Shadow of Your Heart: Part 1 of the Guns 'n Roses Series
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
I shouldn't be alive.
It was shock first. He was breathing, even if it did come short and panicked and coupled with racking coughs and sobs as he inhaled the dust and dirt of whatever forsaken planet he landed on. He should be dead. He'd rather be dead. Everything he was, everything he had was dead, why was he still alive? How could he still be alive?
He had accepted his fate, as he was falling. It was like falling on the end of his sword, the only honorable death in the face of such grievous dishonor. Now what did he have? No home, no brother, no throne. Just the Void he fell through, and an empty heart.
Pain came after the shock dried with the tears. Later, many months (eons, rather) later, he would laugh at being tossed around like some straw doll by that dull beast. He groaned, a strangled, choked sound.
"Oi, you!"
His eyes snapped open.
"You complete fuckin' tosser! What the hell were you thinking?"
"What?" he hissed at the blue and yellow being standing over him. If he hadn't just been shocked out of the idea that he was still breathing, he might have admired the slightly feminine and completely aggressive tilt of her hips against an over-sized weapon pointing in his direction. He instinctively scrambled to stand, to defend, but something broken in his left side ground sickeningly. He felt the blood drain from his face, and nausea hit him like a wave as he crumpled.
"Woah…mate, are you okay?"
"No, you stupid creature." His voice was weak whereas he tried for rough and angry. His fear and pain rose up with a bitter tang, rage bubbling just underneath the surface. "Where am I?"
"Earth, I think," the figure came into clearer view as he stopped moving and the pain subsided for a second. She was sizing him up, and he glared back. Injured as he was, he was no threat to her…at the moment. She seemed to understand that, and lowered her weapon. "Give me a second on that one. You might 'ave thrown off the cannon, slammin' into me mid-shift like that." She stepped towards him, slinging the gun further over her shoulder and out of the way as her other hand fumbled for something in her pocket.
Midgard, then. Lovely. He ground his teeth, but kept his face neutral. He had bigger issues, such as the risk of a punctured lung if the pain in his side was any indication.
"Not far out from Torchwood, then. Better than last time," the woman muttered, shoving the device back into her pocket. "I've got to call you in, see if we can get a Medi-Zepp here—"
"No!" Loki snapped, grasping her wrist. His side protested, but he didn't let go. At the touch of her skin he felt a strange jolt. Nothing strong, but part of him noted the hairs at the nape of his neck rise as if a small chill went through him. Like electricity or—no. He didn't want to think of that. Not right now. "No one else must know I'm here."
"Why?" she asked, her gaze suspicious. He bit back a growl; this woman was all he could rely on at this point, and he would have to play nice if he wanted to get out of here and not be put on some black-list on this wasted planet. Again. At least until he recovered.
"Do you know how to patch a broken rib?"
"Well, yeah—"
"Then take me…somewhere I can mend in peace," he wheezed, "and not in some Midgardian fortress where I'll be poked and prodded. And I can assure you that does not bode well for anyone."
The blond chewed on her lower lip, her brow furrowed.
"What planet are you from?"
"I'm not in a humoring mood, mortal. Will you help me, or will you not?"
"You keep goin' on like that and I'll not. The name's Rose. And you are—?"
"Still injured, so if you don't mind skipping the niceties…"
"Fair enough. Well, if you want I'll help get you up to the road. I've got a car about a mile or so west. Good thing we didn't end up somewhere near Glasgow or somethin' or you'd be outta luck." She held out a hand to him. "Think you can manage it, Guns n' Roses?"
Loki didn't like it, but he allowed the blue and yellow human to help him limp over to the road at the bottom of the hill the two of them landed on. He was pale and trembling just a few steps in, but he was conscious and his breathing didn't show any sign of worsening. He stared up at the sky, mind buzzing with pain, frustration, and anger as he forced himself to limp forward.
It took him a moment to realize that the sky he was gazing at was curiously empty.
"Where am I?" he barked at the Rose, pulling them to a stop.
"I told you. Earth."
