Chapter Six - Whispers in the Dark

Chapter Six
Whispers in the Dark

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"She learned of them from the one you call Coulson."

The pain that stung the massive Asgardian at the sound of his fallen comrade's name pricked at Thor's temper. This had to be false. If Thea had known the son of Coul, and if Loki loved her as he seemed to, why had he murdered the Midgardian warrior? Thea and Coulson could not have been friends or even mere allies, or Loki wouldn't have killed him…unless Thea was already dead, and her death had driven Loki to it somehow. Yet Loki had said the Chitauri had murdered her to punish Loki's failure. The timing simply didn't add up. Why would Loki lie about this? This one small thing?

Unless　Thea　had lied to　him…but Loki was an accomplished liar and manipulator, a puppeteer without equal. If Thea had manipulated Thor's little brother, wouldn't Loki have noticed?

Loki was a master at pulling the strings of others. What if this entire story was merely another of Loki's attempts to play with Thor? What if Loki had been aware, all this time, of Thor's movements, his intentions to cajole and bargain to ferret out this supposed story of the younger prince's? If Loki had known all those times his foster brother had been watching, observing in secrecy…what then?

"How did your lady know the son of Coul?" Thor asked softly, his voice a rumble like a lion's warning growl. Loki had to hear the danger in it. His eyes narrowed as he studied Thor, and that familiar scornful expression twisted the pale feature. "Why are you smiling?" The crown prince demanded.

Loki shook his head. "You don't believe me." Then he did something Thor would never have expected—he dropped his head against the back of the chair, closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, and laughed. His brother stared at him. Loki laughed until tears ran down his cheeks, until he struggled to draw the next breath. Until he had to clutch his sides.

As he did, Thor saw a strange black mark on the protruding bones of Loki's sword-slim wrist, peeking from beneath the hem of his green sleeve. Golden brows drew together. Where had that mark come from? Even at a glance, Thor could see it wasn't ink. So what was it? Asgardians did not customarily tattoo their bodies. Yet another way the adopted prince was different from the rest of the kingdom, Thor thought. What could Loki have felt was so important that he would etch it into his flesh?

But he didn't ask. He only demanded, "What is so blasted funny?"

"You," Loki chuckled, then sighed as his laughter petered out. "You are funny…and despicable. Trust me, you plead. Let me help you, you implore me…yet I can see the disbelief in your face, hear it in your voice. He must be lying—that's what you're thinking, isn't it? That I must be lying, because unless Thea was Coulson's enemy, I would never have hurt him. Oh, you are a fool, Thor." Softly, as if to himself, Loki added, "And so am I."

A sudden flash of long-banked anger flared to life, a bright blaze that set Thor's sapphire eyes smoldering with fury and grief. "I am no fool. You didn't hurt him, Loki. You killed　him. You murdered one of my friends, and for what? You　murdered　him."

One knife-thin black brow arched in sardonic inquiry. "Is that what I did?"

"You know it as well as I," Thor raged. "Don't stand there and mock my pain, my grief! How dare you? How dare you disdain a friend of mine, a comrade, when you murdered him in cold blood?"

"Murdered him?" Loki echoed, voice suddenly eerily empty. "I murdered your friend? Someone you cared for, respected? I hurt you by killing someone who mattered to you?"

Thor slowly shook his head, feeling the anger like a cool frost spreading through his veins and chilling his blood. He felt cold down to his bones. "No," the prince said slowly. "No, Brother. Blame me if you must for the deaths of Thea and the child, but you cannot equate that with—"

"Her name was Sophie!" Loki yelled abruptly, startling the nearby guards. They shifted back into tense attention with soft clinks from their armor. Eyes blazing that strange cerulean, the Frost Giant roared, "You　know　her name! Damn you, Thor Odinson, for speaking of her that way. Your o—" Loki cut himself off, gritting his teeth as if to bite back the words. A shudder rippled through him and he sucked in a sharp breath that whistled through his teeth. "You accuse me of so much without proof, Brother…but then, you always have. I don't know why I'm surprised."

Blue eyes widened. Something pulsed hotly in Thor's chest, a molten hand clutching at his heart and squeezing until he thought he might choke on the tight pain in his breast and surging up into his throat.

