Gone is gone
Space is a comforting place. That is, if endless dark only to be broken by an occasional galaxy, hundreds of planets crashing into their own extension, and defining silence was comforting.
Not that the Guardians were silent. Or the nightmares.
But after. When Quill and the Rabbit stopped quarreling passed out with droll dripping down their chins, Zargnuts rolling softly across the deck, and Gamora put The Benatar on auto; after that, it was calm.
It's the calm he's afraid of. Of the illusions dancing across the night, things of past, things never to return. Bitter laughter, mischief eyes, glorious purpose, bruises, and betrayal, but above all,
Loki.
Broken on a prison floor. Falling from the rainbow bridge. Dying in his arms. Tricking him, abandoning him, leaving him -
Saving him.
Leaving him with cryptic phrases of suns shining again and the sound of crunching bone.
"You were right," he tells the smirking Loki, tossing a Zargnut at the illusion, shattering it. "The sun did shine again."
On earth. When he was alone. Waiting for him to come back and laugh at him, mocking. "Are you so easily fooled, brother? As if I'd stay dead a third time." And he'd wrap his arms around him, real or not real, if only for a merciful moment.
It was shining when the first illusion came. When he rushed to his brother, shattered in relief, laughing in the exhaustion of heartache, lightning coursing through his veins, only to be met with air. And again, when the illusion came as he watched the ocean throwing itself against the shore, when he found numbness of beer, lay shivering in fever, fought his way back to reality. Again, and again, and again.
All the while, the sun kept shining.
He learned the illusions stayed longer if he didn't try to touch them. Longer still if he didn't speak, so he'd watch them. Sometimes trapped in a memory. Sometimes not. But always, Loki. With his dancing eyes and sarcastic chuckle. "Did you really think, brother -" Then he'd vanish. And so would the sun.
It was the sharp crack of bone that always woke him. Shapes of the ship would morph into dead Asgardians and falling comets into bursting flames as he fumbled his way to the ship's hull. He'd watch the darkness then, remembering the endless drift through space before the Guardians pulled him from his grave of infinity. And he wondered. If he'd ever be awakened by the sudden thump of a body crashing into the ship, Loki finally finding his way back to him, or if the abyss would claim him forever.
"Nightmares again, brother?" Loki was sprawled against the hull wall, comet light ricocheting off the illusion. "Greif isn't very becoming on you."
"Come to visit so soon?"
"Ah, you know how it is. Death leaves you with quite a bit of time on your hands."
"If I were to be so lucky." Was he out there now? Adrift? Mangled in a floating space wreck or marooned on an abandoned planet?
"Well, that's a bit depressing. Even for you, brother." Loki flickered; his smile filled with shadows. "Do you miss me so drastically?"
He laughed. Bitter and hollow. "I'm lost, Loki, utterly lost."
The illusion blinked, broken shards shifting behind his eyes; he opened his mouth as if to form a question but vanished to places between worlds before the first words could be uttered.
Nights later, gasping awake with the familiar snap of bone still ringing in his ears, Thor wondered what the illusion might have said.
Banner should never have given him hope. Pulling him from his drunken stupor, dragging him back to the Avengers, as if they'd always remain the family of long ago, mocking one another late into the night, laughter drifting into the skyline off Stark tower. As if all it took to heal old wounds and bitterness was a new threat on earth. Perhaps being together, misplaced Gods, and abandoned humans would bring them peace where their worlds could offer none.
Look out for each other.
All this time, I thought I never had any family; it turns out I got two.
No matter what, if you need us, if you need me, I'll be there.
I used to have nothing. Then I got this...This job. This family.
She's gone.
We lost.
Love you 3,000.
But stories never do end the way we think they should. Killing Thanos, traveling back in time, Tony snapping half the world back to existence couldn't fix what was taken from them. And when half the world came back, Loki wasn't with them.
Instead, they lost more. Nat. Tony. Gomora. Steve. Each loss barely leaving an impact after Loki. At some point, Thor thought the pain would cap, reach ts final height and cease to climb. Come down and overflow, spiraling into some metaphorical drain just long enough to let time take a full breath. But it never did.
Part of the journey is the end.
When he went back, back to Asgard, back to the home suspended in realities of time travel and worlds of past glory, he remembered why he hated him.
Loki. Caged and pacing in his glass prison. Safely hidden from MidGod and Asgard and all the realms. Not yet the cause of their mother's death or his articulate illusion of sacrifice and allegiance.
