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Loki was falling.

He was falling and falling and falling and falling through nothing and everything all at once and he felt nothing and everything and saw nothing and everything and it was horrifying and terrifying and he was falling and falling and falling.

He was falling until he wasn’t. He didn’t know after the fact if he landed or if he was plucked out of the void. Half of him remembered landing with a painful crack, his bones shattering on impact, his spine cracking, his head splitting, his entire body screaming out at the painful sensation of something after so long of nothing.

The other half remembered a gentle hand reaching out into the void and grasping him, pulling him from falling falling falling and grasping him in a warm, solid, real grip, and taking him back to reality.

He didn’t know which was real, after the fact.

He didn’t know if either was real. All he knew was that he was no longer falling.

***

Thor grabbed Loki out of the helicopter and slammed him to the ground, blinded with anger and betrayal and confusion and hurt. He was barely looking at Loki as he shouted at him, demanding answers.

“Stop this!” he said, not letting go of his brother. “Stop this madness, Loki!”

Loki just laughed. It was a maddening sound that made Thor’s skin crawl; it felt wrong in a way he couldn’t quite place. He shoved Loki roughly as if to shake the wrongness out of him. Loki only laughed harder, and the skin at the back of Thor’s neck prickled with the sound.

“Is it madness, brother? Is it?” Loki asked, and even his voice sounded wrong. Then Loki twisted sharply out of Thor’s grasp and twisted away.

“What happened to you?” Thor said. The shout echoed angrily in the darkness.

“You mean after you tossed me into the void?” Loki all but snarled, eyes narrowing at Thor, and something about them was wrong wrong wrong.

“Tossed you—?” Thor almost reeled back from the shock of Loki’s words. They felt like a slap to his face, more painful than any physical attack from his brother could have been. “I did not, I would not!”

“Liar,” Loki hissed, and with every word, every movement, the prickle of unease along Thor’s skin grew.

“I am not! You let go, Loki.”

“Liar!”

That’s not your brother, Thor’s thoughts hissed, and though he banished them before he could even blink he hated himself for forming the thoughts at all. But something about Loki was so, so wrong and he couldn’t place it, couldn’t recognize where the strangeness lay.

“What happened to you?” Thor asked again, but quieter now, less angry.

Loki did not answer in words but in an angry shout as he lunged at Thor, a dagger summoned in his hands and flying free with his first step. Thor moved out of the way, managing to dodge the dagger and moving towards Loki in one fluid motion. But Loki had always been quick and he somehow seemed even quicker now, moving so fast he was almost a blur. Thor swung but his arms met only empty air. He swung around to see Loki poised behind him, face twisted in a snarl.

“Loki, stop this!” Thor pleaded. He had been angry when he first grabbed Loki from the plane, but his anger had faded as his unease grew. Something was wrong and Thor needed to know what it was. “Please, brother. Stop this madness and let us go home.”

“Home?” Loki said. He stared at Thor was hard eyes, and Thor stared into them, trying to see what about them seemed so foreign in his brother’s face, what about them made his thoughts whispers traitorously that is not your brother. “I don’t have it.”

“Yes, Loki, you do. Just end this now and we can go home.”

For the briefest moment Loki hesitated. Thor felt hope lurch into his chest, pushing away some of the unease. He stared into Loki’s eyes—wrong wrong something about them is all wrong—and he thought he saw a flicker of something like hope reflected in them as well.

Then Loki’s lips curled up into a sneer and the flicker was gone, and with it went the hope Thor had felt.

“Liar,” Loki hissed. He threw his arm up so unnaturally fast that it was glowing with a spell before Thor even registered the movement, and it was all Thor could do to raise Mjolnir against the blast before it hit him.

Both Thor and Loki were thrown backward with the impact. Thor grunted as his back hit hard rock, but he was up and raising Mjolnir within the next breath. Then he froze.

Loki was up on his feet as well, but the impact had knocked his helmet off. Beneath it his hair was completely shorn off with bright red patches of freshly-scabbed skin visible. And splitting his skull was a cross-section of freshly-stitched scars, the glaring evidence of surgical incisions.

“Loki,” Thor said hoarsely. It was all he could say, staring in horror at the mess of his brother’s skull. “Loki.”

Loki stared back at Thor evenly. The feeling of wrongness was a scream in Thor’s thoughts now.

Those weren’t Loki’s eyes, Thor suddenly realized. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was certain as he stared into them that those were not his brother’s eyes.

Thor opened his mouth, a pleading question on his tongue, when something heavy and strong and fast slammed into him, tearing him away from Loki again.

***

They took Loki’s arms first.

His hands were his greatest asset, they told him. His magic, his fighting, all of it centered on his hands.

His greatest asset, but not great enough.

They started with his right arm to practice. They didn’t say it in so many words, but Loki understood what they were doing anyway. His left hand was dominant, and therefore more important. So they sacrificed his other arm as a trial run.

They told him it was his choice, even as they chained his arms and his legs to keep him still.  They told him it was his choice, even as he screamed for them to stop. They told him it was his choice all while he was screaming, screaming as they sliced through skin and muscle and bone, screaming and screaming until everything went black. 

