A/N: Feel free to skip this note. It's way too long.

Ooo~kaaayyy. So I could give a long list of why it takes me so long to update this story, but the truth is - I'm just lame. So very lame. And I'm sure none of you want to hear my excuses. I do have this absurd idea, however, that I'm going to wrap up this story around Thor II's opening [please all laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of this], which will require me to speed up this process quite some bit.

Regardless of when I actually finish this thing, I do recognize that I need to write faster. I'm not going to make promises, because I will inevitably break any promises I make about my writing speed. It always happens. But I hope I can pick it up to a pace where I can have the next chapter up by the end of September. It'd be cooler if it was earlier, but I truly don't trust myself.

About the chapter itself: I really don't know how I feel about it. I've lived with it a long time. I wrote an entire beginning and then trashed it. I wrote pieces of this chapter in different fonts - it took me three fonts to write this entire thing, and I changed them for really stupid reasons, like the different fonts looked better on the screen to me and somehow helped me focus. Then I literally opened up a new document and wrote about half the chapter there. Then I copied and pasted it into the 'official' Chapter Six document.

I'm very weird.

I still hate the opening. It's very overdone and really pretty awful - Don't get me wrong, I like the ideas behind it, but I'm still not satisfied with how I wrote it. However, I lived with it too long, and there was no way I could trash it entirely again. For the rest of the chapter - again, I have mixed feelings. PLOT actually does happen in this chapter, but the Thor-Loki relationship is still pretty much at a stalemate. I apologize if you guys are starting to get frustrated with how slowly their relationship moves. I'm one of those people who loves character development (over plot, which can sometimes be good and sometimes be dangerous) and I LOATHE the sort of insta-love craze hitting books & movies these day, where a couple of glances are sufficient for a couple to fall in love. I always feel like the slower a relationship moves, the more delicious it is, so I could be happily plodding away while other people are tapping their feet in frustration.

However, I recognize that it's possible for things to move TOO slowly and I DO like plot, even if I like character development more. I actually have a plot sheet for this story, and I can assure you that once Loki gets released from rehab there will be much more Thor/Loki interaction. Their relationship won't necessarily move any faster, but they'll be seeing each other a lot more. In fact, we'll reach a point where they're together nearly all the time, 24/7. But certain events need to happen before this can happen.

It's also occurred to me that this story's summary is VERY vague. If any of you are interested, I'm going to jot down a few things that you CAN expect from the plot here: It WILL include 1) Horror [meaning murders, disappearances, threats, etc.] 2) Supernatural elements [You don't need a logical explanation for everything, you can suspect ghosts/magic/gods, etc.] 3) Mystery [not necessarily a whodunit kinda thing, but there's the mystery of Loki's kidnapping and why it happened, etc.] and of course 4) The core of the story - the very, very, very slowly budding Thorki relationship. But you all already knew that one!

Otherwise, a few ridiculous, nerdy, unrelated questions [I apologize - I only have one friend who enjoys Marvel Studios movies as much as I do, so I don't have as many people to rant about this with]: Did any of you see Ironman III? What did you think?! I personally loved it - especially how it dealt with Tony's trauma, but I know a lot of people were furious with it because it made serious changes from the comics. And have you see the THOR II trailers? Have you seen LOKI in them? HAVE YOU? Ahhhh - SO MUCH MARVEL HAS HAPPENED SINCE I LAST POSTED! /falls over and dies/

OK. I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long with this disgustingly long author's note!

FOR ALL OF YOU WHO STILL READ - THANK YOU. I LOVE YOU. YOU ARE THE REASON I'M STILL WRITING IN THIS.

"You're my beautiful stranger,

the game is afoot.

It's the shadow's domain –"

"Beautiful Stranger," The Devil's Carnival

Chapter Six

Threat

HalloweenKid377: It was some sort of fucked up devil thing. Why else would they have tortured him like that? I heard there was satanic shit all over the walls, hanging from the ceiling in the warehouse.

xxxDemonSlayerxxx: That's so stupid. If that were true, we would have seen pictures of it. People are still trying to explain what happened. If there were devil pictures on the walls, everyone would know.

HalloweenKid377: Unless they wanted to hush it up.

xxxDemonSlayerxxx: But they let you in on it? Yeah right.

HalloweenKid377: It makes sense, though. Why else would people kidnap kids? They were Satanists. And you know what? Maybe whatever ritual they did worked…Laufeyson could be possessed. I mean, he's the only one that survives? And he looks sorta possessed.

xxxDemonSlayerxxx: Uh, people kidnap kids for lots of reasons. Ransom, for one thing. It could have been the Jotuns. I mean, the kidnappers could have been Satanists, I guess, but they were probably just crazy fucks. They didn't accomplish anything. Laufeyson's just crazy now, that's why he's so weird. You would be weird too.

WildOne43: You guys are both wrong. It was an alien abduction. That's why Steve Rogers disappeared. Idk why they left Laufeyson…maybe he was defective or something. Or they probed/chipped him, so they could watch us.

HalloweenKid377: Yeah, right. And my theory's dumb.

WildOne43: Really? Then where's Rogers? They never found his body or anything

xxxDemonSlayerxxx: They found the children's bodies, though. And they know what made the wounds on Laufeyson's body…it wasn't like they found any alien technology inside of him.

ANONYMOUS: This whole conversation is completely offensive. I can't believe someone actually made a blog about Laufeyson's kidnapping. He's a traumatized individual and people like you make it worse.

WildOne43: If it's so offensive, why are you here?

xxxDemonSlayerxxx: Why are you even reading this? Besides, its not like Laufeyson's reading this. He's hopped up on meds somewhere.

ANONYMOUS: Wow.

HalloweenKid377: I'm telling you, it was devil worship…definitely devil worship…

Thor stands on the edge of the field and dreams.

He's not a dreaming sort of person, not necessarily. He has ambition, yes: whole mountains of ambition, great swells of pride and belief and determination, but that does not correlate to dreaming. Dreaming is a purple-colored thing, it's a long elusive swath of something you can't entirely see, can't entirely grasp, and it's the irrevocable truth that a dream is something that can never actually be.

And that is why Thor has never dreamed. All he has ever envisioned – everything, his entire life – has always been made up of things he knew would happen. The stardom; the fortune; the success: these were never faraway concepts, meant to be chased and briefly touched – he has always defined himself by them. Sure-footed, he has walked across a hundred of these fields, and each time he has drank deeply the applause of his admirers, has let their love reverberate in his core. He has felt like thunder. Like thunder and lightning and raw, electric power. These are the building blocks of his soul, his glorified identity. He has known it, firsthand, striding down these emerald grounds – even back as a child, during his first tryouts.

He had thought, I am going to be the best at this; they are all going to love me. And thus it happened. Just like that.

Thor Odinson does not need to dream. His life is the stuff of other people's dreams.

So why does he waste his time dreaming now?

His hair and palms are slick with sweat. It has been two days, a full forty-two hours, since his last confrontation with Laufeyson. He has just finished practice. He could tell his team had been anxious about him, trading shifting glances when they thought he wasn't looking, snatching hurried murmurs from each other in between warm-ups and passes. It had annoyed him, almost as much as the memory of Laufeyson's bloodless, snarling face, but he just barreled through them, using the anger as a blood-fuel. By the end of practice, Thor had scored about twenty touchdowns singlehandedly, body-slammed every member of his team at least five times, and flung the football so far that it winked out of sight somewhere past the goalposts, smaller than a speck.

Their coach, his lips tacked up in a wide, almost relieved-looking grin, had clapped Thor personably on the shoulder at this, bellowing his praise. And for some reason this had also irked Thor. Of course, his performance had been stellar; it always was. What made them assume it would be any less so today? Why did they all smile nervous, twitching smiles, as if stifling surprise?

And why is he out here now – dreaming?

Dreaming that he never met Laufeyson. Dreaming that the scatterbrained receptionist had given him a different room number, a different key, and he had stumbled and collapsed on a fine bed and woken up to a rosy morning. Dreaming that he had never seen him, that he had never slipped in a great red sea of blood, that he had never found that long lean body sprawled across the tiles, hair so black, skin so white, like Snow White, if Snow White were suicidal. Dreaming he had left the hotel with nothing but the cottony sort of headache that comes from a hangover and a roughish grin in his eyes. Dreaming that he starts up his car, drives back into his golden life. Dreaming he opens a newspaper, flips through the ads and the cartoons and the sports columns, dreaming he returns to the first page. Dreaming he hears the gossipy whispers of people who don't really care. Dreaming the headline of the paper reads: 'LOKI LAUFEYSON FOUND DEAD IN HOTEL ROOM.'

Thor decides he does not like this dream.

So he dreams other things.

He dreams Laufeyson gets better: cleanly, smoothly, efficiently, without any second attempts or sudden relapses. He dreams Laufeyson leaves the clinic, a sad low building nestled in a crown of hills, and he dreams Laufeyson never looks back. He dreams Laufeyson wears crisp tailored suits and silk white gloves and plays his piano in echoing concert halls that seem to float around him in a golden haze of candlelight. He dreams Laufeyson is beautiful, with black hair that curls around his chin like liquid smoke, and wily jade eyes that slant and smile foxlike, mischievous. He dreams Laufeyson lets go of his bitterness. He dreams Laufeyson attends all Thor's games and smiles at him with his mouth and his eyes and he dreams Laufeyson thanks him, again and again and again, for saving his life and mending his mind and healing the wounds inside of him. He dreams Laufeyson laughs at some joke Thor makes, and he dreams it is when Loki laughs that his beauty shows the most: his lashes dip dark over crinkled eyes and his lips flower rosy-pink. And Thor's dream-self needs to remember that Loki is the sort of man who falls in love with men; he needs to dream he reminds himself…

Wait – wait – what?

Thor rips himself from the dream, his heart thrumming like a hummingbird in his throat.

What the hell was that? Thor's fingers grow lax in the shock and near-revulsion of his thoughts, his helmet sliding through his sweaty grip. What business does he have – imagining such things? He feels smothered in heat. He does not even like Laufeyson; he doesn't understand why his mind conjures the man's image so favorably, so often. Certainly, the man's sick, and the acid on his tongue is likely a symptom of his madness, but that does not make his company any more enjoyable –

And he's a man. A man who doesn't like Thor. A man who doesn't like –

"Thor!"

Thor whirls around, his every nerve electrified – surprise courses white-hot through his veins, narrowing to needlelike pinpricks at his fingertips. His thoughts are roaring against his eardrums, What if they can see what you dream on your face, What if they can somehow guess what you're dreaming – and his body responds to the speculation by cramping his muscles and pinching at his vocal chords, as though preparing to launch an attack –

But it's just Fandral, and he certainly does not know what Thor is dreaming.

Or, indeed, that Thor needs to dream at all.

"What are you still doing out here?" he calls out, his feet springing up merrily from the grass with each footfall, his silhouette burning fuchsia in the setting sun. "Practice ended twenty minutes ago!"

The tightness in Thor's throat slackens, leaving nothing but the gritty residue of shame in his mouth, a taste like sand. It should be an unfamiliar taste, this shame, but it clings to his tongue with unyielding tenacity, as if determined to burn away all feeling in his mouth. It feels like something deep in his center has become infected and now bleeds its disease into his every pore: his skin recoils against the sensation – but it is impossible to escape one's own body, to somehow sever oneself from the blood and bone and sinew that shapes who you are, no matter how much your mind rebels against the churn of wounded pride.

