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Imagine a throne.
(Loki certainly does)
Build it in your mind. Steel. Gold. Ermine. Plush. Feathers. Spikes. Get creative. There’s no wrong answer. Have fun with it.
(Here in the void between worlds, there aren’t many other ways of passing the time. Loki makes his own fun)
All that matters is that it sits taller than everyone else around it. In a pinch, you can sit in a normal chair and make everyone else kneel.
Imagine a throne. Imagine it's not yours. Not yet.
What wouldn’t you do to sit in it? Be honest. What wouldn’t you do.
You see, it’s about power, about right, about need, about want.
Haven’t you ever wanted something?
Didn’t it burn when you didn’t get it?
Don’t pretend you’re different. Call him a monster if you like. He doesn’t mind. But remember, always remember, dear kin and kind and king, that slaying the monster never meant you aren’t one yourself.
But that’s not why you slay the monster. You do it because you want the monster dead and you want to laugh at its corpse.
They never liked him. They never never liked him, not when he tried to be liked and not when he stopped trying and not when he earned their hatred. Their feelings towards him never changed and that’s the truth, that’s the truth. They’ve always despised him, always, and if Loki’s earned it now, isn’t he just doing them a favor? He made the unjustified justified. So they hated him, so they always did, but now he deserves it, you see, and who knows how long he’s been hiding this twisted version of himself? Or is it a version, is that too generous? Is this the true core, the soul and heart and mind, aether and ether and matter, is who he is now who he has always been with the veneer of Asgardian civility washed off? They don’t know, they can’t say. Maybe yes. Maybe yes. It certainly feels true, doesn’t it. They wouldn’t have hated him all these years if they hadn’t sensed something.
Really, truly, how noble they are. How perceptive and thoughtful and noble they are. To have known him for who he was before he knew it himself.
Imagine a boot. Imagine the leather and laces, the stink of mud clinging to its sole. Imagine pressing it against their faces. You know who. You don’t have to imagine them. They always exist. Imagine the softness of their cheeks against your heel. Imagine the mud rubbed in their eyes. Imagine how they whimper. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.
Imagine showing them just how fucking sorry they are.
Think of analogies. Here, he’ll start one off.
Sun is to moon as Thor is to Loki.
Easy, you see? It works because the glorious, beloved sun gives off light which the moon steals for its own to keep the dark away, the dark that presses close and closer and eats away until it is a sliver of itself, until perhaps this time it doesn’t wax back. Simple.
Let’s do another one. This time, you finish.
First is to second as king is to—what?
Write your answers neatly. No cheating off your neighbor.
The solution, of course, is peasant, an insultingly simple solution, he knows. He hopes you won’t be too offended. For after all, it is clear as the sun in the sky, that you are either the ruler or the ruled. If one man gets everything, what is left for the rest of us?
A third:
Blood is to family as blood is to blood is to blood is to blood is to
Because that’s all that matters in the end. Blood, your blood, his blood, their blood, our blood, pooled together on the floor until he’s going to drown in it until his skin turns blue as he gasps for air and he burns from the inside out.
That’s enough analogies. They bore him now.
Imagine
Imagine a
Imagine a fall.
Imagine a wait.
Imagine nothinginess. Nothing nothing nothing out there in the ness, nothing at all but you and all the nothing.
Here. Let him help you.
.
It’s like that. You’re the dot.
It’s like death—he imagines. He’s never died, not yet, not from lack of effort, and never in the technical sense, that is, his heart his heart has never stopped beating and maybe that’s too narrow a metric for death but it’s the only one he has. The blood keeps pumping.
Or, imagine a different fall, the fall of the house of Odin. Don’t you see the fissure? The crack in the gold? They put a cuckoo on the throne, don’t you see, and so the palace will crumble into the nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing no—
He’s not lost out here.
He’s just taking the long way home.
Imagine a knife
(what wouldn’t you do?)
Imagine it red
(nothing)
Imagine them screaming
(so fucking sorry)
Imagine your throne
(mine.)
Insane? Isn’t that the question. Insane or just in sane, in too deep for his own good when everyone else is out.
Brother, son, kin—no, he is none of those things to no one now. You see, don’t you see, he killed the monsters who had the right to call him those vile names. He killed them, he killed, he he he he is free to do what he wishes now. He is free to be born anew, born in blood and nothing.
Strip away Odinson. It always felt fat and poisonous on his tongue—Loki Odinson, no, wrong, clearly wrong, no wonder they hated him and hate him and will hate him with a name that sounds so wrong. Take Laufeyson away too because Laufey is dead by Laufeyson’s hand and if that doesn’t merit disownment, he doesn’t know what else to try.
He is Loki. He was Loki. He will be Loki. Nothing more and thus nothing less. Without the chains of kinship, see how high he will go.
That’s the secret of falling after all, don’t you see, don’t you at last see. With the right mindset, you're just flying.