Please note, there's some unpleasantness in this. However, it's not written in an overly graphic way, and I think it's still safely "T-rated."
The please-don't-sue-me part: I have no claims to anything in the Marvel universe. I make no profit off of this. I am grateful to all those who gave us Thor and Avengers (and all the rest of the MCU movies, which provide such an amazing canvas on which we can paint our own imaginations.
Titans Bearing Gifts
Chapter 1: The Nature of Gifts
Screaming.
It dug its way through his ears, his nostrils, his eyes, his mouth. It wound around inside his head, into his brain, until there was nothing else.
He had fought in battles, had wounded and killed, had been wounded. He didn't think he'd ever heard screaming like this.
He couldn't tell if the shrieking, piercing voice came from male or female. Agony did not know gender. Neither did madness.
He lost track of time. A few minutes, a few hours. There was nothing to reliably mark the passage of time. No sun moving across the sky. No devices to display it. No meals, not anymore. No one coming to him with questions he would no longer answer, or outstretched hands to force the secrets from his mind against his will. No break in the screams, except when they changed to some shuddering death-rattle sound that was even worse, an attempt to draw more air into the lungs, only to begin screaming all over again.
He sat there stubbornly, on the hard uncomfortable ground. It was for him, all of this. He was certain of it. "This will be you if you do not tell us what we wish to know. This will be you if you do not cooperate." Such words had never actually been spoken to him. But he heard them in every scream.
And then it stopped.
He staggered to his feet, head pounding, screams still echoing in his head, reverberating around where there should be no room for them. He clenched his fists at his side to keep them away from his head. He would not give these creatures any indication of his distress. Not of his free will, at least.
He knew where the sound had come from, though it felt like it had come from everywhere, including inside his own head. He'd come across the room weeks ago; he'd known instantly he wasn't supposed to see it. An actual room, a large one with a door made of metal, a rough metal roof, and four high walls molded from the dark porous stone that made up this asteroid-like realm, if it could even be called a "realm." Shelves carved into a jutting rock held a myriad of instruments laid out in plain sight. Some of them looked little different from items he'd seen Eir or other healers use on Asgard. Most of them he could not imagine Eir ever touching. In the very center of the room was a single rectangular metal table. He'd left quickly and never mentioned having seen it. Looking back, he wondered now if he had in fact been meant to find it. "This will be you if you do not tell us what we wish to know. This will be you if you do not cooperate." But they hadn't threatened him. They'd just taken what they wanted when he stopped giving it to them freely.
The door was in front of him; he couldn't quite remember reaching it. He grasped the handle, then caught himself. Whatever this is, it's no business of yours. It's nothing to do with you. Walk away. Turn around, and walk away. He squeezed his eyes shut. The screams still echoed. "Knowledge isn't a bad thing, Loki." His mother had told him that. Once. More than once? Maybe he was imagining the whole thing. He concentrated. They would not take her from him. He had so little left, perhaps not even her, not after Thor returned and ruined everything, twisted and stole his moment of triumph. But if he lost her, it would not be because of that lackey or his unseen master. He would lose nothing to him.
"Knowledge isn't a bad thing, Loki." He concentrated. He could see her saying it. Her hair was golden, lit up by the sun behind her. Her face was kind and gentle. Her smile said "I love you."
He took a deep breath and turned the handle, pushing lightly on the door. He already knew its hinges were as silent as death. The light inside was low, but for his eyesight it was sufficient. He could see about a quarter of the room through the cracked-open door. He'd known what he would see, more or less, but he still sucked in a soundless breath. Bare feet and bare legs atop the table. Feet and legs that were not as feet and legs should be, enough so that he still could not tell from the shape of the pale calves and thighs whether this was a male or a female. A foot that dangled over the edge of the table, at an angle that told him bones had been broken, tendons and ligaments torn. A knee that was bent slightly in the wrong direction. Toes that pointed upward. Bone protruding from a bloody shin.
Loki swallowed and forced himself to not look away. This knowledge I could have been quite happy without, Mother.
"What are you waiting for?" a voice from the far side of the room, beyond his field of vision, rumbled.
His eyes widened in a moment of unrestrained terror, frozen in place by a desire to confront in typical Aesir arrogance, and a conflicting desire to flee and hide among the rocks in utter cowardice…the nature he was born with, he supposed.
"Will you lie there all day? I have given you a gift. I expect you to exercise it. I expect you to be grateful for it."
Loki calmed himself and relaxed his tightened grip on the door handle. The words were not meant for him. The shattered body on the table still lived, or at least the speaker thought that it did.
More time passed, an eternity in probably no more than a minute or two.
"Is this too simple for you? Would you rather I make it more interesting?"
Another sound came from the room then, a croaking sound, the sound of someone trying to speak whose voice had been ruined from screaming.
And then the body on the table began to move.
First the toes. He was close enough to hear the bones grinding and popping. In less than a minute they were back in their normal position. The ankle came next, the one that hung limply as though attached only by the skin. It twitched; its owner moaned. The moan grew louder then turned into a choking sound, and somehow the foot righted itself. Loki stared in horrified fascination. Such severe injuries could not be healed with magic, not that quickly, not that completely. There wasn't even any swelling. Before his eyes the rest of the visible injuries healed, and the continued grinding and popping sounds told him that those injuries were not limited to the legs. A woman's legs, he was almost certain now.
"That's it. You're learning. Now thank your father for this gift."
"Thank you, Father," came the shaky, scratchy voice. Definitely a woman's voice.
"Good girl. Next time you'll do it faster."
His throat tightened and it took every last ounce of self-control he had to close the door slowly. To ignore the sobbing.
Notes
Background: Titans Bearing Gifts is already complete (has been since I think at least March 2015), though I'm not sure how quickly I will post the chapters. I was holding off posting it until I got to the part where I will reference it in The Memory Casket, but since I haven't been able to get a new chapter up of that one in ages, I figure this would be added motivation to make me somehow find the time to do so. So, yes, this is my take on what happened - one small but pivotal part of what happened - after Loki fell from the bifrost. I made it a "crossover" story because that was the only way to select Thanos as a character. The Other will appear, too, but he's not available as a character for either of these movies. I also suspect that no one will ever find this story (except those who've "followed" me on here) because it's a crossover, as I think that means it doesn't appear in either the Thor or Avengers feeds. Oh well. :-)
This story is canon for my other stories that are based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we knew it at the end of Avengers, though I think it's written in such a way that it would work as canon up through the current MCU, meaning Age of Ultron. It came to life with my second viewing of Guardians of the Galaxy, entirely inspired by one little line in that movie...which I can't remember right now. Either Gamora or Nebula said something about what Thanos did to them (or was it just the image of one of them "unmangling" her body?). And I imagine that a story by CreativeReading, Not the Only Ones, contributed to my imaginings about who or what else Loki might have come across in Thanos-land. (Her story is a Guardians-Avengers crossover, and if this subject interests you, you should check it out.)
Few-to-no notes on the following chapters, promise! I hope you enjoy the story.