#3

During a pitch-black, starless night several weeks later, as Loki was wading through the murky waters of semi-consciousness, trying to fight his way out of his own head, Thor woke with the peculiar sensation that someone was calling out to him. It was a faint voice, barely above a rasp, but he recognized it nonetheless. Help me, brother … His body jerked awake, his heart slamming against his ribs.

"Loki …" The word came out desperately, skidding on his shaky voice. Thor felt a sob clawing at the back of his throat and he covered his mouth with this hand, biting the inside of his palm to hold it back.

Over a month had passed since Thanos' attack on their ship—over a month since he'd had to watch his brother's lifeless body being thrown at his feet like a rag doll—but he still could not bring himself to believe that Loki was truly gone this time. He never really died, not like other people. Not even like other gods. When Thanos had murdered his friend Heimdall under his very nose, Thor's mind had instantly grasped that he would never see the other man again. When Thanos had choked the life out of his brother shortly after, however, he had still sensed a glimmer of hope amid all the inexpressible pain of loss and desertion that this was not the end. How could it be? This was not the first time he had thought him dead.

"Your family has been such a toxic mess," Valkyrie had commented once, partly surprised, partly intrigued, when he had reminisced about the events leading up to Asgard's destruction shortly after they had reunited on Midgard. "Especially your relationship with Loki."

As far as Thor was concerned, this was an understatement. His relationship with Loki had complicated during the past years, becoming increasingly tainted by jealously, grief, despair and the assignment of blame for things that were far beyond what either of them could control. Maybe the relationship had even been complicated from the outset and he had been too self-absorbed to notice, but even if that was true, it did not change much. What remained was the fact that, somewhere along the line, Loki had ventured a voyage into the dark side and had never fully returned. It had all started, Thor presumed, with Loki finding out that he was not Asgardian by birth and that, consequently, he had no right to the throne. This must have been a major disruption to his brother's life, although Thor had not perceived it as such back in the day. If anything, he had shrugged it off, attributing his brother's sudden fits of insane rage to his missing sense of self-worth. Even as a child, Loki had always complained that he was not being appreciated enough but to Thor these complaints had always been nothing but symptoms of weakness and a lack of virility and strength. When Loki had been confronted with his true parentage, however, the already existing suspicion that he was being mistreated had evolved into sheer self-destructive madness; but even that had not been enough for Thor to pause for a moment and reflect on his brother's behavior. It was only now, as he was sitting in his own bed in the middle of the night several years later, with the cold sweat of a horrific nightmare drying on his skin, that Thor allowed himself to think about everything that had come to pass between them since that first fateful encounter with the Frost Giants on Jotunheim.

He imagined how he would have felt if he had been to discover that Odin was not his father and that he was instead descended from a race that was considered vile and lesser creatures among his own people. Was it truly surprising that something in Loki's mind had shattered upon the discovery of his true heritage and that he had never been able to piece it fully back together? Thor had to admit that Loki's psychological reaction was not entirely incomprehensible but, at the same time, he still held the belief that it was no excuse for his brother's behavior in the aftermath of the revelation. He'd told him the lie of their father's demise after all and he had tried to kill him. Thor had been banished to Earth at the time, stripped of his powers by their father as punishment for a reckless hunger for war that had endangered the Asgardian population. Loki had visited him, telling him that Odin had died and that he could never return home because the peace with Jotunheim, Loki's place of birth, was conditioned upon his exile. When Thor had found out the truth, Loki had sent one of Asgard's protectors to kill him. He had also threatened to kill the woman Thor had loved at the time. And he had killed his biological father in an attempt to gain Odin's respect or, maybe, he had done it in order to erase his past. It hardly mattered now. What mattered was that, as soon as Loki had realized that Odin would hold him accountable for his actions, he had thrown himself into the abyss of space, evading responsibility at all costs. Despite the events preceding what he had thought of as his brother's death at the time, the thought of his brother being gone had pained Thor in great measure.

