A/N: Thank you so much for the comments, you are great3

Forever foes

There is difference between thunder and thunder, lightning and lightning, he can recognize it easily after centuries of witnessing Thor pulling them out of thin air, making the particles crash and the air vibrate. He can hear the difference in how it discharges, see it in the hue, sense in its fierceness. He never really liked thunders. As a child, he feared them. Thor was hanging off the rails of their bedroom balcony and wailed at the sky with open arms like a little priest offering sacrifice. He would watch him from under the blanket, pleading him, threatening him, crying for him to come back in the safety of the chamber. Thor was always fascinated by thunders that Loki never really understood. Loki was likewise fascinated by magic that Thor could never perceive.

All those storms he has experienced throughout the past months were not the Thunderer's making, none of them, and strangely, each bellow of the sky punctured a hole in his chest.

This one, though, this one he knows. And it punctures an equally deep hole in his chest as he waits.

He doesn't want to confront Thor, not yet. It has been months he last saw him, and his insides lurch with a falling sensation, falling, whirling, cold like the abyss, at the memory of their last moment. Words ring in his ears, the last words they shared, and they spark the bitterness in the pit of his stomach.

This is when Thor appears in the back of the metal vehicle, mighty and enraged. From then on, it is all about falling again, about swirling. About hitting the ground.

-o-

It has been months of captivity, locked up in Asgard like a caged animal, seething with anger and hurt, and hearing out the reports of his brother's wrongdoing and not being able to do anything about it. The brother he lost and mourned.

The brother who turned up alive.

Loki has the Tesseract and anyone can tell his intentions are as ill as ever. He is about to conquer Midgard, the realm so close to Thor's heart.

He doesn't know which thought sends the fury boiling in his chest but he suspects it's the first. Loki is alive, Loki is well, and he didn't seek them out, he didn't try to reach them while his family was wallowing in grief. It's like he truly, entirely tore the bonds between them forever, and it hurts. It hurts because Thor didn't, not for a minute. For him, he still has a brother, and he very much doubts it would ever change.

So when finally Allfather finds a way to send him to Midgard and he falls, while he falls, disappointment chews on his heart and his mouth is bitter. Does he mean so little to Loki? So little that he takes no care in anything else but destruction? He lost Loki, but Loki lost his brother too, back on the Bifröst – does he not miss Thor the way Thor misses him?

He feels the pooling bitterness ferment, and when he grabs Loki and steals him and throws him against the hard rock, it is this bitterness roaring from his chest as he bellows: "Where is the Tesseract?"

Because if he lets his focus shift from the actual danger, it is his heart he would let speak from him.

"I missed you too." And it's an ugly laugh that accompanies the remark, and Thor's stomach twists because Loki is mocking him, making fun of the thought Thor hasn't found courage to utter.

Loki is all irony and vile words, paying no respect to anything that once was the part of his life. Thor cannot take it, cannot take the memory of Heimdall warning him that the person who landed might not be the brother he once knew and loved. And this person is everything Heimdall could refer to.

"I thought you dead," he forces out, and he doesn't like how his voice cracks just a little. Loki's gaze is unwavering, testing, searching.

"Did you mourn?"

And Thor doesn't believe his ears because there is no mockery in Loki's tone, if anything, he is darkly curious, and Thor stares at him in disbelief because how can he not know what they went through. He thinks of all the words that could describe it but there is nothing sufficient, nothing that remotely manages to sum it up, the darkest days of his life, the full-on questioning of their whole coexistence, and his voice is low and shattered, full of fissures but he doesn't mind it anymore because Loki must understand what he means to him.

"We all did."

And from this moment on, it is just a long ride on the waves of heartbreak, and if Thor thought Loki wounded him a few months ago by proclaiming they have never been brothers, then he all but destroys him now by painting a life among shadows that he declares was his own beside Thor, behind Thor.

That he has no memories akin to Thor's.

"So you take the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights," he blurts. There is a passing frown on Loki's forehead he cannot really decipher but he understands it is nothing good.

