Title: Project Stormking
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: This was written for the Norsekink prompt "An AU or fusion with Pacific Rim where Thor and Loki are Jaeger pilots."
Pairing: Thor/Loki

Author's Notes: I wrote this within days after seeing Pacific Rim in theaters. One thing I noticed when reading other people's PR crossovers is that they tend to convert the Avengers characters into normal humans, which seemed a little unnecessary to me, since they take place in the same era anyway. And considering the nature of the Drift, Thor and Loki's shared history seemed ideal to explore.

A few ground assumptions for this fic, which may differ from most of my other body of fic:

- In this world, Loki's Aesir form is a true shapeshift, not a glamour or an illusion. When he looks Aesir, he IS biologically Aesir, and so things built for Thor's physiology will work for his as well.

- In much of my other fic, I elide Loki and Thor's lifespans down to a few hundred years, and explain the time discrepancy by variable timeflow in different realms. That is not the case here. In this fic, they are their full canon one thousand and something something years old and have spent most of that time together.

There is a mansion in the Canadian Rockies, a sprawling estate that overlooks a spectacular view of forested slopes and pure alpine lakes. Pristine, untouched, and usefully inland. While the ravening monsters from beyond the Breach rampage along the coastlines for the last ten years, destroying beach and cities with careless abandon, this sanctuary has remained peaceful.

It would be a stretch of the word to say that Loki owns the land, but he has certainly staked his claim in no uncertain terms. In the past ten years, the Canadian government has had very little inclination to spare to contest him for it, and so it has become his official place of residence on this planet.

Not that he spends all of his time at this mansion, of course - not even when he is on Midgard, which he frequently is not. In fact, he is recently returned from a five-years sojourn around Vanaheim and Alfheim, tending to his deep laid schemes and enjoying the break away from Midgard and its mess of mortals and old unwanted sentiment. It was a nice vacation. Restful.

Yet time and time again, something always draws him back again to Midgard. The rest of the Nine Realms, as grand as they are, are so boring; they never change. Everything of interest that happens in the Realms Eternal, it seems, has its roots on Midgard.

Such as now; a breach in the Pacific ocean, a gateway leading from this universe to the next. Visitors from beyond this plane of reality. A shame they have proven so unfriendly, and so resistant to any of Loki's forms of persuasions; he could think of much more interesting things to do with such magnificent beasts than merely rampage blindly. As it is, the constant disruption of life on Midgard by the kaiju were much of the reason Loki has absented himself from the realm in the past few years; there's not much fun in creating chaos of his own in a situation already so chaotic.

He assumed that if he took few years off and then returned, the Midgardians would have sorted out the problem themselves by now; clearly, they have not. Mortals. Always needing their hands held.

And so they have come to him of all people for help; the gorgeous irony of it was enough to let Loki drop his wards and allow the mortal envoys to approach.

He's regretting that now, a little bit; the novelty of having Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD as a supplicant on his doorstep is waning in the tension of actually having the man in a room with him. Another man accompanies him, one that Loki knows of but has never met in person: Grand Marshal Stacker Pentecost, the leader of the so-called Jaeger Rangers. Something about his gaze and bearing, the heavy way his eyes rest upon Loki, reminds him of Heimdall the Gatekeeper; it's not a comparison that inspires him to ease.

"Truly, my friends, is this where you need to be in this hour?" Loki asks, pouring himself a drink from a carafe of wine and sipping delicately from the crystal goblet. He does not offer any to his guests, a profound insult that alas is probably lost on them. "Should you not be out in the ocean, fighting monsters? Really, it seems there's hardly a moment's peace nowadays."

Fury and Pentecost exchange a glance between them; it seems the soldier draws the short straw, for he is the next to speak. "You're not wrong," he says, his voice a deep rumble. "All our attempts to close down the Breach have met with failure. Kaiju are coming through with greater frequency than ever, and one out of every ten is a Category Five."

Loki hms thoughtfully as he sips his wine. "But you have a strategy for that, do you not? Your shining new prototype, a glorious machine of war equal in size and strength to the most formidable of monsters. What was the incredibly gauche name that you chose for it... Project Storm King?"

If he hoped to shock them by casually mentioning their classified military secrets, it fails. Marshal Pentecost grimaces and leans forward in his seat as he talks, framing sizes and spaces in his hands. "We've completed the prototype, Nevada Thunder, on time and over budget," he says. "But there are complications. Turns out we can't just scale up the older Jaegers and still expect it to work.

"With a living thing, the larger they get, the more strain it puts on their nervous and circulatory systems," the marshal continues, as though Loki is some kind of schoolchild to be lectured in elementary biology. "If a creature doubles in height linearly, its internal volume goes up exponentially. Well, a Jaeger's neural control net isn't so different, for all that they're machines. The control system for something the size of Nevada Thunder, well - there's just no human pilots that can handle it. The neural load and physiological strain would kill anyone we tried to put in the cockpit."

"What a shame that would be," Loki says, sweetly sarcastic. Marshal Pentecost ignores him, and goes on.

"There's only one person on Earth right now that can successfully pilot Nevada Thunder," he says. "Only one person with the toughness and strength to handle it. And he's not even human."

The humor drains from Loki's demeanor. "You speak of Thor," he says coldly.

"Your brother," Marshal Pentecost observers. Loki snarls.

"He is not my brother."

"For a thousand years of shared experience, he was," Marshal Pentecost counters.

Loki stands up, turns and paces to the bay windows fronting his mansion, overlooking the sunset outside. "I fail to see how this concerns me," he says.

"Thor has volunteered for the role of piloting Nevada Thunder against the Kaiju," Fury says, and Loki scoffs at his reflection in the window. Of course he has. Thor never met a fight he didn't want to throw himself into. "But the same restrictions that apply to any of our other Jaeger pilots apply to him. He can pilot solo, but to do so renders him incredibly clumsy. Completely unviable in a fight."

