Who: Thor and Loki What: A cask of ale and two Norse gods in the Statue of Liberty. Where: Statue of Liberty, Liberty Island, New York, Midgard, Marvel Door When: Recently Warnings/Rating: None!
If Loki had full use of his powers, Thor might have been more concerned about meeting his brother like this, but no, the manacles had taken care of that. As he'd told Tony, if his brother had managed to break them, Thor had no doubt that they would know about it as Loki would make his displeasure at being bound so known the realm over.
And as likely as it was for his brother to be irritable, he wanted to assure himself that Loki was no worse for wear after the memories. More than that, the conversation that they'd had while Loki had been in the cage made it clear that no matter how his brother thought himself changed, there was still a bond there. Thor intended to not let it die such an easy death.
The casket of ale was slung over his shoulder as he flew to the top of the statue and into the crown. For once he was not dressed as he normally was in his armor, but in the jeans and shirts he favored when he'd been in New Mexico. Setting Mjolnir down on the floor, the space otherwise empty of anyone else, he set the two mugs he'd brought back on top of the cask. All that was missing now was his brother.
It took Loki longer than Thor to make it to the top of the statue - much longer. Trust his brother to forget entirely that Loki no longer had any quick means to meet him, no method to fly triumphantly into the crown.
When Loki finally came around the top of the stairs into the crown, he was tired, but not out of breath. He still had the constitution of a creature not human, whatever the manacles did to his magic, and he could still climb many flights of stairs without growing entirely winded. Still, he sat down a bit more heavily than usual, after approaching Thor with the caution of one who expected a trick at any moment. Logically, he knew that was more his own modus operandi than Thor’s, but one never knew. Maybe Thor would learn something from Loki’s tricks one of these days.
Loki wore Midgardian clothes, castoffs he’d stole from a home he’d broken into. Locks in this realm were childishly simple to pick. He learned that trick by the time he was four, and on Asgardian locks, no less. He was clad in simple dark jeans and a green long-sleeved shirt that clung to his thin form. The manacles were still there, clinking obtrusively, but he’d managed to hide them with the rest of the decidedly manual disguise - a bright scarf wound through the links of the chain, making them into a sort of strange fashion statement, and dark makeup around his eyes like the young people he’d seen on the street, all in black and heavily painted. He still got stares, but it was just enough to fly under the radar, even with the blasted things on. He unwound the scarf and tossed its green length aside. “Funny timing,” he said, dry as ever. “I could use a drink just now.” He pretended, as he often did, to be surer of himself than he was. After those thing he’d seen in Thor’s mind...it was still difficult to accept that he had mourned him so earnestly. He almost didn’t want to believe it, simply because it didn’t fit. “What an appropriate place to meet,” he said, his emerald eyes flashing up at Thor, a dark brow arching. He slid his mug toward the cask for Thor to pour him a draught. “The crown, that is.”
Make up. Loki was wearing make up. Scars, battle wounds, injuries, none of them made him stare like his brother wearing make up. Loki's eyes had always been bright, piercing even, but with the dark lines around them only drew them out more. It took Thor a minute to realize he was staring and then he quickly shook himself out of it. "You look... different," he said haltingly as he took the mug from Loki.
Different, yes, and still too thin if the tight shirt was anything to go by. The manacles were still on, but Thor had already guessed that they would be. And like Thor, he wasn't dressed in his armor. For the moment, they were nothing more than two men, two brothers alone atop a statue, about to drink fine Asgardian ale.
Opening the spigot, he poured Loki's first and then filled his own mug. It might have been better in a horn, but horns, heights (or more accurately stairs) and ale had never mixed well for him. It might have had something to do with a night of drinking with the Warriors Three and a very long flight of stairs that had instilled the firm believe that horns of ale were best consumed on the ground level. The memory, as painful as it had been, made him smile now as he sat down on the stone floor and took a long swallow of the brew. A quiet rumble of pleasure rolled around in his chest. "I suppose," Thor said, leaning back against the wall, his gaze back on his brother. "Yet we're both in it and we haven't fought yet." Yet being the operative word, but he hadn't asked Loki to come here tonight so they might fight again. For once, Thor wasn't itching for it.
