#14

When sleep began to release Loki, his powers of recollection were failing him. His mind, still befuddled by sleep, exhaustion and terror, remained entirely blank for a moment. He tried to open his eyes but his lids seemed glued together. His memory came back in single flashing images, blurry at the edges, as they would come after a night's worth of drinking. The first image that materialized in front of his inner eye was the blue color of his hands. Holy Shit, you are a Frost Giant. The next image that came was of Thor summoning the Bifrost with his axe, bluish white lightning sizzling around him. His brother had rescued him. That was the only thought that mattered for now. Thor and Hela had come to an arrangement and he was free again. Alive again, more or less, and they were on Midgard. The Bifrost had released them on the exact same place where Odin had met his doom. There was a lovely irony in that. He rejoiced for a second, before the rest of his memories sped by, unfolding in a kaleidoscopic nightmare. Hela feasting on his conflicted emotions; his confrontation with Thor; his inability to shapeshift his body back into its Asgardian form; you just hate me too much for this ever work out; Thanos alive; the snap; the Avengers defeated; the deserted cabin where innocent earthlings had vaporized; his descent into the bottomless pit of his own twisted mind; the madness, the weakness, the brokenness, which had given first Thanos and then Hela the power to crawl through the crevices of his mind, to claw at the core of his very soul and send his mind into a spiral of never-ending hate, despair and pain.

But there was something else, too. Another memory that was slowly cutting its way through into his conscious thinking, like a dragon hatching from an egg. If you want your brother to acknowledge that you are his equal, you need to take revenge on him, Loki. You need to subjugate Earth. Only then will he appreciate your greatness.

You speak true, Mighty Thanos, he had agreed while another thought had been taking shape somewhere in his semi-conscious. If I as much as attempted to subjugate Midgard, Thor will come and stop me. He will take me home.

And then the last image came, still blurred by nightmare's confusing terrors, but sharp enough to recognize. He had fallen asleep in his brother's arms, crying like an accursed newborn. Loki yanked his eyes open and moaned in pain when he ripped apart the tiny splinters of ice that had glued his lashes together. Thor was standing in front of the counter in the small kitchen nook with his shirtless back towards him. Judged by the dreadful smell wafting from the stove, he was preparing a Midgardian meal, the rising sun outside the window casting a soft tangerine glow upon him.

How could you let your guard down like this? You are a hopeless … No, things are going to be okay this time. Loki closed his eyes again, savoring the feeling of connectedness to someone—something, anything—before he would lose it again. He knew that losing it again was inevitable. If Thor turned around, he would … You know what he would do, do you not? What he thinks of you? Always has thought of you? He has always thought you weak and now you have given him proof that you will never be his equal. You will never be his equal, Loki, never.

No, you are wrong! Wrong! Be silent now. STOP TALKING NOW! I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE!

The truth was, despite the fact that the prospect of his brother touching him had terrified and angered Loki in equal parts, he had still wanted it more than anything in the world, had craved it like a man dying of thirst longs for water. And when the hug had finally come, when he had finally felt as protected as he had in his brother's company as a boy, he had been at peace. You will not take that away from me again, do you hear me? I won't allow it. I won't!

Loki opened his eyes again, slowly this time, and cleared his throat. Thor turned his head and, strangely enough, flashed him an almost melancholic half-smile. "I put some clothes there for you."

"Thanks," Loki managed. Sitting up sent him into vertigo. He blinked the dizziness away, inspected the content of the bag his brother had placed on the floor and fished out a black long-sleeved shirt made of a very thin fabric and some sort of trousers that felt stiff against his fingers. "This is not really my style," he commented dryly.

"Well, if I had tried to put together one of your flashy black tie outfits before coming to your rescue, you would still be with Hela," Thor jested.

"All this time spent on Midgard and you still don't know how to dress properly?" Loki retorted as he struggled into the clothes in a half-sitting position. "I heard they have remarkable designers here."

"Do I look as though I care about designers?" Thor turned around then, a steaming frying pan in his hand, and Loki saw that the skin inside his arms and on his chest was blotted with dark, blistering patches. His lips parted in amazement. "What happened to you?"

Thor's smile died. Suddenly, Volstagg's voice rang out in the back of Loki's skull. Don't let them touch you! "Did I …" Loki paused, his thoughts shooting off in different directions all at once. Are you sure that you will not again bring pain to the ones you claim to love? "Did I do that? I thought … well, I didn't know …" I wasn't aware of the fact I can no longer touch people without hurting them.

"Don't worry, brother, it's okay," Thor mumbled and put down the pan, which contained white beans swimming in an unsavory red sauce, and gave off a nauseating smell. What a heavy price to pay for a hug.

Loki's stomach lurched. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. "I didn't meant to—"

"I know," Thor interrupted him, fixating him with a mixture of compassion, despair and pity in his eyes. "It's okay. It'll heal."

