Paws pounded into the dry bracken as trees blurred before him. His great lungs filled with powerful breaths, swelling his rib cage and drawing in the scents of the forest. Here the trail of a rabbit, fear leeching into its bounding strides. There the streaking presence of the fox that followed it, a brush of sinuous hunger. Loki let his tongue loll from his mouth as he surged ever higher, reveling in this freedom. He had nearly forgotten what it was like to move unhindered through wood, or stream, or sky.

With a great leap, he burst from the underbrush, tufts of his black coat caught in the brambles. The folds of the mountains stretched ever bluer into the horizon, drifts of cloud settling into the valleys between. Breathing hard, he threw back his head and howled a note of joy, letting the reedy notes echo among the hills. There were no longer native wolves to answer his call.

The sun dipped ever lower, tingeing the drifting fog with its dying colors. Shaking himself, a wild glint passed through Loki's green eyes. He backed away from the edge of the ledge, and with a yelp of delight, surged forward, powerful claws digging into the stone. At the very edge, he gathered himself into a great leap and hurtled out into nothingness. His form shrank, the wolf disappearing into the ruddy feathers of a hawk as he plummeted toward the javelin-tipped pines below. With a snap of his wings and a scream of exhilaration, he shot upwards into the sky. The setting sun flashed along his cutting wings as he danced and dove, pirouetting in sheer bliss.

As the stars pierced the twilight he reluctantly headed for the gleaming lights of Stark's mountain retreat. A friendly current carried him smoothly over the treetops, his feathers just brushing the tallest branches. He checked his progress, looping lower until he spiraled above the mountain pool at the base of the yard. Tucking in his wings, Loki dove. Before he hit the water, his feathers vanished, growing sleek and soft along his lengthening body.

Breaking through the surface, he slid as easily through the water as he did the air, his ruddered tail and webbed feet sending him curling through the biting depths. A need for air finally brought him to the surface. His whiskered face broke free and he nearly dove again after a mountain trout that was taunting him. The otter could already taste the cold flesh, feel the last wriggling as the fish fought in his jaws. But Loki resisted. The rapid changes had taxed him more than they ought to have, and he cursed the limitations of his mortal frame. His patron still held his greatest powers back. More patience was required. Patience and possibly pizza if the growling in his stomach was anything to go by.

As Loki scampered out of the water and up onto a rock, Thor was waiting for him. With a twitch of his whiskers, Loki shifted around so that his back was to the Thunderer while he began to shake water from his fur.

Thor sighed. "You may ignore me all you wish, but we must talk."

Giving a brief, chittering retort, Loki turned back to his grooming.

The sigh came again, "You know full well I do not speak otter."

Loki had the brief impression of a large something coming toward him; before he could react, he found himself dangling by the scruff of the neck. He was almost level with Thor, staring straight into solemn blue eyes. "I would speak with you, brother."

If Thor hadn't had such a grip on him, Loki would have sunk his teeth into his wrist and left it at that. He had to satisfy himself with growling low and pulling his lips back over his teeth. The instant Thor set him down, Loki arched back onto his hind legs, stretching tall as the fur receded to reveal pale flesh and his paws lengthened into hands, the webbing melting away. At the same instant he conjured jeans that clung to his still damp flesh.

"Don't call me that," he snarled. Standing there, half naked, Loki felt small and slight compared to Thor. Nothing but bone draped in whipcord muscle and tied together with sickly pale flesh. He was exposed—his inadequacies bared for all to see.

"I call you what you are—my brother," said Thor steadily. He reached out a hand, but Loki only batted it away as he paced the grass. "This is an old argument. You are my brother, deny it though you will. Our blood may not be the same, but in every other way we are family."

Loki froze, his fists clenched at his side, tension jammed up his spine. He turned slowly, eyes bright beneath hooded brows. "Do you not understand that I was but a means to shore up your greatness? I was never your brother. I was a useless broken tool, not even able to fulfill the purpose for which it was taken." He was shaking now, his lips spreading wider in a feral grimace as he advanced. "Did you not think it strange that the Allfather favored you over me at every turn? Graced you with his love and affection. Showered you with praise!" Loki was yelling now. "Because no matter how I tried I could never earn his love. A false son had no hope against the Mighty Thor. What place on Asgard was there for a monster!"

The blue burst across Loki's skin as the water in his damp hair crackled into ice. Red eyes met blue. A feral grin cracked across his face to bare sharpened teeth. "Tell me now that we're brothers."

Thor's eyes trailed across Loki's form, jaw clenched. He blinked and then closed the gap between them.

Loki flinched, taking a step back. "Don't touch me."

