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Chapter Text

For some time Thor thinks he must be dead; he does not see how one could have survived such a terrible journey without injury, so he takes his lack of pain as proof. It is only when he hears a hoarse cough to his right that he realizes the cold gray blur of sky is merely that - a sky, not oblivion. He blinks, and blinks again, trying not to think why his eyes are watering so, and slowly feeling comes back into his limbs. When he is able to move, he drags himself to his knees and casts his gaze about. His friends lie scattered across a narrow stretch of dank, stinking marsh. He sees Sif rising to her knees, reaching down to help Hogun out of the muck. Close by, Fandral rolls off his injured side and retches into the fetid water.

The warriors of Jotunheim and their dread beasts seem very far away now, and no cause for fear. Yet his heart still thunders with terror of what he tries, and fails, to convince himself were mere shadows in the dark, twisting passage between worlds. Shadows, with talons long and sharp and cruel, with kaleidoscope eyes reflecting unholy colors. Shadows that screamed when touched by the fire in Loki's hands -

Loki.

Ice grips his heart. Surely Loki did not stay behind. Surely Loki did not linger in that dark place to draw the veil closed once they were safely through. Surely - "Loki!" He stumbles to his feet. "Brother! Loki!"

"I see him," Volstagg croaks, from the shadow of the treeline where the marsh gave way to a gray-green forest. He drags himself to hands and knees, and then stands with a mighty groan. "He breathes. But I do not think he will rise."

*

Volstagg had thought aright, for though Loki's body seems unharmed, he will not wake. His eyelashes flutter rapidly against his pale cheek. From time to time his hands clench like claws and he mutters nonsense under his breath. Perhaps it's not nonsense. Thor has seen things this day that he, had he but heard tale of them, would have sworn on his honor were lunatic fancies.

He thinks now that if Loki woke and told him up was down, wet was dry, and right was wrong, Thor would only beg pardon for having been so long in error.

If only Loki would wake.

"We must move before dark falls," Fandral says after an hour has passed with no change. Sif has wrapped his shoulder well, and when he stands it is with only a momentary grimace. "We should make camp somewhere less exposed."

Volstagg helps maneuver Loki's dead weight onto Thor's back. He and Hogun fall in to flank Thor, close enough to lend their hands should he falter. He won't. "Lead on," Thor says to Sif, and she does.

*

She finds them a place against a moss-encrusted stump half again as tall as Thor, sheltered on all sides by dense brush, and protected above by the branches of a neighboring tree so massive and ancient Thor feels it might almost speak to them.

They make fire as the pale featureless sky fades from gray to black. They mean to sleep, but one after another their warrior hearts quail at the thought of going willingly back into the dark of the mind. Thor piles the fire higher and draws Loki close against him. "Give us a story," he says to Fandral. "I would hear something of merriment and good fortune."

Fandral hesitates, then inclines his head. "Have I ever told you of my long summer with the seven maidens of Midgard?"

*

It's a good story, charming and well told, and if it does not entirely restore their courage it at least renders the sense of the moonless night peaceful instead of threatening. In the ensuing quiet Thor can sense their thoughts all turning to the same place. Sif, as ever, is the first to speak her mind.

"I don't know how he managed it." Sif is a warrior equal to any, yet Thor knows there is a scholarly turn to her mind. Not fully understanding their journey behind the veil would distress her more than the memory of the dark place or the nightmares therein. "Many times during the long march between worlds I was certain we were lost."

March? Thor frowns against the memory. "But surely - surely we flew. On the back of a raven?"

Volstagg stares into the fire. "We were carried, I thought, like babes in arms."

"Carried?" Sif's hand falls to the hilt of her blade before they recognize the low rasp as Loki's voice. He draws himself up to a sitting position, slowly and as if it pains him to move, yet in the fire-light his eyes glitter with amusement. "Would that I had, Volstagg, for to carry you any distance at all would surely be a feat worthy of song."

They all stare for a long moment, then Volstagg bursts into laughter that would - in any other being in the realms - sound near hysteria. It is as if a dam has burst, and the other warriors release their tension in howls of merriment.

Thor alone does not laugh, but leans close and cups a palm to Loki's jaw. He pitches his voice low. "How fare you, brother?"

Loki's eyes flicker, but he doesn't pull away. Neither does he answer the question. "Is there water?"

Thor hands him a skin full of the least brackish water they'd been able to find. Loki makes a face at the smell but drinks. Afterward he yawns hugely. "There is a river some leagues hence." He gestures vaguely. "We will make for it tomorrow."

Hogun cocks his head. "You have been here before, then?"

"Once, a long time ago," Loki murmurs, his eyes sliding shut again. "No more questions, for I must sleep." He leans heavily against Thor's side, curling under his arm as he had when they were children. Thor wills his body to remain relaxed and his face calm, yet his heart sings so loud it seems astonishing the others do not hear it. “We’ll leave at first light."

Chapter Text

They rise with the dawn, though Thor cannot say exactly when the sun breaks over the horizon. The persistent clouds obscure everything. The black of night simply yields to the brightness of day, and as the darkness retreats Loki sighs and stirs.

Thor helps him to his feet. Sif and the Warriors Three have slept in shifts, but poorly, and are already gathering their things for the journey. For his part, Thor finds the memory of the dark path between worlds is becoming less terrible, being replaced by more practical concerns. It is a blessed relief.

“How long will it take us to reach the river?”

Loki tilts his head, thinking. His face remains pale, but his eyes are clear and sharp. “A day, perhaps two. I can’t be sure.”

Volstagg clears his throat. “Are there beasts to hunt, as we go?”

Thor expects a scoff, but Loki only laughs. “There is food aplenty, though the taste may not satisfy so sophisticated a palate as yours.”

“And once we reach the river?” That from Sif. “Will we find passage home?”

“I certainly hope so,” Loki says cheerfully, and ignores their worried expressions. He waves his hands against further questions. “We have a long march ahead of us. Let us not delay.”

*

They walk for some hours, out of the forest and back across the narrow marsh and on into a great verdant sweep of meadow, before Fandral gasps and staggers, falling to his knees. Loki and Sif, being closest, reached him first.

“Forgive me, my friend.” Loki kneels beside Fandral. “I was too focused on the journey, and not enough on my companions. I should have tended to you ere we left.”

Fandral shakes his head, but cannot find the breath to speak. He yields easily when Loki presses him back into the soft grass. Sif crouches at his side, while Thor and Volstagg and Hogun find their places in a loose circle around them.

Loki pulls Fandral’s cloak and armor away, passing them into Sif’s waiting hands. She knows little of the healing arts, but by dint of skill and wit she has ever been less likely than her companions to suffer grievous injury. Thor cannot count the number of times he has watched her face lit by the glow of Loki’s magic as they kneel over Volstagg or Fandral or Hogun, or Thor himself, Loki losing himself in the old words while Sif manages the practicalities, removing armor and clothing, laying weapons safely aside, keeping guard against new attack. Sif and Loki make, in their own prickly way, an excellent team.

Now Fandral groans and twitches as Loki removes the makeshift bandages. Beneath, the wound is raw and angry and red. Loki presses one hand to it and says, as he always does, “This will only hurt a little.”

Fandral gives a bloody grin and replies, as he always does, “Thou art a liar and a knave.”

He only cries out a little when Loki’s magic swirls against his skin and then beneath. They are all of them used to the strange dilation of time that seems to accompany healing, never sure if it is magic or only their worry which elongates every moment, and they wait patiently. Still, the world itself seems to sigh in relief when Loki finally falls back on his heels, looking at nothing in particular with his bright unfocused eyes. Thor goes to him.

Fandral draws a deep breath and laughs. “Ha! That’s better. What a treat it will be to walk without feeling my bones grinding against each other.” He sits up and looks to his healer. “How fare you, Loki?”

“Very well,” Loki says dreamily. He rolls his neck loosely, flexing his fingers deep into the earth. “Oh, can you feel that? How lovely.”

Thor places his hand alongside Loki’s. He feels nothing but the sun-warmed grass and the damp, cool earth beneath it. Nice as it is, he doesn’t think that’s what Loki means. “What do you feel, brother?”

Loki blinks at him, and seems to come back to himself all in a rush. For a moment he looks terribly, unaccountably sad. “Never mind.” He turns and pushes himself to his feet when Thor would have drawn him close. “We should make for that ridge. We will find food on the other side.”

