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When Thor finally found the witch, he had been searching for weeks, following nothing but hearsay and tall tales to her crumbling cottage deep into the Taynish oakwoods. She was rude and completely uninterested in his plight, but she did seem to find him amusing, which he intended to use to his advantage. They had lunch together, then tea, and once she broke out the whisky, Thor set out to convince her to share the secret behind journeying to Valhalla without actually dying.
“Odinson, you’re not as subtle as you think,” the witch said, interrupting what he thought was a rather moving speech. She took another big gulp of whiskey and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Let’s say I help you. Even focusing all my power, the spell isn’t strong enough to find all those you’ve lost. You’d need to concentrate on one person for it to work.”
“I understand,” said Thor, a heavy sorrow settling in his chest. He had hoped to save them all, but the path before him remained clear. He had chosen to be selfish.
An hour passed. The witch drank, and Thor sat in silence, waiting; even he knew better than to rush a witch. Finally, she drank the last of her whisky, then shrugged. “I’ll help you,” she said. “But only because I’m bored. The spring has come too early.”
His shoulders sagged as he sighed in relief. “I’m grateful,” he told her. "And whatever price—"
“Never mind that.” She waved him off, then leaned over to peer at him, her eyes glassy and strange. “Now, tell me: what do you know of Valhalla?”
Thor told her. He had first heard about it as a boy sitting beside Loki on Mother’s lap, both looking up at her in wonder as they listened to her weave a thousand tales. ‘A great room,’ she’d told them. ‘The biggest you’ve ever seen.’ ‘Bigger than the throne room?’ Thor had asked, wide-eyed. In his child’s mind, nothing could be greater or grander than Odin’s throne room. But his mother had laughed. ‘Oh yes,’ she’d said. ‘Far, far bigger. Perhaps even bigger than Asgard.’ At that, Thor and Loki had shared a secret smile. ‘Impossible,’ that smile had said. ‘Nothing can be bigger than Asgard, nothing at all.’
***
The witch’s spell, when casted, felt like someone had dropped a fully grown Bilgesnipe on Thor’s head.
One moment he was kneeling in the middle of the woods, naked and feeling like a fool while the witch recited her incantations, and the next he stood in full armor before an enormous golden figure, larger even than the tallest Frost Giant had been.
“Thor, son of Frigga, son of Odin,” the Guard of Valhalla said in a rough monotone more reminiscent of a rockslide than a voice. They did not look down at him, but rather continued to stare straight forward. “It is not yet your time.”
Thor cleared his throat. “I know. I am here on a quest,” he explained. “I intend to find my brother and bring him home.”
“Ah, yes. I know of gods and their quests.” The Guard gestured towards the huge golden doors next to them. “The fallen Æsir, they dwell here now. They dine and converse and revel in their celebrations. They wait for their call.” They paused briefly, and Thor thought he saw their brow furrow. “But your brother, he does not wait. He is lost.”
“What do you mean, lost?” Thor asked, his mind reeling. “He is not in Hel.” He couldn’t be. Loki had wreaked havoc in more than one Realm, yes, but in the end, he had chosen to die a noble death. Valhalla's boons were his to claim.
“No, he is not. But Valhalla and Hel are not the only dwelling-places of your people. And he is not only your people, is he?”
Of course. Trust Loki to make everything more complicated than it ought to be. “So where is he?” He asked, resigned to his fate.
The Guard fell silent. Time ticked by, and Thor was about to repeat his question when he heard them speak again: “Perhaps you can find him in the Chambers. I will take you there. But Odinson, I must warn you: it will not be easy.”
Thor sighed. “No,” he said. “It never is.”
***
The Guard pulled the great golden doors open and the radiant light held within poured out into the hallway all at once. It was like staring straight into Nidavellir, Thor thought, as he followed the Guard inside a room so large that it could have been an open field. Everything inside was made of dazzling light, and yet as solid as Earth itself. There were thousands of people sitting around a table so vast that Thor could not see the other end. All kinds of drinks and food were piled on top of golden serving plates big as beds, and the Hall was loud and merry, and everything Thor had hoped death would be.
It occurred to him then that everyone he had loved in Asgard was in this room, and the urge to seek them out was almost too great to resist. But resist it he did, for he could already feel an unnatural drowsiness taking over him, and he knew that the spell would fail should he forget, even for a minute, the one he had made this journey for.
“You can take him back, but only if he goes willingly,” the Guard warned him, pointing towards a worn wooden door to the left that looked comically out of place in the grandeur of the Hall. “You must cross every threshold together.”
“Thank you,” he said, but the Guard had already vanished.
***
Thor didn’t know what to expect of these “Chambers”—would they be challenges, designed to keep him from his brother unless he proved himself worthy? Or were they a series of endless rooms crowded with the souls of the lost, amongst whom Loki would be hidden?—but when he came through the wooden door, his hand instinctively reaching for his missing hammer, he found himself somewhere as dear and familiar to him as anywhere else in the Asgard of his youth. It was the small armory at the edge of the palace's training grounds, where he’d spent long, wonderful days learning the art of combat alongside his friends. He could hear them now, Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, laughing and teasing each other just outside the door. Thor ached to join them, but he knew better than to try—he could feel the fragile tension of the witch's spell in his throat, like a thread pulled taut. Instead, he headed towards the chest where the training armor was stored and started to dress himself, as he had done countless times. It was a strange sensation: the memory—for surely that's what this was—unfolded before him, but he could also feel his body go through the motions, as if he were both audience and actor in one of his brother’s plays.
