Darkness There, and Nothing... CH. 13 - The First Vow (aka Ice Cream Pretty Much Cures Everything)

Chapter Thirteen

The First Vow

(aka Ice Cream Pretty Much Cures Everything)

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"What's a valkyrie?"

"A warrior maiden," he replied. "Now, Thea…how badly are you hurt?"

She sniffed back a few tears. "Nothing broken. It doesn't hurt badly enough. They pretty much just knocked me around except…except my arms and on my back. That really hurts."

Loki shifted her so that he could inspect her injuries. The little cell was cramped with two people in it, but he still had enough room to maneuver. He put the flashlight between his teeth and took Thea's arm, palpitating carefully. She yelped when he reached the flesh above her elbow. The sleeve of her shirt was damp, stiff. Loki realized he could smell blood and burnt flesh. He frowned.

"Thea," he said gently, placing the flashlight atop the pile of debris by the wall so he could see everything better. "I need you to remove your shirt."

Her fingers went to the row of tiny buttons running from the neck of her yellow shirt—now a sort of dusty mustard color—to the bottom. Loki was surprised she didn't protest until he saw that she wore another shirt beneath it. This one had no sleeves, only thin straps that showed off her collarbones and shoulders. Her skin was pale and clammy with sweat. He saw freckles lightly dusted her shoulders, too. When she tried to slide the overshirt down her arms and off, pain spasmed across her features and she hunched down, whimpering.

"I can't," she whispered. "Jeez, that hurts. My shirt's stuck. I can't…"

Loki grasped one edge of the shirt. "Allow me. This will hurt." Thea nodded, her face tight with pain. Slowly, Loki peeled the shirt down Thea's left arm first. The fabric made a sickly crackling sound as it pulled away from the flesh of her shoulder and upper arm.

Thea began to cry again. "Ow," she whispered. "Ow, ow, ow. Ow. Jeez, jeez. Frack, frack, frack."

"Good girl," he murmured, trying to soothe. "Good girl. Be strong."

In the light from the Midgardian device, Loki could see that a long, thin strip of hot metal had been pressed repeatedly against Thea's arm. The flesh was red and shiny between the deathly-white blisters. Her shirt had been stuck to the raw edges of the burn. It peeled away, drawing blood from the ruined flesh as it did so. The same happened to her other arm. The overshirt itself was actually charred in places. They hadn't removed it before burning her.

The back of her shirt was charred as well. Loki carefully pulled it up to reveal the burnt flesh of her back, blistered and raw. She whimpered when he pulled the shirt away from her back and rolled it up so he could look at the wounds.

"There's a first-aid kit in my duffel bag," she said. "It has antiseptic wipes and gauze and some aloe gel, I think."

With a little blind rooting around because he couldn’t poke his head through in order to find the kit and be able to use the flashlight, he managed to get his hands on the duffel bag—and thus the box that Thea described to him. Pulling it into his cell, he undid the latches and looked at the contents. Piecing together what Thea told him and what he'd seen of Midgard while he'd sat on Odin's throne, Loki tore open an antiseptic wipe and began cleaning the burns on Thea's back.

She hissed and arched her spine to escape the fire of the antiseptic. Loki said nothing; merely waited for her to settle again. Once she'd relaxed, he went back to cleansing the burns. Minute tremors shivered through the girl's thin frame as he worked. Loki realized he could see the faintest ridging of rib-bones against flesh in Thea's torso. She hadn't complained, but she needed better food than the slop the Chitauri served twice a day. She was too thin. Not as thin as he was, but too thin.

He'd been working for several long minutes in heavy silence when Thea began to sing.

"I like glitter and
Sparkly dresses
But I'm not gonna talk about that
In my monologue.

"I like baking and
Things that smell like winter
But I'm not gonna talk about that
In my monologue."

Loki paused for a moment and stared at her. Her voice wavered, but it was still clear and sweet. Nothing special, but lovely after the silence Loki had grown accustomed to in the last several minutes.

"What are you doing?" He asked, beginning to work on the sprawling burn again.

"Singing to keep from screaming," Thea replied in a voice tight with pain. "My mom taught me that when I was a kid and I had to get vaccinations. Still hurt, but it gave me something else to think about. Especially if I picked a funny song or a silly poem. I've got one that'll make you blush, but it's pretty crude. Learned it from Austin when we were younger. It has the eff-word in it, so it's not really…anyway, I like this song better."

"The 'eff-word?'" Loki asked.

"Earth profanity. It's a word that means 'sex.' Anyway, I was singing 'Monologue Song.' Taylor Swift is a singer I like on Earth, she's pretty cool. She did this silly song for a comedy sketch on television. The rest goes…

"I like writing songs about
Douche-bags who cheat on me
But I'm not gonna say that
In my monologue."

