MAKE HIM BEG YOU FOR MERCY

It would’ve been a lie to say the past few days were easy. They were not. Loki had been in and out of consciousness for the most part, his body struggling to keep itself alive as the minutes stretched into hours. Hours into days. Days into… no, Thanos would definitely not give him weeks. It was impossible to tell how fast or slow time was passing anymore, not without the Schedule.

Almost felt like once the painful, degrading structure was removed, things only got worse. The pain had no scale anymore. No beginning, no end, just a constant ache eating the god alive as his frail, starved body was forced to heal itself without proper care to help it along.

Of course, the drugs only made everything worse.

At first, Loki thought, he dared to have a faint shimmer of hope that the meds Thanos so generously “prescribed” for him were going to ease his pain…

Not only did they not do that, they caused the opposite effect.

One pill every 8 hours. When Loki wasn’t conscious, the guards woke him up, fed him the bitter capsule, forced him to choke it down with or without water, then left. It was not up to discussion whether he swallowed it or not. They left him no choice.

Most of the time was spent with Loki lying under the dripping faucet and letting the murky water drip into open his mouth. It wasn’t enough… it was never enough. By the time the pipe finally let go of a droplet, his body had already absorbed the previous one, and the god never got to feel the luxury of feeling not thirsty.

He had begged the guards for water more times than he would’ve liked.

Most of the times, his requests were ignored – nothing surprising there. But the few times a wish of his was granted, the water he got was disgusting, usually warm, and it tasted foul.

Yet, he gulped it down.

When Thanos eventually returned after gods-know-how-long, Loki was finally able to stay conscious for longer than a few minutes at a time. He could even sit up and walk around, his skin still feeling too tight as the burns were still in the healing stage, but he wasn’t confined to the floor anymore, at least.

Without the titan bleeding him out every morning, coupled with whatever cellular restoration effect the drug they gave him had, Loki was able to heal almost as fast as he used to. There were a few moments when he even started to feel better: his thoughts clearing, the dark, seemingly impenetrable fog of self-hatred and despair lifting as the pain dulled with the wounds closing… but then he’d get the drug again, dragging him back down into the void of his worst memories, spiking the pain to unbearable levels as his overworked body was forced into overdrive to heal itself.

It was the most confusing, disorienting experience Loki had ever felt.

Every day, he had nightmares; not just about Thanos, but he was undeniably the star of the show. What were worse than that, though, were the dreams that took a more abstract form, visualizing Loki’s trauma in the most mind-bending, metaphysically painful shapes.

The dreams kept looping, each time becoming more and more terrifying, and the god had no way to stop them. He couldn’t wake himself like he normally could.

There weren’t many dreams Loki couldn’t control; he’d learned that ability centuries ago. But these… these felt so deep, so visceral, that there was nothing that could be done about them. Nothing in them made sense; Loki couldn’t hold onto anything, he couldn’t even remember them properly, nor could he rationalize what was going on…

And that confusion, that transcendent, irrational fear of something, something he didn’t even understand, felt almost as terrifying as the titan’s eventual return.

Loki noticed the metal walls groaning faintly before he even heard the footsteps. His mind learned to pick up on the smallest details, connecting the dots subconsciously so he could prepare himself mentally for what was about to come. He was never prepared.

Thanos didn’t have a dramatic entrance like Loki had imagined over the days.

He simply walked through the door. Moved towards the god as if nothing had happened.

“You’ve been healing well, Asgardian,” he noted, eyes boring into the messy braid on Loki’s head as if his stare alone could untangle it. “I suppose you're ready to continue.”

For the past few minutes since he’d known that Thanos was coming, Loki was trying his very best to suppress the trembling, to steady himself, to make sure he wouldn’t give in; but the moment the threat, no, the certainty of pain was on the table, all those walls collapsed.

The shaking came first. Then the tears; finally, after days of extreme dehydration, he was able to cry again, and Loki absolutely hated how that felt like a relief. Then that one, barely audible, pathetic whimper as he tried to once again push everything back down. As if he hadn’t already shown all his cards to Thanos. As if he had anything to hide, any dignity left…

“I know you are frightened,” Thanos said, stopping his slow stride a few steps in front of Loki. “That will not change what’s going to happen.”

The god let another weak whine escape his lips, his fingers sinking into his own arms painfully as he was desperate to find something warm to hold onto. Even though his body temperature was fairly low, everything else in the room was made of cold, rigid metal.

He didn’t even realize that he broke his barely-healed skin open. Again.

“Get up. I have a surprise for you.”

The words knocked the air out of Loki’s lungs.

Thanos, of course, noticed – how could he not? The god practically froze, unable to move, breathe, or even blink after the word “surprise” left the titan’s mouth. He knew surprises were never a good thing; not anymore. Before he was captured, he reveled in unpredictability. He was chaos: he felt like he had control over it, since he was the one causing it. But since he’d experienced how it feels to be at the receiving end of it, he quickly realized how terrifying uncertainty could be.

“Not… just not the heat. Not again, please. I’ll take anything but the heat,” the words stumbled out before Loki could stop them. He hated himself for not keeping them to himself, but what did he have to lose? He’d begged enough already. Acting though now, after all that, wasn’t going to convince Thanos that he was worthy of respect.

For a second, he wondered why he even cared about what the titan [or anyone for that matter] thought anymore.

Respect didn’t make the pain go away.

“You still think you have a choice,” Thanos hummed, hand coming down to stroke Loki’s matted hair. Stray strands caught on meaty, calloused fingers as he dragged the black locks back, and the god bit down on his own tongue to choke back a scream. The hand kept moving; back and forth, over and over until Loki eventually started sobbing. “Tell me, little god. Do you think you have a choice?”

Loki didn’t answer. He knew he should've, but he couldn’t bring himself to; not until the titan repeated his question, this time while sinking those thick fingers into the mess of what’d become of the god’s once beautiful, silky hair.

“I… I'm a god. I should—I should have a choice,” he hissed through gritted teeth. A moment of defiance burning through his terror as he knew he had nothing to lose. Maybe if he upset the titan enough… maybe then he’d lose his cool, maybe then…

“Your optimism is admirable, Asgardian,” Thanos laughed softly. “But fine. I will give you a choice,” he continued. Let go of Loki’s hair, who shuddered from the painful, humiliating relief as he felt the follicles sink back into his oversensitive scalp. “The Thermo-Pod… or something new. Your choice.”

Loki hesitated for a second before answering. “I d-don’t need to answer to you. I'm… I'm not… not your—"

He couldn’t finish it. His body fell forward, and if it wasn’t for Thanos catching him, he would’ve landed on the floor. The titan held him like a misbehaving pet, one hand cradling him under his chest, the other planted flat on his back, fingers wrapping around his messy braid as if he was loosely holding a leash.

“You should choose your words more carefully,” he whispered, his voice raspy and ancient. The tenderness only made Loki more nauseous. “You might regret them later.”

The god began to shake violently as he realized the weight of what he’d just said. Deep down, he knew Thanos wasn’t going to kill him. Being difficult only ever put him in a worse situation, more pain, longer hours, more pain, more pain, more… he should've just kept his mouth shut, he should've—

“I'm going to ask you one last time, little god,” Thanos interrupted Loki’s frantic thoughts that threatened to drown him. “The heat, or something new?”

“N-not… not the heat, please…” Loki exhaled, the words barely audible. Yet, the titan understood him loud and clear.

“Now, was that so hard?” Thanos asked, pulling Loki up by his hair until his spine was straight again. The god screamed until he ran out of air. “All you had to do was ask nicely.”

After an impossibly long time, Thanos finally let go of Loki’s hair, now slicked by blood again as the freshly scabbed wounds at his scalp were torn open by the upwards drag. The titan stood up then. Made a gesture towards the door, one that the god saw but chose to ignore… which only caused the massive hand to hover over his head again. Only then did he move, scrambling to stand up before his captor had the chance to grab the braid again.

“Good. You’re learning.”

The praise burned worse than Loki’s overworked nerves as he forced his body to move. Even something as simple as putting one foot after the other was a demanding task for him… he tried to keep his balance, but with each step, the world tilted slightly, slipping from under him as he tried his best not to fall.

He made it to the door.

To the hallway.

Followed Thanos like an obedient little pet, and he hated himself for it.

48 steps until the first turn. Right. 93 until the next. Right again. A small ramp, which made the god gasp for air by the time they climbed it; 50 steps. Then a left turn. Nothing different from the regular path. Right, then left. He began losing count of his steps as it was taking a much bigger toll on his fraying mind to keep up with it while focusing on not giving in to his growing desire to lay down and not move again.

At the 6th junction, they took the wrong turn.

Loki automatically tried to turn left out of pure muscle memory, only for Thanos to tut and guide him to the right corridor. The lights were harsher here, the buzzing louder, and the god felt a cold, prickling sensation run down his back, starting from the back of his head.

