[GEN] or Loki/Victor von Doom. Loki!whump. Angst.
anonymous
May 2 2013, 03:05:44 UTC
Okay, we all have seen stories where Loki after being brutalised becomes the responsibility of his family or someone from Avengers. I want it different ths time.
Chitauri get Loki into their claws and torture him almost to the insanity, until he's battered all over: physically, mentally and emotionally. When after a long time of pure agony he's no longer fun, Thanos orders to throw him out, but not to kill him, because he doesn't deserve Death; he deserves to live with everything they have done to him, or die by his own hand. While torturing him by turning his mind inside out, they discovered in his thoughts that Loki's family no longer wants him, no longer cares (at least, this is what Loki is sure about; it's not necessarily true), but they also saw an ally that possibly (!) cares enough to take care of what remains of Loki at least for the time being. So they decide to give Loki at Doom's mercy, either to get killed, or to be taken care of.
One night Victor locates something at an entrance of his castle and goes to check what it is. He doesn't recognise Loki at first, only sees an unconscious body, entirely covered in blood, naked, except for a sheet wrapped around it. He finds out that it's Loki and that he's still alive, and takes him inside the castle.
Maybe Doom is merciful to Loki in the name of their past partnership, maybe he feels more than that.
It takes him quite a while to patch Loki up. Loki's magic doesn't work properly anymore, so it doesn't help him to heal.
When in a few days Loki wakes up, he's catatonic, but then he has a PTSD and a lot of painful flashbacks. A few times Victor thinks it would be wise to put Loki off his misery (but still doesn't), because this wreck very remotely reminds him of his canny, mischievous partner that he had grown fond of.
Loki, when he becomes more or less conscious and capable of thinking is afraid that Doom will throw him out soon. He has nowhere to go, and without his magic he won't be able to defend or hide himself. He thinks that exactly because his magic doesn't work properly, Victor won't tolerate his presence due to his uselessness. But when it doesn't happen Loki starts thinking that maybe, just maybe, Victor actually cares. He thinks it's ridiculous of him to think that way, but he's still hopeful.
I'd be happy to see eventual Doom/Loki.
+ 10 When Loki gets too overwhelmed, he tries to commit suicide, but fails for any reason you find appropriate here. + 1000000 if you make everything graphic.
Fill: Strange Bedfellows 1/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 01:32:09 UTC
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Who in God's name had left this mess on his doorstep?
Victor von Doom had seen his share of the dead and nearly-dead, but they did not usually turn up of their own accord; typically, he knew exactly where they came from.
So what was this bloody bundle? A threat? A gift, perhaps, of a fallen enemy from a would-be ally?
Victor knelt to inspect the bundle of flesh and bone concealed by the bloody sheet, and he paled.
Loki.
There was no mistaking the trickster god's face; sharp features, face even whiter than usual from - death? No. A cursory inspection revealed that his once-time ally still had a pulse.
A very faint pulse. And very faint breath.
What rang more alarm bells than anything in Victor's head was this: who was even capable of doing something like this to a god?
And why weren't Loki's wounds healing?
This was a threat, Victor decided. Definitely a threat. He looked up and scanned the horizon warily.
If someone's laid a trap for me, they chose piss-poor bait. As though I'd risk my neck for this one...
But if someone was trying to scare him, they were doing a very good job.
With great reluctance he gathered the bloody bundle into his arms - and wrinkled his nose. Loki was limp as a corpse and dripping crimson. A glimpse under the soaked fabric revealed injuries seemingly without end. It seemed that every inch of the chaos god's bare flesh had been in some way marred by his tormentor. And even Loki, it seemed, had been powerless to defend himself from these forces.
Yes, they are doing a very effective job of scaring me.
Someone had done this to Loki, his former partner, and whoever it was had shown that they knew exactly where to find Doctor Doom.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 2/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 01:49:49 UTC
Victor knew what he had to do.
Loki had been left alive, clearly, for a reason. He had been left very precisely, very barely alive. And he had information, Victor was willing to bet, on who exactly was threatening him and why.
Now if he would just wake up.
Human biology was one thing, Aesir another, and jotun - that was another thing altogether. Dr. Doom mustered his expertise, took his best guess, and started rehydrating the god with room-temperature saline.
It seemed to be working. Hour by hour, his patient's vitals climbed. The sickening black bruises even seemed to begin to pale, and the gashes in the battered god's flesh, Victor guessed, were shrinking imperceptibly beneath their scabs.
Thank the gods that jotun physiology was very, very resilient.
The question still remained: who had done this to Loki, and why?
It was a torture job that rivaled anything Doom or his cohorts had come up with. There had been some creativity, it seemed; some of the bruises and gashes seemed to have been inflicted from the inside, and Victor actually shuddered to imagine how that was accomplished. Innovative, certainly, and perhaps under other circumstances he'd have respected that. But now with this fragile, pale creature lying at death's door before him - a man he had known, if not as a friend then not as an enemy either...
A man whose fate may be tied to Victor's own, for why else would they have brought him here?
