Rude Awakening
Loki awakened sluggishly, opening his eyes to a blur of shapes that took some time to wrangle into coherence. Eventually he was aware of the warmth of a hand against his face, the palm molded to his jaw and the thumb tracing the line of his cheekbone, and then he realized that the bright blur in front of him was actually a man.
"Its skin is soft like a human's," the blur said, "but cold."
Loki blinked and wrestled his way through the fog in his brain. Something had happened... something about Dr. Lazarus and his absurd claims and then... what?
His vision finally cleared, and he realized that the man staring down at him with a hand on his cheek did not have a face. Loki remembered, drew in a sharp breath and jerked away. It took a few long moments of grunting and flailing before he realized that his wrists and ankles were bound with bands of metal and that he could barely move. He huffed and pulled harder, intending to break them with his Jotun strength, but they would not give. Next he tried his magic, but the spells were locked away in the part of his mind still mired in fog. He grunted and thunked his head back against the slab of metal on which he was displayed like a piece of meat.
Loki swallowed and glared at the faceless man but willed himself not to panic just yet. He just needed to review his options. Strength and sorcery were out, but they were not his only weapons.
The faceless man continued to stare at him – well, Loki assumed he was staring, though the creature had no eyes to speak of or a mouth to speak of, for that matter; just how exactly had he spoken before? – and the hand stroking his cheek in a sick parody of compassion moved up to smooth back his hair, petting him like he was some sort of skittish animal.
"What do you want?" Loki asked, schooling his expression into one of immense boredom. "Hm? Is it money? Information? Godhood? A harem of nymphs?"
Loki wasn't sure where to look on an eyeless face.
"Does it bleed like a human?" the faceless man asked. Loki could not see where the sound issued from. It had no mouth, and his throat did not move when he spoke. Loki wracked his brain, sifting through catalogues of strange and foreign creatures, but he drew a blank – so to speak – on the faceless creature in front of him. Was it a human then, somehow deformed? Or a mutant, like Xavier's precious X-men? At least he wasn't wearing their signature tights.
"I'm not an 'it'," Loki replied almost absently as the gears in his brain continued to churn. "What" his captor was did not really matter, he grudgingly decided. He could puzzle out that enigma once he was back in his lair, concocting his next dastardly plan. "I'm a 'he'. Though I could be a 'she', if that's something you desire." Loki molded his features into a seductive leer even as he tried not to vomit at the idea. It was distasteful, surely, but if he could convince his captor to at least free his ankles...
"It maintains its composure when frightened longer than a human."
Loki gritted his teeth. "Who says I'm frightened?" he sneered. His captor placed a too-warm hand flat against the left side of Loki's chest.
"Its heart thuds like a rabbit's."
Loki frowned, for once truly at a loss. He thanked the Norns that Thor was not there to see it, at least.
The faceless creature started to poke and prod at Loki like a potential buyer examining a horse for sale, every once in a while pausing to scribble something into a blood-stained notepad. That, more than anything, told Loki this would not end well. So he was a research subject. Just how far would this examination go?
"While you're at it, Doc," Loki said when the silence started to chafe, "there's this mole on my backside I've been wanting to have checked out, if you could – mmmph!"
His captor stuck a thumb into Loki's mouth and wrenched open his jaw, staring without eyes into his mouth. Loki rolled his eyes and considered biting off the offending appendage, only to decide against it. This was uncomfortable and humiliating, but he was at the mercy of a deranged mortal. Perhaps it was best not to anger him more than necessary.
"It seems human," said the faceless creature. Did it just sound disappointed?
Loki wondered if that was the hint he had needed.
"Alas, yes, that's me," he said once his captor had released his jaw, "disappointingly and regrettably human. I'm afraid that I am no more interesting than your average Joe." That was how the mortals said it, wasn't it? "But if you were to be so kind as to release me, I could tell about quite a few far more interesting–!"
"It is not human."
Loki sighed, deflating, and wondered where this would go next.
"What do you want with me?" he asked, hoping the wide-eyed, pitiful face he was making was enough to make his captor at least stop referring to him as "it".
Loki's captor turned and fiddled with something on a table just out of Loki's peripheral vision. He returned with a thin, wicked-looking knife with a hook at the end.
"It would not understand."
Bonus points to those of you who know where I borrowed Dr. Lazarus from. -whistles innocently-
