Until that night - Chapter 2 - "A song from nowhere"
A/N: Well then, here we are. I know exactly the kind of thing I wrote, and I just had to. Needed to. Wanted to. Because this is how I feel them. I’m really happy with it, I like it so much I even cried while I was writing.
Hope you like it as well.
Oh, and I literally spit my blood on it, so plz don’t be too merciless with me. ;)
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Title: Until that night
Author: rollina
Fandom: Thor (Marvel’s movie), The Avengers (Marvel’s movie)
Chapter: 2/3 - A song from nowhere (words: 3626)
Rating: R
Pairing: Thor/Loki
Genre/Warning: OOC, slash, angst, torture, rape, H/C, OTP
Summary: Loki should have seen that coming.
Chapter 2. A song from nowhere
When Thor woke up, the huge boulder weighing directly on his head made him feel as he had been asleep since centuries after the worst bender in his life. Eyes still closed, he stretched his arm at his side, smelling his brother’s scent.
Loki wasn’t there.
Clumsily, Thor sat up with a grunt, scratched his head and scrolled it, trying to drive that annoying ache away. Too much sex tonight, he thought. Again. And chuckled to himself.
He blinked, his sight dim, trying to focus on the side of the bed where his little brother fell asleep in his arms a few hours earlier. Or well, maybe more than a few.
But Loki wasn’t there.
“Loki?” As he put his feet down on the floor and stood up, the room kind of turned upside down, he staggered and almost lost his balance. “What the…” Regaining self-mastery, he took a wide look all around in the room. “Loki, are you there?”
No answer.
Thor stretched his body, a bit puzzled, a lot more hungry, then his eyes fell on the pool room’s door left ajar. He giggled.
“Don’t you dare having a bath without asking me to join! Loki?”
No answer.
He jumped through the door, the biggest smile ever on his face.
“…Loki?”
His smile vanished.
Loki. Wasn’t. There.
A few hours earlier. Or maybe more than a few. Days, perhaps.
Time just went blurry when the deep, warm night on Asgard caught them both and walked them gently into sleep, locked together in the most peaceful and fulfilled embrace.
Quite oddly, a while before falling asleep Loki found himself thinking of how their bond had grown unique, exclusive and invaluable day by day since the first night. Something he never ever had a taste of in his whole life, something so outstanding and gratifying and at the same time so instinctive that he often couldn’t help being astonished. Something so new and unexpected that, almost without realizing it, he started believing things could actually change for him, eventually. Thor made him forget his old self, and think of himself as someone… different, someone… sincerely good. Maybe even discover his true self was actually that, and not the Master of Tricks, not the God of Mischief.
That wasn’t just… love, at least not in the same acceptation that tiny mortal creatures were used to; that was so much more, unspeakable, blended with magic and deity… it savoured unworldly. And yet it was so uniquely… intimate. He and Thor really didn’t need anyone else now, now they really were simply enough to each other, as they became fatally addicted to each other, and the way they now perfectly, purely knew that was amazing.
It came spontaneous sharing feelings, thoughts, concern and laughs, and surprisingly enough Loki didn’t feel so often the urge to cover up the deepest issues, and even less to lie on them; in fact, things were weirdly turning the other way around.
They had a few secret places elected all over Asgard, where they got used to hide, to talk and cuddle for hours, to play childish games, to have fun practicing their skills, or just to lay down silently, looking at the stars; and at the end, every time, to make love until they were consumed. Had it just been possible, they’d never stopped having sex even for a minute, every hour in every day of every week. Being close, or even being in the same room just smirking at each other was enough to turn them up, anytime, anywhere, no matter who was around. If there was a template of ultimate perfection in making love in the Nine Realms and further, that was theirs and theirs only; they were redefining from scratch the meaning and borders of desire and fulfilment, in a way no-one - not even the two of them - could put into words. A way that laid just… beyond. And that was Loki’s last though that night, while closing his eyes on Thor’s cheek.
Thor grabbed Mjolnir and rushed out of the room, while a sort of shady sensation started spreading under his skin, preventing him from thinking clearly. They came to learn - he and Loki - to perceive each other’s presence even when they weren’t in the same place, a sort of inner and superior bond linked to Loki’s uncanny skills - at least that was Thor’s explanation for such a remarkable thing. Now, no matter how hard he tried to concentrate, he couldn’t feel anything. He walked faster, and almost didn’t see someone coming across and speaking to him along the wide corridor - Fandral, maybe? -: “Hey buddy, at last! Bet you had some very pleasant days locked up in that room, didn’t you? We were wondering if you both would ever get out!”
Thor went on with no answer, dazed, days? What are you talking about, what do you mean, days?
