This fic proved surprisingly difficult to write, as probably evidenced by the fact there's another fic that got written first but is set third. But I knew it definitely had to get written, as a lot of important points about well, both of these two got addressed here where I couldn't really find a way to fit them in otherwise. It was an important point of development in this desperately fucked up relationship.

All told, I'm surprisingly happy with the results. Hopefully you guys are, too.

Of course, Loki would have to be tested before he could be of proper use. The time before he'd been properly inducted into the group – which was to say, before he'd been brought up to the floor Nebula and Gamora had occupied, and left there – had just been for the sake of convincing him to be of use. Demonstrating all the many alternatives, and why they were infinitely more unpleasant.

Nebula, and likely Gamora besides, still had no idea just what he could do. She still had no clear idea of what made him special enough for Thanos to claim, when he apparently came from a world so backwards as to have not yet managed space travel. Certainly not special enough to ignore everything about him that was uncertain, potentially dangerous. As Thanos had impressed upon her, however, it didn't matter what she saw or knew. It only mattered what he decided, and her place was to trust and obey.

Still, when the time came to put him properly through his paces, that same mingling of curiosity and bitter resentment drove Nebula to volunteer her assistance. Predictably, she was first called upon to serve as a sparring partner.

"Are there any rules I should know about?" Loki asked, testing the balance of the knife he'd been handed from his end of the room.

Nebula looked up from where she was limbering up and running through a few mental diagnostics. She bared her teeth at him."Yeah," she said. "Don't waste my time. And don't die."

"Simple enough." He looked up at her then – they were both studiously ignoring the presence of the Other in their heads – and smiled just a bit too broadly. "I should hope the same applies to you as well."

She actually found herself laughing. How could she do anything else, in the face of such bravado? It was almost admirable, under the circumstances. Kicking his teeth in was going to be a shame. A desperately satisfying shame. "It's never had to so far." That was a lie, but she knew already that they were both very good at lies.

Without giving him any further warning, Nebula flipped her knife into a slashing grip and closed in for the attack. She took in the details of the lunge at lightning-speed. She saw the way his eyes widened in shock, the way his teeth clenched in determination, the shift of his stance into a defensive one too late, the way he brought his own blade up just a fraction too slow.

She herself was just a fraction of an instant too late in realizing that she'd just slashed through empty air, the image of Loki shimmering and fading away like a heat haze. So when her senses screamed behind her, something she should have known all along but somehow hadn't, Nebula could only turn in time to stop the knife from plunging between her shoulder-blades. The motion of the turn meant that it still cut deep into her shoulder, her flesh shoulder. The pain was intense enough that she had to grit her teeth against a cry, but fortunately, her flesh arm hadn't been the one holding the knife.

The battle proceeded from there. Loki had his illusions, which he continued to use to great effect, even if only to trick her into thinking that he was half an inch to the right of where he actually was. In a fight like this, however, in close quarters and flashing blades, a half-inch could make the difference between life and death. Nebula was far from helpless herself, however. Loki was stronger than most, even if that was still a hard baseline to measure where the wider galaxy was concerned. He was still only mortal, however, only flesh. Only Nebula's robotic arm could exert more force than him, but it was a fairly significant amount of greater force. Her eye could take in detail faster, the implants wired to her nerves and tendons could respond and compensate faster, so that even if he kept her off balance, it was never for long enough to make a difference.

So they might have continued on like that for days, slowly chipping away at one another until they both died of a thousand cuts. The Other had its own agenda, however, and pulled them both sharply apart after just a couple of hours. It didn't deign to actually do anything so crass as touch them, however – it just dropped a blast of concussive force between them as they closed in again, knocking them both aside hard and far enough to smack into opposite walls.

Nebula knew she should probably have been grateful for the interruption, undignified as it was. She wasn't. Even as a catalog of her various injuries appeared on a readout before her mechanical eye, she bared her teeth in irritation. Yes, it had been a long slog of a fight, but it had been her fight to manage. For the Other to take the choice to see it through out of her hands like that was one more sign that it – and through it, Thanos – thought her too incompetent to manage on her own. Or perhaps just not trustworthy enough to do as she was told, even now. Gamora was not kept on so tight a leash as she was, after all this time.

