Howdy, y'all!
First time trying to write for the MCU...oh boy. In summary Ragnarok was glorious and I love it dearly and have since been bingeing on the MCU so. That's been interesting. I actually have a couple different Loki fic ideas (most of them are sad) and yeah. We'll see how this all works out.
As for this fic, well. My friend gave me the prompt 'You always smile like you're about to cry' and then this happened. Oops. The characterisation is probably terrible but I tried? Anyway.
Hope you all enjoy, and as ever, please feel free to leave a review/follow/favourite, whatever floats your fancy! See you next time!
(Title comes from a slightly bastardised version of the lyrics from "Red Sun" by Anadel. The mood is oddly fitting for the story.)
As a child, Loki is always the sick one.
He's prone to fevers. Coughs. Something in his lungs doesn't like breathing the air here, always tries to spit it out. Loki never understands why, only that he is alone in the phenomenon and that Thor runs around the palace without trouble and eats heartily at every meal and never catches ill, no matter how many stupid stunts he pulls.
(Years later, he'll look back at all the times he sat aside, a book in one hand and the sensation that he was burning to death crawling across his skin, and he'll laugh. Of course he always felt Asgard too hot. He's meant for the cold.)
Thor is the older brother and likes to pretend that makes him the smart one. Loki, after the third time Thor tries to kick his hammer across the room in a tantrum, knows better than to believe that's true.
Thor is not the smarter of the two of them, but he's smart enough. He has the same elegance as Mjolnir, which is to say none at all, but he's charismatic, even at eight. He knows how to flatter their tutor into letting them skip lessons, how to convince Fandral into another round of sparring when Fandral knows that Thor will beat him, how to smile at the cooks and get them to slip him an extra sweet, sometimes two extras when he feels like sharing with Loki.
But for all his charisma and good intentions, Thor has never been able to manipulate Loki. Loki, who is born for mischief, who realises young what his brother is, who learns magic to supplement daggers because he's useless at swinging a battle axe but he's fast enough to manage blades, who nods and agrees when Thor is yelling because Thor breaks things when he's angry and Loki likes being in one piece. Thor grins and gets his way with everyone else, but Loki knows him well enough to be wary of his tricks.
If Thor notices Loki's caution, he doesn't say. He hugs him and laughs, and they chase each other around the palace and sprawl across their bed and Loki makes the ceiling shine with stars when he feels like showing off, because magic is the one thing he has that Thor doesn't, the only skill he can lay claim to that is his and his alone. Thor is impressed by it, though he never says so out loud, and Loki lives for the sensation of being the only person Thor ever looks up to as better, even if it is only in this one, tiny regard.
They play and laugh and grow and prank each other, and sometimes Loki goes a bit too far (though he'll always maintain that the stabbing didn't hurt Thor too badly, and his face was funny when the snake he'd been holding morphed into Loki instead) but Thor always forgives him and admires the trick, and eventually gets him back for it, so really, they're even.
Or as even as anyone can be, when it comes to Thor.
(Although he has many friends, Thor always boasts that Loki is his closest. As for Loki, he's only ever had one.)
"You always smile like you're about to cry," Thor tells him once, out of nowhere.
They've finished the day's training, are sprawled on the bed that once was theirs and now belongs only to Loki, their limbs overlapping in knots. It's been months since Thor was given a room of his own, but somehow they still always find their way back to each other.
Loki twists his head to look at Thor, his brows drawn in confusion. "I'm sorry?"
Thor rolls on his side and meets Loki's gaze. "Your smile," he says again, "when we're with the others. You always look like you're in pain."
"Maybe it's your company," Loki says, and twitches his leg out of the way before Thor can kick him.
"Very funny, brother." Thor rolls his eyes in a way that almost looks fond, and Loki feels warmth in his chest even if he knows better. "What troubles you? Are you unwell?"
Loki shakes his head. Smiles, even as he bites his lip. "I'm alright."
"You don't seem to be," Thor insists, and winces when Loki pokes him sharply in the side. "What was that for?"
"For worrying," Loki laughs. "Acting like mother doesn't suit you."
Thor huffs out a breath. "Am I not allowed to care about my brother?"
"I'm fine," Loki says again, "really." He doesn't know what to make of Thor's concern, but he's certainly not about to validate it.