Until Loki had come out of wherever he had been hiding about a year later, apparently having lost what was left of his mind. He had announced that he would take over Midgard and he had opened a portal to outer space, unleashing an army of war-hungry aliens upon New York City, which had resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. During the ensuing battle, Loki had tried to kill him again, throwing him out of a plane crashing down to Earth at he didn't know how many miles an hour and then stabbing him in the side a few hours later. In that very moment, Thor had felt the betrayal deep inside him, the realization that he had lost the brother he'd grown up with not to death but to insanity almost devouring his heart. Eventually, Loki had been captured by the Avengers—a group of remarkable people with superhuman strengths Thor had later come to call his friends—and he'd brought him back to face Asgardian justice. Odin had imprisoned Loki in their dungeons, sentencing him to a life in seclusion and Thor, still hurt and enraged by his brother's treason, had not visited him once.

Until another tragedy had crippled Asgard, threatening the sanity of Odin and the very foundations of their entire kingdom with it. While Loki was locked away in the dungeons, the Dark Elves—an evil race led by Malekith who desired to plunge the entire universe into a never-ending, all-consuming darkness—had invaded Asgard and unleashed death and destruction upon it in the search for the weapon that would allow them to carry out their plan. Their attack had claimed the death of his mother Frigga, which had numbed Thor's soul with unimaginable pain but had aroused in Odin the far more dangerous sensation of rage and revengefulness. His grief mixed with his thirst for revenge had overpowered him, extinguishing every ounce of rationality and common sense until Odin had been willing and ready to sacrifice however many Asgardian warriors it took to strike back against Malekith. He had insisted that the weapon the Dark Elves were searching for was not to leave Asgard and that the Bifrost, Asgard's main connection to the rest of the universe, remained closed for everyone trying to enter or leave the kingdom. Thor had known that this would end in a tragedy costing the life of several thousand innocent Asgardian souls. He had known that he could not let this happen, that he had to protect the people of Asgard, and so he had sought Loki's aid in order to remove the weapon from Asgard to protect its people. At the time, he would have rather bitten off and eaten his own fingers than to ask Loki for help but, unfortunately, his brother was the only being Thor knew who possessed the knowledge of secret pathways through the universe; the only one who could help him escape the kingdom with the Bifrost closed.

Loki had thanked him by using the opportunity of his liberation to stage his own death in front of Thor's eyes when they had reached the home planet of the Dark Elves. Once again, he had mourned for him despite his anger. Once again, Loki had not truly died but had sneaked back into Asgard instead and, after exiling their father with the help of one of his spells, had posed as Odin for an incredible four years. If he allowed himself to think about it, Thor would still scorn himself for having remained unaware of his brother's doing for so long but, in his defense, he had left Asgard for Earth shortly after the defeat of the Dark Elves to live with Jane Foster, the woman he had loved at the time.

Yes, Loki was the master of mischief and deceit. He had deluded Thor so many times that he had lost count and he had been convinced for years that he would never be able to trust his brother ever again. The spell Loki had cast on Odin had weakened him and ultimately resulted in his death, which had made Thor even more furious since his brother had hazarded the consequence of Odin's demise, seemingly without thought, when he had chosen to impersonate him. Trusting Loki, Thor had thought upon watching his beloved father's physical form disintegrate into golden dust, was no option for any half-intelligent being in the universe. "This is your doing," Thor had groaned, his fingers itching to beat Loki senseless for all the misery he had caused him throughout their lives.

For better or for worse, he had never gotten the chance to act on his basic instincts. Immediately after their father's death, the fabric of whatever had been holding Thor's life together for more than fifteen-hundred years had unraveled at a dazzling speed. When Odin's life force had extinguished, his sister Hela—Odin's firstborn and the Goddess of Death—had appeared through a portal, claiming the throne of Asgard and declaring war upon him. Thor had been convinced he would be able to defeat her but he was soon confronted with her seemingly limitless powers as she crushed his hammer Mjölnir, which he had believed to be the source of his strength until that moment, to pieces with her bare hands. Loki had panicked at the demonstration of her strength, commanding the guardian of the Bifrost to bring them back to Asgard, and, naturally, Hela had jumped at the chance, throwing herself into the rainbow bridge after them.

