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Chapter Text

When he next returned to Midgard, Thor's heart was heavier than it had been in many a year. Even on his last descent, though half-wild with anxiety and his heart heavy with dread at all Loki had wrought upon this world, he had not felt anything like the same despair. For then there was still the promise of action to stir his blood; then there was still the possibility, however distant, that Loki might reconcile with him and come back to Asgard in peace. Then, there had been  hope.

Now, there was not even that.

He still loved his brother. He didn't think that will ever stop, not unless the beating of his heart were to stop along with it. But love was no longer enough. All Loki did at home -- bringing the Jotun into Asgard, assaulting Heimdall, sending the Destroyer, raining death down upon Jotunheim -- it could be argued. It could be waived. It could, perhaps, be forgiven.

But there was no forgiveness for what Loki had done in his madness, in his cruel game that was no longer a game. People had  died.   People died in in the laboratory and they died in Germany and they died on the Helicarrier while Thor  watched   and could do  nothing  --  and they died in New York, too, even whilst they labored to bring down Loki's strange, hideous army from the sky. They were only mortals, perhaps, but they were people all the same and their deaths could not be overlooked.

So it went. Loki had returned to Asgard to stand trial. Midgard was under the protection of the Allfather and his crimes would be weighed and retribution distributed appropriately. Thor loved his brother, but he knew with a heavy heart that there was nothing he could say or do to shield Loki from the consequences of his actions. The justice of his people was harsh -- it had to be, to hold sway over a people so proud, so strong and so resistant to censure, who lived so long and could carry grudges for eons of time. Thor did not know what the punishment was to be, but he knew it would not be light.

Loki would survive it, of that Thor was certain. He had the resilience of his people --  both    his peoples -- and his body was not weak. But Thor feared  for what would become of Loki's mind afterwards. He was already so twisted, so warped by rage and pain. It could not possibly do aught but ill, to force yet more pain upon him.

Thor knew not what else to do. He could see no way past this tangle.

So when Odin took command again, Thor had no thoughts but to do his bidding. Mother always said that there was a reason for everything his father did, no matter how arbitrary nor cruel it seemed at the time. And now Odin had ordered him back to Midgard, there to collect the evidence needed for his brother's trial.

It was a logical assignment. Thor had witnessed the entire debacle from start to finish and already knew the gist of all that had befallen. He was known to the mortals, was deep in their conferences and already 'cleared' by their security. It would be easy for him to get the requested information, without going through the no-doubt tedious negotiations of an official envoy.

Nonetheless it was an assignment that gave him no joy. Thor's glory had always been in the battle, never the gruesome aftermath of the battlefield. Although they had won their battle against the Chitauri invaders -- and it had been glorious, no one could deny that -- the crumbled concrete shells and twisted metal girders left Thor feeling as defeated as he ever had after any rout.

There was a heavy weight in his step that had never been there before as he walked the streets of New York City. Mere days had passed on Asgard since the princes had returned -- one triumphant, one disgraced -- but over a month had elapsed in the mortal realm. Much of the debris had already been cleared, and in some places skeletal new repairs showed above the ravaged skyline. Truly the mortals were a resilient people, recovering quickly from shock and lending their industry towards rebuilding what had been lost.

But that could not diminish the impact and tragedy of what had transpired to bring this great city to such a pass. The folded parchment -- SHIELD had not been able to make use of any of Mimir's memory crystals, nor he of their flashing drives, so they had compromised on this printing -- lay on his breast like a lead weight. Frozen images, transcripts of the video footage of Loki's first emergence into Midgard. A detailed timeline of the events of the days that followed. Estimated monetary damages, ranging in the billions. Estimated death tolls -- even now, weeks later, they had not found all the bodies, and likely never would.

 Brother, how could you do such a thing?   Thor thought, furious and grieving.   However hurt and angry you may have been, these people never did a thing to harm you! Why did you not bring your army against Asgard, as would have been an honorable and proper path to your vendetta?   That Loki had directed his thwarted rage against the weaker, undefended target smacked of cowardice, and Thor hated to think of his brother as a coward. Yet the evidence he bore said otherwise.

Now that he had that evidence, Thor knew he should return to Asgard. Loki's trial was already underway, had been all that terribly long day, and would continue for interminable time yet. But here on Midgard where the stream of time flowed more swiftly, Thor knew that he could steal a precious few hours for his own solace, and still not be late upon his return.

His steps turned towards Stark Tower.

Here, though at the center of the devastation, the repairs had been most swift. Already power was restored to the tower, humming and glowing in the desolation around. Shattered glass and concrete had been swept from the pavement, the broken walls and windows repaired. Though many of the streets surrounding it were blocked to their metal ground-vehicles, others flitted to and fro the roof of the tower like ungainly birds. The only thing that had not been repaired, somewhat to his surprise, were the tall metal glyphs that spelled out his teammate's name in the local Midgardian script; all that remained was a solitary rune, defying the destruction.

Thor stepped into the lobby, and was challenged by the warden of this place, the disembodied voice that served the Man of Iron as a servant. The invisible squire greeted Thor politely and directed him to a sitting room some forty floors above ground level; Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, the Hawk and the Widow were all assembled there, although Doctor Banner had apparently departed some weeks before. An elevator arrived smoothly, waiting to convey him to his destination, but all Thor's earlier sojourns on Midgard had not reconciled him to the claustrophobic confines of these floor-lifts; he took the stairs instead. A mere forty flights was not enough to trouble him.

When he arrived at the appointed floor, a greeting for his shield-comrades ready on his lips despite his depression, he never got the chance to voice it; Tony pounced on him almost as soon as he'd entered the room, the blue glow of his chest-borne phylactery giving his expression a febrile cast. "So what's he planning?" Tony demanded.

He stalked forward until Thor was backed almost against the wall, a ridiculous sight they no doubt made with how much he outweighed the other man.  "Have you figured it out yet? If you have,  please   share it with the class, I'm going nuts here. Has he spilled the beans yet? Have you pulled out the thumbscrews? I'm betting you've got really epic thumbscrews up in Asgard, they probably aren't even thumbscrews, you probably have something that's way better, spinning rims and chrome and all. But the point is  what is he planning?"

"And a good day to you, my comrade, as well," Thor got out, feeling a bit bewildered. "It is meet to find you in such good health and, uh, spirits." He looked around the room at the other three, a hint of pleading in his expression.

"He's been like this all week," Natasha said in a long-suffering voice. "Don't look over here for help, at least he's not bothering one of us  for a change."

"He's planning something," Tony shot back over his shoulder. "He's got  to be, I just know it. It's driving me crazy. You must know something, right?"

"Tony, leave off him," Steve intervened, blessedly diverting Tony's attention from Thor long enough for him to cross into the room and lower himself creakingly onto a wide metal-and-leather divan. Similar seats were scattered around the room in a foursquare pattern, with the two dark agents sharing one, Steve sitting on a third, and Tony prowling the room like an agitated beast of prey.

