Archive of Our Own

He woke with a start.

And then, he started again.

His head rolled and pounded akin to a dwarven anvil on metal. It rang in his ears, the loud and clanging beat of his blood, and rolled down from his ears to his stomach, too, a great and roiling knot of welling nausea that left his throat dry as sandpaper and his mouth bitter with the taste of sweat. Even like this, even ensconced in soft sheets and poured gently into the softest bed and head rested upon the carefulest pillow, the world turned so dizzy and spun so fast, it felt like he was falling.

Still, falling.

He hurked quietly, stomach rebelling despite it having nothing to throw up. Despite that he was motionless in bed and had been for hours. The lights glowed, drilling sharp little dots into his eyes that burned like hot coals in his head, and he heaved at them, too, but the motion, the spell, the overall exertion to dim them down was so much more than he could ever care to exert again.

So he stayed there, curled up and trying not to pant, eyes narrowed to slits, and waited.

He did not have to wait long.

The whisper came from behind him, not audible at all but instead a faint ripple of power, the quietest murmur of magic that he only heard because it was so personal and intimately familiar. He didn't bother to turn, feigning a languid, lazy ease like a second skin even if there was no one there who believed it.

"Loki," she said. "My son. You're awake."

He barely cracked an eye open, surveying the stone-faced, soft figure kneeling before him. She did that a lot, now. Their mother had always had a small and loved collection of pet names for him, names that would've been intolerable from any other soul, but in the past weeks, months, she'd taken to calling him any number of permutations on that.

Son.

He didn't have to pretend he didn't know why she was doing it.

When he did not respond, she drew closer, immaterial hand passing over his side with a ghostly whisper. "How are you feeling?"

He huffed, half-muffled into the pillow and even further so behind gritted teeth. "Hurts." Loki closed his eyes, letting himself imagine the passing world about him instead of watching through veiled illusion and magics, and through a shockwave of pain so intense he gasped, huddled up a little tighter. "How long has it been this time?"

There was another unhappy sigh, one that somehow scraped at his ears; too loud, too loud. A breath later, the lights around him dimmed, and he would've said thank you if he wasn't so busy trying not to embarrassingly sag against the pillow with a second gasp of relief. "Three days," she murmured. "You're lucky it was not more... these are spells that ought not be attempted alone. Especially not so when attempting them on yourself."

"Ah, true. But I wasn't alone, was I, Mother?" He smirked. He wanted it to be worse. Wanted it to be a nasty, hateful sneer, an accusatory jab that needled underneath defenses and pried open vulnerable and soft guilt underneath like a stitched wound clawed open to bear the sunlight of the day. But when he opened his eyes and saw her staring down at him, waiting with kindness and sad eyes, he just couldn't do it. "You were there."

Frigga tsked quietly, giving his cheek a faint, chiding smack, a smack which wasn't felt, because it wasn't real. "And I wasn't real enough to help you if something went wrong."

"Yes, well, how about we take it up with Odin, then." And this time, it was a nasty sneer, as hateful as he could make it as his eyes flickered shut again, and in an almost desperate request to leave it alone, please, he began to worm his hands about to try and sit instead.

Every inch of the push hurt. A dry, aching soreness that beat in him from head to toe, caught in his throat to whimper and his stomach to send his head dizzy and spiraling again.

It was all still infinitely preferable to speaking about the Allfather.

Frigga's hands moved helplessly again; fluttering uselessly at his arms, seeking to help support his back, to hold his hands. They passed on through him every time, warm ripples of fake light, and he smiled bigger even as her grief flooded her own into almost-tears. But she could not touch him to help. Could never touch him. It had been so long, in fact, since he had truly seen his mother, since she had really been there and touched him, that he'd almost forgotten if she was real.

A sorceress could come as a ghostly illusion, visiting him down in the palace's deepest cells. She could drift in through the walls and stand there shrouded to anyone's sight but his, kneeling by his side as the world rocked around him and entreating him out with gentle words and warm promises and a murmured oath that he was loved.

The Queen, however, could do none of those things.

Not when he had ordered her, told her, once, in his heart, begged her that he is not to know.

No one, he thought with a breathless, agonizing weight of unending need, could know.

