Darkness There, and Nothing... CH. 9 - Now You See It, Now You Don't

Chapter Nine

Now You See It, Now You Don't

.

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Thor frowned, utterly baffled. "Why did she think you were a Martian?"

Loki scoffed and closed his eyes, tilting his head back. "She didn't. She was simply trying to break the tension. Clever little thing, she was. Always knew just what to say to shove back the darkness, the despair." A slow shake of the head. "Her cheerfulness kept me from going mad when the dark became so oppressive I could nearly taste it."

The crown prince of Asgard knew he ought to just let his brother continue with the story. Knew that interrupting him represented its own dangers. Yet the questions about Sophie's identity still revolved around and around in Thor's brain like a tornado, refusing to leave him in peace. He had to know the truth. Loki had to explain the connection between Coulson, Thea, Sophie, and Loki and Thor themselves. What was the connection?

"Loki," Thor said softly, trying to keep his voice gentle so as not to spook or infuriate his younger brother. "Loki, tell me about Sophie." Loki flinched at the sound of the child's name. "Will you not tell me about her?"

After a moment the green-eyed prince asked in a hollow, dead voice, "What do you wish to know about her?"

A hunch and a thought had been twisting and twining in Thor's brain for several hours, ever since he'd seen the drawing of Loki holding a pregnant Thea. It couldn't be…the timing didn’t work at all…but what if…? So the Asgardian asked, "Who is Sophie's father?"

An interminable silence stretched out between them, heavy as lead, brittle as glass. Loki's eyes squeezed shut and a shudder rippled through him. His hands convulsed into white-knuckled fists. The scabbed scrapes on his knuckles split and began to ooze fresh blood, but he didn't seem to notice. Thor held his breath. He could taste his pulse in the back of his throat as his heart hammered in his breast.

At last Loki shattered the silence with a simple and terrible confession. "Sophie's father is dead."

Thor's mouth fell open. Of all the things Loki could have said, somehow that had been the last one he'd expected. Trying to gather his wits, he echoed, "Dead?" Loki nodded. Scrambling for words, finally Thor managed to ask, "How?"

A cruel, sharp smile slashed across the pale, haggard face. "I killed him."

Cold horror began blooming in the pit of Thor's belly as he stared at the savage expression twisting his little brother's features. "You…you killed him?"

"Oh, yes," Loki hissed, hatred suffusing his face. "I killed the wretch. Drove a blade into his pathetic heart and watched him bleed out, watched him suffer for…for what he'd done. For leaving them there. Leaving his helpless wife and his daughter to the Chitauri."

"You killed Thea's husband, the father of her child?"

And to the prince's horror and disgust, Loki laughed—a low, bitter sound that rattled like death in his chest and echoed in the cell and down the dungeon corridor as if the place was a mausoleum. 

"Yes, Brother," the Frost Giant murmured, still smiling that cruel, half-mad smile. "Yes, I killed him. I killed Thea's husband and Sophie's father. I watched him die, watched his heart's blood spill like a crimson fountain until there was nothing left but an empty, desiccated husk, a dead man—if he ever was a man at all."

For a long time, Thor could only stare at Loki in sick astonishment while he sat inside his cell, eyes closed as if he were merely sleeping, head resting against the cold, bare stone with that smile on his face. Finally Thor managed, "Did…did she…know? Did she know you'd done this?"

At that, Loki's eyes opened. He blinked, and his thin black brows furrowed as if he were puzzling something out. Pursing his lips, he nodded slowly. "Yes…yes, I think she knew when I left for Midgard, to lead the invasion…I think she knew then what I would do. How it would end. She was always so clever. So wise. I think she knew."

"You killed him during the invasion?" Confusion and grief suddenly gave way to certainty and rage. It couldn't be…could it? But Loki had said he'd stabbed Thea's husband in the heart and watched him die. Which meant it could only be…"Coulson," Thor breathed. Loki's head snapped around and emerald eyes fixed on the crown prince. Loki raised one brow in silent inquiry. "Coulson was Sophie's father. That is why you killed him? That is the reason?"