This is all Laufeyson's fault, his mind snarls, and his anger flares up, all red coals and smoke; He's like a virus. He's like a sickness.

Thor barely registers Fandral's voice.

I hate him, I hate him.

It's true, isn't it? That is why Thor thinks about Laufeyson so often: it's out of hate.

"Uh – Thor?" There's a soft punch on his arm, and Fandral's voice finally punctures the obsessive buzz in his ears, "Is something…wrong?"

Wrong. Thor blinks back to reality, bristling a bit at the word. He's Thor Odinson.

Nothing is ever wrong.

"…what? No, no, of course not," he turns to see his friend watching him carefully, blue eyes slanted in concern, "Why should anything be wrong?"

"No reason," Fandral responds automatically. He rolls his shoulders as he says the words, and although Thor can tell that the motion is meant to be casual, it seems forced, almost stiff, "You just look…distracted."

There's an eggshell's fragility in his tone, and it grates on Thor's nerves. Since when have his friends felt the need to tiptoe around him, as though frightened he might break?

"Distracted how?" he barks, a roughness distorting his voice. "I was better at practice than ever today! It was the rest of the team that was distracted – you think I didn't notice you all doubting me? – But Laufeyson hasn't affected my playing at all –!"

"Hey," Fandral raises his hands in a baffled defense, "You're the one bringing up Laufeyson. I never said anything about him –"

"So now," Thor growls, and those red coals sitting hot in his stomach begin to simmer dangerously, "You're accusing me of obsessing over him?"

Fandral literally gawps – his mouth falling unchecked as he sputters out his reply –

"What? No! Thor, what the hell's wrong with you? I haven't thought about Laufeyson in weeks, not since the last time he was brought up at the diner. What's there to think about? I – I mean, we – don't even know the man. Back at the diner, you said you were fine. We believed you. More than that: we never once considered that you wouldn't be fine. No one doubted your performance today."

Thor sees the earnestness straining in his friend's eyes. He means what he says.

No one doubted his performance today.

No one except you.

The words hang unspoken between them, as thick and potent as a smoke. Thor presses his lips together tightly, refusing to breathe them in. He will not let them pollute him.

It's Laufeyson that's polluting you.

"You were all muttering in the locker rooms," he grumbles, as if desperate to validate his suspicions.

Fandral smiles sheepishly. "Ah, yes. About that –"

"Fandral!" another voice booms somewhere behind them. Both men swivel around. "What's with your dawdling?" A huge figure calls from a distance, "We were supposed to be at the bar ages ago! What's the hold up?"

Thor watches as Volstagg blunders onto the field towards them, his every step bludgeoning the grass beneath him. Nearby, he sees Hogun sidling up besides him, gliding swift and quiet as a shadow, his face expressionless as always.

He blinks, returning his gaze to Fandral. "Bar?"

The last time he checked, they had no plans.

But Fandral's face has flowered back into its usual brilliance. His blue eyes spark and his eyebrows begin jumping again, a laugh lilting its way into his next words,

"Ah! You caught us, Thor! It was supposed to be a surprise. Now, smile nicely for the ladies – they'll be so upset that you figured it out."

And he swings his arm around his confused friend's shoulder, beaming at the two men walking towards them.

"The jig is up, fellows. Mostly because of you, Volstagg – I had him nice and distracted, but then you had to come bumbling over, shouting it out to the heavens. Oh well. Thor's really to smart not to notice anyway."

Notice what?

But Volstagg simply frowns, digging a hand deep into his pocket, fumbling for an energy bar.

"It's not like I said anything about the party," he mutters irritably around bites of granola and raisin. He pauses for a moment. "Oops."

Fandral sighs theatrically, glancing back at Thor with a sardonic shake of his head. "See what I mean? Look at Hogun: he's in a fit of tears now that we've ruined the surprise."

Hogun stares at them.

Thor stares back.

"What's going on?" he says, a little edgily. He's not in the mood for one of Fandral's pranks.

Fandral heaves another laugh, "Don't tell me you've forgotten, Thor! Ah well, I guess with the Super Bowl coming up and you being our star quarterback, it makes sense that you wouldn't remember. Today's the day that the Thunderers signed you on! We're going out to celebrate – I mean, our team would never have gotten this far without you."

The information hits him like a bolt of lightning. Thor stands completely still, his heart reeling in his chest, scrambling to keep up with what his mind is telling him cannot be true. Because certainly he would remember something like this. Certainly, he would not be caught daydreaming about another man's eyelashes in the middle of a football field if it's the anniversary of the day he was signed onto his fateful team. Certainly – But what's today's date? His mind implores crazily, and the truth clutches at his throat with icy talons, It's…it's…September 2nd. It is, isn't it? Today…today is the day – And now his mouth's drying, and there's a prickling sensation creeping up the back of his neck, something that feels remarkably like a flush, which can't be possible, because Thor Odinson never flushes.

Today's the day I began my career to stardom, all those years ago. And I've been standing here, thinking about what Laufeyson would look like in a suit with white gloves –

"Aw, will you look at him, guys? He's blushing."

Fandral's comment floats over him, like a rosy bubble, elevating him away from his thoughts, his discomfort. He feels the ghost of his ordinary self stir within him, guiding him through the moment.

"Me, blushing?" Thor guffaws, "Odinsons do not blush! I saw through your little ruse hours ago!" He lies, but still throws an arm around Fandral's shoulders and yanks him into a rough bear-hug, "But I am grateful," He pauses, and his voice inflects with a touch of sincerity, "…friends."

His companions cheer and talk and lead him back to the locker rooms, shoving each other (except for Hogun, who smiles subtly and evades Volstagg's swings, leading him to accidentally pummel Fandral, who in turns knocks a third energy bar from his hands) and tossing Thor's helmet between them.

Thor rumples his blonde hair and looks at them, a strange feeling stealing into his body.

It's only natural that they should do this for him. His friends would not have even tried out for the Thunderers if he had not done so first: he has always paved the way for the trio, ever since childhood, and he has always laid each step in gold, a shining path for them to follow. After all, it's through his sheer talents alone that that team has swollen so much with wealth and fame; that it's now buoyed itself up on torrents of success into the Super Bowl. And it is he who will lead them triumphantly onto the field not so very long from now, framed on all sides by adoring faces, to topple their competition and achieve their rightful victory.

But even so, when he looks at them, a peculiar flicker of emotion ignites in his chest.

I am grateful.

Thor Odinson, glorious, has friends.

Loki Laufeyson, spiteful, has no one.

Let him be bitter.

The bar is called Valhalla.

Thor doesn't know why Norse things seem to stalk him wherever he goes, but he has long since decided not to care. Once, when he was younger, a boy tried to tease him about the mythical underpinnings of his name: the result was a black eye and a mouthful of loose teeth. The punch landed Thor in detention for weeks, but no one ever bothered him about his name again.

As far as he was concerned, it had been worth it.

The bar is structured like an old-fashioned mead hall, though littered with obvious historical inaccuracies. The walls are made of rough-hew stone, but a sparkling wraparound bar clings to the corners and around the curved end of the room. There are rusted-looking rings hanging from the ceiling, held aloft by oiled chains: at first glance, they appear laden with flickering candles, but on closer inspection, one could see the artificial light bulbs peeping over plastic bodies. Rich red tapestries dangle down from wooden rafters, and long oaken tables smothered in white cloth stretch beneath them, their benches crowded with drinkers. Faux torches adorn the walls, wavering with the same orangey glaze as the candles above, infusing the entire bar with a smoky, indistinct aura.

There should be a hearth in the middle of the room, a pit full of flame and rubble with a boar roasting on a spit. Instead, there's a varnished oak table with a hooked Viking drinking horn propped atop it – and around it, all sorts of bottles of varying sizes and colors, as if on display.

"That's the hard stuff, only for the grown-ups," Fandral murmurs, a roguish challenge in his eyes.

"Ah!" Volstagg echoes Fandral's enthusiasm, clapping his meaty hands together and rubbing his palms, "The Viking Challenge – drink as much mead as you can in a single night! If you can break the last winner's record, you drink here for free for the rest of your days!"

Thor grins, his thoughts about Laufeyson quickly evaporating. Here's something he can understand – something simple, mindless, fun. There are no twists and turns in a mug of mead. There's no touch of hate or guilt or shame or whatever else in a swallow of alcohol.

Forget about Laufeyson tonight. He's not important right now.

A little worm gnaws at his heart, wriggling through holes in his resolve.

"Well? Don't tell me you aren't up to it!" Volstagg barks cheerily, striding up to the table. The bartender beams behind it, her hair a cluster of brown curls. "Unless, of course, you're afraid I'll beat you again."

"Oh, you really don't want to start that, do you?" Thor quips, his heart lightening with each step forward, "You didn't win at all last time!"

Volstagg chuckles. "Is that so? If I recall, you fell dead asleep over your thirteenth cup – knocked the bottle right over, poured everything onto the floor!"

"As if you could remember," Thor retorts, nodding and smiling at the bartender, who blushes and laughs and fumbles skittishly for his glass, "You were so drunk that you were singing about moons and cows!"

Volstagg swirls a cup of amber liquid, smacking his lips noisily as he throws the mead down his throat. His laughter is a deep rumble in his chest.

"You were so drunk," he counters, gazing at Thor wryly over his glass, "That you mistook Fandral for a woman and tried to kiss him."

Thor pauses mid-sip, the honey-colored brew lapping at his lip. For a moment, everything freezes, and he's not standing here, clutching a glass, laughing with his friend. He's somewhere small and tight and dark, and he cannot breathe.

He had forgotten about that incident. It had always been a funny thing, a ludicrous tale, the type of story that made Sif roll her eyes. And yet now, after Laufeyson, after that moment in the field, thinking about his eyes and his hair and his…mouth, smiling –

Oh, no, no, no, his mind scrambles frantically, quelling the notion, You aren't seriously thinking about that. You aren't seriously thinking…about a man you don't even like. And after all these years. And after all the women you've – oh God, no. It's completely absurd.

And it is. The tightness eases and the darkness recedes and he's back in the bar, handling a glass in his sweaty grip, drowned in the orange glow of false torches and candles. And it's a funny story again, funny because it's so entirely meaningless, and there's a pretty girl pouring drinks behind a counter and he's winking at her.

"He doesn't know what he's talking about," Thor assures her, swallowing the rest of his mead in one gulp. "What an ugly woman my friend Fandral would have made."

The bartender titters and asks if he's Thor Odinson.

Three drinks later (it's been three, hasn't it? He hasn't started his fourth?) and there's a pleasant hum throbbing in his temples. All thoughts have softened into cotton: they flutter and fall soundlessly into a cushioned subconscious, and nothing's wrong, and nothing means anything.

Everything is so simple.

He's Thor Odinson. Had he seriously forgotten that?

What has been bothering him so much anyway?

He's Thor Odinson!

"I just don't understand how," the bartender, who calls herself Jillian, says breathlessly as she pours him another glass, "How can you not possibly be drunk yet?"

"This? This?" Thor barks jovially, "This is nothing! I drank more as a boy! Volstagg, on the other hand –!"

"Oh-ho!" the red-haired man shouts, a little too loudly, "I'm already on my fifth, Odinson! How can you possibly hope to match this bulk?"

He clutches his massive girth for emphasis. Jillian ducks her head down in a fit of giggles.

Thor shakes his head, golden tresses falling astray. "You liar! You're barely on your third!"

"Is that so?"

"I know so!"

