It seemed even the voiceless could scream.

"Loki! What is it! Hey, Loki!"

Confusion muddled his thoughts as Loki lurched from sleep into reality, tendrils of his dream still clinging to him. The ache in his throat was real, the rest was just phantom pain ghosting across his body. He vaguely registered the boy framed against the fire barrel's meager light. Book was standing there, eyes still glazed with sleep as he menaced the shadows around them with a ragged piece of wood. Slowly it seemed to dawn on him that there was no real danger and he shakily lowered his weapon.

Loki shoved himself back against the wall of crates, wrapping his long arms around his knees to try and hide their shaking. Sweat trailed down the back of his neck and seeped through his clothing to chill in the night air. His heart slammed against the inside of his chest arrhythmically and a sick feeling curled in the pit of his stomach, threatening to upend his meager dinner. Mortal frames were not built for terror.

Book gave a weak laugh as he placed one end of his plank against the floor and leaned heavily on the other. "I had no idea someone that couldn't talk could scream that loudly." He whistled, "impressive. And you know, terrifying." He pressed a hand against his heart. "Yeah, that adrenaline rush isn't going anywhere any time soon." Catching sight of Loki's ashen face and wide eyes, he sobered. "Loki, it's okay. You're safe, it was just a nightmare."

Just. Loki gritted his teeth. If it were only that. He clenched his eyes against the fragments of memory that threatened to undo him. The agonies Thanos had inflicted upon him, not because he wanted to make Loki comply, but because he could. The Mad Titan had been canny enough to make sure that while the pain was raw and visceral, the damage wasn't lasting. Loki had a job to do after all. His…"instruction" had still left him stumbling through the tesseract portal, wild and reeling, weakness buried beneath a manic masic.

Tangled up with these more solid nightmares were the vague, distorted recollections from the void—the dark between darks. It was nothingness filled to the brim with things that his mind shuddered to even comprehend. They might have been beautiful or unholy terrors. But they were so completely other, made of the inexplicable pieces that had fallen through the mesh of reality, that a creature of Yggdrasil had no way to even begin to give them shape. And yet, the mind tried, creating flaming wheels filled with eyes, crystalline wings that continuously shattered and reformed, teeth with no mouths to hold them, and a thing that was every childhood nightmare enfleshed. They moved through him like ghosts…or maybe, maybe they were the solid things, the real things, and he was the one that was intangible, untouchable, a fragment of thought from someone else's dream.

Flashes of colliding with a great, predatory thing—sinuous and devouring all about it, coiling about Loki like some massive serpent. In the void there were currents of soundlessness—a silence beyond deafness that cut off even the voice within your mind. And yet, this thing shrieked in rage, tearing at Loki, knotting itself through the shattered remnants of his psyche that had fallen into the void.

A hand on his shoulder caused him to jump.

Book offered a reassuring smile. "It'll be okay. Whatever it was, whatever happened, it's over. You're safe here." He hefted his piece of wood. "I've got your back."

The image of Book facing down the inhabitants of the void, shouting them down and swinging his meager bit of wood, struck Loki as funny. And by the Norns, he could see it. He tried to swallow the sound in a kind of choked cough, but he was too raw and untethered for that kind of restraint. He laughed. Letting his head hang between his knees, he laughed until his shoulders shook. It sounded slightly manic even to his ears.

Book merely quirked an eyebrow in confusion and gnawed on the corner of his lip, "dude, you okay?"

This only made Loki laugh harder. This child with his naiveite, crooked face, and broken piece of wood would take on the Mad Titan and terrors of the void? Loki let his head loll back against the crates as his laughter softened and the deep shadows of the dream slipped away. He offered Book a weary smile.

The boy rolled his eyes. "You are so weird."

Too true. Loki bowed in acknowledgement.

Book glanced at the complete darkness still visible through one of the dingy transoms and sighed. He tossed more kindling into the barrel and then slid down across from Loki.

"Sometimes I have this dream, a good dream" he clarified as Loki narrowed his eyes, clearly not wanting Book to start sharing whatever horrors darkened his sleep, "and in the dream I've got this big family, and I mean big. I've got brothers and sisters, and aunts and uncles, cousins, the works. And I've got parents and grandparents…or at least I think that's who they are. You know how it is in dreams where things are kinda one thing and kinda not?"

Loki nodded.

"I dunno, the exact relations, but I've just got this sense that I'm at the center of this big group. Sometimes I think it's Sim and the rest of the gang, but it's not really their faces I'm seeing. It just feels kind of like them, but I know it's not. Nothing ever really happens in the dream. Like, we don't do anything, they're just all there, but I get this feeling, like they care about me." He sighed. "It's…nice."

Loki snorted. Of course the little orphan would dream of being at the center of a large clan. His nightmares likely consisted of the opposite—of abandonment, loneliness, and rejection. The boy ought to count himself lucky if those were the worst terrors to stalk his sleep.

It shouldn't surprise him that his own nightmares had finally come. He'd been dreading them since he had first felt exhaustion wearing down this mortal body. If he'd had his magic there were ways to push back the need to rest, or at least hedge his sleeping mind with the same vigilance that guarded his waking thoughts. Without it, he was vulnerable. What he'd experienced since being thrown from the Bifrost would likely haunt the dreams of most, but he'd not necessarily been a stranger to bad dreams.