A bizarre expression crossed Loki's face, one Thor couldn't fathom, and then the other prince threw back his head and laughed so hard tears streamed from his eyes. Thor lunged for the glass, slamming into it with even more force than the guards had reported Loki doing. Loki didn't jump or startle in any way. He simply continued laughing. Slowly he slid from a sitting position until he lay on the floor, one hand—swollen and blue-violet with bruises—covering his mouth as the mirth refused to abate.

"Stop laughing!" Thor bellowed, bringing his fists crashing against the glass like thunder. Crimson hazed across his vision. He tasted the copper tang of blood and fury. His heart threatened to burst from his ribcage. "Stop it! It isn't funny! Stop laughing, Loki! Stop it!"

But Loki simply spoke through his laughter. "You idiot," he gasped out. "Oh, you complete and total fool. Congratulations, you have at last discovered the great mystery! Well done, Brother!"

"Don't you dare mock me, you bast—"

"You never listen!" Loki suddenly roared, cutting off Thor's tirade before it could effectively begin. Laughter abruptly gone, Loki lunged to his feet. Six savage strides brought him directing in front of Thor, only the enchanted glass between them. "How dare you accuse me of murder, of such heinous crimes? Why don't you ever listen?"

"I am listening! I am listening to the confession of a craven murderer—"

"Shut up!" Loki yelled. "Shut up, you idiot! I confessed to murder weeks ago, weren't you listening? All those Midgardians; I know their blood is on my hands! But you accuse me of new crimes without proof—"

Incensed, Thor shouted, "I saw you kill him! And you just—"

"Liar!" Loki raged. The word was so not what Thor had expected that he simply stared at his brother, unable to comprehend just what his little brother was saying. "Liar! You saw nothing! You never see anything! You never see, you never hear! You never listen! You never look!"

After a moment Thor shook his head. "Will you listen to yourself? Loki, I looked right at you when you stabbed Coulson in the back, through the heart, with the Chitauri staff. I saw you do it. I know what I saw."

Just as suddenly as the rage had come, it drained away, leaving Loki a shadowed figure on the other side of the glass. He slowly shook his head before letting it thump heavily against the window. His entire body shook as his hands dropped to his sides.

"You never listen," Loki whispered, voice thick with emotion. He thumped his forehead against the glass again. "You never listen to me. You never have. Why?"

"I am listening," he said coldly. "Your own words betray you, Laufeyson." Loki flinched, but Thor shoved away the concern that slashed at him and stepped back from the glass. "You murdered my ally, my friend, and for what? Because you lusted for his wife? What did you think—that she would go to you with open arms after you butchered her husband in cold blood?" Shaking his head in disgust, Thor turned on his heel and began to walk away. "Give up any hope of so-called vengeance, Loki. You'll never see it."

"The man you knew wasn't Sophie's father," Loki said, and they were perhaps the only words that could have made Thor pause. "Nor was he Thea's husband."

Thor sneered. "Enough of your lies—"

"I am not lying," Loki snapped. "I would not lie about this, of all things. I would never lie about…about them."

The words rang with utter sincerity…but was that a trick? Yet as much as Loki seemed to love Thea and Sophie, something in Thor told him that his little brother wouldn't lie where it concerned the two of them. But…"You said you killed Sophie's father."

Loki sighed. "I did." Haunted jade eyes met Thor's. "That man no longer exists. He is dead and buried."

"Then you still murdered—"

"It wasn't murder," Loki confessed softly. "He wanted to die; he knew the weight of the sins on his shoulders. I granted him that death. It was mercy, Thor. Surely you can see that. Mercy to end a life made bitter and empty by the destruction of all he held dear. And it was justice, to pay for his sins. So many sins…so much blood…"

The crown prince shook his head. "Who was he, then, if not Coulson?" If Loki would give him no other name, then it had to be Coulson, Thor thought. Otherwise why not tell him the identity of the man who'd fathered the Midgardian child? But Loki merely sighed in exasperation and pushed away from the glass. 

Thor took a breath. He'd let his temper get away from him. It was still twisting and writhing in his veins, making his blood boil, but he couldn't let it make him lash out or Loki would give him nothing. Instead, the prince tried a tactic that had worked in the past—guessing.

