Loki Misses the Asgardian Prison System

Chapter 72

Loki is half-asleep in bed when he hears a knock on his door, and he has half a mind just to tell them to go away. He doesn't care who it is or what they want. He's tired and he wants to sleep, and that doesn't happen often. (Well, the 'tired' part does; the 'wants to sleep part' less so, but he's been sleeping well for the last couple of days and he'd like to push his luck.) Whoever this is – Steve, he'd guess? – can come back later, when Loki's actually awake.

"Loki?" The voice on the other side of the door belongs to Thor, not Steve, though that probably would have been his second guess, so he's not too surprised.

Loki rolls over so he faces the door as opposed to lying facedown into his pillow, but he doesn't even bother opening his eyes. "I'm sleeping."

Thor huffs a quiet laugh, which means he must be in a decent mood, because that kind of comment would usually get an eye roll. "Will you open the door?"

Ordinarily, Loki would just flat-out decline, but since Thor seems to be in a good mood, he decides he might as well be nice to him. His idea of being nice, though, at least for the moment, is to say, "Must I open the door now or can I sleep first?"

"Oh, you can sleep," Thor assures him. "I was just going to tell you that I'm returning to Asgard."

Loki frowns. Okay, maybe he'll sleep later. He sits up in bed, and, after scanning the room briefly for his cat – she must be with Pepper because he doesn't see her – he says, "You can open the door if you'd like."

Thor does just that, and he steps inside, closing the door behind him. His gaze lands on the broken wall next to him, and, after eyeing it for a few moments, he asks Loki, "Is somebody going to fix that?"

Loki shakes his head. "I imagine I'd have to talk to Stark about it, and that is something I do not want to do." Admittedly, the conversations they share in the privacy of his room, however rare they are, usually do end well, but he can't bring himself to ask Tony for help, especially for something as ridiculously frivolous as this. Changing the subject, he says, "You're going back to Asgard already? You've only been here a few days."

Thor gives a small shrug. "Well, duty calls."

"Is everything okay back home?" Loki asks, and he kicks himself for it the moment the words leave his mouth. Back home. This is his home now, not Asgard. Asgard's nothing more than a not-so-distant memory now. There's no reason to call it what it's not.

Thor doesn't seem at all bothered by the word, answering with a simple, "Asgard is doing well."

Loki waits for a few moments, expecting him to continue, but he doesn't. "You've been spending a lot of time there. Are you sure there's nothing wrong?"

"Of course," Thor says. "No more than usual."

Loki nods slowly. Is that really all he's going to get? "And the rest of the Nine Realms? How do they fare?" He knows Sif mentioned months ago that Thor was busy cleaning up that mess. He hasn't heard an update on that in a while.

"They're doing well, all things considered," Thor says.

Loki's eyes scan his face, looking for more to that answer than his brother is giving, but there's nothing. It's strange. Usually Thor could talk for hours on end. Now he's barely saying a sentence at a time.

Loki hesitates. This is probably a question he shouldn't ask. It's opening up a can of worms he's worked hard to shut. But curiosity gets the better of him, and the conversation is leading itself in that direction anyway, so he feels like he can get away with it. "How's Mother?"

Thor smiles at the question, but there's a hint of sorrow in his eyes. "Mother's doing well," he says.

Loki eyes him warily. "Are you sure?"