They walk on for awhile before Thor remembers their discussion from the prior night, and the different account each warrior gave of their journey through the dark. He clears his throat. “Loki, when we were between worlds - “

Loki turns, and arches one contemptuous brow, and says, “Were?”

*

“We are obviously in the world!” Thor shouts, for the tenth time. Sif and the Warriors Three have long since sprawled on the grass in attitudes of utter boredom. “There is land, and there sky, and all about us light and air! This is nothing like the dark path beyond the veil!”

“I never said this isn't a world! I say that we are still between worlds.” Loki drags his hands through his hair, leaving it in wild disarray. “May Odin ever keep you from the deeper mysteries, if your mind strains and fails so easily at the barest hint of paradox!”

They continue shouting until Volstagg reminds them politely that the day wears on, and wouldn’t it be better to find food and water and shelter before they argue themselves into exhaustion? Loki whirls and strides away, and if he does not mean to lead them it is no matter. They follow anyway. Begrudgingly, in Thor’s case.

“I knew there was something strange about this place,” Thor confides to Sif in a whisper that is not overly quiet. She rolls her eyes.

"Don’t be smug," Loki snaps over his shoulder. "Hogun has understood from the beginning and you don't see him smirking. Nor asking stupid, pointless questions."

Thor turns a look of betrayal on Hogun, who merely shrugs. "It doesn't really matter where we are, does it? We must trust Loki, for we know nothing of this place. He knows all."

"Well, not all," Loki says in a strange, strangled tone. Thor glares at him, then follows his gaze up, and up, and up, to the six-eyed troll lumbering over the ridge. "That's new."

*

Loki breaks right, and Fandral left, and Volstagg and Sif and Hogun fall in at Thor’s back. He draws Mjolnir from his belt and crouches, spinning the hammer faster and faster until she practically cries out for release. Thunder and lightning, he knows well, will do little against the stony bones and granite heart of a troll, but even those born of earth are not immune to a hole through the head. The main problem is keeping the troll from snatching him out of the air as he approaches; trolls can, Thor has learned the hard way, be surprisingly quick when pressed.

As if on cue a cry sounds from a clutch of great boulders to the right, and Loki limps out into the troll’s view, holding one arm close to his chest and whimpering like a lost child. Thor knows, he knows, that this is a trick, but it has never stopped his heart from lurching when his brother seems to tremble and fall under some mighty blow.

The troll snorts its approval when the first Loki-lie crumbles under its great stone of a fist, then jerks back at the Loki-lies bursting into life like mayflies, laughing all alike, darting between the troll’s legs, shooting little stinging spells from in front and below and behind. The troll roars and slams its hands down again, and again, smashing the Loki-lies into glittering dust, until Fandral darts in from the left and buries his foil deep in a soft joint.

The troll throws its head back, mouth wide open in a howl of pain, and Thor lets Mjolnir sing.

*

“You can’t eat a troll,” Volstagg complains. “If I’m to be in a battle where I don’t land a single blow for the glory of Asgard, I at least want a meal out of it.”

“You can’t eat when you’re dead,” Sif replies. “So long as you are alive to feel hunger, don’t whine.” They are climbing down the far side of the ridge, toward a smudge on the horizon that Loki promises is a forest that will provide shelter and nourishment. She nudges Loki with her shoulder. “Are trolls common here?”

He only shrugs. In the failing light, he looks weary and heartsick, though perhaps he has only overused his magic. It has happened before, particularly when he was called upon to heal, and she never thought much of it; all warriors, save perhaps Thor, must one day find their limit. Now the memory of the horror beyond the veil sobers her thoughts. “You fought well,” she says, and means here, and on Jotunheim, and in the darkness between worlds. She hesitates, then pitches her voice very, very low before voicing her next thought. “Your father, I think, would be proud.”

He wheels on her, eyes wide and frantic and searching, and she’s so startled she steps back. Of course, she steps back into Thor, who stumbles into Hogun, who does not stumble but barks such an inventive oath that Fandral and Volstagg burst into laughter.

“Now, now, good Hogun! My mother takes offense to that,” Fandral cries when he has breath enough to speak.

“My mother does not,” Volstagg says, “but I daresay the goat would!”

Thor, who would once have laughed loudest, looks first to Loki, and then to Sif, as concern clouds his brow. She feels that she has imposed, somehow; invoked some confidence it was not hers to demand. She ducks Thor's questioning gaze and marches quickly ahead.

*

They reach the treeline as night falls. These trees are different, somehow, than the ones that sheltered them the night before. It is too dark for Thor to swear to the particulars, so he is left only with a strong impression: these trees look taller, and feel stranger. Loki kneels at the edge of the wood and gathers five fallen branches, setting the ends alight with a cold pale flame and handing one to each of his companions. His own hands he keeps free.

A fire that does not burn - it is unnatural, and such charms always make Thor’s skin crawl. “We might as well make camp, Loki. We can find food in the morning.”

“We mustn’t stop here,” Loki says shortly, and slips between the trees without further explanation. Thor must hurry to catch up before he disappears completely into the gloom. The others lift their makeshift torches high and follow.

The going is not hard, for there is little underbrush. Twice Loki steps out of the circle of flickering light, and Thor hears a faint scratching that might be boots on bark. Loki always reappears before Thor has cause to call out, and leads them further on.

An hour passes, perhaps, before Loki stops in a small clearing covered in thick drifts of fallen leaves. He kneels and touches one hand to the ground, tilting his head as if listening. They all have time to gather around before Loki folds his legs underneath him and simply says, “Here.”

Thor and the others exchange puzzled glances, but have no reason to object. Volstagg clears leaves away to make a small circle in the middle of the clearing and sets a fire, as Thor and the others set about making themselves as comfortable as they can.

Loki does not move as they ready their makeshift camp, except to extinguish the torches with a twitch of his hand once Volstagg’s fire is established. He does not speak, either, until a stretch of expectant silence causes him to look up. “Oh,” he says, faintly apologetic, “of course, I should have said before. The fruit of these trees is safe to eat.”

Thor had not even noticed the plump little things, despite the fact that the low branches turn out to be heavily weighted with them, for they were well hidden by silvery-green leaves as large as Thor’s own hand. In the light of the fire they appear a sullen, dullish purple, and in other circumstances Thor would hesitate to eat them despite Loki’s assurances. However, his suddenly-roused hunger denies too much consideration to his doubts. The taste bursts strange and sweet over his tongue, and his belly is content after only a handful.

The mood of their party, which had grown gloomy as they edged through the unfamiliar wood, now grew merry again. Volstagg alone is not satisfied with a few of the fruit, but eats on with sounds of great contentment, juice dripping unheeded into his beard, as Sif and Fandral and Hogun stretch their legs towards the fire and fall into a familiar cadence of light-hearted jests and boasts.

As the warriors trade exaggerated claims of their prowess, Thor quietly draws his knife and slices one last fruit into crescents so thin they approach translucence. He presses them on Loki one at a time, letting his resolve show on his face each time Loki shakes his head and tries to turn the rest away.

He is right to insist, he thinks, because afterwards Loki’s entire aspect brightens considerably. Sif is the first to notice, and draws him into a joke with an expression of frank relief on her face. Fandral and Volstagg then implore him to listen to their respective feats of might, and judge fairly who has the better claim to superiority; they do so, of course, knowing full well that he will make mockery of them both, and he does, to Sif and Hogun’s raucous approval.

Thor stares fiercely into the fire, for gratitude keens so sharply in his breast it threatens almost to sting tears from his eyes. He cannot think what he has done to deserve such good-hearted friends, nor such a devoted brother. He meditates on the golden throne of Asgard, and the aborted coronation that would have seen him already upon it; he finds that he feels only a dim sense of relief that the crown remained out of his reach, and the whole of Asgard was not swept up in his folly.

He is roused from his thoughts when Hogun, who had mostly listened and laughed as the others spoke, addresses himself to Loki.

“I was wondering - when were you here before?” Hogun draws closer to the fire, to better see Loki’s face. Some of the gaiety leaves Loki’s expression, yet he appears willing enough to satisfy Hogun's curiosity. “How came you to find this world?”

“It was the first time I tried finding my own path between worlds. Though I had convinced myself of my mastery, in truth I was little more than a boy, wildly overconfident in my abilities.” Loki’s laugh hides a shiver, and he crosses his arms tightly across his chest. “I panicked in the dark, and ripped through the veil the nearest weak spot I could find.” He looks around the clearing with an expression of mingled exasperation and fondness. “I could have landed somewhere much worse, of course. I count myself fortunate.”

