Title: The Serpent's Lullaby
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Descriptions of torture.

Summary: Brought back to Asgard after his rampage on Earth, Loki faces the unavoidable. Slight post-Avengers AU, insofar as it doesn't match what we know so far of Thor 2.

They brought him to a cavern and they bound him on his back to a slab, limbs stretched by winding coils attached to three metal staples, driven deep into the slab. Through the haze of agony he can see the serpent's pale coils above him, undulating loops of sinuous scales that rustle with the harsh hissing of its breaths. From one razor-sharp needle-fine point he can see the glistening bead of liquid that swells at its tip, each one quivering with breathless anticipation before gravity takes it -

The drop falls - strikes, and Loki arches his back as pain like a railroad spike drives through his head behind it. He knows not what species of wyrm they have found to torment him, but the slightest touch of its venom brings agony. His bloodied wrists yank at the chains that bind him - futile, they have tied him too well. The strange bonds are slick against his skin, rubbery when he yanks at them, but they will yield only up to a point and no more - and when he sinks back exhausted, they pull taut once more.

One drop would be enough, but there is not just one drop. The true torture here is the slowness, one drop following another, an endless deluge that will peel the skin from his flesh, then the fat, the muscle - all seared away with excruciating patience until only the white bone is left bare to the air, and he will be awake for every moment.

He would laugh. If he had the breath left after screaming. If he had the throat left after cursing. He would laugh at the Aesir who think themselves so high and noble, so advanced, so above the savagery of the lesser races - yet the golden gilt disguises a slavering beast at its core, for this, this is how they punish their enemies.

Not an enemy, he thinks, for even an enemy would be granted the mercy of a quick death in combat, a place reserved in Valhalla's high halls for the brave. Not this - this debasement, this slow excruciating flensing, here in the darkest and most stinking reaches of Asgard's dungeons.

Pain. It drives into him like an icicle, freezing as it cuts, a remorseless drill through his soft flesh. And how ironic that is, he thinks, when he himself was born of the frost and ice, the sodden rime that collects under the Aesir's boots, and he never even knew.

All his life Loki had been the small one, the weak one. He'd learned better than to fight back against those who so easily overpowered him, learned not to struggle when he was grabbed or squeezed or held down. In place of muscle he had developed his mind, sharpening his wits and silver tongue to talk him around the obstacles and perils that those around him simply smashed through.

And then Midgard - ah, Midgard. For a moment - a brief, shining, glorious moment - Loki had felt strong. Surrounded by the petty mortals and their cardboard worlds, so easy to crumple and destroy with a touch, Loki had felt strong, a god among men. He had tasted the exaltation of being able to fight back, strike back, and the sweet promise of victory.

What a foolish lie that had been.

Pain. Again. Do they think that they can break him? He, Loki? Do they dream that they can tame him? They will not succeed, he swears to it; he can be bound but he cannot be broken, not by their brutality and not by their clumsy pantomime of sentiment.What is this for, anyhow? For doing no more and no less than his father and brother had done, when they brought glorious war upon other realms, when Odin trampled the bodies of mortals carelessly beneath their hooves as they rode into battle with the giants? When Thor laughed and sang as he bloodied the head of his hammer with the shattered skulls and brain-flecks of the giants he had sought out for sport? How was it different?

He will survive this; they do not mean to grant him the mercy of death. He will take that oversight and twist it back on them, he will be free someday and oh, what revenges he will bring against them. He will call a storm of howling demons from the hells to scratch their walls, he will bring up the dishonored dead from beneath their very feet to crawl into their beds and chew on their limbs. He will tear down proud Asgard and coat its gold mockery in filth; he will bring a cloud of black locusts over Midgard, he will watch and laugh as those who thought themselves his enemies scream as they are eaten alive, he will -

Pain. A hoarse, strangled sound rips from his lips, half a shout choked back in his throat by the futility of it. No one will stop it, he knows; no one will come to save him. There is no hero in all the Realms that would bother to rescue a monster.

Movement at the corner of his heated, flaring vision - the hushed murmur of voices. They have come to watch him, then, to revel in his suffering and laugh at the whimpers he cannot suppress, sneer at his weakness and offer critical comments on his performance. Let them gawk. He will not give them the satisfaction. He will not, will not...

"Is there nothing more you can do, Healer Skadi?" he hears his brother's voice, thickened by grief and a dull misery. As if Thorknows anything about pain, about suffering - not yet but he will, he will, he will - "My brother is suffering! I cannot bear to see him like this. Can you not cleanse him of this foul enchantment?"

"We are doing all we can, Your Highness," a woman's voice replies, smooth as silk and cold as a serpent's scales. Slithering around him with the sweet promise of worse. "We are administering the antidote one drop at a time, but the enchanter who placed it on him was cunning indeed. The spell he is under warps his mind, and it resists our attempts to remove it. It defends itself, forcing him to experience all attempts at healing as pain. If we attempt to push the treatment, it might cause permanent damage to his mind."

Pain. The rest of the scream tears itself from his throat and Loki's back arches as his throat works, scraped and bleeding and raw and he heaves and writhes against his bonds but there is nothing, nothing, nothing he can do -

"Do you hear me, Brother?" Thor's voice again, this time hovering somewhere close, somewhere just out of reach. He can see his brother's silhouette through madly-watering eyes, looming cruel and implacable above him. "I do not know if you understand me or not but please, Loki, be strong. I am here. You are in Asgard, you are safe, we are laboring to make you well; please, Brother, do not fear -"

This time Loki does almost laugh, a choked snarling bark that expels a fine mist of blood from his lips. Does Thor imagine this will placate him, to be reminded yet again that he is in the stronghold of enemies, chained and tortured by the very one who calls him brother? Does Thor even realize how cruel he is, to claim brotherhood in one breath and submit Loki to agony in the next - no, no, Thor is not that clever, it must be Odin's doing, somehow -

A vast dim shape wavering over him is Thor's hand stretching over the distance; Loki can't help the instinctive flinch, the aborted cringe that comes with the expectation of pain. But he is Loki, the chaos-bringer, the author of woe; he is not some beaten dogand he will not submit -

As soon as Thor's hand comes within range Loki lunges sideways the bare few inches allowed to him, and seizes Thor's thick stupid hand between his teeth. His teeth are ground razor-sharp, the edges jagged where they have broken, and he does not stint his strength; he bites savagely and bears down with all the force of his jaw.

He missed; instead of meat and bone he catches only skin, and Thor rips his hand free with little more effect than a shocked cry. Blood fills Loki's mouth along with the flaps of skin he managed to catch, and he grins ferally into the blurring darkness, aware of what a savage picture he must make. Look you now upon the savage Jotun, flesh-eating, blood-drinking -

Pain. The next drop hits and his moment of triumph is wiped away, fleeting satisfaction borne away on a rising tide of agony. Loki arches his back and howls, his entire universe narrowed down to one single moment of suffering.

At the very edge of his sight, a dark figure; at the very limit of hearing, a sad whisper. "I am sorry, Brother."

And so Loki's torment continued.

~end.

Author's Notes: Just a short little piece to let MCU readers know that I'm still around, even as I'm finishing up works in other fandoms!

It seems like every Lokific author touches on the legend of snake sooner or later, and here's my take. The first and the last line are actually taken directly from the translation of the Edda.