Loki wasn't expecting a hard knock on the back of his head the second he stepped through the time portal the new variant of himself had opened for him. He'd caught a brief glimpse of what seemed to be a Midgardian-style kitchen, dimly lit by only a night-light, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up with a splitting headache, face down on something soft and fuzzy.

There were hurried voices exchanging a panicked conversation somewhere above him.

Neither of them were the variant, and one was a small child.

"You told me if there were ever intruders on the ship, I was supposed to pummel 'em," the kid said, defensively. "How was I supposed to know who it was?"

"I told you that before I knew he was still alive. He is still alive, right?" The other voice was extremely familiar.

Too familiar. He'd know it anywhere, actually.

"Thor?" Loki turned over, and sat up with such abruptness that his head reeled, and stars flickered through his vision.

It was Thor, despite all odds, standing nervously above him. The look on his face made Loki worry he was going to get whacked over the head again, but considering his companion, he doubted it. A little girl with twin purple streaks running from her eyebrows to her hairline, arms crossed, lip stuck out in a pout as she glared at him.

"He's still alive," she assured.

"Good Norns," Thor huffed. He didn't seem all too pleased about that.

As per usual, the longer he was awake, the more questions accumulated in his brain. Why did the variant send him here? When was this? Was this even Loki's Thor, or was this a variant of his brother? Who was the child? She wasn't Thor's, was she? She looked nothing like him.

"Alright." Thor nudged him with the toe of his boot. "You've gaped like a fish long enough. Explain this one to me."

"This one…" Loki echoed. He felt he was more than justified in a little disorientation. "What?"

"You know…" Thor sat down on the couch next to Loki. "What are you doing here? What do you want? While you're at it, how did you survive? You were definitely dead. And why do you always take forever to come back?"

This was the kind of thing that made Loki glad he'd watched his entire life, back in the TVA. This meant this was after one of the times he'd faked his death, or maybe after the last time. Come to think of it, he had no idea what Thor did while his brother was dead.

"I… I suppose I'm very talented," Loki said.

"Thump him again, Love." Thor commanded.

The girl looked all too eager to oblige, but Thor held her back before she could actually touch him.

"That was a joke," he clarified, and dropped his head into his hands. "Are you not going to tell me? Or are you just going to pretend like nothing happened? Like I didn't have to go six years without you? Like that was all for…" Thor stopped, and squinted at Loki suspiciously. "You're younger."

"Yes." Loki ran a hand through his hair. He wasn't sure if Thor would believe a single word that would come out of his mouth, but he could only try his best. "Were you there when the Avengers time-traveled back to New York?"

"Well, I wasn't there," Thor said. "But I remember what they told me. They let you escape."

"Yes. I escaped, but I was caught." Here came the tricky part. "There's a covert organization that oversees temporal anomalies and corrects them. I wasn't supposed to escape, so they captured me."

"That's why it didn't change anything in the future," Thor guessed. "Well… the present. You understand."

"Right. They told me the way my life was supposed to go, and how I've messed everything up so terribly–"

"As you do."

"As I do," Loki agreed with a bit of a smile. "They decided they needed my help chasing down another version of me, one which did something wrong, and capture her."

"Nice," The girl spoke up. "You break rules in every reality."

"Yeah, you and Love are going to get along great," Thor sighed.

He looked so tired.

It hit Loki like a sack of bricks how exhausted Thor looked, not just from irritation, not just because it was presumably the middle of the night.

He'd been so wrapped up trying to think how to explain himself, and where and when he was in the first place that he hadn't stopped to notice the little things.

Thor always had at least a little bit of hope in his eyes. From what he'd seen in the film in the TVA, even after Ragnarok, there had been something Thor was still holding onto.

"How'd you get here?" The girl – Love? Was that even a name? – piped up. "Did you escape from the temperamental overseers?"

"Temporal," Thor corrected. "It means time."

"I did escape. The variant I was hunting opened a portal, and left it open for me. She… she must have changed the destination, because I arrived here, and she didn't."

"Fun," Love decided. "And by fun I mean annoying. Now I'm in trouble with Dad because you weren't supposed to get whacked."

Dad? So this was Thor's daughter?

"Why did you name her Love?" It was a bit of an irrelevant question for Loki to ask at that moment, and Thor waved it away like an irritating fly.

