Darkness There, and Nothing... CH. 8 - I Have No Title Yet

Author's Note: so I have no title for this chapter. Any thoughts?

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Chapter Eight

I Have No Title Yet

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When Thor returned to the dungeons, he found Loki pacing furiously back and forth across the length of his cell. One arm was tucked behind his back, pressed tight against his body, hand clenched into a white-knuckled fist that only emphasized the raw scrapes and bloodstains marring the pale skin. Loki's other hand was raised to his mouth. Tiny rivulets of crimson trickled over his fingers to soak into the hem of his dusty-green sleeve. It took Thor a moment to realize his little brother was biting down on the middle knuckle of his index finger hard enough to draw blood. Loki's head was bent, eyes squeezed shut. Thor paused several paces from the glass when he heard Loki muttering to himself.

"Who was it? I don't know, alskling, I don't know, but I'll find out. I won't let them do this to you. It's all right. It's all right. There's still time. I promise you that I'll make them pay for what they did to you. I'll make them pay, Thea. For you…for Sophie." Loki made it to the far side of the cell, whirled around, and started across the room again. "I had no choice," the prince added. "Forgive me, I had no choice. I…I…" Loki suddenly jerked to a halt, bringing both hands up to clutch at his temples. Eyes snapping open in a blaze of cerulean, he snarled, "What is that hideous sound? What is it?"

Those half-glazed eyes spotted Thor. The knotted brows slowly relaxed. The snarl faded from Loki's face as the strangely mazarine gaze fixated on the three pieces of paper in the crown prince's hand. In three swift strides, Loki was pressing himself against the glass, uncaring of the fresh blood left by his hands.

"You found them!" Loki rasped. He sucked in a sharp breath through his clenched teeth, his entire body seeming to yearn toward the drawings. "Give them to me, Thor!" When the older prince didn't move, Loki yelled, "Give them to me!"

"First you must answer my questions," Thor said softly. He motioned to the guard for his customary chair. It was brought and Thor took his seat, glancing between the topmost sketch—the one of Loki and the girl watching television on the couch—and his little brother, pressed hard against the enchanted window. "Who is the woman in these drawings?"


Loki jerked back as if Thor had bared a serpent's fangs at him. "You looked at them?"

He sighed, exasperated. "Rather difficult not to, don't you think, Brother?" Holding up the topmost drawing so Loki could see it, the crown prince reiterated, "Who is this woman?"

Green eyes lanced with that bizarre electric blue flicked to the drawing, and a look of such intense longing twisted the pale features that unease churned in Thor's belly. Loki's eyes traced the delicate lines of the sketch like a loving caress. The thin black brows rose and the pale lips parted, turning the foster prince's expression into one of abject pleading…yet Thor was certain his brother wasn't directing that gaze at him, but at the girl in the picture. Loki's slender shoulders rose and fell sharply as he took a quick breath, then let it out. He closed his eyes and let his forehead thump gently against the glass.

"This is Thea, isn't it?" A shudder rippled through Loki at the sound of his brother saying the name. Thor leaned back in his chair and asked, careful to keep his voice gentle, "What is this drawing of, Brother?"

Another shudder shook Loki's frame. "A Midgardian entertainment called a movie," he replied, voice bitter with defeat. "Tangled, it is called…about a girl imprisoned in a tower who finds her freedom. Give it back to me."

"How do you know of this…movie?" Thor needed to know. He sincerely doubted the Chitauri were in the habit of offering their prisoners entertainment of any kind, and Loki didn't seem the type to fritter away his time watching foolish Midgardian entertainment when he had an invasion to plan. Another chink in the story, the prince thought, along with Coulson's murder, Thea's bags, and Sophie's identity.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Loki replied in a whisper.

"Try me," Thor commanded, voice sharper than he'd intended.

Loki's eyes suddenly chilled, frosting over with the same cold hatred Thor had seen so many times before. The crown prince didn't look away from his foster brother's gaze, but held it until a smirk curved Loki's thin lips. Then the infuriating brat slowly shook his head.

"Loki—"


Thor cut himself off. Clearly his brother was attempting to bait him…but why? So he would destroy the precious drawings? That was what the disguised Frost Giant did with them himself, after all. The Asgardian wouldn't fall for that little ploy. Instead, he went to the second drawing, of Thea spinning amidst the crashing ocean waves. He held it up so his brother could see it plainly.

"And this?" Thor demanded. Loki said nothing, though a shadow passed over his face. "What is this? A memory? When did you and Thea go to the sea, Brother?"

Still Loki didn't speak. He merely sneered at Thor. That sneer stayed fixed in place until Thor lifted the third sketch—an anguished Loki holding an obviously-pregnant Thea before the moonlit window—and raised one eyebrow in silent inquiry.


The change that overtook the green-eyed prince was almost instantaneous. Wide-eyed, he recoiled from the drawing, stepping back from the ensorcelled window with his hands up as if to ward off the image. His throat worked convulsively and what little blood remained in his face drained away. He retreated until his back smacked against the far wall. Then his long legs buckled, sending him sliding to the floor.

"How dare you?" Loki whispered in a voice that shook. "How dare you use my penance as a weapon against me, Odinson?"

Puzzled, swallowing back the first sting of guilt—he hadn't realized Loki would react like this—Thor stood and laid the stack of drawings on the seat of his chair. He approached the cell window cautiously. His little brother trembled on the floor, face haggard with grief. Before Thor could speak, Loki shoved his scraped, bruised, bloodied fingers into his hair and tilted his head back. His lashes made dark crescents against his death-pale cheeks as he drew in a deep breath and let it out. Took another breath, held it, let it out. He didn't open his eyes for several minutes. When he did, the blue tinge to his gaze had disappeared, and he looked a little more like himself again.


"I'd like those back now," Loki said in a soft, even tone that made the hair on Thor's arms prickle. "I need them back, Thor. They need to be burned."

"Why do you always burn them?" He'd asked that question once before, and Loki had rebuffed him with a sarcastic response, but the crown prince didn't think his brother would do so this time. "You mentioned penance. What penance?"

Loki was silent for a time, then he looked away, murmuring, "I promised her I would remember."

"Remember what?" Thor asked gently.

A weak chuckle echoed in the prison cell. "'Weep not for roads untraveled,' she used to tell me. That is a Midgardian song that she liked. She told me to remember the beauty and forget the ugliness. Remember peace and forget pain." Glacial emerald eyes flicked to Thor and Loki's expression turned murderous. "That is the woman you killed, Brother." Closing his eyes once more, Loki sighed and slumped against the wall. "And I am such a weak-willed cretin, I cannot even keep my last vow to her."

Still confused, Thor asked, "But…but what was your vow?"

"To remember her," Loki whispered at last. "To remember her and Sophie, to immortalize them in my memory. To retrace the threads of their lives as they intertwined with mine until they were imprinted within me for eternity. To refuse to forget them as they were."

And Thor remembered his brother earlier that morning, working his illusion. I'm sorry, Thea, Loki had murmured, staring up at the ceiling after struggling to make the illusion of Sophie younger and younger. I couldn't do it. I cannot look at her as…as she…I cannot do it. Forgive me.

