It was natural that the delicate peace that had grown between the brothers— and delicate peace it was— would shatter before it could strengthen. Loki woke the next morning and found Thor asleep on the couch beside him, sprawled awkwardly over it, his large body hanging partially over the edge. The sight brought a smile to his lips, which surprised him.

Loki rose and stretched. He ached all over, but not as badly as he had the day before. His ribs and torso still hurt, but it was just pain, and Loki could handle that pain. He had before and he would again.

Part of him wondered if he should take the time to reflect on the events of the past few days, and in spite of the fact that he was Loki, and he was nothing if he did not think, reflect, plot, plan, he didn't want to think about any of it. What he wanted to do was get back to Earth, and from there, back home.

Home?

Loki shook those thoughts away like a dog shaking water from its fur. He didn't have the strength to open that particular can of worms. He moved toward the ration box but found that he wasn't hungry. Still, you should eat, he told himself sternly. You can't get your strength back if you don't eat. Loki tried in vain to force down one of the ration bars. Without warning he was assaulted by a memory from when he was younger. Frigga's voice drifted out of his consciousness.

Eat, she told him, a smile on her beautiful face. You'll never grow big and strong if you don't eat.

And child-Loki ate, even though he wasn't hungry, because what could be worse than never growing big and strong like Thor?

Loki realized with much irritation that he had started thinking about Thor again. What is wrong with you? he asked himself bitterly. You never stop thinking about Thor, not even for a moment, but when he tries to make peace with you all you can do is give him anger and vitriol? Do you care about him?

Ten years ago Loki would have liked nothing more than to declare that he cared nothing for his brother, that he was perfectly self-sufficient and did, indeed never had, needed him; Loki was by nature selfish and self-serving and he would betray anyone with pride and never feel a lick of remorse.

The Loki of today knew that those were all lies.

He got to his feet, suddenly needing to pace, and nearly fell when the ship jolted beneath him. Alarms began to sound; the tinny voice of the ship's intercom alerted Loki that they were being boarded.

"Thor!" was the first thing he shouted.

Thor's large form came stumbling forward. His single blue eye was bleary and his hair disheveled (although in his current state his hair always looked disheveled). "Who's attacking?" he asked. Stupidly, Loki's brain added, because of course it was the pirates, and then Loki was annoyed at himself again because why could he never decide if he loved and cared about Thor or hated and resented him.

"The pirates!" Loki replied, finding his staff and shaking his limbs to wake them before the fight. (It was a practice he had adopted long ago, since habitual betrayal meant that surprise attacks, especially ones that occurred during his sleep, were common. Shaking the sleep out of his body, he called it, and it did work wonders. Admittedly those wonders were limited when his body was in as poor of shape as it was at the moment, but he had little choice.)

Thor located his broadsword and shook his hair out of his face. He grinned, tiredly, wanly, but genuinely, and said, "Never a moment's rest."

"Never a moment's rest," Loki agreed, and then they threw themselves together at the band of pirates who had burst into the cabin.

The fight was short and bloody. Thor was thoroughly tired of the group of pirates and took on three at once, fighting like a demon. He stabbed one through his throat and the pirate fell with a strangled cry, but then Thor felt something— undoubtedly a sword's slash— on his side and the touch of hot blood coursing down his torso. He turned and, cursing the shortness and lightness of his broadsword, stabbed through his attacker. The third pirate took a flying leap. Thor almost laughed at his naiveté. His blade found the man's stomach and, with a cry very similar to that of his fallen comrade, he collapsed in a spreading pool of blood (not all of it his).

There can't be that many of them, Thor thought. I killed a lot of them when I was on their ship and there weren't that many to begin with. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Loki, fighting fluidly and smoothly and effectively but wincing in pain and suddenly the image of his brother, lying defeated in a puddle of his own blood, his wrists raw and torn, came to his mind.

