The Avengers, and Thor, and all situations and characters thereof, belong strictly and solely to Marvel Comics. This is a fan-work, meant for enjoyment only, and not for any material profit.

"Keep the blind down on the window
Ah, keep the pain on the inside
Just watching the dark.
Just watching the dark.
Ah he might laugh but you won't see him
As he thunders through the night
Shoot out the lights."
– Richard Thompson

Alone. The four walls of his prison mock him. If the Warriors Three were here they'd mock him: Loki, who always wants to be by himself; now he's complaining that he's lonely? That he has too much time on his hands? If this is his only complaint, he should count himself lucky. He is a traitor to Asgard, and this punishment of solitary confinement is light in the extreme.

Probably, they think it too light. They would like to see him chained somewhere no doubt, and suffering unimaginable torments. They would like to see him deprived of his powers and thrown down to wander Midgard, as was done to Thor, for the relatively small crime of invading Jotunheimr. It galls on them, surely, to think of Loki Silvertongue here, safe and comfortable in what were his own rooms before he became a prisoner, that are different now, only because of the magical wards Odin has put on them.

But those wards: How much is kept from him that he never even knew he wanted, because of them! They hold him here in his rooms, and they bar... They must bar visitors from entering, that is the only logical conclusion he can make. Else why has no one come? Surely there are some yet, who have not turned away? Where is his (adoptive) mother? Where is his childhood's playmate, Sif? – Where is Thor, who swore every time they met, that he would be brother to the end, no matter what? He was always right there to taunt Loki with his superior skill at-arms. He was always there to belittle the magical contributions his so-called "brother" had made. Where is he now, when Loki actually needs him? Where is he when he needs comfort, some kind of comfort, and the company of another's presence and voice?

Silence, only silence responds to his questions, spoken aloud. – And why not? Who is here to listen and make comment? Who will notice if the Sly One talks to himself? – If, finally, he is driven mad by the sheer pressure of being alone?

How the others would laugh if they heard him in his self-pity. Loki pictures them: He imagines Volstagg's huge belly-laugh, the sly comments Hogun would make, and the mirthful look that he'd see on Fandral's face. His friends? No, they were ever Thor's friends, not his. They tolerated his presence only because the Thunderer made them, and they made sport of him as if it were payment for their having suffered him to be there. He wonders if he is more relieved, or sorry that they are not here now. Is he – Can he be? – desperate enough that he'd rather mocking companions than none at all?

He is not, Loki tells himself. He has a mind, he has inner resources, and he has his powers, such powers as he can use, closed up in this cell. He casts himself down on his bed, willing his thoughts away from lonely, unproductive channels. He will ...He will amuse himself. His hands move in the air, and he conjures: A serpent, a wolfling, a raven. Child's playthings all. His magical beasts are nothing to keep a grown man busy. He conjures a scrying surface out of the basin he was given to do wash his hands, and seeks to catch a glimpse of what is going on outside his chambers. This proves to be impossible. Of course the wards Odin has put in place stop him. He conjures a book, but when he opens it, the pages are blank. He'd have to draw on minds outside his cell to fill them, wouldn't he? And this, apparently, the All-Father cannot allow.

Why not, he wonders? When did he ever use telepathy as a weapon? When did he use mind-control? Can Odin really be thinking of what he did to the scientist and the assassin while he was in Midgard? Did he really fail to notice that he was doing Thanos' bidding, and with Thanos' own sceptre? Having that added power to draw upon was intoxicating, but it was not his power. Power like that comes only from long practice, and Loki has ever focused his practice elsewhere.

He kind of wishes now, that he had not. Perhaps if his telepathic abilities were stronger, Odin could not block them. He would be using them now to amuse himself. ...No, better: He'd be using them to free himself. If he could communicate across distance as effectively as his ex-ally, if his mind-control powers were as great, he'd have the entire palace guard – Nay, Heimdall himself! – breaking down the doors of his cell and freeing him.

Picturing it, Loki falls finally into a restless sleep. Images crowd in, then change themselves. He is watching guardsmen crowd forward, a mass of them, faceless in Aesir armor. Then the image changes, and it is the Chitauri he sees, those faceless, mindless hordes, in their crude armor. Then it changes again.

Everything's dark around him. He's standing on solid ground, on a rock, surrounded by ...By nothing, and the vague sense of something moving, shadows maybe, or clouds. He's in his battle armor, he notices, and something's coming at him. He knows it the way you know things in dreams, with no reason for knowing it, and he braces himself, hands fisted, feet wide apart, waiting for whatever it is to hit.

"Who's there?" His voice sounds echo-y and hollow, in the weird acoustics of this place. He's heard acoustics like this before, but where? Where was it? "Whoever you are," he shouts into the weird, hollow-sounding darkness, "I demand that you show yourself!"