Nor would he dwell on it. "The first time I had ale here on Midgard, I thought they were serving dirty dish water," he said with a laugh. They had coffee and pop tarts, but the finest brews still escaped them. Thor didn't understand it.
Loki rolled his eyes, and rubbed at the smudging lines around his eyes. “Yes, well, without magic to use for a disguise, I had to make do with what was available,” he snapped, irritable that he had to justify it. It was silly, of course, and reminded him a little too much of war paint he had sometimes seen worn by the less civilized races, the frost giants among them, or of a woman’s paints and creams. But a disguise was a disguise, and it had gotten him this far unassailed.
He accepted the ale with a bit of a begrudging look, taking a smaller swallow than his brother. He was right about one thing - though wine had always been his preference, there was no such thing as a good ale in Midgard. “I believe that is because Asgardian draughts would knock out the most hale specimen of the species in one swallow,” Loki pointed out with a smirk. “We are made of stronger stuff, remember.” As for fighting, his lips quirked up. “It’s been thirty seconds,” he said, looking out over the city. This place could have been his, and all the world it rested on. But that, like so many other things, had been ripped from him just when he had his best chance to take it.
"No, it—" Thor started and shook his head, letting out a little laugh. "It's better than when I had to wear it." Though they had put him in a dress and women's make up, he had not made for a pretty woman, not even for Thrym. Nor did he think that his eyes had ever quite looked like Loki's had when they were so outlined in bronze. The black had been far too garish for him, but it fit Loki nicely, though he was no expert on these things.
"It's – it fits," Thor finally fumbled and laughed again, at Loki's reference to humans and their ability to withstand Asgardian drinks. "The only thing stronger was that dwarvish spirit – do you remember it? I stood Mjolnir head up in the stuff and it floated." That should have been warning enough, but he'd been younger then – they all had – and it seemed more like a challenge than something to be wary of. He shuddered at the memory of waking up a week later with a taste like dwarven feet in his mouth. Thor had sworn off it after that – once he'd managed to make it to Asgard from Svartalfheim.
"I felt about as green as your cloak." He grinned and took another sip of his ale. "And we've made it to near a minute." Thor paused and for once chose his words with a bit more care than he was used to as he met Loki's eyes. "Come on." Placing one hand on the floor, he levied himself up again, his mug in his free hand. Grabbing the casket, he lifted it up and fit it into one of the open slats of the crown.
Placing his mug in the slot on the other side of the one he was going to use, he started climbing out. It took a moment to find the right hand holds, but eventually he managed it and lifted himself out of the enclosed room and toward the actual spikes of the crown. Out here, they were facing the sunset instead of the sunrise and he grinned. The spikes were at enough of an angle to rest both cask and mugs against them safely and he held his hand out for the first one.
Loki relaxed a little when Thor chose not to mock him for his disguise. "I would have pointed that out," he said, "Had you chosen to deride me for it." He smirked. "You wore a bit more than makeup around the eyes, as I recall."
"No," Loki said pointedly. "I do not remember it. The last thing I remember of that particular evening was you handing me a horn of the stuff, and then nothing after that." He glanced out the windows of the crown, the turn of his head hiding a very brief, rueful smile. For all his ire over how he'd been treated by Thor and his friends in their youth, there had been good days, when he had very nearly felt like one of them. "I remember waking with some truly horrendous company next to me on a fur. I also remember attempting to convince fa- Odin -" he marked the slip, and brushed past it quickly, "That our absence was due to being knocked out cold by Dwarvish treachery, and that we barely escaped with our lives."
Loki looked up when Thor met his gaze and stood, and he followed, a little warily, the chains clinking yet again as an eternal reminder of what he was, really. Loki watched Thor climb out, brows shooting up. "You're serious?" Normally, the height wouldn't have been an issue at all, but Loki had no way to catch himself if he fell, now. He hesitated, then climbed through. He was not going to appear a coward in front of Thor. Nor did he think Thor would allow him to fall to his death, whatever he felt, whatever lay between them.