Suddenly, the around sounds became weirdly muffled, as if his ears were full of cotton; his vision wobbled and he lost balance, but caught himself before hitting the floor. He was aware that if he fell, the titan would only drag him up by his hair, and he was trying to avoid that at any cost. He knew it was just a matter of time until he did it again anyway, but if he could delay it by even a minute, he would try.

187 steps.

The air felt even more stale here than other parts of the ship he’d been to so far. Cosmic dust covered some of the crates scattered around throughout the hallway, and Loki made an observation that this wasn’t an area that was visited frequently.

He wasn’t sure whether that made the situation better or worse.

After a few more turns [left, left, right, left], they arrived at a door identical to the one where the Thermo-Pod was.

The pneumatics hissed and the metal pulled up, revealing a brightly lit room that was vastly different from the others: in the middle, there was a surgical table, a huge, industrial lamp drenching it in a light so blinding it made Loki’s eyes hurt. The room itself was smaller than usual, which might’ve just been an illusion because it was so dense with medical equipment, monitors, thick bundles of cables leading gods-know-where, and seemingly well-used tools.

Run.

Run.

You can make it, just run.

Loki’s mind screamed at him, but his body was paralyzed with fear. Blown-out pupils scanned the room, focusing on the worst of it, his mind struggling to comprehend what most of the tools were even for. He didn’t want to know.

A large hand met his back, making him jump. His legs felt like jelly. Still, he took a step forward. The echo hit him differently: softer, smaller. Felt like the walls of the room swallowed the sounds of his presence. As he stepped over the threshold, he immediately realized that the tiles had a different texture, too. They were less slippery, slightly shiny, but scratched up by what seemed like excessive scrubbing. It wasn’t hard to figure out why the floors needed to be scrubbed.

“Go on,” Thanos said in an almost playful, encouraging tone. He gestured towards the centerpiece.

Run.

Loki tried to resist the instinct, he tried to, but as he felt the titan’s hand approach his back again, he ducked and used what little energy he had left in his body to bolt towards the door, still open, still open, there was still a chance—

The world went agonizingly still for a drawn-out second before white flooded his vision. The heavy hum of the lights dissolved into cold, viscous static, filling his brain to the point where he felt it dripping out of his eyes, his ears, his mouth, his nose… it was cold, so cold, and he felt the veins in his brain freeze up, the splitting tension wedging itself between his eyes as his world exploded into shards of  buzzing, disorienting pain.

It lasted forever.

His knees were bleeding against the floor by the time he’d gathered some sense of awareness. Blood trickled onto the white tiles, staining it, spreading between them and soaking into the filling… it reflected the light in such an unnatural way. Colors melted into each other, tiny, blinding sparkles bloomed over the reflections before disappearing.

.. .. nw h e er—

tto . …. .. … .    . .  .

r u

n   .   .. .. .

runn—run—rrrrrrrrun—

lllilliitt—

god

l ii tle… .   .. . .. …

nooo ooooooooooo oo n  oo n o   .       . ..     .  ..

ruun to ru  n

.. . …   . . g o ddddd

nowhere tttto run—

to run

to run  . . .. …   .      .

.  . .to run

little      god

nowhere... run... run...           no… little... god... .. . . ….    .. .

.. . …god... no… god...  . .. . .  .                          where... no… to…  run... little god... god...

The sound came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Drowned Loki in repetition, in infinitely mutated, diseased echoes as the words got stripped out of the soundwaves and ate themselves between thoughts. They morphed and distorted in a way that the god’s flickering mind couldn’t process, seeping into his psyche as he finally, finally understood what they meant.

Nowhere to run, little god.

Loki felt sick. His stomach heaved, but nothing came up, which was not surprising, given that it’s been over a week since he’d eaten anything. He was shaking, his core twisting into itself as the nausea reminded him how much he was starving.

Just another distraction from the pain, he thought, hoping to convince himself during the most desperate moments. [Unfortunately, his body was perfectly capable of experiencing both at the same time.]

His vision came and went a few times before he realized why his knees were bleeding. The stabbing, pulsating pain that was splitting his head in two started to make sense when Loki realized he had been held up by the titan this whole time. How did he even get himself into this situation?

He tried moving.

Tried again.

A few more attempts and he managed to breathe a little deeper than he had been for the past few… minutes? He wasn’t sure. The fresh air cleared up his thought a little, only for him to acknowledge the severity of the pain, and he finally gathered enough self-control to straighten his spine in an attempt to alleviate the pressure from his scalp. To his surprise, it actually worked.

“Are you done?” Thanos’ voice sunk into him like a dagger, twisting in his throat as he struggled to swallow a desperate cry. He couldn’t answer without the risk of screaming himself hoarse before whatever torture Thanos had planned even started.

Luckily, the titan didn’t press him for an answer this time.

A few failed attempts later Loki managed to push himself up, and after one last, longing glance towards the door, the last golden strand of hope evaporating as he saw it slowly closing, blocking his only exit route… he turned around to face the table again. His eyes burned from the strain to even look at the brightness, so he closed them; only peeked through his eyelashes, just enough for him not to fall over on his walk towards it.

When he reached his destination, Thanos hummed. An acknowledgment.

Cold was radiating from the metal slab, which was only covered with relatively thin, worn-down leather padding. The faint cracks in it were dark brown, and Loki didn’t need to think twice about what caused the discoloration. He felt sick just thinking about it.

Yet, he forced himself to climb on it, and despite his shaking, he managed to get on. Obedience. He hated himself. He hated himself so much more than he ever had, and that said something. He was disgusted by his own compliance.

But when the only other option was even worse pain, Loki knew he had to make the rational decision, not the one he wanted to.

Nowhere to run, little god.

He wasn’t sure whether he actually heard the words or they just resurfaced from the looping thoughts he was drowning in, but it was enough to snap him back to reality for a second. Thanos was standing in front of him now [when did he even walk there?], adjusting the padded restraints on the side of the table. Loki felt his heart in his throat, each frantic, fluttering pulse flashing his vision with white as the pain kept spiking every time fresh blood surged through his wrecked body. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think.

run.

run.

run.

RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN

RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN

RUN RUN RUN RUN RUN———

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Thanos didn’t need to walk inside the cell to see the state Loki was in. Splayed out under the dripping faucet, body limp and lifeless, breaths so short it almost looked like his lungs weren’t working anymore… his skin was covered in burns and blisters, blood oozing from them still, dripping down the drain under him. Even from the door, it was visible how much the god’s body was shaking, the constant pain clawing at him from inside and out.

“You're alive. Good,” the titan’s voice rumbled through the room. Loki flinched, the sudden jolt causing the air to catch in his throat. ”48 hours aren’t your limit, then.”

Loki never wanted to beg so much.

He couldn’t even remember how to speak, let alone figure out what to say.

“So quiet now. Was it too much?” the titan continued. Fear, existential, mind-bending fear gnawed at Loki’s empty stomach as he tried to suppress his cries. “I expect an answer when I ask a question, you should know that by now.”

But no answer came from the trembling, shivering god. His body was cold, now; yet he still felt the burn inside his bones. He was convinced that it’d never go away. Skin on fire, muscles aching and twitching from the heat exhaustion, wires in his hair pulsing in sync with his heartbeat.

Part of him wanted Thanos to punish him more. Maybe, maybe then he’d go just a little too far, just a little over what his body could take, and it’d all end. If only Thanos would lose control, if only he would push just a little bit more… maybe then… maybe, maybe then it’d finally end.

Loki wasn’t that lucky.

The titan walked through the door after waiting for an answer that hadn’t come for over a minute. It felt like hours. The echo of his looming footsteps narrowed as he dragged his massive form closer to the god curled up on the floor, and he crouched, then a terrifyingly large hand grabbed Loki’s shoulder and turned him on his back.

He would’ve screamed from the white-hot pain if he had that much left in him. Instead, he just shuddered, a weak whine spilling from his mouth with the blood he’s been choking on for the past few hours. He must've bitten through his tongue while he was slipping in and out of consciousness.

Maybe it happened during the heat; he couldn’t tell.

Not like it mattered.

“Do you need a break, little god?” Thanos asked finally, after examining Loki’s pale, dry face. His eyes were bloodshot, staring at a point far beyond the confines of his cell, with circles so dark under them they hurt. His nose was bleeding too, mixing with the blood from his scalp and his mouth, all running together into one thick river of red down the side of his face.

He was barely conscious. Barely breathing. His body struggled to keep him alive, yet it still did, against his innermost wishes. All he wanted was for the pain to stop. At this point, he had nothing to hold onto.

By now, he’d realized: even if he did get out, he wouldn’t be able to live a normal life anymore. Not after what just happened. Maybe it was just his brain being so severely overloaded with pain that it couldn’t function anymore… but he fully, truly believed he wouldn’t survive this. Even if physically, he could, his mind couldn’t take it.

