pirateangelbaby | If We Can't Save the World... [for coldsong]

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loki

If We Can't Save the World... [for coldsong]

[Endgame spoilers, takes place after this thread which also contains spoilers. This thread contains depression/disassociation, panic attacks, alcohol abuse, and suicidal thoughts. Thor is in a very bad place and has many unkind thoughts about himself that are not necessarily true.]

Thor barely notices that they're back on Earth until he finds himself standing on the lawn of the Avengers compound, green and wet and devoid of the smoke and flame that had been devouring the Garden when he left. Stormbreaker remains clenched in forged-onyx fingers, its blade drenched in tacky drying blood that matches the spatter of purple across the front of his armor, and though Thor himself is not wounded in body he still feels as though something has been ripped out of him entirely, leaving little more than a hollow husk of a man behind.

He doesn't remember the others passing him by, but he is alone, the ship's engines ticking quietly as they cool in the soft breeze, and everything seems vague and muddled as if he is not in control of his own senses.

The work is done. It always will be.

There is no going back. They never had a chance, stolen from them days before they arrived, and what's left of Thor's hope lies crumbled into the ash of half the universe and blown away in the wind. The blood of trillions is on his hands, and not even the blood soaking his axe is enough to pay its weregild. The only monster greater than himself lies dead, so what does that make Thor now?

His arm feels as though some other force directs it to rise and call upon the Bifrost, and all he can do is watch as it sweeps him away.

The pillar of rainbow light deposits him neatly outside a Nexus tavern. It doesn't matter which one. Just as long as they have drink strong enough to fill the emptiness that is devouring him alive.

It's hours later when the barkeep finally cuts him off, escorting him firmly to the door with some word of warning or advice that Thor does not care to listen to. He weaves unsteadily on his feet, bracing himself against the blood-crusted axe to keep himself from falling over, and it's not enough, not enough to chase away the sickening slump of the Titan's headless corpse to the floor of the hut, not enough to wash the smell of ash and blood from his nose, not enough to make him forget how it felt to carve a man's neck in half and know that it would do absolutely nothing but add one more body to the sea of corpses he's killed.

Corpses.

Loki.

Thor doesn't manage to raise the axe, but it responds to his call anyway, sending the light of the Bifrost roaring down just outside the protected wards of the cottage elsewhere in the Nexus, a bloom of rainbow in the dark of early night.

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Blood and fire are not prominent in Loki's thoughts this evening. The children are bathed, his clothes have been changed, and he is seated in the common room of the cottage, hands folded in his lap as his illusions scuttle about, checking the houses and apartments where the other refugees are staying. Rindr is mending clothes and and running a humidifier for a baby with the sniffles. Hild has a list of things they need in the hostels. Diaper rash ointment, band-aids, more books, more towels, soap and mild shampoo, and one of the children has been biting the others, hard enough to bruise, and time-outs aren't helping. He'll have to talk to the child directly.

Don't tell them the Jotnarr will get them if they misbehave. His illusion tells Hild with a grimace he can't hide. That...needs to stop, as of now.

And she's profusely apologetic, but he's too tired to soothe her feelings, so he just hushes her and moves on to a new topic.

The light of the Bifrost dances across the windows of the cottage, casting Loki and his shadow in multicolored relief against the far wall. Fǫnn is the only other awake to see it, and she looks up from her reading with wide eyes as he stands. It's not like Thor to make such a loud entrance, and Loki suspects that heralds either good news or very, very bad news, so he gestures to the healer to keep her seat and goes to the door.

"Thor?" He looks out into the night, and he can already smell the blood and the liquor over the ozone.

Damn.

The sudden transition from the lighted exterior of the tavern to the night-dark gloom of the edge of the Wilds is disorienting, the world already determined to rock on its axis around him, and Thor squeezes his eye shut as he waits for everything to stop moving so he can get his bearings, Stormbreaker's bloodied head planted firmly in the soft grasses of the lawn to help keep him upright.

It takes him a moment to realize that his name is being called, the familiar voice echoing through the emptiness in his chest, and Thor wheels around on unsteady legs to find where it's coming from.

"Loki." It's entirely possible that Loki may have never seen Thor this deep in his cups before, the drink making his tongue feel thick in his mouth, face flushed with an uncomfortable warmth. His reputation for holding his liquor is well-earned, but even so, he's usually possessed of the good sense to pace himself even with the strongest drinks, so that the night's revels are not forgotten in the haze of drunkenness.

Not so now.

He traces an unsteady path across the lawn, and there is no grin of triumph on his lips, no spark of satisfied vengeance in his lone blue eye. Thor stops just short of Loki, a wet sheen on his cheek as he stands there, swaying like a tree in a spring breeze. "I avenged you," he slurs, and where once shock had muffled the trauma of what he had borne three weeks ago, now there is a horrible cognizance to it, something devastating creeping up in his throat.

A drunk Thor is an unpredictable Thor, and though they've come a long, long way, though Loki loves this brother from another world, that knowledge combined with the smell of blood makes him hesitate, trying to hide the prickling of fear down his spine.

