"How we got lost in the parts of each other
that went too deep.
How we clawed our way out.
How we wanted to go back.
How we couldn't.
How every other place feels like hiding now."
-Caitlyn Siehl, "Remember," What We Buried
Loki is pooled against the wall beside his bed, his limbs and spine curving in a way that is reminiscent of a serpent. His nonchalance in his wretchedness recalls a devil who can be nothing other than what he is. His eyes are sleepy slits, but this is deception. His mouth is smiling softly, but this is mockery. He sees the way Thor's blue eyes bore heavily into him, so blatantly wishing to fall into Loki at the slightest sign of remorse or feeling, and the silver prince licks his palm and slips it lewdly into the crotch of his pants. Thor recoils and turns his head away. Loki laughs, a breathy sound devoid of warmth. He withdraws his hand from his pants.
Thor steps into the prison cell which contains a table, two chairs, a bookcase, a single bed, and five walls so luminously white it is jarring. There is no clutter. He harbors a fragile hope and a lot of fear. Heimdall's assurances are directly at odds with what his mother has counseled him to accept about Loki.
"I have brought you a gift, brother," he says and deposits two objects wrapped in fabric onto the table. He takes the back of a chair in his hands, awkwardly. Then he sits.
His little brother rises from the floor and glides to the table. He sits and mocks Thor's posture: arms crossed, back stiff, with legs brought together. The Thunderer glares at him ineffectually.
"It has been so long since I last had audience with a member of the Royal Family! Look how you shine," Loki begins, drawing out every word between his teeth like they are things he wants to bite. "To what do I owe this honor?"
Thor's jaw clenches. He has kept away for so long solely because he has developed enough sense that his hopes are dying. Still, occasionally, he is prompted towards some maddening stroke of faith that maybe this time, this day, Loki will resurface from this sentient pool of hatred.
"I want you to have these," he replies in as even a tone as he can manage. "I want you to use them."
Loki gives him an amused smile and unfurls the two objects from the fabric and leans back into his chair. Two eggs: one of white alabaster, the other like the view of the galaxy from the Bifrost Bridge. They are simple and unassuming. He gives the two objects a deadened look.
"Paperweights!" Loki cries at last, "Paperweights, for all my precious documents! Truly, only you would think of such a thing, dear brother."
Thor keeps his clenched fists locked under his arms as his brother sneers and cackles and howls at him. He remembers the last time he tried to bring Loki a gift: he thought he must be so bored and lonesome locked in his cell, he should get him something interactive. And not Asgardian or human, so he would not hate it. A cat! And Thor brought him a sweet, friendly cat. Loki seemed genuinely pleased with it, but the next time Thor came to visit, Loki had a gift for him in return. Close your eyes and hold your breath, Loki whispered in his ear, and then Thor was wearing a scarf of the cat's fresh, oozing innards. Why had Thor been surprised?
"What does this do?" Loki asks, picking up the speckled, gleaming Bifrost egg. "Nothing!" he yells, suddenly throwing the stone egg with all of his might. Thor winces at the harsh crack of stone on stone. The egg ricochets off the floor to the wall and the force field barrier, then straight back into Loki's hand. He deposits the Bifrost egg back into the cloth coverings on the table.
"And this one?" the silver prince asks with a sickeningly sweet tone, clearly just dying to stab Thor again for his sentiment. He grasps the white alabaster egg, and then just as quickly he is a yard away from the table, having leaped from his chair with such force that it now lays on the floor.
"What is that?" Loki snarls, but the anger passes, giving over to curiosity.
Loki experimentally taps the white egg with his index finger, first for one second, then for longer when no ill occurs. His green eyes run over and over the curious object. He places three fingertips against it and holds it.
"What do you feel?" Thor asks, hopeful. Heimdall promised him.
"Curious. I feel, somehow, lighter. As though this little egg has sipped some poison from my cup," the younger brother replies. The malice is gone from his voice.
Loki toys with the white egg some more, experimentally adjusting his grip and tossing it from hand to hand, then rolling it over his forearm and his forehead. Thor is silent because he is afraid anything he might say will convince Loki to stop touching the egg.
"So you have given me one egg which does something very curious and one egg which curiously does nothing at all," the raven-haired prince observes. His gaze flicks over the Bifrost egg again. He has been in contact with the white egg for several minutes.
"Where did you acquire these…" Loki trails off, staring at something only he can see straight ahead. He is now holding the Bifrost egg in his spare hand as he continues to grace the white egg with the other.
