[By : DaScribbla on AO3]
"So it's gone."
Thor nods and doesn't look at his brother. He doesn't know if he means their home or his eye.
"It's gone."
"I suppose it doesn't matter," Loki continues after a beat or two. "The whole thing was a façade, wasn't it?"
"It was still our home, wasn't it?" Now he looks at him. Loki stands there, hands clasped. He's aged; Thor can't believe he hasn't realized how much until now. The prince he grew up alongside is gone, and in his place is a man whom Thor is unsure he knows. No more smooth lines, no more epicene languor. He's grown stonier.
The thought makes Thor think more about what he's lost.
"Your home," Loki says. "Not mine." Perhaps his tone is less acerbic than it could be.
"But wasn't Asgard where we played together, where—"
"—where we fought together, yes, I remember."
"That wasn't what I was going to say."
"What were you going to say, then?"
Thor holds his gaze. "You know perfectly well," he says.
Loki looks away first. And that's new, too; the man Thor knew before would have hissed at it or made some sharp retort to make Thor feel ashamed for addressing something that had happened so long ago.
"It's been years," he says at last—and it sounds like he's gone hoarse. "I'm surprised you even think about it still. I don't."
"Liar."
Thor says it almost affectionately. It's hard to make a word sound like an insult when you've used it so many times. As it is, Loki does nothing, barely reacts to it.
"If I could go back," Thor continues after the silence has stretched too long, "I would."
"And this time, you wouldn't touch me. Is that it?"
The door to his room is still wide open, and some of the old fear snakes into Thor. But there's no one to hear, and if there were, what damage could it do now?
It was so long ago.
Had they ever discussed it? Certainly not before, Thor thinks. The only sign Loki had ever made that he wanted it too—or at least that he didn't care one way or the other—was the lifting of his hips so Thor could unlace his trousers properly. They had been young, and it was night the first time it happened. Lying beside each other since there had been no point in Thor's returning to his own chamber. And Thor had reached out for him in the dark. He hadn't asked him. It was too frightening, what Loki's response might be.
"If it would keep all the rest from happening," Thor says. "Yes." He sighs and then lets the words come. "What I did to you was horrific."
"Thor."
"I drove you mad," he says. "And yet they call me a hero and you a traitor."
Loki just looks at him, arms crossed over his chest. Gods, he really has changed. Thor remembers the courtyard gardens of the palace—and nostalgia stabs him between the ribs at the thought of never seeing it again—and watching his brother read beneath the boughs of the largest tree there, stretched out, so engrossed that he failed to see Thor there, drinking him in. He smiled more then.
"I don't expect forgiveness," he finishes. "But I want you to know that I don't—that it's not like that for me anymore. I understand what it did to you."
