Chapter Text
If pressed, Loki would swear up and down the fates that it was complete chance he was in Midtown when he saw his brother. And if Loki had made this trip several times in the last month, past the diner that boasted, “Avengers' Favorite Eats” on the window display, well, that too was a coincidence.
This time, unlike the first...few, there was a small gaggle of tourists taking excited photos by the door, and a familiar blaze of long blond hair behind the tinted diner windows.
Thor.
Loki slowed, then crossed the street to the opposite side at a light jog, his heart rabbiting. It was instinct to avoid this confrontation, to slip away into the shadows. Even as another instinct tugged at him to go back and see how close he could get to Thor.
He wasn’t afraid that Thor would recognize him. Not truly.
The great buffoon with his hammer had never gotten the hang of seeing through Loki’s disguises. Of seeing Loki. Why would this day be any different?
Even if Loki didn’t have his powers of illusion now, his magic crippled and bound by Odin’s spell, he was still a trickster god, and it was a bright, bitterly chilly fall day. A large knit cap hid Loki’s long hair, the scarf obscured most of his face, his bright green eyes were hidden under brown color contact lenses. The rest?
A small spell, the one Loki wore on a thin chain under his shirt and blazer, kept people’s eyes slipping by him, seeing what they expected to see: a harried office worker out on a lunch break. That was a spell it took Loki weeks of careful crafting and multiple failures to finally coax to life. Give it a push, and it would break and collapse. This ghost of power was all that Loki had left to him ever since Odin had bound Loki’s power and sent him to Earth to serve penance under Thor’s watchful supervision.
It had taken Loki less than four full midgardian days to escape. What came after, though. That hadn’t been as easy.
Loki’s fingers rubbed the inside of his right wrist where he’d carved a rune for secrecy onto his skin. This spell had taken much longer to craft, and did something much greater. The rune rested like green ink on his skin, and sometimes, in the quiet moments between trying not to think and thinking too much, he could feel the rune pulsing as it swallowed down his petty stores of magic to stay active. With it, Heimdall’s all seeing eye could not find him. With it, he was safe from Asgard.
For now. For a while yet.
But a skin rune was old magic - effective and dangerous. It would not break, not while there was an ounce of magic in Loki’s body that it could pull on to power itself, not until it drained him dry.
And at which point, Loki supposed, he’d be dead, and Asgard finding him would be the least of his worries.
Desperate times.
For now, though, Loki’s crippled reserves kept up.
Loki stood on the other side of the street from the diner and tried to bring his hammering heart under control. He knew that Thor never paid attention. No tourist would recognize him (why would they?) but it still took almost a full three minutes for him to get his breathing under control and turn around to wait for the light to cross back across the street. The light changed.
Loki couldn’t make himself move. Not until a shoulder jostled him from behind, and he took the first step. The next few came almost on autopilot.
His stomach was churning as his eyes flickered to the diner window, then the diner door, then up and down the street for threats.
Loki thought that he would be angry when he next saw Thor. This was the so-called-brother that had taken him in chains before Odin and stood by when the All Father had sentenced Loki to rot in Asgard’s dungeons. This was the same Thor that mourned over Loki’s body on an alien planet when he thought Loki was dead, then turned on him months later when he realized Loki had survived.
This was the Thor that brought Loki to earth to do penance and thought he could be kept on a leash and under guard, like a prisoner. Or a pet.
And each thought hurt. Loki drifted over to a wheeled cart of tourist chachkies for sale as he stared through the dim diner window at the gold shape of the back of his one-time brother’s hair. Loki was not alone in watching the diner. The New Yorkers going about their business flowed around the tourists that were lollygagging on the sidewalk, hoping for an autograph.
Loki wondered if his own disguise would hold up if he were to walk up to Thor in the guise of a fan asking for an autograph? Would Thor’s eyes light up with recognition, or slide right on by? And what would come after recognition? And Loki’s mind shied away.
He knew the answers to his own questions too well by now.
But still, there was a hollowed out part somewhere in Loki’s chest - the part that had raged as he found a life in a dingy basement apartment in New York City, scraped together a life, unable to leave town, unable to move on. Unable to, without his powers, do anything beyond scavenge on the outskirts of the city’s underworld, and spend sleepless nights trying not to slip into dreams of darkness and ice.
