A/N: I don't own anything Marvel or Avengers, unfortunately. Just my own thoughts.
Thor cocked his blaster and hooked it on his belt, surveying the rusty landscape. He had been forced to leave Stormbreaker aboard the Benetar—something about "not intimidating the local populace"—and, okay, Thor guessed he could see where that was coming from, but the spacesuit was just pointless. The Rabbit had insisted that everyone took a spacesuit with them before they left the Benetar and had slapped one on his back, even though Thor didn't need the light covering. The Agullo atmosphere was easy enough for his time-hardened body to withstand.

But Thor had just shrugged internally. Blasters and spacesuits were a few of the many things he was beginning to get used to with the Guardians—and, in truth, he would take them over death and destruction and that beating loneliness any day.

Hell, he was even willing—maybe—to let Starman be captain if it would distract him from his mind.

Though, fortunately, his newfound friends' strange adventures usually left little room for wallowing in memories. Thor had long ago stopped craving the bloodshed and violence that came with battles, but the initial adrenaline of running, of defending, of just being side by side with his companions was always exhilarating. Sometimes, it made him think of Sif and the Warriors Three and Loki (and, if it was late and quiet, and all he could see was the black emptiness of space, he'd slip away into nothing and surround himself with bottles until he was too blurry to remember—), but, usually, the fighting did a pretty satisfactory job of filling his mind.

Actually, Thor had to admit that things were decisively better after joining the Guardians. The stock of drinks that he had originally brought on to the ship had recently been used more for impromptu celebrations after heists than for his own personal use; in fact, he hadn't touched it for weeks. He was also getting the distinct impression that Rabbit was trying to get him to stop drinking—judging by how many times Tree had 'accidentally' broken one of his beers, or a bottle had mysteriously gone missing from the shelf—but Thor had only grown annoyed and argued with him once or twice.

Really, Thor was just grateful—touched, even—that he cared. That they all cared—even the blue robot girl, Nebula, who sometimes talked with him about her lost sister, the one he had met years ago called Gamora.

Thor ducked underneath a dusty tent overhang, hovering on the edges of a market square peppered with merchants. They had stopped on Ahl-Agullo as more of a pit stop than anything else. Quill had heard rumors of Agullo pirates who might have information about Gamora, and the rest of his teammates had agreed to visit with little persuasion. He'd grabbed his blasters from the cockpit and set off across the planet almost the moment they had landed, with Nebula grumbling something about being there in case their subjects got "uncooperative" and reluctantly tagging along. The Rabbit, too, had disappeared fairly quickly, rushing towards a marketplace with Tree to steal some kind of transistors, and Drax had wandered off with the bug-girl, Mantis.

That left him, weaving his way through this small town, really, just to stretch his legs. With all of the quests and battles, he had been gradually growing back into his old physique and skill set; Rabbit had even transitioned from calling him ice cream to "more like hot fudge." ("Hey, he's starting to look better than you again, Quill!" he had cackled, and Quill had chucked his sandwich at him.)

But, sometimes Thor just preferred to walk rather than run or fight for his life. Technology glittered like jewels on racks and shelves around him, seeming feverishly bright through thick orange clouds of dust, and foreign alien tongues reached his ears, muted and murmuring. Each new civilization he visited with the Guardians was fascinating, and so starkly different from anything that he had ever experienced in the Realms that it made him marvel at how much there was out there.

How much had been at risk. How much they had saved.

The Agullo people had only just recently built back up to their previous economic heights after being devastated by...by him, and Thor could still see the scars of it everywhere—in the way the children huddled close to their mothers, in how the merchants kept a wary eye on those who passed by as if expecting them to steal. And then there was the square itself: tattered around the edges, with faint scarlet stains worked permanently into the dirt like bruises.

He tore his eyes from the ground. Clearing his mind, he lazily meandered his way toward a shop full of little green cells—hadn't Rabbit asked him to pick up some common batteries or something?

Probably. He had no idea what "common batteries" looked like, but these seemed good enough. And next to them stood a shelf of some kind of whiskey, so maybe if Thor bought some of that, too, Rabbit wouldn't notice.

Picking up one of the bottles, he felt the owner's gaze boring into him and glanced up to meet it. "Ah, hello. How much is one of these?" he asked lightly. The merchant's narrow stare didn't abide.

Thor gave him a little smile.

The owner just grunted and pushed a small cup toward him, apparently meant for money. Thor casually wiped dust from the whiskey's label in an attempt to see the price, only to have it billow up in his face. He coughed, grimacing, ears ringing as he—

Then something cut through his hacking: a voice, terrifyingly clear and distinct.

He hesitated. Froze, at the faint, dulcet tones of Loki's—his brother's—voice.

Of course, it wasn't that rare of an occurrence for him to hear their voices—Mother, Father, Heimdall, Loki. They were always there, sometimes whispering and laughing, sometimes screaming so loud and abrasive he wished he could join them, if only to make it stop. Ghosts, that, even through their death (because of their death), haunted the back of his mind, present in everything he did, everything he saw.

