#fayf

Two years later. A secluded wood in a distant realm. Nighttime.

“Loki…”

“Shh.”

Thor drew a deep, shuddering breath as Loki stroked his fingers along the bound strength of his arms. Thor’s spread knees shifted against his sides—he seemed not yet half desperate enough for Loki’s tastes, but he was already beginning to whimper. Loki’s blood sang.

He could not have imagined this when they first left Midgard together.

They had been very careful around each other at first, speaking little as Thor chose their paths, taking them into the wilderness so that they may as well have been the only two beings in all the realms. For much of the first few months Loki felt himself on edge and off balance, and he often doubted his own sanity.

Loki did not know why he had agreed to this. He did not know why Thor had asked it of him.

Yet he followed Thor from realm to realm, trailing after him like his shadow, silent and uncertain. Thor was changed, turned steadier and more thoughtful. No longer the reckless god he had once been, and with a sorrow deep in his eyes that Loki had put there.

Loki did not know why Thor dossed down every night mere inches from where his treacherous brother lay.

Then, one night, under a spray of innumerable stars…

“I have been thinking” Thor said, one arm folded under his head and the light of their campfire rosy on his face. “I have realized that I… I would be with you again. If you still wish it, at least.”

“What?” Loki murmured in shock, eyes narrowing as he turned his gaze from the sky above. “Why would you…?”

Thor made no answer, but only smiled softly at him in the dark.

Loki swallowed, and his voice felt thin. “You don’t want that.”

“Don’t I?” Thor said, with that same smile. “Didn’t I?”

It was enough to make fire and ice crawl beneath Loki’s skin; Thor could not mean that the way it sounded, he could not, but Thor moved nearer and put a tentative hand to Loki’s hip as he lay there motionless.

In an instant they were tearing at each other’s clothing. They were both gods this time, equals—yet he ended up with Thor writhing eagerly beneath him, chest rising and falling with panting breaths, letting Loki pin him to the ground. He ended up mouthing hotly at Thor’s skin, unable to shake his disbelief and throwing himself into it all the more fiercely for that.

When he woke the next morning, exhausted and sore, Thor was already on his feet and speaking cheerfully of his plan for their travels that day, the morning sun through the trees catching in his hair. Loki slipped back into silence, uncertain.

It happened again a few days later. And afterward, they lay in a sweating tangle, Thor’s arm around him holding him close, and Loki felt the strangest sensation. A pressure welling up in his throat.

But the closest he could come to an apology was to put his chin to Thor’s chest and murmur, “I would have undone myself, for you. To save you from me.”

Thor tensed all over, but he held his anger at bay rather than lashing out as he once might have. “Having to mourn you would not have helped me.”

Loki had wanted to answer but he found himself unable, unsure of what to say or why it had all seemed so simple before. Thor got up soon after, pulling on his tunic again and going to stoke their dying campfire as warnings of thunder rumbled in the distance. That night they sat under an overhang as rain poured down and dripped splashing onto the rocks around them, neither speaking.

Dawn was in the sky and the rain still coming down before the silence was broken.

“I know you would have,” Thor said, quiet, from beside him.

Loki turned to look at him.

“I know you better than you believe, brother, all the things you think I cannot know. And still… I am glad you are here with me.”

Loki looked away again, unable to meet his gaze.

The rain lasted all day, and Thor let it, so they rested in that spot. The next morning, woken by a cacophony of birdsong from the damp green leaves, they started their journey again, Thor beckoning Loki to follow.

By midday it felt almost like one of their long-ago adventures, traipsing across the realms like young gods.

And like that, it had gone on. Good days and bad days. The two of them, alone together.

Tonight was one of the good nights, Loki thought as the chill night breeze caressed Thor’s skin in the moonlight, raising gooseflesh and making him seem all the more vulnerable. Thor had let Loki bind him, had let Loki torment him until he trembled under every touch. A few more tiny, shallow strokes—and Thor twitched and strained against the conjured chains.

“Brother, please,” Thor whined, clinging tighter with his legs. Loki hushed him again and bent to place a kiss just above his heart.

But something so good could not last.

And later, as the moon sank toward the horizon and Thor slumbered beside him, Loki carefully got up, glancing back at the shadowy shape of his sleeping brother only once, and slipped silently away into the sparse woods around their little camp.

