A/N: Sorry about the irregular update schedule - I'm afraid life is what it is right now. Also, since I can't reply to them directly, here's a big thank you to my lovely guest reviewers!

And now, a displaced prince and a conflicted king walk across a bridge...

.

The ravens take flight again as soon as Loki and Thor step onto the Rainbow Bridge. Thor doesn't seem to notice their departure; his eyes are glued to the shining silhouette of the palace in the distance, and Loki has to wonder what kind of images are filling his brother's mind right now if even he has a hard time looking at the palace without seeing it engulfed in Surtur's fire.

With a turn of his wrist, he hides them both from sight; the bridge is clearly visible from the top of Asgard's highest spires, and he won't have Thor's return discovered before he considers it safe to reveal it. He wouldn't have expected Thor to notice the small gesture, but his brother's double-take indicates that he has. "What did you just do?"

He sounds suspicious, which seems rather strange considering he was willing to place his life in Loki's hands just a few minutes ago. Loki doesn't dwell on it; it's not like he's ready to trust Thor either. "I made us invisible for the time being."

Thor gives him a look Loki can't interpret. "I wasn't aware you could do that."

Loki bites back a reflexive quip about tricks; he has better things to do than bicker with Thor. "Well, now you are."

"You've grown more powerful."

Loki resists the temptation to roll his eyes. He does indeed wield more power than he ever has before thanks to his command of Asgard's magic and the two Infinity Gems in his possession, but he needs neither Gungnir nor the Gems for a spell he learned when he was barely out of the nursery. "Or maybe I stopped pretending to be less powerful than I am."

At Thor's puzzled frown, he adds, "Remember that veil of smoke that saved all our lives on Nornheim even if you and your posse would have bitten off your own tongues before you admitted it? How much more sneering at my sneaking ways would it have earned me if I had turned us entirely invisible, even if it would have spared Volstagg an arrow in the shoulder?"

He doesn't even want to imagine how the court would have reacted if it had become common knowledge that the younger prince, with his unmanly seiðr and his cowardly preference for words over violence, could be around unseen at any given moment, could be listening in on any conversation or causing all kinds of mischief with no fear of getting caught. He hasn't actually used the spell for such a purpose all that often; he always found it both more effective and a lot more entertaining to wear a different shape that allowed him to hide in plain sight and to influence events to his liking instead of just observing them.

Thor seems about to reply, but Loki cuts him off before he can get a word in. "I'm not discussing this with you again; it's pointless, and there are more important things we need to talk about."

Thor hesitates. "Can't those wait a little longer? I would – I would really like to see Mother first."

"And you thought you'd just barge into her rooms and announce that you're back from the dead? You can't spring something like that on her without warning!"

Thor recoils as if Loki had struck him. "You don't seriously think she won't be happy to see me!"

"Of course she will be happy, you idiot." Loki can't help the sharp edge that has slipped into his tone. "She'll also be in complete and utter shock, and once she recovers from that, she'll demand an explanation. What are you planning to say then?"

Thor's shoulders slump. "I... hadn't considered that."

"Of course you haven't." Loki forces himself to remain calm. "Which is why we're taking a little stroll across the bridge first to have this conversation, and once we're at the palace, I will inform Mother to make sure she's prepared."

Thor smiles weakly. "And to make sure you get the credit for bringing me back."

Loki shakes his head. "I'm done playing that game, Thor."

Since the earliest days of his childhood, he and Thor have been pitched against each other in a fight for Odin's love that could only ever have one winner; he isn't going to repeat the same pattern with Frigga now that she's the only parent Thor has left. Loki has no idea what Thor's return will mean for his own complicated relationship with his mother – he has never doubted that she loves him (not even when he discovered his true origins), but the fact that she always considered it her most sacred duty to maintain peace within the family meant that he couldn't ever count on having her entirely in his corner. He recalls, from that other life, how she stood next to the Allfather's throne as Odin sentenced her cuckoo child to an eternity in the dungeons – pale and unhappy, but also silent in the face of her husband's wrath. And yet...

I have been ordered to inform you that the queen is dead.

In an attempt to escape that memory, Loki starts walking. Thor falls into step beside him, and for a second, Loki is tempted to slip back into the comforting familiarity of walking by his brother's side, but Thor's heavy gait quickly shatters the illusion. Unsettled, Loki checks his stride; he usually prefers a brisk pace, but he remembers how Volstagg used to start huffing and puffing after a few minutes of trying to keep up with him, and he doesn't ever want to hear that from Thor.