"Without proof?" Thor repeated. His voice was just as empty as Loki's had been, but where Loki's had been like a thin veneer of ice across whatever half-mad thoughts and emotions festered in his brain, Thor's hollow voice was a vessel waiting to fill with his infamous, thunderous rage. "Without　proof?　Perhaps Sif and the Three are right. Perhaps you are mad. I　saw　you, Loki. Surtur's blade, you stabbed Coulson in the back like a coward right in front of me."

His brother scoffed and turned to stare into the dying fire. "Believe what you will. You always have."

The breath strangled in Thor's throat for a long moment. "I am　trying　to understand, Loki. I am　trying. I promised to listen, to believe. I am keeping that promise so far as I am able. Will you not tell me the truth?"

I saw you kill him, Thor wanted to rage.　I saw you murder my friend when he tried to stop you from killing me. Me! Your brother! I saw you, Loki! How could you do it? But he didn't ask. He couldn't let his fury and grief rule him now. Not when he'd finally gotten Loki saying something—truth or not—that might help the crown prince understand what madness or evil festered in his brother's mind.

Glacial emerald eyes pinned the crown prince like a needle through a dying insect. The breath wheezed out of Thor's lungs beneath the force of that icy gaze. "I'm giving you the truth,　Brother. What's wrong? Can't stomach it? Can't believe I would 'murder,' as you put it, someone who stood in the way of doing what needed to be done in order to protect what truly mattered?"

And what was that? Thea and Sophie? Had Thor been right, then, that the Chitauri had used the two Midgardians against Loki? Forcing him to invade Midgard?

Yet Thor said none of this, either. He was learning to be as reticent as Loki, it seemed. Instead, he folded his arms across his broad chest. "Very well, then—the truth, is it? Then how did Thea know Coulson? Was she a member of SHIELD?" If Thea was a SHIELD agent, why would Loki attack them? Why not go to the Midgardian warriors' guild for help in rescuing the woman and Sophie?

"No," Loki replied, once more looking away. "She was not a warrior."

"Then　how?"

A heavy sigh from the prince within his ensorcelled prison. "Don't you ever　listen?"

"I　am　listening," Thor snapped. "Explain it to me."

"Did you ever listen to your fallen comrade?" Loki said, ignoring Thor's demand. "Did you ever listen to　him?　Because he spoke of her. Both to you, and to the Midgardian in the flying armor. They spoke of her in front of you—her and one other."

Bewilderment consuming his anger, Thor shook his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

A fleeting shadow of a smile curved Loki's mouth. Some of the ice in the green eyes thawed. "Well, that's nothing new, Brother." Thor was gifted with a look of exasperated indulgence. The last time he'd seen that expression on his brother's face, it had been the morning of the aborted coronation, before Odin had sensed the Frost Giants…the Frost Giants that Loki had led into the king's treasure room. An act of treason that his brother　still　had not explained to him.

"Coulson never spoke of her," Thor insisted, hiding his rising suspicion. Why did Loki have to be so cryptic? It was a game he'd always played, ever since they were children; he'd cultivated an air of superiority and mystique about him, held himself aloof from other Asgardian children at court. Thor and his other brothers had been Loki's only true friends…and, once upon a time, Sif and the Three. But no longer. His comrades and his brothers would never trust Loki again, after what he'd done. Could Thor ever trust Loki, either? "And anyway, how would you even know if he had?"

The indulgence turned just a shade condescending as the other prince replied, "Think about whom you're speaking to, and you'll realize that is a stupid question."

Forgive me, O Cryptic One, Thor thought with no little acidity. But he swallowed that acerbity back and said only, "I do not recall Coulson ever mentioning her, Loki. Who was she to him?"　Who was she to you? And Sophie, who was she? What happened to you, my brother?　He desperately wanted to ask, but knew better than to attempt it just yet.

Loki licked his lips. Thor saw they were cracked and dry, bleeding in places. Tiny jewel-drops of blood stood out against the pale lips. The tip of his brother's tongue swept them away, but the crimson blood welled up again seconds later. Blood and Loki paired together seemed to be a common sight these days. When the green-eyed prince steepled his fingers, Thor noticed that the knuckles of　bothhands were scraped raw and bloody, and blue and violet shadows mottled his fingers, as if he'd rammed his fist into something that refused to yield to his strength.