"Sif is here," a new voice announces, quietly, and Thor turns to see Hogun slipping out from the shadows. He's holding a thick mug full of some foamy brew, but his step is neat and sound and his eyes are perfectly unclouded.

In all the years of their friendship, Thor has never once seen Hogun drunk. He's seen him drink, yes, on multiple occasions. But drunk? Not once.

Thor blinks through the haze (since when did it become so dim in here? There's a blurriness smearing the edges of the room, shrouding the bar in orange-black fog) and spots a tall, slender figure moving towards him. He recognizes the erect posture and the purposeful gait: it's definitely Sif, though still dressed in uniform, her dark hair pulled back sharply in a ponytail.

"Thor!" She calls over the din in the room, "Hogun! Volstagg!"

He laughs, setting his glass down with a clumsy little clatter before extending his arms wide in welcome. He cannot see Sif's face through the crowd, but her movements suggest a certain amount of agitation, as though she's here on business and these frolickers are hindering her duties.

So very like her, he thinks, with a swell of fondness.

"Sif! Over here! Come! Come!"

"Oh," Jillian sighs somewhere behind him, a little enviously, "Is that your girlfriend, Mr. Odinson?"

"Ha, ha! Girlfriend? No, no! Sif is a friend! Sif!"

Sif finally pushes through the throng, smiling tightly as she reaches them. Volstagg booms out his pleasure, swinging a huge arm around her shoulder (she does not stumble or flinch) and unleashing a torrent of drunken hellos into her ear. Hogun does not move from his spot, but he tilts his mug towards her respectfully, a toast to her arrival.

Thor leans back against the table, his shoulder brushing against the Drinking Horn, surveying his friend with glowing expression.

"Ah, so you've decided to make an appearance, Sif! Here I thought you would miss my celebration – you've been so busy!"

And he had been unhappy this morning? What is there to be unhappy about?

Sif sidesteps Volstagg, lifting her eyes to the rafters above their heads. "Oh, no," she counters, "I couldn't possibly miss it. How could I miss another opportunity for you to show off?"

Thor drains his glass. "Don't be jealous! We can't all be stars! Head of the police office is still pretty good though, eh?"

Sif does not seem to be listening to him. Her eyes scan the area beadily.

"Where's Fandral?"

Thor blinks. He had not even noticed he went missing. "I don't know –"

"Other bar," Hogun supplies, nudging his head towards the wraparound bar at the back of the room, "He went to get us some vodka. He got distracted."

Thor squints, mead pounding its honey elixir through his brain, muddling his vision into a delicious gold fog. Through huddles of bodies and splotches of artificial candlelight, he spies Fandral gesturing his hands animatedly at a curvy silhouette with a shock of pink hair.

"The scoundrel! He's left us for a date!"

"Oh no," Jillian gasps theatrically, her fingers gliding subtly over Thor's bicep as she turns to glance at his friend. "I suppose he won't feel up to the Viking Challenge now, will he?"

Thor grins, but he notices Sif's gaze flitting to the bartender's delicate touch, and he sees the strange smile that touches her lips at the sight. It's not a bitter smile, it's not forced at all, and it's most definitely not a sneer masquerading as curving lips. It's a genuine gesture, even a bit sympathetic.

I suppose…Sif never truly liked me? His mind thinks fuzzily, Or perhaps she's gotten over me…?

And then there's Laufeyson in his head again, like a virus. Laufeyson does not like him either. Laufeyson, with his bladelike smile and his midnight hair, with his cream-colored skin and emerald eyes, those eyes that cut, and with his lips, so pale, and pink –

NO. No, no.

Why can't I stop thinking about him? Why can't –?

Heart hammering, he opens his mouth, but Sif interrupts him.

"Thor? Do you mind if I talk to you? Alone?"

The tickling weight of Jillian's fingers withdraws from his arm immediately. Hogun does not move, though he watches them over the rim of his mug, one slender eyebrow raised. And Volstagg chokes mid-slurp, an already cloudy eye swiveling towards Sif from beneath a bushy red brow.

Sif's face is noncommittal.

"I –" Thor splutters, though likely not for the reasons that his friends think.

His head is still reeling, a random seesaw of thoughts and emotions, and the alcohol's influence does nothing but spill the image of Laufeyson's sneering face into Volstagg's comment about a drunk Thor once attempting to kiss Fandral.

But that's not…Laufeyson wasn't there, and…I hate him –

And then he's thinking about Laufeyson's last words to him, spiteful words, and there's a thorny feeling in his gut, as though he's swallowed a cactus.

God, I hate him.

Thor must have mumbled his consent, however, because Sif grabs his wrist and totes him, like an oversized handbag, to a relatively deserted corridor at the side of the bar.

It's much brighter here. Thor has to shade his eyes against the fluorescent gleam beating down on them from above.

"Sif…?"

In the light, Thor notices that there are bags clinging beneath her hazel eyes. Her ponytail is flawlessly severe, as always, but there are wrinkles creeping into the sleeves and sides of her suit – as though she's worn it a few times without washing.

Which is not like her. Not like her at all.

And he remembers, dimly now, Volstagg saying something about her being busy, though it feels like a long time ago…

"Sif –" Thor shakes his head a bit, trying to dislodge the Laufeyson-virus from his brain, "Sif, what's wrong? Is there…something wrong?"

The mead swirls muzzily through his head, a tightness seizing up in his chest. There is something about Sif's posture – the rigid straightness of her back, the thinness of her pursed lips, the blotchy shadows bunching underneath her eyes – that seems foreboding.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to ask you out," she half-jokes, but the words plummet as though filled with lead. She presses her back against the wood-paneled wall, her gaze boring straight ahead, "I need to tell you something serious."

"Did something…happen?"

Everything is vague, faint at the corners, as though he's in a dream. He cannot imagine Sif coming to him with a problem, which means she must be bearing bad news. Has someone died? He struggles against the alcohol, which seeps into his mind like a poisonous cloud, distorting everything, keeping him from fully grasping the situation. No one could have died, right?

His friends are with him…but his parents, maybe…? His mother always worrying about Odin's health –

"Yes," Sif answers plainly, "But it's nothing personal to you," she reaches out an unshaking hand and touches his wrist gently. The pads of her fingers are cold. "I don't mean to freak you out," she heaves a breath, then continues, "And I don't want to bother you while you're celebrating. But you're a connection to a –" She pauses for a moment, "To a lead, I guess I could call it, so I need to ask you a favor."

Some of the tightness eases up in his chest. The effects of the mead ebb ever slightly, but as Thor's thoughts and vision sharpen, an annoyance begins to prickle beneath his skin.

"What's going on?" he prompts. "It's not like you to be so vague. Just tell me – whatever it is. Or do you think I can't handle it?"

Sif rubs her eyes. "A horrible thing happened in New York," she says, and then without hesitating she plunges onward, "Twelve children were kidnapped while on a trip at Central Park. They just…vanished. No sign of a culprit, no sign of a struggle. Nothing."

Something is pushing against Thor's memory.

"…What?"

"It happened a few weeks ago," Sif continues, not looking at him, "Remember how I couldn't come to the diner? Twelve parents – all wanting to file a missing persons case. They were all hysterical. Everyone needed to stay overtime that night," she shuts her eyes, the bags so pronounced that they look like bruises, "At first we hoped it was a misunderstanding. You don't immediately jump to the conclusion that it's a kidnapping, you know. Not unless it's really obvious. And there was no note, no ransom. Maybe the kids just got lost. Maybe they were just playing some sick prank, not realizing how incredibly serious the consequences would be."

She stops, and for a moment she might be carved out of stone, she's so very still.

"But we did a lot of searching and they never turned up. We're still searching, of course – but we're going to have to make the case public now, air the kids' pictures on TV. It's going to cause an uproar," Sif swallows, her throat constricting in a sharp and sudden motion, "You know why, don't you, Thor? Twelve kids. Missing. No sign of the culprit. No clear motive."

Why is hallway suddenly spinning?

It was an alien abduction, a faceless someone wrote on a blog months ago. And then something about Laufeyson being defective.

It was devil worship, said another.

Thor shuts his eyes, trying to erase the memory of those floating white words against the black face of a computer screen.

"Why are you telling me this?" he asks.

"Do you think it's a coincidence," Sif states calmly, turning a grave face towards him, "That this happened so close to Loki Laufeyson's suicide attempt?"

There's a terrible swelling feeling in Thor's chest. He cannot describe it. He has never experienced it before. But he thinks if it keeps going, if it keeps swelling, on and on and on, it will soon push against his ribcage and then through his muscle and then burst out of his body –

"What are you saying?" he thunders, his words oddly hoarse. That swelling sensation, it must be pressing against his lungs, flattening them – "You think that Laufeyson has something to do with this? He's in rehab right now, all locked up –!"

Sif whirls on him, her entire body shifting in his direction, her eyes flaring, "Are you kidding me? Do you honestly believe I think Laufeyson committed these crimes? Thor – this kidnapping is almost identical to the one that took Laufeyson!"

But there's fire in Thor's blood now, and the memory of an open bathroom door and the whisper of running water.

"I know THAT!" he roars, the swelling now an acrid, solid thing clawing up his throat, "I'm not a FOOL!"

"Then quit acting like one!" Sif snarls, her hand slamming against the wall before gripping at its wooden paneling, "Think about it! The kidnappers could easily be copycats or the original perpetrators. In either situation, who's their biggest target – besides the poor children that they've already abducted? Who is the only known, definite connection to the original kidnapping?"

It's like the swelling is a balloon, expanding wider and wider, and Sif's words are a needle: there's the jolt of impact, and then the sensation pops and shrivels, until his insides feel wrung and squeezed and beaten. The mead, which a moment ago was a fuel, licking his irritation into a furious gusto, now sinks, sludge-like, through his entire body, infecting him with fatigue.

"Loki," he breathes, too tiredly, and slumps against the wall. Everything is too bright and too dim all at once.

Why can't you just leave me alone, Laufeyson? Why can't you just let me be?

"Exactly," Sif responds, her voice clipped and forbidding. "I'm sorry, Thor," and her expression looks sorry too, some of the austerity lightening until her face is a faded gray mask, "Normally I wouldn't even be telling you this – at least, not until the news reports aired. But my entire department has been trying to contact Laufeyson, and it's so difficult to get in touch with him that it's absurd. There's all this red tape – more than there should be, honestly, especially since I'm head of the police force and it's an emergency," her lips tighten around the words, as though they taste bitter, "I had my people call his therapist and his rehab center. They were all put on hold for hours. It was so…strange. I even tried to contact them myself. Same response. I actually had someone call his landlord – but it was no help. The guy was half a crook and a drug-addict, he wasn't even aware that Laufeyson wasn't in his apartment…"

She sighs, shakes her head, and looks Thor keenly in the eye.

"You've been able to contact the therapist, though. You have her number. She must have given you a personal line when you met her. Can I have it?"

Thor stares at her. He knows she's saying something because he can see her lips moving, but her voice falls flat and soundless and he cannot hear her. He's thinking about Laufeyson, thin and sick and sharp as a razorblade, and he's thinking about blood, running thick and viscous, floating like crimson lily pads on an inch of water on a bathroom floor. And he's thinking about words, pointy little words that cut, and all the thoughts and the images rush into his throat and clot there and he cannot breathe, cannot breathe, cannot wheeze his response past his crushed vocal chords.

The memory of their last visit ripples through his brain,

Absurd. Pompous.

