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Thor jerked awake from a dead sleep and was already summoning Stormbreaker before he even realized what was happening. He sat a moment in silence, waiting to learn what had woken him, until his front door rattled again with the force of someone’s discourteous fist. He let Stormbreaker fall and pushed his fingers against his eyes with a deep, calming breath. Then he stood, stalked to the door, and threw it open with a carefully curated rebuttal for whatever his visitor had come to tell him.
He didn’t get that far.
“Hey, buddy,” said Steve Rogers.
Thor blinked. Then he frowned, running his hands over his face to clear the hangover-induced cobwebs. He shook his head and squinted and blinked again. It was still Steve—blond hair and checked blue shirt and all. Just the way Thor always knew him.
“Cap,” he said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his. He coughed into his shoulder to scratch his dry throat, and behind Steve he could see Valkyrie a short way off. She watched with open skepticism but shrugged when he frowned at her.
“I told him you wouldn’t see him,” she said.
Steve shot her a slightly annoyed look.
“Cap?” Thor said again, a question this time. “Why are…What are you doing here?”
Steve looked back at him with a smile. “I just wanted to stop by and check on a friend,” he said, seemingly oblivious to Thor’s floundering thought process. “It’s been awhile.”
“Yes.” He realized he was just standing there in the open doorway and hastily stepped back to make room. “Sorry, uh, would you like to come in?”
Steve’s eyes crinkled. “Thanks.”
Thor led him to the sitting room and invited him to make himself comfortable. Steve settled on Korg’s favorite sofa where Thor had been napping and Thor, after pulling a beer from the cooler following a brief hesitation, dropped into the chair beside. Steve gave a cursory glance around the room and very politely did not mention the smell. Or the mess, though he did appear mildly alarmed. Norns, why didn’t he call first?
“So, how are things?” Steve started, angling away from the pile of bottles in the corner to look at Thor. “I heard you were with that other group, the, uh…”
“Asgardians of the Galaxy,” Thor said, fiddling with his beer. He hadn’t decided if he wanted to open it yet. Drinking when he was already this hungover seemed like a terrible idea, doing it in front of Steve even more so. But he hadn’t seen his friend in a long time and wasn’t sure he wanted to be sober for this.
Steve made an odd face, but it vanished quickly. “Yeah. Them. How’s that going?”
Thor dug the pad of his thumb into his temple. “I quit. Four months ago.”
“Oh.” An awkward pause followed wherein Steve was clearly hunting for a polite way to respond or a tactful question to pose.
Thor had mercy on him. “It’s all right. I couldn’t stay and they knew that. It was time.”
“What do you mean?”
Thor sighed, rolling the bottle between his hands. “He found her.”
Steve frowned a little. “Who found who?”
“Quail. Or Quill, I guess. Star Lord, human member of the Guardians. Did you ever meet him?” The final battle was so chaotic he wasn’t sure who crossed paths with whom during the whole thing. The Guardians disappeared from the battlefield not long after Stark passed, but Thor was pretty sure he saw them at the funeral. Not that there was much mingling going on at that time.
Steve hesitated a moment. “Maybe. But pretend I didn’t. Which one was he?”
Thor briefly described Peter Quill and his amusing and unusual companions. There was no recognition in Steve’s expression, but he nodded anyway. “He wanted to find his lover Gamora, daughter of Thanos. She disappeared sometime after the battle. He found her and convinced her to stay with them.” He swallowed convulsively, blinking to cool the sudden burning in his eyes. “It was beautiful. Their reunion. We had searched for…ever. Spend enough time in space and time becomes meaningless, you know. But we finally found her on Primia’s second moon at sunset. That’s a planet at the very end of one of the arms of this galaxy, it’s really nice, you’d like it. Anyway, we had searched for so long, following dead lead after dead lead, rumor upon rumor, and all of a sudden she was just there, and…” His throat closed then and he had to cut himself off, struggling to breathe.
Steve courteously looked away and gave Thor a chance to collect himself.
