"Me either," Thor agrees with a faint chuckle, because of all the lessons he's struggled to grasp, this one might be the hardest. You are not Odin, the other Loki has told him, and Thor is trying his hardest to believe it, to keep it at his core, and forge a new path free of what Odin would have done. Yet the Allfather and king of Asgard is again without an eye, and gifted with the same ravens as his father had. Is he doomed to follow his father's legacy, or is this an opportunity to become as Odin perhaps should have been?

The magpie is being uncommonly straightforward and sensitive, and Thor thanks him with another gentle scratch on the neck. "We should all be so lucky." Whatever the future holds, he has support from Loki, and that matters to Thor. No matter how much he may dislike Huginn and Muninn as they once were, and might be again.

"Besides," he adds, deliberately lightening his tone, "maybe you could be a good influence on them this time around."