[fic] You, the Living / Matantei Loki Ragnarok
only some nine months late: all the pretension i thought i'd moved on from, with bonus abuse of the tag and unexplained timeline-AU premises! this is not what i wanted to write, since it is nothing new, but by now i am not sure i could write anything else. :\
in retrospect i should have written something in which angrboda is kickass and gun-wielding, based on that one coloured manga pic. it could be a western. sleipnir could appear and everything. oh well, too late now.
Title: You, The Living
Fandom: Matantei Loki Ragnarok
"--temporary. The mortal world, exceedingly so." Utgard Loki takes another slow, contemplative bite of his cookie, seemingly oblivious to the crumbs already littering the black-and-silver of his robes.
If nothing else, Loki hopes this visitor is temporary. As the days wear on, they wear on his nerves, and by now even Yamino's smile is off-kilter in a way more complex than the strain that Narugami's presence brings. Loki is tired of playing a game without rules or a goal, and if he were petty enough he would note that Utgard Loki is running up a bill for provisions even swifter than he consumes them. It is one thing when Narugami does it, in his unashamed and thoughtless manner; Utgard Loki makes his very presence seem an unnamed triumph.
Said intruder licks the crumbs off his fingers, with an insouciance Loki recognises and wishes he didn't. "Perhaps you'd rather return to something more permanent, then," he ventures. "Utgard, for a start."
He has yet to ask Why are you even here? To do so would be to admit the fact of Utgard Loki's intrusion, one step closer to a reluctant oikeiosis.
"I'm waiting for you," Utgard Loki points out, more amused than irritated. He reaches towards the plate.
First the smell of smoke, then beneath it the softer scent of grass. He opens his eyes and the gaze he meets is not hers, no, but oh, how sad and strangely familiar--
In the sterile evening light of streetlamps (not moonlight; nothing so romantic, here in Japan's suburbs) Utgard Loki is more insubstantial than ever. Failure makes ghosts, drains the defeated of colour. When Utgard Loki speaks he is still staring out of the window: "We couldn't get her back."
You never had her, Loki thinks, without the energy for anger. He's running one hand over the sheets, finding no lingering warmth. How does one chase what Urd has taken? Memories are meaningless now, but still they surface, sharpened by absence. Listening to her voice, his eyes closed; his touch learning gentleness; the delicate warmth of her skin; his fingers combing the soft fall of her hair; the knowing darkness of her gaze. The moon in his palms had been scarred and imperfect, cold, lighter than expected -- too light for something that promised so much. This is the wrong response. He wants anger, defiance, an impulse to action. He clenches his fingers into a fist; holds only air.
Has he ever seen Skuld this solemn? He begins to ask-- but then she leaves, or is already gone, or has never been there. Ash; an ash tree; a familiar arrangement of lines. Verdandi's gaze is neither kind nor cruel as she lays one hand over his eyes. The command she whispers is not forget.
"Your tea, Loki-sama."
And how many times has he heard that since? Or more importantly, since when-- he's stopped keeping track, and the frightening part is that this does not frighten him. He thanks Yamino, and watches for that same shy smile he now associates with his son, borrowed though both body and expression are.
The tea is comfortingly dull. Today he is in the garden, not his study; it's amusing, he thinks, how the differences in his days have come down to such details. Soon both Spica and Yamino join him at the dainty wrought-iron table, with Fenrir bounding after them, the warm smell of the kitchen -- baked goods and spices -- still clinging to Yamino's collar, the lace of Spica's cuffs. Loki looks away from Midgard's imperfect, too-distant sky, watches instead the way sunlight lights upon the carefully-iced cookies, or the quiet smile that Yamino and Spica exchange.
Not that this is perfection. There is someone missing from this happy picture: her absence a reminder of the disconnect between what they are and what they live as. Some nights he finds Spica staring at the moon, with an expression too complicated for mere longing, and he asks if she wants to return, or if she misses the place -- but perhaps they are the wrong questions.
"I knew what I was giving up," she tells him. It is easy to forget how much is built upon sacrifice, and none of it his own.
