A/N: Thanks for checking out the fic! This was written as a sequel to my earlier story "Truths, Lies and Bilgesnipes", but I think it's not vital to have read that fic before reading this one.

"Through here, yes?" Thor's voice boomed out in the corridor.

It galled Lunda that it took six guards and Thor with his hammer at the ready to bring Loki in. They only had to transport him from his holding cell to the examination room and there were all of three hundred paces between the two. He was handcuffed and fettered too. Enchanted handcuffs and fetters at that; the heavy chains were in etched runes. She had to wonder if they truly believed Loki was dangerous enough to necessitate such precautions, or if this was a way to impress upon Loki his changed position on Asgard.

Lunda tugged at the shoulder seam of her healer's uniform. There was something off in the tailoring; the garment refused to sit correctly on her. "Please remove the trailing chains. The shackles on his hands and feet will suffice. This shouldn't take more than twenty minutes; please wait outside while I work. I'll let you know if I require longer than that."

Realistically, I almost certainly will.

"Certainly, ma'am," the highest-ranked of the guards said as they removed the unnecessary chains. This was a matter of daily routine for them.

Thor, on the other hand, cast an uncertain glance at his brother. "I think it'd be better if I stay here."

"I appreciate your concern, your highness. But I need a degree of privacy to conduct my work. Besides, there's only one way out of this room," Lunda replied.

He still didn't look comfortable with the situation, but the guards had begun to file out so he must have gathered this was standard practice down here in the dungeons. Scowling, he turned to his brother. "You so much as try something, I'll be here in a second and you'll feel the full brunt of my wrath."

"Truly, I am terrified," Loki replied dryly.

Lunda shut the door behind Thor. Both the door and the wall that adjoined the corridor were constructed of semi-opaque material. You could see the outlines of people within and hear raised voices, but the details of what occurred within remained obscured. This was the best compromise yet found between a prisoner's need for privacy and the necessity of maintaining safe working conditions for the healers.

Now that they were alone, Lunda focused on Loki proper. He had been stripped of his princely regalia, but wasn't in standard clothing issued to prisoners either. His hair — an oily, tangled mess — was longer than it had been when she had last seen him and heavy bags sat beneath his eyes. He still stood as straight as ever, however, and towered over her. Over the years she had seen him at his brother's side so often, it was always a shock to realise that although he didn't match Thor's height, he was nevertheless inches taller than the average Asgardian.

"I am Chief Healer Lunda," she began. "I am —"

"I know who you are."

"If so, I am glad for it," she replied, which was true enough. Rumours flew around Asgard claiming that Loki had utterly succumbed to madness and recognised nothing of his old life. She hadn't believed those tales, but it was good to have confirmation. "It is standard protocol for every prisoner to undergo a medical evaluation before their trial can proceed."

"Surely that's not a task for the chief healer to undertake."

That was certainly correct. But the palace had been in such storm of gossip and conspiracy theories since Thor had brought his brother back to Asgard, Lunda had been hesitant to assign any of her junior healers to the task. She had been curious to see Loki for herself also. There had been a time when he and Lunda had gotten along quite well.

Loki made a small step toward Lunda, sending his fetters clanking. "It'd be a waste of time even for a trainee. What's the use of worrying over a man who'll be dead within months?"

She tried not to react, but she thought her eyes betrayed her. "Do you not know your father at all? And were he to even suggest it, your mother would… She wouldn't let it happen."

"The king isn't my father nor the queen my mother. You'll find too that the queen will acquiesce to her husband's wishes, as she has done before. Really, this exercise is a waste of time for both of us." Loki replied. After a mirthless chuckle, he added, "This is even a waste of Thor's time and the guards'. Though I don't much weep on their behalf."

"Enough now, Loki. Get onto the bed."

He stiffened, but, no doubt realising that Lunda could call in Thor and have Thor manhandle him into the soul forge, obeyed her directions. In Lunda's estimation, this was a good sign. Many prisoners insisted on being uncooperative; it wasn't unusual for healers to have to resort to bringing in the guards. Gags were sometimes necessary too. More often than anyone who didn't work in the dungeons would have guessed.