He almost hopes that Thor will start talking, but his brother remains stubbornly silent, leaving Loki to his own thoughts. He feels a little dazed, as if he were just now waking from a strange, chaotic dream, and a part of him wishes he could return to that initial state of shock that kept him from thinking clearly while he was in that strange other place where he found Thor. He knows he can't afford it, though; now that the shock is wearing off, he will need his wits about him in order to deal with the repercussions of his impetuous decision.

Why is it still Thor who can make him forget to think rationally and follow impulses he will inevitably come to regret? For better or worse, Thor has had that effect on him for as long as Loki can remember, and it's a risk he should never have taken now that the future of the Nine may well hinge on his choices. Still, even as he's reeling from the inrush of new-old memories, he no longer feels like a part of him is missing, and only now that it's absent does he realize that the strangely hollow sensation has been his constant companion since... the day he saw Thor's body on the bier? Or the moment he found himself on Vanaheim, unaware of the fact that he had just frayed the thread of his destiny?

And yet... among the swirling mass of half-remembered impressions in his mind, Loki recognizes the sensation of being less than himself, of waking up to a world that no longer felt entirely real. He recalls opening his eyes to the murky skies of Svartalfheim, the realm's black sand sticking to his back with dried blood, and wondering whether this oddly muted feeling might be what death was like. It wasn't death, though; rather, it turned out to be a life that kept slowly seeping through his fingers like water from his cupped hands until he no longer could have said whether he hadn't truly died after all and only left a dwindling shadow behind.

Loki thinks back to the searing pain of a blade through his chest, pain he doesn't remember feeling any longer as he sat on Odin's stolen throne, wearing Odin's stolen face – yet he has kept feeling it here, in this life, this reality, ever since he woke from that vivid nightmare that turned out to have been no nightmare at all. He unwittingly tries to focus on the Aether in his dimensional pocket, but the Reality Stone remains dormant and doesn't give him any indication whether its power might have reached out beyond the confines of a single universe to pull in shreds of a different existence.

He remembers the all-permeating feeling of wrongness that haunted the early days of his true reign – he had assumed he had simply adapted to the drastic changes in his life when the sensation had started to fade, but...

Something is changing, as if this place is slowly becoming less... wrong around me the longer I rule it.

How could Hela have felt it too if it had just been him growing into the mantle of kingship?

Loki grits his teeth and forces himself to keep his pace steady; he won't be able to outrun his own mind no matter how much he might wish for it. Images from that other rule keep resurfacing, even if they're blurry and strangely out of focus – losing himself in the reflection of Odin's face staring back at him from his mirror, his sense of self slipping away bit by bit while he kept playing a role that resembled him less and less as the world around him slowly dissolved into a mad dance of too-shrill sounds and too-gaudy colors. He remembers the sensation of sliding deeper and deeper into a distorted travesty of what used to be his life, a life that left him with a growing sense of detachment no matter how hard he prodded at it in a futile attempt to break through the surface and see whether there was anything underneath but the gaping maw of the Void. He recalls the blazing inferno that was Asgard's destruction, and while these images now make him recoil, there are no remembered emotions to accompany them other than the strangely numb impression of witnessing a play staged on a cosmic scale that was finally about to come to an end –

"Did you repair the bridge?"

Loki draws in a deep, shuddering breath and silently thanks the Norns for Thor's inability to keep silent for long. Right now, he welcomes any distraction from the turmoil inside his brain, even if Thor's question was supremely tactless considering how the bridge got destroyed.

No, Loki…

The crystal-clear recollection of that moment actually comes as a relief compared to the dizzying cacophony of half-formed memories, although it still causes his answer to sound harsher than he intended. "Odin did before my return." The fact that Thor doesn't know that means he isn't experiencing the same double vision effects as Loki, given that this universe's Thor was present while the Allfather rebuilt the Bifröst. "Why do you ask?"

"Never mind." Thor was clearly about to say something else, and it isn't long until he tries again.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Are you going to believe my answer?"

Thor flinches, proving that Loki has hit a nerve. "I... will try?"

How gracious of you, brother dearest. The brief sting of bitterness is almost grounding in its familiarity, but Loki doesn't let himself dwell on it; he isn't going to go down that road again just because Thor has managed to stir up old ghosts from two lives. "So ask."