He palpated Loki's arm very gently, realized he feared to hurt the god even though he was obviously unconscious. And obviously in no shape to thrash around hard enough to wreck Doom's laboratory.
But still, he was gentle as his fingers traced the god's forearm, trying to determine how a particular puncture had been made from the inside out.
What he found sickened him; a tunnel had been bored through the muscle. Something had been inside Loki, probably something living; his torturers had put it into him and let it tunnel its way back out.
By the looks of things they had done this several times.
There was not a lot that could make Victor von Doom cringe, but this...
If it had not been someone he'd known as a strong, proud and ambitious cohort, he might have admired the work.
As it was, he needed air, desperately. So he rose, checked that Loki was restrained where he lay, that the IV bags were full, that the monitors on his vitals were reading properly - and left, washing his hands far longer than was necessary on the way out.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 3/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 02:48:13 UTC
On the second day, Victor thought to test the state of Loki's brain. He could not bring himself to shave the god's head in his current, defenseless state; felt for some reason that that would add immeasurably to his trauma. So instead he placed the electrodes, with excruciating care, along the god's hairline all the way around his scalp.
Loki did not move, did not respond, gave no sign of life beyond the unchanging beep-beep-beep of his pulse monitor during the entire procedure.
Victor was beginning to get worried.
He placed electrodes on Loki's arms as well - galvanic skin response would not tell him what the god's brain was doing, but it might be able to tell him if Loki was perceiving anything at all of the outside world.
The electroencepholagraph results brought relief. The god's brain was active - normal, almost. Loki's brainwaves were strong, synchronized, the pattern of REM sleep.
Loki was dreaming. And as he dreamed, his brain was re-inforcing memories, processing emotions - Doom could tell no more than that, for he could not carefully monitor the regions associated with specific emotions, but that Loki was dreaming meant that his brain was healing.
Probably. Victor still had no idea what the as-yet-unnamed bastards had done to him.
Now to measure sensory responses. He pried one of Loki's eyelids open, a delicate operation, for the jotun's skin seemed softer and more fragile than Victor ever remembered it seeming. It was almost as though Loki's torturers had turned him human.
His patient's pupil dilated. First one eye, then the other. That was good. That was excellent.
But the galvanic skin sensors showed no change. Loki's eyes perceived the light, but his consciousness did not. He was somewhere far, far removed, it seemed, somewhere in memories and dreams.
Then Victor made the mistake of testing his patient's pain response. He pricked the god's thumb with a needle - a sturdy needle, granted, for he did not expect this formerly immortal jotun to respond to a tiny prick, but when the needle pierced the skin of the god's thumb the results were violent.
Loki's hand fled the pain; his body arched off the table, and his throat began to scream in such intense terror that Doom had to stop himself from smothering the god just to make the deeply disturbing sounds stop.
By the time the episode was over, Doom was halfway on the other side of the lab, and he was shaking.
Who had done this to his former friend? And what did they want with him?
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 4/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 03:44:09 UTC
On the third day, numerous scans of the areas surrounding Doom's compound had shown no unusual threats. His attempts to trace the origin of Loki's torturer had been equally fruitless; he had been dropped from the air, or possibly via teleportation, but whoever did it covered their trail so well that not even Doom's most advanced equipment could pick up anything more than a random scattering of ripples in spacetime surrounding the event.
And so, Victor surveyed his patient critically. If leaving Loki here was a threat, then the threateners seemed in no hurry to get their specific point across.
Maybe they just wanted time for the reality of their horrific capabilities to sink in.
Doom made the mistake of picturing himself in his former ally's place; himself being beaten so brutally as to leave bruises the color of tar, himself being held down and cut, cut deep into muscle and skin, himself being restrained somehow and fed those horrible things who would eat their way out...
God, no. He shuddered.
Loki had still not responded to anything except pain. No light or color, no music or sound, seemed to wake the god. Did he not perceive these things, or had they somehow so deadened him to everything except pain and fear...
Acting on a hunch, Victor shouted at him, venting some of his frustration.
And Loki, in his sleep, recoiled. The galvanic monitors jumped. And - was that a whimper?
What in God's name had been done...
Somehow angrier than before, Victor barely remembered to restock the god's IV before he stalked out of the room.
He was going to find out who was responsible. A need, very faint, was beginning to grow in the back of his mind.
Beyond his need for safety, to prevent the same from being done to him, Victor von Doom was beginning to thirst for vengeance.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 5/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 04:15:21 UTC
On the fourth day, Dr. Doom entered his patient's room to find Loki's eyes open.
At first, he thought this was a good sign.
He fairly crept toward the god, not wanting to alarm him and elicit another round of screaming, caring even less to be perceived as an object of blame; if Loki believed that Victor was in league with his torturers, he'd never get any useful information out of the jotun at all.
But Loki simply stared, his eyes unfocused, or perhaps fixed on a point on the ceiling, as Victor von Doom advanced cautiously to the chair by his bed from whence he'd been reading the god's vitals.
Victor frowned.
