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When King Odin came back the war, he brought back a victory drenched in blood, his and the enemy's. The God of Wolves came back with one eye missing, a sacrifice to fate and fight, and he came back with a small bundle hidden under his squire's coat. The victory and sacrifice were shown to the face of all Asgard. The secret little thing was kept out of sight until Odin and his most private entourage only were there to see it revealed.

“My husband,” Queen Frigga murmured. “What have you done?”

In her arms sat her own child; barely a few years old, little Thor was growing vigorous and strong, but the return of the army had happened late into the night, and he had fallen asleep waiting for his father. The baby sucked in his slumber at a lock of the queen's hair.

Odin made a gesture of defeat. In the crook of his own elbow, the Jötun babe was well awake, but he was a small and quiet child, looking at the king's face with awed deep eyes without making a noise. All pale and dark, all silence and attention, he was a strange mirror to the Asgardian heir.

“I couldn't leave it,” he said, quietly. “I would not have allowed Laufey to nourish an heir full of anger and vengeance.”

“This is Laufey's child?!” The queen's hushed whisper of horror was only to be heard by Odin himself, and general Tyr, and Odin's manservant, and her own handmaid: secrets in the night, with the silence of the most loyals.

Murders and massacres were plotted with more witnesses in this court. Asgard was a land of honor and gold. Lies and shames were things Odin All-Father wielded very carefully, for a myth had to be an untarnished thing; but the babe in his hands was shrouded in whispers and secrets already, merely by existing.

“He changed his skin in my hands,” Odin replied. “But he bears the crown of his father in his kin markings. Laufey kept him hidden through the fights, but Frigga, can you not feel him? It was a fire in the dark. I could not leave it there.”

The queen frowned and looked at the child; the baby looked back, a curious, quiet thing. She approached her hand uncertainly, looking for what Odin would have seen with his wise old eyes.

“He is a child of magic,” she understood quietly. “Would you fear his power?”

“In Laufey's hands?” Odin's left eye was burning into hers, and she shuddered to see the hole in his skull where the right one still had been, when she had last bid him farewell. “Look at him, wife. He is thin, weak. He must be Thor's age, but he is half his weight. His mother's breast was dried by hunger and war. This magic fed with pain and hatred- it would become something to shake Yggdrasil in its roots.”

“Laufey will not forgive this.”

“Laufey is alive by my forgiveness. Let him understand it.”

“And the boy, husband?” Frigga's voice was a tense thing, making the quiet night shudder, and the boy in her own arm stirr sleepily, though she did not notice.

“We'll keep it safe,” Odin said, but he hesitated.

“You want an hostage. You've ripped the boy from his mother's arms to keep him from seeking revenge and you'd keep him locked here, like a stolen weapon?”

“I mean not to mistreat it.”

“Stop calling him an it,” Frigga hissed. “Thor's age, you said? Then soon he will be a boy, and after that he will be a man. Do not tell me you could not kill a child you would rather keep here in a cage, do not tell me you fear his magic yet would feed him on loneliness and confusion for crimes he has not yet commited.”

“Would you rather I have slain him where he lied?” Odin's own face twisted with discomfort. His one eye darted to Thor's shifting form, then to the pale little thing he held to his own chest. Even as he asked, he knew that he would have prefered it.

The Asgardian army did not slaughter children, even those of the enemies. That was part of its code of honor. But when entering the temple, Tyr Hymirsson, general of that same army, confident to the king, unsheated his own sword wordlessly, waiting for the command. There were things a king only had to do.

But there had been an unpleasant tug in Odin's old dusty heart. Feelings, unwanted, for the small naked thing crying on the altar. Placed there, Odin knew, in a desperate measure. Placed there maybe by queen Farbauti himself, before he joined the fighting and was killed at his husband's side. A mother's last hope in the enemy's honor, that they would not kill a defenseless child.

He had thought of Thor. Not of Thor endangered, no. He knew there was no way the universe could have unfurled where Laufey would have had the chance to kill Thor. He knew the day would not come that his baby boy would be killed by the enemies of Asgard. Not yet.

He had thought of Thor's smile. Golden and innocent and pure, like never his father's could be. Thor, he had thought, absurdely, would not want this boy to die. He would not want his father's hand to end the Jötun babe.

“What do you suggest, wife?” He asked, wearily, as seconds ticked by and the servants and the general stood quiet, neutral. They would do what Odin decided. Kill the boy. Lock it up. Steal from it its magic, leaving it an empty shell. Only a word from the king, and its fate would be sealed. What, he thought, an horrible privilege.

“He changed at the touch of your hand,” Frigga said. The fierceness of her motherhood. There had been no love in their marriage, but sometimes Odin thought fondly of her anger and strenght and pride and resolve. She had taken a decision. “Raise him an Asgardian. Raise him not for revenge, but for peace. Let his magic grow into the fire you saw and let this fire be the fire of the hearth, not the fire of carnage.”

“Who would raise him? Who can we trust with this, Frigga? He must be contained.”

“Look at the size of him,” the queen did not reply. “Thor's age he might be, but he will forever be smaller. We could call him newborn, explain nobody but the Lady Eir. None would suspect a thing.”

We.

“He is Laufey's heir,” Odin said, disbelieving. “I cannot raise him by the side of ours.”

“Why not?”

“You would threaten Thor's claim to the throne?”

“They will be brothers,” Frigga countered, her eyes filled with a fire of their own. “You stole a child, Odin, and by doing so you tied his fate to yours. It is not your right to decide you are not up to the task now. Let them grow side by side,” she interrupted before Odin could protest. “Let them be brothers in play and in fight. And when the boy grows, we will tell him the truth. He will know of us and of Asgard his family and his kin. He will close the gap you deepened with the scars of this war.”

Odin was tired. The war, yes, had left its scars; but it had finished late into the night, only a few hours ago, after years of conflict. He wanted it done with. He wanted Jötunheim out of his sight and out of his mind. And he? He did not believe in peace with the giants. Laufey's kind was a proud and dangerous race, just as his own people was.

But he had brought the boy, it was true: just a small bundle, who was starting to fuss and whimper now, the long talking exhausting him, and perhaps his stomach empty. Odin looked at his wife, tiredly: Frigga, the goddess of marriage, the goddess of family. Then he handed her the boy.

“Give him a name,” was all he said, feeling too tired to wonder if today was more a defeat or a victory.

Loki, second prince to Asgard, was soon the nightmare of all the castle's staff.

Thor was a loud, attention-seeking baby. Loki was worse.

Loki, the nannies and servants soon found out, did not ask for your attention. He took your attention.

Soldiers rushed into the queen's bedroom when she screamed in the middle of the night. She had not been attacked, no, but, missing the smell of her hair and the warmth of her skin, baby Loki disappeared from his bed, and teleported right into hers, with his tiny cold feet on her thighs.

A nanny with experience in the royal family of twelve children of King Heimarr of Nidvallir resigned. She had seen toddlers uniting to drive their guardians mad before, yes, but she had never seen a toddler turn into a dozen smaller copies of himself to unleash chaos. Loki had just been trying to avoid bathtime, at first, when dividing himself into the five-inches tall little clones, but then all of them had quickly grown distracted, running around the grown-ups' feet and climbing into Odin Allfather's cape or hiding in his helmet. It had taken hours to find the last one of them, eating a proportionnally enormous sweetroll in baby Thor's arms. It had taken hours more to persuade baby Thor to let go of his very tiny brother so Eir could fuse the little Lokis again.

Like herding cats, really.

And that was where it started becoming worse . When Thor and Loki started playing together, when the naptimes were coordinated and the meals took place together so they could learn their first bits of etiquette and when Frigga brought them both in her gardens to play in the flowers, and when the boys realised that they were brothers.

Or partners in crime, as it would turn out.

Neither boy was malicious, no, but together, they quickly realised, they could do anything. Why lie around in your bed when you were supposed to sleep and were bored to death, when in the next room lied your big blond brother to jump on the mattress with? Why eat cleanly when you could stuff almonds in your nose and watch your baby brother laugh himself under the table?

Bathing together? An underwater playground and little bubbles of soap to catch in the air. Piling up blocks together? Creating an enormous fortress to better smash it. Sleeping in their own respective bed? Nope. Sneaking into the other's bedroom to babble incoherently and fight with pillows and invent stories. Much better.

The palace had an exclusive staff, trained and loyal and made for secrets. But the boys grew, unaware of their parents watching them. The boys grew, at peace for now, in a small world of snacks and finger painting and waking each other up in the early morning to go watch the frogs in the puddles.

Once, Odin went to visit his brother Vili far up in the mountains. He brought Thor. He didn't bring Loki. The reason of this choice was not explained to the brother, who were only toddlers and weren't usually given much reasoning for what happened to them.

What they both did know was that the separation was a sad thing. Loki spent time with a guardian who entertained him with story-telling, tasteful snacks and running around the yard, but could not stop inquiring about his big brother. Lost in the atmosphere of mist and moss of Vili's home, Thor was offered a wooden sword and shield and he had much fun with it. He kept asking Vili when he would get to give Loki his gift.

When reunited, though Odin and his heir came back to the castle late into the night, Loki had been waiting up. He snuck out of bed hearing the sound of footsteps, and jumped in Thor's bed after the sleeping little boy had been layed under his blankets. Thor cheerfully woke up and pressed a big kiss to his brother's cheek, before mesmerizing at seeing his hair longer. Loki remarked his brother's tan. They slept to each other's side.

A few years later, Loki was sick with a bad case of fever. He was confined to his bed, sweating, moaning. Eir feared that the young Jötun was finally enduring the consequences of living in the warm land of Asgard. For a few days, there was genuine fear that the boy's life was in danger, if he could not slip back into his blue skin and be cooled at all costs. Odin would not let it be, so long as Loki was not on the brink of death.

In the end, he survived. Eir remarked his health would probably always be fragilised by his condition. Frigga looked at her husband, but Odin didn't want to argue.

“He is too young to know what he is, and too old not to know,” he murmured. “Let's wait. Let's keep this to ourselves.”

Loki was later told he had gotten himself sick through playing in too cold water. He didn't care, not much. All that mattered was that, after seven days of throwing up and feeling his skin like fire, Thor rushed in the infirmary, and said how dearly he had missed him, and they were together again.

They had not always been allowed to roam the palace freely, because there were so many things out there that were dangerous for children. But now Thor was one hundred, a big boy strong on his legs, and his little brother Loki was close behind, and together they were allowed to go wherever they wanted, so long as they warned one of their guardians first.

Frigga's gardens had never been forbidden to them, but now, because even noble godesses couldn't resist the darling little smile of tiny prince Thor, Idunn had allowed them into her part of the castles' ground. It wasn't like the little boys could do much to harm the golden trees there anyway, and there was just something about the wildness of the garden that made them fall in love with it. Thor was tall enough to climb on the first few branches of the trees, while Loki was still small enough to hide into the tall herbs. There were small bushes, colorful wild flowers, even a little pond near the stone wall; there the two brothers were men and warriors already.

“Brother! The Dark Elf is beyond that sea! We must get across!”

“Yes, to get his cursed treasure!”

“But how shall we do it?”

“Look at those branches! Maybe we can build a raft!”

“Oh no, there is a wild wolf! I'll protect you! Prepare our escape!”

This was how it usually went. Loki adored the idea of picking berries to feed starving soldiers, or big leaves to make bed or umbrellas, or branches to build brooms or walls. His small hands yet had no skills to imitate the art of the builders they admired, but playing pretend was good enough for him. Thor was determined to grow into a protector, a legendary fighter, with sticks for swords or stones for throwing, or his hands for grabbing. His arms were yet too thin to carry any true strenght, like the Valkyries he had spied upon before, but playing pretend was good enough for him, too.

And from the edge of Idunn's unkept garden, watching one boy hold twigs together and the other parry and thrust with thin air, Brunnehilde, sent by Frigga Allmother just in case, smiled in that sort of amused disdain one can only have for long gone childhood days.

She watched with her arms crossed, because unlike her shield-sisters, the other Valkyries, she did like the babysitting duties, but it was hard to admit in her order. Love and families were things shunned by the warrior women, who refused to be brought down with the other weak females of the realm to places of housewives and mothers. Falling prey to such instincts as to admire chubby cheeks and clumsy work was discouraged by her people, and she tried to tell herself she was disinterest as well.

And then, something odd happened: little Thor pretended to be wounded, playing the tragedy of the brave hero fighting still, yet calling for Loki to hurry in his work. And as Loki played the part of dramatic anxiety, suddenly, a brief little flash of light sprung from his hands. The branches were suddenly all holding together, a tight bundle he threw onto the pond's water before pausing, seeming to realise what he had done.

“Thor, look at what I did,” he said, with a suddenly confused voice.

“You did that?”

“I think I did magic. There was the green light, you know, and my hands were very cold and then it all -stuck together.”

“That is so awesome,” Thor proclaimed, before wincing. “Brother! I'm losing blood! Carry me to our ship!”

“No! Thor! You must not die!”

“I'm not dying, I'm hurting,” Thor clarified in a hushered tone. “I'll be fine on the ship.”

Brunnehilde looked at the bundle of branches in the water. It looked like a mess, but it held still, even in the water. She had heard that the Odinssons had power in their veins. There were rumors of Thor's might, the sparks that flew from his eyes and fingers, the rain when he was angry or sick. But this? Odin's youngest had seidr? Not an elemental power, but actual magic?

She frowned, fondness gone. Frigga herself was powerful in the arts of magic, yes, but could she have borne a son misshaped enough to inherit that power? She glanced back at the pond. Sitting on the branches with their feet in the water, the boys were playing along, careless to the anomality of it all.

Loki reached one hundred fifty, six years after his brother, as he was slowly starting to understand all his birthdays would be. He had just lost one of his last baby teeth, and he was old enough to enter the training grounds.

In Asgard, age was not considered much for how old a person actually was. You were a man when you were capable of living on your own, when you could have children of your own, when you could put down the animals you hunted, or better yet, an enemy. There were men in Asgard who were barely growing their first facial hair, and there were boys who would forever stay that way because they were weak.

But, with the princes being princes, their training were not to start until they were one hundred and fifty. It was a general estimation of how old a boy had to be to understand the importance of the lessons he received, and symbolics were always reassuring. The Norns liked big numbers and specific dates.

Thor had grown into the lessons with ease. His enthusiasm had been rewarded by a natural talent at the first arts he was taught. Loki was not allowed to watch him with his teachers, but out of the grounds, it was inevitable that his big brother showed him what he had learned: countering blows, blocking an attacker's limbs. By the time Loki was allowed into the classes himself, he had learned nothing of the positions and stances his tutor explained, but he was quickly the best of his group to strike back and neutralize an enemy to better run away.

“He's a quick one, All-Father,” the teacher praised after six lessons. “Not as strong as your oldest, but he's slippery. He improvises on what he already knows. I think he could start his weapon training immediately, though I'd like to see him at least thrice a week to teach him more movements.”

Loki absolutely beamed as he brought Thor the good news. His brother had needed one full year, after all, before he had been allowed to move to the upper group. His success was met with as much cheer as he had expected, and Thor laughed and tackled him in a brutal hug that brought them to the ground.

“Slippery? I could have told them that myself,” Thor proclaimed. “Get out of that, you little snake!”

“You're crushing meeee!” Loki accused. “Thor, you're fat! It's unfair!”

“I'm not fat, I'm strong.”

“You're fat because of all that cake you ate when Mother told you not to!”

“Am not! I'm keeping you trapped forever for saying that!”

“Oh yeah? Ah!”

Loki scrunched up his nose in concentration, and before an instant, Thor was falling face first into the dirt with a little 'oof'. A victorious, bright green little snake emerged from beneath his arm and slithered up to his wrist with a pleased little hiss that sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“Proud of yourself, are you?” Thor huffed in amusement, pulling himself from the ground. “You know, you can't use magic in training.”

“I don't need it. Master Lehn said I was quick to learn.” Loki had turned back to his shape of a little boy with ease, but he paused looking down at his hands. His skin remained green and sharp talons dug into his fingers in place of his nails. “Oops.” He shook his arms and rubbed at his fingers, making the remaining scales disappear. “But still. Imagine if someone bigger attacks me. I can just -poof!- and surprise them with my magic.”

“I don't know that that's honorable,” Thor said, frowning. “It's a bit like biting or pulling hair, no? It can work, but it's not a glorious win.”

“But it's not cheating,” Loki argued. “It takes work. It's an art. Mother said so. What if I didn't wait to be trapped, then? What if I used it as a weapon? I could be a witch-warrior.”

“How do you use magic as a weapon?” Thor wondered.

They both wondered at that for a little moment. Thor's own magic was more of a symbolic thing than it was anything else. He had yet to control much of it, but it was impressive, glorious. Something to be proud of. Loki's seidr, though -what was there to that? He could shape-shift, but that was funny, not mighty. And what else was there to do with the women's art? He would not win any fight with protective runes or meditation or brewing remedies for common colds.

“I'll ask Mother,” Loki decided finally. “If there's something, she'll know, right? And then I'll be better than you.”

“Yeah, right.”

Loki laughed at Thor's grumpy answer, and climbed up on his brother to place a noisy kiss on his cheek. Thor's face softened, his frown turning with comical speed into a grin.

Back when Bryling was only a servant to the Council, he remembered, the whole kingdom had been overjoyed to hear of the birth of a second prince. It had come as a surprise: only a week or so after the end of the war with Jötunheim had the Queen Frigga showed up at her balcony, carrying in her arms a small bundle of clothes too small to be prince Thor.

As long as blood had been shed and violence wrought, the King had explained, standing by his wife's side, the royal couple had not wanted to speak of the queen's pregnancy, or the boy's birth, and risk bringing additional danger upon the family. He presented it that way, that it was a blessing from the Norns to have a second boy, healthy and full of life, just as peace reigned once more. The birth-day of Prince Loki, second heir to Asgard, had been a matter of national celebration, mingling in with the relief of seeing the troops coming back home from the front.

Bryling, though, had frowned already back then, the first time he had laid his eyes on the infant. Two princes and one crown, he had thought. He failed to see anything else than a bad omen in that.

Years had gone by, and small royal feet ran in the hallways and two little boys were paraded at speeches and celebrations, first in their mother's arms, then standing in her skirts. Bryling's life evolved. He had always been a brilliant student in his free time, looking at the stars every night he could afford. He suggested a theory, and his teachers helped him to write a scroll about it. His serving days were soon behind him. He had enough gold with him to live in the royal city itself, and he pursued his experiences and writings.

One old elvish woman died at a convenient time. As prince Thor grew close to two hundred years old, now a young teenager, Bryling was met by one of the Queen's trusted ladies-in-waiting. The young prince, she explained, was moving very quickly through his lessons of languages and mathematics. Would Bryling be interested in teaching him of the sky and the earth, as she had been told nobody could do it better than he?

The pay was as great as the privilege of living in the castle was glorious. Of course Bryling agreed.

It wasn't until his first class he found out 'the young prince' meant the young prince, when dark-haired little Loki saluted him formally.

“Master Bryling,” he said, bowing his head. “I am honored to meet a man of your knowledge, and I swear to you this day that I shall attempt to be a student worthy of your time.”

He was polite enough, but there was something about the prince that made him uncomfortable. As days turned to weeks and the stiffness of working in the castle wore into pleasant familiarity, Bryling started deciding he didn't like the way prince Loki worked: constantly asking questions instead of studying facts, demanding to know of books he could read by himself like Bryling's lessons were not enough for his taste.

He couldn't really complain about his results. He remembered things, and calculated well, and was observant and patient enough to trace near-perfect sky maps and calculate distances and dates for sky events, and how they affected the seasons and the days.

Five years later, prince Thor joined his brother's private tutoring. He was an unruly student, not mean-spirited, but always distracted, always moving on his chair like he couldn't stay in place. And he wasn't stupid -clearly he wasn't, not the son of Odin-, but he didn't care much for the subject, and often forgot of things he had just learned about. Bryling looked at him chewing his quills in eternal irritation.

All in all, he didn't like his students. Both were arrogants in their own way, and both irritating rich boys. He didn't stop himself from telling as much to his friends when they asked about what the royal family was like, and there was something delightful about being able to criticize the golden heir and his shadow.

Still, it was an honor to be teaching both the princes. His pay was great enough that he would live in luxury until the end of his life, long after the princes were done with his wisdom, and he once received an appreciative nod from the Queen herself as she came to pick up her boys.

“I must interrupt your lesson early, I'm afraid,” she said that day. “The Princes are expected to be ready to welcome the Lord and Lady Alfyse later today.”

“I understand completely, your Majesty,” Bryling said, bowing deeply. “It's truly no problem. We were done with today's lesson.” They weren't. He had been looking down at Thor, both irritated and gleeful to see him struggling to remember the shifting of the constellations above Asgard during the winter months. Loki had wanted to answer, but Bryling had told him off. He didn't need to show off, thank you very much, he had been asking Thor.

The Queen smiled and left, her sons by her side. It was the proudest moment of Bryling's carreer.

He didn't see Thor throwing a grumpy glance back at him. He didn't see Loki poking Thor in the side and winking at him as they headed out.

He did see the enormous cockroach in his mug of tea, but not before he had lifted it to drink.

His screams were heard through the entire wing.

At night, they weren't allowed to sleep together anymore.

Still, sometimes, they woke in the night, and smiled at each other, and kissed. On the cheek, or on the lips. Or bunny kisses, dissolving into laughters.

In the training grounds, Thor had made friends. His father had advised against it, warning him that he should not indulge in camaraderie too easily.

“Remember that you are a prince, Thor. These boys are not like you and they know it. You should keep it in mind as well. You'll have time to make friends later, but today, you are training with your future soldiers.”

He had lasted only a few days before his natural enthusiasm had gotten the better of his father's commands. He didn't see what the harm was: in weapon training, when he had met General Tyr, who would be his main instructor for the years to come, the warrior had made it very clear that ranks were left outside the arena.

“Facing a sword, we are only worth what we can do, not who we are,” he'd explained darkly to the few dozens of boys who were starting on that day. “I will tolerate no arrogance, nor any refusal to do the exercices. If you think yourself above the training ground, then I will kick you right out of it, and I don't care if you are the son of Odin Allfather himself.”

The noble boys had laughed, if a little nervously. Thor had heeded the warning, but he had not felt any anxiety about it. He wanted to learn. He wanted to do great. He had absolutely no intention of angering General Tyr. As the exercices started, he stood in line with the rest of his cohort, wooden sword in hand, and obeyed the calls of up, down, side and side.

Before long, his hands were sweaty, then they were thick with blisters. He bandaged his palms with the delight of knowing he was one of the few to keep up with the most advanced material of the class. Before long, he stood apart with only a handful of students, and started additional, private training with only they and the general.

“Remember this,” Tyr said. “You are my elite today, but that only means you'll have to work harder to keep it up. You have talent, but it will lead you nowhere if you do not have the heart to work on it, every single day.”

Thor did. Even when it became harder and harder, as promised. Even when he had to train until late in the evening to perfect his footsteps, and he dragged himself to bed too tired to even eat something, and then he woke before dawn to get to his muscle training. He forced himself out of the soft feathers mattress, and on more than one occasion was the only one to be in the training grounds on time.

“He should make you proud, Allfather,” Tyr told Odin, with one of his rare satisfied smile, eyeing Thor's sweaty figure. “I know only of a handful of students this good and dedicated, and I usually make them into my own generals. We have the best boy for a prince that this realm might have prayed for.”

