thoughtformed | [LOG] 'Til all my sleeves are stained red

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[LOG] 'Til all my sleeves are stained red

Who: Kid!Loki and Aradia
When: The night of the Kanima instagram?
Where: Aradia's room, in East 102
What: Secrets. Lots and lots of secrets, and irons in the fire, and how much work it takes to be Loki's confidante.

She wasn't worried. Was she? Sort of, possibly, in an abstract way. Just because he'd called on her aid once didn't mean that he needed her to bail him out of every single piece of trouble he got himself into, and she wouldn't insult him by acting as though it did. Realistically, it didn't look large enough to pose too much trouble; on Alternia, that would have been moderately dangerous at best, being as how it looked person-size. He should be all right. She skimmed ahead, briefly, saw no deaths. He didn't need her to bail him out.

And maybe he'd only stumbled on it by accident. That could have happened. But somehow Aradia didn't think with Loki that anything just happened. Somehow, somewhere along the way, he'd have had a hand in it. Even then, she didn't have to know. He'd promised honesty, not absolute disclosure, and she didn't have the right to ask for it.

And yet she was irritated, to not have known. Just a bit, enough for her to notice the edge on her mood. Aradia didn't want to dwell on what that meant, because the possibilities of poor repercussions, according to this timeline, didn't exist; everything turned out fine. There was no room for but what if it hadn't.

He didn't have to tell her anything! Just, she sort of wished he had.

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It ran deeper than good and evil. It was easy to categorize the things that he had done in another life. Those were evil. This is ... more complicated. But it always is more complicated.

Then again there was always a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan C all the way to Plan ZZ if necessary. He had a knack for running with the consequences and relying purely on his wit. It had saved him more than once, as it had saved Asgardia and Thor.

There's a bland look in her direction, and he examines her expression, his eyelids heavy over inhumanly green eyes.

"You're very good at this," he says, finally, and then leans back on his hands. "It could be arranged, though if possible, I would rather find out where the beast came from, or if there are others like it."

Possibly for backstabbing and manipulation purposes.

"I hate to say it could be of some use, but it could be of some use."

He waves his legs, his boots skidding lightly against her floor. As a chaotic force it was hard to say why he cared so much about saving everyone. It was, perhaps, the debt he felt he owed to a prior life of causing nothing but pain.

Aradia would kick him squarely in the ass if she knew he was winging it that much. She's always been meticulous, holding the various strings and threads and plucking at them just so, the right conversation, the right moment to appear and prevent something or push events in a new direction.

She looks back at him, just as bland, perfectly serene.

"That's practical," she agrees. No judgement. "And also true. It could be. But that's an abstract bonus, not a goal. Take your shoes off if you come up on the bed for real, I have to sleep here."

And him? He's a chaotic force of nature, nothing seems to go quite right when he's involved, even if the pieces fall oddly into place. His Evil-Self had been the opposite, calculating and particular. It didn't hold quite as true in this incarnation. A God of Chaos that caused chaos but never flowed with it never seemed quite right. Then Evil-Him became old hat.

"An abstract bonus? Possibly another piece," he was mulling this over, kicking off his boots so he could put his feet on the bed, resting his arms over them again. He looks thoughtful. All it would need was the set-up. And then he looked thoughtful, like he was constructing something in his head.

He remembers the battle with the Serpent, and what he had to set up to get his brother killed. This is not so involved, but his resources were dry.

And then it strikes him awkwardly, and he looks shocked at his own revelation.

"Oh, Hel, Aradia. It's a person."

Aradia waits patiently for him to go on, well used to waiting for people to put all the pieces together. She can't exactly assist him in drawing any conclusions, but she seems perfectly content to sit there and keep an eye on him, elbows on her knees and chin in her hands. At least he doesn't seem so upset, anymore?

"Is it?" Without the evidence or the context, she doesn't know what he's talking about, but she's pretty sure in this instance she's only meant to be a sounding board.