Looking up as she pushed herself up into a slightly more dignified crouch, the first thing she saw was Loki. He was also trying to rise, shaking his head as though to clear it as though that would do any good with the Other in the room with them. He was also glowering at it, which said to her that he agreed it was called for after that little stunt.

"What the hell?" Nebula demanded, adding her glare to his.

"Pathetic," it growled, looking from her to him and back again. "That entire display…worthless! If that is how you both plan to proceed in offering service to Lord Thanos, then better you both die and cease wasting all our time!"

Despite herself, Nebula felt a chill creep down her spine at its pronouncement. She knew she'd been in particularly poor standing ever since the electrothorn net, and knew that after being left to hack her own arm off there was only so much further down she could fall. Trying to arrange for Loki's death before he could be brought into the fold – even if, from his point of view, she'd been trying to do him a favor – almost certainly hadn't helped matters. So this was a decision she'd had nightmares about hearing ever since then. The only thing that allowed her to keep her composure was the tiniest suspicion that it was only trying to alarm them both, and didn't actually mean to kill them both for apparently poor performance on a training exercise.

"Nebula!" it snapped, rounding on her. "Do you think Thanos was wasting his time when he rebuilt your useless body with his own devices?"

"No, sir." The words came without thought, even as her stomach twisted with mingled humiliation and rage.

"Then why won't you make use of them? Loki!" Here it snapped, pointing at Loki without turning to look at him. Loki, for his part, did not look the least bit alarmed by the Other's irritation – either because he didn't understand the threat, or he didn't care. Either one was likely with him, she knew. Personally, Nebula questioned the wisdom of keeping an obviously suicidal agent around more than she did one who was simply performing poorly.

"You called?" he asked dryly.

"Another one of your tricks, as a demonstration for Nebula!"

"Your wish is my command." From where she was sitting, Loki did nothing more than a complicated flick of his fingers. Yet the air around him shimmered slightly, as though in a heat haze, edged with green light. Then suddenly there were three of him – one leaning against the wall, one in a crouch, one sitting lazily. All three were looking fixedly at her, which was a strange effect to say the least.

"Satisfied?" asked the one leaning against the wall.

"Look at him, Nebula. Really look and see through his mage's parlor tricks."

And of course, now that the battle was over, she knew what it meant. She could think that far ahead, put those pieces together. And, of course, she could have kicked herself for taking this long. Of course.

Nebula started cycling through the different views on her mechanical eye. Of course, after she pulled up her infrared view and saw the two illusions as barely anything more than patches of light, the others were just a matter of getting a comparison. She just hadn't thought to do so at the start. She'd been too wrong-footed, and Loki too fast.

Much as it burned her to think, Nebula knew in her bones that the Other was entirely justified in its anger. Such a mistake, an oversight, was tantamount to unforgiveable. If it was a mistake she'd made in the field, it would have been unforgiveable.

Fortunately, the universe chose that moment to take pity on her at her lowest point. The Other, apparently satisfied that she had remembered her place, turned its attentions on Loki instead. "And you, Loki!"

Loki raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. He even made it stand, dusting himself off. The cowled figure put a stop to that with a neat flick of its fingers, and Loki dropped back to his knees with a gasp that was equal parts surprise and pain. "Listen to me when I deign to speak to you, boy! Did you not promise to serve Thanos?"

"Of course," Loki said, sounding as though he were speaking through gritted teeth. "And I meant it."

"Clearly not! Thanos requires service to the best and fullest extent of our abilities…all our abilities."

He went pale. He probably didn't mean for her to see it, but she did. The Other could catch people off guard like that, especially when it dug into your thoughts and dragged them out into the light. Nebula found herself almost sympathetic – almost, but not quite. After all, he was part of the reason she was in this mess, receiving this scorn, even if he was apparently destined to suffer with her. "And he has it," the mage said, very quietly, his gaze fixed on the Other. As far as both of them were concerned, it seemed she might as well have vanished from the room. Her irritation with that was tempered, as it seemed it ever was with Loki, by curiosity. He seemed almost afraid, above and beyond what he had a reason to feel. And had he really been holding back during that fight? What reason could be possibly have for that?

How dare he?