Thor wasn't certain if it was sheer rage that drove him, or protectiveness (because, after all, he was Loki's big brother first and foremost), or that he was simply tired of the pirates, but abruptly he snapped. He roared a wordless battle cry and all around him, his enemies fell. Thor was stabbed and slashed repeatedly; he barely felt the wounds.

Loki, meanwhile, was watching his brother in awe. Thor was as unstoppable as a train, as ferocious as a lion, and as angry as, well, Thor. He moved with surprising grace and speed for someone who had put on so much weight in the past five years. It struck Loki, then, that this was the first time he had seen his brother truly in his element since they had re-met on the ship. (It was no great surprise that Thor was most comfortable in battle. Had he not always been most comfortable in battle, for as long as Loki could remember?) Thor moved the same way, fought the same way, that he always had, even though he had long, tangled hair and a potbelly and only one eye.

Unbidden, an image of that wolf, its golden fur sleek and long, its pelt rippling with muscle, came to Loki's mind— fighting with precision and power, strong and fast and perfect.

And as Loki watched, two pirates fell with a single stroke of Thor's sword (which looked tiny compared to his massive form).

Do what you're good at, Loki, he ordered himself, and he ducked under the whistling blade of one of the attackers and rolled neatly to his feet, stabbing him in the armpit. Loki very nearly cried out, because his wounds were nowhere near healed, but Thor wasn't showing any signs of slowing or stopping and so neither would Loki.

As if in response to his thoughts, Thor shouted in pain and collapsed to one knee. One of the pirates had landed a hard blow on his stomach, and the cut went deep. Blood coursed down the front of Thor's shirt from the wound.

Loki's lips formed his name, but no sound came out. Swiftly he remembered his dream, remembered the wolf's ragged pelt and scarred muzzle and singular, bloodshot eye.

Then Thor got slowly to his feet, steadied himself on his sword, and beheaded the pirate who had injured him.

They made short work of the pirates, the two of them. None were left alive. When the fight was over, Loki and his brother threw the corpses out of the airlock to rid the ship of the smell of decaying bodies before they started to fester. Thor made short work of that, too, and did so without complaint, but he was clearly limping. When they finished Loki took his arm and guided him to the bed. He was surprised to note that Thor leaned against him, causing Loki to have to brace himself against the other wall (which, thanks to the tiny dimension of the ship, was never far), seemingly barely able to support his own weight.

"Take off your shirt," he ordered. "Let me see it."

Thor didn't protest.

Loki clenched his jaw. The wound was still bleeding profusely and it stretched from Thor's left hip to the underside of his right ribcage. The blood was dark red, thankfully, and not bright red (which would have indicated that an artery had been severed, in which case Thor would probably bleed out and die) but still, he was losing a lot of blood.

Thor closed his eyes. "It's bad, isn't it," he said, more of a statement than a question.

"It's bad," Loki agreed. "You never were very good at protecting yourself. Hold still."

"Because I was too busy protecting you," Thor protested weakly— no, not weakly, exactly. Just without force.

"Lie down," Loki told him. He found a hoodie of Thor's and pressed it to the wound, leaning forward to keep pressure on it and staunch the flow of blood. Loki was no great shakes at healing magically and he didn't trust himself to try to close it, so he elected to use the tried-and-true method of applying pressure to the injury. That said, he was no great shakes at healing in general, and in truth it was a little strange to be the one administering help to Thor after a battle. Not because Thor was so rarely injured, but because he was so used to Thor taking care of himself. In their younger years Frigga cared for him and as they grew older, Thor was less and less likely to trust Loki. Likewise, Loki was less and less likely to offer aid.

It was strange, then, that Thor allowed his brother to help him now, but then a lot of things had been strange over the past five days. And Thor was looking much less like his old self now. Without the heat of battle to liven it, Thor's body seemed tired, and his face looked haggard and old.

All of these things were worrisome and unusual, but Loki had no time to think about them because he was too busy thinking about saving Thor.