"The Kanima is a person," he says, more clear this time, putting a hand to his head. It's as if he's trying to draw out some kind of idea. And why hadn't he seen it before? All the conversations on the forum, the way that Derek had approached him in the post, it made sense.

He pauses and then looks at her curiously. He had got caught up in it, the whole idea where he could save people.

"That makes things more complicated."

And she was just listening to him.

What else can she do? She's still learning about all of this, and she hasn't been involved in the action. Alternia doesn't have Kanimas. It's unfortunate, but this time she can't play the role of the nerdy girl with all the arcane library containing every occult secret necessary to cracking the case.

"You'll want to save them too, then." Of course he would. In some obscure, mythic way, grand and lofty, he's the hero, and she knows what boys and girls with hero complexes do. "I assume you mean person, as in sometimes not a lizard, and not person as in a being with personhood regardless of lizardness."

Is he? He never quite feels like the hero. Not in the way his brother is, or the other patrons of Asgard. Instead he's simply Loki, caught between not wanting people to die and in a grand debt to the universe.

"It's not fair, is it? To keep them as a lizard," though 'not fair' is a fairly odd way to put it. In terms of 'not fair' he always asks himself is this 'not fair' in the way that people are suffering, and he got a second chance? "If I can do something about it."

"What a weird question!"

She rolls her eyes at him, pushes at his hip with a besocked foot, trying to lighten the situation up a bit. Even though she's actually rather serious.

"What if they're happier as a lizard? I'd be pissed, if you tried to make me stop being one if I liked that better. You don't have the right to tell them they can't be a lizard for the rest of their lives if that makes them happy. That would be unfair. How do you know they're being forced to be a lizard? How do you know they're being forced to do anything? Don't make assumptions."

He rolls on his side a little dramatically for the contact with her socked foot. He lays on his side there for a moment, and then he closes his eye. "What if they're not happier as a lizard? If they're happier as a lizard then ... then stopping them is the part that's easy. If they're not happy it's different."

Always thinking, he supposes. Every detail did have a right to be brought to light.

Aradia scoots after him, knee bumping against the small of his back as she leans over, hair cascading over one shoulder into his face.

"Then you need to figure out how to stop them from being a lizard. Either way you can't really figure it out until you know who the lizard is, and who's pulling their strings. Shouldn't that be your first priority before you go delving into their psyche?"

He uses a hand to veil himself, pushing up her hair so he can peek at her form beneath it.

"I have a good idea of who's pulling their strings—and as far as the lizard goes, there aren't many options. Obviously it's not you or me, correct?"

Her hand braces on the other side of him, holding her ground as she looks back at him.

"No, it can't be me because I was talking to you while you were being chased by it. It could be you, if I were inclined to be paranoid and come up with increasingly complicated explanations for how you took a picture of yourself while talking about yourself without letting on. And I don't think even you would make it so pointlessly difficult, and it would be a different sort of conversation entirely if you were talking to me about how to take down your other self, and rather more meta, I imagine.

"I'm very good at pointlessly difficult," he says, even though it doesn't quite help his case in the situation that he's in. Or perhaps he does. "My Evil-Self would make it even moreso, and as much as I'd like to blame him for this, I don't think that he has any involvement.

"At least, not yet."

There is, however, a little amusement in his expression.

It doesn't help make his case at all. But Aradia doesn't look like she minds.

"How inefficient of you."

It's so funny to be able to look at him, with his face and his hair clearly visible for once. Much more open. She likes it better, this way. He's nice looking, for what she understands of humans, or more human-like features than hers.

"I suppose that's why you haven't shot it with a tranq gun yet."

It would be best not to ask him. Or tell him, really. He had the tendency of strutting and letting the whole thing get to his head.

"I'm not very good with guns, either." Or any weapons, really. He had carried a bow around for a while, and there's usually a dagger at his side, but neither of them really got much use. He liked to run away before he liked to fight. "It wouldn't be me shooting it."

