Titans Bearing Gifts

Chapter 3: The Avoidance of gifts

Loki struggled to control his reaction but it was impossible to keep it entirely hidden. He saw again those legs and feet, broken and bent and mangled. Only now they were his.

He had a choice to make. Would he run? Would he fight? Would he go to his fate on his own two feet? Would he beg? Would he scream for hours on end, day after day after day, until finally he accepted his fate and expressed his gratitude for his gift? Would he break under this Thanos?

The lackey waited with more patience than Loki had known him to demonstrate in the past, but the decision didn't take that long, in the end.

He had not survived what he had only to come play the weakling for some faceless tyrant. Whoever and whatever he is, I am the monster, Loki told himself. I will break for no man. For no creature. There is no weakness in me. I'll force him to kill me before I accept his "gifts." Any naïve thoughts that these beings might actually be friendly, the saviors he'd first thought them to be, when he'd wept his relief and they'd provided comfort and sustenance and sympathetic ears, those were already long gone. Loki knew nothing good waited for him at the top of those stairs, and there was no sense pretending otherwise.

He took a step. A lesser being would have quaked merely at placing his foot upon these steps loosely anchored to each other but not to anything else, not visibly. Loki looked not down but up, and took another step, and another and another, until he stood before the back of an enormous floating chair.

"Anyone home?" he asked casually.

The chair turned.

"Prince Loki Odinson," said the creature who sat there. He was large, larger than an Aesir, probably not as large as a Frost Giant – present company excluded, he thought with a brief twist of nausea – though he couldn't be certain with the man seated. He wore a golden helmet and armor, his skin was a dark shade of what looked like violet, and his eyes were an unnaturally shining blue.

"If you don't mind, I prefer 'King Loki,'" Loki said with a winsome smile. "And you must be Thanos. What about yourself? Is it really just 'Thanos'? No second name? No title? Not 'King Thanos?' Names must be important here, since you're the only one who seems to have one. Are you expecting that you're so infamous that your one name alone is sufficient for all the realms and the realms beyond the realms to know who you are? I'm sorry to disappoint, but your name is completely unknown. It may as well not exist, like everyone else I've encountered in this place. I've never heard of you at all."

Thanos grinned, and a row of gleaming white teeth appeared. Then he stood, and descended the few additional steps that led to his chair.

Loki stood his ground and watched, never breaking eye contact, never letting his expression change, never swallowing, blinking only when his eyeballs became too dry to avoid it. Perhaps as tall as a Frost Giant after all.

Thanos towered over him. He would tower over Thor. At that thought, Loki felt his jaw twitch. He did not want to think about him anymore. The lackey had forced enough of those thoughts and memories from him.

"I'm glad you can admit to your ignorance, false Asgardian. But I will change that. I will give you knowledge."

"I'd rather you give me a ship fast enough to take me to some more scenic part of the cosmos."

"How limited your desires are. How childish."

Loki opened his mouth to speak, but all his air rushed out in a loud grunt as he found himself flat on the ground, on his belly, face pressed painfully into the rocky surface beneath him. He moved his arms to brace himself to rise, but an unbearably heavy weight pressed down onto his lower back, pinning him there.

"I dislike it when children don't pay the proper respect and attention."

Loki had no time to think through those words before he was lying on his back, though somehow he still felt the weight on his spine, or a reflection of it – it was there but he was removed from it. He lifted his head, the only thing he could lift, it seemed, and saw to his horror that he was lying on a metal table, his body limp and unresponsive. His head fell back as he lost control of that as well. He closed his eyes and told himself to harden his resolve, to give nothing of himself, to display no weakness. He was done with frantic desperate efforts to prove himself, to please others. He would please himself, by never giving in.

He felt something brush the toes of his bare right foot, then he felt the little one break. The pain flared red-hot, then settled into something bearable. A second toe broke, the one next to the first. It hurt worse, and longer. But still manageable. A third toe broke, then a fourth, then the big one, in a crescendo of pain that left his heart hammering but dragged no sound from him except heavy breaths forced out his nose.

"Perhaps you might be motivated to show respect now," Thanos said, and if Loki had had any doubts before, he now knew for certain that this was the voice who'd asked the mangled woman to thank him. "Or shall I continue?"

Loki gritted his teeth for a couple of seconds, giving himself a chance to make sure he could speak in a normal voice. "Do what you will. I will never thank you for breaking my body."

