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The crimson eyes are the first thing Loki fixes on when he finally, finally dares to conjure a mirror in front of him. It’s a necessary evil, he repeats to himself when his first instinct is to conjure a dagger to throw it into the enemy's heart. He refuses to have such weakness ready for someone to exploit, damn Thor and his big mouth.
So, he’s here, sitting in front of a mirror wearing just some trousers, staring into the crimson eyes his brain refuses to acknowledge as his. The horns were a surprise, he thinks, terrible thing they are, mocking him with his own symbol, making him more of a monster than he already is.
Not a monster, a part of his brain that, horrifically enough, sounds like Emrys, whispers.
Shut up, he answers. Since when is Merlin the paradigm of good behavior or healthy coping mechanisms for that matter? Yes, he’s aware of the meaning of that, Merlin’s been...insistent.
“Loki? Are you in there?” Merlin himself asks, knocking a couple of times on his door in that way of his that never fails to irritate him.
He may have told Emrys about his experiment, this, Loki acknowledges as he keeps staring into those red eyes, wasn’t the best idea he’s ever had.
“Go away,” he snarls, with his best there-will-be-consequences-if-you-don't-do-as-I-say tone, Merlin, as usual, isn’t fazed.
“What is taking you so long?”
He also may have overestimated his capacity to deal with the lies beneath the skin he knew as his and told Merlin ‘Of course I can go on my day like that, I won’t hide like some sort of--”
“Maybe if my skin wasn’t carved by horrors I was taught to fear since I was a child, I would have left this awful room a long time ago,” He snaps, trying to decide if the black of the horns is good or not. For one side, it blends easier with his hair, for the other, though...
“You don’t like your room?” Merlin says and Loki is sure that he’s pouting. Ridiculous man “I chose everything specially for you,”
Loki stops his meticulous examination of those damned horns to look at the desk where the horrifying Mjolnir plushie Emrys gifted him lies. It’s the most awful thing someone could have given him and the smirk on Merlin’s face said that he was well aware of that. It's also a charm, a powerful one, for his nightmares.
“Well, it’s not horrible, I guess,” he concedes.
He hears a snort from the other side of the door, “your compliments always warm my heart.”
“I live to please,”
So, the horns, he wasn’t expecting that, for some reason, even when he had already seen Frost Giants with them. He decides, as he follows the lines in them with his fingers, that he hates it, not as much as the eyes, but the feeling is there.
There’s a soft thump outside and Loki knows that Merlin sat down. Stubborn.
“You could fill Central Park with ice,” Merlin muses, “make a sculpture of yourself, y’know,”
“What are you doing?”
“Positive connections, I think.”
“You should stop reading those embarrassing self-help books,” Loki replies “And do you really think I would do something as predictable as making a sculpture of myself?”
“First of all, I actually have a psychology degree, you dunderhead,” is his unsurprising answer, even if the aforementioned degree is at least seven decades old. “And second of all, yes, I have known you for a long time. I know that’s the first thing that comes to your mind,”
“I thought you were one of the good ones, it’s not really heroic to encourage me, Mister The-most-powerful-sorcerer-to-ever-walk-the-earth.” he says, just to infuriate him.
The claws, for all the gods, the fucking claws. They are entirely black and so sharp he’s certain he would have no problem cutting someone’s throat. The Jotnar really have the most nightmarish features, and the most cliché ones at that.
“Nobody is good, little prince,” Merlin sighs, and the use of his childhood nickname gives Loki a pause “most of the heroes are just trying to atone for the sins they committed. Put their conscience at ease.”
“How very cynic of you,” He says and presses the claws on his left arm. It takes more force than he expected but eventually he draws blood. That, at least, is a familiar sight.
“Well, I grow pessimistic in my old age,”
Well, well, well, he thinks, relaxing his hand and curling it next to the cut, that just won’t do. If the beacon of light in Midgard extinguishes, there’s really no hope for the rest. It’s just his duty to do something about it.
He smiles when he hears a shriek on the other side. That’s when he notices the fangs. They are not that big, barely there and he doesn’t think they will be of much use if he tries to eat raw meat, like the Jotnar do. Typical, just another thing in which he is not enough (another failure). He’s not sure if he’s relieved that he’s finding more features to separate himself from them or if he’s disappointed.
“Stop, you’re not that old,” he says, congratulating himself when his voice doesn’t break “and those are very bold words for someone that spends their whole day in hospitals making miracles.”
