Author's note: *abandons earlier fic because it was a crappy idea anyway and this was much more fun* Okay, this is a multi-chaptered story I've been working on with several friends. We disregarded Thor: The Dark World because I haven't seen it (SHAME ON ME). I wrote Loki's POV. A friend of mine—ArwenisWholocked, go check her out, she's AWESOME—wrote Alex (daughter of the Winter Soldier) and Aron (son of Loki and Sigyn, who was Loki's wife in the comics). Peggy (daughter of Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff) was played by another friend, Abby, who isn't on here. Frera (daughter of Thor and Jane Foster) was written by yet another friend, The Elvish Butterfly (check her out as well). And…we don't have a title for it. I think that's it. Yeah. Please favorite, review, etc.
1
Loki hurt. He hurt everywhere. Sometimes he hurt so badly he forgot he was hurting, which didn't make any sense when he was sane enough to think. But often, he wasn't sane enough to think.
When he was, he remembered things. Things he loved to remember and which were incredibly vivid, things he wished he remembered better, and, more often than not, things he wished he could forget. He would remember Laufey-he wished he could forget how Laufey had left him-and yet he somehow relished the memory of killing him-and knew he shouldn't relish the memory of killing his father-and did anyway. He would remember Sigyn, who might have been the only person in the nine realms capable of loving him. He remembered Thor, Thor who he hated with every fiber of his being, Thor the golden prince everyone loved, the hero, the one who was everything Loki had ever wanted to be. Thor he remembered with loathing. He would remember everything he had ever done, how he killed all those pitiful mortals, and how he had enjoyed it, and how he had known he shouldn't have enjoyed it and did anyway. And sometimes-and these came least often-he would remember Aron.
At these times, his mouth would twist into a wry smile-or as much of a smile as he was capable of making. It was a grimace, really, and nothing more than that. But it was something.
Aron had been little more than an infant when Loki had been captured by the Chitauri. Loki barely could remember him, in fact. But he had the faintest image in his head, and when he called this image to mind, the pain almost disappeared. Almost.
And when he remembered Aron, there was also hope. The faintest bit of hope that, someday, he would escape everything and find his son again.
But he knew that there was only the pain and the hurt and the monsters that lived with him.
Alexis caught the subway home from the firing range where she had practiced her shooting for the past hour, her arms sore and heavy. It had been a long day; she'd gone to the range straight after her last day of school to celebrate and had tested a new handgun model the range had just gotten.
Dropping into an empty seat as a stream of exhausted business workers, their once-crisp, pristine suits and pencil skirts wrinkled and rumpled as they trudged up the stairs to the surface, exited the train, Alex picked up a discarded copy of the day's newspaper and scanned the top headlines briefly. Nothing interesting was on the first page, but the second page had a report on Tony Stark formally apologizing for some fiasco in New York by one of his sons. Alex rolled her eyes. Typical, she thought, riffling through the paper for the sports section. The apologies were nothing new; Stark's boys were almost always in some sort of trouble as they followed in their father's questionable footsteps. It was a different world for them; they were the sons of one of the most famous, richest men on the planet. As for her, she was a nobody, the daughter of a former killer with an almost impossible, completely unbelievable past and a deceased young woman who'd worked for most of her life as a cashier at a Seven Eleven in Washington, DC. She had no place in the Avengers' world, nor the world of the Avengers' children.
The train slowed to a halt a few minutes later and Alex got off, climbing up the stairs two at a time to greet the setting sun, only a block or so ahead of the Lincoln Memorial. Saluting to the huge monument as was her typical custom, she pulled her skateboard out of her backpack and took off down the sidewalk towards her apartment.
Aron stalked around his room, scowling and tossing a dagger up and down in the air as he walked. He hated being confined to one space, but he had no choice but to stay in his room unless he wanted a very ticked off Clint Barton coming after him.
He hadn't done much... not really, he defended himself. Just placed a couple of explosive chemicals in Uncle Steve's cereal that had blown Cheerios around the kitchen when Uncle Steve poured milk onto his breakfast. The result had been a wet, soggy mess of charred cereal all over the walls, a very startled (and very annoyed) Uncle Steve, and a huge mess for Aron to spend an hour or so cleaning up. He protested that no one had gotten hurt, so what was the big deal, for crying out loud, but that had only made everyone more upset ("You don't GET it, Aron"- yes, yes, I get it perfectly fine, you keep TELLING me) and had landed him in his room for "reckless behavior" or something, as Uncle Clint had said- although Aron was pretty sure his uncle had been trying very hard not to laugh at Uncle Steve's surprised expression when his cereal had been enveloped in a greenish-grey mushroom cloud of chemical smoke.
