Happy Day of the Dead! 😀 This fic is dedicated to @illwynd, who encouraged me to write this piece and was kind enough to let me blather to them about it. The title I nabbed from their story No Return, which definitely influenced my fic and which I can only recommend if you like being stabbed in the guts with feels and angst.

Post-IW. At first it seems like a blessing when an older Thor from the future appears before Loki. But it’s not. It really is not.

Warnings: Some dub-con and angst. Not a fix-it.

Second Chances (AO3)

*

Loki could almost see the phantom of two little boys, one dark-haired and quiet while the other brought a shard of sun into these dark chambers with his exuberance and bright head of gold. They ran past him into the shadows now, taking with them their laughter and leaving only silence.

There was only the quiet drip of water. This place had almost seemed hallowed to him, once, with weapons like the fangs of great felled beasts that whispered of the primeval horrors that had existed even before the creation of the realms, speaking tell of their grandfather’s battles against the hideous and monstrous giants. As a child he had desired nothing more than to glean all the secrets from these ancient and forgotten treasures. Now he only wanted to burn it all down.

The true meaning of the words Odin uttered all those years ago had finally become clear to him.

Both of you were born to be kings.

As if a frost giant could ever ascend the throne of Asgard.

But it hadn’t really been a lie, had it? After all, he was Laufey’s son.

He could never be a king of Asgard, only a king of monsters.

Loki wanted to laugh. He stood over the steps where only a day ago the man who was not his father had collapsed, unable to bear the force of his changeling child‘s rage. This was the exact spot where his hands had hovered over Odin the Allfather’s fallen form, ascertaining his appendages were the right color before daring to touch the one who had raised (stolen) him. He had let the woman who was not his mother take vigil at Odin‘s bedside but did not stay long, not trusting a frost giant near someone so helpless and vulnerable. After all, there was no telling what such a beast would do. And it was only later, much, much later, lying awake in bed at night, that he allowed himself to imagine it. A thousand, perhaps a million times.

What if the blue had not faded from his skin? What if in his rage he had summoned it to the surface, unleashed that cold, icy fury that froze his veins and burned him from the inside out?

He had not been thinking. Unleashing the black miasma and poison that had been festering inside him, screaming at Odin the way the other had screamed him into submission, into silence; the way Thor sometimes emulated. But oh, he would not be silenced any longer. He could see himself now, watching with dark satisfaction as Odin failed to think up more lies or hollow justifications, growing feebler and feebler underneath the onslaught. But then his legs had buckled. And Loki could see himself, grabbing hold of those familiar, calloused hands that used to hold his own smaller ones or pat him on the head with skin the color of discolored corpses, reaching out to help but instead doing the opposite.

Loki could hear the shout, weak with the encroaching healing sleep, as Odin’s flesh turned black with frostbite, climbing up his arm, shoulder and chest and the rest of his body. In his state he would have been unable to fight it off, helpless to watch as his fingers fell off, then his arm, pieces of necrotized flesh crumbling away, his face twisting into a rictus of horror as he died a slow, torturous death.

In those last moments, Loki wondered, would he still be capable of looking at him with that treacherous, false love in his eye?

Or would he finally realize it was folly to love a wretched thing like him, abandon his facade and only look at him with pure loathing on his face? And surely, surely then would he rethink his decision to not have let that runt die all those years ago.

For even when Loki wanted to help, he couldn’t. He could only make it worse. Maybe it was in his nature. Maybe he couldn’t be good no matter how much he tried.

Not like Thor, beautiful, honorable Thor with his golden hair, which was the gold of Asgard.

He belonged underneath the sun and sky, not in this dark, hidden chamber, dusty and full of forgotten, unloved things and secrets. Not like Loki, who was just another stolen relic, meant to be stowed away in the shadows until a better use for it was found.

Thor would never be like Loki, and he would never know what it’s like to lose everything.

Even now Loki couldn’t help glancing at his hands every few seconds, as if he thought they might have changed color when he wasn’t looking. It was ridiculous. It was sickening. It made him feel like a stranger in his own skin.

But he could make it stop.

Beyond the cage of his fingers, the Casket glittered on the plinth where it had been sitting since the frost giants’ defeat.

As he walked towards it, feet whispering on the ground, the drag of his cape a susurring murmur behind him, he could hear Thor’s words echoing in his ears. It felt like he was wading through a dream.

Now! We’ll finish them together.

Was he supposed to feel some kind of kinship with this ancient and holy artefact of the Jötnar? Just because they were both left in that temple and stolen by Odin? The idea was laughable.

