Guest (Who doesn't?! ;) ), salenastarzz (Thanks a lot for reviewing! Yes, I will post it, I promise :). I've gone soft, because it really wasn't going to go well :O. ), ClintBarton-Loki'sButtWarmer (I'm so glad. Thanks!), SitarLover (Oh, god, I'm so flattered! Thank you! :) I'm afraid It'll stop being this pleasurable if it stops being a hobby, becoming just a work. You're very nice, thanks again! I hope you're going to like today's chapter ;). ), Maru de Kusanagi (Who's not?! ;p You'll have to wait for it a little bit more, though. Still, I hope you're going to like the new chapter!), RainbowMoon13 (Oh, no, it's not the end yet ;). Yes, Thor can be a little suffocating sometimes, don't you think? There's no need to pout; here's more, and you're going to like it, hopefully. :) Thanks a lot for reviewing!), Guest (Yes, he is ;). Thanks!), THORKISUPPORT (Here it is. Thank you!), Silver Jackie (No more waiting! Please, enjoy. So many compliments, I'm absolutely flattered :). Thank you so much! Indeed, I was originally planning a sad ending, but now some things have changed :) ), monkan (Thanks a lot, once again!), Guest (Thank you!), Noelwing (Thanks a lot :) ! It's so nice of you. Indeed, it's not over yet.), thorkilover (How can I say 'no' to it? I say 'yes' ;)! Please, enjoy the next chapter and thank you), Aquarinus (Thanks again!), Prince Of Pariahs (Thanks for reviewing! I promise to explain myself in the next chapter ;) ), Guest (It's so good to know! Thank you so much! :) ), Ginsekatze (I'm so glad you enjoyed :). Thank you! I'm afraid it's not that simple with Loki remembering anything, but I hope you won't be disappointed. Here's more; please, enjoy. :) ), intern3t (Thank you! It's very flattering to know that this story is scary, not just angsty :) ).

A/N: I'm going to give you a bit of Loki's POV today, even though I prefer to write this story from Thor's POV, and I think that this fandom lacks it terribly :(. Thor is so interesting to both read and write about; he's really inspiring. I'm still leaving him in the main focus, but I feel like showing some Loki, and his thoughts and feelings, because it just needs to be written now that he's awake. Please, enjoy.

12. Just A Coincidence

~oOo~

It had taken Loki more than one week to be able to really focus on anything. He still tended to suddenly become absent-minded for some time, but it was possible to shake him out of that state, though he was never happy when someone did it to him, to matter how gentle it was. He hated that his mind was out of his control at times, and he couldn't help but take out his irritation on other people, mainly on Thor and Ingibjörg, - the only people that were spending time with him, since he knew nobody else here in Denmark, so it was they who endured Loki's moodiness. Ingibjörg wasn't a new person for him. He was aware of the fact that he'd known her for some time, though he mostly remembered feelings that were related to her than any actual occasions. He knew her voice and he knew she had been taking care of him, but he hardly knew anything else about her consciously; he felt that, without being attached to her, he somewhat trusted her, nevertheless.

But he didn't appreciate when both Thor and Ingibjörg were fussing over him. To him they seemed too loud and hyperactive. Sometimes he couldn't even follow when they were talking to him, so they often had to repeat things they tried to tell him. Really, were they expecting him to be ecstatic or something? His mind was still a little blurry, so he couldn't share their good mood. He needed rest. A lot of rest. At the same time, he was willing to participate when the nurse was doing some exercises for his mind with him, to help him to recover sooner. She was encouraging, but not annoying when he failed to do some exercises and felt stupid and frustrated with himself.

He was happy to hear his mother's voice as she had rung Thor and asked him to give the phone to Loki. He missed a good half of what exactly she was telling him, but hearing the timbre of her voice was pleasant and made him feel warm and content, as if he was a little boy again. She seemed to know it, so he was relieved that she never insisted for him to answer, letting him listen to her, instead. He would've kept melting at her voice if she was lecturing him about the niceties of nuclear physics or describing the pattern of the carpet on the floor of their living room in minute detail. He would have listened to anything she told him, with or without understanding it, because her voice felt like a warm blanket that cocooned him cosily.