Before he could get any farther, Thor lunged forward, catching him in a crushing hug that buried Loki's head against his shoulder. Flesh sizzled wherever Loki's bare, frost-rimed skin met Thor's.

"Stop," Loki hissed as he struggled in his brother's grasp.

Thor refused to let go. "Know this, Loki. You are my brother—no matter what color you happen to be."

The blue drained from his skin, but still Thor did not let go, even as Loki stopped struggling. "And though you will not yet admit it, because you are my brother, I am yours as well."

Loki pushed away as Thor finally released him, running a hand through his hair, ice crackling. He took in the frost burns all up and down Thor's arms and across his neck where he had clasped Loki to him. He was lucky—if he hadn't startled Loki's control over the form, the damage would have been much worse. "Fool," he breathed.

A frostburned hand clamped briefly around Loki's shoulder. "As you say, brother."

The mottled, peeling flesh felt hot and oddly smooth against his bare shoulder. Even an Aesir would be days healing from such things. Loki sighed as Thor gave him a nod and a smile, turning back toward the house. "Give me your hands."

Thor turned and looked at him questioningly.

"I can't have you traipsing about looking like I attacked you," he said as he conjured a shirt from between realms, still feeling rather exposed even with it on. "I would rather not give my hawk the excuse he so badly desires to fill me with holes."

Thor stepped back and extended his hands. Loki placed his own long, pale ones above and below Thor's. He didn't allow their hands to touch as he dug down to the meager pools of magic and coaxed power upwards. He could feel the echoes of older spells in Thor's flesh, healing from a hundred childhood misadventures and hundreds more from battles through the centuries. Trace whispers of his own workings called out to him, each one a witness to the fact that these circumstances were not so unusual. He ignored how familiar it was to be patching Thor up after he'd done something stupid—again.

As the skin knit together, Loki turned his attention to the other burns. He hadn't the reserves to do anything but set them on their way to a new pink layer of skin, delicate and easily torn. Pulling his hands away, he rubbed his thumbs along his palms. "There. Now maybe your Avengers," the word came derisively, "won't find cause to exercise their righteous fury." He sank leisurely down onto a large rock.

Flexing his hands, Thor smiled appreciatively. "My thanks." He looked up, expression suddenly wary, as if he were trying to edge his way around to something unpleasant and wasn't quite sure how to go about it. "Have you ever," Thor hesitated, searching for the right words—which were apparently located somewhere other than Loki's face since he refused to look at him. "Have you ever seen yourself?"

That statement was particularly confused, even for Thor. Loki blinked rapidly, scoffing silently at his –at Thor. He leaned forward ingratiatingly. "One can't really help but look when one is so handsome as myself." This didn't elicit the annoyed huff Loki had expected, rather Thor continued in his seriousness.

"In your Jotun form?"

Loki stiffened as if he had been struck. "Tread with care," he said slowly, the words soft.

Instead of leaving it alone, Thor moved closer, his presence filling all of Loki's vision. "You hate what you do not even know. I can guess at what grotesqueness you must be conjuring." Here Thor pressed his fingers to his brother's chest. "Whatever you imagine, I promise it is a lie."

Turning away, Loki rose to his feet, pacing toward the edge of the woods. He thrummed with agitation and dearly wished for a tail to twitch. "Oh, yes, I imagine that I am a fine specimen of Jotun beauty."

Thor shrugged. "You are actually quite…comely. Much like yourself, but…bluer."

He spared a withering glance over his shoulder, "Your attempts at salvaging this conversation are failing spectacularly—do go on." He idly brushed the trunk of a gnarled oak, rubbing his thumb along the thick-ribbed bark. "Before long and I'll be fighting the urge to find a cliff to fling myself from. I do so love falling."

The barometric pressure dropped away as storm clouds suddenly boiled up. He turned to find Thor clenching his fists and bearing the strangest mixture of emotions. The anger only scudded across the top, beneath it bloomed hurt and fear. If it had been anyone but Thor, Loki would have said it was terror lurking in the blueness of those sparking eyes.

"Do not joke of that," he said, voice thick as if he were fighting back powerful emotions.

Loki smiled, trying to blot out that pained expression. "Does the Mighty Thor balk at gallows humor now?"

Thor was shaking his head heavily. "Just not that." Silence descended as the storm clouds swirled overhead, the trees bending beneath the growing wind. It continued for so long that Loki wasn't sure if Thor was going to speak again, though it seemed like he might. "My dreams are troubled with falling. Your fall." He settled onto a log and crossed his arms. "It changes, the details, but each time ends the same—with you dangling over the void and your hand in mine…and then you are gone."