***

 Thor landed on the ground hard, but he was rolling up to his feet before he had taken in a full breath. He whipped his head up and found himself before two figures, one a Midgardian dressed in a suit of blue and one a metal creature. Thor’s features hardened into a glare. How dare these beings attack him so? How dare they tear him away from his brother?

He did not give them another chance to attack. With a shout, he lifted Mjolnir into the air and lunged, hitting them both with a surge of lightning.

“Wait!” he heard one of the men shout, but Thor wasn’t listening. All he could see were those awful eyes that weren’t Loki’s, the ugly scars and stitches hidden beneath his helm. Thor didn’t understand, and it scared him and it angered him, and so he channeled that into another strike of lightning at these new enemies.

There was a surge as his lightning collided with something else, another surge of power, and Thor felt himself thrown back by the impact. Again, he crashed into the ground, breathing heavily as he jumped to his feet.

“Let’s just hold on a moment, okay Lightning McQueen?” the metal man said. He held up both his hands in a motion of surrender. “We just wanna talk. You’re Thor, right?”

Thor’s eyebrows drew together. “You know me?”

“Kind of hard not to,” the other man, the Midgardian said. “You do stand out.”

“Then why did you attack me?” Thor said, and lightning crackled through his fingertips.

“Woah, easy there,” the metal man said. “We didn’t mean to. We were actually kinda aiming for your brother, but I, uh. Nabbed the wrong norse god.”

The metal man laughed slightly, sounding almost embarrassed. Thor frowned.

“What do you want with my brother?”

“Same as you do, we’re hoping,” the Midgardian said. “To stop him from hurting anyone else.”

Thor looked between the two of them, calculating. He saw honesty there, in the Midgardian man’s expression, and power within the metal man. Allies, potentially.

“Let us talk, then,” Thor said. “I believe we have much to discuss.”

***

Loki woke to screams. It was a while until he realized that they were not in his head, not screams of his own frayed and flayed mind.

The screams were distant, cold. Vaguely female, maybe.

They went on and on and on. Loki closed his eyes and tried to block out the sound, focus on the fact that at least they weren’t his screams today.

The screams did not stop until many hours had passed, and even when they had silenced Loki did not sleep any further that night.

The next morning one of Thanos’s daughters came to fetch him. It was the blue one with the mechanical parts. He had seen her only twice before this. She did not seem to be as low in ranking as some of the others, didn’t seem tasked with the degrading job of waking and corralling the newest prisoner.

“Get up,” she said. It was the first time he had heard her speak. Her voice was low and raspy and vaguely, vaguely familiar.

He tilted his head at her and narrowed his eyes. He could not remember her name though he was certain he had heard it spoken before.

“I said get up,” she said when he didn’t move. She moved as if to kick him and he stood only to dodge it. Her kick had faltered, a hesitation that did not belong on anyone here, and it raised a red flag up in the back of his mind.

“You are slow,” he said, finally speaking, even as he tried to remember her name still. Something to do with space. Galaxy? No. Nebula? Ah, yes, that was it. “Strange that he would send you to fetch me.”

“Shut up,” Nebula snapped. She shouted it more than spoke it, and the sound was familiar. She lashed out at him, but again he dodged it.

“Ah,” he said, finally making the connection, “It was you screaming last night.”

“If you do not shut up, you’ll be the one screaming,” Nebula said. Loki chuckled darkly.

“I don’t think you’re able to make good on that threat, Thanossdottir, not injured as you are today.” And indeed she did seem injured, now that he was putting the pieces together. The screaming, the way she favored one leg as she stood, the silver gleam of a metal arm. She must have been sent to fetch him as punishment.

“I am not so injured that I could not beat you in a fight,” Nebula said. “And Thanos would thank me for the opportunity to fix another of your weaknesses.”

“As he has fixed yours?” Loki hissed, the words pointed, “He only fixes the ones that are weak, the ones that are broken.”

Nebula stared at him, cold and hard.

“I know,” she said.

“So what does that say about you, so called daughter of Thanos?” he spat.

“What does it say about you?” she shot back. He laughed, a harsh, grating sound that hurt his throat.

“Nothing good. But I am not his child.”

“You are no one.”

“That’s right. I am Loki, son of no one.”

Nebula stared back at Loki with dark eyes. He thought maybe, just maybe, he saw something akin to understanding there. Camaraderie.

Just to be certain, he spat in her face. She hit him then, hard, and black spots danced in his vision.

He laughed.

***

They had captured Loki. Placed him in a glass cage so that he could not escape, could not hurt anyone else. It did little to put Thor at ease.

“So, uh, Hammertime,” the metal man, who Thor now knew as Tony, said, standing in front of the screens that monitored Loki. There was an undercurrent of unease in his voice. Thor glanced up half-heartedly and gave a half-hearted sound of response.

“Yeah, um, how do I put this,” Tony murmured, sounding even more nervous, and Thor looked up fully then, all of his attention on Tony. “Was your brother always a cyborg?”

Thor felt like his heart stopped. “What?”

“That wasn’t…that wasn’t the best way to put it, Tony,” Bruce said, looking nervously at Thor.

