A Picture is Worth... Meme.

[yohko]

A Picture is Worth.... Meme
This ain't your mama's meme. Forget your RNG, forget your tired old prompts.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
It's easy. Comment with your character. Then go comment around.
But instead of pre-filled prompts with words or numbers, you find a gif or image (any gif/image from any canon or scenario you please) that sets the scene.
The picture is the prompt.

WARNING: THIS POST WILL BE IMAGE HEAVY. AND POSSIBLY NSFW AND THERE MAY BE TRIGGERS.
Some images will not be able to be hidden behind cuts, so please be aware that triggery material may be found within.

If you post an image that is violent or sexual in nature please LINK it, do not embed it into the comment.
<a href="http://IMAGEURL" _fcksavedurl="http://IMAGEURL">TRIGGER WARNING GOES HERE</a>
Feel free to use this template to stick your image in there.
<img src="IMAGE URL" _fcksavedurl="IMAGE URL"width="400"><br />

Good resources for images/gifs are weheartit or tumblr. For not so safe for work gifs/images go here and here.

Original Meme here.

Comments

loki ( mcu )

[treachery]

[dudebrodinson]

[treachery]

[ Somewhere along the meandering causeways of history, Midgard has come of age. Her skies have learned to rage and storm without Mjolnir's song to call her hence.

And yet — Loki has spent years upon this half-formed attempt at civilization, crawling upon his belly like a worm to hide from the justice of golden Asgardia. He has supped from Midgard's meager tables, and slaked his thirst upon the piss-poor wine of her orchards. He has weathered a hundred of her storms, and each time he has felt the rain and the cloud and the fury of her skies to be lacking.

So, when the lightning cracks across the sky, brutally, ferociously, splitting it in twain, Loki draws a quelling breath, and his heart skitters like that of a creature caught and trussed for slaughter. Mjolnir sings even to Loki Liesmith, but it is not her strength that draws him from his palace of mud and of fickle bones. ]

Such is the rage of a god. [ says Loki, a tattered murmur of sound against the ferocity of the storm battling the skies, and yet he knows he will be heard. He is smiling; a cruel twist of his mouth upon his bone-white face. ] Have you thus found me worthy to behold it?

[dudebrodinson]

Have I ever not? [The reply of the Thunder God, windswept cape and hair a halo of his majesty as the storm dies down, but yet remains. He looks hard upon Loki, anger warring with other emotions.]

You are caught and you will cease this foolishness, brother. You will return with me to Asgard. You will serve your sentence with honor and then you will serve Asgard and Asgard alone. There is no dishonor in punishment, Loki, only in avoiding it. [Hard, hard lines. But they soften as he steps forward, if only minutely.] Return with me.

[treachery]

No. [ says Loki — or the shade wearing Loki's face, for soon it drains away like moonlight given liquid form. His voice is a mere murmur of sound upon the wind, with no tangible source.

And he watches from his perch upon a mortal-wrought building of ugly metal and stone, cosseted in the darkness. His true form, even the moonlight does not touch.

Yet there is a catch of his breath at the sight of crimson cape and golden hair: the eternal response of the secondborn to the first, where brotherhood has been forged and forged again with blades of iron far heavier than blood. ]

You stink of the mortals. [ says the wind, says Loki from his high perch. ] I find it offensive.

[dudebrodinson]

You will mourn the day I no longer fall for that. [And he means it, words rough with emotion, but there might come a day when he doesn't seek out Loki in fraternal affection, but only as something to be hunted down. He cannot foresee this day, for he does love his brother and would do anything to see him back in the fold.

But that does not mean it cannot or will not come to pass.]

[treachery]

Ragnarok will fall before that day comes to pass, I'm afraid.

[ And the wind shifts, just as quickly as it had come into being — a moment, another, and then Loki is materializing into solidity further into the darkened street upon which Thor now stands, his golden helm painted silver in the moonlight.

He's holding a gem that is as green as the Tesseract had been; its light spills over the clutch of his fingers. This can be only the reason why Thor has sought him out now, after months spent in Gladsheim's gilt halls.

The Infinity gems are precious beyond comparison, after all. ]

An event precipitated by your death, if the oracles are to be trusted.

