A/n: Okay, so this was originally gonna be for another fandom, but then I thought that it didn't really work that well for the other person and then Loki popped into my head, (maybe because of season 2 releasing which… lots of feelings, let's say), and I went with it. While writing, I had to search something up and ended up finding out that in Dark World/ after Avengers, he was actually in solitary confinement for a year and a half which no wonder he looked so terrible in that one scene but I definitely changed my og plan after that. Hope you enjoy and see you at the end.
Being alone was nothing new to Loki.
Being alone in solitary confinement was unfortunately nothing new either, nor was being lonely, or any other alone he could think of. Come to think of it, he found himself alone more often than he'd like. And each time, it only seemed to get worse.
It made sense that he was the type of person to live off of interactions with other people. He was a showman after all, a con artist, an actor but what was the fun, how could one be those things without an audience? Without anyone to perform for? One of the fundamentals of theatre was that all you needed was one actor and one audience member. And here he was, an actor without an audience.
He supposed he couldn't blame himself though, not entirely. About half or more than that of the times he'd found himself alone had been the result of something he'd done or said. Yes, he lived off of social situations, but he also had a bad habit of killing the mood. His idea of fun was a unique one, not shared by many others. So after a while, the fun would become one-sided and he would be bored and go and be alone of his own volition or the other person would just plain leave him alone. Then, of course, because that was just the way bad luck loved to torture him, it was always the rare person he wished would leave him alone who would be the ones to steadfastly refuse to do so. Case in point, his brother, Thor. Not much else really needed to be said about that.
Yet, when he was truly alone, or alone for too long, he found himself wanting anyone to talk to, longing for even Thor to be there so at least he could feel annoyed instead of so mind-numbingly bored.
He was no stranger to being bored - after everything, he was still technically a prince and had attended many many boring events and parties for older people - so he knew how to deal with boredom but that usually depended on having someone else there with him. Being bored and alone was as good as torture to him. He didn't mind the peace and quiet sometimes, and people or stressful situations sometimes made him want to have a break but then he knew what happened when he was left to himself for too long. The peace and quiet only ever lasted so long before his mind started talking.
That was the true reason he hated it, being all alone and bored. Especially in times like now when he was in solitary confinement with no one else but himself to blame for being in that situation in the first place. Because after he got over the anger, and the people who'd put him there deemed him not dangerous enough - or sometimes too dangerous - to have guards watching him, and he was all alone, he suddenly became not alone. Suddenly, he was only left with himself, and his thoughts.
His thoughts that constantly loved to remind him of his loneliness. His thoughts that repeatedly brought up his worst fears and insecurities, and because he had nothing else to do, he was forced to confront them or pour over them which only ever led to them getting worse.
After his shenanigans on Midgard, he was kept in solitary confinement for a year and a half on Asgard. He'd never forget those endless days, all alone. The first week or so hadn't been so bad as he spent most of his time stewing in anger, trying to find where his plan went wrong but it didn't take him too long to figure it out; that his downfall had been a simple underestimation of Earth's defences. He would not make that mistake again if he even tried to take over a second time.
But as time went on, he was left with nothing to do. All he could do was reflect, and reflect, and look inwards, and think, and obsess, and absolutely exhaust himself. He was almost happy no one else was there to see him as he slowly descended to the darkest parts of his mind, the worst version of himself. He'd always been self-conscious, but every day he woke up and saw his reflection, the unrecognisable, bedraggled man who stared had tears in his eyes not because he looked terrible but because he knew there was nothing he could do about it.
His saving grace came a few nights a week though in the form of his saintly mother. He would treasure those nights, hold them close to his heart until the next night she'd visit. If it weren't for her, he would have likely gone to drastic measures to just end it all.
He'd told her one day, how bored he got and how he hated the silence.
"Why not write in a journal?" she'd suggested, and he'd looked at her questioningly.
"And what would I write about? 'Dear Diary, I saw a speck of dust make the journey from the ceiling to the floor today and it reminded me of how far I've fallen'," he ended wryly, rolling his eyes. His mother had just smiled and laughed softly.
