Chapter Text
Afterwards, Thor went with the other Avengers to clean the smashed-up robots and other debris from the street below. Loki, his blood still running cold, took deep breaths of warm air as he returned to his normal shape. In one corner, keeping watch in his tatters and rags, was Banner.
"That was really something," Banner murmured softly, as if to himself, as if having a soft voice would fool anyone. Loki ignored him, and studied his hand instead: the color was coming back, the silvery blue veins receding. But the man-monster would not stop talking. "I didn't know you could do that."
"You know so little of anything," Loki snapped, "I am surprised your ignorance even registers."
Banner surprised him by laughing. "Yeah, well, I'm hopelessly provincial: lived on one world my whole life." He was sliding into a pale green shirt and fitting tiny metal spectacles onto his eyes: another lie. Loki narrowed his stare as Banner drifted closer. Who did he think he was fooling? "All the same, I've never seen anything like that. I've only ever seen two other blue people and both were mutants—human beings. Yellow eyes, not red. But that ice-creature you became: what was it?"
Creature. Loki showed his teeth, lips pulling back into a snarl. Banner didn't react: he just waited expectantly, calm to the point of dullness, like a pudding.
"I thought Thor would have told you. The Jotun are enemies of Asgard. Monstrous beyond the telling of it. Bringers of Eternal Night. Kings of Ice." Loki was strangling in cold fury; he remembered Laufey calling Odin a murderer and a thief. Blood father, false father. Two fathers, no father. "I was born of that world," he told Banner. "I am of it. It is my true face, though I hate it."
Banner's face twitched and he went quickly into the kitchen. "Yeah," he said, beginning to busy himself operating some small machine. "I know what that is. You want a cup of coffee?"
"A what?" Loki asked, but the brew was quite satisfying.
"Ah, you have discovered one of Midgard's many treasures," Thor said appreciatively, upon his return. "I like that drink very much. I cannot think why we have not brewed something like it on Asgard."
"I shudder to fucking think," Stark muttered, pouring himself a mug, "of you people on caffeine."
Loki pointedly ignored the monkey-man. "Yes, it is good," he said to his brother. "It is reassuring to know that there are some local delicacies. I had feared we'd be limited to slops and sodapop."
"Hey, hang on there, Epicurious.com." Stark propped himself against the counter between them, forcibly interjecting himself into the conversation. "You're standing at the culinary center of the world. Paris thinks they are, of course, but they're wrong, of course, like they are about everything."
Loki whistled, pursing his lips. "Ah, but alas: the center of nowhere is still nowhere."
"Oh, those are fighting words," Stark said. "Daniel Boulud is gonna kick your ass."
"Wait: those are fighting words?" Rogers boggled. "What about, 'Kneel before me?' or--"
"Eh, that was so last summer," Stark replied. "You can't live in the past. Well, you can."
Thor stood up and clapped Stark on the shoulder hard enough to knock him back a bit. "My friend," he said, "you have shown yet again that you have a charitable mind and a generous heart."
"Sorry, who's he talking to?" Barton asked Natasha.
"I can't believe I'm hearing this," Rogers protested.
"He did just stop an army of killer robots on my doorstep," Stark pointed out. "He saved you by throwing up that ice blind--hell, the guy shot icicles out of his fingers. That was pretty badass."
"That isn't the question," Barton said through gritted teeth. "We know he's badass. Consider his badassery stipulated."
"The question," Rogers insisted, "is: will he murder us all in our beds?"
"I dunno," Stark said; through all this, he still hadn't taken his eyes off Loki. Loki showed him a deliberately unsettling smile. "Do you know? " No answer. "What about you, Thor: do you know?"
Thor was insulted at the question. "Of course he will not. I vouch that he will not."
"Doc?" Stark asked, and Banner looked up from his coffee and shrugged.
"Past performance does not predict future results," he replied.
"I thought you were a scientist," Barton said accusingly.
"I am a scientist," Banner said, jamming his hands in his pockets.
"Natasha?" Stark asked.
"Well," she sighed, appearing to consider the matter, "they do say keep your friends close and your enemies closer--"
"Too close!" Barton and Rogers yelped simultaneously.
