thor odinson isn't wearing his mother's drapes (thundering) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-04-07 15:34:00 |
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For entirely too long, Thor hadn’t realized that his searches on Google had been made public. When he first learned of this glitch that had been affecting Vallo’s Outlander population, he had stopped using Google for anything but the most innocent and basic of questions and didn’t look at what was being sent to all of their phones out of respect. But apparently the damage had been done and queries from days before this had started had started to show up. In the latest batch of them, his searches happened to be among them. And he didn’t realize how damning this Google history had been, until Torunn had posted. He had made it so that he would receive a ping any time his name was mentioned on the network in public and when he saw what the context had been...well, his stomach had dropped. What had been seen by the other Asgardians? The Avengers? The people he had come to know here? It wasn’t too bad, all in all. Anyone that really knew him, knew that he had been going through some things and when Wanda had shown up and Darcy had explained what was going on with her, he had been worried for her as well. So his searches weren’t too damaging by themself. Together, though, they painted a picture of a man that was struggling. They all struggled, he knew that, but the others managed to hide their insecurities and doubts well. He had, once again, failed to do that. But he was surprised when he received a knock at the door not long after that post. It wasn’t Darcy or Fandral, like he had half expected. But Loki. “Brother,” he said, sounding as surprised as he felt. He recovered quickly enough, stepping back and widening the opening of the door. “What brings you here?” He gestured for Loki to enter, not wanting to leave him out in the dark. Loki knew he wasn’t a particularly good brother. That probably came from subtly being pitted against Thor since they were children - oh, you’re both princes, you both have a right to the throne but Thor’s going to get it? It stung more deeply than Loki had ever truly let on, even with his reactions to everything that had happened. Still, Vallo gave him multiple reasons to try. It wasn’t as though he disliked Thor as a general rule, but they had been through a lot. Many things that Loki had considered for a long time to be an unbreachable crevasse in what was left of their relationship, the cracked, rotten foundations of something that as much as he was reluctant to admit, could have been an incredibly powerful leadership - with Loki as an advisor and Thor as the King and Allfather, it was somewhat terrifying to think what they could have achieved had they been on the same side. Had Loki not succumbed to Thanos’ influence with the Mind Stone and the Space Stone as Loki wielded both at once, driving him to a subtle madness that only served to confirm his many slights. He hadn’t felt welcome recently, no - Fandral, Thor and Valkyrie had apparently had something and he felt the same sting of jealousy at their easy camaraderie but reading the searches so clearly from Thor was… odd. Depressing. He’d thought he’d been doing well but apparently that wasn’t the case, which had brought him to Thor’s cottage as soon as he’d noticed them, waving away a book he was holding into a pocket dimension when the door opened. He stepped inside, casting away his cape so that he could take a seat in Thor’s usual spot in his living room, looking up at him with raised eyebrows. He considered being direct, but instead pulled a bag from his pocket, holding it up. “I’ve been attempting to recreate Mother’s tea,” he settled on. “You’re going to test it for me and perhaps we’ll talk.” In another world, in another time, they would have been a powerful pair, true enough. But in this place and now? Well, they all were struggling to find some footing, not just Thor. And for Thor, it wasn’t all bad, honestly, the good days outweigh the not so good ones. Ending Thanos’ life had helped resolve some internal struggles for Thor and stopping the alternate Thanos had centered him once more. He had been fully prepared to go off with the Guardians to see if he could find a new purpose, leaving the kingdom of New Asgard in Valkyrie’s more capable hands. But then he had been brought to Vallo instead and his purpose had disappeared. He and Fandral had spoken about this briefly, once, and he still wracked his brain over it. With so much time on his hands, of course his mind wandered and got dragged back into the mistakes of the past. With his brother, his father, Thanos, and more. Having his brother here now though, where he could hope to make up for his part in his father’s cruel manipulations, it helped. But where did he start? How could he forge a bond