March into Jötunheim as you once did, teach them a lesson, break their spirits so they’ll never dare try to cross our borders again!

No, he had a better idea. There was a way to end it all, put things to rights again.

He reached out, but a hand gripped his wrist. “Loki,” a wretched voice said.

Loki sucked in a sharp breath, head whipping towards the towering figure that seemed to have appeared out of thin air. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

His heart pounded in his chest and already, Gungnir was materializing in his palm, but then the stranger also caught his other hand and crowded him against the plinth. The edge dug painfully into his lower back and he could have had the intruder bound and immobile with barely a thought, but there was something strangely familiar about the other that halted his tongue.

His eyes flickered warily over the intruder’s face, the breath catching in his chest when he realized who it was. He would recognize those features anywhere. And how couldn’t he? Even if you closed your eyes against it, you wouldn’t be able to block out the sun, shining bright red behind your lids.

“Thor?”

Thor let out a ragged breath that sounded almost like a hitch. “Loki.” His name almost seemed like the only thing the other could say and… were those tears glinting wetly on his cheeks?

“How are you here?” Loki took in the heterochromatic eyes, the close-shaven hair, the slightly older, worn features. The conspicuous lack of Mjölnir. If he had managed to regain his powers, then where was his hammer? “What is going on?” he asked, a hard knot of dread already forming in his stomach.

“I’m from the future.” Those mismatched eyes were fixed on his face with unsettling intensity, and Loki would have stepped back if he was not already trapped. Icy cold radiated from the Casket behind him, oddly reassuring against this new uncharted threat.

“I’m here to tell you,” the stranger with his not-brother’s face continued, “that you are right. You were always right. I was just an arrogant and war-hungry boy, unfit for the throne. You are so much better suited for kingship than I was or ever will be, brother.”

The reflexive protest that Thor was not his brother died on his tongue. Loki stopped and stared. “What?”

“It’s true. How could I ever protect a realm if I couldn’t even protect my loved ones?” There was an ugly twist to his mouth, one that Loki had never seen on Thor’s face before. “And even in that, I failed.”

Loki inhaled sharply, the implications making his head spin. “What do you mean?”

Thor only shook his head, the wetness of his cheeks becoming even more apparent as it caught the light at different angles. “It doesn’t matter. None of that will ever come to pass now. Brother, I came here to tell you that I was sorry. I never appreciated or saw you even though you were always by my side and supported me. I ignored your advice, thought of myself as better than you because of my position as the crown prince and due to everyone’s praises of me. I was self-centered, vain and cared only for battle glory and fame. I took you for granted and constantly put you down even though we were equals. You have always been my equal, brother, and I was a fool for not realizing that sooner. For not seeing how much pain you were in, because of me, because of father and mother and so many others in Asgard. I’m sorry, Loki. I’m sorry for being so stupid and blind.”

For a moment, Loki was rendered speechless, almost dazed. But when he shook himself out of his state, the blinding rage was more potent than ever before. He grabbed Thor’s jaw roughly, nails digging into the salt-sticky skin. “Oh, so you are sorry? You are sorry now? You think you can just walk in here and I’ll instantly forgive you like everyone else?”

Ah, such pretty words. So pretty and utterly meaningless.

Loki wanted to laugh. Did Thor think to manipulate Loki this way? To use him, as Odin had planned to use him? Yet inwardly he also reeled. Such deep insight was unexpected, let alone from his not-brother whom he had only ever known as a thoughtless oaf not even a full two days ago.

“No, never.” Thor’s brow creased as though pained, and even that expression looked wrong on him, somehow. “Please, please let me make it up to you. Let me make it right again. I was wrong, so wrong.”

Loki let go of his jaw with a sneer, heart racing and mouth feeling far too dry. “How?”

Thor looked at him then; looked at him like he could flay him open with his eyes alone and peer into the deepest, darkest corners of his soul.

It made something quiver inside Loki, but he couldn’t know. He couldn’t. It was one of Loki’s most well-kept secrets. Now more than ever it felt like they were the only things he was made of. Maybe that was all there ever had been to him, just the shape of a person wrapped around all the things he could never say. And if they were revealed, so too would Loki the person unravel.

That too-intense gaze softened and Thor smiled fondly, sadly. “Oh how I have missed you, brother.”

His hand gripped the side of Loki’s neck like a branding, thumb finding the groove at the base of his ear like second nature. Then that searing hot mouth covered his and he was lost. All he could do was hold on to Thor’s shoulders, sliding along his bare arms with sweaty, shaking hands, eyes fluttering shut and mouth falling open in equal parts shock and awe.