In that instant, Thor looked almost…vulnerable. Certainly not. But Loki peered back at his guileless not-brother and read the truth of his pain in the darks of his eyes. How had Loki not noticed the tarnish to that naïve optimism before? A shadow etched along his brother's soul that spoke of experience with pain. Loki could not bring himself to admit that his dreams were also full of falling and the void and…worse. Perhaps Thor could appear to be vulnerable, because that was all that it would be—an appearance. Loki had no such luxury.

Crushing the small part of him that wished to share exactly what he was thinking, Loki instead rolled his eyes and picked at his cuff. "Your concern is a bit outdated, don't you think?" He gestured at himself. "I've clearly not met my end, so you might as well stop fretting over it. Honestly, Thor, you're like a hen wife with your worrying."

The somber cloud never left Thor as he looked up earnestly. For a long moment he held Loki's gaze. "I think that you may still be falling."

Loki flinched, nearly hiding it, but failing. The raw panic he carried just beneath the surface pressed in a hard knot against the inside of his sternum. He forced his lungs to fill, but they faltered against the almost tangible clench of fear.

The mask he showed to Thor obviously looked far too much like the face of someone desperately trying not to show what was happening beneath the surface. If it was possible, Thor's look of concern deepened. A meaty hand reached out, but Loki turned away from it.

"Don't be so dramatic, Thor," said Loki, fearing that the words weren't as steady as they ought to be. There was too much of the terror of falling oozing into them. The muscles in his neck tightened as he clenched his jaw against the sensation of sliding between Yggdrasil's branches, clawing at tendrils that rasped through his hands and then being pitched into a nothingness that swallowed everything he gave it and offered up only the perpetual promise of impact.

He fixed a smile on his face as he whirled, "we both know I'm the dramatist in the family." He allowed the edge to creep into his voice, features ever so slightly too manic. "So, let's put on a show." With an upward jerk of his fingers, magic wove through the threads of his clothing. Didn't need them burning away with what came next. The image of a cold, baleful gem hidden beneath his ribs popped into his mind. He reached for it, shocked by the cold of it and yet not really feeling it.

He gritted his teeth and gave himself over to the form he'd been born with. Anything to distract Thor—and himself—from talk of falling. He could feel the Jotun creeping through him like tendrils of frost spreading across a window pane. A vague uneasiness settled in his stomach. Whether it was the change itself that made him queasy, or the revulsion he felt at putting on such a grotesque form. No, not putting it on. He slid into other shapes, putting them on like a coat. This one came from somewhere else, bubbling out of his core. This was his skin—but not his skin.

Raising his left hand in a quick gesture of command, magic leapt to his call. He sneered. Of course ice magic came particularly easily in this form. Without looking, he piled the water in the air into a frozen pillar, its roots buried in the layer of last year's leaves. Still not looking, his fingers twitched and the layer facing him melted and refroze in a flat, reflective sheet. A mirror.

He didn't turn to face it.

"You can't run from this," said Thor quietly.

Watch me. Loki gritted his teeth, wondering yet again why he was capitulating to such a distasteful thing. Idiotic! Since when did he listen to Thor? He raised his other hand to melt the mirror, but a sudden morbid curiosity grabbed him. Part of him wanted to see the monster beneath the lie. A rather sizeable portion wanted nothing more than to be able to forget that his skin had ever been anything but pale Aesir. And then there was the small jeering voice that called him a coward for being too scared to look at himself.

A slight turn was all it would take.

Loki faced the mirror.

At first he didn't really see himself, eyes instead focusing over his shoulder at Thor. The idiot was smiling in what was probably meant to be an encouraging manner. Loki drug his gaze away.

Red coals stared back at him. Jotun eyes had always been the worst part of the stories, the part that parents emphasized to their children at night, and what every child thought they caught glimpses of in the shadows. The fangs were his next least favorite thing about the Jotun. Loki ran his tongue over his now finely pointed teeth.

He couldn't dwell on his eyes, but other than that, Thor had been largely correct. He looked like himself. The midnight skin was marked with patterns and ridges. Loki couldn't tell if they were ritualized scars or naturally occurring. Idly he wondered if they served to differentiate between Jotun, much like fingerprints.

Very deliberately he turned from side to side, taking himself in from each angle. He wondered if he ought to feel recognition now that he saw himself for what he really was. He swallowed hard. For nearly the first time in his life he was being completely honest. No more Aesir-skinned lies.

The ice-mirror cracked in a jagged line from edge to edge. He grimaced. This was what truth looked like.

