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Of course Loki knows his name. He’s a childhood nightmare story, much like the Frost Giants, save for the fact that no one really thinks Thanos is real.

But Loki knows. The name Thanos has often been whispered here and there in his travels through Yggdrasil. The World Tree is an excellent way to find out things which Asgard does not want known.

And naturally they would dismiss the Mad Titan as a story. They don’t think stories are important. They don’t think they can be dangerous.

Loki carefully pulls his legs underneath him, letting nothing more than a flash of discomfort cross his face even though it hurts like Hel itself to move. He lets a small bit of healing magic flow into his wounds, and he keeps the smile up as he stares at the large purple creature on the throne.

He has not given up the idea of dying, mind. He just does not want to do it here, and if he is to make a quick escape so he can do it elsewhere, it will be better if he has healed a little first.

“Thanos, the Mad Titan,” he says. “Forgive me for forgetting my manners. I’d stand, but I don’t currently appear to have the use of my legs.”

“Hmm,” Thanos rumbles. “You know who I am, I see. But who are you, little Asgardian?”

Loki barely restrains a grimace. “Not Asgardian,” he replies.

“No? What are you, then?”

Loki considers his answer carefully. He must not underestimate this…can Thanos even be called a man?

“I,” he says finally, “am only a wanderer.”

“A wanderer,” Thanos repeats. “And why have you wandered to this forgotten corner of the cosmos?”

Loki lets his smile thin to something a little more acidic. “Well, I did not mean to come here alive,” he replies. “I did not mean to come here at all. I had thought to let the Void choose where my corpse landed. It chose here, and also chose not to kill me, for unfortunate reasons which I know not.”

Thanos’ brow furrows. “I have never before had a creature in my court who wishes to die instead of live,” he says slowly.

Loki tamps down his annoyance at being called a creature. “That tends to happen when one has been made an outcast for the whole of one’s life.”

“Hmmm,” Thanos rumbles again. Loki finds that the deep tone reminds him unfortunately of Odin- though, granted, the Allfather is more prone to growling and occasionally roaring than rumbling. Thor is never so delicate- he bellows. Loki does not quite know where his own voice fits, but he likes to think of it as a hiss or a purr. Much more muted than the Allfather and Thor. Much harder to hear except if one is listening for it.

And no one ever listened, did they?

“Where were you cast out from, then?” Thanos asks. The way he speaks is unnerving- slow, deep, methodical. As if he already knows the answer to his question and is simply waiting to see how Loki responds.

“A place I will not go back to,” Loki replies simply.

“Your home?”

Loki lets the smile slip back on his face, closing his eyes for a moment. “No. I think not.” 

Thanos makes another rumbling hmm, somewhere deep in his chest. Loki wonders if he has lungs, if he breathes at all.

In the morbid way of those too far in death’s shadow to fear the concept of it, he wonders what it would take for the Mad Titan to die.

“And why, wanderer, have you been cast out of a place that is not your home?”

The stories never mentioned how fond Thanos is of questions. This is rather more like an interrogation than Loki would prefer. Still, he cannot remain silent.

He draws himself up with something that would be dignity, if he had any of that left. The dregs that remain when all pride has been drained are stubbornness, and Loki clings to his obstinacy as a brace to hold himself up. “I was cast out,” he says, allowing his words to frost over, “because I was something they did not approve of. I tried my very best to become so, and I failed. So I was thrown out, and I have ended up here.”

He still remembers that night on the bridge. He remembers opening his hand, letting himself fall into the Void, because it was the only option left to him.

Because if he had not let go, he would have been thrown off. Loki is very sure of that. Odin’s hands, as they always were, had been occupied with Thor. Loki would have been shaken off the Bifröst bridge like a bramble clinging to a sleeve, like mud on the sole of a boot.

Like something worthless and unwanted soiling something better, staining it with its presence until it is thrown away.

Loki jerks himself out of his thoughts in time to realize that the Mad Titan is laughing. It is a terrible sound, a rumbling, cruel thing like a dragon’s snarl. “You give yourself away, wanderer,” Thanos says. “You answer my questions with non-answers, use pretty words to skirt around the truth I am after. And, in so doing, you have revealed the truth to me anyway.”

“And what is the truth?” Loki asks, making his voice sound relaxed, almost taunting.

The truth of this moment is that he is terrified.

Thanos sits back on his throne. “The truth, little one, is that I know who you are. You are Loki, one of the princes of Asgard. You are a magician, a scholar, a trickster. And you are a liar. But you cannot lie well enough to fool me.”

