Warnings: vomit, starvation

The blanket lifts up over the top of the cage, letting the light stream in. Loki forces his eyes open, and Pierce's face greets him from the outside. Of course it does. It always does.

"Rise and shine, Loki," Pierce says with a grin.

Loki groans and covers his face with his hands. It's stupidly bright in here. He hates it. He hates that he has to do things. He just wants to go back under the blanket and block out the world.

"How are you feeling?" Pierce asks him.

Loki lowers his gaze to the small pile of bile he's vomited up overnight. He's sure it would have been more if he'd had any actual food in his system. "Awful."

"Yeah, that'd be the drugs wearing off," Pierce says. "Come on out. I've got something to keep your mind off of it."

Loki was not, in fact, aware that drugs wearing off had such shitty consequences, but complaining will do nothing to make them go away, so, reluctantly, he crawls out of the cage.

He keeps his gaze on the floor. It's not so bright on the floor. It doesn't hurt his head as much when he's looking at the floor.

As if reading his mind, Pierce says, "Don't worry; I'll have you in the dark in no time."

That is probably the best news he'lll hear all day.

"Stand up."

Loki forces himself to his feet, and his legs shake beneath him. His arms are shaking, too. His whole body is shaking – and not the fun way it was shaking yesterday.

"This will be a quick one," Pierce assures him. "I'll let you have your dinner in no time."

Loki glances toward the doorway, and the sight of the bowl on the floor has his stomach doing flips. Usually he'd be ecstatic, but right now, he's not sure he wants to put anything inside of him. His body has already tried to vomit all the food he hasn't eaten. He doesn't want to give it something more to work with.

"I'm going to blindfold you, okay?" Pierce says. "And I'll tell you where we're going from there."

"Yes, sir." At least the blindfold is dark. Right now, that's all he wants.

A strip of fabric covers his eyes, and he can feel Pierce from behind him, tying it snug against his head. Loki takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. This is marginally better. The pressure against his head is oddly comforting. It doesn't quite relieve the pain, but it feels nice.

He's sure that nice feeling won't last.

With his sight blocked, he's left with only his hearing to tell him what's going on around him. He can hear Pierce's footsteps, though not all that far away, seemingly circling back in front of him. He braces himself for the worst.

And he braces himself.

And he braces himself.

But the worst doesn't come.

This is strange. What's he doing? Is he getting something ready? He's being awfully quiet about it. It's weird. It's... suspicious.

This is going to be awful, isn't it?

He stays as quiet as he can, listening for what he might be up to now. He doesn't hear anything. It's completely silent. No rustling; no footsteps; nothing.

So he waits.

There's nothing else for him to do. Pierce doesn't tend to like it when Loki asks questions, and if he hasn't explained his plan yet, he's clearly doing so for a reason. He just has to wait and see what it is.

... It's a lot of waiting.

A really, really big amount of waiting.

A really, really, really big amount of waiting.

Is Pierce even still here? He can't imagine that he'd stand in the same spot for all this time just to confuse him. What would that test? His obedience? He has to be obedient. He doesn't have a choice. What would they gain from that?

Or did Pierce somehow sneak away without him noticing? He can't imagine how he would have done that. Loki's not convinced his senses are as sharp as they once were, but he certainly knows how to listen for footsteps. He does it every day in the cage. If Pierce had left, wouldn't he have heard it?

He tries to be good.

He tries to wait this out.

He really, really does.

He stands there for a long time – hours, he'd guess, though he can't know for sure. He stands there until his legs grow tired and his back is sore from holding him up. He stands there long enough for this stomach to transition from post-drug nausea to a more familiar starvation-induced nausea – and it says a lot about his life, he thinks, that he can tell those apart.

He stands there for as long as his legs will carry him, but finally, finally, he has to give in.

"May I sit?" he asks.

There's no answer.

He counts to a hundred.

Still silence.

So he carefully lowers himself to the floor and crosses his legs in front of him. After all, nobody told him he had to keep standing. It was implied, maybe, when Pierce told him to stand up and never said otherwise, but technically, he wasn't told he couldn't sit down.

He's acutely aware that this is the type of technicality that could result in an awful punishment, but it's also the type of punishment he can extort. When he's given an order, he has to listen, but he only has to listen to what's said, and technically...

This is probably a bad idea. He knows that. But he can't stand any longer. He's tired. He's sore. He needs to sit down. He's earned this break, even if Pierce doesn't agree.

And now he's sitting.

And he has no idea what to do.

He can't even relax. This feels so much like the cage — the darkness, the silence, the stillness — but it's so, so much different. The cage is supposed to be his safe space, and right now, he feels anything but safe. For all he knows, Pierce is standing in front of him with a gun aimed right at his head. (He's not, obviously. Loki knows that. But what if he is?)

He can't bring himself to relax, even for a moment. He's hyper-vigilant, listening for even the slightest of sounds that tells him somebody's nearby.

And he doesn't hear them.

He doesn't hear anything.

For hours, he sits there, and it's silent.