Loki lets his lips curl up. Wouldn't that chafe Thor's pride. "So?" he says.

"So he needs a copilot," Marshal Pentecost supplies. "Someone else with the same physical and neurological stamina. Someone with enough combat training and experience that we don't have to take years we don't have to train them up. Someone with enough shared memories to be Drift-compatible. "

"You," Fury adds, completely unnecessarily.

Loki stares out of the window, unseeing, as his mind veers and races. This wasn't exactly unexpected - truly, he'd known what they wanted from him the moment he granted them permission to approach, and he wouldn't have let them in if he wasn't willing to entertain the idea. But the thought of it - to put aside his years-long vendetta towards Thor, towards all of Asgard, to actually cooperate with Thor, to fight with him again, to the very extent of letting Thor into his mind -

"What's in it for me?" he asks, turning around to better watch their expressions.

Fury clears his throat. "You'll have a full pardon, of course," he says gruffly, and it's clear that it pains him to make the offer. But the havoc that Loki wreaked upon New York City a decade ago, and other, smaller messes since then are trivial in comparison to the devastation even one loose kaiju can inflict upon the mortal world. They are mere beasts, unthinking and dumb; they wish only to destroy, never to rule. "And your name will be expunged from the public enemies list permanently."

Loki waves that aside. "You know how little I care for such things," he says. "I ask again: what do you have to offer me?"

There's a moment of silence, and then Fury says grudgingly, "Name your price, and we'll try to match it."

Loki smirks. "And if I told you that my price was the kingship of this realm?" he challenges them.

Fury and Pentecost exchange another of those long, fraught gazes, and then Pentecost leans forward and meets Loki's gaze seriously.

"You have to understand that there isn't such a thing as kingship of Earth, or even the United States, so we couldn't hand that over to you even if we wanted," he says carefully. "But we can try to... compromise. Every acre of the Pacific Northwest from the mountains to the sea in two countries has had to be evacuated anyway. It's possible we could give you ownership of that territory, and recognize it as a separate principality."

Loki's eyes widen, shocked despite himself. He never expected them to go that far. "And what is a kingdom without subjects?" he scoffs.

Pentecost's brows pinch in a glower, and for a moment he looks so unnervingly like the Gatekeeper that Loki has to fight the panicked urge to veil himself with seiðr. "We won't force anyone under your authority who doesn't want to be there," he says. "Nevertheless... there are a large number of displaced persons from up and down the coast, refugees who need to be provided for. If you can prove that you can offer sufficient infrastructure to accommodate a population... then we would arrange passage for anyone who wanted to emigrate."

Loki's mouth actually drops open, and it's a few moment before he can control his own reactions enough to close it. He's not sure whether he's more shocked at their audacity in offering to hand over half their kingdom, or their chutzpah in attempting to hand him the responsibility for cleaning up after their messes. "Truly you must be desperate, to consider such a bargain," he sputters.

"In the last stages of a war, the rules change," Pentecost says steadily. "We've been authorized to negotiate pretty much anything."

When at last Loki has regained control, he speaks again. "I never truly desired kingship of this rock, or of any of the petty mortals that walk upon it," he spits. "I merely wanted to see how far you would go. The truth of the matter is that there is nothing I need that you have to offer, and there is nothing that you can offer me that I want."

Pentecost's hands clench into fists, and Fury's single eye narrows. "Does that mean your answer is no?" he growls.

"I never said that," Loki says, turning a smirk in their direction.

"So you'll do it," Pentecost says eagerly, more a statement than a question. "You'll co-pilot Nevada Thunder."

"I will," Loki says, "but only because you've already given me the one thing I truly seek above all others, handed it to me on a platter, and you don't even realize it."

The two mortals look uncertain, but only Fury is brave enough to ask. "What?"

Loki turns away without answering them. Vengeance, the thought boils in his mind. At last.

Loki strides through the Shatterdome with his head held high, Fury and Pentecost trailing in behind him. He will not be led like a child, nor escorted like a criminal; his presence was specifically requested here, they very nearly got down on bended knee and begged for him, and he does not intend to act otherwise.

Their procession collects a variety of stares as they walk through the crowded, chaotic landing bay: some awed, some hopeful, some hostile, depending on from where they know Loki and for how long. Loki catches a familiar face out of the corner of his eye: Tony Stark, one of the premier designers of the Jaeger pilot interface system and long-time Avenger. When it became obvious that there were some threats that even superheroes could not fight, Stark had thrown himself into the Jaeger project with obsessive passion, and nearly half of the models that rolled off the assembly line had been touched by his hand somehow, the latest one not excluded. It amuses Loki no small amount that he will be given free permission to play with Stark's toys, and break them if he so wishes.

Stark is staring at him with a mix of bemusement and outrage on his face, and Loki catches his gaze before grinning wickedly and blowing him a kiss. Stark stiffens and then turns his back in a huff, and Loki laughs low in his throat as he strides on.

Some lackeys try to steer Loki off into a small, ugly metal room; waiting room or barracks Loki doesn't know, but he has no intention of being put aside. He can sense the presence of another immortal in the facility, the magical signature of the Aesir glowing bright as a diamond in the dull gravel streambed of humanity around him. Loki ignores those who seek to distract or divert him, and sets off to find Thor.

He finds him in a large whitewashed laboratory stinking of ozone and ammonia; machinery and computer terminals are packed along every wall, and dozens of cables snake across the floor in a king-rat tangle to the figure in the center. It is Thor, and despite all their years of enmity and estrangement Loki cannot stop his heart from jumping uneasily at the sight of him.

Thor is not wearing his Asgardian armor, but instead a thickly padded white and black bodysuit with sectioned panels of metal and plastic over torso and arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet. Leads sprout from the back of each armor-plate, carrying their feedback away in a steady stream, and there's a glass helmet over his head that obscures his face but cannot tame his lion's mane of tawny hair, the only splash of color in the ensemble.

