4,048Disclaimer: Nothing from this Marvelous universe is mine.
Summary: Three months after Operation Avengers all is well. Or is it? When Steve and Tony hack into SHIELD to find missing weapons shipments they find more than they bargained for in the form of a prisoner who should, by rights, have been sent to Asgard long ago.
Warnings: Moderately graphic torture, hints of non-con.
A/N: (Thanks again to GothicCheshire, for betaing ;) All remaining errors are my own o.o) Also, huge, a huge shout out to all of you who are still reading this fic *-* To everyone, but especially the guests I cannot thank in person. All of you rock. I'd not have made it this far without you. (Though whether that's a good or bad thing, looking at the word count now, I leave to you to decide ;)) Also, again: Happy Christmas!
Chapter 46: Ascension
It is harder than it should be, returning upstairs.
Reluctance grows stronger in him with each step he takes from the safety of the workshop. With each step he takes towards Thor. He needs, and yet he does not need. He does not want his friends to die, for lack of his power. He does not want to hurt if he does not have to. He does not want to ask Thor for mercy. He does not want to be useless. In Asgard, he would be. There, there are ten thousand warriors as skilled as he. Without his magic, he is no better than any of them. Here, he can count on one hand the number of those who might be able to defeat him.
Like a pendulum his emotions swing, firm as quicksand.
It is fear that seeks to hold him back.
Fear is weakness.
He keeps walking.
Rationally, there is nothing to be afraid of.
He tells himself this, reminds himself that Thor is not Odin, and his stomach curls inwards despite all of it, forming a solid ball.
Fool. Pathetic fool.
There are no elevators here to do the work of climbing for him.
He sets his foot on the first step. The second.
Should he ask to speak to Thor alone?
Yes. He wants no witness to this humiliation.
Coward.
He hates Odin, for forcing this choice. Hates the fear that will not leave him, even though he knows Thor will not laugh at him for this or sneer.
Hates himself, suddenly, because it is joy he should feel now, isn't it? Now he knows that there is an end— a way out of this that he need not wait for for years— should he not be happy? Why is he not happy? Why is he not grateful, a tiny bit, for this? Woody did not hate Buzz Lightyear for freeing him. Luke did not hate Darth Vader. Toothless did not hate Stoick the Vast. He likes them, but he is not them.
He will never be them.
Coward.
Another step.
There is a purpose to everything the Allfather does, so Frigga always claimed.
She sees the future. She would know.
What is Odin's now?
To humiliate?
To humble?
To force him to see the hand Thor has stretched out in friendship?
To force him to take it?
All of them, perhaps.
Loki sneers at nothing. Remembers, belatedly, that he should be moving, and forces his legs once more to climb.
He's not so very far off, now. He can hear them already. Tony, who looks at him like he sees a little, and will demand more. Steve, who will wait until he is ready. Jane, who knows nothing and whom he wants to hate, does hate, sometimes, and who's eyes are haunted by a shadow of the same darkness that lies behind his own. And then Thor, amused and warm, saying— something, and suddenly he is paralysed. His hand is white about the railing.
Coward. Move. Move.
Another step.
"So, in all seriousness," Tony's voice drifts downwards, "What movie'll you vote for? Dinner first, sure, but we can't exactly have a shared movie night with you moping on the roof or something. Quit worrying. SHIELD's watching all the flight-paths, and even if they weren't, I am. Even the poor bastards stuck on takeout delivery duty will be getting DNA scans before they get within fifty miles of here."
He feels sick. He feels— foolish, maybe. So very foolish. He is Tony's friend, but Thor is too. Movie nights are not his right alone. Of course Thor, who does not even like them, who would prefer to be off killing things, will be a part of them too.
"I am not familiar with movies," Thor says, sounding resigned. "What do you recommend?"
"Well, if Clint comes down, it was the latest James Bond and you lot coerced me, but between us, I'm holding out for 'Stuart Little'."
"'Stuart Little'?" Thor echoes, lost.
"It's about an adopted mouse," Tony says, and Loki knows, suddenly, exactly who this was picked for. "You'll love it. I mean, it's 'Stuart Little'. Who wouldn't?"
"Seconding," Jane says. "The ending always makes me cry."
"Very well," Thor says, loyally if dubiously.
"You?" Tony says.
