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Remember this place. Home .
Thor stands on the edge of the cliff, stands where his father had stood not that long ago, and looks out onto the raging ocean.
It is dark out, the sun still lingering below the horizon. Waves surge against the jagged rocks below, frothy white forming at the impacts. It is as if the seas can sense his anger, his grief, and are mourning with him. The cold wind rushes by him, skimming at his bare skin. Before Sakaar (before Ragnarok, before Hela, before Thanos, before-before--) the wind would've whipped up his hair, and Loki would've made fun of him and his princess locks.
His hands, he realises, are shaking. He clutches a candle in one (the metal casing is green and it is unscented, he would've loved it) and a box of Midgardian matches in the other. He's waiting for the sunrise.
Thor stands at the end of a looming precipice and wonders how it all came to this.
Half of the universe is dead, turned to dust and memories. He can't help but wish that he had been one of the dead, instead of one of the survivors. A selfish wish, but. Well.
His planet has been destroyed by a massive monster of flame and bone. The vast majority of his people are dead, slaughtered either by Thanos or by his sister Hela; the rest, for all he knows, are drifting in space, alone and devoid of hope. His family is gone. His father faded away before his very own eyes in this exact spot, his mother was killed by Malekith, his sister was no doubt dead with Asgard (he doubts things would be better at all if she still breathed), and his brother - his brother.
"Loki," he whispers, letting the wind carry his words up, up into the air. He hopes that his brother can hear them, in Valhalla (something claws at his ribcage, something akin to wretched, tattered hope), where he belongs. There's an awful, twisted pain in his soul, and the weight on his shoulders pushes down with renewed vigour.
He is a god, a king, a warrior. But right here, right now, Thor does not feel like any of those things. He feels... lost. Empty. Like someone had reached a hand into his chest and tore out his heart, and all he is now is a puppet at the mercy of fate, waiting for the moment when his strings are cut and everything falls at the seams again.
God of Thunder. King of Asgard. He chuckles, bitter and broken, and tears his wretched gaze from the open ocean. The sun is almost up; he can see the barest glimpse of its promised light, peeking out above the line where the ferocious sea met the darkened sky. He turns and sits down where he once sat with Odin and Loki, before Hela had emerged from her swirling portal of ominous green and deathly black, waiting to cut his strings. Fingers still trembling, he sets the candle and matches down beside him and smooths out the tiny crinkles on his pants.
Midgard had been thrown into chaos upon the Snap, with half its population now nothing but piles of ash. It was a wonder that Thor had even found time to get away to this cliff in Norway, seeking solitude and respite. The Avengers, or what was left of them, were desperately trying to coordinate the remaining humans, but the world was confused, shocked, terrified. They wanted answers (where are they, how do we get them back?), but not even Earth's mightiest superheroes could give them the ones they need.
"I miss you," Thor says to thin air. "I wish you were here. You would know what to do." He had always been the weapon, the warrior, the one to paint the battlefields with blood. Loki had been the schemer, the plotter, the one to soothe tensions with a few well-timed words and handle the consequences with his renown silver tongue and penchant for deals and diplomacy. Oh, the God of Mischief had been a terror in the midst of a fight, there was no doubt about that, but his real skill had lain outside of warfare. It lay in his ability to spin chains of words and paper around you until you couldn't move, his talent with trickery and finding loopholes, his sharp mind and fearsome intellect.
He remembers Loki talking to visiting dignitaries, voice saccharine, carefully selecting and timing his words. He remembers with heavy clarity that Loki had been able to run circles around even the best of them, head tilted slightly, eyes gleaming with victory, a tiny smile of glee adorning his face.
Loki was past tense. Loki didn't play pranks, he played pranks. He didn't run circles around diplomats, he ran. He didn't fight with magic and cunning, he fought.
Thor presses his palms against his eyes and wills the familiar burning feeling away.
"You're right. I would know what to do."
Thor lets his arms fall back to his sides, hope swelling in his heart, and turns.
He has his back to him, but there's no mistaking the dark hair, falling just past his shoulders. It moves in the breeze, just like his cape, and Thor rises to his feet, movements agonisingly slow.
"Brother?" he asks, taking a few hesitant steps towards him. He reaches out a shaking hand towards him -
And passes through nothing. Not-Loki turns to face him, and Thor staggers back, collapsing back down onto the makeshift bench because it looks exactly like him, but it's not.
His Loki is dead, strangled to death by Thanos. Even his body is lost to space, drifting along with the corpses of those who had stayed behind and the wreckage of the ship. His Loki is gone, and the one before him, watching him with regret and pain in his eyes, is nothing but a figment of his imagination. It hurts anyway, to see him standing there, looking completely unharmed.
He even has his stupid horned helmet, Thor thinks, and he blinks away tears.
"You're not real," he croaks out, and the mirage shakes his head. There's a smile on Loki's face, but it's small and sad.
"No," he confirms, moving to take a seat beside him. "No, I'm not."
And he knows, he's known this ever since Thanos had let go of his neck and his brother had fallen to the ground, bleeding from the eyes and the nose, and he remembers. He remembers this moment perfectly, he knows he will never forget the moment the titan's group loosened and Loki fell like some sort of ragdoll (a puppet, Thor thinks sadly, whose strings had been cut). Something in him had died with his brother, and he will carry the weight and memory of his death with him for the rest of his days because his cunning, devious, intelligent brother deserved nothing less. Thor knows with painful certainty that Loki was dead and gone and never coming back, but this stupid confirmation from a mere conjuration of his own mind still seems to dig a knife into his chest and carve out a piece of his tired soul.
