MINGLE LOG: WEEK ONE

[asgardmods]

Who: Everyone!
What: The MINGLE LOG for Week One of the Asgard Eventide Reunion!
When: March 1-7
Where: Anywhere in town!
Rating: PG-13 tops! Anything higher than that should be taken to a private log, please.

[ OOC NOTES: Whether you're making a return to the city or this is your first time setting foot into Asgard, the gods and Natives alike sure are happy to see you. This is a catch-all mingle log for Week One! Please check HERE for a run-down on what's cookin' this week. You can feel free to make your own headers, create your own events, or post your own logs elsewhere as you please. Please put [OPEN/CLOSED] along with the time/location of your character in the title of your comment.

As a note: we were super fortunate to have a few of our old NPC handlers volunteer to pick up their old Gods for the reunion! We currently have Hel, Heimdall, Baldr, Thor, Freyr, Mimir, Honir, Asgard!Loki, and also Frigg available for threading. If you'd like to request an appearance from one of these kids, please say so in the title of your comment. Some of us may make our own top-level as well, so be on the lookout for that! A million thanks to our NPC team for being so fantastic, we love and appreciate you so much.

Don't forget to check out the IC Inbox Mingle and the Network Post Mingle in the network comm! Let us know if you have any questions! ]

Comments

[comeonthensexy]

"You struck me as a traveller. Was I mistaken?"

He tuts. Really, are your legs so weak, Maglor?

Not that he isn't feeling some toll from running around looking for everyone, himself. There are a lot of people, a lot of noise and a lot to take in and do.

But his legs are mostly fine. For now.

[bythewaves]

"By necessity!"

Maglor protests laughing.

"But I am old and prefer my peace and quiet these days."

Not that the Doctor is much younger than him these days, probably.

[comeonthensexy]

"Oh, really? Do tell me how old you are. I'm all ears."

Maglor probably told him once upon a time, but he certainly doesn't remember. He just knows Maglor is one of many who are much older than they look. From a human's standards.

[bythewaves]

Maglor hums thoughtfully.

"Well, obviously dates are a little suspect and difficult to convert until after we had a moon and sun but... as of last count, I am somewhere in the region of nine thousand four hundred. Give or take a few centuries. I think."

[comeonthensexy]

"And then add time travel to that and it really gets complicated."

Which is to say, the Doctor might just be older than that even if he usually says two thousand, but he truly doesn't have any idea.

[bythewaves]

"Aye, even so. And do not forget alternate realities! Do we count our time here, as well? Although for both of us that only adds a scant handful of decades, I think."

He eyes him in amusement. "So I am guessing you are not sure if you are older or younger than me, is what I am getting from that answer."

[comeonthensexy]

"If I'm going to be perfectly honest. Which is rare, in this matter."

Perhaps one might question why it is that he can't be honest about it. That he prefers to lie, if not to be outright secretive and evasive. A way to escape from the matter that he actually doesn't know, maybe. Distract himself from the fact that he has no idea how long he's actually lived.

How long he's actually struggled.

Or maybe it's simply because there are so many years of his life that he isn't proud of, and he'd rather not think too much about all of those.

This is the most honest he's been for a very long time, about his age.

[bythewaves]

"I promise not to tell anyone. Especially not your brother." Maglor says dryly, adding quietly.

"Either way - tis not the years one has lived, eh? Have you been content with yours? Not all of it, necessarily - as I imagine there are few without regret. But in the larger picture, that is." And both of them are used to dealing in the big picture, when they have to.

[comeonthensexy]

There are very few without regret, and yet one should always try to regret as little as possible. The Doctor tries not to think about the tomes of things he could consider regrets, that very much are regrets if he thinks about it for even a moment too long ...

If one gets stuck on the details, there is so much to regret. The bigger picture is a lot more forgiving.

He smiles wide, and brings the cup up to inhale the scent of the tea.

"Yes. Wouldn't have lived any other way."

[bythewaves]

"Then to a life lived as best as one can." Maglor tips his teacup to him in salute. "I am glad, my friend."

[comeonthensexy]

"So am I." He takes a sip, and sighs quietly. "And you? Are you content?"

[bythewaves]

Maglor laughs softly. "If you had asked when I first arrived I would have said no. But time has passed, and I have learnt, and... yes. Yes I am."