Would it be so bad to take off his hat and unravel his scarf, lean casually against a light post and say, “Greetings, brother.”
His heart twisted.
From down the street, Loki’s watched as Thor’s form moved through the diner, and then stepped onto the street to the excited chatter of tourists. And then, Loki could finally make out his former brother’s lunch companions. The captain and the archer.
Loki’s half-formed plan to approach Thor - in disguise, of course, perhaps as a tourist. Perhaps to -
That all scattered to the wind. The archer would not hesitate to put a knife through Loki’s eye. And with Loki’s powers so bound, so drained by the constant effort to stay veiled from Asgard, he couldn’t be sure -
He wasn’t going to -
Thor and his companions finished signing shirts and arms and photos, and were pushing their way down the street. In less than a minute, they turned the corner and were gone, leaving behind excited chatter and laughter.
There was a bitter taste in Loki’s mouth. It tasted like a missed opportunity.
It tasted like relief.
Thor had looked...happy. Carefree. Like he had moved on and found himself new companions to replace Sif and the Warriors Three with his new Avengers friends.
To replace Loki.
The public was awash in information about the Avengers, but they all boiled down to dramatic exposes about Tony Stark’s life, a new spate of stories about the undying friendship of the two icicle soldier buds (and what were the chances that they both ended up superfrozen and in the future?) and a surprisingly deep rumor ecosystem that placed the Black Widow at the heart of a Kremlin plot to undermine the American Way Of Life. And, of course, this Bucky Barnes, a new player, whom the good captain had rescued after the collapse of SHIELD.
Loki learned more about the Avengers from Clint Barton’s briefing during Loki’s short few days invading Earth than anything else he’d seen since.
Which one of them replaced Loki in Thor’s life?
Or, perhaps, there had been no hole to replace at all.
Loki’s lips twisted, and it could have been a smile.
“Are you getting something?” the man minding the stand of tourist items demanded, and Loki glanced down to see where he had ended up. Avengers merchandise.
“I will take this one,” Loki said, picking up a box of plastic Avengers action figures with one hand, and pulling out a ten dollar bill with the other. “My brother is a fan.”
***
The walk home passed in a blur of unease, Loki’s thoughts scattering like a shoal of fish startled by the shadow of something large passing nearby. Thor’s presence in Loki’s life had always been...outsized. A larger than life shadow. A more brutal betrayal than anything Odin could have managed when Thor threw Loki from the Bifrost and into the timeless void beyond Asgard’s edge.
Loki slipped into an apartment complex, ragged and worn with age and too little maintenance, then continued through it to the back entrance and into the backstreets where there were no cameras or eyes. Another ten minutes, and he was descending the five steps into the basement apartment he rented.
Rented.
As if he weren’t a Prince of Asgard, Trickster god, a sorcerer of the Nine Realms-
Well, he wasn’t any of those, now was he?
He walked through the door, eyes alighting and checking on the sigil on the other side of it to make sure it was intact. It was a faint power, a solid week of almost draining himself dry, to shield the small cramped apartment from prying eyes. Sometimes, the effort to stay unnoticed seemed too much and Loki wanted to cut the rune tattoo from his arm, walk out into the uncaring sun glare outside, stretch his arms out and scream at the sky.
Do you see me? Do you see me now?
Have I made you all proud?
The answer to those questions would always be a resounding no.
It was barely afternoon, but Loki was done for the day. Done for the week, the month, the year.
He dropped the box of Avenger figurines on the small coffee table he’d scavenged from the side of the street. It was the first item he had found and taken home. That first time, months ago, there had been a stillness in his head as he stood on the pavement, stared at the peeling table and its cracked glass panes -
He didn’t need it, he told himself. He could steal the money to furnish himself with elegance. He could con his way into the life of a powerful patron. He could -
It was all truth, and also entirely false.
In that moment, he couldn’t find the energy to scheme.
His long fingers had trailed over the long cracks that crisscrossed the reflection of the sky in the table's glass cover. His own figure was a dark, distorted block in the glass as he stared at the broken, abandoned piece of furniture. A car rolled past and broke the spell, and Loki took the coffee table home.
The first time had been hard.
After: A small, ratty (but comfortable) couch appeared in his small space, followed by a lamp, and a television and three miss-matched chairs. Used, ragged books followed, filling the spaces in between.