"No, it's not," he hissed. "I know this realm, mortal. I have visited it many times. The smell of the air. The stars—"
"They've gone out, yeah. And it's Rose, so quit—"
"Gone out?" Nothing seemed to make sense with this Midgardian. Somehow he knew that she was the reason he survived the Void. But passing through it without the Bifrost was impossible…
"Look, calm down. I'll explain everything when I get you to my place. But you're right. Well, you're right if I think you're from where I'm from. Sorry. Universe jumpin', it's confusin' at first."
"You seem unusually accustomed to travelling the Realms," Loki ventured. "For a mortal."
"Oh yeah? Well you seem unusually posh…for an alien."
"Yes, well," he shifted, his expression bleak. "Your ancestors considered my kind to be gods."
"Well, god or not I don't think you'll be intimidatin' anyone the way that rib is treatin' you," she replied archly, her mouth pulling into a bitter smirk. "Sit tight, I'll be back in under an hour. Just…be still and we'll have you patched up as soon as I get to my first aid, eh?"
It just didn't make any sense. Any magic still left in him whispered that this Rose was more than she seemed, and that everything in this world was just off. Who was she? Questions begged to be asked, but he couldn't bring himself to voice them, partially addled by the pain still radiating from his left side.
"Very well."
"Fantastic. Be back in a tic."
Rose quickly disappeared in the dark, leaving Loki with nothing but the promise of a yellow-haired mortal and the empty road in front of him.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"Loki, you complete tosser!"
"Ah, Rose, you're always so lovely in the morning."
"Don't you pull that shit with me. I have been lookin' for me notes the past hour."
She was often angry these days. Not as much as he was, in the beginning. In the beginning he lashed out, sometimes physically, a rage coiled inside of him like a deadly snake. But never at her. There was something strange, uncanny, about his blue and yellow human. Something he never could put his finger on, something that seeped into his skin each day. It was like a balm to his torn and raw heart, an odd power that radiated from her like a star. Like the stars that were slowly but surely blinking out of the night sky.
But oh, he did love it when she was angry at him. Her cheeks turned a brilliant pink, a color that suited her. But not as much as that blue leather jacket she wore like armor, the one she wore now as she stormed across the room to where he sat sprawled in an armchair. In her fist was a shredded mass of paper.
"It was stuck under your desk as I was vacuuming, how was I supposed to see it?" Loki protested, raising his hands up in placation. "I suggest you take better care of your notes."
"If you really wanted to destroy somethin', why not try Earth like a normal alien? At least then I'd have reason enough to shoot ya without all the paperwork at Torchwood."
"Been there, done that," he tossed back casually.
"They were about the dimension cannon, you twat. I needed them. Do you even care?" She threw the wad at him in frustration and stomped out the back door.
"Rose…"
She ignored him. With a heavy sigh Loki levered himself off of the chair and out to the back porch. He told himself that he only followed her because banished or not, the very little power he had left here was his way with words; gathering, giving, twisting, destroying information. That made him more trouble than he was worth, but on his own, fallen…that was all he had left now.
And her. But he didn't really have the blue-and-yellow spitfire, did he? No, the woman staring out across the Channel belonged to another god.
Though, truth be told, Loki never was one to honor any sense of boundaries.
"I am sorry."
"No, you're not," Rose sighed. "You're not like…" She did not finish, she didn't have to. It always did come to this. She told him, once, about her Doctor. How Loki reminded her of him in some ways. But certainly not in others, though Rose could only guess at the extent of those comparisons.
He never told her why he fell, or anything about where he came from. He just wanted to forget. He just wished she would want to forget, too.
"Oh, fine. If it makes you feel better—" With a dash of magic and a flourish he pulled the notes, fully restored, from his pocket.
"How did you—"
"I was saving that party trick for your mother, but I suppose I'll have to charm her some other way the next time she deems me worthy to invite to another damn Vitex circus."
"What will you lift off her this time?" Rose asked dryly. "Her watch?"
"I was thinking her earrings," Loki mused.
"She'll smack you again, you know," she pointed out.
"I think that means she's starting to like me."
"You're impossible."