Thor grinned from ear to ear. His adversary tried a daring move to make him back up. Thor spun around and kicked the man -for now he trained with men sometimes twice his age- in the chest, sending him to the ground. When he looked up, his father gave him a small nod. It meant much, coming from the king, and Thor grinned in satisfaction at being worthy of it.

Volstagg had been the first true friend he had met on the grounds. He was an enormous individual, with a huge red beard that made Thor a little jealous the first time they met. Volstagg was older than he by about thirty years, which did not make much of a difference in the trainings, but certainly showed in their conversations.

“Ah, two full days of rest,” Volstagg groaned in relief once as their spear training ended and they made their way to the hot spring to relax their sore muscles. “Thank your father for parades. I needed a break.”

“It's more about commemorating the end of the Vanir War than it is about letting you have your rest, I would think,” Thor retorted in amusement. “What are you going to do with all this free time, uh?”

“I'm going to the party in town. Hoping to get a dance with pretty Hildegund, too. Ah, don't make that sort of face! Before you know it, you'll be courting your own girl, and you'll be the type that won't shut up about her, I guarantee it!”

“Pah,” Thor said, wrinkling his nose. He doubted very much that he could ever get as foolishly enamored as Volstagg was for the pretty alchemist's daughter. “Even if I wanted to, I'd have no time for it. Maybe you can get two days free, but I know my mother. She'll make sure I use all of the free time to catch up with my lessons. Ugh, and I'll have to go through all the Vanir etiquettes for the celebrating.”

“Poor little prince,” Volstagg sighed. “What an ordeal it must be to feast on Vanir delicacies and look at the Lady Freyja all evening long.”

“Also maths,” Thor reminded him gravely, before looking up with an immediate smile at hearing a familiar voice's cry.

Spear training took place in the higher grounds, and to go back toward the rest of the castle and its comfort, they went through most of the other classes. Students had been sending them a few envious glances, or straightening up at the sound of their prince's yet unbroken voice, but Thor had not been paying them much mind until this. Now, they stood at the edge of a wrestling mat, where boys a little younger than he were practicing pinning each other to the floor.

And there was Loki, always looking a little strange to Thor in his loose training clothes. His brother prefered tight silks and dark leathers. It was strange to see him in the grey tunics of the beginners' rank. It was even stranger to see him on the mat, battling a boy Thor didn't know. The battle was clearly a rough one, with Loki gasping and the other boy shouting. As they paused to watch, the stranger managed to get his arm behind Loki's waist, and his foot in front of his leg. Loki could have countered the push, but wasn't fast enough, and quickly fell to the mat.

“Yvarsson, that's five points,” the instructor said. “Odinsson, please, tell me. What did I tell you just two minutes ago? Were you listening? What did I say about your stance?”

“I tried, Sir,” Loki said through gritted teeth, pulling himself up on his elbows.

“Pardon me, Highness? I can't hear you.”

Thor frowned, closing his arms around his waist. His brother was obviously in a bad mood. Thor knew him to be a sore loser, but he knew him also to be better than he at keeping a public facade, even when he was amused, or tired. He could see that the boy -Yvarsson- was a little bigger than Loki, but that was to be expected: he had skipped a few classes before settling in at this level, after all.

“I have the theory, Sir,” Loki replied, dusting his clothes. “Body lowered, I heard you. You don't need to repeat it.”

“And yet,” the instructor said. Then his eyes caught the stillness of the two figures by the side of the mat, and he was suddenly bringing a fist to his heart. “Your Highness. Can I help you with anything?”

He said it in a tone very different from the first time, but Thor did not quite realise it; his eyes were on Loki, and the frustrated look of his face, and the tightness of his shoulders. Was he falling behind? Was he having difficulties? Thor had always known him to be weaker than he was, but he was used to most people being like that. Loki looked up at him, fire burning in his green eyes. Oh, he was in a bad mood alright, the kind that sometimes made things break without him even touching them, or fire suddenly spring up and wild into the hearth, burning the stones by it.

“No, Sir,” he replied, gesturing for the instructor to be at ease. He was a prince, and soon to be a man, and servants and warriors both saluted him now, as befit him. “I was but passing by. Keep going, brother,” he added, hoping he was encouraring, and moved along. Volstagg followed suit without a word, bowing his head toward Loki in a gesture that went unseen by both brothers.

Keep going, brother. Keep going, brother.

Loki's entire afternoon that day was drowned in the sound of his brother's voice telling him his platitude. It wasn't just in his mind, either. The other boys in his class were snickering, looking down at him -more openly than ever they had before. Like Thor had given them permission. Like all you needed was to see the difference between the two princes to decide which one was worth the respect... And which one was a joke.

Keep going, brother. Well could Thor not see that he was going and going and failing?

He had started struggling with his classes a little over two years ago now. He'd always been top of his class in theory, and then -then he had moved to the actual sparring, and to fighting other advanced boys. He could pick up a serie of movements and remember it perfectly, and he could hold stances and move and throw easily. But fighting -he was awful at it.

It stung all the more because he had been so good until now, so convinced that he was good. But as his instructors told him, sometime with disapproval, or worse, disinterest, sometime with some sort of mean enjoyment, theory was worthless if he could not put it to practice.

He was worthless, they didn't say, but implied.

He had been stalling for months and months now, watching the other students progressing and receiving praise he was used to once earning. No matter how he tried, he never caught up with them. Facing an adversary, he couldn't remember his movements, or do his stance in time, or block effectively.

And the worst part- it was not the failing. It was failing in front of everyone.

It began with little smiles, sideway glances. The satisfaction of being better than the prince. Then, as time passed, the smiles became smirks, the glances full-on stares. Rolling their eyes when the instructor went through the steps slowly again for his benefit. By the end of the first few weeks, the other boys suddenly stopped talking when he came close, but their smile told him they were barely holding back.

It was unacceptable. He was their prince. Did they not know that? Did they not know that they should bow to him, like the servants did to his mother, the warriors to Odin? Like everyone did to Thor?

Was he not like his brother?

Was his brother starting to see him like a failure, too? He, whom he had sparred with for so long? He, with whom he had thought he could stand against the entire world?

No -Thor had not meant that. Thor had not realised what his words meant, and how the other boys would hear them. He would not be so cruel.

Except, what if he did? And if he didn't now, then how long before he did, with Loki failing like this? And then, the others. Were they not right to compare Loki to Thor? To recognise his failures as compared to his brother's successes? Was it not logical that they would mock him for his weakness, when he was weak indeed?

Was it not fair that they would find him worthless, if for all Thor was worthy he was but a weakling who had thought himself his equal, so naively?

The instructor sent him back to kneel by the side of the class, with the others, as he demonstrated another technic. He held his head high, but his stomach was acid and burn, watching the advanced footsteps and knowing he would fail in this too. Perhaps he could convince his tutor to help him after class. Perhaps he could work into the night and force his body to remember the steps out of despair if not out of will.

There was, he thought, one thing he was so much better at than any of them. There was one thing he had spent nights and nights and nights perfecting while strong boys slept contentedly. A few weeks back, Frigga had proudly told him that she had nothing left to teach him.

“My little sorcerer,” she had said, fondly. “You are exceptional, my Loki. Don't you forget that.”

It was not quite appropriate anymore, he was starting to understand, to crave this much for his mother's love. Thor himself had started to spend less time listening to their mother's stories, or simply chatting with her while braiding his hair. Other boys were proud and dismissive of their homelife, some mocking their own mothers for packing their lunch a certain way or worrying over their training wounds. He couldn't imagine himself leaving his mother's tender side in such a way. Frigga was safety and she was kindness; she was calmness and patience and she was strong with her own magic, like him. She taught him, and by her side he felt how powerful he had become with his work.

Then again, he was starting to understand, as well, that magic itself was not appropriate either.

It made no sense to him, what they all said. Magic was a woman's thing. Magic was made to clean the house and cook the vegetables and charm little blessings into clothes. Magic was honorless. Yet were the precious artifacts in the vaults not imbued with the mighty spells of elves and dwarves? Was Asgard's entire aqueduct system not built on magical charms to clean and refresh it?

Was Loki not capable of escaping even Thor, with his spells?

“Our gift is a rare one, Loki,” Frigga had explained, stroking his hair, and he had realised then that he was speaking quickly, desperately. “Even more rare is it to see it grow as mighty as I see yours becoming, day after day.”

“Then shouldn't it be something to admire?” He pleaded. Like Thor's thunder, he thought. Like Odin's voice booming into the halls and commanding the sky and earth.

“Asgard is a proud realm, my boy. Reluctant to admire something it doesn't understand. But it wasn't always like this.”

“So what happened?”

Frigga had smiled, that thin and contained smile she sometimes had, and Loki didn't understand.

“Your grandfather, Bor, was a powerful king”, she explained softly. “He was very wise and very strong, and it was he who united the Nine Realms into what we know. But Bor was as Asgard is: proud. His longest war placed him against the Vanir -my people. And Vanaheim valued its magic, and its sorcerers. Mimir, Hoenir, the greatest seiðrmadr of those days all learned their craft in Vanaheim's ancient tomes. I remember my own mother speaking to me of what we called Battlemages: warriors who used magic as their weapon. Fearsome enough to make even the mightiest berserkrs of Asgard tremble.”

“How could they lose the war?” Loki asked, confused. He knew history well enough to know Asgard always won; but he knew it little enough to have never heard of this part of the story, and his heart raced at the word his mother used. Battlemage. Magic as a weapon. Was he not a strong sorcerer, as she herself had said? What if this was his way of being more like Thor? Of being by his side, different yet equal, different yet worthy?

His mother gently caressed his hair, quiet for a moment, and looking at him like she was hesitating about something. It was not a common look on her.

“The battlemages were mighty, but they were few. Many of Asgard's men fell before they themselves were defeated, but it was bound to happen. In the meantime, Bor grew furious at those who defied him so strongly. Vanir and sorcerers both became words for enemy. When I married your father, much later, and when the lord Freyjr and the lady Freyja came to the court, Asgard began to forget its bitter hatred for my people. But magic... It was looked down upon.”

“But I'm an Aesir,” Loki protested. “I'm not an enemy. Would Asgard not be stronger, with warriors and battlemages both?”

“It would,” Frigga agreed gently. “And it will. I know you will serve our realm gloriously, my son. And in time, I trust that Asgard will see you, and your seidr, with the pride you deserve. It is unfair,” she carried on gently, “to ask you to prove yourself to obtain that trust. But when you do, my boy, you will know that you earned every instant of it.”

Loki had believed her. That night, he had left her side, feeling brave and motivated. He would do it, he thought. He would become Asgard's first battlemage. He would prove himself and change everything.

But the next day, he was back in the training field. And the day after. And the day after, and again until today, today when he knelt on the floor and felt sweaty and felt his back hurting from falling too many times, and Thor had looked at him like he couldn't understand why he was so bad, and the other boys would snicker in his back later.

There was no using magic in the training arena. It was cheating, and even if it wasn't, the others would sooner look down at him like he was a leper than to respect his strenght. He could hurt them, he knew. He could make them swallow back their grins. But then they would call it treachery all the same.

He was too young then to wonder that Frigga had been an enemy of Asgard, or to understand the deeper, uglier meaning of that particular peace-making, and why Frigga smiled yet painfully to speak of it. It would be many years before he fully grasped how Bor had arranged it all, how he had shamed Vanaheim into giving away one of their best Shield-Maiden into wedding and how he had twisted Vanir and magic both into submission to Asgard like Frigga to Odin.

But it was about then that he started to tell himself that Asgard could be better . And as he fell into the dirt and broke his hands on his swords and read old dusty tomes about magic, it was a natural slope to go from there to start hating those Asgardians who made his home so bad.

Thor was a man now: he could kill and skin a deer, and he had gone on survival trips in the wilderness. He could speak Elvish and had started learning Groot to Loki's disapproving frown.

“Developed societies of Flora Colossus are even less spread out in the known universe than humans. What's the point?”

“It's fun,” Thor had smiled. “It's all in the intonations, see: I am Groot. Can you guess what I said?”

“I can't, because it's made-up,” Loki said, frowning.

“All words are made-up, Loki. I said, I'm hungry. I'd like a steak.”

“Flora Colossus don't even eat meat.”

“But I do.”

Loki had shaken his head, like he did when Thor was being dense. He did that a lot, these days.

It was true that his little brother was a genius: by his side, any man looked like an idiot. Younger than he was, Loki was still fluent in Dwarvish and Vanir, and was practicing the subtelties of Eastern Elvish; he was the most advanced student of the silent signs that were used by spies and messengers, he rode horses with shocking ease, he could play the lyre, and recently he had even started throwing knives; all this, without counting whatever it was he learned to do with his magic, during endless hours with books and hand signs and things he didn't get. Thor was proud of him, always amused and amazed to find Loki had learned something new and strange at the start of every week.

Sometimes, though, he wondered. Loki never looked quite satisfied with his new discoveries. And when Thor told him how amazing he was, his brother looked up at him like he was just insulting.

Sometimes he wondered about Loki, and he felt his little brother was being complicated and grumpy for no reasons, and it gave him a headache. He missed the days when Loki and he would just climb in trees to escape the summer heat up in the branches and eat stolen cakes up there, making up stories about the servants. The last time Thor had complained it was too hot, Loki had cast a spell on him to cool him, and when Thor had marvelled at it, his brother had just shrugged somewhat.

He loved Loki with all his heart. Nevertheless, a part of him was grateful to be getting away for a while.

He was a man now, and with immense pleasure, he had received his first ever assignment, away from Asgard. He brought a bag, a cape, a hunting knife; he brought his best axe and a back-up dagger, he brought a healing stone and plenty of water, and he brought an amulet Frigga gave him, blessed with protection spells.

“This is just a rendez-vous with an informant. I doubt I'll meet any danger,” he pointed out to his mother, but he couldn't help smiling.

“I know you will honor your realm and your father,” Frigga replied, sensing his excitation underneath his dismissal, and smiling in return as she caressed his cheek. “Come back to us promptly.”

“Aye, Mother,” Thor agreed, and took a deep breath. Then he turned to Loki, who stood by Frigga's side. “This is just like our old adventures.”

“Don't get your hopes too high. I do believe we encountered then many more dragons than is statistically conceivable.”

Thor laughed, pleased to find some of his brother's old humor, and squeezed the back of Loki's neck fondly as he pressed his forehead to his. He resisted the urge to kiss him on the cheek like he had his mother, and simply smiled before backing up. Loki's green eyes followed him, sparkling or perhaps shining a little. Standing there in his clothes of silk and leather while Thor wore a stealthy armor, it felt like he looked younger. Loki had yet to go on his first survival trip. His dear, dear little brother.

“What is it? Are you afraid of leaving the castle to me?” Loki teased when a few seconds had passed, and Thor failed to find the words he wanted to say.

“No,” he said, then smiled, giving in to the simplest truth of all it was he was feeling: “I'll miss you.”

“Thank the Norns we aren't bringing you all the way to Nidavellir, my Prince,” said a cheerful voice from the door. “This is a three-days trip. And I don't know we'll get to use that glorious axe of yours.”

Thor laughed and spun around, walking to the man coming in. It was technically very inadequate to enter as he had, and to disrupt the royal family's own moment of peace -but Thor couldn't bring himself to disapprove as he clasped his fellow warrior's arm.

Chosen to come with him on the mission was Fandral. He was a man with no status, only a year older than Thor, and it made it all the more impressive that he was a renowed soldier, entrusted already with many a task. Born and trained as any ordinary citizen, Fandral's charisma and strenght had done the rest, and though he was not as strong or as proficient in weaponry as Thor himself was, he had accomplished enough yet to be trusted as Thor's sole escort in this mission.

Thor had never spoken much with the man. He knew him to be loud, boasting, popular -the type everybody wanted to be friend with, the type teachers trusted to keep the classes when they were gone for a moment and the students secretely prefered. Thor was pleased in more ways than one to be alone with him, hopefully enough to form a true friendship.

“You cannot blame me for being excited, Fandral the Dashing,” he smirked. “I've never gone any further than the edge of the city without at least three guards before.”

“You do know Father will have planted soldiers everywhere in case anything happens, do you not?” Loki's voice called, suddenly a little high and snob.

“Loki,” Frigga reproached quietly.

“We'll need no intervention, trust me,” Fandral said pleasantly as Thor looked at Loki in betrayal. “I'll bring you your son back in one piece, your Majesty, I promise so.”

“Let's get going,” Thor ordered.

Loki met his eyes as they left the room. Something in his brother's face had shifted, his eyes no longer wide and pure and green, but meeting his own as if asking if anything was wrong, as if daring him to say anything.

Yes. It was good to be going away, for a while.

Fandral had not noticed anything, or so he pretended. When they were out riding, and their horses had left the main route to the city to step on a less travelled path, he smirked at Thor.

“I think you can pull your hood off now, Highness. Nobody's going to recognise you.”

“They might, if you call me that.”

“Ah, maybe so,” Fandral said. “I couldn't tell my siblings what my mission was, of course, but I can't wait to tell them I'm getting three days of lèse-majesté immunity.”

“Most of my friends call me Thor, you know,” Thor said, always a little at a loss when he realised what a gap there was between himself and the commoners. It was hard to think of Fandral that way, when all he saw of him was a fellow warrior, and a more experienced traveller. “You're more than welcome to do the same.”

“Well, Thor,” Fandral replied, testing the name, then seeming to decide he could do it, and looking back at him with a smile. “We have twice forty miles to go together, and I'd be honored if you'd decide I'm worthy of speaking some more after that. What do you enjoy to talk about?”

Though Thor feared for a while that Fandral would be too reverent, or too reluctant to speak of himself in his presence, it turned out his companionship was an easy one. Fandral was not ashamed of his rank, and with him Thor learned a lot about the way merchants and their children lived, out of the castle. They spoke of how life was different in and out of the golden walls, and Thor asked in curiosity about school instead of tutors, and hunting without an entourage, and all those things that he had never asked from Volstagg, because Volstagg was no longer young enough to care much for those things.

They spoke all day of horses and siblings and sword-fighting and friends, and by the end of the day, Thor was fond of Fandral's clever humor, which reminded him a little of Loki when he played braggart, and he was determined to one day oppose his new friend and his rapier and see what he was truly worth. Silences were comfortable while they stopped to let the horses eat and to relieve themselves, yet they didn't run out of things to say while they rode side by side.

The weather was good and the ground even enough; they covered their distance easily and pushed the horses through the sunset to reach the town of their rendez-vous by the beginning of the night. They left their mounts to rest at the inn's stables, and Thor's eyes drank all that they saw.

“Maybe stop gaping at every dwarf you meet, okay, Thor?” Fandral advised in a murmur.

Nordbark was a busy city on the flank of the sea, and its harbors brought visitors from many far-off islands, as well as Dvalin's Plains, the closest peninsula of Nidavellir. The dwarves stopped here on their way to sell their goods, when they couldn't afford the biggest ships who brought them immediately to more important commercial routes; the Aesirs, they stopped before taking the sea to head out on discutable missions. The streets were made of stones and wooden bridges crossed over muddy canals the occasional sailor would stop to spit in. Even though the sky above was black, the city was awake with lights and laughters, as if on a holiday night.

Thor knew the place had a bit of a hot reputation. It was not a proper place for a prince to be, which was why he had been given the mission in the first place: no would-be-traitors or assassins would expect the heir to the throne here. At least, they would not, unless Thor brought too much attention to himself, he realised, and immediately lowered his eyes from where he had been staring at a big dwarf keeping the door of an unidentified establishment, from which music and cheering could be heard.

“You've been here before?” He asked Fandral, a little embarrassed to be caught so out of his element.

“With my father, briefly, and on a previous mission. But I was with more soldiers then,” Fandral admitted, hands in his pockets, and Thor wondered if he was faking his nonchalance.

“Do you want to explore?” He asked him, then smiled when Fandral looked at him in surprise. “Come on. We won't get into trouble. We'll just look around, maybe get a pint from a bar. I want to see.”

“This is not exactly the keeping you out of any possible danger I was ordered to, you know,” Fandral said with a little grimace. “Look, we can... Walk around a little. The inn we're supposed to stay at is on the other side of town anyway. But let's not draw any attention to ourselves.”

“Are you scared?” Thor smirked.

“Of course not,” Fandral huffed defensively. “I just don't want my first big mission to die on me.”

“Then come along.”

The city was buzzing with life and joy. Though Thor had been warned, and though he knew the town was known for its high crime rates, he didn't feel very tense. Most people here looked like they were just coming and going to and from parties, and the fact that some gigantic dwarves dwelled along with the Aesirs was just an exotic variation. He was confident that nobody would move against him -why would anyone?- and even then, he trusted his axe, concealed for now by his cape, to change any would-be-attacker's mind. On the other hand, was it not his duty as future king to grow comfortable in even the darkest places of his kingdom?

There were bars and music and drinks, and streets with impromptu darts throwing contests where every shot was met with howling and screaming from the betting public. Fandral's initial doubts melted as Thor laughed loudly and nobody tried to squish him, and soon they were walking with confident strides. They stopped for a drink at a bar with an enormous shark head as its signage, and Fandral admitted to a bunch of laughing sailors that he had never caught a fish in his life.

“What about you, uh? You don't look like you'd survive a day at sea. Not every milk-drinker from the big city can handle a water serpent.”

“I'm busy now, fellows,” Thor said with a grin. “But if that's a challenge of strenght, how about a friendly bet?”

Fandral's two pints of mead helped him laugh the danger off. Thor easily won the arm wrestling contest, and bought an ale to the sore loser, and though he grumbled and hissed, his friends were otherwise laughing and amused, and they stayed for a third pint each.

It was getting truly late, and they finally left the bar in case Odin's men truly were watching them from the distance -although the idea made them both snort with laughter in their drunkenness. They crossed through the streets, heading toward their own hotel, and Thor took long breaths of fish-and-mead-perfumed air to steady himself. He caught a strange sight in the corner of his eye, though, and soon paused where he stood to try to make sense of it all.

“Ah,” Fandral said, pausing too. He sounded drunk, but still concerned, as his eyes travelled over the tight little street, packed with colorful spheres of lights and a dense crowd whose cheering and shouting sounded more intense than it did elsewhere. “Now, I'm not letting you go there, High-Thor. I don't want your dad to kill me.”

“What?”

“It's a no,” he insisted.

“No, I mean -what? What's there?”

Fandral paused, looking as though perhaps he thought he was joking. Then he gave a little awkward laugh.

“Tha's the streets of the Houses, Thor. The red lanterns? We have those at home too. Each red lantern means one girl available.”

“Available?” Thor repeated, something hot coiling in his belly.

“Don't make me spell it out.”

“Have you ever been?”

“Of course not!” Fandral genuinely looked offended. “I don't -I don't need to pay. And here -all of it must be even more wild. Nuh-uh. If you want to try that, you'll try it at home, when you're someone else's problem.”

“What about the green lanterns?”

“We are not going fo' the green lanterns either. No, no. Wait, uh -green?”

“Yeah? There?”

He gestured discreetly with his chin, feeling hot and confused and a little scared -or maybe that was something else? This... This was definitely forbidden. He had kissed a few girls by now; two of them servants, one elvish lady, and a few courtesans. One of them had placed his hand on her breast, and another had held her body so close to his body that he had dreamt of her thigh pressing on his groin for weeks after that. But he had never yet done it. And it wasn't that he wanted to go -he didn't want it happening with a prostitute, it felt entirely inadequate and wrong. But his lower body felt electrified, desperate to catch a glimpse more of the girls he saw, over there, cheering on a balcony over looking the street, wearing colorful yet transparent veils...