His blood simmers in his veins, as if hissing at the phantom of those words.

Self-important bastard.

The blood churns and heats, it roils at his temples, it boils, it burns.

You will stay away from me. Do you understand?

There is the taste of ashes in his mouth, and a hot feeling gathering in his palms, muffling the back of his neck.

You will stay away from me.

And whoever said Thor wants to go anywhere near Laufeyson?

He's the one who invaded my life – the sick, twisted bastard. He was the one who wanted to… – and I saved his life, I saved it…and who does things like that? All sliced and bleeding and warped – who the fuck DOES things like that? Who in the right mind – but he's not.

He's not in his right mind.

The heat around his neck disintegrates into little crumbly balls of hot and cold, pricking at him, needling against the corners of his vision. And Sif is still saying something. She's speaking, saying things. Important things.

But I saved his life. He should be grateful. He should be happy. All human beings want to live. All humans – (who does things like that?) – all humans…and he's alive because of me. He should be grateful. I saved him.

I'll save him –

But now Sif is telling him about twelve children. Twelve children, the same story Mother told him. A whole home full of children attend a Christmas carnival, and twelve of them disappear into the silent birch trees, into the brooding pines and naked oaks. Gone, gone, forever.

Twelve children.

Now one.

Sick. Twisted. Bleeding.

What did they do to you, Laufeyson? What did they do to make you this way?

Twelve. It always starts with twelve.

When the fingers graze his wrist, Thor shifts away, recoils, as if in disgust. He blinks and finds Sif watching him, her tired hazel eyes rimmed with worry.

"Thor…?"

There's a strangeness to her voice, a voice that's really only a breath in a deserted corridor, and Thor doesn't like it. Why does she sound so heavy, so bothered? It's not like he's one of those twelve children. It's not like he cut himself open on a bathroom floor – bleed all over the tiles – it's not like he would do something so incredibly disturbed, so entirely wrong.

"Thor?" Sif repeats. "Are you all right?"

This is the second time someone has asked him something like this. Fandral asking if something's wrong, Sif wondering if he's all right.

He imagines Gajra, sitting compactly in a high-winged chair, tapping a pen against a pad of paper. "How does this make you feel, Thor?" she would ask, her eyes lightly brown and penetrating, "How do you feel about this? It's all right to feel things, Thor Odinson. It's all right to be afraid."

Twelve children.

He's Thor Odinson and he is never afraid.

"I –" he drifts on the word for a moment, as if remerging after a long submersion in someplace cold and dark and lost, "…of course, I'm fine, Sif," and he hears himself gain volume, gain strength and body and character to his voice, "And of course, you can have the number."

I am Thor Odinson. I am, I am.

His fingers feel frostbitten as they fumble in his pockets. The cellphone's surface is slippery, metallic; it slides through his touch.

I am Thor Odinson, and Thor Odinson is never afraid, and Thor Odinson can accomplish anything.

He scrolls through the names. There are a lot of them. They are a blur of black print on a blaringly white screen. Unreadable.

"Gajra…Hansini…right?" Good. Pretend you don't remember her name. Pretend you don't call her often.

"You put her name in your phone?" Sif's voice floats somewhere over him, "That's perfect! I thought you might just have her card lying around your house. I'm so relieved."

Thor's thumbprint smears the screen. "What? Oh. Yeah."

But if I am Thor Odinson, why do these things keep happening? These things aren't supposed to happen. I am Thor Odinson. Children aren't supposed to be killed. Not when I'm Thor –

Laufeyson isn't supposed to be in danger. I saved him. Me. Thor. Thor Odinson –

"Do you have it?"

Thor blinks blearily. "What?"

"The number," Sif presses, a biting edge to her tone now, "Hansini's number. Did you find it?"

"Wha –oh," But I am Thor Odinson. I am, I am, so why is this happening? Why do these things keep happening? They shouldn't be happening. Everything's wrong. Everything's so – "Yes. Of course. Here, it's here."

And he shoves the phone in her hand.

These lights are far too bright. He closes his eyes, but the brilliance just burns through his lids, an insidious yellow. Why do they make it so very bright in here? The rest of the bar is dark.

"All right," Sif says, her fingers working deftly to transfer over the number, "What's on your mind?"

The yellow light reminds him of yellow mead. Ugh. Why did he drink so much?

"I don't know what you mean," Thor answers slowly, his words dragging on a thick tongue. The electric lights have suddenly become unbearable. The alcohol in his brain shivers and squirms and shrinks away from their intensity – I must be crashing, he thinks dully, This is probably the hangover.

"You know what I mean," Sir remarks steadily, lifting her gaze from the two phones. "You're upset, Thor. Don't tell me you're not. I've known you too long."

She taps her nail against her cellphone (a nervous tic, if Thor remembers correctly) and the metallic ting! from its impact seems to resound throughout the hall. The hard edges in her face soften ever slightly.

"I understand that you're worried about these little kids. Believe me, we are too," she begins, and her voice sounds amazingly steady, slow and calm and self-assured, "But we all need to remind ourselves that this kidnapping, while very serious, could have no connection to the Asgard one. Twelve children were taken, true, but they were all children with parents, the month is off, and the area is completely different. That puts a lot of holes in the copycat theory."

Sif pauses, takes a breath, and draws herself up grimly. She looks every bit the soldier: the lines of her face sharpen once more, the softness in her eyes recedes into a steely sheen, and her shoulders square themselves in morbid resolve.

"But if it is the same perpetrators, you can bet it won't happen the way it did the last time. Not while I'm running the police force. I…never told anyone this –" Sif breaks off for a minute, and are words are somehow both as hard and as brittle as stone. "…but I became a police officer because of this case. I couldn't stand that no one was punished for this. I was…sickened that there could be only one survivor. I wanted to keep something like this from ever happening again. And I promise you, Thor, I'll make damn sure that it doesn't happen again. We'll get those kids back. And no one is going to touch Laufeyson."

She closes those hard-brittle eyes, her throat jumping as she swallows. Her fingers look white and pinched, crushed around their cellphones.

"I'm sorry," she says after a protracted pause, "I didn't mean to…dump that all on you. I'm just saying –" She lifts her head sharply, her gaze drilling into Thor's, "Don't feel hopeless about this."

Thor watches Sif, bemused, still struggling against the narcotic effects of the mead. More than ever, he wishes he hadn't drank so much tonight. He's dimly aware that something momentous has happened here – Sif has told him something that defines who she is – but the mead and the bewilderment and the strange dread are like a tourniquet, squeezing all functional thought from his brain.

Sif…became a police officer to protect people, he thinks, fuzzily, and it's always been something he knew, always been something that made sense to him. But somehow now it's different. Now it means something else entirely. Sif followed the Asgard case, back when we were children. Sif dedicated herself to justice because of that case. Sif…

And what are you doing, Thor Odinson? A voice that sounds remarkably like Laufeyson whispers in his ear, You, with all your greatness – what are you doing to make a difference?

What is wrong with him? What's happening to him?

But I did make a difference, Laufeyson. I DID. I saved you. I SAVED you.

"Thor?" Sif prompts for the third time in their conversation. She steps forward and gently slides his phone back into his palm. Something about the way her black ponytail swishes reminds him of Laufeyson. Thor feels his chest constrict painfully.

"I saved him, Sif," he finds himself mumbling. Is it the alcohol making him say this? He suddenly thinks it's very important for Sif to understand this fact. "I kept him from dying. Why isn't he happy I saved his life? Why can't he be grateful?"

Sif watches him for a long time. She does not move to touch him.

"Sometimes, people see things," she finally answers, and her face is an inscrutable gray mask again, faraway, "And after you see certain things, Thor, you forget how to be alive."

Thor doesn't respond when Sif thanks him for Gajra's number. He doesn't react when she leans forward and touches his fingers and tells him to take care of himself, that his mother is always worried about him, and that Laufeyson will be all right, that the police force will protect him, that Thor shouldn't focus on him too much. And he only half-acknowledges her when she finally says goodbye, tucking her cellphone in her pocket and surveying him worriedly before turning on her heel – her eyes scrutinizing little pinpricks that glance back at him over her shoulder even when she marches down the hallway and out a side door.

Sometimes, people see things.

Thor waits a full ten minutes before reentering the party.

He wakes to someone screaming.

Thor sits bolt-upright in bed, a blackness pouring over his eyeballs, muffling his vision. The scream is a primal thing, a sound of human agony, a noise that still signifies the same sentiment after eons of evolution. It sinks into his core and grips him there and holds on like talons clinging to a mouse, cutting deeper and deeper until the creature stops wriggling, until its heart bursts, until it's dead –

Wait, wait.

Thor swings his legs over the side of his bed, his palms gripping at the slippery folds of his blankets. The screams repeat, again and again and again.

The same pitch. The same volume. The same sound.

Not screams. Ringing. The house phone's ringing –

He makes a noise of frustration in his throat, his fists kneading at his temples. Who is calling him at this hour? And using the house phone? His cellphone sits glittering in the dark, right on his bedside table, the charging cord snaking its way to an outlet. Friends, manager, coach, associates, the media – they all use his mobile line. The only people who bother with the house phone are old-fashioned callers, like his parents, or individuals who don't have any real business with him – namely, solicitors, amateur reporters and the occasional diehard fan, who must have hacked into a lot of tricky places to find his number.

Thor drags his gaze over to the cable box. The blue numbers highlighted there read 4:01 AM.

Diehard fan, it is.

He rubs his eyes. He should probably just return to bed. It's doubtful that this call means anything, and alcohol still swirls cloudily around his thoughts. He has that dangerous velvet-slick taste in his mouth (the taste that forewarned upchucking when he was a teenager, but he's long since learned to temper that urge) and the area inside his skull feels like an open nerve, drawn and stretched and bleeding. He doesn't really know how much mead he consumed after Sif left, but there's the memory of a dozen glasses clinking in his direction and Jillian informing him gleefully that he'd broken a new record in the Viking Challenge.

The ringing stops. Thor collapses back onto his mattress, his face pressed into the downy pillow.

What made me think the phone sounded like screams…? the words drift fuzzily as the room begins to dim around him once more, I must have been dreaming.

A shrill sound cuts through the air.

Thor blinks, twisting around in bed. Who the hell is calling him twice in a row at four o'clock in the morning? His eyes stare across his bedroom to the half-open door, a vague gray shape draped in black gloom. He thinks about Sif, about the twelve faceless children who will be on the news tomorrow, and he thinks about the man he found still and lifeless in a hotel bathroom. His pulse beats irrationally fast in his wrist.

Probably a wrong number, he tells himself thickly, clenching at his pillows.

The phone stops ringing.

Thor's fingers loosen.

The phone starts ringing again.

Thor jumps out of bed, an icy feeling twisting in his chest, even as he mutters a string of curses under his breath. It's nothing, he tells himself, and his mind snatches the words greedily and starts replaying them over and over again, until they become a mantra, unceasing, It's nothing, it's nothing, it's nothing, and the mantra synchs with his footfalls and his breathing and his heartbeat. Nothing, nothing, nothing. The bedroom door reminds Thor of a mouth, waiting to snap shut. He wants to brush the childish thought away, but the hallway beyond looks worse – it's close and leering, full of shadows. The ringing pierces through the gloom, and Thor imagines that the shadows are scuttling things, things that twitch and move when he turns his gaze from them.