"Did you come to mock me once more, brother?" Thor watched him. Knowing this time, Loki was anything but an illusion. "Does it please you? To trap me? For me to know my place." He flung his fits to the glass, eyes blazing in fury when they didn't connect with Thor's face.
"Loki." A statement. A question. A wish.
"Ah. Does the God of thunder have more to say? Tell me, brother. Have you decided my fate? What shall it be then? Cast to the frost giants? A beheading, perhaps? Father would love that. Stopping me once and for all - "
"Loki."
"What!? What could you possibly have left to say to me!?"
Nothing.
Everything.
"Speechless, brother?" He spun around, eyes settling on Thor, drawing back as if he'd been burned almost instantly.
"You're not Thor." The hair was too long, limp, and stringy. Age etched in Thor's face in places it had never known, all the light, confidence, and vigor Loki had detested was replaced with despair. Only the voice that had remained unchanged.
"Loki...How I've missed you." And how he hated him now. Alive and on the cusp of his second betrayal. He touched the glass. Inches from the Loki he had loved. Hated. Loved.
Hated.
It seemed one was impossible without the other.
"What have you done with my brother." Loki inched closer. Examining him as if he were a ghost of something he once knew.
"He's lost." Loki blinked, broken shards shifting behind his eyes, his mouth opening as if to form a question just as Thor vanished between worlds.
Back on earth, with the reality stone safely retrieved, he wondered if that Loki knew. If time always remained the same no matter the line created. If it simply restarted once it ended. If that Loki would always die, and that Thor would always watch. Again, and again and again, until time itself crumbled. Or if somehow, in some timeline, Thor and Loki found their way back to what they had always meant to be.
Later, before Steve left, before he left them, he asked him if he saw Loki when he went back to New York.
"Was he the same?"
Steve nodded. Confused by Thor's grief. But he didn't know Loki. Not the Loki who had come back to rescue Thor and save Asgard. Not the Loki who stayed, for the first time, willing to rule a new Asgard with his brother, coming home at last.
"If you were here, I might actually give you a hug."
"I'm here."
But of course, Loki had stolen the Tesseract. He had brought Thanos to the Statesman in the first place. Maybe Steve didn't need to know the new and improved Loki. Maybe Loki never did change or had any intention to. Perhaps he had another elaborate con planned to fool Thor for the hundredth time.
At least that's what he tells himself. After he decapitated Thanos. After the second snap failed to bring Loki back, the God of Thunder lost his thunder and lightning and the will to continue existing in worlds without a brother wreaking havoc on galaxies.
"You're not the only one who lost someone." Banner was angry, green spilling from his eyes as he clenched his fists, fighting to keep his rage in check. But the list of things that mattered to Thor was limited to beer and illusions. Banner only distracted him from both.
"I didn't lose someone. I lost Everyone."
"And what about me, Thor?"
He scoffed. "You? What about you." Biting words from a broken God whose last friend only reminded him of dashed hope and the cold gray skin of his mangled brother. "I don't care what you do, just as long as it's away from me."
"Coward."
"What?"
"I said," Banner lifted his gaze to match Thor, "You're a coward."
"Ah. This will be fun. Let's fight this out, shall we?" But the Hulk was no match for the StormBreaker as it slashed into his skin, faster than the Hulk could heal and with more vengeance than he was prepared for. Even after Hulk shrunk back to Bruce in defeat, Thor tossed the ax aside slammed his fists into him till their blood streamed in rivers at their feet. "Don't pretend to know what I've lost, my friend." He dropped him then, fleeing from the blood and despair and shame of wanting to kill the only friend who cared of his pathetic existence.
Banner's voice called after him as he fled like the ghosts that clung to him in the night. "Everyone else is gone, Thor, and they're not coming back. Not this time. We're all we've got."
But he was wrong. He had Loki. And nothing was going to take him away from him again.
When Banner found him, staring at the waves, crashing against the shore, pulling back to the sea, crashing, and pulling, crashing, and pulling, he tried to bring him back. 'Come on, Thor, let's go."
The illusion had returned, younger this time, unmarked by bitterness and betrayal. He watched it in the waves, laughing, the sun glinting off his gold and tangling in his smile. "Come join me, brother! Let us catch a sea monster to make father proud!" He tossed Thor a wink over his shoulder, his innocence shattering Thor once more.
"Go? Go where?" Loki was gone again when he looked back, and storm clouds clung to the sun blocking its light.
But Banner didn't know. He'd lost everything too. And he knew just as Thor did, there wasn't a place for forgotten heroes and scared monsters, and nobody cared to morn a once assassin or a fallen God.
When he stopped coming, Thor didn't blame him.
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