“Did you just drop water on me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,”
Loki closes his eyes and touches his face, in the place where his markings lie. It doesn’t feel as rough as he was expecting, but he’s not sure if that’s just him, with his short stature and his pathetic fangs. He’s just--he’s--
Merlin’’s sudden cheerful voice comes through the door, “remember when Thor dressed like a bride to retrieve his hammer? You could make a sculpture of that.”
“ Now we are talking,” he says without opening his eyes. A smile tugging on the corners of his mouth as he images Thor’s face when he sees it. Oh, it will be delightful.
“And that time when the Hulk’s trousers didn’t resist the transformation. Goddess, forget I said that, I don’t want to see it again,”
Loki lets out a very dignified snort, he’s sure nobody will forget that in a while, with his...very proportionate vigour hanging around as he smashed some robots Victor made. Why he keeps trying that, when all his attempts met with failure, Loki doesn’t know.
“Do you have an idea for Iron-man?”
He smirks “That man knows no shame, I think he would enjoy whatever we come out with. No, he will be more upset at being left out.”
Merlin laughs, “your brain, God, That’s-”
“Awesome? Brilliant? The best thing you’ve ever heard?”
He follows with his fingers the marks, from his forehead to his chest, traveling from his neck. He’s not sure what they mean, even now, Asgard’s library didn’t deem important information about the Jotnar and the ones he found on Vanaheim were limited to the planet itself and some of their most outlandish customs.
“Wicked,” Merlin says, a smile on his voice.
Those books are not useful for him now, not really. Are the marks representative of his lineage? Do they form uniquely for every Jotunn? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t know and the horns aren’t supposed to be black, he’s never seen black horns, the Frost Giants have horns that are the colour of their bones, naturally, or they are translucent*, like ice. Not black, not black.
“Thank you, I try my best,” He responds, distantly.
He’s an outsider, never belonging anywhere. He looked at the Aesir all his life, asking himself what set him apart, why can’t he be more like them and now he looks at the race of monsters he really belongs to, and he comes out lacking, too.
When Loki opens his eyes he barely refrains himself from breaking the mirror at seeing the monster still there, watching back at him with its eyes wide open and limbs shaking, he wants to look away, away, away but he can’t stop staring.
“-ki. Loki?”
“Yes?” he rasps, throat suddenly dry. He thinks Merlin has been calling his name for some time.
A pause, then: “Can you let me in?”
No, he thinks, frantically, He’s having problems keeping his breakfast inside just looking at his eyes, at his skin, how can he subject another to them?
“Go away!” He yells, “Merlin, for once in your life, do what I tell you and. Leave. Me. Alone!”
His traitorous magic thinks otherwise and the lock on the door opens with a click. He doesn’t see anything outside the image in the mirror but flinches away when he feels Merlin get closer.
“No!” Loki growls, standing up and putting one clawed hand in front of him “Don’t come any closer.”
Merlin stops a couple of feet away from him, the soft hum of his magic doing nothing but irritate Loki’s raged ends.
“You’re not going to hurt me, Loki.”
“How do you know?!” he tries to snarl, but it comes out desperate.
MonsterMonsterMonsterMonsterMonsterMonster
“I will burn you, I will, don’t doubt that. This skin wasn’t made for anything else,” he says, stepping back. He still can see his reflection.
He can see horns that aren’t supposed to be there, and a skin that can kill. Marks he doesn’t know, doesn’t know what they mean. He can’t-- he can’t-
Loki flinches when Merlin moves to stand in front of him, blocking the mirror and resting his bare hands on his shoulders. He opens his mouth, ready to yell at him for his stupidity, but Merlin is staring at him with calm eyes, without any signs of pain.
“Why did you do that?” he says with ragged breath, “I could have hurt you!”
“I know, I’m sorry,” he replies, but doesn’t take away his hands “but you look like you could use a hug,”
“ I beg your pardon?” Loki snaps “Are you out of your mind?!”
Merlin has the nerve to smile tentatively at him, “maybe?”
“Seeing if you can die from frostbite, is it?” He growls, shaking away Emry’s hands
He flinches and Loki launches onto that, like the vicious monster he knows he is. The guilt that creeps into his limbs like spiders has nothing to do here.
“Nothing else worked, so why not?” Loki feels his lips form a smile, but his mind is reeling, far away from here and into a frozen land “Why not? That’s what you want, after all, a release.”
His hands are trembling, so he puts them behind his back. The claws press against his skin.
“ No,” Merlin says, sharply “I’m not going to do this and you aren’t, either.”
“Oh?” Loki tilts his head “Do what? Have a monster kill you and see the disappointment in your eyes when you wake up again?”
