Chapter Twenty - Discovering the Lies

Chapter Twenty

Discovering the Lies

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"I sent him to rescue Thea."

Thor could only stare at his brother for several long moments before rising slowly to his feet. It was impossible for him to tear his gaze from his brother's pale, solemn face. Loki looked back with an unwavering emerald gaze. It cost the crown prince a Herculean effort to finally speak when he came to within an inch of the ensorcelled glass. "I feel like such a fool."

A small smile curved Loki's mouth. "That's all right. Admitting you're an idiot is always the first step to fixing the problem."

"I didn't say I was an idiot."

"You were thinking it," Loki replied.

Thor found himself laughing softly, shaking his head. "You have always been the only one who could call me such and not have it infuriate me. Why is that?"

Loki shrugged. "Because I am always right, Brother. Surely you've realized that by now?"

Another low chuckle. "I've realized that I am not always right, at least. That should please you. You were always trying to drill that into my skull. It seems you've succeeded at last."

"And it only took eleven centuries. Well done, you."

"Shut up," Thor mumbled, smiling. This. This was one of the things he'd missed for so long with his brother—this easy back-and-forth between them. Yet it was so precarious. The Asgardian could feel that. He would have to take care…but everything was so jumbled in his head. Coulson…and his connection to Loki…the true purpose of his brother's strike…all of it left him off-balance and shaken. "So, you used Chitauri seiðr to send Coulson to their world," Thor whispered. Loki nodded. "To rescue Thea and Sophie."

Yet here, Loki shook his head. "No. Just Thea. It should have worked because Sophie wasn’t…"

Golden brows furrowed in startled condemnation. "Only Thea? Loki…you would have left your daughter behind? Abandoned your own child as Laufey did you? Brother, how could you—"

Eyes like jade knives, threading with ever-widening tendrils of sinister cobalt, slashed to Thor's face. What little color remained in Loki's face bleached away as incredulous fury twisted his features into a vicious mask. Loki lunged to his feet and in four swift strides had crossed the cell. As if the glass weren’t even there, the green-eyed prince snapped out with one fist. Scabbed knuckles smashed into a shield of seiðr and glass. Sparks of soft gold and sky blue exploded on either side of the window. Thor stepped back from the shower of tiny seiðr shards, which sprinkled across the floor before fading, leaving small wisps of smoke and char marks on the stone floor. Thor saw the magic had also left burns on Loki's knuckles, but his brother didn’t seem to feel them.

Loki drew his fist back and punched the window again. More magic flew in a shower of aurulent and mazarine sparks. Lines of pale gold and vivid emerald spiderwebbed out from where Loki's fist still pressed hard against the glass. As Thor watched, the verdant magic withered and died, fading away as the gold lines raced to catch and absorb it. Loki leaned into the glass, forehead pressing hard against the window. The air rasped in his throat as he wheezed for breath. Madness blazed blue as the tesseract in his eyes.

"How dare you?" Loki hissed between bared teeth. Blood ran in tiny rivulets down the window from where his seared and split knuckles bled against the glass. "How dare you? After everything, after all this, you still think me a monster! Damn you! I would never abandon my daughter! I am not like Laufey, or Odin! I would not cast my child aside as if she were trash."

"Then why didn’t you order Coulson to get Sophie as wel—"

"I loved Sophie!" He roared, raising both hands and slamming them into the glass. The seiðr crackled and hissed. Loki ignored it. The green of his eyes had been eaten away entirely by savage blue. "I loved Sophie more than you have ever loved anyone or anything, Odinson. She was my daughter. I didn’t abandon her! I didn't!"

"All right," Thor said, trying to calm his foster brother. From somewhere far off, he thought he heard a high-pitched whining sound, like the drone of bees. He'd heard it before once. On Midgard. He simply couldn't think where. "All right. I'm sorry. I must have misunderstood—"

But Loki snarled, "Shut up. Don't patronize me, thunderer. Get out."

"Loki—"

"Get out!" His brother raged. Pounding the glass, he yelled, "Get out!"

The whining drone had gotten louder, humming distractingly in Thor's ears. Loki's eyes were such a brilliant and unearthly blue that it sent a whisper of apprehension twisting and churning in Thor's belly. It was the Chitauri, the prince was sure; the Chitauri were making Loki scream at him this way, fueling his rage and hurt over the Asgardian's words. He'd been wrong to accuse Loki as he had—he'd spoken without thinking because he was so off-balance from his brother's words regarding Coulson—and now those foul creatures were twisting his little brother's emotions, enraging him. Yet how to calm Loki with such magic at work?

Pitching his voice low and soothing, as if he were speaking to a skittish horse or wolf, Thor murmured, "All right, Brother. All right. I am going to go now, as you ask. I shall return tomorrow. We will speak more then. But Loki?" His brother sneered, more a baring of teeth than anything else…but Loki wasn't shouting at him anymore, at least. "I shouldn't have said that about you and Sophie. I'm sorry. I spoke without thinking. I know you loved her."

The sound of the child's name seemed to push back the rage pulsing within his brother. Loki blinked, looking more confused than angry now, and shook his head as if to clear it. Thin brows knotted together as he looked around. "What…why do you…no. No. You think me evil. I know you do. Why do you bother attempting to disguise how much I disgust you?"

Thor shook his head. "No, Brother. I know now that you are not evil. You were desperate." And, Thor thought silently, he was mad. Had he been driven to madness even before Thea and Sophie's deaths?

Thea said she felt a shadow growing in my mind, Loki had said some months ago, but she couldn't tell what it was, if it was the effect of our captivity or…Or what, Thor wondered? Or the Chitauri's influence? What had that influence been responsible for? Loki's rage, his choking fury and fear? The warp of his memories?

