AN: Special thanks to Kibbitzer on DeviantArt for use of the picture titled 'No More Illusions' as cover art.
Phil Coulson sighed as he watched the man walk away into the night. He was in Colorado trying to gather together more of SHIELD's shattered remains. The man he'd just met with had agreed to speak to him only to confirm he wasn't HYDRA but he'd been adamant about not joining up with Coulson. Apparently he'd been thinking about retiring from SHIELD for a while now and this seemed like a good time. Coulson had been disappointed but had warned him to watch his back and let him go on his way.
Well this had been a wasted trip. Phil looked around at the abandoned warehouses and turned to walk away. A shadow moved in the corner of his eye and he fought to keep his stride. Several times he'd come across HYDRA agents at these meetings and not always because he'd accidentally arranged a meeting with one, not that he'd tell May that. She'd never let him out by himself again.
He walked towards an abandoned cargo container and strode casually behind it, putting it between himself and where he'd seen the movement. The instant he was fully behind it his demeanour changed. Gone was the casual businessman and out came the SHIELD agent as he pulled his service weapon from the small of his back. He peeked around the corner of the container and surveyed the scene. Nothing.
Just as he was about to put it down as his imagination he saw a small dark shape slipping into one of the abandoned warehouses. Coulson crept forward scanning for any other movement. He stood to the side of the entrance where the warehouse would have once held massive doors but was now just a large hole in the semi-intact building.
He poked his head cautiously around the corner, surveying the dark cavernous interior for further signs of movement as he reached into his pocket for the small flashlight. He gripped the small light source in one hand, thumb ready to activate it at a moment's notice, his gun held firmly in his other hand, braced against his wrist as he brought both items up and entered the room.
Moonlight shone through the large doorway, windows and even a hole in the ceiling illuminating the room enough to see vague shapes in monochromatic hues of blacks and greys. Piles of stuff were scattered around, the largest of which was near the back of warehouse and from his limited night vision Phil could make out it was a mound of stones, the type generally used in construction projects, although judging from the hole in the roof directly above it, there was probably a fair amount of debris on it too. It was easily a couple of meters high. High enough to conceal someone behind it.
Coulson's eyes scanned the edges of the warehouse as he made his way around the pile in a wide arc, giving him room to move and fight if there was someone back there. Movement in the corner he was approaching made him freeze, training his weapon and light in that direction as he thumbed the button. A large black labrador froze for a second in the beam of his light before returning to what it was doing. Phil sighed. He was just about to lower his gun when a disturbingly familiar voice sounded out behind him.
"I hope you're not planning to shoot the beast," Phil spun bringing the gun and light to bear on the origin of the voice and an icy chill flooded through his veins at the sight of the familiar face. Loki stood there dressed in his usual Asgardian garb.
"She's the only company I've had these last few days." Loki continued in a seemingly easy tone. He looked past the light to Phil's face and frowned. "I thought you were dead."
"I heard the same about you." Phil replied as he studied the man before him and his eyes widened in alarm.
The last time he'd had this man in front of him he'd noticed something off about him and at the very last second before he'd been stabbed through the heart he'd realized Loki's eyes lacked the spark of life in them. There was a deadness that gave away the truth of the illusion. There was that same deadness in his eyes now and Phil swung his weapon away, hunting through the darkened room for the true form of the man while he continued speaking.
"It seems being reported dead counts for very little these days." The illusion frowned.
"What are you looking for?" it asked with the demigod's voice.
"You." Phil replied still looking around. The illusion smiled.
"I'm right in front of you."
"Yeah, the last time you were right in front of me you stabbed me in the back. Forgive me if I don't take your word for it." Phil replied and he reached out with his weapon and waved it through the intangible form, causing the illusion to flicker and fade. A shifting of stones was heard and Phil turned towards the large rock pile moving toward it.
At the base of the mound of stones Phil looked up. It was a steep three meter climb to the top. He'd need at least one free hand to steady himself. He looked down at his gun and sighed before flicking on the safety and stowing it in the holster hidden at the small of his back. It wasn't like it was any good against Loki anyway.
"If you value your hatred for me, you won't go up there." Phil flicked his torch to the face of the man that appeared beside him. Dead eyes. Not him. He clutched the small flashlight in his fist and started his way up.