He hadn't even wanted Frigga to know, he remembered bitterly, wiping at his mouth with his sleeve and baring his teeth against a second dizzy wave, kneels curled to his chest, the heavy world pulsing in and out, gripping the sheets for dear life. She was there, again, sitting miserably on the edge of his bed, intangible hands searching until they just settled in his hair, pseudo-strokes that were not real and could not be felt.

She wasn't supposed to be here, either.

"Breathe, dear one," she murmured, and Loki half-snarled through bared teeth, except he wasn't breathing, and as an almost afterthought he sucked in one tight breath to make his head spin again. "You did well. So well."

He shook his head once, pushing hair back that was ragged and half-torn (he didn't even remember trying to pull it out). He hadn't done well at all. His magic still felt frayed, uneasy in his fingers and slipping down through them like grains of sand, his core drained and scarred and every sputter of his seidr flickering back to crush underfoot. His magic hadn't been this untrained, this desperate, since he was a child.

It felt like Thanos and the Black Order had strung his magic out like a particularly stretchy noodle. Just tugged, tugged, and tugged, winding it out longer and longer until it at last began to wear and tear. And in those holes, Thanos' children had poured, clawing them bigger, filling them with their own filth and perverse magic, infecting him from the inside out until he could no longer tell up from down, Thor from Odin, the Void from home.

He had been unwinding those enchantments for near two years, now. Frigga, with him, and helping as very much as she could, for the past fourteen months.

Because only a third-rate sorcerer would've failed to realize he was fighting another mage's spells, almost every day down here in his cell, and only his mother would've not succumbed to his seething fits after it, with bared teeth and thrown tantrums and hurled obscene threats to get her to go away.

Because she was, in fact, his mother.

He could at least accept that much, now.

Vaguely, he realized, recognized, a second Loki curled lazily in the chaise lounge across the cell. Hair immaculate, formal attire neat and unwrinkled, paging gently through a thick tome with all the careless ease in the world.

He wondered what Frigga had had his double spend the last three days doing.

"I need to go again," he said at last, when his head had finally settled; the room had stopped trying to spin. His fists balled in his lap and he pushed himself even more securely straighter, glaring at Frigga's double, daring her to stop him. She could not. "I only unraveled half of this particular spell. I wish to... I can not leave this unfinished."

"And why's that?" She moved closer, sitting still on the side of his bed yet leaving no impression in the sheets. Too much. Too close. If she'd been real he would've snarled or thrown her back, but she was not real, because that was the point; he could handle no more than that.

"Loki?" she pressed again, her ever watchful eyes narrowing. "Why do you insist on continuing today, when you are already so unwell?"

Loki merely grinned, still all teeth, still a wild twist at his mouth that felt like feral and wild, not a smile at all. "You can not stop me," was all he could bear to say, a nasty challenge which was categorically untrue: she could very much stop him. She had any number of ways with which to stop him. But she wouldn't, and they both knew it.

His mouth still tasted like lead, and his heart raced so fast he could hear it beating in his ears and even worse, he could not stop it.

He remembered, how this particular spell had gotten entangled in his head.

Most of them, he couldn't.

He remembered the one they called Proxima Midnight, taking him by the jaw and broken arms with a face inches from his, smile rancid and filthy magic probing his own broken core. He remembered knees digging into his legs as he was pried spreadeagle and pathetic, vulnerable and too parched to scream, and the witch had pressed closer still and whispered in his ear you've been so good, our father wants to give you a reward.

And with that, his seidr had been flayed open like a live wire, and he was burned with the fire of a blazing bed of coals as the infectious worms of their magic clawed into every exposed inch.

Somewhere underneath the screaming in his head, the endless, bloodcurdling, meaningless screaming, Proxima Midnight had come back.

Now you have the same blessing as all of Thanos' children.

Now, she'd whispered, in his ear, and so sickeningly, so wrongly, she was IN HIS HEAD too, you will never be alone.

He couldn't hear their voices, anymore. Asgard's wards were powerful, and the protections on the palace even moreso- not even Thanos' children could break through. Not without shattering them so completely that the Allfather would know, and consider it an act of war.

It didn't matter.

He wanted that spell GONE.

When he did not answer, could not answer his mother, she merely let out an unhappy sigh, intangible fingers trailing in his hair and passing over his head. "As you wish, my son," she murmured, still brushing his hair with fingers that weren't real. "I can see that it pains you."

