A/N: So, this is the final installment. See you in the next story;)
And thank you for the comments you left so far. You are great!

Forever friends

The same memory resurfaces in their minds, they both are certain of it: the last time they stood together on the same spot, before the molded golden doors to the throne room. Thor's coronation day.

The day when everything started to fall apart.

The present is like the mockery of that long past day. They reenact it, and it's skewed, warped all to the wrong way. The metal of their cuirasses are battered and lost their shine, capes are torn and burnt, and so are their gazes. There is no vigorous anticipation, no playful taunting there, only the hovering shadow of their losses. They look defeated, both of them do, the captor and the captive. And on the greater playground, from every possible slant, they indeed are.

It has never occurred to Loki before how their own garments are just costumes and camouflage. The golden son of Asgard wears silver and grey iron, while the second son, the lesser son, the son born in shadows and cold, is clad in golden. They are all lies, he ponders now until he remembers the softness of gold and durability of iron, and it makes him bitter.

They are halting here for long moments and Loki doesn't understand why. Upon their arrival, Thor sent the einherjar guards for the Allfather, but the Thunderer is now hesitating. His face is tight as he turns Loki toward him, and Loki is almost startled when Thor reaches for the back of his head, afraid that he is planning to smother him with another display of foolish affection.

Instead, and it renders his blood to a standstill in his veins in astonishment, with the same serene expression Thor removes the muzzle without a single word. His fingers run along the manacles around Loki's wrists, it's a cursory touch and almost apologetic, and Loki feels the disbelief creep on his face because Thor by no means should be so unreasonable and emotional, and still, on a horrifying level it affects Loki, too. The shackles, however, stay.

When he finds his voice, it is satisfactorily unwavering. "Aren't you afraid you would be banished again for disobeying the Allfather in the favor of the Jötun dog?"

Thor glares at him, and it's nothing reassuring. "I would hit anyone for saying such unsavory words about you. You are no exception, brother."

Loki huffs under his breath. "Then the truth itself is unsavory."

Loki's hostility toward their father aggravates Thor. For some reason he suddenly recalls the first time their father entered the Odinsleep. He was still a child and it terrified him, the motionless form of the Allfather. Their mother soothed him by telling it was all fine and natural, and though he didn't understand, he was willing to believe it. Loki was younger, though, pale and frightened. Thor remembers he cried only because Loki rarely did. He recalls that night so sharply as if it wasn't hundreds of years ago. He remembers how Loki went missing the following morning. Thor woke up in their room that morning and found his brother's bed empty. He has never seen their mother so petrified and horror-stricken. Eventually they found Loki. He was sleeping at the feet of their father, not more than a curled up bundle of wool and cotton under the golden dome of Odin's bed, and when their mother asked him if he had been afraid during the night, Loki shook his head. He pulled forth the wooden sword that belonged to Thor and said with severity so unlike of young children that he was watching out for father, because in his sleep, he couldn't defend himself.

Thor wonders if Loki would ever do that again. He very much doubts it.

"Do not behave like it is any easy for our father…"

"Oh, I'm sure it is not," Loki says with biting tone. "Calling him consequently our father doesn't make it true, Thor."

"Correcting me consequently won't make anything untrue, brother," Thor snorts. He shakes his head. "We have been living under the same roof all our lives. I have loved you for a thousand years, in every waking moment of my life. You think there is anything you do or say that can make all of this undone?"

"You are being sentimental again."

And it doesn't work, his irony is powerless, it glances off Thor like a knife with a too dull tip. The look in Thor's eyes makes Loki want to shrink back, and it's fear that engulfs him, fear that Thor would try to pull him down in the emotional pit he is wallowing in, the fear that he would actually, eventually succeed.

"You once told me: however envious you might be sometimes, I should never doubt that you love me. Do you remember that?"

Loki doesn't look at him, and for a moment he is taken aback that Thor still remembers this moment that seems like it belonged to another age, another life. How ironic to mention it right here, right now. It took place at this very spot, and through the whirlwind of the events during the past months, his mind is able to recall the scene only as if it happened behind misty windows. He sees himself, sees Thor, he sees the shadow of betrayal looming above their heads. All unclear, blurred. The feeling, though, it's a stab through his whole being. Never doubt that I love you.