"She came with the name. Then you really did die?"

Loki nodded. "Unfortunately. I've only experienced up to the invasion in our timeline. She's not Jane's is she? She seems like the kind of tacky mortal to name her child 'Love'."

"I'm right here," Love pointed out.

"No. Jane died."

The three words deflated him as they left his mouth, leaving him a little more bleak than before.

Before, the conversation had just been awkward. Now, it felt so much more loaded and heavy and altogether…

"I'm sorry." There was little else to say.

Round and round in circles they always went, insulting each other, blaming each other, interacting with each other for sure, but he couldn't remember when the last time he'd actually opened up to his brother had been. And in Thor's timeline, it had probably been even longer.

No wonder Thor wasn't pleased to see him, now that he thought about it. This would be the third time he'd simpy left Thor to fend for himself and live his life, and then just popped up again as if nothing had happened. As if he still understood his brother, when he hadn't had a heart-to-heart

since… Well, definitely not since Jane had come into the question. Thor had gone through worlds of character growth, and Loki had barely even acknowledged that maybe Thor might have changed since that day he'd pitched him off the Rainbow Bridge.

"Are you…" How do you even ask that sort of question? Loki had never lost a family member he cared about, not in his conscious memory. He would eventually grieve the loss of his mother and father - heck, his whole realm - but at this point, he didn't even know how to approach or relate to grief.

"Are you doing alright?"

The look on Thor's face didn't really say much, and neither did his mouth. He half-shrugged, then looked away.

"I'm managing."

Was he now?

Loki fished around in his mind for anything else to say. "How long ago was this?"

"About three months. I want to talk about something else."

What else was there to talk about?

They sat and stared at anything but each other for a very long moment.

Love glared disapprovingly, then left the room, claiming something about going to touch all of her dad's things.

"Why is…. She's your child?" Loki grasped at straws. He hated feeling this addled.

"Her father died in battle against me, and so I had to take her in," he explained.

"Had to," Loki echoed. "What became of the rest of Asgard?"

For the first time since Loki had woken up on the couch, Thor's confidence didn't seem faked. "They're in good hands. Brunhilde - she's a Valkyrie, and she's king, now, and she's doing an excellent job of keeping affairs in order."

"While you… do what?"

Thor owned his mouth to answer, then closed it. "Well…" He fumbled, "I was going on adventures… with my friends."

"And now?"

Thor didn't easily blush, but Loki could swear, he looked just a bit pinker. "Jane told Gorr - that's Love's real father - that Love would have a good home. So I'm trying to give her a proper Asgardian upbringing. Just, without all the…"

"Without all the Asgard."

"Right." Thor bit his lip,still avoiding Loki's gaze. He didn't seem very happy with this arrangement. He'd said Jane had created this obligation, probably as her dying wish, or something. And Thor naturally felt expected to live up to that responsibility.

It was a pattern, a vicious cycle, a round peg that always fit into the square slot of life, but it wasn't supposed to. It was just the simpler way to do things, it was how it had always been done for some reason or other, and at the end, it always ended the same. Thor was always miserable, because he always did the thing he felt he was supposed to do instead of figuring out what he really wanted.

Duty always came first, and now that he'd succeeded in passing off the throne of Asgard, he was chained down by another obligation. At the end of the day, no one knew what Thor wanted out of life, they only knew the kind of person he felt like was supposed to be. It was an amazing person, and about sixty-five percent of the time, he lived up to the golden standard. It was just that the golden standard had never lived up to Thor.

"You're trying to figure me out, aren't you?"

Despite not having been around each other for so long, Thor still knew him perfectly well. "Yes."

Thor had nothing to say to that. He gave Loki a long, exasperated look, folded his arms, and sighed.

"You're going back to your friends, aren't you?"

"Which friends?"

"The… time people."

"No," he replied, not at all convinced, himself. Yes, Mobius had told him he'd murdered his mother, and had ridiculed him at every turn, had spent every moment they'd been together trying to make him feel lesser. But there was an aspect of mystery in the TVA, a sense of adventure, and Loki never could resist a good puzzle…

Thor was giving him a look halfway between irritated and despairing.

