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Beneath

Chapter One Hundred Eighty-Six – Repose

Loki pushed lightly at Brokk's shoulder, jostling him just enough that the head lolled on its neck, eyes open but with that unseeing look peculiar to the dead. From Brokk's unprotected chest protruded Loki's dagger, a deceptively small amount of blood seeping through the brown vest. He took a couple of slow steps backward.

No matter what he may have suggested to Brokk about prison cells, no matter what he may have let Thor believe, no matter what he himself may have absently entertained once Brokk was captured and restrained, prison was never going to have been Brokk's fate. Brokk was never going to leave this place alive. He was always going to die, and he was always going to die by Loki's hand. That decision had been made months ago.

Brokk was dead. Loki was alive. Thor was cautiously leaning over the body, placing a hand over Brokk's neck. Only one of these things differed from what he'd intended.

"He's dead," Thor said as he straightened up.

Loki met his gaze steadily. Thor, of course, would never do such a thing. He'd killed, certainly, but an unarmed man? Never. Honor. Morality. Simple right and wrong. But Loki did not regret what he'd done, nor was he ashamed of it, nor did the right or wrong of his dagger buried in Brokk's chest concern him at all. Thor looked unsettled, chest and shoulders visibly rising. Loki's gaze remained unflinching. Whatever the consequences of what he'd just done, that eternally vacant look in Brokk's eyes was worth it.

"Do you think that fire meant anything?" Thor asked, twisting a bit to take in the singeing on his cape and boots.

He crept into the library, senses on alert, slowly circling around to the front of the wooden bench where Brokk sat motionless. The elf was surrounded by over a dozen white candles with steady blue flames, supported by gleaming silver candlesticks.

Loki came closer, and used his boot to push Brokk's foot to the side, then squatted down. Just visible in the dirt floor now – and definitely not visible before – were a series of flat silver rings. He didn't need to check to know they encircled the chair. He stood again, staring down into Brokk's eyes, silently daring them to see again. "I think this is where he was continuing his explorations, seeking the next stepping stone on his path to escape. A convenient distraction, too, once hope of worming his way out of this was all but gone."

Thor nodded, though to him it all sounded fantastical, and made him more uneasy than he already was. He assumed Loki was referring to Brokk's ability to separate mind from body, but he didn't understand how it was possible. Neither did he doubt Loki's words, though. He looked back at the body, Loki's dagger still protruding from Brokk's chest. Thor also did not doubt that the dagger had torn right through the heart, and that Brokk was well and truly dead; still Mjolnir went back on his lap.

He also had no doubt that what happened to Brokk was exactly as Loki intended. It was murder, what Loki had done. Another murder laid on Loki's head now. Brokk had been attempting escape, yes. But a strike to the shoulder from Mjolnir, a tackle from Loki, probably even a knife that had not swept through the heart after the initial stabbing, could have left Brokk alive. No, death had not been the only option. And in the way Loki stared at him, saying nothing, waiting with a stubborn lift of his jaw for him to respond, Thor knew that Loki knew exactly what he'd done.

Thor averted his eyes. "We still can't return yet."

"Not until we're given the signal," Loki agreed, gaze still on Thor even if Thor could no longer meet his.

Thor glanced around the bare chamber, then at the stairs. "I'll go see what's above us." It didn't take long before he returned, bounding back down the stairs and ending up not far from Brokk again. "We're three levels down. The other underground levels look like this one. At ground level there are windows, boarded up, some construction equipment. Very little disturbance of the earth. He might have gone out to get food and drink, but I'd guess he's mostly stayed down here."

Loki nodded. It was good to know, but he hadn't been particularly concerned about what lay above them.

"This is awkward."

"How so?" Loki asked flatly.

"We're stuck here with a dead body."

"I don't see what's awkward about that," Loki said, somewhat surprised. Thor, he supposed, was committed to avoiding the issue for the time being. It wasn't a bad strategy, really, if unlike Thor. Confronting it here was pointless. Better to wait until they returned to Asgard. Thor, he hoped, would see reason – or rather, less reason and more sentiment. He had put real effort into ensuring that the conditions were there to induce sentiment, despite the unpleasantness of it. Brokk had muddied the waters with his escape attempt, but there was no reason that should prevent Thor from telling himself that Brokk's words had provoked Loki to frenzied impulsive action.

Loki headed over to the stairs and lowered himself to the second one from the bottom, carefully steering clear of the books and the remnants of Brokk's last meal. The books were tempting, but Loki didn't trust anything belonging to Brokk at this point. He twisted his hand and plucked an orange out from storage, then tossed it into the air a few times. Thor's eyes were back on him now. "What? You didn't come prepared with snacks? Take this one. I have plenty more." He drew his arm back to throw, but Thor was shaking his head, face pinched. Loki shrugged. "Don't say I didn't offer." He peeled the entire orange, then carefully pulled out a section and popped it in his mouth.

Thor watched with distaste as Loki dispassionately chewed, then turned back to the body. Bodies didn't bother him. But this was not the normal way one behaved around them. Not the way normal people behaved around them. "We could at least cover him." The room was barren, though; there was literally nothing that could be used as a cover. He glanced over his shoulder, down at his own damaged cape. It was a worthy sacrifice. He reached around and started to tear.