He understands Thor's question easily. He can translate it into its true meaning. Do you remember that?

Do you still love me?

And he is horrified, not because he can answer -no. never did. never will.- but because he can't, not even to himself.

Though the words feel foul on his tongue, he says it anyway. "It was a long time ago. It's part of the past now. Things have changed."

"Maybe in you. But never in me. And I will never forget that once I had a brother who loved me just as much."

Loki turns away. Suddenly he doesn't know who he is angrier with: himself or Thor. The big oaf managed to reach him with his pathos, and Loki is honestly surprised that his own words cut him just as painfully as it certainly did Thor.

"I wouldn't want to make the Allfather wait too long," Loki advices and it's a retreat, an escape from a bad to a worse. But he can deal with the worse, he believes. Not with Thor, not now.

Thor silently agrees but it's only display. His hand slips around his brother's elbow, his strides are firm but inside, with each step up to the door, he is crumbling.

It is the old defense, he recognizes it. It was in his blood from the very beginning, the never ceasing urge to protect the family but above all, the brother who failed to grow as big and intimidating in built as he did. It's his second nature, really. It was the first and maybe the only command from his parents that he took so seriously that he is ready to follow even if it costs his life – he has done it even against their own parents, even when he knew Loki was no innocent – more in the past, though, than recently but still, it is embedded in his body like a motor reflex.

He remembers when it was born, the reflex. It followed a fight between him and Loki who was not more than a mere toddler, a childish fight over a broken toy, not more. Their mother pulled him to her and instead of scolding him, she said: "This is your little brother, Thor, yours, and only yours. You will grow up together, and this gives you something that you find nowhere else: people come and go in one's life but siblings stay forever… he can be the closest person to you, as you can be the closest person to him. Protect him as you are the older. Protect him, because if you don't do it, no one will."

And ever since then, those words have been sewn in his heart. Maybe back then, all he could hear and understand was the word 'yours'; that this soft and gurgling and sweet-scented new toy was all his. He was a proud and selfish boy. Even his first word was his own name – with the involuntary shame, sudden fondness for Loki gushes forth in him at the memory of their mother telling them that they shared the same act for Loki's first word was, as well, Thor's name.

He always acted upon it without a second thought, no matter against whom he should go. His friends weren't particularly fond of Loki, Thor knew it, but they didn't dare to vocalize it for knowing Thor would hit anyone saying a foul word of his brother.

Loki has always been different, and children, as clear-sighted and cruel they can be, never failed to point it out. It was Sif, back then golden-haired, shining Sif, who started it. The first day they met, the two princes let out of their secluded golden world, she looked at Loki and asked, "Why does he have dark hair?"

Thor looked back above his shoulder at his brother, took in the sight of the raven locks he had known almost as well as his own, turned to stare at the new children, at people crossing the space around them, thought back at all the guests and guards at the palace, their own parents, and he glanced at Loki again like he saw him for the first time. Nobody had hair like his, everyone was red and golden and silver-white. He saw the look on his brother's face, the slackened jaw and unblinking eyes. Back then Loki wasn't the master of his emotions as much as these days.

Thor had the most affectionate smile on his face, and when he spoke, he directed his words at Loki and not the other children. "Because he is special." And this was his argument. He was rewarded with the slightest smile but it was a unique treasure.

It never stopped, though, the questions, the hints, telling Thor how strange his brother was, how unlike any other person in Asgard, how out-of-place; growing more oft after Loki started to practice magic. It always infuriated him, the insinuation he never understood or maybe it has never even been intended but it enraged him nevertheless. The remarks stopped abruptly from his friends when he got into a fist-fight with another boy and gave him a decorative black-eye for calling Loki puny and strange, a mockery of Asgardians, doing so with Loki within earshot. Thor jumped on the boy like a rabid beast with foam at the mouth and bloodshot eyes. Later that day Loki huffed that he didn't need saving but he tended Thor's bruises with tender touches and a soft smile he didn't try hard enough to hide.

