Title: Laughing As I Pray
Rating: PG-13

Summary: The brothers come face to face, and have a heart to heart, at last.

The wind sighed through the branches of the trees, setting up a steady susurration of leaves dancing among green light. They were on Midgard, but in this green and primal place Thor could almost imagine this patch of woods to be any realm; the woods of Alfheim where they had traveled as youths, the hills of Vanaheim where they had wandered as children… the gardens of Asgard where they had grown together.

In this calm, peaceful moment Thor did not dare to speak, barely dared to breathe, lest he break the spell that allowed he and Loki to stand face to face in peace once more.

"Loki," he said, and his breath expelled in a whoosh. "I did not realize you were so near. I thought you still to be at the school of mutants."

"Yes, well." Loki waved a hand vaguely. "You were not so hard to find, really. These mobile phones are a marvelously clever creation."

"Indeed, they are," Thor said, concealing his surprise at Loki's approval of a patently mortal device. Although he was not sure if Loki was speaking only of their convenient portability, or also of the ease with which they allowed him to track those he wished to find.

Loki looked… Loki looked well, for one, in ways that Thor had not seen since before his fall from the Bifrost. Maybe long before. His hair was neatly brushed and braided, his skin clear and healthy, his eyes calm and hooded. As before he was dressed in a tunic and trousers of Midgardian make, neatly tailored, though with an Asgardian-style vest-coat over all. It was not one that Thor recognized; it was not in his signature green. Indeed, his entire outfit was picked out in shades of rich navy blue with gold accents; Thor had a suspicion that they were the colors of the mutant hero team, the X-Men. The look suited him, but it was alien nonetheless, and Thor was forcibly reminded of one more way in which his brother had become a stranger to him.

Still he drank the image in, using it to fight off the memory of Loki ash-grey and shaking, choking through his dying breaths on a dying planet. "I am very glad that you are alive, Brother," Thor said, breaking the silence with a truth.

Whatever Loki was expecting him to say, that wasn't it. "I... thank you, Thor," Loki said, momentarily lost for words. After another moment he found them again. "I am sorry my actions caused you distress, when you thought me to be dead."

Thor narrowed his eyes, because he heard that one from Darcy. "Are you sorry for your actions, or sorry that I was distressed?" he countered sharply.

"...Sorry for your distress." Loki looked away. "If I had to do the same thing over I would. I am sorry that you were hurt by them, but they were necessary."

"That's not so," Thor protested. "Odin slept; I was king. Your actions saved us all. I would have pardoned you, if you had come back."

Loki rolled his eyes. "Certainly, and in the eyes of Asgard I would forev -" He broke off, mouth tight in a grimace, and shook his head. "Never mind. I don't wish to argue with you about this."

"You not wishing to argue?" Thor raised his eyebrows. "That's a new one. Midgard has changed you, Brother!" he joked weakly.

"Yes," Loki said. "It has."

More than anything else, Loki looked stiff; he held and moved himself rigidly, as though carrying an over-full cup that might spill at any moment. This at least Thor did recognize; it was the look of Loki steeling himself up for some unpleasant but vital duty back in Asgard.

"Your apologies are accepted and appreciated," Loki said formally. He swallowed hard; Thor could see the line of his throat shift and flex. "And... I believe I have some to offer you as well."

Loki took a deep breath. "Thor, I offer my most sincere remorse for the attack on you with the Destroyer," he said. "Please believe me when I say that I never wanted - your death was never my intent. I was angry, so angry that I was very nearly beyond reason, and I… forgot then that your body was only that of a mortal's. I had seen you brush off similar blows in the past with little harm and it did not occur to me that your mortal body could not withstand it." By the last few words, anguish had leaked into his calm and level tone, and his face crumpled slightly as he struggled to maintain his calm. "I am so sorry."

It was that leak of anguish that convinced him. Thor had once known Loki better than anyone else - and while he could keep an impressively smooth poker face, he was not skilled at manufacturing false emotions to sell a lie. His emotions, on the rare occasions that he let them show, were always genuine. Thor believed him, he really did.

