A/N: And kitty makes part 3. I didn't think I would get so much positive response to such a strange idea, but I'm quite happy with the results.
NOTE: I honestly have no proper idea how a legally "dead" alien ex-prince would find his bearings on the world he tried to conquer only a short while earlier, but it's Loki, and he wouldn't be Loki if he didn't have a backup plan... for the backup plan... of his extra backup plan. Given that he'd have his magic (we all know he'd find a way to keep and use it, one way or another), he'd be able to settle down and find a nice little niche somewhere for himself, and then figure out where he wants to go from there.
Also, the building where our resident mischief god has "set up shop", so to speak, is partially based upon Charles Xavier's home for mutants, as well as the wonderful little bed-and-breakfast inn I stayed in while I was in Wales last summer. The design of both the interior and exterior of this building, as well as the design of Loki's little "hole in the wall" apartment, is of my own design.
I may be rather late now to have seen it, but the BBC's 2009 rendition of Shakespeare's Hamlet has, as of last Wednesday (and finished as of this Tuesday), at last graced my eyes, as well as the lovely news of the recent Shakespearian performances at the Globe Theatre. This chapter thus results from the surge of energy and glorious, angst-riddled madness that it, and the terrifying glory of the combined acting skills of the men who played the good doctor, the 10th Doctor, and the Norse God of Mischief, gave to me.
If this chapter seems a bit too non-crackish for you, don't worry, it's only to establish back story. The next chapter will have our dear trickster running around with the poptart-kitty and turning Midgard upside-down soon enough.
Considering the magic he'd spent to add the new changes to his former minion's appearance, Loki felt slightly tired as he teleported off the rooftop and into a hidden back alley of downtown Manhattan. Looking down to check on the cat in his arms, he felt a flicker of affection as he noted in amusement that his pet seemed even more tired than he himself felt, blinking up with sleepy eyes and letting out a little yawn.
"Come along, then," he murmured quietly. "To home, we go."
The only answer was a soft mmmrrrrrrr as his furry companion cuddled up to his chest, the large round eyes blinking sleepily.
The god felt the corners of his mouth quirk upwards, threatening to become a full-blown grin at the sweet sight. It had been a long, long, long time, it seemed, since anyone had given him such unspoilt, absolute trust, such readily given affection.
He relentlessly pushed back the little, annoyingly insistent voice that whispered that such assumptions held an exception.
The exception thought he was dead, after all.
Forcing his mind to turn to less touchy subjects, Loki let his magic run through him, saturating his body with energy, and opened his eyes when the transformation was complete.
Loki had been a god of many talents to the people of Midgard back in the olden days, when he had been among those worshiped. Even if not all the old tales were true, there was still a grain of truth concerning some of his powers.
Of all his gifts, shapeshifting was among the most useful, now more than ever.
The cat in Loki's arms looked up, completely calm as he took in the sight of his owner-turned-secretary. Clad in a charcoal-grey pencil skirt, a long-sleeved powder blue blouse, and grey sheer stockings with comfortable mary jane flats, Loki, who now currently resembled an upscale female secretary with a thick mane of golden curls, now looked even farther removed from his previous incarnation. His cat was also in on the disguise, having been given a mild illusion charm which left anyone other than Loki himself seeing only a large to-go tray with a neatly folded stack of white napkins and several containers of premium hot coffee.
Walking out of the alley with his pet in his arms, the god hummed quietly, content with his deception. The cat leaned back, pressing close as the large eyes slipped shut for a nice long nap.
Earlier on, if he'd wanted to, Loki could have simply teleported himself all the way back to his new abode. However, the magic he'd used to prank his former minion had left him lacking the reserves needed to transport himself such a distance. Instead, a smaller quantity of magic could be used to hide his identity as he traveled. Disguises were among his more versed magics, a small flicker of energy being the primary expense in comparison to the sizable chunk that would be required to go directly home.
Almost idly, he wondered for a moment what the expression on the humans' faces would be if he lifted this pretense and showed himself.