Loki said nothing as he stretched out on the stiff mattress of the soul forge. Lunda pulled up the chain dangling off the side of the machine; prisoners couldn't be left unrestrained in case the healer had to turn away from the soul forge. She connected the chain to Loki's handcuffs and frowned at how thin and delicate that chain seemed in comparison to the restraints he already wore. Loki had no comment about the additional restraint either and merely turned his head to the side so he faced the back wall. Lunda suppressed a laugh; he had done exactly the same as a child when he had healers looking over him.

He's a child no longer, but a murderer many times over. Don't lose yourself to sentimentality.

"Did you know?" Loki asked sharply.

"Know about what?"

"What I am, beneath the illusions."

"No, I —"

He went on as if he hadn't heard her. "There had to have been someone in the palace who would've known besides… besides the king and queen. Healers, in particular, seem suspect. My physiology would have deviations, no? And children don't pop up out of nowhere; someone had to have noticed that my mother was pregnant with one child yet gave birth to two."

Loki didn't seem to notice the slip of his tongue, so Lunda let it go without comment, but it did warm her to know that, despite his protestations, Loki still thought of his mother in these terms. "I wasn't employed here in the palace when you were born and I didn't know later either. Honestly, I still don't know properly. We've miles of rumours, but no official explanation about what happened."

"I'm a frost giant, a traitor and a murderer. What else is there to know?" Loki turned his head then and met Lunda's eyes. She had no idea what he sought from her at that moment, but the intensity of his gaze unnerved her.

"I think the how and why of it would go a long way toward explaining how you ended up in these shackles. We all watched you grow up, Loki. You had your quirks as all children do, but you were never cruel or callous."

"A beast might look tamed, but it always remains a wild creature at heart."

Lunda sighed. "Is that what you are now? A beast?"

"No." Loki's voice turned cold. "That's what I've always been. The metaphor isn't so hard to grasp, surely?"

He sounded little different then from the rapists and murderers the healers usually encountered down here. A lump solidified at the back of her throat. She really didn't understand how Loki could have taken such a turn. She remembered him sitting long hours at Thor's bedside, trading jokes to keep his brother distracted while Thor recovered from his latest bout of tomfoolery. She remembered too Loki working diligently alongside her own trainees during his teen years; he'd had a fascination with the healing arts once and it had been thought for a time that he would apprentice formally as a healer. Only, Eir, who had been in her last years as chief healer then, had discouraged an apprenticeship for reasons Lunda had never quite grasped.

"Oh, Norns be damned," Lunda muttered. "Eir knew. She was always very involved when it came to you, wasn't she? I thought it was because you were the prince, but she didn't care half as much about your brother. And there was that oddness with your temperature reading and the lack of a blood replenisher. You remember your run-in with the bilgesnipe, don't you?"

"I've tried to forget, but no luck." Moving awkwardly due to the short chain-span between his handcuffs, Loki pushed himself up into a seated position. "She developed a special replenisher for me. There was an ingredient in the standard formula that I'd had some bad reaction to. Although, I can't say I remember ever having any adverse effects after a replenisher."

"That was later I think. But she didn't give it to you then and you would've recovered quicker if she had. She couldn't, of course. The standard variant, based on Asgardian blood, could have killed you. But I should have guessed then — the temperature readings the machines were spitting out that night were too low for an Asgardian."

"Normal for a frost giant though?"

"Exactly. I do remember now. I brought it up with her and she told me it had to be a technical fault. She bloody knew the truth. Someone had to know and who better than the chief healer? But she never bothered to tell me!" Lunda swore, which prompted a laugh from Loki. She shook her head. "It's nothing to be laughing about. My ignorance could've killed you. If I were to inject Asgardian blood into you, it'd be little different to pumping poison into your bloodstream."

"Maybe they didn't care for the consequences," Loki said. He tried to sound nonchalant, but couldn't keep the hurt out of his tone.

"The king, the queen, Eir and whoever else was in on it were idiots through and through."

Loki gave her an odd look but offered no reply.

Out on the edge of her vision, Thor's figure shifted on the other side of the semi-opaque wall. Lunda sighed and tried to bring her thoughts under control. She had work to do, after all. She could dot-point the number of ways the king and Eir had endangered Loki's life at some later date.

"We should get to the matter at hand," she said, gently resting her hand on Loki's shoulder. "Lie back down for me."