Damn, Loki thinks. Aloud, he says, “You are mistaken, I’m afraid. Perhaps I was once Loki of Asgard, but no longer. Loki is done. Loki is gone. I am not a prince, nor am I Asgardian. As for being a liar, well-“ he tips his head in a way he knows to be positively infuriating- “I wouldn’t be much of one if I confessed to being it, would I?”

“You intrigue me, little one,” Thanos replies, and Loki instinctively prepares himself for something to happen. The way the Mad Titan spoke just then was the way Odin spoke before making a decree or passing a sentence.

Usually upon me.

“You are a prince who claims he is not one. An Asgardian who claims not to be of Asgard. A liar who claims he does not lie. You are a creature of contradictions.” Thanos rubs his grooved chin. “And I believe you might be of some use to me.”

“I’m of no use to anyone currently, as my legs are currently of no use to me,” Loki replies. “Rather difficult to do much when I cannot stand on my own.”

There. Let Thanos believe I am simply concerned about my wounds. Loki has absolutely no intention of doing anythingfor the Mad Titan. Or anyone at all, really. He just wants this- interview, or whatever it is, to be over. He has more important things to do. Like dying.

“I have heard rumors,” Thanos says, “that you tried to destroy Jotunheim. That you tried to usurp the throne and kill the king of Asgard.” He looks askance at Loki. “Are either of these accusations true?”

“Does Jotunheim still stand?” Loki asks.

It’s one of his favorite tactics. Answer a question with another question, and let the asker believe they have figured it out for themselves.

It does not seem to work here. “So you failed.”

“Perhaps I intended to fail all along,” Loki fires back.

Thanos’ lips curve up in a smile. It’s a frightening expression to see on that hideous purple face. “I doubt that very much.”

With very few cards left to play, Loki decides to throw the game.

“What do you want?” he asks bluntly. “I’ve not the time to waste being interrogated here. I’ve got other matters of great importance which I must take care of.”

“Like dying,” Thanos says.

“You do like to harp on unimportant details.”

“Oh, I think that is the most important detail of all. You seek to die, all because you could not steal your brother’s kingdom.” Thanos steeples his fat purple fingers. They look like elongated grapes. “What if I offered you a kingdom, little outcast? What then?”

“I would, ever so politely, refuse,” Loki replies. “I never wanted a kingdom.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Pity. This could have been much easier for you.” Thanos lifts a hand, and it seems to be some sort of signal. The Chitauri close in again. One of them forces Loki to his feet. Loki cries out as lightning bolt pain flashes through his legs- which seem to have, in the course of this interrogation, healed enough for him to stand on. Not without a great deal of pain, but he can at least do it.

It is not, in this moment, helpful. “I assure you, I do not need to be escorted out,” Loki says coldly. “I do not intend to return here.”

“And I do not intend to let you leave,” Thanos replies, equally coldly. “I have need of you, little one. You will serve me for awhile, and if you still wish to die when I am done with you, by all means I shall be happy to oblige. But in the meantime, I will command, and you will obey.”

Oh, shall I? Loki gathers his seidr from the depths of his soul.

“Very well, Titan,” he says with acid in his voice. “Command me.” And he  hurls a blast of fiery green seidr through the circle of stone.

Several Chitauri are vaporized, which is unfortunate, as Loki was not aiming for them

.

Thanos is not vaporized, which is also unfortunate, as Loki was aiming for him.

In another moment Loki is down on the ground, his face pressed into the rocks by half a dozen Chitauri. If I had not been wounded, I could have made that shot, he thinks uselessly. Useless because he knows that it would not have mattered. Thanos is too strong to be felled by a single blast of magic.

But perhaps it would have distracted him long enough for Loki to make his escape. Or perhaps he was simply attempting to delay the inevitable.

“I see I shall have to persuade you,” Thanos says, his tone somehow both mocking and grave at the same time. He sounds like a disappointed father who never really expected anything more.

Norns, Loki thinks. He sounds like Odin. How many times has he stood before the court of Asgard, before Odin on his golden throne, to have sentence passed upon him for something they have all decided already he is guilty of? If I had not done what I have done, that would have been Thor, seated at the highest place, pronouncing judgment upon his unfortunate, wayward younger brother. He can hear the wagging tongues of the Asgardian courtesans even now. Far better to die at the hands of Thanos than be humiliated thus by Thor, of all people. And speaking of Thanos-

He pushes himself up as much as he can. “I warn you, Thanos. I will not be persuaded. Release me at once, or I will use my magic to free myself- and free your head from your neck in the same instant.”

