Confrontation
“Is this how you’re to while away eternity? Gaming?”
“It’s fun,” Thor replies offhandedly, not looking his way. “You should try it sometime.”
“I’ve been rather busy trying to keep New Asgard from falling apart in your absence. Do you know, some people here are still of the opinion that you’re their king?”
“They’ll get over it.”
“Yes, they will. They’re a resilient people. For which you are still responsible.”
“Loki,” Thor drawls, fondly but with an edge to it, “if you want the throne, just—”
“I never wanted the throne! ” Loki nearly screams at him, snatching up a book and flinging it so hard that it knocks down one of the supports for the shelf above Thor’s head. Other books and trinkets cascade down around his shoulders to the crash of breaking ceramics.
“Did you completely forget that conversation?” Loki asks, his voice gone cold and quiet as Thor stares almost blankly at him. “I understand how it might have slipped your mind, what with it being a few of the last words I ever spoke to you before you thought me dead. ‘I mourned,’” he adds, mockingly, “‘we all did,’ but you couldn’t be bothered to actually listen to me, let alone take me seriously. And why not? I was mad. Small wonder you found it more credible when you thought I was trying to rule Midgard.”
Seemingly baffled, Thor shakes his head. “What are you saying?”
“You never did know what I wanted, did you? Growing up or at any time since. I wanted our father to treat us as equals, I wanted to stop feeling like I could never measure up to some impossible standard that you seemed to master just by breathing, I wanted any number of things, but it wasn’t the throne, it was never—”
“You stole the throne!”
“I was handed the throne!” Loki counters. “Who else was going to hold it?”
Jolting to his feet, Thor advances on him, and Loki feels a thrill of triumph to have gotten some reaction out of his brother, even if it means they’re about to come to blows. A few months ago, he might’ve been concerned over his own safety, but now that his neck’s been fixed, he’s hale enough to handle himself in combat—and it’ll feel good to let loose, if it comes to that.
“You stole the throne from Odin,” Thor smolders, his fat finger poking Loki in the chest, “and held it for four years while the Nine Realms fell into chaos. Don’t tell me you never wanted the throne.”
“Oh, are we going to talk about missteps during the Convergence? After you defied the Allfather’s edict, and then—because you were relying on my aid yet wouldn’t dare to trust me to get us quietly out of his sight—fled the palace in the most public way possible? What did you think would happen when you came home, Thor? A title, a parade? If he banished you for three days just for causing a little havoc on Jotunheim, how did you expect him to respond over this new act of treason, when he was still reeling from Mother’s death?”
It hurts to throw her memory around like this, but Loki presses the issue. “I doubt he would have executed you, but you did manage to implicate every single one of your friends in your escape. Had the real Allfather held the throne when you returned, it’s quite possible they would have been hung.”
“So they would have died a few years earlier, instead of at Hela’s hands. Does it matter?”
“I bought them those four years,” Loki asserts. “I’m as much a wanderer as you are, and yet I gave that up and tied myself to the throne, for the sake of the kingdom. Volstagg’s kids got four more years with their father because of me.”
Thor narrows his eyes and huffs. “Yes, I’m sure that benefit was foremost in your mind that day.”
“Oh, do you want to guess at what was in my thoughts that day? With Odin fallen at my feet, again, after hearing that I was dead? After you’d left me for dead? After you’d brought me along on yet another suicide mission, being so kind as to disown me and threaten my life, shove me out of a flying ship and barely hold yourself back from striking me while I was still in chains?” He pushes Thor back a pace, their gazes locked, twin stares of unquenchable, trembling rage. “Do you want to take a wild guess at what was foremost in my mind that day? More than thoughts of you, or our father, or the fact that I was still bleeding and couldn’t risk going to the healers, or that cold hard knot of feeling for Mother that I couldn’t take the time to deal with right then?
“‘What do I do now?’ That’s what I kept thinking, Thor. Norns help me, what do I do now? And pardon me if you didn’t like my solution. As I recall, I tried to hand you the throne, and you preferred to run off having adventures.”
“Adventures?!” Thor splutters. “Tracking down and dealing with problems across the Nine Realms! Trying to prevent Ragnarok! Mopping up the messes that you left to fester when you dropped Odin off at a retirement home on Midgard and blocked his memories and, oh, lest I forget, let him lose his power and die. That kind of ‘adventures’, brother? Did you think I was slacking? I was off doing everything that needed to be done!
“For all the good it did,” he adds, suddenly losing whatever energy had possessed him. He turns to clump back to the sofa and throws himself onto it again, staring up at the ceiling. “We still lost Asgard. Our people were cut down again and again and again. And then, as the final insult, I let my lust for vengeance get the better of me, and couldn’t even land a death blow to save the universe. Well, half the universe, anyway.”
He slumps forward, covering his eyes with the palms of his hands. “The golden prince of Asgard. Protector of the Nine Realms. You were right, brother; I wasn’t up to the task. They should just forget about me… it’s better this way.”
Seemingly out of steam, Thor wearily reclaims his controller.
For a long moment, Loki stands there, stunned and not sure what his next move should be. It’s the first time in weeks that he’s roused Thor enough to get off the sofa for anything short of fetching more beer, the first time in months that Thor has strung together more than a few words at a time. And yet even this hasn’t really been enough to effect any lasting change.
There’s a heaviness in his stomach, as though his brother—still here, still alive, still talking to him—has been lost, perhaps for good. Or will be lost, if nothing changes the situation.
“Forget the titles,” he murmurs. “You were the boy I always looked up to, even when I didn’t want to crane my neck that high. And this… we went up against the Titan; there was always a strong chance that we would lose. Would you shame a warrior fallen in combat, if he fought on to the last?”
No answer, save for the tinny sounds of combat coming from the headset Thor still hasn’t put back on.
“But you gave up,” Loki says, stepping between Thor and the mortal tech that has so captivated his attention of late. “You sat down. After all we’ve been through, you’re here, you’re alive and free… there are people who care about you, who ask me about you, and what am I supposed to tell them, Thor? That I blew up Asgard’s dungeons, so you’ve locked yourself into this ridiculous shack ?”
When Thor doesn’t reply, he adds, darkly, “Look how far you’ve fallen. What would your Avengers think, if they could see you like this?”
“Why don’t you go ask them?” Thor challenges, bitterly but without much bite. “See what kind of welcome they give you, hmm?”
“After Wakanda? Half of them no longer think me a villain. I stood toe to toe with the heroes and defended this land just as fervently as Odin driving back the Jotnar invasion. Small good that it did us.”
“Good, you can go join them, then,” Thor grumbles. “Even you’d be a better hero than me.”
And with that verbal slap in the face, he flops onto the sofa, turns his back to Loki, and curls up to sleep.