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Loki has always had restless hands.
That was what his mother (do you yet have any right to that name) had always called them - like they were creatures that might wander off on their own if not closely watched. It felt like that sometimes, too: he would be still, and yet his hands would be moving, tapping his fingers on his leg, rubbing his thumb against his palm, picking at his nails. Never still. Like his mind: always moving.
He had a tutor who rapped his knuckles when he started to fidget, at least until Frigga caught him at it. She was not pleased.
“He says a prince should be able to sit still,” Loki said.
“That is true,” Frigga said. “But pain is a poor teacher.”
Lies, Loki thinks, centuries and light-years away, are a worse one.
Loki learns Sanctuary’s ways swiftly enough, out of necessity. Here, you learn, or you die, and quickly either way.
It is simple, mostly. Thanos owns him. He owns everything here, as good as a god of his domain, and when he fell here Loki became a part of that. He has paid the price in blood for that lesson that took him longer than it should have to learn.
He is a piece of ruined metal being remade in Thanos’s forge. Loki wonders sometimes if the metal is more grateful than he is for the privilege.
Metal, at least, cannot scream. Loki should not, but he cannot always help himself.
He passes through the fire and emerges a new man. He promises Thanos his loyalty, as though he could do anything else and live.
“The Tesseract will be yours,” Loki says, and catches his hands twisting like his thoughts. For a split second he sees (his mother?) Frigga, making just the same gesture. He imagines her doing it now, their hands moving in the same way at the same time–
Thanos is watching, and Loki makes himself stop, and still. “The Tesseract,” he repeats. “And for me…the planet on which it resides.”
It’s an uneven bargain, and not one that Thanos is likely to keep. But it is the bargain he has.
It is Loki’s hands that always betray him.
They betrayed him in lies, when his tell - inherited, Thor pointed out at the time, from Frigga - gave him away. They betrayed him in Jotunheim, changing color before his eyes.
They betray him now, trembling where they are folded together as he sits down across from Thanos. His right thumb rubbing across the pad of his left hand over and over and over again.
“You are restless,” Thanos says, gesturing at them. “Impatient?”
“No,” Loki says. “I just have-”
Restless hands. Frigga’s words. (His mother. Not his mother. He doesn’t know which is true.)
“Trouble keeping your hands still,” Thanos says. “I’ve noticed that.”
“An old habit,” Loki says, somewhere between excuse and apology. Thanos looks at him for several long beats.
“It’s a weakness, Loki,” he says at last. “A tell. I need you to be strong, and this…twitchiness? It won’t do.”
Loki freezes. He does not let himself press back or away. He folds his hands between his knees, acutely aware of them, of every twitch of his fingers. “Understood.”
“I was not asking you to understand,” Thanos says. “I am giving you a chance to prove to me that you are capable of the strength of will I require.”
His lungs are tight. He wants to run, but there is nowhere to run to. He is already caught, already bound, and there is no way out but through. “What chance?” Loki asks, his voice steadier than he would have thought possible.
His hands are splayed out flat on a table, fingers spread wide. They are not bound, and he can see them shaking.
In front of him: Corvus Glaive. On the table to the left of Loki’s hands is a hammer, though the metal it is made of is far from ordinary. Behind him is Thanos, his shadow long, and dark, and cold.
Your chance, Loki, is this.
“Do it,” Loki says, though every nerve in him is screaming against it.
“I don’t take orders from you,” Corvus says, looking past Loki.
“Once he begins,” Thanos says, “He won’t stop until it’s done.”
“I understand,” Loki says. Thanos must nod, because Corvus picks up the hammer. He does not hesitate before bringing it down.
He starts with one of the small bones at the base of Loki’s palm.
You will show you can hold steady, when it’s asked of you. You will learn control.
Your hands. Fight, or try to run away, and I will know you cannot be relied upon. It will be your final failure.
The bone doesn’t break at the first blow. He is sturdier than that. It takes three of increasing force, and Loki felt it in his teeth the moment it gave way. He does not scream, though he can hear himself taking sharp, uneven, breaths. His left hand is already throbbing and it’s only just begun.
Do not mistake me, Loki of Asgard. Failure doesn’t mean escape, not for you. As you are, you might be unsuitable. But you could make adequate raw material for something else.
You’ve seen my daughter. You know how I could remake you.
Don’t disappoint me.
Corvus Glaive proceeds methodically and with astonishing precision. Not swiftly. Loki’s body is shaking but his hands, his hands are still,. He doesn’t want to look at them but he does: comparing the as-yet untouched right to the left, the base of his palm swelling black and purple, misshapen, wrong. The hammer doesn’t break neatly, doesn’t fracture - it crushes. Loki would not recognize his left hand as his own if it did not hurt, and oh it hurts, red pain that closes in at the edges of his vision, threatening to swallow him alive. Consciousness blurs.
He first screams when the first long bone across the span of his hand splinters. The only thought that fixes in his head is don’t move your hands, don’t move, and if he rocks back and forth his hands stay where they are, fixed in place.
Absurdly, Loki thinks of the long ago tutor rapping his knuckles. His laugh comes out as a sob.
“Do you want him to stop?” Thanos asks.
Yes, on the tip of Loki’s tongue, but - but. It doesn’t matter what he wants. It won’t stop. Asking is weakness. Weakness is failure. It will be your final failure.
“No,” Loki says, the word torn out of him, little more than a sob. “No, keep. Keep going.”
There are eighteen more, if he is counting correctly. Only eighteen. He can. He can last that long.
The hammer comes down again.
Loki holds on through to the last, shaking, sobbing, but he hasn’t moved his hands. He doesn’t want to try to move the left, at this point, doesn’t want to look at it, can’t look away. It’s a monstrous ruin of itself and he can hardly breathe for the pain of it. His head spins. The shuddering, gulping inhales that he can manage provide insufficient air.
The cessation of blows is not even a relief.
Thanos is silent as he weeps. Corvus looks at him with disgust and wipes the hammer clean. There was blood on it from where Loki’s nails broke under the onslaught.
“I can hold fast,” Loki says. “I will hold fast,” though he can barely force out the words between chattering teeth.
“We’ll see,” Thanos says. “Corvus. The other hand.”
No, Loki almost says. No, please. Please.
He bites the inside of his cheek and closes his eyes. Don’t stay here, he thinks. Go somewhere else. Somewhere safe.
There’s nowhere else to go. He hears Corvus move into position.
An explosion of pain. A scream bursting from his throat.
Pain is a poor teacher, Frigga said.
She was wrong. It’s the only teacher there is.