"Thor Odinson," Loki drawls as he stops in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe and crossing his arms. "So this is what you've sunk to."

Thor whirls around too fast; the cables drag at his movements and make him stumble, rendering his usual grace heavy and clumsy. He reaches up to paw at the helmet obscuring his face, despite the shouted protests of the little mortals that hover around their field of vision. Loki tsks.

"Once you were a god, wielding the fury of the heavens over the eternal deluge of Élivágar," Loki says, sarcasm making a sing-song mockery of the old litany. "And look at you now - here you are, down in the dirt and allowing mortal men to yoke you to a plow, that they might drive you as their beast of burden."

Thor has managed to get his helmet off at last, and he regards Loki with a solemn air. The white bodysuit with black trim makes his eyes look all the bluer in contrast. "Whatever you may think of me, I am not too proud to do whatever I am called on to help Midgard in her hour of need," Thor says seriously.

Loki snorts disdain at this, glancing aside and picking a fragment of dirt off his sleeve. "So apparently we are to work together."

Thor looks uncertain, guarded. "It would seem so," he hazards. "Loki, I must thank you for -"

A sneer curls Loki's lips. "Really, Thor, are there no depths to which you would not descend, in your eagerness to serve the mortals?" he mocks, cutting across Thor's words. "After all I've done to you, to Asgard, to this planet and its people - and yet you would sweep that aside as though it were nothing, handfast with a murderer."

Thor, uncharacteristically, refuses to take the bait. "There are many things I would refuse to do; not for my honor, but for the safety and well-being of others, that there are some horizons beyond which I must never descend." He leans forward. "Fighting by your side again, Brother, is not one of them. You have my gratitude, for offering your aid to - "

Loki laughs darkly. "That's because you haven't thought it through yet, Brother," he says, giving the word a taunting sting. Slowly he begins to walk around the perimeter of the room, treading negligently over wires and tubes.

"You have no idea what it will be like to join your mind with mine." His voice drops, a volume so low and intense that only Thor's ears will hear it. "With a madman. To let the poison in my soul spread to yours... you will never be free of it again. All your purity, your vaunted righteousness, your blessed wholesome heart - it will be defiled, Thor. Every love, every hope, every happy memory that you ever had will be contaminated." He enjoys the way it disconcerts Thor, to have him circle like this, so he does it again; a slow but steady spiral inwards towards Thor, at the center of things. Always, always at the center. "My malice will spread into your thoughts, into your very soul, a corruption that spreads to the very root of it and eats you away from the inside.

"And oh, Thor..." Loki comes up behind the chair where Thor sits, lays his hands on Thor's shoulders and leans forward to whisper in his ear. Such secrets, such filthy, terrible secrets. "When it's done you won't even know any more what thoughts are mine and what are yours. When you find yourself waking in the night with unholy lust burning in your loins, yearning for the flesh which is above all others in the realms forbidden to you, that of your own brother - when you curse and weep at your traitorous blood, Thor, will it be me that you are cursing? Or yourself?"

The muscles under his hands clench and pull tight and Loki grins, pulling his hands away as he backs up to a safe distance. He hovers alertly, waiting for Thor's next move; but all the thunder god does is stand up and pick up his helmet, fitting it back over his head. "Have you been fitted for your suit yet, Brother?" Thor asks.

Loki scowls, thrown off-balance by Thor's refusal to react to his taunts. "Is that all you have to say?" he demands. "Have you no answer, no argument to make?"

Thor shakes his head. "I have never been proficient with words, Loki - you know that," he says. "Why should I struggle and stutter to shape them now, when an hour from now you will be in my head and see them anyway?"

And with that he walks out of the lab, leaving a fuming Loki behind.

Thor steps into the center of the simulator, taking a deep breath and clenching his hands in an attempt to hide his nervousness. He has always felt a little foolish in the cockpit of the Thunder, like a child playing pretend, swinging his fists at foes that are not truly there. The presence of Loki by his side does nothing to diminish his sense of intense self-consciousness.

For all the hours he's spent in the simulations, training with the system and helping the mortals build the connection between him and Thunder, this will be the first time he has ever actually merged himself into the mechanical consciousness. He's had the Drift explained to him many times: what it is, how it feels, what to expect. But he can't help but remember in a tiny corner of his mind that this system was designed and built with humans in mind, and he is not.

Nor is Loki, and Thor can't help but be anxious as he watches the technicians fit his brother into the gleaming, plastic-and-circuits suit of armor. Loki tolerates the process with an air of bored superiority, holding out his arms or tipping his head with the same unconscious expectation that he used when his squires or servants would help him dress before a feast or prepare before battle. That is not so far from the truth here, and Thor can't help but smile through his worry. Still, whatever shapeshifting magic Loki uses to assume his Aesir form, it seems to hold through and through: the sensors which were calibrated for Thor's physiology seem to respond just as well to his own. To Thor, it's just more proof that no matter what Loki says or does, no matter what else comes between them, Loki will always be his brother.

"Nervous, Brother?" The words are familiar - a near-perfect echo of the conversation they had before his disastrous coronation, years ago - but the tone is cold, piercing. Loki looks at him with a small smile and cruel, glittering eyes, just waiting for Thor to rise to the bait, to bluster and make a fool of himself with denying the patently obvious.

"Yes," is all Thor says, turning back to face front. From the corner of his eye he sees a brief look of surprise flicker over Loki's face, but it quickly hardens back into cruelty.

"Good," Loki hisses, and then deliberately looks away.

"Are we ready to go?" A voice comes over the loudspeaker, and Thor looks up through the glass to see his mortal friends all assembled, tense and waiting: Marshal Pentecost, Nick Fury, Tendo Choi, Tony Stark. They are all depending on him, he knows; and he knows that no fear of his can ever be allowed to get in the way. Unable to speak past the tightness in his throat, he extends his arm with the thumb up in their favorite gesture of encouragement. "All right. We're beginning the Drift in fifteen."