that had never existed before? They cared for each other, loved each other even, but did they really know how to act like brothers? With time, he hoped so. And the fact that Loki was here, now, it meant that he cared enough about this too. In his own way. Suppressing the small smile that threatened to break out across his face into something more obnoxious, he raised his eyebrows. “Well then,” he said, unable to stop the tiny sliver of happiness from colouring his words. “By all means, you know where the kitchen is.” He gestured in the direction of it, trying to remember if he even had a tea kettle. Loki did care, despite everything. He rolled his eyes as Thor mentioned the kitchen, as if Loki needed such things - although maybe it was a chance to give Thor a buffer to deal with the clear shock at his sudden appearance. He decided to give him the space instead of just conjuring a teapot full of hot water. He did conjure the teapot, carrying it with him into the kitchen as he set about setting water to boil and measuring out the right amount of tealeaves and additional flowers to add to the pot. It was a few minutes later when he returned to the room, pot and two teacups and saucers hovering above his hand to be carefully set down on Thor’s coffee table. He’d become much more liberal with his magic in Vallo - partially out of laziness, partially because he finally could be without somebody questioning him or teasing him for it. He was a powerful sorcerer, this he knew. He was confident in his abilities, but more confident when they were seen as useful rather than something amusing. “It has to brew for a couple of minutes,” he stated as he took a seat again, folding his arms across his chest as he looked up at Thor. “The palace here is… odd. It’s very almost right, yet it’s wrong in many other ways. A lot of the secret passages are in the wrong place,” he wasn’t sure if Thor wanted to talk, in all honesty. Maybe he should prompt it. When Loki left to make his tea, it gave Thor the opportunity to answer the text he had felt buzzing in his pocket. With thumbs entirely too big for the small screen, he swiped until he saw it was a message from Fandral worrying about him. He spent the time alone he had, going back and forth with the other Asgardian in an attempt to reassure the other man without lying outright, before Loki finally returned with the pot and accompanying cups and saucers. Putting the phone down on the coffee table, he nodded as Loki explained that the tea would take a few more minutes and sat back so he was more comfortable. “I had seen it when the turkeys had attacked it and once before that. The oddness is why I haven’t revisited it yet,” he explained, grateful that this is the subject that Loki landed on. If they never spoke on what Loki had likely seen on the network, Thor would be okay with that. “The feel of it being home and not? It’s confusing.” And entirely too much on top of how else their lives had changed once again. Loki nodded slightly. “And the fact that it doesn’t exist at home any longer,” he hedged. There had to be reasons behind Thor’s… alcoholism, apparently. Was it to do with Valkyrie leaving? That seemed odd, all things considered - not because she wasn’t worth missing, but she wasn’t gone. She could return here at any time, but perhaps Loki was underestimating how close their relationship had been. He sighed, rubbing a hand down his face and glancing over to the teapot, picking it up to pour them both a cup. “A lot of things here are horrendously confusing. At this point, I’m simply stuck with- how do humans put it? Going with the flow?” he rolled his eyes. “It’s one thing after another.” It had been one loss after another, for Thor. He had never properly sat down with Loki and explained what had happened, after Thanos had boarded their ship. But he had lost so many people after that moment, his brother most prominently. And then to have not aimed for Thanos’ head with his axe...he had lost half of the universe for them, irreparably changing life in the known universe. How do you explain all of that to your brother, who was back from the dead? You didn’t. Thor didn’t want to burden Loki with the hopelessness, the guilt he had felt for not having finished Thanos off when he had the chance. The fact that he hadn’t been strong enough...it would live with him forever. So he drank to cope. Thor had been doing so much better, once he had gotten to Vallo. But the reminder that nothing was set in stone, triggered by Valkyrie’s departure, that anyone could be sent away, well, it had hit Thor harder than he thought it would. “I say I’ve come to terms with Asgard no longer existing, but there are days where the nostalgia and the sadness are very much real,” Thor said, his smile not reaching his eyes. New Asgard was home, but it still felt like an miss-sized sweater some days. “But I’m thankful we’re here, still. You, Fandral...I even have the chance to know a daughter of Thor.” Speaking of children...