#& loki 002. * benevolentgodloki

[victoriousfidelity]

"I do not need others to tell me what you are." Comes her response, the words as resolute as her gaze is. "Loki, look at me. Do you think that I am not furious that you were lied to? Do you think that I am like them?"

The questions hang in the air between them, and then a far more gentle one follows: "Your heritage does not make you a monster. Not to me. Or have you forgotten that not every Realm shares the Allfather's prejudices?"

Loki scoffs bitterly, not at her so much as his predicament.

"Do you hope to learn that I am not what they say? These hypocrites who raise me in lies and wonder why I do what I can to prove my worth, why I turn to conquest when that has always been Asgard's right, why I turned on my brother before he could destroy me because of my heritage. They treat me now at last like the monster they pretended I was not and so here is my cage."

Buried beneath his spite he knows his wrongs, he knows, but he will not allow himself to see them. To examine himself is to give in to fear and everything that he has suffered, every bad choice he has made.

[victoriousfidelity]

For as much as he tries to push her away, Sigyn is equally as unyielding. She wears her loyalty (and her heart) on her sleeve even now, almost like a challenge; daring him to keep going down this road and discover just how pointless it is to try and convince her to do anything other than what her heart tells her to do.

She did not mourn him for as long as she did only to allow herself to be kept from him now - whether by Loki's own attempts, or Odin's sentencing of him.

But she does wince, at his turn of phrase. The analogy pains her; he is no beast, and she has never been his keeper. The expression only lasts for a fraction of a second, though, before she replies.

"Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I am. How could I not have come here, Loki?"

It wounds him to force this rift between them, and yet Loki can't seem to help but damage everything around him. He doesn't know how to stop, after learning what he was, what he is. There is poison in his thoughts that has been there even before Thanos' influence. How can she love him knowing what he is? What he's tried to do; what he's done? Loki rails between a twisted wish to protect her and a disbelief that anyone on Asgard can be true to him anymore. He is riddled with fear and distrust, even of those he deems most precious.

"Can the beast trust its keeper after it has savaged his guests? After it has run wild? You should not be here, Sig."

@victoriousfidelity