Who: Thor, Sif, and Loki What: Thor goes in search of answers and finds more than that. When: After this. Before Thor leaves for Nidavellir and Loki's ultimatum. Where: Jotunheim Rating/Warnings: Violence, death of some random Frost Giants, Loki and Thor fighting...
Jotunheim. Land of the Frost Giants, a desolate land now partially destroyed by the Bifrost and Loki. It was Thor's second option for answers. Jotunns were coming up far too much around his brother, from his incomplete coronation to the fight on Midgard and coupled with the Isa rune that his brother had nearly scorched, Thor knew it had something to do with his planet. The only question was why? Was it simply because of the animosity between Frost Giants and Aesir? Perhaps his mother knew, but Thor hadn't asked before departing.
The only person he had asked had been the court historian and the only thing that she could confirm was that the first reference to Loki appeared after the war with Jotunheim. That wasn't wholly unsurprising; it wasn't unknown for warriors to leave for a foreign realm and return with a child they'd fathered while there. Thor was born in much the same way. It would explain why Loki looked so different from them and if his brother was a half giant... Long ago Thor had come to the determination that it didn't matter who his parents were, Thor loved him as a brother all the same.
What she could not answer was why Thor had contacted Sif to meet him here. Jotunn were notoriously conniving and would lie just as soon as tell the truth, but he had his suspicions that they might give up more where it concerned Loki. After all, Laufey had. Thor remembered what the Jotunn had said when they first appeared on Jotunheim. At the time, he'd thought Laufey was lying as the Giants were wont to do and had no clue that he was referencing Loki instead.
This time, Thor knew better. Their band was smaller on this occasion, but Mjolnir was in his hand and Sif was at his side. It wasn't a fight he was in search of, but answers. And as he'd told Sif, it might be something he was after, but Jotunn were as likely to fight as he was.
There was no Loki to keep the peace as they marched on, stopping at the first encampment marked by a ring of jagged ice peaks cutting into a snow dimmed sky.
"Little Asgardian, come back for a fight?" Came the rumble of the largest Jotunn there, bringing out snickers and sneers from his comrades.
"I want to know about Loki." The fight could wait for the answers.
"Laufey's runt?" The response came with more snickers and one of those eerie, snarling smiles from the giant.
Laufey. Not Odin. The pieces were starting to fall into places that Thor didn't like. "Yes."
What they shared was nothing that Thor wanted to hear, but needed to know all the same. Even if it was lies told with frost and snow, it made more sense than what he'd known before. That didn't stop him from sending Mjolnir into the leader's smile, the hammer making a satisfying and distinctive whump-crack as it hit the Jotunn. Thor's inner turmoil was always easier to bear with a good fight.
The Jotunns put up a worthy struggle, long enough for Thor to forget for a few moments that Loki might indeed be the son of the traitorous race and focus solely on the strain of his muscles. Even on Jotunheim it was enough to warm the blood, his air was leaving him in clouds of white once they were done, the bodies of six frost giants littered around them.
Sif would have been lying if she said she wasn't expecting a fight. She'd be also lying if she said she wasn't looking forward to the test. Her recent days were spent in disuse, trapped within a girl who didn't understand the siren song of battle, the rush of blood humming in her ears, the thundering sound of her foes falling before her. When the beat started, the tell tale sound of the hammer, her body moved, knowing the dance well.
Only when the last note ended, the final enemy falling to his side, the ground rumbling under their feet, did her grip on her spear loosen. She looked to the companion at her back, catching her own breath but far from winded. She had only spared him a small glance when he spoke with the Jotunn, her back to his, her attention to the enemies he hadn't faced. Now there was nothing but silence and nothing to distract from what had been revealed.
"Thor, you don't really..." She spared a glance once more to the bodies at their feet. There was so little in common with them and Loki it was staggering, the disbelief blatantly strewn across her brow.
Thor's gaze followed hers. Did he? These creatures were so unlike his brother, massive and blue skinned, ragged with scars and damnable red eyes. But Loki had their cunning, their lying ways and he couldn't ignore that. He'd long suspected that his brother had been fostered by their father, but to think that Loki was a Jotunn? Even a runt?
"I think there is more to my brother than any of us know," he finally said. His gaze lifted to meet hers. They, who were supposed to know him better than any, even Thor who had always counted Loki as being closest to him, closer even than the Warriors Three and Sif and yet... Loki had always had his secrets, hidden in the depths of his green eyes and that wry smile. "There's a reason he continues to rely upon them."
The terrain around them was partially obscured by driving snow, howling through the crags. It made the tundra nigh invisible beyond the hollow where the Jotunn had made their camp, in the shelter of screamingly sharp gray peaks.
