#9

"If the sun doesn't bother you too much?" Thor added carefully when he saw that his brother's face was still twisted into a frown, his eyes narrowed to slits against the light. "It's a lot hotter than it usually is at this time of the year, sorry about that."

"Just my luck," Loki said softly, a hint of desperation in his voice.

"But I suppose I could help along," Thor said and clenched his fist, summoning a dense blanket of rain clouds to block out the sun.

"It's okay, brother," Loki hissed but the blue sky was already darkening rapidly. "I'm not an invalid."

"I'm just trying to help," Thor mumbled but started wondering if this was really the case as soon as they started walking. Was he really trying to save his brother or was he just trying to silence his conscience? Had he truly brought him back because he had missed him or because he was convinced that he would feel better if Loki completed his path of redemption? Or had he brought him back because he still couldn't forgive himself for missing his chance to defeat Thanos and expected Loki to help him clean up his messes the same way he had cleaned up so many of Loki's messes? But maybe these motivations weren't mutually exclusive and either way, they were here now. It was a ridiculous enterprise and Thor knew it would probably end in disaster but they were here now. Loki was alive.

He caught himself shooting side-glances at his brother every twenty seconds, his mind halfway expecting to see him changed back into his Asgardian form, but every time he looked, Loki's face was still of sapphire blue color with silver markings on his forehead, cheeks and chin. The mark on his forehead consisted of three separate parallel lines that reached from his hairline to his eyebrows in semi-circular shapes with another double vertical line in the middle. The other lines looked like claw marks, three of them curving upward from his chin to his lower lip and two from his tear ducts across his cheeks to his ears. Thor wondered what those lines meant but he could not remember what Laufey, former King of Jotunheim and Loki's biological father, had looked like. Did he have the same pattern of markings on his face? Were they genetic? Did they mean anything? Why couldn't he remember?

The only thing he did remember was that Loki had murdered Laufey shortly after learning about his true heritage, which he had rejected so fiercely that he had tried to destroy the whole of Jotunheim in order to erase his true origin and prove his worth as an Asgardian to his adoptive father. The memory sent a shiver down Thor's spine and he realized that it was not primarily the fact that Loki had murdered the man who had fathered him which upset him—although that was, admittedly, disturbing in its own right—but his own handling of the entire revelation. It was not until after Loki had let go of his hand that his father had told him the truth and he remembered with shame that he had pushed the knowledge to the back of his mind because he had been unable to deal with it. Worse still, he had to admit to himself that he had blamed Loki for writing off their entire childhood and brotherly bond because of a thing that did not really change anything in Thor's opinion.

At least he had thought back then that it did not change anything. Now that he could see his brother's true appearance with his own eyes, he finally realized that it changed everything. It was visible now but Loki had known it was there for the better part of the last decade and he'd had to learn to live with the knowledge that he was descendant from a race that the Asgardians, Thor himself included, had grown up to think of as enemies and fear as monsters.

He felt a tap on his shoulder and swung around. "Stop it, brother," a softly glimmering illusion of Loki hissed.

"Stop what?" Thor asked, his eyes darting back and forth between the two versions of his brother.

"Stop looking at me," the real Loki clarified with his eyes closed. "I cannot focus."

"I'm not looking at you," Thor denied and cast an apologetic glance at the illusion, which frowned at him in response.

"Yes, you are, I can feel it." The real Loki looked down and inspected his hands. "Stop it."

"Alright, alright," Thor yielded, forcing himself to stare straight ahead as Loki's breathing slowed down next to him. His mirror image was still walking beside them, and Thor watched from the corner of his eye how the blue complexion of the illusion paled into Loki's light Asgardian facial color and the disheveled curls smoothed out into a slick mane of shiny raven-black hair reaching all the way down to his chest. On the ground in front of him, a few blades of grass transformed into squirming little snakes. Thor dodged them as he walked even though he knew they were not real. Naked trees with long, gnarled branches suddenly materialized on either side of them in a soft light green glow and sprawled out their limbs like bony fingers. Thor jerked away from them, asking, "What exactly are you doing?"

Loki's illusion brushed its finger against its lips, silencing him. The gnarly branches entwined around them, trapping them in a wall of wood. Thor felt a wave of unease wash through him at the sight of the sinister mirage Loki had conjured up but forced himself to keep still. He felt the eyes of the illusion burning on his skin. After a few minutes, Loki groaned with aggravation. "What?" Thor asked, his eyes darting back to his brother.