"Did I know this man?" He asked. A moment's hesitation, then Loki nodded. "Were we friends?" Another nod. "Were we allies?" Thor held his breath, waiting for the reluctant nod that eventually came. "What was his name?"

Loki looked away, and the suspicion was cemented in Thor's mind—Loki meant Coulson. Yet Coulson had seemed surprised when Thor had mentioned the Chitauri on the SHIELD Helicarrier, had claimed no knowledge of them. And hadn't Tony, the Man of Iron, spoken to Coulson of love at several points while on the Midgardian airship? In fact, yes, Thor recalled suddenly that the SHIELD agent had been in love with a woman—not Thea, based on what both Coulson and Loki had said—but had broken off the relationship for some reason, though he still cared for her. But then what of his kidnapped wife, pregnant with their child? It didn't make sense. None of Loki's story made sense.

"Loki…why did you kill Coulson?"

His brother growled low in his throat, a sound of intense frustration, before snapping, "Killed him. Is that what I did? You're so clever, why don't you tell me? Why did I do as you accuse? Hmmm?"

Thor frowned, fighting back vicious invectives that blistered his throat. Instead of snarling at his brother as he ached to do, he swallowed back the rage and grief, fought for calm, and then spoke. "You killed him because he was going to prevent you from killing me. Your brother. Your twin."

"We're not twins, Thor," Loki muttered. "We are not even brothers. I'm adopted, remember? It was a lie they spoon-fed us all this time, that we'd shared the womb together, two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin, the shadow of me to your golden light.

"I remember a shadow, Thor. I remember that shadow trying to break out of the darkness, never being allowed to do so. Always being told to know my place," he added bitterly, "which was always one step behind you. And I respected that. Even though it hurt to know that I would always be second-best, I accepted and respected that my place was at your right hand, because you were the heir and we were brothers, and that's what brothers do.

"Except I have real brothers, and they wish me dead for killing Laufey, the father who left me to die. I have foster brothers—Víðarr, Hermod, Balder, Tyr—and they want me dead for what I did to you. Then there's my so-called twin, the light to my shadow." Loki spat the words, dripping with sarcasm and disdain. "You want me dead, too.

"Do not try to deny it!" He shouted when Thor opened his mouth to protest. "You tried to kill me. I clung to Odin's staff above the abyss, I reached for your hand, and you dropped me into the void. You left me to die! And you have the gall to stand there and act as if what I did was any worse? How did it feel, Thor, to tumble through the air, fearing that once you hit the ground you would shatter, unable to get up again until your enemies found you?"

"So it was revenge," Thor replied through numb lips. Pain pulsed through his chest once, twice, like twin arrows of ice piercing deep. "You tried to kill me for revenge because of what happened to you on the Chitauri home-world."

Loki suddenly looked very tired. Slumping back against the wall, he heaved a sigh and shook his head. "You never listen. You haven't heard a word I've said, not in all this time. Why do I bother telling you anything? Why do I bother, since you obviously don't care enough to listen?" Still shaking his head, sliding to the floor, Loki said wearily, "Go away, Thor. Tell the queen you tried, but that the man she loved as a son is long dead. Tell Odin he was right—that you've seen I am nothing but a liar and a traitor, a coward and a murderer. Tell our brothers you were a fool to believe there was anything left to salvage. Go away…just go away."

Something hung betwixt them, delicate as a filament of gossamer, hanging on a precipice that yawned between the two brothers like a gaping abyss. Thor swallowed hard, wondering if he were wasting his time when he said, "I promised you I would listen. I keep my promises."

Laughter shouldn't sound like dry bones scraping against gravestones, Thor thought as Loki chuckled. What was so funny? Anger seethed beneath Thor's skin, mingled with pain and confusion until he thought he might go mad. The conflicting emotions must've shown on the crown prince's face, because Loki sighed again and seemed to take pity on him.

"Thor, why are you bothering with this? You don't believe me. I can see it on your face. You have tried, haven't you? Done what the queen asked. Let it be now."

