Sunshine IV
Warnings: Mention of Major Characters Death
Summary: I decided to write a brief interlude as this chapter to break up all the action that’s been going on.
A/N: As part of my weekly prompt for FICWARS. The prompt is: "I don't deserve this" "except you do"
The trio was back on the ship, new information in tow. Quill manned the helm, while Loki sat in a corner of the room.
Thor walked up to him, two glasses of what he assumed were some form of alcohol, in his hands. He handed one to Loki. Loki took it with a smile of appreciation.
Thor sat next to him with a lumbering sigh. “It’s been a rather long day.”
“More like a very long week.”
“At least we are back on the ship, and we have new information about Gamora. So a win!” Thor grinned, before taking two large gulps of his drink.
Loki sipped it. It was nothing like the Asgardian mead he was used to, but then again, nothing was like Asgard. Not anymore.
“Do you ever miss it?” he asked.
Thor paused, his brow furrowed. “I used to. I used to a lot. But Asgard is a people, not a place, and our people are safe now.”
“But our memories are not. Asgard was the only place I was...content.”
“Really? Even after being locked up? After...after mother?” he finished in a quiet voice.
Loki glanced at his brother and nodded. “Even then, it was where she taught me my powers, where she read to me, where you and I played. There might be terrible memories there, but there were also good ones. Possibly the only good ones I’ve had.”
Thir patted Loki on the back. He rested his hand, grasping his neck, as he had always done. It was his brother’s way of showing understanding. Of showing love.
Loki smiled lightly. He watched the others carry about their lives. Nebula was teaching some form of flicking a piece of metal to Mantis, while Groot watched Rocket building yet another mechanical contraption.
Drax ate Zargnuts against a wall as if he were invisible. And Quill steered the ship through the outer reaches of space, searching for the woman he loved, humming along to music blasting from all corners of the ship.
It was a family. A home. One Loki had not known in many years, one Loki had maybe never known.
The first time his father had said he loved him was right before his death. The first time Thor said Loki deserved the throne was when he thought he was speaking to Odin. his mother loved him, this he knew, and yet his final words to her still would haunt him the rest of his life. Not to mention that he had a sister he never got to talk to, to understand. What if she was just as lonely, just as much of an outcast as him?
And would Midgard ever understand that what he did to them wasn’t his fault? That he had been tortured and manipulated? Or would it be just another place that hated without ever trying to understand?
Yet. and yet, through it all, all the pain, and death, and suffering, he had found himself back with his brother, back with a family, a home. A place of only understanding and acceptance, a place that didn’t know who he was and what he had done, so that he could be someone new, someone, that more resembled what he always wanted to be: himself.
“I don’t deserve it,” he sighed.
“Deserve what?” Thor asked.
Loki stared into his cup. “This. a home. A place with you. I deserve to be dead in Hel still, fighting for all eternity. I deserve the honeyed words of poison by Thanos.”
“Loki you have made mistakes, some were not your own, I know that now. But we’ve all made mistakes. Mother told me that we all fail at who we’re supposed to be, it’s the measure of a hero that succeeds in being who they are. You were supposed to a king, a tyrant maybe. A villain. But you failed. You are a hero, a savior,” he nudged him in a winking tone. “You are a good person. And I’m sorry that no one has seen that.”
“But I don’t deserve to be. I don’t deserve it.”
“Except you do.” Thor smiled, a smile of finality. “You deserve everything good. We both do. Now we just have to try to earn it.”
Loki nodded finally, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He wanted to say thank you, wanted to say he loved him, but he didn't think he needed to. Thor already knew it. So instead he raised his glass and clinked it with Thor’s. They both sipped long and slow.
In the background, a man was singing, singing that it wasn’t time to change, but to take it easy. That yes, he might be young, he still had time to learn and so he’d be okay.
Loki smiled at the poignantly prophetic words of the unknown Midgardian and continued to watch the crew, working and playing, laughing and hiding, as he sat by the only person who he needed to understand him and accept, the one person he realized always had.