As they were…

On sudden impulse, Thor asked, "Loki…when was Sophie born? Do you know?"

A tense, feral stillness gripped the other prince. In a voice carefully devoid of any and all emotion, he replied, "Yes."

"When was she born?" He waited, but Loki said nothing. After a few minutes of taut silence, Thor tried to cajole, "Will you not tell me?"

"No."

A beat of silence. "Why not?"

Loki's nostrils flared and wrinkles snarled between his brows. The ice melted from his gaze as he looked at his brother. "It is too soon to tell you. You wouldn't believe me…and if you did, it would hurt you to know."

Thor frowned. "Hurt me? How?" No answer. "Will you not tell me, Brother?" Loki shook his head. "Why not? Isn't that what you want—to hurt me, to make me pay for what my sins against Thea and Sophie—"


"Don't say their names as if they are nothing," Loki snapped. "They're not nothing! If you knew who they were, you would…" He trailed off, swallowing back whatever he'd intended to say. He shook his head. "You have no idea how to say her name. Their names. You have no idea how to speak of them."

Baffled, the crown prince replied, "I don't understand."

"You say her name as if it is nothing, as if it doesn't sit on the tongue like…" Loki trailed off again, eyes suddenly darting frantically around the room as if searching for something. He straightened slightly. "What is that? What is that sound?"

This was the third time today, Thor thought, that Loki had claimed to hear something when no audible noise came to his elder brother's ears. Still the prince strained to make out whatever sound his brother might be hearing. There was nothing. "What sound, Loki?"

"That sound! That hideous, wretched sound!" One slender hand came up to press against the pale temple glistening with a sudden sheen of sweat. "Don't you hear it, Thor? Don't you hear it? That sound…I can scarcely bear it. Hnn…" Loki pressed the heels of his palms against his temples and hunched his shoulders. Tension quivered through his entire body. His voice rose in pitch as he curled himself into a sort of ball. "It never stops for long. Why does it haunt me? Why that sound?"

"Loki, what sound?" Thor demanded. Loki's teeth had sunk into his lip hard enough to reopen the wound he'd chewed there earlier. A thin trickle of crimson spilled down his chin to stain his tunic. "What sound, Brother?"

Loki shook his head as if to shake the sound away. "The crying," he breathed with soft horror. "The crying…the baby crying."

Thor frowned. "What?"

But there was no answer. After several tense minutes of silence while Loki panted for breath and shivered as if in the throes of agony, the tension suddenly faded from the prince's body and he sagged against the wall, hanging his head in obvious exhaustion. When his breathing evened out, he said softly, almost as if to himself, "There is always a baby crying. In waking. In sleep. I can hear her wails in my dreams. My nightmares…haunted by the desperate cries of a child in pain. Such cruel suffering…I didn't want…I never meant…why does she haunt me?"

He dropped his head into his hands and simply sat there, shuddering for a time. At last he raised his head and whispered in a voice suffused with pain, "She's dead, Thor. Sophie. My little Sophie…yet she haunts me still. And Thea…I hear her screaming in my dreams. What the Chitauri did to her…to Thea…"

Surtur's blade, Thor thought as horror twisted and coiled in his belly like a serpent. Was that why Loki always looked as if he hadn't slept? Because he heard the woman he loved and the child that Thor was almost certain was hers being tortured and murdered by the Chitauri? Surely Odin could do something for Loki's nightmares…surely…

But the way Loki said the two names told Thor what he'd meant earlier. When Loki said, "Thea," there was such an odd note there. He said her name as if it were the words to a song, a plea to the Creator for strength as well as a prayer of gratitude…a cry of joy and a lamentation. The same with Sophie's name, but there was an undercurrent there too, of pride, of pain, of protectiveness. As if Sophie were a rare and precious treasure that belonged to Loki alone.

"Here, Brother." Letting instinct guide him, Thor moved to the door and slid the drawings beneath it. The seiðr allowed the pages through, as they possessed no magic and could not be used as weapons or as a means of escape.

Loki scrambled for the sketches, snatching them up to press to his chest. Before Thor could say anything, Loki stalked to the fire and cast the first two drawings into the flames. He paused only for the third. Trembling fingertips lightly traced over the woman in the window, followed by Loki's shadowed jade eyes, before the prince cast that drawing into the fire as well. The paper browned and curled, charring around the edges. Blackness spread across the pages as they crinkled and burned. The scent of smoke and burning paper filled the air. Loki never took his eyes off the sketches until they were nothing but char and ash.

"Why do you burn them?" Thor asked, because there was something more than this "penance" Loki spoke of. The penance was why he drew them in the first place, but why burn them? Unless they were his offering to Thea's ghost, like the letters his foster brother often wrote. "Tell me."

"I despise them," was the astonishing reply. "I cannot bear them to be in the world…when Thea and Sophie are not." Loki sighed. "Will you not leave me in peace, Thor?"

"I brought your drawings back," the prince reminded his little brother. "You promised me more of your story. I cannot help you convince Odin if you do not tell me the entirety of it, and if we cannot convince him, your vengeance will slip through your fingers."

Loki said nothing, merely watched the flames. Then he turned and strode to the wall, where he sank down and sat tailor-fashion upon the floor, resting his back against the cold, pale stones. Another sigh escaped him as he leaned his head back and closed his eyes. If not for the raw knuckles, bloodied fingers, chewed lip, and the dark circles beneath Loki's eyes—so stark against his sickly pallor—Thor might have Loki was merely resting his eyes or something, instead of readying himself for some fierce battle with the past, as Thor knew him to be doing.

When his brother spoke again, it was not what Thor expected. It had nothing to do with Thea, Sophie, or the Chitauri, though it did concern the past—a much more distant past, before Loki had first betrayed them all.


"Do you remember when Víðarr came home from his coming-of-age quest with a bride?"

Golden brows rose nearly to Thor's hairline. "I…do. Yes. Why?"

"Tell me about it," Loki requested softly without opening his eyes. "What do you remember?"

"Surely you remember it better than I," Thor protested. After all, Víðarr had come home during Thor's exile, before things had gone truly mad.

His little brother shook his head. "Please, Brother—tell me of our sister-in-law."

Utterly confused, Thor settled himself back in his chair. Crossing his legs at the ankle, he folded his arms across his broad chest and tried to remember as much as he could. "Víðarr went to retrieve a lost relic, stolen by Surtur himself, from Muspelheim. On his way, he had to stop in Vanaheim. There he met Bellalyse, one of the common-born Vanir—though rather an uncommonly beautiful one—and they fell in love. They stole away from Vanaheim in secret because her father wanted her to marry the blacksmith or some such, who was a brute and a scoundrel. Sometime between when they left and when Víðarr returned home with her, he gave her one of the Golden Apples of Iðunn and they were wed."

