A/N: Okay, so I saw on Pinterest something that said it looked like Thor had been locked up in a cell in the Endgame trailer. This story takes place during Avengers 4. It is something that could happen but most likely won't. It's all feels. For the first time, I felt myself wanting to cry for Thor because of what I had written. Anyway, enjoy! :)

You… will never be… a god…

Thor sat despondently in his cell. The muted colors matched his feelings; the dull white of the walls matched the numbness that had spread through his whole body. Now, Loki wasn't the only one that was broken; Thor's heart had cracked a bit at everything he lost; first Frigga, then Odin, and now Loki and, he'd admit, even Heimdall had held a place in his heart. The strain that had been put on him… he'd only hold up so long under pressure, and now his heart had splintered and broke. Thor wasn't sure if he'd recover, actually. He just felt numb. He'd been in here for days, sitting on the bench, staring at the ground. Somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, he remembered why they'd locked him up, but he couldn't recall right now. He'd forsaken eating, drinking, sleeping. His mind had become his greatest enemy, where once it had been his friend.

That sound… the snap…

The snap of Loki's neck rang through his head, over and over, as his mind conjured up vivid images of when he was on Thanos's ship.

"Almighty Thanos," Loki had said, with the tone that suggested he was going to do something that went completely against what they'd been fighting for, and Thor could feel it. He was going to say something that put him on the other side, and betrayed his trust yet again.

"I, Loki-" Thor would have sighed, if he could. He recognized the tone, the words. Loki was declaring his loyalty to the purple titan before him. Thor almost bowed his head, but something told him to keep watching and listening, that it wasn't quite all that it seemed, even as a weariness of all of Loki's betrayals and a small spark of anger flooded through him.

"-Prince of Asgard…" Here Loki trailed off and hesitated. Thor's mind started whirling. What was his brother doing?

Loki looked at Thor with the most pain in his eyes that he'd ever seen, as well as a bit of hope and acceptance, and Thor thought he could see some kind of message in their green depths as well. It was the first time; usually Loki's expression betrayed nothing. Only an expert reader of people would be able to decipher his emotions, and even then, only his eyes really said anything. You definitely couldn't trust Loki's words.

"...Odinson…"

Odinson. The full force of the word suddenly hit him. He kept eye contact with Loki, before his brother looked away. He knew Loki had seen the recognition in Thor's eye, what that one word meant to them both. For the first time, Thor was able to keep his expression unreadable, same as his brother's-though it wasn't very hard, with the muzzle, he thought with annoyance, the cold metal biting into his cheeks and mouth. Still, his mind was whirling with thoughts and emotions and what was his brother doing?

"The rightful king of Jotunheim, God.. of Mischief," Loki continued, walking up towards Thanos. Thor glanced down at the tiniest bit of motion, and saw a flash of silver. Loki's hand curled up slightly backwards as it hung by his side, and there was the smallest gleam of one of the silver blades of his daggers before it disappeared between his waist and his arm. Thor's eyebrows furrowed; was that what he thought it was? Was Loki planning to do what he thought he was planning to do? His eyes darted fearfully from Thanos to Loki. A feeling of dread settled in his stomach like a cold rock. It wasn't going to end well. Something… something felt very, very wrong.

"-do hereby pledge to you my… undying… fidelity."

Loki looked down for a long moment, and Thor's feeling of dread increased. He saw a shimmer of blue from Thanos's left hand, and all in a flash, Loki's arm was stretched upwards and the Infinity Gauntlet glowed blue in Thanos's hand, raised, almost casually, to intercept his brother's strike.

"Undying?" Thanos said. "You should choose your words more carefully."

The silver blade was inches-inches-from Thanos's purple neck. Thor's muscles itched to leap at the titan, save his brother, and his legs started to cramp in the uncomfortable position he was in. He watched, helpless, as Loki's face turned to desperation-to a struggle-as he tried to push the blade past the Space Stone's endless power. The titan twisted Loki's dagger away with his right hand. Thanos used his other hand to reach for Loki's neck, as Thor had done so many times before-his fingers wrapped around the back of his brother's neck, the thumb just in front of his ear. He'd never realized how much he did it until Thanos reached for his brother's neck, and instead of a harmless hold, he closed the Gauntlet around Loki's neck and lifted him up almost effortlessly.

