keep me hanging on
Aug. 12th, 2022 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
softpunksthor & loki // ~2.5k
> written for Odinson: A Thor & Loki Zine; Post-Endgame.
It began with a conversation between Rocket and the guardians, one that Thor wasn’t meant to overhear but did anyway. The ship wasn’t very soundproof in spite of its size, and people seemed to be forgetting that sobriety meant he was aware enough to pick up on things he, if he were still in his drunken stupor, would not have noticed. Normally, this was something to be grateful for, but the conversation topic reminded him sourly why quitting was harder than it looked.
“I still don’t get it,” Rocket said, thinking he was out of earshot. “He lost all that weight quick enough. Why can’t he do the same for all that whining ‘about alcohol? He doesn’t even drink as much as he used to!”
“You’re the one who should know him best,” Nebula replied. “Damage to the body is one thing. What he has is a damage to the mind. It cannot be fixed that easily.”
“Look, everyone has their own way of coping,” Peter cut in. “So long as he isn’t asking us for help and he isn’t dragging us down during our gigs across the galaxy, we should just let him be.”
“Fine, but,” Rocket sighed. “You should’ve seen what he was like when we went back to get the Stone in Asgard and he saw his Ma. It just got me thinking—him being like this must disappoint all the people that died for him. He’s not like the rest of us, ‘cept for Drax. He may have lost just as much, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t loved.”
Thor stopped listening after, focusing on piloting the ship. Their concern was foreign to him, but not unwelcome, the same way this newfound sobriety was. He’d get used to it in time.
//
It was probably because of that conversation that Thor began dreaming about his family.
He knew they were memories. He knew because of the blue tapestries of the ocean Frigga had made that he shoved into his mouth as she carried him, he knew because of the gold that tinted his vision when he gazed into the watchful eye of Odin under the sunlight as he was handed a sword for the very first time. He knew, more than anything, because of the rich green that spun past him as he dashed through the thick forests and ran from Loki, who’d only begun learning to walk.
Thor flipped by the memories fast, all of them set at poignant stages of his life, from his earliest memory as an infant making its slow climb to his growth, either because during the few times he slept, he fell into deep slumber, or because he slept more often, as if chasing these dreams like grasping onto one would let him wind time back to when things were much simpler. Rest did not come easy to him, as much as he forced it, just like many other things.
Rocket’s words had unlocked something in Thor. The more he dreamt, the more they lingered after he woke up. He agonized about drinking less, shaking off the permanent fog that the alcohol used to grant him and emerging into this vivid view of the world. And that was all it should’ve been—his subconsciousness coaxing him into a gradual state of recovery, leaving him preoccupied with a new kind of ache.
But even as his memories began to change and age over the nights and dreams, Loki did not.
As Thor grew and his memories warped, like a highlight reel of all the stark bright memories so accurately detailed that it ached, Loki remained—the same. It was as if he was frozen in time, unchanging from the memory of the two of them tucked under the shade of a large tree when their feet and hands were twice the size of what they’d grown to be by the time of Thor's botched coronation.
The ghost of the child that was Loki followed him through the memories. The memories remained unchanged, and all this Loki did was take the place of where his brother should have been, growing alongside him. It was the only aspect of the whole thing that made it dreamlike, though Loki still said and did the same things his ever-growing counterpart had actually done, and no one found it odd but Thor. Even then, the oddness was distant.
Thor realized it was because Loki had always been a child, or at least to him, who never even truly learned what it even meant to grow up until he realized he was growing old, and doing so alone. And being a child did not mean being naive, or fickle. It meant deserving more patience and care that Thor had long-forgotten to extend to Loki until it was too late.
When he woke up, his regrets spilled over to the surface and he grieved over them, unbridled; it might have been why he began seeing flashes of Loki even out of the dreamscape. Yet they were often gone in a mere blink, and it felt like his mind was playing tricks on him when he was most unaware, scouring through markets of a planet they stopped by or making repairs on the ship. It did him no good to acknowledge them, so he didn’t, but there had been no apparent harm in following them either, because it was Loki’s notable lilt he’d hear when trying to decipher a clue during a mission or a snide comment about his form when he was in the midst of a brawl.
“You stress me out terribly, you know. No wonder Father always had a glass of mead in hand whenever you caused some kind of realm-level incident,” the illusion of child Loki nattered, and Thor found that he did not crave any semblance of liquor, but the corporeal form of his brother instead.
//
He did not respond to anything Loki said, but responding was not the same as listening, nor was it the same as occasionally following the comments like advice. He did not respond, because he feared that if he did, Loki would disappear.