Thor's tone as he says his brother's name is not angry, though. It's not even particularly loud or aggressive, and Loki takes heart from that, stepping out into the night and closing the door behind him. He waits there for Thor to approach, and in the light that shines from the windows behind him, he can see the tears flooding his brother's cheek.

His tongue freezes to the roof of his mouth. There is nothing that can be said here. Nothing to stanch the bleeding. He steps closer to meet Thor and does the only thing he can, clasping him in his arms and holding on tight. "Brother," he murmurs. "Oh, Thor. Oh, my Brother."

Reflexes slowed by the alcohol, it takes Thor a moment or two before he drops the bloodied axe and lifts his arms to grasp at Loki, leaning heavily into him as if Loki is the only thing keeping him on his feet. The new prosthetic is just as strong as his natural arm, and doesn't shake like the rest of him does, finding purchase in a handful of his brother's shirt.

"I killed him." Even in the depths of what he'd thought were his blackest days, Thor had still thought he would find some redemption in taking the Mad Titan's life. For Loki, for Heimdall, for a thousand murdered Asgardians and every other life Thanos had unjustly ended. For a slaughtered universe, who met their ends because Thor had wanted to gloat first.

He hadn't made that mistake this time. But it made no difference. None at all.

There's a faintly hysterical edge to the laugh that escapes him then, entirely absent of any humor, and choked off as soon as it begins. "I went f'r the head. Like I fuckin' should've. Chopped it... right off. It didn't matter. It didn't matter, Loki."

If Loki hadn't been braced for that lean, he'd have hit the ground at once. As it is, he has to shift position a little to steady himself. Norns help him if Thor collapses; he might actually have to use magic to keep them upright. His own hands shake a little, one coming up to pet Thor's hair. He feels helpless, lost in the face of so much pain.

They can't stay here. If the children wake and overhear, if Solvi or Fonn wakes--

"Sssh," he murmurs. "Ssh. Come away from the house, darling, we don't want to wake the babies."

And if he has to drag Thor a little, he will, making slowly down the gentle slope of the yard and into the quiet, starry darkness. A few dozen yards away there's a little dell, and what lies beyond is some sort of meadow full of long grass, dotted here and there with absurdly tall, striped mushrooms. Whatever flowers grow there have a strong, sweet scent, like gardenias or honeysuckle, and the wind ripples the grass with a soft sound that echoes Loki's shushing.

He sinks to the ground, pulling Thor with him, and for a moment he feels a stab of nostalgia, remembering camping out like this when they were children. The night is warm; they will take no harm from exposure. "Death...doesn't solve anything, does it? I cannot tell you how much I have hungered for vengeance. But I...I don't know, Thor. Some things cannot be fixed, or healed, but only endured."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

He honestly hadn't remembered the children, and it still doesn't quite register, his thoughts muddled and hazy. But Thor does not resist Loki's efforts to relocate him elsewhere. What does it matter where he stands, or what he does? Nothing will change. He no longer has any hope of that. So he staggers along at his brother's side, leaning against him for support, until suddenly they are no longer standing and Thor does not quite remember sitting down in the first place.

Typical. He can forget anything but what he wants to forget most, but it's written into his bones now, carved so deeply that he can feel the voids left behind.

He seems so detached from himself, making no move to move his legs from their ungainly sprawl or straighten his back from the slump he's fallen into, tilting slightly to one side as he listens to Loki with ears that seem stuffed with cotton, or very far away. It's the voice of a dead man, and the flash of memory of his brother dangling by his throat from the Titan's fist has Thor nearly toppling over in his haste to turn his eye on Loki, irrationally afraid that he won't actually be there, not quite reassured even when his fumbling fingers find the edge of Loki's shirt and twist it tight in his grasp.

"I thought... we could use th' Stones. Bring 'em all back." His throat convulses a moment and he isn't sure whether it's in a silenced sob, or suppressing the urge to throw up. "We were... too late. They're gone. F'rever. Days ago."

He'd hoped. He'd hoped, prayed to the Norns and the Allfathers and anyone else who would listen to give him this one chance to mend the sundering of the universe, placed all the faith he had left in the idea that there was still justice to be found for the slain, only to learn that it had all been for absolutely nothing.

The work is done. It always will be.

How is he to endure this? There are no more monsters to slay, no Infinity Stones to gather, no last-minute plan to restore the universe, no goal to set himself to. The last lifeline he'd staked all his hopes on has been torn away and left him holding the tattered end with only darkness opening up beneath him.

"I am sorry," he mutters quietly, an unconscious echo of years ago, sitting in a holding cell in New Mexico as he had blamed himself for the ruin he'd thought he'd brought. How lucky that Thor had been, young and brash and naive, with no real understanding of pain or grief or loss, blaming himself for something that hadn't happened at all. "I-it's my fault."

Thor, seated on the ground, looks like a broken doll, and Loki feels a sudden, unexpected burst of rage, not at Thanos but at Odin, for the way he decided their fate, his and Thor's, in their infancy and groomed them for it at every opportunity. Loki's hurt is that of a son who could not meet his father's expectations. Thor's is that of a son who met them too well, and cannot now tolerate failure.

Norns, what an awful way for him to find out what defeat is like. Loki's lessons were harsh, and there were more of them, but he would not trade now.

