6.
Thor remembered. He remembered how the sky had seemed to dance that night, looking up from the roof. It had seemed alive with fire, dancing tongues of red and green, colours in the sky, trailing a ladder to the stars. It had shone with rainbows as though the sky had opened up that night and let all its hidden secrets come falling through in a waterfall of colour.
It had not been that way, not in actual cold fact, but he remembered it so all the same.
He remembered. He lived in memory. That feeling as though the night had been encapsulated in a snow globe and all the stars like glitter around their figures on the roof. It hurt his head to shake that globe and see the glitter fall but he could not tear his eyes away from the sparkle. If it caught in his eye long enough he could see glimpses of that smile flickering at him out of the night like a trick that lured him in, fooled him completely and then tripped him up. He never wanted to follow where that smiled beckoned; it could reel him in, trapping him in that dark snow globe forever. It never occurred to him how trapped he already was.
He could sit for long moments some days; brooding, running the smooth green stone of the pin in his fingers. He wore it so often that there were fan theories as to what it meant. Actually, he wore it always; only sometimes he kept it hidden so that nobody would suspect him of any kind of strange obsession.
Even when he was not specifically brooding, he would stroke the shiny stone like glass, at all times and in all places his hand would seek the pin on his lapel and touch it again and again for a comfort it really did always seem to give him.
-x-
Loki's hand went to his lapel. It often did when he did not stop himself in time; a nervous gesture that never consoled him anymore. He had always reached to stroke the green stone, for luck he had told himself at first; but now he reached for it and finding it not there simply reminded him every time that he had lost something. Something more than the pin, though he refused to admit to that.
It had a history, that pin, a long and Romantic one that he did not know the full of himself. He had been given it so long ago he could no longer remember who by. Somebody said it had once belonged to Oscar Wilde. Somebody else said it was alien in origin, part of a fallen star, the glint from a dead god's eye. Some said they were all true, that the aliens had left it with Oscar Wilde when they left him behind on this planet as a child. They were all good stories; Loki worked them all, spinning them into his tales and the legends he constructed around himself. He constructed legends out of legends using parts of him in the mix. He constructed the stories into himself in return so it was impossible for anyone, even for him, to know where the stories ended and the man began. He would talk about this at length if you asked him, and the interviewers did.
The reviews. Oh the endless reviews. Some had told him fame would be a nightmare;
"I deal in nightmares," he said, smiling that mischievous smile his fans screamed and wept over – "And in dreams. I couldn't possibly make it clear to you which of the two I was now could I?"
Fame suited him like everything suited him. One fan had written that he could wear a bin bag and make it look beautiful. The next week he had done exactly that; transforming the suggested article into slick black plastic jeans and tattered strips that revealed most of his chest. He had done a photo shoot in the infamous Bin Bag outfit that had been the talk of fans and critics for months. Everywhere he looked he saw pictures of himself, gazing out from shiny front covers of magazines with charcoal black around the eyes, teeth shockingly white against black lipstick and the black nails resting against perfectly white airbrushed skin.
If he had been anyone else it might have made him uncomfortable but –
"Thank god I am who I am," he had told the press, smugly – "I'd have been useless at being anyone else."
The interviewer came back at him then for not using an original quote and stealing one from Game of Thrones.
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person," he grinned – "Give him a mask and he'll tell you the truth". He grinned harder when the interviewer failed to point out that these too were not his own words and instead asked him who he thought should take the Iron Throne. He spent the next few days manipulating images of himself as ruler of the seven kingdoms and sending them out to all the magazines that would take them.
There was nothing wrong in the whole of the life of Loki Laufeyson; one of the most successful musicians and personalities perhaps in the world these days. Everywhere he looked were posters of himself- he saw his own face grinning up from every surface. The world was simply a mirror in which he could admire his own beauty. And he did. There were no sleepless nights for him; you only had to look into those shimmering reflective eyes to see it.
Later, he would forget where he was when it all came tumbling down. He would remember what he was wearing and nothing else.
He was resplendent that day in black leather and silver steel, touches on the arms of his shirt to look like armour, shoulder plates in dangerous spikes and entirely aesthetic leather straps around his arms and chest. His boots were tight leather to the knee, edged with silver flame.
He would forget the place; perhaps it was a club of some kind; his band had booked some very exclusive room and you could hear the whole place awash with pretty lies and meaningless witticism flowing in little streams around the chink of crystal glass and the mystical sweet sound of his own voice blasting from the speakers welcoming you into a magical world from which you would struggle to return. It was as easy to enter Loki's world as to slide into silken water and a difficult to get out as to wade through sticky treacle.
Suddenly someone tapped him rather hard on the shoulder and he turned around slowly, because he hurried for no-one, scowling a little because it was rather vulgar of them and smiling his most artificial smile at the same time. It dropped from his face before even he could dart and catch it.
"Thor," it came out in almost a gasp of surprise.
"Loki".
The warmth in the blue eyes was dreadful; cracking the ice of the chilly plastic reality with which he had surrounded himself. Obviously he had not spared a thought for Thor Odinson of – what was it - god yes Terminal Deafness, not these five years gone. Not once. Never. This was just a ridiculous and unexpected blast from a well forgotten past, one of the many fleeting encounters made along the route to his current glorious position.
Loki was, for the first time in his life, speechless, hanging in the balance between warmth and chill without even the breath of a word on his lips.
_x_
Seriously Loki is the unreliable narrator to end all unreliable narrators. Yes I have shamelessly stolen quotes and plot and Oscar Wilde's pin from "Velvet Goldmine". I didn't actually mean for Loki to quote Jaime Lannister but he did. Then I remembered that he – Loki - is canonically a Game of Thrones fan and ran with it. There are heaps of images out there of him on The Iron Throne if anyone just looks. :-)