Throwing the dagger at the wall, where it stuck quivering next to a similar gash in the wall an inch or so away, Aron flopped down on his bed and waited for Uncle Clint to come and tell him he could come out. He was too old for this "time-out" type stuff; but he guessed he was only really in here because everyone was too busy with paperwork and SHIELD assignments to chew him out properly.
He shouldn't complain, he knew; the Avengers had done him a huge favor by taking him in like this, raising him for the past eight years and treating him like one of their own kids. He called them his aunts and uncles; they had insisted on it, even though only Thor and Jane were really related to him (and not even by blood, technically), saying that "Mr. and Mrs. Stark", "Mr. Banner", etc., was far too formal for their tastes. Although, before Aron had gotten used to (albeit outdated) Midgardian internet slang, Uncle Tony had almost convinced him that Aron was to address him as "sir, the amazing p0wner of all noobs" until Aunt Pepper came to his rescue. He couldn't help smiling at the memory, his mood lifting somewhat and leaving him with a slightly chagrined feeling. He was being childish; he was 16 (although technically he was 36 in Midgardian years) and bigger than pity parties. He made a mental note to apologize to Uncle Steve for pranking him.
A few minutes later, a soft knock sounded on his door. "Come in," he called in his distinctive Asgardian accent (which Aunt Jane insisted sounded a lot like a British accent).
The door opened, revealing Bruce Banner in the doorway. "Don't eat me," he said, smiling a little.
Aron rolled his eyes. "I'm fine, Uncle Bruce; I overreacted," he assured him. "I'm sorry about all the yelling."
Bruce shrugged. "It's alright, but it's not me you need to apologize to. Listen, I came up here to tell you why we were upset about the chemicals. It wasn't so much the mess- although that was a bit annoying- but rather the fact that you put Uncle Steve in danger. I know you like chemistry and all, but I don't think you knew as much as you thought you did about those chemicals. They're pretty dangerous; I was adding some compounds into them and I hadn't relabeled them. So they're a good bit more powerful than the chemical on the label. See what I'm saying?"
Aron nodded, embarrassed.
"Good," Bruce said. He turned to go, then looked back at his nephew-of-sorts. "Aron, we know you like pulling pranks and being funny, and that's fine. You just need to use common sense and make sure what you're doing won't hurt anyone, ok?"
Aron looked up and nodded again. "Yes, sir."
Bruce smiled. "Alright, then. You'd better get changed; Uncle Clint and Uncle Steve are leaving for SHIELD soon, so if you want a ride to the training area, you'd better get going soon."
Aron looked at his clock and winced; he would have to hurry in order to be on time for training. After five years, SHIELD had finally decided he wasn't a maniacal killer, or at least not psychotic enough to warrant prohibiting him from being trained in weapon combat and the like "for emergencies only".
Peggy shouldered her school bag as she left the library. Her bag should have been heavy from all the books she carried, but because of her father's strenuous work-out program, she didn't mind it. Peggy looked at her watch; she was already late. Breaking into a run, she dodged flying cars and crowded pedestrian filled streets. She kept her eyes on the tower up ahead. Reaching the doors, she flung them open and made her way into the lobby. On her way up she noticed a newspaper holding yet another Stark apology; she knew she was going to have to ask Clarisse about that later. She reached her apartment on the twentieth floor and, opening the door, she saw her dad in the kitchen eating a sandwich.
"Hey Dad. Mom home yet?"
"Nope, she's still on her mission."
Peggy sighed and, taking out a book, slumped onto the couch.
Frera ran out the door into the hot, bustling air of New York City in June, her heart soaring and leaping every time her feet hit the concrete, beating a rhythm: School is over! Over! Over! Not that she hadn't liked it. She'd loved every minute of learning. But the way kids stared at her...
She slowed to a walk as she rounded a corner, heading towards Stark Towers. Most of the kids in her class had gotten used to her, the half-Asgardian weirdo. But there was always the new kid who'd come along and gawk at her like she was some kind of extraterrestrial...and speaking of gawking...
