Title: A Bird Without Feathers
Author: ATG-4835
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters from Marvel. I am just borrowing them for the moment.
Author's Note: A serious take on a semi De-aged Loki story. Takes place Post-Avengers and will be AU from The Dark World, as well as future Marvel films. Explanation of the time between The Avengers and the time of this story's occurrence will be given as the story progresses.

Re-Edited: 3/19/14.

It was to rain that he woke to.

There was a roaring sound in his ears, as if he had a shell pressed to them and he were listening to the sound of the great sea. Roars and echoes and patters all around him and he was spinning inside the sound, lost as he was tossed about from crescendo to peak, as the sound faded and consumed and overwhelmed him. Lost to the waves of time and sound, swirled about in uncertainty. But some sort of clarity was arriving, like a glowing ship to him, and he swam towards it.

His head was throbbing, from what little he could tell of the situation. Not hurting, not exactly, but a throb that was almost deeper than pain could be. His entire face throbbed, in fact. A bone deep ache settled into him, hard and heavy in his limbs. It hurt to move, to think, to breathe…

And there was rain.

He blinked his eyes open.

His world was so very disoriented. His vision was cloudy, surrounded by muted, cold colors. All of them were blurry and out of focus. Mere smudges against his eyes. He blinked, eyebrows furrowing slightly. Shapes swam into view slowly. Bricks. Many of them, in fact, rising up to meet a dark sky, and he realized he was in a back alley made of the red stones. His mind was swaying from alertness to fog and he gave himself into it for a moment as he tried to figure out what had just happened.

Falling.

Falling…. That's right. He had been falling. He recalled the distant sensation of being weightless and, at the same time, so very, very heavy as he plummeted down from the heavens. Gravity was an unpleasant master when it chose to take hold and drag one down. He had been thrown around in the air, in the storm that swallowed him. He hadn't been able to manage for a graceful landing, either. The ground beneath him was cracked and shattered, stones digging into the skin of his cheek.

Always digging in. With their weapons beyond any weapons imaginable. Pain beyond the most frenzied dreams, and he was screaming, lost in the fog. Screaming for anything. Anyone. Father. Mother, Brother... Screaming and begging and not himself anymore. Nothing. He was nothing and he was falling away into nothing too...

Always falling...

He blinked, mind coming back from the distant place he found it wandering in on occasion. Focus. Now was not the time for this. The episode would have to wait for later; he had to move.

Ahh, but his body ached. This was not the first time he had fallen, and he had a feeling (and his feelings rarely led him astray) that it would not be the last time either. It seemed to be something of a habit for him now, to fall between worlds like a chick falls from its nest. Featherless, alone, and unknowing if he will be able to spread his wings and fly.

Fly...

He had been able to do so once. To glide and walk upon the air as if it were solid beneath his feet. To sit on it and feel it support his weight. But no longer. No, that grace had been taken from him, savaged away and leaving him mere scraps of whatever dignity he could muster up. Nothing but ravaged, shredded remains of what he had once been. A God. A Prince. A King. And what was he now? A husk of dark thoughts, of petty, vengeful urges, and a sharp stabbing of madness. No energy, no warmth of magic. There was only the barest tickle of it in the back of his mind. How much he had used for his escape, to break open time and space and jump from the edge of the universe. Instead of an ocean of magic at his fingertips, he felt dried up and empty. Mere drops remained behind…

For a moment, for a long moment, he simply stared at the brick of the wall. A Lord of Lies in the realm of Midgard and he was sprawled in their filthy, degenerate back alley. A God, forced to lay amongst the trash. It was both degrading as it was disgusting and he endeavored to move from the spot as immediately as possible. Such a typically human place; he guessed he was in the city from the amount of grime he could feel clinging to his skin.

How far he had fallen, and not only physically. The ascension from Prince to a King, and then the long fall from a King, to an outcast, to a villain to a... what was he now? He could not even tell any longer. So many titles and so many labels. He'd come up with another one as soon as he felt himself able to think properly. At the moment, he wished to be out of the foul, smog-ridden rain and into some sort of shelter.

Pick yourself up, God of Lies, and meet the day.