"But you just said it," Loki pointed out. Thea shot him an exasperated but smiling look over her shoulder and he canted his head. "My apologies. Pray, continue." He didn't care what she did, so long as he could work without her flinching away from him. The obvious pain in her made him grit his teeth. He wanted to find the Chitauri that had hurt her and rip them to pieces; the urge was like the hot-cold pulse of seiðr in his blood.

"I like putting their names into songs
So they're ashamed to go in public…"

When he was done cleaning the burns, he carefully dabbed on the green slime that claimed to help with such injuries. Then he covered the raw flesh with gauze and surgical tape. He was miserly with the gauze; it would have to last them…he didn’t know how long. That done, he lowered the back of her shirt to cover the gauze. Thea shivered.

"I didn't tell them about you," she whispered, abandoning the final notes of the song. "Us, I mean. That we were…you know. Talking and stuff. I don't even know if they saw the hole in the wall, but just to be safe, I didn't say anything about you."

"You are very brave," Loki said softly, brushing back her hair. He'd never touched her hair in the real world before. It wasn’t as soft as it had been in the illusionary world—no doubt because it was dirty and tangled—but he remembered its softness. It didn’t smell of flowers, either…but he remembered the fragrance of it from the mirage.

Loki studied Thea. Tearstained cheeks, dirt, and blood made her look older than her twenty-four years. Opening another antiseptic wipe, he began cleaning the cut above her eye. It was deep. Without stitches, it would take a long time to heal…but he was no surgeon, and they had no needle or thread. Instead he cleaned the cut and applied what Midgardians called a "butterfly bandage," trying not to think about her nearness, the way her presence seemed to fill the dimness with something tangible and almost intoxicating. This was different, somehow, from all the times they'd been together in the illusionary worlds she created.

"Thank you for taking care of me," she said. Carefully she drew her knees up to her chest and rested her arms on them. Her chin dropped to her only-bruised forearms. She moved like an old woman, he thought. It shouldn't have been so. "Can I have Hobbes?"

Loki retrieved the stuffed tiger from behind the door, a bit worse for wear after being squashed by his head, and handed it to her. She tucked it in the little cave made by knees, arms, and head, the top half of the toy poking out next to her cheek. She didn't seem to care about the grime on the toy's fake fur. She simply held it tightly, eyes closed. Loki leaned back against the wall and tried to ignore the utter weariness that seemed to settle over his body like a death-shroud. His knee throbbed, his arm ached, and breathing hurt from the tight pain of his ribs. But that was nothing as he studied Thea once more.

She was so silent…but he could see her, hear her breathing, smell her nearness. Remarkably she didn't stink. Well, she did a little, but nowhere near as badly as he did (not that she seemed to mind his stench). And she seemed cleaner. Simply a matter of being imprisoned for less time? Or was she actually making a point to take care of herself in that box of tenebrous horror?

Suddenly Thea turned to him, eyes bright and shining in the dim light from the electric Midgardian torch. Clutching Hobbes in one hand, she scuttled across the foot of space separating her from Loki and pressed tight against his body, uncaring of dirt or grime. Fitting her body to his, clutching the stuffed tiger, Thea laid her cheek against Loki's shoulder.

"They hurt me," she whispered, and he realized she was crying afresh. "It hurt so much."

Somehow he found the strength to put his good arm around her. "I know," he whispered back. Her tears trailed hot down his shoulder, his chest, his arm, leaving tracks of nearly-clean skin in the layers of dirt. "I know. I'm sorry. I am so sorry, suetyng." The endearment slipped off his tongue without him realizing it at first. Once he fully registered what he'd called her, he fell silent, though he continued to hold her.

"What if…what if Phil isn't coming?" Thea asked a few minutes later, and he could tell it cost her a great deal to ask such a question. "What if they can't find us? It's been more than two weeks. What will we do?"

We. They were irrefutably and irrevocably "we" now. More than that, they were…they were…Whatever they were, whatever the days in darkness had made them, was such an infinite, complex thing that Loki couldn't put it into words, not even in his own thoughts. Even the ghost of it was almost more than he could bear to think about. Instead of thinking about it, his arm tightened fractionally around Thea, careful of her burns and bruises.

"I do not know," he said. "But we will be together, and that is something, is it not? Neither of us will be alone." She nodded and cuddled closer. Loki could feel her trembling, despite her bravura. "Will you be all right?"

She hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. I just need some ice cream. Ice cream fixes almost everything, pretty much."

"Will illusionary ice cream suffice?"

The small laugh that came was weak and tired, half-afraid, but it was a laugh nonetheless. "Yeah."

"Do I also get illusionary ice cream?"

Thea glanced up at him and raised one eyebrow. There was just the faintest spark of her old mischief in her eyes. "Don't push your luck, Green Eyes. Touch my limey, whipped creamy, key-lime-pie-y goodness and I will shank you with a spoon."

"No sense of gratitude in these young ones," Loki muttered, feigning offense.

"All's fair in love, war, and dairy products, dude."

