Lo, There do I see my Father

Lo, There do I see my Mother and

My Brothers and my Sisters

Lo, There do I see the line of my people back to the beginning

Lo, They do call to me

They bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla

Where thine enemies have been vanquished

Where the brave shall live Forever

Nor shall we mourn but rejoice for those that have died the glorious death.

-Ancient Norse prayer

The Norns must really hate him.

That was the first thought that his mind formed after he woke.

The second one was that Thor would kill him for coming back to life again. Well, he could rest assured that this time was entirely unintentional.

His eyelids bristled and slowly opened. Immediately, aggressive sunlight pierced his eyes, and Loki pressed them back shut with a sharp breath. All right, sight was a no for the moment.

He focused on his other senses. At first, silence seemed to surround him, a comfortable absence of distractions and trouble. As his hearing acclimated, he realised the sounds around him were muffled, as if underwater. Distant murmurs and whispers found their way to his ears, and he found himself inexplicably drawn to them. He could perceive the steady beatings of his heart against his ribcage, and he wondered how it could manage to be so peaceful when it had just died.

He tried opening his eyes again. This time, the sunlight welcomed him, tenderly brushing his eyelashes.

It seemed he was lying on a bed, his head resting on a comfortable pillow. Warmth seeped into his body, a warmth which reminded him of summers back on Asgard, where he and his brother would run to the gardens and climb the tall, steady oak trees. The room was bathed in a peaceful morning glow, with stray rays of light gently lapping at the corners.

He turned his head. Lying next to him was Thor, propped up on his right shoulder with his left arm discarded across his chest. He was clad in a full-body armour that Loki thought had been destroyed on Sakaar. His face was blocked from Loki's view, but he could see beads of sweat hanging from the back of his brother's neck. His hair seemed ruffled, unkempt, and highly uncharacteristic of Thor's usual practices. Loki could remember endless mornings spent fruitlessly knocking on his bedroom door, only to be met with "I'm not ready yet!" and "I need to make my hair look just right for the ceremony!".

(On the cramped Sakaarian vessel, he had often spotted Thor absently rubbing the back of his head, a disappointed and wistful expression on his face- the loss of his hair was easier to mourn that that of his friends, his father, his home-)

But Loki did not focus on that. Because his brother's body was shaken with uncontrolled spasms, and his tense shoulders rose and fell with each ragged breath. Occasionally, a small whimper escaped his mouth, his closed eyelids unconsciously twitching. It was obvious Thor was experiencing a violent nightmare, like the ones he used to have as a child and tried in vain to hide from his younger brother.

"Thor?"

The instant the words fell out of his mouth, Loki knew something was wrong. The sound of his voice echoed around, but it lacked depth. It rang with a shallow, almost unreal tone, almost as if it did not belong in this plane of reality.

Wait.

Oh, no.

Oh, no, no, no.

Loki sprang into a sitting position. "Thor. Brother, wake up. Can you hear me?"

Nothing. The trembling and whimpering redoubled. Loki tentatively reached a hand toward his brother's arched back, hoping against all odds that the situation wasn't what he suspected. His fingers hovered next to Thor's shoulder, before closing the gap to touch him-

His hand went right through.

He tried to control his breathing. His hands went to the sheets and tried to crumple them, to move them, anything to prove he was here.

(I'm here, Thor, I'm here. Brother, please. I'm here. The words echoed in his head in painful recollection.)

He felt the sheets under his fingers, and yet they refused to move. He could tell every bump in the fabrics, but each time he tried to ruffle them, it was as if he was plunged in honey. Everything felt wrong.

He stood up and reached for a small lamp on the nearby table. Again, his hand went past it when he tried to grab it. And yet he could still feel the heat of the morning sun, could still feel his heart banging in his chest. He was a living ghost.

There, but not there.

It seemed he was dead after all.

But if he was, why was he stuck here?

His confusion was cut short by Thor's sudden intake of breath as his body gave one final spasm. Turning around, Loki saw his brother's eyes (how had he acquired a second?) snap open right in front of Loki's form.