And then Loki was there, too. So little, and so many years behind his crimes. His eyes lit up when he first saw Thor; they used to do that, before.
“Brother!” Loki shouted joyfully as he ran towards him. “Look, there is something I must show you. You won’t believe it!”
“Not now, Loki,” he heard himself say as he finished securing the leather straps on his chest piece. “I don’t have time for games. I’m late for training.”
“But, Thor! It’s—Mother taught me—you have to see, look!” He rushed to cast his spell, but his nervous excitement worked against his concentration, and whatever magic he had been trying to summon fizzled out in his hands in a shower of sparks.
“That’s nice, Loki,” Thor said thoughtlessly as he browsed the weapons that lined the walls.
Loki’s face twisted in anger, and Thor remembered what had happened next. Loki had grabbed onto his arm and dug in his nails, desperate for him to stay and see, but Thor had shoved him away. “I don’t care about stupid magic!” He’d yelled, and his own expression had transformed into something awful. Uncaring. Selfish.
But he was no longer a child.
“I am sorry, Loki,” he said instead. “You’re right, I’m being an arse. Please show me. I want to see.”
The change was instantaneous. Loki’s eyes, which had narrowed into slits, widened in surprise. “Oh,” he said, very softly. “Very well, but I need to concentrate. It’s not—I don’t always get it on the first try.” He moved his hands to the position they had been in before, but nothing happened. He stomped on the ground, frustrated. “I swear I can do it!”
“I know, Loki,” Thor reassured him, taking a seat on one of the benches in the room. “I will wait here until you’re ready.”
Loki gave Thor a look like he’d sprouted another head, and for once it hadn’t been Loki’s doing. “Are you mocking me?”
“I’m not,” Thor said seriously. “I’d really like to see your seiðr. Won’t you try again?”
And so Loki did. This time, four other Lokis manifested, two on each side, and they all looked at each other with the kind of naked joy that Thor had not seen in his brother’s face in years. “Thor, it worked!” The Lokis said in unison. “Can you tell who the real one is?”
Thor could. He’d had a lot of practice by now, what with fighting alongside Loki for so many centuries, and then against him in the last few years. But he could guess what answer Loki actually wanted to hear.
“Oh!” He exclaimed, feigning surprise. “Loki, that’s incredible! I can’t tell at all!”
The Lokis smiled, looking very smug. In his brother’s boyish face, it was a dear sight.
It was then that Thor felt cold water splash onto the back of his neck, and he yelped, turning around in shock only to find a sixth Loki, laughing wildly. “Oh, brother! Your face!” he yelled, delighted. The five other Lokis were laughing too, but Loki must have lost his concentration on the spell, because, one by one, they vanished.
Thor grinned. “I’m going to get you for this, Loki!” He reached for him, but Loki slithered away, still laughing.
“You will have to catch me first!” He ran outside, throwing the jug that had held the cold water at Thor’s feet to slow him down, but Thor jumped over it, and followed him out of the armory and into the sun.
***
On the other side of the door, he found himself in full armor and riding a horse to Heimdall’s Observatory. Behind him, he could hear the gallop of at least a hundred more. “But why can’t I come?” Loki whined from his right, his horse nose to nose with Thor’s. “I’ve trained just as hard as you. I can fight.”
“No, you can’t,” Thor said sharply. He had grown tired of this argument. “You can do some neat tricks, I grant you, but you’re no use in a real fight. You’ll just get in the way.” He sighed. “Go back to Mother, Loki.”
Thor remembered this day. It was the first time he’d been chosen to lead a mission to restore peace in one of the Realms, and he’d been desperate to prove himself to Father. Loki had also wanted to come, and now Thor understood that his brother had been aching to prove his own worth, too. He could only imagine what it must have been like for Loki, to see Odin pick Thor for this mission without sparing his second son a single thought. Had he been angry? Upset? Thor had been too proud to notice.
The truth is that his refusal to take Loki with him had had nothing to do with his readiness for combat, and everything to do with Thor’s own fears. What if he failed, and Loki was the one to pay for it? The thought had been unbearable. Loki had been ready to fight, but Thor had never been ready to lose him.
“I’m not some child that you can send back to Mother!” Loki screamed in a high-pitched voice. Thor turned to face him, instead of ignoring him like he had back then. Loki’s face was red with anger, and there was a touch of that madness in his teary eyes that he’d come to know well, years later. His hands were shaking at the horse’s reins, so Thor reached over with his own to steady them.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m just scared,” he admitted. Thor had never been honest about his insecurities, preferring to bury them under cocky confidence instead. He’d never considered how this must have hurt Loki, who never really learned to hide his. “If something went wrong and I lost you, I couldn’t bear it.”