Loki did not disappear, as it turned out, after what could’ve been two months in space and Thor had cried his name out in joy by accident after successfully procuring the stolen technology the guardians’ clients wanted back thanks to Loki’s tip.
Instead, Loki paused, and stared shell-shocked at Thor, as if he was the one who was having a hard time grappling with the fact that Thor was here all this time. “You can hear me?” Then his face shuttered, as if the idea pained him. The expression always hurt to see, but on that youthful, unblemished face, not yet tainted with scars or weariness, it felt like a piercing stab gutting Thor inside out. “You aren’t supposed to.”
“Of course I heard you, brother,” Thor said. Loki’s voice was not something he believed he could ever forget, the same way he still remembered the roughness of Odin’s large palm on his shoulder and the fragrance of Frigga as the sun rose. “But that does not mean you are real. That’s why you said I shouldn’t have heard you, is it not?”
In response, Loki disappeared. As Thor stood there alone, he wondered why he was surprised. Loki was uncannily good at never giving Thor a proper answer.
//
It was much easier to come to terms that he was imagining Loki being there as opposed to the possibility that he really was there, by some stroke of luck or curse. Loki had died countless times, after all, yet still returned as if nothing was amiss. On the ruins of the Statesman though, the death felt final. Thor had cradled Loki’s corpse in his arms, knowing deep in his bones that there was something lasting about this one.
Thor was also under no illusion that Loki had come during a peculiar point in his life. After the conversation, after the dreams. After the increasing difficulty in staying sober. Loki could be a trick of Thor’s mind, an attempt to make this new sobriety a little easier to bear. Loki, for all the mischief and chaos he caused, soothed Thor the only way a brother could—by being there, even if the truth was far from it.
But if Loki’s reappearance was intended to keep him steady, his disappearance had the opposite effect. Surely, it did not make sense for Thor’s conscience to betray him like that; the absence of Loki, even in his outdated, childlike form, leaving Thor to crave for a bottleneck wrapped around his hands. It did not make sense either, when he recalled that Loki never shied away from commenting on Thor’s previous drinking habits despite its sensitivity; not really disappointed in Thor as he would’ve been if he were still alive, for letting it get this far, but disproving, the same way he’d disprove of his carelessly Thor used to pick berries from Frigga’s trees in the palace garden.
Loki felt so real in these nuances that it made Thor doubt that Loki could be something he conjured up. The thoughts drove him mad, and though it was oftentimes like this would tempt him to join Rocket and Peter to a nearby pub in whatever planet they were on for a brawl, Thor instead joined Gamora, who found solace on top of the pub’s rooftop, sitting by the ledge and staring down below at Nebula, arm-wrestling with bulky, scar-ridden strangers. This was how Thor knew he could come to her, because even if she’d think him strange, she would not judge him.
“We’ve been in this galaxy for about two months, in Earth time. It might have something to do with that,” Gamora considered. “The dead and the living—it doesn’t mean the same things here. The boundary is murky. We may not be natives, but if you really believe in what you saw, then it might be that your brother actually is here, alive or as a spirit. As for why, it may be because of how intertwined your lives had been—as brothers. I’d advise against hoping though,” she added, seeing the look on his face. “Being here doesn’t mean being alive.”
“You’re right,” Thor acquiesced. But Loki was here, with Thor, even if he wasn’t right now, even if Thor didn’t know if he would be later on. It gave him a bit of hope.
//
“I’m not exactly a ghost,” Loki said, after Thor had spent the equivalent of a week worrying how he could get Loki to come back, if such a feat were even possible. Loki was still a child, but he had the mannerisms and intonations of the person he grew to be. “Though I wouldn’t exactly say I’m ‘Loki’ either, which is why it’s difficult to say if I’m alive if not dead.”
“I do not understand.”
“Naturally,” Loki scoffed. “But you are not an oaf enough to not realize that this... form is not the one I was in when we last saw one another. I don’t particularly understand it myself, to be honest,” He tucked his hands behind his back the way he always would when he was pondering on something and was nervous about it. “Jotunn don’t go to Valhalla when they die, no matter how honorably.” Oh, Thor thought, a bit heartbroken, because Valhalla was respite, serenity, and Loki could not even be granted that. “I thought I’d end up in Hel, but our dear sister is still quite angry for what we’ve done and wouldn’t let me stay, hence—this.”
Oh, Thor thought again, but this was coupled with stronger hope swelling in his chest. Reincarnation, he realized; a chance at reuniting.
