"You always argue with me, Victor. Why? Why can't you ever just make this easy for me?" Loki was groaning dramatically as he slid down in his chair. Loki often did that. He enjoyed being dramatic, for reasons that Victor would never understand. Nonetheless, Victor watched him closely. Loki's actions were always double layered and the loudest one was usually the most false.
They were in Victor's study, one of the few places they both felt was safe and private. This did not extend to all of Victor's castle. Loki was tense whenever they were in Victor's lab, rightly so, and Loki made him nervous if he ever stepped foot in Victor's bedroom. Here, however, they had adjourned to have many private conversations and debates, a few even bordering on intimate.
Loki's glass was nearly empty and Victor debated whether or not to refill it. It would be the polite thing to do, he should make the offer if nothing else, but he was starting to wonder if the god was actually intoxicated. He was not drinking from Victor's own stores, so it stood to reason that whatever Loki had brought could be strong enough to effect him. Loki had offered him a glass when he'd placed the bottle on the table between them, a bottle that had yet to empty despite Loki having certainly drained it twice over, but Victor had refused. One did not take food or drink from strangers, the fey, or Loki, and Victor had yet to work out which of the group could turn out the most fatal.
Before Victor had made up his mind to play host or not, Loki sat up and reached for the bottle himself.
"Alright, Victor, please explain your reasoning to me," Loki said as he refilled his glass. Once he placed the bottle back on the table between them, within Victor's reach as some sort of temptation to make him change his mind and sample the unknown, Loki picked up Victor's bottle of wine. He raised an eyebrow, an offer to pour, since Victor would never trust Loki being too nice or too proactive. Victor nodded with barely any hesitance and Loki refilled his glass.
"Tell me Victor," Loki said again, "Why do yo believe that I should not destroy Asgard?"
"Why destroy what you can rule?" Victor asked first. It was the obvious argument and Loki groaned immediately upon hearing it.
"You and your desire to lord over everything you see!" Loki flopped back into his chair as if Victor were too ludicrous for him to handle. While he was slumped there, he took a long drink. "Did you plant a flag on your father when you first laid eyes on him, too? Did you challenge him to rule the house when you were taken home after birth?"
Victor did not bother to offer Loki anything to dissuade this notion. If he was fishing for information, Victor did not want to give it to him, and if he was being purely hyperbolic then he did not want it.
"It would be a waste of resources," Victor said. "Even if you disregard the beings that populate it, which would be foolish, there are surely minerals there that cannot be found elsewhere. Knowledge, though they seem not to use it, that would be lost. Why would you destroy it?"
"You think you would be able to rule Asgard?" Loki asked.
Yes, Victor thought privately. To Loki, he said, "That is not the point of the discussion."
"It's related," Loki argued. "If they cannot be conquered, then the resources that you are lauding as reason not to destroy them is rendered a moot point."
"This is your problem, Loki," Victor told him calmly. He took a sip from his own glass, pleased to find nothing seemed off about the taste, but still on the edge of being weary of what Loki could have potentially done to it. "Once you cannot have something, you wish to destroy it. Asgard, Thor, Midgard. This is why you go through allies like tissue and treat every realm you tread upon as if it is paper, ready to be thrown away once you've written upon both sides."
"You're a dragon, Victor, treating everything you get your hands like it is gold. But you will never spend it, nor is everything so very precious as to require hoarding."
"Nor is everything so worthless that you should consider it trash the moment you cannot collect it yourself."
Loki sat up straighter, near to glaring with the serious regard he gave Victor. "Asgard is a cesspool of brain dead brigands that don't deserve to be saved."
"Perhaps," Victor replied. Loki would bristle that Victor was not agreeing with him, but without outright dispute he would not go into a frenzy. The god was not yet so uncontrolled. "But you are you truly willing to destroy what could so easily be bent to your will instead?" Loki glowered silently. "Do you even have the power to destroy them?"
"Of course I do!" Loki answered with an offended look.
"How?"
"Ragnarok, obviously," Loki told him. "I am it's trigger. I can very easily put it into motion."
"You will be caught up in that as well," Victor pointed out. "You are so willing to destroy them that you will destroy yourself, as well?"
"Yes," Loki answered without hesitation. "You underestimate my hate for them." Then, only slightly more quietly, he added, "And you overestimate my love of myself."
That statement was a minefield that Victor did not want to touch. Victor was well aware of what Loki was willing to do back when he desired Asgard or something from it, and he was well aware how that affair had finally ended for him. There were too many obvious things that Loki could be implying, but the conversation would not move forward if Victor did not at least nudge it. Loki would make sure of that.
Victor was not a coward, but he took the easy path to furthering their discussion. "I am surprised that you love anything more than yourself."
"My hate will always burn hotter than my love," Loki promised. That, Victor thought, is probably part of the problem. He, of course, did not say that. What he did say was perhaps not much better.
"That is likely why you fail to woo Asgard at every turn. You are always ready to die just to spite them, but you will not put in genuine effort even when the prize is their love."
Loki was either too hurt or too angry as he stared at Victor with an expression that was entirely blank. Finally, he looked away as he picked up his glass and slowly drained it.
"You are arrogant, Victor." Loki's voice was as equally blank as his face. "You believe that you can tame anything. People, land, power, all ripe and ready in your hands. You are not nearly as powerful as you think, that is why you constantly lose all that you have ever gained and why you are constantly fighting to keep it. How long will it be until those four idiots that are obsessed with you march in here and remove you from your seat of power, or your rivals stomp through to put you in your place as second best mage and sub par scientist? How long until your technology falls below Stark's? Or Shield's? Or even Hydra's? You racing so many different clocks that you might as well already be dead and buried for all the time you will spend losing progress and glory."
Victor did not take a defensive or aggressive position as he faced Loki. Calmly, Slowly, he met Loki's gaze. "At least I am not so weak that I would rather die than fight to claim my rightful place."
It was no lower a blow than the one Loki had dealt, but Victor had struck much deeper with that much less effort.
Loki did not take his eyes away from Victor. He reached out for his glass, which filled itself, retroactively making a show of the effort that Loki had expended to do it manually earlier, and leaned back comfortably in his chair. "I suppose we are at a stalemate, Victor."
"You may view it as such," Victor told him.
Loki took a slow slip from his glass. Victor prepared for this to be a battle of attrition. Loki had more stamina, and could perhaps sit staring at Victor indefinitely, but Victor was stubborn and disciplined enough to hold his ground. It would not be the first time a night of theirs had ended this way. Victor doubted that it would be their last.
Loki surprised him by speaking again. "You may be right, Victor. Perhaps I am too quick to destroy my own things." My own self, Victor heard, but was not sure that was the thought that Loki meant to invoke. "But I am also right. If you destroyed more things instead of hoarding them, your enemies would not have so many things they could use against you."
Loki had a point, but Victor didn't like to admit it. Loki didn't make him. He rose from his chair, making a show of stretching and displaying his comfort and lack of held grudge from their conversation and traded blows. "I'll leave the bottle to you, in case your curiosity gets the better of you."
Loki disappeared.
Victor remained where he was and sank into further contemplation. After a long moment of thought, he poured himself a glass of Loki's wine. Victor was a fool. Victor took a drink.