Chelsea Grin (6)
Demented Dreams
It was well into the evening when Loki was escorted into Tony's tower. The billionaire smartly stepped through the automatic double doors, with Loki close behind.
"Welcome to my humble abode—again. But I assure you that I won't have you in my lounge like last time."
Pepper followed in behind Tony and Loki. "I'll go fix dinner."
"What are you making tonight, babe?"
"Steak and baked potatoes. Medium rare, the way you like it."
Tony beamed. "Mmm, you know I do. I like 'em at that fine line between bloody and cooked."
Pepper glanced at Loki. "Are you hungry?"
"No, he's not." Tony quickly snapped.
"Tony! You don't speak for him. And you're being a rude host."
"Last time I checked, I was a volunteering babysitter. And you are not serving your awesome steak and baked potatoes to the supervillain of ultimate doom."
Pepper rolled her eyes. "Whatever."
Loki shot her a curt glance. "Spare me your concern. I have no urge, nor desire, to eat."
She seemed a little put off by his tartness. "All right…if you say so…"
Tony put up his hands. "There. The god has spoken. Come on, big guy. Straight to bed with you."
Loki sighed and rolled his eyes as he had no choice but to follow Tony. Pepper headed off the other way towards the kitchen. The two men walked in tense silence until they went into the elevator. Loki stared out the glass window, watching the ground level dwindle.
Tony sized him up with a quick sweeping glance. "You're really tall. Almost as tall as Thor. You people are giants."
"No. Those would be the Frost Giants."
"Ooh, there are giants in your world too?"
"Frost Giants have their own realm called Jotunheim."
Loki didn't want to continue on the subject. Thankfully Tony didn't press for more.
Upon reaching their destination, they exited the elevator. Tony led Loki down to the end of the hall. He made a sweeping gesture in the air as he walked. "This is my penthouse suite. Sometimes I have friends sleeping over after parties and such."
He stopped at a room and quickly clicked past security. The door slid open after an affirmative click. "And this is where you'll be sleeping every night. A hostage couldn't ask for a better room, I might say."
Loki entered and studied the room. It mirrored the clean and contemporary design of the hallways. Across from the bed and nightstand was a flat-screen plasma TV. On the other side of the door was a large glass window that provided a generous view of New York City's urban landscape.
"There are complimentary pajamas in the bathroom." Tony said. "I even have cable for you. In case you get bored out of your mind."
Tony made to close the door, then he changed his mind and the door slid back. He jabbed a finger at Loki. "I got my eye on you. So does JARVIS. You do so much as do anything fishy, and you've got automatic flying tasers up your ass. Got it?"
Loki scowled. "What in Hel is a taser?"
"Want a demonstration?"
Tony pulled out a long metallic stick from behind his back and poked at Loki's chest. The God of Mischief snarled in pain and surprise at the shock.
He eyed the taser rod with the wariness of a guarded wolf. "Don't tell me that...little thing...has the same power as Mjolnir."
"Not quite. But it can still pack a wallop." Tony suddenly became dead serious. "At least I won't be as defenseless as poor Phil. I still won't forgive you for that, by the way. While you're here, you better not lay a finger on Pepper. She's got nothing to do with this. If you dare hurt her, you've got S.H.I.E.L.D. and me coming after you with a vengeance. And when you're gone, Thor might miss you. I won't. Good night, I guess."
With that, Tony shut and bolted the door. Loki remained where he was, confused for a moment. Then he figured that this Phil must've been the man he had murdered at the Helicarrier. The one who had told him he lacked conviction. Truthfully, he didn't mean to murder the man.
'That fool had paid the price for getting in the way. To think he could challenge a god with a weapon he didn't even know how to use...it's sad, really. I better not bring him up during my stay here...the last thing I want is to rekindle the hostility of the Avengers.'
Loki changed out of his Asgardian attire and into the pajamas provided for him. The loose sleeves felt similar to that of his own robes, so he didn't mind them as much. He flopped down onto the bed and tried to sleep. He stretched out on his back and closed his eyes. Minutes later, he winced and turned over to his side. Lying on his back reminded him too much of his recent punishment. Despite the soft white mattress, Loki likened the surface to the hard slab of rock. Loki kept shifting the pillow and blankets every few minutes. His attempts to grow drowsy and comfortable proved futile. Finally, he quietly snarled in frustration and sat up. He reached for the TV remote, trying to comprehend all the little buttons and the commands written below them. The TV screen flickered to life as he found the power button.
