How does a moment last forever?

How can a story never die?

Beauty and the Beast

Loquens celat et indicat christus ac corde meo.


"I'm here."

Thor returned his brother's fond smile, and poured another drink, moving to sit. He held it out to Loki.

Loki didn't move for a moment, lowering his hand. He took a slow step forward, then two more.

Took the drink, turned and lowered himself besides his brother, bumping his knee gently.

Though he didn't look, he could feel Thor relax, his shoulders ease. He took a measured breath, and sipped at the drink, wondering at how once such a familiar act between them could have grown to feel foreign.

Thor rested his hands on his knees. He did not speak.

"...not so bad without the hammer, is it?" murmured Loki. Thor swatted at him, as he barely hid a cheeky grin.

"I'm going to throw another cup at you. How long have you known...?"

"Oh, ages. I was beginning to get bored waiting around-"

"Shut-up. You were not."

But Loki could see the pressed together edges of Thor's mouth, holding in a smile. And words.

"What is it?"

Thor waited. Turned his glass thoughtfully in his hand.

When he finally spoke, Loki could detect that glamour of confidence flicker. Subdued.

"Were you really going to turn me into the Grandmaster for mere coin?"

Loki glanced at him peripherally.

He took another drink. Swallowed slowly.

"Maybe. If it would have kept you on Sakaar."

Thor frowned. "Don't tell me you missed me that much. How long were you there before I got there, anyways?

"It's hard to say. Time got quite muddled. The whole place is designed to dull the senses to everything outside of it. Maybe... 3 or 4 months."

He paused. Gauging the silence.

Breath slowed. Deepened.

And beneath, the dull hum of the engines, a low shiver traveling through his feet. He could feel it in his bones if he was still enough.

Thor's left arm brushed his right.

"Loki?"

He sighed.

"I wanted to stay on Sakaar because I was afraid."

Loki's voice lowered to almost a whisper, and Thor's head tilted toward him.

"Afraid? Of what? Hela?"

"It- I thought it would be safer. For you. And for me. At least for a time."

"...After Svartaelfheim, after... I thought I knew who I was. That enough time had passed, that I had finally come to accept my place. Then, when I saw her, it all... flayed apart. I didn't know who I was.

More than that- Like she... like..."

"-Like it was her all along?" came Thor's quiet tones. Softer than he'd expected.

Loki's head turned toward him.

"Am I really so transparent?"

"Come now. We've both lived long enough to know that shadows don't erase. If her lifeforce was bound up in that much of Asgard, with her history, her imprint would have been on everything. You recall the lessons even better than I do, I'm sure."

It astounded him, still, how Thor could recover so quickly from such heavy blows, whether he bore them graciously, or they bounced off him... Loki didn't know.

But he admired Thor for it. Worries had always seemed to to soak into him like water to a dry sponge. Flippant humor had always been his closest defense, daggers nearer to him than his knives.

"She was a sorceress, a-a demon, shattered realms with a thought. And I could feel... I could feel she wanted me. Like me having the throne was somehow... her having it all along."

"And you thought hiding was a better alternative?"

But Thor's voice was careful. Patient.

"No. I simply thought that we'd need more preparation. Sakaar wasn't place she'd ever be inclined to go. And you were ready to charge back to Asgard without a thought or a plan- with three warriors. I knew what she would do. What she'd unleash. And you- you just... hammer or not, you would go. I knew who she was, what she was. What she was capable of. But I... I didn't say any of it. Because you never listen."

Thor was silent for a long moment, letting their breath fill the pause.

Turning Loki's words over in his head. Trying to hear between them.

Then, he reached over with his left hand. Settled it on Loki's neck.

And that firm, warm hand brought him startlingly to the present, out of the abstract worries that blurred to greys. Fingers gently rubbed back on forth on the whipcord muscles, and tension finally began to bleed out of him.

"You can't look too long at the enemies, Loki. You have to look up."

He focused on the touch to ground his thoughts, thoughts that had haunted him for nearly 4 months.

He was ready to be done with them.

On Sakaar, right after, all his former motives suddenly felt foreign. Like a dog you'd grown fond of that turned into a wolf.

It... unbalanced him, the similarities. He couldn't stop wondering on Sakaar why he was so much like her. If there was a reason for it. How her thought and mind could be influencing him, even in his youth, even though she was a dimension away.

What other dimensions holding dark secrets might he be unaware of?

What influences could be making his life an illusion?

He hadn't slept for 2 whole weeks after he'd landed on Sakaar.

Even his name, into which he'd fit his entire life's paradigm, seemed to evade him. He'd over-compensated every step, constructing a persona that fit into the name.

But more and more feeling... like it had separated from him.

Only his mother, saying his name, seemed to say it right. Three distinct tones that chimed through his bones. He brought her voice to mind often, when his name felt grey. When he needed to feel a root between himself and his identity.