"Don't you know me anymore?" A disembodied voice, coming from close, and so unexpected that he loses his balance, and almost falls. Loki knows that voice. Oh, he knows it, all right. Is he armed? He looks down at his hands, but there's no weapon there, not a sword, not a spear. And does it matter anyhow, he asks himself? Does his foe not have hordes he can draw on to destroy him?

"I don't know you." It's a lie, and they both know it. "Show yourself if you want me to."

"Prince of Asgard." No response at all to his words, and what is a Liesmith if all his lies are ignored? The voice is gentle, suave, a lover's caress from a lover not sane. The mind behind it, Loki knows, was ancient before the first Aesir babe babbled and shat itself. "You failed me," his host murmurs, "and you made yourself so easy to find. Did you not know I would come for you?"

"Blame yourself, Thanos." Weak, puny defense that it is, he throws it like a weapon. "It is your army that failed."

Thanos' bellow of laughter comes right into his face, and so unexpected that he staggers backward, and almost falls again. "Loki Liesmith: You'll lie with your last breath, won't you? My little Prince of Asgard, my little fallen Prince: You've fallen far, haven't you? And so fast! Look at you standing here unarmed, and barely able to summon the battle armor you were so proud of. I choose not to see you in it. Watch what happens:"

Cold wind, suddenly touching his bare body directly, tells Loki he is naked in front of him, but he summons the will not to look down. He will not give Thanos the satisfaction.

The laugh that follows sounds satisfied enough without that, though. "Your pride's still intact at any rate. I'm glad. It would be boring to break you too easily, Loki of Asgard."

"You think me so weak?" How to answer something that could be anywhere, on any side of you? Loki speaks into the darkness, toward the place Thanos was when he spoke last, for whatever that's worth. "You will not break me at all."

Another laugh. The pure, untroubled pleasure of a child, pulling wings off a captured fly. "Spare me the defiance. You were already half-broken when I found you. How long do you really think you can withstand?"

All at once, Loki feels the pain of tiny, hot-sharp – Blades? Nails? Flame-points? – ...He feels the pain of tiny somethings, tearing at his skin, all over his body. There's a giant shove, and he's falling, his body spiraling through nothingness.

He wakes with a start, in his own bed again. The pain is there, but it's already fading. Dream-pain? This was just a dream, surely? He hasn't slept well ever since his fall from the Bifrost, his nights ever tormented by nightmares and terrors. This was just another such, was it not?

And it was just a coincidence that it involved Thanos? Loki leaves the safe haven of his bed. He crosses the room and grabs candles, lighting them with shaking hands. In spite of himself, he can't help looking around, scanning the room with their dim light. Foolish! As if he'll find Thanos hiding in the shadows! Feeling ever more the fool, he raises his shirt and to inspect his body. Of course there are no marks on it. His pale skin is untouched, no cuts, no stings, no burns. Whatever Thanos did to him, hasn't harmed him physically, and even the pain is starting to subside now.

Brusquely, he straightens his garments and stalks back to the bed, telling himself he's wasted enough time on dream-terrors. But as he reaches to extinguish the candles, he hesitates. What if Thanos is waiting for him again? What if this is the punishment the entity has for him, that he should never be able to sleep in peace again, that his every night should be haunted like this one? Loki shivers. He is alone, completely, completely alone. Odin will not help him. – Perhaps, indeed, he foresaw this very development. Perhaps he is allowing it, as fit punishment for Loki's crimes.

Where is Frigga? Where is the woman who was mother to him for so many years? And Thor, who said he would never give up on his "brother": Where is he?

Huddled under warm bearskins, Loki fights sleep. His green eyes look out, scanning the room again and again, in the dim light of the candles. In truth, he has always been alone, hasn't he? He is an alien, cast out by his true father, and brought here to be raised where he could never fit in. Loki the Liesmith? Loki the Silvertongue? Say rather Loki the Stranger, Loki who will always be a Stranger, wherever he goes. Loki is for Loki because he must be, because no one else is. – Because it is no life, always to trail behind the Storm God, using his own power only for another's ends. He will get through this, Loki tells himself. He survived the fall from the Bifrost, didn't he? And he survived the real torments Thanos visited on him when he was in his realm. Can he not more easily, survive these imagined ones?

It is a while before the fear dissipates, though, and even after it is gone, the piercing loneliness of knowing he is completely alone, facing this threat lingers on. Loki stays where he is, huddled under the bearskins on his bed. The cold light of dawn finds him there, and if it illuminates a face filled less with calculating intellect, and more with simple unhappiness, than Loki pretends, well there is none to see anyhow.