Everything that had happened had changed them both. For two years, he had watched Thor healing, watched his scars make him better, more beautiful—if that were possible. The good days outnumbered the bad because of him, because of the storm god’s newfound wisdom and calm.

Loki, too, was changed. But he was not sure it could be called healing in his case.

The cool wind stirred his hair and he listened to the whisper of his footsteps on the soft ground and he turned his face skyward, waiting for the frantic tremble to subside in the hollow of his chest.

He was not really going to leave, even if he should. He had taken this walk countless times and he had not fled yet.

If he chose, though, he could disappear. Thor would soon enough give up and return to Asgard, take up the throne that had always been his birthright. And Loki would wander the realms alone, with no one to answer to but himself, with no one to look at him with such bruised patience. Perhaps he could find some distant cave to hide in, where it would not matter if Thor forgave him or if Thor loved him or if Thor knew everything he was. He could hide there until he mended into whatever twisted shape was destined for him, and then perhaps someday, on a whim, Loki could slip home once more, sneak behind that throne, brush his fingertips through a wisp of blond and whisper sly in the young king’s ear—miss me, brother?

Loki sighed as the shadow-thin fantasy dissipated as he blinked up at strange stars. And the night breeze rustled the leaves along the trail as his steps brought him inevitably back to their little clearing beneath the trees.

Thor stirred, throwing open an arm to him, and Loki crawled into the space left for him, feeling the lush grass bend under his weight, feeling Thor shift closer. It was warm there, and what Loki felt was likely the closest he could get to happiness.

“You came back,” Thor murmured, nuzzling.

“I did,” Loki said, and he moved so that he could put his arms around Thor, who sighed contented against him.

Perhaps it wouldn’t last. But this was what he had truly wanted, and this time… this time…

Thor fell like a comet and struck the desert ground hard enough to send shivers through it, but it delayed him not a moment, and with a few strides he had come before the gaunt figure that waited just over the little rise of ground.

Loki. Not the well-kempt vision that Thor had seen in Latveria, but Loki, haggard and filthy from months exposed to wind and rain and burning sun, with rust-colored dirt caked under his broken fingernails, eyes deep and haunted and hollow, the skin around them seeming almost bruised.

And Thor found him with his thin arms wrapped around his knees, a ragged black curtain of hair falling back from his face as he tilted his head to gaze upward, blinking sluggishly.

“You’re too late, Thor. It’s already started,” Loki said, and oddly there was no malice in the dry rasp of his voice. Only a sort of exhausted determination.

“What has started?” Thor asked.

Loki gestured over his shoulder, and it was only then that Thor saw it: hovering in the air a few feet away, there was… an object. Thor did not recognize it, could not have identified it; it spun slowly, its edges squirming so that it was impossible to tell even its shape. It pulsed with magic and with menace. It glinted in the early morning sunlight.

Thor stared at it as Loki unfolded himself a little to peer at it, considering. “You can’t imagine how long it took to gather everything I needed for such a spell, especially when I had to hide everything I was doing from myself. You have to admit, that was a good trick.”

“Loki,” Thor said, insistent. “What is it doing?”

Loki’s gaze flicked up to his and away again.

“Loki—”

At that Loki huffed a peevish sigh. “Do you have to ask? Your brother is a monster, Thor. As long as I live, I will hurt you again and again, because that is all I know how to do. Because I want to. Because I…” He stopped and for a moment his eyes squeezed shut. “This is the only way. Even if I were to die it would not be enough, so I have found a way to remove myself completely, and when it is done I will exist not even as a shadow in Hela’s realm. I will simply be gone.”

Thor felt his heart stutter. He shook his head in refusal. “I don’t want you to do this, Loki.”

Loki gave a thin laugh. “Of course you don’t, even after all I’ve done. And that is why I must,” he added. “Think of it, if you like, as the last terrible thing I will ever do to you.”

Thor stared down at his brother—his brother who was obviously unwell, his brother who had indeed done so many terrible things yet here he was now, a thin, starved creature in the desert, plotting his own death—his own unmaking, and speaking of it so calmly even as he looked away with eyes brimming. His brother who loved him, painfully, undeniably. Brokenly. Thor saw that now.