"Don't you dare lie to me, whelp!" the Other snapped. Its voice seemed to echo with strange harmonic that vibrated in the air. "If I have to skin you where you stand for you to show your second face, I will do so without hesitation!"

Oh. Now Nebula understood. It was one of the first things she'd ever heard about Loki, even before seeing him for herself. He has two skins, and seems to revile them both equally. She had yet to see it, whatever it was, though she did remember seeing a strange, glowing something beneath his skin.

However, the realization that he'd been holding back only served to tip the balance between her curiosity and her irritation in the other direction. So Nebula, as she often did, found herself saying something she would regret later. "Quit wasting our time, Loki. Forget Thanos, you're boring me."

Loki looked at her as though he was only just remembering that she was there. She almost thought she saw him smile, little more than a twitch across his face before it faded to be replaced by an expression of deepest resignation.

He raised his hands. She braced herself, ready to charge in and go for the spine.

"You asked for it," Loki said quietly, and…changed. Nebula forced herself to ignore how he changed. She just focused on getting in close, getting ready to attack…

Then all she remembered later was that it got very, very cold.

Nebula woke up on the operating table. Again.

Trying to sit up very quickly proved a bad idea. It felt like every muscle she had left in her body seized up all at once, dropping her onto her back once more with a pained gasp. She still managed to catch a brief glimpse of herself in doing so, however – enough to see that she was wrapped head-to-toe in bandages. Beneath, she could feel some sort of salve, working into her skin.

Probably something for the cold, she realized, memory returning slowly.

A quick check of herself beyond that revealed she had miraculously managed to escape without losing any more limbs, despite what had certainly felt like crippling frost bite in the making. A diagnostic report flashed before her mechanical eye, confirming that while her body temperature hadn't quite returned to normal yet, all systems were operational and undamaged after some maintenance that had been done while she was out. She was on the mend. Her muscle-and-skin side had come off the worst for the encounter, and was feeling the damage most acutely.

That, she knew, was probably why Thanos had made her keep all of her remaining flesh this time. So she would feel it, and think next time.

With a grimace of distaste – at herself, at her father, at Loki, at the pain – Nebula hopped up off the operating table and went to go and see what she'd missed.

Gamora was able to confirm that she hadn't been out for long, just a few hours. Nothing urgent had come up in her senseless state to require immediate action. Her performance in the sparring exercise had still been deemed "subpar", but subpar was still a step up from the Other's rantings of "abysmal". If Nebula had to guess, it was probably because she'd been cooperative, obedient, even if in doing so she'd gotten herself scalded with cold. Not like Loki, who had dug in his heels.

There was no point in asking, however, and so no point in worrying about it. There was probably no point in seeking out Loki, either, but Nebula did so anyway.

She found him on a balcony level, higher up in the fortress even than their rooms were. When Thanos wasn't marshaled for actual war, the fortress could be surprisingly empty, entire floors of rooms left standing empty. It made for plenty of places to get away for at least a semblance of privacy, especially when you were actually permitted full run of the place.

He was leaning against the edge of the balcony, staring down at the marshaled ranks of the Chitauri being put through their paces far below. It was a long way down from here.

They both seemed to prefer it that way. After all, it wasn't the fall that killed you.

"What the hell was that?" Nebula demanded without preamble, when he'd barely looked up from the sound of the door opening.

He gave her a nod of acknowledgement before going right back to staring at nothing. "You've recovered quickly."

"I'm good at that." Without waiting for an invitation, Nebula joined him at the rail. On a wild whim, she heaved herself to sit on it instead. The instant's lurch of the world realigning around her, that momentary feeling of weightlessness, brought with it the familiar fear of mingled elation and terror. "What the hell was that?"

She wasn't in the mood to be deflected – Loki was good at that. He seemed to pick up on that from her, fortunately. So he just let out a sigh, his breath frosting in a way it by rights shouldn't have in the warm air, and…changed.

Nebula realized that she'd seen him change like this before, just before the cold. The sheer system shock of what came next, however, had stopped her from properly registering or realizing as much before now. It was a strange sight, patches of blue spreading out across his skin like ink spilled on paper, faint ridges rising up like worms crawling beneath his flesh, his eyes darkening from blue to red.