"If you can't figure it out for yourself like an intelligent man—"

"Loki—"

"Then," his little brother said over the fresh growls, "I will have to reveal the secret to you…in due time. For now, leave it be. You will know soon enough who Thea is." A shadow of anguish passed over Loki's pale face. His brows drew together and his eyes darkened. "Who she　was."

Long moments of silence passed, but Thor said nothing. He was weary of the ongoing game between himself and his little brother. Why did Loki have to play with him this way? Was this some sort of test, to see if Thor was worthy of hearing this tragic story that Loki claimed had driven him to murder and the invasion of Midgard?

An odd prickling sensation at the nape of his neck slowed his thoughts. A test? Yes, he realized. It was a test. Whether to test Thor's willingness to reach out to his brother, or Thor's gullibility, the crown prince had no idea. But it　was　a test, and that helped his anger cool. A test was a challenge. He was Crown Prince Thor of Asgard, the Thunderer, the heir to the throne, as well as the son of Odin. He could handle—and conquer—Loki's challenge.

"She kept raging," Loki murmured at last.

Thor's focus narrowed to his brother's drawn face, the bruised-looking circles beneath his eyes, the ice-blue veins beneath the paleness of his skin. When Loki began to speak again, Thor realized his brother actually looked a bit…fragile. Fragile and wounded, in a way he hadn't even after Banner had beaten him to jelly against the floor of the Iron Man's towering stronghold.

"She wouldn't stop. I was surprised the Chitauri guards didn't come back to beat her unconscious, she kept at it for so long. I learned later on that she could be quite stubborn…"

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The girl, the new prisoner, was still screeching at her long-absent captors. It would have been comical, actually, but it had been so long since Loki had heard another voice…so long. So he closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the dry, crumbling stone wall of his prison cell and simply allowed the sound of the other prisoner's demands to wash over him, driving back the maddening silence.

"Let me out! I'm serious, my mother will rip you bozos apart! She's got connections! My professor's going to find me! There's nowhere you can take me where he can't find me! And when he finds me, you goons are going to wish you were dead! Let me out! Now! And take off this stupid collar! I will blow this place to smithereens, you hear me? Smithereens! And my mom's dating a mobster; he'll kill you if you don't let me go right now!"

There was a soft　thump,　like a body hitting stone, and then a steady percussion of something hard against the wall next to his head. Muffled shrieks of outrage came through the wall. Then there was silence.

No. Not silence. There couldn't be silence. Not more silence, empty and hollow except for the arrhythmic beating of his heart in the cage of his ribs and the harsh animal panting of his breath in the darkness. There had been days, weeks, months of silence. Eons of silence. There could be no more, or he would go mad.

"Who's there?" Loki croaked, his voice hoarse with disuse. After those first weeks, when he'd screamed for freedom like the girl on the other side of the wall and torn his throat to bloody shreds that could produce nothing more than a raspy wheeze, he'd stopped speaking. It was almost as if he'd forgotten how. Now he dredged up words from the depths of his memory and whispered, "Who's there?"

No sound emerged from the ever-thickening silence. Had the girl fallen asleep? So quickly? Had she been attacked by something in the cell and knocked unconscious? Been killed? Or—sick, twisting, gut-wrenching thought—had he imagined her, desperate as he was for some form of contact with something, anything, so long as he was no longer trapped in this empty cell with no one but ghosts and darkness?

Water, he thought. He needed water, something to wet his throat. His tongue was thick and desiccated in his mouth, a lump of cracked and dried leather useless for anything. His throat was filled with sand. If he had water, perhaps he could find the volume needed to prove the girl was real. There　was　someone on the other side of his prison wall. There　was.　He'd heard her. If she was a figment of his crazed desperation, she wouldn't have used a word like "bozos." A Midgardian word. His figment wouldn't be Midgardian.

There was no water. Loki remembered this as his good hand fumbled in the dark, through dirt and bits of broken stone. A metal splinter shoved deep into the pad of his thumb. That first shock of sharp pain ripped a rasping oath from his dry lips. Wetness welled up and spilled from the wound down over the dirty flesh of his thumb and across his palm. Without thinking, he brought his hand to his mouth before the precious fluid could drip onto the floor and be lost.