Loki reached for her waist, a self-indulgent grin on his face.
"Oh, but you love it."
"Loki," she warned.
He shrugged off the move with a light-hearted chuckle and instead leaned forward onto the railing. He enjoyed the novelty of living in a realm and in a circle of people unfamiliar to his true nature, but he couldn't quite shake the feeling that Rose knew more about him than he ever shared with her. As much as he didn't completely fit in with his brother and his circle of friends, this alternate Midgard was worse.
And this is why he had to keep Rose working on the dimension cannon.
"You really are set on this ridiculous project of yours, then?"
"I've always been set, Loki. I didn't think you would need to shred my notes to realize that."
"You're risking death each time you jump."
"The stars are goin' out. I don't have a choice."
"You don't even know if he'll be on the other side."
"I'm not givin' up on that. Can we just leave it, Guns?"
"Only if you stop calling me that…Roses."
"Yeah, mate. I got it." But Rose grinned at him then, and he knew it was genuine.
He's lied enough for the both of them, anyway.
"I shouldn't be alive."
Rose looked at his face, which he carefully kept smooth and emotionless. She stilled as well, almost as if she thought he'd bolt or forget his sincerity. He wanted to laugh bitterly at that. As if he ever was sincere with her.
"I still don't think I should be. I've done terrible things, Rose, and I have suffered the consequences. You helped me when I was completely alone, and I owe you a great debt because of it. So listen to me when I say this."
He reached over for her hand, turning to face her.
"You aren't going to help anything by staying here, I know that," he said, voice soft and earnest. "But is it possible that you are just grasping at false hope? You have your family here. You have a home, a life; everything I have lost. Let Torchwood continue the blasted dimension cannon. And stay."
"I'm the only one who knows how to find the Doctor, and he's the only one who can help us find out what is happening to the universes."
"He left you here, Rose," Loki said, his tone becoming more urgent. "You're doing more than he ever would to get you back."
"Well maybe that's true!" she exclaimed, ripping her hand out of his. "Maybe he made the right choice leavin' me here. But at least I'm runnin' to fix something. It's more than I can say for you!"
Loki grit his teeth, biting back his anger. He wanted to tell her she didn't know a damn thing about what he was doing. He wanted to shout at her, shake her for putting such blind faith in a person that had stranded her, abandoned her.
"I…I'm sorry, Loki. I didn't…"
Rose made a motion like she was about to reach out to him, but she dropped her hand before she dropped her gaze. He watched her silently as she walked back into the house. When the door closed behind her, he turned to stare out into the grey sky.
Pushing her away from him and to the Doctor was the only way she would work harder, faster. It was the only way he had the chance of leaving this horrendously domestic life and this pitiful mortal planet, but it was also the only way Loki could stop Rose from keeping him as her own personal pity project. But she didn't need to know that bit.
He conjured a rock to throw into the waves in front of him, letting the persistent darkness in his mind envelop him.
He couldn't stand the thought of losing Rose, but he hated the thought of her sympathy all the more.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
"So the rent should last you another month. Pete will handle your paperwork when you choose to venture out into Midgardian life."
"You know this is pointless." His tone was a tad harsher than he meant it to be.
"Oh, c'mon Loki. You have to get out and make yourself useful sometime." Her playful tone fell flat as she looked up at him from her small briefcase.
"I'm not talking about work, Rose. There's still a chance for someone else to go in your stead."
"We got it right this time." Rose's eyes were bright with anticipation as well as anxiety.
She truly is beautiful, he thought with a pang in his chest, this blue-and-yellow human. It was a shame that she was not born an Asgardian. He knew that she could have made whole realms kneel to her will if she wanted. Contempt boiled in his heart. That mad, wayward Doctor didn't deserve Rose Tyler.
She finished stuffing the small pack and slung her gun over her shoulder. The room fell completely silent as they stared each other down.
"Al—Alright. Um. I guess this is it, then?" her voice cracked as she studied him. "Good—?"
"Please, Rose. Just don't." He didn't have to fake the pleading in his words. Her face crumpled, and she quickly ducked her face down to hide it. Loki watched her with tight expression as she took a quick breath and composed herself.