“I deserve this, Thor. I should have done it long ago, would have if I hadn’t had—if you hadn’t been—”

Before Loki could evade him, Thor sank to his knees in the space before him and brought their mouths together. He breathed Loki’s scent, rust and flame, his fingertips curling against Loki’s neck, stroking at the frantic battering of his pulse there and feeling the heat rolling off his skin.

From somewhere deep in Loki’s throat came a soft sound of despair, and Thor kissed him deeper on instinct, and drew him closer.

Moments later, though, Loki’s hands came up between them, pushing him away. “That’s enough for a goodbye. You should go now.”

Thor could have laughed. “You cannot believe I will actually simply leave and allow you to…”

“You cannot stop me,” Loki interrupted. “Because I cannot stop what I have begun. I made sure of that.”

They both sat unmoving, meeting each other’s gaze like a challenge.

They had been in this place when it all began. All Thor had cared about then was to redress the hurts between them, but they had only grown worse, deeper—and then he had forgotten, too wounded by what Loki had done to him, too mad with rage and pain to care.

And now, when he had healed enough to try again, he found…

It was Loki who looked away first, and as he did so he seemed to crumple, closing in on himself. “Please. I would rather not have the last thing I say to you be a threat. Don’t make me. Please… go.”

Thor found that he had missed his chance and he was going to lose his brother forever.

The horizon blurred as he got to his feet, throat stinging, aware of nothing more than the sounds of his own choked breaths. Hastily, futilely he wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, and with each inevitable step he took, he felt he was unraveling, the warp and weft of his life coming apart.

He tried to imagine a world in which his brother no longer existed, in which there was only emptiness where Loki had always been. He couldn’t. The grief of it would be too large to feel, too devastating to comprehend. It would be a night with no dawn, a razed wasteland, and there would be no way back.

He could not accept that. But what choice did he have? Loki had said it could not be stopped.

Thor halted where he stood, tears on his face.

No. Loki had said only that he could not stop it, that he had kept himself from wriggling free of his own trap. Thor was no sorcerer, but he was not without power, and he had lately had the experience of having to teach another how magic functioned, so he understood it better now than perhaps he ever had before.

When he turned back, the strange throbbing sphere was still there, spinning and glowing and bobbing a few feet from his brother’s slumped form. Putting an end to such a spell, such an elaborate conjuring, would be dangerous. Thor had only the vaguest understanding of the tendrils the thing would have put out in preparing to rip Loki’s life from the fabric of reality or what might happen if he cut them. Loki could not do it—Thor did understand that as he thought about it; by the very nature of the spell Loki, both its target and its source, could not stop it now.

But Thor could—at least he believed so, and he would risk anything at all to try.

Stalking swiftly back across the cracked ground he hefted Mjolnir, calling for lightning and murmuring a hasty spell under his breath as the hammer’s haft fitted into his fist, and swung.

The sphere exploded in a blast of light and fire, and the force of it rebounded against him, throwing him backward.

He barely heard Loki’s desperate cry.

*

When Thor came to, he was lying on the desert floor gazing up at a wide grey sky, a patter of heavy raindrops crackling in the warm air and pitting the dusty ground around him. And he was aware of Loki lying sprawled near.

He was, happily, aware of Loki’s breathing. He was there. They were both alive. The worlds remained, apparently much as they always had. Thor could hardly have hoped for better.

Beside him, Loki groaned. “You are a fool,” he said, sounding dazed. “Have you any idea what you just risked?”

Thor felt himself begin to laugh, still flat on his back, the joy of triumph overwhelming him. “It did work, though.”

Loki said nothing, but he had not yet fled.

Thor’s laughter trailed off, but his happiness remained, and so he did not hesitate to push his luck. “I have a favor to ask of you,” he said.

There was a pause before Loki answered. “And what would that be?”

“Before, I came with you at your bidding,” Thor said, leaning up on an elbow to look over at him. “Now mean to leave this realm and I would ask that you come with me at mine.”

Loki sighed. “I will not go back to Asgard. I’ve told you that.”

“Asgard is not my aim. That is why I will have need of one who can travel by other means than Bifrost. I will have need of you.”

As Thor watched, Loki sat up and drew up his knees, hugging them to his chest. “Thor. Everything I said before is still true. All I know how to do is hurt you. You should keep away from me.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps my wants will guide us better.”

