Apparently serious

[st_ratagem]

The beach hadn't been in Loki's original plans for the day, to the extent that he planned days ahead in the Inn. They were all similar enough that there seemed little point. But after a message from Thor arrived while he was spending his few hours in the clinic (no more than a few, as he was still primarily trying to stuff information into his head and it turned out there actually was a limit to how effective that was on a daily basis) his not-plans had shifted.

The message had been simple, almost innocuous. Anyone else would have read it as a simple 'hey, we should talk!' More of Thor's sporadic clinging. But Loki had a longer baseline, and a few things had put him on edge.

It wasn't going to be a conversation that should have an audience. There was a chance it wouldn't actually be a conversation, per se - he'd have thought 'lecture' if he'd actually done anything worth lecturing about. (Surely putting a small child on a very low to the ground tightrope didn't qualify.)

But that was how he'd come to be seated on the beach (easy enough to reach within the border timeline if he shapeshifted to a wolf) with a neat coil of twine beside him, tying it into the right series of knots for a decent fishing net and waiting for Thor to turn up.

If nothing else, he'd know if he still remembered how to make nets properly.

Comments

[st_ormbreaker]

"Hi."

For once, Thor's presence wasn't as bombastic as it usually was, and neither was his greeting. He wasn't somber by any means, more subdued than normal.

Which likely was normal for almost anybody else.

Thor looks down and surveys Loki's work, the ends of his lips naturally tugging up and into a smile. He hadn't seen Loki do this for probably a millennia.

"You're making a net."

[st_ratagem]

“You’re looming.” It was an almost instant response, more teasing than defensive, the opening moves in a state-the-obvious competition. Loki’s hands didn’t stop moving: measure, twist, pull tight. “What of it?”

[st_ormbreaker]

"I'm not looming," Thor protests, and then, as if to demonstrate physically how he's Definitely Not Looming, promptly sits dwon next to his brother.

"I'm just interested," he pouts.

[st_ratagem]

“Now you’re not,” Loki agreed, because sometimes Thor was ridiculously easy to play with. Perhaps someone else might have put off the minor vindictive play out of respect for the upcoming serious conversation, but Loki had never been able to pass up teasing Thor. “It’s just a net.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"Yes, but you don't make nets. You haven't made a net in a long time." At least not that Thor has seen. But right now, Thor's grateful for something -- anything -- he can cling to to put off the inevitable.

[st_ratagem]

Loki sighed. “Fine.” At least he’d proved to himself that he remembered how. Without missing an apparent beat, he switched to undoing knots instead of tying them. It was slower, the knots were tiny and tight, but that didn’t bother him. “Feel better, brother?”

[st_ormbreaker]

"No!" Thor reaches to grab the net out of his brother's hands before he can untie any more. "I like it!"

[st_ratagem]

He let Thor take it. The man would have to leave it behind unless he wanted to keep a quarter-finished net and remaining twine enough to take it with him later. “I’m well aware it’s not something I do. I just felt like it. Apologies for going off-brand.”

[st_ormbreaker]

"I think it's good for you to go off-brand from time to time." Thor looks down at the net, at Loki's precise little knots and rolls one of them between his thumb and his forefinger and middle finger.

He needs to say something, or he will continue to put it off.

"More happened after we left Asgard."

That seems like a good enough place to start.

[st_ratagem]

“I’m aware of that as well.” So what was this, then? An explanation of why he didn’t deserve to know? An odd choice if so, he hadn’t pushed since reminding Thor that he didn’t have to be polite about these things.

Loki was tempted to take the net back despite having just let it go. Somehow he thought he’d probably appreciate having something to do with his hands... but he let it stay where it was.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor doesn't let Loki's words get to him. He idly continues rubbing that little knot until he realizes what he's doing and sets the net back down in his lap.

The next words come harder than the first.

"We were about a week out of Asgard when Thanos found us."

[st_ratagem]

Thanos. The word felt almost like blank ink dropped into water. Loki stilled, almost froze, while the word spread out in his mind. Anyone who knew him, other than Thor, wouldn't have noticed, but the long baseline that let Loki identify in a sentence or two that Thor meant serious business also meant that Thor would be able to identify genuine fear.