It was gritty with the dirt on his hands, salty, with a strong essence of rust…but it was wet, and the heavy drop spread across his tongue, easing the painful dryness there. In his greed for that wetness, his chapped lips split. More blood welled. He drank it up eagerly, feeling a freshness in his mouth he hadn't felt in over a moon.

Blood wouldn't do the trick for long, Loki knew, but it would give him enough time to catch the attention of the prisoner in the next cell. He took a moment to pull the long splinter out of his thumb with his teeth; the metal spike slid from his flesh with a scraping sound audible to his sense-deprived ears.

He slammed his palm against the stone wall with a meaty smack and demanded, "Who's there?"

From the other side of the stone came the blessed sound of a shocked and very feminine squeak. Rustling, like leaves or cloth, and then he heard that same voice as before—not yelling now, and not quite so full of false bravado. "Hello?"

"Who's there?" Loki repeated, feeling the strain in his throat from the effort. Long lines of stinging heat crept from his mouth down his throat toward his chest. "Who are you?" The prince briefly considered that the Midgardian girl might be frightened. Of course she would be. Only an imbecile wouldn't fear being locked in a dank, dark pit and left to rot. "What's your name?"

Another long silence, one that pressed on Loki, threatened to swell his head with the roaring deafening absence of sound until his eardrums burst. Then the girl murmured, her light voice splintering the too-quiet dark, "Thea."

He didn't know what made him do it—she had no need to know, not really; he could have told her anything he wished…he could have given her his elder brother's name, not his own—but he said in his failing voice, "I'm Loki."

"Are you a prisoner too?" Compassion. It surged up into those five simple words like water from a spring, drowning out whatever anger and panic had been in the girl's voice before. Shared suffering; it could make heroes of anyone, under the right circumstances.

She was focused solely on him, because she didn't want to be alone, either. Alone in the ever-thickening darkness, the hollow void. She was latching onto him. He wanted to caution her not to, because it should have been degrading, disgusting—she was Midgardian, while Loki was a prince of Asgard—but in a distant part of his mind, he knew there was no point. In darkness, there was that small beacon of light—a fellow sufferer. Misery loved company.

The lines of heat creeping down his throat didn't sting anymore; they smoldered, red as metal first stabbed into the coals of a forge and left to heat and soften. Still Loki said, "Yes."

"Where are we?" Thea asked. Her voice kept the silence away. It was Midgardian, but it shoved back the deafening silence. She had to keep speaking. He couldn't bear one more month of soundlessness, couldn't bear another week of nothing but his heartbeat and rasping breath. "Who are these people?"

To tell her would frighten her. She might stop speaking, too afraid to make a sound. Midgardians were cowards, after all, and little better than animals when it came to submitting to their baser instincts. An animal startled by a predator would either fly—which she could not do—or hunker down and attempt to wait out the hunter. Yet he could hear the strain in her voice, even through the cold, dry stone. The same strain he'd felt creeping in on him in those first hours and days and weeks in his tiny cell.

"They are called the Chitauri. We are in one of their dungeons."

"I'm in a dungeon?" She repeated incredulously. Then the girl did an unlikely thing—she snorted. Loki could just hear it through the wall. "Well. Okay, then. Gives a whole new meaning to the song, 'I'm a little princess, short and pissed. Here's my foot up your butt and here is my fist…' Chitauri. Who the heck are the Chitauri?"

She seemed to be speaking to herself rather than to him. He didn't care, so long as she kept speaking. Her voice held a strange accent—clipped and hard consonants, carefully-formed vowels. A singer's diction. Loki tried to memorize her voice, because the Chitauri might have put her here to give him a taste of contact, a thin and flimsy shield against the lonely dark, only to take her away again in the hopes of shattering his resolve. He licked his lips. Tasted blood. He would not submit. He would never succumb. Nothing they did could make him.

"Are they aliens?" The girl asked. The question startled him. What did Midgardians know of life from other worlds? But the girl appeared to be serious. She　soundedserious, at any rate. "Like the Shi'ar?"

Loki frowned. The grit on the wall ground into his cheek as he pressed himself closer. The stone was ice cold, chilling his flesh. "You know about the Shi'ar?"