It helped. It really did help to ease some of the deep-seated hurt and anger that still lurked within Thor despite his best efforts to push it aside - more hurt than anger, for once, mixed with a bewildered disbelief. More than anything else, it had hurt to think that his own brother would want him dead. To hear that this was not so, that it was a mistake made in the height of rage, helped. Thor had known the red haze of the berserker often enough to understand mistakes made in passion, at least.

But at the same time, while a solid core of Thor's unhappy anger melted away, that only left more room for other feelings to come crowding further to the front. Thor did not fail to notice that Loki had apologized only for this one thing, and not the myriad of wrongs that had come before or after it. Or even at the same time.

"I... I accept your apology, Loki," Thor said slowly, echoing Loki's words from earlier. He fixed his brother with a sharp frown. "But is that the only thing you think you should be apologizing for? Truly?"

Loki's face pinched more, and then he smoothed it back into a neutral expression again. "Well, I hardly know where to begin, really," he said, his voice falsely light and detached. "Why don't you tell me what you think I ought to be apologizing for, and we'll go from there?"

Thor was immediately wary; coming from Loki, that sounded like a trap. But it could also be an opportunity to clear the air at last. Loki had never been this receptive before; who knew when he might be again? Thor knew he must not blunder and waste this opportunity. "I will not condemn you for your actions during the Chitauri invasion," Thor started, "for Tony Stark has explained to me that you were under the control of another at that time."

"He did?" Loki looked briefly startled, then looked down towards the side. "Oh. I… I did not know how to tell you."

"You didn't tell me when you were on Asgard, either," Thor reproached him. "You were free again by then, were you not? You had the opportunity."

Loki continued to study the low-lying grass by his feet. "There… didn't seem to be any point," he murmured.

Now it was Thor's turn to wince. He remembered Tony's warning, "probably he thought you wouldn't believe him?" and thought that his friend's guess might have been astute. That did send a pang through his chest, the thought that his brother had not even trusted him with the truth.

Well, he would prove himself now. "So you need no forgiveness for me on that account," Thor forged ahead. The rest of Midgard might not share in his forgiveness - those who had lost their lives or families or livelihoods in the invasion could not be expected to put aside their grief and anger. But Thor could not blame his brother, not knowing that he had not been in control of himself. "But what of before that, Brother? What about during my coronation, and after, during my banishment? You were not being mind-controlled then, when you unleashed the Destroyer upon an innocent town." Despite his best efforts to stay calm and reasonable, accusation crept into his tone.

"I had to," Loki muttered. "Sif and the Warriors betrayed me. I explicitly ordered them to stay on Asgard, and they disobeyed me, with Heimdall's collusion. I never wanted to harm them, or you either, if they had only obeyed as they should." His gaze swung back up to meet Thor's, equally full of hurt accusation. "If you had stayed on Earth - if you had just stayed out of the way, like I told you to -"

"And that is another thing that you must answer for, Loki!" Thor interrupted hotly. "Why did you tell me that Father was dead? That Mother refused to see me? It was cruel, Loki!" In some ways, the memory of it hurt more than the memory of his death at the Destroyer's hands. Thor had never feared physical hardship, nor pain, nor death. But the memory of having his family ripped apart around him… that he would never forget.

"Not only cruel, but needlessly so," Thor continued passionately. "Father had banished me and I could not have returned unless he chose to lift the sentence. You didn't need to invent a lie about his being dead! So why?"

"I'm sorry," Loki whispered. Thor saw his mouth work, shaping words that fell away as he stumbled. "I... I can offer no excuse except that I was not in control of my own thoughts. Father had just told me the truth, and then as I railed at him for answers he fell into the Sleep without giving me any.

