Final steps

[st_ratagem]

Loki had spent the last hour or two before sunset preparing, and the first hour afterward. He’d taken ruthless advantage of the fact that the Inn staff was desperate to give people towels and had carefully interwoven the. On the floor such that there was no chance of getting at the actual carpet below without effort. He’d selected a dagger from his collection - a very old one that he hadn’t actively used since childhood, one of a pair given to him by his mother - and sharpened it to an almost perfect edge. He’d opened up the balcony door to let the early-winter night chill in. He’d even out together a little aid kit (disinfectant, pads, bandages, needle and thread) for afterward.

In many ways, the hardest part was settling on the towels with the in-etched staff resting in front of him and forcing Odin’s enchantment away, knowing that he wouldn’t be allowing himself to go back to normal possibly for hours. And that, as soon as Thor arrived with a bowl and his hands, it would all have a witness.

Comments

[st_ratagem]

“I could wish for a little more subtlety, but that may be part of the point.” Elemental force was force. It could be made smaller and subtler, but naturally it was... well, Thor. Intensely straightforward. Which was probably one reason (likely among others) that Loki had needed a focus: he wasn’t very good at straightforward. It wasn’t how his mind worked.

It increased the strain on what now seemed to be severely atrophied magical muscles, but Loki applied a little more force and concentration to the little water in the air. A few seconds later, the runes pulsed and a few small ice crystals swirled in the air. Another good start, but then Loki had to let it go, let the temperature return and the ice melt. Too much at once would only set him back. “I believe I should apologize, brother. Did you know there are two ways to start an avalanche?”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor's face brightens even more at the sight of the few crystalline snowflakes his brother has created; he holds out a hand to catch them in his palm and finds they melt before they hit the surface.

No matter. Thor's slightly-damp hand is back on his brother's back. He gives his brother's shoulder an encouraging squeeze.

"What do you mean?"

[st_ratagem]

“You can start an avalanche by blowing up one side of the mountain or finding exactly the right place to drop a snowflake. I’ve been trying to one-snowflake this, and it was never going to work that way.” Asgardian magic often did, at least the parts he was good at. “This is more like a set of muscles, not a set of rules.” Which and eperfect sense, but somehow he’d never thought of it that way.

[st_ormbreaker]

"You're right." Thor gives Loki's shoulder one final pat-pat, then withdraws his hand. "Finesse isn't a word in my dictionary." Not, at least, when his powers were involved.

[st_ratagem]

“Yes. And I’m not good at brute force.” Loki sighed. “At least I have a framework now.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"You did it once. No reason to believe you can't do it again."

Thor's grin softens into a smile as he looks over at Loki.

"I'm proud of you, you know."

[st_ratagem]

“What?” Now that sounded ridiculous. “Why?”

[st_ormbreaker]

"You found something that didn't come easy to you and tried to do it anyway," Thor answers, as if it were the most logical answer in the world.

[st_ratagem]

“Oh.” Loki shook his head. “That’s not why, you know.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"The why doesn't matter," Thor says. "What matters is that you tried."

[st_ratagem]

“The why matters to me.” Loki held up his bandage dhand - still blue like the rest of him - and looked at it. “I hate this, you know.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor looks down at Loki's hand, then up to Loki's face and frowns. "Being frost giant?"

[st_ratagem]

Loki nodded, closing and repening a fist as if watching it fascinated him. “The nightmare Asgardian mothers frighten their children with. The monster you wanted to destroy for most of our lives. And yet I have to be one. A defective one, at that.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor watches as Loki opens and closes his fist.

"For the record, my stance on Frost Giants has since changed," Thor says. He is still ashamed of his previous position. He was even before Loki called him out directly; he'd just never talked about it."My opinion here probably doesn't matter, but I never saw you as defective. Different, maybe, but not defective."

[st_ratagem]

“It’s not a question of opinion. It’s a fact. I was thrown away for being defective. Too small, not particularly strong. Probably other reasons about which I know nothing.” He shrugged, “I’m not anything, really, which is appropriate for me, and maybe if I have some minimum level of competence it will bother me less.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"How much do you know about the Christmas stories Midgardians tell their children?"

The question probably seems to come out of nowhere given the current topic of conversation, but Thor is going to use it to drive a point.

[st_ratagem]

“Very little. It’s nothing I’ve had cause to learn.” Thor thought it was relevant somehow, so Loki was willing to play along.

[st_ormbreaker]

"There's this person named Santa Claus who has this little workshop up at the North Pole. On Christmas Day, he delivers toys to all the good boys and girls on a sleigh driven by flying reindeer."

The basics, first.

"There was this one reindeer, Rudolph, though, who wasn't normal. His nose was red and it glowed and he was mocked and cast out for it. He tried to hide the nose -- tried to cover it up so he looked like everyone else, but that didn't really work, either."

[st_ratagem]

“Ridiculous story so far.” And obvious, but Thor wouldn’t be satisfied until he told it in full.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor continues, choosing not to address Loki's quip.

"Christmas came one night and it was too foggy for anyone to be able to see anything. There was no way that Santa would be able to fly his sleigh and deliver toys around the world. It wasn't until then that Santa and the other reindeer realized Rudolph's worth. It had always been there -- they had all just failed to see it."

[st_ratagem]

“A very sweet story of a world populated by gormless idiots incapable of lighting lanterns. What of it?”

[st_ormbreaker]

"You're Rudolph here," he says, directing a finger at his brother. "All the other reindeer thought Rudolph was defective because he was different, but those aren't one in the same."

[st_ratagem]

“I shall bear your idiot story in mind should I ever go to Jotunheim to bring it to heel.” It was an possibility, with Asgard going to be gone, his not-arrived-yet welcome on a trash world worn out, and Midgard not an option.

[st_ormbreaker]

"I like the story!" Thor protests.

[st_ratagem]

“It is a very you story,” Loki granted. “Saccharine, simplistic, reliant on the nonexistence of normal objects like lanterns in order to get to the moral point you want to make, ending very tidily before rational consequences follow so it can stay ‘happy’.”