"You great fool," Loki says to his brother, but not unkindly; there is mild irritation in his voice but yet even more amusement. "This is the hunt when you took Fandral's bait. He challenged you to fight the boar barehanded to prove yourself 'worthy'. You must have realized—as though there could be any doubt of the golden prince. We ate roast boar steaks that night at the palace, but I played nursemaid to you for how many weeks afterward?"
"Only because you gave the boar unnatural speed and longer tusks."
"You liked me reading to you while you were in sickbed."
"I liked that you were talking to me again," Thor huffs.
"Every kindness of mine comes at a price," Loki replies. It is the truth. Thor is beloved for what he can do for others, and has long been trained to exchange deeds for appreciation. For the others, he needed only provide aid once to earn their easy, unconditional adoration. But nothing about Loki is unconditional and he has always reserved the best parts of himself, accessible almost exclusively to Thor through repeated, periodic payment. The result is infinitely more meaningful to him that way. He hopes he is paying now.
"How do you feel?" Thor ventures again.
Loki regards him coolly, then a sharp smile slices his red lips part. "I can almost remember caring for you."
It is the barb Thor should have seen coming. Loki cares not about the pained expression he can see his brother try to suppress.
"Less like smog," he answers, and he sets the Bifrost egg down.
xx
The Bifrost egg is in his hand again and this time Loki is scowling.
"Dear Father, just and wise," he hisses.
He steps forward and reaches out as though to crush the face of the aged, scarred man he sees. This is tipping the scales precariously, Thor thinks, and he moves to take the egg from his brother's hand. Loki rounds on Thor instead. Quick as an adder, Loki has brought the stone egg down on Thor's face, narrowly missing his nose. Thor grunts and locks Loki's arms down by his sides, turning him away to better detain him with one arm while wresting the Bifrost egg from his hand. His brother screeches over his golden prince's unworthiness, his unearned praise, how the love others bear him is the result of blindness, ignorance, and nothing of good value. Thor seals the white egg against Loki's palm with his own calloused hand. He holds him tightly, his tanned face buried in the back of Loki's neck, until the rage ebbs.
"Are you well now, Loki?" he asks, once the screaming has stopped.
"I am not well, brother, never, no," the disgraced silver prince moans. Loki is now limp in his arms and this makes Thor nervous.
Thor sits back in his chair and pulls Loki into his lap. He folds his brother against him and entwines the fingers of their free hands, as much an act of affection as a defense. The pain in Thor's cheek is just beginning to register. He copies his mother as he rests his chin on Loki's shoulder.
"Tell me," he commands softly.
"I am nothing in their eyes," Loki answers. "When I stand next to you, I am invisible. When they count the tally of your virtues to mine, I do not exist."
"Our parents are not perfect. They are not unerring," Thor counters, but he knows there is nothing he can say that will undo the damage to his brother. He takes the hand entwined with his own and brings it into contact with the white egg.
"What is it with you and this egg?!"
"Please," Thor mumurs. Loki complies.
xx
"Which one is this one?" Thor asks. Loki is still in his lap, Bifrost egg in hand.
"It's the wedding of Beyla and Byggvir," he says, smiling. "I am standing with everyone in the hallway. You are to my right. They have spread a carpet down the center of the hall and…oh, I'm standing right across from that ridiculous, obnoxious ambassador from Alfheim. What was his name? I am certain I put bird shit in his night cream."
Thor is stroking little circles in the sides of his brother's waist.
"She has just begun her procession down the hallway," Loki says.
"Have the horses shown up yet?"
"Shut up! It's coming. Everyone's ooh-ing and aah-ing about her damn dress, that sweet slattern, she's passing us, greeting Father, and he's opening the doors to the chamber in which she's actually supposed to say her vows… BAM." Loki releases a peal of laughter at the memory only he can see.
"I thought you loosed the horses from the chariot that was to take them away to their honeymoon."
"I did better than that. I cast illusions on everyone in the next room and there loosed the fertile mares with all the stallions from the stable. I've forgotten how many Asgardians had their teeth kicked in that day, and this memory doesn't show that part."
"How many times did Father whip you?" Thor asks with a deep chuckle.
Loki smacks his lips and raises his eyebrows. "'s why I was never into whips."
