"The moons have waxed to full," Frigga observed with some surprise as she glanced out Loki's window. "They were barely past new when my sons first came home. Strange, the time seems both longer and shorter than that." She turned to the bed, smoothing Loki's black hair. "Is there any change?"

"None, my queen."

"There will be."

"I hope you are right"

...

"Hear me and rejoice," a voice behind him whispered. The Other was mildly startled; he had not remembered anyone was in the room besides himself and... the one he loved. He gazed up at the familiar, stern features, the strong and resolute shoulders, the weathered but ageless skin.

"You have had the privilege of being saved by the great Thanos," the voice continued. The Other was grateful; he had forgotten the name of Thanos for a moment. The one he loved was named Thanos. Thanos. Thanos. Thanos. Thanos had other names too, but he did not remember what they were... and it was not important.

"You may think this is suffering. No. It is salvation." There was an unidentifiable sensation in his head that he thought was probably unpleasant, but it was hard to focus on, and he certainly was not suffering. It was impossible to suffer in the presence of... the one he loved. He had forgotten the name again.

"The universal scale tips towards balance because of your sacrifice. Smile. For even in death, you have become a child of Thanos." The Other smiled. Being a Child of Thanos was something he had always wanted, he felt sure, although he could not recall who Thanos was. He gazed adoringly at the face of the one he loved, who was sitting utterly still and watching him. The Other opened his mouth to speak, to tell the one he loved how much he was loved and admired and worshiped... but no words came. He could not remember how to form the words. Or what the words might have been for the bond he felt with The One.

The One was the world the Other defined itself by. The One was a monumental physical presence, and indestructible, the Other was quite certain. The One was immortal. The One had a vision and the will and mind to execute it. The Other... had a body. In that way, it was the same as the One. But the Other perceived itself as old and frail and finite in comparison to The One. The only worthy quality the Other knew it possessed was love and reverence for the One.

The mind of the Other was so wasted and spent, it lacked the recursive ability to reflect on its own qualities with any more sophistication.

Without The One, the Other could not imagine its own existence. The Other was contingent on the One.

The One stepped forward and touched the Other's face. "I release you from my service," he said softly. Then another figure stepped from behind him, common green beside his royal purple. The Other did not know her, but she smiled brightly as she set a cold, thin, sharp piece of metal to his neck.

There was pain then. The Other recognized it for what it was, thought he did not understand what it meant or why it was happening. Then there was nothing.

...

"It has been weeks, Madame healer," the Allfather rumbled, gazing at the pale form of his younger son, still unmoving in his bed in the healing chambers except for the steady rise and fall of his chest. He looked frailer than he had. "Is there any change?"

"Nothing good, my king."

"Is there anything else we might do?"

"Your majesty, I have tried every medicine and every spell I could think of. None of the standard therapies have helped."

"And the non-standard?"

"Have also proved ineffective, and dangerous. If you'll recall, I believe the problem to be chemical and electrical, not traumatic or architectural, but the ancient medicinal therapies have done nothing. The sedatives historically used as a chemical reset in similar cases induced a true, profound coma that would have killed him without artificial respiratory support, and he is no better for it. I tried going the opposite route, using potions to boost the levels of stimulating chemicals in his brain. That was even worse. I had to use such high doses to get any measurable change in the levels in the nervous system, I effectively poisoned his body. There was significant muscle damage which indirectly threatens his vital organs. The fevers only subsided yesterday. I cannot try that again." She sighed in frustration. "The only things left are true quackery or carry inherent and innately uncontrollable risk."

"My lady," Odin said gently but with a hint of irony in his tone. "What risk are you still anticipating? How are you imagining his condition could worsen?"

Eir raised one eyebrow. "You make a good point, Allfather," she admitted.

"I am called the God of Wisdom for a reason, Madame healer."

"Very well. But I would rather wait awhile longer still. In more conventional injuries, I would wait at least a month before declaring lack of spontaneous improvement a true sign of poor prognosis. Two more weeks."

"I bow to your expertise... what will you try next, though?"

Eir smiled mirthlessly. "It is well you ask. The options are limited, and the most promising venture into the realms of dark magic on one extreme to some barbaric Midgardian treatments on the other. Of the options to hand... I would rather go with the Midgardian approach and, as they would have it, 'jumpstart' the brain. With a seizure."

Odin's one eye widened. "I see what you mean by 'uncontrollable risk.'"

"I would not deceive you, my king. On the plus side, I think the approach might help Thor, even if it does not help Loki."

"Why?"

"Because I would rather use electricity to do it than more poisons, and Thor happens to be the most convenient way I can think of to generate the voltage I will need. I don't predict the standard Midgardian equipment would work, after all. Not on your son. Regardless, it may help Thor to feel he is doing something besides watching his brother die."

Author's note: mostly plot, but there's a little bit of science: In demented states (what is happening to the Other through Ebony's ransacking of his mind), the various parts of the memory and cognition are not lost all at once. Classic Alzheimers dementia starts with recent memory loss, whereas some dementias start with language loss, and some start with movement disorders. They all end up in roughly the same place of every system dysfunctioning, but certain parts of the mind can be remarkably preserved until the end. In the Other's case, his buried emotional and religious connection to Thanos remains intact, even when he's lost all of the contextual memories. My grandmother with dementia was like that: she apparently was talking to my other grandmother about me and could not remember my name but called me "the one who we both love."

Also, a play on the idea that contrast with "the other" is a major way that people define their own identities, identity philosophically being the same as one-ness.

As for what the heck Eir has been doing all this time, benzodiazepine medications are sedating, but they are counterintuitively the usual treatment for catatonia, apparently. Presumably because real catatonia involves an overactivation of some area of the brain (the parts that don't work well in psychosis), not just depressed activity as happens in a more typical coma. Don't quote me on that. Additionally, several, actually most, of the neurotransmitters involved in consciousness act as poisons in high doses, both in the brain and in the body. That's why an overdose of various psychiatric medications (and drugs of abuse) can be so dangerous.