From behind them, through the blinding sheet of white, Loki emerged as if he'd found them by chance. He wore his armor, the new armor he'd crafted for himself, jagged diagonal strips of gold and green and black. There was a dark cloak around his shoulders trimmed in sable fur, but no helmet. He carried the gold staff, however, loose at his side, its cruel curves pointed to the ground. His hands, visible where they held it, were bare against the icy air, unchapped, untouched.
Loki had known Thor and Sif were in the realm as soon as they arrived. He’d gotten through the door in the first place on a promise to harm no one, and he had been true to his word, surprisingly. He still had preparations to make, after all. He’d been in his cave, tucked away on one of the high peaks not far from the hollow, when there had been a ripple in space. It was easy to sense the pair of warriors when they arrived - after all, it wasn’t as if there was anything else on that world that shone as brightly as an Asgardian. Loki still held the Cask in his possession, however, and a little of the old power of the barren winter world came back to it whenever he was there. The snows blew hard as they had of old. The Cask had made it delightfully easy, really, to take his vile father’s former position as their king.
Loki spared a glance for the dead Jotunn on the ground, taking in their splayed forms. Once upon a time, the sight of them would have elicited nothing more than simple revulsion. Now there was so much more, his disgust so much deeper felt, mingled with self-loathing and hatred. "Barging into a kingdom under my control and wantonly slaying my subjects is considered bad etiquette," he said. All his old humor was there in the soft rebuke, though he no longer hid his sneer, circling around them, staying close to the rock wall behind. The sight of Sif with Thor wasn't unexpected, but it was new. He hadn’t encountered her since they had all been forced into the bodies of others, though Louis, the fool, had spoken with her. "Still tagging after the king of your heart, I see," he said to her, softly taunting. "Good lap dog that you are. He pats his leg, and you come running. Pathetic."
Loki gestured with the staff to the only other exit from the small clearing, just opposite him, leading out onto the rocky hills and down onto the ice blue plains. "You ought to take your leave. Or have you come to make war again?" he asked, those sharp green eyes pinned to his brother. He smiled, then, sharp at the edges. "Funny, isn't it? You remember how you last came down here, hammer swinging, spoiling for glory! Ready to demolish this world single-handed for the sake of 'Asgard' and your own pride. And yet, it was I who killed Laufey, not you."
Loki's presence was as unexpected here as it had been on Midgard, but there was still the sharp edge of relief that came with seeing his brother well that Thor could not bury. No amount of fighting could, or would, change that. "I wasn't aware you'd taken this realm as your own," he said, stepping away from Sif. If Loki was going to keep the ice wall at his back, better that they split up. If he was going to attack either one of them, it would give the other a chance to get close to him. And he was going to keep his eyes on that damned gold staff. He remembered it from the last time.
"I recall," Thor said, almost thoughtfully, his gaze unwavering from his brother. Even the ice in the air wasn't enough to make him turn his back. "That you were on a different side then. Do you remember how you tried to stop me from coming here then? Or do you only remember that when I said we would take all the glory, you readily agreed?" Everything else that his brother had said had been ignored, cast off simply by his desire to do so.
"This time I came only for answers, but these Jotunn had a strange tale to tell," he added, splaying his arms wide to indicate the bodies around them. "How a son of Asgard, one of Odin's sons was not his." Did Thor believe? Sif had asked him before Loki had shown his pale face and spring bright eyes. He wasn't sure. Whatever Loki told him, he wasn't sure he'd believe either. Once he would have and the loss of that trust cut deeper than the whip his brother had used last time.
Whatever old fondness lingered at the sight of the one Sif used to call a friend fled as Loki started his taunts. An eye roll and a scoff carried away on the wind were his only answer. She had once thought him more clever than that. As Thor talked and moved and Sif mimicked his actions, step for step away, claiming as much ground between them once more as a battlefield. Her eyes kept darting between them, wary of the conversation but unable to not keep an eye for either of them. An action, that was what she was looking for. One step too close, one raise of a weapon. But as they stood and talked she kept her silence, her spear at the ready.
And when Thor asked for the truth, her gaze settled firmly on Loki's face, needing and fearing his answer all the same.
Loki's smile widened as his brother continued talking, as hard and sharp as the curved end of his staff. His feelings on seeing his brother were complex, moreso than he would have willingly admitted. There was the hatred, first, the absolute venom, the bitterness, the desire to see him subjugated. But he had left behind the need to surpass his brother in their father's eyes. There was no longer any point. Asgard was no longer his home, and its people no longer his family. He had no family. And yet, underneath all that, there was a flicker of something else when he saw him, something so tightly wound in with the hate that he couldn't have extracted it if he tried, an emotion he refused to name except as weakness.
