Some evenings, Thor was able to forget that Loki had ever been.

While his ascension to Asgard's throne was indefinitely postponed, the God of Thunder found himself to be King in all but formal title following the sentencing of the war criminal Loki. Perhaps testing him, perhaps distracting him, or perhaps both, Odin provided Thor with a barrage of duties daily. The hurdles set before him ranged in nature from manual to political, and they were seemingly never-ending. He took their bait, throwing himself into the work with determination and gratitude for the occupation of a mind that was tormented when allowed to idle.

Come nightfall, the kingdom provided plenty of diversions to anyone who sought them, and Odin's heir accepted what was on offer – a fight, a flask, a frenzied tumble in unfamiliar bedchambers, or all three at once. Busying his every waking moment until he fell into black slumber helped to keep still an overactive imagination. As time had passed, distancing him from the melee on Midgard and the horror of Loki's trial in the days following their return, Thor had even found some occasional success at being alone in his bed while the kingdom slept and pretending that he had never been a brother to anyone at all.

Some evenings, he fooled himself. Some evenings, he was the only son of the Allfather. Some evenings, nothing raven-haired and rose-lipped had ever slept beneath his arm on childhood hunts, clutched his hand in a darkened wood, danced with him at banquets, murmured secrets into his ear, tried to end him atop Stark Tower. Some evenings, he could detach himself entirely from all that Loki had ever been, all that he was and was not now, what might become of him in the years to follow. Some evenings, Thor felt nothing.

This was no such night.

It was a familiar compulsion: A nameless, faceless tongue of his own making tickled Thor's ear and told him to go to the black towers. Hidden away from the splendor and brilliance, hidden from view of even the stars, they were Asgard's ugliest truth, jutting crookedly from the depths of a frigid moat. The structures resembled a row of jagged teeth, moss-covered and windowless. As children, Loki had once insisted they take a horse and ride to see the towers, and they had stood at the edge of the water, gazing on them with morbid fascination.

"Take my hand, I'm frightened!" Loki reached for Thor, gripping three of his brother's fingers against his own palm.

"I'm not." Thor squeezed his younger brother's hand, puffing out his chest. "And you should not be frightened, either. We are princes of Asgard. And we have done no wrong."

"If you are very wicked," Loki whispered, "Father sends you here to be tortured."

Thor sat up in his bed and pressed the heels of his hands against the sockets of his eyes, his brow furrowed. The clarity of his memories tonight was crippling, and the irony of this particular recollection was not lost on him. Loki had been very wicked. And Odin had sent him to the towers to be tortured.

Standing stoic at his trial, his brother muzzled and staring at the floor, Thor had still harbored a red and righteous anger. He had believed at his core that Loki deserved to be punished. But when the sentence had been spoken aloud, neither he nor Loki had been prepared for its severity. No commonplace misdeeds and trivialities were punishable by time spent in captivity there; warriors committed to the clutches of those towers were legendary evil.

Thor knew, even now, that days of torture stacked on end, nights providing no reprieve, could reduce man to animal in far less time than Loki had already passed in those towers. He knew that if he stood from the bed and reached for his clothes, his cape, all the days and nights he had spent resisting the urge to do this very thing would be lost. He knew he would be seen by Heimdall and Odin would inevitably find out that he had gone to Loki's side.

"You know there is a chance that even the Mighty Thor is unprepared for what will be found there." So many nights before, that last actuality had been the one to stop him, to force his head back to the pillow and put this madness to rest, but not tonight. Tonight, it was too late. He was on his feet and in his clothes, striding through the corridor holding Mjolnir, by the time it drifted into his mind.

A nameless horse beneath him, one whose absence no one would question, Thor ran the beast hard over the blue moonscape of the sleeping Asgardian countryside. The wind tangled his own mane and that of the barebacked creature he rode, brisk and cool against his face. As he ascended into the hills, the strength of the gusting increased to such a force that Thor wondered if some higher power weren't trying to send him back into the city.

The terrain grew steep as he drew nearer to his destination, became less favorable, less passable, the grass giving way to gravel that slid beneath his steed's hooves. The glory of Asgard loomed behind them in slumber as Thor negotiated his ascent, and he could smell the clay in the moat now, deep and unforgivingly cold. Torches rose up, tall and spindly, from the water surrounding the towers to illuminate them, and a flood of nausea rolled through Thor when he dismounted and looked on them properly for the first time in years. What must Loki have been thinking upon seeing them again? His own voice was strained in his ears as he murmured the words aloud to a brother who surely could not hear him, "How have we come to this?"