“Right, right, sorry. But, seriously. You didn’t mention that he was half metal. Is that a thing in Asgard?”

Thor couldn’t do anything but stare at Tony. He understood the words that Tony was speaking, yes, but they made no sense. How could Loki be…. What did that mean… He couldn’t even complete the thought. It was too foreign, too horrifying, too impossible.

But again he remembered Loki’s eyes, remembered the horrifying fresh scars on his scalp, remembered the awful and vivid feeling that that is not his brother.

“Thor? Buddy? You with us?”

Thor shook himself from his thoughts and focused on Tony and Bruce. Both were looking at him apprehensively.

“What do you mean?” Thor forced himself to ask. His voice sounded raw, strained. Unlike himself. “I don’t…. I don’t understand.”

Tony and Bruce exchanged an uneasy glance with each other.

“Your brother… The scans are showing…” Bruce took a deep breath and looked over to Tony as if silently asking for help.

“Here, maybe it’s easiest to just show you,” Tony said, motioning Thor over to them. Thor stood slowly, his whole body heavy with dread.

The screens in front of them showed Loki, though it wasn’t a direct picture of him. Thor didn’t quite understand what it was he was looking at when shown Midgardian technology, but he could follow well enough to understand that what the screens were showing him was below the surface.

Nonetheless he said, “Explain it to me. What am I looking at?”

“Well, this is Loki, right?” Tony started, pointing to his brother’s shape on the screen. “And over here are his vitals. Which are weird and all over the place, but you known, alien viking god and all, that’s not surprising. Except that there are some irregularities that were just… too irregular. And then if you look over here… Well, look at his arms, Thor.”

Thor did. He looked and he looked and he looked, but he couldn’t make himself comprehend what he was looking at.

“What does it mean?” he heard his voice ask.

“So I take it that means Reindeer Games here didn’t have robot arms the last time you saw him?” Tony said. He let out a nervous laugh, but Thor didn’t see any humor in the situation.

“Are you telling me that something… someone… cut off my brother’s arms? That they replaced them with machines?” Thor’s voice rose and he spoke, anger seeping out, and the air crackled with the dangerous thrum of electricity.

“Hey, hey, we don’t know what happened yet,” Tony said quickly, hands raised placatingly. “Let’s keep calm and not jump to conclusions.”

Thor turned a stony glare to him. “My brother was gone for two years after falling into the void. He then shows up on your planet half-mad, looking like his skull was split open, and then you tell me that his arms are replaced with machinery, and you want me to keep calm?”

“Okay, yeah, it sounds bad,” Tony said. “But we still don’t know what happened, and getting angry and frying us to a crisp won’t help that, right? So let’s keep the godly lightning powers under control, maybe? Please?”

Thor took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Tony was right, of course. But nothing about any of this made sense and it frightened him in a way that he had never been frightened before.

“You’re right,” Thor said at length, focusing on keeping his voice calm. “I do not know what happened. And that is the problem.”

“Well the one person who knows is standing in a cell below us,” Tony said. Thor shook his head vehemently.

“I can’t,” he said. His voice broke on the word. He couldn’t face Loki yet, couldn’t look at his brother’s eyes that weren’t, couldn’t face that familiar-yet-wrong face, he just couldn’t.

“Let’s figure it out, then.” Bruce spoke up this time. “Tell us everything you know, and we’ll figure out everything we can from the scans.”

Thor nodded. He didn’t think he wanted to know, but he had to.

*** 

“You and my daughter seem to be becoming… rather close.”

Thanos’s voice boomed around them. Loki kept his head bowed low, eyes firmly on the ground, and focused on not flinching at the veiled threat in that voice.

Beside him, Nebula let out a scoff.

“We are not,” she said.

“Certainly not,” Loki said after a moment. He kept his voice carefully level with the faintest hint of disdain. “With all due respect, your daughter is hardly the most… pleasant of company.”

Nebula cast him a glare. “Neither are you, godling.”

Thanos hummed thoughtfully, the ground echoing with the sound. He sounded amused.

“Good, good,” he said. His mouth split up into a slight smirk—it might have been meant as a smile, but Loki couldn’t see anything on that man’s face as a smile. “We can’t have any unnecessary attachments, you understand.”

“Of course not,” Nebula said. “And there aren’t any.”

The ground shook with Thanos’s hum again, and then he looked at Loki, waiting for his reply.

“You needn’t worry,” Loki said. “I assure you. I do not particularly enjoy the company of anyone here.”

The last sentence was said with more bitterness than Loki had intended. He bit his lip and dropped his gaze. Fool, he thought. Still yet you cannot hold your tongue.

But Thanos still seemed only amused, to Loki’s relief.

“As it should be,” Thanos said. “You are still a guest here, Asgardian. You would do well to remember your place.”

“Of course,” Loki said, too quickly. His hands throbbed with phantom pain as Thanos spoke. “I understand.”

“Good,” Thanos said. “Then you two will not object to a fight, will you?”

“When would I ever turn down that opportunity?” Nebula said easily.

“And of course you both understand the consequences of losing.”

Loki fought a flinch. The phantom pains in his hands grew stronger. “Of course.”

