(no subject)

[st_ratagem]

Loki glared at the journal, then shook his head. Asking Thor that particular what-if had been a mistake, and he'd realized it immediately after writing it. It was annoying, though, being asked the same question over and over again, as if the answer was going to change the twentieth-plus time. And it had never really stopped being concerning, verging on worrying, how clingy his brother tended to get, lately.

They'd been in battle before. Loki had even been injured before. It hadn't led to endless repetitions of ARE YOU OKAY before. One, maybe, immediately after the battle. But not... this.

A good indicator of how upset Thor really was: would he use the door or make a hole in the wall?

Either way, Loki wasn't actually in his room at all. He was on the roof above his room with his journal, a thoroughly non-magical blank book slowly filling up with astronomical observations and other thoughts, and a pen.

Comments

[st_ormbreaker]

It takes some time for Thor to find him; he did bang on the door for a minute or two until he eventually just ported inside using the combined powers of Stormbreaker and the Bifrost. He wasn't there. He'd even checked the wardrobe. Not to make sure he wasn't hidden in there, but to be sure that Loki hadn't simply transformed himself into the wardrobe.

He had not.

Thor ported from place-to-place, going to all the places his brother frequented; eventually, he ran through the list and started looking other places: the pool, the stables, and then finally the roof.

"Found you!" he exclaims, just as the rainbow light dissolves from around him. He promptly sits down next to Loki and steeples his legs in front of him like a boy. He gives his brother a light punch in the shoulder.

[st_ratagem]

Loki gave his brother a Look and rubbed his shoulder. It wasn't the one that still tended to be sore after being dislocated and relocated, but he wasn't interested in a matched set. "I wasn't hiding, brother. You never actually asked where I was."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor looks over at Loki. "Would you have told me?" He doubts he would have.

[st_ratagem]

Probably not. "Anything's possible. More possible, if I ended up with a broken door."

He was fairly sure he hadn't. "Why all the concern?"

[st_ormbreaker]

"You were completely thrashed like, three days ago." Was it three days? Thor was having a hard time remembering. It felt like such a short time and such a long time all at once.

[st_ratagem]

“And?” Did Thor really not see the difference? “I’m up and moving, everything’s healing.”

He picked up his journal, flipped to the pages with the repeated ARE YOU OKAY messages, then handed it to Thor. “We’ve been in battle before, many times. I’ve been injured before. We’ve even faced certain death before.” On Jotunheim, almost certainly, before Odin intervened. “You’ve never done this before. As far as I remember.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Things change," he says, idly paging through Loki's journal. He snaps it shut and then hands it back to his brother. "People change. There would be a problem if I were the same person I was ten years ago."

[st_ratagem]

"Likewise, I'm sure." Exactly ten years, or almost, probably not. He'd thought he'd taken care of his problem status. He hadn't, of course, so the time since then had been all 'problem'.

But then, Loki had always been a problem of some kind, even before everything. "Still, one would think my actions in that time would earn me less concern, not more."

[st_ormbreaker]

"We had that big long adventure," he says. "The one you haven't gone on, yet. Lots of things happened there. Escaping Sakaar. Fighting out sister --" Thor points a finger at Loki. "-- that's a big one. Siblings squaring off against one another. Teamwork."

[st_ratagem]

"That's not me yet, though," Loki immediately pointed out. "Nor will it be anytime soon, unless an opportunity for escape presents itself." Nor would it be, ever, possibly - how would he know? "I'm me."

[st_ormbreaker]

"It's not relevant," Thor says flippantly. He looks up at the sky. "Anyway, what does it matter? Either way, you would still be my brother."

[st_ratagem]

"What is relevant is that once is enough." Loki tapped his journal meaningfully, the nonmagical book with its pages of notes and thoughts currently forgotten. "Once is more than enough. Why wouldn't it be good enough that I'm up and moving around? You don't have to ask, you can see."

[st_ormbreaker]

"Plenty of people can still move, even when they're hurt," Thor says. It occurs to him he might be too smothering, but it felt like for last 1500 years he hadn't cared nearly enough.

Thor lays his legs flat on the roof and then sets his back down, hands folded behind his head.

"If you say again you're fine, I will take your word for it."

[st_ratagem]

"I'm fine." That felt too easy, so as usual Loki pushed it. "For the record, if I'm moving, I'm fine. What doesn't kill me isn't worth worrying about. In fact, as you well know, what kills me is also not worth worrying about."

[st_ormbreaker]

What kills me is also not worth worrying about.

Thor is uncharacteristically quiet for a second, but the second he becomes acutely aware of the silence between them, he scrambles for something to say before it becomes weird.

"What were you doing out here, anyway?" He knows the answer already, but it's the first thing that comes to mind to ask, and so he asks it.

[st_ratagem]

Thor generally had a reply for most things, even if it was just a Look. But it was like he just stopped, for a moment, which was as much Thor as endlessly asking 'are you okay'. Loki wanted to think that maybe, maybe his over-optimistic brother was reflecting on the admittedly bleak truth of things... but probably not.

The moment passed, though, and Loki allowed it to do so.

"Mostly thinking. Some amateur astronomy." He flipped through the nonmagical journal until he came to a few pages of his constellation observations, then showed them to Thor. "We're told this is California, but it occurred to me that few people track these things by the stars anymore." And whether it actually was or wasn't, it would be good to have proof. Assuming he could construct whatever data into a proof.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor takes the book into hand and pages through it. There's only a few pages, but it's clear that Loki's put a lot of effort into his observations. Loki'd always liked the stars, even when they were young.

"It might be awhile before another portal opens," he says, paging back to the beginning of his notes. "But when it does, I'll keep an eye out for an astronomy text." Like the other notebook, he snaps it shut with an audible sound, then offers it back over to Loki. "I don't know how helpful it'll be if it's not from Earth, though. Maybe we can ask around and see if anyone has such a book in their personal collection."

[st_ratagem]

"I'm sure there's something in the library. I'll check when I have less of a stack already claimed." While it would be entertaining to see exactly how far the lovely Illyana would let him go in terms of checking books out, it was entertainment best saved for when there was nothing else available. "So far I haven't found anything obviously wrong."

[st_ormbreaker]

"Were you doing a lot of amateur astronomy while you were on Earth?" Thor can't imagine that he had much time for it, but then again, it felt like he didn't know his brother nearly as well in the last ten years. Or maybe he didn't really know Loki that well before then, but just hadn't been aware of it at the time. He'd been blindsighted by Loki's betrayal. Was there some slow buildup he had been blind to, some signs he should have caught before then? Thor's not sure.

[st_ratagem]

"Of course not." Loki smiled faintly and repeated what he'd told Stark when the man had asked about food, "Just the mayhem, for me. But I'd been to Midgard before that, as often as you."

[st_ormbreaker]

"Plenty of amateur astronomy here, though," he says. "And on Asgard."

Thor blinks up at the stars. It's a remarkably clear night. He can understand why Loki'd be on the roof. It was a good view.

"You remember the play you put on? Back on Asgard?"

[st_ratagem]

Now Loki grinned. “Awful, wasn’t it? But very entertaining. Yes, I remember.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor turns his head so he's looking at Loki. "You seemed to be enjoying it at the time," he observes.

[st_ratagem]

“Oh, I was. It was entertaining, and of course it’s always fun when things go as planned.” Better than planned, in many ways, since he’d always assumed Odin would come for his head, not quit the field entirely.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor directs a lazy finger at Loki.

"You had Sif and Jane both there in your play. Sif wasn't even there, and I'm not sure why you included Jane. The two of you barely knew one another."