In the meantime the detective agency becomes a diversion, not a necessity. Mayura's enthusiasm wanes as the school year drags on and blurs into the next. Her visits grow infrequent, if no less cheerful, and with her loss Loki grows further from Midgard even as he grows used to living on it. Asgard, too, recedes. Freyr and Heimdall are observing an unspoken truce, or have left, or are merely taking longer than usual for their next attempt. Reiya comes by more often; he sees Freya less and less.
There's another absence, of course, the greatest one of all, but that life now seems so very far away.
Perfection is infinite, therefore impossible, but Loki takes what he can get, and for now he has an uninterrupted afternoon. Spica smiles at him across the table as Fenrir dozes off in her lap. Midgard is simple, ungrand, and its pleasures similar. Loki has learnt a different sort of complacency: an appreciation of the mediocre. Even the chasteness their new forms dictate has its own charm, and he grows used to it as he has grown used to too much else, domesticity not a curse but rather something to be welcomed at each slow breakfast, each walk in Midgard's unpretentious gardens, each shared ice-cream cone. These are the sentiments he never voices to himself: it is enough to fight no foe greater than inclement weather, to meet no surprises greater than Yamino's latest culinary experiment. To wake in morning's faint chill and be assured of the warmth of another beside him; to meet the same dark gaze each day. This life is petty, safe, predictable, nothing like him at all, and he does not care.
Cold stone is cold stone no matter which world one is in. There's something he should be remembering, Loki thinks, as he gazes into the seething spring and fails to find his reflection. Something about death and poison, origins and endings. Or something about forgetting?
He dips his hands beneath the surface, just for a moment; the numbness comes half a second too late, the pain a misplaced echo. The water trickles from his cupped palms, slips through his fingers, a metaphor he can't find the shapes for. He drinks: it tastes of nothing but its own coldness.
Not a memory: Yamino, standing in the doorway of a room too small to be familiar, an uncharacteristically shabby tea-tray in his hands. Fenrir, bounding forward with all the fierce and selfish affection that neglect engenders. And behind them, turning around at the sound of the door--
At some point, he finds the ground.
in retrospect i should have written something in which angrboda is kickass and gun-wielding, based on that one coloured manga pic. it could be a western. sleipnir could appear and everything. oh well, too late now.
Title: You, The Living
Fandom: Matantei Loki Ragnarok
"--temporary. The mortal world, exceedingly so." Utgard Loki takes another slow, contemplative bite of his cookie, seemingly oblivious to the crumbs already littering the black-and-silver of his robes.
If nothing else, Loki hopes this visitor is temporary. As the days wear on, they wear on his nerves, and by now even Yamino's smile is off-kilter in a way more complex than the strain that Narugami's presence brings. Loki is tired of playing a game without rules or a goal, and if he were petty enough he would note that Utgard Loki is running up a bill for provisions even swifter than he consumes them. It is one thing when Narugami does it, in his unashamed and thoughtless manner; Utgard Loki makes his very presence seem an unnamed triumph.
Said intruder licks the crumbs off his fingers, with an insouciance Loki recognises and wishes he didn't. "Perhaps you'd rather return to something more permanent, then," he ventures. "Utgard, for a start."
He has yet to ask Why are you even here? To do so would be to admit the fact of Utgard Loki's intrusion, one step closer to a reluctant oikeiosis.
"I'm waiting for you," Utgard Loki points out, more amused than irritated. He reaches towards the plate.
First the smell of smoke, then beneath it the softer scent of grass. He opens his eyes and the gaze he meets is not hers, no, but oh, how sad and strangely familiar--
In the sterile evening light of streetlamps (not moonlight; nothing so romantic, here in Japan's suburbs) Utgard Loki is more insubstantial than ever. Failure makes ghosts, drains the defeated of colour. When Utgard Loki speaks he is still staring out of the window: "We couldn't get her back."
