Author's note: Again, I'm amazed at the response for this story. Thank you so much! :)
And judging by the comments from you readers, I think this chapter will be what many of you have been waiting for. It's one of my absolute favourite ones, and the only reason it exists in the first place is because of a review from AidennQueen that made me think twice about certain things. (Hey, see what happens when you review, people, you get more (and better) story! *wink wink, hint hint* ;) )
Alright, enough fishing and on with the next chapter!
Perhaps his situation would have been slightly easier to deal with if he had had something worthwhile to do, something to keep his thoughts off the down-spiralling roundabout that they're currently taking, regardless of how much he tries to steer his mind into other, less destructive directions.
But his efforts have no effect; they keep returning to Tony, to what transpired yesterday evening and all that heralds for his near future. And all the things he's been forced to endure since coming here; the humiliation, shame and disgrace of his position, the knowledge of what he has been reduced to. How he will have no choice but to suffer whatever Tony decides to heap upon his slave, the scorn, the retribution for past transgression, the constant debasement. To say nothing of the things to come that will no doubt be even harder to endure – becoming a toy, a plaything for Tony's pleasure and personal gratification.
Like a silent and forgotten shadow, he's restlessly pacing the living room – or rather, one of them, as Tony seems to have several of everything – back and forth, in circles as dark and dreary as those of his wandering mind. But at least it's better than just sitting around and letting idle nothingness choke him.
The spacious, airy room is so perfect, so spotless and stainless, the furniture all so meticulously arranged and everything in its proper place. It seems to ridicule him in all its faultless appearance, making a mockery of the horrible, uncontrollable mess that his life has become. Where nothing is in order, nothing is as it should be, and everything is coming to pieces.
And there is something about that perfection that makes the potent cocktail of emotions swirling inside of him suddenly ignite. All the simmering anger and resentment and bitterness that he has kept a lid on until now as to not make things even worse for himself is suddenly blown off by the powerful pressure cocker beneath boiling over. It's just too much to handle and he can't take it anymore, not when fate, the universe, and even this very room are all mocking him, the fallen god, laughing at his pathetic-ness and helplessness.
The last piece of string holding his façade together is finally torn apart, and he snaps.
Engulfed in a rage that he doesn't know quite where it came from, he grabs hold of the first thing within his reach. A blue and white vase of some kind, probably worth half a fortune here in Midgard, but he couldn't care less. A second later, before his mind has even had the time to register what he is doing, the broken shards of porcelain lie shattered on the floor, some still nailed into the wallpaper in front of him from the forceful impact of china against concrete.
He pants slightly after the sudden exertion, though his quickened breathing comes more from the impulsive release of pent-up anger and boiling fury than any physical movements.
But it's not enough, not even close to it.
With a howl of rage, his hand latches onto the next object within reach, hurling it with as much force as he can muster, not even noticing what it is. It doesn't matter any longer.
He then strides up to the bookcase, the beautifully carved piece of furniture, another so fucking annoyingly perfect thing when his own life lies in shambles. Snarling, he rips out the dusty volumes, throwing them to the floor, scattering paper all around him as he tramples the books strewn all over.
And it's like he's released a monster, a beast hell-bent on destruction and annihilation. Nothing matters anymore, as long as he gets to tear everything around him to pieces and reduce it to the pathetic, broken tatters of nothing that is his own existence.
And it feels good; for the first time since being brought here, he can finally revel in at least the smallest inkling of control. He's not the rag doll being pushed around, held down and played with for once; no, he's the one to create chaos and disorder now as opposed to being the one subjected to it.
He steps on something that crunches under his feet. Probably one of Tony's useless inventions, he doesn't know and he couldn't care less. He relishes it being crushed under his weight, now that he can get to break something rather than being the one broken.
And for a blissful while, that's all there is. His existence has been compressed into this singularity of desire to destroy and demolish, lest he be the powerless victim yet again.
So he smashes and breaks, rips and tears, hurls and stomps, as his rage simmers within him, maddening and powerful.
Then, Tony is suddenly standing in the doorway, the well-known figure materializing like an apparition from out of nowhere, an angry shout on his lips.