He found a wan smile curving his mouth. "Is ice cream considered a dairy product by Midgardian standards?"

She shrugged, wincing. "Technically. It's got milk in it. Super fatty milk, but it's milk. That makes it dairy. And healthy. At least, that's the lie I tell myself so I don't feel like a beached whale when I eat it. It's delicious enough, the fib is worth it." She propped her chin on his shoulder and was quiet then for a long time. Finally, she said, "Loki…I don't want to die here. I don't wanna die alone, here in the dark. I hate the dark. I don't want to die here. I don't want to die alone. Loki…I…"

The words came without permission, bruising his tongue with their weight and searing his mouth with the heat of their promise. "You won't," Loki whispered. "I won't let you die alone. No matter when that time comes, no matter where you are, I will make certain you are not alone. Do you understand? I will be with you, Thea. I swear it. My word as a prince of Asgard."

She didn't remind him that he wasn’t actually a prince of Asgard, only burrowed against him like a child seeking comfort. They'd only hurt her a little—compared to what they'd done to him—but she was shell-shocked by it. The Chitauri had managed to crack the shell of her bravado. How to fix it?

"I'm kinda scared, Loki. I tried to use my powers, I couldn't help it…they didn't work. It's like there's a block there or something. I mean, I literally felt what wisps of illusion I had run into this…wall. We can't get out. I can't break through that block. I'm scared."

"I know," he murmured, masking the sudden savage teeth tearing into him like a fear-beast. Perhaps with even more practice, she could shatter that block. Perhaps…but perhaps not. "I know you're frightened," he added. "But you're also very brave, Althea."

Slowly she pulled back enough that she could look him full in the face. Her expression was one of bewilderment. "How funny."

Loki quirked a brow. "What's funny?" He didn't see anything funny about their present situation.

"It doesn’t bother me when you call me Althea. I usually hate that name, but…I kind of like it when you say it. Occasionally," she added, making an odd face. "I'm still Thea Sigyn Valerian, but…I dunno. 'Althea' sounds pretty when you say it like that." Thea bit her lip, then suddenly darted forward—though Loki knew it had to hurt—and pressed her lips against the line of his jaw.

The breath faltered in his lungs. Where her lips had touched, the skin tingled. Those lips were soft somehow; rose petals against his jaw. Her breath touched warm and moist on his dry skin. He swallowed hard, everything whirling around him. Lightheaded still from lack of food, from dehydration and the fading adrenaline that had flooded his body while Thea had screamed and screamed, Loki could only stare at her in wonder. Of their own accord, his fingers came up to touch the spot where she'd kissed him. It felt warm where the rest of him was chilled with drying fear-sweat.

"Why did you do that?" Loki asked softly.

Thea blinked slowly, the dim glow of the flashlight catching on her lashes. She licked her lips. How were her lips so soft? Taking a slow breath, she replied, "Because you took care of me…and because I wanted to. Are you mad?"

He shook his head almost numbly. She'd kissed him. She'd…she'd kissed him.

"Your lips are soft," he blurted, then could have kicked himself. That was something foolish and dull, something Thor or Tyr would've said. What had happened to his famed silver tongue?

She shrugged, looking a bit uncomfortable. "Chap Stick. I have, like, twenty tubes of the stuff in my bag. I collect flavors, you know?"

"I see." He had no idea what Chap Stick was.

"Let's get out of here," Thea said suddenly. "I can focus. I can get us somewhere special. Somewhere nice. Let's just get out of here for awhile, okay?" Clutching the tiger to her breast, she sniffed back a few last tears. "They can hurt us, but they can't stop us from escaping in our heads. They can't. So they can go…rub a monkey's tummy."

Loki's brows rose nearly to his hairline and he blinked, positive he was hearing things. "They can do what?" She'd been beaten, burned—she'd been tortured—and that was what she said of her tormentors?

"I'm trying to think of something other than how much I want to jump off a cliff and drown right now," she said tersely. He forced back a wince. "The first thing that popped into my head was my favorite book when I was little, and someone used to say that about the people they hated. It just came out. I can't…I can't freak out about this anymore or I'll shut down. I can't do that. You need me. I mean, we need each other. So let's get out of here for awhile, yeah?"

"You have to go back into your cell first," Loki replied. His jaw still tingled where she'd kissed him. His mouth felt strange, his lips almost numb. A thought was trying to form in his mind but the prince wouldn't allow anything beyond a nebulous sort of what if?

Thea looked stricken. "But I want to stay with you!"

"If the Chitauri return, and find you in my cell with me…Thea, think of the consequences. I…" Loki gritted his teeth, trying to swallow the words, but they pried his lips apart and spilled off his tongue anyway. "I do not want you to go either. I wish to stay with you, but I cannot. We have to hide our contact as much as possible. You cannot stay here if we're to go into your memories."