To Steve, Loki realises, because Steve says, a moment later:
"Why not? Sounds fun. Though I do think we should at least ask everyone else what they want before we form a deciding coalition."
Tony makes a scoffing noise.
"Bruce, Clint, Pepper, Loki. Four against four."
"Except that Pepper will be doing paperwork, and Clint won't vote for anything Loki does unless it's rated R."
"R?" Thor says.
"Pornographic, buddy, or a lot of blood."
Thor laughs.
"I see. Well then, unless the knife-work in it is clever, I think we three may have the deciding vote already."
The railing dents beneath his fingers.
Tony, Loki thinks, should invest in sturdier ones.
"Oh?" Tony says, "Loki not a fan of gratuitous blood-letting?"
Thor laughs again.
"Only when he is responsible for shedding it."
Loki does not want to see Thor anymore.
What difference will there truly be, if he puts this off?
No agents are coming. No one is attacking. Polt is in prison, and Tony and SHIELD watch. He's waited this long to be free. He can wait a little longer. Tomorrow he'll ask Thor, when the new clothes get here, and he can do so in three layers, gloves, and shoes. Tomorrow. In the meantime, he will go to the workshop where he cannot be heard, bite his sleeve just in case, and teleport to his room where he can read 'Sherlock Holmes' alone.
OoOoOoOoO
Dinner, Tony thinks, is less bad than it could've been.
Pepper has to be dragged from her paperwork, Bruce has to be woken up for it—Steve objects to that, and is firmly overruled by Tony because Bruce had more sleep than he did three hours ago— and for some weird reason Loki's upstairs instead of in the workshop, but eventually they're all there. The kid stuck on delivery duty doesn't look 20, looks like he's read the latest story on Tony housing supervillains, and has a cotton ball taped to his left arm from the DNA test.
Two SHIELD Agents accompany him.
The kid eyes him with wary awe.
Tony tips him $250, and that kid is his devoted slave.
By the time the car-load of takeout's been set on the table there's not actually any room for plates, so everyone ends up eating on the couches instead. Tony's suggestion. He hates this lounge set. He's been looking for an excuse to get rid of it ever since Pepper bought it.
What about putting Thor, Loki and Clint in the same room together doesn't equal furniture destruction?
It's a solid theory, he thinks. Still. For now, they're disappointing him.
"So what you're basically saying," Jane is saying now, the half-finished and rapidly congealing plate of Thai on her knee apparently forgotten, "Is that there are nine realms, and all of them have their own stars and planets and exist in separate universes that we'll never be able to get to?"
"For the most part. Some, like Asgard, have no other planets, and create our own light. Others, like Midgard and Alfheim, have thousands of planets. Each exists on a separate branch of Yggdrasil, and only once every five thousand years do their paths converge. Of course, with the Bifrost it was possible to reach them whenever we wished to. And with magic, though I know not how those paths work."
Thor looks at Loki as he says that, appealingly.
Loki, half way through his second pizza, either doesn't notice or doesn't care.
"You create your own light?" Jane says, "How?"
Is this how Steve feels when Tony goes on about electronics?
No. Electronics are actually interesting.
This is just plain weird.
Tony says so. In an undertone, admittedly, and to Bruce, but still.
"It's not that bad," Bruce murmurs back.
His hand's still swollen, but— though that could be optimism speaking— Tony thinks it's got a hint of purple to it now, as opposed to straight black.
"It's that bad," Tony says, firmly. "Who seriously likens a bunch of coexisting universes to a giant tree?"
"Asgard," Bruce says.
"Ha ha."
Clint, looking about as interested as Tony is, is twirling a chopstick around his forefinger. Steve is half-way through his third pizza, and still going strong. Pepper is either checking news headlines on her phone, or texting. Tony's not sure. He shovels in another mouthful of curry.
Thor and Jane show no signs of stopping any time soon.
It's either silence, forcing himself to take an interest, or it's starting a conversation of his own to combat it. Tony turns to Bruce, and starts expounding his current theories about the serum. Admittedly, they're less theories as in, concrete info, and more theories as in, places to possibly start acquiring something that might eventually solidify into concrete info if they're lucky, but hey. He's getting there. Slowly. Still, unless it's a variable inside a mathematical equation, DNA is Bruce's field, not his.
Bruce's theory is that the serum is either a catalyst or an enzyme, and the pre-serum is something to offer better reaction conditions.