"Thor, it's good to see you again," Steve said, turning all his earnestness on the thunder god. "But, we really would like to hear what's going on in Asgard. There hasn't been much news since you left with the Tesseract and -- well." He broke off, his fair skin reddening slightly as he averted his eyes, no doubt uncomfortable at the idea of asking Thor point-blank about his traitorous brother.

"With the Tesseract and your axe-crazy wannabe-conquistador of a brother," Tony filled in helpfully, and Steve and Thor both winced. "Who went  way   too quietly, if you ask me --"

"Nobody did," Clint muttered under his breath, but Tony ignored him.

"You do still  have  him, right?" Tony demanded.  "Oh my God, you didn't come down here to tell us he escaped, did you? Tell me you didn't let him escape. That's just the sort of thing he would do, wait till he was out of reach of the Avengers and then give you the slip. Did he steal anything from Asgard? I bet that's his plan. This whole Independance Day re-enactment was just a smokescreen, Act 1 of his incredible Xanatos gambit. Get you to take him back to Asgard, then do a runner and steal something, I bet you have all the best weapons, he could grab something out of your vaults that would make that scepter of his look like a playskool toy -- "

"Peace, friend Tony," Thor finally got out, raising his hands as if to ward off the spate of words. "I can assure you, we still have... Loki in the custody of Asgard. Our bonds are not easy to slip, even for a sorcerer such as he." He brooded on this for a short time, remembering his brother's familiar shape, bent by chains and tight-clasped by the metal restraints that kept him secured. "His trial continues apace."

"That's still going on?" Natasha's lovely eyebrows rose in disbelief. "It's been over a month. I'd have thought they'd reach a verdict by now."

"The proceedings continue with all possible haste," Thor assured her; indeed, the scramble to summon all the appropriate members of the Thing from the corners of Asgard had been somewhat unseemly. All had been made ready and begun within days of Loki's return to Asgard, and that was haste indeed.

"But since he is -- was --  is   still a Prince of Asgard, never having been officially disowned, there are any number of formalities that must be waded through first." He sighed. Not all of those who had arrived for the trial had been summoned; there were plenty among them who had come just to gawk, or to gloat. Loki had made many enemies in his youth, and even of those who were not, the spectacle of a son of Odin being brought to such humiliation and disgrace was the show of a thousand years and not to be missed. Yet whatever their reasons for coming, be it a sense of justice or merely enjoyment of a show, the law decreed that a place must be found for all of them.  "I was sent to gather word of my brother's doings in Midgard, for use in that part of the trial. Upon my return, the last of the witnesses will be called, and the Thing will call its verdict."

"I understand," Steve murmured, and his expression was that of stern sorrow. Natasha's was more guarded, and Clint looked openly vengeful. Thor supposed he could not begrudge him that, for all of them save Eric Selvig, Clint had endured the most ill-use at his brother's hands.

Tony, on the other hand, would not be sated. "Look," he said. "I've been thinking over this ever since you left, Thormeister, and it just doesn't  add up.   After we cancelled his little war, Loki went  way   too easily. Even with the sweet-talking the Hulk gave him, he had plenty of time to escape from Stark Tower before we got back to him. He could have run off, or teleported, or just sat there and made himself invisible, or set up an elaborate and yet karmically appropriate trap to blast us all to Milwaukee as soon as we set foot in the terrace. You know him better than any of us, Thor, am I right or am I not?"

"You do have the right of him," Thor admitted, somewhat uneasily. Truthfully, it bothered him more than a little that Tony Stark's insight into his brother exceeded his own, who had known him for hundreds of years and yet never, apparently, understood him for a day of it. "My brother has always been skilled at illusions, and he knows the secret pathways of Yggdrasil, that allow him to walk in the shadows between worlds without the aid of the Bifrost. It was something of a mystery to me as well, why he chose not to do so."

"So did you  ask him?"   Tony said impatiently. "I mean, come on, kind of a pressing question here!"

"Uh, kinda hard for Loki to say much of anything with that gag on him," Clint pointed out dryly. "That was kind of the point of the thing, to shut him  up   for a change."

"It was a necessary precaution, to stop him from speaking words of  seith,   yet by the same token it prevented me from questioning him as I would have liked," Thor said quietly. "Yet I did ask him, once, before I bound him; why he had changed his attitude so, why he had at the last ceased fighting and surrendered. I did not understand the answer he gave, however, and there was no time for more."

"What'd he say, what'd he say?" Tony demanded, and the full-grown man was practically  bouncing   with impatience, jittering from foot to foot.

"Sorry about this," Natasha apologized, "you would not  believe   how much caffeine he's had today."

"He said --" Thor thought back on that dark afternoon, frowning. It was difficult to bring the words to mind, for they had made no sense to him at the time and it was hard to retain things that seemed like nonsense. But there had been only two words, and the whole of the scene had burned itself unforgettably into his memory. "He said, 'cranial recalibration.' I think."

After a moment Thor glanced up, to find the Avengers stock-still in their positions, as though he had uttered some magical incantation to turn them to stone.  "Are you sure?" Natasha asked in a strange, flat voice.

"Verily," Thor said, bewildered and beginning to get angry with it. For all he had learned patience over the past year, his temper still slept within him, and anger was always the first emotion to come to hand when he was uncertain of himself or the situation. "That was what he said. Why? What does it mean?"

"It means we fucked up," Clint grated. "Big time."

Chapter Text

The moment of shocked silence was broken by five people talking all at once. All right, only four -- Natasha maintained a grim silence even as Clint, Steve and Thor all broke into demands for explication at once, at various volumes -- but Tony talked enough for any two of them.

"No way, just no fucking way! This is bullshit!" Tony shouted, his voice eventually coming on top of the hubbub. "This has got to be some trick -- this is his angle! This is his smokescreen, see? The game is up and now he's trying to throw the blame. Plausible deniability and all that crap."

"Hell of a smokescreen, Tony, if the person you're supposed to be springing it on doesn't even know what you're trying to imply," Clint said darkly. "As someone who actually does  covert ops for a living, I can promise you nobody would hang their exit plan on something that flimsy."

"So he screwed up! Missed his target! It happens to the best of us sometimes, right, and that bag-of-cats crazypants wasn't exactly at his sanest and most rational when he thought out this whole plan of his --"

"Excuse me? Weren't you the one who just spent the last week insisting that Loki is a criminal mastermind with a brilliantly convoluted scheme?" Steve demanded. "I think this is a possibility we have to consider very seriously."

"Oh hell no, no we don't,  this is complete bullshit and I cannot believe  that any of you are considering such a transparent confidence scheme for even a moment --"

This budding argument was interrupted by an increasingly irate god of thunder; while he might not be able to talk as fast as Tony, he more than made up for it in projection. "Will you not all cease this prattling and explain to me what you are talking about!"  he roared, building up to a volume that actually made the windows rattle a bit.