This protection is what makes Thor's hand wrap around his brother's arm. And maybe, he seeks strength through this touch, too.

Loki has only the slightest falter to his steps as they enter the throne room. There is no one inside but the Allfather perched on the throne, and a handful of guards lining the walls, silent and unmoving as shadows. Loki expected the witans to be present, all thirsty of his blood, and it's a surprise they are alone.

They cross the room, and the bitterness engulfs him. The golden walls, the fan of cursive stairs of the dais and the magnificent plains of the throne slap him in the face. The last time he was here, he was the rightful king of Asgard. He was the one sitting on the throne with Gungnir in his hand, with the burden of the realm on his shoulders, with the weight of trying to be seen by the father who has never been his father sitting on his heart. In the end, it crushed him. Then again, perhaps he was destined to fall from the very beginning.

He remembers he didn't sleep a wink after Thor was banished. He was roaming the corridors, the dungeons, the chamber far below, coated in the bluish hue of the truth of his origin, and he was so tired that there were times he couldn't think straight, but when he tried to sleep, he found himself wide awake. There was a moment somewhere between sending the Destroyer to Midgard and setting his plans in motion when he stopped and tried to remember when had been the last time he ate. The moment the frost giant grabbed his arm back in Jötunheim and it left him unharmed shattered something within him, and everything spilled out, the inside was suddenly outside, the up was down, and he knew it would never be the same again though he didn't know the answers they had kept from him all his life. Something stopped working in him that day and hasn't started again ever since.

The Allfather looks small and old, almost lost under the enormous mass of the throne and golden canopy, and Loki suddenly doesn't understand how he ever could fear this man. He doesn't understand the broken look, the disappointment and regret: to be foiled in his hopes, Odin should have had hopes to begin with, hopes in Loki, but it never looked like so. How can he fail a standard if there has never been a standard set? Apart from following all orders with bowed head, of course, waiting in the background until he occurs to be useful. He doesn't mind being the source of chagrin in that matter.

Odin is addressing his lines to him but they are weightless in Loki's mind. They are nothing more than mere respite of the final word.

Thor is standing beside him all the while, a hand casually around his elbow. It's not restraining, Loki isn't even sure for what purpose he is keeping his hand there. When Odin speaks up, iron fingers are tightening around his arm, and Loki steals a glance at Thor, at the frown over his eyes and lips, and for a moment he is wondering which of them is about to receive the sentence. Thor's jaw flexes, and Loki cannot help but think it is both of them.

But there is no decision, only a postponement untypical of the Allfather. For the time being, he is to be kept in the cells under the palace, hidden from the world like a blot on the family's immaculate reputation, the disgrace to Asgard, stripped off the only thing he ever valued the most in himself, the thing that nobody else did: his magic.

-o-

There is a shuffle on the other side of the latticework of the cell door, and Loki's eyes fly at it, a snarl already on his lips to bark at Thor for not leaving him alone even here, but it is not Thor entering in the next moment. It catches him off-guard, and for a moment all pretense is lost.

"Mother."

It's only seconds later when Frigga is already in his cell that Loki realizes he called her mother. Somehow he isn't able to make himself call her anything else, and it grabs at his heart.

"Loki," and her voice cracks, it's a whisper only, filled with emotions to the brim, so thick that it's almost palpable.

She steps toward him without a word, and like in the old times, she pulls him in a warm embrace with the unquestionable authority and right of a mother, and suddenly he wants to be a small boy again, a boy with no blurs on his soul, a boy who lets himself think he can hide for a while if he snuggles up close enough to his mother.

So he lifts his arm, because he wants to hide, he wants to forget.

And his chains rattle.

And the blurs spot his soul so much that he cannot see how it has been before.

And everything that boy has ever believed in is a lie.

