Somewhere on Knowhere: Book Three

25

In probably about five minutes, they re-entered the Knowhere atmosphere, through the other eyehole than they'd exited through. Loki steered the ship to an empty couple of spaces on a ledge on the inside of the skull, rather than flying down to the surface. You could still see the new crater from here.

Just as Loki cut the power, Danvers landed next to their ship, and the Guardians' ship flew inside, the three of them (the cloak was still passed out) watched the ship land slowly next to his ship.

Loki felt his heart catch somewhere in his throat as now he could see through the windscreen in the other ship, and made eye contact with Thor.

Loki had never felt so OK about seeing Thor in all his entire life.

Without speaking to each other, Loki and Strange got out their seats and walked over to the ship door. It took all Loki's restraint not to just kick it open to get out there as quickly as possible, but he unlocked it the normal way and only hesitated for a moment before pulling it open and stepping out into the Knowhere atmosphere.

Strange followed him out, and Loki stopped as soon as he got to the gravelly floor-ledge-thing. He wasn't going any further than this until he was sure what he was feeling.

Then someone opened the door from the inside of the ship and Thor came out.

Even with the obviously terrible haircut (and had he grown a new eye?), it was definitely undeniably 100 billion percent him.

"Loki?" Thor said. It had been a long time since he'd heard that voice but he'd know it anywhere.

"Thor," Loki said in reply, uncertainly, not knowing what else to say. He still wasn't sure how he felt, or how Thor was going to react.

Thor walked down from his ship and came towards Loki and Strange, looking a bit dazed. Loki immediately wondered whether Thor was going to hit him. He had plenty of reason to, he supposed, because it had been Loki who gave away the Tesseract to Thanos, then faked his death again, then here he was, nearly 6 years later, a wanted criminal from space. Thor was going to punish him. He knew it.

Loki tensed up, anticipating a fight. It was a mistake trying to find him.

Then he knew he was wrong when Thor was within a metre and he grabbed Loki and pulled him into a practically bone-breaking hug.

"I knew it," Thor said, and he sounded like he was going to cry. "I knew you weren't dead."

Loki wondered whether to resist at first and pull away. But then he figured out how he felt. He'd missed Thor. He'd missed his brother. So he gave in and hugged Thor back.

He was not going to cry.

He was not going to cry.

He was not going to cry.

He felt a tear forming in the corner of his eye and brushed it away quickly. He was not letting Thor or Strange see him cry. Ever.

After what seemed like an hour yet didn't seem long enough, he and Thor separated, and Loki got a proper look at his brother for the first time in years. He looked exactly the same as he remembered, his hair a bit longer but still in its short style, though it looked like he'd cut it himself. The only thing he was confused about was why Thor suddenly had two eyes, and the one Hela had, uh, taken out, was now brown rather than its natural blue.

"Loki, I can't believe you're alive," Thor said, tears pouring from his one blue eye. "And here! And not dead!"

Loki decided to break him with some of his normal sarcasm. "You didn't think I was going to let that over-sized grape kill me, did you?"