Loki turned on the tea pot, and let the low murmur of a news program fill the small space like the illusion of company.
***
He spent the evening reading, looking up only when a familiar voice caught his attention. The news show had switched to a recording of an Avenger’s press conference. Steve Rogers and Tony Stark stood by the podium, both out of costume and in their civilian wear. The archer, Clint Barton, stood on the other side of the group in parade rest. The Black Widow and the Green Beast were nowhere to be seen. It was time to turn off the television.
“ - grateful to have the verdict released this Friday,” Steve Rogers was saying. “It has been a long journey but I am - “
Loki hesitated, the remote in his hand, and his hand hovering in mid-air.
Thor flanked them in his Asgardian armor, and half a step behind him hovered the hunched form of Sergeant Barnes in what looked like a uniform. Army, Loki guessed, but for all he knew, it could have been a costume.
Thor looked out of place on the press conference stage. Like an illusion badly cast - a piece of golden detritus from a foreign planet that had somehow washed up on this shore.
Perhaps we are not quite so different.
Loki could almost regret not speaking with him earlier. Perhaps next time their paths crossed, Loki could pass by close enough to slip a note into Thor’s pocket. Or a live snake.
Thor loved snakes.
Loki grinned at the thought, and tuned back into the conference. They seemed to be fielding questions about their most recent mission - something about Doctor Doom, infrastructure damage, and whether the metal from the robots could be repurposed without contamination.
“People are calling this attack a repeat of the Battle of New York City. What do you say to that?” A reporter called out and Loki raised his eyebrow. Do tell.
Loki hadn’t even heard about this incident, so it can’t have been all that impressive.
“With the help of New York City’s finest and the implementation of the Emergency Red Alert system, we were able to contain the incident within minutes of learning about it,” Rogers said. “The Battle of New York was the first of its kind. We’re ready now, and we can respond to it quickly and efficiently.”
“We’re so ready. If Loki ever comes back, he won’t know what hit him,” Barton pitched in with a grin, leaning around Rogers. “We can take that antlered bag of crazy with our eyes closed and send him home with his tail between his legs.”
“Have care how you speak,” Thor snapped, glaring over at the archer. With his booming voice, he didn’t need the microphone. “Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother.”
Why Thor, Loki thought, staring at the screen, and he felt his lips twisting into a wry smile. Thor’s other teammates took that in as the pause stretched. That was both terribly awkward, and sweet.
“With all due respect, Mr. Odinson. It sounds like you are defending what he did,” one of the journalists called out, a blonde woman with bright eyes and an even brighter baring of teeth. “He caused billions of dollars in damages, left thousands homeless, and more than 200 people died in New York City the day of the invasion. What do you have to say to that?”
Thor blinked. “Ah, he’s adopted?”
Captain America rushed into the breach. “Ah, thank you Christine. Does anyone have any questions about Sergeant Barnes or this latest incident?”
Loki stared at the screen, frozen, as hands shot up from the audience.
Adopted. Three years of his life and torment, reduced to a punchline.
Loki's cheeks felt on fire. He looked down at the top of the small coffee table where the small Avengers action figures he’d bought outside a diner were arrayed.
Iron Man and Black Widow were trapped in an empty tea mug, Captain America hanging onto the edge in his attempt to clamber up the side in a doomed-to-fail rescue attempt. (He didn’t even have any rope. That venture was doomed to fail from the start). The archer was on the empty toy box, providing cover.
And Thor - well, somehow during the conference and their adventures across the tabletop, Thor had ended up in Loki’s hands. Loki stared down at the small toy and realized his hands were shaking.
Crack.
He didn’t realize he’d thrown the action figure until he heard the sound and saw the small dent in the wall. The toy bounced to the floor and tumbled to a stop by the closet door. It hadn’t broken, though. Of course it hadn’t broken.
The toy was plastic, and Thor was a god.
And Loki was…not sure why he had expected anything else from his -
From Thor.
From Thor Odinson, son of the man who’d stolen Loki as a babe, bound his magic, lied to him his entire life -
From Thor, who had never truly taken Loki’s side in anything. Not in any way that made the smallest difference.
The coffee table followed the toy across the room with another crash, taking the adventures of the action figure Avengers along with it. On the screen beyond the wreckage, the program went to commercials.