Ever since that first disastrous venture to Jotunheim, he had been following where Loki led, in one way or another, even when they were apart. Maybe it was time for a change. And Thor did want to leave; they both needed time to heal on their own terms, in a place where they could do so together. He did not know what place that might be, but he trusted they would find it.

Thor stood then and reached out his hands, and Loki stared at them, uncertainty flickering in his eyes, looking more lost than Thor had ever seen.

But he hesitated only a moment, and then his hands were slipping into Thor’s, letting Thor haul him to his feet. Thor steadied him with an arm under his shoulders as he swayed.

They had a long way to travel, and there would be more pain. Thor had no doubt of that. But he was willing, and for now they were two specks in the vastness of the realm as off in the far distance thunder rumbled and the horizon blurred with a haze of rain.

Loki moved to curl a hand around Thor’s waist.

“We should go, brother,” Thor murmured.

Beside him, still silent, Loki nodded.

Coulson eyed him across the desk.

Thor had gathered that the man was not actually glad to see him, but he waited in the hallway for as long as it took, arms folded across his chest and his shoulder casually leaned against the wall, standing half a head taller than anyone who might have inquired about his business there. (Somehow, centuries as prince of the highest realm on Yggdrasil’s branches had still not prepared him for the experience of Midgardian bureaucracy, but he faced up to it as best he knew how—through sheer stubbornness and refusal to be put off.) And eventually Coulson had been forced to speak to him.

He looked harried.

“We’ve been doing everything we can to keep tabs on him. Most of the time we’ve had someone on the inside at his organization, but what that mainly means is that sometimes we get advance notice of what they’ve got in the pipeline. Not so much about his person. I’m sorry I don’t have more news.”

Thor frowned. “But if nothing has changed, why has he chosen to avoid me all this time?”

Coulson gave him a carefully blank look. “I couldn’t say. Except that you are the only person on Earth who’s managed to put him in a cell for even five minutes, so there’s that.”

Thor got the impression that the agent was not being entirely honest with him. Nonetheless he nodded and left him to his desk full of other labors. There was one other he could think of—one with both a spy’s background and SHIELD connections—who might be able to help him, if he could convince her.

He found Natasha later that day in her study, a thick, leatherbound book open on her crossed legs. She scrutinized him as he made his plea, explaining what he hoped she might discover for him.

“If I do…” she said, closing the book on her finger and brushing a coppery curl back from her forehead. “Say I find out where he is. What’s your plan then?”

Thor took a breath, trying to come up with the words to explain his change of heart when it came to his brother; he had never told his mortal allies how close he and Loki had been for centuries, the bond they had shared. It had never seemed prudent to do so, and anyway the idea of speaking of such things had been too painful. “The entire time I have spent here, I and everyone else have attempted only to stop him by force. I am ready now to try another way.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I would speak to him, if he will listen,” Thor said, hesitant, “and try to convince him to make peace with me and with this realm. I do not wish to be at odds with him any longer. I will not let him… continue in his evil deeds, but I must try.”

She studied him, her pale brow creased. Then the book flipped open again in her lap with a whisper of paper.

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said. “No promises.”

*

A week and a half later, there was a call for the Avengers to assemble; when more information came through, a stream of curses had poured from the communication device in Thor’s pocket.

“I know this guy,” Tony Stark said. “Dammit. Watch out for someone coming at you through walls. Without breaking them first.”

Thor had gone along, unconcerned; there were few mortals who could pose him any threat. It was not until they were returning that he realized Natasha had been absent. But he knew she had other duties that drew her away from time to time, and he thought nothing of it.

That night, she reappeared, and she pulled him aside with a subtle tilt of her head.

“Coulson wasn’t lying. Nobody really knows where he is or what he’s doing,” she said. Before he could answer, though, she held up a hand. “But there is something strange. SHIELD has been keeping an eye on his people. And they’re disappearing. The low guys, runners, things like that, some of them are turning up back where they came from, and some of their excuses are pretty weird. But it’s not just them, and that’s where it gets really bizarre, because there are way too many mid-level mooks who are just disappearing.”

He blinked at her in confusion.

