For the Sun will Shine

Eirian Erisdar

Loki sat in Thanos's cook-fire and watched with a sense of hollow victory as Thor severed Thanos's head from his shoulders.

It was a good thing, Loki supposed, that he didn't have a body to turn away or a face to grimace with. The death of the mad titan was an instantaneous thing that was far more painless than many would have wanted. There wasn't even any blood – Thor made a single, devastatingly precise swing with all the pain and grief and rage arcing in white lighting through Stormbreaker's blade, and burnt all the places that blood could have run.

There was simply Thanos, alive – and then two pieces of him, dead.

A bloodless death – rather like Loki's own, but with far less agony. He could feel no pain here, a fire-spirit housed in the flames of the last meal Thanos was not permitted to eat – but Loki recalled, still, the fat, purple fingers crushing his neck and pushing the blood to his eyes, so that even Thor's grief-struck face blurred in his vision.

That was then. This was now.

The purple-skinned head fell to the floor with a muted thud, like a fat ram's head gone rancid – followed shortly by the bulk of Thanos's half-wasted body.

The edge of Thor's cloak skirted around the flames of the fire pit as he moved past, his stride heavy and defeated on the floorboards. Loki leapt as far as he could on a tongue of flame, spirit straining, but try as he might, he could not reach his brother. Sparks singed the edge of Thor's crimson cloak – burned a few stray fibres of red into the burnt brown of old blood.

Brother, Loki would have said, if he had lips and lungs and a throat to voice his words. Brother, I am yet here.

The silence made mockery of him.

And Thor did not look back.

(:~:)

Loki stayed with his brother for the next five years.

New Asgard was a place of hard labour with little fruit, and Loki's brother, King of Asgard's remnant, did not labour at all.

Really, one could argue he did not live, either.

And neither, of course, did Loki.

"Oh, please don't," Loki said – or tried to say, when Thor first turned to cheap beer to water down his pain. Of course, the air remained silent. One needed a body to speak, and Loki was soul-flame.

"You were never one for doing things by halves, brother," Loki continued, wincing mentally as his brother downed the next bottle in two careless gulps. "But this is the equivalent of a slow death by your own hand."

He realised later, of course, that Thor wasn't drinking himself a slow death at all. Aesir blood did away with that. It was just suffering.

Just as Loki suffered, thought-speaking words his brother could not hear, year after endless year.

"Now, was that last tub of – what was it, ice cream – worth it?" Loki chided silently from the bathroom lightbulb as Thor heaved into the toilet bowl below. "I always said you fought like a dragon and ate like an abilisk, brother. I didn't ever really mean it literally."

"–Brother, you've had plenty. Perhaps not another–"

"–Thor, sleep on your side, please, you've had enough drink to water a dozen of Father's best horses. Don't come to as inglorious an end as to choke on your own sick. If I wind up in Valhalla after all, gods forbid, I'd hardly be able to look you in the face then."

"–Bor's name, Thor. You never listened to me when I was alive. It makes sense that you shouldn't listen to me when I'm dead, either. So drink away. See if I care."

That particular instance was particularly horrible: Bitter and seething and helpless, Loki eventually soul-flitted away to a forest-fire on another planet, just to see the different stars; but on his return he found his brother deep into his third round of drinks that night, and cradled in the flickering flame of the tabletop candle, Loki looked into Thor's haggard face and wished for eyes to weep with.

"–Please, Thor. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Stop. Please."

Thor, oblivious, had leaned over his current bottle and blew out the candle – not knowing he sent Loki careening through Yggdrasil's branches by doing so.

But.

Loki was in the meagre hearthfire when Thor raised his sixth mug of spirits to his lips in the same number of minutes; Loki was in the flame of the porch lamp when the eighteenth slipped out of Thor's fingers and smashed into the wood floorboards, staining them the colour of urine and cheap liquor; Loki was strung across the dim, burning wire of the lightbulb that had needed changing for six months when Thor, huddled in his filthy bathroom surrounded by empty bottles, pressed his war-scarred hands into his eyes and wept.

The lightbulb flickered, a flare of fire stronger than possible for old wire stretched so thin and half-rusted; but Thor did not raise his grime-haired head to see.

And, bereft of a body with which to hold his brother, Loki wished.

He wished for their mother, who had fallen to the dark elf's blade, brilliant and quick-witted and shining like Asgard's sun.

He even wished for their father, whom Loki had tried so hard to hate and instead only found himself wanting their father to stay for a moment longer, just so Loki could touch him, on a windblown cliffside in Norway.

In a way, this present situation disgusted him.