[dudebrodinson]

And will you my death be at your hands, Loki? Is that truly what you want? [He points at Loki, then.] Think well on this, brother, for there is no coming back from your actions. Will you throw away centuries for one small fit of pique, a madness that might pass all too quickly and leave you with naught but the consequences you have seeded.

[He advances, then, hungry to see his brother. The ache of that missing sibling is like a piece of his soul gone, a place where the youngest son fits, no more laughter, no more smiles, no more conspiracy.]

[treachery]

[ A quiet laugh, nearly inaudible across the space between them. ]

Oh, your death will not come so soon. I wouldn't allow you even that paltry mercy.

[ He does not draw away from Thor's advance; his stillness is unnatural, manufactured, like a calm of reflection before the blade slips silver into the night. He is a serpent, coiled and ready to strike. ]

But do not mistake me — I will not return. You would sooner dash my brains upon the road and take my hollow corpse instead to the prison of Odin Child-Thief's crafting.

[dudebrodinson]

That mercy? It would be be a mercy. I suffer, Loki, I suffer so. [He continues until he is a foot away, uncaring if this is an illusion.] I used to have a brother, one I wronged. He was wicked and clever and I'd be dead thrice over if not for his magics.

But now he is lost and I would give much for him but to hear my apology. For him to understand that there is a place for him, not under the heel of a boot, not in a prison, but beside his oaf of a brother who is much less clever and wields only strength as his weapon.

[debts]

[treachery]

[ In the end, he chooses her.

She had been the only one to truly best him, after all. While her companions fought with steel and brawn alone, she had looked upon him with her flickering mortal life already curling into smoke, and she had seen past the glint of teeth and eye to the shape of his mind beneath.

Because Loki is no madman to crow his adulation for power and glory upon the rooftops. No, better that a thousand blood eagles rise from split rib and flesh to soar into the clouds and sing of his victory instead. Better that SHIELD's lady spider tie the noose about her own neck, and smile in gratitude as she takes the step that will snap her own neck. ]

Natasha. [ says the master smith of lies, nothing more than a white sliver of moonlight in his threadbare tunic, in his fading britches. He comes to her as one who has seen nothing but cage after cage for an age, and his convalescence has not yet broken into health. It cannot, for Loki's sickness is heart-deep.

He is curled now in another of SHIELD's glass cages, looking upon her with a murmur of a smile. A week ago, he had followed the thread connecting master to thrall, and he had thus hidden Barton away. ] He calls for me, did you know? When the fear floods out sanity and memory: he thinks only of how my hand clasped his, how I made him more than mortal alone.

[debts]

[ Her eyes blink. Once, then twice. There is nothing in her expression, as it should be, save the seamlessly constructed expression of someone who knows the weight of a lie. It won't be easy, like the time before: this isn't a questioning, this is a bargain, and she knows this as easily as she knew the in-between of his words. Loki might be slighter, his physicality smaller, but Natasha remembers the power of a god and what it means to be selfish. What it means to look at your hands and think this is not the end, because these claws can still tear with a hunger that pains the inside of your maw.

(She wonders what Clint is doing. If there is anything in relation to his disappearnce and the small rise in kidnapped girls, aging from seven to ten. All redheads.) ]

Give him back. [ It's phrased as a demand and disguised under neutrality: there, a tiny kernel of something other, carries the shuttered words. To me; give him back to me.

Natasha wouldn't be herself if she had given Loki alternatives. No bargain, no plea. There's no pretense this time (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, as that saying goes), no take me instead — just a chair that creaks when she leans forward, arms braced on her knees. She looks at him through the brief smudge of glass.

(Give him back to me, she doesn't say. Before he becomes you.) ]

[treachery]

[ Oh, she may not let the sentiment drip from the eaves of her mouth, but Loki hears it all the same. Lies are no object, not when his gaze has been sharpened by months of captivity. He is a skeletal apparition of his former self, pared down to the necessity of only malice and manipulation.

In the end, she cannot understand. Barton was made and unmade, the song of the hawk changed in tempo and key until Loki alone knew to conduct its crescendo.

