Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
This story was made for the Writers Anonymous Broken Object Challenge.
Loki found himself gazing into the long elegant mirror that this place had come with. He had merely meant to make sure that his features were presentable but he was unable to tear his gaze away from his reflection. His familiar pale face stared back at him, the same as it had for the last more than 1,000 years of his life. Only, he had been basically satisfied with his looks during his life; maybe not with his physical stature but his face had always pleased him.
That had all changed with one simple trip through the Bifrost. In fact, that's when everything changed. The pale face and green eyes that stared back at him now were not what they appeared to be. It was a lie. A carefully hidden lie that he had been presented all his life by the people who were supposed to love and care for him. The familiar rage he usually kept at a slow simmer starting boiling again. His pale hands clenched into fists at the sides of the Midgardian clothing that he was forced to wear because of those same people. Anger was his constant companion; at least it had never left him when the rest of his family had. Anger that grew more and more as he looked at the lie in the mirror, the lie that he was ever part of the family he had thought he was part of. A lie that he was a prince, if not loved and accepted by those around him that at least bound by blood to them. He was not.
The lie that he could have been anything other than what he was.
A monster.
Jotuns were monsters. It was a fact that had been drilled into him as far back as he could remember. Yet he was the only one who seemed to remember the bedtime stories and everything he had been told about the Jotuns his whole life. Everyone else seemed to have forgotten when Thor did, which only made his blood's temperature rise that much more. The pressure built inside of him the longer he stared at the lie that he had been feed his whole life.
The lies that covered up the harsh truth that part of him had known from the very beginning. He had been raised to think he was a prince of Asgard, paler than normal but still of Asgard and of his mother and father who loved and cared for him. In reality, he was unwanted by those who had borne him and cast out to die on a frozen rock he was a part of those people by blood. He was a Jotun no matter how much he hated himself for being one. As he looked at himself in the mirror he saw the princely exterior but he also knew it was an illusion, a spell, a lie that hid the truth from all eyes to see, even his own. Loki knew that the Jotun was lying underneath the surface. He was born a monster but grew up a prince and the two were irreconcilable. One could not be both an Aesir prince and a Jotun monster.
Jotun. Prince. Monster. Son. Jotun. Aesir. Lies! All of it!
He winced slightly as he heard a crack and then winced again as he felt a slight stinging sensation on the knuckles of his right hand. He peered down on the hand and saw the source immediately, his knuckles were bleeding. Loki looked up at the mirror and saw that he had apparently punched the mirror without even consciously intending to. As a result, the mirror was no longer than the elegant silver mirror that it had been previously. Now there was a large section of glass missing. A quick look to the ground showed the bits of glass that his fist had misplaced. Another look into the mirror showed that there were ripples around the broken sections of glass where fractured pieces of glass still stayed in the now broken mirror.
"Seven years bad luck." He spun around on the spot to see who had spoken only to see someone he didn't expect standing in his living room. Tony Stark. Tony Stark- Iron Man was standing in his living room like Loki had invited him in for a spot of tea or to chat. Iron Man was leaning against his walls with his arms crossed over each other much more casually that should be possible given the suit he was wearing. Iron Man stood up from the wall and took a few steps in Loki's direction.
"What are you doing here Midgardian?" he spat at the annoying Midgardian but his heart rate sped up. No one was supposed to know he was on Midgard. He had been so careful and while his mind might not be as sharp as it once was, he was sure that he hadn't done anything that would draw attention to himself.
"You know I always thought if I happened across you again it would either be in one of two ways. One, I would be attending your execution, or 2 you would get out and do something horrible again." He gestured to the room they were standing in.
"This?" he scoffed, "Not what I was expecting." He shrugged slightly. "The decor isn't surprising though but the fact that you're free and you're hiding." Iron Man then smirked at him. "Actually, it's what I should have expected. Maybe, I gave you too much credit. After all, even though you led the invasion, you had your grunts do most of the dirty work. You hiding here, shouldn't really have come as much as a surprise."
The anger that had temporarily abated due to the shock rose once again. The man was calling him a coward! From the time he was but a child being a coward was about the lowest thing that one could be called...which is why it had hurt so much when others had hinted or downright suggested that his method of fighting was cowardly. The emotion was buried under anger which burned hot but it much more easy to handle than it's counterpart.
"It is not smart to come here alone," he said his lips curling into a smirk that he didn't really feel but it wouldn't do to let the man see that what he had said affected him in any way.
"I'm not worried," he said even though he stopped a few feet shy of him.
"I nearly killed you the last time we were face to face. You sure you want to try again?" He taunted as he looked for the Midgardians opening attack. Midgardians were rarely subtle so it likely wouldn't be hard to miss. However, Iron Man seemed to be content on just standing there looking at Loki with a smirk on his face. Part of him wanted to attack, to start this fight rather than stand here and wait for the Midgardian to attack, but he stayed patient for the moment and waited for Stark to attack him, not without difficulty. Stark looked down at his fingernails for a moment before looking back up, he still didn't appear like he was ready to attack.
"If you really want to talk about the last time we fought let's go right ahead. You attacked me without a suit on, or at least you didn't think I had one on. Tell me, in Asgard, is that considered a fair fight? Especially against a Midgardian like myself?" Stark taunted him again and Loki struggled to maintain any patience he had left. "Seriously you couldn't even take me on man o man o? That is pretty-"
His patience snapped abruptly and sprung forward intend on causing the obnoxious Midgardian in front of him a great deal of pain but Stark proved to be far nimbler than he had expected. Stark avoided his jab by darting to the left and then to the left again the next time that Loki attempted to strike him. Loki fixed his stance slightly as he came at him at a new angle and a greater speed than before. This time Stark couldn't move in time and Loki expected his fist to hit -only...it wasn't right. The moment his fist made impact he knew that there something wrong. However, it took far longer than that for him to realize what was wrong.
HIs fist hadn't hit the man at all, rather instead his fist had impacted the mirror again. The mirror was completely fractured now from the force he had hit it with, reflecting his face and the rest of his body back to him at odd angles and with several missing pieces giving him a rather odd distorted look. A small part of him admitted that it was probably the most accurate picture of himself but he shoved that thought to the back of his mind as he turned around quickly looking for the man of Iron.
Turing around and around he looked for Stark but after three rotations he stopped as he realized that he could no longer see him. No, it was impossible. Stark had been there just moments ago. He couldn't have been distracted by the broken mirror for more than a few moments but Stark was gone. Impossible. Absolutely and utterly impossible. He scanned the walls looking for any perforations but he couldn't find any big or small and certainly none that a Midgardian man could fit through. There hadn't been enough time for the Midgardian to have slipped into another room.
Had the Midgardian simply vanished? Stark had a suit but he had been keeping tabs on the self-proclaimed superhero and on his exploits. While Loki could grudgingly admit he was rather intelligent for a Midgardian, he hadn't seen or heard of any way that the Midgardian could accomplish simply vanishing without leaving a trace behind. He spun again hoping to see Stark tucked away in some dark corner of the room so at least it would be solved but Stark was still nowhere to be found.
There was something going on here. There was something that he couldn't see but he could feel it niggling at the back of his mind. Part of him was trying to push it away but the other part of him wanted to know. He closed his eyes and focused repressing the part of want that wanted to keep it hidden, and his memories flashed back to the encounter.
Stark's suit had disappeared before the fight and he hadn't even noticed. There had been no signs of it being put away and it would be a rather stupid decision on Stark's part to try to fight him without a suit when he had one just moments before. This aligned with everything let him into the truth, the truth that he wasn't quite sure how to accept or what to do with.
Stark had never been there.