TREE OF NOVEMBER
It was all a wilderness of the purest chaos. And it was all because of him.
Loki unfolded on Midgard in the heart of new S.H.I.E.L.D. from his drapes of shadows. A group of agents including Romanoff, Hill, Coulson, and Barton scrutinized the developments of their latest refined armament at the time and place of his appearance.
Screws. Screws and metal and sulfur choked out the air in the room. He thought he would drown in it until all eyes fell on him, then he thought his death would be nails and teeth mauling apart his flesh.
He swallowed the black tiles with meticulous strides towards the familiar faces pointing guns at him. Cloaks of shadows slipped off his shoulders, leaving a fringed sheet of pallor to ripple every time a foot met the ground. Tattered black boots grew closer; fingers closed in on triggers. A slight jingle and flash of barbarous helplessness—desperation?—reflected an eerie sign of life in the monster, from his enchanting azure eyes to the melody of metal and clad surging to a new crescendo with each dainty step.
He was savage and sublime, wild-eyed and doe-eyed, ghastly and heavenly, all attributes made all the more ominous in his deliberate progress. It was strange, because all life and non-life in the room unarmed itself at the ferocious sight of such an uncensored heart, as though they all had been looking at the image of their own tenebrous and passionate souls and feared to scare its truths away.
Once the atmosphere of metal and adrenaline surrender-accepted him, he planted his boots where he was and slowly raised both hands. His burned sugar lips parted to deliver the first words of the long night.
He swore he wanted to help The Avengers face down the greatest threat Yggdrasil has ever known. He did not want anything in return but the heart of him called Thanos. The starlight reflections bathing his lurid irises lulled and flamed their fears out of proportions, even when he pulled a notebook brimming with his scrawls out of thin air as an offering for their allegiance.
Last time he claimed he wanted to bring freedom by taking it away. This time he claimed he wanted to help, perhaps to bring them deeper into trouble, distract them from it, or create it himself…again. Which was why Romanoff and Barton tackled him to the ground the moment Coulson's apprehensive gaze lifted from the paper offerings towards him. Coulson and Hill issued a dire summons for all Avengers ("Cat of Ages") not another moment later.
The new Avengers roster collided with the older like a shower of stars and meteors in less than half an hour. Vision believed their historic foe's desire to help and his lack of hostility thus far, even when apprehended, made him worthy of trust (more so once he skimmed over his notes of spectacular strategy and fine cut facts); Banner warned him that the God of Mischief was the hotbed of crazy and manipulations, that last time he pretended to surrender to further his machinations. Wanda pondered taking the risk to team up with him for herself, for she saw the aura of tamed feral magic about him…until Barton unearthed his "bottomless" mines of red ledgers. Lang wished to give the demigod another chance (of course with plenty of precautions like a muzzle and magic dampers); Stark threatened to decimate his precious suit with twenty atomic bombs after he finished suing the skin off the villain unleashed.
Once all who hoped abandoned here, Fury and the team who saw him at his demented peak broke into their skins of hounds of hell.
Thor, lost in a brutal winter of berserk sorrow and fatigued by the bout he and the Warriors Three finished minutes before his summon, could as much as watch while humans beat and bound and wrung and marred the monster that didn't as much as whimper...until a boot crushed the back of his neck and an archer's arrow grazed his forehead.
(To which the golden sun heard a voice call his shadow a worthless beast, a royal mistake of chance that didn't deserve to breathe, much less cry out.)
Thus the heart without a home was unanimously sentenced to death for his terrors against New York courtesy of the Grand Court of Midgard. He was to fly down the velvet Midgardian sky like a shooting star from the top of the tower with the names of the lives he took entwined encased engraved forever in blue blood while bound and drugged as the monster he was until he crashed and shattered into shards of petals made of iron.
(A broken bouquet for Death, they said, a wreath of mangled red and justice and black to crown the caskets of those he snuffed the light out of.)
But an unexpected ally pleaded his cause with 10,000 tears and a busted heart.
His sentence changed.
To something worse.
S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Grand Court damned the monster to waste away in a room flooded with bright florescent lights not big enough for the demigod to stretch his legs out, or to pace more than three steps. He was to receive no food or drink or anything to pass time with, nor were his eyes to fall upon any living creature or hear any other sound ever again besides the loyal lights and their maddening lullabies.
(He would destroy himself, they said, and it would please them all to watch.)
The first two years he pretended he didn't care while he entertained himself with illusions around his 2-by-3 casket. Parents covered their childrens' eyes while they ripped apart the behemoth who couldn't see them.
(Disgusting, they said, as they tendered S.H.I.E.L.D. thousands per day to lay their vain eyes upon the Treasure of Midgard.)
By the third year, all he did was wonder and sleep. By the third year, the children were grown enough to meet their enemy.
(Go to Hell you pathetic creature, they said, as they lusted for the power that flowed through his veins in locked crevices of their dreams...as they wished they had an army and a mind and a [disowned] prince's visage as his.)
By the fifth, he tried to break free only to have his seidr swallowed by the endless gaping mouths of his prison. By the fifth, the world called him queer.
(Sew it's lips, brand it's eyes, flay it's back - give it wings - then rip them off; they said, but first they curated stunning albums of the fallen royal unmatched in perfections no matter who the culture's newest darlings were, showcased his ravishing elegance in galleries and galas far and wide, and composed so many poems and prose from the twine of his soul that he became the indestructible needle betwixt the inexhaustible fingers of a buzzing generation.)
By the eighth, he crumbled against the wall. With his knees being the barb wires to trap his heart to stay down in the center of a raging war zone, he broke. By the eighth, the world jeered at the creature who wasn't made for this.
(The beast still plays it has a heart, they said, as they watched bullet tears pour like a runoff river until his chest jumped like he was drowning and they looked away with throbbing, angry throats before they could see him writhe in a salty crimson ocean covered with a sheet of sailing silver barbs. Before they realized he'd been drowning for so long and screaming in the silent torrents so loud that it had stolen his voice.)
And beyond? Well, after the tenth was when those who hated him stopped coming to feast. The museum to observe the legendary extraterrestrial-terrorist-mass-murderer closed.
(It's too ugly to look at, they said, to the fallen prince whose raven locks framed him like tendrils of the galaxy' soul, whose baby blue eyes glistened with diamonds of humanity, whose ivory skin shined like the moon though dim as it was, whose raw cheeks and weak shoulders exposed the depths of an annihilated spirit who could feel tenfold after spending its last breath.)
When the ten years morphed into twenty, S.H.I.E.L.D. cast his casket twelve levels under their feet though he and it remained where they left him. They faced other traitors, other manipulators, other villains. The Avengers roster changed as some from the older retired and others married.
Life moved on but he never did. He shuffled not an inch, made not a sound, didn't even blink. Not even when two small footsteps left a trail in the dust mites formed from the venomous scales of admirers long gone, when that human became the first in over a decade to lay eyes upon him.
And so his unexpected ally carried his casket back to the light and convinced those who remembered him to bring him back to life.
It was her death wish.