He gave a wolf-edged smile. "Well, what do you think?" Loki spun around slowly to Thor, as if showing off a new tunic.

A sudden flicker of surprise showed on Thor's face. He reached out as if to touch Loki, but stopped just above the freezing skin, his fingers hovering over Loki's forehead. "You have horns."

Loki's hand shot to his hairline. Sure enough his hands traced over the raised mound of budding horns. A sudden jolt coiled through him. His helmet. Thor had always teased him about it, but he had loved how intimidating and powerful it made him look. How natural they felt.

The unease knotted itself in his stomach and started clawing up his throat. He dropped to his knees, hands dug into the ground as he retched. He tried to ignore the soothing hand that was awkwardly patting his back.

As he rocked back on his heels, Loki drug a now pale hand across his mouth.

"You must take after your," Thor hesitated, "blood-mother."

Loki didn't miss Thor tripping over the term. Even to Loki there was a snapping sense of betrayal in trying to call anyone but Frigga his mother—no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that he had no family.

"What?!" spat Loki.

Thor pointed at his forehead. "The horns. A small number of Frost Giants never develop them. Laufey was one of these."

"How would you know anything about Frost Giants, other than how to mount their heads on the wall?" asked Loki.

"The archives. After you fell I," Thor swallowed, "I wanted to know more about what you were."

Loki blinked slowly, face curled in confusion. "Archives?"

Thor smiled. "Yes. The place with all the books? You spent most of your childhood hidden away in there, those archives?"

"You actually entered my library. And read. A book?" Loki asked, emphasizing each phrase.

"Aye, I read a book." Thor's eyes sparked with amusement.

Loki leaned back against a crooked oak, crossing his arms. "It is good to see at least some good came from my death."

Thor chose to ignore the comment. "The wisps took some convincing. They were displeased that I could not produce you." He frowned. "I think. I finally had to bribe them with one of your books."

"Which one?!"

Thor ignored him. "What they led me to were only partial answers."

Loki slid in front of Thor, leaning into the Thunderer's space. "Which one," he ground out. "So help me, if you answer poorly, no vow, no matter how magically bound, will save you."

"Peace," said Thor, placing his hands on Loki's shoulders. "It was only an alchemic text, uninscribed, with no notes."

"Red or blue cover?"

Thor's eyes shifted to the side as he tried to remember. "Black."

He frowned. "Shelf above my desk, second book from the bottom of a stack of five, boarheaded torque on top?"

"Yes?" said Thor, sheepishly.

Massaging his temple, Loki groaned. "That was volume one of Theophrastus' Transmutations!"

"The archives had a copy."

Loki gaped and blinked rapidly, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter! It was Transmutations, the work on alchemic reactions. And you gave it to the wisps." He pinched the bridge of his nose and sank onto a fallen log. "They'll have nested in it."

"I am sorry, brother."

He gave a dismissive snort as he waved away Thor's apology. "What other of my belongings have you done away with? Did you give my journals to a traveling troll, or perhaps sell my wardrobe to a band of roving bilgesnipe hunters?"

"We did think you dead at the time," murmured Thor.

"That hardly matters! It was Theophrastus!"

Thor smiled indulgently, as he always did when Loki became overly excited about books or study. "May I continue?" He took Loki's flippant gesture as a yes. "There were great volumes of the battles of old and the conquests of Father and Bor involving the Frost Giants. The invasion of Midgard, the War of Black Ice and many others. Then there were the tales of horror that so frightened us as children. The books talked only of how bloodthirsty the Jotnar were and how best to kill them and what tactics they used in battle."

Loki scowled and folded further in on himself.

"But there was nothing to tell about their culture, their joys, and their families. When I asked if there was nothing else, the wisps danced in conference. No, there was nothing else in their hunting grounds. Discouraged, I was about to leave when three wisps waylaid me. Triplets, they chimed like silver shards. They beckoned me to the healing ward. It was there that I met Merat." Thor dove into his tale.

The three lights bobbed down the corridor before him, their blue glow sheening off the polished floor. Occasionally one would dart back and flit before his eyes, as if checking to make sure he was following.

Thor nodded to the guards stationed at the entrance to the healers' wings—silent presences between the arches. He received a polite bow in return. Their training was too good to let them question why their prince was trailing after a cluster of wisps. It was not so good as to keep the younger one's eyes from straying after Thor before snapping back to attention.

"Where are you leading me?" he asked as he recognized the path to the healing ward. Over the years he had become quite familiar with these rooms. It was here he'd been brought for so many different reasons over the centuries. When he'd been little Eir, the head healer, had intimidated him. The woman was built like an ox, betraying her dvergr heritage and Thor shuddered to think what she would look like with a battle axe in her hands. Eir didn't coddle, but she was far from unkind. He remembered fascination with all the white twists of scar that marked her hands, and how careful those rough fingers could be.