"It's gone," Loki whispered. His Asgardian mirage faded back into him. The ugly tree wall disappeared but the sight that replaced it was no less gloomy, for the black clouds suddenly erupted and heavy rain started beating down on his face. "You just created all sorts of illusions," Thor objected, fighting the feeling of hopelessness that rose inside of his chest. "Your magic—"

"But I cannot change this." Loki held up his blue palm. His voice was barely above a whisper.

"This is probably temporary," Thor assured him without thinking, praying to the Norns that it was true; that Loki could change his appearance back for both of their sakes and being painfully aware of how selfish that thought was. "You're probably just exhausted. Give yourself some time."

"I have been exhausted before and could still—

"You never died before," Thor reminded him, mentally willing the rain to stop. "At least not for real."

"This is not something that just goes away," Loki howled. "She took it away." His eyes began to flicker with—rage? despair? madness?—and he held up his hand, its palm facing Thor, narrowing his eyes in intense concentration. Nothing happened. "She took everything away."

"Loki, please …"

His brother's eyes glimmered for a moment before he got lost in thought. The only problem was that he was not really thinking when this particular expression settled on his face. Rather, he seemed to be getting lost in the abyss of his own mind.

"Loki?"

Out of nowhere, his brother took a big swing and rammed his fist into Thor's biceps, sending an explosion of pain along his neural pathways. "Ooow! What was that for?"

"Does that hurt, yes?" Loki asked and took another swing. Thor tried to squirm away from another punch but his brother's fist was faster.

"Loki, what are you doing?" Thor yelled. "Stop punching me!"

"I was just making sure I still have my superhuman strength," Loki replied, looking at his fingers with a new kind of interest.

"And more of that, it seems," Thor noted, breathing through the wave of pain rippling through his arm. "You've never had such a—" Loki was gazing at him half-amused, half-curious, before his eyes moved heavenward. "What?" Thor asked, uneasily. This was his brother's crazy stare and the hairs on Thor's arm began to tingle with alarm as Loki opened his palm and caught a few drops of the subsiding rain in it.

"Loki, what are you doing?" Thor asked firmly. His brother was transforming the water drops on his hand into three spikes of ice about ten inches long and two inches wide. His hand shot forward just as Thor thrust out his arms in defense, the tip of the razor-sharp spikes slashing into the skin on his right wrist. "Loki, what the fuck?" Thor roared and clasped his right arm with his left hand, blood dripping through his fingers.

"I-I am sorry," Loki stammered, "but that was entirely your fault."

"My fault?" Thor echoed, his voice vibrating with rage. The noise of distant thunder rumbled across the sky.

"I was just—I would have stopped but you practically rammed your arm into my hand, I am sorry." Loki had the decency to look at least somewhat contrite. He looked down at his hands and the icy spikes that were now speckled by scarlet drops of blood.

Thor rubbed his bleeding wrist against his shirt, bewildered by his own naivety. "I brought you back from the dead and, in return, you attack me?" It was more of an assessment than a question. This was what he should have expected when he had embarked on this journey. Valkyrie and Tony had been right. This was insane. "I should have known better."

"I did not mean to attack you," Loki mumbled as he shook his hand, causing the blood on it to splash onto the grass.

"You punched me," Thor reminded him. "Twice."

"I was just—" Loki bent down, his eyes alight with that accursed sparkle of madness. His arm jerked upwards and Thor grabbed it before he could slam it into the ground, yanking his brother's entire body backwards.

"Would you stop it?" Thor screamed.

"It won't come off," Loki replied and shook his hand again, as if he actually believed he could dislodge icicles that had somehow grown out of his own skin. "Brother, I am sorry, okay?" Loki mumbled as he felt Thor glowering at him. "I have not yet figured out how this is supposed to work."

A desperate laugh escaped Thor's lips when he realized just how difficult Loki was going to make this for him, be it intentionally or unintentionally. He was Jotun now. He could manipulate moisture into sharp icy weapons. Whatever it was inside that Infinity Stone, it had taken his Asgardian form away and Loki was as unprepared for the identity crisis this was bound to bring about as Thor himself was. You see, there are a hell of a lot of worst-case scenarios here, Tony had said, but of all the worst-case scenarios this was the worst worst-case scenario because he had not seen it coming. Because he had ignored it all those years.