“Yes,” Nebula said simply.

“Good,” Thanos said. He motioned forward with one massive hand. “Why wait, then? Let us start.”

Nebula moved immediately, drawing up into a fighting stance. Loki hesitated only a fraction of a moment before doing the same. He met her eyes and nodded.

Neither of them held back.

In the end, Loki won.

He found her after, both bruised and bloody but only Nebula stitched in the aftermath of surgery. He did not ask for permission to enter her room, but she didn’t deny him it either. He sat on the ground next to her wordlessly. Neither of them said anything.

He didn’t feel guilty. She fought him as hard as he had fought her. He didn’t feel pity either, not exactly. He felt… empty. Cold. Numb. Emotions he couldn’t put words to.

Their silence spoke more than either of them could have with their voices. 

***

It had taken Thor the better part of a day to muster up the strength to face Loki again, to look him in those awful eyes that weren’t his own. He dreaded it, but it had to be done.

Thor approached Loki on the other side of the cell. Loki looked smaller there, trapped within the glass walls, pacing restlessly as if he were a captured animal. Thor wondered briefly if he might be exactly that. He shook his head to dislodge the thought.

“Brother,” he called, and his voice came out louder and harsher than he meant. He softened it as he continued, “I would speak with you.”

Loki, facing away from Thor, stopped abruptly in his pacing to throw back his scarred and stubbled head and cackled. There was no other word to describe the sound that he made and Thor had to consciously stop himself from flinching at it.

“Oh, that is a riot,” Loki said. He still didn’t turn to face Thor, though thankfully he didn’t laugh again.

“What do you mean?” It was an effort to keep his voice steady. Even through the walls of the cell, even with his back turned, everything about Loki screamed wrong. It made Thor’s skin crawl, made every nerve in him on edge.

Danger, danger, his instincts shouted at him. Danger.

“Don’t play the fool,” Loki said. It sounded like a hiss. “It has never suited you well.”

“I’m not playing any games, brother. I don’t understand what is going on. What has happened to you?”

Loki laughed again, and Thor wasn’t able to stop himself from flinching this time. Danger, danger, his instincts screamed at the sound.

“That,” Loki said. He still hadn’t turned around to face Thor.

“What? Loki, I don’t understand.”

“This farce of family,” Loki shouted, and he finally turned to face Thor then, face twisted with anger. “You have the audacity to call me brother, to say it now, after you renounced it so last we met.”

“No!” Thor’s voice boomed through the room, an echo of the thunder he commanded. “Never, brother, never. I have never done such a thing and I never would. I have always claimed you as my family, and I will continue to do so no matter what horrid acts you might commit.”

“And they call me the liar,” Loki said. His face was flushed red and his lips curled back away from his teeth in a snarl that warped his face “I remember your words, Odinson, on the bridge. I’m not your brother, I never was, you said just before you threw me to my death.”

Thor drew back as if struck. His mouth opened but no words came out and he gaped helplessly, wordlessly, as he stared at the vicious snarl that was Loki’s face. His first instinct was to take Loki’s words as a lie. But he remembered the similar exchange they had had on the mountain, remembered how raw the emotions on Loki’s face had been then, saw how equally raw they were on his face now, and Thor knew it was no lie. Loki believed what he was saying. However false the words were, they were truth to Loki. The realization roiled sickly in Thor’s gut.

“No,” Thor finally said. His voice was no more than a whisper. “No, Loki, no. Those were your words, not mine. Never mine.”

“You tried that trick once already. Your game grows tiresome, Thor, and I grow weary of it. Pick a new tactic or fess up, but don’t try the same tired lie.”

“It isn’t a lie. Loki, brother, it is the truth.”

“Liar.”

“Loki.” Thor stepped forward, hand hovering over the glass. “Tell me what has happened to you. Tell me why you think these lies as truth. Who has hurt you? Who did this to you?”

Loki’s eyes met Thor’s and they stared unblinkingly for a long moment before Loki’s snarl curled up into a horrid grin.

“Who did this to me?” he said, spreading out his arms so that the metal glinted under the harsh lights.

“Or this?” he said, motioning to his mutilated scalp.

Thor swallowed down his nerves and said in as steady of a voice as he could,  “Yes, brother.”

Loki’s grin faltered momentarily at the name, the corner of his lip twitching, before his expression hardened.

“Perhaps you would rather see me as I was, then,” Loki said, and with a shimmer of green and gold light his appearance changed. His hands and what little of his wrists that could be seen beneath his armor no longer glinted the silver of metal, but were pale flesh. His scalp was not the hairless mess of scars it had been, but covered in long black hair that was slicked back down his neck. It was Loki as he was before, but at the same time it wasn’t. His hair was longer and in more disarray than Loki had ever let it be. His cheekbones seemed sharper, the circles under his eyes darker. It was as if it was a warped version of Loki as he was. Thor wondered if this was really what Loki remembered, was really how Loki had seen himself.

“Is this better?” Loki asked, stalking closer to Thor. “Does this help to jog your memory of the last time we met?”

“I remember it well, and this does nothing to change my memories of that day.”

