#10

"Loki …" Thor racked his brain for something else to say but his thoughts failed him. Loki was shutting down emotionally and he knew he needed to prevent this at all costs, because once his brother's lips remained sealed, he could never be sure whether Loki was merely lost in thought or if he was slowly sinking into his own mind, drowning in madness, and plotting to kill him.

"Not everything has been a lie," Thor tried but, even to his own ears, it sounded insincere. "We grew up together as brothers. That is not a lie; not to me."

Loki grunted but at least he gave a reaction. "Of course not," he mocked.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I can see in your goddamn eyes just how much you think of me as your brother right now," Loki snapped. "You have internalized the hatred towards Jotuns as much as everyone else did. Don't lie to me." His voice was thick. "Not about this."

"But you're still you," Thor said softly, uncomfortably aware that the last time he'd said those words, the you he'd denounced back then was the very same you he was trying to advocate now.

"Maybe. But do us both a favor and acknowledge to yourself that you wish I didn't look like this," Loki whispered, his voice quavering with pain and anger. So much anger. Thor's stomach dropped. "Accept that I was born like this and that Odin made me into something I'm not." Loki's gleaming red eyes searched for his. "Accept that the brother you want to save so badly never existed."

Thor was at a loss for words. Loki had seen right through him, of course he had, but even though he was pleading with him not to lie about it, Thor could not admit out loud that his brother's Jotun appearance was bothering him for reasons he didn't even entirely understand. He could not say, 'Yes, I wish you'd come back in your Asgardian form,' although this was exactly what he wished for.

A desperate laugh escaped Loki's lips but the flicker of madness in his eyes miraculously died down. Even though his skin remained blue and his eyes remained red, he suddenly transformed back into the Loki he had known for fifteen-hundred years. "See?"

"What happened?" Thor asked softly because he could not think of anything else to say. "You redeemed yourself. We saved Asgard. We saved it together." He paused for breath because he knew what he was going to say next would pain them both. "You died as an Odinson."

"I didn't die as Odin's son," Loki corrected him quietly. "I died as your brother."

"That is not true. I saw you cry on this exact same spot when he died. I saw you mourn him, if ever so briefly. Whatever happened to you that you can't seem to forgive him now?"

"Give me one reason why I should."

Thor drew in a deep breath. "Because you're wrong. Not about everything, of course. He should have told you but you think he didn't love you and that is not true. He saw you grow up, Loki, and he learned to love you even though you weren't his son by birth. I know that. And remember, he did say that he loved us both, shortly before he died. Stop telling yourself that he didn't."

Loki swallowed. "Do you want to know what Odin said to me when you took me back to Asgard after New York? He told me that the only birthright I could claim was being cast out onto a frozen rock and left to die."

Thor felt hatred flare up inside of him at the thought of Odin saying such a vile thing to Loki's face, but he had learned over the years that the only things hatred and anger brought forth were more hatred and more anger, so he tried to calm himself down. "I don't know what to say. He probably didn't mean to—"

"Didn't mean to?" Loki echoed, shooting him an incredulous glare. "Let me make one thing very clear, brother. If you try to convince me one more time that this man loved me, I will never speak another word with you for as long as I live. Odin was a terrible father, not only to me. He cast his own daughter out. After that, he fed you the lie of being his firstborn, made you believe you were ready for the throne when clearly you were not, then stripped you of your powers and exiled you to Midgard for not being ready as if it was your fault. He took me away from my home, from my real father, and kept me as a discardable political trump card that he would have played for peace with Jotunheim anytime given half a chance. He locked me up in the dungeons. He would have ruled death for my crimes if not for mother's intervention. Not to mention the fact that he senselessly started a war with the Dark Elves—the very thing he banished Hela for, mind you—over mother's death. He was a terrible person but, go ahead, keep telling yourself that he wasn't and that he loved you."