"Don't," Loki objected. "I want to make sure he doesn't blink."

Thor paused. He was certain Brokk was dead, and almost as certain that Loki was certain of it, too. He didn't care to think too much on why Loki wanted an unobstructed view of the body. He reluctantly let go of his cape, now hanging unevenly from where it was already ripped. He realized then something Loki had been missing, and that was infinitely easier to talk about. "Why haven't you been wearing your cape?"

Loki gave it half a second of thought while he chewed, and decided the shock value might be worth it, and he didn't particularly care if Thor knew, anyway. What difference did it make at this point? "Strangely enough," he said, pausing to swallow a bit of orange, "I don't care to be draped in a cloth in honor of a 'Jotun whore.'"

Thor squinted his eyes, cast a quick glance back to the body, then approached Loki. "Are you well, Brother?" He made a grunt of annoyance. "Sorry."

"At the moment? Very well."

"Then…I don't understand."

"Although I still enjoy hearing it, for once I can't really blame you for that. Your color is a variation on Odin's color, is it not? And long associated with the direct line of Asgard's ruling family, in one shade or another."

Thor nodded, slowly. "Because I was firstborn."

Loki dipped his head to the side and gave a one-shouldered shrug. "The fact that your skin isn't naturally blue and your eyes not naturally red might have a little something to do with it as well, but let's go with that for now. Do you know how my color was chosen?"

Thor hesitated, looking for the trap he knew had to be there, but he couldn't find it. "Mother said it suited you."

It hurt. It was entirely unexpected, but it genuinely hurt and Loki faltered for an instant before forcing a dark grin to his face. "Mother is a liar."

"Loki," Thor rumbled in warning.

"Are you honestly going to dispute that?" Loki asked with a laugh. "It's a simple fact."

"She kept one thing from you. And you know it was out of kindness."

"It doesn't feel terribly kind."

"I'm not saying it was the right thing to do. But you know they didn't do it to hurt you."

"Regardless, she kept much more than one thing from me. Your color honors the House of Odin. Mine honors the rag I was found wrapped in on Jotunheim. Nothing to do with how it brings out my eyes, I'm afraid."

"You were found in a rag? A green rag?" Thor asked, slow to reconcile what Loki was telling him with the "truth" he'd always known.

"Mmm," Loki responded, in part an answer, in part an expression of appreciation for the fresh orange. He swallowed quickly, forcing it past the lump fighting to rise in his throat. "You know how sentimental she is. She preserved it all these years. She showed it to me." "Cloth is precious here," he heard Farbauti saying."She took it as a sign that even though they condemned a baby to a slow, lonely death, deep down they really cared."

Pressure built on Thor's chest; he felt as though he were being crushed, and couldn't help the wince. He had never given much thought to what led to Loki's abandonment as an infant, or the abandonment itself, but rather everything that had followed. Loki's blood parents had left him to suffer and die. Alone. It was cruelty of the highest order. Loki had faced more cruelty in his life than Thor had ever known. "We need to make a real peace with Jotunheim. But right now…I wish to slaughter every last one of them."

Loki chuckled. "Come full circle, have you? Well, it is the best way to ensure a peace is permanent. But I'm afraid you'll have to get in line."

Thor regarded Loki – absorbed in peeling away another section of his orange – with a deepening frown. Loki not only lacked his green cape, but the only hint of green he wore at all was a bit of green trim visible in his collar. He probably didn't have any formal wear without it. Thor wanted to wipe them out for what they'd done to his brother. But it was just a thought, a feeling of rage and a desire for vengeance born out of that old sense of protectiveness he'd had toward Loki when they were boys. Loki seemed to have no regrets about having actually attempted it.

Thor's thoughts swam in circles; he knew he was in well over his head. He felt like someone had reached into his guts and squeezed and wouldn't let go. "Move over," he said to Loki, waving a hand at the stairs on which Loki sat. Instead of moving over, Loki spread out further and sprawled back on his elbows. "Where am I supposed to sit? Move over."

"You could use the chair. He doesn't need it anymore."

"I'm not eager to touch anything belonging to that man," Thor said, looking from the body to his burned right hand, red with a blackened rough imprint of the talisman seared into his palm.

Loki, too, got a glimpse of Thor's palm; it was worse than he'd realized. He thought he might have had something for burns stashed away in storage before everything had been emptied out at the South Pole. "You should probably wrap that. Use your cape if you're so eager to divest yourself of it."

Thor got to work on it, for in this Loki was right. The fact that his hand didn't hurt wasn't a good sign. The Healing Room was in his future. He struggled to secure one-handed the end of the cloth he tore away, and was surprised when Loki left the stairs he'd claimed in order to help him. Loki didn't look at him as he did it, and continued over to the body afterward, wrapping another strip of cloth from the cape around his own injured hand after refusing Thor's offer of help. Thor eyed the stairs and considered claiming them for himself now that Loki had left them. It brought a faint smile to his lips, with long-ago memories of how things used to be between him and Loki. How things used to be when they were still good.

"I can't exactly do this by myself, you know."

Thor turned to see Loki standing next to Brokk, pointing with a flat bandaged palm at Mjolnir. He headed over and picked up the hammer. Loki then went behind the chair and pulled and lifted. Brokk slid out, head hitting the floor in a heavy thud.