"--but fortune cookie fortunes aside, I'm in favor of anything that gets me a dinner from Boulud," and at this, Stark laughed and turned to her and said, "Right, that's the spirit."
The food, Loki had to admit, was uniformly excellent. Stark got on the phone and shortly thereafter plate after plate of food was brought up to them and spread upon the table, Steve Rogers having categorically refused to endanger New York City by permitting Loki to go out to a restaurant. This despite Thor's well-reasoned argument that they had just been out enjoying themselves in the city of Berlin and it was none the worse for wear. "Oh, well, Berlin," Rogers snorted inexplicably.
Loki had an exquisitely cooked bit of fish, and a lamb chop cooked with fennel and fig sauce. There was also something delicate and delicious called caviar that Loki thought surpassed even coffee.
Thor was scraping the fig sauce off his plate with his knife. "Is that it?" he asked, and Stark sighed and had someone bring him a steak.
The meal was so good that it actually seemed to have the power to lessen hostilities among them: oh, certainly, the Avengers were all still watching him warily, but several of them had moved their hands off their weapons, and Barton had actually put down his bow for long enough to enjoy his panna cotta.
The pleasures of dessert could not mitigate the dread he felt at losing the thread of his narrative. To be the enemy of these creatures was pointless: they were living their tiny lives, banging rocks together and playing video games and inventing clever desserts, like this delicious braised pear with gelato. Oh, there was some small pleasure to be found in unnerving them, as when Loki held out his hand to Thor, announcing his intention to retire, and delighted in the shock writ so plain upon his friends' faces as Thor joined him. But Thor was not in the least ashamed or distressed, nor could Loki wish he had been: it was not for any man to judge the behavior of gods, and Loki missed nearly all of the mortals' own mildly amusing squawking and fluttering while Thor was kissing him.
Loki was uneasy and impatient with himself in their adequately luxurious quarters; he did not even spare the time to crack the lenses of the staring optical devices, but drove Thor into the bed and took him, channeling everything into it: this fuck, this connection, this body beneath his. Thor panted and shuddered and begged for more, for more, more--please--and Loki dragged him to the edge of the bed and shoved his shoulders off it, pushing his thigh up and fucking him upside down, head flung backwards, golden hair grazing the floor and blood rushing to his face.
Lying in bed afterwards he thought to persuade Thor to leave at once -- perhaps a visit to Gotenheim for the annual tournament. Movement was not plot, but might at least provide the simulacrum of one, substitute for purpose, for meaning. But Thor had been made so obviously happy by the cessation of hostilities that Loki had trouble devising a winning approach. "I never doubted," Thor murmured as he drifted off to sleep the sleep of the well-fucked. "I never doubted you at all," and Loki bit back his reply, which was that doubt required thought, where credulity required nothing at all.
Still, he came to see some of the pleasures of this life. He had been cast in a comedy, slumming with his brother-god among the chimpanzees. Stark was engrossed in his little machines, while Banner peered through microscopes at insects yet more trivial than himself. Rogers spent hours punching invisible demons while Romanoff gripped rings and spun herself through the air. It was fun to watch them all: Loki felt he now understood why living with animals was said to be therapeutic. His brother and Clint Barton spent endless hours playing Grand Theft Auto and shouting: Loki did not understand why you would pretend to drive through city streets and kill civilians when you could do the real thing, just outside. Possibly the game was more challenging. He pressed his hand to the window: New York was interesting, a city built on ancient physics and half-understood magic. He felt sure he could blow the buildings down but resisted the urge to try: Thor would only make him build them up again.
It was all right, surely, merely to eat and drink and enjoy the simple life. It was no different from lying before the fire in the great hall of Hreftheim, dozing while the hounds licked your fingers. Great men often had such interludes before their years of greatness: Halvard's Prince Gunner spent his youth in the bordello, and Shakespeare's Prince Hal logged hours in the tavern, cavorting with peasants and thieves. Thor Odinson himself, future king of all Asgard, was happily executing cheats in Grand Theft Auto. Why should he not take a role in the comedy? He had watched many episodes of Friends. He could--
He turned away, dry-heaving, and pressed his forehead to the cold glass of the window: his whole body rebelling against it. No. He was not made for comedy. He would smash everything, redirect rivers to drown and mountains to crush bones: that at least would provoke growth and change and challenge, for himself and for others. If that be monstrosity, so be it. Better to be a monster, if it were that or this.