As if Loki had heard him though, he held up his hand. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t find me.” Thor was stricken, and it must’ve shown, because Loki amended with a sheepish smile, sounding so mature with his childlike voice, “It has nothing to do with you. That’s the whole problem of it, really. I just—I believe I need space to breathe, a chance to be myself as opposed to someone’s brother, son, enemy, and what myself even means to begin with. It’s not something I’d expect you to understand, or easily accept, but it is what it is.”
“You’re right, I don’t understand,” Thor said, not afraid to let the fact that he was upset bleed into his tone. “But I will accept it, as much as I resent it.”
Loki blinked, clearly surprised. “You will?”
“I’ve had time to think,” Thor admitted. “So much of the strife between us was because of the expectations, the ones we burdened you with unreasonably, friend or foe. Not once had we actually stopped to ask what you wanted, or at least to hear an answer that truly came from your soul, rather than your rage.”
It was what Thor thought about when he heard Gamora’s comment about how intertwined they were. It was a good thing, to Thor’s eyes, because Loki was his brother, a part of his soul, if not the other half entirely. But with every good thing came something bad, the same way the brightest creations were rooted in the darkest of things, and the bond that Thor treasured, regretted not nourishing enough, suffocated Loki with the weight of everything expected of him, as someone good and evil.
Loki’s eyes softened, and Thor knew, as much as it pained his heart, that he had said the right thing. How cruel, for the Norns to finally give him Loki only for him to realize that the best thing to do was let him go.
“You need time for yourself, even if you think you don’t,” Loki told him gently. “It may have been years since we’ve all gone, but you’ve yet to really live with that knowledge. You are more than your family, Thor, more than the responsibilities you believe you owe us. It’s time you do something for yourself, for a change.”
“You never could let go of something without having the last word,” Thor huffed, but it came out more amused than he expected, almost like a laugh.
“What’s the point of saying things if I can’t maximize their impact?” Loki pointed out. Thor only smiled, tired but sincere. Loki’s mouth twisted like he wanted to do the same. “In a few years,” he began instead. “When the time is right, stop by Jotunheim. They have a temple there. I’ve always wanted to visit it.”
“How will I know when that time is?”
“You’ll simply know,” Loki told him, with the stubborn certainty a child would have. Thor found it charming, and more importantly, he believed it. “I suppose, the same way one would know they’re dreaming.”
“Interesting analogy, brother,” Thor said, closing his eyes. For the first time in a while, he felt at ease.
> written for Odinson: A Thor & Loki Zine; Post-Endgame.
It began with a conversation between Rocket and the guardians, one that Thor wasn’t meant to overhear but did anyway. The ship wasn’t very soundproof in spite of its size, and people seemed to be forgetting that sobriety meant he was aware enough to pick up on things he, if he were still in his drunken stupor, would not have noticed. Normally, this was something to be grateful for, but the conversation topic reminded him sourly why quitting was harder than it looked.
“I still don’t get it,” Rocket said, thinking he was out of earshot. “He lost all that weight quick enough. Why can’t he do the same for all that whining ‘about alcohol? He doesn’t even drink as much as he used to!”
“You’re the one who should know him best,” Nebula replied. “Damage to the body is one thing. What he has is a damage to the mind. It cannot be fixed that easily.”
“Look, everyone has their own way of coping,” Peter cut in. “So long as he isn’t asking us for help and he isn’t dragging us down during our gigs across the galaxy, we should just let him be.”
“Fine, but,” Rocket sighed. “You should’ve seen what he was like when we went back to get the Stone in Asgard and he saw his Ma. It just got me thinking—him being like this must disappoint all the people that died for him. He’s not like the rest of us, ‘cept for Drax. He may have lost just as much, but it wasn’t because he wasn’t loved.”
Thor stopped listening after, focusing on piloting the ship. Their concern was foreign to him, but not unwelcome, the same way this newfound sobriety was. He’d get used to it in time.
//
It was probably because of that conversation that Thor began dreaming about his family.
He knew they were memories. He knew because of the blue tapestries of the ocean Frigga had made that he shoved into his mouth as she carried him, he knew because of the gold that tinted his vision when he gazed into the watchful eye of Odin under the sunlight as he was handed a sword for the very first time. He knew, more than anything, because of the rich green that spun past him as he dashed through the thick forests and ran from Loki, who’d only begun learning to walk.
Thor flipped by the memories fast, all of them set at poignant stages of his life, from his earliest memory as an infant making its slow climb to his growth, either because during the few times he slept, he fell into deep slumber, or because he slept more often, as if chasing these dreams like grasping onto one would let him wind time back to when things were much simpler. Rest did not come easy to him, as much as he forced it, just like many other things.
