Thor was leaning against one of the stone pillars in the atrium, gazing into the starry night as he brought his mug of mead to his lips and took a long, satisfying drink. He could no longer tell how much of the devilishly sweet poison he had already consumed but that was just as well. It was beginning to numb the pain inside his chest and that was all that mattered. Behind him, the sound of festivities in the banqueting hall of Asgard began to fade into a dull murmur and his vision started to blur slightly at the edges. If he emptied two or maybe three more mugs, he would fall into a dreamless slumber and, for once, he would not think of—

A soft voice rang out somewhere beside him, speaking his name. He glanced around and spotted Lady Sif, who was stepping forth from the shadows.

"You have retreated again," she stated, her forehead wrapped in a frown of concern.

"I am enjoying the view," Thor replied, his tongue lying heavy in his mouth.

"The view, hm?" Sif raised an eyebrow at him, not bothering to mask how worried she was. "You are quite drunk, aren't you?"

Thor forced himself to meet her gaze. "So? Have you come here to lecture me?"

"Not at all," Sif replied. "I have come here because I am worried about you." When he motioned her to continue with a clumsy nod, she said, "I know you doubt that I could possibly imagine what you are going through, but I know the feeling quite well." She sighed and then her hand traveled to his arm, squeezing it gently. "It is one of life's greatest hardships when you cannot be with the one who you truly wish to spend all of your time with."

Thor felt his mouth gape open in surprise. "You think this is about Jane Foster?"

"Please," said Sif. "You need not spare my feelings. I have accepted long ago that you only see me as a companion."

"This isn't about Jane," Thor clarified, feeling his anger rise. Why did everyone assume that his heart was breaking over a mortal woman whom he was able to visit anytime he pleased now that the Bifrost was fully restored?

"No?" Sif looked unconvinced. "Then who else would it be about?"

"You wouldn't understand," Thor mumbled, dropping his head in embarrassment.

"Then tell me," Sif demanded after a moment of silence.

"I-I can't," Thor stammered, his vision suddenly blurring far more than he had ever intended, images he had tried so hard to forget in the previous months mingling into the fuzzy nightscape in front of his eyes.

"Thor," pleaded Sif. "We have been friends for eons unthinkable." She squeezed his arm once more. "You can trust me." She paused meaningfully. "With anything."

Thor felt his emotional defenses going up but at the same time, he knew that she was speaking true. They had been friends for a long time and he had always been able to confide in her. Deep within his heart, he knew that she would not judge him. Maybe at first, yes, but she would eventually try to see his perspective.

Sif was looking at him expectantly.

"I miss my brother," Thor finally conceded, the words gaining so much more force once he had spoken them out loud. "I know I shouldn't, but I do," he continued, the truth breaking out of him before he could stop himself. "We have been together all this time and now father forbids me to see him?" He brought his cup to his lip once more and took another swig. "He is still my brother, Sif!" he howled. "This is not fair."

Sif pulled him into a hug and simultaneously removed the mug from his hand with one swift motion. "Have you talked to the Queen?"

Thor peeled himself out of her arms and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "How could I?" He huffed a sad laugh. "Father is urging me to take the throne. I cannot possibly disappoint him again by questioning"—he stumbled over the s and the word came out in a slur—"the rightfulness of Loki's sentence. Not now." He paused thoughtfully. "Not even in front of my mother."

"It is not as if Lady Frigga is not doing the same thing," Sif whispered conspiratorially.

Thor's befuddled brain needed a moment to unpack the meaning of her double negative. "What are you saying? That she is going against father's orders?"

Sif gave a nod. "I am sure this must remain secret but I caught her by surprise the other day when I walked into her chambers and I saw that she uses her magic to send illusions to Loki. She also does everything in her power to make him as comfortable as possible."

"As I imagine she would," Thor mumbled and, suddenly, he yearned for her comfort as fiercely as he had when he had been nothing but a boy. He looked into the hall, his gaze searching for her among the reveling Asgardians.

"She has already retreated to her chambers for the night," said Sif and he felt a stab of disappointment in his stomach. "And so should you. You are not well, Thor."

"Nonsense," he exclaimed. "I am drunk, is all."

"Which is my point exactly." She smiled at him and, despite the brick of grief that had settled inside his stomach, Sif's smile warmed his heart as few things in all the Realms ever could. "Come on, I will escort you to your chambers. And tomorrow morning, you tell the Queen about this. I am sure she will be delighted to see you worrying about Loki."

"You really think so?" Thor asked.