(If Barton calls for her beyond the shroud of Loki's influence, then it is no matter: she will never hear it. Because the blackness of space cannot be traversed by words nor will, only by power taken and power lost. Loki is a sorcerer; he has spent his life giving away the sweetest parts of himself for that power.

No, she cannot understand.) ]

You misunderstand. He does not wish to return.

[ He is calmer now than he was when the Chitauri first spilled their fury upon Midgard, but the brittleness of ice remains. ]

I am his god, now, beyond love, beyond hatred. Beyond the pettiness of emotion that drives the flicker of a mortal lifetime. Why do you deserve his service more than I do?

[agile]

[treachery]

[ The seabirds tear the sky ragged with their shrill ugly calls, and yet a peculiar sort of silence reigns. Loki sits coiled in his bastion of sand and salt, his fingertips light upon a page of a book whose title has long since been scoured away by time's unforgiving hand. But his eyes are set forward, past his own curled shadow, into the white rolling waves of the sea.

They had all come today, Thor and his retinue of sycophants — charming Fandral, noble Hogun, boisterous Volstagg, and the Lady Sif herself. Thor had considered them friends: all of them, including Loki's narrow shadow amongst their number, but long has it been since Loki has shared his brother's opinion.

Thor had challenged the Warriors Three to a swimming competition, and now they are mere specks of color upon the horizon. Loki, with the eye for observation that all those blessed with seid have learned to cultivate, watches the sea, and he watches the sky, and lastly — he watches Sif.

Sif, one day meant to stand as a golden shadow to Asgard's king. Loki flicks his fingers idly, a smile curling across his face. He looks young and guileless in his high-collared green tunic, perched upon the sand like a hollow-boned bird. And yet his seid draws forth a monstrous wave, large enough to swallow the banks upon which he rests.

It is little more than an illusion, but Sif won't know that. ]

'ware, my lady! [ He calls out, wearing innocent distress upon his face with practiced ease. ] Even you would find no husband amongst Asgard's many if you allow the sea to make a corpse of you.

MY LOVE

[beworthy]

darling heaaaart

[treachery]

[ The moon shrivels to a speck of dust in the sky, and another rises to take its place. The winter-king forgets his own name, he forgets the joy of his youth, and he remembers only the hunger of the valdyr, the pain of the white-faced dryads. Winter devours everything upon the lands, until the soil is barren, and even the skies above are barren of light.

He grows bitter and cruel. He ceases to sing of his prophecies entirely, for the future has already proved itself to wrought of little other than suffering heaped upon suffering. He learns to steal from the creatures under his own dominion. Their blood runs hot through his veins, and still he is but a black tower of waning life in the gyre of snow and sleet. Everywhere he travels, the earth is crusted over with the frost. Every moment of warmth left upon winter's country is sucked of marrow and swallowed whole.

A thousand years after the winter-king was gifted with a boon more precious than his own life (a name shaped by a single syllable, sweet as a rune-spell upon his tongue), the mortals come.

Hordes of them, naked and dumb as beasts in the snow. And yet their minds are sharpened by the pain that the cruel winter-king looses upon them: they learn to conjure fire from the violence of stone against stone, to hide their nakedness behind fur and leather, and to build shelters of wood and brush. They speak in the words and sing the melodies that the winter-king teaches to them.

For a time, he knows contentment. That his dominion has lost the beauty of his youth matters no more, for now he has mortal subjects who bow to his will, and who worship him for the god that he has become. He is as powerful of the sallow moon hung upon the sky, and as distant as the shadow of a star, so they offer him part of all they have, even in the worst years of his winter.

And yet — there is a land beyond winter's peaks verdant with life, a land that the winter-king once loved more than his own. Beauty and bounty are plentiful within its borders, and its summer-king is the most beautiful of all. When the sleet drives its way past the meager wood of their shelters, the mortals climb down the slopes of winter's mountains and find, to their delight, the land of summer.

A hundred years pass. The mortals have forgotten the winter-king, and again he grows bitter and vicious in his isolation.