Unlike Thor, Loki was a fast learner. He eventually knew how to surf channels and control the volume. His brow furrowed in confusion at hearing the foreign language channels.
'I have heard these Midgardian tongues during my last time in New York. Perhaps they're very common in this area, along with English. Too bad I can't understand them.'
Then he scoffed. 'Hmph...if I had succeeded in dominating Midgard, I would make everyone speak Alltongue. It would be much easier.'
His confusion quickly turned to disgust as he stumbled into Disney Channel, which featured an adolescent boy singing a song called "Baby." Loki flicked past the news channels without a second glance. He didn't care for Midgardians and their petty attempts at foretelling the weather. He likened the TV channels to books. Each one catered to a particular audience. (Though he didn't understand how anyone would appeal to the channel with the Bieber boy.) He just wished they were effectively categorized into titles and genres. There were so many channel numbers that he didn't know which one he would like if he pulled up a list. Loki was about to turn off the TV when he tried one more shift to another channel. He flicked to a channel called HBO, featuring something called "Game of Thrones." Intrigued, Loki set down the remote. He watched Game of Thrones until it ended, and he had to switch off the TV.
Finally he fell into a short, uneasy sleep. He dreamed of Jotunheim, as cold and unforgiving as the fictional land of Winterfell. He dreamed of a Frost Giant that pursued him relentlessly, across barren plains and craggy glaciers. There was no escaping it. Loki was too scared to glance behind. His legs were dead weight. Ice shards seemed to embed in his lungs with each desperate gasp of air. Suddenly a lance of ice stabbed through his back. Loki stopped and lurched back from the impact. The Frost Giant pulled him in closer, like a hunter reeling in a gutted fish. Loki gasped in horror. His own face leered back at him.
He lurched from his nightmare, his body wet with cold sweat. He breathed heavily and shuddered. Suddenly the room felt too hot and stuffy for him. He threw off the covers, unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it to the floor. He let the air cool his bare skin.
Loki closed his eyes again. He was pulled into yet another dream, this time he was surrounded by nothing but darkness and dying stars. His heart clenched. He knew this place. An all too familiar figure appeared from the shadows and slipped into view like a wraith.
The Other bared his blood-red teeth, his voice dripping with mocking scorn. "Hail to the king! How goes the realm you have so desired to conquer?"
Loki couldn't find the words to speak. He was sure that whatever excuses he came up with would be seen right through like a wall of poorly made glass.
"Taking over Earth should have been a pitifully easy task." The Other spat. "We had provided you a fine, fierce army of Chitauri and Leviathans. Yet you left them to be crushed like flies! You let the Tesseract slip between your fingers! You are no king. You are just a lost boy...a fool!"
The Other approached ever closer, and extended a bony hand. Loki couldn't move. He was frozen on the spot, helpless before the sinister being. He turned his gaze downward to see spidery blue fingers curl around his neck. His blood ran cold. The Other's fingers were tipped with metal claws.
His breath rattled over Loki's bare and vulnerable skin. "The follies of a fool do not go unpunished..."
The claws slashed at his throat.
Loki jolted awake once more, with cold dread and fear fresh in his stomach. He put a hand over his eyes. His fingers massaged his forehead in an attempt to quell the headache. Loki didn't need an unpleasant visit with the Other to remember his failure. He only knew the strange being to be the one who provided the army, as well as acting as liaison for some unknown higher entity. Loki had only cared about his part of the deal: to steal the Tesseract for the Other and his mysterious master, in return for an army needed to invade Earth. Now that he failed to do his end, he feared how the one from the other end would react. Worst of all, he was powerless on a strange realm. He wouldn't stand a chance against a swift and merciless retribution from a being whose name he did not even know. But, if Loki feared the Other, certainly that mysterious being was much more terrifying.
'Perhaps the Other does not know I'm hiding in Midgard. I must stop thinking, let alone dreaming, about seeing him.'
The thought brought him little comfort though. It will only be a matter of time before he was discovered, like all the lies and empty promises he had made throughout his life.
Loki survived the first day of his return to Midgard. But how much longer would he be able to endure the nightmares, the constant reminder that he was nothing but a monster and a disgraced fugitive? He glanced at the clock on the nightstand. 2:30 AM. He groaned; it was going to be a long night.