Loki stares, and for a moment, he is back in Asgard, being behind his great and bright brother's back, the slim and dark and lesser son, the ever-looming shadow, and he is ordered to stay in silence, he is mocked for the womanly magic, he is told to know his place and always follow, just follow and never lead. He thinks of the numerous battles Thor didn't take him to fight along; he didn't always require his presence, and it was worse than if he had never taken him at all. Every time, before each campaign, it was hope blossoming then withering when Thor didn't ask him to join. It always made him wonder if he had done something that didn't please Thor enough, but Thor decided on a whim, like with everything else, and it pained Loki that he couldn't obtain a level of permanent sustenance in his brother's eyes, and Thor never once realized it. He has the whole catalogue of such moments because Loki never forgets, not even when he wishes to, and this is a curse and blessing in one, but Thor is oblivious, he has always been, and little jabs and cuts pour from his tongue without registering it. So he says imagined slights, and Loki feels something spreading within his chest, something he is reluctant to call disappointment because that would mean he's cherished a foolish hope that things could change.

So when Thor grabs him, when he almost pulls him in something that looks to be a hug, and says, tone desperate and wavering and Loki knows, just knows because he has always been able to read Thor that nothing matters anymore to this daft God of Thunder, no Tesseract, no invasion but this inane selfish wish -you come home-, Loki doesn't understand why Thor cannot see it, if he would ever be able to see it: that he doesn't belong anymore; that maybe once he thought to have a brother but that time is over and never comes back.

But he cannot help the sudden assault of hope, senseless and ludicrous it may be, and he has no idea where it came from but it darts through him -you come home-, and for this weakness he would chastise himself later with no mercy, but for this horrific second while he searches the man's face who once has been his brother he remembers the golden halls and crystal waterfalls of Asgard.

His vision blurs, and he is terrified at his own weakness. He tells himself it is all just a play, Thor tries to lure him into telling him the Tesseract's whereabouts, but it sounds like a lie even to his own ears, and when he shakes his head and whispers -I don't have it-, even he doesn't know what he is referring to: because he surely doesn't have the Tesseract with him, and even if he did, he would never give it up, but it is also clear to him that the other one he doesn't have either: the golden halls and crystal waterfalls. He hears home, and this is the image swimming forth in his mind, torturing, taunting image that clenches his heart, but it's fake and empty, it's like the illusions he is capable of creating: they look like their archetype but when you touch them, they burst like a bubble. This is how Asgard is in his heart: a false illusion of home.

He is grateful to the man clad in iron for ending this conversation so abruptly, and from the mountaintop, from this perfect balcony, he is watching with great entertainment the foolish, mighty Thor engaging in a fight, not stopping to consider it for a minute that in this matter of imminent war, he is on the same side with his captors.

Is he fighting for him, the blind ignorant dolt, as if it was solely family affair? As if he could turn back the events by the mere strength of his arms. Like he could gain back what was forever lost.

He watches with equal delight and disgust as the petty fight unfolds. Never before has such arrogant display of raw power repelled him more, and on a level, it appeals to him, fascinates him. It is beyond him how such paradox can nestle within his thoughts without conflict, without stretching his sanity and tearing it.

But Thor has always been like this. Once a boy, reckless enough, broke Thor's nose. They were young, just out of adolescence. Thor engaged in this petty debate over a petty subject, one of the many. His nose broke so severely that even Eir couldn't replace it properly. Ever since then it has been visible. Frigga lamented his old noble nose but Thor was beyond gratified. It was his first battle mark and he considered it the sign of manhood. He was proudly walking around Asgard with the violet, ugly bruise, with the damaged nose bridge, and instead of mocking, laughing at him, everyone gave their respect and praise. Asgardians value honors gained in battle above everything. Loki learnt it very early in his life. He did so because, given his built and nature of self-preservation, he lacked any of the quality Thor possessed.

So he waits and smiles to himself that Midgard's secret heroes don't even start to question why he didn't simply disappear. He lets them drag him back to the flying object, and he waits for Thor to come up to him, to spin the lost thread of their conversation, and he rolls his eyes because he can already tell what Thor would say but it nevertheless angers him.

"You cannot gain, Loki."

"Oh, certainly," he hisses, tosses Thor by the shoulder but he is like a mountain, he doesn't budge. "How could I win against the mighty Thor? I can only be second behind you."

Thor is incredulous, and as far as Loki can tell, he is honestly so. "Can you not see I'm not fighting against you? I'm fighting for you."