"I wanted others to know how it felt to be orphaned, to be fatherless, to know the guilt of being the one to bring your own parents low ," Loki said. "I wanted you to know how it felt. I wanted you to hurt like I was hurting -"

"Well, you did that!" Thor flung the words at him. He was angry again, almost as angry as he had been when the Warriors Three had first exposed the lie to him. With his return to Asgard and the fight and shock that had followed, the anger had been buried, but never truly quenched. "It hurt! It hurt. When I learned that was a lie... that you would go to such lengths to keep me stranded on Midgard, that you would rather see me dead than let me come home -"

"I had to!" Loki burst out, sounding driven at last beyond his calm. "I had to keep you out of Asgard! I had no choice!"

"Why, Loki?" Thor demanded. "Why were you so desperate to drive me away? Why was it so important to keep me out of Asgard that you would strike your own friends and family for it?"

Loki glared at him. "Because of this!" he snapped, and raised his hands, palms pointed back towards his own body.

Thor took a half-step back, startled and uneasy, as Loki closed his eyes and a shimmer washed over his frame. It was followed in the next moment by a sudden gust of frigid air, and blue color washed and spread over Loki's skin like dye washing out in a sudden downpour.

Not only color, but marking as well - not much skin showed through Loki's clothing, but there was enough on his throat and face and hands for Thor to recognize the scars of the Jotnar. And when Loki opened his eyes again, they were deep crimson.

Thor had known about this, at least in theory. Ever since Frigga had taken him quietly aside in the days following Loki's fall and explained everything to him, ever since Loki had turned up alive once more, Thor had always known that the day would someday come that he would see his brother in a Frost Giant skin, and tried to prepare for it. It was simultaneously easier and harder than he had expected it to be. Despite the change in hue and texture, the form and features were still unmistakably Loki - his brother, his shield-companion and friend. Even the way his eyes narrowed when he glared, the way his shoulders hunched when he was upset or defensive, the way his hands twisted around themselves - they were all entirely familiar. And yet it was that very familiarity that made the alienness before his eyes so shocking.

But he had prepared himself for this, and so after a moment of shock, Thor forced himself to push past it. He swallowed against the dry lump in his throat, and spoke. "This..." It came out with a slight stutter, so he tried again. "This changes nothing."

Loki rolled his crimson eyes, another heart-stoppingly familiar gesture. "Oh Thor, don't be trite," Loki sneered. "This changed everything! Odin powerless, Jotunheim on the brink of war, and what was I to do, a Jotnar hiding in Aesir skin? Hated and despised! My secret was out - it was only a matter of time before everyone knew. What else could I do, to prove that I was not one of the enemy?"

"Is that why you came up with your mad plan?" Thor said disbelievingly. "To destroy Jotunheim with the Bifrost? You didn't have to do that, Loki!"

"You have no idea what I had to do!" Loki ground his teeth together. "Why would I strike out at my friends, you say? They were never my friends! Even without knowing what I was, they plotted to overthrow me from the moment I was given the throne. Even Heimdall betrayed me, disobeyed the first and only order I gave to him! How could I have led Asgard into battle? The first time I came to blows with a Frost Giant, they would have seen what I was, and turned their swords on me!"

Loki began to pace, back and forth on the cool forest floor, gesturing agitatedly. "I had to find some way, some way to end the war that didn't rely on Heimdall, that didn't rely on the Einherjar, because I have always known that I could rely on no one but myself!"

"That's not true!" Thor protested immediately. "You had me. You did not have to drive me away, you could have brought me back to Asgard, had at least one person beside you that you could trust -"

Loki began to laugh.

Thor was taken aback, staring at him as Loki's shoulders began to shake and his head threw back. His laugh was unabashed, as full-bodied as though Thor had said something genuinely hilarious, and yet there was a harsh, mocking bark to it that tore at Thor's ears. "What's so funny?" Thor demanded.

"Trust you, Thor? You?" Loki gasped, when at last he had regained control of himself. "Why in the name of Nidhogg's putrid fangs would I have trusted you? It was you that I feared most of all!"