Nothing, nothing, nothing, his mantra hammers, but the ringing slices through it, and the words quicken and blur as he lurches down the hallway. Nothing, nothing – and that breathing, that's him, isn't it? That thing breathing in the dark – nothingnothingwhatthefuckisgoingonnothingnothingwh at and the mantra is a distortion now and anyway, isn't this hallway too long? Isn't this goddamn hallway too long and he's not a child and this is stupid and why's the phone ringing anyway –? Why the hell does the phone keep ringing at four o'clock in the morning and he's imagining little white faces pressed against his windowpanes, little white dead faces of children buried somewhere deep beneath the earth and Loki sitting on his living room couch with bleeding wrists and the phone is still ringing, why is it still –?

He stumbles down the stairs and grasps the phone without looking.

"Hello?"

Darkness swallows his voice.

"Hello?" Thor repeats, more angrily this time.

Goddamit, this is a prank, his mind reels, seizing onto the logic with savage fervor, This is Fandral. What a stupid, shitty thing to do – I'll wring his neck tomorrow, the bastard. Does he really think I need this, with the Super Bowl so close–

And then he hears something, a small, infinitesimal blip of sound, and it's not Fandral.

Haaaaa. Huh – huh – huh – haaaaaaaaa.

It's a breath. A moist breath. A broken one.

Haaa-A-aa-A-aaaa.

It's a low, choked, throaty noise, and it's familiar: it makes Thor think of spiders crawling up his spine.

Huuuuuh – huuuh – haaaaaa. Haaa – haaa….

Sniffle, inhale. Choke. Exhale.

Thor's fingers crush over the phone.

Inhale. Huuuuh.

Exhale. Haaaaaaa.

Crying.

Someone is crying on the other end of the line.

"Who is this?" Thor asks, and his voice sounds scratchy and ragged and not like him, "Who are you?"

Haaaa- A – aaa – A – aaaaaa…

Inhale. Choke. Exhale. Choke.

"Who are you? Who are you?"

Gasp. Rattle. Gasp.

Haaaaa. Haaaaa.

No words come. There is no reaction to Thor's voice. The cries are wispy and breathless and fragile, and he thinks the person must have lips pressed against the receiver, an intimate half-kiss, whispering tears. He feels electrified. He cannot move, he cannot breathe. His throat and vocal box become mechanical inventions, repeating the same question, over and over again.

"Who are you? Who is this? Who are you?"

The crying only doubles, as if disturbed by the inquiry. He sees a throat in his mind, opening and closing, gasping for air.

"Who are you?"

Inhale. Huuuuuh.

Exhale. Haaaaaaa.

Hang up, Thor thinks, Just hang up.

But the crying gets louder, it's a gasp-choke-rattle-choke sound, and it infects the air around him. Thor realizes with a jolt that he does not know what room he's in. Why am I here? a little voice wades through the frostbite in his brain, What am I doing…? And the crying is all around him, it's not in the phone, it's in the air, it's in the darkness, and he feels it inhale, he feels it exhale – Huuu-UU-uhh-Haa-AA-haa-AA-aa – and it's in this room, it's crying in this room, it's crying and he can't stop it, he won't be able to, it'll cry and it'll cry and it'll bleed –

"Let me help you," he says, and his mind says, Hang up.

There's a faint thud on the other end of the line, like something falling.

Then silence.

The lights buzz on and Thor's standing in his living room, his phone clutched in a sweaty hand, staring through the yellow glare at the corner of his sofa.

He hangs up.

The sunrise blooms like a bruise on the horizon.

Thor sits on the bottom step of his porch, watching the sunrise bleed pink and red and purple and orange into a mottled rash against the skyline. His hands cradle a cup of coffee, but the drink has long since gone cold, and he does not even notice it when he accidentally tilts the rim and it sloshes all over his fingers.

Everything is quiet, quiet, quiet.

Thor has always thought living upstate was a good idea – not because he thrives on calm and quiet, but because he agreed with his manager that the woods would serve as a muffler after raucous months of games and travel and fans and partying. He's very rarely in his own house, after all. It would be a brief recluse, a pocket of still air that gives him time to catch his breath before plunging into the fitful winds of his superstar career.

But now the silence feels like a pair of lungs, sucking breath deep into its cavities and refusing to release it, holding it in until the whole forest strained and ached, as if on the brink of suffocation. Thor thinks he might go mad from it, and he does not like the thought, because Laufeyson is mad and he cannot imagine being like him.

He swills his coffee in uneven little circles.

Laufeyson…what happened last night? Would you understand what happened last night?

Of course, Thor knows exactly what happened. In the steadily climbing daylight, the explanations grow clearer and clearer: either it was an accidental call (unlikely, given the phone rang three times), a prank call (and then most certainly in poor taste) or it was someone in trouble, a victim, someone who wanted his help.

Possibly, a child.

One of twelve children.

Thor shuts his eyes. He does not want to believe the third choice, but he feels his body as well as his mind leaning towards it. His very muscles need to strain against the impulse: they are throbbing in the morning sun, and there's an odd pressure weighing in his chest, forcing his heart and lungs to beat and breathe with doubled exertion. His mouth tastes like sawdust. It's too suspicious, entirely too suspicious, that he would receive a call like this so suddenly after Sif told him about the missing children. And he was the one who found Laufeyson, and Laufeyson is the only connection to the original Asgard Kidnapping, and Laufeyson is vulnerable and Thor should take care of him (he saved him, after all) and they probably know this, so they –

Or he's reading into it.

Either way, he still called Sif about it. Immediately, the moment the call had ended and the lights flicked on and his hand had placed the phone icily on its stand. He knew it was a coincidence – the lights turning on – knew he must have either forgotten to shut them or the freakish weather (rain! He had never seen so much rain in his life! And when it wasn't rain, it was eerie and windy and thundering) caused it, but he did not have time to explore the occurrence. He made his way to his bedroom on purposeful feet and unplugged his cellphone and then stood out on his porch and scrolled through names until he found Sif. There was a brief moment of hesitation, where Thor looked out on a world swabbed thickly with shadows, and then reasoned that Sif wouldn't mind him waking her up.

She answered on the second ring.

"Thor?" she asked, sounding only mildly sleepy.

"Sif," he answered, and launched into an explanation of the event before she could say anything else. He left out the bit about the lights coming back on.

"Check caller I.D.," she responded, after remaining silent for nearly ten minutes while Thor blundered over what had happened, "You won't find anything, but check it anyway. Then call your cable company and demand that they trace the call. We'll check all the lines. We might be able to see where the call was made, at the very least."

Thor acquiesced (a rare thing for him), Sif thanked him, and the line went dead.

That was hours ago. The conversation had left him feeling no different than how he felt before the call: numb. And that's still how he feels now.

He made all the necessary calls, even a few follow-up calls, but no one has given him a response yet. So he sits outside in this eggshell of trees and sun and delicate birdsong, and it's like he's watching himself. It's like last night happened to somebody else. Like he sees someone else, hunched on the lowest step on his porch, his hair a mangled blonde wreathe, his stubble a little more ragged than it should be, his hands clutching that damn useless cup of coffee. And he's arguing with that person, he's telling him, It wasn't really a big deal, it wasn't really anything at all, it was nothing, and this other person who looks like him and talks like him and possibly thinks like him responds, adamantly, But it could have been something, it might have been something, it certainly felt like something…

A bird caws somewhere, loud and deep and throaty. It sounds like a raven.

Thor knows about ravens because his father keeps two as pets (it should be illegal, but it's not when you're as rich as Odin) and their bird chatter often kept him up as a teenager. He's not entirely sure how long ravens are supposed to live, or if they're meant to be so very noisy, but Huginn and Muninn seem both timeless and timelessly squawky. Thor has the creeping suspicion that Odin wrote them into his will, and he dreads the day when he'll have movers carting an aviary that looks more like a small cathedral into his backyard.

Rawk! Rawk! Rawk! the bird screeches, and Thor winces, imagining Huginn and Munnin whirling around his father's head, snagging at bits of food with their scaly gray claws, their feathers falling all over the dinner table like a downy black rain –

Black birds. Black feathers.

Black hair.

A man with hair as black as a raven –

NO.

Thor abandons his coffee mug, allowing it to crash to the floor as he crushes the pads of his fingers against his temples. He cannot do this, not now, especially when he keeps being arrested by the strange, fidgety desire to jump into his car and demand to see Laufeyson. The impulse is borderline masochistic, because he knows how Laufeyson will react if he sees him – like acid. And, logically, Thor does not want to see him: the man's problematic, dark and twisted and morbid and half-dying, and he's always accusing Thor of things that he didn't realize were sins – like being alive, or at least living successfully.

You're the one screwing with your own life, his thoughts rumble, a greasy pit of anger tightening in his gut, You're the one who tried to kill yourself. Maybe if you complained less, maybe if you were actually grateful and let people help you –

But then he remembers Laufeyson's toothpick-thinness and graying bandages and the way his crumpled blue uniform hung off his body like a smock on a child.

How does a person get like that?

Thor tips his head back until his eyes meet the blue of the sky – it's the color of a robin's egg, too bright, too beautiful to coexist with something like Loki Laufeyson. Sunlight slants pure and glossy through clusters of leaves and branches, and the result is a starburst pattern of gold-and-emerald on the forest floor, glorious spokes of color and light. How could the world be so very lovely and at the same time wicked enough to let individuals bleed themselves dry?

He glances back down at his overturned coffee cup and amends his earlier thought.

How do people let someone get like that?

He remembers the receptionist, the man who took his name when Thor first entered TARC. He had greeted Thor with enthusiasm – which Thor had expected, honestly – but his excitement had receded into a dissatisfied scowl when Thor mentioned Laufeyson. He had twisted the wedding band on his fingers and rolled his eyes in the direction of a closed door and had muttered something about seeing what he could do.

And he remembers Gajra, her voice choked and breathless over the phone, No one has ever willingly decided to help Loki before.

Thor cannot imagine being someone else's chore, he cannot imagine hating everyone and himself enough to take a little blade and press it to his pulse and think, I'm going to cut this and I'm going to bleed and I'm going to die, and then actually going ahead and doing it. He cannot imagine it and he cannot understand it and whenever he thinks about it (and it's a residue in his brain, clinging to his every thought) he feels something dry and painful scraping in his throat.

But –

Don't ever call me Loki.

Thor pictures him, his bony shoulders jutting up towards his ears, his face turned away, his head bowed so that his black hair sweeps around an alabaster chin. He thinks about the cheap shirt they have him wearing, the way it ties in the back and how he can see long swathes of skin between the knots. And he thinks about Laufeyson's voice, snarling those words –

Don't – ever – call – me – Loki.

Thor cannot imagine killing himself.

But perhaps most importantly, he cannot imagine someone not liking him.

Why do you hate me, Laufeyson? What have I ever done to you?

Rawk! cries a raven in response, and Thor stirs from his thoughts.

Phone calls and ravens and Laufeyson. What's gotten into me? What am I doing – sitting here and thinking and doing absolutely nothing? How is this going to solve anything?

So Thor decides not to think for the rest of the day. Instead, he goes to an overpriced gym that caters to his every need and runs and lifts weights and forces his body through obstacles until he's effectively sweated out every frustration that's haunted him since last night.

It's not until he exits the building, a towel twisted around his damp neck, that he feels his phone jitter (it's always on vibrate; he gets too many calls to let it ring) and senses the ghost of last night inching in on him again.

It could be Sif – it could be the cable company – maybe they know who called –

He blinks in shock at the name on the phone. Gajra Hansini.