Loki stared at him as if he'd never seen the crown prince before; then he turned away and trudged back to his chair. Dropping into it like a sack of stones, the fostered prince stared at the tabletop in silence before dropping his head into his hands.

"What's happening to me?" Loki whispered. Thor couldn’t tell if his brother spoke to himself or to the crown prince. "This is worse than it ever was on the Chitauri world. I…I cannot tell what is real and what isn't anymore. What is happening to me?"

Some movement seemed to catch Loki's eye, because he jerked his head up. The helpless confusion faded, to be replaced by a look of such raw agony that Thor almost felt sick. Loki's hands trembled as they pressed palm-down against the surface of the table. The too-thin body leaned forward, yearning toward something Thor couldn’t see. Cobalt eyes widened and Loki stretched out one hand, reaching for empty air. He licked his lips. Swallowed hard. The breath escaped him in a sound too much like a sob. In mere seconds, he seemed to have completely forgotten Thor's presence.

When Loki spoke, his brother wanted to fall to his knees and weep. Softly, in a voice of impossible tenderness, Loki whispered, "My love. Oh, Thea. My Althea." He stood with the slow, measured grace of someone afraid of startling a wild thing. Hand still outstretched, Loki murmured to the empty room, "I thought you left. I thought…I thought you were dead. You are dead. I…I felt it. Your pain. How…you're not real. You cannot be real…are you real? But you're dead. Or am I dead? Or…or are you alive? You can't be. Can you?" Loki's breathing hitched and his eyes widened. What did he hear? Whatever it was made him take a step forward. He rasped, "You're alive. You're alive. But I thought you were dead. I tried to follow you. Oh, Thea, I thought you were dead."

The raw hope and fear in Loki's voice twined together to form a noose around Thor's neck. His brother sounded so desperate. He had said he glimpsed Thea at times, that her image haunted him just as cruelly as the sound of her voice. Thor watched his brother, wondering what he should do. Fetch their father? What if Loki tried to harm himself again while Thor was gone? The prince wasn’t certain he could trust his brother's welfare to the guards. If he'd left it to them, his brother would have died after cutting his wrists with that shard of broken glass.

Should he try to get his brother's attention? If Thor shattered whatever hallucination Loki was currently experiencing, he had no idea what the disguised Frost Giant would do, what the interruption would do to him.

"Are you truly real? Or are you a cruel illusion?" Loki whispered, edging around the table toward the focal point of his delusion. He tripped, caught himself on the edge of the table without even noticing his stumble. He never took his eyes away from the mirage his madness—and no doubt the Chitauri—had created. "Please," he breathed. His skin had gone gray as a corpse. Thin lips quivered; Thor realized his little brother was barely holding back tears. "Please, be real. Please be real. Älskling, I beg you…"

One step closer. Another. And another. Thor held his breath; he didn’t know why. Dread seethed beneath his skin, writhing like icy snakes in his gut as Loki drew closer to the spot his eyes had fixed on. Loki's breathing came in shallow gasps. His hands shook as he reached out and grasped…only empty air.

Loki shook his head. "No," he gasped. Electric blue eyes darted all over the room, frantically searching. "No," he whispered. Long, white fingers tunneled in his black hair, grasping and yanking at fistfuls. Loki paid no attention to the pain. His legs buckled and he fell to his knees. "No," he moaned. "No, Thea, please. Come back. Please, come back. Thea, please…no. Please. No…" He shook his head vehemently, gasping for air as his hands slid over his ears. Loki hunched down as if to avoid a blow. "I tried, Thea! I tried to save you both, I did, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't abandon you. I would never…Forgive me. Please, come back. Please forgive me. I loved you. You must believe me!"

He collapsed onto his side on the floor, splaying the fingers of one hand against the stone and squeezing his eyes shut. He pressed his other hand against his eyes as if trying to block out a terrible vision. Sucking in a shuddering breath, Loki gasped, "Come back. Please come back, Thea. Please forgive me. Don't leave me." Shifting minutely, Loki hid his face completely behind his arms and lay trembling on the floor, whispering tearfully over and over again, "Come back, Thea. Forgive me. Come back."

Thor stepped back from the window. His eyes burned. His chest had gone viciously tight, so tight he could scarcely breathe while his little brother sank further and further into madness. Loki had been doing better; Thor was almost sure of that. He'd gone almost a month where he'd gotten at least a few hours' rest each night, where he'd been able to eat a bit more and put just a little more weight back on. In the last week, Loki had stopped chewing his knuckles bloody in his sleep. The mercurial mood-shifts had tapered off the longer he'd talked to Thor about his time with the Chitauri. Yet now…

With a heavy heart, Thor backed away from the cell. Moving to one of the guards, he commanded in a low voice, "Keep watch over Prince Loki. Do not allow him to harm himself or the king will know of it and you will be punished." The guard nodded. If he took issue with being forced to protect the dishonored prince, he kept it to himself. Thor moved off down the corridor, every so often glancing over his shoulder to see if Loki had gotten to his feet yet. Until Thor lost sight of the prison cell, Loki remained prostrate, a dark and trembling shadow against the white stone.

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"Heimdall hasn't told us they're ready for our return, Thor," Víðarr reminded the restless prince as Thor paced the length of the empty banquet hall. "You must be patient."

"Asking Thor to be patient is like asking Sif to wear a dress," Fandral said with a chuckle.

Seeing Sif's cheeks redden a little, Thor shot his other friend a sharp look. "Which has been known to happen on occasion," the prince said coolly. "But patience is not one of my virtues. Asking it of me is like asking you not to admire yourself in every reflective surface you see."

Fandral spread his arms and smiled brightly. "I have to make sure I look well for the ladies, Thor."

Thor scoffed, but he smiled. "Rakehell."

"Yes," his friend said, grinning.