Thor was stunned, not believing his own ears. Loki went on. "You, who swore once to kill every Frost Giant with your bare hands! You, who was so sure of your claim to the throne that you were giving orders as a king before your coronation was even complete! 'When I am king, I'll teach the realms to fear me as they should.' " His voice shifted into a mocking imitation of Thor's, harsh and braying. " 'When I am king, I'll hunt down the frost giants and slay them all.' And look at me now! How was I to trust you to guard my back?"

"How could you think that, Loki?" Thor said, voice laden with hurt and disbelief. "You are my brother and I love you! This changes nothing. You should have had faith in me. I have always been your protector, always - "

" Protected me?" Loki snapped, all trace of laughter suddenly gone. "Thor, when have you ever protected me? Name one time - one battle from our youths, before your banishment to earth - when I was in danger and you came to my defense. Just one. I'll wait." He planted himself on the mossy ground, folded his arms over his chest, and looked expectantly at Thor.

"I..." Put suddenly on the spot, off-balance, Thor groped around to an answer to Loki's shocking accusation. He immediately thought of their battle on Svartalfheim, where Loki had been pulled off his feet by the gravity grenade, and only Thor's timely mid-air tackle had knocked him loose from its influence. But no, Loki had specifically said before his banishment to Earth. Yet somehow he remained stuck on that one image, because no matter how far back he forged in his memory, his mind remained otherwise blank.

"You can't, can you?" Loki said with a sneer. "Because you never protected me, or anyone else for that matter. Never! All you thought about, all you cared about in battle was your own glory.

"You always charged ahead and threw yourself into the thickest part of the fray, and damn the hindmost. You were so intent on finding a foe that was 'worthy' enough to be a challenge for you, you never once stopped to think what such foes would do to those of lesser strength than yourself! In our last battle on Jotunheim, you were having so much fun slaughtering Frost Giants that you didn't even notice when a Frost Giant grabbed my arm. You didn't even notice when Fandral was impaled! "

Thor flinched, feeling each accusation as if it were a blow. "You... you were not in danger often, though," he protested, his voice feeble in his own ears. "You were a strong warrior in your own right, you would not have welcomed any attempts to coddle you..."

"Yes, I was strong - because I had to be!" Loki snapped. "Because I couldn't afford to be weak, not for a moment. Every warrior in Asgard was waiting for me to falter, for me to show a moment of weakness, so that they could spit on me for it! I had to be strong in order to follow you into battle, to watch your back because you always left yourself open, taking for granted that I would be there. Because that was my place, to serve and support you. I was the one who always protected you, Thor. Small enough thanks I ever got for it - how many times did I save your skin, only to have you deride my victories as 'tricks' unworthy of a warrior?"

The passion and bitterness in Loki's voice could not be feigned; it was a well years-deep. Loki truly believed the things he was saying. But how could he? They were brothers, they were friends. They had always been together in everything. How could Loki genuinely believe that Thor would betray him?

Perhaps… perhaps he had not always been as supportive as he could have been, when Loki's unconventional - unmanly - interests were the butt of palace gossip and jokes. But brothers teased each other, that was what they did. It didn't mean anything deeper than that. And perhaps it was true that he had, on occasion, seen or heard cruel things said or done to Loki that he had not addressed. But they had only been minor incidents each time, not worth the trouble that would come of making a big stink of it, and Loki had not really seemed all that upset at the time anyway.

But they were family, and regardless of the banal wear of everyday life, family always came together in dark times. Loki must have known, surely he must have known, that Thor would have dropped all jests and pretenses and come to his aid if anything really bad ever happened.

…Didn't he?

Thor tried to defend himself. "That is not true, Loki. I have always respected your talents, no matter how odd -"

Loki cut him off with a savage slash of his hand, like the downward stab of a knife. "They all took their cues from you, Thor!" he spat. "All your so-called friends, they followed your lead! And why not? Why should they have pretended to respect me when it was so clear that you did not? You never stood up for me when others whispered to my back, or jeered to my face. You never defended me when your 'friends' taunted and mocked. You laughed with them, Thor. You laughed! And when I came to you for help, you told me that I was imagining things.

