Furious Fires and Flames
Pain.
Searing, hot agony ripped you out of your serenity with a jab to the chest, making you jerk upright, blanket clutched in your hands. You had hoped for it to be a nightmare, yet the pain stubbornly persisted, growing even further in intensity. Every breath of air pulled in through your clenched jaw and grinding teeth was a struggle, barely enough air managing to reach your lungs for you to keep consciousness, while sweat dripped down your clammy skin in abnormous beads. With a wheeze you tumbled out of bed, face first unto the soft rug below. It barely managed to lightly cushion your fall, but as the agony within you continued to surge like fire burning you from inside out, you could not care any less about falling on your face. Your hands grabbed the carpet, fingers burying themselves deeply in the tangled strands of fabric as you tried to collect and calm your breathing, desperately so.
Everything was okay. Everything was okay.
You frantically pushed yourself up, checking your body for any kinds of injuries—cuts, bruises, stab or burn wounds, anything. All the while you tried to bite back the scream looming behind your grit teeth, resting on top of your tongue merely waiting to be released as you eased it out in a light wail instead.
Everything was okay, you were fine.
Through the thick haze clouding your mind you could only think of one person connected so deeply to your own being, only one person whose condition could affect your very soul to such extremes.
And so you forced yourself to stand, almost tumbling down to the floor another time with each small step you took, each breath you had to violently drag through your mouth and into your lungs. Your hands fumbled with the doorknob as if you had never opened a door before, until finally managing to twist it, leading you into the darkness beyond.
The hallways were barely alight with small bowls of orange fire in the corners as you stumbled through like a zombie in search of nutrition. Flames were dancing inside of your veins with mirth, while you were on the brink of collapsing as the intensity grew worse with each passing second in which you followed along through the darkened corridors, all the way down the stairways to the dungeons with incredible difficulty.
Feeling positively set ablaze by the time you reached the entrance, you tossed morals out of the window as you forced your consciousness into the guards’ heads, to prompt them to not notice how you were sneaking right past them.
They couldn’t see you like this.
They would have most likely refused you entrance and instead called for the healers, for Eir and Aldís. But they could never help you with whatever was happening, only delay you in solving it yourself.
Labored breathing filled the silence as you entered the room and you willed yourself to stop. Not wanting to draw any more attention to yourself you bit down on your lip with excruciating strength prompting it to bleed—yet the ragged breathing continued.
“Alien Prince,” you mumbled, though parts of your exclamation came out as a mere breath with the air stuck in your throat, pain inside of you forcing you to your knees. Your hands pressed against the cold stone floor, muscles tensing as you inched your way to his cell, close enough to finally raise your head. To search for him.
Your eyes locked with his just as another jolt blurred your vision with tears.
He was laying on the blue blanket sprawled across his bed in the far corner of the room; hair a vivid, ebony mess, attire not at all the graciously ironed one you were used to as he tossed and turned with—what you assumed—an even worse amount of pain than you currently felt. You winced watching him writhe, heels digging into the mattress along with his fingers and nails, expression strained with obvious effort as he bared his teeth.
“Prince,” you tried, but with your lack of oxygen it came out as a mere huff of air and he only continued on in his struggling, no signs of having heard you.
“Loki!”
His name finally escaped your lips in desperation, mind short-circuiting as you almost physically reached out to him. For a few seconds his face showed recognition as he stilled, before panic took right over again, eyes shut so forcefully it only hurt you further. You crawled closer to the barrier in distress, each movement feeling like further letting yourself getting drowned by the raging fire seeming to seep out of him, feeling your limbs being burned off so realistically, you had to periodically check whether they were still attached to you.
Few centimeters from the barrier you willed yourself to calm—a rather impossible task as the jab to the chest managed to tear you out of your concentration more than once while you focused on the Prince. On Loki. Focused on the sensation of your hands on your temples and the image of you entering his mind.
With one last breath you let go.
———
You awoke in his consciousness being set aflame. Quite literally.
The fire surrounding you threatened to melt you on the spot as you formed your own consciousness into your shape, your apparition, stumbling along before crashing onto your knees as the pain was too much to bear.
He was having a nightmare.
Your eyes found him in the midst of even more fire, huddled on his knees with his head clutched in his hands. The bright orange licked his body, his skin already full of burn wounds, parts of it even scorched so much it seemed black rather than red and you had to fight to keep your focus, had to force yourself to crawl closer.
“Loki,” you called, voice on the brink of breaking as it was weighed down with misery and terror alike, “Loki. I’m here.”
The closer you got the more horror engulfed you, seeing half of the Prince’s face burnt to a crisp, left hand all the way up to his arm filled with blisters in various sizes. In newfound panic you scrambled around the other side, taking his mostly non injured arm in your hands once you were near enough to touch him. Instinctively he tried to flinch out of your grasp, but you didn’t let him, grip firm and tight, but careful.
Taking in his condition, an involuntary sob escaped your lips, tears welling in your eyes not because of you, but forhim.
He didn’t even look at you, didn’t even really notice your presence with his head directed to the floor and hands still clinging to cover his face. His ebony hair was singed at the edges, standing up in slight curls. Sweat was trickling down his broken and torn skin which was burnt in spots to the point of being unrecognizable. Clothes were torn in places with red protruding from beneath, crimson smeared across parts of his neck as well as his arms, blossoming from his stomach like a red rose.