Loki scowled. “No? Well, perhaps this will help then.”

The same light surrounded Loki, and then he was growing, growing, growing until he was as tall as the cell would allow. And when the light dissolved around him, his skin was blue and ridged and his eyes a dark red where they stared down at Thor from several feet above.

“Do you still pretend that I am your brother?” Loki laughed, and the sound echoed.

Thor’s instinct was to draw back, but he forced himself to stand still and to not flinch. He took a deep breath and stared evenly up at Loki in the giant form, and as a looked, he could still see his brother’s featured in the curve of his jaw and the slant of his cheeks.

“Yes,” Thor said with as much conviction as he could muster. He stepped forward and placed his hands upon the glass. “Yes, Loki. You are my brother. Jotun, Aesir, it doesn’t change anything. We were raised together and I have always seen you as my kin. There is nothing that will change that. I swear to you on my dying breath, by Odin Allfather, Loki, brother… I never renounced you as my family, and I did not throw you off the bridge that day. This is the truth. I don’t know what happened to make you believe it is not so, but brother, I swear it on our mother’s life.”

For several long moments Loki stared down at him, eyes red and huge.

Then, Loki started to scream.

“Liar,” he screamed as the cell filled with light and the figure of the Jotun shrank down. “I will tear your tongue from your mouth so you can never speak your twisted lies, I will peel your flesh from your bones and I will break them until all you will want to do is scream but you won’t be able to, tongueless liar you will be, and I will break your bones and set them with metal so every movement is pain, and I will split open your skull and reach in and rip those lies from your brain—”

Thor slapped his hands over his ears and stumbled back, unable to listen to the horrifying words that came screeching out of Loki’s mouth. The cell still flashed with light, and Loki’s words grew unintelligible, more scream than speech. SHIELD agents came running but Thor could take it no longer. He turned and fled.

***

“Tell me,” Thanos said, voice booming around the rocky, barren plains that made up Sanctuary, “What happened to bring you here, little godling.”

Loki lay strapped down to a bed, the technology of the makeshift operating table around him at odds with the rocky wasteland that made up the rest of the planet. Thanos had asked him this question before, had asked him it a hundred times, and though Loki’s answer hadn’t changed, he was now asking yet again.

“I’ve told you,” Loki said, voice strained from screaming. His head hurt, Norns his head hurt. He didn’t know what they were doing, couldn’t lift his head from where he was strapped down to turn and look behind him.

“Yes,” Thanos said, moving to stand in Loki’s line of vision. His expression was calm, almost gentle, and Loki hated that he was nearly comforted by the sight. “But tell me again.”

“I fought with my brother,” Loki said, repeating himself for the upteenth time because at least while Thanos was there, at least while he spoke to Thanos and said what he wanted to hear, there was no pain. “He had been banished by our—by his father, the Allfather. And he returned while I was attempting to end the war he had started with another realm. We fought, and we fell off the edge of the bridge. The Allfather arrived then and he caught us, but he renounced me. Rejected me. And I let go, and fell into the void, until I landed here.”

Loki spoke haltingly, between gasps of breath, body still twitching with the aftershocks of pain. Thanos stood silently as he listened, head nodding every so often as if in encouragement. When Loki finished speaking, Thanos took a step closer and placed one hand gently on Loki’s cheek. The tips of his massive fingers pressed against Loki’s tender scalp and he flinched but did not pull away.

“Oh, Loki,” Thanos said, “It is amusing that you continue to tell yourself these lies.”

“What?” Loki blinked up at Thanos’s face looming above him. “It is the truth, as I’ve told it to you many times over.”

“Yes, so you have. And I have let you tell the same tale in hope that you would come to realize the truth on your own. But it seems I have overestimated you.”

Something akin to disappointment ran through Loki then. Panic, perhaps. It wasn’t that he cared what Thanos thought of him, not exactly, but Thanos was the only one who promised relief from pain, was the only one who did not hurt him directly. He had to please Thanos unless he wanted to suffer more.

“I don’t understand,” Loki said.

“It seems you don’t.” Thanos sounded so utterly disappointed, so regretful, that Loki couldn’t help the stab of guilt in his gut. “So I will take pity on you, little one. You claim that you let go of your own volition, but that is not what happened. The truth of that matter is that you were thrown. Tossed into the void by your own brother in his anger.”

“What?” Loki stared up at Thanos with wide eyes. He couldn’t understand this game, couldn’t understand what Thanos was trying to gain by this. “That is not what happened. I was there. I remember it as it was.”

“You were tossed off the edge like you were nothing, like you were trash to be discarded, and you fell until I saw you, little godling, and I saved you from your endless fall.”

“What is the point of this?” Loki said. Anger was starting to built up in him now. Who was Thanos to so blatantly lie to him? Did Thanos think him a fool, to believe any story told? “You think to lie to me, he who is the god of lies?”

Thanos shook his head slowly, disappointment etched into his features.

“I had hoped you would listen to reason, Loki,” he said. “It seems you have proven me wrong.”

Thanos turned away then, just as Loki felt something sharp slice into his scalp, and the pain in his skull flared anew.