"Loki?"
The galvanic monitors jumped, just barely.
"LOKI."
The eyes closed, too quickly, their lids pressing too tightly against a perceived hostile environment.
And damned if he knew where he got the idea, but it came into Victor's head to try stroking Loki's hair.
The creases in the god's brow relaxed. And then returned. And Loki seemed to be waging some sort of internal battle with himself as his brain waves shifted back to those of REM sleep, and as he, quite unexpectedly, reached out and clutched Victor's free hand with his own.
This was possibly the most horrifying development yet. Victor von Doom's former partner, the regal, elegant, eternally unflappable Loki - seemed to have been emotionally broken by whatever his tormentors put him through.
Victor fled the room, quickly; he needed to be sick.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 6/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 04:32:34 UTC
On the sixth day, Loki finally spoke.
His eyes were open again when Victor entered his room. The injuries to his face were slowly healing, leaving scabs and scars and bruises that were mottled yellow and purple now instead of black. And today, there was something decidedly Loki about the god's expression.
Again he said nothing as Victor approached the bed. But his air of studied regality seemed to have returned.
"Are you going to kill me now?" Loki asked, managing to sound casual despite his hoarse voice, when Dr. Doom sat down.
Victor has always been good at hiding surprise. "No. Of course not. You're safe here."
Loki closed his eyes. "That's what you always say."
"I...what?" Victor was growing desperate, watching his patient appear to retreat within himself again.
"In the dreams. You always say you won't hurt me. That you won't kill me, specifically. Why not? If you mean not to hurt me, why don't you do me this kindness?" The casual facade completely cracked on that last phrase, and now Loki was not only rasping but sounded as though he wanted to cry.
Dr. Doom had never been very good with emotional situations.
He put his hands, very gently, on Loki's shoulders; didn't want to harm the god, didn't want to scare him away, but needed a way to shake him if he started slipping into sleep again.
Loki opened his eyes and stared up at Victor dully.
"Do it. Do whatever you're going to do. I'm getting bored of this."
"I'm not going to do anything to you. Except take care of you." Now THAT was an un-Doom-like sentence if Victor had ever uttered one, but reassuring his patient seemed to be his only option...
Victor could see the sardonic irony, even in the faintest ghost of the smile that passed Loki's lips.
"I'm NOT going to hurt you. No one is. You're safe here." It was a blatant lie, for Doom had no idea what had hurt Loki in the first place or how to defend himself against it, but that was scarcely useful information to give the god...
Loki's mouth began to twitch, and his ribcage to stutter. Victor thought that he was having some sort of fit until he realized that Loki was laughing. It was the laugh of someone who hadn't had the freedom of his own muscles in a long time - the laugh of someone who had damn near forgotten how.
His lips now pulled into the semblance of a smile, Loki grinned up at Victor von Doom and his eyes actually sparkled a little.
"I'm dreaming anyway," he rasped, "so what the hell?" And then he lifted himself far enough off the bed to plant an open-mouthed kiss on his caretaker's scarred and mangled lips.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 7/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 04:43:24 UTC
Why had he stopped wearing the mask within the confines of his own fortress?
This is, comically, the first thing that Victor von Doom thinks as he finds a bedridden chaos god trying to make out with his face. And because he thinks it, he doesn't pull away immediately; he is too stunned.
After the half-seconds' delay, by which time Loki is licking lasciviously at his lower lip, he manages to shove the trickster down and sit back down in his own chair.
He really should have worn the mask today.
But it is apparent that Loki is in no way bothered by what has transpired. And the reason soon becomes clear: he doesn't think that any of this is real.
Well that's an interesting development. Perhaps Victor can use it to his advantage.
"Loki," Dr. Doom clears his throat, and attempts to continue their conversation as though nothing mind-blowingly strange has just happened. "You say that you are dreaming - who is making you dream?"
"Nice try. But I know a hallucination when I see one."
"Humor me."
"Why bother?" Loki sighs, managing at first to seem merely exasperated as he sinks back onto the bed.
But then something changes, some thought passes through his mind, and suddenly the chaos god's face contorts and he is weeping, and trying to hide under the covers like a terrified child.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 7/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 04:56:57 UTC
Doom cannot bring himself to hold Loki after the kiss. It would be the best way, he knows, to ground the trickster, or at least convince him to stay in the land of the living long enough to reveal who has done all of this to him.
But he remembers too well the cool wetness of the other man's tongue on his mouth, the ONLY tongue other than Victor's own to grace it in quite some time, and that combine with the sudden mind-bending pitifulness of the former Loki is entirely too much to handle.
Loki does not live in Victor von Doom's reality. Victor is beginning to suspect that he never will again.
Which wouldn't be so bad, if Loki's alternate reality didn't seem to be one of inconceivable terror that had reduced Victor's former partner to...
A man with no inhibitions, because he doesn't think reality is real?
A frightened child, who seeks nothing at all but to avoid the next inevitable blow?
A catatonic shell, a corpse, unresponsive to any attempt to revive him?
