"Pure Insanity" 2/?
Title: "Pure Insanity" 2/?
Author: Lena
Fandom: Marvel
Warnings: Foul language, some violence, and I don't know what else. I'll update this as the story spews forth.
Rating: R (The version of Tony Stark in this story is RIDICULOUSLY foul mouthed.)
Disclaimer: Marvel is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary: A man insists that he's Loki of Asgard, and ends up in a mental institution. Was he really sent here as punishment for his misdeeds in New York as he insists, or is he just a sadly deranged soul? Your guess is as good as mine.
Beta'd By: Just me tonight, kids. Feel free to correct anything you see. My grammar sucks balls.
Chapter Two:
"Reality is that thing that doesn't go away when I stop believing in it" Philip K. Dick
Loki hated to admit to the fact that he was almost enjoying Tony Stark’s company while stuck in this prison. If anyone asked him (which they seemed to do, constantly), he would explain that it was only because the rest of the people in this place were so damn intolerable. However, he tended to usually just sit during his ‘sessions’ and continue to not talk to any of the doctors. He found them to be especially moronic.
He was already losing track of time in this place. When you stared at the same few walls every day, it was easy to forget just what day it was supposed to be. His best guess was that he had been here for over a month. It was in the morning time when he was dragged off for a personal meeting with a doctor, one William Rankins, whom Loki knew to truly be Phil Coulson. He had to meet with this bloody man several days a week, and spent most of his time with his arms crossed over his chest and staring off into the distance.
“Jeremy, why do you spend most of your time here not talking to me? We know that you’ll talk to other patients,” Coulson said to him. “Do you hold some ill will against the doctors?”
Loki didn’t say anything right away, looking down and checking his fingernails. He was usually so particular about his appearance, but he had let himself get dirty here. It was hard to keep his nails clean. “Why won’t you people allow me to keep up my appearance? My nails are filthy,” he grumbled.
“Jeremy, we’re trying to talk about things that are more important than your nails right now,” Coulson told him. He set down the pen that he was holding onto his desk. “I know that you’ve started talking to Louis Gooden. He seems to be the only person here with whom you’ve held more than one amicable conversation.”
“You mean Stark,” Loki corrected. “He’s the only person here who isn’t a complete moron.” Stark was the only one who was willing to believe him, that seemed smart enough to understand that this reality was a lie. He wondered why Stark was seemingly stuck here with him. Everyone else seemed to completely believe the lie but them.
In addition, everyone else here thought that they were crazy.
“I’ve noticed that, when you do deign to talk to other people, sometimes you call them different names,” Coulson continued. “Why is that?”
Loki sighed, squeezing his fists shut. “Are you blind or just stupid?” he snapped, slowly cocking his head actually to look at Coulson. He wondered if there was a scar on his chest from where he had stabbed him before, in that Helicarrier. “Do you really not remember anything from before? Nothing at all?”
“I’m sorry, Jeremy, but I don’t know what you mean,” Coulson told him.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT NAME!!” Loki yelled, jumping up from the chair he was sitting in. “You don’t remember me at all? Remember what I did to you? Then maybe I will have to remind you, Phil Coulson!” He jumped onto the man’s desk, not paying any mind as he pushed his chair back to get away. Loki snatched the pen off Coulson’s desk, leaning forward and slamming it into his chest. “Do I still lack conviction, Phil Coulson?” He grabbed the now screaming man by his shirt, pulling him closer. “Now you will always remember my name, and it’s Loki.”
He didn’t even hear the orderlies run into the office, grabbing his arms and pulling him off the desk, forcing him to let go of Coulson. When he was slammed against the floor, he looked up to see Clint Barton of all people standing above him. “You look much different when you’re not under my control,” Loki commented with a grin as he looked up, letting the archer hold him down. He had made his point. There was no need to fight and get up. “You looked better that way.”
“Damn, you’re a fruitcake,” Barton said, grabbing Loki so that he could pull him out of the room.
Loki could see that someone was helping Coulson. “I would suggest getting my name right next time, Coulson,” Loki said with a manic laugh as he was taken from the room. His laugh could be heard all over the building, though.
