Still much trauma, hang in there folks!

2.

Thor releases his hold on Loki just enough to be able to try and stare him down, keeping a firm hold on his shoulders, both so Loki cannot break away from the question and because he can see that in his sudden panic he is not standing too steadily. He cannot outstare Loki and he knows it and yet, to his immense surprise it is Loki who looks down first, he can see the effort in his every gesture that it has taken to offer Thor this standing down, like an animal rolling over to expose its soft underside. He could make it no clearer if he tried that this is what he has been doing ever since Thor came down to the prison to see him. Thor feels dreadful, beyond measure, to realise what it means for Loki to offer him this, having tried not to understand to save himself from continuing to care. Much good, he thinks, these attempts have done. He cannot bear it, that Loki is so desperate for approval that he would do this, Thor is no psychiatrist but he hears, as it were, a montage of Loki calling everyone desperate other than himself right down to that last –

You must be truly desperate to come to me for help.

Thor curses his own stupidity, that he never noticed how Loki was trying to drop him hints all along, trying desperately to let him know without saying it - that he did none of this wilfully;

That it never was the rest of us you thought so desperate, it was you all along –

He does not say this aloud, does not want to damage to chance he may be verging on of Loki actually telling him something true.

"You can't" Loki says, finally, still not looking Thor in the eye, though it is this that convinces him that Loki is speaking the truth – when he can so often look one direct in the eye and tell the sweetest of lies. He wishes he could see Loki's face, he keeps his expression carefully hidden but Thor sees his shoulders heave in a sigh that seems to hurt him and Loki kicks the front of the boat in frustration before looking up, hiding behind the surge of anger that has come into his eyes – "You can't kill anyone for me brother, you cannot protect me, cannot save you little brother from the people being mean to him. Not this time. Your friends saw to that and I cannot say I am sorry. But you cannot take anyone to task for my downfall. As I see it you have had no problems before now in pinning that on me alone."

"You did not tell me!"

"You barely asked!"

"Would you have told me the truth if I had?"

"Of course not!"

"Well then –" Thor breaks off, not knowing what more to say, he shakes his head –

"You admit then that you did not act of your own accord?"

Loki looks away and stubbornly refuses to answer, lips sealed so tight they might have been sewn together. He twists out from beneath Thor's hands, Thor letting him, and sits back down at the front of the boat, turning his face to rest his forehead against the cool of the prow, soothing to that still burning brain. Thor looks at him silently for a moment, realising how stupid a question it was to ask; Loki would never admit it outright, but he had done so indirectly for all intents and purposes.

"This changes things. You need not be punished for something that is not your fault – when we get home – if we survive this - I will go to father – I will –"

"You will do nothing of the sort!" Loki snaps viciously, whipping his head around to glare – "Do you think for one moment I would want him to know that I –" He stops himself, rethinking and covering it up poorly, muttering more to convince himself than Thor – "Anyway I am not so easily controlled. You credit me with too little blame."

Do I? Thor thinks, doubting it.

"I do not get the impression it was so easy" Thor murmurs as gently as he can. Loki glares at him through brimming, stinging eyes, hating him for making him remember everything he has been trying all these months in prison to forget –

-never knew I could cry so long, never knew I was so weak, so easily broken, a small ball of a creature curled up to avoid the worst of the blows, the lashes stinging across already broken skin, screaming with the pain so long when the screaming ran down it could still be heard in the brain. So loud, so loud already in the head, burning and roaring with red static pain, ongoing pain, hour after hour, day after day until the concept of pain seems remote and strange for forgetting that there was ever any other state of being. However long it took I broke and broke too easily, pathetic, crawling thing to break like a bug crushed not quite to death beneath the boot. Disgusting thing, to let this happen. Hoping against hope that It cannot reach into the mind and see the wish sobbing in there for nothing more than to go back home. But it can, of course it can, fingers wriggling in again, invading the mind, filthy, so filthy this foul penetration, plucking at that sobbing childish wish and pulling at it, using it to mock, to scorn, to torment –

"You have no home and nobody to return to, this is all you are and all you ever were –"

There was a memory, even in that place that was no place, the memory of summers of silver and gold and someone loving me, of fires warming the heart of winter and love in defiance of reason. There were these memories that I threw up as a barrier to Its words, to Its cruel insistence of my worthlessness, there was the memory of someone looking at me like they loved me. There were memories and they were the strongest weapons that I had. And oh how It tore them to shreds,

"You think this is proof you were someone once? This is nothing, this is lies, there was no love here, there was only coercion and rape from one who sought to use your as his toy, as I do, as we all do –"

How it went to work on all those memories, tearing at their fabric and injecting them with poison until I tasted that poison in my every pore until I believed in the injection and not the evidence, until Love became a filthy, venomous word to be trampled down with me – until I had nothing to hold onto but the consistent pain of now –

"You know nothing Thor" Loki spits with bitter sadness – "Do not speak of what you cannot imagine or begin to understand."

