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Sanctuary was a cold, vile prison teeming with monsters. It was dark. Enormous. Small enough to walk the beam but forever winding and yawning and horribly windowless. The feeling of it all turned Loki’s stomach, gripped his lungs in an icy vice.
Months of rock walls and whips and rot had broken him, and the Titan… he shall face Hel’s coldest depths, so long as Loki bared the hands to send him there. Thanos was an experienced savage and learned his own ways, sacrificed who he no longer needed. Punishment until failure. Abuse until death. Failure, on Loki’s part, had been both of his body (loss of consciousness, sickness) and his mind (pleading to the enemy, bargaining with the enemy).
His cell had no window. It was nothing more than a jagged sliver of rock with a ledge on which to sleep. A bucket sat in the corner. Water and food were rare and often contaminated; Loki had, more than once, fallen deathly ill from both. Faded white lines etched into the stone counted 136 days and then Loki’s brain fell into madness and he stopped keeping track. It was pointless.
Three days ago—though Loki couldn’t be certain—a guard tossed a loaf of bread into his cell and nothing else after. Hunger was a knife in his gut and moving felt like swimming through hot sand, all the recent lashes opening again and leaking new blood. Loki had never been so thin. Muscle bled away and away and his mind drifted away and Sanctuary sailed away with it.
Now, his stomach cramped and twisted and, Norns, maybe stealing from the kitchen wasn’t the best idea. Poison, he suspected, but his cell had somehow grown hot and he struggled to think. A thin whine pealed from his lips. What a disgrace. The damp stone under his cheek relieved the heat stewing his body, just a little.
Loki swallowed around a gag and lurched upward. The next gag brought a wave of bile, all over his lap. He vomited again from the smell of it.
“Not feeling well, are we my prince?” said one of the guards.
“Leave me alone,” Loki rasped, after the coughing had stopped.
Laughter rang in his ears and he decided to ignore them. For now. Water would be nice but he knew it was futile—always earned and never gifted. Flashes of pain and scalpels and tools he had never seen assailed his mind, tearing a dry-heave from his throat. He could live a few more days without water. A few more days without the Maw and without the torture.
Loki threw up again, blood splattering on the dark stone. He knew it wasn’t good but that part of him was foggy and far away. His heart thumped heavily in his chest, tongue coated in sour, copper tang.
“Our Lord wants to see you, pet. Perhaps this time he may finally kill you,” the guard said.
Loki sucked in a ragged inhale. “No.”
“It’s a shame to see you go. We had so much fun, didn’t we?”
The hollow weight of dread filled Loki’s stomach. An echo of greasy, two-fingered hands prickled his skin, the hairs on the back of his neck raising. Fun. Existence on Sanctuary was violent and infernal and deeply harrowing—but it was not fun. Having his clothes ripped off his body and knives carving his skin was not fun.
“Rot in Hel,” Loki said.
The guard ignored him. Bastard.
An inhale caught in Loki’s throat and he choked, blood spraying from his lips. The room carouseled in lazy arcs around him. The poison wouldn’t kill him… but he didn’t know that, did he? Thanos needed him. Yes. To retrieve… something. He couldn’t remember what, but he knew it must’ve been important.
And then Loki would escape. And once he’d found somewhere safe our Lord will appear as Sanctuary and Sanctuary will swallow your darling stars and pain will be your universe, my Prince.
Loki’s heart seized in his chest. The Maw had found him. A rumble of hulking bootfalls only confirmed this—Thanos knew. Everyone knew. The food was poisoned on purpose; it was a trick. And now… stars flickered in Loki’s vision. He fought to stay conscious. What awaited failure vanquished death in every way. Though, he supposed, the result of theft might not be much different.
“Little Prince,” came Thanos’ booming voice from the hallway.
Loki watched his enormous shadow grow and grow until it engulfed his cell—and then eight feet of purple skin and golden, bloodied armor sneered down at him, like a hunter before his prize. Loki flared his nostrils and fought to breathe evenly against his thundering heart.
“You know better than to disrupt my fun,” Thanos said.
“Forgive me.” Loki’s voice shook despite his efforts.
“No, it is I who must forgive you. You have betrayed me yet again. Thievery is a crime of which I must rectify.”
“How so, my Lord?”
“Patience, little one.” Disappointment shadowed the lines on Thanos’ face. He paused to scan over Loki’s dirtied cell with narrowed eyes.
Allfathers, give me strength, Loki thought.
