Chapter 21:
"Loki, in Odin's name, stop being such a coward and come with us!"
Thor watches Loki's shoulders stiffen just the smallest fraction, his face otherwise remaining flat, impassive, as he continues on reading the book opened up before him, or simply feigning at it.
"Lookiii..."
"Enough Thor." His brother finally responds, an edge of irritation in his voice.
Thor had been at him for the past half hour or so, attempting to persuade him into joining him and their friends on another fine quest. Only his little brother, as usual, was being difficult and unyielding. It seemed more and more to Thor that Loki was, as some sort of rule, opposed to any sort of gallivanting or amusement of any kind. He was always so serious. So stoic. Thor could scarce recall when last he saw his brother even smile.
He half-expects Loki to berate him now for pestering him so, but instead his brother again falls silent, back into the world of his books and scrolls and whatever other boring endeavor he continuously engaged in these days.
Thor wonders what happened to the days when Loki always used to trail after him like a shadow, begging unabashedly to be allowed to join him and the other, older boys on their adventures and games.
He wonders when it was his brother had become so... odd.
"The others think you strange Loki." He blurts without really intending it.
A tight smirk lifts at the corner of his brother's mouth then. Finally some sort of expression, though not the sort Thor was hoping for.
Loki worried him sometimes. His manner could be unsettling, though he never overtly threatened. Only Thor knew how powerful his brother was. And others were beginning to understand as well. His magic was near to rivaling their father's own. And one would have to be deaf and blind not to catch wind of the things others said of Loki. Of the way they whispered about him. Nor the growing cruelty of their insults towards him. They rarely spoke such things to Loki directly, but Loki knew.
Sometimes it seemed to Thor that Loki knew everything everyone said and did.
"How troublesome for them." His brother says, eyes still fixed on his book.
Thor sighs, exasperated.
"Loki, it isn't healthy that you isolate yourself this way, holed up here in this library day and night, never speaking to anyone."
"I'm speaking with you now." Loki says flatly, voice strange and emotionless.
Sometimes too, it seemed to Thor, that Loki was the older one. There was the strangest depth in his brother's eyes. An age which went well beyond his eight hundred years. Thor wonders about that too sometimes. Loki seemed to him at moments to come from some other place entirely.
"Loki, do not twist my words. You hardly see our friends anymore. I hardly see you but at the suppers we share with Mother and Father."
"Your friends Thor."
"... What?" Thor blinks, not following, and at last his brother looks up at him, expression still unreadable, his eyes aglow, shocking green with the depth of his magic.
"They are your friends Thor. Not mine." He says sharply.
For an instant, no words come readily to Thor's tongue, staring at Loki in shocked disbelief.
His brother continues holding his gaze, before at last his eyes shift back down.
"They've made clear enough to me the undesirability of my presence among them. You needn't recite their pretense to you with regards to me, nor find fitting excuse for their feeling towards me. It does you no service Thor, and is a waste of my time."
Hurt wends through Thor, a mix of frustration and denial swirling together with it.
It was true that the others sometimes complained to him of Loki, at times seemed frustrated with him, but... they assured him time and time again of their respect and even friendship towards his younger brother. He knew not how Loki could think such things. Why he would feel so unwanted when...
He's snapped from his thoughts by the sound of Loki sighing, his brother bringing his eyes back to him.
"Thor, I mean you no distress. Please, pay no heed to my indulgent ramblings. Only... you go off with the others, on your own. You'll find a finer experience without my interfering voice of reason. You know well as any I've grown a bore and would only cause for you aggravation."
Thor still finds his tongue useless, staring with a deep well of discomfort at Loki, feeling he needs to do something, to say something to address what his brother's just spoken. Only he knows not what to say, and so continues only to stare. And then Loki smiles, the hardness of his features which Thor had so grown accustomed to over the last few centuries melting away, and he is reminded once more of how young Loki is. Not yet even a man, still a boy.
"It is well Thor. Please, go! Fret not over me. So grim an expression suits you ill."
Thor doesn't quite understand the feeling of relief which washes through him when he at last does leave his brother to go and join the others.
Only... Loki wished to be alone. And he was right. Whenever he did happen to accompany them on their quests now, he leaned so intently to the side of caution, it often did dampen the mood.
It was better then, for both of them, that he stay behind.
That's what Thor tells himself then, as he joins Sif, and the Warriors Three.