OoOoOoOo
“Doctor Godfrey, we can’t keep having disturbances like this,” Dr. Thomas Jones, the head administrator of the hospital, said as he looked at the younger doctor sitting in front of him. “Jeremy Elder needs more care than our facility provides.”
Godfrey ran his hand through his messy dark hair, sighing. “Dr. Jones, his mother gives A LOT of money to the hospital. She’s insisting that he stay here so that she is close enough to come visit him.” Not that he was usually one for these sorts of things, but he earnestly believing that he could help Jeremy Elder if given enough time.
Dr. Jones looked at Godfrey steadily with his one good eye. “I understand that you think you can help this young man, but he’s demonstrated time and again, starting with his own brother, a propensity for violence. The only way that I think we could keep him around here is to dose him full of sedatives, and that isn’t exactly going to ‘help’ him, don’t you think?”
“I understand where you’re coming from, I really do,” Godfrey said to him. “Let me try one more doctor. She’s an old colleague of mine. She works at a nearby hospital, but I think she could really do good work with him.”
Jones’s face was a blank slate as he seemed to think on it for a moment. “If you really think that she can help, then call her. One more incident, though, and we’ll need to ship him somewhere else.”
OoOoOoOo
Loki didn’t think that they were ever going to let him out of his damn room. He was starting to wonder how hard it would be to break the window and climb out of it when one of the orderlies finally came and got him, walking him directly to another doctor’s office. The redheaded woman sitting inside was someone he recognized immediately, although he hadn’t seen her here up until this point. She had a pair of glasses perched on her nose, but otherwise Natasha Romanoff looked just as he remembered her.
He stayed next to the door, knowing that there was at least one orderly standing on the other side of it, likely waiting for him to attack Romanoff as he had done Coulson. He was actually considering it when she finally spoke. “Please feel free to take a seat, Loki,” she said, motioning to the chair in front of the desk.
He arched an eyebrow at her, as she was the first of any of the ‘staff’ of this place that had called him by his actual name rather than this ‘Jeremy’ nonsense everyone seemed to insist upon. “You know who I am?” he asked, keeping his guard up even as he did as she asked, slowly walking over and taking the seat she suggested.
“I only know what I’ve researched,” Romanoff explained. “Loki, God of Mischief and Tricks from Norse mythology.” She leaned forward on the desk. “You stabbed my last colleague for getting the name wrong. I figured I should do some research before coming in to work with you.”
Loki chuckled. This was definitely the Russian spy that he remembered. She was trying to placate him by calling him the name that he demanded, that he knew that was his. Still, if it helped him to get out of that damn room more, he was more than happy to play along, just a little bit. “What else did your research tell you?” he asked her.
She picked up a notebook, reading off it as if she had made notes to bring. “You’re closely associated with fire and magic, a shape shifter, and can be either malicious or heroic, depending on the situation.”
He sighed when she mentioned that he could occasionally be heroic. “Anything about me that may have been heroic died a long time ago,” he remarked, staring out of the window for a moment. “Long forgotten to ages past.”
“Even the worst people have it in them to be heroic,” Romanoff said to him, writing in her notebook. “When was the last time you remember being heroic, Loki?”
He shook his head, not wanting to discuss that. He pushed his fingers through his long dark hair, pulling his knees up to his chest. He rested his chin on his knees, staring off into the distance at the moment. “Why are you here, Romanoff?” he asked her.
He didn’t notice her make note of the name that he called her. “To help you,” she said plainly.
“If you want to help me, then get me out of this place. I’m not insane, I’m simply stuck here,” he explained. “How well would you react if you were being imprisoned?”
“We’re holding you here because you attacked your brother,” Romanoff explained. “Your family feared for your sanity, Loki.”
“The big oaf is fine,” Loki grumbled. “And I don’t just mean here. This whole place is just some...construct created by my adoptive father. You’re not a stupid woman. You wouldn’t have gotten to the place you have if you were. Do you not feel that this place, this existence is wrong?”
She stared at him evenly for a moment, studying him before answer. “I’m sorry, Loki, but I don’t. I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that I do,” she said. “Tell me more about it. Maybe that will help me realize it more.”
He nodded. Maybe the more people that he broke free of the unreasonable hold this place had on him, the more likely he would be able to escape.