The memories of the heat, the braid, the humiliation… how could he even look at himself and see anything but a worthless, disgusting failure? He let this happen to him. He did this. He wasn’t even worthy of his own respect, let alone anyone else’s.

And who else would respect him, anyway? His parents were dead, his brother most likely believed he was dead, and even if he didn’t, he hated him for what he did. He was Asgard’s and Midgard’s public enemy. He never even had a home in Jotunheim. Where could he go? Who could he turn to?

He had no one, nothing left. Absolutely no reason to even get out of here alive. There was simply no point.

It took him almost two months [at least based on his own, most likely inaccurate calculations] to realize this. All that time he’d been holding onto hope, thinking that if he just kept himself afloat a bit longer, he’d be able to escape… just down the drain. What a waste of time.

What a waste of a god.

No home. No one to even look for him. Not one person who ever truly, unconditionally cared about him. Never was, and there never would be. What was there to care about?

The massive hand shook his body, the movement surprisingly gentle yet so painful it made him sob. More blood spilled from his lips, some dripping back into his throat as he convulsed from the pain. The series of coughs that followed only sent his body in a fit of agonizing spasms, each instinctual gasp for air dragging shards of glass into his damaged, burnt lungs.

“Loki,” Thanos said quietly. The god flinched after hearing his name, something the titan had never ever called him by. He suddenly felt sick; the unnatural softness only made him feel smaller in comparison. He hated it. A tone that wasn’t cruel, wasn’t mocking, wasn’t dismissive. This… this was worse. Infinitely worse.

Thanos never called anyone by their name. Not like this. It simply wasn’t something that he did; and Loki had already figured out that whenever the titan steered away from his ways, something terrible followed. When he went against the Schedule, when he fed him after weeks of starvation, when he decided to clean his body by making the guards hose him down with neasr-boiling water as he was trying his best to curl up in the corner to protect what was left of his skin…

It was always a prelude to something even worse.

“I'm not going to hurt you now, little god. I want you alive, remember?”

His voice was a whisper, not different from one meant to soothe a dying animal, so it stopped thrashing. Loki knew. Why did it make him feel safe? His own reaction to the feigned kindness disgusted him more than anything Thanos had ever done to him.

“Please…” he whispered, but he didn’t even know what he was pleading for. Mercy? Rest? Death? None of these were options for him. He was painfully aware of his own situation.

“Shh. You disappoint me most when you beg,” Thanos murmured. A thick finger, almost thicker than his wrist, pressed at Loki’s cracked, bleeding lips.

Then the hand slid under his jaw, gripping the god’s head softly and turning his face up until the strained tendons in his neck screamed from the unnatural angle they were forced into. “Look at me. Eyes open,” the titan said, and Loki’s eyes burned with the promise of tears; but his body couldn’t deliver them because of the severity of his dehydration.

He was exhausted. So exhausted. He tried to focus, but his vision kept cutting out, reality stuttering as it was impossible for his nerves to process the scale of the damage that’d been done to his body and mind. Something had to give… and his brain decided seeing and hearing wasn’t as important as feeling the constant pain everywhere in his body.

When Loki kept failing to keep himself conscious enough for the titan to feel satisfied, Thanos grabbed the braid with his other hand, cupping the god’s head between two, impossibly large palms. Loki’s body jerked immediately. His back arched, and a thin strangled sound dragged itself from his throat.

It should've been a scream, if only his damaged vocal cords could handle that.

He felt his scalp tear again, fresh blood trickling down his neck. Drop after drop, adding to the growing puddle under him, slowly crawling into the holes in the metal floor tiles.

“There you are,” Thanos hummed after a low, drawn-out chuckle. A faint smile curled the corners his thin lips upward, which only made the broken god more nauseous. “Now tell me, do you need a break?”

It took all that Loki had in him to exhale the single syllable.

“… yes…”

He wanted to say no. He wanted Thanos to keep going, to push him over the edge, to finally kill him, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He knew death was so far out of reach that even wishing for it was merely a cruel lure of a dream he was never allowed to even think of.

Finally, finally, the titan let go of his hair.

“See? I'm merciful. That’s all you had to do to get a break. Wasn’t that hard, was it?”

Loki shook his head. The little movement hurt so bad.

A break.

A break.

That wasn’t what the god wanted, but it was better than nothing. Or was it? He wasn’t sure. Was it just dragging out his suffering even more? Possibly. But he was so tired. So exhausted. He couldn’t bring himself to care… not when the possibility of the pain stopping for even a short while was on the table.

“You will get your break. A few days for you to recover, then we continue,” the titan said so casually it could’ve been mistaken for small talk.

Loki’s chest tightened. Something that wasn’t hope, nor relief choked him. He could barely breathe, but it wasn’t entirely from fear, either. Not this time. Just confusion. A cold, crawling dread, mixed with a sickening sense of reassurance.

Thanos never gave him a break before.

What was different? Why? Why now?

Did Loki finally hit a point where even the titan knew he was at the brink of death? Was he really… that close to escape?

“Why—” Loki breathed, but the word crumbled halfway out. He didn’t even know what he wanted to ask, or why he even opened his mouth in the first place. There was nothing that could make him understand, nothing that could soothe the boiling anxiety in his core.

Thanos didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, he leaned so close to the god that he could see the reflection of his own ruined, pathetic face in the titan’s golden armor plates. The red, swollen burns all over his skin. His hair matted with blood, the wires, those metallic parasites burrowing themselves into the mass of black knots. His eyes, so red and lifeless he barely recognized them as his own…

“Your body is failing too quickly” Thanos answered after a while. “A little pathetic for a god, don’t you think?”

“No— don’t— I c-can't—” Loki started, but the titan interrupted him. He swallowed his own blood to prevent another coughing fit.

“You cannot die yet,” Thanos continued, as if the god hadn’t spoken. “You will rest. You will recover enough to continue.”

He reached for Loki’s head again, slowly cradling the side of his face in one giant hand. His thumb pressed under his jaw. Forced his mouth open. Loki’s breath hitched so violently it hurt, and he tried to turn away… but it was too late. He knew resistance would only put him in a worse position than where he already was.

Thanos was holding a small pill in his other hand, insignificant compared to his size. The god didn’t have time to figure out what it could’ve been; not that it mattered, really. Choice was a luxury he no longer had.

So he let the titan slide the pill in his dry, bloody mouth. His stomach heaved from the bitter taste as the external coating dissolved on his tongue, and he tried to spit it out instinctively, but Thanos was quick to cover his mouth, preventing the god from getting rid of whatever drug he was being made to ingest.

“Uh-uh. Swallow,” Thanos ordered. It was not a suggestion.

Loki didn’t want to; he felt his stomach turn, his body revolting from not only the chemical taste but also the helplessness… but he knew he didn’t have a way out. Not this time; not ever.

Despite his body fighting it with every urge it had left in it, he struggled to get the pill down, burning through his throat all the way with the same harsh, metallic sting. He gagged again, repulsed by his own submission, but only blood came up.

“There you go. Good boy,” Thanos praised him when he was sure the pill reached Loki’s stomach. “It will keep you alive. Help you heal. Stabilize. Balance your body again. You are going to take it three times a day during your break; my Children will make sure that happens. But I would be very, very disappointed if they had to step in. That won’t need to happen, right?”

Loki wanted to scream.

“… no,” he whispered instead. He didn’t recognize his own voice.

“Good. Now rest,” the titan said, followed by a long, satisfied exhale as if he’d just finished a fulfilling task. “You will feel better by the time I return.”

The room echoed with the phantom sounds of his footsteps long after he’d left the cell.

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Loki couldn’t remember how he got back to his cell. After 34 hours, his mind blacked out completely, but he was sure Thanos didn’t immediately remove him from the heat. He wasn’t one to leave any job unfinished. The tension in his joints and worsening tears at his scalp both confirmed that he’d been hanging by his hair for the last 14 hours.

He couldn’t remember anything past the timer hitting 14:06:11; the number burned into his memory for some reason that was beyond his current ability to understand. It was too painful to think about how those last hours must’ve looked like… or if Thanos even gave him water during that time. If he didn’t, Loki would’ve died, he was sure of it. But the thought of the titan feeding him water while he was unconscious made him feel violated and repulsed on a level he never thought was possible. He had no idea if he was even able to respond, and if yes, how he acted. The vulnerability made him sick to his stomach.

Everything hurt.

By now, Loki got used to the heat, but it was never this bad. He didn’t even know how he survived it, or better yet, if he did. He wasn’t sure if he was still alive… but the constant pain circulating his body reminded him that unless he was stuck in the worst of Hel, he was still, [unfortunately], very much alive.

