Things went relatively well for having a god of chaos living in a den of heroes. Well, until the epic battle between Loki and Clint in Tony's kitchen. Yes, his kitchen.
He had made it shit-perfectly clear to stay out of everyone's way. See no evil, hear no evil, don't go looking for a fight with evil.
So what did Clint do? The second Tony left Loki to himself and went to finish his suit, Legolas walked right into his personal kitchen and taunted the god. It wasn't for a long time afterwards did Tony take a look at the recordings to see exactly what had happened.
"Boy have I been waiting to get you alone," Clint said nastily as he entered the kitchen. "About time your body guard took a break. You controlling his mind too?"
Loki had already turned full around from where he had been trying to use the toaster. All his previous attempts had failed miserably, and he was just getting a handle on it when he was rudely interrupted.
"Of course not," he snapped, not bothering to hide his disdain. "I've made it perfectly clear that I was never able to control Anthony, and I do not intend to."
"So it's 'Anthony', huh?"
"That is his name." Loki leaned back against the counter, relaxing his posture in an attempt to appear less threatening. It didn't seem to matter, the man was looking for a fight.
Clint looked thoughtful, playing it up a bit by tapping his chin. "You know, I find it strangely ironic, you being tortured and all."
"Ironic?" Loki replied slowly, his voice dripping with venom.
Clint moved closer, his finger still tapping his chin. Loki had a sudden temptation to cut it off.
"You know that Tony was tortured, of course."
Loki paused, failing to see the connection. What was the mortal implying, exactly?
"Perhaps. I only know what you and he have told me."
"Isn't it funny, then," Clint said, stepping even closer, "that you should disappear and come back with some sob story about being tortured. Sounds oddly familiar, doesn't it?"
Loki snarled, and jerked forward to grab the man by his shirt. The fabric ripped under his strength, causing Clint to flinch slightly.
"You will hold your tongue, mortal," Loki hissed, his face inches away from the archer's. "Do not speak of things you know nothing about!"
Clint growled, "Or you'll what…?"
"Or I shall cut that tongue out of the harebrained head of yours."
Clint smiled. "Yeah, there's the Loki we all know."
A knife flashed and Loki had seconds to jerk away before his neck was sliced open. With a snarl, he leaned back against the counter and kicked out with both of his feet, sending the archer flying into the stove.
"I do not want this!" Loki shouted as Clint stumbled to his feet. "I have no desire to fight you."
"Sure you don't. I've seen the looks you give everyone." Clint paused and flashed a cruel grin. "Well, everyone except Tony. Got a soft spot for the Ironman, Loki?"
Loki hesitated for a moment. A moment was all Clint needed to throw his knife at Loki with unnatural speed. The blade embedded itself into Loki's chest near his shoulder.
With a grunt, he tore it out and glared at Clint. "I do not wish to fight you. Anthony swore to me and to Thor that I would be safe here. He vouched for you as well, Barton."
"He doesn't keep his promises. There's a surprise."
With that, Clint launched himself across the kitchen and dove into Loki. They fell back heavily against the counter, Loki smashing his head hard on the stone edge. For a second there was nothing but bright lights and a strange sound before he was whisked away into unwanted memories.
When Loki had heard about someone's death through the whispers of the other prisoners, he never expected it to be anyone important. It could have been Thor, or Odin, or Fandral. But no, it was the only person in all of Asgard who mattered to Loki.
Thor didn't come for him. He didn't come to tell him of her death, nor to comfort him. It was in that moment that Loki knew that all ties had truly been cut. Because she was his mother too, and she was gone with nothing but a word from some servant in passing.
"Lady Frigga is dead."
Loki screamed. Curses flew from his lips and echoed off the walls of his cell. His little cage designed to keep him contained. So shuffled and hidden away that no one even told him the queen had died. That his mother was gone.
So when they came for him, he was prepared to die. Not without taking some of them with him, of course.
They poured into his room like hot lava into the sea and the room became a smear of magic, bodies, and blood. They finally caught ahold of him after he managed to rip another of their soldier's throats out with his teeth. There was a light, then Loki fell away and became nothing.
When he next awoke, he had no other wish than to be back in his cell on Asgard. For the thing that woke him was pain. Soul shattering pain that echoed throughout body and shook him to his bones. Then, it was gone. He was alone, laying on a stone floor in utter darkness. The small room felt damp and hot, two things that greatly disagreed with Loki's heritage.
This time, his prison itself was a form of torture. The heat alone was enough to cause him great suffering, but the never ending darkness was starting to wear on his eyes. He often found himself half asleep with eyes wide open and staring, simply because he thought they were already closed.
After several days of the Room, he was ripped from the darkness once more. The light was blinding and burned his eyes so badly he was seeing spots. There were rough hands dragging him to their destination. His escorts remained complexity silent, and Loki learned nothing of his new captors.
Upon reaching their destination, he was placed into a second room, even smaller than the dark one. Then, it was nothing but pain. Cuts on his skin, blood blossoming across his body. Crushing one limb, and than the other until they were reading to snap. Then a pause.
Then they started all over again.
Loki was never asked a single question, or ever told why they wanted him there. He never knew who, exactly, had him tortured for year after suffering year. No one uttered a word to him, not a question or a command. He was fed, sparingly, by another silent guard. They sometimes went for days simply ignoring him. No food, no company, nothing.