What he tells himself when he keeps looking to his flank, expecting to see his brother, finding in his place only emptiness instead...
That's what Thor had told himself.
That Loki had wanted to be alone. How he had justified to himself his own selfishness, and excused away how after a time, he'd stopped looking for his brother at all. Had stopped even thinking of him, and found the thrill of battle and living in the absence of Loki's calm and careful voice checking his reckless abandon and thoughtless stupidity.
How he had begun to grow increasingly less tolerant of Loki's measured approaches the rare times then he did join, and would often snap at and berate his brother.
The many times he called him a coward... belittled his abilities...
How could he have acted so crudely?! So thoughtlessly? How could he have convinced himself that the expression of hurt which he at times saw flash across Loki's features was naught but an illusion? His imagination playing tricks on him?
Foolish, useless idiot that he was.
He watches his brother now, sleeping deeply along the couch which earlier he had been reading upon, the book fallen from his tiny hands to lie open upon the floor.
Loki is so young, and Thor cannot cease marveling at his youth. It has been so long since last he saw him thus, he had scarce recalled just how sweet his brother had been as a child.
His eyes burn as he watches him some minutes more, the unfair weight of things weighing heavy upon his heart.
Loki never deserved to suffer as he did. He never deserved that.
"Should we take him to his bed?" Volstagg comes up beside him, eyes fixed on his brother, and Thor feels grateful for the presence of his friend.
Of all of them, Fandral and Hogun and Sif, Volstagg had always been the kindest and most tolerant towards Loki. Thor thinks mayhap it was for his being older than the others, thusly more mature, and understanding.
Thor had been pleasantly shocked upon arriving back here in New York to find not simply Volstagg, but Mother arrived as well. He had sensed her presence before ever reaching the Avengers place of dwelling, and doubted for a moment his own intuition. Surely his mother would not have traveled to Midgard. Not, he knew, when Father had expressly forbade it. But then, Thor remembered, his mother was ever wont to do as her own mind told her, and her own heart, regardless of her husband's wishes. That, Thor had no doubt, was one of the very qualities which had so attracted Odin to her in the first place.
It had been as the weight of an entire world lifted from his shoulders to know Mother was there. Not for him, but for Loki. To know she was there for Loki, when his brother needed more than ever the love of his mother. To know too that it would not be left to him alone to guide and support Loki again in his most tender and impressionable years.
Thor holds hope that, together, he and Mother and Volstagg, and even his friends and shield companions, they may give to Loki the chance at a happier boyhood. A happier life...
"Aye." He at last answers Volstagg. "Though we need be careful not to wake him. He needs rest."
Volstagg nods in understanding, moving to lift Loki from the couch, handling him with a gentility seeming incongruous to his massive bulk. Loki hangs like a rag doll in the Aesir warriors arms, his smallness only more apparent against Volstagg's great frame, and hardly for the first time Thor is struck with in almost overpowering desire to protect his brother.
"Thor."
He turns, seeing his mother standing there in the doorway, her hands folded together at her waist, elegant and beautiful beyond reason.
He feels a smile spreading over his face, a burst of unadulterated joy in his heart at seeing her, and without thought he turns fully, striding to her, hands outreached.
"Mother!" He embraces her, feeling her arms enfold him back, and for long moments they stand together like that. A happier reunion Thor could think not of, and he had not realized until that moment how much he had missed his mother.
"My son." She at last pulls back from him, her delicate hands grasping to his forearms, looking up at him with plain pride. "I came as soon as I learned you had arrived. Oh, my heart is full to see you!"
"As is mine." Thor returns, and he bends, pressing his lips to her forehead. The scent of her magic is strong. It reminds him of Loki, though their power is at once so very different. Mother's magic is of fragrant fields, of flowers and grass and morning dew, while Loki's has always been of fresh snow, of pine and ice.
"Your brother will be most pleased to see you returned." She tells him, and Thor smiles, able, for once, to believe it.
He had forgotten how wonderful the feeling, Loki regarding him with so much unadulterated admiration, as he had when they were boys. How Loki had once followed him everywhere as his shadow, and looked upon him with eyes of near worship.
He cannot recall when that had truly begun to change. When in place of reverence, he saw in his brother's eyes disappointment, frustration, and then resentment.
Loki looked upon him now with all the wonder and love of his youth, unconditional and unwanting but for love in return.
Thor wishes to keep that gaze in his brother's eyes always now.