"That's not-"

"Of course," she said warmly, with a smile that was almost mollifying. "Of course it isn't." She made stroking motions again, eyes thoughtful, and then gave him another slight smile again that reminded him just who he had learned all his tricks from in the first place. "However, if you'll allow me one request, before you commit yourself so recklessly to yet another exorcism against your own spirit?"

He glared back, but found it mild, like an early spring or a late autumn. He wanted to snap at her, wanted to be vicious and cruel and mean, but he was just... so tired. He'd slept for three days, she said, had done so little for these last two years but sleep, broken up by intermittent bursts of tormenting magic- and yet, he was still just so tired.

He would not admit it, but he was glad she was here.

Frigga smiled again when he did not speak, letting the stretched silence answer for him. "Have a meal with your mother."

"Oh? And how would like me to do that, Mother?" He showed his teeth again, because he still couldn't quite remember how to smile, and from the broken ends of whimpering spells there was still a whispered she's not your mother. "You are not here. There is no meal for me to share with you. Ah, of course, I could always join you in your chambers, if Odin should let the black sheep out for an evening- but I forget myself; to be the black sheep, you must actually be family, and I-"

"Loki."

"I am not-..."

He closed his eyes again. A whiplash of old pain and betrayal tightened again around him, an old wound, this one, one that had never quite stopped bleeding and never would. He wanted to scream, to cry; to throw things until they broke and throw his mother out. He wanted to scream so loud and hard it bled his throat, to scratch himself until he bled for real, bled until monster inside him was dead and then he'd open his eyes, and he-

He wouldn't be here anymore.

He wanted to scream until he was heard.

His shut eyes burned again, not grief or betrayal or nightmares or anything at all that he could name. It tightened in his chest and caught in his throat until he couldn't scream, could hardly even breathe. He shuddered, coughing hard once, and with a wavering hand pushed at his hair again, this time feeling the cold sweat lingering on his face from a fever that never seemed to fade and nightmares that never would.

"Yes, Mother," he gave, and bowed his head in the obedience that would've made any proper prince proud.

There was soup and hot tea, a broth that was delicate and a drink that he knew from the smell was meant to calm and comfort the seidr. Frigga, he knew immediately, had had a hand in it. Had had a hand in wherever his meals for the past three days had ended up. Had had every hand in why no one had ever noticed the prisoner so sick and bedridden he might've been dying for three days straight, and for so many other days in the months that were slowly stretching into years.

Something weighed on his heart that felt too much like obligation, and it sunk inside him until it twisted his stomach as vicious and unforgiving as a cursed blade.

"Why?" he asked dully, spoon spun in the soup. He had no appetite. If he ate more than a bite, he was surely going to be sick. Perhaps that's what she wants; perhaps she insists you eat only to leave you so ill you must continue another day.

"Because," Frigga said, no hesitation, no pause, no breath given to delay. "You are my son." She did pause, then, tilting her head a little to watch him force a single bite. It tasted of ash and bile. "Although- might I ask, why what, specifically, dear one?"

He rolled his eyes, this time content to let them settle on the soup. He still couldn't taste it. Wasn't sure his sense of taste had ever come fully back at all, since he'd frozen, in the Void. You know why, he wanted to say.

But-

Being difficult was exhausting.

And he was already just so tired.

Loki sighed again, and took a second bite.

There was a part of him, some small, ashamed, scorned part that wanted to let it all stop. To close his eyes and sag sideways like a child and land with his head in his mother's lap and just lie there and cry, and she'd make it all better. She'd stroke his hair and call him her little wizard, and he'd curl up as a snake about Thor's arm and press against the warmth of his skin until he'd forgotten what was so wrong in the first place. No Tesseract, no Black Order, no Mad Titan he still could not yet bring himself to name aloud, and when he shut his eyes there was no lingering voice in his head there to follow him into his dreams.

Third bite.

"Why haven't you told the Allfather?" he asked finally. Still could not yet look at her. Could not dare to let himself think beyond this little room. "I know you desire it."

This time, it was Frigga's turn to sigh. His eyes glazed downward, and he did not see the look on her face; only her ghostly hand as it came to hover over his. "Because you don't want me to."