Victor cannot avoid thinking about what this one-time threat to his own sovereignty now meant to him. The contrast between the Loki he had known and the creature which now lies, alternately catatonic, pitiful, or ridiculous in the next room.
He hadn't really thought that anything was capable of horrifying him anymore.
He thinks all of his as he puts on his mask, double-checks its firmness to his face. Loki will not touch his skin again without permission.
Loki will not touch his skin again. Why would he give the chaos god permission?
Never, in this state. What started out as haughty dignity, a refusal to indulge in any such intimacy, turns into sickness in his stomach when he thinks of the particular type of rape it would be if he let Loki have his way.
Somehow anything seems better than the thought of letting the god defile himself, while thinking none of it is real.
Tomorrow, Doom will find a way to get the information out of Loki. And then, as soon as is practical, he'll give his former partner the release of death he asked for.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 9/?
anonymous
July 16 2013, 05:41:18 UTC
On the seventh day, Loki got out of bed.
He was already up and about when Victor entered to see to his patient, half-expecting to find the man catatonic again, and found him instead on all fours on the medical bay floor, instruments scattered everywhere and Loki covered with blood.
It was all Doctor Doom could do to rush in and restrain his patient before he injured himself further.
Loki had been crying, by the looks of it, since long before Victor arrived.
"Why won't it cut?" the jotun whispered brokenly, offering his gouged wrists for Doctor Doom's inspection. "I tried everything in here, and they won't cut deep enough..."
Victor could only stare at Loki. The trickster he knew would not have attempted suicide - would certainly not have openly offered his wounds to another if he tried and failed. But Loki was out of his head again - he didn't know where he was, or that it was real.
And Doom drew him close, not out of any cold, calculating practicality, but out of something warmer...
Doom wanted Loki back. The real Loki. The trickster he had known.
"The scalpels didn't cut you because I wouldn't let them." That was a lie, but who cared? If it had been within Doom's power he would have made it true. "I won't let you kill yourself. I won't let you die. You're going to get better. You're safe here."
The creature who had once been Loki blinked at him, wide-eyed, and then simply sank down into Doom's arms, against his breastplate, and closed his eyes and grew still.
Victor von Doom had no idea how he was going to put this mess of a person back together into Loki's former glory, but somehow, he wold manage it.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 9/?futakuchi_onnaJuly 16 2013, 23:42:13 UTC
That's terrific, I love every bit of this! It's especially awesome that Doom only took him in because he thought someone was trying to threaten him with it, very in character.
Please, please, continue this! There aren't enough stories with these two and much less with awesome writing like this. <3
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 10/?
anonymous
July 17 2013, 02:52:31 UTC
((Happy to oblige!))
By the eighth day, two things had become apparent: that Dr. Doom's patient was strong enough to be moved to more normal residential quarters (he also seemed utterly terrified of medical equipment), and that his mental state was such that to get any information at all out of him would require an oblique, strategic approach.
It was also becoming rapidly apparent that the creature-who-was-once-Loki craved physical contact, with made Victor von Doom profoundly uncomfortable.
The morning had been an exercise in frustration. Doom had more or less locked Loki in his new quarters - guest room, a normal bedroom, or at least what passed for normal within a supervillain's castle.
Loki seemed to have largely the same series of reactions to any apparent positive development.
First came resistance. This response was borne, Victor guessed, of fear. The trickster's tormentors must have dangled all manner of relief before his eyes and snatched it away to sharpen the resulting suffering. Now, Loki reacted to everything from his new, soft four-poster bed to the protein-rich feast he was offered for breakfast as though it were surely a poison in disguise.
When resistance failed, the trickster would feign indifference for a while. He was most definitely not interested in his new blankets, or in any food at all, and would sit pretending not to be watching the things out of the corner of his eye.
Only when the blessings still failed to disappear would he indulge, and then with a sort of resignation that made Doom angrier than anything else. The Loki he had known was never able to relax under the watchful eye of another; he never let his guard down, for it would never do for a god to indulge in either pain or pleasure before a mortal.
The new Loki didn't care.
And so Doom - was he actually aching as he watched the shell of the former god devour sausage, eggs, bacon and hashbrowns like an animal? Dressed in a minion's uniform, to boot - Doom's own clothes would not have fit the trickster before, much less in his present emaciated state, and servants' garb was the only other kind he had around.
Victor had it funny for about five seconds, until he realized that the trickster was not mentally intact enough to be indignant about his state of dress, and possibly (probably?) never would be again.
If Loki did not someday return to at least favor Doom with a white-hot, scathing rant over the treatment he'd received at Doom's hands...
If Loki did not return, what could Victor do except burn the vacant body?
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 11/?
anonymous
July 17 2013, 05:42:01 UTC
((Is this thread becoming too compressed by my constant replying to replies instead of to the original prompt? I can see it just fine but I'm new to this format. Lemme know if I should start replying to the original.))
Damn him if it wasn't obvious that trickster god wanted to cuddle.