“Your magic is exhausted,” Thanos counters. “That blast was all you had left. If you truly had enough to attack me with, you would not waste words to warn me about it.”

Loki struggles in the Chitauri’s hold. “I will not be bullied into your service!”

“We shall see,” is all the Mad Titan replies. “Take him away.”

“You have just made a mistake,” Loki says, and he makes his voice as cold as ice.

Thanos merely smiles. “Oh no, Loki of Asgard. You have.”

His new cell is a cave, much like every other cave Loki has ever been in save for the heavy door at the entrance. He has already tried to pick the lock or force it open with his magic, and it has refused to budge. Somehow, it is warded against his seidr.

Does the Titan have a magician here? He must, to be able to render Loki’s power useless. But the Chitauri are too stupid for such things, and while Thanos is mighty, he is no sorcerer.

The prison cave is very dark, and very bare, and most disconcerting of all, very silent. There is not even the screeches and clicks of the hivebound Chitauri to break the stillness. Ordinarily Loki does not mind a bit of quiet, but the silence here is like a tomb.

Like the Void. Oh, it would have been peaceful to die cradled in starlight, drifting endlessly through space. And instead I am here, trapped on a barren rock in the grip of a madman. Can life never be simply fair to Loki? Why must things always go wrong for him?

He picks up a rock and throws it at the wall. It makes a satisfying thud. “It isn’t that I mind dying here, instead,” he says aloud. “It’s a rather bad ending- dying alone in a dark prison cell. Very melodramatic. But I don’t mind a bit of drama.”

Loki hurls the rock again. “It’s that I don’t believe this madman intends to let me die when I choose. And that is infuriating.”

All his life, Loki has had choices made for him. He has been presented with two options as if it were a choice, knowing full well that there is only one answer. The first time he really made a choice of his own was when he chose to make an alliance with the Jotuns and let them interrupt Thor’s misguided coronation.

Funny that the allies I made to betray my family turned out to be…well. My blood. He cannot call the Jotunn his family, since they are not. The Asgardian royalty are certainly not his family. Loki, it seems, has no family left.

I wonder if the Titan has got a family somewhere, or if he has already murdered them? Loki cannot exactly picture the Mad Titan dandling a purple babe on his knee.

He wonders if it might be easier to give Thanos his way, serve him in whatever capacity he might demand, and wait for an opportunity to escape. Or gain the Titan’s trust and then stab him in the back when the chance comes. Literally, Loki thinks grimly.

There must be other prisoners in this place somewhere. Thanos may have chosen a barren asteroid as his stronghold, but Loki cannot be the first person to stumble across the desolate rock the Titan calls home. And they already have a prison built down here, which tells him that either Thanos or the Chitauri have kept prisoners here before.

So where are they? There is nothing but silence here. He cannot hear even the usual sounds one would expect from a prison such as this- groans and cries, the rattling of chains, perhaps screams. Instead there is nothing.

He cannot hear a sound that is not made by him. He cannot see very well, either- the darkness is nearly complete. There is a saying he has heard on Midgard- can’t see your hand in front of your face. Loki raises his hand and stares at it, his eyes narrowed, for a longer time than he would like to admit. His eyes are not adjusting to this darkness- all he can make out is the faint shape of his hand.

How long do they intend to leave me here? There is no way to track the passing of the time, of course, but it feels like it has been much longer than he would have expected. Loki should have been brought again before Thanos by now, told what purpose it is the Mad Titan is keeping him a prisoner for. There has been no one and nothing.

He is alone.

Loki has learned that being alone as often as he is does not make it any easier to endure it. He does not mind it when it is of his own free will. But too often he is simply ignored, overlooked, pushed to the side and left to make his own way. Or, he thinks, locked away in a dark cell and forgotten.

That is another matter. Loki hates to be confined. If he has locked himself in his room to study or to practice his magic, it is one thing. But if someone else has locked him in, then he will do whatever it takes to get out again.

He stands up abruptly and hurls a blast of magic at the cave walls. It hits with a tremendous crash and a sunburst of glittering green, but it serves to do nothing at all useful. It does, however, bring rocks tumbling down nearly upon his head, and he must dive out of the way of them. Well, there goes that idea. It will serve me nothing to blast through the wall if I am crushed by a boulder before I can make my way out. It is rather irritating that caves are so good at confining Loki.

And irritating that Thanos, somehow, knows that little tidbit.

