Thor rushes to catch up with Loki, still not as good at walking with a cape even after all this time. Since arriving, they have had no time to speak with one another; in fact, Thor hasn't spoken with Loki since watching his brother walk away weeping with the body of Sigyn draped over his shoulder.

"Loki, were you ever going to reach out to us after conquering Vanaheim?" Thor asks the question harshly, making assumptions about Loki's plans for the future. Loki stops dead in his tracks to address him.

"I didn't conquer the Vanir, brother. They respected me. They honored me. I did nothing but show them that Frigga did not waste her time, or theirs, in teaching me magic. Which is more than you ever did to represent this house to them." Loki tries to keep walking, but Thor stops him with a heavy hand on Loki's shoulder.

"Brother, what else was I to do? I couldn't go after you without guaranteeing all of Asgard invading Vanaheim. We were in a time of peace until you came with Pluto and his army. I thought you would want to be left alone and not face another punishment, and after our last exchange, I couldn't bear to watch your suffer through it again." Thor is somewhat of a bumbling person, but he has genuine compassion for Loki. His eyes do not lie, and his words are clearly grasping for some form of forgiveness or truce. Loki lets out a heavy sigh.

"No, brother. There wasn't much you could do. But why wait until my children stumbled upon yours? Why now, when you could have come to me when this began?" Here in the hallway, Loki and Thor are completely alone, and the silence after Loki's questions seems to dominate the atmosphere.

"I... I didn't know if you were really alive until I met them, Loki. When I last saw you, it looked as though you'd given up. I told myself when I met your boys that they couldn't possibly look so familiar to me, until they announced their names." Thor's hand squeezes Loki's shoulder so that his brother's eyes will raise and meet his. "Loki, when I saw Vali, all I could think was that he looked just like you. And Narvi has your impeccable and annoying sense of pride. You should be, you must be, very proud of them. My brother, a father!"

Thor's declaration of how impressive Loki's sons were even at their first meeting makes Loki smile. He is incredibly proud of them, happy to call them his. It's obvious that the honor of being a father is much more important to Loki than any throne, though he wouldn't have known it until he held those babes in his arms.

"They remind me of us, Thor. It pains me and honors me to see them with your Modi. I had convinced myself that they would be safer without this world, without the confusion of whether or not they belonged here. So I kept them from it. Selfishly. Because if I didn't belong here, why should they?" Loki's risen crest falls again at this revelation, admitting to himself why he kept them from Asgard all this time. He was jealous of his son's ties to Asgard through Sigyn, as he never truly belonged here.

"Loki, you do belong here. You are here now. And you have brought your family honor, even if it wasn't in your home first. Can you keep the promise that you made and be part of Asgard, even with your station in Vanaheim?"

"Yes. Yes, I can. And I will." Loki and Thor exchange a look of understanding and forgiveness towards each other. Any resentment that Loki has for Thor's respect from Odin is overshadowed by the debt he owes his brother, and his yearning to have more family than the one he created for himself.

"Besides, if I didn't have you, who else would appreciate the fashions of my people, Thor?" Loki laughs and shows off his cape, handmade and intricate, such a beauty compared to the tattered rag of a red cape that Thor wears, threaded at the bottom from so many treaded footsteps.

"Only you would care about appearances over true presence, cow, but I see your point." Thor smiles, and they walk to the great hall together, Loki removing his helmet to keep from drawing more attention than necessary from the surely surprised droves of people waiting downstairs.