Loki began to struggle like a trapped bug, his legs kicking and hands clawing at the titan's arm, his face contorted into fear, desperation, and a thousand other emotions Thor couldn't name. His brother had always been the complex one, never Thor.

Thanos gave a sad smile, filled with something that was akin to pity for this victim, as if he had no choice. Loki made eye contact with Thor before the titan's grip squeezed. Horrible choking sounds emitted for his brother, forcing a bolt of pain through Thor's heart with every noise. Miraculously, Loki still had the ability to talk, though his voice sputtered and died out every few words, and Thor felt the most pain hearing his brother's voice like that. Usually, it was velvety and smooth, betraying nothing. He was a Silvertongue; occasionally, Thor could feel his brother's words invading his mind, his emotions, twisting and playing with them according to what Loki wanted. He had felt something like that on Sakaar, before Loki betrayed him yet again-besides Thor's general mistrust of his brother, that was also his incentive to stick the obedience disk on Loki's back.

"You will… never be… a god," Loki finished painfully. Thor's eyes widened as the sound of the snap rang through the near-silent ship, drowning out all other sound, and Loki went terribly limp in Thanos's hand. Thanos walked over and dropped Loki's body near Thor.

"No resurrections this time," he said carelessly and almost smugly, as he walked back to the Black Order. Then purple fire began to rage through the ship, and Thanos and the Order vanished with a glow of the Space Stone.

Thor was released from his bonds. Emotions raged through his body. Anger made his blood boil, coursing through his veins, hot and quick, and his vision was red at the edges. Grief invaded his mind, taking away all thought or reason, as he crawled towards the purple fire, pleading Loki's name the whole time. He laid halfway onto Loki's cold chest, cradling his hand, as he felt the suffocating heat of the fire reach him, and then his ears began to ring as the ship exploded, but somehow, he was not given mercy. He didn't join Loki in… wherever Loki had gone. Thor wasn't even sure Loki had gone to Valhalla, despite his honorable death.

Thor got up almost robotically and kneeled in front of the dull white walls. His voice sounded as hollow as he felt as he spoke softly.

"Lo, there do I see my Father,"

"Why have you done this?"

"To prove to Father that I am a worthy son! When he wakes, I will have saved his life, I will have destroyed that race of monsters, and I will be true heir to the throne!"

"Lo, there do I see my Mother,"

"What makes you think you can trust me?"

"I don't. Mother did."

"And my Brothers, and my Sisters,"

"I never wanted the throne, I only ever wanted to be your equal!"

"Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning,

Lo, they do call to me,

They bid me take my place among them in the halls of Valhalla,

Where thine enemies have been vanquished,"

"You can't kill an entire race!"

"Why not?... And what is this new found love for the Frost Giants? You could have killed them all with your bare hands!"

"Where the brave shall live forever,"

"Come on, this place is perfect for you. It's savage, chaotic, lawless. Brother, you're going to do great here."

"Do you truly think so little of me?"

"Loki, I thought the world of you. I thought we were going to fight side by side forever… "

"Nor shall we mourn but rejoice,

For those that have died the glorious death."

"...those that have died the glorious death. "

Loki's voice echoed in his mind, and Thor almost turned around, to see one of his brother's illusions standing there with that infuriatingly calm expression. Maybe even Loki himself…

"If you were here, I might even give you a hug."

"I'm here."

In the beginning, there had been some hope that Loki was only faking, as he had done. He couldn't die… he was Loki…

…right?

Loki had not come back. He had not tried to subjugate Midgard. He had not disguised himself as a king. He had not saved them from Thanos; he had not helped Thanos because of his promise of fidelity to the titan.

He had not come back.

That was what had shattered Thor's heart, in the end. The first snap-when Loki died-had made possibly the biggest crack of them all in his heart. The second had only splintered it further. The years… that had finally broken him. He'd been put in a cell-he couldn't remember why-and at first he'd functioned normally. Eating, sleeping, drinking. He did all that. Then, just over a year ago, he'd started to decline. His appetite, once comparable to Volstagg's voraciousness, became that of a bird. Sleep? Hardly enough. Water was forced down his throat, but for fear of him choking, food had not been. Recently-the past week-he'd stopped eating, sleeping, and drinking altogether. He'd taken to staring brokenly at the ground, and everyone could see the horrible hollowness in his eyes. They'd considered letting him out-even opened the door and walked away for a few hours-but they'd always come back to him still staring at the ground. At first, he'd glanced up when they came and went, but now they were not acknowledged at all. Talking didn't work, either. Thor used to reply to them with clipped answers, his voice cracking and dying when they turned to the topic of moving on, but now they were met with a stony silence. All who visited him noticed the small, barely noticeable pools of clear water on the floor. Some was from the messy job of forcing Thor to drink; some was the former god's own tears.