Which would have been a bit trickier politically, Thor thought to himself, if Bellalyse had been a nobleman's daughter instead of the daughter of a herdsman. But once a non-Æsir was given one of Iðunn's Golden Apples—the source of the Æsir's strength, longevity, and power—they were bound to the giver as a spouse. That was all it took to wed an Asgardian, really—simply one bite, offered by someone of the opposite gender who was not already wed, and so long as the eater was not already wed, and so long as they both possessed the knowledge that a bite from the Apple would bind the eater to the Æsir as a spouse.


There was more to the wedding ceremony if both partners were Asgardian, but the seiðr involved meant that no witnesses were needed (convenient for young lovers with disapproving parents), though it was considered customary to invite both families if possible. Bellalyse had known all of this when she'd accompanied the fourth prince of the House of Odin on his quest, and yet gone with Víðarr gladly, knowing her family would not be pleased.

"I've always been fond of Bellalyse," Loki murmured. Thor dragged himself out of his reverie to focus once more on his little brother, who still sat with his eyes closed, smiling faintly now, though there was such weariness to the expression that it made Thor tired just to look at it. "She was always so very kind to me during your exile. Never acted as if I might turn her wine into a goblet of snakes, for instance."

"You can hardly blame that servant for being afraid of you doing such after you did it to him, Loki," Thor reminded him, shaking his head in exasperation. "That was a waste of good wine, as well."

Loki merely shook his head. "A little mischief never hurt anyone. A good trick now and then is good for the blood."

"I've told you the story," Thor replied, refusing to be drawn into a debate about mischief; Loki had long since moved past mischief when he sent the Destroyer to Midgard; the crown prince still couldn't be sure if he believed his brother's supposed reasoning for why he'd done so. Instead, he said, "Now you owe me the tale you promised me."

Several moments passed in silence broken only by the snap and crackle of torches and the fire in his brother's hearth. Finally Loki nodded. Ebony strands of hair fell across his brow and eyes, masking the emotion in his gaze. Did Loki dread telling more, Thor wondered?

"Very well," the adopted prince said softly. "Where did we leave off?"

Though Thor suspected Loki knew very well where they'd left off in his story, Thor replied, "Thea had widened the crack in the wall so you could see her face, and she could see you."

"Ah," Loki murmured. "Yes. My first glimpse of a friendly face in many moons…"

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"Hi, there," Thea said brightly.

A shadow swept across her cheek and temple, and Loki realized she was brushing the hair back from her grimy face. Her gray-blue eyes sparkled almost obscenely with her triumph in widening out the crack so they could glimpse each other. Loki wondered how she'd even known the crack was there in the first place. Had she dug her fingers into mortar and stone in vain attempt to draw closer to the voice on the other side of the wall?

Thea peered at him, angling her face as if she were trying to see something difficult to make out. She shifted again, pressing her eye socket to the crack—more like a small hole, now—in order to see better. But this cut off the light from her little torch, plunging Loki once more into darkness. A low sound of protest strangled in his throat as the dark pressed in against him, bearing down like a hellhound intent on the kill.
"Hang on a second," Thea muttered, pulling back, and the blessed light came back, though it was muted as she angled the glow away from the hole. What was she doing? When would the light return fully? There was that rustling sound, the zzzzz Loki had heard earlier, and the clatter of hard objects jouncing against each other. "I will find it…now. Or not. How about now? No. Okay, I just had them, where did they go? Seriously. You cannot hide from me, flashlights, I know where you live. Where are you? Wait a minute…" There was a sharp sound of exultation, followed by the full return of the light. "Here, take this," Thea said, thrusting something through the hole.


It slid with a harsh grating sound and fell onto Loki's leg. His hand closed around it convulsively. It was smooth and hard, but didn't quite feel like metal. Perhaps two inches long, it seemed to have a slim circular handle that took up the majority of its length. A wider circular piece at the end had a flat, glass-like piece about the size of a small coin in the center, though Loki couldn't make out the details of the contraption. When he ran his fingertip along the side of the wider part, something slid beneath his touch with a soft clicking sound. When he pushed at it again, a vivid beam of nearly-blinding light erupted from the wide end and shot up toward the ceiling.

He shut his eyes hastily, waiting for the same ache that had lanced his eyes before when Thea had flashed her own small light to dissipate. When it finally faded, he opened one eye cautiously, then the second. Blinking hard to clear the spots from his vision, he let his eyes adjust.

Among other things, the luminous beam illuminated most of Loki's body. He grimaced. He'd known instinctively what he looked like, but to see it…he'd fallen far from the elegant battle-armor he'd worn when he'd made the greatest mistake of his life and let himself fall from the Bifröst. His armor was gone, leaving him in only ripped trousers of soft black leather and a tattered green tunic spattered with old bloodstains and grime. The flesh that showed through the torn fabric, crusted blood, and filth was pale as a corpse. No sun for six months would do that to a man, he supposed.

Swinging the beam around his cell allowed him to fully appreciate its squalor for the first time. No cot or pallet, only hard stone floor and walls; no lights at all, as he'd already determined by feel six months previous; a hole in the floor to serve as a privy—with a lid, thank heavens, to keep in the stench—in the far corner; a spigot sticking out of the wall where water would trickle sometimes when he was at his most desperate; a very small vent near the ceiling to circulate air so he didn't stifle to death; the metal door that opened at random to let in his torturers so they could beat him with merciless fists before dragging him out into the corridor by his limp arms and his hair; the one-way swinging slot in the bottom of the door where the Chitauri shoved in plates of prison slop, but that he couldn't push out to get even a breath of fresher air or dimmest light; and nothing else. No windows, no hinges on the inside of the door, no blanket or pillow, no amenities or anything.

"Oh, bleh," Thea mumbled from her side of the wall. Loki immediately zeroed in on her voice again; she sounded distracted. He peered through the hole in the wall and saw the vague shadow of her against the far wall of her own cell as she swung her own beam of light around the small room. Strange—her cell appeared to be a little bigger than his own. Or perhaps it was simply that she was smaller. Was she smaller? "This place is a box. I'm starting to miss my old dorm at school."


"Dorm?" Loki asked.

Her head whipped toward him; he could see the ripple of her hair, a moving shadow that suddenly brought to mind something he'd thought of many times since his imprisonment—women. He hadn't seen a woman, or had one, in six months. Hadn't had one soft word, one soft touch. Hadn't felt the caress of a woman's fingertips against his brow, or tasted soft lips, or touched the silk of her hair. Loki suddenly wondered what color Thea's hair was.

"Yeah," the girl said. He could see her crawling back to the wall they shared. The beam of light danced crazily around the room as she moved toward him. "When I was younger—up until I graduated college—I went to a boarding school. We slept in dorms. It always bugged me because I had to share a room with three other girls, and we all had our problems, you know? Hard to sleep when your roommate's throwing things around the room in her sleep with her mind, or screaming from a nightmare and shattering the windows. Though to be honest, I probably wasn't the easiest roommate to be around, either. Until I got a handle on my powers, things were a bit…tense." She settled with a sigh back into place against the wall. "Say, you don't have a problem with me being a mutant, do you?"


"What is a…mutant?" He imagined a pair of eyes in the back of the girl's head, or horns under her hair, or perhaps extra fingers or tentacles on her belly. He'd seen such things in other realms.