He's trying to dredge up something, some final insult for Thanos that might bring Thor out of his head, but he starts when Thor turns to him and grabs his shirt again. His mouth is half open as Thor explains his plan and all thought of a sensible response dies. Because of course that's what Thor thought, and that's what the Avengers thought, because they, like him, have not known the sinking horror of defeat with high stakes. Loki has seen it, tasted it, over and again. And he is not all right, he hurts, he is broken, he is afraid, but he will endure.

Will Thor?

"You thought you could...undo it all?" His voice is weak. "Whoever tried would have been killed, Thor--"

Never mind. They wouldn't have cared if they had known that for a certainty. Thor and his Avenger friends, they would have vied for the opportunity to sacrifice themselves. He used to wonder what it would feel like to be like that. Heroism is a kind of insanity.

But Loki's dismay will do nothing for his brother right now. And he swallows it down, crushes one kind of practicality beneath the imperative for another. Thor is bleeding out, eviscerated. No one but Loki can do triage here.

He raises his hands and cups Thor's face in them, one on either cheekbone. "It's Thanos' fault, Thor. His design, his madness, his brutality. You failed to stop him, but so did a centillion others across the universe."

Thor's response is unfiltered by rational thought or any semblance of self-control, his tongue loosened by the alcohol to voice the poisonous thought that has been growing in him since he held Loki's corpse in his arms and waited for the fire to take them both. "Don' care. Worth 't." It would not have been the first time he has put his life on the line to save others, but this... this is different. Not a noble sacrifice born from the goodness of his too-trusting heart, earning a seat in Valhalla by defense of innocents. A penance, a punishment, offering himself as weregild for those who were murdered by his inaction.

But even that is denied him, now. Too late, always too late. If they had known sooner... if Thor had aimed for the head the first time... if he had at least fallen in battle and died a hero...

If.

He is no hero. He knows that, now. A hero would have found a way to triumph, or turn defeat into something stronger, to find hope for others if not himself. But if Thor is not a hero, what is he? He doesn't know anymore, and his thoughts make the world reel drunkenly on its axis around him, nausea pricking at his stomach. He needs... he needs...

He needs another drink, because he has clearly not had enough. He can still think more clearly than he'd like. Enough that it still hurts, muted though it is.

Enough that the mere mention of the Titan's name makes Thor's heart speed up, uncaring that the monster is dead and gone as a great fist seems to squeeze around his lungs, and all he can see are those hatefully peaceful, triumphant eyes grinning up at him, the smugness of his raspy voice as he'd spoken the words that doomed them all and shattered what was left of Thor's hope. The rest of Loki's words drift past him through the haze, and some strike Thor as deeply as a spear to his chest. Failed. Yes. But his voice doesn't seem to want to cooperate enough to reply, strangled by a need for air that he suddenly isn't getting anymore, and as he stares helplessly at Loki, head held still by hands far steadier than his own, he wonders if this is how his brother had felt in the moments before he'd died.

Perhaps Loki should be shocked by Thor’s quiet pronouncement. He is not. And he hears in it more than the desire to sacrifice himself for the innocent. He hears the unmistakable emotional death-knell of ‘I don’t want to be here any more’. That same bell has tolled for Loki more than once, and now that he looks into his brother’s eyes he sees something so darkly familiar it makes his heart sink. Did his eyes look like that, he wonders, when he let go of Gungnir and tumbled into darkness?

The last words he heard then, before he shed that skin and left that self behind him for good, were Loki, no. First from Odin, then from Thor, and they both meant vastly different things by them. Odin meant that nothing Loki could have done would change, in his eyes, his assessment of what he was good for and the plans he had made for him. Or, at least, that’s what Loki heard. Thor meant something else, a protest born of confusion and loss that he could not find better words for in that instant between intent and action where he saw what his brother was about to do.

But Loki’s had a lot of time to think about what words might have saved him then, and utters them now: “Thor. Thor, come back.”

The hands grasping his face move to smooth his hair. He can tell he’s struggling to breathe, doesn’t know what he’ll do if he passes out or runs or sinks into catatonia.

“Brother, I need you. Please, please come back.”

Come back, Loki says, like a call meant to pierce thick fog and guide a lost wanderer home. Is that what Thor is, now? He certainly feels lost, drowning in an ocean where he cannot see the shore, dread and grief and panic pulling him down at every turn. The haze of inebriation muffles the sharp edges, throwing him further off-balance, with no idea which way will lead him to the sun, if it even still exists.

Loki had promised that it would shine on them again. But if there is a way, then Thor cannot see it. Not anymore.

Vaguely, he recognizes what's happening to him, something he'd endured weeks ago when he'd seen another dead man walking, but it feels no less dire now, as if Death itself is coming to claim him. Surrender is not in my nature, he'd said once, but is it surrender to be beaten unto death, whether by fists or his own body rebelling against him? He craves it and fears it all at once, and perhaps it is only the raw animal instinct of survival that makes him reach desperately for anything to keep him from plummeting further into its clutches.