"Try to stay out of trouble, yeah?" she said, her lips trembling slightly.
"Can't promise you that."
"Loki—"
"Go, Rose. They're waiting."
She reached behind her to grasp the doorknob, but hesitated. Seemingly on a whim, she took his hand. He ignored that persistent jolt of her touch and the nagging feeling of a shift in time and space as he looked into her earnest brown eyes.
"I'll miss you, Guns," she whispered.
"And I you, Roses."
On a whim of his own, he lifted her hand and brushed his lips over her knuckles. He let his eyes flutter closed to imagine, just for a moment, that this strange and wonderful woman wasn't choosing another man over him.
Pulling himself together, Loki dropped her hand and opened the door, his expression carefully cool and collected. Rose took one last look at him, turned, and walked out.
He had the codes, that was easy enough to lift off of Rose's notes. Entering the alien-research facility was laughingly simple. Torchwood provided cannons for Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith, as well as a handful of extras for the back-up. It was only a matter of snatching one while the team was preoccupied. It was almost too easy.
He wondered whether maybe Rose would forgive him long enough for him to help her fight whatever was destroying the stars. If he found her, that is.
What he wasn't prepared of was being knocked off course by something very big and very blue.
The darkness was crushing, literally suffocating. The panic that he was going to die, to be truly lost in the Void, overwhelmed him as he opened his mouth in a silent scream.
But then it stopped. The first thing he realized, with a sinking feeling, was that he was certainly not on Midgard. The drifting piece of rock he found himself on was foreign and all too quiet.
Something growled behind him. Loki quickly pulled himself to stand, and duplicated himself as a precaution.
What he certainly didn't expect was a searing pain in his head when he did.
Everything went dark.
At first Loki thought they were torturing him to get information, but it didn't take long for him to understand that the monsters that imprisoned and poisoned him were not after any weapon or plan to destroy Asgard. No…they enjoyed ripping his flesh and violating his mind.
The pain…well, what words can describe having your intestines plucked out and magically restored only so they could do it all over again? Did anyone truly know what it felt like to have yourself drained from your mind only to have it stuffed with madness and visions of demons destroying everything he cared for in a million horrific and astoundingly bloody ways?
He had long lost count of the nights by the time they grew bored with him and tossed his beaten and broken body into a cell to rot, chattering and screaming to himself as he was lost to the agony and insanity the Chitauri pumped into his veins.
When the pain finally became too much, he feared the darkness that fell on him as he drifted into fevered unconsciousness. The nightmares continued to plague his tormented mind, picking apart everything that he was and forcing him to watch as his own hand strangled his mother, her mouth gaping like a stuck fish and her eyes bloodshot and her nails raking at his face and neck—
Suddenly, like milk spilled on black marble…light flooded into his mind, erasing his dreams. Confused and terrified, he blinked and saw her.
She was glowing brighter than a sun, his blue-and-yellow mortal. Something was wrong, but he remembered the wrongness; it was that thing he felt whenever he touched her. The thing that made him think that she had reached into his soul and understood every thought, every dark shadow imprinted on his heart whenever she looked into his eyes. It was the beast behind her eyes, the unrestrained chaos of the universe. It was there all along and he never really knew.
And her eyes…the soft brown eyes that once filled him with warmth now burned with an intensity that frightened him.
"No. No. You aren't here. You can't be," he muttered, eyes wide with panic and fear. Somehow he knew that this was not the Rose he lived with, not the Rose that picked him up off the ground after he was tossed off the Bifrost and left for dead. This was a Rose out of time. Something was wrong, very very wrong.
"I am."
He didn't want her here. He never wanted her to see him like this. He was broken and wasted, a quivering child with no home. He didn't deserve to see her again. He was angry, ashamed, betrayed.
And completely lost in her presence.
And with that, he broke.
"I shouldn't be alive," he screamed at Her, hands tearing at his hair as he fell to his knees.
"I want you safe. My ice prince. Protected from the false king."
"Why?" he choked.
