If Ever I Should Leave You

The galaxy-eyed behemoth lays dead, cooling hand clutching his bloody golden sword. A trail of blood still ties that weapon to its last victim, swaying on his feet, held upright only by a deathgrip clenched around a silver lance with its broken head planted in the earth. He has always been pale, but now he is alabaster, blood spilling from a wound in his side, running down his leg, pooling on the ground.

Emerald eyes that still glare and spark behind fluttering lids stare into the distance; he can see the coils of the great beast, his son, the serpent, unmoving. He can see a comparitively tiny figure staggering towards him. A god brought low, his once-brother. He can see that the approaching warrior is grieviously wounded, but he does not doubt, now, at the end, that he will finish this last journey, that they will be reunited this last time.

He is determined to stand until his brother reaches him. As the other nears he can see that so much blood has splattered him that his golden hair is now dyed darkening copper. Almost he makes it, but then he cannot hold on, and sinks to his knees in the blood and the mud, though his eyes stay open as he looks up; a moment more and he is half-catching the other man as the great hero falls to meet him, clutching at him with a last, desperate strength. Green eyes roam the other body, seeing what he expected: twin punctures from the sea-snake's fangs, dribbling bld and venom. They cling to one another, kneeling. Dying.

"Brother. Loki." The words are spoken in a hoarse whisper, and Loki replies in a voice much the same, "Not. Your brother." A pale ghost of a wicked and mocking grin quirks Loki's lips upwards, and Thor smiles, weakly, too. For one short moment it makes them both laugh, the softest sound, gasped out like a sob. "You have ever been, and will always be, my brother," murmurs the thunder god, trembling all over from the effects of the poison.

Ragnarok still rages around the two; neither of them care. A bloody, shaking hand, the strongest hand Loki has ever known, reaches up and threads into his sweat-soaked black hair (even now, body decimated, that gesture makes the mischief god's cock twitch.) Thor is tilting the Lie-smith's still-beautiful face up, and Thor bends to kiss him, fiercely, with the last great surge of passion in his failing flesh. Loki's mouth tastes of blood as he kisses back with no less desperation.

Unshed tears flicker in blue eyes, in green, and together they fall, arms instinctively clutching the other; they fall, and lay as they did as children, as lovers: entwined, looking into one another's eyes. Blood smears their lips, so close they breathe into each other breaths. Thor's voice is weaker now, as he says, "I will see you in Valhalla, brother," a pallid, tiny smile on his lips.

Loki's voice, soft, broken, still manages to convey a sneer: "They will not have me in Valhalla, Thor."

"They will. You have died a warrior. And if they will not, neither will they have me. I will not leave you - I will see you, brother, at the gates."

Loki's chuckle is almost too soft to hear. "At the gates, then." His green gaze sparkles in amusement for the last time, his last smile has finally lost its cynical cant.

In each other's eyes they read nothing now of anger, envy, hatred. In that dying gaze there is only what there was at the first, when a tiny boy held an even smaller babe: love. Brotherhood. Neither one closes his eyes at the end, though their sight grows dim, and cold, and fixed in death, seeing only eternity, and each other.