Thor shakes his head. "Fine. Don't tell me." He rolls onto his back again, and Loki wonders for a moment if he's upset. Then Thor takes his hand, a familiar sort of casual tactility that they haven't shared in nearly a year. "When I'm King, you and I are going to rule together and take down any who would try to hurt us or Asgard," he declares grandly to the ceiling. "Maybe you'll tell me what troubles you then, when we've vanquished all there is to fear."
Loki squeezes Thor's hand and smiles again, faint as the stars he's cast over their heads. "Maybe I will."
It is summer, and Thor is laughing, the sound bright and ringing. Loki hears it less and less these days as the anger knotted up in Thor's guts claims more and more of his sense of humour. His eyes are electric when he is fighting and Loki never knows what to say, because fights are not and never have been for him.
But Thor only laughs when he has a sword to his neck and Loki misses the sound when it's gone, and so he fights anyway. He studies magic and gets quicker at casting spells, smoother at disguising his movements. He leaves Thor constantly second-guessing himself, is the only one capable of making Thor uncertain. They're still as good as children but Thor's eyes spark as electric as the lightning he wields when he fights, brighter and bluer than Jotun skin.
They fight, and they fight, and they fight. Sometimes Loki casts illusions and watches Thor chase his tail before taking him out. Sometimes Thor sees through the ploy and shocks the spells apart to claim victory. Sometimes they both end up tangled on the ground, scraped and bruised and laughing too hard to continue because they know each other too well for their fights to end in anything but a stalemate.
The Warriors Three watch and laugh, and Fandral and Volstagg place bets on who will win the next round. Thor grins broadly and holds out a hand to pull Loki up, and Loki wants the moment to last forever.
Thor doesn't know how to walk away.
They are barely out of adolescence when Thor talks everyone into going to Norheim. There is a fight (there is always a fight where Thor is involved) and they are outnumbered. They escape because Loki summons smoke to hide them and because Thor fights like it's what he's born to do, blood dripping from his lip as he swings Mjolnir around and down and into body after body after body.
"We should be more careful," Loki tells him when they've made it home safely, and Thor laughs like he's joking, limping as he makes his way to the training field.
They fight again in Niflheim amongst the fog and the mist, in Muffelheim amongst the smoke. They fight against elves and dwarves and creatures of rock. They fight though there are no wars to be had, because Thor hates sitting about and because he still only grins when someone is throwing a punch and Loki-
He doesn't know what to do. The Warriors Three are just as bad as Thor and Sif might just be worse, blinded as she is to the truth of Thor's nature. Loki doesn't know what to do, so in the end he does nothing, only stays, because at least if he's there he can protect them from their own idiocy and maybe he can keep them all alive.
They fight and they bleed constantly. Thor avoids death by a few feet. Then by inches. Then by less. Loki watches his brother creep closer and closer to the edge every day, blinded by his own legend and arrogance and there is nothing he can do to stop it.
Thor fights, and fights, and fights.
There is nothing Loki can do to save Thor from himself, but he can keep him from taking the throne and razing Asgard with his stupidity. He lets the Jotuns in through a hidden pathway he found years ago that he hasn't even told Frigga about, then leaves them to their work. They will cause no trouble the Destroyer can't solve, and the resultant anger will be enough to show Odin that Thor isn't ready for the throne, and maybe then Thor will listen to reason for the first time in years.
Except Thor is not angry, he's livid. Heimdall is too stupid to tell him no, and they go to Jotunheim, and Loki's skin is blue in the frost giant's grasp when Thor looks for a war and finds it and then disappears into the Bifrost and takes all sense with him when he goes.
There is nothing left that Loki knows. He is the son of Laufey, the son of no one. He is the king. He is cast out by the Warriors Three and by Sif, not that that's anything new.
Thor is gone, and Loki is cold, cold, cold.
(It's just a joke. He didn't mean it. It's a joke.)
They are brothers and then they are not. Loki hangs from the Bifrost with the abyss at one hand and Thor at the other, and Odin lords over both of them. He has tried to prove himself, tried to be the better son and all he wants is to sleep, to belong, to be anything but what he is.
No, Loki, Odin says, and then Loki, no, but Loki is not Odin's son and he is falling, down and down into what he hopes will be rest, but death doesn't find him, Thanos does, and everything only gets worse. His life rips apart at the edges, one bright blue burst at a time, and Thor tells him they mourned him on Asgard but all he ever hears is no, Loki, and he can't believe anything anymore.