"Why do you even bother to show up," he asked, his vow in the low, calm tone he always used when deeply, deeply upset. "If you're just going to leave again, anyway?"

"Thor, I promise-"

"You always do this, Loki. Over and over, and I'm tired of it." Thor got to his feet, possibly just to loom threateningly over Loki to make a height difference. When they were both standing, Loki had a full inch on him, something Thor was never allowed to forget. "You die, you come back teamed up with someone dangerous who probably doesn't even like you, and then you go and die again. Why can't we just be brothers again? Why do you keep leaving me behind to go find someone who hurts you?"

Loki had to stop, gathering his wits. (Silver tongue turned to lead?) How do you defend yourself from someone who knows you inside and out? "The TVA doesn't… hurt me?" It wasn't supposed to come out as a question.

Thor hummed, a sound so laden with doubt it was almost as if Loki had told him elephants could hide in cherry trees by painting their toenails red. There was a moment of awkward silence as Thor's face fell.

"It's not as if I don't hurt you, too, though." He whispered, half-broken. "Do what you will. You're a grown man."

"What about you?" Loki couldn't hold back the question anymore. "What do you want? What are you even doing?"

"I'm trying not to be the cause of my little brother's fourth death in a row," he growled. Loki had to stifle a laugh.

"I've got a winning streak, haven't I?"

"One more and you'll win a bingo."

Loki didn't know what that meant. It was probably a Midgard thing, and it really didn't matter. His brother was letting him joke about it, so it was alright. "I'm serious, Thor. Is this what you want? If I'm a grown man, and I can do what I want, why can't you?"

"What makes you think I'm not?"

Oh, so much. The burdened weight on his posture, the restless discomfort in his eyes, the way he looked at Loki and Love, everything, but it was too much to say. "Am I wrong?"

The silence said everything necessary.

"What would you do if you could do anything, brother?" It was an interview question Odin had used to ask potential council members, evaluating royal guards for promotions. It was supposed to give insight into what kind of a person you were, and whether you were fit for power or not.

"I don't want to be king," Thor answered immediately, "and I've already got that in spades."

"I didn't ask 'if you could not do something, what would it be'," Loki countered. "What do you want to do?"

"I…" Thor trailed off. "I go on adventures. Quests, you know, battles and such. With Love. And it's not like I remember. Keeping half an eye out for a child is hard, and it distracts from the main focus of the adventure. I try not to resent her. It's not her fault."

"No," Loki agreed. It was never any child's fault for getting in the way of their grown-up's plans. That was how children were supposed to be. "Dying isn't the only way to give your life to someone. A man is supposed to give up his life for his children."

Thor hummed in agreement, then frowned. "Is it bad that I don't want to give up my life for her?"

"It's not surprising," Loki admitted. "You've never wanted children. I'm surprised you wanted to raise her for yourself, really. You are aware, there's plenty of families in Asgard – or New Asgard, now – who probably would be thrilled to take in a new child. Several of them may have lost children to Ragnarok, and now that they've had time to grieve, they may want to pour out their love upon another child. It didn't have to be you that raised her, even if Jane wanted you to."

"But her dying wish–"

"You can still fulfill it. She wanted Love to have a good home, yes? Take it from me, a father who never really wanted a child in the first place isn't a good home for the child, anyway. Children are more perceptive than adults give them credit for. Don't think for an instant she hasn't picked up on it."

Thor was shocked into silence. He looked towards the doorway Love had disappeared into, eyebrows in deep furrows.

"You don't have to do what's expected of you," Loki continued, "you just have to do what you think is best for everyone involved."

"I'm bad at trusting myself to know what that is." For such a powerful man, Thor could sound pretty small, sometimes.

He shrugged, uncaring. "We all are. That's nobody's business but our own."

"Speaking of business," Thor whirled around to glare at Loki. "What are you going to do? If you promise not to go back to your time friends, what next?"

Now, that was an excellent question. "I'm not certain," he admitted, "But if you're willing, I'd like to stay."

"Do." Thor's face made the context a light-hearted command, but from the tone of voice, anyone would've guessed he'd been begging. "Let's figure out what it is we want to be together. Like when we were small."

"No more tossing me at your enemies, then," Loki agreed. "One thing I'd rather not be is airborne."

TheOnlyHuman.