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There is a wall, glass and polycarbonate, Loki in front of him with arm out, palm flat, and if Thor hits it hard enough Loki will shatter but not break.
This is the distance between us, Loki says, only he doesn't say it at all, no sound from his mouth no light in his eyes. Thor can see the void in them, within them, maybe Loki's never left it and it'll never leave him. This is the difference between us.
There is an alarm screeching in the helicarrier, rising above the rumble of muted explosions. Thor should be paying it more attention than he is, should be more worried than he feels, but he is frozen, uncomprehending, the moment reduced to the singularity of this.
It is a cage. It is a cage and a wall and it was built for neither of them.
Brother, he thinks. Brother you are cold. Brother, Loki. Brother you are cruel.
But he has always known this.
His hands are numb when Loki's magic touches them, the thinnest strand of seidr looping round his wrist. It is not much - would snap easily with a proper amount of force, but it is a tactic meant to distract rather than restrain. Generally too fine of a craft to weave in the heat of battle, though Thor has seen Loki use it to direct a fist into a glancing blow. It is low trick. It has earned him no friends in the sparring rings.
He remembers, once: Loki's voice bitter and tight, and why should I have to seek the right to earn friends?, like there are rules that exist only for him. Maybe there are, though. Maybe Thor should ask for the rules to the right to have a brother.
It is an important answer, staring at his brother's image and hoping this is another illusion, another trick. His brother has many. They are good tricks when they are not cruel, and right now he'd willingly fall for any of them.
But Loki's eyes are dark and rippleless, and Thor cannot read any insincerity in his smile.
The humans think us immortal, whispers the condensation on the glass. It is an illusion, muted breath and frosted skin, this Loki has not enough warmth in him to produce such things. Shall we test that?
His magic jerks Thor's hand towards the control panel, enough force to smart Thor's hand and snap the thread of seidr. In the same instant a dozen more golden threads spring forth and loop about Thor's arm, tethering him to the ship.
Something flashes on the screen, makes the lights shatter and disperse.
"NO!" Thor roars. Maybe he yells something else entirely.
The seidr holds him back just long enough to see the glass chamber drop through the opened latch. When they snap, they tear like heartstrings.
His eyes, again. They are always the last thing Thor sees before Loki falls.
In his adolescence Loki spun out a string of pets, collected from all the realms.
Thor thought of them as pets because there wasn't much else to call them, creatures Loki chose at seeming random and carted back home in nets made of seidr. Souvenirs, more like, though Loki hardly paid them any attention beyond the initial capture.
Once on a trip to Alfheim Loki caught a songbird, plumage bright and striking against the backdrop of winter sky. It was a pretty enough creature, Thor supposed, splashes of brilliant reds which some maiden might find pleasing to the eye. But it was a common breed that did not warrant much praise. It would not even sing.
Thor knew of sorcerers who would spend weeks seeking out ingredients for their potions and poultices, spells crafted more from time and patience than either power or skill. He had accompanied Loki on enough of such hunts to compile a half-decent list of them himself, but this creature was not even good for that. Loki had told him as much, even if that was all he cared to explain.
“I know not why you have taken the trouble to procure this specific creature,” Thor grumbled petulantly, gesturing toward the feathered creature as Loki batted his hand away.
They'd spent months trekking through the forests to find the damned thing, rejecting dozens of other birds until Loki had finally deigned one sufficient for his purposes- whatever those purposes might be.
Really, it had simply been the only bird foolhardy enough to fly so close, to be so easily caught. Thor hadn’t thought Loki would care for unintelligent creatures, but it often seemed the case that they were the ones his brother ended up carting home.
“Surely you can find one that’s better.”
Loki absently ran a finger along the bird's crown, holding it up to his eyes for inspection. The bird chittered and pressed close, before nipping at his hand.
Loki’s smile was a shadowed thing, a knavish slash of skin. You'll laugh, when I tell you the joke, the smile said, but Loki hardly ever told. Not for months at least, not for years, not until Thor had almost forgotten there was something he wanted to know in the first place.
At least, Thor thought, he wouldn't have to wait long with this one. It was a flighty creature. Frail. He judged it'd only be a year or two before the bird would die.
Thor does not even feel the impact of the landing, eyes locked upon the broken wreckage of his brother's cage, jagged glass and metal striking pillars in the sky. They are as the ruined spires of Jotunheim, broken and crumbling and continually lost to time.
You will come home, Thor thinks, fervently, fruitlessly, a break in his thoughts like bones.
There are no words this time, just a roar of pain and fury, mingled with the groans of glass and shrapnel as he tears them from the ground.
"Loki!" he calls as he tears away the first layer of wreckage, and it is not even a word, is not even a name. Nor is it anger or grief, nor is it denial, those emotions too flimsy to hold the things he wants to convey. "Loki!"
He hears it before he sees it: a gasping, gurgling sound. Thor doesn't even realize that he's lifted the last of the shrapnel until he hits flesh, doesn't recognize the scraps of skin gleaming through the blood. He stops, suddenly, reeling at the sudden uncertainty of what to do.
