There is nothing that will ever move him.
He has seen everything and done everything, seen things that would make Thor and all his warriors lose sleep for centuries, done things nearly as miraculous and hardly so reprehensible. There is nothing that will ever strike him as new, nothing he can flinch at in surprise. Nothing can shatter his world again.
Because he has all the reasons in the world. And besides, nobody wants to break something that is already broken. And pieces can be replaced, rips re-sewn, although awkwardly and only ever in his own wicked image.
There is nothing he regrets.
Every action and reaction has brought him to this point, this exact moment in time. Perhaps not intentionally, but what does it matter? There is no one and nothing left to fight. Or worth fighting for.
Here, in this glass cage, he is as free as he was ever meant to be. As he ever will be. There is no after.
He would laugh at the irony. Instead he sits and bides his time. His eyes twinkle.
When Thor finally comes, Loki is ready.
He is readier than he ever has been, in fact, so unconcerned is he by purpose. To think that he ever yearned for Odin's approval seems ludicrous, an unimportant memory, lost across time and space, dense and impenetrable. The stranger he was then is unobtainable except in a dream.
But Loki does not dream and nothing haunts him anymore. He is free.
There is no time for regret or remorse of self-comdemnation. There never really was.
Thor radiates coolness and mistrust. He seems hardened about the edges. Loki, by contrast, looks softer.
These past years, Loki thinks, have done Thor well. Standing squarely before him from across the glass, Thor seems for the first time a proper heir to the throne of Asgard, no longer clinging pitifully to willfull ignorance or foolish naivete. Loki has done Thor a service. All along Loki has been everything that Thor needed him to be.
And Thor, it seems, is finally returning the favour. He is finally the man, the brother Loki had always needed him to be. Because Thor is the only one who can do this. Loki has spent his life daring Thor to despise him, giving him every reason and more. Yet even now, caged as he is within this prison, this palace, he has never been more liberated. He has finally shaken the constraining bonds, the restrictive, smothering restraints of purpose and the pointless, impossible requirements pushed on him by a fake family.
By bonds.
By sentiment.
When Thor finally comes, he is everything Loki always wanted him to be. Cold and distant, threatening and mistrustful.
He is changed and that is all that matters, because Loki has changed him, given him all the qualities of a king truly worth the throne of Asgard.
"You should know that when you betray me, I will kill you."
He wants to scream that it's too late.
He wants to laugh and laugh and laugh.
Instead, he smiles.
"When do we start?"