“I don't know,” Fandral said, rubbing his temple awkwardly. “Maybe green is -I don't know, um, dwarvish ladies? Or... O-oh.”

They both paused. There was only one house with the green lanterns hanging at the edge of its roof, yet, as if somehow he had heard their ushered talk, a man walked right out of it then. Not a customer, no. There was no being confused. His bare chest was flat, his hair cut shorter than was common for a free man, but prettier than most slaves' completely shaved head. Thor only caught a glimpse of his full look, through the movements in the streets, but he saw black leather pants and a moss-colored veil moving with grace before Fandral pulled him by the arm.

“Let's get to the inn,” he said quickly, looking a little disturbed.

Thor didn't protest. It was -it was disturbing. His drunken brain kept trying to figure out what else it could be, with increasingly absurd solutions, because truly, anything would make more sense than men sleeping with men. Perhaps it was a house for women to seek lovers? But then why employ a slave? Why make him wear those feminine veils? Why was the street only frequented by men?

He knew it existed. He knew there was a word for it. Being argr . An ergi. A man perverted enough to desire another man. He knew it to be a crime. But he had never before truly realised -truly understood that it was... real.

He was tired and drunk, and in his feather bed at the inn, he fell asleep easily, without having time to speak with Fandral, or even decide what he would have said of the city's deviances, or what even he thought of it.

It was wrong, he knew. But the hotness in his belly had not quite gone away as he wondered, perhaps only because he was intoxicated, if a man's body on his would be as delightfully enticing as a woman's.

The next morning, they shook off their headaches and exhaustion painfully, and spoke very little over the inn's lukewarm breakfast of greasy sausages and half-cooked eggs. By the early afternoon, they went to wait for their rendez-vous. The informant came two hours later, a dirty Dark Elf with nervous movements and noisy sniffles. There, Thor was grateful to let Fandral speak, unsure how he would have led the stranger to keep a remotely coherent train of thought.

This was about knowing whether or not Balin, a lord under Dwarvish mountains, was condoning the trafficking of dwarvish steel to Asgardian rogues and marauders. Of course, the Elf they met was not quite prepared to answer that question so easily, nor was he fully aware of what he was or not telling them. It was of saying that they looked for cheap swords to sell to a local weaponsmaster, and of figuring out whether this man would sell them his goods, and whether he would worry about it being known. But to ask questions without looking like you were was a delicate thing, and they spoke for nearly two hours of how infuriating Odin's taxes on imported goods were before they could get him to admit that he was evading them. It was a much more boring mission than he had expected.

“Of course it was,” Fandral said as they left the seedy little bar in the late afternoon. “Did you expect you would get to kill him?”

“I didn't expect I would give him those three hundred pieces and just let him go,” Thor admitted with a grimace. “I know he'll be stopped in due time, but this is... slow.”

“I hear it's quite a typical thing in politics,” Fandral remarked, seeming amused, and then: “What shall we do? Leave town and sleep in the wild, or did you want to sleep at the inn and leave at first light?”

Maybe it was because he had been half-sick with mead and questions, but Thor had not found their chamber overwhelmingly comfortable. He didn't hesitate at the thought of camping that night, and before long, they packed their bags and retrieved their horses from the stables.

That night, they set up camp at the foot of a hill, near the river. Their horses chewed the fresh grass while they warmed bread in the flames. The adventure was nearing its end already; Thor had perhaps secretely hopes for bandits to attack them in the darkness, but either no thieves were roaming the plain that night, or his father's guards truly were keeping watch, somehow.

As they ate, they spoke. Fandral was ambitious, it was becoming more obvious in the way he spoke. He wanted to be the best swordman Asgard had ever seen. He wanted epic quests and grand fightings. Thor and he laughed and it was like nothing had happened, imagining their grand future of kings and warriors and becoming men of legends. After the boring mission, it gave Thor some hope that there was more coming.

When they went to sleep, they lied back to back in the grass, with a single string of wool guarding them both in a full circle, ready to trigger defenses if anyone came too close. Fandral's body was lean and hard but he was warm and Thor held himself a little closer. He wondered about what they had seen the night before, and not discussed since.

Even a full day later, he still saw the man's black hair and sharp face, smiling behind his closed eyelids. It was a strange thing to think about.

Before the war with Vanaheim was two thousand years old into the memories, tensions grew anew between the two realms. Peaceful, heirless King Tacitos had died, and as his body was yet warm, fights arose to chose the new leader of the land. By right it should have been Nerthus, the niece of the beloved king, who ascended to his crown; but some angry voices had rosen in the North, and a champion grew of these angry people, an archer who called herself the Lady Jord and who claimed to be a relative of Freyjr and Freyja themselves, calling both traitors for their peace with Asgard.

It was all a big mess. In the middle of it all was Loki, who had simply asked for the permission to travel to his mother's realm to seek more experienced teachers of seiðr, and who ended up in his first diplomatic, if unofficial, mission.

A lot of it simply meant staying at Tacitos' old castle, showing Nerthus had Asgard's support by doing so. He was still young and so was the rebellion, and Odin had no wish, he had told Loki, of making it look like Asgard was worried about it. Loki didn't look the kind of reinforcement you sent in a time of crisis.

He hadn't said that last part, but Loki had figured it out well enough by himself.

He didn't even get to speak much with Nerthus. She was busy, checking maps and receiving messengers and sending trusted warriors on mission. Loki gave her adequate reverence and she curtsied and called him 'Prince Loki' when they met, and it was all.

Odin had not agreed to pay a tutor of magic for him. Odin, in general, did not like to acknowledge Loki's interests. Frigga had obviously tried to compensate for her husband's stubborness by offering to contact old friends about Loki's interest for new fighting technics. Vanaheim had some amazing barehand combat styles, very different from Asgard's, and Loki had agreed -but only because Frigga had told him how to find for himself the precious books of magical knowledge that rested in the castle, while his excuses for being there kept his facade busy. In his luxurious bedroom, he could spend hours on end devouring the old tomes and new essays and learn as much as he could from them.

He did have to show up to the training session, though. He was pleasantly surprised to find himself entirely alone with his trainer, in a royal privilege he had rarely been granted. The man was a little older than he, and looked eternally angry, but he was also barely larger than Loki himself was. And as it turned out, there was much he could learn from Hogun.

“It's all about using your opponent's strenght against him,” the grim man explained. He didn't call Loki prince or highness. In fact, he had always figured out how to avoid adressing Loki by any name, thus far. “If he throws a punch, his weight is on his front. It's easy then to tip his balance forward and make him fall.”

“What if he's too strong or too heavy for me to make him fall?”

“Then you make him weak. Hit his ears. That's were the balance is. Or kick the inside of the knee, to break his steadiness.”

“This sounds like cheating.”

“Perhaps that's how the Asgardians see it.”

“How do the Vanirs see it?”

“Being smart. Winning.”

Loki couldn't help his smile. It turned out his training in Asgard was not useless: he could easily beat Hogun in an arm-wrestling match, or in anything that meant simply strenght. It was rewarding. But it was nice to meet his point of view, too.

His trip lasted about three weeks. Hogun was not his friend, or maybe he was. Loki had grown used to hanging around with Thor and that meant enduring his fat friend and his loud friend, but he didn't know if that meant he was their friend. He wouldn't have talked to them if Thor hadn't been there. He wouldn't have talked to many, if it wasn't because he couldn't avoid it to see his big brother. In any case, he liked Hogun, in his own way. And when the time came to go back to Asgard, he told him he was welcome to visit.

It was politeness. He didn't expect an answer. But Hogun nodded. Grimly. He did everything that way.

“I was thinking of leaving Vanaheim,” he said. “A cousin of mine said one could find job easily in Asgard's farms and mills.”

“You'd like that?” Loki asked, disbelieving. “Working in the dirt? You live in a castle, here.”

“Yes,” Hogun said, “and it bores me. I want to be proud of what I do. I want to live before I die.”

He said it with the utmost seriousness, so Loki didn't mock him. He didn't think he was allowed to mock Hogun, or rather he didn't think that Hogun would still talk to him if he did. He mocked a lot of people, at home. Mostly Thor, who would always forgive him, and laugh along too. Sometimes his stupid friends, hoping they would maybe remember he was their prince and they should stop looking down at him like he was just a little boy.

“I could talk to my father,” he said instead. “Maybe you can come home with me, and find something you would like to do.”

“Why would you do that for me?” Hogun asked, looking at him in the eyes.

“You've been a very good teacher to me,” Loki replied, a little weakly.

Hogun seemed pensive. Quiet, for a time. Then, as Loki felt ashamed, and ridiculous, he nodded.

“I would appreciate it,” he said.

Loki went home early, but promised to write to Hogun as soon as he could speak to his father. It left him feeling all strange, this relationship. It was uncomfortable, but luckily Hogun didn't seem to want any more than what they had. It made him want to spend time all alone with his brother -with the only person in the world he could laugh and talk and do things with without questioning himself all the time, and wondering if he was an idiot.

He almost got it, too. On the evening of his return, Thor came to his room to bid him welcome, and to ask how the trip was.

“I learned a lot,” he replied.

“Always learning,” Thor said, throwing himself on Loki's bed and looking at him unpacking. He smiled upside down. “Was it fun, at least?”

“I enjoyed it very much,” Loki replied, smiling back. “I copied several books I want to study in more details. Don't let Father know that.”

“Don't let who know what?”

“I also made a- friend. I think.”

“You did?” Thor straightened up and rolled on his side, this time. “Like, a friend... or a friend?”

Loki crouched to put a bunch of dirty clothes all in a large basket. He knew what Thor meant, he supposed. He knew many boys his age were kissing girls; some even whispered about doing more. Thor himself had had a girlfriend . He hadn't called her that, and it annoyed him when Loki had. That was alright, because Loki was just happy she had left, back to the South with her mother after a long visit to the court. Thor had spent all his evenings with her. He wondered how far they had gotten.

“He is a friend,” he replied. “He was my instructor. He might come to Asgard. I asked Father about it.”

“Why?”

“Well, it's a good diplomatic move. Asgard welcoming Vanirs might remind those over there who call us enemies that they are wrong.”

“Your friend would come here just for diplomacy?”

“No. He wants to. But I figured Father might like that answer better.”

“You're thinking like one of those councilmen,” Thor laughed as Loki turned back to face him. “You're always planning ahead. I don't know how you do it. Things just -go out of my head.”

“Yes. It's a miracle you survived for three weeks without me,” Loki retorted, somewhat fondly. When things were good -when Thor wasn't being stupid and when he wasn't surrounded by his friends-, then it was something he liked to think about. How he could plan ahead for Thor and think of things he didn't, and how that went well with Thor being so strong and charming when he wasn't. He liked to think of them as being so perfect together.

“Oh, Loki! That reminds me! Norns, I waited all week long to tell you. You'll never guess.”

“You're gossiping like a girl.”

“Ah, yes!” Thor laughed. “You almost guessed -there's a girl who started on the training grounds.”

“Wha- when?” Loki blinked, shocked. A girl-warrior? That was... Very unlikely. Maybe an assistant to a trainer? It wasn't uncommon for the wives of high-ranking warriors to know the basics of fighting, but what man would want to be trained by a female? Or did he mean a student?

“Her name is Sif,” Thor carried on excitedly. “She's still little, but she only just started: she's two hundred. Apparently, she had been arguing for years to get on the field.”

“But who allowed it?”

“General Tyr himself, I heard. He said something -that it was the only way to see if she was serious about it. She's showed up every day this week at the beginner's class.”

“Did you see her train?”

“I tried, but beginner's ends much earlier than my classes. But Fandral did. He says she hasn't complained yet. She has trouble doing all her exercices, though.”

A girl in training. What an anomaly, he thought, and then he imagined what that would be like -to be all alone, surrounded by women who looked down at him, with older girls trying to peek at him to see if he would give up. His stomach had ached all day on his first week of training, feeling the pressure of doing good , and even today, he dreaded going back to his tutors now that he was back from his trip. But he was expected to.

Why would a girl want to fight? Why insist to go through all this pressure, all those efforts, when as a girl she could avoid it all? Not for the first time, Loki envied the women of Asgard, they who could pursue magic and arts and weren't expected to impose themselves anywhere. But for the first time, he wondered. Would it have felt like a cage, too, the other way around? Would he not have been angry too, if he had been refused the chance to try?

Two hundreds, then. The girl was not much younger than he was. It was late to start training. Loki felt some absurd kinship to the rebellious girl. In another world, maybe she was a boy, and Loki was a girl, and they weren't weird.

“Female warriors were pretty common, in Vanaheim, in the past,” he remarked out loud. “And there was that old story of Themyscira, an island with just wom- what are you laughing about?”

“Sorry, sorry,” Thor chuckled. “It's, um -Themyscira. That's -a bar. Down in the Glass Quarter.”

“A bar?”

Loki's confusion made Thor laugh all the hardest, and he frowned, a little insulted.

“It's a bar with, you know. Dancers.”

“Oh Norns,” Loki winced. “Is that all you can think off? Naked girls?”

“I never went there myself,” Thor argued quickly, but couldn't stop smiling. “It's just, it's just funny that you wouldn't know what it is. I'm sorry. You're so cute, my baby brother.”

“Oh shut up,” Loki snapped, embarrassed. “I'm so sorry if I have better things to do than learn about all the shady establishments in the city, like helping Father to try and avoid a civil war in Vanaheim!”

“Don't get angry,” Thor protested, losing his grin. “You don't have to get all offended. I just figured you should know, because somebody else might make fun of you for not knowing.”

“Thank the Norns you're there to keep that from happening.”

“Oh, stop being like that!”

“Whatever, Thor,” Loki snapped, turning his back to him to remove his cape from his backpack.

It wasn't a very biting reply, but he didn't want to bite Thor. He didn't want to have a fight. He just didn't want Thor to make fun of him either, to treat him like he was a cool kid and Loki was that weird little bookish boy everyone else saw in him. He wanted them to be that perfect pair of brothers. Them, and then the world.

He heard Thor give a long, suffering sigh, and then his heavy footsteps walking away, and out the door. He turned back when he couldn't hear him anymore, and looked at the empty room, and winced.

It was experimental and clumsy.

Loki crawled on the bed, on all four. He didn't look shy, or like he was trying to prove himself, and that was rare enough to celebrate, but Thor didn't think about it then; it felt normal. The same way-

The same way Loki didn't wonder why Thor was lying on his back with his cock out of his pants, and why he smiled timidly at Loki when Loki knelt over him-

And Thor shuddered when Loki took him in his hand and gave a shy, dry touch, that was enough to make him buck his hips up, hoping for more-

And he leaned down, feeling hungry for this shameful desire, feeling hot all over as Thor let him and he sucked the tip of him into his mouth carefully-

And Thor came fast, really fast, but he didn't feel shame, and he pulled his brother closer and kissed his dirty mouth and thought he looked so, so pretty.

Despite their best efforts, war broke out.

Thor knew he could not say so, but when Heimdall's horn sounded across all of Asgard, he felt an incredible thrill of excitation.

For months now, the hushed whispers and tense council sessions had only spoken of avoiding this. The common folk were afraid, burning sacrifices to the Norns to preserve themselves from the horrors of war. Even Tyr, his trusted teacher, general of all Asgard's armies, stronger than all, was somber as he gave the dark nod that meant fighting.

But Asgard was strong, much stronger than the coward fake-queen who would claim to fight them. Thor had never been bested in battle. By his sides stood Fandral, rapier in hand, and Volstagg with his axes, and legions of young men he knew to be brave and proud. And he knew it was wrong to go merrily to combat, but had they not trained their entire life for this?

“Jord is an arrogant woman standing only on her own illusions,” he proclaimed as the troops prepared. “When we win, and I doubt it will take long, this will be a reminder to all the Realms that Asgard is there to preserve order and peace.”

He had spoken this to his trusted friends, to those young trainees who looked up at him in adoration; but somehow his words were reported all the way to the General, who called him to his office later that night and met him with a grim look.

“You are Asgard's heir, Thor. One day you will be its king. It is good that your people looks up to you, but you would do well to make no promises before you know you can keep them.”

“You do not think this treacherous war-queen will be a problem, General?”

“I think that she is a problem now, boy,” Tyr said drily, and the word made Thor wince more than his tone. “The true sovereign is in jail. Vanaheim is bloodied by civil war and all routes to Asgard were broken. This is war, not a mere fight against bandits.”

“I understand,” Thor said, tense. “But my general, we will beat her. You said we would. Her troops are disorganised.”

“We will win the war,” Tyr said. “But before you know how much we will lose, do not brag of that victory.”

Thor nodded, though more out of embarrassement than of truly understanding Tyr's words. He left the office and startled when a thin shadow detached itself from the wall and called for him, voice low.

“Brother,” Loki said. “Are you prepared?”

“My bags are ready,” Thor said, trying not to show he had been taken by surprise. “I'm leaving tomorrow at eight with the general, right after the scouts. What of you, Loki?”

“My horse is saddled. Father wants me in Vanaheim, to meet the resistants. I'm leaving now. I wanted to say goodbye.”

Thor frowned, instinctively stepping closer to his brother. Loki had grown, lately, or perhaps he had thinned. His face looked more like that of an adult, with his cheekbones protruding where there had once been the softness of childhood. Thor brushed his thumb over his skin without thinking, and closed his hand to the nape of his neck, and he felt Loki's soft hair stroking his fingers as his brother leaned, always, into the touch.

“You will not be alone?”

“I leave with two spies. We do not want to get noticed.” Loki's eyes seemed to search for something in his face, then his lips thinned. Thor wondered how it came to be that his brother's face remained smooth as a child's, without even the shadow of facial hair underneath his skin. “I wanted to be by your side, but Tyr would only let me into the third force. I chose an alternative”

“These battles will not last, brother,” Thor assured him. “We will meet again very soon. And when we do, we will be victorious.”

“So we will,” Loki said, but his smile held on some reserve, as though he hesitated. “Be careful, Thor. This will not be training. The rebels hate Asgard; they will hate you more than any of us.”

“And I will show them what Asgard and I are capable of,” Thor said, and chuckled as Loki looked at him in disapproval. “I will be fine, Loki. I swear. Fight well, and may the spirits guard you; yet I know you do not need their help.”

“You're arrogant,” Loki replied, “and you're even arrogant in my place.” His hand came to rest on the one in his neck, and despite his words his eyes were alit with softness that replaced all the smiles in the world. “Be safe, brother. I'll meet you again soon.”

Thor's hand slid down Loki's shoulder into nothing as his brother turned around and, with one last look, walked away.

They met again soon, yes; but the war did not end so fast. The Lady Jord was a sly enemy, slithering out of her hiding places long before any messenger reported it, and finding a supply of troops that appeared endless. Later, Thor would realise this war was a game of cat and mouse; as it happened, he realised what General Tyr's warnings had been about.

On his first day, Thor stormed a camp of rebels with Tyr. He was told to take prisoners, when possible. No possibilities arose. The warriors fought to the death and fell with Thor's sword slashing their throat or sinking in their ribs. He killed six men on that first day, and didn't remember a single face. He had trained for this his entire life. It felt easy to bring down a target; an enemy. He wondered, at how easy it was. At night, he lied on his cot and thought he didn't feel any different.

Not yet.

War was not fighting and glory. War was killing and dying. It was fire and ransoms and men tearing one another apart. It was betrayal and ugly traps and rotting injuries. It was a little boy with a spear in his chest and women raped when their husbands were dead and screaming death death death and hatred.

From a distance, it had not seemed so bad. But when Thor went back home, two weeks after his initial departure, he realised as he walked the streets of Asgard that something in him had changed.

He didn't know how, not fully. He had not wept over his victims, like he knew some men had. He had broken down when one of his oldest sparring partner, Ask, had been found stabbed seven times and finished off with cruel kicks to the skull, left ugly and broken on the bloody ground. After that, Thor had killed even more swiftly, like it meant protecting the rest of his troops from every man he murdered. And then he had not cried, but he had hurt, when they had found the families and children of the warriors they had slain, huddling in the dark and sobbing, and launching themselves desperately at him crying revenge.

It was nowhere as simple or glorious as the images of outdoors battlefields and armies smashing into each other he had pictured his whole life, and he felt he carried that knowledge now, heavy in his stomach, forever.

Loki was waiting for him, at home. He looked fine, but for his right arm, burned raw from falling of a racing horse while, he said, trying to set a false trail.

“Did you kill?” Thor asked, quietly, when they were alone over supper. Odin was busy, not with the war, but with the rest of his ruling. Frigga was writing letters, trying to bring peace in her own power.

Loki hesitated before he answered. His eyes shifted down, avoiding Thor's.

“No.”

They both knew Thor had. The word of his agility and strenght in combat had travelled back from the front already. Asgard was acclaiming its future king over it. Thor wondered about that, too. He couldn't help now imagining his own city aflame, its people hiding in cellars and attics, its children lost in the midst of the fights. His mother one of those broken wives, his brother one of those slaughtered boys.

“How did it feel?” Loki's voice was but a whisper.

“I don't know. I didn't feel anything,” Thor admitted in a breath. “I brought them down like weath in a field. Just bringing them down. It hit me after the fight, that they were never getting up.”

“I couldn't do it,” Loki murmured. “You know, how I can barely kill my own boars and deers? My hand sways to the thought of drawing blood from flesh that still beats with a pulse. General Tyr said it would pass in the heat of battle, but it didn't.”

“What did your companions say of this?”

“Nothing. I told them I didn't have a chance to strike.”

Thor looked at his little brother. Loki looked tired, and nervous. Ashamed of telling him this, yet desperate to share it.

He wasn't surprised. Not really. When hunting or fishing, Loki was indeed barely capable of killing a rabbit, or pulling a fish out of the water to let it suffocate. His brother's hand had ever been soft; meant to stroke his horse's mane or hand-feed Odin's ravens, not deliver death and pain. Thor felt absurd jealousy, for those hands that were still clean of all blood, but then he felt that envy fading away into something softer and sadder. He thought absurdly that he wished Loki would never have to join him on that other side.

“I don't feel very good about what I did,” he told him gently. “General Tyr says some men are not meant to kill...”

“Yes, those who are weak in their heart instead of being weak in their arm,” Loki said bitterly, before his face crumpled. “I know I'll have to do it eventually. I want to be a warrior. It's just -it's so... There will be no coming back, once I do.”

“It can wait,” Thor said, though he didn't know if it was true.

“I thought I could use my magic,” Loki continued, agitated. “But it felt even more intimate. And at the same time, others would call it cheating, or they would say it's a coward's way, because I don't even touch the other man.”

“You could kill with magic?"

“I think so. In theory.”

They sat silent for a while; side by side, sitting at the small table. A servant knocked at the door and asked if they wanted more wine or anything else. Loki refused. Thor accepted. She departed, and Thor turned to his little brother, and opened his arms. Loki sank in them and they embraced, Thor trying to hold all of his Loki to his chest, safely, gently. His brother's hair were soft and clean and perfumed with some fruit's aroma as he held his nose into it, gently stroking the back of his neck, and letting that be a reassurance, for now, for Loki, that the world was still alright.

