"What is the meaning of this! Why is the traitor no longer in chains? Have you gone mad!?" when met with the barrage of questions, Thor let his anger act as a proper defense… Frigga would surely have something to say about the impoliteness of that. Then again, show her a chosen son writhing in illness and woe the man who dared to part them.

"He is ill! Can you not see he wouldn't have been long for this realm if not for my intervention?"

"How do you know you're not being lied to? Are you certain this illness is not a fabrication to gain favour?"

Odin charged up to Loki's bedside, crudely lifting him in order to inspect his physique. His very being, every last inch, a lie. Perhaps he'd engineered this one with his fingers, but his fingers Odin found bloodless and weak… his mouth then, blue-tinted cracked lips and unwieldy tongue and all, but he didn't emit a sound save for the occasional whimper or moan… still, ever paranoid (Odin preferred the term 'watchful'), the Allfather roughly manipulated his once-son's limbs until he was - if not convinced of his sickness, at least his innocence of having enchanted Thor.

"So, you see, father; He is in fact ill. Now stop hurting him!" ah yes, blessed force, the second language of the golden realm of Asgard. What luck they both spoke it so well. Within two seconds, Thor had removed his father from where he so invasively inspected his brother and indadvertedly thrown him against a wall. The old god merely caught himself and straightened out.

"You still defend him? After all he's done to us? Why do you allow yourself to be tainted by his madness so easily? Have you as little sense as he does?"

"He doesn't deserve to die in a cell like a caged dog, father!"

"Yes he does! That was to be his penalty! You were there at his sentencing, were you not? Be glad I've permitted him to live this long. You know it was by your mother's graces I did!"

"Mother, yes… so you let her son expire with not an effort made to aid in any way, and you expect her to understand? To let you live?" Thor laughed, a spiteful, sniping thing.

"Frigga will come to understand, in time. Loki stopped being a son of this realm the moment he betrayed us."

"You raised him, do you not feel anything seeing him suffer thusly?"

"I do. Of course I do. But I'm also quite keenly aware he is not to be trusted, as you would do well to remember." something akin to remorse showed on his battle-worn face then, but Thor found himself still too enraged to properly acknowledge it.

"I do remember. It is not in spite of his madness that I stand by him, it is because of it. I found him pleading with spectres in his cell. His madness is ruining him, father; it has begun to poison his mind!"

"Thor… his mind has already been eroded. You know this. You saw it."

"Aye…" a seed of doubt seemed poised to plant itself and… then Thor turned. He saw his brother, his brother, straining against some mounting agony. He didn't seem to care Thor wasn't there to bare witness to it all, didn't acknowledge the healers that swarmed around him, didn't acknowledge anything or anyone save the pain. It couldn't be a lie.

Otherwise, the panic in the eyes of the healers would be unwarranted. They would weave their magic and see through it, not tend to him so kindly, hiding their fright whilst they spoke in hushed tones above him. They didn't know what ailed Loki. When Thor asked, they at least tried to appear calm, but the fact was that they weren't. Over time, their movements had become increasingly frantic. Where at the start they had regarded Loki with cold detachment, a glimmer of care could be seen on their faces now. It was their curse, as healers. They cared. Always did. Thor's Midgardian comrade Banner had said so himself.

"…but this time I believe him. Look at him, father! He has not the coherence to gouvern a lie! I know you must think little of me to continue to undermine my rulership as you have done, but do not ever think so little of my heart as to assume I'll let a helpless soul perish out of spite!"

In response, Odin merely laughed. Laughed.

"You too, Thor? He was never helpless. Don't tell me you blame me for his madness same as he? He chose his own path. It is a pity that it lead do this but that was his own doing! My only fault was taking him out of the cold. Raising him to be a king!"

"Some king you meant him to be…" Thor scoffed, retreating a few steps to guard his brother against his father's ire. "I know what I've been told, father, what we've both been taught from the cradle onward. You only ever addressed the Jotnar as monsters and menacing creatures, instilled in us both a hatred so intense it tore a rift through Loki's mind to know they were kin! Speak not of fairness when my brother suffers nearby, living proof of the lie it is!"