It was when Thor's mind played cruel tricks on him and forced him to relive memories, as if in a dream, as if it was so starved for sleep that it was trying to make up for it by doing something that usually meant he was sleeping, that he made any noise, or moved from his position.

He'd roar suddenly in anger, or silent tears would run down his face and he'd make pitiful whimpering noises. Sometimes he'd yell Loki's name a couple times; sometimes he'd whisper it, over and over, for hours, his voice growing more broken and hollow with each repetition. Occasionally, he'd start pacing, or he'd punch the wall once, maybe more, or-rarely-he'd start talking to himself, to whoever would listen-and someone would, because someone was always watching Thor on the cameras, not out of the danger he himself posed to them, but out of simply wanting to make sure he didn't hurt himself any more than he already had.

It was now, after Thor had finished the prayer for the dead and returned to his seat, that his mind decided to send him visions. And, he couldn't do anything. He'd relinquished all control of himself to the numb feeling that spread through his body.

"She wouldn't want us to fight," Thor spat. He stood up, off of Loki, who slowly began to get up, his eyes studying Thor as he watched his brother.

"Well, she wouldn't exactly be shocked," Loki countered. Thor almost laughed at the smile he gave. It reminded him of times before; times when he could trust his brother. Thor dismissed the thoughts.

"I wish I could trust you," he said, almost regretfully.

A mischievous thought entered Thor's mind. It could work…

"Hey, let's do 'Get Help,'" he suggested.

"What?" Loki asked, and Thor grinned.

"'Get Help,'" Thor repeated.

Loki answered almost immediately. "No."

"Come on, you love it."

"I hate it."

"It's great. It works every time."

"It's humiliating."

"Do you have a better plan?"

"No."

"We're doing it," Thor said, in a tone that suggested it was final, and stared ahead.

"We are not doing 'Get Help,'" Loki argued once again.

Thor felt Loki's limp weight as he supported him with one arm, and could barely hold back a grin as he imagined Loki's face.

"Get help! Please! My brother is dying! Get help! Help him!" he yelled. The guards approached them and Thor hurled his brother at them. He grinned.

"A classic," he said as Loki stood up.

"I still hate it. It's humiliating," he said.

Thor kept grinning. "Not for me, it's not."

…

"You must have missed something," Loki remarked as Thor rushed around, pressing every button he could find on the spaceship.

"I didn't, I'm pressing every button on this thing!" Thor countered.

"No, don't hit it, just press it gently," Loki replied, in which Thor began hitting the buttons even harder and in an angry, desperate frenzy.

"I-am-pressing-it-gently-it's-not-WORKING!" Thor ground out, before the ship suddenly made a whirring noise and came to life in a bright glow of blue. Thor laughed and began to steer the ship. The sound of the columns of the Asgardian palace breaking rang through the air.

"I think you missed a column," Loki chimed in.

"Shut up!" Thor said, as he concentrated on driving the ship.

…

It was one of those days where Thor began crying silently. Steve Rogers was watching the surveillance and he almost cried, too. He understood what had happened to Thor, and though he couldn't begin to imagine the kind of relationship him and his brother had, and what memories he was reliving, he thought he could empathize with him. He had lost someone of his own that was unimaginably important to him too.

Thor continued to be tortured by the visions. The tears flowed silently for hours. He started talking to himself, and Steve tried to catch every word.

"...thank you for the commentary, Loki, it's not at all distracting!"

"...not just of Odin… you alone loved Frigga? You have her tricks but I had her trust!"

"...What help were you, in your cell?"

"...When I'm king, I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all!"

At this last sentence he bowed his head even further and covered his face, then went silent, though Steve cursed Stark's genius in the perfect, smooth quality of the surveillance screen as he could see every tear that fell through the former god's hands and onto the floor.