Loki laughs.
His limbs are askew, bent at all the wrong angles, his skin too pale where it isn't bleeding or black. Glass and metal stick haphazardly from through his clothing, catching and glittering mockingly in the daylight. There is a jagged shard the length of his arm embedded in Loki's chest, and Thor thinks: Loki is alive.
"The last fall didn't kill me," Loki rasps, humor lining his voice and malice hiding in its trenches. "I don't know why you thought this one would."
Thor falls to his knees, gathering Loki up in his arms.
"Then what was the purpose?" Thor asks, voice too loud and grip too strong, fingers wound tight in Loki's hair. It is slick with blood and grime, makes it difficult for his hands to grip. "What reason would you have for this madness?"
His only response is a rasping wheeze, and Thor doesn't know if it is because Loki cannot answer him, or refuses to.
"What have I done? Tell me what I have done to cause this. Tell me what I can do to fix this."
It is not the right question, Thor knows. Loki laughs and blood bubbles past his lips, paints them like a kiss.
The bird took up residence in the western wing, not long after its master abandoned it. It flitted amongst the ceiling rafters, above the servants' quarters, twittering incessantly in a cacophony that was racket rather than song.
The maids cooed at the sight and the cook hated it with passion, swearing he would catch the strepent thing and serve it beside the roast. The stable hands lodged complaints to have the creature removed, since it stayed high in the rafters and hid deep in the crevices, and no one seemed able to catch it.
Maybe that had been Loki's plot all along, Thor thought, hands clamped over his ears and mouth pressed thin. Loki had never held much love for the cook, and he had that sort of vengeful streak to him, to try and irritate his grudges to death. It made Thor wonder what he had managed to do to upset his brother so, to be stuck with the task of ridding the servants of the creature.
“It’s father whom you upset, not me," Loki sighed. "I don’t know how many times you need me to repeat it. Just finish it quickly so we can finish up the preparations for Niflheim."
He could finish it quicker if Loki would help him, though if he suggested it Loki would only refuse. Someone must finish the preparations or you're the one father told to handle the problem or some other excuse to not be involved. "Just try not to kill my bird," Loki added, offhandedly, as if Thor needed to be told.
Mjolnir vibrates restlessly, hot upon Thor's skin. His hand itches but he grips her tight, her handle burning impressions on his palm.
("We're being tugged around by the whims of a madman," the director growls, hands clenched upon the table. "Worse, he's a suicidal madman."
“Troublesome lot, those,” the metal man agrees distractedly, attention fixed on the twisted piece of armor that has warped itself around his wrist.)
They know not of what they speak, the humans, lobbing words back and forth in what would be an argument, if only their opinions did not align. They exchange words like blows, voices rising in a cadence Thor matches to the turning of Mjolnir in his hands.
Petty, he think with one turn. Weak, with another. A king should love his subjects but he sometimes finds them difficult things to love.
(“Is this just some sort of joke to you?” the soldier demands, hair mussed and cheeks smudged, angry as any warrior in the battlefield. "There are lives on the line."
The metal man shrugs, as if to say when are there not?, throwing his hands up in surrender.
"Yeah. His. And considering that the alternative would be ours, I'd say we have nothing to complain about.")
There is soot caked upon his greaves and blood dried upon his bracers. Mjolnir gleams dull in his hands.
These humans, these mortals. They've no servants to wash away the filth. They've no healing stones to burn away the wounds.
Thor thinks, they are all of the same opinion: they do not know what to do.
(The captain grimaces, but doesn't comment, and the widow leans forward in her seat.
"But we still need him, to find the Tesseract. Agent Barton doesn't have access to its location, so we need someone who does."
She has wiped away all traces of grime from the most recent battle, but her seat is the furthest from the beast, and her eyes flick immediately to him when he speaks.)
Mjolnir is heavy, Thor notes. He'd abandoned her on the ground when as he'd torn at the wreckage, and she is angry at him, petulantly tugging at the cord binding her to his wrist.
If he be worthy, Thor thinks, if he be worthy.
He wonders how one judges worth.
(“Don't worry,” the beast smiles, thin.
“It’s not easy for a monster to die.”)
In the end he wasn't able to catch the bird.
It had stayed high in the rafters, tweeting a mocking racket that echoed through the room. Always, a flash of red at the corner of Thor's vision that disappeared before he could pinpoint its location.
How, Thor had wondered, could a creature so easily caught be so difficult to detain? It had shown neither this level of intelligence nor fortitude the first time around. Hadn't even hinted at it.
Maybe that was it, the reason Loki had chosen it. Maybe there was more to the creature than met the eye.
Thor’s eyes, at least, for Loki was convinced that Thor’s eyes were worse than most, would frequently complain about Thor's inabilty to see small details or large plans, his refusal to comprehend things even when they were laid out right before him.
It was an unfair accusation, Thor thought. Loki was simply more sensitive than most, and the things he noticed were far beyond anyone's standard scope of perception.
Sensitive, at least, for things other than his pets, for with how the bird keened Thor might have thought it calling for attention. Like a child, like a spirit, never put to rest.