Ghosts, illusions—

He sighed and ignored the way his heart plummeted to his stomach. It wasn't him, it never was, and it hadn't been for five years, no matter how twisted a trick his heart played on him.

No matter how much that merchant's voice sounded like Loki's.

He wasn't going to check, or listen to it anymore, because he knew if he did, the disappointment and darkness would pull him under and take hold for weeks, dragging in its prey.

Instead, he curled his fingers too tightly around the bottle of whiskey and stared at the unfamiliar script written on its label.

And stared.

And stared.

The merchant growled.

"Uh, right, sorry," he murmured hastily.

The voice was still there.

Thor raised his head up, and a flash of sneaky gold and green flickered at the edge of his vision.

No, don't, not real, not there—

He whipped his gaze around to squint after the colors and felt a surreal dullness settle into his limbs like cement. His knees were shaking, and the shop owner was glaring murderously at him, but Thor didn't care. He slammed the bottle down on the counter.

"Um, sorry, give—give me a second."

He shot away from the stand and wormed his way through pink-skinned bodies and shelves full of metal, with his mind on fire because the figure that he had seen, the hair, the hair had been black—

Stop it, stop it, ghosts—

Then he exploded into a different area of the square, and the only thing separating him from the green-caped figure—who was conversing with another merchant in a low, cunning voice, undoubtedly attempting to strike some sort of deal—was a flimsy little partition.

"...L-Loki?" Thor croaked. Hope expanded rapidly inside his rib cage, like a too-tight balloon with too-thin edges, and he knew it would soon, inevitably, burst and suck him back down into that vicious spiral, but he just had to—

The figure's spine stiffened minutely, not unlike that Midgardian dog creature Thor had seen once before when it smelled something threatening, and unwanted. Then it swiveled to face him, and Thor found himself staring at a pale, angular face he'd know even if his other eye was sliced out.

How—?

His mind stopped, buffering, looping the image around and around with no result.

It couldn't be possible. How was it possible? That Loki was here, had been holed away on this planet for five long years, hiding after he had stood against the greatest foe they'd ever faced?

I, Loki, Prince of Asgard—

Thor's fingertips, slick and clammy with sweat, nearly failed him as he clambered around for the closest object—a mutilated little piece of weaponry—and hurled it with all his might. It clanked off Loki's forehead, solid and echoey and almost comical, before he could defend himself, and hit the ground with a hollow thud.

I assure you, Brother—

He was here. He was here.

His brother said something he couldn't hear, and his eyes narrowed in irritation, which Thor only took as an invitation to stumble forward, tripping over the uneven ground like a foal with shaky newborn's legs. The hazy orange air swirled about him, creating an effect far too similar to that of alcohol-imbued fantasies, but Thor could feel that this was different—this time, his arms were actually, truly closed around those gold-clad shoulders, thin and freezing cold but real beneath his grasp. A sob tore from his throat, and he tightened his grip at the sudden, paranoid fear that if he let go, he'd find himself holding nothing but a bruised, broken body amidst the screams of nightmares. As it was, his vice-grip was probably cutting off Loki's air supply—otherwise his brother definitely would have complained by now—but Thor was too dizzy to care.

"Brother," he whispered hoarsely.

An aggravated series of grunts (Thor thought he caught the words "fool" and "oaf," but his ears were too clogged with that stupid dust to make sense of anything) escaped from between his arms before Loki, instead of responding, twisted like a snake in his hold, sharp and quick. Something silvery danced briefly in his hand before vanishing from view.

Then it pierced his side, and shocks of ice exploded through his veins.

Thor gasped and automatically jerked back. For a moment, alarm struck his heart—What if he was wrong? Was it really Loki? An illusion? What if it was an illusion? Was he angry—?

But then he remembered his brother's knack for knife tricks. In their childhood, Loki had often seemed to prefer stabbing him more than actually holding a conversation, poking and prodding because he knew it annoyed Thor to no end.

(And then he stabbed me. We were eight at the time.)

Giddy relief—that at least some things remained the same—clouded over Thor's foreboding, and he relaxed, albeit only slightly. He leaned back, one hand winding toward his bloody side, a comeback, fresh and eager, already prepared on his tongue. Finally, he saw his brother's face clearly through the gloom—

—and found no mischievous taunting or satisfaction waiting to welcome him.

Thor's unspoken words curled back around his tongue and halted in his throat.

Because, at first, his brother's pale eyes were almost—terrifyingly—unrecognizable, cold and cunning and laced with a tiny shadow of anger that made Thor's skin prickle uncomfortably. Certain shades of darkness he had nearly forgotten about stared back at him from his brother's emerald gaze, foreign, like ghosts.

Ghosts, illusions—

Thor squinted hard, but his head had started to spin like a spool of yarn, unraveling over and over as the string slipped through his fingers. The knife blade felt serrated and dense in his flesh.