By the time he finally lost his mind, 14 years had passed.
By the time he got it back, another 20 had passed in silence.
On his 21st year in their captivity, Loki began to sing.
He knew all the ballads of Asgard by heart. He knew most of the elven songs, and some of the dwarfs. He forgot the song of the Frost Giants, and he had only heard one song from Midgard.
That blast of sound that signaled the arrival of the Ironman.
So he sang. He sang to the damp walls of the Room a lullaby his mother used to sing him to sleep with. During his tortures in the Small Room, Loki sang a fighting song he and Thor used to sing together. When they walked him between his rooms, he sang a crude song about women who do anything for shiny stones. When he was most afraid, still shaking with pain from his most recent excruciation, he hummed that song he barely knew and had only heard for a moment in Germany. He never knew why, but it never mattered.
The day of his escape was not pretty. There was no glorious battle, or any dignity to be had.
Loki ripped organs from their chests with his bare hands, tore ears off with his teeth, and even managed to crush one between a door. The majority of his success was pure and simple luck.
Lucky that his guard came alone today, instead of the usual two. Lucky that Loki ran into only three other units until he was outside. He last stroke of luck was when he found a teleport station. It was manned by at least Twenty men with a variation of long and short range weapons.
He tore through them in ten minutes.
In the process, he was shot, stabbed, burned, had his hair ripped out, and something happened to his hip. Over all, it was worth the damage just to get to the device. The teleport device that would send him home. Loki's heart swelled at the thought of seeing Asgard's golden columns rise above him again. As he began to work his way through the controls, he realized that Asgard was actually no longer home.
The Aesir would not welcome him, even after all he had gone through. He had no illusions of any grander other than that golden cage, hidden away from the disappointed eyes of Odin and his golden son. No, he would not return there. Not when even his once brother had abandoned him.
But where? Where could he go to recover his strength and perhaps even grow a life again. He knew Odin would have warned the other realms of him, ordering them to return him to Asgard when they lay eyes on Loki. But perhaps, Odin would not warn the one realm no one expected him to return to. With a grimace, Loki set his course and stepped into the cylinder. For a tense moment, Loki feared the mechanism failed him. In his fear, he thought of the song that brought him the most comfort.
The next thing he knew, he was looking into the eyes of the same man that the song belonged to.
Someone had heard the crash from the kitchen. That someone just happened to be Steve, so maybe luck was on Loki's side for once. Because as soon as the captain saw what was going on, he ripped Clint off of Loki and marched him right out of the room. Tony had been called up a few minutes later to 'take care of his god'.
"Jesus!"
"Please refrain from screaming right now," Loki said, attempting his usual drawl. Tony was not fooled.
"Jesus," he repeated in almost a whisper. "Who did this? You're bleeding all over again."
"It is hardly 'all over', Stark. I simply fell."
"Fell backwards and hit your head then decided to fall forwards onto a knife?"
"Precisely."
Tony gave him a sour look, his lips pursed together and his arms crossed. This went on for a while, the clock the only thing filling the silence.
Until, at last, Loki muttered, "Barton came in looking for a fight."
"I hope you gave him one," Tony replied testily.
"I did not. My aim was to avoid a confrontation."
Tony hunkered down started poking around at Loki's wounded shoulder. "If someone attacks you, you attack them right back. Even if it's me."
Loki's smile was a little strange. Tony couldn't quite place the emotion behind it, and decided he was probably just in pain.
"Would you attack me, then?"
"What?" Tony asked distractedly. His full attention was on the bleeding hole in from of him.
Loki leaned a little closer to him and muttered one more, "would you attack me, Anthony?"
Blinking, Tony turned sharply to meet Loki's eyes. "No."
"Barton mentioned you were not so terribly good at keeping promises."
"I keep the important ones," Tony corrected him, reaching behind his head to brush his fingers over Loki's bleeding scalp. Loki's lips drew together in a thin white line, but he didn't make a sound.
"It feels like it's already healing," Tony said quietly, still concerned.
"Of course it is," Loki replied with a hint of a smile, "I do heal rather fast."
"Then why do you still have a few scars from—"
"Those are different," Loki snapped and pulled away from Tony.
With a small huff, Tony pushed himself up and grabbed Loki in one swift movement. Tony saw, and ignored, the spark of fear in the god's eye as he pulled him off the floor.
"Come on, time to bloody my bed again."
"I am perfectly—"
"You're not fine," Tony interrupted, already pulling him to the elevator. "You're shaking worse than when we pulled you out of the creator."
Loki went silent behind him, and Tony didn't press it. It was painfully obvious the god had been traumatized by something during his brawl in the kitchen. He had that haunted look Tony had seen reflected in his own mirror one too many times.
Once in the elevator, Tony wondered to himself once more if he should put in an AC/DC only speaker. With a smile, he started to sing.
"I'm like evil I get under your skin
Just like a bomb that's ready to blow—"
"That song," Loki interrupted suddenly.
"What? Don't like it?"
"What is it? I've heard it before somewhere," Loki replied carefully.
Tony looked at him and thought back to where the god could have possibly heard it. He drew a blank.
"It's called 'Shoot to Thrill'," Tony said with a smile. "It's one of my favorite songs."
"I like it."
Tony sang the entire song for him, and when Loki asked him to sing it again, he did.