"She's not the queen," Thor replied on impulse. "She's our mother…and she's worried about you, Loki. So is our father—"

"Your father wishes he'd left me to die out there in the cold wastes of Jötunheim," Loki said tonelessly. "And you wish I hadn't survived my tumble through the void—"

"Don't you dare say that!" Thor snapped. The sharp tone seemed to pierce the other prince's sudden apathy a little; he frowned at Thor, clearly bemused. "I didn't drop you off the Bifröst, you idiot! I didn't want Banner to beat you to death when he found you in Stark Tower! I didn't want you to break your neck when you fell from the Rainbow Bridge! You're my brother, damn you. You have betrayed me countless times, hurt me, tried to kill me, but you are still my little brother and I love you. So shut up! Stop saying I want you dead! It isn't true!"

Loki stared at him, jaw slightly slack, eyes wide. The dancing firelight made them gleam as if they were wet. He blinked several times and clenched his jaw, looking away. Slowly drawing his left knee up to his chest, he draped his arm across it and hunched his shoulders, staring at nothing as his brows knotted together above the bridge of his nose. A thin scar sliced across Loki's nose—from Banner's beating, Thor remembered. Loki pressed one fist against his mouth and hung his head so that the dark strands of his hair fell around his face like a curtain. A tremor shook the thin shoulders before subsiding.

"Brother?" Thor whispered, wondering at this sudden posture. It was a pose of tightly-controlled pain, one the blue-eyed Asgardian had seen his brother take but rarely in their lives. What was Loki thinking? What was he doing? Was Thor about to finally break through that shield of ice and poisonous sarcasm his little brother constantly employed?

"I didn't try to kill you, Thor," Loki whispered at last. "I needed you out of the way."

Forcing himself to remain calm, the prince took his recently-vacated chair, sinking into the soft cushions slowly to give himself time to formulate a proper response. "You have always been very clever, Brother," he finally said. "Could you think of no other way—"

"I'm not clever," Loki replied. Thor's brows furrowed at the unexpected words. Loki still wasn't looking at him, but at seeming nothingness. "All my plans, my brilliant schemes…the best ones were always formulated under times of great danger to me, to us."

"Those were the best," Thor agreed cautiously.

"They were also the ones with the most holes, the least likely chances of success. Luck was what always brought us through, not my cunning. You always had an extraordinary amount of luck. Born under a lucky star, Mother always said."

Sensing his brother was going somewhere vital with this—and having not missed Loki's use of the word "Mother"—Thor shrugged, a casual gesture belying the maelstrom of emotions and thoughts whirling around inside of him. "You've had your fair share of luck in the past."

Loki chuckled weakly. "It ran out that day."

"The day we stopped this invasion?" Thor asked, unsure. "Or the day I returned from exile?"

Dark lashed drifted down to make black crescents against Loki's thin, white cheeks as he closed his eyes. "The day I met Thea. I thought I knew desperation before then, but I was a fool. I couldn’t think clearly with so much at stake. More than there ever had been before. I couldn't tear my mind away from what I was trying to do in order to think of the best way to do it. Something made it almost impossible. There was too much rage, too much f—"

Loki cut himself off, swallowing hard. It was several moments before he opened his eyes and continued, "Thea said she felt a shadow growing in my mind, but she couldn't tell what it was, if it was the effect of our captivity or…but no. I could think of no other way to take you out of the battle. I knew you wouldn't die. If my plummet through space hadn't killed me, such a small tumble wouldn't have killed you, but it would have hurt you just enough."

Thor shook his head, protesting, "I don't understand, Loki. Why did you want me out of the battle?"

The hurt on his brother's face was a fleeting shadow, but he saw it. The green-eyed prince asked softly, "Do you not know? You said it yourself once. 'I will not fight you, Brother.'"

"But you did fight me that day on the Bifröst."

He nodded, his expression almost musing. "That's true, I did." He flicked his eyes to Thor's face. The vicious pain in the depths of the viridian gaze sent a pulse of sympathetic pain through the crown prince's heart. "I fought you then, because I knew I wouldn't have to kill you in order to win the battle. But in a battle for Midgard and its people? I knew I would have to destroy you utterly in order to do what was needed, because you would never back down."

"And on the Bifröst? During the explosion? You were caught in the backlash when I destroyed the Bridge because you leapt to attack me. Did you mean to kill me then?"