He managed to balance the mug, up onto the edge, then grasped it and pulled himself up with lithe, quick ease, despite his faint nerves. Loki settled on the edge, looked down past his dangling feet, then abruptly leaned back, looking at the scenery instead. "One can say this much for the humans," he said. "They learned well from us when it comes to crafting a city. Better than most realms." There was something in the gleaming towers that evoked Asgard, more than a little. Maybe the golden city had come to some Midgardian builder in a dream.
"I dimly remember your success in doing that." Most of what Thor remembered was the taste of dwarven, or perhaps Dark Elf, feet in his mouth. He'd never asked why, or what had happened that led him from Nidavellir to Svartalfheim, but he had been preoccupied with making sure that the contents of his stomach remained inside and not out. After that, he'd simply been grateful to still be alive and back home, even if he swore that the palace was spinning still. It'd taken the better half of the day for that to stop. And at least he hadn't been in a dress again.
Thor watched his brother come up, one hand ready to reach out to Loki, should he start to fall. He made it without issue and once Loki was safely up, Thor dragged the cask into a better position between them and leaned back against one of the spikes. Looking out over the city reminded him of home as well and he smiled to hear Loki speak of it. "We had a larger hand in their development than in other realms." They'd told the humans their stories, gave them their culture, visited them frequently during their years. Even a day of their week was named after him. Asgardian fingers were deep in the pot that was Midgard.
Yet, in other things, they had not influenced the humans at all. Science, for one and technology for another, but magic had never been taught to them either. When they were ready, they would find their own, Thor was sure of it. He took another sip from his mug, one leg stretched out in front of him, the whole of the city before the two of them.
Once they would have come down together, Thor with his lightning and Loki with his magic and wowed the humans, treated them to stories of honor and glory and when they left, another city would be under the sway of Asgard. Not so anymore. He smiled ruefully. "Remember when we would visit here together? They would raise a new city and invite us to see what they had done in our honor." Perhaps not as much in Loki's name, but Thor, ever persistent, still considered his brother one of them.
He finished off his mug and reached to fill it again, his neck stretching a little to see if Loki needed more yet.
"I thought it was admirable, considering the circumstances," Loki said, with the same faint smile. Yes, better days, indeed, when all that was on their collective minds was surviving the present adventure to get the the next one. Well, that had been all on everyone else's mind. But he'd been able to forget sometimes, for a while.
Loki studied the city. "I suppose we did." He polished off his mug, settling it into his lap. He didn't have quite the tolerance to alcohol that Thor did, but it would take more than one mug to make him loose, or act the fool, or fall off this wretched green idol.
"I do remember," Loki said. "They were so...trusting. Like children, savage children with honor and all the thirsts of adults. They hardly grew out of that, as their cultures aged." He looked down toward the base of the statue again, and this time let himself look long, at the churning water that separated the small island from the mainland. "They did so love you," he said, gaze turning inward far away. "The flashes of lightning, the drama of the thunder. They adored it. To them, you had everything in the palm of your hand. Rain, bringing them crops, bringing them life, thunder and lightning to bring pain and destruction to their enemies. Me...I don't know what I meant to them." His eyes raised, lingered on the empire state building, aglow in the late afternoon sunlight. It could have neatly doubled for an Asgardian spire, just then. "Fear, perhaps. Pain. Comedy. The chaos in their lives."
Loki leaned his head back, looking over at Thor. Perhaps it was the beer, or maybe he was simply tired, but he spoke, and without quite so much of his usual bitterness. It was still there, but muted. Even he needed to step away from it, every once in a while, or he truly would go as mad as they all said. "I came here, sometimes, when I needed time away. When I couldn't stand being in the palace a second longer. When there was a tournament that I could not participate in, or a battle I was tactfully not sent to fight. I would go to Midgard, or Svartalfheim or Nidavellir. When I began to learn the paths, I would sometimes walk the tree itself, the spaces between the realms. But those were lonely places. I liked to be lost in the crowd, and Midgard was always best for that. Earth does excel at its crowds."
"I would visit bazaars, or taverns in their great cities, or the museums they built. I watched them. I tinkered with their small lives. I elevated, brought nightmares and dreams, made gods out of men with a few good tricks." He looked past Thor. "No one knew me in the places I went. Sometimes, if I made too much of a show, I would find myself called Devil." He waved a hand, explaining, "The embodiment of evil, to many of their cultures. Bit of a trickster, like me. I suppose I fit the profile well enough." He sat forward a little. "I would warp and shape the lives of these people, talk to them, be amongst them, and they were awed by me or despised me or scorned me and it was on my own merit. Because of who I was, separate of anything more."