He scoffed once, this time burying it against a swallow of tea that was too hot and too bitter, but she pressed it, of course, because it always had to be pressed, nothing could ever just be. "Of course I want to tell him, Loki. I want to tell the whole palace- I wish for you to get the proper help that you need and deserve, I wish for you to stop killing yourself by a thousand cuts with this nonsense idea that you must do all things alone, I wish to give Thor the answers he so badly needs and will not admit- I wish to stop this madness!"

"Then do it. Then speak with the Allfather, and tell him all that you know and all that you've guessed, and-"

"But I've told you, I want for it to be your choice. And even more than that, I do not wish to take it from you."

Loki pressed his lips together, saying nothing. The spoon dug into his clenching fist and he pried a finger loose, glaring down at it and the fine tremors that shook from him to it. His choice. His.

As if any of this was what he would have wished.

"Oh, my son..." And then, her hand was there again, caressing his cheek and he felt it only through the cool air of an illusion, knew it only through the waver in her voice. "Do you not think I have thought this through? That I have not wanted and even begun to speak to Odin a dozen times yet, that I want to end this madness myself? But I know how it would end, Loki. I will speak to Odin, I will tell him all that I know- and then he should come here, and speak to you. And then- well, would you tell him the truth, Loki? The full and honest truth... the words that you have not even said to me?" She laughed quietly, giving him the mercy of not having to answer, and her hand passed again from his cheek to his hair. "I would love to tell him, Loki. This would be so much easier if I could. So much easier on you. But... until you are ready to speak... I will not force the words from you."

He was shaking, again.

That was what he had come to, these days- always shaking.

Always broken.

Always teetering, right there on the edge.

He heaved in a hard shock of a breath, swollen and eating away at his attempt to swallow and sob. He couldn't put a word on it, again- couldn't know if he wanted to scream END IT and KILL ME or whisper thank you. Perhaps all three, but he didn't have the voice for it and for perhaps just one day, wanted to get through it without dissolving into a sniveling child.

She was right.

He didn't want to see Odin.

He hadn't- not once. Not once since he'd been taken back to Asgard in chains, looked him in the eye, and smiled like a madman. And if the Allfather appeared down here now and asked him why did you attack Midgard for the very first time, because he had never even bothered to ask why before-

Well, he didn't know what he would say.

He would not, however... could not... say the truth.

Loki left his eyes shut, then, dragging the spoon still through the bowl that he had no wish to eat, and continued to mechanically swallow until he could hear the spoon scraping the bottom of the bowl. Frigga, mercifully, left them there in the silence, and he drank it in thrice as hungrily as he'd ever tasted the soup.

And then, just as he was ready to open his eyes and say I'm going to try again, Frigga spoke up once more.

"I've been speaking to your brother."

Loki opened his eyes just to roll them, heart sunk and hands ice-cold. "And how has the golden son of Asgard been lately, then?" He sipped his tea like it was wine, smiling wickedly around the rim. "Soaring sky high, perhaps, now that he's no longer tethered to the ground?"

"He misses you."

"Hardly." He smirked again- it seemed, somewhere along the way, he'd forgotten how to manage an actual meaningful smile. "Hardly, Mother."

He couldn't say it.

But what he meant was, he let go.

But she pushed onwards, deaf to the argument he couldn't make so she could not refute it. "He misses you, and he misses you because he does not know where his brother has gone."

"His brother has gone into nothing, because he never had one. Because-"

"He misses you, Loki, no matter what skin you wear, no matter your father's name, no matter your birthright, no matter your sins. He misses you, my son, and he does not know where you went, and because I am bound by your silence I can not tell him." She could not force him to look at her but yielded closer instead, her pale hands hovering intangible over his and a voice hard as iron. "He asks me what's gone wrong in your mind that you could kill eighty mortals in two days and laugh at it, and I am not able to tell him that you don't even remember it."

"Perhaps he should ask the Allfather all these questions, then! Perhaps-" Whatever there'd ever been of his patience frizzled and snapped and he wanted to scream it, then, the words catching in bared teeth and a hollow throat and rage boiling so hot his vision melted red. "The Allfather will say- the monster within finally shows his true colors, what more would you expect of a Jotun, of a rotten Frost Giant runt- a r-rotten-"

His chest hurt. His head spun, his heart pounded, his breaths raced, and his chest hurt. His all but scraped bare magical core screamed at him and he clutched his chest, wheezing into nothing, the roar in his ears drowning until there was nothing left.

