Resurrection
It hurts.
All Loki knows is that it hurts too much, and he can't get out of it.
He doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know what has happened and he can't open his eyes. Not yet. Not while all this agony is consuming him, eating him whole, making all of him hurt.
There's electricity coursing all through him, in some places it's soft, like a tickle, in others it's a burning electrical shock that knows no end. Maybe he's convulsing. Loki doesn't know, all he knows is pain, the excruciating pain of becoming whole again after so long being broken.
It's an indescribable experience.
It starts as a small tingling and then increases its intensity, little by little, until all of you is trembling. And then jerking. It shoots up his spine, it is sharp and merciless. The pain is almost too much – it drowns out everything else. He doesn't know why this is happening, he doesn't know how it is happening.
It's not natural, and all of his body fights it at the same time as it taken over. It is as it he is being remade whole again and every nerve that is mended, every drop of blood flowing again, it all is extremely difficult to find its place again, to learn how to work properly again.
He's not supposed to come back – and it hurts.
Loki is coughing up blood now. His throat is raw and bleeding and on fire, and there are a couple of tears going down his cheeks. His throat and neck are trying to repair themselves, and it is a pain like Loki never thought could possible.
And Loki knows pain, intimately, deeply, in all of its forms. He's been a constant companion in most of his exploits, so much that it's become part of him, so much that it has gotten really hard for him to even get hurt at all. But this... it doesn't end, and Loki doesn't think he can take it much longer.
He opens his eyes, but cannot see anything. His chest and stomach are throbbing, sending furious bolts of agony to his head and limbs. He wants to scream, but he can't. He wants to curl up in a ball, but his body is not responding.
It has been building up, all the time since woke up, little by little becoming worse, the burning, the cramping, become more and more intense until they reach its height and Loki lets out a deaf scream and back arches up, his unseeing eyes imploring for some rest.
Loki wonders why, wonders if he will forever be trapped in this pain. If this unrelenting agony is the punishment of the afterlife for his wrongdoings. Neverending pain, infinite horror, trapped forever in a body that keeps torturing him.
He's convulsing again.
He prays for a way out, and manages to find the strength to curl in on himself, like a little ball.
Eventually, the spasms slow down, he starts to see. The pain, the slowly but surely, gets softer, duller, until it is finally bearable.
There someone there, in his field of vision.
Someone is cleaning his tears and vomit, and spit and blood. Someone is hushing him, caressing his face, changing the sheets when they get dirty. Someone's eyes are kind, and don't judge the mess he's made of himself during this torturous trance.
He closes his eyes.
When he opens them again, he's there.
The pain has become a tingling, on his hands and throat, and his eyesight in focused once more. Loki can see him. Thor, with a small smile. He's talking, and Loki can hear him.
“Sorry I had to put you through that. Trust me, if there had been a kinder way we would have used it, but this was the only way. And I needed you back. I wanted you back.”
“We all did.”
Another voice says, and Loki thinks it's the Valkyrie.
He cannot talk, not yet, but he finds a way to communicate.
One shaking hand. A weak, flickering green light, made with magic.
“GL A D tO be B A c K”
The nightmare is over.
The dream has come true.