"I learned about them in school," was the startling answer. Her voice sounded closer, but wavered as if it were moving. It came stronger as she drew nearer to where his head rested against his side of the wall. "So, what do these Chitauri want? What are they doing with us?"

Us, he thought. Already, in her mind, they were "us." Two parts of a whole, simply by virtue of their common enemy, and the joint torment of their imprisonment. And she wasn't breaking down, crumbling to pieces under the weight of her fear. How long would that last? How long before she realized her mother, with all her supposed connections, and her all-powerful professor would never be able to find her, here on this world of darkness and cloying fog and moonlight?

"They want to use us," he said, because he had no other answer—he was too weary, too thirsty, the pain in his belly like some ravenous beast, his strength fading as the taste of blood soured in his mouth—and to keep silent would encourage her to do the same, and that couldn't happen. He'd been alone in the alien womb of the dark, waiting to be ground up and absorbed into the shadows and the stones. He couldn't be that way again.

"Yeah, that's not happening," the girl muttered. Loki realized that he, too, had said "us." As if they were a unit. As if they were comrades against the Chitauri, against their captivity. As if the girl had something the Chitauri wanted. But she must have had something, or why bring her here? Why not simply snap her neck back on Midgard and leave her corpse for the worms?

"How did they get you?" Loki asked.

"Family camping trip," Thea replied dismissively, as if the very idea of encamping in the woods to spend time with loved ones was a waste of time. Yet he heard the slight hitch in her voice when she spoke the word "family."

All at once, the image of eyes the color of strong ale and hair like thickened honeyed mead came into Loki's mind, stealing like a thieving shadow into the confines of his skull, lodging like a poison-tipped arrow in his heart. A single blue eye replaced the brief flash of Frigga's face; a blue eye stern with kingship, but bright with a father's love. He saw four men wrestling together like overgrown boys, laughing and tossing out petty insults to goad the others.

Mother,　Loki thought before he could censor the word.　Father. My brothers…Thor, where are you now? Have you given me up for dead? Thor, I should never have let go. I should have held onto you, to Father. To my home. Forgive me, Mother. Forgive me, Thor.

"How did they get you? How long have you been here?" Thea asked then, her voice hesitant. No, there could be no hesitation. He needed the sound of her voice to fill the dark. He would have to answer her.

"They captured me in…" He had to think. What was the Midgardian term? "In April," he concluded. How many months had passed since then? How much of his life was gone now?

"April?" Thea's voice was sharp with horror, almost sharp enough to cut. "But…but it's October."

At least six months, then. He'd been in prison for at least six months. "They came upon me when I was wounded," Loki replied, feeling the flesh inside his throat gasping for moisture. He sucked a few drops of blood from his lips to wet his parched throat, a feeble and fleeting reprieve.

There was a sharp gasp from the other side of the wall. It echoed in the dark cell. "You're hurt? I know some first-aid, maybe I can help. Walk you through what to do. How badly are you hurt?" Desperation edged her voice, sharp as a knife blade. Panic. If he was hurt, he could be dying. That was what she feared; Loki knew. If he died, she would be alone in the dark. Of course she would seek to aid him, to prevent the loss of her only companionship.

"I've healed," he said tonelessly, as if it mattered not at all. In truth, he hadn't healed yet. His ribs were still mending from his last torture session with the Chitauri; his broken arm still hung in a sling. Dull pain throbbed through his right knee; something had ripped there when he'd fallen from space to hurtle to the black sands of a Chitauri beach. "Are you hurt?"

"No," the girl replied sourly. Was that chagrin he heard? "Just a concussion."

Just. False bravado again. Or perhaps the girl was merely stupid. Did it matter? Sound was sound. And if she succumbed to her injury, fell unconscious, there would be no more sound. She could die.

Something about the thought of a corpse moldering in the room next to his filled Loki with a twisting, knotting, clawing iciness in his belly that threatened to gut him. Thinking of death and decay so close, unable to escape it, as it stretched out fingers of cloying stench and rot and filth made bile burn in the back of his throat.

"Have you any pain? Dizziness? Nausea?" Loki demanded, remembering the field medicine he'd been taught by Eir, Asgard's mistress of healers. Any of those symptoms could lead to something worse than a mere concussion.