Thor punches a button and lifts the cellphone to his ear, unsure if he should be worried or not.

"Gajra?"

"Thor," she answers crisply, "I'm so glad you pick up your phone so quickly."

Thor does not know how to respond to this. It's such an obvious, meaningless statement. He decides to cut to the point.

"Why are you calling?"

He hears rustling on the other end. "I want to talk to you in person," she says evenly, "About Loki, if you're still willing to help him."

There's a taste like wormwood in his mouth. A part of Thor, the irritated, overburdened part of him, the part that listened to someone cry on his house phone last night, wants to say no. It wants to let go and eject Laufeyson from his life and go back into the gym and lift some more weights. But a larger part of Thor, the part that scores winning goals, the part that smiles for crowds and winks at female fans and promises his coach that they'll win the Super Bowl – in short, the part that made him Thor Odinson – refuses to accept defeat.

I'll make you see I'm right, Laufeyson.

"Of course," he says.

"Oh, good, good," Gajra breathes, and she sounds a little relieved to him. "It's just – I heard that you visited him a few days ago."

"Yes," Thor responds, the wormwood taste souring in his mouth.

"And – well –" The therapist pauses, as if deciding how to arrange her words, then continues, "I know it didn't go well. I think you two are coming at the same situation from different angles and you're having a hard time communicating. I think –"

"We're having a hard time communicating," Thor thunders, his voice crashing over hers, "Because Laufeyson is completely crazy and he –"

But Gajra suddenly snaps, lightning-fast, "You didn't say that to him, did you?"

Thor pauses, swallowing his words. He has the sudden impression that he has just said something very, very wrong without realizing it.

"I…what? I –" He stretches the pronoun out, as if unsure of himself. It's a very un-Odinson response. "Of course not," he answers, a bit lamely.

"Good," Gajra says slowly, "Because that would be bad. You know how…hurtful…it is to call someone with mental problems 'crazy,' right?"

Thor resents the carefulness of her tone, and he resents the way his mind races now, picking over his argument with Laufeyson, wondering if he accidentally stepped on any other landmine words that might obliterate the man's chances of recovery.

Well, he is crazy, he finds himself fuming, It's not his fault, but he is. He doesn't know how to take care of himself. That's why I had to save him. That's why he's in rehab. That's why he has Gajra breathing down his neck. He's totally crazy.

Still, he grumbles, "I know," into the receiver, and then adds, "I didn't think he was listening in."

Gajra makes a noise that sounds like an almost-laugh. "He's not, but you shouldn't get in the habit of using words like that. They…they're damaging, they make it seem like you're not thinking of Loki as a person, or that you won't be able to take him seriously."

Something inside Thor squirms uncomfortably. He doesn't like this.

It's not that I don't seem him as a person, he rationalizes, It's just that I can't trust what he says. How can I trust what he says when he just tried to kill himself?

But he doesn't say this. "I'll be careful," he mutters instead.

"I know you're trying, Thor," Gajra placates, and her smooth, reassuring voice somehow irritates him more, "And I truly, truly appreciate it. Loki needs people like you. You just need to be patient. He has…" Gajra teeters in silence for a moment, then heaves a deep breath, "He has no faith in humanity. But – as I was saying, you two are having trouble communicating. I think I need to be there the next time you meet. To…uh…to translate, I guess."

Thor feels a little itch of amusement in the back of his throat. "Like a referee?"

Now Gajra does chuckle: her laughter blooms over the phone. "Yes, I suppose that's an apt metaphor."

Apt metaphor. Who talks like that?

"Okay, I don't mind that," Thor says as he saunters towards his car, half-waving at a flock of giggling girls, "I need someone to translate Laufeyson anyway. It's like he's speaking a different language. Screaming it, actually."

He pulls out his keys and taps a button. His Mercedes chirps happily in response.

"Maybe you should start referring to him as Loki," Gajra suggests tentatively.

Thor scoffs. "Oh, no. We already had that discussion. He told me point-blank never to call him by his first name."

He slides into a leather seat, trying to shun the memory, which swirls up in his conscious like smoke in a fire. He jams his key into the ignition, perhaps a little more forcefully than he should. The smell of his air freshener – a sharp, clean scent – accosts his nostrils. It reminds him of pine needles, and it's oddly unpleasant, recalling his early morning on his porch in the woods.

Gajra sighs. "Loki…he – he says a lot of things. He didn't want me to use his first name either."

Thor swings out into the road, swerving around a battered old car that honks furiously at him as he passes. He catches the image of the driver in the rearview mirror: an ancient-looking man with a hooked nose, his beady eyes narrowing in on his adversary as he slams his fist down on the horn. He's quite obviously someone who doesn't know who Thor is or else he wouldn't be responding to him like this – and anyway, he looks way too old to be driving a car.

"You shouldn't even have a license anymore," Thor grumbles, his foot punching at the gas pedal, and Gajra says "Huh?" in sequence with the screech of the tires.

He chuckles, his phone crushed between his ear and his shoulder. As with every car he's owned, the Mercedes has been installed with a basic cellphone system: his service synchs automatically with the vehicle, allowing his caller's voice to issue through the radio with the touch of a button.

But Thor forgot to put his phone down and he doesn't feel like pushing a button.

"Nothing, nothing," he soothes.

Gajra hisses a breath. "Wait – wait. You aren't driving, are you?"

"So what if I am?" he counters, cutting off an unsuspecting taxi and ignoring the cacophony of shrieks and beeps that follow, "Anyway – don't change the topic. So, you're admitting Laufeyson's crazy, huh?"

"Are you completely irresponsible?" the therapist nearly shouts, and Thor can almost hear her glassy demeanor cracking. Then she pauses, hesitates, and sputters, "Wait – what?"

"Laufeyson," Thor prompts, zigzagging down the road, "You just told me that 'he says a lot of things,' like you don't really listen to him. Are you trying to tell me that's not crazy?"

He knows he shouldn't push this, but he's still a bit sore about his clumsiness with the word earlier. He's not one of Gajra's patients; she shouldn't be lecturing him on his vocabulary.

But the woman snaps neatly to her reply, "That's not what I said. At least, that isn't what I meant. I should have phrased my meaning more clearly – I'm sorry, Thor. What I meant to say is that…Loki's traumatized, and once you've been through a trauma, you don't see the world the same way other people do."

Sometimes, people see things, Sif had said.

"The way Loki's acting is actually sensible," Gajra explains, "Given what he's been through. Trauma makes it difficult for a person to communicate or – express him or herself to other people," she lets the description dangle for a moment, fiddling with something nearby (he hears a clink-clink and imagines her tapping a pen on a desk), then continues calmly, "That sort of…guardedness makes sense for these sorts of individuals. Paranoia becomes a way of life; it's a self-defense mechanism, and it's…a normal reaction. So – when he says those things, it's a symptom of his trauma, not insanity. You need to be patient with him. Understand where it's coming from. Realize that eventually he'll let his guard down, if you're persistent and – and sensitive."

A symptom of trauma, not insanity.

Thor grips the wheel tighter.

What's the difference? he thinks, but knows better than to say that.

"Right, sensitive," he responds offhandedly, "I'll keep that in mind."

He can almost feel Gajra smiling. "Thor."

"What?" he grunts, jerking the car around a sharp corner, "I said I'd watch my language. So why do you want to see me in person? Do you just mean when we all meet up? Or do you mean before –"

"Only about a half hour before we all meet," Gajra promises, "I know being with Loki can be…frustrating, especially when you're getting to know him. I think it would be good for us to discuss what it is that you want to say to him. I don't want to just assume I know where you're coming from. If you help me, I think I could help Loki understand. Eventually. At least – the encounter will be less painful that way."

She talks about him like he's a wild animal, Thor reflects, but he can't say that he disagrees. Laufeyson is like a bleeding cobra: wounded and all the more deadly because of it.

The streets whiz by in a blur of electric lights. "All right," Thor says. "When do you want to do this?"

"Oh…" Gajra trails off, and Thor senses an oddness in her voice, a trace of aggravation, "Next week? Loki, he – he's being released then."

The Mercedes careens to the side of the road. A din of squealing wheels and shrieking horns and screaming people rises up behind him, but Thor does not even hear them.

"What?"

"Thor –!"

"He just got in!"

"I know –"

"He's sick!"

"Well –"

"He'll try it AGAIN! I know he will! How could they possibly release him? They haven't fixed him at all!"

"Rehab doesn't fix people," Gajra cuts in hurriedly, "It helps people. And I know, he's not better; believe me, no one is more aware of that than I am. But TARC is funded by the state, and they can't afford to keep him any longer. Do you know how crowded those centers get? And he's not at a point where he can be forcibly and permanently institutionalized, so –"

Thor thinks Laufeyson is probably beyond that point, but he decides not to say this.

"He'll need to go somewhere else, then."

"It's not like he can pay for private care, Thor," the therapist sighs.

"I can pay for it," he blurts before he can stop himself, "Let me pay for it."

Gajra pauses, then says haltingly, "I don't think…I mean – Loki would never let you do that."

The anger is like a live thing, crawling up his throat. He wants to throw his phone, the way he did when his manager called, but some distant part of his brain realizes Gajra wouldn't appreciate that. Instead he jabs at a button on the radio so he can hear her voice more clearly, and tosses (only tosses) his cell into the passenger's seat. And by now the anger's in his mouth, and it's something with red-hot pinchers, something that keeps seizing at his words and turning them to ash on his tongue. He has never felt so useless, so goddamn useless in his entire life – a tarry, sticky feeling, something that he drowns in. And the anger is ash on his tongue and a whiteness in his eyes, blinding him. He grits his teeth and grips his steering wheel and tries to remember to breathe. So Laufeyson cannot pay for his recovery, and he won't let someone else pay for it, and Thor has to accept this or else he's insensitive. And Laufeyson can't pay to get better, so TARC's booting him out, and he'll just go outside and try to off himself again, and when that doesn't work he'll be back in TARC, and the same thing will happen over and over and over again like an absurd carousel ride –

"So," Thor growls thickly, "He'd rather die than give into his pride."

A heartbeat's pause.

"Thor. You're very prideful too."

He thinks about hanging up. He wants to hang up.

"I have a reason to be prideful."

The moment that stretches between them is thin and sharp and unpleasant.

Thor wonders again why he decided to do this, why he doesn't just back out. It's not like this is a football game, not like this is the sort of thing he needs to prove himself. So what if Laufeyson doesn't like him – if he's ungrateful? Thor doesn't like Laufeyson either. And the man's given him enough headaches these past few weeks. He's still dreaming about his body, still and white and surrounded by patches of pink water on a bathroom floor. He doesn't need this, not now, not so close to the Super Bowl. It's already hard enough to focus, after what happened last night; after that ridiculous phone call –

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait.

Thor's throat suddenly seizes up. "Gajra, did you hear from Sif?"

"Sif…?" Gajra's voice trails, then suddenly hardens, "Do you mean the commissioner?"

Commissioner! If not for the frigid air crushing at his lungs, Thor would marvel over the grandness of that title. He sometimes forgets how very successful his friend is.

"Yes –" He begins, but Gajra slashes through his words.

"She did call me. She told me about what happened in Central Park. It's very tragic and I hope those poor children are found right away," the evenness of her tone sounds somehow brittle and breakable, "But there's no way that it has anything to do with the Asgard Case. It's vaguely similar, but it can't be a copycat scenario – the details are off. And there's no way it can be the original perpetrators."

