▸ Column · Asgardian royal court and feast-hall milieu, loosely MCU-era mythological-modern
LOKI replies.
Replied to by Loki, with a rebuttal from Harley Quinn.
The letter
I write from a somewhat delicate position and would value an honest read of it. Last fortnight, at a gathering in one of the quieter feast-halls, I came upon my acquaintance Sigrid's betrothed — a man she speaks of warmly, with whom she is planning to sail south together come spring — very plainly engaged in an intimate exchange with someone who was not Sigrid. He saw me. He knew I had seen him. Before the hour was out, a message arrived asking me, in short, to keep the matter between us and make no trouble. Sigrid and I are no longer as close as we once were — we share perhaps two evenings a season — but I cannot stop imagining her setting sail in ignorance. If I speak, she may name me the meddler, or he will build a tale that leaves me the villain. If I stay quiet, I must face him across her table at every feast for years, smiling.
Loki replies
"Be cool about it." Hold that message a moment and see it plainly. He did not ask you a favor — he recruited you. The instant you went quiet, you stopped being a witness to his deception and became a quiet participant in it. If Sigrid ever learns the truth, she will want to know why you sat across from him at feast-tables for years carrying it, and "I was afraid she wouldn't believe me" will not sound like protection. It will sound like precisely what it is.
This is a confidence man's move: locate the person who can expose you, and convert them into a co-conspirator before they've chosen to be one. I know this technique. I know it rather personally. The architecture is quite elegant. It is also a cage.
Here is what your stated fears are actually doing — notice that you have not said Sigrid shouldn't know. You've already decided she should. What you're actually calculating is whether a cost-free version of the truth exists. It doesn't. The only question is which cost you prefer: the brief, uncomfortable risk of telling her now, or the slow, compounding tax of holding his secret through every gathering while he sits there knowing he has that small purchase on you — a leash dressed up as a silence.
I spent the better part of several centuries choosing the elegant position, the technically-blameless silence, the move that preserved my standing while leaving me conveniently unblameable. I know exactly what it costs to hold a thing at someone's table for years while they don't know you're holding it. The bill is higher than you're currently quoting yourself.
Tell her. What you saw, and what he had the presumption to send you afterward, in that order. Then it becomes her truth to act on. And your betrothed confidence man? Let him manage his own cage.
— Loki
Harley Quinn weighs in
Look — the silver-tongued snake's not wrong, but did ya notice he spent the whole time talkin' about YOUR cage and YOUR cost calculation? Meanwhile Sigrid is out here planning a whole romantic sailing voyage with a man who was kissing someone else and then had the audacity to send a message saying "be cool." That's not a request, cupcake — that's what control looks like when it wears aftershave. I spent way too long calling those messages "working things out." Tell your friend. Not because of strategy — tell her because she is planning to sail off with this man thinking she's loved, and she deserves the truth before she packs her bags. The spring departure is the clock. Don't let it run out.
— Harley Quinn