Sanctuary: Day 1

What have my sisters brought me? Hmm...something new. Delicious.

It took Loki a moment to realize that the velvety feminine voice he was hearing was not actually audible, but itching itself directly into his mind. He tried to recoil, but his body was still broken, and pain jarred through his innumerable wounds at the attempt. His eyes rolled frantically to trace the source of the voice. He was lying flat on his back in a chamber built of black rock, lit eerily in purple. A tall, slender figure in a hooded white cloak crept towards him from the shadows. Frigga had trained Loki well to defend against psychic attacks. He prodded at the barriers he kept in place at all times, and they were still there. His fall through the void hadn't shattered them.

Oh, it thinks it can hide from me? She moved like a spider and he was a fly trapped in her web. Her skin was marbled blue, her eyes milky white. She reached long, spindly fingers towards his temples. The moment those fingers touched him, he felt a dragging pressure against his barriers. It was like fingernails against slate, and his entire being shuddered. Her lips curled back in a smile, and laughter sounded in his mind. Nebula wanted to play with you, but I think you don't need any further breaking than you've already had, do you, little prince? A jolt of panic shot through him. How?

"Who is he, Corona?" This voice definitely came from outside his head. It was masculine and very deep, but he couldn't see the speaker.

She spoke aloud this time. "Loki Odinson, Father. Prince of Asgard."

"The child of my enemy," said the deep voice, tinged with eagerness now. "The universe sends me a priceless gift. How did you find this place, Asgardian?"

Loki said nothing, but the images of his final glimpses of Asgard flashed before his eyes. The shattered bridge, Thor screaming, Odin's face twisted with something that might have been grief, but surely that was only wishful thinking. Why would he mourn his pet monster?

"He is capable of walking between worlds, but he did not mean to come to Sanctuary. He tried to end himself by falling from a shattered bridge into a wormhole." Panic turned to horror. How was she getting past his defenses? They were still in place, and there were no holes in them, and yet she had managed to steal information anyway.

"Then the Bifrost is broken? This is truly a glorious day. We have much to do. Corvus, Maw. Our guest is injured and weak. He will need... repairs before he can be rehabilitated."

X

Corvus and Maw turned out to be aliens of two more species Loki had never seen before, and the "repairs" the deep voice spoke of were surgical implants they grafted into him. Maw possessed powerful telekinetic abilities. He waxed poetic about what a great honor it was to be made an instrument in the hand of the almighty Thanos, all while slicing Loki open with the needles he controlled with his mind. Corvus seemed to have a detailed understanding of the mechanics of the implants, but he said nothing while he did his work. Plates, pins, and rods clamped his broken bones together, but the goblin-like creature added other things Loki couldn't identify, which gave off currents of energy that put a foul taste in his mouth.

After they finished with him, he was deposited in a dingy cell of the same black rock everything was made of in this place. He could feel every piece of what they'd installed beneath his skin. As soon as they left him alone, his stomach turned. There was nothing in it to expel, but he dry heaved for minutes straight. Now that it wasn't needed to keep him alive in the void, his seidr was trying to heal his wounds. It was pooling and coiling around each of the foreign objects, making him even more aware of their presence, like mechanical parasites trying to make him into something else. Watching his flesh turn blue and lined had been nothing compared to this.

He was curled up in a corner when Gamora arrived, carrying a bowl in one hand and a ceramic cup in the other. The mere thought of food was almost enough to set him retching again, and the smell of whatever was in that bowl did not help. She set bowl and cup down on the floor beside him, then stood up straight again.

"You should have just killed me," he said. His voice was hoarse.

"No one dies here unless my father lets them," she said. "No one escapes. No one hides. He'll get what he wants out of you. It's only a matter of time."

"You don't sound much like a loving daughter," he said, narrowing his eyes. "Are you a prisoner as well?"

"I have nowhere else to go," she said. "He made sure of that."

"Is he the reason you alone now speak your native tongue?"

"Apart from you. How are you doing that? Your word choice is a little archaic, but you sound fluent. I can see your mouth forming the words, so I know it's not my translator."

"It's called Allspeak," said Loki. He was loath to provide more information to anyone in this place, but what was the worst they could do with this knowledge? Use him as an interpreter? "It's the first thing every child is taught on Asgard. A language infused with spellwork, so that any who hear it perceive their own language being spoken instead. Provided that the language functions in the usual fashion—different sounds corresponding to different meanings, parts of speech, and so forth—, I can in turn hear the words of an entirely unknown tongue and comprehend what is being said.

"I understand that within individual languages, there are sometimes differences in pronunciation based on region or class status. This is how other tongues sound to my ear. Allspeak can be applied to written language as well, though that requires far more study to master." Thor had needed all the help Loki could provide to get the hang of the written form, and most of the common people never bothered trying to learn it. The ordinary Asgardian alphabet served them well enough.

"So you don't actually speak Zenwhoberian."

"No. I've only convinced your mind that I do." He didn't tell her that her nearly-dead language sounded far more pleasing to his ear than any of the others he had heard in this place. The pressure around the grafted pieces inside him was building. "You might want to stand back," he advised.

She frowned at him, hand going to the hilt of her sword. He convulsed, a scream tearing its way free. Her eyes widened and she jumped back. A second later, there was an explosion of green-gold light, and bloody pieces of metal and circuitry clattered to the floor of the cell in an arc around him. Several were embedded in the wall.

Loki laughed even as he coughed up a mouthful of blood. "Perhaps I'll succeed where you failed," he said. His vision was blurring quickly. "I don't appear to be compatible with these repairs."

X

The Present

He came to with jarring abruptness. For a moment, he could still see the black stone cell around him, and he recoiled.

"Brother, you're awake!"

Loki's mind caught up with his senses, and he registered that he was lying in a cylindrical glass enclosure with white ceiling and floor. Thor was leaning over him, a mixture of relief and wariness on his face.

"Where are we?"

"You are currently the guests of SHIELD," said a familiar voice. Loki pushed himself into a sitting position and saw that Director Fury was standing outside of the enclosure, next to a control panel. He glared at Loki with his one eye. So they were on the flying craft, then. That meant everything was still going according to the plan, except that Loki now had a growing suspicion it had never been his plan at all. His head was still splitting—a consequence, he supposed, of the way he was fighting against whatever had been done to his mind.

"Your brother has staked an awful lot on the idea that someone's been messing with your head and you're not the real bad guy here. I'm less inclined to offer that kind of benefit of the doubt." He rubbed the spot on his chest where the enthralled Barton had shot him. "But if he can keep you in check and get you talking, I won't press it."

Okay, Corona from the first scene is my version of Supergiant, the only member of the Black Order from the comics who didn't make it into Infinity War. I also used her in "The God of Mischief." I really really didn't want to use the name Supergiant, and since MCU canon already gave Black Dwarf a better name (Cull Obsidian), I saw no reason not to make up a different name for her: Sulcus Corona. A sulcus is a groove in the surface of a brain, and a corona is the gaseous envelope around a star (you can only see it during a total solar eclipse). Given that she is a psychic vampire and an omnipath, these seemed like good words both to describe her and to make her fit in with the other Black Order members. For me, Sulcus Corona and the Other are basically evil Maximoffs. They have mind powers they got from the Mind Stone, and they use them to further Thanos's goals.

I have this headcanon that Thanos is so keen on cybernetic enhancements for his "children" because it's his way of taking ownership of their bodies and literally turning them into his tools. Also it occurred to me that this would potentially be an even more horrifying thing to have done to you than run-of-the-mill torture.

I also have a headcanon that Groot isn't really a language, so Allspeak doesn't work on it, which is why Thor had to take it as an elective.