"I meant to stop you," Loki murmured. "I meant to knock Mjölnir from your hands so that you would have no choice but to stop trying to shatter the Bifröst. I had to destroy Jötunheim, or they would kill us all, and you wouldn't let me. I was…desperate. As I've said, my desperate plans are always the ones most likely to backfire."

Thor wondered if he were mad to believe his brother…but he did believe. Loki hadn't tried to kill him. He'd only been desperate—insanely desperate—to protect what mattered to him: Asgard, his family…and Thea and Sophie.

"Why did you say nothing?" He demanded. "Why not explain?"

Loki scoffed. "As if it would matter. It doesn't."

"It does, Loki, it does matter. It changes—"

"Nothing," he snapped with a little of his old venom. "It changes nothing. Thea is still dead. Sophie is dead. They are both dead, Thor, and nothing can change that."

It would be the end of this conversation, the rational part of Thor thought, and the death of any future revelations from his little brother…but Thor had to ask, and he had to have the right answer. He didn't know why, but he needed Loki to admit it if they were going to continue this.

"Did you love her? Did you love Thea?" Thor demanded. Loki squeezed his eyes shut, but said nothing. "Were you in love with her?"

Loki turned his face away, as if to hide from the question. "Thor, why must you ask such stupid questions? Of course I didn't love a Midgardian—"

"Did you love her?" Thor snapped. "Not a Midgardian, not a mortal. Thea. The woman whose name spills from your lips like a prayer, the woman whose death has been carved into your heart as if with a blade. The woman who makes your soul bleed every time you think of her. Did you love Thea? Were you in love with her?"

"Thor—"

"Were you in love with her?"

"Dammit, Thor—"

"Were you?"

"YES!" The word was a cry of pure, unadulterated anguish. Loki shoved his hands through his hair, clutching cruelly at the dark strands as terrible agony twisted his drawn features, as he bit his lip until blood came. "Yes, damn you, I loved her. I loved her, and now she's dead because I couldn't commit genocide, because I couldn't conquer a world to save her. Because I wasn't strong enough, desperate enough, clever enough, ruthless enough to protect her, and now she's dead!

"Are you happy now? Are you pleased? Proud of yourself, that you've wrenched this from me? Yes, I loved her! I loved her more than my own life, more than my freedom, more than food or water or breath." He dropped his hands to stare at them with something akin to horror, or perhaps it was despair. "My hands are gushing with red…for her. I did it all to save her. To save Sophie. And they're both dead. My girls. My beautiful girls, my alsklingar. I swore to protect them…" Loki dropped his face into his hands. "I loved them both. I did. I did."

"Loki?" The soft, tender voice was not Thor's. Both men turned at the sound of the younger prince's name being called to see Frigga, shrouded in a black gown, hovering at the edge of the pool of light cast by the torches. The sorrow and surprise on her pale face told Thor that his mother had heard at least part of Loki's confession of love for Thea. She stepped closer. "Loki."

For a long, terrible moment, there was only silence. Then from behind Thor came the sound of a sharply drawn breath and the rustle of clothing. Loki whispered, "Mother? What are you doing here?"

Frigga rushed to the window, pressing her shaking hands against the glass. Thor watched as Loki slowly rose to his feet. Moving like a reanimated corpse, he approached the queen and laid his hands against where hers rested on the window. He closed his eyes and dropped his forehead against the glass as if in surrender. A look of defeat settled over his features.

"Mother, you promised me you would not come here."

Thor started in surprise. Why had Loki made Frigga promise such a thing? The prince knew his mother would never have sworn an oath like that without prompting from her foster son. She'd been desperate to speak to Loki ever since he'd begun telling Thor about his captivity at the hands of the Chitauri.

"Does Father know you're here?" Thor asked gently.

The queen shook her head before focusing once more on her younger son. "Loki, I want to speak to you. Privately," she added to Thor, but it was Loki who protested.

"No, Mother. No, I—"

"Please," she said. It was all she said, just the one word, but Thor could see in his brother's eyes that Loki didn't possess the strength to turn Frigga away, and now he knew why Loki had always been so careful to refer to her as the queen instead of Mother: because here was the one person the foster prince still loved wholly and unequivocally, without any reserve; the one person Loki would tell anything to if she asked him. He hadn't wanted Thor to know that, had been afraid of what Thor could use Frigga to find out…because if he'd been ruthless enough, he could have used her to force Loki to tell him everything.