Thor was lucky, he thought viciously, to say these things through their mother. So very very lucky, because if he'd been here now, saying them himself, he would've taken the pleasure to tear him to shreds and tear that pathetic hopeful smile straight off his face.

The silence that settled then was as sick as it was poison.

But then, Frigga was there.

Again.

"Little one," she sighed. A name that she had always called him- but now he at last suspected just where it had come from, because she had never called Thor that, and now he understood just really why that was, and he wanted to claw himself through and scream- "Let me tell you a story."

"Aren't I past the age for bedtime stories, then, Mother?" he asked, then laughed. That, too, was all wrong. Halfway hysterical, and out a smile that wasn't a smile at all, because he'd forgotten how.

Frigga did not smile back.

"It is the story," she said, "of the day that you fell."

Loki stopped smiling.

"Thor pleaded with Odin. For hours and hours, he pleaded with him, and would not be quiet until he was silenced by Gungnir itself. He begged for him to allow Heimdall to look for you- but the Void is vast, Odin said." Frigga shook her head, vague fingers drifting through his again, a sad smile that could not touch the pounding of his heart. "Heimdall was the watchman for all of Asgard. He could not devote his sight towards such a vast, fruitless task... not for a son of Asgard that willingly let go."

Loki flinched.

Frigga's hand moved across his still, drifting as if she wanted to hold, to squeeze, to make right. "Thor did not speak to Odin for a near month, after that. I still think he only spoke to him at all at first because he had to plead for the king's favor- he did not speak to him as his father. I don't think Thor has ever quite forgiven it, even now." She smiled once, but it was wane and pale, an illusion as much as this entire play. "He did go to Heimdall, though."

Loki's bitter, sifting mass of resentment, then- it flinched. He remained perfectly still, his gaze still down, and his hands remained perfectly calm in his lap, but for just a moment, he was not sure how to breathe.

...what?

"He begged Heimdall. He said he knew he could not ask him to go against his king's orders, but if there was any favor he could bring, any bribe he could pay, any way at all he could see to circumvent the Allfather's command- there were some days, Loki, when he scarcely left Heimdall's side. Because Heimdall did look for you, when he could. When Asgard was assuredly safe, he turned his eyes to the Void, and-"

"What?"

"-and he- what?" Frigga stopped, tilting her head for the first time in abject confusion. She watched him for several moments, clearly not understanding, then repeated herself in words that washed over and above him so violently he almost could not hear. "Heimdall looked for you. But he never saw you."

"Heimdall-" He choked on it, grasping fruitlessly at her hands, then at the sheets, an anchor in a whirlwind that held nothing down. "And Thor-" There was a distant screaming in his head, a clawing at the remnants of magic and the deluge of memory. He could not think; he could not breathe.

It took several moments, for her to understand.

But when she did, the horror that washed across her face seized about Loki's heart in the same moment, and her hands reached for him so suddenly he knew that she'd all but forgotten that she could not touch him.

"Oh-" she whispered, her voice nothing but heartbroken. "Loki... you did not know."

"K- know?" he rasped. The world tilted; tea spilled flat from his hand and he didn't even feel it stain his leg. "How- h-how-"

And then she was there; too close, too real, too unimaginably real. "We looked for you," she said, and that-

That was the end.

Thor had looked for him.

"Stop!" he howled, and Frigga would've been crying if they wouldn't have been false tears; he could see it in her eyes. "Stop it! I-" He couldn't stop panting, a black panic encroaching at the heels of his sight, and Frigga kept trying to calm him but she wasn't there and all he could feel was the scrambling freefall as he slipped and fell back into the endless and empty dark of the Void. "I d-don't- I don't want to hear this! Stop!"

