WARNING: This chapter contains some disturbing content. It's not quite torture, but it does depict characters getting hurt in a bad situation. I'll put *'s right before and right after them, and I'll put a summary of what happened in the AN at the bottom if you are unable to read that sort of thing.

His name was Loki, and that was all he knew at the beginning.

He eventually discovered more things about himself. He despised high temperatures, but was perfectly comfortable in places cold enough to kill. When he was cold enough, his eyes turned red and his skin turned blue, odd raised lines that had never been there before suddenly decorating his whole body. He was clever, with an eye for mischief. He had a mind for strategy. He was a talented liar, and he could tell when someone was lying to him.

Which was why he could tell immediately that the purple man claiming to be his father was nothing of the sort.

He knew that he had not always been there, no matter how many people greeted him as though he were an old friend, or asked him if he remembered a certain event, acting like they forgot he was amnesiac when he informed them that he did not. No matter how many people congratulated him on his recovery from "That nasty fall", or asked when he would return to the army. Liars, liars, liars the lot of them.

They did not know him. The events they kept mentioning never happened. He had not fallen… well, actually, that didn't seem quite right, maybe he had, but it was certainly not what had caused his loss of memory. He had never been in their army.

The scars on his body were not gained from battle. At least, most of them weren't. There were battle scars, a knife wound on his gut, a scar on his side where it seemed as though an arrow had grazed him. The others though… they were deliberate. They were new. *A long patch on his inner thigh that looked like it was from someone skinning him. Burn marks on his feet. His slightly crooked fingers that were more likely that not broken. Little chips near his fingernails where it looked like they had been peeled off. Dashed near his eyes where the oh so sensitive skin had been nicked. Long lines on his back where he had been lashed. Dots lining his lips, in what he can only assume is the pattern where they were stitched together. He had been someone before this place, someone with information. He had either given it away or it had been forced from him, and once whoever was on the other end of these scars, they erased his memory and made him anew.*

He was not their Prince, regardless of what they said. He was their King's shiny new weapon, that would be used until broken and thrown away.

At the time, he had no idea that "shiny" would be all too true.

The first time he met the girls who would later become his sisters was in battle. They were dirty, dressed in rags, and frail. They each wore the yellow armband that marked them as slaves, usually prisoners from planets the Mad Titan had conquered. Thanos has thrown them in a room with swords that were not suited to them and told them to fight. The girls had lept at him without hesitation, and he had no choice but to strike back.

After the battle, Loki stood victor over both of them, though he had been surprised that they were as good as they were, even though they were afraid of something, and had allowed that fear to take hold of them and send them into a frenzy. When the fight was over, the blue one looked terrified, and the green one simply looked numb, as though she knew her fate and had accepted it.

"Well done, Loki! You've always been the best! Now, kill them!"

And suddenly, Loki understood why they were afraid. They knew that if they lost, they would be killed. He looked to Thanos, grinning from the balcony over the arena, and then back at the girls lying bloody at his feet. He knew the scars, he knew that Thanos would hurt him without hesitation should he refuse. And really, he had no reason to. He did not know them, their deaths would mean nothing to him, he had nothing to gain and everything to lose.

He gripped the sword in his hand tighter, telling himself that he would make it quick for them, end their suffering as much as he could, until he looked into the blue ones eyes.

She, unlike her companion, wanted to live. Desperately, completely. He looked back at the green one and saw the fire in her eyes that said no, she had not accepted her fate, and if she was going out she would go out fighting.

Loki turned around, all the while wondering what he was doing, and dropped the sword, letting it fall to the ground and send a loud CLANK throughout the metal room. He looked Thanos, the monster who claimed to be his father, dead in the eye, and announced with far more confidence than he actually felt:

"No."

He could feel the girl's eyes staring at him in shock from behind him as Thanos jumped into the pit. He stalked towards Loki, who had not dropped his gaze no matter how close he had gotten, until he stood towering over him.

"What was that?"

"I said no. I will not kill them."

"And why, pray tell, is that?"