"It sometimes amazes me how dense you actually are," Loki said. "I remember how easy it was to trick you into coming. I remember how simple you were then, and how simple you are now, how it only took a few well-placed words to stir your ego, plant the idea that you should come to Jotunheim." His chin tilted up, and he spread his free hand in admittance. "I thought that father would simply chastise you. Perhaps even pass over you entirely, and realize which of his sons was better fit to rule. I knew then, and I know now, that Asgard is doomed under you as a king." That sharp smile turned slightly inward, his words losing more and more of their mirth by the second. "Those who have always been loved, who have failed in nothing, are unfit for leadership. It was your own foolishness that saw you banished, in the end. I just nudged you to make you show the world what an arrogant child you were."
What Thor said next stilled Loki. He had been circling them, but there he stopped, listening, green eyes losing that edge of triumph and rage and becoming more difficult to read. What was it that hid there, fear? Self-loathing? Impossible to say. "Is that more convenient for you?" he asked. "Cutting me off the family tree. Does it help? Would it make you sleep better at night to think I share no blood with you? Would it neatly explain everything I've done, so you could forget everything else?" He stepped forward, slamming the base of the staff into the ground as he leaned toward them both, teeth set, eyes as blazingly fierce and as the worm that encircled Yggdrasil, the one they all used to joke was his son.
There was no denying the things coming out of Loki's mouth. He was simple, yes, he didn't have the labyrinth's in his mind that Loki had in his. One could not get lost in the maze of his thoughts because Thor's thoughts were relatively straightforward. If he was hungry, he ate; if he was tired, he slept; if he was itching for a fight, well, he found an opponent. For every twist Loki had that transmuted thought into psyche, Thor had a straight line. A simple line.
Nor could he deny that he had been arrogant in his superiority. Reckless, taking Asgard to the very brink of war and for what? Answers that had never come. Though it had hurt when his banishment came, to be ignored by Heimdall, to be without friend and family, Thor knew now that it had been the right choice for his father to make. He could not fault Odin. Nor could he truly deny that he was unfit to rule, not because of the Loki's reasons, but it was not in his heart. He was happiest on the field of battle, not in the halls of the Citadel crafting affairs of state. All this Thor knew, and he knew that Asgard would never take the knee to Loki. His brother might frighten them into it, but it would never be done out of respect or love.
Yet, Thor did rule Asgard. Had cleanly taken the throne with Loki upon it and would gladly return it to his father as soon as he saw Odin again. It was not because it was Loki that he had taken it, but because every time he spoke with his brother now, his eyes were starting to look less like the color the leaves turned after a spring rain and more like they burned green with his inner madness. Like they did now, the anger clear in them and something else which Thor could not, or would not, define.
"No," came the abrupt answer, a small shake of his head that sent the flurries clinging to his hair flying off. "I've known since we were boys that we likely shared no blood," Thor admitted. It had been said that Thor resembled Odin as a youth and Thor, in his innocence, had asked who Loki resembled. No answer had come and when he was a little older, he asked to see pictures of their family. Loki resembled no one. He had never told his mother, never asked his father, but he knew then that Loki might not have been his brother in blood. Yet, he was his brother in all other matters and Thor had put the matter aside. Shared blood did not a brother make. "And you are still on the family tree."
No, Loki had never looked like anyone in the royal family, and it had always been a point of contention. He'd heard the whispers over the years, heard the mocking of the other subjects when Thor excelled in every possible way he could not, but he had never put stock in what they'd said. Of course, bitterness had been inculcated in him early, but always because he thought their father was passing over one son for another - never for a moment did he suspect the truth.
It was the forgiveness that maddened him most, he thought. It was the pity in Thor's eyes, the way he looked at him like all his actions were simply the temper tantrum of an impossible brother. Where had that compassion been before? And what understanding it lacked, forgiving him for acts Thor didn't understand, for a motivation he couldn't contemplate, forgiveness out of hand, brushing away what the reasons might be. Willful ignorance in the guise of understanding. He despised it, despised that unconditional love he claimed to have learned on Midgard, where the people had cottoned to him just as quickly and easily as everywhere else. Yes, everyone loved Thor, wherever he did go, however idiotically he behaved, patting his head like an overexcited golden retriever. That easy charm wasn't going to work on him. He knew better.
"Did you?" he asked, those burning green eyes widening. "I couldn't be more proud, you came to a deduction on your own that even I didn't contemplate. Eager to distance yourself, I imagine." To the remark that Loki was still on the family tree, he laughed, short and and low. "Oh, Thor," he said, with an indulgent smile. "You know better than to think that father hasn't scorched me from it. No - I have scorched myself. I have no family. You are not my brother now, and you never have been." He was not seized with pain. He'd moved beyond pain, found hatred in it, and liberated himself by it. He no longer felt any of the anguish, numb now to the sting.