After several long moments where he could see her struggling with panic and loneliness and anger—rage, for the Chitauri, for what they'd done, for what they were keeping them both from—she nodded, defeated. Her face was miserable when she glanced at the tight hole in the wall. Loki touched her cheek, silent reassurance. They locked eyes for a moment, and he could see the misery in her face, the unhappiness suffusing her gaze. But Thea nodded again and crawled back through the hole. It was easier now that she'd had rest, but still slow going, and the pressure of the edges against her back and upper arms made her gasp in pain.

When she was gone, back into her own darkness, Loki finally acknowledged the dull ache in his chest that had begun to grow with her first movements away from him. Against all his hopes, despite his better judgment, he'd begun to need her. To trust her. More than that, he…

We're friends…aren't we? Surtur's blade, what was he doing? What was she doing to him?

"Loki?" Her hand came through the gaping maw of the hole in the wall, white against the dark stone. Knowing he was only making his attachment to her worse, knowing he was opening himself up to a weakness, but also knowing it was a weakness he couldn’t do without, Loki took Thea's hand, and let her take him where she would.

.

"And where did she take you?" Thor asked softly. The crown prince sat in his customary chair, elbows propped on his knees, one hand stroking his beard as he considered his brother's words. "Where did you go to escape this new nightmare?"

Loki smiled—a wistful smile that almost made Thor flinch at the grief in it. He said, "There was a place she liked to go on Midgard. A hotel near a place called Disneyland, with a very lovely ballroom. We went there and had ice cream and later, after we'd gone back a thousand times, we…here," the green-eyed prince added, lifting a piece of paper from the table. Blue eyes widened as Loki held out a drawing. Thor rose to his feet. Using a whisper of seiðr, the Asgardian plucked it from his little brother's hand and brought it to the glass.

Elegant arches, carved marbled columns, and a ballroom floor polished so that it shone almost like glass emerged from the slow, careful charcoal lines Loki had sketched. A massive chandelier hung from the ceiling, glimmering with light. A vast painting of some sort adorned the vaulted ceiling. Thor thought he glimpsed small winged creatures and clouds, but the details of the mural had been left deliberately vague, the better to emphasize the beauty of the woman beneath the hundreds of glowing lights.

Yet again, the drawing was arranged so that Thor couldn’t see the woman's face—but he knew it was Thea. In her slim, dark gown with the ring on her finger the prince had noticed in previous drawings, she danced with a shadow. Thor recognized that shadow as well: Loki. More hinted at than defined, still he would've known his brother anywhere. What was more, the shadowed figure curved itself around the slender form of the girl, protective as a guarding hound, even as the pair of them swept across the polished floor. Happiness radiated from every line of Thea's body in the drawing.

"You never draw her face," the prince said softly.

Loki shrugged. "I do."

After a beat of silence, Thor asked, "But?"

"I cannot do it often. I…I cannot. The memories are hard enough." Green eyes slid closed and deep grooves formed between Loki's brows as his face tensed. "And I needn't draw her face to remember it. Verily, I recall it. Every time I close my eyes I remember the darkling shine of her hair falling over her shoulders, the curve of her smile, the light of her eyes like moonlight through mist and clean water; the shadow of freckles across delicate cheekbones, the arch of one brow when she would laugh at herself or tease me about something, the way wisps of hair would lay against her forehead. I remember her." All at once Loki opened his eyes and looked to Thor. "Go away, Brother. Leave me in peace. I will tell you more tomorrow."

"As you wish," the elder prince replied. He didn't react outwardly to Loki's use of the word brother. Better to, as the Midgardians said, play things close to the chest for now. But the thrill of triumph refused to abate. This was only the second time Loki had called him "brother" since before Thor's exile, and the first time had been caustic and savage. "Until tomorrow, then, Brother."

However, just as he was about to step out of the pools of torchlight and into the shadows of the corridor, Thor turned back. Today he would speak to his mother again about Loki, and he needed one question answered.

"Loki…I must know something."

His brother leaned his head back against the polished wood of his chair and sighed. "What is it?"

"Why did you tell me Father was dead? Why come to Midgard at all, especially to tell me something that wasn't true?" Thor swallowed, tasting salt and bitterness, but refused to let it sharpen his words. He could not alienate his brother now. "Why tell me Father was dead?"

He wasn’t sure what he'd expected, but Loki's answer certainly wasn't it. "Because I thought he was."

Anger and hurt flashed like twin bolts of pain through the prince's breast as he advanced on his little brother. "That isn't true. Father was here, safe, in his chambers. You knew where he was all the time. You knew he was in the Odinsleep—"

"But we didn't know if he would ever wake up." Loki's voice was quiet, yet Thor could hear something in it…something like the devastation and fear of a child mourning his father. The same grief that had ripped through the Asgardian the night Loki had come to him in the SHIELD base and said Odin was dead. "Mother told me not to give up hope…but I could see in her face that she already had. She didn't believe he would come back." At last he met Thor's gaze. "And neither did I."