No, not Thor, wallowing in misplaced guilt.

Loki was disgusted at the fact that he was doomed for eternity, as it seemed, to watch the brother he loved best (and only semi-recently figured out that he did, by the way, which only served to peeve further at the wasted opportunities) grieve and suffer and drink himself to a grave he could not reach because the blood of the Aesir was in Thor's veins.

And Loki could do nothing to stop it.

On the dusty tiles below, Thor buried his unshaven face a little deeper into the knees of his unwashed jeans. His bare shoulders trembled.

Brother, Loki thought – he soul spread thin and faint across the wire, like his non-existent heart had twisted in place to be there. Brother, I am here. Yggdrasil is open to me – every flame a doorway and a window – but I am here. I chose to be here. With you. Even if you cannot hear me.

Once, Loki had danced through the realms like a spark in the shadow of Yggdrasil, clever-tongued and fleet-footed, and even when inconvenienced with true death had soul-flitted across worlds to see the battle against Thanos. He had hoped for a future, even, when he discovered continued existence of all six original Avengers who had defeated him in New York so long ago.

He hoped rather less, now.

And then the doctor with the anger management issues and the talking raccoon showed up.

And Loki, for the first time in five years, decided to give hope another chance.

(:~:)

He would have liked to travel with Thor to the day when their mother died, just to see her face again – she would recognize him, he was sure, even in the form of flame – but Loki had not spent five years solely watching his brother drink without planning.

Thanos and the soul stones and time itself was a problem, yes. But Thor and his band of incredibly hard-headed friends had the hands and feet with which to attend to the matter. And now with the Man of Iron's arrival, it seemed, the technology with which to practically do so.

No, the problem that presented itself to Loki was first and foremost his lack of a physical body.

Loki spent a few minutes seething quietly in one of Stark's decorative fireplaces in the Avengers compound to get to the crux of the issue.

Five years was ample time to fully comprehend I think, therefore I am; that didn't quite change the fact that he needed a new body to drink and eat and breathe and hug with. And for that to happen, someone had to a) recognize Loki in his flame-soul form, b) make a body Loki would find aesthetically pleasing and durable enough for his preferred brand of adventuring, and c) aid in helping Loki put himself in said new body.

All the thinking in the realms had come to one person, really. A little self-flattery, perhaps, but it was truth.

And so, when what remained of the Avengers keyed into the gleaming structure of glass and steel that would send them into younger versions of Yggdrasil, Loki leapt into the flicker of quantum flame that enveloped Stark's form and piggybacked along into the battle of New York.

Finding flame inside Stark's tower to watch the impending chaos from was entirely thanks to the man's penchant for stylized fireplaces and decorative flame; but when things went south in the lobby and Loki's younger self stared down at the open case of the Tesseract, Loki looked around desperately for a source of flame on his younger person, and finding none, cursed silently and flitted directly onto the Tesseract's flickering blue surface.

It quickly became apparent that of all the ideas he ever had, this was one of the worst ones.

It was like his soul was made of paper, and the power of the Tesseract careening in a torrent through and around him until he was sure he would be blasted into smithereens of energy.

If Loki had lips, he would be screaming, but his younger self's hands latched eagerly around the Tesseract and twisted–

His younger self obviously had a different destination in mind, but with Loki's soul running over the surface of the space stone, screaming in soul-speak, the Tesseract spat them out elsewhere.

The moment reality coalesced around them Loki soul-lunged for the nearest flame – a burst of new fire in a fireplace edged in green marble, familiar and solid and–

On the green-black carpets, his younger self had paused in the act of scrambling after the Tesseract, wide-eyed as he stared agog at his surroundings: the four-poster bed with emerald bedspread, the bookcases stuffed with books and relics from a hundred worlds, the desk carefully dusted with the remnants of a last magical experiment before Thor's coronation–

Loki slowly became aware that he had settled into the flame of the fireplace he had so often sat by while reading – his favourite spot in his own rooms in the Asgardian palace. The fact the fireplace was aflame at all was due to an enchantment of his own making, eons ago – to recognize his presence and welcome him home.

Loki did not pause to wonder why his family had not cleared his rooms after his supposed death.

Apparently done with staring at their old rooms, his younger self scrabbled at his gag and flung it to the floor. It missed the carpet and clattered across bare stone to the fireplace grate. Those glittering green eyes followed its course.

Loki flared the fire a little.

His younger self paused in the act of listening at the door and snapped his gaze towards the fireplace.

Loki flared the fire a little more.

Soft Asgardian boot-soles against carpet – an expression on that bruised face of curiosity, and careful steps closer.