“I advise you to leave this realm, and leave it now.” Loki tipped the staff toward them both. “I would like you both to live to see my endgame, but if I you linger here, I will find it in me to rob myself of that pleasure.”
Thor knew better than to believe his brother wouldn't make good on the threats. He was also, in equal parts, stubborn as a mule and disbelieving Loki would actually kill him. There was no guarantee for Sif though and with a quick nod to her, Thor said, "Go, Sif. I shall be home shortly."
If they fought, it would not be the first time. If his forgiveness was as simple as his desires, his thoughts, his very being, then Thor was not ashamed. Only rarely had he ever understood Loki's machinations without his brother explaining every twist, every dip and rise, every nuance that had been laid into his plans. It was not in him to think as his brother did, though he certainly understood what a temper tantrum looked like. He'd had enough of those over the years, always chorused by thunder, to know one when he saw it. Loki's temper was altogether different, cold where he ran hot, an isolated howl over icy plains where Thor was the summer storm, bright and cracking in the sky. Loki was a whisper of shadow and Thor was the blinding, thunderous light.
Thor, in his anger, sought to fight and Loki, in his, sought to destroy. His temper was every bit as fearsome as Thor's. "I have always been your brother, Loki. You know I have ever wanted you at my side. Some scorched tapestry isn't going to change that." Nor would the fact that they had different fathers, even if one was a Jotunn. If there was ever a time when he was willfully, wantonly ignoring what came from Loki's mouth, it was now. His words did not hurt because Thor did not believe them, he gave them no more importance than the wind over the rocks.
Sif’s sneer was immediate, an incredulous look that he would send her home like a coddled babe. She wasn’t in danger, no more so than before or any of the other countless times they had stood in battle together. She wasn’t afraid, not of Loki and his threats, not of the biting and bleak Jotunheim landscape, not of anything here.
But it was quickly becoming clear that this was a fight between brothers, for brothers they would always be called in her eyes. This was their own battle and she couldn’t fight this for him, either of them, if she wanted to. The scowl remained firmly in place, once directed to the fairer of the two, and then to Loki. “I’ll be waiting,” she promised, simply, her face already turning before she could focus her words on one other. Then she pulled her hood down over her brow and trekked through the snow.
Loki watched Sif go with contempt and a wisp of triumph. He remembered, still, what she’d looked like with her pretty blonde hair, how everyone had admired her. It had been a good trick, taking her hair and then replacing it with black, made from the nothing he’d paid for it. It seemed so long ago, now, when mischief was all it was, and tricks were his trade, his own small way of lashing out while still stepping in line with everyone else.
Loki’s blood ran colder than ever at Thor’s insistence nothing could change what brothers they were. “Yes. At your side. In your shadow.” His back straightened, and the wind slammed faster and higher pitched through the craggy rock around them. “I grew tired of standing there some time ago, Thor. I won’t be going back.”
The bitter burn intensified, glowing white. The fool didn’t even know how his every word of filial affection was insult to injury, pain branded over pain, searing him. No more. Loki would end it now, so they could at least be clear what side they each stood upon.
“And what if we were never brothers at all?” Loki asked, even as some small thing inside him still tried to keep the words from coming out, every inch of the admission like knives driving through him. Numb as he was, he couldn’t forget how the revelation had felt, how it still had its claws dug into him, tearing what was left of him into smaller and smaller pieces. “Not in blood. Not in likeness. What if we didn’t even share the same kind?” The words whipped back on himself twice as hard as they sounded, even as he held his chin up, regal as the king he had been cheated out of becoming, as the rule he had been forced to command for himself by right of his own power. He watched his brother’s face, his gold hair in these cold environs where they would never belong. No, not like Loki, who stood against the ice and cold rock and looked more at home than he had one single day in the warm gold of Asgard. At his side, his fingertips slid over one another, and something glowed softly in his palm, turned away and hidden from sight.
“What then, Thor?” The wind very nearly carried Loki’s words away, and something like a smile, quirked at the edge of his lips, eyes unblinking and wide. If there had ever been any question that whatever had happened to Loki had sent him spiraling into madness, flirting at its iridescent edge, there was no longer. “Would that at last be enough to cut me from the branch? Would you be relieved to know that you would be justified to drop your pointless martyr act, and fight me, now, until one of us, or both of us, is dead?”
Thor, too, watched her go. He knew that once he returned home they would have words and he would need to apologize for sending her away but truly, now it was a fight between brothers. Thor would not involve any more than needed to be involved in this.
It did not escape his notice that the storm amped up around them, but it was secondary to everything else save for his brother. "You preferred the shadows, Loki." The longer and wider his shadow was, the more that Loki could get away with and Thor knew it. Even when they were children, there were several who would not voice their displeasure with Loki as long as Thor was by his side. And Thor, the ever vigilant older brother, did his best to smooth over any hurt feelings caused by Loki's tricks.