"There. All yours," Loki said brightly as he deposited the now-empty chair next to Brokk's body.

Thor's lips curled in distaste. Loki's irrational insistence on keeping the body in sight had really gotten to him, though, and he carefully lowered Mjolnir back onto Brokk's abdomen, just below Loki's dagger.

Loki dropped down onto the stairs again. He looked at Brokk in disappointment. In his new position, Loki couldn't really see his eyes. He wasn't going to blink, of course. Loki knew dead when he saw it, and so did Thor, who had checked Brokk's nonexistent pulse. A quick, simple death was not what Loki had envisioned over the last couple of months, though. He'd imagined a blade placed where death was still inevitable, but much slower, much more painful. He'd imagined eviscerating Brokk. He'd imagined carving his name into the dead body, so that it was clear who had ended Brokk's pathetic life. He could still do that one, he supposed, but Thor would probably not appreciate it, and what hope he had of getting out of this without consequence would be wiped out. And, in retrospect, the idea had sounded better in his fantasies than it did right now in reality. Reality, as it turned out, was sufficient. Brokk was dead and a burden had been lifted. It was just that the occasional glance toward those vacant eyes was satisfying.

And if it shook Thor's confidence in his earlier declaration of Brokk's death, well, there was nothing wrong with getting a bit of extra fun out of all of this. His attention again settled on Thor, who was eyeing the chair. "You still haven't said something that we both know needs to be said."

"What's that, Loki?" Thor said, giving in and picking up the chair to carry it over closer to Loki. It was true that they could still be here for hours. Better to settle in. He angled the chair so that he would still be able to see Brokk out of the corner of his eye and took a seat.

"Your plan was to capture Brokk, and bring him back to Asgard for questioning and trial."

"He was captured and questioned," Thor said uneasily.

"Mm-hm. My plan, on the other hand, was-"

"Loki, stop. Don't."

"It won't be true if I don't speak it aloud? Childhood was a long time ago, Thor."

"I know that."

"And?"

"He had a knife."

Loki stared, suddenly conscious of his own breathing in the barren chamber of hollowed-out earth. Thor held his gaze for a moment, but then looked away. He could not figure Thor out. Sometimes it seemed he had matured. Sometimes it seemed he'd regressed and childhood wasn't so long ago after all. Thor didn't lie, not intentionally anyway. Not since they were much, much younger. The fact that he was terrible at it was only a small part of the reason. "The great Thor Odinson will lie?" he finally asked, quietly.

"It isn't a lie," Thor said with a slight shrug. "He did have a knife. I don't have to specify when."

"Rhetorical games. It's deception."

"So be it. I know what happened here, Loki, I'm not blind, or deaf. But I won't see you brought down because of this. Only you and I and Heimdall know the truth, and it will stay that way."

Thor seemed more confident now than he had at first, but Loki could tell he was still uncomfortable. "I don't require any sacrifices from you. There's no need for you to be brought down from your high perch in my stead."

"My 'perch' is not so high," Thor said with a rueful smile. He wasn't allowed to talk about this, but he knew Loki knew what he meant.

"A perceived act of charity on your part doesn't negate the past, you know."

"There's no charity," he said sharply, then paused to take a breath and calm himself. "There's no sacrifice. And I'm not doing this to try to make up for the past. What's done is done. No one else needs to know the whole story. We tried…I tried to bring Brokk back, he had a knife, there was a scuffle…and he was killed. That's the end of it." He wasn't going to lie to try to wipe away past wrongs; he thought back on some of the things he'd said to Loki before, trying to show Loki that he valued and respected him, and how Loki might have seen it as pandering. He wouldn't do that again; he would at least try not to, not in that way. But to assuage his guilt? Perhaps a little, he grudgingly admitted to himself. But mostly because Loki had endured far worse humiliation and cruelty after falling from the bifrost than he'd known. The things Brokk said had ripped him apart inside, until finally he could stand there passively listening no longer. That Loki had groveled for their father's favor and never felt he received it. That Thanos had told him Loki was reviled by those who claimed to love him, by which of course he meant Loki's family. By which he meant Thor, too. If Loki had yielded to revenge, Thor wasn't going to condemn him for it, or say anything that would give Odin or anyone else leave to condemn him for it, either. You were not reviled, Loki, he thought, searching for some way Loki would let him say it and not finding it. They had an agreement, after all, and he knew Loki wasn't going to release him from it. Even absent their agreement, there was no way Loki would allow Thor to say all the things he wished to, if Thor could somehow find the words for them in the first place.

As Thor sat there, captive to his thoughts, Loki stared at him in silent frustration. He didn't doubt Thor meant everything he said. That didn't necessarily mean it was true; it only meant that Thor thought it was true. But there had to be more to it. And even though Thor keeping his mouth shut about what really happened was very much to his benefit, he didn't care to owe Thor anything, either. Another idea occurred to him. "I could make you forget."

"What?"

"Perhaps not entirely forget, but I could make it foggy at least. I know you don't want to lie. I could make you forget what's foremost on your mind, what makes you most uncomfortable."

"That makes me most uncomfortable," Thor said, physically drawing back as far as he could while remaining seated. "Don't ever do that. And what's foremost on my mind…those things Brokk said, about you facing Thanos alone-"

"You can stop right-"

"No, Loki, let me…just let me say this. You don't ever have to fight alone. I'll be there. If I'd known what would happen, I would have let go, too. You shouldn't have had to face him alone. Especially not then."