He made a soft, wounded noise like he was dying. Maybe he was. Maybe this was what it was like to die in the heart of a star, to become plasma, heat and stardust.

He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. There was only Thor, like a force of nature, unstoppable, and Loki was a fool, a fool for thinking he could ever resist him.

Thor made a similarly broken sound that Loki had never heard before and only seemed to press closer, impossible as that was, taking the opportunity to fit their mouths together better and slip his tongue inside. Loki moaned, long and loud and needy, like it had been punched out of him. His breaths came in short, fast pants and he was shaking so violently he was sure he would fall apart the moment Thor wasn’t there to cage him in with his body and hold him together. Thor was touching him everywhere, with clever fingers that knew their way around his many layers, digging underneath his armor to get at the tender insides, leaving a trail of fire with lips and tongue and teeth until Loki felt like he could drown in the heat of him.

“You are so young,” that dangerous, beautiful mouth whispered into the skin of his throat, pressing impossibly tender kisses into his racing pulse point. His fingers seemed to shake as they caressed the base of Loki’s neck without ever closing, half-reverent, half-fearful. “So beautiful.” He began weeping again. “How could I have not seen this before? You are the most beautiful thing in my life.”

Loki was so hard it hurt, so hard it brought tears to his eyes and had him mindlessly rutting up against Thor’s hip, cock still trapped painfully in his pants and Thor’s own erection a line of heat digging into his thigh. It was too much. It was not enough. He wanted to hurt Thor, scream and lash out at him. He wanted to pull him closer, taste every inch of his golden skin until he was left a trembling mess like he was. He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes against the sensations. Loki turned his head to the side, away, to put some distance between them, so he could have just a moment of reprieve and breathe, but a strangled sound escaped his throat instead when Thor cupped the bulge in his pants, massaging him through the leather.

Loki’s hand snapped out to curl around Thor’s wrist, his grip white-knuckled, hoping to stop the motions, but the fingers continued groping him, mercilessly. In response Loki tightened his grip, grinding the bones together.

Against Loki’s ear, Thor’s words were only puffs of warm air as he said, “Let me, let me.”

It was begging, a plea, and a violent shudder wracked down Loki’s spine. Something dark and exhilarated unfurled in his chest as he drank in the way Thor trembled, like the very thought of stopping was too much for him to bear, like he would die if he was not allowed the privilege of Loki’s skin. It was unfamiliar, strange. It brought him that much closer to the precipice.

“Beg me,” Loki bit out, even though he couldn’t form even one coherent thought, felt like he was melting, melting against the miniature sun that was Thor. Even so, there was something mad bubbling up inside him, almost like laughter, vicious and dark. “If you want me so much, then beg me for it. Beg me to let you touch me.”

“Of course, Loki. Anything. I would give you anything for that. Please, brother. Let me continue, let me prove my love and devotion to you.”

“Anything?” Loki did laugh then, sharply. “Even the throne? What about your little mortals you are so fond of, hm? What if I wanted to kill them? Would you give me their lives? What about that woman you have grown so close to?”

Thor only shook his head, much to his surprise. “I don’t care for the throne. It’s yours. And if you want the mortals, I will deliver them directly to you. But please, please brother, don’t tell me to stop.”

The easy nonchalance was… mildly disturbing, but it was only right, wasn’t it? It was only Loki’s due. At the same time it made his blood boil that Thor could so easily and carelessly throw away so many of the things Loki had always coveted, subsisting only on shadows and scraps. Even after all this time, he hadn’t changed. He was still that same spoiled, arrogant prince who took for granted the things others could only envy him for. But that was alright. That was what Loki was there for, ungrateful fool that Thor was. Loki would teach him how to be better. He would teach him his place.

“Who do you belong to?” he hissed, grabbing Thor by that beautiful, golden throat and dragging him closer.

“You,” Thor gasped, pupils blown wide, two black holes leeching the rest of the light from his irises. “I’m yours. I’ve always been yours, Loki.”

His heart was pounding, the blood rushing in his ears, something like giddiness making him feel jittery in his skin. The power was addictive and he thought he could easily get used to this.

“Alright, you may… continue.” Loki let go with a disdainful push, while everything inside him lay taut and trembling with anticipation.

“Thank you,” Thor said, voice wretched and breathless and full of raw adoration.