Tony's is that the pre-serum is the catalyst, and that the serum is a toxin.
"About that..." Loki says, looking weirdly guilty and not meeting Bruce's eyes at all, "I scanned the serum with magic before. I do not know if the results will be usable, but I did try to mimic your databases. I imagine they will be on Jarvis' security footage, from the workshop."
Bruce stiffens. Steve, too, shoots Loki a curious look.
"You used your m—," Bruce starts.
"You did?" Tony says, elbowing Bruce in the ribs.
Bruce, thankfully, takes the hint.
"What did it look like?" the doctor asks, instead, after a short pause.
"A protein, of some sort. I could not tell more than that."
Tony's not a fan of magic on principle. He likes science and he likes rules and he likes Newton's Laws to be preserved the way they should be.
He can't help wondering, though, what it would be like to have the freedom to just have to want something for it to happen.
Money does it too, to a certain extent, but not instantly.
"We'll have a look at the results after dinner's done. And maybe a movie."
"And dishes," Pepper puts in.
"And dishes," Tony agrees. "Though given how Bruce's hand is, I'm guessing we won't be the ones doing them."
"I'm not sure I quite see how Bruce's hand being hurt stops you from doing the dishes," Pepper says.
"I'll do them," Steve cuts in, dryly.
"You always do them," Pepper frowns.
"Which means that of all of us," Loki says, persuasively, "Steve is really the most experienced, and thus the one best suited, for the job."
"Exactly," Tony agrees.
"Men," Jane says.
"Says the women who tidies her dirty plates into cupboards," Loki says.
"I don't— well, maybe just the— wait, how do you know that? You were watching me?"
"I was watching Thor," Loki corrects her.
Thor looks flattered.
Loki, immediately, looks defensive.
"To—," he starts, then breaks off abruptly.
"To what?" Thor asks.
To work out if he needed to kill Thor yet, Tony knows, or otherwise stall the return, assuming Loki had been telling him the truth when he'd said that, which admittedly he may not have been. Still. It's uncharacteristically tactful of Loki not to say so.
"To what, Loki?"
"Do you need any help with the dishes?" Loki says to Steve, ignoring Thor.
"That'd be nice, once I've finished eating."
"To what?" Thor says, for the third time, "Why did you watch me?"
"Because I wanted to," Loki snaps. "I was bored. Watching you ask for horses in the pet shops and being hit by cars amused me."
Doubt flickers in Thor's eyes, and reluctant amusement.
He backs off though, and after a moment or two, Loki keeps eating.
Tony makes his escape when Bruce does, five minutes later, with a casual, "I'll be in the workshop if you need me. Just having a quick look at the data."
It's... weird, for lack of a better word, the shape Loki summons. It's weirder still to see the blankness on his face, and the cold fury that follows it. Still. Priorities.
He'll nag Loki about the other later.
The serum, it turns out, is indeed a protein of some sort, and complex enough to give Tony a migraine just looking at it.
It's better once he works out the flickering-intensity thing and slow rotation is related to potential energy. It's better still when Bruce does something to convert the image into a usable format, and plugs it into a virtual database and finds, not matches, no, but similar results that fall under the broad umbrella of RM systems and endonucleases. An enzyme, then, and one that chops up DNA at only one spot? If he's right then it doesn't, Tony thinks, remembering the pre-serum, take a genius to work out which one.
Figures Bruce'd be right.
No, he doesn't have a clue how it works.
No, he also doesn't have a clue how to stop it.
It's something to work off though.
Something to tell Fury?
Maybe after 'Stuart Little'. He has a feeling the battle to get Fury to let them access the restricted info on the pre-serum will be a tough one. For some weird reason, Fury doesn't seem to think his house is as secure as SHIELD's triple-encrypted, access-restricted back up databases. Ah well. If it takes too long, he'll just have to slice into them too. That ought to prove to Fury just who's systems are reliable and who's needed his expertise three centuries ago.
Still... Remembering the Tower, perhaps it wouldn't hurt to be a bit cautious himself.
"Jarvis?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Encrypt these files. If you think you're compromised in any way at all, delete all info we have on the serum."
OoOoOoOoO
Loki objects to 'Stuart Little' on principle.
He's overruled, mostly because Pepper isn't doing paperwork after all and wants it too, and Bruce shrugs and says, "At least it's not 'The Hunchback of Notre-dam'."
