In the Silence of the Darkness We Unite

Loki wound his way through the narrow maze of tunnels that comprised the markets of Svartalfheim, drawing little enough attention in his borrowed form. It had been a month since the confrontation in Latveria, and his physical injuries had long since healed, ragged gashes drawn into pale scars concealed by his habitual glamours. The same could not be said for his emotional wounds, deep lesions which seeped putrid pus and bitter blood at every ill-conceived move.

And, despite all his careful planning, most of Loki’s moves were ill-conceived. Scarcely a moment passed where he did not exacerbate his hurts, tearing open newly-formed scabs under the pretense of plotting his revenge.

It had been a month, and he had made no true effort toward that end. Instead, he concealed himself at this cultural crossroads, lying low in a low-lying realm far past the point when he should have again taken up the tools of his trade to make dark deals towards shadowed schemes. Sooner or later he would have to accept that the truth was simply that he enjoyed the pain.

Rounding a sharp corner wedged between the stalls of a silversmith and a silktrader, he narrowly avoided colliding with a disgruntled dwarf as he noticed the familiar gleam of a blonde head from across the cavern. Not the shimmering, icy pallor of the Svartalfar, but a deep, burnished gold he knew would be soft to the touch.

Heart hammering to life where it had been dead in his chest, Loki turned on his heel, doubling back the way he had come. He slipped unseen from the crowd into a cramped corridor, hurrying past idle travelers, taking turns at seemingly random intervals, striking deeper into the very heart of the realm. When at last he reached an empty chamber, alone save for the echo of an underground stream and the bioluminescent light of Svartalfheim’s oversized glow worms, he sagged against a wall and coughed out slight, hysterical laughter.

Why had he run so? Even if Thor had looked directly at him, he would not have known it was Loki. He appeared as any other dark elf in this infernal city, if garbed a bit more strangely. But Thor had never turned enough of an eye to Asgardian fashion, much less what passed for normal elsewhere, to notice such a disparity.

Nowhere Left to Go

viciousthunder:

Thor traveled in the dark, hammer singing voiceless whirls of air in front of him as it swung powerfully and split the atmosphere. The air was cold and tinged with silence, the light of a flickering bridge far beneath him, once so broken and now repaired; enough, enough. He would rather fly than walk, the drag of space about him drowning out his thoughts and any time for them. To have walked so long a way between realms would have brought too many things to the surface, things he was saving for Odin, things he was saving—

The feeling, so vivid and tense in his mind racked his frame and made him scowl, the memory of Loki squirming beneath him, thighs tensing, hips jerking. The way his breath had escaped him—

No.

Read More

Abandoned

The door slammed shut behind Thor with the finality of a coffin’s lid.

Loki did not move from where he sat, curling even further in upon himself as if that pathetic instinct could somehow protect him from the emotions raging fierce and unchecked throughout his being. He felt naked, exposed, vulnerable. His armor—all his lies and schemes and secrets—strewn about him in tatters on the floor. And Thor. He had seen, had gazed upon the broken and bloodied form of Loki at his weakest, flayed fleshless, bare to the bone. Had knelt beside him, eased a gentle hand between his ribs, and, effortless as a summer shower, ripped the still-beating heart from his breast.

Loki shook with the aftershocks of that pain, tiny tremors that would not stop no matter how he willed it. Loki had renounced Thor once, amidst shards of Bifrost and shattered  trust, but for all that he was not Thor’s brother, he had never stopped thinking of Thor as his. To be so disowned was an anguish he had not felt since his own children had been torn from his arms, and was that not precisely the heartache that had led him to this one? He could not manage even the bitterest of laughs past the burning in his throat, a stinging rawness that owed very little to the bruises now blooming on his neck.

Read More

Recovering Truths

viciousthunder:

He moved to sit behind Loki as he shifted to a comfortable position before him. The cloak spilled over the side of the bed like a great dash of blood against the deep green of grass. It made his hands still just over the needle and twine, why, he knew, but he passed trembling fingers overhead to grab a rag. He dipped it in the warm water and squeezed, not bothering with wetting the bedding underneath them.

Dry brown blood, with some bright strands of red still oozing out, matted his pale skin, the cuts leaving his flesh raised and puckered against the rest of his smooth back. Thor stared a moment longer, wondering how it would heal, if it would scar, how his brother’s once unmarred flesh would look with, after. His eyes grew heavy with sadness as he pressed the cloth to his skin as gently as he could. He did not drag the cloth, but rather dabbed, cleaning away the blood slowly, allowing for every slight tremble of frame, every hitch of breath, and every flinch of body to go without pain as much as possible. If it were not Loki, his brother, under his care, then he would not have taken such time or caution. Loki could take pain like any man among them, had taken plenty more in some regards…and that is why Thor took such cares.

And he would see the time he reached for that needle beside him a long time in coming indeed.

Read More

Loki relaxed slightly  as Thor cleansed his wounds. It had been some time since the brothers had engaged in this particular ritual, and it had always been Thor who was more commonly in Loki’s current position, but it was still familiar. The antiseptic stung as it began its work, but it was nothing in comparison to the venom  and was thus unworthy of his attention. What Loki noticed instead was the genuine care Thor put into his work. None knew Loki’s strength better than Thor. For all that he had doubted it in their youth, eons of rivalry had certainly relieved him of the notion of his younger brother’s frailty. Why, then, did he act as if Loki might crumble away to dust at one rough touch? Did he truly look so wretched? Suddenly, he wished he had a mirror so that he might see for himself, but that was one furnishing Doom would not abide in his home. Foolish, vain mortal.

