“A most noble little warrior. Shall we name him after one among the Einherjar?”
Loki’s question is playful, yet it carries a wistful note, for the home, and the many thousands of people, lost: first to Hela, and then to Thanos.
He lifts his eyes to his brother’s face, studying hastily shorn hair complete with scissor-hewn lightning; the grief is still so fresh for them both that Thor still sports his gladiatorial cut.
Loki knows the pain, for Thor, is greater; for Loki, Asgard died years ago with their mother. The rest was relatively inconsequential. For Thor, however, Odin was a true ancestor and moral compass, and Asgard reflected the Thunder God’s image, in every sword, breastplate, mead glass, and pillar.
Asgard WAS Thor.
“You have toiled unendingly, to avenge mother, father, Heimdall, me… when was the last time you were able to weep freely, brother? You must remember who stands before you. It is only me.”
“Aye,” he says, smiling softly as he looks more at the frog. As Loki speaks, Thor can feel the grief welling up in his chest, no matter how hard he tries to shove it back down. He turns away, knowing that it is precisely the one person he can truly be himself around, that if he’s not careful, his mask will fall and he may not be able to pick it up again.
“A while,” he says at least, throat thick as he tries to swallow the tears down again.
Loki turns an ever-vigilant eye on Thor, reading his noble struggle for composure like a large-print text. He knows him by heart. He knows him better than Thor knows himself.
The vantage point, in close proximity, though in shadow, is piercing.
“ … Thor. You must let go now. You are ready.”
The Trickster God places his hand on the side of his brother’s neck; he who is never confrontational now urges his sibling, the sun around which he orbits, to purge.
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