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Loki had always been a constant in his life. When they were young he was always there, getting him into and out of trouble with his cunning and mischievous ways. As they grew he became his partner in battle, the more tactical and crafty of the two, but no less deadly. Together they fought, they laughed, they did virtually everything together and he had thought that that was how it would always be.
Many things had changed throughout the years between them. Loki had betrayed all of their trusts, had been exiled from Asgard multiple times and had been punished in increasingly creative and horrific ways. He had gone on to defend Asgard and Midgard from his brother, leaving them divided in a manner that wasn’t just physical, that cut deeper. There was now an emotional wall between Thor and his brother that he could never hope to scale, could never hope to break down with even the mightiest swings of Mjolnir. When he saw the hate in his brother’s eyes, the greed, the hunger for destruction, he wondered what more he could have done to save who his brother had been.
Perhaps he had laughed at one too many jokes, had showed too little eagerness to help, had been too blind to his brother’s suffering. Had he not asked enough questions or not asked the right questions to keep his brother at his side? He felt as if he had missed something massively important, something that could have changed his brother’s fate. However, deep down, he knew that his brother was a man of subtleties and that the fact that Thor was not had been the true failure.
New York was in flames, civilians screaming in the distance, rubble scattered across the streets along with overturned cars. Despite the appearance of chaos, of the world falling apart around them, Thor knealt, battered and bloody, with the cause of it all cradled in his arms. With the main battle over the rest of the Avengers had left to secure the city, leaving him alone with that which had always been there, that which had always been constant, that which he himself had broken… Broken in a way in which he, yet again, could not fix.
“Once again you… Prove to be the better man, Brother…” Loki rasps out, his lips the brilliant red of fresh blood, his eyes a little hazy with pain.
“No.” Thor’s words are firm, jaw set as tears begin to well in his eyes. “Never better. Only different, Brother.”
Something shifts within the fathomless green of his brother’s eyes, something cold seeps away to reveal a vulnerability that hadn’t been there since they were children, that had laid concealed within Loki the whole time. Here, at the end, with Loki broken and his clothing tattered, his dark hair matted with blood, Thor finally sees his brother smile again. It is an expression that holds within it thousands of things that have gone unsaid, hundreds of emotions, and it steals the breath from his lungs.
“Thank you…” Loki breathes, closing his eyes, his body relaxing in Thor’s arms, the strength and life in him beginning to slowly bleed out of him.
Bending down he pressed a gentle kiss to his brother’s bloodied forehead, watching the smile grow a little at the gesture, feeling the struggling of Loki’s lungs begin to weaken. It is a gradual thing, death, but in those last few moments there isn’t anything to be said between them that they both don’t already know. Thus Thor holds his brother until the last breath eases out of his lungs, gently rocks his battered form, silently wishing as he gradually succumbs to great, wracking sobs that he had not done everything so horribly wrong.