"I would have let go, too." For a moment, that idea overwhelmed him, blocking out every other thought. Not being alone in the void of Yggdrasil wouldn't have made a difference. To be stuck in Yggdrasil was to be stuck in the terror of one's own mind. Without air there was no speech, and Loki had hated Thor then, anyway – what would they have talked about? He would have turned away to hide his own suffering and to not have to look upon Thor's. But if Thor had been plucked from Yggradasil, too, if they had both lain there recovering, maybe… Maybe it would have gone differently. Maybe not. And Thanos wasn't stupid. He probably would have separated them, told each the other had died. Loki would have told himself that he was glad, and at that time, perhaps it would have even been true. The sentiment, though, was a nice one. And typically Thor in its arrogance. "If only I had been with you, this never would have happened. You were too weak to face him alone." For some reason, that poem that Jane had mentioned, that Macy had overheard and filled in, came to mind – "No man is an island entire of itself," it began. Perhaps it wasn't arrogance. He didn't say he would have defeated Thanos. He said I wouldn't have been alone. His throat was tightening and his eyes threatened unexpected moisture.

He left the remains of his orange on the stairs and stood to walk the perimeter of the circular structure, shuffling his feet along the bare earth as he went. If nothing had happened by now, probably there was nothing to worry about, but an inspection for traps or magic of any sort, not to mention the stability of the ceiling, wouldn't hurt. As he made his way around, he heard Thor, too, stand. Thor never could sit for long periods of time. "You're really going to lie about how he died?" Loki asked, deliberately keeping his tone light, as though he were asking about the weather.

"I'm going to tell the truth, but leave out a few details. Other than my advisors, no one will even know you were here." Loki said nothing further, so Thor went the other direction to pick up his cloak with the talisman, then searched for and found the invisible bundle with Brokk's invisible knife. Evidence. When Loki made it back to the stairs, apparently having found nothing of note, he brought the knife and the talisman over to him. "Can you make them visible?"

Loki took them, somewhat reluctantly. He didn't want anything of Brokk's. But an invisible knife was an unnecessary danger, and the talisman…he supposed it was necessary. "Yes." Reversing someone else's magic wasn't easy, but it was less complicated on an object than on a living thing, and less complicated still when the person who'd placed the magic was dead and thus had no continued connection to it. And while Brokk's magic was strong, Loki was familiar with it.

"How do you do that?" Thor asked, watching as Loki unwrapped and studied the invisible knife, free hand moving over it.

"You wouldn't understand," Loki said without much thought, without looking up from his work.

"Perhaps not. But definitely not if you won't explain it."

At that Loki did look up. Thor didn't sound angry, or even particularly annoyed. He sounded reasonable. And that was annoying. "I know what you're trying to do. It won't work."

"You can't know for certain it won't work if you don't try. I think you'll find me a better student than I once was. I hope you will."

"I'm not talking about the magic, idiot. I'm talking about you, the way you're behaving. You seem to think you can tame me. Transform me from the monster into the family pet with a few gestures of kindness thrown to me like bones. It won't work."

Thor shook his head. Sometimes Loki really did sound mad; it made him wonder just how much madness there truly was in his brother. "Of course it won't work. It's ridiculous. We were wrong to call them monsters. To think of them that way. They aren't monsters. They're people. You aren't a monster. And if you were a pet…you would be the most ill-behaved pet that ever lived," Thor said with a chuckle. Probably inappropriate, he thought even as he laughed, but he couldn't help it, imagining Loki as the goat that ate all the family's laundry as it hung out to dry. "You aren't an animal."

Loki finished with the knife and tossed it back to Thor, who caught it, rewrapped it with more material torn from his cape, and tucked it into his belt. He wasn't sure what Thor had found humorous about that, but it made his thoughts jump in a different direction, as he began work on the talisman. "Not everyone would agree with you."

"Then they've only known you at your worst, and they're wrong. If they'd seen me at my worst, they might come to the same conclusion."

"And yet they didn't."

"The Midgardians didn't see me at my worst."

"I'm not talking about that."

"Then…what are you talking about?" Thor asked, sensing Loki had entirely changed the topic, leaving Thor yet again struggling to catch up.

"On Midgard they believe I'm an animal, at least part of the time, I suppose. They believe I gave birth to a horse."

Thor stared, face contorting with confusion and growing concern. "Are you certain you're well, Loki? I think Brokk may have done something to you, some kind of magic." He approached Loki, arm outstretched, thinking to clasp his neck and hopefully gain some idea of what was wrong. Loki smacked his hand away and rolled his eyes. A new idea occurred to him. "Is that an expression among the Midgardians? Or a jest? Giving birth to a horse? What does it mean?"

"It means exactly what it sounds like. They believe I gave birth to a horse. It's in a book Jane has, about their mythology of us." Oddly enough, talking about the disgusting deviance with animals the Midgardians ascribed to him wasn't anywhere near as unpleasant as talking about Frost Giants yet again.

So not an expression, not madness, not cursed by Brokk… Thor's concern quickly faded, and in its place laughter bubbled up. A minute had not yet passed before he could barely breathe from it.