"They're good fighters, and have the potential to be greater. Their deaths would be a waste. They're far more useful alive than dead."

Thanos looked down at him, seeming to consider his words. Personally, Loki thought he was doing a rather good job of standing still and confident even though every fiber of his being was remembering the pain he could not, and was screaming at him to give in and save himself.

"Very well, Loki. From this point forward, they are yours to train, and to punish. They will be moving into your wing, and you may use them for anything you wish. However, this is not a gift. There is a price for them, and a price for denying me."

Loki raised his chin and looked at him coolly, ignoring his instincts begging him to look down at the floor.

"Name it."

The titan grinned savagely at him before grabbing his wrist. *Excruciating pain followed, and Loki almost lost his silver tongue trying not to scream.*

When all was said and done, he had a new metal left arm, left eye, and half a right leg. *The process of turning the skin and bones to metal was the most painful thing imaginable, but Loki simply grit his teeth and refused to scream, refused to give this monster the satisfaction.*

Thanos dismissed him, and he calmly used magic to levitate the girls and take them to his wing of the palace. He carefully set them on the bed in one of the guest rooms, before sitting beside them with a first aid kit and carefully tending to their wounds. The blue one fell asleep as soon as she realized that he would hardly be going through that much trouble if he were going to kill them, but the green one did not take her eyes off of him or let her guard down, even as she moved to give him access to the slashes on her back.

"Why?"

He looked up sharply, not expecting her to speak."

"Pardon?'

"Why did you spare us?"

He looked at her for a long moment, not sure how to answer that question.

"I'm not entirely certain myself, but I think… I think that was me, once. I think, a long time ago, I was the one lying bloody on the ground, my fate in the victor's hands, pleading for him to help... and he failed me. I couldn't let the same thing happen to you."

She stared at him for a long moment, before nodding and laying down. He stood from his chair and moved to the doorway.

"I'll come check on you tomorrow in the morning. We'll talk then."

He learned their names were Nebula and Gamora. After they were healed he moved them to separate bedrooms, magically designed them to their tastes, and commissioned new clothes for them. He trained them to fight better than they were, he taught them how to work with their adrenaline instead of against it. It wasn't long before the girls were thought to be Princesses, his sisters under Thanos. Thanos didn't seem to care about the rumor all that much. Gamora and Nebula because some of the best agents he had, and he used them to their fullest extent. But when they returned from their missions, Loki would always be waiting in their rooms, extra blankets on their beds, with a smile and a first aid kit.

They would stay awake late into the night, plotting their escape from the void, promising each other over and over that they would leave together, they were each other's home now, none of them would be left behind. When Ronan came along, they saw the opportunity they had been presented with and took it in a heartbeat. The plan had been for Gamora to get arrested while Loki stayed with Nebula, and for Gamora to escape and meet up with them later. Loki getting arrested with her was a huge wrench in the plan, but they continued, only to discover that Nebula, thinking she'd been abandoned by them, had snapped. They tried to get her to come with her during the battle, and tried to find her afterwards, but she was nowhere to be found. They acted like they were happy at their victory in front of the other guardians, but that night, and many nights long after, Gamora snuck into Loki's room and they cried late into the night, mourning their lost sister.

When Peter announced she had been found, Loki had been internally bursting with relief. Gamora pulled him into a hug before they left, whispering "Bring her home" in his ear. He nodded against her shoulder.

When he saw Nebula for the first time in months, his heart broke just that little bit more.

AN: Basically, what you missed if you didn't read the parts with torture, is that Loki knows that he's been brutally tortured because of the distinct scars on his body and he gained his metal appendages painfully as the price for Gamora and Nebula.

I know this isn't a continuation of the previous chapter and that cliffhanger is still there, and I'm sorry for making you guys wait, but this was absolutely necessary in order to understand the relationship between Loki and Nebula before their confrontation, and I couldn't figure out a way for this to be in the next chapter and have it all flow the way I wanted it to. I know it's short, and it's darker than this story usually is, but it had to be done.

Hopefully the next chapter isn't too far off and we can wrap up that cliffhanger soon.

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