*** 

“Thor, what the hell happened down there?” Tony asked the moment Thor entered the room. Thor just shook his head and sank down heavily onto one of the stools, leaning his elbows on his knees and placing his head in his hands. He focused on taking deep breaths, in and out, in and out.

“Thor?” Bruce’s voice came from the side, quieter and much more gentle in tone than Tony’s had been. “Are you alright?”

“No,” Thor said. It came out like a croak. “No, my friend, I am not.”

“Is it Mr. Batshit Crazy down there? Because dude, he looks like he’s a nightmare to have a conversation with,” Tony said.

“Don’t speak of him that way!” Thor whipped his head up and leveled a glare at Tony.

Tony raised his hands up in surrender, taking a few steps back as he said, “Sorry, sorry!”

A moment passed and Thor let his head drop down again. “I am sorry, Stark. I don’t mean to shout. I just— Do not wish to hear my brother spoken of in that manner.”

“Got it, got it. No insulting little bro downstairs. But I mean—”

“Tony,” Bruce said, cutting him off. “Enough.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything bad! But, Thor, your brother killed people. Like, a lot of people.”

“I am aware,” Thor said to his hands. “Believe me. The knowledge hurts me more than you can know.”

They were both silent at that. After a few moments Thor took in a deep breath and looked up at them again.

“But, my friends, you have to understand. That is not my brother. At least, not as he was. Something has happened to him. Something horrible. I look at him, and I am not looking into my brother’s eyes. I speak to him, but he speaks words that do not seem his own. Something horrible has been done to him.”

“The cyberkinetic replacements,” Bruce said quietly. At Thor’s questioning glance he elaborated, “His metal arms, and everything else that seems to have been done to him. It’s hard to really tell from just these scans, but we’ve been thinking and that’s what it looks like. Mechanical replacements that have been connected to his nervous system so that they’re essentially a part of him.”

Thor swallowed down the sick feeling that crawled up his throat. “Who would do such a thing? And why?”

“Enhancements, maybe?” Tony said. “Make him stronger? Seems like if you’re going to want to replace pieces of a guy, you’re probably gonna want to make those pieces stronger.”

“But to what goal? And why Loki?”

Bruce shook his head, hands nervously twisting around each other and he paced a little. “I don’t know, Thor. This obviously isn’t anything we have the technology to do here on Earth, not at this level. Maybe someone sent Loki here, and whoever sent him did this to him?”

“Made him a weapon,” came Tony’s quiet voice. The words sent chills down Thor’s spine.

“My brother is not an object,” Thor said, but there was no heat behind his words.

“I know, buddy,” Tony said. “But not everyone would see it that way. Especially not someone who would command an army to take over an entire world.”

“This isn’t my brother,” Thor said. “You don’t know him like I do. One of the last things he ever said to me before I thought him lost was that he never wanted the throne, he only ever wanted to be my equal. I cannot reconcile the man who said those words with the man who claims to want to subjugate an entire realm. These are not his goals, or else they are his only out of madness and duress. But either way I would help have my brother back to me. I would help him.”

Silence rang in the room. Bruce and Tony exchanged a meaningful glance between them, and Thor read the uncertainty in it.

“I know you have no reason to have any faith in my brother,” Thor said, “But I am going to help him with or without your aide.”

“You’re right, we don’t have any reason to trust Rudolph downstairs,” Tony said, and Bruce shot him a warning glance before Tony quickly added, “But we trust you, bud.”

Bruce nodded. “You have our support.”

Thor mustered up the most genuine smile he could, though he was certain it was weak. “Thank you. You have no idea how much it means to me.” 

***

Loki pulled his lips back in a snarl at the creature in front of him. The Other, it called itself. What a terrible name for an equally terrible creature. It seemed he had been deemed Loki’s primary tormentor, and the creature delighted in his duties.

“You speak lies yet again, Loki Odinson,” the Other hissed, it’s tone nearly taunting.

“I am no son of Odin,” Loki spat back. The Other tilted his head at him, considering.

“That is the only truth that seems to spill from your lips. Shall I call you Thanosson, then?”

“I am no son of Thanos.” Loki’s voice was nearly a shout. He took a step backwards, but the Other simply took a step nearer and closed the gap between them again. “I am son of no one. I belong to myself and myself alone, creature.”

“Lies,” the Other said. “All lies. You deny the name of the one who saved you, who plucked you from the void with his own hands and granted you salvation?”

“He did not save me,” Loki said, but the words lacked the conviction they once held. They kept claiming Thanos had saved him, kept drilling it over and over into him, and why? Why were they so determined in the farce?

“He did. He saved your life, granted you safety and power here at Sanctuary, and yet you persist in your lies. What sort of payment is that, Thanosson?”

“I fell here alone. No one plucked me from the void, least of all your lying master.” But even as Loki spoke the words, tendrils of doubt creeped into his mind. Had Thanos saved him? Everything was a blur, and he had been so sure before, but if he really focused… was it not Thanos’s hands he could remember around him? Was it not Thanos’s face he first saw when he awoke?

The Other stared at him, silent and foreboding. Loki took another step away, but this time his back met the wall and he could retreat no further.