"They're talking about mind control," Natasha said flatly.

"Mind control?" Thor looked completely blank, but an angry betrayal was beginning to creep about the edges.

Natasha met his eyes. "That scepter Loki was using," she said. "The labs are still running analysis six ways from Sunday, but they're pretty sure it was Chitauri tech, not Asgard's."

"I could have assured you it was nothing of Asgard," Thor said. "Its manufacture and purpose was as much a mystery to me as to you."

"Well, among other purposes, Loki was able to use it to take control of people," Natasha said. "He got to Selvig that way, and Clint -- "

"Yeah, didn't you wonder why Clint was fronting one team on the Helicarrier attack, and then another team in New York?" Tony chirped. Clint gave him a dirty look, one that promised arrows in sensitive casing joints.

"I did not think to question it, at the time," Thor answered, giving Clint a sideways apologetic look. "It did not seem so strange to me, that any Midgardian would choose to turn away from a commander who proposed to bring ruin and slavery upon his own people. Indeed, it seemed more strange to me under those circumstances that anyone would not."

"Well, I'd like to say that I just came to my senses," Clint said stiffly, "but unfortunately it took a little more than that. Fortunately, Tasha here got the upper hand."

"Cranial recalibration," Natasha explained. "Hitting him really hard in the head. That was what broke the scepter's hold on him."

"Those were the words that Loki said, but --" Thor sat bolt upright, his expression and attitude radiating shock and horror. "Do you mean to suggest that Loki was being so controlled?"

"No," Tony said.

"We don't know," Natasha said at the same time. "If the mind-control tech was theirs, not his... we don't know what went on between them before Loki stepped through that portal. We assumed it was voluntary cooperation on his part because we had no reason to think otherwise."

Thor got hold of himself with some difficulty, then shook his head, expression tight. "No, it -- it's not possible. For all that Loki's thoughts are shrouded in mystery to me, I know  his moves. I know the way he speaks, the way he fights. It was truly him, I would stake my right arm upon it! Surely you do not mean to imply that some other force could have been pulling my brother's strings like a puppet-master, moving his limbs for him and speaking from his mouth, and I would not notice that aught was amiss?"

"It's -- it's not like that, though," Clint said hesitantly, his face pinched and greyish with the stress of reliving his own captivity. "I mean, it's not like -- remote control, where someone else takes the wheel and pushes you into the backseat. You still remember everything, you still have all your skills and habits and everything like that.

"It's just that you stop caring  about -- the things you used to care about," Clint said, and gave Natasha a haunted look. "All your priorities get twisted, until the only thing in the world you care about is what your new master  wants. Until all that's left in the universe is making his desires happen."

"But this cannot be true," Thor said, looking from one of his teammates to the next in hurt disbelief. "Long have I been confounded, wondering how Loki could have come to such a pass where he would commit deeds so unlike him. I swear to you, my friends, that he was not always thus, and I could not fathom what had changed and twisted him so in such a time. Now you propose a means by which it might have happened, by which his very will could have been violated and taken from him, and yet no one told me that our enemy had such a power?"

"Come on, it's not like we were trying to keep this a secret!" Tony said, exasperated. "It was all in the files. I don't expect everyone to brush up on gamma radiation theory in the course of a single night, but you could at least  get in the background info dump before you start playing with the big guys!"

"But Thor joined the team after the rest of us," Steve said uncertainly, glancing from Natasha to Thor. "After Stuttgart. Did he even get  a file folder like the rest of us?"

"That would have been SHIELD's responsibility, not mine," Tony shot back, bouncing the responsibility firmly off his chest. "I was in the lab with Banner, busy trying to track down that little piece of reality-breaking tech they lost."

"Don't look at me," Clint said, raising his hands. "I was batting for the other team at the time, remember?"

Thor's expression was growing steadily darker, stormclouds coming in to block the sun. "Your one-eyed commander did describe to me the strategy for battle," he said, "but no mention was made to me of this mind-control method, nor any suggestion that Loki's will was not his own."

Several pairs of eyes shifted to Natasha, whose expression was wooden. "There wasn't time to do a full background debrief," she said. "We just hit the highlights. Since Thor knew on his arrival where to find Loki and what he'd been doing, it was assumed that Asgard had its own intelligence sources to draw on."

"We did not,"  Thor began heatedly, but Tony interrupted him.

"I'm not buying this," Tony objected. "Look, if he was really being mind-controlled, Loki had plenty of opportunities to break out of it. I gave him more than one tap on the head when we were fighting in Germany, and I know you did too, Cap."

"Yeah, but it takes more than just a 'tap,' doesn't it?" Steve replied. "I mean, sure, I gave him the old one-two, but he got right back up from it. From what Natasha told him about Clint, she had to completely knock him unconscious in order for it to take."

"And Loki's head was a lot tougher than mine," Clint said, and smiled grimly at the memory of a certain explosive-headed arrow. "The only one of us who was able to really hit him hard enough to slow him down was..."

"The Hulk," Steve finished for him. "I saw the crater that he left in the floor when Bruce was done with him. I'm not going to lie, I was surprised he even survived that, let alone was able to walk away after --"

"After which he became suspiciously cooperative," Tony said in a tone of disbelief.  He crossed one arm over his chest, bringing the other to cover his mouth.  "Shit. Shit."

Natasha raised her hands wearily. "Look, this is all an interesting debate, but kind of pointless," she said. "I got a very good close-up look of Loki when he was in that cell. Doctor Selvig, Hawkeye, all of the mind-control victims had the same tell -- their eyes showed bright blue. Loki's didn't. They stayed plain green the whole time we were talking. He wasn't being mind-controlled, at least not by any kind of magic."

Tony and Clint brightened with relief; Steve frowned, sinking back into the couch. For a moment it seemed that might be the end of it, until Thor shifted uncomfortably in his seat and admitted, "But Loki's eyes are not green."

Everyone turned to stare at him. With an unhappy expression and uncomfortable demeanor, Thor went on to explain. "The All-father revealed much to me, after Loki's madness and fall, that I had not previously known," he said. "Loki is... a Jotun, what you might call a Frost Giant, and they are... very different in appearance from us. His true eyes are of a red color, common to his race. It is only by means of a sorcerous glamor that they appear as they do."

"So you're saying that this glamour could have been hiding the color change, too?" Steve said.

Thor shrugged helplessly. "I do not know, my friends. Truly I do not. The ways of illusion and sorcery are my brother's province, not my own. All I know is that if there was any aspect of himself that Loki wished to hide, then hide he would, and it is unlikely he would allow any of his foes a glimpse of the truth."