If Loki had eyes, he would have rolled them by now. Mother always said that one realised one's former inadequacy as one matured – but to see this in himself after a gap of only a little more than a decade was highly embarrassing. Must he make his soul dance the boogaloo in his own fireplace before his younger self understood?

Younger Loki was so close now that Loki could see the flame reflected in his emerald eyes.

Loki decided that subtlety could go dust itself and momentarily turned the fireplace into a little live-flame rave show.

Loki's younger self sat down abruptly. His rear end made a bony thud against the stone – he'd just come off an eon of torture, after all. "Trickery," he murmured, incredulity in his voice. "You? Me?"

It was rather a pity, Loki thought, that he hadn't yet discovered how to form flame into shapes. If he could he would form just the letters needed to express how much he did not care about his younger self's surprise. Quickly followed by MAKE ME A BODY, of course.

His younger self licked his torn lips. "What are you doing here? How are–"

Loki flared the fire meaningfully. Stars, this was his only way of communicating. And his past self seemed very much like a dolt. He was sure he hadn't ever been this stupid.

"You're me. Dead."

Flare.

"You need something."

Flare.

"That only I can give you?"

FLARE.

"All right, all right, keep your cinders on. You want a…body?"

Loki flared the fire so brightly that his younger self winced at the heat.

Younger Loki mirrored Loki's mental eye-roll with a very pronounced physical one. "Obviously, is what you're saying – ow!"

Loki settled in the flames smugly, while his younger self glared at the fire over the minor burn on the back of his right hand.

"Fine, if only for the fact that this might serve me later," his younger person hissed. "And I thought Thor was the petty one. If any Einherjar come I'm leaving you to the flames."

Loki waited, patiently, as his younger self divested himself of the shackles and mucked around in the workshop in the next room. His younger self may have been rather less enlightened, but it seemed that Loki's recollection of his magical abilities was not insofar inaccurate; in no time at all his younger self slinked back into the room, and stretched a hand towards the fireplace expectantly.

Loki stared at the hand and didn't move.

His younger self rolled his eyes and beckoned once. "Don't tell me I've become cowardly in my old age."

Very, very carefully, Loki judged the distance and leapt on a tongue of flame. Familiar magic – his own – wrapped around him, and he soon found himself undergoing the extremely disconcerting experience of being held in his own hand.

And then there was a doorway, and a workbench, and a black-haired, pale-skinned body on top of it, a mirror of his younger self save for the bruises and the cuts and the shadows under his younger self's eyes.

A fistful of flame was nothing to his younger self, of course, and Loki barely had any time for mental preparation before he was slammed into the sternum of the body on the table in a surge of green-tinged magic.

And then he was on fire.

Less literally, this time – he was on fire from pain, the first time he felt anything at all in five long years – nerve endings flaring anew and flashing his vision white-hot and searing.

He screamed. One long, wailing howl that he only realised he could hear when he ran out of breath and had to gulp in another to scream again.

His younger self cursed and slapped a hand over Loki's lips, but Loki did not care; he was alive, bodied and physically present, and every throb of his heart and breath in his lungs and movement of his limbs was a blessing he could not begin to comprehend.

And his magic.

It coiled around him and within him and at his fingertips, ready and waiting and housed at last, an eager fire waiting for his command.

His eyes snapped open, and he gulped in a breath so sweet in his raw throat he could weep for it.

"Well, that was bracing," he whispered, and laughed out loud at the sound of his own voice.

"Shhhh!" His younger self had retreated to the door. After a moment, he returned, eyes flashing. "Any more of that and you'll have the guards on us."

"Oh, pish," Loki scoffed. "As if that'd matter. The space stone's right there."

"You're naked," his younger self said pointedly.

Loki checked.

His younger self was right.

Ah, well. Loki knew it had been a good idea all those centuries ago to put freshening enchantments on his closet. He'd make do with magic, but then again one never knew when one could be magically bound – and then he'd revert to whatever he was wearing before.

A pause, in which his younger self plainly struggled between turning away or watching curiously as Loki pushed himself off the workbench and moved to the find garments for himself.

Once he was suitably clothed Loki rummaged through the cupboards – blithely ignoring his younger self – and found the next most important item on his list – a bottle of aged wine.

The first sip was divine. Really, if Thor was here – wait. No. Loki would most definitely not share this drink with him.

"Ahhh," he sighed appreciatively, closing his eyes stretching luxuriantly in his favourite squishy armchair, wriggling his bare feet – he hadn't bothered with shoes – into the carpet. There were things one forgot to appreciate unless one was stuck as a formless flame for an extended period.

