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Loki woke in darkness.
There was a hard stone floor beneath him and as he began to sit up his stomach rolled. He doubled over, fighting the urge to vomit. His head felt thick and foggy; he could almost feel whatever poison it was making him sick swimming in his bloodstream. Loki took several slow, deep, breaths, nerves jangling. Something was terribly wrong.
That much is obvious, he thought caustically. He tried to think back, but he couldn’t remember what had happened, couldn’t quite recall an attack that would have led to his being incapacitated in this way. There was a foul taste in his mouth.
Loki closed his eyes and reached without thinking for the magic to ease the headache throbbing in his temples, but there was nothing there.
It was like missing a step in the dark. Or like falling. A sickening drop at the bottom of his stomach. Loki’s eyes flew open though there was nothing to see, and he tried again, with the same result. It wasn’t a wall between him and it, it was simply as though it – wasn’t there. Like the place it should have been was hollow. He felt himself reeling. His eyes strained to penetrate the dark, to see who had done this to him. Why couldn’t he remember? His thoughts were still sluggish, and his stomach heaved violently, but he would not debase himself in front of some unknown, faceless watcher-
He raised his head and his voice, together. “Well. Congratulations. I am frankly amazed that you are not attempting to gloat at your accomplishment.” The terrifying thought occurred to Loki that perhaps they had blinded him, but the fact that he could make out, dimly, some kind of reflective surface reassured him of that, somewhat. “Generally people like to savor victories like this in person.”
His last memory…he’d been eating lunch in a little café. Gone home, and then…nothing. Had they been waiting for him there? Whoever they were.
Not his erstwhile allies; he could guess that, at least. They would not be letting him stew in silence. His next thought, absurdly, was Thor. Perhaps this was vengeance for his deception, though Loki thought he would remember if Thor had found him. Thor was the reason he was no longer safely in Asgard, hidden behind the All-Father’s face…but this did not seem his style. Unless, perhaps, he had simply given him over to that organization. SHIELD, or whatever it was.
That didn’t seem like Thor’s style either, but he had made his erstwhile brother terribly angry.
(Something in his chest turned uncomfortably.)
Loki stood up and moved cautiously toward the reflective surface, hand stretched out. He hoped no one was watching him stumble about like a blind man. “Come. I should like to see the face of whoever it is attempting to cage me. Though I must warn you, you will not be the first to try.” His hand met a smooth surface, solid. Loki pushed into it with his hand, testing. Breakable? Perhaps. He tapped it with a nail, and then stumbled back as lights flared up, shining almost directly in his eyes. Loki slammed them shut, spots dancing behind his eyelids.
He prised them open a moment later, though he was careful not to direct his gaze directly at the new light – a challenge, as they spanned the perimeter of his cell in a circle, leaving no corner unilluminated. He could see his cage better now – much like the one SHIELD had used in their flying machine. This one was seamless, though, and there was no threat of a drop. The walls beyond it were grey concrete and told him nothing. He could not see an obvious door, and felt an uneasy prickle down his spine.
He blinked the spots away and turned in another slow circle. “Well?” he said, raising his voice again. “What do you want?”
No answer. Loki’s skin tightened with the uneasy notion that perhaps the answer was nothing. It was difficult to manipulate a target that wouldn’t respond.
He stepped back from the barrier. “Well,” he said, “If you change your mind, I think I shall enjoy your hospitality just a bit longer.”
The blazing lights were bright and uncomfortable and not helping his headache. There was nothing on which to sit, so Loki paced around the confines of his cage, keeping moving rather than staying still. It was large enough to move in, at least, and to stand fully, but not much more than that. Loki pressed his fingers into his temples and closed his eyes, but the glare was bright enough that he could see them even there.
What did they think to accomplish with this? He wondered. He was uncomfortable, but not beyond bearing. His magic…that was worrying, but Loki was confident he could puzzle out whatever they had done and undo it soon enough. No requests or demands had been made, and at the moment his main concern was that he was bored, a little overwarm, and beginning to grow thirsty.
He wondered if they intended to try to make him submit that way. If so, he thought they would be disappointed.
Loki entertained himself first by going through the entirety of Njord’s Seventy-Five Theorems of Thaumaturgical Necessity, and then by recalling the composition of several interesting Alfish brews, and then by singing through all thirty verses of “Sigurd’s Reckoning.” By the time he had finished the last, there was still no visible sign of his captors, and he had become aware that it was not just light that the lamps were giving off, but heat.
And whatever it was that his present cage was made out of, it did not release heat well.