It was late—late enough that only a couple of exhausted but willing servant girls attended the two princes, the Lady Sif, and the Warriors Three. Sif had told the Three everything Thor had told her once she'd received his permission; Thor wanted his friends to know the truth about Loki. Now they knew…but that didn’t mean they believed.

One of the girls brought them Asgardian warriors full flagons of mead. Thor didn't touch his; he wasn’t in the mood for it. He noticed the girl lingering beside Fandral. When Thor spared a thought for why the serving maids were so willing, he realized they were likely there to giggle and flirt with the other man. He didn’t care; let them flirt. As long as his brother and his friends took the situation seriously.

"What could be taking them so long?" The crown prince growled. It had been a week since Loki's most dramatic episode of madness, a week since Thor had managed to get anything coherent out of Loki, and four weeks—nearly a month—since the two princes had gone to Midgard to speak to the Man of Iron and the mortal scholar called Banner. During the first (and so far only) mission with the Avengers, Tony had managed to "hack" into the information in SHIELD's keeping in a matter of less than twenty-four hours. What was taking so long now?

Volstagg put a hand on Thor's shoulder. Thor shrugged him off. His friend sighed. "Thor, why are you so worried? Give your mortal comrades time."

Thor shook his head. "Loki doesn't have time." He couldn’t be certain how he knew this, but he did know it. Day by day, it seemed, his little brother was slipping deeper and deeper into insanity. The Asgardian didn’t know why, but something deep within him—instinct, perhaps—told him that Tony and Bruce's findings would hold the key to helping Loki. Perhaps his mind was past complete recall, but somehow Thor knew that if they could only get him out of that seiðr-dampening cell, and out of the Realm, his mind might begin to heal a little. And if they could set forth on this quest against Thanos, mayhap his little brother's sanity would mend still further. At least it would give Loki something to think about, to focus on, besides the agony of walking Thea's tomb night after night and being confronted with her corpse, or whatever other horrors the Chitauri were pouring into his skull like poison.

Odin had put more seiðr shields around the tesseract, but it seemed to have no effect on the fostered prince. Perhaps, Thor thought uneasily, he was wrong about the device being the source of the Chitauri's interference. Odin was beginning to doubt that, as well. In fact, Odin was beginning to doubt whether anyone was influencing Loki at all except Loki himself.

"He has time enough. It's not as if he's dying, surely," Fandral said with a smile. His smile faded under Thor's scathing look and Víðarr's scowl. The rakish Asgardian stared at them both. "What's wrong with him?"

"He won't eat," Thor muttered, shoving a hand through his hair and starting to pace again. "He rarely sleeps because of his nightmares. When he does sleep, he comes awake screaming. He grows thinner and weaker by the day. He has always been slight, but…but now he looks more like a wasted corpse than a man. And he won't talk to me!" Thor turned suddenly and kicked the wall hard enough to put a small crack in the stone. "He just sits there, staring at the fire. I have no idea if he even hears me anymore! Whatever is wrong with him is getting worse!"

Hogun sighed and scanned his friends with dark, piercing eyes. "I have heard the servants speak of what ails Loki," he murmured. Thor shot him a look. Unperturbed, Hogun added, "They say Loki married the mortal called Althea and got her with child. A daughter named Sophie. That his grief over them is what poisons his mind."

Sif and the other two warriors stared at Thor and Víðarr. "Is that true?" Volstagg demanded. "The the woman he continues to draw and the child Loki conjures are his wife and daughter?" After a brief hesitation, Thor nodded. Volstagg shook his head in disbelief. "A wife. Loki with a wife. A child…"

"What proof is there?" Fandral asked. "Just because the servants say it is so, doesn't make it true. If that was all the proof necessary to substantiate rumor, I would have bedded every maiden in the castle by now, as well as several lapdogs."

"You mean you haven't? Your reputation hangs in tatters, my friend," Volstagg said with a smirk. Hogun nudged him in the ankle with the side of his boot, and the large warrior's smile faded.

Fandral ignored his friends and continued, "For instance, we all know there have been rumors for centuries that Loki is…" He trailed off when Thor and Víðarr both pinned him with equally cool stares. "Is…"

"Is what?" Víðarr demanded.

The other Asgardian cleared his throat. Carefully avoiding the princes' stares, he said, "There have always been rumors that Loki's affinity for sorcery made him…unnatural." When there was only a cold silence demanding to be filled, he added, "You've heard the rumors, Thor. They say that Loki is…is ärgr."

Víðarr growled low in his throat.

Thor lunged to his feet. "How dare you—"

"I didn't say it," Fandral snapped. "I am only repeating what I have heard people say. Don't act as if you've never heard this." But then he got a good look at his friend's face, and the ire vanished. "You have truly never heard what has been said of Loki? Surely you must have. What other reason would Angbodr have for turning him away when he asked her to wed him?"

"Angbodr? The woman everyone says is descended from Frost Giants?" Víðarr exclaimed. His friends nodded. "He asked her to wed him? When? He never said aught of that to us. Why would he tell you, and not us?"

Volstagg looked startled. "He didn't. Angbodr spoke of it, though the queen silenced her fairly quickly as I recall. It was a handful of centuries ago. Angbodr said she wouldn’t have a man who didn’t know how to be a man." Volstagg suddenly chuckled. "As I remember, she said Loki would make a better spouse for Sif, since she could play husband and he could play wife."

From the corner of his eye, Thor noticed Sif stiffen. Her eyes gleamed for a moment in the candlelight before she squeezed them shut. When she opened them again, there was no sign or even a hint of the tears he thought he'd glimpsed. But Thor realized the outspoken warrior maiden hadn’t said a word during the entirety of this impromptu conference, and she hadn’t laughed at the joke.

