Work Text:
Loki is a liar, a trickster, and a weaver of words. His famous silver tongue is smooth enough to soothe the most bristled fur, but sharp enough to cut through the strongest stoicism.
He is an actor, a showman, a manipulator, and a shapeshifter. But what people forget, what they always forget, is that in order to lie, you have to know the truth. The best lies were one or two lies within an all encompassing truth that make people overlook the lies hidden within.
The truth itself is a blade, a lover, a paint that blends so perfectly when mixed with hues of lies and deceit that Loki himself cannot fathom how exactly it works so well. It is something that exists in everything and nothing, something that can be both heartrendingly beautiful and ugly at the same time.
He cannot own the truth, no more than he can own the stars or the weave of magic in the universe and within his very bones. It is not to be tamed, but only vaguely controlled and aimed. The truth is wild and free and savage. It answers to no one but sometimes the waves left in its wake can be used to create.
Loki can see the weave of the universe woven in words, and magic, and thought, and truth, and will and slip his knife into the weak spots and carefully manipulate the matter with none the wiser. To his whims things slowly bend, be it though magic, words, or will alone. The strongest magics will destroy those with weak conviction; and Loki, he is anything but weak.
And what good is a lie if it is not believed? If no one will even hear you out, if you are not even given a chance to speak, what good is there in being a liar? Words are Loki’s specialty, but it takes willing, trusting, ears to receive them. It is easy and necessary for Loki to use the truth to secure a place for himself that can be used for other plots. Fools eventually forget what exactly Loki is when he uses the truth or a lie that no one wants to think untrue. After all, nothing hurts worse than an ugly truth you don’t want to believe.
No one knows this better than he. Oh the irony, the trickster, the liar, being nothing but a lie himself, It shattered him, finding out that he is, has always been, a Jotun. Not one of the Aseir. The fundament of him, the one truth that he was sure could not change, had been a lie.
“As a shapeshifter the most vital thing is to know oneself.” That had been the first lesson taught to him during his training with the elves. The was always a danger of shifting too far, of forgetting you original form and identity and becoming the animal both physically and mentally forever. There was no hope of returning if you reached such a state. Many a child of Magic had shifted and never returned from the forests they ran.
Finding out that he was Jotun, had always been, shattered Loki’s sense of self. His cornerstone, the basis of self and thus his magic, was obliterated. Loki had always fallen back on those truths when he was in danger of forgetting. When he was lost among the flow and ebbs of power in the universe, when the pull of complex artifacts sucked him in, when the temptation to lose himself in the baser instincts of his animal form was nearly overwhelming; that innerself was what he clung to in order to center his mind.
And with it gone... he is in constant danger of losing his already slipping grip of reality and sanity.
Loki may be the god of lies, but truth is his weapon. Lies and the truth are two sides of the same coin that cannot exist without the other. Lies could not be as masterful and elegant as they are meant to be without the truth. They are opposites that complement each other so very well if used correctly; and Loki, he is an artist.