When the food arrived the trio turned their attention to lighter discussion – talk shifted to Judah's schoolwork, and how he was learning Asgardian now. After the meal ended, they said their goodbyes and headed back to Asgard. Though he wasn't entirely certain he should, Loki paused a moment to speak to Heimdall, in a low voice that he hoped Judah would not hear.

"Heimdall… you saw my birth on Jotunheim. Do you remember it?"

Heimdall gave him the strangest look he had perhaps ever given anyone in his life. "I know what you discussed with your mortal friend, my Prince, but I cannot tell you what you wish to know. Please do not ask me."

"Cannot or will not?"

"Cannot. Will you wait for your brother? He should be on his way soon."

"He's coming back now?"

"He's a bit tied up at the moment, but I foresee he will deal with the problem shortly."

Loki paused. "Did you just make a joke? 'Tied up?' Is he literally tied up somewhere?"

"I am not allowed to have a sense of humor?" Heimdall said blandly.

"You've never had one before now."

Loki and Judah waited with Heimdall while the Gatekeeper watched Thor's progress on the Surtur front from afar, not knowing what he was seeing, just trusting his word that it wouldn't be long before Thor wrapped up whatever he was doing and came flying home. Eventually, Heimdall unsheathed his sword.

"You might want to stand well back," he said.

"Why?" Loki said.

"You'll see," Heimdall said. Loki pulled Judah back to the very furthest edge of the Observatory. Heimdall opened the bridge and in a moment Thor came flying through, pulled even faster than the bridge allowed for by Mjolnir.

"Close it!" he shouted, just as a huge reptilian head came through behind him, snapping its jaws. Heimdall didn't need to be told. He pulled the sword and the bridge closed, slicing the dragon's head off in a spurt of hot blood.

"Whoa… is that a real dragon? Is it dead? I'm sorry, that's a stupid question. It got its head cut off."

"It's actually a pretty good question, Judah," Loki said, cautiously approaching. "Dragons are even harder to kill than gods, and gods don't necessarily die when they're beheaded."

"Looks pretty dead to me, Brother," Thor said, wiping gore off his face with the back of his hammer arm.

"You know what they say about dragons, Brother," Loki said, stretching out one leg to gently rock the head with his foot, as if to check it for reaction. "Even when they're dead, they're still lively. A week, a year, a millennium, and they'll come back, no matter how dead they seem to be."

"Point well taken. Perhaps, Heimdall, you could drop this relic off on some distant, uninhabited planet?" Thor said.

Heimdall nodded. "Of course."

Thor slung his arm over Loki's shoulders, transferring a good deal of dragon blood to his impeccable clothes. Loki grimaced but said nothing. "Come, Brother – I have the Crown of Surtur and the threat of Ragnarok is behind us. A celebration is in order!"

"I'm not taking my son to a tavern," Loki said. "And you're a mess."

"Come on," Thor wheedled. "The boy has to come to a tavern sometime."

"I'm all taverned out," Loki said. "But don't let me stop you. I'm sure Sif and the Imbeciles Three will be glad to join you."

Thor looked at him in concern. "Are you all right? What's wrong, Brother? Why were you even here waiting for me?"

"Heimdall told us you were coming."

"You don't seem glad to see me."

"Am I ever glad to see you?"

"Then why bother to come all this way to greet me?"

Loki threw off Thor's arm. "We just got here ourselves, all right? We were on Midgard, visiting Coulson."

Thor sighed. "Brother, I told you to keep an eye on things."

"Heimdall was on watch, he would have warned me if anything happened. And we were only gone a short time."

"That's not the point. The point is your habitual unreliability."

"Stop it stop it stop it stop it!" Judah shouted, crouching down and putting his hands over his ears. "Everybody just stop picking on my Dad!"

Loki knelt down and put his arms around Judah. Thor looked down at them and asked, "Is there a story behind that?"

"Judah isn't adjusting well to Asgardian politics."

"So I see. Anything in particular about them that I should know?"

"No."

"Hmm."

Loki picked Judah up and carried him all the way along the Rainbow Mile to Odinhall. Thor walked with them. Despite his calling for a celebration at the Observatory, he seemed rather down about something. He tried at several points to say something, but kept changing his mind. At the palace they went their separate ways in the throne room – Loki and Judah to the common area, Thor to the relic vault to secure the Crown of Surtur. Despite the fact that his back was beginning to pain him again, Loki cheered Judah by playing with him for a few hours before tucking him in to bed for the night. Then, he changed into his sleepclothes and sat on the edge of his bed, grappling with pain like fire in his lower back and the terror he'd been fighting down all day. It didn't take very long until he just couldn't take it anymore.

