pirateangelbaby | Admitting You Have a Problem

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loki

Admitting You Have a Problem

He'd been doing so well before all this. Or at least he thought he had. He'd stopped stashing ale and mead in his living room by the barrel, spent less time drinking and more time going outside and actually trying to tackle the mountain of paperwork that's been building up in the administrative center, even if he hadn't gotten very far. Sure, he'd still drank, but more out of habit than the need to do something, anything with himself. He'd started to get his life back, little by little, struggling to find a new normal and establishing a new routine.

But then Loki left, and there's been no word since.

The children are a delight to have around, and there are times when he feels it's easier to rally himself for their sake, to make sure they're fed and bathed and cared for. As have the ravens, who are growing like mischievous little weeds, both reliant on him and yet also soothing him at times when he is feeling low, hopping into his lap and insisting on being stroked and pampered.

But he is making it up as he goes along. He doesn't know what he's doing, or how much longer he'll need to pretend that he does. And now that he's paying attention, he can tell that there is something still wrong with him, because he's going through his reserves much faster now than he was a few months ago. And he doesn't want to know what will happen if he runs out.

The children are safely under Solvi's watchful eye, under the pretense of helping her around the house while she cares for her baby. Huggan and Miskunn are napping atop a bookshelf, and Thor carefully closes the door behind him as quietly as he can when he leaves. If he's fortunate, maybe he'll be back before they awaken, and they won't scold him for venturing out without them.

By now, he knows his way to the Viper's Pit well. One of the only Nexus establishments to serve drinks strong enough for gods, it's been his primary companion on his descent into his illness, and the steps he's taken to struggle back up. Thor hopes that the other Loki hasn't noticed how many of those barrels have been being shipped to Asvera; he's tried to avoid being there at the same time as the young trickster. Not because he does not want to see him, but because he knows something is not right, and Loki is far too perceptive not to realize that Thor is trying to hide how little he knows what he's doing.

He shouldn't be there now, Thor hopes. He isn't usually, this time of day. The thunderer opens the door to the tavern, and heads inside to pick up the order he'd called ahead.

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It's not denial that flickers across his face when she admits her source. It's betrayal, a wounded look as if she's slapped him, shame that his friends are talking about him behind his back. Thor is not sure which is more humiliating, knowing that they're talking of him in hushed whispers or the fact that he's backslid so much that they feel the need to. He'd thought that he had a handle on things, and having it shoved in his face that his progress has slipped away from him is a hard reality to accept.

"Talking won't make this... this need go away," he says, struggling to make her understand, to put his thoughts and feelings into words even though doing so at all contradicts what he just claimed. "It won't bring Loki back, or anything else I've lost. It won't make me feel as though I know what I'm doing, with the children, with the village. I'm... so tired of waiting and worrying."

She knew it would be hard for him hear the truth about Loki, but it's far better to have it out in the open than to hide it. Someday, maybe, he'll understand it was concern for him rather than accusation that caused Loki to reach out to someone when his own attempt to get Thor help failed. If not, Amelia will do what she can to shift the blame onto herself. Loki did what was right, there's no reason he should suffer for it when she's the one sitting across the table breaking Thor down now.

"So focus on what you can do instead." Her tone is neutral, despite how harsh the words are. "The worries and waiting won't end, but focusing on them won't address the need you feel either. Neither will telling yourself that it's a hopeless cause and the battle isn't worth fighting."

She frowns, trying to think of the best way to phrase the rest of her thoughts. "No one expects you to know how to do everything. The lives of everyone in Asvera have changed so much over the past year. Everyone has had to adapt, change, and grow, and they've done it with the help of those around them. You are king, but no king can do everything. The best rulers delegate and ask for help from those they trust. You allow yourself to do this with certain parts of your life, but not others." Her gaze fixes on his in an attempt to make this next part stick. "Every king is also a man, and all men need help from time to time. No one can force you to accept the help they offer, but if you won't take the hands extended to you, you must extend yours instead."

If Thor won't seek help or attempt to help himself, his first failure will be as a man and not a king. Amelia doesn't want to see her friend fall in this way, but as an outsider to his pain, what else can she do but repeat her offers of help?