He also remembered one week where it seemed like he and Loki had been in and out of the ward constantly. When they both showed up with an impressive collection of new cuts and bruises, Eir had threatened to lock them both in a storage closest if they couldn't go two days without undoing all her good work. Loki had merely grinned and told her that if she were more free with her company they wouldn't have to invent ways to come see her. She didn't smile at that, but Thor could tell she'd wanted to.

Loki. He closed his eyes against the image of his brother that flashed before him. The wrongness of the figure who had stood before him in the observatory. It had worn his brother's face, had used his voice, but that had not been the brother he had known. He couldn't quite match up the grinning boy with the wild, frantic desperation he'd seen on the Bifrost. Now that he could revisit the memory—and he had, constantly replaying the events—he saw that Loki had done everything in his power to make him attack. Thor shook his head. Little wonder that Loki had so quickly found exactly the thing to make him lose his temper.

He barely registered that the wisps had turned down the curving walkway that circled around one side of the healing ward. Sunlight fractured through large light-gems set into the arched ceiling, sending white and colored flecks of light across the floor. At one time the right hand side of the corridor had looked out over the city, but expansion of the old palace in his grandfather's time had obscured much of the view. Now murals nestled in the blank window arches. Highly stylized, the images told the story of how the first healer fought to the heart of Yggdrasil and begged of the Norns the knowledge to mend rather than destroy.

"Wisps!" exclaimed a voice from somewhere below Thor.

He glanced down, so lost in his thoughts he hadn't realized he was no longer alone. Crouched at his feet and cooing at the wisps was perhaps the smallest Asgardian he had ever seen. Smaller perhaps even than Jane. Her lack of height was nothing compared to the rest of her body, however. An almost carapace-like shell had melded with the left side of her face, tearing away into flesh along the other side and disappearing back into the hairline. Three glistening eyes clustered like red jewels amid the gray chitin, balanced on the other side by a single watery blue. Frizzy, blonde hair fell in a thick, knot-like braid nearly to the floor, stray strands curling out in every direction.

"Oh, aren't you just the most beautiful plasmio-genetics I've ever seen, you are indeed," she cooed, extending a hand that was mostly melded into a claw, gray carapace flaking off the fused fingers. One of the wisps chimed gleefully and settled into her palm.

"Are you well?" asked Thor uncertainly.

"How could anyone be unwell with such beauties," she said, glancing up at him for the first time. She squinted. "You're one of Odin's aren't you. Not the homicidal one—the other one. Hammer prince."

Thor shifted uneasily. No one spoke so casually of the royal family. "I am Thor." He waited for the strange woman to give her name. She merely continued to stare at him. He swallowed. "And you are?"

She paused for a moment. "Everyone is always shouting 'Merat' at me." She brought the perched wisp to her nose and sniffed experimentally. "Slight scent of absinthe—not yet two years of age, wing span measuring three centimeters—vein like pattern to the wings—definitely a female," she murmured. She suddenly thrust the wisp into Thor's face—or as close as she could manage. "Would you say this is opalescent or more of a pearlescent?" Before Thor could hazard a guess, she huffed and drew the hand away, "why do I bother? The male of the species...never of any use in such matters."

The wisps chirped and circled around her in joyous little dance. Darting back to Thor, they tugged at his cape and then skipped back to Merat.

This was who they wanted him to see? A rude, disturbed shapeshifter who had obviously overreached herself. One of the wisps pulsed in an almost angry huff and darted forward to give his hair a quick yank.

"Oh, they don't seem to like you. Good judges of character the wisps," said Merat. Light and shadow dappled across her strange form as she brazenly stared up at Thor, not the least bit deferential.

"Are you certain you ought to be wandering the halls?" he asked as he craned to look around, as if expecting to see Eir appear and tuck the little creature under one arm and haul her back to the healing rooms.

"I ought do what I will do, and no overgrown dwarf-witch is going to say otherwise." Merat swelled with indignation and snapped her claws shut with finality. "Until Frigga arrives to untangle the mess I made of myself this time, I would do well to avoid that gaol of a house of healing. One lecture on the safety of shapeshifting will be more than enough."

Confusion passed over Thor's face. "You await the Queen?"

Merat gave him a look he well remembered his more brazen tutors wearing behind his back. One of equal parts astonishment and disgusted disappointment. "Did you not know your lady mother to be quite skilled in treating ailments such as mine?"