~oOo~

His phone talk with the family doctor (not the psychiatrist, with whom Loki would also have to talk soon) was much less pleasant, though. Loki was a little more coherent when the man rang him to find out how he was from Loki himself. The doctor said that it would be nice if the youth came back home as soon as possible to be thoroughly examined by the psychiatrist and other specialists. He also said that they would have to do some tests in addition to those that had already been done long ago, since Loki had been raped and enough time had passed to reveal any possible sexually transmitted diseases that hadn't been revealed before, if he had any. The doctor said he was sure that everything was going to be fine and they needed to do it just to make sure; he was quite tactful about it, but for Loki this subject was pretty painful. He'd started having flashbacks of what had been done to him in that dark mortuary. He was almost glad that his mind had been practically shut down for such a long time after what had happened. He wasn't sure how he would've been able to even start coping with that horrible experience if he had been conscious right after that. Even though he had been 'away' for quite a while, he still felt that the rape and the torture had taken place months ago, not yesterday, not a few days ago.

But it still hurt...

The talk with the doctor had upset him very much and he didn't feel like coming home. And he absolutely didn't feel like talking to police, which he knew would be required of him. Not only he would have to give some details, which he didn't want to give, but he also didn't want to say that his mind had been so damaged by shock and terror that he hadn't been sure that the one who had assaulted him was even a human. He still didn't know what to think. When he was forcing his logic to work he could understand what had caused him to think about being attacked by something that wasn't a human being. When he was having panic attacks because of his phobia, he could experience a tunnel vision or hallucinations, his perception could be distorted, and so on. But when he was remembering what he had heard and what little he had seen back then, his heart was freezing in his chest.

He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to remember, didn't want to voice any of it in the presence of strangers or not strangers. He didn't want to talk to the psychiatrist about it, nor did he want to talk to the police. He wanted nothing to do with that at all, even for the sake of founding and arresting the rapist. He would be much more comfortable with the idea that a nameless and faceless person was free than gained a name, a face and revealed what he had done to Loki, his confessions written down or filmed. It was scary, painful and humiliating to the point that Loki sometimes wanted his mind to shut down once again only to stop thinking about all of that, only to stop feeling violated and tainted. He felt too vulnerable to be in the centre of any attention. Nobody should've ever found out about it at all!

Sometimes he started thinking about running away and leaving everything, including his family, behind; and then hiding somewhere where no one knew him and what had happened to him, so he wouldn't have felt this shame; he would try to pretend that nothing had happened to him. And, in that case, he wouldn't have to talk to anybody, giving any details on how he had been brutalised: frightened, molested, raped, burned... How he had been sure that the assailant had been murdering him and his life was about to be ended; that he was about to stop existing...

When he was too deep in his fears and concerns, only the familiar warm, muscular embrace could make him relax and concentrate on his present, as if Thor knew when Loki was hurting inside.

"You don't have to do anything you don't want to. You don't have to talk to anyone you don't want to talk to," Thor once told him after Loki's another descent into his painful thoughts; his fears and insecurities. Loki couldn't help but give him a shocked look. Thor had always loved him (okay, Loki had had some doubts back when the blond's good nature had been overshadowed by his arrogance, but it hadn't lasted), had always meant well, but since when the older of the two had become this empathetic? Loki hadn't expected his older brother to understand him so well in this particular situation, even though they had never discussed it. He had never shared his thoughts about it and his feelings that were akin to a huge, heavy stone tied to his neck. And his older brother never insisted him to share.

