Title: Three butterflies
Pairing: Thor/Loki
Summary: "There is a tale they tell on Midgard," Loki says. "It is about three butterflies." "Is it a sad tale?" Thor cuts in. "It's a true anecdote."
A/N: Have been planning to use this old Sufi tale for oh so long, and never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I would do it with two Norse Gods;)
Three butterflies
I.
It's around the dawn of their existence, the peak of their youth, amidst the full blast of the confusion that comes overnight with puberty. They are brothers, and on a level, more than that. They know brothers don't hide behind pillars to exchange secret kisses and touches, brothers don't sneak into each other's chambers to steal just a few hours of intimacy and affection from the night. Brothers don't elope and hide in the knee-high grass of the pastures over the Asgard palace. They do, and they are not yet over the point of dizzying excitement and carnal desire that keep them simmering with want even in the most untimely moments to care about anything beyond satisfying the need. There are no questions and doubts, not yet.
Everything is so simple. It's so simple to lie in the grass and stare up at the sky with nothing on their mind, and everything printed in their skins where they are touching the other. It's spring, and everything is green and wild and sweet-scented.
"There is a tale they tell on Midgard," Loki says lazily, and Thor smiles. He likes when Loki entertains him with old ballads, his voice, soothing and silky, falling and rising with the rhythm of the words he conjures into life like the magical green flames and golden sparks he learnt to bring about just recently.
Loki is a great story-teller. Whether he spins the threads of his narratives or they are written somewhere, Thor never cared to find out. Loki knows all these anecdotes from all the other realms, strange tales, sometimes terrifying, sometimes funny and naughty. There are endless rivers of parchments in the Great Library of Asgard, and Loki can often be found there, crouched over rolls and dusty books nobody remembers ever placing there, and he reads and memorizes all these tales.
"It is about three butterflies."
"Is it a sad tale?" Thor cuts in. He doesn't feel like hearing anything dreary now. It's such a perfect day.
"It's not even a tale," Loki muses. "It's a true anecdote."
"A true story from the Lie-Smith? Is it even possible, brother?" Thor chuckles and pinches him in the side. There is so much affection in his voice that Loki cannot feel offended, not even for a second. Thor's arm tightens around his shoulder and he pulls him closer to plant a kiss against Loki's temple. "So tell me that story, brother."
"They say the people of this world are like the three butterflies around the candlelight." Loki's forefinger draws a lazy circle on Thor's chest, and he rests his head on Thor's broad shoulder. "The first one goes closer, it feels the warmth of the flame, and says: I know about love."
Thor hums, Loki isn't sure what it means but it vibrates through his body and heart. His finger creeps up in cursive motions like an invisible snake curling on Thor's robe. His voice is like a lullaby, soft and melodious.
"The second one flies so close that the flame lightly touches its wings, and the butterfly says: I know how love's fire burns." For a moment, he pauses. His finger moves further up and it circles around Thor's heart, drawing closer and closer as the imaginary butterflies move around the flame. "The third one doesn't say anything. It flies right into the flame and is immediately consumed. The third alone knows what true love is."
There is silence for so long that Loki thinks Thor fell asleep but then his hand shifts and plasters against his shoulder blade. His other hand covers Loki's on his heart, and he squeezes it lightly. Loki looks up and meets the bluest gaze he has ever seen and wants to see for an eternity. Thor is playfully chewing at the end of a sword grass and has the warmest smile on his lips but Loki sees he doesn't fully understand every bit of the story. Not yet.
It doesn't matter, Loki thinks just a second later when Thor scoots to lean closer, pulls the grass from his mouth, and replaces it with Loki's lips. His kiss tastes green and wild berries and spring.
Loki hides his face in the crook of Thor's neck, and he is smiling, and he believes they are glowing under the sun like two forgotten gemstones. They are young, they are carefree and happy.
We are the first butterfly, Loki thinks, and he knows Thor thinks the same. Will we ever be anything else, he wonders, and it's a fleeting shadow over his heart that he fears.
But then Thor rolls him over in the silky grass and he laughs and flails and for now, they are glowing.
II.
"I only ever wanted to be your equal."
It's a snarl, so low and distorted that for a moment Thor isn't sure he heard it aright.
The man before him, pulled taut with unleashed anger and hurt and every intention to harm, is not his brother, cannot be. Nothing at all resembles the Loki he has known and loved for so long, all his life. It's like staring into a volcano and seeing the raw core of the earth, all boiling and smothering substance capable only of destruction. This man doesn't have the intelligent, composed and cunning look of his brother, and Thor finds it hard to recognize Loki behind the haze of madness. For a reeling second he wonders if this has always been there, under the surface Loki just covered perfectly, if Thor should have seen it gathering. He doesn't understand anything, the words that fly accusingly at him don't make any sense. Equal. Not brother. Fight me. How could he fight him?
Every word exchanged cuts deep, Loki senses it, but it cuts deep within him too, not only Thor, and he wants to fight, wants to hit and punch because maybe, maybe by smashing Thor in the right spot would smash this feeling into smithereens inside him.
"Brother-?" and Thor is looking at him like his heart is split in two, but it's just fair because Loki's is not only split but shattered, and he has no idea how he could make Thor see if he hasn't been able to do so in the past centuries. "We are equal, why would you think otherwise? This is nonsense. You know… you know that I…"
Loki's laugh snaps sharply, and it's a sound Thor has never heard him utter.
