This felt too similar already to that night many years ago—the night that a beaming Loki had come home from the Capitol, and the night that Thor had first used alcohol as a weapon, against himself and those he loved. Their conversation now was too real, and there was too much at stake—there was the entire world and the system it was built on, but there was also their brotherhood on the line, which was the only system Thor personally believed in anymore.
But that was why he had to persist. They belonged to different worlds now, as much as either of them may wish to ignore the fact; occasionally, necessarily, their borders touched. He needed to speak to Loki now without a mask, maybe even without the safeguard of blood and history that made it so easy to ally themselves under the worst circumstances.
"If two could be Reaped, why could not two be spared?" Thor fired back. He stopped in his pacing, then, to press a hand to his forehead, before letting both fall against the cooling glass surface of the window. He had a headache, of course—when he wasn't drinking, he was almost always in recovery—but the move served a dual purpose as he gazed out into the electrified streets of the city he loathed. Where his brother might see order and beauty, Thor could see none. Every intersection, every gridline, mapped the strictures of an impossibly labyrinthine cage. He could feel himself howl in protest against it on the inside, like an animal—after witnessing the Maximoffs' Games, the beast grew louder and more insistent still—but he could not allow it to claw its way to freedom. He would continue to keep it buried, tranquilized.
"It was never my wish for you to play this game," Thor said quietly. "Those from our District would call it selfish of me to say as much. There was no honor in what I did, Loki—I chase it as much as you do. I sometimes doubt that it even exists. What then are we left with, in the death of all that was promised us?"
Thor's hand slipped, his empty glass hanging at his side. "Our hands are stained, and one more sibling tours alone. It is not right. It is not right or honorable what has been done to that girl. Doubtless she will seek you out again; do me a favor, and do not speak to her of glory."