A ficlet prompt if you're interested: “Tell me, when you are alone with him, does he take off his face and reveal his mask?” The pairing would be Loki/Val, but the conversation would be btw Thor and Val.
(Hopefully, an antidote to yesterday's Valkiangst-o-rama...) (Read at AO3)
Thor looked up at Valkyrie entered the tavern and waved aninvitation to join him at his table. "Alone again?"
Valkyrie took the bottle and, for the sake of politeness,poured herself a glass rather than just taking a giant swig. There were otherpeople in the tavern, after all, and you had to be at least a littledeferential to the king, even if he was someone you'd fought the undead withand shared some of the most unimaginable swill in the known universe with."Loki begged off. Said he had paperwork to do."
"He never wants to join me in the evenings now,"said Thor, rather sadly. "I'd hoped, after everything that's happened,that we could mend our friendship, even if we couldn't ever be the brothers weonce were..."
"It's not that," Valkyrie said, feeling more thana little uncomfortable discussing this in public. Something about her posturemust have communicated itself to the people nearby, because as one, they allgot up and moved over to the bar, leaving her and Thor with a bit more privacy."It's... well, it's the whole 'tavern' thing."
"You know. Taverns, drinking, rowdy drunk people? He,uh..." She searched for a tactful way of expressing the things Loki hadtold her as well as the things he had not but which she knew via osmosis andgossip anyway. "He had his fill of all of that. On Sakaar."
Thor's expression changed, and Valkyrie actually felt alittle chilled. "He won't speak of Sakaar to me," he said, his voicea low, unhappy rumble in his chest. "I have, uh, well, anidea of what happened to him while he was there,but..."
"That idea is probably just the tip of the iceberg. I'mnot surprised he won't talk about it with you. This won't be news, but yourbrother has one hell of an identity complex, where you're concerned."
"Yes, I'm aware. Thanks for that." Thor grabbedthe bottle and upended its contents into his giant glass mug. "But... hetalks to you?"
"We talk a lot, yeah. He talks, anyway. I don't say toomuch. Not sure why he decided I'd be the best person to unload his personaldemons onto, but," she shrugged, "at least he doesn't expect me to doanything about them."
"He hides from me," Thor muttered. "Still. Hehas the same face as always and he is helpful and hard-working and loyal. It'salmost like having my brother back, after all these years of fighting andtorment. But he is not the same. The face he shows me and the rest of theworld, it's nothing but a mask."
Valkyrie didn't want to agree, if only because she feltincreasingly awkward having this conversation at all, but she couldn't denythat Thor was right. "Loki... has a lot of masks," she said finally."Just mask stacked over mask. I'm not even sure he knows which one is hisactual face, anymore. Or if he has one."
"But he shows you those masks?"
"He does." For all that they butted headsconstantly, and sometimes literally, in public, their time on Sakaar - Loki'squick and intense and destructive, Valkyrie's drawn-out and soul-numbing - leftthem standing a little apart from the rest of the Asgardians, and even from theremaining gladiators who had come to Earth with them.
It was a bizarre aping of friendship, but she couldn't denythat Loki's pain called to her, in the same way that hers had piqued hisinterest. She didn't want to examine it, for fear that it would crumble if shetried to actually make sense of it, but it was real and it was something tolean on, for both of them.
"And..." Thor traced lined in the frost riming hismug. "Is he still in there, do you think? Under all of those faces, all ofthose masks, is there still a person?"
"If any of us can say we're still people under all ofour masks... then yes."