"It isn't funny," Loki said, watching Thor clutch his stomach.

"Yes it is," Thor wheezed out over the laughter. "You have to admit that's funny."

"I do not. All my life you've insisted I must find things funny that I clearly do not."

"But this one is. You just refuse to admit it." Instead of reaching for Loki's neck as he'd intended earlier, he reached for Loki's tunic to try to pull it up, but he didn't get far, impeded by armor and Loki's grip around his wrist.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?" Loki said, a rumble of anger joining his irritation.

"Looking for the scar. There must be a big one for a horse. Was it a healthy foal, Loki? Boy or girl?"

Loki pushed Thor's hand away, then again when he tried again with his other hand. It devolved into a scramble of arms until Loki reached higher and struck Thor in the jaw. Hard enough to stop the grabbing, not quite hard enough to stop the laughing. "Sleipnir," Loki mumbled over a traitorous little pulsing of his own chest.

"What?" Thor asked, not quite catching what Loki had said and assuming it to be some invective or slight against his intelligence.

"They say it's Sleipnir."

Thor's eyes grew wide and the laughter suddenly stopped, but in an instant it was back in raucous guffaws that left tears slipping down his cheeks. He'd given up reaching for Loki's stomach to wrap his arms around his own again. "That must have been so painful, Brother! All those legs! How did you ever manage?!"

Loki watched Thor a moment longer, then turned away and gave up trying not laugh. Thor might not have noticed that he'd slipped and called him "brother," but Loki had. It wouldn't hurt to let it go this time, though. Laughing felt good.

Several more minutes passed. Thor nearly said something several times, but each time stopped himself. He knew Loki had laughed, too. Anything he said would surely shatter the rare moment. Eventually, though, something had to be said. "What else is recorded of us in this mythology?"

The question gave Loki pause. The things that flickered to mind, the things Jane had told him about, were generally things he didn't want to speak of. "The Journey and Challenges of the Valiant Odinsons." Thor's marital bonds with Sif, which would likely lead to questions about Jane. His own monstrous progeny and the normal wife and normal children who met gruesome ends. His parentage ascribed to Frost Giants while Thor gained half of Asgard as brothers. There was that early one she'd told him… "There is one delightful story, in which you don a gown."

"A gown? A woman's gown? Now you're just inventing your own stories."

"Really? I'm inventing that one but not Sleipner being my offspring? Yours is actually true, Thor. There's no need for anyone to invent it."

"But I've never…"

"You've never?" Loki asked with arched brow.

"Thrym?"

"Thrym," Loki confirmed.

"But that was…that was over a thousand years ago. We were practically children. And you were in a gown, too."

"I remember. Unfortunately."

"Does it say why I was in a gown? Does it say whose idea it was that I was in a gown?"

"It does. The story isn't without error, but it gets a surprising amount right. And from what I heard of them, all of the myths they built around us all seem to come from that time period, the first few decades of our lives. Someone was obviously interacting with the Midgardians much more than we were permitted to." As Loki spoke, he paid less and less attention to the words from his own mouth, and more to Thor, who he wasn't sure was listening anymore. His entire countenance had changed. Where he had been relaxed and jovial, he was now tense and uncertain and acutely uncomfortable. Any time now, Heimdall, he thought. Whatever Thor now had on his mind, Loki was certain he didn't want to hear it.

"When I visited Jane in Norway," Thor began, each word all but forced out, "she mentioned something to me about Midgard's mythology, too."

"Did she," Loki said with a tone meant to convey his utter lack of interest. "Change your mind about an orange?" he asked, pulling one from storage and lobbing it at Thor before he could answer. If his mouth was full of orange, perhaps he'd give up on saying whatever it was that Thor seemed to not want to say any more than Loki wanted him to say it.

Thor tossed it absently from hand to hand a few times before letting it fall to his side in his palm. It was surprisingly hard to physically get the name out. It wasn't to be spoken of, and it especially wasn't to be spoken of around Loki. "Baldur's death," he finally said, as complete a sentence as he could manage at first.

Loki's eyes locked on Thor's, which were locked on the ground at his feet. "I know," Loki murmured, hoping to stave off Thor telling him what he already knew. He was surprised Jane had told Thor about this particular bit of Norse mythology, though, because when she'd told him it sounded as though she was telling it for the first time, uncertain of what was fact and what was fiction.

"Jane said you told her about it."

It took all Loki's effort to keep his expression unchanged as his focus on the talisman faltered. He had little left to try to keep the anger at bay, and none left to respond. Speaking with Jane about that had been difficult. Painful. And as soon as Thor showed up at the South Pole she was repeating it to him?

"She said you told her…it was an accident."

"And?" Loki finally managed to grind out.

"She said you were talking in your sleep. Dreaming about it. She said she heard you, and that's why you told her. She was asking how we went on with our lives after his death, after what happened to you. I told her it was a long process that started with your confession. She was…surprised that you confessed." Why lie? After all this time? What difference does it make now? Thor didn't ask; he didn't want to accuse Loki of anything. It didn't even bother him really, that Loki had lied about it. He didn't know the true circumstances of the decision to lie. Loki had befriended Jane, the only one of the Midgardians at the South Pole who knew who he was, and he had perhaps feared that she would turn her back on a man who had intentionally murdered his brother, despite how long ago it was. It was an odd fear, if that was the reason for it, given Loki's attack on Midgard, and on Erik. If Jane had accepted him despite those much more recent events, why would he think she couldn't accept him over something that had happened a millennium ago? He wondered, then, with only a mild curiosity, and a concern that it continued to weigh on Loki more heavily than it should. But the matter was long over, and dredging it up now was of no benefit to either of them. Except that Jane wanted him to, out of her own concern.

