ataraxionlogs | don't fret precious i'm here

Entry tags:

libby,
loki

don't fret precious i'm here

CHARACTERS: Loki and Libby; closed
LOCATION: Neutral ground
WARNINGS: Violence against a teenager, cursing
SUMMARY: Libby knows she's an idiot.
NOTES: Things are going to get very bad.

Does Libby know she's a fool?

Of course she does, now. She's been told enough, seen enough. She adapted wrongly and too slow. Maybe she never had a chance to survive.

Still. She goes to Loki first with what she knows, because--because. She has people who rely on her. If she dies, Nikolai won't protect Jesse or Syg or Mouse. She has no choice. If she lies more to Loki she'll die for sure and she wants to leave one single good thing behind.

She sends no one a message. They'd disapprove.

Is she going to die? She thinks so. And she doesn't want to. But she thinks of--let's say Jesse. Jesse injected and infected with the horror she decoded. She has to be here. She has obligations now. There is a crew that depends on her as a core for now and she can't--

Libby knocks on Loki's door. Waits patiently and tries to cut hope out of her chest, because she's going to die.

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It would be foolish of the mortal to consider what he is going to do and what he is not going to do. His methods are often so fleeting, and as a trickster - well - they don't take kindly to being 'seen through'. He does not. He is the trickster. The liesmith, the silvertongue. He will not be bested nor predicted by anyone. Ever.

"Hello Libby," he welcomes her, calm. The door opened to her entrance. There wasn't much herein. Not anything at all, really. Just what came with the room. "Come in?"

Libby thinks she could cry. But she doesn't. At least she has that.

"I decoded the message," she tells him, stepping inside, "Smiles was part of an experiment. They injected the old crew witb a disease and they all went insane and died. That's what I found."

Her voice is wavering and fragile. This hurts more than she expected--she's not ready, she's not, she can't do this. She can't go out this way and she knows her desperation shows as clearly as neon while she stands so small in his room, but what can she do? She just looks at him, hopelessly.

Edited 2012-07-20 14:06 (UTC)

He slowly closes the door. There's nothing intimidating in his motions, nothing threatening, if anything his body language seems welcoming and kind. His brows ebb as if he truly cares; concern and thought running over his face.

"I see," the hand unfolds to welcome her further in, take a seat if she wishes, relax. "The Smile did know the remedy."

There's stupid and then there's being an idiot. Libby stays standing. Miserable, yes. But herself for now.

"Nikolai said you wanted to play with me," she says, softly, unzipping her jumpsuit. She doesn't step out of it in training bra and panties yet. Just stands there, and spreads her arms.

"I brought you what you wanted. And here I am. Let's be done, okay? Let's just get it over with and be done." She is impossibly tired, by now. So tired and--maybe this would be better. Faster. Just die and be finished.

He watched her, so easily sliding his position around her so that his back faces the door. Those green eyes almost piercing. A slow cant of his head and a wave of his hand had that suit sip right back up.

"Foul dim creature," spat, but no raise in tone. A beat, "out of countless mistakes you've made thus far, making light out of your fears in front of a God is high on that list. I said sit."

His eyes sharpened just a little, chin downward. "So sit."

Libby sits. She doesn't do anything but sit right on the floor, knees slightly tucked up, and watch Loki. At least she's alone, she thinks. No one has to watch. She sickly considers licking his boots. She knows how to crawl.

"I'm sorry," she says soft and contrite and still lying because she isn't really sorry at all. She sits at his feet but she looks at him with defiance. Her body obeys but her heart does not.

Libby rubs her knees, and more isolence: "So what do you want?"

She still doesn't understand. But she'll learn.

Edited 2012-07-20 19:31 (UTC)

"I want to talk." The door is locked, and he's more than quick enough to stop her from making a run. His feet slide away to her and he puts out his hand when he reaches a foot away.

"Your device."

Libby touches the device in question, holstered on the opposite hip as her computer. If she gives him that--there's nothing good that can come of being silenced.

"No," she says, defiantly, and closes her hand around it. He'll be able to take it anyway, but she'll fight for it. Fight and lose, but she won't just give in like that. It's important not yo just give in.

"Give me the device," he kicked her back, square on her chest, but left his foot right there. The weight he applied was not devastating but he was quite heavy. "Or I will crush your ribcage."

Libby sucked in a breath when he kicked her down, eyes wide and startled. Why is she startled? She was expecting--but his boot is heavier on her chest than she imagined and even if he were only human he could stamp on her once and shatter bone.

