@hraunwyf
of course. of—fucking, course, she’s crying. crying in front of norman osborn, right here and right now when she’d kept it in the entire time before this, and never let him see, even if he had to have known. how can he do this? how can he just be there and tell her, even if not in those exact words, that he wants her to be happy. it betrays everything she knows about him. and most things she was trying to be certain of in herself, as well.
but it still makes sense.
loki’s been asked before why she can’t just get over things. why she can’t move on. those questions are always asked by midgardians, by these little humans with their insignificant lifespans and the marks they manage to leave on the universe in their brief little flickers before being snuffed out.
humans are built with all the mechanisms they need in order to die well. they can be bent and bowed and broken beyond recognition, and they heal. they heal because they have to, however they have to. even monsters like norman can go through hell and be put back together on the other side, because for him to die as such a little thing it needs to mean something more.
loki, immortal, forever, just… is there. and aching and aching and aching because she’ll live no matter what. no one taught her how to clean up her scraped knees, set her broken bones, and just keep going.
she wants to say that to him. wants to say that what’s wrong with them is he has the one thing she doesn’t: potential.
what she says instead is, “i just wish you would have loved me before all this happened. i think it’s too late now.”
There’s a distance in his gaze, and he keeps it pointedly away from her. He’s aware, now more than ever, of how others view him. The wild animal that wanders too closely to your camp and leaves you uneasy, at best. You avoid looking it in the eyes, and hope it continues on without noticing you. There was never a time in the past where his gaze on her wasn’t both a warning, and a threat, and all by his own design.
More and more it feels like a constant battle to avoid those habits. So perhaps it is less about her, and more about him simply beginning to feel... tired.
At least, if he keeps telling himself that he can keep the bulk of the emotion at bay. Tucked safely away, somewhere, where it will be seldom seen or experienced until the day he finally dies.
His eyes are directed a random spot on the wall just past her head as he leans on the doorway. There’s ten feet between them, roughly, but depending on which of them you ask there should be more or less.
The twisting of the knife would be to admit, out loud and finally, that it all probably happened because he began to love her.
Instead, he says, “Too Late Now will probably be the name of the book Harry writes about me after I’m dead,” adding, in an attempt to deflect, “I should probably copyright that in advance, actually...”