There weren’t many things in his cell; he had a pathetic excuse of a bed in the corner [just a slab of cold metal with a thin, decaying rag thrown over it, soaked in the god’s blood. He hated that thing. What a pitiful sentiment, as if giving him something to wipe the fluids of his body was an act of “care”.

He knew it wasn’t.

There was also a dripping faucet in the corner [more like a broken pipe that he could lay under]; and let the rotten, contaminated water drip into his mouth. It tasted like chemicals. Disgusting, but what else did he have? Loki was sure it was slowly poisoning him, that must've been the reason why his mind was becoming more and more foggy each day… he refused to believe that the unrelenting, methodical torture alone could do that to someone like him.

It took him a few minutes until he gathered enough willpower to drag himself to the pipe. Every movement hurt, even breathing, his skin blistering and coming off in chunks all over his body, but the drought he was feeling made everything else dull into a secondary concern.

When the drops of water hit his skin, he nearly started crying. Was it relief? Pain? Despair? The realization that he was going to die here, that it was inevitable, but it would take so, so long…?

Loki wasn’t sure. He didn’t care. It’s not like he had any tears left to cry.

\\

For hours, he stayed under the steady drip. It was way more challenging than he initially thought to keep his mouth open, but he did, and after a while, he felt the water finally starting to absorb into his body, only bringing him back to consciousness more, making all the pain fire up again. It only kept getting worse, but his instincts didn’t let him pull away, no matter how loud his mind was screaming at him to do so.

Loki wanted it to stop. He wanted the pain to stop, but he couldn’t, he just couldn’t give up. It was simply not in his nature. He hated himself for it. He hated everything he did that brought him to this point, the lies, the betrayals, his desperate need for power, his desire to be seen… if only he could’ve just stayed invisible.

He would’ve given anything to be a nobody at this point. He wished he’d never even tried to be somebody. A god, a king, a conqueror… those titles meant nothing. All that those selfish, ego-driven desires brought him was pain.

And he just wanted the pain to stop.

What was it worth being a god if he suffered just the same? His power, his magic, his intelligence… they meant absolutely nothing when he was faced with pure, undiluted force. Thanos knew this. He knew Loki wasn’t unbreakable, no matter how much he tried to convince himself of the opposite. This wasn’t their first encounter; the titan knew exactly what to do to get the results he wanted.

The only difference was that the first time, Thanos needed him functional. He wanted Loki to be compliant, to follow his commands, and he didn’t shy away from doing what needed to be done to get him there. No, Thanos was not like that.

This time, however… there was no reason to keep the god useful. He had served his purpose. Well, he had failed, but that only made his situation worse. At the end of the day, Thanos did not truly care whether Loki lived or died – although the titan preferred if he lived, he had no further plans with him. If the god expired, it would not be mourned. Thanos would just move on with his next mission.

Loki knew this. He knew the second he was captured that it was the end; he hoped for a fast and relatively painless death, but that wish wasn’t granted. Not even when he tried attacking the titan in a last-ditch attempt to upset him enough, so he’s killed on the spot. It almost worked; Thanos almost choked him to death, but he changed his mind in the last second.

Killing him would’ve been a mercy.

They both knew.

It didn’t matter, though. He was still alive, and he knew it wouldn’t end any time soon. He knew Thanos wasn’t one to get bored. And after failing him so miserably, Loki knew the titan wasn’t going to let him die easily. He was merely making good on his promise he’d made before he sent the god to Earth to retrieve the Tesseract for him – that he would make him long for something as sweet as pain.

And as much as Loki hated to admit, he was right. This wasn’t just pain anymore. What he was feeling was systematic, existential disintegration of everything he’d ever been. He was tortured before, and this wasn’t torture. It wasn’t interrogation, or intimidation, or even coercion. It had no meaning. No goal. It was purely punishment, no, it was damnation… it was the price he had to pay for who he was.

A god.

A god?

No.

A selfish, manipulative, deceitful, arrogant, greedy, self-righteous liar, a murderer, a villain, a parasite, a monster… a fraud, a joke, a coward, a mistake, a burden, a disgrace, an unworthy, weak-willed, pathetic failure.

The spare son, a wretched runt, child of no one; left to die, unwanted by his own kind, then used as a pawn while being promised a throne he never had a right to. He had always been replaceable, just a necessary annoyance people had to put up with. The adopted, pitiable little frost giant that was “given a second chance” by the merciful Odin, the one who tried to eradicate his race… only to realize that the life he thought he had was all a lie. An elaborate, arranged lie.

He should’ve died in Jotunheim.

Was he ever worth anything? Did anyone ever truly care?

He knew the answer.

There was a good reason why he was betrayed by everyone he ever loved… why no one believed him, why no one listened to him, why no one took him seriously. He could never be trusted. How could anyone trust the God of Lies?

No, no.

The God of Nothing.

That’s what he was.

Thanos was right.

He knew, deep down, that he was not a god, he was barely even a person, just a shadow of a pathetic, childish dream of who he could’ve been. A promise that was never meant for him. A web of lies so dense that he was able to build his entire life on it, only for it to collapse in on itself when the threads were inevitably untangled.

Who else was there to blame but himself?

He should've been more perceptive. He should've known. No one really cared, never, he wasn’t worthy, he wasn’t, he truly, without a sliver of doubt wasn’t worthy of anything but his own, predestined, self-inflicted demise. His glorious purpose.

All he caused was pain and destruction everywhere he went.

It was only fair it caught up to him at last.

\\

Loki woke up to his mother’s fingers in his hair. He didn’t even realize he fell asleep… but after what he’d endured, it wasn’t a surprise that his body gave out without his consent. The loss of control was terrifying… the thought that he couldn’t even choose when he was conscious or not made him feel sick.

But her fingers were so soothing. He felt a lump in his throat, a sob that was so desperately trying to tear free, but he choked it down.

He didn’t want Mother to see him cry.

When he closed his eyes, he could feel the soft breeze of the evening air blowing through the open window. A broken, fluttering vent on the wall, circulating used up, stale air. But no, no, it was Asgard’s clean, crisp air. He could smell the rain. He knew it was coming. He could always tell, and he used to think it was because his brother was the God of Thunder… but he was simply observant.

Frigga’s fingers combed through his hair in slow, soft strokes, the thin digits digging into the mass of black silk. Strands looped around her fingers as she idly played with it. Her voice was smooth as she hummed something Loki knew he should've recognized, but he was too focused on her hands.

Ten fingers tangled in his hair.

They pulled, just a little bit, but it wasn’t bad. It was part of it. Every night before he slept, his mother had to sit by his bed and tell him a story, Loki remembered. It was such a long time ago, he was merely a child. He didn’t remember the stories anymore, but her hands… he remembered those.

She used to love his hair, treating it as if it was something exotic, always making sure to keep it soft and beautiful. She took pride in making Loki look like the pretty prince he was. Sometimes, Loki even let her wash his hair. That was one of her favorite things to do, besides braiding it.

And now her fingers were sliding through the same hair again. Unhurried, deliberate, gentle. Loki wanted to cry, he wanted to tell her how sorry he was for telling her to stop that one time, he wanted to take it all back and just cling to her, grab her wrist and keep her hands there, keep her soothing fingers running through what was once his pride…

But the more he tried, the deeper those slender, caring fingers sunk. His hair twisted around them, caught on her nails and pulled.

no no no no no not yet please…

Loki felt Mother’s thumb dig into his scalp on the side. A dagger. The finger grew, stretched into a thin tendril, wrapped around his head and squeezed, and Loki swallowed against the heat in his throat that threatened to spill out in the form of a desperate cry.

Mother, please stop, please, it hurts…

She didn’t.

Her nails scraped deeper, stabbing into his delicate skin, and Loki tried to reach up, to stop her, but he couldn’t move.

Frigga had long stopped humming. All the god could hear now was the ever-present, pulsating harmony of the pumps working restlessly behind the walls, keeping his prison alive. He felt the air on his face. Decay. Rot. A kind of sick wind filling his lungs as he gasped, unable to stop the once-loving fingers from burrowing into his very thoughts.

Ten fingers turned into wires, splitting at the ends to coil around the strands of Loki’s hair, around and around and around until they nearly suffocated it, yet they held it together, constrained it into the disgusting leash it had become.

The warmth Loki felt was not motherly love.

It was his own blood seeping from the split, exhausted skin. His hair, his beauty, his pride ripped away from him and twisted into nothing but humiliation and pain, so much pain he couldn’t even think. He hated himself.

He let this happen.

He caused this to happen.

If only he didn’t… if only… it didn’t matter. His thoughts trailed off every time he tried to convince himself that there was a timeline where this wasn’t his reality. It was. There was nothing to be done. Nothing he could do to stop it.