She doesn't want to die. So she offers her device up to him mutely, but there's hatred in her eyes.

He grabs it, and tosses it aside for now. For someone who seems to have been through situations like this before - recalling her state 'are we being sold again - she didn't have very strong survival skills.

He stepped off her a moment later and casually turn his back on her. She was no threat to him, and she was going to know it. In every subtle and unsubtle way. He simply walked. A calm pace. "I assume you have been following me."

Libby sat up, thinking of coiling Jesse's gift in her chest and lashing out at him--but she doubted it would work, and if it did she had to save it for an escape attempt. She seethes at his turned back. Arrogant son of a bitch.

"Yeah," she says, and then, because she might have just thought of escape but she knows she can't really get out of this, "Your brother's a sweetheart. Guess that skipped you, huh?"

"He's less sweet than you think," perfect. Perfect. This was good. This was actually good, this was exactly what he needed to tug at the strings.

The look that he tosses over his shoulder didn't look angry. Honest and true anguish, it seemed. Some of it might have been - hidden far beneath everything, but on the surface it was just an act.

"You don't have any idea at all what you have stumbled in to, but now you're here. Should I tell you?"

Libby folds her arms over her chest. Doesn't hug herself and hates the look on his face because it seems so real and she knows that ache; she tries to remember if she ever slipped about her sister. Does he know? Or could he just guess? Was she just fucking obvious?

"I know you're a fucking asshole. What else is there to know?" She spits it, hard and quick as a flung stone.

He knew nothing about her sister, and he really hated letting go of information that was - in all honesty - fairly true. However, it had use. Sometimes a liesmith spoke truth in lies and lies in truth, they spun webs. So intricate.

He pulled up a slight smile with a single huffed laugh and found the chair not too far away. Slouched, haughty, but not imposing.

"You're one to talk. Your mouth is foul, you're arrogant, you're reckless, you're bold and impulsive and you have a completely unjustified sense of superiority.

Perhaps, even, partially due to how much you hate yourself and what you are if you're even sure what that it.

You barged in here with your nose in the air. Now maybe you're powerful in your home world, maybe you're smart and capable, maybe you're better, but when you finally came to realize that you were not where you once were did it at all strike you that perhaps you weren't?"

Libby pales. Her feathers flatten against her arms ever so slightly, because all of that hits too closely. Not so much that she's abrasive and unpleasant, she knows that, but he says if you even know what that is. He knows she hates herself. Everyone else, she thinks, believes she loves herself too much.

But she hates herself, whatever she is, and he knows. He knows that and he knows how fragile and stupid she's felt on this ship, towered over and begging for scraps of information like a ragged dog at the backdoor. She's still on the floor, but that's not why she feels small.

"Fuck you," she says, dredging up her resistance, "Did it ever occur to you that no one gives a fuck about you here either? You matter as much as I do. No--you matter less, you know that? At least I fucking do something."

Edited 2012-07-20 23:58 (UTC)

"You don't know what I do," it's said calmly, keeping good hold of the anger that did swell. His eyes look off for a moment and fingers curl before his lips.

"You have no idea who I am, what I am, what I can do, what I do. What reason or what cause. You know nothing of me, but everyone, everyone knows a lot about you." He pauses, and looks over at her again.

"They pity you because you're a child. How can they truly like you and you truly like them when you've been here just almost three weeks?"

Libby flares up, feathers and all, like a candle flame surging at oxygen, because that's a raw and awful nerve.

"I don't like anyone and no one likes me, are you fucking stupid?" She is pitied and there's no point in debating it, it just tints her cheeks with humiliation. "I'm not making friends. I'm being useful. And whatever you do you sure as fuck aren't doing it, so you might as fucking well not be able to do anything at all. I work. I work wicked hard and you don't--you don't know a single fucking important thing about me, you know fucking obvious shit that anybody knows just looking at me. So fuck you."

"I'm done," she says, standing up, daring him to knock her back down--she knows he won't let her leave, but she goes for her comm anyway. Hit her. Hit her because that is so much better than listening to you.

You. Are. Stupid.

She could move for her comm but he would appear right in front of it. His hand wraps around the neck of her jump suit and pull her up with ease. The voice is low when it speaks, bridging his true annoyance.

"Do you ache so much to die? You are missing the point, here, I am a God and you are even further below humans. You are a mutated concoction created by man's filthy and stupid minds. I could kill you with one fist.

