Chapter Text
Loki is the younger brother, but in the months that have become Midgardian years since his fall from the Bifröst, to Thor’s eye Loki has both looked and felt older than he himself. Bitterness and hatred have etched deep lines upon his face, have hardened the fragile emerald of his eyes to something closer to the adamant fallacy of green-stained diamond. And even though Loki continues to deny their blood relation, in Thor’s mind he will always be his elder – he will always remain the one who was supposed to protect Loki throughout their entire long and lively existence.
Yet he always feels the younger, the confused, the naïve one when he faces Loki across a battlefield. As a warrior born and raised Thor hides it behind a façade of righteous anger and justice-driven reason – but every time Loki has pushed him back with seiðr, every time Thor has raised Mjölnir to him his heart has beat a little slower, as if willing the world to end before they both destroy that which makes it worth living in.
“Do you really think this is going to work?”
Of course it is the archer who speaks. The man always goes for the heart of any matter, and rarely does his aim not hold true. The Lady Natasha raises her eyebrows, flicking her gaze to him, but says nothing. She has always been much more reticent with her thoughts, but then that is why Thor is often unable to think of one without the other. In such a complementary fashion these two mortals are ever a pair to his mind.
As we were. Thor and Loki. Loki and Thor. Princes of Asgard, brothers of blood and bond and heart and soul. How often did they ever see one without the other, in the golden vaulted halls of our ancestors?
The doctor breaks into his troubled musings, each word low and sure. “It seems to be, so far.”
With some reluctance, born of guilt and uncertain morals, Thor turns to look again through the glass that separates their small chamber from the larger beyond. The doctor stays as an almost constant presence here while the others come and go. Strangely it is Barton and the Lady Natasha who have stayed the longest. Thor is not sure what that says about either of them, or their experiences with Loki in the past.
But he doesn’t want to think of the past. Or at least, not that past. The distant past is more comforting, and he can see that in the youthful lines of Loki’s pale face; a kind of childish peace has returned to him even in this unnatural sleep. There is a future in this, Thor thinks. In this wrong they can indeed make something very right.
Or so he must tell himself.
The glass cracks beneath his fingers.
“Uh, big guy.” The archer steps closer to where Thor now leans too heavily upon the panel, though he is sensible enough not to put a hand on him. “We’ve kind of already blown the budget for internal property damage around the place this month, yeah?”
Lady Natasha sips her coffee, mostly to suppress a snort. Thor thinks bleakly he recognises that only because Loki had had much the same mannerism, years ago. “Maybe you shouldn’t have attempted to mate that flamethrower with your bow, then.”
“A man’s gotta have a hobby, Tash.”
“I thought that was what the X-Box was for.”
“There was an accident with the X-Box.”
One well-shaped eyebrow curves in high scepticism. “Involving a makeshift self-detonating arrow cum flamethrower, yes.”
Thor tunes them out. Often their arguments go over his head – although not half as often as anything and everything that comes out of the ironic curve of Tony Stark’s mouth – but that’s not why he doesn’t listen. He’s never quite worked out what they are to each other, but it doesn’t matter. They just are. The Lady and her Archer. The Archer and his Lady.
That alone seems to explain why he takes comfort in their presence even as he wishes to shout at them to go away and leave him to his peace and his pain.
“Will he wake soon?” he asks, tiredly; Dr. Banner looks up from his constant vigil over the bank of electrified Midgardian enchantments that tell him the secrets of his brother’s body, if never his mind.
“I think so.” Removing his glasses, he runs a hand back through his hair. The motion leaves much of it sticking up in crazy peaks that ought to be amusing. At that moment, Thor wonders instead if he’ll ever smile again even as the doctor squints at another display. “You have to understand, it’s hard to be sure of anything. His…physiology is odd, even for what little we know of his own race.”
The words unspoken are clear enough even to a mind that’s not inherently disposed to subtlety – and even you cannot help us, because for all you call him brother we know that you are nothing of the sort, at least not in blood and biology.
“Do you really think this is going to chill him out?” The archer is doubtful, and Thor is too weary to resent him for it as he takes his seat once more. “I mean, I know some guys go all ga-ga over their kids and I freely admit if I had rugrats and some crazy-ass motherfucker tried to touch them they’d have more arrows than fingers in less time than it takes to blink, but…going all Papa Bear on someone’s ass isn’t exactly helping, is it?”
