driftfleet | dreams in digital

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dreams in digital

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Lup

(last updated: 1/21/19)

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["Then am I not your mother?"

The lie that left his throat, a parting painful barb, stung them both. Taako pulls his hand back from the painting. Loki had been hurting, pushing people away, and the one person he'd never meant to push had been caught in the tide. Her smile is like a knife, sharpened by the tears in her eyes, and the knowledge that it wasn't true.

He pulls his hand back to his chest and sighs. Somehow this is worse than the memories brought by the Tesseract. Those were painful, visceral and raw, but this is emotional pain on a different level. Rejecting the only mother he knew because of anger at his father.]

I'd call you a spoiled shit for rejecting her, but considering everything - can't really blame you. Families are complicated, huh?

[ loki hums. ]

She loved me but she also lied to me. They all made me believe I was one of them while they let Asgard curse the name of my people. I grew up on the stories of monsters, monsters that looked like me. Monsters that Thor wanted to kill as a child.

That is not a poison so easily removed.

Fair. Racists be racists, even if they're, you know, your family and otherwise okay people.

[Taako's known his fair share. A lot of people are orcist on Faerun, not least of which because orcs were kind of a nasty bunch of people who liked to fuck shit up. But orcs were also super badasses that fought to save the world like Killian and nerdy as fuck like Brad Bradson, so labeling all orcs as monsters was pretty fucked up.]

Not defending what they did, because it's suuuuper fucked up they let you hate your own people for so long, but they thought of you as one of their own instead. 50% nice and 50% what the fuck, y'know?

It is imperfect.

[ and that's why this world continues to be that way. imperfect. balanced, but not quite there to what a mental mindscape should look like. people lock away the bad, show off the good. loki hides what is good, protects it from his own failing mind and keeps what should not be forgotten out in the open. ]

As all things are.

Pfft, dunno about that. Taako's pretty much primo perfection as he is.

[He preens and tosses his braid over his shoulder. Then he goes back to looking up at the portrait of Frigga. Why not a happier memory of her? There had to be a lot, right? She'd been alive until a few years ago according to Thor and the gods were endlessly old already, so all that time... There had to be good things mixed in.]

But before all the lies and all that...she was still a good mom, right? Thor seemed to think she was.

I do not recall saying otherwise.

[ the tapestries aren't about pain, though they certainly seem painful. the tapestries contain truths, things that give loki direction. things he cannot afford to forget. ]

She was my mother. But she died before I could tell her so.

Pretty sure she knew. Lady seems pretty damn perceptive - even had your number.

[He knew she was gone already but it's sad to think that something so important was left unsaid. Taako could, if not empathize, at least sympathize. He didn't get the importance of family in anything other than the academic sense, but he did get it. For Loki, being lied to by his family, being led to believe the lie and complicit in it, was horrifying. He'd lived a relatively charmed life up until then, and then had it all yanked violently away from him. It had to be hard, losing all that.

Enough to wage a war? Maaaybe not, but gods fought on a different level than mortals. Taako would've just given some people a bad bout of the bathroom blues and split, resolving never to see any of them again. But he was used to being alone.]

Guess it's a lesson for later though, huh? Don't leave stuff unsaid? Or whatever.

I did not repeat the same mistake twice.

[ when he died . . . as he does, he told thor what he could. what mattered. ]

Glad to see one of us can learn then.

[He rubs the back of his neck, his ears twitching downward as he looks at the remaining portraits.]

But what about, y'know, memories of her from before all this? I'd totally get it if you don't really have any nice ones anymore - fuck if I even remember what my parents' names were, let alone anything nice they did - but you don't have the whole forgetting problem I have. So there's gotta be something, right?

What is there still matters, but it is difficult to call them good.

[ loki isn't saying his life is all bad or awful. and it takes him a moment to contextualize his answer. ]

That one lie threw everything into doubt. All the good became . . . questionable, uncertain. I stopped being able to tell what was truly real or not.

