I have so many thoughts about Ragnarok! Stop! I have term papers to write, dammit!

One-shot (I promise, this time). Can be read as a prologue to "atonement," or just a standalone. Maybe this discards the "I'm here" scene, I don't know. Not a scene I would willingly throw away, but I don't know where this would otherwise fit in the movie.

turn a blind eye

"You should have been to the healers hours ago," said Loki, observing his brother from the doorway of his chamber.

Thor was perched on the edge of his bed. He paused in unlacing his boots to look up at Loki (the hollow, bloody chasm in his skull glared). His movements were slow and deliberate, clearly nursing injuries that were only now beginning to make themselves known come the falloff of battle adrenaline.

A smile ghosted across Thor's face at the sight of Loki, and Loki expected some kind of wise-crack about always sneaking or still slithering, I see, but Thor was evidently too weary for such remarks.

Instead he said, quite gravely, "They have enough on their hands. I did not need to burden them."

"It is hardly a burden, brother," Loki replied, cocking an eyebrow. "It is, after all, their job."

"As it is my job to show them strength," Thor answered.

Loki shook his head and stepped into the room, "You're a fool, you know."

"You certainly tell me often enough," said Thor wryly.

Loki stood awkwardly in the center of the room, too far from the door for a quick getaway but not near enough Thor to dissolve the odd tension that sprouted up between them: a tension Loki recognized as a separation between a king and his underling, a friction Loki had never allowed himself to feel in front of Thor before, always stifled beneath disdain as it was. But there was a nobility, now, to Thor that Loki could not deny – not since he had seen him enveloped by the crackling threads of lightning as he punted their sister into the churning sea below the bridge, embodying his power in a way only a true god could. Not that Loki would ever tell his brother that, of course.

Now Loki felt constrained by an alien formality before his brother: he did not know whether he had Thor's permission to further approach him, or how to ask for such permission, or if Thor expected him to ask, or would be displeased at the asking.

"Besides," said Thor, a forged heartiness in his voice, "it is not as if you are any better, brother, merely better at hiding it than I."

Loki grinned. It was true that he'd hid his battle-rumpled appearance under an unmarred glamour, but it was also true that it was only a momentary mask as his seidr circulated through his body, knitting together lacerations, levelling nicks, flooding bruises, and glossing over scrapes. He did not need a healer as Thor did.

"We were talking about you," he retorted.

Thor chuckled and shook his head, returning to the removal of his boots. He eased them off, one after the other, carefully maneuvering his body so as to minimize the strain on his sore muscles. He was obviously in greater pain than he was willing to show; Loki felt a pang in his chest as he remembered older times – much older, ages upon uncountable ages ago – when Loki had been the only one Thor had ever felt comfortable revealing his inner self to, instead of concealing it so consciously as he did now.

After his boots were off, Thor began to work at the fastenings of his breastplate, fingers stiff and stumbling. His knuckles were blackened and bloody on both hands. He must have moved too suddenly, or twisted in some unforeseen way, for he winced, restraining a hiss of pain behind clenched teeth.

"Dammit, Thor," said Loki. He was moving again, reaching out a hand to help Thor remove his armor. "Didn't anyone let you know you were done playing the hero for the day?"

Thor batted his brother away. Hesitation flickered to life in Loki's mind: did Thor not trust him to touch him? He grinned to hide his disconcert: "No knives, I promise."

Loki held his arms up at shoulder-height to prove his good-intentions and Thor stopped his fumbling for a moment to look up and snort, whether at Loki's idiocy or his own, Loki could not tell.

"You needn't coddle me, brother," said Thor. He managed to get his breastplate off by himself, revealing a watercolor of purple, blue, and yellow bruises on his bare chest.

"I think that is the first time I have ever been accused of coddling," Loki scoffed. He was close enough to Thor now to make a grab for his marred face. The wound was distracting and disturbing: it seemed to swallow up Thor's entire face. It was all Loki could focus on. He was intensely aware of how much it confirmed Thor's resemblance to Odin.

