"Fight well, brother," Loki joked, tears still in his eyes, "So I don't have to follow you."

Thor gave his little brother a crushing hug, one unfitting for his crisp uniform and cropped blonde hair. A military man, in all senses, his father had complimented earlier while his mother sobbed quietly into her handkerchief. Loki had been suspiciously quiet this morning, never making eye contact with anyone and stealing glances at Thor when he thought he wasn't looking. When Thor did catch his wandering eyes, they held a peculiar sort of sadness he'd never seen in his scheming little brother before. That sadness was back in full, unbridled force, spilling over in the tears threatening to overflow their banks. Thor absentmindedly wondered if their strict father would tolerate something as 'feminine' as tears in this parting moment, but as Thor boarded the train and snuck a glance out the window, he found his tiny hope shattered. Father was obviously reprimanding Loki for his moment of weakness, but when he noticed his golden son's face at the window he collected himself and let Loki alone for the moment.

Sighing, a small spring of memories bubbled up in Thor's mind. Once the two reached certain ages, there was no more crying, no more playing, no more disobedience, and rules backed by threats never really outlined but imagined by frightened, overactive children. Loki seemed to always bear the brunt of Father's anger, being thin and lithe and tricky, not at all taking to their new authoritarian existence nicely. Small rebellions would but ignored, but large discrepancies warranted the paddle or the belt, or, very rarely, the cage. The cage, Thor shuddered at the thought, was a hole in their basement floor covered by a heavy iron grate, a part of what was the dungeon when their house was a full castle, not a renovated ruinage of it's former glory. Thor, fortunately, had never angered his father enough to warrant it, but Loki had been placed in its custody three times.

The first, Thor remembered, was when Loki acted up at one of their parents' fancy dinner parties and embarrassed and outraged Odin into throwing the raven-haired youth in as soon as the last guest cleared the gate. There was much screaming and pounding on the decrepit stone walls of the tiny enclosure, until Odin brought him up the next morning to reveal bloody hands and a throat so hoarse he couldn't speak properly for a full week. The next time was a few years later, brought on by a cruel prank Loki had pulled on one of his schoolteachers that had got him expelled from the private school their family had gone to for generations. There was yelling that time, but more asking for Thor or Frigga to help him get out rather than for forgiveness. The last time was when Loki set a trap for the old man, and before Odin sought medical attention for his badly bleeding eye, Loki was thrown into the cage. As Frigga took Odin into town, Thor crept down to the cellar when he realized Loki was making no noise. Although he had only been inside for a few hours, Loki looked absolutely feral, all messy hair and torn clothes and dirt-caked skin, looking up at him with madness in his piercing green eyes and not whispering a word. Thor only glimpsed it before he had to turn tail and escape. As soon as he shut the dungeon door he realized that he had only been repeating that same word, escape, in his mind, and either at his brother's animalistic form or the realization that he had believed his brother a monster so terrifying it warranted such bolting, he threw up.

Thor shook his head in an attempt to dispel the foul memories, and looked back out the glass as the train lurched forward. In a sudden fit of panic, he stood and threw down the window, hanging outside to see his family waving.

"Goodbye!" he called frantically, "I'll see you again!"

Loki cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled something, but it was lost to the engine and the wind, and then to Father jerking his arm away roughly and barking something at him. Thor drew inside, as the train was already off the platform and his family was obviously now preoccupied. He settled into an uncomfortable sleep, with iron bars and green eyes haunting his dreams.


It was November 1917, and Thor received a stark letter from his father informing him that his brother was to be shipped out to the trenches near the Somme River in France in less than a month. Three years of hard work and an immense amount of luck granted Thor a comfortable position away from most of the trenches and the warfare, loading and unloading supply boats and aircrafts. It was a dull, simple job, but he was grateful for it. More fortunately, it was relatively easy to secure a day off and travel back to his hometown to send off his dear brother, but that was where his luck ended. He overslept and missed the first train, and, now forced to take a later one, barely got into his station before Loki was set to depart.
The station was flooded with people, most trying to leave or arrive on their winter holidays, or the grave few who were being sent to war. Thor was jostled every which way, but, somehow, he managed to find his way onto Loki's platform, and searched frantically for his brother's pale form, ears pricked for the sound of his voice, though Thor wasn't quite sure he could remember it. A good few meters in front of him, he saw a familiar thin figure dart out from behind a brick column, head bent and hands curled into fists-his brother wore his chagrin exactly as Thor remembered. The blonde man glanced back at the pillar and spied Odin looking grimly out after his younger son, before turning back in a disappointed huff and leaving.

"Loki!" Thor searched again, not accustomed to his brother's new cropped hair and stiff uniform. He spotted him again, now as the younger was boarding the train, and Thor muscled his way through the crowd to get closer and peer in through the windows. Loki's ghost-like face appeared in a window a few paces down, and Thor reached it just as the engine pulled the cars away. Momentarily stunned, Loki had tears running hot down his angry face, and a bolt of shock ran past his face as he saw his brother down below. He yanked the curtain shut as another look of fresh outrage painted his features, and then the train was gone.