"It means I have special powers," Thea replied cautiously. "How do you not know that? Mutants are like, the big controversy right now. Whether we have the right to go to school and hold jobs and stuff. Apparently my friend Kitty—one of my old roommates—is one of our spokespeople now because some big-shot senator mentioned how she could walk through walls in a Congress meeting and everybody flipped out. It made the news about eight months ago."


"I am not from Midgard."

There was a pause, as if she were mulling something over, then the girl said, "Wait…are you an alien?"

"That is the Midgardian word for it, I believe." He didn't tell her he was a god. She wouldn't believe him, and he certainly didn't feel very godly right now. Besides, though humans had worshipped Asgardians as gods at one point, it had never been the aim of the Æsir to be treated so—merely a consequence of their power being witnessed by the simple Midgardians who'd lacked any other explanation for such might.

Thea gasped. "You're kidding. Oh, my gosh, my mom will freak when I get home. I can tell her I met an alien, too. And that he was nice. My mom has this phobia about aliens 'cause she saw this movie. Anyway, I'm babbling because I'm freaking out because I've been kidnapped—again! Only by evil aliens this time, apparently."


He didn't have the heart to tell her that she would never get home, never see her mother or tell her that the girl had met a "nice alien." Nice. She thought he was nice? She didn't know him. Didn't know what he was capable of. No one in Asgard would consider him "nice." This girl was almost sweet in her naïveté.

Then something she said struck him anew. "You have been held captive before?"

She made an aggravated sort of growling sound. "Yeah, when I was a senior in high school. My school was attacked by these guys, I don't know what they wanted other than to kidnapped us. Most of us got out, but this freshman kid I'd been mentoring, helping him with his powers, I had to go find him and we ended up getting caught. One of our teachers saved him, but I ended up getting rounded up with everyone else who got captured. Our teachers came and got us, though."

"Why did they want the children at your school?" Not that it mattered to him, really, but he wanted to hear her explanation. She had a unique way of speaking. Clearly Midgardian, but there was a lightness to it that seemed to push back the darkness almost as well as the tiny Midgardian torch she'd given him.

"Probably," Thea replied sourly, "for the exact same reason these Chitauri want us—for our powers. You do have powers, right? Because if you don't then I'm wondering why they kidnapped you."



Oh, he had powers. Seiðr was his life's blood, it seemed, but he couldn't use it in the shape he was in. Not enough to do anything important, at any rate. He was too malnourished, too dehydrated, too badly hurt, too weak. "I do," Loki mumbled. "But I cannot use them."

"Yeah," she sighed. "Me, either. The jerks. When Phil finds me, he is going to rip these guys to pieces. Him and his boss. His boss is kinda scary, but you know what? I'm banking on scary being a good thing right now. My mom's probably frantic," Thea added softly, a slight waver in her voice. "Jeez. And my brothers are probably going crazy."
The words pricked at his interest while raking across his heart. Brothers. Suddenly Loki thought of Thor: built like a grizzly bear, affable as an old dog, with his leonine looks and good humor, with his loyalty. Víðarr, still so besotted with his beautiful bride, Bellalyse that he hadn't been concerned at all about Thor, the coming war, Odin's prolonged sleep. Hermod and Balder, still not of age, both princes idolizing their older brothers. Tyr, with his temper and dark looks so like Loki's. Loki had idolized him as a child.


"You have brothers?" Loki asked, swallowing back salt and grief. He'd been such a fool. Even if Odin had rejected him, had never truly loved him as a father, he'd still had Thor, Víðarr, Balder, and Hermod. Even Tyr, though Tyr had always been cold toward his brothers since being passed over for the throne. He'd had Frigga. Why had he let go of his father's staff?

"Yeah, five brothers and two sisters," she replied. "Two younger sisters, one older brother, three younger brothers, and my twin, Anthony, who's an hour older than me, but we still like to argue about who's older just to be ridiculous sometimes. Everyone calls him Theo, though, because everyone calls me Thea."

"Is that a nickname?"

"Short for Althea, but that's my so-called real mom's name, so I shortened it to Thea when I was kid because I'd always thought it was prettier than Althea."

Why had his heart suddenly sped up? "Your…real mother?" She hesitated, as if unsure she wanted to answer his question, so Loki added, "I mean no disrespect, but I would like to understand you better." Anything, so long as she kept talking.

"My real dad—my biological dad—left my mom when she got pregnant with me. That's when he told her that he was a mutant, so Theo and I would probably be mutants, too, and he didn't want to bring anymore mutants into the world the way it was. My biological mom…freaked out. She hadn't known my dad was a mutant. When Theo and I were born, she dumped us on the steps of a local cathedral with a letter to the archdeacon explaining everything. Theo and I got adopted when we were two by my mom and her husband.


"When our oldest brother, who was also adopted, developed mutant powers when I was five or six, my mom's husband turned psycho. Said he couldn't handle having a real freak living in his house. Like the rest of us were hypothetical freaks or something. He put my brother in the hospital," she added bitterly. "So my mom divorced his ass and took us to New York, enrolled my brother in this special school for mutants where they could learn to control their powers. Theo and I ended up there, too, when we got old enough. That’s how my mom met Phil. He was checking the place out for his job and she was there for a parent-teacher meeting for me."

He couldn't think about this girl's story any longer. Couldn't think about how she, too, had been abandoned as a baby at a temple where anything could have happened to her, where she could have died, and all because she wasn't what her parents wanted her to be, and how she was taken in by another family, as he had been. Too much, they had too much in common. He couldn't afford to think of what Odin had revealed that day in the Treasure Room about Loki's history. He had to think of something else.

"Tell me about your mother," Loki said. "What does she look like? What does she do? What is her trade?"

"She's beautiful," Thea said wistfully. "I wish I looked like her. Blond, but she keeps her hair short 'cause she doesn't want to look like Rapunzel or whatever. Except she looks like Tinkerbelle instead when she wears green. I tried to tell her, but…anyway. Blue eyes, like mine, but they don't have any gray in them like mine do. She's a musician. Plays the piano and the cello. What about you? Do you have any family?"

After a long pause, Loki whispered, "No. They…no, I do not." He would never see his family again. Better to resign himself to that fact now, before it could be used against him further.

"Oh. I'm sorry." There was an awkward silence in the conversation, then suddenly Thea said, "Hey, come here for a second. Flash your light so I can see your face." Curious, he did as she asked. Her eyes widened as they peered through the hole in the wall. "Wow."

Loki blinked. "What?"

"Don't take this the wrong way or anything, 'cause I know this is sort of coming out of nowhere, but you have the most beautiful green eyes I have ever seen." When Loki only stared at her, unsure if he'd heard her correctly, she laughed a little self-consciously. "And I totally just made this awkward, didn't I? Sorry. Comes from being around teenagers, day in and day out. Sometimes I just say whatever's in my head. Sorry. So…you're an alien. You wouldn't happen to be from Mars, would you? Because that would be really cool. My students will flip when I get home if I tell them I met a Martian. Please, please tell me you're from Mars and I will love you forever."


