Hello! So a bit of a warning for this chapter. It contains explicit and graphic detail of torture and violence. So I guess a bit of a trigger warning. And for the record if this chapter was made it into a movie I probably would have to look away. For some reason I don't have a problem with reading this kind of graphic gore, but I get a bit squeamish if watching it.

Anyways. I hope you enjoy despite the warnings.


Chapter 28

"No!" Loki tried to shout, but the oxygen was ripped out of his lungs. All at once he was thrown into emotional turmoil and the memories of what he had done were suddenly fresh in his mind. He had tried to kill Thor...again. Was it again? He had tried to kill Thor at the Bifrost, or was it Midgard, or was it over a city filled with monsters. And Thor still tried to save him, but Odin was there? Odin knew Loki's lies. And Loki. Loki had murdered his biological father. Loki was a monster. He would never be accepted in Asgard. Especially now. Now that he knew the truth. How long would it take the rest of Asgard to know the truth? How long before Thor kept his promise to slay him? Even if Earth had changed him. Loki was now considered a criminal. And the only way to deal with a criminal with the blue skin of a Jotun was execution.

Loki had no home to go back to. Better to die now. To let the winds of time and space tear him apart than have to go back and face what he had done. The Warriors' Three and Sif were right, he was a coward, just like his fathers. Odin, a coward for lying to him and Laufey a blue monster who desired to slay Odin in his sleep rather than battle. But who could blame Loki? Considering whom he was raised by and his own blood.

Loki closed his eyes and stretched out his arms, he let the space tear at him. He let it suck all the oxygen from his body. Ice climbed up his hands and arms and covered him. But his mind would not just let him die in peace. All he could see in his mind was Frigga, his mother. The sudden thought of never seeing her again twisted a knife into his heart.

Suddenly there was pain. Agony, fire up and down his body. Loki's eyes flashed open. For the longest time of falling, of feeling as if he was just going to break apart, of being without oxygen and being covered in ice, he didn't recall how he landed. Just that suddenly he lay awkwardly on his side. He felt as if all the bones in his body was broken.

It felt like he had fallen for hours without oxygen. But that was impossible…? It barely mattered now as Loki tried to push himself up. He coughed and tasted blood in his mouth. He felt splinters of bones shift in his arms and he fell back to the ground as his arms gave out. Loki panted and struggled to breathe. He coughed and he choked.

He laid there for a long time, in a crater of dust and blood. He waited to die. He waited for Thor to find him and to crush his skull with Mjolnir. He waited for Odin to execute him for his crimes. But none of it ever happened. And sluggishly he began to heal. Loki drifted in and out of restless feverish sleep. Confusing images of fighting Frost Giants and liquid shadows haunted his sleep.

Until finally Loki awoke from the images. He managed to push himself up and look around. He was on a barren planet without a nearby star or sun for light. No satellite of a moon to guide his path. His stomach growled in hunger, his healing required him to eat. Loki had always struggled to convert magic into healing energy. Slowly Loki realized, because healing took Asgardian energy and Loki was of Jotunheim. Loki looked down at his hands and remembered the repulsive blue skin. His Asgardian energy had to have been synthesized somehow. Faulty, unreal, a fake.

Loki stumbled out of the crater and called forth a small green flame to guide him. Each step was shaky with exhaustion, starvation and pain. He could sense creatures hiding in the shadows. Each step was closer towards danger. He hoped a monster would attempt a strike at him. At least then he could eat-

Everything flashed before his eyes. It was a sudden attack that he could not explain. A huge green monster grabbing at his legs and throwing him around like a ragdoll. The Other pressing hot burning irons against his face. Thanos's hand around his throat until it snapped. A voice flooded into his mind, "This is the real world."

"Jane?" Loki cried out. His hand reaching towards a woman's face that seemed to fade away like smoke from candle that has been blown out. He couldn't remember her face. What name did he just call out? Loki looked around himself. He was near a cave with a small fire and a dead creature skinned on a spike, slowly cooking. How did he get here? Last he could remember he had been climbing out of the crater. He was surrounded by a small wood now. There were fungi on the trees that glowed brightly. There were still things lurking just out of sight.

"Are you ready?" a voice asked.