He whirled to face Thor, his face a wild mask of hurt and fury that made Thor's heart sink into his boots. "I learned many years ago that I could not rely on you, Thor - not in battle, nor out of it. I learned to defend myself because I had to, because no one else would. I made sure everyone in Asgard knew the cost of mocking me, because even then I knew that I stood alone."

Loki's tirade ran down at last, leaving him panting slightly for breath. For once, Thor had nothing to say; he was speechless, devastated, as the very foundations of their childhood crumbled around him. Loki's words so shocked him that he felt it as a physical sickness, a twisting nausea in his chest and gut that threatened to unstring his legs and send him to his knees.

Nothing was as he remembered it. For years - centuries - he and Loki had been living in different worlds, sharing the same space, but seeing completely different realms. And while he still doubted that all of Asgard truly was as hateful as Loki seemed to think they were, it was clear that Loki had felt hated all the same. And Thor had not seen.

Before his banishment Thor had been a selfish, arrogant, spoiled little princeling - and although he had known this was so, though his sojourn on Earth had opened his eyes to it, he had never stopped to consider what this meant for his relationship with his brother. Somehow he had been willing to recognize his faults in every arena but his treatment of Loki, and for that he had continued to blithely assume that he was faultless.

How could he have been so blind? Willingly blind, treating cruelties like jokes because it was easier that way, because he did not want to take the risk of social embarrassment in front of his father's men? How often had he put Loki down, in the guise or cover of a joke, in order to make himself look better by contrast? How often had he taken advantage of Loki's loyalty, taking for granted that Loki would always be at his side, at his back, cleaning up his mess? How could Thor expect Loki to somehow know the depth of his own loyalty and love, when Thor had never bothered to show it?

It was no wonder Loki despised him.

Thor did not know what showed on his face just then, but whatever it was made Loki hunch his shoulders slightly, much of the anger draining out of his voice. Slowly, the blue color of his skin faded away, returning his eyes to their familiar green. "I love you, Thor," he said softly. "I told you to never doubt that I love you, and I do, but I did not trust you. No, I did not trust you.

"I did not trust you to make a good King, I did not trust you not to betray me to take the throne for yourself, and I did not trust you not to turn on me when you discovered what I was." He gave a little shrug, and looked up at Thor with an expression of genuine puzzlement. "Whyever would I?"

"That may have been so once… but I have changed, Brother," Thor said desperately. His eyes stung with the pain of unshed tears. "Midgard has changed me, I swear it. I am a new man, a man in whom you can place your trust."

Loki looked remarkably unimpressed. "Are you really?" he said. "Is that why, on the quinjet, you leapt so readily to oppose me, to fight me and chain me like a beast? How quickly you shed yourself of me when I threatened, once more, to embarrass you in front of your new friends? Because I seem to recall this all occurred after your miraculous change of heart on Earth."

"Loki!" Thor protested. "I understand that you were not in your right mind, but if you had told me of the one threatening and hurting you - if you had just cooperated with me, brought the Tesseract -"

Loki cut him off with a hysterical-sounding laugh. "Ah, I see! How quickly the 'unconditional love' gains conditions. Would that have been the price for your protection? My submission, my abasement?"

Thor fell back, crushed. "That is not - that is not true…" he said weakly.

"Perhaps it is true that you have changed, that you are a new man," Loki admitted grudgingly. "But do not make the mistake of projecting your newfound protectiveness back onto your past self. Because I lived through that time, and I can assure it you it is not so."

The words were another twist on Thor's breaking heart, and despite his best efforts, he felt his eyes overflowing with tears. Was his brother truly lost to him, forever? Had their brotherhood ever actually existed, except in Thor's own mind?

Loki glanced at his face, then away. "Please stop standing there looking as though your puppy has died," he said. "It's making it very hard to stay angry at you."