"Two skins," she said quietly, when the transformation was complete. Then, after a beat: "I hope it doesn't always take you that long to change, before you can do whatever the hell you did with the ice. That would make this a nice parlor trick, but tactically useless."

Loki did look up at her, finally, his gaze snapping over to meet hers'. For a second, his eyes only widened with shock. He seemed genuinely gobsmacked, and that was satisfying.

Then he seemed to…choke? He pressed a hand to his mouth at the sound, bending almost double. Nebula was momentarily concerned – Thanos would kill her if she actually did succeed in killing Loki, even accidentally. But as she was reaching out to try and help, somehow, it sank in that the man was instead laughing. There was a slightly manic edge to it, but it was definitely laughter she was hearing.

It was a strange reaction, but not an unpleasant sound, so Nebula waited until he sounded like he was at least starting to regain control of himself before she spoke up again. "Well?"

"Well what?" And then he seemed to remember himself. Leaning back against the railing, still grinning faintly, Loki shook his head. "No, it doesn't normally take me that long. Well, it's…" He faltered. "It's odd. I still don't entirely understand it myself. But if I use the ice, I change automatically. If I don't, it's…harder."

"How can you not understand?" Nebula asked, tilting her head with curiosity. "Isn't this what you are?" More to the point, this looked to be an entirely organic side, which was to say something he was born with. It wasn't like her implants, where she had to figure them out all on her own.

Except, as it turned out, it was. "I didn't always know I was like this," Loki said, a little more sharply. As she watched, he started to shift back into the skin he seemed to favor. "For most of my life, I thought I was this. Asgardian. And then, one day, by the…the very most idiotic of chances…" He clenched his fists on the railing, staring down at the backs of his hands where the knuckles stood out white. His voice lowered to something like a growl, twisted up with hate, with a loathing more fierce than anything she'd ever heard from him before bubbling beneath the surface. "I found out that this skin, this body, was just an elaborate lie. I was born a Jotun. I was always a Jotun…a monster."

He might have had more to say on the subject, lost in his own grim thoughts. Nebula never heard them, however, because at that it was her turn to laugh. It felt good to do so, even if Loki was staring at her first in confusion, and then in offense. Actually, the wounded look on his face was even funnier, under the circumstances. Nebula found herself gripping the railing for support. She thought she understood, but if she was right, what she understood was one of the stupidest, most senseless things she had ever heard.

"Something funny?" he asked, in a tone as frosty as his touch.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact." She grinned at him, entirely unabashed. "You."

Nebula took a deep breath, gathering her composure once more. What she knew she had to say was important, and he needed to not only hear, but listen. So she slung herself off the railing and back onto the landing with him. Then she moved to stand directly in front of him, damn near nose-to-nose. This left Loki with absolutely nowhere to run – though she knew he wanted to, judging by the way his gaze darted first right, then left. Unless he wanted to fall, however, or possibly stab her, then he had no choice but to look and listen for once.

He clearly didn't want to fall, if the way he refused to even look over his shoulder at the drop was any indication. And if he stabbed her, it wouldn't be on Thanos' orders, and so he would most certainly get in trouble.

Trusting to all of the above to keep her safe, Nebula pushed her luck just a bit further – reaching out to jab a finger into his chest. His expression darkened, but she had his attention, so that he didn't even try to swat her hand away. "Listen," she growled. "What the hell gave you the impression that you have any choice in being a monster? Thanos wants monsters. The fact that you apparently came prepackaged is one of the reasons he let you live. I'd bet my other arm on it! But more than that, he wants effective monsters. He wants his servants strong, his children strong, so they may better serve him. And here you are, willingly, willfully limiting yourself when you should be offering your all for him!"

She was trembling now – shaking with the force of her emotions. But Nebula dragged the words she said next from the very depths of her twisted, mechanical heart. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt any words as strongly as these. "If you're going to be a monster, be a powerful one. Strike fear into their hearts. Make them remember you, even if you're the last thing they ever see – because if you're weak, they'll forget in no time at all." She couldn't possibly have told him how many people she had killed, by now. It didn't matter. One day, if all went well, he would forget, too.