Hogun makes a considering sound. He seems to think over his next words carefully, then finally asks: “And how long were you here?”

“Oh, months,” Loki sighs. “A year, perhaps. I lost track. I had to learn to speak this world’s magic, you see, before I could find a way back through the veil. I assure you it was no easy task, with only earth and grass and trees for tutors.”

Thor chuckles at the apparent jest. “Come, brother, I think I would remember if you had gone missing for months.”

Loki’s lips compress into a thin, unhappy line, and he says nothing. After a moment Hogun clears his throat and says, “I believe, Thor, that time passes quite differently here.”

Thor turns to stare at him, and then at Loki again, this time with horror in his eyes. “It could not have been so long!” he cries. “Even if it had seemed but a moment on Asgard - I would have known, had you been so long and far afield.”

The shadow of an old hurt darkens Loki’s face. “Yes, I had rather thought you would.”

Thor’s dismay passes abruptly into anger. He is furious, suddenly, at himself, and at Loki, and at this bizarre not-world and whatever forces led Loki to it in the first place. His hands clench involuntarily into fists. “You should have told me!”

Loki glares at him. “Clearly, you would have thought it a jest! A trick. And I could not prove otherwise.”

Thor finds he cannot answer that, for the memories of a thousand such conversations chime loudly in his ears. He settles for glowering into the fire. The ensuing silence is broken when Volstagg belches and says, stoutly, “Well, Loki, I for one would have taken you at your word.”

Thor recognizes his friend’s generosity for what it is, and affection wars with the aggravation in his heart. Drawing Loki’s ire is no enjoyable task, yet over time they have by common assent found it preferable to letting him seethe and stew until his anger found form in mischief.

“Oh, yes, Volstagg,” Loki bites out, “I am convinced that if I had popped up one morning, having been gone mere hours, and spun a tale of a shadow-realm where time stood still and the earth sang and the trees walked at my side, you would have tripped over your beard in your haste to believe me.”

“I’m sorry,” Fandral interjects, in a voice faint with astonishment, “I must have misheard - surely you do not mean we will see the trees walk?”

Loki throws his hands into the air in disgust. “Well, not with an attitude like that!”

His tone is so perfectly reminiscent of their childhood tutors, that endless procession of gray-bearded scholars who found their wills broken on the shoals of Loki’s insatiable hunger and Thor’s vast indifference, that Thor cannot help but snort. Loki turns on him with murder in his eyes, and that only tickles Thor further. He roars with laughter, clapping his hands on his thighs. “Brother,” he says between wheezes, “tomorrow you shall make clear how little we understand such things, and never will you find more willing pupils. But for now, give over, for it is only fair you taste a little of the outrage we visited upon our own poor tutors.”

Loki stares at him for a long beat, and then his lips twitch in defiance of the anger he so clearly wishes to nurture, and that sets Thor off again. In another moment Loki’s resolve crumbles entirely; all insult seems forgotten, and the forest rings with merriment.

*

When at last they all retire to sleep, Loki again draws close to his side, and Thor must bite his lip to keep from showing his gladness. It is sweet and familiar to find Loki his bedfellow once more; it was a youthful habit they had long outgrown, yet Thor now considers that they had been too quick to set aside such innocent comforts. Loki curls on his side, facing Thor, with his hands folded flat beneath his cheek. For all his height, he is still slender as a boy, and when Thor draws his cloak across it covers them both easily. Thor stretches out on his back, linking his own fingers beneath his neck. Beyond their little clearing the darkness is total, but somehow not oppressive. The others settle, their sighs and sounds of motion gradually fading to silence.

Thor does not sleep immediately but drifts on half-dreams, until a question strikes him as so obvious that it seems strange he had not thought to ask before. He turns his head enough to see Loki’s face; his eyes are closed and his breath even, but the cast of his face suggests he does not yet sleep. “Did you like it here, before?” Thor whispers. “Were you happy?”

Loki does not open his eyes, but sighs and mumbles, “Mostly.” Perhaps Loki is dreaming after all, for Thor feels sure he would not otherwise have added, so quietly Thor strains to hear it, “Though I often missed you.”

Sleep finds Thor quickly after that, and he yields to it with a smile on his face.

Chapter Text

When Thor wakes, Loki has gone from his side. First light barely frosts the silver treetops as Thor pushes himself up and looks about the clearing. The others slumber peacefully. A sound reaches Thor that he would have sworn was not present the night before - the whispering rush of water, somewhere in the near darkness yet untouched by the dawn.

He rises and follows the sound. Though it echoes strangely in the unfamiliar wood, he moves surely and finds no obstruction; it is almost as if the way has been opened to him. He finds the clear, swift-running stream just as the first finger of light reaches the leaf-carpeted ground.

Loki, kneeling at the water’s edge, does not turn at his approach. Thor knows his presence has been noted, so he does not announce it. Rather he stands back, and takes a moment to look upon his strange, beautiful oddity of a brother. He cannot remember when he started thinking of Loki primarily in terms of what use Thor might put him to - what tricks of his might aid Thor in combat, what lies he might tell to smooth Thor’s way at court, what small humiliations he might be persuaded to endure to burnish Thor’s reputation. Petty indeed were the ends to which he put his dear brother, his Loki, who solitary wandered the dread paths between worlds and let Thor name him but a jester.

He regrets his actions bitterly, and is moved to speak. “Loki - ”

“I let the frost giants into Asgard,” Loki says.

Thor instantly knows it to be true, though his very soul strives to reject it. All at once the light seems to go gray and the air so dry it stings his eyes. He takes one uncertain step forward, then halts as Loki rises and turns, his eyes burning keen and merciless in his thin, pale face.

No trick this, Thor thinks, half-dazed, no prank, no jest, no Loki-lie standing before him to be smashed into dust and laughed at and forgotten. He has never wished so desperately to be made a fool of. “It is a lie.”

“No.” Loki’s voice is as quiet as snowfall, cold as frost. “You already know it to be true.”

Thor retreats without volition, until his back comes to rest against a broad tree trunk. Loki does not move to follow, but stands and watches him with that terrible blazing honesty in his eyes. Thor cannot look at him any longer. He cannot bear to look at anything at all, if this truth is the fractured lens through which he must now see the world. He lowers himself to sitting, and bows his head, and covers his face with his hands.

“They came, as I allowed, and they died, as I intended. For what it’s worth,” and the smallness of his voice suggests Loki knows how little that is, “I never meant for things to go this far.”

A moment passes; a small eternity. “I do not understand this,” Thor finally replies. The sound of his own voice shocks him, wet gravel-choked thing that it is. His brother. Loki, prince of Asgard. Traitor. “I hear your words, but cannot comprehend them. What could have compelled you to do such a thing?”

“Envy.” Loki condemns himself with bleak calm. “Malice. Pride.” He draws a shaky breath. “And love.”

Thor groans into his hands. He feels that his heart must crack in two and he wishes it were done quickly. “You call treason an act of love?”

“Yes, in part!” Loki moves toward him, two staggering steps, as if he was being drawn by a force beyond his will. “I do call it an act of love. Love for Asgard and her people. Love for you, and the good king you might someday be! You weren’t ready, Thor.” His voice breaks. “You needed more time. There is so much left to learn. There is so much we don’t understand.”

Thor jerks his head up sharply. “Why do you say we?”

He regrets his choice of words, for Loki recoils as though slapped. Thor had not meant to suggest the final dissolution Loki clearly divines in his question; he wanted only to know what cause Loki had to indict himself for ignorance. He is yet too aflame with wrath to care to explain himself better, yet the pain in his breast only grows worse at the sight of his brother’s stricken face, at the utter desolation in his eyes, before Loki turns away to gather himself.

“I will answer for my crimes when we reach Asgard,” Loki says after a time. He does not turn back to meet Thor’s gaze, nor could Thor say he wishes him to. “For now I ask you to keep this between us. The path before us is hard, and will not be made easier if our companions mistrust their guide.” Thor does not answer for so long that Loki finally adds, quietly and with unfamiliar deference, “Of course, you must do as you see fit.”