A memory whispered through his mind, there and gone, of Thor himself laughing over the same jest perhaps two or three centuries ago while he and Sif stowed their weapons after an intense round of sparring. Sif hadn’t laughed then, either.

"And besides," Fandral continued, "if Loki is the one who claims such a thing—that he married a mortal and got her with child—it's probably false."

Blue eyes narrowed as Thor studied his friend. "What makes you say so?" He asked in a deceptively mild voice that hid the beginning storm of temper. His anger had no place here; it was only because he was concerned about his brother. Yet for his friends to say such things…

Fandral gave him the sort of look one usually reserved for a particularly dull child. "Loki? The Prince of Mischief? The Lie-Smith with the silver tongue? When has he ever been truthful? I'd wager my last copper that half of what he tells anyone is a bag of farts and lies. Did he perhaps come to care for this Althea? From what Sif says, I have to believe that. But would he marry her? A mortal? Loki?" Fandral shook his head. "No. I don't believe it. What proof is there?"

"Thor's comrades are attempting to bring us what proof there may be," Víðarr reminded the older man. "But I, for one, believe Loki." Fandral's brows shot up. "If for no other reason than the testimonies of the Midgardians I spoke to when I journeyed to that Realm on my own. Lady Althea was not the type of woman to allow a man to bed her outside of the confines of a marriage. She wasn’t married and had no child when she disappeared nearly three years ago. And Loki has never been one to claim a conquest he never made. That, he has never lied about. If he hadn't bedded the girl, he wouldn’t have said he had."

"But she is mortal," Fandral protested. "Loki is too arrogant to use a mortal for aught but a moment's pleasure. And that's really all they're good for, anyway—"

"What about that mortal from a few centuries back?" Volstagg asked, nudging his friend. "The one who admired your archery skills. Marian, wasn't it? You seemed rather fond of her. Broke two ribs falling from a horse trying to impress her, as I recall."

The roguish warrior glared. "I cracked two ribs. And I was young then."

Hogun nodded. "Young enough that you screamed like a girl when the horse nearly stepped on your head." The grim countenance cracked the smallest smile when Fandral rolled his eyes.

"One needs to be careful when blessed with a face like this," he replied. "And I did not scream."

Víðarr chuckled. "You're right, of course." Fandral looked vindicated until the prince added, "It was more of a squeak. Like a maiden frightened by a mouse. It shall forever be imprinted on my memory. That was a glorious day."

"Shut up."

"He loved her," Sif interrupted, to everyone's surprise. She sat at the table, chin propped on her fists. Her dark eyes were fixed on a lit candle on the table not six inches from her face. The flame danced and flickered as she breathed. "Loki loved her. You did not hear him. Thor and I did." Sif closed her eyes. Sighed. "I have never heard him sound like that before. Does he truly think we betrayed him?" She added without looking at Thor. "That we've always hated him?"

"We did not betray him," Fandral snapped.

Volstagg spluttered, "Hated him? What? Why would he think such a thing? Until he betrayed you, Thor, we had no quarrel with him. We were his friends."

"We suspected him of treason without any proof beyond the words of King Laufey," Sif murmured. "We believed one of our greatest enemies over one of our dearest comrades."

Fandral scoffed. "He was guilty."

"But we didn’t have proof of his guilt. He was our friend." At last Sif tore her eyes away from the flames to look at Thor. Regret shimmered in her gaze, along with quiet misery. "We should have waited for proof before condemning him. That would have been just. Perhaps things would have been different if we had trusted him."

"Trusted him to kill the king?" Volstagg demanded.

Thor straightened. "Loki would never harm our father," he growled. "He wasn’t trying to hurt him. Or have you forgotten that it was Loki who lured Laufey into a trap and killed him, saving the king's life and helping to put a stop to the war that I so stupidly instigated?" Surging to his feet, he looked each of his four friends dead in the eye. "Everything Loki did before his fall was to protect Asgard. He went about it wrongly, but then, so did I. Why does no one condemn me for my foolishness? Because I am Thor, and Loki is Loki. He was right, that Asgard spurned him but adored me. Otherwise why have we never been punished in equal measure for the same crimes? You have always been my friends, but you were never truly his…and he knew it. And I was too blind to see how he felt. How all of you felt."

Fandral, obviously bewildered, shook his head. "Thor, until his betrayal, we cared for Loki as a friend and brother-in-arms, just as we did you. He was our friend. We—"

A knock at the door interrupted Fandral's protests. All six Asgardians turned toward the doorway as a warrior in the black and silver uniform of the prison guards entered the room. Bowing to the crown prince, he said, "Your Highness, Prince Loki is asking for you."

Blue eyes snapped wide and Thor took a step forward. "He spoke?"

"Yes, Your Highness."

It was the first words, as far as he knew, that Loki had spoken in more than seven days. Swallowing hard, Thor nodded and started for the door. To his friends he said over his shoulder, "I must go." Without another word, he strode out the door. His friends watched him go.

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It seemed almost as if Loki hadn’t moved since the last time Thor had come to see him. He still slouched in the chair in front of the fire, the crimson flames casting dancing light over his face. He was still pale, his eyes were still sunken. The only change was his hands: raw teeth marks and lacerations marred the long, white fingers beginning from the second row of knuckles. Loki had refused the attentions of any healers. Was he even bothering to tend the wounds he left on his hands in his sleep?

"Loki?" Thor ventured into the oppressive silence that hung so heavy in the dungeon. His brother didn’t even twitch. Just stared into the fire with dull, anguished eyes, one finger draped across his lips as if in thought. "Loki. I came, as you asked."

The green-eyed prince sighed. "So you did," he whispered in a voice stripped raw from screaming. "I hadn’t thought you would."

