Havoc and Retribution

And I Darken

Out on the balcony overlooking New York City, Loki gives a long-suffering sigh and says, "Don't lurk Thor. You're so much better at looming."

He crosses his arms and turns to face Thor. The god of thunder has a bashful look on his face, caught in the act of trying not to disturb Loki. Loki came out here to get away from the cloying, goody-goody atmosphere a room full of Avengers exudes, but he'd guessed, Thor being Thor, that his former brother would follow him. At least he got a couple of moments alone with his thoughts before Dark and Brooding cornered him to try and talk about his feelings.

"We're not doing this," Loki warns Thor, a disgruntled look on his face.

Thor gives him an innocent smile. "Not doing what?"

Loki gives him a look and turns back to the skyline. He leans on the railing, looking not at the cars below, but at the hazy sky with the stars hiding behind the smog. Such a polluted teeming mass of humanity lives in this city and the result is a city where starlight doesn't reach human eyes anymore. It makes him even more disgusted with Migardians. He's not sentimental but having traveled past galaxies and nebulas that challenge the imagination, he doesn't understand a world that willfully corrupts its own view of the stars. He's not sentimental.

But she was. They both were.

He rams that thought down, hard. He will not think of them, not with Thor at his shoulder, wanting to talk about her, that stupid woman who has become a nightmare of memories. They are starting to blur in his mind too, Sigyn and Jace. No longer one woman, but one potent ghost.

He realizes he's angry with her. From any one else's perspective, his anger is irrational, but Loki decides that it is completely justified. She made a decision to be a damned hero, to be all brave and goddessly, and didn't consider or understand the fact that it would destroy his mental clarity. Damn her for messing with his brain. Now his head is a cesspool of emotions he has no desire to indulge in. He may have been very objective when telling the Avengers off, but if Steve had gotten any closer, he might have quite literally bitten his ear off. Well at least an earlobe. And they needed a good telling off anyways.

If Thor doesn't back off, he might just lose some cartilage. His brother is looming at his back. Loki knows it is in Thor's nature to want to touch him to comfort him and a memory of Thor consoling him when they were children rises unallowed into his head. He shakes it off. Pesky memories.

"There's nothing to say, brother," Loki says at Thor comes to stand at his side.

"Loki," Thor says softly. "You've never talked about this. Your knuckles are white on the railing." Loki unclenches his bloodless fingers, irritated. "And you push me away. If you never say what you have to about her, you'll never be free of it."

Loki scoffs. "It's a plague," he says humorlessly. "She's a bloody swarm of locusts up here." He taps his temple with one long finger. "Why would I unleash that on the world?" He asks sarcastically.

"So you'll be the hero and contain it all?" Thor shrugs, arms up, a half smile on his face. Loki wrinkles his face in disgust.

"Pah," he growls. "Heroics are not my style."

"Then talk to me," Thor says.

"No," Loki's reply is curt and emphatic.

"Well now you're just being obstinate," Thor snorts.

"Damn straight," Loki says and can't help the smile that lifts the corners of his mouth when Thor laughs. "Where did you learn a word like 'obstinate'? Did you steal Rogers' dictionary?"