Natasha couldn't sleep either.
A bout of fever, accompanied by a stomachache, hit her hard that night. It reminded her of the times she was conditioned to be resistant to many poisons. The Red Room administered small amounts of different toxins to her food and drinks. Not every day, of course...only when she was off from missions. The rations were pitifully small, so that Natasha could develop a fierce appetite and had no choice but to accept what she was given. They slowly worked up her immunity, giving her a range from date rape drugs to exotic and lethal poisons like sea snake venom. One could actually survive drinking venom. She would know. She had learned that the hard way.
Natasha tried to close her eyes and rest many times. She wasn't the type to toss and turn in her sleep; on the contrary, Natasha would lay stiff and still in her bed, as if paralyzed. She kept dreaming of herself as a small child, remembering the time she survived her first dose of poison at six years of age. The man had been so nice...he gave her a hot and soft chunk of bread after a grueling training exercise. It would make her strong, he said. She had accepted the food with a wide, baby-toothed smile. She asked if she could go back to her cell and eat with her teddy bear, Mr. Boris. It was the only remnant of her old house and memories of her mother and father before they died. It was also her only friend; all the other girls she trained with were mean and nasty. Natasha had to be mean too, so she could win her fights and survive. But she was always nice to Mr. Boris.
The man with the bread had said yes. The Red Room let her keep the toy as a way to reward the best fighter in her group. Natasha had skipped back to her designated room despite her aching legs. She hopped onto the bed, famished and eager to eat. She sunk her teeth into the bread without a second thought. But after she finished, she curled up and clutched her stomach. It started to hurt so much that Natasha began to cry and hug her teddy bear.
"Why does it hurt, Mr. Boris?" she sobbed. "What did I do wrong?"
As the years passed, the teddy bear would be replaced by a rifle. The poison grew worse then, and Natasha would find herself driven insane by the agony. She would clutch the cold barrel of the rifle in a death grip, and bite down on her lip to keep from groaning and crying. The weapon had become her source of comfort even in sleep. She would be in too much pain to even dream.
Now the poison became the very object of her nightmare. Natasha turned to the side and buried her face into the pillow, despite the pain from her scars. She tightly clutched at the bedsheets. Her chest heaved from small sobs and soft whimpers.
Natasha slipped into another nightmare, farther into her past life and deeper into the realm of haunting dreams. She was ten years old, and she still had Mr. Boris. She tried to keep that a secret; it would be humiliating for the other girls to find out she was so attached to the stuffed animal. Natasha was out for personal training one day. Some man from North Korea came in to teach her Hapkido. It was the Red Room's way of offering her special treatment. The rest of the girls were only given basic self-defense. The training was brutal and difficult, and the instructor was merciless. But Natasha came away proud of learning new things. She felt a mix of soreness and content as a result from a good workout. Her arms and wrists in particular throbbed, due to the instructor demonstrating what seem like one million ways to twist and break an opponent's limbs.
What Natasha needed was a good, long nap. When she had returned to her cell, she was horrified to find Mr. Boris gone. The traces of drowsiness had instantly left her. Natasha searched frantically in the rooms between the living quarters and the mess hall. She finally found her toy bear in the hands of her most hated enemy at the time: a blonde girl of her age named Yelena. Natasha stood paralyzed as Yelena swung Mr. Boris around for the rest of the girls to see.
"Look at what I found in her cell!" she exclaimed gleefully. "Her little secret, not so secret anymore! You should have thrown away this stuffed rag long ago, Romanova. Toys are for babies! The Red Room won't be happy to know that their favorite fighter still has a teddy bear."
The other girls laughed along dutifully. Yelena was a bully who picked on and scared everyone. Except for Natasha, who was too pissed off to care.
"Give him back to me now!" Natasha growled.
Yelena smirked as she continued to hold the teddy bear. "I have to say that it has a cute little hat. But it's not winter right now...is it?"
Natasha felt her blood run cold. Yelena pulled at the black fur hat and made a savage ripping motion, taking the head of Mr. Boris clean off. Natasha snapped.