"Initiating synchronization sequence," the smooth, pleasant female voice that Thor knows from countless hours of simulations. "Neural handshake in five... four... three... two... one."

A twisting, nauseating sensation grips Thor and he suddenly feels like he's falling, though he knows his body has not moved. It his mind that has suddenly become unmoored, and his vision wavers and then crumples as his consciousness is torn away, and he falls into the Drift.

A basis of shared memories, his pilot friends had advised him, doing their best to explain the unexplainable. Don't fight them. Don't get caught in them. Just let them flow over you; find your partner in there, complete the circuit with them, and you'll be home. Perhaps it is easy for them, these mortals whose memories amount to but a handful of years in the great stream of time; but Thor has so many more memories, and the weight of them threatens to drown him.

Asgard. Home. The palace, the hallways, feasting halls, the nursery. So many places he knows; so many years he's lived here, so many times he's tread these floors. They seem to flow over him as smooth and golden as mead, each edge lit up with their own internal glow; like a dream but far too detailed, too focused, too real. Faces he knows as dear as his own: friends, playmates, comrades. Family. His mother and father leaning over him, smiling, larger than life and reaching to the ends of the universe.

But there is a strange darkness overlain on his memories, an unreal tinge of blue-black among the gold. A cold wind chills the breath of his childhood nursery, gives pleasant dreams the flavor of nightmare. Friendly faces turn to him suddenly twisted in cold, cruel sneers; the laughter of children takes on the shrill scream of mockery. He sees a little girl who was once their playmate turn her head towards them and open her mouth, and a forked tongue flickers out against long and jagged teeth as she hisses.

Doors close against him, every back is turned to him. The training yard, a place that Thor recalls with thousands of hours of hard honest sweat and the fun of practicing for battle, suddenly becomes a place of blood and pain and fear. His father looms over him like a thundercloud, stern and disapproving, distant and terrifying - and no matter how he/Loki tries he/Loki can never seem to please him -

Loki. These are Loki's memories as well as his, Thor realizes with a burst of clarity. They seem familiar because they lived together for so long, one memory overlapping another without seam; but now he sees them as Loki does, now he feels the things that Loki felt. It is horrifying. Was Loki truly so miserable from so early on, Thor wonders, or does his madness bleed backwards to turn even his happiest memories to ruin?

Laughter fills the drifting current about him, laughter with no mirth or humor, dancing on the edge of hysteria. "Loki?" Thor shouts, straining his eyes in every direction. The world about him flickers, dancing from one scene to the next - Asgard, Midgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, adventure after adventure, memory after memory - but still he cannot see Loki anywhere. He can hear him, feel him (smell him taste him be him) but he cannot see him. It is like trying to see the back of his own head, or the space inside his own ventricles.

And for a moment Thor forgets all the warnings, forgets his friends' importuning of what he must and must not do in the Drift; he turns in the direction of Loki's heartbeats, into the howling gale of Loki's madness, and follows the rabbit.

Stacker Pentecost strides into the control room overlooking the dock, where the two Asgardians are undergoing Drift calibration in the pilot's cockpit below. They aren't in Nevada Thunder itself, of course; given that this is the first time for either of the pilots to experience the Drift and one of them is a freaking supervillain, no one had suggested hooking them up to live weapons systems yet.

Besides, Nevada Thunder isn't even fully assembled yet. There isn't room inside the Shatterdome for a Mark VII (world population: one) to stand up; at its full height, it makes the other Jaegers look like toddlers. At the moment only the top half of Nevada Thunder sits in the Shatterdome, torso and arms and head all knitted sleeky together and waiting. Waiting for the spark that would make her move.

"How are they doing?" Stacker demands abruptly, tearing his attention away from the mesmerizing silhouette of Nevada Thunder and back to her pilots - prospective pilots. Through the observation glass he can see into the cockpit, can see Thor and his brother standing in full rig with their eyes open and staring. "What's their synch ratio?"

"Don't know," Tendo Choi says laconically.

Stacker wheels to face him. "What do you mean, you don't know?" he demands.

Tendo jerks a thumb over at the corner of his instruments panel, where an analog dial has pegged the needle and is refusing to budge. "They maxed out the meters a while back, but the other energy signatures we're getting are still rising," he says. "We're gonna have to calibrate a new multimeter for these guys, it only does humans. Or at least go digital."

Stacker frowns out at the cockpit, the hero and the villain standing side by side. It's strange to see them side by side and realize how different they really are; red and gold against green and black, a lion beside a panther. Most pilot pairs are selected for their similarities, not their differences; usually siblings, sometimes married couples, occasionally other family combinations. Synchronicity, not personal virtue, was always the first consideration, which is the only reason they're letting a known alien war criminal into the cockpit of his Mark VII in the first place.

But if anyone should know that sometimes the exception proves the rule, that sometimes yin and yang can combine in the most powerful harmony of all, it's Stacker Pentecost.

"How long have they been at it?" Stacker asks.

"Thirty-four minutes and counting," Tendo replies, with a nod to the stopwatch set off to the side.

Stacker groans. "It's not supposed to take more than five," he grouses. "If a Category Five shows up, we can't wait an hour for them to finish sorting themselves out before they deploy!"

"It's their first Drift, Marshal," Tendo says placatingly, and only because he's an old friend does Stacker let him get away with the title slip. "They've got a lot of memories to sort out. Their neural link is incredibly strong - everything we'd hoped. They can do this. Just give them time."

Whatever Loki imagined when he planned this campaign of revenge, it is nothing like reality. Loki had dreamed of pouring his own poison into Thor's ear; he had never stopped to think that this street must run two ways. Instead of boiling Thor alive in his memories, he finds himself thrust into Thor's.