And somehow, though he didn't know where it came, Loki actually laughed.

Darkness There, and Nothing... CH. 7 - A Thousand Words

Author's Note: so I'm not sure about this one, love. What do you think? Any thoughts? Oh, and I'm working on Once 96. I've got 1500 words so far.

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Chapter Seven

A Thousand Words

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

Thor strode aimlessly through the castle corridors the evening after his latest conversation with Loki. He had nowhere he needed to be and much he needed to think about.

Loki had withdrawn after those final words. Something had seemed to crumble within him, and he'd bowed his head and said nothing more, no matter how Thor cajoled him. Sensing his brother was at the end of his endurance, the crown prince had retreated from the dungeons, leaving his brother to—what? Grieve for the girl on the other side of the wall? Plot his story further in order to hoodwink everyone? Thor didn't know. He needed to think.

Sometime during his constant pacing of the palace halls, a light footstep began to echo his. A slim shadow hovered beside and little ways behind him—a quiet and comforting presence.

"Hello, Sif."

The only shield-maiden in Asgard drew abreast of him when he acknowledged her. They'd been friends for a long time. She was the only woman he'd ever gone into battle with, the only woman he trusted to guard his back in a fight.Sif was his best friend, as Loki was…or had been.

"You have seen Loki," Sif said softly. Her dark hair was pulled severely back, giving her a harsher look than usual. Like his father's weathered face and his mother's somber clothes, Loki's betrayal had affected Sif, as well.

For the first time, Thor considered what Loki had said of Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, that they'd betrayed him. That his inability to rely even on his closest friends had driven him to take such drastic actions while the king had been in the Odinsleep.

But then I learned I couldn't trust any of the courtiers here, couldn't trust Heimdall or Sif or the Three. My so-called　friends. How was I to win a war, if it came to that, without soldiers I could trust? And I couldn't trust them because　you　were the one they wanted!

The prince wondered why Sif and the Three had gone against Odin's decree of exile, gone against Loki's order—the order of their ruling sovereign—and come to Midgard to bring Thor home. Had they known of Loki's part to lure the Frost Giants into the Treasure Room the day of Thor's coronation? None of them had said anything. Then why bring him back? Not because of the Destroyer; it had arrived after them. Not for what Loki had done to Heimdall, either—that had come after the Gatekeeper had allowed the four friends through the Bifröst.

Sif was waiting for an answer.

"I've seen Loki," Thor acknowledged without breaking stride. "We have struck a bargain, he and I. He will answer my questions if I help him convince the All-Father to release him."

The warrior maiden halted in her tracks. Thor paused. Somehow he knew what she would say.

"Convince the All-Father to release him? Thor, you cannot trust Loki! What madness would possess you to set him loose?"

Sif, Thor thought, was his dearest friend outside of his brothers. He could trust her to keep his words to herself, and trust her not to rush off to Loki to demand he stop spilling poisonous lies in the crown prince's ear.

"If my father releases him, I've promised to help him kill the leader of the Chitauri." He started walking again.

"Why would he want to kill Thanos? Loki is loyal to him."

Thor shook his head. "I do not believe so, Sif. Loki and I have been talking about the Chitauri, about Thanos, about why Loki did all that he did."

Sif waited. Thor knew she wanted him to simply explain to her what Loki had said…but he needed to couch his words carefully. For instance, he could not share with anyone—save perhaps Frigga and maybe Balder—about the illusion of young Sophie, and how Loki had tried to make her even younger. He couldn't give away the knowledge that his younger brother had loved this Midgardian child enough to weep for her. But there were some things he could say, if he were careful.

"And?" Sif demanded at last.

"Thanos murdered someone Loki held dear," Thor murmured after a moment's hesitation. "Loki's thirst for vengeance makes bargaining with him a bit simpler."

Dark eyes studied Thor for a long moment; the Asgardian could feel the weight of Sif's stare like the heaviness of his battle-armor. At last, she nodded. "It is just like him to focus on getting back at someone to the extent of all else…but who was this person? His woman?"

"A woman," Thor acknowledged softly.

"The woman in the drawings?" Sif hazarded.

He wasn't surprised she knew of it; she'd always been shrewd. He nodded. A large part of him itched to catch a viable glimpse of one of Loki's drawings, to be able to see Thea's face with his own eyes.

"The woman in the drawings…" The shield-maiden shook her head. "How do you know this isn't some elaborate trap of his to lure you in?"

He shrugged. "I don't, but I feel he is being truthful."

"Has he explained why he murdered your Midgardian friend?"

"No," Thor replied after a long moment where he wrestled with anger and the echoes of disbelief. It still astonished him that his brother had tried to kill him, had succeeded in killing one of Thor's allies. And Loki hadn't even admitted to the fact. Why wouldn't he admit to it? He made no excuse, either, such as with the Destroyer. Loki refused to do anything but mock and attempt to redirect when Coulson was mentioned.

Yet he'd said Thea's connection with the son of Coul would be made clear…and Thea had mentioned a man named Phil who would be angry about her capture, a friend of her family. Was that the connection? That didn't explain Loki's evasion when Coulson was brought up whenever Thor demanded an explanation. There was something there, something more. What was it? Yet another of the mysteries Loki needed to explain.

"Has he explained why he took over Asgard?" Sif persisted.

"Mother made him king," Thor said tonelessly. Seeing Sif's stunned expression, Thor canted his head. "I asked her about it. No one else could take the throne during Father's Odinsleep. The queen made him king-regent during my exile."

"Then…" Sif looked faintly uneasy. "Then it was according to the law." She frowned. "He must have known somehow when he arranged your exile that she would make him king."

Thor frowned. "Arranged my exile? What are you talking about?"

"Thor," Sif said as if speaking to a particularly dull child. "Think about it. He arranges for the interruption of your coronation, knowing it will anger you. He knows the king will not do what you wish—"

"Because it was foolish," Thor retorted. "It could have sparked a war. Father was right not to attack Jötunheim just because—"

"And then Loki tells you to go to Jötunheim, even though the king has expressly forbidden it, knowing your temper and their barbarism and arrogance would provoke you, knowing the king would punish you for what you'd done in a fit of temper egged on by none other than your so-called brother." Sif shook her head, as if dismayed by his thick-headedness. "He set you up. Don't you see that?"

I learned I couldn't trust any of the courtiers here, couldn't trust Heimdall or Sif or the Three. My so-called　friends…couldn't trust them because　you　were the one they wanted! You were the one everyone loved…And before that, what had his brother said? I　told　you to leave the Frost Giants alone. I　told　you not to go to Jötunheim, I　told　you to let it go when the Frost Giant lord tried to pick a fight with you, but you—wouldn't—listen.

The thing was, Loki had said all those things…yet Sif suspected him of arranging matters. Did the Three suspect the same? Was that why they'd gone to Midgard to bring Thor back?

Had Loki told Thor all of that, knowing how Thor would react, in order to bring about the outcome he'd wanted?