Jerking his thoughts away from such paths, Loki turned his attention to Book. The boy continued to yammer on, talking about everything and nothing. The noise was a comfort and Loki dropped into the warm sea of words, only latching onto meaning for a moment before releasing the thread of thought.

"Never really liked artichokes…flight risk they called me, but I've never been on a plane—get it…curdled milk…they call them fireflies down here…Mark Twain…love the two dollar theater…bet I could pass for as young as ten if I needed to…not sure when my actual birthday is…wish people would stop recycling their cardboard, where am I supposed to get it…wolves up at the nature center…Dr. Pepper…I can whistle "Bohemian Rhapsody"….couldn't read 'till third grade…don't like the Moderns much…did you know that "blonde" with an "e" only refers to girls, and without is typically for guys…marshmallow cream…"

And on and on it went. Loki drifted further and further away from the shadows of his dreams. Exhaustion rushed in to fill the empty hollowness left as the fear leeched away. His eyes slid shut as he drifted back into oblivion. Just as he succumbed, the brief glimmer of a memory nagged at him. He was familiar with the tactic Book was using.

As a child, Loki was prone to nightmares. They were enough to be noticeable, but not it seemed enough to overly concern his parents. As he grew, they settled—for the most part. Certain events understandably followed him into his sleep and he would awake screaming or drenched with sweat even into his mid seven hundreds. By that point, though, he had learned how to hide the shame of such unmanly weakness.

But when he had been very small he had cared only for the comfort of his mother's arms, or when older, his brother's presence. When he was older still and couldn't very well climb into his brother's bed anymore, he would still sneak into Thor's room and sit just within the doorway and listen to him breath.

Despite being more often afflicted with nightmares, Loki wasn't the only one with troubled sleep. Thor had them on occasion as a child, as is normal. Very rarely would bad dreams bother him as he grew, even after experiences that would follow Loki from the waking world. But there was once when they were both young men—too old to be considered children and too young to be considered adults—that it was Thor whose sleep was broken by nightmares.

Loki started a bit as his door suddenly creaked open and Thor slipped into the room. Thor hadn't been particularly annoying recently, so there had been no need to spell the door against him. Still, Loki hadn't expected him to be barging into his rooms when anyone in their right minds would have been asleep. Although "barging" wasn't quite the right word. If anything, Thor seemed…hesitant.

"Thor?"

His brother didn't answer, merely trudged over to the sunken seating area where Loki was perched cross-legged with a magic tome across his knees. Thor wasn't really looking at him…or anything really, but Loki could still see the redness around his eyes.

"Are you drunk?"

"No." Thor snapped, though there was little fire behind it.

"Then are you going to tell me why you're in my chambers well into third watch?"

Thor ignored the question and dropped heavily onto a cushioned seat across from Loki. "What are you reading?"

The fact that Loki was reading was answer enough as to why he was still awake—though in reality he slept less than Thor for a variety of reasons. If you slept too much there weren't enough hours in the day to train properly, study, and still cause a little mischief.

Placing his elbows on the book and leaning forward, Loki narrowed his eyes. "Why in all the realms would you care what I was…" Loki trailed off as Thor glanced his way before his gaze slid away again. In that brief moment, Loki saw the hollowness and lingering terror behind his brother's eyes. More than once he'd seen that look in green, reflected back at him as he splashed water over his face and head, trying to wash away the remnants of a nightmare. He'd never seen it in blue before—hadn't thought Thor capable of it.

He knew Thor had been on a mission to Alfheim recently—something that was becoming more common as they grew older, Thor going his own way and Loki not always trailing along. Loki also knew that it had gone poorly. A group of fanatics with dangerous aspirations and even more dangerous weapons had been plaguing Alfheim and leading the fairly isolationist elves to reach out to Asgard for assistance. Attempts to strategically disarm the zealots had gone spectacularly wrong—a spy in the Alfheim tribunal. It had been a bloodbath.

Loki hadn't been there when Thor returned and the little he'd seen of him since, Thor had been uncharacteristically quiet or desperately loud. And Loki couldn't believe he hadn't seen it. Hadn't understood the importance of the somber talks behind closed doors Thor had had with their father. Or the concern in his mother's gaze. It had gone badly—of course Thor wouldn't have been his usual boisterous self—but Loki hadn't realized just how badly.

Thor cleared his throat. "What are you reading?"

Loki rocked the book back so that Thor could see the cover. "Ensorcelment and Magecraft."

"Ah." There was a long pause as Thor continued to find the drapes framing the balcony absolutely fascinating. "What's it about?"

Blinking rapidly, Loki couldn't quite keep the shock from his face. Thor had repeatedly said that he'd rather take a beating with Mjolnir than listen to anything about magic.

"It's pretty advanced material…but it's really quite fascinating. You see, it deals with the root nature of magic and sorcery. More philosophical than practical."

Thor was nodding, but clearly not really paying attention to what Loki said.

