Chapter One: Curiosity Killed the Cat

The world was shaking apart in a furious storm of thunder and lightning, and Loki felt as though he stood at the very centre of it.

His bones rattled. He was unspooling; everything that had tethered him to Asgard —son, brother, prince—revealed as nothing more than a filthy lie; a legacy of gold turned to tarnished brass.

And still, pathetically, Loki had to fight against the small part of himself that wanted to dig his fingers in, and hold on with greedy, grasping hands.

Let go, he thought furiously. Uncurl your fingers and let go—

Loki sucked in a sharp, pained gasp. Mjolnir's weight crushed the breath from his chest, pressing the slats of his ribs down against his lungs; his heart was pounding so madly, Loki thought it might actually succeed in dislodging his brother's hammer.

But for all that, Loki still managed to find the breath to sneer.

"Look at you," he spat, tasting blood at the back of his throat. "The mighty Thor. With all your strength, what good does it do you now?"

Thor didn't reply, but he didn't need to. With a miserable sort of pleasure, Loki watched the sweeping lines of Thor's back, followed the resigned curve of his spine when suddenly a memory, half-forgotten, flitted on soundless wings and landed at the very back of his mind.

Inside the deepest recesses of a thousand years long past, Loki remembered a small, mechanical bird.

It'd had jealous green emeralds for eyes, and had been enchanted to life by clever magic. It had been one of Thor's gifts from his journeys to Vanaheim. Loki remembered thinking how delicate it had looked, passing from Thor's hands to his smaller ones.

He'd held it as gently as though it were actually a baby bird. He'd known that it was precious without having to be told.

But, like all things between Thor and Loki (always, the words arranged themselves that way even in his own head), something had inevitably soured. A simple prick of the finger, ignored and then left to fester and rot.

Loki couldn't remember now what they had fought about, only knew that he'd been holding that toy bird in his hands when, with an emphatic shout at Thor, he'd made a sharp, slicing motion through the air with it still in his hands.

As the bird had slipped out of his grasp, time seemed to slow. Loki's eyes had followed the graceful arc of it through the air; its wings spread aloft as though it might instead take flight.

Then, when Loki blinked, it had shattered against the floor, as fragile things inevitably did. A beat later and time had finally caught up to itself in a moment of splintering clarity.

The terrible, wounded look on Thor's face had surely been a reflection of the way Loki's heart was trying desperately to crawl inside itself, a creature of cowardice and fear. Regret, Loki had thought numbly. This is regret.

But even as a child, Loki had known that to admit it would be worse. To look at Thor and say, 'Brother, I'm sorry' would have made him just like that bird, broken against the floor.

In that split second, Loki had twisted his expression into a pleased, vindicated smile.

Maliciousness. Spiteful pleasure. Loki had gloated, pretending that he shattered that toy bird on purpose. He had very carefully avoided the thought that he'd have had an easier time dashing his own heart out against the stones.

He'd been both relieved and angry that Thor had believed him. He'd looked so vulnerable, so plaintive. It had made him stop to grind the little bird's remains beneath his heel before leaving.

This was a lesson Loki had always known: it is easier to destroy something precious, than to lose it.

Loki looked at Thor, felt hatred and love tangle themselves up inside him. It would be easier, he thought, if he could just pick one and be done with it.

He teetered between the two conflicting urges, running his tongue along the jagged edges of his indecision, when abruptly, Mjolnir's weight left his chest. His sudden freedom felt—unmooring.

He laid there for a moment, and wondered if what he was feeling was disappointment.

The moment didn't last long. Loki pushed himself up on his elbows and frowned. He watched as the hammer flew faithfully back into Thor's grasp; his brother's shoulders slumped for a sliver of a second, before straightening, as if with some new resolve.

Thor raised his hand. Lightning crested at the head of his hammer, splitting the air. A second later, the pursuing thunder arrived, with a deafening crash.

Loki stared, uncomprehending, until Thor brought Mjolnir down hard against the Bifrost. He felt the juddering impact rock the ground beneath him, and shot to his feet.

"Stop," he breathed, still half-caught in disbelief. Then, louder, he demanded, "Stop! What are you doing?"

Thor didn't answer. He brought Mjolnir down harder this time—sparks flew out around the hammer, and the impact reverberated up Loki's legs.

Loki steadied himself, gritted his teeth. A vein of desperation opened up amidst the tumultuous wave. But his mind, with its rows of hungry teeth, found weaknesses like bruises. He found the words and pressed down, mercilessly.

"If you destroy the Bridge," he snarled, "you'll never see her again."

The words worked. Thor jerked against them like they were an invisible leash. A triumphant smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, even as his stomach roiled with disgust.