“I will keep your confidence,” Thor says dully. He is weary beyond belief, feeling as if he had fought a thousand foes single-handed and turned to find ten thousand more at his back. “I would not see them afflicted with such news unless I had great cause. Nor,” he cries with sudden passion, “can I understand why you would burden me thus! Cast adrift as we are in this cursed place, where I can do nothing but keep to your side, to be stung afresh every time I look at you! That was cruel, Loki, even by your unkind standards.”

“I told you because I am selfish,” Loki says, “and secrets weigh less heavily when shared.” Thor knows that his brother weeps, though Loki’s voice is even and his body still. He cannot bear to think how he knows this. He cannot bear to tarnish a single memory of their boyhood with this new and bitter knowledge. “I have ever relied on your strength, brother, and I need it now even to bear my shame.”

The morning light has grown strong while they spoke. Thor notes distantly and without pleasure how nicely it plays through the silver leaves, how it leaps and sparkles on the babbling brook. He wonders if he will ever again feel charmed by such loveliness, or if the poison of Loki’s betrayal has rendered him immune. He rises slowly to his feet. “How far away is the river?”

Loki passes a hand roughly across his eyes. When he turns to Thor, it is with an expression of perfect, princely calm, and a voice to match. “We could reach it by evenfall, I think. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

“Then let us make haste,” Thor says. “I have grown sick beyond words of this realm.”

*

Something has passed between the princes, though Sif does not know the nature of it. When she woke it had been to see Thor re-entering the clearing from she knows not where, his face grim, and Loki trailing him like a shadow, his own expression carefully blank. They have not spoken to one another since, and there is a brittle quality to their silence that speaks to something more than a brotherly tiff.

Now as their party moves through the wood Loki strides ahead, seeming at least less distracted and weary than he had the evening before, and Thor lags behind, looking only at the ground before him and turning away each attempt at conversation with an indifferent grunt.

The day, at least, is pleasant. Light filters through the high, thick canopy of leaves, leaving splashes of warmth amid the cooler shadows. Fruit and water alone might have left their bellies pinched in other circumstances, but here seem to leave them as sated as the most glorious of feasts. Even with the tension between Thor and Loki, and the uncertainty of the path ahead, Sif altogether considers this a very enjoyable excursion.

They break at midday. The stream they have been following has carved itself a hollow about the roots of a massive tree, and swirls in little bubbling eddies before escaping again into the woods. All save Loki give in to the temptation to remove their boots and rest their feet in the water as they eat.

Afterwards, Volstagg gives a deep groan of satisfaction and falls back on to the soft forest floor. “You found yourself an excellent vacation spot, little prince,” he says. “All the comforts of home, none of the pressures of court.”

Loki gives a narrow-shouldered shrug. He sits a little apart, his back against a tree trunk, the fruit Sif had handed him lying uneaten at his side. “It has its charms.”

“Are these the walking trees you spoke of?” Fandral leans back and peers into the branches of the tree above him. “They don’t look particularly...agile.”

“No, these trees don’t walk.” Loki tips his head back against the trunk, letting his eyes fall closed. A smile touches his lips. “They sing, though. Can’t you hear it?”

Fandral screws his face into an expression of great concentration. “I can’t say that I do.”

Sif and Volstagg voice their agreement. Thor keeps his gaze upon the water, only muttering that he doesn’t quarter with such nonsense when Fandral pokes his side. Loki pointedly ignores him.

Hogun’s silence has a different quality, and Sif cocks her head at him. “And you, Hogun?

“I - ” Hogun frowns. “I do not know what I hear. It is more than the wind in the leaves, but less than song.”

Loki opens his eyes and gives him a hard look. “You have unsuspected talents, Hogun. How strange that you should have kept them hidden.”

He’s looking for a fight, of course. Hogun is meant to say that he sees no virtue in cultivating such useless arts, that spellwork is fine for healers and old women but warriors have no need of tricks, that singing trees make a charming children’s tale but would be of little use in battle. It is no more than they have all said before, though always in good humor.

Now, having herself traveled the path between worlds, Sif doesn’t find the defiant set of Loki’s jaw quite as laughable. She remembers Loki’s hands aflame in the darkness beyond the veil, driving before him creatures ravenous and legion, and wonders with private amusement if she will actually find herself defending Loki’s view of things; that indeed would be the final proof of this realm’s astonishing strangeness.

But Hogun smiles and inclines his head. “I am honored by your words,” he says serenely, “for I know how often we have benefited from your own talents. Had I a true facility for such things, I would be proud to join my art to yours in service of Asgard.”

Loki blinks at him in such surprise that Sif must hide her grin behind the pretense of a yawn. They must soon have tempered their teasing anyway, when their little brother-prince became court sorcerer and right hand to the new king of Asgard. It is exceedingly pleasant to know they will yet be able to make him blush and furrow his brow and turn his eyes away in consternation.

She draws her feet out of the water and rests them in a warm, dry spot where the light hits the forest floor directly. “Shall we reach the river today, Loki?”

His gaze skates past Thor. “I think so. Tomorrow, surely, if not today.”

Fandral tugs on one boot and pauses before reaching for the other. “And you say we will find passage to Asgard there?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Loki says mildly. The others, even Thor, turn worried faces toward him, but he only laughs. “Oh, hush. There’s no point fretting away such a nice day.” He rises to his feet and reaches out a hand to help Volstagg to his. “Let us away, and Fandral may yet satisfy his desire to walk with the trees.”

*

They come to the end of the silver forest within the hour. The view from the edge of the wood is dominated by a majestic sweep of mountains rearing against the horizon, forested almost to their snow-tipped peaks. Between where they stand and the distant range is a series of undulating hills, marked here and there by the sparkle of water.

“There,” Loki says. Thor follows his pointing finger and sees at a thin ribbon of light wending its way through a valley a half-day’s walk away.

Volstagg looks to the sun, then back at the river. “Doubt we’ll make it by nightfall. Perhaps we should make camp here?”

“No,” Thor and Loki say at the same time, in the same harsh tone. Loki’s hard look glances off his own, which only makes Thor angrier. Sorrow had passed quickly in the light of day; or rather, he had laid it aside, and let himself be carried along instead by the hot rush of rage.

“Still,” Fandral says, hand creeping reflexively to where his wound had been ere Loki healed it, “it wouldn’t be best luck if a troll happened upon our camp in the night.”

“I think that unlikely,” Loki says. “They’re not native to this place, you know. I’m not sure anything really is. It must have stumbled through some natural rift and found itself lost here.”

“Fair enough, yet by your reasoning we might find worse beasts abroad.”

Loki frowns into the distance, as if listening for something. Finally he shrugs. “I think we’ll be safe tonight. The land doesn’t speak of danger.”

Sif chuckles. “Did it before, when that troll was nearly on top of us? If so, then I must henceforth beg the land to speak up more loudly.”

“I wasn’t listening then,” Loki snaps, aggrieved. He looks pointedly at Fandral’s hand, still clasped over the phantom wound, and Fandral somewhat abashedly drops it to his side. “I had other things on my mind.”

“I have no wish to tarry in this realm,” Thor says, in a voice that brooks no argument. Commanding, he might privately have called that tone, before his illusions of authority were so rudely shattered. Sif and the Warriors Three nod and accept that the matter is settled; Loki keeps his gaze turned toward the horizon. “Let the beasts come, if they will, and I will meet them with such force the land itself will speak of the might of Asgard long after we have departed.”

“Perhaps it does already,” Volstagg says brightly. “What say you, Loki? Maybe the land remembers, well, not your might, exactly - but - ” He falters at Loki’s dark look. “Your wit, perhaps?”

“The land thinks of nothing so petty,” Loki says. “Might as well ask the ocean to recall a particular wave, or the sky to remember some singular wisp of cloud, as ask the earth to remember a prince.” He spares Thor a mocking glance. “No matter how loud and long he boasts of his own prowess.”

The others look warily between Loki and Thor, anticipating some outbreak of hostility, but Thor only pushes past his brother and strides ahead. Now that he can see the river, he has no need of Loki’s guidance. He must no longer hang back and let Loki lead, must no longer suffer the familiar shape and movement of Loki’s body like a stinging wind in his eyes, must no longer listen to the voice that betrayal has turned from a sweet balm to venom in his ears.

