A/N—I don't own Thor. Everything belongs to Marvel.
Okay-to make up for my terrible, terrible absence (which was completely unannouced and dragged on for a long time...) I'm putting up another chapter...Thanks for all your reviews!
"Loki?"
Thor didn't care that his voice was shaking with horror. He didn't care that his knees were knocking together audibly. He didn't care that Mjolnir fell from his grip and dented the ground.
"Loki? LOKI!"
His little brother's bed was rumpled, the sheets and covers lying abandoned on the floor. But it was empty.
A chilly wind came from nowhere, making the door swing about, revealing for brief instants the lonesome room, all empty, all dark, all cold.
Thor staggered away from the doorframe, determined not to stoop so low as to clutch it for support.
The hallway was even colder than Loki's room, and as Thor ran along, his heart hammering against his ribs, it got ever colder—almost as if the cold was a trail, leading him somewhere, left behind by someone.
Ice crystals laced the middle of the wall: the trailing remnants of icy fingertips straying across the surface. On the marble floor, smudged footprints shimmered briefly in a strange blue light. Thor shivered, remembering with horror the Jotun attack of so long ago. Had Loki really only been two? Had seventeen years really gone by? It seemed unreal to Thor, and he found himself transported back—four years old, frightened, clinging to Mother, screaming as they careened across the ice-coated floor, Loki dancing about happily—
The stolen Casket was suddenly glinting in the darkness ahead, tingeing everything a melancholy blue, making the grated floor ripple like water, shining like ice.
"Loki?" He'd always known that Loki bore an affinity to the Casket.
"Thor?"
Spinning around, Thor beheld Loki.
His little brother was pale, and his green eyes bore the tell-tale red that fever always lent them, bringing out the Jotun in him.
"Little brother, you should not be up. What were you doing?"
"Walking..." Loki's voice was feverishly distant.
Thor didn't bother answering. He grabbed his brother's hand and pulled him along the corridor. Loki's fingers were a dull blue, and Thor massaged them, trying to ease the Asgardian color back into Loki's hands.
As they slipped out of the hall, Loki looked back reluctantly. His eyes glittered.
"Thor...the Jotuns—"
"Is that why you slept-walked?" Thor asked, trying not to sound irritated. "Little brother, I assure you, Heimdall simply let his guard down. Someone will speak to him, and it shan't happen again."
"Father—"
"—is worrying too much. There is no way into Asgard besides the Bifrost, Loki. You're still ill, and walking around in the cold, fretting about a mistake in the security is no way to recover. You want to be at my coronation, don't you?"
Loki livened up. "Yes!"
"Then rest, and don't worry. I'll speak to Father, and to Heimdall, and we'll fix whatever went wrong. But there's no secret passageway into Asgard."
Thor's assurances didn't stop Loki from looking back again, and Thor was too busy reassuring his brother to hear Loki whisper,
"But there is."