Loki hasn't felt so alone in years.
In front of him stands his family. His mother, his father, Thor. It should be a happy reunion. He wants it to be a happy reunion. He's with his mother again. Even his father is a welcome sight after so long in exile.
But it's not a happy reunion.
Nobody's said it, but somehow, Loki just knows: The Avengers are dead. He's not sure what happened; he's not sure how long it's been; all he knows is that the mortals he's been living with for years are now gone.
And now Asgard is here for him.
"So, can..." Loki swallows hard. His throat feels unusually dry. "Can I come home?" He looks toward them, but he can't force himself to look at them. His gaze flickers between them, but he can't bring himself to meet their eye.
Odin raises his brow, a look of casual disdain on his face. "What home?"
Loki's heart stops.
What does he mean, what home? Their home! The one he grew up in; the one Odin himself raised him in.
"Asgard." It's barely a whisper as it leaves his mouth. He doesn't know for sure that he even says the word aloud.
Frigga takes a step toward him, cupping his face in her hand. "Oh, darling," she murmurs, and he closes his eyes, letting the sound of her voice wash over him once more. How he's missed this. He's missed her. She gently strokes his cheek with her thumb. "You know Asgard was never your home."
Her words hit Loki harder than any ever have before. They're cold, harsh, but her tone is full of warmth, and that only makes it hurt more. She's not saying it out of vitriol. She's speaking her truth, the truth, and it hurts more than any purposeful cruelty ever could.
Loki opens his eyes, and through the tears welling in them, he sees his mother's blurry face looking up at him, adorning a sad smile. He can't force himself to return one of his own.
"What happens now?" Loki asks quietly.
Frigga lowers her hand and looks at her husband and her son to answer, so Loki looks at them, too. If Frigga can't answer his question, he's not sure he wants to hear the answer at all.
It's Odin who delivers the verdict. "You'll finish out your sentence alone, bound to this tower where you can bring about no more harm unto our worlds."
"But I don't want to hurt anyone," Loki pleads. "I don't want to bring any harm anywhere. I just want to go home."
"You never had a home in Asgard," Thor says. "You've always known that, even before you knew why. We all did."
"Brother..." He can feel his heart breaking with every word that leaves their mouths. After everything they've been through together, after centuries upon centuries of playing and fighting together, this is what they've come to? He can't believe it. He won't believe it.
"It's time to stop pretending," Thor says. "I'm not your brother. I have no relation to..." Thor eyes him up and down with distaste. "Your kind."
Loki looks down at himself, and he's met not with his usual pale skin, but a deep blue that covers his arms. His eyes go wide, and he puts his hands against his face, running them down his cheeks. He can feel the ridges embedded into his skin, the mark of the monsters he's been raised to fear.
The mark of the monster he's always been.
Loki squeezes his eyes shut, as though the horrors will go away when he can no longer see them.
The scene keeps replaying in his mind, over and over and over. He can't stop thinking about it; he can't stop watching it play out in his mind. That illusion, that vision the witch cast upon him, it's haunting him. It felt so painfully real. He doesn't know how to move past it. He doesn't know what to do.
The quiet thud of footsteps announces a presence in the hallway, and both logic and the sound of his gait say that it's Steve who approaches. There's a knock on the door that, as expected, is followed by the Captain saying his name.
Loki just rests his head against the wall and closes his eyes.
"Can you open the door?" Steve asks.
Loki doesn't move.
A few moments of increasingly uncomfortable silence pass before Steve seems to realize that it won't happen. He doesn't try to push – he rarely does – and he moves on. "I'm sorry about Wanda," he says. "She did the same thing to the rest of us, so I know how it feels. I know it's not fun. I know it feels like the floor's been ripped out from under you and I know it's not something you can just bounce back from, but none of what she showed you was real. Whatever it was, it wasn't your future, okay? She was just messing with you."
Loki swallows hard. He wants to appreciate the thought, but he's wrong. It is his future. He can't hide from it much longer.
"I just want to check in on you," Steve says. "I'll leave you alone if you want; I can't blame you for wanting some time to get yourself together. But if you want to talk, you know I'm here for you."
Loki doesn't say anything.
"Alright, um..." There's a pause on the other side of the door, then, "I'll see you later, I guess."
The receding footsteps announce Steve's departure, and only then does Loki finally allow himself to open his eyes. He lowers his gaze to his hands shaking in his lap, and he doesn't recognize them. He doesn't recognize himself. All he sees is blue, that all-too-familiar hue haunting him with visions of the past and memories of the future.
Steve won't be seeing him anytime soon.