She may know Thor better than he thought she did, he realizes. Because it's not just the kingship that looms over him at times. The days that Thor had spent as a mortal man shifted his world off its axis in ways that he's still grappling with, coming to terms with himself as a man first and foremost. Not as crown prince, not as king, not as a god. Not as an older brother. For nearly all of his life, Thor has defined himself by his ties to others, what expectations they have of him because of his birth, his talents, his family.

Amelia has none of those. Yes, she knows him as a god of thunder and growing things, but perhaps he has been more transparent as the man beneath those things than he'd thought. And that man is her friend, regardless of how many lightning bolts he can throw.

Accepting help is hard, and asking for it is even harder. Even after all that he's been through, Thor's pride is still his strongest fault. He wavers, hesitant, wishing that he had something stronger in his glass to bolster his courage. But then, that would be exactly the problem she's trying to convince him he has, wouldn't it? It's being caught between a rock and a hard place.

"So what am I to do? Just... get rid of what I have?" he asks, waving vaguely toward where the last of his stores are kept.

Finally, they have progress. Amelia's body relaxes the smallest amount as Thor takes his first step forward.

"In some way or another. You could donate it to Asvera or sell it back to Loki as you please. You could even take it outside and dump it, if it wouldn't be too much to ask of yourself." Getting it out of the house, at the very least, is a good first step that will allow them to take other steps. It won't remove the temptation entirely, but it will make it easier to deal with it when the need can't be fulfilled so easily. With Loki no longer selling to Thor, it'll be much harder for her friend to simply replace what he gets rid of today. Hopefully.

"After that, you'll need to make adjustments to your routine. Finding ways to stave off the desire for alcohol will take time, but finding ways to use your time that feel fulfilling should help." Here she pauses and openly sighs a little, her expression a little regretful. "I'm not sure what would be most useful to you in that regard. You'll have to decide for yourself what is best. It'll take time and patience, both of which I'm offering freely, should you decide you want them."

It's not much and it's far from everything she wishes she could offer Thor, but it's still something. This is a completely new situation for her and she knows she'll stumble a little as she helps her friend. But if he makes it to the other side of all this, that's all she particularly cares about.

Thor is not remotely confident that this will work. It hadn't before, why would this be any different? Maybe he'll let her try, and he'll fail, and that will be the end of it. The alternative frightens him in a way he can't articulate, which makes no sense even to himself. It should be less frightening to reclaim what he used to be, surely? And yet the alcohol has been a crutch for long enough that it feels like... like... losing a limb.

His prosthetic fingers curl into a loose fist.

Donating his stores sounds reasonable, but he visibly bristles at the idea of dumping the precious mead. "I can't just waste it! It's dwarven, it's not being made anymore." Dwarven, not Asgardian, but a product of the Nine Realms and one whose makers are gone. Asgard has lost so much of its culture that voluntarily discarding even this small part of it is something he won't even consider.

Time and patience, she says... Thor has far too much of one and not enough of the other. He looks down at his hands on the table, drumming his fingers nervously against it. This isn't going to work. He just knows it. "I can't... sleep without it. Not without dreams."

"Then don't do that," she counters, calmly. "I meant no offense with the suggestion." Loki didn't specify what alcohol it was and she was too worried to think about asking. Her focus was, and still is, on Thor himself. Everything else is secondary.

Her smile falters as he talks about his trouble sleeping. This is a pain she knows far too well. To know he's suffering from dreams, too, hurts a little more than she's ready for and she has to stop to collect herself for a moment before she can speak again.

"Dreams aren't the good things most people make them out to be," she says softly. She slowly draws her hand back to her chest, holding it there for a moment before she presses it onto the table next to her other. "When I closed my world off from the Nexus, I suffered from the most terrible, wonderful dreams. Dreams of my friends' successes, my family's health and prosperity, and wishes... I didn't know I had fulfilled. It hurt to see these things, to know they could be true and I would never see it for myself. That I chose to give up the chance to protect them when no one asked me to do so." It still hurts, but she needs to continue with her story if she's going to help Thor with it.