Thor shook his head. He had not known. With Loki as a brother it was sometimes easy to forget that Frigga too could change her form—though through magic, not natural skill. Thor frowned. All those years of Loki sliding from one form to the next and neither had realized that he never truly wore his own skin.

"What do you know of Frost Giants?" Thor asked. The abruptness of the words startled him.

An odd look flashed across her face as all four eyes narrowed. "And what would a Prince of Asgard be needing with such information?" She hummed to herself. "To kill them perhaps, maim them, put their heads on your wall!" She drew herself up to the limit of her rather unimpressive height, rage sparking around her. "Such magnificent creatures and you'd wipe them out."

"My brother was not in his right mind when he attacked them."

"And were you not in your right mind when you led an attack on their world—unprovoked?" she said with steely calm. "Does mental instability run so freely in the royal line?"

"Loki is Jotun." Thor stopped abruptly. It felt so odd to say it—as if the two things should never have coexisted in the same sentence, and yet there they were. His brother was—had been—a monster. But it didn't feel monstrous to say it—except for those last few days, he would never have thought of his brother as being anything like the demons of his childhood fantasies. Perhaps not quite as Aesir as he ought to have been—but never that.

Merat blinked, her multiple eyes closing in a swift wave. "A natural shapeshifting magic user among the Jotnar…how curious."

"In what way?"

"Quite rare among them, shapeshifting—as is anything beyond elemental ice magic—it's so rudimentary that few sorcerers would deign to even call it magic. And you are sure the other one," she shook her head as if trying to focus, "Prince Loki, was Jotun."

Thor gave a heavy nod. "He was a foundling, abandoned in a temple during the war."

Her eyes brightened as she clutched at Thor's sleeve, dragging him toward a shadowed bench. "Sit, sit, sit. Tell me everything. A trade—what you know for what I know," she said excitedly as she forced Thor down—startling him with the strength she had for her size. Before he could think on it further, she popped up onto the bench next to him, the wisps burrowing into her hair to listen. "Now…speak of your brother."

And so Thor spoke. He began hesitantly at first, often beginning one story before realizing that it wouldn't make sense if he didn't also mention some other related fact. Merat let him ramble, only occasionally asking a question for clarification. Her focus had narrowed to him and him alone. Thor had seen this kind of honed attention in warriors in the training grounds, but never in such a tiny scholar. He could almost see the absorption of information and the quick connections and mental notes so was taking. It reminded him a bit of Loki.

Eventually Thor's words ran out and he waited for Merat to tell him about Jotunheim. For a long while she merely sat staring at the lengthening shadows, hand and claw clasped under her chin. The pale light from the wisps mirrored strangely in her eyes, like candles through the mist. "Jotunheim spends nearly its entire year in darkness. It is a place of bitter cold, with tearing winds and harsh jags of ice. The planet itself doesn't want anything to survive. Anything that would live there must fight for the right to do so, becoming harsher, crueler, and colder than the ice around them." She glanced up with a wicked smile. "And the Jotun have flourished there—or they did until Odin stripped them of the Casket of Ancient Winters, ceding control of the planet back to the wastes and blizzards."

She shook her head, sending her wild hair bouncing about in a golden tangle. One wisp was flung out and struck an irritated chime before it floated back. Merat idly guided it back to its brethren before she continued, "It takes generations to pool enough magic in any one Jotun to actually have talent—and that imperialistic fool Laufey," she spat on the floor in disgust, "sacrificed the first Frost Giant within memory that would have had the skill to create a new Casket and tame the world." She gave a wry smile as she looked up at the much bigger Thor. "All for the crime of being small."

"What do you mean 'sacrificed'?" rumbled Thor. He'd always assumed Loki had been forgotten in the tide of battle—or simply unwanted.

Merat slid from the bench and paced back and forth before him, hand clasping claw behind her back. She flashed in and out of the light as her path took her beneath the light-jewels in the ceiling. "There is a custom—ancient as the darkest ice—of offering up a child to the cold in order to win a battle. Children are dear to the Jotun—they are perhaps hard parents by your understanding, but children are meant to carry on their parents' legacy and one would not be sacrificed lightly. Not a healthy one at least. Exposure is not uncommon for lesser specimens." She paused in a pool of light, harsh shadows tearing across her features. "The sacrifice would hardly have mattered for a stunted runt like Loki. He wouldn't have meant anything to Laufey despite being healthy in all other ways." Shaking her head, she continued, "If Odin hadn't had such a soft heart, we wouldn't be having the conversation now."

"Meaning?"