Thor's stomach twisted as his heart lurched into his throat. Loki sounded so lifeless. So empty. He would've preferred his little brother rage and scream at him, mock him, even jibe him about polishing his feathers…instead of sitting there with hardly any spark of life. "Of course I would come if you called. You are my brother."

But Loki shook his head—slowly, as if the movement hurt. "I called for you for so long…but you never came."

He swallowed back instant denial. "When, Brother?"

"When they put me in the dark," he whispered. "Before she came. I screamed for you when they ripped me to pieces and put me back together again. Screamed for you and Father and our brothers to help me. To please help me. And you never came. You forgot about me."

Thor shook his head. "No, Loki. No. We thought you were dead. We didn't know. We would have come for you if we had known; I swear it to you, Brother."

Loki didn’t seem to hear him. "The darkness has teeth to rend men's hearts and claws to tear out men's souls. There is always darkness. Even when there is light. She told me. She warned me about the shadow. It grows in my mind, Thor, even now. It feeds on me now that she's gone. Now that they are gone. I can feel it." He tapped a finger against his temple. "Here. Slimy black tentacles twisting me up, unraveling my very self. There isn't much time before I am lost to it. I can't tell what's real anymore. Are you real? Is any of this real?"

Instinct warred with intellect for approximately half a minute before Thor turned to the guard. "Open the prince's prison."

"Your Highness—"

"Now." Thor's voice held the sharp, cold air of regal command his father had taught him long ago. It had always worked before, and it worked now. One of the guards hastened to obey while the second moved off down the hall. Thor knew he was going to report this to the king. Let Odin find out. It didn't matter. Every instinct in Thor told him that if he was going to help Loki, this was how it would have to be.

The door opened, the guard on high alert as Thor dragged his chair into his brother's cell. Closing, locking, and bespelling the door behind him, the crown prince hauled the chair to the hearth and sank into it. Leaning forward, he reached out and carefully took Loki's hand.

That grabbed his brother's attention. Loki closed his eyes and frowned, deep grooves forming between the thin, dark brows. When he opened his eyes, some of the haze seemed to have faded from the vivid blue gaze. Blue, Thor noted. Not green. How long since Loki's eyes had been green? Thor didn’t recall seeing even a hint of emerald in the last week. Had the Chitauri been feeding off of his grief all this time? Loki shifted and tilted his head ever so slightly. Dark strands of dirty, raggedly-chopped black hair fell across his forehead and eyes. Pale lips parted. Loki seemed to grope for the proper words for a long moment before finally speaking.

"Why are you…in here?" The question sounded dazed, exhausted. Loki shook his head slowly. "You shouldn’t be in here. Father will…Odin will be angry. What are you doing in here? Are you…are you even real?"

"Yes," Thor murmured, gently squeezing his little brother's hand. Loki's skin was warm to the touch. Feverish. Were his wounds infected? Or was he ill? He looked ill. His eyes glistened feverishly. "I am real, Brother."

Loki blinked. The act seemed to take monumental effort. "You can't be real. The guards wouldn’t have fetched you."

"Why not?"

"Because I asked them to," he murmured. "They never do what I ask. No one does what I ask. They won't. They want…they want me to…" He frowned, eyes drifting restlessly around the room. "Want me to…despair. That's what they want."

"No, Loki. No one wants you to suffer."

His brother's head lolled to one side and he stared listlessly into the flickering flames. Loki's mouth, Thor saw, was also shredded. He'd been chewing his bottom lip incessantly. When Thor glanced over for a split-second at the table, he saw scattered drawings and half-finished letters sprinkled with spots of dried blood. He turned back to Loki.

"I will never be what they want," he whispered. Thor frowned. The fostered prince sighed, a shuddering death-rattle sound. "I cannot be the mighty Thor, with all his strength and charm and golden good looks. They want me to remain a shadow. But they hate the shadows." Loki licked his lips and tapped his fingers against the arm of his chair. "I am nothing but a shade. They want to forget me. They want me to disappear. What will they do with my corpse, do you think, Thor?" He glanced at the Asgardian. "Feed it to the pigs, do you think? Or throw it into the cold wastes of Jötunheim so that when I lie there rotting, they needn't deal with the stench of their treacherous foundling?"

The words should have been said with bitterness and hate, but they were empty of any emotion. It was almost as if Loki were commenting on the weather. As if what he spoke of had no meaning to him. But it had meaning to Thor. The thought of Loki imagining his own corpse lying moldering in the snow of Jötunheim, scraped bloody by the cutting wind, had bile rising in the prince's throat.

"Why do you say such things?" Thor demanded, gripping his brother's hand. "We are glad you're here, home again. We love you, Loki. How could you think we don't?"

"Then why did you throw me away?" Loki whispered, and suddenly Thor couldn’t breathe. Loki's eyes slid to Thor's face and he asked, "I begged you for help and you threw me off the Bifröst into an abyss. Why?"

Thor shook his head. "No, Loki. I didn't. I would never hurt you. You're my brother. I begged you to hold on, but you let go of Father's staff. I didn't drop you, Brother. I swear to you. You let go."

Loki squeezed his eyes shut and pulled out of Thor's grasp. "Liar. You dropped me—"

"You let go!" Thor cried. He grabbed Loki's shoulders, squeezed. "I begged you to hold on! I saw in your eyes what you were thinking. I saw your despair. And because of Father, because of Sif and the Three, because of Laufey and your so-called heritage, you left me! Me, your brother! Even when I was pleading with you not to let go, not to leave me, you let go of Gungnir and fell. I did not drop you!" Eyes stinging, Thor shook his head again. "I didn't," he whispered, voice breaking.

The breath Loki drew sounded almost like a sob. "That is what Thea said. She said…said in my despair, that I…but I remember what you did. I looked in your eyes. I saw your decision to discard me. You and Odin…I would never be good enough, never be what you wanted, and you decided…you…I saw it—"

"Has Thea ever lied to you?" Thor asked. Loki's mouth snapped shut with an audible click of teeth. He stared at Thor with wide eyes. "Answer me, Brother. Did Thea ever lie to you?"

