First, thank you for the follows, favorites, PMs and reviews. I write other things for money, but this is just for fun. Knowing people like it is payment enough for me.

Second, please note that this chapter is a bit more risqué in the area of Thor and Loki being a little less than kin and more than kind. Simply put, it starts to get slashy here. If you don't like that sort of thing, please don't read on.

Hope you've all enjoyed your weekend.

CHAPTER THREE

Thor sat at the mouth of the cave with his back to one of its walls, watching the sun rise high into a midday sky. With a blade from his belt, he sliced chunks from a piece of fruit and ate them without tasting the sweetness, deep in thought.

In the night, no one and nothing had come for them. It was unrealistic, he knew, to think that the guards would not have told Odin of Loki's liberation. Still king, Odin could have gone to Heimdall had he so chosen, and could have been upon them in mere seconds. But he had not come. Thor and Loki had slept through safely, undisturbed, and Loki still slumbered now. It was no accident that they were being allowed this morning, as they had been allowed the night, but why?

The Allfather's every action was born of a purpose. Working so closely for long months at his right hand had taught Thor to read into each command for a reason, a lesson, and it had grown Thor in the direction of patriarchal capability, more in the time of Loki's imprisonment than in all of his previous life's years combined.

"Are you testing me?" Thor spoke the words aloud, anticipating no response. He needed none. It was the only reasonable explanation; for some purpose, to an end he could not yet see, he was on trial, being watched and scored. The way he executed this with Loki undoubtedly carried some weight. He would need to do the right things, make wise decisions about what was to become of his brother and not let Loki's lying silver tongue into his ear. Loki's own fate would likely depend on Thor's own strength. And Thor owed it to him to keep him safe, even if that meant keeping him safe from himself. He owed him a great many things.

Rising from where he sat, wearing only undergarments, he slung the pit of his fruit into the sea and stretched with great arms over his head. Here in daylight, he wanted to wake Loki, to wash and feed him and make certain nothing was grievously wrong with him. He had been sleeping for a worrisome amount of time, and his body had been weakened by the torture to an extent that it would likely sleep on into its own demise.

Daylight had infiltrated the cave, though the hollow at its far end where they kept their camp was still fairly dark. Loki had stretched his body across the bed in Thor's absence, sleeping on his back at a diagonal with his mouth and his legs open. In repose, he looked like an innocent. White as a china doll, his delicate features relaxed, there was nothing about the image that spoke of the liar and killer he was. It was an image that transported Thor, as so many seemed now to be doing, back into a simpler time.

Wet and naked, nearly a man, Thor jogged barefoot down the cave's corridor. Saltwater ran from his golden limbs and when he stopped beside the bed, it pooled on the rock floor around his feet. His hair was very long, wild and bleached by the sun and falling to the middle of his back. The wiry suppleness of adolescence was beginning to leave him in favour of a sturdier musculature. Loki remained as slender and lissom as a willow's branch, and he was sleeping in the shape of a starfish, every limb thrown outward, rosy lips parted.

As it had begun to do in moments like these, Thor's heart pounded and a breathless smile tugged up one corner of his mouth. Passing through buttery slants of morning light, he covered Loki's body with his own. The smaller figure beneath him jolted into animation immediately, startled by the wetness, the difference in temperature. He slapped Thor's chest at its centre with both hands in unison and scowled at him, not yet fully awake.

"Troll," Loki said, voice gravelly from sleep. "Get off." But like always, his resistance lacked conviction, and Thor kissed him instead. The wet ropes of his hair fell to frame their faces as their tongues made a salty dance, and Loki's soft fingers pulled at Thor's damp skin, his hips raised and seeking friction.

Untaught and untouched, Loki was graceful even in his inexperience, and Thor's body responded to it. This kiss was more intimate than those leading up to it had been, more significant. When it broke, they both gasped to catch their breath, the cave walls echoing that panting back at them.

"Get up and swim with me," Thor said, pinching Loki's bare thigh where it rested against his hip. Loki jumped at the sting, but didn't admonish his brother for it this time.

"Do more than kiss me." Loki's pale eyes pleaded as he spoke, fear and longing living there together, his lust colouring his high cheekbones.

Thor chuckled, pinching him again. "What more?"

At this, Loki closed his eyes, pressing his smooth cheek to a blonde whiskered one. "Do to me as you've done to Signy." A handmaiden of their mother. "As you've done to Tyr." This was a more apt comparison. Tyr, a pageboy and one of their sparring partners. Thor had taken him in an empty stable stall on a bed of fresh-strewn straw.

"You spied on me!" Thor's tone and expression were of surprised amusement.

"Do that." Entreaty. A hint of frustration.

For a moment, Thor waffled with indecision. There was no denying that his body wanted this, but something deeper warned him against it. Without really comprehending why, he shook his head and stood up, dragging Loki to his feet as well by one wrist.

"No. Swim with me."

Loki hung back, resisting the tugging toward the sea.

"Why won't you, when you will with anyone else?"

Incapable of sincerely expressing why, unwilling to try, Thor released his hold on his brother and ran ahead, his answer ringing against tunneled rock, "Why would I, when I can with anyone else?"

Heavy with guilt, now painfully aware of so many moments of cruelty in their past, Thor bent over the bed and placed a hand to Loki's arm.