“I don’t think you’re a monster,” he says, eyes softening “so stop trying to convince me otherwise. It’s not going to happen,”
Emrys removes the glamour that makes his eyes blue, leaving a gold that never stops burning and with it the rest banishes too, most of it is not really physical, but what it is, oh, it is. He has scars, so many scars that Loki has trouble seeing where one ends and the other begins. Maybe it doesn’t, maybe Merlin's whole being is a scar. The masks that are in his presence are another matter entirely; the tight hold he still has on his magic for fear of upsetting others disappears and he looks less human, more other and Loki relaxes into it. He shred the lies and is showing himself as he is, so Merlin does the same.
When Merlin searches for him again, Loki sags against him, exhausted. Not willing to fight any further when the results will be the same. Merlin won’t leave him, not when he’s in this kind of, for a lack of a better word, distress. Loki knows that far too well, he’s not sure if he’s grateful or irritated, he never is.
The other way around is true too, and is that thought that makes the vulnerability more bearable. He’s seen Emrys at his lowest, screaming himself hoarse at The Lake; unable to leave his bed for days; looking desperately for the sword that can put an end to his unwanted immortality. He’s seen it and Merlin has seen him too, there’s nothing to hide.
That’s why he lets Emrys guide him to a sitting position on the floor again, it’s not uncomfortable, he has a astounding rug he obtained on Alfheim a century ago, so he doesn’t complain. He doesn’t complain either when Emrys puts his arms around him.
Merlin rests his chin on top of his head and they both stare into the mirror, gold and red. The skin that remains after the lies are uncovered and a body that is far too small for all the power it contains.
“You’re too kind,” Loki says, closing his eyes “After everything, you shouldn’t be,”
“You were there,” he whispers “I don’t know how you knew, but most of the times I died you were there waiting for me to wake up again, you cried even though you knew I would come back. You helped me, every time I woke up, freezing and trembling, too weak to walk on my own,”
Loki presses against him harder, and bites his lip to stop the sound that wants to come out.
“You helped me,” Merlin repeats “when I didn’t have anyone, when I was lost in grief and rage. You just walked with your little posh self and got me to stop drowning in self-pity,”
“You were a rather woeful old man,”
He huffs, amused, but continues “You offered me a place in Asgard, so I wouldn’t have to see everyone around me die. I don’t think those are the doings of a monster, do you?”
“That’s in the past, what matters is what I am now,” and he opens his eyes. The mirror is still there.
'`Yes, it does,” Emrys agrees. Loki senses a trap “but for that you have to understand what you are, don’t you? Not rely on misconceptions of a bigoted realm,”
He clutches Merlin’s arm into his claws, and he knows it must hurt, but he doesn’t say anything even when he tears his sweater and the claws bite his skin.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” but he’s still staring, staring, staring into the mirror, unable to look away, even if his mind is begging him to.
“Alright,” he says and the mirror disappears.
Loki wants to be angry at him, for daring to assume he knows better, for doing exactly what Loki needs him to, but he’s exhausted and when Merlin’s arms tighten around him, Loki drops his head into his shoulder.
“I shouldn’t have said those things to you,” Loki says, the guilt too much to keep ignoring it.
Merlin hums.
“I don’t think they are true,” he continues, not wanting to look at him.
“Nothing you said was exactly a lie,” he replies, slowly. “I don’t want to, not anymore, but I know there’s times… I shouldn’t have died so many times in front of you, I’m sorry,”
Merlin, as always, is missing the point.
“But it’s alright when you do it in private?” Loki asks, tired “I still shouldn't have said it,”
“I haven’t done it since I promised, I haven’t,” Merlin says, something desperate hidden in his voice.
“I believe you,” they fall in silence after that.
Emrys runs hot, always has, for the fire that resides inside him. It feels uncomfortable against his ice skin, but he couldn’t care less. And now he’s curious about the elemental differences between them, ice and fire. He figures it's as good a distraction as any. For both of them.
“Can I--” he starts after a while, untangling himself from Emrys to face him, unsure if he can ask this of him “Can you show me…?” and he gestures vaguely at his own horns.
Merlin frowns at Loki for a moment, before his face brightens with understanding and nods. It’s not the first time he sees him like this, but it is different, and he’s the closer Loki has that looks like him on this form, it’s not the same, it’s not, but it’s something.
The shift occurs without any display like the ones Loki enjoys, there’s nothing flashy, Merlin is not one for those kinds of things, but it goes slowly, like he’s making sure Loki is noticing each of the changes.
It’s because he’s a Dragonlord, Merlin told him a while ago, but he’s unsure if it’s because he’s the last one without any dragons and therefore, that magic had to go somewhere or if all the Dragonlords were able to change.
