Despite himself, Loki knew he was staring. It was difficult not to stare at the man who had haunted him – hounded him – for the last three hundred years.

Until now, he'd seen Odin's son only in glimpses and traces – a shadow in the forest, a flash on the horizon – before he had to slip away to the next sanctuary, then the next, over and over in the endless night.

The Asgardians came like thunderstorm and wildfire, one great seething mass that drowned the world in heat and noise and red, and most of the time he could no more have picked out one of their number than pluck a candle-flame from the heart of a star.

But what little he had seen of his so-called brother was not easy to forget.

Ruined villages melting to nothing under soot-blackened rain.

Blue eyes burning with laughter beneath a mask of blood.

He knew that the worst had begun when the other prince had been little more than a child, a soft-faced adolescent no older than himself, but it was hard to believe it. No son of Jotunheim took to slaughter so easily, so young.

(Loki would have become the same, had Father never taken him back. And when he was promptly slaughtered on the battlefield, as such a weak child could only be, the All-Father would have given him a mockery of a hero's funeral and called the waste a glorious sacrifice.)

Loki had seen a little more, these past few months. He'd had to argue until his lips bled and to prove himself threefold, but his father had finally agreed to let him fight back, not just against stray or wounded warriors, but against the House of Odin itself.

So at last Loki had been able to track the prince's movements, to study his tactics and find the chinks in his armour, to shadow his campsites and occasionally even to get close enough to hear his voice. It had been a vicious relief to be the hunter for once; and in truth, Loki had let his pursuit drag on longer than it truly needed to, to steel himself in the fire of that feeling.

But here they were, at last – and staring Thor Odinson in the face could not be more different from before.

They weren't just warriors any more.

There was something old awakening within Loki, something soft, sick, and childish he thought he'd purged years ago – Memories he'd tried to forget. Parts of himself he had tried to kill.

He saw it all now, every story he'd been told, layered over one another and bleeding at the edges. And with it came a distant, dizzying sensation of being both within and beyond himself at once, as if he were about to faint.

Through his Jotun eyes, Loki saw Thor for what he was: A ghostly barbarian wrapped in stolen furs, hungering for carrion and gold. The very image of Bor the Butcher, of Odin the Mad; the perfect bloodstained raven-warrior of Loki's nightmares. This was the truth, and Loki knew it. (In his ear, his father's voice murmured, Don't make me tell you again.)

But through the eyes Odin had given him, he saw another truth: A boy he'd once known, now grown enough to dress himself like a hero in a song. (Ever the damned idealist.) Familiar eyes wide, without malice, and already marked with creases from smiling in the same manner as their mother's. (No, Thor's mother, not Loki's – whom he had not glimpsed even once since their parting. Who had left him behind.)

Loki had missed Thor. Centuries ago, he had missed Thor – before he had come to understand where he belonged. He had wept and begged and prayed to be rescued, to go home, to wake up, to be something more than the monster Odin had taught him he was, until his guards had had to beat him just to put an end to the pitiful noise.

But the war for his inheritance had raged on, and despite what Asgard claimed, no-one had ever tried to save him.

No, when the Asgardians found him, they attacked him as they would any of his people. Boys he had grown up alongside would look straight through him, already swinging their swords. If they even gave him a chance to speak, they would laugh, call him liar, coward, creature – and then he would find himself with half-familiar blood on his hands and a half-familiar corpse at his feet, again.

He could see why they called him a monster. In the end, he stopped asking them to see anything else.

But now Thor stared steadily back at Loki, without a whisper of fear.

It was hard not to wonder what he saw.

Loki pushed back and forced himself to look away. With a dismissive flick of his hand, he vanished his dagger and snapped Thor's shackles together behind his back.

"Keep at least four guards on him at all times," Loki told his men. "We make for Utgard now."

They dipped their heads and took up their positions, smooth and harmonious as a pack of whales on the hunt. A smile played over Loki's lips as he watched, and the reality of his success began to sink in.

"And send word ahead to my father," he added. "Tell him to expect an honoured guest."

Behind him, Thor made a quiet, affronted noise. "Laufey is not your father," he said, voice low. Then, taking obvious effort to soften his tone: "Our father misses you."

Loki stilled.

He had expected Odin to at least arm his son with better lies.

It was a lie, he knew it was, a shameless, mocking, arrogant one that only proved how little they thought of him, and Loki had sworn never to let himself be caught in their web again. Odin felt nothing for him, and he knew it. Odin himself had made sure of it.

Half a century after Loki had been reclaimed, Jotunheim and Asgard had held negotiations – brief, tense, and quick to crumble, but serious enough that Loki had, once, been allowed to be into the room.

It had been the first time he'd seen Odin in five decades. He had spent hours bracing himself beforehand, to be certain he wouldn't break into tears.

And when he'd entered, the king of Asgard had looked at him for a long, cold moment with something like regret in his eyes, but had not said a word. Then he'd turned away and continued to discuss Loki as if he were a thing to be bought and sold. As if he were not even there.

Loki had wanted desperately to say something (anything) to Odin, but his true father would not allow it. And he'd been right – later, much later, Loki would thank him for it.

Now, Loki turned his head only enough to let Thor see the corner of his mouth curl up.

"Next time, tell Odin to send a letter instead of an army," Loki said lightly. "They're much faster to burn."