An entire day of attempting to wheedle information out of Loki had proven fruitless; asking about his tormentors proved fruitless because Loki was convinced that he was still under their influence, that Doom was one of them or one of their conjurations.
For all that, he didn't seem to fear his caretaker - or he feared him less than he feared anything else in the world, and Victor von Doom was more than a little curious as to why that was.
The creature that had been Loki clearly expected his savior to turn on him at any moment. What he expected that betrayal to constitute, Doom could only shudder to imagine when he looked at the injuries Loki's torturers had previously inflicted.
And yet for all that he clearly lived in constant expectation of betrayal by the only other living creature he'd encountered, he followed Doom rather than avoiding him.
Followed him into the study when Doom worked, when he strategized; Victor thought he'd found an in to his old ally's true mind when he caught Loki showing a spark of interest in the world map he was pouring over. The thing had various important locations marked with colored pins, a color-coding system obvious only to Doom himself, a world domination puzzle to unravel.
But the instant Doom's eyes fell on Loki, the former god's face slackened back into something dead-looking, and Doom knew with a horrible certainty that the deadness was not an act.
Chitauri get Loki into their claws and torture him almost to the insanity, until he's battered all over: physically, mentally and emotionally. When after a long time of pure agony he's no longer fun, Thanos orders to throw him out, but not to kill him, because he doesn't deserve Death; he deserves to live with everything they have done to him, or die by his own hand. While torturing him by turning his mind inside out, they discovered in his thoughts that Loki's family no longer wants him, no longer cares (at least, this is what Loki is sure about; it's not necessarily true), but they also saw an ally that possibly (!) cares enough to take care of what remains of Loki at least for the time being. So they decide to give Loki at Doom's mercy, either to get killed, or to be taken care of.
One night Victor locates something at an entrance of his castle and goes to check what it is. He doesn't recognise Loki at first, only sees an unconscious body, entirely covered in blood, naked, except for a sheet wrapped around it. He finds out that it's Loki and that he's still alive, and takes him inside the castle.
Maybe Doom is merciful to Loki in the name of their past partnership, maybe he feels more than that.
It takes him quite a while to patch Loki up. Loki's magic doesn't work properly anymore, so it doesn't help him to heal.
When in a few days Loki wakes up, he's catatonic, but then he has a PTSD and a lot of painful flashbacks. A few times Victor thinks it would be wise to put Loki off his misery (but still doesn't), because this wreck very remotely reminds him of his canny, mischievous partner that he had grown fond of.
Loki, when he becomes more or less conscious and capable of thinking is afraid that Doom will throw him out soon. He has nowhere to go, and without his magic he won't be able to defend or hide himself. He thinks that exactly because his magic doesn't work properly, Victor won't tolerate his presence due to his uselessness. But when it doesn't happen Loki starts thinking that maybe, just maybe, Victor actually cares. He thinks it's ridiculous of him to think that way, but he's still hopeful.
I'd be happy to see eventual Doom/Loki.
+ 10 When Loki gets too overwhelmed, he tries to commit suicide, but fails for any reason you find appropriate here.
+ 1000000 if you make everything graphic.
Reply
Who in God's name had left this mess on his doorstep?
Victor von Doom had seen his share of the dead and nearly-dead, but they did not usually turn up of their own accord; typically, he knew exactly where they came from.
So what was this bloody bundle? A threat? A gift, perhaps, of a fallen enemy from a would-be ally?
Victor knelt to inspect the bundle of flesh and bone concealed by the bloody sheet, and he paled.
Loki.
There was no mistaking the trickster god's face; sharp features, face even whiter than usual from - death? No. A cursory inspection revealed that his once-time ally still had a pulse.
A very faint pulse. And very faint breath.
What rang more alarm bells than anything in Victor's head was this: who was even capable of doing something like this to a god?
And why weren't Loki's wounds healing?
This was a threat, Victor decided. Definitely a threat. He looked up and scanned the horizon warily.
If someone's laid a trap for me, they chose piss-poor bait. As though I'd risk my neck for this one...
But if someone was trying to scare him, they were doing a very good job.
With great reluctance he gathered the bloody bundle into his arms - and wrinkled his nose. Loki was limp as a corpse and dripping crimson. A glimpse under the soaked fabric revealed injuries seemingly without end. It seemed that every inch of the chaos god's bare flesh had been in some way marred by his tormentor. And even Loki, it seemed, had been powerless to defend himself from these forces.
Yes, they are doing a very effective job of scaring me.
Someone had done this to Loki, his former partner, and whoever it was had shown that they knew exactly where to find Doctor Doom.
Reply
Loki had been left alive, clearly, for a reason. He had been left very precisely, very barely alive. And he had information, Victor was willing to bet, on who exactly was threatening him and why.
Now if he would just wake up.
Human biology was one thing, Aesir another, and jotun - that was another thing altogether. Dr. Doom mustered his expertise, took his best guess, and started rehydrating the god with room-temperature saline.
