Loki woke with a start, his lip still throbbing. The blood on his forehead was dry. He rolled off the bed and began to pace again, measuring out the width of the cell, back and forth, back and forth, always the same pattern. He paused to carry out the exercises he did daily to maintain his strength and muscle tone, assuming the various positions of his own arts of battle, throwing imaginary knives and wielding an imaginary scepter. He applied the ointment that kept his face free of the stubble he so disliked, determined not to become the prisoner sunk so deeply in his own despair that he no longer cared for his appearance. He had no means of cutting his hair, but he kept it clean and out of the way.
He sat at the desk again, his eyes burning with the lack of sleep. He opened the book to another page. The chapter, densely illustrated by an artist of some skill, covered the period in Midgard's history known as the Great War. The first so-called World War. Only the first of many. He'd simply had no interest in the details.
Now he was interested, and almost appalled at the mindless destruction. The sheer waste of forces on both sides of the conflict, the futile courage, the sickness, the stench of desperation, all over insignificant patches of territory that made an anthill seem like a mountain.
If he had come to rule Midgard, Loki told himself, all such petty conflicts would cease. The freedom to make war would be erased along with so-called "free will." The lives his attempted conquest had taken would be more than recompensed by those saved at his command.
"The war was a mirror; it reflected man's every virtue and every vice, and if you looked closely, like an artist at his drawings, it showed up both with unusual clarity."
The man's name had been Charles Grosz. He had been a soldier in the "Great War." And he had opposed Hitler, like Elie Wiesel.
Loki laughed. Virtues and vices. Humans were roiling cauldrons of contradiction. And he .. He saw too much of himself in them. Far too much.
I am nothing like them.
He got up again and walked himself to exhaustion. But the more desperately he needed rest, the fewer defenses he had against the voices. He paused again to lean against the wall, gritting his teeth. Listening.
The woman wore a neat and very plain suit, with a tailored jacket and trousers. Her face was not beautiful, but it was not unpleasant, and her hair, a very unremarkable shade of brown, had been neatly trimmed around her oval face.
"Why did you kill me?" she asked, nothing but gentle query in her voice. "I never hurt anyone. I never dreamed they'd think I was good enough, but they were actually considering promoting me. It took me such a long time to believe in myself. Why did you take that away?"
Loki found himself on the floor, knees to chest and arms wrapped around them tightly, like the child left alone because Mother had important business, Father had no time for him and Thor had gone off with his friends to play at being great warriors. Something Loki would never be.
I never dreamed they'd think I was good enough.
With frantic intensity, Loki reconsidered every possible means of silencing the voices, and his own mind, permanently. He was willing to take almost any steps but the one his captors had apparently not thought of; choking himself on the pages of the book.
He refused to die so ignominiously. He would never give them the satisfaction.
So he rested his chin on his knees and thought on things that would make him angry enough to drive the voices away. He remembered the child again, the child he had been. The shadow. The watcher. The invisible listener, because when he was with his elder brother, he was all but unnoticed by everyone he passed.
Cruelty came on thoughtless footsteps, dogging at his heels when Thor was too intent on some warlike amusement to notice. Small things-whispers, muffled laughs, talk of the one who was surely never destined to become a warrior like his brother, like all who aspired to find honor in Asgard. He was a prince, and so could not openly be mocked. But he heard the voices, and he never forgot them.
There had been kindness then, too, in bits and snatches. From Fandral, on occasion, when all of them were young—Fandral, who was always merry and seldom carried a grudge. Volstagg had been wont to make a few jokes at Loki's expense, but never with cruelty. Not until they were older, and the big warrior became impatient with Loki's "devious" ways.
There had been others, flitting in and out of his life when Thor chanced to step out of the way. Thor, too … from him, there had been a rude affection, unthinking laughter, and a protectiveness Loki had grown to resent even as he recognized Thor's thoughtless devotion to his only sibling.
And Frigga. Frigga the gentle, Frigga the wise, who seemed to see all and yet judged none. She had loved him, the one love he had known was true and abiding, no matter what pranks he pulled to draw some attention away from his glorious brother. She had played at draughts with him, read the old books with him, encouraged him to hone his skills in what mortals called "magic."
But from his father … from Odin … nothing. Not after childhood was done, and boys were boys no longer but must take their places as true princes of Asgard. And even after Loki was acknowledged in his new rank and walked beside Thor as his supposed equal, he still saw the looks, heard the voices , knew every god and courtier and guard in the place thought him unworthy to be one of Odin's heirs.
He is different. He is a liar. He cannot be trusted. He is the worm in the apple. Only look at him, and you will see.
Thor never heard the murmuring or noticed the looks. His life was as it should be. He had been given what was his by right, and he was more than content. Battles, tournaments, games of chance, women—all his for the winning whenever he chose. And men lost to him gladly, out of love for the golden son of Odin.
But if Loki won … why, then it must be by trickery, by illusion, by lies.
So he became what they expected of him. Pranks became less like jests and more like vengeance. And he became adept at being somewhere else when the schemes played out. When on those rare occasions he was caught, Thor made light of it and threw his muscular arm over Loki's shoulders and laughed. "Up to the old games, I see, little brother," he would say. And Loki would smile and nod, as if he had never thought of his machinations as anything else.