She caught his look. “I mean someone’s killing them. Mostly we haven’t turned up any bodies, but we’re usually pretty good at finding people who are still breathing, so we can assume they’re not.”

She gripped the back of the chair before her, fingers tapping anxiously on the wood.

“For a while, SHIELD thought it was infighting, or maybe a rival bad guy going after his people, but it’s not, and it’s got a lot of agents spooked. My theory… I think what’s really happening is that he’s cleaning up: I think he’s taking out his own people. Don’t ask me why, though.”

Like someone dousing the candles before leaving the room, Thor thought, and he stared at her with a buzzing sound growing louder in his ears. “When did this start?”

“Months ago, probably. But we don’t know for sure.”

Loki had been avoiding him all this time. And if it had been months, then surely he was near the end of his preparations. If he departed Midgard now—Thor wondered if he would ever find his brother again. Sweat burst chill on his skin in his sudden panic. If he was right, he had little time.

But he had not gone very far in his own hasty preparations before he found his way blocked by the other four.

“Hey, Hammertime, want to share with the rest of the class, or do you want us to guess?”

“I am sorry,” Thor said. “I do not have time to explain.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “We heard about what Nat told you. And now you’re tear-assing around the place, and I’ve gotta tell you, you have the look of somebody about to do something supremely reckless. I should know, I’ve seen it in the mirror enough. So slow down for a minute. Tell us what’s going on. Maybe we can help.”

Thor took a deep breath. “I need to find Loki.”

There was a possibility even worse than the notion of Loki leaving and giving Thor no way to follow. He had not wanted to consider it. A sick hollow grew in his chest as he thought of it now. “I know you have all wondered what transpired between me and my brother, and I will not tell you of his crimes. But the last thing he did after them was to ask me to kill him. I fear now he means to do to himself what I would not.”

There was silence, a sort of thick dark silence of disbelief (broken by a mutter from Barton, saying, “So you mean we were fighting your suicidal evil brother? That clears everything right up.” Natasha kicked him.).

Thor ignored the interruption and continued, the words spilling out inexorably now that he’d begun.

“I know to you he is just another villain. I understand. But to me… he is my brother. So I must find him. And stop him.”

Thor felt almost certain that they would turn him away, and he steeled himself for their scorn, feeling himself nearly flinch in advance of it.

“You sure you want to do that?” Stark asked.

Thor could only nod, aching.

Tony tilted his head back and shut his eyes, letting his neck roll a little bit, loosely. He spent a moment in thought. “Okay, then. I’ve got an idea. We might just be able to track him down.”

“What?” Thor said. “How?”

“Magic detector. The idea got kicked around back when you two first showed up but nobody had a clue where to start. You and me, though, we can probably figure it out. We’ll hole up in my workshop, order a couple pizzas, set Dummy to making espresso. We’ll be done in no time.”

Thor’s heart leapt as he thought about it. Then it fell again as the hole in this logic became quickly apparent to his eyes. “Loki is not the only sorcerer in this realm. I am not certain that we will be able to pick out my brother’s magic from among them even if we succeed in building such a device.”

It was Natasha who spoke up then, her voice low but confident. “I can give you places to start. We have lists of possible hideouts for him. A magic signature in one of them would be a pretty sure bet.”

“Or try his friends.” This was Clint, sounding almost bored.

Thor frowned. “Friends? What friends does he have in this realm?”

“Maybe that’s too strong a word. Fellow bad guys. Known associates. There’s lists like that too; there always are.”

“All right,” Thor said, weak with fear and gratitude, after taking in the sight of all their faces. “We will try.”

*

There was almost a sense of nostalgia to it. Lights flickering on around the workshop at the first hint of motion as they entered, the whir and clang of robotic helpers, the near-silent hum of the computers arrayed around the space. Many things he and Tony had built here together, combining their knowledge and skills to create things of use to the mortals of this world. But never had what they set out to make mattered as much to Thor as this.

He began by trying to explain Loki’s magic, to translate the little he knew into human terms. Tony listened, sketching notes onto an invisible board in the air or tapping a finger to his upper lip as he considered, then shaping something new of intangible light.