"Don't look at me like that," Loki snapped and immediately admonished himself for the hostility in his voice. Why are you antagonizing him? Why do you have to ruin it again? Why can't you just say thank you?

"Like what?"

"Like that. Don't pity me."

The half-desperate, half-angry smile Thor flashed him in response to the clarification hurt even more. "How can you expect me not to feel sympathy for you when I saw you break—"

"Don't," Loki cut in. He tried and failed to smile but managed to soften his tone. "Please, don't."

"Alright," Thor replied, endlessly drawing out the first syllable.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, I don't know really. Midgardians seem to use it in different ways, depending on the overall context of the conversation, I suppose. The meaning ranges from 'let's do this' to 'I'm tired of your bullshit'. You just never know."

"What was the meaning of yours?"

"I don't know that either. A combination of both, maybe, as in 'Alright, if you don't want to talk about it, fine, I can't force you, but damn you, Loki'." Thor paused when he saw Loki flinch. "Damn you and your hilariously far afield thoughts. Seriously, you are such a piece of work and a pain in the neck and sometimes I just want to beat some sense into you."

Even though his brother's manner of speaking was rather peculiar, the meaning of his words was clear enough and despite everything, they made him a laugh. "That seems fair."

Thor joined in. "They are right. It does feel good to say these things." Then, he turned serious again, locking eyes with his brother. "Seriously, Loki, let us talk about this."

"About what?"

"Everything," Thor cried out. "We barely scratched the surface last night."

Loki thought this over but, as far as he was concerned, all the important cards were on the table now. There was nothing he could possibly add to what he had already given away; at least not without losing more face than he already had. "I'm not sure I can manage more than the surface at the moment," he confessed softly.

Thor sighed but acknowledged his silent plea with a nod. He handed him a spoon. "Let's have breakfast, then."

"Are you sure this is edible?" Loki asked suspiciously. "It looks dreadful."

"It was the only thing I could find in these cupboards that isn't expired yet," Thor replied and slurped up a spoonful of the icky soup. "It's not bad though."

"Expired," Loki echoed before he surrendered, scooped up a spoonful himself and sniffed at it. The smell churned his stomach.

"Don't be so overly dramatic," Thor chided him. "I know I'm not a five-star chef but this is not as bad as you're making it out to be."

Loki put the spoon into his mouth and swallowed the soup before his brain had time to realize the implications behind the steam drifting up from the pan. He felt a spurt of flame shooting down his throat. He gasped; then coughed. "Are you trying to kill me?" He flicked the spoon onto the table and flopped back onto the couch. "This is scalding hot! Do you ever think, brother?"

Thor looked aghast for a second, stammering, "I'm—no, I didn't think." Then, his eyes narrowed. "But apparently you didn't either because you also knew this was going to be hot."

Loki tried to choke down the pain. He closed his eyes, put his palm onto his forehead and violently raked his fingers through his hair. Holy Shit, you are a Frost Giant. His brother's voice transformed into that of an annoying, shrill-voiced vendor marketing his products on the now destroyed Asgardian marketplace. That means you cannot touch people without giving them frostbites. Your body is going to reject food. And the very best thing, you cannot cry without quick-freezing your own lashes. Are you not curious what else there is to discover about that new body of yours? "I'm sorry, I can't eat that," Loki mumbled.

"But you have to ingest something."

"I really don't think so," Loki protested although he knew that his brother was right. His body was so weak that he doubted he would be able to stand up.

"You are completely starved out," Thor insisted. "Look at you. You have been with Hela for weeks. Your jawline looks like blades under your skin. You need to eat."

Loki forced his eyes back open and cast his brother a reproachful look. "Say, do you remember Jotunheim, brother?"

Thor looked confused. "Of course I remember Jotunheim. Why?"

"It is a barren wasteland consisting of nothing but stone and ice. Do you actually think that the cultivation of any type of plant is possible in such a climate?"

Thor chewed his bottom lip. "Not really, no."

"Then you should be able to understand that there might be a possibility that Jotuns do not consume actual food," Loki concluded.

"And where do they get their nutrients from?" Thor countered.

Loki heaved a desperate sigh as the dark frozen wasteland of his birth planet materialized in his mind's eye. "There aren't that many possibilities."

"Ice," Thor concluded. "Of course. Wait a minute." He went over to the counter, rummaged around one of the cabinets and came back with a translucent bag filled with little cubes of ice and a cylinder-shaped carton. "They had ice and ice cream, but I suppose the latter will not sustain you either."

