Author's Note: I swear I haven't abandoned this. I'm just sort of trying to figure out how to pace it. On the upside, there is at least a solid concept of what the ending is going to be now in my head, which means I at least know what I'm working towards. I also dug out my old Psychology textbook so I can try not to suck quite so much in writing that aspect of this, which I really should've done earlier. And there's some very poorly veiled, badly done foreshadowing in here because I guess I'm in love with ccertain cliches. But still, I consider this to be progress in writing what I have to say is one of the hardest-to-write fics I have ever done.

As always, reviews, thoughts and suggestions welcome.

"Doctor Gaberiel Nikolaj Zlotan, born Gavran Nikolaj Zlotanovich, Belgrade, Serbia. Blood type O negative. Worked on a few mutants before, went to college in the USA..." Fury frowned. "He's completely average. Can him. I want the best on this project."

"My brother needs this man's help!" Thor objected. "He understands the madness plauging him like no other healer does! You can not simply hand him over to a stranger!"

"It would really suck if the Serbian government thought SHIELD was discriminating against their people," Tony Stark added in casually, thumbing over the other man's profile. "He seems pretty clear headed for someone who grew up in a war zone. There isn't really a reason to throw him off the project. Especially since he found Loki fair and square."

"Are you threatening me, Stark?"

"I'm theorizing, Fury. You wanted my tactical advice. That's what I'm officially signed on for, right? To advise the Avengers and the people involved with them." He smiled benignly, eyes like a shark. I got this, his expression said to Thor. "Between this and SHIELD being pro-Kosovoan indepedence, you could lose all your power in the region if, say, it were to leak out to the mass media via some sort of internet leak and spun ever so slightly. Romania's already on terrible terms with you, you really want to add Serbia to the list?"

Fury glowered. Thor looked confused. Tony tilted his head challengingly. If he weren't Iron Man, he wouldn't get to be so blatantly manipulative. If he weren't rich, even that wouldn't have let him get away with this sort of conversational arm-twisting. But his father had spent a lifetime using people and escaping consequences, and Tony was nothing if not his father's copy.

"Alright. Anyone else you want on this, Stark?"

"No, I'm good. Thor, thoughts?" he asked in that infuriatingly calm Tony Stark way. Thor smiled weakly at him, grateful for his unusual mortal friend.

"Nay. I merely want my brother restored to the man I once knew."

As a direct consequence of his devotion to his work, desperate efforts to avoid idle time and a need to be helpful or useful in some manner, Zlotan had never been married.

He had no children, no pets and about three real friends all things told. His house was cluttered and rarely clean. His freezer contained a lot of microwave ready meals, his cupboards were stocked with ramen and soup, and he hadn't made his bed in weeks, half the time crashing on his couch, spending about ten percent of his income on caffeine to keep himself going. He arrived home tired and late every night, got up early every morning and endured the nicknames 'Doctor Suck Up', 'Boy Scout' and 'Goody Two Shoes' from his coworkers, eye rolling for being the idealist in a field of broken cynics and the rare but delightful ethnic slurs from the less enlightened in his field.

And he didn't bullshit himself: his desperately optimistic, overly devoted personality was not healthy. It was the result of a lot of rejection and some very deep seated abandonment and guilt issues he really needed to seek more help for. He had never been loved or needed, so he put himself in a career field where he would be both of those things automatically then overdid it trying to save overtly hopeless cases. It was honestly kind of sick, the way he he'd set himself up to be in a position of power over needy people. Zlotan didn't pretend he was noble. He was human, ultimately, subject to all the issues that came with being a modern person. He was flawed and weak and ultimately dependant upon the people around him more than he would like. He was just one person, in the end.

So was Loki.

He might have been a god, but in essence he was just a person. A soul. Emotions, hopes, failures, problems and strengths. He wasn't any different to his therapist now than he had been when he came in. He was still a patient, a person and a friend. He was Loki, the same spiteful patient who put a Xanax pill in his nurse's coffee to make it sour. The same arrogant person who thought he could outwit the psych evaluation sheets. Though the history he'd gotten from Thor was excessively dramatic and complicated, it was no more disturbing than anyone else's profile. Actually, it was a lot less disturbing than some people's profiles. Zlotan still had nightmares about some of the cases he'd worked. The main difference was that now he was undoing centuries of family problems instead of a simple decade or two. In that aspect, he was performing without a safety net; there was much, much more baggage that needed to be sorted through than with any other patient. There was a very real possibility that Loki might be yet another person too far gone to save that Zlotan was working at anyway out of the aforementioned caretaker-nurturer complex.

Walking through the SHIELD Psychiatric Center, a tangled mess of containment cells and downtrodden people with super powers, it was possible, if difficult, to have hope for the future. Loki was a lot more sane and lucid than most of these people were. At least he knew his surroundings most of the time. These lapses out of conscious awareness were rarer and rarer and might have stopped entirely if Thor hadn't barged in like an idiot the other day. Loki trailed after him, looking apathetic and semi-omposed.. Of course he did. He never wanted anyone to see him fall apart, but the way his eyes lingered on things was telling to his therapist. He had very small signals that he gave off, little flexes of the fingers and side glances that gave him away. His green eyes were a touch unsteady. But he wasn't teleporting away and hadn't vanished. Staying to fight the fight was the first major step for someone with supernatural powers.