"Just leave it. We're already established that our illustrious Allfather doesn't prioritise my health."

"This isn't a negotiation. You won't be the first prisoner down here to refuse to cooperate with a healer; the guards know how to deal with that. And your brother will be happy to assist them."

"That oaf is no my brother of mine," Loki grumbled as he slunk back onto the mattress. While that wasn't a sentiment Lunda liked to hear, she was relieved he was willing to cooperate. It didn't help anyone in the long term if a prisoner had to be held down while the healer did their work or if matters got so out of control that a chemical intervention was required.

She flicked on the soul forge and waited for it to boot up. This machine took a while, it was practically an antique, barely more sophisticated than the med cradles Loki would remember from his childhood. Slowly, however, images began to form above Loki's prone body.

"Bloody wonderful," Loki mumbled before Lunda could react. He would have learned enough as an unofficial healer's trainee to be able to interpret the projection himself.

Lunda, for her part, had guessed the results would be troubling. Between rumours of a massive battle over Midgard, Loki's harried looks and his obvious reluctance to undergo an examination, her jaw would have dropped to the floor if he had been in perfect health. But the sum of it — healed fractures, damaged nerves, stretched tendons, frayed ligaments —left her aghast. She was amazed there were no outward signs of these injuries when Loki moved.

"Now you know what manner of brute your future king and his Midgardian friends really are," Loki grimaced. He started to get up, but Lunda pressed her hand against his solar plexus and jerked her head to Thor's foggy figure visible through the wall. Loki stilled.

She could feel the wild beat of his heart under her palm. "This isn't from your escapades on Midgard. The bulk of this is months old. Healed badly, but healed nonetheless."

As Lunda had heard it, Thor had explained that Loki had finally been brought down by some large beast native to Midgard —physically pummelled into submission. The queen's fears about what such treatment had done to her son had expedited this medical assessment.

Looking at the soul forge projections, Lunda could see remnants of that skirmish: bone fractures, contusions on the inner organs, a concussion. Loki's innate magic had done a lot of work toward healing these injuries already. Yet his magic had done such a poor job on these older wounds. More peculiar yet, someone had tried to put him right later on. Several bones had been rebroken and reset straight, several ligaments had been surgically repaired and a compound metal insert held together a vertebra in his lumbar spine. This work was too sophisticated for Midgardians to have been responsible and was too primitive for what any decent Asgardian healer could do.

"Loki, what is all this? How did it happen?" Lunda asked.

He fiddled with the chain between his handcuffs. Only now did Lunda notice that the index finger on his left hand sat crooked. It had been dislocated and not set back at the right angle. "The thing with falling is this: eventually, you have to land. Considering how long I had to fall, as I'm sure you can imagine, it was quite a crash landing. But the bulk of it is from Midgard."

"You're lying."

Loki let out a snort and for the first time seemed genuinely angry. "Why? Because that's just what I always do?"

"Sure, you've always spun a tale when it suited you. But this… if you're going to lie, do better. Don't insult me by suggesting that I can't tell the difference between a two-day-old injury and those from many months ago."

"I don't actually owe you an explanation."

She had to concede on this. Loki would be questioned, likely by several trained people, over the next weeks in preparation for his trial and the truth would come out then. Her purview was limited to assuring he was healthy enough to stand trial.

"All right then," she said. "I won't ask you questions about how you came by these injuries. But we need to come up with a treatment plan; I can't repair such breadth of damage in one session."

"The chief healer has better things to do, surely?"

Lunda purposefully misunderstood the question. "Would you prefer to be treated by a different healer?"

"I would prefer to return to my cell and enjoy a good book or two while my head is still attached to my neck," Loki snapped.

"If the opportunity arises and you are able to escape the confines of your cell, it'd be in your best interest to be as hale as possible."

Loki tilted his head. "I think encouraging my flight from Asgardian custody could be construed as treason."

As she was well-aware. And she certainly wasn't encouraging anything. His cold manner made it plain that he was now far from the boy or even the young man she remembered so fondly. It made it easier to remember too that he wasn't innocent of the crimes he was accused of. But the fundamentals of a person never changed. Odin wouldn't execute his youngest; no one who had seen how bitterly the royal family had grieved when they believed him most after the destruction of the Bifrost would believe the Allfather would put his son to death. No, as Lunda saw it, a long imprisonment in the bowels of the palace awaited Loki.