"Because I know, knew, will know a god much like you. I want you free. I want you both free, free from your bonds of leather and death. It will not end soon, but I will give you a chance. I will bring you life."
"It hurts—"
"I know," the goddess whispered as She reached up to his face. Her hands were hot on his face, smearing the tears and the blood. He leaned into them with a hitched groan."Fight the only way you know how. There will be pain, but there will be release."Her fierce eyes, full of stars and rush of time and the Bad Wolf, closed as She pulled him down to Her lips.
He woke to the stinging of his healing wounds and the sound of someone opening his cell.
"The Other wishes your presence," the guard hissed. Loki blinked, mind still reeling from his dream and the lingering feeling of hot lips against his.
As the Chitauri's words sunk in, he tensed. "Why?" Loki asked, his voice hoarse and broken. The last time he was brought to the leader of the Chitauri he was lost to nightmares that made him tear out his own fingernails.
"Frightened, Asgardian?" the guard mocked. "He has a task for you, I know not what."
When the Other explained to Loki about his brother, about the Tesseract, about…Him, it was like a dam was released.
He did as he was told. He learned the black arts, he relished the power, but also knew that it wasn't he who had the control. Loki feared what his master had in store for him if he failed to collect the Tesseract, so he began to think, to wonder how he can escape his bonds. He couldn't fight physically, only with his words and all those little actions. He had to fight the only way he knew how.
Just in case.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0
As soon as he touched down on the wretched planet, Loki knew this was not her universe, the one she was born to. For some reason he thought he could feel it if it was. A part of him mourned, afraid for her life. Did she perish in the fight to bring back the stars? Because they were still going out.
"It's too late now."
Midgard burned below him and Thor, and for some reason his victory turned sour at the sight, even as his pulsed raced and his brain screamed for more more blood chaos kneel more submit destroy take more more more. His body ached, he was so tired. The rage that carried him through this task was sputtering, he was exhausted fighting both the Avengers and the Other's poison in his mind. The only thought was relief that, one way or the other, this whole thing will soon be over.
Planting that seed of his spear as a fail-safe in Selvig's mind was hisonly fail-safe. If the Avengers were as good as they seemed, they would find a way to close the portal. There were too many of the Avengers, and they were all resourceful and intelligent (save the beast that dwelled in Banner), and the Chitauri were dull creatures, not fit for a higher form of war. Even with Loki guiding them, they were nearly useless soldiers.
Thanos may not rest until he punished Loki if the Tesseract did end up lost to him, but damn it all if he wouldn't give that bastard a run for his money. He had enough of bowing to and following others; to Thanos, to Thor, to Odin, to Rose. Because it led to nothing but betrayal and abandonment. And he had no choice but to do the same, damn them all to Hel.
And he certainly wasn't going to share the glory with Thor. One way or the other, it would always come down to his actions, his choices. Loki always had the last laugh.
"Sentiment," he said after he thrust his dagger forward and Thor fell. His smile was bitter and hollow.
The Other's poison refused to fade with the closing of the portal and the sealing of the Tesseract in Asgard.
He dreamed of her, sometimes. In-between the persistent nightmares and visions that found him drenched in sweat and tears when he woke, his mind seemed to apologize for the horrors and give him that one thing.
The mortal girl, the Bad Wolf. He knew that without her he would be lost, in one form or another. Loki would lie awake after the dreams where he caught a glimpse of her smile, or felt the ghost of her hand in his, and wonder at the idea of Rose. He manipulated her just as easy as any other, and yet still the Bad Wolf reached out and changed his fate, pulled him out of the pit. That impossible woman who gave life and asked for nothing in return.
And the stars did come back, not long after his brother took him back to his own forsaken planet.
She did it,he thought as he gazed at the Asgardian night sky from his barred window. His blue and yellow human did it, she found her Doctor. Part of him, a small sad corner untouched by the ever-present consuming rage, was relieved. She was safe, wherever she was. Her Doctor would make sure of that.
And she will never come back, he was just a memory now. Nothing more than a shadow of her heart.