Thor, stop and think, Loki had cautioned when he'd wanted to launch his fist—or his hammer—straight into the disdainful Frost Giant's big blue face.

Know your place, Brother! The crown prince had snapped back. He'd seen the moment of hurt on Loki's face, a fleeting break in the mask of courtly politeness and carefully-veiled urgency.

In the Gatehouse of the Bifröst, Thor remembered suddenly, Loki had yelled, I never wanted the throne! I only wanted to be your equal!

That was the thing about not only being brothers, but being as close as they'd once been, Thor thought. Frigga had revealed that Loki had come to Asgard as a newborn babe—barely a few hours old—the very night Thor had been born. The question of who was older had been a matter of perhaps an hour, if that, so Healing Mistress Eir had told the king and queen; Eir, the only person besides Odin and Frigga (and of course Heimdall) who'd always known Loki wasn't the son of Odin. Everyone else had thought Loki not only Thor's brother, but his twin—born on the same night in the hour after Thor, pale and dark-haired against Thor's golden looks and blue eyes; the shadow to the golden prince.

He hadn't wanted to be Thor's shadow anymore. Because he'd tasted the power of kingship? Because he'd discovered he and Thor weren't two sides of a coin, two halves a whole? Or because of something else?

"Thor?" Sif ventured after he'd been silent for some time.

The crown prince shook the troubling thoughts away and focused on his friend. He offered her a smile.

"I've always valued your friendship, Sif. It's good to know you're watching out for me," he said, because that was all he really could say. He didn't know whether to deny her allegations or not. He simply didn't have enough information. Thor had learned, after everything that had followed his exile, never to make assumptions…especially where his little brother was concerned. "I must ready for dinner. I'll see you there."

"Of course," the shield-maiden replied hesitantly. "I will see you later, then."

Thor headed for his rooms, still keenly aware of the weight of Sif's gaze on his back. Just before he turned the corner, he decided that it was better to be safe than sorry, so he turned back.

"And Sif? Do not speak of this to anyone, please. That includes Loki."

She offered him a short bow; her silent way of communicating her displeasure, but also her promise to obey. "As you wish."

No, he thought as he strode away. Not as I wish. If things were as I wished, my brother would not be in prison, half-mad with rage and grief, after murdering my friend, trying to kill me, launching an invasion on a realm I've sworn to protect, trying to decimate Jötunheim, and working behind my back to do…whatever he was trying to do.

But Thor said none of this aloud.

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Lady Sif was not a sorceress by any means, but she had a little seiðr of her own. Just enough to get her hands on something she—and Thor—desperately wanted. The only trick would be keeping Odin's foster son from discovering her presence.

Feet silent as the velvet paws of a cat, Sif crept down the dungeon corridor toward Loki's cell. Subterfuge was not her first choice when confronting an enemy; she preferred a face-to-face attack. In this instance, her fist in the traitor's pasty face. He deserved worse, the shield-maiden thought, for what Loki had done to his family. To the queen, especially, and to Thor. The crown prince had been devastated by Loki's loss, and then to find out he'd turned traitor and was planning on making war on Midgard…

Thor had been different since his return from Midgard when he'd gone to retrieve the treacherous prince. Only later had the court learned that Prince Loki had murdered a friend of Prince Thor's in cold blood, stabbing him in the back like a coward when the mortal attempted to prevent Loki from killing Thor.

Sif didn't know why the idea of Loki attempting to kill his foster brother surprised everyone. He'd done it before. Did no one remember Loki's treachery? Usurping the throne while Thor was banished? Yes, Frigga had made him king while Odin slept, but the slimy little rat had known she would. What about sending the Destroyer to butcher the golden-haired prince? Could no one else see Loki's jealousy, his hatred for Thor because Thor was crown prince and Loki wasn't?

But it seemed no one had until Loki's attempted coup…no but Asgard's lone shield-maiden, friend to both princes, and one who was unquestioningly loyal to the heir to the throne.

Sif paused at the bend in the corridor just out of Loki's line of sight and peered around the corner.

Loki was bent over the table in his cell, a charcoal stick clutched in one white-knuckled hand. The charcoal practically flew across the paper while Loki muttered under his breath, "No, no, no, no." He paused for a moment and he stared intently at the paper on the table.

A shiver of unease whispered down Sif's back. Perhaps Loki was mad after all. He certainly looked it. Dark brows knotted together above glassy, absinthe green eyes burning with some emotion Sif couldn't name. Chewing his lip viciously until a tiny trickle of red appeared to spill down his chin, Loki practically panted for breath, eyes wide and nearly bulging in his skull.

"I cannot bear this," he rasped. His chest heaved with the effort of drawing breath. "Thea, I cannot do this." He lowered his head so that strands of black fell around his face, obscuring his tormented expression. A long, agonized shudder ran through his entire body. The charcoal fell from his fingers to clatter against the tabletop. "I know I promised," Loki half-whispered, half-moaned. "I know, but I…Thea, I can't bear it. She was only a child. She was only a baby. And you..."

Suddenly he lunged to his feet, whipped around the chair, took four savage paces toward the wall, and rammed his fist into the merciless stone as hard as he could. There was a muffled crunch. Loki's entire body spasmed. Shoulders hunching, he dropped his forehead against the wall and cradled his hand to his chest. Blood dripped scarlet from his hand to pit-patter on the bare stone floor.

"Damn you," Loki hissed, thumping his forehead against the stone again—a little harder this time. "Damn you, damn you, damn you. Damn you, Thanos. Damn you, Thor. You stole them from me. It's your fault, it's all your fault. If not for you, they would still be with me. I'll see you pay for it, Brother. I'll see you twisting and writhing on the ground like a worm for every sin you've committed against…against…

"Oh, Thea." He drew a shaking breath. "I would have followed you. If they'd let me, I would have followed...I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, alskling. I should have been there. I should have been with you. Forgive me. Forgive me, I…"

Loki trailed off, muttering under his breath so softly that Sif couldn't hear what he said. He fell quiet, still shuddering. Then, with excruciating slowness, Loki straightened up, forcing his injured hand back to his side. His head remained bowed as he drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. His shakes gradually subsided. Then he turned, to reveal a haggard face gone ghastly pale. Without another word to whatever entity he might've been speaking to in his madness, he sat back down. Picking up the charcoal stick with his good hand, he set the point to the paper.

"I must do this. I must not forget this. I must never forget. I won't forget Sophie, Thea. I swear to you, I'll not forget her. Not one moment of…of her time with us, short though it was. And I'll not forget you, either, and our time together…I swear to you." Loki began to sketch again.

Sif waited, every nerve on the alert, as Loki sketched. When that drawing was finished, he set the paper aside and began another drawing, and then another when he'd finished the second. At some point during the third, Loki dropped the stick of charcoal. It hit the table and rolled until it dropped off the edge to clack onto the floor. Loki didn't seem to notice. He simply stared at the drawing for a long moment, throat working convulsively. Then he swallowed hard and closed his eyes for a brief moment.