Unable to manage the nagging feeling growing inside him, he searched every corner in the palace and every hideaway of theirs on Asgard, yet knowing in advance he wouldn’t find him.
A few hours earlier. Or maybe more than a few. Days, perhaps. Days.
But still that night.
Loki woke up all of a sudden, eyes wide opened, as the almost forgotten sensation of a devastating chill shook his body deeply into his bones.
He shuddered, instinctively focusing his mind on gathering all of his powers.
And he smelled them.
“…No.”
A leaden, unnatural darkness bore heavily on the room, catching him in an invisible grip, his breath got faster and his heart exploded in a silent outburst of rage, as he saw his own nails starting to turn darker and the skin on his fingers, his hands, his arms slowly change colour into a more and more intense shade of blue.
“No!”
At his side, Thor was still snoring, unmoving, unaware. He was just nearby, skin to skin, and yet Loki had the hunch he was parted from his own dimension by an unseen, impervious barrier.
And then he felt them.
Before the enormous shapes began to take form right at the foot of the bed, cloaked in a frosty mist, he felt them, and realized they had casted on everything in that room the most powerful spell he could ever imagine.
There were four of them. And their leader - he recognized him at once, Ymir, the mightiest of all sorcerers on Jotunheim - sneered at him, penetrating his soul with his frozen red eyes.
“Son of Laufey,” Ymir chuckled. “Finally, your time has come.”
As he tried teleporting, Loki suddenly felt a violent hit of energy running through his whole body, tearing all his strength out in a second and banging him roughly from his bed against the wall.
He tried to get his magic spear from the corner he threw it over weeks before.
He tried to move against them the first objects he could think of.
He tried to regain his mental powers to block them.
No way.
He realized he couldn’t even speak anymore. His sight was growing dim. Everything around was getting darker. And darker. And darker.
And at that point, such an unusual, almost unknown feeling to him, Loki was… scared.
In Ymir’s huge hand, a small sphere of light was now pulsating faintly. Loki could still see it, and he understood instantly: as instantly as the porcelain castles he was by then so used to dream of fell all apart in ruins.
“Your dull tricks will not work against the power of Jotunheim,” Ymir snarled on his breathlessness.
In a livid, frozen air Loki glanced at Thor while the shadows were falling darker all around, oh please, wake up, please, I need you, but Thor wasn’t moving, caught in that incantation, looking like he was peacefully lost in the most wonderful dream of all.
Ymir grinned, a hoarse, creepy grin that spiked Loki directly through his soul.
“Do not rely on your… how should I call him? Your… Asgardian concubine? He will not wake up for days.”
The giant got closer to him and reached out his hand carrying the light, now throbbing feebler, at the very front of Loki’s sight that was slowly fading into darkness.
“Look at yourself, son of Laufey, as long as you can. This is what is left of you.”
And he clenched his fist, ruthlessly, thoroughly around that last drop of life, annihilating it.
Everything in Loki’s mind went black, he could just hear him saying “Take him.”, and then… nothing.
Heimdall, Thor though at the end. If there was someone on Asgard who had the power to see whoever was getting in or out of the Realm at any moment, that was Heimdall. And even if it occurred to him that Loki could have yielded again to his dark side and plotted some new trick, Thor wasn’t actually able to think his little brother had disappeared on purpose. He just felt it was wrong.
“You’re looking for your brother,” Heimdall stated as he saw Thor at the gates of the Bifrost. “He’s not here anymore.” He didn’t let Thor even open his mouth. “It had to be a most powerful spell to keep me unaware. And you asleep, until now that I have been able to wake you up. It was three days ago.”
Three days before.
Darkness.
Ice against his skin, under his back. Tied.
Unable to defend. Unable to move. Unable to think. Unable to see.
His arms tightened over his head. His wrists aching. Pulsing. His mouth locked by a frozen muzzle. A million cold needles stinging his lips and freezing his tongue.
Their smell. Their presence. The rough sound of their breath.
I should have seen this coming, he thought in a blink of clarity.
Cold. Void. Pain. Darkness.
Everything ran so fast. From that wondrous first night, when he and Thor walked the first step into the lands of absolute mutual belonging, from the brightness of his brother’s hug, from the golden illusion of a new way of living… to that end. To that unavoidable end.
“You betrayed us all, son of Laufey. Time to pay for it.”
Weakness. Ultimate weakness.
Loki had never felt so powerless in his life, and he had never been. So drained. So helpless.
He had not strength enough even to ask himself how.
He was simply aware it was over.
“We took your magic sight, we obliterated your powers. So easy. Now learn what pain is really like, without your healing capabilities.”
