Warnings: Blood, injury

Disclaimer: Don't own Thor

It took two of them to haul him back into the cave: on his left, Thor had his beefy hands clamped around his arm, holding him upright, while Fandral performed the same duty on his right.

It had been a hunting trip gone terribly wrong, in an area of Asgard outside of the city that they didn't have much knowledge of, and the cave in which they had made their camp was the only safe place for miles around. It had been hours since they had last left it, and the only sign that they had been there at all was the cold pile of logs surrounded by a circle of stones.

The warriors dragged him passed the logs and began to lower him to the floor.

"You've put on some weight, Loki," Fandral joked, as his back touched the floor of the cave.

His body was trembling, his breathing ragged, his unfocused eyes wide and his skin dangerously pale. Sif kneeled down by his right side, as the worried Thor dropped to his knees to his left, before carefully shifting his cloak to reveal the damage underneath. The green material was stained with red, and it was only getting worse.

Sif wasted no time in giving her diagnosis. "The sword did not go through. It swiped across his side. But it will not heal on its own. We need to stop the bleeding."

"What do you suggest?" Thor asked, his voice shaky and thick.

Sif didn't look at him. Instead, she addressed the injured figure before her.

"Loki?" she asked. "Loki, can you hear me?"

Loki tried to nod, but the action only made his head swim, and he was finding it difficult enough to hold onto consciousness. He opted instead for croaking, "I can hear you."

"How is your magic?" Sif continued.

Loki scoffed, blood dotting his lips as he did so.

Sif rolled her eyes impatiently. "Can you create a hot flame? Can you reignite the fire?" She pointed over to the pile of logs.

"Why?" Thor asked worriedly as his brother raised a hand to the logs. He flicked his fingers in their general direction; in an instant, a flame sprung up, burning bright and hot. Yet even such a simple action was almost too much for Loki in his severely weakened state, and his hand dropped to the floor with a thump as he fought the black dots that had begun to appear in the corners of his field of vision.

Sif nodded her thanks at the injured prince on the floor, before looking up at the worried one by his side. However, when she spoke, she wasn't addressing Thor.

"Fandral, hold his legs down."

Fandral moved immediately, pressing his knees into the floor by Loki's feet and wrapping his hands tightly around the prince's ankles.

Sif reached forward, grabbing a handful of Thor's cloak, and chopped off a long strip of the red material with her sword.

The older prince started to mount a protest, but his anger turned into confusion when she stuffed the torn cloth into his hand.

"Put this in his mouth, and hold his arms."

Not waiting for a reaction, she turned and placed her sword on the ground, so that the end of the blade was engulfed in the flames.

Thor shuffled around his brother, so that he was kneeling, his knees by the top of his head. He stuffed the cloth into Loki's mouth and told him to bite down.

"It'll be okay," he told him, ignoring the sounds of ripping material as Sif at Loki's clothes to get better access to the wound. He reached forward, wrapping his beefy hands around his brother's arms. "You'll be fine."

The words only sounded like lies, however, when Sif placed her heated blade against Loki's wound, and the cave was filled with muffled screams.