It is as bad as he expects, in that it makes him ache in all the deepest places inside.
Odd, how much he sympathises with Snowbell.
Odd, how much something in him hurts, at the chopped out photo, and, I'd give you the pieces, but Mr Little set them on fire.
Odd, how, You don't have to look alike. You don't even have to like each other, can lance through his heart like a blow.
He doesn't cry, at the end.
He does leave early, before the closing credits are done.
The roof, or his room? The roof. It is night outside, but there are the stars.
He will avenge himself on Tony. He will enlist Steve, and maybe Pepper, and find a movie to select that Tony hates. He will—
"Brother," Thor says, coming to stand beside him.
"Odinson," Loki says, in return.
Neither of them say anything for a while.
Thoughts form, and shatter. Movies Tony may hate. Movies Thor might. He's not my brother. He's a mouse.
Better to not think, perhaps. Loki watches the distant stars, and listens to the crash of the waves beneath them.
Soothing, that noise. That smell.
"When did things get to be like this between us?" Thor asks, after a while.
"When I tried to kill you."
Bleak, those words. He does not soften them with false words of apology.
"Why did you?" Thor asks.
Why indeed?
"I hated you."
"Why?" Thor asks again.
"Can you truly not guess?"
Thor is silent.
Loki speaks, then, because— why?
Because the ache lingers, perhaps, and he wonders, obscurely, if Laufey would have liked peanuts. If he has a mother. If she is dead too. If he killed her.
"I wanted Odin to see me. I wanted him to look at me, even when you stood beside me. I wanted your mother to say something more than just that I must not feel different or lose hope that you would return and your father wake, when I asked her why Odin had kept what I was from me. I wanted to be able to lift Mjolnir too, even just an inch. Pitiful, really, but then, I was rather pathetic in those days. I thought, if I were king for longer, my chances would be better. If I did enough... Foolish, of course. If in the millennia he had ruled without me, Odin had not destroyed Jotunheim, I should have guessed my doing so would not please him. And yet, I did not guess. I acted, or tried to, and you were simply in the way."
"Do you still hate me?"
So like Thor, to fasten on that which really matters.
"Should I?"
"I do not know. That is why I ask."
A diplomatic answer.
It earns him one in return.
"Sometimes."
"Why?"
"Because you left me. You left me without looking when you look for all the others whom you care for, and yet when you came you claimed that you still cared. And then you told me why, and I resented you for leaving me with nothing to blame you for. I still do."
"You resent me for not giving you cause to hate me?" Thor echoes, confused.
"I did not say it was logical."
"Do you wish I had given you cause to hate me, then?"
"Yes. No—well, perhaps. I have the hate already, you see. I have so much of it that it hurts. It would be a pleasant change to be justified in feeling even one tenth of it. You and Odin are so very good at being right, you see. If just once, you turned and said, 'I wanted to humiliate you because the Jotnar disgust me' or, 'I left you because you were useless. Now your magic has returned, it is worth remembering you', I would be able to speak of it to others and have them understand just once why I resented you. But there is always some other reason. You are always right, you and he, always blameless, and I am left with months and years of resentment that, even knowing they are groundless, I cannot get rid of."
"... I could try to give you cause, if it would make you feel better?"
Loki closes his eyes, and opens them.
"That is not how it works."
Thor is silent.
Loki is too, for a while. Then:
"There is one more reason."
"There is?" Thor says, with mild dismay.
"Yes. It so happens that when he bound my magic, the Allfather ensured that it would not obey me properly, even with the collar broken, unless I used it to follow commands issued by you."
Thor tenses.
"What?"
Loki keeps his voice indifferent; his posture, the picture of studied carelessness.
"I have studied magic for nearly one thousand years. I studied with the dark elves, and with the light. On Vanaheim, I learned from scholars more ancient than Odin, and in Asgard I was taught by the Queen herself. Do you know how galling it is, to find casting the merest cantrips without your consent almost more than I can bear?"
"How did this happen? Why did this happen?"
Loki shrugs.
It is like lancing a boil, this. The filth oozes from him. Will he feel better, once it is done?
"It is your father's work. Perhaps he thought you would need a sorcerer to follow you when you were king and knew I would not do so willingly. Perhaps he merely grew sick of my enmity and your moping, and wanted both to end. He does not know me well enough, though, if he thinks coercion will hold me for long," Loki adds, darkly. "But then, he has never known me well. Not really, and nor I him. But I will end this, and I will use this to grow stronger. When I break the spell, I will learn it. I may even use it."