Loki lifted himself, forcing his fatigued, battered body to his elbows and then to his hands and knees. He gasped, his insides seeming to shift around as he attempted to move more. Sweat beaded at his brow and he closed his eyes, panting with exertion. He felt... sick. Sick and so very vulnerable that he almost could feel something similar to fear. Ignore it. Push it from his mind. Concentrate on what he could control and not on what he could not. Fatigue, pain, injury... they were beyond his reach at the present. They were of the mind, and he was his own master.

Always your own master, King Without a Throne. Never forget that. You are a God and a King, and you belong to no one.

You answer to no one…

Finally, after many long moments of kneeling there, half wheezing with the effort, he finally came to his feet. Standing had taken longer than he would have liked; a trial that had him sneer at himself half-heartedly. Disgusting. Was this what was to become of him? Dripping in polluted rain in a fleshbag's city, stinking of their dirt and trash?

Perhaps he did deserve this. A bitter, choked laugh escaped him as he leaned against the wall of the alleyway. It wasn't merry, it wasn't pleasant. It spoke of insanity, of a madness starting to emerge that he couldn't quite smother. Too long. It had been too long since he had laughed and he felt the sound of it eat at him like a poison...

Poisontongue, they call you, God of Lies. A Silvertongue. Like a sharp metal dagger slipping into the ribs, deadly and quiet. Thy false-Brother: The Hammer. Blunt and honest. Made for helping, fixing, plucking the nails as they burrowed into the wood of Yggdrasil. A loud instrument, echoing, vibrating, and shaking the branches and roots. Honorable. A honest work for an honest man. Oh, but not you, Little God. You slip in, the snake in the grass, and you cut the leaves, and you slice the branches, and you notch the roots. You carve and damage and burrow into the core, dripping and ripping and destroying...

Would that your mouth be sewn, so you couldn't drip more of your filth and lies...

A laugh escaped him again, a high-pitched, dangerous thing that had him shaking as he stood there.

He needed to get into cover now. His escape would be traced and his false-Brother would come for him, so earnest and just that it was sickening to witness.

But where to find it? Who would take you in? Your face is recognizable, your garments even more so. Go hide, little Godling. Go hide so no one will find you. Hide like the coward you are and the coward you pretend not to be...

A good suggestion and he took it from his own mind without further a thought, pulling himself along the wall of the alley with shaking legs. They barely supported him, they hardly even moved enough to walk. He more shuffled, the meager rags of his clothing sodden and soaked to the bone. His hair fell long in his face, limp and unwashed from the length of his imprisonment. He'd have to get that fixed when he was in a proper state. When his energy came back, when he could feel the magic inside of him...

Right now, he felt so very empty of everything except exhaustion...

The fury of Asgard was not the only thing hunting him. Now that he was out of chains and into the wild, it would be open season to track him down. The Chitauri had not forgotten his failure, nor would they ever. Not until punishment had been served.

'If you fail, if the Tesseract is kept from us, there will be no realm, no barren moon, no crevice where he cannot find you. You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain.'

The words rang in his mind, clear as a bell, and he found himself shaking violently, a barking sound in his throat. Fear. It coursed through his veins and the sense of urgency forced his legs forward again. Desperation. He had no choice, no options, no anything. All he had to do right now was gain shelter and rest. Rest until he could figure out his next move. Rest until his body was not so weak...

A shape ahead, and he stumbled as the wall ended, finding himself on his own without the much-needed support. Not good at all, and a hoarse wheeze of anxiety escaped his chapped lips. His green eyes, dull with exhaustion, flickered up at the skyline that was now visible. Even in the rain, it was recognizable. New York City. How... typical. Irony burned at him. To end up in the one place that would hate him most of all. The fates were cruel to him, and their malice knew no bounds.

He could not stay here. To do so would be the death of him. The mortals, for infectious little parasites that poisoned and scarred their planet, seemed fiercely protective of it from outside forces. A disease that refused to share its host. The one city in all of the planet that would not hesitate to strike him down in his weakened condition.

Loki found himself laughing again, body shaking so violently that his legs almost gave way beneath him. He stumbled forward, arms thrown out in an attempt to catch him should he fall.