Even more curious than the gentle touches was the way in which they lingered. Even if such caution had been in Thor’s nature, it should not have taken half so long. The resulting confusion set him on edge once more and he very nearly growled at Thor to stop dawdling, but then a meaty hand clasped his shoulder and the demand died in his throat. For a moment, it seemed as if Thor might speak, but then his hand fell away, the air around them still vibrating with words left unsaid, and took up the needle. Loki wished again that he had requested a servant perform this task. Memories better left buried were unearthed with the first passing of the needle like a shovel through soft brown soil, and he realized this was not what he had wanted at all. But then, that was his eternal dilemma—he never knew what precisely he wanted.

He remained silent as Thor began the sutures. A hiss here or a whimper there might have helped to alleviate the pain, and yet, in his mind, he relived another such stitching where he had not had that option. He had been defiant then, and he was defiant now. He would not let Thor know how much that particular betrayal had affected him, how often it came unbidden to his thoughts, how he thought of it even now. Then, just as on that day so many centuries ago, a hand carded through his hair and sent his eyes flying open in shock. Again, Thor’s face hovered inches from his own, but instead of the bite of the needle through his mouth, there was only the dry press of lips against his forehead. And an apology, or as close as he was likely to get. And he thought that, just perhaps, this time, Thor knew what he was apologizing for. How sad that it should be so late in coming, for surely there was no going back now. Would things have happened any differently if his brother had cautioned him against such “festering wounds” back then? Loki doubted it. He would cling to his grudges until the day he died. It was his nature. And his destiny.

That did not mean he could not mourn the bond he had so deliberately forsaken, for contrariness was also his nature. A single tear fell in tribute to that loss, though Thor did not see it. This sudden sense of vulnerability made Loki acutely aware of his own nakedness, and he tugged Thor’s cloak more tightly around himself before murmuring, “I will dress, now. Perhaps you might see what is taking the kitchens so long.”

Reunion

viciousthunder:

A hundred years had been his torment away from his own realm. A century gone from the woes that would forever mark him a callous, unfeeling man. Well. To be away from the agony of his brother was something he’d welcomed greatly. Better to be where the sight of Loki could not reach him than to parade around Asgard as if the torment of his younger brother was something he was pleased with. If Thor was anything, he was honest. Odin wanted him to lie to himself, the old man could burn. That was not his to decide. To have silenced himself along with Loki would have been too outright, and so he’d silenced himself another way.

The journey had been longer than he’d intended, yes…weeks had turned to months had turned to years. Thor had yearned for the sight of home and the face of his brother, but then he would catch himself and remember. Home was not as it once was. But he had been away long enough, and could not bear the thought of a hundred more years aimlessly wandering, killing foes and drinking and seducing women into his bed. The appeal had been lost to him; pleasure turning to ash as if it was a physical thing to be grasped.

And so, he set hopeful eyes upon his home realm for the first time in a century. He’d not set upon it a thousand yards before the cry of one so lost reached his ears. A sound he’d wished never to hear again. It was so distorted and holy unreal. And yet…

These cries were familiar. He knew that voice. Mjolnir was above him, winding around in wide, looping arcs before he knew he’d willed it to. Within minutes he was upon the opening of a dark, dank, stone cave. Loki, his brother, his enemy, was retching with the force of his suffering. There above him drooped the heavy belly of a vast, cruel snake. Thor did not need to see the venom drip from it’s fangs to know that is why Loki’s eyes were burned from him, his nose nearly gone, his lips seared to strips of sizzling flesh. The smell reached him and then he was screaming, the tear of thunder ripping from his chest as his great hammer crushed the serpent above.

Thick tendrils of blood and fat and muscle rained down atop the jagged rock and then he was pounding at the restraints that bound his brother. Small whimpers reached Thor’s ears and through the blood that streaked his face, he thought he was crying. Loki’s name poured it’s way from his lips like a mantra, echoing nearly silent around them.

Thor held Loki against him and practically roared his vow to destroy whoever had done this in every intimate way he knew how.

The first sound to permeate past  the pain was a name. Loki. And again. Loki. Over and over it rattled through his skull. Was it his name? Yes, he was Loki. But who was calling him? He was alone. It was just him, and the serpent, and the never-ending agony the monster seared into his flesh. He stirred weakly against the cavern walls, searching for the source of the voice. Except it wasn’t a wall, at all, despite its sturdiness, and when he collapsed back against it, warm arms enfolded and held him there.

It was so familiar, this embrace, and he struggled for recollection even as his body seized and spasmed through the remnants of tortures now ended. His face itched where marred and mutilated flesh sought to renew itself, and his wrists ached where the shackles still clung to them through swaths of dried blood.

He was Loki. And Loki had a brother. An arrogant, reckless,  beautiful brother who now cradled him in his arms and swore vengeance on his behalf. “Ah, Thor,” he sighed. “Do not make promises you cannot keep.”