Saving Thor, his mind whispered to him. Saving Thor. When did it become saving Thor? He saved you. He protected you.

Shut up, Loki ordered. I can't think about this right now.

He was the protector and you were the protected. How the tables turn.

Shut up, Loki snapped. And yet he couldn't help but wonder how unkind the last five years had been to his brother that Thor was so very different from how Loki remembered. The Thor he remembered was bright and vivacious, not tired and lethargic; the Thor he remembered was strong and protective, not uncaring and quiet; the Thor he remembered would never have let Loki tend to his wounds, insisting (the same as Loki would have done) that he could handle it himself.

"Aren't you injured?" Thor asked, snapping Loki out of his musings. "Shouldn't you be taking care of yourself, too?"

Loki hesitated. "I'm not really injured," he said. "A lot of superficial wounds."

"Let me see," Thor said, echoing the exact words that Loki had used only a half hour or so before.

Loki protested, saying that Thor would reopen his wound, but Thor predictably waved away and ignored his brother's words. "If it hasn't closed by now, it never will," he declared, and it was then that Loki realized that he, too, was very tired, because he couldn't quite muster the energy to tell Thor why that statement was so stupid. Thor sat up and let the cloth Loki had been using fall away. He peeled off Loki's bloodied shirt and inspected the cuts and bruises that his younger brother had accrued and found that Loki had, indeed, been telling the truth— they were mostly superficial wounds. Regardless, Thor found a cloth and started to wipe away the blood.

Loki arched one black eyebrow. "I can do that myself," he told his brother.

"I can do it, too," Thor said, "and you look like you're about to fall over. Sit down."

With a haughty sniff Loki did as he was told and allowed his brother to clean up his injuries. To prove that he was as capable as Thor he found a piece of fabric and started to wipe off some of Thor's other minor cuts as well. In all honesty, Loki felt as bad as he looked. Even though he had been injured much less severely than Thor, his body was recovering still from the effects of torture.

"You're not such a beauty yourself," Loki said, a little too late to be considered a witty reply (but true nonetheless, he thought).

Thor chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that came from deep within his barrel chest. "Then we should both get some sleep," he said, and promptly laid down on the bed and threw one massive arm across his face.

Loki gently disengaged himself from the blankets and made his way to the couch and laid down. His thoughts were chasing each other around in his mind, demanding he give them attention and dissect what had happened and how he felt (or should feel) but he was so, so very tired…

"Loki," Thor rumbled. "Come here. There's no need for you to be uncomfortable when we have a big bed right here."

Loki's eyes flew open. He had thought that Thor had already fallen asleep, but now he was talking and what was he saying? Asking Loki to lay down in the bed? For his own comfort?

"We're brothers, for heaven's sake," Thor continued in his deep voice. Loki imagined that if a mahogany tree could talk, it would sound like Thor. Why are you imaging a talking mahogany tree? his brain asked him pointedly. Thor was still talking. "We can share a bed. It's not like there are any others."

For a long moment Loki paused, then he got to his feet and wordlessly lay down next to his brother. Not in pointed silence, but merely wordlessly, for there was nothing he could say.

Thor rolled over and started to snore. Loki closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but to his great surprise, he felt tears begin to trickle down his cheeks— first one, then another, and then an entire cascade, sliding silently down his face. He wept for a long time, without a sound. He was unsure as to why he was so filled with emotion, but knew for certain that it was not fear, because he was next to his brother and that was, and always had been, and always would be, the safest place in the world.

I sincerely apologize for the extremely long wait. I didn't abandon this fic, exactly, but a lot of other projects took up my attention— in any case, it was far too long of a wait, and I really am sorry! I hope this chapter makes up for it, because I put a lot of care into it and even though it's not the most exciting I really think it's the best so far.

As always, thank you so much for reading and if you enjoyed, comments make my day!

~ Atticus