Maybe it served as reassurance for Thor, too. He sighed into his brother's scalp, eyes shut, and enjoyed every seconds of keeping him there, of holding all of him.

The war lasted. Eventually, it felt like it had always been there.

Loki went back to Vanaheim, every now and then. He knew Thor did, too: seeing his scarlet cape on the battlefield or in temporary camps boosted troops morale. Loki was granted the right to be there with him, eventually. He didn't think his own emerald cloak was particularly memorable.

His own missions were less known about. His magic was starting to be a grand thing, and while Odin had never expressed any approval over it, he seemed ready to admit that there was use for it. Loki could shape-shift now, and he could hold it long enough to spy, and perform sabotage, and- else.

I don't know that I can do this, Father, he thought desperately, but didn't speak aloud, one night in Odin's office. His tongue remained tied, sitting in a taste of ashes and bile, until the king sighed.

“This is not an opportunity that will come to us twice, Loki.”

“Everyone would call it cheating,” he remarked quietly.

They had captured a spy, and they had made him speak. Loki didn't ask how, but he could guess, and it sometimes kept him awake at night, imagining screams coming from the prisons deep beneath the palace. The spy was meant to go back to the head of the rebellion: one General Govart, a brute responsible for organising merciless massacres.

“Yes,” Odin agreed. “Asgard holds strong to her honor. But sometimes, cheating saves precious lives. There are few I would trust with a mission so delicate.”

Loki looked up, and his father's one eye was on him. He tried to find the trust or the concern or the love that would let his hand thrust a knife into a man's heart. Thor, he thought, was doing so much. Whispers were going around about how the second prince was a witch-boy, always with his nose in books, unable to hold a sword; impossible to compare him to the golden heir. When if not now would he make himself into a man?

“I will be worthy of this trust, my King.”

He entered the enemy camp with no hardship, and found himself left alone in Govart's tent easily, speaking of unexpected movements that suggested a traitor in their camp. He attacked from the back, and muted his victim with magic and slit his throat with a wide movement, and he held tight through tremors and useless fight, until Govart's body went entirely still and he was left with hands covered in drying thick blood. He had not even met his eyes, and his ears rang too much to remember if he had heard him speak.

He teleported and slipped out of his disguise and cleaned himself with magic and teleported again, back to the castle, and said to his father, it's done. And Odin looked at him and then nodded in approval, and it felt almost, almost worth it, even when he went to his room and puked and tried to scrub his hands. There was no blood left, only his pale fingers, and he regretted having used magic to make it go away. It felt like it was stuck in his skin forever.

And he was a man now, he thought, sitting on the edge of his bathtub and fighting stupid boy tears.

Thor had been curious about Sif for as long as he had known of her. When the girl graduated from her training class, with the black armor that qualified her as any young soldier, he asked if he could have her in his personal guard.

“As a warrior?” The instructor questioned, looking a little suspicious.

“Of course as a warrior. What else?”

Sif accepted the promotion immediately. She came to Thor not a full day later to report for duty, armed and prepared, and she saluted with her head held high in pride. Thor and Loki were sitting in the grass, just resting under the hot sun of summer, but Thor rose to smile at her and seize her wrist in a fraternal gesture.

“It is good to meet you at last, Lady Sif. I heard much about your skills.”

“I will attempt to be worthy of your trust, Highness,” Sif said with a grave bow of her head. She turned to Loki, who had remained sitting, but was watching them both silently. “Prince Loki.”

“Lady Warrioress,” Loki replied. “Welcome to the family.”

“My brother is not enthusiastic about having his own guards, except for his friend Hogun,” Thor explained, inviting Sif to come sit with them. She knelt in the grass a little stiffly, holding to her posture. “My soldiers are his soldiers also. But it will change little for you; where I go, my brother comes along. Is that not right?”

“Aye,” Loki replied simply, eyes still on Sif. “That is to say, Thor drags me everywhere he goes. Nevertheless, I am less likely than he to get challenged to fights to the death. I like to believe I will be less trouble.”

Thor smiled. He knew how Loki admired the fierceness of the warrior-girl, just as much maybe as he was excited about this odd idea. He sort of hopped that Loki and Sif could become friends, or perhaps even more. Loki was a lonely thing; sometimes it worried him to wonder how long he sat alone in his rooms with books while Thor was away with his friends. It was perhaps more because he caught Loki's curious glances at the warrior with long black hair under her helm than for anything else that he had called for Sif.

“He likes to believe it, but it isn't true”, he retorted. “Half of the fights to the death I get into are his doing, someway or another.” He was pleased to see Loki smile at the shared history. Two weeks ago, Loki had infuriated a wolf-man in a tavern by turning his mead to ice, then letting it unfreeze to splash into its face as he had turned the mug upside down. Thor had complained about it, but it was after the wolf had insulted Thor that Loki had interfered, and it was behind Thor that he had hidden himself when his little trick had enraged the enemy. “Nevertheless, you need not fear. I appreciate companionship more than I need protection. Speaking of which -what are your thoughts about Midgard?”

“This again,” Loki pretended to whine.

“Midgard?” Sif repeated, carefully. Her voice was deep and charming.

“Thor enjoys being worshipped by the mortals.”

“Humans think we are gods,” Thor clarified. “I love to go to them and help as I can.”

“Killing trolls, causing rainfalls,” Loki listed. “They're a simple people.”

“Loki and I are having a week away from the castle soon. We thought of heading to Midgard once more. Do you wish to come along?”

“I will go where my prince wishes for me to be,” Sif assured, still a little confusedly.

“Great!” Thor laughed. “You'll see, the humans are charming. And so tiny. But enough of this -tell us about yourself!”

Sif looked a little alarmed, but she straightened up and cleared her throat. Keeping face. She truly was a brave girl, Thor thought, pleased. And proud, too. He looked at Loki from the corner of the eye, hoping she lived up to his hopes.

“Well, my parents are merchants, your Highness. They sell fabrics, silks and furs, and because of their high quality of product, many a grand warrior came to us to get their ceremonial capes. I always admired them, so I asked the General Tyr to let me train.”

“It must have been intimidating,” Loki remarked, resting his back against a tree trunk. “Being the only female.”

“I am not the type to be scared,” Sif replied quickly. “I have no time to waste proving myself to anyone, but if need be, I can throw any of these milk-drinkers to the ground. I am grander than many of these boys who fight like girls and whine at any hardship.”

“You are a girl,” Loki replied, frowning.

“I'm not like any other, Highness,” Sif said proudly.

“What weapons do you favour?” Thor asked.

“The traditional one-handed sword and arm-shield, preferably. Spears are too easy. I appreciate axes, but I have little affinity with hammers.”

“Want to go for a round?” Thor asked, smiling.

She rose to the challenge, brave girl, pulling her sword from her scabbard with no hesitation. She was no match for Thor, of course, but few were; she had clever moves to compensate for her small size, but her strenght was remarkable as they attacked and parried, turning around the grand oak tree while Loki watched. She touched him twice with the point of her sword before he sent her to the ground, then helped her stand. True enough, she did not whine at all, instead grinning in pride.

“You are as great as everyone says,” she said, now beaming. “I will learn much from you.”

“Do you do any magic, Sif?” Loki asked from where he was sitting, and she paused, frowning.

“No.” Then, defensively: “I am a warrior, Highness."

“Loki meant no offense,” Thor said, but he held back on a grimace, as he put his axe back on his back. He saw in his brother's eyes that he was angry now, and not going back. Loki held to grudges like a dragon to its hoard. “Neither did Sif, brother,” he tried, but Loki's fiery look did not even turn to him.

“Of course. So you really want nothing to do with girlhood, do you?”

Sif did not answer, perhaps sensing that she had made a mistake to show her disdain for seiðr. Loki sneered.

“Well, don't be surprised when no man will ever want you as a wife, if you will try so hard not to be a woman. My brother is not argr. He will not court one of his companions.”

“Loki!” Thor protested. Where had that come from? It had nothing to do with anything, did it? Nevertheless, Sif's face suddenly turned beet red.

“Perhaps he will not, but I heard some things about the other prince,” she hissed, and then closed her mouth with an audible clac, perhaps realising just how far she had gone -how dangerous it was. She had nearly called Loki -she almost called him an ergi.

Thor stared, gaping. For this insult, Loki could have her demoted. Arrested. Despite their young age, maybe even killed . Hel below, Thor should have been saying something -he should defend his brother. This was a deadly insult -but Loki had started it, right? Why had he said those nonsensical things? Why had they made her so angry? How had all this gone so fast?

A few seconds passed, heavy with silence. Loki's shoulders were tensed and his eyes murderous.

“Brother, I'm sure Sif did not mean this. You surprised her, saying those things...”

“I don't know why I said this, Highness,” Sif added. “My words went faster than my mind.”

“Ah? And still you didn't speak very quickly,” Loki retorted, and then looked at Thor. “I think I'll do my own things on Midgard. Go with your friends and take Hogun with you.”

“Loki- Wait!”

He didn't. Before Thor could move to stop him, his brother had disappeared, fading completely and no doubt reappearing somewhere far away, and he was left alone with Sif. She stared at the empty spot where Loki had been, mortified. She turned to Thor, and for an instant, he wanted to tell her off. Why had she needed to insult seiðr? Why could she not let Loki's odd insults go unanswered? She met his eyes and looked nervous, perhaps fearing punishment.

“Truly, my Prince, I am sorry,” she said in a breath.

Thor could almost hear Loki hissing, asking if she was sorry for her actions or for herself. Loki was always so complicated. He sighed.

“He'll get over this,” he said, though he doubted it. “But know that magic is not something to be mocked, Lady Sif. Not in my face.”

“I didn't know that it was true, that he did magic,” Sif said with an awkward shrug. “It will not happen again, Prince Thor. I'm sorry.”

“Forget it,” Thor said. Even though Loki will not. So much for helping his brother make friends.

In the day, so quiet. In the night, so loud.

Loki laughed at Thor, and his laugh was hitting the walls and resonating, loud enough no doubt to be heard from the hallways.

“Be quiet,” he snapped. His hand slapped Loki's mouth, holding tightly to his chin. Playful green eyes stared at him.

“Are you afraid we'll be discovered?” He whispered when Thor released him. “Ah!”

With his second hand, Thor grasped Loki's hips tighter, holding brutally, bruisingly. Loki was so skinny, so weak; he could handle him so easily, and he fucked hard into him, lodging his cock deep into him and nailing him there, gasping into the mattress, with his loud and arrogant words silenced for an instant.

“I told you,” he rasped, “to be quiet, brother.”

Loki shivered, though if it was from the order or from the perverted delight of being reminded just who he was in bed with, Thor didn't know. He knew only that Loki's body was trembling and weak in his hands, malleable and obedient and gorgeous. He knew that Loki's face was sharp and gorgeous and that he was the only one seeing him gasping, breaking like this.

He knew nobody had ever had his little brother and he knew nobody would ever have him as hard, as good, as pliant as he was now, dizzy with the pleasure -

The pleasure he felt, the sick delight of being broken to Thor's will. The act itself, unspeakable and intense. He had never had anyone, he certainly had never been had by anyone, and oh, how he wanted it, how desperately he tensed and shivered, how desperately his body tried to take Thor more deeply, tried to hold him closer, like he had always hoped it would be him...

Thor's hair fell over his face, long blond locks shielding both their faces, locking them together in each other's gaze, and Loki smiled, because he knew Thor wanted this as hard as he did, because he knew that Thor had never had anyone before him, because he knew this was perfect, this was just them.

And it was so good, to feel his brother's length, his cock hard and full forcing straight into him, plying his body to owning him, and then stopping, fully shoved inside, and breath, and hold, and suddenly move out again and pound into him and making him cry out at the force of it.

“Shhh!” Thor ordered through gritted teeth, and his hand moved to Loki's neck and held tight. “I told you- to be- quiet!”

Loki laughed and whimpered, and his stomach rose and fall with heavy breathing; he knew nobody would hear them, he didn't know how, but he knew it the same way he knew with absolute certainty that Thor wanted him too, the same way it was all about them-

And Thor knew Loki would not let them be caught, but it was so exciting to pretend they might be; and he could feel how Loki grew harder and tighter around him from the hand on his throat and he just knew he wanted this, somehow just knew that Loki would be okay with it if he slapped him again, harder this time, that in fact he just wanted that-

And when they woke in the morning, each in their own room, each on their side of the wall, in tangled and dirty sheets, then Loki would wonder how he had managed to bruise himself in his shameful dreams and Thor would try to pretend to himself that he didn't know who he had imagined his pillow to be when he had spilled his seed in it, and they both convinced themselves to forget by the time they met in the hallway and Thor said-

“Good morning, brother!”

And Loki replied-

“Good morning, Thor.”

Tyr prided himself in being a fair judge, as often as he could. He had seen enough horrors and pains in war, both by fate and man, both by necessity and cruelty, to not want to cause any more when he could avoid it. Though many in Asgard knew him to be cold and indifferent, the truth was that he cared. He simply couldn't let it show.

If Odin had given him the order, on that day, he would have slaughtered the Jötun babe. It would have been more blood to bring back from Jötunheim, more guilt on his heart; but that was what he was for. Everytime Tyr looked at Loki, he thought of how easily his blade could have cut his vulnerable throat, back on that day, without the smallest resistance. And instead, the boy grew and grew, into a warrior, a survivor, and a danger.

It wasn't a judgement. It was a fact. Tyr knew to look at the world as potential strenghts and weaknesses, dangers and safety. The boy was powerful, with a strong mind, and dark secrets in his blood. He was strange and lonely, passionate and emotional, strong and weak at the same time. They had all known from the start he would be dangerous, some day, and that day was coming closer and closer as Loki turned to a man, and as Odin kept the truth from him always a little longer.

Tyr was not of the old guard who could only see value when it grew big muscles. He didn't mind that Loki was into magic; it was a strenght like any other, to be honed and bettered. In his dealings with other realms, he had grown accustomed to the strange ways of wizards: their wild emotions, their obsessing over events and things, even their difficulties making friends. He didn't get it, but he could respect that difference.

He didn't want to be unfair, not with Loki, not with anyone else. But the boy was meant to be a prince, and he was meant to be stable enough to one day learn the truth of his parentage and help secure the Nine Realms.

And it was the hardest part of being Odin's right-hand man. It was the worst thing about being loyal to the realm first, and to its people second: sometimes, fairness was a concern he couldn't endure.

“They are civilians and you are not only a warrior, but a prince also, Loki. You are trained and powerful. They would not manage to defend themselves from you.”

“I was challenged, General.” Loki's voice was an icy hiss.

“By a bunch of drunken men. You shamed yourself in caring for their opinion at all!”

“Better that than the shame of allowing them to insult me!”

It was true. Tyr himself knew it. Tyr himself would have put these men back in their place, had he been there to hear their cowardly words to one who fought for the Realm. But that was the thing, was it not? Had Tyr been there, or had Thor, or any of Loki's warrior companions, the old imbeciles would have remained silent and muttered their opinions amongst them, not shouted them out loud for all to hear in the street.

Loki had not repeated what it was the men had called him, but some less careful tongues had whispered it back in the castle since. For such insult, any warrior would have been right to be absolutely infuriated. To punish they who uttered it, even with death. The civilians calling Loki nidhing was the most disrespectful thing Tyr could ever remember any member of the royal family enduring. All because the boy's tricks in the camps and battlefields were starting to be known: scouting invisible and confusing enemies, washing with magic where other remained for days in their dirty clothing, warming his tent in the night. Jealousy and envy turned the simple skills into feminity, cowardice, weakness.

People whispered, yes, had been for a while. But confronted with this in public -of course Loki had reacted. He had to. It was either making them right or proving them wrong. He had done right, Tyr thought, and he had even been bold, using his magic to submit these men who called it his very weakness.

But that was where it became unfair. Because Loki had showed everyone what a sorcerer he was. There would be more rumours, now, and more facts too. Now, the second prince was not a strange weak boy with magic. He was a seiðr-wielding monster.

Odin was not pleased. He thought Loki brought attention to himself. He thought he was being too strange to ever serve as the peace symbol he wanted him to be in the future. He thought he needed to be contained, forged into something more suitable for his position. But Odin would not speak to Loki himself. No. He thought it would get through to him better if it came from Tyr, whom the boy had always known approved of his skills.

It was cruel, Tyr thought. Yet it was an order from his king. And his duty was to the crown, not to those who lived in its shadows.

“You showed these men that you are stronger than they; now what? Now everyone else will speak of it. Will you be a tyrant for your honor? Will you bring everyone to their knees to make them respect you?”

“I could have bested them with my sword easily,” the boy retorted, his face pained and angry. “I wanted to show them, General Tyr. I needed them to know that I am not weak.”

“Well done. Do you feel better now, boy? Tell me. Was it worth making yourself the gossip stock of everyone in the city? Making them call you coward instead of feeble?”

Loki remained silent, the smallest shift in his cheek letting Tyr know he was clenching his teeth. He seemed to be looking at him bravely, but that was a trick Tyr himself had taught him, to look at the corner of his eye, not the eye itself, to remain brave in the face of his enemies.

Here he was, he thought, making himself his enemy. Was Odin aware of how he played with fire? How dangerous Loki would be, if instead of bending he broke? If he did not adapt to Asgard's rules, but rebelled against them?

“Am I being punished?” Loki asked, finally, neutrally.

“Yes. The martial court ordered you off duty for a year. They would have also ordered fifty lashes on any other man, but your father interfered in your favor.”

“I see.” His jaws remained tense and furious. His eyes glinted with a brief, dangerous light, and then he blinked and Tyr wondered if it had perhaps been a tear. “Tell my father I do not need to be coddled.”

“I would not speak to him in such a way now, Loki. He is not pleased with you.”

“Precisely,” Loki's voice snapped. “I will not owe him for anything. Just tell me when to get down to the dungeons.”

It was unfair, brave also, and foolish, and entirely useless. Had Tyr been given a choice, he would have taken Loki aside, and told him the truth long ago, and told him too that he was proud of his strenght of heart and skill. That was how you raised a man to be strong in all ways. But Hel, Tyr did not have anything of a choice.

“You have to be comfortable with what you are, Highness,” he said still, as Loki turned his back to him and headed for the door, “if you want the rest of the world to respect you for it.”

“I know what I am,” Loki said, standing very still, then walking out with finite words: “And I'll have no respect for those who do not like it.”

It meant the drunkards, the insults, the disrespect. But even as Tyr remained alone, he couldn't help but think that indeed, Odin was making a dangerous enemy of his boy for them all.

Fifty lashes. Such a punishment on a member of the royalty was entirely unheard of -and usually, even criminals were given several days between each dozen hits to recover. Loki got all of it at once, and nobody was even there by his side.

When he had heard of his brother's fate, Thor had felt himself grow as horrified as he was furious. He wanted to smash the culprit's skull, and he saw through a red haze in his desire to spill the blood of whatever monster of a torturer had done this, and indeed his hand closed so hard that he felt lightning hit the ground outside and reverb through his fingers; but more than vengeance, he needed to see to his brother immediately, and hold his body to his and feel his pain and rage with him and heal him through the force of his anger if nothing else.

He stormed through the palace, shouting for people to get out of his way, infuriated to be kept from his Loki. It was Hogun who had brought the news to him, while looking for the Lady Eir, but Thor rushed alone; the Warriors Three and the Lady Sif, his companions, as people now always referred to them as a group, were left far behind in his fury, and those who would stop him to ask what was happening were told off or shoved aside impatiently as he regretted having even moved away from Loki this day, that something so wrong and so sudden could have happened out of his sight.

He found Loki in his room, where Hogun had left him- or, no. He found blood in Loki's room, blood on the door handle and blood on the lamp on the wall and blood on the floor, echoing how Hogun's shirt had been dirty, except it had looked dry and normal on him; like he was back from a battle. Loki's room was not meant to be a battlefield. Thor wasn't meant to find a trail of fresh wet blood on Loki's stupid white fur carpet and think it was ruined forever and feel horrified because sometimes Loki yelled at him if he dirtied his room without thinking.

Loki wasn't yelling at him now. Loki, in fact, did not seem to have noticed him at all. Following the trail of blood, Thor found a mess of torn flesh shaking on the dirty bedsheets, and attached to the wounded figure, familiar pale limbs and black briefs and delicate shaking hands of his little brother.

“Loki,” he gasped and rushed forward, horror tearing through him like the world was ending. Blood. His brother's blood. Wrong. So wrong.

Loki lied face down, or more exactly he seemed to have fallen that way, face in the pillow, hands holding to the sheets and feet not far from the ground. Thor's hand found the curve of his neck before he could think, but then the tightness of his shoulder twisted into something harder and a sharp, high noise of pain shook him away.

“Thor.” Loki's voice was hoarse and pained.

“I'm here, Loki, I'm sorry!” Thor stammered quickly. “Oh by the Norns! What happened? What did -brother, oh, gods.”

He searched for the thing to do, the adequate reaction, but he didn't find one. He couldn't figure out what to do and he didn't know if it was due to his own panic or to the fact that there were no adequate protocols for finding your brother's back peeled to pieces. He thought he was going to throw up. Yes, panic was definitely involved now, covering all that had been rage before.

Loki mumbled something unclear.

“What is it? Loki, h-how do you feel?” He asked stupidly.

“Where... is Eir?”

Loki's head twisted enough for him to see his face. His cheeks were stained red with effort and pain, covered with wet tears and, at his temple, a splash of blood. His own blood. His eyes somehow managed to be fierce and unfocused at the same time, and Thor felt himself torn from the inside. His brother wasn't meant to look so lost or so angry.

“Where?” Loki insisted, though it seemed painful to speak, when Thor couldn't answer.

“Eir,” he stammered. “Uh -Hogun was- getting her. S-she can't be far, yes, you'll be feeling much better soon. I -should I get Mother?”

He offered it with the relief of how logical it sounded. Frigga had to come, she would know how to fix this, right? She always made everything right for them both.

But Loki actually gritted his teeth visibly at the offer, and glared at him through his tears. When he spat out his words, Thor thought he didn't hear him right.

“Not her, not Father.”

“W-what? Loki, are you -are you delirious?” He asked, and thought himself foolish for the useless question. He never panicked, so why now, when he was most needed, when it was his brother who needed him? The answer was obvious. Because it was his brother who needed him. “You must not realise -you -you are in a bad shape, brother. The man who did this, I will make him pay,” he added quickly, finding some courage in that perspective. This, he could do for Loki -this, he could promise. But his brother scoffed, pale fingers twisting hard in the bedsheets.

“He did his job. Father pays him... To use that whip.”

“Not on you!”

“On criminals.”

“You are not one. You are a prince.” Thor shook his head, confusion and malaise making him both shudder. “You are my brother. My Loki. I don't want anyone hurting you.”

“Well you're doing a poor job!” Loki snapped, then closed his eyes tight and broke into a pained sob. “Go away.”

Thor stood as if he himself had been whipped: shocked and brutalised by his brother's sharp words as surely as by a physical wound. How could he blame him for this? He thought. No -he was right, Thor should have been there to protect him from the torturer. But he didn't want to go away. He wanted to fix this -except how was he to do that if Loki didn't want him there? He didn't move, torn by the demand, torn by his own heart beating harder than on any battlefield.

Eir was in the room a moment later; she pushed the door out of her way with surprising force, rushing without ever running to her patient's side. Hogun was following her footsteps. Both noticed Thor; both turned their attention to the second prince. The healer was crouching at Loki's side in an instant, and Hogun ran out at her order to get clean water and bandages from the bathroom.