"I suppose you are right," Loki agreed and took the bag his brother was holding out to him. He ripped it open with his hands and took a handful of ice cubes into his hand, squeezing them carefully and relishing their coldness. Eventually, he put one in his mouth, savored the sensation for a moment and swallowed it whole. He gulped down the rest of the cubes he had been holding in his hand one by one before he took out another that he did not immediately swallow. He sat there, Thor's eyes on him, sucking on the insanely refreshing piece of frozen water like a baby on a pacifier, while his brother was loudly slurping the icky red bean soup from his spoon. This surreal breakfast situation was a visible confirmation of the unbalanced power relationship that had bothered him for most of his life but, strangely enough, now that his body was so obviously that of a Jotun, it hardly bothered him. Loki was feeling inferior, yes, but for the first time since the devastating revelation that he was not Thor's biological brother, he did not hate himself for it because he realized with a sudden clarity that it was not his fault. He had been an infant when Odin had taken him. He had not chosen to be born to a giant. He definitely had not chosen to be brought into a family of Asgardian gods and raised among mighty warriors who would, quite naturally, relegate him to an eternal second place. All his life, he had wondered why he was no match for Thor and his comrades on the battlefield, why he did not seem to share their bravery and kindheartedness. But even after he had found out why—and still more so after he had found out that Thor also knew why—he had pushed himself even harder to prove that he was his brother's equal. Which he was not. Thor was an Aesir, born of two powerful gods, and he was not. He was a giant. Nothing more, but nothing less either.

It was not his fault then and it was not his fault now that Thor could consume actual food while he could not, and it was not Thor's fault either. If anyone was to blame, it was Odin and he was long gone. The dark part stirred again. Are you going to forgive him so easily? You witless cretin. Are you truly expecting him to be as forgiving as you are? You can hardly think that he would ever be as—

I told you that you are no longer wanted! Loki hissed inwardly. Be silent now! I am in control. I am in control.

Thor pushed the empty frying pan aside and suppressed a belch. "Look, I know this is painful for you," he began softly, "but we need to talk about this. About Asgard and the consequences of its fall and Thanos and—"

"Asgard," Loki whispered. The image of the Realm Eternal wooshed into his head and he shuddered at the bittersweet memory of the golden city, once sitting proudly at the top of Yggdrasil, now destroyed by an explosion that had shaken the very foundations of eternity. He remembered the looks of despair and fright on the Asgardians' faces as they watched their home disintegrate before their very eyes. Then he remembered the distrustfulness and disappointment in Valkyrie's eyes soon after the shadow of Thanos' ship had loomed over theirs, her head snapping towards him. "What did you do?" As everyone else in his life, she had immediately leaped to the conclusion that it was his fault. As everyone else, she had been right.

"I am sorry that I took the Tesseract," Loki apologized quietly. "If I had known that Thanos would find it so fast, I would not have returned to the ship and put our people in danger. I would have brought it somewhere else, even if I could not say where. But I just could not let an Infinity Stone burn. I could not be sure if … The entire universe might become unhinged if one of them is destroyed. I could not risk it."

"That I understand," Thor assured him.

A weak laugh escaped Loki's lips when he realized what exactly it was that his brother did not yet and would probably never understand. "This is about Odin." He snorted. "Of course, it is."

"Hate him all you want—and I know you have very good reasons—but he was the most powerful being in the Nine Realms. The Odinforce could have defeated Thanos and you know that but you didn't even let him try although you knew that Thanos was going to—"

"I didn't really know," Loki cut in.

"Death being the very fabric of the universe?" Thor asked. "That's what he said to you. You told me last night. You also told me that you knew of his goal, what he was capable of, how powerful he was. You knew enough to stop him but you didn't bother to tell those who could have waged war against him before it was too late."

Loki gulped.

"I mean, yes, what he did to you was beyond horrible and I know you came out broken and manipulated and insane," Thor continued, "and I truly am sorry for never giving this much thought before now but this is still no excuse to put the fate of the entire universe at stake. You came back to your senses after the Avengers defeated you. In retrospect, I know this because your eyes went back to their normal green. So, why didn't you tell anyone? Why didn't you mention Thanos at your trial? Why didn't you tell father what really happened? Why did you accept your punishment even though it was not entirely your fault and just crawled into a hole?" He paused a beat before he quietly added, "Why didn't you at least tell mother?"

Loki laughed down the numbing pain of bereavement. "As if you would have, brother!"

"I would not have accepted to be sentenced to a life in the dungeons if the fate of the Nine Worlds had been at stake," Thor replied with a touch of that old, accursed self-righteousness in his voice. "I would have reported this threat."

Loki felt the tears scratching at the back of his throat but he willed them into submission. "I am not going to listen to these accusations when I know damn well that you, too, would have tried to work this out alone. You would have battled your way out of the dungeons, killed all the guards and then set out to annihilate Thanos yourself."

"Maybe but it is moot to discuss this because I would never have been in that situation in the first place because …" Thor's voice trailed off, his eyes full of pain. "Never mind."