The god of mischief wasn't actually afraid of much; he never had been, as he was generally certain of finding a way out of anything he found a way into. But he was deathly afraid of Thanos. He'd spent nearly a year with the Mad Titan, and no part of it had been pleasant. Yes, he'd been an 'honored guest' and then an 'ally', but... really, all one had to do was look at his Children to realize that Thanos wasn't even kind to successes.

What he would do to a comprehensive failure was not to be thought of. So Loki had carefully Not Thought of it, even if he'd had nightmares about it.

It wasn't impossible that Thanos had come specifically hunting him. He'd lost not one but two Infinity Stones, after all, and from what Thor had said he hadn't bothered hiding since his Odin-ruse had been uncovered.

Stupid. "...I see." Half the survivors Thor had mentioned dead, at least, and never mind that they might not have been a stable population in the first place. Loki didn't even consider that Thanos might have been fought off.

There was no fighting him. It didn't work. "Go on."

[st_ormbreaker]

For a second, Thor doesn't say anything. He just looks at his brother and he knows everything in an instant.

Loki is afraid.

He's always felt some sense of obligation to take care of Loki, even when they were children; it felt like his responsibility as older brother. That was part of why he was insistent that his brother be allowed along on their adventures, though he was never Sif or the Warriors Three's favorite. He felt less of a need to protect them when they grew older; Loki was capable of taking care of himself. But there on The Statesman, he had certainly tried to protect him, just as he tried to protect everyone else on board. He hadn't succeeded.

Even now, he wants to say or do something that softens the blow, but he's not sure what. Open communication, as Loki said so long ago, was never their family's forte. Neither were difficult conversations. Perhaps if he had more experience it would somehow be easier. Thor's not sure if it would be.

Thor sets a hand on his brother's back. It seems right.

"He killed half our people. Those that survived Hela and escaped with us from Asgard," he says, somehow managing to keep his voice steady. "We fought them -- all those who stayed behind or couldn't escape. We were all overpowered by Thanos and his Children."

[st_ratagem]

Thanos alone would have been impossible. With even some of his Children? More impossible, somehow.

"That doesn't surprise me." Loki's voice was completely colorless, stating fact and acknowledging he'd heard, nothing more, and he didn't react to Thor's hand on his back at all. The only other possible reaction was probably screaming himself hoarse, but that seemed insane even for him. He could silence his room and scream later, in privacy, if he still wanted to.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor feels something catch in his throat. He's trying to choose his words carefully, omit the things that aren't necessary. He doesn't blame Loki for anything he did anymore; all his fury died out along with Loki, though he had been impossibly angry when he watched as Loki conjured the Tesseract out of thin air.

So he skips over the parts about him being tortured with the power stone. And he adjusts the way he's going to tell the next part of the story. There are some details he doesn't need, even if he's sure Loki would insist that he did.

"He already had the Power Stone," he says. "And then he got the Tesseract."

[st_ratagem]

That was easy enough to parse even without Thor adding the detail. From the previous parts of the story, Loki knew Thor had sent him to wake Surtur using his crown and the Eternal Flame.

In Odin's vault, where the Tesseract was also kept.

Of course he'd taken it in passing. Despite what Thor probably thought, he couldn't even consider taking it to have been a mistake. It was a bargaining chip, and a good one... in theory, anyway.

Was there perhaps a hole to exploit, when he got to that point? It would bear thought. Later. When he could think properly again. "I hope I at least tried to make it difficult for him."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor laughs hoarsely at that, and he doesn't even know why. Perhaps it's at the absurdity of the situation. The entire story is so unbelievably tragic that sometimes, even Thor had a hard time believing it was real, and he remembers every detail -- from Asgard to those last few moments with Thanos with such clarity that the events might have happened yesterday.

"I don't really know what you were doing," he says. "The Hulk came barreling out of nowhere at your cue." We have a Hulk. "You retrieved the Tesseract while Hulk fought him."

Thor briefly presses his lips together.

"And lost."

Much as he tries not to, Thor hand shakes lightly on Loki's back. He pulls it away, then wrings his hands together.