Loki jumped to his feet and turned. Only to be struck by vines that impaled him through his chest. Blood tried to fill his lungs, but the vampirous vines gulped down his blood instead.

"No, you weren't here!" Loki shouted when Vidar stepped out of the shadows with half of his face covered in wires. Standing next to him was the scientist.

"Restrain him and prepare him for surgery," the scientist ordered Vidar.

"No," Loki insisted just at the vines dislocated his arms, forcing them behind his back. Forced onto his knees, the vines slithered towards his mouth. "No!" Loki said again louder. "This happened years after I fell. I remember...falling," Loki said the last word quietly. Vidar and the scientist suddenly burned away and Loki's location changed to that at the heart of a mountain. His skin was frost blue and his wrists were chained to pillar in the center of the room. Steam leapt up from cracks in the floor. It burned him. Lava poured into a pool next to Loki. His chains were so hot that they were red. They burned his skin to unrecognizable charred black wounds.

Loki screamed as hot metal struck his bare back. As the sharp edge of a knife cut into his back. And things that felt like needles impaled his flesh.

He was left there for weeks. And then plunged into icy baths. And even his Jotun skin could not keep up with the change of temperatures. Every night he was left in the room of heat. Forced into boiling baths, but never allowed any water to drink. Burned, beaten, skinned alive. And every night at the height of his suffering the mad Titan appeared to him. Promising awards for his servants, if only they were willing. And every night Loki would refuse.

So the mad Titan poisoned Loki's mind. Twisted memories of what Thor did to him. How Thor threw him off the bridge. How Frigga never loved Loki. How Odin would flog Loki for his Jotun blood.

"And what of the children?" a woman with black hair asked him.

Loki looked up. His wrists were chained above his head. It felt like every bone in his body had been snapped and his Jotun skin had been burned away. The woman before him looked strangely like Hela, he and Thor's older sister they had never known. But her garments were a dark sea green and they seemed to flow around her like an imaginary wind.

"The children?" Loki asked, confused. He couldn't remember things any more.

"Will you not rescue the children?" the woman asked him.

Loki's sunken eyes looked up at the woman. She wasn't Hela, he was sure he had never seen her before. Was sure that he hadn't seen her the first time when he fell. That thought caught in Loki's mind. How many times did I fall from the Bifrost? He asked himself.

"Quickly now, before you are swallowed up by your memories. Do you know how long it has taken me to wade through your mind?"

Her voice was familiar. As Loki stared at the woman, he tried to match her face and her voice..

"Memories?" Loki asked.

But the heavy footsteps of Thanos over took the woman's voice. All Loki could see, hear or feel was Thanos's hands drag him from the chains. Loki was slung against the wall of the cave and his bones we breaking all over again. Loki was dragged upward this time, instead of to the heart of the fire mountain, up to the surface.

The sun on this planet was ten times worse that the lava in the mountain below. The radiation poisoned his burnt flesh, it made his bones feel like they were on fire. He was chained to a post and whipped. Loki felt like he would never heal.

He was left in the sunlight for hours. He was sick and weak. Infections spread across his body. His hair was falling out. He lay limply against the post as the sunlight blinded him. Suddenly a shadow clouded the bright star. Loki slowly made sense of the creature in front of him.

"Your memories are dreadful. Where are we?" the woman asked him.

"Titan," Loki answered with a raspy voice.

"The home of Thanos," the Woman stated. "Is this where you were when you fell from the Bifrost?"

Loki narrowed his eyes, "Most...of it…? I am still here."

"No, Prince. You are trapped in a memory," the Woman told him.

Loki looked up at her, "Who are you?"

"I'm disappointed that you have forgotten your servants so soon," the Woman held out her hand and in it a chalice appeared and dark murky water formed within it.

"The liquid shadows," Loki whispered. A bit of light and understanding reflected in his eyes as he looked from the chalice to the woman's face, "Why are you making me relive this?"

"It was the only way I could converse with you, dear Prince," the Woman told him.

"You're the one controlling the shadows," Loki stated.

The Woman bowed before him.

"Send them off of the craft. And remove your dark tendrils from my mind!" Loki demanded.

"Who are you to be making demands of me?" Thanos asked from behind him.