Unsure of whether to expect a welcome or a battle, he made no attempts at disguising himself from the armed guards manning the drawbridge. If Odin had given them orders to send him away, Thor would fight them and they would lose.

"Who goes there?" one of the men shouted into the night. By the flicker of torchlight, Thor could barely make out his face.

"Thor Odinson goes here. Let down the bridge; I wish to see my brother."

It seemed Odin had given no orders prohibiting Thor from visiting Loki. The heavy wooden bridge creaked as it dropped through the darkness and shuddered to a stop against the bank. Tethering the horse to a dead tree, Thor crossed in broad strides.

"You will find him on the second floor." The burly redheaded guard's brow was furrowed as the prince approached him, undoubtedly concerned about the purpose of this visit and to whom Thor pledged his allegiance. "We have only obeyed the king's orders, sir."

Pausing beside him, the God of Thunder lifted his hand to the guard's shoulder. The man flinched as though preparing for a painful impact, then relaxing when Thor only gave him a gentle squeeze, reassuring him:

"I was present when they were given. I mean you no harm."

The stairs were stone, broad and flat, and the way was lit by candles in alcoves on either side. Thor had never passed through these halls before, did not know what to expect from the tower's interior. It was not as formidable as the exterior; the stones were clean, the walls dark but pleasant enough. And yet, it was very cold. He could smell the sweat and fear of its inhabitants, could smell a mingled tang of blood and urine. Somewhere, high in the tower on a distant level, a man was weeping. The hollow choking sound of his sobs echoed through the stairwell.

"Kill me, I beg of you," came an unfamiliar voice that matched the crying. "Let there be an end."

Thor made a tight line of his lips as he wondered whether the men stationed here had broken Loki. Had his brother ever cried these tears of hopeless despair? Had he been made to plead for mercy, to wish for death? Did he not deserve it, if he had?

There were three heavy wooden doors off the second story landing. Of the three, only one had been appointed sentinels, and Thor knew at once that this was the door containing the God of Mischief. Both posted men bowed in acknowledgment of the prince's presence, and Thor mirrored the gesture. In their expressions, he read the same wariness he'd seen in the eyes of the man downstairs.

"Brothers, let me pass. You need fear no vengeance."

No further persuasion proved necessary. The men opened the door to Loki's chamber and, like a programmed machine, Thor stepped numbly over the threshold. Behind him, the lock's latch clicked into place as the door was shut once more. For what felt like an eternity, his blue gaze remained rooted on his boots, and he was incapable of looking for the dread of what he might see.

"Grant me strength," he breathed, words barely audible even to his own ears, and he lifted his head at last to look upon his younger brother. In an instant, Thor was awash in memory and struggling to stay upright.

"Look at me, Thor!" Chin tucked to his chest, hair damp from swimming, Loki swung from an outstretched branch, having climbed up dizzyingly high in nothing but his undershorts and worked his way out onto the limb, small pink hands gripping it tight, legs dangling in the breeze. Thor stood in the long grass below and smiled with a mixture of fear and wonder, hand shading his eyes from the sun.

"Come down from there, you little fool!" he called, up into the golden afternoon air.

"I can go higher than this!" Loki was smiling, the black fringe of his eyelashes fanned out across alabaster cheeks as he struggled to see his older brother down on the ground. "You look no bigger than my toe!"

"The higher you climb, the further you'll fall!"

"The further you'll fall," he whispered those final words into the present-day gloom, echoing with his child-self.

Arms over his head, chin to his chest, hanging well above the ground in his underclothes, inky curls damp where they rested against his forehead and his face, the adult Loki's current positioning was a cruel mimicry of the boy Loki's giddy swinging in Thor's memory. Steel cuffs had rubbed and cut his wrists raw, the blood there blackened, fresh claret running rivulets down his diminished arms to pool in the hollows of his collarbone and the base of his throat. His ribs were countable one by one, brow furrowed and eyes closed, legs hanging slack. The bones in his hips jutted prominently against his skin, the muslin underpants he wore all but transparent thanks to cold sweat.

There was no glow about Loki, no warmth, no strength; Odin had taken his power from him and it was visibly clear that it had not been restored. This hanging mortal man was a mere shadow of the prideful villain who had brought such destruction upon Midgard, and Thor could not begin to reconcile what he saw before him with the vibrance and beauty of the brother he had always loved so well.