After a brief eternity, the foundling prince shook his head.

Thor swallowed. He had to play this carefully. His brother hovered on the edge of a mental abyss. One wrong word, the slightest push, and he would tumble from the precipice and plunge irrevocably into this slowly creeping insanity. There would be no helping him. "If she never lied to you, then why do you not believe her? What did she say? When you told her I had tried to kill you, what did she say?"

Helpless confusion crossed Loki's face. "I…she said…she said the memory was…shadowed. Frayed. She said there was something strange about my thoughts. That she…that she could sense a strangeness…"

.

Loki sensed Thea the moment she entered the main room of their suite. He wiped at his eyes and glanced at her, forcing a smile. She looked so lovely in her mist-gray robe, her hair hanging in damp tendrils down her back. She took the opportunity to soak in the tub nearly every day; being able to bathe whenever they wished was still such a luxury, even after nearly five months in this new, sumptuous prison. The only thing that marred her beauty was the angry, red scar down her cheek.

For some reason, despite multiple infusions of healing seiðr, the cuts inflicted by the Chitauri in their final torture session had taken the last three and a half months to heal. Only constantly draining Loki's magic to use for healing spells had kept the cuts from festering. Thea had taken a fever six times despite Loki's best efforts. Now the cuts had finally healed, but the scars were vivid scarlet against Thea's pale skin.

Now his wife stopped in the doorway between bedroom and bathing room and just stared at him for several long seconds. Under her scrutiny, Loki's attempt at a smile faded. It was too much effort to force for long. Not when, for some reason, the grief of memory had suddenly surged up and tried to drown him all over again.

"Okay," Thea said after he just looked at her with mute misery in his eyes. "So, you have a choice."

"A choice?" Loki echoed.

She nodded. "A choice as to how I kill the Duke of Spook out there. I was thinking tying him up with electrical cords and electrocuting him with jumper cables, but we don't have any metal chairs. We could drown him in the bathtub. Stab him with the sharp, poky parts on the Glowy Stick of Death over there." She gestured to where the Chitauri staff lay propped against the wall in the corner of the room. "Or—and this one's my favorite—we could tie him down and force-feed him Gummi Bears until he pops like a balloon. A nasty, slimy, amphibious balloon. Is he an amphibian? I can't tell. He kinda looks like a really warty toad. If he's a toad, we can just pop him on a stick and roast him over a bonfire. Like s'mores, except…incredibly toxic. Ew. I think I'm gonna barf. So, which one do you like best?"

A few chuckles managed to escape him. He shook his head, smiling a bit ruefully. "I thought violence was on the list of things not to do in front of our daughter."

"You mean the daughter who plays some mad bongos on my internal organs?" Thea walked toward him; laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. "She beats the stuffing out of me on a daily basis. If I chloroform the guy and then make him into a pincushion, I don't think it'll faze her much. Although he'd be an ugly pincushion. I would not want that in my sewing room. Not that I can sew. Like, at all. Never got the hang of thimbles, and I object to losing pints of blood because my needles have minds of their own. And are evil."

Loki covered her hand with his. Sighed. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

"You stay so bright, so…you. You're like a star, always shining, always so vivid and beautiful. How do you keep shining in this darkness, Thea? How are you so brave?"

She shrugged. "I have you. It's easy to be brave when you're here. Besides, you're distracting. You help me not to think about how scary everything is. Besides, you're so hot." Loki raised an eyebrow. "Don't look at me like that. It's not my fault I'm easily distracted these days. It's a pregnancy thing. My sex-drive is like, in super-overdrive. And you've got dimples. And smexy, smexy Martian eyes. And a face."

A real laugh escaped him. "Oh, I have a face." Thea nodded cheerfully. "You like my face?"

"Oh, tech-yes. It's drool-worthy. I could kiss it all day." She grinned when he just eyed her. "Loki. Babe. That was an invitation." Loki smiled wanly and touched the tips of his fingers to her cheek. Thea's smile slipped. "And for once you're not in the mood. I don't think this has ever happened before. Usually jungle-monkey tango makes you really happy, even when things are sucking more than usual. What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "I was…thinking. The Other still expects me to try and escape, and my magic is only just now restoring itself after your last illness, so we cannot leave yet. I'm sorry."

Thea made a derisive sound. "Meh. I don't care." He just looked at her. "Okay, yeah, I care. I feel like Rapunzel. Which is ironic, since my last name is another word for rapunzel. The plant, I mean, not the princess. Huh. Weird. Anyway, yeah, princess-in-the-tower isn't really my thing, but I don't want you to feel pressured. We've got time. A few months, anyway. I mean, I'll be out of commission once a certain cutie pie decides to make her grand debut, but that's not for another three months or so. We can get out by then." He merely heaved a sigh and turned away to stare at the wall. Thea's hand came up, cupping his jaw, and gently turned his face back to her. "Loki?"

"I was thinking about our escape to Midgard. Wishing I could take you to Asgard. It's beautiful, Thea. You deserve to be able to go there in safety and see it. But I cannot take you there. I wish I could."

Her smile was gentle and coaxing, trying to ease him out of his sorrow. "Maybe one day, you can. And besides, I've already seen it. It's great frolicking around in your memories. I get to see all kinds of great stuff. I mean, we jump off the Asgardian cliffs almost every day. It's also the only time I'm not carrying Sophie around, and it's nice to be skinny again. Not that I don't love you," she added, patting her belly. "Daddy and I love you to confetti bits."

"I can never take you to Asgard," Loki whispered. "Either of you. It isn't safe."