Thor's first thought was that this did not sound like such a bad outcome; after all, he wanted Loki to no longer be angry with him. Then a wisp of Jane's voice floated through his mind: even if he has good reason to be angry? Thor, that's not love, that's emotional manipulation!

So Thor made an effort to pull his grief back under his skin. He wiped his cheeks free of moisture, and found his voice. "Was I really that unbearable?" he asked, his voice wavering and breaking.

Loki was quiet for a long moment, then sighed. "…you could be, yes," he said at last. "Not all of the time. But often."

"Loki… I am so sorry," Thor choked out. "I was never the brother I thought I was. I don't know how to fix this." He would do anything in his power to show his love for his brother, to prove himself worthy of trust once more, but he could not go back into his own past and pound his former self into the ground until he learned his lesson.

Loki sighed in exasperation. "You don't need to 'fix' it," he said. "I have never been under any illusions about what kind of person you are, Thor. Unlike those fawning sycophants that surround you, I don't imagine you to be perfect. Nor do I expect you to be perfect. But I do expect you to understand that my grievances are not imagined, simply because you yourself did not experience them."

So you take the world I love as recompense for your imagined slights? Thor flinched again, hearing his own words on the mountainside where he had confronted Loki. As though Midgard were his to give or withhold, as though Loki were so devoid of self or agency that everything he did was purely to spite Thor. As though all of Loki's pain - all the betrayals he had endured - were no more than 'imaginary' because they affected only Loki.

"What has happened on Midgard to make you so wise, Brother?" Thor asked, managing a watery smile. "Is it that mutant, Charles Xavier?"

He kept hearing about this mysterious Xavier - from Tony, from Fury, from Jane and Darcy, from Loki himself. He still was not entirely sure what to think of this leader of mutants - but if he really had freed Loki's mind, if he had healed so much of his pain, then Thor owed him a great debt. "Perhaps, if he is willing, I should pay him a visit myself."

Loki's eyes widened, shocked. Then he managed to force the reaction back down, and gave a rusty chuckle. "I don't know about that," he said. "He rarely leaves the school grounds, and I don't recommend that you show your face on them anytime soon."

"Loki, I swear I mean them no harm," Thor said earnestly. "I will not pick any more fights."

"Perhaps, but they have sworn no such oath to you," Loki said dryly. "Haven't those mortal friends of yours taught you anything? You fought but one of the X-Men and it was very nearly a draw between you. She has a dozen teammates each as powerful as she is, plus dozens more who live and work at the school who may be lesser in strength, but not in courage or in loyalty. They have a man who fires blasts of power from his eyes as potent as the Destroyer himself; a man with metal claws that cut through everything, who cannot be killed; a woman who can pick up a tank with her mind and crumple it into the size of a breadbox. If you return to the school uninvited, Thor, they will most certainly kick your ass."

At the description of these most potent warriors, Thor's eyes widened with awe and disbelief - admittedly, his first thought was a desire to face each of them in single combat so that he could test their mettle himself. But now was not the proper time for such things, so he pushed the urge aside. "They sound like a team of mighty heroes, if strange ones," he said. "I have heard from my friends of the noble work they do on behalf of the mortals of Midgard. Will you be joining them, then? Adventuring as a part of their team?"

Loki scowled and drew back, folding his arms defensively across his chest. "No, Thor!" he said sharply. "No! I have done with trying to be a hero. I have tried and failed and only done ill in the attempt. No more."

Thor's face pulled into a frown. This again? They had had the exact same conversation, or near enough, when Loki had returned to Asgard to fight against Malekith. Thor had assumed that Loki's return, willing and unforced, meant that he was ready to rejoin Asgard's corps of warriors and find his place once more at Thor's side. When his welcoming advances to that effect were soundly rejected, that had only solidified the Warriors' conviction that Loki was evil at heart.