Loki, for his part, was staring at her like she was…marvelous. Like she was the most awe-inspiring thing he had ever seen. Nebula knew for certain that she had never been looked at that way – not without at least a small inkling of fear – and she didn't know how to react to it. For lack of anything better, it was enough to make her step back from him, folding her arms primly behind her back as she did so. Moving like a man in a dream, Loki stepped away from the railing and straightened up, so that he looked more like a soldier and less like a cornered wolf.

He opened his mouth to speak. Nebula was suddenly desperately afraid of what he might say. She was only slightly less afraid of what she might say. So she turned sharply on her heel, and just from breaking their locked gazes found that she could breathe a little easier. It was easy to pretend that there was…nothing there, no emotion, no association besides necessity, when she wasn't looking at him.

"Here endeth the lesson," she said, but there was no hiding the unsteadiness in her voice. All she could do was hope that it was only unsteadiness. "Don't make me repeat myself, and don't make me waste my time again."

"I'll try not to do that, then." She thought she heard a smile in his voice. She also thought she heard him settling back against the railing rather than trying to draw nearer, which was an indescribably relief. "Still…you're right, Nebula. I would rather be a powerful monster than a weak one. When the time comes, perhaps I can follow in your footsteps to do just that. You really do wear that machinery well."

She'd known from the beginning that he held a fascination with her enhancements, and an eagerness to receive some of his own that bordered on a hunger. Nebula thought she understood why, now. If it was just a matter of shedding a hated skin, well, all the better for him. A power that wasn't utilized to its fullest was still a weakness.

"Thanks. I think." Nebula waved over her shoulder, and walked away without looking back. Her parting shot, offered over her shoulder, was this. "I don't doubt that time will come soon enough."

Except it never did. That was something of a surprise to all three of them.

When an exploding fuel tank caught him during their destruction of a Nova Corps outpost, that should have been it. Anyone could have seen that his eye was a ruin, and a respectable amount of flesh had been burned off his hand and arm. It was a minor miracle that he was still able to stagger towards the rendezvous point, limping into view at the very last minute before Gamora arrived with their ship out, although Nebula thought shock and adrenaline more likely explanations.

She was the one to call ahead to the Other, and through him to Thanos, to ask just what was to be done with Loki when he was in this state. After a breathless moment that seemed to last far longer, the Other reported back Thanos' word. If Loki could walk quickly enough not to slow them down, he would be permitted to return with them.

She had that entire conversation with Loki standing there with her on the roof, staring at her with his one working eye, cradling his ruined arm and hand against his chest. He was dragging in air in shuddering, rasping swallows, in a way that told her the superheated air of the explosion had probably done a number on his lungs. It left him in no fit state to even scream out his pain, which was just as well. They weren't safe yet.

Nebula didn't break their locked gazes as she gave her report and received her orders. She knew that if the Other had told her to leave Loki behind, she would have. After all, Gamora hadn't hesitated in leaving her. That was just the way their lives worked. It was nothing personal, it was just a matter of orders. Obedience to Thanos came before all else. Serving Thanos came before all else.

Except so much of her emotions with regards to Loki had grown impossibly, dangerously personal. Nebula knew that, if the order had come down to leave him, she would have killed him first. It would have been a mercy, for Loki most of all. There was no possible chance he would have gotten the help he'd need from their enemies to even survive injuries like this, let alone live without suffering and being left ruined.

But the order to leave him never came. He'd proven himself fit to return solely by virtue of making it here, damned if she knew how. If he actually lived long enough to get back to base, even Thanos couldn't deny that he had earned the right to be improved rather than broken down.

"Okay. We'll be back on schedule," Nebula said aloud, for Loki's benefit more than the Other's. His breath caught in his throat in a way that seemed surprised more than pained, his remaining eye widened in surprise, but doing so tugged and pulled at the scorched skin on the other half of his face and had him nearby doubled over with pain, letting out a death rattle of a moan that might have been the most he could manage of a sob.

Pity twisted, ugly and hot, in Nebula's chest. Unbidden, moving without even entirely thinking about it, she drew nearer to him. All the blood and ruin she'd seen and inflicted throughout her life somehow didn't quite compare to this. Maybe just because it was Loki, more likely that it was because he was her sibling, the only family she had, for all that mattered. After all, she'd never before seen Gamora so badly ruined before. More than that, when Nebula had last found herself in Loki's place, all her focus had been on getting out and moving on rather than pitying her situation.