OoOoOoOo
Doctor Christine Donahue sat in front of Dr. Jones’s desk, sitting beside her old friend William Godfrey. He had called her here in an effort to gain some help for a patient, and she hoped that she could continue to do some good for them.
“He’s convinced that he’s the Norse god Loki,” she said, looking down occasionally to her notes as she talked. “He believes that he’s being punished by his father, Odin, by being placed into a false reality. He seems to add people to his reality as soon as he meets them. One of your orderlies and I are super assassins who work for some agency called SHIELD, along with his doctor from before. He thinks that you,” she indicated Godfrey, “are a scientist who occasionally turns into this green rage monster that is capable of tearing apart cities, and that his friend Louis Gooden is a genius inventor who created a metal suit that he can fly around and fight crime in. It’s quite the complex universe that he’s created.” She looked up at Jones. “I’m sure that he’ll decide that you’re the head of the spy agency or something when he actually gets to see you.”
Dr. Jones chuckled. “Crafty little fucker, isn’t he?” he asked. “It all sounds like he’s a kid who reads too many comic books or something.”
Godfrey shook his head. “I went through his room before I brought him here. He had a lot of books, but no comics. He didn’t have any books on Norse mythology, either. Did he mention that he thinks that he’s adopted?”
Donahue nodded. “I had assumed that he was, that this psychosis developed from feelings from that and manifested.”
Godfrey shook his head. “Both of his parents insist that he’s not adopted, and I even went behind their backs and researched his birth. He’s really not adopted. I suppose he may feel that way in comparison to his brother. This almost seems more complicated than a simple inferiority complex. He’s created an entire world inside of his head and adapted all of us to being in it. It’s amazing, really.”
“Don’t think about writing a book about him just yet,” Jones ordered quickly. “We’ve only gotten through one session without him attacking anyone. Donahue, are you up for more?” She nodded. “Good, then it’s at least a start.”
OoOoOoOo
It was after three sessions with the Russian spy before he was allowed to be outside of his room again. He supposed they wanted to see if he would attack anyone else, especially her. Despite the fact that he was certain that she didn’t believe him, it did feel nice to have someone that listened to him and didn’t call him by that stupid name that he had been given.
When he was allowed to go outside and walk the grounds, it didn’t take long at all for Stark to find him. “I was fucking certain that they had shipped you off somewhere else after you attacked that doctor!” he said, seemingly happy to see him. “They brought in a babe of a doctor to talk to you, though. I should start stabbing doctors with pens if we can get more pretty ones like that around here.”
“I don’t think that they will appreciate you stabbing doctors just so that you can get better looking ones, Stark,” Loki remarked with a slight smirk. He kept walking, assuming that Stark would simply follow as he headed to a bench, sitting down. Stark did follow, but he chose to pace in front of the bench rather than sit beside him. “How long was I locked away for?”
Stark shrugged. “I don’t keep up with time very well,” he admitted. “I did stop taking the meds, though. Got all these ideas flowing through my head now. It really does feel like this place is one big piece of fake reality bullshit. How the hell do we get out of here?”
“I am working on that, Stark,” Loki explained. If he weren’t used to Stark by now, he would find the man’s rapid fire delivery of anything he said annoying. Right now, he was putting up with it simply because he seemed to be the only person willing to see the truth. “You should talk quieter. I am still being followed.” He looked in the direction that he was sure Barton was in. The man was still good at hiding, even in this incarnation.
“Yeah, fucking orderlies follow us everywhere,” Stark grumbled. “Seriously, though, we need to get the hell out of here. I tried telling my sister when she last visited me that this place was fake, and she just cried and said that I was getting worse. I think she’s a part of the conspiracy.”
“You are right about one thing: we need to get out of here.” Loki wasn’t certain when he decided that he would be taking Stark with him when he escaped, but it had happened. Maybe he was just desperate for the company. For once, a person hadn’t pushed him away or thought that something was wrong with him, even if he had thrown the man through a window once.
“Too bad you aren’t magical like you used to be,” Stark remarked. “Then you could just like, magic us out of here or something.”
“No, that would be too easy,” Loki said. It would almost take the fun out of it. He had to admit one thing: this was the first real challenge that he had faced in a long time. He’d almost thank his father for that if he didn’t want to strangle the man on sight.