If only that had been the extent of it. She had pushed them both out of the Bifrost fueled by incredible physical strength, first Loki and then himself, gaining unhindered admission into Asgard. Both he and Loki had, independently of one another, stranded on the whimsical planet of Sakaar with Loki having been, much to Thor's dismay, lusted after by the being in charge who called himself the Grandmaster. He himself had no such luck. Upon his arrival, Thor learned that Loki had apparently touched down at that God forsaken place several weeks before him—which, he figured, could only be possible since Loki had been pushed out of the Bifrost by Hela a few moments earlier—and that his brother's mischievous demeanor had caught the attention of the Grandmaster. While Loki was allowed to move freely, being handed bilious green martinis wherever he went, Thor had been forced to fight against The Hulk, a member of the Avengers in days long past, in the Grandmaster's Contest of Champions. Oh yes, his life was truly "fucked up", as the Midgardians would say.

Nevertheless, in the midst of all that Sakaarian craziness, he and Loki had somehow moved closer together. That did not mean that Loki hadn't tried to betray him yet again during his escape from the Grandmaster's prison—he had and although Thor was used to it, every betrayal initially hurt as if it were the very first one—but after that last attempted proverbial stab in the back, Loki had gotten back his senses. With Odin and Frigga gone and Asgard presumed lost, he had, for some inexplicable reason, apparently accepted that, as tainted and crazy as their brotherly relationship might be, it was all that was left of their past and that them being there together meant that they had to fight Hela together in order to defer Asgard's doom.

As far as Thor was concerned, Loki's eventual decision to fight against Hela by his side was compensation enough for most of his previous transgressions. Thor had even allowed himself to believe for a moment that his little brother, whom he had thought lost for so long, had finally returned to him and that they would be able to start over on Midgard once this was all over. He had wanted to believe this so badly. Despite everything that had happened between them, despite the rage and the pain Thor had felt every time Loki had done something outrageous, he still wanted, still needed, to believe that he would be able to change him back to the person he had once been.

He had soon been reminded, however, that every single one of Loki's pledges to allegiance obscured at least ten possible ways of betrayal already planned out to the last detail and that his brother's course for semi-redemption was probably nothing more than another trick. Battling Hela, it had occurred to Thor that the only way to overpower Hela and save Asgard was to destroy the place and save its people and he had sent Loki to their father's vault to unleash the beast that would lay waste to their homeland. Loki had fulfilled his responsibility; but not without helping himself to one of the Infinity Stones that eventually—after the fight was over, their people were safe, and Hela was destroyed—led Thanos straight to them, allowing him to kill the majority of the people that they had just managed to save.

Thor felt tears stinging his eyes as he recalled the attack. The course of events his life had taken after Hela's defeat was, if not entirely, in great parts Loki's fault. He had done it again. Shortly after Thor had allowed himself to believe his brother had somehow come back to him, Loki had demonstrated once more that Thor was a perfect fool for believing in him. Worse still, this time Loki had not stopped at betrayal or claiming something that did not belong to him. This last time, he had … Thor still did not understand what exactly his brother had been doing. He had replayed the scene of Loki's death in his head over and over again, first consciously in order to understand, then involuntarily in his nightmares. Loki giving up the Tesseract, facing Thanos, trying to stab the titan with that tiny little dagger, his green eyes drowning in tears and blood, his trembling lips chapped, his expression convulsed by terror and alarm. This had been the worst. Loki had suffered through his fair share of emotional breakdowns throughout the years but Thor had never seen such glaring fear in his brother's eyes. Loki had been scared stiff, freezing mid-movement like magma solidifying on a rocky slope, when he had heard Thanos' voice but then he had still tried to kill him with so small a weapon. Except he couldn't have expected to kill him with it. He would have known, must have known, the inevitable outcome. Which left only one possibility that Thor had not yet dared to put into words.

"Oh, Loki," Thor muttered into his hand, trying to suffocate the scream that wanted to come but it overpowered him easily, forcing its way out of his lungs, through his fingers and into the room.

Next to him, Valkyrie started from her sleep. "What is it?" She looked at him drowsily, her pillow-tousled curls falling into her face.

"Just a nightmare," Thor whispered softly but he knew his trembling voice would betray him just as Loki had a thousand times. "Go back to sleep."