""You have proved most useful to me, Loki, and your help is appreciated. Sadly, I have no more use to you. And you know too much."

"Some of the Avengers and Guardians that had been knocked out were coming to, others were just arriving. But almost all of them saw perfectly what happened next, shortly after Loki had given Thanos the Tesseract, as he was asked to do. But he knew too much, he was a liability, a loose end.

Loki could give those Avengers an advantage with what he knew, make things difficult for Thanos. And now that he the tesseract back and that he had most of his children with him, Thanos had enough resources and enough companions, sufficient for his plans. It was a pity to relinquish such a great asset as the Asgardian prince, but he had to. And so he did.

"The Titan approached Loki, a faint smile on his purple lips and, instead of shaking of shaking his hand, instead of stabbing him or anything of the sort, he simply put two fingers on Loki's forehead and disappeared in a hue of purple smoke, his smile transformed into a malicious grin that seemed to be a very bad omen for Loki's future.

And so the Avengers saw, confused, how Loki collapsed after having simply been touched in the forehead. He fell, boneless, to his knees, and looked in front of him without seeing, a strange look of finality in those unseeing eyes. Time seemed to have stopped, and they were all frozen. And then... a strange pale blue liquid started falling from the corners of both of Loki's eyes and then he started coughing up the same blue substance. Within seconds, he fell completely to the floor, and was on there, choking, gurgling, retching whatever that was that seemed to be taking over him.

"Loki!"

"Thor screamed and ran, trying to reach his fallen brother. He had ready to strike him down, just minutes before, but seeing like that, miserably retching on the floor and trying desperately to breathe, suddenly all of his hatred, all of his anger at being betrayed again were forgotten, abandoned and there was only worry and horror at seeing him like that. No more how many times they betrayed each other, no matter what he did, Loki would always be his little brother and he would always love him.

"The Asgardian put Loki on his side, cradled his upper body, while he frantically asked what he could do. There was no answer from Loki, who looked at him with clouded eyes and vomited more of that liquid. Thor tried to clean his brother's face a bit, tried to get him to talk, to tell him what was going on and how could he help, but Loki didn't seem to be able to respond. He was looking at him, at least, he knew Thor was there.

"But he couldn't talk through the pain, could hardly move, couldn't do anything except let it consume all of his body, all his internal organs exploding with white hot pain, eating him and his head alive. It had been like a distant hum, before. Loki had known that Thanos had done something to him, and he did feel someone else, another presence within him, but never seemed to want or be able to anything to get rid of it.

Now that distant hum had become a deafening scream and it had grown fangs and it was throwing bombs in him, was clogging him and Loki was on the floor, trying to focus, trying to see, to hear, to get through the pain. Thor was there, seemingly calling his name, holding him, talking to him. He wanted to tell him many things before he died, didn't want to die with all those regrets, but he couldn't speak, his throat drowning him.

He tried grabbing one of Thor's arms, trying to pass all the things he should have before it was too late, but couldn't. His hands tried to grab onto Thor but couldn't. He was fading, at an alarming speed.

"Somebody help!" Thor screamed, with his booming voice.

The others had been watching in confused horror as the scene unfolded before their eyes. It made no sense for Loki to have collapsed like and be in the brink of death, suddenly, when all Thanos had done, was lightly touch him on the forehead with two fingers. If he had such power to kill people with such a small movement? Why hadn't the titan used it with anyone else? It seemed to great a power not to have used before.

Maybe Loki was playing a trick on them, pretending to be die or to be in agony, so he could get away with what he had done. Wouldn't be the first time. Sure, it seemed like too gross a death for him, too physical and pathetic (these people were royalty, they liked their deaths clean and in glorious battle) but one could never be sure with someone as sketchy as the God of Lies.

"Why are you standing there?" Thor bellowed. "Help me, do something!"

"How do we now this is not just a scene he's playing to avoid punishment? There's something wrong here." Tony said, all suited up and in front of the brothers, trying to figure out what just didn't fit. One thing was clear, if Loki was faking he was the greatest actor in the history of the universe.

"We are wasting time!" Thor screamed at his unmoving friends, fearing that Loki would close his eyes and never open them again.

"I can tell you if his pain is real or fake." Mantis said in a small voice, appearing behind Iron Man. "Just let me touch him for a moment and we will now.

And so she knelt in front of the brothers and gently reached out and touched one of the god's cheeks lightly and... IT WAS HELL and raging fire, pain like she had never known before, pain in a way she hadn't thought was possible and it was in every bit, overpowering consuming. Mantis screamed without realizing it, a loud, unending scream of pain and then she let go and fell to the floor, two tears already falling.

"He is not lying. I had never felt such pain... I... poor soul... we – we have to do something."

"I don't think there's anything we can do. It's too late for him." Another feminine voice spoke, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. Nebula. "I've seen Thanos do that before, he uses it with allies he considers difficult or not trustworthy. He plants whatever it is on them the first time they work together and lets it grow, lets it eat the hosts mind, to make their will more flexible.. To make them obey in an easier way. And then, when they no longer of use, or he hears they know too much... Just a little touch, and they're dead in seconds."

"Well,great to know he can do that." Tony said, feeling bad for being sarcastic in such a dire situation but doing it anyways.

"It's not something he does often." Nebula added. "It takes years for whatever that blue liquid is to reach a level of infestation critical enough for the instant kill."

"Well, it's been more than an instant, and Loki is still alive."Bruce said, wearing only some dirty shorts. "Maybe something about his constitution is making him last longer?"

"So?"

"If he lasts enough for us to fix him, he will be able to tell us, all of those things that Thanos doesn't want us to know."

"There's no fixing it. It's a death sentence."

"And yet, he's not dead. From what you said, and what I see, this looks like something biological, a virus, a parasite something like. With a sample we could easily create an antibiotic, antibodies, something to stop it."

"To stop an alien mystery magical death sentence? I don't know, Bruce. It sounds a bit far fetched." Tony said "we don't have any time to waste, or anyone."

"This could a breakthrough! I'll just take Thor and Nebula."

"And if that blue thing influenced Loki into doing what he did, we owe to him to do as much as we can to save him and free him." Steve said. "I say we give them a chance."

There was a general consensus and they left for one of Tony's warehouses/secret labs/headquarters. Mantis decided to join them, haunted by all she felt and hoping to help. In the meantime, Thor was hoping against hope, Bruce was sciencing in his head how could he fix this extra quick and Nebula too was hoping that this would have a happy ending, because it would be a huge step forward in her plans. Loki was just hoping for the pain to end.

Sadly, time was not on their side.

A/N: Sorry about the formatting. If you liked, feedback would be lovely. To be continued!