They had found Loki wedged between rubble on the floor, trapped in a hole in their shape and size, as if someone or something had brutally crashed them into the ground over and over again. They had been unresponsive at first, though once they had noticed the entourage above them — as if they were daring them to resume their attack — a look had crossed their face.
If Thor hadn't known any better, he would have interpreted it as scared but hopeful in a way he had never seen on his brother before, but Thor knew better. After all, he had just finished ending an invasion his brother had started on the realm of the mortals.
Just moments after that look first appeared, Loki had schooled their expression, forcefully shifting their act into a more suave and self-confident one, quipping about accepting a beverage Prince Tony had apparently offered them before during a confrontation.
Thor was feeling increasingly unsure of his brother's motivations. They were acting quite differently than he would have expected, considering how just a year before the current events, they had preferred death to the disappointed and cold gaze of their father.
Thor shook off the uneasiness and got to work, helping to clear some of the rubble the battle had left in Prince Tonys' living quarters, while others started to coordinate pickup, search and rescue as well as relief work for the injured. Meanwhile, Loki had been bound in chains and deposited to the side, where they were currently standing, taunting the group to attack, mocking their actions and words at every possibility. Not in the mood to simply take the degradation, Thor looked through some of his gear, picking a mechanical muzzle that should ensure complete silence as well as being uncomfortable enough to be taken as a punishment as well.
Thor nodded to himself and approached Loki, slapping his hand over his mouth, simultaneously engaging the silencing device.
„Shut up!" he ordered, expecting Loki to fight against him but instead, they flinched, a look of panic on their face, for just a second before once again forcing his expression to even out into a relaxed one.
Thor halted in his step and turned to face his brother to look at him questioningly. He had expected many things from his brother in this very situation but this turn of events was not one of them by far; Loki refused to meet his gaze, rather observing the dusty ground with such an intensity, one would expect it to spontaneously combust.
This suddenly caused Thor to pay some attention to Loki's current physical state, which he had not before.
They looked extremely thin. While Loki had always been more lean to support their preferred style of fighting, they had still been looking healthy and strong. Now though, his brother was looking dangerously underweight as they were shaking like a vulnerable leaf in the strongest winds of Hraesvelg.
Thor's gaze wandered down Loki's body and started noticing more and more injuries that did not seem to fit the narrative of the story, for example bruises that looked days older than Loki had been on earth. They were littered with cuts that looked mostly healed but raw enough still to have been caused during the year Loki had been missing.
Moving downwards, Thor noticed that Loki's left leg stood crooked in a way it should not, bleeding sluggishly though this did not seem to bother them as much as it should. As well as this, upon closer inspection, every single finger of theirs looked mangled and wrongly healed.
Considering the state Loki had been in when they had let go of Gungnir, the only possibility of those injuries' origin would be wherever his brother had been during the missing year.
Thor took a step back to take a look at Loki's entire form, quickly noticing how rundown his brother looked. Their hair looked dull and poorly cared for, their skin looked grayish and translucent. Loki's eyes seemed to hold no thought behind them and looked empty. They could barely hide the terrified body language that Thor had noticed his brother was displaying quite obviously.
This was not the brother he had last seen.
Authors Note:
I am having trouble making chapters longer than this before my editor breaks, so if you would like to read the remaining chapters, I'd feel honored if you visited my page on Archive of our own (Ao3) Mending Shattered Glass. You are not obligated to do this of course and as soon as I figure out how to add chapters/my editor works again, I will also post the rest over here. : )