lucetilogs | variety is the spice of life

variety is the spice of life

Who: Everyone who wants to be here!
What: Total Recall 2014
When: The first week of the event, roughly April 9th-16th, give or take a few days depending on your character's timeline.
Where: All over Luceti, presumably
Summary: Chaos! Madness! Unreasonable happenings! You know the drill. Alternatively: characters wake up and sigh because god, not this again.
Rating: Varied. Anything frisky goes to appointments as per usual, chums.

Due to the size and variation of this event, it's probably best to have several logs for it to avoid one getting overcrowded and broken. Feel free to have your characters post their own entries, of course, if you'd prefer- you're more than welcome! This is for people who like to consolidate. Another log ought to be posted around the 16th for round 2.

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[Loki laughs, continuing to slowly pace. He rubs his hands together as if to rid himself of the memory of some haunting touch.]

I screamed for you, Iofast, when they flayed my skin off on the other side of Hel. I screamed for you, and Thor, and Juti, and Valka, and... [...Saldis.] Well, it doesn't matter now. None came for me. None heard. It was as useless an effort as the tears I shed when my brother sewed my mouth shut.

[He stops and looks at his old friend, anger and sadness in eyes that seem older than the world.] The Allfather took me as a war prize so many centuries ago and meant for me to be a tool, a pleasant little puppet. And when I no longer had use because of what Thor did in Jotunheim, he was pleased to see me discarded and told you all that I was dead.

[His voice drops softer still, not angry, not venomous, but filled with a naked pain that he never intended to let free. But this argument was perhaps too unexpected, and he's had his defenses worn down by living an easy life for over a year, one where Rogue has daily chipped away at the armor in which he wrapped himself. Perhaps the cracks are finally beginning to show.]

And you believed him. All of you believed him. What sort of companionship is that?

Edited 2014-04-20 23:13 (UTC)

[Each of Loki's clever knives is blunt as a root, compared to that question, and Iofast is certain it shows on his face how it stings. How it cuts through the tender softness of his own thoughts, asking him again and again if they failed him, his companions, if they could have prevented or even forestalled this fate.]

One clouded by duty, and troubled thoughts, and- Loki. The things that we had seen of you, then. We . . .

[No. He cannot put this on all of them, and he shakes his head, barely, and corrects himself.]

- I. I wished for certainty. I wished to understand.

[It is all the explanation he can offer without censure or outrage, both of which he knows will be received even more poorly than everything he has already said. But it is the truth, Loki's actions, even before today, have left him only more uncertain than ever.]

Edited 2014-04-20 23:24 (UTC)

The things you had seen of me. [He laughs at that. Everyone is so shocked, when nothing he has done has been a whit more brutal than anything Odin has perpetrated. He has no more blood on his hands than anyone else. And no horror any of them felt can compare to that which shattered him when he was exposed to himself as nothing but a lie.] Are you well satisfied with what answers Odin has provided? I am sure he has made the matter quite simple and certain.

[He jaw tightens at the unspoken accusation, and he casts an arch look at Loki for even voicing it, for faulting him in taking the single thing set before him by a trusted hand.]

Perhaps I would be more dissatisfied, were his answers given some competition.

Have you really bothered to ask? Perhaps I missed it somewhere in our delightful conversation, between your accusations that I am but a vengeful shade wearing a Loki-skin suit and your annoyance that I have been less than pleased to be a guest in the Allfather's dungeons while I wait for him to get around to executing me.

Between the confusion and your insults and doing your best to sting me into madness and-!

[And madness, madness is what it must be when heat flares again in his blood with another one of those smug accusations, another calculated barb to paint Iofast as the cruel one, the monster, the careless fop laughing and making merry while his companion rots.

Madness it is when he strikes at the lapel of Loki's jacket with the aim to catch it and slam him against the nearest tree, for even in their days of fellowship, Loki was always the quicker and more cunning of them, and with blades besides. But the madness thinks, in that roaring moment, that even to feel steel bury in him would be better than this, trapped with a Loki who hates him and will not rest until he hates himself.]

[And Iofast meets...nothing. No resistance. Just an image that shatters away to nothing.

