The Ways to Where You Are
In which Thor receives a gift. Written for the lovely sunandsilks of tumblr.
When Thor is very young, he is given a gift. He is not old enough to question why it is so unexpected – why he's heard nothing of it before this – and so when his mother presses the bundle into his arms, instructing him to first sit with his legs folded, he is only curious. "Your new brother," his mother tells him, beaming, and Thor thinks this must be a very special gift if it makes her so happy. (Thus far Thor has been the only one capable of producing such smiles from his mother.) It is a very small gift, he thinks, but Thor is still small himself, so it fits in his arms just right – as if they were made for holding it.
"Loki," his mother calls the bundle – his brother – and Thor hardly stumbles over the name at all, though he's still learning to master the art of speech. When he pulls back the blanket to reveal dark hair and green eyes that already feel familiar looking up at him sleepily, Thor can't quite understand the fierce burst of protectiveness that warms in his chest, doesn't even know that's what it is – he knows only that it is a feeling he wants to keep. And that is a good thing, because in the way children know some things, Thor recognizes it is not a feeling he could shake even if wanted to. Already it has made itself at home inside of him, as if it has always been there – and maybe it has. Maybe this Loki has only just awakened it.
Maybe Thor has always been a big brother, and he's just been waiting for Loki to find him.
It is convenient that Loki is meant to always be at his side, because he appears to be permanently glued there. From the day his brother is deemed old to leave the nursery, he sleeps in the bed that was previously only Thor's. Thor doesn't mind - not really. He grows very warm when he sleeps, while Loki emits hardly any heat at all. They temper each other, Thor never feeling too warm – and Loki has never shivered under his care. They are at an age now where their father considers it appropriate that they are given their own quarters, but the brothers fight it tooth and nail, Loki clinging to his leg with hiccupping sobs. Thor remembers a time when he slept alone, but the bed seems bigger now that it has occupied Loki beside him for so long.
For now, the All-Father acquiesces.
Sometimes Thor awakens to find he has sprawled over Loki, arms and legs flung out to the corners of the bed, with Loki curled into his side, taking up not even a third of the space Thor does. But rather than rolling over to give Loki his space, Thor just curls tighter around him, fitting his brother into the hollow of his chest and tucking Loki's head under his chin. Loki is growing, but Thor is too, so that Loki never quite catches up to him. What Thor does not tell Loki is that he is grateful for this because he does not want there to be a day that Loki's body doesn't fit to his own as it does now.
When they are like this, he can feel Loki's heart thudding against his own – sometimes Thor imagines it is saying 'mine, mine, mine' with each beat, every moment they breathe together making it truer. But they are only boys, and Thor does not know what it is to lose things yet. He has never considered that something might be yours the one day, and not the next. That holding something, fitting it to you, does not ensure you will keep it.
That sometimes, you can let go without even meaning to.
He is not embarrassed of his little brother, that is what Thor tells himself when Loki fails to improve at sparring. It is not that his brother lacks the skill – Thor is sure of that, knows perhaps better than anyone how graceful and sure-footed Loki is – but his strength is… not what Thor's is. They are built differently, he understands that now; this is why Loki fit so well against him in their shared bed when they were small. Even though they are both reaching adolescence – even though it has been years and longer since Loki last snuck into Thor's bed after a nightmare – Thor suspects Loki would fit against him now just as well as he did then. (He tries very hard not to question why he still thinks so regularly on the specifics of napping with Loki pressed into his side.)
Loki does not come to the arena with Thor as often as he once did; now he has his own lessons to attend to, lessons in sorcery and knife-throwing and sometimes Thor spies him outside with their mother, learning the names and properties of the plants in their gardens. None of these are things he is used to seeing men do, but there is no doubt Loki is as good at them as any woman. These are Loki's talents – though Thor still tackles him into the dirt when their weapons are restricted to those of strength, Loki is no easy target when his trickery is allowed – and Thor should not be ashamed of them.
But there is something cowardly about throwing shades and shadows rather than stepping into the light to meet one's opponent. All of Asgard knows it – this is why sorcery is a woman's weapon. So Thor is quiet when Loki is forced to meet sparring partners with no use of his trickery; there is time for the study of magic when he is locked away in the library, as he so often is now. And when Loki is brought down easily, his limbs still gangly and thin, where Thor's have already become muscled and strong – when his face smacks hard into the ground, and he gets up on his hands and knees, spitting blood, to look for Thor's face among the spectators – Thor looks away.
He is not embarrassed of his little brother, but it is easier to pretend not to see.
Thor is going to be king; it is hard to believe sometimes, still. The way they all look at his father will someday be the way they all look at him. Of course, that will not be for hundreds upon thousands of years; he has plenty of time to acclimate to the idea. The strangest part, he thinks, is the way this knowledge separates he and Loki. He will be king, and Loki will be… Loki will be Loki still. This is the way it was meant to be; they've both known it since before they were too young to understand what ruling meant. And yet… though he knows it cannot be so, whenever Thor imagines ruling, it is with Loki at his side.
As children, the notion had not seemed so ridiculous. "We have done everything else together, Loki!" he'd explained, when his brother was reluctant to the idea. "Why not this?" It was Loki who had been quick to remind him that there had always been only one king, and the tradition was not likely to change for the two of them. In turn, Thor had pointed out that their mother ruled just as surely as their father did, and if their mother and father could rule as one, what was stopping the two of them? A marriage between the two of them would be most practical. Loki hadn't been fond of playing the role of Thor's queen, though, and the discussion always seemed to end with the two of them wrestling on the floor of their room.
