Thor's eyes flew open with a jerk. He lay facedown in the dirt, feeling like he had just been trampled by a herd of his father's war chargers. His first reaction was to make sure Mjolnir still hung by his side—it did. His second was to realize that he was no longer holding onto his brother. He struggled to his knees, ignoring his protesting muscles. "Loki!" he choked out, coughing against the dryness in his throat, "Brother! Where are you?"
"We're not brothers," he heard a caustic voice say from behind him. "Stop referring to me as such." Thor spun around as quickly as he was able. Loki sat on a stone a few paces away with his back to Thor, staring across the barren landscape that stretched to the horizon in all directions. Thor remained kneeling on the ground, staring at him, for several long moments.
"You're all right," Thor said at last, his voice thick and heavy with relief. Loki made a sound like a derisive snort but still didn't turn around. Thor sat back heavily and began to categorize his various aches. Time crawled by. Loki suddenly broke the silence, his voice sharp.
"What, pray tell, is your definition of 'all right'? My world has been turned on its head, I have no home, no family, nothing to return to and no way to return even if I did—how can you say that I'm all right?" He spit out the last words as if they tasted foul. "I don't even know where I am!" Thor regarded him coolly with a touch of surprise.
"You're alive, aren't you? The rest will follow in time. As for our location, I'm fairly certain that we've ended up on Earth again—Midgard. As for the rest—" Loki cut him off before he could continue.
"You're a fool, Thor." Loki turned to face him for the first time now, his green eyes flashing. "What in the name of the Eternal Realms possessed you back there? You—the hero of Asgard—you let yourself fall off the Bifrost, to come after me, the would-be annihilator of Jotunheim? Do you even realize what you did?" Thor listened to him quietly without interrupting, though his piercing blue eyes looked pained. "You shouldn't have come after me, Thor! Don't you understand that I ha…that I h…" The words he longed to spit into Thor's face died on his tongue, as if refusing to cross the air between them. "WHY?" Loki screamed at him. "Why would you do that, you ox-brained fool?" Thor's expression of surprise took Loki immediately back to that day in the stables. He knew exactly what the other would say before Thor even opened his mouth, and it felt like someone was driving a hot iron poker through his chest.
"Why? Because you're my brother, and I swore to protect you. Always."
"FOOL!" Loki screamed back, not even caring that his so-called silver tongue wasn't providing him with any better slander than that. "Don't you understand? We're not brothers. We never have been, we never will be! I'm a Frost Giant! I'm the son of Laufey!" As proof to his words, Loki conjured up the Ice Casket that he still carried with him.
Thor watched in horrified fascination as his brother's pale skin suddenly began to turn blue, as his cool green eyes suddenly blazed a ferocious red. He wanted to accuse his brother of lying; he wanted to blame this on another of his brother's elaborate pranks. But the fierce blaze in Loki's eyes allowed no room for such denial, nor did the blue that continued to creep up his skin. In that moment, Thor suddenly understood his brother's previous words and actions. How long had he known? He must have found out some time during Thor's exile. No wonder Loki had been driven to madness!
Loki stowed the casket away again, his eyes downcast, half-bracing himself for a devastating blow from Mjolnir. Surely now that Thor realized—he had seen the horror in Thor's eyes—surely now—what Loki was not expecting was the low, dry chuckle he suddenly heard. His gaze jumped up again to focus on Thor's face. The horror had receded from Thor's gaze again, and the expression that had replaced it was unreadable, even by Loki's cunning.
"If either of us is a fool here, brother,"—there was no mistaking the emphasis placed on the word—"then I would say it is you and not me." Loki's breath caught in his throat. "Do you honestly think that would make a difference to me now? You say you are a Frost Giant, and what you have just showed me inclines me to believe you. I don't know how this came to pass, and in all frankness I don't want to know. What I do know is this—you are my brother. You have been adopted, then—very well. I accept this. But adopted you have been, and you are as much a part of this family as the Allfather himself." Thor's quiet voice twisted itself around Loki's heart. What—what was this? Surely Thor must hate him now!
"You don't know what you're saying," Loki spat out. "I have no family. Even the Frost Giants hid me away in a temple for shame of me." Thor lurched suddenly to his feet, towering over the seated Loki.
"You do have a family, we are your family, until such time as we choose to renounce you," he said firmly. "Loki Odinsson—Frost Giant or no—you are still my little brother!" Thor's words burned in Loki's ears. Loki stared up at him in disbelief. This man—the man he had tried to kill multiple times, whom he had lied to, whom he had hurt, whom he had been jealous of and hated for years, who had just realized what a monster Loki truly was—he still stood there claiming him as his brother? Even with all his cleverness, Loki couldn't fathom it. He opened his mouth to reply, but Thor suddenly held up a hand. "Shh—do you hear that?" Loki paused and listened. Indeed, he had been too caught up in the moment to pay attention to what Thor had just now heard, a low rumbling that seemed to be coming from somewhere beneath them. Loki mentally cursed himself for not picking up on it sooner. He pressed a hand to the ground at his feet and sent down a quick Seeing spell. The image that returned to him made his heart skip a beat.
"Thor—Thor, MOVE!" he shouted, vaulting himself off the rock he was sitting on and crashing into the bulkier man with all the force he could muster. A split second later a barbed claw crashed up through the dusty ground where Thor had been standing moments before.
"What the—since when have they had things like that on Earth?" Thor snarled. A huge, spiny, insect-like monster was burrowing its way quickly out of the dirt. A stone's throw away a second one suddenly burst out of the ground. Thor instantly flew at the first of the monsters, Mjolnir in hand, grinning at the opportunity for battle. Loki hesitated a split second—it would be an easy thing to slip away in the chaos—but something rooted him to the spot. He couldn't bring himself to tear himself away from Thor's side quite yet. Half-cursing himself and half-cursing Thor, he conjured the casket again and quickly turned the second creature into an elaborate ice sculpture before it could think of joining its peer against his brother. Distracted as he was, Loki forgot to correct himself in his thoughts. Behind him two more monsters plowed up through the earth.