"Why are you here?" he asks, fingers brushing over the candle and the matchbox. Loki's eyes follow the movement.
"I'm here," he says, still speaking with as much time and care as he had in life, "because you need to say goodbye."
Thor's resolve crumbles, and the dam bursts. He feels the tears trail down his face, can taste the salty liquid as some falls into his mouth, dripping down his chin and cheeks. He wipes them away with stiff, wooden movements. Loki still watches him. There's something like grief in every line and hollow of his face, and his fingers twitch, as if he wants to reach out and bush the tears away, but then realises that he can't.
"I don't want to," Thor says, but there's none of his usual stubborn tenacity, and he winces at the blatant exhaustion in his voice. Loki arches a single dark eyebrow.
"Why not?" he asks, voice still perfectly steady, and Thor opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. For some reason, Loki looks like he already knows the answer. Thor knows he does, because he's nothing but a fake made up by his own foolish brain.
"I..." he trails off and frowns, diverting his gaze from a waiting Loki to the two items he had brought along with him, then to the horizon, where the sun waits to bathe the word in its bright rays. There is no one here but him, him and an illusion of his dead little brother.
"I feel like if I don't farewell you, I can still have a smidgen of hope," he admits to said illusion. "And it's foolish, because I saw you die, but..." His voice is thick, and he falls silent.
"But I've died before," Loki completes with ease. "I've died before, and who's to say I didn't pull another trick on Thanos?"
Thor swallows, but there's a lump in his throat that won't go away. He thinks of wheezed words (you will never be a god-) and broken promises (i assure you, brother... the sun will shine on us again) and the moment Thanos crushed his brother's neck is replaying in his mind, long and torturous.
"He's been dead before," he says, an echo of his words to the talking animal who had given him his eye, "but this time I think it really might be true." He snorts wetly and shakes his head.
"I can't believe I'm here," he chuckles, but there's no humour in his voice, "talking to a figment of my imagination masquerading as my dead brother. In Midgard's Norway. On a cliff. Before sunrise." There's an undercurrent of real disbelief in his voice. Beside him, Loki laughs softly.
"I told you the sun would shine on us again," he murmurs, and Thor can't help but make this terrible, broken, choked sort of noise. All of his strength, his new axe and his thunderous powers, and he has never felt so weak.
"You did," he says simply, heavily. "You did." He wants to scream in this Loki's face, to hug him until he's making jabs at his affection and asking for air to breathe, until his chest rises and falls with his heartbeat, but he can't and he never will again.
He wants to say You lied, but he doesn't, because this is as close to seeing his brother again that he will ever get before his own time comes. Loki watches him with a sharp look in his eyes, and it's painful in its familiarity.
"This can't be healthy," Thor says, desperate to break the silence. "Talking to you like you're really here when you're not. I should... I should stop."
"You should," Loki agrees, punctuating his words with a nod. "You need to let me go, Thor."
"I know."
But he's lost almost everything he's ever known, and it feels wrong to let go of the last shreds of fantasy that Loki had tricked even Thanos, had escaped and was roaming the universe in search of their people. His parents are gone and so is his planet and he cannot bear to officially lose another piece of his world.
Loki frowns at him with a hint of disapproval, and Thor manages a hollow laugh because he's seen that look countless times before, after his foolish decisions and missteps and general, overarching blunders, of which there were many. His brother had always been his voice of reason, and before his disastrous coronation, he had always dreamed of sitting on the throne with Loki at his side as his closest advisor, spinning webs of half-truths and catching unsuspecting enemies in his carefully woven traps.
He has lost his brother twice before, to the empty void of space and to the clutches of a Dark Elf, and his heart had broken both times. Now, it feels as if there is nothing left to break, and yet also as if there is everything left to shatter.
"I miss you," he says again, and his voice is tremulous. Loki sighs.
"I'm gone, brother," he murmurs, sounding tired beyond belief. "Let me go. Let... let me rest."
Thor faintly registers that he's crying again, teardrops pooling in his eyes and sliding down his face. He breathes in a ragged, shuddering breath.
"Okay," he says. "Okay."
He moves his place from the long, bench-like rock to the grass, cool and slightly wet. Behind him, the first blinding rays of the sun are starting to peek out. Loki stands and watches as he picks up the candle and puts it down right in front of him, still balancing on the rock. Thor opens the box of matches and takes one out, swiping it against the textured side. It catches flame immediately, and he carefully lights the candle wick before extinguishing the match, setting it down on top of the box.
For the first time since he came here, his hands aren't shaking.
"You'll stay?" he finds himself asking. "Until I'm done?"
"Of course," Loki says, and kneels down next to him. Resolve strengthening, Thor opened his mouth and began to speak.
"Loki," he mutters, eyes closed, "I bid you take your place in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave shall live forever." His voice hitches, unsteady, but Loki speaks with him, and so he swallows and continues.
"Nor shall we mourn, but rejoice..." he pauses and takes in a deep breath, fighting the urge to open his eyes. He remembers saying this for his father on Sakaar, and Loki saying the words with him, making an illusion appear behind him. Something rough scratches against his heart, and there's a crushing weight on his shoulders, but he needs to finish the funeral rites. For Loki. For his brother.
"For those that have died the glorious death."
When he opens his eyes, Loki is gone. And his heart still hurts, and there's still an enormous weight on his back, but he feels... whole. Or at least, more whole than he has in a while.
He turns his eyes to the sky, to where his brother is undoubtedly watching in Valhalla, and says one final, silent farewell.
Then he turns, picking up and blowing out the candle, pocketing the matchbox, and walks away from the cliff.
Behind him, the sun is rising.