"Where are the Infinity Stones? If Thanos is still –"

"Two of them remain on Midgard for the time being," Loki cuts him off; there's no harm in telling Thor that much since he will need to know anyway if Loki wants to go through with the plan to send him back to his beloved mortals. "The other four are... reasonably safe."

Thor shoots him a look that is probably supposed to be surreptitious. "I guess that means you have the Tesseract?"

The Tesseract, or your brother's life. Almost without thinking, Loki reaches for the reassuring pulse of the Space Stone's power until its gentle hum fills his consciousness, shielding it from another sudden onslaught of memories that are trying to suffocate him.

You will never be a god...

"Let's just say that you'd better keep yourself out of the Titan's hands this time." With considerable effort, Loki manages to keep his voice steady. "I died for you twice, I'm not doing it a third time."

Thor's eyes widen. "What are you saying – twice? You never –"

The blade slicing through his chest with a blinding flash of pain, the monster's foul breath burning on his skin –

"Remember Svartalfheim?" The images well up again, of black sand and swirling red mists and Thor's face above him slowly fading into darkness. "Because it appears that I do."

"That was real?" Thor seems torn between shock and incredulity. "But I – you went back to steal the throne, it must have been your plan all along to be left for dead!"

When we fought each other in the past, I did so with a glimmer of hope that my brother was still in there somewhere. That hope no longer exists to protect you.

Loki barks out a laugh. "Did you never wonder why I would go through the trouble of faking my death in order to escape instead of just slitting your throat as soon as your back was turned?"

You betray me and I will kill you.

He doesn't want to remember; he wishes he could scour all those resurfaced memories from his brain, of bleeding out in Thor's arms, of struggling against Thanos' merciless grip with Thor screaming in the background, and always the thought, the first and last thought on his mind, Better me than him...

Thor looks absolutely stricken. "You truly expect me to believe that?"

Loki shrugs with deliberate nonchalance. "I'd show you the scar, but –"

"You have the scar?" Thor has gone very pale under the tangled mess of his beard, although his color quickly rises when Loki laughs at him again.

"How could I? You mislaid that body, did you not?" Loki is fully aware that he's being unfair, but he doesn't feel inclined to be gracious right now. He presses the knuckles of his right hand against his breastbone, willing the new flare of phantom pain to subside. "I can still feel it, though."

His brother keeps his eyes on the glittering colors of the bridge under their feet and doesn't reply.

They walk in silence for a while until Thor finally says, "There's another thing, since we're already talking about..."

"...death?" Loki suggests sweetly when Thor hesitates. "I suppose you mean to say that you'd prefer to discuss your death instead of mine?" The flinch he gets instead of a reply is all the confirmation he needs; apparently Thor would rather talk about a topic he seems wildly uncomfortable with than admit, even to himself, just how quick he was to always assume the worst where Loki was concerned.

Did it ever occur to you that at some point, I might have decided to live up to your expectations just to prove that I no longer cared, brother? Consider yourself lucky that I have far more important things to worry about these days than your opinion of me.

"No – I mean, yes, I just..." There was a time when Loki would have taken great pleasure in the spectacle of Thor struggling for words, but now it just makes him impatient.

"Spit it out, we don't have all day."

Thor takes a deep breath. "What am I supposed to tell Mother? Or anyone, really? You said there was a funeral, so everyone knows I'm... dead, don't they?"

This time, Loki does roll his eyes. "Of course they do, it has been more than a year. Are you worried they might accuse me of necromancy when they see I brought you back?"

Thor gives him an unreadable look. "Would they?"

Loki shrugs. "I doubt it; some at court might, but Asgard's people seem to have come to terms with the idea of having a sorcerer for a king."

"But one who raises the dead? Even I know that's the vilest, most dangerous kind of forbidden magic there is – wouldn't it be better to just tell them the truth?"

"Wouldn't it be more honorable, you mean?" Thor's eyes narrow, but Loki keeps talking before his brother can take the bait. "So you'd rather sing them the saga of Asgard's fall and the annihilation of half the universe? I'm sure that will go a long way towards reassuring them."

That shuts Thor up for a while; at long last, he asks mulishly, "Then what do you suggest we tell them? They will demand some kind of explanation."