Loki is beginning to feel that Thanos knows more about him than Loki knows about Thanos. It is certainly an uncomfortable feeling- Loki likes to be the person in the room who knows more than anyone else, about everyone else. Here, he knows very little about the Mad Titan save that he is terrible and terribly purple, and yet somehow Thanos knows that he has been trapped in a cave before and what wards to set against his seidr to keep him trapped in this one.

There is a grating sound at the entrance, and the heavy door opens. It only lets a very dim light in, but Loki shields his eyes from it all the same. “Who’s there?” he calls out, hoping that he sounds careless and imperious rather than frightened.

There is a woman in the doorway, looking at him with a face he cannot read. “Get up,” she tells him- her voice is a bored sort of cold, as if she would rather be doing anything else rather than wasting her time on him.

“Who are you?” Loki asks, not standing up and hoping she catches the deliberateness of it. He has done with being ordered about.

“Not someone you want to make angry,” she replies in the same flat tone. “Now get up, or I’ll make you.”

Loki has learned long ago that sometimes the best trick is to go along with it until there is a chance to break free. He decides, mostly because there is little else he can do, to employ this strategy now.

With some difficulty- his legs are still not working very well, but at least they are working now- he stands, leaning a hand on the wall for support. The woman watches him impassively.

As he approaches the light of the door, Loki notices with some surprise that the woman’s skin is entirely green.

“Who are you?” he asks again. He is not so rude as to ask what are you, although he is certainly thinking it. Out here in the depths of the Void, who knows what sorts of creatures there may be? If he were more inclined to obey the Titan, perhaps he might turn scholar, studying the Void’s mysteries.

But he is a prisoner now, and so he must study ways to escape, and if not that, how to best take advantage of the situation.

This time, the woman gives him a real answer. “I’m the Titan’s daughter,” she says shortly, grabbing his arm and pulling him out into the corridor. It is suddenly not silent anymore, but loud with the clamoring of what must be other prisoners. There must be a spell or something on his cell that keeps him from hearing them when he’s inside it.

But that is not what Loki is focusing on- that knowledge is useless compared to what else he has learned. So the Mad Titan has got a family after all. Good. I can use that.

However he hates his not-entirely-undeserved reputation as a schemer and a liar, Loki still has his tricks and his mischief, and in a place like this he will use these gifts for the most glorious purpose.

Which is, of course, his own.

He has no knowledge of how many hours it has been. He has no knowledge of any time passing at all, only he is sure that it must have done so.

There is no thought in his head of trickery and scheming now, only a wild desperation and a fear like that of animals cornered in a hunt. And pain. There is pain.

In Asgardian terms, Loki is still quite young. No longer a child, and he counts as an adult, but it is superficial, in a way. He is still too young to really be counted among them.

Too young, or too different? something cruel in his mind whispers.

Young as he is, though, he is not a stranger to torture.

Well does he remember the dwarves and their awl, and the weeks spent in bloody silence once they were finished. Well does he remember the giant Gerriod and the three months he held Loki prisoner, starving in the darkness of a little wooden box.

This is nothing like those incidents.

This is far worse.

The Titan’s herald is called Ebony Maw. He is a gray, wrinkled creature, like a Chitauri peeled out of its armor, somehow both slender and fleshy at once. He speaks slowly, gravely, with a formal air, and his voice rarely rises above a calm intonation or a rasping whisper.

As Loki has discovered, this herald also serves as Thanos’ torturer.

He is very, very good at it.

Loki runs a hand over his face, his fingers coming away sticky with blood. The Chitauri are the guards here, it seems- witless brutes following the orders of Thanos’ more intelligent lackeys.

There were no questions. There was no interrogation, nothing they wanted from him save his suffering. They are not trying to get something out of him; they only seek to break him.

Loki grits his teeth as he lays back on the hard stone, everything in him set alight at the movement.

I will not break, he tells himself, and hopes with all his heart that, for once, he isn’t lying.

In the dark hazes of the Titan’s torture chamber, Loki is sure he is screaming. He can almost hear it, here in this distant retreat inside his own head. Outside of himself, he is agonized and in pain and terrified, and he is screaming.

But inside his mind, it is silent and dark. His mind has looked like the Void for some time now, only now he welcomes its quiet, cold presence. This is what he wanted when he opened his hand and let himself tumble from the Bifrost- a peaceful existence, an ending in starlight and blackness.