His heart thunders in his ears and there's a distant echo somewhere in the skies above. He feels unmoored, at the mercy of a tempest that refuses to heed his command, his brother's voice as the steady pulse of a lighthouse to guide him toward safe harbor. It's a struggle to find any semblance of calm, to force his lungs to fill and his heart to slow its breakneck pace, and it's several long minutes before he seems to make any headway at all. But slowly, little by little, the iron bands around his chest loosen enough to let him breathe again, and he leans heavily into his brother's touch as if it is all that keeps him from flying apart. Maybe he already has.

"'m sorry," he says, once his voice obeys him again, though he doesn't know what he is apologizing for. Anything. Everything. It's not enough. But he has already given everything he has left, and in the end it had not mattered. Trillions are still dead, and always will be, and Thor does not know how to endure it.

Loki’s hands are cool, and getting cooler as he strokes his brother’s hair. Only now has it occurred to him that any of Thor’s distress might be related to seeing in him the image of his dead brother. His real brother, a mean thought whispers in the back of his skull, but then since that same unpleasant neuron used to say just that sort of thing in reference to Thor of his own world after learning of his adoption, Loki shoves it aside without fretting overmuch. Gradually, he lets his skin darken, eyes going from green to crimson. In the fitful starlight there is something subtly iridescent about the Jotun skin.

And he watches for Thor’s reaction, ready to shift again if the look of the Frost Giant triggers anger or fear. If he’s lucky, he hopes, it will only help him to differentiate the Loki he is seeing from the one he is mourning. Either way, his voice is the same, murmuring only: “Ssh, Thor, I’m here. Come back. I am here.”
He glances upwards at the flicker of the storm, feeling mixed relief and chagrin. He doesn’t want to be rained on just now, but at least Thor retains his connection to the element that is his signature. It makes Loki think about his own panic attack, the shaking of the ground. It makes him think about lightning.

No one is here to see what they do, and if Thor needs to lean into him, Loki will not object. He encourages it, even, coaxing that heavy head down against his shoulder. This is what they have, the hand they have been dealt, and he would be hard-pressed to say it’s sweet, but there is some mercy in it, even if Thor cannot yet see that.

“I’ve had that, too,” he tells him quietly when he apologizes. His voice quivers like a bowstring, but his hands are gentle and slow and easy, holding onto Thor’s shoulders. “I made the earth quake. No one was harmed. I’m not sure anyone but my alternate noticed.”

This time, at least. He can’t be sure it won’t happen again.

He takes Thor’s hand and places it on its back on his knee, reaches to the ground beside them, and claws up a little handful of dirt, placing it in his palm. “Have you ever thought about how when your lightning strikes, it delivers nitrogen to the soil? Even your most terrible weapon, my Brother, feeds the Earth and makes the plants grow.”

“You have seen too much loss, and too much violence. And too little birth and growth. I know you’re lost. You should seek yourself in the ground, and that which grows from it. Be buried, but know you must rise up again some day."

If anything, Thor seems not to notice the change in the grips of the panic attack that’s all but paralyzed him, vision blurred by tears and drunkenness both until Loki is just a smear of color that darkens to better match the night, but the cooler touch is a shock to his senses, one that serves as an anchor in the storm so he does not capsize entirely. Even once it passes, and his vision clears enough to see that Loki has shed his Aesir skin, still he does not pull away, and in this moment he has never cared less that his brother is a Jotun at all. Only that he is here, when Thor has no one else left.

Though the thunder rumbles again several times in his distress, no rain threatens to fall, the squall that Thor has inadvertently called passing by harmlessly just to the east, given a life of its own as it churns and flashes brightly in the distance. Thor pays it little mind, too deeply sunk into himself to care about that which he once took great joy in creating, trapped by the cage of his failure. But he clings to Loki even so, blotting his tears against his brother’s shoulder until the trembling eases.

It should be horrible to learn that this too is something that they share, a weakness that no one should have to suffer even once, wounds of the mind that cut far deeper than any blade. But there is a twisted sort of comfort in knowing that he is not alone even here, that even if they are both lost then they are lost together. Thor cannot hope for answers, for an easing of his pain, for some route back to the light that he has left behind. He has no hope left, severed from him as neatly as his arm. But he does have Loki. It does not matter which one, not anymore. Not when he knows that his brother is dead, and this time, he will not return. This one is his brother, in the only way left that matters.

He says nothing at first, but listens though the dull ache in his head, his head bowed as if under a terrible weight. He doesn’t need to look up to watch his brother turn over Thor’s hand, as if it does not belong to him anymore, and nestle a lump of rich soil in his real palm. You’re a destroyer, Odinson, Heimdall had said in his vision all those years ago, and that has never been more true than now. But Loki has remembered what Thor has not, what he struggles to accept as the truth, even though he can feel the tender potential of the damp earth between his fingers as easily as the storm that pulls at his senses from leagues away. He is a god of thunder and war, but also life.

Slowly, as if in a daze, he worries the dirt in between his fingers, grinding its richness into the swirls of his fingerprints. “You want me to... bury myself?” he asks, uncertain, and can’t help but think of the Midgardian customs of entombing their dead. And though it seems right for the way his soul has died and left his body to carry on without it, even his muddled mind does not think that is what Loki meant.

