Author's note: The title comes from "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri. Spoilers for Thor. The beginning of this chapter may seem familiar since I posted it separately on Tumblr a while ago, but I recommend reading it all the way through.

Chapter 1: The Beginning

This is a story of the end of the world.

Before the bifrost was broken, before Thor was banished, Thor had often gone on quests. Sometimes they were to make war on the Æsir's enemies; sometimes they were not quests at all, but adventures; sometimes they were simply to prove his might. Loki was invited along on occasion, but more often than not he was left at home.

The quests were not short. Asgard was a large place, and all the nine realms together were even larger. Thor would often be gone for a year or more. At first, when they were boys, Loki was hurt to be separated from his brother and left at home as though he were useless. Loki had thought it incredibly unfair. He spent a lot of time moping around the palace and missing Thor. He practiced spells and refined his magic to distract himself, and so that when Thor got home he would see that Loki had been doing useful things, too.

As he got older, he buried himself in books and tried not to think of Thor. Eventually, he realized that trying to forget Thor was impossible. He achieved a kind of pained acceptance that his brother would always leave him, and that nothing Loki could say would stop him. He would go outside at night when he could not sleep and stand on the bifrost, looking at the stars. He would think of Thor – not what he might be doing at that moment, because that drove Loki to jealousy, but of what Thor had been like in their childhood, and of all the happy moments when Loki had had his brother all to himself.

(Only occasionally did he let his thoughts stray to what it would be like when Thor came home. Loki's imagination always caused him more pain than his realities.)

Loki grew used to waiting. And when the bifrost did break, Loki finally realized how useless all that waiting had been.

A long time ago, on a cold winter night, Loki and Thor were supposed to be in bed. It had been Loki's idea to sneak outside and look at the stars.

Loki loved looking at the stars. They were so beautiful, and the sky seemed so immense. They made him feel small, but also comforted, as though the fact that something so beautiful could exist made his own future brighter. Loki could lose himself in the feeling. He thought it was the best in the world.

"Father took the embers from the fiery land of Muspell and threw them into the sky," Loki whispered to his brother. "That is how he created the stars and the sun."

"This is a boring story," Thor told him, not bothering to keep his voice quiet, "And I've already heard it."

Loki scowled. "No you didn't, you fell asleep. And shush, or they'll send us back to bed."

At that, Thor quieted down. He squinted back up at the stars in the way he did when he was thinking. "Do you really think they're just little embers?"

"They don't have to be small," Loki told him.

"There are a lot of them," said Thor.

They both looked up at the sky for a moment. "They're amazing," Loki said quietly. He immediately blushed and looked hurriedly at Thor; he hadn't meant to say that out loud.

Thor noticed and nudged him. "I think so too."

Emboldened, Loki looked back up at the stars. "Don't they make you feel small, but great at the same time?" Thor nodded. "Do you think . . . that is what it feels like to be in love?"

It was a feeling neither of them was familiar with, and neither of them had anything more to say as they stared at the night sky. Each of them was silently sure that when they fell in love in the distant future, it would be like that – vast, never-ending, and inexplicable. Surely that was the only kind of love fit for gods and for kings. Surely such was their fate.

This is a story of the end of the world. It seems only appropriate, then, for it to begin with the beginning of the world, when hoarfrost from the great rivers filled the Void and created life – but that is not where it starts. It starts with two children on a winter's night.