From off to the side, leaned casually against a tree, Loki remarks:]

Be mindful now that you were the first to strike, Iofast.

[He tilts his head.] And do not dare speak to me of madness. Until you have have hated your own skin as I did, until you see your life shattered into pieces that reflect only the undeniable fact that you are the very monster your brother has sworn to slay, you will not for shame speak of madness.

[Nothing. Of course he reaches for Loki and finds only empty air. As ever, a treacherous dark part of him whispers, you are not permitted to touch him unless he wishes it so. But he need not even touch you to make you writhe. That is the truth of power and weakness, Iofast.

Slowly, he pushes up from the tree, meaning to leave this time in truth, more worn-down than a day of sprinting in circles around the village might have made him. Loki always did win their battles, in the end.]

And because I have not died, I will not for shame speak of wounds. Because I have not suffered as brave Loki has suffered, I am clearly the happiest man alive.

[There can be no remaining fight, he thinks, with his lie of a surrender spelled out so plainly, and he turns to go, back toward the village. Loki will hold his returned strike in reserve, and this ugly errand has taken long enough. Now he needs light, and sound, and people.

Oh, mercies, he needs anyone else.]

Whoever you are, you play his part too well. Good morning to you.

[Loki laughs at that, because it's just so ridiculous, too ridiculous by far, but he catches his breath with a strange hitching sound. He is good at this. He's always been good at hurting people with words far sharper than daggers.

But why was it like this? He remembers how he and Iofast were, so far in the past. A past now dead and forever out of reach.

He's not really aware of moving, but he's still as silent as always, as fast. One moment at the tree, the next up behind Iofast, his hand reaching out to catch at the man's--friend? enemy? he no longer knows-- sleeve.

His voice is quiet and strange to his own ears.]

Don't you know me at all? Ever have I been the greatest coward in all nine realms.

[And already he curses himself for speaking, for moving, for not just taking his victory and resting upon it. Why?]

[Only wary hurt keeps the hope from Iofast's gaze when he looks back, and even then it struggles toward that promised opening, a tiring fish still fighting the net. But he stills, if nothing else, though he does not smile, does not make as if he recognizes that slim chance to reach his once-companion. He's already been tempted into range of a blow too many times in this round.]

You must be, to try now to keep the company of a man who has betrayed you so deeply. [Is he trying to joke? If he is, it's pathetic, but he can't even say for himself any more what he means. He had never even expected to see Loki alive again, but here he is, hale and full of nothing but hatred for him.] Have you no pride at all, old friend?

[Has he no pride? It's a good question, the one he should ask himself. And Loki is a coward; he believes in strategic retreat. Suddenly, that seems a good idea.

His brows draw together for a moment and there is something in his eyes, some sorrow or pain or even regret, then his fingers loosen on Iofast's sleeve, and he lets his hand fall away. He takes a slow, careful step back.]

A point well-made. [He fights to regain that hard shell of distance that he allowed to foolishly slip for a moment. His next words sound more like teasing than an insult, however.] You must be a fool indeed to waste your time speaking to a shade.

[This was a mistake. What did he think would come of it?]

When have I been anything but? [There's a cadence that he catches the hook of to answer, and he is almost afraid to think too long on it, lest it disappear.] Iofast, who carries club rather than blade or hammer or spear. Iofast the over-clever, the loud, who makes merry from beginning to end in every quest.

[He is a bard's son, if nothing else. And he knows that there are endless sides to a story, and holds the gift to present the one that fits best the circumstance. And if it is only a fool who the shade will gentle for? A fool he will be, for the moment.]

You cannot be Loki, surely, if you think me anything else.

[He's left feeling caught almost off guard, that Iofast has not continued on his way, or gone on the attack. And he can't help but laugh, sounding rather surprised.]

Perhaps the particular ghost has been too long out of the company of fools.

[He takes another step back. More space will perhaps lend more certainty.] Though surely, I heard you were given a club because the armsmaster was sore afraid you'd cut yourself otherwise.

[Though he almost hates himself for it, Iofast's shoulders sink slightly in relief when Loki laughs like that. It might still be another artifice, another lure, but some intuition tells him otherwise. He knows when he is being hunted, and this cadence of theirs is something else, something far older.

