In which Thor deals with Loki's issues. All trigger warnings for this fic apply.

3.

and it is so dark here so very dark and so very cold with the only warmth coming from sickening bodily fluids trickling over the skin and clammy touch of the creatures all around, by turns sharp and scraping in blunt and bright shades of pain and then the wishing it would come back when the touches become disgusting nauseatingly tender. The smells and the sensations all washing together into a sickly world of filth that invades the brain and poisons it through and through until it would be good to say the body no longer mattered but it does matter because oh dear god, it hurts. Then the loss of all dignity and the simple wailing at the pain and the indignity, the chaotic yet also methodical destruction of the self in an attack from every possible side – fighting sounds petulant, sounds like pleading, curling up silent feels like defeat. There is no answer to this that does not induce complete and utter worthlessness – the kind so complete and utter you come out the other side grandiose and grinning –

- and there is nothing to say here, save to sing to yourself in madness, save to babble the inanities of a child in distress, nothing to say or do that does not reduce you to that most pathetic mire ridden infant, nothing but over used pleas that have never been heard by anyone –

"No – nonono please stop, please it hurts, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

Thor has watched over Loki for almost three hours into the night, first in silence, holding him, stroking him gently, apprehensive but hopeful in the idea that he has him back, remembering so many nights spent watching over his nightmares and calming him back to sleep. This is different though, he knows it, when Loki starts to twitch in his sleep he kisses him and draws him closer, when this seems to make him panic all the more he lets go and when the shivering and the whimpering become frightening he starts to shake him awake and this is the point at which Loki starts screaming, lashing out with every limb and coming damn near close to clawing Thor's eyes out in his struggles.

"Loki!" Thor half whispers, half shouts – "Loki, Loki, Loki – it's alright brother, it's just me, you're home, I won't hurt you Loki, nothing's going to hurt you –"

Loki does not stop struggling, indeed as Thor holds his arms as gently as he can Loki simply strains and squirms more desperately, seemingly terrified, but in his wild searching gaze he finally finds Thor's face and his stricken roving eyes seem to still as the breath rips raggedly out of him. Thor can almost see the light coming back into his eyes from a place that it seemed like light forgot. He can feel Loki's struggles become less frantic though he can still feel the heart beating in his chest like it is trying to jump out of there, every muscle strung like an over tightened instrument. He does not stop stroking him for half a second, murmuring a constant meaningless torrent of comforting sounds and half words.

Gradually Loki's swimming eyes seem to focus on Thor's face and he stares at him a moment as though the truth and awareness of his current surroundings are now only just coming back to him – which they are. In the silence as he blinks Thor can feel Loki scrunching into himself, contracting like a heartbeat and he is almost certain that he is going to burst into tears. When instead Loki starts to laugh he wishes his certainty had been correct. It is a terrible sound, hysterical, hollow and so close to despairing that Thor's eyes ache to see Loki contort with the spasms of laughing so hard and so humourlessly

Loki laughs at the prospect of his own safety, of the concept of nothing hurting him, that seems so preposterous, so ludicrous it has long ceased even to be funny, laughs until his eyes are leaking, stinging and his head pounding like the monsters trapped inside his skull are hammering to get out and when it starts to hurt too much his shaking subsides and laughter ceases, though Thor cannot be relieved by this when the pain so contorts his brother's features and he rubs the heels of his hands furiously against his forehead and ears to try and stop the screaming inside. He cries at at the pain in his head, a terrible keening cry that stabs at Thor's heart until he wishes he could feel some of what Loki is feeling – or all of it if he could – just to take it from him. As Loki twists away from him, he keeps his arms around him and tells him this gently –

"I would take it all if I could, brother I swear."

The hammers do not stop their beating in in his head but Loki ceases his frenzied rubbing to sigh, a scream caught within the sigh as he whispers –

"Yes I suppose you would – but – it is not your due –"

"You deserve it no more than I"

Loki snorts but does not have the energy to argue, instead he gives the fraction of a nod –

"You could almost make me believe it" and though his back is to Thor he pushes back against him, insinuating himself deeper into that comforting embrace. A ghost of that terrible laughter rips itself out of his mouth but this time he stops it fast, the words rushing out –

"It told me that you, more than anyone wanted only to hurt me. That I could not trust you. It said you hated me and wanted me only to use – it said – it said –"

"Loki –" Thor murmurs, stroking the damp hair back out of Loki's eyes – "Everything it said to you was a lie."