The corner of Loki's mouth lilted, more mocking than sincere. "You keep forgetting, Thor. I'm not your brother," he said wryly, twisting the blade deeper.

"Wha—?" Not his brother?

But Loki had admitted, he had said, on the Statesman—

Odinson—

Because Loki hadn't denied their kinship for years.

Not since that time, when all hell had broken loose upon Midgard, when his brother had had bitter madness eating away at the edges of his eyes, and his hair had been smoother and slightly longer, his armour a gaudy green and gold—

When he had looked, in fact, just as he did now.

Impossible.

When Thor responded with nothing other than spluttering, Loki ripped the knife out of his side with finality. Thor became aware that he was now several steps away—conveniently out of arm's reach. "Well, as much as I love these little talks, I'm afraid I must be going," he sighed aloofly. He flashed Thor one of his brief, showy smiles, fingers twitching behind his back in a way that set off warning bells inside Thor's head.

"Wait, Loki—"

"Give my best to the Allfather."

His voice was light and haughty but his eyes hard on the last word, and it took Thor a long, sluggish moment—way too long—to realize that he had said Allfather. In the same instant, Loki's hand wrapped into a circle, and blue light solidified into one of the last things Thor wanted to see at that moment, resting innocently in his palm.

Adrenaline instinctively snapped through his blood, his shoulders tensing. How the hell was that stupid Cube back here? Hadn't the Captain taken it back? The storm of confusion in his mind pounded further.

Then, all at once, the edges of the air began to shiver and implode around Loki, creating a chasm of angry blue smoke that sent the common people of the square jerking backward, shrieking.

Panic seized Thor's heart like a cruel claw, he was losing Loki again, just like the Bifrost, just like Svartalfheim and Thanos, always his fault, his failure—

"No, no—!"

Stormbreaker slammed into his outstretched hand before he could remember summoning it, but the portal was closing, too late, too late, and his vision was going milky white and his thoughts frantic—

Light exploded from the axe and blasted Loki and the Tesseract ten feet apart.

Oh. Um.

...Oops?

He stood for a moment in the square, panting, trying to dull down the surges of electricity coursing through his body.

Around him, straggling groups of Agullo had seemingly appeared out of nowhere to form an uneven crowd, gawking at him in various degrees of fear, anger, and pure wonder. Thor suddenly noticed that Stormbreaker's shockwave had caused numerous stands and racks full of machinery to collapse, spewing their contents everywhere. The whiskey bottles he had been looking at earlier now lay in shards on the ground.

"Oh...ah, sorry about all...that." Trying, unsuccessfully, to loosen the tension in his chest and the confusion engulfing his mind, he offered the people his best sheepish smile, which probably looked quite pained. Several merchants were glaring daggers at him for ruining their stock, a couple bolder ones fingering at their weapons. "Er...family squabbles, you know?"

He was met with silence, but Thor decided that it would have to do. What else was he supposed to say, anyway? Sorry, don't mind the explosions, just the god of thunder retrieving his slightly psychopathic brother who's probably from a different timeline.

Different timeline.

Oh Norns, Norns, Norns—

His gaze landed on the Tesseract, which was now lying on the dust like a fragile block of ice, flickering and humming with a seducing light. Catching Loki's greasy merchant friend eyeing it hungrily, Thor lunged forward and scooped the Cube out of reach of his prying fingers, ignoring the creature's angry squabbles of protest. It took every ounce of his godly willpower not to take the damn thing and smash it to pieces right there, but he knew they would need it later for…uh...

Well, for something. He wasn't quite sure what, at the moment, he couldn't even think, but the last thing he wanted was for it to end up back in Loki's—or anyone else's—hands.

And, speaking of Loki...

His brother was out cold from the blow, twisted upon the soil, clothing still smoking slightly. By all scientific evidence, he was definitely real, and alive. (But it just didn't make any sense—) Now, up close, there was no doubt that it was him—and that he was very much not the brother that had fought with Thor on the Statesman.

He stood and stared down at Loki—Midgard's attacker, his brother—for a long moment, several pairs of eyes still burning dully into his back.

He's a lunatic, but he can be amenable, Loki had once said of the Grandmaster, when they had been on Sakaar what felt like eons ago. It seemed almost cruel, now, for Thor to apply that same judgement back to him.

So don't. He's not completely crazy, anyway.

But he was dangerous, and unpredictable, and leaving him here to scheme his way to the top promised destruction and chaos for the Agullo. Possibly even for the galaxy, the universe; with his brother, he never knew.

But what was he supposed to do with Loki, then? Haul him back, stuff him aboard the Benetar, and then what? Imprison him forever?

This Loki hated him, and it hurt. He hated Father, Asgard. Hated everything.

...How was this even possible?

He needed to do something.

Loki was alive. His brother.

(I'm here.)

Thor gripped the Tesseract, leaned down, and hefted his brother over his shoulder like a sack of yaro root. Betrayed by sentiment, Loki said, and it took a moment for Thor to realize that the voice was just in his head.

He sighed.

He was definitely going crazy.
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