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“It’s true, isn’t it?”
There was a knot in your stomach, a heaviness as you looked at him.
You’d figured out a way to pause the time loop (you couldn’t change it, unfortunately), in that scant moment before the Lady Sif entered.
The torches’ flame frozen in place, an unsettling stillness to the scene as you forced yourself to watch him.
How he folded his hands, resting his elbows against his knees as he sighed.
The pair of you now sitting on the golden steps, watching a portion of Asgard that would never shift despite how intently Loki appeared to be looking at it.
“It’s…complex.”
“We have the time,” you murmured, earning you a small smile from the god, though he wouldn’t meet your eyes.
“Not much once Mobius realizes what you have done,” he retorted, glancing for a moment at the corridor Lady Sif would enter from.
“If he starts the loop again, I’ll fight her,” you stated, and Loki actually laughed.
“With what?” He retorted.
He reached towards you, his long fingers curling around your wrists before he held up your hands between you.
“You can barely manage a dagger, let alone hand-to-hand combat,” he continued, and you pulled your hands away as you shook your head.
The knot loosening slightly as you felt a small smile rest on your lips.
“Somehow I’ll manage,” you murmured.
You couldn’t see his expression as you watched the stillness of Asgard below, though you swore you saw a similar smile on his lips out of the corner of your eye.
“Is she…decent, at least?” you risked asking, the knot tightening again inside you. “Or is she another you?”
“She’s…” Loki began. “Me and…not me.”
“Just enough to hate her and yet not enough to stop you from loving her?” you murmured.
“I suppose,” he replied gently. “Though it…”
It was the first time you’d seen the god fumble for words, a quip never too far from his tongue, and you knew.
The knot somehow tightening further, your eyes beginning to prick as you forced yourself to look at him.
He laced his fingers together, tapping his thumb against the top of his hand as he puffed out his cheeks.
“I…I suppose,” he began. “I suppose it’s…”
He shook his head.
“Maybe Mobius is right and I am a narcissist,” he mused with a small smile. “Because I suppose it’s…it’s like that moment, where you regard yourself in a mirror and you’re stunned to realize you’re not…repulsed, by what you see in it.”
You watched his black brows knit over his eyes, his lips pursed before he continued.
“And you realize that perhaps, you could…love this person. If you’ll allow yourself to do it,” he continued.
He suddenly waved his hand dismissively.
“But then of course, the moment passes and you realize you were a fool for thinking otherwise.”
His eyes met yours, his smile refusing to grow.
“I look at Sylvie, what she has been forced to become, and I…I respect her for it. Understand why she has done what she has done to survive, and I can’t help but think I would likely do the same,” he continued. “That I was only spared because some space lizards determined I was abiding by my path on the Sacred Timeline.”
You couldn’t help but laugh at that, and you swore you saw Loki’s smile widen a fraction.
“She…she reflects the parts of me that I despise, and also the parts I can…perhaps be affectionate towards,” he continued. “But there are aspects of her that are so foreign that I can’t help but wonder what made her become that way.”
He took a deep breath.
“And perhaps I am terrified that they will become parts of me too.”
He shifted his frame to face you, his hands still folded as he sighed.
“So, in response to your question…I do care for her. Understand her pain, and frustration, and rage more than I should probably admit,” he murmured. “See in her a fierce passion that I am also prone to.”
He wetted his lips.
“But love?” He murmured. “In the way that Mobius believes it to be? That the narcissist god can only love himself?”
He shook his head.
“It is affection, but it is not love,” he continued. “For even a god who has never felt the emotion would know it upon the first twinge.”
He smiled a little.
“I suppose the weakest of comparisons would be the affection I held…” he began, pausing before he sighed. “Hold, for my brother. For my mother. In some strange way, for my father, despite what he has caused. And yet, it feels…deeper. More like I gaze at her, and it makes me want to show…myself, the same affection that I feel.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“If that is love, the type that they speak of in grand tales performed on numerous stages, then I do not see why humanity strives so tirelessly for it,” he confessed. “Because it isn’t…”
“Enough?” You murmured.
He smiled.
“Precisely. It isn’t the all consuming love, the unyielding passion like the tales my mother used to read to my brother and I. Of the noble finding their equal in the good,” he retorted, his eyes meeting yours again.
“Perhaps that is not your fate,” you offered, and Loki scoffed.
“Despite what Mobius believes, I do understand aspects of myself,” he retorted. “And I suspect I will not be satisfied until there is that moment, where our eyes meet, our lips curve, our hearts thudding at the same tempo, and I realize…”
He suddenly stopped, his eyes widening as he swallowed. Taking a deep breath, his frame beginning to shift forward when you heard someone’s steps behind you.
“I see you intervened,” Mobius murmured. “Learn anything interesting?”
Loki blinking before his eyes hardened, quickly manoeuvring himself back to his feet as your heart thudded.
“Loki…” you began.
“Clever tactic, Mobius,” Loki murmured. “But I preferred Lady Sif.”
Slipping through the red-lined doorway, Mobius looking at you questioningly.
You wished you had something to respond with.
Besides the fact that he might have misjudged the God of Mischief.
And perhaps…you had too.