"My son-"

"NO!" He was panting now, half-sobbing, scrambling up over the sheets to crawl away but there was nowhere to crawl away to, not when the torment screamed in his own head. He gasped, tearing once at his head, then his chest, nails dragging lines of blood as he dropped to his knees, and Frigga was speaking but he couldn't hear it over the shouting in his head. He had to get away- wanted to crawl out of his own skin, wanted the oblivion of the past three days back, the fevered sleep and dreams to run away with, wanted, wanted-

Choking, Loki scrambled back upright, heaving with each stab of agony and each jerk of a breath. "I'm trying again," he gasped, then, "NO!" when she tried to reach for him. "Not- do not touch me, do not stop me, I'm starting again-"

"No, you are not, Loki," and perhaps she couldn't touch him but her hands still curled around his wrists, eyes blazing with all the sudden force of a goddess and one that was stronger than him. "You will not run away yet again; not like this. You could hurt yourself-"

"I don't- do I look as if I care?!" He laughed once but it was stricken and mad, of course I could hurt myself, that's the POINT, the circles of his magic already warming desperately inside of him. All he had to do was start hunting after the remains of just one of the dozens of spells in his head- it wouldn't take long, it wouldn't be hard; he'd just have to push a little too much, and then-

The last thing he saw, chest split down in two with breathless panic and anguish pierced his head straight through, was Frigga on her feet, the wealth of her own magic beginning to glow.

Then his magic scraped and sparked as a live wire, one wrong connection made with the desperate last breaths of a seidr ready to give and die, and everything went white.

When Thor at last brought himself to stand before his brother's cell again, he only came expecting to face a recalcitrant, glaring statue.

Loki didn't talk to him much, anymore.

(And that was on good days.)

But he kept coming. He kept coming, because it was all he could do. He kept coming, because his mother advised it, and promised, so often with the strangest look in her eye, that she believed it was going to get better. That someday, Loki would be ready.

Ready for what? he'd asked her last, downhearted and lost.

She'd smiled so sadly in answer he had not wanted to ask again.

And at first, as he stood before his brother's cell, he thought that today was going to be one just as the others.

"Loki," he said. An announcement of his presence, since Loki had not gone so far as to even acknowledge it. He stared at the figure, still curled and feigning obliviousness in the chaise lounge, his eyes cold and frozen downwards and his entire form so motionless he was but a statute.

So, he tried again.

"Loki," he said. "It is I. Thor."

For a moment on, there was nothing.

For that one moment, he quite nearly lost what little patience he had left, for his brother.

And then, everything was gone.

The room before him changed, a silent and wordless ripple of magic, just an instantaneous little flicker of air. And he had that moment to wonder at it, but that moment only as the room shifted and jumped- his lounging brother vanished with but a whisper, in his place a broken chair, a stain of blood, a shattered book of crushed wood and torn pages fluttering across the floor-

And there, again, was his little brother.

Crumpled on his side down on the hard floor next to a torn, mess-stricken bed, clutching at his chest with the violence of breaths so hard he spasmed with each one. Jerking like each was a little jolt of electricity, face horribly contorted and twisted, his feet kicking, his shaking, bloody hands grasping on for dear life.

And his wide, stricken eyes- locked right onto his.

There was a breath of horrible, shocked silence.

Then, they broke it together.

"Witch!" Loki howled, yanked away from him, screaming to the cell that was otherwise utterly empty, "Witch!" but Thor was already there, passed through the barrier to drop beside his brother's stricken form. "No! Do not-"

"Loki! What-"

"Do not touch me, d-do not touch-"

"Are you sick? What ails you?! Loki!" He grabbed for him heedless of his cries, one hand prying the death drip Loki had on himself back, the other gripping his head still as he tried to buck and shout. Legs flailed, desperately kicking, desperately clawing, and he flailed and sobbed and shouted, screaming don't touch me, do not touch me, LET ME GO but all Thor knew was that he was unwell and if left as he was, then he was bound to hurt himself worse than he already was.

He had already promised to himself, that horrible day years ago on the Bifrost, that he was never going to let his little brother go again.

So Loki kicked and screamed, he snarled through gritted teeth and panted through anguished spasms of broken magic that stole his breath away, and he stared at Thor with blazing hate and madness in his eyes but he did not, could not, break free. He cried out once, head jerked back and the hands pinned under Thor's slick with cold sweat, shuddering worse and panting harder, and Thor did not let go.

He knelt there still, pinning his brother to the ground, and he waited the spasms out.