"What else?" Loki asked when Thor didn't continue.

"Nothing else. She wanted me to ask you about it. She's convinced of your innocence."

Loki snorted. Jane shouldn't have stuck her nose into this, but it wasn't as bad as he'd thought. Although it had led to an exchange he could have happily lived without, she had raised the issue, he supposed, because she cared. About him. That realization greatly eased the sting of a minute earlier. He would simply have to tell her to keep her concerns to herself. "I never told her I was innocent."

"But she-"

"She insisted you raise this, didn't she."

Thor nodded.

"Then you may tell her you did."

"Tell me though…does it burden you still?"

Loki considered the question seriously, both the truth and whatever he would tell Thor. "Burden," he thought, wasn't quite the right word for it. Such an austere word for something so unspeakably vile, dragged back out of the lilac bushes and into the light of fresh memory. "It was a long time ago. I have other burdens now."

Thor nodded slowly. He thought he had perhaps not gone as far as Jane would have liked. But Loki had already reaffirmed his guilt, or at least had not negated it, and Thor could see no sense in trying to further force the issue. Whatever exactly Loki had told Jane, it had simply been a more convenient version of events. "One less now, perhaps?" he said with a pointed glance over his shoulder to the body on the ground.

"One less now," Loki agreed.

"I know it's wrong of me…but I'm glad Brokk's dead."

"Hm. Well, we're agreed on that last, then."

"I wanted to kill him myself, for the things he said."

Here we go, Loki thought. He'd hoped that maybe, just maybe, Thor could let it go without commenting on it. "He said things? I remember only a buzzing noise, as may come from any number of small annoying insects."

"Beneath that arrogant smirk are a million cracks. I watched him shatter you. It took him less than a minute." Horrifying, infuriating words. That wasn't Loki. Loki was sharp-tongued, cold and calculating when it suited him. In his younger years he'd been called sensitive, yes, but he was not fragile. He did not "shatter." And yet… "Do you think Loki is without hope?" he heard his father asking him. He saw yet again that change on Loki's face, that moment of decision, Loki's palm opening, Loki falling. Loki had also appeared unbreakable, unshakeable, in the midst of his entirely uncharacteristic attack against Midgard. "Beneath that arrogant smirk are a million cracks." Those cracks, perhaps, explained Loki's mad actions. He saw Loki standing calmly in his bedchamber, face blank, broken glass at his feet, fist reddened. Those cracks were still there, he now knew, even if Loki was no longer without hope. He could even name them, many of them. And suddenly, he was afraid for Loki, for what else might become of him, still in such a state. And what good was he to his brother, when his brother refused to accept him as such, when he refused overtures of friendship, when he preferred to not even be around him? How was he supposed to help?

The feeling peaked in a near panic, then settled. Loki was right there, right in front of him. Not falling. Not attacking. He'd intentionally killed an unarmed man, yes, but Brokk was no innocent, and was responsible in part for the deaths of tens of thousands. Loki was making plans to Asgard's benefit – even if to his personal benefit as well – and following through on them, even when they were personally difficult, like facing his blood family on Jotunheim. And Loki was talking to him, albeit not on a particularly personal level. He couldn't fix Loki's cracks. All he could do was try to remember that they were there, no matter how well Loki hid them, and try not to exacerbate them. And reiterate his offer. "I know Brokk said what he did to make a point. I don't know how true it was, and I suspect you won't tell me. But what I said before, about not having to face Thanos, or his lackey, or anyone alone…I meant that, Loki. I know you'd rather do things on your own, and…I understand that now, but you shouldn't have to. Ever."

Loki cracked a smile. Thor had actually managed to not bring it up, not directly, anyway. But he was repeating himself now, and while Thor often felt the need to say things more than once, Loki rarely cared to hear them more than once. "So what you're saying is that when you invited me to abandon my plans and join you in defending Midgard against the Chitauri, and my response was a knife to your gut, if instead I had made you a counteroffer to join me in attacking Midgard…you would have agreed? So that I didn't have to fight alone?"

"You weren't fighting alone then," Thor said, shooting Loki a sardonic look.

Thor, curse him, occasionally said things that made him think. It was entirely unintentional, clearly. Moments from that day, the chaos of that battle, flickered through his mind. "Actually," he said, "I rather think I was." He couldn't recall a single incident where any of the Chitauri had specifically aided him, not when Clint Barton targeted him with his arrows, not when Thor singled him out and attacked, not when the Hulk smashed him senseless. Looking back, he didn't think the Chitauri had even noticed his existence, much less lifted a thick gray finger to assist him. And he certainly hadn't cared if any of them lived or died, either; they were only marginally alive, by his definition, in the first place. He wondered, for one very strange moment, what might have happened had he arrived at that New Mexico facility and immediately pasted on his most genteel smile. "I am Loki of Asgard. Brother of Thor. He was unable to come himself, and asked me to go in his stead, to assist you in your study of the Tesseract." He could have convinced them. He could have convinced them enough, at least. Enough to get a moment to himself to securely dispose of that wretched scepter. Enough to slink away into the night, or join their work long enough to subtly guide them into using the Tesseract to aid his own departure from Midgard to a more convenient realm. Maybe snatch it and take it with him when he left. Or leave it behind like a bad memory, along with Asgard and Thanos and the lackey.