"Hey, just what the fuck do you think you're-"
That's as far as he gets before Loki hurls the object clasped between his cramping fingers straight at the man's head with full force. Unblinking, without thinking, without reflecting for the briefest of moments what he's doing. He doesn't even register what the thing in his hand is, he just reacts blindly, submitting to the swirling maelstrom raging inside his veins.
With reflexes quicker than any human should have, Tony ducks beneath the object coming at him, and it misses his head with only a few inches to spare.
Snarling in red-hot fury, Loki makes a grab for something else to throw at the man, but it is already too late.
In one moment of lucidity, in which the raging madness subsides to give way to a sharp, conscious clarity, he realizes what the man is about to do as he dives forwards onto the floor. And even though his mind registers it, he knows it's too late for his body to react, despite how everything seems to be happening in slow-motion, like a dream where he is unable to move, but can still watch as a frozen statue as everything unfolds around him.
In that strange slowing of time, he watches, like he's standing behind a pane of opaque glass distorting the world around him, as two hands make a grab for the rug that he's standing on, pulling with a sharp, forceful tug.
And the ground under his feet is gone, ripped away from under him like it was never there at all.
Then the floor hits him as he lands flat on his back, and with that, it is as if the world has gone back to normal again; there is no opaque glass and no distortion of time. He gasps for air as the wind is knocked out of his lungs, coughing and sputtering.
And Tony is on him in a second, pouncing like a feline predator on its mewling prey, grabbing him and forcing him flat to his stomach. Loki hisses in anger and struggles against the hands, but it is useless; only a moment later the man has wrenched one of his arms behind his back and straddles him, pinning Loki down with the weight of his own body.
If circumstances had been different, Loki might have stood a chance against Tony, but not when lying flat on his face with the man on top of him.
It makes no difference. Growling, he tries to shake the weight off, struggling and fighting in desperation like a wounded, cornered animal. He bucks in a desperate effort to loosen the arm locked into a vice-like grip behind his back, but to no avail. The body atop of him shifts but remains steady in place, and then there is a sharp pain in his shoulder as if the joint is about to be pulled out of its socket as Tony twists his arm.
But it isn't the pain as much as it is Tony's voice that finally stills him.
"Knock it off." Three words only, but spoken in a low voice so deadly and deceptively soft; velvet just barely covering steel, a razor-sharp blade hidden by only the flimsiest of fabrics.
And that voice pierces through the howling anger swirling inside his head, commanding his attention like white-hot iron pressed against bare skin.
At that, the cacophony of fury and vehemence slowly dissipates, until the only sounds in his ears are those of his own panting breaths. He lies still as the rage abates and dwindles to nothing, draining him as if a plug has been pulled from a tub full of water, leaving him empty and spent, the previous all-consuming rage only a faint lingering memory.
It is only then, as his mind and senses are coming back to him, as they once more return to his control, that he realizes what he has done. The world grinds to a painful halt as icy dread fills his stomach and turns the blood in his veins into liquid frost.
The wanton destruction of his master's property would have been bad enough, of course, but it pales against the fact that he just threw a potted plant at Tony's head. And back where Loki comes from, a slave raising his hand against his master would be killed or at the very least flogged to within an inch of his life. What Tony is going to do to him now, he has no idea.
And with that, the last vestiges of fighting go out of him. His body goes limp, like it's been drained of every last bit of energy. The bitterness grinds inside of him at the realization that once more, he is forced to accept that he is powerless and there isn't a damn thing he can do about it; once again, he's been reduced to nothing. The taste of resignation at the back of his throat is acidic and bitter, but he is unable to stop it from washing over him. In the end, Tony still owns his life and will come out on top, no matter what Loki does, regardless of what he tries, despite how much he might futilely struggle to change what can't be changed.
And perhaps this was to be his last chance trying; maybe there won't be any more chances left for him now. He closes his eyes, too tired and depleted to do anything else than resigning himself to whatever Tony decides his fate will be.
So he only lies there, unmoving, as Tony remains on top of him, a leaden weight on his back. And their relative positions, him lying flat on his face and Tony holding him down and straddling him, are so damnably mocking, so twistedly ironical that he shudders at the unwelcome reminder of the miserable, bleak outlook that is his immediate future. If he still has even that left now, after all this.
