A/N: Written for a Norsekink prompt.

Strings

It is a slow decay after many millennia of flourishing. Odin sees the gradual disintegration of his family, and it is the wickedest thing to witness for someone who has only ever wanted the best for the beloved ones, to witness it and know he has assisted to it with wrong decisions and careless words. It is but cruel how mistakes come back with such savagery that leaves no place for a second chance, only fruitless repentance. For all the wisdom he once gained with great sacrifice, there is very little he can do now. For the time he could have done things otherwise would never return.

He is forced to question everything, if the life his sons lived and he once regarded prosperous maybe has always nourished not a promising future but one full of pain and loss. If what he once regarded a balanced family life has always been rotting underneath, and he has been none the wiser. For someone who is granted with the gift to see things that are distant, in place or in time, it is a shameful shortcoming to not capture what is right before his nose.

He still doesn't see where it went wrong, which was the moment where he made the step that led down this path eventually. He knows what others whisper behind his back. He knows they think he nourished a viper in his bosom from the very start but he cannot make himself to see it that way. He hopes he never would. He does not believe in innate evilness, for all the blood spilled between the races of Asgard and Jötunheim, Odin refuses to regard the Jötnar as creatures with inborn wickedness but the other option is just as hurtful: the knowledge that his upbringing spoiled something that was, by nature, pure.

What they have sank into sings shame of their family. He keeps one son in chains while the other crawls through his days as if he had to strive against the same shackles.

Odin sees how it is picking Thor apart day by day. Thor has his mother's heart with its bottomless pits and hopeful thuds, with valves that pump naught but affection and an everlasting conviction that seeks the good and bright in all things and beings. Breaking such heart is harder but the result is much more mournful, too.

Loki knows it – his second son has the sharp mind of a father he is not related to but who has always loved him still. Loki knows his brother's heart in a way he has never known his own. He knows the daggers that can pierce it, he knows how to put an ache there that could never be removed.

What Loki doesn't know is a tragic thing.

That to perish Thor's heart, the road leads through his own.

o.o.o

Weeks turn into months, and Thor understands it takes a whole different kind of courage to recognize and accept that there are irreversible things. There are things he cannot mend and are maybe forever lost. From that aspect, he is a coward. Loki calls him a fool, and in this case the two are the same.

If crawling backward can ever be considered a progress, he is progressing in a steady pace.

He does not know anymore what he seeks, or what he hopes to find has ever been there to begin with. Behind bars, shackled, Loki is still a vicious thing, one Thor recognizes with difficulty.

Thor visits him regularly like he has nowhere else to go. As if he didn't descend the winding stairs to the dungeons to see his brother, he would get lost and become transparent, like Loki, he would languish and fade. It is an addiction that keeps him on tenterhooks when he is away, and drives him away with a sickened feel once he gets there. It always ends up either in argument or apathetic silence, and for all the strength he possesses, Thor feels powerless in the presence of his brother.

Both of them are bound, Loki literally so, but the fight is no less desperate. It is a different type of fight, one that he is unfamiliar with. It is Loki's turf, the wielding of words, deadly like poisoned blades. They are Loki's territory.

His brother is a vile player. Loki envelops him in hope one day just to crush it the next time they meet, and it aches all the more. The splinters of foolish faith Thor built for himself can cut deeper than anything crafted by others. Loki has figured out the workings of pain and hurt, and brought them to perfection. It saddens Thor that while over the centuries others would collect memories they want to keep close to their hearts forever, Loki picked every scrap of pain and put each of them in glass containers so he could anytime look at them – could never look away from them. He learnt things no one should, he learnt of envy and bitterness, of loneliness and the idea of being unworthy. He rolled these around and played with them like children play with colorful glass balls, put them together to construct forms even more monstrous, and forgot there were other things beyond these.

He knows it is his fault, too, and it is a heavy burden upon his shoulders.

Everything is falling apart around them, Loki's venom corrupting not only the bond within the family but the ones between them and the whole of Asgard. Thor doesn't know how long his strength will last to fight against the remarks they whisper about Loki behind his back, and sometimes into Thor's face. The curses mingling with Loki's name as if they were one and the same thing. They gut Thor slowly, they seep into his head. He doesn't know the depth of his strength but he fears the day it would run out.

There are no reasons behind Loki's words, no rationality Thor's mind is able to capture, only chaos and so much hatred and bitterness that Thor suffocates in it. Sometimes Thor thinks he only wants to understand Loki. Sometimes he knows he is afraid to.

