Part Four.

Thor had thought it pointless when a servant had brought him clothes to change to a few hours before, but now that he was on his way to the stables he was grateful. His mind whirled as he walked so fast he'd nearly begun to run. He had to find a way to convince Master Rowen and his father that Loki's life would be safer in the hands of the lead healer rather than an apprentice.

He rounded the corner to the stables, nearly running over a guard as he dodged between them, gaining the immediate attention of both king and healer.

Odin froze. "Thor, has something happened?"

"He's worse. He can't breathe and I know that his fever is higher. Please, Master Rowen, I know that these people need your help, but so does Loki."

Rowen glanced to Odin, his lips straight in a tight grimace. After a moment he pulled his medical bag from the horse and called Freya to him from where she had been packing another horse before going in to follow his instructions with Loki.

"Yes, Master Rowen?"

"I need to ask a great deal from you, Freya, but I believe you're ready for it."

Thor felt a small relief as the healer explained that he needed Freya to take over for him in the south. He explained in detail many kinds of wounds that she should expect and how to handle them. She took the information in, soaking it up like a sponge and nodding. Finally, when he'd finished, he turned his attention to the waiting king. "My lord-"

Odin held a hand up to stop him. "You go where you are needed," he echoed the earlier words. He glanced to his son, but neither said a word as the Allfather mounted his horse to leave for the fires in the south.

Rowen worked tirelessly with Loki who had slipped back into unconsciousness, his fever spiking and he seemed to fight against demons in his dreams, only settling when his brother was near.

More times than not, Thor and Frigga stood to the side, watching as Rowen mixed potions, fill the tub with ice water, ease the younger prince into it, and then take him out again. He repeated the actions several times, the hours stretching on until he finally sank tiredly into a chair in the corner.

"He feels a little cooler," Thor offered from his place with his younger brother leaned up against him.

"I won't be comfortable saying that his fever is breaking until it has," the healer murmured.

It seemed an endless repetition to Thor. Loki's fever would lower, and then just as they thought it would break, it would spike again and leave him curled and shivering. Days past in this way, the blond prince only leaving his beother's side out if necessity, and each time that he was forced to he would hear a small sound follow him, a not-quite-awake mumbling of his name and often he would return to try to sooth him into an easier sleep once more.

He wasn't sure the exact time of day as he'd lost track of them in the pattern that they had fallen into, but it felt like morning when he woke, finding green eyes staring at him in a clearer fashion than he had seen in some time. Thor blinked, sleep still clinging to him, and when he realized it wasn't a dream a smile broke out across his face. He reached a large hand forward, cupping the side of Loki's face and finding it cool.

"I feel like I've been sleeping a while," the younger prince said, his voice rough from disuse.

"A while," Thor agreed, barely able to contain his excitement. It only took a moment before he gave into it and took hold of his younger, pulling him into a crushing embrace.

To Loki's credit, he did not squirm away, but instead simply shifted so that he could make eye contact again. "What happened?" he asked seriously.

"The swimming trip did not go as well as we'd thought."

"Ah," his brother answered. "How long have I been out?"

"A week, perhaps? It's difficult to say,"

Loki looked ready with a quip over Thor's short term memory, but he seemed to realize what he meant. "Have you been here the whole time?"

The blond nodded and his brother felt a large arm move protective around him again. He forced himself to stay still, just as Thor had, apparently, done for him in the past few days. He had a hard time picturing the thunderer lying around all day with him when he himself was not injured or ill, but the stiffness of his movements validated that there was no amount of exaggeration on Thor's part.

"Mother's been here as well," Thor offered when Loki had gone quiet. "We've been worried."

"I'm sorry to have worried you," Loki said softly.

The door opened and Friggs slipped in, eyes instantly lighting up at the sight of of both boys on the bed awake and speaking clearly. She seemed to barely touch the floor as she moved over, taking a seat on the edge next to Loki and smiling at the coolness if his skin. She leaned over, pressing a kiss to his brow. "Hello, my sweet boy."

Loki shifted, Thor finally releasing him as he pushed himself up carefully on shaky arms. He sat still for a moment, collecting himself. He hasn't realized just how much it had taken out of him. When the moment had passed he turned to look at his mother, his eyes sharp as ever and she could see the questions there before he spoke. "I don't understand it," he said at last. "I've never met another person in Asgard so affected by the heat as I am. Surely Master Rowen was able to isolate-"

Frigga offered a strained smile, touching his cheek. "He has always said is an oddity, my dear."

"But if we could find out what causes the oddity I could certainly find a spell or a charm to counter it," the young sorcerer said thoughtfully.

"There is not a charm or spell for everything," his mother answered quietly.

"Yes, but-"

Her sigh stopped him, a strained expression washing over her. "There is not an answer to everything in the worlds, my love."

Loki shot her a look to say he didn't believe she meant that for a moment. She had always encouraged him to study and search for any answers that he did not have readily available to him. She had tried to install the same curiosity in Thor as well, but it seemed his attention span was too short and his younger brother too willing to explain so that he did not often bother with the searching as Loki did. Her words did not make sense to him, but in the end her younger son decided that perhaps his mind was not fully back up to speed and he filed it away in his memory to approach the subject later.

Frigga kissed him again. "Your father has returned today," she told them both.