"Wake up."

There was no fight in him when he did. Thor roped an arm around his waist and held most of his weight for him, but made him walk the length of the cave with help nonetheless. Sitting in the sand, neither of them spoke while Thor used a small blade to pick the locks of Loki's shackles. It was tedious work, and even once they were open, Loki was not free of them; they left raw red rings around his wrists, wounds open in some places, his skin chafed away and bleeding.

"I'll bind those for you after we bathe," Thor said, and rose to undress.

"No one came." Loki was incredulous, squinting across the neon brilliance of shallow water.

"I think Father is testing me. Testing us, perhaps."

"How so? To see what you'll do with me?"

"Perhaps." Thor brought Loki upright again to remove his undergarments, and the younger god shoved the helping hands away, wavering where he stood in an indignant refusal to have assistance with something so undignified. "You're going to fall," Thor warned him. And he did, stumbling and taking a knee when he attempted to step out of his clothes on his own, sand clinging to the sore wet flesh at his wrists when he dropped his hands to catch himself. He was white as milk and trembling.

"You must help me to regain my power."

"Must I?" Lifting Loki beneath the arms and taking him to the water's edge, Thor shook his head. "Somehow, I do not think that would help either of us in passing Father's test. But I can help you to regain your strength. Sit."

Loki sat as directed in the shallows, the water gentle and warm and no deeper than their chests. With careful hands, Thor rubbed the blood and filth from Loki's body, schools of small silver fish tickling them as they darted beneath the surface. The ocean rocked them with tranquil waves while Thor tipped his brother back to wash his hair, the dulling mixture of oil and blood stripped away to reveal the gleaming ebony of those locks as they were meant to be.

"There," he said when he was satisfied. "You are a new man."

"No." Loki shook his head, weary. "I'm very, very old." And Thor could not argue, as Loki's green eyes looked tired and ancient, indeed. It saddened him.

"You've missed breakfast, but I'll fish our lunch. Sit and soak your bones awhile, brother."

"I'm not your brother, Thor."

Thor chose to ignore him. With flint in hand, he started a fire in the pit they'd always used and retrieved the spear they'd always fished with from a ledge inside. Golden, glistening and naked as a newborn babe, Thor skewered two monstrous fish near an outcropping of rock. He carried them back with his forefingers hooked in their mouths and cleaned them on a flat black rock, tossing fillets of their flesh onto a grate suspended over the flames.

"Are you pickled yet?" he asked Loki, coaxing a shadow of a smile from the younger man at that.

"Nearly." Then he admitted, "And starved."

They sat side-by-side on Thor's cape and ate in the shade, succulent mouthfuls of fresh fish and chunks of wet red fruit. They didn't speak for a long stretch of time, eating intently in one another's company.

"The last time we were here, do you remember what I asked you?" Loki's eyes were downcast as he spoke his question aloud, breaking a long silence with it. His hair had recently been cut and fell only to his ears in loose curls wet from a swim.

"You asked me to take you." Thor smiled, studying his brother's profile. Of course he remembered. It had weighed heavily on his mind in the days since then. He had stayed away from Loki's chambers in the night since, had refrained from kissing him or holding him. "Why do you speak of it now?"

"I'm glad you said no." Loki was eating berries, and his lips were stained as though painted. "I think I want someone different. His name is Bjorn. He is the brother of Tyr, do you know him?"

In the wake of their gluttony, Loki was exhausted, slumped against Thor with his back against the tree of a palm.

"Did you think of me at all?" he asked, his voice adrift. Thor knew he was not long for the waking world. "When I was in the tower?"

"Of course I thought of you."

"While you were dining and bedding handmaidens?"

"Every day, Loki. Not only while I was dining and bedding handmaidens." There was no point in denying that he had done those things. Loki knew him too well.

"What were your thoughts of me?" The younger son of Odin closed his eyes.

"They were many. And they varied."

"Tell them to me."

"Some of them were fond, because I missed you," Thor admitted. "For so many years, you were half of who I was. My closest ally, my dearest friend. Many of those thoughts were memories of us as children."

"And others?" A murmur, barely coherent.

"Others were angry. Thoughts of disappointment and betrayal. At times, I numbered in my mind the reasons you deserved to be exactly where you were. The lives you ended, the people you hurt, the wreckage you caused on Midgard... And then, other times, I numbered in my mind the reasons I deserved to be there with you." Thor stopped speaking, his throat thick, and Loki made a soft sound, but it was obvious by his breathing that he was very nearly asleep. "All the times I failed you. The times I hurt you and gave you cause to want to hurt others in return."

Bjorn was long-legged and flaxen-haired, and his blue eyes swam with fear and excitement both as Thor took him. The dizzying jealousy that had plagued Thor since this servant's name had fallen from Loki's lips a week ago on their island lessened with every thrust, his fists twisting in the bedsheets and sweat beading across his upper lip.

When it was over, Thor handed Bjorn one of his own tunics.

"Wear this when you go riding with Loki in the morning." The boy looked confused, but it was by far the finest thing he had ever had in his hands, and he nodded his consent. "When Loki asks you about it, tell him what we did."

"I failed you." Thor whispered those words again. "But I won't this time."