"Waitadamnminutehere," Tony sputtered, wheeling around and pointing an incredulous finger at Thor. "Loki's a frost giant?  As in, blue and icy  and ten feet tall? I'd think that was something we would have noticed!"  

"He is small for the Jotun, yes," Thor said impatiently, "and the exact manner of this concealment he wears I do not know, except that it was maintained unconsciously for all the years of his life. Do you doubt the Allfather's word on this?"

"No," Tony said, "but I'm doubting whatever the hell you were thinking that you didn't at any point tell us  any of this! Given that we were hip-deep in his schemes of world conquest, don't you think we might at some point need to know just what he was capable of? Kind of a piece of vital tactical knowledge you were holding onto there."

"I did not keep it secret," Thor retorted, beginning to get angry. "I told you -- I told her -- that he was not my brother by blood -- "

"Yeah, you mentioned the adoption thing," Tony cut across him. "But there's a big difference between 'not biologically related' and 'actually a blue alien who can star in his own winter olympics'!"

Thor was on his feet in an instant. "By your reckoning, I am no less of an alien!" he exclaimed angrily. "What mattered the specifics of Loki's bloodlines? It was enough to know what he had already done, what he still went on to do! What need to further cement his humiliation?"

"Look, everyone just calm down!" Steve interjected himself physically into the argument before it could escalate, getting between Thor and Tony and pushing them apart. He was getting unpleasant flashbacks to the three of them fighting in the woods in a thunderstorm, while Loki sat on a cliff above them and watched. "There's no point in throwing around accusations at this late date about who should have done what and when. I think we can all agree that this failure to communicate important information is what got us into this mess in the first place."

"And in the end, it doesn't really matter, does it?" Clint said, his tone oddly resigned. Everyone's eyes went to him, and he shrugged. "I mean, we can argue all day about who should have been told what when, but the fact is that this is all speculation. It's not like we have a blood test we can run for mind control. In the end, all we've really got is Loki's word."

"What of you, Barton?"  Thor demanded in a tight voice. "It was only your  word, was it not, that you would not willingly choose to serve my brother's schemes?"

Clint's mouth pressed in a flat line, but he squared his shoulders and looked back at Thor head-on. "Fortunately I had a little more than that going for me," he said. "Fury witnessed Loki's little trick with the scepter himself. Even if he hadn't, I had a record at SHIELD and people who could vouch for me." His hand slid up along the back of the couch, reaching without looking, and Natasha quietly reached down and took his hand in hers. "Loki's got none of that."

"Unless your people in Asgard had some way of seeing what happened with Loki before he appeared on Earth?" Steve asked.

Reluctantly, Thor shook his head. "Heimdall's sight does not extend outside of the Nine Realms," he muttered. "Neither Loki nor any of the Chitauri became visible to us until his return by route of the Tesseract. Whatever may have passed between them in their own strange realm, we had no witness of it."

"Which means it's right back to Loki's unsupported word," Steve said. "And I'm sorry, Thor, but he just doesn't really have that much credibility right now."

"Yeah, no kidding, with the God of Lies thing and all," Tony added. "Speaking for myself, I just can't think of anything off the top of my head that could convince me this is anything  other than a last-minute saving throw to get out of jail free on his part."

Silence hovered in the living room for a moment, and then Thor pushed himself slowly to his feet. His expression was dark and resolute. "I can," he said. "My friends, I beg your pardon for cutting short our time together, but I must return to Asgard ere Loki's questioning is complete."

"Uh," Tony said, unnerved by Thor's sudden atmosphere of determination. "You know I was kidding about those epic thumbscrews, right?"

Thor gave him a small, distracted smile, made a few more absent pleasantries to each of them, and bowed himself out. He eschewed the stairs entirely this time, instead stepping onto the balcony outside the plate glass window, and taking off from there with a roaring crack of thunder.

The four remaining Avengers sat listening to the last echoes of thunder fade. "Well," Tony said with feeling, "that  sure sucked."

Overall, Steve could only agree. Clint gave a faint groan. "Anyone wanna bet on the odds of us hearing what went down before another month or two is out, at least?"

Nobody took that bet.

Chapter Text

When he next returned to Asgard, it was with a mind roiling with uncertainty, doubts and hopes and fears aflame within his breast. Although half a day had passed in Midgard, in the golden realm it had been barely an hour; Thor's horse was still waiting for him at the end of the long variegated span. He mounted quickly and rode back towards the city, wondering as he rode how everything could still look so the same  when in such a short time everything, everything  had changed.

The great golden crown of Odin's hall loomed up before him and he steered away, guiding his mount on the roads leading up and behind. On a ridge of high ground overlooking the grand hall was the thingstead, the low stone hall where met the assembly of Asgard. The Althing was made up of those lords, lawmakers and warriors of Asgard with the rank and inclination to attend, with the grim and dour Tyr presiding.  

The stead housed both the  assembly room of the Althing -- not so grand as Odin's hall, but with the gravity of age and tradition -- and the court-hall of Asgard. It was there that Loki's trial was being held, and the normally silent building buzzed with activity and noise as Thor approached. He saw no sign of his father's retinue; with a heavy heart he realized Odin must still be locked in conference with his advisors in the Great Hall, refusing to attend upon his son's trial and sentencing.

Thor dismounted, handing his reins over to the care of a servant, and pushed his way inside; bystanders were annoyed at his shoving  only for the length of time it took them to recognize Thor, Son of Odin, and hurry quickly out of his path. Despite that, it took several minutes before Thor managed to reach the entrance to the hall, a wide broad ring of raised seats surrounding the old iron cage in the center, where sat the prisoner.

The dock was one of the oldest things in the court-hall, built back when Asgard was yet new; it had been among those magics fashioned by Odin, Mimir and Hœnir when they were first ordering the kingdom. Its foundations were set deep in the stone below the courthall, laid in with powerful spells and virtues for truth. Any man who stood at the dock was constrained to speak only the truth; and further enchantments had been laid upon it over the years so that the suspects so questioned could answer only yes or no. Truth, after all, could be bent and twisted in many ways, but in a simple no or a condemning yes  there could be found certainty.

Loki was in the dock now, had been for many hours as the tribunal questioned him. Thor replayed some of the record that had gone on in his absence, small remote images pressed into crystal for archival purposes. Did you let the Jotnar into the treasure vault. Yes. Did you encourage Thor to go to Jotunheim. Yes. Did you force the Allfather into the Odinsleep to make yourself king. No.

The break in the rhythm of questioning caused a flurry of consternation among the bailiffs, and prompted another round of more careful, more specific questions. Did you fight with the Allfather in the weapons vault. Yes. Did he go into the Odinsleep then, even as you railed at him. Yes. Did you then become king in the absence of your brother. Yes.

It seemed that the proper formulation of the questions was just as important as the answers. Truth could be bent and twisted, indeed. Thor was going to have to be sure he asked the right  questions.