There was no instant healing. Eir advised Loki to breath and to focus his attention on his undamaged hands. She numbed the pain with runework and cleaned out what felt like layers upon layers of cuts through careful work. It took ages and Thor just stood back, wondering why nobody was screaming as he wanted to, why nobody cried as he did, why not Hogun nor Eir would express indignation or horror or the desire of revenge.

Instead, as she dressed Loki's wounds, as she had him lift some of his weight from the mattress so she could wrap the gauze around his chest, the goddess watched the younger prince holding back tears with a look of sadness and disapproval both.

“Pride is a useful tool, Highness, but it can be a dangerous one also. I hope you take at least as much away from this.”

Loki did not answer. He had not spoken since his harsh words. Thor couldn't see his face. Maybe it was for the best. He feared Loki looking at him with anger again.

“Why are you blaming him?” He asked in a breath as the healer walked away from the bed to clean her hands.

“Your father did not ask for this punishment,” Eir replied. She had a round face with cheeks that usually showed dimples through her eternal smiles. She could be overbearing and too caring, but Thor had always been fond of her, until now, as she shook her head like she was still dealing with children. “Loki didn't have to go through it. He will be lucky to recover from this fully within the year.”

“Of course my father didn't ask for this,” Thor said, indignated. “How dare you imply that Loki chose it?”

“Because I know he did, my Prince,” Eir said, frowning now in disapproval. He didn't care if she didn't like his tone. “He walked to the dungeons by himself and asked the sentence delivered. The condamnation was legitimate. The torturer did what was asked of him.”

“He tortured his prince!”

“Yes,” the Healer said. “Never have I seen pride and dramatics bring such consequences in this castle. I do hope that in a year we can all forget about this, for everyone's good. Now that is enough talk with you two,” she added. “His Highness needs to rest. Everyone out.”

Thor felt fury without knowing exactly why. He wanted to say that it was not the healer's job to tell the prince to leave his brother's bedside, except Loki himself had told him that. If Loki had moved at all through all of this, then it didn't show; he still stood hunched over the bed, his bare chest, newly bandaged, moving with his tight breaths. Thor wanted to meet his eyes now, no matter how hurtful they could be. He needed to know, needed to understand. But Loki did not look up, and Eir waited after him while Hogun had cleared out already.

“Rest well, Loki,” he said weakly. Then, with something tight in his throat, he added, “I'm sorry I failed you.”

No answer came. Thor walked out, his chest feeling heavy.

The world did not stop spinning. The court didn't break into horror and shock. Few people even seemed to notice Loki was gone. Nobody seemed to hear about the fifty lashes. Murmurs and rumours no doubt ran, but they did so away from Thor's ears. Odin refused to speak with Thor long enough for him to ask if truly nobody would be punished for this atrocity.

Thor didn't dare visit his brother, but he lay awake in his bedroom at night, desperate to cross the single door that separated them from each other, stopped by the memory of his blame. The questions tormented him, unanswered. Had Loki truly claimed the punishment? Why? Why then scorn Thor for his inaction?

A week passed of the servants bringing Loki's meals to his room and Eir visiting the royal wing twice a day, carrying her little case of vials. Hogun didn't know anything: Loki, he said, wanted to see no one. On the eight day, Loki slipped into the dining hall for breakfast, as though nothing had happened. He walked slowly, but his back was straight underneath his linen tunic.

“Brother!” Thor leaped to his feet, interrupting Sif. “You are well?”

“Of course,” Loki said, voice elegant. He looked so regal and in control, Thor thought, and Loki even met his eyes and smiled and it was like he had never cried. “Now, don't look so worried. Do I look weak to you?”

“Never.” He smiled back, wanting to lean into this normalty, into this world where everything was okay. But how could he? How could Loki? “I missed you.”

“Ah, I apologise for that. See, some fools needed a lesson, and supposedly it is not legal to frighten civilians.”

“Hogun told us this,” Volstagg said, frowning in concern. “It seemed unreal. Are you recovered?”

“Of course,” Loki replied, taking a seat. “Fair consequences for teaching these men a valuable lesson. Some bread, please.”

The last bit was meant for a servant passing by with her arms full of empty plates. She nodded obligently, but her eyes lasted on Loki for a few seconds as she walked toward the kitchen, no doubt trying to judge if the rumors were true. Loki pretended he didn't see, as if his eyes could have missed what even Thor noticed. In control, he thought, what an appropriate way of describing Loki. Was he playing a role now, casual at the breakfast table? Chatting careless of his bloody punishment in front of their friends, in front of Sif whom he despised?

“I am glad to see you recovered, brother,” he said softly. “Wish you we do something together today, now that you feel better? We could perhaps go hunting. Or merely enjoy some time in the forest?”

Loki did not even look at him. All his attention was on pouring himself a cup of juice.

“Perhaps,” he said slowly. “I'll attend to my duties first. I missed a few messengers in the last few days. I wouldn't want Father to believe I am failing at my tasks.”

Thor nodded uncertainly, wondering if he had dreamed his brother's anguish, if it had been a feverish dream. It had seemed so real, he thought. The anger. Had it been caused by the pain, or had the pain only brought it to the surface? Had Loki always held that bitterness in his heart? That bitterness for him? Had his true smile been replaced with this fake one for years, without Thor noticing? Had he meant those rageful fits everytime his voice had calmly pronounced their father's name?

Which Loki was the stranger? The one blaming him, or the one smiling about his own abuse? How long had the two of them lived under this same skin, without him noticing?

They didn't go hunting that day, or the next. In fact, they didn't go hunting together for a very long time after that.

Thor was an amazing fuck. He was an even better lover.

Maybe he had gained experience with others. Loki didn't care. He knew Thor didn't love anyone like he was loving him, now and yesterday and every other wonderful night, when he wrapped his entire body around his and his mouth was in his neck and his hair was in his hair and he moved into him slowly, intimately, delighftully.

In these few moments, he felt so awfully at peace.

It was all fake. It was all lies. But it felt nice.

And when Thor whispered in his ear,

“Come on, Loki. Come on, brother. For me.”

Then he came, shivering and moaning and melting into this love that was all a dream.

And when Loki came in his dreams, then Thor would allow himself to break as well, and he bit his lips as he came into him, making himself silent so he could hear his gasps and his whimpers to the very end, because there was not a sound so delightful in the world, nothing in the awake world that would beat those few filaments of his imagination when he was letting Loki know how he loved him, and Loki was letting him.

The war ended. It had lasted so long, Loki sometimes failed to remember there had been a time before he was a warrior. A killer.

The war ended, and Asgard won. Vanaheim was on its knees. The rebels were decimated. The losses were heavy on the loyalists side too, but Odin strenghtened their troops with his own. Soon, a new king was crowned. Peace was restored. Asgard's hold on Vanaheim was restored, too. And that was what it had all been about, in the end. Not fairness, nor justice, despite what everyone said in the golden realm. Fair and just were not words to describe villages torn to the ground and teenagers dead because they had hoped for freedom.

It was treason to think such things, perhaps. Loki kept it to himself. It wasn't like he wanted to contest the decisions. He was a grown man now. He sat in the council meetings. He knew how Asgard needed its control over Vanaheim and Alfheim to hold the dark realms of the giants in respect. He knew Nidavellir was greedy and Svartalfheim was not dead and Jötnars and Muspels and Storm Giants all waited for the first sign of weakness to unleash the end of all things good in the rest of Yggdrasil.

Asgard was cruel because it was the one way to be strong; to keep everyone safe, and everything in its place. Asgard, and its king.

Odin had once spoken of it to them both. They were so young, Loki didn't know how he remembered, but the words were engraved in his mind. A wise king, he had said, doesn't seek out war. But he has to be ready for it.

Not bloodthirsty, not unstable, not power-hungry. But capable of cruelty. Capable of showing no mercy. Capable of seizing control.

Well, Loki had learned. He had learned that the world would not be kind and he had learned that strenght was the only thing that gave you control, safety, respect. He had learned that there would be challenges and cruelties, and if he didn't stand strong, then he would crumble.

He had killed hundred, perhaps thousands of enemies during the war. It had lasted close to two hundred years, many of which he had spent at least a few months off at the front. He had killed soldiers and civilians and men and women and even a few children; any and all that stood in his way and would have fought the power of Asgard. At first, it had been so hard. Now, it didn't mean much anymore. He knew some soldiers kept counts of how many they had slain, to brag about it or to ask forgiveness from the Volurs when they came back home. Loki did neither. He wasn't proud, but he wasn't sorry.

He had done what he had to. No matter if it was fair or glorious. Like his father. Like a king.

Words ran about him now, like they did about Thor. Thor's bloody scarlet cape meant thunder and enemies fleeing in terror. His brother used mighty axes or warhammers to scatter the opposing troops and to bring down their champions. Glorious, brave Thor -growing into a symbol. He was gorgeous, his brother, the picture of perfection, strong and noble and golden.

Loki was not like that. He was only himself. But he made himself worthy the way he could. He knew he was becoming something too, something recognised and known by Asgard and its enemies both. He had heard it from soldiers' mouths, that when Loki Odinsson's horned helm could be seen above the battlefield, the dark prince riding in the midst of the fighting, then the enemy was done for. What didn't fall beneath his spear or daggers would die an awful death, for the king's youngest son wielded worse weapons yet.

His magic was famous now. He could kill a man without ever coming down from his horse or removing his hands from the reins. All he had to do was to look at you in the eye and he could make your heart stop beating -if he was feeling generous. Stories ran that they who had challenged him had been torn to pieces, their flesh melting off their bones or their bodies twisting in agony as they vomitted their own organs and died slowly without the witch-warrior ever looking back down at them.

Loki had not done those things often. Asgard's armies had rules. Dirty killing was frowned upon. But war was war, and he had done enough for the rumors to be based on facts. When noblemen asked him of their truth, he simply shrugged. Common soldiers had not dared ask for ages. In fact, few would come near him, could they avoid it.

Feared. Strong. Respected.

The war ended. They went back home. The people celebrated the return of their sons and the pride of victory. Odin threw a grand celebration, with his vassals coming from all around the Nine to witness the glory of his own returning princes. An extravagant feast was held for three nights in a row, with dances and speeches and tributes to the death. On the last day, bothered by those celebrations, Loki's mind drifted to strange places, thinking he could have killed any of those loud careless elves without a blink.

“Brother, have you seen?” Thor was leaning over to him.

They both sat at Odin's side, Thor on his immediate right arm, Loki right after him. Fandral and Volstagg and Sif were at a distant table, the occasion too important to allow commoners at the royal table. Hogun sat with them. In the last few years, Loki had rarely spoken with him at all, finding him always standing by the others. They had grown into a tight little group, always gravitating around Thor, making prowesses of their own during the war, rising through the ranks. It had been a while, Loki realised, since his brother had been with him, without them.

“What is it?” He asked.

Thor tilted his chin toward one of the servant's entrances. A pair of dwarves were working around a heavy chest, preparing something discreetly.

“Oh,” he said, his interest piqued. Several dwarven lords sat in the hall, amongst them some of the greatest weaponsmiths in the realm. Had they brought gifts for the war's champions, as in the ancient days when they had furnished Odin with Gungir or Freyjr with his ship as reward for the war against the giants?

“Right?” Thor seemed as excited as he was, barely capable of hiding his hopes. He looked like a puppy, Loki thought, and wondered at the absurd fondness of that thought, when he should instead be irritated that his brother was still so bad at putting on a court face.

“Don't get too hopeful,” he advised, trying to reign on his own fond smile. “Maybe it will be for our father or the General Tyr only.”

“Maybe,” Thor admitted, but he turned to grin at him nevertheless. “But maybe not. Can't you see what it is? With your magic?”

“I probably could, but that sounds impolite. And this chest is probably enchanted anyway.”

Thor pouted, but not for long. Loki bit the inside of his lips so his own smile would not show. Respect, he thought. Earned respect, from even his brother. His equal. Different yet just as mighty.

They did not have to wait long. With the plates mostly emptied and the drinking horns often refilled, the dwarven-lord Sindri stood, commanding silence in the hall as he came to Odin's table and put one knee to the ground. Even so, he was taller than the Allfather, but nothing in the King's attitude implied he was impressed as he allowed him to speak with a gesture.

“As my father's father, King of Asgard,” the dwarf's voice rolled like the earth spliting, “I bring forth today a present for the mightiest amongst Asgard's warriors. The people of Nidavellir have watched and we have admired prowesses the likes of which prove to us that the sons of Asgard are today so brave as they were in the beginning, and ever worthy of defending Yggdrasil.”

“The Lords of Nidavellir honor us in their eternal wisdom,” Odin said. Loki had heard him before spitting on the cowardice of the forgers who would hide in their tunnels rather than fight, but he could tell his father was genuinely pleased with the flattery. “Please, bring forth this present you speak of, that as with your father's father, I can admire the skill of your smiths.”

Sindri glanced at his servants. The chest was brought to him, with every warrior in the hall holding their breath. Loki studied the size, the apparent weight of the casket, stomach twisting. The mightiest amongst Asgard's warriors. So brave today as in the beginning. Dwarves, he thought, they admired magic. In the beginning, everyone had.

“We have observed and heard, Odin Allfather, as your own blood brought victory against the enemy of Asgard.” One of the carriers. Not servants, then, to dare speak in front of the king. Maybe one of the smiths, presenting his own work. Loki's heart beat hard, waiting, but the dwarves' eyes were only on Odin. “Fighters need weapons as mighty as them; but this particular work needed a warrior more powerful than the Nine Realms ever met.”

“She was forged in the heart of a dying star,” the second carrier picked on. “She sings with a power few could hope to tame, let alone use to its true potential. Her might is as unique as the sample of uru that composes her, and this day we believe the mighty Mjölnir has found its equal.”

Sindri smiled, pleased to see near everyone in the hall waiting, sitting on the edge of their seat. With Odin's nod of approval, he finally opened the chest and, from it, drew a warhammer.

It didn't look extraordinary. Its shape was odd, its head oversized, with only a few runes to decorate the mass of it. The handle was wrapped in thick brown leather, overall giving the impression of a crude, primitive weapon. Some warriors frowned in disappointment. Most didn't, knowing better. Dwarves were too proud a people to bring an unfinished weapon and call it a wonder, and both the carriers were radiating with pride. Loki didn't care for them, though. The weapon, oh, the weapon was radiating by itself, a raw and mighty power unlike anything he had ever seen. Such potential. A power few could hope to tame. It had to be him. It could only be him, for only he had studied seiðr enough to use the weapon to her true potential. Odin's blood. Him. At last, him.

“Once Mjölnir will be given to her new owner,” Sindri said, giving a demonstrative spin to the hammer and creating a wave of whispers and gasps as even the lest perceptive of them started to feel her strenght, “she will bind herself to him. Only if he be worthy will he be able to lift her from the ground, for if a thought of cowardice or weakness crosses his mind, she will refuses herself to him. When thrown, she will come back to his hand, no matter from how far.”

“Lord Sindri,” Odin asked. “For which of Asgard's son is this wonder?”

“For Odin's son himself, Allfather,” Sindri replied immediately. At last, his eyes moved to the king's right. “For Thor of the Aesirs.”

The hall exploded in cheers. Thor started laughing a laugh of pure joy. Loki looked at the dwarf, but the dwarf didn't spare a glance black. He presented the hammer, and Thor immediately stood to walk up to him, and his hand wrapped around the thick handle. For a brief second, Loki felt nothing but pure hatred for his delighted, proud smile, for his arrogance and joy, and he wished with all his heart the hammer would not be lifted.

But of course it was. Thor picked it up, effortlessly, and he tested his grip on it. Then, grinning, he pointed her up to the sky. An exploding sound made everyone jump, but Thor just laughed as deafening thunder rumbled.

“She is perfect!” He said in mirth, and then lifted her again. The applauses of the people nearly covered the sky's response.

“Use her well, Lord of Thunder,” Sindri advised, smirking with evident pride. “In return, she will be a glorious companion for you.”

“You honor us all with this gift to my son, Lords,” Odin said. “Let us drink some more in the name of our friendship, and in that of Thor, Defender of Asgard.”

Everyone lifted their cup toward Thor, and Thor grinned and turned to let everyone see him. Looking at his back, Loki drank with everyone else, tilting his horn to his lips slowly and deciding none of this mattered. The mead, still, tasted of acid and ashes as it ran down in his throat. Night and day and blood and sweat, he thought, and second. Always second.

Thor, Defender of Asgard. Mjölnir, a glorious companion.

His heart was beating so hard and his hand was sweaty around the shaft of the warhammer. He could feel her pulsing like she had a heartbeat, almost stronger than his own. She was sentient, he knew as much without truly knowing how. A mind of her own, or at least a personality. He felt like she was studying him now just as much as he was her.

The warriors drank and they cheered and Thor cheered with them. Defender of Asgard. A hero. A son of the king, a son of the realm. Worthy, the dwarf had said. Frigga was clapping, looking proud. Odin didn't smile, but he never did. Thor told himself even his father had to be proud now. This was so big. He was like the heroes of old, like the god the mortals thought him to be. His legend was forming now, forged like this weapon and acclaimed as he was now. Protector. Hero. Warrior. Worthy.

He turned to look at Loki. His brother met his eyes. He smiled, a court smile that seemed entirely uninterested by the situation. It hurt more than maybe it should have, and suddenly he wasn't sure if he wanted to ask Loki to help him figure out the magic in Mjölnir -he had not even formulated the thought until now, but it had seemed evident. He knew Loki didn't care for war and weapons, but could he not see that it was more?

“Come now, Thor! Let us meet the lady!” Fandral and the three others waved him closer. Volstagg looked paternally proud of him, and Sif's excitation broke her into a rare high-pitched laugh. Even Hogun seemed intrigued to see the hammer.

Thor glanced back at Loki, but Loki was drinking, and gestured lightly over his horn for him to go to his friends. Like Thor was a child, and he had more important things to do anyway, yes, go play, brother, I'm busy here, sitting alone and thinking of things you wouldn't understand anyway even if I bothered to explained, so I won't.

He turned back and went to his friends, trying not to let the disappointment in his chest burn too painfully.

Odin fell in the Sleep for the first time ten years after the end of the war. It was not the last. And though Frigga ruled as Regent for the five days the Sleep endured, all of Asgard knew now it was only a matter of time until the prince -well, one of the princes ascended to the throne. Yes, sure, technically, neither of them was yet named heir, but everyone knew -well. They would just see. (But they had their guess.)

Loki was poisoned.

They weren't sure how it had happened. The entire kitchen staff would be interrogated, and the food suppliers were being tracked to examine all of their last commands. They didn't know who or why and it would take a while to find out.

What they knew for sure was that the witch prince had asked a servant for a mug of herbal tea to settle a sudden bout of nausea before going to bed. By the time the girl knocked at her prince's door, there was no answer. Erik, the soldier standing guard in the hallway, had taken it upon himself to go inside anyway: he had worked at his station for decades, and though he had never exchanged more than a dozen words with the prince, he thought Loki might be pleased to find the tea at his side if he woke still feeling sick.

Erik was granted personal thanks by the Queen Frigga, later on. If he had not found the young prince crumpled on the floor, clawing at his throat and gasping silently for air, who knew how he would have been the next morning?

(Dead, they all knew. Dead in a few more minutes, if the guard had not screamed for a healer and gotten one immediately. But it didn't do to even mention a royal family member's death, let alone how it almost had happened.)

Loki survived, but it was close to a miracle. He was told to stay in bed, and though it was an order he despised, though he usually didn't, even after battlewounds or punishments, he obeyed this time. It was a testament to how effective the poison nearly had been.

Thor came to visit several times a day, tortured by the thought of how he could have gone to sleep while his brother stopped breathing in the next room. He found Loki asleep, mostly, a side effect of the antidote. He sat by his side and waited and blamed himself. At times, he simply watched him as his mind drifted away, and he detailed the pale sharpness of Loki's face as he slept, pure black hair falling on the pillow. He knew how his brother hated to be unclean, and he kept thinking that he wished he could wash his greasy locks for him before he would wake.

Loki shifted a lot in his sleep, curling to one side, then to the next, wrapping one leg around the undone bed sheets, half-waking and bringing the pillow to his side to rest his head on it like a lover's neck. When he opened his eyes, the vulnerable, peaceful look melted away. He looked no longer like his little brother, but instead he looked like Loki: eyes curious, hands closing on something, shoulders tense and uneasy. When had Loki started looking uneasy all the time?

The first time Loki woke enough to ask what Thor was doing by his side, the god of thunder wept. Without a thought for the dignity of it, he wrapped his arms around Loki and felt his back's muscles tensing and his breath brushing his cheek in surprise. He was alive. Thank the Norns, he was alive.

“I was so afraid,” he said, closing his eyes and feeling hot tears rolling into Loki's shirt. “I was so -you can't leave me. You can't leave, Loki, the, the -Yggdrasil itself will wither and rot if you die, you understand?”

Loki was silent for a while, but soon his hands were closing in Thor's back in return, and the softness of his hairless cheek was on Thor's, and he felt more tears coming at him as he held tighter, finally losing the fight against the storm of feelings in his chest. Outside, the sky started to weep its own cold tears, a gentle rain befitting his small sobs.

Guards had woken him up as soon as Loki had been in the infirmary. By the time he understood why they were so relieved that he wasn't feeling sick at all, they all knew Loki was going to make it. He had known nothing of fearing him dead. But since, oh, how the thought had haunted him. A world without the smiles of his brother and the pride of his back always held straight. A world where he couldn't turn to Loki's wit or expect him by his side. A world where Loki didn't have his silly habit of slicking his hair back and Thor didn't mind because it made him look younger and softer, or where he didn't know exactly how to answer adequately to Elvish visitors in their own language and told Thor what to say and scolded him for not remembering by himself but still looked pleased to know better than he, or where he didn't know how to spin glorious stories for the awed mortals who would listen to them...

“Don't ever leave me, Loki,” he whispered, and pressed his lips to his brother's temple, inhaling his smell. Even after the poisoning and the antidote, after sweating and shivering all night long, Loki had a distinct perfume now, something that was his own, not their mother's skirts and the castle's clean laundry. Loki smelled of spices or citrus, of something odd yet comforting, something fresh yet feverish.

“I'm not planning to,” Loki replied finally.

He made to lie back in his pillows, probably exhausted. Thor released him reluctantly, but Loki didn't let go of his shirt. Their eyes met for an instant. Tentatively, Thor lowered himself on the bed, and wrapped himself back around his brother. Loki's body felt too cold beneath the covers. He wanted to warm him, as much as he wanted to comfort himself that his brother, though warrior and prince and cleverer than anyone, was safe and sound and by his side.

They slept together, that night, like when they had been children. They were men, now, and things were changed and the world was bigger and stranger than ever they had imagined, and so were the two of them, but despite that -or perhaps because of that-, it felt perfect like this.

Loki woke before the morning sun. His mouth felt dry and dirty, like he had swallowed coals. It had been a few days of it now, but everytime he woke, he felt only vague confusion about the previous times. He remembered Thor lying down by his side, but still he was surprised to realise it was not a dream. Thor's breath was in the back of his neck, and his arm loosely held him around his middle, skin golden and warm against green pajamas Loki didn't remember putting on.

