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.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 12/?
anonymous
July 17 2013, 05:43:30 UTC
In time, Victor began to make sense of this behavior.
Loki believed that he was still inside whatever special hell his tormentors had concocted for him. Apparently, they had made liberal use of illusion (and perhaps they still did; Doom remembered with sudden, great unease, the strong dreaming patterns he'd observed in the god's unconscious mind). And apparently, there'd been an intellectual arms race between the two parties; the tormentors would lull him into a false sense of security again and again and again, and the instant Loki bought it they would turn on him with--
Doom shuddered to imagine.
Loki's solution: to never buy into the illusion. To never believe - including now, apparently - that he was truly free, or safe (and Victor was increasingly begin to wonder if he actually was safe, even in this fortress).
To answer any of Doom's questions would have meant assuming that Doom did not already know the answers; that he was not in truth a torturer, waiting to strike. To show an active interest in anything, to show any flicker of who Loki had been, may have brought untold horrors upon said self until it was utterly spent and broken. Again.
So he accepted Doom's physical accommodations grudgingly, only because they would not go away. But he would not give any indication that he believed Doom was anything other than one of the enemies who Loki refused to name.
Did Loki's personality still survive, somewhere under these Pavlovian defense mechanisms? Or had the trickster's mind genuinely been trampled to dust?
The Loki Doom had known would never have behaved in so undignified a manner; not for anything.
But perhaps (Doom could hope), someone had managed to scare the god into humility without actually destroying him.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 13/?
anonymous
July 17 2013, 05:44:16 UTC
The briefest spark of mischief when Loki looked at Doom's world map, even before the mortifying incident where he had kissed him, was enough to keep Victor's hope alive.
Of course, none of this did anything to help him figure out who it was that was so dangerous and felt the need to deliver the near-corpse of von Doom's ally to his doorstep.
And so there was only one thing to do.
It was apparent that the thing that had been Loki was desperately lonely. In the way he followed the man he fully expected to turn on him with untold horrors, in the way the god stole shy glances at his sole companion (Doom dared not allow anyone but himself near the trickster; with all of this going on, he suddenly felt that his background checks for servants were not nearly thorough enough).
In the way he tended to inch closer, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes pitifully, when the two of them were seated in the same room.
For some absurd reason or another, this broken version of Loki craved affection. And if Doom hoped to speed the god's recovery, to gain his trust and then finally the information - he had to give it to him.
And so it was that, with the most bizarre possible mixture of feelings, Doom beckoned Loki to his bed on the eighth night of the god's recovery from near-death.
Anticipating the typical violent reaction this Loki had to any gifts, Doom had lured the unsuspecting trickster into his own room under the guise of retrieving supplies for a war game simulation. Then he'd locked the door.
And Loki had not spat and hissed and backed into a corner, had not threatened any sort of violence or demanded release or even disavowed his desire for such a thing.
He had simply paled, and sat down on the bed.
No. No no no no no. No. This horror could not be the Loki he knew.
For it was apparent in the trickster's pallor, the emptiness of his face, the practiced-mechanical way in which he sat, that the former god was expecting to be raped.
NO.
Had they used this precise scenario against him? Had Loki experienced the most horrific kind of undoing at the hands of Doom himself, a hallucination drawn from his own memory by whoever-the-hell had tortured him?
No.
Rage and horror almost strong enough to make Victor von Doom vomit passed, and when they had passed the trickster was still looking at him with that horrible emotionless expectation.
Very, very cautiously, Victor stood up. He did not remember sliding down against the wall.
There would be no point in saying 'I won't hurt you'; what else would a horrific hallucination say? No point in all at making a show of gentleness, of trying to convince Loki of his at-least-harmless intent - the entire prior week had been an exercise in futility in that department.
So Victor stood up, unbarred the door, and opened it.
The creature that had been Loki blinked at him, momentarily confused.
And then there was the faintest shadow of the Loki he had known in the surprise that surfaced, in the slight unconscious of posture as the god rose to his feet, and left through the open door.
Re: Fill: Strange Bedfellows 10/?futakuchi_onnaJuly 17 2013, 05:42:55 UTC
Awesome!
