A/N: I know you're probably confused by the last chapter, and I was expecting you to be that way. :D But the plot development keeps a'coming, and I'm going to go with it. If you're still willing to support me through all this depth, three words.
I love you.
Please don't give up on me. This is exactly where I want the story to go. I hope you can stay patient until it unfolds.
-Phan
(PS. this chapter hurt.)

Loki never slept.

He was never allowed the privilege of sleeping. He was confined to this realm for a reason: to suffer for what he'd done. Any escape from the pain he was sentenced to would be unimaginable. Sleep, apparently, was an escape. Thus, Loki wasn't allowed it.

But that didn't stop him from trying.

The closest he got to sleep was a relative step into unconsciousness. It was that near dreamlike state in between being awake and falling asleep. The time when the mind wanders, but still understands the terms of reality. Whether it accepts those terms or not is a different matter…

Loki pulled against the chain attached to his wrist. He shifted around a few other ways, attempted to find a comfortable position, and yet nothing availed him. The rawness he could deal with; the unbreakable cuffs around his limbs, neck, and torso had become so painful that eventually they started to go numb. The snake venom he could deal with; the burning with each acidic droplet dulled into a steady white pain. It was the amounts of sheer time, coupled with the lonesomeness of bearing pain alone, that made Loki ache the most.

His head eased down and he closed his eyes. The dark, cavernous scene left him for plain blackness.

After a moment of absolutely nothing, Loki began spinning fantasies to pass the time. He'd replayed in his mind hundreds of times what would have happened if he'd won the war against the Avengers. But mostly, he imagined simple things. He'd imagine conversations, the most mundane conversations imaginable, between him and members of court. He'd imagine feasts, and reading by himself in his chambers on Asgard. He imagined magic training, horse racing, and skipping stones. Imagining little, pointless scenes brought him some amount of peace in the most nerve-wracking times of pain.

This particular time when Loki's head dipped down and his eyes closed, he thought about KrishnaLan.

Now this, one must bear in mind, was completely unusual. Krish was unwelcome in Loki's study of thought. Whenever the memories of her came dancing into his mind, he burned them before they could reach his heart. He'd spent so much time trying to forget about her… and after he realized that he would never be able to erase the memory of that demon, he taught himself to hate her instead.

If he couldn't forget about her, he would despise her.

And he did.

The fact that a sweet scenario of KrishnaLan trickled into his thoughts wasn't unusual in itself. It was the fact that he let it stay without burning it. He was planning on destroying it, he definitely was, but he hesitated to see what would happen.

With the thought planted and growing, Loki's mind began spinning a fantasy. A fantasy that had never happened. A fantasy that never would.

-X-

Their hands were clasped together. Krishna's hand was thin and delicate and with it slid into Loki's own hand, it felt like their fingers were made to intertwine. They walked together along the paths of the massive gardens. KrishnaLan made sure there wasn't a quiet moment; she talked about anything that drifted into her mind. Whether it was gardens or zombies or a deep, one-sided conversation about the universe, she talked. Loki never interrupted her. He listened intently as she rambled on, surprised at times by her insight and depth of thought. She talked about things from a perspective that Loki would have never seen from himself.

And every once in a while as they walked, Krish would let go of Loki's hand and stop talking to ask one question.

"Are you listening?"

"Of course." Loki would always respond.

Krish would take Loki's hand again, pick back up where she left off in her ramblings, and they would continue to walk.

The gardens were beautiful. Whenever they passed under the archways, Krish would reach her other hand out and run her fingers along the strips of lattice. She seemed so content by the simplest things.

Suddenly, Krish stopped and reached down, making sure to keep Loki's hand grasped in her own. She came back up holding a beautiful red flower.

"The gardeners would have your head if they saw you picking blossoms." Loki warned with a small smile.

"Maybe if I cared I would be more concerned." Krish reached up and tucked the base of the flower in Loki's black hair, right above his ear.

"What are you…?" Loki stopped and his face went absolutely unamused. With dark eyes, he added, "Get it out."

"You look gorgeous. Red is definitely your color." Krish said sarcastically.

Loki pulled the flower out himself, turned to Krish, and set it into the crook of one of her horns.

"Loki, take it out."

"You look gorgeous," Loki mocked. "Red is definitely your color."

Krish didn't say anything else, and she didn't take the flower from her hair. She just took Loki's hand, ran her fingers over the latticework of the garden, and continued to walk. She went back to her ramblings, talking about anything and everything. Loki never interrupted her.

"Are you listening?"

"Of course."

-X-

Loki opened his eyes.

It was back to the chains and the venom, the darkness and the solitude, the pain and the longing.

He discarded that daydream.

He burned it before it could reach his heart.