Thor…, he muttered in his mind, and it sounded to him just as the echo of a severed memory.
The first stroke hit him by surprise, directly on his chest, he felt the cold burning of his skin ripping, smelled his own blood, cried silently, appalled by a kind of pain he had never experienced before.
Lost.
“He will not come for you.”
Thor got lost in a whirl, three days? “…What?” How… what do you mean, spell? Are you saying it was him who…?
“No,” Heimdall said on his thoughts, and his face didn’t reveal any emotion. “It was them. They opened an interdimensional passageway. They took him.”
Thor gritted his teeth.
“…where.”
Heimdall’s blank eyes fixed inscrutable in his, while he spelled that name.
“Jotunheim.”
Despair. Revulsion. Emptiness.
Loki lost count of hours, of days. His body still strained, every single muscle in his arms so atrociously tense and hurting he was sure his joints were about to snap.
And Thor was not coming. “He will not come for you”. Probably, he never would. He was trapped into that magic sleep. Perhaps even forever.
He didn’t listen to the charges they flung at him. He wasn’t even reacting any longer to the dozens cold strokes they inflicted to his body with their frozen blades, for hours, for days. And when he peed himself under the blows he almost felt relieved. Blood dropping into his eyes, on his face, on his neck, his head burning, his whole body throbbing in pain at any smallest move. Pain. Pain? Pain was the last issue. Pain was already part of his new state of being. Pain, and blood, and exhaustion, and the sore blurring of his mind.
Darkness was the real dreadful thing. Not just a physical darkness. An utter, boundless, shouting darkness that was the eternal metaphor to his existence, now extinguishing the very last sparkle of life still trembling in the deepest corner of his soul. And in that final sigh of light, the only one thought still able to hurt him to tears. Thor was not coming.
But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. How could he even think things could actually turn different? No change could have ever been real in his shattered life. Not his hopes, not his love. No place to belong to. No escape from what he really was, because that was the one and only reality meant for him.
It would have been so sweet.
To die.
“Do not beg for death, little slut,” the shadow of Ymir’s voice said in the blackness. “You will not be so lucky.”
An endless, clear, burning universe of rage took the place of confusion inside Thor’s mind and body, and a big part of that rage was against his own self. There was one most vital thing in his life, there had always been since his childhood, and now more than ever: he inwardly vowed himself to protect his little brother with his own life, no matter what. From the nightmares that haunted his sleep, from the monsters he tried to cast away so many times, from the madness that so many times put his life in jeopardy. And - even if several times in the past Thor himself was forced to do that against his own will - from any possible harm. Almost unconsciously at first, then more and more wittingly, and now giving him the very wholeness of his deepest loyalty.
Whereas, he failed him.
“Heimdall, open the Bifrost,” he growled. “And take me there.”
Hours elapsed. Days. Aeons, perhaps.
Almost incapable of keeping his brain awaken and not even sensitive to his own body anymore, Loki was drifting himself away in the darkness, quietly, hoping to be finally swallowed forever.
There was a song, whispering through the fog in his mind, from nowhere. A sweet, sad song he didn’t remember where or when he heard for the first time. “Being silent, they scream…”, that song said. “Save me, and you’ll be saved.” It spread wider and wider, filling every blank space, so softly and calming he just let himself float on the melody, wearily smiling inside at the idea he’d loved to sing it for Thor. How… odd.
Then, from the Kingdom of Non-life, again came the voices, harshly crumbling his deadly reverie.
“Your punishment is not over.”
And together with them, the final shame arrived.
“You had good times with your Asgardian princess, didn’t you.”
Loki gulped a gasp down in his throat, because in a short lucid moment he realized.
“Now try us.”
He trembled slightly, that was the only thing he had still strength enough for. “Us”. How many “us” there were, he could just guess. Many. A scary thought. And yet not the scariest. Tears merged with blood in his eyes. Until then, he never even thought to stoop so low as to plead them. But now, if he could talk, he would have begged for mercy. Not for himself. For Thor. For the safe of the only one unspoiled memory he had left. And if mercy had been death, he would have welcomed her.
Why?, he cried ruefully inside himself, for he perfectly knew he’d never find a way out from that nightmare. I do not even deserve to just… die and spare… this?
“You do not deserve anything. And you will take back to Asgard a little gift from those who rule you.”
Loki couldn’t see, or get the hidden meaning behind those words. While he desperately tried to grab the string of that song back, he just felt two ferocious, cold hands splaying his legs roughly, and then the first of them thrust into him like a beast, ripping his body apart in blood.
“Save me, and you’ll be saved.”
Under the frozen muzzle, his scream was so loud and harrowing that even the stars above shivered in anguish.