Thor craves to find something he can relate to, something that makes sense for someone like him, but Loki offers none. There are moments Thor thinks Loki doesn't even wish to be set free because with every day that comes and goes, it is not his punishment that drags on.

It is theirs.

o.o.o

Sleep eludes him, and if it doesn't, images flood his mind in nauseating baseness, and Thor wakes in sweat and more tired than the day before.

He wonders if he is sick. The lethargic state of his body is an unbearable burden to carry around. His blood is rushing through his veins as if it was fighting to eliminate the invisible tasteless toxin Loki has put in there.

He cannot remember the last time he ate and sometimes, when his thoughts cut through the haze in his head, it frightens him how detached he became from his close surroundings. There is a feverish heat rising in his body that blocks the flow of thoughts, and they are running in circles in his mind, always in one direction like a snake biting its own tail, curling and twisting and pulling him to the dungeons.

He doesn't tell anyone but he is sure they know. It's enough to look at his worn face, the dark mood hanging off his shoulders like a heavy cape. He doesn't know how long he can levitate in this constant vertigo, or if the only way out is only downwards.

He gets his only sleeps in Loki's room on nights he is brave and desperate enough to enter it. He keeps it a secret, too, that he finds his warped comfort only in his brother's chamber, untouched since the day he fell from the Bifröst. He would lie on the floor beside the bed and inhale the scent that is still lingering there, stale yet with the essence of the Loki he once knew. The scent crumples his insides like a violent contraction, and he doesn't know if what he feels is pain or shameful, sordid, sickening pleasure.

o.o.o

In his dream he levels the world with one blow of his hammer. The rivers stop flowing, the birds fall from the air, and the stars blink for a last time before they burn out. There is nothing left but the dark cell in the dungeon, and Loki, and Thor.

In his dream he holds Loki close to him like he has never done, like he maybe never should.

In his dream, he is happy, and only because of that he knows it is but a dream.

o.o.o

There is only one difference between them, and it's the metal manacles around Loki's wrists. They are both imprisoned, and it fills Loki with satisfaction that when he fell, Thor fell, too. When his world came apart, it started to corrode Thor's, too. He does not understand how or why, if not for the nonsensical fixation Thor developed, spouting from the personality of a spoiled child who got used to getting whatever his heart desires, and Loki is a toy that broke without Thor's permission.

Loki has been watching him dwindle for weeks. He revels in Thor's struggle in the golden cage of the palace and the wicked heartstrings Loki twines around him. He is an easy, simple puppet yet the most entertaining of all, one he would not exchange for all the treasure in the world, one that makes him feel almost free. He pulls a string and the contentment the result brings is like the sweetest mead down his throat.

Sometimes it is the bitterest bile he doesn't comprehend.

He waits for Thor to come every day, waits with a quivering excitement the logical part of him cannot approve. There is a horrible suspicion rising in his mind and it leaves him sick to the stomach: the realization that every tether has two ends, and if he binds one end to Thor, Loki is bound to him, too.

o.o.o

"You want me to repent of my sins?" Loki asks, and there is only a hint of snide in his tone that he lets through.

Thor watches him with a delicious concoction of suspicion and hope, and Loki scoots as close as his chains let him. Thor moves upright, his back arching away from the cold wall where he has been leaning against as if he belonged to the cell just as much as Loki.

The mellow expression he cannot seem to hide sickens Loki's stomach. It irks him why Thor believes in him with such conviction when even Loki cannot see the point in it. He shouldn't be surprised by Thor's usual arrogance, by the pride of a warrior who is unfamiliar with defeat. He has seen it too many times over the centuries.

"Is it another play of yours?" Thor whispers.

Loki has never seen him looking so much like a cornered animal. He has never seen Thor full of fissures so wide that he can claw his fingers in them and pull them even wider, peeling them off one by one to find the raw core underneath. He is beautiful at this moment. Beautiful like an intricate spell Loki learnt to weave, something of his doing, of his molding.

His hand rises to Thor's face to stroke it, tangles his fingers in the locks that have lost their golden touch along the months as if neither Thor had the chance to see natural light, and Loki wants to keep the image forever imprinted in his mind, for Thor is perfect now. Perfect with his translucent skin and the cobwebs of veins underneath, the circles under his eyes and the dull glimmer of the once summer sky-toned orbs, perfect as his rough stubble scratches painfully against Loki's palm. The chapped creases of his lips that Loki wants to bite open until he tastes what they never shared. They are alike now, finally they are, in all of these, in the lividness and the circles and fissures. In the way the walls of Loki's prison cell bear down on them.

"I will…" he murmurs, and it is like a lover's whisper.

