Chapter 25
"Tell me about what happened in Midgard." Loki confronted him before he could leave the balcony. Thor swore in his head.
"Perhaps we should ask the…"
"Stop coddling me! I need to know. You won't talk about it and I'm starting to wonder if maybe we weren't on the same side." Thor looked as if he had been struck, and Loki pushed harder. "I have eyes and ears, brother. And I've begun retaining the things I experience in the seizures, if you hadn't noticed. Is it not better to tell me the truth than let me snoop and speculate on the fragments?"
That worked. Thor sank down on the nearest couch, looking pained. "You are right. The truth is better than the horror stories the mind invents." He paused, considering how to begin. "You are also right that we did not fight for the same side. I do not believe it was by choice on your part though." Loki cocked his head. "During one of your seizures you remembered creatures wanting to torture and make a toy of you if you did not please them. That was news to all of us, so it had to have happened after you disappeared. We believe that they forced you to fight for them, by whatever means."
"What happened."
"The humans had found one of our stolen relics and were trying to use it for a power source. You appeared through a portal opened by it, and stole it and used an unfamiliar magic to bend some of its guards to your will. A group of humans with extraordinary powers and myself were called together to try to get it back and stop the plots in which you were involved. You were… not yourself. The madness we had seen here paled in comparison. I do not know what they did to you to break your mind so fully. But the army that came with you may have been those same creatures that wanted to torture you. They were savage twisted gray things in a sort of armor that none of us had ever seen before."
Loki nodded tightly, a vague picture of a creature like that standing over him tickling at the back of his mind. "I think that…very possible."
"There was much damage, but we defeated them and returned the tesseract to where it belonged and I brought you home."
"I am sorry for the damage I have done." Loki's voice shook and he tried to blink back tears. "I know I can never truly right the wrongs I have done in my madness, but is there anything I can do to help make things better?"
Thor came and knelt before his seat, cupping his brother's cheek in one huge hand and brushing away the tears that escaped with his thumb. "I will visit my Midgardian friends and find out. You are a good man, brother. I know that you would never have done any of those things in your right mind."