His home is Asgard, is nowhere, is a cell amongst all the other criminals, and he never knows what to say when Frigga comes so he mocks her too until he forces her away, except that then she's not just away, she's gone and there is nothing left for him but destroying his cell and his furniture and he wants this whole damn realm to burn sometimes and-
The world around him falls and falls and falls apart, and Thor is the only thread that ties it together, the only constant Loki can measure anything by but even he is changing. His eyes aren't the same blue they once were when they fought, and Loki feels the time nesting in their bones like a parasite, eating them away.
No matter how often they try to escape each other, he and Thor are tied together. When the world falls apart, it will fall with them in it, still desperately trying to find a way to keep the other alive in whatever way they can, even if it's only a memory, only a chance.
"I'm here," Loki says with a bottle stopper in his hand, and there is no fight but Thor's eyes are blue, blue, blue.
Loki knows the ship when he sees it.
The Other once promised that Thanos would make him long for something as sweet as pain, and standing in the shadow of his vessel, Loki knows the Mad Titan has come to collect and he's scared, but not like he used to be. He is not the God of Mischief for nothing. He can buy them time.
Except he doesn't know how much good even that will do them, and so he tricks Thor just in case, one last time, shoves him on an escape pod and launches it against his will. Thanos doesn't make prisoners of kings, and Loki-
Loki is a coward, and is not afraid to admit it. If there is one thing in this life he can avoid, he never wants to know again what it is to watch Thor die. He sends him away and hopes that it's enough, but the world falls and falls and falls apart, and Thanos blows the remnants of Asgard out of the sky.
They make their way to Midgard eventually, safe under the assumption that they have been left for dead. They reunite with Thor there, and with the rest of the heroes of Earth who hate Loki almost as much as he sometimes hates himself, and they stage a plan to fight back against the Mad Titan.
Then Thanos catches them. Thor first. The others, one piece at a time.
He has too many stones. Too much power, but all Loki needs is some time and he can make the whole thing work, can come up with some sort of trick to solve this issue.
But he doesn't have time. He has nothing to bargain with. Thanos holds Thor in one hand and demands answers, and Loki gives them because there is no choice and there is always time for tricks later, except that there isn't.
For once in his life, he's right. Thanos doesn't make prisoners of kings. He holds Thor in one hand and laughs, and Loki-
He hears the bones crunching for days.
It's been weeks or months or years. He hasn't slept. He can't.
They escaped, some of them. They didn't win the first fight. Loki doubts that they'll win the second, but those who are left insist that they have to try, and he-
He is too tired to argue. He doesn't care.
Rogers finds him sitting on the bed – not his, none of this is his – and frowns. Tells him to suit up, because it's time to fight the Mad Titan and bring this all to an end. Loki wonders if Rogers realises it ended a long time ago, but the good Captain is gone before he can be asked.
Loki stands in front of a mirror without meeting his own eyes, and magic flows through his veins as the golden helmet settles on his head. The horns are starting to look bent, and the metal is dented and scraped from all the fights it's seen. Thor would tell him he looks inelegant, would tease him endlessly until Loki came up with a jab in response. Loki can see him just over his shoulder in the mirror, body angled away so the light catches on his good eye instead of the patch. There's a smile on his lips, the same one he'd had when their positions were reversed and Loki had returned because they were constants, the only threads tying each other together in the end.
Maybe you're not so bad after all, brother.
He is. He is. He is.
If you were here, I might even give you a hug.
Loki knows now how it felt all those years, when he'd left Thor to talk to illusions. What it's like to interact with someone who is there, and then isn't. He wants this illusion broken. He wants to apologise.
He still hears the bones crunching. There is nobody to hug him. Nobody to try.
The sky is red and cold and burning, the colour of Jotun eyes. The earth is rumbling with the Mad Titan's laughter. Soon, Loki knows it will stop.
("We were raised together. We played together. We fought together. Do you remember none of that?")
It is summer, and Thor is laughing. Loki is a snake and Thor holds him the way he never holds other people, smiles at him like he's something precious.
("You give up this pointless dream. You come home.")
They are the kings of a country that doesn't exist. Wherever home is, Loki doesn't know it anymore.
("All I ever wanted was you and Odin, dead at my feet!")
It's just a joke. He didn't mean it. It's a joke.
("You always smile like you're about to cry," Thor tells him, a million years ago.)
"I'm sorry," Loki says, the words like rust on his tongue. There is no one left to tell.