Then his hand was back on Loki‘s crotch and he ground the heel of his palm into his cock in small, tight circles. Loki tried to control his breathing, but what came out instead were half-aborted, stuttering gasps. His skin prickled, like someone had lit a fire underneath the surface. It felt like he was burning alive.

Thor all but brimmed with need. It radiated from the stoop of his shoulders, calling to mind something mangy and starved, to the way he pressed himself to Loki’s form, close and intimate and claustrophobic, trying to maximize the points of contact between their bodies to the extent of hindering the movements of his own hand. His skin felt clammy to the touch, and Loki wondered if it was possible for Thor to infect him with the same sickness. Maybe Loki was already infected and they were both doomed.

Licking his slightly parted lips, Thor reached into Loki’s open breeches. His hand, big, warm and calloused, curled around his shaft and pulled him out. The cold air hit his skin, almost painful on his oversensitive and heated flesh.

Thor swiped his thumb over the head of his cock and the friction was almost too much. Loki hissed, teeth clenched tight, nearly lurching out of Thor’s grip. Thor waited a moment, then he began stroking, finding a rhythm as he watched Loki closely, learning what he liked, what made him jerk the hardest or moan the loudest, for once paying his full attention to Loki, for once the one who looked at Loki for direction, who listened and tried to understand instead of assuming he knew best already.

He added a twist to his wrist on the upstroke just so and Loki’s head tipped back, eyes squeezing shut, mouth going slack and falling open. There was no air. It was like there was a vice around his chest and throat, crushing him. The thin skin of his lids twitched restlessly and his hands clenched white-knuckled around the plinth behind him, threatening to crack the stone. He could still feel Thor’s eyes on him, hungry and intent, both frightening and intoxicating at once, devouring him whole. It couldn’t have been more than two strokes when he came, the orgasm feeling like it had been yanked out of him, too-intense and too-soon, leaving the muscles of his abdomen cramping and aching for a long time after, as though Thor had gutted him open, like a fish, removing his entrails and cleaning him out.

It was too painful to be called pleasure and there was a fine tremor in his limbs, like the aftershocks of an earthquake. The plinth was the only thing holding him up. It was everything he had ever wanted, and for a moment he wallowed in it.

For a moment, there was peace and something that could have almost been called satisfaction.

A touch on his cock jerked him out of his repose. His eyes snapped open and he tried to push Thor off him. “Stop, you oaf. I’m sensitive.”

But Thor was like a mountain and just as immovable, his mouth hot on the side of Loki’s neck, his hand fondling Loki’s soft cock. Loki hissed at the overstimulation, putting a hand into the middle of Thor’s chest, feeling panic welling up inside him, something ugly rising to the surface and souring the earlier pleasantness.

“No,” he repeated, but it was as though Thor couldn’t hear him. “No, stop!”

It wasn’t until he reinforced his words with magic that Thor relented, staggering back and looking at Loki bewildered and almost drunkenly, as though he had been in a trance.

Loki sneered and slapped him harshly across the face, though his heart still pounded. “You forget your place. Where do you belong?”

Thor looked stunned for a moment, then he slowly lowered down to his knees. His breathing was slightly elevated from their brief struggle and the hard bulge was clearly visible between his spread thighs. “I know my place. My brother.” He looked straight at Loki, stabbing right through him. “My king.”

A thrill went through Loki at the title. Even now he could hardly believe his eyes. Thor, willingly kneeling at his feet, ready to serve him.

But outwardly Loki’s expression did not change. He continued to look down at Thor contemptuously, nudging his boot forward so it rested on the bulge between Thor’s spread thighs. Loki pressed down. A hoarse cry escaped Thor’s throat and Loki pressed down harder in response, painfully, earning a wounded noise. Wild eyes skittered across Loki’s countenance, but he would find no mercy there.

“Do you now?” Loki asked, smooth as silk. He waited a beat, then lowered the pressure until it was barely there.

He whispered a simple spell to clean himself and did up the laces of his breeches, taking his time as he did so and without lifting his foot. When he was done, he pressed down again, crushingly. This time, a full-body shudder went through Thor’s body and the tendons in his neck went taut. But he didn’t make a sound, even as he trembled. Good boy. So he could learn after all. Loki almost smiled.

It felt like a dream, but Loki‘s dreams were never that nice.

There was always a catch.

Loki removed his boot and walked around Thor’s kneeling form in a slow circle, watching the long stretch of his bare neck as he tipped his head back submissively. So many things he could do to him and this Thor would just let him.