Thor was dumbstruck. He had hoped for an emotional reaction—that was why he had brought Loki back to this place after all—but he hadn't expected it to escalate so quickly. He hadn't expected to have his worldview smashed to pieces. "I know that he did," he whispered, too paralyzed to respond to anything else his brother had said.

"Well, good for you," Loki snapped. He had stopped dead in his tracks, his red eyes drowning in pain. His breathing was so heavy that his entire face was vibrating.

"Loki, I—"

"No, you stop talking!" Loki shouted in a shrill, tearful voice. His entire body was shaking now. "I know what you are trying to do. You are trying to ease your conscience. You want me to forgive him so that you can mourn him in peace and that is a ruthlessly selfish thing to do considering the fact that I wasn't even allowed to attend mother's funeral!"

"That was years ago!" Thor cried out. The familiar anger and sense of betrayal that had always mingled with the love for his brother in recent years had been gone after his death, but it came back now and it was doing so with an intensity that threatened to overpower him. "You're not seriously putting the blame for something you alone messed up on me after all this time, are you?"

"Yes, I am!"

"It wasn't my fault that he took you from Jotunheim, Loki. It wasn't my fault that he lied to you. It wasn't my fault that he wanted to make me king instead of you. It also wasn't my fault that you attacked New York and that he imprisoned you for it!" Thor screamed. "And it certainly wasn't my fault that Malekith killed our mother!"

Although, maybe it was, because he'd brought the Aether back to Asgard in Jane's body. But that was beside the point.

Tears sprang into Loki's eyes. He squeezed them shut to keep the tears from spilling and tiny ice crystals solidified on his lashes. "Still you chose not to tell me. You could have at least told me," Loki whispered. He opened his eyes and flicked the tear crystals away with his little finger. "You sent a guard to deliver the message and you never once acknowledged that I had as much of a right as you did to be devastated by her death."

Thor nodded weakly as the anger he had felt only moments ago streamed out of him, leaving him with a feeling of emptiness and desolation. Even though Frigga had told him that he and Odin had cast large shadows over Loki's existence and had said right to his face that she had always loved and would always love Loki as much as she had always loved and would always Thor himself, he had called their bond into question after his brother's misdeeds. He had thought her naïve for still believing in him but more than that, he had called Loki's feelings for her into question because he had been convinced that Loki did not care about anyone or anything besides himself and his own pain at that time. Only now did he see that this was not true. "It wasn't the most virtuous thing I've ever done," Thor acknowledged in a low voice. "I give you that."

Loki gave a hardly perceptible nod. "What truly bewilders me is that you were unwilling to share our grief about mother's death but still somehow expect me to mourn for Odin with you or, at the very least, reconsider my resentment towards him."

In the face of these not so far-fetched accusations, Thor's anger came back with full force. "Mother died years ago, shortly after you declared war on Midgard, threatening to kill everyone I cared about; shortly after you tried to kill me several times. You're right, I didn't want you at her funeral because I thought it was somehow your fault and that is why I thought you didn't deserve to be there and I didn't want to share my grief with you either because of it." Loki flinched but somehow this gesture only fueled his anger. "And coming to think of it, you were responsible for Odin's death as well, so, yes, I really shouldn't expect you to mourn for him because the only person you've been capable of mourning in the past is yourself!" He breathed out heavily, his entire body throbbing with rage.

Loki hissed a laugh. "Oh, make up your mind, brother."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means what it means," Loki replied curtly.

Thor sprang forward, his hands making a grab for his brother's neck as he had so many times before but this was the first time he truly recognized it as a gesture of sheer desperation. His hands had grabbed Loki by the neck on the plane on which Tony Stark and Steve Rogers had captured him after he had killed eighty-nine people in Germany shortly after Thanos had released him. He had grabbed him by the neck on the rocky surface they had landed on after escaping from that plane. He had grabbed him by the neck on Stark Tower when he had tried to convince him to stop the Chitauri. He had grabbed him by the neck when Loki had accused him of being responsible for Frigga's death all those years ago. And yet, Thor had never meant to hurt him. He had always grabbed his brother's neck in the fallacious hope that his touch might shake Loki out of yet another stupor and Loki had never flinched. Until now. Loki jerked away from him, stumbling backwards, his chest heaving with short, erratic breaths.

