Loki Misses the Asgardian Prison System

Chapter 196

"I know nothing of substance," Loki answers evenly. He has an idea – a very vague, somewhat foggy idea that still haunts him even years later. He has nothing concrete. He has no evidence. He has his hidden history and a bad feeling in his gut, and what good does that do? How is that supposed to convince the Allfather to give away the most powerful relic he's ever laid his eyes on?

So, with that settled, he turns his attention back to the game. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Thor looking at him, but ultimately, he does the same.

They finish the level for what must be the twentieth time by now, and all is well in the common room once more. After a brief conversation, they agree to go through the level two or three more times before they try their hand at the boss level once more, just to be safe. So back to the beginning they go.

Loki's getting better, he feels. He's getting used to this controller. He's getting used to controlling his little green guy on the screen. It doesn't take quite so much thinking anymore. It's not quite instinctual, but it's getting there.

And then Thor speaks again.

"If you ever want to talk about anything," he says, "I will be more than happy to listen."

"I know," Loki says absently.

"It can be anything, truly," Thor adds. "If there's anything that you would like to talk about..."

Loki shrugs minutely. "Not so much."

"Including the Tesseract," Thor adds. "Or the other Infinity Stones. Just... anything you may want to talk about."

Loki feels himself tense at the words Infinity Stones, which is ridiculous. They're just words. It's not as though they weren't just talking about an Infinity Stone mere moments ago. But to hear those words come out of Thor's mouth... There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but when he hears those words, he thinks of one particular man; one much less forgiving than the one sitting beside him.

He swallows hard, and answers as evenly as he can, "I have nothing of the sort to talk about, but thank you for the offer."

Thor's looking at him. He can see it out of the corner of his eye, though he refuses to look back at him. He just has to act normal. He can do that. He acts normal every second of every day. He just has to continue to do that. Easy. Right?

Loki's little green character picks up Thor's little red character and throws him across the screen. He scoffs, the corners of his lips turning upward in a grin. "I did not know that I could do that."

That gets Thor's attention back to the game where it belongs. "What? What did you do?"

"Watch," Loki says eagerly. His character runs up to Thor's, picks him up, and throws him back the way he came.

Thor scoffs. "Excuse you!"

"This is amazing," Loki declares. "This is the most amazing development of the night."

"How did you do that?" Thor asks. "What did you hit? I want to do it to you."

"Ah, ah!" Loki mimes zipping his lips. "If you want to throw me, you must decode it yourself, much the same way I did."

Thor groans. "I hate you sometimes."

Loki's grin only grows bigger. "I know."

Loki runs further into the level, to the little turtle dudes that like to walk back and forth for no reason other than that they can. He has his big-person power-up, so if this fails, he's protected from sudden, unavoidable death. He runs up to the little turtle dude, does his little picker-upper thing...