He hears his companions following behind, and even the whisper-soft fall of Loki’s feet drives him to distraction. He wishes the land would speak, would cry out, would shout loud enough to drown out the anarchic din of his own thoughts - though even the idea of earth given voice, he thinks with fresh fury, is nonsense. He’s beginning to think Loki made it all up. Singing trees! Land that speaks of danger! He has almost resolved to turn around and shake the truth out of Loki when his brother gives a cry and springs forward.

*

Thor and his companions rush to keep up with Loki, looking all around for what threat he might have spied, but they see nothing. For his part, Loki outpaces them as easily as he has always done, and is already dashing high up the sharp-rising hill before them.

It makes no sense. There is nothing behind them; besides, for all his faults Loki would not fly from attack. And if he means to lead them into ambush - no, even in his anger Thor cannot countenance such a thought. But why, then, should he run?

Thor and the others follow, marking the distance only by the rise and fall of the land under their feet, until they see Loki pause, silhouetted against the sky at the top of the next hill. Then Thor stops abruptly, befuddled, for he sees that the same crest is marked now by a clutch of trees, perhaps a dozen in number, that he would have sworn were not there a moment before. The trees rise high against the blue sky, their leaves green as emeralds, their bark shining white in the sun, and though there is no wind they are swaying - no, they’re moving, by the Norns, they’re walking!

And Loki is now perched high astride the foremost, borne aloft by branches that hardly seem thick enough to support his weight. He’s but a shadow, a blur of black leather and pale skin amid a sea of sun-dappled green, but through the clear air Thor can hear snatches of song, or laughter, or spellwork, or perhaps all three mingled together - a music so sweet and wild it sounds the very depths of his soul. The effect is such he almost sinks to one knee, though whether to recover himself or to give himself over entirely to the song he cannot say.

He does not have the chance to decide, for Fandral lets out a great whoop of delight and dashes forward to meet the approaching company. The rest of them follow, and they and Loki’s party all meet at once, low on the warm green curve of the hill.

Loki leaps from his perch, landing light as a bird on the ground before them. The tree that bore him seems unwilling to let him go entirely, and continues to sway toward him as if buffeted by a strong wind - or a thousand strong winds, rather, each directing an individual branch. Thor’s mind cannot quite make sense of the motion, but it is clearly directed by some conscious self.

“You found them!” Fandral seems almost overcome with delight. “Or did they find you? Did they come to meet you? Will they walk with us awhile?”

When Loki first tries to speak, his voice is muffled by the noise of the tree’s movement, and by the leaves tumbling about his head - somehow without even the smallest branch striking him with any force, Thor notes. Loki pushes at them with a touch no less gentle, tucking the greenery back as he might his own hair, patting the branches as kindly he might touch a friend’s hand.

Fandral directs his shining gaze up at the tree. “Come, Loki,” he cries impatiently. “You must introduce us!”

“This is - this is - oh, there’s no word!” Loki turns his face, flushed and half-laughing, under his companion’s clumsy ministrations. “I can’t say her name, not properly, in any tongue but her own. But it’s - it’s something like - The first breath of rain after a long, hot summer.”

Fandral, who may always be counted upon at such moments, gives a deep bow. “An honor, my lady!”

There is a loud rustle of leaves among the gathered company; it is a sound of approval, if the way Loki grins is any indication. Then Loki turns to Thor with his eyes bright as jewels, his face alight with a joy so boyish and free Thor cannot help but answer it kindly. “I am Thor, of Asgard,” he says politely to the tree, unsure where to look and so directing his words to a random spot on the trunk some little height above his own eyes. “At your service.”

At Loki’s gesture Thor leans forward obediently, letting the soft, cool leaves find his face. Each of Thor's companions follows his example, and Loki makes the necessary introductions with more warmth and courtesy than he ever had shown at court.

For this, Thor finds, watching Loki laugh as Volstagg tries vainly to keep his beard untangled from one tree's curious touch, he can set aside his wrath for a time. For the sake of this moment he thinks he could set aside anything at all.

*

All together they walk on to the river before making camp, though the last part of their journey is lit only by the pale flicker of Loki’s fire dancing harmlessly along the branches of their companions. Loki and his companion move a little ahead of the rest of the group; Thor can only see his brother as a shadow, leaping easily from the ground to her welcoming branches and then back again at seemingly random intervals, his voice a constant murmur amid the whispering leaves.

Fandral chatters along merrily as they walk, and even Volstagg is persuaded to tell a tale as evening falls. They cannot hear the tree-voices as such, but the kindness of their regard, the completeness of their attention, the pleasure of their amusement, are all somehow as clearly felt as a cool breeze on a warm day. Though they have journeyed long, they all feel refreshed when they finally come to the bank of the deep, wide river.

Loki, having preceded them, has already marked a clearing for them, setting a small fire of leaves and fallen branches, but he is nowhere to be seen. Thor steps out into the darkness as the others settle in around the fire, their leafy companions forming a comforting circle around the camp. He strains his eyes searching the darkness, but sees nothing. He starts at a light touch on his arm.

“Let him be,” Sif says quietly. “The company he keeps tonight is to Loki’s mind as good food and drink are to a hungry belly. Sleep, and let him prepare for the morrow as he may.”

Thor bows his head, and allows himself to be led to the fire. Their little fellowship eats and drinks and settles to sleep. The night is calm and the presence of their quiet companions soothing, and when Thor lays his head on his folded cloak he finds that sleep comes with blessed speed.

*

Sif awakes to a noise in the dark. It does not come again, so she is left only with a confused impression of something harsh and pained. Sitting up, she sees Thor and Volstagg and Hogun and Fandral arranged as they were, faces slack with sleep.

The night is moonless and still, which makes it easy to see the dim flicker of Loki’s false green fire some little distance away. She draws closer, and finds him sitting cross-legged on the bank of the river, flicking the flame idly across his fingertips as he watches the water rush darkly past.

He does not start at her approach, indeed does not even look up at her as she comes to stand at his side. After a moment he leans forward to press a hand, palm down, into the damp, cool earth. A true fire, small yet warm, rises obediently to his touch, and Sif takes it as an invitation. She sits on the other side of the flame, and they watch the river together.

After a time Loki turns his gaze on her, and says, “You have something to ask me.” His voice is hardly louder than the whispering leaves behind them or the sighing water before them.

No, Sif begins to say, before she realizes with a strange, unpleasant jolt that she does. Familiar as she is with both danger and magic, she feels no particular fear of the creatures which may lurk in the passage that awaits them. What she feels is something deeper, reflexive - an atavistic revulsion to how fragile and changeable are her memories of that place.

They each remember the journey differently, and Sif knows this is finite minds making the best of infinity, creating patchwork memories of things sensed but not seen by their mortal eyes. Her warrior’s heart does not quail before death, but the blank unnatural vastness of the place, her mind’s inability to comprehend it fully - these strike at the fear even the most fearsome warrior carries with her. The fear not of body harmed, or life ended, but of mind lost, of soul annihilated.

“How does one remain one’s self?” Sif asks, pitching her voice as low as Loki’s own. It is the question she came to ask, though she did not know it until she spoke it. She is unsure if she can bear the answer - yet she is certain she cannot bear not knowing it. “When passing between the worlds, how does one keep one’s mind?”

Loki throws his head back and laughs. It is a mad sound, but in the way soothsayers are mad - it is madness only if uncloaked truth be madness. “Isn’t it obvious? One doesn’t.”

She feels the truth of it in her bones. “I don’t understand.”

“To keep one’s mind or lose it - don’t you see how the answer lies in the question?” Loki extends one hand and Sif sees he holds one of the fruits of the silver forest. As he speaks the fruit swells and splits and reveals the pit within. “It suggests that one is separate from one’s mind. And if that be so, then it follows that, as long as one remains oneself, one can lose one’s mind and retrieve it later.” He laughs again. “Or discard it entirely and make it all anew.”

“But how? How can one choose - ” She stops and stares at his hand.

There is no fruit in Loki’s palm, but an ash tree sapling, straining towards the sky and bursting into spring finery. “It’s simple,” Loki says. He brings his other hand down and shatters the sapling to its roots. “You must only forget the sun, and the sky, and the sea.”

There are no roots, but a fire, green blazing to white, bright enough to sear the eye. "Let the fire consume all. Hope, envy, desire. Love." The flame climbs higher, casting Loki’s face in unnatural light. "Become no one. No son, no brother, no prince, no friend. Become nothing but that which cannot burn."

