Music and the sound of laughter drifted up from the city streets below: there would be a feast tonight, all the wine and all the mead and all the ale in all of Asgard, spiced meats and succulent fruits and decadent desserts enough for even Volstagg's appetite. It would be a marvelous event, and all who could come would come, and all would dance under the stars and on into the pale hours of the morning.
All who could come, save him.
Thor had no stomach for sitting through another long dinner in celebration of all his brother's failings.
It would reflect poorly on their house, and knowing that Thor had tried. He had steeled himself, allowing servants to dress him in fine new clothes as befit their future king, and had truly meant to venture out into the beautiful winding corridors that would lead him to the wide hall where every other man, woman, and child of Asgard would make merry this night.
And then the servants were gone and he stood alone before the long mirror they had used to check their work and very abruptly he had not been able to bear any of it.
The sight of himself in his finery, the lavish bedchambers in which he stood, all the trappings of the life he had proven himself unworthy of a year ago, and where his brother should have been, standing beside him, fitted with his own green silk-
For a moment more, he had somehow held it all in check, hands clenching into fists but nothing else.
A moment more, before everything came crashing down.
Thor scarcely remembered tearing the hangings from the walls, the sheets from the bed, upending the furniture, or the sounds of shattering porcelain and ripping fabric. All he knew was that suddenly he looked round, breathing ragged and heart racing, to see with an ugly satisfaction that the room he had grown up in - the room they had grown up in - now looked as broken as he felt.
From the doorway behind him, his mother's voice came softly: "It has been a poor homecoming for you both, but you make much work for our servants."
He stiffened, then flushed. He had not thought - no, of course he hadn't. Thor bent quickly to retrieve a large shard of porcelain, staring helplessly at all the many, many smaller slivers. He had changed so little. "Poorer for him," he murmured.
Silence, taut with misery. When they'd first arrived, tendrils of the Tesseract's magic still clinging to them, she had flung herself towards them - and then stopped short, so visibly stricken, at the sight of her wayward son.
"...Yes," she said at last, heavily. "Much poorer."
Words could be a very effective weapon, even in unskilled hands. Too late, Thor regretted that attack, too. But he could not quite bring himself to apologize.
He got slowly to his feet and moved to right a dresser. "I will not be going to dinner," he told her.
She bore his words. "Nor I. But there must be - a feast." Her voice held a bitter edge. "Glad tidings demand no less. The Tesseract was recovered, the mortal realm spared - and my sons returned to me." Those last words, she whispered.
"One of them in chains."
From the corner of his eye, he saw her flinch.
"...Better he be in chains than dead."
It should have been harder to agree with her. There would have been honor in such a death, felled by worthy opponents on the field of battle; even as an enemy, it might have secured Loki a place in Valhalla. Was that not the kind of end he had dreamed of as a boy?
But the year he had spent thinking Loki truly lost welled up in his throat, tightened it until he could not breathe.
Why, he had asked them so many times since. Why did you lie to him?
And every time he'd asked, he had searched her face and his father's for any sign of malice, any hint that their intentions had been even slightly less than what they said. In hers, he had found nothing.
Thor could not keep his back to her, could not keep his distance. He could cause her no more pain.
He crossed the room with quick strides then and laid his hands on her shoulders, and she looked up at him with such naked gratitude, her eyes wet with tears, that he found it hard to speak.
"What..." He wet his lips and tried again. "Do you know what Father's judgment will be?"
She hesitated, then lowered her eyes. "It is not - in his hands alone, this time. For crimes this high..." And there, her voice broke. "There must be a trial."
That clenched cold in the pit of his stomach. For the first time since his exile, Thor found himself wishing he were not so very far from being king himself. "A trial," he repeated slowly.
The wisdom in it was plain - Loki had done too much this time, taken too many lives, bartered with the Chitauri - but so, too, was the danger. All the noble families would be there, all would raise their voices, all would pass judgment on his brother...
He curled his hands into impotent fists.
His mother's eyes wore heavily on him, and when he looked up he was struck by how pale she had become, how small she seemed, and her eyes - her eyes, in the dim light, were nevertheless red and shining. She had been weeping, and... not only today.
If only Loki could see this. Their mother's fear for him, so plainly etched upon her face. Even he would not have been able to deny...
But he could all too well imagine his brother's mocking voice in his ear. Sentiment, it hissed, and the knife went in.
Still, she drew herself to her full height, and when she told him, "Your father will do what he can," Thor could tell she believed it - and so did he, when he looked at her.
The trouble was that it might not be enough.