"I don't hate you, Loki." he replied, not looking back.
"You have every right to hate me. I did try to kill you after all." The apparition hadn't moved, just watched as Coulson climbed.
"You succeeded." Phil replied and he heard a gasp from somewhere above him.
"Then how are you here? Have you come to haunt me?" The voice sounded from above this time and Phil paused looking up. Loki was sitting on the top of the pile, his legs lying down the slope. Phil wasn't high enough to get a good look at his eyes but the lack of impact he had on the loose stones told Coulson that this was another illusion. He kept climbing.
"I'd rather not talk about how I'm alive." Phil said softly and to his surprise Loki didn't push. The silence lasted a couple of minutes while Phil concentrated on climbing the loose stones, sliding back a little with every step.
"You really don't hate me?" Phil was a little surprised. Not so much at Loki's question, but at the hint of hope in his tone. He sighed.
"No. I'm a little suspicious, a lot cautious and probably more curious than I should be for my own wellbeing, but I don't hate you, Loki." Coulson reached up and grabbed hold of a slab of what probably used to be the roof and pulled himself up to stand on it.
The slab he was standing on was easily a couple of meters square but it was split down the middle, like something had crashed through the ceiling bringing the slab down with it. There were smaller pieces of rubble scattered around the top of the stone mound but aside from the illusion sitting on the edge watching him there was no sign of the demigod. He flicked his flashlight in its direction.
"So where are you?" The image of Loki sighed.
"You're a good man, Coulson. It would no doubt distress you to see what I've become. Are you sure you don't want to just leave?" Phil shook his head rallying himself.
"Just show me, Loki." The illusion sighed, sounding defeated before it faded. There was a shimmer of air and a battered figure appeared at Phil's feet. Surprised, Phil went to take a step back, forgetting he was only a half-step away from a three meter drop.
Gravity took hold and he nearly fell backwards but the figure at his feet surged upwards and grabbed hold of his wrist, pulling him forwards. Phil vaguely registered that the grip felt wrong as he pitched to his knees and Loki fell back with a pained gasp. No longer at risk of falling, Phil ran his torch over the demigod, horrified by what he saw.
Loki was dressed in a simple dark green linen top with matching pants, both of which were torn and bloody. Everywhere Phil could see on him was dirty, bloody and bruised. His feet were bare and Phil could see bloody rings around his ankles, as if he had been shackled. His right knee was bent at an odd angle and his left leg seemed to have grown an extra knee.
All of his fingers were broken and his hands were almost completely black with the bruising. His left shoulder was obviously dislocated and the arm seemed to lay limp at Loki's side. There was some kind of light-green guard around his right wrist and there were a number of cuts above and below it, as if someone had tried to cut the thing off.
His hair was filthy and matted and his left eye was swollen shut. His lips and the surrounding area was red raw and spotted with sores, like some kind of chemical burn and there was a large gash down his left cheek.
His breath came in short pants, like it hurt to even breathe. Phil stayed on his knees by Loki's right shoulder, but sat back on his feet as he finished his assessment. He looked into the prone man's good eye and for an instant Phil thought this was another illusion but no, it wasn't deadness in that eye but a guarded pain.
"What the hell happened?" Phil asked. Another illusion appeared across from Phil, this one a pristine, injury-free version of the broken man between them. Even the illusion seemed smaller, guarded, vulnerable. It hugged its linen clad legs to its chest and stared at its bare feet, pointedly not looking at the real version of itself as it answered Coulson's question quietly.
"He's known as the mad titan. He caught up to me on the dark world. I was wounded and I couldn't fight back as he took me prisoner. He didn't want anything from me, just pain. I'm not sure how long he had me, it's all blurred together. I became a game for his followers, they held competitions. Who could make me scream the loudest, the longest, who could come up with the most interesting way to inflict pain." The illusion shrugged.
"I guess they got bored. About a week ago he put this on me." The real Loki raised his right arm, slightly, showing off the wrist brace that seemed to be made of some kind of green gemstone as his illusion kept talking softly. "It suppresses my body's ability to regenerate so I wouldn't just heal what they inflicted upon me. That's when I knew it was escape or die. It took me a couple of days."
"Why?" Phil asked and the illusion laughed morbidly.
