The winters in Asgard are cold.
Cold and lonely, if you have no fire to sit by, no friends to laugh with, no cloak to wrap yourself in and no home to hide away from the snow in.
And I do want these things, brother. I always have.
The only thing that makes feel anything other than the chill in my bones, is the bitterness. A different type of cold, granted, but this brings with it the fire of fury and the ache of betrayal.
You betrayed me, brother.
Night after night, I lie here. I lie here and I picture you, sitting in our fathers throne, our father, Thor. He was my father as well. But you were so keen to forget that when you cast me out - an outcast - worse than the rats that skitter around in the muck. You cast me out.
And I wish I could hate you for it, brother. Oh, how I wish it. How I wish I could wipe the smug smile from your features - always the favored son, our father's son.
And what was I?
I was the toy. Just another piece in father's plans. Peace. Delusional. He promised so much, Thor. He promised me everything.
And so did you.
Tell me, brother, when did those promises no longer hold water tight? Was it when you discovered that actually, it mattered little what you'd said because I was not of Asgard? Was that it?
When did the future become so divided? When did you get everything? When did I end up so alone?
I want to go home, Thor.
I want it badly.
I want the love, I want the promise, of knowing that I matter too.
I miss those nights, brother. I miss our mother, who loved even though she knew I was, and I was a monster.
And I am, aren't I? The monster?
I walk the streets, hunched, shivering, and mothers pull their children away.
Tell me, brother, what happens when you walk the streets? Do they bow? Do they scrape and bow and kiss the very ground that you walk on?
I assure you, brother, they do not for me.
I wonder, do you remember when we were children?
When everything was so beautifully uncomplicated - we were to be kings - do you remember? With wooden swords, we would slay the very threats that dared to set foot in our kingdom! We would run and ride all day, our capes flying out behind us, the sun on our backs as we rode, oh, how we rode, until sundown, when we would return, breathless and flushed, our kingdom safe once more.
Do you remember, brother, how our father would place a hand on each of our shoulders?
Do you remember the way he would smile, as we fought to talk over the other? To tell of our adventures?
Do you remember when he would pull us too him, and talk of his pride, talk of how we were men at heart, talk of a future where we would rule, side by side.
Oh, brother.
The bitterness leaves, leaving nothing but the aching. Leaving nothing but the sadness, the regret... the loneliness.
I have done wrong. I know this, brother - I know.
I have done such things that mothers should pull their children away.
And there is nothing worse than knowing that.
Nothing is worse than knowing what I have become.
Nothing is worse than having no escape from my own mind.
Nothing is worse than the loneliness, brother.
Nothing is worse than knowing that now, our childhood left so far behind, that now - you too would turn away from me.
Asgardian winters are long, brother.
But it is nothing, nothing, compared to the winter that lives in my heart.