AN: Several warnings. Firstly, this is an idea that's been bubbling in my head for months but the words for it to start really only found me last night. I can't be sure that there will be much more, if any, although in my happiest fantasies I finish everything I've ever thought of. Secondly, there is mention of rape and abuse (although no content of it) in this chapter. It's not going to be a theme of this story but it is in here and I wouldn't want anyone disturbed unnecessarily.
This is AU and takes place before the very end of The Avengers. All events after the attack on NYC are victim to my whims.
Loki Laufeyson - or was it Odinson, had he decided yet? - was in shackles, his lips gagged and a bitter metal taste trapped in his mouth. He was surrounded by enemies, and Thor who might have been something worse. It was not, he decided, the finale he had hoped for. Although it was certainly better than the one he'd been goaded towards. He considered congratulating Earth's heroes on being more difficult to defeat than expected - he thought they'd need his own help - but then remembered, he could not.
The silence in SHIELDs meeting room was a weight, physically sinking him deeper into his seat - or was that the guilt he now carried for the hundreds of lives brought to ruin by his command? The Avengers, every oafishly brave one of them, sat at the table glaring at him, clearly thinking decidedly unheroic thoughts. Loki could meet every one of their gazes, and did, although he may have skirted by the doctor faster than the others. His greatest punishment for failure, was not coming from Thanos as promised, but by being stuck in a room with this company of star-lucky dunces.
The glass doors slid open. Thor and the defrosted soldier stood as two uniformed agents escorted in a young woman. Loki sat up, the burden of quiet broken by this new addition.
There were several noteworthy things about her. The expertly tailored dress cut from lush and expensive fabric and the way it hung too loose on her sharp-boned shoulders. The delicate entrance into the room, the steps and stature of aristocracy. The vacant, disinterested expression on her face, eyes gazing out the opposite window as the rest of the occupants studied her keenly. She sat, ankles crossing, back straight. Gods, she reminded him of Mother - no, Frigga.
"We are here, taking this opportunity to assess the risk of Loki Odinson, citizen of Asgard," Fury began in a lecturing monotone, the voice of a bureaucratic official rather than his usual cross between over-lord and rebel.
Loki ignored him, preferring to watch the woman whose gaze was still blank, lighting on the faces in the room but clearly not listening. It was more than pretending to not listen, it was genuine not hearing, and not caring to hear. No single thing in the room caught her attention, seemed worthy of study. As if she honestly neither knew nor cared why she had been brought in.
Who was she?
She met his eyes, the focus so sudden and so sharp it jolted him in his chair. And suddenly, he knew her, every inch of her.
The canopy bed. Country summer's entrance through an open window. The gray cat that thrummed under her small child's hands. The remarkably empty space where sound should have been. The beautiful pair, man and woman, who watched her with frowns, whose hands would not take hers. The gilded home she found herself lost in, unable to hear her name called and not knowing to cry out for help. The doctors. God, the incredible number of doctors, of strangers hands against her skin, turning her about one way and then the other, pricking her with needles.
The surgeries. The sudden, painful, entrance of sound. Layers of it, the sounds from outside of her head and those from within.
More doctors. Psychiatrists. Speech Therapists. The lessons in decorum and comportment alongside the clinical studies. The word Mutant. Her mother's shame. Her father's frozen hunger, the secret he kept buried that she knew of but didn't understand. He had not wanted a daughter for just this reason.
The rhythmic nighttime tortures of his visits.
The slow shredding of her sense of self. Of what was right. Of what she was meant for.
The mundanity of new doctors, new treatments, new lessons as if she might one day be capable of becoming the symbol of two peoples success that she was intended to be. The slow understanding that she was proof of their imperfections.
Their sudden deaths.
Her following incarceration.
Released early to serve new masters, she had refused the hearing device offered to her in the town car that had brought her to SHIELD. She had learned, freed from her parents, exactly what she was capable of, and that hearing was a hinderance not a help in learning what others wanted from her.
She was not innocent.
But she was not a monster, not like him.
Too late he understood her presence at the table. She had already retrieved all his secrets from his mind, distracting him with her own. He was stripped as bare as she. And somehow he could not fully care. She was…interesting. A fascinating challenge. She could not hear his silver tongue, caged or not, and he didn't believe that he could force his thoughts to lie, not in any way she would not see through. He wondered how they trusted her. Most likely Fury did not.
She raised one hand gracefully, just a few fingers really, and silence fell so completely he might have believed that she had deafened him as thoroughly as herself. She pulled her gaze from him and it was as if they had physically broken an embrace. He was the only one who didn't jump as a foreign voice lilted in his thoughts, it was soft and gently seductive, like a hand cupped in a caress.
Your prisoner is guilty of acting on behalf of Thanos-
Thor stiffened and glanced at Loki who remained watching the woman.
-After extreme psychological and physical torture. He considers himself a capable threat to Earth and humanity, but lacks real interest in the conquering." The words were more his than hers, he suspected. What he had gathered from her memories were images, not language, and it was as if she was piece-mealing his own stray thoughts as explanation. There is no regret for his actions, nor is there disappointment at his failure. If you kill him, Earth will be held accountable by Asgard. If you send him back we will be defenseless when Thanos comes. Thanos is coming. He is certain that he is the best defense. He knows the Titan's plans and what few weaknesses exist.
The heroes broke into arguments and a great deal of colorful curses regarding Loki's usefulness to a planet he had so recently threatened. Fair enough, he supposed. Only he and Fury remained watching the woman whose focus had fallen away and who now seemed to absently be waiting to be retrieved and released. Loki wondered how long it hand been since she had made a choice regarding her own movements, if she ever had.
What is your name? Loki thought, imagining he could press the thought to the woman.
She shifted and her eyes landed slightly over his shoulder.
Carolyn Booth.
And do you know the secrets of everyone in the room? He wondered.
The interesting ones.
Oh, he liked her.
Her eyes shifted to Fury, who must also have been silently communicating with her. He, Loki had to admit, was not as stupid as the others. He watched, barely following the general thread of the room's out loud conversation which seemed to be leaning towards taking their chances alone and sending Loki back to Asgard. Fury, by his tense expression, was quizzing the woman. He paled, a shocking sight, and sat back in his chair, looking breathless. Whose torture had she shared, Loki wondered, her own or his? Or had she stolen the history of the most secretive person in the room?
"Miss Booth, as you may have noticed, is what she refers to as a Mentalist," Fury said, his voice tight, but able to cut through the useless chatter.
"Understatement," Stark snapped quietly, looking wary of the woman.
"She will be working for SHIELD, serving as the first alert system to the threat of Loki Odinson, who will remain as a heavily guarded asset providing he cooperates fully with our expectations and needs."
"Are you shitting me right now, Fury?" Barton snarled.
"Loki will remain in those protective shackles on a probationary period," Fury continued with a sharp glare at his archer. "The gag will be removed as Miss Booth says that there are concepts he understands that she simply isn't… other enough to translate for us. She assures me of his participation."
She did, did she?
"And we're just supposed to trust her?" Romanov asked with a coquettish head tilt.
"You'll trust her because I trust her," Fury said, which threw the two veteran SHIELD agents back in their chairs.
"Not good, enough," Stark said, rising from his chair, before losing his balance and glaring uncomfortably at Carolyn Booth. His eyes bulged and he began to pant while she stared impassively out the window.
Oh gods, what he wouldn't give to be able to shut up men like these with as little effort as it took this small, fragile woman.
Stark sank back into his seat, green and swallowing convulsively. After a moment of quiet, he turned and glared at Loki. "Welcome to the team, Rudolph."
