According to Plan (A Loki x Reader Fanfic)

Cut Off/Hard Truths

Loki had plenty to keep himself busy with in New Asgard. They were rebuilding a culture, and in an unexpected way, he had finally taken on a place in its leadership.

Thor was the diplomatic muscle - his experience in Midgard made him an effective advocate and mascot for the new community.

The Valkyrie was good with people. She was a leader who also put in the work herself, and was good at solving social disputes. Her tactics almost always involved drinking, but Loki would be damned if it didn't usually work.

As for Loki's role - well he had become sort of a fixer. Thor and Val had leaned on him to use his magic to sort out... trickier... diplomatic and social situations. And the Asgardians had started to see him as someone who had influence when Thor's answers to a problem were too brutish, and the Valkyrie's too practical.

He also had a reputation for being able to obtain things - things that were otherwise difficult to procure in a secluded part of northern Norway with fairly dubious legal status, no international recognition, or even an official currency.

The little doorways had useful for his under the table import/export hustle. More than once when he couldn't otherwise accommodate a special request, he had simply procured what was necessary in LA. Although he had found it harder to cross that barrier as of late, and he was glad that his particular services weren't as necessary now that the little community was finding its footing.

In this way Loki was both the carrot and the stick as the pioneering New Asgardians muddled their way through life on this new world.

His situation was tenuous, as his situations always seemed to be, and while he would not be beloved in the way that Thor was, nor would he ever be their friend like the Valkyrie, Loki found that he did have the Asgardians respect, maybe for the first time ever, and that was something. He still had to put on airs for them, he still had to seem stoic and hard. He still had to play the cocky scoundrel. But there was no leadership without compromise, he supposed. And at least this way he didn't have to pretend to be Odin and he didn't have to hide anything but his smoother edges and his true feelings.

Loki found himself the most useful and the most comfortable around the witches. The few remaining of the once formidable coven of Asgard had established their own little commune on the outskirts of town - a small collection of houses and gardens and ceremonial spaces.

Thor had a hard time confronting the group, because it reminded him of their mother, Loki assumed. But that was precisely why Loki liked it. Frigga had guided and moulded him in ways that Odin did not and could not. It was for that reason that he often found himself helping out in the little coven - helping them dry herbs, helping them with repairs, running errands for the elders. He could show them a little of the softness the he could not show the others. It was in these moments that he thought the most about the girl he'd left behind through his doorway, and about the paradise that they had made together.

Loki found that it was all too easy to let his mind wander into thoughts about what it would be like to share all of this with her.

It was several days after the sudden departure from his fantasy life that Loki went to the witches with questions about those collapsed pockets of space. He wanted to know what their presence meant - what it could mean for magic in this new world.

The witches confirmed that they too had sensed a power in this new home similar to their old one. On Asgard they had called it Bifrost - it had powered their cities and technologies - it had flown through the rainbow bridge and created gateways into other worlds. They had harnessed it on their old planet, so why couldn't they harness it here?