And when he felt himself sink into the haze again, when he felt the heavy, sticky film of senselessness coat the inside of his brain, his consciousness slipping in and out of focus as he struggled to keep his sobs at bay…

Mother’s fingers returned to his hair. Soft. Warm. Slow. They rubbed small circles into his scalp, soothing the god as his body shook with incoherent sobs that were too raw, too instinctual for him to control, no matter how much they hurt his wrecked body. No matter how much he hated himself for being such a weak, pathetic, undignified excuse of a “god”.

The humming frequencies of the ship melted into her voice, low and smooth, lulling Loki into a feverish dream again and again until he was yanked back to reality by yet another surge of bone-deep agony.

He curled up in his mother’s lap to escape the constant pain as she sorted through his hair with tender fingers.

His blood dripped through the holes in the metal floor.

The rain was coming. He could smell it. He could feel the air… he could… he could…

The thick, metal door opened with the all-too-familiar creak before Loki was able to convince himself that it was real.

\\

[ << PREV ] [ NEXT >> ]

Time ceased to exist in the Thermo-Pod. It was as if the heat evaporated the seconds themselves. Loki’s brain couldn’t comprehend how something as simple as temperature could alter the fundamental laws of the universe. 8 hours, which was practically nothing for a god who had lived through a millennia, already felt like an eternity…

He didn’t even want to think about how two days of this hell would feel.

“Luckily” for him, he didn’t need to think [not like he was able to at this point]; it was already happening. He felt his own blood from the braid run down his back, thinned out by the beads of sweat as it merged with them on its descent. Then it collected on the floor, under him, adding to the stains. They had been growing since the day he was captured.

The soft hum of the heating wires flooded his brain until it became deafening. Every so often, a switch went off; a sharp, echoing sound. It was the heat turning on or off, a mechanism in place to keep the Thermo-Pod at a stable temperature. Loki was trying to count the seconds until the wires would switch off again, only to start panicking when the intervals stretched longer and longer between each OFF cycle. He wasn’t sure if it was his sense of time deteriorating, or if Thanos wanted to raise the temperature even higher.

He wasn’t sure which was worse.

\\

Hours must've passed. Loki hoped it wasn’t just minutes, he hoped he wasn’t so far gone already… but he knew it was getting worse. He felt it. His brain shut off from time to time, vision turning black for longer and longer, then fluttering back on with a loud, high-pitched sound in one of his ears. Everything sounded muffled, as if he was submerged in water… oh, how much he wished for water right now…

His bones felt like they were boiling from the inside. Sometimes deep, sharp stabs of pain shot through them, his marrow vibrating from the violation of the heat. Every spasm, every tremble echoed infinitely… until his nerves got burnt out for a second, only for them to reactivate when he inevitably inhaled another lungful of scorching air.

The pull was unbearable.

Thin wires, now fully heated up, sawed deeper into his scalp with each quiver, and his hair stretched so thin that it was a miracle that most of it was still attached to his head. It didn’t hurt any less, though. Sure, his body was far more resilient than that of a human’s, but he felt pain just the same, only without a ceiling to cap it off. Where most people would’ve blacked out, he was still conscious, painfully aware of everything that was happening to him. His biology didn’t allow him the mercy of unconsciousness that easily.

Loki gagged at the smell of burnt hair, and something sweet, metallic. His blood. He should've gotten used to it by now, but his reaction to it only ever got worse over time.

The switched clicked again, fresh heat wrapping around the kneeling, shaking god, and he let out a weak whimper as he felt the sharp, hot air bite into his lungs once again. His body jerked. He didn’t mean to. He couldn’t stop it, though, not when it happened again and again, his hair pulling at the hook it was secured to with each sudden jolt.

His legs felt weak, muscles wobbly and unsure as the heat engulfed him again. He was barely sweating anymore, his body already having burnt off the little hydration Thanos had allowed. This usually happened around the middle of the sessions, Loki reminded himself. When he felt his skin dry out painfully, he knew he was halfway through.

That usually meant 4 hours, give or take 30 minutes.

Four hours in, Loki repeated to himself like a broken mantra, holding onto the thought of getting through the first half. Only the same amount left. Only four more hours. I'm halfway there. Four more hours.

44:48:32

Loki didn’t see the display. His fractured mind couldn’t remember what he saw prior to entering the glass cage… it blocked it out because of sheer terror, or it simply dissolved with all the other, irrelevant things that the god once knew. When his body was in this much agony, nothing mattered. All that knowledge in his sharp, sophisticated brain was useless when he couldn’t even tell if he heard or tasted his screams.

There was movement outside, Thanos leaving the room and entering again. He usually just left and didn’t return until the end of the sessions; this was new. Loki didn’t like that. He got used to the predictability of the Schedule, and any deviation from it put him on edge. He knew that was when things were going to get truly bad, and he’d learned to fear any change in the routine… no matter how dehumanizing and humiliating, it was the only structure he could hold onto.

And his mind was desperately scrambling for any safety.

“Finally kneeling. How godlike,” Thanos murmured as he passed the glass cylinder. He chuckled under his breath, almost quiet enough for Loki not to hear; but even in his wrecked state, his senses were hyper-aware. “Remind me again, what exactly are you the god of?”

Loki didn’t answer. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t. It would’ve only made the burning in his mouth and lungs worse, and he was trying to focus on his breathing, to inhale as slowly as he could. Of course, he wasn’t succeeding… but the last thing he needed was Thanos poking at him on top of the battle of keeping himself upright.

“I asked a question, little god. I expect an answer,” the titan continued.

His fingers reached out towards the pod, hovering over the control panel, doing gods know what. Loki bit back a scream as his legs gave out for a second, after a shooting pain tore through his spine. He felt the joints burn from the sudden jolt.

The hot wires in the braid were burning his nerves directly, and his body was starting to malfunction. He could barely control his breathing, let alone his heartbeat, weak and fluttering as he struggled to position himself so at least the sharp metal edges weren’t burrowing themselves further into his head. There was no position that felt comfortable. He had tried everything. No matter what, it hurt worse with each second passing, and he was rushing towards the moment when his muscles would give out.

“I’m going to add one extra hour for your disobedience.”

The words echoed in Loki’s head, and he forced out a weak whine, struggling against his restraints as if that did anything but dig into his already bleeding skin more. He inhaled, breath shaky as the scalding air gnawed at his split, parched tissues. The words bubbled up from his chest between sharp gasps and choked cries.

“P-please… wait… I— I'm a… I'm not— not a god. Okay? I'm not. Please, just—” his voice cut off from a fresh wave of pain. He hated himself. Never felt so low. Begging, how pathetic. How ungodly.

But Loki knew it was his only chance. He told himself that he was the God of Lies, and this was merely a lie, not an admission. No, he was still a god, he was only lying to Thanos this to spare himself. He needed to keep himself from deteriorating any further. This was the last thing he could onto, desperately clawing at this false sense of safety, that if only he could cling to his sanity long enough, he would be able to escape.

What he didn’t take into account was that Thanos did not care whether he was sane or not. His control over Loki was absolute, unyielding, not something that could be challenged with something as trivial as intelligence or resilience. No matter how long the god held out, it wouldn’t matter.

Where would he even go? How would he even get off a ship that was the size of a smaller moon, one of which he only knew less than 1% of? He wouldn’t even know where to go, how to get around the security, he wouldn’t even be able to walk that far on his own… and even if he did get off, even if he somehow found an escape pod or a smaller cruiser, managed to get inside and turn it on and somehow take off without tripping off the alarms…

… he would still get caught and taken back before he could make it anywhere safe.

And even if… even if he got away…

Where would he go to?

He didn’t have a home in Asgard anymore. He wasn’t welcome in most places thanks to the lifestyle he’d been living for the past centuries. He didn’t want to be on the run forever. Eventually, he would slip up and get caught, ending up right here, again, but with Thanos having yet another reason to torture him.

It wasn’t up to his sanity whether he’d make it out or not. Any plan he could come up with would be fundamentally faulty against the unmovable force that was Thanos. It didn’t matter how smart he was, how thorough, calculating, perceptive… there was nothing he could do against absolute, inevitable control.

“Not a god, you say?” Thanos hummed, repeating Loki’s earlier words. He tilted his head to the side slightly as he crouched in front of the god, their heads finally on the same level. “Look at me when I'm talking to you, Asgardian.”

Despite his body screaming at him not to, Loki looked up. Pride wasn’t something he could afford to hold onto right now, not when it hurt this much.

“That’s better. I ask you again: what are you the god of?”

The titan wasn’t curious about an answer that he already knew. All he wanted was to degrade Loki even further, and judging by the god’s expression and continued refusal to respond, he was succeeding. “You should be more careful about defying me, trickster. I assume you don’t want me to add yet another hour to your timer.”

Loki’s stomach dropped in anxiety as his hazy brain processed the words. Another hour? Did he already add one? He was confused. He didn’t remember. Did he do something wrong? When did he resist?