"Why make it seem as if Father died thinking…" Thor's voice cracked. Even after all this time, this was what still hurt more than anything else. "Died thinking I hated him?"

"Because it worked."

Loki had said that before, Thor thought. I don't regret telling you Odin was dead, Loki had said oh so coolly. It worked, didn't it? And when Thor had demanded to know what Loki meant, he'd refused to answer. Now the prince asked, "What does that mean?"

"You weren’t ready to be king," his foster brother said. "If the Frost Giants attacked, you needed to be ready."

If his brother had intended that to make sense, he'd failed. "What?"

"I told you once I never wanted the throne. I only wanted to be your equal. It was never good enough, for anyone, that I excelled at the things I put my hand to. I had to excel and best you at the things you excelled in…and I never could. I wasn’t strong like you. I didn't jump into battle like you and slay my enemies simply by swinging my arms around. I wasn’t the one everyone loved. Even before Sif and the Three betrayed me, I knew if it came to war, we would need you. The mighty Thor. But if you came back, the throne would be yours. If you weren’t ready, then everything Father had done, everything I did, would have been for naught."

Thor raked a hand through his hair. "So…so what? You break my heart so that I would become a better king?"

"So that you would stop being Odin's son, stop being the crown prince of Asgard, and become a man, instead of a feckless boy playing soldier," Loki snapped, straightening in his chair. "It seems as if ever since Mother cut you from her apron strings, you've made sure to hide in Father's shadow instead of casting your own. You were a prince, you were the king's son, but you weren't a king. You weren’t a ruler. You wouldn’t attempt to become one until you thought you had no other choice."

"What? That isn't true!"

"Until you failed to lift Mjölnir, you walked around with all the brash arrogance and recklessness that had nearly gotten us all killed in Jötunheim. Then, when you couldn’t lift the hammer, you were dazed, confused, uncertain of yourself…but you were also angry with Father. If that anger festered, you would have become exactly what our other brother essentially became—nothing but a bitter sword-for-hire who gives no thought to his people, his responsibilities. I had to shatter your anger and leave you with nothing, so that you could become something. Something other than what you were. And it worked. You learned humility, you learned to understand the pain of someone other than yourself. You learned at last that your stupidity had consequences. You learned, in short, just how much of an idiot you'd been. And once you figured that out, you could come home that much sooner."

For a long moment, Thor could only stare at his brother. Loki had always been known for manipulating people…but Thor had never stopped to examine why he'd learned to do so, why he did it, what he hoped to accomplish by it. He'd only ever gotten angry or laughed, depending on the situation. Now he stared, thinking hard, letting his little brother's words sink into his brain.

Loki had been trying, as quickly as possible, to teach him the lesson Odin had failed to teach: that he wasn’t infallible, and that terrible things could happen to him with the same brutal suddenness as anyone else, mortal or immortal. Which explained Loki's words, I'm glad that it worked, yes.

And yet…

"Then why send the Destroyer, if I was ready to come home?"

"I didn't say you were ready," his brother replied. "I said you could come home sooner. I'd sown the seeds. They needed time to take root, to grow. And while you were gone, I was going to help deal with the Frost Giants and prove to Father that while you might've been the heir, I was still a viable son. Everyone else would consider what I did to Laufey an act of cowardice."

Cautiously, Thor asked, "And what do you call it?"

"Justice. He tried to kill me when I was a baby. He tried to kill you. He would have tried to kill Father. And it was necessary. Since the Frost Giant king knew of ways to sneak past Heimdall, I had to kill him, to protect Mother and Father. But while I was readying that plan, I was betrayed, which cemented everything I'd feared regarding the war. You weren’t ready to come home yet, and with Laufey dead, the war would escalate too quickly. Something had to be done swiftly…and I knew you would try to stop me, so I put an obstacle in your way."

An obstacle? Thor thought with some of the old rage. An obstacle didn’t decimate buildings and injure innocent people. None of the humans in Puente Antigua had been killed in that attack, but one of the SHIELD agents had been in the Midgardian hospital with terrible burns over the majority of his body for several months—so Fury had told Thor when he'd approached him a second time to ask for his assistance in torturing information out of his little brother.

But all the crown prince said was, "I couldn’t let you kill an entire race."

And as he had that day on the Bifröst, Loki chuckled. "Why not?" Unlike that day, however, this time Loki reminded Thor of something he'd forgotten centuries ago. "After all, you've longed to eliminate them ever since we were boys. You even told Father so. I was there."

"Loki—"

"'I'll go to Jötunheim and slay them all,' you said." Loki's smile turned bitter as Thor winced. "All. And Odin told you a wise king doesn't seek out war, but he never told you it was wrong to wish the Giants dead. And there I was," Loki added caustically. "Wide-eyed and innocent manling, thinking how brave you were, how bold, how I wished I could be just like you so Father would look at me with the same pride. And all the time Father let you boast about one day killing all the Frost Giants, even though he knew I was included in that number."