"Bara heppni mína að ég ætti að enda á stað sem hatar mig..." He gave another pant and stepped forward. There were a large pile of dark objects ahead of him, tall and with platforms. He supposed he could take shelter beneath them for the moment, just until this horrid rain passed him by and he had a chance to gain control of himself.

Loki had to duck to fit beneath the platform and he sat down roughly, leaning back against a pole. Shelter from the rain-

A drip on his face and he glanced up at the roof. The storming sky was visible through the scattering of holes in it. His expression deadened, lips quirking down and eyes going dark. What roof of a shelter would have holes to allow in the elements in? What sort of shelter was this at all? A poor one, obviously, and he rolled to his knees. Not five feet from him was a small tunnel. A small but dry tunnel and inched forward without a thought. It was too small for him, but how he longed to find a spot to sleep, to curl up like a bird in a nest and dry off until the sun shown.

Protection. All he craved right now was shelter, security and protection. Be it from the rain, the mortals, the Chitauri, or from his False-Brother. Shelter. Security. Protection….

A wave of nausea hit him suddenly and he gagged heavily, crawling into the tunnel that now seemed to accommodate him. He didn't spare it any mind; didn't even notice it at all. All he knew was that now he felt some semblance of comfort surrounded him. It reminded him of when he was little, just a small child, hiding in the corners, beneath tables, behind furniture or curtains. The memory gave him warmth he had not known he could still feel. The rags weighing him down were sluggishly kicked off and he curled up on the smooth dry surface of the tunnel, closing his eyes.

And the God of Lies slept soundly.

"Son?

Loki blinked his tired eyes open as the light shone into his eyes. For a moment, he was about to say something scathing, to snarl and sneer and insult whoever dare wake him up from his sleep. He was a God. However long he wished to sleep was however long he would sleep, and it was as simple as that. The nerve of anyone to challenge this...

Memories came to him, then. The battle. The falling. Midgard. The rain... that's right. He was in the city of New York, a prisoner of his own design in a city that hated him. How cruel and hilarious it all was, but he found little reason to smile right now. That voice spoke again and he flicked green eyes downwards.

A flash of light caught his eye. A small metal shield on the man's shirt. Police. This was one of the Midgardian protectors then; a law enforcer. He knew that they had superiors, and that those superiors had superiors. And somewhere in the mix, far down the line, S.H.E.I.L.D had their grubby, greedy little fingers into the Police-pot too. This was not good. He remembered destroying a metal vehicle of theirs in Germany. And how many countless brave officers died for this city during the Chitauri invasion?

Loki said nothing and simply stared, waiting for the officer to make his move. Instead of slapping metal shackles on him, as he had expected, the man knelt and wore an expression of serious concern.

"Hey, kiddo..." The man said softly, eyes kind and gentle, and Loki furrowed his brow in confusion at the word. It was spoken with a sort of breathy tone that one reserved for children. Kiddo. Obviously some sort of endearment. It was not one he had heard before, although he was not so accustomed to Midgardian slang. It had been far easier when the lot of the fleshbags had been grunting slobs, eating hunks of raw beast and carving wooden boats. Far easier to communicate and dazzle them into submission.

Loki understood that he was being treated gently, but he did not understand why. The mortal did not know him, couldn't possibly be endeared to him, and yet, that expression was one of tender kindness. Loki raised felt a frown tug at his lips.

"Can you understand me, kiddo?" That name again, and the tone was something one would say to a child. Insulted, he was about to open his mouth to complain of the derogatory treatment when he became aware of where he was.

The tunnel, in the light from the hand-held torch the man had, was a bright blue, made of a smooth material he recognized as plastic. There were carvings on the inside, made with some crude blade. LuCuS luvs AmEE' was spelled out in a mix of capitalized and lowercase letters, the middle word mispelt completely. It was a sloppy handwriting and he realized that he was in a child's toy. A playground, he knew them to be called. A place where Midgardian children came to scream and run about like headless chickens.

He glanced down at himself and his gaze grew thoughtful.

Oh.

