Archive of Our Own ^beta

When sleep finally found him, Thor was too exhausted to pay any attention to the dreams his mind played out.

He hadn’t slept for a week, maybe longer than that, since the end of the world presented itself in the form of a deafening snap. Thor had tried to chase Thanos after he disappeared, but even with the power Stormbreaker gave him, he still could not see to where the Titan had vanished. The universe seemed to be mocking him in the cruellest way, yielding the ability of sight but rendering him still incapable of seeing the one being he needed to find the most. Had this ever happened to Heimdall? Thor’s dearest friend, the man who never failed to help when he needed him in the most dire of situations, was now gone. What would he do in this case?

Heimdall. Thor could almost hear his friend berating him for not getting enough sleep. “Your strength is useless without the proper amount of rest. The balance of activity and inactivity is crucial if you wish to function at your peak,” or something equally prophetic and vague. Not that sleep mattered. Thor had faced every extreme known to the gods, and he still came out alive. A little insomnia would not kill him. It seemed like nothing could.

Thor was unsure if he wasn’t sleeping because he couldn’t, or because he didn’t want to. Sleeping felt like giving up. With Stormbreaker, he could find Thanos and make him pay for all the lives he took, but Thanos was gone. Instead, Thor used the Bifröst to bring Stark back to Midgard. He used the Bifröst to search the universe for familiar faces. Heimdall, Loki, his mother, his father, his sister, Valkyrie, they were all gone. His planet, his people, obliterated. Even the sad excuse for a team--they called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy--whom he remembered fondly as his friends, were turned to ashes save one of them. Rabbit. Together, he and Thor stayed in New York with Stark. Rabbit refused to walk outside after an awkward encounter with a child who saw him, yelled “talking racoon!” and ran away. Thor remained at Stark Tower only because his mind could not think of any other place to go. Asgard was no more, so maybe Midgard would be his new home.

When Thor went outside, he would wander the city in his civilian clothing. If people recognized him, they said nothing. The streets were no longer crowded, and the emptiness and silence of the once bustling city served only to remind Thor of his failure. Life continued, reluctantly, with half the population gone, but Thor could not stand to see the grim faces of passersby for more than an hour or so.

When his first slumber since before the war came, he remembered nothing of it. He woke on Stark’s couch to the sun streaming through the large, clear windows, feeling warm from the inside out.

He saw very little of Stark despite living in his home. The tower felt hollow. A few times, Thor heard crashing and angered yelling from Stark’s workshop, but he knew better than to intrude. Stark was hurting, and his coping mechanisms were his own. All Thor could do was stay out of his way, but also make sure there was an extra mug of bitter coffee on the counter in case the man wanted to emerge from the dark. Thor never saw him, but the mug would mysteriously disappear from time to time.

The next time Thor slept, it was days later. His dream transported him back to Asgard, the old Asgard he remembered from his childhood, shimmering and gold and lush. He walked the gardens of his palace, reaching out to touch the broad, smooth leaves of foliage as he passed. Loki waited for him at the pond, back turned to him. Thor stopped and stared at the scene, listening to the trickling water of the fountain, watching Loki’s green robes furrow in the breeze.

“Brother,” Thor called, and Loki answered by turning.

“Brother,” Loki said with a nod and a smile. He looked younger, genuinely happy, nothing like the bruised and battered man with bleeding eyes when Thor had seen him last.

Thor joined him at the edge of the pond, and they both gazed into the rippling reflection during a long period of silence.

“What are you looking for in there?” Loki asked.

“I’m not. I’m just… remembering,” Thor said after a drawn out moment. “It’s gone forever, and I’d like to take it in just one last time.”

“How can it be gone if you’re standing right here?” Loki’s mischievous smile gave him away, and Thor couldn’t help but mirror it with a small grin of his own. “You can smell the fresh air and feel the wind as it blows past you. You can feel the cool water on your furnace of a body.”

With a flick of his wrist, Loki sent a stream of water into Thor’s face and laughed as he sputtered in surprise.

“I thought we outgrew splashing games, Brother,” Thor said under his palm as he wiped his face, the smile never leaving his lips.

“My point,” Loki started, facing Thor and swiping his thumb over his eyebrow to clean leftover drops of water, “is that if this place feels real to you right now, then it is not gone forever.”

“We watched it explode, Loki.” Thor caught his hand and held his fingers. “It is gone. We saw it. I saw you. I held you as you died. You’re gone with our planet, our people.”

“I am right here.”

“You are a dream, and dreams are not real.”

Loki switched their hands around and pressed Thor’s palm to his chest. His heart beat so steadily under his clothes that Thor thought it might have been real.