He could have asked for reassurance, himself, Loki supposes. Could have confessed all that happened to him, before it happened to Thor. Maybe it would not have changed things, maybe it would have changed them for the worse, but there have been times he ached for comfort. Coughed and swallowed around the lingering choking sensation in his neck. Watched the sky for signs of the Sanctuary II.

Thor might not have understood fully, but he wouldn't have been harsh. Same with others. Harley, at least, would not hesitate to hold him.

Loki's tendency is always to cover up that which wounds him worst. Maybe he has a few hidden, dark secrets to face aside from his Jotun shape.

"I don't know how to make it not happen," he says. "I'm not sure...if I should, for myself. I..."

He trails off, chin tucked lightly against Thor's hair. He can't just go saying he thinks he might deserve the pain. Not when Thor is in the same state, or worse.

"I won't tell you what not to do," he says instead. "But I don't think drink will help. I don't think anything will, except time."

He clasps his hand over Thor's, the one that holds the earth in it. "I want you to remember that the Universe is a wheel, and despite how it feels to you now, it is still turning. Autumn comes, and the flowers die. Winter comes, and with it darkness. The wheel turns again, and the seeds begin to sprout once more."

"Bury your heart. Let it die, and wait for the wheel to turn again."

He may be speaking too metaphorically for a drunken man, but if he has to repeat it all over later, he will.

Loki finds it easiest, sometimes, to think in metaphors.

"But you are not merely a warrior or a king. You are a god of Fertility. Remember that. Touch the earth and make the fields bloom. Make the fish multiply in the sea. Be Thor. You are still needed."

Odin's sons have often lived their lives in contrast, whether complementary or contradictory, opposite sides of a coin. Where Loki hides his heart under layers, Thor has always worn his openly, unguarded, vulnerable. Perhaps this was inevitable, then, for him to be wounded so deeply, his very self cut down again and again until it seems nothing remains. The Norns must have a sense of irony that both of them should be here now, as they are, meeting in the middle with a terrible shared understanding of how it is to be unmade. To look at what they've done, or failed to do, and feel as though they do not deserve mercy or lightness of heart.

Thor thinks of balance and cosmic scales, and shudders, forcing it away before the stranglehold on his chest can return.

Instead he listens as best he can, Loki's hold on him the only thing keeping him steady, and tries to believe it. "Can't hurt," he mutters, because the idea of trying to endure decades - maybe centuries, or millennia - of this torture without anything to dull the sharp edges is terrifying at best. There are many things that Thor has feared over his long life, despite the brave warrior he has projected as himself to the universe, but never has he faced a foe as frightening as his own self. Something he cannot slay or escape, except perhaps in death, and even then he does not know what awaits him on the other side. Hel may be no more merciful, in the end, and Thor no longer believes he will see Valhalla at all.

Loki's words make little sense to him now, heartsick and headsick both, the fog inside himself muddying the path to understanding. The poison of his own self-doubt runs deep, a thorny root ensnaring and strangling what was once his confidence. Even if his brother believes in him, right now Thor does not share it. But it's nice to pretend, even if only for a moment, that there is still a use for Thor Odinson after all.

He closes his fist beneath Loki's, the soft grit molding to the creases of his palm, shaped to fit his touch. "Burned th' field," he mumbles, half to himself rather than his brother, and he can still smell the smoke, faint though it is now. "Gotta... start over." It's a daunting task, even for a god. He can't rebuild a world, can't replace what was lost and grow it exactly as it was. Where would he even start? Is it better to try and fail, or to not try at all? He doesn't know anymore, but his head is spinning too much to think on it too deeply, not right now.

"Wildfires also put nutrients in the soil," he reminds Thor, and buries his face in his hair for a moment. Shame it's still so short. He misses the long, braided locks. Nostalgia is dangerous. Regret is even more so.

"You cannot anesthetize this pain, Brother. Not fully. You can delay it, maybe soften the sharpest edges, but sooner or later, it will sink its claws back into you."

Sigh. "And I will be there, doing what I can to stop it, but my strength has limits."

And he's run out of advice, really. He just wants to stay here and cling, and wait, and hope that Thor will rally himself somehow. There's a long, pensive silence before he comes up with one last thing to offer:

"You have given me what the Thor from my world did not. Could not. I think he merely ran out of time, but...you have given me your acceptance. I never thought to have that, after all we have been through and all I have done. I don't want to lose you, Thor. You have no idea how important you are to me."

Or maybe he does now, because Loki never talks like this, from the heart. And he sounds awkward even as he does so, words stilted and shy on his silver tongue, but that's just stronger indicator of their sincerity.

"I need you, Brother."

Edited (needed a blue icon) 2019-05-31 00:53 (UTC)

Some of what Loki has said may yet reach Thor, once he has a chance to reflect on what he remembers of it with a more sober eye. Wounds such as these cannot be healed overnight, as both of them know too unfortunately well, and stubbornness is sometimes more a curse than a blessing, particular when it comes to Thor. But just as thorns have grown in his heart and bled him to the core, something else may take root, if given the time and nurturing.

For now, Thor can think of nothing else to do but hold tight to his brother, the only thing keeping him from drowning in the dark. If Thor was entirely alone, if he did not have anyone to turn to in his darkest hour, he is at a loss as to what he would do at all.