"I've been in his tender care before. He's the one that gave me the sceptre and sent me after the tesseract. Needless to say he wasn't happy with how that went."
"So he's who you were scared of." Phil said as understanding dawned and Loki, both of them, looked at him sharply so he clarified, sitting down properly.
"Before the battle of New York, I told you that you lacked conviction, and for an instant I saw fear. You were afraid and not because I was right but that someone else would see I was right. Then I realized that you had spent all this time provoking the people that could stop you while making it seem like you were trying to tear us apart. You took Barton for his inside information so you would know what buttons to push. Every move you made..." Phil trailed off as he realized something else.
"You were going to kill me anyway weren't you? Even if I hadn't come to you, you would have made it a point to kill me before you left the helicarrrier." Loki closed his good eye and his illusion sighed.
"I've killed before, you know, murdered even, but of all those deaths, of all those lives, yours was the only one I regretted taking. Yes. I planned to kill you, even hoped it would look like a matter of circumstance rather than the rallying point for your forces to fight against me that it really was."
"It's ironic that you should be the one to find me, really. Had I known you still lived I wouldn't have chosen Midgard to hide on. Of all the people in the universe that wish me harm, that want vengeance against me for some slight, real or imagined, you are the only one I would not fight against taking it." Loki admitted in a small but heavy voice. It was the kind of tone that an abused child would use to tell his drunken father that he'd done something wrong. Phil Coulson blinked and let a mask of cold indifference slide onto his face.
"I'd better get started then." He said evenly and picked up the nearby misshapen hand and a little less gently then he could have, straightened each finger. True to his word, Loki didn't try to fight back, he didn't even move except to let out pained gasps and the illusion faded away.
Coulson leaned over to pick up the other hand and Loki whimpered, actually whimpered. There was an answering whine from the dog still hanging around but Coulson ignored them both and repeated the process with the rest of Loki's fingers. He stood and stepped over the downed man in front of him before grabbing hold of his left wrist and ruthlessly shoving the shoulder back into place. Loki yelped at the pain but still didn't move to stop his tormentor.
A quick glance at Loki's face told Phil that he didn't realise that Coulson was doing something other than causing him pain but Phil didn't let his mask of cold indifference slip as he moved to Loki's feet. He grabbed Loki's left ankle tightly heedless of the wound there and sharply straightened the break. Loki let out a small scream that cut off abruptly as the demigod slipped into pain induced unconsciousness. Phil closed his eyes and let out a sigh.
"Finally!" He whispered to himself and much more gently than he had done with the rest he leaned down and popped Loki's right knee back into its proper place. He let the mask of callousness drop, looking sadly down at the man that had once killed him but he didn't see his killer, he only saw a man that had suffered more than he should have, more than anyone should have.
It hadn't taken long after seeing the state Loki was in for Phil to decide to help him and to do that he had to move him. That was why he had forced him to lose consciousness. Getting him down was going to be rough as it was. Him being unconscious made things a little easier.
Phil gently grabbed the front of Loki's shirt and praying it was intact enough, used it to pull him up so Phil could lift him from behind and pull him over to the edge of the mound. With careful manoeuvring Coulson managed to sit down on the edge and pull Loki onto his lap. With an arm around the other man's chest to brace him, Phil slid down the slope of loose stones.
At the bottom he eased Loki off his lap to sit on the ground, leaning against the pile he had been laying on top of. Phil stood and shook the loose stones off his clothes before leaning down to rid himself of the few that had lodged in his shoes. The lab came up to them and wuffled at the unconscious man, swiping her tongue across the scratch on his face a couple of times.
"Easy there, girl. He's hurt pretty bad." Coulson had always believed that dogs were smart but this one seemed even smarter than most as she looked up at him before laying down next to Loki and resting her head on his thigh. Phil just shook his head and started toward the door to go and fetch his rental car, sadly Lola was too visible to drive around in. He pulled out his phone and dialled a number.
"Randolph, hey. I hope I didn't wake you... Are you still at that safe house of mine? ... No, no. You can stay there as long as you like. Listen I need your help with something. I'm coming to you but I'm a couple of hours away. I'm bringing company, can you make up an extra bed?" Phil spared one last glance back as he rounded the corner. "There is literally no one else on Earth I can trust with this."