Thor's gaze sweeps across his face, and Loki knows this, he knows the glances he shoots at him recently, the touches his confused hands seek, but he knows those even better that Thor locks up inside him like they were deathly disease. And maybe they are. But who would be Loki if he was afraid of carnage and taint?

Thor cannot help the elated thumps of his heart that maybe… Loki's face is so soft as he smiles now, and he sees the brother he has been searching for in the depth of that smile. He sees the pointed deadly spikes in the bottom, too, but it is a risk he is willing to take.

Loki's hand crawls on top of Thor's head and he stands slowly, keeping him kneeled as he says, "I will consider…"

Thor frowns, just slightly. The spikes only nicked him but there would still be a time they impale him fully, now he starts to understand as the fingers in his hair fist and twist painfully.

"If the offer is good enough…" Loki growls, and with a swift movement Thor doesn't anticipate, he pulls Thor's face sharply against his crotch.

For a moment Thor is too shocked to react. When Loki's ugly snicker floats to his ears from above, Thor rips himself away from his grip.

"You twisted, wicked thing!" he snaps, face scarlet and eyes bloodshot, and the warped scraps of a dream race through his mind and his veins like a mockery. Holding Loki. Holding like he never should. The reflection of this simple, secret thing is hideous in Loki's mirror.

He pushes himself to his feet, and before Loki could retreat to his place Thor grabs him by his lapels, a torn poor thing of once delicate materials. His brother is that, too.

"Oh Thor," Loki laughs in his face. His thigh slips between Thor's legs, and rubs and presses there crudely. It doesn't escape his attention how Thor's hips twitch at the touch, pressing down before jerking away. "It is such a generous offer. I thought you would do anything to get your little pathetic brother back."

Thor wants to rip his venomous tongue out. He wants to strangle him for being able to wound Thor with the same slight he slaughters his own past self and dismisses the memory Thor cherishes more dearly than anything in the world. Something glows redly in Thor's mind, a heat that burns everything out, and his head is pounding with sleep deprivation. Months of self-deception culminate in the moment, every remark, every vile curse he wanted to not hear, the realization of not being enough, the everlasting guilt gnawing at him instead of Loki. His own wretched fever dreams.

He is not gentle when he pushes Loki face first against the wall but it helps because he doesn't have to see the stomach-churning glint in those eyes he doesn't recognize their color anymore. Loki's hips snaps backwards, brushing against his like a challenge, and his foggy mind interprets it exactly that way.

"You mean to humiliate me? Like you haven't done so far?" With one violent pull he yanks Loki's pants down. "I shall do the same then."

Loki only laughs at him. He is still laughing at him even when Thor breaches him.

"Eye for an eye. You ravaged us." With each word he slides deeper into Loki, and the answer is nothing but an airy snarl at each thrust given. As it has been so for a long time for each gesture given, too. "You humiliated Midgard, you humiliated Asgard, you did so with Jötunheim, and you humiliated our family, our love for you."

Like I've never known humiliation, Loki sneers silently. As if violating his body could ever be compared to anything in the past. Thor is a fool, a blind fool who after everything that has happened between them still cannot see, cannot understand, and Loki detests him for it.

He squeezes his eyes shut. The rough texture of the stonewall cuts into his forehead. He bites his tongue to keep a whimper within – they would never hear him beg; not if it doesn't serve him.

It will never be otherwise, he thinks, and the truth in it bears disappointment in him that slices through him more effectively than Thor's cock would ever be able to. He loathes with the last scraps of his heart how they would forever pass each other like two men in the dark. Maybe once they knew a language that could blossom other things than pain but neither remembers it anymore. They know only words and gestures that leave ruins behind, and now, with this last act they have used them all.

He is still numbed by shock that Thor resorted to such violence and disgrace. He would have never assumed the mighty Thor would ever cross the line and answer a blatant tease with carrying an act of this nature through, but maybe Loki finally pushed him too far. Through the pain, he finds pleasure in the cold sparks of glee.

And still, there is something ancient and wickedly legitimate in the way Thor glides into him, the way he angles Loki's hips so the friction explodes in his mind with an intensity that makes him want to upchuck everything Thor's touch arouses in him. They may have done this once, in the cloud of drunkenness, many centuries ago. They had no memory of it. They woke half dressed, entangled. Every part of their body was soar but it could be just as much the result of a brawl as anything else. They never talked about it. They pretended jumping to the most obvious conclusion would be a mistake.

It returned now, everything they buried deep back then, but like everything else it festered until neither could recognize it anymore, and now it's nothing but taking without giving.