"Thor?" He tentatively waved his hand. The eyes did not move, and Loki's heart sank. His brother could not see or hear him. He was truly alone.

Thor's initial panic had subsided, and, breathing heavily, he rolled onto his back. As if by instinct, his hand crept up to the empty pillow next to him. When they found nothing, Thor quickly sat up, and his breathing stopped. Then, his eyes glazed over and his face contorted into a grimace of pain. He sank back into the bed, defeated.

Loki had the impression he was watching something incredibly private. He had never seen Thor appear so vulnerable since Svartalfheim, or even when he had given himself up to the Destroyer back when he was banished, a lifetime ago.

They stayed here for a while, Thor sighing on his large bed, and Loki sitting next to him, wishing he could rub off the lump that had formed in the space between his brother's eyebrows.

What had happened, that Loki was stuck here, with no means of communicating? Why was he not in the afterlife? After all that he had done, he clearly did not deserve Valhalla, but surely there was a place in Helheim for him? Had he been called back? If so, by whom? Thor clearly was not aware of his presence. So why did he wake up next to him?

Loki was not used to be lacking answers. He had always loved to be in control, to know more than the others and to be one step ahead. He thrived in situations where he was the one to divulge information, specifically plucking out the truth so it could bend to his ends.

Now, helplessly staring at Thor's broken form, he felt plunged in a swirling ocean, with no way of controlling his descent.

Eventually, Thor got up. He didn't bother changing out of his armour, though. Instead, he walked up to the bathroom, scowled at the mirror, and splashed some water over his face. It trickled down filled with ash and dust.

When Thor stepped out of his quarters, Loki felt a strong pull towards the exit. Apparently he was condemned to spend his afterlife following his brother. Great. Not very different from his previous life then, he thought bitterly.

The building was eerily quiet. Thor's footsteps echoed as he wandered aimlessly through the halls. Briefly, Loki wondered if they were the only ones there when a tall figure walked past, long hair hanging from a bearded, weary face and clouded blue eyes which he thought vaguely resembled the Captain's. Thor looked up, and the figure nodded before wordlessly disappearing, as if it was never there.

Eventually, they reached a common room with comfortable couches, a bar and several bay windows. While his brother reached to the bar to pour himself a drink the younger god was pretty sure would not affect him in any way, Loki peered out the nearest window. Outside, the sun shone on what first appeared to be a bustling city. Tall, overhanging buildings in the distance cast their shadows on a clean, perfectly organised street below while the houses complimented each other in light tones of red and brown.

And yet something was off. The street was utterly empty, and a thin coat of dust was draped over the city. The energy around this place was…odd, Loki thought. Like it was lacking an essential part, and therefore was not whole. His seiðr longed to fill in the gaps in this incomplete setting, but he held it in. Even if he had been physically able to intervene, the sheer magnitude of whatever had happened here was far too large for him to fix.

He reverted his attention back to Thor. The god of thunder, clad in new armour, looked incredibly small in the empty room. His eyes were sunken and dark, but not in the fury Loki had so often seen his brother harbour. He was just…drained, like the third empty glass that was now discarded on the bar table.

And Loki felt the inkling of doubt, which had been sowed ever since he woke up to Thor's nightmare, grow into a strong ringing in his mind. Against his will, he remembered his last moments on the Statesman. The dark energy swirling around the dead remnants of Asgard. Thanos' cruel, ironic smirk as he watched them fall apart. Thor's desperate, desperate blue eye searching Loki's, searching for any sign that he had a plan, that everything would be fine, that-

He was pulled from his memory by the clink of yet another glass on the counter.

Loki watched as the mighty Thor refilled it once again, and wondered if Thanos had been the one to finally bring his brother to his knees.

It was a beautiful day outside. Too bad they were stuck in Thor's room because of the oaf's terribly irritating inclination to spend his time moping around the building like some damned soul in Helheim. And Loki was growing severely bored of talking to the void.

"Are you going to spend the rest of your life cooped up in here?" The attempt was futile, he knew. For the past two days, he had tried every possible method known to gods and men to reach Thor, with a spectacular success rate of zero. But talking had always been his go-to response in the face of a challenge, so why stop now?