“What about the frost giants, then?” Loki said, unable to help himself. “I mean to destroy that race of monsters, once and for all, and steal the glory you so eagerly sought for yourself. What would you say to that? Would you stand by my side still and follow my every command?” Just as Loki had done so many times, a quiet shadow who assisted the other in his adventures, no matter how foolhardy or dangerous, saving Thor and his companion’s necks time and time again without a word of thanks for his efforts, which were merely brushed off with the easy dismissal of tricks.

Thor’s spine straightened, the hesitation clear in his eyes. “I’m not sure if that would be wise.”

Loki smiled scornfully. Of course not. How could he have ever expected otherwise? But Thor’s next words froze his insides to ice:

“I-I know, Loki. I know.” Loki’s pulse stuttered and all he could think was, no. Another secret carved out of him, another stitch unravelled. Soon, there would not be enough left to hold him together and he would break apart at the seams. “That you are not Asgardian. That you are a… frost giant. It matters not to me. It changes nothing. You are still my brother and I love you.”

His eyes were full of such aching sincerity and sorrow that Loki snarled. “You know nothing. Do not presume to speak of things you do not understand. And wasn’t it you who said that we should march to Jötunheim and teach them a lesson? Wasn’t it you who took us to the home of the giants, seeking to wipe them out? And you want to tell me that nothing has changed?”

Loki was screaming by the end, but he didn’t care. His fists shook in rage and he took a deep breath so he would not strike Thor down on the spot.

Thor reacted at once, bowing forward, prostrating himself before Loki and forehead nearly touching the tip of his boots.

“Forgive me, brother. Once more I have spoken out of turn. You are right, of course. I know nothing and was arrogant to suggest even for a moment that I did. We will march to Jötunheim, if that is what you want. And under your leadership, I will kill the frost giants, as many as you like. Please,” he begged, voice shaking. “I would do anything. I wasn’t lying when I said that. Of course you are right to want to slay them. The Jötnar are disgusting, mindless beasts and nothing like you. Just tell me when and where, and I will slaughter them like cattle, bath in their blood—but not excessively so. The glory and fame of the victory would remain yours still, always. Never doubt my devotion to you, for I am yours to command, my king.”

Loki abruptly deflated at the declaration, at the same time recognizing the familiar phrasing, an echo of a different time, once, before their trip to the accursed realm of the giants, before the coronation, when Thor had smiled at him, marking him with that familiar, hot iron touch on Loki’s neck that never failed to burn his flesh in the shape of those broad fingers.

And yet he also felt uneasy at the simple acquiescence, the fever-bright fervency in Thor’s eyes. It was off in a way he couldn’t place. He had known Thor to be bloodthirsty at times, itching for a brawl or to feel the crunch of bone beneath his hammer, but this seemed… darker, somehow. Unfamiliar and almost repulsive.

For a moment, it made him question his decision to obliterate Jötunheim, wipe it away like an annoying stain. A sense of dissonance sliced through him. Did he look like that when he had confronted Odin with the terrible truth he had learned, going on and on about stolen relics and monsters that parents told their children about at night?

Loki inhaled sharply through his teeth. Finally, he realized what it was that stung his nostrils.

It was the reek of despair.

And how could he not recognize it? Not when he knew it so intimately, so deeply; not when it had been his nursemaid for as long as he could remember.

Something ugly reared its head inside him as the full implications hit him, and he instinctively knew that it hadn’t been him who had done the deed; someone had dared to go and break Thor first, even before Loki could, robbing him of that pleasure. Even though they had no right.

Loki fletched his teeth and grabbed Thor by his too-short hair. “Who did this to you?” he hissed into Thor’s face. “Who dared to break you?“

Loki wasn’t angry. He was furious.

Something twisted in his chest, something painful that made his heart pound and the blood rush in his ears. Looking down into that tear-streaked face, he wondered how he had not noticed sooner. It stared him right in the face, yet it was as though he couldn’t grasp it.

He had never thought that Thor could look like this.

But even though it hadn’t been by his hand, this was what he wanted, wasn’t it? Thor grovelling at his feet, the glory and gilt torn from his flesh.

The monster inside him slithered its way to the surface and an ugly smile twisted his lips. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

The words had barely left his tongue, yet he wondered why they echoed so hollow. Something uneasy churned in his gut, but he dismissed it easily.

There was still his own Thor, trapped on Midgard and safe among the mortals. Loki made a mental note to watch this timeline’s Thor more closely, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have a little fun with the older version.

