The Man in the Iron Mask

“Do you realise what you’re doing?” Sarah hissed to me as she pulled me inside the room downstairs and closed the door behind us. “This is serious. You’re going to get into so much trouble…” I saw in her eyes for a moment the stress she was feeling, but only offered confusion in return.

“SHIELD was pretty understanding of my concerns when I visited them earlier. I mean, they didn’t take me off the case or anything. Wait… wait, how did you know I visited SHIELD earlier? I was going to tell you…” It was Sarah’s turn to seem confused now. We both took a breath and I waited for her to explain everything.

“I’m not talking about that. I don’t know anything about why you went to SHIELD but I can assure you that it’s the least of your problems. You cannot be serious about this business with Loki.”

“My business with him?”

“Do I have to spell it out? He’s written some pretty notable things about you over the last few weeks in his patient diary. I only just got to see it this morning. You realise I can’t simply rip these pages out… they’d see there was something missing…”

“What the hell has he been writing about me?” Sarah blushed.

“He details your erm… “relationship”.” She quoted the word with her fingers in mid-air. “He talks about secret notes and conversations. You know how that’ll go down with SHIELD.” She must have seen the look that crossed my face as she continued. “Even if it isn’t true.”

“You have to tell them Loki is a nasty little liar. Isn’t he supposed to be the God of lies or something?”

“Of mischief, actually.”

“Well then, they won’t find him very convincing.”

“Madeline… I know you. We’re friends, and even I believe his words.”

“Still?”

“I don’t want to believe them! And I don’t know if I believe them in their entirety… but there’s something there.” We stood still for a moment and I collected my thoughts. “…Isn’t there?”

“They’re doing something to him. Something with injections. It… hurts to see someone treated like that, even if it would be easy to reason how they deserve it for what they did. How many people did he kill in the end in New York?”

“74.”

“It still makes my stomach churn to know that he’s being mistreated, when he’s been so very human whilst being here. He’s not the monster we saw on the screens a few years ago. He’s not that person. I don’t know why I feel so strongly about this.” I felt as my voice began to quiver and finally, tears began to spill from my eyes. It just wasn’t right.

“He’s not under any special treatment, Madeline. How do you know he’s being injected?”

“He showed me the marks. He didn’t do them himself. He was pointing to a man in the recreation room, but he didn’t know him. He was just a man in a black suit, I don’t see…” It hit me right at that moment, and my tears stopped to make way for my anger.

“What?”

“SHIELD. Who else would Loki associate with black suits? SHIELD is injecting him with something. Or maybe they’re taking his blood. Oh my God.” I had to run into the adjacent room to throw up in the sink, and I felt a hand on my back a moment later.

“Listen, Madeline. Regardless of whatever’s happening to him, you have to protect yourself. I really don’t know what you’re gonna do. They’re going to want to see these notes, even if they’re non-existent. They’re going to want an explanation. You’d better start thinking of one…”

“I need to see Loki.”

“He should be in his room. Aren’t you supposed to have shown him to the showers by now? Security doesn’t wait around… would you like me to come with you?”

“I need to talk to him. Alone. Please, please… keep this to yourself.” I turned around and Sarah nodded, taking her hand off my back and giving me a small smile before starting to turn on her heel to leave. I followed after her after a little while, and got ready to see Loki.

---

I waited patiently by Loki’s door as he finished writing in his journal – that journal – before taking him to have a shower. I didn’t say anything. I wanted to gage his reaction, now that I knew what was going on. Was he playing some sort of game to have a cruel kind of fun, or was he actually serious in what he wrote?

Loki eyed me off several times as I admit, I lost my thoughts and happened to be staring right at him at the same time. I hadn’t realised. He had. He finished up and dressed, and I walked up to him as he began to comb through his hair, flicking it back as he always did. He had an eye for style, I guess. Not many of the patients bothered with that sort of thing anymore.

“I need to talk to you.” He stopped fluffing with his hair and turned to me as if to say he was listening. “You’ve written something in your journal, and someone else has seen it. It wasn’t very nice of you. I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.” His eyes crinkled at the sides and I swore he was smirking beneath that mask. What was wrong with this man?

“Are you listening to what I’m saying? Once a certain agency sees this shit, I’m in so much trouble.” I watched as Loki took his finger to the mirror and in the steam wrote “SHIELD?”. I might have slapped him, had his face not been protected.

“You know they’ll read your stuff!? And you still wrote about me!?” He nodded, then brought his eyes back to stare inside of me.

“I need your help.”

His request scrawled across the mirror might have seemed so simple yesterday. Now I knew what he might have wanted, and how he might be pushing me into it.

“I cannot help you escape. You got yourself in here, and I know as well as any other that releasing you would be a bad idea. Blackmailing me wasn’t the best way to grab my attention.” His cool hand rested on my shoulder, then ran across my jawline. I didn’t feel in danger. I felt something else. I felt somewhat human, and instantly recalled the way he was being treated. My own hand moved to his arm where he had new puncture marks along with a tiny bruise. I figured he’d got them this morning during SHIELD’s little visit. They made these visits every week. Whatever they were pumping through his veins was… wrong. I knew this, and it was bending me in ways I wished it wouldn’t.

In the quietest voice I could manage, I whispered to Loki, “How can you be sure I won’t be harmed? That I won’t lose everything I have?” He took his hand from me to write again, pausing just before he did so to look at me once more though this time, not at my eyes.

“Trust.” His word was a simple one, and one that I wanted to believe in so very bad. Perhaps things might have been easier if he could speak with me. There was no tone in his words. They were starting to form drips where the loops in his letters were, and slowly, were disappearing into a mess of nothing on that mirror that now reflected his heartrending reflection. I wanted to help him, but I wanted it to be the right thing to do. I knew, however, that there was no way I could be certain of this.