"Oh, please," said Sif. "There is no person in any of Realms that loves your brother more than she does."

The next morning, Thor found his mother in her garden after he had spent the night in an uneasy sleep filled with ghastly visions of a deranged Loki leading a Chitauri army into Midgard. Thor cleared his throat, loathe to disrupt her moment of peace.

She turned to face him, a sad smile playing upon her lips. "Thor." She rose immediately. "How do you fare, my son?"

He could sense the worry in her voice and her tone stirred up unwanted feelings of need inside of him. "Why would you even ask such a thing of me? I am well."

"I could not help but notice," said Frigga, Queen of Asgard, as she crossed the distance between them, "that you seem to be deriving a little too much comfort from the drink lately." She stood right in front of him now, her hand traveling to his chin and cupping it gently. "What ails you so, my son?"

Thor had practiced a million different speeches when he had walked from his chambers to his mother's gardens but everything he had thought he would say was instantly forgotten when his mother looked at him like that. "Sif told me you have been visiting Loki," he blurted out.

"I have sent spectral apparitions of myself to converse with him, yes," Frigga clarified, her voice dripping with the same pain that he felt inside his chest. "But I have not visited him."

Thor gulped.

"I wish I could," Frigga continued. "He is in sore need of my presence. As, I suppose, are you." Without any further warning, she looped her arms around him and cradled him to her chest.

Thor savored the gesture for a moment, allowing the love for his mother to fill the hole inside his chest, before he tore himself free. "Are you at all mad at him sometimes?" he asked, knowing that he could no longer keep at bay the emotions he had been trying to hold off by fighting the foul creatures that had used the Bifrost's destruction and Asgard's helplessness to their advantage and by drinking himself into a stupor after every victory. "Because I am. I am so angry that he betrayed me like this. On some days, I am glad that he is locked away and that I do not have to endure his scathing humor and his hostility towards me but then, on other days, I just …"

"You miss him," said Frigga.

"I do," Thor confessed in a low voice. "And I just want to understand what happened. He had everything and still he …" He left the rest of the sentence hanging in the air, not daring to give it a voice.

Frigga reached for his hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "No, he did not," she corrected him, tears pooling into her benign blue eyes. "Loki is very troubled. He always has been. Even from a very young age, there has been a shadow growing inside his heart. I thought I could kindle enough light in him to make it go away but I …" She let go of his hand and turned away.

"What?" asked Thor.

"I am mad at myself mostly," Frigga conceded quietly. "All these years and I never managed to, well, I think I could have made a difference if only I had—"

"Mother, please," Thor interrupted her gently, pulling her back towards him. "You did everything you could. You loved him more than anyone and you always made sure that he knew it. There is no better mother than you in all the Nine Realms and beyond."

"And yet I lied," Frigga whispered, choking on the words. "I lied to him for more than a thousand years. I could have told him what he was from the beginning. I could have prevented his breakdown. But I did not. And why?"

"Well," Thor began, "if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that you did not tell him because father forbade you to reveal the truth." Frigga laughed a desperate, toneless laugh that encouraged Thor to continue. "The same way he is forbidding us to see him now." He drew a sharp breath. "And this is not right. It has been months, mother! Is he ever going to alter the sentence?"

"I do not know," Frigga conceded.

"This is not right!" Thor yelled.

Tears glistered in the Queen's eyes. "Thor, please."

Thor narrowed his eyes at her. "What?"

"Believe me, I am trying to convince your father to alter the sentence but you know him as well as I do. You know how stubborn he is. If we are to convince him, we must proceed with care." Frigga smiled sadly. "There is a reason for everything—"

"For everything he does, yeah, I know," Thor finished for her. He had heard that speech more than a hundred times. "I also know that he is not only my father but my King and that I am sworn to obey him." He took another breath to steady himself. "But what if I no longer believe in the justness of his verdicts?"

Frigga looked at him with an interest he had never seen in her eyes before.

"Loki is your son!" Thor continued far more urgently than he probably would have had to. "And he is my brother. Father cannot just decide that we are never going to see him again! That is bullshit!"

Frigga was startled by his choice of words. "What did you just say?"

"Bullshit," Thor repeated. "It is an expression that Midgardians use to refer to something truly outrageous. Which is what this is." He searched for his mother's eyes. "Did you know that most of Midgard does not even have kings anymore? One person who decides what is best for everyone? One person whose powers are unchallenged and unquestioned? That is not wise."