Where Thor went back to the beginning and started forward, Loki started at the end and fell backwards. They will meet in the middle (perhaps) but only if their memories do not swallow them first. There are things in Loki's memory (too recent, too soon) that he would much rather avoid. If he can trick Thor into reliving them on his behalf, that would be all to the better; now Thor will see, now Thor will know, now Thor will understand…

Loki struggles through a series of strangely skewed, altered memories from Thor's past: Thor's life on Midgard. Thor's time spent with the Avengers, the warmth of friendship and camaradie that scalds Loki to the touch because Thor feels all these things for people who aren't him. Thor's battles against evildoers, blood and blows and fury and burncrushruinpain -

Thor's battles against him, warped and distorted to see them from this side. The Loki of Thor's memories is strangely gray, the very air around him weeping. Over and over again Loki hears his own words, threats and taunts and cruel insults, feels the sting of blast and blade and betrayal. But none of the physical pain hurts Thor so much as seeing Loki like this and gods, gods -

He's been wrong. He's been so, so wrong all this time, so misguided in making Thor his enemy. He'd been hurt and, with a child's simple reasoning, Loki thought that he could give the hurt away and not feel it any more. He'd tried to gift it to Thor instead, pretended that he would be free of the twisting hurt in his heart and in his head; tried in every way he knew to bring Thor down to his level, to make him know his pain.

He hasn't failed. Worse. He's succeeded, and he was too wrapped up in his own self to even realize it. He'd wanted Thor to hurt like he hurt, and he'd never realize that Thor already hurt just to see him in pain - that Thor ached because he ached, because Thor loves him, and his pain is also Thor's.

And Thor's is also his.

In his selfish desire to make himself feel better, all Loki has done is bring more agony upon them both, every hurt multiplied between them. Whatever slights and betrayals he thought was done to him, he has done far worse. He is everything that is wrong in his life and there is nothing, nothing he can ever do to overcome it.

Trapped between Thor's pain and his own, an ever spiraling loop of love and betrayal and despair, Loki sinks ever further into the desolation of the Drift.

Thor chases Loki through a rippling cascade of memories, one world leading into another as they wind their way all throughout the Tree. All those years - all those journeys with Loki by his side, and yet Thor still can't see him. He only chases a fleeting impression, like the tail end of a dark coat fleeing ahead of him.

At last the winding trail of coruscating memory grinds to a halt - in blue and black and howling cold, looming edifices of crumbling ice and frozen stone. The dark blue color of the ice smells like of loneliness, hatred, and despair. Thor has only been here once in his life, but he can never forget this place: Jotunheim. The beginning of the end.

The sky shivers above them, shrinking down to a hard suffocating bubble around him before expanding back to an unfathomable depth. Thor hears a baby's cry and the noise tastes like terror and desolation: lost, lost, abandoned, lost.

It suddenly occurs to Thor that although this was the first and only time he'd been to Jotunheim, the same was not true of Loki: and he wondered how much Loki remembered of the time before Father had found him.

"Loki!" Thor bellows, his voice echoing away into the space around him. "It is I, Thor! Do you not know me?"

A movement out of the corner of his eye, and Thor whirls to face a nearby pillar, its surface solid-black and shining as a mirror. A reflection slides over it and is gone and Thor's heart jumps, for he knows Loki's silhouette better than he knows his own.

I know you, Thor, Loki's voice slithers through his mind, cruel and cunning and gorgeous and it makes Thor shudder at the feel of it. I know you better than any of those others, they think you're perfect but you're not, you're not, you're not. No one knows you like I do, knows you for what you truly are, vain arrogant cruel greedy boy

A blood-curdling war cry sounds behind him and Thor spins around, only to see a shining vision of himself standing at the center of the plaza, Mjolnir in hand, red cape streaming from his shoulders. A rush of dark blue figures passes over him in a wave, shadowy half-real Frost Giants attacking in the dark, and the shining Thor raises his hammer and swings a mighty blow that cleaves the heads of four giants at once.

perfect pretty thor, Loki's voice rants in his ear, an endless mantra of seething resentment. shining golden favorite boy. everybody loves you and you love everybody, you give your love away to mortals peasants strangers ants you give your love to anyone and there's none left over for me

"That's not how it works, Loki!" Thor shouts to the sky. "Just because I love others as well, does not mean I love you any less!"

LIAR Loki's voice shrieks, the sound coming from the ground below his feet as well as the space around him. Liar liar, skin on fire, sew your mouth shut cut out your tongue never tell another lie again -

Thor is buffeted by gale winds on every side, stumbling to his knees on the shattered ground, but he holds fiercely to his determination. "I do not lie," he says, barely a whisper. "I want nothing but for us to be reunited. I love you, Loki. I never ceased to love you."

you give your love to worthless mortals but not to me, nothing's left for me, Loki rages. nothing left but your hate so I will take it, I will take your scorn and your rage, take every drop of it and milk you for more because it is all of you that I can ever have.

"That's not true!" Thor insists. "I have been angry, and rash in my anger, this I cannot deny. But I never hated you - not one sliver of the way you hate yourself! Why do you insist on causing us both such pain? Why must you hold yourself apart, and deny yourself peace?"

I love you I hate you I want you I hate you I need you I hate you I love you I

Loki's reflection flickers into view at the corner of Thor's vision again, and Thor whips his head around to face him, only to recoil at the sight of his brother standing in the dark pillar in his full Jotun skin. Deep blue skin, traced with strange curling lines, echoed by the proud jut of horns that curve back along his skull; the blue reeks of malice, cruelty and hate.

But the eyes - strange red eyes deep as a ruby, looking out from him behind the glass - that red color carries the scent of desire, of a well of yearning without bottom.

can never have you, not the way I want you, not the way I need you; and if I have no peace in this life then I shall see to it that neither do you

Thor feels a great wave of sadness wash over at him for his brother's misery. Loki is in so much pain, and the terrible thing was, it is all so unnecessary. He did it to himself, his inner rage driving him to lash out; and when he could no longer reach the world around him to wreak havoc upon it, he turned inwards to sabotage himself. Why can Loki not let himself believe that he is loved?