At the jingling sound of the shackles, Frigga flinches, her face dives deeper into the crook of her son's shoulder, and Loki freezes just a second before he is engulfed in her scent, in the motherly comfort he has known all his life, and there is only so much he can do right now to keep him from breaking, keep him from telling himself that a lie can be true sometimes. He bends his knees and lowers his head for Frigga being considerably shorter and he manages to hug her back without tension in his muscles, and for a long moment they are just standing there, engrossed in a moment they stole from the past.

Frigga pulls away first, cradling his face in her palms, and she smiles. He can see the twinkle of pearly tears in the corner of her eyes, and he bites down on the inside of his mouth.

"My dear, my son," she whispers, and there are so many things she doesn't say but they are there in her eyes.

Loki's lips open, this is habit too, being around his stubborn brother, once-brother, taught him so. His voice is low, solemn and beaten to his own ears. "You know I'm not."

Frigga is not as incredulous as sad, but she looks at her so fondly that his chest suddenly seems to shrink and squeeze his insides.

"Yes, you are. How can you think otherwise? You were only a baby when you arrived here. You were so small, so fragile. There was no question in me that I would raise you and protect you as my own. From that moment, I consider you my son." Her hands smooth the wrinkles of his tunic, an unconscious gesture that doesn't make sense in the given moment, but it's full of care. "I was there when you cried, I was at your bedside when you were sick, when you were tormented by a terrifying dream, when you felt lonely or afraid. I was there at your first steps, first words, when you skinned your knees, in all those moments when you needed someone to hold you. You think it doesn't make you my son? A mother's heart isn't born only of blood and flesh. These are the things that made me your mother, Loki."

Her hand is so warm against his cheek, and Loki is suddenly terrified at the prickling sensation behind his eyes.

"Now I know from whom Thor inherited his sentiment," he chokes out with a trembling smirk, and Frigga laughs softly.

"Your brother loves you so dearly, Loki. Thor is brash sometimes, stubborn and yes, unmindful, too, but I think he loves you more than he does anyone else in the Nine Realms. You must be blind not to see it, and I know my son's mind is sharper than any swords in this realm. So tell me, darling, are you deceiving yourself?"

He moves to untangle from her arms but Frigga fists his tunic and holds him in place easily. "I do not wish to talk about this."

Frigga doesn't mind his protests, and softly she adds. "You are unwilling to accept it because you are incapable of believing anyone can care for you when you don't care for yourself anymore?"

With a spark of defiance, Loki says, "Oh but I do."

"No, Loki. Pursuing ambitious purposes doesn't mean you do it because you are in peace with yourself."

Loki stares, and it's a moment of utter nakedness. And the most terrifying in it is that he cannot decide if he feels annoyed or relieved.

"Shouldn't you admonish me now for doing horrible things, give me lecture, and not try to…" he is at loss how to name it, or he simply doesn't want to find the word. Frigga smiles and says it for him.

"Fix you?"

"There is nothing to be fixed anymore."

"For a mother's heart, there always is. I leave the lectures to your father."

At that, he finally withdraws, but not in his heart. He realizes, there he would never be able to.

-o-

He has another visitor. It is Thor, he recognizes the sound of his steps as if they were his own much before Thor emerges at the cell door. He looks at his shackles with a frown like he doesn't understand how they got around Loki's wrists and ankles, like they were out-of-place in a prison cell.

"How have we come this far?" he murmurs. It's so soft that Loki wonders if he only imagined it.

He doesn't know the answer. Sometimes it feels like their story, the story of two brothers growing up together is a story that belongs to someone else, and there is no continuance between that and this moment in the dungeons of Asgard. There is an abyss-like gap in it, as there is in his heart.

It seems out of context, and yet darkly fitting, when he whispers, a low hiss, harsh and bitter: "You have no idea how it is. Every time I still dream of falling."

Thor's laughter is an ugly crack, a strangled voice scratching against his throat. "You say I have no idea? Every time, I dream of you leaving. Shrinking, disappearing, drawing away, falling. Every time I dream of it, and there is nothing I can do about it. I scream my throat hoarse but there is nothing I can do that would bring you back."