"Are you done?" Tony's voice above him has slightly less of an edge than before, but there is still sharpened steel in it, ready to cut at a moment's notice.
Loki only nods; he would have been unable to get even a word out even if Tony hadn't been sitting on top of him.
Then the weight pinning him down eases off as the man straddling him lets go of his arm and stands up. An instant later, two hands reach down to grab hold of his collar, manhandling him as Tony roughly pulls his prone body up from the floor and on to his knees. The world tilts at this sudden change of positions and a second later, he is looking up at Tony's face, the man towering over him like a vengeful angel of doom, mouth twisted into an angry snarl and hands digging into the tightly clenched fistfuls of cloth around his neck. Instinctively, Loki's fingers curl around Tony's wrists, trying to ease the pressure on his throat as he waits for the man's rage to come down on him.
Out of the corner of an eye, he can glimpse the mess of the room clearly for the first time since he snapped out of his blinding frenzy – the porcelain shards littering the floor, the torn paper lying all over, the dirt and flowers from broken pots thrown to the ground in anger. Though all that soon melts away into the background, leaving only a fuming Tony filling his vision.
The man gives him a forceful shake that makes Loki's teeth rattle, before bending down over his charge until their faces are only inches apart, all hard lines and narrow eyes staring down at him.
"I've just about had it with you going around wrecking my house," Tony growls at him, eyes burning with barely contained fury. "You pull anything like this again and I swear I will have a fucking shock collar put around your neck." Even though the words are angry, the voice is surprisingly even and controlled, and that only makes the menace all the more potent.
Loki holds his breath for what comes next. Maybe it won't be his death after all, or Tony probably wouldn't have wasted his time making threats.
With that, the man lets go of his collar and shoves him back onto the floor, and Loki falls on his ass with an ungraceful thud as Tony takes a step back. Then his hands go for the belt at his waist, with one deft motion unbuckling it and pulling it out of the loops.
Loki bites the insides of his cheeks. So Tony is going to beat him up, then; no surprise there. He expected no less, of course, and probably even worse.
He tries not to flinch as Tony comes at him, belt held in a steady grip. It's just pain, he tells himself, only pain, despite being in this weak, pathetic mortal body that can't withstand anything. He'll get through this without fighting back, without risking getting hauled back to Asgard for a drawn-out execution. So he remains on the floor, breath tight in his throat as he waits for Tony to tell him to strip or roll over or whatever, eyes fixed on the grim face glaring down at his.
"Give me you hands," the man says after what feels like an eternity of silent staring, underlining his order with an impatient gesture.
Loki blinks twice in confusion, but slowly holds out his wrists. Tony grabs them and loops the belt tightly around them, finishing off by tying the loose ends together with a double knot. Then his arm is seized in a bruising grip as Tony none too gently hoists him up from the floor, and without uttering a single word half pushes, half drags his charge through the tower until they end up outside Loki's room.
Kicking the door open, Tony shoves Loki inside and onto the bed, once more looming above him, though it seems like the edge of the man's anger has been taken off by now.
"Alright," he says, giving Loki another one of those stern glares as he reaches down to untie the belt around his wrists as he speaks. "You're going to cool off in here for a few hours until you can handle being within a ten yards radius of a potted plant without being overcome by the urge to throw it at someone's head. Particularly my head. Then you're going to clean up this whole fucking mess and I'm sure as hell not feeding you again until you're done."
And with that, Tony turns on his heel and stomps out through the door which closes with a bang, lock automatically clicking into place, leaving Loki on the bed wondering why he's still in one piece.
But the reason doesn't matter. None of it matters. All he can think of right now, as dread churns inside of him, is how he's just managed to make things so much worse for himself that he doesn't even want to consider what the consequences of all this are going to be.
Having neither the physical nor the mental strength left to do much else, he curls himself into a ball and then just lies there on the mattress, trying, but miserably failing, to dispel the plethora of disturbing images that are jostling for space in his head, each one depicting a more horrible near future for him than the last.
Alright, people, show of hands – how many of you thought that Tony was really going to beat up Loki there?
Please review. :)