Opening them and wiping his blackened fingers on a piece of cloth, he stood and trudged toward the door in his prison that no doubt led to a privy—a private one, an accommodation most prisoners weren't afforded. Sif suspected Odin had provided this and other unusual amenities for Loki in order to console the queen. Just the thought of what Loki had put Queen Frigga through sent a fresh wave of anger boiling through Sif.

The moment the door clicked shut, Sif made her move. Twining seiðr around her, she thrust out one hand. The strands of magic wove around her arm and out, down the corridor toward Loki's cell. She saw them as ribbons of iridescent light, but unless another magic-user was looking for magic being worked here, no one else would see. This was a simple enough spell, but difficult for someone to which seiðr didn't come naturally.

When Sif felt the tendrils of magic slip under the door of Loki's prison—a prison designed to keep Loki's power in, not out, and porous enough for small magics to seep through—the shield-maiden grinned. Like a breath of wind, her magic swept the three drawings off the table and onto the floor. Another whisper of power whisked the sketches toward the door and under it before swishing them in a tiny whirlwind down the hall toward Sif. The guards glanced at her; she puta finger to her lips, and they nodded. They wouldn't tell the traitor that she'd been there.

Quick as a snake, she grabbed the drawings. She knew Thor wanted to see them. Perhaps they would give some clue as to what Loki was planning.

Sif glanced at the first sketch and frowned. What was this? Why would Loki draw such a thing? She went on to the second drawing, then the third, frowning harder all the while. It made no sense. Why in the nine realms would the traitor be drawing—

"Where are they!?"

The anguished demand jerked Sif from her reverie. Peeking back around the corner, she saw Loki braced against the table, panting like a dog again, eyes wild. He swept his hand across the tabletop, sending quills and sticks of charcoal skittering across the smooth surface and to the floor. Blank paper whooshed overhead before settling to the floor with faint fluttering sounds. Loki's eyes raked over the tabletop.

"Where are they?!" Loki cried, turning that half-mad gaze around the room, scanning for the missing drawings. His face had gone nearly gray. He shoved his fingers through his hair before clutching cruelly at the ebony strands. Sif frowned. What was wrong with him? "No! Where are they?" He roared the question, bellowing like a wounded beast at the impassive and unresponsive guards. They didn’t even so much as glance in Sif's direction.

Suddenly Loki hurled himself at the glass window. His body collided with enough force to knock the wind out of him, but he didn't stop to catch his breath. Instead he hammered at the ensorcelled window, hard enough that Sif's hands ached in sympathy. Humming power filled the air. A dull ache throbbed through Sif's teeth as Loki gathered seiðr to him, straining against the bonds of his prison, and hurled his power at the ensorcelled glass.

The guards reacted to this. One leveled his bladed staff at the window, barking at the prince to cease his attack, while the other shot a glance at Sif, who knew exactly what the Asgardian was trying to communicate.

Fetch the king and the crown prince.

Hugging the mystifying drawings to her chest, the shield-maiden turned on her heel and raced silently away, leaving Loki raging nearly incoherently at the guards far behind.

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Anxiety was a living, breathing shadow in Thor's belly as he and his father strode through the dungeon corridors side by side, Odin's heavy tread echoing off the walls in counterpoint to Thor's own. Frantic thoughts raced through Thor's mind with every step. What was Loki doing? Why would he try to escape after accepting Odin's bargain? There was only one possibility that made total sense to Thor, but he didn't want to consider it…yet.

If Loki had been lying all this time, if his desire to avenge Thea and Sophie was all an act, he would have no reason to fear Odin rescinding the bargain to aid Loki if seeking his revenge. He could simply lull them all into a false sense of security, then escape.

Yet mad as Loki was, he was still cunning enough and clever enough to know things weren't there yet. None of the Asgardian royal family trusted him enough to make this prison break make any sense.

Thor thought of Sif racing into the informal sitting room where Thor and his parents had been discussing Loki, discussing whether he would or would not accept Odin's bargain—and whether Odin would or would not accept Loki's story—when the shield-maiden had rushed in, crying that the prison guards needed both king and prince, that Loki seemed to be trying to escape.

Now the king and crown prince found the other prince on his knees in his cell, forehead and palms pressed to the window, fingers curled into claws against the glass. Thin smears of crimson marred the otherwise pristine window. Thor saw Loki's fingernails had splintered and cracked, and blood seeped from beneath the nail-beds. His fingertips had been scraped raw . He shook as if with a palsy, and his labored breathing echoed in the dungeon. Even as Thor and Odin approached, Loki thunked his head against the glass.

"Where are they?" Loki snarled without lifting his head. "Who stole them? Who stole them? Tell me, curse you! Tell me what you did with them!" Those clawed fingers skidded down the glass with an eerie skreee sound. "I'll kill you if you do not tell me now!"

Odin opened his mouth, but Thor laid a restraining hand on his father's arm, gesturing him back where Loki couldn't see him. Odin glanced at his heir, but Thor's gaze was elsewhere. Keen warrior eyes took in the prison cell at a glance: the scattered paper, the quills and charcoal pencils everywhere, the blood smeared on the glass and on one wall.

"Loki?" Thor stepped into the light and spoke gently to his brother. Slowly, as if his head were an almost-impossible weight upon his shoulders, Loki looked up at his foster brother with a face eerily blank. "What's the matter?"

Something flickered in the depths of that emerald gaze—a flash of electric blue, there and gone—before the other prince closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the glass again. "Where are they?"

"Where are what, Loki?"

Wearily, the prince replied, "You know what." An even wearier shake of the head. "Why, Thor? Why did you take them?"

"I took nothing, Brother, I swear to you," Thor said. "What have you lost?"

Why was it so hard to breathe? Something about the sight of his little brother looking so despondent, and the words they both spoke, struck a chord in Thor. There was something about this...

The storybook; Thor remembered now. They had had a similar conversation that long ago day when Tyr had stolen Loki's favorite storybook, utterly destroying it to get Loki back for some petty, inconsequential thing. At the time, Loki hadn't known who'd done it. He'd come into his bedroom to find the ripped-out pages scattered across the chamber floor, done a frantic search for the elaborately-tooled leather binding, and found it in the midden pile. That was one reason Loki had refused to speak to anyone about the event; he hadn't known the identity of the culprit. Just like now…

"Brother, I would never deliberately steal something from you," Thor murmured, using that memory as a weapon to cut down the walls of ice around his little brother. "What have you lost? Perhaps I can help you find it."

Silence stretched out between them, strained with the weight of centuries and the betrayals Loki still hadn't explained, but at last the green-eyed prince raised his head again and whispered in a voice heavy with bitter defeat, "Someone stole my drawings. I need them back. I promised…I need them back. They are part of my penance. I have to get them back."

Someone had stolen Loki's drawings? No charred paper in the fireplace, Thor reminded himself. But how had anyone gotten into the enchanted prison without the guards seeing the intruder? Unless…

A sliver of memory pierced Thor's brain. When Sif had come in to pass on the guards' message, she'd been holding papers in one hand. Thor had glimpsed elegant lines and shading, but he'd been distracted at the time. His only thought had been that he hadn't known Sif could draw. Now the thought nagged at him. Sif couldn't draw. He would've known; they'd been friends long enough. Where had she gotten those pictures?