“You never were the brightest,” Loki said, and his characteristic smile was back on his lips.

Thor woke on the couch in darkness, the light from Asgard no longer surrounding him. Whatever time it was, it must have been late at night, judging by the cloudy moon barely shining through the window.

Not wanting to sleep any more, Thor wandered into the kitchen and made some coffee. He spiked it with a strong liquor he found in the cabinets, a trick he learned from Stark a long time ago.

Banner stopped by not long after. He did not look well, but then again, none of them did. He mentioned to Thor that he had been seeing a therapist and suggested that he might try it out as well. Thor turned him down. Banner said that he hasn’t heard from the “other guy” in a long time, and he feels grateful for it.

Natasha called the tower. Banner and Thor answered, standing in front of the large digital screen. Stark did not join them.

Natasha was looking much better than the rest of them. Her hair was a different color from the last time Thor saw her, and when Banner asked where she had disappeared to, she responded with “somewhere unimportant.”

“The reason for my call is to just fill you in. Rogers is laying low for now, we both are, but he’s not relaxing. He’s wracking his brain for a solution--”

“You’re with Steve?” Banner asked.

“Yes, and you’ll hear from him soon enough. He’s just not feeling himself lately.”

“None of us are,” Thor said. Natasha nodded.

“I’ll be in touch as often as I can,” she continued. “Sooner rather than later, we’ll both be back at headquarters. We’ll be bringing company. Rogers wants you all to be there, too, when the time comes.”

“I’m surprised you’re back on your feet so quickly, Nat,” Banner said. “Not that I should be surprised, actually. It’s just that I didn’t think you’d care so much when we’re so deep in this hole.”

“Trust me, Bruce, I’d rather vanish,” she said with a smile that looked more sad than happy. “I’m doing it for Rogers. I’m worried about him. Tell Stark I’m worried about him, too. Gotta go. Stay sharp, boys.”

The video feed cut off, and Banner pressed a button on the wall to make the screen stow itself away again.

“I was afraid she was going to ask me to join them again,” Banner confessed, fidgeting with his wristwatch.

“Why is that?” Thor asked.

“Well, with the ‘other guy’ not listening to me, I thought maybe I’d be free from him. But there’s no telling what’s gonna happen if they ask me to get into another fight. To be honest, man, I don’t know if my body can take another transformation.”

Thor laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I will join them wherever the fight may be. My ax is a Thanos-killing weapon, and I’d be rather pressed if I don’t get to kill at least one Thanos.”

When Thor saw Loki again, they were not on Asgard. Thor was in bed, but he could not remember falling asleep in one of Stark’s bedrooms. The room was dark because it was still night, but the sun was threatening to break over the horizon within the next hour.

Thor sat up when he saw Loki slowly making his way toward the bed, wearing simple robes that he used to sleep in.

“Will you stop tormenting me in my sleep?” Thor asked.

Loki didn’t answer until he was on the bed, on Thor’s lap, cupping his face between his palms.

“I thought you’d be happy to see me.”

“I am overjoyed.” Thor’s hands came to rest on Loki’s waist. “And that is why it torments me.”

“This is the only way we can be together, Brother. For now, at the very least.”

“Don’t fill my heart with false hope.” Moisture welled up in Thor’s eyes and spilled easily down his cheeks. Loki cleaned them with his fingertips as they fell.

“What makes you think it’s false?”

“Because it is in your nature to play tricks.” Thor’s arms wrapped around his brother, holding him close. Unashamed, he pressed his ear to Loki’s chest, feeling and hearing the heartbeat once again. “It hurts me to have you here.”

“It hurts me to stay away,” Loki murmured into Thor’s hair, arms sliding around his shoulders.

They did not move for a long time, content to let the minutes pass in silence. Loki felt so real that Thor absorbed his body heat and clung to it. When he pulled away, it was only because the sun was rising.

“It is morning,” he said, knowing that he would wake soon and his brother would be gone again.

“Not quite yet,” Loki whispered. His hands came up to hold Thor’s face again, and he leaned down to press his lips to his right eyelid. The damp lashes fluttered underneath his mouth. “I miss your blue eye.”

“I miss yours, Brother.”

“You will see me again very soon.” He pressed another kiss to Thor’s tear-stained cheek, punctuating his words with more and more. “You have to only be patient. Until the sun can shine on both of us. Again.”

Loki’s eyes slipped closed. His mouth touched Thor’s for a brief, warm second before he woke in bed alone.

Touching his fingers to his lips, Thor glanced out the window into the sparkling sunrise that turned everything gold.