Loki blinked and the Woman was gone. Loki screamed as his bindings were cut. He slumped down into the powdery red sand, he screamed as the fine grains got into his burns and cuts. He was snatched up by his foot and dragged through the barren planet. He screamed and howled at the agony and was thrown back into his cell, a mere hole in the dark.

He tried to remember the Woman. She was so familiar, who was she? "You wanted to converse, here I am!" Loki shouted in the dark.

"Yes, lets talk."

Loki cringed away from the hands of Thanos.

"I've heard you've been to Earth. And you abilities to walk the shadow paths."

"I will not serve you!" Loki shouted at the mad Titan.

Thanos grabbed him by the throat and threw him against in the cave wall. Again and again until his skull cracked. Until blood gushed around his ears. A final strike and the whole cave pixelated into a whirlwind of colors and fireworks.

Loki opened his eyes and was suspended in the air. His arms were stretched out. His neck was stiff and it took too much energy to turn his head. His skin on his right arm had regrown, but it was his detestable Jotun skin. A glance to his left arm startled him as it retained his Aesir skin. Loki looked down at himself. All but a flimsy cloth wrapped around his waist is what he was wearing. But he was caught securely, suspended half way between skins.

A butcher appeared before him. Looking at him closely. Loki could imagine how he looked. Half Jotun crimson eyes and half Aesir.

"Bring it," said the butcher.

A servant raced around the to the butcher. The servant raced around to he brought him a hot poker and he pressed it against his shoulder of his Aesir skin. Loki winced at the heat. But when the butcher brought it near his Jotun skin, his blue flesh seemed to wilt away from the heat. Loki screamed in agony.

"Tis fascinating how Jotun skin is more vulnerable to heat than the Aesir skin," the Butcher spoke to his slave as the slave took notes. "Return him to his Aesir skin," the Butcher ordered.

Loki watched as his flesh became entirely Aesir. A forcefield came around him and a red light glowed at his feet. It burned him. He panted as heat became overwhelming within his cilyndrical prison. All at once the red light vanished, taking with it the heat. Loki was sweating and precious fluid dripped away from his body.

He winced as he felt magic on him, in him changing again. His skin reverted back to blue. He was entirely blue this time. The red light came on again and Loki was sure they had brought it up to a higher setting. His breathing became shallow and desperate. He felt sick. He suddenly could not sweat anymore. He was dizzy. He was dying.

Then the light vanished with the forcefield. Loki panted in relief at the cool air that rushed around him.

"Bring him back to his hybrid state," ordered the Butcher.

Loki grimaced at the forced shifting of his skin. The Butcher pressed the hot poker against his Aesir skinned side. He dragged it across his stomach over to his Jotun skin. Loki was morbidly amazed of how uncomfortable the hot poker was on his Aesir skin to the pure agony like molten lava on his flesh the hot poker felt like on his Jotun skin. He wasn't alone. The Butcher smiled at the results.

The Butcher called for something new. Loki stared as another prisoner was dragged in. Another Frost Giant. This one was missing an arm and half of his face. Tubes and wires connected to its face. It's legs were crippled and twisted and shriveled beneath him and he was dragged in by a wheeled cart. Loki couldn't make out the order that the Butcher gave. But the Frost Giant had lifted its only working limb up to Loki and blasted him with ice. The feeling was amazingly soothing. Once it touched his Aesir skin, his skin exploded with blue Jotun flesh.

The Butcher ordered the Frost Giant to stop and had him taken away. Loki barely noticed. He was trying to curl up into the ice that latched onto his middle. Everything the ice touched made his skin blue, but it also touched his burns and cuts and it felt so good. Suddenly the forcefield was back up and the red light appeared again. Loki writhed at the high intensity of the heat and the ice quickly melted. His skin, where the ice did not touch him, melted as well. Loki screamed in horror as below him dripped the ice and his flesh into a slimy puddle on the ground.

It felt like his brain was melting, all Loki could see was red until darkness flooded his vision altogether.

Loki took an uncomfortable breath of cold air. Someone was holding his head.

Loki's eyes flew open and saw the woman before him. Her hands around his head. He tried to pull away but he was too weak.

"I do not mean to make you relive all of this," the woman told him.

"Then remove your tendrils from my mind!" Loki meant to sound threatening, but it came out as a plea and a whimper.