There was precious little she could do for him, she knew. Keeping stocked with medical supplies beyond what was necessary to keep themselves upright and functioning was considered an unnecessary luxury. At best, once they were onboard the ship, they could probably keep him sedated until their return to the fortress.

There was, however, something he could do for himself, if he could only think through the pain to do so. Or if she could remind him.

"Loki," Nebula murmured to him, barely a breath between them now, moving to rest a hand on the mostly undamaged side of his face, the better to make him look at her. "Remember what I told you?" It was a strangely intimate position to hold, the two of them together in the shadows of a heat vent on the roof. She'd already forgotten the corpses laying just a few feet away "Remember what I said about serving Thanos to the best of your abilities? All of your abilities?"

He tried to speak, maybe. It only ended in him doubled over in a coughing fit, arm wrapped around his stomach, and that only ended in him vomiting up bile mixed with blood. She didn't flinch away from that, either. Just rested a hand on his back to steady him, even rubbing lightly while he suffered through it. She thought, for a moment, that he was going to sink to his knees, and that would be it for him. He didn't, however – even if he swayed in a way that left him slightly slumped against her, she deigned to pretend not to notice.

She just brushed his scorched, bloodied hair away from his face, continuing on. "Sometimes, that means using those abilities on yourself. Sometimes, that means surviving to keep serving him. Do you understand?"

For a long moment, she was afraid that he didn't. But then, he tensed beneath her grip, and she felt the temperature in the air around them start to palpably lower.

It wasn't a perfect fix, but it was better than what he'd had and better than she could provide. The damage didn't heal when he changed to his other form, but the sensors in her mechanical arm automatically compensated for the biting chill of his second skin with barely a thought from her. And as she watched intently, she saw frost and ice start to creep over his burned, shredded skin, covering and shielding the damage, fixing his bones and muscles safely in place for now.

Left too long in place, the makeshift bandages and casts would probably only leave his nerves permanently deadened, but that would only make the inevitable amputation easier. And until then, the chill of the ice against his burns was apparently enough of a relief that he actually moaned aloud softly.

Nebula smiled, feeling almost proud and undeniably relieved. "Good boy," she murmured, patting him on the head. "I guess you can be taught."

He tried to say something, then, but she never knew what it was. At that precise moment, she heard the telltale hum of the dropship's engines, and looked up to see Gamora disengaging the cloaking long enough to lower them a rope.

That should have been it. He lived through the flight home, with the help of some strong sedatives that they kept on hand for transporting prisoners. Nebula had noticed that even Gamora looked faintly ill at the sight of him. It made her want to ask just what Gamora had been feeling when she'd left Nebula behind in the past, but she'd been able to forcibly remind herself that now wasn't the time. She'd just let herself be glad that Gamora didn't put up a fuss this time about saving him.

Doing anything but carving out the burned and broken bits of him would have been nothing short of cruel. So when they turned him over to the Chitauri for transport to the surgical chambers while she and Gamora went to report, Nebula expected that just that would be done.

"Just a little while longer," she'd murmured to him before they'd parted. "And you'll never have to hurt like this again." It was the most reassurance she could offer, but if he was still conscious enough to hear her, she knew he would appreciate what it meant.

Yet she didn't see Loki again until a full month later. Whenever Nebula or Gamora tried to ask after him, all they were told was that he was recovering. They were told nothing about why it was taking so long to recover, when the surgery should only have taken hours, when acclimating to the implants could be done in a few days.

They weren't even told when he was released. He just wasn't there, and then he was. Nebula found him limping along the hall towards his room on her way out from her own, and felt her heart skip several beats at the sight of him.

He was still swathed in bandages, his arm in a sling and a splint. She could see just from the bandages, however, that there was more to his arm than there had been after the explosion. The burns over his face had healed that she could see, and somehow she knew just from the sight of him that if she lifted the bandage from his eye, he'd actually be able to look back at her with it.

One look at him in x-ray confirmed her suspicions. Impossible as it was, he was just as flesh and blood as he had been before.