It had occurred to him. Not that, exactly, but something like it. The part of him that recognized an expectation and immediately wanted to subvert it, to sew chaos and confusion. Something had surged in him when the tiny portal opened and he forced it wider, finally breaking free of his captivity – to call it anything else, no matter what bargain he'd gladly and sincerely agreed to, was folly, he thought with clenching stomach. Freedom. "They'll never take our freedom!" he incongruously remembered Brody and then Austin shouting.

Then normal gravity had reasserted itself, and he was surrounded by mortals aiming at him what were clearly weapons of some sort, and he recognized the man with the eye-patch and the older man, these were Thor's friends, and he hated Thor with a venomous burning passion, and he hated these people, too, but he would show them. Oh, he would show them. Everything became clear. He had his plan. His purpose. The one Thanos had given him, that he too desired, even if the details were not of his choosing. There was no freedom; it was a lie. The uncertainty and restlessness evaporated, and he accepted what was to come. It was better that way.

"Loki?"

He looked up from his reverie, and felt a jolt of shock at seeing Thor. "What?" he snapped, reflexive anger rushing through him.

"What did you mean?"

"About what?"

"You said you fought alone. In New York. What did you mean by that?"

Loki forced himself to relax. Thor hadn't actually done anything to deserve such ire, not today. He'd let himself drift into the past too deeply, until it began to feel like the present. It wasn't, and he wasn't interested in returning to it. "Nothing. The Chitauri were useless."

"Then why…never mind."

"Random armies provided by someone else, armies you've never fought alongside even in mock battle, you have no clear means of communication with, you know not one individual by name or even if they have names…well. Not the most reliable armies."

Thor had never thought of Loki as fighting alone in his attack on Midgard. He'd known even before arriving on Midgard of the Chitauri army, massed and waiting for the opening to invade, on Loki's signal. He'd learned not much later of his forcible "recruitments," including of Erik Selvig. Looking back, though, he understood Loki's point. He'd just fought in his own war, alongside fellow warriors who'd learned to use a sword the exact same way he had, who shared the same understanding of discipline and courage and honor, who sang the same battle songs he did, who breathed the same silent prayers for the dead. Loki had fought beside strangers of an unfamiliar species, creatures who, as Loki had suggested back at the South Pole, perhaps were not even capable of independent thought. His only other allies were those he'd enslaved to his will. Such were not friends. Such could not share burdens. To fight under those conditions was a dreadful thought, and Thor knew that he should have realized all along that they were not of Loki's design. It painted Loki in a different shade than Thor had first envisioned when he'd learned of Loki's attack. "Why didn't you say anything to defend yourself at your trial?"

Loki spared a glance toward Brokk and his unseeing eyes. "Asgard isn't even attempting to pretend that its laws have any bearing on its so-called justice?" "There will be a trial, in accordance with the law. But we have more than enough evidence of your crimes. Your fate is in no doubt." "A number of reasons come to mind," he answered. "Chief among them…I was guilty."

"But by saying nothing you made yourself out to be a cold-blooded fiend."

"You mean I revealed the truth."

"No, Loki, you know that's not what I meant. Your attitude turned the Assembly against you. Father had to pull your case from the hands of the magistrates for fear it would be the ax. We knew there were unusual circumstances, but you could have told us about Thanos, and The Other, how they took advantage of-"

"Do not finish that sentence. It would be easier for you, wouldn't it? To imagine I was forced into my actions. To paint me Thanos's innocent puppet. A victim." "I am not a victim!" he heard Jane shouting at him. At the time he hadn't thought much about it; he'd been focused on placating her so she would continue working with him, and he'd been struggling with a sense of guilt he didn't know quite what to do with. Now he understood. He would rather kill again than be thought a victim. "I wasn't. It's a childish notion, and kings should not cling to such things."

"You go too far, as you always do. I've never said or thought that you were a puppet. But Loki, can you honestly imagine yourself agreeing to lead this army of unknown creatures in an attempted conquest of Midgard at any other time of your life?"

"Who knows? But timing, as they say, is everything." No, he thought behind the blithe smile. No, he couldn't imagine it. But timing was everything. He wasn't sure now why he'd ever thought that plan would work in the first place. He supposed he'd never really even thought it through, not seriously, not critically. His need had been so raw, so all-consuming…Thanos had dangled Midgard before him, knowing full well its significance to him in Thor's ruining of his plans on Asgard, and where Loki's resistance to other forms of manipulation had proven insurmountable, this he had leapt at. It was revolting. Humiliating. But only if the truth was known.

"The artifact Brokk dug up. Do you think he was telling the truth about that?" Thor asked. He knew Loki was leaving a great deal about Thanos and the attack on Midgard unsaid, but it was clear that Loki intended to keep it that way.