The thought was daunting. Logic and word-play had never been his domain; those things belonged to his brother. Thor had never been clever, had never tried  to be clever; no one who knew him would expect such from him. And yet...

Much had changed since Loki's fall. Had been changing ever since the disaster of the coronation. All the comfortable assumptions that Thor had once held were overturned, one after another. He had lost the certainty that he would be king. He had lost his own might, his own power, been reduced to no more than the mortals over which he had once ruled -- He had lost the certainty that his father would always, always be there -- no matter that Odin's death had turned out to be a cruel lie of Loki's, the rock foundation of his childhood had been shaken and he would never have that blithe confidence of his father's immortality again.

Had lost his brother, when Loki struck him, when Loki screamed at him, when Loki begged Thor to strike him down. When Loki let go.

Ever since then he'd been forced to the realization, however bitter, that he could no longer count on having his brother by his side. He could no longer rely on Loki to do the heavy thinking for him, could no longer rely on Loki to draw the plans and give the pitches and find the loopholes. Could no longer rely on Loki to caution him, draw him back from heedless disaster and think  things through before he got in over his head.

Since Loki fell, Thor realized he would have to do those things himself. And so he had. It was a constant struggle -- he had not felt so clumsy and unprepared since the day he'd first tried to lift Mjolnir -- but he had. And as he'd shoved the rusted gears of his mind into action once more, Thor realized that he was not nearly so stupid and guileless as everyone in Asgard -- including himself -- once assumed.

It was obvious even to Thor that the court was no friend of Loki's, and would have little interest in any evidence that seemed to acquit him. Therefore a more subtle approach was clearly called for.

His first thought was to rush into the middle of the trial and drop the revelation of the Chitauri's mind control on the floor like a bomb. It was not entirely the heedless plan it once might have been. What was it that Stark had said? 'Plausible deniability,' that was it. If he could plant even the seeds of reasonable doubt into the minds of the tribunal, it would disrupt the careful train of logic leading to the inevitable condemnation. A plan to sow chaos, confusion and doubt; surely Loki would approve?

But when he made himself stop and examine his plan from all angles, he admitted reluctantly that it was doomed to fail. Thor had heard -- from the Captain, of course, what other -- that on Midgard it was the custom that the accused were innocent until proven guilty. The same was not so on Asgard. Loki was accused, and no one in the golden realm doubted his guilt, only the specific details of his crimes. It was not enough to introduce reasonable doubt; unless he could provide definitive proof of Loki's innocence, then he would be condemned.

Besides, Thor did not know how long he could bear this burden of uncertainty. Only the truth would dispel it. He had to know.  

He could have the truth, if he timed it right. Thor pulled the sheaf of papers from his pocket and descended to the courtroom floor, approaching the bailiff who oversaw the proceedings. The initial plan had been for Thor to hand off the record and then leave, but instead he took his place on the floor, gently but irresistibly elbowing aside the minor lawspeaker who had been serving as chief questioner.

"If it please you, my lords," he said in a tone that made it clear he really didn't care whether it pleased them or not, "I shall handle the account of Loki's doing on Midgard, as I am the closest witness." The man -- Bragi, if Thor recalled correctly, a minor noble not ever a friend of his -- gave him a look of wary dislike, but gave way.

And then Thor had no other choice but to face his brother.

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting from Loki -- what he'd hoped to see. After the last beating he'd taken at the hands of the Hulk in the battle of New York, Loki had been almost -- docile. Submissive. He'd not argued when Thor came to put the restraints on him (not apart from those two words,) nor struggled when Thor had led him back home. Thor had assumed that a few days of rest would have restored his spirit somewhat, and had expected to see his brother glaring hotly from the dock, bristling and spoiling for a fight.

If anything, the days of rest had worked the opposite effect on Loki. He barely responded to anything he saw or heard. He went where he was led and obeyed when he was commanded, but it seemed that with all other roads blocked to him, he fled inwards. When Thor stepped in front of him, Loki did not look at him; Loki did not look at anything, and the guttering of his fierce spirit nearly broke Thor's heart. He would almost rather have Loki fight him again, mad and laughing but alive.

But now was not the time to dwell on such things. Thor cleared his throat and coughed, suddenly nervous. He was not unused to speaking in public, but the speech he was about to give was unlikely to draw the usual cheers. "Loki of Asgard," he said, addressing his brother by name but leaving off his usual titles and appellations; it was far too confused right now which ones should be in use. "It is my duty to ask now of those events which befell you after you fell from the sight of Asgard."

Loki didn't respond. That wasn't too much of a surprise; bound by the magics of the dock he could only answer when asked a direct question, and then only one whose answer could be given in yes or no. But Thor did wish his brother would look   at him.

"After you fell from the Bifrost, did you end up among the Chitauri?" Thor began. The Chitauri were known to Asgard, though they were not residents of the Nine Realms; they had endured raids and treaties and negotiations with them in the past.

"Yes," Loki said, and that one word was his only reaction; he still did not move or look up.

"They used the magic of the Tesseract to open a portal to Earth, did they not?" They could only have done so with Loki's aid, Thor knew; the thought of how they had extracted that aid made his stomach turn.

"Yes."

"From the Chitari homeworld, you came to Earth through the portal of their making?"

"Yes."

"And you brought with you a scepter, a device of Chitauri magic."

"Yes."

"Did you used this scepter to put Eric Selvig and Clint Barton under your control, to overcome their wills and enslave their minds to yours?"

That got the first reaction; Loki blinked and stirred, and his eyes raised to meet Thor's. He looked wary and puzzled, as if not sure why Thor was raising this point. "Yes," he said.

"The Chitauri have such abilities, to subsume their unwilling victims to their own purposes..." Thor paused, partly for dramatic effect. Loki did not answer, since it wasn't in the form of a question, but that was all right; he was only re-stating the obvious for the benefit of his audience. His brother tilted his head, looking bemused, and his gaze upon Thor's face intensified.

Thor took a deep breath. "All these actions -- from the moment you stepped onto Earth -- Loki, were they done of your own free will?" From the moment he stepped through that portal till the moment the Hulk's unforgiving hands smashed him against the stone; and oh, what a waking that must have been, surrounded by everyone in that world who had reason only to hate him.

And Loki smiled, his eyes lighting up as his face split with a razor-edged grin of triumph and glee and malice and hard, bleak despair. As if he had been waiting for just such a question -- and how long  had he been waiting, Thor wondered, how long had he waited in silence for someone to notice what was wrong?

"No."

The tribunal around them erupted into outraged shouts, but Thor ignored them. His gaze was locked onto Loki's, and Loki was looking back  at him now. His mouth was dry, his palms sweating as though he were going into a battle; but it was a battle fought with words, not weapons.  

