It comes and goes like the strength in your bones

He wakes up back in the cell. Which is odd, considering he doesn't remember returning to the cell, or passing out.

What he does remember is the pounding headache thrumming at the front of his skull, giving him a sense of vertigo. And the tube-

Humid, sharp plastic attacking his throat, his lungs and stomach. Heaving and gagging to be rid of the cruel item. Moaning and writhing on the wet floor. The screams of his mind blinded him. An impossible symphony he could not calm.

Pain. Hurt. Misery. So much pain. Excruciating, miserable pain.

Tight black threads weaved between his lips. Piercing his skin with every movement. Back arched and holding back cries as the guard knitted his greatest weapon together. Fists and ankles cuffed to the bed, blood leaking from limbs and mouth.

Needle smooth and stinging at the same time. Tearing through his skin and pride like nothing more than pieces of wet parchment. A sickening grin on the guard's face. Ropes tying with Gungrir. Magic washing over him like acid.

"What is the matter? Is the argr hurting?" A guard taunts, throwing him into the cell once more. Bloodied and bruised.

Loki, the argr. Silvertongue without words. What was he? He was nothing.

His body is screaming with cowardice again. Heart pounding out of his chest, exploding through his ribcage. Shivering and sweating and nausea coming in waves over him with hysterical mania. It was almost comical. Because he felt like he was dying and he was laughing because it was his own mind forcing him to lose it. His own mind forcing his thoughts to be matted and scrambled and although he was aware of it he couldn't stop.

Needle piercing his lips. Blood on his tongue. Loki the argr. Unmanly one. The unmanly one with his other form. He who pretended to be a man in a hideous Jötun body. He who pretended that he did not have another form with breasts and curves.

Choking back a sob and whimpered because he could not breathe. He was dying and he was going to die and it would not be at the hands of Him or of horses or of needles but because of his own insanity that made him carve into his skin and punish himself with sickly pleasure for being who he was.

All the time in the world seems to pass and none at all before he manages to regain a hold on reality. His hands and body still trembling, inhaling shaky breaths but no longer dying. Quivering with useless paranoia. His eyes pleading for rest and sleep. He twitched around at every noise, picking at his left palm.

He just sat there, feeling nothing but an emptying numbness. Slouched against the wet stone with his legs sprawled out in front of him. He wasn't sure if that was normal. He was convinced he had been dying earlier but now he didn't feel anything. As if all of his emotions had been viciously sprayed by a hose and fled. Left only with careless indifference and an overwhelming urge to sleep.

It wasn't as bad as it could've been. But he wasn't sure if he preferred the apathy to the paralyzing fear from before. Because it was the first that scared him the most. If he even had the energy to be scared. Throughout all of the traumas he had been forced to endure in his life, he had always felt something. Whether it be agonizing grief or rage or vengeance, he had never just felt so utterly and completely hollow before. His eyes trailed to the large wooden splinters that had dug into his hands days ago. Sprinkled in the corner, sharp enough to cut skin.

Loki couldn't help but stare at the stranger in the mirror. The stranger with cornflower blue skin and blood-red eyes followed his every move. Heritage lines raised on his skin, small, caramel-colored horns protruding from his head.

He narrowed his eyes and the stranger copied the creature. That couldn't be him. The wretched beast who had terrorized home- Asgard for millenniums. The 'prince' of Jötunheim. Abandoned by the king- his father because he wasn't good enough. Wasn't enough for Jötunheim or for Asgard or Frigga or Thor or Odin to see him as more than just his bro- the Prince's shadow.

He hated this. He wasn't this, this foul creature, beast. The burning crimson eyes that bore into his soul, wide with fear and antagonizing hatred. It didn't surprise him though, the monstrous orbs that glared back at him. It was a monster, the stranger was a monster, he was a monster.

Had Laufey recognized him? When they ventured to Jötunheim? Had Laufey recognized Loki as being his offspring? The babe he had left out to die all those years ago? Remember the dark Prince as one of his own? Had he just chosen to do nothing? Not want anything more the the Jotun runt? Seen what Loki had grown up into and realized he dodged a bullet?

Grateful that he had left the Prince- his son, abandoned and alone once again?

Then without warning, the mirror exploded. Loki ducked, glass shattering and hitting every corner of the bathroom. Angry flecks of green seiðr flickering around the remnants.

He stared at the destroyed mirror for a brief moment. He couldn't say that he was surprised with the outburst. His seiðr tended to do that with strong emotions. What did surprise him, was the frost rapidly forming all around the room. Coating every flat surface with a light sprinkling of ice.

Panic spread deep and rampant throughout his blue body, desperately trying to make it stop. But it wouldn't. The ice wouldn't stop and he couldn't figure out how to make his Aesir illusion come back and he was stuck in the monstrous Jötun form and he couldn't breathe.

And before he realized what he was doing he had a pair of antique scissors in his hands and was trying to cut away the horns that swelled from his head. Crying out in pain the second they made an indent, blue blood gushing from the small gash. Horns were very sensitive, he realized and they hurt to much to get any sick satisfaction from harming them.

