Author's Note: so I've written a bazillion fanfics but never written a Thor fanfic before. Or a fanfic for any comic other than X-Men before. So hopefully I do well. I hope you enjoy what I've done, and if you find any flaws or mistakes or what-have-you, please let me know so I can fix them. I usually don't post prologues by themselves, but I received a teensy nudge from one of the best fic authors on this site, OceanFire9, and she does me lots of favors, so I thought I'd do her one.
And just so you know, the MC's Mary-Sue Litmus Test Score (I always post this in the first chapter) is 10. "Most likely Not-Sue. Characters at this level could probably take a little spicing up without hurting them any (from the Universal Mary-Sue Litmus Test)."
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A Curse as Dark as Night, and Cold
A Modern Faerie Tale
Prologue
Tokens Found in Slumber
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It is often said that things are not simply black and white, but that all things reside within shades of gray. Nick Fury thought of that as he cradled a small, white satin object in his large dark hands. Where to place blame was not always black and white, either. After all, the federal agent could have placed the blame on Coulson for the room that now pressed down on him, its blank walls the dingy paleness of old bones, the room itself empty of anything save labeled and duct-taped cardboard boxes like sawdust-colored tombstones.
The room itself was stifling. The sweat gathered at the back of his neck and slipped beneath the collar of his jacket. Droplets of water rolled down the white-painted concrete walls and gathered in tiny pools on the cement floor that had been stripped of its cheery carpet. Threatened to mildew the cheap paper blinds hanging brokenly from the cracked window. Staring at the glass spiderweb of cracks made his hand throb in memory.
An insectile buzzing in his pocket distracted him from staring at the fragmenting glass, at the drops of old blood that stained the jagged edges of the more damaged shards that still clung desperately to their fellows. Ancient blood on pale glass; not always black and white, or black on white. Never quite sure where to place the blame. Coulson... or himself... or S.H.I.E.L.D... or a teenager who'd known exactly what he'd been doing, what he'd been planning. Nick pulled out his phone and tried to remember it didn't matter anymore who was at fault and who wasn't. Coulson was sorry. He was sorry, too. And the kid... the kid was dead.
"Fury," he snapped into the phone. "What is it, Coulson?"
His agent's voice was smooth and polite when he said, "The trucks and the workmen are here for the boxes, sir." No indicator that the man was still walking around with a metal plate in his head, still limping from the surgeries that had fixed his mangled knee and stuck him behind a desk for the last eight months.
Nick didn't want the blasted trucks to be there. Didn't want the workmen coming into this room that no one had been in except him since the accident and handling the flimsy boxes with their fragile contents. The idea had bile rising in the back of his throat. No one had come into this room since his fist had sent hairline cracks spiderwebbing through the window. And before that, no one had dared open the door when the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. entered this place. It was an unspoken rule that no one disturbed him here.
Until now. Now they were packing the whole thing. Boxing it up. Shipping it out. Sending it to the helicarrier. Putting it into storage where he wouldn't be able to look at the things hidden away behind silvery duct-tape locks. Only the single object in his hand would remain behind. He wondered whether he ought to put it on his desk or leave it locked up tight in a drawer.
"Sir?" Coulson's voice snagged his superior back from the mental void he'd slipped into.
"Trucks and movers coming up." Nick replied as if there had been no pause in the conversation, gently tucking the miniature ballet slipper into the pocket of his black leather coat. Desk drawer. Definitely. He'd pick up a trinket box to keep it safe once they got back to the Helicarrier. "Acknowledged."
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In spring Nick brought the puffs of dandelions, even though the nurses had apocalyptic conniptions about the possible allergens and contaminates. He would brush them over her fingers and remember the little girl who would run up to him, holding out the white cotton ball on a green stem, and tell him to make a wish. Sometimes he hadn't had time to play. He should have made more time. Sometimes he'd had the time, and he'd blown, and the filmy white ball had exploded into a thousand tiny tickly pieces. Sometimes they had gotten in her mouth and she'd made faces trying to spit them out on the grass. He wondered if she could feel the softness of the dandelion seeds now.
