Chapter Text
Valkyrie, Korg and a young healer had overlooked the distribution of water for drinking and washing faces, but they wouldn’t last for long. And Loki knew that they wouldn’t be getting more resources any time soon.
A mother had started singing somewhere in the middle of the ship near the doors, perhaps in a side storage now made into a cramped family room. It was half lullaby, half lament, just a soft keening tune without a full poem. Though the space inside the main hall was wide, all seventeen hundred inside had hushed to listen to her song. The singer changed at some point, but the tone remained the same – perhaps her daughter, Loki liked to think, but it could have just as well been another new neighbour in that miserable hull. Families were broken more than they were intact.
His included. Thor was standing silently in front of the tall windows. They were truly alone, slowly swimming through the endless dark, away from where Yggdrasil’s crown was cut and chopped and burned to ashes by Loki’s own hand.
Or at least he had been the one to invite a woodsman to cut off the branch from underneath them. To start Ragnarök, and the end for that demise was nowhere to be seen.
“There’s something I need to talk to you about,” Loki said slowly stepping closer to Thor’s side. It was familiar, and ridiculous, and it made his whole body strain from a wave of trepidation – but at the same time it felt much like stepping into his favourite boots. Everything was well and good. It shouldn’t have made him so suspicious.
“What do you mean?” Thor asked, sounding wary already, even if he tried to hide it from Loki’s ears. Loki gave him a long look – it wasn’t that easy to fool him, really, Thor could have done better – and tried to let go of the ridiculous fear that gripped his throat, breathing out a slow sigh. They could reason with each other, he just had to convince himself of that. Thor would want to understand him, surely. There was no problem to fight over, just an issue they’d have to tackle together.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Loki said, but kept his exasperated huff to himself. He didn’t want to bait Thor, and he couldn’t attack, but it shouldn’t have been so difficult.
“Like what? Like I’m worried?” Thor asked. He looked at Loki in a sharper way, though, searching for something with his one good eye.
Lies, probably. Just like the good old days.
“You look tired,” Thor said instead. Loki lifted a brow at him - that was a rather obvious statement, and Thor wasn’t better off himself.
“Well, apologies. Should I get you someone else on this ship?” he asked, but softly, and nodded over his shoulder to where people tried to prepare for sleep in the open hall. It wasn’t a real jab. Luckily Thor understood and only rolled his eye.
“No,” he said quietly. “What is it?”
“It’s nothing about you, but it’s very important. I need to talk to you, brother,” Loki managed without choking, and hoped that whatever Thor saw in his eyes was convincing enough. There was enough of a pause for Thor to look away for a few heartbeats.
“Did you do something?” he asked, and the way his tone lightened felt like a knife struck right through Loki’s throat.
Thor, you fool, was what he wanted to say. He was trying to be fun, cursed idiot with too much good will and trust left for him. He tried to joke, even, tried to jest to ease their worries.
“I did,” Loki had to reply, and he saw that warmth crumble away once more. Thor’s posture shifted, and he had to force himself not to take a step back and flee once more. Would it be like that forever? Loki couldn’t say.
“What is this about?” Thor asked.
“I want to tell you, and that’s why I need to talk to you,” he said and looked up at Thor, hoping that his reply would not be a thunderstorm. “But not here, where everyone can hear.”
There was no charge in the air even if Thor’s expression grew darker, and Loki felt like it shouldn’t have been such a great relief. The smile he gave Thor when he nodded was still a strained one.
Agreeing nod aside, Thor didn’t waste time dragging him away from the makeshift throne and through a door. The wide windows of the starboard cockpit opened up to a view of black space just like the tall and grand ones in the main hall.
“Tell me, and I’ll listen,” Thor said when he let go of Loki’s elbow. He looked even more worried than he had been, and Loki realised that he had been keeping up a firm pretense of peace and trust just for the sake of Asgard.
But now it was just the two of them.
“Before you and your friends… well, before you met Banner,” Loki started carefully and swallowed, but tried to look a bit less miserable. It was enough to have one of them look as pale and worn as a ghost, and he had been the source of most of Thor’s hardships, hadn’t he. Thor looked at him in silence for a moment, before sitting down on a steel crate, elbows on his knees. He motioned for Loki to go on.
“If this is about the Hulk,” Thor said and smiled kindly. Loki shook his head and lifted his hands to cut that thought as quickly as possible. And maybe it was a little like relocating a joint: painful, horrible, and with an unsure outcome, but still better to be done quickly.
So he said: “No. This is about the, uh, the Tesseract.”