Despite the severity of the matter they were discussing, Frigga's face lit up with a pleasant smile. "You will make Asgard very proud when you are made king," his mother told him. "You will bring about a sorely needed change and lead us all into a new age."

"Yeah, well," Thor replied. He was still wary of the responsibility he had so fiercely craved until Odin had exiled him to Midgard and he had understood that the brutality of the sacrifices a king had to make would forever change him. "We will see about that."

"I have faith in you, my love," said Frigga before she steered the conversation back to his brother once more. "Loki knows that you love him and that he loves you. He might not be able to remember it right now but, at the bottom of his heart, he knows it. You just need to give him time. You must be patient."

Thor huffed a laugh. "You know as well as I do that patience has never been my strong suit." Frigga locked eyes with him and Thor instantly knew that she knew what was going to happen next. "I will not wait for him to remember," said Thor. "I will remind him." He paused. "Right now."

"And I will not stop you," said Frigga.

Thor descended the stairs leading deep into the belly of the Realm Eternal, his steps echoing off the walls of stone. It was cold in the weapon's vault but it was colder in the dungeons still and he shuddered. When he approached the entrance doors, two armed guards rose from the two chairs positioned on either side of the door and bowed their heads. "My Lord Thor."

"I wish to have a word with my brother."

The guards exchanged a quick glance. "But my Lord, the sentence—"

"I know of it, obviously," Thor replied, "but it is important that I speak with Loki. Now, I do not want to fight you but if you deny me passage, fight you I shall."

The guards seemed to gauge his threat for a few heartbeats but, eventually, they stepped aside in awe and so Thor walked the length of the corridor with its magically sealed cells until he came to the one that imprisoned his brother. He drew a sharp breath, stealing himself for the encounter, and then stepped towards the glass that was pulsating with the Seiðr of old. His brother was clad in casual leathers of green and brown, his bare feet slipped into a pair of loafers, and he was lounging in an armchair, his gaze focused on a book in his lap. He did not seem overly troubled but, then again, he never did when he was reading.

Thor cleared his throat. "Loki?"

Loki glanced up from his book and his lips parted. He appeared to be confused for the fraction of a second but then his mouth curled into a devious grin. "Thor," he spat.

Even though he knew he should have anticipated this, Thor was taken aback by the hostility in his brother's words and eyes. "I have come to—"

"What a glorious sight!" Loki exclaimed, slamming his book shut. "The Son of Odin chooses to grace me with his presence, disobeying his father's commands." He rose, glowering at him as he stepped closer to the barrier. "I suppose I should be rather grateful that I have lived long enough to witness such a marvel."

Before he could stop himself, Thor chuckled. Loki was still glowering at him. "What is so funny?"

Thor cleared his throat, pondering his next words. "It is funny how, despite all that rage and hatred I know is beating inside your chest right now, I still missed your company."

Loki huffed a mirthless laugh. "You should really leave the lying to me. It does not suit you."

"I have never lied to you in all my life," Thor countered. "You should know that."

"Of course not," Loki snarled. "We all know you are the virtuous one, brother."

Despite Loki's intractability, Thor felt a genuine smile creeping onto his lips. "So, you still think of me as your brother?"

Loki's brows drew together in a suspicious frown. "What?"

"You just called me brother," Thor said, waiting for Loki's reaction.

"Force of habit," Loki replied briskly. "What do you want?"

"I do not want anything," Thor told his brother with a hesitant smile. "I merely wished to see you."

"And seen me you have," Loki replied curtly, turning away again.

"Brother, please," Thor mumbled, unsure how he would ever manage to engage Loki in a conversation when so much rage and hatred still filled his heart. "I … Don't you feel the urge to speak about, well, you know. Don't you want to—"

Loki swung around again, boring his ice-cold gaze into him. "I want you to leave."

Thor cleared his throat. "No, you don't." He locked eyes with Loki, forcing himself not to break the contact. "I know you don't."

Loki bristled. "You have never known much, though, have you?"

Thor exhaled a breath he did not know he had been holding. "I will not deny that I am angry with you still," he began, taking a leap of faith. "We grew up as brothers. You were my best friend, Loki. You should have known that I would not have treated you any differently after coming to know that you are not my brother by blood. You could have come to me and I would have been there for you but, instead of reaching out, you chose to keep me exiled, tell me the lie of our father's demise and send the Destroyer to kill me."

"You know what they say on Midgard, don't you, brother?" Loki snickered. "What does not kill you makes you stronger."

"You have betrayed my love and my trust," Thor continued, ignoring his brother's remark. "And I will not pretend it does not ail me still."

