Chapter Text
Loki was lounging on his bed reading when Tony burst into the room without knocking. “Loki! Thank God. Babe, we’ve got to get out of here.” Loki only looked at him, not moving. “Loki… Thor’s here. He smashed up SHIELD headquarters, demanding that they hand you over. They’re going to do it. I’m sorry.”
Loki still did not move. “Did Thor say what he intends to do with me?”
“He was vowing to put you back in that cell,” Tony answered reluctantly.
Loki nodded and finally stood up. But instead of moving to leave, he started unbuttoning his shirt. “Take off your clothes,” he said. “We don’t have much time.”
“What?” Tony said.
When they were done, Loki let himself drift off to sleep, confident that Tony would take care of things. Sure enough, Loki was awakened by a familiar, very strong hand yanking him out of the bed.
“Thor!” Loki blinked at his foster brother’s enraged face. He didn’t even have to fake being frightened.
Thor snarled at him. “Dress.”
Holding Thor’s gaze, Loki conjured clothing onto himself.
“What are you going to do with me?” Loki forced himself to ask.
“What I promised. Put you back in your cell. Mother wouldn’t want me to give you the fate you deserve.” Thor dragged him out of the bed. Tony was standing by the door, looking sick. He’d had a few drinks, Loki could tell even without getting close enough to smell the whiskey on him.
Loki let his eyes widen. “Tony? You - you said-“
Thor sneered. “Said what? That he loved you? Mortals are fickle by nature.”
Hm. Perhaps Thor’s feelings for the mortal Jane had been more serious than Loki had known. Or perhaps Thor was merely angry at a rare rejection.
Thor was clamping shackles onto Loki’s wrists, the ones Loki had worn for his sentencing. If he tried to do any magic, blades would emerge and slice off his hands.
“Mother would be so proud of you now.” Loki put as much malice as he could into his tone. As expected, the reply was Thor’s fist connecting with his jaw. Not a very hard punch, as Thor’s blows went.
“Hey, that’s enough!” Tony sounded completely appalled, even after everything he had seen Thor do. “He’s already in chains, you don’t have to-“
Thor released Loki and summoned Mjölnir, advancing on Tony. Who of course didn’t have the sense to run, or grovel. Dammit. Loki should have realized Tony wouldn’t have the stomach for this moment.
He could think of only one way to distract Thor from attacking Tony. Loki lunged past Thor, a useless attempt to reach the door. It worked: Thor forgot about Tony in favor of seizing Loki by the shoulder, slamming him against the nearest wall, and planting his fist in Loki’s stomach, twice.
Loki stayed leaned over for as long as he was allowed, gasping for breath and hoping Tony wouldn’t interfere again. He should have warned Tony that Thor would do this. It wasn’t as if Loki wasn’t used to it.
Tony still looked sick when Thor hauled Loki upright and marched him out to the balcony. Loki stumbled keeping up. He got a glimpse of Tony’s stricken face before the Bifrost took them away.
Then they were in the Observatory, guards waiting to accompany them. Loki would have preferred to be stoic, but his game required that he make hopeless appeals.
“Thor, I can still be of use to you.” Thor ignored him, gripping Loki by his hair and striding along, forcing Loki to walk with his spine twisted. Twenty guards (Loki felt flattered by their number) fell into step around them. “Keep me shackled! Keep me on the leash your father had made for me! Just do not put me back in that cell! I’m no use to you there.”
Thor set his mouth in a grim line. Loki kept up with his desperate bargaining as they reached the palace and he was dragged through its corridors. “Thor, please, at least let me have a window. Put me in the tower instead of the dungeon. Let me see the sky! You can’t know what it’s like, underground, never seeing it. Please!”
Thor did not answer as he dragged Loki down the stairs. Loki had only gone down them once, and up them once, but they were all too familiar anyway.
They stopped in front of Loki’s old cell. The broken fragments of the furniture Frigga had smuggled to him still littered the floor. Grim-faced, Thor shoved him inside.
“Thor, we were brothers for a thousand years. You loved me once. Have some mercy!”
“I have. You live.” Thor activated the force field that would keep him in.
“Brother, please.”
Thor looked at him. “Do you recall the last time you said those words to me?”
Of course, Thor could not at this moment recall the hundreds of times that Loki had saved Thor’s life or swallowed Thor’s insults. All he recalled was when after a thousand years of loyalty, Loki had at last been driven to turn against him.
Loki went very still. “Yes.” He said it quietly. “That time, the trick was that you should not have had mercy upon me, and you did. This time, the trick is that you should. And I suppose you won’t.”
Thor snorted, turned on his heel, and stalked down the corridor.
Even after everything that had passed between them, the sight of Thor turning his back twisted inside Loki.
“Thor!” Loki shouted after him. When there was no reaction, he screamed. “BROTHER!”
Thor did not turn around. He climbed the stairs and was out of sight.
Loki sank to the familiar floor. There was no reason not to spend the next half hour having a good cry.
Then he made himself rest. He would need his strength for what came next.
When he judged enough time had passed, Loki stood up and said a word. The shackles opened and fell. Odin always had underestimated him. A moment of concentration dissipated the force field.
“You could’ve escaped any time?” Tony had asked earlier that day, incredulous.
“Yes.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you?”
“I needed time to heal. To rest. And then… once out of my cell, where would I go? Even if I escaped the palace, there was nowhere in the Nine Realms where Asgard would not pursue me.”
He had not added that he had been waiting to see if Odin would relent. If Thor would visit him, or pass a message to him through their mother.