That did certainly explain it, and he almost laughed at how long it had taken him to notice. He was being spoken to as if he were a child because he currently was a child. A young one, by the looks of his legs. They were thin, but very short, still retaining a hint of the babyfat that followed into later youth. Tiny hands, tiny legs, tiny feet. He moved a hand to his head and felt the hair there. It was long enough to curl around his ears, and it felt as greasy and unwashed as it had as an adult. He was covered in dirt and grime from his soak in the muddy alleyway and he was bruised up rather nicely from his fall.

Ahh. All at once, this made sense. The concern the man was showing him. Of course. Even savage apes cared for their young, and finding an injured naked babe on its own would tug at most heartstrings. Loki had little problem harming children himself, although he was aware he was not overly paternal. Or maternal, depending on who he decided to be sometimes. He did not dislike children; quite the contrary. But neither did he have a moral code. In the past he had had children of his own; although he did not think that counted for much at all as it was a very long time ago and he had been a much younger God.

A much more foolish God.

As a shapeshifter, he felt comfortable in most forms. Man, woman, child, horse, cat, wolf, bird, fish, it did not matter to him. He was Loki and he was what he was... whatever that might be at the time. Being in the form of a child was hardly shocking. He had wanted to fit into the tunnel, and he had shrunk himself to fit into it. Some part of him had recognized the playground, even in the rain, and he had likely honed in on that thought.

The officer was speaking into a device, obviously one of the ones used for communication and he was calling for an ambulance. He knew what that was; a Midgardian healing vehicle. The chaos he had caused in his last encounter with The Avengers had required a great deal of them.

"Kiddo? Can you tell me what you are doing in there?" The man had stopped using his communication device and was looking back at him, pulling off his coat. Loki said nothing for a long moment, eyes guarded as he kept himself curled up. He was soaked still, and he supposed he should be cold. But the temperature did not affect him. It never had and it never would. He thought he should attempt a shiver for acting, but he was too drained to put in the effort.

"Sleeping." He finally said after a moment, his voice sounding childlike and very small. "I was sleeping."

"Sorry to wake you, son." The man was saying softly, reaching out. His face was calm enough, but there was such worry etched into the lines on his face. Humans were so, so easy to read. "Can you tell me your name, kiddo?"

Loki. His name was Loki. A God of Lies, of Mischief. A King without a Throne or Kingdom, a Jotun, a runt, a trickster, a silvertongue, a dagger... so many, many titles. For the moment, he was about to open his mouth, to speak the truth for once. The face of this parasite when he heard it, when he saw the truth. That the innocent, fragile, hurt little child before him was the same one who had murdered, without a care in the world, all of his co-workers, friends, family….

A thought occurred to him, though, before the words could escape his lips. A delightful, magnificent, rather brilliant little thought.

His magic was drained completely and it would take some time for it to return. Whatever he had used to transform into this, it was the last of his reserves. He was effectively trapped in this form for however long it took to regain his strength. But he was a child. Humans, he knew, protected their human offspring with a violent passion. Few things could stir protective instincts like a child in danger, and he was currently that child. A child of but four years of age, he guessed, with large green eyes. Sparkling and innocent and so very, very pleading.

He was on the run, from both the Chitauri and from Asgard. They were expecting to find a weakened, helpless God of Lies. They would not find a helpless little child, hiding in human protection.

The idea was dissatisfying, truly, but he lacked any other option other option. A child of his age wandering around would be noticed. He was naked and injured; a grave combination that would be picked up on almost immediately. He was defenseless from any that might try to harm him. He needed to hide, and he needed someone to keep him safe. Humans, though selfish and revolting, could provide him with some level of protection.

Think of it like a servant, God of Lies. Think of it as playacting. You are their King. It is their job to protect their King.

Green eyes flicked to the inside of the play tunnel, to the childish words written there.

"Lucas." He said, pulling his tiny knees to his tiny chest and wrapping his tiny arms about them. "My name is Lucas."

Icelandic Translation:

'Bara heppni mína að ég ætti að enda á stað sem hatar mig'
'Just my luck that I should end in a place that hates me.'

Translations provided by Google Translate and may contain inaccuracies.