Disclaimer:I don't own anything except Mrs Renault and Ariel.
Frozen Numb
Chapter 2
He ran into Mrs Renault again. He used to be surprised by how often he would run into her in the beginning but it didn't take long for him to realise it was because she was the only person in the building who was retired. The other tenants, like him, were mindless drones lost to the rat race, he out of choice, and them out of necessity. In some ways this world was harder than the one on Asgard. Every day was a fight of some kind, if only to survive. On Asgard there were series of battles punctuated by feasts. Some lived for those feasts; others like him lived for the battles.
Part of him wondered why he wasn't quite unable to stop comparing his homes like that. Most of him didn't care.
"Lucas! Fancy running into you here!" Mrs Renault was always happy whenever they met but she was never this exuberant.
"I was just on my way out actually. Running low on groceries." He chit chatted. The elevator was out of commission again and he was taking the stairs down when she had appeared on the landing.
"I'm waiting for my granddaughter, she said she's on her way up but the doorbell isn't working." She said informatively the happy twinkle never leaving her eyes. He would have been envious if he thought himself capable of feeling anything. "I meant to tell you that she'll be house-sitting for me while I'm going to visit my son in Arizona but it slipped my mind."
A girl walked up the stairs with heavy footsteps and stopped right in front of the two on the landing. She had the same hooded eyes that Mrs Renault did but in a grey reminiscent of clouds rather than the bright mossy green that her grandmother, as he assumed Mrs Renault to be, possessed. He noticed the rest of her as well, short bobbed black hair and a small mouth on a tiny deer like face but he kept on returning to the eyes.
They were dead, not unlike his own.
The two stared at one another and a brief look of recognition passed on both their faces. A kindred soul in pretence. He didn't know what her story was but he knew instantly that this girl put up a facade, the same as he, that she could feel and that she belonged to normality.
"Do you two know each other?" Rs Renault asked.
"I believe I've seen her around the university campus." He hadn't but the university was a convenient excuse. You could always find someone who looked familiar there.
"I don't go to college but I actually thought I saw you at a gig somewhere. It's easy to confuse people in crowded places." She smiled candidly and he was fascinated by how deep her act went. He would have been fooled if he hadn't spent many an hour practising that exact same smile in the mirror.
"Oh right, Lucas this is my granddaughter Ariel, Ariel this is Lucas he lives just upstairs."
"Ariel Summer." She offered her hand for a shake and he accepted.
"Lucas Ackerman."
Ariel looked at him with a curious smile. "You won't be too noisy an upstairs neighbour, I hope? No wild parties or dance sessions."
She was teasing him. They both knew that he would do no such thing, the hollow shell of a person that he was.
"I hope you won't make me want to rip my ears off by playing bad music which consists only of basses being dropped." He assumed the reference was correct he had overheard his students talking about it only last week.
"Only once a week." Mrs Renault looked between the two as if imagining he sparks flying and he inwardly smiled. The thought of two people incapable of feeling trying to 'make it work', as the phrase went, was laughable.
"Well I'll be going now. You both play nice."
"I'll walk you down." The girl, Ariel threw her bag in quickly before picking up Mrs Renault's duffle bag and they began the walk down slowly, Loki following close behind. Within minutes they stood on the curb watching as the cab carrying Mrs Renault sped away but the girl's smile remained.
"Still keeping up the act?" He asked conversationally and she raised an eyebrow.
"You're new at this aren't you?" No one mentioned what 'this' was but they both knew.
"Does four years count as new?"
Midgardian scale of time was different but from what he understood of it four years was a relatively long enough time. People at the university certainly seemed to think so.
"Yes." She laughed, a fake sound but well honed to sound real. "Don't worry, you'll get there eventually."
"Where?"
"The place when it becomes habit to the point where you start smiling to yourself even when you don't need to."
Loki stilled. He'd always thought it would work the other way round. Eventually the sparks of emotion would turn to a blazing fire and he would feel again. Patience was all it needed, he'd figured and he had years, centuries for them to build up, that he would feel again even if it was only paltry human emotions.
She gave him an indulgent smile and left him there on the curb with his thoughts. He began walking soon though, he really did need to buy groceries.
Still, he thought with an almost smile as he felt stirrings of what some might call relief, it was nice to know he wasn't alone in his numbness.