[By : astolat on AO3]
Part I: Midgard
It had been—a month, perhaps; Thor had lost count of the days. There was always pain now, a steady and wearing constant, but his captors kept it well-measured: not so much that he could not feel more when they wished it, and dread their coming. They had resentfully given over trying to break him: he could not be touched so by ones such as they, and their attempts to maim him in revenge had failed. But they still gloried in their power to make him suffer, and to use him for their amusement.
Mjölnir they had hung on the wall above the door where he might see it every moment, and especially when they came in: a mockery of his impotence. Even after so much time, his hands and wrists strained against the binding wires when they came, so when they had done with him, the blood trickled wet over his wrists for a time. He did not mind: it was better to feel that pain, and think on it, than the other.
"They got someone special coming in to work on you, later today," one of them whispered that morning, breathing obscenely in his ear. "They say he's going to crack you open like a nut, let us pick out all the meat. Not gonna be much left in you after, though. We're gonna dump you somewhere, just let you go, let your pals pick you up off the street drooling." He touched the corner of Thor's cracked and bloody lips with one finger. "You maybe want me to look you up? Maybe you'll use that mouth on me in the end, just to have someone look after you."
After they left him, Thor stared at Mjölnir just out of reach and tried not to fear. He would not have thought that anyone could do worse to him than this and yet let him live, but then, he had not thought anyone could do this much. He did not fear death; death would have been welcome lately, if only it had not left these mean and shameful men after to brag that they had taken the life of Thor. But to be made less, to have some essential portion of himself taken—and there might yet be powers in the universe who could do such a thing.
He shut his eyes. To think of it was as much as to admit it might be possible. Sleep would not come, so soon after they had been at him, but he might yet gather what remained of his strength.
They did not leave him waiting long. An hour passed, and then the door opened; the chief of his captors came in and smiled down at him, vicious as a starving war-dog. "You've held out a long time, god of thunder. But I think that's at an end, now." He turned and made way, and Thor caught his breath as Loki stepped forward to his side.
"Loki," he said, and tears slid from the corners of his eyes, running hot down his face.
"Yes," Loki said, and bent down and kissed his forehead. "Tell me: would you rather kill them yourself, or be out of here more quickly?"
"Quickly," Thor said. His captors were saying things, but he didn't have to listen or think of them; Loki was standing up and opening his hand. There were a few little black papery scraps in his palm: he blew upon them and they stirred and fluttered into the air, like moths, and flew away. The voices went silent.
Loki turned back and said, "Here." He bent down and pressed his lips to Thor's. Thor breathed in icy chill and felt it flow through him, settling into his flesh and his bones, a deep and thorough numbness that swallowed all pain. The wires unwinding from his arms and legs were only a dull removed sensation.
It took long moments before he could take a step, when Loki had helped him off the slab. His feet yet were numb, and he did not look more than once to see the ruin of his flesh. "Lean on me," Loki said. Thor let him take his weight, and limped with him past the corpses. Loki paused beneath Mjölnir in the doorway. "Can you reach the haft?"