“And she came back to the ship, and even though she wasn’t the same Gamora everyone knew she was still a Gamora and…” And sometimes it was like she never left. For weeks he watched them talk and tease and sing awful songs together, and tell stories of adventures they had with the other Gamora and tell jokes they knew she would think were funny. “And I realized I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t…I couldn’t watch them get back everything they’d lost while I sat there knowing that the only reason I was able to see it was because I had lost everything. So I left.”
Steve puffed out a breath with a wince. “Wow. I’m…really sorry, Thor. That’s…”
Thor ran his hand under his nose. “Before I came back to Earth I went to the place where the Statesman was destroyed. That was our refugee ship, I don’t know if you knew that. I wanted to have something to bring back with me, some scrap or thread or hair but everything was gone and everyone was gone. My brother and my best friend died there and I couldn’t find either of them, I couldn’t find anything…” A tear traced down his cheek, and he let it.
“Thor,” said Steve, gently. Thor shook his head and covered his eyes, jaw aching and lips trembling. He felt like a fool, weeping this. “Thor, come on. Look at me.”
Reluctantly he dropped his hand. Steve gazed back at him with sympathy and a surprising lack of judgment; it was almost enough to make Thor hide his face again.
“Your brother…Loki? You looked for him?”
Thor nodded miserably and sniffed. “I needed…I wanted to give him a proper sendoff. I know what he did to your world and I don’t expect you to understand, but he was my brother. My only brother. We Asgardians commit our people to Valhalla with fire and I wanted to give Loki that honor, but I couldn’t even do that much.” So he’d spent the last four months either drinking or drunk.
“Well, the ship exploded, right? I’m sure there was a lot of fire.”
Thor glared at him. “This is not a joke, Steve.”
Steve raised his hands. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was trying to help. Sorry.”
Thor thumbed the tears from his eyes. “Sorry. I shouldn’t snap. I just…knowing he’s gone—for real this time—and I will never see him again…” He gasped a breath as fresh tears ran. “The last thing I said to him…the last thing…I can’t take it back. I have to live the rest of my life knowing that my brother died thinking I didn’t love him.”
Thor’s sniffles and quiet sobs echoed in the silent house. After a time, Steve asked, very softly, “Well, if he were here, what would you say to him?”
Thor scoffed and scrubbed his face. “Why? What difference could that possibly make now?”
Steve shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe none. But it seems like you need to get it out, and even if he can’t hear what you have to say, someone should.”
It was a stupid idea. What he would say didn’t matter because he couldn’t say it. Loki would never know how sorry he was or how much he missed him or how viscerally Thor wished Loki had just taken the tesseract and run. None of it mattered.
“Thor,” Steve murmured.
“I would say he was a fool,” Thor gritted out. Steve stiffened. Thor sniffed. “He was a fool to think my life was worth more than his. He never should have given up the tesseract for me. He should have left.”
“Do you really think he would have?”
Thor blew his nose. “No. Because he didn’t. He stayed. Which was stupid. He’s so stupid. He stayed and he died to save my worthless life again and I miss him so much I could die. He was my little brother. I was supposed to protect him. I’ve never been able to protect him. And I hate myself for how I left things and if I could talk to him just one more time I would make sure he knew how much I love him and I would make him feel so guilty for leaving me that he would have to stay alive just so he could spend the rest of his life making it up to me—and—and I would try to make it up to him—”
He couldn’t breathe anymore. His throat was thick and the tears burned and his lungs ached and he couldn’t get enough air. He squeezed his eyes shut and covered his face, trying to pull the pieces of himself back into a whole. It was impossible, because he hadn’t been whole for a long, long time.
He regretted not drinking that damn beer.
He heard Steve rise and walk across the floor, and he bitterly cursed himself. Steve was leaving. Of course he was. And why wouldn’t he? Thor drove everyone away, even the nearly-unflappable captain.
But then there was a hand on his knee and another on his elbow and voice that whispered, “Thor,” and it didn’t sound like Steve anymore.