"I'm okay," she replied. Loki wondered if she were lying. "It knocked me out for a couple minutes, that's all. I had a headache when I woke up but that was hours ago. I should be okay. Are you…are you a doctor?"

Doctor, he thought. The Midgardian word for a healer. "No. Are you?"

A soft laugh. How odd, Loki thought distantly. How could she laugh? Was she laughing at him? Or was she so stupid that she didn't realize the direness of the situation? Wasn't she afraid? Didn't she realize…there would be no help coming. Not for either of them. They would die in this place, or surrender to the Chitauri. There were no other options.

"No," Thea said. "I'm a professional tutor. What about you?"

I was a prince,　he wanted to say. I was a son, a brother. My father was the king of my country. My brother would have been king after him. My mother is the most beautiful woman in Asgard, and the wisest. I am…I am their bargaining chip.　The thought oozed into his brain like noxious poison and would not be dispelled. They stole me from where the father of my blood left me to die, and sought to use me as their tool in games politick. I am nothing but another stolen relic.

"I'm a soldier," Loki replied, because he was too tired to think of anything else that would explain what knowledge might emerge during a later conversation—his understanding of military strategy, combat, politics, war. He was losing his edge in this place, he decided. The utter nothingness was wearing down his honed edge, dulling the sharpness of his mind. How long before he lost that edge completely?

Thea sighed. "A soldier, huh? Cool." She sighed again. "I don't believe this. Phil's going to kill me."

The name scraped a little at Loki's interest. "Who is Phil?"

His voice would give out soon, he thought. He could feel it. The strain and tremble in his vocal chords, the harsh rasping in his throat…he didn't have much time left. He needed water. When would the Chitauri bring him more? He couldn't keep track of time in this place. Without the sun, the moon, the stars…without even a window or a crack in the wall leading to the outside world…

"Friend of the family's," the girl said after a moment's hesitation. "He's been teaching me self-defense, how to escape an attacker, blah-blah. He told me not to rely on my powers. I should've listened to him. I'm such an idiot." Before Loki could latch onto the word "powers," the Midgardian added, "And now I'm wearing this stupid inhibitor collar. Ugh. It's cold, too. So I can't use my powers at all. At least they didn't take my backpack and my dufflebag. I wonder why not."

"Your packs? What's in them?"

More rustling, and a harsh metallic　zzzzzz　sound. He heard a small grunt of effort. "Not much. My cell phone, a box of matches, my compass, my little mini-flashlights…and my mom's manicure case, apparently. Oookay. Um, a crud-ton of energy bars, and like, seven water bottles. Let me see what else…"

Loki's heart slammed against his ribs hard enough to bruise. He felt hollow, sick. Dizziness washed over him, threatening to drown him in the raging tide of his blood roaring in his ears. She had water? His fingers pressed against the stone wall until his nails scratched and dug into the mortar. Water? He swallowed convulsively and nearly choked on the dryness of his throat. Water…

"Hey, wait." Thea's voice sounded very close now. Right beneath Loki's chin, in fact, but still muffled by the wall. "I just thought of something. Hang on a second. Can you see this?"

A flash of blinding, silver-blue-white light exploded out of the wall, searing Loki's eyes. Pain shot from his eyes through his skull, fragmenting the bone and shattering the world around him. He clapped his less-damaged hand to his face and wheezed in pain. He could hear Thea speaking to him, but he couldn't make out her words beyond the pain, the rushing in his ears, and the after-images from the sudden eruption of light.

At last the spots dancing across his vision cleared. The pain gradually began to fade. He could just make out the violent sunburst that had blinded him—now a tiny, flickering white light that seemed to illuminate the entire miniscule room. The silvery glow came from a crack in the wall.

A crack…

"Can you see that?"

"Yes," Loki croaked, mind reeling. So many possibilities, so many implications, he couldn't grasp them all. If there was a crack in the wall, there was light, there was more than just darkness and a voice, there was more than this cell. There was a world beyond it. There was something outside of this eldritch prison. "I see it."

"What's wrong with your voice?" Thea asked suddenly. "You went all croaky." Loki tried to work up enough saliva to speak, but found he couldn't. He couldn't even focus long enough to form the words. All he could think of was the nearness of the water, the tiny unsteady glow through the crack in the wall. The girl said, "Do you need water?" He made a sound that would have been yes if he'd had the strength to speak. "Um…here, hang on."