He gives a wary smile in return, ruffling the prickling sweat of raised tempers off of his scalp.]

Is that the tale that has won out? Fine luck. There was a rival one once, that woman-hearted Iofast would of course faint at the sight of an open wound.

I don't think that one survived Saldis joining in the fun of adventuring.

[Loki remembers the stories told about him as well, his lack of honor and cowardice.]

Or Juti's leg.

[He gives a rueful lift of his eyebrows with that one, because if there ever was a wound to make one weak at the sight of it, it was that one.

But through that, too, they had remained together. It seems even longer ago now than it was.]

. . . is it you, truly?

Hah, or that. Either when it happened or the quest that followed. [He remembers that. He remembers. He wishes he didn't, sometimes. It would be so much easier if he didn't.]

[For a moment he almost mocks the question, but then makes a small gesture with his hands, as if to say do I not look as myself? But then:] It would be far easier for you, were I not. And it is still true that the criminal Loki bled out his last on the blasted soil of Svartalfheim.

[He looks away for a moment.] Perhaps someone will write a nice song about it. The sort that always made me want to vomit. [But it matters. It matters that he had protected Thor, almost at the cost of his life. He had avenged mother. And yet.]

Edited 2014-04-21 04:18 (UTC)

[He states it with such ugly, cold finality, and Iofast finds that the smile he manages in response is rueful and faint, a pallid thing.]

It will be a long time before even I can sing of it, regardless. [To at least have the air between them no longer so charged is a relief, but it's still tense, and he still feels worn-thin from that first long struggle. Iofast scrubs a hand over his face, giving a soft noise, overwhelmed and off-balance.] I think this calls for a drink. Will you join me?

I somehow doubt it would be a welcome song.

[He hesitates, unsure what he wants to do in this situation. The smart thing would surely be to walk away. But wasn't the point of dying that he could in a way be reborn? In Asgard he had a fiction to maintain. Here, he can try to begin anew.

And Billy, Rogue, Ikki, and others have worked so hard to convince him that other people were not a weakness of which he needed to rid himself. At least not here.]

All right.

[After another hesitation, he offers, oddly tentative:] I've some mead at my house.

Mead from Loki's stores?

[Now that is a familiar story indeed - one that has a thousand endings, in every shade from regret to celebration, but a central tale itself that never disappoints. Jack's expression gains a little more substance, and he nods, fixing his weapon firmly to his belt.]

Now there is an invitation that any fool would be ashamed to decline.

[This is a bad idea. A very, very bad idea. For a multitude of reasons. But had he not earned this with his near death? Has he not made amends in his own way? Why should he not reclaim friends as a ghost?

Because history will only repeat itself.

But he's never been good at talking himself out of doing what he wants, just rationalizing it later.]

Come along, then.

[And he turns down the path, toward the house he calls his. Will Rogue be there? Likely not. She hasn't been herself recently, and that has been surprisingly difficult for him. Not that he will ever speak on that topic. He must simply weather it.]

It isn't far to walk.

[Iofast falls into step alongside him, brow quirked, the entire strange circumstance slowly falling into place. With affairs settled down to a reasonably safe smolder, he can speak on other things, perhaps. Less volatile things.]

A house and stores of drink already? How long have you been in this place?

A year and a half. [He smiles crookedly.] You are lagging quite far behind in that regard, the lot of you.

A year and-? [Iofast's expression screws up into one of incredulity, and he lists closer without meaning to.] How?

[Loki notes the narrowing of that distance with a flick of his gaze, but doesn't move otherwise. Iofast isn't a threat, at least not like that. No, he's a threat because he's something of Asgard that Loki's been reminded he doesn't really hate. It threatens to unravel a lot of the foundation that's kept him going since he found out the shattering truth.]

I know not. Only that a year and a half ago, I woke here. [He snorts.] Surrounded by mortals. Many of whom didn't like me overmuch, though I've taken care of myself well for all that.

[For now, he decides to not go into the part where he's actually arrived twice, going back to Asgard between the two times.] It is better than Hel, I suppose. But more boring.

Edited 2014-04-22 05:21 (UTC)

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