As Thor got there, it was like having flashes, and everything happened in a matter of seconds.
Loki was tied up to an iced cliff. Naked. Injured. Apparently passed out. Blood on his face. On his hair. On his arms, and chest, and stomach, and legs. His eyes closed. Muzzled. His skin, blue. Thor suddenly realized that was his Jotun form, which he had never seen before. Beautiful. Naked. Injured. Injured. Blood even between Loki’s legs. Injured. Tortured. Raped.
“I’ll say once” he snarled. “Release him.”
They didn’t. And there they learned what was like to unleash Thor’s wildest fury.
When finally Thor could reach Loki and set him free, he found his little brother was barely breathing. He held his head as gently as possible, to avoid adding more to the pain he was sure Loki was already suffering, why are your injures so bad? What’s wrong with your healing power? Bewildered by the mess of feelings struggling in his soul from the mix of rage, astonishment, grief, confusion… that amazing blue… those cute marks on his brother’s face and arms and chest, he could just hold Loki’s hand in his, staring at that bloodstained wonder mingled with agony. As Thor’s fingers touched him, anyway, Loki’s skin started getting clearer and those …odd marks… disappeared, returning to Thor’s eyes the smooth and pale body he was so familiar with. And when he skimmed the frozen muzzle on his brother’s mouth, sorrowful and not sure on what to do, it just thawed out and vanished, freeing Loki’s lips covered with blood, but yet intact.
“Loki… what have they done to you… open your eyes, look at me… Loki…”
The cosy sound of his voice was enough to force Loki’s eyelids to open and reveal his pupils, turning slowly back from red to green. Looking nowhere over Thor’s head, chilled, empty. Terrified.
“Thor…?”
At first, Loki was sure he was raving. Or dreaming, maybe, the last, most tender dream while he was floating down towards the death he yearned so desperately for. Worlds away, the bleary feeling of a hand, warm, holding his one from a different level of existence.
“…is that… you?”
Together with the awareness, the pain suddenly flared up and it was a terrible strain to raise his hand and grope for Thor’s face in the darkness. As he recognized him under his fingertips, he let a muffled sigh out.
“…Thor… I can’t… see you… I can’t… see.”
Thor gasped. “Wh…”
Loki’s hand grasped his hair.
“…you killed them…?”
Thor bowed his face closer to his mouth, panting, smelled his blood, his hand on his cheek, chaos in his mind, his rage still burning.
“I did.”
Loki let his arm fall back down, and rubbed his cheek against his brother’s hand, soaking warmth up from Thor’s palm as if that was the only way left to stay alive.
“…thank you.” He coughed in a grimace, a trickle of blood seeped out of his lips. “…are you… injured?”
Thor shook his head, unseen, me?, swallowing a lump of tears while looking at his little brother’s tortured body, you’re worried about me?
“No, I’m not,” he whispered, and the deep bleeding cut on his arm and the wound on his thigh weren’t actually hurting so much. He laid the softest kiss ever on the blood on Loki’s forehead, lightly stroking his hair. “Hush, little one… hush. Don’t strive. I’m here, now. I’m here.”
Thor sounded so… sweet when he called him his little one. And it felt so… sweet being his little one. But… now? After that… extreme demeaning? Turning a bit on his side, Loki tiredly curled his knees up to his chest, trying to soothe and sorely hide the stabbing pain riving him between his legs and from there all across his soul.
“… they… took my powers… and… they…” His tears drew little white lines through the blood on his face. “…I couldn’t… I couldn’t stop them.”
A sudden retch, he moaned, and threw up blood and spittle on Thor’s hand, viciously, painfully, because he couldn’t restrain that massive loathing any longer. Thor grabbed his nape, dreadfully worried, words dead in his throat; he rubbed his palm on his mouth to erase anguish together with sickness, and trying to allay his brother’s torment he warily leant his other hand on his hip… He felt Loki quiver in shame and, at the mere sight of the brutal rent screaming blood between his brother’s legs, his eyes suddenly filled with tears, while he cursed the entire Walhalla in his mind.
Loki’s breath was cold and feeble on his palm. His voice even feebler.
“Thor… I’m so… sorry.”
A choked sob, barely hold just because Loki was too weak even to cry. Thor felt the blade of that abyss of despair piercing his heart directly through Loki’s broken sigh, shut up, he thought, you’re mine, I’m yours, nothing will change that, nothing, and he nestled his brother’s head on his neck, rubbing his cheek on his hair.
“Don’t. Even. Ever.”