"I need to converse with you."

"So you have said, so talk to me. Can't you find a quiet place in my mind, rather than dragging me through my own personal hell of memories?"

"I was ordered to take down the craft so that they could not send reinforcements. And to control your mind so that you would aid us."

"Hydra has ordered you to do these things. Have they implanted an explosive device into your eye?"

"No," the Woman told him.

Loki gritted his teeth, his body was in agony, even if it was just a memory. He hated that he had to feel it all over again. "Then why...are you?" Loki asked as he struggled to force air into his lungs.

"My daughters are lost," the Woman told him. "All nine scattered in the darkness of Midgard."

"Nine daughters?" That sounded familiar with Loki, "Did Hydra kidnap them?"

The Woman was silent.

"Ran, did Hydra kidnap them?" Loki repeated himself.

The Woman, Ran, looked back up at Loki. She smiled briefly, "You remembered my name." Her face became solemn again as she answered his question, "I do not know. But I was promised aid in finding them, that Hydra had resources to locate them. One of my daughters have been found North of here. Hydra swears they are protecting her for me. Then I was told that the Shield had tried to harm her. I did not believe them. For our King is allies with the Shield. But they threaten to keep my Kolga hidden from me. They force my hand against the King and against you."

"You must not fight against S.H.I.E.L.D!" Loki told her.

"I have no choice, Prince," Ran told him. "They tell me if the King and the Shield win that I will never see Kolga again. That my daughters will remain lost and suffering for all time. I have no choice."

"I understand," Loki said, he winced as Ran's hands squeezed his head tighter in her fury. "Please, stop," Loki asked.

Ran quickly released him, "Forgive me, my Prince. If my water shadows reach the King, I will relay the same message to him. With the apology of becoming his and your enemy."

"Ran. We are trying to rescue what remains of Asgard," Loki told her.

"Then, rescue us," Ran told him.

Loki nodded his head, "Can you help us at all? Send your shadows back to you? Then I will come and stop S.H.I.E.L.D.'s attack on the facility. Make them take you to Kolga. You can leave a piece of the shadow in my mind, inform me once she is in your custody. Then we will rescue you?"

"Will the King heed your words? Will the Shield obey your orders after what you did to them?"

Loki sucked in a painful breath, he winced and blinked, "I will make them listen." Loki suddenly leaned back.

The Butcher stood in Ran's place. A sharp knife in his hand to which he cut into Loki's chest. He cut a straight line from the base of his throat down to his navel. Loki's body was still suspended in the air. Though it seemed like nothing held him there, his body, except for his head was immobilized. The Butcher moved the knife to his left shoulder and cut a bloody horizontal line to the other shoulder. He made a similar incision across Loki's navel. It created a bloody uppercase I over his chest and abdomen. The knife cut down to his bones and Loki shivered in agony. His tears dripped down his cheeks and mixed with the blood dripping from his wounds.

"Ran, please let me wake!" Loki begged. He had all but blocked this memory from his mind. The Butcher peeled back the great flaps of the skin from his chest and used needles to pin back the flesh. Loki's chest was flayed open. It dripped blood and only a thin film held his organs in place.

"Interesting," the Butcher said.

"What have you found?" Thanos asked him.

"On the inside Jotunar and Aesir look the same.

Loki lifted his head just in time to Thanos reaching towards him. Thanos placed his hand over Loki's bare ribs. Loki screamed in agony.

"Please! Ran!" Loki shouted.

"Run? Why would I run from you?" Thanos asked him. With just a little bit of pressure, Thanos slowly broke Loki's ribs while he screamed and shook. "I'll make a deal with you, little prince. Swear yourself as my servant and I will heal you. No more unnecessary procedures. How does that sound?" he asked as he continued to break more of Loki's ribs. Loki couldn't think he couldn't breathe. All he wanted was it to stop.

"I can make it all stop."

"Yes," Loki whispered.

"I'm sorry?" Thanos asked as he broke the last of Loki's ribs.

"I will serve you!" Loki cried out in a harsh whisper.

"Good boy," Thanos told him with a cruel smile.

"Ran?" Loki whispered, "Do we have a deal?" he asked one last time before his eyes closed.