So outside of his head, Thanos’ priest pierces him with a hundred glass needles, and the Titans’ daughters hone their blades on his bones, and the Chitauri hold red-hot pieces of metal against his skin until it bubbles and melts and chars black. And outside he cannot hold back his cries, and his screams echo on the rocks. But inside his head, it is cool and dim and quiet, like he is floating in the ocean at night, and if he looks up he can see the stars.

It’s a lie. Of course it’s a lie. That’s what Loki does. That’s what Loki is. He is himself a lie, and he lies even to himself, and right now he lies and tells himself that the torture chamber and the stone cell are nothing more than terrible, distant dreams. It is this which is real, the black void and the colorful starlight and the peace. False peace is still peace, and Loki is content in his falsehood.

He is content.

He is.

He is-

He is not.

He chides himself for it, the next time he is left alone in his cell to lick his wounds (there is no passing of time save when he is in the cell and when he is in the torture chambers burrowed into the rock.) He breaks himself from out of his own head and hurls curses and venomous words at himself until the rocks ring with them and he feels better. Barbs and jabs have always made him stronger- words are his weapons to use, so them being wielded against him only makes him defiant.

He is a coward, cringing in his mind, hiding in his head while he could be looking for an escape, a trick to play, something. A way to die, if nothing else- the Titan’s minions, for all the torture, have been very careful not to hurt him too badly. They push him right to the edge and then bring him back.

That tells Loki something. It tells him that they need him. And that is a card in his hand.

He searches every inch of his cell for some way out. He tries to chip through the rock, to create a tunnel. They catch him doing that eventually- he has no sense of time in this place- and he is made to suffer more than he has ever suffered before. When they finally throw him back in the cell- with the shallow hole he chipped filled in- he can’t even move. He spends what feels like years lying on the stone, gasping for breath, waiting for what remains of his magic to knit his bones and body back together. His healing is slow here, unable to keep up with the near-constant torture. It takes days of waiting in agony for a single wound to heal, and even then there are usually far more waiting their turn. All the magic is doing now is keeping him alive. (And sometimes he wishes it wouldn’t.)

When he sleeps, it is torment. His dreams are terrible ones- in this place they could be nothing else. Every awful memory, from his childhood, from Asgard and Midgard and Jotunheim, from this place, parades before his eyes when he dares to close them. He relives every moment of Odin’s favoritism, Frigga’s manipulation, Thor’s bullying, Asgard’s insults, Thanos’ sadism.

When he can stand it no longer, he stops sleeping. He curls in the corner of his cell and stares at the wall, refusing to let his eyes close for more than a second. It takes a great deal of effort, and trying to heal exhausts him, but the dreams are worse, and so he grits his teeth and stays awake. It takes a toll far more quickly than he expects.

When the hallucinations begin, it is not entirely unexpected. He sees Odin, Thor, Thanos and his minions, appearing in the darkness to taunt and berate him- or worse, to tell him how much they loved him, that the abuses of Asgard were all in his head. Loki turns his face so that he does not see them, but they move with him, and eventually he simply stares at them until they fade away.

Thanos’ henchmen find out about the hallucinations eventually. The priest forces him to drink some sort of potion, and it makes the visions much more vivid, more real. He hallucinates torture even when it is not happening. Even his cell is no refuge now. He spends hours curled in the corner with his hands over his ears and his eyes squeezed shut, trying desperately to get a moment of peace.

And then there comes an angel into his cell.

Loki knows of angels. He spent much time on Midgard, and he learned there of the creatures they call angels. Benevolent beings of light and goodness, who come in times of great need to comfort and help those who believe in them.

Loki does not believe in them, but one comes to him all the same.

He is gasping against the wall when it comes, overwhelmed with a particularly sharp-tongued hallucination of Odin. “It is good that you opened your hand and fell into the Void of your own accord,” the shadow-Odin spits. “Else I would have tossed you in myself!”

“I know,” Loki whispers. He has always known, somehow. Thor is the treasured one. If Odin could only save one of them, it would be Thor- it would always be Thor. Loki means less.

The shadow-Odin bangs Gungnir on the floor of the cell. “And look at where you have fallen,” he sneers. “Insect tunnels in a barren rock. A fitting place for you, parasite.”

Loki breathes, in and out, filling his lungs with the stale, dusty air, and tries not to hear the words. He tries to fall back on his old tricks, to twist the barbs into praise, to let them roll off his shoulders like water on a bird’s wing. But he is cracked open, and the poison seeps in whether he will or no.

