Firstly, SPOILER WARNING for Marvel's The Dark World.

Wow, I've really missed Fanfiction. It feels nice to be back. All those people who had been Favouriting, Following, reviewing and enjoying my other stories, please know that I appreciate it dearly!

So,

what if, instead of going to Midgard to see Jane, Thor had gone to Svartalfheim to bring Loki's body back to Asgard?

This story presumes Loki had really died, and had not come back.

Thor's perspective, second person. A one-shot.

Enjoy.

You held his body close as you walked.

Under the dark sky, his face was pale. Where the moonlight touched his cheek, it could have been the beginnings of a ghost. He looked colourless. Only a distressingly fragile white, and the blackness of his hair. Even if his eyes were to ever open again, you wondered if they would be still that same shade of green. So was that lost too?

Your home realm felt unusually chilly that night, and you wondered if even the very foundations of Asgard were unwilling to let the traitor, the ex-King, the war criminal, your brother, back in. You found yourself tightening your hold around him protectively as the faces of your father and your friends flickered behind your eyes.

In the faint light, you drank in all the shadows that were draped around his closed eyes, and lying in the hollows of his cheeks. The kind of shadows that gathered only on the face of one who was haunted by war. Yet, you could take in how childlike he somehow still looked. Was this supposed to be the insatiably greedy alien god everyone had fought to overthrow? That couldn't be true – he fit perfectly in your arms, and even without a trace of life, he still seemed to huddle against you like he were trying to hide from the worlds, just like your little brother might have done. This must just be your little brother.

You carried him from the gigantic halls. Past the gardens, past the training arenas, past the shadow of a tree you remembered he sometimes read books beneath, when he lived in summertime.

You realised how long you have been carrying him for – since the last slice of the sun had said goodbye from earlier that night – but you continued to place one foot beyond the other, and forbade tiredness to find you. He felt far too light, and a lump rose in your throat as you registered how Loki looked wearied beyond belief.

The two of you passed quietly trickling silver fountains, empty gilded banquet chambers, and paths that weaved like weathered ribbons out to the rest of the city. You ignored it all.

Your yesterday's pleading to the Allfather, half deafeningly forceful, half brokenly desperate, still resonated faintly somewhere at the back of your mind as you continued staring at the face of the person clasped gently in your arms. Cold and haughty as your father had been, you thanked Yggdrasil that he had consented to let you give Loki an honourable farewell.

... Just this one last kindness...

… You should have left the body in Svartalfheim! …

… Even if you think he deserves such service no longer! … Please…

Keep it private

… Would not want anyone else there...

Blinking away the echoes – and your eyes and nose were feeling uncomfortably warm and prickling – you reached a long, stone-white hall that almost shaded the shore of the ocean. The glimmering channel of water that voyaged along the hall's length travelled until it met the seas. There, an imperial-looking funeral ship waited silently – gold, silver and with light from moon and the city polishing the prow to a soft sheen.

Ignoring the cold breaths of wind, you laid Loki's body down carefully inside the vessel, cradling his lifeless head in your hand. You recalled when your mother would tell you to take him to his room, when the two of you were young and sleepy, tired of the rest of the worlds.

"Make sure your brother is safely in bed before you go to sleep, Thor."

"Of course, Mother."

Unlike his younger self, Loki now did not stir as you gently placed him down, and you swallowed hard to try smother the bitter distress that was rushing forward somewhere inside your ribcage. You unfastened your cape from your shoulders, and with more gentleness than you could give to anyone else – even Jane – you tucked it around his narrow shoulders. As if it thought you were finished, the miniature ship began to float down the channel, and your breath began coming in heavy lungfuls as you found yourself clenching and twisting your hands to stifle the urge to drag the ship back.

It seemed too unreal. Surely Loki was only sleeping. Even as he lay in a gleaming vessel reserved for the dead, with his thin hands folded over his sternum, and dark hair fanned around his pale cheeks. Even with the most exhausted expression you had seen on his face in a long time.

Even then, surely he would wake. His eyes would open, his head would lift, and you would see him smile faintly in that way that told you he had just had a nightmare he would not want anyone else to hear about. But Loki's eyes stayed softly, terribly closed, his expression unwavering, and the golden boat carried him further down to the undulating sea, further away from you.

During your mother's sendoff, her body had been glided seamlessly to the edge of the ocean, in a manner almost as cool and regal as herself. She had vanished in a thousand shards of star-like light, into eternity. The bodies of the other fallen had followed straight, as soldiers follow their general, ready to take their seats at the tables of Valhalla.

But Loki's boat wandered so slowly over the waves, almost meanderingly, like he was still reluctant to leave you. It reminded you of him when you were both much younger, and he were still small enough for you to hoist onto your back and let him drift asleep. If he ever had to do something in front of other children, if the Allfather had summoned him, or if he knew you were troubled, it would be as if there were an invisible physical tie between you two, only unfastened when you urged him to go ahead. Only then would he walk away.

There had been a heavy, twisting knot inside you that you had been trying to unravel for the uncounted past hours since you saw him hit the ground and his eyes close. Despite your struggles to suppress it, it had grown, and made you feel both excruciatingly hollow and horribly choked. You knew this was just grief, and that there was nothing you could do to stop it, except only let it consume you. The tears that had been hovering expectantly behind your eyes and nose finally surged forward. The thunder and lightning you never realised you had gathered above in the dusky sky began to truly rage, letting the world know its loss.

Ever since you brought him home chained and muzzled from Midgard, of all the deaths that you had ever dreaded – Father's, Mother's, Sif's, Jane's, others' – you had never known that this would be the one to bring you to your knees! To force such a sense of loss upon you. Earlier, you could have said your real brother had already dissipated from that silhouette who paced inside the dungeon cell. You would not have back then known you would have cared this much if he were stolen away again. But somewhere amidst all the agonising sorrow, you were glad that you were the one who did.

All the while, you already knew you would never, never, never be able to accept that he was finally gone.

The one who had journeyed the branches of Yggdrasil beside you from the days you two had begun to walk. The one who had known your flaws when it came to kingship and had tried to help you. The one who had fought by you, fought against you, fought for you, and who would have continued to do so until his bones turned to dust if time had been kind enough to let him stay that long.

Your vision was hazed by water droplets – rain and tears – that just continued to stream on and on, but you were determined to watch the vessel until the end. For one who had lived a life such as his, you thought the way Loki was being carried over the waves was strangely peaceful. The single, lonely boat inevitably reached the edge of Asgard's ocean. Like your mother, he seemed to disappear in a shattering of light that flew upwards to embrace the sky.

Your battle partner, your closest friend, your once-enemy, your brother, now parted from you as you watched and wondered if you still had some sort of place in his heart somehow.

Maybe this was what it had been like to be Loki.

Slowly, eventually, the thunder softened to a quiet, mournful quavering. The lightning was exhausted to some mere flickers in the distance. The rain eased. You were left alone in the empty darkness, but the first few hints of early morning light were beginning to delicately paint the horizon.

Your voice, hoarse and broken as it was, was the loudest sound in the gloom, and you wished that your brother could hear it.

"...Goodbye, Loki..."

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