Loki doesn't even care to answer because it is all too ridiculous and he understands the words but doesn't comprehend what Thor is meaning.

"You cannot gain. Not because you cannot win. You can beat me. But you won't gain anything because you have nothing that's worth fighting for."

He laughs coldly, and now it's his turn to be incredulous. "Look around, Odinson."

"You want Midgard? You want to rule them? You want the throne? You can have it, yes. But it won't make you rightful, worthwhile. Because behind everything, this is what you deeply desire."

And Loki stares at him in white fury and puzzlement, and though Thor's tone didn't deliver any hint of intention to hurt, he growls in utter scorn. "Worthwhile? Wouldn't it be just foolish of someone like me?"

And he thinks this is the last time they talk about it, or talk about anything if he can have it his own way.

-o-

They keep Loki in the Stark Tower, locked up, bound and monitored constantly. He didn't want any of their help and treated his own wounds and cuts himself. Thor wants to give him this night, to let him sleep in a proper bed because he very much doubts Loki would have such luxury when they are back to Asgard.

Thor is plagued with sharp pangs of worry. Next morning, he would take Loki back home to face justice, and Thor is uneasy and weary to the bone at the thought of it. He has so many times imagined it, back when he thought Loki dead: he all but willed the childish desire into reality that he would go and track him down and take him back like a lost and found treasure, and they would celebrate and he would do everything to make up for whatever went wrong in the past. His head reels how different it turned out. It is absurd and wrong that he returns his brother to their home in shackles like a criminal, and in all honesty, even if his heart cracks at the thought, Loki is.

It is still beyond him to capture the suddenness of everything. How strange a feeling it is, how it makes his head spin that the greatest changes, the gravest turns in life happen during the course of a few hours or days. So short time, so trifling when someone lives for centuries. It makes him feel like the slow oaf Loki always called him. He is used to having enough time for everything. His world that has toppled and turned upside down is still rattling inside him without a place. Just what would have been a mere nightmare not more than a half year agone is now his life with a brother he is forced to fight.

He knows there would hardly be an opportunity once they are back to Asgard. Everyone would want a piece of Loki, but for now, it is only Loki and him. For now, he has a chance to have a private moment with his brother, and Thor has never been known for someone who wouldn't do everything in his power for what he believes in, even when he foresees its difficulties.

When he enters the room they keep Loki in, his brother doesn't even look up, and Thor has a moment to scrutinize him, undisturbed. Beside his battered form, Loki is haggard, his eyes are dull and lackluster in the hollows of his face, and he had been so even before he was beaten and defeated. Thor has seen him like that only once when Loki disappeared for weeks, centuries ago. Thor just came back from a foray he had gone on with Sif and the Warriors Three, and Loki wasn't at home, and as his parents informed him, he had been gone for some time then. When he didn't show up for days, Thor grew worried and guilty for not taking his brother with them. Then Loki came back, thin and almost translucent, so pale like the star-light. He had been up to the rocks above the Asgard palace. That's when he started to practice magic. Thor recalls how he wanted to march up to the mountains and smoke the Sorcerer out of its cave for doing that to Loki. He never dared to ask what exactly Loki had to sacrifice to obtain the knowledge of magic but he is not a complete dullard: there had to be a price.

And he is afraid, there is a price Loki promised to pay now as well. To the Chitauri or someone even worse.

Loki looks up then, and his gaze glints coldly behind the shattered resolution and vigor.

"Came to gloat over my latest defeat against you, brother?"

The word on Loki's lips scrapes Thor's ears. It pains him how he says it -brother- like it was a curse, something vile and aversive, something that disgusts him. It hurts him more than the occasions when he outright refused to be addressed as brother.

"You genuinely deem me such person?"

"Oh how could I forget your immaculate soul!" Thor only frowns, and his silence hurls Loki into deeper disdain. "Oh no, I know why you are here. You want to comprehend what went wrong with me, right? Nothing, Thor. Maybe I have always been like this."

"It is not true," Thor says, and there is no room for debate in his tone, so Loki doesn't even attempt. "So this is how you regard yourself? Does it make everything easier? It helps you in thinking your deeds would ever cease me to regard you as my brother?"

