PILLARS

"Loki, I thought the world of you."

Loki steals a glance at his brother in the small confines of the lift. He's always known it; same as his mother's love was never really in question. But he needs to hear it anyway. Craves it in a way he'll never admit.

Yet, his brother's use of the past tense and his somber tone give him pause. He looks harder at Thor. He's changed, his hair shorter than Loki can ever recall, but it's the differences on the inside that threaten to shake his world. Sometimes he doesn't feel he knows this man his brother has become. Gone is the impetuous braggart, and also gone is the earnest man who desperately begged him to leave his madness. In their place is someone solid, someone with a well of steadiness born of trials overcome.

While he admires this man in a quiet corner of his soul, it's unsettling to no longer be able to manipulate his brother's volatile moods in the way he was once accustomed. More importantly, if there were something he could count on in the past, it had been the devotion of his mother and the persistence of his brother. Sure, he'd been a shadow, neglected and unacknowledged, but Thor's confidence in their brotherhood had never faltered. Oh, they'd fought as brothers, with each other as much as any other foe. And maybe that confidence was shaken a bit when Loki rammed his dagger deep into Thor's torso on Stark's tower, and Thor had threatened to kill him when he released him from Asgard's prisons, but even all that had been put aside when they joined forces against the dark elves.

It was always Thor who was desperate to maintain the farce of their closeness. The farce of family.

His brother, his mother, and his father—like three legs of a stool propping him up. When he was younger, he hadn't realized how he depended on those pillars. He'd taken his family for granted. Like a small child perched on a stool, he never considered it until it begun to topple and he'd felt the lurch of falling. By then, it was too late.

Nothing should be able to rattle him anymore. Not after the revelations that had gone before. The casket wasn't the only thing you took from Jotunheim that day, was it? But even then, and even though he hadn't been willing to hear it, Odin had called him son. That had changed though, by Loki's own hand, a fact he can admit now. His mocking smile had faded as Odin pronounced those cold words: Your birthright was to die as a child cast out onto a frozen rock.

Thor is talking again and Loki forces himself to listen.

"I thought we were going to fight side by side forever, but at the end of the day, you're you and I'm me. I don't know, maybe there's still good in you, but let's be honest, our paths diverged a long time ago."

Loki finds he can't make eye contact with Thor. His lips part to let out a breath. "Yeah… It's probably for the best that we never see each other again." The lie tastes bitter in his mouth.

It reminds him of another lie. Then, am I not your mother? Frigga had asked. You're not, was his cold answer, denying his need for the pillar of support she represented. And then that leg had irrevocably been kicked away by his own words: You might want to take the stairs to the left. He doesn't doubt his mother's love even now, but she's beyond his reach and he can never take back his last words to her. Odin too is now beyond the veil. He is alone but for his brother, Thor.

"It's what you've always wanted." Thor's hand claps his back with a finality that jars him harder than a light pat has any right to. Rocks him till he's teetering on the edge of a precipice. He sucks his lips in to prevent them from betraying him, to prevent them from begging Thor to take it back.

A part of him thinks this must be some sick joke on Thor's part. A test perhaps. But one more swift glance into his brother's face tells him otherwise, and the final pillar holding Loki up crumbles into ash, leaving him to fall once again—not this time into the endless Void, but somehow opening a void inside him. Mother, father, brother… gone.

"Hey, let's do 'Get Help."

"What?" His mind isn't tracking Thor's words.

"'Get Help,'" Thor repeats.

A hundred memories leap to mind. Scenes where he and Thor fought side by side. And somehow those memories ground him to the present and pull him out of his dark thoughts.

"No." And he's reminded of another 'no'—one that feels a lifetime ago. Loki, no. But now it's him telling Thor no and he realizes there is so much more to his no than just no, let's not do 'Get Help.' Maybe there was more to Odin's 'no' too, but now he'll never know.

"Come on, you love it."

"No, I hate it."

"It's great; it works every time."

"It's humiliating."

"Do you have a better plan?"

"No."

"We're doing it."

"We are not doing 'Get Help," he says, even knowing he will. One more lie—this at least is familiar.

A/N

Thanks for reading! This is my first attempt at writing Loki. I am sure others have written this scene before (and better), but it was such a poignant scene that I decided to take a crack at it. BTW, if you like this sort of thing, Natalie Rushman has several Thor fics that take the events of the movie and elaborate on them, so be sure to check her out.

Please feel free to review as reviews make the Vendetta happy! Also know that there is the possibility of an Avengers/Dr Who crossover... someday.

For my Chaos & Kadaj readers: don't worry, I haven't forgotten it. I do apologize for the delay in updates there.

Vendetta

06/17/18