It seemed to be working. Hour by hour, his patient's vitals climbed. The sickening black bruises even seemed to begin to pale, and the gashes in the battered god's flesh, Victor guessed, were shrinking imperceptibly beneath their scabs.
Thank the gods that jotun physiology was very, very resilient.
The question still remained: who had done this to Loki, and why?
It was a torture job that rivaled anything Doom or his cohorts had come up with. There had been some creativity, it seemed; some of the bruises and gashes seemed to have been inflicted from the inside, and Victor actually shuddered to imagine how that was accomplished. Innovative, certainly, and perhaps under other circumstances he'd have respected that. But now with this fragile, pale creature lying at death's door before him - a man he had known, if not as a friend then not as an enemy either...
A man whose fate may be tied to Victor's own, for why else would they have brought him here?
He palpated Loki's arm very gently, realized he feared to hurt the god even though he was obviously unconscious. And obviously in no shape to thrash around hard enough to wreck Doom's laboratory.
But still, he was gentle as his fingers traced the god's forearm, trying to determine how a particular puncture had been made from the inside out.
What he found sickened him; a tunnel had been bored through the muscle. Something had been inside Loki, probably something living; his torturers had put it into him and let it tunnel its way back out.
By the looks of things they had done this several times.
There was not a lot that could make Victor von Doom cringe, but this...
If it had not been someone he'd known as a strong, proud and ambitious cohort, he might have admired the work.
As it was, he needed air, desperately. So he rose, checked that Loki was restrained where he lay, that the IV bags were full, that the monitors on his vitals were reading properly - and left, washing his hands far longer than was necessary on the way out.
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Loki did not move, did not respond, gave no sign of life beyond the unchanging beep-beep-beep of his pulse monitor during the entire procedure.
Victor was beginning to get worried.
He placed electrodes on Loki's arms as well - galvanic skin response would not tell him what the god's brain was doing, but it might be able to tell him if Loki was perceiving anything at all of the outside world.
The electroencepholagraph results brought relief. The god's brain was active - normal, almost. Loki's brainwaves were strong, synchronized, the pattern of REM sleep.
Loki was dreaming. And as he dreamed, his brain was re-inforcing memories, processing emotions - Doom could tell no more than that, for he could not carefully monitor the regions associated with specific emotions, but that Loki was dreaming meant that his brain was healing.
Probably. Victor still had no idea what the as-yet-unnamed bastards had done to him.
Now to measure sensory responses. He pried one of Loki's eyelids open, a delicate operation, for the jotun's skin seemed softer and more fragile than Victor ever remembered it seeming. It was almost as though Loki's torturers had turned him human.
His patient's pupil dilated. First one eye, then the other. That was good. That was excellent.
But the galvanic skin sensors showed no change. Loki's eyes perceived the light, but his consciousness did not. He was somewhere far, far removed, it seemed, somewhere in memories and dreams.
Then Victor made the mistake of testing his patient's pain response. He pricked the god's thumb with a needle - a sturdy needle, granted, for he did not expect this formerly immortal jotun to respond to a tiny prick, but when the needle pierced the skin of the god's thumb the results were violent.
Loki's hand fled the pain; his body arched off the table, and his throat began to scream in such intense terror that Doom had to stop himself from smothering the god just to make the deeply disturbing sounds stop.
By the time the episode was over, Doom was halfway on the other side of the lab, and he was shaking.
Who had done this to his former friend? And what did they want with him?
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And so, Victor surveyed his patient critically. If leaving Loki here was a threat, then the threateners seemed in no hurry to get their specific point across.
Maybe they just wanted time for the reality of their horrific capabilities to sink in.
Doom made the mistake of picturing himself in his former ally's place; himself being beaten so brutally as to leave bruises the color of tar, himself being held down and cut, cut deep into muscle and skin, himself being restrained somehow and fed those horrible things who would eat their way out...
God, no. He shuddered.
Loki had still not responded to anything except pain. No light or color, no music or sound, seemed to wake the god. Did he not perceive these things, or had they somehow so deadened him to everything except pain and fear...
Acting on a hunch, Victor shouted at him, venting some of his frustration.
And Loki, in his sleep, recoiled. The galvanic monitors jumped. And - was that a whimper?
What in God's name had been done...
Somehow angrier than before, Victor barely remembered to restock the god's IV before he stalked out of the room.
He was going to find out who was responsible. A need, very faint, was beginning to grow in the back of his mind.
Beyond his need for safety, to prevent the same from being done to him, Victor von Doom was beginning to thirst for vengeance.
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At first, he thought this was a good sign.
He fairly crept toward the god, not wanting to alarm him and elicit another round of screaming, caring even less to be perceived as an object of blame; if Loki believed that Victor was in league with his torturers, he'd never get any useful information out of the jotun at all.
But Loki simply stared, his eyes unfocused, or perhaps fixed on a point on the ceiling, as Victor von Doom advanced cautiously to the chair by his bed from whence he'd been reading the god's vitals.
Victor frowned.
"Loki?"
The galvanic monitors jumped, just barely.
"LOKI."