Loki drew back from the glass, but slowly, as if it pained him to do it. He hung his head, eyes downcast. A sigh shuddered out of him. He looked off to one side as if there would be answers there. "Mother, please. Why are you doing this? You gave me your word."

"If you will not speak to Thor, then you will speak to me, Loki," she said.

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists at his sides, then nodded. "I will speak to Thor if you promise to go."

Which astonished the prince quite a bit. "You would rather speak to me than Mother?"

"The two of you will tell each other everything anyway," Loki muttered.

Thor had the strangest feeling that this wasn't entirely the real reason his brother wanted him there instead of Frigga, but he said nothing to that, merely offering his mother a truncated bow. Frigga nodded first to her natural son, then to her adopted one, before turning away and leaving the dungeons.

"Have you told the All-Father any of this?" Loki asked Thor as their mother's footsteps faded into the distance. A moment's hesitation, then the crown prince shook his head. Loki nodded as if this confirmed something. "Very well." Going to the table, he dropped down into his own chair. "You know, you really are irritating. Why do you continue to pester me?"

"You promised me the story," the elder brother replied, as if that should explain everything. "I want it."

Loki smiled ruefully. "In some ways, you haven't changed at all. You know that, don't you?" They shared a smile, the first in a long time, then Loki sighed. "I am so tired, Thor. Would it not simply be easier if you just killed me?"

Thor scowled. Growling like an irate bear, he snapped, "That isn't funny."

"I wasn’t joking. There is a line of mortal verse Thea told me once. It's remarkably apt, these mortal rhymes. 'Ah, dear Althea…I will stay with thee; and never from this palace of dim night depart again: here, here will I remain with worms that are thy chambermaids. Lips, O you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death.' Except there is no kiss, and there is no death, much as I may long for it. There is only this endless purgatory."

"You don't really want to die, Loki."

He scoffed. "What do you know of it?" He demanded bitterly. "Nothing. You don't know what it's like to think you still have one last hope, only to have it snatched from you at the very last. You have no idea what it feels like to be told that your…that the woman you love is dead, through your failures."

Taking a gamble, the elder prince replied, "Then tell me. That is what you want, isn't it? For me to know your pain? For me to feel your grief?"

Loki said nothing for what seemed an eternity. At last, however, he said, "There was nothing in the darkness but that small light she offered, and the sound of her voice. I came to depend upon it. It was that, or succumb to the pitiless silence, the hungry dark. She offered me succor, even though she didn't know me, had no reason to be kind to me. Such kindness. I've never known its like before."

"We have never been unkind to you," Thor protested before he could stop himself.

The pseudo-Æsir raised a sardonic brow. "You are so blind, Brother. You always have been. You see only what you wish to see, instead of what's right in front of you." When the Asgardian opened his mouth to protest, Loki demanded, "Do you want the story or don't you?"

Thor closed his mouth. Time enough to deal with Loki's allegations of unkindness later. He nodded for his little brother to continue.

"She was always so cheerful," Loki continued, in a low voice soft with remembrance. "I couldn't fathom it, how she could remain so bright in the dark. She'd been kidnapped, hurt, locked in a cage without light or access to the outside world. She only had me. I didn't understand how she could stay so optimistic…"

.

"What are you doing?" Loki asked some hours later as a series of thuds echoed from the other side of the wall. "Thea?" His voice sharpened when she didn't respond. Unease whispered like the faintest traces of poison in his veins. He pressed himself against the wall. He could feel the steady percussion of something heavy hitting the stone. Tiny bits of rubble skittered out of the hole between their cells and rattled to the floor. "Are you all right?"

"I'm (thud) fine (thud), just (thud) trying to (thud) make this (thud-thud) stupid hole (thud-a-thud-thud) bigger!" Panting for breath, she hit the wall again. "Ow! This is (thud) making my (thud) feet hurt."

Loki's brows rose and incredulity flooded him. "Are you kicking the wall?"