"That you love me? Is that what you struggle to say? Do you love me, Thor?"
His arms stretch out tauntingly, making a show of displaying the scenery as if Thor has failed to acknowledge their surroundings so far: behind him, it's the miniscule ice sculpture of Yggdrasil growing and gleaming, its icicle branches are like million ice-daggers, and at its root, it's Jötunheim being pulled apart. The ice-tree cast cold shine over Loki, and his smile is dead and frozen and sharper than any knife can be. There is a deranged glint in his eyes, a blue sparkle of frost, and Thor reels back like he has been hit. He doesn't want to remember this face because he fears it might overwrite every memory he cherishes of his brother. This face is full of hurt and hate and Thor thinks: so this is how love ferments.
"Yes," Thor blurts but it's the slightest hesitation in his voice that clenches Loki's heart.
The resentment is still palpable on his face but there is something else underneath that makes it impossible to look at Loki now: maybe sadness, but probably, Thor decides, it's finality.
"You have no idea what it means to love someone like me, Thor. What comes with it."
And Thor doesn't know, really, he simply loves with the truest throbs of his heart. But he thinks of Jötunheim, of the genocide his brother is about to commit, and he swings Mjölnir because he has no idea how else he could stop it, but every livid swoosh of the hammer seems to gradually destroy something between them, and nothing can ever be the same again.
He loves, and it hurts so much that it feels like something just broke inside him for good, and for a funny moment he thinks of butterflies in an old, half-forgotten story, butterflies with burnt wings, with marks that would never go away.
III.
Loki is standing there, his unleashed magic is like invisible wings around him, one sweep and it brings about a hurricane that levels everything in the vicinity, like a rolling earthquake, swallows the buildings and spits their debris out, tears the straw lampposts and tooth-pick iron fences. Everything is flying and swirling around him in crazed chaos with Loki in the epicenter, a small universe with no order, and Loki doesn't even attempt to control it, and sometimes he only narrowly avoids being hit. He has been so for quite some time now: not only destructive of everything in his vicinity but himself, too.
Everyone is crouched against the ground, and buildings crumple and fall like house of cards, and Thor finds he cannot care less anymore.
The glorious campaign of travelling from realm to realm, following Loki's trail of wreckage and loss, trying to prevent him from causing any more extensive damage has long since been reduced to the sole wish to face him, to see him, because there is no other opportunity for Thor to do it. He is ashamed of it on a certain level but not enough to try to change anything. This is how it is, and he accepted it long ago. He has loved Loki far too long to just turn his back and walk away.
Sometimes he thinks Loki aims the same. Sometimes, when Loki prefers to go on rampage on Midgard, always Midgard, and Thor wants to believe it's not because he is aware how precious Midgard is for Thor and intends to stab him where he is certain it hurts, not mainly because of this, but because he can tell for sure that for Midgard, Thor would definitely come to meet him.
But Midgard has lost to matter that much for quite a long time. He doesn't care what is crushed, he doesn't want to stop it because he wants to save this realm; he wants to save Loki, even if it means he would risk the future fate of all realms. So when Thor foresees it happening, when everyone is cowering in fear and confusion about the madness Loki has conjured, amidst the shaking buildings and flying rubble, Thor jumps to his feet, and it takes only three huge steps and his incredible stamina, and he leaps and he is the quicker.
The iron pole pierces him just right through his torso, but it came with such force that it thoroughly impales him, so much that Loki, who is standing frozen behind him, has his thigh stabbed.
Clinking and thumping of objects resound as they hit the ground as the wings of magic dissipate, and then silence.
Loki is at his side in an instant, and through the numb, impossible pain Thor decides it was worth it, the look on Loki's face, the guileless, unguarded dread and the long forgotten expression of gentleness: this is the face of the brother Thor thought he has lost forever.
"What have you done, you fool?" There is no venom in his voice, it's broken and weak, and suddenly they are children again, they are hiding under the blanket in the dark bedchamber, and Loki is pleading him to stop scaring him with frightening stories of monsters and giants, and scoots closer and asks him to chase away the ghouls.
Only now the ghouls are them.
There is a small smile on Thor's lips, sad and weak, and it's painted shiny around the corner by the lone tear running down his chin. His finger touches Loki's face, feather touch with so much love that Loki has to close his eyes because even looking at it twists his insides into a throbbing mass of ache.
"I am the third, Loki," Thor whispers, and the glint in his eyes is almost proud, but still only the shadow of his old pompous self. Loki stares at him, blinking wildly and at a loss what he is referring to. "I am the third butterfly."
The air leaves Loki's body with a hitch, and suddenly he understands what has concerned Thor all this time, what his greatest fear and struggle were he carried along and dragged after him as he chased him down through the Nine Realms.
He cradles his brother's head close to his chest and whispers, "I know, Thor. I knew it all along."
All of a sudden Thor is relaxed in his arm, and for a second Loki fears that it's already the end but Thor is looking up at him with the most peaceful expression he hasn't seen for centuries. Loki smiles back but it's crooked and broken and is pierced by the splinters of all those things they have lost and shattered during these unholy months.
"We both are."