The eyes closed, too quickly, their lids pressing too tightly against a perceived hostile environment.
And damned if he knew where he got the idea, but it came into Victor's head to try stroking Loki's hair.
The creases in the god's brow relaxed. And then returned. And Loki seemed to be waging some sort of internal battle with himself as his brain waves shifted back to those of REM sleep, and as he, quite unexpectedly, reached out and clutched Victor's free hand with his own.
This was possibly the most horrifying development yet. Victor von Doom's former partner, the regal, elegant, eternally unflappable Loki - seemed to have been emotionally broken by whatever his tormentors put him through.
Victor fled the room, quickly; he needed to be sick.
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His eyes were open again when Victor entered his room. The injuries to his face were slowly healing, leaving scabs and scars and bruises that were mottled yellow and purple now instead of black. And today, there was something decidedly Loki about the god's expression.
Again he said nothing as Victor approached the bed. But his air of studied regality seemed to have returned.
"Are you going to kill me now?" Loki asked, managing to sound casual despite his hoarse voice, when Dr. Doom sat down.
Victor has always been good at hiding surprise. "No. Of course not. You're safe here."
Loki closed his eyes. "That's what you always say."
"I...what?" Victor was growing desperate, watching his patient appear to retreat within himself again.
"In the dreams. You always say you won't hurt me. That you won't kill me, specifically. Why not? If you mean not to hurt me, why don't you do me this kindness?" The casual facade completely cracked on that last phrase, and now Loki was not only rasping but sounded as though he wanted to cry.
Dr. Doom had never been very good with emotional situations.
He put his hands, very gently, on Loki's shoulders; didn't want to harm the god, didn't want to scare him away, but needed a way to shake him if he started slipping into sleep again.
Loki opened his eyes and stared up at Victor dully.
"Do it. Do whatever you're going to do. I'm getting bored of this."
"I'm not going to do anything to you. Except take care of you." Now THAT was an un-Doom-like sentence if Victor had ever uttered one, but reassuring his patient seemed to be his only option...
Victor could see the sardonic irony, even in the faintest ghost of the smile that passed Loki's lips.
"I'm NOT going to hurt you. No one is. You're safe here." It was a blatant lie, for Doom had no idea what had hurt Loki in the first place or how to defend himself against it, but that was scarcely useful information to give the god...
Loki's mouth began to twitch, and his ribcage to stutter. Victor thought that he was having some sort of fit until he realized that Loki was laughing. It was the laugh of someone who hadn't had the freedom of his own muscles in a long time - the laugh of someone who had damn near forgotten how.
His lips now pulled into the semblance of a smile, Loki grinned up at Victor von Doom and his eyes actually sparkled a little.
"I'm dreaming anyway," he rasped, "so what the hell?" And then he lifted himself far enough off the bed to plant an open-mouthed kiss on his caretaker's scarred and mangled lips.
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This is, comically, the first thing that Victor von Doom thinks as he finds a bedridden chaos god trying to make out with his face. And because he thinks it, he doesn't pull away immediately; he is too stunned.
After the half-seconds' delay, by which time Loki is licking lasciviously at his lower lip, he manages to shove the trickster down and sit back down in his own chair.
He really should have worn the mask today.
But it is apparent that Loki is in no way bothered by what has transpired. And the reason soon becomes clear: he doesn't think that any of this is real.
Well that's an interesting development. Perhaps Victor can use it to his advantage.
"Loki," Dr. Doom clears his throat, and attempts to continue their conversation as though nothing mind-blowingly strange has just happened. "You say that you are dreaming - who is making you dream?"
"Nice try. But I know a hallucination when I see one."
"Humor me."
"Why bother?" Loki sighs, managing at first to seem merely exasperated as he sinks back onto the bed.
But then something changes, some thought passes through his mind, and suddenly the chaos god's face contorts and he is weeping, and trying to hide under the covers like a terrified child.
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But he remembers too well the cool wetness of the other man's tongue on his mouth, the ONLY tongue other than Victor's own to grace it in quite some time, and that combine with the sudden mind-bending pitifulness of the former Loki is entirely too much to handle.
Loki does not live in Victor von Doom's reality. Victor is beginning to suspect that he never will again.
Which wouldn't be so bad, if Loki's alternate reality didn't seem to be one of inconceivable terror that had reduced Victor's former partner to...
A man with no inhibitions, because he doesn't think reality is real?
A frightened child, who seeks nothing at all but to avoid the next inevitable blow?
A catatonic shell, a corpse, unresponsive to any attempt to revive him?
Victor cannot avoid thinking about what this one-time threat to his own sovereignty now meant to him. The contrast between the Loki he had known and the creature which now lies, alternately catatonic, pitiful, or ridiculous in the next room.
He hadn't really thought that anything was capable of horrifying him anymore.
He thinks all of his as he puts on his mask, double-checks its firmness to his face. Loki will not touch his skin again without permission.
Loki will not touch his skin again. Why would he give the chaos god permission?