The temperature within was beginning to climb. He could feel sweat prickling on the back of his neck, his leathers starting to feel just a bit too heavy.
Loki stopped in his circuit and glanced toward the lights that he had not considered much beyond the inconvenience and the annoyance they caused.
Now, though…
He remembered once, when he was young, the royal family of Asgard had gone on a journey to Alfheim. It had been an unusually hot year, and he and Thor had spent hours playing outside. Loki hadn’t registered how tired and hot he was until he started to feel dizzy and sick.
He remembered little of the next few days, though he learned later that he had been rushed back to Eir to be placed in ice baths, and that he had hovered on the edge of life more than once. Loki had not thought of that incident in some time. He wondered, suddenly, if his vulnerability to heat was due to his…heritage.
On its heels, he wondered if whoever held him now was trying to get him to unskin himself and show his Jotun blue. If they thought their heat would drive it out of him. That begged the question of how they might know, however. Unless this was SHIELD’s doing and Thor had…
Loki flexed his fingers.
If that was it, they would be disappointed there as well.
A drop of sweat rolled down his spine, slowly. It’s only going to get hotter.
Loki stopped pacing a few hours later. He shed first his overcoat, and then the second layer down to his undershirt and breeches. He folded each layer carefully and sat down on them as though only using them for a makeshift chair, but there was no avoiding the unpleasant damp feeling of even that single layer of clothing. Thirst nagged at the back of his mind until he shut it up in a small box and pushed it away.
Late afternoon – or what he judged to be late afternoon, though the constant light was not only making it near impossible to rest his eyes but also difficult to tell the time – saw his first visitor emerge from an apparently seamless portion of the wall. The man, square-jawed and scruffy, with the look more of a mercenary than a warrior, regarded him in silence. Loki stayed where he was, legs outstretched, and raised his eyebrows.
“Your hospitality lacks something, though I’d find it difficult to say what.”
The man said nothing, simply observing him. Loki felt sweat run down the side of his nose and fought the urge to grimace in disgust.
“What,” Loki tried again, lounging back on one elbow. “You are not even going to offer me conversation?” He noticed a pin on the man’s collar and focused on trying to pick out the design. “Don’t just stand there,” Loki went on. “Make yourself useful. Bring me some wine. Or a book, at least.” His eyes remained cold even with the lightness of his voice. You think you will defeat me like this? They couldn’t keep a hold on his magic forever, and when it was free…
A wave of dizziness passed through him, and Loki dug his fingers into the floor where they could not be seen.
They don’t need to hold it forever. Just long enough. But Loki didn’t think they wanted him dead. There were simpler ways to do that, after all.
The man continued to stand there, watching him. Perhaps ten minutes later he was joined by another, and they spoke to each other in voices he couldn’t quite overhear. He pushed himself to his feet and crossed the cell, but he only heard the second man say sharply, “wait for orders” before they both fell silent, and looked at him.
Loki bared his teeth at them both. “Well, well,” he said. “Two rude watchers. Did no one ever tell you not to stare?”
“Shut up,” said the second man.
“Don’t talk to it,” said the first. Loki felt his jaw click together, fury flooding through him, followed by another wave of dizziness. He held himself steady, though.
“Why?” he said, keeping his voice careless. “Afraid of what I might say?” The mercenary looked flatly back at him. The second man shifted and then stepped back.
“Tell them to dial up the intensity. Experimental Subject #23 is getting mouthy.”
Loki’s lips peeled back from his teeth. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with,” he said, voice lowering into another register. “When I get away from you I will cut your throats and make you drink your own blood.”
The men looked at him a moment longer, and then retreated.
The air inside his cell felt hot and thick, muggy. It didn’t quite seem to satisfy his lungs.
The temperature continued to climb.
He clung to the thin layer of protection that his shirt offered for a long time, but even when he finally peeled it off, wet and stinking, with a grand show of nonchalance, it didn’t offer any relief. There was no breeze to cool the sweat drying on his skin. Nothing but the lights beating down on him.
Loki didn’t try to stand up again, the dizziness now a near continuous light-headedness. His lips were cracking, though they hadn’t yet started to bleed. The thirst could no longer be pushed down and ignored, and his head was throbbing with the too-quick beat of his heart.
There was nowhere in his cage to hide from the heat. It seeped into everything, seeped into him, and he was sure now that the damp, heavy air was no longer filling his lungs properly, each breath half a gasp. His muscles had started to cramp and seize.
His thoughts struggled to cohere.