"My prince!" Bragi was back at his elbow, outraged and indignant. "You should cease this line of questioning. Obviously the Liesmith has found some way to get around the spells of truth, his testimony cannot be trusted -- "

Thor swung on him, and took some satisfaction at the way the smaller man shrank back from him. "And what of his testimony of an hour ago, which pleased you more, Bragi?" he demanded. "If it is false now it was false then, and if it was true then it is true now!" His voice carried powerfully, and the noise from the audience dropped to a low muttering instead of vociferous objection. Bragi fell back, looking purple-faced with fury, and Thor ignored him.

He licked his lips and forced out the next question. "You were under the same mind-control spell as Clint Barton?"

Loki made a grimace of frustration, and raised one manacled hand with his palm level in a rocking motion. "No," he said.

Not -- For a moment Thor's mind jolted in panic, before his reason took over. "Not the same spell, then," he amended. "But a similar one, with similar effects to your freedom of will?"

"Yes." Loki stared at him, a desperate, guarded hope burning in the back of his eyes.

Thor hesitated, unsure where to go from there. He had his answer, and the truth of it could not be denied by all the assembled witnesses; but he was not yet done, he knew. Due to the strict, literal nature of the spell, it was the custom for the questioners to ask the same questions in a variety of specific ways, to cover every detail. Thor was not entirely sure what the right way to ask was.

But he tried anyway. "If you had not  been controlled by the Chitauri," he said, "would you have done the same?"

Loki rolled his eyes. "No." Of course not,  his tone implied, and don't be ridiculous.

"Do you wish to be king of Asgard?" Thor asked. He knew the answer, Loki had screamed it at him in a moment as rawly honest as this one, but he needed to ask again.

Loki's expression faded back into a near-mask. "No."

"Of Midgard?" Thor prompted him.

One corner of Loki's mouth curled up, in what could either have been a smile or a sneer of disdain. "No."

"Then what do  you want?" Thor asked, aggravated as he always was by his utter failure to understand his brother's motivations.

Loki only stared at him, unable to make a response; not a yes-no question. Thor took hold of himself, steering back onto more practical matters. "Do you wish for revenge on those who injured you?"

"Yes," Loki said promptly, and Thor's brows drew down in worry.

"On the Avengers?"

"No." The long drawl of the word made it plain that he considered those mortals well beneath his notice.

"On the Chitauri, then?" Thor amended.

"Yes,"  Loki hissed, and for a moment his expression twisted with such pain that Thor had to look away until the nausea twisting his gut had faded. He'd seen such an expression of bleak hatred on Clint Barton's face, but hours ago when he'd spoken of what it felt like to be controlled, to be so violated.

But Barton had not been alone, when he emerged from the darkness of his ordeal. He'd had friends, comrades, the support of those who knew and loved him. Who had Loki had? Only enemies on all side, contempt and hatred from those who should have loved him best, from those who should have known better. Who should have taken his part, who should have noticed  what was wrong  long before things ever came to this desperate pass.

"Why did you not say anything?" Thor said, and the question came out as a wail. Loki glared at him, and made a gesture with his two hands, the tips of his fingers pressed together and his palms flat along his mouth. The gag, of course.

"Yes, but after that,  brother," Thor said impatiently. "Once we had returned to Asgard and took the gag off you, there were many chances, many opportunities. Why did you not tell us?"

 Loki looked like he was struggling against a great weight, but he said nothing. Could say nothing, Thor realized, because it was not a yes or no question. Thor was going to have to figure this one out himself. "Was it part of a plan of yours?" he reasoned, thinking back on Tony's wild speculations on Loki's grand plans. Not that he thought Loki still planned to escape and wreak havoc on Asgard, of course, but perhaps some elaborate revenge planned on the Chitauri? "Some reason why you needed to be in the captivity of Asgard?"

"No," Loki said. The look he gave Thor was an eloquent mix of fury and despair, but Thor thought he saw the anger drowning in the despair. It was that look, the same look he'd seen in the flickering shadows of Loki's face as he disappeared into the blackness beneath the Bifrost, that gave him his answer.

"Because you thought no one would believe you," Thor said softly. Oh, my brother.

"Yes," Loki said, just as soft. His eyes dropped.

And the Althing was still around them, a hundred pairs of outraged and hostile eyes, but as far as Thor was concerned they might as well be alone. This was his chance, perhaps his last chance, to get true honesty from his brother; and while Loki might hate him for so abusing his powers, he would not let this chance pass.

"Do you hate me, Loki?" he asked quietly.

"Yes," Loki said, and his voice was ragged, his breathing quick. His mouth twisted, as though more words of bile were trapped behind them, and his eyes were agony. It was the truth, it could only be the truth; but Thor still had to know --

"And do you love me still, Brother?"

For Thor still loved his brother. He didn't think that would ever stop, not unless the beating of his heart were to stop along with it. It would be enough, it had to be enough, but his love had lived for so long in the forlorn and battered hollows of his heart that Thor couldn't help but wonder if somehow, it was returned.

Loki looked utterly furious, as though he could bite lengths of iron and spit nails. His expression promised vengeance, torments unending, an eternity of retribution to Thor for forcing him to say this before the eyes of all Asgard. "Yes."

And that was the limit of how much Thor could bear; he stepped forward, crossing the barren floor of the court hall to his brother's side, and with stiff fingers he jerked at the bindings that kept the iron tracery closed. "My lord, wait, you cannot!" someone protested -- not Bragi again, thankfully, or Thor would not have been responsible for his safety. "The tribunal has not yet rendered a judgment -- the accused may not  be freed --"

Out of patience, Thor raised a hand and called Mjolnir to him. He whipped her around and brought the hammer down squarely on the bench. The thundering impact shook the hall, and a wide crack split in the heavy table. "I am calling a recess," he said savagely, and no one else argued with him.

The gate to the iron dock opened with a protesting cry, and Loki stepped down from it, shivering madly as the potent magics lost their hold on him. He stumbled and Thor was there in one swift pace to catch him, to gather his wayward brother in his arms. Loki pressed his face against Thor's shoulder, his thin frame shaking, and if Thor felt a warm dampness soaking through the fabric of his tunic where Loki's head rested, he would swear any oath to never tell a soul.

Chapter Text

Thor did not lead him back to his own rooms in the palace; nor did he take him back down to the holding cells beneath the stone. Instead he found himself led to one of the guest-houses normally reserved for visiting dignitaries of Alfheim and Vanaheim. Tastefully decorated and comfortably appointed, they were nonetheless built for security, and the bodyguards that were normally set to ensure that intruders were kept out could just as easily be ordered to keep a prisoner in.

He was not inclined to complain. He was not inclined to do much of anything. There was a muted relief to be free of the cells and all that came with them, heavy chains and sharp-edged stone benches and the silent scorn of the guards; at the same time his mind shied away from the prospect of being led back to his old rooms as though nothing had happened, folded back into his old life.

