Thor: Only if for a Night

Disclaimer: Thor and all of its characters, locations, etc. belong to their respective owners; I'm just borrowing. No copyright infringement intended!

Author's Note: This was written way back in October for my very dear friend Alydia Rackham, who shares a birthday with me. Somehow, I completely missed posting it (though I emailed it her, so don't think that I forgot our birthday!), so I give it to you now. Enjoy!

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Loki felt his ears perk up briefly as footsteps padded outside of his cell. He relaxed almost immediately; it was merely another rotation of guards coming on shift. It was the same pattern every day, so blindingly predictable that it was driving him mad. He'd begun to wonder if perhaps Odin had decided to bypass his trial entirely and subject him to this as punishment; endless routine and monotony and solitude. It certainly wouldn't surprise him. After all of the lies he had endured, why should he expect fair treatment now, even by Asgardian standards?

The sound of footfalls ceased, and Loki leaned back against the wall. What indeed could be expected from such fools as these?

Silence reigned over his small prison. He'd resented it at first, despised the quite. He had spent hours shouting uselessly at the guards, or indulging in wordless, piercing screams, hoping to rattle his captors. But it had showed no apparent effects save a worried visit from Thor – who he had stubbornly ignored – and had left him oddly exhausted. It hadn't taken him long to give up on the activity.

Which brought him back to the boredom. He would never admit it, of course; they must believe him to be above such things. But the sameness just might kill him before Odin or Thor had the chance...

Loki frowned, his train of thought interrupted by the arrival of a new presence outside. He heard the guards speaking softly, but he hadn't heard the newcomer approach. Setting his jaw, he debated getting up but decided against it. The lack of obvious approach suggested an assassin, and he was hardly about to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing him frightened.

It is a bit below Odin to send others to do his unpleasant tasks, he thought as the door was released from its magical lock. He had expected a public execution, something with screaming masses and cruel laughter as he died. But such a spectacle, it seemed, was not to the Allfather's taste today. A coward to the last.

There were very few things in the Realms that could take Loki, the Trickster and Mischief-Maker, by surprise. His brother's soft and unarmed entrance into the cell brought the list to a grand total of one.

He stiffened, all of his senses coiling like a startled snake. Thor closed the door behind him, and the locks slipped back into place.

For all of his shock, Loki found his voice before Thor did. "So the Allfather has sent you," he sneered, throwing all of the scorn and disgust he could muster behind his voice. "How very unsurprising. And quite fitting too, really; the 'true' son sent to kill the monster in your midst. I should have thought you'd be here to end my life days ago. Or did Odin simply forget my existence until today?"

Thor sighed quietly, reacting with none of the fury and fervor that Loki remembered. "Are you still so angry that you refuse to see reason, brother?" he asked, a heavy sort of sadness in his voice.

Loki hated that kind of false pity.

"You are not my brother!" he spat. "My usurper, my captor, the son of my kidnapper. That is not a brother."

"Do you not tire of your hatred?" Thor pressed. "We bear no grudge against you."

"Nor should you; it was I who was lied to. Betrayed."

"Our father never lied about loving you as his son," Thor protested, his voice rising. "If you were not still so stubbornly angry you would understand that he has tried to give you everything. Give up this pointless war, Loki! Come home. Reclaim the name of Odinson."

"Is that why the Allfather has sent you, then? Not to murder me, but to beguile me with further lies? He should have sent Mother; words were never your gift." Loki shook his head. "And so it is that Odin's bright and shining heir must leave here in failure. I have lived in your shadow for all of my life, Thor. I will not go back willingly now that I am finally free of you."

"...I never intended for you to be a shadow."

"And you never intended to get yourself banished, and Odin never intended me to know the truth about myself. Yes, I've heard all of the excuses before."

"Things were not always as they were now," Thor reminded him, his face unnervingly thoughtful as he met Loki's eyes. "Think, brother. Remember what it was like."

Loki glared back at him, but he could feel his gaze losing its edge as memories rose unbidden into his mind's eye. Flashes of childhood – mock-battles with Thor, racing wooden horses through the halls, a birthday when the older boy had presented him with his most prized possession as a gift. Warm images, pulling feelings out from where he'd buried them deep inside. Things he had intentionally tried to hide.

Thor's expression didn't waver, but Loki realized that his must have when Thor gave a sad smile. "See?" he said. "I know that you remember the good times."

"There were no good times," Loki hissed, but his tone lacked conviction as he caught a flash of the day that he and Thor – still quite young and curious – had sneaked into the kitchen and devoured an enormous cake intended for a banquet. It had taken days to clean all of the frosting out of their hair.

For his part, Thor didn't contradict him outright. "You're thinking about the sea serpent you wanted to adopt, aren't you?"

Loki snorted. "Hardly. As I recall, you were the one who carried it home and begged Mother to let it live in the healing pools."

"You were not even going to ask her if you could put it there."

"If you must know, I was remembering that cake we made ourselves ill on." As Thor chuckled at the memory, Loki realized how easily his brother had baited him. One minute they were in the middle of a shouting match – as it should be – and the next he'd somehow been tricked into reminiscing. A rather weak play, really; and it frustrated Loki to no end that he had not even seen it until it was far too late. He was even more frustrated when he found himself feeling a bit proud of his brother for using his own methods of trickery against him.

This was not how conversations with Thor were supposed to go. They were enemies. Loki was supposed to be furious; he was furious. And yet...

"That was all your fault, you know," he informed his brother loftily. "You thought it looked like a mountain, and you decided to climb it."

Thor grinned. "I seem to remember you suggesting a race to the summit," he recalled, sliding down against the opposite wall and resting his hands on his knees. "A race that you won, I believe."

"Of course I did; I always won. If you hadn't added your dead weight to the top, perhaps the cake might have survived its ordeal instead of collapsing."

"Indeed. But then we could not have bragged that we, as brothers, could reduce mountains to rubble..."

As the conversation continued, there was a part of Loki – a large part – that hated every second of it. The fact that he and his so-called brother breathed the same air was infuriating. But there was also a part of him that remembered the days before the anger; a time of easy banter and closeness that he would never admit he missed.

He didn't miss it enough to chase after it. The cards had been dealt, and things were what they were. But even in spite of his anger and hatred and betrayal, in the end he saw no reason why an Asgardian and a Jotun couldn't pretend to be brothers again. Just for a night.

The End.