He caressed the other’s jaw, feeling him shiver, but then the doors opened and a guard entered. Loki felt the questioning gaze as the woman glanced between this wearier, older Thor and himself, but he ignored it. “I thought I told you that no one was to disturb me.”

“My apologies, your majesty.” Loki thought he might never tire from hearing himself addressed that way. “But esteemed Heimdall seeks your audience. He said it was urgent.”

Before Loki could answer, Heimdall himself came rushing into the room past the other guard who tried to stop him to no avail. The blatant show of disrespect turned the corners of Loki’s mouth down and he let go of Thor’s jaw roughly in annoyance. Yet when he turned to Heimdall, there was a pleasant smile ready on his lips.

“Whatever could be so urgent that would make loyal Heimdall of all people barge in on his king without permission?”

Heimdall of course did not bother to explain himself, not when it came to Loki, especially not when it came to Loki. But he did falter when he saw the man kneeling on the ground and recognized his features. A slow, dangerous smile curved Loki’s lips and he ran fingers through Thor’s hair, like he would a pet, except he would never treat a pet like this, alternatively stroking or tugging the short strands. It had to be painful and Thor probably did not deserve his ire in this particular moment, but he had earned it and more of what Loki could dole out many times over, so it was fair all in all.

“Speak. You try my patience with your silence or have you already forgotten the urgent news you rushed here for? It is unfortunate, but it seems that you have grown senile in your old age.” Loki almost snickered at the look on Heimdall’s face.

The gatekeeper shook himself out of it, face growing grim, but when was that ever not the case? “Your majesty, this is no joking matter. Something terrible has transpired that has never happened before and which unsettles me deeply.”

“I’m not the one here who treats his king like a joke.” Loki continued playing with Thor’s head like a cat with a ball of yarn. “I’m no one’s fool, Heimdall. Speak now. It is quite unlike you to stall.”

Despite the fact that he was speaking to Loki, Heimdall’s eyes had not once left Thor’s form and his maltreatment at Loki’s hands. “It is your brother.”

Loki paused for just a moment. “What about him?”

“It was not long ago that I stood vigil at my usual post and saw the prince. Now his countenance escapes even my far-reaching sight. For all senses and purposes, he is gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“There was nothing unusual about it. One moment he was on Midgard among the mortals who had found him. The next he was gone, as though he had merely vanished into thin air.”

There was a noise in Loki‘s head as he stared down at the older Thor, who was trying to bite back pained whimpers. It was a noise as though he had fallen into space, all air and sound being swallowed in the vacuum that opened up inside him.

“What do you know about this?“ he demanded.

But this broken Thor only looked up at him with wet doe‘s eyes. “I don’t know anything. Brother, you must believe me—”

Loki let go of him with numb fingers. “Watch him,“ he barked at the guards. “If he manages to escape, I will have your heads.”

He ignored Thor’s protests that he would never try such a thing, turning instead to Heimdall. His eyes were keen and watchful, and Loki knew that he must have come to his own conclusions about Thor‘s twin. Hating what he was about to do, Loki said, “Show me the place where you last saw him.“

For a moment Loki shared Heimdall‘s vision, saw Thor, freshly mortal and vulnerable but hale as he smiled at the mortal woman. He spoke to her, but then in the middle of a sentence he simply—vanished. There wasn’t even a whisper to mark his disappearance. He simply faded into nothing, like a ghost. Loki shivered. But the sensation of another in his head set his teeth on edge and he soon broke the connection.

Without waiting for Heimdall, Loki closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he was on Midgard in the place he had just seen, the cramped, sad little space that Thor‘s mortal called her home.

Riding to the Bifröst would have been too slow and Loki was well-versed in navigating Yggdrasil‘s branches besides. It was easy, if you knew how—you just weren’t supposed to look too close, lest you be led astray by lure lights or lose your mind.

“Who are you?”

Loki turned around at the voice. It was the mortal who made pretty eyes at Thor, like all the others who had followed him around on Asgard like mindless sheep in the hopes of receiving even one scrap of his attention. Pathetic. His eyes dropped to the pan in her hand and he scoffed. Did she really think she could hurt him with that?

“Are you the one who took Thor?” Despite her obvious fear, she did not back down. It was almost admirable.

Loki put on his best charming smile, though his eyes remained cold. “Actually, I wanted to ask you about that. I was wondering where my brother could have gone off to.” A small lie but a necessary one, no matter how much it grated on him. Thor was not his brother. He never was.

“Your brother?” There was a spark of recognition in her eyes. “Then you must be Loki.” It sounded almost disbelieving.

