Trigger warnings for references to past abuse, mental, physical and sexual and for extreme flashback reaction.
All the Stars Fell
1.
"Trust my rage" he says and Thor looks back steadily but not for too long before he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he will. He does not want to look too long, does not want to fall back into that head rush of less than a minute ago, that the pounding closeness of his brother's body brought upon him. Does not even want to think those words; repeating the litany of denial over and over in his head in the hope that it will keep his heart from breaking further –
You are not my brother, I will not say it, I will not even think it, will not look at you too closely, my brother is dead –
But he does think it, and he does look, and he can see the flame in Loki's eyes and the needy grasping for approval that he has not seen there since they were so much younger and he can feel his brother's pain and – there it goes again – and he aches beyond what he thinks he can bear for not wanting to care anymore. For there is so much that he wants to say, so much that he wishes he could do and it could all so easily just pour out of him in a flood –
How this broken heart lay close to death all the time you were down there, away from me, while you haunted my mind like a ghost. How I cannot stop remembering what we used to be, how the ghost of you comes to me at night. How it tears at the heart you have broken that I still love you and yes I hate myself for doing to you what I am doing when your eyes frantically rake me for approval, for remembrance – for something that I could give you but that I cannot without tearing myself apart again, forgive me, please forgive me, my dearest brother and my only love –
He bottles it back and swallows it down hard, looking firmly at a spot over Loki's shoulders when he replies –
"I think I have a plan."
Why? Loki thinks – why won't he look at me? Why now when I will say it will he not call me brother? Will he only ever do it when I didn't want it? When did he stop caring – and when did I start caring if he did or not? I don't care. I never did. He can go to Hel for all I care - What did I do wrong?
He fights the urge to laugh hysterically at his own last question and raising an eyebrow says –
"Dear gods, and I thought this could get no worse."
That gentle, teasing, slightly sardonic tone is so familiar, so redolent of the brother he likes to think that he likes to think lost – it tugs at Thor's heart and makes him very nearly but not quite smile.
"Are you with me or are you not?" he growls. Loki twists his mouth around the sigh that wants to escape him and looks down –
"I am. You know I am."
"I no longer know anything of you" Thor replies bitterly, and too quickly. Loki looks at him sharply with those bright eyes that miss nothing and that look that says he knows too well that bitterness covers the sharpest of aching in the heart.
"I am" he says, he wants to say more, wants to say perhaps "I always have been" – because he wants it to be true but knows it to be a lie, a lie even Thor would not fall for, not for a second.
"Jane cannot know." Thor says – ""It won't work if she knows."
"Suddenly I'm liking this plan better."
Thor takes a step towards where Loki is sat, wondering how it is possible for every little thing, every moment between them to be so complex, so fraught with layer and difficulty, wanting immeasurably for everything to be simple again.
"For the love of the gods –" Loki groans, "Sit down won't you? I won't bite and even if I had a weapon it would hardly be in my interest to make stabbing you the first thing I do with it."
"Actually" Thor sits across from Loki, wary, though not if he is honest – wary of Loki – "That might be the plan". The front of the ship is narrow, and even sat across from him their knees are touching. Thor wishes he was not so painfully aware of the contact, just as he has been aware of every contact so far –
When I pushed you into the pillar and my hand wrapped around your neck, the feel of your skin so familiar, the memory that was more than a memory of never wanting to stop touching you, how my hand slid into the familiar place at the back of your neck and your hair was like silk in my fingers, how my treacherous fingers went to your cheek in spite of my intent – how I wanted you – no –
When I grabbed you just ten minutes ago and I felt your body so close to mine I could hear the beat of your heart, that heart that used to beat with mine so I could not tell where I stopped and you began, how I still cannot tell in spite of everything and it kills me – how I felt your breath on my face and in your breath and in your heartbeat there were no lies, no tricks and there never were – yes and how I wanted you –
"Are you quite alright?" Thor snaps back to the moment to find Loki peering into his face like an interested cat, indeed like the little brother he always thought he knew. Suddenly, unbearably, he wants to cry. He takes Loki by the shoulders, putting him firmly at arms' length but then finds that he cannot let go, not again, he feels like all he has ever done is let go, all he has ever offered his brother is a series of failure and he hates that a part of him is blaming Loki for everything that he knows in truth is his fault.