His memory self lets out a booming laugh, swinging his hammer with the implacability of a blacksmith. Jotun corpses litter the courtyard, twisted and disregarded as rubbish. Bright blood splashes Thor's face and hands. Blurrily he can sense his friends, the Warriors 3 and Sif, fighting for their lives not far away; but he cannot find Loki anywhere.

Panic seizes him. The picture of himself must come through Loki's eyes, but where is his brother? These are Thor's memories as well as Loki's; why can he not see Loki in any of them?

Because you never looked.

The voice is a nasty whisper in the back of his head, but it is not Loki's voice. Thor fears it is his own. But he knows it to be true; all that time, he had treated Loki like an extension of himself, never bothering to look his brother's way in the secure confidence that Loki would always be there. He'd paid more regard to his hammer than to his brother, esteeming the prestige and glory that Mjolnir brought to him and little else.

Jotunheim blurs to a blue-black mist about them and rushes away, the rest of the battle and Odin's rescue slipping past them in fast-forward. Odin confronts his shade in the Observatory and Thor cringes at the memory of it, feeling his humiliation even more keenly in retrospect, without the stupid shock of his burst bubble of pride to protect him.

Now the memories split in two as the brothers separate, a dizzying double view of Midgard and Asgard at once. Asgard is wholly gray and dark now, drained of all color and joy, and hateful faces lurk around every corner. He sees a confused, twice-removed vision of the Destroyer upon Midgard, his own weak and pathetic human form standing transfixed in the road before it like a deer mesmerized by the glint of light on the hunter's arrowhead.

A rush of light and colors as his powers return to him, and Thor remembers the bursting joy of returning strength, the indescribable rightness of Mjolnir returning to his hand. His return to Asgard, flush with victory against the Destroyer and brimming with the rightness of his purpose, and now - now, at last - Thor sees Loki.

The brothers face each other in battle in the Observatory, and Loki is clear in Thor's memories at last. Was this really what it took for Thor to tear himself out of his own self-absorption and see the world for true? He remembers being shocked by the change that had come over Loki; raging, weeping, throwing stinging taunts and mocking blows to try to provoke Thor to fight me, fight me! Had his brother really changed so much in the three days that Thor was gone? Or had this been inside Loki all this time and Thor had never seen?

The Bifrost shatters beneath them, broken by the memory of Thor's titanic blow. The brothers tumble off it, Thor hanging perilously off the edge of the bridge, Loki below him. But he is so close; he is almost there, he can stretch out his hand and almost touch Loki, close the gap between them, if only Loki would reach out to him in turn.

"Loki!" Thor shouts. "Take my hand!"

Loki turns his face away, refusing to meet his eyes, refusing to extend his hand.

The chasm of darkness yawns beneath them, and Thor knows that it holds memories of his brother's that he does not share. When they had both nearly fallen from the bridge, Thor had feared the drop and the end of it, but the darkness in itself had held no terror for him; now the darkness waits, teeming with chittering whispers and soft whimpers that build their way steadily to agonized screams.

For the first time, Thor feels a spike of real fear; he does not want to know what lies in that waiting darkness. Even though he knows that Loki survived, that he came back again, he is terrified by the thought that if Loki slips into the grasp of those memories, he will not emerge again.

"Loki, please," Thor says, feeling tears sting in his eyes. "I'm sorry."

In a breathless moment, suspended in a timeless instant of memory, Thor finds his words at last. "I did not mean - I know that I had wronged you, in all those years. But it was never that I loved others more than you. In those days I did not love anyone so much as myself. I was selfish, and obsessed only with my own greatness - I only took, believing all that was given to me to be my due. My banishment on Earth humbled me, and that was the lesson you helped to teach me, Brother.

"Now my pride has been demolished, I have learned to love those around me again. I have learned to give as well as take. Would that I could have shown you how I changed, but you left, Loki, you left me and I never got the chance. Please, please give me another chance."

Loki looks at him, and in the storm of resentment and fury and mistrust that bleeds from the green in his eyes, Thor catches the faintest shade of hope.

And he stretches out his hand.

Thor seizes it, and the lightning shock of the connection rolls through them both. The steady march of the past is inevitable; Loki's hand slips from the spear and he begins to fall. But Thor has them now, and with a mighty wrench he pulls them both free of the Drift.

A shrill buzz sounds from somewhere over Thor's head; it is annoying, and he wishes it to be silenced. The wish for peace and quiet is enough to fight him out of the fog that has settled over him, bring him back somewhat from entrancement.

"Neural handshake complete," the disembodied woman's voice says from behind him. "Systems now engaged. Left hemisphere on-line. Right hemisphere on-line."

And they are, Thor realizes, with a surprise born of amazement. Although he can see the cockpit around him, his vision is filled with flickering haloes and ghosts of other images, information being fed to him in a constant stream by the machines. He feels the vibrating presence of the great machine on all sides of him, awaiting his movement, his command; and he can feel Loki there with him. He raises a hand and it comes easy to him, as sharp and smooth as razored wire, no more the suffocating drag that had come when he tried to use this system before. He hears the whine of hydraulics from outside the cockpit, and a shadow passes over them as the great titan's arm passes over him in an exact mimicry of his own. He pounds his fist against the ground in triumph, and there is an earth-shattering roar as the Jaeger follows suit.

"We did it!" Thor cries jubilantly, remembering only at the last minute not to express his joy too physically while he is still in the rig - the last thing he wants is to send the metal titan on a rampage through this crowded dome. "Brother, we did it!"

After a stunned moment, a chorus of cheering starts from outside the cockpit; some of it heard over the communicator, some of it reverberating through the glass portals. Thor looks over at Loki, grinning in triumph.

But Loki does not share in that triumph. He is standing with his face blank and his eyes glassy, one hand raised in a mimicry of Thor's pose, and he is crying.