Then, as carefully as he could, he picked Loki up in his arms, simmering with rage and grief as his little brother wailed in pain and dropped his head on his chest, lifeless. And he ran, through the frost rain of Jotunheim, wishing to burn that entire world to ashes.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Chapter 1
Chapter 3
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Hope you like it as well.
Oh, and I literally spit my blood on it, so plz don’t be too merciless with me. ;)
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Title: Until that night
Author: rollina
Fandom: Thor (Marvel’s movie), The Avengers (Marvel’s movie)
Chapter: 2/3 - A song from nowhere (words: 3626)
Rating: R
Pairing: Thor/Loki
Genre/Warning: OOC, slash, angst, torture, rape, H/C, OTP
Summary: Loki should have seen that coming.
Chapter 2. A song from nowhere
When Thor woke up, the huge boulder weighing directly on his head made him feel as he had been asleep since centuries after the worst bender in his life. Eyes still closed, he stretched his arm at his side, smelling his brother’s scent.
Loki wasn’t there.
Clumsily, Thor sat up with a grunt, scratched his head and scrolled it, trying to drive that annoying ache away. Too much sex tonight, he thought. Again. And chuckled to himself.
He blinked, his sight dim, trying to focus on the side of the bed where his little brother fell asleep in his arms a few hours earlier. Or well, maybe more than a few.
But Loki wasn’t there.
“Loki?” As he put his feet down on the floor and stood up, the room kind of turned upside down, he staggered and almost lost his balance. “What the…” Regaining self-mastery, he took a wide look all around in the room. “Loki, are you there?”
No answer.
Thor stretched his body, a bit puzzled, a lot more hungry, then his eyes fell on the pool room’s door left ajar. He giggled.
“Don’t you dare having a bath without asking me to join! Loki?”
No answer.
He jumped through the door, the biggest smile ever on his face.
“…Loki?”
His smile vanished.
Loki. Wasn’t. There.
A few hours earlier. Or maybe more than a few. Days, perhaps.
Time just went blurry when the deep, warm night on Asgard caught them both and walked them gently into sleep, locked together in the most peaceful and fulfilled embrace.
Quite oddly, a while before falling asleep Loki found himself thinking of how their bond had grown unique, exclusive and invaluable day by day since the first night. Something he never ever had a taste of in his whole life, something so outstanding and gratifying and at the same time so instinctive that he often couldn’t help being astonished. Something so new and unexpected that, almost without realizing it, he started believing things could actually change for him, eventually. Thor made him forget his old self, and think of himself as someone… different, someone… sincerely good. Maybe even discover his true self was actually that, and not the Master of Tricks, not the God of Mischief.
That wasn’t just… love, at least not in the same acceptation that tiny mortal creatures were used to; that was so much more, unspeakable, blended with magic and deity… it savoured unworldly. And yet it was so uniquely… intimate. He and Thor really didn’t need anyone else now, now they really were simply enough to each other, as they became fatally addicted to each other, and the way they now perfectly, purely knew that was amazing.
It came spontaneous sharing feelings, thoughts, concern and laughs, and surprisingly enough Loki didn’t feel so often the urge to cover up the deepest issues, and even less to lie on them; in fact, things were weirdly turning the other way around.
They had a few secret places elected all over Asgard, where they got used to hide, to talk and cuddle for hours, to play childish games, to have fun practicing their skills, or just to lay down silently, looking at the stars; and at the end, every time, to make love until they were consumed. Had it just been possible, they’d never stopped having sex even for a minute, every hour in every day of every week. Being close, or even being in the same room just smirking at each other was enough to turn them up, anytime, anywhere, no matter who was around. If there was a template of ultimate perfection in making love in the Nine Realms and further, that was theirs and theirs only; they were redefining from scratch the meaning and borders of desire and fulfilment, in a way no-one - not even the two of them - could put into words. A way that laid just… beyond. And that was Loki’s last though that night, while closing his eyes on Thor’s cheek.
Thor grabbed Mjolnir and rushed out of the room, while a sort of shady sensation started spreading under his skin, preventing him from thinking clearly. They came to learn - he and Loki - to perceive each other’s presence even when they weren’t in the same place, a sort of inner and superior bond linked to Loki’s uncanny skills - at least that was Thor’s explanation for such a remarkable thing. Now, no matter how hard he tried to concentrate, he couldn’t feel anything. He walked faster, and almost didn’t see someone coming across and speaking to him along the wide corridor - Fandral, maybe? -: “Hey buddy, at last! Bet you had some very pleasant days locked up in that room, didn’t you? We were wondering if you both would ever get out!”
Thor went on with no answer, dazed, days? What are you talking about, what do you mean, days?
Unable to manage the nagging feeling growing inside him, he searched every corner in the palace and every hideaway of theirs on Asgard, yet knowing in advance he wouldn’t find him.