Thor protested, hitting Loki's hands away, "Leave it, Loki –"

"Don't be such a baby," Loki snapped, snatching hold of Thor's chin with one hand, with the other he steadied Thor's head, peering into his remaining eye warningly. "It needs to be seen to. Let me if you won't let a healer."

Thor stilled unwillingly; Loki could feel the tautness of his every particle beneath his fingers, ready to spring away at any false move. Loki moved his thumb across Thor's cheek to his empty eye-socket. As he approached the wound, Thor flinched in pain.

"Sorry," Loki muttered. He was trying to be gentle. He didn't want to cause his brother any more undue pain – at least not in this moment.

He cautiously examined the gaping fissure where Thor's eye had once been, investigating the edges with merely a wisp of prodding magic. The wound was crusted with dried blood and partially cauterized from the electric heat of Thor's own lightning.

"Will I live?" Thor asked ruefully, obviously thinking Loki had taken long enough.

"Unfortunately it seems you will," said Loki, not looking away from Thor's wound. He began to call forth his seidr, ripping it away from its current occupation of repairing his own many injuries to puddle at the ends of his fingers. Ordinarily, he could manage both tasks at once, without sensing an iota of difference in his own body, but a combination of physical and mental exhaustion from the battle had depleted his reserves; he'd need time before his magic was up to full running speed again. As it was, his efforts to spill seidr into Thor left parts of his body neglected and aching.

"Also, unfortunately, it seems I won't be able to regenerate the eyeball," said Loki. "At least not one that would work." He couldn't create living tissue, not even recreate it, merely the illusion of such. Not even gods could create life on a whim.

Yet destroying life was a much simpler task. The thought struck Loki unexpectedly and he struggled to push it back to the dark, infrequently visited corner of his mind whence it came.

Thor sighed, "I expected as much. I suppose I shall simply have to get used to it."

"Does it affect your vision much?" said Loki, more to keep Thor talking – this next part was going to be a bit unpleasant.

"Hardly…except everything looks strangely flat – argh!" Thor growled and flung his head away from Loki's touch but Loki kept a firm grip, ordering him silently back to stillness.

"This may hurt a bit," Loki warned him belatedly and Thor glowered.

"Damn you, Loki."

Loki's seidr beaded and dripped from his fingers, exponentially accelerating the healing process rather than bypassing it totally. Scabbed blood peeled away, replaced by stretching skin, pinched shut exposes nerve-endings, and sealed severed blood vessels. Thor gritted his teeth against the pain of the operation.

Finally, Loki stepped away, hands falling from Thor's face, and admired his handiwork: where there had once been a gory hole was now a dip of fresh, pink skin, seamless and smooth.

Thor grimaced and rose a hand to tentatively touch the sealed wound. It was clearly still tender, for his winced again, but appeared pleased. "I can at least comfort myself with the thought that, even with only one eye I am still more handsome than you," he said.

Loki let himself laugh. "You wish."

What was this uneasy silence that descended between them? Conversation used to be so easy. They had known each other better than anyone else. Now Thor's words rang in Loki's ears. I thought the world of you. I thought we were going to fight side-by-side forever, but let's be honest, our paths diverged a long time ago. The last binding between them had dissolved into gold dust on Midgard. The hand that pulled them together now no longer existed. And there were no more words now that the world had ceased being quite so intent at throwing weapons at them. Now all the words that should have been said long ago crowded in around them, clogging the air and making it impossible to speak at all.

Thor sighed, whether or not he could sense the heaviness in the air Loki could not tell. He eased himself off the bed, pressing his hands into his knees. He approached the small nightstand set against the wall with a pitcher of water atop it.

Loki leaned against the door jam, crossing his arms over his chest, pretending to be casual. Loki watched his brother as Thor poured water out of the pitcher into a basin and snatched ahold of a rag to wash himself. He wondered if Thor had forgotten Loki was standing there.

Thor dipped the rag into the water and brushed the damp cloth over his bruised shoulders. Loki was perturbed by the deep contrasts of the scene: Thor's supposed intimacy of cleaning himself while Loki was still present, but also the great distance that existed between Loki and Thor's turned back.