Tossing all that you had thought of him prior to this out of the window, you gently got ahold of his wrists, trying to ease his hands out of his face to tear him out of his trance as you numbed to the agony.
He tried to fight your grip, weakly, but you persisted and you could hear your own heart shatter as you looked at his face. His condition. His expression, genuine expression. Nightmares weren’t nightmares for nothing, it was a means of dealing with things that had happened, albeit usually depicted in abstract forms.
But this—
His green eyes still forced themselves to the ground, almost swollen shut due to the burns and tears. They shined with sadness, with terror and panic, with trauma so severe the mere thought forced tears to escape your own eyes as your gaze searched his. Instinctively, your hand let go off its hold on his now unmoving arm, reaching up below his chin to force him to meet your gaze, trying your best in calming him. Your hands avoided whatever parts of him were mostly injured, touch careful, light as a feather and undeniably gentle as you held onto the clammy skin of his face.
“Loki,” you spoke, pouring as much of your compassion into his name as you could, “Loki, it’s me.”
For a few seconds longer he was terribly still, your very own agonizing wails tearing through your teeth filling the silence with other noises besides the cackling of the roaring fire, the flames leaping at your skin. And through it all, he whispered your name. Not the nickname he had always used—your actualname.
His voice was small as he spoke, fragile. Hurt, confused and terrified.
But mostly so, so terribly broken, shards lodging themselves into your soul hurting more than the fire surrounding you ever could and you gave a hurried nod in response.
“Yes,” you replied, trembling while your lips formed a desperate smile, “You’re dreaming. You’re having a nightmare.”
Seconds, perhaps minutes passed—as slowly as sand seemed to wind down in an hourglass. Time passed, before the fire surrounding the both of you appeared to dissipate into thin air, terrific heat slowly subsiding as you watched his attire shift back to the one you were accustomed to. You watched as his wounds healed, from gaping wounds to scars to perfect smooth porcelain skin, holes in his clothing seemingly getting sewn shut.
His sudden, tight grip on your wrists surprised you and you noticed that your hands were still softly cupping his face as if afraid to let go. He slowly lifted them away, off of his face and let them drop into your lap, lingering for but the fraction of a second before retracting his own hands to lazily cross over his chest.
“Are we in my mind?” he spoke, voice having returned to its cold, calculating tone while he looked at you with an almost eerily neutral gaze. Even though he tried to cling onto his protective walls, you could still feel exactly what he felt. And while you were in his mind, it was even stronger than ever before.
Every little thought and feeling of his laid absolutely and utterly bare for you to see, hear and feel.
“Yes,” you said to answer his question, “We are.”
He was insecure. Afraid even.
The amount of access you had to his consciousness frightened him, the fact that the fortress he had build for himself to hide behind was but dust in your hands as you stood among the rubble created by a war he fought with himself.
“Why are you here?” he inquired.
“Because you were in pain,” you replied. It was as simple as that.
[The connection had carried across my misery to you and forced you to act if you wished for it to stop.]
That wasn’t your thought. It was his. It was a thought he meant to keep to himself, it was a thought forcing him to pretend that no one would ever care for him in any way or form, that anytime anyone visited or spoke to him—it was merely for their own personal gain and not because they cared.
You saw it clearly now, laying bare in front of you.
Every time his mother had visited, he told himself that she felt as if it was her duty. Her duty as his mother to check whether he was still alive during this eternal imprisonment.
Every time he had interacted with his brother, he told himself that he felt it was his duty too, to protect the weak link in their happy, beautiful, picture perfect family. To make sure the black sheep behaved accordingly.
Every time you had visited, he told himself it was out of blatant curiosity for another species, attempts to understand the lunatic mass murderer of New York, the War Criminal of Earth. Because of the link forcing you to make sure he was in a sufficient condition, enough so for you to not feel the negative aspects influencing your life—
“No,” you spoke up, no longer wishing to listen to his self deprecating thoughts but wincing at his use of ‘lunatic’, “I’m here because I’m willing to give you a chance.”
You looked into his eyes which still appeared ice cold on the outside, watched him tilt his head as you gave him a determined, fierce, but incredibly genuine smile.
“Because I want to know who you are. Because I want to help you,” you continued, watching small parts of the ice in his glare melt away with the sincerity of your words, “I’m here because I want to be here.”
His eyes were wide, expression open, vulnerable. The ice was gone.
“I know you can feel that I say the truth,” you said, intertwining your hands in your lap as you shifted in your position, “And I hope you noticed.”
“I did,” he spoke, so quiet you barely caught it while his eyes continued to stare at you in newfound curiosity and confusion, a softer look compared to his usual piercing glare.
Silence followed as neither of you had any idea what to say, what words to use to fill the void. But at the same time, the quiet seemed oddly calming. With the fire gone you could actually feel yourself relaxing in his presence, sitting mere centimeters away from him, from the very core of his being.
[Thank you.]
It was the last thing you heard from him while you were still in his consciousness and your smile widened, brightening the darkness around you considerably as it shrunk under your mirth.
[Thank you for tolerating me.]
You barely managed to catch his lips curling upwards in what could only adequately be described as genuinely sweet and his dark eyebrows drew together in an expression of utter ease and tranquility.
You barely managed to catch the honest delight brightening his features before you were forced to leave his mind out of exhaustion.