MaLoki 20 themes: of the gods

13. Demons

Drawing out the darkness from where it has wound itself around Heimdall's heart is harder than Loki had expected, though that also means that the surge in jyaki is more than sufficient to restore his form. Heimdall shivers, trembling hands seeking purchase on a floor slippery with his own blood.

It’s an exorcism of sorts, even if the demons are less of Odin’s creation than they are of Heimdall’s. Loki has no real demons of his own; he knows better than to lock his darkness away, and in any case it is the brightest light that casts the deepest shadows.




17. Awakening (kakusei)

The first time it is laughably literal. Loki wakes in the bed he has come to think of as his own, and in a body that feels at once familiar and suddenly awkward. It is a sort of rebirth – his powers restored, the world suddenly bright and sharp and full of potential.

But the real awakening comes much later, when Loki regards his almost-reflection and suddenly remembers: silence, solemnity, everything he now sees in Utgard Loki's eyes. The voice he hears is his own but unfamiliar, the same way no one recognises their own voice when hearing it outside their head.




4. Memory

Verdandi pulls the sheet off the washing line and lets it fall. The detergent’s scent is light, floral; it doesn’t remind Loki of Asgard, though he wishes it would. Verdandi’s words are softened by the folds of fabric, their solemnity out of place in the sunshine, but Loki feels their cold significance and keeps his head bowed.

“Because of my relation to the king of Utgard?” he asks, though he recalls nothing of the past that Utgard Loki supposedly holds. Skuld doesn’t truly answer. He doesn’t expect her to, and wonders instead what Odin has seen of his past.




2. Predestination/Fate

Strange, how simple it can be to kill part of the past. ( Not her past, she thinks -- not quite. ) Urd looks down at Utgard Loki’s body and does not know if what she feels is the unravelling of threads or the breaking of something far less significant; neither possibility is an appealing one.

She lets the sword fade. The blood on the now non-existent steel spills belatedly to the ground -- she steps back, breathes, wonders if they are all tangled in events of their own weaving. ( The problem with that idea is that it brings the possibilities down to one. )