This time, when he descends from his palace of ice to meet with the king of summer, he brings the winter with him. Every blade of green falls to the frost where he treads. The skies roil with a storm barely leashed, and the red berries upon the bushes grow white with fallen snow. ]

Thor-king. [ says the voice of winter, like the cracking of ice beneath a great weight. The snow has caught in his eyelashes and in the dark fall of his hair, but otherwise he is unadorned; only the fall of a fur-lined shift retains his modesty. Bare-footed and lean as a hungry wolf, the winter-king summons the only lover he has ever known. ] Thor-king, betrayer!

<3! ten thousand edits sob

[beworthy]

[ Once as a young man Thor lived some of his years in the kingdom of winter, in the embrace of his lover the winter lord, at his table and in his bed at night, warming the cold slick sheets and heavy drape of furs with his own body. Though the cold pierced and abated by turns, though his own kingdom was washed by rain and wind in his absence, and eventually by soft falls of snow, the beasts and the dryads and all the subjects of his own realm made to shore up their resources and do without plenty while they waited for their lord's return, still he stayed and loved and brought warmth and laughter to the cold halls of winter, brought passion and sweet yielding to the king's bed.

And though he had once imagined the lord of winter swelled and ripe with the fruit of his seed, it was he who eventually was sown; when he felt the life beginning to grow within his body, Thor saw at last his own terrible weakening: saw how the stark beauty of winter and the cold touch of his lover leeched the warmth and life from his body, turning him pale and sleepy and pliant, how he slept long hours in Loki's bed, waking only to offer himself in love and desire to his beautiful, beloved king. Here he was no king of his own right but Loki's consort, and the winter was killing him.

As it would kill the life within him, if he let it. As it would kill all the realm of summer.

And so Thor, without guile, one dawn simply kissed his sleeping lover farewell and left his bed, left his palace, walked staggering down the mountainside until at last he felt the sun warm and golden upon his skin, and its strength lend itself to his.

There was warmth and peace in summer again, but not so much laughter; his heart broken, his body aching in its hollow desire for his cold lover, Thor eventually bore their two children, a son and daughter, Autumn and Spring.

When the children have grown and left his kingdom to found their own, Thor is alone again, a man in the prime strength and years of his life: broad and virile, the antlers proud upon his head, his beard thick, his hands devastating in their brutal strength and unerring gentleness. But he does not take another lover, his heart yet unmended, his body yet hollowed by the hunger of the one he has loved and lost, as Loki had once warned him: an inevitability, that Thor should someday know the pain of parting.

And so when the winter intrudes upon his kingdom, the borders crossed in what could be called an act of outright war, his whole body lights in grieving fury and savage joy.

He strides from the greenwood palace with Mjolnir in hand, the beasts who have never feared their gentle, loving king scattering before his ground-shaking steps. And there is Loki upon the fields frozen by his malicious seidr, naming him betrayer, and Thor stands to meet him, clad in deerskin and gold as once he had met him before: but where Loki has grown whip-lean and hollow-eyed, Thor is even broader and taller than he once was, the antlers proud upon his brow. What would it be like now, if they were wrapped in one another's arms; whose strength would prevail? ]

I am here, Loki. [ he calls to him, his voice deep and resonant. ] By what right do you call me betrayer?

<3!!!!

[treachery]

[ Loki.

His own name, given new life and beauty by a tongue now unknown to him. Yet in that moment, when the winter-king becomes Loki again, a thousand colorful memories slide from the bilgewaters at the back of his mind, widening the dark gleam of his eyes, and — for a moment — loosening the tight clench of his jaw.

But the moment passes, for alongside the joys and the tenderness of years long past come the knowledge of treachery twisted even beyond the understanding of the cruel king of winter. Thor had stolen his children. Not only the mortals with their fragile bones and their empty minds, but his own flesh and blood, beautiful even whilst but a glimmer of growing life within.

How can he abide?

And the sight of summer's king before him only stokes the blizzard of his fury to colder, blacker heights. Above him, clouds gather to blot out the stars, about him, the snow and the sleet buffets all in its path. All but the pale slice of white flesh made gnarled and cruel by Thor's hand. How dare he stand more god than king now, when Loki was the first to know himself as the divine? How dare he grow more beautiful in his isolation, how dare he flaunt his mantle of warmth and joyous plenty before the one who has known such things for but a breathless moment of his life?

