[TRIGGER WARNING: TORTURE MEMORIES]

I put that here just in case.

#12

First, Loki remembered a cave, his back pressed against a cold, hard wall of stone, and he remembered pain, bolts of unspeakable pain tearing through his flesh as purple flashes of lightning zigzagged in front of his blurry vision. He remembered the pain of fiery metal blades repeatedly searing his flesh. He remembered the pain of steely instruments stretching his limbs to their breaking point. He remembered the sounds of his own bones breaking, a nasty crunching noise reverberating through his skull. He remembered his body's desperate revolt against the anguish of dehydration. He remembered the cloying taste of blood biting into his tongue and the gurgling noises of his own drowning. He remembered how, eventually, the pain had robbed him of his ability to communicate, leaving him unable to transform any mental concept into words, and this had been the worst because passing beyond expression into a world of linguistic nonexistence in which terror defied every description was to leave any hope of rescue behind.

Then, he remembered the images and the voices. Oh, the voices. He remembered Odin glancing down at him as he was hanging from the Bifrost, his skin suddenly turning black and shiny and reptilian, his one remaining iris transforming into two gleaming pieces of hot coal. He remembered his father's black arms growing ever longer and ever more slippery, reaching for him and catching him as he was falling into space, wrapping around his neck like tentacles. You are not going to get away so easily, Loki. I am not done with you. You will never get away. He remembered a blue-skinned Thor sending him flying across an icy, barren plain of rock, towering above him, a fifteen-feet-tall wall of muscle, razor-sharp icicles growing out of his fingers. He remembered Thor ramming those icicles into his throat, hissing, Monsters have no place in Asgard, Loki, before hurling his bleeding body into a dead black vortex. He remembered countless versions of his brother, his face convulsed with rage and hatred as he decapitated him; sliced open his chest; choked him with his bare hands; stoned him to death. He remembered Frigga, too, his beloved mother curled up on a bed behind a curtain of almost translucent pastel green, sobbing in despair. I should have told Odin that he was wrong to take you in. You brought us nothing but trouble. How could I ever think you were worth loving? You are a disgrace, Loki … Nobody ever wanted you, Loki … Did you really think you could have made me proud, Loki?

He remembered His voice, too, and His face, which coalesced with Odin's face sometimes; an atrocious purple grimace with a golden eyepatch. Resort to your illusions all you want, Loki, but they cannot conceal the truth: Not a single Asgardian cares about your fate. How many of them tried to rescue you? You are dead to them, dead. A distorted, inhuman laugh. Do you truly think this is suffering? No, Loki, you are coming to life for the first time. You are about to see what true power looks like. I will make you stronger and more resilient than you ever thought possible. Once you get through this, they will fear you. They will kneel before you. They will recognize they were dazzled by the same bright lure of freedom and self-determination that once dazzled you but you know the truth now, Loki. Freedom is a lie. There is only pain, and more pain, death and more death, suffering and more suffering. That is the very fabric of life, the very fabric of this universe. True power can only be achieved through mastering pain. You will come out of this stronger than anyone you ever encountered and you owe it to me. You owe it to me.

He remembered Hela as well, her voice fusing with that of the titan, as if somebody had split his mind into two entities, catapulting them into two different pasts, which were now miraculously converging, sending memories back into his brain, creating a hideous, horrific mashup of overlapping images. Your agony is delicious, Little Laufeyson. Asgard would never have been yours, you measly tapeworm. How could you have ever thought to be able to rule this glorious realm? You are nothing but a flyspeck on the pages of the glorious history of the Gods. Yes, he was back there, back where hope did not exist and sanity was far out of reach and he was sure that this time he would not return and that was fine because … because what?

A whisper came from somewhere deep inside his own head. You do not have to stay here. There is a way out. You created your own demons, Loki, and you alone can defeat them.

Someone was shouting his name. He thought it must be Thor—oh, please, let it be Thor—but the sound of his brother's voice was coming from far away, muffled, as if reaching his ears through a roaring ocean. Is Thor real? Is he here? Then he felt a weight on his shoulder. Hands, grabbing him. Are those hands here? Am I still there? And where is here, anyway?

No, whatever here was, it was gone. He was in that freakish non-place that had melted past and present together into an ice-cold, rocky, purplishly-glowing sanctuary-cave-hel-dimension that had, finally, severed him from reality, from humanity, from life, from the cabin, from Thor, from the putrid essence of his accursed existence. It was just pain now. He was free.

"Hey!" Thor's voice was persistent. He was shaking him now, the usually pleasant monotone of his deep voice grotesquely butchered by panic. "LOKI!"

He is here. That means I must still exist.

