Tell me about a complicated man
- The Odyssey (tr. Emily Wilson)
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Willingly, you took the scepter from him.
Oh, scope of endless shadow. Oh, planets. Oh, wide, unfriendly stars. This is your destiny. You stand tall and pale, needing no sun.
(There is only one sun, as mortals call it, and it is a lesser body.)
Willingly. He stretched forth his hand and his smile and his offer of power, and the scepter was as weighty as you had dreamed it would be.
(Willingly.)
(You took it willingly.)
.
"By my troth, the All-Father has softened in later years."
A shade of Odin lies sleeping in the royal chambers. Invisibly, you slip from corridor to corridor, listening to the guileless voices of the people. Your people.
One maid says this to another. And the other answers, "Verily, since both his sons are gone."
.
Loki stands quite still, not quite knowing what to hold—that he was named a son, by courtroom gossip, or that his supposed death is nothing more than gossip, too.
Is it such a great wonder, that he commands charades and fripperies? It is a peaceable existence, and it is a fine thing, to watch himself be grieved.
A fine thing, to be a king unknown, and therefore free.
.
Cold. It was cold in space, colder than Jotunheim, colder than Loki's skin. Thanos' voice fell upon him like a mantle, pincered his brow and brains like a cruel crown.
This is what you wanted, little frost-elf. This is what you begged for.
There was a place in his heart for Thor, even when he tried to kill him. There was a tenderness about it, about the hurt and the precision. There was a belief, even, that Thor would survive—and he had.
The cold finds that place, that twisted heart, and burns it black.
.
"Loki," Thor says, and says it hoarsely, for he is unskilled at grand speeches and gentle pleas alike, "What were you thinking?"
And if Loki remembers, really remembers, what went wrong between falling and falling and the crown, between horns hooked on his brow and a scepter heavy in his hand, between a burning city and silver pinned round his mouth, he would say—
I wasn't.
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Take an apple—take a golden apple, the kind that gives you life—and tear away its peel.
It will wither and die. This is the nature of apples.
Take a child—take a frightened child, who blushes rosy and almost human because he wants, very badly, to belong—and rob him of a future.
The child will grow cold and hard in the shadows, until you do not know him any longer.
This is the nature of sons.
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Right, in the end. Right and just, that Thanos crushes him. Like the scepter, and the crown, and the cold promises.
Loki is a rush of panic. Loki is a tight fist of nerves. Loki is a king hiding behind his father's face, his brother's light.
Loki is—