Men came – different ones this time, he thought. He shoved himself up to sitting and snarled at them, only to regret it when his stomach heaved up into his throat and the world reeled wildly. Otherwise, the most he could do was lie flat and still, the energy dripping out of him along with his sweat.
If he knew what they wanted…but no one told him what they wanted, no one spoke to him.
Almost, once, he begged for water, but he bit back the words before they could escape. Thor loomed on the other side of the glass, looking down at him with disdain, but it was just another one of their men.
Loki realized belatedly and with dull alarm that his skin was dry. He’d stopped sweating.
“What do you want from me,” he snarled at the transparent barrier, his words slurring. “What do you want?”
The walls of his cage were hot. He burned his hand lashing out at it, and then broke the skin. He sucked the blood away eagerly, but there was too much salt to ease his thirst at all.
Thor, help me, he thought dizzily, and feared he might have said it aloud.
It was so hot. He threw up thin bile on the floor and it stank so vilely that he retched again just for the smell.
The lights blazed down on him like eyes, watching his humiliation. Loki closed his eyes and turned his face to the floor as though he could get away from them there.
When he did shift, finally, it wasn’t by choice. It was, Loki suspected even in the midst of delirium where Odin shouted his faults at him from above, a last ditch effort of his body to save itself. His thoughts puddled like his vomit on the ground, but he knew enough to recognize the edges of his own endurance.
He felt the change as a wave of blessed coolness washing over his skin, and at first he thought someone had poured ice water on his bare back. A moment later the brief relief was gone, however, and everything was worse, the heat twice as intense, he could feel his skin blister and peel-
He opened his eyes and looked at his arm, blue ridged skin rapidly turning an ugly purplish color as his own fever and the stifling heat roasted him both inside and out.
I’m going to die, he thought vaguely, and I don’t even know why. He could feel his body shaking again, muscle spasms convulsing through him in waves. Each breath in burned his lungs. Everything was burning.
Thor, please.
He could hear shouting, and tried to push himself up, but his muscles no longer obeyed and even slight movement cracked his Jotun skin, making his head spin and his stomach revolt. His head thunked back down to the ground, body shuddering violently and continuously.
Odin shouted at him to get up, weakling, stand up and fight. Loki didn’t try to respond. His mouth was parched dry and he suspected words would only fill his throat with blood. Maybe he’d never healed, he thought dizzily. Maybe he was still lying in his bed after the trip to Alfheim, and all of this had been a terrible fever dream.
He heard a low rumble in the distance, and more shouting. There was a loud crash, nearer, perhaps.
Loki’s heartbeat slowed, staggered, and he was aware of nothing more.
He remembered cold, sudden and intense and painful. Strong hands holding him down as he thrashed and struggled against the agony of it and then fell limply back into dreams of ice and snow. He remembered someone massaging something that stung into the skin of his face, trying to snap at their fingers only to subside at a quiet, “no, Loki.”
He remembered, very dimly, being carried, the rumble of a voice he didn’t quite understand above him, transmitting only the feeling of safety, of home.
Loki opened his eyes.
He did not recognize his surroundings. It was no cell, not in Asgard or otherwise, that he could tell. Not his own bedroom, nor, he thought, a healing room, either mortal or otherwise. It was a little room, cramped and bearing a vaguely familiar smell that he couldn’t quite identify.
He glanced at his hands and found that they were swathed in bandages that ran all the way up his arms and over his chest and stomach. He could feel more of them on his neck and shoulders, loose dressings with some kind of cream underneath. The tips of his fingers were visible, though, discolored but still discernibly blue.
He tried to focus on shifting his form, but the change wouldn’t come. He’d never learned how to control it. Loki reached for his magic next, and the void where it had been was full again but it only stirred sluggishly at his call. Still, the relief that ran through him just at feeling it there at all made him dizzy.
Already half knowing what he would find, Loki made himself turn his head to the right despite his protesting neck. Thor was sitting in what could not be a comfortable chair, fast asleep with his mouth open. His hands and arms, Loki noticed, were also bandaged. Like he’d touched something too hot – or too cold, perhaps.
Loki felt his breath quicken. I can’t be here. I can’t, I can’t-
Thor stirred and opened one eye, and then the other, sitting up rapidly. “Loki,” he said. “Brother, you’re awake. You need water.”
Loki opened his mouth to object, but if his mouth and throat felt less dry they were still little better than bones in a desert, and all that came out was a faint croak. Thor left the room and returned quickly with a glass full of water. Loki thought he’d never seen anything so wonderful in his life. His muscles felt as weak as a newborn kitten’s, and he was forced to rely on Thor holding his head up as he tipped the glass to his mouth, swallowing mouthful after mouthful of clear, cold water. Thor pulled it away far too soon, though.