“I'm… I'm the god—” his voice broke, bile rising in his throat as he felt the humiliation gnaw at him from the inside. His brain felt cold, frozen in time as the same thoughts kept looping until the click of the switch snapped him out of it again. “I'm the… the god of mischief—”

“And what good does that do for you now, hm?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. What could he even say? Did Thanos just want him to dig himself even deeper into a hole? He was a god. He knew he was. That was what he’d always been. No one was going to take that away from him.

“Answer me,” Thanos ordered, making the weak god’s body twitch as a series of deep, guttural sobs racked through him. He didn’t have a choice but to obey, and he hated it, hated every second, hated Thanos… but most of all, hated himself for folding like a wet tissue.

Yet, he said the word he knew the titan wanted to hear.

“N-nothing…”

“That’s right. You believe so desperately that you're a god,” the titan said, his voice almost paternal, as if he was teaching his son a valuable lesson. He took a few seconds to take in Loki’s trembling, kneeling body before he continued. “Yet you scream, just like a mortal. Pathetic, don’t you think?”

The god nodded without even thinking about it. He didn’t care anymore He just wanted Thanos to stop talking.

“It suits you,” he continued. Hummed once. “The God of Nothing.”

Loki didn’t have it in him to deny it.

\\

Some time had passed; hours, minutes, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t going by fast enough, and that was all that Loki could think about. He felt his body starting to shut down. He wasn’t sweating at all anymore, skin dry and cracked in the unforgiving heat vibrating around him. The uneven chemical burns that the acid drip left on his back broke open as the scalding air ate at his living tissues.

Every shudder, every breath, every heartbeat was pure agony. His blood felt like it was boiling, pulsing against his flaking skin, the little shift of damaged tissues cutting into him from the inside every time his heart pumped more of the hot liquid through him, making his exhausted veins scream.

Loki was trying to count. He didn’t know what he was counting anymore, he didn’t care, he just needed something to focus on. Over the weeks, he’d learnt that it helped. It was predictable. Finite. Once he was done counting one thing, he could move onto another and keep repeating it. Helped him pass time a bit faster and kept his brain active, stopped him from losing himself in senseless pain; or at least he was telling himself that.

By now, he had run out of things to count.

219 blinking lights on the wall panel. 3470 tiles in the room, 53 of them missing. 15 long light tubes, each buzzing at a slightly different frequency. 84 crates; 66 small, 12 medium and 8 large – at least the ones he could see. A dripping pipe in the corner, water hitting metal in an even, painfully repetitive rhythm. The clicking of the switch every few minutes, turning the heat on and off. On average, it went off around 900-950 times during a session, which meant that one interval was around 3 minutes [it took Loki way longer to do that calculation than he would’ve liked it].

Then his heartbeat. The soft splashes of his own sweat and blood on the floor. The cracking of the heat wires as they expanded when they lit up again… less consistent, but still countable sounds. The guards’ footsteps. Metallic creaks of the ship. Pipes hissing. He knew all the noises by now.

Loki began to memorize each number, which meant that the counting had lost its grounding effect. But now… now that he couldn’t even think, his fractured mind defaulted to counting the shiny tiles on the wall. One after another. 10 horizontally, 10 vertically, clusters of them separated only by a slight texture change. Repetition in the repetition. Made the counting easier.

His vision blurred as the heat surged in again after another soft click of the switch. He lost count, but started again, trying his best to actually focus, but the numbers kept slipping away.

There was barely any oxygen left inside the glass cage. Loki felt like he was inhaling his own recycled breaths, each time feeling like it was not enough. He was certain that if this continued, he would suffocate. He wanted to.

Unfortunately, he still remembered the oxygen deprivation tests that SHIELD did on him. A whole day without oxygen didn’t kill him. Barely, but he still survived.

Loki didn’t remember when he fell on the floor. He wasn’t kneeling anymore; he simply couldn’t. His muscles were aching too much. He couldn’t hold his weight without constantly losing balance and tearing at the braid over and over again. It was easier to sit down, just like always, forehead resting on his pulled-up knees, despite his hair pulling relentlessly now; a searing, mind-splitting blade driven through his head.

Something was happening outside, but the god was too out of it to look up. Only when Thanos knocked on the glass again did he raise his head, his vision swimming and unfocused.

He saw a red glow in front of him, and it took him a few seconds to make out what he was looking at. The display. Thanos had moved it, positioning it in a way so Loki could see it. A cruel, mocking gesture, but at least there wasn’t that much time left, Loki thought. It couldn’t have been, there were more than 800 clicks from the switch, he tried to soothe himself. It wasn’t working. Not this time.

Loki knew something was wrong.

Before his eyes could even focus on the numbers, he’d already felt that something wasn’t right. But when the picture cleared up and he saw the numbers, the last digit slowly counting down… a wave of visceral, existential dread flooded his entire body.

40:12:39

He felt his heart skip a few beats as he struggled to process that number. The god remembered now, a frail, flickering strand of memory he tried so hard to wipe from his mind, a promise of two days of hell. His brain couldn’t even begin to comprehend it.

Loki had been in the heat forever by now. 8 hours, a standard session, which alone felt like a neverending punishment, only to realize it wasn’t even halfway done, no, not even one quarter of the way done…

All the water was gone from his body, he felt like his blood was barely circulating as it thickened from severe dehydration. Each heartbeat forced a sluggish pulse. Loki felt nauseous from the feeling. His own body’s desperate, instinctual functions made him want to claw his own skin off just to make it stop.

A scream formed in his lungs, but never made it out his mouth as his bleeding throat was too brittle to handle it. For the first time since he was put inside the glass cage, Loki started pulling on his restraints in a hopeless, feral attempt to get out. He knew that it wouldn’t work, that it never worked, that it’d only hurt more, but the animal in him didn’t care about reason.

It hurt so bad.

The timer ticked.

Slow, so slow Loki started to question if Thanos had manipulated the length of each second. It didn’t feel right, how dragged out they were, but the god didn’t have the energy to think about it more.

“Alright, little god,” Thanos said right when the timer hit 40:00:00. “You need to hydrate.”

He opened the door, the fresh, cool air surging in, allowing Loki to finally, finally breathe again. He would’ve cried from relief if he wasn’t already sobbing from the pain of inhaling. Instinctively, he turned towards the door, barely even registering how much his hair was pulling. He was barely aware of what was going on.

Thanos placed a glass on Loki’s cracked, bleeding lips and tilted it. He started gulping down the water immediately. The raw burn in his throat dulled to background noise compared to the coolness as the liquid seeped into his damaged tissues.

It tasted off; way too metallic, almost acidic… but he couldn’t bring himself to care. There was nothing in his brain at this moment.

“Slowly. You’ll make yourself sick if you rush,” the titan spoke softly, but Loki didn’t hear him. Half of the water splashed on the floor as he was struggling to swallow the liquid; the mere concept of it felt alien, foreign to the god’s worn-down mind.

“M-more…” he rasped out, eyes locked onto the orange glow oozing from the coils under him.

“Next time, you will be more careful about wasting it,” Thanos murmured, then patted the god’s bloody hair. A scream ripped from him, raw and violent, only making his body tense up more. “The second cycle will be harder.”

Loki screamed again. His vision went white as a wet chunk of hair ripped from his scalp from the sudden convulsion of his body. He slumped forward, only held up by the unyielding hook through that bloody leash of a braid until he became lucid again, scrambling to relieve the pressure form his hair.

“Good boy,” Thanos hummed. “Hold your head up, just like that.”

“P-please… please, more water, please—" the god started, but Thanos pushed a thick, hardened finger to his lips to silence him.

“No.”

The word hung in the air for an impossibly long moment before Loki remembered to breathe again. He was already feeling parched, a few seconds after that humiliating “mercy”… and the thought of enduring more made him dizzy.

“You’ll get another ration in eight hours. You will be fine,” Thanos said. A few strokes on the god’s hair, and the titan finally removed his hand, then left the pod.

The door hissed, then closed again.

\\

[ << PREV ] [ NEXT >> ]

Loki shuddered as his body remembered. He wanted to scream, he wanted to attack the titan, he wanted to use his magic to trick him, to save himself some time, to get away… but he had tried it all already. He knew there was no way out. Defying Thanos only led to more pain, and he could already barely handle it as it was.

The only thing he was truly terrified of was the pain getting so bad that it’d start affecting his mind; and for the first time in weeks, he felt like he was way too close to that point. He couldn’t afford to provoke the titan right now, not when he could barely even think from the wires worming themselves into his brain, between his thoughts. It felt like they were alive, shifting with each quiver of his body, each breath, each heartbeat… Loki knew if this continued, he would soon lose grip on reality.

And he was certain it wasn’t going to stop anytime soon.

That filled him with dread he didn’t think he was capable of experiencing.

“What are you waiting for, little god?”