Thor's violence draws snide sniggers on his lips. Loki knows these movements, knows the clutch of the iron fingers around his bones, he knows the huffed breath against his skin. He has seen his brother many times over the centuries sink into the vertigo of bloodlust. This is the Thor his enemies fear. He may be the only one among them who doesn't.

"Take, Thor, everything," he spits, "everything I've never wanted to give."

Thor lets out a choked sound against his hair, and even his more and more erratic thrusts are so predictable. Loki's body twitches and he meets them halfway. They always do this, meeting halfway and clashing. He moans as Thor buries his face into the crook of his neck, the brush of his lips against Loki's nape is an intimate gesture that sends his stomach flipping.

"Oh, Loki," Thor sighs and it is nothing but tenderness there, and Loki doesn't want it, doesn't want any of it for the danger it nurtures deep inside.

"Allfather," Loki gasps. His chains rattle as his fingers scramble for purchase, and he feels Thor jerk against him at the sound and the words Loki dares to utter. Oh if you knew… "What would Odin say if he saw you like this? Defiling your own brother. Oh, father…!"

o.o.o

There have been many things over the millennia Odin wished he wouldn't see. Governing the realms and being able to see distant lands are gift and burden in one. Something only Heimdall could understand.

Still, Odin finds himself sitting on Hliðskjálf even when he has no reason to. Only Frigga knows how he leaves their bedchambers in the middle of the night to do what he hasn't done ever since his sons reached adolescence: watching over their dreams. His own have abandoned him. He doesn't want to violate their privacy; it is nothing more than the sentimentalism of an old man.

He would watch Loki from his High Seat because it is the only way he can do it. When he visits his younger son in the dungeons, Loki hides behind masks and sharp remarks Odin cannot peel off him. He is unable to ascertain when Loki started to feel the need to hide but that moment was their undoing, Odin realizes now.

Sometimes he sits upon Hliðskjálf and does what Thor is chasing so desperately it slowly grates him to thin and sick: he tries to catch a glimpse of the son he has failed to understand. The son he has failed.

It is a burden that ruling the realms would never be able to match. Conflicts and truces and wars are volatile, malleable things, they are twined of words in a contract, of oaths that are ever-changing, flexible. He knows the ways they are bound or ripped apart. They are nothing alike the workings of Loki's mind and heart, the workings of the severed bonds tying them together.

Sometimes he sits upon Hliðskjálf, and shuts his eye against the sight of the son he keeps as a prisoner for things that are, in some parts, his failure, too.

"Father…!"

It is a desperate cry in his ear, so loud as if it was coming from right beside his seat. His attention turns to the cell in the dungeon, and his stomach sickens at the sight. They hit the bottom eventually, the lowest grade in the slow decadence.

So this is how a magnificent heart looks when it gets grated and corroded to the core.

o.o.o

"Such a hypocrite, Thor! Your means of punishment is just as twisted as what you accuse me with."

Thor's hand slips over his mouth and he ruts into him in despair. He feels Loki's lips curl into a smirk against his palm. He doesn't want to hear his words anymore, he doesn't want to weigh if there is any truth to them. His lips slide down Loki's neck and he yearns for the savor of the pale skin in a way he doesn't feel the taste of food anymore. He is close, his hips stutter against Loki as his brother meets his movements eagerly. Thor wants to believe this is true, that the jerking, hungry moves of Loki's hips are honest, he wants to think this is right and natural – it's like a fundamental need, and without it he would shatter.

The sound of skin slapping against skin draws color to Thor's face, and his pleasure finally unfurls in his belly.

"I will never want—" he croaks, and his throat strangles the syllables with a choked sob as he comes, "…anyone but you."

And Loki stills.

Thor stills, too.

The words ring among the walls with a hollow echo. In the empty silence they sound definite and irrevocable.

Loki wonders it might be called completion what he feels at the moment, or the closest thing to it. He wouldn't have a greater revenge even if he planned so.

He would like to rub Thor's nose into the fact how his own weapon has turned against him and eventually become his demise. He doesn't have to, though. He feels it in the rough patches of the hand that slips over his throat, the erratic breaths against his neck as Thor fights a truth that cannot be changed. In his insane quest to save Loki Thor lost his hold over himself, and Loki needed to apply but the slightest push to gain it. His lips twist into a secret smile. You took everything from me, so I took everything from you. Have taste of your 'eye for an eye', brother. He wants to laugh at him, to tell him how transparent he is, how his own folly served as the catalyst for Loki's plans to reach an end even he hasn't felt the confidence to dream of.

Odin finds them in this inappropriate position and it puts the perfect end to everything Loki has set to motion.