-xXx-

Krish thought that reuniting with her body would be wonderful. She thought there were going to be fireworks and celebrations, that she would feel totally new. But when she slipped back into her skin, it wasn't as pleasant as she thought it was going to be.

Her body hadn't been empty for very long. Whoever had it after Krish left it recently. But it was long enough for rigor mortis to start setting in. It was a miracle that there were no flies, given the fact that it was a dead body in sweltering heat.

But when Krish's spirit was rejoined to her original body, she just felt like she was at home again. It was wonderful to have nerves and muscles and real sight. There was something liberating about having a brain and a beating heart. Living was wonderful. It was wonderful even despite the fact that Krish took several minutes to stretch out the rigor mortis.

That wasn't very wonderful.

That was pretty gross, actually.

But after a few moments, Krish was actually able to get up and walk around without falling over.

She heard a few things pop as she walked, and her joints were confused. ("Whoa. What? We're alive again? What is this…?") But at least she was walking in her own body. That was an unstable step in the right direction.

Krish could now feel the heat of the African plains. It was sticky and uncomfortable, and when she fanned herself with her hand it was only hot air waved into her face.

"Okay, now here's the problem." It was swell to hear her own voice again. Even if it was scratchy and sounded like it was rolling in broken glass. "How am I supposed to get back to New York… from the middle of Africa? Hell, I don't know if I'm even in the middle. I might be on the edge. Where am I…?"

No one answered her.

"You know, Krish. You did not think this out very well." She said softly. And then, much less softly, "THOR! COME AND GET ME!"

That didn't work either.

'Course not.

But apparently, it did get the attention of someone. Krish turned and was surprised to see something she didn't even notice before. There was a smatter of huts built there, a tiny African township centered around a few firepits. Krish was staring right into the eyes of one of its residents: a bare-chested African man holding a spear.

It was then that Krish noticed the symbols drawn around where her body had fallen on the ground.

It wasn't an African township.

It was a cult.

He turned and shouted something to the other huts. Suddenly, the place was much more alive. They were shouting the same thing back to each other. Krish didn't understand at first. But when she dug up old knowledge from the depths of her soul, she could roughly translate it.

'Dead demon lives.'

Krish didn't realize the depth of her situation until a group of them began advancing toward her with weaponry gripped in their hands. Several of them were over at the newly kindled flames, heating the tips of their branders. Krish was completely unarmed. There wasn't a single blade on her.

This was where she ran.

And they ran after her.

The commotion quickly escalated as they screamed back and forth to one another. They snarled and spit as they ran the ground their devil counterpart was treading across. Krish kept sprinting – she didn't know where to, but she didn't care.

It didn't take long for her weary muscles to betray her. It was her calf that cramped up first, sending her screaming for the dry African ground. After her tumbles disturbed dust and sent it drifting into the air, it wasn't long before the cult caught up to her. One of them threw a rope around her neck and, making a series of noisy cries, yanked her onto her back. Krish's back thudded onto the ground, and several of them gripped to her ankles and violently dragged her back to where she had started – among the symbols on the ground.

Krish struggled against their hands, trying desperately to escape at the beginning of what was to come. Before it was too late. But she was engulfed by the group of them, all of them hissing and crying out things Krish didn't understand, blending into a clashing harmony of high pitched voices.

Hands were gripping onto her clothes, pulling her in multiple directions.

Krish flailed around, she screamed, she kicked, she pleaded.

One of them threw her head to the ground. There was a gruesome cracking sound that emanated from her skull as he put his foot to her head and crushed it into the caked African floor.

KrishnaLan's voice cracked when she felt the blood moving through her hair. That was when she first began to cry. It was a whimper, really, as her arms and legs moved slowly in giving a final try at escape.

She saw the dirty glint of a homemade axe. And she thought that they were planning on beheading her. But when it whistled through the air, it wasn't her neck that was struck at all. It was her left goat horn.

The feeling was about the equivalent to having one's fingernails bent back. It was magnified on the side of her skull, where the horn grew as part of her anatomy. The axe came again, this time roughly bludgeoning away the horn. It skidded across the ground and rested there for Krish to see. They cried out in their triumph as Krish cried out in her misery. Her eyes locked on that goat horn, panicked and wide. Glassy with tears and absolutely terrified. She didn't look anywhere else as they filed down the ugly stump of horn still attached to her head.

They kicked her to her other side, crushed her head into the ground, and did the same for her other horn.

Once her emblems of freedom and independence, those two goat horns were shorn from her and kicked into the fire. Krish's head rocked back and forth as they filed her bone down for the second time. The scraping sound hit her ears and made her spine tingle.

When they were fully satisfied with the short stubs they'd created, the group backed away from Krish. They formed a large circle around her, making whooping calls and jeering laughter, urging her to get up. Stumbling drowsily to her feet, Krish coughed several times to clear the dirt from her lungs. They cheered.