Until at last, with anguish melted into a full-bodied, crushingly heavy exhaustion that haunted his sallow face and dragged on circled eyes, he fell limp.

Panting, sick, gasping, and in pain, but limp. He stared back up at Thor with those exhausted eyes, betrayal and anguish caught in their depths, and somehow, just like that, his hands slid free.

"Loki," he gasped again, touching his face, then his neck instead. His brother flinched, face twisting in silent misery but he held fast, feeling the uneven fluttering of his heart, then the sticky fever on his face. "Loki, what is it?! What's wrong; what's happened?! Do you need a healer? I can-"

But his brother's head shook once, a rapid back-and-forth jerk so vehement it nearly smacked and drew blood on the floor. A second gasp choked by and he strained against Thor's hand, desperation clouding until it was wet tears that formed and slid without heed.

"Th-" he choked once, half-sobbing, then again. "Thhhhor-."

"I- yes." He squeezed the thin hand in his, still half-pinned against the ground. (Thin; when did he get so thin?) "I'm here."

Loki choked and gasped again, his chest heaving with the strain of trying to breathe, the strain of crying, the strain of the periodic electric jerks that shook through him with all the force of a solid blow. "I n-need-" He panted harder, so desperate he could barely even speak at all. "I need to tell you something."

Thor was still lost, still stricken, still hopelessly, helplessly scared, but- Loki was really speaking to him, for the first time in three years Loki was actually, seriously speaking to him and he could not throw that away. "Okay," he said, squeezing the hand against the floor again. Loki was still shaking, and not all of it from emotion at all, so he did not dare pull him to sit lest he fall, but his hand found its way beneath his head, instead, cradling it against the hardness of the floor. "What is it?"

And to that, Loki only stared back.

No answer came. No words at all.

Nothing, actually, but the continued, rhythmic strain of panicked, gasping breaths. Over and over again as his brother began to work his mouth, one aborted attempt at speech after another that came so quickly and steadily it was an instant pattern. Like a machine that had glitched, hurtling against the same error, over and over; over and over again he tried, and over and over again, nothing came out but the breathless gasp of a non-started word.

Nothing but silence, and the desperation, screamed out from his wet eyes.

And it was like that, his stricken brother gasping his arms, taken ill and mute and desperate with a fear that he could not give a single name to, that Thor understood.

Someday, Loki will be ready, their mother had said.

Loki had something to tell him.

Something that he wanted to tell him, right here, right now.

Something that someday, he would be ready to say.

And something that, it was very horribly now utterly, undeniably plain to see-

He was not ready now.

In that moment, several things hit Thor. The flicker of magic and glamour, first washed over the cell that he'd first attributed to Loki, but now realized without a semblance of a doubt had belonged to their mother. That there was still no one here now, drawn by the screaming and the mad fit; that perhaps their mother had not dispelled any glamour at all, but instead simply expanded it to include him, and give them privacy. That Loki had something to say, to him, not to Odin, that their mother already knew, and that he did not.

In that moment it was decided, that that evening, or as late as it had to be, after Loki had settled, after Loki was safe again, Thor was going to pay a visit to their mother.

However, that moment was not now.

Now, Loki still gasped in his arms as he tried to speak, over and over again, his eyes desperate and his face beginning to fade red, and now, Thor knew what he had to do.

"Shh," he said, and before the new alarm in his eyes could crest to new heights, he hauled him up off the floor and crushed him into the tightest, warmest hug that he could.

He could hear Loki continuing to gasp against his chest, too small, too sick, too cold. He did not speak; did not seem to be able to even try.

So Thor did, for him. "It's all right," he whispered, one hand caught in his hair, suddenly too long, suddenly too brittle and limp and sick; the other he spread over his back, trying to breathe deeper, trying to instill that into him. "You don't have to say it now. I can wait- I can wait until you're really ready." He waited several moments more, trying to listen past the panicked breaths and find something, in there, some assured sign that he knew his brother was listening. "Because this time, even if you try to-" He swallowed hard, his own grief tightening in his throat, "even if you do-"

I'm not letting go."

Loki jerked into a dead stillness.

The seconds ticked by in a breathless, motionless silence.

And then, with a sharp, muffled back cry, and with all the fierceness of a man grappling for dear life, Loki hugged back.