Thor pulled back instantly and held up his arms in a gesture of surrender, palms outstretched.

"Leave me alone," Loki whispered, his voice growing louder as he continued. "You only ever come to me when you want something, which means that the only reason you brought me back is because you want something from me now as well. Information about Thanos and the Infinity Stones, I should guess. But then again, you didn't only bring me back from the dead, did you?" He took a step towards him, closing the distance between them. "You brought me to this of all places to reminisce or the Norns know what else, which tells me that you miss Asgard and Odin and Frigga and your friends and maybe you even missed me a little. What a shame that I look like this now, huh? That even though I am back, I am also somehow gone, and you are somehow still alone. Well, fancy that, your old life is gone, Thor. It is gone. Just like my white skin."

"You accuse me of being selfish," Thor concluded and even though he was well aware he had been acting selfishly when he had embarked upon this journey, it made him furious that his brother was confronting him with it. "You, of all people."

"You are being selfish," Loki replied coldly. "You've always been selfish when it came to our … relationship."

Thor spat out a desperate laugh as memories of the past weeks flashed up in front of his inner eye. The face of Tony Stark when the other man had returned to Midgard from Titan with Nebula; bruised and battered and beyond all hope, mumbling more to himself than anyone else, "We lost." The warm welcome, which they had all received from Shuri and the rest of the Wakandan people despite the tremendous losses the nation had suffered. Thanos's almost-sneer when the titan had told him that he should have gone for his head. Natasha Romanoff's half-smile when he had arrived on the battlefield in Wakanda with his newly forged weapon. Valkyrie's cry that "thank God" he was alive when they had returned to the Avengers Facility in Upstate New York. Bruce's hand on his shoulder. The expression of absolute forlornness on Steve Roger's face. Thor might have acted selfishly every now and then along the way but he was still part of something bigger and he was a part of it in a way that Loki—the trickster, the rogue, the master of lies and deceit—could not ever hope to understand, even if he was to live for another millennium. Suddenly, he remembered Loki shouting at him, I am not your brother. I never was, and he remembered, too, just how easily he had brushed this off as another flight of fancy. How easily he had always discredited Loki's surges of emotion. How easily he had written him off as a mother's boy. How easily he had questioned his abilities as a warrior, as a son and as an heir to the throne of a realm that no longer existed. And then he remembered what he had said to Odin, who had not been Odin at all, a perceived lifetime ago: I would rather be a good man than a great king.

Was he being a good man right now? Probably not. Was he fulfilling his duty as an Avenger? Most definitely not. Was he being the big brother he could have been when Loki had found out that his entire existence had been a lie? He was trying to be but Loki was making it insanely difficult. Yet as much as Thor wanted to help Loki—as much as he wanted to give him back a sense of self, a home, a sense of belonging somewhere—he realized that he would have to give him up in favor of his friends. "I was a fool to believe you would for once appreciate what I've done for you," Thor mumbled to himself as he turned away. "I will be gone then."

"Wait," Loki cried out. "Are you just going to leave me here?"