[comeonthensexy]

He hums. "Whether you feel content about your life changes from moment to moment as much as life does. I think, perhaps, the greatest gift would be to feel content when you inevitably pass on. At least, that's what I'd like for myself."

So it wouldn't have been bad, to die as he is now. He's hardly angry with Clara for saving him, even less so ungrateful, but it would have been a good time to die.

[bythewaves]

"I would agree." Maglor nods. "It would be a great blessing, eh? To be able to cross that threshold content."

[comeonthensexy]

"The best. Unfortunately, I think rather few are so lucky."

And that's a terribly sad thing. He hopes, if anything, if he can't save people from death, perhaps he might have been able to show some of them that there is no need to regret.

[bythewaves]

"Aye." Maglor nods softly. "As I grow older I learnt to grieve ever more the knowledge that I took that chance from so many."

[comeonthensexy]

There's a long pause, as he sits and breathes in the scent of his tea, eyes on Maglor but still somewhere far away.

"Sometimes your hands are forced," he says, quietly, and puts the tea down. "Sometimes you don't fully realise the weight of your actions and by the time you do it's too late."

An unspoken question: Which one were you?

Sometimes he isn't sure. Sometimes he'd like to think his hands were forced. That in the end he had no other option. Sometimes ... Well, a very few times he has thought with no thread of doubt that the universe would be a better place without someone, and he's willing to carry that burden, but those people never seemed to regret a thing in the end either.

It tends to be rather complicated.

Still. Every now and then, you have exhausted the time to do anything else.

[bythewaves]

"Mm." Maglor sips his own tea pensively.

"Sometimes one is both. A word to the wise, Doctor - never swear an Oath. Particularly not an Unbreakable One. It tends not to end well."

[comeonthensexy]

"I think an oath is by definition unbreakable, but I get the very distinct feeling an oath is a bit different where you're from."

Which obviously means Maglor should tell him about it.

[bythewaves]

"If you want to get into the technicalities, yes - but some oaths are easier to break than others - particularly if you go into one with appropriate clauses! But... we swore, my brothers and my father and I, by the highest authority of our world, and called upon ourselves the most terrible fate. For love, for grief, I swore it, and none made me do so, although I knew that it would only bring grief. Too late I realised exactly how terrible the darkness I had called upon myself was, and by then it was too late. I committed terrible atrocities in the name of that Oath, Doctor. And until I came to Asgard, I felt it like hooks in my soul, driving me on no matter how terrible the deeds and how little I wished to do them. It killed my family, that Oath, and at the last my eldest brother could no longer bear it, and killed himself to find some peace."

[comeonthensexy]

Well.

Perhaps he had been hoping for a slightly more fun explanation, even if there had been no inkling that it's in any way fun from the very start of this conversation. He's silent for a long while after Maglor has finished, sipping at his tea.

There is a tendency, in many living things, to adopt the name of something greater and bigger than yourself and doing things under it. Perhaps it comes from a desire to strip yourself of responsibility, to make it possible for you to live with yourself under the weight of what you have done. Like the actions he has executed in the name of peace and life. Funny, how you sometimes wage war and kill in the name of peace and life. So paradoxical.

Now he really wonders what the oath was. There's little else he wants to do but press, try to get more info, but even he sometimes knows there really is a time and a place, and this is not one of those. So he swallows those questions with the tea, and sets the cup down quietly.

"Did you honour it, in the end?"

[bythewaves]

"Yes." Maglor sighs softly, and gently sets his teacup down and turns his hands palms up, to reveal the burn scars.

"And in fulfilling it, my brother and I, we realised that we had forfeited all rights to it, for the treasure that we swore to reclaim rejected us, at the last." He huffs softly. "We should have known - they were holy - sanctified to bear no evil touch - and we were anything but, especially by the end. But for our father, for our grandfather... love can blind, especially when tied to grief and duty."

[comeonthensexy]

A treasure. Of all things, they made such a promise over a treasure. Then the Doctor really has to wonder what kind of value that treasure held. What it even was. If it could "bear no evil touch", then ...

"It certainly does that," he says quietly, and offers a crooked smile. "One might just do anything if blinded by grief."

He knows. He falls victim to it himself, often.

[bythewaves]

"True. But we were still fools." Maglor says matter-of-factly - he has had enough time to be able to see that much, at least.

"Many others have been bereaved without doing what we did, so that is no excuse at all."