Prologue
Author's Note: For anyone who hasn't read the previous parts, you will be quite lost lol. But the fic is essentially a Loki-Thor roleswap, where Thor fell into the void and attacked Earth instead of Loki.
For everyone who did read the previous parts, enjoy the next part of the journey. :D It's going to be the beginning of Thor's redemption arc. :)
The prequels are Parts of Me Will Die With You and Avengers: Soldier's Thunder.
~ Tirana Sorki
Being on Asgard again is hard. Loki knew it would be, and he dreaded returning here, but it was a guarantee all the same. He takes them to the palace, dropping them off and letting the axe clank to the floor by his feet.
"You took us back to Asgard?" Thor sounds incensed.
"I'm sorry, brother."
That's the most they say to each other until they part ways, Loki heading off tell Odin that he recovered Thor and the Tesseract, just as he asked. Thor's weapon is put in the vault, where it should be, as is the Tesseract. With its presence here, Loki suspects the Bifrost's repair will be largely sped.
He hears whispers as he walks the halls. He's grown used to ignoring them, to tuning out the words.
Thor was lost, and everyone blamed Loki. He had, too.
There was no one else to blame, except Thor's own idiocy, and Loki hated him for it – hates him for it – but nothing will change that gutting moment he saw his brother fall from the explosion of the Bifrost.
He had to stop Thor before he destroyed an entire realm, and he hadn't thought of the consequences. After everything he'd already ruined, he had to ruin something else, too.
He pauses when he sees Sif. Her dark eyes narrow on him angrily before she whirls around and walks off the way she came.
He's not blind to how Sif and the Warrior's Three are against him. So many of the people are now, and he knows there is no way a kingdom under his rule would last. Asgard is falling. Everything is falling.
He was trying to keep it together, the only one who was willing to, and...
It's all burning down around him.
The trial is a day later. Why wait, Loki doesn't know. He's just... itching. Thor's fate is on the line, and he's terrified of how it might come out.
Maybe he did make the wrong choice. Maybe he should've helped Thor, held in the chaos the way he always did and tried to make the most of it. All he knows is he regrets every choice he's made over the past decade immensely.
Hates most that it's his role to collect Thor and take him to Odin.
"You aren't worthy of wielding Mjolnir," his brother says, eyes narrowed at where the hammer dangles off Loki's belt.
"Father gave it to me. You weren't there to carry it anymore."
Thor's quiet, but the air smells like ozone, and Loki knows he's seconds short of exploding. This will go badly, one way or another, and he's dreading what comes out the other end. Either Odin will let Thor walk freely after everything he did and Loki will fall into the shadows again, and he'll have to face his brother for everything that's gone between them, or – or Thor will be punished, and that will be...
He doesn't want to watch that, either.
Odin's waiting for them when they enter the throne room. Thor holds his gaze defiantly, angrily.
"Why did you send Loki to bring me back?" Thor demands.
"Do you truly not realize what you've done?" Odin asks, voice sharp. Loki has seen his brother and father argue precious few times, but they're always violent and explosive. They're both that way, and it blows up when it rubs on each other the wrong way.
"I was claiming my kingdom!" Thor yells, "That you took and gave to Loki!"
Ouch. Loki is right here, you know. But still, the way his name is spit out like a curse cuts deep into his chest, burning and twisting.
"You have done that yourself!" Odin shouts. "You betrayed the express command of your king when you went to Jotunheim."
"And found the truth about who let the Frost Giants into Asgard! You sat giving speeches while the Nine Realms laugh at us and Asgard falls. The Realms must learn to fear me, just as they once feared you."
"That's pride and vanity talking, not leadership. You've forgotten everything I taught you about a warrior's patience."
"Patience?" Thor echoes dubiously, "What will patience do when we do not have a home? When we've been overrun by our enemies? I will not let Asgard fall. You would not act, so I chose to claim the Nine Realms as mine. I am ready to rule."
Idiot.
Did Loki truly have to be present throughout this entire scenario? He would prefer to be anywhere other than right here. Of course, Thor is dragging Loki's fate into the balance, too, and he already knows somewhere inside what Odin's choice will be.
He's always chosen Thor.
"All this because you desire a throne?"
"If the throne is not mine, it will be given to a traitor of Asgard!"
Loki flinches. He tries to hide it, but Odin looks at him, and Loki looks away from them both. He had tried so hard to hide it, but in the end, the truth came out so fast thanks to Laufey who is probably dead thanks to Thor. Loki has no grief over that. He's not trying to be a hero,
Not when he tried to stop Thor from destroying Jotunheim, not when he had to stop him from destroying Midgard. It's just because he understands. The Nine Realms are a balance. None can coexist without the others.