A trial. Thor dug his fingers deep into his own palms. He knew so little of them. He had never been to one before, had never been particularly interested in the legal aspect of justice, and he cursed himself for it now. "If only there were something..."
He felt his mother's gentle hands on his jaw, bidding him to raise his head, and wondered when he had lowered it. Her smile was tense, but there was a strength in it as she met his eyes. "There is."
The smallest spark of hope lit in his chest, but she did not stop there, and what she said next snuffed the flame before it could even begin to truly burn.
"At a meeting of nobles, Thor Odinson, you have as much right to speak on his behalf as any in our realm have to decry him."
Thor struggled to match her smile, bringing his own hands up over hers on his jaw. "Mother," he said, carefully and haltingly because he did not want her heart to sink as his had, "I have no special gift with words."
This was not the sort of battle he knew how to fight.
To his surprise, her smile did not dim. "I know," she uttered. "You are brave and strong and kind - but I had always hoped..." And there she trailed off, but he knew what she meant to say and it made him heartsick.
It was a bitter irony indeed that they needed Loki to speak in his own defense - and one thing that would never be allowed, not from the man they all knew as Silvertongue, the man who had been brought back with his mouth sealed by enspelled gag because his words were more weapon than most.
Thor ran his tongue uncertainly over the roof of his own mouth. It felt slow, thoroughly inadequate for the task he was about to undertake. "I will go anyway, and do what I can."
Then he pursed his lips and corrected himself.
"No. That is not enough. Mother," and he exerted gentle pressure on her hands, "I swear it on my life and my honor. I will not let him come to undue harm."
Finally, his mother's smile trembled, but she only nodded, leaning in to press her lips to his forehead. She had to go up on tiptoe to manage it. "Thor, son of Odin... I accept this oath," she told him softly.
This time he managed to match her smile, and perhaps she felt a little better, but they both knew that even with so much staked upon it the oath was still, at best, fragile spidersilk hung between them.
She broke the silence only haltingly. "Have you..." For an instant, Thor thought she would decide against whatever this question was, but then she pressed on all in an urgent rush. "Have you been to see him yet?"
It should not have startled him. Thor paused, and found himself unable to quite meet her eyes. The truth of it seemed abruptly shameful. "-No, I... I have not seen him since we arrived." He hesitated, then turned it back on her: "Have you?"
Her lips went white and she lowered her eyes. "I... have gone to see him," she confessed. "He would not look at me."
Thor could not help the small surge of outrage on her behalf. "What? Mother-"
But she was already waving it away, almost impatient with his defense. Her smile trembled again. "He has not forgiven me for my part in his deception - nor should he. I bear no less blame for it than his father," she added firmly, even with her eyes haunted. "...But he does yet have kin who played no part in this lie, Thor. You, I think, he may be willing to see."
Thor had to shut his eyes against her words, just for a moment, and was surprised at the uneasy tilt of his stomach. Surprised at himself, that her request was not easier to accept. All day he had wanted nothing so badly as to see his brother - but now that it was offered to him, sought of him, he found himself... afraid, somehow, as well. Afraid of his reception.
Not all fear was shameful. He knew that, had learned it through pain and struggle, but with his mother still looking at him so earnestly he could do nothing but nod. He could say nothing but, "I will do as you ask, Mother."
She studied his face for a heartbeat - but not, he felt, because she doubted him. After a moment, she reached up again to touch his face and told him softly, "I know he still loves you, Thor. Whatever he may do or say. It's only that he thinks he's lost you."
Suddenly his eyes stung. If only he could have been as certain of that as she seemed. But again, he could do nothing but smile for her and say, "He will never lose me."
Of that much, he was certain. That much, he could pledge.
But then she brightened at his words, just a little, and said to him, "Then... I think he may yet mend."
And that... that was such a terrible weight. Such a terrible responsibility.
For a moment, he could see his brother's broken smile in his mind's eye; for a moment, he could feel the bottom of his stomach dropping out as the capsule plummeted, feel the sudden sharp heat of the blade in his belly. And then all he felt, every bit as painful, was his chest clenching tighter than any fist with the need to believe her.
She was searching his face again, as if she wanted to be very sure that her words had taken proper seed, but at last she let her hands fall away from his face and pressed her cheek to his chest instead. He could feel fresh tears through the silk, and there she whispered, so faintly he almost failed to make it out:
"My boys."
His arms found their way around her waist, then, fastening tight as he shut his eyes and made the oath again: a hundred times, a thousand times, a million times, as many times as it took before he could make it true.
He would fight for his brother.
And somehow, someway, on some distant day, whether in this life or the next - he would win.