Loki tilted his head, trying to remember if he had known Odin to have left.

"Then everything is well?" Thor asked.

Their mother nodded. "I will send him in to you after I speak with him. I dare say he'll want to see you feeling so much better."

Neither boy mentioned that her words didn't match her tone and Loki thought that he must have missed more as he slept than he realized.

He had sent a servant ahead to let Frigga know the moment that he arrived, with full detail that after ten terrible days the fires were contained enough that he had been able to return. At the end of the dictation he made sure that the servant had known to ask after his second son's health.

But the servant did not return, instead the quiet sound of Frigga's footsteps in the hallway alerted the Allfather of her coming. Odin's exhaustion won him no favour in his wife's eyes and he felt her judgment fall heavily against him as she approached.

"How is he?"

Frigga stopped directly in front of him. She had never been intimidated by the power, and that had been one of the many qualities that had originally attracted Odin to her. She had always spoken her mind and was often the voice of reason amongst that grounded him. If he let her.

It was the moments when he did not let her that he often regretted the most.

She swung out at him, hand striking against his bearded cheek hard enough to leave a mark. "I hope you're proud of your tangled web, Odin Borson, because for you I've lied to one of the few people that should always hear the truth from my mouth."

Odin did not move and she took his silence as listening.

"Mark my words, the older he gets, the further this terrible trench of lies is dug. There will be a day when he finds out and it won't be from us, then have you thought what that will do? What does a child think when he is lied to all of his years? He questions everything!"

The Allfather remained silent until he knew she was done. "And that is my burden to worry over. I have my reasons, you know this. I wish to keep him safe, as I have since the moment that I first held him."

"All your protections have done nothing! He only just-"

The halls were empty, but Odin lowered his voice anyway. "And if it were to get out? Do you think that the men who lost brothers, the women that lost their husbands, our boys' friends who may have even lost parents to that terrible war... Do you think they would treat him kindly? Do you think that, all forbid, anything ever happened to Thor after my end that they would let Loki sit on the throne with that knowledge?

"So you have made your decision on that."

Odin gave a frustrated growl. "I know you have never thought me as kind to our second son as to our first, and I will admit to often being at a loss to understanding him, though you never seem to be." He paused, reaching out to her in a pleading manner. "But I love him and... I ask that you trust me that I have his interest in mind."

"I hate lying to him," she said in a deflated tone.

"Then say nothing of it and give him your love as you always have. I will deal with the consequences if they ever should need dealing with. Now how is he?"

"Better. He woke this morning with his fever finally broken."

"That long? It is a good thing that Rowen stayed after all."

"Thor never left his side."

Odin did not miss the pride in her voice. He remembered a long-ago fear when he had first brought Loki home. She'd thought that Thor might not take well to a new baby brother, but the devotion between them had grown, and even though they squabbled often they were, in the end, inseparable when it counted.

"His brother needed him," the Allfather said as they stepped into the hallway and towards the healing room Loki was in. He pushed open the door to see his eldest standing in the middle of the room, arms flying in some spectacular display of a story, and Loki sitting up in the bed, still pale and worn in appearance, but laughing heartily at his brother. Both sets of eyes turned.

"Father!" Loki called, looking a bit sheepish at the outburst seconds after it had left his lips.

Odin smiled at him and the embarrassment seemed to wash away as he approached, motioning for Loki to make room and he sat on the edge of the bed. Thor seemed hesitant at first, but he rarely was known for holding a grudge long. He landed on the end of the bed, all his pent up energy from the week and a half of quiet and worry bubbling over.

"Thor said something had happened that you had to see to urgently."

Odin found those green eyes that he knew well studying him, but he decided that the dark haired prince seemed to know little about it. "Yes, it's taken care of now." He glanced at Frigga who was watching with guarded approval. "I hurried home as quickly as my duties allowed. How are you feeling, son?"

"Better. I think perhaps the swimming trip was taken in poor judgement."

Odin's words that he had begun to speak just before he'd left rattled around in his memory, as did his ill son's reaction to them and he wondered if perhaps he had, looking at the expression that the youth wore now, somehow left an imprint of disappointment over the actions in his mind. He reached up, finding it strange that though his boys were reaching adulthood that his hand could seem so large next to his youngest, and ruffled dark hair in a rare display of affection. "I'd rather us worry about making sure you are fully well than dwelling on what cannot be changed."

Loki smiled at this, more at ease with the words. Odin did not rush to leave, but stayed, speaking with his children until his youngest drifted off to sleep and his eldest eased himself off the bed, far too restless to stay put. Their father, though, did not move right away, but sat and watched the dark haired prince even as he felt Frigga's thin hand on his shoulder.

"He needs this, you know. He needs to know you care."

"Of course I care," Odin replied gruffly. "Isn't that the discussion we had on our way here?"

Frigga smiled and kissed his cheek, the one she had reddened some hours before. "Loki is not Thor, my love. He must hear it from time to time. He must see it. He won't simply assume."

The king of Asgard let out a long breath through his nose and settled in to stay a while longer.

END

A/N: One shot, four-shot... You know. It happens. =)

Many thanks to all of you awesome reviewers and readers. I'm hoping to get started on the next story soon, but it may not be until Monday. We'll see...