“I thought I had finally fixed you. I see that I’m wrong,” Thanos continued. He lowered himself onto one knee. “In my youth I was told that living is learning and life is a lesson. My father’s life ended in our annihilation, some days later. I was young but I remember these words because they are principal, and my father was a reputed man. Even I will continue to learn, but you, runt, are naive and stubborn.
“My gift to you is fate, and my teachings shall serve as enlightenment. Remind yourself of a throne-to-be-yours and you shall feel no pain. You will be righteous and grand and you will remember that I did this to you.”
Loki’s eyes flickered to Ebony Maw, standing in the pale, orange light with his hands crossed behind his back. He offered a sly wave and Loki swallowed thickly. Nothing was righteous and grand about this, but—no, he mustn’t think. Ebony Maw’s cold, slender fingers had clawed into his brain; his thoughts were bared like the rocks of Asgard’s shore. He realized woozily that the memories of his ho—his residence were shrouded and vague. It had been so long since he’s seen the sun.
“I thank you for your gift, Almighty Thanos,” Loki gritted out from between his teeth. The pain in his stomach had escalated until it felt as if something were clawing him open from the inside-out.
“I’m sure you’re already aware of the poison,” Thanos said.
“Y—yes. The lesson is quite… effective.”
“Good. I requested the guards to stop feeding you. I wanted to see how much I could trust you.”
“Why not just kill me if I’m clearly such—such a nuisance?”
Thanos sighed. “You are a skilled fighter and my most valued tool for the retrieval of the Space Stone. Despite what you may think, I’m not heartless. When we rescued you from space, blue as the sea and not breathing, I saw the fighter in you. I showed you mercy, even when you attempted to kill me when you woke. Savagery is among the wealthy and war and famine, I will spare the universe from all, as I will spare you from shadows.”
“Torture is hardly mercy,” Loki said.
You know better, vermin, slithered the Maw’s voice into Loki’s mind. For every word of every question is a needle. That would make 16, now. You might want to bite that silver tongue of yours.
“Enough, Maw,” Thanos said. “Let him learn on his own.”
Ebony Maw smirked. “My sincerest apologies.”
Loki fought against a verbal hex upon both of them. Useless, anyway, as his magic had been disabled—but he had yet to figure out exactly how. It was a smart move, admittedly, to extract certain memories from his brain. To flip through his entire existence as if a box of old files, to rummage around and prune anything they didn’t want: evidence, motivation, his hard-wired resistance to pain. A brilliant, horrifying tactic of manipulation.
“What shall you have me do?” Loki asked, voice thin. Shall I suspend myself with chains while you poke a knife into my intestines? Will you puncture those wretched needles into my skin? Or will you starve me until my flesh eats itself?
Thanos opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by a loud rumble from Loki’s stomach. He smiled.
“Still hungry?”
You may want to tell him the truth.
Get out of my head, Loki thought. He pressed his lips tightly together. “Marginally.”
Thanos rose to his feet and turned the key that opened Loki’s cell. Slowly, the orange forcefield between him and Thanos wavered, and then fizzled out entirely. Loki shrunk in on himself, stomach flipping. Damned body betraying him.
Loki licked his chapped, bloodied lips as Thanos retrieved something from Ebony Maw. When he turned back around, Loki’s heart plummeted. It was the bag of potatoes he had stolen out of. The very same ones that poisoned him. A tsunami roared through his head and when his vision cleared Thanos’ face loomed three feet before him, one massive, armor-clad hand extending a lone potato.
“Eat.”
Loki moaned. “I can’t.”
An oddly empathetic look steeled Thanos’ features. “The poison was synthesized regarding your body composition. Designed to cause illness but not to kill. This will serve as the beginning of your lesson.”
“And the rest…?”
“Will rely on how you perform now. If you refuse to eat, the Maw will be happy to encourage you.”
Loki clenched his jaw and took the proffered potato. Thanos and the Maw and several guards watched him with interest and curled lips and hungry eyes. Loki damned them all, prayed to the Norns, and took a bite.
The potato was soft on the outside and moderately rotten, but so were most food items on Sanctuary. Loki grimaced as he chewed and fought to swallow. He glared at Thanos’ prying face.
“You’re getting too thin. Eat the rest,” Thanos said, lowering himself to the floor across from Loki and crossing his legs. Ebony maw shuffled in and slinked into a corner. Between Thanos’ mammoth figure and the minuscule scale of the cell, Loki struggled to breathe. He eyed the open doorway to his cell.
Escape and you shall swallow your own tongue, the Maw reminded him.
Loki glanced between the door and the bag of potatoes laid on the floor in front of him. His brain felt like cotton and his vision swirled, and by the fifth potato, something in his mind snapped and his mouth opened and he begged.