"What do you mean by that?" Loki inquired. "What situation exactly?"

"It's not important," Thor assured him. "Let's not—"

"Tell me what you were going to say, brother," Loki demanded. "And let me decide whether or not I find it important."

"Because I would never have let go," Thor finished softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Sorry."

The dark part clattered back into Loki's head, breathing poison into his ear. "Of course not," he snarled, his voice transforming into that of it. "Not the Mighty Thor."

"Stop calling me that," Thor shot back. "We're past that now, brother."

Loki did not have to feign surprise at this. "Past what?"

Thor smiled thinly. "You're so smart and so perceptive figuring out everyone's motives but still you never seemed to notice that you only ever call me Mighty Thor or Son of Odin with that growl in your voice when you're in doubt about yourself." He fixed him with an intense stare. "You admitted it. This has never been about me being Odin's son but about you not being his son. It has taken me fifteen hundred years, granted, but I am finally seeing through you. It's not me you hate right now."

Loki flinched inwardly. When did that witless oaf become so astute? You should not—"If you have dedicated yourself to humiliating me," he replied, pushing the voice out of his head, "you are doing a marvelous job, brother."

Thor exhaled a long breath. There was anger in his voice but it was the type of anger born out of sheer despair. "Why do you always assume that I mean to humiliate you? All I said was that I would not have let go but that does not mean that I think of you any less because you did."

Loki hissed a laugh. "Because I can have a moment of weakness but you can't? Now, that makes a lot of sense."

"I did have my own moments of weakness during the past weeks, believe me," Thor assured him. "I crumbled, I cried. I cried more than once, actually." He paused thoughtfully. "But other than that, I never had to endure any of the things you had to endure. I never found out that I am a Frost Giant by birth. I never found out that my entire Asgardian existence was a lie. I was never tortured, tormented, brainwashed and rejected for things that were, if anything, only partly my fault. So yes, after everything you suffered through, I think you're allowed a moment of weakness, Loki."

Loki could not identify the feeling that flowed through him and instantly took the edge off all the agony and self-rejection that had threatened to corrode the core of his existence for the past years. He did not know whether this unknown sensation was gratitude, self-acceptance or indeed the sense of belonging his brother had promised him but it did not matter. The only thing that mattered was that Thor did not think him frail despite his outburst the night before. Loki looked his brother in the eye and smiled at him. Genuinely smiled at him. "Thank you."

Thor smiled back and nodded.

"I knew it was wrong of me to exile him the way I did," Loki conceded, "but I don't regret that I did it. His time had come. He was longer acting on behalf of Asgard and you know that better than anyone else does. If he hadn't gone mad, you wouldn't have come to me for help." He chuckled. "Oh, there's a lovely irony in that, isn't there?"

Thor joined in. "Oh, brother, I missed you."

"I missed you, too," Loki allowed. "And, in my defense, I tried to perform some sort of damage control. I delivered the scepter to you. I also sent you a vision about the Infinity Stones but unfortunately—"

"Wait, what?" Thor interrupted but before Loki had a chance to answer, the noise of a large engine roared outside, drowning out his words.

Author's Note:

- Credit where credit is due: I took the "to crawl through the crevices of his mind, to claw at the core of his very soul" line from the Annual of The Mighty Thor 2011 comic, where the Silver Surfer tells Thor that he "felt the Other crawling through the caverns of my mind … clawing at the core of my soul."
- By the way, Thor made baked beans but to Loki, it was just a slimy tomato-y mess with beans in it and who can blame him, really? Eck. Speaking of food and what Loki can or can't eat, I thought about this for a long time and also discussed it with some of my friends. While Jotunheim appears to be a rather nice place in some mythology sources, where the giants are farmers and hunters who eat boars and stuff, most portray it as being pretty much covered in ice and snow all the time. That doesn't mean that there's no animals there who can be hunted and eaten. Same in the comics, where Jotuns actually prepare food (as in the recent Thor What If comic, for example, or #12 of the Thor 2007 comic where Loki and Laufey can be seen eating some kind of brown soup-stew-thingy from a bowl). But MCU Jotunheim literally consists of nothing but stone and ice and there were no animals or plants in sight either. In a random conversation that I don't remember in full, my dear friend Skadi then suggested to me that ice might contain nutrients for Jotuns, which is when the idea began to take shape in my mind. Also, in the third Magnus Chase book, the half-Jotun giantess Kólga eats "a meal of different colored snow scones" (p. 94) and, since she is The Cold One, the shaved ice seems to sustain her just fine.
- Last but not least, try to imagine Thor saying, "Oh, brother, I missed you" in sort of the same way he said, "I wish I could trust you" in The Dark World, i.e. with the same amount of love but, of course, with a lot less desperation.