(And if Thor sometimes knit crowns of flowers and imagined what they would like in Loki's hair, he never said a word.)
Now, whenever Father asks him to attend some political dinner, to accompany him on a diplomatic mission, to say some words that will soothe the ruffled feathers of the dignitary of another realm, he is tempted to run to his little brother. It is Loki who has read the history books, not he. Loki would know what to say, but Thor has never been as ready with words as his brother. He thinks that, still, the two of them would be better off doing this together, that the realm would be better for it.
One night, after a particularly awful dinner, in which Thor sticks his foot in his mouth at every available opportunity, and Loki spends the evening smoothing over one faux-pas after another, he tells Loki as much. "I am not meant to rule without you," he says, suddenly and uncharacteristically afraid of what he is being called to do. For a moment, Loki looks startled, his green eyes blown wide, and then he swallows once, hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.
"But you are," his brother says simply, and the clack of his boots on tile is loud as he leaves the hall. Thor would wrestle him to the ground, keep him here, but Loki is not a child anymore.
The first time Thor sees Loki after his fall from the Bifrost, he is a snarling, ferocious thing, and Thor is taken aback. Not because he can't recognize this person, but because he can. This is the same Loki who shared his bed as a child, the same Loki who refused to touch half of what was put on his plate and allowed Thor to polish it off so their mother wouldn't suspect (though she always, always did, and plied Loki with more of the fruit he craved), the same Loki whose long fingers had braided his hair so deftly whenever it was required Thor dress in his finery. There is history and then there is history and then there is what he and Loki have shared, and Thor cannot unsee that, even for the fine sheen of sweat that glistens on Loki's skin now and the erratic way his breath spasms in his chest.
It seems like Loki has, though – at least those parts. He would strike Thor as soon as look at him, and there is a part of Thor that would have him do it. Would have him take out Thor's every inadequacy as a brother on his own skin.
He would stop Loki from hurting himself if he could, because while it stings that Midgard and its people are in danger, it is far worse that this is Loki and he is not a monster and Thor is the maybe the only one in all of the Nine Realms who can see that anymore. "I am sorry, brother," Thor wants to say. "I should have protected you from more than I did, should have been prouder of you, should have loved you better. I could have done it, brother. For you – for both of us." And he would, oh he would, if only Loki would give him the chance. There are some things that can never be taken back – like hundreds dead in a battle that should never have happened, a traitorous voice in the back of his mind whispers, like the hatred kindled for one's own race – but Thor does not worry about fixing the past. He is a god, and the future is, to him, unfathomable, endless.
They have time, he longs to tell Loki, but Loki will not listen. He hears only the words Thor has forgotten to say.
If only Loki would listen (but how long did I not listen? Thor reflects, and that is the crux of it, isn't it?), he would hear that Thor did not lose a brother when he learned he had never had a brother at all. That as long as Loki is by his side, whether the blood in their veins is shared or not, Thor will be content. That the sheer absence of Loki burns worse than anything Loki could ever have planned.
The day that he sees his brother falter in battle - knows he has been wounded, that he will allow no one to see his pain except those who know him well enough to read it in the way he holds his body – Thor goes back to the Tower and makes a crown of the Lady Pepper's Midgardian flowers. She will be unhappy – they are a gift from the Man of Iron, he remembers, to make up for some important date he forgot, and then forgot again on the make-up date – but he hopes she will understand.
"Come home," Thor says, a hundred times, then a thousand times, and Loki laughs and sobs and tears at his hair, lashes out, broken or mad or both.
He says he has no home, choking on the words, and it is not until Thor says "If you will not follow me, then I shall have to follow you" that Loki seems to hear him.
It does not take as many years as Thor had feared it might for Loki to find his way home ; really, it is barely a blip in the eternity of their lifetimes, but Thor experiences the period of their separation as if it has lasted a millennium.
In the end, though, Thor was right – Loki fits against him as easily as he did in youth, almost of a height with Thor now, but slighter, more so now than he has ever been, allowing Thor to fill in his angles. This is good, Thor thinks, this is right – it is true that some things will never be taken back, but he's no longer sure this is something he regrets. So many ways there might never have been any changes between them at all, so many universes that are not his own – so many in which he might never get the chance to feel Loki's heartbeat strong under his palm again, knowing exactly what he is and who he is. When Thor hugs Loki to him, he cannot stop the sloppy grin that covers his face, even these many months later. He suspects this is a phenomenon that will never fade. Yes, there are times Loki puts up a struggle, but Thor recognizes that it is only a token one – Thor recognizes so many things about Loki now that he really looks at him – and it always ends with him relaxed against Thor's chest while Thor runs broad fingers through his hair. Loki always liked the motion in their youth, and after everything, some things still have not changed.
"Brother," Thor whispers against Loki's temple, "is there anything you require?" Loki is nearly asleep, his head lolled back on Thor's shoulder, and Thor would have him remain that way.
There is a soft snort, and then, "I require that you stop talking, Thor, and let me sleep." The comment makes Thor chuckle, and he pulls Loki a little tighter against him, settling them back against the headboard. He can hear Stark puttering somewhere above him – the man keeps as odd of hours as Loki does – and it sounds like home. He supposes for now it has to be, is unsurprised to find it is not something he minds. Asgard is not Asgard without Loki.
Thor is still very young – millennia have passed, but there are countless more before Ragnarok will start to weigh on his mind – and he has been given a gift. He is just beginning to understand what that means.
There is only quiet, the whir of what Stark calls an 'air conditioner,' long enough that Thor is content in knowledge that Loki is asleep. "You need no crown to be my king."
He knows better than to let go this time.
End.