"Oh, make up your mind, brother," Thor parroted him without turning back. "You just asked me to leave you alone not two minutes ago." He quickened his pace and strode away, leaving Loki to himself as he pondered over how he had just put the innocent soul of one of his friends at stake. He needed time to think and get himself out of the mess he had catapulted himself into because he had neglected his duty not only as an Avenger but also as the God of Thunder and protector of the Nine Realms when he had put his personal objectives over those he had sworn to defend. He needed time to figure out a way to retrieve the Infinity Stone from Hela and to preempt their bargain in some other way than taking his brother's life. He searched the bag he was carrying for the communication device that Tony Stark had forced upon him and noticed with no great surprise that Valkyrie had left him a number of messages. He put the device away again. Apart from the fact that he was still suspicious of its usefulness, he did not know what he could possibly say to her. You were right. Of course, you were right. This was beyond dumb. And I actually made everything a lot worse. By Odin's beard, I offered Hela a mortal soul. And for what? For what? For a brother who only ever sees the worst in me. He pulled the device back out, briefly considering calling her and saying just that, but then put it away again. He was not yet ready to admit to his defeat. He would not speak to her again before he had thought of a plan.

And so Thor kept walking until the clouded sky eventually faded into dark and a small wooden cabin loomed at the horizon. He headed towards it on impulse. A coal-black raven was flapping its wings over his head as he climbed the sloped trail towards the cabin's door. The bird followed him and perched on the poorly plated roof as he gently knocked on the door. No answer came. He briefly contemplated turning around but then pushed the door open and set a foot over the threshold. The cabin, which was consisting of two built-in wooden bunk beds on the left and a seating area around a fireplace along with a small kitchen nook on the right side, seemed uninhabited. He entered and stepped into small heaps of dirt and ashes. He tried to swallow the horror, his entire body rendered motionless with shock for a moment.

Then he registered the raven flying into the cabin through the door he had not yet closed, perching on one of the armchairs and fixing him with dark turtle green eyes. Thor walked towards it, suddenly overpowered by another roaring wave of anger. The animal was surveying him the same way it would have surveyed a worm squirming in the grass if it had indeed been a raven. Thor lunged forward and clutched the bird, squeezing the small body inside his fingers. The raven cawed.

"Come on," Thor mumbled. "I know it's you." He tightened his grip a little.

"Please stop," Bird-Loki pleaded. "You're hurting me."

"And you're lying to me," Thor fired back. "You told me you couldn't shapeshift anymore, yet here you are, messing about with my mind as you always do."

Loki croaked in response. Thor flung him onto the blue-and-white checkered couch that stood by the wood-paneled wall. Loki transformed back into his real form mid-toss and landed ungracefully on the cushion, groaning softly. "I don't know why my powers keep coming back so slowly and chaotically."

Thor punished him with silence.

"Fine," Loki conceded. "We need to talk. About the Infinity Stones."

Author's note:

Okay, so here's a little more madness, a little more sadness and a liiiiittle more family drama. It honest to God took me almost a month to finish this because, even though I know exactly where I want this story to end, I still couldn't figure out how to unravel the knot of this particular interaction after it sort of took on a life of its own in my roleplay. But since this moment between Thor and Loki is basically the springboard of everything that is going to follow, I wanted it to be as authentic as possible, so I rewrote this about eight times, testing different scenarios, different reactions, different dialogues. Thor and Loki do have a very complex, very destructive and also very dependent relationship and I truly think that if you set them free on a deserted place like that with no way to escape they would argue for a hundred years. Also, I am convinced that Loki would not come to his senses in a matter of hours after being tortured, so I tried to touch upon all the aspects that might have corrupted his relationship with Thor and that might rise to the surface in such a confrontation, while simultaneously trying to keep it as short as possible and circumvent repetitions (I see your point, Akira, I really do). If this was too slow a wind-up, I apologize and I promise the next chapters will get down to business.

Also, thank you GlitterQueen, for pointing out that the Bifrost should have been linked to Asgard itself. I agree but since Thor could summon the Bifrost with Stormbreaker in Infinity War and Odin could, in fact, travel across the Nine Realms before the Bifrost was even created in the comics, I think that it is fueled not by Asgard as a place but by some kind of power that the Aesir possess and that they somehow can administrate in different ways, including having it somehow transferred to the forges of Nidavellir.

And last but not least: I published a one-shot last night that might give you a little hint about Loki and the Infinity Stones :3