I love Doom's clinical approach to everything and the reaction it causes, only to have irritating feelings and wishes for things he doesn't want to admit aloud.
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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Loki believed that he was still inside whatever special hell his tormentors had concocted for him. Apparently, they had made liberal use of illusion (and perhaps they still did; Doom remembered with sudden, great unease, the strong dreaming patterns he'd observed in the god's unconscious mind). And apparently, there'd been an intellectual arms race between the two parties; the tormentors would lull him into a false sense of security again and again and again, and the instant Loki bought it they would turn on him with--
Doom shuddered to imagine.
Loki's solution: to never buy into the illusion. To never believe - including now, apparently - that he was truly free, or safe (and Victor was increasingly begin to wonder if he actually was safe, even in this fortress).
To answer any of Doom's questions would have meant assuming that Doom did not already know the answers; that he was not in truth a torturer, waiting to strike. To show an active interest in anything, to show any flicker of who Loki had been, may have brought untold horrors upon said self until it was utterly spent and broken. Again.
So he accepted Doom's physical accommodations grudgingly, only because they would not go away. But he would not give any indication that he believed Doom was anything other than one of the enemies who Loki refused to name.
Did Loki's personality still survive, somewhere under these Pavlovian defense mechanisms? Or had the trickster's mind genuinely been trampled to dust?
The Loki Doom had known would never have behaved in so undignified a manner; not for anything.
But perhaps (Doom could hope), someone had managed to scare the god into humility without actually destroying him.
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Of course, none of this did anything to help him figure out who it was that was so dangerous and felt the need to deliver the near-corpse of von Doom's ally to his doorstep.
And so there was only one thing to do.
It was apparent that the thing that had been Loki was desperately lonely. In the way he followed the man he fully expected to turn on him with untold horrors, in the way the god stole shy glances at his sole companion (Doom dared not allow anyone but himself near the trickster; with all of this going on, he suddenly felt that his background checks for servants were not nearly thorough enough).
In the way he tended to inch closer, sometimes unconsciously, sometimes pitifully, when the two of them were seated in the same room.
For some absurd reason or another, this broken version of Loki craved affection. And if Doom hoped to speed the god's recovery, to gain his trust and then finally the information - he had to give it to him.
And so it was that, with the most bizarre possible mixture of feelings, Doom beckoned Loki to his bed on the eighth night of the god's recovery from near-death.
Anticipating the typical violent reaction this Loki had to any gifts, Doom had lured the unsuspecting trickster into his own room under the guise of retrieving supplies for a war game simulation. Then he'd locked the door.
And Loki had not spat and hissed and backed into a corner, had not threatened any sort of violence or demanded release or even disavowed his desire for such a thing.
He had simply paled, and sat down on the bed.
No. No no no no no. No. This horror could not be the Loki he knew.
For it was apparent in the trickster's pallor, the emptiness of his face, the practiced-mechanical way in which he sat, that the former god was expecting to be raped.
NO.
Had they used this precise scenario against him? Had Loki experienced the most horrific kind of undoing at the hands of Doom himself, a hallucination drawn from his own memory by whoever-the-hell had tortured him?
No.
Rage and horror almost strong enough to make Victor von Doom vomit passed, and when they had passed the trickster was still looking at him with that horrible emotionless expectation.
Very, very cautiously, Victor stood up. He did not remember sliding down against the wall.
There would be no point in saying 'I won't hurt you'; what else would a horrific hallucination say? No point in all at making a show of gentleness, of trying to convince Loki of his at-least-harmless intent - the entire prior week had been an exercise in futility in that department.
So Victor stood up, unbarred the door, and opened it.
The creature that had been Loki blinked at him, momentarily confused.
And then there was the faintest shadow of the Loki he had known in the surprise that surfaced, in the slight unconscious of posture as the god rose to his feet, and left through the open door.
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Ah, it's still alright, but if you want to make sure, you can always reply to the prompt-post with new chapters.
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I love Doom's clinical approach to everything and the reaction it causes, only to have irritating feelings and wishes for things he doesn't want to admit aloud.
Please, more? *hopeful puppy-eyes*
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