Summer offered longer days, and flowers like roses and honeysuckle. Could she smell them? The fragrance of roses was rich and heady in the hospital room, and he would remember how much she'd wanted to live in a house with a garden. Why hadn't he ever let her have a garden? Honeysuckle's golden syrup smell was heavy on the recycled air. Too heavy, the nurses said, but he wouldn't let them take the flowers out. When no one was looking, he would take one of the pale blossoms and squeeze a drop of the nectar onto her tongue. Just a drop. She'd always loved the sweetness.
Autumn, he would try to talk to her about what was happening outside. Out in the world beyond the darkness of her closed eyelids. Leaves turning from green to gold and fire in the late afternoon sun. Frost curling on the windows. She'd shown him how to make pictures on frosted glass with thimbles and paperclips. He'd never been very good at it. Grownup fingers were too big. Her little fingers had been just the right size.
Sometimes he brought a leaf - maple were the biggest, and brightest, and she liked them, but oak leaves had interesting shapes, she'd always said. He would ever so gently curl her fingers around it. Let the tiny drops of morning dew slide along her skin, seep between her fingers, catch under her nails. Remembered watching her jump into leaf piles. Watch her throw them in the air to make a shower of golden leaves, a whirlwind of them, and spin around and around as they all fell down around her, laughing and smiling and dancing, how she'd loved to dance, a blur of a little girl in blue jeans and a bright sweater.
In winter, when ice coated the streets and snow sugared everything, he would bring her some of the fresh whiteness and watch it melt in her limp hand. Her skin would turn marble-white with the cold of it. He would remember snowmen and ice forts and long-pitched battles with fluffy snowy missiles. The goal, whenever he'd been on her team, had always been to get at least one snowball down Mommy's jacket.
Every day he came he would read to her. Stories of girls who fell asleep and woke up long after the curse had first come upon them. Beauty Sleep; "Thorns;" Once Upon a Summer's Day; "Charm;" Spindle's End; the Gates of Sleep; Waking Rose; "Awake;" Watching the Roses; The Wide-Awake Princess; "And Still She Sleeps;" Briar Rose. All the same story, of the girl who pricked her finger and fell into an enchanted slumber. One of her favorite stories as a little girl. She'd always liked faerie tales. Always liked how they could stay the same, or change. Just like she did now - still the same inside, locked away in a coma, but changing still.
He didn't let them cut her hair again after the surgery. In everything else, practically, he gave the medical staff their way, but not with that. It would have been the easiest way, but she wouldn't have wanted them to cut her hair. Not after she'd finally managed to get it to grow out. Not after finally figuring out what to do with it to keep it from becoming a tangled rat's nest. Instead he told them to let it grow long again, and had someone in to do her hair every week in the style she'd preferred. If nothing else stayed the same, when she woke he knew she would at least be happy about that.
When she woke... if she woke...
In spring, in summer, in autumn and winter, he came and brought her offerings, gifts to tempt her out of the sleep that she would have called an enchantment. For five bright green springs. Just as many hot long summers. A handful of golden glorious autumns with their red, red leaves. Five glistening winters. And still she did not wake, and Nick began to wonder if his daughter ever would.
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Sometimes there were voices in the darkness. Whispers like the sound of snow falling or leaves rustling on a breeze. Most of the voices were dismissive, the words jumbled and jagged and too fast for any sense to be made of them. Sometimes when those voices came, there would be a pricking sensation too. Needles pressing sharp and icy. Or sometimes the touch of fingers against neck or wrist or elbow along with the soft murmurs. Yet none of these voices actually seemed to speak.
One voice spoke, though. Soft words, slurred, unknowable. Dark whispers. Shadow words. Could see them against the darkness behind her eyelids. Hands touched, neither rough nor gentle. Hair, chest, stomach, thighs. Cold hands, slick with something sticky and slimy. Not impersonal like the others. Didn't like it. Had to go away when that person came. Had to go to sleep.