Loki leaned back, eyes dulling. "Then, I would go home," he said. "I would call Heimdall to bring me back to Asgard, and the tournament would be over, and you would have won the prize. I would be expected to participate in the celebrations, stand by your side, and there I would be. Only your brother. Only that, nothing more."
Loki reached over to the cask and pulled it open again, bracing it carefully while he poured himself another mug of ale. "Odin defended this realm. You won its heart. They named days after the both of you, and our mother, and the others. And all that may be true, but Midgard has always been mine." He closed the cask, and looked up, eyes sharp. "When I had nowhere else to go, it was my refuge. So it is to be for me now. I will not let you take it for me, however much you feel you are destined to protect its people. They are mine, every soul of them. He lifted the mug to his lips, and smiled, truly, at his next thought. "And they say here of their Devil that he fights a war for their souls."
When they had been but children, they had sat at their father's knee for stories, but at night, Thor had always sought out his brother. Not for his warm rich tones, but Loki could tell a story like no other, and sometimes they had pretended to play out the battles, either with toys and sticks, or by making their hands into shadows on the wall. They had been children at play.
Now, atop the Midgardian monument to freedom, Thor listened again. Unarmored and unadorned, he wondered if it gave them the chance to finally speak as they hadn't done, even when Loki was in the cage. To any eyes, they might have been nothing more than two humans, sitting against the crown, Thor's hammer left in the head of Liberty, Loki's staff in the weapons vault of Asgard.
The bitterness was there, yes, but there was something else in there: passions and old pains, loss and a need to belong. Thor had always belonged on Asgard, with his people, and he had never questioned that. What he heard in his brother's voice was that Loki hadn't felt that way. He felt more at home here, with the humans, but would he protect them?
"If you would protect them, I would have named Midgard yours and left it simply because you desired it," Thor said, his gaze on his brother. "That is our duty, Loki. To guide if we can, to protect when they cannot do it themselves." That was the lesson that had been drilled into Thor's mind by their father.
Lifting up his fresh mug, he took a healthy swallow and then a second. Loki knew all these things, Thor was sure of that, but had bitterness and rage crept so deeply into him that he could no longer remember? He looked away. Whatever Loki felt, Thor could not follow him. His mind was full of such complex labyrinths that he would be lost before he'd managed to figure out which direction he wanted to go.
"You know all these things," he added, still quiet. They had both been taught to rule, but Thor had been stubborn and Odin had been right to keep Asgard from him those months ago. Even now, he wasn't sure that he was ready for it or that Loki was, but without Odin, the choices were limited and he would do the best that he could.
He did not look down, but straight across the water to the city. As much as he loved Midgard and its' people, it would never be Asgard. "I am not here to fight with you. I have had enough of fighting with you, Loki."
Loki listened to his brother's predictably simple and honorable desires for Midgard and its people. "I do not need you to leave it to me," he said, a sharp warning. That was the point, wasn't it? To earn things on his own at last? "Would I protect them?" he asked the wind that buffeted their voices away. "I cannot say." He smiled. "Would I guide them? Undoubtedly." Whether they liked it or not. "You know me.” Begrudging as it was, there was some truth in it. "Even I cannot always predict what I will do next," he said, looking down at his hands.
Abruptly, he laughed. "Even when we were children, I could not be happy simply obeying meekly, even when I knew precisely what trouble it would bring. I wanted disorder, surprise, the unexpected. I wanted to know I had made an impression, made people remember I was more than just a prince, or your brother. But more than that, I wanted to see something fall, be it a face or a golden dish or one of the other children to the ground...I suppose chaos sings most sweetly to me. Could I rein it in to rule? I do not know." His hand, the empty one, trembled slightly. "I sometimes dream of owning this world and ushering it into a golden age, only to kill its figureheads and have its pleasures turn to ash in my mouth, merely for a change. I do not know what I would do if I had this world for my own, but I know desire." He gripped his knee with his hand, looking over at Thor. Those sharp eyes reflected long thought, bitterness, and a little of that emerald edge of madness that never really went away these days. "I know I want it. More perhaps than I have ever wanted anything. And perhaps it would be enough, to own a world of my own. My conqueror's thirst might then be slaked - or I might go on to conquer each of the nine realms, and the worlds I saw beyond them."