Author: Lena
Fandom: Marvel
Warnings: Foul language, some violence, and I don't know what else. I'll update this as the story spews forth.
Rating: R (The version of Tony Stark in this story is RIDICULOUSLY foul mouthed.)
Disclaimer: Marvel is god, I'm just a lowly worshiper, blah, blah, blah.
Summary: A man insists that he's Loki of Asgard, and ends up in a mental institution. Was he really sent here as punishment for his misdeeds in New York as he insists, or is he just a sadly deranged soul? Your guess is as good as mine.
Beta'd By: Just me tonight, kids. Feel free to correct anything you see. My grammar sucks balls.
Chapter Two:
"Reality is that thing that doesn't go away when I stop believing in it" Philip K. Dick
Loki hated to admit to the fact that he was almost enjoying Tony Stark’s company while stuck in this prison. If anyone asked him (which they seemed to do, constantly), he would explain that it was only because the rest of the people in this place were so damn intolerable. However, he tended to usually just sit during his ‘sessions’ and continue to not talk to any of the doctors. He found them to be especially moronic.
He was already losing track of time in this place. When you stared at the same few walls every day, it was easy to forget just what day it was supposed to be. His best guess was that he had been here for over a month. It was in the morning time when he was dragged off for a personal meeting with a doctor, one William Rankins, whom Loki knew to truly be Phil Coulson. He had to meet with this bloody man several days a week, and spent most of his time with his arms crossed over his chest and staring off into the distance.
“Jeremy, why do you spend most of your time here not talking to me? We know that you’ll talk to other patients,” Coulson said to him. “Do you hold some ill will against the doctors?”
Loki didn’t say anything right away, looking down and checking his fingernails. He was usually so particular about his appearance, but he had let himself get dirty here. It was hard to keep his nails clean. “Why won’t you people allow me to keep up my appearance? My nails are filthy,” he grumbled.
“Jeremy, we’re trying to talk about things that are more important than your nails right now,” Coulson told him. He set down the pen that he was holding onto his desk. “I know that you’ve started talking to Louis Gooden. He seems to be the only person here with whom you’ve held more than one amicable conversation.”
“You mean Stark,” Loki corrected. “He’s the only person here who isn’t a complete moron.” Stark was the only one who was willing to believe him, that seemed smart enough to understand that this reality was a lie. He wondered why Stark was seemingly stuck here with him. Everyone else seemed to completely believe the lie but them.
In addition, everyone else here thought that they were crazy.
“I’ve noticed that, when you do deign to talk to other people, sometimes you call them different names,” Coulson continued. “Why is that?”
Loki sighed, squeezing his fists shut. “Are you blind or just stupid?” he snapped, slowly cocking his head actually to look at Coulson. He wondered if there was a scar on his chest from where he had stabbed him before, in that Helicarrier. “Do you really not remember anything from before? Nothing at all?”
“I’m sorry, Jeremy, but I don’t know what you mean,” Coulson told him.
“STOP CALLING ME THAT NAME!!” Loki yelled, jumping up from the chair he was sitting in. “You don’t remember me at all? Remember what I did to you? Then maybe I will have to remind you, Phil Coulson!” He jumped onto the man’s desk, not paying any mind as he pushed his chair back to get away. Loki snatched the pen off Coulson’s desk, leaning forward and slamming it into his chest. “Do I still lack conviction, Phil Coulson?” He grabbed the now screaming man by his shirt, pulling him closer. “Now you will always remember my name, and it’s Loki.”
He didn’t even hear the orderlies run into the office, grabbing his arms and pulling him off the desk, forcing him to let go of Coulson. When he was slammed against the floor, he looked up to see Clint Barton of all people standing above him. “You look much different when you’re not under my control,” Loki commented with a grin as he looked up, letting the archer hold him down. He had made his point. There was no need to fight and get up. “You looked better that way.”
“Damn, you’re a fruitcake,” Barton said, grabbing Loki so that he could pull him out of the room.
Loki could see that someone was helping Coulson. “I would suggest getting my name right next time, Coulson,” Loki said with a manic laugh as he was taken from the room. His laugh could be heard all over the building, though.