Thor sat up and his face blanched. Loki waited, heart hammering in his throat, but he said nothing more. Just stared at Loki, eyebrows climbing high up on his forehead.
“And this is about… about who wanted it,” Loki added.
There was a long moment of silence.
“Okay,” Thor said, and even if it wasn’t fully a growl, it wasn’t a happy ‘okay’ either. Loki closed his eyes for a moment, but he kept himself from fleeing the mess he alone was to blame, again. He didn’t run. He had to tell Thor, and he needed help, and whole Asgard needed help –
“You took it, didn’t you,” Thor said. It wasn’t even a question, so Loki didn’t reply. He just shrugged a little and gave a weak smile. Thor didn’t answer it.
Should have seen that one coming.
“I thought that even my hands would be safer than Surtur’s,” Loki offered. Thor scoffed lightly at that, shaking his head.
“Where is it?” he asked.
“Safe, for now. But I can’t keep it hidden for long,” Loki admitted. “I put it inside a pocket –”
“In your pocket? An infinity stone?” Thor asked, sounding alarmed and confused, and for a moment the question jumbled Loki’s thoughts too.
“What? No, no, inside a pocket I created between spaces,” he said and huffed out a shaky breath. “I have a few of those if you remember,” Loki added and gave Thor a look that hopefully wasn’t too apprehensive. In all truth, Thor’s worry was starting to seep through his skin too, and he did sound a bit more scatterbrained than usual. Loki had already grown used to Thor being the steady one, in the last decade.
“Oh, thank god,” Thor replied, only making Loki frown harder.
“Thank what?” he asked and felt a burning dread rise up in his throat. What god? Thor had no right to start talking through delusions now – no fever dreams, all right – not when it was just the two of them left. “What are you talking about?”
“No, I just… everyone kept saying it on Midgard,” Thor said and waved it off like nothing.
Loki didn’t feel so sure about it, but he didn’t know how to ask. All that made him feel anxious, the back of his neck and arms prickling. He pulled his chin up.
“All right,” he said slowly, looking at Thor at length. He didn’t take the bait. “Well, that brings us to Midgard.”
“What about it?” Thor asked, leaning forward.
“We can’t go there. Not yet. Or rather we can’t stay. We can’t land,” Loki forced out, and squared his shoulders for the backlash he had already expected.
“That’s not your call, Loki! We need help, and the people of Midgard can give that,” Thor snapped and stood up, glaring at Loki.
“Thor,” he tried to say, but was cut off quickly.
“I can’t believe that you’d be so proud to refuse that help now, when we’re on our way already. We’ve hardly enough food and water to last over a week,” Thor growled and lifted a hand to point at his chest. Like it was Loki’s fault that they didn’t have enough, when it was thanks to him that they had anything at all. He slapped Thor’s hand away and shoved at his chest.
“If you would shut your mouth for long enough to listen to me,” he snapped, “then I would tell you where my ‘pride’ comes from!”
Thor shut up after that.
“I can keep the Tesseract hidden with me for a few days more, perhaps a week. After that, I fear, there will be a man on our tails wishing to collect what he already tried to get through me,” Loki told him.
Thor’s shoulders fell even as he crossed his arms, and if it were possible in any reality, Loki wouldn’t have said no to another tight hug. As they were, it wasn’t going to happen any time soon.
“I take it he’s not a nice man,” Thor said slowly, not quite asking. Loki closed his eyes and turned his head, not quite answering.
“Heimdall said that he feels like someone is looking our way already. We can’t stay on Midgard if you wish to save that wretched place from our fate,” he said instead, and could hardly believe the words coming out of his own mouth. “We need to take the Gem away.”
Thor took a deep breath and turned around to face the windows again. Loki could see his face in the reflection, worried and in deep thought, but he stepped carefully closer. They stood side by side in silence.
“If we do that, what are you going to do with it?” Thor asked and looked at him.
“I was actually thinking that we might destroy it,” Loki said. “We’d find a way.”
“How?” Thor asked, and his voice was thick with some emotion Loki didn’t want to guess. “What way is there to destroy it?” he asked. Loki chewed on his lip and tried to find out a way to suggest his plan without sounding entirely deranged.
“For that, we might have to pick up one thing from Midgard,” he said. Thor looked a little confused.
“But not stop there?”
“I talked with Heimdall, and he said that it will take a while still, before the branches wither and die. We might be able to reach it from here,” Loki said, shrugging. The details were not that important to explain to Thor right then, not when they both knew that travel without Bifröst was possible as well. It just wasn’t that easy.
“Then what do you need?” Thor asked. Loki screwed his eyes shut.
“How mutual exactly was your and Jane’s breakup?”