This was far beyond any trick. When his brother did not give a denial earlier to the question, the reality that Loki might very well be a Jotunn had settled into his mind. It would explain much, yes, but long ago when Thor had first come to the realization that Loki may not be his brother in blood, he'd dealt with this particular demon. There had always been the possibility that Loki was fathered by Odin on some Jotunn woman and now, to think that Loki might be fully a frost giant and adopted by their father was not a stretch. One afternoon, staring up at the sky, he'd decided that he would love Loki as his brother, regardless of his parentage. The flesh that bore him meant nothing. They: Odin, Frigga, Thor, Balder, Tyr, were Loki's family.
To other eyes, Loki might have looked at home on Jotunheim, but Thor was long accustomed to seeing him amongst the firelight and golden shine of Asgard. For him, Loki was as foreign here as Thor was. The last of his brothers words were whipped away by the wind. "Brotherhood is carried not only in the blood. How many battles have we fought together? How many songs have we sung? How many have been sung in our honor?" Thor countered.
He did not back down from the madness in his brother's eyes, that wicked edge of an unbalanced mind. "You think it matters now?" There was no backing down, but Mjolnir remained still in his right hand. If Loki wanted a fight, he would have to attack first, as he had the last time. "No lie will change what we are, Loki, and what we have always been."
How many battles, yes, and how many songs. How many countless years of watching everyone favor Thor over him, how many years as the second-best, with no chance of ever being his equal. Well, no one would dare compare them now. The songs sung in his honor about intercourse with fillies and having his mouth sewn shut, what tunes those had been! He regripped his staff.
Thor's last insistence that all was still the same was what at last made him snap. No lie? "But it was all lies!" Loki shouted, lashing out with the flicker of energy in his left hand. The spell, loosed from his fingers, whipped up to the rock face above Thor's head. It slipped between the grains of sediment, separating atom from atom, molecule from molecule, cracking it in a neat block, and dropping several tons of rock toward Thor. There was room to dodge, but he'd need to move fast.
All of it, lies. Everything their father had said to him, about being king one day, about being brothers, being equals. He had let Loki live a lie all his life, live the lie that one day the scales would balance out, that they were equal in all things, the golden son and the black spot on the family name. Let him hear everyone say all his life what monsters the Jotunn were, how ugly, how despicable, how repulsive. The lies were so thick he was drowning in them. Cold burst behind his eyes. He would drown Thor, too. In his own blood.
Before Thor could reply that it hadn't all been lies, there was that flash and the signalling crack of breaking ice. With no time for words, he only had enough time to point Mjolnir at his brother and go flying towards him, out from under the waterfall of ice and rock.
This was the language Thor knew. The dive and thrust of battle, the sound of destruction on his heels. Poets had fancy words, they wrote the verses of the songs lauding his strengths, the battles he had fought in with Loki at his side. The wise ones made sure that Thor heard only those ones, not the ones that Loki remembered -- where he was foul and dark, a blemish on the shining presence of Thor. Thor had been happy to share the light with any and all of his friends, but he failed to notice that the light shed on them was only what reflected off him.
Even now, he was the shearing cut of light against the darkness of Jotunheim's skies. Coldness was no longer felt at the rush of blood in his veins, the hope of battle that came with Loki's attack, but with a few scant feet left before he could hit his brother, he dropped Mjolnir into the snow. It would come back to his palm with a single though, an eager leap like that of a blood thirsty hound, but he was counting on the momentum to carry him into Loki.
Loki knew Thor would make it out from under the rock falling toward him from that high peak, that he would never let himself be punished in such an ignoble fashion, but it gave him satisfaction to feel the rock crack under the pull of his magic, and to see Thor dodge out of the way. But Thor cleared the space under the cliff faster than Loki had expected, and he took the hit directly, slamming back into the opposite wall. Nothing broke, for despite his heritage, so soiled, so unlike his brother’s, he had a similarly tough constitution. He hit the wall and rebounded, his staff jumping from his grip. The slam against the sheer rock face made the cliff rumble, and the precarious rock above creaked and slid, though it did not give. Despite the disorienting hit, the force of it slipped him clear from his brother’s grip, and he rolled, reaching out for his staff and calling it to him. No, this would not be so simple for him, not today.
Mjolnir remained in the snow where it had landed for the moment. It could have been a slight, that Thor thought he did not need the hammer to fight with Loki, or the more likely of the two, that this fight was far too personal to him. He wanted the distance closed, wanted to translate his anger and confusion and love through his hands, not with the ringing song of Mjolnir. That his brother slipped from his grip only made him bare his teeth and as soon as his feet were under him again, Thor was launching himself at his brother. In a hand to hand fight, they were at least evenly matched. Though Thor was the stronger of the two, Loki was fleet as a fox and as slippery as an eel on ice.