He won't do it, Loki thought. He would never, for the life of him, be able to understand what Thor found so worthwhile about a brief, pathetic mortal. But what did his understanding matter, in the face of his imminent victory?

You're weak, Loki thought, vindicated, bitter. Your love makes you weak, Thor.

He saw it in the tense lines of Thor's back. In the muscles bunching at his shoulders. In the way his grip went white against Mjolnir's handle. Loki saw that he was wrong a split second before Thor raised his hammer above his head.

No, Loki thought furiously. If his world really was to be shattered apart, then it could not all be for naught. It had to mean something. He could not fail.

Loki snatched up Gungnir, and hardened his heart to a cutting edge.

With his heart in his mouth, he raced down the length of the Bifrost, his aim straight and true—

—But Thor was faster, and some small part of him was even grateful for it.

Thor raised Mjolnir one last time, drawing lightning towards its head. It flashed, like branches of blinding, white fire. Loki saw him summon all his strength to bring down his hammer in one last, powerful blow.

For the span of a heartbeat, everything was still. Like all sound and sensation had been compressed down to the focal point of where Thor's hammer met with the Bifrost.

Then the Bifrost shattered in an burst of searing light, and then began splintering further and further down the bridge. The unleashed power of the Bifrost seemed to contract for a moment, before expanding, larger and hotter and brighter. It exploded in a wave of rainbow light, deafening and blinding.

Loki had enough time to throw his arm over his face, but that didn't stop the acrid taste of ozone burning through his lungs. The explosion hurled him off his feet and sent him skating along the length of the Bifrost, hurtling towards the edge. Loki scrabbled to find purchase, but the surface of the Bifrost was smooth, and slippery as ice.

Still holding onto Gungnir, Loki tumbled over the edge. For one, terrifying moment, he was in free fall.

Then his shoulder was very nearly wrenched out of its socket when someone yanked and held onto the other end of Gungnir. Only sheer force of will had kept him from letting go out of surprise.

When he looked up, he felt his heart lurch.

Thor. Of course Thor. Because even now, his brother was still incapable of letting him fall into the abyss. Fool, Loki thought. You were ever the fool.

Thor was holding onto Gungnir like he was using all his strength to keep the gates of Valhalla from shutting in his face. Thor was holding on like a dying man trying desperately to cling to life, like he knew what this moment meant and exactly what hung in the balance.

Loki stared at him blankly.

He didn't know what showed on his own face, but what Thor saw there made him plead. "No, Loki—Brother. Please don't."

He'd never heard Thor beg before.

Distantly, as though through a sheet of ice, Loki's eyes travelled past the length of Gungnir, up Thor's arm, past his pathetic, appalling display of emotion and up—

His hand jerked spasmodically, and he slid a few precious inches down Gungnir's shaft. Thor cried out, and Loki ignored it.

Father, Loki thought, unbidden, before he reminded himself that Odin was no such thing. Yet he couldn't make himself believe it. Not yet.

Just as Thor had searched his face, Loki found himself searching Odin's. He didn't know what he expected to find, but at least in this moment he could scour the darkest corners of his secret heart and admit, if only to himself, that he knew only what he hoped he'd find.

Pride. Approval. Acceptance.

His heart burned in his chest, so hot it began to feel as though ice was creeping through his veins. "I could have done it, Father!" He cried, sounding young even to his own ears. "For you! For all of us!"

Loki looked at the man who he called Father, and thought, Why did you steal me if you never wanted me? And thought, If it had been only me, dangling at the end of Gungnir, would you have bothered? And thought, Why couldn't you love—

He fumbled at the word. Even in his own mind, it made him feel weak—and weakness made him vicious.

He could feel his heart turning to stone before he'd even heard Odin say, almost gently, almost with regret, "No, Loki."

—And thought,You should have left me to die on the ice.

Loki's expression hardened. His eyes left Odin's form, sliced back, instead, to Thor who seemed to know him at least a little. His eyes widened, and his realization made desperation break open in his voice. "No, no, no, Loki don't—"

It was better, he knew, to destroy something precious than to lose it.

Perhaps it, too, was better to let go than to be let go.

Loki stared up at Thor, at his wretched, threadbare expression. For one terrible moment, he felt his heart waver, tremulous.

"Goodbye Thor," he said.

And then fell—

—Through fire. Through ice. Through streaks of searing light.

As he plummeted he felt his skin stretch thin and taut over his bones with the sheer force of his momentum. He hurtled through an endless expanse of nothingness, wind screaming in his ears. The blackness rushed by in a blur of sensations: bone-deep cold, a crushing emptiness that dragged at the edges of him, and then a light so bright it burned out his retinas.

He was falling. Had been falling for years, it felt like. Or perhaps mere seconds. Time seemed like such an indistinct, distant concept when the end looked to be nowhere in sight. It felt like he'd been suspended in limbo, an insect caught in the amber of one of Idunn's golden trees.

