"All the sad and empty faces

That pass you on the street

All running in their sleep, all in a dream

Every loving handshake

Is just another man to beat

How your heart aches just to cut him to the core.

Life seems so rosy in the cradle,

But I'll be a friend I'll tell you what's in store

There's nothing at the end of the rainbow.

There's nothing to grow up for anymore."

- Richard Thompson

The Avengers, and Thor, and all situations and characters thereof, belong strictly and solely to Marvel Comics. This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.

"He does not change, Father. Indeed, he grows worse."

Pure generosity on the part of the All-Father, to leave his throne, his duties, to come here to this narrow, unheated corridor.

"Worse, better..." Odin does not even look into the cell. "Who can say, son? He looks the same to me."

The same is bad enough. The tiny, barred window is a poor vantage point, but he can see his brother well enough: Loki sits as he has for days. – Or weeks even, perhaps? – His shoulders are slumped, his head bowed. His eyes are dark smudges against the pale face, the mere slice of it that can be seen from the door. At this angle, easy to pretend that he does not see them, and speaks not for that reason. Thor has been in there though. He has tried speaking to his brother and seen him unresponsive, close to unseeing.

"He ate." His voice comes rougher than Thor expected it, as if grated over the surface of his pain. "Before, he ate."

"And now the food comes back untasted." Odin speaks low, as if to himself.

"A boon, Father." Thor touches his father's arm. "Let him leave the cell, at least for a short time. – Until he is himself again, no more."

But the hand is shaken off and Odin turns. "Your brother is there for good reason, Thor. You know that."

"When I displeased you, you banished me. – Sent me to another realm, merely."

"Your brother went to another realm." Odin's face is wry. "We are still making amends to the people of Midgard."

Amends: Thor is the one making them. He cares not, for Midgard is a second home, but it rankles his father, he knows.

"Father, he will go mad in there."

"He is mad already." An angry voice, a hand, waving toward the cell door, the little window that shows Thor his baby brother, silent, unnaturally still. "He has been mad for a long time now, none of us know how long. Remember his actions while you were on Midgard? Slaughtering Laufey in cold blood? Sending the Destroyer after his own brother? This is merely a new madness."

"Mayhap he will die." It is true, Thor thinks as he says it. Loki is alone. He is tormented by his thoughts. Is there anything he still lives for?

"Mayhap it would be better if he did die." Odin turns away. "My son, I have done all that can be done. Loki has had healers, for his mind as well as his body. That I can provide, for whatever good it does. – Would you have me let him out, so he can rampage again? Would you have more realms destroyed, more innocent lives lost?"

But Loki too is innocent... The thought vanishes as soon as voiced; Thor drives it away. His brother is not innocent. Far from it, he has killed and killed again. And for what? So that he can reign, victor over a captive world? ...So he can take over Midgard?

What was it his brother said: I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness... How long was it that Loki felt that way? How much of himself did he feel he had to hide? – How much of it was hidden only because Thor never looked? Perhaps that's where the innocence went.

"Give him something, Father," Thor says. "Give him freedom, some kind of freedom. I understand that you cannot release him."

The cell is not soundproofed, but if he tries hard enough, he can will silence. The voices of the other prisoners, the footsteps of gaolers in the hallway, the endless rumble of Thor talk-talk-talking when he visits, all fade away and he is left... What is he left with though, that is the question?

The sick knowledge that he has failed and failed again. Spawn of monsters, he was foolish enough to believe himself better, despite all the times, the many many times, that others turned away, pulled away, showed him by one means or another, that he was not one of them. Ambitious fool, gulled by Odin's pretty tales of two boys born to be king, ignorant of the truth: He has seen Jotunheimr. Kingship there means merely being one brute above the others.

And the Chitauri: The toy-army that was to be his, and he put the Tesseract into Thanos' hands as payment. Did he actually believe those promises? Did he manage to pretend to himself that it made sense to throw himself onto a hostile world and attempt subjugation by his own hands? He was all the more a fool then. Unsurprising that he should have failed.

He thought himself better than the Midgardians, but it was delusion only. Pretty weak mortal creatures, their lives mayfly-short: How quickly they pulled together the force that defeated him. And of what elements did they pull it: The time-stranded soldier, the scientist who's own dark experiments made a monster of him, the two assassins, as much government functionaries as loyalists. – The one with machine embedded in his body: He has been nearer death than any of them, hasn't he? And he spoke as one who knows failure: "You will fail. There's no throne, no version of this where you come out on top."

Sometimes Loki thinks about that one, but not often. Mostly his thoughts are of his own failure, of the crushing hopelessness that is a Frost Giant trying ever, to be anything more than a brute.

He hears it when Thor brings Odin to the cell. The sound of their footsteps, the mumble-mumble of their voices in the hallway. What they're talking about, he doesn't care. Some nonsense of Thor's perhaps – He's always trying to make people do things. – or another chance for the All-Father to get angry. These things never change much, and they never involve him.

Maybe he sees Thor's face peeping through the cell-window. Loki doesn't bother looking a second time to be sure. There's not much point. What's he there for anyhow? "You are still my brother," he'll say, and, "oh Father, Father, look, here is my brother." His "brother". Whom none notices, for looking at his golden glory. As soon be the Jotun monster he was born to be. – As soon be liar, cheat, traitor, imonster/i, all the things the Aesir believe him to be.

And so Loki wills away the golden face in his window. The worried blue eyes, the soft rumble of remonstrances in the hallway, purposefully he ignores them all. A while, and the noises fade; a while longer, and the Golden One is gone as well. He'll sleep, he thinks, as well as he ever sleeps at any rate. ...And when he wakes, things will be the same.