“Perhaps I would have done better to offer you to Thanos when I found you as a babe,” muses the shadow-Odin. “It would certainly have saved me much trouble, mischief-maker. All of Asgard will be much better off without your lying tongue.”

Loki sighs. It comes out more of a whimper.

The shadow-Odin smiles, and kneels down. “It was your magic, and that alone, which saved you as a child,” he whispers viciously. “Else I would have dashed your brains out on the altar where you lay abandoned by your sire. How pitiful is Loki, to have two fathers who never wanted him?”

“Stop,” Loki breathes.

The shadow stands up, his aged hand wrapped around Gungnir. “What now, no-one’s-son? You could do what I should have done all those years ago. You could end this.“

Loki glances up then. “Don’t you think I’ve tried?” he spits out. “They will not let me. The Void itself would not let me. I am cursed- cursed to live when I want nothing more than to die.” His words echo that of a Loki who already seems centuries past- a Loki who stood with a box of ice in his hands, blue seeping over his skin, and asked his father, “Am I cursed?”

“You are not cursed,” a voice answers, and it is not the voice of Odin. The cell fills with a soft red glow. “Begone, figment.”

The shadow-Odin vanishes like a candle flame in the wind.

Loki does not dare look up. But a gentle hand slips beneath his chin and tips it up, touching his tightly-shut eyes. “Will you look at me, wanderer?”

He does, and his heart trips and falls and gets back up before he can remember how to breathe again.

There is a person in the cell with him. Not a person- a being, formed of red light and thrumming with power. With seidr. Loki reaches out a hand, stopping just short of touching them. “Who- what are you?” he breathes.

“A friend,” the figure tells him. “One of several. I am sorry we could not come before now. But-“ the angel lays a hand on Loki’s heart, a hand more gentle than any he has felt here. When they pull their hand away, something dark and thick comes with it. “There. I have taken away the poison. You will be haunted by no more ghosts tonight.”

“How?” Loki manages to say.

“We are powerful, my siblings and I. Although-“ and here the angel looks sorrowful. “Not powerful enough, it would seem. The Titan has our sister imprisoned.”

“Your- sister?” The angel does not seem to have any characteristics of gender, although Loki knows from experience that means very little. It is simply a person.

“One of us is male, one female, one both, one neither, one all, and one forever changing. Of course, which one of us is which of those things at any given time is something that cannot be predicted. We change, all of us. Constantly, or it seems so for us. Time is much slower for us than it is for you- we are young, and yet you would consider us as old as the stars themselves.”

Loki’s mind is well used to elegant words. But he is tired now, tired and hurt and a thousand other sufferings, and he cannot make sense of them. “I-I- don’t know what you mean,” he stammers.

The angel smiles at him, and brushes some of the sweat-soaked hair from his forehead. “That is all right. You will in time, shape-changer.”

Loki shakes his head. “I scarcely have magic enough to keep myself breathing. I could no more change my form now than I could escape from this Helhole.”

“Whether you can change or no, you are still Loki,” the angel says gently. “When was the last time you slept?”

A little bitter laugh breaks from Loki’s lips. “Days,” he replies. “Weeks, more likely. I could not close my eyes without being tormented by the visions. And then the priest made me swallow that poison, and the visions became real.”

“I decide what is Real,” the angel proclaims, and for just a moment their voice thrums with power enough to make Loki stare. “I am Reality. Close your eyes, illusion-weaver. There will be no more cruel visions.”

Loki swallows hard, hesitating. He has become used to everything being cruel. But something deep inside him whispers that he can trust this angel. He has not slept in weeks; he is driving himself mad. A few hours’ rest, with the promise of no visions, sounds like a Valhalla.

So he stretches himself out on the hard stone, and pillows his head in the crook of his arm. The angel touches his head and his eyes, and it feels like a blessing, like a father would do with his child.

Though Norns know mine never blessed me.

He cracks his eyes open again, expecting to be alone in the cell. But the angel is still there. They fold their legs beneath them and sit by his side, watching over him.

Loki has to ask. He cannot help it. “Who- and what- are you?” he breathes. “You and your…siblings. I have heard of angels-“

The being’s lips tilt in a smile. “That is…close enough. We have names of our own, and also a name for the six of us together. I am Reality.”

“And- what are you, together?” Loki asks. His eyes are drifting closed almost of their own accord; he didn’t realize how truly exhausted he had become.

The angel looks up at the craggy ceiling, and though their eyes have no lids, Loki gets the sense that they have closed them anyhow. “We are Infinity,” the angel whispers. “Now sleep, wanderer. I will keep watch until the Titan’s servants come.”