"Um," his younger self said.

Eyes still closed, Loki gestured in the rough direction of the Tesseract. "It's there. Go."

"But you–"

Loki cracked an eye open. "You know me. You know yourself. There are other ways to walk Yggdrasil."

His younger self's voice rings closer, sharper. "But you're from a possible future? How would you return to your time if–"

"I'll think of something," Loki murmured. The fire was warm, comforting. "I have literally all the time I could want."

New intensity in that younger voice. "But you would leave such a powerful object–"

"Believe it or not," Loki snapped, straightening abruptly, "I've come to find that there are more important things in life than infinity stones. And there are greater sacrifices."

His younger self froze in place, an arm's length from him. There was a wild sort of youth to his face that Loki remembered in the mirror from times long ago – the second son, the spare, who had once wished to kill the monster within himself to win their father's love. Who had almost conquered Midgard for a master he did not want to serve, to avoid another eon of pain.

Loki sighed. When he stood, his younger self edged backwards – like a startled animal.

"Our brother is a sentimental sap," Loki began. "He wears wings on his helmet, doesn't shave nearly as much as he should, has an over-fondness for drink, has the subtlety of a brick, and yet, despite all our repeated attempts to end his life, is determined to save us. Save you."

His younger self was carefully avoiding meeting his gaze.

The glass of wine met the table. Loki's fingers lingered on the stem for a minute, if only to marvel at the coolness of the crystal. "I come from a time where I realised too late that what Thor and I shared was beyond our different blood. He is my brother. When I died, he blamed himself for it."

"What do you want from me," his younger self hissed suddenly, eyes narrowed – and suddenly he was the monster that snarled back at Loki so many times in the mirror – bitter and bruised, a capricious thing that only laughed as though in pain.

Loki paused, and considered his next words carefully. "When Thor looks like he needs – and I cannot believe these words are leaving my mouth – when Thor looks like he needs a hug, give one to him."

"…You're joking," younger Loki said flatly.

"Most assuredly not," Loki returned, grinding his eyes with the heels of his hands. It was most unfair that the return of a physical body meant the return of exhaustion. He suddenly felt drained, like a towel wrung dry and left out to the sun.

"I tried to kill him two hours ago."

Was it Loki's imagination, or did his younger self sound ever-so-slightly regretful?

"He'll forgive you. He always forgives you, the stupid oaf." Loki moved to the window, and glanced out into the Asgardian sunset. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've just figured out a solution to my dilemma. You'd better make yourself scarce before the guards notice anything off. We've been here a while."

"Wait."

One magically-booted foot already on the windowsill, Loki turned.

The Tesseract flickered in his younger self's hands. In the blue light his face looked thin, hollow-cheeked, and younger than his years, but his voice was clear, and knife-sharp. "How do I die?"

Loki watched him steadily.

There was no use telling him the truth – that he had given up an infinity stone and pulled as pathetic a weapon as a single dagger on the mad titan Thanos in the vain hope that it would save his brother? That by then they would be bereft of mother and father, and most of Asgard?

"Treasure your family," he said instead, and slipped over the balcony and into the shadows before his younger self could even call him back.

(:~:)

The answer to the problem of returning to his timestream was simple, in the end – he took the long path to Midgard, treading pathways hidden in pocket dimensions, bridges spanning Yggdrasil's branches – and found himself after a few days' journey standing on the doorstep of 177A Bleecker Street.

He was shown in to The Ancient One, who took one glance at his slick black hair and his sharp-cut coat and smiled secretively.

Loki got to the point rather directly, and with impeccable politeness. "Good afternoon, madam. I require the use of the time stone to return to my time stream, several years in the future. This is, of course, provided that our mutual acquaintances have succeeded in their final task and returned the time stone to you, which I dearly hope is the case – it would be terribly embarrassing to speak to you of mutual acquaintances that aren't mutual, so to speak."

It was only after he finished speaking that he realised that might not have been quite as direct as he had hoped. Perhaps his silvertongue was a trifle…unpracticed, after five years of disuse. Hiding a wince, he settled for grinning charmingly instead – charm had always worked for him.

The Ancient One's smile widened a little further, her blue eyes seeming to pierce right through him, and even as he opened his mouth to speak again the pendant hanging before her shirt opened to reveal an eye with an emerald iris…

And then a grassy field flew up and smashed Loki in the face.

"Ow," he mumbled into the dirt. The grass was lush and green and poked his face in all the wrong places.

Voices.

The magic surged up within him, and a moment later a common green garden snake slithered where a grown man had been before.