A few hours earlier. Or maybe more than a few. Days, perhaps. Days.
But still that night.
Loki woke up all of a sudden, eyes wide opened, as the almost forgotten sensation of a devastating chill shook his body deeply into his bones.
He shuddered, instinctively focusing his mind on gathering all of his powers.
And he smelled them.
“…No.”
A leaden, unnatural darkness bore heavily on the room, catching him in an invisible grip, his breath got faster and his heart exploded in a silent outburst of rage, as he saw his own nails starting to turn darker and the skin on his fingers, his hands, his arms slowly change colour into a more and more intense shade of blue.
“No!”
At his side, Thor was still snoring, unmoving, unaware. He was just nearby, skin to skin, and yet Loki had the hunch he was parted from his own dimension by an unseen, impervious barrier.
And then he felt them.
Before the enormous shapes began to take form right at the foot of the bed, cloaked in a frosty mist, he felt them, and realized they had casted on everything in that room the most powerful spell he could ever imagine.
There were four of them. And their leader - he recognized him at once, Ymir, the mightiest of all sorcerers on Jotunheim - sneered at him, penetrating his soul with his frozen red eyes.
“Son of Laufey,” Ymir chuckled. “Finally, your time has come.”
As he tried teleporting, Loki suddenly felt a violent hit of energy running through his whole body, tearing all his strength out in a second and banging him roughly from his bed against the wall.
He tried to get his magic spear from the corner he threw it over weeks before.
He tried to move against them the first objects he could think of.
He tried to regain his mental powers to block them.
No way.
He realized he couldn’t even speak anymore. His sight was growing dim. Everything around was getting darker. And darker. And darker.
And at that point, such an unusual, almost unknown feeling to him, Loki was… scared.
In Ymir’s huge hand, a small sphere of light was now pulsating faintly. Loki could still see it, and he understood instantly: as instantly as the porcelain castles he was by then so used to dream of fell all apart in ruins.
“Your dull tricks will not work against the power of Jotunheim,” Ymir snarled on his breathlessness.
In a livid, frozen air Loki glanced at Thor while the shadows were falling darker all around, oh please, wake up, please, I need you, but Thor wasn’t moving, caught in that incantation, looking like he was peacefully lost in the most wonderful dream of all.
Ymir grinned, a hoarse, creepy grin that spiked Loki directly through his soul.
“Do not rely on your… how should I call him? Your… Asgardian concubine? He will not wake up for days.”
The giant got closer to him and reached out his hand carrying the light, now throbbing feebler, at the very front of Loki’s sight that was slowly fading into darkness.
“Look at yourself, son of Laufey, as long as you can. This is what is left of you.”
And he clenched his fist, ruthlessly, thoroughly around that last drop of life, annihilating it.
Everything in Loki’s mind went black, he could just hear him saying “Take him.”, and then… nothing.
Heimdall, Thor though at the end. If there was someone on Asgard who had the power to see whoever was getting in or out of the Realm at any moment, that was Heimdall. And even if it occurred to him that Loki could have yielded again to his dark side and plotted some new trick, Thor wasn’t actually able to think his little brother had disappeared on purpose. He just felt it was wrong.
“You’re looking for your brother,” Heimdall stated as he saw Thor at the gates of the Bifrost. “He’s not here anymore.” He didn’t let Thor even open his mouth. “It had to be a most powerful spell to keep me unaware. And you asleep, until now that I have been able to wake you up. It was three days ago.”
Three days before.
Darkness.
Ice against his skin, under his back. Tied.
Unable to defend. Unable to move. Unable to think. Unable to see.
His arms tightened over his head. His wrists aching. Pulsing. His mouth locked by a frozen muzzle. A million cold needles stinging his lips and freezing his tongue.
Their smell. Their presence. The rough sound of their breath.
I should have seen this coming, he thought in a blink of clarity.
Cold. Void. Pain. Darkness.
Everything ran so fast. From that wondrous first night, when he and Thor walked the first step into the lands of absolute mutual belonging, from the brightness of his brother’s hug, from the golden illusion of a new way of living… to that end. To that unavoidable end.
“You betrayed us all, son of Laufey. Time to pay for it.”
Weakness. Ultimate weakness.
Loki had never felt so powerless in his life, and he had never been. So drained. So helpless.
He had not strength enough even to ask himself how.
He was simply aware it was over.
“We took your magic sight, we obliterated your powers. So easy. Now learn what pain is really like, without your healing capabilities.”
Thor…, he muttered in his mind, and it sounded to him just as the echo of a severed memory.
