Pandora
Summary: Loki is told a Greek myth during an attempted interrogation.
I do not own any of the copyrighted material. Amy is an original character.
Takes place during The Avengers, when Loki is captured.
I'm not sure how the formatting is so here goes nothing...
Not for the first time, Amy cursed her bad luck and her seemingly endless knack for ticking off Fury.
This, he had told her, was her punishment for being a smart ass.
So here she was –about to interrogate an alien hell bent on world domination.
There was no way she could be intimidating. And there was no was she could fake having a naturally commanding, authoritative presence. So there was only one way she could do this –by being herself. Her awkward, painfully honest self.
Once the soldiers and various mercenaries had led her through the secure areas, Amy stood in front of a large metal door.
Somehow, through reasons beyond Amy's comprehension, the room behind the door was keeping all hell from breaking loose on Earth.
There were butterflies in her stomach –but she managed to type her pass code and not to blink as her retina was scanned on a panel by the door.
The door slid open.
She stepped through and the door slid shut.
He was there. He was the first thing she saw because he was the only thing to see.
The room was bright and sterile. There was a sleek metal table and thin matching chairs on opposite ends.
His back was to her, looking at a mirror that took up most of the wall in front of him as though looking through it.
She wondered if he knew –if he really could see through the two way mirror.
Amy shifted uncomfortably. "Uh… Hi…"
No response. Really though –what did she expect?
He liked green. And leather. And metal. He was definitely an alien. She had to hand it to him though –not a lot of people could pull off a cape.
"So…" Amy walked over to the table and pulled back one of the chairs –the metal scrapping loudly on the floor.
She sat down. The only thing she could see of him was his long green cape and his slick black hair.
"I'm supposed to interrogate you… Well, just ask you some questions… My name's Amy by the way."
He didn't even twitch.
"You're Loki, right? The guy who wants to take over the Earth?"
No indication that he'd even heard her.
"You know I don't really expect you to answer. I'm not really sure my bosses expect you to answer. I'm not even trained for this… I think they just wanted to send in someone weak and nonthreatening so you could see another side of S.H.I.E.L.D." And because I pissed off the wrong boss, she silently added. "The side you didn't try to kill…"
The silence was painful. She could feel it. The need to talk about random things that almost always got her in trouble. The same need for meaningless babble that had gotten her in this mess in the first place.
"I don't know a lot about Norse mythology. I've read some… but I like Greeks myths better. There's this one… I'm not sure why but I think you might like it…
It's about a girl. She falls in love with a god and he falls in love with her too. They end up getting married. But there's a goddess who's not to happy about it. She gives the girl a box with a warning not to open it, knowing the girl's curiosity will get the better of her.
One day the girl's husband goes out to do whatever it is gods do, so she opens the box. By opening the box, she unleashes evil upon the world: Hate, Fear, Vanity, Famine… all that bad stuff.
When her husband gets home, he knows what she's done. Together they open the box again and look at the very bottom. At the bottom of the box, underneath all that bad, was the most beautiful thing they'd ever seen: Hope."
Loki was a statue. He hadn't moved from the time Amy came in and it didn't look like he was going to move anytime after she left. There was no way she was going to get him to talk and she really didn't want to sit there twiddling her thumbs while Fury laughed at her from the other side of Loki's mirror.
She really didn't want to have a conversational monologue so she took his continued silence as her cue to leave.
She got up and noisily pushed the chair in. "Uh… Bye…"
Still no response. But again –what did she expect?
She walked to the door and looked at a camera at the closest corner.
The door slid open as someone on the other side of Loki's mirror decided she could leave.
She walked out the door and it slid back in place.
Unlike the people on the other side of the mirror, what she didn't see was that right before she left, Loki's eyes had shifted toward her.
I was compelled to write this when I couldn't get the idea of telling Loki the story of Pandora's Box out of my head.
The thing about Hope reminds me of some stuff Frigga and Heimdall say in the movie…
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The Box
I've had to add this here because I'm having a hard time adding a uploading it
Summary: Loki reflects on a story he was told.
Follow up on "Pandora"
I'm not sure about the timeline –sometime after The Avengers. I'm speculating that Loki is going to end up being a good guy based on online pictures.
I once heard a story. About a mortal who unwittingly unleashed destruction upon the Earth.
And from that story I was inspired.
Inspired to be the evil –and strike fear into the hearts of the millions of insects who would have to look to me. I would be their master. I would be their Hope.
But I was wrong.
I thought my brother's mortal to be the girl –Pandora. I thought my brother to be the girl's god. I thought my place of captivity to be the box.
But I was a fool. I see now. I was Pandora. I used the mortals, this S.H.I.E.L.D., to create a new bridge –my very own box. And then I freed the Skrulls.
I thought I could control them. I thought I could use them and bring the world to my knees. I was so very mistaken.
I had to look to my brother. I had to look to S.H.I.E.L.D. The pathetic creatures I thought were so beneath me were now my Hope –my only chance to live.
When I was very young, my mother, or the woman I thought to be my mother, once told me that there is a lesson in each story. And I did learn my lesson.
Next time I'll keep the box shut.
This is purely Loki's thoughts. I don't think Amy would have registered to him (he would have thought of her as one of the many pathetic insects) –he probably would have been inspired by the story in a completely twisted way.