He felt out of his body, watching a tragedy happen. Climbing into the bathtub to not make a mess, taking the scissors to his forearms, his wrists. Pressing gently, just enough to draw the slightest amount of blood. Pushing harder and harder in clean, precise lines into his Jötun skin.

It was foul, the disgusting satisfaction that he got from it. The addicting thrall that came with every fresh cut. Lining his wrists like a battle wound. And with frightening terror, he realized he craved it. A way to let out his emotions without confiding to anyone. The downward spiral that sucked him down. He should've stopped, he knew that. It wasn't right nor what Asgard expected of a prince but he didn't care.

He was embracing his monstrous heritage onto himself.

And now he was watching history repeat itself. A particularly large wood splinter was in his hand as he waited to strike, the jagged piece hovering inches above his skin. For a moment, he considered cutting deeper than in the past. Hard enough to do possible damage beyond scarring. He shook his head, deciding against it. Although the idea was much more appetizing than he cared to admit, it would just prove to Pierce and Rumlow that their attempts to break him had been successful.

So he decided to go slightly less than deadly, just enough to satisfy him for the time being.

Time seemed to faze in and out, only focusing on the gratifying slush of blood that leaked from his hands. Enticing him like a sickness. A poisonous dream. Because he is drowning drowning drowning and he is enticed by the way the wooden splinters make him feel something.A  tarnished joy from the split blood on his hands because there is red in his ledger and why should it matter if he adds his own to the tainted mix?

He's too focused on the blood, on the blue blood spilling from his pale hands, but his hands aren't pale because he is a Jötun monster hiding in an Aesir body and cutting is the only way to relieve the pain because it makes him feel so good. Too focused on the steady stream to hear the creaking door open, to hear Rumlow mutter 'You've gotta be shitting me' until suddenly there is a boot in his abdomen. Kicking rock hard into the place where the tube ends in his stomach. He cowers away from the pain of the tender area and his gut explodes with fire and pain from the boot rendering him breathless.

"Pathetic," Rumlow spits, words like poison as he twists the bleeding skin on the gods forearm. Loki bites his tongue so hard that it draws blood, but he will not admit weakness. He will not. He refuses.

But Rumlow grabs a hold of Loki's jaw, the tube between his rough fingers, "Look at me," he growls, a sickening smirk when Loki finally looks up with full eyes. "You are nothing, bitch. If you think that this is helping then you're even more of an idiot than I thought. Now get up, we got work to do,"

Loki wouldn't stop a whimper as Rumlow dug his dirtied fingernails into his flesh, sluggishly following him to the same chair. The same chair where they had stolen him of his words once more. Made the weaponless Liesmith.

"Come on, be a good bitch and sit down," Rumlow taunts as Loki sits down, momentarily distracted from the pain. His Allspeak is translating the word as 'female dog' but he's certain there has to be a more derogatory connotation. Plus, even if there wasn't, it wants to make his blood boil. He is not a dog. He is not an animal and he will not be treated as such.

"Now, since you went and did... that," He says, every word leaking with disgust, "We gotta clean this mess up. Specially before it gets infected," he says, a smile shining across his face. He steps, aside, revealing the same agent- doctor?- who shoved the tube down Loki's throat yesterday.

Then there is acid in his wounds. Acid burning down the tube and in his wrists and there is so much screaming and burning and pain. Ripping and scavenging for any part of his body that is not in pain and infesting it. Infesting and plaguing his body and he wants to explode. Because there is no way to scream or cry out and detonating like a bomb would be less than the misery he is suffering through right now.

Because he can feel the acid bursting through his veins and corroding his lungs and stomach and he can't breathe as he gags and bits of the acid erupt from the clear tube they were poured down. His eyes widen because along with the acid are little pink bits that he soon realizes are pieces of flesh. He is vomiting up acid and bile and tissues and parts of him.

And he cannot scream so he whimpers and clenches and jerks, moving his hands around so much that he feels a crunch in his wrist but he doesn't care because there is acid in his arms and his body and it is killing him.

The acid coursing through him began to die down, slowly, painfully. Until he feels it just barely below the surface, aching to bubble over once more. The world wibbly-wobbly, tilting to the right and warping like water. Words fading in and out and black covering a majority of his sight.

"Yeah," someone says, but he's too disoriented to tell who, the words blending together like sand, We just continue the treatments until he breaks. Then he'll tell us where the scepter is. It worked with Barnes,"

Loki blinks, trying to keep his eyes open from the pain, who is Barnes? The name sounds familiar but he can't remember. He can't do anything, he realizes. His movements are sluggish and weary, stumbling and leaning onto the wall for support when Rumlow drags him back to the cell. The taste of blood, flesh, his flesh drowning his senses. The acid worming and prying at his open wounds. The doctor speaks to Rumloe a bit more. But Loki doesn't care, he's too out of it to notice the gentle drip of blood leaking from the tube. The deafening silence of the cell was stifled only by his own ragged breathing.

And yet he still firmly kept the wooden splinter in his hand through the whole ordeal. If the urge to feel something overtook him again.

Just in case.