It's tragedy in itself in a way, and now that he said it out loud, it makes it somehow eternal and truer.

"You have my trust, then you lie and betray my trust, then you do something that in a wicked way makes up for it, and…"

The ever recurring cycle. This is how it always has been. Loki lies, cheats, then helps him with advices. Always like this. Loki falls, Loki rises… He doesn't add -though Loki might not even care- that he cannot help it: that Loki is always forgiven. He doesn't add it because he fears it would serve only as encouragement for his brother to know that he can stretch his patience. Maybe there is a limit there, but Thor doesn't know. He dreads it. He isn't too keen on musing what would happen if one time Loki crosses a line Thor is unable to name right now. What if there is something he would never be able to forgive? How would they go on then? How would he? It frightens him, the unnamable limit, but the lack of it would frighten him in equal measure.

Thor knows it is weakness. Knows that his greatest fear is that one day he might need to confront Loki in a fight for life and death. Because maybe as strong and formidable he is in physical battle as weak he appears on this level: he is unable to erase or overwrite centuries of memories, and he would forever be biased for the brother he grew up with. Maybe it is weakness, it is foolish, it is even dangerous, but when he looks at Loki, though he sees how fearsome he became, how twisted in his deeds and logic, he also sees the thin, raven-haired boy with sparkling eyes who clung onto him on stormy evenings when nobody could see it, the brother he loved so dearly and who on some point, Thor is sure of that, loved him back just equally. No one can expect him not to see how they were as children. He cannot betray his own heart, even if Loki did exactly just that with him. They have been there for each other ever since he knows his name. He cannot give up the belief that under the rage and hurt, under the madness, there is still the brother he loves. He cannot give it up. If he gives up, he loses him, and then there is so little remained to believe in.

And he knows Loki doesn't understand it. He knows Loki cannot grasp why he is so stubborn to accept what everyone else did long ago: that he is a monster. It makes Thor sad because it tells so clearly that the first person who truly and wholly has given up on Loki is himself. And whenever Thor shows his affection, treats him like the brother he used to be, he is reminded of his past self – of someone he forgot he has once been.

Loki rolls his eyes with undisguised resentment. He wants nothing more than stop dwelling on something that would not change but making Thor realize the same has always been a tedious task. Nit-picking, though, has proved to be a good strategy so far in averting Thor's narrow-minded focus.

"That is your problem. Many times I have told you I wasn't your brother, you half-wit."

And indeed, Thor jumps where he wants him to. "You're talking about blood. Blood matters nothing. It is not blood that makes us brothers, Loki. We are related beyond that."

"Oh, when has the Mighty Thor become so wise?"

"It is no wisdom. I have a heart, and it doesn't make me scared."

"Oh, this again," Loki laughs and it's a teasing laugh, mocking, resenting, and it delivers no warmth. Then it fades into a wry line across his face and when he puts his next words together in a chain, he doesn't deem them a lie, he believes they are coming from sincerity. "When I say I never was your brother, I don't refer to blood, Thor. I refer to all those things that made us be not brothers all these years. Moments when you were not my brother, not the brother you should have been. Not how brothers should be."

He watches Thor's face, watches how he, with cruel precision, touched and stabbed at a sore point, but his words somehow aches in his chest, too. He cannot decide on the taste in his mouth, if the bitterness is coming from the truth or the falseness of his accuse.

"Do you wish to know the key? The answer?"

Thor regards him warily. He recognizes the curling, taunting bane in Loki's voice, the all too ready helpfulness. He knows there is a jab behind them, a poisoned blade of a knife ready to strike but he nods nonetheless because when Loki uses this tone, there is usually truth mingled with the pain, and he wants to know, wants to understand even if there is a price of ache he has to pay. But deep within, if he is utterly honest to himself, when he is brave enough to admit, he already knows the answer. The answer that keeps him awake at night with the weight of guilt sitting on his chest.

"You have taken a part in this, Thor. In me standing here and you standing there. In what I am now."

His hands ball into fists, and Thor already feels the prick of the knife. "And how is that true?"