Loki saw that Thor had left the hammer behind and knew what it meant. Thor thought it was a sign of goodwill even in battle, a sign of his faith that he would not hurt his brother, that his brother would not hurt him. A sign that he meant love and clumsy forgiveness toward him, even after everything that had come between them. But they weren't brothers, and if it took Loki beating him until he screamed, he would prove it.
When Thor came hurtling at him, hands bared, Loki put the staff up between them. There was no stopping Thor's bulk, weightier than his own and guaranteed to take Loki off his feet again if he let him get too close. No, instead Loki struck the staff into the ground, channeling his power into a barrier that would knock his brother back, perhaps give him enough time to pin him. "What do you wish to accomplish today?" he shouted, words snapping like a whip through the cold and the ice, rebounding off the rocks. "What do you think you'll win?"
It was one of the basic laws of the universe: an object in motion will remain in motion at the same speed and direction unless an unbalanced force changes it. Thor was the object in motion and there was no time, no room to stop before he smacked painfully into the barrier and rebounded off the blasted thing, leaving a ringing in his ears to match Loki's words on the rocks and his entire backside in the snow.
"The truth," Thor said, but the words were likely whipped away like snow flurries on this frigid planet. What did he hope to win now? Loki, in his refusal to answer directly, had given Thor his answer to the questions he came here with. The only thing left for Thor to do was to convince his brother to end this madness and come home.
Loki walked over to his brother where he lay on the ground, staff held out before him, pulsing with a violent energy that displaced the air around it in waves. “And now that you have it,” he asked, “How do you feel?” If it hadn’t been for the lack of emotion in the words, for his fixed gaze and the staff held between them, it might almost have seemed like they were back in Asgard again, talking over dinner after a long fight, swapping stories. So casual, yes, like those days, but lined underneath with tightly controlled rage, and cruelty that offered a thousand different ways he might kill him where he lay. He stood like a lost king in the snow, and it required the eye of someone who knew him to see how deeply it stung to even talk about it, how it twisted the knife that learning his true parentage had dug in, for Thor to know.
That blasted staff. Thor was wary of the thing. He was not sure where Loki had gotten it from, but he well remembered the last time he had been at its mercy. Still, he did not rise, but allowed Loki to come closer. It wasn't one of his usual tactics, but Thor was learning that his common ways were only a hindrance to him now. Loki knew him, knew his ways, just as he knew his brother.
For years he had taken Loki at his surface value, the tricks, the words, not knowing the malice that lurked beneath them. Loki's truth lay not in the immediate presentation, not at what you first saw, but what danced around the edges. If you stared at it directly, it was lost. It was not Thor's way of looking at things and he strained to do it now. "The same. I accepted long ago that your parentage did not matter," Thor said quietly. Mules could have taken lessons from him on being stubborn. "You are my brother still and my brother you will always be."
Given the way that his brother had flown into a rage when Thor insisted they were brothers, he expected no less this time and prepared himself for the attack that would surely come.
It would never end. Loki realized that then. This would go on, and on and on, so long as Loki was not what his brother wanted him to be. Things could never be the way they were again. He’d seen too much, knew too much. How could he go back to Asgard to be Thor’s hanger-on again, the less younger brother? No. Thor would always pursue, and Loki would always pull away, because Thor would never be able to offer more than groping understanding. He thought he knew the truth, but if he really understood how Loki had been betrayed and ignored, he wouldn’t ask him to return.
Loki looked down at Thor, mutely studying him for a moment. The penitent, quiet tone, so many miles from the blustering boy he’d grown up with, just added insult to injury. Thor claimed to have changed. Well, Loki had changed as well, and he would never allow himself to stand behind Thor again. “So be it,” he said, pulling the staff back and twisting its curved edge down for a brutal crack to his face if he did not move.
A brutal blow it would have been, if it had landed, but not a mortal one. There was a bare flash of a grin from Thor, brightly gleeful before he was rolling towards his brother. A more perfect attack he couldn't have hoped for. The staff was easy to dodge, even from flat on his back on the frozen surface of the planet. If it caught in the ice, all the better for him. If it didn't and Loki had to rest his weight on it, he could easily knock his brother off his feet and if his brother managed to stop the blow before it touched the surface, Thor was already far too close to his legs. If all else failed, Loki was close enough to kick.
One way or another he'd have his brother on his back like he was. If Loki would not listen when they were feet apart, or worlds apart, perhaps he would listen when there was no space left between them for the words to be twisted and confused.
The staff hit home in the ice, but slid through it like so much wax, and did not stick. Still, the moment's hesitation left him open to attack, though he attempted to pull back in order to dodge. It would likely be futile, however. Even if Thor pinned him, though, he had his ways of getting free.
