It is a weird thing to be understood. All these years, no one understood him (they underestimated or overestimated him, they scoffed at him for not understanding, they shook their fingers and put him in time-out). He has lived his entire life knowing he will disappoint or let down or be judged or laughed at – but he has come to accept it. And when he senses her understanding, it is a dramatic shock to him mentally. He tries to shrug it off (forcing in and out deep, silent breaths; turning his mind away from the matter; allowing his eyes to scan the surroundings slowly) but he knows she is finely attuned to his every thoughts, sense, emotion, and memory and she is reading everything.
He doesn’t try to hide anything (she must know everything about him, already; pulling memories and thoughts on him from various places in the minds of the Beqannians – and he hopes she’s stumbled across Quark’s heartache from his own doing – like they are newsletters about him), but he does force his mind to switch tracks as quickly as possible. She accepts his congratulations and the small smile at the corners of her lips makes him wonder how much she has actually been congratulated.
Their conversation dies, but he doesn’t put effort to work it back up. The river of voices in the meadow takes over, flowing between the empty spaces between them. He is content to wait until she proposes her true reason behind being here (because knows she has a purpose as to meeting him, he knows she is not here by chance, he knows there is something brimming so electrically behind her magical mind) and merely observes the scenery around him until she speaks again.
She asks him what he wants, suddenly, and he almost laughs. It’s a silly question – a simple question, but silly nonetheless. She might be able to guess what he wants (the history written on his body, the angular sharpness of his devilish cheeks, the blood metaphorically splattered on his hooves, the glint of darkness and death and evil in his eyes) but to ask him the question is amusing to him. It always amuses him that magicians ask questions to their victims when they already know the answer, when they can just peel it away between the layers of thoughts and emotions and memories and events and wishes in their minds.
(She’s red and brilliant and full of power. This is before she’d succumbed to something bubbly pink and shriveling and self-harming. This is before she left the throne in a cloud of disappearance in the middle of a war. This is when she was thriving and brimming with ideas and abilities and prosperity. And he had come to her because he had wanted to be her right-hand man. Her accomplice. He wanted to be something powerful and accomplished and wonderful and feared and dangerous. And she could give it to him.
“Alright, what is it that you want?” Her eyes relay an expression of boredom – she does not think he can do much, but she will be proven wrong soon later. And his answer is one that he remembers for a long time – one that echoes in his mind when he must remind himself of why he is here, of what makes his toes curl and his lips smirk and his bruised eyes bruised.
“I want to be the unknown assassin, the very thing children whisper about at night and mothers croon terrifying stories about. I want to be the thing that everyone judges, but no one knows will kill them just when they think their life is perfect.” In those words, in those moments, in those sentences, he became something he wasn’t and something he would never be and something he would always be. Even with his one clear blue eye and one blue and white eye, even with his yearling body and lean haunches and sharp cheekbones and practiced tricks, there could almost be a hint of all the things to come in his being. And she had granted that, and much more.)
He raises his chin to look at her, bruised eyes swirling with memories and thoughts. Here he is, given the chance to become anything he wants, and he cannot come up with an answer. His eyes flare with mingled thoughtfulness and indecisiveness.
And then, he combines the past with the future. “I want to be the very thing children whisper about at night and mothers croon terrifying stories about. I want to be a bringer of chaos and destruction and death and mischief.” He knows there is more he can say, but he also knows she can already feel it brimming beneath the curtains of his mind. He shrugs his shoulders. “As for what you want to do with that information, I’ll leave that up to your magical imagination.” He grins haughtily, sharp cheekbones sliding up into a charismatic smile.
While she is seductive and snakelike and velvety, he is charming and showy and explosive.
Although they are different and although they are the same, they work together in perfection. And he knows it.
Lokii
the tricky god of chaos