"Why? You think monsters are born out of whim?" Loki's gaze is dripping of irony and something deeper, something dark sits in his eyes and almost swallows the emerald shine. He waits for the answer to sink in, waits for Thor to start to debate but there is only silence, and in the silence, Loki adds softly: "You had mother, you had Odin. You had your friends. The noblemen, the warriors, the whole realm worship the Golden Son of Asgard. And you had me."

He smiles.

Thor sees the smile twitch around the edges, ever so slightly, and he thinks this is the first time he catches the mask Loki has fabricated for who knows what reason throughout the centuries slip. And its slip hits him harder than expected because he realizes the point is touching Loki so painfully that he loses control.

"And I…" He smiles again, and it's all but mirthful. "I had only you."

It is so simple a statement, and it occurs to Thor that this is exactly the reason why it tears at his heart. He knows it's not entirely his fault that Loki never has been able to make friends but he feels guilty nevertheless.

I only ever wanted to be your equal.

Thor remembers now. In the rage of the battle of words and fists, he didn't have time to ponder. He was bewildered by it, but dismissed it as one in the row of surreal things Loki just unleashed on him. The pain came in delay. Loki, with one single line, overwrote memories of centuries, their whole childhood, and Thor was left to doubt everything they shared, if what he remembers was real or fake. If they really could have different takes on the same events. If what he keeps fondly in his mind is something that drove his brother into madness.

"You still have me. You always will," Thor says quietly.

The mask shifts back, and Loki is again sardonic and haughty. "You want me back but not for myself. You want your little brother, the ever second, the weak, the petty. Gold shines brighter when placed against coal, and you acted on that contrast. On me being the odd one out."

"Not in my heart. You've never been the odd one out there."

He shrugs, shakes Thor's words off like they were droplets of mist. "Maybe. But neglect and inconsiderateness can achieve the same destruction as open cruelty, and you did that to me, Thor. Intentional or not."

Thor looks, and there is a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, cold and heavy like iron when he becomes aware of something that has never occurred to him before. He usually wears his emotions like robes for everyone to see them but for the few times he had something that bothered him, Loki was the first he turned to. Never the Warrior Three, never Sif, never his parents. It was always Loki, and he trusted his brother's judgment more than anyone's. It is the first time he realized that over all these years, Loki rarely confided in him. He knew he wasn't the best man to give advices, but he could listen, he wanted to listen… now he wants to. He regrets so many things now. Maybe Loki sensed it, he sensed that Thor wanted only to be listened, selfishly but never intentionally. He should have been more mindful. They all should have been. Loki was so different, so delicate like a jewel made by the hands of the craftiest dwarves in the Nine Realms. He was never the worthiest man for such preciousness and fragility. His hands could only break things, and he feared, in his thoughtlessness he broke Loki.

He realizes only now that over a thousand years, he still didn't get to know him.

Exasperated, Thor cries out, because this is all he can do to halt the slowly oozing poison in his mind. "Why have you never told me when I hurt you?"

"What for? To make you take it back, and the next time do it again?"

"I'm better than that. You should have given me credit."

"You are fire, Thor. You first do the rampage then think."

And Thor has to admit Loki is right in this.

"I failed you," Thor says, and it is so simple, so terrifyingly humble and solemn that for a second, surprise springs faster on Loki's face than he could stop it from leaking through his indifference, and he feels pity for him, for the great, golden, infallible son who is forced to acknowledge his foibles. "And I failed myself. I failed to show what you mean because I took you for granted. It was never once out of spite. All I always wanted was the best for you but maybe I failed to realize the best in my standards very much differed from yours. I know how my means can be rough, and not as chiseled as yours, and now I see the damage it caused. I deeply regret it, brother."

Loki's face is detached but he has a twinkle in his eyes that Thor cannot properly decipher. It can be anything from surprise to appreciation and even to condescension.

Loki doesn't say anything because the moment is the closest he would ever get to victory. At the sight of Thor's weary face, he revels in the knowledge that Thor finally understood that part of it is his creation, part of what Loki became, this threat on his precious realms is all his doing. With his dismissal and ostracism he created a monster he is bound to fight for eternity, no matter if he cares for him or not, Thor is still forced to fight him forever. And this is his only consolation and he squeezes the dubious pleasure out of the knowledge that the rotting hell that corrodes everything within him and he can never reconcile with is now passed to Thor like a heritage.