“How goes it with Sleipnir?” “Well. He’s still a horse,” Loki eyed Thor a little warily. He’d seen him saddened before plenty of times, but it usually manifested in a particular kind of… sulking anger. After losing a fight or a battle of some description, after Loki had stabbed him, after their mother- well. Loki associated Thor being sad and hurt with raging stormclouds and fury, not with this morose flatness. He momentarily wondered whether he should do something to the tea to influence his mood - a spell, perhaps. The realisation that it would be a terrible idea was fairly instant and Loki was, once again, left with a problem relating to family that he could not fix with a wave of his hand. “Perhaps we could conjure up a city of our people if we merely think it into existence. Vallo seems to bring the strangest of things from our worlds,” he mused, eyeing Thor a little warily, as if the anger would still be on the way, but he just… didn’t seem to have it in him any longer. It may manifest if somebody seriously hurt Torunn, but regarding people leaving? There were plenty of potential outlets in Vallo, but according to the network, Thor had turned to drink. He knew he had to do something. He knew Thor would do something if he were in the same position, but they were two incredibly different people. This proverbial olive branch had been difficult enough for him to manage, but he sighed, standing up. “Get up, Thor.” Thor had poured himself the tea and had been sipping at it from a cup that looked comically small in his hand, when Loki commanded him to stand. Bossy, Thor thought fondly, though he set his cup down and stood as instructed. “I’m standing. Now what?” He asked, wondering if Loki would take this moment to stab him. It always did happen unexpectedly with no obvious rhyme or reason to it, at least, to Thor’s view of it. But he didn’t tense, merely wondered if he had offended Loki with asking after Sleipnir. Loki looked for a brief moment like he’d rather be doing anything else than attempting to awkwardly be a reasonably not-horrible sibling, but. There happened to be a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like their mother telling him that Thor needed something, even if he had no idea what that something was. He huffed slightly and closed the gap, wrapping his arms around his shoulders in a hug. He actually wasn’t sure when the last time he hugged Thor was. He didn’t particularly know what to do or if he should pull away as quickly as he’d started, but he squeezed him gently. “You don’t have to be alone, unless you insist on being a- depressed hermit,” he murmured. Oh. Oh this was new. Well, not so much new as it was something that they hadn’t done in a very long time. Thor couldn’t even remember the last time Loki had initiated a hug and it caught him by surprise, much more than a knife would have. And if he was tearing up a bit as he raised his arms to return the hug? Well, Loki would have to deal with that. He squeezed his brother tightly, not saying anything for long moments as he just lived in this gesture that Loki had freely offered. When he did speak, he said, “I do not plan to stay a hermit this time, I can promise you that.” Reluctantly, he pulled away from the hug, wiping at his face to chase away the evidence of how emotional this had made him. “You don’t have to worry about me, brother. But thank you for that.” Loki almost made a noise to joke that Thor was crushing him before quickly realising that it wouldn’t be a funny joke - apparently his brain was working with him, for once. He did make a noise regardless even as he squeezed him back and if he leant into the hug a little himself, he absolutely wouldn’t admit to it even under duress. “Yes, well,” he straightened his clothes when Thor finally pulled away from the hug, folding his arms across his chest quickly for something to do with his arms. “You say I don’t need to worry about you, but I’m not sure whether that’s yet another form of deflection from the new master of lies,” he sat back down and picked up his own cup of tea, taking a sip from it. “I could always charm the cottage to explode any bottle of alcohol that comes through the door, you know.” “I don’t have a problem,” Thor protested, sitting back down and not mentioning that he had absolutely felt Loki leaning into that hug. Maybe if he played it cool, Loki would start initiating more affection like this. “And I’m not a master of lies. I just...it’s something that I need to work on, on my own. I didn’t behave all that well, during the Thanos crisis. I didn’t do as a king of Asgard should have. It still haunts me, some days. And the reminder that I could lose you again without warning, well...I was in a dark moment. But no longer. I am coping.” “Forgive me, but