Ego Operor Quis Volo
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
A/N: You can blame the trailer for 'Skyfall' for this. That, and Tom Hiddleston in a tux.
'Let the sky fall,
When it crumbles,
We will stand tall,
Face it all together,
At Skyfall.'
'Where you go I go,
What you see I see,
I know I'd never be me,
Without the security
Of your loving arms.
Keeping me from harm,
Put your hand in my hand,
And we'll stand.'
- 'Skyfall', Adele
6th December, 1981
A remote area of Soviet Russia.
0400 hrs.
The harsh icy wind blew through the pines, the only trees capable of surviving the harsh Arctic winters. Nonetheless, to the black-clad SAS commandoes slowly and stealthily making their way towards the barbed wire camp, it still seemed like the trees shivered from the sheer cold.
The Gulag had long been shut down, but its presence still lingered in the Russian countryside. The KGB still needed remote places to imprison and interrogate suspected traitors and captured enemy spies.
That was what they were here for. One of the KGB's nastiest interrogators and counterintelligence operatives had picked up one of MI6's deep cover operatives in the Politburo. The information he had, and knew about others in MI6, was too valuable to allow their man to simply die an unglorified death at the hands of KGB interrogators.
Their assault was quick and smooth. They were the world's best.
They took out the guard with sniper rifles then cut the barbed wire. Once inside they split into two squads, one to disable surveillance and the computer systems, the other to retrieve the prisoner.
In cell block D, in the basement of the main building, was the interrogator's suite of rooms. After checking every cell, and not finding their man, Alpha Squad OC approached the last door.
The cells had been a nightmare, even for his battle-hardened eyes. The KGB interrogators were sadistic, and not afraid to use harsh methods to torture their victims, as long as they still had a mouth to talk with.
The guards were dead, most of the prisoners were dead or dying, but their man was not among them, and neither was his captor. He pulled open the last cell door; hope already died in his heart, but then he was a professional, that never mattered.
And stopped dead.
Inside the cell, on a makeshift cot, was the figure of a woman, in ragged prison uniform, but most harrowing of all was that the only signs of life came from the starving, pale, wailing child in her arms. The mother was dead.
He lowered his rifle, and stepped warily inside, cautious of traps or any hidden targets in the shadows of the cell. It was freezing cold.
"Hey, Raven? You alive down there?" his radio comms buzzed into life. He tapped it absentmindedly.
"Yes, I'm alive," his voice husky, but refined, the voice of a British aristocrat. "Tell the boys…we have a new mascot."
He shouldered his rifle, and then bent down, scooping up the tiny baby in his arms. The mother's dead eyes stared up at him, almost pleadingly it seemed.
He read their message clearly. Look after him.
The child was a boy, with tufts of dark hair and green eyes that blinked up at him, as he slowly stopped crying. He smiled, stroking the boy's cheek, and the baby smiled.
He had a boy at home, a year old. Thor, after the Norse God.
He'd like a baby brother.
Opening his jacket, he tucked the baby inside, sheltering him from the cold. With an impersonal glance at the dead woman, now bereft of her treasure, he leant down and closed her eyes, and then left the cell, the door clanging shut behind him with all the finality of a tomb.
20th July, 2012
This was it. This was really it.
He'd been sent into enemy territory in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq, Qatar, Russia, South America and China. He could fight off hordes of opponents with his training and particular brand of ruthlessness that his instructor at the MI6 training compound in the Falklands commended him for. He'd faced death hundreds of times before.
But now…any second, he, Loki Odinson, MI6 agent, Commander in Her Majesty's Royal Navy, was going to crack.
From sheer boredom watching his elder brother drinking down pint after pint of lager as his friends cheered him on. The idiot.
It wasn't that he didn't love his brother, he did, but sometimes the blonde muscle-bound hulk was a real idiot.
He was using that word a lot.
His close colleague and subordinate, Sif Jaimeson, a loyal Lieutenant of the Logistics Corp, attached to Thor's unit. And far more personally, now as well, to Thor.