The smile was obvious in her voice when she gasped out, "Worked last time, didn't it? Sort of. Maybe I'll feel better if I yell 'hi-ya!' That always works in the movies. Hi-ya! (thud) Ow. Yeah, that didn't help. Whatever, time to see what the damage is."

Rustling issued from the dimly lit shadows on the other side of the wall, and then the beam of her flashlight illuminated the area she'd been pummeling with her feet. Loki peered through the hole in time to see a quick gleam of teeth as the mortal woman grinned. Then the light skated around the cell to land on a dark mass tucked against one wall. The beam wobbled as Thea crawled toward the mass—which was probably one of her two packs.

Why had the Chitauri let her keep them? It didn't make sense. But Loki wouldn't worry about it now. He listened to Thea rooting around in her pack before exclaiming in triumph. Scraping ensued as she scrambled back to the wall.

"This should be so much easier now," she muttered. A familiar chink-chink-chunk-chank sound followed, and tiny fragments of stone crumbled to the floor. "See, my mom's got one of those old-fashioned nail files that supposedly you can saw through prison bars with. I don't know why. And there aren't any bars in here anyway, which stinks because that would make this a bit more fun—funner? More fun? I dunno, you know what I mean—but whatever, you take what you can get."

"But you cannot escape that way," Loki said. Surely she didn't think he knew a way to get out of his own cell, or surely he would have done so by now. So why did she want to make the hole bigger?

She made a rude noise of derision. "Yeah, I know that. I'm not trying to escape. I already checked all the other walls for cracks. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. That's not the point."

"Then what is the point?"

"The point is that a) I'm bored out of my mind and the only things to do are talk and take a nail-file to this stupid hole, and b) I want to see your entire face. It seems like a nice face. I like your chin."

He blinked, unsure if he'd heard her correctly. "My chin?"

"What little I saw of it, yeah. And you have a dimple in your left cheek, did you know that? Totally cute. You're covered in dirt, but I'm not exactly a supermodel right now, either. You should see me when I'm not totally gross. You'd be all over me like sprinkles on a strawberry sundae."

If he didn't focus on the minutia of her little sayings, he found they made sense—usually. "Oh, would I?" He asked, smiling. The muscles in his face protested the unfamiliar strain. "And why is that?"

"Because," she replied tightly. He could hear her doing…well, it sounded like she was attempting to pry a piece of stone out of the wall. "I am stunning to behold. I am God's gift to men. I'm a love goddess…minus the sexy fun time part. So just the beauty part, but beauty goddess sounds weird, so just go with it. Oh, for crying out loud, what is holding this wall together? Cement? I—will—pry—you—out—now!" There was a loud crack, Thea yelped, and then there was another crack. "Ow, ow, ow! Are you serious? Ow!"

The smell of rust and salt trickled in through the somewhat bigger hole in the wall. Loki was fairly certain he could easily shove his arm through up to the shoulder. He knew the scent carried on the stale air—blood. 

"Thea?"

"Tore my fingernail," she whispered, voice taut with pain. "It's bleeding a bit. Great. Ow, that really hurts. Mmph." When she spoke again, her voice came muffled, as if she had something in her mouth. Her injured finger? "Thon of a theabath. That hurth. If thith geth infected, I'm gonna be pithed. Grrr, thay thomething to dithtract me, pleathe."

Loki cast about for a topic, but the only one he could think of was something he'd managed to scrape together enough energy to be interested in. "You spoke of your powers. What are they?"

"Hmmm? Oh," she said, and he realized she'd pulled her finger out of her mouth. "Illusions. Basically. And limited telepathy in conjunction with the illusions. Like, I can't read your mind, even if I wasn't wearing this stupid inhibitor collar—I will kill these goons when I get my hands on them—but my illusion works with your brain, you know? 

"So, for example, I could stick someone in a memory and my illusion pulls all the sensory information out of their brains automatically to formulate that illusion. So like, if I trapped you in a memory of the hottest day you'd ever experienced, my power automatically pulls stuff—like how hot it felt, whether there was a breeze, how itchy your shirt felt after you got a sunburn, all that stuff—out of your brain and makes you feel it all over again. That also works if I want to trap you in one of my memories. And once I cast the illusion from someone's memory, I've got that memory, too. Since I have an eidetic memory, I never forget anything."