Loki made it another few paces before he realized she was standing there, staring back at him. He lifted his gaze to hers', and his face twisted into something that was technically a smile.

"Hello again," he rasped, his voice still damaged and faint.

"Hey."

With him fully conscious and looking at her, Nebula didn't dare do anything like move to support him again. She could, however, allow herself to at least slide open the door to his room for him. "You look like three kinds of hell," she added aloud.

He chuckled, a low, dark, broken sound. "I'm aware." He continued on towards the door, towards her. If he swayed just a bit when he reached it, if he had to reach out his good hand to brace himself against the frame, she deigned not to notice. "I am tired," Loki added, an understatement so great as to be a lie in its own right. "I have been allowed another two days to rest myself. Allow me that, Nebula."

"If that's what you've been allowed, I'm hardly going to stop you."

He nodded his gratitude, or perhaps just his acknowledgement, and turned away to retreat into his room. It hit Nebula, then, just how many of their most important conversations had taken place when they were unable or unwilling to look at one another.

She wondered if that said more about her or him. She also, however, continued their little streak by speaking up before he could close the door in her face. Why mess with what worked?

"What happened?"

He stopped dead in his tracks, and for a moment she wondered if he really would just close the door in her face. She wouldn't have blamed him if he had, not really. However, after a long moment broken only by the sound of his rattling breathing, he replied instead.

"Did you know that magic is apparently quite rare, in this part of the galaxy?"

Nebula gave a little half-shrug. "Not for certain, but I could have guessed." That sort of super-mortal force usually had to be granted, by something like the World Mind. Instances of it being innate were heard of, but staggeringly rare, some freak accident of genetics that occurred less often than a white hole. "What does that matter?"

"It seems that Thanos hold some fascination with the forces behind it. Yet before me…he was never able to hold on to a live subject before. So even if it means using more…expensive, exhaustive procedures to ensure my recovery, he deems it a worthwhile expense, rather than risk disrupting whatever it is about me…" She saw his hand tighten its grip on the doorframe, and he sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth as he corrected himself. "…about this body that grants that power."

Because it wasn't about him. Loki's body and the secrets it held were the real prize. Loki's mind and service were just pleasant bonuses that came as a packaged deal. He was valuable like this, valuable enough to have been brought into Thanos' service when he'd first been caught by the Chitauri as a trespasser and potential enemy agent. Except he wasn't what was valuable – the collection of cells that he'd just so happened to be born with were worth more.

Nebula felt a hot stab of…something, at the realization. She thought it might be offense. Maybe it was because, yet again, he was placed above her in Thanos' eyes without having to lift a finger, for just having been born special.

Yet she couldn't look at him, head and shoulders bowed, all but swaying with exhaustion, pieced back together into his weak, hated flesh with brutal efficiency, and believe that he took any satisfaction from Thanos' esteem. A tiny, traitorous part of her even whispered, too quietly for the Other and almost too quietly for her, that how much did Thanos' esteem really mean to the three of them?

She wondered if it might be offense on his behalf, instead, for being reduced to just a body. He was…more than that. They all were. They all should be. This life had been chosen for them, but it was up to them to make the best of it, to rise above their broken circumstances. Nebula had always believed that she could find worth through service. Maybe she'd only believed it because she had no other choice in the matter, but she'd still improved from where she'd started. She'd still made herself better, made herself stronger, and picked herself up when she'd fallen.

If Thanos had his way, Loki wouldn't do or be any of that.

She thought she could be offended on his behalf, for that.

All Nebula said of any of this was: "Sorry to hear that." She meant it, even if her voice was gruff. "Get some sleep." A part of her wanted to reach out, but she didn't know what she'd do if she did, so she didn't. It was safer that way. Distance in general was…safer, so it was a shame she kept seeming to forget that around Loki. Fascination could be an equally powerful thing, it seemed.

"As you command," Loki replied, apparently too exhausted for his usual level of sarcasm. That only made the pity return stronger than ever. He turned his head very slightly, almost as though to look back at her…but, in the end, he didn't. He just gave a little nod, and stumbled inside his room.

She closed the door behind him. The last thing she saw before he did was her brother collapsing bonelessly on the bed.