Loki nods rapidly, convincing himself of this with every jerk. He gives thanks to the dark and to Thor not trying to make him turn around that he can bear to say what he says next, even though his heart has been shrieking it since their first encounter on Midgard what seems like so many ages ago –

"Thor –" he whispers, in the barest breath, his fingers hooking like little claws into the arm that holds him tight – "help me". He starts to shake again to believe he has actually said it when neither of them ever imagined he would and Thor, who imagined it no more than Loki has to turn his head so that no wetness falls onto his brother's shoulder and betrays his relief.

He makes it sound like a joke but it is unbearably true as he gently, forcing a smile, replies –

"I thought you'd never ask".

Loki almost relaxes and when Thor's fingers run firmly up the side of his face to press at his temples he can almost feel some of the badness seep out of him like a dark stream pouring steadily out of his ears. Thor rubs circles, fingertips digging into Loki's head so perfectly they seem to go straight into his brain like warm gold. Loki remembers the last fingers that wriggled into his brain, violating his mind and injecting him with venom like slithering snakes – this is the antithesis of that horror. This touch could erase that with those steady loving circular strokes. Loki groans in pleasure at the relief, at the removal of so much dark stickiness in the brain and its replacement with that amount of gold. Moisture seeps from his eyes that is not exactly crying. He can barely believe it – that this is helping. That it can start with something so simple.

As he feels Loki soften Thor starts gently whispering words in his ear, embroidering a story of truth that he expects Loki at any moment to force him to silence, and certainly Loki tenses at the recollection and the images he re-conjures from their past, but Thor can almost feel him stop himself objecting, making himself remember.

He spins a recollection into Loki's ear and to his mind, weaving together anecdotes that began when they were small, of Loki's tricks and Thor's plans. Of stolen adventures and games. Of the times Loki had crept to his room again and again with his nightmares , first confiding them to Thor, tremblingly and afterwards denying that he had ever been afraid. How Thor had held him through the night and watched over him until he fell asleep.

"I was less different from you than I would have readily believed" he admits – "For I would not have admitted how much I liked having you there any more than you would have admitted being afraid of the dark –"

"I was not –" Loki begins, almost for old times sake. Thor chuckles and ignores him, though he knows that Loki still is as afraid of the dark as ever.

"All those nightmares you confessed to me then – I never thought so many centuries later I would be watching over you just the same as then."

Loki scowls, thinking about arguing, then flops back into Thor's arms –

"This never happened either" he adds. Thor simply smiles and carries on, knowing that there are some things he will never be able to change and he is not sure he quite wants to. Some things are just so Loki about Loki he could never truly want to make them different. He takes the tale on into their adolescence, re- discovering the first days of their burgeoning desire, those first tentative explorations of one another that rapidly grew into desperate journeys of discovery, re-exploring one another over and over again. He paints the colours of those days into the darkness of the room, golden sunlight and blue skies, snow and starlight, Loki's eyes in the firelight, falling in love with him over and over again, telling one another in a thousand murmured confessions over a couple of hundred years.

"I never told you any such thing" Loki huffs.

"You did" Thor smiles, telling the stories of those rare times, quiet times like these, Loki lying by the fire or in their furs, blissed out and smiling that rare smile that held not a hint of malice or pretence. The tremble in his voice as he whispered those magic words. Loki turns around at this part of the story, trembling now at the memory and at the closeness he feels now to such recollection. The terrifying suggestion in Thor's arms that all this could be regained.

Forehead to forehead, as they have always been when they are not fist to fist they share this sweet dream of a past that may or may not really have happened – at least quite the way that memory paints it. And perhaps memory does paint it in a panoply of shimmering jewel like colours and perhaps that is an exaggeration of the fact. Perhaps after all it is not. Perhaps this past, this state of being that they held then can be restored. It has always been Thor's tragedy that he never stopped believing this, and then for a while it was his tragedy when he did not. For Loki, he has never quite believed in the dream even in the centuries when it was a truth, and this then is his tragedy too. And now? Now Thor is not sure if he is breaking apart or coming back together for the belief seems to be returning and Loki too, he can see it in his eyes, is shaking in silent fear and hope that it could after all be true. He is not sure which scares him more.

Restoring the dream would be a step to restoring that long but never forgotten state, and as Thor rocks his brother back to sleep in the wake of the nightmares it does seem like this time, finally Loki might simply dream again.

_x_

I think that's this one finished! I'm not totally happy with this ending so there may be more or a sequel at some time but no further plans at this time! For now watch this space for my Roman AU fic starting soon!

Thank you for reading! :-)