There is no flame, but a jewel, hard as diamond, green as poison. Loki cups it in both palms, curving his body around it, cooing to it as one would to an infant. "Become Loki. Only Loki, who was and is and shall be."

Dry leaves crunch nearby under a heavy foot, and the very air around them seems to shudder. Sif snaps her head around to see Thor standing a pace away. Loki brings his palms together sharply before he turns, and so he misses what Sif's eyes do not. He does not see the grief and fear that chase each other across Thor's broad brow as quick as summer lightning.

"My apologies,” Loki says. “I didn’t mean to disturb your sleep." He smooths his hands across his thighs and stands, extending a hand to help Sif to her feet. The jewel, if it ever existed, has disappeared. “We have a long day tomorrow.”

Yet Sif feels suddenly dizzy with uncertainty. Her mind tries and fails to reconcile the stunted princeling, the mad sorcerer, the burned god, who stands before her looking once again like the familiar companion of her childhood. She stares at Loki, who after a moment frowns and withdraws his hand.

In the same breath Thor steps forward and takes a knee at her side, offering comfort under the pretense of warming his hands at the fire. She turns her gaze toward the river and blinks, until the water looks like water again, and not like a writhing thing reaching for her in the dark. After a deep breath, or several, she feels herself again, and she turns her gaze to Loki to see him regarding them both with something like pity.

"My dear Sif, you have ever been too wise to concern yourself with my flights of fancy." He inclines at the waist, slightly, as if begging her pardon. "All is well. Tomorrow will see you safe in Asgard, and all this world will seem but a dream."

*

Thor remains crouched at the fire as Sif walks away, her step firm and steady for all the uncertainty he had seen in her eyes when she looked at Loki. His own heart aches with worry, for the costs Loki and the rest of their party might pay on the morrow, and sorrow, for those Loki had paid already, alone in the dark and far from home.

Loki remains standing, watching Sif go, and Thor half-expects him to follow her, or simply to turn and disappear into these friendly woods, or perhaps to walk past Thor, across the water or through the sky - nothing could surprise him now. He thinks he should let Loki go his way; then he considers where such apparent indifference has brought them. “Stay,” he says, “please.”

“You needn’t worry about losing your mind, Thor,” Loki says, his voice familiar and amused, though he avoids Thor’s gaze. “It has never yet strayed far from its appointed path.”

Thor bows his head, not trying to hide his smile. “As ever, brother, your wisdom is a great comfort to me.” He watches at Loki lowers himself back a seated position, notices how Loki wraps his empty arms tightly around his body. “We will stand together in Asgard, Loki.”

“Will we?” Loki asks in an idle voice. “How novel.”

“We have always -” Thor sits back on his heels as the fire snaps and sparks Loki’s discontent. He grits his teeth and chooses his words more carefully. “In this matter, we have both erred. I will be at your side as you answer for your choices, and I for mine.”

“And what choices do you believe you made, Thor, of your own free will?” Loki keeps his eyes upon the river.

“I chose to go to Jotunheim,” Thor says, frowning, “though you counselled against it -” His mouth goes dry when Loki finally turns that coolly amused gaze on him again. Suddenly without conviction, he adds, lamely, “I chose to disobey the Allfather of my own free will.”

“Did you,” Loki murmurs, not like a question at all.

Thor may only dimly suspect the depth of Loki’s machinations, but a line must be drawn. “I was under no enchantment, no coercion.” He holds Loki’s gaze until Loki drops his, muttering a faint affirmation. “To be a prince is to be always the intended object of some manipulation. We learned that in the nursery, Loki. That I did not perceive it is no excuse.”

“Of course it is,” Loki says bitterly, “and if you will not offer it on your behalf I will do it for you. You’ll find that I can be fantastically persuasive when I’ve a mind to.”

Were this world as responsive to Thor’s mood as Asgard, thunderclouds would be gathering above them. “I will not allow -”

“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” Loki cries, “it doesn’t matter, you great golden fool,” his voice breaking high and wild in the dark. He rises and stumbles a few paces apart, keeping his face turned away.

There is so much we don’t understand. The words echo unbidden in Thor’s ears as he watches Loki press shaking hands over his eyes. “We will make our way through this, Loki.”

Loki answers with another echo: “Why do you say we? The prince and the traitor are born enemies, Thor, no matter what nursery they shared in innocence. Why do you still speak in such childish terms, now you’ve had your first bitter taste of what it means to be king?”

He rises and reaches reflexively for Loki, who jerks back as if Thor’s touch would burn him. “You are my brother,” Thor says, bewildered at Loki’s desperation, “and if I am to be king, on some distant day, it will be with you at my side. You shall teach me how to temper the bitterness of rule with the sweetness of mercy.”

“Mercy! Justice is the duty of kings, Thor - and could you forgive my trespass then? If I were a world in rebellion, would you make war on me? Would you grind my cities to dust, and tear my keep down with your hands? Would you salt the earth and poison the water? After such a betrayal, could you bear to leave a single stone untouched?” Loki turns his mad, gleaming gaze on him. “Would you call down lightning, my prince, and burn me all to ash?”

Thor cannot speak for a long moment, shaken as he is by the violence of Loki’s imaginings, by the depth of his certainty. He knows in his heart that Loki wants him to say yes, that Loki wants Thor to imagine himself a warrior and Loki a world to be conquered, to name himself Loki’s king and god and immortal enemy all at once.

He closes his eyes, and lets Loki’s vision unfold in his own mind. A realm, then, brother-world to Asgard, shadowy and dangerous and beautiful. “Never,” he says softly. He opens his eyes to see Loki staring back at him in surprise. “If this realm of your imagining had harmed me as grievously you have, it must follow that I had loved it as dearly I love you. War? No, brother. Peace would I have, at any cost.”

“You are generous,” Loki says, in an uncertain voice.

“Perhaps I must be, to make up for my selfishness.” Thor looks away into the river. “You imagine lightning, but I would call for the warm rain of spring, to make the grass forget how heavily I had trod upon it. You imagine poison in the water, but I would kneel at the edge of every lake and river, and ask forgiveness for having made such greedy use of them. You imagine I would strike at each stone, but I would leave the cities untouched, and make my way to the heart of mountains, and beg for their long-unheeded counsel.

“And should that world hate me still, should the grass wither out of spite and the rivers run dry and the mountains yield only echoes, then I would lay aside every other claim, and devote myself to its service. For a king unloved by his realm - and that realm is ever mine, Loki, my own and most beloved - oh, such a king is no king at all.”

He can no longer ignore the small, hurt sound of Loki’s breath. He goes to Loki’s side and draws him close with an arm about his shaking shoulders. “Peace, brother,” he says quietly. It is a promise and a prayer. “Peace.”

Chapter Text

As the black of night pales to gray, Loki, still sitting pressed to Thor’s side from shoulder to hip, rouses himself from his reverie and stands. He reaches his fingertips to the sky, yawning, and after a moment Thor stands to join him.

Loki has not slept, nor has Thor, yet neither have any unnecessary words passed between them in the last quiet hours. For all the confusion and pain Thor has felt in this world, some part of him is loathe to leave it. He was ever jealous of other demands on his brother; how much more so, now he begins to see the sweet, strange truth of Loki and not merely the threadbare fraternal illusion he had carried from childhood? He cannot imagine when Loki will acquiesce to another such night passed in quiet camaraderie, to hours spent with no words save those which pass soul to soul, scorning the clumsy tongue.

“We should wake the others,” Loki says. “It will be easier to open the way at dawn.”

“A boundary,” Thor notes, grinning at Loki’s raised eyebrow. “Am I not correct?”

“You are, and for all our sakes let that be the last surprise we suffer here.” Loki hesitates. “I should say, it may not be as easy as our last passage.”

“Then we shall not ride a raven this time?”

“We did not ride a raven last time, brother mine, but the manner of travel is rather less important than one’s awareness of the journey.”

“Can’t you just - ” Thor makes a complicated motion with his hands at which Loki does not even deign to glance. “As you did last time - ”

“Last time, I flung us headlong into the abyss,” Loki snorts, “and I remain astonished we all survived, let alone landed in the same place. Let’s not press our luck again.”

Thor shakes his head. “It wasn’t luck that brought us safely here, Loki.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Loki turns and stamps out the fire. “I doubt even you know what you mean, o great rider of imaginary fowl.”

“You fought for us,” Thor says quietly. He holds up a hand against Loki’s rising protest. “No, don’t deny it, for we all remember it so. If that is what you mean by luck, I would stake my life on it a thousand times over.”