"Seriously, brother, are you going to tell me I gave my life for you to waste yours feeling miserable?"

He was standing in the corner, his arms loosely crossed against his chest. Thor sat on the couch in the living room, absentmindedly holding a glass of…beer? Whiskey? Frankly, Loki had stopped looking too closely at his brother's favoured drinking habits. His gaze was far away, and his slouched form differed so much from his usual alert posture.

"You're making me regret choosing the heroic way out, you know." Loki sighed and flopped on the couch next to his older brother.

Thor shuddered. The younger god couldn't tell if he had somehow felt him, or if he was just so exhausted his body was shutting down. He preferred the former.

"Uh, Thor?"

The sound of a voice other than his own filled Loki with relief. A week had passed with only silence enveloping the two brothers, along with the occasional otherworldly whispers that Loki could hear when he closed his eyes.

He turned his head towards the blessed man that had cut through Thor's brooding. He seemed mortal, with dark skin and chestnut eyes. His hair was buzzed short, and wrinkles creased his brow, as though he had spent too much time in the sun. Or worrying. Or both.

"Princess Shuri and the others are out helping with the repairs. The outskirts of the city took some damage and the people were evacuated. I thought maybe you'd want to join us?"

The man's inquisitive and slightly cautious tone made Loki scoff. "Good luck, old man," he said grumpily. "This oaf won't leave his moping if the whole treasures of Nidavellir are offered to him on a silver platter."

Thor straightened in his seat. He got up and smiled tightly at the newcomer. "Of course," he said, "I'll join you shortly."

Well, Loki supposed he should have predicted this. He recognised his brother's favourite way of coping with grief that was pretending it didn't exist until it was shoved in his face. Paired, of course, with his idiotic, overgrown sense of responsibility and desire to appear fine when he was everything but.

The other man smiled back, a friendliness engraved in his features that never seemed to leave him. "Awesome. I'll see you outside then. I'll go see if I can convince Rogers to leave his room for more than two minutes."

"Thank you for fetching me… Colonel Rhodes, isn't it?"

The man nodded. "Call me James." With that he left, gently closing the door behind him.

"Well, if it finally makes us leave this cursed place for a while, it can't be that bad," Loki told Thor as the older god sighed and put on a pair of shoes. Together they set out in the late afternoon sun.

He couldn't believe these were the same Avengers that had defeated him all these years ago. They were…hollow. Without purpose, without drive. Even Loki, who was literally dead, seemed less like a ghost than these shells did.

The radiant sun fell heavily on their necks as they worked to clear the rubble. Dust coated their bodies, but none of them seemed to notice it, let alone mind it. And while Thor and his comrades mechanically moved rocks and avoided each other's gaze, Loki started to apprehend the fact that Thanos had actually won.

It hadn't been far from his mind, really. The dread that had been beaten into his essence from his very first encounter with the titan had never stopped shaking his dreams and creeping into his thoughts. When the gigantic vessel had flashed before the Asgardian refugee ship, Loki had instantly known there was no way he was going to survive this. His one and only thought, the one which had hammered in his brain for the entirety of what followed, had been to save Thor, get him out of here, please don't let him die. He was never supposed to live past that point.

And yet, as much as he had convinced himself that Thanos would kill him, he had never really believed he would win. Granted, he knew the Titan was powerful, powerful enough to destroy Asgard, to vanquish the Avengers, to kill Thor. But the idea that he had succeeded - that Thor, greatest warrior in the Nine Realms, had been defeated- it didn't compute with him. Thor was the one constant line in his life. He was the warrior, the one who bowed to no one and who always won, no matter what. Whatever happened, his brother would always be there, right next to him.

And, he thought with a wan smile, in some ironic way, he was. But he was starting to believe his brother had left a part of himself on the Sakaarian ship.

The sun was setting when Thor broke his monotonous work for a breath of fresh air. A tiny breeze crept out on the lake in front of them, timidly ruffling their hair as if afraid of profaning the atmosphere. The birds did not chirp. Thor's breaths were the only sounds disturbing the peace.

