Work Text:
“I just keep thinking about Thor... Not bright, but he’d give you the goddamned shirt off his back if you asked him. And he killed himself. He put a gun in his mouth and blew his head off in Philadelphia in 1932. What kind of way is that for a god to die?” - Odin, American Gods
Thursday, August 1949
When “Venus” #6 comes out Loki feels a rush of power the likes of which he hasn’t felt for ages. It fades soon but he is refreshed and sated for the first time in long centuries. He buys the issues and keeps them in little plastic bags, as a reminder of the other ways to be worshiped in this world that keeps getting stranger with every passing year.
He calls Odin, who calls himself Wedding these days, to let him know. He wishes he could call Thor.
Thursday, August 1962
“Journey into Mystery” #83 comes after a little more than a decade, exactly thirty years after Thor killed himself. Loki smiles and buys the issue and the ones that follow it with money he earns from scams and con tricks, the likes of which Thor would never approve. He waits for Thor to come back, reborn from the love and belief of these mortals, this new found popularity.
“He can’t come back, Loki. He’s dead.”
Odin’s words hurt but the All-Father has always been bitter and Loki knew better than to listen.
“When has that stopped any of us old man?”
*
He doesn’t know when his own memories of Thor and the things he read at those comics start melting together in his head. Everything that once seemed ridiculous and far-fetched slowly starts sounding less and less like a cheap mortal lie and more like the Asgard Loki remembers, the brother he remembers and misses.
But they weren’t really brothers were they?
That was just one of the stupid mortal fancies.
A pity, Loki can’t help but think. He’d like to have grown up with Thor, in an Asgard as carefree and beautiful as the one these comics depicted. He often tries to imagine what the other Loki would do, the paper Loki, if he had lived his life.
He tries not to imagine himself leading the other Loki’s life.
Not until Thor came back. They’d think about it together.
Not until Thor came back, and Loki made sure that he’d stay, that he’d let Loki keep him alive this time.
Not until he found again what the other Loki has and doesn’t appreciate enough.
Loki calls himself Lyesmith and settles in new Mexico, watching and waiting for the world to change.
Wednesday, April 27th 2011 23:58
A storm is brewing on the horizon.
Loki sits on the roof, waiting for the rain, and the thunders.
Waiting for what he hopes will follow them.
Thursday, April 28th 2011 00:15
Loki laughs as the rain starts to fall and the thunder cracks like something coming alive around him.
“Brother,” he says to the figure in the rain, smiling wildly with his scarred lips. “Brother, I thought you dead.”
“Did you mourn?” Thor asks, stepping closer.