There was a bed. There was a wide bed in a dimmed corner with heavy forest-green comforters upon it, and as soon as Thor released hold of his arm Loki walked right over to the bed and lay down upon it. He was very tired. He couldn't remember the last time he'd slept properly, other than in uneasy doses snatched in the hours of waiting for his trial to convene. He had not slept in all the time the Chitauri ruled his mind, nor for a long time before that, as they discovered that denying him sleep was the most effective way to weaken his mental defenses. But now. Now there was a bed, with pillows and blankets and everything bed-like that he could have ever asked for. Now he could sleep, and in sleep, hopefully he could forget for a time.

"Are these chambers adequate, Brother?" Thor was asking him, his boisterous voice unusually subdued. Loki didn't answer him, instead drawing a pillow to his chest and curling around it, burying his face in its softness. Thor ought to know better, Thor ought to be able to tell from Loki's actions that all he wanted to do was sleep. If the answer to his question wasn't obvious from Loki's behavior, then Thor didn't deserve an answer at all.

"Do… do you need anything?" Thor asked again, even more uncertain than before. Loki ignored him. He didn't have to answer Thor's questions any more, he didn't have to do anything. It had been so long since this was true that Loki felt like being contrary, denying Thor the responses he sought. See how he liked being denied what he wanted for a change. Besides, if he responded to Thor in any way then Thor would want to talk, and that would take too long and require far more energy than Loki possessed. He was so tired. He just wanted to sleep, that was all.

He just wanted to sleep.

"I… I will have food and water brought," Thor said at last, finally realizing that Loki wasn't going to answer him. "There is a bath-house adjoining to this one, and a small library near the back, though nothing like as extensive as yours once was, of course. Do whatever you need to make yourself comfortable, Brother, and I will return in a few hours."

Loki said nothing.

Thor hesitated a moment, then added in an uncomfortable voice, "The Althing is still cloistered, debating your new testimony. Until their judgment is completed, it would be best if you do not… do not… do anything."

Loki could have laughed. Do anything? What did they imagine he would do? He wanted to do nothing. For far too long he'd been forced to do so many things against his will, to obey commands that sickened him, to tolerate magics upon him that horrified him, to answer questions that humiliated him. Now he had his own will back and his freedom, however limited, to do nothing at all.

His only response was to shift a little further to turn his face into the wall, putting his back towards Thor, and closed his eyes. He heard a sigh, and after a little the door clicked as his brother went out, and in a soft murmur spoke to the guards there waiting.

Loki took a deep breath and sighed, a deep shuddering sigh that seemed to release some coiled, hurting pit of tension in his stomach; then he slept.

Thor stormed towards Valaskjálf, Odin's great silver hall, seething under his skin. His palms itched for Mjolnir's handle, muscles twitching in anticipation of battle, while at the same time accusations and arguments boiled in his head. He was more sure than ever, now, that Odin had known of the Chitauri's mind-control from the beginning. There is always a reason for everything your father does, Frigga had told him, but at the moment Thor couldn't even begin to imagine what it was.

"Father!" Thor stormed into the great hall, heedless of what he might be interrupting. By chance or design Odin was nearly alone, conferring quietly with Vidarr, one of his advisors. Odin glanced up when the doors slammed open and whatever he saw in Thor's face, it was enough for him to gesture Vidarr to withdraw.

"What is it?" Odin said, and he sounded more resigned than anything else. For a moment Thor could barely find the words to express his fury.

"You knew!" he accused.

"I know a great many things, Thor. You'll have to be more specific than that." Odin's voice was dry, and when he said things like that he sounded just like Loki, a comparison which sent chills down his spine.

"You knew about Loki," Thor sputtered. "That he was being controlled by the Chitauri, that his mind was not free. You knew!"

"I suspected," Odin corrected him. "I couldn't be sure, not until we got him back to Asgard. What occurs in the Chitauri's ream is outside of the sight of Asgard, but there are other ways of gathering information, and rumors had come to us about the Chitauri's new alliances and… experiments."

"You didn't tell me!" Thor seethed, getting right on to the root of his grudge. "You told me Loki had become an enemy of Asgard -- you told me to go to Midgard and punish him --"

"What did I tell you, Thor Thunderer?" Odin interrupted him. "What exactly."

Thor eyed his father with deep suspicion, and tried to recall that last interview with Odin to his mind. "You told me that I must harden my heart to Loki…" And the Fates knew he had tried. "That I should seek him out and smite him with all the fury of Asgard behind my blow, and apprehend him to Gladsheim to determine his fate."

"In other words," Odin said sharply, "I told you to go to Midgard to find your brother, hit him really hard over the head, and use the Tessaract to bring him back here where he belongs. And if you had just done what I told you, this whole fiasco could have been over before it began! I underestimated you, Thor, you do not usually need this much encouragement to solve your problems by hitting them."

"You should have told me of the enchantment upon Loki!" Thor protested. "Had I known he was so afflicted, and that a blow to the head was the cure, I would have smote him most willingly."

Odin uttered a bark of laughter. "So when I told you that Loki was an enemy, and ordered you to strike him, you refused," he said. "Yet if I told you that Loki was not an enemy, and to treat him with kindness, you would have struck him? Truly I am surrounded by the most reliable of vassals."

"Yes, but once I had him safely back --" Thor said heatedly. "If I had not chanced upon the clue from the other Avengers, then what? Loki would have been condemned for crimes he did not commit!"

"Yes," Odin said. "Which was why I sent you back to Midgard to obtain just such clues. I had faith that you would come upon the answer eventually, Thor. Well done."

"This is no jest! Father, you should have told me the truth!" Thor said angrily. "He was grieved and weary enough from his ordeal with the Chitauri and the punishment he took at the hands of my shield-brothers on Midgard. We could have at least spared him the humiliation and distress of parading him around Asgard like a condemned criminal. We should have spared him that, Father! After all he has suffered, we should have spared him."

Odin sighed. "My son, believe it or not, there is a method to my doings," he said. "If I had announced to all of Asgard that Loki -- my own son, known trickster, called mad -- was innocent, who would have believed me? They would have thought me deluded with a father's love, or else scheming to protect the power of my own House. Loki might have been allowed to return, but there would always be a festering outrage, a firm conviction of his evil that no kingly pronouncement could overturn. He would never again be accorded trust or honor, and men would spit in his shadow as he passed. It was that fate from which I wished to spare him, Thor.

"But now the truth is out and all of Asgard knows, for the news of Loki's ensorcellement has been brought to light in a manner that no man can doubt or question. The enchantments of Gladsheim are known to all, and trusted -- more so than my word. You should know by now, Thor, that the people of Asgard are hot-hearted and easily moved by passion. They built up a feeling of outrage over Loki's path of destruction, from the Bifrost leading on down to Midgard. Now they learn that Loki was innocent of the worst of those crimes, that he himself was a trapped pawn in the machinations of others. Outrage turns to pity, and in the shadow of such things those crimes which were indisputably by his hand seem less in comparison, and they will be more inclined to forgive."