"Your brother would have died. Once dedicated in the temple, no Jotun would have touched him, no matter what his cries or wailing. Not even his own mother—if she lived. Probably not, Laufey certainly wouldn't have taken the blame for producing such a stunted thing."

Thor shifted uncomfortably. "You do little to shift my opinion of the Frost Giants being monsters."

"Do I not?" asked Merat, surprise sending her only eyebrow up to brush against a ridge of chitin. "Do not mistake all Jotun for being as their thrice-cursed devil-king. A vain, ambitious, cruel shard of ice that one. Petty enough to order all his subjects to grind their horns simply because he lacked them himself." She spat again. "The Jotun have long followed a bad king, but as a people they are not the monsters your Asgardian mothers paint them to be. They are impressive in their own way. Creatures of pride and rugged endurance."

Merat talked until the sun was long down and hinting that it may rise again. She spoke of them physically—their lack of beards and the horns of both males and females—of their history, culture, and customs. Male Jotun wore their hair long until their coming of age. If they survived the dangers of the wastes they shaved their heads completely or left only a long mane along the top of their head. The females did the opposite, only allowed to grow out their hair once they wore the skin of a hunta-beast they had tracked and killed themselves. One out of ten girls wouldn't come back from that quest.

She spoke of the deep-throated singing of the warriors and the brief, brilliant summers. Back when the Casket had been on Jotunheim, vast cities of ice, clear as crystal, rose like branching frost into the air. And the towers had caught and held the light of the sun long after it had dropped back into the black cold of winter.

Thor listened intently, trying to shove down over a thousand years of revilement. Especially when some of their culture was so foreign to his own. One of the most foreign was the role Jotun kith-bands played in courtship. Ties of blood on Jotunheim were nearly overshadowed by the bonds of kith-bands: tight-knit, adventure hardened groups of friends—not so different from the Warriors Three and Sif. The groups began in childhood, occurring naturally as the Jotun youth grew and learned how to survive in their world. It was not uncommon for a kith-band to lose a member even before the trials of worth proved them ready for adulthood. These groups were first in a Jotun's loyalty and played important roles in one another's lives. Once a maiden had picked out a likely candidate for marriage it was her kithen-sisters that helped her kidnap the lucky male from under the protection of his brothers. Typically the arrangement was not unfavorable to the groom-to-be and his band were not likely to try and protect him very diligently.

Then the bride's kithen-sisters would whisk him into the wilds where an elder cut their marriage marks into them. Then all of the females would hold the new husband captive and in secret until his wife bore the proof of their unity with their first child. Only then would the husband be released to his own group. Until then none of the other girls would pursue their own lives. If they already had children of their own, they would join the group in hiding. Luckily this was normally a process of only some months, though Merat had heard of one group of particularly diligent females that lived in the wilds for nearly twenty years.

As the picture of a people—rather than beasts—came together, Thor wondered how he had not heard all this before. He couldn't say he admired much of the Jotun culture, and there was quite a bit that repulsed him, but Thor had always thought of them as little more than animals. They had been a blight on the nine-realms, these beasts of nightmare and children's tales that ought to be wiped out. But the world Merat showed him was one where there was no room for monsters.

Eventually Thor felt he could absorb no more—and he was fairly certain he'd dozed off at some point because he had no idea when Merat had switched to talking about traditional dishes involving toasted eyeballs. Getting to his feet startled the scholar, causing her to glare up at him. He ducked his head briefly in apology. "I fear that is more than I can handle for the time being. I thank you, Lady Merat, for telling me these things."

She grinned. "Are you yet sorry you asked?"

He shook his head, also grinning, though it was tinged in sadness. "Nay. I…needed to know this. But I would like to know how it is that you come to know so much of the Jotun."

She cocked here head and peered up at him. "Does this look to be the face of someone who sits at home all day? I'm not at the same level as it would seem your Loki was, but I have some modicum of skin-changing talent. Not enough to keep from getting spliced on occasion, however." She frowned and knocked her claw against her shelled face. "While I appear to have over-reached myself with the Nifelheim spice spider, I'm very good at anything on two legs. It's a useful skill for one that wants to study the other realms up close. I'm also good with birds—most of them have only two legs." She tapped her chin in thought, then shrugged. "I ought to be watching the spice-spiders' hatching flight, not stuck in Asgard's golden halls while all the action happens without me." Small hands clenched in agitation and then eased as she let out a long breath. "There is always next century."

She traced the gilded edging around the scene depicting the first healer gathering up golden apples of immortality. Even in the faint light of early morning the apples seemed to gleam with their own light. "All told, it wasn't a wasted night. You proved far less dull than I would expect from a sword-swinger. And you brought me wisps." The little lights cooed from where they had settled in her hair. She rounded on Thor and gave a sharp nod. "This was a Norn-fated meeting to be sure."