That hesitation was all the window that Thor needed to spin to his knees and tackle his brother. Even without the added power of being standing, his legs propelling him forward, Thor still hit plenty hard enough and with enough force to carry them both to the icy surface of Jotunheim. There was enough snow to keep them from skidding everywhere, but all Thor truly wanted was to pin his brother, and as soon as they landed, he was scrambling to cover Loki's smaller body with his own. His brother was strong, strong enough to match him, but Thor still carried the greater bulk and weight.
Loki was flattened against the ice by his brother’s bulk, snapping and snarling like a cornered animal. He tensed his body, kicking up as hard as he could, but at the angle he was held down in, it was nearly impossible to get good enough leverage to force him off. He didn’t command his brother to unhand him, because that would be predictable as well as futile, instead he lay suddenly still, staring up at him. Thor wouldn’t kill him, but he might try to hold him until one of his friends came to help cart him away.
Abruptly, he laughed, his head falling back, dark hair stark against the snow and blue ice. “I win,” he said, to the sky beyond. “In the end, I will always win.” He turned that piercing gaze on Thor. “And do you know why, oh brother mine? I win because you will never kill me. You care too much. You’re too attached to your precious reformation to sully it by murdering me. It won’t matter how many thousands I kill, how many of your friends I take from you - you won’t be able to find it in yourself to cut my throat.”
The laughter was surprising. How many times had he heard Loki laugh like that in the past? That freely and not on the heels of some bit of mischief? Though now it was tinged with the madness that had Loki full in its grip. "You think I won't kill you because of how it would make me look?" Thor asked, not only confused but utterly baffled by the suggestion. Realization came on its heels, hot and nearly as baffling as the words already sliced off Loki's tongue. His gaze sought out something, some strand of his brother buried beneath the man he'd become. For his brother, there was no possibility in being forgiven.
"This is not your home, Loki. It is not where you belong. This race lost any claim to you when Laufey abandoned you. " Thor whispered to his brother. This close, there was hardly any space for the wind to carry his words away. "I won't kill you because you are my brother. Step from this reckless path, brother and come home." The look in his eyes spoke only of his tenacity, his sheer determination that they were kin and would always be so.
"No," Loki said, voice low, seeming suddenly vague and tired, even in his rage. It was difficult, as always, to tell what he was thinking. "No, I think you won't kill me because you believe it is right to see me live."
Loki's pupils were blown so wide that his eyes seemed nearly black. The closeness of Thor's body, this position, where he lay pinned beneath him, it brought back a thousand different fights they’d had over the years, grappling with each other. Thor always won, unless Loki used his magic to gain the upper hand, always ended up on the floor, asking with smirking exasperation for his brother to stop gloating and let him stand. Fights of play, those had been. Now the fight was deadly serious, and being let off the ground was no longer inevitable. He was beginning to think Thor would pin him until Yggdrasil died at the roots. "You're right," he said, after a brief silence. "I cannot disagree. I don't belong here, nor do I have any special love in my heart for the race of monstrosities who abandoned me to die.” His mouth quirked up, a touch of wicked satisfaction. “But I have been dearly enjoying showing them what that decision has cost them."
Loki lay still for another moment, studying Thor's face, thinking.
"But yes," Loki said. "Alright. If you have such an intent desire to pull me into the bosom of Asgard again, I can hardly resist the opportunity to show you what a fool you are to think it will be a happy homecoming." He looked down, with the same eye-rolling exasperation of their youth. "Now, may I stand? Or shall we travel horizontal?"
"It is right to see you live, you are my kin," Thor started and stopped himself. He wondered if his brother ever grew tired from the rapid changes in his mood, being tired at one point and wickedly gleeful the next. There were times when he grew tired just watching his brother vacillate between conflicting emotions.
All of that disappeared in the moment that Loki agreed to come home. If he'd been more prudent, been more wary, Thor would have know that Loki gave in far too easily, but the simple soul-deep joy of Loki returning to Asgard was enough to override all of those things. His brother was coming home. Thor's smile looked like it might split his face in half as he climbed up slowly, one hand held out to help his brother up. Even the exasperated look on Loki's face was welcome, familiar, like days past when they would have been fighting together, on the same team as always.
"No, of course not brother!" Thor laughed, happy and carefree, the same look in his eyes as when Odin came to Jotunheim to rescue them and he hoped to finish the Jotuns together. "Mother will be glad to see you. She has missed you, we all have missed you," he started to ramble, his fingers flexing to call Mjolnir back to him.
Loki’s mind moved quickly, and thus vacillated quickly, an endless tangle of dark thought and theory and intense feeling. It was what made him so difficult to predict, and what gave even the smallest slights so much weight in his heart. He worried them, those wounds, and the endless flow of thoughts kept them open, let them fester.