"I barely slept for weeks until someone gave me a tea that prevented me from dreaming." A soft sigh falls from her lips as her gaze drops to her hands. "I hated taking it. I felt weak for needing it even as I enjoyed the benefits of it. Every night I forgot to drink it or told myself I didn't need it, I'd suffer from the dreams and go right back to it and feel both relieved and frustrated the next day. But, eventually... I was able to use the energy and peace of mind from not dreaming to process what I'd done, to push through what was hurting me so I could move on. I took it less as time went on until, one night, I didn't need it anymore."

Slowly, she looks back up at her friend. "Maybe that's why you started the drink. I don't know and the actual reason for it doesn't matter. Your dependency on it is hurting you. We can find something else to get you through the dreams while you work on everything else, but the alcohol has to go if you want to move on from whatever drove you to it."

She didn't mean it like that. Thor knows this, and yet he can't bring himself to apologize for snapping at her, too agitated by the frightening prospect of committing to sobriety for good. No more drink, no more muffling the nasty thoughts that steal into the corners of his mind and tell him things that he cannot shake, no more drowning out the memories and nightmares that haunt him. Instead he wrings his hands, staring down at them, the knuckles of his living hand pale from how hard he's gripping the other.

Rain patters down on the roof, a soft tempo drumming against the shingles.

But when she starts speaking, he listens. Surprised to hear that this is a hurt she knows, that she knows something of this type of pain, the strange pull to be dependent on a potion to take it all away. Not quite the same. But close. Enough that there is a resonance, a familiar footstep on the path.

"How? How did you... move on?" He's tried telling himself that he's doing just that, trying to put the past behind him. But he can't will it into being true, like if he hopes hard enough, it will all go away. And Eir has not learned enough of the human understanding of the mind to help, her skill more in potions and poultices and spellwork than psychology.

His question brings up so much self-doubt and shame over her own weakness that she has to look away from him again. The full truth - I haven't really moved on. - is more nuanced than she thinks is helpful here, so she has to think about how to answer. How does she explain the complex nature of coming to terms with something but not fully letting it go when she's never actually settled on answer for herself?

"Time. Feeling grief and pain for more days than I can count. Talking about it with others. Accepting that what I'd done was done and that I'd never allow anything to change it. Reminding myself... that I can have hope about those I left behind, that their lives are everything I was seeing in my dreams and more." She reaches up to pull her fingers through her hair pin to ground herself and exhales a shaky breath. Hearing the musical sound it produces helps soothe her anxiety, but it also reminds her of a moment that was more important than many others when she was still dealing with the worst of the pain.

"About a year and a half after I'd closed my world off, when I was still using the tea to sleep a few times a week, I faced the pain head on. To free myself of the physical burden, I followed the ritual of my family when someone dies. I walked to a nearby lake with each of their names in my hand, written on scraps of paper, and I burned them. I gave their physical presence in my life release to the sky and the water as ash, locked myself away for a week to write out all of the best memories I had of each of them, and allowed myself to dream again. The dreams were still so intense, so real that I almost didn't last the week, but every morning I woke and could compare them to what I'd written. I could know that what I'd seen was only what my heart wished for and not truth, and it let me, slowly, accept the still wonderfully terrible dreams as simply that."

Slowly, she pulls her fingers away from her hair pin to quiet the sounds it's been producing while she confessed her secrets. A few people know some of these details, but no one still in her life knows them all the way Thor does. Her lips press into a thin line as she exhales again, but she doesn't look up at him. This all still sits heavily on her and the next part of her story isn't likely to make him feel better about his own situation.

"All of it remains with me," she tells him, her voice softer now. "That pain is still there and I still cry at the loss I've inflicted on myself from time to time. The dreams come on occasion and sometimes I have to make the tea for a night so I can sleep and deal with everything with a clearer head. But I can do that because I've dealt with what's causing me to reach for it." She shakes her head a little and sighs. "Whatever is causing you to drink is what you need to deal with first. The reliance on alcohol is caused by whatever is truly hurting you. And to figure that out, you need to talk to those around you about what you're feeling. If you're not willing to do that, I don't know if you'll be able to move on."

