Thor has never met Mother Nature, but he can see her grief in the grayscale fog cloaking planet earth. He watches it, day after day and night after night, as this small, insignificant planet struggles to recover, rebuild.
They got them back, those that Thanos snapped away. But there were still so many more gone. Turns out, when half the world fades into dust, a whole lot more go with them. And the kids… Thor sighs. Orphans weren’t uncommon on Asgard. A planet of warriors is going to leave a few kids parentless, but the sheer number of kids here, dirty and puffy eyed, alone with no family left, it makes his heart break.
What it does to Loki, to Quill, to so many of the others, there is no fixing this one. Not really. But Thor, he can build things. His strength is useful on the construction sites, clearing rubble and lifting walls.
That’s what the Avengers do now; find places they can be useful. There aren’t many people attacking the rubble planet these days. Not much use for heroes.
He’s dusty, and sore in a way he doesn’t remember being ever before. Not even beaten bloody by Thanos. It’s the kind of ache that feels apart of him, deeper than bone and tissue and muscle. Deeper than spirit or power. All he wants now is to curl up in bed and sleep until the sun rises again.
But he can’t find Loki, and the same panic that sits on his sternum every time he is separated from his brother builds in him, floods his lungs and burns his eyes. He knows where to find the mischief god. The only place he’s really safe these days, where anyone really trust him. He works, well past when the humans give up, works until even he can’t see where his hammer falls.
Thor makes his way to the orphanage that’s been set up. The building used to be a hotel, which makes it the perfect place. Add in some of Tony’s toys and a ton of volunteers, and these kids have a pretty good holding place. As good as they really can have. He knows exactly where Loki’ll be, so he makes his way to the converted nursery. It’s well past midnight, most of the world asleep and exhausted, but Loki doesn’t really sleep these days.
He doesn’t talk to Thor, about where he was. About how he got back. Thor doesn’t ask, doesn’t let the others push. But Loki is exactly where Thor expected to find him, cradling one of the few infants left. She’s tiny, even in his slim arms, dark-skinned and curly haired. Her lips are puckered, asleep. Loki’s voice is low, and Thor has to properly enter the room to hear the song he’s mumbling.
“I have not heard that in many years,” he whispers. Loki stiffens, watches the girl carefully, before turning.
He keeps his voice low as he says, “Not since we were little, and Mother still rocked us to sleep.
Thor smiles at his brother and steps closer, stroking a large finger down a soft cheek. Baby Girl stirs, brows creases and lips opening, but she doesn’t wake up. Her tiny hand does wrap around his large thumb and he smiles as he presses a kiss to her forehead. Loki must’ve bathed her recently, because she still smells powdery.
“You were late finding me,” Loki says, with an edge of concern.
“I wanted to give you more time with the babies,” Thor reassures him. Loki sways with the infant in his arms, and he studies his brother.
Thor can’t meet his eyes. “Tony’s algorithm found her family, didn’t it?” There’s a coldness to Loki’s tone that makes him flinch.
“Loki, I told you from the beginning we might not get to keep her. You know the rules, if they have family, we hand them over. That was the deal.” Thor hates it as much as his brother, but he also knows it’s the right thing to do. These kids, their lives are going to be hard enough in this post-snap world. Any little thing that can be done to ease their paths, should be.
Loki doesn’t agree. “Then why did it take so long? Hmm?”
Thor glances at him, and the way Loki hunches over Baby Girl, shielding her from the rest of the world. “He’s young, Loki. Her half brother, though according to the system he was adopted before she was born. It took the system a bit of time to find him, and longer to confirm the connection.” He doesn’t tell Loki the boy is just barely 20, that he has a record. He had argued with Tony for hours about it. It’s not that Thor wants to steal a baby away, but the boy is too young for this burden. Tony pointed out that one instance of shoplifting wasn’t enough to turn him away. That he’d been fifteen and with friends. That he’d paid his dues and more. That Loki had done worse.