The first stroke hit him by surprise, directly on his chest, he felt the cold burning of his skin ripping, smelled his own blood, cried silently, appalled by a kind of pain he had never experienced before.
Lost.
“He will not come for you.”
Thor got lost in a whirl, three days? “…What?” How… what do you mean, spell? Are you saying it was him who…?
“No,” Heimdall said on his thoughts, and his face didn’t reveal any emotion. “It was them. They opened an interdimensional passageway. They took him.”
Thor gritted his teeth.
“…where.”
Heimdall’s blank eyes fixed inscrutable in his, while he spelled that name.
“Jotunheim.”
Despair. Revulsion. Emptiness.
Loki lost count of hours, of days. His body still strained, every single muscle in his arms so atrociously tense and hurting he was sure his joints were about to snap.
And Thor was not coming. “He will not come for you”. Probably, he never would. He was trapped into that magic sleep. Perhaps even forever.
He didn’t listen to the charges they flung at him. He wasn’t even reacting any longer to the dozens cold strokes they inflicted to his body with their frozen blades, for hours, for days. And when he peed himself under the blows he almost felt relieved. Blood dropping into his eyes, on his face, on his neck, his head burning, his whole body throbbing in pain at any smallest move. Pain. Pain? Pain was the last issue. Pain was already part of his new state of being. Pain, and blood, and exhaustion, and the sore blurring of his mind.
Darkness was the real dreadful thing. Not just a physical darkness. An utter, boundless, shouting darkness that was the eternal metaphor to his existence, now extinguishing the very last sparkle of life still trembling in the deepest corner of his soul. And in that final sigh of light, the only one thought still able to hurt him to tears. Thor was not coming.
But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. How could he even think things could actually turn different? No change could have ever been real in his shattered life. Not his hopes, not his love. No place to belong to. No escape from what he really was, because that was the one and only reality meant for him.
It would have been so sweet.
To die.
“Do not beg for death, little slut,” the shadow of Ymir’s voice said in the blackness. “You will not be so lucky.”
An endless, clear, burning universe of rage took the place of confusion inside Thor’s mind and body, and a big part of that rage was against his own self. There was one most vital thing in his life, there had always been since his childhood, and now more than ever: he inwardly vowed himself to protect his little brother with his own life, no matter what. From the nightmares that haunted his sleep, from the monsters he tried to cast away so many times, from the madness that so many times put his life in jeopardy. And - even if several times in the past Thor himself was forced to do that against his own will - from any possible harm. Almost unconsciously at first, then more and more wittingly, and now giving him the very wholeness of his deepest loyalty.
Whereas, he failed him.
“Heimdall, open the Bifrost,” he growled. “And take me there.”
Hours elapsed. Days. Aeons, perhaps.
Almost incapable of keeping his brain awaken and not even sensitive to his own body anymore, Loki was drifting himself away in the darkness, quietly, hoping to be finally swallowed forever.
There was a song, whispering through the fog in his mind, from nowhere. A sweet, sad song he didn’t remember where or when he heard for the first time. “Being silent, they scream…”, that song said. “Save me, and you’ll be saved.” It spread wider and wider, filling every blank space, so softly and calming he just let himself float on the melody, wearily smiling inside at the idea he’d loved to sing it for Thor. How… odd.
Then, from the Kingdom of Non-life, again came the voices, harshly crumbling his deadly reverie.
“Your punishment is not over.”
And together with them, the final shame arrived.
“You had good times with your Asgardian princess, didn’t you.”
Loki gulped a gasp down in his throat, because in a short lucid moment he realized.
“Now try us.”
He trembled slightly, that was the only thing he had still strength enough for. “Us”. How many “us” there were, he could just guess. Many. A scary thought. And yet not the scariest. Tears merged with blood in his eyes. Until then, he never even thought to stoop so low as to plead them. But now, if he could talk, he would have begged for mercy. Not for himself. For Thor. For the safe of the only one unspoiled memory he had left. And if mercy had been death, he would have welcomed her.
Why?, he cried ruefully inside himself, for he perfectly knew he’d never find a way out from that nightmare. I do not even deserve to just… die and spare… this?
“You do not deserve anything. And you will take back to Asgard a little gift from those who rule you.”
Loki couldn’t see, or get the hidden meaning behind those words. While he desperately tried to grab the string of that song back, he just felt two ferocious, cold hands splaying his legs roughly, and then the first of them thrust into him like a beast, ripping his body apart in blood.
“Save me, and you’ll be saved.”
Under the frozen muzzle, his scream was so loud and harrowing that even the stars above shivered in anguish.
As Thor got there, it was like having flashes, and everything happened in a matter of seconds.
