3.

. . .

"I like what you did to your hair."

Thor nodded to Daisy as she dropped onto the concrete bench next to him in the rooftop sanctuary, patting at his shaggy brush cut with affecting awkwardness. "Ah, thank you."

Daisy seemed to resist the urge to touch it, looking him over in his gym rat-slash-Canadian bacon 'undercover' Earth outfit and not missing the hangdog expression that capped it off. Trying to find some tact and mostly missing it, she asked, "Isn't there some Viking thing about not cutting your hair unless you lose a battle or something?"

"I'm… fairly sure someone made that up." Thor chuckled, the glumness fading a little. "I'm going to tell Fandral that, though. Man's had the same style for six hundred years, I'd almost run out of ways to rib him over it."

"Is that the guy with the goatee that was super rude that one ti-"

"Yes, that's Fandral. Gods, I almost forgot about that." Thor squinted at the orange line of the horizon.

"I didn't. Grand dinner in Asgard with the royal family? Might be a nightly event for you, dude, but for me that was like some Iron Chef bucket list thing." She leaned back. "But anyway, you don't look like you're up for hashing out random depressing stuff."

"Mmm."

"Hyperfixated on just one depressing thing."

Thor glanced at her, getting a sympathetic grin back. "Good catch."

"We're big on noticing stuff around here. Kind of a job dealie." Daisy tossed her hair over her shoulder, then clasped her hands together and looked at the sunset. "Mack would have called Loki about twenty minutes ago. I don't know if he's gonna bother with the jet home or just magic that action. Either way, he should be back pretty soon now. You staying for dinner?"

"I was told there will be pizza. I won't lie to you, Miss Johnson. It's one of the better Midgard temptations." Thor couldn't resist a small grin of his own. He liked pizza very much.

"Especially from our regular joint. We've got a special, you gotta have a slice. We call it the Lyin' Vegetarian. It's sauce, cheese, then all you see is mushrooms, onions, green peppers, olives, and sweet red peppers. Sometimes banana peps and dried tomatoes if we're feeling it. And then, between the cheese and all those veggies, is a full layer of top shelf pepperoni. The hard-and-fast rule is, you cannot see it under the vegetables."

"Thus the lie."

"There's something about that much veggie that just really makes the pepperoni pop. We started getting it because we have this one guy in Research who is like technically Hindu, and by that I mean he's Hindu at home when his family's watchin' him, but that guy craves the burger like a thirsty man in a desert. So last year he actually brings his family to one of the not-top-secret work parties and we had, like, a real veggie pizza and some other stuff so they'd feel welcome because they're super nice… and that pizza, which our team snuck him over to, and I think he'd die for us now."

Somewhat at a loss, Thor managed to offer a pleasant-sounding, "That does sound tasty."

"Whatever's up, dude, with us you can at least eat your emotions." Daisy rubbed her palms together. "Kind of a chilly night coming in. Hey. Random little question."

"Of course."

"Do you know someone back home named Kara?"

"I…" Thor visibly paused. She had specified it was random. He thought. It took a while. "There was a young woman in the Queen's service named such. A handmaiden, if I recall correct. No one important, and the name is a relatively common one otherwise. Why?"

"Not a big thing. We had this deal last year, with the Framework… I'm not gonna be able to explain this easily. But we all got plugged into an artificial reality and the people that did it made damn sure to get Loki out of the way really early on, which is amazing, because usually he somehow gets sent out of town before the really big crap blows up on us, and there was some stuff that went down inside." Daisy shrugged. "I met some lady with that name working in the Asgardian embassy Loki was running. In the, uh, alternate reality. I didn't get a lot of detail then, thought maybe she was just a random he used to know, like an NPC pulled from his brain. We all had a couple. Turns out, he really doesn't want to talk about it. I just thought I'd ask."

Thor studied the young woman, frowning. That didn't quite sound like a small thing, but with Loki it could be hard to know what mattered and what didn't. "If he's that reserved about such a matter, be cautious."

"Oh yeah, dude. That's all I was gonna ask." She shrugged. "He talks when he talks."

Thor opened his mouth to say something to that, when the door to the rooftop sanctuary opened and an ordinary looking agent in slacks and a polo stuck his head out. He nodded to Daisy when she looked over, and she gave him the thumbs up back. "He's in. Dinner's on. He's all yours after that."

