Chapter - 12

INT. DAY. A roadside diner. Big windows facing the desert, clay-coloured hills in the distance, a stretch of road that seemed to go from nowhere to nowhere. Dull white sky. There were only a couple more patrons, truck driver type. Nobody had flinched when he had come in. Nobody recognised him. Nobody cared. One year ago that would have been a worry, and Coulson could have used it as leverage to convince him into taking on a few more talk shows, do a few more interviews, maybe even do some panel shows in the UK. Right now, Thor was just grateful he wasn't that big a deal after all. He took a seat by the window, his back and legs cringing unhappily after so many hours on the road. He was aching for a run. Maybe later.

"Alright, hon? What can I getcha?" asked the waitress, a middle aged woman with garishly dyed red hair, sweet brown eyes, ruddy red cheeks, smiling like she was impressed with what she had before her eyes.

"Coffee, please."

She returned a second later with the coffee pot. The brew was slightly burnt, and weak even for English standards. But it was too early for anything else, so Thor drank it down, with a grimace.

He let his eyes drift away into the horizon, scorched, bare, baked dry. Back home, it would be trees in bloom and fresh green leaves, newborn lambs skipping in the greens, the sun starting to become warm and the ground dry, for the first time in months. He was glad he wasn't there. The desert seemed a better match for his state of mind these days, less jarring.

These were the first proper holidays he had in almost three years. He had never needed them more. He felt he had been hanging on by a thread, struggling more and more to put on a smile and the movie star act, and to be civilised, nevermind engaging, at interviews and events and related publicity fuckery. Oh, it had been a close call. He very nearly lost it several times, whenever the questions went anywhere near the revelation of Loki's adoption. Coulson had been there to step in and defuse things, but it was obvious to those who knew him that Thor wasn't doing well at all.

A while ago, looking forward to these precious three weeks off, he had pictured himself somewhere tropical, not necessarily with Amora -he had never thought they would make it that far, and they hadn't-, snorkeling and scuba diving and surfing and drinking caipirinha and piña coladas, dancing and fucking on the beach. Instead, when the time had come, he had rented a car and headed south, into the desert. Life, eh?

He had been driving for a week now. He had slept in motels and, occasionally, in the car. He had eaten at diners pretty much like this one, had talked to a few interesting characters, had seen some beautiful things, and he had tried both thinking and not thinking. Still, no healing for him, and no peace.

It was six months today since Loki had run away. For the first three, Thor had kept it to himself. Not only because he didn't want to talk about it, but because Loki had a big opening night coming and a big publicity tour leading up to it, and there were people who would start to fret if they heard he had just upped and vanished. In those early days, Thor was still hoping Loki would come back.

That was over now, the cat had been out of the bag for a few weeks, and the movie was going to open without Loki. His agency had dropped him, the studio had blacklisted him, and it was taking some serious lawyering, provided by their parents', their friends and collaborators, to avoid a lawsuit for breach of contract. His brother's career in Hollywood seemed to have finished before it even started. And there was not one single fucking thing that Thor could do.

One evening three months ago, Tony Stark had taken Thor out for drinks, to coax out of him the truth to his silent misery. He was a good guy, not a lot of people seemed to realise that, and more perceptive than Thor had given him credit for -before this, Thor had thought that the man saw nothing past his own navel. He was also, and simultaneously, a massive jerk, but he wasn't the only highly contradictory character in Thor's life, and Thor was used to taking people as they came.

Now, Tony wasn't the sort to content himself with paying a sympathetic ear and sit still to offer a shoulder to cry on. The moment he had understood the nature of the problem, he had made a phone call, that same night, from the club.

"A guy called Fury is going to call you tomorrow" he said.

He had indeed, way too early for hungover Thor to process. He had put down the phone with an appointment for later in the day.

Fury didn't tell him exactly what it was that he did. The guy looked like a pirate, and had a mouth worthy of one too. Thor deduced he was some kind of private detective. He told Thor that they would have to debrief him and see Loki's apartment.

"I can't make promises without more data but, from what you have said, he shouldn't be difficult to find," he said.

"Why is that?" Thor had asked.

"Sheltered upbringing, limited money, limited experience of the world."

"Loki is resourceful," Thor had said, echoing his mother's words.

"We'll find him," Fury had said.

Dead or alive, Thor's mind had supplied, in the husky voice of the villainous sheriff in a Western movie.

Tony pulled some strings to get him a couple of days off. Thor flew to London, showed Fury's people the apartment, and while two guys combed the place, rummaging in every drawer and under every piece of furniture, taking photographs of absolutely everything, and scanning every piece of paper they could find (Loki would skin him alive for the intrusion if he ever found out), Thor sat down on Loki's couch for debriefing.

They wanted to know all there was to know about his brother, to piece out his mind and have an idea about where to start looking. It was grueling. There was a woman called Hill who was particularly ruthless and insightful. She sensed Thor was hiding something straight away. Thor had felt naked and exposed under her relentless questioning, and flat-out exhausted by the time they were done, hours later. It's what comes from raking your brains, trying to supply every shred of information you think can help in finding your brother, while doing all you can to hide the biggest fucking bit of data of them all.

"I will have to have a thorough look at all that we've gathered today," said Hill, "but I'm pretty sure we'll be starting in Russia."

Well, fuck. Thor felt an idiot for not thinking about that straight away. It did sound like such a Loki thing to do; when mortally wounded by one of your fathers, go and see if you can get yourself rejected again by the other one, too.

A few weeks later, he got a phone call from Hill. Loki's trail had been sniffed out in Moscow. His brother had managed to locate the orphanage where Odin had found him (clever, clever Loki), and had spoken to people there, apparently in basic, yet spotless Russian with an impeccable southern accent (now, of course Loki would manage to teach himself to speak Russian in under two months! And kill the accent too, because d'uh, fucking brilliant actor and mimic.) He had inquired about Laufey, and had met with the same wall as Hill; there was nothing to go on, nothing to narrow down the search. It was next to impossible to find a nondescript man nobody remembered, that could also have been using a fake name. Loki, Hill was sure, would not find him either.

"That doesn't mean he won't try. Laufey is a female name in most of Scandinavia, but male in Norway. It's relatively rare. He might try there next."

And off to Norway Maria Hill had gone, with photos of Loki and a bundle of Thor's cash. He was spending a fortune on this mad quest for his brother, most of it on buttering civil servants, to get them interested in being a bit more helpful. Loki had emptied his bank account before he had left the country, but whatever he took out, it couldn't have been that much. If Loki had had to bribe the information to track down his origins as well, and there was no reason to doubt it, he might be running out of money by now. And what would happen then, thought Thor with a shudder.

And money was only half the problem. Thor never forgot for one second that there was a time bomb in his brother's brain, that started ticking the moment he ran out of his meds. And that must have been months ago. Loki had been known to become suicidal when not under treatment. Loki felt lost. He had told him so himself, in these very same words, just before Thor pushed him away.

And then he had let him run. He had just stood there and watched him go, heartbroken and lost and aching, and then sat on his hands like a lemon, doing nothing to get him back for months. No wonder Thor could not sleep. He didn't fucking deserve a minute of peace after how much he had managed to fuck up with his baby brother.

He had not told his parents about Fury. First, because he wasn't sure Frigga would approve. But more than anything, because he was afraid of what they would find and, before he was made to face some tough questions, he wanted to make sure he could deal with the answers.