Loki is barely listening; the memory of Asgard's destruction has given him an idea that is positively elegant in its simplicity. "I brought you back; that's all they need to be told. Their own assumptions will do the rest, given that they know I hold the leash that tethers the Goddess of Death – and if they really don't jump to that conclusion on their own, it will be easy enough to steer them towards it." He can't help smirking when he sees Thor's stare. "Preconceived opinions can be so very helpful on occasion."

Thor ignores the jibe, or maybe he didn't even hear it. "What is that supposed to mean? Are you telling me that Hela still lives? And that the people know of her?"

"Who on Asgard doesn't know of the Goddess of Death?" Loki asks with feigned innocence, but then he relents. "They don't know that she's Odin's daughter, if that's what you meant – her bloodline remains another dirty little family secret, but yes, the people know that I freed her from her prison and bound her to Niflheim to rule there as the realm's queen. She hates me with a passion, but she will still prove useful once the Titan reaches the Nine."

"You think you can control Hela?" Thor shakes his head in agitation. "Loki, it's madness to assume –"

"Of course I can," Loki cuts him off. "Do I need to remind you again who you're talking to, Thor? And I certainly wasn't stupid enough to put her in the kind of chains that would break at my death!"

"She is dangerous, Loki!" Thor sounds downright imploring now, but Loki just shrugs it off. "Yes, I'm aware – I was there, remember?"

Thor visibly deflates at that. "So you were." He's still shaking his head, although he now looks bewildered rather than incensed. "I still – I don't think I will get used to this anytime soon."

"You would be surprised what one can get used to." Loki isn't sure whether he meant his answer to sound condescending or reassuring, but Thor eyes him in a way that seems to indicate he took it as something else anyway.

"How do you do it, Loki? How do you keep memories from two parallel existences in your head without going mad?"

"I see you're still forgetting who you're talking to." With a wave of his hand, Loki conjures a double that turns into two, then four, then a dozen identical copies of himself. "I learned it a long time ago – maybe not on such a scale, but I've been looking at the world through more than one pair of eyes for centuries."

Thor frowns at the doubles surrounding them until they dissolve at another wave of Loki's hand. "And that makes it easier?"

"It's certainly helpful." Loki doesn't elaborate further; Thor doesn't need to know that nothing about this is easy, that half his mind is still taken up by a swirling mass of images, sounds and sensations he can't place, and that it will likely take him months of meticulous work – time he doesn't have, none of them do – to sort out the worst of the mess and regain true control of his memories. "Stop fretting, Thor, there are other things you should be worrying about right now."

"What should I – oh, fuck." Thor stops short and blinks as if he had suddenly thought of something.

Loki raises an eyebrow; the brother he remembers hardly ever used profanities. "What?"

"I just realized I forgot Stormbreaker." When Loki merely gives him a quizzical look, Thor elaborates, "My battle axe – Eitri forged it for me because I needed a new weapon after Mjölnir..."

"...was destroyed by Hela." Loki just rolls his eyes again when Thor gives him a startled look; it wouldn't do to let him notice that Loki is just as unsettled as Thor seems to be by the way the scene just popped up in his memory. There was no warning this time, no dawning recollection – the image of the hammer crumbling in Hela's grip was just there at the forefront of his mind the moment Thor was about to bring it up, and it makes him feel as if he were walking over a bottomless lake on a thin layer of ice that could crack under his feet with every step. Loki digs his nails into his palms and forces himself to keep his breathing even; he knows only too well how it feels not to be able to trust his own mind, and he isn't ever going to let that happen again.

"You can have her back if you want."

Thor's slack-jawed expression goes a long way towards alleviating Loki's own unease. "What are you talking about? You can't possibly mean –"

"Mjölnir? She's in the Vault; I put her there myself after my coronation." At Thor's shocked silence, Loki adds with a tiny smirk he can't quite suppress, "I'm afraid you'll have to get used to the idea that your beloved hammer is not quite as exclusive to you as you thought."

Thor hunches his shoulders. "I've come to realize that."

It's certainly not the reaction to his little taunt that Loki expected, and Thor notices his surprise. "The captain – you know, Steve Rogers? He was able to wield Mjölnir in the fight against Thanos. I didn't think that a mortal could ever be worthy of her, and I'm sure Father didn't foresee it either when he cast that spell on her, but apparently..."