. . .

Loki watched Thor hold in a burp with a surprising amount of consideration instead of watching the occasional cluster of agents come into the cafeteria to sneak after dinner snacks. He knew what they were looking at. Two alien gods stuffed in a corner, letting some sort of unspoken tension build in the air around them. Not a common sight for them. For Loki, it was almost the scent of home.

Loki let the bottoms of his palms do the work of turning a thick-bottomed coffee mug around in his hands, wrinkling his nose at the rich, thick smell, and finding it acceptable.

It better be, since it was brewed from his personal bag of coffee, and he never left it alone by the carafe. These people kept reusing paper filters. They drank the kind of coffee that was purchasable in giant plastic tubs. And worse, sometimes they didn't set up a refill on the ruddy thing when it was almost empty. They were occasionally barbaric in their habits, left to their own devices. It drove him batshit.

The one time scourge of Midgard, now the easily riled guardian of the gods-damned common-area coffee pot.

Thor glanced around in silence, looking as awkward as he did when they were children and some authority figure or another was mad at them again. The shorn blonde hair had thrown Loki for a moment, but he decided he wasn't going to say anything about it.

Or really, much of anything at all.

Let Thor direct the damned conversation, if he chose. At least Loki would get a few minutes of quiet away from the phones and the other agents on the UN job. And if Thor wanted them to just sit in uncomfortable silence until one of them had to wander away, that would be fine, too.

That wasn't the warmest way Loki could be thinking about it, and the smallest pang of guilt hit him. He took a sip of his coffee, looked away past his brother's head, and waited out the silence.

"Seems busy here," said Thor, prodding at that quiet.

"Usually is." He kept his voice neutral. "Sometimes moreso than others." The peevishness tried to sneak back in despite his control. The mug came back up to his face, to try and swallow it down.

"I'm sorry to interrupt it."

Loki glanced at the door, watched Agent May come in, pass a word with some other agent, leave again. Then other agents, all of it flickering through the moments like playing cards through the spokes of a bicycle tire. He kept his tongue, and just watched.

Thor shifted in his seat. There was a large glass of water by his hand, and he gently shoved it away so he could clasp those hands together atop the table. "I didn't know who else I could talk to." Loki saw his face tweak in a wince, just at the edge of his vision. "That's not quite right. Not what I mean. I know who I wanted to talk to. I'd rather talk to you about what's going on, I just…" He trailed off.

Oh, this was already interminable. His hands tightened around the mug, guilt twanging again at the thought. Fine, a lifeline, then. It was the least he could do. "What did Odin do this time?"

That wince crossed Thor's face again, sharper and deeper. "It's not exactly what he did. It's something I may have found out."

"About what he did at some other point previous to your discovery. Odin advised me you were upset. He even suggested you may be coming." He put the mug down, pretending to ignore Thor's jolt of surprise. "There's a pattern to these things. Let's jump to the part where you just blurt out what the hell he did wrong this time."

Thor continued to sit there, going terribly, portentously still. That itself told Loki it was going to be bad this time. How bad?

The silence grew, tightening and coiling around them.

"It may well be that neither of us are Frigga's children."

The room went deathly cold. "What?"

"She might not have borne me, either, Loki. I found records with some… meaning to them that I don't understand yet. I found no other clues. And then I left Asgard to think, when Odin would not answer my direct questions based on those clues except in the vaguest of ways."

Loki restrained himself, scanning the walls, forcing his thoughts back into order, feeling the coldness bury itself inside him. He realized he wasn't actually all that surprised. When he spoke, it was with exhaustion weighing down each word. "Oh for gods' sakes."

"Odin only told me there had been something to do with strengthening the nine realms, that Frigga was involved, that-"

Thor's voice went on. Loki realized about two minutes later he wasn't actually listening. The coldness was there instead, crackling in his ears. He didn't know what he felt. Then he knew he was angry, and tired, and at the fringes of them, more dangerous emotions. A deepness he tried to avoid. Things that led to… He tried to cut them off before they grew. "What do you want me to say?"