She cried out like a wounded animal and threw herself at Yelena. The other girls scattered as the combatants rolled all over the floor. Yelena was no match for Natasha's unexpected attack. Natasha assaulted her with some Hapkido moves she just learned: side kicks to the stomach and hooks to the face. Tears ran down her face as she pummeled Yelena again and again. Natasha brought her down with a kick to the kneecap. In a panic, Yelena threw out her arm to protect herself. Natasha simply blocked and twisted it at a jarring, unnatural angle. She sunk her teeth into Yelena's arm and bit down hard. Yelena shrieked and cried as blood ran down her arm to stain her uniform.
"Get her off! She's going to kill me!" Yelena wailed.
A Red Room officer had finally come in to break up the fight. He hit Natasha hard in the head and pulled her off of Yelena. Natasha struggled in the man's arms, and finally stopped upon seeing what was left of Mr. Boris. More tears ran down her cheeks. She turned back to Yelena, and silently bared bloodied teeth at her.
Yelena had to get medical attention and a cast for her sprained and bleeding arm. She couldn't use it for days. Natasha had been sent to the Red Room administrator Ivan Petrovich, who also happened to be her surrogate father. She stood and still before his desk, hardly a head taller than the top. After what seemed like an eternity, Ivan looked up from his folded hands to meet her gaze. She had expected some harsh scolding, some kind of reprimand or punishment to justify what she did. Instead, Ivan talked to her in a gentle, paternal voice.
"At ease, dear Natalia. You are my daughter just as you are a soldier. Come."
At his beckoning gesture, Natasha relaxed her posture and promptly strode over to stand next to him behind his desk.
"Explain yourself, my dear."
"Yelena destroyed what I loved." Natasha spat. "She deserved it."
He had surprised her with a pat on her head. "I know how precious that toy was to you. It hurts, doesn't it?"
Natasha was losing her grip. Her stoic mask slipped as she made a visible effort to swallow. "Yes, sir." She finally managed to say.
"But do you see what happened? Do you see the consequence for having such an attachment? The more you love something, the more it hurts to lose it."
She nodded numbly. "I understand, sir."
"But you did well, Natalia. You did the right thing to defend what was important to you. Continue to fight hard. Nothing is more important than Mother Russia, our great homeland."
"I can love my country, but love no one and nothing else."
Ivan's warm smile softened his cold eyes. "Exactly. It's why we've been training you all these years. You are such a smart girl. What must you do when she is threatened by her enemies...Your enemies?"
Her answer came out flat and cold. "I will destroy them."
"Good girl..."
Nataha's body still trembled from fever, and her heart ached at the thought of Mr. Boris. That teddy bear, lovingly made by her mother in their dirt-poor home, represented her childhood innocence. Both were brief, fragile...destroyed by the Red Room. Natasha's childhood ended for good that day.
Natasha spiraled further into her distorted dream world, unable to pull herself out of the dark whirlpool. Then, in her fevered and restless mind, her worst fears materialized.
She was back in that musky old basement. Alone with Joffrey. She was helpless on the floor as he approached her. Then she heard Loki's voice. His sinister snarl reverberated all around her as Joffrey's knife inched closer.
"I won't touch Barton. Not until I make him kill you...slowly, intimately...in every way he knows you fear. And then he'll wake just long enough to see his good work..."
Natasha uttered a strangled cry of horror. Clint was holding the knife now. He looked confused and terrified as his gaze moved from the blood on her face to the blood on the knife.
"And when he screams, I'll split his skull!"
Natasha and Clint let loose a simultaneous silent scream.
She finally jolted back into reality, only to also enter a world of pain. She had jerked her legs, and now her ankles throbbed relentlessly. The pillow and bedsheets were drenched in her sweat. Her hospital gown clung to her like wet paper. Natasha stayed awake, unable to close her eyes and rest in peace. The pain in her head and stomach persisted. Just like all those years ago, she would have to take the brunt of it and endure it.
Why her dream had lumped Joffrey and Loki together, she did not know. Perhaps it was a warning to not trust the Trickster God too much. What if he was putting up a sympathetic act to let her guard down? She had seen it all before; she had done it herself many times. But for some odd reason, thinking of Loki and his little talk with her earlier lessened the pain. Natasha could do nothing but stay awake and wonder what he would do tomorrow, if he came back. It was an unsettling thought that kept her up for the rest of the night.
It's so much fun to write about Loki interacting with Midgardian technology. I figured he would pick it up better than Thor, but still be amused by our strange ways. xD
Joss Whedon is totally right about Nat having the most darkness out of all the Avengers. Her past is so dark, twisted, violent and sad. I want to explore it further in a separate fic...