She frowned. "What do you mean, not safe? Because of the Chitauri?"

"Because of Thor."

"Loki…I'd bet an entire box of apple-jelly cinnamon donuts that Thor misses you just as much as you miss him—which is saying something, because I'd do a jalapeno tap-dance while singing 'Yankee Doodle' to get my hands on a box of those. So you know I'm sure of it. He'll be so happy that you're alive, that you're safe and happy with me and Sophie, he'll forgive you about all the junk with the Frost Giants. He loves you."

Loki stared at her, unable to speak. Finally, though he didn’t know where he dredged up the strength, he managed to snarl, "Loves me? He loves me? He tried to kill me."

Thea's mouth fell open. "What? When? You never told me that. When did that happen?"

He shook his head, baffled. "I showed you. On the Bifröst, I begged him to help me and he reached down for me, but when I took his hand, he sneered at me. At me. His brother. And then he threw me from the edge into the abyss."

To his surprise, Thea stepped back from him. Her brows drew together as she tilted her head, frowning. Her gaze darted all over his face before locking onto his emerald eyes. "What are you talking about?" She asked softly, cautiously. "That's not what happened."

"What do you mean?" He rose to his feet, watching her, studying her in turn. Was she ill again? The wounds that had grown infected had healed in the last few weeks. Any chance for festering and fever should have disappeared…yet she wasn’t making sense. "Thea, are you all right?"

"I am fine. I'm wondering about you. Loki, you fell from the Bifröst because you let go of your father's staff. I read that memory. I remember it. You were so…you were suicidal, Loki. You wanted to die. I remember. It was one of the saddest, most horrible things I've ever felt."

"What? No," he protested. "No, Thea. He tried to kill me. He cast me off. He let me fall—"

"Loki, no, he didn’t. That's not what happened. Come here." She reached for him, pulled him to her. Light as butterfly wings, she touched his temples. Thea peered into his eyes. "Let me look. There's something wrong, Loki. One of us isn't remembering correctly, and it shouldn’t be me. My powers shield my memories. People can't screw with them. Let me look again."

He shook his head. "There is nothing wrong with my memory. I recall vividly how he smiled at me, as if everything would be all right. As if all was forgiven. Then he sneered. And Odin scoffed, scorned me. Both my fathers tried to kill me. Laufey left me to die of the cold, and Odin allowed his heir to hurl me to my death."

Thea didn't look away from him. In a gentle voice that held the whipcrack of a command, she said, "Let me look. If there's nothing wrong, then at least we'll know there's a problem with me. Let me look."

With a sigh that was half a snarl, he nodded. "Go ahead. You'll see."

Silvery-blue eyes slowly unfocused as a tingling warmth spilled down the back of Loki's neck. Thea's eyes drifted lazily over his face, unseeing, as she immersed herself in his memory. But then she frowned. Something flickered in her gaze. Her eyes began to focus a little. Loki felt a tremor shiver through her smaller frame as she drew a sharp breath. Her eyes narrowed. Leaning in a little, she closed her eyes. Frowned fiercely.

Concerned despite himself, Loki murmured, "Thea?"

"Fraying," she whispered tonelessly. Whenever she interacted with the real world while submersed in memory, her voice held a clinical detachment that always unnerved him. "Shadowed. Threads unraveled. Knots undone. Pulling, tangled. Spots of weakness. Uneven weft. This isn't real."

Loki jolted. "What?"

All of a sudden there was a small flare of cerulean light from the Chitauri staff in its corner. Thea yelped and yanked her hands back from his skull, cradling them to her chest. "Ow! Jerks!" Flicking her hands as if she'd burned them on something, she shook her head, grimacing. "I noticed it, ya little rabid jumper-cable, so you can just kiss my sugar-coated grits and call me 'Sally,'" Thea growled at the staff. "Screw you very much. Go drown yourself in a bucket."

He grasped her hands and turned them over. His eyes widened when he saw the reddened fingertips. The flesh was irritated, as if she'd touched something hot. Loki kissed Thea's fingertips, breathing a soft whisper of Jötunn cold against the scalded digits. It wasn’t seiðr, so it cost him nothing, and it seemed to help. Thea sighed and dropped her forehead against his shoulder.

"What were you saying before?" Loki murmured, brushing his lips against her temple. "You said, 'This isn't real.' What did you mean?"

"The memory isn't real," she replied in a mere breath of sound. Behind them, in its corner, the staff hummed with power. Prickles of unease skittered up and down Loki's spine. His wife continued, "Someone wove it together and stuffed it into your head. It isn't real. The pain from it is real, because that's your reaction to remembering something like that. But the actual events never happened. There's…there's a shadow in your mind. I don't know…I don't know what that's from. If it's related to this memory thing or you're just super-stressed or what. I have no clue. But the memories are frayed. Something's putting pressure on your memories." Thea drew a deep breath, sighed. "I can't fix it, either, and it might get worse."

After a moment, Loki nodded. "All right. We will think of something." Shutting his eyes, he laid his cheek against her damp hair and inhaled the scent of clean water and soap. Just under that was a hint of Thea's lotion. She was nearly out of it now, but she needed to keep using it as her belly grew bigger from the child. It was sweet althea blossoms and orchids; that scent always soothed him. It seemed to cut through the fury and hatred always seething within him, bringing him back to himself…and to her.

So…Thor hadn’t tried to kill him. His brother hadn’t betrayed him. Instead, Loki had tried to end his own life by falling into the abyss, hoping it would destroy him. Instead he'd landed in crush of broken bones and a spatter of blood on the Chitauri home-world. Was his brother perhaps searching for him even now? Was his father? Or had they given him up for dead after more than a year in captivity to the darkness?

"Can this…whatever it is…affect my memories of you?"