No one deserves this, Thor thought, swallowing hard over the knot in his throat, struggling to breathe past it. So many nights, he had lain awake wondering how Loki was faring, convincing himself he deserved to be punished, needed to be humiliated and tormented to show him the error of his ways. Even now, standing faced with the concrete reality, Thor knew there were many Midgardians mourning brothers, sons, wives, mothers thanks to Loki's madness.

But had The Other not orchestrated that? How much fault could be attributed to Kept in this windowless cage, bruised and lashed and cut into, sleeping while he hung like meat on a hook, his muscles wasted and leaving him gaunt, stretched thin, ruined. It was difficult for Thor to see justice in this any longer. It was difficult for him to see anything at all, apart from what he could do to make things immediately better for the brother he still loved, after all.

Loki smelled awful, like sick and sweat and blood, but Thor cared nothing of it. Stepping in on shaking legs, face wet with tears, he put his arms carefully around the damp and sticky body he had embraced so many times, lifting just marginally, just enough to take the weight from Loki's wrists. The prisoner jolted awake as his limbs shifted, sucking in a haggard breath and going wide-eyed, trying to make sense of what was being done to him next.

"Fear nothing, Loki. It is only me." Thor looked up into the other man's face, into oceanic eyes swimming with confusion and self-doubt while tears gathered there, as rife with conflict as they had ever been.

"I have had this dream before and it is never real." Loki's words were hoarse whispers from a parched throat, his tongue thick in his mouth. "Go away. Leave me."

"It is real, Loki. I am as real as you are." Thor kissed his brother's cheek, allowing the younger prince to feel the warmth of his breath, the evidence of his truth. The rigid resistance left Loki then, and he collapsed for that moment into the much larger man's embrace, choking on a series of short, pained sobs and dropping his head to Thor's shoulder, limp with heartbroken relief.

But the keepers of the tower had not broken his spirit entirely; only seconds later, the stunned crying gave way to a snarl and Loki attempted to twist his body away from Thor's arms, lashed out at him with bare feet and tried to kick him.

"Let go of me! I need nothing of your pity! Get out!"

It was a pathetic display. Weak by even human standards, his efforts were certain futile when matched against the strength of Asgard's heir, and Thor kept hold of him carefully, not wanting to release him to sway again by mangled wrists.

"Be still!" Voice raised, Thor clutched him more tightly. "You are wounded, you'll make it worse."

"Have you come to gloat?" Eyes jittering, pale, Loki gave up the fight; he had nothing left in him to fight with. It was evident that his head was spinning, his equilibrium in poor practice from lack of use.

Hands at his hips, the child prince Loki Odinson stood facing the trunk of an ancient tree, breathing hard and bleeding from his knuckles in the wake of a sparring match with his older brother before the court at the Winternights festival. Dignified even in his early years, he wept but took care not to let anyone see. Thor knew, of course, and cared that his brother was distraught. He approached and wrapped his arm around Loki's shoulders, giving him a gentle squeeze.

"What are you doing here?" Loki hastily wiped at his face and stepped to the side, away from the affection. "Have you come to gloat?"

"No. I only wanted to impress Father. Fight me again and you will surely win. Of course I haven't come to gloat."

"Of course I haven't come to gloat."

"Then what? Why now, after all this time? To look upon me, to comfort yourself by seeing that I am alive?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps to comfort you, as well."

"There is no comfort for me, Thor. Do you feel better now, seeing me this way? If you want to comfort me, put your hands to my throat and squeeze hard." Loki spat the words past his teeth, eyes alive with self-hatred, with misery. "And if you haven't the courage to do that, then you have already looked upon me. Leave."

"I will not." Thor could no longer bear the intensity of his brother's gaze, and he was not prepared to weather the impassioned desire to die burning there. Instead, he pressed his whiskered cheek to a smooth one, keeping that guttingly slight body flush against his own. Perhaps in surrender of his pride, perhaps in relief, Loki yielded his struggle altogether and allowed himself to be boneless, weightless, while Thor held him. "I will not kill you. And I will not leave you."

There was a long silence, stretching on between them and filled only with their breathing. Thor knew not which words to say, and so said nothing. It was Loki who finally broke the quiet with a murmur: "Then what will you do?"

"I do not know."