I don’t think that a fear of loss is going to be helped by working through it alone,” Loki grimaced a little. “Well- for what it’s worth, which I assume is very little in the grand scheme of the things I’ve done, I have no plans to fake my own death. And if I do- well, I’ll warn you,” he was fairly sure that wasn’t helpful, but as alarming as it was, it was the truth. He had done enough damage and Thor had been through enough loss. As constantly frustrated as Loki was, he did see the merit of at least trying to repair this - and as much as he told himself it was purely to have Thor on his side once again, he knew it wasn’t the case. Thor sighed, smiling somewhat. “It’s worth a lot, thank you.” He honestly couldn’t be sure if Loki would actually live up to that, but hopefully, they wouldn’t ever have to find out. “Just, be present, I guess? That’s all I really need from you, brother.” It’s all he really ever wanted, under the politics and their egos. Because it wasn’t just Loki that had taken things so personally. Thor could fully admit now that he had always been jealous that his mother had favored his brother so obviously. But he was trying to be better about it now, since all either one of them had left of their parents was their memory. “Be present,” he hummed. “Well, what better presence than a giant eight-legged horse, I suppose,” he sighed as he glanced towards the window. Sleipnir was fine, he knew that - he’d been testing various different things since creating his initial post that had failed so spectacularly in the way of filters, but he still felt a long ways off from actually achieving anything in regards to his form. “Well, I’ll- ‘be present’, as you say, but you also need to learn to reach out,” he raised his eyebrows. “I think we’re well past the point of seeing any of this as shameful.” Snorting, Thor looked down at his tea. "Knowing it isn't shameful and believing it are two different things." He felt weak, having these thoughts and feelings. But with time, he hoped for growth in that regard. He picked up his tea again, drinking it. Loki simply sighed at that, watching Thor pick up the cup of tea. “How is it?” he questioned. He was drinking it, but that didn’t necessarily make it good or close - he was fairly sure he was way off the mark, but he’d tried so much tea at this point he barely had a clue. “Good…? But if you’re looking to have something similar to mother’s tea, I don’t think you’ve quite hit on that yet,” Thor said, looking down at the cup in his hand with a sigh. Their mother…”Did I tell you I saw her again? Once? It was when we were trying to get the Infinity Stones again, by traveling through time. She knew I wasn’t the Thor of her time as soon as she saw me.” Of course, he had been a great deal heavier and disheveled. But it had been more than just the visual realization. Loki frowned, his attention certainly grabbed by that statement. “You never did tell me that, no,” he frowned, remembering his own sighting of their mother but that had been here, the week of… ghostly apparitions. He wasn’t entirely sure that she hadn’t just been a figment of his own imagination and a shared hallucination by the people of Vallo in terms of others seeing their loved ones, but it had still been… a comfort. “Of course she would have recognised whether or not you were the same.” “I tried to save her,” Thor admitted, remembering how weak and helpless he had felt in that moment. “She wouldn’t let me. Knew that whatever would happen, was meant to happen. It didn’t make it hurt any less, but seeing her...helped. She was the only reason I followed through on the mission we were on to retrieve the Aether.” Loki sighed softly, setting his cup down. Thor had been through more than he’d pictured and there were many things that Loki wanted to say, but he wasn’t sure they were there yet - or would ever be there, really. “Mother was a very powerful sorceress, but she also- would have understood that changing the past can have detrimental effects on the future. She wouldn’t have wanted to meddle with that, especially not knowing that it would potentially impede the mission that you were on,” he pointed out, gently. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she knew of what was coming, or- at least, had some idea. If you completed your mission, she would have considered that a success in itself,” he hoped this was somewhat reassuring. “She loved you terribly, Thor.” Whether what Loki was speculating was true or not, Thor was comforted somewhat by the thought. "She loved you too, I hope you know that." And Thor had always suspected that she had favored Loki more, but it wasn't something he had ever said to his brother. Because it didn't matter, at least to Thor. They were loved and that was all that counted. "Come on, the mood is too melancholy. Let's order something to eat and watch something ridiculous." |