Suddenly, Thor looked up. Steve leaned forward. For the first time in a long time, there was emotion in Thor's eyes. Disbelief filled their sky-blue depths, as well as hope, anger, and a dozen other emotions he couldn't name right now. And, when Thor stood up and whispered his brother's name, in the softest of voices, his voice wasn't hollow. Rather, that one soft-spoken word laid out all of Thor's soul for the world to see. Thor stared at a spot in front of him, and the tears renewed themselves.

No one there questioned the former god's sanity. They all believed it was buried deep under the black void of grief Thor had captured himself in. They didn't think he was going mad, not even when he started talking to himself as if he was having a real conversation.

Thor looked up. His brother stood there, giving him a small, sad smile. His emerald eyes were filled with pain and hurt.

Thor stood up. Slowly, slowly, some feeling was restored to his brain, and in the next moment, he had no desire to roar or yell, but rather to lay his soul out bare in one soft, whispered word.

"Loki?"

Loki stood before him, in his Ragnarok suit, his green cape hanging stagnant behind him and his skin covered with the same cuts and bruises he'd had when he died. Thor felt so many emotions rush through him, more than he could count, or name, or that he'd ever felt before. Loki was alive? He faked his death-again?

Loki held his hands up. "I'm not alive, Thor. No resurrections this time, remember?"

Thor's shoulders slumped. He felt tears stream down his face yet again-his first real thought since being pulled from his grief was that he really had to stop crying so much, it was un-Asgardian and not warrior-like. He sat down on the bench again and stared at Loki, still disbelieving.

Loki smiled and lowered his hands. "You prayed for me to go to Valhalla," he said, and Thor could hear the emotion in those words. Thor returned his smile, knowing it was what Loki needed.

He glanced down. "I heard you and… with a little bit of persuasion on my part, I convinced Hela to let me visit you. It's not easy in Hel. Hela didn't enjoy our little trick with Surtur, you know."

Thor laughed. "I can see why she wouldn't."

"Well," Loki continued, "I have limited time here, and it seems our positions are reversed, so… I did not come here to share feelings. Instead-" here he laughed and looked at Thor meaningfully- "I offer you the chance of a far richer sacrament."

Thor glanced up. Since when did Loki ever need him? Suddenly, his memory of how he had broken Loki out of prison for Malekith's attack came back to him, and he gave a short laugh. "Go on."

"I know you seek vengeance. You help me escape Hel and I will grant it to you. Vengeance," he said, only modifying the script of their previous encounter slightly.

Thor tilted his head. "Why would you want to escape Hel? I mean, it's not the best place to be, but what reason do you want to be alive again? It's…" He glanced down. "It's not the best of times to be alive."

Loki nodded. "I am well aware of the danger I'd be in if I was alive again. Thanos would probably hunt me down again and either enslave me or kill me before I'd be able to do anything. But… I can't live there. It's so boring. If I try to do any kind of prank, they set me on fire or something and I hate heat. You know that," Loki explained with a smirk, and Thor could've sworn he saw a hint of sapphire in Loki's pale, bruised, scarred Aesir skin.

Thor laughed, and not just a small chuckle either. This was true laughter-the kind that, if kept up long enough, would make your ribs and cheeks hurt, your eyes water, and you would be bent over in mirth. He watched as the corners of Loki's lips flashed upwards quickly in a real smile, before returning to his usual smirk, though amusement danced in his verdant eyes as Thor, after a few moments, finally stopped laughing. Steve Rogers, who was still watching the surveillance, almost laughed with Thor, though by now, he had no idea what was happening and was starting to question the former god's sanity. Asgardians were so weird. He'd stopped trying to figure out Loki a long time ago, and it seemed Thor would be a repeat of his brother.

"Loki, I've missed you! You don't even know," Thor said. Loki's face sobered.

"Oh, but I do. I never left you. I used my magic so I would experience and feel and think whatever you were at the time, and… I'm sorry, Thor." His voice cracked, the smooth, velvety quality fleeing with a speed that Thor had never heard before, and Thor's smile faded instantly as Loki's voice was reduced to a broken whisper, and he stared at the floor.

"I had no idea."

Thor felt the pain in those four words, and the immense remorse he felt. He smiled, though there was not an ounce of happiness in it, but rather the crushing weight of millenia of memories together, only for one to disappear from the other's life completely, their relationship questioned and their hearts both broken. "Maybe you're not so bad after all, brother."

Loki looked up, hope in his eyes.

"Maybe not."