Thor hadn’t punched the iron genius for that, but it had been close. But Tony was right. She wasn’t theirs to keep. “When does he come for her?” Loki asked, resigned.
“Should be a couple of days,” Thor answers. He can see the way Loki deflates, how he collapses into the rocker, Baby Girl cradled against his chest. He hums a little, presses his nose to dark curls. “You can go now, Thor.”
Thor wants to argue, to stay, but Loki doesn’t handle these goodbyes well. He leaves, pretending he doesn’t notice the damp glisten on his brother’s cheeks.
+
Loki spend every moment with Baby Girl he can. Thor has to literally pry the girl from his arms and force him to take small naps and eat something. But only by promising not to let anyone else near her.
On the day her brother arrives, Loki is tense and snappish. He almost stabs Marisole when she offers to change her, and he does stab Danny when he offers the girl a bottle. Tony ends up sequestering them to one of the few empty rooms of the large building, demanding Thor sort this out.
“She should have a name,” Thor says, “before her brother arrives.”
“She does,” Loki says tensely. “Solvi.”
Thor can feel his heart breaking; for this girl who is alone, for the brother who will have to grow and raise her. For Loki, who names them the moment they land in his arms, despite everything. “She is strength. She survived where so many have not, and she will continue to do so.”
Loki nods, and when Solvi stirs in his arms, when her face screws in pre-cry, he shifts her to his shoulder and sways, hand gently thumping against her back. He’s humming again, a forgotten lullaby, and Thor feels little again, warm and safe in a way he hasn’t felt in a long time.
Her brother arrives early in the morning, fidgety with nerves, but with a steel-flint in charcoal eyes that tells Thor he’ll be good. He can survive this. Loki eyes him cautiously, ready to flee. But they boy shifts the bag on his shoulder, arm scar-covered and thick, and they can see a pale, silver blanket peaking out. The bag is full of supplies, and he’ll get a bag from them too. Solvi takes to him instantly, babbling happily and patting his cheek, like she can somehow recognize their relation. It’s a thing with all the kids, no matter their age. The one parting gift the snap left no one wants to return.
“Solvi. It’s a strange name, for a strange new world.” It’s the closest to a thanks they get, but Thor understands. He wants to ask that they get updates, but he knows better. Still, he tucks the number into Solvi’s pocket and he sees the small nod the brother gives them. Loki vanishes before the door shuts, and Thor knows he won’t see him for many hours.
+
“They all have families, Thor,” Tony snaps.
“Yes. And I’m not,’ Thor clenches his fist around the cup, watching the plastic crack in his hands. “I’m not asking you to give us one of those, Tony. I’m asking you and Strange to find another way.”
Strange studies him, head cocked and twitchy fingers steepled under his chin. “You want us to science you up a baby?”
“Or magic it,” Thor says, disliking the subtle mockery in the wizard’s tone. “Loki needs this; needs to feel like he is doing something good. And he needs someone to care for.”
“He has you,” Tony points out. “And he has the orphans before they go. Eventually there will be one with no one.
“It is not the same and you know it,” Thor says. “What would you two do, without Peter?” It's a cruel, low blow, but Tony sits up straighter.
“We will figure something out.”
+
The algorithm is flawless, combining Peter and Bruce and Tony’s science with Stephen’s magic, and alien… alien. Small swabs of DNA take from the children, run through different spectrums and analysis and records, until all possible matches are found. Matches are then screened for criminal and health histories, personality equations, and whatever else the others have determined makes a suitable caregiver for the children. Clint and Natasha are usually responsible for contact potential familial matches, although who made that decision will forever baffle Thor.
He hates the machine. Tony calls it B.I.G. D.A.D.D.Y. Loki calls it metal devil. But the machine has never, not once in all this time failed them.
So when Loki slinks into their bed, far from the nursery, with a baby in his arms, Thor sighs. He sits up and lets Loki lean into him, wraps his arm around a cold, bare shoulder, and stares into green and blue eyes.