Thor feels like he's fighting through a haze. "Why not?"

"Because," Gajra plunges on, "Loki's relayed details to me about the incident that make it impossible."

"He –" Thor's mouth is dry, too dry to form words, "He's told you want happened to him? What did he say –?"

"I'm not allowed to tell you," she replies in clipped tones, "I was able to tell the commissioner because it concerns the public's wellbeing. I told her anything that might help with the case. But you…" Gajra heaves a heavy breath, as if weighing her words, "Telling you would just be an invasion of privacy."

A low, shivery voice, murmuring tears over the phone. And a faint thud, like someone falling.

Like someone falling.

Is Thor falling?

"How can you be sure?" he mutters. "They were never caught."

What did you tell her, Loki? What happened to you? What screwed you up? What could possibly screw you up so bad –?

"No one knows who did it," Gajra says softly, "No one has ever been able to put a name to a face, no. But they questioned Loki, you know, even though he was so very, very young," and her voice suddenly sounds tired and ragged and pulled too far, like she's run for a very long time and cannot stop, cannot stop, "There were suspects on trial and Loki didn't recognize any of them. The police, the detectives, they were never able to come remotely close to catching anyone involved in the Asgard Case.

"But not catching someone…it doesn't mean they'll come back. Loki hasn't told me a lot, Thor, he's very silent about the whole thing. But he's told me enough to know that whoever – whoever was in charge of the kidnapping can't come back. And that's what matters. It's trauma that Loki has to deal with now, and people stirring up the past, claiming it's happening again, they're only going to make him hysterical."

Thor clenches his jaw so tightly that it starts to ache. He's not entirely satisfied with Gajra's conclusions. He knows that she wants to protect Laufeyson, understands that this sort of news could break an already fragile man. But if the leader is dead, which Gajra's shady comments imply, that doesn't mean that no other kidnappers survived. Surely, the Asgard Case required more than a single kidnapper – twelve children disappear all at once without a sign? Not to mention, they vanished in New York, but Laufeyson (and the bodies) reappeared in Oregon. No criminal could be that skillful. And Laufeyson…Laufeyson, who's so quiet, so scathing, so merciless, what could he have possibly said? What could he have said to assure Gajra that this case has nothing to do with the old one?

Did you see the man die, Laufeyson? After he killed nearly all your friends –

Thor's throat constricts and he has the sudden desire to vomit. He needs to force the urge down, swallow past the velvet slickness in his throat.

"I don't understand," he presses stubbornly, "Even if the top guy's dead, there could still be others out there. And it's twelve kids –"

"Yes, twelve kids," Gajra snaps, and there's some heat to her words now, "Twelve poor children lost and shivering somewhere, being held captive by criminals. Children who must be terrified out of their minds. That's the only two similarities these two cases have – the number twelve – and unless the police wants this case to end the same way Asgard did, they should focus on rescuing these kids instead of spinning conspiracy theories."

The implications hit Thor like a sledgehammer: he feels almost winded, crushed beneath their awful weight, and then as his body adjusts to the knowledge, a fire starts up in his stomach.

"Are you saying Sif is doing nothing?" Thor growls at his dashboard. "She hasn't been sleeping for weeks! She's doing everything to help those children and beyond that – that's why she's calling you! She's following every lead possible – you should be grateful that she actually cares about what happens to Laufeyson. It's more than you can say for TARC, and they're supposed to be helping him! She's the best thing that's ever happened to the NYPD and she'd die before abandoning those kids –"

Thor breaks off, his mouth too full of words to speak. His pulse surges in his neck.

Silence settles thick and rancid between them, a ballooning discomfort that expands across invisible WiFi lines and snatches away their voices. Thor digs his nails into the steering wheel, likely leaving imprints, his heart thundering in his chest. He desperately wants to hang up, or at least hit something, but the memory of Laufeyson lying in a puddle of blood and water keeps him from it. It's a tenuous resistance, but he realizes that if he falls out with Gajra he will sever any contact he has with Laufeyson, and then he'll have to live with that sunken image of the man forever.

And he can't do that. He needs to regain equilibrium in his life, and he won't be able to do that until he leaches Laufeyson from it entirely. And he can't cut Laufeyson out until he fixes him, until Thor knows that he's fine and happy and doesn't hate him.

"You're right," Gajra answers, her voice low.

Thor blinks. He almost doesn't hear her.

She continues, "I didn't really mean that. Of course the commissioner – your friend – is doing everything she can. Of course everyone is. And she's very thorough, checking up on Loki. I'm grateful. I just –"

There is no quaver, no break, no hiccup in Gajra's voice. She simply stops short, as if she needs to seize a sudden breath and cannot speak at the same time. It's such an ordinary, human impulse, but it pitches Thor into a nightmare, into last night when he stood in his living room with his phone to his ear and listened to the noises something made on the other end, not a person but a collection of gasps and sobs and inhalations, and no matter what he said it went on and on and on and it would not stop, would not stop, not until the sound of something falling –

Needles of ice prick at his skin.

What's wrong with you, Odinson? It's not like you to be scared. You're never scared. Never, never.

"Just…what?" he mumbles, adrift on his thoughts.

The therapist draws a steady breath. "I don't believe it's them. But…God forbid…if it is the same kidnappers, I don't think Loki could recover from it. It would be detrimental to him. Please try to understand, Thor," and here, though her tone never weakens or strays from its evenness, it sags with fatigue, "All people in my line of work want to do is help others. But that doesn't mean that we always succeed – and it certainly doesn't mean we always know how. I want to help Loki. But I'm…I fear that if this happens, I might not be able to."

It's a diagnosis, but it sounds more like a death toll.

Thor stirs numbly, "But you would still try…right? Even if it was…you wouldn't give up on him?"

Gajra's voice is a ghostly whisper.

"I will never give up."

There's a heavy ping! – ping! – ping! on the windshield and Thor cranes his neck back to find raindrops plummeting down from above. They crash against the glass in a cascade of gray water, quickly gaining momentum, more and more falling until he sees nothing but liquid sheets and a distortion of the road ahead of him. Cars whiz by him on the street, blurs of color and light, oblivious to Thor and Gajra and the specter of Laufeyson, haunting them both.

But he does not have time to scowl or wonder at the temperamental skies, because at that moment a shock of lightning bathes the car an acid purple, and a clap of thunder extinguishes all other noise. Its roar touches something deep in Thor's core.

"I won't either," he says, and hangs up, and pulls his car out to drive.

The next day he visits Laufeyson.

Gajra expressly told him not to visit before the scheduled meeting, but that morning he receives a notice from the cable company, informing him that it has no record of him receiving a phone call at four a.m., and that afternoon Sif contacts him, claiming that they cannot track the whereabouts of a seemingly nonexistent caller.

Everything feels so goddamn useless.

Thor knows the phone call meant something. He heard it all night in his dreams, a dismal phantom's cry, and he woke with the distinct impression that something stood at his bedside, looking down on him. He had seized the his lamp immediately – and of course nothing had been there – and he had cursed himself (aloud, no less) for being susceptible to the sort of nightmare jitters that affects children.

Even when he lay back down, his muscles remained strained, his ears attuned to every sound, as though expecting the phone to ring.

This is not Odinson behavior.

Thor tries not to grind his teeth as the Mercedes screeches to a halt in the parking lot. He sits in the driver's seat for a moment, the car humming around him. For some reason, his mind has decided to attach the Laufeyson predicament to the phone call incident –solving one issue will somehow solve them both. He knows it's irrational, but it seems so much better to actually do something, even something as unpleasant as listening to Laufeyson's insults, than to wander around and pretend that the world is golden instead of gilded.

He'll get his golden world back. Just as soon as he fixes Laufeyson.

Rawk! Raaawk! a raven shrieks as Thor exits his car, and his thoughts swoop automatically to his father. He remembers how somber, how very craggy the man had looked, like an ancient tombstone, back when Thor was a boy and he stole the newspaper with the too-long title ('MUTILATED BOY DISCOVERED HIDING IN THE CARNAGE OF FELLOW ORPHANS'). He cannot imagine how Odin must have felt, knowing that the kidnappers had plundered his orphanage and stolen the children that he vowed to protect – the kids that he offered second lives. He cannot imagine how he must have felt reading that article, or seeing the blurred shape of Laufeyson in the grainy photo, or realizing that the boy he took in on charity was living but already dead, dead, dead.

And he cannot imagine how Odin could not have told Thor about this.

Didn't Laufeyson deserve some sort of compensation? Asgard must have paid for his hospital expenses…did the orphanage just let him go after that? Did it close down? Father never talks about it. It might as well not exist.

Except Odin had made speeches and statements and organized press conferences about the kidnapping. Thor knows because he's seen a lot of the footage on YouTube, back when he researched Laufeyson's history. His father hasn't bothered to hide the information – so why hasn't he been open enough to talk to his son about it? Is he guilty? Ashamed? Are the memories too painful? Is Laufeyson simply a skeleton hiding in the Odinsons' plush, Persian-carpeted closet?

Thor intends to find out.

There's a soupy sort of twilight falling, all gray and blue and lavender, because Thor spent his morning in football practice and his afternoon working out in a private gym. Then he'd gotten himself a drink (or a few) and mulled over the merits of disregarding Gajra's advice. There were decidedly few – in fact, other than assuaging his own restlessness, there were none – and yet he found himself driving here nonetheless. Maybe it was the liquor talking. Thor doesn't really know, and he reasons that he doesn't really care. Thor Odinson never questions his actions.

The reception room is as cramped and gloomy and flaking as he remembers it. The place depresses him.

"My friend!" he booms at the receptionist, striding towards the seated man, "I need to see Laufeyson again. Can you show me to him –?"

But it takes less than a minute for Thor to realize that something's horribly wrong. The last time he was here, the receptionist was lounging in his chair, scrolling through his laptop at his leisure. Now he sits hunched forward, one hand splayed flat against his desk, his other hand crushing a black phone against his ear. His feet pedal nervously beneath him, a frantic tap-tap-TAP that conjures dust clouds from the rug. His cheeks are white and sucked in tight, as though he's biting on them.

"I know," he mutters into the phone, "I know. I called her already – I called. She's coming; she'll be here. Just hold him off until then. Hold him off unti – what do you mean, you can't? For God's sake, he's got to be around ninety pounds. I'm sure you can handle him. Well, I don't know how he got a scalpel – I'm just a receptionist! I know, I know. She'll be here soon. And no, I don't know how we can release him after this. I don't know. It's not my call. I said I don't – okay, fine, I'm hanging up. No! I'm hanging up – bye!"

He slaps the phone down with a fierceness Thor didn't know he had.

"Excuse me," he says testily, shuffling papers, not glancing at Thor's face, "But we're dealing with a bit of a crisis right now, so I'm going to have to ask you to come back later. Not to mention, we've fulfilled all appointments with guests today, which means you must be unbooked. And unbooked means no visit, so –"

"What?" Thor barks, incredulously, though there's a creeping feeling in his gut. He hears the words 'I don't know how we can release him,' play over and over in his head, and the feeling curdles to dread. But there are hundreds of people in here. It doesn't have to be him. He clears his throat, "You let me in just fine the last time, and I didn't have an appointment then!"

The receptionist's head snaps up. His horn-rimmed glasses slide down his nose.

"Oh," he proclaims, uselessly.

"Yes," Thor glowers, and now the phrase 'I don't know how he got a scalpel' begins to etch itself disturbingly into his thoughts, "You remember me, don't you?"