"Help me to understand then! For the love of the gods Loki, tell me something true!"

"What you want me to share? To – to – begin some kind of healing process? Do you think talking will make this go away? No, no I have said enough already – too much – I –no, damn it, no, stop pretending that you care -"

Loki bites his lip, not wanting to say more, Thor too opens and closes his mouth several times, on the border of saying but I do care and ultimately he cannot, even though it would be only too painfully true. He sits back down, wanting to reach out again but not knowing how, he cannot make himself speak, always the possessor of the more leaden tongue, and he cannot reach out to touch Loki again for fear of provoking another terrified reaction. His blood boils and his heart aches for fear of what has been done to his brother, remembering the time he would have quickly beaten to the ground anyone who caused him so much as the faintest hurt. He could drown his own heart in the tears that he swallows for remembering a time when Loki was still perfect in his eyes, unharmed and undamaged. He looks across at Jane, asleep at the far end of the ship and wishes he could care only about the simple lives of these mortals that concern him and not take back in hand the one life he cares about beyond all measure. He sighs, knowing too well that when it came down to it he would choose Loki every time.

Loki watches Thor, eyes narrowing as he sees him look at Jane and sigh, misreading it completely, and he closes the door to his heart again silently, hardening himself once more. It has become almost easy.

"If you have a plan it may be a good idea to share it before we reach Malekith and not after" he says, voice neutral.

Thor looks at him a moment, reading nothing once more in that blank mask of a face, knowing that look that means Loki has closed himself off again and unsure whether he has made any real ground or not. Thor nods and outlines the plan. By the time he has not quite finished Loki is shaking with genuine not quite silent laughter.

"I do not see what is so funny" Thor frowns.

Loki meets his eye, merriment dancing across his face –

"Truly brother – you would trust me with a plan such as this? Whatever do you think will stop me from doing all of it for real?"

"Only my own idiocy" Thor sighs – "And my –" love, hope, faith? Perhaps one, perhaps all three are pushing him to trust that just this once Loki might redeem himself.

Loki looks sourly over at Jane –

"Is she that worth saving?"

Thor looks back at him steadily for a long moment before saying, very quietly and without really meaning to at all –

"It is not her I wish to save."

Loki stares at him a moment uncomprehendingly, then he sees the intensity and the unarguable love in Thor's returned gaze and the moment he gets it he starts to sob, silently and uncontrollably, really truly crying for the first time since before he fell. Thor stares back dismayed, not quite knowing what to do for a moment, but only a moment before he kicks himself for being in any doubt. He reaches a tentative hand to Loki's face and when Loki does not shy away curls that hand around his neck, settling into that old familiar spot that feels like it was made for his hand to sit there. He remembers that old, never really forgotten feeling of wholeness, of how well they have always fitted together and leans forward until their foreheads are pressed together and he can hear Loki's hitching breath and fluttering heart. There is a moment when suddenly everything is deeply simple and all he knows is that his little brother is upset and hurt and that it is his job to take care of him. It is all he has ever known so certainly.

"Come here –" he sighs in a soft growl, and Loki is pliant and placid as a dormant cat as Thor pulls him closer on the bench, wrapping his arms around him from behind and settling his chin on Loki's head while Loki cries softly, torn between struggling not to and the curious joy and release in finally doing so. He has always chosen to cry best like this, supported but from such an angle that Thor cannot see his face, all open and raw and streaked with tears and Thor murmuring a strange but somehow pleasant litany of comfort such as he has been offering for centuries, murmuring his name like an incantation –

"Loki, my Loki, it's okay, it's all going to be alright, my beautiful Loki, it's okay, it's okay –"

Somehow when Thor says his name like that it reminds him who he is, that he even is someone with a name is reassuring after everything. Somehow too, it rings almost true, maybe it really is going to be alright because he remembers now that however many times he was told that love was a lie, however brutally It ripped at his fondest memories of sweetness, however close he came to believing everything It said there was always a tiny hidden seed at the core of him that held out against hope and would not truly believe it. He supposes he would not have felt half so conflicted in New York if he had. And he thinks that maybe, just maybe it means he is not as weak as he feared, that he is not nothing after all. For though the memories were ripped at and put back in his head damaged they still shimmer in they rags, silver and gold, crimson and green, sapphire and starlight, shadow and sun.

That seed growing into hope that when they get through this it will be as okay as Thor says it will and that he will call him brother again before long.

"Am I really?" he murmurs, half curious, half just to speak as Thor kisses him ever so gently on the top of the head.

"Really what?"

Loki smiles to himself at the sweet, silly idea of it –

"Beautiful" he says.

_x_

Thank you faithful readers for putting up with all the sad, there's at least two more chapters of sad to go before it can start getting any better but watch this space!

Also I have to mention that I run the risk of plagiarism a little as some parts of this story share some very common ground with my partner, Zedrobber's very excellent story "Stripes" which I urge you all heartily to read. :-)