With his heart and soul still wrenched bare by Loki's confession just a few minutes ago, Thor thought now he could understand why Loki did not want to return to fight at Thor's side, not when Thor had so often failed at doing him honor. But this was not that. This was a world away, with an entirely different set of shield-companions, ones that Loki clearly had great respect and affection for. Why, then, should he still refuse to take up the call?

He tried again. "Loki, I believe in the goodness in you!" he exclaimed. "You could become a hero, if that is what you desire!"

"But it is not what I desire," Loki snapped. "That is what Asgard desires! That is what Odin desires! Stop trying to get me back, Thor, because you never owned me in the first place! I am not a prize for you to win with pretty words, I am not a trophy you can parade about when it suits you and then put back on the shelf to rot when you have not need of me -"

Thor was taken aback for a moment by the sheer poisonous fury in Loki's voice. Up till now in the conversation Loki had been angry, and sometimes bitter and sarcastic, but there had never been this level of hate in his manner. The sudden outpouring of venom shocked Thor, left him numb, feeling as though there was nothing he could say or do to get through that shell of seething animosity.

Abruptly Loki took a step back, turned aside and gave Thor his back. Thor saw his shoulders rise and fall as he took deep, gulping breaths, and then saw the line of his back slump as he let them out in a deep exhale. "I apologize for that," Loki said, quieter now, and when he turned back to Thor his face had calmed somewhat. "Professor Xavier has told me that I should not take my anger towards fath... towards other people out on you, just because you are in reach and they are not."

Thor made a mental note not to mention their father again, still somewhat shaken by the strength of Loki's bitter fury. Yet at the same time, the moment of madness had served to strike home how much better Loki had changed.

"I am done with the game of heroes and monsters," Loki went on. "I cannot be a hero and I choose not to be a monster. I will walk my own path now. And you can wish me well on that path, Thor, or get out of my way."

Those last words had a ring of finality to them, an ultimatum or a death sentence. Thor struggled to find the words to respond to it, to find the right thing to say; then, when that failed, he struggled to understand his own complex tangle of hurt and disappointment.

In their youth the princes had been trained by Tyr, the old battle-master, who had been maimed in a deadly combat against the fel wolves of Hróðvitnir. In all the realms are but three kinds of people, my prince, he had said on more than one occasion. There are the ordinary people, the sheep. Then there are the wolves who would prey on the sheep. And then there is us. We are the sheepdogs. Without our vigilance, the wolves would have their way.

Thor had always believed Tyr's words, seen himself as a class apart from those whose safety was in his charge, guarding them from those whose intentions were fell. Heroes - like himself, like the Warriors Three, like the Avengers - were the sheepdogs of the Realms, the watchers and guardians. If they did not watch over the sheep, who would?

Loki - Loki was not a sheep. He was a warrior, of that Thor had never doubted, however unconventional his weapons. When Loki had said back at the school of mutants that he was a teacher, Thor had immediately dismissed this as an obvious lie. Only once this had been corroborated by others did Thor have to reconsider his judgment, and he still struggled to wrap his mind around the concept. Loki was not a sheep. To claim that he was one was absurd, even deceptive, like a wolf putting on sheep's clothing. If one was a fighter, yet refused to be a hero, then what could that make them except a wolf?

But Thor had just gotten done with apologizing for Loki for assuming the worst in him, for suspecting foul intentions in every harmless act. He was not going to make the same mistake again, before the ink had finished drying on his first apology. He had to find a way to make sense of what Loki was saying. Loki was a warrior, and yet he insisted he was not one. A person with the strength to fight, and yet who adopted the lifestyle and mannerisms of a civilian, was…

Frigga.

It was not until he reached adulthood that Thor realized their mother had been one of the best swordmasters in Asgard. She had been a shieldmaiden in her youth, one of the furies of Vanaheim, in the days before she married Odin and became Queen of Asgard. She had trained Loki; she had helped to train Sif in the years before the warmasters had consented to accept the girl into their training program. She had killed one of the Frost Giant warriors who invaded Odin's sanctum; she had dueled Malekith to a standstill.