Loki puts the Bifrost egg back on the table. The raven-haired prince looks over his shoulder at Thor with a degree of tenderness not seen in him in years. Thor is still caressing his sides and while he now just wants to hold him, he knows this is still not his Loki and he may be doing more harm than good. Disappointed, Thor lets him go.
Loki stands, and he now has the grace to look ashamed. It is awkward. He moves to put the white egg down, but Thor whispers Don't in such a plaintive tone he is disarmed. He continues to hold it between the tips of his thumb, index, and middle fingers.
"How do you feel now?" Thor asks.
"Much lighter," Loki answers, "Much better."
But from the pained way Loki looks at his brother, it is not better, it is worse, the only caveat being he no longer wants to torture his brother to death with his own hands. Then he is shaking his head and a sweat breaks out on his forehead and he backs farther away from Thor.
"Loki, come here."
"No."
"Come to—," Thor speaks reflexively, then breaks off.
Loki's eyes immediately blaze, incensed. "Don't you fucking do that," he snarls, "Fucking cheap shot.
"Have you married Sif yet?" the younger man continues. "Have you fucked her sopping wet cunt? Is she with child? Is all of Asgard weepingfor joy at the golden age you've sired from your cock?"
"Nothing of the sort has—"
"Has Father given you the throne?" Loki spits and circles him. "Has he finally given you everything? Does he know his shining firstborn son is a fucking cocksucker?"
Loki is trying to bait him, Thor realizes. His defenses lapsed and he let Thor see him and Loki does not understand why. He has lived so long with the sense of control his rage afforded and now suddenly the white egg has stolen much of that blinding, mind-addling hatred away. What remains to him are his deeds. He must be afraid.
Thor tackles Loki to the ground before he can cast an illusion. His little brother thrashes and struggles, but of course it is futile. He wails and lows and hisses and all Thor can do is hold him and hush him until he quiets. Thor clutches his little brother tightly to his chest and rocks him as best he can from the floor.
"You are feeling strangely because of the white egg. The white egg siphons away negative emotion, that is all. You have sojourned with your darkness for too long. You are fine and I am here and is that not wondrous given what happened?"
But his little brother is still crying and trying to crawl away from him, as though his shining savior brother reflects his deepest fear. Hush now Thor murmurs to his little brother. Sweetheart he croons, and stay, and please. There is now a particular recognition in Loki's eyes when Thor speaks to him this way, an intimate knowledge which returns him to a weakling, young boy who sought shelter in his big brother's arms. Loki shudders; all of him is shuddering—his frame, his ribs, his heart—it is threatening to fail from sheer fright and loathing. Do not remind me, for then I will comprehend my crimes.
Thor is truly powerless on his own in this matter. He resorts to the white egg and forces it into his little brother's hands. In time, Loki stops shaking. More than that, when his green gaze meets Thor's, he gives him doe eyes the way he used to, without thinking. It calls to something within Thor and he moves closer, nearly nuzzling Loki's face now. He does not close the final distance between them. He does not know what Loki wants.
Lying there like a maimed faun, Loki wants Thor to kiss him. And bundle him up in his arms and say love to him again and make it all better. But now as ever before, he cannot bring himself to ask it.
Stalemate. The elder brother breaks the silence.
"Have they seen all of this?" Thor asks, looking out through the force field of Loki's cell. He sees inmates across the hall and guards patrolling.
A mundane query and the intimate moment ends. Loki is fine, his flushed skin running to cold and his trembling gone. He arises from the casement of Thor's limbs.
"You think I'd let them see me?" Loki asks. His eyebrow is arched up to high heaven, like Thor had forgotten everything about him.
xx
They are sitting on the bed. Thor almost breaks the silence, but he stops when he sees the sudden change in his brother's face. His green eyes have gone all wet and molten and soft. Thor reflexively reaches for Loki, for his expression is a look that has long been etched in the Thunderer's memory: the way he looked one fair spring day in the forests of Asgard when Thor first courted his own brother.
"I had not thought of it in so long," Loki says softly, and the wetness rising behind his eyelids now runs over and spills down his face in two neat trails. "I thought you were making fun of me, but then you kissed me and bade me enter you and we coupled. I thought this, this was the only important thing in the universe."
Loki is silent for a moment, staring as he is transfixed with longing at the memory the Bifrost egg now plays for him.
"You were so happy with me then."