He remained motionless for a few seconds, reluctant to disrupt his brother's sleep; but soon, the thirst was growing too painful to ignore. He moved very carefully, twisting under his arm to reach for the jug of water sitting on the bedside table. His fingers wrapped shakily around the handle and he went to lift it -except, the instant he did, it became unbearably heavy, making him hiss in pain as it slipped his grip and fell heavily to the floor where it smashed into a mess of water.

“Loki? Loki! Are you alright?”

“Yes, you oaf, amazing!"

Thor didn't seem to care for his frustrated jab. Within a second, cold air rushed under the blankets as Thor evaded their hold to sit up and look at the disaster on the ground.

“What happened?” He asked, sounding alert and confused. “You dropped it?”

“What do you think happened?!”

“Did you hurt yourself?”

He sounded so worried. Apparently, Loki's snapping answers didn't impress him. It angered him more, for an instant, but as the pain in his arm faded, his annoyance deflated as well. He brought his free hand to his face, feeling that arm weak and heavy as well.

“I didn't,” he mumbled, rubbing his forehead. “I'm just... not feeling good. I felt thirsty.”

Fabric rustled and the covers moved some more and the mattress shifted. When Loki looked up, Thor was standing, getting a new pitcher from a table. He was quick to hand Loki a cup filled with lukewarm water, his eyes on him. Only him.

“It's good to hear you,” his brother said, almost uncertain. When had Thor ever sounded uncertain? Why did Loki only remember Thor as proud and boasting and loud? Had he always been that way? “The last few days, I was starting to fear you would never again wish for something without it being suggested by the healers.”

“I can't hold it,” Loki said, looking at the glass.

“Ah. Let me -like this?”

Thor brought the glass to his lips before he could contemplate refusing. It was awkward and unpractical, but soon the fresh water was rolling down his throat, relieving him of thirst and pain. Thor tipped the glass, but carefully enough that it wasn't too much. When Loki tried again to raise a heavy hand, he immediately pulled back. And looked at him -only him- with something like hope. Or -no. Expectation. Attention. Something better. Something that made him the center of Thor's world.

When had he started wanting that?

“I'm feeling tired,” he said quietly. “What was I healed with?”

“Everything,” Thor said ruefully. “Nobody knew what was happening to you. Eir says now that it was poison, but we couldn't tell at first -if it was a spell or a drug or anything. So the healers -they sort of piled up everything they thought you could hold, I think. They made you drink at least two potions, like, one thick black thing, and one that looked almost like glue? And there was a healing stone, and one of those Elves scholar that work with Eir traced runes all around your bed.”

That explained it. He didn't know to feel grateful. He felt it more distinctly, now, the heaviness that came from using a healing stone when there wasn't enough damage to fix, and the headache he associated with runes. But if he had been -poisoned...

“Who?” He asked carefully.

“They arrested him,” Thor said, frowning now. “He wouldn't talk. Father didn't tell me more.”

Him. A man. A murderer. A traitor. Somebody had tried to get rid of him.

Poisoner. Coward. Not killing, but eliminating.

People wanted to dispose of him. They wanted it badly enough to go to these unglorious lenghts.

“Nobody else was poisoned?” He asked, throat feeling dry.

“Every piece of food that was in the castle was burned to make sure, and everything that came in afterward was checked.”

So nobody else. If you wanted to kill more than a target, you poisoned both at the same time, you didn't give them the opportunity to learn from the other's death. Him. He had been targeted.

He felt sick again -in a new way, too. Him. Somebody wanted him dead. Did everybody want him dead? How many in the plot? How many who would have been relieved, had it been a success? Whom? Servants? Soldiers? Commoners? Noblemen? Did the Council want him dead? Was it an interrealm affair? Why not all of it?

He had so much blood on his hands too, so much coward blood. He had done this to others. Something so wrong, yet so fair in the name of Odin, in the name of Asgard. Treachery, plots, betraying those who would never expect such an attempt.

Who had come for him?

Would they come again?

Of course.

Not another realm, he thought. They would have aimed for Thor. Or had they? What food had been poisoned? Had he eaten something meant for his brother? What was it? He couldn't remember the feast. Couldn't remember anything... No, not an enemy of Asgard. Asgard itself. Why else such an off-handed attack? An enemy could have asked for a clean fight.

Asgard wanted him dead, he thought, this time with more dread, with more certainty. Somebody in Asgard. So Asgard itself.

By Yggdrasil. He could have been dead now. He could be dead. He could never have woken up...

“Brother.” Thor's voice, worried. “Breathe. Breathe, calm down! Should I get the healer?”

“Thor, I -I don't want to die,” he stammered. Stupidly. A distant part of him knew how stupid he sounded. But it felt so desperately true, something that -that he had never considered, but was now so evident, and could the universe ignore it? It wasn't fair, it wasn't supposed to be part of the game. He didn't want to die, he didn't want the terrifying unknown of after, he didn't want Hel and his name forgotten for a coward's death and he didn't want to never see Thor again-

“Loki!” Thor was repeating his name, louder and louder now, until his eyes locked with his. He heard a whimpering sound, and then realised it was his own. “Loki, calm down! You need to breathe!”

He wasn't breathing, he was shaking, shaking so hard even his lungs were stammering a broken rhythm, so wild, so alive it was painful, so alive for now-

“Thor,” he said, a sound like a sob, broken by his hyperventilating breath, and he tried to reach for Thor but felt too weak, but Thor understood and soon Thor was lying down, hugging him, holding tight, making small sounds that were probably supposed to calm him, but he sounded so unsure it didn't work, except he was there, solid and strong, his brother, mighty and unbreakable, the golden, mighty Thor, his brother, his big brother, his Thor-

“S-Stay wi-WIth me,” he begged, sobbing, a weak child, everyone would have laughed and they would have been right, this was who he really was, weak and cowardly and scared, and he couldn't fight against the cruelty and strenght of a world that didn't want him, but Thor held tight, and made his little 'shhh's and brushed his hair back. He was weak and wrong, but Thor held still.

“I'm staying, baby brother,” Thor said. “I'm staying. Shh. You're with me. You're with me.” He sounded like he was crying too, now. Everything Loki touched was corrupted, he thought, vaguely, before he felt too weak to think even that and turned back to a weeping mess.

Loki stayed a week longer in the infirmary. It felt like forever.

Thor had to leave his side a few times. After that first promise, it felt unforgivable; but in the light of new, passing days, there was no rational reason not to sleep in his own bed and attend his training. Loki himself said so, now far from those wrecked tears he had shed.

But it was not like something he could forget. The melting cold of his brother's ice, turning into terrified sobs. Emotions, hidden under his perfect mask.

He had known, he thought, that Loki was not so indifferent. That he couldn't be. That his strenght had not risen so distant from the sensible boy he had been.

It scared him, to think that there was something hidden so deeply under all those layers of his brother that perhaps he would never see it again. That perhaps Loki would never again dare to ask him to stay by his side, if he wanted him to. So when he could visit him, and when he found him resting, as he spent most of his days, he tried to let him know how he wanted that, too.

He was lying by his side, on the bed, when Loki woke that day. He frowned a little when he turned around and saw him, but then, there was a brief smile.

“You can sleep in your own bed, you know. This one is quite small. It can't be comfortable.”

“I missed you,” Thor replied simply.

Loki's eyes did that thing they did, when his brother seemed to look at the entire world, consider every possibility, think about enigmas, all in the while of blinking a few times. Then they locked on the hem of the blanket, and he was carefully shifting in the bed, and they were face to face, touching at the hip and at the elbow. His body felt cold and solid. He cherished that solidity more than ever now.

“I'm looking forward to being given my leave by Eir,” Loki said quietly. His eyes were on Thor's shirt now. Distracted or thinking? Both were very different things, wherever Loki was concerned. His long hair fell on the pillow, cleaned by his own magic. Building himself up, cleaning his looks, so quickly after everything.

“By the day after tomorrow, at the latest,” Thor said. “I heard her telling Mother you would be able to welcome that painter from Vanaheim.”

“Ah. We're still having the painter.” Loki would have sounded irritated to anyone, but Thor could tell he was just dreading the effort of welcoming the famous artist.

“Father thought it would send a wrong message, if we were to cancel,” Thor apologised. “But he's staying over for a while. I'm sure the actual portrait will be able to wait.”

Frigga had decided to give her patronage to the Vanir artist for their family portrait of the century. The last one depicted both Thor and Loki riding dark horses on the battlefield, with Odin and Frigga in the background in their ceremonial armor; no doubt, there was politic even in the choice of painters. Thor wondered sometimes if he would ever be able to realise the implication of every action he took, and its consequences, like the rest of his family seemed to.

“Mmh.” Loki was closing his eyes. “Hopefully. I can't imagine standing still for two days like for that elvish idiot the last time.”

“Maybe you can sit.” Thor smiled, his hand carefully moving to push a strand of hair from Loki's cheek and brush it behind his ear.

Loki opened his eyes, looking at him wordlessly. His eyes deep and so very vibrant. His brother, so clever and strong and alive. Miraculously alive. Thor's thumb came to rest on Loki's cheek, his fingers wrapping around the back of his neck, and Loki looked back, wordless for once. It felt so simple, so peaceful, he thought. He wished they had so much more time, just like this. Like when the world had been only about them.

“Are your friends not angry at me for stealing you from them?” Loki whispered, a quiet parallel, after a few moments.

“They're all relieved you're alive,” Thor said, then realised he was mostly guessing. He had barely held a conversation with any of them, instead speaking of his own heart while Volstagg listened comfortingly, or laughing with Fandral and Sif around a pint to relax from the almost-disaster. “I want to be here with you, for now. They can understand that.”

“Mmh,” Loki said, and watched him for a few moments more before he straightened a little. “You might want to be away from me, for a moment. I need to freshen up,” he added, smiling at Thor's disappointed face.

“I don't feel like moving, though,” Thor retorted, a little insulted by the joke.

“Then feast your eyes, brother.”

He didn't pick up on the amused tone, resting his hand underneath his chin to compensate as Loki left the bed. He was growing a little stronger each day and insisted on looking like it, even if it only meant being allowed to wash before putting clean pajamas on. Thor looked at the ceiling as Loki made for the small, not-quite-private lavatory in the corner of the room, where a healer had had to support him until a few days back. Hearing the sound of his barefoot steps moving back on the tiles, he glanced back to see his brother pulling his shirt over his head in front of the washbasin.

He probably should have averted his eyes from this as well, he thought distinctly, and didn't. Loki's skin was pale. His muscles so thin they were barely there. Scar tissue hid into the healing's room soft lights. Loki's thumbs hooked into the soft fabric of his pants and pulled them down. The scars were a little more evident, in that spot where his back became the subtle curve of his ass. The fabric slid down on endless legs, revealing more paleness, untouched by the cruelty of the whip.

He didn't seem as healthy as he could have been, or as strong as he should have, but it was strangely okay, Thor thought. He wasn't perfect. He was a little too tall or maybe a bit too thin. His skinny legs stood a bit too much apart, too. From the back-

It had been a while since he had seen his brother naked. Not perfect. Not gorgeous. Not a beautiful Elvish girl or even Sif's warrior strenght or plump attractiveness like Lulla the servant. Not perfect, no, but better-

Maybe he breathed in too sharply, maybe the little pick up in his heartbeat was heard across the room. Loki looked over his shoulder, directly at him, and their eyes met, but Thor had had to look up, revealing his own staring. He closed his eyes, too late, and pretended it had been this way all along, his heart pounding in his chest.

Silence followed. Too long. When he dared to open his eyes, Loki was leaning over the washbasin, running a sponge over his shoulder. Quiet and busy like nothing had happened at all, like the incident was either unnoticed or not worth mentioning. Thor didn't know why he felt a bit of disappointment, somewhere through his relief.

In the end, the portrait was painted exactly as it had been planned. Nobody mentioned Loki being just out of the healers' care. He stood at Frigga's left as the old Vanir man sketched, humming to himself in an endlessly irritating process. He had hated having to stand still for those things as a child; now, as he felt weak and tired and wondered how many people thought he didn't belong in that family portrait to begin with, he hated it more.

Some part of him felt he should have hidden himself from the world and let that be over. Let himself be over. Had he ever thought he would belong? Could he keep fighting toward it? Why bother? Everyone knew Thor had won that fight ages ago, and Thor didn't even realise they were fighting.

Thor was looking at him, so much that the painter had had to ask for his attention several times. Concern, perhaps. Or disgust. Maybe, Loki thought, maybe despite all his kind words, maybe he was starting to see it too, that he was unworthy. Maybe Thor had looked at him well, in the infirmary. Maybe he had realised they were different, too different, as he had looked at waxy flesh and ugly scars and everything. Maybe he had seen Loki looking back, to see if his eyes were on him.

Thor had stayed with him in the healing wing, yes. Was he regretting now? Was he hating him quietly? Thor stood on Odin's right. The two of them as far as possible on the portrait. Thor golden and red and strong. Loki dark and green and witchy.

Thor had said he loved him, Thor had loved him, yes, he knew he had been true then. Maybe it was over now. And if not, then it would.

Loki found himself hating him back. There was nothing more pathetic, was there?, than to love someone you disgusted.

The painting took two years to complete. It was on the very ceiling of the throne room. Two brothers so very apart. Two brothers, golden and dark. Storms and mischief. Warrior and coward.

Why had he so desperately wanted for Thor to look at him, to look at his weak body and wounds? Why had he ruined himself, hoping Thor would speak something to make it all better? Why had he exposed his flesh, heart pounding, remembering the caress of Thor's hand on his cheek and thinking to push and try and test?

Why was fire roaring in his belly, burning everything inside to stinging ashes like the poison was still there?

He needed -time, he thought, and told himself and told nobody else. To Thor, he said he was busy. Tired. Thor was the only one asking, maybe out of guilt, maybe out of pity, maybe out of pure mockery, was he capable of it?

He went to Midgard. He liked the frailty of human life, its hurry, its beauty, its carelessness. He enjoyed the mountains of the North, the volcanoes, the green field to walk barefoot in. He liked the humans scared and confused and charming, making stories about a nature spirit, a familiar demon, a glorious god. He was many things, in their eyes. Sometimes he delighted in their terror. Sometimes he killed trolls for them, grew their dry crops, answered their prayers.

A gorgeous man, a forger, refused to be scared or admirative of Loki. He called his magic tricks, but not the way Aesirs did. He was a proud, clever little man.

He was Loki's very first lover. Not what he had dreamed, or imagined, or hoped. But he was kind. Beautiful. Skilled.

For nearly twenty years, he travelled to Midgard, again and again, visiting Anthony, son of Haward, in his lonely forge in the Land of Ice. It was Tony who moved first, Tony who kissed Loki, and smirked at his shock.

“You pretend you're six hundred and you were never kissed?”

“Not by a man,” Loki murmured, but it was a small trick of words. He had never been kissed by a lady either. Never kissed -only in his dreams.

“I never kissed a man either,” Tony admitted, amused. “I figured a supernatural being was as good as any for a first try. Nobody would believe you if you went to tell them.”

Secrecy. They were both alone, two lonely souls away from their world. Nobody had to know.

Loki's hands shook as he wrapped them on Tony's cheek and kissed him back. He was clumsy, unsure what to do with his tongue, then shuddering as Tony's lips smashed his, possessive. Not strong enough. Just a mortal. But so good. So, so good, to feel wanted.

Tony called him pretty, Tony was small and Loki was tall, Tony cooked awfully, Tony engraved Loki's breastplate with beautiful designs, to remember him with. Tony was proud and pained and human.

Human.

Dying.

“I could save you,” Loki said, voice breaking. “I could heal this.”

“Come on, little giant,” Tony rasped, still teasing, even now, even so tired, even so pained. His human. So strong. So playful. What would he be, given years? Given eternity? Given strenght? “It's not j-just the lungs, you know that. I don't have much left.”

“I can make it more.”

“I don't want to, Loke. I'm sixty-three. I maybe have a year left, maybe even two. I don't want you to use your witchcraft to make that five or six or seven.”

“So you want to die, rather than to let me care for you.”

“I don't want you to spend years trying to keep me alive,” Tony corrected. “Won't you stay with me and enjoy that, rather than complain about how little it is?”

“It's a heartbeat,” Loki said, and his own heart was pounding in his chest with the despair of how quickly time passed, every second in this room. “It's nothing but a heartbeat.”

“I'm scared of death,” Tony said, a brief fracture in his facade. Tony had his own masks, like Loki. “I -I know I'll fear it more if I run from it. Let it come at me, Loke. I'll rest in Helheim.”

“The golden apples of Idunn,” he pleaded still. “I can steal one. Nobody needs to know. You could live to be hundreds of years old. You could-”

“Loki,” Tony said, snapped. “No. Please. Let's not talk about it.”

Tony died that next summer. A cruel irony, after surviving the cold, rough winter. Loki screamed at the sky and the earth and watered Midgard with his own tears. Tony Hawardsson was gone forever.

Nobody even knew he had existed. Gone, gone. His sweet little mortal with his warm lovely eyes and insecure arrogance. His first love. Never enough and never perfect but there, there, and had he not loved him enough? Had he wasted everything they had? Had he not argued enough to save him? What god was he if he couldn't persuade a lover to love him enough to live?

Nobody knew, he thought, but when he stepped back into Asgard, after days and days of weeping, he found Thor, waiting at his door.

“What do you want?” He asked him. His voice was weak, his heart burning alive. I'm argr, I'm nidhing, I've lost him. Nothing else mattered. He wanted to scream at Thor. He wanted to let him know how bad, how rotten he was.

“Heimdall told me you lost a friend today,” Thor said, eyebrows furrowed, and eyes worried. “Brother, I know you -you have been busy, these years. I know you have a lot of duties, and we didn't see much of each other, but I wanted... I... If you wish to speak... I too grew fond of several humans. I miss... I still miss them.”

Thor, Loki thought, through a numb mist, Thor would have loved Tony. So brave. So full of principle. So proud. Had they met, then Loki would not be the only one to remember his lover. Loki, and Heimdall, watching him and spying on him and no doubt thinking him weak and cowardly and playing pity on him, on the argr prince too pathetic to love anything else than a mortal.

The fire in his heart was spilling into his eyes now, burning into furious tears. He would learn to hide from the Guardian. He would learn not to need his help for passage through Yggdrasil.

“I just want to rest,” he said, even his throat constricted by flames, pain, weakness. “Goodnight, Thor.”

“If you change your mind,” Thor started, then stopped. He seemed tired, too. When had he started to have dark circles under his perfect eyes? Perhaps it was just the world, turning to dust and grays and regrets, and ruining everything as they grew into men.

“Goodnight, Thor,” Loki repeated, and Thor stepped aside, freeing access to the door.

Thor would be crowned king of Asgard in a year from now. Just in time for his seven hundredth birthday.

It would have been better to wait for nine hundred, maybe even nine hundred ninety-nine. It was a sacred number, one that would no doubt ensure the Norns would look kindly on the new sovereign. Some council members had argued to wait, saying that Thor was yet young, that he should be there for more meetings, more trials, that there was still time.

Thor agreed. He didn't feel ready, though he didn't want to say that out loud.

Odin didn't want to wait. Odin felt, he said, tired, and Asgard needed a strong king. The Volür of the temples spoke of danger and war coming, or at least it felt like that was what they were talking about in their endless riddles. Frigga herself admitted to seeing disturbances in the future, the ripples of fate uncertain and grave.

“Then Asgard need your experience, Allfather,” Lord Bragi argued.

“Our Queen speak of uncertainty. We do not know for sure that she means war. With all due respect to the prince, we might want your wisdom more than we wish for his strenght.”

“My wisdom and experiences are not going anywhere, Lord Hoenir,” Odin replied sharply. “It is true that Thor has yet a lot to learn. This is why I wish him to sit on Hlidsjkalf while I am still there to guide his actions. The Jötnar are stirring at the borders. Marauders and pirates are sailing our seas, testing our harbors ever more daringly. A leader like Thor is exactly what Asgard needs.”

There was a vote. The oldest councilmen, four of them, wanted to keep Odin as king. Four others, Forseti, Heimdall, Tyr, and Freyjr raised their hand in favor of Thor's imminent coronation. Odin didn't get a voice, as king, and neither did Thor, as the subject of the debate. Eyes moved to Loki, who as always sat in his own throne like he had been born there, looking regal, confident yet careless, like this was all below him. He looked so sure of himself, hair slicked back, longer now, eyes shut as he drank his cup of wine.

“Well, Highness,” Hoenir asked. “What do you say?”

Loki looked up, like he hadn't been bothered to notice everyone staring at him until then. He looked at Odin, and so very briefly at Thor.

“In favor, of course,” Loki said, and lifted his cup again already, until Hoenir protested, making him pause.

“My prince, your brother is as brave as he is loved by all of Asgard, we can all agree on this, but the two of you are yet very young to pretend to understand the challenges of this position. Popularity may chip away as hardships befall-”

“Lord Hoenir,” Loki said, putting his cup down in a very controlled gesture, and his voice commanded silence, so rarely spoken so loudly, and suddenly so similar to Odin's powerful Voice. “Please, do not explain to me what choice I should make. I am in favor. This makes five to four. May we move on to the other matters?”

This was all Loki had to offer about the news of the coronation: vague disinterest, boredom. It was made all the more absurd as he argued passionately and sarcastically with Heimdall, an instant later, about the need for armed patrols at the border of Jötunheim. The debate ended with Loki winning, of course. He was good at that.

Thor didn't know how he felt about being king. It had never been confirmed, that it would be him, except now, it seemed like everyone had been expecting it for centuries. He had dreamed of this, yes, he had pictured it his entire life... But always as a distant future, the pleasant blur of ages to come turning him into a man nobody would defeat, a man who would reign peacefully and do no wrong.

A year. He wouldn't turn into a king in a year.

He lied in his bed that evening, and thought he was alone. His friends would be so excited. They always praised him, admired him, even when they mocked him in that friendly way. They never questioned his choices, his ideas. Nobody ever had. Nobody, except for his brother.

But it had been a long time since last Loki had ridden with him on an adventure, noticing that it would be stupid to sleep in that clearing because the moss that was so comfortable now would quickly sink under their weight and bring out the unpleasant rock, or speaking perfect elvish to persuade a shopkeeper not to try to hussle with them, or just smirking playfully and making Thor trip on his cape when he was trying to impress laughing maidens in Midgard...

He brought his hands to his eyes and sighed, feeling so stupid, so useless, so -alone.

Fatigue gradually washed over him, numbing the cloud of worries in his mind. He turned to lie on his side, running a hand down the soft fabric of his shirt a few times. His fingers paused and twisted, and soon he was sliding his hand down the tightness of his brief, feeling himself. Eyes shut, he stroked himself lazily, breathing slowly through his nose as his body slowly woke to his own attentions.

He hadn't had a lover in a while. His last adventure with a palace servant had ended poorly, with the girl turning jealous and saddened by the certainty that Thor would never be with her for good. He felt guilty she had ever believed otherwise, but also somewhat annoyed by it. He had comforted her, even arranged for her to work at a higher function, down in the kitchen, so she wouldn't have to see him. She had seemed pleased with the pay raise and was smiling again, so other servants told him now. He was glad he had not hurt her too deply. But she had been so meaningless, the warmth of her body not enough to breach through the numbness of what was now familiar and inexciting...

Maybe she wasn't the problem. He hadn't been truly excited by his lovers in a while.