Thor stared at his own feet, his head lowered in the face of Odin's authority and yet his unhappiness undiminished. "It was not right," he muttered. "Whatever others might or might not have done to him, he is my brother and your son, and 'twas the duty of his family to stand by him."

"If you still think thus, then I have no more arguments to sway you," Odin said with a sigh. "But it is done, Thor. I cannot change the past, whether I would or nil. Go back to your brother now; I have other arrangements to see to."

"Will you…" Thor said hesitantly. "Will you go and see Loki?"

"In time." Odin stood from his throne, Gungnir gripped in one hand. "He has more need of you right now than he does of me. Even in my youth, Thor, I was never so whole-heart as you; that is a trait you get from your mother, to be able to love purely and unreservedly. I am too old now to change my ways, and although I may seem cold and calculating to you, believe you that all I do is with love in my heart and the best interests of my family and my realm in my mind."

The thought came to Thor for the first time ever that if this was what it meant to be king, he was no longer so sure that he wanted it. Tongue-tied he bowed to his father, then turned and left.

As deliciously soft and pleasant as the bed was, Loki found himself unable to sleep well. He would still jerk awake periodically, muscles twitching under his skin as though he still felt the stinging shock that the Chitauri had used to dissuade him from sleep. Almost worse than the memories, though, was the dim grey cloud of loneliness that seemed to creep about him when he was still. It seemed unfair that he could be too tired to sleep, and yet the universe had never felt any need to be fair in his favor.

Others had come and gone while he dozed; the servant bearing a pitcher of water and a tray of food, who had set it on the table and then left. Soft footsteps once that he recognized as Frigga's; he had refused to open his eyes or acknowledge them, and after a long time she left as well. Loki only wished that they would all leave him in peace, but there seemed no point in telling them that.

He was not at all certain what was going to happen. When he'd fallen from the Bifrost, it was not so much because he'd wanted to kill himself as because there no longer seemed to be any reason to go on living. Odin's words, those two simple, deadly words had cut into his heart and drained his limbs of the strength they needed to hang on. He'd thought: he would fall from the bridge into the void below and then it would be over. How easy it would be, how final.

But he'd landed amongst the Chitauri instead, and the prospect of death went from being an easy out, to a sweet fantasy of escape that beckoned from far beyond his reach. The Chitauri had no intention of letting him die. He was far too valuable to them, containing the indispensible knowledge of how to manipulate the Tesseract. They had not mishandled his flesh, not especially, but the process of cracking open his mind to insinuate their own controls had been long and excruciating.

Loki was no mortal to be dominated with a single touch of their scepter; he was Aesir (Jotunn. Monster!) and well-trained in magic. It had been a long, wearying process to break down his mental defenses enough for them to subsume his will to theirs. Loki would never forget the feeling of crawling worms in his head as the insidious magics crept under his skin, would never forget the helpless horror he felt the first time his body stood and walked across his cell without his commanding it.

When the green beast had smashed him into the merciless floor of Stark's tower and Loki felt the oppressive veneer of the Chitauri's influence over his mind pop like a soap bubble, he'd thought, At least I may die as myself. He had fully expected the Avengers to kill him when they found him and had made no argument to dissuade them, taking the trouble only to request one last drink to speed him on his way.

It was somewhat to his surprise that they had not, but when Thor had come to him with the gag and the chains, Loki understood: Thor would take him back to Asgard and they would kill him. It seemed an unnecessary cruelty to drag it out so when the ending was never in doubt, but Loki had steeled himself to endure, to face the mockery and laughter of everyone he'd ever known, to drag himself along one foot in front of the other while promising himself that soon enough it would be over.

And now it was over. And now. Now what? He had let himself fall and let himself be taken and had been prepared to let himself die, only to find himself in the end right back where he had started with all the things he had run from still there awaiting him. There would be no ending through death unless he was prepared to inflict in on himself, and for all his long weariness and grief Loki didn't think he was. Among other things, he was surely watched at all times now, and his captors would not take kindly to any attempt of his to take his own life. Plus they would probably tell Thor, and Thor would make a scene.

As though thoughts of his miserable brother were enough to summon him, Loki heard Thor's familiar booted step outside the door. The sound jolted him awake again, and perversely he drew himself tighter about the pillow, closing his eyes tight and making his breathing deliberately deep.

"Brother?" Thor called as he came in. "I have returned. How do you fare?" A pause, and then Thor added "You need not feign sleep, Loki, I know you are awake."

So Thor had learned to pay attention to that which surrounded him, after all. Pity it came to him so late.

A weight caused the mattress to dip and shift under him, and he caught the whiff of leather, metal and ozone that had always been Thor's personal scent. Had breathed it in secretly when he pressed against Thor's shoulder, earlier that day, and the familiar smell of it had broken the stern careful barricades he had built around his heart, that none of his enemies would see him break down and weep like a coward.

"Loki," Thor's voice came to him softly, hesitantly. "I have spoken with our father, and I have been thinking much. I realize now that we have not… not done well with you, as a family should. I especially was prideful in calling myself your brother, when I have done little to earn that title and much to abuse it.

"The council has still to render a judgment for those crimes and errors that were yours without interference or ensorcellement. I do not believe they will be too harsh -- our father will throw his weight on the scales in favor of mercy, and so will I, for whatever my influence is worth."

Loki wanted to laugh. How unusually humble of Thor, to imagine that there was anyone in Asgard who would deny him his will in any avenue he chose to exert it. Truly, his time on Midgard had changed him.

"The very worst they can do is banish you from Asgard, if but for a span of years. If that is so, then I will accompany you wherever you will go instead; to Midgard, if that place does not give you too much pain. I know that my shield-brothers would accept you, for they too know the secret of the Chitauri's ensorcellement and would not blame you for your deeds. Or to Vanaheim, if that would be easier for you; or even to Jotunheim if that is where you wish. Even if you were to go to Niflheim, Loki, I would follow you, if only to bring you back again.

"I do not understand why you are so strangely silent, Brother, who always had a clever word for any situation otherwise. But when you speak again, I swear upon Mjolnir's haft that I at least will listen."

Loki said nothing, letting the words wash over him, burrow down under his skin and into his heart. He wasn't sure that he believed them, yet; rash promises were easy to make and harder to uphold.

"Loki," Thor said, and his voice was half-choked with sorrow. His brother truly was a creature of sentiment, letting joy and rage and sorrow overflow from him and splashing off on anyone who happened to be nearby. It was embarrassing. "Will you forgive us someday?"

Loki rolled over on the mattress towards his brother, and although he still did not meet his eyes, he let one hand creep out in an open invitation. Thor took it, clasping their hands together and entwining their fingers; Thor's hand was very warm. "Yes," Loki said.