Of all the tests Pierce has done, this is perhaps the strangest. What's the point? What is he testing? What is the end game?.

He supposes he'll find out soon enough.

~~~

He really tried to stay awake.

He was trying to be good. He really was. He tries really hard to stay awake. But he's been left here for so long in the darkness and the silence that eventually, his body has to give in.

He forgets for a moment where he is when he wakes. He thinks he's in the cage. He thinks the darkness that envelopes him is that of the blanket that covers it, and the weird feeling around his head is nothing. He almost goes to swipe at it, to move it.

But then he remembers.

And then he's really, really confused.

He's quiet for a minute or two, waiting to hear Pierce's voice — or Rumlow's voice or one of the other SHIELD agents — but it doesn't come.

So, hesitantly, he says, his voice shaking, "Hello? Is anybody here?"

Silence.

As always.

He lets out a long breath. This is strange. This is really, really strange.

He's sure this is part of a test. He's sure there's a plan in place here. But he doesn't understand it. He can see the psychological torture of promising an explanation and not giving one, but why the porridge? Why go through the trouble of bringing it in just to leave it at the door overnight? And to not even give him an instruction? A single thing to do?

He doesn't get it.

He really doesn't get it.

This is definitely going to be a waste of time; he's sure of it. It was the last hundred times he tried, and it will be now. But he has to try. He just has to.

"Heimdall?" Loki says quietly. "I don't expect you to help me. I know I don't deserve to return to Asgard. But could you..." He trails off with a sigh. "Would you please tell me what's happening? I don't understand, and I'm confused and I'm starting to become scared. Just this once, will you please tell me what's happening to me? That's all I ask."

He waits for a few minutes.

It never takes a few minutes. He knows after the first one that nothing's going to come from this. But still, he waits a while longer, just in case. Maybe Heimdall will talk to him. Maybe, just maybe, Heimdall will help him.

He doesn't, obviously.

Because if there's one thing Loki is not, it's helpable.

He sighs. It seems there's nothing to do but wait, then. He'll just sit here with his blindfold on and he will wait. Pierce will come back eventually. He just needs to be patient and wait.

It can't be too long now, right?

~~~

He can't tell if it's actually been days or if the boredom and the uncertainty and the anxiety makes it feel like it's been days.

His stomach is starting to gnaw at him — and it must be bad if he can tell it's worse than usual. He's so hungry, he feels like his stomach is going to eat him from the inside. He wouldn't even blame it. It deserves to eat itself.

Actually, now that he thinks about it...

Pierce left a bowl of porridge by the door. He could go eat it. He could take off his blindfold just long enough to eat it and then put it back on, and nobody will have to know.

Although the bowl would be empty, so that might give it away.

He sighs.

He'll just wait.

~~~

If he waits any longer, he is going to die.

He needs to eat. He needs to. He doesn't care what Pierce does to him. It has been days. He is fully convinced that it has been multiple days now — a week, even. Two weeks, maybe. He's so hungry. He's going to eat.

He tries to untie the blindfold, but his hands are too weak, too shaky to do it. He gives up and pulls it down around his neck. He just needs to be able to see.

The light assaults his eyes, and he squeezes them shut before he blinds himself. Maybe he didn't think this through. He's not sure what he should have done differently, but he definitely should not have done this the way that he did.

Somehow, the few minutes it takes for his eyes to adjust to the light are worse than the hours he's considered taking this blindfold off. He's so close. The food is right there. He can almost taste it. But he can't see, and if he can't see, he can't eat.

He tries to stand up, but he can't. His arms can't push him, his legs can't support him. He's too tired. He's too hungry.

He reaches out a hand, trying to pull the bowl toward him with his magic, but even that doesn't work, and his magic always works. Even at his worst, his magic has always worked. The fact that it doesn't right now...

It's terrifying.

But he's too hungry to be properly terrified. He can focus on that later. He needs to eat first. He needs to get that bowl.

He turns himself over onto his hands and knees, and the pressure on his arms makes them shake even worse. But he can do this. He can make it over there. It's only, what, a hundred feet? He can crawl a hundred feet.

It's only then that he notices the small pile of dust in front of him. He's not sure how it got there or why there's so much in one spot and so little dust everywhere else, and a part of him wants to question it, but he can't find it in himself to care. He just has to get to his porridge.

He moves his hand first, then his knee. That's one step. Hand and knee. Another step. Hand and knee. A third. It's slow, painfully slow, and it's nothing short of exhausting, but he can do this. There's a bowl of porridge on the line, and he is determined to get it.

It takes a long time. He has to rest four or five times along the way. But finally, finally, he reaches the bowl. He picks it up and looks inside, and he's met with the dryest, most inedible porridge known to man or god.

He shovels it in his mouth anyway.

He can hardly force himself to swallow. He's so thirsty, so dehydrated, and the porridge is so dry, it doesn't want to go down. But he worked too hard to get here to back down now. He's eating his damn porridge if it kills him.

Although, knowing Pierce, he'll likely face a fate far worse than death. He just has to come back first.

And he will.

Eventually.

He has to.