She groaned inwardly as a reporter rounded the corner ahead of her, looked around, and headed straight for her. Most were leaving her alone by now, but this one was obviously new. She arranged her face into a forced smile and tried to walk faster, to no avail. The reporter was making a beeline straight for her, his face alight with the eager, media-hungry look she had come to disdain.
"Hello, hello!" he panted. "You must be Miss...Frera?" He took out a notepad.
"Excuse me, I'm trying to get home from school," she said.
"Yes, yes, of course. I understand that you have things to attend to," he said, glancing at her as though expecting her to display mind-staggering powers any second now. "I only wanted to ask you a few questions."
"How exciting," she said flatly. She opened her mouth, then had a new, truly exciting thought: This might be a good time to test it! "Of course...sir." She leaned against a nearby dumpster, looking resigned.
"Excellent!" gushed the reporter. "I-" He stopped and stared at Frera. Except there was no Frera. She had disappeared into thin air.
Frera only glanced once around the corner. It had worked! The reporter was poking at the garbage around the dumpster and muttering to himself. With a satisfied smirk, Frera broke into a run, reached the glass doors of the enormous Tower, and dashed inside, but she had only taken a couple steps before she bumped into someone, hard.
"-Aron?"
Aron jumped backwards. "Heads up!" he exclaimed, then blinked. "Oh, it's you, Frera. What's the rush?"
"Oh," she said, catching her breath. "Nothing much. Just getting rid of a reporter." She looked at him more closely, scrutinizing the bits of smoke still left in his hair. "Is something wrong?"
Aron realised what she was looking at and blushed, rapidly running a hand through his curls and dislodging bits of chemical powder and Cheerio dust. "Ummm, no, not really... just up to my usual. I'm off for training; I'll be back in an hour or so. I'm probably just going to hit the range; it's a bit late for anything else..." He grinned mischievously at her. "Did you do your... thing? On the reporter?"
She grinned back. "That I did. I do hope he won't report me, though. And I hope you have a great time! I gotta go do some stuff." She paused a bit before continuing down the hall, her shoes squeaking on the shiny floor. I wonder what he did again... she thought, a bit concerned, but she brushed the thought away as she got into an elevator, making sure to avoid any staff.
She would have come with him to the range, but as it was the end of school she wanted to do something she had not done for a while: read. And she had just gotten a new book on Norse mythology. True, she had Asgardian books, but only a few, so she had gleaned most of her knowledge from "normal" textbooks, with a grain of salt: the exaggerations were sometimes fantastical.
When she reached the 9th floor, she stepped outside onto the carpeted hall, glanced around, and headed straight for the third door on the right. Once inside, she dropped her book on her desk and reveled for one moment in the sunlight streaming through her many windows. Her room was her protection from the outside world, and the huge windows staring right onto one of the world's busiest cities never failed to attract her. The rest of the room was plain: light green and airy.
She reached for her book, but then hesitated. First, an experiment: the floating specks of dust had given her an idea. She concentrated for a moment, staring right at the spot in front of her in the dancing air. Nothing happened-but then, with a bluish glow, a soap bubble appeared, hovering in the air. Perfect. She let it float there for a moment, then turned back to her book and heaved it onto her bed. Eagerly, she opened it and scanned the pages, but then disappointment sank in. This was just another one of those good-for-nothing mythological books that restated nothing except the usual hash of Norse mythology from the (severely limited) Midgardian "expert" perspective. Sighing, she turned to the index and a list of the Norse gods, which she already knew all about.
Odin...Freyr...Frigg...Heimdallr...Thor - He's my father, for goodness' sake! -...Loki...
She snapped the book shut and just lay there, thinking. I should have gone with Aron, she thought. More use than just sitting around here! I hope he doesn't get into trouble; he always seems to be doing that. Out of boredom, her mind skipped back to the index.
I wonder where they all are now...Father is probably coming back soon from some business or something... Her mind skipped farther back and farther back into her family: mother, grandfather, grandmother (now long dead)...which left...I wonder what happened to him. Or what is happening. Father never told me much-Wikipedia told me more! She thought hard. She liked to think. She tried to imagine herself being one of those names on that fading page.
Blackness. Blackness and more blackness. Ruin. Revenge...yes, that would be it...
Above her, the soap bubble popped.