The air smelled like burned soil, when the earth becomes so dry it folds back on itself in silent desperation. In the distance, the surface of the lake was blurred with heat as it reflected the multicoloured rays of the setting sun.

"…I can't do it."

Loki was so entranced by the glorious scenery that he jumped at Thor's voice. Glancing to him, he started at the blank expression covering his brother's face. The tight smiles from earlier were gone, and Loki only wanted to clasp his face between his hands to get some semblance of happiness back into his features.

"I can't do it, Loki," he spoke again. He sank down on the ground with a thud.

Loki sighed, settling down beside him. "You're going to have to be more specific, Thor."

Thor's head was bowed down, his hands absently rubbing through the coarse dust. He didn't seem aware of the other god's presence, and yet here he was, addressing him as though…

"I've tried, so hard. Even in my head, but- I can't say it. I just can't." He raised his head, unseeing eyes sweeping through the lake. Loki bowed his head, resisting the useless urge to hum his acknowledgment.

"You know, I keep on seeing you," Thor continued with a humourless laugh. "I turn around, and I can almost see you beside me, criticising my horrible decisions."

It was Loki's turn to huff out a breathless chuckle. "Brother, the irony would make the Norns snicker in their caves."

"I- I've tried to avenge you. I put all my soul into it. And I failed. And no matter what I do, what I try, I just can't let you go, brother. I. Can't. Say. The. Damned. Words."

His voice had become ragged, as if he was swallowing a particularly painful mouthful. His breaths came out in short, choking gasps, and Loki could see the tears brimming in his mismatched eyes. Anger and self-hatred clouded his brow.

Loki processed the words. He was suddenly reminded of their snippet of a moment back in the Sakaarian prison, when the illusion he had sent out had found Thor softly murmuring the Aesir funeral words for his father. It had been small in the inferno of destruction that followed, but it had seemed to lift a weight from his brother's shoulders. And that relief was why Loki had joined him in the end of the prayer. The traditional words represented a way to move on, past the insurmountable grief that threatened to swallow you whole. To find peace.

Loki inhaled sharply. Maybe that was the reason he was stuck here, in this incorporeal form. Maybe Thor had yet to pronounce the words. To simply let him go.

He had never been a particularly religious person. His idea of the afterlife, if he ever thought about it, limited itself to a vague idea of Valhalla and Helheim. But if he really had been called back, what other motive could possibly have been stronger than his brother's need for his presence? There was a chance his soul was actually held back by the intensity of Thor's longing for it.

If so, he thought as his heart sank, he really was dead. Or worse. A mere shadow, the remnant of a memory in Thor's mind.

He wondered with a sort of wry curiosity if that was the case for Heimdall too. For Valkyrie, whom he had not heard of ever since the first shot had hit the Statesman. For the countless Asgardians slaughtered by Thanos in the sombre outskirts of space. He wondered if thousands of other ghosts were following Thor this instant, coming to the same conclusions as he had, trapped here because the last remnant of their kind was far too consumed by guilt and grief to let them go. As he looked back at his brother's hunched shoulders, at his vacant, glistening eyes and his trembling form, the possibility seemed more and more plausible.

"I miss you, Loki." With that, Thor let out a heart-wrenching sob that sounded so foreign, so not-Thor to Loki's ears that he instinctually rushed right next to his brother's body. He was painfully aware of his arms blurring through the older god's chest, of the tears that smeared his own face and yet refused to wet the parched ground underneath.

"I know, brother, I know. But I'm here. Please, it's alright." He murmured continuous words of useless comfort as Thor heaved yet another painful breath.

"Please," his brother finally whispered, in a voice so small and vulnerable Loki could hardly make it out. "Please come back, Loki."

And Loki sat there, right next to him, as the last king of Asgard broke into tears, wishing with all his might he could do anything to grant that helpless plea.

Thank you to whisperoftheheart925 for beta-reading! I love you 3

Disclaimer: all characters belong to Marvel Studios, not me.

This is going to be 3 chapters, hopefully I'll post the second one within a week.

Please let me know what you think! A reaction, a detail you spotted, a rant, or a keysmash, anything really! Hearing from you literally makes my day 3