"I am sorry," Loki repeated but he did not look at him. The illusion of the garment's sleeve dissolved. His brother started scratching the skin of his own arm with the tip of the icicle.

"Please, Loki, stop it."

When no blood came, he jabbed the spikes in full force.

"Loki!" Thor bent over but then realized he could hardly wrest the weapon from his brother. Loki watched in awe as thick drops of blood oozed out around the edge of the icicles and ran down his arms in thin streaks of dark space blue. Thor's stomach clenched when Loki brought up his arm to his face and started licking the blood off his arm with a tongue that was of indigo color. Thor tried to fight it but eventually he gagged.

Loki laughed, his face warped with madness. "Do you still think that nothing is ever going to change that I am your brother?" He tore out his hand and scooped up the tiny rest of the blood that sept out with the spikes he had created out of the rain.

Unable to answer this question, Thor asked, "Why aren't you bleeding?"

"Because my blood is practically frozen, you imbecile," Loki snarled at him. "It is frozen and it is black. Look, brother!" He held up his hand, forcing Thor to look at the dark blood on the icicles, to look at how the blue-black of Loki's blood was staining his own scarlet blood a dark purple. "This is what I am. This is what I have always been on the inside."

"But you are more than that," Thor tried, struggling for words because as much as he had missed his brother and as much as he wanted to help him, he could not fight against the disgust that he felt in response to Loki's blue skin even though he hated himself for it.

"I just made you gag," Loki reminded him in a hoarse voice. "You gagged."

"Because you licked off your own blood," Thor objected, the words spluttering out of his mouth on their own. "I would gag if anyone did this. I mean, what are you, a vampire?"

Loki frowned. "I just wanted to know what it tastes like."

"And what does it taste like?" Thor asked softly, dreading the answer that he somehow knew was going to come.

"It doesn't taste like anything," Loki whispered, lowering his hand and closing his eyes against the exasperation. When he opened them again, the madness was gone. "How did she do this, Thor? How could she take away what Odin's and mother's death and Asgard's destruction left intact?"

This was indeed the only question that truly mattered but he had no answer for it. "How would I know?" Thor settled on saying. "It's not like I'm an expert in magic spells."

Loki rewarded his attempt at conciliation by humor with a faint smile.

"What did she tell you?" Thor asked carefully, scanning his brother's reaction to the change of subject. Loki looked at him questioningly, so he continued. "Surely there must have been something she said about what this place"—the Infinity Stone—"is and what it is … for. I mean, it wasn't Hel."

"She said it was her refuge," Loki told him, surprisingly, without hesitation. "That it was like Hel in a way, but not entirely, of course. She said the place allowed her to look into my soul, to access my memories, and the moment she looked at me, I felt it. She forced her way into my head by sheer force of will and tore everything away and she … God, why am I telling you this?"

"Because I asked nicely?" Thor asked back, unable to struggle against the crushing weight of Loki's agony with any another conversational weapon than a largely misplaced sense of humor.

Loki smiled thinly. "Truth be told, it doesn't matter how she did it," he mused after a pause and then continued to recite Thor's thoughts from a few moments before. "Because it would not change anything, would it? Asgard is gone, Odin and Frigga are gone, and this is who I am, what I am, what I have always been. She might have brought it to light for you to see but it has been there all along and, despite all your reassurance, I have known all along that something about me is different."

"Loki …"

"No, brother. There is nothing you can say and you know this as much as I do because this—" Loki raised his hand again, shoving the icy spikes into his face for emphasis—"is the only thing we both know for certain is not a lie."

Author's Note:
- So, here's two chapters all at once for you because I woke up at 4:30 a.m. today and couldn't go back to sleep, so I edited these two and here they are. I really had a lot of fun with this one, especially the illusions and Loki trying out his Jotun powers. Also, Thor's perspective on Loki's heritage truly fascinates me since he's never actually seen his brother's true form before and the next chapter is going to explore this even more. I can't wait to finish it (although it will be a while since I'm going on vacation tomorrow).
-And if you like the story, please leave a review and also if you don't like it, please leave constructive criticism. It would be very much appreciated. Thank you :3