"I only know that I will never know how my fate might be changed if I never see the opportunity to act." Loki lifted the mug and drained it in a few long swallows, emptying it and setting it aside. He reached his hands out toward Thor, the thick chain between his wrists swaying with the motion. "If you do not wish to fight with me. If you are my brother, as you claimed to be, you would take these off." There was no denying that his gaze was intense and plainly desperate, practically pained. "I cannot stand them. They make me nothing."
Thor's gaze dropped to the manacles around Loki's pale wrists, the thick chain between them still swaying slightly in the air. He wanted to do what his brother asked. Maybe it was the tone, maybe it was because it was Loki asking him and Thor had never wanted to hurt his brother. He knew it hurt, knew it had to because when he'd lost Mjolnir, it had been the worst type of agony. Everything he believed about himself was gone and he was lost, amongst people he did not know.
Thor had found his way though, Mjolnir was once more his. He had done the same to his brother, but he wasn't sure if Loki had learned a lesson from it at all. Reaching out slowly, he fingered the heavy chain, but it left his fingers aching, like he'd left them exposed and still for too long on Jotunheim. "You are still something," he said quietly, his gaze nearly as pained as Loki's voice when he finally raised it to meet his brother's.
Repeating that they were brothers would not help now, Thor suspected. As much as he hoped it would, he knew better. "You have one of the sharpest wits on all of Asgard, Loki," he said quietly. Thor had often felt it, but he had not been the only one. "And the keenest intellect, perhaps in all the realms." Loki's strength was in his mind, not his body, as much as Thor continually tried to make it so. At least he was capable in a fight. "Something good still remains yet in you, so you are not nothing."
Loki pulled back, his hands falling into his lap, looking back at him. "Something," he said. There was a bit of incredulity, there. He really had thought that would work, and despite the fact that it had been a plea crafted directly to manipulate Thor, to appeal to his blundering feelings of professed love and filial loyalty, for it not to work still stung.
Loki turned away and stood, grasping the edge of one of the peaks in the crown, dark hair buffeted by the strong winds. He leaned forward toward his brother. "I am something. Something you fear." The words were definite, hateful, and sure. There was only one reason that Thor would refuse him now, and there it lay between them - Thor's fear of what he might do. Well, he would show him what it truly meant to be afraid, what it meant to despise. He would meet that expectation. "Your appeal to my ego is appreciated," Loki said, with a bitter curl of his lip, "But useless, for all the good it does me. What do you know of what good is in me? Nothing. But you make your point. Stripped of everything I have ever been, I still have my mind. And you will regret crossing it."
Loki knelt down and slipped clean and quick over the edge of the crown, feet plunging through the open window. He landed neatly on his feet despite the manacles around his wrists, proving that he at least still had his skill at moving with easy, quick grace, even if there was no strength behind it to make it meaningful. Thor had promised to let him go freely. He counted on his guilt to hold him to it as he began making his way down the stairs.
Thor watched him go, knowing that whatever peace they had managed to find, the few stolen moments when they were not enemies was gone now. He would not count Loki as a foe, but he knew, watching his brother's too bright eyes and Loki counted him as such again, the past forgotten. Everything but the fight forgotten.
In another man, or even if Loki had been on his side instead of against him, he would have relished such a thing. Cultivated it. That sort of determination was something to be rewarded in one's war brothers.
He did not give chase, did not even look further than to make sure that Loki was safely inside before he turned again. It wasn't fear that had stayed his hand, but in the breath before pleading with Thor to free him, he'd said he could have been satisfied with Midgard, or he could go on to conquer everything that he knew. It would have been folly to release him then. But if Loki had not said that? If he had turned those green eyes to him instead and pleaded for release? Thor might have. He could have.
"What I regret, brother, is letting you slide so far," he finally said, a quiet confession to the wind.