Hi i like making everyone hurt and miserable
I don't own Marvel or any of it's characters.
The counter is cold against his palms.
"Sir?"
Tony's head whips up. "Yeah, Jarv?"
"I thought it might be of note-"
He takes in a shudder, tasting metal. "Come on, no need to drag it out."
"Ms. Potts previous room has dropped to negative forty degrees."
That gets him to stand. "What?!"
"I'm sorry sir, I can't see why."
"But Loki-" He hadn't calibrated Loki into the system yet.
He hadn't even cleared out the room.
"Alright, I'll go in there as soon as I get one of my suits. I'm not freezing my ass off to see if 'public enemy number one' is doing anything stupid."
Loki's skin is blue and nothing is right.
Scratches are digging their nails into this disgusting flesh. So many raised lines, the ones of the royal blood line, the lines of a coward, the new ones that communicate that he is a monster, he needs to die.
His terror is so great that it keeps every other emotion at bay.
He fell to the ground when he first saw that hint of color, of the ocean depths, depths he would drown himself in if given the chance. Curling in on himself, he can't breathe, he's scratching his chest raw, and he can't even feel it.
Ice spirals out from him, crawling along the floor, climbing up the walls and that damned mirror.
The room is as cold as his heart.
"Natasha!" Tony's just gotten to getting his suit on, and he makes the only good decision of the day-calling Natasha.
It takes a few moments before she responds. "What's up, Daddy Warbucks?"
"Too creepy for my taste, but I need you to come with me."
"Where?"
"Loki's room, the temperature dropped to negative forty. Still dropping."
"Woah, alright. Meet you there in five?"
"In three."
Clint sits against the window sill, holding his mug emptied of coffee.
He can't think.
His heart beats, but it's covered with cotton. It's always like this.
That fog.
And Loki's broken through it.
The memories are trudging through, squinting in the mist. Desperate, to remind Barton, that he murdered good people. Some of which were his friends.
He killed them. Without remorse. No feeling.
Loki arriving, maniacal and buzzing with energy. Barely speaking and enjoying the fear.
Making Clint his slave.
He's tired.
There's no more coffee and he still doesn't move.
"Ah-Don't touch the door!"
"What?"
Tony sighs. "It's frosted over Red."
"Well, yeah. It shouldn't be that bad, should it?"
He only shakes his head. The chill reaches him even from inside his suit, brisk, and tingled like mint. Really uncomfortable and disorienting.
Natasha being immune to it, isn't a surprise. He doesn't know all of the specifics, but he knows that the Red Room was brutal, on par with his worst nightmares. Mixing his terrors with the experience of little girls makes his brain prickle with the same squeamish cold.
"I'll open it. Don't want your black coffee soul to freeze over."
"Quite the comedian Mr. Stark."
"Wow, that just gave me flashbacks to when you were Natalie."
"Just open the door smart ass."
Snickering, he makes sure levels inside his suit are stable. His eyebrows furrow when he still feels cold.
"Jarvis?"
"Yes, sir?"
"How cold is it in there?"
"Negative sixty degrees Fahrenheit, and dropping."
The spy smirks sidelong at him. "And you thought bringing me was a good idea."
"Look, just stay outside the door. Which looks like the inside of a cold vending machine."
"I'm shocked you've ever used one."
"Well, there's five in the rec room. You're distracting me."
"Because it's a horrible idea to go in there."
"Also a horrible idea to leave Loki in there. I-I hadn't exactly cleaned out Pepper's things."
A cloud passes over the sun, dropping along with the mood, and Natasha's grin. "You have about two minutes to get him out of there before I go in there to beat your ass."
Gulping, "Got it," along with nerves, he flashes his card before the panel, which thankfully still works.
The door clicks open.
Loki would give anything to shiver. To feel cold, to shake off this skin.
His tears freeze on his eyelashes. The heat of his insides are burning him. Ice around him bites into his thoughts, reminding him of what he is.
Not even the sun will shine on him. It fades from sight, leaving his ice cloudy.
Cracks are appearing in the mirror.
Tony steps in, the cold seeping in. For once, he doesn't break the silence without thought. Loki is on the ground, back facing him. He hopes that his blue skin is the cause of all of this, rather than him freezing to death.
"'ey, Loki?"
"Leave."
This already is out of his league. He doesn't want to deal with this guy, he doesn't need another problem to climb out of him at night.
"Look, I really don't know what this is about, but I think I deserve an explanation."
All he gets in return is a small glare, Loki barely turning his body. Red, eyes red as blood on the battlefield. Red that catches in Tony's throat.
"I told you to leave. You all insist mortals are an intelligent species, yet lack the common sense to run from a monster?" Loki's voice is as sharp as the shattering edges of the mirror. Cutting right through Tony's suit, exposing everything about him. The dizzy feeling returns. His breath comes in small puffs of air, which he can see from the brisk room.
"Monster?"
The laugh he's given back ices his blood over. It's twisted and faint, running through fields of brambles and out of the god's throat.
"A damn Jotun, is what I really am. A fake, an imposter, a ghost of what should have died." Tony braces himself, as Loki begins to push himself up. He still faces away from him, but he sees a clouded over reflection of his side in the mirror. A face wrought with agony, of blazing eyes the color of fire, roses, beautiful and deadly. "That fool Odin made a mistake that day. As you made a mistake to stay."
A glance thrown behind Loki's shoulder, a smile hiding a trickster, is all the warning a man in a metal suit gets, before being blasted with ice.
Thank you so much, again for all the reviews.
I thrive on your pain~
fyi-updates will be once a month, it's easier for me to manage, if I can get more in, then ofc I will.