Zzzzzz. Snap! Clink-clatter-chrk. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Snap! Chunk. Chink-chunk-chunk. Chunk-chink. Chink-chink-chunk-chink. Chank!

There was a tiny puff of dust that caught and reflected the soft light, and the pale light increased a fraction. From the other side of the wall, Thea yelped and muttered an oath no lady in Asgard would know (except perhaps Sif), then went back to whatever she was doing. It sounded like…hammering. Loki heard her mumble, "Sorry, Mom," a couple times before the hammering finally stopped. Her voice drifted through the crack, stronger and clearer now. "Put your mouth against the crack. I'm gonna try something."

Desperation could make animals of men. It could make murderers of heroes. It could make heroes of untried Midgardian maidens. Loki did as she said, too wickedly thirsty to care what it might look like, what it would be like. He could only think of water, filling his mouth with cool wetness, running down his throat to heal the burning there.

He tasted dust and cold stone. Sharp bits of mortar landed on his tongue. Then a short, sharp burst of something tepid shot into his mouth. It was lukewarm, almost unpleasantly warm. It had the tang of chemicals to it; Midgardian stuff. It carried silt from the somewhat wider crack in the prison wall.

It was delicious. Wet. The water filled his mouth, seeping into the dried-out cracks in his tongue. He swallowed the precious mouthful, felt it run down his throat like nectar. There was a pause, and he made a sound. Thea squirted another mouthful of water at him. The silence, once filled with her voice, was now filled with the wet sounds of Loki swallowing thirstily, gasping for breath between drinks.

She was patient. She was careful not to waste it, and careful to make sure he didn't drink too much too quickly.

She was a goddess.

When his throat no longer burned, when he was no longer desperate enough to lick up the moisture from the stone wall, he sighed and leaned back against the other wall. "Thank you," he mumbled, though the words were paltry. There were no words adequate to describe how he felt in that moment. This girl was mercy's avatar. "Thank you."

"You okay?" She asked. Her question was followed by several more　chunk-chink　sounds as the hammering picked up again. "You got enough?" Loki mumbled an affirmative. He didn't care anymore if she was Midgardian. If she was stupid. If she was beneath him. She'd given him water. Blessed, crystal-sweet water. "Hang on, I think I've got…" There was a loud　ka-chunk,　followed by a hardclick-clack-thud,　and two pieces of stone—one about the size of a large marble, and the other the height of a tapestry needle and as wide as two of Loki's fingers—fell onto Loki's thigh. "Ha!"

Loki shifted as soft light—softer than before—emanated from the wall in an irregular shape about the height of his little finger and little wider than an Asgardian gold coin. He peered through the hole.

On the other side was a dirt-smudged face, blood crusting down one cheek. The hair was dark, that was all Loki could see in the dim light, and plastered to the girl's cheeks and temples with sweat and blood. A streak of gray grime smudged her nose, which might have had freckles beneath all that dirt. Eyes the blue-gray color of the sea after a storm reflected the light from what looked like a miniscule handheld torch about an inch and a half long, held between two fingers. The face grinned, revealing the only part of it not covered in some form of grit or muck.

"Hi, there," Thea said brightly.

.

"She put a crack in the wall?" Thor asked incredulously.

Loki eyed him with mild disgust and sighed. "The crack was already there, you buffoon," the green-eyed prince muttered. A small smile tugged at the corner of Loki's mouth. "There were several, in fact. Her kicking them had helped loosen some of the chunks of stone. She simply widened the cracks out a little." Then a shadow passed over Loki's face. The little smile slipped away. "We didn't understand then why they hadn't taken her packs from her. We understood eventually…but by then, it was far too late."

Thor frowned. "Why did they let her keep them, then?" He felt as if Loki were still speaking in riddles. How much of what Loki had told him was true? And was his brother hiding anything, keeping anything back?

Jade eyes closed wearily. A heaviness seemed to settle over the fostered prince. Loki shook his head slowly, so that his raven hair fell across his brow. Thor could not get over how pale his brother seemed.

"They let her keep the packs because they knew she would put that crack in the wall."