It seemed that their fun wasn't over yet after all.

Another one of them ran up to her in her dizzied state and ripped away her clothing, one article at a time. She was completely exposed. Every one of her henna tattoos that lined her spine, every part of twitching muscle and freshly bruising skin was exposed. She felt like an animal. Something on display. The heat of the noon sun beat against her pale skin directly.

KrishnaLan didn't see the bows aimed for her back. She didn't see the primitive arrows slice through her skin and rub against her bone. But she felt it. Each one, piercing through muscle and fracturing ribs.

It didn't take long for her to fall to her knees.

They stoned her until she stood up again.

She tried to get up, but she fell sideways when a rock collided with her ear and sent everything ringing. Wherever a stone landed, Krish could feel her heartbeat. She was never so mortal than in that moment. And as they hurled their rocks and jeers at her, Krish held her head in her hands. She couldn't stand up again.

A few more rocks hit their target, and each one of them sent Krish off balance and into a reel of pain. But she wouldn't stand up again. She didn't have the strength.

Krish tried to leave her body. She'd done it so many times with the other possessions. But her soul was latched to this flesh, and she couldn't force herself to part with it.

She leaned forward on her knees and covered her bleeding head. Arrows were jutting grotesquely from her bare flesh, some of them broken and already becoming infected in the heat.

Suddenly, a break in the torment.

The mortally injured woman gripped to her stomach and retched dryly, throwing up nothing but the occasional drizzle of stomach acid. It dripped out of her mouth with the generous amounts of blood to stain the ground a sickly green color. Her breathing came in raspy, painful bursts. A lung must have been punctured. She was dying.

Krish had used whips before. She was especially familiar with the Cat of Nine Tails, and with the oozing wounds it left in its victims. She never thought that she would be on the receiving ends of its horrific stripes. But she recognized it when it licked her back.

The nails imbedded in the whip were the worst part. They would catch and rip anything in the midst of their sick pathway. The pain that snapped through all of Krish's nerves was terrible; the sounds of her breaking body were horrendous; but the cries that came from her own mouth were what broke her. The cries from a single lung waiting to break.

She was done.

With every crack of that whip against her back, with every cheer of the cult, Krish was done.

The nails caught onto one of her previously opened wounds and ripped it open farther. Krish felt the chunk of muscle tear from her back and she knew, even in her tortured delirium, that she was bleeding an extensive amount.

She was done.

The air became a little cooler, the terrain went very much darker.

Krish thought she was dying.

But the animals that still remained by the watering hole panicked and ran away in a hurry. The trees began to bend in an unprecedented wind. And the cracks of the whip were accompanied by the cracks of something else.

Lightning.

Krish didn't know what was happening. She kept her head down and covered herself, exposed and crying. All she knew was that the whipping stopped. The pain now was the radiating after-effect of what had been done. Krish gripped one of the arrows with one hand and tried to pull it from her side. It snapped, and Krish's hand fell back to the ground gripping only a fraction of the shaft.

The noise of the thunder was enormous, and the cult was suddenly screaming underneath its roar. Krish could hardly hear anything over storm's sudden descent. The wind was whipping dirt into Krish's wounds, so she tightened up.

Suddenly, there were no more screams at all.

The thunder died down to a soft growl, the lightning was gone. There was a light, soft drizzle of rain that pattered happily onto the dry soil. It created hundreds of little wet dots and disturbed the surface of the watering hole. Krish barely willed herself to look out past her tears. It seemed the whole land was at peace now, covered in the shadow of the dark, omnipotent clouds rolling in the sky.

Thor dropped Mjolnir onto the ground heavily. As he ran toward Krish's mangled body, he was afraid he had been too late. But she was breathing shallow, shaky breaths.

He ripped the cape from his armor and draped it over KrishnaLan's bare, shaking shoulders. She tried to crawl away from him in her insanity-driven fear. To her, at that moment, everything was going to hurt her. Everything was an enemy. No one could have been trusted. Not even Thor.

Thor helped her carefully to her feet, and she finally stopped avoiding him. When he saw her face, one eye swollen closed and the other eye wide open, glistening with panic and bleeding dark purple – with her expression twisted up as she cried, shakily holding the cape around her shoulders… Thor took her into his arms.

"All is well, Krish," he said soothingly. She cried harder into his chest as he talked to her. "No one is going to hurt you anymore. I am here." She seemed so infinitely tiny in his arms, reduced to quivering in embarrassment and fear. "It's okay…you're okay, I have you. I have you. I will take care of you."

Krish held onto him like he was going to disappear, praying that he was real.

"I'm here," Thor said again, feeling his eyes sting, "I have you."