Sun danced in sparkles into the living room. Loki was laying on a makeshift bed of the couch (he had refused to return to his room once Tony arrived), watching an episode of Doctor Who on the television. Natasha was cooking something that smelled absolutely appetizing, making Tony's mouth start to water at the very whiff of it.
Loki had curled himself fervently in a heap of blankets and comfortable pillows, but even so, he was still shivering, eyes glued entrancingly to the screen, their glow of blue dimmer then they had been yesterday.
Tony crept around the corner, as quietly as possible setting on a vertically placed chair, taking a seat. Fortunately, Loki didn't notice-well, he didn't seem to. His gaze was intently staring at the television, hell was he even blinking?
"I never understood this show." Tony said a but nervously, hoping to stir some sort of conversation with his former boyfriend.
Loki visibly flinched, his body shuddering as he glanced once Tony's way, then returned to the television screen.
"...I missed fifteen years of it, I'm attempting to catch up whilst I'm confined to this household." he mumbled back, his eyes flickering downwards a moment before returning to the screen.
Tony swallowed. He had hit the shallow end, he had to tread carefully now if not to piss Loki off or send him into unspeaking grief...like he had last time.
Unfortunately, Loki caught on to his nervousness, and sighed deeply, the sound rumbling through his hollow chest.
"Fifteen years," Loki echoed, voice suddenly numb and void of emotion, "locked away in a rancid, dirty cell for crimes I did not commit. Chained to a wall in rusty shackles..." He started shaking now, almost violently, as he wrapped his arms around himself, hugging his own body in a death grip.
"Loki-" Tony began, but Loki cut him off, no longer even watching his show, his eyes deadlocked on Tony in the most painful gaze he'd ever seen.
"They broke me with illusions. They sent images of everyone I loved, and I had to watch over and over and over again as Thor died. As mum died. They used your image frequently, slaughtering you in multiple ways until I screamed. And then that's when they sewed my lips shut, because I just couldn't stop screaming. Gods, make it stop, end me now...!" Loki howled, clutching his head with a rampant cry.
Natasha whirled around the corner, running forward in a mad scramble to calm him, but Tony was faster, his mind reeling in agony at Loki's own words.
He pushed the covers aside, peeling them off of Loki's shuddering form, before sitting down beside him. Loki whimpered, tears streaming from his clenched eyelids, the blueish veins dancing on his skin in a gradually brightening glow.
Tony hesitated, before guiding Loki's half-conscious head to lay in his lap, forcing him close until his cries were dampened until just shuddering.
He glanced Natasha's way, who cocked her head, trying to lip something to him, but he ignored it, focusing back on Loki, who was going slack and exhausted, eyes open but lulling in between a dream state and reality.
"Don't go...don't go, don't go..." Loki muttered over and over again in a delirium, fingertips tightly clenching Tony's knees, small fistfuls of denim in his palms.
Tony rested an arm slackly over Loki's waist, the other gently combing through the matted knots of Loki's raven hair, to remind him that he was still there.
"I've gotcha, Lokes. I've gotcha." he softly replied, stroking his hair until at last Loki fell unconscious once more, curled up into Tony's lap like a broken doll.
Only then and now, did Tony allow the silent tears to fall, a shattered whisper escaping his lips.
"I'm gonna kill the bastards who did this to you." was Tony's quiet vow, before he slumped back in both grief and shock.
'They're going to wish they were never born, the assholes. No one deserves this level of pain. No one.'
.::.
His head felt numb and nauseous, everything around him spinning out of control.
"No one's coming for you," a eerily familiar voice rumbled in his ear. He shuddered, jade eyes widening at the sight of a man with sickeningly pale blue skin and startling crimson eyes staring back at him.
Loki tried to shriek, scream, yell, anything...for help, but found his lips burned to move. He twitched them again, only to feel blood begin to seep into his mouth and dribble onto his tongue.
They had sewn his lips together.
"Your precious family isn't coming for you, you don't get it, do you?" the man continued, cutting himself off with a rugged chuckle like boulders rolling down a jagged peak, "No one loves you, you worthless lab rat. You weren't made for love, you were manufactured to be a weapon."
A calloused thumb brushed his chin, before all five fingers gripped his chin roughly, forcing him to face that scar-ridden face. Loki trembled, eyes beginning to leak with tears, and he hyperventilated through his nostrils, feeling as if he were to faint.
This only made the much larger man howl in laughter, his hand still tightly gripped on Loki's chin.
"How pathetic are you, my son," Laufey spat, "you would be honorably killing all those pathetic muggles at this point of your life, and you've wasted it all being some mudblood's pet!"
'No,' Loki's gut screamed, 'This is a dream, this isn't real, this isn't real!'
Laufey raised a syringe, eyes gleaming, when suddenly a strangled cry erupted from nowhere:
"Loki!?"
.::.
Tony nearly dropped his cup of coffee when he finally returned to the couch, finding Loki writhing and crying hysterically in his sleep.
He had clawed upwards, his hands pawing desperately at his lips as he thrashed back and forth, broken sobs escaping him as he violently shrieked and yowled.
Tony rushed forward, quickly setting his coffee mug down as he rushed to the side of the couch, reaching out and grappling Loki's wrists, effectively pinning them to opposite sides of his unbearably thin frame.
"Loki!? Loki, wake up!" he pleaded.
As if on cue, Loki made a sort of jerk, gasping and still whimpering, bright cobalt eyes seeing nothing, yet, everything.
He immediately released Loki's wrists, pulling the covers back up around his shivering form, trying to mask his fears and worries.
It took Loki a few moments to register what occurred as his mind slowly translated from the blank aftermath into a dark, cold remembrance of whatever he had dreamed of.
"Anthony...?" came the slurred, slow question.
"I'm right here, Lokes, I'm right here." Tony reassured, giving Loki's boney hand a brief squeeze.
Loki seemed to immediately forget the only minutes before, his body going slack as he curled against the pillow in which Tony had replaced him with in the absence of his lap.
Tony glanced towards the kitchen, where he met eyes with Natasha. She gave her head a slight shake, though he understood how she really felt, her woes and concerns for Loki, his best friend since he first arrived at Hogwarts, would only grow worse with the coming tides.
A storm was brewing inside of Loki, this, Tony knew. A terrible, terrible storm, and they had to quench the beast within's drooling thirst before a disaster could occur.
But how, in Loki's current state as he was, could they possibly save him now?
.::.
.::.
.::.
Voldemort waited, lurking, in his shadowy abode, crimson eyes lingering briefly on the corpses strewn about, fingertips twitching as with each coming moment, his sanity diminished.
He wanted death.
He had death, he wanted more.
No, he wanted a specific death.
He grinned.
He would murder Harry Potter.