In the end, him being born Jotun and discovering he'd been deceived by Odin his entire life would be a small comfort. He could respect a well-deserved dose of cosmic vengeace.

To learn that his entire perception of himself was a lie from the beginning was a bitter pill to swallow.

However, to consider that his thoughts, his personality, perhaps even his gifts had not been his own... that Something had been attached to him from the beginning, Something he had not chosen... Even Thanos and his manipulations had not stirred in him such a confrontational self-reflection.

If you were not your personality... what were you?

Something had chosen him.

And he'd been fighting it. Ever since the crack had appeared on Jotunheim all those years ago he'd been fighting it.

He knew it was there.

He just had to draw it out. Dangle his feet in the water to attract the sharks.

This thing.

This thing that was him and yet not.

A more devious enemy, a fuller evil, a more complex trick.

A possession.

It had chosen him, knowing his mind was capable of receiving those thoughts.

It would be looking for a host.

And he was tired.

So tired.

Tired of feeling like a tool of the universe to achieve other ends. Tired of running. Tired of inventing escape routes.

Tired of not having enough courage to wrap his grip around the wild tide that compelled him.

And now, now she was gone.

And he felt... empty.

The thought that it didn't completely gladden him made him terrified. He didn't want it back.

But he didn't know who he was without it.

"Am I the illusion?"

The thought left his lips suddenly, unbidden.

But then, the hand on the back of his neck pulled just slightly.

He sighed and let his head rest against his brother's shoulder, holding him to a pillar.

"No, I think you just need faith."

Loki huffed out a breath.

"Faith? Is that what you call your foolhardiness now?"

"I didn't go back because I was certain, Loki. I did it because I had to."

"Mmph."

"Besides which... you were always able to throw words like a hammer."

"Probably better."

Thor shoved him. Loki clamped down on his left arm, twisting it, and throwing his other arm across Thor's middle, the momentum flattening his brother down on the seat backwards. Thor laughed tiredly, not moving to get up. Loki smirked, still sitting, resting a hand on Thor's knee still, tension uncoiling from his middle at last. He smirked, raising his glass.

"To faith then."

He downed the rest of his drink. Thor folded his arms underneath his head and closed his eyes.

Loki glanced at him, turning the last words over in his head.

Letting them sit there, carefully. A silent hammer, waiting to be picked up.

Hmm.

With a fond look that his brother couldn't see, he rose, nudging Thor's knee.

"Come," he said, swiftly holding out a hand.

"Really? 5 minutes? Loki. I just sat down."

"Asgard needs to see her king."

Thor sighed. Opened his eyes.

Saw his brother's outstretched hand before him. His brow furrowed.

But then he leaned up. Grabbed that flesh and blood forearm, and was swiftly pulled to his feet.

Still clasping his forearm, he stepped forward, before Loki could move away, and enfolded him firmly in both arms.

"Thank you."

Arms came around him then, bold and oaken, and only then did Thor loosen, letting the absolute craziness of the last several days wash away like smoke.

He rested, and he was held fast.

"You're not like her, you know," he whispered, "Because I'm your brother."

Loki cracked a smile then, and his arms clasp a little tighter.

He knew what it was to be Thor's brother.

To stand in sunlight, and victory and battle and joy. To take part in his overcomings, to have confidence and bold assurance. To stand aside while the brighter part received praise and accolade and acclaim. A cracked apart morning on a mountain, muscles burning, out of breath, but having the giant behind you.

To stand in shadow.

But not unknown.

Yes, he knew what it was to be Thor's brother.

Thor did not yet know what it was to be his.


Death had not given them much of a respite.

The tide had gone out, far out, and now had rushed back in a wave of vengeance.

The shadow had found them, at last.

He catches his brothers eyes, watching Thanos finish the job in his mind, ripped, torn, bleeding.

And at last, the illusion of Thor's strength is broken.

His confidence. His will.

There is no magic he has to heal those wounds.

But Thor is a fighter.

He will survive.

He must.

Loki cannot understand.

How Thor needs this.

How it can possibly be good when all Thanos will bring is ashes and pain.

But he is here.

Thor will survive.

He will ensure it.

So he offers him the only thing he has.

His words.

Shattering stone.

Cracking through the image, the lie, the despair.

Words that will come back to him.

They do not have to go into the empty.

They will return.

He has not constructed this kind of illusion before.

Not a temporary imaginary picture to deceive... to hide the truth...

But to create it.

Not an illusion to become a lie, but a projection that could become the truth.

Because nothing around this shattering world right now was worth believing in.

He forms the words, choosing them carefully. Making them undying.

Thor will need them that way, need them to live forever.

And after they are formed, he speaks.

He flings them like a hammer, and the clarity settled in his heart lets him say them exactly right.

Thor's pain lets him say them exactly right.

He thought it would be harder.

But now, at the end, they are enough.

They are perfect.


Faith is... the evidence of what we hope for,

and the certainty

of what we do not yet see."