"Perhaps it was indeed." Thor offered his arm to escort her back to the healing rooms, which she waved off. "I am grateful at least that you were here to tell me these things. You have been…" he trailed off, searching for the words. "I wish my brother had known these things before."

Merat huffed and tugged at her collar as if it had suddenly offended her. "Well, I will set him straight if given half a chance."

He stiffened. "My brother is dead." He closed his eyes against the words. His brother was dead.

Merat flapped her hand dismissively. "Yes, yes. But if he ever ceases to be so, send for me."

It was so painfully absurd, Thor gave a snort of laughter. "I've never met an Aesir quite like you."

Mixed eyes fixed on him. "And who's been saying I was Aesir?"

As Thor ended his tale he looked carefully over at Loki as if to gauge his reaction. Loki in turn held his features painfully neutral. The cooling night kicked up a breeze, ruffling their hair as it passed.

"Do you believe what she said?" He looked up at the stars peeking through the canopy above him rather than at Thor.

"I do not think it is in her to lie. What she thinks, she says."

"And you did not deem her unsound?"

A throaty chuckle built in Thor's chest. "Entirely. But I think her information true."

Loki paused. He was far from believing the Jotnar were anything but beasts to be slaughtered, but he couldn't keep his mind from ranging over the far-flung hills of doubt. What if they were a race—not particularly pleasant—but a race worth the consideration of an Aesir? And if—just supposing—they weren't the evil he had always thought them to be, what did that make him? He had sought to wipe them from the nine realms as if purging an infestation.

"Loki?" Thor asked, a tinge of unease in his voice.

Looking down, Loki realized he'd risen to his feet without noticing it. He smoothed the front of his shirt and spoke quietly, "I wish to think on these things. Alone."

Thor had a look that threatened protestation, but instead his shoulders slumped a bit and he nodded. He had not made it far before Loki's voice followed him.

"Thor?" he paused to make sure the Thunderer was listening, "do not speak to me of Frost Giants again." Finality laced his tone though his expression was neutral as he gazed into the patchwork darkness of the forest.

"Aye," said Thor finally. It didn't seem to really surprise him.

Loki waited until the heavy footsteps had faded away before he lowered himself deliberately to the rock. An uncertain emotion swam through his heart. He'd shown Thor the monster and Thor hadn't so much as flinched. Turning over his pale hands, Loki gazed at them, somehow seeing the hideous blue beneath the Asgardian veneer. How could Thor be so blind. Hundreds of years swearing vengeance and murder upon the Jotun and now he would embrace one?

"Sentiment," Loki said as he shook himself. Though, the word lacked the usual derisive venom.

A/N: The scene with Thor reacting to Loki's true form was one of the earliest and clearest images in this story—it was also one of the more difficult ones to make work. It took a fair bit to get the set up just right to where I would buy Loki willingly showing Thor what he looked like.

Also…Merat. She is an example of a character who just kind of waltzed in and established themselves in the story. As the author I'm kind of standing there with my notes going, "Who are you and what are…okay and you're just going to do that now and…you're saying that…well okay then." She's not as fully fleshed out in my head (like there is still a lot I don't know about her) as some characters of this type, but her personality was just kind of there right off the bat. Still, she's not as bad as one character I had that I created specifically in order to die…and then he waltzed back into the story later on. So I tried to kill him again. And there he was back. "Didn't I just kill you?" "Yeah? So, what? I'm not going anywhere, deal with it." Ultimately he refused to die, but I did at least succeed in blinding him…not that it slowed him down.

QuiltedRose49: Your rendition of Clint's reaction to Loki trolling him made me laugh. That's skill, you making me laugh anew at something that /I/ wrote!

RedHood001 & Molleyn: Thanks! Character interaction is really something I've been trying to focus on.

Silver Frost: Thanks! While I often thoroughly enjoy stories that make Loki more of a victim in the whole Thanos incident…I agree with your concept of things. Also, Loki is canonically a complex character that while not completely evil and villainous, is culpable for his actions and deeply flawed; he has done some pretty horrible things that a better person wouldn't have, regardless of the motivating reasons or circumstances.

RedHood001: Thanos won't play too much into /this/ story other than being the catalyst for so many of the demons Loki nurtures and as a looming shadow. Other as yet to be written tales in this universe…well, we'll have to see. And I was actually just thinking about whether Loki would have known/interacted with any of the Order the other day. It certainly does present interesting story potential.