Thor's eyes flew wide and he took another step toward the window. "Loki, no! Father never intended…he didn't mean for you to take it in such a way. I would sooner lose my right arm than lose my brother."

"We were raised that the Jötunns were monsters," Loki reminded him. "Monsters, demons of ice, barbarous fiends who ate the flesh of their own kind, raped women and livestock, took innocent children in the night for the cook-pots in their slovenly kitchens. And you're surprised that when they declared war on us and my father was helpless, my kingdom in danger, and my brother on his way to make a mess of things yet again, that I would simply let them destroy us."

"You tried to destroy Jötunheim after Mjölnir returned to my hand," Thor pointed out. "After I was worthy of being king." Loki canted his head. "Why?"

"It needed to be done," Loki murmured. "Or so I thought."

"But why?"

One pale hand convulsed into a fist atop the arm of the chair. "The war was still coming. The war you brought upon us."

Thor waited, but his brother said nothing more. "And?"

"And you were coming back!" Loki lurched to his feet and strode to the glass, tension radiating from him. He banged his fist against the window. "You were coming back, the triumphant son, ready to be crowned king. If I had given you the crown then, we would've both been reviled and condemned—I for being a coward, and you for starting the bloody war in the first place."

Golden brows drew together. "What are you talking about?"

Loki sighed and shook his head, letting his forehead rest against the window. "You really are blind. Does anyone remember that your stupidity caused the blasted war in the first place? Does anyone remember that you waltzed into Jötunheim and practically slapped Laufey across the face like a fool? Everyone knew you'd been exiled for it, but does anyone remember?"

After a moment, Thor shook his head.

His brother chuckled. "Of course they don't. And almost no one remembers that I nearly obliterated the Frost Giants, either. They only remember my so-called betrayal. But if I'd handed you the kingdom just on the cusp of war, they would remember that Thor Odinson brought the slaughter upon them, and they would remember that Loki Odinson abandoned the throne and the responsibilities of the crown when threatened with conflict. Once a coward in Asgard, always a coward. What more proof would they need?" Shoving away from the window, Loki stalked to his cot and sank down upon it. "Don't you understand how your people are, Thor?"

They needed to move back to sturdier ground. Thor didn't know what to say to his brother's accusations, his half-mad reasoning that was—disturbingly—starting to sound more reasonable by the moment. What Loki had done was wrong, evil…but why he'd done it made a terrible and twisted sort of sense.

"Why did you make it seem as if Mother hated me?"

Loki's shoulders slumped. He hung his head as if suddenly unutterably weary. "Because you wanted to come home, and I couldn't let you."

"I don't understand."

"You wouldn't simply shut up and stop asking to come home," Loki snapped, lifting his head at last. Pain twisted his features. His hands shook when he ran his fingers through his hair. "You kept pleading…and no matter what I said you wouldn't stop…and I wanted to let you come home. I…I missed you. I hated what I was doing, what I thought needed to be done. I wanted my brother home. But it would have undone everything. I couldn't let you return. I had to make you stop asking. It was the only thing I could think of."

"With all your cleverness, you decided—"

"I told you," Loki broke in, "I'm not clever. Not as clever as all that. Not when my heart is being twisted up and shredded and bled dry. All my cleverness is nothing then. Now please leave me alone. I have a letter to write."

Thor hesitated. "Loki—"

"Get out."

Wondering if he'd just made everything worse by pressing, Thor made his way outside, only to find an ambush waiting for him once he'd returned to sunlight and fresh air.

"Thor," Sif said. She hung back as if waiting for him to rebuff her. The Warriors Three stood with her, but one look at their prince's face and they made their excuses, going off to do who knew what. Sif and Thor watched them go before Sif took a step forward. "Thor, I need to speak to you."

He sighed. He wasn't…angry at Sif. Not anymore. But he was exasperated by the fact that she still didn’t understand what she'd done wrong in taking Loki's drawings. It had taken his little brother's hands weeks to heal. Not only that, but the assault of seiðr when he'd tried to burst the bonds of his prison had left him exhausted for days after. Perhaps the warrior maiden thought that was a good thing; after all, Loki exhausted couldn’t launch any sort of attack on Thor or Asgard. But she didn't understand how much Loki valued those sketches.

"What do you want, Sif?"

She hesitated, then drew a breath and said, "I'm sorry for what I did to Loki. I was only thinking of trying to help you. I didn’t realize it would cause such a problem. I knew you wanted the drawings, and didn't think it would interfere with what you're trying to accomplish."

"Do you even know what it is I'm trying to do?"

Unease flashed across her face; she could tell he was still somewhat irritated. "You're trying to rehabilitate Loki."

"I am trying to understand why he did all that he's done these past three and a half years," he corrected her. "The reason for all the lies, the tricks, the betrayals. And I'm beginning to wonder if his is the only betrayal that occurred."