Ah, so Thor had talked about him. This time Loki’s smile was more genuine. “Come on, say it. Ask me.”

Her eyes were bright with fear and she took a shuddering breath in preparation. “Are you,“ her breath hitched, “a god?”

“Yes,” Loki hissed, drawing dark satisfaction from the way she recoiled from him. “I am a god, a being far beyond your feeble mortal understanding—just like my brother. You were the only one around when he went missing, so tell me: Where did he go?”

The mortal only shook her head, hugging herself and staring at the ground. “I don’t—I don’t know. He was there and then he was just… gone. At first I couldn’t believe what I had seen, how someone could talk with you, laugh with you, then suddenly there’s this empty space where they used to be. It was like he had never been there to begin with, except I could still see the crumbs on the plate, the rag he had picked up to wipe the table with. He had wanted to wash the dishes. I told him no, he already made breakfast, but he insisted.” She bit her lip, noticing she was rambling. Her eyes were red-rimmed but dry. “We went looking everywhere, but we can’t find him.”

That noise returned. All the air being sucked into a vacuum. For a moment, his vision went blank. When it returned, the mortal was dangling in the air, choking in his grasp as his fingers wrapped around her delicate little throat. “Where. Is. He.”

Her eyes bulged, like a bug’s, and her fingers scrabbled desperately at his hand, nails breaking against his skin. “I-I don’t know,” was all she managed to press out, thin and reedy.

She was less than useless.

Blinding rage ate his vision and the urge to kill her consumed his entire being. His hand shook with the force of it and for a moment he truly considered snuffing out her puny mortal life. It wouldn’t bring his brother back, but oh how it would bring silence into the cacophony in his head, if only for an instant.

Loki sneered and released his grip. She collapsed on the ground in a heap where she coughed painfully, spit speckling the ground. Loki turned away in disgust.

That was when her other mortal companions arrived.

“Jane? Oh my god.“ The dark-haired woman rushed to her friend‘s side. She glared at Loki. “What the fuck is wrong with you?“

Everything, Loki did not say. Everything had gone wrong, so very, very wrong. He smiled.

“I could kill you. Every single one of you. I could decimate this town on a mere whim.“ It would be easy. He wouldn’t even have to do it himself, simply send the Destroyer, let it burn the town to ashes while he watched from his throne on Asgard. Punishing them for Thor’s disappearance. But what would be the point? Everything seemed so senseless now. “You should be grateful that I am even letting you live at all.“

And with those words he was back in the space between Yggdrasil‘s branches. Time was malleable here and if you weren’t careful you could lose up to thousands of years wandering this labyrinthine space. But Loki knew his way and before long he was back on Asgard, with the other Thor.

The guards startled at his sudden reappearance but were too well-trained to say anything about it. They must have seen the look on his face because they immediately filed out of the room without him even needing to open his mouth, and then it was only him and Thor.

“What have you done?” Loki snarled, grabbing Thor’s throat and leaning forward so their faces were only inches apart. From up close, he looked even less like the Thor he knew. “My Thor is gone and his disappearance coincides strangely with your arrival. Speak.”

Thor only shook his head. “I did not foresee this outcome. I swear it was not my intention and I’m sorry for what it’s worth, brother.”

“Don’t call me that. You are not my brother. I only have one and you are not him. For that matter, I am not your brother either.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way. But… you could also look at it like this: I did you a favor. He didn’t appreciate you. I do.” Thor looked up from underneath his lashes, something glittering in his eyes that chilled Loki to the bone. “And you wanted to kill him anyway, didn’t you?”

Loki recoiled in shock, letting go of the other and staggering back as though he had been struck.

He now realized why everything had felt subtly wrong, right from the start. It was like staring into a broken mirror, pieces of himself refracted back at him, making everything seem over-familiar in a face that should have never learned the shape of those jagged edges and how to cut yourself on them.

It was sickening, downright revolting. Loki couldn’t look away from it.

“In my timeline,” Thor went on, “you sent the Destroyer to Midgard. I was still only a mortal. When he struck me, I’m sure I died. It was only the return of Mjölnir along with my powers that saved me.”

Loki felt like all the air had been squeezed out of his lungs. Had he? Would he? He may have fantasized about it sometimes, in his darkest moments, but would he actually kill Thor? His chest constricted.

“You don’t understand. He is mine.” Loki’s to love and hurt and do with whatever he pleased. He nearly said was, like his Thor was dead already, but it couldn’t be true. A world without his brother. It was untenable—impossible. Loki couldn’t wrap his mind around the mere concept. “You had no right, absolutely no right at all to take him from me.”