Thor was not a mage, yet he did know many things about Loki’s particular sorcery, and that had to count for something. Even if he had not attended to it much at the time, he had watched his brother come to his magic as a child, watched his skill grow until he surpassed his teachers. Likewise Thor had seen the working of countless of his spells over the years. He probably knew more of what Loki could do than anyone but Loki himself. And there were things Loki had kept secret, to be more useful in his mischief. Yet Thor had nearly always found out sooner or later.

“All you have seen of his magic is the destruction he could do with it,” Thor added mournfully. “But it used to be that he turned his cleverness to other things. He is very skilled with illusions. I have seen him conjure a knife real enough to kill, and serpents that dissipated into smoke at a touch. He can create illusory duplicates of himself that copy his motions or those that move and react on their own for a brief time—those are not real enough to touch but plenty to fool the eye.”

“Decoys?” Tony asked.

“Yes, he would use them as such in battle, or in fun. I cannot tell you how many times he…” Thor shook his head, casting the memory aside. “It matters not. Now, where do we begin?”

By the night’s coldest hour, they were almost ready to put the prototype through its very first paces.

“We’ll need to start on a small geographic range. I don’t think it can handle too much all at once, completely aside from the aforementioned problem of maybe picking up everything from Doc Strange to kids with Ouija boards,” Tony called out, elbow-deep in a mess of wires.

It was dawn when they had turned up a signal that matched an entry on Natasha’s list. Two signals, actually, which meant that it was probably what they were looking for.

As they watched, the two overlapping points appeared on the map display as a pair of softly pulsing greenish lights, surrounded by the fainter outlines of the Latverian border.

Tony cursed under his breath. “How did I know that was going to happen?”

*

Loki stalked through Doomstadt in a rage.

He had come here after slipping to the end of his rope. The lapses had gotten more and more frequent, and he was fairly certain they had grown longer as well, consuming entire swathes of hours in what he only ever remembered as a dark mist that resisted his every attempt to combat it.

Someone was trying to control him. Loki was not to be controlled.

Someone had also been interfering with his plans in more prosaic ways, killing off his mortal lieutenants one by one and scattering his minions to the winds, and the lapses had been too many for him to find out who was responsible.

In between those shadowy lapses, he made himself accept at last that he needed aid. He needed a place of relative safety, and he needed the use of someone else’s magic, since his own had proven insufficient in his current state. And he had remembered—after what was probably an alarming stretch of time—that he had access to such a thing among his villainous connections.

So he had gone to Doom for refuge—oh, he’d lied about the reasons for his visit and Doom said nothing, but they both knew it was an act of desperation—and he had smiled as shrewd eyes behind a metal mask stared through him, trying to discern what advantage could be taken of a weakened god. When the dark mists crept in around him, he had in secret siphoned off a trickle of Doom’s magic with which to defend himself. He was fairly sure the mortal did not know.

It was not a comfortable arrangement or a safe one, but it was in fact starting to work. Loki was beginning to feel better, steadier. Emptier, as if some turmoil inside him had been drained away from the hollow shell of his form, but what was left—he felt better. Whatever was gone, it was hardly to be missed.

That peculiar peace lingered through the clank of armored steps, and as Victor appeared in the doorway Loki looked up, expectant.

“I understand my country’s climate is pleasant to Asgardians, but I would prefer not to host an invasion of them,” Doom said.

Loki blinked, and Doom went on to explain that Thor had just crossed the borders into his nation—flying above them and avoiding all the formalities, of course—and that he had stopped to gather himself in a small mountain village that lay just to the southwest of Doomstadt.

“A quaint little place, I understand. He has paid for a room at an inn and spent the last hour supping amongst the peasants,” Doom went on.

“Alone?” Loki asked, frowning. “He is not in the company of any of the other mortal heroes?” he clarified. Doom had enemies of his own; if they had brought Thor with them on the way to some confrontation, then his coming might have nothing to do with Loki.

“Alone.” Doom gave him an expectant look through that metal mask.

“Don’t concern yourself, Victor,” Loki said, managing a sneer. “My brother is easily dealt with.”

But the fragile calm Loki had built over those weeks shattered as everything fell into place.

Someone had been doing something to him, causing all of this, and now Loki saw: there was only one explanation. Thor. Thor had done this to him, and now he would have to come face to face with his brother again, because whatever he was doing wasn’t enough, Thor had to come here to—

Loki swallowed heavily, and his heart raced. He would be near Thor again, and part of him could not help but thrill at that.

