Marvel Comic Whump/sick fics

What its Worth

A continuation from "What I am Capable of"
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"Do you know why we have the sunflowers? It's not because Vincent van Gogh suffered. It's because Vincent van Gogh had a brother who loved him. Through all the pain, he had a tether, a connection to the world. And that is the focus of the story we need – connection."

― Hannah Gadsby
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It was a bitterly cold winter day when Loki made his choice, one he had been mulling over for days. Loki didn't find himself a particular ethical person, he had never found a normal persons idea of ethics reasonable in the universe. He had known this about himself for the majority of his life, in that allotted time there was a total of three persons he genuinely loved and cared about. One of them was Frigga his adoptive mother, the only mother he had ever known. It had been her he always would see as his mother, he loved her more than most anyone else; even in death.

The second was the only other person he would admit to loving was his brother Thor, Odin had placed a wedge between them but Loki had been through to much to not admit he loved Thor. The lovable doofus who was truly a golden retriever of a god, his heart too big and with having a heart so big he knew his brother was more prone to heartbreak than he would let on. Who was the third? His cat Finnic in his little seaside home in the small town in Maine. Loki was not the Loki his brother had known, he had been taken from 2012 to the TVA and had won his freedom. He had left his brother to mourn and move on thinking it best for him. Fate however had other ideas and Loki found himself not so estranged from his brother any longer. Thor was one of the most forgiving of people perhaps in the whole universe, kind down to his very core.

His nature was naturally more emphatic than most, the golden boy of Asgard. Perhaps that had been another reason he had become the snake, it had started as a needed persona that Thor had needed not that he knew that. Loki coming behind him defending him from the gossip and whispers, that persona had taken on a life of it's own and well...

Most knew the rest of the story by now, Loki wasn't the god of mischief for nothing after all. But nearly dying over and over and seeing what your future holds tends to humble a person and humbled Loki was.  That happens when you pour your broken soul out and beg forgiveness from a brother who by all accounts should hate you but he just pulled you into his bone crushing hugs and does without a second thought. Since that day Thor hadn't left Loki company, they spent their days reconnecting. It was how Loki was now in the position he was in, he hadn't meant to prod an open wound but one night a few beers in by the roar of the fire while it stormed outside he had asked a simple question.

'So how is Jane?'

It had been an innocent enough question, for all he knew they were still madly in love. He had heard Thor go on and on about her after all. It felt so long ago now, those days where it had all shifted. She was the reason Thor loved Midgard so much, the reason he had a change of heart about the Front Giants. Thor had matured centuries in a matter of a year because of that woman. What Loki hadn't been prepared for was this...crestfallen look to overtake Thor's entire demeanor.

Loki had known in that moment that something truly awful had happened he had assumed the worse. She was dead she had to be and maybe Loki himself that other version had been the reason. SO color him very confused when Thor poured out the story of how Jane Foster after all the two of them had been through had 'dumped' Thor. Like some cheap mistress you wanted to keep hidden and in a letter of all things. Loki had years of practice in court which made keeping his face neutral was easy for him even if rage burned bright in his chest.