Thor jerked his hands from his face and locked his gaze onto a pair of familiar green eyes.
Loki was looking at him uncertainly, his hands cold through Thor’s clothes. He looked exhausted, pale, and thin, but his eyes were bright and focused intensely on Thor’s. “Brother?”
Thor’s breath stuttered and then stopped entirely. For an eternity he could only stare, absolutely frozen, very nearly convinced his heart had simply stopped for grief and he’d just joined his brother in Valhalla. Though Valhalla looked an awful lot like his living room.
Loki licked his lips and reached out toward Thor’s head until his fingers gripped the back of Thor’s neck. Thor could feel the way Loki’s hand shook, the chill of his fingertips against his skin. “Brother,” Loki murmured in a voice so gentle Thor almost wept. “I’m here.”
That did it. Thor came back to himself like a lightning bolt and, half expecting to be met with empty air, threw his arms around Loki’s shoulders with an animal sound of pain and shock and crushed him to his chest, weeping into his shoulder. Loki neither squirmed nor struggled; he gripped the back of Thor’s shirt with both fists, arms trembling with the force of his embrace.
“Brother,” Thor gasped thickly. “Brother. My brother.” He kissed the side of Loki’s head once, twice, then hid his face once more. His hands squeezed and pressed against Loki’s back, his shoulders, his hair. “Loki.”
“I’m here.” Loki moved one hand to cradle the back of Thor’s head. “I’m here.”
It was as if all the pain, all the sorrow of the last ten years just gushed out of Thor at once, leaving him drained and weak as a baby bird. After a while he couldn’t even cry anymore. His lungs quivered, his head throbbed, but his eyes were dry save for the residue of tears clinging to his lashes. He did not once let go of his brother.
“I’m sorry,” Loki was saying in his ear. “I’m so sorry, Thor. I never wanted to leave you alone. But it was either you or me, Thanos always takes half, and I couldn’t—”
“It’s okay,” Thor forced through clenched teeth. It occurred to him that he was shivering. “I know, brother. It’s okay. Shh.”
Loki quieted, and Thor held him so tight he could feel his brother’s living heart beating against his chest.
With a heroic effort he unplanted his face from Loki’s neck and drew back just far enough to look into his watery eyes. “How are you here? I watched him…Have you really been alive all this time?” To his surprise, the anger he thought he would feel wasn’t there. In its place was only warm, sweet relief. And a touch of fear, that this was nothing more than a wonderful, horrible dream. He squeezed Loki’s arms just to feel the solidity of them.
But Loki shook his head. “No, this time I’m afraid it stuck. I believe we have our friend Bruce to thank for this. He is the one who undid the ‘Snap’, as they’re calling it, yes?”
Thor nodded, speechless.
“I’m almost certain he brought me back. When I awoke, I heard his voice in my head telling me to find you. I’ve been trying to get here ever since. I gathered some information on the way, and I think I have a fair grasp of what happened. You’ll have to fill me in on everything else.”
Thor pulled his brother in again, and this time he noticed all of the ribs and knobs of his spine he could feel through the thin shirt Loki wore. “Later,” he murmured into his brother’s hair. “Later. There will be time for talking. For now, let me just…do this.”
He felt Loki’s chuckle in his chest. Warmth spread through him and he squeezed tighter. “Such sentiment, brother.”
“Shut up.”
For once, Loki did, and Thor held him as he had wanted to do since that dreadful day on the Bifrost; as he had feared he’d never be able to again. He rocked them both as they wept together in the quiet of the house, in the dim light of the fading sunset, pausing occasionally just long enough to plant a firm kiss on his brother’s forehead.
“Just one question,” Thor eventually whispered into the quiet.
“What?”
“Why always Captain Rogers?”
Loki laughed through his tears.
…
Much later, long after they’d shared a meal and Loki had fallen asleep on the couch, Thor snapped a picture on his phone and sent it off with a single sentence: Thank you.
Bruce replied: Just returning the favor :]