cerulean
::loki, thalia, & all of the shadows they're in:: I hate my father, too, you know. / As if a dysfunctional demigod and wayward godling could ever do anything other than implode.
oh you are thirsty
and oh you are weak
come to the fountain
to be right in the streams of love
- willis, sea of bees
Their first meeting is on account of an accident. His magic is wayward and pityingly weak, which frustrates him to no end. It is as if he is young again—unskilled and erratic. She notches her warrior's bow, cautious of this stranger who has stumbled upon her and her sisters. He's dark like a new moon, deadly like a god—but not recognizable as Greek. His finery is odd and alien, as if he's stepped right out of a page in a storybook. She's heard of him from Annabeth, about how it was the oddest thing, a Norse god trying to come and take over the world like that. She didn't even know Norse gods existed until New York.
"Are you Loki?" she asks him. God of mischief flickers waywardly across her mind like a warning, so she keeps her bow up and her aim steady.
"Don't be daft; am I to be anyone else?" he snaps. There are other gods, she thinks, minor gods that are so countless in number and trade—even she cannot memorize or keep track of them all. "Shall I assume you aid the wounded, or be on my way?" His stomach is bleeding, a fact which she hadn't realized until now. He injured it escaping from Asgard, but he doesn't mention that and she doesn't ask. She wonders how a god can injure himself, realizes another must have done so.
He has settled himself onto a large rock, and she scowls down at him. "Don't be rude." Still, he seems to be bleeding terribly and his blue eyes glare at her—Luke, Luke, Luke. "I'll be back. Stay here and don't move," she commands. Her silver circlet shines in the moonlight and Loki, to his bewilderment, complies.
"Eat this." She holds ambrosia out to him. He stares at it skeptically. "It'll help," she promises.
To the girl's credit, it does. He decides he won't kill her for commanding him, after all.
.
When they're near a city again, she goes to the public library and finds information on him until her eyes burn.
She's gotten a paper cut from flipping so many pages, and if she never laid eyes on the dim light of a computer screen again she'd rest easy. All the information is jumbled—Hel Sigyn jotnar Laufeyson Poetic Edda
—trickster close air Thor sorcery lies Odinson god of evil
—Bifrost silvertongue Avengers Destroyer Lady Sif
—brothers Allfather "teasing creature of the night".
Thalia Grace wonders whom it really is she has saved, worries that it was not the best decision she could have made.
.
He visits her purely out of boredom, he decides. By coincidence—or perhaps not; he is the god of mischief but he is also an intellect and there is no telling what this mistress of animals can do to him, with his crippled magic and it's better to be safe than sorry, he supposes—they bask in the light of a full moon. She flings questions at him, and he almost wishes he simply vanished from her life. But at least she seeks knowledge, unlike so many other Midgardians he has observed.
"Do you have children?" she asks. "All the myths say you do. A lot, actually."
He laughs without a trace of mirth. "I assure you, I am not quite so promiscuous." Thor was always much more unchaste, as if bedding were a sport; Loki faintly pities the poor woman who will one day be bound to him on account of marriage.
"Oh." There's a hint of disappointment in her tone. "So no giving birth to eight-legged horses, then?" She's only joking, of course, but he takes it as a jeer and frowns.
He replies with a curt, "No."
Still, his visits slowly increase in frequency—every full moon, leisurely adding a gibbous, a quarter. (He is wise not to visit on new moons and crescents, when Artemis can be found with her sisters-in-arms.)
He tells her of Norse gods, about Asgard, murmurs easily and in great detail the nature of his pranks. In return, she hunts game and prepares meals that they both share. She could fill a palace with adventures of her own, but Thalia is content to listen to this silvertongue weave his tales for the time being.
.
"Artemis will kill me," she says. It's been at the forefront of her mind—what her goddess will think about this godling, this man, stopping by so often. They bask in the moon so it'd be a wonder if she hasn't noticed by now. Aren't gods supposed to be omnipresent, or at least omnipotent?
He laughs that crooked laugh of his—only that makes no sense; laughs aren't crooked, only smiles are. "You need not trouble yourself about that."
She raises an eyebrow, like, Yeah? You sure about that?
"Have faith," he says simply, as if it were that easy. He flickers away, then, and grins as he goes—a Cheshire through and through.
.
Loki kidnaps her and Artemis is furious; one of her finest lieutenants, stolen! And by a blasted Norse god, no less!
Still, she relents; she wishes for no war with their gods and the Frost Giants. He demands that Artemis release her from her contract—and she must, she must, dammit. She may be a god but she is not fickle and she may be loyal but not enough to sacrifice lives that are not hers to give.
He whisks Thalia away to a house near the ocean. It smells of salt and isolation, but the waves crash soothingly against the rocks. "When you said have faith...," she trails off, dazed, but anger is starting to fizz with uniform effervescence. The emotion doesn't play out on her face, but it boils under her skin like water in a kettle. "Take me back," she demands—a fury, a flurry, a tornado.
He stares at her as if she's grown another head. "She would change you into a beast for what I have done. Greek gods can be unpredictable in their fury. You would return to that? To be ostracized, cast out, perhaps worse?" Loki Laufeyson thought he understood her. The obvious truth about Thalia's nature shocks him; she is fickle, capricious—the same as the rest of them. It's a depressing realization.
"They are my family," she murmurs, quiet as the breeze. "You cannot take that away from me! And you can't blackmail Artemis into letting me go! That's cowardly, and I didn't agree to this."
She didn't agree to anything, but he is not called god of mischief without basis. "I gave you your freedom!" he snaps at her. Ungrateful, insolent. Can't she see he's done her a favor? Her so-called sisters do not care for her; she is simply another person who will flicker through their lives to be discarded and used as they so please.