Blinking slowly, Thor's body moved on autopilot to a bench near the back of the platform. He slumped down onto it and put his head in his hands bewilderedly. What had just happened? he asked, slowly retracing the actions of the morning. He drew conclusions, assuming that Odin and Loki had gotten in another spat, which explained Loki's heated flight to the train, but not the look he gave Thor. It was full of malice and grief and...disappointment. He suddenly remembered the last words he had heard his brother say to him;

"Fight well, brother, so I don't have to follow you."


Thor wrote his brother every day; they were usually long, rambling, inarticulate things, mostly questions for Loki to answer, and Loki usually did, but in as few words as possible, and in incomplete sentences. Thor would send him bundles of papers and only receive lists of "yes"'s and "no"'s, and Thor couldn't tell which questions they were answering. Soon, he learned he'd need to keep his own copy of his letters in order to figure out what his brother was trying to tell him, but the return correspondence didn't get much more informative.

Be it the futility of the letters or the steadily-increasing pace of his job, Thor dropped off on his letter writing and began writing only short letters once a week, as winter turned to spring. Spring heated into summer, and then the seasons cooled into autumn, and on November 11, 1918, the War to End All Wars came to an end. Thor traveled home quickly, as he had stayed on British soil for most of the war, and was celebrated by his hometown, along with many other soldiers, as a hero. He didn't pay much attention to his brother's slow return until he found the tin where he had stored all of Loki's letters. The last was dated May 20th, and contained another short list of cryptic yes-no's, and "the Germans are awfully quiet lately," just before his scribbly signature. Thor ignored the foreboding line and connected the date and subsequent loss of communication to the Spring Offensive. Loki must have been so busy fighting he'd forgotten to write, or felt nothing was worth writing about. Suspicion roused itself again when Thor received a bundle of return-to-sender mail delayed by the war. They were all letters he had sent after May 20th, and they fit nicely in with another theory of his-Loki had been re-stationed after the start of the German's attacks and nobody had forwarded the mail to his new post-how could he have written back if he had nothing to answer to?

He'd be along soon, Thor reassured himself.

Nearly a week passed, and on November 16, 1918-Thor will never forget-he received a telegram:

"Deeply regret to inform you Private L. Odinson missing, presumably killed in action France May 21st 1918"

That was it. There was no other letter, no visiting officer, no explanations. Just "missing, presumably killed."-and a good few months late, at that.

It was absolutely heartbreaking.

And so, he descended. There was the initial shock of the telegram, and a month of torturous, ever-present grief, and then the eldest-turned-only son seemed to be alright again. He laughed, he smiled, he functioned, but melancholy's tendrils slowly wrapped around him, dragging him further into an abyss. Every place he went, every person he spoke to, everything he saw or felt or tasted or smelled reminded him of Loki. Although it never bothered him before, Thor began having nightmares about the Great War, intermittently at first, but they became more frequent, began spilling over from the world of sleep into his waking hours. Most were not of himself or any soldiers he fought side-by-side with, but of his brother. Loki in the draft office, Loki arriving at the trenches, and the worst nightmare of all; Loki being killed. His imagination excelled at that one; the Loki of his dreams encountered landmines, mortars, machine gun fire, mustard gas, or the bullets reserved for turn-tailing cowards, all imagery graphic and potent and heart-shattering.

Three years spent slowly slipping downwards, three years drowning in slow-working depression, three years of agonizing dreams, three years of his life lost.

He knew he had to get out.


It started from an offhand comment a radio reporter made, contrasting the desolation in many parts of Europe to the economic booms of America. The idea of leaving for the United States became more and more appealing in his mind, tales of luxuries and glamor fuel to the fire. On November 16th, 1921, Thor packed up necessities enough to fill a large trunk and left the only home he'd ever known. Less than a fortnight later, Thor laid eyes upon the Mother of Exiles intent on leaving his past and his problems behind. He breathed in the salty sea air of New York Harbor. The New World-no, my new home, he corrected himself, stepping down onto American soil. English as a first language, a British pedigree, and considerable sum of inherited money expedited his entry into the American world.

Nestled neatly into a brickwork apartment in Manhattan and working steady construction jobs, Thor began to make friends. The two girls that lived across the hall from him were always bothering him-well, only one ever actually got on his nerves, and only sometimes. Jane Foster was the older of the two, was a nurse at a small hospital nearby, and Darcy Lewis, an absentee college student who was the perfect example of all the "sassy, forward-thinking, feminist" women he had heard so many disparaging things about on the other side of the pond, (but he thought fondly of her anyways). He thought fondly of them both, really, and whenever they weren't working they'd be out on the town or in either apartment. Dr. Selvig was another one of Thor's new-found companions, another European forced out by the war, though he had been in New York for much longer. He taught science at a local secondary school, but Darcy had heard rumors that he had been a very prestigious university professor back home. Thor had learned that putting too much stock in Darcy's gossip did not usually end well, but it did seem plausible. Selvig was wise and educated and reminded Thor of his father's best qualities.

His life returned to some state of normality. He went to museums with Dr. Selvig, parties with Darcy, soup kitchens with Jane. He had a nine-to-five job, and a regular circadian rhythm-the nightmares had been banished away in the lights of the City that Never Slept, resurfacing once in a blue moon, but to shortly be forgotten again with the help of his new routines, new acquaintances, new life. The Great War, Europe, his family, all seemed millions of miles away, far in his past and unimportant in his present.

Four months, he spent, reveling in his new freedom in the Home of the Brave.

Four months, albeit, of self-deception.