And then sometimes there were other voices, and then it was time to wake up a little bit. Three people who always came. These were familiar. Safe. Slow and soft, gentle. Coaxing. Come back. Open your eyes. Just squeeze my hand. You can do it. I'm so sorry. I should have been there. I'll be better if you just come back. He's doing okay; you don't have to worry about him. My poor baby. Wake up. Kind voices. Safe voices, safe place, safe. But so hard to do what they asked. So hard to be anywhere but in the black.
A single flick of a finger against a warm palm was nearly too much. The flicker of an eyelash too strenuous. Even simply swallowing took so much effort. Sleep came after every attempt, sleep and dark and oblivion for who knew how long.
How long in the dark? How long since seeing dawn breaking over the waters of the Hudson Bay? Feeling the wind tickling her skin and hair and tugging at her clothes? Hearing music pounding like a heartbeat, so hard the bass rattled her teeth? Tasting the sweetness of gourmet ice cream? Drowning in the syrupy perfume of honeysuckle in summer? Too long. Couldn't remember what those things were like anymore; only that they existed.
So tired. So very tired. Hard to push through the sticky webs of sleep. Hard to fight the need to go away and rest. Keep resting. So tired all the time, had to keep resting. It was nice to rest when one of the voices, rich and deep and warm, sang slightly out of key. When that voice read words to her, slow and storylike. Nice to sleep, safe, with the reassuring pressure of fingers wrapped around hers.
Yet nicer still, she knew, to wake. One day she would wake up, and find dawn and wind and music and ice cream and honeysuckle again. No more voices. Only people. Only the world. So much nicer to finally wake.
One day.
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In another place and time...
He drifted for a long while in darkness, the cold of space more bitter and biting than the icy wastes of Jötunheim. Stardust offered little light or warmth in the dark. How long he fell, Loki had no idea. Only that by the time he plummeted to the desert sands like a falling star, his skin had transformed from the paleness of the Asgardians to deathly mazarine with Frost Giants' power and his eyes flamed scarlet as crystallized blood.
The impact ripped the breath from his lungs. In its place came fire searing his chest, raking molten claws across his belly. He sucked in air and choked on the dust of desert wastes. Meltwater from the ice coating his throat soothed the ache. Let him breathe a little. Gave him enough peace from the dust to allow him to think.
Midgard. This was Midgard. Earth, its people called it. He was trapped here, on this pitiful rock, because Thor had shattered the Bifröst. There would be no returning home for him. He was trapped in this pathetic mortal prison... for how long?
Until he found a way to return. To prove to his father that he was fit to be the son of Odin, and that he was Thor's equal. He would have to find a way. Something powerful enough to defeat Mjölnir, for one thing. Something stronger than the Cask of Ancient Winters. Something strong enough to destroy Jötunheim and hold Asgard in his grip. The glowing beacon of Jöttun magic, bright and chill, that called to him like a breath of soothing winter.
In the meantime, he had to get up. Get up out of the dust and come up with some sort of plan. All well and good, to say what needed to be done. The true test would be to actually do it.
He struggled to his feet, the smoldering pain in his chest flaring into an agonizing wildfire. There was one thing he could do. He could search for that energy source. He could find it and harness it. And then he would use it to rebuild the Bifröst, and he would return home. As Asgard's prodigal prince... or as its conqueror.
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Author's Note, and the Purpose of This Fic: So the deal is, I have this fanfic for Hellboy II. And this woman, Reme Sandra Couch, recommended this Thor fanfic to me by Alydia Rackham called "Fallen Star." But there was a catch. The fanfic was a Jane/Loki pairing. I was like, "Psht. Whatever, no way, that's just dumb."
Then, randomly, I decided to give it a shot just to see what was so great about this fic, and I fell in love not only with the pairing, but with the character of Loki (not in a romantic way, but in an "OMG how did I not realize how awesome this character is?" way. And I decided he needed to be... given more credit, I suppose, and more screen/page time than he is in the film.
But I didn't want to break up the pairing of Thor and Jane (I like that pairing). So I started this fic to fix both problems. And because I think there's more to Nick Fury than meets the eye. Hope you enjoy it.