Yet when the end came, it came abruptly.

He was falling, and then suddenly, he wasn't. His skin began to split and peel from the acrid, blistering atmosphere resisting his intrusion. The ground was rising up to meet him, and when he landed, he landed with a deafening clap. The earth split beneath his back, reverberating out and away with tremors that made the ground shake. The impact broke him, shattered his bones apart. Loki felt a wracking looseness ripple out from the centre of him, and tasted blood in his mouth.

It was a pain like one he'd never before known. The agony of being rent apart and unmade was so excruciating, Loki knew that death was the only thing that could possibly follow.

In the trembling aftermath, Loki waited. And waited. And waited.

Loki waited until he realized he'd be waiting for quite a long time.

Loki wondered, dryly, whether the bitter taste in his mouth was blood or disappointment. Both, in all likelihood. In the end, it made no difference.

Loki had survived. And now, he would have to live.

This was, admittedly, easier said than done. His body felt like a rictus of pain. Every breath was agony, every small shift of movement made his vision go white with pain. He tried to push himself onto his elbows and coughed up blood. Asgardians had the ability to heal very quickly, Loki thought, before his mind tripped over itself.

As did Jotuns, he added mentally. But it was still going to be a slow and excruciating business, lying here and waiting for his bones to mend, piece by shattered piece.

Loki only had two seconds to contemplate the bleakness of his future when suddenly, as though the Norns had collectively decided that attempting to knit his broken flesh back together wasn't quite enough for him to contend with, he heard the distant, crunch of gravel rolling closer and closer, signalling a rather untimely approach.

Loki looked up and made an admirable attempt at seeing through the dizzying, spinning spots in his vision. He noticed a beam of encroaching light and cursed when he realized it was real, and not some hallucination brought on by severe head trauma.

He was vulnerable like this. Anger, like black tar, threatened to choke him at the thought, but he was forced to admit that in his current state he was an easy target for any skulking mortal to hiss and jab at. More importantly, he couldn't risk being identified or worse, detained; he had no idea if whoever approached was a mere passerby, or if they were agents of that meddlesome organization that had had its run in with Thor.

His list of options was growing shorter and shorter with each passing second. Seeing little other choice, Loki closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath and concentrated…

Going had been a mistake.

It wasn't like Tegan hadn't known it would be. Everyone knew that 'family gatherings' were really just cesspools of misery and seething hatred, only there were rules involved. For example, no one was allowed to point out the fact that Harold was an alcoholic, or say anything about the fact that Susan's third husband was hitting on one of the servers. Showing even a hint of fear was rather unwise, though it seemed everyone had meanly forgotten to inform her sister's fiancee of this fact, if his compulsive sweating was any indication. Tegan's family could smell it like a shark could blood in the water, and any sign of weakness meant being fair game to their jeering and hissing.

It had been exhausting, putting on a happy face for her sister while simultaneously being constantly aware of where her father was in the room. Tegan had shamelessly stolen a tray of crab puffs right from a server's hands and retreated to a corner to hide with her ancient, great aunt Nora, who was just as crotchety and mean as Tegan suspected she'd herself be one day, going by her life's current trajectory. On account of all the rudeness that no one could say anything about because Nora was so old, few of Tegan's relatives dared to incur her wrath, and so, for the most part, they'd been left quite alone. Luckily, the old dowager seemed to tolerate Tegan well enough. Perhaps she'd sensed a kindred spirit.

"Are you married yet, girl?" She had asked, fixing Tegan with a beady eyed look.

"No."

Nora had harrumphed. "Good. Useless things, husbands. It was the greatest day of my life when I got rid of mine."

Tegan hadn't been sure if her great aunt had been referring to divorce or murder. Always did like that crazy old lady, Tegan had thought fondly.

And then a shadow had fallen over them both, and the night had only gone down hill from there.

The entire family retreat was supposed to have lasted the entire weekend. Tegan wasn't sure if she would have even survived it, but she'd been willing to try for her sister, if no one else.

She hadn't been able to last even a night.

It was late, now. Almost worryingly late for a four hour drive back home, but she'd gone anyway and no one had protested. If she was lucky, she'd be home in time to steal an hour or two of sleep before going to work. She'd owe her coworker one, for begging her to take Tegan's weekend shift, and then calling to beg for it back.

It was so quiet outside. The stillness had the quality of being somewhere between peaceful and unsettling. The road was desolate and bare. Though her headlights cut a swath through the inky darkness, there was nothing to see. Nothing stirred. The world was asleep, and the only sound was the crunch of gravel beneath her tires and jangly, late night radio tunes she'd put on to stop from feeling quite so alone. It didn't help much; in the end there was only the endless stretch of road, and Tegan in her tinny little car, miles away from anywhere.