“Heterochromia,” Loki tells him. “I think usually one eye is one color and the other a different one.” The boy’s eyes are green on top and blue on bottom, and he’s so small. Smaller than any of the others.
They don’t see them this young normally. Only the hardiest of orphan infants made it through the snap. But occasionally, B.I.G.D.A.D.D.Y.’s probes would find one younger. This one though, “Did you steal him, Loki.” Thor asks and there is nothing cautious in his tone.
“His mother was ill, Thor, and her doctor did not survive,” Loki answers distracted. He bounces the boy, makes his face shift ridiculously so the kid babbles at him.
Thor questions this knowledge, but never out loud.
+
No one ever asks Loki how he feeds the infants. Why he feeds then alone, behind locked doors. But when he comes to bed, Thor rubs his chest with oils and kisses behind his ear.
Stephen knows, and Tony has his suspicions, and Peter tries to spy, but Thor and Loki keep this to themselves. Some of the babies are not meant to survive, but if Asgard can do this one last thing, can keep this race alive despite its own death, well, the brothers think it is a fitting legacy.
+
Stephen approaches Thor, appearing out of the shadows. He’s had a lot of practice with Loki, not being startled by shadows appearing from other shadows. Still, it’s discomforting when the cloak wraps around his shoulder, pulls him aside.
“It would be much simpler than we thought, to give you what you want,” Stephen says it, excited in the way doctors are for tumors and growths. Tony rolls his eyes, and rambles long science about atmospheres and gravity and water content.
Thor understands about 78% of it, but more, he understands the hope in Tony’s eyes, the thrill in Stephens.
Peter is the one frowning, cautious. “His body,” he hesitates, clearly worried about saying what the older men won’t. What Tony can’t. “None of us know how being gone affected our bodies, Thor. No amount of science is prepared for the effect of that, the anomalies. We can,” he pauses, glances around.
Bruce finishes for him, “Time, Thor. We need more time.”
+
Thor doesn’t tell Loki about the geniuses ideas and concerns. He can’t put into words why he keeps this a secret, but when he lays Loki against their sheets and fucks into him, when his brother is wrapped around him, pulling Thor into him.
When they are one in this way, skin melded to skin, bone grazing bone, one wild heartbeat and stuttered breath, it feels wrong that he cannot give Loki this one desire.
It feels right, watching Loki’s face shift in pleasure, his hips arch, his belly soft. When Thor spends in him, there’s this moment, quiet and still and untouchable where a part of him wills this wish into being, and where Loki, bone limp and soft in ways he never is otherwise, wills it with him.
Later, when morning hasn’t quite reached them, Loki slips into the shadows, leaving Thor cold in their bed. But he returns as suddenly as he was gone, the boy cradled in his arms. Thor knows that when the others see the baby is gone, they will come for them. But he lifts the sheet and lets Loki curl against him, baby balanced on their chest.
“His name?” Thor asks quietly.
“He was ill, Thor. I could feel it,” Loki says, desperate and fierce. He strokes his fingers down red skin, watching the dark lashes flutter. “He was ill, and he was hungry, and he needed me.”
Thor nods, curls around his brother and the baby tighter. “What do you call him, Loki?” He reaches for the oil on the bedside table, and offers it to Loki who bats it away.
“Yatniel,” Loki answers. His eyes are green, vibrant and fresh in ways they have not been since he returned. “He is ours, Thor.”
Thor agrees, can feel the rightness of this moment in his chest, but he does not know how to prepare Loki for the inevitable. B.I.G.D.A.D.D.Y has never failed to find a family before.
+
B.I.G.D.A.D.D.Y. has found 36 kids family since the night Yatniel came home.
But Yatniel still sleeps in a cot beside their bed. Steve and Bucky and Wanda had argued against the gods keeping the boy in their home, arguing protocols and standards. Surprisingly Quill and Peter had been the loudest voices in their favor.