“More later,” his brother said, when Loki made an incoherent gurgle of protest. “I don’t want you to make yourself sick.” His brow was furrowed, worry written on his face, far from the rage Loki remembered last seeing on those features. You found me, Loki thought. How do you always do that?
“Thhhhor,” he said. The word came out strangely, rasping over his throat, his tongue feeling thick and unwieldy, and he was not sure what he meant by it.
“I came as soon as I could,” Thor said. His voice seemed to vibrate down Loki’s spine, loosening aching muscles. “I did not know…I did not know.”
“Ffffool,” Loki said, though it felt half-hearted. He realized, belatedly, that if his limbs were Jotun his face must also be…he could not remember if Thor had seen him like this before. He didn’t think so. And yet Thor was looking at him with only worry, gazing unflinchingly on this hideous face.
“You were badly burned,” Thor said, and there was a hum of anger briefly in his voice before he subdued it. “For a few moments when I found you I believed…but we revived you.” We? Loki thought, and the question must have shown on his face, because Thor added, “Jane and I.”
Loki felt himself tense and closed his eyes, hoping it would be enough to mask his reaction to that. He must be lying in her place of residence, he thought. Perhaps even in her bed. That struck him as faintly funny.
Thor hadn’t left him there to rot, Loki realized, after a moment. Even after everything he’d done to throw their bond in Thor’s face…Thor had come for him. His lungs still ached on every inhale, and he wondered how deep the damage had run.
“Who,” he pushed out. Thor’s face darkened.
“It does not matter,” he said, a rumble of danger under the surface of his voice. “They are destroyed.”
But why, Loki wondered. What did they want from me? His head still felt stuffed full of cotton, and if he couldn’t feel the burns that must have damaged much of his skin he suspected that was an artificial relief.
“How long,” he asked, the words grating painfully over his throat, like he’d been swallowing glass. Thor’s expression flickered briefly.
“Nearly a week,” he said. “Since I found you.” Loki saw his jaw tighten. “You should not have run from me.”
Loki tensed again. “Are you saying this is my fault?” he forced out. Thor shook his head.
“I’m saying you shouldn’t have run.”
“I had no particular wish to-” Loki broke off, grimacing at the effort of speaking too much. What a pathetic wreck you are, lying here at his mercy all over again, weren’t you going to get away from this? “—to let Mjolnir make mincemeat of me.”
Thor’s jaw tightened. “Is that what you think of me?” Loki turned his head away. He wanted more water. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to lie in a snowbank until even the dull throb of his burns faded. Thor breathed out harshly. “I see.” Loki heard the chair scrape back and waited for Thor to get up and leave, but he didn’t.
“Father lives,” he said, a few moments later. “If you care.”
Loki wasn’t sure what he felt, at that. He licked his lips clumsily and asked, “why did you bother?”
The brief silence hurt, and he half expected I wish I had not. “Because you are still my brother,” Thor said, his voice heavy. “And I could not leave my little brother to suffer.”
Loki felt a laugh rasp painfully over his throat and he turned his head to meet Thor’s eyes, knowing how his would glow like red coals, the devil of a thousand nightmares. “Even looking like this?”
“You are Loki, as you always have been,” he said. “And besides…even if you were hurt more because of it, if you were not…if you were not Jotun, I do not know if you would have survived. And for that…” Thor’s eyes softened, and Loki had to look away. “For that, I am more than grateful.”
Loki felt his mouth twist. “After everything?” He rasped.
Thor’s face set, stubborn and determined. “After everything.” Thor stood. “You need to rest. I will leave you to do so.” He started for the door.
Loki’s eyes caught on Thor’s arms, the bandages on them mirroring his own though he suspected from the other extreme. The memory of being carried resurfaced, and there was something grotesque and awful about the image of it his mind offered: his limp, monstrous body cradled in Thor’s arms that blistered and burned at each point of contact with skin, but his jaw set with determination, refusing to let go no matter how much it hurt.
“You’re right,” he said, the words grinding the inside of his throat. “I shouldn’t have run.” Thor turned, his eyebrows furrowing. The skin on his face felt too tight as he tried to form a faint smile. “There’s no point, is there,” he murmured, “when you just keep catching up.”
Thor’s smile was just as faint. Fragile. All wrong, for him. “I told you,” he said, and his voice, at least, was firm. “Surrender is not in my nature. And it never will be.”