Say my name! - Loki & Tom Hiddleston fanfiction

Part 1

The man

Everything felt familiar. The weight of the dark wig. The bodysuit that enclosed his body like a second skin and made him stand taller, as if the tight fabric angled his chin up. The layer of makeup that covered his face, making him paler. The flutter in his stomach that was always there before he enters a stage, any stage. The anticipation. The joy.

There was someone with a camera backstage, filming him as they walked towards the back entrance of hall H.

"I'm going out in full costume," he said with a laugh to the camera, like he could hardly believe it himself. His nerves could be heard in his voice, though he knows that wouldn't be the case when he was on stage.

"Ready, Tom?"

"Oh, yeah!" He was ready. He felt it in his veins: this was going to be great! This was like playtime, this was having fun.

"Through there and then just wait for your cue."

A door was held open for him, nothing but darkness behind it.

***

The god

You're only truly dead when you are forgotten. It happens to everyone. You live your life and then you die, leaving behind nothing but memories and some possessions. If you're lucky, the memories last longer than the possessions. Although that could depend on which kind of possessions you leave behind.

You can leave behind a pocket watch, a nice gold pocket watch of a dependable make. It gets passed down through the family for generations, until your great- great- great grandson decides he rather has a couple of hundred bucks in his wallet than a dusty old watch in a drawer. A dusty old watch from a relative that he never knew and that his own father can only tell him the name of because all firstborn males in the family carry the same name. A name without meaning, because it has been reduced to just a word.

Gods don't have possessions, gods don't even have a life. Not in the way that a man has a life anyway. Gods have a name, a name that holds power. And gods have a story. They can have multiple names and numerous stories, ever changing, ever evolving.

Over the years, his name sometimes wasn't mentioned for long periods of time, but it was never quite forgotten. His name popped up in the research of scholars mostly, cold soulless texts that discussed the worshipping of the god and his peers in the old days. Every now and then his name came up in more exciting ways, when someone retold the old stories with true passion, with here and there some true veneration thrown in for good measure. There were new images too, some of them even imbedded in popular culture, like in the summer of 1949 and later in the fall of 1962. This was years and years after the heydays of the true veneration of his kind and feeling the stirs again was of joyous relief. Things got even better when the world reached a new millennium, when the god was mentioned in rankings that didn't do him justice as a god - he was portrayed as a villain -, yet still showed his popularity.

The god drank it all up. It got even better when the new millennium was barely a decade old. It was a new story, one with many foreign elements, yet it touched base at the same time. His name was mentioned alongside that of another god - one he had often shared stories with - and he was now somehow linked to a mortal man. A human with a growing following of his own. The god wasn't worried by mortals; they had not worried him in the old times and he wasn't gonna start now. Yet they did pique his curiosity. All this newly found adoration was worthy of a reward; surely their god could pay them a visit?