Thor put down the rag. His head dropped. He sighed again and finally spoke, words so weighted he must have had to drag them out of his esophagus. "Was it worth it, Loki?"

"Was what worth it?" Loki said quickly. Irrational alarm leaped into his chest – could Thor have known? Had losing his eye granted him unnatural sight?

"All –" Thor struggled to fit the right words through his lips. "All of it. I wonder…we lost so many. Would it have been better to let Asgard exist under our sister's rule unencumbered? Had we not involved ourselves…A people in bondage is surely better than a people dead."

Loki had not expected this. He was not prepared for this. He had no grand words of comfort for his brother. That was more Heimdall's forte, or perhaps even the insufferable Valkyrie. Surely one of Thor's friends –

The binary between a friend of Thor and the unnameable category in which Loki was the only occupant had existed for years, but Loki had somehow never so explicitly considered its boundaries before.

"You made a choice, Thor," Loki answered clumsily. "It is useless to deliberate on what could have been."

"But regret is inevitable, nonetheless," said Thor. "Is that not how we improve? How we can hope to avoid such future mistakes."

"Regret is pointless," Loki insisted. "It is impossible to turn back the clock, and useless to pine for the unattainable."

"Is that how you manage it, Loki?" Thor turned and the gaze of his remaining eye pinned Loki to the wall. His voice was accusing. Loki swallowed. His throat had gone dry. "No regrets? Making choices without considering the consequences? It is a pore way to live, if your resulting path is any proof."

Loki was pointedly aware that he was being scolded, and Thor was so like Odin in that moment that Loki fought back the anger within him, the desire to bite out a retort, to stalk from the room, or to launch himself bodily at the single-eyed king.

"Do not presume to understand what I know of regret," Loki hissed. He straightened against the wall and let his arms fall to his sides. The Tesseract seemed to be burning a hole through his cloak of illusion.

Thor's eyebrows furrowed. "I have no desire to argue with you, brother."

Loki broke away from Thor's gaze, rolling his eyes. He let the subject slip away from his clenched fingers. "You started it," he huffed.

"It is enough for me, brother," Thor continued. His voice was uncommonly somber, drawing Loki's gaze like a magnet, "to be assured merely that you are, in fact, acquainted with the idea of regret."

Loki was not going to talk about this now. He thought, with a pang of irony, that just a moment ago he had been lamenting Thor's lack of forthcoming. He pulled away, turning to leave, "Be assured then, brother."

"Loki –" Thor's call brought Loki to a stop and he reluctantly turned back around. Thor's expression had changed, no longer wary, but almost pleading. "Brother, we are not –" for a moment his lips worked without making any sound; Loki waited with eyebrows raised, determined not to make it any easier for the oaf to articulate himself. "We are not the best at saying what we mean to each other, I do not think."

Sentiment. Loki snorted but Thor rose a hand, asking for silence, and for once Loki yielded without resistance.

"It seems that we are always…missing something. Some piece of the puzzle that refuses to be fitted into place. I – do not know how to fix this, Loki, but, please, at least know that it is not deliberate, this misunderstanding. If it was in my power I would certainly clear it all away. And, be certain: when I ask if it was worth it, I do not cast judgement on your decision to return for us."

Thor appeared to be finished. Now Loki was supposed to say something. Wordsmith, silver-tongue, his powers seemed to desert him now. An uncomfortable tautness formed in Loki's throat, and his was glad of the glamour that shielded him, keeping his expression at a safe neutral.

Thor sighed. His eye dropped from Loki's face, clearly disappointed by the lack of response. His next words were stilted, for he was surely uncertain of Loki's reception.

"If I could somehow travel back to the point of our fracture, I would do so readily. That is one thing I have learned through regret."

Loki turned his back once again, and took a step out the door, silence dangling in the air between them. He stopped. His voice was stiff and not entirely within his control. "Brother," he said, not turning around but he could feel Thor's raised stare on the back of his head. "As you know, I reject the benefits of regret, but if I did not…then I think I would also regret that moment."

And much that has since passed between.

end