Nine months before, Thor had separated from his wife, Jane, after a difficult tour of duty, and Loki had never forgiven him. He had liked Jane, enjoyed her company and conversation. Unlike his brother, she could actually talk about something other than guns and grenades. He had never understood what she'd seen in his brother.
Things had been strained after the separation, especially when Thor confided in Loki that he was seeing Sif now, and was planning to divorce Jane. The bloody idiot.
Sif was beautiful, but as superficial as his brother to Loki. She liked the same things he did, enjoyed the same hobbies, and believed the same ideals. Hell, what was he thinking? They were perfect for each other.
Not that it justified the way Thor just dumped Jane. It still made Loki's teeth grind to think about it, and he never usually cared. He could think of a dozen reasons why he cared, but he wasn't in the mood to dissect them tonight. He knocked back his very good vintage whiskey, and sighed as Thor beat Fandral at yet another drinking game.
He longed for the excuse of a mission to get away. He watched from the outskirts, as he always did, and while usually he relished his skill to observe and remain unseen, it depressed him that night, for some unknown reason.
He was getting soft. With a disgusted grimace, he looked down at his watch. 8 pm.
They'd be going for hours yet.
Surreptitiously, he slid from his seat at the bar. It was Thor's 32nd birthday, and while he wished his brother well, he didn't want to be there now.
"And where do you think you're sneaking off to?" his mother's voice echoed knowingly behind him, and he rolled his eyes before turning to meet her. She stood behind him, graceful and lovely in her pearl coloured dress, flaxen mane loose and curly. Still youthful, still beautiful in Loki's eyes, at the age of fifty.
"Work, Mother," he smiled. "I have a large stack of reports calling my name and a meeting with the Defence minister in the morning."
His official cover was that he was an adviser and representative of the Royal Navy to the Ministry of Defence, a post he'd 'held' for five years.
He'd been working for MI6 for a decade.
He loved his job. Unlike Thor who was too loud and brash to be so subtle, he enjoyed the thrill and danger of his work behind enemy lines. He carried a military rank, but he had never served in the Navy. He'd been recruited at 21, graduating from Oxford with a 1st in Politics and Arabic. His talent with languages and natural gift at being able to fade into the crowd made him attractive to the MI6 recruiters. He'd signed up with barely a moment's thought.
He hadn't needed to. Ever since he was a child, he had felt a burgeoning need to prove himself to his father and to Thor. His father, a seasoned ex-Army General in his sixties, was a stern, uncompromising man, and when he had confided he had joined the Navy, as per his cover, the disapproval that had radiated from him had almost physically hurt.
As for Thor…his brother joked it was an easier life anyway, so why the hell not?
No one could know who, or rather what, he really was. He was protecting his country in a way Thor could never dream of doing, and some days he ached to yell it from the rooftops, but he never did. Because father would never approve of him working for MI6, nor of his work as an international operative.
Like many of his generation, passed down from father to son, the General looked down on spies and the Intelligence Services as cowards who didn't dare face a fair fight. Thor shared that view.
After ten years of doing the job, Loki had convinced himself he'd stopped caring.
This all rushed through his mind, as he felt his Blackberry vibrate in his pocket. With an apologetic glance at his mother, he fished it out and his breath rushed from him in relief. Work.
Or rather, duty called.
"Sorry, Mother. Duty calls," he told her, with a kiss to her cheek. Frigga sighed but let him go.
"Take care on the drive back to London. The roads are wet this time of year," she replied, and he hid his instinctive need to roll his eyes.
"I'll be fine," he sighed.
"You would be if you used a car instead of that infernal contraption!" she snapped, but only teasingly.
"It's not infernal. It's a motorbike," Loki retorted. He liked his bike.
"Just wear a helmet," she hugged him once, before glancing back towards Thor and his half-drunk gaggle of friends. "I'll tell him you said goodbye."
Loki sent her a grateful smile, before slipping quietly and invisibly out of a side door. As he strode towards his bike, the vehicle gleaming in the twilight, he quickly sent a text; simply detailing he was on his way and not to worry about dinner.
His standard operating procedure. He would be expected, and the briefing ready for him by the time he made Thames House in London.
As he strapped on his helmet, flicking down the visor, he felt a surge of anticipation.
Duty called, and he answered.