"Must it be this way? Is there no way I can free you, brother? I would not have you enslaved."
He feels a flicker of— something. Feels his lips twist.
He has not had to beg after all. All that fear, and he has not even had to ask.
"You do not plan to use it, then, to be sure I will not harm the innocent? To barter, for my naming you brother once more?"
He would. Perhaps.
He would, until he found a way to end this properly.
"I am no saint, brother. I would very much like to do both," Thor admits, "And to make you come home with me to Asgard, to father and to mother so that she will stop summoning illusions of you in the gardens when she thinks no one is watching her and crying. But those are not choices I can constrain you to make. I will have them freely, or not at all, and in the meantime I will wait."
Always so pragmatic. Always so careless. Always so blindly trusting.
She cries over me?
"Have you ever seen Disney's Aladdin?"
"No," Thor says. "You know I have not."
"In it," Loki says, ignoring that, "There is a genie who is bound to obey the holder of a lamp."
"Go on," Thor says.
"All the owner of the lamp needs to do is wish, command, him to be free, to use his power for all that he chooses, and he is unbound."
"And did they?"
"It is a Disney movie. Of course he did, eventually."
"And you think that would work here?"
"Perhaps."
"I will try it," Thor says, decisively, "If there is a chance that this will work, let us do it."
Something twists inside.
He does not show it. Cannot.
So easy, this is. So laughably easy.
"What should I say?" Thor asks.
"A variation of your choice, on the basic command of, 'I, Thor, command you to use your power freely, for any purpose you should choose to call it for, and I command that this hold true regardless of any future commands from me.'"
"Is there some ceremony that needs to accompany this? Or just the words?" Thor asks, stepping away from the railing and watching him.
Loki's hands tingle with— anticipation? Fear?
"Just the words."
"Then I, Thor, command you to use your power freely, for any purpose you should choose to call it for, or for any purpose for which you may need or want it, and I command that this hold true regardless of any future commands from me."
He feels nothing.
He'd felt nothing before, either.
A thought, and he summons a soft flame in his palm, soft and slight as a candle.
Weak, the spell, and it wastes no energy.
It does not hurt.
A thought, and it is a tiny wolf, prancing across his palm.
Another, and a snake rears upwards to chase it, relentless as fiendfyre.
He does not hurt.
His hand closes. The light dies. And then, because he can, he transforms Thor's armour into garments that match his own, save that they are deep purple and have a tiny bow on their chest, instead of Tony. A stronger spell, that. It does not hurt either. Thor eyes himself, appalled, and Loki laughs.
"Loki..." Thor groans, "This is not dignified."
"Welcome to my world... Thor."
Surprise flickers in Thor's eyes, followed by something that makes him look away, and back out at the darkness beneath them. Thor should not look at him as though he has just swallowed a piece of the sun. As if he has just offered him some lore-book, rare and precious. He should have lost that the moment he drove his knife through Thor's side. The moment he drove the sceptre through Coulson's heart. Thor should be—
And just when has Thor ever done what he should do?
How many of his problems have come from assuming Thor capable of common sense?
His lips twist.
"Did you never hate me, Thor, even a little, for all that I did to you?"
"Not really. I was angry, but I have never been very good at hating. I tried, once or twice, when I thought you truly lost. I kept remembering you when you were small— little things. Putting cockroaches into the beds of the Alfheim ambassadors, when they flirted with mother. Stealing food from the kitchens, when we should have been sleeping. Your cold feet, whenever you slept in my bed instead of your own. I missed your feet."
"My feet," Loki echoes, glancing back.
Thor flushes, a bit defensively, and doesn't reply.
"You are a fool."
"Perhaps," Thor allows. "But I would have been a greater one, to toss aside a thousand years of love over a mere handful of days of madness."
Loki is silent, for a little while.
There is a lump, somewhere, in his throat. He does not trust himself to speak.
"I am sorry I did not look for you, brother, when you needed me."
The lump swells.
The Void, Thor means.
It feels like it is everything.
He's slipping, and he bleeds from trying to hold the pieces of himself together.
"You should not be," he manages, almost steadily, "I stabbed you. I killed you. I dropped you from the Helicarrier. I slaughtered hundreds, here, merely because you had declared them yours. We are, since we are counting slights, more than even."