"WAKE UP!" Thor's voice was raw with held back tears. There was more shaking and the death-grip around his shoulders tightened. "Dammit, PLEASE, wake up, Loki!"

He realized then that his brother was crying. Thor was crying.

No, that was impossible.

He had to make sure. Loki squinted, forcing himself away from the memories and back into the here with the last ounce of mental strength left inside of him. He did not understand how he could still muster it, how he could still be alive and thinking, but it did not matter. Thor's face swam into focus. His lips stood apart, trembling. His eyes were wide open, glaring with fear. A single tear spilled out of his left eye and streaked down his cheek.

Loki panted. "Death … and suffering … the very fabric of this universe … that's … he … his plan …"

Thor was gaping at him, shaking him ever more violently, his expression one of naked consternation. "Loki, please," he pleaded, his voice breaking. "Come back!" He was holding on to him as if he feared that Loki might actually break if he let go.

And he would. He would.

Loki felt the urge to relax his muscles and sink into his brother's arms. He briefly struggled against it—the dark part would be furious should it ever come back—but he did not have any more physical or mental strength left and that was fine because, suddenly, he found a very powerful sense of relief in the realization that everything he had been through had not terminated his existence. That he was still alive and here despite all that pain, all that madness, all that horror; and that even though his blood was blue and his mind insane, he was still a person; a giant maybe, but still a person; and that he was strong; and that no matter what he did now, nothing would change that. Nothing would change the fact that he had lived through pain and torture so tremendous that it would have put an end to a lesser being.

He lowered his head, pressed his forehead onto Thor's shoulder and allowed himself to cry, and he did not recoil when Thor pulled him into a cautious and clumsy embrace.

Looping his arm around his brother's shoulder made Thor feel utterly helpless. It was like holding a newborn for the first time. He had no idea how to move or what to do with his hands. Loki's icy forehead was pressing onto his clavicle, his tears spilling onto his shirt. He was weeping bitterly now, choking on his own gut-wrenching sobs. The illusion of his garment was dissolving right before Thor's eyes.

"It's okay," Thor tried even though he knew very well that nothing was okay. Oh, these meaningless phrases we throw at people in unfathomable emotional distress. Why do words fail us every time we need them most? Loki's entire body was trembling, so he pulled him closer, locking him inside a tight embrace that sent a numbing chill through his entire body. Thor had thought that everything up until this point had seemed somehow unreal but this—his intelligent, mischievous, defiant, and proud little brother crying in his arms, clutching at his shirt as if his life depended on it—felt as ludicrous as a drug-induced craze.

"You're safe," he whispered, as he suddenly understood something else. Yes, Loki was a mischievous trickster who delighted in causing chaos among those he claimed to love, but he was also entirely alone. He had been entirely alone ever since Frigga died; maybe even before then. It was not only that nobody trusted him; the worst part was he did not trust anybody, least of all himself. Whenever something had bothered Thor in the past, there had always been someone to unburden himself to—be it Odin, Frigga, Sif, the Warriors Three, Jane, Tony Stark, Bruce, Valkyrie or even Rocket—but Loki had decided to suffer in silence, carrying the burden of his experiences alone, lest he be frowned upon or ridiculed for his lack of resilience. He had put on his typical array of masks—illusions, sarcasm, humor, contempt, outright hatred—to conceal his distress but now he had reached his breaking point.

Bizarrely and outrageously, Thor felt a wave of anger wash through him because his brother had never trusted him enough to ask for his help and his advice but he knew that this was not the right time. "You're safe, Loki," Thor repeated, absentmindedly stroking his brother's naked back until his fingers were frozen stiff. "I'm here now, we can fix this," he mumbled, repeating the words over and over again, unsure whether he said it to comfort his brother or himself.

After a while, Loki's horrendous bawling died down to a steady sobbing and a few minutes later, sleep was finally pulling him away from consciousness. Thor waited a moment longer, flexing his hurting fingers, before he untangled his arms and squirmed out of the embrace, gently pressing Loki down onto the couch. He did not even as much as stir.

Thor walked to the back of the cabin, where he found a small wood-paneled bathroom with a toilet, a black-framed mirror over a sink mounted above a wooden cabinet and a shower in the corner. He groaned with pain as he peeled off his shirt to inspect the damage. The skin on the inside of his arms and on his chest where Loki had rested his head had turned an almost black purple. He carefully touched the spot on his chest with his swollen, blistering fingers, but he felt nothing. He opened the wooden cabinet, looking for any type of medicine, but found it empty except for shower gel, toothpaste, a toothbrush, various make-up articles, some towels and a bilious green tube of moisturizing cream announcing in lean white letters that it contained ninety-two percent of Aloe Vera.