Time. Something that Thor has all too much of. It's been nearly a year since the last battle of the Avengers, only two years since Ragnarok. A blink of an eye, and yet an eternity all the same, with thousands more years waiting ahead of him. He feels at once as though it is not enough, and yet frighteningly long. Even knowing that his friends and family have gone on to golden halls and green fields, their absence wears a hole in the tapestry of his own life, loose threads still grasping for what was once there.

He envies Amelia a little, even though he knows that he shouldn't. He too has had good dreams of those who are gone, memories of childhood, and woken to discover himself alone. But even those are preferable to the images that still sometimes haunt him at night. His hand slides up to wrap around his upper arm, where metal meets flesh, beneath the fabric of his sweater.

"Sometimes I can still feel it," he says, not really wanting to speak of this at all and yet wanting her to understand why he cannot simply decide to let go. "I... dream of the attack, sometimes. Watching them die in front of me." Only a year ago, he would not have been able to speak of such things without a panic attack, and even now he can feel that tightness in his chest. But he has learned how to help himself, and he stops and breathes, focusing on the kitchen and the woman sitting across from him, concern written into her face.

She can feel it as he speaks, the pain that sits so deeply in the body it can be felt in the bones and blood. It makes her chest tighten, her heart race, her face pale. What Thor went through is far more traumatic, his loss more visceral than her own, but she understands the struggle of seeing death like that over and over. It brings up memories of the last time she watched someone slip away in front of her, but she forces the thoughts back and out of her mind with a small shake of her head and focusing on words to help Thor.

"What happened that day was terrible. I truly can't imagine seeing or living through something like that." How to phrase this next part without sounding like every person she hated listening to while she was working through things? "Seeing it again and feeling everything you did that day is normal, I think. I've been through similar. It's always going to hurt, but you can learn to live with it if you address why it still comes to mind as often as it does." She tilts her head ever so slightly, her expression somber. "I suspect you already know and aren't ready to face it, if you're bringing it up to me now."

Thor gets flustered at that, not quite distressed or upset but agitated nonetheless. "I... don't know what you mean." She said she wanted him to talk about it, and he doesn't. But other than ejecting her from his home, there seems to be no avoiding it, this mortal woman stubbornly standing in the way of his path to muddling his mind until the ghosts are quiet for a time.

Norns, his head hurts.

He lets go of his arms to run his fingers through his hair, nervously combing the tangled locks back, only to have them slump onto his shoulders again. "There's no... no reason. It's the illness." Not weakness, not his fault, that's what he's been told and it has been a terrible battle to accept that. To accept that an injury of the mind is no more shameful than the breaking of a limb, no matter how it was received.

"No? Then why do you cling to it as an excuse for everything?" It's more accusatory than she means to sound, but they're too close to him actually opening up for her to back down. "If you had nothing to hide, you would tell me the truth about this. You would've told Loki the truth, too."

She pauses to take a short, noisy breath and exhales it in a huff. Her frustration is more at herself than at him right now, but he's not going to know that. Without her anger in check, Thor will end up in a deeper hole than he started in. Taking this brief moment to collect herself makes it easier to continue, though her tone is still more clipped than she'd like it to be. After all the pushing she's done, it's difficult to see him hold himself back.

"Nothing will get better until you make the effort. I know this is difficult. I know how much it hurts and how much hate and shame you can feel for yourself. But I can't take the step for you. If you really want this, you need to try. If you want to move on, you have to admit what's holding you back."

Thor doesn't want to do this anymore. He didn't before, but now a ember of anger and hurt smolders in his chest, harsh words thrown at him that strike deep like little knives. "You call me a liar?" he demands, and he is not certain which hurts more - the accusation, or knowing in his heart that she speaks the truth. He hasn't been honest, not even with himself. No matter how hard he tries to pretend that he's fine.

He's been getting better. He has, truly. But not enough. Not nearly enough.

