Shadows and Lies

Chapter 14

Thor walked into Loki's room and had to double take. Loki looked like a zombie, standing in the middle of the room, leaning a bit to one side and looking pale and almost green. It didn't help that his neck was bleeding.
"What happened to you?" Thor asked, gong over to make him sit again.
"Your guards attacked me. I didn't want to sleep after that" loki said tiredly, glad to see Thor for probably the first time in several years. He knew Thor wasn't going to attack or kill him, so he didn't feel defensive.
Thor grabbed something to wipe the blood off Loki's neck and made sure the wound wasn't deep or dangerous. Thankfully it was just a surface wound, and Loki's poor state was mostly caused by his pain in his leg and lack of sleep.
"Why did you tell everyone I was here?" Loki asked. He didn't understand Thor, why would he tell anyone he was there? Now he had a target on his back.
"Loki they would've known eventually, you can't spend your whole life in this room in secret." Thor explained, cleaning out the dried blood from the cut.
"Why now though? Why not wait till I can at least defend myself?" Loki asked him, though Thor could tell he was falling asleep already.
"Because if you're going To show up at the memorial in a few days I don't want it to be a surprise, I want them to know what's coming" Thor told him. "Wait here, I'll be right back" He then got up and left to go get Katarina so she could make sure Loki was okay. He was standing when Thor came in, and Thor had no idea how long he'd been on his feet, Katarina was having him walk around for a few minutes everyday, but he could've been up for hours.
When Thor and Katarina got back loki was passed out asleep.
"One of the guards attacked him, he was up when I came in, I don't know exactly what happened so I wanted you to check him out" Thor told her. Katarina made sure that his leg hadn't been broken all over again, and she checked to make sure the cut in his neck wasn't in danger of infection.
"He's okay. There was shock in the bone in his leg, but thankfully it's healed enough so that it didn't re-break" she told Thor, taking out a syringe and injecting Loki's leg with some dark grey liquid that looked like it was alive.
"What was that?" Thor asked, he wasn't a medic, but he was still interested in what she was doing to Loki.
"Nanoparticles. That's how he's able to be without a hard cast, I inject him with constructive particles that surround the bone and help to repair it, essentially creating an internal cast." she explained, gathering her things and getting up. "He'll be fine after some sleep, it seems that most of the damage was psychological, not physical. Just don't let him walk around for a while" she told Thor, he nodded and she left the room.
Thor sat in a chair and waited for Loki to wake up, if there were murderous guards out to get loki then Thor didn't want to just leave him at their mercy.
Thor walked around the room for a few minutes, realizing that he never even threw out or went through Loki's things. Everything here was exactly the way it had been when Loki left the first time. Of course Odin just locked the door and left the rook to be forgotten when he was still alive, but once Thor became king he kept it clean and maintained, hoping Loki would be back here someday.
Thor walked over to a desk by what used to be a window, and opened one of the drawers. It wasn't even locked, why hadn't he looked at any of this stuff before? He had the old loki right here and he never bothered to find anything out about him.
He picked up a notebook and just started thumbing through it to pass time. Apparently Loki had developed a new way to generate the shields around the palace that made them faster and stronger, but before Thor could finish reading it he was interrupted.
"What are you doing?" Loki asked. Sitting up to see Thor digging through his stuff. "Why are you reading my notes?" Thor thought Loki would be mad, but he surprisingly didn't sound too angry, just a bit confused and maybe slightly tweaked.
"Sorry, I was just-" Thor didn't know how to finish that sentence. 'I was just poking into your old journals'? 'I was just being super nosy'? 'I was just digging though your stuff because I was bored'? There really wasn't a good answer, so he decided not to bother.
"Loki this design for the shields is genius, why haven't I seen it before?" They were clearly old, why hadn't Odin used them?
"Father buried them" Loki said, he didn't really care if Thor saw that stuff, none of it was sentimental or anything, they were just old ideas.
"Why?" Thor asked. Loki shrugged like the answer was blaringly obvious.
"Because I came up with it. He didn't want me one-upping you, so he buried the design. He did that a lot, he didn't want his golden boy to be overshadowed by the second favorite, so he just pretended my ideas weren't there. Even if it hurt other people... if he'd used my design I bet the dark elves wouldn't have been able to invade and-" he stopped short, but Thor knew the end of his sentence. Odin's dedication to keeping Loki in the dark was what let the dark elves kill Frigga, the only person who seemed to recognize Loki's skills.
"Well... Odin's not here now, I'm calling the shots, and I say you're a genius. I mean I always knew you were smart, but I had no idea you were this inventive. Can I keep these? I assume there's other things in here that'll help us" Thor requested. Loki was a little surprised, and couldn't help but feel an ounce of pride. His inventions and designs were going to be put to good use. By Thor, who had basically been his idol all growing up.
"Um... yeah. Sure, whatever, I'm not using them" he said back.
"Great, thank you. I'm going to figure out who attacked you, until then I've got Fandral and Hogun keeping surveillance to make sure you aren't attacked again" Thor said, heading to leave so Loki could have some space, as Thor knew he liked.
"I can't go to the memorial" Loki said as thor was about to open the door. Thor turned back around, Loki could see the disappointment Thor was trying to hide.
"I'm sorry, but I just can't. The guards tried to kill me? What do you think the people are going to do? And even if I wasn't in physical danger I don't- I mean you're holding the evidence of Odin being a terrible person. He was so intent on keeping me from having any glory that he let mother be murdered. How can I go to something to honor a man like that?" Thor nodded. though he still looked disappointed, he also did understand Loki's perspective. Odin didn't know that keeping loki in the dark would get Frigga killed, obviously, but Thor understood why Loki held such strong hate for Odin. Odin was a terrible, terrible father.
"Alright... I'll tell the council you need more time to heal, hopefully they take it well" Thor said diplomatically. He knew it was just going to cause more problems, they were expecting to see Loki, the people were expecting to see Loki, and now Loki was suddenly not going to be there. This was the condition the council put on forgiving Loki (or at least being more lenient with him) and Loki was passing it up.
"I gather that causes a lot of issues for you" Loki inquired, half hoping Thor would say it was no big deal. But he got just about the opposite.
"Yeah pretty much. But it's alright, I'm getting used to arguing with them about you. Hopefully showing then your designs will convince them that you're still willing to give up helpful Intel and they won't try to take me off the throne" Thor said with a slight sigh.
"Come on Thor, you must've been expecting this. Did you really think I'd end up going? You can't be surprised" Loki asked. Thor  nodded and shrugged slightly.
"I was holding out hope, but I though you'd probably not go for it. I'm not surprised, just a little bit disappointed" he said  "Try to get some rest" he added, then just left.
Loki felt a sadly familiar pit in his stomach. He didn't really care much about his physical safety, he could handle whatever was thrown at him. No, the pit in his stomach came from something else; he hadn't cared about what Thor thought of him for so long, but suddenly he did, suddenly he was disappointed with himself for disappointing Thor.