The next hour Loki spent sobbing into the blond's strong shoulder, which was something he hadn't expected of himself and suspected that he would feel ashamed for it some time later. But he couldn't stop; he was inconsolable. Thor's arms made him feel safe and protected from everything and everyone. Loki wasn't guilty of what had happened to him, and yet he would be the one to face the consequences, one way or another. He wasn't ready for it, he wasn't sure he would ever be; he didn't want to. Holding onto Thor felt like being kept away from all of it.

~oOo~

As Thor entered their anteroom after returning from his training session and saw Ingibjörg reading some medical magazine, he opened his mouth to speak, but the woman forestalled him without even tearing her eyes away from her reading:

"Yes, he's still sleeping, just as he was fifteen minutes ago when you last rang and asked me about it. And yes, I've checked. The baby is in the bedroom, sleeping," she assured. Thor rolled his eyes and couldn't contain a smile. He knew he had been rather annoying, but he had been worried since Loki had broken down yesterday, crying heartbrokenly into Thor's shoulder for a good hour, shaking all over and falling apart completely, until he had become semiconscious from exhaustion. And he hadn't talked to Thor since then, which was upsetting and made the blond man seriously concerned. At the same time, there was nothing really unusual about Loki's reaction, because it was a little untypical of him to search for a comfort like that, to be pitied and soothed. Even when Loki had been a child, it had been more like him to lie that he'd been having a running nose or something in his eye than to admit that he had been crying, hiding from everybody's eyes; even when everybody knew that he was lying, and even when he knew that they knew that he was lying.

Despite that knowledge, Thor felt concerned about him; his brother was hurt. He had been crying and wailing his pain and grief out into Thor's shoulder and chest, but the blond knew that there was a lot more of it left in Loki. And Thor had been lost and helpless, only capable of giving some comfort, embracing the boy with one arm to hold him tight and support his weight, and rubbing the shuddering back between the little shoulder blades with his other hand, feeling a choking lump in his throat and hurting for his little brother to the point of numbness.

"I see. Thanks," he mumbled, remembering that he was talking to the nurse. "So everything's fine then?"

"He's been a little moody today, but nothing extreme. We had a little problem with taking our pills and eating our breakfast." the woman informed mater-of-factly, finally looking up at Thor.

"But nothing seems to discourage you, right?" he chuckled. Loki must have been really difficult today. And he was unbearable and nearly impossible to deal with when he was like that, Thor knew it very well.

"Pfft... One of the patients under my care used to throw dishes with his meals in my face, and demanded to bring him alcohol all the time. He refused to eat, drink, get up and talk to his family, because he certainly wasn't getting any alcohol. And somehow I managed to deal with the rowdy and do my job, which included feeding him, while he liked to imagine he was still having his hunger strike. And that wasn't even the worst case I've had in my practice, believe me. So I'm sure that I'm competent and experienced enough to handle a grumpy and sulky teen perfectly fine; especially a naive child who thinks he can scare me away by snarling and scowling at me or demonstratively ignoring me."

"I will probably have to take lessons from you," Thor sighed, smiling sadly.

"Any time," she shrugged, smirking.

When Ingibjörg had left, Thor entered the bedroom quietly and approached Loki's bed. The younger youth was sleeping peacefully, lying on his side, with one hand under his cheek, the other one in front of his face on the pillow. The light blanket was covering him almost all the way up to the neck. His dark hair looked beautiful on the white pillowcase. A couple of days ago the two thin strands of grey hair, left after the night of terror that Loki had endured, had disappeared. Thor didn't have heart to ask what had happened to those two strands, but he suspected that Loki had cut them off at the roots, obviously wanting to get rid of everything possible that tied him to the horrible experience, even if it wasn't enough, even if it was for the time being, because those two strands would grow out again. He would get rid of them again, just to give himself a short moment to indulge in the illusion that nothing bad had happened to him or that he can undo it somehow. Loki needed that illusion to cope, because he wasn't ready to face everything.