Loki's quiet confession brings an undignified lump to his throat, Thor's misery twisting his expression into guilt. He had not thought for a moment what Loki would do without him. What could his brother possibly need a failure like him for? Maybe it is just another pretty lie, meant to keep Thor in the land of the living, except he cannot imagine what secret motive his brother might have other than what he's said, Thor's mind in a fog of his own making. And he is tired of fighting this, too. He heaves out a deep, heavy sigh and gives a wobbly nod against Loki's shoulder. "I don'... don't wanna lose you either. Not... not again."

That thought, if nothing else, is what pushes him ever so slightly back onto the precipice whose edge has crumbled beneath him, a small handhold arresting his headlong descent into something he would not come back from. Maybe it is selfish of him to want to see Loki again, a comfort he does not deserve, but if Thor must continue to draw breath after painful breath, then he would cling to this one thing with all the might he has left. He will not see his brother on the other side, nor his mother or father or any of his friends, and that eternal loneliness may be the only thing frightening enough to match his desire for the pain to stop, at least for now.

A thought drifts across the surface of Thor's mind, and he gives it voice before he thinks twice. "Does 't... give you peace? With Th- him dead." It certainly hadn't brought any to Thor, only added one more name to the list of people he has slain. But if not killing the Titan sooner was a mistake, he needs to know if today made a difference. For Loki, for anyone.

Loki is halfway just throwing things at the wall and seeing what will stick. Not that any of it is insincere. He's meant every word of it, even the more vague and philosophical advice. It's just hard to know what will sink in, and when. If Thor recalls any of it later, if any of it helped, that's enough.

He ruffles the hair at the back of Thor's neck idly, looking up at the sky. The stars that were hidden behind the brief storm clouds are becoming visible again, fitful and watery and distant. What Thor has seen, what Loki is aware of, the halving of the entire Universe, is something too brutal to be borne. People die all the time. Civilizations fall, even planets collapse, but this is so big. It's hard to know if anything will comfort, in the end, but regardless, they still have to try.

He will try.

His arms give Thor a little squeeze when he admits he doesn't want to lose Loki again, and he nods against him. And he thinks there is nothing more to be said until Thor asks that terrible question. Part of him thinks he should say no, that he knows damn well vengeance is a thing that looks appealing from outside, but falls apart when touched. But something tells him to be honest this time, not to say what he thinks Thor needs to know for the future.

"Yes," he says in a strangled voice. "It does. A little. What they did to me--oh, Thor, I hope you never know what they did to me, before."

He can't quite suppress the shudder that runs through him, nor the icy rage that colors his voice next: "He was a thug, with delusions of grandeur and more power than any being should have. But nothing more than a violent brute playing at being a god. Now he will never harm anyone else, and whatever afterlife he's found in, may he be faced with the truth about himself for eternity."

It has occurred to Thor to wonder, before, what horrors the Titan and his terrible Children had done to Loki when he was in their cruel clutches. Once, he'd thought he wanted to know, to truly understand what they had done to torture and twist the brother he had known into their thrall, to make sense of it even if there was nothing he'd thought he could do to heal his brother of his madness.

And now here they sit together, Thor freshly broken by the same monster's hand, and knows more of that madness than he'd ever hoped to learn.

You will never be a god, Loki had said, with the last breath he would ever draw, weakly forced through the stranglehold that had crunched bone and cut the thread of his life in an instant. It has haunted Thor ever since, one of many things that have kept restful sleep at bay for weeks now. Hearing it again now, Loki's voice strong and cold and angry... though the words are similar, it holds none of the frailty and desperate defiance that Thor had heard that day, and he grasps at it as tightly as he holds onto his brother in body.

It may not be something that brings him comfort later. But right now, it matters. "Good," he answers, and though he feels he may never find true peace again, it eases that horrible ache by the smallest fraction. Thor was a hero, once. Even if he can no longer claim that, if his own actions have brought him nothing but agony and bitter regret, he has done something right, no matter how small. Maybe that will help, when he closes his eye and sees the Titan's smiling face before the axe had bitten through his neck, far too late to save anyone. Even if Thor can feel nothing for himself, to know that it matters to Loki, and the others slain by his hand... maybe that can be enough. "H-he's gone. And... all 's Children."

It's difficult for him to tell if he feels any more sober than he was when he arrived, how much of his stricken mind is muffled by drink and how much of it is simply because he has finally crumbled under the weight of everything that has been lost, but Thor is a little calmer now, at least. Quieter. After a long moment, he follows Loki's gaze upward, the stars little more than blurred lights above. Not the sun. But that is not a question Thor can bear to ask, not now, so he does not say anything, letting the silence of the night wrap around them like a cloak. Except it isn't, not truly, with the sound of wind rustling the long grasses and the leaves on the trees, the small chirping of insects, the soft exhale of his brother's breath. Things that endure in the dark, even after the sun has gone away.

Some day Loki might want to talk about that in more detail, to exorcise the lingering demons. About hooks and blades, dark magic and heated microneedles, pain and defiance and humiliation, and a slow inexorable breakdown of everything he thought he was.