In the end, Yatniel’s delicate nature won out. Anytime he was separated from Loki, left in the near-empty nursery, he grew ill. Within minutes of Loki cradling him, crooning ancient songs with no meaning, the boy grew calm and rested.
Tony eyes them both warily. “B.I.G.D.A.D.D.Y. never fails.” It’s a warning and an apology.
Loki shrugs, “No, it doesn’t.”
Thor doesn’t like the smugness of his tone, but he gently takes Yatniel from his brother, so Loki can stretch a little. Yatniel coos in his ear, pats his cheek, and prods Thor’s false eye. “Yes, like you, my eyes are different,” he whispers.
+
Loki has Yatniel strapped to his chest as he cooks. He’s talking to the boy like he understands the stories, making objects appear and disappear in front of his face. Thor leans in the doorway watching, eyeing the fruit-mash Loki feeds the boy.
“It’s rude to stare,” Loki says suddenly, and Yatniel turns and grins at Thor, clapping his dirty hands.
“B.I.G.D.A.D.D.Y. is never wrong,” Thor says quietly.
Loki stiffens, but he doesn’t stop stirring. Instead, a green blanket whips past Thor’s head and drapes itself across Yatniel’s head. “It’s time for his nap. Do be a dear, brother, and watch this pot? Even you can’t mess that up.”
Loki goes to brush past Thor, but Thor grabs his arm. He’s thankful for the child, that it stops Loki from vanishing. “B.I.G.D.A.D.D.Y. is never wrong, and Yatniel has no family.”
“How is that possible?” Loki scoffs.
“The only child from a long line of only children. Some issue with fertility down both parental lines,” Thor says. He smiles, soft and bright, as he offers his thumb for Yatniel to teeth on. Loki still has not grasped this fully, refuses to let himself hope.
“What will they do with him?” He asks.
“Nothing. There is no one to claim him,” no one to challenge us.
Loki does not weep. But he unstrapped the boy, bounces him in his arms, and his green eyes are bright as he tells Yatniel, “I told you, you need me.”
If it sounds more like, I need you, only the brother gods are there to hear it.
+
Yatniel flourishes in Loki’s care. The mischief god still cares for the other lost children, still feeds and changes and loves them until their family comes for them, but he does so with Yatniel on his hip.
They aren’t sure why the boy’s skin stays red-tinged, or why his pale hair turns black, but he grows, stretches into his limbs and turns his babbling into words. Most nights he starts out in his cot, snoring softly. But somewhere between the moon rise and fall, he ends up nestled between Thor and Loki’s chest, chubby fist gripping their thumbs.
Stephen is fascinated by it, by the baby’s oddities. “He’s human. Or, he was when we first brought him here.”
Stephen eyes Loki. Tony says, “Perhaps,” and Stephen nods, and they disappear into the lab.
Loki smiles, like he’s got a secret to share, and blinks into the lab.
+
Yatniel’s exact birthday is hard to pin, so they celebrate one year from the day he arrive at the orphanage. He’s got frosting smeared across his face and his blue-green eyes are sugar-bright as he reaches for Loki who picks him up.
Thor studies his brother, the circles under his eyes and the hollows of his cheek. Loki has been ill, worse so than when he returned from the beyond. He spends most mornings ill, and his body aches.
But he won’t tell Thor why. Just melts into Thor’s hands as he massages oils into his back, his shoulders, his chest. Thor can’t understand why he’s massaging it into his chest, now that Yatniel eats solid foods.
Loki is whispering in Yatniel’s ear, and the boy is blowing spit bubbles, when he lets out an ear splitting shriek. “Present!” The boy cries, “present!”
Thor stares at the mounds of newspaper and ribbon, searching for a forgotten box. Loki hands Yatniel over and kisses his brother’s cheek. “Yes, son, present. A little brother, all for you.”
Thor stares at him, then carefully presses his palm to Loki’s abdomen. Loki just grins a sly little thing at him, and takes Yatniel away to bath him.