And yet for all the years of their childhood Thor had known her only as Mother, more beautiful and special than any lady in the world and yet otherwise much the same as them. She had worn skirts, dresses, and the fine draped layers of the women of Asgard. She spent her days in sewing, in weaving, in directing the diplomatic affairs of the royal house of Asgard. She had the skills of a warrior, but she did not live the life of one.

Frigga had always favored Loki, training him and fussing over him when few other adults in their life had paid much attention to the second prince. Perhaps Loki had been inspired to follow in their mother's footsteps, as Thor had been inspired by Odin's?

And she was not the only one, Thor realized, that did not fit into the simple mold of the sheep, the sheepdog, and the wolf. There were others, as well. Bruce Banner, who ministered the strength of the berserker inside him; he had the power to devastate battlefields in his heart, yet he resisted using it. Refused to use it, in fact, until the circumstances became dire. He, too, had the strength of a warrior but did not wish to live a warrior's life.

Midgard was a fertile soil for such uncertainties; when Thor had first arrived here so, too, had he been quick to cast the mutants into the role of the wolf. They were born with strengths and powers to which their mortal kinsmen could not compare - yet by the testimony of Tony Stark, of Nick Fury, even of Darcy, the mutants did not wish to conquer, nor to fight - they wished only to be left alone. Peaceful, yet not powerless, they could not be called either wolves or sheep.

Nor, Thor was forced to admit to himself, was the boundary so easily drawn between those who were 'sheep' and those who were 'wolves.' As a child, as a youth, he'd immediately assigned the Frost Giants in that place - those who were outside the proper order of things, who only really existed for long enough to viciously attack and destroy and be destroyed in turn.

Yet he'd sought to thwart Loki's scheme with the Bifrost because the Frost Giants had done nothing to deserve such a brutal punishment upon them; they had been given no chance to plead surrender, no chance to defend themselves from such an assault. In that moment, they whom Thor had always seen as the wolves, had themselves become the sheep.

Maybe it was time to accept the fact that such simplistic metaphors could not describe the complexity of the Nine Realms - this one least of all.

It's not that simple, Thor.

Ever since he had come to Earth, people had been saying that to him. Perhaps this was what they meant. He could not treat all the Realms as though they were Asgard, and then be shocked when they failed to respond to him as though they were Asgard. If he truly wished to be a champion and protector, if he truly wished to help people, then that meant he had to give them the help they needed - not the help that he, Thor, thought they ought to have.

He did not know Loki. He did not know what Loki needed. Perhaps the time had come for him to learn.

"I… I do not know how," Thor admitted. It was harder than he had expected to admit that lack, almost frightening to show such a weakness. "I do not know how, Brother. I do not understand this world, these mortals or their mutant cousins. I do not understand their way of doing things, these battles they fight that are unlike the battles of Asgard, these monsters that are not monsters and heroes that are not heroes.

"I do not understand it, but Loki, you do. And so if you will allow it, I wish to spend some time in your shadow; I wish to follow you on this path you speak of, that I may learn from it and grow to be a better man, a better brother, and a better king."

Loki looked utterly poleaxed. Thor had to admit, there was a certain satisfaction in seeing his suave, controlled brother so flummoxed for a change. "You?" he sputtered. "You wish to - to - apprentice to me? To trail me around Midgard like a baby chick until you… what… understand the mysteries of how mortal societies work? Because I can tell you, Thor, that is a mystery that will endure until the Tree falls!"

"All the better then," Thor said quietly. "If it is a chance to … to have a place at your side, then yes."

"Hm." Loki turned away, staring out for a long time into the woods. The sun was starting to go down behind the ridge of the trees, casting a cool blue twilight over the scene; yet the sky was still bright, and the highest branches in the trees still shone with bright golden promise.

At last Loki looked up at Thor and smiled, and it was a warm, wicked and utterly familiar smile. "Well," he said. "It's certainly worth a try."

~to be continued...