It would be someone else. He would set it up. He was good at that part.

Aradia rolls her eyes again. She's been doing that a lot, lately, when it comes to him. Not that she could fire the gun either; she's limited to time, psychic powers, summoning and hearing ghosts, and a whip.

"I know you have accomplices." Another subtle push, this time with a knee. "Somebody helped you, didn't they?" And she obligingly, finally, pushes her hair back over her shoulder again, the better to look at him.

It's some kind of reaction, even if she looked slightly exasperated at him. He was used to it.

"None that have tranquilizers," but there's a significant pause, "...yet." That was something that could be arranged, now that he thought about it. If they could knock it out until it had the chance to turn back, they may even be able to restrain the creature.

But he's smiling, "How well is your aim?"

Aradia bites her lip, the picture of consideration, though really it's for the effort she's expending to pull back her hair, trying to gather up the mass at the back of her neck and tie it up without aid of pins or ties.

"Good with my mind, poor with my hands. I never had a ranged weapon. Unless you're willing to consider my aim with a whip."

There's a quirk of his head as he watches her. It's rather fascinating. He's not sure what part is fascinating, but the subtle movements of her fingers is definitely something that he just caught himself watching.

He brings himself back to reality.

"You have a whip? ... I'm very not-surprised."

It's a rather time consuming process, too. She hadn't exaggerated when she said she'd never bothered to cut her hair, and it grows in an unruly mass, but it's only going to keep getting in their way if she doesn't do something about it.

"Every serious archaeologist has a whip," she says, looping the last bit, to leave it knotted messily at the back of her neck. "I was very good with it, too, before I died. But it was destroyed when I did. I'll have to work on replacing it."

That was the first that he had heard of that—but he can't say that he had been on many serious archaeological digs. He had just skirted the outside of Broxton when Asgard (and it's shadow sister) had fallen.

He holds up a finger, still lying on his side.

"It could certainly be a sight to behold. The Lady Aradia, wielding her tranquilizing whip in a grand display to take down a very dangerous and ugly lizard man."

She laughs, softly. "Alas, I am not sure New Moore has quite the range of toxic soporific and paralyzing substances I could have coated my weapon with back on Alternia." Because what else would someone who had to make weapons for themselves use? Or someone overly familiar with the sort of traps buried deep within ruins, left by the ancients.

And she hesitates, on the edge of something. Then she reaches out, ruffles his hair gently with her fingertips.

"You look nice, like this," she offers. "It's nice to get to see you clearly."

He's about to open his mouth and say something about the toxic substances that he could so gracefully dig up if she desired, but he's cut short when she reaches out to touch him. This isn't as playful and casual in the way she knocked him over, or the way they were leaning—that was easier. This is deliberate.

"It seems like my Asgardian robes make very little statement of fashion in New Moore. I may adopt a new look."

It's very deliberate. So is the way she looks him directly in the face when she combs her fingers through it, unwavering. Her stomach does something funny, turns inside out on itself and fills with lightness, but her face stays steady, smiling at him as though this is nothing to be remarked on.

"Oh yeah?" she says, trying to sound light. "I can understand that. Dressing in full Maid of Time regalia started to seem less attractive after a little while, too."

Which is to say she doesn't spend all her time in wings and a hood, anymore. Tights and skirts and warm comfortable sweaters seem far more convenient, in a crowded city. And for the limited space of a bed.

Moments like these were not his strong point. Somehow he always managed to mess them up by saying the wrong thing, because he was Loki, or because he had just jumped, full-fledged, into teenager-hood. Once again his mind reeled for something to say, going through his options so quickly that it hardly seemed like there was any hesitance when he spoke again.

"You do have more than once dress, I'm sure you would look good in whatever you decided to wear."

So it was half-way there. He was sure he could get used to the petting.

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