Thor never understood that.
Odin reaches out, and Mjolnir flies to his hand. "Neither of you are worthy of wielding this weapon."
"And yet you gave it to Loki while I was gone!"
"We thought you to be dead. Lost in space. And that does not absolve you from your crimes against Midgard."
"You wish to speak of that and not Loki's crimes against Asgard?"
Does Thor want to see him hurt this badly? The only thing Loki has wanted was for them to be one, and stop being invisible, and –
The last thing he has ever wanted was Thor to be hurt. He knew what he had to do, and he hated himself for it.
"You speak of crimes for which your brother has already been punished?"
"You call a few days of bound magic punishment for treason?" Thor sounds so incredulously disbelieving Loki wants to hit him just for that. He hadn't cared. Loki had been terrified when Thor shoved him at Odin's feet and told him what he did. Thor hadn't cared. Having his magic ripped out when that was all he was all he's ever had was agonizing, and it left him fully defenseless and he didn't know how much he used his magic to see or hear or breathe until it was gone and he was on the Bifrost's floor, panting and crying.
Thor had just looked at him and walked out.
Like he wanted him executed.
Loki had thought he was going to be.
Frigga had been the only one who visited him while Odin went into Odinsleep and Thor was brooding in the palace, grounded from going outside its walls. Which of course, he did anyway.
He broke Odin's orders twice.
Loki couldn't let him do it again.
"Enough!" Odin shouts, and this is where Thor should know to shut up. He won't, though, because his brother is an absolute idiot. Loki wishes he were anywhere else. "You speak of treason when it was your arrogance and stupidity which opened the Nine Realms to the horrors and desolation of war?"
"I'm taking what is rightfully mine! The old ways are done." He still talks the same. It makes his heart ache, and Loki wants to throttle his brother more than anything. But after the axe, the mind stone, Loki questions what is Thor and what is what someone made him believe.
Odin must know that.
Loki... may have neglected to tell him. Specifically. He warned him of how its powers nearly overwhelmed his mind. Not of how he thought it may have done the same to Thor.
"You are a vain, greedy, cruel boy!"
"And you are an old man and a fool!"
Odin is quiet, that dead-quiet sound when Loki knows someone is either going to end up dead, or wish they were. And Loki's not going to let that happen to Thor – he's furious at him, years on years of suppressed hurt and resentment, but he saw him die once. Loki knows what matters most to him. "Yes. I was a fool, to think you were ready."
"Father," Loki starts, stepping forward, and Odin yells wordlessly at him.
Loki flinches back. Something's about to blow up in his face. At this point, with no thanks to his idiot brother, he knows it's set in stone.
And Odin will listen to him no more than he ever has, even if his brother's full consent in this is legitimately questionable.
"Thor Odinson," he says, his voice a terrifying calm. "You have betrayed the express command of your king." He stands, walking down the steps of the throne, ripping off a corner of Thor's cape. His armor starts flicking off, disappearing. "You are unworthy of these realms! You're unworthy of your title! You're unworthy of the loved ones you have betrayed. I now take from you your power!"
The magic twists around him, more seeing then feeling as Thor's powers are ripped out, reducing him to a mortal state, the same as all the Avengers and all the mortals he's killed. His armor and cape fade away, leaving him in the same blue tunic he was wearing the day of his coronation.
Odin must have kept the Tesseract with him, because it shimmers into his hands. Loki watches, frozen and terrified and numb.
"In the name of my father and his father before, I, Odin Allfather, cast you out!"
A portal rips through a cloud of smoke, sucking Thor into it.
Again.
It's happening again – him fighting and Thor falling from view and disappearing as Loki can do nothing but watching his brother falling from sight while Odin holds him back from
Loki jerks forwards, the air sucking in around it.
"Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor." Odin throws Mjolnir through the portal after him.
Mjolnir, which he gave to Loki as the first time he noticed him here, and an instant promise that he only mattered when Thor was gone, as a tool to bring him back.
But Thor's gone. Again. Cast onto a world unknown back to Midgard – Loki recognizes the magical signature of that realm well enough to know his brother is being thrown back to the mercies of the mortals, which are lacking in comparison with what should be his own family – just like before, and before Loki couldn't stop it.
He chose Asgard when he destroyed his brother's dreams. When he let the Jotuns in.
He chose Odin when he tried to stop Thor from destroying Jotunheim.
He chose Odin when he fought his brother and brought him home in chains.
And this time, he's choosing Thor.
Loki reaches to the edges of the magical portal, yanking it outwards.
When the cloud closes, it closes over him, and the last he sees of Asgard is a flash of gold and Odin yelling his name.
Final Notes: Reviews are always appreciated! ^-^
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