TRICKSTER

A Wondrous Feast

Thor Odinsson strode through a warren of corridors that had grown familiar over the months, carrying under one arm a parcel wrapped in red cloth. Gilt and draped in fine fabrics, these halls weren't unlike the halls he had raced through with his brother when they'd been small, chasing after one another or competing or fighting or laughing. But the smell was wetter, colder, and unmoved. The stone felt thicker under his feet, anchored by time and less alive than the well-travelled paths stories above him. He'd grown accustomed to it quickly, and then had liked it, because he enjoyed all things which even hinted at coming pleasure.

And while none else would consider his self-appointed task pleasurable - things lived down here - Thor relished these journeys because each led to another opportunity to regain something he'd lost. He waved the guard aside with a careless gesture and pushed past without waiting for a response.

"I have brought you a wondrous feast, my brother!" he said, his voice echoing.

Loki ducked his head and winced. He moved his hands to cover his ears, but even behind the gleaming bars of his Asgardian prison, his wrists were shackled on a short lead from his waist and he could not quite reach. His wardens had insisted he not be able to gain access to the bars themselves and had kept him on a lead attached to the far back wall above the cot he reclined upon. He glared balefully up at Thor. "Why are you here?"

Thor frowned. "I … have brought you a wondrous feast," he said again, thrusting the parcel forward in evidence.

Loki tilted his head in consideration. "Has it been a week already?" he murmured.

"Aye, and an adventuresome one! I shall regale you with stories of this week, my brother." Thor paused. "If that is what you wish."

Loki stared, then looked away. "It is," he admitted.

Thor grinned madly, motioning that the guard should unlock the door for him. The guard did so, as the guard did every time, and then left them alone to talk.

Thor set the table eagerly: the cloth onto the floor, onto it the platter and plates, mead from the horn at his side. Every week, he provided to his brother a meal he remembered from their youth was one of Loki's favorites in an attempt to win him, to woo him to good, to be the brother he had been for so many long years.

Loki had only just begun to accept his entreaty; before that, Thor had merely barged in, something Jane Foster would have disapproved of and something he was definitely going to remember when he was able to visit Midgard again, but something which he felt in this case was warranted.

"I had occasion to take a hunting party out to dispatch the grisk which has been taunting our borders," Thor began, seating himself on the floor to dine with his brother.

Loki watched him from the bed, sidewise. "A difficult task, even for you," he said mildly.

"Aye! But a grand adventure. We felled the beast in long glorious battle and brought its heart home for the evening's feast!"

Loki twisted his lip in distaste. "Wonderful."

"It was!" Thor beamed up from the table he'd set, expectant. He was not gifted in guile the way his brother was, calm and cool in speech, but he had learned that Loki could not turn him down if he merely kept on smiling at him, so, as he was inclined to do it anyway, he kept on smiling.

But Loki did not join him on the floor to dine as he had been doing for the previous three weeks. Instead, he leaned back against the wall and looked off, unhappy.

"Something troubles you," Thor guessed.

"Of course something troubles me," Loki hissed, suddenly animated. "Look at me, locked up in this cage like the monster you all know me to be. And you, a parody of a champion, the naive fool tempting the beast-!"

"Enough of this," Thor said. And his command was quiet, but Loki had always feared his anger even if he made a show of bravado; he snapped his mouth shut and shrank back against the wall, his gaze going distant again. Thor felt shame for having caused it. And even though Loki had said beast only after Thor had told a story about defeating the grisk, he knew Loki wasn't referring to his hard-won battle that week. "I love you, my brother. I mourned for you. You cannot understand how deeply. It is my hope that my continued visitation to your prison will soften your heart to me, and that one day we may again battle alongside each other. My clever brother who once made the honeymilk stream from my nostrils in gales of laughter, my powerful brother who claimed masterhood of magic while he was yet a boy." Thor stood. "I wish to have that brother back." He turned to leave.

"You might clear away your mess," Loki said quietly.

Thor turned back. "You may yet find your appetite."

Loki looked at him then, eyes bright with anger, or something else. "Really. Leaving me alone with all of this?" He gestured vaguely to the meagre place-setting, with its shining knives and forks. "With potential weapons. You do me more harm than good."

Thor frowned. "Then I shall say that I have forced this meal upon you." He sat back down. "Come and eat before my lie becomes truth."

"You couldn't lie if your Hammer depended on it," Loki snapped, but there was no energy in it. He unfolded from his perch on the wooden slat bed and slid down to the floor without ever having properly stood up. He was thinner than even he'd once been, so different from the other Asgardians. Even the other magic wielders had a healthy strength and heft to them, where Loki had always been frail-looking. It made sense to Thor now that he knew his brother was not of Asgard, but at the time, Loki's lack of a traditional warrior's strength had only instilled in Thor an intense desire to protect his younger brother, even when Loki had proven it unnecessary.