But she'd promised not to speak to Loki…

Loki didn't know who'd stolen his drawings…if they had been stolen, and he wasn't slipping further into madness. If Sif had come to speak to him, he would have suspected her right from the beginning. The trust, friendship, and affection that had existed between Loki, Sif, and the Three had been irreparably shattered, and Loki knew it. He would've suspected her if she'd come to see him.

Unless she hadn't spoken to him, thus keeping her word to Thor, but had somehow gotten her hands on the drawings anyway…she would have seen nothing wrong with taking them, to use them as a tool to get more information about Loki—whom she considered a threat to her prince.

"I will see if I can find them," Thor assured his brother. This wasn't the Loki he'd spoken to earlier that day, nor was this the one he'd battled on Midgard. This was…he didn't know this Loki, broken by madness and guilt and rage. Loki's face had been emptied of any emotion by his exhaustion. Didn't he feel his injuries? His hands were shadowed violet and blue, bruised raw in places, smeared with blood. He didn't seem to notice at all. "Or," Thor added, "I'll find whoever might have taken them. In the meantime, you need a healer."

"No," Loki hissed. Sapphire sparked in his eyes before being swallowed by jade once more. "No healers. I want my drawings back, Thor."

"Loki, your hands—"

"It's nothing," he snapped, looking away. One damaged appendage came up to tangle in a thin chain around the pale throat, to clutch at the gold and emerald ring hanging from the thick chain. Thor had never seen that ring before. "Forget it. Someone stole from me. They have to pay."

Thinking of Sif, Thor made no promise to that effect. He merely said, "I will do what I can, Brother. In exchange, I want more of your story when I return."

Emerald eyes snapped to Thor's face. "Find what was stolen and I will give you what you want."

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Thor stood outside Sif's door, swallowing back the anger surging up in him like the tide. Her door was open, and she sat in a chair, staring at a piece of paper in her lap. Two others rested near at hand. Instinct told the crown prince that it was exactly what he was looking for.

"Sif," Thor said softly. Her head snapped up, the firelight sheening the spill of her long, dark hair. The moment she saw Thor, a tinge of unease colored her features. "Where did you get those?"

After a moment, she sighed. "You said once that you wished to know what he was drawing all the time, so I endeavored to find out."

"You shouldn't have taken those," he growled, striding into her sitting room and kicking the door shut behind her. "Do you have any idea what you've done to Loki? My brother is frantic—"

"He's not your brother, Thor!" Sif cried, bringing him up short. "Why do you care what happens to him? He betrayed you. He tried to kill you more than once! He's dangerous, he's evil, and he's attempting to manipulate you. Loki cannot be trusted! Forget about him!"

A thousand thoughts and emotions clamored inside the Asgardian warrior, each one raging to be heard and acknowledged. He shoved them all down and away, where he could deal with them later, and held out his hand. "Give me the drawings, Sif."

Hesitating only a moment, she handed him the three sketches. "I can make neither heads nor tails of them," she said softly, without looking at him. Thor gazed down at the topmost drawing and frowned.

It was an angled drawing of Loki…and a woman.

Sketch-Loki settled into the comfortable cushions of a plush Midgardian couch, legs stretched out before him. He wore Midgardian garb, as well—the heavy, durable blue trousers known as jeans, a sleeveless shirt, and a plaid overshirt. Thor remembered Jane had said they were called "lumberjack shirts." The woman lay draped across the couch, her head pillowed on her arms on the arm of the couch opposite Loki, her hair tumbling over the couch-arm to touch the floor. Unfortunately, the angle obscured her face. Her feet were in Loki's lap; Loki seemed to be in the middle of rubbing them.

The drawing was composed so that the emphasis was on the woman. The prince was in the background, more an implied shadow than anything else, but Thor recognized him nonetheless. The focal point of the piece seemed to be the jeweled ring on the girl's finger, one Thor thought he vaguely recognized. In front of the pair was something Thor was surprised Loki knew about—a Midgardian device known as a television. The sketch was angled so that the viewer could just see the television screen. To the crown prince's surprise, he realized the smaller image there was of a man dueling with a horse, the horse armed with a sword in its teeth and the man armed with a skillet.

Loki smiled in the drawing, but it took a moment for Thor to realize that the smile was gentle, joyous, not cruel or malicious, and that he wasn't looking at the screen of the television. He was looking at the girl. Was this Thea? What was this drawing of? A futile wish for the future…or a memory?

Thor skipped to the next drawing, of the same girl splashing in the rolling ocean surf in a knee-length dress. It was almost as if Loki had caught her in the act of twirling in a circle amidst the sea spray, frozen her in time. Her hair fanned out around her, obscuring Thor's view of her face, but joy radiated from every line of her body. Her arms were flung out on either side of her as the waves crashed over her feet. There was no one else in this picture.

When he reached the final drawing, Thor sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.

Loki stood beside a window. The curtains were filmy with the moonlight pouring in through the window, gilding the dark hair and sharp cheekbones. Curled up in the window-seat with her back to Loki's chest, feet pressed against the side of the casement opposite herself and Loki, sat a woman with the back of her head to the viewer. She wore a night-robe, but that didn't hide the gently swelling curve of her belly where her hands rested…over Loki's. Thor's brother wasn't smiling in this picture; his face was shadowed by anguish and dread.

Something clicked into place. Thor was fairly sure of something about Thea—she'd been married, probably. Had a husband, been with child when she was captured by the Chitauri. Poor girl. Had that been part of why Loki had fallen for her? Her obvious distress, her need for an ally and a friend under such circumstances? Or had it been something else?

Or could it be that this was not a memory, but another futile wish of Loki's? Loki, wishing for a child with a Midgardian? It didn't make sense.

Whatever these drawings meant, Thor would have to ask his brother…but since he'd managed to retrieve them, Loki would have to answer his question. He would have to explain to the crown prince the exact meaning of these sketches, especially the third.

And then Thor would find out just what had happened to his little brother while imprisoned by the Chitauri.

Darkness There, and Nothing... CH. 6 - Whispers in the Dark

Author's Note: so the thing is, we finally get a Loki flashback! Yay! The only thing is…how much of the flashback is Loki actually telling Thor? Hmmm? That's the question, isn't it?

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Chapter Six

Whispers in the Dark

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Then how?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Loki—"

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

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

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

"She kept raging," Loki murmured at last.

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

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

.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How did they get you?" Loki asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Your pack? What's in it?"

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

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

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

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

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

A crack…

"Can you see that?"

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

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

Chunk. Chink-chunk-chunk. Chunk-chink. Chank!

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

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

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

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

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

She was a goddess.

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

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

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

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

"Hi, there," Thea said brightly.

.

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

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

Thor frowned. "Why did they let her keep it, then?" He felt as if Loki were still speaking in riddles. How much of what Loki had told him was true? And was his brother hiding anything, keeping anything back? For example, how had Loki spoken for so long to Thea if the Chitauri deprived him of water?

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

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