The tentative blush of dawn does not provide enough light for Thor to read his brother’s expression. “You should not say such things,” Loki says, his voice as bitter as winter. “You know better.”

Thor inclines his head. “I know what I know.”

“Then keep your certainty close to your heart, Odinson.” Loki is upon him suddenly, leaning close and digging his sharp cold fingers into Thor’s arm as he speaks. Thor is so startled, by the movement, by the words, by Loki’s strange form of address, that he can only stare. “You may have need of it before the end.”

*

Silently, they gather at the river’s edge. The arboreal queen and her handmaidens stand at attention, every branch and every leaf lying still even when a breeze courses down through the valley.

Finally, light breaks over the horizon. Thor takes a deep breath, and hears his companions do the same.

Loki lifts his hands and rends the sky apart.

*

Thor is alone.

The darkness is infinite and terrible. There are shadows in the deep. They are not beasts to be slain, but stains spreading toward him through the black, reaching out with iridescent claws and he knows their touch will burn him, will burn him clean away, will burn will burn will -

“Careful, brother,” Loki says, closing a hand on Thor’s elbow. His touch feels warm and solid and real, and if it isn’t then Thor is grateful for the lie. “You’re quite near the edge, now.”

“There are edges?” Volstagg chokes out, and Loki laughs. Finally, a faint glow suffuses the darkness - a flame held aloft in Loki’s slender hand. The darkness hisses and recoils, revealing Sif and Volstagg and Hogun and Fandral huddled together but an arm’s length away.

“Come, and trust that Sif had the right of it last time.” Thor notes that Loki does not say outright that Sif did have the right of it. “No giant ravens here, nor motherly arms. Merely a night march, which cannot be cause for fear among Asgard’s mightiest warriors.”

They fall in line, Loki and Hogun, then Fandral and Volstagg, then Sif and Thor bringing up the rear.

*

It seems as Loki says, and as she remembers: a long cold march through the howling dark. Sif does not think she could ever become accustomed to such a place, and the knowledge that they survived it once before offers little comfort.

Some little eternity later, she senses movement at her back. A shadow creeping onto the path, reaching toward Thor, who stares forward with blank eyes and does not seem to hear her whispered warning.

Sif knows not if she can defeat these creatures, but she knows she can try. She clenches her hand around the hilt of her blade and brings it up in front of her. Then she freezes in astonishment, for her bright steel has gone green as poison. The shadow takes advantage, darting closer.

Become nothing, Loki whispers in her mind.

Sif lets her confusion pass through her like light through a window, leaving her mind clear and clean. She raises her arm and strikes true at the shadow. It gives a high, thin scream and fades into nothingness.

But that which cannot burn, she whispers back, and hears Loki’s answering laugh echo in the dark. Another inky figure coalesces at the edge of her vision and she twists fearlessly toward it.

No daughter, no sister, no lady, no friend. Only Sif, diamond blade in hand.

*

Thor senses the end before he actually sees it - a swell of warmth, a sudden lessening of the dread in his heart. He has been dreaming of ravens again, but comes now to himself, sees Sif at his side, carelessly magnificent, laughing in triumph, her gleaming sword flashing against the shadows now running before her.

Loki and Hogun lead the party still, fire streaming from Loki’s hands in great gouts of green flame, scouring the path before and above. Hogun is carrying a flame high in his own hand, and if it is a borrowed one he still wields it as one born to the art. With his other hand he draws a seemingly-blind Volstagg along, while Fandral keeps pace with dreamy, unfocused eyes.

And far ahead there is a golden glow. It is Asgard, Thor knows with sudden clarity, the warm light of her pouring through a flaw in the veil that separates her from this shadowy realm. It is home.

Though they move at a steady pace, the light of Asgard does not grow steadily closer - it leaps toward them and then away, sometimes close enough to touch, sometimes distant as a star flung into the firmament. "Stay together," Loki calls, hoarse and pale, as he slows to bring the entire party within reach of one another. "Things don't behave as they should, this close to the boundary."

"Things such as?" Hogun prompts, between ragged breaths.

"Things such as reality, Hogun," Loki says with an unsettling smile, "things such as time, and space.”

They edge along together, and then it is indeed as if reality crumples in on itself, not around Thor as he had expected, but within his very self. He is caught at the collision of many times - he is at Sif’s side, yet a world apart from her - she is shouting at him, in his very ear, yet he sees her safe in the throne room of Asgard. Figures move dimly about her. He sees Fandral, and Volstagg, safely through. Hogun, stumbling to the gleaming floor, shaking, staring at his hand as though it still burns.

Loki is even now screaming at him to move, his hands hard on Thor's back, and Thor understands that Loki cannot close the doorway while Thor lingers in it. Yet Loki has long since turned away to defend the opening between the worlds, and his foolish brother caught therein; Thor can see him being pulled back into the distance, a valiant light against the gathering dark.

Thor is wavering on the edge of reality, and he sees Asgard as through a prism. Here is Odin, trudging heavy back across the Bifrost to tell Frigga her sons are lost, somewhere beyond the sight of the Allfather; here is Frigga, intent at the loom he sees now, for the first time, in its true form. He smiles to see the very source of Loki’s spellcraft, intricate forms he must have learned from the observation of Frigga’s own nimble fingers, darting back and forth through the threads of reality, creating with the warp of power and the weft of magic.

Here is Laufey on Jotunheim, raging against Odin and his vanished sons; here are Laufey and his court arrayed at the council table in the Asgardian throne room. Here are Odin and his advisers seated on the opposite side, every face wary and drawn with tension.

And here the Casket of Winters rests on a dais a little distance away, blazing much brighter than he has ever known her to, so bright and so cold she hurts to look at, and as Thor gazes upon her he knows things he cannot know but does, sees things he has not seen but will.

*

He comes back to himself with a cry, still on the wrong side of the veil, his mind grasping after the visions already slipping from his memory. He is forgetting, though he knows with icy certainty that he must not forget, that tragedy will follow if he does. He looks about wildly, but cannot see Loki - cannot see anything, in fact, that his eyes can make sense of.

Two raven-shapes come screaming through the veil, limned in mage fire, searing negative images on the backs of his eyes as they pass. Hugin and Munin are searching, and Thor turns to follow their progress, hefting Mjolnir into his hands that he may follow the path they burn through the black sky. She sings high in response to his call, but she pulls him sideways at the moment he means to go straight, straight when he tenses for a turn; his entire body strains against the unnatural gravity of this place.

Ahead of him, Hugin and Munin have found Loki and are circling, casting huge concentric circles of light through the darkness, allowing Thor to glimpse the balletic fury of Loki's movement in fractured time. Now sheets of flame are pouring like liquid from Loki's hands as he fights toward Asgard; now he's driven back, almost to the edge where the slender path falters into nothingness, leaping and twisting over the writhing shadows that would drag him down. Thor lands just in time to sweep an attack from Loki’s unprotected side.

"You aren't meant to be here," Loki shouts over the echoing howl of the void. He's white with exhaustion, his hair clinging damp with sweat. "Follow the others through, I can make my own way back.”

"Not without you," Thor shouts back, gracefully ducking the sweep of Loki's arm as Loki sends daggers into the dark. He shifts his hand on Mjolnir for a better grip, and reaches the other out to Loki. "Take my hand!"

He's already turning toward the far golden gleam that means home as Loki's hand closes above his wrist, and his above Loki's. He never knew, later, why he looked back - a whispered presentiment, he believes, a faint afterimage of a forgotten vision. But look back he does, expecting Loki's determined nod, only to see that Loki's eyes have slipped closed, and he's turning, twisting his arm away from Thor's grasp, his muscles slackening, his body coming open to the thunderous charge of a creature just emerging out of Thor's peripheral vision.

Thor feels the impact down to his bones. Loki's whole body folds, and falls, and slides back, and back, and back, to the very limit of the path. Time seems to shatter again, as Mjolnir falls unheeded from Thor's hand. He twists and dives for Loki's arm, catching him at the wrist just as Loki's body finds the edge. The beast has vanished - either it has gone over, or been absorbed back into the foul air that birthed it. Thor cares not. His shoulder screams in protest as it takes Loki’s full weight, but his grip does not slacken as they plunge together toward infinity.