Thor kneeled near the side of the bed to take a better look at his brother's relaxed face. The blond's gaze traced the elegant, dark eyebrows and the thin eyelids that were hiding the green eyes underneath them. Thor could see the pupils slightly moving under the thin, fair skin, which was still a little bit swollen after the yesterday's breakdown. The dark, thin, eyelashes, sometimes faintly fluttering, were resting against the pale cheeks. Thor liked Loki's sharp, high cheekbones that had only revealed themselves when Loki had lost all his baby fat about two years ago, though when the boy's face was relaxed, the cheekbones seemed flatter and lower. The pale, thin lips were very slightly parted, letting the air go in and out between them.

Thor loved this beautiful face; he loved everything about it... He suppressed the urge to reach out and touch the smooth skin of its side. It had been okay to do it when his brother had been catatonic, but now the boy would, most likely, wake up, and the blond didn't want to disturb his sleep.

He quietly left the bedroom and picked up his mobile phone to ring Sif and talk to her for some time. She had been watching all his fights, as well as all the other fights of the competition, online, and together they enjoyed discussing it. Iceland was going to take the third place, most definitely, which wasn't bad at all, and it definitely wasn't Thor's fault that they wouldn't take a higher place this year. He had done well, and nobody could say otherwise.

Today's phone talk with Sif had reminded him that in a few days Loki and he were going to come back home, and Thor wasn't sure if it was good for his brother. There were going to be things that would remind Loki of what had happened to him; not that he really needed to be reminded of it, but still... The blond hoped that Loki's emotional condition wouldn't get worse.

He returned to their bedroom. Loki was just waking up and stretched himself, his face sleepy. Thor sat down onto his own bed, looking at the younger youth.

"Hi... Did you sleep well?" he asked.

"Hi. Uh-huh," Loki replied, his voice thick from sleep. 'Thank goodness, we're speaking again,' Thor smiled to himself, though wisely decided to leave it unvoiced.

"Good dreams?" he asked instead.

"I don't remember having any today. What's wrong? Why are you asking me about my dreams again?"

"Just curious," Thor shrugged. After that last dream about killing the monster and carrying his dream Loki out of the abandoned hospital, his dreams had become normal. Either he couldn't remember them, or they had been blurry and insignificant, which was absolutely normal for him.

"I think I remember seeing you in one of my recent dreams," Loki said pensively, furrowing his eyebrows in an attempt to recollect something. "I don't know, maybe I'd seen it when... when I was a vegetable. I can't be certain about it. I just remember that you didn't look like yourself most of the time in that dream."

"What did I look like then?" Thor asked curiously.

"It's stupid and hard to explain. As far as I can recall, it was cold and dark around me, and you were made of light and warmth. I just felt that it was you even though everything was... blurry. Sometimes I just saw you, and you looked almost normal, but you radiated the light... or something like that," the younger of the two replied, though he looked like he wasn't satisfied with his own explanation at all. Maybe it was something that was just hard to put into words even for him. "I told you it was stupid," he added dismissively.

Light and warmth?.. Thor suddenly remembered that in his own dreams, when he had been exploring the dark, windowless corridors and tunnels of that hospital, he had hardly seen any places where there was no light at all, except for the room with the refrigerators, the first time he'd been there, and a couple of other places. He had thought it was odd back then, since he hadn't found any sources of light, though he had tried to. Could it be that that dim light had been radiated from him, illuminating his way, even though his body looked perfectly normal to him?.. He also remembered that his dream Loki had been squinting sometimes whilst looking in Thor's direction, as if his eyes needed to get used to light.

Damn, he knew he should really stop it. Loki's dreams were Loki's, and his, Thor's, were his own. He didn't want to start going insane again. All of that had been odd and mysterious, but it was over, and it was better left behind.

Frigga rang the next day in the evening, as usual, and talked to Loki for some time before asking him to give the mobile phone back to Thor.

"Hi, Mum," the blond man greeted with a small smile. He watched Loki leaving for a shower in moderately good mood after talking to her. She always knew how to make her dear 'princes' feel better.