(Because this is the way of things, says the wind, this is what you were meant to be, says the gift of prophecy that sings in the hollowness of the winter-king's heart. Because life is less precious without the promise of death to follow.)

So the ice forms into blades along Loki's arms, long, hungry blades that cut furrows into the land when he lets his arms hang. If there was love between them once, he has buried it beneath his sorrow. ]

You've stolen all that was mine. [ he roars in return, but his voice is a brittle thing, splintering under the weight of his rage. ] You, gifted with all the bountiful plenty of your wretched summer — you took more than I knew to give. And so you will pay your final penance.

[beworthy]

[ The earth splits between the thrust of ice from Loki's hands, Loki's arms; life freezes and shrivels and withers away, and Thor sees again the cruelty of winter which his beautiful, strong, vulnerable body could no longer abide, all those years ago. Winter kills, winter suffers and sorrows and teaches loneliness and desolation, and even the sweetness of summer's kiss can only warm it for so long. He roars in fury, swings out Mjolnir, shatters the blades of ice in one fell swipe of its blunt savagery. ]

Would you have my plenty as yours? Would you take it now, Loki? You who sang the death of our love the first night we lay together?

[ Mjolnir strikes and the thunder roars, the dark clouds of summer storm and fury driving back the winter. Thor flings himself after his beloved, and the land trembles  beneath the clash of their weapons, trembles beneath the booming of thunder, as Mjolnir swings again and again, driving the king of winter back to his own borders. ]

And who will take my penance from me? Will it be you, my heart?

[ Yes, he stole their children. From the jaws of death he stole them into life, that they might grow and become strong, become queen and king, become warriors and mothers and lords of their own choosing, and that they might one day know the father who sowed them. And when the mortals fled to his green lands, Thor opened his arms and took them in, sent daughter and son to show them how to plant and how to harvest, that they might one day understand how to bear the cruel empty months of winter, so that they might one day return to the mountains and learn for themselves the true beauty and quiet peace of that kingdom. 

He knew there would be no such return for him. ]

[treachery]

[ Every time the blades shatter, they reform again crueler and sharper than the last. There is no dearth of ice in winter's heart, and no end to the fury of its storm.

Still, Loki is thrust back with each of Mjolnir's blows, hardly able to stand trenchant against the shattering assault. Winter preys upon the flickering life that has been starved and frozen, but summer is no meager creature to be cowed by wind and snow.

Oh, Loki saw this day when he was still young and eager; he saw how Thor would look upon him with pity and rage, and he had feared it, once. He fears it still, but the promise of an end does not figure in those fears — no, he has lived long and lived poorly, and finally only Thor will bow his golden head to mourn him. None other.

Such is the fate of the winterborn.

Loki had come here, once, the gentleness of song upon his lips. It breaks free from him again, but this time it is more akin to the jeering of the raven, the murderous cries of the falcon.

My heart, Thor would call him, as if the chasm between them has not grown teeth; Loki's eyelashes clump with snow and rain and loathsome sentiment. ]

Yes. [ he shouts, with each wheeling cry. ] Bare your throat, King of Summer, and let me anoint the land with your blood — else take up your strength and strike me down now — !

[beworthy]

[ His strength and the storms drive winter back to the brink of its own realm, and there Thor catches Loki with one hand around his throat and the other swinging Mjolnir, shattering another gleaming blade of ice that would shatter his ribs apart and pierce heart and lungs in a gushing of dark blood. Then he pulls Loki near with that savage grasp and kisses him, claiming for himself again the cold lips that once parted in sweet yielding for him, that shared laughter and song and passion between their mouths. How diminutive Loki has become, lean and furious as a starving wolf, and Thor drops his weapon and wraps him into his arms, pulling him up against all his own great and brutally hewn frame: a body whose devastating strength has only ever been used in the realization of joy and love.

Then he lets go and thrusts Loki back, standing with one foot in summer and one in winter, torn between them as he has ever been, and Thor stands proud and unafraid and opens wide his arms, lifting his chin to bare his throat. Like the king stag, the great beast who comes every year on the eve of the shortest night: the sacrifice who offers himself. ]

Come then, Loki, my love; take my life if you will have it, then take this war of yours and bear it home to your own realm.