"Better than nothing, I suppose," Thor muttered to himself. He opened the tube of cream and squished the whitish mousse onto the blackened patches of his skin, cursing under his breath when his body began to burn. "Damn you, Hela. Damn you and this Infinity Stone and everything else." He felt tears clawing at the back of his own throat as helplessness overwhelmed him all over again. Look at the God of Thunder being completely thunderstruck. I love the irony of that. "I swear I'd damn you to Hel if you weren't already there, you murderous spawn of the devil."

He allowed himself a moment of weakness. Look at the God of Thunder crying into the mirror of a deserted Norwegian cabin, he thought grimly, weeping for a past long lost. He let it all out and brushed away the tears with his hurting fingers before he tiptoed back into the cabin's living quarters, where Loki was now lying curled up like a fetus in the womb, his own arms wrapped around himself as if for protection, his hands tightly gripping his shoulders. Thor took a blanket from the other couch and covered his brother's emaciated blue frame before he took the communication device out of his bag, left the cabin and sat down on the two steps leading up to its door.

"Thor!" Valkyrie cried into his ear. "Where have you been? Why didn't you call me?" There were a lot of voices and rustling in the background. Someone was shouting, "No, careful with that!" Something clanged against a metal surface.

"I'm sorry, I didn't—"

She interrupted him with a snort. "Didn't have the time? It's been eleven days, Thor!"

He opened his mouth to protest but then he remembered that he had used the Bifrost twice since he had left the Avengers Facility earlier that day—or what felt like that day, anyway—and that traveling across the rainbow bridge was to travel at a speed that defied the calculation of time used in any of the Nine Worlds. Apart from that, time passed differently in the land of the dead as well, which was to say that he had no way of knowing how much time he had lost fighting Hela or when his, or better Loki's, four weeks were actually over. The realization settled in his stomach like a wheelbarrow's load of uru metal. "I told you I needed some time to figure this out." I still do. A lot of it, actually, but I only have nineteen days at the most. "He is very … It's complicated."

"Did he try to kill you yet?"

Thor briefly thought about the icicles but decided it did not really count. "No, he's …" He broke off, staring into the night. This was all going so terribly wrong. "I'm okay, Val."

"And where have you been all this time? Wait, can he hear you?"

"We're in Norway," Thor mumbled, knowing she was about to protest when he heard her inhale. "And no, he can't. He's asleep." Another sharp breath. "I'll explain later, okay? Listen, about the Infinity Stones—"

"Yeah, about that," Valkyrie cut in. "Shuri called us three days ago. They did it. We're in Wakanda now."

"Is that Thor?" Tony was shouting from somewhere in the back. "Put him on video. I want a divine opinion on this."

"Very funny," Thor quipped but before he could say anything else, the connection broke off. While he waited to be "put on video," he thought about the plan that Tony, Shuri and Bruce had conceived a while ago. It was promising in theory, yes, but he was still doubtful of its practical effect and, not wanting to nurture false hope, he had told them as much. Before Thor had arrived on Wakanda to battle Thanos, Shuri—who was already a leading scientist at age seventeen and the most intelligent person he had ever spoken to—had been entrusted with the task of extracting the Mind Stone from Vision's body. Their plan had been to destroy it so it would not fall into the titan's hands; which was an understandable decision given the pressure they had been under but completely irresponsible in the face of the knowledge that these stones contained the fabric of the universe. Shuri had downloaded Vision's and, by extension, the Mind Stone's essence into one of her machines in the process and had now apparently managed to reproduce a synthetic version of it.

Shuri's name was flashing on the display of his communication device, along with the icon of a telephone receiver and a video camera. He took the call and her futuristic light-blue glowing workspace flickered to life on the small screen. She was standing in front of a surgical table wearing thick, steely-looking gloves, flanked by three dark-skinned men in white laboratory coats that Thor did not recognize. Virtually everyone else was scattered across the room as well but he could only make out their shapes, not their faces. Tony Stark was standing close to Shuri and her engineers, along with Bruce. Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff and Okoye were standing back a little. Nebula was there as well and so were Pepper and Rocket.

"Hello everyone," Thor greeted them awkwardly. If he had known that he would be visible to the entire team, he would have put his shirt back on.

"What happened to your neck?" Valkyrie gasped.

"Just a souvenir from Niflheim," Thor settled on saying. He could not really see Rocket but heard him ask, "Niffle-what?"

"Niflheim," Valkyrie provided. "It is one of the Nine Realms; the land of icy fogs that is situated on the lowest level of the universe and harbors the kingdom of hel, gathering place for the dishonored dead."