Some terrible part of him knew what it was about. Some part of him that listened through the walls, when he thought he heard Loki speaking with somebody in his own rooms. Some part of him who had looked once for green lanterns through the streets of the capitals, and some part of him who wished girls had skinnier legs and stronger shoulders and green mischief in their eyes.

Some part of him that wondered why he didn't dream anymore.

His breath hitched up. He closed his eyes. Loki's disinterest in the council room came to his mind; he chased it away. He remembered instead Loki in the baths, sight caught on accident, his brother seeming relaxed for once. He remembered his head tipped back and his throat exposed, his Adam's apple, the curves of his collarbones. He remembered wondering if Loki had been touching himself underneath the water, away from his eyes. He was so quiet, so sure he was alone, eyes shut, lips gently parted...

He had imagined it then, watching him. What it would feel like, to kiss these lips like a lover's. To squeeze Loki's neck and pull him closer and to feel his strange gorgeous body in all its details, pressed to his. To touch his tongue and breathe his breath away from him. To feel him tense. To hear a sound of pleasure from him. What did Loki sound like when he came? Who had had the chance to know?

He turned a little more on his stomach, bucking his hips into the mattress, gritting his teeth. He remembered Loki naked and standing with his back to him in the infirmary. He remembered sharing this very bed when they had been children, so innocents. They had kissed so often, hugged so often. Such a familiar body, such a lovely smile. How would Loki feel, bent under him? How would he sound, being fucked like a woman, maybe on all fours on the bed, maybe his long fingers grasping to the sheets, maybe his back rounded against Thor's chest, maybe he would scream and lose all of that control of his when Thor would pound him into the mattress, hold down his thin wrists and hold him and own-

“Ah- ah- y- yes- YES- brother! Nnh-!”

He spat out a curse as he came. The pleasure rushed through him, something low in his belly, then it was melting away already. The flatness of a lonely orgasm. He squeezed himself, making the pleasure last, mixing it with pain to heighten the last seconds of it, then gave up and let himself fall flat on the sheets again. He caught his breath. Opened his eyes.

Wondered if he would feel so dissatisfied forever, stuck in his secret fantasies. Wondered what sort of king he would be, alone on his golden throne.

Giants were being an issue. Of course they were.

As a child, Loki had been terrified of Giants. It was perhaps only logical: he had been born at the very end of the war, when soldiers came home with the scars of battle and the horrifying frost-burns caused by the enemy. Jötnars were the monsters of all the stories the servants would tell to make him eat his meat; they were the threats the older children used to make the little ones run back to hide in their mother's skirts. And Loki was curious, so of course he asked, and of course he read the books and looked at the drawings, and of course it made everything worse. Even when he had been two hundred years old and it was far past the time of nightlights and servants watching him at all time, there had been cold winter nights when he had been too terrified to fall asleep, imagining the howls of the monsters in the wind and cold bloody eyes watching him at the window.

He had grown now. He knew enough to know Jötnars were monsters indeed, but they were not invincible. He had grown now, and he had never fought a giant himself, but he knew enough to know that he could win, to know that giants were flesh and bones and organs and that he could make all of that die.

But he didn't like giants. In feverish nightmares and dark lonely nights in the war, he sometimes imagined demons with skin like a drowned man, reaching for him to eat his flesh or wear his bones as necklace or do all those awful things that savage monsters did.

And today, the Giants were being an issue. Frost was spreading dangerously from the Northern border. Nomadic sheperds were reporting massive loss in their cattles, saying the giants came at night to devour their goats and sheeps and leaving nothing but bloodied bones for them to find in horror in the morning, like a threat. The monsters were hunting and haunting, terrifying the land and making Loki grimace, and feel glad that Thor was there and that Thor had Mjölnir.

“If they breached our border now, what is to say that they will stop there?” Freyjr asked the council in evident worry.

“These might be isolated beings,” Hoenir argued, but didn't seem convinced either. “A few more daring than the rest.”

“It does not matter,” Forseti said. “Whether these creatures were on Laufey's orders or not, they need to be ended before others might be tempted to follow.”

“Mind your words, Son,” Tyr interfered with a somber tone. “Calling a man a creature because it is your enemy is a dangerous slope. You are too young to remember the time before the war, but the giants are not to be thought of as animals. They are intelligent beings, and if they do this, then there is thought behind their actions.”

Tyr looked tired and tense, had been since he himself had brought this issue to the gathered council. Loki eyed him, wondering if he was sick, hoping he wasn't. His words were strange too, and did little to comfort him. Nobody thought of giants as of animals. Wolves and dragons were animals, dangerous but without malice. Giants were worse. Dark tribes of savages, perverted and rotten, fighting each other and fucking each other and laughing when bathing in their own children's blood.

Or something like that. No, that last part was more of a nursery rhyme, he knew that. Bathing in blood -it made no sense, in such a cold land. But killing their own offsprings -he was quite sure he had read of that in a book.

“Which is exactly why they must be pushed back immediately,” Freyjr said. “They must be taught this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated.”

“We left the giants to die, my King,” Tyr said, looking at Odin intently. “We took the heart of their planet from them, centuries ago. I agree that those intrusions cannot be tolerated. But perhaps it is time we speak of peace, before it is too late.”

Odin's one eye travelled to his most trusted general. Loki followed it intently enough to catch Tyr looking back at him for an instant. Maybe he felt Loki's disbelief. Or Thor's. Both shook their head. Peace? With monsters? The councilmen frowned, exchanging glances around the table. The king had been silent for most of the exchange, and remained so for a few seconds longer.

“What do you say,” he finally asked, slowly, “my sons?”

Thor stiffened as all turned toward the two of them. He should have been used to everyone looking up to him. Loki could feel him tense, next to him, wondering perhaps if this was a test of his competence and looking for the good answer.

There had been that rare plural to the question, though. He thought of saying nothing, and letting Thor sit in his own tension and prove that he was not suited to be king, not ready to handle taking decisions.

It was a short-lived thought. He looked at his brother's distressed face from the corner of his eye and sighed on the inside. It was not Thor's fault. It never had been. No matter how he tried to hate him -he could never convince himself of it.

“I believe this menace must be taken seriously,” he said, taking everyone's attention on him, but looking at Thor like he was asking. “If the Jötnars wished to parley, then they should have, shouldn't they? What we have here is pure savagery. I say that they must be reminded of Asgard's strenght, old and new. Laufey should remember that if he is to ask for peace, he should do so with his head bent, not with a weapon in hand.”

“Aye,” Thor agreed, lighting up in relief. “Exactly! I was thinking the same. We must put them back in their place. I would do so myself, Father.”

“You are both young,” Tyr countered again, looking almost -what, sad? “You know of this war only stories written by enemies. I know otherwise. The Jötnars are a proud people -just like we are. We should give them a chance.”

“That very pride is what brought them where they are,” Forseti retorted. “I am in favor of letting our Prince let them taste the wrath of Mjölnir and decide if their pride is worth dying for good.”

“All-Father,” Tyr implored, eyebrows knit together. “There will be no going back from such a decision. You must remember how we spoke of this day, so many years ago. You must remember that very war, that very battlefield.”

Loki frowned at the general, and exchanged a glance with Thor, for what perhaps was the first time in ages. They both knew Tyr to be strong, wise, solid -and always, always faithful to Odin's wishes. There was something very odd in seeing the two men looking at each other, obvious tension between them.

“I remember, General Tyr,” Odin said, flatly. “We spoke of peace with the Jötnar then, and we hoped for it today. But those things... They no longer matter.”

“Odin,” Tyr said, with more angst now, and several men around the table startled at the familiarity of it. “This is not right.”

“Would you defy my sons, Tyr? They took this decision.”

“They do not know better!”

“This is enough, General.” Odin's eye glinted with a first show of irritation. “This council has chosen not to endure the Jötnar's arrogance. I will not endure yours.”

For a half second, it almost seemed as though Tyr would retort. It looked like the general was about to snap something back at Odin, despite his warning. His eyes moved to the two princes- no, not the two of them; just Loki. Then, gritting his teeth, he sat back, looking furious with himself.

“We will send troops to the North and make sure any and all giants within our borders are slain,” Odin said, without letting the silence last. “Any response from Laufey will be met with the necessary force. If he wants peace, then he will come and ask for it.”

“When should I leave, Father?” Thor asked, obviously aware of the tension in the room.

“You are not going anywhere,” the king said, standing without looking at either of them. “There is much still to be done for the coronation. Let this meeting be over.”

Gungir hit the floor, the heavy thud symbolically ending any discussion in the deadly silent room. Thor seemed completely lost. Loki watched Odin retreating, his heart beating hard, then glanced at Tyr. The general was resolutely looking down at his own two hands, even as the councilmen stood and started to whisper.

He didn't know what it was -but he had a feeling something finite, something awful, had just happened.

“General Tyr,” he asked, standing and commanding attention. “You take the Jötnar's defense to heart. I never heard any in Asgard take offense in their being called monsters before. With all due respect, why do you care?”

There was a new pause, and he had the time to regret his question when Tyr looked at him, seeming, for the first time, as old as he truly was. His eyes were sharp and sad, something dark in them as he looked back at Loki.

And suddenly Loki knew, even though he had known for a while now, but he had not known like this. And suddenly it felt like everyone in the room understood just as he did.

“The Jötnar are a proud race, Highness,” Tyr said again. Loki looked at him, eye to eye, standing just in front of him, but he realised his voice was -his voice was blurry, yes, that was the best way to say it. He was speaking quietly, as though preparing him for the worst, like Loki was still safe from that answer. “They are fierce warriors, capable of the mightiest feats-”

“But we will triumph,” Thor said, and suddenly his hand was on the back of Loki's neck, a gesture he did that was always so full of love, but today it felt like he would just clench and crack Loki's neck. “They are strong, but we are stronger still. They will be no match-”

Loki shoved him back. He couldn't breath. Jötnars are monsters and I am a Jötun. Jötnars are monsters and I am a Jötun. Jötnars are-

I am-

Together they would have hunted the monsters down and slayed them all-

Rotten to the core, wasn't he-

No wonder, no wonder he had never had a chance-

And everyone had sensed it, had they not, everyone who knew something was so wrong with him-

Everything he had fought and denied and struggled and the magic and the sex and Thor, and Thor, and Thor-

He had been dirtying everything even here, and they had let him, and Thor, and he had seen, and he had been so wrong from the beginning-

What had he been doing here?

“Brother?” Thor's voice was worried now.

“Loki,” Tyr said, breaching all rules of etiquette as he looked at him in the eye and called him by his name, not his title.

Of course not. Title. Prince. Highness. Monster-

The councilmen watched on, looking at him in judgement, disapproval, they always had disapproved of him but he had held his head high, he was their prince and they owed him respect and he knew better than them, but did they know, did they know before? Did everyone know?

“Loki, you are scaring me,” Thor said and moved on him again, imposing himself to his face, looking so worried. “Are you hurting? Brother, please, tell me what is wrong, that I may help you!”

“I'm not your brother,” he realised out loud, barely hearing his own voice through the fire that was filling his mouth, his ears, his chest, “I never was.”

“My princes,” Tyr said, and

“What is going on here?” Odin asked, and

“Loki? Loki, brother,” Thor begged.

I love him so much, Loki thought, and felt blinded by rage, toward himself, toward them all for letting him believe this was real, for letting him think for even an instant that he was theirs.

No longer matter, Odin had said. No longer. So it had once -it had been about peace, but not anymore, and now-

He could have kept his mouth shut and the Jötnars would have been slain and he would have not known and they would all have laughed but he would have been safe and he would have been here but now they all watched and they understood, they were about to understand, if they didn't know already, if Tyr had been the only one to know-

Tyr whom he had trusted and whom had lied and looked at him like he was a boy a child a prince but really he was looking at him like he was a fool of a monster growing in lies and believing-

“Thor,” he said, feeling his heart burning in the acidic fire.

Thor. Thor Thor Thor.

His Thor.

He was a monster. He was the monster. He was everything wrong.

He burned. Everything burned.

Everything burned.

Everything burned.

Everything burned.

He recognised the dream land now. He had for a while, and it had prompted him to study and to shield his brain in invisible barriers to protect himself from any eyes that, like Heimdall's, might have seen what they shouldn't have.

Well, his barriers had fallen now. It wasn't a surprise, not after everything. Not after the fire. The fire, the fire, the fire, oh-

“What fire? What was all this fire? What hurts so bad?”

He hadn't dreamt of Thor in a long time.

Well, it had been the Thor in his mind he had wanted to hide from spying eyes, after all. So maybe it made sense. What did it matter now? What had he not told his torturers already? What could they figure out about him and his weakness and his cowardice that they didn't know?

“Who's torturing you? Who's hurting you? Where are you?”

He looked up at Thor and did not answer. There was no reason to entertain the fruit of his own wishful dreams. He was so tired. He didn't want to ever wake. He wanted to stop hurting. He wanted to stop being a failure...

He wanted to be dead.

“So you are still alive! Loki, where are you?”

He indulged himself: he lied down on his side, and when Thor came to kneel over him, he opened his arms and welcomed him there. It had never been this way before, because he had always wanted Thor to hold him instead. But now everything hurt and he could tell that Thor wanted to be held, that Thor needed to be reassured. His strong, dear, beautiful brother.

Except he wasn't.

It had all been a lie, a dream, a fantasy.

He had never been worthy of him.

“Why are you in so much pain?” Thor pleaded. “Brother. Where are you? Come back. Please. Please.”

Even in the dreamland, his skin was raw, his muscles flooded with hemorragias forming slow bruises over old bruises over burned flesh. Even in the dreamland, he felt pain.

He remembered his torturer: a big thing, so monstruous it felt he shouldn't be sentient, let alone intelligent enough to break him. Cull Obsidian, someone had called him. Whom? He didn't quite remember. It had all been so messy -burning, burning, then being here, and when had the burning changed from his own fire to that of the enemy? He had wanted to die and then he had been dragged and burned and beaten so hard he had wanted to die-

“Their master,” Loki murmured, ordering his lost thoughts, “calls himself a Titan.”

He didn't remember much of him. He had fallen in his grip, and he remembered... He remembered squirming and fighting and eventually trying to escape upon realising that he was so hilariously outmatched by the purple monster. Then-

“Thanos,” he remembered. “Lover of Death.”

“Is that the one who holds you? How did you end up there?”

Perhaps he had conjured this dream-Thor to make him answer those questions, to help him make sense of it all.

“I burned myself out. I burned out like a star and I hoped to die but he found me. He found -my fire in the dark, he said. And he said... He said he wanted me to be his child.”

Yes, that had been it. He had been called powerful and damaged and Thanos had looked at him with almost fondness, and told him he was fond of his sort. Loki had laughed so he wouldn't scream, but Thanos didn't take no for an answer. He had thrown him to Obsidian, and said... And said...

Make him your brother.

So many dark words. Child, son, brother. He was a lie, he had been lied to. He was of Jötunheim, of Asgard, and now he was in the darkness between the branches of Yggdrasil or maybe even beyond that, and everything was so scary and he was asleep for now but Cull would wake him soon, he was probably just letting him heal enough so he wouldn't be able to just-

Why couldn't he just die?!

“Loki, you must tell me where you are, I beg you! Brother, I have been searching for you -it has been years now!”

“Then you should be king,” Loki remembered curiously.

Thor made a sound of despair or maybe of frustration and twisted to look at him, and his hands were gently on his cheeks. Loki saw tears in those blue eyes and felt furious. Thor wasn't supposed to cry. Thor should be safe. Thor should be happy. Thor should be... away from him.

“But I want to be with you,” Thor said, showing a tense smile.

“I didn't dream you to be so stubborn,” Loki said, eyes sad.

“I didn't dream you to hurt so much,” Thor retorted, chest pained.

Thor was running out of time; he knew so without knowing how he knew that Loki would wake soon, and that Thor would wake up in his own bed, alone, alone in his room, alone in Asgard, withLoki missing and everyone thinking him dead and nobody being able to tell him why, why, why everything had gone so wrong.

He was running out of time and his dream was as stubborn as his precious dead beloved brother and he kissed him, a hard kiss that tasted of Loki's lips burnt like rotten meat and bleeding in his gums and he cried.

Thanos. Lover of Death. So that was who held Loki away. But why? What did he want with him?

“He wants something in Asgard,” Loki answered him, still lying on his side, still reeking of wanting to die. Where had his brother's life gone? “He wants me to burn Asgard to the ground. He said... I missed my chance the first time. I think... He wants me to be mad at you.”

“Are you not?”

“Mad?”

“Yes.”

“I think I am.” Loki's eyes were glassy and lost. “At Odin. At Asgard. I'm not just -not just angry. I think I'm...” Insane. Nothing made sense anymore. Loki didn't say it out loud, though. “I'm not mad at you. Never at you.”

“You have plenty of reasons to hate me.”

“Yes,” Loki agreed. “So do you.”

“I could never hate you.”

“I could. But never as much as I love you. I know -I tried.”

There was a shift. Something in the darkness crumbling. They were out of time. Thor felt hot, furious tears running down his cheeks.

“Loki. I love you too.”

Dream. Lies.

Thor gritted his teeth and grasped Loki by the back of his neck and Loki cried out, feeling his flesh burnt there underneath his fingers. Green eyes stared back at Thor in shock and Thor swallowed painfully. He didn't want to wake up. He didn't want to leave.

“Loki, I love you more dearly than anything. Come back. Please, come back.”

“Are you real?” Loki wondered, bewildered.

There was no time for answers. Loki faded and-

Loki woke up to fire and pain and-

And Thor woke up to emptiness and rage and-

A dreamed Thor would have allowed him to give up-

A dreamed Loki would have agreed to come back-

Thor was about to commit treason when the attack came.

At first, Odin had ignored his claims to have seen Loki in his dreams. He had pushed back the date of the coronation on Frigga's insistance, to allow Thor to mourn his brother. Loki's self-inflicted immolation had left the entire court in a state of confusion and turmoil, seeking for answers and finding very few of them. In the end, it was called an accident. The people mourned, symbolically, while servants and nobles alike brought conflincting whispers to the endless wheel of rumors. Some said that the shadow prince had been executed by his own family, for he was growing too dangerous. Other claimed he was not dead at all, but making himself invisible to spy on every being in the kingdom.

What everyone could agree upon was that the second prince was indeed gone, and that the heir to the throne was unconsolable. Thor, supposedly, didn't eat, and didn't sleep, yet would spend days and days lying in bed, only to emerge once or twice a month to fight mercilessly in the training rings. There was no sighting of the prince outside of the castle, and supposedly he didn't speak to anyone, let alone the Queen and King and his most precious friends.

It was a sad time for the kingdom indeed, to lose both princes so strangely. As months, then years passed, the sadness turned to confusion, the confusion to annoyance.

“Life goes on, my prince,” Eir said, with a voice so gentle it almost covered the reproaches. “Your brother would not want you to stay like this.”

Thor was growing better at hiding his true thoughts, now. Eir didn't seem to notice him glaring at her, thinking that she had no idea what Loki would want; thinking that Loki might very well want for Thor to die.

After the incident, Tyr had left behind his title, on his own decision, although Thor wondered now if Odin would have let him remain in function. Nobody outside of the council seemed to know what had happened; what knowledge had driven Loki to the edge of reason. Nobody knew that Loki was not Thor's brother by birth.

“So he was of Jötunheim,” he asked Tyr once, voice hoarse from fighting all day, and having found the general advising young soldiers. “All this time.”

“You should ask your questions to your father, Highness,” Tyr said somberly. “I spoke too much, thinking I knew better than he.”

“My father lied. To both of us.”

“For your own good, I believe.”

“I don't feel good, General.”

“No,” Tyr admitted. “I would think not. I apologise, my prince.”

“Don't. Of all the people in this castle, I am starting to believe only you and I truly cared for my brother.”

“You speak darkly, Highness,” Tyr said, shaking his head. “Please be careful. Your brother followed those dark thoughts too far. It does not do well to feed oneself with doubts and anger and remain alone with that pain.”

“If I had realised those things earlier, he would not have been alone with it,” Thor said, teeth gritted.

“You are not the only one in this realm to mourn Loki, Thor,” Tyr said, a little more harshly this time. “Try to remember that.”

It was after this talk with the general, that very same night, that the dreams came back, for the first time in ages. Shameful, lonely dreams they had been, when he had been younger; and now, so full of sadness. It was as it had been then: a secret in the night, to be more free, to be more honest. And in these dreams, Loki was himself too.

Loki. Alive. Kept prisoner by someone, something Asgard knew nothing about.

Waking from the dream, he had rushed to his father's study, immediately explaining what he had seen, demanding to take arms immediately against this foe and free his brother. Odin had been less than impressed, telling him to ask Eir for potions if his dreams were haunting him.

He had almost obeyed, embarrassed to realise just how little facts he had with him to justify the dream material as being real. But he wasn't ready to give up -not this one time. He had gone to Heimdall instead, and asked about his brother.

“I have not seen Loki in a long time, your Highness,” the Guardian said, sounding neutral and patient as he always was. “Even before he left us, your brother has long been able to hide himself from my sight.”

“He could do that?”

“Aye. It began a few decades back. I saw him...” And for the first time, Heimdall hesitated.

“You saw him what?”

“With a mortal,” Heimdall said. “A man. He loved him.”

It felt like a hit to his chest. How many secrets were there to find, if he were to dig into this past? He had thought all this time that Loki would have had lovers; it had felt unrealistic to hope it wasn't the case. But -a man.

He thought he had been the only man with him, in those dreams he had thought were his alone.

But it didn't matter. By the Norns, it didn't matter. If Loki was alive -if Loki came back, then Thor would be happy to see him love anyone in the Nine Realms, even if it left him all alone- he just needed to see his eyes, and his smile. Lords, how long it had been since he had seen him smile. He just wanted to see it again, at any cost, even if it meant asking for those lone Volurs who performed dark rituals to break the rules of the shadow-realms...

“You cannot see him? Not anywhere?” He insisted without hope, shaking his head.

“I have not looked,” Heimdall admitted, his golden eyes on him. “Do you think he is to be found, Highness?”

He was the first one not to dismiss him as mad, to believe Loki might still be alive.

Tyr. Heimdall. How many others had been like him, truly loving Loki, yet not knowing how to convince him of it? How many had Loki pushed away with his stubborness, how many had he dismissed?

Fandral, it turned out. And Hogun. And Volstagg. And even Sif, grown now, and standing with her head proud and telling the world that there was nothing wrong with feminity, or witchcraft, or spear-fighting.

“You think your brother alive,” she said, breaking the still silence that followed Thor's explanations. “You think he is held captive somewhere and came to you in dream.”

“I know he did,” Thor corrected, bracing himself. “And I will find him.”

“Has it been just the one dream?” Hogun asked.

“Yes,” he admitted, reluctantly. “I do not know what -I know not what might keep him. Perhaps they do not let him sleep. But I know what I saw. I know it was real.”

“You have no idea where he might be,” Volstagg frowned. “How do we go to his rescue then?”

“I have a name,” Thor said, relieved to hear the we already. “It is little, but it is better than nothing. With research, I know we can find him.”

“What does the King think of this?” Fandral asked in a breath. “I believed you said he didn't want to hear of Loki anymore.”

“I will not wait for his approval. Even if I need to break out of Asgard as a criminal, my choice is made. I will go after my brother.”

“And I will go with you, my prince,” Sif was the first to say, decision and purpose steeling her dark eyes.

“And I.”

“And I.”

“And I.”