"I don't ask thanks for breaking fragile bodies. I ask thanks for removing their fragility. For providing the ability to repair them. But not from you, insolent boy. Your body is already less fragile. You are different."

Loki sucked in a shallow gasp of air as he blinked and saw the dark rock beneath him again. He was not on the table. His bones were not broken. But the weight on his back was easily painful enough to make up for it. "I am Loki. Of Asgard. And I. Do. Not. Kneel. Not to you. Not to anyone." The effort of getting the words out left him panting shallowly; he was pressed so hard into the ground it was difficult to breathe.

"I never asked you to. I seek an ally, not another subject. I will give you everything you desire, King Loki. Everything you long for. And from you, I do not even ask thanks. I ask only for a trinket."

Everything I desire? Everything I long for? Odin's death? Thor's humiliation? Asgard's throne? Name your trinket, Thanos! Loki thought. He didn't believe this madman in the slightest. But what he desired most, as a first step, was a way off this cursed chunk of rock, and he would be only too happy to promise Thanos whatever he wanted if he would give him that. He was good at lying. There was a game to be played first, though, and Loki would play it, rock biting into his flesh, his spine threatening to snap. "Your methods of" – he took a gasping breath that still did not fill his lungs – "negotiation are…unique."

Thanos gave a low rumbling sound that reminded Loki of a death groan but that he somehow suspected was a laugh. Then a worse sound met his ears – a cracking sound that came from his back. The steady crushing pain was now joined by fiery spikes of it, as though daggers were repeatedly being thrust into his back.

"I care nothing for politics. For your kingdoms and empires and civilizations. I find things I like, and I take them. Sometimes I destroy them, and sometimes I keep them, when they have a certain spark. I mold and reshape them to my liking. I give them gifts. I care for them when no one else in the universe does. I become their father."

Loki would have laughed at that had he been physically capable of laughter. The irony was too much. Am I now to have a third father to kill? I suppose he can get in line. "Your methods…of parenting…also…unique," he gasped out.

Again that rumbling death-rattle laughter fell down on him. And then the pressure disappeared. Loki instinctively positioned his hands again to push himself up, but the pain in his back when he attempted it was horrific, and his body would not obey his very simple commands.

"You have no such spark in you. You have little need of what I usually provide. And I don't need another child right now. Raising stubborn children demands a great deal of time. You also don't need another father, do you, Loki of Asgard? Yes, there is nothing I don't know of you now. Nothing that matters. I know that you sent one father who rejected you to his death, that another father did the same and your heart burns with hatred against him, as it should. I know that you have embraced Death, and that she spurned your advances, and instead sent you to me. I, too, am besotted with her, but I seek her charms in another way. Offerings, gifts, from time to time…"

"No such spark…" The words echoed in Loki's mind, muddling the rest of what Thanos said, crazed rants about death. So this creature finds nothing worthy in me. Yet he found something worthy in that woman who could not stop screaming day in and day out. He laughed, the air for it reaching his lungs now, but each small shake of his body sent fresh lightning bolts of pain up his back and down his legs. Do you actually care what this mad creature thinks of you? He squeezed his eyes shut. Yes, you do, you fool. You've always cared what others thought. Too much. It must end now. It must.

Thanos was still speaking, but Loki had stopped paying attention until he felt enormous hands gripping him under his arms and lifting. He swayed on his feet in front of Thanos, looking up at him, uncertain how it was that he was actually standing. Perhaps the vertebrae had only been cracked, and not broken. Perhaps Thanos had healed it somehow. Perhaps the cracking sound and associated pain had been no more real than his brief time on the table. Whatever it was, the pain was definitely still there, but on Asgard a broken back would need much attention from a healer before the sufferer could stand again.

"I will give you a spark."

"I'd still rather have a ship," Loki said, looking Thanos straight in his shining blue eyes.

"Where would you go? What would you do? You need a course. A purpose. I will give you one. You need a means of proving wrong everyone who doubted you, everyone who distrusted you, everyone who looked on you with suspicion and disdain. Everyone who thought you unworthy."

Loki clenched his jaw as anger welled up in him. The whole of Asgard, he thought. I'll see them burn.

"It begins with my gift to you."

"Would I be correct in guessing it's not a ship?" Loki asked. He made himself say it. It would be easier to give in, to play nice, to ask eagerly what wonderful things Thanos would bestow on him to make all his dreams come true out of the kindness of his heart in exchange for some "trinket." The being had nearly shattered his spine. Loki would go to his death before he'd bend his knee.

"What do you know of Earth?"