More bitter ranting from your friendly neighbourhood Loki.
Turn Left
I have a story for you, here – let me tell you how it goes.
The Kursed leaves the dungeons taking the stairway to the right. Meanwhile Malakith enters mother's quarters searching for the girl. But mother is ready for him; of course she is – she has always had a strength not to be under estimated.
"Stand down creature" she says, honour and dignity side by side in her with wit and lethal ability. Of course the creature does not stand down. No matter – they fight – she wins. By the time the Kursed reaches her quarters she has left with the apparition of the girl.
How much further can the story now go? Of all the tales I have ever told this happy yarn is the saddest never to leave my lips.
With Malekith gone The Kursed is nothing. Mother being still alive she campaigns for my freedom. You join her, with that never – ending hope you have that I am still somehow redeemable. With two such strong forces battling for my salvation I am less able to hold out against your dear adorable hopes.
She knows you as she knows me – better than anyone – perhaps even better than we know each other and certainly more honest. She notices you of course – how you sit brooding every night, every night a stranger at your own feast. She at least is not foolish enough to imagine it is some mere mortal you are pining for. Neither is she afraid to confront you with the truth in your own head, the truth you hide from – and after all it is me you were missing was it not brother? I am the cause of the vast emptiness that walks beside you, a thing so black it is a wonder not everyone sees it. She makes you face up to those feelings that you flee from as only she could. She has always known what we were – what we are – to each other and she alone has never judged or turned away.
And so between the two of you, you release me, not just from this cage but breaking and entering through every barrier my ever busy mind can erect. Between you you manage – though I am sure I do not make it easy – to bring me back – to bring us back – somehow even to something like we were.
Did mother have this kind of power? Could even she effect so incredible an ending? But of course she did. Of course she could.
And in the end when the Allfather dies you and I rule Asgard together, like we always should have done, like we always should have been. We can be what we are with no fear or hiding, content, and always in the background our gracefully aging mother. So we live. Happily ever after as they say.
That is my story brother, did you care for it? My little tale of what could have been.
What could have been. How it bites into the heart with its many venomous little teeth.
Because it is not this way. Because Loki of Nowhere has to have the last word. Because the capricious imp of my mind had to say something to the beast that would not release me when it released so many others. Do you know why, brother? Because it sensed in me something useless to it – it sensed some fetid sense of goodness and it let me know this with the scorn in its eyes.
Well I had to say something to that kind of insult did I not? And how remarkably I did succeed in proving it wrong!
"You might want to take the stairs to the left" was all I said.
It was all I needed to say.
And could you forgive me this? Could even your foolishness forgive me such as this?
CAN YOU FORGIVE ME THIS, BROTHER?
Because I sure as hel could not.
_x_
Yes, I took this chapter title from an episode of Dr Who, it seemed curiously fitting.