Rocket’s words had unlocked something in Thor. The more he dreamt, the more they lingered after he woke up. He agonized about drinking less, shaking off the permanent fog that the alcohol used to grant him and emerging into this vivid view of the world. And that was all it should’ve been—his subconsciousness coaxing him into a gradual state of recovery, leaving him preoccupied with a new kind of ache.
But even as his memories began to change and age over the nights and dreams, Loki did not.
As Thor grew and his memories warped, like a highlight reel of all the stark bright memories so accurately detailed that it ached, Loki remained—the same. It was as if he was frozen in time, unchanging from the memory of the two of them tucked under the shade of a large tree when their feet and hands were twice the size of what they’d grown to be by the time of Thor's botched coronation.
The ghost of the child that was Loki followed him through the memories. The memories remained unchanged, and all this Loki did was take the place of where his brother should have been, growing alongside him. It was the only aspect of the whole thing that made it dreamlike, though Loki still said and did the same things his ever-growing counterpart had actually done, and no one found it odd but Thor. Even then, the oddness was distant.
Thor realized it was because Loki had always been a child, or at least to him, who never even truly learned what it even meant to grow up until he realized he was growing old, and doing so alone. And being a child did not mean being naive, or fickle. It meant deserving more patience and care that Thor had long-forgotten to extend to Loki until it was too late.
When he woke up, his regrets spilled over to the surface and he grieved over them, unbridled; it might have been why he began seeing flashes of Loki even out of the dreamscape. Yet they were often gone in a mere blink, and it felt like his mind was playing tricks on him when he was most unaware, scouring through markets of a planet they stopped by or making repairs on the ship. It did him no good to acknowledge them, so he didn’t, but there had been no apparent harm in following them either, because it was Loki’s notable lilt he’d hear when trying to decipher a clue during a mission or a snide comment about his form when he was in the midst of a brawl.
“You stress me out terribly, you know. No wonder Father always had a glass of mead in hand whenever you caused some kind of realm-level incident,” the illusion of child Loki nattered, and Thor found that he did not crave any semblance of liquor, but the corporeal form of his brother instead.
//
He did not respond to anything Loki said, but responding was not the same as listening, nor was it the same as occasionally following the comments like advice. He did not respond, because he feared that if he did, Loki would disappear.
Loki did not disappear, as it turned out, after what could’ve been two months in space and Thor had cried his name out in joy by accident after successfully procuring the stolen technology the guardians’ clients wanted back thanks to Loki’s tip.
Instead, Loki paused, and stared shell-shocked at Thor, as if he was the one who was having a hard time grappling with the fact that Thor was here all this time. “You can hear me?” Then his face shuttered, as if the idea pained him. The expression always hurt to see, but on that youthful, unblemished face, not yet tainted with scars or weariness, it felt like a piercing stab gutting Thor inside out. “You aren’t supposed to.”
“Of course I heard you, brother,” Thor said. Loki’s voice was not something he believed he could ever forget, the same way he still remembered the roughness of Odin’s large palm on his shoulder and the fragrance of Frigga as the sun rose. “But that does not mean you are real. That’s why you said I shouldn’t have heard you, is it not?”
In response, Loki disappeared. As Thor stood there alone, he wondered why he was surprised. Loki was uncannily good at never giving Thor a proper answer.
//
It was much easier to come to terms that he was imagining Loki being there as opposed to the possibility that he really was there, by some stroke of luck or curse. Loki had died countless times, after all, yet still returned as if nothing was amiss. On the ruins of the Statesman though, the death felt final. Thor had cradled Loki’s corpse in his arms, knowing deep in his bones that there was something lasting about this one.
Thor was also under no illusion that Loki had come during a peculiar point in his life. After the conversation, after the dreams. After the increasing difficulty in staying sober. Loki could be a trick of Thor’s mind, an attempt to make this new sobriety a little easier to bear. Loki, for all the mischief and chaos he caused, soothed Thor the only way a brother could—by being there, even if the truth was far from it.
But if Loki’s reappearance was intended to keep him steady, his disappearance had the opposite effect. Surely, it did not make sense for Thor’s conscience to betray him like that; the absence of Loki, even in his outdated, childlike form, leaving Thor to crave for a bottleneck wrapped around his hands. It did not make sense either, when he recalled that Loki never shied away from commenting on Thor’s previous drinking habits despite its sensitivity; not really disappointed in Thor as he would’ve been if he were still alive, for letting it get this far, but disproving, the same way he’d disprove of his carelessly Thor used to pick berries from Frigga’s trees in the palace garden.