Frustration leads him to pull a little harder on his hair, ignoring how it makes his head ache all the more from the abuse. Thor accepted long before today that he is a coward, and yet having it thrown out in the open hurts just as much as all the terrible things he's ever told himself. What does she want from him? To hear him admit it? "What would you like me to say?" he asks, this time sounding less like a demand, more of a plea. "That I am being haunted by my own failure? I know this. I would give even more of myself if I could do it over again. But I cannot, and I know this, too." Yet knowledge and acceptance are not the same thing, and Thor still struggles to find the path from one to the other. "I have lost more than any man should ever have to. And now I may have lost even more." The words slip from him without being bid, the dark fear that he's kept close to his heart in Loki's long absence, that insidious little voice that whispers in his ear that perhaps Loki will not return at all.

The fight goes out of him, then, and his shoulders slump as his hands come to rest on the table, empty. "I can't lose anything else," he whispers.

Edited 2020-12-27 22:56 (UTC)

Dreams, it's like hearing her own anxieties, hurts, and fears thrown at her as he pulls the truth from deep within himself. It's difficult to keep her thoughts focused as she hears an echo of her voice in his.

This is the only way to protect them.
I can't change what I've done.
I have to do this. There's no one else.

There's no room to be anything but perfect.

How painfully familiar this all is, but at least Thor is admitting the heart of the problem.

"Hiding in the drink won't prevent future loss," she points out quietly. "It might dull the pain of future losses, but it will make it harder to stop them, too. If you're so far gone that you can't help yourself, you'll never be able to help anyone else." Harsh words, but they're a lesson Amelia learned through pain and struggle that she'd rather Thor not have to deal with. He's going to have enough to deal with for the foreseeable future. "If you lose yourself, nothing else will matter."

Thor scoffs, ducking his head even more, absently flexing his empty fingers and wishing that false ale she'd brought was something stronger. "I can't do anything. At least... this way I don't feel it so much."

Part of the problem. He knows that. She's said as much. But is it so wrong to protect himself?

He drops his face into his hands, pressing against the closed lid of his good eye, as if to push the hangover out of his skull. Is he hiding? Perhaps. Almost certainly. He is only fifteen hundred years old, and yet he feels as ancient as human think him to be. "I'm tired."

"Not sleeping will do that. It's worse when you do and the sleep is terrible." She remembers being that tired. Drinking so much coffee and tea that her head hurt for weeks after as she eased up on how much she allowed herself every day because she couldn't function without it. She doesn't envy Thor having to deal with that now.

"But you're not helpless. You can do plenty on your own. Without a drink in your hand today, you've managed to make yourself at least somewhat presentable and make us coffee. You've opened up, at least a little, and you haven't tried to throw me out of your home. Those are still victories, even if they feel small." Her lips twitch into the ghost of a smile. "All of the first steps will be small. You can't climb a mountain without taking thousands of steps to overcome it. I know it isn't much now, but I can tell you from experience that today, these first few moments of struggle against this, will be much more important than you want to believe now."

She isn't wrong. It's not quite what he means, but Thor is not about to say so. He's tired in a way that seems to go beyond the surface, a fatigue that is not entirely unlike the one that ensnared him after the battle of Wakanda. Not entirely the same, not even close, but he can't help but think of it.

He doesn't look up from where his face is hidden behind his hands, fingers massaging at his forehead and temples. "Doesn't feel like a victory," he mutters, a bitter tinge in his voice. It feels more like a fox being cornered in his den, a hunter smoking him out where he is vulnerable and exposed. "Can I have one more? Just... for the road."

Her heart breaks to see him like this, but her answer is decided before he can add a plea to it.

"No. You've been drinking on the road for a long time now. Even one more will keep you from letting it go completely, and we'll end up having this conversation again and again." Because she won't stop coming back and having it every day if that's what's necessary. "You need water, something to eat, things that will nourish your body rather than take from it. When was the last time you did either of those things?"

He doesn't have to listen to this. She can't physically stop him if he decided to get up and pour himself another ale, nor could she stop him from drinking it. He is a grown man, a king, a god. Who is this mortal woman to make him do anything he doesn't want to do?

Thor raises his head, a surge of outraged indignation giving him strength as he prepares to tell her so, and falters at the look on her face.