Determined now, he whirled, hand extended - a power surge to start, he thought; one strong enough to blow out all Stark's equipment, and the windows besides. But Thor was before him, coming toward him with a serious face as Stark blazed past. "The harbor," Thor said grimly, seizing his arm. "Come,"-- and there was a vast ship on fire, already listing dangerously onto one side. Stark was desperately trying to keep the boat upright, a spark of fire against the sea. Thor dropped Loki onto one of the decks, then landed beside him. Around them, panicked people were fighting to get into lifeboats.
"I'll put out the fire," Thor shouted, rushing away. "Help these civilians!" Loki looked at the screaming, shoving mass of humanity with distaste and considered putting them all out of their misery. Someone moved past him - Rogers - shouting, "Citizens! Please! No need to panic! Let's have a nice orderly evacuation! Step away from the--" and there was a horrified gasp as the crowd surged against the railing and knocked a woman who'd been stupidly trying to climb over it off balance. She screamed, and Loki leapt out, catching himself on the railing, and grabbed her by the ankle. Her purse tumbled down, spinning, and landed in the sea with a tiny splash. Loki yanked her up and dumped her unceremoniously back on the deck, head first, legs in the air. In its hysteria, the crowd didn't seem to notice, though Rogers shot him a nasty glare before turning back to continue waging his pathetic campaign of cooperation.
"People!" Rogers shouted. "Come on, now: stand back--"
Loki strode up to him and gripped him tightly by the shoulder. "You fool," he said, casting a spell with a twist of his hand. "Their consent is not required." The spell rippled through the crowd like a shockwave. The jostling stopped. "What," Rogers said, open mouthed. "What the hell did you--"
There was a deafening hiss, and then a cloud of black smoke belched upward, white smoke pushing up from underneath. Loki turned to watch; a moment later Thor flew out of the smoke, looking sooty and a bit singed. Romanoff appeared too, breathless and panting, from a side door.
"That was no accident," Romanoff said darkly. "That was a bomb: your standard homemade job, ammonium nitrate, nitromethane--" Stark flew up and onto the deck, landing with a thump. "That was a bomb," she repeated.
"Yeah, I know," Stark said. "Banner's taking samples. Hopefully there's something we can--" He looked around at the passengers, who were smiling beatifically at him; a herd of sheep. "What the hell's the matter with these people?" Rogers pointed accusingly at Loki.
Loki rolled his eyes. "They're fine. A touch of amnesia; perfectly harmless. It stopped them throwing each other off the deck - though why I bothered, I can't imagine. There's billions of you left."
Rogers stepped forward and stabbed a finger at him. "You can't-- You can't just--" but Stark suddenly had a wild coughing fit, glaring and waving at Rogers to step back, and then said: "What the Cap' means, of course, is that it was really good you saved all those people. Really good work there."
Rogers looked like he had developed some sort of bizarre facial tic. "Yes," he managed finally. "Good work. Um...thanks a lot. Um, Loki," and Thor clapped his shoulder, looking proud enough to burst.
Back at Stark Tower, still feeling unsettled, Loki transformed into a raven and flew up and around in midtown, reveling in the freedom of his wings and pausing only to rip apart and eat a family of nesting sparrows. Feeling infinitely better, Loki flew back to the tower, only to discover the Avengers in the middle of an argument, with his brother and Steve Rogers going at it, Tony Stark shuffling between them, hands outstretched to keep them apart, in the awkward role of peacemaker.
"--any longer!" Rogers was shouting at Thor. "This is ridiculous, keeping a mass murderer in the--"
"Do not speak of Loki like that," Thor said in a low, dangerous voice.
"Loki is a lunatic," Rogers insisted.
"He's a powerful lunatic," Stark pointed out. "He's a magician--hell of a weapon for the utility belt."
"Loki is a god and a king," Thor proclaimed. "He is also my brother."
Stark tilted his head to one side. "A little more than that, no?"