"In case you had not noticed –" he says through gritted teeth – "Very little here is alright. Things have not been alright for some time – No – no Loki – don't – please broth –" he cuts himself off only just in time, not really in time, but he can see Loki's chin tremble and his eyes go that very bright green that means he too is close to crying. It is the same face he has seen on his brother since they were tiny, the one that means he is genuinely, not – faking- sad. It cuts him deep that in spite of all his fierce attempts to push him away, to not care, he is as susceptible to seeing Loki sad as he ever was when things were simpler.
It starts by with just a gentle touch, gentle being something he had sworn to himself to avoid – two fingers against Loki's chin as though to try and stop the trembling, but he does not want to see that lip quiver either – he does not mean to start kissing him, more than anything he does not, but the pull is just too strong, he has no more choice in it than he chooses to breath. Loki's eyes fall closed and lets himself be pulled close and at first his head simply hums with the pleasant sensation of coming home. It is Thor now, who is the needy one, once he has broken, fallen upon his brother as he was used from before, he does not see the point in holding back, kissing Loki deeply, desperately, wanting to feed the hunger that has burnt in him since first believing him dead. He lets himself remember – they both let themselves remember how these kisses would become more frantic, burning into a fire of lust that could only be put out in hours of diving each into the body of the other. The kiss, the closeness – they wash through Loki like a healing fountain, soothing out a little of the burning in his soul, for several beautiful moments until Thor pulls him closer and he reaches to hold back, forgetting his chains and something switches, clicks into black in his head; perhaps it is the tenderness, the memory and the presence of Thor's affection, perhaps the bonds that do it but he hears the voice in his head that he has fought all these months to crush down –
"Did you really think you were loved? What are you assume anything could care for you? You are nothing; petty, worthless thing. They didn't love you, they just wanted to use you – they all just want to use you – forget them and be used by me –"
The words, the knowledge being pressed into his mind with fingers that wriggled into his brain, tearing out the truth and replacing it with darkness, the pain of those fingers rummaging, dirty in the mind as The Other systematically destroyed his body, putting him back together only to fulfil its own needs, making sure always to leave him in no doubt of his worthlessness and that this worthlessness was apparent to everyone else that had offered the lie of love –
"No!" he screams, breaking away and leaping up so savagely he staggers back so hard Thor has to catch him, clasping him closely in a wildly ill-timed attempt to calm him down. Loki struggles, writhing like a drowning animal, frantic and trapped – "I will not!" he yells – "I will not be used again! Not by you, not by anyone! Damn you – let me go –"
"I will not!" Thor retorts, stubborn and intent now he has started down this road – "I have let you go too many times"
"I am nothing to you! Nothing do you hear? You never loved me – nobody could –"
But Thor sees the glazed look in Loki's eye and hears this suddenly for what it is, what it always was on earth when he sneered at sentiment with tears in his eyes, hears a memory of his own voice come back to haunt him –
Who showed you this power? Who controls the would be King?
He should have pressed it; he should have known better than to take Loki for what he said, should have known that the hollows under the eyes and the stagger in his walk were not affectations, symptoms of madness or evil, but proof that someone had broken his brother beyond repair.
Thor does not believe in defeat. Nor will he accept that anything, least of all Loki who he wants to fix so much, is truly beyond repair and when he speaks next he can hear the echoes of the question he asked then – can hear fate offer it up again as a second chance, a chance to get it right this time –
"Who told you this Loki?" he asks quietly – "Who made you think this that I might kill them for what they have done?"
Loki stares back at him, eyes wild, though he no longer struggles, torn between what he has been forced to think and what he wants to think, not daring to imagine that the latter could actually be the truth but not seeing anything in his brother's eyes to confirm that he does not care. He does not answer straight away and for a few breathless moments the ship sails silently through the dark sky where the stars shiver with cold and shiver for anticipating an answer.
_x_
See, I've read a lot of fics now, some of them extremely good, where Thor and Loki have sex on the ship, this is sort of my answer to why, sadly, I don't think that happened….however this is possibly going to turn into a beast of a long story and anyway will certainly contain sex in later chapters. Enjoy.