"Hello, darling. How are you?"

"Fine."

"Are you?" she asked suspiciously.

"Just a little worried about our return," Thor confessed. "I... I just don't want them to put Loki into that madhouse again."

"I'm sure it can be avoided now."

"I don't want doctors to bother him more than necessary."

"You've always been like this since we had him," Frigga smiled, which was evident in her voice.

"Like what?" he smiled weakly.

"If little Loki was ill and needed some unpleasant treatment or was being given some usual inoculations, no matter if he was taking it stoically or not, it looked like just watching it hurt you equally badly, though you were trying to hide it. You always knew when he was in pain."

"Really? I don't remember," Thor smiled even wider now.

"Thor..." Frigga said after a pause, sounding rather serious now. "I have some news, but I didn't have heart to say it to Loki just yet... I want you to know..."

"What is it?" Thor asked worriedly.

"Just calm down and listen," she soothed. "They've found him." There was a silence between them for a few seconds. Thor immediately realised whom she was talking about. That sadistic scum that had raped and tormented Loki... The blond was immediately agitated, wanting nothing more right now than to see that pig and break his every bone one by one, slowly.

"So... He's been arrested, right?" he forced out of himself.

"No. He's dead, Thor. They found his dead body in that abandoned hospital yesterday in the morning. They said he'd been dead for almost two weeks," she explained. Thor felt uneasy now and he couldn't understand why.

"Are they sure it's really him?"

"Yes. The medical examination has confirmed that he was the one who attacked Loki. We've just got the results. There's no doubt."

"Who was that scum?"

"He had lived and worked in that district before the plant was closed. Everybody moved out of there, but he, obviously, decided to stay. For a few years he'd been considered missing, and then they automatically decided he was dead. They think all these years he'd been stealing food, alcohol and cigarettes from the warehouse in the nearby district. They found some evidence that he'd been living in one of the rooms of that hospital for a while before starting to hide from the police after what he had done to Loki. They found some of his personal things there when they'd started looking for him months ago. And, ironically, he died there, in that very hospital. That man had a severe form of asthma. And... they think that that was exactly what had killed him. He'd been ill for many years and kept smoking a lot. So... The case is closed. He's dead now."

"Good," Thor frowned, hoping that the bastard had really suffered before dying. "I only wish I was the one who..." he began angrily, but suddenly shut his mouth as the feeling of uneasiness had intensified tenfold.

"Thor?" Frigga murmured, probably thinking that the connection was lost.

"Um... You said almost two weeks..."

"What?"

"You said he'd been dead for almost two weeks before they found him."

"That's right. That's what the experts say. What about it?"

"Nothing... I'll ring you later, Mum, okay?"

When he ended the call, he was just sitting on his bed, dumbfounded. It was quiet in the room, and the only noises he could hear were the noise of the running water behind the bathroom door and some noises from the street. It didn't make it hard for Thor to hear his own restless heartbeat. His mind was racing.

The orange, glowing 'eye'... Like a lit end of a cigarette. The acrid smoke... The scum had been smoking a lot. The cigarette burns on Loki's body... The white-hot hands... The wheezing, heavy breath of the monster... The asthma...

No... No, no and no. Thor wasn't superstitious. It was just a coincidence that Loki had found the way out of his catatonic state after the dream (Thor's(!) dream), in which Thor had killed the demonic creature. It was just a coincidence that the rapist had died, quite possibly, the same day that the monster in Thor's dream had been killed.

Just a coincidence, right?

A/N: Today is my birthday; and, of course, there's no better way to congratulate yourself than finishing another chapter of a story you enjoy writing so much, especially when the cake is already gone, right?

No, this is still not the end! I'm not letting you go yet ;). The next update will be an Epilogue and the promised alternative ending, though it'll be short, because I've internally accepted the course I've already chosen for this story, so I'm only planning to give you the idea of what I'd originally intended to do when I was starting to write it. Still, I hope you're going to enjoy reading it.