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Loki is being odd. Thor had attempted to raise that to Valkyrie, who he's fairly sure had been either drunk or hungover, and she said "Thor, I've known your brother for like a week and even I can tell you that he's always odd." He had raised it to Bruce as well, who looked at him in this awkwardly amused way and said, "Well—he's Loki."
Then there was nobody else to ask, unless you count Heimdall, who has always been cryptically reticent on the best of days. Well. Nobody except, of course, Loki himself, but Thor was under no illusions that his brother would answer him directly.
He still remembers when they had been inseparable. They had lived together, laughed together, played together for centuries. The change had been slow, but effective nonetheless, and now Thor cannot remember the last time he and his brother had really, truly spoken, without pretence. He cannot help but blame himself. If he had only paid better attention, watched as Loki receded back into his shadow—but no. Loki was and is incredibly adept at hiding the things he does not want to be seen, and behaving as if Thor is mad for suggesting that perhaps all is not well.
After so recently getting his brother back, Thor does not want to drive him away again so quickly. He must approach this carefully, with grace.
"Thor, what are you doing."
Thor looks up, eyebrows raised and eyes wide. "Hm? Oh, me? Just simply… admiring the view." He looks out the small porthole window into the entirely unimpressive blank expanse of space.
"In my room?"
"Oh, is it? I hadn't realised." He gives Loki his best smile. In return, he receives a look that implies he has perhaps lost his senses.
"Thor."
"Loki."
There is a brief stare-down. Loki wins, on behalf of the fact that he has two eyes rather than one. He likely would have won anyway—Thor remembers in their youth Loki cheating at many such games by using his illusions.
Eventually, Loki rolls his eyes, irritation winning over slight confusion. "Thor, do get out."
Then, when Thor doesn't move, he reiterates, "Now."
Thor still doesn't move. Instead, he stares at Loki harder. Typically, his brother would have got up and pushed him bodily out of the door by now. His inaction was… concerning. Another point in favour of Loki's oddness. Looking closer now, there is a certain tension in the set of Loki's jaw, the corners of his eyes. His forehead carries a sheen of moisture.
"Are you hale?" He asks.
A flickering series of expressions shutter rapidly over Loki's face, before landing on a scowl. "What are you talking about?" His tone is mocking, derisive. In the past, Thor likely would have taken offence to this and be successfully deterred from pushing further. His years apart from Loki, though, had been filled with regrets of things he should have said, could have done. He isn't about to give up easily and risk Loki closing himself off from Thor again.
The more he looks, the more he becomes certain that there is something Loki is concealing from him. Something feels just a bit… off. What exactly it is, he cannot pinpoint. He purses his lips, ignoring Loki's incredulous stare from where he is sitting on the bed, hands loosely at his side—that's it!
"You're not moving," Thor says loudly, the reason for the feeling of wrongness promptly slotting into place. Loki is always sitting in strange flexible ways, jittering a knee or twisting green sparks around his fingers—it is something he was scolded constantly for as a child. Though he had learned to keep it near unnoticeable, Thor could always tell. Now, Loki is still and half-slumped against the bed frame.
"What?" Pieces are clicking together now—his tense expression, his strange and withdrawn behaviour. Loki always has been the type to hide away and lick his wounds rather than suffer the indignity of other people's help.
Thor takes Loki's arm, turning it back and forth as if the nature of his injury will magically reveal itself on the spot. "Where are you injured?" He demands, "Was it during the battle?" When else would it be, he supposes, but he does not recall seeing his brother take any particularly awful hits.
"What are you—stop that, Thor!" Loki rips his arm fiercely from Thor's grip, glaring fiercely, but with an air of bewilderment.
Thor's fists are tight, jaw tense. "No! I will not leave you to wallow alone in your pain, Loki!" His brother opens his mouth to retort, but he ploughs on, "Why do you refuse to let me help you?"
It is there, as Loki's expression shifts into what can only be described as disbelieving rage, that Thor realises he has made a mistake.
"Refuse?" He says, teeth bared in what could almost be considered a grin, "Me?" He rises to his feet, body held tense and somewhat awkward but the anger winning out over the pain. "I wonder, Thor, why I would not want your help—why I would not come running for your aid like a child?"
Loki is up and in his face, now, finger jabbing into his chest and Thor feels a slight sense of relief that at least it is not a knife. "Tell me, Thor, what use has your help ever been? Where were you when I screamed for you—" He abruptly cuts himself off.
Thor feels something cold wash through his chest. Loki has folded into himself, now, shoulders tight and face carefully blank. He reaches out a careful hand—Loki flinches back, it's a slight movement and well disguised but Thor still sees it. How could he not?
"Loki," he says, gently, entirely unsure of how to progress from here. Loki's words—when I screamed for you—ring in his head.
Loki's head is bowed slightly. "Get out," he says, plain and flat and yet with a barely-detectable tremor in his voice that makes Thor's heart seize.
"Brother," he says next, and how could he miss the way Loki folds into himself. He reaches out with both hands, unsure of what exactly he is going to do.
"Don't," Loki chokes out, stepping back, trembling slightly. "We are—we are not brothers, Odinson," and the words are no more convincing now than they were the first time Loki said them. The words burrow into his chest, but Thor pushes past. A millennium of being Loki's brother has given him a thick skin against jibes and jabs.
Thor reaches out and encloses his brother in his arms, careful not to squeeze or jostle his yet-unknown injury. He is smaller than he was just a few years ago, something that Thor had noticed in an abstract sort of way but not felt. In his arms, it is all the more obvious.
"What has happened to you, Loki," he says rather than asks, not really expecting any answer. Loki is already displaying more vulnerability than he has in the last—what, two hundred years? (Excluding, of course, that one terrible night on the Bifrost.)
Rather than pulling away, Loki's face drops further into Thor's shoulder and he lets out a shuddering breath that is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. "You don't want to know," he mutters, and Thor wants to push but then Loki's arms are coming up tentatively to Thor's back. Perhaps, he hopes, this is a sign. Maybe something is shifting back to how it was, all those years ago. Perhaps, later, Loki will ask for help with his injury. Or he will finally tell Thor what it is that truly happened in that missing year between falling into the Void and appearing on Midgard.
For now, though, this can be enough.