The continuation
When he woke up, they had found a place to hide out and he had his people call in some favours. People who hated S.H.I.E.L.D, hydra, people all over the world who were ready and willing to help him achieve his goal.
Of course they all went under the spell too, you could never be too careful, but it didn’t make him feel any better about it. He sat, overlooking the workers and getting his bearings. But no, he wasn’t allowed even a second of rest.
In front of his eyes the world disintegrated and was replaced but that bleak gods forsaken planet, the one he was tortured on for so long. At least here he had control over his own words, his own actions. He tuned out most of it, but when the six fingered suck up reached for him, saying
“You think you know pain? He will make you wish for something sweet as pain.”
He knew all too well what Thanos was threatening. He flinched, and as his consciousness was brought falling back to midgard he tried to hold on to the words from his own mouth, trying to make himself believe them.
“You are words. You cannot harm me. You are but words.”
Their next target was decided, the steps planned out. They raided a museum, found what they were looking for, and the plan was furthered when he got caught. He was jostled into a plane, the straps binding him there digging into wounds yet to heal.
He tried to stay quiet, not letting on that he was in pain. His cuffed hands made him return to the dark cave he was bound in for killing Frigga’s golden child, and then the room the Chitauri tortured him in for a year. It was not a nice feeling. He was snapped out of his haze by the sudden rumbling of thunder.
“What’s the matter? Afraid of a little lightning?”
Damn. He had let surprise and recognition onto his face, and the stars and stripes bastard had caught on. And when he replied, he was in complete control of his words.
“I’m not overly fond of what follows.”
As soon as the words left his lips, a loud thunk was heard. Tony went to open the vehicle's hatch, and lo and behold in comes the last person Loki wanted to see. Good old Thor.
Thor grabs him by the throat and tugs him out of the plane with him into a free fall. He was dropped onto hard rock, and the air was knocked out of him. He tried to mask the gasping for air as laughter. To let this fool see his weak side was something he wouldn’t allow to happen ever again. He himself had been an idiot to ever let it happen in the first place, even after all Thor had done.
The first words out of his dear brother’s mouth were, “Where is the tesseract?”
Not even a hello. Rude. He was grabbed by the neck, again, and pulled to standing.
“I thought you dead.”
His oh so caring brother said. He had to hold back a laugh. It seemed as if the oaf actually cared, and there was a sickly sort of sadness in his voice. Still pathetic, even after all this time. Had he even looked for him when he fell? And yet there he was demanding answers and pretending he cared, that he was affected by his disappearance.
“Did you mourn?”
He couldn’t help but ask, and half of the question was spite, but the other half of him was genuinely curious who would be sad when he was gone. Who?
“We all did.”
Well, that was certainly news to him! What reason did anyone have to miss him?
“Our father-“
“Your. Your father.”
He couldn’t help the bit of venom that snuck into his cold and aloof facade. Odin was no father of his. He had never been. To think it had taken him falling off the bi frost to realise it, let alone the thousands of years of mental abuse and pain Odin had caused…
Loki slapped Thor’s hand away, his touch a reminder of the charade of family they had been playing out since childhood. He made a remark about his true parentage, and he could see Thor’s face get cloudy and the downturn of his lips at the thought of Loki’s Jotun blood. Thor opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again.
“We were raised together. We played together, we fought together! Do you remember none of that?”
Talk about insult to injury. Of course he remembered, he remembered being laughed at when he remarked upon his wishes to be more fluid with his gender.
He remembered being cast aside for the idiots four when Thor met them, and he certainly remembered all the games they played where he was the bad guy, the adversary, the outcast.
But he had been too young and too eager to fit in to stand up for himself, and when he told Thor that all he remembered was a shadow, living in the shade of his greatness, being tossed into an abyss, all of that had the weight of truth in it. He told Thor that he should have been and was for that brief time king.
If only he had the sense to tell him why, why he wanted to be king so badly. If he was, he could reach to the farthest corners of the world and bring them back, bring all his children back.
They would no longer be tortured, left to fend for their own. They could be together again without the fear of Odin separating and cutting open the seams that held them together once more.
But of course, hard headed Thor had to bring it back to himself. It was always that way with him. If it wasn’t about him it didn’t interest him, it wasn’t important. Raising his voice Thor tries to cover up Loki’s pain with his own, saying,
“So now you take the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights?”
Imagined. IMAGINED? Every bone in his body fought against the control of the Chitauri, snarling for a chance to tear his pain into Thor’s being, yet the hooks of their control dug deeper into his flesh, keeping him under the ocean of their hold on him. Thor said the earth was under his protection, and Loki laughed. He laughed hard.
While he didn’t really want to take over the mudball that was midgard, he agreed with the Chitauri on one thing. Earth was in shambles. They brought destruction and pain upon themselves, tearing them apart as they went. He could no longer listen to Thor’s drivel, and as much as it hurt to admit it pained him too much to be in the presence of one he once loved as family as they told him his 1,000 year old pain was fake, made up like the games they used to play.
His voice raised the longer they talked, and when Thor implied someone was controlling him, Loki longed to tell him how right he was. Because deep down there was the hope that maybe, just maybe, Thor did care. That it wasn’t all an act. That he could help him be rid of the shackles his mind and body had become. The emotion in his voice when Thor told him to come home was too much, too much, too much, and tears began to well in his eyes. But he would not let them slip.
This is what always happened. Someone redeemed themselves, convinced him that maybe they did care, that it was all for his own good. But even if he believed Thor, and even if he wanted to go home, he couldn’t follow Thor back now.