They ate in silence. Loki picked, while Thor tore off great chunks of flesh with his teeth - another indulgence he would have to curb when he again met with Jane Foster.

"I was afraid," Loki said finally, having gotten through perhaps half of his large leg of mutton.

Thor paused. "You are rarely so plain, brother-"

"Stop calling me that."

"You will never not be my brother."

Loki closed his eyes, and Thor worried that perhaps the hurt was simply too deep, that even the mention of the word was too great a pain for Loki to bear. His mind was more complicated than Thor could fathom, he knew that, and it was twisted as well. But he had said I was afraid, and that was more than he'd said about himself or his recent descent into madness than he'd ever said before and Thor waited to hear if he'd say anything else.

"Please, leave me," Loki whispered, and Thor gathered up his things. He bent to brush a kiss over his brother's forehead where Loki sat slumped on the floor in front of the bed, then stood up straight. "I will come again. If you wish it."

He waited, but Loki's answer was always the same.

"I don't."

"You always come," Loki said two weeks later.

"You are surprised," Thor replied, laying out their dinner.

"I suppose I imagined you'd have given up." Loki watched him, sprawled out on his small bed with his chained hands relaxed at his lap. "Will you regale me with your exploits again? Will you taunt me with this freedom you possess, to waltz in and out of my cage? Is this truly what brings you joy, brother?"

Thor did not comment on Loki's use of the word. It only ever seemed to upset him to have it pointed out: that "brother" sounded sweet from Loki's mouth even if he sneered while saying it; and that he hadn't sneered while saying it in at least a month, even when angry; and that Thor felt truly hurt that only Loki was allowed to say it in the first place.

Instead, he said, "What brings me joy, brother-" He ignored the flinch. "-Is the ever-increasing chance that you might once again welcome my love for you and make an attempt to prove to our fa- to Odin that you have changed."

"That I have changed," Loki muttered. "As if I would stoop - as if anyone would even believe-" He looked up at Thor sharply. "You'd believe. If I said I'd try to make amends."

"Why should I not?"

Loki gave him a perplexed look, a disbelieving one, exasperated, even.

Thor poured the mead and sat cross-legged, waiting for Loki to join him, which Loki did even as the mead tinkled into his glass. "They are saying," Thor continued, "you are planning to deceive me into believing you are well when you are not."

"Well?" Loki spat, picking up a fork and poking through the vegetables. "As if I'm sick? What idiocy. I would have given these mewling fools everlasting peace-"

"Are they right, brother?"

"Of course not."

Thor smiled wistfully. "When you say it, I want to believe you."

Thor returned to his brother's prison only hours later, Mjolnir in his hand. He murmured to the guard, who looked from him to the Trickster and then took off at a run, drawing his sword. The corridors above them began to thrum with a rumbling vibration, the air filled with cries and battle.

Loki looked up, sanguine. "That is an exceptionally raucous party, brother," he drawled.

"It is no party."

Loki frowned. Blinked. And instantly fear clouded his vision.

"He has come," Thor said. "He has come for you."

Loki was already on his feet, looking more animated than he had been in months, than he had during any of their spats at dinner, than any of their reminiscing. He fretted at the cuffs keeping his hands near his waist. Even as Thor unlocked the door to his cell, Loki came forward, circling around Thor with his hands up, until he reached the end of the tether keeping him from the bars of the prison.

"Please," he said.

"They will destroy Asgard."

Loki ducked his head, and Thor recognized it as a gambit, an attempt to gain Thor's sympathies, but he supposed it wasn't necessarily a lie - "Brother, consider-"

"They will destroy Asgard," Thor said again, coming for Loki who could only strain at the end of his chains. Thor grasped him around the arm and pulled him close, brandishing his Hammer. "Before they touch a hair on your head, they will have to destroy Asgard and myself." He swung at the chain binding Loki to the far back wall of the cell and crushed the dumbfounded Trickster to his chest. "Go now. To Midgard. I will find you when this is through."

Loki stared at him.

"Promise me that you will wait for me in Midgard!"

"Upon my heart," Loki breathed, his eyes shining with that same hopeless something Thor had seen in him on the top of Tony Stark's tower, just before Loki had stabbed him in the gut. But there was this time no tiny vicious knife, no inkling of a grin, just Loki tense with fear and promising everything in exchange for his own life.

Thor shoved him through the doors, manhandled him down the long corridors while the sounds of battle shook the stone above them. Thor gave him a final push down the corridor that led up and out through the back ways they had discovered together in their youth.

Loki stumbled once, glanced back at him, and then tore down the corridor until he reached the end of it. Thor watched. One direction held freedom from the magic suppressing qualities of the dungeons and certain escape. The other led to the weapons vault.

Loki stopped at the junction, stared at Thor for one very long moment, and then took off toward the weapons vault.

Mjolnir shook in Thor's white-knuckled grip. But the battle raged on in the corridors above and his people needed him.