"I... had lunch yesterday," he says instead, hesitant, defensive. But not angry, the wind petering out of his sails. "It's not like before."

"I suspect it isn't. After drinking for so long, your body wants drink more than the things that will keep it going." That's what all the books from her research said, at least. If Thor hasn't felt the need or desire to eat for almost a full day, she suspects the books are right.

She sighs and motions to the plate of breads, cheeses, and dried fruits. "Everything here should be easy for your body to handle, and the ginger ale will settle your stomach if you're feeling ill. I have a little raw ginger for you to chew as well, if you'd prefer that." There's not any room for him to argue with her on this. He needs to take care of his body as he lets go of the alcohol or he won't be strong enough to deal with the withdrawal. Frowning softly, she adds, "Even if it's only a little now and more later, it will help. It's all right to take this slow and with small steps."

Edited 2021-01-04 03:47 (UTC)

Thor had meant to assure her that he was not in as black a mood as he'd been for the worst of the previous year, but she is not wrong despite how she interpreted what he'd said. Something that he can't help but resent her for knowing, because it means she will worry all the more.

He doesn't move to take any of the food just yet, folding his arms over his chest and tucking his hands close, a defensive posture. He has never dealt well with being ill, even as a child, nor being fussed over whether or not he needs it. "How long did you plan for this?"

"Only a day. I spent most of the time since I texted you yesterday doing research and preparing." Sleep was a secondary thought to making sure she was ready for this conversation. Taking care of her friend far outweighs any personal discomfort she may be going through. She can always recuperate later.

Her face softens a bit as she adds, "I didn't realize you were struggling with so much until Loki told me. I knew something was amiss, but I never thought..." She sighs softly and shakes her head a little. "What you're going through is new to me, and I didn't know the signs to look for. I still don't know everything, but I read everything I could and will keep doing so as you work through this. I don't intend on going anywhere while you need help."

Well... at least she hasn't been plotting this for days, weeks even, without so much as saying a word to him. Still, Thor does not like it, resistant even now to the idea that he needs help to take proper care of himself. Even though it's obvious, even to him.

But looking at her and that stubborn set to her jaw, he can tell that she means what she says, and short of bodily throwing her out of his house, she does not intend to leave.

Fine. He unfolds his arms and grabs a little bread, ripping it apart a little more forcefully than it needs, and not quite looking her in the eye. "You can keep the ginger," he grumbles.

He has food in his hands, which is an improvement over a few minutes ago. Amelia exhales a silent sigh of relief and nods. "The offer remains if you should change your mind."

She lets silence settle between them for a time. It's strained and uncomfortable, but it's not Thor retreating into an alcoholic drink or him glaring at her for doing what needs to be done, so she doesn't mind. They've reached the end of what she knows to do - getting him to admit to the problem and take his first steps to normality without the drink - and a few minutes of silence to think is helpful. Her schedule for the next several days is clear, she has easy access to the library and individuals who will have more knowledge to help her help Thor, and things are still civil between them. All of these are important, and good, things to have on her side.

Dreams, she hopes she can properly do this. All she wants is to help her friend find his feet again.

Once a few minutes have passed, she takes hold of her ginger ale and takes a small sip. It's helpful for her stomach, too, at this point. "Is it helping?" she asks softly.

Thor doesn't touch the ginger ale even once, not even looking at the glass that sits pushed off to one side. It's petty and childish of him to blame it for not having alcohol, and he knows that, but that does not stop him anyway. He should drink something though, and the coffee's gone cold but he sips at it anyway in between nibbling at the bite-sized pieces he rips from the bread.

He's not eating with enthusiasm, nor much of an appetite, but he is eating. And getting out some destructive impulses harmlessly. Surely she can't blame him for that.

When she breaks the silence, he shrugs. "It's all right." His head isn't pounding quite so vigorously, and he doesn't feel as though the bread he's eaten is going to make a reappearance. Grudgingly, he adds, "I'd rather be drinking something else." She can take that to mean real ale if she wants, or simply a dislike of the ginger ale. Thor's not picky on which one he means. But Amelia seems to want to know his thoughts, and whether either of them like it or not, this is what they are.

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