The Maw’s voice in his head spat threats but Loki couldn’t focus through the heat baking his brain or the jagged teeth ripping his stomach open, serrated and salivating.
“I’ll never steal again, I swear,” Loki said through stuttering gasps, on his knees, forehead pressed against the stone floor.
“Remember what I told you,” Thanos’ voice said, but through all the fuzz in Loki’s head it sounded more like Odin.
And then Loki looked up at his father and his eyes widened and Odin spoke of strange worlds where the grass was blue and the sun was blue and Loki—Loki was blue. Loki was blue. That wasn’t… right. Was it?
Loki opened his mouth to ask his father and then his stomach tore in half, reality slamming back into him with a violent retch. By the third wave of vomiting, the contents of his stomach had turned nearly black with blood.
“Interesting,” Thanos said. “You haven’t turned blue for a while.”
Loki looked down at his hands pressed against the floor—abominably, disgustingly blue. A sob wrenched from his lungs.
“Make it stop,” he said. “I beg you.”
Thanos hummed thoughtfully, rising to his feet. “This is where you belong.” Loki watched as his golden boots clattered closer. “At my feet.”
Loki scrambled backward, his back hitting the wall with a dull thud. “No.”
He pleased Thanos in many shameful, foul ways, but he did not kneel. Thanos was a sadistic tyrant, he was not a king. Not a god.
“Kneel, Prince.”
“No,” Loki growled.
Thanos sighed and tangled a giant fist into Loki’s hair, yanking him closer. “You still have much to learn. I will not say it again. Kneel to your savior.”
Loki flailed and screamed and kicked against Thanos’ grip, but the Titan’s extraordinary strength forced him to the floor. A cold prick of metal pressed against Loki’s neck and his breath caught in his lungs. Slowly and shakily, Loki lowered himself into a kneel before Thanos’ boots. A hint of his reflection gleamed in the polished gold. Pale, blue face. Red eyes. Matted hair.
“Good,” Thanos’ voice rumbled from above him. “Now stay there.”
“For how long?” Loki said.
“Long enough.”
Time swam through the room like cold honey, and Loki couldn’t be sure how much of it had passed before his stomach lurched and he threw up again, but it had to have been at least ten minutes. The cell stunk of iron and vomit and rot and he gagged weakly, bringing up a measly string of blood. His ears filled with a harsh ringing and darkness swept over the room.
“That’s enough,” Thanos said, but Loki’s consciousness had already slipped.
“Why are you covered in blood?” came a muffled female voice through Loki’s waking.
“Because I was poisoned,” he tried to say, but it came out more like, “b’cs’I’ssss poisnnn’d.”
Somehow, Gamora understood. “You poor thing.”
Loki cleared his throat. The absolute last person he wanted to talk to was Thanos’ daughter. “Don’t pity me.”
“You’re a pitiful creature.”
Loki shot her a glare. “I was a king.”
“And you will be again.”
“So he’s shared his plans with you.” Loki propped himself against the wall and sighed. “What, pray tell, does the daughter of Thanos think about my fate?”
“I think you’re a very sad man.”
“Highly irrelevant.”
“And I think you will die.”
Loki scrubbed a hand down his blood-caked face. “How encouraging. Why even bother speaking to me?”
“You looked like you needed a change of clothes. Don’t overthink it, Asgardian.”
Before he could stop himself, Loki blurted, “I’m not Asgardian.”
“Oh?” Gamora said. “But you’re from Asgard, aren’t you?”
“I’m—I’m Jotun. I was born on Jotunheim, to Jotun parents.”
Gamora’s brows inched upward. “So your father is not Odin?”
“I was adopted.” Loki glanced away uncomfortably.
A crackle of the forcefield powering off turned his gaze upward. Gamora tossed a pair of loose, ratted garments inside the cell. Loki bit his tongue, hesitating.
“I guess we are alike,” Gamora said. “Take them. They’re yours.”
Perhaps some water? Loki’s brain urged, but Gamora had already slipped away into the shadows. With a quivering hand (pale and blessedly porcelain, he noted), Loki snatched the garments and hastily dressed himself. He felt better, he realized, but not entirely healed. Then again, he couldn’t remember the last time he was, on this Norns-forsaken vessel.
His stomach had stopped raveling itself into knots and his mind felt clearer. Alas, the hunger remained. It might’ve been another few days until he was allowed to eat again, but the feeling was adaptable and therefore bearable. Most of the time.
Until then, he would wait. And once this was all over and Thanos was a distant memory, he would fulfill his destiny as King.