"Exactly that. Spend your time searching for something to write about. It doesn't have to be real. You could take up poetry, or write stories, about distant and mystical lands like the ones I would tell you about before bed all those years ago."
He'd considered, leaning his head back against the glass. "I miss those stories. What I wouldn't give for you to tell me one now."
Another soft, tinkling laugh. "I'd be happy to if you really want."
"Please do."
She'd only just opened her mouth before a guard came in and called out for her, telling her time was up. He'd only looked at her and said goodbye quietly, even though he wanted to shout, and call her back, tell her to say the story no matter what the guards said. But he knew better and the second he left, he dropped his illusions that he'd kept up during the visit so his mother didn't have to see his red-rimmed eyes. That day, she'd left with the promise of bringing him a journal to fill the next time she came, but while she didn't come, the book made its way to him the next morning.
He'd left it to sit in the corner on the first few days, staring at it for hours on end, trying to think of what to fill it with. Boredom won though, and it wasn't long before he finished that book, ink covering every available space on the pages which were either filled with words or doodles. He never really wrote about anything consistent, sometimes poems, sometimes his thoughts, sometimes crude letters to various Avengers that he knew would never be sent but he felt better writing anyway. There were even some parts where he'd written a story like his mother had told him to write, a story about a boy who lived by himself on a distant planet, exiled and left to scream and shout and do whatever he wished with no one to hear his cries.
"Like crying out in empty rooms, with no one there except the moon," he'd written, the statement too close to his own predicament for his liking except for the fact that he didn't even have a moon to listen to his heart echoing around the room in his voice. He'd stopped writing that story not soon after.
Sleep began to evade him, usually after he'd overused it as an escape from the boredom, only for him to finally get exhausted and the whole cycle would start again. He worked on his magic, but one could only do so much. He was a person who lived for gatherings, whether to use them as an audience, or victims of his latest tricks, but now it was all a thing of the past, it seemed.
How could a year and a half seem so long now when he was immortal and it was usually but a second to him?
Bored, bored, bored, bored! He'd even run out of things to obsess over about himself! His mind was all but empty, leaving him to mourn the loss of its usual sharpness. He was becoming useless. Bored, and all alone, and no one to blame but yourself, and bored. Bored, bored, bored.
Origami! He'd used up all the pages in the journal but that didn't mean they didn't have any use left! He could learn origami and make mini Iron Mans, and Captain Americas, and Hulks, and crush them all, over and over and over and over again until they were all scraps of paper too small to do anything else with. Great. Now he was bored again.
Then one day, out of the blue, a guard comes to tell him some news that changed everything. His whole world, what was left of his heart and mind shattered, joining the shredded pieces of paper on the floor of his cell, the paper that his mother had given him, his mother who was now dead.
Dead, and the last time he'd even seen her had been… had…
She was gone.
This couldn't have happened. But it had happened anyway. How had this happened? How could his mother be dead, gone forever?
He hadn't even been there to protect her. Because he was in here, bored, bored, bored all because of what he'd stupidly done that got him locked up in here instead of by her side.
"Make it stop." A whisper in an empty room, no one there, not even the moon unlike in his story, his story that his mother had told him to write and - "Make it stop." Stop everything from reminding him of her, stop the boredom, stop the blame on himself, stop him from doing stupid things that put him in these positions, stop losing everything good he had, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!
As he lay curled up on the floor in the corner of his room, tears drowning him, a thought passed his mind and he couldn't help the bitter laugh that escaped his cracked lips.
At least now he wasn't bored.
A/n: So… no happy ending, really. Well, I mean, we all know how the rest of the story goes, but yeah. Poor guy. Doesn't even get a break in his own show. Anyway, still trying to catch up on Whumptober prompts but doing my best even if it means sacrificing a bit of quality. Kind of happy with how this one turned out though.
Anyway, stay safe and see ya soon.
- CrowofArcadiaOaks