OoOoOoOo
“Doctor Godfrey, we can’t keep having disturbances like this,” Dr. Thomas Jones, the head administrator of the hospital, said as he looked at the younger doctor sitting in front of him. “Jeremy Elder needs more care than our facility provides.”
Godfrey ran his hand through his messy dark hair, sighing. “Dr. Jones, his mother gives A LOT of money to the hospital. She’s insisting that he stay here so that she is close enough to come visit him.” Not that he was usually one for these sorts of things, but he earnestly believing that he could help Jeremy Elder if given enough time.
Dr. Jones looked at Godfrey steadily with his one good eye. “I understand that you think you can help this young man, but he’s demonstrated time and again, starting with his own brother, a propensity for violence. The only way that I think we could keep him around here is to dose him full of sedatives, and that isn’t exactly going to ‘help’ him, don’t you think?”
“I understand where you’re coming from, I really do,” Godfrey said to him. “Let me try one more doctor. She’s an old colleague of mine. She works at a nearby hospital, but I think she could really do good work with him.”
Jones’s face was a blank slate as he seemed to think on it for a moment. “If you really think that she can help, then call her. One more incident, though, and we’ll need to ship him somewhere else.”
OoOoOoOo
Loki didn’t think that they were ever going to let him out of his damn room. He was starting to wonder how hard it would be to break the window and climb out of it when one of the orderlies finally came and got him, walking him directly to another doctor’s office. The redheaded woman sitting inside was someone he recognized immediately, although he hadn’t seen her here up until this point. She had a pair of glasses perched on her nose, but otherwise Natasha Romanoff looked just as he remembered her.
He stayed next to the door, knowing that there was at least one orderly standing on the other side of it, likely waiting for him to attack Romanoff as he had done Coulson. He was actually considering it when she finally spoke. “Please feel free to take a seat, Loki,” she said, motioning to the chair in front of the desk.
He arched an eyebrow at her, as she was the first of any of the ‘staff’ of this place that had called him by his actual name rather than this ‘Jeremy’ nonsense everyone seemed to insist upon. “You know who I am?” he asked, keeping his guard up even as he did as she asked, slowly walking over and taking the seat she suggested.
“I only know what I’ve researched,” Romanoff explained. “Loki, God of Mischief and Tricks from Norse mythology.” She leaned forward on the desk. “You stabbed my last colleague for getting the name wrong. I figured I should do some research before coming in to work with you.”
Loki chuckled. This was definitely the Russian spy that he remembered. She was trying to placate him by calling him the name that he demanded, that he knew that was his. Still, if it helped him to get out of that damn room more, he was more than happy to play along, just a little bit. “What else did your research tell you?” he asked her.
She picked up a notebook, reading off it as if she had made notes to bring. “You’re closely associated with fire and magic, a shape shifter, and can be either malicious or heroic, depending on the situation.”
He sighed when she mentioned that he could occasionally be heroic. “Anything about me that may have been heroic died a long time ago,” he remarked, staring out of the window for a moment. “Long forgotten to ages past.”
“Even the worst people have it in them to be heroic,” Romanoff said to him, writing in her notebook. “When was the last time you remember being heroic, Loki?”
He shook his head, not wanting to discuss that. He pushed his fingers through his long dark hair, pulling his knees up to his chest. He rested his chin on his knees, staring off into the distance at the moment. “Why are you here, Romanoff?” he asked her.
He didn’t notice her make note of the name that he called her. “To help you,” she said plainly.
“If you want to help me, then get me out of this place. I’m not insane, I’m simply stuck here,” he explained. “How well would you react if you were being imprisoned?”
“We’re holding you here because you attacked your brother,” Romanoff explained. “Your family feared for your sanity, Loki.”
“The big oaf is fine,” Loki grumbled. “And I don’t just mean here. This whole place is just some...construct created by my adoptive father. You’re not a stupid woman. You wouldn’t have gotten to the place you have if you were. Do you not feel that this place, this existence is wrong?”
She stared at him evenly for a moment, studying him before answer. “I’m sorry, Loki, but I don’t. I’m not going to lie to you and pretend that I do,” she said. “Tell me more about it. Maybe that will help me realize it more.”
He nodded. Maybe the more people that he broke free of the unreasonable hold this place had on him, the more likely he would be able to escape.