Thor scoots closer on the bed and his hand finds its familiar position on Loki's neck, his thumb ghosting over the defined jawbone. Loki releases the dark egg and for no amount of gentle tugging can Thor make his brother look him in the eye. He brings his forehead to rest upon Loki's. The green eyes flicker to his blue ones briefly, with shame.
"It can be that way again," Thor urges him, pushing the white egg towards his pale brother's hands. He stops short of making contact, for it must be Loki's decision. "If you cast out all of the poisonous hatred that consumes you, you can come back to everyone who loves you."
"But they don't," Loki replies with an utter certainty that makes his words seem almost solid. "They love you. And they will never forget their shame and loathing for me."
Thor struggles to find the right words. Having matured into a man more fit to take the crown or no, he will never be clever or cunning. His head and heart are muddled with the day's events. He sifts through it all, at length to offer up some words that sound meager, inherently not enough. Not insufficient, but achingly not enough; he cannot quite capture the meaning he is trying to convey.
"But for all that they love me, you are the only one whom I love. Surely that must count for something," he whispers earnestly. His gaze bores into Loki's eyelids, intent upon seeing the way this coin will fall. His grip tightens on Loki's neck, for the Thunderer now fears that his brother will slip away from him again.
"There is more to this egg. I cannot place it. What else does it do?" Loki asks, giving him a beleaguered look. He knows there is something else. His green gaze is somber, solemn, as though he knows Thor has betrayed him.
"It…mostly siphons away negative feeling, such as your bottomless rage," Thor answers carefully. "But as the lancet purges the wound, some of the good flesh comes away in the cleansing. It steals away…a little bit of you. A little memory, age, or experience. One who uses the egg is rendered a little younger, in a way. The person is a little less than before."
Gold, the symbol of purity and true worth. His golden prince has deceived him.
Loki swallows and smiles wanly at this depressing detail. "So now our parents have only one son." He laughs.
Thor's grip tightens. "It is this or an eternity spent in this room, alone," Thor intones, trying to clarify the starkness of the options. "A life without. A sentence I, too, must suffer. I will never come here again if you decline.
"Do not sentence me to a life without you," Thor whispers against his cheek. Loki's answer is to caress his brother's lips, casting glances where Thor would know to find them.
Then Thor is on him and around him and falling into him through their joined lips, where it seems their souls connect. Loki's soul is moving in his chest. He feels it changing shape or moving, like the undulation of wings. He is the free falcon over the forest who returns to Thor's gauntlet after capturing their quarry, before he resumes his human shape. He is the fierce seiðr protecting Thor's flank in battle. He is the insight into the minds of men that counsels Thor on his next move. He is partnered, he is part, of this one individual now holding him, and this can never be undone.
Loki nods, though his assent clearly pains him. This time, he grasps the white egg wholly, giving the entire surface of his palms and digits as contact, and the little egg begins its work in earnest.
It takes five hours. Loki has filled and emptied the egg twelve times, discarding the contents to the air, where the specks of emotion made manifest dissolve into nothingness before they reach the floor. Thor has backed off for this process and napped, but now he is awoken as though the completion of Loki's exorcism created a palpable shift in the room. His golden face drawn, he gazes intently at his little brother for a sign that this is not the result of his malicious falsehood. He wants to trust him, to unmake his acceptance of his brother's irrevocable errancy. It is like thawing his hand after it has been frozen solid in ice.
Loki has dropped the white egg and rests heavily against the wall. His breath comes labored and deep and the way his shoulders are drawn up beneath his ears makes his chest look as though it has caved in under the effort. Languidly, he turns his head to Thor and murmurs over the hollowness, the tiredness, and the lightness he now feels. He has not the strength to protect his vulnerabilities, so he asks for what he wants. Won't Thor call him sweetheart again?
Thor kisses him the way a plague-ridden pilgrim touches a Saint's relic.
"Come to papa," he rumbles fondly, desperately pulling Loki into his lap and wrapping his great arms tightly around his prize. Loki receives the endearment the way he did all those years before. The silver prince presses himself against his lover as earnestly as Thor tries to trap him against his flesh. He cannot stop kissing him, on the mouth, the sharp cheekbones, the hair.
Thor remembers he has another gift for him and tells him so, courtesy of the stupid, hopeful part of himself. He fumbles in the pockets of his tunic for it.
Breathless, Loki's brow furrows, incredulous and utterly serious. "Is it a paperweight?"
Then Thor's lips are on Loki's again, but this time he cannot kiss him properly because he is laughing too hard, with joy, with relief.