Sif blinked at him, clearly taken aback. "What…what do you mean?"

The words boiled up in him and burst forth. He was angry, he realized. Not at Sif for what she'd done or Loki for what he'd done, not at the Three for their words of discouragement, Tyr for baiting Loki, or his parents for lying to them all for so long. He was angry because he didn’t' know what was going on. Things had been happening in the background for years leading up to Thor's exile and Loki's treachery, things he should've seen but hadn't, and he had to ask himself—how much of what he'd missed had contributed to Loki's madness?

"Why did you hit Loki?" Thor demanded, fighting against clenching his fists. He didn’t want Sif to think he was that angry at her. "Why did you call him ärgr? Why did you and the Three come to Midgard to fetch me home after my father banished me? I know the king didn't send you. Neither did my mother. Why did you disobey Loki's order? Why did you and the Three and Heimdall choose the crown prince over your king?"

She stared at him. Her mouth fell further and further open with every word he spoke. When he fell silent, she shook her head. "I don't…I don't understand. You wanted to come home—"

"But the king had ordered me to remain in exile," Thor reminded her sharply. "What made you decide to disobey Loki? What was it that he'd done that induced you five to commit treason to bring me back?"

"We…we suspected he'd let the Frost Giants into Odin's Treasure Room the day of your aborted coronation," Sif said at last.

Thor nodded. Loki had said as much, that they'd suspected him…but he'd claimed it was without proof. "Why?" Thor asked, wondering what Sif would say…wondering why they'd never spoken of this before. Why had no one called Sif and the Three out for bringing Thor back? Only Balder and Hermod have every questioned it, and Odin had told the twins that it didn't matter now. Well, it mattered to the crown prince.

The warrior maiden fumbled for words. Clearly, Thor thought, this hadn’t been what she was expecting from her prince. Finally she said, "Laufey said…" She trailed off at the expression on the other Asgardian's face. "Thor?"

He couldn’t believe his ears. "You suspected Loki—your friend, my brother, third son of the king—of treason because one of our enemies said it was so?" He shook his head. "We'd been friends and comrades for centuries, yet you suspected him of—"

"Thor, he was guilty," Sif protested. "He was the one who brought the Frost Giants here, twice!"

"But you couldn't have known that when you disobeyed the king's edict," Thor replied softly. He wasn’t sure if it bothered him because it clearly bothered Loki, or for another reason. Yes, Loki had been responsible…but that Sif and the others would even suspect him based solely on the word of Laufey…Was this evidence of what his little brother had been saying, that their friends actually hated him? "Was there any other reason?"

"I…no," Sif said. "But after everything else he'd done—"

"What had he done?" Thor frowned. What else was being kept from him? Had Loki done something else, committed another crime against Asgard? Surely Odin and Frigga would've told the heir to the throne about it. Surely Thor would've heard about it during Loki's trial.

Sif brushed a wisp of night-dark hair out of her face. "He tricked you into going to Jötunheim in order to ensure your exile—"

"Loki had no way of knowing or even suspecting my father would exile me. I've done even stupider things before," the prince reminded her. "And the only consequence was a strapping or a public reprimand. My brother was right," he added softly, "that my father favored me. He favored me too much. Exile was the only way to undo the damage my own pride had caused."

"Then he took advantage in order to make himself king," Sif insisted.

"And how was Loki to know my father would fall into the Odinsleep when he did, when even my parents were unprepared for it?" Thor demanded. "How was he to know that my mother would make him king and not Tyr? Yes, Tyr was taken out of the line of succession, but he is also older and a better warrior than Loki, and we were headed for war with Jötunheim. How was Loki to know that Víðarr wouldn’t come home and be given the throne?"

She threw her hands up, obviously exasperated with him. "What are you saying then, Thor? That Loki has committed no crimes? That he should be released and returned to his former position of glory in the court?"

"I'm saying," he replied in a low, dangerous voice, "that I want to know why you committed treason and betrayed Loki to bring me back."

Stepping back from him, she snapped, "Betrayal, was it? I betrayed no one. Even Heimdall approved of what we did, or he never would have helped us. You were the rightful heir to the throne. It should have been you ruling Asgard while Odin slept."

"That was my mother's decision," he said. "Did it not occur to you that she could have brought me back and chose not to?"

"She doesn't see what Loki is."

And neither do you. She didn't say it, but Thor could hear it in her voice. Anger and confusion mingled like poison in his veins at the implied criticism. Maintaining his calm tone, he demanded, "And what is he?"

Some of his anger dissipated when Sif sighed and her shoulders slumped. The sorrow in her face was plain enough to see. "He's a traitor, Thor. He tried to kill you, tried to kill all of us. Innocent Midgardians were hurt in that battle against the Destroyer and during Loki's invasion. He murdered your friend. How can you defend him still?"

