rather-be-a-good-man:

icyxmischief:

rather-be-a-good-man:

So it was as he suspected, in his worst and lowest moments. A million
mistakes, a million little wounds, all culminating in the moment that
still haunted Thor’s nightmares – a hand, letting go of his.

And
he found that there was very little he could think to say in his own
defense, in the face of this explanation that had come far too late. You should not have played that trick, he could say, but he would truly have made a very poor King. You should have told me, he could say, but fear could drive a man to otherwise incomprehensible lengths.

He could tell Loki how Thor had raged at both their parents, on being told the truth, too late – you let us hear those stories, and oh, Norns, and you let me say those things to him! But what good would that do now?

He
had learned better, he had learned enough to look back and see and
regret and understand why he regretted. But he had learned too slowly,
understood too late – 

     always, 

          always, 

               too late.

A million little moments where things might have gone a different way, and as Thor looked up at Loki – so worn, so tired – his eyes held the regret that every one had passed them by. Thor wanted nothing more than to pull his brother close and let him fall safely apart, and maybe he would weather this storm and come out a little more whole for it. Maybe they could once again be happy.

For a moment, he almost did. His fingers twitched with the urge, his arm shifted with the beginning of it, because Thor had never wanted so much in his life.

                                               “And I love you still.”

And yet and yet and yet…

There
was precious little Thor could think to say in his own defense. But this
stopped being about his own defense much too long ago.

“That town
did not deserve your ire.” Puente Antiguo remained little more than a
ghost town, a shell set up around some lonely SHIELD research
facilities.

“The Earth did not deserve your ire.” New York was still rebuilding, and Loki’s invasion had paved the way for HYDRA, for Ultron…

“You call the Jotun your mother people, and yet you attempted to annihilate them all.”

Laboriously, shoulders bowed with the weight of duty, Thor pushed himself to his feet, the better to look his brother in the eye, perhaps for the first time in years as equals. His eyes held regret, but his expression was resolute. Around them, the storm had abated – fat, scattered drops splashing against the leaves, the thunder quiet, the lightning distant and brief.

“If your quarrel was truly with me, Loki, there were others ways you might have seen it done. You could have come to me in the night and cut my throat while I slept, and I think there would still have been less harm done.”

His tone held no accusation. It didn’t hold much of anything, really. There was nothing to accuse. There were only facts to state. Thor thought he was at least closer to understanding. With time to process, he might even have been able to offer something like forgiveness.

But this had stopped being just about the two of them much too long ago. With a long, tired sigh, he looked away, even looked ashamed for a moment, but knew what he had to say next.

“You should not be here. I should not have brought you here. For that, brother, you have my apologies.

But you must leave this world, now, before your presence is noticed by someone else.”

Because if they stood together, Loki would be bound and gagged and silenced once more, would be shut away in shadow to be safely forgotten about. It would be SHIELD, or it would be Asgard, and Thor would understand why even as he would argue for mercy.

It was always Loki who left Thor wishing that he could close off his heart. And it was always Loki who left him unable to. He was only capable of remaining so stoic for so long, and Thor could feel his resolve crumbling like ruined stone, could feel the threat of hopeless, helpless tears in his eyes.

“I did not wish you leave you there, Loki.” Not on Svartalfheim, not forgotten and cast aside after he had done so much. “And I will not be your downfall now. Not more than I already have been.”

◣♛◢ —- – 

Thor stepped toward Loki, and the younger Asgardian’s 
pupils dilated, swallowing the jade of his irises. Feral and
afraid, overstimulated and under-rested, he jumped back
and drew his dagger again.

            “N-no …! “ he yelped, and then again, with ferocity,
            he barked, “NO.”

It was not even that Loki did not crave his only remaining family’s
affection.  Rather, it was that Loki had so long been denied the
power to SAY no, and be RESPECTED for asserting himself: his
needs, and his boundaries.  Now it was sacred unto him that
Thor observe these coveted things.  Thor seemed to notice; he
fell still, the arm that had moved falling inert.  But he continued
to speak.  

A gasp bereft of any remaining strength escaped Loki.
    

             And I love you still.  

The words were a tourniquet, and the mercurial Trickster
God whose ire had been unslaked by years of carnage 
now felt a flame inside him extinguish. A lick of water,
two wet fingertips, pressed inside his soul and simply
doused it.  

And though his mind hummed with the locust din of 
INDIGNATION, he was now willing to l i s t e n . 

            “Nay, brother, my quarrel was not with you, but with ODIN–”

It had begun that way, but it wasn’t entirely true.
In his darkest hour, Loki resented Thor for existing.
He bit his tongue and tucked his chin into his chest,
and let his eyes fall closed as he pondered the litany
of wrongdoings that his brother had recited.  He had the
presence of mind to smile; it reminded him of when they
were small boys, once again, as their every interaction
now did–every insignificant choice of word or gesture
was saturated with many rich years of memories.  
It reminded him of when they were seven or eight years
old, and Odin had charged them with memorizing 
complicated verse of Bor’s many “valorous” deeds.
Loki had no trouble mastering the material, but Thor
stumbled over the words on the paper, and rote 
memorization elided him. So when the time came for
Thor’s recitation to Odin, at a feast table where many
important diplomats sat. Loki scurried under the table
unseen and fed Thor the verses that he could not
recollect. Thor had been infinitely grateful.  