Once he recovered from the shock of Thor’s sincerity, Loki rolled his eyes. “Thor, you pompous fool, Father isn’t sending you to war! You only need to break a few skirmishes and the glory will be yours.”
Thor laughed as he dismounted his horse. They had reached the Observatory. “Alright, alright. You had better come, then, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Loki almost fell off of his horse. “Do you mean it?” He asked, eyes wide.
It was hard not to smile at that. “Yes, yes. Quickly, now. Before I change my mind.”
When Heimdall sent them through the Bifrost, he thought he could feel the subtle touch of Loki’s cold fingers on his arm.
***
There were many other such memories. Moments that Thor could scarcely remember, but that Loki must have held close to his heart, feeding his rancor. It became immediately clear how much Thor had changed, and how wise Odin had been to challenge him with exile before he became King. He didn’t blame himself for his brother’s crimes—Loki had his own demons to contend with, and mischief came to him as easy as breathing—but he felt as if he finally understood the source of Loki’s monstrous bitterness.
Thor spent an eternity in this jumbled echo of their shared life. He made it better when he could, soothing Loki’s pains and carefully tending to his ego, and basked in the good memories that just required him to relive their best times.
Fifteen hundred years were a long time, but not nearly long enough, to have Loki by his side.
***
The last Chamber was completely featureless except for its arched windows, which opened into dark, starless skies. The only light came from a lone figure in the corner, who held a candle over a book on their lap.
Thor’s eyes met red ones, and all the air left his lungs.
“This is not a memory. You have never seen me like this,” Loki sneered, gesturing to himself. He looked every bit the Frost Giant, except for his size. His skin was that same cold blue, but it looked softer somehow, in the candlelight. The textured markings on his skin created strange stark shadows on his face, and his red eyes glowed even brighter in the dark.
He was beautiful.
“Loki?” Thor asked, still frozen by the door.
“Some other torture, then,” Loki decided, standing up from his place on the floor. The book and candle vanished in his hands. “How novel. Am I supposed to fight you? Because I am—”
But Thor never found out what Loki was, because he wasted no more time in rushing towards him and enveloping the insufferable bastard in a tight hug. For the first time since he’d seen Thanos’ ship, his heart felt light. At peace.
Loki, however, was not happy to be held. “Unhand me!” He screamed, squirming in Thor’s arms. As he felt the telltale sting of a knife in his ribs, Thor thought that he had never been so happy to be stabbed. He pulled back and held Loki by the shoulders, gazing at him in wonder.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Loki asked, but then seemed to understand, for his body went stiff and he shoved Thor away. “It’s you. What in Hel are you doing here, Thor?” Suddenly, a flash of intense rage twisted Loki’s face, and he began to shake. “Did Thanos—? ” He whispered, his voice wrecked.
“No, Loki,” Thor said quickly. “I’m here for you.”
Loki blinked. “You—what?”
He pulled on Loki’s wrist. He was done wasting time. “Come with me, brother. We’ll rule Asgard together.”
But Loki snatched his arm away. “Thor, have you finally gone mad? I’m dead.”
“When has that ever stopped you?” He asked with a grin.
“It’s not a trick this time, brother,” Loki said drily.
“Perhaps it’s my turn to play a trick.” Thor walked up the door and held it open for his brother. “Follow me,” he said.
But Loki didn’t move. “You know,” he said quietly, his eyes full of suspicion. “I have these memories in my head, but they’re not at all like I remember them.”
“I was looking for you,” Thor explained. “And, Loki, Father was wrong to pit us against each other, but I was wrong to fall for it, too. You said once that all you wanted was to be my equal, but that’s all you have ever been to me. So come home.”
“Earth has turned you into a sentimental fool,” Loki scoffed, but at last moved towards him.
Thor smiled, unable to deny it. He cupped Loki’s face gently in his hands and let himself look. His black hair, slicked back in Loki’s preferred style, which Thor loved to tease him about; his bright red eyes, clever and sharp; the blue planes of his face, so dear to him; and his soft lips, tinted a dusty violet in this form. Thor loved him so completely, and yet he could not find the words to tell him. “Say you’ll come with me, Loki,” he whispered instead, and kissed him.
Even in death, he tasted so sweet.
After a brief moment, Loki pushed him away and stumbled backward, bringing two fingers to his lips. His eyes were angry when they met his, but Thor must have looked a besotted fool, for Loki coughed awkwardly into his hand and looked away. “Somehow, I don’t think that’s quite what Father meant when he said he hoped I would unite our kingdoms.”
Thor laughed, reaching again for his brother’s hand. “Well, we tried his way, and it didn’t turn out so well,” he said. “Shall we try ours?”
Loki pursed his lips, but he didn’t let go of his hand. “I suppose it cannot hurt,” he muttered, his put-upon attitude contrasting endearingly with the violet that colored his cheeks. He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but then just shrugged, and gripped Thor’s hand a little tighter. “Well, what are you waiting for?” He asked. His eyes were bright with amusement and, Thor hoped, happiness. “Lead on, brother.”
They crossed the threshold together.