Thanos’ voice snapped Loki out of his thoughts, and he tried taking a step towards the glowing tube. His legs were shaking. The world tilted. It felt like the floor was sinking beneath him, shifting right as he tried to balance himself. One leg after the other. He could do this, he told himself again and again, until he was finally, finally standing in front of the tube.

He almost threw up from the panic as the heat slammed into him when the door hissed open. A wall of fire. Loki could’ve sworn it felt hotter than before, but he knew he always had the same thought.

There was a small display next to the door: it showed the temperature, the time remaining, and Loki’s vitals while he was inside. As a reflex, he always looked at it, compulsively checking all the numbers, hoping for the slightest drop in temperature, a shorter timer, anything… but it was always the same:

100°C

8:00:00

Once he was inside, he couldn’t see the screen anymore. Was it just another layer of cruelty, or a mercy in its own, twisted way? Maybe seeing the timer tick down slowly, so slowly would be worse than not knowing how much is left. Maybe it would anchor him. Maybe, maybe…

It didn’t matter. There was nothing he could do to change it, anyways. Might as well just accept it as it is.

Loki’s vision swam as he began to walk towards the door. The fresh heat was burning his dry, blistered skin anew, and he tried holding his breath, again, just like he did every time. A futile, pathetic attempt, but at least it would win him a few more moments before the scalding air inevitably tore up his lungs. He knew it was coming… was it so bad that he wanted to delay it?

But something was different.

His eyes locked onto the small display, the glowing red timer fuzzy from the heat, and for a second, he let out a sharp, almost relieved exhale. The first number… it wasn’t 8. Was it? Loki blinked a few times, the small movement sending ripples of pain through his head.

4:00:00

Four? No, it didn’t seem right. It couldn’t be. Why would Thanos cut it in half, that’s not like him… why would—

He blinked again.

48:00:00

“No… no no no— that— that’s… that’s not… not right, that’s— wait— no, that can't— you can't— that’s not—”

Loki couldn’t breathe.

His legs gave out again, and he crumpled on the floor, bloody hands covering his face as he refused to look at the timer. If he didn’t look, it wasn’t real, right? It could just disappear, right? That 4 could just be a mistake, it wasn’t really there, right? Thanos couldn’t… he couldn’t possibly be serious, no, he wouldn’t actually—

The number didn’t change when he forced himself to look at it again. It wobbled faintly from the heat, but it was there, it was there, a 4 right in front of the 8. It didn’t change. It wouldn’t change.

Everything stood still for a second. Loki’s entire existence narrowed down to the 4 red, glowing lines of that number [three vertical, one horizontal, pulsing faintly from the uneven energy source of the ship]. There was nothing, nothing else that mattered, only those small, flickering strokes on the screen. The world was going dark, everything blurring around that one number, yet he couldn’t look away.

Despite the heat, his body was covered in cold sweat, heart pounding so loud it drowned out every sound. His stomach felt like it had already sunk through the floor as the terror gnawed at him from the inside, but then Thanos reached down to grab his hair again.

He had never panicked so much in his entire life.

“W-wait, wait, please just wait—” Loki started, but the titan’s grip in his hair turned his words into a painful cry of pain. “If you— if you do this, I will— I… I know— I know I won't survive— you… you don’t— you don’t want that, r-right? You want— you want me alive. I know you don’t want—"

“Quiet, Loki. You’re a god, remember? You’ve said it yourself. And gods don’t die. Hm?” Thanos said, his voice unwavering as he spoke. “Now get inside. You’re going to live.”

“No, you… you don’t understand, you don’t— the heat— I can't, my body— it can't, I will—” Loki started to get more frantic as it dawned on him that no matter what he said, Thanos would not reconsider. He had made up his mind before the day even started.

“Shh, little god. Stop being difficult and get inside. You don’t want it to be any more painful than it has to be, I assume,” the titan murmured, the low rumble that was his voice making the god shudder in horror. “Or resist and face the consequences.”

“No— you can't— you won't—”

Thanos’ fingers sunk deep into the braid. The pull was excruciating, an upwards drag until Loki’s legs were dangling a few inches above the ground, kicking helplessly as every single nerve in his body screamed in a language of pain his brain struggled to comprehend. It didn’t stop. Would it ever stop?

Loki couldn’t think.

“Very well,” Thanos said slowly, savoring both words as he held the helpless god in the air. “You will learn your place, little god. One way or another. Won't you?”

He didn’t expect an answer.

When he threw the trembling god inside the tube, he signaled to one of the two guards standing at the door, who stepped inside and secured the restraints to the worn latches on the floor. Loki’s chains were just short enough that he couldn’t stand, but there wasn’t enough space for him to lay down, either; not that he would ever even consider that, given that the worst of the heat was coming from the bottom of the tube.

However, instead of closing the door immediately, Thanos lingered there, watching the Asgardian struggle to find a position that wasn’t immediately painful. He couldn’t.

“Kneel,” the titan commanded, and Loki snarled at him, hot tears streaming down his face but his eyes full of rage. And pain. So, so much pain. “Last chance, trickster.”

“I… I will… I will never kneel. Not for you,” Loki spat the words at Thanos in a last-ditch effort to hold onto what pathetic scraps he had left of his pride. “A god— a god doesn’t kneel.”

Thanos laughed.

This time, it was louder, almost gleeful. He reached into the tube and grabbed the length of the braid, and pulled it up, up, up… until the god was forced on his knees, struggling to keep up with the unrelenting vertical drag. There came a point where he couldn’t straighten himself anymore as the chains kept his wrists and ankles locked to the floor, and that’s when Thanos finally stopped.

He yanked on the wet rope of hair, tearing a scream from the god – now reduced to a shaking, convulsing mess on his knees. Sweat and blood poured down his back as the heat was eating itself through his skin. It didn’t spare his scalp, oh no… it seeped through the damp mess, heating up the wires embedded inside it, and all Loki could feel was his own heartbeat hammering against them, like veins of a mechanical parasite trying to force itself into his brain.

His head felt like it’d split any second. Chunks of hair were ripped out as Thanos kept yanking the braid, to do gods know what with it. Loki couldn’t even begin to imagine what was happening, why the titan would do this when he was already inside the tube.

Then he stepped away.

The realization hit Loki when he saw the door close, and the braid was still strung up on something, hair pulling until more and more blood started to run down his sweat-slick neck, down under his clothes, collecting on the floor beneath him.

No.

No no no no no that can’t be. That can't be.

He tried to move, he tried to straighten up to take a bit of pressure off his head, but the chains barely had any slack. He couldn’t lean forward to put his hands down without the braid tightening even more. He couldn’t lean backwards either, as the chains around his wrists stopped him. He couldn’t straighten his back enough for it to be comfortable without digging the metal cuffs deeper into his already frayed skin…

Even so, the braid pulled. No matter what position he tried, no matter how properly he tried to kneel, it still hurt, it hurt so bad that his vision kept flickering, his body kept convulsing, his muscles turning off from time to time, forcing him to lose his posture.

The cruel, inevitable yank of his hair dragged him back to consciousness every time he dared to let himself slip for even a second.

Every breath was a new wave of torment. The heat was too much. It was too hot, it was hotter than it had ever been, Loki knew, he was sure of it, he’d never been so sure of anything in his life. The hot wires reacted to each tremble of his weak, exhausted body. He screamed, then immediately regretted it when it only made the braid pull more.

Yet, he couldn’t stop.

He screamed until he ran out of breath, only to gulp down the hot air desperately to scream once again, over and over, until his throat was dry and split open from the dry heat. The taste of blood didn’t even surprise him. It was just another thing to focus on; something to take his mind off the fact that he was kneeling for the very being he despised the most.

It took five minutes before the shaking got worse. His muscles were screaming. Without proper sleep or any time to recover between sessions, his endurance had been vastly reduced. He was still regenerating faster than average, even with Thanos doing everything in his power to keep him weak, but he knew his body was collapsing in on itself. He was almost certain this was going to kill him.

Part of him wished that it would, but the other part, the logical one knew that it was just wishful thinking. Sure, his body wasn’t built to withstand heat for extended periods of time; but that didn’t mean he couldn’t. He was far more resilient than he wanted to believe.

For the first time in his entire life, Loki considered giving up. He needed to. It had just started, and he was already on the brink of unconsciousness every few seconds from the heat and the pain. His heart was beating so fast. So weak. Fluttering in his chest helplessly as his overexerted body fought to keep itself alive.

The air was too thick, sweet with the smell of his own blood. It made him want to retch, but he knew better, even in his confused, dazed state. He knew that any sudden movement would only tear at his scalp more. He also knew that if he threw up the food, it would only make the 48 hours drag out even longer…

But nothing changed. The timer barely ticked down a few minutes, and he was already slumping, his body giving in, spine strained under the impossible posture he was forced to hold.

He screamed again.

Again.

Again.