Loki’s gaze dropped to the ground, seeing nothing. But then this Thor’s strange words from the beginning came back to him and his lips stretched in realization, slow and wide and terrible. It was clear to him now.

“You wanted to make things even, didn’t you?” Loki said. “Just because you killed your Loki.”

Thor looked like he had been cracked open. “I didn’t kill him.”

Loki only laughed bitterly, overcome with the urge to hurt this Thor the way he had hurt Loki, so he twisted the knife, deeper and deeper, wanting to see blood and the lurid pink of flesh. “No, of course you didn’t. You only failed to protect him, didn’t you? Failed him in so many ways, in all the ways that mattered, and now you are trying to start over with me. By the Norns, you disgust me.“

His eyes were hard when he said, “Tell me everything about the future. Don’t even think of lying to me.”

After some initial hesitation, Thor complied. He told the tale of how he had lost everything in slow, halting sentences, but pressed on, never stopping for long, as though to punish himself. Loki’s lip curled. How quaint.

By the end, Thor was outright weeping. In contrast, Loki only felt a spreading cold inside him. It expanded outwards from his core, bit teeth into his limbs and echoed all the way to his fingertips. It was colder than winter, colder even than Jötunheim‘s tundras.

So that was how he would end. At the hands of a madman, laying his life down for someone who may at one point have tried but had not truly accepted him until he was dead and it was far, far too late. There would be no glory for him, no mercy. He would go out with only a croak, pitiful and desperate, and nothing else to mark his passing.

Maybe it was a fitting end for a Jötunn runt who had been left to die in a temple, who should have never been born in the first place. And maybe that was how he would always end up, no matter how much he screamed at the world or tried to fight his fate.

But he rejected it.

Maybe that was what happened in the other world, but it wasn’t his. Just like this Thor wasn’t his.

Looking at this other, diminished version of his brother, Loki realized that he was a fool to think he ever had a chance of breaking Thor, or that any other outside force ever had a chance for that matter. It was only Thor himself who could do the deed, who could betray all his values and everything he ever stood for, hollowing himself out.

Loki remembered Mjölnir, how it was forged from the heart of a dying star. It was said to have been akin to a primordial giant, burning red and hot, a gigantic sphere of fire too bright to even look at without going blind, shining with an intensity thousands of times that of the sun, and that countless dwarves were sacrificed in the hammer‘s making. Had it been allowed to remain undisturbed, it would have surely exploded in a brilliant supernova at the end of its natural life cycle, painting the galaxy in iridescent colors before gravity became too much and it collapsed in on itself, giving birth to a supermassive black hole capable of devouring even worlds.

Thor was like the husk of a star that had gone dead and cold. Its life should have ended in a bright supernova, but against all expectations it stopped burning and its nucleus merely cooled down, fire fading to embers to ashes, into silence. In the end, a cold star was nothing but a rock.

It was startling to realize that this Thor would fit right next to him in the Vault, as a reminder of some past glory, the relic of a fallen hero.

Faint traces of hysteria edged Loki’s thoughts and he was suddenly hit by a dizzying and overpowering urge, by the sheer, raw need to see Thor. His brother and not this imposter who wore his face all wrong.

Loki felt exhausted, all of a sudden.

“Where is he? Where is my brother?“ he asked wearily. In this moment, Loki wanted nothing more than to see Thor, with an intensity that brought tears to his eyes. Nothing else mattered right now. Not the throne, not the countless slights that he had endured over all these years; not even his frost giant heritage.

In this moment, all he wanted was Thor.

“I‘m here,” the imposter said, with those limpid doe‘s eyes, rocks that had lost all their shine. “I will never leave you.“

Loki didn’t even have the strength left to say anything scathing in response to that.

His Thor was still out there. He had to be. But what if he wasn’t?

Then he would be stuck with this broken version indefinitely.

And this Thor may not be the one he wanted, but maybe he was the one that Loki deserved. A monster for a monster. It would be only fitting.

His thoughts unwittingly cycled back to the words he uttered to the mortals. Of how he was a god and could do whatever he liked, whenever he liked. Of how powerful and almighty he was and they should be grateful for his mercy.

Loki laughed. He laughed and laughed and laughed and didn’t stop until he was retching, the tears flowing down his cheeks into the bowl of his mouth, burning wherever they touched, burning his eyes and lips and tongue, like snake venom.