The question how Thor could still have had Mjölnir in any fight against Thanos is on the tip of Loki's tongue, but he immediately decides he doesn't even want to know just how badly those harebrained fools messed up the fabric of time. Instead, he interrupts Thor with a scoff. "The Allfather would have eaten his ravens for breakfast before he ever considered a mortal worthy of anything. I'll let you in on another one of his countless secrets, brother: if Rogers could pick up your precious hammer, it was because Odin's death had broken the spell that tied Mjölnir to his will."

"That can't be true." Thor sounds calm, but Loki can hear the promise of rising anger in the measured tone like the first sounds of distant thunder. It's strangely reassuring; it means the man he knew is still there somewhere underneath the layers of dejection and misery. "Father said –"

"I know what he said." Loki lets his tone match Thor's – deliberately calm with just a hint of warning. "What he did, though, was to put a spell on the hammer that allowed him to control who would be able to wield her. That's why you couldn't pick her up while he didn't want you to; that's also why I, the captain, or really anyone could lift her once Odin was gone." It's probably petty to enjoy this moment, but that doesn't stop Loki from savoring the look on Thor's face when he adds with a final twist of the knife, "Worth never had anything to do with it."

It hurts, doesn't it? Being lied to?

The memory of that conversation is there and gone again before Loki can fully focus on it, but it is more than enough to snuff out the faint stirring of sympathy. Instead, he claps Thor on the shoulder and adds cheerfully, "I'd tell you I'm sorry, but that would be a lie."

The glare Thor shoots him in return feels so normal that it's like a breath of cool air during a stifling summer day. The moment is quick to pass, though; Thor's posture slumps again, and all he eventually says is, "I'd still like her back if you will allow it."

"I just said I would; the hammer is of no use to me."

"Thank you," Thor replies stiffly. "And speaking of... being lied to." He hesitates, looking strangely embarrassed – as if he were about to bring up a subject that isn't supposed to be discussed. "Just to make sure I don't misstep – do the people of Asgard know of your... lineage?"

Loki is almost impressed; as far as payback goes, that was both clever and ruthlessly efficient. He keeps looking straight ahead so he doesn't have to meet his brother's eyes. "I would hardly be sitting on Asgard's throne if they did."

Your birthright was to die as a child, cast out onto a frozen rock!

Loptr Laufeyson was our brother, but he died as a babe on the altar of the Winter Gods, and his name shall remain no more than a cherished memory among his people until the Fimbulwinter turns Yggdrasil itself to ice...

If possible, Thor sounds even more awkward than earlier when he points out, "You were before, though. I mean, in my before, not –"

"I know what you mean," Loki interrupts him, "and no, I wasn't. Odin was, as far as the people of Asgard knew – and I never managed to reach the limits of what they were willing to accept as long as they believed it to come from the Allfather."

Losing himself in the reflection of Odin's face staring back at him from his mirror, his sense of self slipping away bit by bit while he kept playing a role that resembled him less and less as the world around him slowly dissolved into a mad dance of too-shrill sounds and too-gaudy colors...

"I swear I won't speak of it to anyone." Now Thor sounds like the brother Loki remembers, all grand gestures and rousing declarations and pompous promises, but Loki knows better than to fall for it – has known better for centuries (even though his ability to admit it to himself is a far more recent development), and yet he still forgot to consider it when he made the stupid, spur-of-the-moment decision to drag Thor back into his life.

Once again, Loki curses himself for a sentimental fool. How often has he berated Thor for rushing in blindly where he should have stopped to think about the consequences of his choices? He's sure that Thor genuinely means his promise in this very moment, but Thor has never been able to keep his mouth shut about anything of importance for long. Besides, he is inevitably going to take issue with a number of things Loki has done and will still have to do as Asgard's king, and he likely won't hesitate to use his knowledge of Loki's Jötun blood as leverage as long as he can feel self-righteous about his motives.

Stupid, stupid, stupid...

He put a noose around his own neck and handed Thor the rope when he brought him here, and he needs to wiggle out of it right now, before he allows Thor to set foot on Asgard's soil again.

Asgard's soil –

Loki stops dead in his tracks at the realization that this might just be the solution he is looking for. He commands Asgard's magic the same way Odin did, and it would be an almost poetic way around his current problem if he used the Allfather's own clever trick to keep his precious heir from endangering Loki's rule over Odin's golden realm.

Thor has also come to a halt and is eyeing him with a wary expression. After a few more seconds of deliberation, Loki calls Gungnir to him; once the spear has materialized in his hand, he turns towards his brother and states matter-of-factly, "No, you won't."