Thor sighed, the anger draining completely away. "What he did, misguided though it all was—and he admits that, that what he attempted was wrong—he did it to protect what was precious to him. He was trying to protect Asgard."

"Protect Asgard," Sif echoed. "You'll have to explain to me how attacking Midgard would help our Realm."

He shook his head. "That was…that was to protect someone else."

Thor realized he'd slipped up and said too much when Sif, face intent as a hunter on the scent of prey, said quickly, "Someone. Not something, but someone. Who?" The prince opened his mouth. Closed it again. If Loki learned that he'd told Sif anything about what his brother had confided in him…"Was it that woman?" Sif demanded. "Althea?"

A jolt of shock ran through him. "How do you know that name?"

"If people in the palace stopped gossiping, the walls would fall in without all that wind to hold them up," Sif replied. "Is that who Loki was attempting to protect? This Althea? Who was she? Loki's woman? She was," the warrior maiden added as she studied Thor's face. "She was Loki's woman. A mortal?" Sif shook her head as if she could scarcely believe it. "Loki with a mortal? Strange, that. And was she the one Thanos murdered?" When he said nothing, she grabbed his arm. "Thor. No one but perhaps the queen sees Loki as you do. There is talk that he's beguiled you with his famed silver tongue, tricked you into believing whatever stories he spins. What does he say to you?"

The prince shook his head. "I haven't his leave to tell you—"

"Then how are the people to know you're not being ensnared in Loki's net? How do your friends know you aren't being lied to—"

"Loki has never been one to employ tears in his mischief," Thor snapped. Sif's eyes widened. With a sigh, Thor added softly, "Have you ever known my brother to weep over anything since reaching manhood, Sif? Have you ever seen him shed a tear—for anyone or anything?" Looking dazed, the warrior maiden shook her head. Thor nodded. "That's right…but he weeps for this woman. What does that tell you?"

Sif groped for words. "That…that there is more here than we know, I think," she said at last. Thor offered a sharp nod. He didn't want to discuss this with anyone except his mother, because there was too much still left murky and unknown to him. Like his brother, he despised not knowing. But Sif wasn't done. "Has he explained why he sent the Destroyer? Why he didn't bring you home?"

After a long moment, Thor nodded. He wondered if Sif would agree with what he was about to say. "He did it to protect Asgard from me."

As he'd expected, she immediately protested. "From you? You were no threat to Asgard! You would never hurt our Realm, our people—"

"Not intentionally," the crown prince murmured. His oldest friend—aside from his foster brother—fell silent, baffled. Thor shook his head. He suddenly felt inexpressibly weary. "Don't you remember why I was banished, Sif? I started a war out of selfish pride. I invaded a Realm we had a peace treaty with, slaughtered their warriors in a fight I provoked, then had the audacity to think my father would be pleased. Not only that, but I dragged you and the Three into it, and Loki. I, the crown prince, who should have known better." He shook his head again. "Loki saw what I was, what I was turning into. He feared for the Realm. He knew I was a threat to our people, when I should have been their protector." Fixing his tired blue gaze on Sif, he added, "You know it's true, Sif. I wasn’t ready to be king. It would have brought disaster upon us all. Loki knew that…and so do you and the Three."

He could see it in her face—she didn't want to agree, because she was his friend, but she couldn’t lie, either. So she said nothing, only watched him with unhappy understanding dawning in her eyes. Sif's honor wouldn’t allow her to gloss over the truth or ignore it. Her own courage, her disdain for cowardice, forced her to acknowledge that in this, at least, Loki had been right, and the rest of them had been entirely wrong. Thor hadn’t been ready for the kingship, and Loki had tried to prevent what had happened to Tyr from happening to Thor.

"All of it," Sif murmured, voice shaking slightly. "All of it—the Frost Giants in the Treasure Room, his refusal to bring you back, sending the Destroyer—was to protect the Realm?" She shook her head. Thor saw that her knuckles were white as she gripped her staff. "But…but why try to kill us? Why send the Destroyer to stop us? Why not simply send guards to bring us back?"

"He couldn’t trust them," Thor replied softly. "If he couldn’t trust you four or Heimdall, then he couldn’t trust anyone. And he panicked." One gentle hand rested on Sif's slender shoulder. Enough of the coolness between them. Enough fighting. He'd already lost his brother for a time. He didn't want to lose his friend. "You and I have both done stupider things when afraid, haven't we? But Sif…you misunderstand what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to cure Loki of his madness; I merely wish to know what happened to him. I haven’t the power to heal his mind."

Worry sparking in her dark eyes, Sif asked, "Does anyone have that power?"

Thor drew a breath that seemed to burn as it filled his oddly tight chest. "There was one person…but she is dead, and so Loki's sanity is lost, I fear. If anyone could have helped him, it was Thea."

"What will you tell your mother?"

"I don't know, Sif," he confessed, hating himself for not knowing. "I simply don't know."