[ thor isn't dense enough that he can't hear the sorrow bleeding from the other end of the line, realizes loki's only looking back on their memories as something regretful and painful, and the most of him wants to reach through their daemons and shake him. he's tried that already, it ended in new york city in ruins. ]

A handful of centuries. [ 'a while'. a long while, he wants to remind. not that it seems to matter much, and thor simply can't wrap his mind around how so much can just become irrelevant to him with one piece of new knowledge. for a long several moments, he's quiet, watching the ceiling and thinking on those lost years. ]

I'm many things people seem to overlook when my name's said, but liar isn't one of them. [ he speaks quietly, musing with a sadness in his voice. ] Our youth was the most true thing I've known.

[ even with the fights and the pranks between them, loki was the closest soul to him, the one who knew him better than anyone, the one constantly at his side no matter how arrogant and pig-headed he got. thor hadn't kept any secrets from him, and he always went to breakfast every morning expecting to see loki already awake, sitting across the table and snorting at the state his bed hair was in.

it's like the ground has fallen out from him since, continues to every time loki denies that past, and thor still hasn't found his footing again. with their parents so caught up being king and queen, they'd been each other's entire worlds. the thing thor hadn't said was the loki is home to thor, as family ought to be. ]