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Thor was angry. Furious. Loki could see the silent rage inside him, building up behind his eyes though on the surface he appeared calm and collected. The calm before the storm, and when the thunder began, everyone would know about it.
But for now, he contained his fury admirably.
His brother knelt before him on the ground, while Loki sat on the end of his bed, hands clenching around the blanket that covered it.
It hurt. It hurt so much more than he could have imagined. He had feared the humiliation, and the terrible inconvenience of Odin's punishment, but he had not anticipated this level of pain. White hot, pulsing in time with every accelerated beat of his heart. He wanted to scream in agony, but his lips were still sealed closed, and he feared the movement of air inside his mouth from even the quietest incomprehensible vocalization would provoke a fresh wave of agony. He breathed slowly through his nose, trying to remain in control.
“Hold still,” Thor told him.
In his brother's hand was a sharp blade, held dangerously close to his lips. Loki tried to take his eyes from it and look Thor in the eye, but something in him refused to allow it. He remained as still as he could. He could hear the sound of his breathing, quick and panicked.
“This will hurt,” Thor told him. Master of the obvious, his brother. “But if I do not do it now, you will begin to heal around the stitches, and removing them will hurt more.”
He raised the blade, bringing it so close to Loki's face that he could no longer see it. He felt a tightening of the cord that sealed his lips, it pulled against two of the wounds, one in his bottom lip, one in his top, and stung like the flesh was again being pierced. He pulled back, retreating from the knife, feeling flesh blood begin to trickle down his chin from the newly agitated wound.
“Unless you would rather I leave them there?” Thor suggested. “In which case, the best course of action would be to apply some sort of salve to aid the healing, and become used to silence.”
Thor was joking, of course. His brother would never subject him to that kind of treatment. But yet, he had never believed Thor capable of going through with their father's cruel punishment. He hadn't wanted to. Loki could see his reluctance in his expression, and the hesitant tremor in his fingers. He had done it to save him worse pain, or so he had believed. There came a point when pain was pain, and a little more no longer mattered. He believed he had passed that point already.
“If you would rather wait a while, I am willing,” Thor told him. “Let me wash the blood away, give you some time to recover, and then we will try again.”
He got to his feet and turned to leave.
Panic gripped Loki, along with the need to tell him to stay. His mouth tried instinctively to open, to ask him to try again, and once again,pain, as the cord pushed against each of the nine – he had counted each agonizing piercing – wounds running along the top and bottom of his mouth. He heard himself make a sound at the same time, a muffled, meaningless and guttural noise, full of urgency.
Thor turned back to him, and Loki reached out and clasped his hand around his brother's forearm. Their eyes met, and Loki shook his head.
“I won't be long,” Thor promised. “When I suggested leaving you like this, I did not mean it. I'm going for water and a cloth.”
Of course Thor hadn't meant to abandon him. Loki knew that, he only wanted to communicate that he wanted Thor to try again to remove the stitches, and that this time he would stay completely still. He wanted them out, now. He did not want to wait another minute longer. But he could communicate none of this.
“Just a few minutes,” Thor promised. He pulled his arm free of Loki's grip, and left him alone.
Loki got to his feet and crossed the room to his mirror. He almost didn't want to look, but he needed to see. As he glanced into the glass, he recoiled in horror. Blood was drying now on his lips and chin, beginning to congeal in places over a backdrop of almost brown where the thinner blood had already begun to dry.
The cord was thick and dark and horrifying, stitched into his face like he was some hideous rag doll, and his lips... the whole area had begun to swell, pulling the cord tight against his damaged flesh. The skin had bruised where the damage had allowed blood to leak under the surface of his skin, resulting in a rainbow of reds, purples and blues. The lower half of his face was a mess of bruising and blood.
He couldn't bring himself to look away, both horrified and fascinated by the sight.
Slowly, carefully, he brought his hand to the still hanging loose end of the thread. Thor had removed the needle, which now lay on the table, still coated in drying blood. As his fingers closed around the cord, he realized that they were shaking with shock. He gripped tighter against the tremble, and began, with as much care as he could muster, to pull the cord back through the hole left by the needle.
Agony exploded, white hot, and his fingers jerked instinctively away.
“Loki,”
Thor's voice was quiet and sorrowful. Loki turned to see him standing in the doorway watching.
“Let me,” he said.
Thor had done enough damage already and were he able to speak, Loki would have told him as much. But under the circumstances, his brother's hand would no doubt be steadier than his.
With one final glance at the horror scene that was his face, Loki turned and walked to a chair. Thor followed him, and knelt down beside him. In his hand was a small bowl of water, murky white in color, and a thin cloth.
Thor dipped the corner of the cloth into the water, and began to gently cleanse the wounds. It hurt, but not as much as previous ministrations.
“I asked a healer for a balm to add to the water,” Thor told him. He spoke softly, almost a murmur, as though he meant to sooth him with his voice. “It should numb some of the pain, while I...” he didn't finish the sentence. The cloth continued to cleanse his wounded lips, spreading a wonderful, blissful numbness. Thor's hands were gentle, as though he had trained for this kind of work.
When he was done, the whiteness of the liquid in the bowl was stained pink. The pain was dulled to an almost tolerable level, though it was far from gone. Thor once again raised his blade to Loki's lips, and sliced through the thick cord.
He had left the stitches loose, but swelling had tightened them, and the knife pulled the cord tighter still. Loki hissed in pain. Alone now, with Thor, it was allowed. Before the court, he had not dared show such a sign of weakness.
Thor's free hand moved to the back of his head, in a way that reminded him of the stitching, but this time he did not hold him in place. Instead, his fingers caressed him, running through his hair. “I'm sorry,” he said.
Loki couldn't tell whether he was apologizing for the pain he was inflicting now, or the carrying out of their father's twisted form of justice, or for taking his complaint to Odin in the first place. Possibly a combination of the three.
Loki looked at him searchingly, but his brother's face revealed no answers. Thor raised a hand to the cord and pulled free one stitch.
He felt the wound begin to bleed again as the cord was pulled away. Thor once again doused the cloth in the numbing balm. He held the cloth in the air, and allowed it to drip onto Loki's lips. Then he repeated the procedure, cutting another stitch, pulling it free, and another, and another.
Slowly, the pressure began to ease as the swollen, damaged flesh was freed of its restraint.
It took what felt like hours, and when it was finally done, Loki was exhausted, trembling, sweating with the exertion of remaining still to endure the torture. Thor looked no better. When he finally lowered the blade and dripped the last of the balm onto the final wound, he sat back and closed his eyes.
“I am truly sorry, Loki,” he said. “Believe me when I say I had no idea father would do something like this. It was not an official complaint that I made, simply something mentioned in passing.”
Loki wanted to reply, though whether he should forgive his brother or not, he was still undecided, but the slightest movement of his injured lips was agony still, and so he remained silent, waiting.
“This was done to punish both of us,” Thor continued. “I will never again go to him with such petty matters. We must settle out differences between ourselves.”
To punish them both. Loki stared at Thor. If he could speak, his answer would have been cutting and cold, “Forgive me, brother, but I believe my punishment was greater than yours.” But his stare reached his brother's eyes and saw the horror and the sorrow there, and he wondered whether that was true.
He would heal, and probably be back to his usual tricks in days. Thor would truly learn this lesson. It was just unfortunate that Loki had been the unwilling teacher.
He wished he could say something, but he dare not even twitch the muscles of his lower face. Instead, he reached out with both hands, and entwined them around one of Thor's. He looked him in the eye, and willed his brother to receive the message. He nodded.
He hoped that Thor understood.