They didn't have to, though. Half an hour later, Heimdall's horn sounded through the entire kingdom. For the first time since the beginning of time, Asgard was under attack.

“Our first Chitauri ship is down.”

“Then send the rest.”

Loki stood at the commands of the ship, hands folded behind his back. Through the screens, he could see Asgard, its golden walls standing brighter than ever in the light of what had been a peaceful morning.

By his side, Nebula, the broken warrioress. And behind them both, Ebony Maw and Proxima Midnight.

He wanted to ask them if these were their given names or if he should expect Thanos to start calling him Darkness Wings or Scar Lips anytime soon. It had taken him weeks to recover enough strenght to remember he hated them. He truly hoped he would get the chance to mock them out loud before this was all over.

“They did quick work of the first ship, little prince,” Midnight remarked. “I dare hope you know what you are doing.”

“The Infinity Gauntlet is in the Vaults below the castle,” he replied. “We'll get it long before they realise it's what we're after. And when that is done, you will leave Asgard to me.”

“You'll have your throne when Thanos has his weapon, Asgardian.”

“Give me strenght,” Loki answered, and breathed as he felt the restrictions upon his magic melt. A little.

“Your brother is for me,” Maw reminded him in that awful, cheerful tone he always had, twisting his fingers gently around the invisible chains he had enclosed him in. “Do not forget it.”

“I forget nothing. Make sure you kill him with extreme prejudice.”

“Landing now,” Nebula warned them all, twisting her metallic hand around the controls of the ship.

Everything smelled of fire when they made it out of the sleek, little black ship. They had landed inside the main walls, and the streets that should have been busy with life now were deserted, with only the distant screamings to confirm that the fight was still going on, both in the city center and toward the castle. Civilians would be slaughtered playfully no matter how they begged, forcing Odin to choose between protecting his castle or his people.

Loki knew which he would choose. He had told Thanos as much. The most of the offensive forces were blasting shots after shots upon the magical doors guarding the great halls.

“Glaive is waiting for you near that underground entrance, Asgardian,” Proxima told him, checking her wrist. “Nebula, get the bridge guardian. Maw, with me. We have eyes on Thor Odinsson.”

“Loki,” Maw spoke, and it had been so long since he had heard his own name outside of his mind that it made him pause despite himself. The alien smirked at him, clearly pleased with his effect. “Remember this. The Black Order is your family now. Thanos will reward and punish you to the exact lenghts that you deserve after today.”

“I know what I have to do.”

And he did.

Thor had fought enough, killed enough, to think that he was a soldier. The truth was, no years of war could have prepared him to see his own home go up in flames as creatures he had no name for rushed over in endless batallions, taking down the soldiers to devour them.

“They're all over the city!” Sif shouted. “It's an invasion!”

“How did Heimdall see nothing of this?!”

“Volstagg, Hogun, stay here and get my parents! Sif, Fandral, follow me -we need to get to the city!”

The enemies were at least of two alien races: one advanced enough to carry guns and metallic masks, one monstruously equipped with two pairs of arms and sharp predator teeth. The first ones died at the slice of a sword; the second had scaly skin the sort of a dragon's and was tough enough to need a mighty lightning blast to fall to the ground. One clever enough to fire at a distance, the other rushing forward with animal savagery.

This was not a random attack. This was something organised and deadly and something they had been entirely unprepared for. Sif and Fandral and Thor were brave and furious, and they were mighty warriors -but what was there to do when seeing old friends and civilians falling to the ground, chest smoking, throat ripped off? They brought down the enemies, but their number seemed only to grow as they moved forward toward the city, trying to get people out of the way and feeling more and more sick and powerless as the number of bodies piling up in the streets grew as well.

They made it to the market square in the middle of town and Sif screamed a curse upon seeing the monstruous ship there, a winged monster the size of a house, looking somewhere between organic and mechanic. She ran at it, jumping on top of its head and slashing at what should have been its neck, and only then did Thor recognise the girl dead on the ground underneath the monster as one of her best friends-

It was a nightmare. A pure nightmare. He felt dizzy, Mjölnir throbbing in his hand. So much death. There was so much death.

“Thor!” Fandral shouted in warning, and Thor only had time to lift his hammer to protect his head from an energy blast that came flying at him. There were more aliens, standing at shooting range and hissing orders and aiming for Thor, yes, but also for Sif vulnerable on the ship-

He brought down thunder and lightning from the sky, but he had been pulling this trick many time now, and it fell with tired strenght, blasting the row of enemies, yes, but leaving him panting, his arm aching. This was a nightmare. He was not strong enough. He was...

“Thor, look! That one's in charge! SIF!”

Fandral was pointing at a shadow emerging from the cloud of smoke, where the dead bodies of the enemies crackled on the ground, and it looked down at them as if in disappointment. It was a hulking monster, with scaly skin and fangs like that of a boar, and the instant Thor saw him, he felt electrified as well with renewed hatred.

Because he had caught the image of this thing before, though only a whisper of it, only a silhouette in the darkness of a dream.

This thing had tortured Loki.

He roared and ran forward, and rammed against the monster with the full strenght of his anger. The beast was startled but only for an instant, showing teeth into an ugly roar as it caught Thor's wrists and held them hard; nearly as strong as he, but not enough, not quite enough, and Thor kicked it in the groin and was pleased to see it was humanoid enough to rear in pain at that. It let go of Thor's hand, just a second. He needed no longer.

Its ugly head rolled onto the paved floor. Thor shoved the heavy body off of him, panting.

“This is it,” he told Fandral and Sif as they fell behind him. “This is the enemy Loki talked about. He gave me a warning and I didn't understand. I wasn't ready.”

“Now's not the time to dwell upon that, Thor,” Fandral said, sounding pained. His side had been clawed at by one of the beasts, and though he had brushed it off then, Thor could see his tunic wetted now with blood. They had not dressed for a war today. “Let's get the rest of those sons of wolves and when we're done, we'll make the last of them tell us where Loki is.”

“Such optimism”, a pleasant voice rolled from above them, and they all jumped, weapon in hand. A few meters above the ground floated the tightly cloaked form of a man with gray skin and alien features. “Perhaps I can save you the trouble.”

“Thor Odinsson,” called another voice, and a woman appeared from the same place the monster had. She threw a sideway, uninterested look at its beheaded body, then looked at him. There was only coldness in her visage, with no sign of mockery. “My master Thanos wants you dead, and so dead I will make you.”

“Rejoice,” advised the wizard, and smirked.

“This way.”

“I am following you, Asgardian. You need not burden me with your words.”

“So I was told a few times before.”

Corvus Glaive gave a hiss that might have been a warning. Loki kept walking.

Here, in the bowels of the castle, everything was quiet. He could hear his own footsteps echoing in the entire chamber. Taken by surprise no doubt, the guards of the Vaults had rushed away from their position at the sound of fighting outside. For such behaviour, Odin might well have had them whiped. Odin just loved punishing failures. Odin loved it enough as to bring failures into his very house to let them fail over and over again at being anything other than it.

He squinted, feeling a drop of sweat running down his neck. The chains over his magic were somewhat loosened. These around his mind, though -they were not. Ebony Maw's whispered words echoed in his mind again and again and again.

“The Gauntlet will be inside this chamber,” he announced, to break the noise of it with his own voice.

“I believe I told you to stop speaking, brother,” Glaive said impatiently.

It was ironic, really, that Thanos would call his minions his children. The Black Order, they called themselves, but to Thanos they were sons and daughters. It was not a show of love. Loki knew fully well that even his precious Gamora, even his dearest Maw, were entirely disposable to the Titan. That was not the point. It wasn't love. It was possession.

Well, Loki was son of no one, he thought, and thought it harder and harder as someone laughed in his mind.

The Vault's door opened without resistance to Loki's presence. Nobody had bothered to erase his presence from Asgard.

Inside were weapons, treasures of war, stolen prizes. The Eternal Flame's glow illuminated the entire chamber as it danced in its prison, and reverberated on the golden prize they were after.

A fake one.

He had only a few seconds before Glaive would figure that out, as he walked toward it in triumph and took the Glove of its pedestal.

Luckily, seconds were all that he needed. Next to the flame, just where he remembered it, smaller than in his memory, the Casket sang for him, waiting patiently. He had never understood why she called to him so desperately. He had tought it was magic calling magic, not ice calling ice. Now he figured out why she sounded so sad.

Well, monsters could be sad. He knew that.

“Wait an instant,” Glaive said sharply. “This is not the Infinity Glove.”

“Is it not?” Loki asked, feeling dizzy. Jötunheim begged for him through the blue glow of the Casket. It was not the time. He had imagined this would be easier.

“Thanos will make you regret this arrogance, Asgardian,” Glaive growled, and he threw the fake glove to the ground. It bounced in a heavy metallic noise, falling in the darkness below the Vault, but Corvus Glaive was not looking at it anymore, advancing on Loki and reaching for his weapon. “Tell me where the glove is!”

Loki took a half-step back. His legs shivered, pained to carry his weight. Corvus was on him now, and his hand hit Loki's throat, squeezing, hard, lifting him from the ground. He was strong. Way too strong.

Not strong as Thor, though.

“Speak, now”, Glaive hissed, his shattered face inches from his. “You know I can make you suffer without killing you, Asgardian.”

“That's where you're wrong,” Loki managed to rasp, and the hand squeezed even tighter, blocking his breath entirely, and he twitched in fear despite himself, hand lifting to claw at the petrified fingers holding him.

“Am I? Do you truly believe our master's hand doesn't reach you here?”

Loki closed his eyes, shivering in pain and fear and dark memories and the whispers that grew stronger, obliterating everything else in his mind. Thanos, Lover of Death, had a tight control on his beloved lady's power. Nobody died without his approval; nobody died without it being a mercy. Loki knew that. There was nothing more terrifying than dying and not dying.

That wasn't what Glaive was wrong about, though, and he gritted his teeth as he forced his mind through its storm and fire, until burning ice grew into every little crevasses of his mind, encasing all the darkness there until he was able to hear the screaming-

It was Glaive's turn to be terrified, as his hands burned on Loki's flesh and fell to pieces and he didn't have time to reach for his sword.

“You won't die either,” Loki gasped, breathing painfully, crimson eyes looking back at the soldier. “Not until I'm done with you.”

The Casket was in his hands now, and perhaps he managed to ignore her crying or perhaps she silenced herself upon feeling his intents, but she freed her power, the might of all of Winter, just for one second. It was more than enough.

Loki stumbled back. Glaive was frozen solid, eyes wide and scared. Not dying. The children of Thanos didn't die without Thanos' approval.

He held tight to the Casket, feeling her magic rushing through him like a complete stranger. He didn't give himself time to recover.

He had to find Maw. Wherever he was, Thor would be also.

Sif and Fandral were standing in front of Thor within an instant, holding their swords in front of their prince. Both warriors showed teeth as Proxima looked down at them in disdain.

“If you believe for an instant that you are a match for Thor, these horns you have are messing with your brain, lady,” Fandral said, but there was too much exhaustion in his voice for it to carry its usual mockery.

“Stand out of my way or die,” the woman said, eyes dark. “I will have no qualms about getting rid of the two of you.”

Before Thor could tell them to back off, before he could move forward to protect his friends, Sif gave a war cry and ran forward, lifting her still bloody sword over her head. With lightning speed, the woman produced a spear out of nowhere and blocked Sif's hit, spinning the end of her weapon to hit her back in the head. Fandral interfered at that same time, almost managing to send his rapier straight through her neck before the woman stepped back at the very last instant, growling in annoyance.

“Well, well. Quite loyal servants you have, Thor Odinsson.”

The other man was back on the ground now, holding his hands together in a strange fashion. He seemed unarmed, and too thin, and too pale.

Thor didn't relax, eyeing him wearily while trying to keep an eye on the fight. He twisted Mjölnir in his hand.

“Who are you?” He asked. “What is this madness?”

“I am Ebony Maw,” the alien supplied, almost kindly. “I serve the Great Titan-Lord Thanos. Rejoice, for my Master has turned his eyes to your world first, in his quest to save the Universe! You will die first, with the honor of serving his cause."

“You and your master are insane,” Thor snapped. “I have no patience for your riddles. Where is my brother?”

“At this specific instant,” Maw said, feigning deep thoughts, “Loki of Asgard is breaching Asgard's defenses to bring my master his prize. I'm afraid I am here but to make sure you do not distract him from this quest, Thor Odinsson. Your brother has proved a docile servant thus far, but my master does not want him to fall to tentation.”

“You are lying!” Thor's heart was beating hard into his own temples, his hand shivering at the confirmation that these were Loki's capturers, that Loki was here -unless this thing was lying, and surely it did, because Loki was no traitor, and Loki would never be docile, he would never serve anyone, let alone these monsters-

“He is quite a fragile thing, that boy, is he not?” Maw continued, smiling at Thor. “I wonder if you are any stronger. I wonder if you can offer any resistance.”

“I'll show you resistance,” Thor snapped, losing any semblance of patience as he heard Sif shouting in pain, and he ran forward, swinging his hammer at full speed- only for Maw to disappear completely, and for his hit to debalance him and make him fall to the bloodied floor. He heard a laugh behind him.

“Truly impressive!” Maw laughed, and when Thor looked back, he was lifting his hands to the sky and grinning like a madman. “Asgard is as good as dead, Lord Thanos! Only Earth will be left standing in our path!”

“You have not won yet!” Thor shouted, spinning back on his heels to throw Mjölnir at his enemy. Maw simply twisted his hand, and the mighty hammer deviated, heading straight for Fandral as he was holding the woman in respect- “NO!” Mjölnir fell heavy to the ground without hitting his friend, but the harm was done. Distracted, Fandral looked at him. Proxima hit him straight in the chest with her spear and sent him hard to the ground, not even sparing a glance at him before walking to Maw's side. Both looked at Thor, one smiling, one not.

“Tell me, boy,” Maw asked, sounding falsely sympathetic. “How does it feel to be told you are the greatest and to know that you aren't?”

“I will not die without a fight, you snake,” Thor snapped, but took a half-step back despite himself, feeling Maw's words piercing something deep in his chest that he hadn't known was there. He wanted -he wanted him to shut up. He needed him to stop speaking, because his sweet voice was making him sick-

“Won't you?” Maw was advancing now, and Thor should have backed off, but he felt paralysed, close to throwing up. “I think you want to die, Asgardian. I think you'd be so very relieved to meet someone better than you. I think you've long waited for me to put an end to this fraud you've been for all these years.”

“SHUT UP!”

“No resistance at all,” Maw smiled. “I thought you would at least hold as far as your brother. But even in this, you are an impostor, aren't you? Nobody ever seems to realise how weak-minded you are, how uncapable of thinking. Only a worthless brute... And even at this, you are outmatched. Shh, stop screaming. Tell me. Tell me you want me to end it.”

His finger was on Thor's lips, imposing silence. Thor should have been able to shove him away. This close, he should have been able to get his hands on him before he could escape, and kill him. This close... He should be able to win.

He should have, but he wasn't. Because -the words ran and hit and echoed in his brain- because he was worthless. Outmatched. Weak-minded. An impostor.

Loki feared he would have to fight if anyone saw him, and so he tried to make his way fast and invisible through the castle. He didn't have any strenght left in him, no clever plot or magical outburst to make everything okay. The last sparkles of his magic were twisting in his veins, fighting to keep his plot working.

Every second, his mind pulsed with dangerous words, laughters of another life, the certainty that he shouldn't be here: a blue-skinned madman, in those beautiful immaculate golden halls, running from the enemies he had led inside himself. Every second, he had to fight it back and tell himself back that Asgard's gold had ever been soiled with crimes more cruel than his own, and that if he ran fast enough-

If he ran fast and hard enough and if he found Thor and if Thor believed him-

And it was a lot of ifs and it was impossible and he would be punished for disobeying his master, and did he think Odin would welcome him with open arms and did he think-

IF HE RAN fast enough then Thor would hear him and together they would protect Asgard and it didn't matter that Loki was no longer of Asgard and it didn't matter that he wasn't a prince and that he was wrong because Asgard would be safe and Thor would be safe-

He slumped against a wall, gasping out loud, his lungs burning hard.

And he heard it then,

“Loki?!”

Hogun, his friend, Hogun whom had cared when Loki told him to go to Hel, Hogun whom he had pushed away and lost-

“Norns above -ODIN! LOKI IS HERE!”

And his mother. His dearest mother, sounding so afraid. How did she recognise him, he wondered, how did they recognise him when he was wearing this awful blue skin and everything around was red and falling to pieces?

“Loki,” a third voice, Odin now, his father except not his father, sounding choked or maybe like he was crying. It was ridiculous, because Odin didn't cry. Loki was hearing wrong now. He gritted his teeth and tried to hold tight to the Casket, but he was shaking, quivering, wrestling with the demons in his mind.

“I believed Asgard to be protected by your all-seeing eyes, Guardian.”

“She is.”

“Yet here we are. Inside. Killing the very people you were supposed to protect.”

Heimdall met the black eyes of the woman standing in front of him. She was only half organic, the rest of her replaced with machinery, her very stance unnatural and disbalanced. She probably was in constant pain, although her face said absolutely nothing more than the words she spoke so coolly.

“Yes,” he agreed, eyeing her very carefully, hands on his sword. “You hid well.”

“You do not seem very affected.”

“Nor do you seem to rejoice.”

“This is not my victory.”

“Are you here to kill me, woman?”

The blue-skinned girl looked at him for a long moment, blinking. She seemed -worried, somehow. It didn't make Heimdall much more comfortable.

“I am not here as your enemy,” she said finally. “I'm going to need you to trust me.”

“You'll have to forgive me. I don't think I can do that.”

“'Anthony Hawardsson rests beneath an ash tree'”, the girl spat out, with the suddenness of evident fear, fear of saying it out loud, maybe fear of speaking it to the wrong person. Heimdall's eyes widened, disbelieving. “He said this would have to be proof enough for you. Your eyes are going to be our one chance to see the end of this day, Guardian, but you will have to listen to me carefully.”

Outside the Observatory, people died. Heimdall stood there, weapon in hand, and time slipped as he looked at the blue woman, obviously as unsure as he was. Both of them wondering whether to trust Loki of Asgard, or not.

Heimdall trusted not the prince, no. This could all be a trap. If Loki truly was still alive, then what made it more likely that he would want to help Asgard against these enemies than to lead them to their very destruction?

He could imagine it. He had been able to imagine it since the boy's first years in Asgard, the fire in him turning to chaos. That was what the boy was, raw fire; raw pain, raw feelings. Nothing he did was less than intense, exagerrated. He hurt dangerously. He loved dangerously. He was a wildfire, always on the edge of getting out of control.

Through the centuries, there had been one thing to keep him from burning.

It was a dangerous gamble.

“I'm all ears.”

“This is taking too long,” Midnight said under her breath. “Glaive should be back with the Gauntlet. We need to go after him.”

“Then go,” Maw suggested, smiling. “Bow.”

“Stop playing.”

“Bow.”

The warrioress gritted her teeth in annoyance. Standing in front of them, Thor Odinsson stood with his head in his hands, shaking as a scared child.

Yet he stood, still.

“Boy,” Maw encouraged, eyes sparkling at the resistance. “How dare you keep your head high? How dare you pretend that you are worthy still?” He tutted in disapproval. “Do you know how often your brother screamed your name in our prisons? Do you know how he begged for you? And yet you didn't come. You should be ashamed. Bow. Bow to me. Show me you know how wrong you did.”

“Kill him, Maw,” Midnight hissed. “We've lost six batallions yet.”

“We can lose them all, to bring Thanos his prize,” Maw retorted. “I want this.”

“Why do you even care?”

“I want the survivors to know they lost. Bow, Odinsson."

Thor's knee bent and he fell to the ground, his head yet in his hands, his cheeks covered in falling tears. He was a fraud. Everyone had so believed in him, and how wrong they had been; how unworthy he was; how shameful, how insignificant, how arrogant to have thought he was a hero.

Yet he held his back straight, second after second, though it cost him the world. He held straight and refused the order that rang in his ears again and again and again, refused the coddling that said he would get to rest his head when he just obeyed.

He was Thor Odinsson, and he didn't bow.

He was Thor Odinsson, and he didn't...

“I'm telling you to BOW!”

Ebony Maw was a convincing manipulator.

But not, Thor thought, not the best there was.

And then the woman -he had forgotten she was there- the woman was screaming and Thor thought it couldn't be good, and- and just then- the world exploded.

Gungir was a mighty weapon indeed.

Blinded by the light, Loki only managed to keep standing because of Hogun's support. And yet, he heard all of Ebony Maw's shriek of agony, as the pure energy contained in the spear dissolved him completely.

It was a very satisfying sound. It felt like the first noise he heard properly in ages, and he realised why a few seconds later, as the constant pressure of the whispers in his head ended at long last.

“You!” Proxima Midnight screamed, and he laughed at realising she meant him.

“Me”, he smiled, but it didn't last. He saw Thor, with one knee to the ground, and his chest was teared with fury and fear. “That's three siblings down, sister. Do you feel the odds might be against you?”

She cried in rage, freeing her lance from nowhere. Hogun cursed, pulling his own mace from his belt to meet her.

He didn't have to. As though echoing the blast of energy from Gungir, a bolt of lightning as blinding as the thunder that accompanied it was deafening striked her down. She fell to the ground burned to the core, a grotesque figure still breathing because she wasn't permitted to stop.

Loki didn't spare her a glance.

Thor was shaking, but he stood. Thor was crying, but he stood. Thor looked like he had seen Ragnarök. Yet he stood, and Mjölnir crackled in his palm.

Thor.

Alive.

He stumbled forward, near falling to the ground as soon as he freed himself from Hogun's grip; but Thor met him halfway, and they somehow steadied like this, facing each other, with Thor's hand grasping Loki's hand in the air and Loki holding to Thor's shoulder and Thor holding to Loki's neck.

They stared at each other, Thor so dirty and crying for the first time Loki could remember, Thor with his cape torn and Mjölnir reeking of thunder, Thor with his eyes so blue and always so honest and open for him, Loki bloody and sick and blue all over, Loki broken and rebuilt again in the wrong way, Loki with his eyes so green and so miraculously alive.

“Thanos is coming,” Loki stammered. “Thanos is coming. W-we don't have much time. He'll kill us all.”

Thor laughed. Impossibly, he laughed. It was nervosity, or perhaps it was just being freed from the mind-control. He laughed. Loki laughed back, unable to help it. Odin and Frigga and Hogun and Tyr with a missing hand were staring and they would think that they were both crazy.

But they were still alive. That was worth celebrating.

“Battlemage,” Thor said, and squeezed the back of his neck. “And warrior. We'll kill him or die trying, Loki.”

Then they would die, Loki thought. They would burn. But no -no. It was a filament of a whisper, it was fatigue and pain speaking. No. He had brought them here. He had given them time. He had brought the fighting, but he had done so knowing that it was their one chance.

Together.

“How long do we have?” Odin. He sounded as terrified as Loki had ever heard him.

“Days. Weeks, at the most,” he said, but he looked at Thor. “Heimdall will see him, this time. We must prepare. We must assemble the warriors from all the realms. We won't have another chance of killing him.”

“We won't miss it,” Thor said, with something like determination in his exhausted voice, and then he smiled. His hand moved to Loki's cheek and stroked it shakily. He didn't add anything.

Loki smiled. He didn't add anything, either, certain now that they understood each other better than that.