Lacing his fingers together, Thor lets his head sink forward. He’d prefer the weight and constant low hum of Mjölnir between his palms, but this is no place for a weapon. He tries to ignore the light scent of healing and sterility around him that suggests otherwise, that gleefully whispers in his ear that the weapon has already been wielded beyond his ability to stay his hand.
“Being with child changes him,” he says finally, still unable to look up. His nails dig fine crescents to bisect the lines of his empty palms. “I know it might seem that Loki cares not for the sanctity of life, but…it is more to do with the lives he chooses to sanctify.”
“If you say so,” the archer replies, and Thor looks up with such weary conviction he almost takes a step backward.
“I say so.”
This hadn’t even been his idea. In the end, perhaps it had been no-one’s idea. Instead it had been borne of a drunken conversation – well, drunken argument – in which Tony had insisted on dredging up every crazy mortal-wrought story of Norse gods he could find on the web of information the mortals had wrapped around their world like a mockery of Jörmungandr. They’d been gathered in a common room of the sprawling mansion, one of Stark’s mechanical devices spewing out light and information like a cursed well; it had been inevitable, perhaps, that such a conversation would turn to the subject of Loki’s alleged children.
“Do not mock my brother’s offspring.” The tankard had turned to so much ceramic dust in his fingers, but he felt it no more than he noticed the blood dripping to the carpet below. “Not only would he take great personal offense at it, so will I.”
And Tony had frowned, bleary and baffled. “But he’s like…the mother of monsters.”
“He is their mother, yes.” When he’d turned away, that was when he’d noticed the stain of blood and memory upon his hands. “But in all hearts, there lurks a monster each of our own.”
Yet for all he hadn’t wanted to discuss it, neither had he been able to walk away. In the end it had been the Captain who had brought it out of him, the stilted stories and recollections of the truth of Loki’s children – the truth of Loki himself, as it were.
Only later, after the cold stark reality of uncounted days and battles, did the idea seem to emerge fully-formed in the minds of more than one of his Midgardian comrades.
It shames Thor to realise that he himself is still its ultimate source, intentional or not.
But can I deny that I wanted this, brother? Can I?
He stares at Loki now, sedated by sorcery and by science. It reminds him of the way mortals regard his battles upon their planet; so often they do not run screaming from the danger that threatens to crush their delicate little lives and send them to whatever passes for Valhalla or Hel in this realm. Instead their eyes widen and their bodies still and they stare at death even as it swallows others whole, even as it turns to them. Though he’d never understood before, he thinks he understands it now as his eyes are drawn towards the flat abdomen beneath the stark hospital gown. Then his stomach clenches to see one hand has moved. At the level of Loki’s belly it lies still, cradling and unconscious – and yet, it is as unmistakable as the wretched gasp that escapes Thor’s own throat.
The archer’s look is sharp but Banner is putting his glasses on, engrossed in the sudden song of beeps and boops coming from his mechanical thralls.
“He is waking.”
“How’s he going to take it, do you think?” Barton asks over Lady Natasha’s continued silence. “Because if I got knocked out in a battle and then someone told me I was knocked up when I came to, I’d be writing a pretty strongly worded letter to the War Crimes Tribunal.”
Thor takes a deep breath. One proves not to be insufficient. Not even two quite gives him the strength. Only on three does he speak. “I can give him reason enough.”
“What, so he’s really got a boyfriend you never told us about?” Rubbing at one temple, Barton seems to be on the verge of misappropriating Lady Natasha’s coffee. From the look on her face, it would be worth his life to try. “Hey, no offense, big guy, but that could have been useful information. Who is it?”
And Loki’s head rolls upon his pillow, like iron to lodestone. It is as if he has been called and Thor’s fingers clench again, though Mjölnir is far. He still feels the tracery of electricity moving through his veins, the uneasy broken current of the soul-deep power it is ever his responsibility not to abuse.
Then Loki’s eyes open. Thor cannot hear him through the glass. But the shape of the word is as familiar upon his lips as his own name.
Brother.
“I will never leave him,” Thor says, heavy and helpless, “no matter the cost of his salvation.”
But when he stands, when he walks towards the white-painted chamber that has become Loki’s prison, each step costs him more energy than he even thought existed upon this realm so far from home.