A commotion at Loki's bedside stifled further arguments, both men turning - one in fear, one in suspicion - to find the Liesmith in the throes of some fit, screaming in agony and grappling desperately for purchase before Thor hastened to offer it. And even then, he did not still. His mouth kept working silent proclamations, his eyes hungrily roving the vastly arched ceilings and needlessly ornamented surfaces of the healing rooms. All that gold, all that splendor and yet no release. Ever none. So he did what he tended to, these days: He begged. Said please again, in that tone so foreign to his tongue it brought tears to his brother's eyes. Once, he had been a prince. A God-Prince, a proud man. Perhaps it would be so again, in death, but not here: not in the fifth bed from the front on the left hand side where brothers did roar and mothers did weep. Here, he would be a beggar.

"T-Thor, Thor, you must listen! Please, you have to l-listen, you m-must! " Thor, - steadily losing circulation in the majority of his right hand fingers - grabbed him around the shoulders so that with each passing tremor their noses would briefly touch.

"What's happening? What is this? I'm listening, brother. I am listening, it's alright, it's… I'm here."

"Whatever he asks of you, whatever he p-proposes, you must deny him! D-Don't yield to any demand… None. None! Promise me!" Thor loathed it; the desperate tinge that tainted these words, the eyes that sang with insanity and pain and fear and the way he pled and begged and just… just kept bleeding. From his ears, eyes, mouth, nose… Thor was sickened to see scarlet crawling in sprawling branches across the bedsheets, starting in the vicinity of his brother's lower regions. Was he to lose his brother to this, then? This flagrant mockery of Yggdrasil?

He bore the rages, made his promises, held Loki to him, tried to ignore the sounds of his mother crying behind him. His eternal optimism was failing him. Only dread remained, in the end.

"I promise, Loki. If he comes for you… we will not yield. Asgard will remain standing. And… and you will stand with us." mere whispers. They were all he had to offer. His hands moved slowly, cupping his brother's face and pressing a tentative kiss to his forehead. "You shall stand with us, Loki. You shall survive, you shall be restored, and I would have you beside me. We will find Thanos, together, we shall make him pay. You can live for that, can't you? You've done it once before… survived, for revenge. Do it again, now, and you'll have my hammer. Do you understand?" Thor was not a man easily given to tears, as Loki had never been one for despair. "Y-You don't understand, Thor, you d-don't… he approaches now. I can feel it. I can't… I c-can't stop it… I've tried. I… I-I'm sorry, Thor." maybe the oaf lacked understanding, as he always had, but he lacked fear nor love when he grasped the back of Loki's head. It was meant to signify their bond, as it had in the past, but… when he touched the sweat slicked hair, he found an impostor in his grip.

One with impossibly blue eyes, a grin fit to split a face in half. Another. Thanos.

"So obedient… so very… subdued. Do you enjoy my handiwork, thunderer? No easy feat, mind you… how strong he was when he landed in my snare. Do you miss it, Odinson? Do you miss the one who would've struck you off the earth without thought? You should thank me. I tamed him for you, did I not?" his voice, its voice, sounded impossibly loud in the closed quarters. It struck fear into all the nearest hearts, and some fellow patients fled with no regard for their ailments. Others had to be carried, but they too left, aloft in the arms of others, until only the house of Odin remained along with Eir; the head-healer.

"I shall never thank you for this! What did you do, monster? What have you done to my brother!?"

A stillness had gained mastery of Loki's limbs now, even as Thanos' gaze slid across the flesh thereon to reveal jagged wounds and ragged scars lurking just below the surface. And then, below that, blue.

A very deep blue. Royally so. But the marks, the marks were different. Where the other Jotnar had worn their separate inscriptions like warpaint, Loki's were paler, somehow, laced with the delicate beauty of ice as it snuck upon the windowpanes in a winter's night. After all, he had only been a runt. Not fearsome enough. Too delicate. In fact, he was… well, he was beautiful.

A creature of winter, perhaps, but his was not a savage chill. Only one of snowflakes, in which children would make merry… one of the ice that froze across ponds, where sports would be held and silly games played; Royal blue, webbed in intricate patterns by the pale blue of frost. He wore his skin like a fine garment. He had not been born a man of war, it seemed. He had never been one either, and both the æsir and the Jotnar scorned him for it. And, well… why? He was enough, like this. All frost and wits and perhaps vanity, but why not?

"You think this spectacle would sway me from the belief I still have a brother in the man you have unfairly taken as your vessel, do you not? You think wrong, intruder. I care not what shape he may take… he is my brother and he needed no taming. Not by your hand. What have you done?"

"Very well," purred the sire of the void from another's lips. "I shall tell you… would you like to join in, Allfather?"