But it could not carry on forever.
By the second hour the bird's twittering had softened to mild chirps. By the third hour Thor was unable hear it at all.
One way or another, the main problem had been resolved. He told Loki as much as he joined Loki in the courtyard, though the look Loki gave him implied he knew exactly how successful Thor had been.
“You will procure no more pets on this trip,” Thor grunted, mounting up his steed. Niflheim was filled with savage creatures, and for all Thor knew Loki would try to bring home a dire wolf. Once that, a bilgesnipe wouldn’t take long to follow.
“None but you,” Loki had promised gravely, the utmost sincerity in his tone, and Thor had chased him all the way to the Bifrost.
Loki smiles a ghastly thing, fingers stretching to touch Thor's chin. They are thin and bumpy structures, cuts scabbed over into crags. His nails dig into Thor's skin, drawing crescents like scars.
"It seems," he says, "that your mortals did not have another cage in which to put me."
It is a cold room, close walls and white light, makes Thor miss the gold of Asgard. The height, the splendor, a place to call home. He wonders if Loki misses it too.
He must. He must.
“So what would you like to know today?” Loki hums. “Why I have fallen to madness. What it is that you've done wrong?”
His voice is canted high in mockery, his chosen tone of voice regardless of who comes to question him. Thor is not the first to have tried. He is not the first to have failed. He is not the only one who refuses to fail. (Loki’s tone asks, why do you think you are special?)
“I would have you tell me what I can do to make it right.” For there must be something and Loki sees thing Thor does not, understands things Thor cannot (but eventually he comes to tell).
“Nothing,” Loki says, delightedly, a victory in thwarting Thor’s intentions, and he leans up, lips brushing light against Thor’s ear.
"But I'll tell you, if you want to know," Loki says, almost kindly, "I'll tell you what the worst thing was."
He clasps one hand on Thor's shoulder and lines his palm above Thor's heart, and Thor thinks: this is dangerous.
"The worst thing was looking back, and thinking: ah, that makes sense. The worst thing was looking back and realizing there was never anything to cherish in the first place."
Thor stands still, careful not to breathe. They will break each this way, he thinks. They will shatter themselves to pieces. In any words comforts Thor could give, Loki only finds more weapons with which to tear.
"I was never happy there. I could never be happy there. I will never know happiness in the entirety of my existence, Odinson, for I was not made for such things."
Loki is a liar and a traitor and knows now what he says. He is broken, with not enough power in those of Midgard to heal him, not enough power to kill him. And Thor has not the means to return them home.
Loki bleeds into him, through him, does not seem to know how to stop, and Thor does not know how to make him. He clasps his hand over Loki's fingers, holds them close and feels the scars.
"Where is the Tesseract?" Thor asks.
A year or two, he’d thought, until the bird would die.
In the end it hadn't even lasted that long.
On the third month since their return from Niflheim Thor found Loki by the riverbank, bird cradled in his palm, a pile of sticks laid haphazardly by his side.
"It was not important, really," Loki spoke without turning, and for all the lack of acknowledgement he may have been speaking to himself, "in and of itself. Only for what it represented."
Loki set the stiff body up his knee as he plucked absently at the sticks, picking one at seeming random to lay out before him. Another one followed soon after, then another, each once chosen with less care than the last, a neat little stack of broken twigs.
"So you see, it isn't much of a loss."
Of course not, Thor thought. Not useful and not valuable, not unique in the slightest. It could not even sing.
"And what was that? What was the bird supposed to represent?"
Loki did not answer at first, the silence stretching long so Thor thought he would not answer at all.
"Maybe just a choice," Loki said, and Thor wondered at whose choice it had been, Loki’s or the bird’s or someone else’s entirely. He did not care for games like these, guessing games with countless answers because he never seemed able to choose the right one.
Loki cupped his hands around the bird, fingers smoothing out its crown, with more gentleness than Thor remembered him ever giving it.
"It was mine, you see, while it lasted." But Thor didn't really see at all.
Loki placed the bird on the raft of sticks, treading a small distance to kneel and set the raft in the river. It caught on the shallow rocks and he toed it deeper into the water, watching it drift a small distance before flicking his wrist. A tiny spark arced through the air and caught upon the raft, setting the entire thing aflame.
Thor stood beside Loki without commenting, watching the raft burn; shoulders close enough to brush, though they didn't.
"Tell me, brother," Loki smiles, and it's a smile full of lies. "When the glass cut me open, did you see a heart?"
His sheets are bloody, patterns like snowdrift. He has rebroken his fingers, torn at the scabs. He might have done more damage to himself, if he was not already so weak.
Thor thinks, he could place Mjolnir upon Loki. He could lay her beside the gash in Loki's chest. He could tie up Loki's hands and bind him to the bed and keep his little brother from hurting himself again.
He could save them both the pain.
"I think you loved me better, when you thought me dead,” Loki says, and sometimes his truths hurt more than lies.
"I think I loved me better, too."
(It was a poor choice, he'd thought, after all.
He should have chosen another.)