14.
It is a year before he sees Loki again.
It is a year to the day because Loki has the most unendurable tendency towards dramatic flair. Because he wants to tell a good story. Because it sounds good. Whatever. It is a year to the day because Loki wants it to be.
"Three intensely stupid questions," Loki says, before Thor has even said a word to him –
"Three stupid questions, and I'm gone on the third."
They are stood on the edge of a battlefield. This is how Thor has been searching; following him throughout the realms, following the trail of damage and carnage, bloodshed and chaos. For the worlds are descending, it is easy to see. On Midgard, talk about the end of days has ceased to be the eye rolling, predictable nothing it has always been, fire and flood – it's not a joke anymore; humanity is suffering and there's nothing Thor can do.
But it is not just humanity; everywhere he goes, throughout all the nine realms, the signs of disintegration are growing. It is not just Loki, he knows that, it is too big to just be Loki. But he knows which battles have Loki's name on them, which razed homesteads have his after-image dancing in the fires of what used to be a thousand homes.
In an abandoned palace in Vanaheim he actually finds a note from Loki pinned onto the throne of a dead king. It is over half a year since he has seen him and the note tells him nothing.
Happy hunting brother, you just missed me – it says, and nothing else.
Or nearly nothing else. On the back of the night, impossibly amidst the grimness and the death it reads –
Kisses, Loki, xxx
His eyes becoming immune to the dead and the half-eaten by monsters, strewn across the great hall, he looks at these nine words until they grow sore.
Everywhere he goes he stops to offer help where he can, though there is rarely much help to be given. His father's ravens that now follow him everywhere do more help in cleaning up carcasses than much that he can offer to the living. The sense of uselessness plagues him only when he stops to think how long it has been and he has still not caught up to his brother. He wonders if, in his inability to help, he really is helping Loki in whatever "Plan" he has to destroy the world.
As time goes on the calls from his acquaintances on Midgard grow increasingly desperate. He joins up with them when he can – he knows it is not as often as it should be – and he still feels a little like this takes him from his main purpose.
He is no longer even certain what that is. He lies to himself for as long as he can that he means to stop Loki, but the more he sees the more he realises how little good that would do. It is not Loki. Not really. In truth he simply knows the end is coming and he wishes to face it with only one other by his side.
The others don't believe in the end of the world. They are heroes after all, and heroes means they don't just lie down and accept these things. Heroes means they go down fighting; Natasha reminds him of this so grimly he wonders if she does not perhaps see what is coming at least a little after all. One day, separate from the others, Steve calls him out on his negativity, reminds him how he used to be the one who kept them all smiling.
"I guess I did," he says and though he did not mean the hopelessness he feels to be quite so apparent in his voice, he sees the unwavering hope flicker so badly for a moment in the Captain's eyes that he does not go back to earth again. He stops answering their calls, throws out his phone and suspects this really will be entirely for the best.
_x_
Now he stands facing Loki in the charred soil beside a burning copse, smoke billowing black and grey across the sky from the remains of a neighbouring village. He stands frowning;
"What?"
"First question. Look I know you want to give me all the why and the how and the what for but just answer me one thing first."
Thor makes a grunting sound, unwilling to accidentally let a question slip, should Loki be true to his word on this. Loki smiles winningly –
"Did you miss me?"
Loki has hardly changed, Thor notices, from the day they returned from Hel. His eyes never leave Thor's face and it is like being stared at by a snake, he is the one perfect thing in the desolation of the worlds. A pale, shining thing, striding, emerald and onyx down the smoking road that leads to Ragnarok. He should kill him, slow down the suffering of all the nine realms.
The hammer falls from his hand. He half stomps, half falls the few steps to seize Loki, almost crushing him into his arms in reply. Loki allows it and his arms twine sinuously around Thor's neck in return, the little face pressed into his shoulder. He can hear his little brother's heart fluttering wildly against his chest and he squeezes him as though he will never let go. Before he knows it Loki is kissing him like he has starved for this more than he has. Before he knows it he is kissing him back.
Before either of them know it they have fallen here, on the edge of the battlefield, a sweaty, tangled pile of limbs, inseparable as an impossible knot.
Fucking on the road to Ragnarok should not be such a priority at this juncture.
It really is the most incredible priority.
Afterwards they walk up through the village, hand in hand, innocent in the wreckage as young lovers on some starry night. They discuss the upcoming End of All Things as though they were children again planning a play hunt in the woods.
"What have you been doing?" Thor asks.
"Killing things," Loki replies too promptly, then he sighs – "Well not really. Just getting people to kill each other. It's terribly easy when you know how."
"Why?" Thor asks, surprised to find he still has it in him to be a little appalled.
"That's your second stupid question." Loki sighs – "Do stop. Because I have to. Next."
Thor shakes his head.
"I don't want you to go."
"I don't –" Loki thinks about what he wants to say and says something he would rather not all the same – "I don't want to." Thor frowns, Loki carries on before he can speak -
"But I have to –" he shrugs – "I have to," he echoes looking down.
"I missed you," Thor squeezes his hand. Loki squeezes back. It gives him hope again for the first time in a year.
"I wish –" he adds, but Loki drops his hand and rounds on him fiercely;
"Don't," he almost shouts, then shakes his head and sighs heavily – "Gods – just – just don't."
He kisses Thor again and again they fall, this time onto a not quite broken bed in a not entirely ruined house. Thor repeats the same phrases until Loki becomes almost irate – I love you, I want you, I need you, I love you, I love you, I love you –
"Norns – shut up – I'll go!"
"Statements," Thor justifies, smiling, as he pushes Loki's wrists back into the pillow – "Not questions."
He makes it through three nights, only surviving he suspects because Loki labels all his questions merely stupid and not intensely stupid. He cannot help but wonder if Loki was just using the questions thing as an excuse and knew exactly how long he wanted Thor around all along.
On the morning after the third night they lie beneath their half a roof, sunlight pouring in through a broken wall, almost at peace, almost smiling. Then Thor goes and asks Loki why they can't just stay this way.
Loki's eyes fill with tears and he looks at Thor silent and furious. His lips twist ruefully and he sits up, instantly dressed.
"That's the third," he says leadenly.
"Don't you have to answer it?"
"I never said that. I just said –" Loki looks at him, face trammelled with silent silver tracks of sun – washed tears. He runs a hand through Thor's hair, tender as a gasping breath. It feels to Loki like grasping for the last sunlight he will feel in a long time.
"Goodbye Thor," he whispers, and even quieter still – "I'm sorry".
Thor sits alone in his wake, wondering how Loki can cry more and leave him than he who is left behind.
He curls back into bed for most of the rest of that morning, breathing Loki's scent from the pillow beside him until he imagines he must have inhaled it all. When he hugs the pillow to him, trying to crush out the last of that musky, leafy scent he notices another of those increasingly familiar notes lying folded on the bed. He drops the pillow and reads it in a joy so great he finally cries for it –
I'll be with you when it all comes down.
He reads, and Loki's rune signature below it.
He knows that, even if it is years this time, before they meet again, it will be easier to bear in the light of this assurance, than it was this one year without it.
_x_
Now I have that Beegees song "Tragedy" in my head.:-(