“You cannot keep them away?”

The angel shakes their head. The last thing Loki notices before he slips into blackness is that he had never imagined an angel could look so sad.

The angel does not come to him again. Thanos' priest soon discovers that whatever vile potion he forced Loki to swallow has been purged from him somehow; Loki is left to the mercies of the Chitauri warriors for some time as punishment (he is not sure how long. Time has no meaning anymore. There is only when he is being hurt and when he is not, and even when he is not being actively tortured there is still pain.)

Loki will never, never let this secret slip past his lips, but he prefers the Chitauri to the rest of Thanos' order. They are a hivemind, and so they are superbly uncreative. They beat him, mostly, and Loki has been fending off beatings since he was old enough to lift a sword (and, somewhere along the way, exchange the blade and shield for the book and candle, and the seidr all his own. Greatest warrior, one most worthy, they said of Thor. But of Loki they said master magician of them all.)

And other, crueler things as well.

His cell comes as a relief when at last the Chitauri are told to be done with him. He is all over bruises, with several bones broken for what may be the second time and may be the twentieth. The disorientation, not knowing how the time passes, is one of the worst parts of this imprisonment. Loki is a realm-traveler, a branch-crosser, a sky-walker; he has been in places where the time passes slowly and where it passes quickly. For all he knows, a thousand years may have passed on Asgard while he languishes here.

Every so often, his thoughts drift towards escape. But where could he go? He is an outcast, with no home to return to, no vessel to steer there, no way to call for help. He let go and fell into the Void, not intending to set foot or eye on Asgard again- and he has been granted his wish, in the cruelest way possible.

It seems that is how the Fates weave for Loki.

He thinks of Frigga, sometimes. Of all those in Asgard, she was the kindest to him. Taught him magic, kept him from feeling too alone. He did not fit in, and neither did she- Odin's Vanir queen and his Frost Giant hostage-son. They had understood each other.

And yet she still helped to hide what he was from him. She stood by in regal silence while Thor and his cronies mocked and belittled Loki. She said nothing when Odin allowed him to take the blame for every mischief, every scheme, even the ones that were not his. She tried to convince him that Odin had only had the greater good in mind.

Loki sits up from the hard stone beneath him. There is a thought. This Thanos too seems to believe that he has the greater good at heart- Loki has heard only snatches of the plot he is brewing, but he has heard enough to know that the Titan believes himself a savior. Much like Odin had believed himself to be, taking an infant Frost Giant from its home realm and raising it alongside his own son.

Alongside, yes. But I never was a true son to him, was I? The thought sticks in his throat like a draught of some bitter medicine, like that poison he was made to drink that the Angel cleansed him of. Would that they could have cleansed me of the lingering infection of Asgard, as well.

Loki sets his thoughts of the golden realm aside. He must focus.

He is always healing, and to Thanos' minions that is enough to assure them that he is weak. But the major injuries- particularly the ones in his legs- have nearly all mended themselves now. The smaller hurts are indeed a drain on Loki's magic, but not nearly so much now. His seidr has, ever-so-slowly, begun to leak back into his veins, ready to be used.

Loki does not, in general, meditate. That is a practice better left to wizards and their sort, the kind who learn their magic from books and must concentrate to remember it. Loki was born with his magic; he need not study it to use it. It is part of him.

But now he finds himself meditating almost unconsciously. He avoids looking like he is doing it, of course- he would feel quite ridiculous sitting in the lotus position, humming like a broken soul forge. No doubt Thanos and his cronies think he is sleeping when he lets himself go into the trance, or that he has sunk into the depths of despair. He props himself against the wall and lets his head rest on his knees, and focuses all his strength on calling up his magic.

It is coming back. Slowly. Surely.

And it is not all that comes.

At one point, Loki breaks himself from the spell and lifts his head to find he is not alone in his prison.

"Oh," he says softly. "Hello."

There is another angel in his cell.

This one is not red, though clearly made of the same stuff as the last. This one is a deep, vibrant purple, and although they are still that odd, smooth, almost gem-like substance, they are shorter than the first one. Loki does not like to decide what people are based on their looks alone- the Norns know he himself cannot be trusted to fall on appearance alone- but if he had to guess, he would say that this angel has presented themselves in the form of a young girl. She wears no clothing, her body mostly a smooth approximation of a humanoid figure, but her face is a pleasant one, and she has a wealth of violet hair, or something carved in the shape of coils of hair, encircling her head like a crown.

