Amnesia
Loki woke up to an intense pain in his midsection, and hands stained with blood.
He was in what he thought was one of Stark's buildings, it was dark, and there were red lights, but no sirens blaring. He didn't understand. He tried to think, but all he could do was stare at his red hands in commotion.
What had he done? Why couldn't he remember it? What if he had hurt someone important, what if he had lost control, what if someone had used him for something horrible, what if...?
“Loki?” A soft voice called. He wasn't alone.
“Why are you here?” The voice asked, and Loki couldn't answer. “We are in some sort of lockdown, nobody should be in, not me either, but.... Loki? Are you with me?”
But it hard for Loki to be there, in that building with her. The crushing realisation that all he had worked so hard for might be gone, and he would go back to being hated, go back to all those horrible places, to the edge of the abyss... His head was swimming, foggy and his stomach was throbbing somehow and he felt that there was no air in the room.
He kept looking at his red-stained hands.
“Loki, what's wrong?”
Pepper had never seen Loki like that, and she'd seen him on some low moments. It had taken her a while to accept his presence, to accept him as one of their own after they way they met the first time, after what almost happened to Tony and to what did happen to Coulson (although she then learned about him coming back) but with time, she'd learned to appreciate having Loki around.
He was good at taking down their resident geniuses a few notches, and good at avoiding conflict,tricking people into surrendering or just doing some clever thinking to avoid battle. Like he'd done when he'd been king, like he'd done when he was a skinny kid that was easy prey for norse warrioristic bullies.
And he knew about good hair care products and he knew about having to handle many issues at once. Sometimes, if she wanted to complain, Pepper went to him to unwind, and he would listen, with a bottle of rose wine and a bunch scathing but not untrue remarks. He was an unusual and complicated guy, but she knew now to look beyond the evil villain routine.
There was so much more there.
Right now, a frightened man, looking at her with wide eyes, not all there.
“What happened?” She asked.
One of these days he would answer and stop looking a his hands as if they were the most horrifying thing in the world.
“I don't remember... I don't know why I'm here, or how I arrived, I don't remember what I did.”
Loki's eyes were glassy and full of sorrow, and Pepper's heart went out to him. He'd suffered enough, what with his being lied to his whole life, always feeling inferior, and nearly dying all those times.
“What's the last thing you remember? You know who I am, right.”
Loki nodded, but still a couple of tears ran down his cheeks. What had he done what had he done? What if he had hut Thor, what if he'd used his magic for something he couldn't fix...?
“I remember... we were going to Boston.... On a plane, with Dr. Banner and Stark and Miss Romanoff.... I remember the plane... But not landing. What did I do? I... What did I...”
“Okay, that's a starting point. I'll see if the phones are working and call Tony, but we may not have any signal in the lockdown.”
Loki looked so broken, so full of despair, she wanted to fix it somehow. Herself of some years, maybe just some months ago would have been absolutely convinced that this was a trick, that he'd done something terrible and now was pretending not to remember. That was how he operated, right? He did horrible things and then lie to try and get away with them.
But no. That was who he used to be, and the Loki the media and so many others tried to sell them. But the real Loki had become something else, a different type of lying animal and trickster. He didn't want to hurt people anymore, and had realised that being for them instead was much more gratifying.
He wanted applause and admiration and he knew that he couldn't go back to his old ways if he wanted the love he so desperately seemed to need. And now... now he was genuinely afraid that he might lose it all.
“You know why we are all locked? Was it me?”
“What? Oh, no, honey, it's just a test to see that the systems are working and what not. You didn't do anything, although I don't know how you got in.”
He looked disheveled and pale and just plain wrong, and there was something there besides the not remembering.
“Are you hurt? That blood may be yours.”
Something told her that whatever had gone on in that time he couldn't remember was more something he'd endured than something he caused. She could see signs there, one doesn't end in a state like that for just doing bad things. Not physically, at least. And he was in shambles, and Loki wasn't an easy guy to break.
“No, I, I don't think....I...”
Loki's head was spinning and his whole body was shaking and he knew that something had happened and he just....
Pepper embraced him, let him cry, caressed the back of his head softly. Loki sobbed for a little while and then composed himself.
“Sorry. I didn't... Sorry.”
“Don't worry, it's all...”
Then she saw something weird, now that the lights were coming back on: a series of horizontal red lines on his neck, the lost themselves under the shirt.
“Take off your shirt.”
Loki protested a bit, but did it.
There were more of those red lines on his chest and abdomen, and they were bigger and looked angrier down there. More red, more painful. She touched one of them, and Loki closed his eyes and hissed. The pain was back.
“It wasn't what you did, honey, it's what was done to you. Somebody hurt you, and didn't want you to remember for some reason.”
“....the blood?”
“I'll have it tested if you want, but it's most likely yours. Look, look at your pant leg.”
There was a big blood stain on it, and it looked fresh.
“You must have been holding on it to stop the bleeding and you got your hands bloody. I can't be sure, but I don't think you should be worried. But we really should get you some medical attention, it looks pretty bad.”
“I didn't...”
“Here's Tony, let's ask him.”
The lockdown was finally over, and he'd got a million calls from Pepper and he was worried and...
“Loki!” His face turned into a smile. “Oh my god, we were so worried! There was someone and we still don't know who it was which was driving me crazy, but they kept sending videos of Natasha and Loki getting... well, let's say “hurt” and we managed to find Nat, but she couldn't remember where she'd been held, and we didn't know where he was...”
“I didn't.” Loki said, breathed, promptly collapsed on the floor.
Pepper was absentmindedly caressing one of Loki's hands as she sat next to his bed, while Tony filled her in on what had happened. How Natasha and Loki had been gassed and lost, how they started getting videos of them being forced to wear some metal “shirts” made of horizontal bars that got hot until they were burned and screaming, and how Natasha had suddenly reappeared some days later.
“They did something more to them, and I won't be happy until I know what and why.” Tony said, determined.
“I hope he'll be okay. He was so scared, Tony, so broken up that he'd done something he couldn't remember. Wondering what he'd done.”
“Endure like a champ, that's what he did. But he does have a tendency to think the worst of himself, no matter how confident and arrogant he appears to be.” Pepper made a face. “Yeah, yeah, I know pots and kettles. Stay with him while I look at some tests?”
Pepper sighed as she looked at Loki peacefully knocked out in that infirmary bed. She knew what it was to be experimented on, to have capacities you couldn't understand, to be afraid of what had been done to you. He knew that Loki wasn't the most... emotionally stable person ever, and hoped that everything would be resolved soon.
She watched some of the videos, not being able to help her curiosity. It was a nightmare, and she was almost grateful that Loki couldn't remember. She remembered being trapped by Mandarin, and Loki's frantic eyes asking what he'd done.
Then she called Tony.
“Keep me updated, and let me know when you find the guys who took them.”
They better run.