And Thor had received all the applause. 

But Loki had felt he mattered, and Loki had been
content in shadow, then.  

He paid homage to those memories when his eyes 
opened again, moist and red and strained, and he
began to quake violently, because what he was about
to confess, by the mores of their homeland … the
VULGAR VULNERABILITY of a VICTIM … was 
repulsive.  Or so Loki thought.  

              “Understand … I mean not … to make excuses …well,
               perhaps I do …but … They did things to me … out there.
               They DID things to me. The creatures I claimed to fieldmarshal.
               And their leader.  If I speak his name, you will be in as much
               danger of his wrath as I. And if you try to make me, I SHALL
               flee, and you will NEVER find me. But… .something tells me …
               that you have already learned his identity.  He performed many
              … tests … upon me.  He used me to understand our people.
              He deprived and starved me … subjected me to experiments,
               to test my threshold of tolerance in the field, and he made me believe
              my worst suspicions about our home and people…
              the better, I now suspect, to manipulate me into doing his
              work.  I understand that the choices I made were mine alone … ”

Fool, S T O P . 
You are granting him every single piece of information 
that may be used in his arsenal to DESTROY you. 
No. Stop. SHUT UP. Thor is not a master strategist.
Thor is Thor, a great candid affectionate LUMMOX.  
That has always been your favorite thing about him:
he never conceals anything. 
Neither is Asgard’s greatest warrior SAFE: for Thor is not tame, but he 
is transparent, and he MEANS WELL.  
What about you, who are neither Odinson nor Laufeyson?
Frigguson: what about you? 

                “I understand, but I am not yet ready to recant the words,
               the deeds, that I performed upon Jotunheim, and Midgard,
                for my reasons were and are still borne of convictions I hold.
                Yet still, things were done to me … that I can never sponge out
                from under my SKIN . . . and I have never felt more disgusting… “

(( I WANT MY INNOCENCE BACK!!! ))

                “ … but for the words that you spoke to me just now, and so, I  … 
                I thank you. For that. I THANK you.”  

Thor granted Loki exit without struggle.  And Loki
nodded gratefully.  The glamour of a teleportation
spell was already encasing his body, green and gold
in hue, when he spoke again. 

           “Brother. Do you remember what I told you never to doubt?” 

           “It’s still true.”

And then he was gone. 

Although at times I’m envious, never doubt that I love you.

And he hadn’t. He never had, much as he might have sometimes tried or wished he could. At heart, it was those very words that had always kept his heart open, always left one small, treacherous part of him hoping. Somehow, he’d known even then, as they’d stood together there in the hallway, that if Loki had ever spoken any honest words to him at all, it had been those. It was as though the part of him that was still a child had merely been waiting for Loki to turn around and laugh and say it was all a joke, brother, I was only teasing you.

He hadn’t gotten that, of course, because life was never so simple and never so kind. But the reminder was confirmation that his hopes nevertheless hadn’t been entirely in vain.

And so Thor swayed where he stood, the tears already falling, as Loki faded from view. Once he had, Thor slumped on his knees to the muddy ground once more like a puppet with its strings cut, slumped forward like a tree in the wind with his arms wrapped around his stomach as though to hold his foolish, bleeding soul inside.

And he wept.

If there were any words in the torrent of emotion and misery, they were a prayer – maybe to the Norns who had thus far been so cruel, perhaps to Loki himself, a plea to remember:

Be safe, be safe, be safe.

Thor was aware of how he was perceived by the people of Earth, how he was perceived by his friends. To so many mortals, he remained a god among men. To his friends, he was a beacon of strength and valor. As long as he smiled, as long as he jested along with them, they knew that all was well, that there was nothing to truly fear.

So he worked a little harder to keep smiling. None of them knew that Loki had died, and so none of them knew that Mother had died.

The only ones who knew were Jane Foster, Erik Selvig, and Darcy Lewis. After Selvig’s response to the news, the only one to know how Thormourned had been Jane, and he’d never told another soul why he might have caused. He couldn’t have born the sight of relief a second time in the eyes of someone he otherwise trusted. She soothed him through the bad dreams, she made him tea when the misery and loss crept up on Thor’s heart and left him feeling motionless and numb, she leaned against him whenever he found himself staring at nothing, thinking back, and he knew she understood, and that was enough.

Jane was not there, now. Thor was alone with his thoughts, but they were thoughts that were crystallizing on points never previously understood, information never known, avenues never investigated quite thoroughly enough.

He’d been close. He’d been so close. One more regret among many.

But no longer.

                                Who controls the would-be king?

Yes, Thor thought he knew. During his own investigation in the stars beyond Yggdrassil, there was one name he had heard, many times, always in a hushed and frightened whisper. Always as the sort of man who wouldn’t hesitate, to do what Loki said had been done to him.

“Thanos,” Thor growled, even if there was no one but the storm to hear him. “One day soon, I will have words with thee.”

@_@ ❤