Ah, the Children of Thanos. In a way, it was Odin that saved that last tiny sliver of self that Loki never lost. I need no more false fathers, he told them, and held fast to it over months of horror. He was never a child of Thanos and was never going to be. Sometimes he wonders if Odin knew somehow, and his cruelty was training, in preparation for something far worse. But his behavior didn't bear that out, not entirely.

Odin remains an enigma. Loki knows he was flawed, but not where the flaws ended and the wisdom began. Thanos, on the other hand, was all too easy to understand. Clever, a master strategist, depthless in his resolution and ruthlessness, and secretly more of a sadist than he ever wanted to admit. But not complicated. And not a god.

These things are too intricate and painful to discuss right now, though. Loki can feel a shiver in the ground below his feet and knows he's on dangerous territory. He closes his eyes and listens to Thor's breathing, his heartbeat, the sound of his voice when he says good, and feels stable again.

"He's gone," he repeats, and lets real relief and gratitude color his voice. In his own world, things may not have played out the same, but it seems likely his version of Thor would not rest until Thanos was dead, either, even if the results were as bitter and hollow after. And now the implications really begin to sink in.

"He's gone," he says again, and realizes the lurking terror that the Mad Titan might still come back for him is utterly irrelevant now. "...and if another version from another world were to come, you would stand with me."

Loki is often, in his eccentric way, a fatalist. He never believed any of the damage done by Thanos could be undone, not in him, not in the wider Universe. He always believed that the Other's promise you will long for something as sweet as pain would be fulfilled sooner or later, somehow, in the least expected, darkest fashion possible.

The scars will remain, and they will ache again. He will wake up in the night thinking he hears Maw's voice calling him to stand and account for himself, or Proxima Midnight singing her awful death-songs outside his window. But now, for the first time in a long, long while, he is safe.

If Thor is a hero to no one else, not even himself, he can rest assured he is one to Loki. "I love you, Brother," he whispers, and doesn't much care that his cheeks are getting wet with tears.

The way Loki says it is so confident, so reassured, that maybe that is the only reason why the thought of another Mad Titan can pass by Thor without triggering another descent into panic. He does not truly know what he would do if such a thing were to happen, if his own sanity could endure another confrontation, even if his axe could stop the monster before he would kill again. Three times he's failed, and half a universe lies in ash and ruin because of it. Would Thor fight? Probably. But out of terror and guilt, and a desperation not to lose the only family he has left.

Thor has lost Loki three times, as well, each more horrific than the last. Despite his promises, despite his fear of spending eternity alone, Thor would not hesitate to sacrifice his life to save his brother.

He does not want to think of these things, not now, and Thor ignores the way the earth seems to sway under him for a moment. The only thing that matters is Loki, who is here despite everything, the calm center of the storm. Not even his tears can change that, or the whispered affirmation of what Thor has always wanted to hear, something he needs now more than he ever has.

There are so many things he wants to say. I've been an awful brother to you. Or you shouldn't love someone like me. Or you've done so much for me, and I have done so little to repay you. But Thor says none of these things, because at the end of everything, he is selfish after all and wants to pretend that he is more than he knows he is. To pretend he's still worthy, somehow. "Love you too," he echoes, just as quietly, and if he cannot change the past, then he wishes that this moment would not end. It is not hope, but it is comfort nonetheless, deserved or not.

For what might be the first time since his arrival here, it occurs to Thor that he has probably interrupted whatever Loki had been doing this evening. A sign that he's sobering up, maybe, or just a lucky thought straying long enough to be captured and realized. "Sorry. For... f'r not calling first."

Loki is safe, and he is free, and it took this moment to make him realize that he was neither of the above before. Like having a chronic wound that aches all the time, only it aches more sometimes, so you forget that the constant lower level of pain exists. Unless it vanishes entirely.

He sighs shakily, wishing he could convey the feeling, wishing it could have come without so much collateral damage to Thor, not to mention the rest of the universe. But in the end, if you can do nothing about the bitter, you can still enjoy the sweet, and Loki is selfish. He remains quiet for a long while, letting Thor process things, unaware what he's thinking. And those thoughts of his brother's would shock him, if he were aware. He's used to being the one that feels lesser and unworthy, the bad brother, the wicked son. He's made a career out of it, and he's finally begun to embrace it on his own terms over the past winter. If he knew, he might chide Thor for trying to steal his schtick, but it's not a good time for that kind of joke.

Love and love-you-too are more fitting for this moment.

"Eheheh," he chuckles softly. "Thor, you are always welcome, and you need not call. I just didn't want you to wake the children. You've been known to be boisterous when you've been drinking."

Sure, he'll pretend that's the reason, not the bloodied axe and the obvious breakdown. "You'll stay the night now, though. You must. You're likely to need a hangover cure from Fǫnn in the morning. But if you want to stay out here...it's a nice night for it."

He can make a few pillows and a blanket exist. The stars are a pretty canopy.

Though Thor has gotten wiser to Loki's tricks and honeyed words in recent years, he is too distraught and inebriated to do much else but take his brother's words at face value. If he had woken the children... if they had seen him like this... they would be afraid of him, and though they would be right to be, they have already suffered too much without their king in their nightmares, too. "Oh. I... I didn't think." And that's his problem, isn't it? He let his heart rule over his head, and now look where it has led.

