drugged into lethargy is happiness." He sighs. "I guess some people might prefer the Kool-Aid, but I think it's 'cause they don't remember how to be happy. I didn't for a while, either. Just 'cause you're not unhappy doesn't mean you're happy."

It's complicated. It's not some cut-and-dry, black and white thing. He knows that. He still has his morals and his beliefs and without those, he really doesn't have much else. "We don't hurt people who aren't already trying to hurt us, but if you hurt my brother or my friends..." His fists clench at his sides. "All bet are off. Someone touches my brother, I'll fuckin' kill 'em."

Honestly, Kobra doesn't know if they were ever going to win, but he knows the fight is worth trying. Maybe his world is just broken, but if it is, they are going to burn it to the ground, because they can't let BLi win. It all just reminds him of how much he would rather go home with Lyds or Dan and just take Party with him.

[laevisilaufeyson]

Loki turns his head to watch Kobra speak, curious, but also... contemplative. Understanding. Pitying, perhaps. How many times has he walked that path, been the underdog, righteous or no? It's all a matter of perspective, of course, and Loki has log since given up on the notion of truth where such affairs are concerned.

"For what did you come to me?" he asks, once silence has fallen between them. "I can offer you no advice on such matters."

For they're mine, and I've never managed to sort them out either.

"What is my utility to you? I would know." Better up front than through some tedious attempt at subterfuge -- and there must be something. There's always something; that's the price of godhood. One is worshipped (perhaps, at times, though Loki far less than most), but for a price -- and the price is so often steeper than a simple man could possibly know.

What he really wants to know now is not what favour he will be expected to perform or what price to extract in return. He wants to know what the cost to him will be -- and, if it is too steep, to end the conversation now.

Now, before it meanders to still more uncomfortable places.

[goodluckkobra]

"Oh, there's not really anything I want that anyone here can give me. Unless you can reach through to my world and grab my friends, I'm cool." He has friends. He has food and a fucking bed. He has all these things he never had before. He's not unhappy here, not by a long shot.

"I just came up here 'cause you seem kinda interesting and you were pretty messed up when you got outta that thing. I wanted to see if you were okay." He shrugs.

"And also 'cause when people warn me off of things, I can't really help going to see for myself." He grins. He can't help being so contrary. Okay, well maybe he can, but fuck it. He doesn't want to be anyone but himself and this is just how he is. "So... don't give me advice, either, 'cause obviously I won't take it." He laughs.