Inspired by this prompt: norsekink. livejournal 9985. html? thread= 22085121# t22085121
"Aesir are ridiculously sturdy, so even though Thor has been in battle and has probably even been hurt before, it didn't actually hurt. Not in the way getting smacked down when he was a mortal did. In fact everything felt much more intense when he was mortal. He was constantly bombarded with the little aches and pains and hungers that come with a mortal body and it was exhilarating! Now that he's back in his own body everything feels oddly muted.
Thor craves to experience some of that intense feeling again and is willing to go to extremes to get it. He starts out by taking stupid risks and eventually flat out hurting himself to try to recreate some of the experiences he had as a mortal..."
... ... ...
It is not what he expects. The falling is a rush, a blur of sound and light and—shock—because he could not believe what had happened, still could not believe what had happened, and perhaps that was why he did not notice until he landed.
And it hurt. There was no way to describe the pain. He had never felt pain before, not like this—oh yes, Thor had fought in many great battles, he had been injured, been struck down before—and he'd thought he knew pain, but this was brighter, sharper, worse—and he lay for a moment, all thoughts eclipsed, before he stumbled to his feet.
And even now he still did not understand. The shock of the weapon as it hit his skin brought with it the blackness of peace, and then—there was nothing.
Thor thinks it fitting that his first experience of Midgard would be of pain.
The short days he spends in the realm is overshadowed by his own worries—but it is not until he is standing above Mjolnir, his hammer, the one weapon that had never failed him, unable to wield it, that he realizes this was different.
Mortal were strange creatures—they felt everything so keenly—pain, pleasure—the brush of skin against fabric, against skin—the hot discomfort of sun and cool shade and wind and dust—every sensation magnified until even the most beautiful hurt.
It was as if he had been living in a world of smoke, only now stepping into the reality. It was frightening, impossible—and utterly, utterly real. Amid all that happened those few days, Thor had never felt more alive.
He has never told this to anyone.
What would they think of him, a prince of Asgard, wishing for the life of a mortal?
Thor does not remember what death feels like. His last sensation is blooming pain, the black taste of failure surpassing even that, as he looked into Jane's eyes and could not let go, because he was not ready, but—death comes for every warrior, in the end.
He had tried.
His hand reaches for his hammer while his mind is yet in the strange garments of death. He is surrounded by lightning—crackling over every inch of his skin—being made anew, being made right again, and the relief overshadows the loss.
And after that, there is only battle, and Loki—
Loki fell.
Thor cannot understand why. Could his own actions have contributed to that one moment? The way Loki's anguished expression smoothed out to that of utter calm—and Thor found himself speaking, or screaming—knowing before he really knew, what was about to happen. He had known Loki for too long, knew him too well. (Not well enough.)
And he fell, and life was muted after, as if a veil had been drawn over his eyes.
And it takes him a while to realize he is not imagining it, because of course—he has spent mere days as a mortal, countless mortal lives as a prince of Asgard—and he is as he should be once again.
But though his emotions pain him as much as before (though he looks for Loki behind every doorway) the world itself seems cut off from him.
Someone placed a pane of glass before him, and he could only watch the world through it, utterly alone (and no one understanding, for how could they? You could not mourn what you had not known.)
Thor has never needed battle. Loved it, certainly—relished in the feelings of it, swift and uncomplicated and clean—but he has never needed it. Not like he needs it now.
He pushes for a fight, pushes without knowing why, (and they think he is grieving for Loki, but how can he explain that he is not?)
It is after a brawl almost ends in another's death that he stops, and sits alone—and thinks, for the first time. Even here, Loki's presence follows him. (Why was it that, even dead, he was so alive? And Thor—who was alive—felt so dead, like dry, brittle grass)
He cannot harm others in search of this elusive feeling, this living that he can no longer feel. The breezes do not stir him, the sun does not touch him, the stones beneath his feet are too smooth. Perfect, and yet apart—and no matter what he does, he does not know what to do. (If only he could forget—forget what mortal life felt like, so sweet, so full—it teases him with memories, and everything since is ashes.)
And he turns to watch Loki sitting beside him, Loki who is no longer there, Loki who is dead, and gone, and fallen, and he still doesn't know why.
He scratches his nails across his palm, feels it dully, as if from far away or through a long sleep. And when he goes to take a knife from the walls and walls of weapons that hang there, he looks at the ones Loki used to use, before he learned to conjure blades of his own. They are still there, hidden, forgotten.
He stares at them a long time, fits them in the palm of his hand. But he takes another knife, one he has no knowledge of, draws it along his arm, and watches the blood spill from the thin cut. He has never wished for death—has no wish for it still—it is this which compels him, because this half-life is death, surrounded by the dead, Loki ever-present and impossible to reach, the world hidden behind dulled sensations.
Father should have known what his spell had done, Thor thinks, and watches the red drip, and drip. Should have known that humans are too alive, for all their short span of time—you cannot live as one and come away unscathed, nor expect to forget it, as if it had been some pleasant dream filled with nightmares.