His brother’s expression hit against something inside him. It was something small, something buried beneath the unending anguish, a thread of something he believed dead. He didn’t like it. He refused to acknowledge that such a thing might still live somewhere in his heart. He would not believe that some part of him still wanted to go home, and see everything back the way it was. For living the lie of being Thor’s brother to still be an option.
Loki was mindful of Mjolnir, and the sight of it called him back to himself - one more sign of how their ‘father’ had favored Thor over him, giving him the greatest weapon a father could gift to his son, and leaving Loki with no heirloom of his own. “Not as much as you think, I expect,” he said. The words were injected with all the old flat, quiet exasperation Thor would recognize. He didn’t analyze how much of it was acted, and how much of it was truth. He only knew that he needed to get out of Thor’s presence quickly, before these thoughts had a chance to fester also.
The flatness of the words caught his attention and the brilliance of his smile dimmed. Loki did not believe and it was never more clearly apparent than it was in that simple statement. "We do," he said quietly, voice far warmer than should have been possible on Jotunheim.
If Loki did not believe, well, Thor was absolutely stubborn enough to do anything in his power to ensure that his brother changed his mind. Throwing one broad arm around Loki's shoulder, he wasted no time in pulling his brother's thinner frame into his broad one. "We shall have parades! And a feast in your honor. We shall sing songs and -- games. You enjoyed that jester we had once, did you not? I will make sure they return." Once started, Thor could hardly stop. "We shall have such a celebration that they will sing of it. The Return of Loki, Thor's Brother!" He grinned widely, his free hand gesturing wildly with Mjolnir, pausing only so he could suck in a breath large enough to keep going.
"Once the celebrations have ended, we will begin rebuilding the Bifrost. And it will be-- bigger. We shall make a larger observatory for Heimdall and it will be magnificent. All of Asgard shall know the sons of Odin have returned home!" Only Thor could share joy so easily, so innocently with his brother. Until Loki could believe that his family missed him, Thor would believe twice as much for his brother.
Loki, Thor’s brother. That was what sparked his rage to fire again. No, there would be no returning to Asgard to be hauled in front of the people as a war criminal, the disappointing, mad son, locked up in one of the deep dungeons. Whatever Thor thought, his return was unlikely involve feasts or parades rather than chains and punishment, and even if it did not, what remained in Asgard for him but the throne that rightfully belonged to him, now denied, and a people who despised him?
Pulled tight to Thor’s side, Loki pressed a hand to Thor’s back, in brotherly affection. He turned his face to him, and how gaunt he seemed now, how dark the hollows beneath his eyes. What things he had seen in the worlds beyond worlds remained his knowledge alone, but they did not seem to have helped his sanity.
Loki’s lips quirked up into a small smile, and a spell crept from the fingertips he had pressed to the small of Thor’s back, a wave of green magic that spread fast over his body. It was a spell of paralysis that would have rendered a mortal or even a lesser Asgardian unable to move for months. He hit with it above a joint in Thor’s armor that he knew well. They had fought side beside for too many years for Loki not to know where his weaknesses were.
Loki stepped back and away from Thor, letting him fall back into the snow, craning his long neck over him to look down at the sight he made. “Yes. Thor’s brother. You’re more right than you realize, you know. You don’t think about the things you say, but they are so often true. They would accept me back, perhaps, if you told them they must. After all - you are their king. But I would be no more than Thor’s errant brother, and when Odin arrived home, I would be put in a cage and trotted out occasionally when the interests of the realm demanded my presence, but no more.” He leaned in, and hissed. “Wouldn’t want the crazed ‘brother of Thor’ to ruin the show, after all.”
Loki pulled back, looking down at the bodies of the dead Jotunn, already partially covered by drifts of ice. “That spell will hold for a few minutes on you, perhaps an hour.” He smiled at him, thin, showing teeth. “Try not to freeze.”
He pulled up the hood of his cloak against the snow, deep and dark and hiding his face, and walked out of the hollow, into the scream of the shifting snows, where he at least felt a little at home.
It came too much as a surprise, this betrayal. Others, perhaps even Loki, might have called him foolish for not expecting it from his brother. Was Loki not the God of Mischief? The King of Tricks? The Liesmith, the Silver Tongue? Thor had never paid much attention to the nicknames his brother garnered, they were wide and various. He knew, as the whole family did, what Loki had done to garner those nicknames, but this was far different.
Loki could have killed him.
Loki did not.
Loki paralyzed him and even though it was one of his brother's spells (he had never been able to break one before), he still strained against it, until the spell, either under the strain or due to the blood in his veins, gave and he stumbled forward. Loki had already disappeared from his sight. The first word out of his mouth was a mere whisper of sound, choked and clogged with emotions he could not name.