At the same time, Loki would always take the chance to slip away, whether the opportunity came tomorrow or in a thousand years. And if she could secure his cooperation today by dangling before him the possibility of liberty at some future date, she was happy to do so.

There was a knock on the door.

"I need more time!" Lunda called out, then lowered her voice so only Loki could hear her. "My responsibility is your health. What you choose to do when you leave this room is outside my control. But be honest with me for a second here. You've never been one for complaining, but all of this trauma must have you in chronic pain."

"It's fine," Loki sighed. "I'm fine. If you must, hand me a something for the concussion headache that damned overgrown gremlin gave me, then let me be. There's nothing here worth fixing."

"Loki —"

"Just leave me be, woman."

Lunda pressed her lips together and suppressed her urge to tell Loki exactly what she thought of his stubbornness. "This is in your best interest. Give me one good reason why —"

"For fuck's sake, leave me alone!" Loki shut his eyes and ground his teeth together. She had no idea what to make of it until the hue of his skin began to change. When his eyes flew open again, they shone a vivid scarlet. "What do you say, chief healer? Still worth your time?"

Bile rose in her throat; she had only ever seen frost giants once before. The ones who had snuck into the Weapons Vault the day Thor was supposed to have been crowned king. They had been dead for several hours by the time Lunda had been called in, so their skin had been pallid and eyes dull. Loki looked nothing like that.

"Well? Answer me!" Loki shouted.

Before Lunda could offer a reply, Thor burst in, his hand clenched around Mjolnir's handle. "What's going on in…"

He paled as his words died on his lips. Loki, on the other hand, froze for a split second, then wrenched his entire body to the side. The chain between his handcuffs and the soul forge snapped. He rolled off the mattress and scrambled to the back wall, his eyes never leaving Thor.

"Get out," Loki muttered. "Get out! Don't— I can't." He gulped down a breath. "I can't. Why isn't it…"

"Loki?" Lunda called out.

He gasped for breath again and sank to his knees. Lunda rushed over to him. He seemed unable to suck in enough breath and his words had become incoherent. She pressed her hand against the side of his neck; his pulse was racing.

"What is he doing?" Thor demanded.

Lunda pulled a small syringe out of the inner pocket of her coat. It was intended to protect healers from unruly prisoners, but right now, Loki was more likely to be a danger to himself. She sank the needle into the skin of his forearm, thankful that the needle was robust enough to pierce Jotunn skin. Within moments his breathing slowed, then his muttering ceased and he sagged onto the floor.

"Your highness, could you please help me move him back into the soul forge?" Lunda said. She sucked in a deep breath herself, then motioned for the guards, who had poured into the room after Thor, to withdraw back to the corridor.

Thor set down his hammer and, in a single, smooth motion, lifted his brother off the floor and deposited him back onto the mattress. "What did I just witness? Why does he look like this?"

"A panic attack, I believe," Lunda replied. "He was arguing with me and stripped off the illusions in an effort to frighten me. But these illusions are not of his making and these handcuffs are binding his magic almost completely. I think when he tried to restore the illusions, he couldn't. I sedated him lest he hurt himself; he should come around in a couple of hours."

"So this is… Father explained it to me," Thor said. He reached out to touch the raised ridges on Loki's forehead, but then pulled back. "But I've never seen him like this before."

"It's still Loki."

"I know. He still sounded the same."

Now that Thor had pointed it out, Lunda realised he was entirely correct. Loki's face was almost unrecognisable, but his voice hadn't changed at all. She glanced down at his hands. And the damaged index finger on his left hand remained crooked.

Bor's bloody balls. Does the Allfather understand what a mess he's made?

"I'm not surprised he tried to argue with you," Thor went on. "He refuses to listen to reason. I tried to talk sense to him on Midgard. It's no use. Are you done with you had to do? Should we carry him back to his cell?"

"Not yet, your highness," Lunda replied. "He's in worse shape than your mother or I anticipated. I can repair some of the damage during these couple of hours before he wakes. But could you ask your mother or father to come down? I would guess they created the illusions to cover his heritage; they would be best placed to restore them."

"Maybe we should leave it as is?"