It is not enough. He presses down, feels a vague white-hot pain (but nothing like that on Midgard, nothing like how humans felt) and he closes his eyes, breathes in the silence and the noise of his own body and listens, and of course he was alone. Ghosts made no sound.
For one moment, he had almost forgotten.
He passes the scar off as an accident, and they do not worry or notice too much. After all, he is a warrior, and they are much too relieved that he is no longer striding about with the blackest look, daring anyone to pick a fight with him, relishing in the sensation (the sensations, the feelings.)
And for a long time he tells himself he will be fine. That he is forgetting. That this will be forgotten in time, and all will be as it was, and the golden days fall round him like petals, soft and crowded round his feet.
And he does not admit to himself any thought when he goes and draws the knife off the wall, and hides it in his chambers.
Just because.
And he goes into the wilderness, makes storms that almost feel—hunts and fights and loves, and tells himself it is real. He is real. But the glass is still between them, and words fall upon empty spaces, and Loki is gone.
And he is no mortal, no mortal bright and brief, such a curse and a gift in one—for they had such little time to know the world, and such senses to know it with, Thor imagines they must feel more than an eternity of immortality.
And he brings the blade across his legs where no one will see, and curses Odin, and Loki, and himself. (What could he have done? How could he have averted such disaster? What has he done?)
He knows it is his fault. No matter that voices fall when they speak of the younger prince, their mourning stained by his actions, but Thor knows that it was he who caused this, he with his foolishness and recklessness, and he wonders, if he had noticed more—if he had said something to Loki when his eyes looked so dark, instead of laughing (for he always returned to the world, once the fits were over) if he had only stayed instead of rushing to Jotunheim, what he could have avoided.
But it is all in the past now, and there is nothing he can do. And there is nothing he can do to draw himself out of the stifling water he drowns in, watching the world from below, no matter how much he drinks.
/
The news of his brother's life should have been joyous—and here he is now, searching this almost-familiar face for the brother he has known all his life.
It may hurt less to find nothing—no hint of who he was, or might-have-been. But it flickers in his brothers eyes, and his laughter sounds like shattered glass and madness, so easy to break. Fury overflows from a well of hate, and he can only catch a glimpse of the Loki whom he knew.
But it is enough.
The battle rages, and in the tumult he is once more almost-alive. (He had nearly expected, when he came to Midgard once more, to find that clarity hidden in it still, as though it was not the mortal flesh which had bound him but the realm itself that felt with such sweet clarity—but it was not, it was as dim as his home, and he is not truly surprised.)
They return.
It is a long while before Loki deigns to speak with him, or with anyone. Years pass, and though his brother is living now, he feels so far—lost, as if he never really left the abyss, just as Thor has never really left mortality behind.
It crisscrosses his legs as he tries, with tearing eyes, to feel once more, but he cannot—not more than an almost-feel, but almost-feel is better than nothing at all, than floating through the world without seeing it.
He watches his brother's eyes and wonders if the opposite has happened to him—wonders if, somehow, he felt the world clearly, and it broke him (and he cannot stop feeling it even now).
He would like to think they share this, that Loki could understand that bright sharp glorious freedom. He knows Loki does not.
He himself has nothing more than memories.
/
It had been unexpected. The battle had been long and hard, but that he would be here now—before this foe, who chained him to a wall and thought to torture him—Thor cannot help but laugh. Does he not know they will find him? Does he not know Thor will kill him in the end? He is so arrogant, so knowing, and Thor cannot help but laugh, until he can laugh no longer.
The blows come with more and more anger, less and less finesse, and Thor provokes it with a wild kind of fury, half of battle half of anger half of joy—and when he can do nothing, nothing more than stand as the little foe strikes upon him as if to gain some peace from the meeting—Thor knows he will not.
And his friends come, worried, horrified, take him down, gentle hands bruising agony, and the world goes black around the edges, and for one moment he believes he has found it—that life, that feeling he has been so desperately searching after.
We'll get you healing stones, they say. Don't worry.
Not yet, he says, but his tongue cannot speak more than a moan, and they crush powder over his body, watch broken bones healing, blood fading away, and the pain dims to discomfort, and he can feel the world again—but it is far-away after all.
The healers do not question him, only heal in silence, and he does not fear their words. They will not speak—what have they to speak of after all? But for days, or weeks, he lies dreaming, half-alive, and fancies Loki sits beside him.
And then he is cured, and he is once more free to wander as a ghost-shadow through the world. His anger fills him, makes him cut more deeply than he has ever before in his rashness—for he has never meant to cause himself true injury, only to feel something again, even if it be pain—and for one moment he stares at the blade in his hand and wonders what he has come to, what he hates so much. Is it life that he hates, taunting him with its sharp clear promises of memory? Is it death, that which takes away those dear to him? Rather it is this half-life-half-death, poised between the two, never quite able to feel as he knows he should.
You cannot long for what you do not know. Thor wishes he could forget those few days in Midgard, and all the consequences of those few days, and the spiraled consequences of those actions.