But the rest of him was alight with fury, fury at his own weakness, fury at Thor for daring to seek him out after… after…

A dizzy spell caught him, but he pushed through the whirling fog by will alone, and rage burned it away to nothing as the doors of Doomstadt swung wide.

Thor would regret this. Loki would see to that.

*

Thor was woken by a rough shove and by Loki’s voice snarling at him.

“You’re the one who’s been doing this to me, aren’t you?”

Thor blinked up at him, disoriented, from the narrow little bed upon which he sprawled. He had not meant to sleep; he’d only meant to close his eyes, the faint warmth of ale in his veins warring with his nervousness at finally seeing Loki again. And now Loki stared down at him, bristling.

“Loki?” Thor said in awe. “You are still here… you are not…”

“I’m not what, Thor?” Loki said, folding his arms across his chest. “Tell me, what were you expecting to find? What were you attempting to do?”

Thor could only stare.

Loki paced a few aggravated steps. “You should know better than to try to control me. You should certainly know better than to try to use sorcery to do it.” He turned on Thor a renewed glare. “Who did you get to help you? Was this your means of chaining me without chains? Did you expect to come and collect me now and bring me back, docile, to Asgard to be locked up to rot?”

Thor shook his head in utter confusion. “What… Loki, I do not understand. I have done nothing.”

“Don’t feign innocence,” Loki said, low and dangerous. “If you are not behind it, then what are you doing here now?”

Thor could not stop himself from reaching out, brow furrowed, to touch, but Loki only yanked backward and scowled at him.

“I thought… I thought you were going to leave,” Thor murmured, because that was the only part of his worry that he could make himself voice.

“And your vengeance wouldn’t allow that, of course,” Loki said, more softly but with a bitter twist of a smile.

Thor studied him in the dim light of the room, the faint glow of the ancient bedside lamp and the pale moonlight through the high glazed window. “Brother,” Thor said carefully, “I truly do not know what you mean. I have known nothing of you for months. I had grown worried and I wanted to speak to you.”

“The only thing that worried you was the thought that I might go unpunished,” Loki spat, beginning to pace again in agitation, near shaking with anger. “You couldn’t stand the sight of me, and you needed to bind me anyway, to make it so I could not think, and so you… you…”

Mid-stride, Loki swayed. His eyes went blindly wide, face blanched with pain. He seemed about to collapse.

Thor was on his feet in an instant, meaning to catch him. But when he closed his arms around his brother’s form—for just one moment there was only empty air, a vague impression all that was left, like a ghost or a fading afterimage. And then, before Thor could so much as cry out in shock, Loki had snapped back into being, real and solid but with his head sagging forward limply and a dazed look in his eyes.

“Loki!” Thor said, hands on his brother’s shoulders as Loki began to come back to himself. “Loki, what happened?”

As Loki’s awareness returned, the blankness melted swiftly into annoyance. He pushed away from Thor, or tried to. “That was the effect of your spell,” he growled. “It happens often, as you should know. It is whatever you’ve done to me.”

Thor swallowed. “I vow to you now: it is not my doing, and if someone has cast such a spell on you, to make you disappear…”

Loki’s brow furrowed as he stopped his struggling and held Thor’s gaze. “I disappeared?”

“You did,” Thor answered, solemn. “For a moment only, but I reached for you and you were not there. I could see you, in part, but only like a shadow.”

The look of confusion grew deeper. Loki truly had not known what was happening.

And that was enough for Thor’s thoughts to begin to race, putting the pieces together. Whatever had happened… what it reminded Thor of most was the moment just before one of Loki’s doubles dissipated, when the magic had just begun to weaken. But his doubles had never been tangible. Never real enough to shove Thor off balance as he rested on a tiny bed—yet perhaps Thor did not know the limits of what Loki could do if he needed to.

Loki had not known what was happening. He had disappeared as if he were a thing of magic, and now he was staring at Thor warily… as if he were real.

“Loki,” Thor asked, the air seeming thin in his lungs. “Where are you truly?”

Green eyes widened, startled, disbelief flaring and dying in a flash. Loki’s mouth fell open as if he might answer.

The next moment he was gone completely, and this time Thor knew he would not return.