[st_ratagem]

"Buying time, most likely. Throwing the biggest weapon available at the problem." He wouldn't have had any 'in case of Thanos' plans ready to go. A question that presented itself: why hadn't he taken the Tesseract and fled in the Commodore while the Hulk fought and lost?

Thanos would have killed everyone and destroyed everything anyway. There would have been nothing real to be gained from running, almost certainly.

Almost. Another thing to consider. "I'm not there yet and I know your Hulk would lose."

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor suddenly wishes he could go back home, but even if they were trapped here, there wouldn't be a home to go back to. The best he could hope for is to return to Earth, but even then, what would be waiting for him there?

Thor swallows, and for the first time since he mentioned Thanos' name, he manages to look over at his brother.

"Do you want me to keep going?"

[st_ratagem]

“Of course.” Don’t try to put the blindfold back on now, brother. He didn’t say that out loud, of course. This had never been intended to be a blindfold. Or, if it was, it had been Thor wishingvhe had one for himself. “If there’s more to know, I need to know it.” For sure he didn’t want to.

It was impossible to make decent plans or decisions without good information.

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor turns and looks out at the ocean, his hands still sitting in his lap.

"Heimdall sent the Hulk to Earth with the Bifrost. Thanos killed him," he says. "Thanos got the Tesseract back. You offered to work for him, pledged your undying fidelity." To him or to Thanos? Even now, Thor wasn't sure. It somehow felt like Loki was talking to him, even as he addressed Thanos.

"But then you attacked him with your dagger. And then --" Thor feels something catch in his throat, and he turns his gaze away from the ocean and down to his hands in his lap. "-- he killed you."

Thor takes a breath and forces himself to look at Loki. He doesn't know what else to say or what to do, but he hopes that once he sees some shift in his expression, the right words, the right actions will come to him.

[st_ratagem]

Loki stayed still, almost frozen, as he had since Thanos’s name had come up. Apart from talking, he hadn’t moved even to an expression.

There was no way he could have thought that a dagger would work where a Thor and a Hulk had both failed. It was suicide, or a trick, or both.

He’d done it before. “You’re sure.”

[st_ormbreaker]

Thor tries not to think of it. The sounds of Loki gasping for air; his brother struggling against Thanos' grip; the sharp crack that followed it; Loki's thrown out in front of him; No resurrections this time; clutching his brother's body and it feeling different than the last time he held his brother when he thought him dead.

He utterly fails at it.

"I'm sure."

Thor brushes away the start of tears with the side of his hand and for not the first time tonight, gazes out at the ocean so he doesn't have to look at Loki.

[st_ratagem]

Any trick good enough to fool Thanos would certainly fool Thor as well. The thought occurred in a flash and disappeared just as quickly. Not dismissed, exactly, but marked ‘not worth hanging anything on at the moment’.

Loki couldn’t weep or even be that upset by a future death; not only was he currently alive, but a couple of cold places inside sad no great loss. He’d wanted to die when he’d let go of the Bifrost, back when, and even if he wasn’t there anymore part of him still thought it would have been better on the whole if Odin had just left his infant self to die.

No great loss.

What started to occupy him more was that Thor had told him. Before it had become pressing. He wasn’t the first to know, no, but he wasn’t being sent to that final battle with no real weapons. He’d decided to try a degree of trust, and it had worked out.

When he moved, it was all at once, to rest on his knees directly in front of Thor and watch him for a few seconds. Without pausing longer than that for a chance to talk himself out of it, he leaned to press a kiss to his brother’s forehead, then pull him into a hug and murmur an unusually sincere “Thank you.”

[st_ormbreaker]

For a few moments, Thor doesn't react to the press of his brother's lips to his forehead, nor Loki's arms when they fold around him. They should; his brother has never been especially affectionate to anyone but their mother, even when the two of them were boys. This uncharacteristic physical display of kindness should be enough to rip Thor from where he is, but it doesn't.

Not immediately.

But when it does, he wraps his arms around his brother and pulls him him close. He rests the top of his face against the top of Loki's shoulder and for once, doesn't say anything.