You never had her, Loki thinks, without the energy for anger. He's running one hand over the sheets, finding no lingering warmth. How does one chase what Urd has taken? Memories are meaningless now, but still they surface, sharpened by absence. Listening to her voice, his eyes closed; his touch learning gentleness; the delicate warmth of her skin; his fingers combing the soft fall of her hair; the knowing darkness of her gaze. The moon in his palms had been scarred and imperfect, cold, lighter than expected -- too light for something that promised so much. This is the wrong response. He wants anger, defiance, an impulse to action. He clenches his fingers into a fist; holds only air.
Has he ever seen Skuld this solemn? He begins to ask-- but then she leaves, or is already gone, or has never been there. Ash; an ash tree; a familiar arrangement of lines. Verdandi's gaze is neither kind nor cruel as she lays one hand over his eyes. The command she whispers is not forget.
"Your tea, Loki-sama."
And how many times has he heard that since? Or more importantly, since when-- he's stopped keeping track, and the frightening part is that this does not frighten him. He thanks Yamino, and watches for that same shy smile he now associates with his son, borrowed though both body and expression are.
The tea is comfortingly dull. Today he is in the garden, not his study; it's amusing, he thinks, how the differences in his days have come down to such details. Soon both Spica and Yamino join him at the dainty wrought-iron table, with Fenrir bounding after them, the warm smell of the kitchen -- baked goods and spices -- still clinging to Yamino's collar, the lace of Spica's cuffs. Loki looks away from Midgard's imperfect, too-distant sky, watches instead the way sunlight lights upon the carefully-iced cookies, or the quiet smile that Yamino and Spica exchange.
Not that this is perfection. There is someone missing from this happy picture: her absence a reminder of the disconnect between what they are and what they live as. Some nights he finds Spica staring at the moon, with an expression too complicated for mere longing, and he asks if she wants to return, or if she misses the place -- but perhaps they are the wrong questions.
"I knew what I was giving up," she tells him. It is easy to forget how much is built upon sacrifice, and none of it his own.
In the meantime the detective agency becomes a diversion, not a necessity. Mayura's enthusiasm wanes as the school year drags on and blurs into the next. Her visits grow infrequent, if no less cheerful, and with her loss Loki grows further from Midgard even as he grows used to living on it. Asgard, too, recedes. Freyr and Heimdall are observing an unspoken truce, or have left, or are merely taking longer than usual for their next attempt. Reiya comes by more often; he sees Freya less and less.
There's another absence, of course, the greatest one of all, but that life now seems so very far away.
Perfection is infinite, therefore impossible, but Loki takes what he can get, and for now he has an uninterrupted afternoon. Spica smiles at him across the table as Fenrir dozes off in her lap. Midgard is simple, ungrand, and its pleasures similar. Loki has learnt a different sort of complacency: an appreciation of the mediocre. Even the chasteness their new forms dictate has its own charm, and he grows used to it as he has grown used to too much else, domesticity not a curse but rather something to be welcomed at each slow breakfast, each walk in Midgard's unpretentious gardens, each shared ice-cream cone. These are the sentiments he never voices to himself: it is enough to fight no foe greater than inclement weather, to meet no surprises greater than Yamino's latest culinary experiment. To wake in morning's faint chill and be assured of the warmth of another beside him; to meet the same dark gaze each day. This life is petty, safe, predictable, nothing like him at all, and he does not care.
Cold stone is cold stone no matter which world one is in. There's something he should be remembering, Loki thinks, as he gazes into the seething spring and fails to find his reflection. Something about death and poison, origins and endings. Or something about forgetting?
He dips his hands beneath the surface, just for a moment; the numbness comes half a second too late, the pain a misplaced echo. The water trickles from his cupped palms, slips through his fingers, a metaphor he can't find the shapes for. He drinks: it tastes of nothing but its own coldness.
Not a memory: Yamino, standing in the doorway of a room too small to be familiar, an uncharacteristically shabby tea-tray in his hands. Fenrir, bounding forward with all the fierce and selfish affection that neglect engenders. And behind them, turning around at the sound of the door--
At some point, he finds the ground.