“I see no use for your silvertongue if all you use it for is lies,” the Other said at length. “Perhaps I should just take it from you and silence you until you accept the truth.”

Loki bared his teeth. “I would like to see you try.”

He regretted his words when the Other’s hand shot out, fingers wrapping around his skull and pain shooting through him. There was nothing but pain, pain, until when it receded he opened his eyes and found himself strapped down again. The Other’s horrid face met his, and his features twisted up into what might have been meant as a grin.

“You’ve proven yourself unworthy of your tongue, until such a time as Lord Thanos deems you worthy of speech again,” the Other said. He reached down and pried Loki’s jaw apart, holding it open at a painful angle.

Loki screamed. He screamed and he screamed until they ripped out his tongue and he could scream no more.

***

 A knock came on the door, startling Thor out of his brooding. He looked up just as Natasha entered, looking between the three Avengers calculatingly.

“The prisoner is asking to see you,” she said, addressing the statement to Thor. Thor couldn’t hide his surprise.

“Loki?”

Natasha nodded. “He refuses to speak to anyone else. He just keeps asking for you. He is getting…. Agitated.”

Thor thought back to when they had last spoken. Agitated was surely an understatement.

“I will speak with him,” Thor said. There was no hesitation.

Natasha tilted her head at him, nodding slightly. Thor looked at her and she looked evenly back at him. He could glean nothing from her expression.

“You sure about this?” Bruce said quietly, stepping closer to Thor. “You remember what happened last time.”

“Yes, I remember, but yes, I am still sure. Loki is my brother, and if he wishes to speak with me I will not deny him that.”

Bruce nodded, though the furrow of his brow betrayed his lingering uncertainty. Thor paid it no mind.

“Just be careful, okay?” Bruce said. Thor nodded seriously.

“I will.” He turned back to Natasha. “Take me to him.”

The walk down to Loki’s cell felt longer than it had any right to be.

“Did he say why he wished to see me?” Thor asked. Natasha shook her head.

“He won’t answer any questions,” she said. “He says he will only speak with you.”

They spent the rest of the walk in silence.

When they arrived at his cell, Loki was sitting on the floor in the center of it. He watched Thor approach with narrowed eyes and Thor could not read his expression.

“Brother,” Thor said, both in greeting and in emphasis, “They said you wished to speak with me.”

Loki’s narrowed gaze drifted to where Natasha stood beside Thor.

“Leave us,” he said.

She glanced at Thor, raising a brow in a silent question. Thor nodded.

“It is fine,” he said. Natasha only hesitated the briefest of moments before she gave a curt nod and left. Thor looked back at Loki, who had not moved. After a moment, Thor sat down on the ground in a mirror of Loki’s position.

“I would gladly listen to whatever it is you have to say,” Thor said. Loki inclined his head slightly but said nothing. His eyes stayed steady on Thor.

A slight surge of anger flared up, but Thor fought it down. Loki’s silence was frustrating, yes, but Thor would not chase away the opening he had been granted. He gathered all the patience he could muster and waited, meeting Loki’s gaze as evenly as he could.

When Loki finally spoke, his voice shattering the silence, Thor almost jumped from the surprise of it.

“You say that I speak lies, that my memories of past events are not the truth.” Loki spoke each word carefully, as if he were reciting from a page. “I would hear your version of events.”

“So you believe me then?” Thor could not keep the hope from his voice. Loki’s expression darkened.

“I claim no such thing,” he snapped. He paused, then said in a quieter voice, “No, I do not believe any lies out of your mouth. But I would hear your tale anyway, if only for my amusement.”

There was something there, something unspoken in Loki’s words. Desperation, perhaps. Thor focused on that and not the harsh words that Loki spoke.

“And I will be glad to tell you,” he said, offering a soft smile. Loki did not return it, but neither did he interrupt Thor as he spoke, and Thor chose to cling to the small bit of hope that he gave him. 

***

Loki’s breath came in ragged gasps, the only sound that escaped his mutilated mouth now. He sat on the dusty rocks that made up Sanctuary’s ground, mindlessly letting his fingers trace patterns in the dirt. He couldn’t feel the dirt beneath his skin, couldn’t feel the course scrape of the grains as his fingers dragged along the ground.

The sound of familiar footsteps approached him, heavy and even in their steps. Nebula. He turned his head slightly as she approached him, watching her out of the corner of his eyes.

She met his gaze evenly, expression carefully blank. She said nothing, just silently lowered herself to the round until she was seated beside him.

Loki’s mouth still tasted faintly of blood. He wasn’t sure if it was real or simply him imagining it. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore, what was real or what was a lie. Fitting for the god of lies, he thought bitterly.

Loki didn’t attempt to speak, didn’t dare to. He didn’t want to hear whatever broken, mutilated sound would escape his tongueless throat.

Beside him, Nebula extended her metal arm and began work on it. Out of the corner of his eye Loki saw that it was slightly out of alignment, her fingers twitching oddly. Nebula worked on it with the practiced skill of one who has fixed herself a hundred times.

She didn’t attempt to speak to him, simply sat with him in silence until his ragged breaths eased.