Thor looked at him. "I… I don't know. I wanted someone to-"

"To what? Be there for you?" The coldness was breaking, despite himself. He wanted it to stop, the coldness was safer, but it wouldn't. The point of no return had been nearly ten years ago, and the melting was fresh again now. "Go talk to your friends. Them Avengers."

"Loki-"

"They've all got tragic backstories and whatnot. They'll sit you down, pat you on the back, give you a listen, and Stark's got a lovely wine bar put in at the new facility." Someone else was talking out of his mouth. He couldn't silence them, and he couldn't look at his brother. "Even if what you fear is true, what do you need from me?"

"I thought you might understand." Thor sounded hesitant now. Young, and surprised.

"I do." As flat as everything else. The color seemed leeched from the room. "I understand deeply. There are vast caverns tunneled throughout Asgard that could be filled with everything Odin doesn't speak of, even when he should. You have my sympathies on that. Gods know what else will emerge one day that he might have spoken of in a better time. Vats of hidden sea children. Werepeople. A pocket dimension full of stolen pennies. A jar containing a demon he won a bar bet with when he was a child. Who knows. Of course, that last one might just be me instead, and I pretend to forget about it." At least when he was so dead-voiced, he didn't sound mocking. "What else do you want?"

"I-" Hurt was creeping into Thor's voice. "I have some threads, things I was going to investigate after I went away for a while. I needed to think, to recenter myself, to-"

"Undergo a radical style change." It blurted out, acerbic. Gods, what was he doing? "I can't help you." The coldest words yet.

Thor leaned back, studying him. The hurt was now so plainly etched that he looked wooden.

The saner part of him tried to balance what he was saying with the truth. "I'm busy. I'm needed here." It still came out bitter.

"When we were children-"

"It's now. We're in the now." Loki found himself leaning forward, careening back towards the crash point. "You have my sympathy. I can't give anything else. I gave up everything just to survive, and to come here. You think you're out of joint, that you're not who you believed. Oh, I feel you on that, Thor. I do."

The bitterness broke. Something wilder crept into his voice, and he was furious with himself for letting it free, but that didn't stop it. "And when I discovered what I felt, what I was, where were you? What were you? Where was anyone? Thor, I fell alone, as alone as I have been my entire life, from where people thought I was and where I actually wasn't and never had been. No one helped me, no one could help me, not even Frigga saved me from that lie, and I fell. And then, I came back, and no one asked what had gone wrong, why had I broken."

His voice was rising. "No one ever asked. Not you. Not Odin, who started the whole damned fire in the first place. I was put in another box, and you let me out when you needed me, and you never asked why I was really put there. The madness is mine own make, and what I did is my responsibility. And yet before that I am dragged before Odin and I tell him - near begging - just swing the damned axe, because I'm tired of what I've been and what I never was. He had no mercy for me then. Even in that moment there wasn't yet any truth between us."

There were people, other agents, openly staring at them now as Loki's voice spiraled up. He felt their glances, going between him and his brother. He kept thinking of Odin's request. No wonder Odin had made it.

No wonder he was now having a difficult time trying to honor it.

"So I lived. I've even mostly forgiven him, though I think things are not healed. I don't know if they will. And I'm needed here, Thor. They know what happened to me here. They asked. And I'm-" Loki tried to pull his control together, lowering his voice for the agents that were watching him if nothing else.

He saw Fitz among that group, one of his friends, looking at him as if he were worried about him and not assuming that Thor was in the right here. Though deep down, Loki knew that he was also not fully in the right. His voice tried to gentle, not to soothe the hurt but to calm himself down. "We are busy. The one thing our family tried to instill in both of us was our duty to the realms. And this may not be Asgard, but I have here a place and title and they need me. I cannot run off on some new brotherly scheme with you. Those days are very likely done, Thor."

Loki got up, realizing he was unsteady. Nothing about this was what he should have said, what Thor needed to hear. But it had also, for better or for worse, been at least one angle of the truth. "I'm sorry," he managed to say before turning his back on their table. "I can't do this right now. This is on Odin, just as what he did to me."

It wasn't supposed to look like fleeing. In his mind, he knew that's exactly what it was.

There were a thousand other things left unsaid. They chased him down the hall, and Loki shut his mind to them as best he could.