OoOoOoOo
Doctor Christine Donahue sat in front of Dr. Jones’s desk, sitting beside her old friend William Godfrey. He had called her here in an effort to gain some help for a patient, and she hoped that she could continue to do some good for them.
“He’s convinced that he’s the Norse god Loki,” she said, looking down occasionally to her notes as she talked. “He believes that he’s being punished by his father, Odin, by being placed into a false reality. He seems to add people to his reality as soon as he meets them. One of your orderlies and I are super assassins who work for some agency called SHIELD, along with his doctor from before. He thinks that you,” she indicated Godfrey, “are a scientist who occasionally turns into this green rage monster that is capable of tearing apart cities, and that his friend Louis Gooden is a genius inventor who created a metal suit that he can fly around and fight crime in. It’s quite the complex universe that he’s created.” She looked up at Jones. “I’m sure that he’ll decide that you’re the head of the spy agency or something when he actually gets to see you.”
Dr. Jones chuckled. “Crafty little fucker, isn’t he?” he asked. “It all sounds like he’s a kid who reads too many comic books or something.”
Godfrey shook his head. “I went through his room before I brought him here. He had a lot of books, but no comics. He didn’t have any books on Norse mythology, either. Did he mention that he thinks that he’s adopted?”
Donahue nodded. “I had assumed that he was, that this psychosis developed from feelings from that and manifested.”
Godfrey shook his head. “Both of his parents insist that he’s not adopted, and I even went behind their backs and researched his birth. He’s really not adopted. I suppose he may feel that way in comparison to his brother. This almost seems more complicated than a simple inferiority complex. He’s created an entire world inside of his head and adapted all of us to being in it. It’s amazing, really.”
“Don’t think about writing a book about him just yet,” Jones ordered quickly. “We’ve only gotten through one session without him attacking anyone. Donahue, are you up for more?” She nodded. “Good, then it’s at least a start.”
OoOoOoOo
It was after three sessions with the Russian spy before he was allowed to be outside of his room again. He supposed they wanted to see if he would attack anyone else, especially her. Despite the fact that he was certain that she didn’t believe him, it did feel nice to have someone that listened to him and didn’t call him by that stupid name that he had been given.
When he was allowed to go outside and walk the grounds, it didn’t take long at all for Stark to find him. “I was fucking certain that they had shipped you off somewhere else after you attacked that doctor!” he said, seemingly happy to see him. “They brought in a babe of a doctor to talk to you, though. I should start stabbing doctors with pens if we can get more pretty ones like that around here.”
“I don’t think that they will appreciate you stabbing doctors just so that you can get better looking ones, Stark,” Loki remarked with a slight smirk. He kept walking, assuming that Stark would simply follow as he headed to a bench, sitting down. Stark did follow, but he chose to pace in front of the bench rather than sit beside him. “How long was I locked away for?”
Stark shrugged. “I don’t keep up with time very well,” he admitted. “I did stop taking the meds, though. Got all these ideas flowing through my head now. It really does feel like this place is one big piece of fake reality bullshit. How the hell do we get out of here?”
“I am working on that, Stark,” Loki explained. If he weren’t used to Stark by now, he would find the man’s rapid fire delivery of anything he said annoying. Right now, he was putting up with it simply because he seemed to be the only person willing to see the truth. “You should talk quieter. I am still being followed.” He looked in the direction that he was sure Barton was in. The man was still good at hiding, even in this incarnation.
“Yeah, fucking orderlies follow us everywhere,” Stark grumbled. “Seriously, though, we need to get the hell out of here. I tried telling my sister when she last visited me that this place was fake, and she just cried and said that I was getting worse. I think she’s a part of the conspiracy.”
“You are right about one thing: we need to get out of here.” Loki wasn’t certain when he decided that he would be taking Stark with him when he escaped, but it had happened. Maybe he was just desperate for the company. For once, a person hadn’t pushed him away or thought that something was wrong with him, even if he had thrown the man through a window once.
“Too bad you aren’t magical like you used to be,” Stark remarked. “Then you could just like, magic us out of here or something.”
“No, that would be too easy,” Loki said. It would almost take the fun out of it. He had to admit one thing: this was the first real challenge that he had faced in a long time. He’d almost thank his father for that if he didn’t want to strangle the man on sight.