"Loki?" Thor says, shocked, the moment of triumph falling away from him in a rush. He can feel his brother still, through the neural link. Loki's movements feel like a phantom tug upon his own limbs, urging him to match his own actions to them without thinking. And he can still hear the susurrus of Loki's misery, a constant quiet litany in the back of his mind.

Suddenly, before Thor can think to move or speak, Loki's form attenuates and vanishes in a wash of green sparks. The Jaeger harness does not teleport with him; it clatters to the ground in a haphazard pile of cloth and circuits, and Thor staggers as the overwhelming exhaustion of trying to manage the Jaeger solo overwhelms him. "Loki!" he shouts, torn between worry for his brother and flat-out exasperation that Loki has done this to him again.

It takes him several minutes to divest himself of the tangled pilot's rig and shoulder his way out of the cockpit, brushing past the protests and reaching hands of those who want him to return for more testing. Loki is nowhere to be seen, and Thor does not know at first where in this crowded war camp his brother would run to for shelter.

But there is a part of his mind that still resonates in time with his brother's, and if Thor closes his eyes and listens, it turns him and guides him like a compass needle pointing north.

He finds Loki outside, on the roof of a half-constructed dock that they had never had the time or resources to spare to finish. Loki stands atop a girder, facing the dimming sunset, hair and coat tugged by the constant sea breeze. He does not turn around as Thor climbs up beside him, but he doesn't teleport away again, either.

"Loki?" Thor asks, anxiety beginning to rise. It occurs to Thor, for the first time, that although he and Loki were linked in their very minds, what Loki experienced may not have been the same thing that Thor experienced. He does not know what memories Loki saw, what hidden voices of Thor's own subconscious might have spoken to him there. Whether some demon of Thor's psyche has undone all Thor's most fervent desire to reconcile with his brother.

Loki doesn't look at him, not even when Thor grabs his shoulder and jostles him around to get a look at his expression. His face is downcast, features calm and composed, but tears drip down in a steady line across his cheeks to drip off his jaw.

"I thought I knew," Loki said quietly. "I thought I had the full measure of who and what you are, Thor Odinson, that I should feel envious of all you had that I did not, that I should feel jealous of all you gave to others that should be mine. I thought I knew all that was good in you; I thought I might, some day, have some hope that I could equal you."

He pauses, and finally looks up to meet Thor's eyes at last; they are so bleak and hopeless that Thor's heart nearly breaks. "I was wrong," he says, his voice hoarse and rough. "I had no idea at all."

"Loki -" Thor begins, confused and frustrated; what can he say? He has never been skilled with words. Did he not say all that needed to be said before, in the drift of their memory together?

But perhaps a little of his brother's silver tongue lingers with him now, because suddenly Thor knows exactly what needs to be said, and how to say it. "Is not today's triumph proof enough?" he asks. "No other but my equal could have moved Thunder with me. We are equal, my brother, but that does not mean we must be the same. And I would not have it so. I would not wish you to be anything other than you are, Loki."

Loki shudders and squeezes his eyes closed, tears spilling over from beneath the lids. But he does not leave. He does not turn away. And Thor has been in his head recently enough that he knows what he does is right: he draws Loki into the circle of his arms and enfolds him tightly there.

And when Loki tentatively accepts the embrace, parting his arms to encircle Thor's shoulders and lifting his face slightly towards Thor's, it seems like the most natural thing in the world to sweep in and claim Loki's lips with his own.

He had not known this desire was in him until Loki wakened it, but now that he had it feels like it has always been part of him - as natural as breathing, as joyous as fighting. He loves Loki. Of course. He wants him. Of course.

Loki loves him back - that is a miracle to be savored.

"Come back with me," Thor says quietly, when they break apart at last. "I have chambers set aside for me in this camp; I would have you join me there. We can rest for a time, but then we must return; there are still many battles left to fight. We have breached the first wall, but we still have many more to travel."

Loki's eyes are still closed, his lips parted. Thor adds anxiously, "You will fight with me, will you not?" After all, Loki did claim that he was only in this to spite Thor, to inflict misery on him through the neural bond. Now that they both know the truth of it, surely Loki will not withdraw his support and vanish himself once more -

"Well," Loki says, his eyes slipping open on clear green, "I suppose. I have come all this way, after all; I might as well."

He smiles wryly, and Thor feels an answering grin break out on his face. He laughs and claps his hand on Loki's shoulder, pulling his unresisting brother against his chest again afterwards. "Come then!" he says. "Let us teach these beasts to fear the wrath of princes of Asgard!"

There are a number of alarms in the Shatterdome, and on any given day at least two or three of them are going off somewhere; the residents have learned to tune them out.

But there is no ignoring this alarm, the blaring, blue-strobe of the all-hands alert. "Pilots on deck," Tendo Choi says into the PA system, his eyes devouring the information as it prints across his screen. It's bad, but when isn't it bad? "We have a triple event, I repeat, a triple event. Bogey One, estimated Category Four, codename Whiptail. Bogey Two, also estimated Category Four, codename Kruger. Bogey Three, estimated Category Five, some uncertainty, possible Category Six. Codename: Gorgon. Traveling eastward, current trajectory will have them hit the wall outside Angeles Crater. We are going to empty the clip on this one, repeat, empty the clip. Get to your stations, it's going to be a wild ride."

He pushes the microphone aside, tears out the printout before it's fully extruded and hurries to find the Grand Marshall. 'Empty the clip' means they'll be bringing out all the Jaegers, even the ones which they had previously held in reserve, not wishing to give their enemy a chance to see their full capabilities piecemeal and develop a counterstrategy for it. With the Pacific Wall in place, funneling the kaiju to selected chokepoints, a force made up of conventional armaments and the smaller, older Jaegers can hold them back. But today's triple emergence means that their time of respite is over, that their enemy is prepared to make a push.

Well, they're going to push back.

He finds the Grand Marshal in the bay, talking to Tony Stark, and Pentecost gives him a nod as he swings in behind them. This will be the first time Nevada Thunder sees battle, and as the man who designed half the thing, Stark deserves to see it first-hand.