Until he couldn’t even breathe, until even thinking about inhaling the air felt like broken shards of glass in his lungs. Yet, his body kept going through the motions. He couldn’t stop. How could he? He couldn’t even control his own crying, something he should've had control over. How could he expect himself to stop breathing, the most basic function of his body?

A knock on the glass took him out of his spiraling thoughts. It was Thanos.

Loki looked up, head swimming from the agony, his entire body red and blistering. He opened his mouth to say something, to give up, to beg… but no sound came out. Not after he screamed himself raw to the point of his throat bleeding.

His head fell forward again, a strangled, choked cry ripping from his lungs. It didn’t sound like him. Didn’t even sound human, let alone godlike.

The titan smiled, a low chuckle echoing in the overheated tube. “Keep your head up, Asgardian,” he said, dark eyes reflecting the orange glow of the heating coils. “Gods hold their heads high.”

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The heat of the room leaked out into the hallway, and Loki felt it before they even entered. He wasn’t sure if he was conscious the whole time… he tried counting the steps, the turns, the sharp lights they’d passed, but his thoughts always looped back to the pain. Nothing worked. Whatever strategies he’d been using to deal with the pain were all futile against the relentless pull.

Loki’s body reacted to the change in temperature before his mind even began to register it. He knew it was coming. He always felt the gentle warmth wrapping around him towards the end of the corridor; a cruel, sickening comfort before the unbearable heat started. By now, he had grown to dread it. He knew what it meant.

When Thanos let go of his hair, Loki collapsed into a heap. The sudden absence of pulling was somehow worse than the pulling itself. How was that even possible…?

His mind tried focusing on the sound of his blood dripping on the floor to take his attention off the phantom tension throbbing through his scalp. Trembling, he tried to curl up in a ball, an instinct he couldn’t resist even if he tried.

“Come here, little god,” Thanos said, voice almost kind in its smoothness. “You are going to eat today. You will need it for what comes next.”

Loki felt his stomach drop. He’d learnt what food meant by now; Thanos only ever let him eat before the worst tortures, the ones that were so severe the god tried his best not to even remember.

That one time the titan poured near-boiling water down his throat for talking back… he couldn’t breathe for hours after, not without pain splitting his body in half. Inhaling felt like shards of glass sliding down his throat. Who could’ve thought air could hurt so much?

He stopped speaking after that for almost a week, but not out of fear. Because of the pain. For a while, he wasn’t sure whether he’d talk again. He wanted to, even though that was what got him in that position in the first place. But gods, he hated being silenced.

Another time, the titan injected acid under his skin, all over his body. It took 12 days for it to clear out. Maybe longer, Loki wasn’t sure anymore. He fully believed he was going to die; even a god could only take so much. When he saw his skin peel off in bloody, slimy patches, he thought he’d never heal again.

He did.

Again and again, as the acid ate away at the new layers forming [thanks to his fast regeneration], until his body burned off the last of the chemicals. He probably slept three hours during those twelve days, if that. Even the thought of laying down made him want to claw his skin off… but he didn’t need to. It was already being stripped off him by the acid.

The extra punishments didn’t stop the heat tube and the acid drip, of course. The Schedule had to continue every day, no matter what state Loki was in. “This was simply the way things were supposed to be,” he was reminded over and over. Thanos knew he’d survive. He was a god, after all.

“I said come here,” the titan repeated his command, and Loki tried to get up, he really tried, but his body didn’t listen to him. He couldn’t remember the last time he ate. It had to be more than a week ago, maybe… he didn’t know. He couldn’t think.

When he stayed on the floor despite his attempts to move, the thick fingers found his hair again. Thanos grabbed the braid and yanked Loki’s limp body up, nearly throwing him into the corner where he had placed a tray of food earlier. This has been planned.

The food was simple as always: uncooked vegetables, lean meat, hardened bread. A big glass of cold water and hydration gel on the side. After all the weeks here, it looked so appetizing, which only made Loki feel more nauseous. He was above this. He should've been above this. This was so beneath him, so humiliating for him, yet he couldn’t stop his body from reacting to the sight and smell of the food.

Still, he didn’t want to eat. That would mean giving in, and the last thing he wanted was to let Thanos win. But he also knew he needed the nutrients, that refusing to eat would only make everything hurt more. It was very unlikely that he could die from something as simple as starvation anyway, not in the span of weeks. His body, though severely weakened, was still too resilient for him to just give up.

And he didn’t want to give up. He just wanted it to stop. But as the weeks dragged on… he wasn’t sure that there was an after.

“You will eat,” Thanos said. It wasn’t a suggestion. “Or I will feed you myself.”

Realistically, Loki knew he didn’t have a choice. No matter what, he would be fed; he didn’t have a say in that. It wasn’t up to him whether he stayed alive… Thanos made sure he did.

Without utensils, he had to dig through the food with his fingers, but he was past the point of caring. After a week of no food and barely any water, his body was screaming at him to eat. He needed to eat, he needed it, he needed it so bad… he wished he could resist, that he could defy Thanos and just let himself starve to death, but he couldn’t stop the desperate animal in him sinking its teeth into the cold, bland food.

It tasted so good.

He hated that.

But he ate. He ate it all, drank the water, swallowed the hydration gel like an obedient subordinate, not a god. So low, so undignified for someone with such delicate taste. He hated himself more than anything at that moment, but he couldn’t help it.

“Good boy,” Thanos murmured, then reached for Loki’s hair again. For a few seconds, he just rested his hand there, fingers sinking into the wet, sticky mess; then he dragged his hand along the braid, as if he was petting an animal. Again, again, and again.

It was degrading.

“You’re shaking,” the titan observed. He sounded pleased.

Loki felt something snap in him. He needed it to stop, he couldn’t, this was not… this was not how he should be treated, and he couldn’t stand another moment of it. In a desperate effort, he turned his face to the side, but all he managed to do was tear at his scalp even more as the massive fingers got stuck in his hair. The embedded wires shifted and tore deeper into the wet mess of tissue beneath it.

He was shaking. It wasn’t just the exhaustion or the pain, but something deeper… something existential. He couldn’t stand being treated like this. He wasn’t going to be treated like this. He was still a god. No matter what Thanos did, he was never going to take that away.

“I… I am not your pet,” Loki hissed through clenched teeth, using all his willpower not to cry out from the pain.

Thanos paused.

His hand stood still in the braid for a few seconds. Then slowly, it closed again. A warning. Loki knew he shouldn’t have said that. Despite his godhood, Thanos still held all the power over him; he wasn’t stupid. But still, he couldn’t stop the words that wanted so badly to leave his mouth, a last-ditch effort to salvage some semblance of dignity.

“I am a god,” he whispered, still not looking the titan in the eyes. “I’m still… a god.”

Thanos chuckled low in his chest. “Are you?” He asked, voice so deep Loki felt it in body. The grip tightened. The god’s vision went white, a pain blooming hot behind his eyes as his body jerked instinctively.

“You eat when I allow. You sleep when I allow. You follow my commands. What part of that sounds divine to you?”

Loki didn’t answer.

“Say it again,” Thanos whispered. His fingers dug into the braid. “Come on. Tell me what you are.”

The god’s throat clenched. He wanted to say it. He wanted to.

“I’m…” Loki’s voice broke halfway. “I’m Loki,” he managed, barely. The wires tore at his skin as Thanos rotated his fist ever so slightly, twisting the god’s hair until a muffled whimper escaped him. It was pathetic.

“That’s not what I asked.”

The pain spiked so hard Loki’s eyes rolled back for a second. He had to bite his tongue to stop a scream; it still spilled out in the form of a choked, miserable sob. But he just took a long, shaky breath and steadied himself as much as he could, then looked up to stare straight into Thanos’ cold, dark eyes.

“I’m a god.”

The titan let out a low, guttural laugh, drawn out as he tilted his head to the side. Then he crouched again. Hooked one finger under Loki’s chin and forced his head up even more.

“Then act like one,” Thanos said with a measured tone. “Stand.”

He slapped the side of the god’s face gently a few times, the touch obscenely intimate compared to the deep-seated, constant ache from the wires embedded in skin. The rage building under the surface slowly dissolved into a paralyzing panic as Loki realized what was coming. Without even meaning to, he looked to the side, towards the heat tube.

His vision was already swimming before he even tried to stand up, and when he did, a sharp pain shot through his head again, down his spine, making his knees buckle. He collapsed back onto the floor; but this time he had enough strength to brace himself before the impact. Desperate to avoid the titan’s hand in his hair again, he pushed his weak body up again, arms trembling… and this time he actually managed to keep his balance without giving in to the artificial gravity of the ship.

“Good boy,” Thanos said, then pointed towards the tube. The wires on the bottom were already glowing orange from the heat, warping the air around them. “Get inside.”

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i usually aint into doin lineart but i was havin a big ol time w this one 🥹