"Well – well, yes, of – of course, Mr. Odinson!" the man splutters, also quite uselessly.

It's not him, Thor tells his racing pulse, It could be anyone.

"So let me in!"

Thunder blasts outside. The receptionist drops his papers in his agitation.

"Oh, well, well –" he bends to gather his paperwork, glasses hanging askew, his mouth tripping over his own words, "You see…I – I don't think I can do that, Mr. Odinson. I'm really quite sorry. It's rather complicated, but your guest, in particular –"

"It's him, isn't it?" Thor spits, as lightning fills the dingy windows with eerie blue energy, "You were talking about Loki on the phone."

The receptionist swallows. "So you understand why you can't see him."

"I can't believe you're releasing him," Thor snarls, and his mind scrambles to dampen the horrible flood of possibilities that the words 'Laufeyson' and 'scalpel' bring to his imagination.

The man shakes his head. Uselessly. God. Why did TARC hire such a useless employee?

"I don't have any say in that," he states slowly.

But now Thor sees a body on the floor and a white rush of water and a sea of crimson lily pads, scudding across tiles. A lump solidifies in his throat, a clot of nausea.

"Just let me in," he hisses.

"No," the receptionist pipes up, and there's an air of fire in his tone now. He presses his back against his chair. "Why do you want to see him so badly? You aren't family; you're not a friend. What are you – obsessed with him?"

Obsessed. The word is like a noose. It strangles him.

"How DARE –"

Thor bangs his hands against the man's desk, but at that moment he hears a scream.

For a moment, he's back at home, in bed, and he's listening to the screams he thought he heard, the screams that were really telephone rings, telephone rings from a phantom caller who cries whispering tears. And then the sound cracks through the air again, high and sharp and desperate, and Thor's transported back into TARC's waiting room. The walls seem to slant in towards him, a cage of white plaster, and he realizes suddenly that he cannot breathe. The scream needles at his heart.

I've never really heard someone scream before, his mind thinks wildly, Except in horror movies. I never really heard what it sounds like to be murdered.

The scream ends and another one starts. It's long and ragged and strangely halting, like the voice breaks and needs to gather its momentum before it can begin again. Ahhhhh – Ahhhh – Ah – AH – aaahhhhh – the scream goes, and it's a physical thing that Thor feels inside him, a horrible thing that slashes at his organs.

It's not like the movies. It's not all noise. It's different.

He lifts his gaze to the receptionist, and the receptionist says, "Go," with ashen lips, and Thor decides to interpret this loosely.

He barrels through the double doorway into the patients' living quarters. It's a drafty, narrow corridor lined with doors, and each step looks exactly the same as the one before. There's nothing to differentiate the plain wooden thresholds, and Thor suspects there's nothing to differentiate the rooms behind them. The air around him tastes like dust and antiseptic. The world is a small, small place, and all that exists is this labyrinth of doors and the endless screaming.

If Thor were born in another world, he would have been a warrior. He's certain of this. Whenever he senses a threat nearby, his adrenaline clamors for him to uncover the source of the danger rather than run away from it. Thor Odinson has never once backed down from a fight, not even as a child. These feral screams, ripping at the walls, spearing through his body, are just another type of fight – or so he tells himself. He must expel the terrible swell of his heart in his throat; he must extinguish the electric shocks prickling at his palms. He must remind himself that Laufeyson is fragile and sick and his throat can't possible make those sounds, his lungs are simply not big enough. And besides, he cannot imagine Laufeyson, spiteful, prideful, livid – he cannot imagine him making those sounds –

"Sir? Excuse me? What are you doing? Get away from here!"

The world tilts on its axis.

"What is he doing here? Do you know why he's –?"

Everything is a blur of motion and bodies and noise. Thor feels himself being jostled by a dozen caretakers, a forest of rubber-gloved hands shoving at his arms and shoulders. He hears little clips of sounds – "Get back!" "Go, go!" "Leave!" – but he ignores them, pushing past the crowd to the commotion at its heart. He needs to see this. He doesn't know why, but it's like when you're ten-years-old and you watch a horror movie that your parents forbid you from seeing, and you're sitting on the floor staring at the pictures on the screen and your mouth is dry and your mind is saying, I can't watch this – I can't watch this– but your eyes keep looking even when the thing creeps out from under the bed and swallows the child whole. It's that same sort of dread, the dread that makes you look, and keeps you from shutting your eyes. It's the sort of thing that burns into you.

He sees a gray floor, and on it shining red droplets, like apples in a bed of smoke.

Thor does not have time to think about this. Something is writhing, twisting and snarling and fighting like it's about to die, and it's shouting things that are not simply screams but actual words, words torn from a mad mouth in a desperate frenzy. There are flashes of movement, too fast for Thor's eyes to compute, and his vision is still reeling with gray-and-blood patterns on the floor when he sees that a caretaker has shoved Laufeyson against the wall. His cheek scrapes against the plaster, his entire body wriggles against the pressure, and his hand opens and closes and drops a skinny silver shape on the floor with a clatter. The gash on his palm grins up at Thor, and Thor feels its rawness and its stinging in his chest, as though the blade has cut through him. Laufeyson's animal thrashing and the caretaker's brutal restraint sear into him, an ugly, ugly thing, and Thor knows it's the type of ugliness that he will never be able to wash out of his mind.

He doesn't feel anything because he's not really here, he's a little boy and he's watching a movie that his mother warned him not to watch.

This can't be Laufeyson, he assures himself, as the person against the wall starts laughing and shouting; Laufeyson is way too prideful to do anything like this. He's too bitter – he's too wrathful.

Black hair spills over a wraithlike face. "I have to get away from her," the person who can't be Laufeyson keeps saying, jerking against the caretaker's grasp, "I have to – she's going to KILL EVERYONE," and then there's a wretched bout of laughter that sounds like tears, because it's pained and breathless and choking, "But what do you care? You're already dead! You're all dead – dead – DEAD! And it's my…my…" The body goes slack for a moment, this not-Laufeyson crumples against the wall, and then he's making a gasping sound and no, no, it can't be – it can't possibly be – he'd never do something like this –

"I'm sorry," Loki sobs, and Thor's thankful, so thankful that he cannot see the man's eyes, "I said I'm sorry…please, please…I tried – I did," and he seizes a breath and shudders into a corpselike stillness, and his next words sound low and soft and hollow, like a child's, "Hey…? Do you know…?" He breaks off, laughing and crying, his hand curling into a fist and his fingernails digging into the wet curve on his palm, "That…the insides of animals…and the insides of people…they look exactly the same. On the inside, a little boy is just like a pig, and when you kill them, they make the same noise. And their insides…their organs…their heart and their lungs and their kidneys…they look the same…the same…the same…"

This is just a horror movie.

After the credits roll, he can forget about it.

"You need to leave," a voice says by his ear, and Thor's whole body surges with gooseflesh at the nearness of the speaker. He whips around, his hands tensing to attack, but his gaze collides with the stone-hard glare of a caretaker and he drops his fists. It's a short woman with caramel skin and a bob of sandy-colored hair, twisted into a spiky little ponytail. She's dressed in the crinkled blue uniform all the employees and patients wear here, and her hands are covered in rubber gloves. When she lifts a palm up to Thor, he notices scarlet splotches on the stretchy plastic and realizes with a kind of vague disgust that it's Laufeyson's blood. Her left hand holds the scalpel he dropped, her small thumb tucked over its handle.

Blood does not bother Thor, but somehow the sight makes him nauseous.

"I don't know how you got in here," the caretaker hisses, beckoning him back towards the doorway with vicious swipes of her hands. She's careful not to touch him. "Don't you know that visiting hours are over?"

Thor does not understand her question. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. Around him, the world keeps moving, but he feels like he's standing still. Everything moves so fast, so fast.

"Well?" the woman prompts, pushing open the double doors with her elbows. They troop back into the waiting room; the receptionist is suspiciously absent.

"I…" Thor begins, numbly.

the insides of animals and the insides of people

Little cold trickles skitter across his hairline. Heat presses itself against the nape of his neck. There's something wrong with him. What's wrong? What's wrong?

"I…I mean…"

The caretaker holds up a bloody hand and Thor feels suddenly dizzy.

when you kill them

"Wait. I think I know you. You were here the other day – you saw Laufeyson," she levels a hawkish stare at him, her mouth shriveling into a frown, "If I heard correctly, he asked you to leave and you didn't listen. Do you think you have a right to harass patients? Do you feel entitled because he's sick and you're not? I don't know who you are to him, but if you want him to get better, you need to learn when to back off. This was a total violation of privacy. Do you think he wanted you to see him like this?" She jabs a red-tipped thumb over her shoulder at the double doors. "TARC could press breaking and entering charges. Now, go. I don't want to see you here again."

She flaps her hands at the front door.

Thor stands there, blinking, knowing he should be mad but unable to muster the emotion.

they make the same noise

He leaves.

Back in his car, Thor listens to the ravens – why are there so many ravens? – screeching out their cries as he sits in the driver's seat, hands clutching at his steering wheel. Something is wrong with him. Something is irrevocably wrong. He's forgotten how to drive, and his fingers are trembling on the wheel. But Thor Odinson's hands do not shake. He thinks he must be dreaming, but he doesn't remember how to wake up from nightmares, and there's a hazy film covering his eyes and he can't breathe. He thinks he may have forgotten that too. He thinks he may have forgotten everything except for the fact that boys and pigs are the same thing and everyone's already dead, anyway. And Thor really believes he's suffocating, he's convinced that there's no air in this car, but he doesn't know how to open the windows and he doesn't remember if he locked the door and outside the ravens could be picking at hearts and lungs and kidneys.

That's ridiculous…that's…

He feels cold and hot and hot and cold. He sees dollops of blood on a gray floor. He hears a telephone ringing, and someone crying in the dark, and somehow his frenzied brain connects the sound to Laufeyson's screams, and the two sounds are the same thing, the same person, and don't you know we're all dead anyway?

Oh God, oh God, what if it was Loki who called me? It was Loki who called –?

He needs a drink. He desperately needs a drink, but he cannot remember how to start his car. His mind floats with the words key and ignition, but he doesn't remember what those words mean. His legs lie useless beneath him; he hopes they are not shaking. Thor Odinson does not shake.

Thor Odinson…

Is this what a panic attack feels like? A voice asks muzzily in the back of his head, Am I having a panic attack?

It's this thought that grounds him.

Thor latches onto the words and grips them like a lifeline, pulling himself up from the tide of airlessness and thoughtlessness that threatens to drown him. He squeezes his steering wheel tight, feeling the silky material against his fingers, and sucks a steadying breath through his teeth. The heat rapidly fades from his body, but the coldness remains, an iciness that lies on his skin in sweat and chills his heart in a deeper frostbite. His head is swaddled in pain.

Outside, the parking lot comes into sharp relief: the ground beneath his car is crumbling asphalt, and the sky overhead is thick with shadows, dusted with a crystal scattering of stars. TARC itself is low and dull and bricked, with sleepy windows that exude a faint orange light. And the woods ripples around the outskirts of the building and the lot, a sea of trees that sigh and shift with the wind, like living things.

Well, trees are living things, Thor corrects himself, and he's unsure why the thought unsettles him.

Rawk! Rawk! the ravens caw, wheeling above him in circles. Black haloes.

He swerves out of the parking lot, the world a dark, muted, breathing place. He tries not to glance back at the building, but when he does, no one is watching him.