He doesn’t have claws, Loki knows, but he has sapphire scales, on his cheekbones, close to his eyes and on his neck. He doesn’t look human at all like this and he knows it still troubles Emrys at times.
Loki snarls, showing off his fangs, because apparently he’s a child and Merlin giggles before doing the same. His own are bigger, and he talks funny with them, that’s why he always makes them smaller, but now he left them as they are just because Loki asked.
“What now, we fight with our horns, like goats?” Merlin asks, shaking his head like a wet dog.
Loki snorts, “don’t be crass, of course not.”
“C’mon. Afraid I’m gonna win?”
His horns are bigger, too and go upwards curling at the end where Loki’s go upwards then to the sides. They’re a deep blue and Loki remembers being fascinated with them when he was younger.
“C’mon, torero,”
“You’re so annoying,” Loki says, almost in wonder.
“It takes one to know another,”
That does it. It’s stupid and childish, but he’s never been good at backing off when Emrys is the one provoking him (or anyone, actually), so he thrusts his horns against his and laughs when Merlin gasps in surprise before doing the same.
He tries to get back, tries being the key word and he closes his eyes in resignation. Merlin has a way of talking him into terrible ideas.
“We’re stuck,”
“Thank you, I haven’t noticed,” Loki responds, twisting his head to try and break free. Norns, this is beyond ridiculous.
He twists again and Merlin yelps.
“Stay still, this is your fault,” he says, touching the horns to feel how they are tangled.
“We’re going to stay like this forever,” Emrys laments, “like siameses. We will go to my favorite ice-cream shop and they will say, ‘what happened to you, oh, favorite customer?’ and I will say ‘oh, a tragedy, Lizzie, a tragedy like the ones you haven’t heard in a long time. You see, we came like this out of the womb--
“Shut. Up, that doesn't even make sense," Loki says, but he’s laughing. “For the norns, help me here. My neck is starting to cramp,”
Which is not true, but whatever.
Cue, to a few awkward movements, a hand on his face and his finger being cut on accident by Emry’s teeth.
“Loki,” he says, after they are finally free and lying on the floor. Horns a safe distance from each other.
“What?” he grunts.
“We’re shapeshifters.” Merlin sits up and shakes his arm, looking at him with wide eyes “One of us could have made the horns disappear,”
Loki sighs and raises a hand towards his forehead, “Being with you makes my brain go on a vacation, and it’s not a nice one.”
“Likewise,”
Merlin is giving him that smile of his that brightens his whole face, the one that looks like it hurts. It’s a lot.
“So…”
“So.”
“ Do you wanna build a snowman? ” He sings, raising to his feet and offering Loki a hand “ It doesn't have to be a snowman,”
He takes the hand, because what else can he do? Once Merlin is set on something it is pretty difficult to dissuade him and Loki can’t really say that he’s trying.
“You shouldn’t encourage me to do villainous things,” he says anyway.
“That’s not villainous, it’s just…” he makes a show to look for the word, touching his chin and everything “... mischievous,”
Of course.
“And what are you the God of, I wonder,” he grins like someone that knows that they already won “of negative and intrusive thoughts? Of unhealthy coping mechanisms and self-destruction? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you stay here.``
Loki scowls, “I’m not a child. I’m perfectly capable of handling myself,”
“The God of being contrary for the sake of it, maybe.” Merlin sighs “I know you can handle yourself, but I think you would feel better if you do something positive with your heritage,”
It’s really funny that he thinks that making sculptures of the most embarrassing moments for the favourite heroes --at the moment, the Norns know how volatile the mortals are-- is something positive, but it warms him all the same. He’s really missed not being told off all the time.
“Well, If you insist,” he says magnanimously “but you have to accompany me in this endeavor.”
Merlin laughs, “I will, but you will have to pardon me for going with a glamour. I really don’t want SHIELD to know that I exist,”
“Imagine the scandal,” Loki gasps, “I don’t want to be seen, either. We can go with invisible spells, I’m picturing it now--the statues forming themselves, out of nowhere, a miracle,”
“A gift from the gods themselves.” Sweet Emrys says and Loki realizes that he’s spent a long time with the God of mischief. It 's beautiful.
But he can’t take all the credit, Merlin is magic itself and magic is mischievous, chaotic by nature, after all.
He takes Merlin’s arm in his, neither caring about the almost painful ice-fire contact and looks at him. He’s muttering to himself about possible solutions for that, Loki's smile softens.
“Ready?”
“Always.”