Thor flushed. "He's adopted," he said, defensively. "But he is of my blood, all the same. We were raised together, trained together. We ate of the same meat. Loki is the other half of me, and it is not only he who needs an anchor, lest he loses his way. We are ravejard, he and I--"
"He vas my boyfriend!" Tony Stark said, throwing out his arms. Thor stared, and Tony said: "Don't worry about it; we'll watch it, you'll like it."
"Horsepuckey!" Rogers was suddenly on his feet. "This is total horsepuckey. You're nothing like-- When Loki loses his way, Thor, he kills people. Hundreds. Thousands. You would never--"
"I have," Thor said.
There was a moment of silence. Rogers looked shaken, then said, rallying. "I'm not talking about defending us from invading aliens. This isn't about Dresden, or Hiroshima. I'm talking about--"
"I know," Thor said. "And I tell you, I have. I did."
Rogers shook his head vehemently. "Not like that," he insisted.
Loki had wished countless times to see his brother shamed, but he had never imagined this. "Exactly like that," Thor said, ugliness creasing his golden skin. "I know what it is to enter a world with murder in your heart. I did it before he did; to Jotunheim. To the world of his people. That it is a world you care nothing for makes no difference."
Loki could not bear to hear more. He fled, he flew to the very top of the building, and let the raging wind tear his feathers away and drag him back into his own shape, into his own armor, his own skin. It was cold there, he supposed; he didn't feel it himself, as he'd never felt the cold. The parapet was beneath his feet. Far below and all around him, in the glittering towers and stone paths they'd built in their ant-like way, millions of tiny New Yorkers went about their daily business. He stood with hands clenched at his sides, feeling shaken to his very foundation.
He had not lost his story. He had never lost it at all. This was the story, and it was a terrible one: of hubris, of savagery and exile. He had always wanted to be Thor's equal, and so he was, but not as he thought. He and Thor had both waged war on innocent worlds. They had both been cast away. They had both been wrong, and had wronged others. Jotunheim--and something in him seized up, hurting, at the thought of it. Jotunheim, forced to bear first Thor's wrath and then his own violence, and with the memory of Thor's ashamed, crumpled face, Loki found himself panting in short savage bursts, gulping them from the howling wind where it tore at his cloak.
His hands went to his head, fingers threading into his hair at the roots and tightening: twin points of pain upon the skull, where horns might one day have grown, if he had not been plucked from the altar. He would have slain every Jotun alive. He had slain his father; he would have destroyed the entire race of his own blood, if Thor had not stopped him. Thor had saved him from that, had saved Jotunheim.
Thor had saved himself.
Loki opened his eyes, calming a little, trying to control his breath. It was possible, then, that there could be redemption as well as horror in this story. That Thor, ever his elder brother, was simply a chapter ahead, in a tale with a different ending entirely than the one Loki had always envisioned. Not the younger brother casting the elder into the shade at last, proving himself triumphantly worthy of a solitary throne -- but also not the elder proven unassailably nobler, of a higher order entirely. Instead two ascending hand in hand, clawing their way together to the high seat.
Loki looked down again at the people below. He found he could even feel a little of Thor's generosity for them: the thought of it no longer made him want to sneer and rage. They were so vulnerable, these little humans. No special powers, no natural armor or claws: few advanced weapons. They would be prey for any superior race that came to their planet--and superior races would come, tempted by the easy pickings. Loki watched the traffic crawling up Park Avenue South, then made a tiny circle with his finger and stopped a bright yellow taxi from colliding with a bus. The fact that this was not a world he cared for made no difference. He was a king and a god: arbitrary interventions were his business.
He stayed there watching some time longer.
Thor came up and found him sometime later, when the sun had gone down; the wind had died a little and a dazzling array of lights shone across the island's length, little people going back and forth in their windows, talking and eating and loving and fighting. "Here you are: I have been looking for you. Come, we are all having--" He stopped and gazed intently at Loki, then frowned. "Brother, are you well?"
"Yes," Loki said, and found that it was true. "Quite well," and impulsively he caught Thor's shoulders and kissed him.
"Ah," Thor said, confused but happy. "Stark has commanded a mighty array of pizza for our pleasure this evening. I thought you might--"
"Yes," Loki said. "Yes, I would," and he went with Thor back into the tower, and turned the page.
THE END