Tongue hissing between his teeth, Loki slithered towards the voices and the tremble of feet on the ground and emerged to find an expanse of water, with a wood lakehouse beside it; and there, gathered at the water's side, dozens of people in mourning black – both those who had vanished into dust five years ago and those who had survived.

Loki glimpsed Thor's wild head of blond hair towards the shore itself and his heart leapt into his throat – a strange feeling in the body of a snake – but something about the words spoken and the terrible stillness of the air spoke of grief.

A moment of searching later, he understood.

It would seem that this final war was won with a sacrifice, as well.

Stark was not there – nor the Widow, the crimson-haired woman who had bested him at his own word games.

Every part of Loki's soul ached to find his brother, and perhaps five years ago he might have barged in without a care for these Midgardians – but these were his brother's friends.

And Loki, though some part of him still cringed childishly to admit it, loved his brother.

So, he waited.

He had waited and watched for five years, now; he could wait a little longer.

An opportunity presented itself in the early hours of the morning, when the sky had lightened to a deep blue that shone against the fading stars.

Thor stepped out on the porch and down to the lakeside, swinging Stormbreaker casually in his hand as he pulled a sloppy hoodie over jogging sweats. Loki winced internally, because by Bor's name would they have to work on fashion after this – but he slithered after his brother, in the short grasses by the sand proper.

Loki knew he had been spotted when Thor paused in his lumbering step, and laid aside Stormbreaker.

"Hello, friend snake," he said, voice soft. "Come to share in the morning air?"

By all rights, Loki should change back right there and then.

He didn't.

A spark of mischief bloomed in his soul.

Loki edged forward a little, nudged Thor's boot with his head.

Down came Thor's battle-calloused hand. Loki slithered onto the warm palm eagerly, glad for the warmth.

"I used to love snakes," Thor murmured, cradling him gently. "So did my brother. He used to take on the shape of one in a shade exactly like yours, and then stab me when I was caught unawares." One thumb stroked Loki's diamond-shaped head as his voice dropped into a rasp. "Can't say I haven't longed for that in recent years, dagger and all."

Well, now, that was just heart-rendingly unfair of Thor.

Loki inhaled once, and released his form.

And suddenly he was standing in his brother's embrace – his own arms wound around Thor's (admittedly ample) waist, sable head pillowed on Thor's shoulder. Not that he minded Thor's bulk. Hugging Thor like this admittedly felt much better than the brick wall of muscle he was before.

Thor's intake of breath was a palpable and audible thing, reverberating through Loki's new form like the shudder of a storm gale.

"Hello, brother," Loki murmured into Thor's shoulder. Well, more like mumbled, but he'd be the last to admit that. Having a body was well and all but this was something he'd been longing to do for years. And now suddenly it was actually happening and his new body seemed to decide that it was falling apart.

Thor was shaking, even as his arms suddenly wound tighter in understanding.

"Loki?"

The name was a susurration of broken syllables – hardly daring to hope.

Loki couldn't help it. He leant back so Thor could see his face and rolled his eyes. "Honestly, Thor, who else would call you brother? I'd have thought you had stone for ears, you stupid oawwwaaargh–"

That last part was courtesy of Thor pulling him in even tighter than before, a hand around him and another at the back of his neck in a warrior's hold as they used to back when life on Asgard was simple, and unfettered, when they were simply two young princes who would die for one another as they would have their father.

"Don't ever do that again," Thor sobbed into Loki's shoulder, like the big baby he always was. It was honestly rather endearing. "I'd threaten to kill you otherwise but I can't bear to lose you again."

"Alright," Loki whispered. "I promise."

Thor sniffed, loudly. "Your promises usually don't mean anything."

"Probably not," Loki conceded, and their shared bark of laughter shook through them in unison, folded together as they were. "But I'll try all the same."

In the quiet, he had a confession to make.

"I was always there," Loki said. "These past five years – every open flame was a vessel for my soul."

Thor shuddered, at that – a shudder of shame.

"Shh," Loki murmured. "We'll work through it together."

In the east the sun was rising – a glow that spread across the water, the wood of the cabin, painting colour in the soft grey light of morning. Purples and greens, blues and reds; the sable and gold of two heads on each other's shoulders. Golden warmth that climbed up the shore and illuminated the two figures in brilliance.

At the sudden warmth, Loki raised his head to glance at the horizon. He smiled.

"Look, brother," he said. "The sun is shining on us again."

And in the moment before Thor lifted his head, Loki felt him smile.

A/N: Thanks for reading! I'm partaway through the next TSS chapter and working on something based on The Silmarillion and LOTR! Hope to have more soon :)