Loki felt so real in these nuances that it made Thor doubt that Loki could be something he conjured up. The thoughts drove him mad, and though it was oftentimes like this would tempt him to join Rocket and Peter to a nearby pub in whatever planet they were on for a brawl, Thor instead joined Gamora, who found solace on top of the pub’s rooftop, sitting by the ledge and staring down below at Nebula, arm-wrestling with bulky, scar-ridden strangers. This was how Thor knew he could come to her, because even if she’d think him strange, she would not judge him.
“We’ve been in this galaxy for about two months, in Earth time. It might have something to do with that,” Gamora considered. “The dead and the living—it doesn’t mean the same things here. The boundary is murky. We may not be natives, but if you really believe in what you saw, then it might be that your brother actually is here, alive or as a spirit. As for why, it may be because of how intertwined your lives had been—as brothers. I’d advise against hoping though,” she added, seeing the look on his face. “Being here doesn’t mean being alive.”
“You’re right,” Thor acquiesced. But Loki was here, with Thor, even if he wasn’t right now, even if Thor didn’t know if he would be later on. It gave him a bit of hope.
//
“I’m not exactly a ghost,” Loki said, after Thor had spent the equivalent of a week worrying how he could get Loki to come back, if such a feat were even possible. Loki was still a child, but he had the mannerisms and intonations of the person he grew to be. “Though I wouldn’t exactly say I’m ‘Loki’ either, which is why it’s difficult to say if I’m alive if not dead.”
“I do not understand.”
“Naturally,” Loki scoffed. “But you are not an oaf enough to not realize that this... form is not the one I was in when we last saw one another. I don’t particularly understand it myself, to be honest,” He tucked his hands behind his back the way he always would when he was pondering on something and was nervous about it. “Jotunn don’t go to Valhalla when they die, no matter how honorably.” Oh, Thor thought, a bit heartbroken, because Valhalla was respite, serenity, and Loki could not even be granted that. “I thought I’d end up in Hel, but our dear sister is still quite angry for what we’ve done and wouldn’t let me stay, hence—this.”
Oh, Thor thought again, but this was coupled with stronger hope swelling in his chest. Reincarnation, he realized; a chance at reuniting.
As if Loki had heard him though, he held up his hand. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t find me.” Thor was stricken, and it must’ve shown, because Loki amended with a sheepish smile, sounding so mature with his childlike voice, “It has nothing to do with you. That’s the whole problem of it, really. I just—I believe I need space to breathe, a chance to be myself as opposed to someone’s brother, son, enemy, and what myself even means to begin with. It’s not something I’d expect you to understand, or easily accept, but it is what it is.”
“You’re right, I don’t understand,” Thor said, not afraid to let the fact that he was upset bleed into his tone. “But I will accept it, as much as I resent it.”
Loki blinked, clearly surprised. “You will?”
“I’ve had time to think,” Thor admitted. “So much of the strife between us was because of the expectations, the ones we burdened you with unreasonably, friend or foe. Not once had we actually stopped to ask what you wanted, or at least to hear an answer that truly came from your soul, rather than your rage.”
It was what Thor thought about when he heard Gamora’s comment about how intertwined they were. It was a good thing, to Thor’s eyes, because Loki was his brother, a part of his soul, if not the other half entirely. But with every good thing came something bad, the same way the brightest creations were rooted in the darkest of things, and the bond that Thor treasured, regretted not nourishing enough, suffocated Loki with the weight of everything expected of him, as someone good and evil.
Loki’s eyes softened, and Thor knew, as much as it pained his heart, that he had said the right thing. How cruel, for the Norns to finally give him Loki only for him to realize that the best thing to do was let him go.
“You need time for yourself, even if you think you don’t,” Loki told him gently. “It may have been years since we’ve all gone, but you’ve yet to really live with that knowledge. You are more than your family, Thor, more than the responsibilities you believe you owe us. It’s time you do something for yourself, for a change.”
“You never could let go of something without having the last word,” Thor huffed, but it came out more amused than he expected, almost like a laugh.
“What’s the point of saying things if I can’t maximize their impact?” Loki pointed out. Thor only smiled, tired but sincere. Loki’s mouth twisted like he wanted to do the same. “In a few years,” he began instead. “When the time is right, stop by Jotunheim. They have a temple there. I’ve always wanted to visit it.”
“How will I know when that time is?”
“You’ll simply know,” Loki told him, with the stubborn certainty a child would have. Thor found it charming, and more importantly, he believed it. “I suppose, the same way one would know they’re dreaming.”
“Interesting analogy, brother,” Thor said, closing his eyes. For the first time in a while, he felt at ease.