Countless times they had ridden together into battle. They had fought the jotuns, the dark elves, any force that would threaten Asgard or its people or its throne. Loki had become adept at a warrior's skills—not of brute strength, but of speed and subtlety and grace, expertise with knife and short spear, darting in and out before any blow could touch him. And it was he who threw up the illusions and conjured cover when Thor went too far and drew every enemy down upon his head.
Again and again the princes returned, covered in glory. Glory for Thor, and the leavings for his brother, save for an occasional pat on the head from Fandral or a slap on the back from Volstagg, especially when the big man was drunk.
"Some do battle, others only do tricks." And then a broad hand gripping Loki's neck, grins exchanged, a moment of unsullied affection, when Loki had loved his brother with all his heart. And learned to adapt a lightness of manner, a quickness of wit meant to amuse rather than vex. Not once did he forget the voices, the whispers of his childhood.
But they began to forget. They began to consider him fit to be in their company, if only because he had finally proven some right to stand beside his brother in battle. And because sometimes he made them chuckle, or impressed them with his casual jests. When they mocked him to his face, he laughed.
The voices in his head now never laughed. How he hated them.
"Why did you kill me?"
The anger hadn't worked. They were still there. Loki looked up, and he saw the one who spoke. An elderly woman with rich brown skin, her face deeply lined, her mouth twisted in contempt.
"Why?" she demanded, thrusting her short chin toward him with the pugnacity of a Midgardian bulldog. "I lived a long life. Sure I did. But I wasn't ready to go yet. I had grandkids. I sang in the choir. I had plenty of years left, stuff to do. Hell, I may have been old as fuck, but I sure had fun." Her eyes narrowed, and her smile became mocking. "You aren't even grown up, are you? Some kind of god you are." She snorted. "You need to go back to god-school, because you have a helluva lot to learn about people. I mean people, son. All kinds of people. We're all the same, Mr. High-and-Mighty. Time you learned that before someone else gets hurt."
Her voice broke off abruptly. Loki stared into the space where she seemed to have stood. We're all the same. But that was a lie. His own life had proven it. The Other had proven it. Pain had proven it. Again and again and again.
The old bitch had mocked him, like Natasha Romanov. A boy, she'd said, as if he were not her senior by millennia. But there had been something in her he could find to respect. It didn't come easily, that respect. It was, quite frankly, unnatural. And yet it was as true, because she'd fought her extinction with the fire of her belief in herself. Her own worthiness to survive.
Loki dragged his sleeve over his eyes. Curse all mortals to their everlasting Hell. They had no business …
Dying. Dying so easily. Falling like wooden figures built merely for practice at arms, never meant to last.
He returned to the desk and read. The Underground Railroad during the American Civil War. The My Lai massacre. The struggles of a man called Gandhi. The "ethnic cleansing" of the Bosnian War. Always, that human curiosity, resilience, courage, viciousness, hatred, cruelty, joy. And the constant search for meaning.
How many hundreds of years had Loki searched for meaning, and never found it? How much less time had these mortals to make sense of their lives?
He closed the book, dropping his head onto his crossed arms. He slept again. The voices let him be. He remembered nothing of his dreams. He counted what he believed to be many days with only blessed silence for company. And he read. He read until he had committed the entire book of mortal history to memory.
"Daddy issues," Tony Stark said, standing behind the bar with the drink in his hand. "We both have that little problem in common, don't we? Along with the lack of a functioning heart." He downed his drink and poured another. "We never really did get to finish our conversation, Reindeer Games. Back in the day, I might have used you as a weapons designer. You're smart enough. But you can't be trusted with dangerous toys. You still don't know they can blow up in your face."
Loki grinned. "You're clever for a mortal, Stark. I might have used you to polish my boots."
"Huh." Stark swirled the alcohol around in his glass, pretending to be fascinated by the rich amber color. "You know, I'm not very good at kneeling. The suit … well, it has this little glitch, and I have no plans to fix it." His dark gaze locked on Loki's. "It's easy to fix a suit. Not like people. I still don't understand some of 'em. Like Capsicle." He rolled his eyes. "A walking, talking God Bless America. But he gets the job done. Can you?"
"I don't think you'll be disappointed," Loki said, strolling toward the bar.
Stark sniffed ostentatiously. "I'm getting a whiff of something. Not just bullshit. Something bigger. And meaner. And greener. Something you'll understand, because you've got it inside you already."
Loki had no time to dodge the brute. But as it charged him, teeth bared, enormous fists clenched, it stopped. And walked right into him. And became him.
He was the monster. It was stretching him from inside out, bursting his skin, covering him in his own blood.
With a cry he couldn't smother, Loki sat up on the bed, his heart pounding in his throat. He held up his hands. They hadn't changed. His skin was intact. There was no blood on him anywhere.
But the monster was still there. Inside him. Hitler. Pol Pot. Stalin. Ratko Mladic. Robert Mugabe. A whole roster of mass murderers and conquerors and tyrants. All mortal.
But there were other names. Asgardian names. Names Loki had known all his life.
His own.
We're all the same.