I am here, giving you a chance. To right your idiotic decisions against me propelled by a further and undereducated arrogance. Now, give me one good reason not to shatter every bone in your body."

Libby can feel her heartbeat.

It flutters in her chest and she doesn't want to die, she wants it to keep beating for however long she has left, but--it's just her heartbeat. And she has no reason he shouldn't kill her, really. What does she matter? She's nothing. She's never been anything better than a sick toy, less than human no matter how much she says otherwise. Why should she live?

Because she wants to. But she can't say that. She looks Loki in the eye calmly, green to blue, even if she's hurt by the tug of her jumpsuit. Heartbeat. She can feel it. What will it feel like when it stops?

"I don't have a reason. I don't. Do it. Go ahead. Everyone will know it was you."

But her voice shakes, and she realizes she's crying when salt drips into the corner of her mouth.

Watch him have mercy, if only to play the role again. He flattens his lips, ebbs his brows, and slowly lowers her to the ground. He lets go, and turns. It's quick, it's even shameful. Even if he felt no such thing.

"They would, wouldn't they? Thor would be all over it, coming in to seem the hero." The look that crosses his face almost matches hers. She might see a sliver of it, but he turns his back again.

"Just to add another reason why I'm wrong; one thousand years and it's getting so large. Know you at all what I am God of?" He turns, then. "Mischief. A trouble maker is all I am, is all I'm worth, because I could never be what they wanted me to be."

Edited 2012-07-21 00:58 (UTC)

Libby doesn't understand what's wrong with him. But Loki sets her down and turns away, while Libby's hand flies up to press over her still beating heart. It beats and beats, and he looks--he looks like she feels, all the time.

Too alike, he said. Maybe in even more ways than he said, and she doesn't want to feel like they have something in common but--she lives in a shadow too. One she will never get out of, because Larkspur is dead and perfect in her memory like a dried version of the flower she was named for. So he hurt her. So what. People hurt her all the time, it's familiar. Sickly comforting, in a way.

"You don't..." she trails off, uncertain, and gathers herself back together, "You don't have to be what they want you to. Fuck--fuck them. Fuck anybody who says--you don't have to act in some stupid fucking play. You're an asshole but you don't--you don't have to be what they want."

There. Now he definitely will kill her for not knowing her place. She's such an idiot--but he didn't kill her. Her heart beats. She doesn't understand what's happening.

"Shut up," but it held no seeming strength. Everyone hurts everyone, it's a simple fact of life.

"You know what kind of person Nikolai is, do you look at him the same you look at me?" He shakes his head, slight. "No, no one ever does. It's some mystic pull in the universes that no matter what I do, I'll always be wrong. You don't know what it's like to live in shadow. To be worthless and overlooked for so long. How old are you? By your personality, I'd say you're just a teenager."

Edited 2012-07-21 01:09 (UTC)

"Don't talk about--" but she has no force either and falters. Don't talk about her Adam, the stitched together lethality and intelligence of Nikolai, who would slap her if he were here. Call her girl, pull her away, and she wants him right now so much. But it's not safe. (She sent him her real name before she came here and wonders what he thinks of that.)

"I'm sixteen. And you don't know." Her hand is still over her heart, giving everything the air of a vow. "I'm--nothing. I'm nothing where I come from, I'm not even a person. Not even a dog. I'm less than a fucking dog, you don't--you don't know me."

She'd liked him at first, she remembers.

"A filthy--whatever you said. But I don't do what they want. I'm nothing like what they want. So why am I braver than you?"

"But I can see the distaste in your eyes, you can smile and laugh and act like you're the best the world, any worlds, have ever seen, but there is a deep seeded blackness that no amount of fixing could ever resolve. Even now, you are too broken." He turns fully, then. And walks forward. "I know this, because I feel this."

He stops with enough space between them. His face, Libby. It is flawlessly pained. "Whoever said I was like them? That's exactly the problem. I'm not, I never was, I never could be, I never will be, but I had been in that shadow for over a thousand years. All but ached for one second to be equal."

He pauses. "I fell in to mischief because it is the only thing I am good at. Causing trouble. Gods aren't born lords of anything, they're born extraordinary beings. Tis their nature, as time grows on, that brings them to what they become president over.

Take what you want from this, mutant," he brings two fingers out to push at her chest as he says that. A simple demeaning movement. "But I can still crush your skull."

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