13.

Thor wakes the next morning unsure whether he is surprised, or not even faintly surprised, to find Loki gone. He buries his head in the indent Loki's has left in the furs, and when he finally looks up again his face is damp without his quite realising how this came to be so. He remembers hunting these furs in another life. They were a gift Loki had demanded from him when his passion destroyed the lesser ones Loki already had, right here by the fire in his room. He remembers Loki's guileless smiles when he found the new ones heaped upon his bed, hears his smiling voice ring again in his ears, remembers the vibrant touch and the taste of him as they came so close to destroying the new ones just as they had the first.

He feels sick to dying from living in the past. There is no longer anywhere else he wishes to live. He wonders if that was it, if it was all for nothing his waiting, his mourning, the journey to Hel and back for all that he wanted, all that he clung to so fiercely through the night has vanished like a dream in the first light of morning. He wishes now that he had done more, tried harder, that he had tried to talk to Loki every time he woke in the night, wriggling against him, frantic and scrabbling at him to fuck him again over and over as the night went on, in bursts of sleep and desperate sex. He wishes he could have achieved more, said even a fraction of the things he wanted and needed to say. But he had not. He had turned back time for one night only, rescued Loki from falling only to lose him all over again when the night's wild dreaming was over.

It is with surprise, lying in the furs, that he realises – if only after some time – that he is not defeated, not plunged right back into the distress that Loki's absence to supposed death had thrown him. No, he never got to talk to him, never got to persuade him to stay, to make things what they were again but he realises now it was a foolish dream, a child's imagining of a future that cannot possibly be. His dreams have always been so. He realises this now and knows too that Loki has always known what it has taken him so long to work out. It is not a tragedy this realisation, it is simply an end to an innocence he has held onto for too long.

He rises and dresses in the cold morning light with a new sense of purpose; a fatal one perhaps, but it is purpose nonetheless. He has succeeded in much and failed just as much. He never got to say all he should have said, never got to fix them beyond the mad crash of their bodies slamming back together once more, that mad frenzied scramble in which they had been engaged, it seems now, for their entire lives – as though they were one thing that got broken, always trying to crush itself back together. He knew now that they could never be fixed, not in this life, but after last night he knew too that they could never be eternally separated. Day and night had to meet briefly in the first morning's light and the end of the day. And so he would weather his days and sleep his nights and wait for those times when they could both hang briefly in one sky.

As he gets up and moves from his room he thinks about the last thing he remembers Loki saying, the sleepy announcement of forthcoming apocalypse. He had thought, at the time, that it was a vague and general statement, a joke even. It occurs to him now that it was not. He knows it, without question. Loki's actions have set him on the path to Ragnarok. Loki must have found this out before they were cast out of Hel.

He knows this because Loki knows this.

It is as though a door has opened in his head that has always been there but always been closed. Not a door through which he can hear Loki's thoughts as such, but one from which he can share in his knowledge. He wonders what part he has to play in the events that will unfold and wishes that he could help Loki play his. He realises now that in that playful question Loki had been asking for his help in the only way he could – in confidence that Thor would not be able to give it.

And he cannot. He knows that. He could not end the world he loves, any of the worlds he loves, not even for Loki. He wishes Loki did not have to, but suspects that he feels there is little choice, that he has not even made a conscious decision towards destruction so much as he is a link in chain being dragged in destruction's wake, cities falling like dominoes behind him.

So it is, as it was before, that Thor's feet lead him where they will. His mind is so otherwise occupied. Now, for the first time they lead him to the chambers of the All –Father where the King lies dead. He is not surprised to find him so; he supposes he knew he would find him like this and knows too how recent the passing is.

He knows because Loki knows. Because Loki wanted him to know. Because Loki made it happen. He knows how Loki crept from his room while he slept, slipping quiet as a snake to these rooms to effect their father's transition from sleep to death. He knows that it happened because Loki wished it to happen and, with the weight of cosmic intent hung about him like a cloak, his wish was enough to make it so. He realises there was never any part for their father in the chaos to come and he accepts this heavily, wondering if Loki meant it as the act of kindness it could well turn out to be. He wonders if Loki really meant anything at all. He sighs deeply in near silent acceptance of the crown that now settles upon him, the crown he had always wished to refuse.

"Loki," he whispers, offering it up from his heart to echo in these hollow chambers.

"You really do need to be led every step of the way don't you?" comes a voice right behind him. He turns around fast as a wind and his cloak whips through the image of Loki behind him which ripples like water disturbed and then settles.

"Yes, I knew you'd come here," it says – "I could see your every move as plainly as you see me now. I even programmed this to start when you said my name out loud. Yes this is a transmission – I'm sure you've noticed by now that I've gone –"

"Loki what –"

"Don't bother trying to talk to me Thor – yes I know you are but you see – I'm. Not. Here. I'm just an echo – a recording if you like, I'm sure that's how your precious Midgardians would put it. By now I'll be too far away for you to catch up with me in a day. There are other ways out of Asgard, there are infinite ways in and out. Oh you'll catch up to me eventually, I know you, and when you do I'll let you. Or maybe it will be the other way round. But I couldn't stay and listen to you spend the rest of eternity telling me how we can be just as we were. Because we can't – you do know that don't you? I wish –"

The reflection, image, projection –whatever it is – pauses, look downwards, it is so life–like Thor can actually see it swallow hard, see the lost, dark look in the eyes;

"It doesn't matter. I meant it about destroying the world. Don't argue; that's just the way it has to be. Hopefully you know that too now. I opened your brain a little while you slept so I can get in more easily. But it only goes one way – don't think you can get to me if you think hard enough."

It pauses, looking for all the world like it is frowning at him thoughtfully, head to one side like a bird, like Loki – so very like Loki. Thor only wishes he could touch –

"Don't frown like that, it makes you look like a pig. Of course, it's possible I'm lying. Thor –" Loki's voice becomes serious again – "Thor I know you'll follow me. You'll probably waste the rest of your life on it. I can't tell you not to but I can say – I didn't mean it – I'm glad you didn't let me fall. The world will end, and I'm going to have to have something to do with that – but I have a feeling – that's it's going to be alright. We'll fight and I'll run. You'll chase me and I'll fall - again and again – and sometimes you'll catch me and sometimes you won't and either way that's alright. It's all alright brother –"

And maybe it's just a shiver or a blip in the recording but Thor could swear there are tears, shimmering rainbow droplets in the corners of Loki's eyes –

"It'll all be alright, big brother. You're my friend and my enemy, brother and everything else. We'll fight and we'll fuck and I think at the end of all of this that we'll die but never doubt that I love you."

Thor's eyes sting to hear this and it is no blip now to see that Loki is crying a river, uncontrolled and silent. And then – it is so sudden Thor suspects that Loki paused for a while and re–started – he grins, shrugs and turns around –

"Now come and get me, brother".

Thor wants to yell, though it is with the same frustrated fury that Loki aroused in him when he tricked him as a child and he reaches to grab the image, his hands falling through it like air just as it goes out, quicker than a candle. Just for a moment he can see the colours that are Loki reflected across his skin before he is left clutching at nothing.

Just for a second Loki switches back on before disappearing, this time for good –

"You just had to, didn't you," the image grins and shakes its head.

And Loki is gone again.

_x_

Confession: I have been reading "Fight Club" and it's highly possible this is why Thor knows stuff because Loki knows stuff however – (plot twist!) – they're not actually gonna turn out to be the same person. Just in case anyone wondered!

Also I made myself cry with this chapter. :-(