She dreamed of him, sometimes. She would wake up thinking he had found her again, teasing her for thinking she could ignore him and laughing at her in that odd and wildly contagious way of his.
When she returned to Pete's World, she expected to find Loki still sprawled across his armchair, and was therefore braced for what would most certainly be an awkward face-off between the Doctor and Loki.
But when she opened her door and found the house empty, she knew. All the little things that he did, all the missing paperwork that she thought got lost in the shuffle, all the times he should have known to say the right words that would have pressed her to stay, they all made sense now. He had made sure she would leave, taken a dimension cannon, and wherever he was there was no way back now. Not with the universes sealed.
Even though she was the one who made the final choice to leave, she didn't expect how hurt that made her.
The Doctor never really pressed the issue of what Loki was doing in Pete's World beyond how she found him, but he did offer Rose some information of the legends of the "gods" of Asgard and the universes he referred to as the Nine Realms.
She really did try to forget the alien with the rage and sadness locked inside him. She had the Doctor, a TARDIS shard that would let her have her old life and a better life all in one.
But try as she might she could not forget saving two gods the day she absorbed the Time Vortex.
The decades passed and her adventures with the Doctor in their green TARDIS began to slow. Running, the Doctor was surprised to find, was much harder with arthritis. Their life was deliriously happy, if only for the fact that they both were giving their all for one lifetime. Together.
Rose always assumed she would go first. After all, she nearly died having accepted that already. So when the Doctor had a heart-attack on a trip back to Pete's World (now, perhaps more fittingly, Their World, for Pete had passed years ago) to see their grandchildren, she was stunned and unprepared. The doctors tried their best, but he caught an infection while on the operating table and was fading fast. Rose begged to let her take him to the future, where they had advanced medicine and could actually save him.
"No, Rose," the Doctor muttered, putting a shriveled and shaking hand over hers. "Please. I'm so tired."
Tears in her eyes, she nodded. As human as his body was, he still carried the weight of so many dead worlds on his shoulders. He deserved this, a final respite from all the running.
"You were brilliant," she whispered. "My Doctor."
"I love you. My Rose."
She smiled at him, and leaned down to kiss his withered temple.
"Quite right, too."
Life went on, Rose was surprised to find, but finally she had to stop traveling in the bright green box. She hated it, to tell the truth, not being able to keep running. But her family called her to stop and spend the rest of the time she had left with them, and she obliged.
She eventually grew to hate domestic life without someone to share it with. Idly she would imagine the Doctor, both the big eared brooding one and the rude and not ginger one, complaining about their children forcing her away from her stars. But sometimes her daydreams included another troublesome alien. She wondered what Loki was doing, she hoped he finally got what he wanted just as she did. She refused to believe he was dead, or lost.
It happened suddenly, on a grey day in her old house on the Channel. It was a creeping coldness on her left side as she lay in her bed. She felt her heart flutter in panic.
No, Rose thought, paralyzed in more ways than one. A darkness started to envelop her vision. No, I don't want to go.
Then there was fire, a pain like nothing she had ever experienced before rise up in her belly and explode through her limbs. For a moment she didn't see anything but the white-hot detonation of her body, mind, and soul.
And then it was over.
Rose slowly picked herself off of her bed, blinking. Everything seemed…off. She noticed with a jolt that the cover on her bed, which once was purple, was now a dull yellow. Did the bloody stroke make her color-blind?
She reached out to pull back the sheets when she paused. Another woman's hand was grasping the yellow comforter. Her heart jumped into her throat.
Did I just…?
No.
She rushed over to the bathroom, her mind and pulse racing as the mirror proved her assumption correct that the Bad Wolf was not just a title.
It didn't take long for a grin to appear on the new new Rose, almost a ghost of the toothy one that once brought a Time Lord to his knees—multiple times.
"Oh, lovely," Rose purred, the word rolling easily off her tongue. Like a bolt of lightning she ran out to the back where a shack that kept a dormant TARDIS stood in the sand.
She had stars to see, running to do, universes to explore.
And—she dared to hope—an immortal Trickster to find.
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0