Rocket grunted with disgust. "You really went to such a frosty, godforsaken place to get your b—"

"I can hardly see you," Thor cut in, unwilling to discuss the specifics of his quest in front of a group of Wakandan scientists.

"It's dark where you are, right?" Tony asked. "Just tap the projection icon and zoom. You have one of my latest phones, which is capable of projecting images onto surfaces and objects that have absorbed all frequencies of light."

Thor was not even sure if Tony Stark was speaking English. "What?"

"Black," the other man clarified, "the darkest color? Complete darkness is the result of the complete absorption of visible light. If you hit it with the right wavelength of light, though, it will—"

"There is a symbol on your screen," Pepper cut in. "It looks like a square with little fireworks around it. Just take your index and middle finger, touch that symbol and stretch it with your fingers, while pointing the phone at a dark surface."

"Thanks," Thor mumbled and followed Pepper's instructions. The almost unrecognizable image from the small screen manifested itself against the dark silhouette of the night, the faces of his companions finally large enough to read their expressions. But as soon as he could see them clearly, as soon as he saw that most of them—the exceptions being Tony, Shuri and Nebula—had nothing to offer except grim, suspicious stares, he wished he hadn't asked for an enlargement.

"So, you really build your own Mind Stone?" Thor asked with a mixture of unease and curiosity.

"Yes, we did," Shuri replied, a proud smile spreading across her features. She gestured to the stone, which was resting in a small metal case on the surgical table, glimmering in a faint purplish light, identical to the other seven in shape and size. "I took us a long time but we eventually managed to determine the stone's exact molecular structure, which allowed us to replicate it."

"But how is that possible?" Thor asked, trying not to sound too condescending. "They were created millions of years ago and they don't consist of anything that you can recreate with Midgardian materials."

"Replicating molecular structures does not necessarily mean to recreate something using the exact same materials," Shuri explained. "Sometimes, you can replicate a molecular structure by using materials with a similar molecular structure and modify them accordingly. Vibranium is quite modifiable."

Yeah, but not where the Infinity Stones are concerned, Thor thought but did not say it. Instead, he asked if they had tried to revive Vision, inevitably thinking of the day he had powered the synthezoid to life with his hammer. How comparably simple and peaceful his life had been back then with no knowledge of Hela's relation to him, with Mjölnir still his entrusted companion, Odin still alive, Asgard still standing and his warrior curls still unshaved. Thor was usually not one to lament the past but he felt a tinge of nostalgia as he recalled their earlier quests.

"Yes, but unfortunately, that didn't work," Shuri replied. "The synthetic synapses holding the stone in place were destroyed when Thanos yanked it out and we could not replicate their exact structure. Not yet."

"We built something else though," Tony chimed in. "Well, Shuri did, mostly. Remember this, Thor?" He picked up a scepter with a long steel-gray handle and a dark purple fitting encircled by pointy black blades, waving it in front of the camera. For the first time since he had come back from space, there was a sparkle of life in his eyes and it was mixed with admiration. "That's a vibranium replica of your bro's scepter to activate and contain the stone's powers. You called just in time to watch the test run."

Author's Note:

- I'll probably have to say that I was just finishing Stephen King's IT at the time of writing Loki's flashback, which might have inspired some of the torture memories to a certain extent. Credits go to the undisputed master of psychological horror. I love you, Stephen King, with every fiber of my being. Oh, by the way, Hela calling Loki Little Laufeyson is actually from the comics but I don't remember who said that to him and what the exact circumstances were. What I do remember is something going like, I see you still quivering in the shadows of your own mighty fathers, too weak to ever be your own man … You are ever the child playing at childish games, Little Laufeyson. If anyone knows, which comic and issue I'm talking about, feel free to tell me because I, too, would love to read it again.
- And of course, avid readers that y'all are, you picked up on the meaning of Thanos' words to Loki in his flashback, both regarding Loki's (Hello mother, have I made you proud? *sobs*) and the titan's future lines/actions.
- And regarding the whereabouts of the Avengers and the timeline, I should probably say that Tony Stark returned to New York after he came back from space and I imagine Thor sent Valkyrie to the Avengers facility with the Asgardian refugees when Thanos attacked. So, Thor also returned to New York while others stayed in Wakanda or swarmed out across the globe to provide emergency aid but of course, they stayed in contact.
- All in all, I have to say that his part really got to me and, truth be told, I had to stop a few times when writing this because it was really intense. I hope you felt as much as reading it as I did writing it. Cheers to everyone who is following this story or has favorited it or given me some feedback. I appreciate it a lot :3