[ His voice is gentled now, the storm wrought of fury and grief gone from it, as the storm wrought above is now receding; the clouds thin and the twilit sky shows through, dusky and warm with the first brave gleaming of stars.

Thor does not fear death anymore. He has lived long, and known the hollow ache of a heart torn asunder, and would count it no great tragedy if his blood were spilled today, now that a son or a daughter might take up his crown. ]

Else put down your arms and come with me: there are things I would show you, and matters upon which we must speak.

[treachery]

[ And Loki wavers between the extremes of the decision posed to him, and for once he cannot hide the battle within him from rising to mar his white face.

Because his body still trembles in the aftermath of Thor's embrace, even a scant moment of that coveted warmth a reminder of how poorly his memories have reconstructed what he has missed for an eternity. The guttural rhythm of his death-song dies in the graveyard of his fading hatred, and Loki shifts his weight from foot to foot and back again, his arms wrapped about himself. The blades do not reform again, even though ice creeps past his fingertips to circle his wrists, and even though his scant raiment is stiff with the frost.

The snow and the sleet does not quiet; Loki's hair is whipped up in the torrent, flicking shadows across his face.

Here is victory, waiting for him to reach out and take hold of it. All the lands will thus be enveloped by the ice, and all will know Loki and Loki alone as a king and a god. They will fear him, and they will turn their faces from him, but he will grow fat and content upon the feast of power that he will spread upon his tables. Never again will he know the agony of separation, for summer will become a relic of the past.

(Oh, the winter-king is a liar still.)

When the ice-blade finally renews itself, Loki's teeth have sunk into his own lip, and blood wells and well until it streaks his chin with crimson. In a blur of movement he forces its point to the apple of Thor's throat, where it hovers, where it shakes and trembles and does not press strongly enough to draw the blood of the summer-king. ]

I will come. [ he says, and his voice is nearly lost in the rage of his storm. And then he's shifting away, the blade melting to icy water, the skies above slowly quieting their thunder. ] As a fool and a traitor to my own self, I will come — but do not think that I have forgotten my warmongering.

[beworthy]

[ The blade pricks, it burns with cold, but it does not pierce, though Thor waits with patient, liquid eyes and his body opened for the thrust of death. It does not come; it withdraws instead, and Loki stands stark with rage and perhaps longing, too, so that the king of summer aches for him and wishes for their youth, for the days when he could have drawn Loki down into his arms, laid him between sweet-smelling sheets and furs and comforted him with his warmth, with the press of their naked skin. Instead he reaches and takes Loki's hand, drawing him back into the realm of summer.

Once he had thought they could both belong here, that they could both live forever. ]

This way. There is something you have not seen before.

[ It is as it was when they were young, Thor leading Loki by the hand, but this time the lord of winter trembles not in wonder but in fury, and Thor treads gentle but heavy-hearted upon the earth. He does not take him across the long stretch of green and gold field, but leads into the dark forest, by a winding path shrinking narrower and narrower between the broad old trunks of kingly trees, their crowns of thick leaves thrust proudly into the sky. The king of summer has walked this path many times before, and the life which springs beneath his feet is all of twisted vine and dark weed, grasping wild growth.

At last a glen in the wood, and a small hut with thatched roof, wildflowers at the door. Smoke curls gray from the peak of the roof; within, the floor is packed earth strewn with herbs, and more hang in drying bunches from the eaves, and a pot over the brazier fills the space with an earthy scent and the smell of rabbit roasted and stewed. There is a garden to one side of the hut, small and laboriously toiled. The bed in the corner is nearly too small for his frame. ]

My home. [ says Thor, when he has brought Loki within. ] When I am not needed at the palace. It is too sweet there: the dryads sing for me, but I ache for want of your voice. They put feasts before me, but it sits overrich upon my tongue, and there is no one with which to share it. The children did not live long with me; they hungered for the world beyond summer, and I had not the heart to forbid them to fly where their wings would take them. And so this has become my refuge. I have found peace here, but no joy, since our parting.