And then something exploded.

A mile ahead, in the path of the road, came a great, earsplitting boom. She felt the ground lurch beneath her tires, and for a moment, she thought her car might go flying. A great plume of dust and smoke billowed up and then rushed out, quickly overtaking her car and seeping in through the cracks in her windows. Tegan hurriedly rolled them up, but it was too late. A sharp intake of breath filled her lungs with dust and she coughed, eyes watering and hunched over the steering wheel.

"What the fuck was that?" She wheezed hoarsely. Were they testing missles out here? Was it a meteorite? She'd heard that meteoroids weren't all that uncommon—they just usually burned to dust as they tried to pass through the Earth's atmosphere.

With narrowed eyes, she switched on the high beam. She squinted, but still couldn't see anything, even with the dissipating cloud of dust and debris.

Tegan drummed her fingers against the steering wheel, thinking. This was the quickest route home. The thought of backtracking nearly all the way back to New Hampshire and taking another six hours to drive home was out of the question. Even more horrifying was the thought of staying the night with her family while waiting however long for people to investigate and clear the road.

Cautiously, Tegan pressed down on the accelerator and approached with caution.

As the smoke cleared, Tegan's eyes widened.

A gigantic, smoking crater.

Heart racing, Tegan staggered out of the car and stood at the edge, peering over the lip of the crater. But it was too wide and too dark to see if anything, or anyone was down there. And why would there be? She was probably the only living soul for miles. Her heart skipped a beat as she realized that whatever crashed here could have very well killed her if she'd been driving only a little faster.

She shook her head quickly, clearing the white haze of fear that had flooded it. No, she thought pragmatically. She would get back into the car, drive around the massive hole in the earth and, God willing, not be late for work.

Tegan shook her head, intent on getting back into her car and getting out of dodge when, suddenly, she heard a sound that sounded remarkably like a human cough.

She turned slowly on her heel and stared into the crater.

"No," she said out loud, as though she could negate reality by just saying so. "Absolutely not."

She had imagined it. Surely—

She strained her ears and heard a groan, and then a sound like the shifting of gravel.

Something was down there.

Immediately fleeing the premises was probably even more pressing now than it had been five seconds ago. Who knew what was down there. What if it was an alien? There were some things in life she would rather just not know.

She was leaving. She was. This wasn't any of her business. She'd always been terrified of aliens, as a child and now that adolescent fear had turned into something a little more pressing. Tegan had no desire to be abducted, or stuffed into a van and taken to Area 51.

This was what she told herself. This was what she wanted to do, with all her heart.

But still her feet would not move.

Tegan knew why. When she closed her eyes, words that she knew by heart floated easily to the surface of her mind. As gentle as the reminder was, the force behind it felt as weighty as iron, impossible to ignore.

I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.

Someone was down there.

With a weary sigh, Tegan went over to her car, popping the trunk and snatching up a flashlight and a first aid kit. "This is how I've always wanted to go," she said to herself serenely. "Getting murdered by aliens." It wouldn't have impressed her father, but he'd never much cared about the humanitarian side of the family profession to begin with, and even less so now.

Tegan circled the lip of the crater until she found a sufficiently shallow slope she could hop down. The real trouble would be getting back out, but she'd worry about that if she survived.

She clicked her flashlight on and strode forward, scanning her surroundings for any sign of movement. But even after swinging the beam of her flashlight back and forth, Tegan couldn't see anything that looked even remotely human shaped. Perhaps she'd imagined the sound after all.

This came as somewhat of a relief. No news was good news, she always believed. No aliens, no people, no one bleeding out under her hands—

A little ways away, something shifted in the dark.

Tegan jumped. Her pulse felt like a skittish animal, beating a shallow, fast rhythm at her throat. But when she spoke, her voice came out remarkably steady. "Hello?"

When no answer was forthcoming, she set her first aid kit on the ground, opened it and tore a disposable scalpel out of its packaging. Automatically, she held it between her thumb and forefinger, before she adjusted her grip, holding onto it more firmly as she crept forward. "Is anyone there?" She continued, tone conversational, as though she were used to spending her nights prowling around in craters for signs of human life.

She hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary until she nearly trodded right over it. Her foot nudged up against something soft, and Tegan instinctively recoiled at the sound of strangled, but no less vehement hiss.

Startled, she swung her flashlight down to the ground.

Lying in the dirt was a black cat with the greenest eyes she'd ever seen.

Author's note: Lmao, this is going to be such a mess. I'm currently stuck af on my other story, so consider this a musing diversion. I'm entirely new to the Marvel/Thor franchise though, so let me know what you guys think.