"We'll get through this," Zlotan told him, despite the fact that he knew Loki was unlikely to hear him in this current state of mind. "Or we will die trying."

Fateful words, it turns out.

Loki burns.

The ice is excrutiating fire. It burns until it freezes and chills him into screaming. There is no voice to his scream. There is silence, and darkness, choking, flailing. Even though it was what he wanted, the pain was such that it began to make him fight against it anyway. He wanted everything to stop. And miraculously, it does. Did. Past and present blur and there was ground underneath him.

And every time he closed his eyes on Earth, it felt like he was tilting again on that vast empty plane of existance. His throat hurts for days. The people around him (mere mortals human Midgaradians Americans?) tend to him with fluids and IVs and medicine, and the burning inside goes away. His fever falls. He lives again, the bruises of impact having faded, the scars from his fall all but vanquished. Except he keeps falling inside. He is suffocating. He is fine.

It's a familiar feeling. He has a feeling it's always been this tightly controlled of a whirlwind. But he is too weak to keep a grip on it. His eyes flicker and glow and things go wrong. Equipment malfunctions. Doors open. Things vanish. He gets names mixed up and words come in a mix of Norse and English, and he feels without thinking. Guilt. Hatred. Disgust. He flinches at the sight of himself in the mirror. It burns him to know he is still alive.

He is well acquainted with the art of biting back on his anger. It's the helplessness he doesn't know what to do with. He doesn't know how to ask for help. He does not feel it would come if he did. Trapped in a world of flickering half remembered shadows and voices only he can hear, it is an eternity befor he begins to make the slow return to functioning sanity with the help of a particularly stubborn stranger. (Redheaded mortal foreign doctor healer not-god his thoughts crash together when Zlotan tries to explain himself the first time.)

There is talking. Lots of talking. Days and nights blur together in both a lack of need to sleep and a need to escape the waking world. He dreams of snow, ice, people with blue skin, the color gold, ominous blonde figures approaching, and slowly, painfully, relays the coherent bits of information to the mortal tasked with piecing him back together.

Then Thor reappeared. Loki felt the world tilt under him again. Everything they'd put together shattered and reformed, everything was too much and not again and none of it was real it was all a dream and - one whirlwind later he found himself being transported to a new facility, too tired to even protest, feeling familiar pangs of icy self hatred, fear and doubts twist in his chest until he was docile as a kitten. The god of mischief has fallen. Now a mortal man tends him, teaches him like a Midgardian child. It would be unbearable, if he had any dignity left. His silvertongue and flexible mind are gone. In their place is a heaviness.

He knows not how long his self induced sleep lasted, only that he woke up in a room done in grays and blues, and Zlotan's voice somewhere off in the background. The clock reads three thirty, though that tells him nothing, and there are no windows. His clothes have been changed, probably in an attempt to take all drugs from him.

All I take with me is grieving...

He follows the half-murmured song to its redheaded source, where Zlotan is pouring over a stack of books on Norse mythology, his MP3 player idly on shuffle.

Close your eyes and leave me, save your words, don't cry...

It's not in English, but gods speak all tongues by default. It's one of those powers he has automatically, like teleporting, with no control or ability to turn on or off. Loki leans against the doorframe and watches him. Studies the lines in his face. Sees the tired circles under Midgardian eyes. And he wonders if there is anyone back there (gold and golden hair and warm laughter and so many people, always watching and whispering, mocking him, not good enough) that is working for him like this. (Stone faced man telling him no, refusing him, abandoning him for the better child, the one who really was his child and Loki is the child of no one, really.) He wonders what Zlotan, or anyone for that matter, would choose a profession based on being with the broken people in the world. He does not understand what he has ever done to deserve help. He does not understand why, now that he knows Loki is the evil lesser son of Odin, he would choose to not only stay but devote himself further to him. Loki does not comprehend that any being, mortal or immortal, could ever care for someone like him.

All I take with me is grieving, and isn't that love, anyway? Say goodbye and leave me...

He slips back towards his own room, and feels the pain inside him lessen somewhat at the thought that at least one soul would mourn his death. The people in the wisps of memories in his mind (brother father but not really, not after what he did, angry voices and betrayal, what have I done, I did it for you, why don't you understand) have uncertainty written all over them. He can't trust his own mind and he certainly can't trust people he can't even remember. The only person he has that he can remotely count on is a complete stranger, a mortal do gooder with a saving-people-thing and terrible taste in music. This is how low the god of mischief has fallen. It is a pitiful excuse to stay in SHIELD captivity or in mortal company, but he is not the sneering brilliant arrogant prince and god he once was. The man that would have tried to exploit the people who cared about him is gone. He died in that icy vortex, and what remains of him is trapped here on Earth, thawing, learning the arts of sincere living and redemption at a painfully slow pace.

He is dying and he is becoming alive again. And these things are not at all contradictory now.