*

Sif cares little for statecraft, but she understands it well enough - enough, certainly, to perceive they could hardly have found a worse time or place to come tumbling out of the air, wild-eyed and stinking of magic. Her sharp eyes do not miss how Odin reacts a moment - only a moment, but a warrior’s eternity - before the Jotun contingent rises in dismay. Ere Laufey clears his seat, Hugin and Munin have leapt from their perch at Odin’s signal and flown past Sif, through the invisible door she can still feel yawning open behind her.

“What do you mean by this,” Laufey roars, wheeling on Odin, “what further treachery does Asgard intend?”

Odin only pushes past him, his eye boring into Sif’s own. “My sons?”

“Beyond the veil, my lord,” Sif says, “though I swear they were but a step behind us.”

“As much as one could swear to anything in that place,” Volstagg says with a shudder, and Sif inclines her head in agreement.

Odin looks over her shoulder, focused on something she cannot see and never wishes to again, and raises Gungnir in one gnarled fist - but what he might have done, Sif cannot say, for Frigga appears at the other end of the long table and stops him with a sound that strikes Sif’s heart before her ears. By the way even the frost giants cease their uproar and turn their strange eyes on the queen, Sif suspects it is one of the old words, not meant to persuade minds but to command hearts.

Frigga crosses the room in long strides, doing nothing to disguise the lethal grace she sometimes finds convenient to hide under ornate gowns and regal restraint. Daggers flash in her hands and magic in her eyes, as Odin steps aside, drawing Sif and the Warriors Three away from the shimmering flaw in the air. Frigga twitches the veil aside as easily as a gauze curtain and disappears beyond it, drawing it closed behind her.

Sif has only time to draw a breath before Thor and Loki appear, not stumbling through where Sif and the others did, but crashing to the ground clear across the throne room. They are tangled together and moving at such speed they keep sliding after they land, and Sif has the impression that Thor has wrapped his body around Loki’s, tucked Loki’s head against his breast, so that Thor takes the brunt of the impact across his broad back when they slam into the dais where the Casket of Ancient Winters lies glowing.

Behind them, Frigga steps through this new tear in the veil, and closes it, too, with a casual twist of her hand. A dagger, small and shining like starlight, disappears up her sleeve as she does so. Sif screws her eyes closed for a moment, rather desperately wishing to go back to the days when she was not aware of the ease with which half the royal family could go ripping their way through the fabric of reality.

The thought is forgotten in the next moment, as Loki crawls out of Thor’s embrace and drags himself to his feet with one hand on the dais. Only then does he seem to notice the Casket, and he stares, wavering unsteady on his feet, as Thor himself stands with a groan.

“How fare you, my son?” Odin asks quietly, laying a hand on Thor’s shoulder.

“I am well, Father,” Thor says, his gaze skipping from Odin to Frigga, to his friends, and then with consternation to the Jotun assemblage. He frowns at some memory, flexing one hand around empty air. “I remember - we were falling -”

“Do not dwell on it. Thanks to your mother, you have landed safely.” Odin steps forward, reaching out for his younger son. “Loki, are you -”

Loki startles violently at Odin’s touch, jerking away and staring at him with wild eyes. Odin withdraws his hand, though he does not move away. His own gaze shifts quickly between the Casket and Loki’s face, and Sif does not miss the weighted glance that passes then between Odin and his queen.

Thor does miss it, for he has eyes only for Loki. “You fell,” Thor says, in a terrible, wondering voice.

“There will be time enough -” Frigga begins, moving between them, stepping toward Loki with her hands loose at her sides and her voice soothing.

“And you caught me, you fool,” Loki hisses back, furious, tensing as if ready to strike. He slides away from Frigga, circling back toward Thor with murder in his eyes. “Why?”

Thor recoils as if struck, but what words he might have found in response were lost to Laufey’s interruption. “We grow impatient, Odin king,” Laufey says coldly.

Sif steps forward, turning so that she stands between Laufey and the royal family, dropping her hand to the hilt of her sword. Out of the corner of her eyes she sees her companions do likewise. Laufey merely raises a scornful eyebrow at them. “Were we here to make war, you would know it. We were promised recompense for this foolish boy’s -” he lowers a finger at Thor, who flushes - “breach of the peace.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Loki says flatly. Sif glances back to see him school his expression, and she welcomes the return of his control, though she knows better now than to assume it means he is calm. He matches the Jotun king’s own imperious expression and raises his voice for all to hear. “The responsibility for all that has passed between Asgard and Jotunheim these last bitter days is mine alone.”

“Fault matters not to me, whelp,” Laufey says. “You may haggle for it among yourselves when we have gone. For our dead, and for the destruction wrought upon our realm, we will take the Casket.”

Odin raises a hand to forestall Thor’s objection. “The payment is fair,” he says gravely. “Even were it not, I have lately wondered if the return of the Casket to Jotunheim is not overdue.”

“Oh,” Loki breathes, and every hair on the back of Sif’s neck stands up. She turns with wide eyes to see Loki’s lips curve in a vicious mockery of a smile. “Has the time come to consign all such relics back to the ice, Allfather? Or only those which have outlived their usefulness?”

*

If Thor hopes to see his parents mirroring his own consternation at Loki’s words, he is disappointed. Odin briefly lowers his head, as if in acknowledgement of an accusation Thor cannot begin to comprehend, as Frigga goes still and pale. Thor looks from them back to Loki, who is trembling with some great emotion. “I do not understand.”

“No?” Loki’s laugh is a short, bitter thing, belied by the tears that stand in his eyes. “I begin to. If I ask you who I am, will you answer true?” He does not wait for a response. “Or does the question presume too much? Dare I assume a status different than a thing in a vault, locked away until you have use of me?”

“There is much I have not told you, Loki,” Odin says, voice hoarse with regret, “and I grieve that you should have come to this moment unprepared. Let us speak now -”

“Speak?” Loki’s voice rises sharp and disbelieving. “What is there to say, save that which is worth my life not to hear? In knowledge of the old ways I may yet be a novice compared to you, my queen,” he says, turning his bright wild eyes on Frigga, “but even I know that Casket does not call to the sons of Asgard. Why, then, is her song echoing in my ears? What am I?”

Odin leans heavily on Gungnir, the weight of history and the promise of sorrow bowing his shoulders. It is Frigga who steps forward, before he can speak, her hands extended in longing to touch. “You are our son,” she says.

Loki twists away and, before Thor can reach him, plunges his hands into the wintry glare of the Casket. Laufey sucks in a great shocked breath and then leans forward, enthralled, as Loki’s skin takes on the deep blue of the frost giant. The change surges up his arms and neck, scoring his skin with deep lines as it goes, lines that Thor had ever looked past on the bodies of his foes but now seem charged, under Laufey’s greedy gaze, with some terrible meaning.

When Loki turns, it is only with a mighty effort Thor prevents himself from stepping back. Loki’s eyes burn crimson as he advances, careless of the magic beginning to crackle in the air about his hands as he asks, “What more than that?”

Laufeyson, one of the frost giants whispers. Or it would have passed for a whisper, undoubtedly, in one of the storm-ridden halls of Jotunheim. In Odin’s golden, sun-hushed court it crashes like a blow from Mjolnir. Loki’s body is wracked with one desperate heaving shudder, and he turns toward the Casket as if to -

“Brother,” Thor says.

Loki wheels on him. “Don’t call me that,” he cries, “I’m not,” and Thor understands, then, that Loki would gladly have carried his doubts to the uncaring depths between worlds to avoid this certain knowledge.

Fear grips Thor’s heart, burning acrid in the back of his mouth as he remembers how close he came to losing Loki - how he might yet lose him, to the grief now shining like madness in Loki’s eyes. He lacks the words, has always lacked the words, will always lack the words to express the depth of his devotion, and so his body acts on instinct. Thor kneels.

“You ask, what more are you?” He reaches out and takes Loki’s dear, familiar hand, not noticing or caring that Loki’s skin flushes back to Aesir pink at his touch. “I say that you are my brother. My own, and most beloved.”

Loki’s whole body remains drawn in tension, a bow strained to the ready, yet he leaves his hand cold and trembling in Thor’s own, and does not pull away. He looks over Thor’s head at the Warriors Three, who as one incline their heads respectfully, and then at Sif, who stares back at him with a strange smile playing about her lips. Finally she draws close and clasps Loki’s other hand between her own.

“Loki,” she says. “Only Loki, and that is enough.”