In the dim light of the dungeon, Loki watches him closely, and suddenly he realizes how everything that happens between them links them more and more for eternity, makes the bonds he is so keen on tearing become even stronger and more tangled, instead of loosening it. There can be no step for him without effecting Thor, and there are always two sides to the same thing. He understands Thor's dreams aren't only about seeing him letting go Gungnir. They are all about losing him in every aspect possible, standing by and watching him growing isolated for long centuries, and the distance they have put between them has never hurt so much before.

Thor's head falls forward, and he mumbles like he is ashamed of it: "There was not one minute when I went without wishing I was falling with you."

-o-

It's days or weeks of confinement, he finds it hard to tell. On one point, they removed his shackles but the collar around his neck, the collar that keeps his magic at bay stays.

Thor comes every day. He comes as though Loki was lying in the healing room, plagued by boredom and it was his duty to lift his mood. Sometimes he comes and reminisces about the past, reciting old tales and adventures, their childhood, his fondest memories. Other times he talks about completely irrelevant events around the court, maybe just to fill the silence Loki always lets hanging. Sometimes he comes, sits on the other side of the bars and says nothing, and they are sitting like that, an unmoving mirror and its image, and it's peaceful. He always comes, and Loki waits for him. First it's the worst kind of anticipation, it's annoyance to the very last bits, later it's the resignation of someone expecting the inevitable rainfall upon seeing the overcast sky. Lately it morphed into something Loki doesn't feel the need to label anymore.

There is no mirror in the cell but he knows how shriveled he might look, how shattered and crumpled like a dying leaf, and each day he fades a bit more like smoke. The dungeons and his own defeat are taking the light from him, and he is surprised because it looks like they are taking it from Thor, too. As Loki dwindles and turns more transparent by each day, so does Thor. Loki sees how his eyes are dulled, his smiles are heavy and way too few and far between, his steps grew weighty and there is no lightness in them anymore – not anymore the bright sun shining over Asgard, and he thinks it is his doing, too. He thinks that when he fell from the Bifröst, he maybe stole Thor's light.

"Father is soon to enter the Odinsleep again," Thor says one day.

Thor is sitting on the other side of the bars on the hard floor, and Loki is no more than two steps away from him, shrouded in the darkness. This is their progress, it went unconscious and unnoticed that he slowly moved closer and closer whenever Thor showed up over the last occasions.

Loki says nothing. A question is hanging in the air.

"I would be the king for that time." Loki frowns but there is no bragging in Thor's voice.

"Are you nervous?"

"Yes." The smile is almost bashful on his face, a little bit dumb, too, and it's a glimpse of the old Thor he hasn't seen for quite some time. "I would need a good counselor."

The frown deepens, and suddenly it feels even colder in the dungeon. "And what would you do? Come here each day for my advices? Or tie me to the throne like a good dog, on leash and collared, so when you need me I would be at hand?"

"Loki." It's a sigh, and Loki isn't sure if it is amused or tired.

Thor regards him solemnly from the other side of the bars, looks about the cell, the chains hanging off the walls, Loki's collar half hidden behind the locks of his hair, his magic he cannot see.

It has taken Thor decades to get used to the fact itself that Loki is capable of doing magic, and it's not only a whim, a childish habit but he can actually make use of it in many aspects that are beyond tricks and half-innocent mischief. They battled against a warlord in Muspelheim when Thor saw him use magic for the first time. It was a fierce fight, they could barely stand their ground, and Mjölnir was in desperate work. His friends, the Warriors Three fought in group, watching each other's back but when Thor looked up and searched for his brother, he saw Loki was pushed to the outskirt and fought his way out alone. Thor moved toward him with every intention to get to his brother's side – Loki wasn't so battle-worn as he was, fighting and sparring has never been in his utmost interest, and it made Thor watch out for him in every battle he took Loki along. And so he moved, wielding Mjölnir on his way when he saw. He saw it before it even happened, the warrior charging at Loki, wild and enormous, crazed with blood and his lips twisted in a battle-cry. Loki stood there motionless, frozen to the spot, and Thor stood there too in his utter terror, heedless of everything else. He wanted to yell and warn Loki, to urge him to move, but his brother's name stuck in his throat and he feared it would stay there forever and never let him breathe again. The warrior leapt.