She settles herself down, her legs tucked against her hip, smiling at him. "Hello, master magician," she replies.

Loki does not weep easily, accustomed to keeping a stiff upper lip and a head held high, pretending that he is not hurt.

But that- hearing once again the simple title that means so much to him- brings the smart of tears behind his eyes. The angel does not seem offended or judging when he turns aside to brush the salty drops away.

"And which one are you, of your siblings?" he asks when he has composed himself.

She smiles. "I am Power," she replies.

Loki can believe it. Her voice throbs with it, enough to knock a mortal to their knees. He himself has to fight not to show the tremors that race up and down his spine with just those three simple words.

"Why are you come to me?" he asks her.

She reaches out and touches him, two fingers pressed to his forehead in a gesture so undeniably magical that it pricks his eyes with tears again. He feels- something. A ripple. She is not giving him power, nor is she taking his from him. It is- it is like his magic and her own are speaking to each other. And he can tell that despite her young appearance, her power is old, primal, ancient, omnipotent. Loki was raised on a planet of people who called themselves gods.

Now he can believe that such things as gods exist, for this is surely nothing else.

"Power calls to power," she says, drawing her finger away. "Yours is becoming strong again, and so I came to you. My sibling Reality came to you with comfort. I come with a warning." The carved expression on her gem-cut face turns grave. "Do not try to fight with it, master magician. You are still weak. Your powers are not meant for such things."

She does not intend for the words to sting, and that makes their bite all the worse. Loki is reminded, suddenly, of Frigga drawing him away from the sword practice and spearsmanship of the other boys his age, telling him that he was not made for such things. She was reluctant even to let him try with the bow or with knives- archery he only became good at, but he is now the best knife fighter in Asgard. Or I was. Regardless, he is not weak, and his magic is not useless.

"I can fight," he tells the angel, and tries not to let the offense in his voice slip through.

She smiles. "I know you can. But not yet. Let your seidr heal a little more. Your greatest gifts are not in battle, master magician. You are born for illusion and change and chaos and tricks." She reaches out to set a hand on his cheek. This time there is no throb of power that rushes through it. It is simply a friendly touch. Loki leans into it before he is aware of what he is doing. It has been so long since he felt any touch that was not meant to hurt. She does not seem to mind; in fact she draws closer, setting her forehead against his. Loki closes his eyes and listens to her speak.

"Your magic is not for evil, though you are often called god of it," she says softly into the stale air of the cavern dungeon. "Mischief, perhaps. But not evil. Never let yourself believe that you are so, Loki Sky-Walker, Loki Master-Magician, Loki Silver-Tongue. Your power is greater than theirs, for a sword may rust and strength may fade. But words, whether of magic or no- words last. Use them."

She sets her hands on his shoulders and- slowly- draws him into an embrace. She feels cool against him, not cold but not as warm as a flesh body. She feels like he is embracing the very concept of magic itself. "My sibling Time wanted to come to you tonight," she tells him, without letting go. "But I knew you needed me instead. Something is going to happen, master-magician. I do not know what. Time was not sure of it either. But it is something very hard, and I came to give you power enough to endure it."

"When?" Loki asks. He is not afraid, not yet. When it happens, he likely will be. But he has never been afraid before he is given reason. He has spent his life in the spaces between being accused of wicked things and being punished for them; he does not fear the waiting.

Power withdraws from him, shaking her head. "There is no telling," she says, her voice grave. "Especially not here- were I to name you a day, you would not know when it had come." She looks around at the squalid cell. "But when it does happen- whatever it will be- you have a whisper of my power now, and plenty of your own."

"Will it be enough?"

She smiles at him again, sadder this time. "There is no telling," she repeats, and presses a hand to his cheek as she stands.

The small gestures are more soothing than even words would be. Loki knows well how falsely words can ring. But the simple comfort of a gentle touch- especially here, where every touch brings him nothing but pain- strengthens him even more than a kind word, because he knows that they are meant sincerely.

When he looks up, the angel has gone.

Loki settles himself back into his corner to wait for whatever will come next. He lets himself slip into the meditation yet again, feigning sleep while his magic floods the corners of his soul. Whatever she did to it, it surely is stronger now- it had dried up to a mere trickle while it healed him. Now it is the sea again, endless, surging, realms of seidr at his fingertips whenever he so much as reaches out to touch them.

It feels good, for a little while, to be powerful again. To have his gift and his title back. The master-magician of them all.

When the moment he was warned about comes, Loki is not powerful enough.