She scowls at him. "I didn't ask for it!"
.
Her head feels empty without a crown. Her heart feels empty without a family. Her soul is at war without the peace that Artemis gave her.
It's two steps forward and five steps back.
.
She feels like she would love the beach. When she was younger, she camped out near a beach with Annabeth and Luke. There were small amounts of trash scattered throughout the sand, but their fire was large and their hearts were warm and their bellies were somewhere near full, which was definitely a pleasant change of pace. But here—this seaboard is clear and clean and crystalline; it's nerve-wracking, reminds her that Poseidon is so close nearby, makes her almost wish she were a daughter of the sea, if only to be comforted and at home here.
She gives Loki the silent treatment. It's her small form of rebellion, after spiriting her away and forcing her to live with him. At first it seems this makes him consider bringing her back—the only reason he sought her was her company—but he doesn't.
Thalia decides she hates him with ultimate finality.
.
It's odd, because he's almost civil with her—she doesn't need to worry about whether he'll incinerate her or not, because if he decides to smite her, it will be much more slow and deliberate and painful and clever. It's odd, because she's not like anyone he's ever met—not a woman, anyways.
Not Sif—such a warrior, in that way they're much the same—who is, at least, a bit proper. Not like Jane—who he did visit; he had promised, hadn't he?—so small and insignificant and delicate. Not like other mortals he has met on his previous visits to Midgard.
Thalia Grace is crooked and hard and broken and damaged and stone. They're a bit alike, actually.
"I hate my father too, you know," she says.
"No," he replies, "I did not."
.
It's a while before he tells her about Thor—the older one, the perfect one. "It was hard to beat him, or be something better than him," she guesses. "He was perfect."
Loki Laufeyson grits his teeth. She continues on with a smirk, "You were his shadow. Just a young magician who couldn't do anything for himself—you weren't a fighter, you were a coward, and a joke. Imagine, the second son of the Allfather, just a trickster and nothing more!"
He slaps her across the face, whisking away—she speaks the truth, damned truth, and it has yet to set him free. As he vanishes, he can hear her laughter, trailing behind him like a well-worn cape.
.
They're out for coffee in New Jersey—not New York, never New York, they've both got their demons and they're not willing to return to them.
"I think," she says with finality, "I know why you did it."
"Pardon?" Loki is amused; he fancies the demigod's figuring him out, since they're cut from the same cloth. He'll get to unravel her soon enough.
"I know why you tried to take over this world. It was you stepping out of Thor's shadow. You wanted to prove that you could do something on your own, without him or your father."
He grins, although he is speechless. Loki did not want to admit this to himself; the poor, little, neglected boy. "Very good," he says, for the god of mischief will always have his words—they are his weapon, his arsenal, his army. They fail him not where others manage to.
"You didn't always want to have your name spoken in relation to the great Odins as the weak second son. You would have been Loki, Earth's conqueror, and the humans' king. But now your name is synonymous with worse things, Loki."
He is Loki of Nowhere and he should not be in the shadow of anyone—not imbeciles or Odins and certainly not Thor. It burns you to have come so close. Yes, yes, yes it did burn it does burn everything burns it's winter shouldn't it be cold for Odin's sake—
"And what of you, Thalia Grace? What words do people prefer for you?"
.
He sniffs in disdain. "Mortal food is disgusting."
She looks at him curiously. "Have you ever had a hamburger?" It's the best thing she can think of off the top of her head.
He said that he had, at McDonald's, but he didn't like it—though he was quite taken with the cheeseburgers at the mom-and-pop store nearby.
She takes him out to eat and realizes that his eyes sparkle sometimes when he speaks; darken, too, when they discuss things like Thor and the Allfather and otherworldly things. He speaks in an Elizabethan or Victorian way or something, and if she's being honest it's quite chivalrous. She thinks she's falling in love but that's silly, stupid, impossible.
.
She blows him away.
Fitting, almost, if only she were a daughter of the wind and not the sky. Her eyes are so blue that they don't remind him of Thor. (This is a lie, but one that even Trickster himself is not aware of.) Thalia Grace is enchanting. Which is foolish, considering she is as broken—or maybe more—than he is. Perhaps it is the simple complexity of this girl. Her life has been terribly hard, cruel, harsh. Yet she is not overly angry, or sad. He wonders why, but then again she is no daughter of Hades.
"I had a brother, you know," she tells him.
"I did not," replies he. "Have you no other siblings besides?"
"Just him," she says wistfully. "His name was Jason, and he was wonderful." She doesn't say anything else and he doesn't press. Was he younger, older? What had happened? Perhaps Loki will have to make it a point to find out. After a long while she says, "Hera took him from me," and that's the last he ever hears of that.
.
Thalia Grace does not want to meet Thor Odinson. She doesn't meet him, not really, but Loki tampers with some magic and they're staring at a memory. The godling's life flashes before their eyes. "Why are you showing me this?" she asks as a younger Loki gets reprimanded, scolded, frowned upon—as Thor gets favored over his adopted brother.
In all honesty, he doesn't quite know himself. If he were a mortal or something of the like that was equally degrading, then perhaps he would feel tears prickling at the edges of his eyes. But he is a godling, and what's past has passed, and tears are good for nothing. "Perhaps I am foolish enough to delude myself into thinking you would understand." This is true, isn't it? Loki isn't very sure of anything anymore, for this demigoddess makes his head spin and is that what pesky emotions are?
"No," she whispers, staring at the ground where another demigod once was, "I don't."
.
They don't speak on personal things much after that.
funny you're the broken one
when i'm the only one who needed savin'
and when you never see the light
it's hard to know which one of us is cavin'
- stay, megan nicole