But the children are still safe in their beds, so they are spared this tonight. And now that Thor is reminded of them, he's reluctant to encroach on their safe haven. He has no idea if he will tolerate sleep, not for a long time, but if he does, nightmares will certainly follow. And while the Avengers have become quite used to ignoring each others' screams in the night, perhaps the children will not take to it as easily.

It has been a long time since Thor has spent the night outside, with nothing but sky above his head and the shift of the weather in his blood, and the rich earth beneath his back. Maybe he does not deserve to be soothed so, but it is not as if he can be further disgraced than he is. And he does not know if he could bear to go back to the Avengers compound now, with none but himself and his own horrors for company.

More than anything, Thor wants to go home. To return to the golden Realm Eternal as it was, when nothing had hurt and everything was glorious, no matter that it had turned out to be little more than a sham in the end. To return to a time when he could go to his parents for counsel at a whim, when he didn't need to worry about preserving the tattered remnant of his people, when the gravest fear he had was looking foolish in front of his friends. Innocent. Naive.

But that Asgard is gone. And it always will be, no matter how much Thor wishes it were not so.

"Asgard is not a place," he whispers, more to himself than to Loki, and tries to believe it again. What is left of Asgard is here, save for those still out of reach. There is nowhere else for him to go, not yet. No one else left who matters. "I-I want to stay."

"No, love, most people forget how to think when they've had as much to drink as you evidently have." Loki's voice is chiding, but gentle. Liquor is not his vice. It never has been, for some reason. Neither in joy, nor in sorrow. He'll try a little to take the edge off now and again, and on Sakaar he was game to experiment, but in general he licks his wounds with a sober tongue.

Thor has always had an appetite for drink, though, appropriate to an Asgardian warrior. To see it turn on him so is not pleasant, but Loki isn't sure what to do about it. What other coping mechanism can he possibly offer, save work?

So that's the last of his reproach for the evening. He's already conjuring up a woolen camp blanket and a couple pillows, even as Thor broods and tries to convince himself.

"I'm glad you want to stay," he says, throwing the blanket across Thor's lap. "Because if you did not, I would have to bind your ankles to the nearest tree and keep you here against your will."

"I'll stay out with you," he adds, more gently. "It is a pretty night, and the stars are stars for once. It isn't always so in the Nexus. I've come out and looked skyward before, and they've winked at me."

He sinks back onto his own pillow, crossing his ankles lazily, but hooks his arm through Thor's as if to make sure he stays. "Come earlier in the evening next time, and you can watch the children catch fireflies. Agnarr's very good at it. Very gentle."

"They're good children. They give me hope. They might give you some, as well, when you're ready to look for it again."

He certainly cannot argue with that, the truth of it self-evident in the way it does not even occur to Thor to try to get out of his armor before sinking back against the ground, something his neck and back may not thank him for in the morning, though the impending hangover will undoubtedly overshadow them both. He's miserable enough already, and Loki's suggestion of restraining him - jest or not - reminds him of the last minutes aboard the Statesman, bound so tightly he could not even scream. But here he has Loki, and when his brother reaches out as if to hold him there, Thor grasps onto him in return, fingers seeking out Loki's wrist and the gentle flutter of his pulse that lies there.

His brother's words wash over him like small, gentle waves, a hushed sound that soothes regardless of its meaning, though Thor is not so far gone he does not understand what Loki is saying. Hope... he does not feel as if he will ever hope again, and it is difficult to imagine a day where he will not hurt as he does now. But Loki does not press him to agree, and the part of Thor that can still feel anything is thankful for it.

The picture he paints is peaceful, idyllic, and so far from the violence that Thor has lived in recent days that something pulls painfully at his heart when he hears it. "I might... like that." He does not know for certain, anymore, as he no longer knows himself. But there is nothing else ahead of him that he can see, no path to walk, no plan and no goal to work towards. No point. All he can do is exist, such as he is. Why not here, when he can bear it?

"I want..." So many things, and nearly none of them achievable. Thor falters, but presses on, though he's forgotten what he was going to say. "They're happy here. As much as... they can be."

They are both minefields these days. So many wounds, so many trigger points. Loki has no inkling his teasing mention of ankle ties horrifies Thor so. Maybe it's a blessing he's as drunk as he is, able to simply let words flow over him and let the meanings slide away. He puts his free hand lightly on Thor's, patting quietly.

His brother may or may not sleep, even under conditions as pleasant and reassuring as Loki can concoct. And Loki himself is weary and is likely to drift off whether he means to or not. One way or another, they will meet in the middle, he supposes.

"You might like it," he tells Thor with a nod. "And if not, it will harm neither you nor them, nor the fireflies."

He rolls his head to the side, looking at Thor's face. "You want?" If there are any words that finish that sentence, Loki would like to hear them, although he's thought them often enough to himself without anything coherent to follow. I want, I want, I want... while wishing things were different than they are.

"I think they are," he tells Thor. "I'm trying."

If We Can't Save the World... [for coldsong]

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