And fell through Loki.

Everything was a blur in Thor's mind. Loki, the real one, unharmed and oblivious, stepped out of the shadows, and Thor remembers charging at his brother, on his way knocking everyone out with a swing of his hammer. He recalls grabbing Loki's arms, shouting strangled words of disbelief, of horror, of relief that didn't make sense, just a string of syllables woven of fear and worry; he told him not to ever do it again, then he took everything back when he realized Loki saved his own life with the trick, so he just yelled because there was nothing else he could do to make Loki's name unstuck in his throat, to swallow or spit it out. Loki had the strangest smile on his lips, a bit bewildered, and raised his hand to Thor's face, his thumb brushing across his cheekbones, and Thor stared at him, stared at the wetness on the pad of his thumb, and he realized for the first time the tears of anger and relief that had sprung to his eyes without his knowledge.

"Worry not, brother, I can take care of myself," Loki said.

"I thought…" Thor didn't finish it, couldn't finish it but there was no need for it. I thought I lost you. I thought I failed you. Loki smiled, and there were so many words unsaid in the way he patted his shoulder. And there were so many words unsaid in how Thor grabbed him by the back of his neck and pulled him close so their foreheads touched briefly. I cannot afford losing you.

And somehow, in the end of all things, he just did.

"I would release you." He says now. "And I would remove the collar."

Loki eyes him in silence, astonished and berating simultaneously as if saying 'Why would you do that, you fool?', and Thor understands.

"I would give your magic back. I'm no fool, Loki, I don't blindly trust you, but I also understand your magic is what defines you. I can keep you around, collared and stripped off it but it wouldn't be you." There is a falter in his words. For a second, he looks like he is unable to meet Loki's eyes. His fingers curl around the iron bar as he leans forward. "I regret I never appreciated enough your skills. It is like I never appreciated you. I'm sorry I haven't realized this before. Maybe things…"

"It would have happened anyhow," Loki dissents softly.

It is a long pause this time, and they are sitting there in mutual silence that hasn't been so cordial for too long time. Loki grips the bar as well, their knuckles touching. There is a faintly taunting smirk on his lips. "Why can you be wise only in hindsight…?"

"It aggravates me just as much."

They stare at each other, and it is not hostile, it is almost peaceful but still only the ghost of how it has been before.

Thor muses whether it would forever be like this: with them staring at each other from the opposite sides, walls with cracks so gaping like the grid they are clutching now towering between them, but always entwining, always bound to the other. He thinks, and it is a disturbing idea, that this, the eternal feud, is better than nothing at all. For this moment, he doesn't mind that he will probably chase Loki for an eternity with the never dying hope that he can fix him because it means he has a brother.

There is a small smile upon Loki's lips as if he knew what is on Thor's mind, the smile is sardonic around the edges but spiced with something soft that reminds Thor of the brother he has once been. Loki reaches through the bars, places a hand on his shoulder and he shakes his head like Thor again did something he should be chastised for.

"You big oaf."

Thor's heart swells and he longs to pull Loki in an embrace they haven't shared for ages. Instead he slips his hand on the nape of Loki's neck and smirks back.

"You have enough wit for the two of us, brother. And it will suffice."

It's not how he imagines his future, always the second man, but Thor's intentions are as pure as ever, and for the moment Loki affords to be magnanimous.

"It will," he agrees.

He doesn't add but it's there in the back of his mind that it will suffice. It will suffice for a while.

A/N: I know there was not particular reason to add the scene with Frigga but I just couldn't resist because mothers...
Anyhow, thank you for reading, faving it and especially for leaving a comment. I finish this one here because it doesn't really matter what Loki's sentence would be, it's not the point I wanted to make. Whatever happens it's nothing new: these two will always be all these things for each other and there are more sides to their relationship than simple love or hate.