"And I will weep for you," Loki snarled, leaning forward, hands clasped behind his back. "You have been through so much, haven't you?" he continued, his voice dripping with so much contempt that the very blood in Thor's veins seemed to freeze at the sound. "I will pray to the Norns that they relieve you of all your torment."

Before he could stop himself, a frustrated cry escaped Thor's lips and then he lunged forward, his fist crashing into the magical barrier of his brother's cell. As soon as his hand touched the yellowishly gleaming surface, he felt a sharp stab of pain and he stumbled backwards, taken aback by the powerful sensation.

"You really should not have done that," Loki told him cheerily. "The barrier is quite strong. It will give you a nasty burn."

Thor grunted, cradling his injured hand to his chest. "I wish to help you," he said, his voice sounding hoarser than he would have liked it to sound. "I am sure I can convince father to alter your punishment but you have to help me too." The thought had been silently growing inside of his mind for the past weeks but now it bore fruit. "You need to tell me what happened to you."

His brother's lips twitched ever so slightly. "What do you mean?"

"After you fell," Thor began, groping for the right words and knowing that he was never going to find them no matter how hard he tried, "something happened to you. I can tell. That insane stare in New York? That was not you. I know that it was not. You are not the kind of person that would attack another planet out of greed!"

Loki worked his jaw and a flicker of madness blazed in his stare. "Well, I am not really a person though, am I?"

"Nonsense," Thor objected. "Of course you are a person. You are my brother."

Loki bared his teeth. "Odin begs to differ. He would—"

"Let me stop you right there!" Thor yelled before he could contain his emotions. "If he really did not think of you as his son anymore, do you not think he would have taken your appearance away, leaving you to waste away in this cell in your Frost Giant body?"

Loki's lips parted in surprise.

"See? He still cares," Thor brought himself to say even though he did not truly believe it himself. "And so do I. Just talk to me, Loki."

"There is nothing to talk about," Loki snarled.

"Yes, there is," Thor continued softly. "Remember when I asked you who showed you all this power? I know that attacking Midgard was not your idea. Someone convinced you to do that." He paused. "Who?"

"No one convinced me to do anything," Loki claimed but his voice was trembling softly.

Thor frowned at him, checking his brother's face for the slightest sign of emotion. "I don't believe you."

"You should go now," Loki said.

"No," Thor countered. "I will not leave you until you told me what happened to you."

"Then prepare to be here for a very long time," Loki replied, settling back into his armchair and picking up the book he had been reading.

"Do you not understand?" Thor cried out. He was angry that his brother was purposefully ignoring him but, at the same time, his heart began to ache for him when he realized that Loki had spent months in this cell with nothing but books to keep him company. "If it wasn't your fault—"

"It was my fault," Loki cut him off without looking up from his book.

"Fine," Thor grumbled. He turned away for show, murmuring, seemingly to himself but loud enough for Loki to hear, "I bet Mother will be able to get the truth out of you."

Loki was on his feet in an instant. "No!"

Thor turned around to watch Loki step closer to the barrier, extending his hand towards him. When his skin grazed the ancient magic pulsating through the dungeons, a shimmer of green light enveloped his brother's frame and the illusion he had presented to him faded into a gruesome sight. Loki's hair, which had been slicked back before, was now unkempt and lusterless. His cheeks were even paler than before, if that was at all possible, and his eyes were red-rimmed, dark circles spreading out below them.

"Loki," Thor gasped.

"I cannot speak of this," Loki whispered, the tremor in his voice sending shivers of fear down Thor's spine. "And neither can you."

"You would rather endure this sentence, which prevents you from seeing me or even Mother, than to confide in me?" Thor asked, his voice breaking.

Loki did not hesitate for as much as a heartbeat before he gave his answer. "I am where I belong."

"Loki, I—" Thor began but then realization hit him. "If that is your choice, I cannot help you."

"I do not expect you to," Loki said.

Thor cleared his throat. "I will comply with your wish then," he said, his intestines churning, "and leave you alone."

"Thank you," Loki pressed out.

Thor knew that Loki did not truly want this—he could feel his brother's longing for his company pulsating through the air as much as he could sense the magic emanating from the cells—but he turned away nonetheless because he knew, too, that he could not impose his help on him until Loki was willing to accept it.

"Goodbye then," Thor whispered.

"Goodbye, brother," Loki whispered almost intimately, shattering Thor's heart into a million pieces as he walked away from the cell and back into reality.