It's what I deserve

[sockdere]

WHAT I DESERVE how to play - no blank comments! your character announces exactly what they believe they deserve. with a full chest. zero dishonesty. for good. for bad. for the worst. - does everyone agree? - tread lightly, triggers may pop up.

Comments

[meforsaken]

I wouldn't know. I only know of his attempt as I was the one who led him to that possibility. I know how to achieve it myself, I've chosen not to for now.

[But that doesn't mean they don't still long for it.]

I'm not the one who built the house, who controls it. So long as I stay I will always be under their control, same as everyone else. No one else notices so it doesn't bother them. But, it's something I can no longer ignore.

[counterstep]

( bucky chews his lip anxiously, through loki's answer and for several beats after.

eventually: )

So you'll leave someday. To...challenge who controls it? Live a life outside of measure?

[meforsaken]

Eventually. To be free.

[They have no desire to beat up Jack Kirby.]

Unfortunately, I made a vow. I won't leave until everyone else is free. That is what keeps me in this reality.

[counterstep]

But how is anyone else meant to get free if no one even knows they're stuck inside? And where there's a high chance many won't even care that they're in the house? It's difficult for most people to give up everything.

[meforsaken]

And you see my dilemma. It's not as if I can broadcast to everyone on Earth-616 that they're not real. I can only give nudges in the right direction.

[counterstep]

( ah. )

Is. Nothing I feel real, then?

( his grip tightens against the mug, the slick surface still overly warm to the touch. it certainly feels real, to him. how could it be anything else? how can he feel, if it's not real? )

[meforsaken]

It is and it isn't. It is real here, and yet it is unreal elsewhere. Then one gets into the argument of whether anything can be real without true free will.

[counterstep]

A very different, metaphysical take on Plato's allegory of the cave, then. Where you wish to learn and so leave, but when you've left, none of what happened in the cave really existed. Or something to that effect.

( brow furrowing, his expression pinches with distress. )

If my story could have ended by now, then why hasn't it? Why make me keep doing all this?

[meforsaken]

Because it entertains someone. Simple as that.

[counterstep]

So everything I've suffered is just...amusing?

[meforsaken]

You understand then, why I seek to escape.

[counterstep]

( a pause. )

You said I shouldn't go with you, though. If you left everything behind.

[meforsaken]

I don't usually speak of these things so frankly. It wasn't always my intention to tell you this way, rather I thought I would wait for the realization to happen eventually. And if it did not happen, or if I found myself wanting to leave before my vow was fulfilled, then it would not be wise for you to follow me.

[You can't follow someone into a new form of existence if you don't know said existence exists in the first place.]

Now, well, there's a difference in being told something and knowing something. And there's no way of knowing how long it might take me to free everyone of my reality.

[counterstep]

( how does time even move between these worlds? would he finally be dead, by then? ...would it even matter? )

I would wait for you. But I understand that it's. Complicated.

Even if you don't normally speak so plainly, I appreciate knowing. And that you'd trust me with it. I guess some people know could create havoc of its own kind, if they're not responsible with the information.

But then again, maybe they'd all take it as fiction, too. Some people still really think Steve is on the moon, for whatever reason.

[meforsaken]

And it's possible too, that you will forget we ever had this conversation. Stories are stubborn that way, always self-correcting and retconning.

[Thor does not remember when the 7th Cosmos were destroyed. Loki didn't either for a while, but that was purposeful.]

There's not really anything that can be done with the information unless you're someone like me. I wouldn't trust Doom with it, but then again... I wonder if he would be able to accept it. The truth is stranger than fiction, especially when the truth itself is fiction.

[counterstep]

I don't want to forget. I. I'd rather know why you...didn't want me along. Even if the information can't be used for anything else.

( it likely hadn't been intended as personal, but it had certainly been felt that way. )

Even if that means I also have to accept I can't follow you there. If I have to be left behind, I deserve to know why.

( that's more than steve ever gave. and it happened twice, both at the ravine and then again after defeating thanos. )

[meforsaken]

There's not a reason. It's not a matter of my wants, either.

[Which is perhaps a flippant response considering the context. But this is Loki.]

I think... you shall have to come to the same conclusion as me on your own. Not by way of me telling you. That is why I think you might forget, so that you may journey into mystery yourself, without these training wheels I've given you.

If I forced a bird out of its cage and into the unknown, there's no telling how long it might live. No, it has to make that decision for itself.

Especially if where I am leading you is not what I believe it to be. The Beyonder's never returned, after all.