Brotherhood - Loki & Thor ♡

53. death threaded the tapestry

"The Tesseract or your brother's head?" Thanos had said, and Thor gulped, looking at his brother whose life was in the Titan's hands. Loki's teary, fearful eyes met his, and even though he couldn't speak, the look on his terrified face seemed to say, 'it's okay. I understand,' Because Thor couldn't give up the Tesseract, knowing it would mean the deaths of half the universe.

But Loki.

But he couldn't. Thor would die for him if he could. Though he simply could not let trillions die, no matter how hard Thor wished he was selfish enough to do so.

When life faded away from Loki's eyes and his body was tossed to the ground, limp and unmoving like a rag doll, Thor felt something in him shatter as he fell on his knees.

Crawling to Loki's corpse and clinging onto him, sobbing on his chest, wouldn't bring him back. Thor did all of it, anyway. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Loki."

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An AU where Thor was in Loki's place, and Loki was in Thor's, in the Statesman Scene in Infinity War. Thor chose the lives of half the universe over his brother and regretted it deeply. But in the end Loki came back with the rest of those who turned into dust. Still Thor was drown in guilt. Things were far from easy for the both of them.

I've seen quite a number of amazing authors write this before so I thought I'd give it a try, too. In my own version. Basically it's kind of a mixture of fix-it and angst because Loki was resurrected and he and Thor reunited, but it was with the hard-to-swallow pill; Thor sacrificed him. It was a tough decision and it destroyed Thor, but it didn't change the fact Thor deliberately let Loki die.

Because I'm a sucker for angst and hurt/comfort but hey! Loki lives and he and Thor are together again.

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After the dust settled and the war was over, all Thor saw was Loki. Loki here in flesh and bone, Loki alive and breathing. Loki. Thor stumbled, staggered footsteps that turned into quick and urgent running once he was close enough. He seized Loki, pulling him into his chest and crashing his bones (not literally) in an extremely tight embrace, weeping frantically with his face buried in the crook of Loki's neck. "You're back," Thor choked between his sobs. "You're back. You're really here." He hugged Loki tighter, like he was afraid someone was going to take his brother away from him again. His brother; the only family he had left.

Loki hugged back. Though it was more of two hands resting lightly on Thor's back than anything else. His chin on Thor's shoulder and he looked... fragile. Like the wind could knock him over. "Thor," Loki said, voice hoarse and hardly audible. He leaned into Thor, seeking all the closure and comfort he could get after having been dead, cold and alone, for five years. (After Thor let him die, but Loki didn't have it in his heart to hold it against him. It was the right thing to do.)

"I'm so sorry," Thor sounded miserable. "Norns, I'm so — I'm so sorry,"

"Don't be," Loki said. "You didn't have a choice." But even that sounded like a lie to both of them, no matter how badly they wanted to believe it as truth. The Tesseract or your brother's head. Thor did have a choice back then, and Thor chose to have Loki murdered. It was... that simple.

~~~

Thor took him home and gave him a room that had always been reserved.... for him. No, Thor didn't know he'd get Loki back; it was more of his way of mourning than false hope — it turned out not to be false, after all — save one room empty and imitate it as close to his brother's old chamber on Asgard as possible, even though it looked barely alike, in size and in glory, for their new home was small and plain, and hardly anything more than four walls and a roof, definitely no match for Asgard's elegant castle made of nothing but pure gold — their old home that was now specks of dust floating in space.