Still in the cells. Nothing is new.

[reindeer_games]

Loki has been doing his best to ignore those around him, but it's become increasingly difficult. This place is open to any who wish to come stare at him in this cage, and then those who keep him here wonder why he remains in such a foul temper.

He has heard no news since Sally Donovan left him last. Perhaps the mermaid has eaten her. If that were the case, Loki would at least get some amount of satisfaction from knowing that one of his jailers has been dispatched.

Comments

[wearsthecoats]

After his chat with Sally, Sherlock decides he may as well pay the old man a visit. He asks to be let into the cell area.



And after he has stepped into view, hands tucked into the pockets of his greatcoat, he can't think of a single damn thing to say.

[reindeer_games]

"Does something trouble you?" Loki asks after a long moment of silence.

His mood, while not as light as it had been that day by the lakeside, is calm. As long as none should come in here to torment or mock him or his children — any of them — he is able to control the anger he has toward this entire place.

[wearsthecoats]

He snorts. "Plenty."

[reindeer_games]

Loki gives him a long stare. Either the boy will speak to him or go away, and Loki is not yet in the sort of mood to make him do either.

[wearsthecoats]

After a much shorter pause, he asks, "When are my siblings going to hatch?"

[reindeer_games]

"I know not. It is an area that I must confess to be new to me, as it is not quite the same as anything I have done before."

He punctuates it with a light shrug.

[wearsthecoats]

"Hm," he says.

[reindeer_games]

"You may go see to them, if that is your wish," Loki says. "I am not permitted to leave this place, so I have no way of doing so myself."

[wearsthecoats]

"Yes," says Sherlock.

To... all of the above, really.

[reindeer_games]

Loki tells Sherlock where in the lake to look.

"There is one there who would do you harm unless she knows you have been sent by me," he says. "She is the mermaid Tamara, and she has been told to eat any she thinks may try to do damage to them. She is doing this as not only a favour to me, but to protect her own as well."

There's a certain... implication there, that he trusts Sherlock to catch.

"You must tell her that the mama squid has sent you, and you must use those precise words."

[wearsthecoats]

He can't help smiling slightly at the pass phrase.

"I'll be sure to remember that."

[reindeer_games]

If Sherlock were anyone else, Loki might chastise him for being like all the rest of the humans. But he's not, so Loki doesn't.

"I could have been your mother, had I so wished to be," he says casually.

But he hadn't the time for such things, and Eleanor had already proven herself a worthy mother with Mycroft.

[wearsthecoats]

"...I really can't see how that would work," he says after considering this for a moment. "I can believe you turning into a woman; I'm not sure I believe Mother turning into a man."

[reindeer_games]

"There are men on Midgard who would have sufficed," Loki points out.

Unlike humans, Loki has always had some little influence over the offspring he produces. How else would his affair with the Jotunn woman Angrboða have managed to produce such beings as Fenrir and Jörmungandr?

[wearsthecoats]

"To create me? No," says Sherlock, with casual but unshakeable certainty. "I don't think so."

He knows that it's possible to be a Sherlock Holmes without the intervention of an Eleanor; witness his legion of duplicates. Loki could perhaps have birthed a very nice shelf fungus or two, maybe even a genuinely intelligent consulting detective, perhaps raised a tall frosty analytical son whose ambitions ran more in line with those of a proper demigod. But he, this particular Sherlock, is the son of Eleanor Holmes and could not possibly be the person he is without her.

[reindeer_games]

"I have seen fate, and looked her straight in the eye," Loki says. He gets to his feet and walks to the barrier, wishing to face his son.

"I have seen many Lokis. I have seen Lokis born female, born of Asgard to Odin and Frigga, born to Frost Giants and never leaving Jotunheim. And they are all the same. Their actions may be different, but that is only a result of the circumstances."

He has to look up to properly face Sherlock, but it does fill him with a small amount of pride that the boy didn't turn out as stunted as he had.

[wearsthecoats]

He shrugs. Loki is at least worth a true explanation.

"At last count there are some half-dozen people in this bar whose name is Sherlock Holmes and whose lives resemble mine to varying degrees. None of them, however, is me."

[reindeer_games]

"None of them is the son of a god."

Loki still believes this to be a very important point, and little will convince him otherwise.

[wearsthecoats]

"To my knowledge, none of them is the son of Eleanor Holmes, either."

He might one day be convinced that those two facts bear equal weight.

He will never be convinced that being Loki's son is more important.

[reindeer_games]

"I do not wish to turn you against your mother," Loki says. "She is a fine woman, and if I did not think so, she would not be your mother."

[wearsthecoats]

"I know."

[reindeer_games]

"Does she yet know that you and I have met?" asks Loki.

It's not something he feels should have been kept from the boy, but Eleanor is hardly the first to have done so. Not when this sort of thing has been a favourite pass-time of sorts for many a century.

[wearsthecoats]

"I haven't found the time to mention it."

Although he wouldn't put it past her to just know.

[reindeer_games]

It only takes Loki the briefest moment to decipher that.

"You mean you've been avoiding her." It's neither a question nor a statement. More of an accusation, really. "For shame."

OK, a playful accusation.

[wearsthecoats]

"Not precisely avoiding, no."

He doesn't usually talk to his mother all that often. He would have had to seek her out to deliver the news, and he hasn't.