He expected a late-night visitor. He expected Judah. What he got was Thor.

"Brother? Can we talk?" Thor said, peering around the door into the darkened room.

Loki stood up from the bed, now dressed in full armor. He lit the lamps. "What troubles you?" he said.

"What are you doing fully dressed so late at night?" Thor asked.

"Couldn't sleep. Thought about going for a walk. Pray, continue."

Thor had been fooled by Loki many times. He walked up to his brother and poked him in the shoulder.

"Ouch," Loki said, and rubbed the spot.

"You're… real," Thor said. "That's almost a surprise."

"What, did you think I was off performing some evil chicanery while pretending to be safely in my room?" Loki said.

"With you? I'm never certain," Thor said. "Anyway, I… er… wanted to talk to you about… Jane."

"Have a seat. What about Jane?"

Thor perched on the end of Loki's bed. "I was very, um… excited… by your gift of the epli, so before I went to deal with Surtur I took the Bifrost to visit Jane on Midgard. I told her about it and asked her to eat it."

"And?"

"And she refused."

"Why?"

"She said mortals aren't meant to live forever. She said she'd go insane if she had to try and find some way of filling a life as long as mine. I told her to consider everything she could discover over such a lifespan, everything she could accomplish, but she said she couldn't do it on Earth, and it had all already been discovered in Asgard, so what was the point? I told her she was wrong, there was still much left to discover, but she said she was so far behind in learning she could never catch up. And she didn't want to try."

"Well, that was rather shortsighted of her," Loki said. "What are you going to do?"

"What can I do?" Thor said. "There's nothing more to be said. We… we broke up."

"I'm sorry."

Thor looked miserably at his feet. "I suppose it was very foolish to fall in love with a mortal in the first place, but she was so unlike any goddess I have ever met. She stood upon no concept of ceremony, you know? And yet she was still so very kind."

"There are goddesses like that," Loki said, thinking that both Angrboda and Sigyn rather fit the bill, even if he found the both of them annoying for different reasons. "You've always just been surrounded by shameless gold diggers. And Lady Sif, who stands upon no concept of ceremony but isn't exactly all that kind."

"She would be kinder if you hadn't shaved her head and replaced her hair with 'strands of nothing,' Brother," Thor pointed out.

"She wasn't kind before, so I refute your hypothesis," Loki said. "She was chief of my tormentors when we were small."

Thor winced. "I'm… sorry. I forgot about that. She used to tease you for having black hair, didn't she?"

"Nice that one of us can forget."

Thor frowned down at his feet again. "Anyway, I was feeling down, and I think maybe you are, too, so I brought something to help cheer us up, for a moment at least."

"Not alcohol, Brother," Loki said, rolling his eyes. "It's actually a depressant. You'll only feel worse in the end."

"No, not alcohol," Thor said. He took something out of his belt pouch. It was a root. Asrelle root. He held it in both hands, preparing to break it.

"Don't do that!" Loki said. Thor snapped the root in two. A sneeze sounded from the bottom of the wardrobe nearby. "Shit," Loki said, and vanished.

The blissful expression that immediately woke on Thor's face as the smell of the broken root filled his senses vanished just as swiftly. He stood up and went to the wardrobe, from which several more sneezes sounded. He opened the door. Loki, dressed in his sleepclothes, huddled at the bottom, and he looked terrible – pale, shaky, and drenched in sweat. He sneezed again, but it was not allergies that made him look so miserable.

"Brother – what is wrong? What put you in such a state?"

"I'm fine," Loki said, in a small, trembling voice that was not at all convincing.

"You are not fine. Now I want to know, and I want no prevarication – what happened?"

Loki shook his head. Thor knelt down next to him and took him by the shoulders. "Brother. Tell me."

"Sentence," Loki gasped out.

"What sentence?" Thor said.

"Mine."

"What did Father do to you?" Thor said.

Loki shook his head. "I told him to do it."

"After he said he was going to one way or another, I'd wager. What did he do?"

"Public flogging."

Thor's jaw dropped. "He put you to the cane? After all you've been through? He actually did that?"

"Better than life in prison."

"You're huddled in a panic at the bottom of a closet and you think this is better?"

"This way, I still get to be with Judah. I'll be all right, Brother. It's just… my back hurts, and it makes me think of… of things better forgotten."

"Maybe you should be in the Infirmary."

"No, I'll be fine."

"Don't be stubborn, Brother."

"It's my strongest defining character trait, Brother, I cannot help it."

Thor sat flat on his ass and put an arm around Loki's shoulders. "Then I shall sit with you, Brother, until you 'pull yourself together.' We shall get through this. Together."