It's both true and untrue that Felassan was never a child. More true that he never had parents. Less true that he never had family. The spark of feeling that Felassan grew from came from the flint and steel of a people already organized into cities and nations and empire, embracing them and chafing at them in turns, producing children who yearned for idealized dreams of the freedom their parents had willingly traded for security and comfort. In that sense he was birthed and raised by people — by the entirety of a people — and he has never felt alien among them. Never baffled by their relationships and emotions.
So he feels it. He doesn't think it; he's an optimist by nature but a cynic by trade, an idealist shaped by circumstance into a practical-minded schemer. He has watched families squabble and kingdoms topple for the length of his world's even half-remembered history, and he thinks everyone is a tool for something. He thinks that this can coexist with love. That it must, if anyone is to be said to have ever loved anyone at all.
But beneath the thoughts he feels the betrayal of a son who still had every right to have expected more.
He's seated beside Loki, and then in the next moment he's standing beside Odin for a closer look. Not in a rushed way. His arms are folded behind his back — and if it's a posture reminiscent of Solas, that's no coincidence, after all the following-him-around Felassan has done — and his expression pensive. Not the look of someone about to snatch a baby away. But the thought has occurred:
"At home, in the world of dreams where spirits originate, there is no history," he says, a dreamy sort of digression while he inspects the scene without disturbing it. "We could have the same fight a dozen ways and none would be truer than another. Once you are physical, though, the earth shows scars. The body shows scars. Changing the story doesn't change what happened."
Which is to say: he would not truly be changing anything by taking that charming little child out of Odin's arms now. But ancient impulses die hard.
He turns back from that overgrown trail of thought and looks toward Loki (the grown one) with sharpening focus. "The space among the stars?"
Felassan's motions in this place, as well as his trains of thought, are fascinatingly tricky to follow. He is at home in dreams, like a fish in water, and Loki...well, he's comfortable, but he's more like a seal. He can venture into the depths with ease, but were he to stay submerged here for too long, he would suffocate or drown. There is a slight tilt of his head as he watches the elf study his construct of Odin, amusement at the way he clasps his hands--not because it reminds him of Solas, but because it reminds him of himself. He does the same, and he knows damn well where he picked up the habit: Frigga.
It strikes him that to leave her out of the tableau is an injustice, and so after a moment, she appears as well, and his emotion and memory colors her, too. There is an innate warmth to her figure, as if she were carved of sunlight. A faint scent of rain and roses, a feeling of aching, bitter regret. She wears a golden gown, and she reaches to take the infant Loki into her arms when Felassan turns at last. And where Odin gives the impression of a granite cliff, a warrior strong and implacable and canny, she is all warmth and wisdom and patience. Everything you could ask for in a mother, save for that one little lie she helped to perpetuate.
It's still hard for Loki to reconcile.
"Do you suppose reliving it in a different way, changing it to be kinder and fairer--would that help to heal a person, or would it just drive them mad when they had to return to waking world?" Not that he's asking for any such thing, but it's a thought experiment worth considering.
He shivers a little at Felassan's question, and nods, sobering a little. "The Asgardian empire extended to the nine realms closest to our planet at one point. They had long been a spacefaring people. Most of their commerce" (and isn't it odd how he switches between 'them' and 'us' when he speaks of Asgard) "was between the realms of Alfheim, Asgard, and Vanaheim, but we went often to Nidavellir as well, and to Midgard in earlier days. I was very fond of humanity in my youth."
"The Bifrost was the method we used to travel. Focused energy, a kind of magic." And were Thor's Jane Foster here, he would let her take over the explanation, but the technical details aren't what Felassan was asking about anyway.
"But I fell from it. I let go." A flicker of shame and pain and uncertainty, which he shoves aside within a matter of seconds. "And free-fell through the space between stars. It was cold, airless. I must have spent days on the edge of death and never crossed over. Sometimes that blackness still haunts me." Falling, floating, moving simultaneously so fast and so slow, and all around the distant, fitful, uninterested light of stars.
"I don't know how long it was before I was picked up by a ship of Ravagers--space pirates--half-frozen and more or less catatonic, but they didn't have me for more than a day before they were attacked and plundered by a ship of the Black Order."
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So he feels it. He doesn't think it; he's an optimist by nature but a cynic by trade, an idealist shaped by circumstance into a practical-minded schemer. He has watched families squabble and kingdoms topple for the length of his world's even half-remembered history, and he thinks everyone is a tool for something. He thinks that this can coexist with love. That it must, if anyone is to be said to have ever loved anyone at all.
But beneath the thoughts he feels the betrayal of a son who still had every right to have expected more.
He's seated beside Loki, and then in the next moment he's standing beside Odin for a closer look. Not in a rushed way. His arms are folded behind his back — and if it's a posture reminiscent of Solas, that's no coincidence, after all the following-him-around Felassan has done — and his expression pensive. Not the look of someone about to snatch a baby away. But the thought has occurred:
"At home, in the world of dreams where spirits originate, there is no history," he says, a dreamy sort of digression while he inspects the scene without disturbing it. "We could have the same fight a dozen ways and none would be truer than another. Once you are physical, though, the earth shows scars. The body shows scars. Changing the story doesn't change what happened."
Which is to say: he would not truly be changing anything by taking that charming little child out of Odin's arms now. But ancient impulses die hard.
He turns back from that overgrown trail of thought and looks toward Loki (the grown one) with sharpening focus. "The space among the stars?"
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It strikes him that to leave her out of the tableau is an injustice, and so after a moment, she appears as well, and his emotion and memory colors her, too. There is an innate warmth to her figure, as if she were carved of sunlight. A faint scent of rain and roses, a feeling of aching, bitter regret. She wears a golden gown, and she reaches to take the infant Loki into her arms when Felassan turns at last. And where Odin gives the impression of a granite cliff, a warrior strong and implacable and canny, she is all warmth and wisdom and patience. Everything you could ask for in a mother, save for that one little lie she helped to perpetuate.
It's still hard for Loki to reconcile.
"Do you suppose reliving it in a different way, changing it to be kinder and fairer--would that help to heal a person, or would it just drive them mad when they had to return to waking world?" Not that he's asking for any such thing, but it's a thought experiment worth considering.
He shivers a little at Felassan's question, and nods, sobering a little. "The Asgardian empire extended to the nine realms closest to our planet at one point. They had long been a spacefaring people. Most of their commerce" (and isn't it odd how he switches between 'them' and 'us' when he speaks of Asgard) "was between the realms of Alfheim, Asgard, and Vanaheim, but we went often to Nidavellir as well, and to Midgard in earlier days. I was very fond of humanity in my youth."
"The Bifrost was the method we used to travel. Focused energy, a kind of magic." And were Thor's Jane Foster here, he would let her take over the explanation, but the technical details aren't what Felassan was asking about anyway.
"But I fell from it. I let go." A flicker of shame and pain and uncertainty, which he shoves aside within a matter of seconds. "And free-fell through the space between stars. It was cold, airless. I must have spent days on the edge of death and never crossed over. Sometimes that blackness still haunts me." Falling, floating, moving simultaneously so fast and so slow, and all around the distant, fitful, uninterested light of stars.
"I don't know how long it was before I was picked up by a ship of Ravagers--space pirates--half-frozen and more or less catatonic, but they didn't have me for more than a day before they were attacked and plundered by a ship of the Black Order."