***

When the alarms sounded, signaling Loki’s escape, Thor couldn’t find it in himself to be surprised. Disappointed, yes, but not surprised. Loki had always been the one to run and hide, to sneak away with shadows and misdirection. Thor should have seen it coming, but he had been too hopeful.

“Loki’s gone,” Steve came and told him, as if Thor hadn’t already realized what had happened. Thor nodded gravely.

“I know he’s your brother, but you know we can’t really hold back if he attacks,” Steve said, speaking very carefully. “It’s a matter of life or death, and if it comes down to Loki’s life and the lives of any number of civilians…”

Steve trailed off. Thor couldn’t look at him. He understood, he did, but he couldn’t help the surge of anger that Steve’s words brought. Loki was his family, they couldn’t expect him to just stand by and let them hurt him.

“Just let me speak with him,” Thor said at length. “Give me the chance to talk to him again. I was so close, Captain. I truly think I can reach him if I have another chance. My brother is still in there.”

Steve was quiet for several moments.

“I’ll do what I can, Thor,” he finally said, voice gentle and laced with understanding. “I can’t make promises for anyone else, but I’ll do what I can.”

Thor nodded. It was the best he would get.

***

The new tongue they gave him felt strange in his mouth. Heavy. There was no feeling to it, no sensation, no taste.

Thanos stood before him, towering over Loki’s kneeling form. The Other was beside him, no doubt admiring his handiwork.

“A silver tongue,” the Other said. “It only seemed fitting.”

Thanos hummed, a sound that vibrated through the ground. Loki felt the sensation through his knees where the knelt, but not through his metal hands pressed into the dirt.

“But is he worthy of it?” Thanos asked. He took a step closer, the ground shaking with it. Loki did not move.

“Tell me, little godling,” Thanos said, speaking slowly, as if to a child, “Who are you?”

“I am Loki,” he said. The words came strangely to his foreign tongue. “Son of Thanos.”

“And how did you come to arrive here, child?”

The next words came more easily, because they had been told to him over and over and he knew them to be true.

“I was thrown into the void by my false-brother and I fell until you rescued me, my lord.”

***

 Thor found Loki on top of Stark’s tower.

“Loki!” he shouted. Loki stood with his scepter in hand and clad in full armor, his helmet upon his head again. Like this, Thor could almost pretend Loki was whole again, as he had been before. “Brother, please, stop this.”

Loki whirled around, facing Thor and staring at him with those awful eyes. Thor couldn’t read the emotion in them, if there was any at all.

“It’s too late,” Loki said, and his voice was quieter than Thor had expected it to be.

“No, it’s not,” Thor said. “We can stop this together, brother.”

Loki flinched back at the word. Thor took a step closer.

“Brother,” Thor repeated, emphasizing the word. “I don’t know what has happened to you, but I know this isn’t you. You told me that you never wanted the throne. The brother I remember would never wish to rule an entire realm like this.”

“I’m not the brother you remember,” Loki said, but the words were flat. “I’m not your brother at all.”

“You are, Loki. You can deny it a thousand times over and every time I will be there to assure you of it. You are my brother, forever and always. Please, let me help you. Let us stop this together.”

Loki was silent. He stared at Thor, unblinking. Unbidden, a chill ran up Thor’s spine, and he could not stop himself from daring to ask, “Loki, tell me this one thing if nothing else. What did they do to your eyes?”

“My eyes?”

“I have looked into your eyes thousands of times over a thousand years, I know them better than I know my own, and I know the eyes you wear now are not your own.”

Loki faltered. Blinked. Stared back at Thor with those strange eyes.

“They took them,” he said at length, his voice a quiet whisper. “They cut out my eyes, Thor. They said they were defective, that they could not see what needed to be seen, and they tore them from my skull and replaced them with something else.”

Thor couldn’t move. He couldn’t answer. He had known, in the deepest part of his mind, that the truth had to be something like that, but to hear the words fall from Loki’s lips was a horror he could never have prepared for.

Loki dropped his gaze, head hanging low as he whispered so quietly Thor barely caught the words, “They didn’t even leave me the ability to cry.”

On impulse, Thor rushed forward to grasp Loki. It was a motion born of familiarity, of a thousand years of familiar touches. Loki was conceivably the enemy now, foreign and feral, but Thor reached out and grasped his arms like he was nothing but his little brother in need of comfort. Loki flinched, but he did not jerk back.

“Can you feel that?” Thor asked in a quiet, broken voice. Tears blurred the corners of his vision. Loki’s arms felt unnaturally hard and stiff beneath the leathers covering them. Metal, not skin.

“No.” Loki’s voice was quiet. This close, Thor could see the flash of silver in his mouth as he spoke. “What use is feeling to a weapon?”

The tears fell freely down Thor’s cheeks then and he pulled against his chest, wrapping his arms around him. Loki was stiff in his grip at first, but slowly, slowly, he relaxed.

“I can feel that,” Loki said, and tentatively his arms came up to wrap around Thor’s back.

“Brother.” The name came out of Thor’s lips in a sob. “What happened to you?”

In a whispered breath against Thor’s shoulder, Loki said, “His name is Thanos.”