Never, in this state. What started out as haughty dignity, a refusal to indulge in any such intimacy, turns into sickness in his stomach when he thinks of the particular type of rape it would be if he let Loki have his way.
Somehow anything seems better than the thought of letting the god defile himself, while thinking none of it is real.
Tomorrow, Doom will find a way to get the information out of Loki. And then, as soon as is practical, he'll give his former partner the release of death he asked for.
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He was already up and about when Victor entered to see to his patient, half-expecting to find the man catatonic again, and found him instead on all fours on the medical bay floor, instruments scattered everywhere and Loki covered with blood.
It was all Doctor Doom could do to rush in and restrain his patient before he injured himself further.
Loki had been crying, by the looks of it, since long before Victor arrived.
"Why won't it cut?" the jotun whispered brokenly, offering his gouged wrists for Doctor Doom's inspection. "I tried everything in here, and they won't cut deep enough..."
Victor could only stare at Loki. The trickster he knew would not have attempted suicide - would certainly not have openly offered his wounds to another if he tried and failed. But Loki was out of his head again - he didn't know where he was, or that it was real.
And Doom drew him close, not out of any cold, calculating practicality, but out of something warmer...
Doom wanted Loki back. The real Loki. The trickster he had known.
"The scalpels didn't cut you because I wouldn't let them." That was a lie, but who cared? If it had been within Doom's power he would have made it true. "I won't let you kill yourself. I won't let you die. You're going to get better. You're safe here."
The creature who had once been Loki blinked at him, wide-eyed, and then simply sank down into Doom's arms, against his breastplate, and closed his eyes and grew still.
Victor von Doom had no idea how he was going to put this mess of a person back together into Loki's former glory, but somehow, he wold manage it.
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It's especially awesome that Doom only took him in because he thought someone was trying to threaten him with it, very in character.
Please, please, continue this! There aren't enough stories with these two and much less with awesome writing like this. <3
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By the eighth day, two things had become apparent: that Dr. Doom's patient was strong enough to be moved to more normal residential quarters (he also seemed utterly terrified of medical equipment), and that his mental state was such that to get any information at all out of him would require an oblique, strategic approach.
It was also becoming rapidly apparent that the creature-who-was-once-Loki craved physical contact, with made Victor von Doom profoundly uncomfortable.
The morning had been an exercise in frustration. Doom had more or less locked Loki in his new quarters - guest room, a normal bedroom, or at least what passed for normal within a supervillain's castle.
Loki seemed to have largely the same series of reactions to any apparent positive development.
First came resistance. This response was borne, Victor guessed, of fear. The trickster's tormentors must have dangled all manner of relief before his eyes and snatched it away to sharpen the resulting suffering. Now, Loki reacted to everything from his new, soft four-poster bed to the protein-rich feast he was offered for breakfast as though it were surely a poison in disguise.
When resistance failed, the trickster would feign indifference for a while. He was most definitely not interested in his new blankets, or in any food at all, and would sit pretending not to be watching the things out of the corner of his eye.
Only when the blessings still failed to disappear would he indulge, and then with a sort of resignation that made Doom angrier than anything else. The Loki he had known was never able to relax under the watchful eye of another; he never let his guard down, for it would never do for a god to indulge in either pain or pleasure before a mortal.
The new Loki didn't care.
And so Doom - was he actually aching as he watched the shell of the former god devour sausage, eggs, bacon and hashbrowns like an animal? Dressed in a minion's uniform, to boot - Doom's own clothes would not have fit the trickster before, much less in his present emaciated state, and servants' garb was the only other kind he had around.
Victor had it funny for about five seconds, until he realized that the trickster was not mentally intact enough to be indignant about his state of dress, and possibly (probably?) never would be again.
If Loki did not someday return to at least favor Doom with a white-hot, scathing rant over the treatment he'd received at Doom's hands...
If Loki did not return, what could Victor do except burn the vacant body?
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Damn him if it wasn't obvious that trickster god wanted to cuddle.
An entire day of attempting to wheedle information out of Loki had proven fruitless; asking about his tormentors proved fruitless because Loki was convinced that he was still under their influence, that Doom was one of them or one of their conjurations.
For all that, he didn't seem to fear his caretaker - or he feared him less than he feared anything else in the world, and Victor von Doom was more than a little curious as to why that was.
The creature that had been Loki clearly expected his savior to turn on him at any moment. What he expected that betrayal to constitute, Doom could only shudder to imagine when he looked at the injuries Loki's torturers had previously inflicted.
And yet for all that he clearly lived in constant expectation of betrayal by the only other living creature he'd encountered, he followed Doom rather than avoiding him.
Followed him into the study when Doom worked, when he strategized; Victor thought he'd found an in to his old ally's true mind when he caught Loki showing a spark of interest in the world map he was pouring over. The thing had various important locations marked with colored pins, a color-coding system obvious only to Doom himself, a world domination puzzle to unravel.
But the instant Doom's eyes fell on Loki, the former god's face slackened back into something dead-looking, and Doom knew with a horrible certainty that the deadness was not an act.
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