"Yes. I'm certain of it."

"How did it get on Asgard, then? And long enough ago that a home had been built over it?"

"The house could have been built the week before, you know. It wouldn't be hard to find out. Just ask about a house that burned down in one of the villages not long before the war. It isn't a frequent occurrence." As he said it though, it didn't sound right to his own ears. New construction, where nothing had been built before, was also not a frequent occurrence on Asgard. It was possible, but… "Thanos sought to attack Asgard once, long ago. When passage was eased by secret events we shall not discuss. When the Tesseract would still have been on Asgard. When obtaining the Tesseract would have further eased his passage to spread destruction across the realms. What if the gem was left behind then? Once Yggdrasil began to stabilize Thanos's minions would no longer have been able reach Asgard to attack so easily. They could have buried it, pre-positioned it to be of some use in a future attack when he found conditions more favorable."

"Thanos would only need to direct Brokk to it," Thor said. It was plausible. "So we still have no means of reaching him. But what were you saying about meeting the lackey? You said you told him that Brokk's plan failed. How were you able to speak with him?"

Loki forced a grin to his face to hide the grimace. So much had been said that he wished Thor had somehow missed, or at least forgotten. He finally learned to pay attention to something besides his own voice – and Loki's whispered manipulations, made to appeal specifically to that voice – and it had to be now, instead of a few centuries ago. "It's simple," he said, as the options flashed through his mind. "I lied," he decided to say. The words ground into him; it was a terrible lie. Jolgeir would say nothing, Loki was nearly certain, and Heimdall probably wouldn't, but Tony Stark or Steve Rogers could easily tell Thor about the state they'd found him in inside the bathroom. His salvation was only in the fact that he'd also lied to them, and Thor, he thought, was unlikely to connect that lie to this one. He could not admit that weakness, that narrow bit of control Thanos and his crony still exercised over him, and if there was one thing anyone would believe about him, it was that he lied. This lie, he thought more after the fact than before it, should hold.

"You really don't know Brokk's means of…communication, then?"

"No."

A burst of light filled the room, and Thor squinted against it. It lasted only a couple of seconds, and then he was blinking away dust from the ceiling.

"Finally," Loki declared, earning a frown from Thor, which was precisely why he'd said it aloud. Being stuck in an underground chamber with Brokk's dead body and Thor wasn't his preferred way to spend the afternoon.

Thor headed over to Brokk, his back to Loki, and a smile replaced the frown. Loki may protest, but they'd managed to share a few good laughs, and hadn't once come close to physical or even verbal blows – not real ones, anyway. Despite the heart-rending things he'd heard here, true or not, he was glad of this rather surreal time they'd spent together. Even Brokk – the outcome wasn't what he'd sought, but as he lifted Mjolnir from the body, he found he wasn't especially bothered by it anymore. "Ready?"

"Yes, but you'd better get over here. I don't want him tagging along."

"We have to bring him back. We can't just leave him here."

"Why not? What exactly do you think you're going to do with him on Asgard? You plan to imprison a corpse? After a trial held in full accordance with the law? I pity those in the cells nearby who have to endure the stench."

"You're disgusting. We have to take him back. To prove what happened."

"You don't think they'll believe you? Well, that he's dead, at least. I'd recommend avoiding the rest of the story entirely. But we are not bringing Brokk's dead body back to Asgard."

"I suppose you're right," Thor said after a moment's consideration. "All we could do is hand him over to the Dark Elves, and I doubt they have any more interest in hauling him around than you do. We'll leave him here. Don't forget your dagger."

Loki hadn't forgotten. That dagger had started out a sword in the hand of an Einherjar guarding the Tesseract, an Einherjar who'd thrust his sword into Loki's back. Jane had removed the half of it that remained after Pathfinder ripped him from the battle, and Loki had fashioned it into a dagger. He'd taken it back to Asgard to be used against him once again before Jane arrived and stopped him, and it had been left behind, found by his mother, and held as evidence for a thousand years before his mother retrieved it and placed it into his hands again, with his oath that he would never again attempt to end his own life. That dagger had made an incredible journey, a journey like no other dagger in the history – or surely future – of daggers. Loki thought perhaps it was time to leave it behind again, this time intentionally. And after all, he'd once hungered to carve his name into Brokk; leaving his dagger buried to the hilt in Brokk's chest would also serve. "I think I'll leave it," he finally said.

Thor regarded Loki in surprise. "Are you sure?"

"Very," Loki confirmed, handing the visible talisman back to Thor.

"All right. We should bury him, then."

Loki let out a frustrated sigh. "If you truly feel compelled to honor his death rituals, I'll return by myself and leave you to your digging."

"No rituals. No digging. I had something else in mind," Thor said. With a pointed glance upward, he gave Mjolnir a casual flip. "We bury him. Right here. All it will require is a bit of coordination."

/


2nd choice title for this chapter was "Abeyance," which is still a fantastic word and one I'll keep in the back pocket, ha. It's super late and I'm super tired so I'll leave it at that this go-round.

Previews for Ch. 187: Time to return to Asgard!

Excerpt:

"Surely you'd like to see Jane again, though? You don't have to accompany me to see Bragi if you'd rather not."

"Thank you for clarifying that," Loki said dryly. "But the answer is still no. I have a report to prepare."