Their little party passes the corridors leading to the cockpit loading docks, and is unsurprised to see their resident crazy space viking aliens - the pilot team for Nevada Thunder - plastered against the wall outside of their docking bay. The dark-haired one has his brother pressed up against the wall, his face hidden in the blond's neck, a hold which the blond is resisting (though not very hard.)

"Loki, cease," Thor is protesting. "We have been called to battle. We must prepare!"

"Give me this, Thor," Loki says, his voice low and yet cutting effortlessly through the blare of the alarms. "Once we have suited up I will not be able to touch you for hours at the least, until the battle is concluded. Give me a memory to carry on my hands as we fight together."

Thor groans. "If you continue your devilish ministrations, I will - ah! - I will be in no state for battle, Brother -"

Loki scoffs. "Oh, please," he says, his tone just the right mix of scorn and mischief. "Not even having your legs chopped off could deter you from battle, pig-stubborn fool that you are. I know better than most that you fight best when your blood is high, and what better way to make it... so?" His hand moves, somewhere thankfully out of their line of sight, and Thor's head thuds back against the metal corridor wall with a resounding moan.

The three of them turn the corner towards the stairs, but Tony Stark has lingered beyond, staring at the entwined pilots with a look of horror on his face. "What the fuck am I looking at," he says to no one in particular.

Tendo takes one arm, Pentecost the other, and together they chivvy him along the corridor, although Stark's head cranks back over his shoulder to track the two pilots as they go. "Jaeger pilots," Pentecost says, a clear 'what are you going to do' in his tone. "Spend enough time in the Drift, they get like that."

"But they were trying to kill each other for years!" Stark protests. "And besides that, they're brothers!"

"Doesn't stop them," Tendo says, his voice amused but resigned. "Remember that pair of twins from Russia - blond, can't remember their call sign-"

"Phoenix Bravo," Pentecost supplies. Figures he'd remember the Jaeger's name better than the pilots, although Tendo is the same way.

"Phoenix Bravo, yeah. Anyway, 'Get a room!' was the only thing I ever learned to say in Russian."

And then they turn the corner, mercifully cutting the Nevada Thunder pilots out of their sight, and Stark manages to unkink his neck long enough to watch where he's putting his feet, anyway.

They make it to the control booth, and Tendo slides into his station with the ease of a switch slotting into its place. "Nevada Thunder, what is your status?" he calls into the microphone. The computer shows the neural handshake complete, both hemispheres on-line, but it's best to get a verbal confirmation when he can.

"We are armed, and ready for battle!" Thor booms over the communicator. Nevada Thunder pounds its fists together, eyes glowing with the fervor of its pilots.

"Nevada Two?" Tendo asks. "Loki, are you reading?"

"Yes, yes," the dark-haired pilot's voice comes back, slightly distracted. "Are we actually going to fight at some point, or merely stand around and chat all day?"

Tendo grins. "Two hundred kilos westward, and you can have all the fighting you want," he answers.

"Tell your flying vessels to move back," Loki says, and Tendo quickly relays the order. He has an idea what Loki's going to do, and doesn't want anyone caught in the crossfire.

The airspace around Nevada Thunder quickly clears, leaving the Mark VII standing alone, up to its knees in water flowing over the coastal shelf; the next largest Jaeger in the convoy, a Mark V, was up to its waist. Slowly Nevada Thunder raises one metal hand to the sky, energy sparking along its joints and conduits. It pools in the Jaeger's arm and hand as it rises slowly upwards, a green-white glow that pulses with increasing intensity as it flows to every fingertip -

Then with a blinding burst of light, the Jaeger's hand wraps around the shaft of an enormous metal spear half a mile long. The spear seems not quite all there in some way, only a green flicker showing along the body of the shaft, outlining the sharp edge and the handle where the giant metal hand grips it. As it swings the weapon down, the wickedly gleaming edge - impossibly sharp, with curls of green fire licking from the blade - cuts a howling path through the air that blasts waves into the water ahead of it.

Beside him, Tony Stark makes a funny keening sound as he clutches at the console. "Where the hell did that thing come from? I know I didn't design it. There was no possible place to store it! And what's it even made of? There's no metal in the world that has that kind of tensile strength in a single piece that size, it's impossible -"

"Brother," Thor says reproachfully, "could you not have made it a hammer?"

Loki's sigh gusts audibly over the radio. "Thor," he says, fondness lining great irritation in his tone, "the last time I gave you a hammer, you threw it."

"It was a mighty blow!" Thor enthuses.

"Yes it was, the mightiest. And then we were unarmed, because you forget in the heat of battles that not all hammers come back to your hand," Loki says dryly. "This entire metal construct is practically a hammer itself; if you wish to smite your foes with a blunt instrument, you may simply punch them. In the meanwhile, it's my magic, so I shall conjure whatever weapons I please. I happen to be more adept with a spear, so I shall conjure a spear."

Tendo ignores their banter, leaning in to say, "Looks good, Loki. Nevada Thunder, you are officially cleared for battle."

Nevada Thunder raises the spear in a battle position. "For Midgard!" Thor roars, his voice stunning the ears of listeners even without the accompanying squeal of feedback.

"For Midgard," Loki agrees quietly, all but inaudible over the link.

Together, their thoughts and hearts as one, the brothers march their vessel of war to meet their foes.

~the end.

More Notes:

I was originally planning to write the whole fight against the Kaiju, but after some consideration, I decided it wouldn't really come across well in prose. Seriously though, if you want to watch giant mechs punch giant monsters in the face, watch Pacific Rim, it's awesome.

The name 'Project Stormking' was actually taken from the Girl Genius universe, of which the word 'Jaeger' can't help but remind me. 'Stormking' refers to Thor of course, but the name of the Jaeger itself - Nevada Thunder - is a not-at-all subtle reference to the Thor/Loki shipname, ThunderFrost.