"A what?"

"Eidetic," she repeated, enunciating the word carefully. "A photographic memory. I never forget stuff. Once it's in my noggin, it's there forever. What makes that great is that I can take a mishmash of memories and make new illusions based on the data in my brain. So if I wasn't wearing this collar, say, I could cast an illusion of my room, and we could actually interact with it and all that, because of all the sensory information stored in my head."

He stopped to consider the implications of such a talent. "So you could trick someone into thinking anything? Anything at all?" When she made an affirmative sound, the dark part of his mind made him ask, "Could you make someone think they were dying?"

"Yeah, but it wouldn't actually kill them. Survival instinct is too strong. I can hurt people, though, if I concentrate hard enough. Trap them in memories I have of bad things that have happened to me. Like once a pot of boiling water fell on my foot, and one time I went swimming and got tangled up in some weeds and nearly drowned. 

"It's just really hard to get to that point. The professor spent a long time drilling into my head not to do that to people, because the last person who had a gift like mine was crazy. For a long time there was a mental block in my mind so I could do that kind of thing. My power's not really good for offensive or defensive stuff, really. I'm sorry. 

"Hey, Loki," she added suddenly, sounding a bit forlorn. The shift in her tone of voice was enough to catch his attention. "Do you think…maybe…well, it's kinda dark in here, even with the flashlight, and I've got this thing about the dark if I'm stuck in it for too long, and I just…'cause my powers aren't really working. I mean, I can project an illusion for myself even with the collar, but I can't touch it or anything, so it's not really helping. And I'm all alone in here, kinda freaking out a little, so I was wondering if maybe…could you hold my hand for a sec? I think mine will fit through the hole okay."

He jolted. To touch her…the first gentle, friendly touch he'd known in six months. The last time anyone had touched him like that had been after he'd put an end to Laufey. His mother had taken him in her arms, so proud of him for protecting his father. To know a kind touch once more…

Loki cleared his throat. "Of course."

In the dim light of the flashlight she'd given him, a slender pale thing emerged from the blackness of the wall like a white lily blooming in the twilight. Questing fingers grasped at the air. With an arm that shook, Loki lifted his hand and caught Thea's.

The silken touch of her skin was a shock after nothing but grit, muck, blood, and stone all this time. Her hand was dirty, but beneath the light dusting of broken wall bits was skin as soft as satin. The delicate bones moved beneath the flesh as she startled at the touch of Loki's large and callused hand. Then her fingers closed convulsively around his and she made a small sound. She clasped his hand, and he gripped hers, squeezing gently. A strange tingle began in his fingertips and shot up his arm. Heat washed down his spine.

There was a flash of light, emerald and ivory intertwined in a blinding corona…and suddenly he wasn't in his cell anymore. He was outside, but not on the Chitauri home-world. Loki scrunched his eyes shut against the vicious glare of the sun and covered his face with his forearm. Only after a long, long moment could he pull his arm back down again to look around him.

Grass burst vividly green from the soil all around, except under his feet. He stood on some sort of rectangular stone courtyard painted with orange, white, and red lines. Two metal poles topped with white boards and red hoops with nets underneath stood on opposite ends of the stone courtyard. There were stone and wood buildings nearby, trees and a fountain, and an orange sphere laced with black lines sat on the ground beside one of the metal poles. A gentle breeze ruffled the grass.

Next to it stood a woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with long dark hair tumbling down her back and familiar blue-gray eyes. Though no dirt smeared the heart-shaped face, Loki still recognized her. Judging by the way hers eyes widened and her jaw went slack, she recognized him, as well.

"Thea?"

"What the frack?" She yelped, stepping backward, and then Loki was back in his cell, plunged into darkness, no longer clasping Thea's slender hand in his own. On the other side of the wall, he could hear her mumbling, "No freaking way. No way. How the…what…how…what?"

"What just happened?" Loki whispered. "Where were we?"

After a moment, Thea said, "That was the school where I work. Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters. It was a memory. The same one I was thinking of when I asked if I could hold your hand, because I couldn't bring it up all the way."

Realization struck Loki like a thunderbolt. "Then that means, if you're touching me, then you can—"

"Then I can use my powers."