And he still does not know why Loki fell (and he still does not know why Loki claims Thor pushed him, why he will not believe he was mourned—could he have been that blind? Thor had always noticed the admiration that followed his brother—quieter than his, but there none the same. It had not occurred to him that Loki might have missed it, that the dark behind his eyes might not have left, even when he laughed.)
And how can he know his brother so well and yet not at all?
/
It has been a hundred years since Frigga's death. Thor can still feel it, feel it with the intensity only emotions have, because the physical world is naught but a ghost-world, and he but a ghost, lost amid bright halls.
This time, when Loki wanders the halls, he does so in truth, for he had been given some pardon long ago. Though not without consequence.
Thor can hear his brother's voice as he answered Odin's last, and final, offer—the way he looked—so defeated, as he never had before (as he had since he learned the news of her death, Thor thinks.)
Very well. I accept.
And it cheers Thor as much as it pains him, for the Loki of old would have rotted in his cell for ages unto eternity than do such a thing as this, for a mockery of freedom.
But old quarrels seem petty, now. And Loki walks the hall, silent but proud, as if he owns it, as if he always has.
Thor does not know why the last was needed. They had already taken from him his magic—the taking of his voice was only punishment and humiliation to heap upon that which he deserved. And Loki walks scornfully, and spits at Thor's feet, and Odin's, when they come too near, and keeps others away with sharp hands and well-hidden daggers.
His mouth is not bound, nor sewn—Thor always expects those lips to open, for him to comment, make some remark—but Loki has ceased opening his lips, and stands like a shadow and watches, eyes glinting cruelly. And when he laughs, he is silent, and his laughter is sharp.
/
It has been a hundred years since her death and this is a day like any other—Thor should have expected it, with Loki's tricks—even without magic he can manage the smallest things, and has been slipping throughout the palace for months, unlocking even the most careful, clever locks, slipping in to watch the occupants like a wraith.
But he does not hear his brother's footsteps. They are silent. He only hears the quick intake of breath, looks up from his bloody work and pauses, knife to skin, words of denial on his lips.
But he cannot lie to the master of lies, not now, not with the evidence before him.
And in his eyes Thor sees outrage, and hate, and shock.
He kneels down, reaches out a slow hand, trails his fingers along the thin cut, and purses his lips, brows furrowed. Thor knows he reaches for the thread of magic inside him, wanting to heal, to make perfect—that is what Loki has always wanted—perfection and order. And he could not understand when Thor went running and playing, and fighting, and came back bruised and bloody and grinning.
And here lay their greatest difference—that chaos looked only for order, for peace, while the golden sun wanted above all those things which were flawed and imperfect.
Why? The accusation reads in his eyes.
Thor has to speak—feels he must. "When I became a mortal, it was—you will not believe—how much they feel. Loki, it is the most glorious—"
He stops.
"And then it was gone. And I was stuck, half-alive, and you were dead, and following me around every turn. What was I to do?"
And the venom in Loki's eyes reads, not this.
He stands up as Loki leaves—calls out, don't tell anyone before he remembers, before he can stop himself—and Loki looks to him with a malice so deep he would step back, only he has learned those stares too well.
The head tilts. Tell someone? How? He steps forward, slowly, as if he would like to strangle Thor—but instead he reaches for the knife, and with a furious, silent growl, snaps it over his knee, and throws the shards to the floor.
Thor stares at it, dull annoyance fading to tiredness. "Now I will have to get another one," he says, and Loki's face twists in hatred—so much hatred he knows not what for—and turns, and leaves.
/
It is a hundred years since his Mother's death, and Loki has written a long plea, hours spent scratching by hand rune after rune of honeyed words to replace those his tongue can no longer fill—sending them all to the Allfather.
Thor thinks it a wasted effort, but says nothing—and is surprised when the request is granted. one day of punishment lifted.
Loki is watched warily, and he delights in hurling well-thought insults at any passing by, honed in years of silence, insults that send them scurrying away, faces pale and eyes downcast, for they are all filled with truth.
One day to mourn the queen, one day of words and magic. Even with the addition of chains, Thor thinks Loki seems freer than he has in a very long time.
He comes to the balcony, and they watch in silence. But he ends up beside Thor somehow, and their eyes meet.
"Thor," Loki says, and that is all—cold words, emotionless, but a greeting nonetheless.
Thor smiles. "It is good to speak with you, brother," he says, and watches Loki turn away with a sneer.
The rain starts falling slowly, hardly a drizzle, hardy wet at all. It comes under overcast skies, and all of Asgard knows who is mourning.
But Loki closes his eyes and holds out his hands—pale and thin, they flutter like birds before settling—and now every drop has, encased within, a spark—and as the day draws on, it lights up the increasing darkness like a thousand candles.
The people know who made this as well. But the water-fire does not hurt them—Thor can tell, sees it sliding with nary a wince across shoulders old and young, Loki's eyes closed and fire-rain falling onto his upturned face, as if to hide tears that will not fall.
But Thor can feel each drop as it hits his arms, sliding across them hot and burning and cruel, leaving no mark.
He holds out his palms.
.
.
.