Lunda shook her head. "Realising he was trapped in his Jotunn form just set off a panic attack. He'll be calmer if we allow him the comfort of the face he grew up with."

Loki groaned and attempted to sink his head deeper into the pillow. A few moments later, he rolled over to the side. Lunda had decided to leave him undisturbed until he woke up on his own. What was supposed to have been half an hour of work for her had taken up the majority of her day already. Another ten or fifteen minutes didn't bother her. But the break she attempted to offer Loki fell through. When he tried to bring his hands closer to his chest, his blanket caught on his handcuffs and that was enough to fully pull him out of his slumber.

"How are you feeling?" Lunda asked.

Although his eyes were still bleary, Loki untangled the thin blanket from around his cuffs, then glanced around the sparsely furnished and dimly lit holding cell he had been assigned to. "Is this a permanent adornment now?" he demanded, lifting his hands a little to show off his heavy handcuffs. On Asgard, prisoners weren't typically restrained while within their cells. "Or is this for your benefit?"

"The latter."

Loki's face twisted into an ugly expression, but then he seemed to think better of voicing whatever was on his mind and instead asked, "Who restored the illusions?"

"The Allfather did."

Loki offered only a loud grunt in response, the meaning of which was a mystery to Lunda. In truth, she too would have preferred the queen's assistance. Thor, however, had been adamant she didn't learn of what had happened and had sought his father's aid instead. In the end, it took the king five hours to find the spare twenty minutes to come down to the dungeons and restore his own spellwork. On one hand, Lunda had been profoundly irritated by the delay. On the other hand, since she had already decided to keep Loki sedated until he looked like himself again, the delay became an opportunity to get more work done than she had initially planned to.

Looking at him now, he didn't seem to be any worse for wear after the sedative, which had been her most pressing concern. But she still needed to address other matters.

Let's see how far we'll get before we end up in another argument.

"Do you understand what happened this morning?" Lunda asked.

"These cuffs dampened my magic more severely than I assumed," Loki replied in a disinterested tone.

"Yes, but that's not what I was referring to. Have you experienced panic attacks before?"

He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand. "How long was I out?"

"Please answer my question."

"No."

"No, you never have? Or no, you refuse to give an answer?"

"Interpret my response as you like." Loki slipped off his narrow bed and climbed onto his feet. "Really, I don't see why I should answer your questions. It's not as if you're listening to me. I told you to leave me alone, but you sedated me and treated me against my wishes."

"You need to remember your legal position now. As a prisoner, your right to refuse medical treatment is forfeit."

"You should leave now, Lunda," Loki replied through gritted his teeth. "Handcuffs or no, I'm still physically stronger than you are and by the time the guards react, I'll have already made a mush of your skull."

Lunda exhaled slowly in an effort to remain calm. This was uncalled for; she was only trying to help him. Everyone – the guards, Thor, the king – had been hesitant about Lunda's intent to wait inside Loki's cell until he woke up and she could confirm he wasn't suffering any ill side-effects of the sedative she had given him. But Lunda had hoped she could get him to calm down and they could have a more honest conversation. Well, the prospect of that happening seemed dim now.

As far as she could figure it, she had only one thing up her sleeve that could mollify Loki's ill-temper. She brought her hand up in front of her, palms out and facing Loki. "I can't change the law and I can't renege my duty by ignoring your poor physical condition. But I didn't mention to anyone the age of your injuries. That much I can do for you."

That decision had actually been more for her own benefit than Loki's. Things proceeded easier if there was a basic level of trust between a healer and a patient. Meanwhile, the details of what had befallen Loki would come out by the end of his trial. Her omission would change nothing in the long run.

"Are you going bloody deaf?" Loki replied. Lunda had hoped to calm him with her words, but he only grew more agitated. "I was injured on Midgard."

Lunda shook her head. "Fine, Loki. I'll return in two days to reassess your progress. If you feel you must lie, come up with a better cover story by then."

"You're not touching me again."

"I must; there are some things I'm still far from satisfied with." She attempted a sympathetic smile. "I hope you're in better spirits when we next meet."

"Don't count on it," Loki shot back. "Guards! The healer is leaving now!"

Pig-headed lout. Between him, his brother and his father, I don't know how the queen ever went a week without tearing out her hair.