And so, Loki talked. At first Thor just stared out the windows. Then he paced for a while, examining the knickknacks and baubles that lined Loki's shelves—ones he'd seen a thousand times. Eventually he settled back on the circular couch, but right next to Loki—ostensibly to look at a diagram—a diagram that would have meant nothing to Thor.

Loki droned on, letting the cadence of his voice fall into a soothing rhythm as the tension in Thor's body slowly eased. Eventually Thor let his head lean back against the top of the couch and his eyes drifted shut. Still Loki continued to talk, and if he wove a bit of sleep into his words, he didn't think Thor would fault him. Before long, the rhythm of Thor's breathing slowed, growing deeper and more even.

Loki closed his book and set it aside. He crouched in front of Thor and studied his sleeping brother for a moment. "What happened on Alfheim?" He reached out with two fingers and gently pressed them to Thor's forehead. Closing his eyes and twisting his head to the side in concentration, Loki took a deep breath. He hadn't done this often, but he needed to know what Thor had seen—and Thor obviously wasn't going to tell him.

Suddenly, Loki was tossed into Thor's memories. Battle raged around them, elves seemed to materialize from the shadows. Blood dripped down Thor's face as he swung Mjolnir, connecting with a charging elf. He gave a battle cry and threw his hammer, plowing through three enemies in succession. He grinned. Thor was enjoying himself.

Then, on the edge of the battlefield, he heard a child's screams. A girl covered in grime huddled at the edge of the chaos, a zealot advancing toward her. In a single bound, Thor closed the distance between them, Mjolnir meeting the elf's raised blade. Thor's reputation for being a skilled warrior was well earned, however, and his enemy didn't last long.

"You're safe now," said Thor as he smiled down at the child.

Slowly, she uncurled from her fetal position and turned to face him, revealing the dark gem roughly imbedded in her chest.

"For the glory of the aether's children," she said, raising her fingers to the gem. The instant her fingers touched it, a sickly glow burned in the heart of it, radiating out through her veins like fire.

Then all was screaming and a rush of dark fire as Thor threw up his hands to shield himself. Someone was yelling his name and the snap of protective elvish magic crackled about him while the girl burned before his eyes.

As the wave of destruction faded away, cracks spiderwebbed through the bedrock in all directions, corpses littering the ground, Aesir and elvish alike. At the center, the girl's mutilated husk.

And then her thin, shredded chest spasmed. Shaking, Thor knelt beside her and gingerly cradled what was left of her broken body, feeling the thick blood work its way through the chinks of his armor and slick his hands with gore. There was so much for such a little thing.

A pained wheezing gurgled in her throat. Thor begged the Norns to cut her thread and end her suffering. Yet the thing in his arms lingered, twitching, moaning, and occasionally making strangled sobbing sounds.

Finally, mercifully all movement ceased. It was even longer still before Thor let them take his burden from him.

Loki jerked away from Thor, skittering backwards as his breaths came in hitching gasps. Exhaling slowly, he licked his lips and looked skyward. He ignored the dampness that trailed down his check and neck.

"Bastards," he whispered as he thought of the kind of monsters that would us little girls as their weapons.

A frown creased Thor's brow. He shifted and mumbled to himself.

It had been ages since Loki had seen Thor have anything but blissfully untroubled sleep—he was too mulish for anything else. If only this were just a nightmare, figments of fantasy and fear that would vanish with the dawn. He sighed and padded across to his brother's sleeping form. Gingerly, he settled himself sideways on the couch, bare feet burrowing beneath a throw pillow. He rested with his back against Thor's side and then leaned back until his head rested against Thor's. The troubled clouds of the dark memories prickled through Thor and leeched into Loki.

Letting his magic seep through their physical contact, Loki pushed back, bridging the gap between them. With measured breaths, he slowly inhaled through his nose, letting the air escape between his lips. Over and over in slow rhythm he quieted his breathing and felt his heart rate drop as well. Beside him, he felt Thor do the same as the two began to breath in sync, and Thor dropped deeper into rest. Then, Loki allowed his head to fall back fully onto Thor's shoulder as he conjured up happy memories. The death and decay, the image of the shattered corpse, gave way to the two of them as boys, dashing through a field of flowers and catching up whole armfuls to shower their mother with; or standing atop Sleipnir's broad back at full gallop, the wind whipping through their hair; or sitting at father's knee while the fire crackled late into the night and he told them tales of long ago; stargazing on Vanaheim with their cousin Freya; the two of them returning triumphant from some quest, each talking over the other in excitement as their mother smiled with pride.

Thor eased into gentle sleep as Loki allowed the memories to sink into his dreamscape, before letting his own heavily drooping lids fall closed.

"Sweet dreams, brother," he murmured as exhaustion took him.

Notes: Sorry about the wait. I realized that I needed to make some changes pretty early in the story in order to better set up some possibilities later (I'm trying to make sure I've adequately laid the groundwork I might need in the future). I'm not 100% satisfied with this chapter, but it's not horrible either. Since I revise, and revise, and revise, going this quickly from first draft to "published" makes me nervous. Plus side is that it manages to include something I knew happened in the world of the story, but hadn't previously felt was really needed/ fit into the flow of the narrative.