Thea immediately shook her head. "Ever since you first waltzed through my mental Disneyland, you've been up here with me, and I've been with you in here." She caressed his temple, down his cheek, along his jaw. "In your head. What we have…it's encoded in our brains. Hardwired into our memories now. Because of my power. So we should be okay."

"I could not bear to lose you, Althea. It would drive me mad."

She bounced up on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his in a chaste kiss. "We're both nuts already, or we wouldn't have fallen in love with each other. You're an alien and I'm…well, splendiferously crazy. And I'm not going anywhere. Ever. It'll take more than the beehive from ET-Hell to get rid of me."

And once again, she'd made him laugh. "ET-Hell?"

"Yeah, ET-Hell. Alien hell. You know, 'ET phone home?'" Casting a scathing look at the still-buzzing staff, she added, "ET phone homoerotic, scabies-eating stag beetles who swim in toxic sludge and deserve to get mauled by vampire-ferrets with Mad Cow Disease." Thea glanced down at her belly and smiled, patting the gentle swell. "Oh, you like that one, huh? Vampire-ferrets; remember that one for when you start school, Sophie-girl." She grinned at Loki. "Frosty McCute-Stuff in here is happily doing back-flips. Anyway, have I never shown you E.T.?"

Loki shook his head.

"Hear that, Sophie? Time to further educate Daddy." Thea suddenly frowned, cocking her head to one side, before sighing. "Really?" She sighed again. "I don't think they have peanut butter in this place. I know, they suck. Let's see…wait. Hey, peanut butter. That is so weird. Where do they get this stuff? And now I just need a spoon. Hey, look, spoon!"

.

Loki stared unblinking into the fire for several long moments after he finished speaking, expression unreadable. Thor didn't push him. If Loki reacted violently, there was no seiðr shield to protect the crown prince now. Where was his father? Surely the guard had reported what the prince had done by now and surely the All-Father would have come immediately. So why wasn't he here?

"I miss her," Loki said abruptly, shattering his brother's thoughts. He immediately focused on the fostered prince. "Do you know what it's like, to live in someone else's mind for almost a year? To share each other's thoughts, to twine your very self around another person until you almost don't know where one ends and the other begins? Like Jormungand, the World Serpent, twisting around and around until it finds itself devouring its own tail…but it is beautiful to be so entwined. To curve your soul around the soul of someone you love until you can no longer live without them. It is terrifying to love like that. It can break you. It can gut you. Yet it is like flying…it's such a long way to the ground if something crushes your wings, but all the while, you are that much closer to the clouds and the stars."

Dark lashes drifted down and Loki leaned back in his chair. Thor said nothing, afraid to disturb Loki now that some semblance of calm had found him. He did keep hold of his brother's hand, however. It felt unusually small in his grip. It reminded him of Loki as a small child when he would slip his hand into Thor's whenever something upset him.

"Do you hate me, Brother?" Loki murmured.

Thor shook his head. "Despite your myriad sins, in spite of all the wretchedness that has been wrought between us, I cannot imagine my life without you, little brother."



Loki sighed. "It feels so empty in my skull, Thor. As if a part of my very self has been stolen away. I wonder if her power was addictive. Perhaps that is why I'm this way now. Or perhaps I loved her too much. Am I pathetic?"

"No. You grieve."

"Grief. Grief is a poison. A cancer with no cure."

"Time," Thor began, but Loki shook his head wearily.

"No amount of time will heal this. It is not the way of Asgardians and you know it." Loki's laugh was saturated with bitterness. "It seems it is the same for Frost Giants. Does it disgust you, that I am Jötunn?"

Thor shook his head again. "You're my brother, and I have learned that the Frost Giants are not the barbarians I once believed them to be."

A small smile tugged at the corner of Loki's mouth. "Do you remember you used to tell Mother that there were Frost Giants under your bed? It would terrify you. Or that they were in your closet, waiting for you to fall asleep so they could rush off with you and toss you into their cook-pots? A princely meal, indeed."

"You were afraid of snakes," Thor pointed out. His brother canted his head in acknowledgement. "And the dark."

Loki shut his eyes and seemed to brace himself before replying, "I have never lost that fear."

"At least you're not afraid of spiders."

Loki actually grinned, though it seemed tired. "Does Tyr still break out into a cold sweat when he sees the things?"

"He does, indeed." Thor looked around as if making sure they were alone…and spotted Odin watching from the shadows, positioned just so that Loki couldn't see him, but Thor could. The king nodded to him. The prince focused on his brother once more. Leaning forward, dropping his voice to a conspiratory whisper, he added, "Found one in his room just yesterday. Screamed like a maiden who'd seen a rat. He hopped around quite a bit and swore at it while he tried to squash it. Set the palace dogs howling."

One dark brow quirked. "Really?" Thor nodded earnestly, and Loki laughed. "Oh, that would have been something to see." Suddenly Loki frowned and leaned forward a little, peering toward the window of his cell. Thor followed his gaze, hoping his brother hadn’t spotted the king.

But it was Víðarr who'd attracted Loki's attention. The younger prince strode quickly toward the cell, pausing only when he realized that both of his elder brothers were inside the prison. He frowned, baffled.

"Loki and I are having a conversation," Thor said smoothly. "What is it?"

"It's your comrades on Midgard," Víðarr replied after a brief hesitation. "Heimdall has just come to me. They have their results from the quest you sent them on, and they're waiting for us at the tower stronghold of the one called Iron Man."

Before Thor could react to Víðarr's words, Loki was on his feet. He stared at his younger brother with wide eyes of vibrant jade, holding completely still—almost as if he were afraid to move. An expression somewhere between fear and hope twisted his features. "What did they find?" He asked in a mere whisper.

Víðarr leveled his gaze on his brother and replied, "What we have suspected all along—that the mortal called Fury lied to us."