"He is... a good child. He deserves happiness." He says, his voice tight in his throat, a pall of regret weighing heavy on his heart as he says the words.
Mother nods.
"Aye. That he does. Perhaps your father, in his strange wisdom, intended such with the spell he cast."
Thor feels his face twist.
He was angry still with Father. Enraged, might yet be a better word.
"Perhaps." He concedes with reluctance. "But he need not have gone about it with such cruelty. To send Loki here, to the very realm he attacked, unaided, a helpless child with no memory... That I do not understand."
Mother's face is tight with tension and pain, her eyes over bright, and Thor knows she is holding back tears.
Again she nods.
"You speak truly Thor. Your father's methods are not always so compassionate in their execution. He sees a problem in need of address, and he acts in ways he thinks will be of most expedient and effective solution. He rarely considers the matter of feeling. What might make the solution more easily withstood. I know it appears unkind, even cruel, what he did to Loki. In many ways it is. In others, however, he acted as he thought might best serve your brother. To send him from Asgard, to give him another moment in the innocence of his boyhood, without the burden of centuries more of isolation and ridicule. He felt to wash Loki of those memories which drove him to such madness would offer him the greatest chance of breaking free of such a hard fate as befell him."
Thor swallows against the burst of protests which swell up in his throat.
He knows Mother is right. He knows Father did not intend such cruelty. Only it made the fact of it no less true.
"And for how long will Odin's spell last?" He finally asks, the question having weighed on his mind since he found his brother transformed again into a child. "Does he intend to keep Loki is such a state for all the centuries it will take him to grow?"
Mother shakes her head.
"I know not Thor. Perhaps. Perhaps he intends to spell to last only so long as it takes your brother to gain a greater sense of self. To be more accepting of himself."
"Can the spell be broken by any other than Odin?" Thor presses, wanting to understand precisely what it is they face.
Again Mother shakes her head, again telling him she does not know.
"Your father's power is the greatest in all the Nine. A spell cast by him would be difficult to break for any. Loki, mayhap... one day."
"But not so now." Thor understands.
"Nay. Loki's power is great, even now. But not so great as Odin's. Even were it so, your brother would not yet possess the skill to undo his father's magic."
Thor nods.
"So he will remain thus until Father wishes it not."
"Aye." Mother again answers. "It is for us then to provide Loki protection."
"... Will... will Loki remember, when he is returned to his true form?" Thor goes on, a kind of dread knot forming in his chest at the thought. Were Loki to remember... everything... would he then return to the near unrecognizable wild beast he had appeared as, when last he came to Midgard? Would that same desperate, fathomless rage consume him as Thor had seen in him during their fight along the BiFrost, before Loki had fallen? That same, unending despair?
Thor had never realized until that moment... That awful moment, when Loki stood before him, face contorted in rage and fear and hate, tears slipping from his maddened eyes... he had never realized the true depth of his brother's agony until then. Never realized how truly, how relentlessly he suffered.
Oh, but he had been such an unforgivable fool! Seeing not the consequence of his ignorance and selfishness until it stood before him in the form of his broken and deranged little brother.
A thousand times he would go back and change it all, if only he were able.
Thor had never thought possible Loki could be so miserable, when he himself lived such a wondrous life... Had never thought then anyone could see and feel different from what he saw and felt.
His great and arrogant folly.
He must have made Loki's agony a thousand times worse with his blindness.
It was with that realization that Thor at last understood the desolation he at times saw in his brother's eyes.
The wretched loneliness.
"Thor..." he's pulled from his unforgiving thoughts by the sounds of his mother's voice, and his eyes lift to her, her soft hands grasping round his own. "do not castigate yourself. You have always loved your brother. You never meant him harm."
Thor's throat feels horribly constricted, eyes burning, and he does naught to stop the flow of tears then down his cheeks.
"Nay, t'was not my intention. Only still the pain I caused him remained real. So taken with myself I saw nothing of what I did to him."
Mother's own face lines in pain, and she reaches up, cupping Thor's cheek in her palm.
"Perhaps 'tiss so, my son. But what is past is past, and we can do naught now but do right by him. It does your brother scarce good, to dwell on the misery of your own guilt."
In that, Thor knows Mother is right. As she seems always to be. Loki needed him now. Needed both of them.
It would be Thor's challenge then, to not fail his brother in this.
His duty, this time, to not let Loki fall.
/
AN: As always, all my thanks to my readers and reviewers! You guys are awesome!