"I am still sorry," Thor says.
"Of course you are."
Silence.
Is Thor waiting to be told he is forgiven?
Perhaps.
"Would it sooth you, Thor, if I told you I had forgiven you?"
"Not really, since you have told already me you still hate me for it so I would know that you were only lying to make me feel better. Or to get me to leave you alone," Thor says, after short moment of consideration, "I simply wanted you to know, that is all."
And what point is there, Loki wonders, in merely knowing?
Some, possibly, since the lump is still there, and his chest hurts from the strain of it.
"My feet are cold," Thor says, presently.
"So are mine. You may return inside, if you wish."
"... I look ridiculous. You cannot expect me to return this way."
"Can't I?"
Thor groans.
He could shatter the spell, Loki knows.
He could summon his armour back with one thought.
He does not.
Loki casts a warming charm on both of them.
"I still hate you."
"Of course," Thor nods.
Loki glares at him, lips thin, and Thor smiles at him, eyes fond and warm and so much like Steve's, and it is so very difficult to hate Thor properly when he looks like that. When he has just freed him. When he misses his feet. Stuart Little, Loki thinks, is a fool. He should not have believed so easily that his family did not want him. Loki is, perhaps, one too, but his excuses are better than merely believing what a cat he already knew hated him said.
Like Gleipnir, the coal of love within him beckons.
It whispers, soft as starlight, and it will chain him, if he listens, so tightly he will not be able to breathe.
He turns from Thor, and back to the gentle night.
Five minutes pass. Ten.
"What happened to Fenris, while I was gone?"
"I do not know."
"Sleipnir?"
"He is well. He was not, after you fell. For a week he would not eat, and for a month bit anyone who approached him too carelessly. He even bit father, once. Father left him alone after that, until the worst of his grief passed."
"And you?"
"I was sensible, and made sure I wore gloves."
Loki snorts, amused despite himself.
Vindictively, he hopes Sleipnir's bite had been a hard one.
"You should visit him," Thor says, "He would be glad to see you once more."
"I should," Loki agrees.
Except that if he visits, there will be Odin to worry about.
He wants to hurt Odin, but he does not know if he wants to see Odin now. Does not know if he wants Odin to see him. Foolish, really. Odin sees whatever he chooses from his throne. He may even be watching him now. Still... He has plans, that he can set in motion, now his duty to Asgard has passed. Magic, to conceal himself from Odin and Heimdall's sight. He knows the cracks that lead between the realms. If there is none that leads from Midgard to Asgard directly, there are ones from Asgard to Alfheim. To Svartalfheim. Midgard connects to both.
He can use those now.
Can visit Helheim, too, and Vanaheim.
"I will," Loki says, more decisively.
Thor smiles. Then:
"Will you stay?"
Loki arches one eyebrow.
"In Asgard," Thor clarifies.
"No."
"You intend to live here?"
"Is there some reason I should not?"
"No. I merely wished to know, that I might visit you often."
"You will have time for that, will you, in-between maintaining order in the Nine Realms and Jane?"
"I will make time."
"I will believe that when I see it."
Thor grins ruefully.
"I will try to make time," he amends. "In truth, there is a part of me that is grateful that the Bifrost is not yet mended. I will miss you, when I return."
"Well, if the Allfather has not managed to fix it in sixteen months, I doubt he will do so in the next few days. There is no need to descend into mawkish sentimentality just yet. You can save that for when you are sent for."
A slight pause. Then:
"You will not take me back?"
"Do you want me to?"
"No," Thor admits, "But I feared that you might offer, and then my duty as a Prince of Asgard would compel me to accept it now that I am of no further use here."
"Well, I will not," Loki says, sending him a sidelong look, "They are secret, and if I told you, Odin would know about them within hours."
"Probably," Thor admits cheerfully. "Definitely, you must refrain from showing me them, then."
He is chained, Loki thinks. And then, no. He's never been unchained.
It is like holding his palms upwards to hide the sun, this battle to keep hating Thor.
His lips twist.
He's not defeated though.
Not yet.
"What is meatloaf?" Thor asks suddenly, oblivious to his silent struggle.
"I do not know."
"Mm."
Silence again. Then:
"I do not think I have said it yet," Thor says, "but thank you, brother, for surviving. Thank you, for being alive."