[Taako's not sure if he can relate to this - the idea of one single lie being so big that it taints everything that was once good in his life. He's been dealing with lying and stealing, fighting for every little thing in his existence up until now that he isn't sure there's anything that could rock his world so much. Maybe the idea that the Director has been lying to them about the Red Robes? But even then? That's just his boss. It's not like he really has any reason to think she wouldn't eventually lie to him, stiff him out of something. It'd hurt, sure, but he's used to that sort of betrayal. He's used to a lot of betrayal actually, and his whole life has been waiting for the other shoe to drop and blasting the person responsible before it can fall. Trusting no one works out for him, lonely as it might be. At least he's not like Loki now, uncertain and hurting.]

I mean, does it matter? The good was good, even if she wasn't telling you the whole truth the entire time. Better that than being treated like shit your entire life, right?

[ the problem is not so much that loki doesn't think there was nothing good. it is that his mind was fractured from it. that loki himself just couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. he had confessed so to thor that the sickly sense of doubt will always be there. if thor said a memory was bad when it had been good for loki, he would immediately clamp down on himself and doubt the truth.

memories are imprecise. messy. ]

And that is why what is good is kept safe from doubt. What isn't is kept out here.

Oh so you do have good memories. You'd rather just-- [He waves somewhere, gesturing to the whole of this cracked and fragmented world. And rather than complete his thought, he stops, hand midair as he considers something.]

....

You know what? Fair. That's fair. [Keep the good things locked up and safe. The general principle behind most safes.]

So this is your "gotta work through it" pile of memories, huh?

More or less. They are all compiled in sections, to slowly be dealt with in time.

[ some of it was mostly done but recent events brought some of his older issues back to the forefront. hence the cracks in the floor. ]

[Taako snorts despite himself.]

That is the most administration-y thing I've ever heard you say. "Gotta collate these memories, Dave. Sort them into appropriate places, please."

[ loki shrugs, nonchalant. ]

It is important to keep an organized mental space. It's safer too, in case other people wander in here.

[ and loki has strong mental powers. he knows the value of a mind and how it operates. ]

Fair enough, but I think I prefer a mess.

[Taako considers himself a hot mess by both definitions and hopefully that'll translate to his headspace. If there's too much shit to look at, maybe people won't be able to find what triggers the memories.]

Better that they get lost and fuck right the fuck off. Taako's not open for mind-reading business or whatever this is. I mean, shit, this is, y'know, your private junk. Not exactly the sort of thing I'd welcome having aired out to whoever stumbled in.

[ loki raises an eyebrow. ]

I think most people would do so after seeing these. I certainly didn't make it easy.

And yet?

[He motions to himself, still in here despite all that he's seen.]

The harder the puzzle, the more people wanna try to see what makes it tick. Or whatever the saying is.

[ loki is bemused. ]

You truly wish to dig deeper?

[Taako shrugs.]

I'm here, I'm queer, I might as well peer-- No, wait, that rhyming scheme got away from me. But yeah, sure - if you wanna show me all those dark corners, why the fuck not? I have no idea if I'll remember this in the morning, or if you will, so what's the harm, huh?

Close enough. If you want, you're welcome to continue looking.

[ it's old pain. recently risen to the surface, but old wounds that have left scabs in their wake. loki will deal with them, eventually. ]

[He considers that for a moment, then looks around the room.]

How about this: you got something you wanna show me, handsome? I know I'd be pissed if people turned over rocks I didn't want flipped, so you point me to something you think I deserve to know and I'll, I dunno, do something in return?

[ loki purses his lips. that is difficult, especially in here. finally he shrugs, glancing to the table of books. ]

You could try there.

[There had been books in the last vision, too. He'd figured Loki was a reader, fit his personality to a T, while Taako was more of a doodle in the margins and pretend he didn't memorize the book the first go around type.]

Cool cool, here we go then.

[He moves away from the portraits, eyes lingering for a moment on the image of Frigga - a mother who loved and a mother who lied for that love - before he focuses entirely on the stack of books. Lots of leatherbound looking tomes, heavy and old, thin and intelligent looking. He tilts his head and bends at the waist, looking at the titles.]

Favorites from your long travels?

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