The Allfather almost breaks the door as he pushes his way into the cell.

"Thor! How could you commit such a devious act? How could you stain our name with something so beastly?"

Thor fumbles with his breeches as nonsensical words are spilling from his lips but they are drowned out by the wrath of Odin. Loki slips to the floor like a boneless doll, a crumpled mess of defeat at the feet of his brother, ravaged flesh and clinking of chains. From behind his hair he watches it unfold, the last fissures in his family running deep to the core, and neither sees his smirk.

Odin's voice is amplified in the narrow space, it bounces off the walls and hits them in the chest. "Is this how I raised you? Is this how you were taught? To vent your frustration by barbaric acts on people who are bound? On your own brother!"

Thor doesn't look at them. There is a line on his forehead Loki knows for certain would never go away. Thor's voice is low and humble as he answers when he should maybe just stay silent, "Father… it is not… I was not…"

"Don't you dare lie to me! Do not tell me—" Loki realizes that suddenly Odin is leaning over him with a tight look on his face. "Answer me, Loki, answer me truthfully: was this consensual?"

Loki lets the silence stretch in the cell. Truthfully. His lips almost twitch with amusement. What does that word mean? Has Odin really forgotten who he is talking to? They are so easy, Odin and Thor are. He plays them still like in old times, the tied-up prisoner. It gives him a certain amount of satisfaction.

His glance swims at Thor, their gaze locks as he claims, "No."

And it is so convincing that even he doesn't know if it is true or false.

He only knows the way Thor falls in on himself, like a collapsing mine, curling into himself. He has never been more magnificent, never been more perfect than at this moment, with Loki's complete destruction upon him. If Loki cannot build, then he would destroy, and in that, he has talent.

He sees the look in Odin's eye, and he is the only one who recognizes the ruthless, gut-piercing disappointment because he has seen it already. Thor is debauched and it is something that can never be undone. It is something Loki has been dreaming of for a long time, writhing in his own distress in the dark, filled by the cold of the void, of an eternal fall, turned towards the light and always just reaching out and never touching. In those hours he depicted this moment with pinpoint precision, the moment where Odin would be left with two empty shells in place of his sons, and Thor, great and cherished and favored Thor would know what it means to reach out and never touch, what it means to be on the wrong side of the Allfather. Oh he had the darkest pleasure gained of this image, the kind that oozes into his belly and wrings his insides until his mind is wiped and his body is hollowed and dried, and there is only a coppery taste on his tongue and something that burns like poison, a flavor he loves with an abhorrent, dreaded addiction.

Odin turns his back on Thor, and suddenly he is the father he has never been as he drapes the blanket over Loki in a clumsy attempt to keep him decent.

"Oh son…" Odin murmurs, and Loki almost believes him. He almost believes the regret is addressed to him and not to the fact that he had to see his cherished son debased.

"Father, please…" Loki breathes, and he has to hide his face so they wouldn't see the mad glint in his eyes he cannot hide anymore. Odin puts a hand on his shoulder and Loki knows he thinks he is ashamed. He stacks his words into neat piles, perfectly shaped words that would seal Thor's misery, even if a laughable, damnable part of Loki craves the same thing Thor does. "Just don't let him ever come here and touch me again. Please, father. This is the only thing I ask."

"I won't, son."

And it sounds like a verdict.

Loki cannot help but steal a glance at Thor because it's like a bowl of fat cream placed before a cat, he cannot resist it even if in the end, it will only make him sick. Thor's shattered and hollowed image would forever burn a hole into his memory, Thor who as well has to live in the shadow of something that once has been mighty and prideful.

He has never even hoped that his small-scale vengeance could be this great and thorough. He hoped for a little amusement, yes, maybe an awkward and embarrassing event he could anytime wave before Thor as a memory he should be ashamed of. He has risked and sacrificed much more for much less before. His body is but a shell and a means, and no pain matters but the one he was able to transmit to Thor.

"I will see to it that you would be treated better from now on," Odin adds but Loki cares little for the old man's assurances. His trophy, this wicked and ugly thing, has already been granted.

You will never want anyone but me, he smirks as he watches Thor leave, watches the slump of the mighty shoulders, the look he gives him before the door closes. He knows what awaits Thor, how he will forever yearn for what he can never have, forever compare everything to it, and never feel the taste of things again. He knows this feeling, he has lived a whole life with the same dust on his tongue.

And maybe neither will I ever want anyone but you, it comes as an afterthought, and it leaves a familiar dusty taste in his mouth.

It weighs so little, though, because finally for the first time in so many centuries, he is not alone in this, not anymore.