Loki was tied up to an iced cliff. Naked. Injured. Apparently passed out. Blood on his face. On his hair. On his arms, and chest, and stomach, and legs. His eyes closed. Muzzled. His skin, blue. Thor suddenly realized that was his Jotun form, which he had never seen before. Beautiful. Naked. Injured. Injured. Blood even between Loki’s legs. Injured. Tortured. Raped.
“I’ll say once” he snarled. “Release him.”
They didn’t. And there they learned what was like to unleash Thor’s wildest fury.
When finally Thor could reach Loki and set him free, he found his little brother was barely breathing. He held his head as gently as possible, to avoid adding more to the pain he was sure Loki was already suffering, why are your injures so bad? What’s wrong with your healing power? Bewildered by the mess of feelings struggling in his soul from the mix of rage, astonishment, grief, confusion… that amazing blue… those cute marks on his brother’s face and arms and chest, he could just hold Loki’s hand in his, staring at that bloodstained wonder mingled with agony. As Thor’s fingers touched him, anyway, Loki’s skin started getting clearer and those …odd marks… disappeared, returning to Thor’s eyes the smooth and pale body he was so familiar with. And when he skimmed the frozen muzzle on his brother’s mouth, sorrowful and not sure on what to do, it just thawed out and vanished, freeing Loki’s lips covered with blood, but yet intact.
“Loki… what have they done to you… open your eyes, look at me… Loki…”
The cosy sound of his voice was enough to force Loki’s eyelids to open and reveal his pupils, turning slowly back from red to green. Looking nowhere over Thor’s head, chilled, empty. Terrified.
“Thor…?”
At first, Loki was sure he was raving. Or dreaming, maybe, the last, most tender dream while he was floating down towards the death he yearned so desperately for. Worlds away, the bleary feeling of a hand, warm, holding his one from a different level of existence.
“…is that… you?”
Together with the awareness, the pain suddenly flared up and it was a terrible strain to raise his hand and grope for Thor’s face in the darkness. As he recognized him under his fingertips, he let a muffled sigh out.
“…Thor… I can’t… see you… I can’t… see.”
Thor gasped. “Wh…”
Loki’s hand grasped his hair.
“…you killed them…?”
Thor bowed his face closer to his mouth, panting, smelled his blood, his hand on his cheek, chaos in his mind, his rage still burning.
“I did.”
Loki let his arm fall back down, and rubbed his cheek against his brother’s hand, soaking warmth up from Thor’s palm as if that was the only way left to stay alive.
“…thank you.” He coughed in a grimace, a trickle of blood seeped out of his lips. “…are you… injured?”
Thor shook his head, unseen, me?, swallowing a lump of tears while looking at his little brother’s tortured body, you’re worried about me?
“No, I’m not,” he whispered, and the deep bleeding cut on his arm and the wound on his thigh weren’t actually hurting so much. He laid the softest kiss ever on the blood on Loki’s forehead, lightly stroking his hair. “Hush, little one… hush. Don’t strive. I’m here, now. I’m here.”
Thor sounded so… sweet when he called him his little one. And it felt so… sweet being his little one. But… now? After that… extreme demeaning? Turning a bit on his side, Loki tiredly curled his knees up to his chest, trying to soothe and sorely hide the stabbing pain riving him between his legs and from there all across his soul.
“… they… took my powers… and… they…” His tears drew little white lines through the blood on his face. “…I couldn’t… I couldn’t stop them.”
A sudden retch, he moaned, and threw up blood and spittle on Thor’s hand, viciously, painfully, because he couldn’t restrain that massive loathing any longer. Thor grabbed his nape, dreadfully worried, words dead in his throat; he rubbed his palm on his mouth to erase anguish together with sickness, and trying to allay his brother’s torment he warily leant his other hand on his hip… He felt Loki quiver in shame and, at the mere sight of the brutal rent screaming blood between his brother’s legs, his eyes suddenly filled with tears, while he cursed the entire Walhalla in his mind.
Loki’s breath was cold and feeble on his palm. His voice even feebler.
“Thor… I’m so… sorry.”
A choked sob, barely hold just because Loki was too weak even to cry. Thor felt the blade of that abyss of despair piercing his heart directly through Loki’s broken sigh, shut up, he thought, you’re mine, I’m yours, nothing will change that, nothing, and he nestled his brother’s head on his neck, rubbing his cheek on his hair.
“Don’t. Even. Ever.”
Then, as carefully as he could, he picked Loki up in his arms, simmering with rage and grief as his little brother wailed in pain and dropped his head on his chest, lifeless. And he ran, through the frost rain of Jotunheim, wishing to burn that entire world to ashes.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Chapter 1
Chapter 3
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::