They probably would become frightened, some might run screaming, others would call for help, and in the end I would have the Avengers coming after me for the second time today. There is only so much of their company I can endure in 24 hours, and that muzzle is never coming near me again.
As he continued to walk, down streets and street corners, across streets and walkways, past parks and shops and tangled snarls of apartment buildings, the disguise changed itself time and time again accordingly. By the time the god had walked past several department stores, a half dozen coffee shops, two parking lots, and a recreational park, his magic had left the people of Midgard seeing not only a secretary, but also several different businessmen, multiple appropriately dressed European and Canadian tourists, and a college student or two.
Several times, he felt eyes staring at him, though it was not out of fear and horror that their would-be ruler was among them. His disguise was too well woven for recognition to dawn, too intentionally simple for anyone to give him anything more than a brief passing glance before he faded from memory.
His appearance was instead noticed for a different reason: the simple, natural feeling of body appreciation. Disguised or not, Loki's pride was still strong enough to make itself known that he have a somewhat dignified air, a certain elegance of body language, if not entirely in looks.
The fact that his pet would be woken up if he cursed every human who shamelessly stared at a consistently attractive disguise was the only thing keeping him from letting loose a little magic and giving a terrible fright to the crush of humans milling around him on the sidewalks and streets.
He did not want his pet upset with him. The little furry menace would be unbearable. The big eyes would water with tears of betrayal, there would be pitiful mewing, the kitchen would have little paw prints tracking water or flour or mud all over the countertop, their home would be subject to hairballs and little mice and bird carcasses in inopportune places. There would be no ear-rubs, no purring, no shameless demands to be held and petted and given Eskimo kisses. Loki would not have a warm, soft, furry, purring pillow curled up by his heart at night to keep out the chill that never seemed to go away otherwise, no matter how many blankets and comforters he piled on.
No, definitely cannot upset him.
It was strange now, to think that his life had changed so much within the space of only a few Midgardian years.
He had gone from a palace, to the Void, to the deadscape of Chitauri space, to Midgard, back to Asgard (this time to a cell), then to the cracks between realms to Svartalfheim, and then to Midgard again, then to Asgard again, then finally ending once more at Midgard.
He had gone from being a prince, to a man left for dead, to the leader of an army not even fully his own, to a prisoner in the world he'd grown up in, to an escapee, and then to being left for dead in a realm over a thousand stars away.
Loki had accepted, if only for that brief moment, that he would die there, on a barren moon of a world, choking on his own blood, held in the arms of someone he both loved and hated more than anyone else in all the Nine Realms. He had focused in those last moments, and with the last of his strength, and managed to force a painful, bittersweet truth past blood-stained liar's lips.
The god had not thought he would survive, and a self-loathing part of what tattered, blood soaked silken flag remained of his spirit had wondered in the brief, painful moment if he even deserved to.
Yet it seemed that the Norns still spun his thread even there in the darkness. He survived, albeit barely.
Now...he was living among the humans...and at the beck and call of a cat.
By now, he had accumulated enough energy to teleport himself the rest of the way home. Ducking into the restroom of the nearest coffee shop, there was a faint crack as he vanished from the lavatory stall, instantly transported upstate to the countryside miles and miles away.
What better place to hide, after all, then where one was least expected? No one would think to find the person who had attempted world domination to live all the way out here.
Approaching his destination, the mad god shivered as memories welled up...
Upon that dusty, darkened plane of existence, Loki's still, cold form choked, sputtered like a candle in the gloom, and the dark prince had woken up from the arms of Death with a lie on his tongue and blood choking its way upwards in his aching throat. His body ached and burned in a thousand different places, but the stab wound he had received was no longer bleeding, already starting to fade and knit together as his magic, his one, true, faithful aide, slowly worked to heal him.
Unable to die properly even for a second time, the fallen god coughed up blood for several moments, then spared himself a surge of anger as he realized that he was alone. Thor and his mortal scientist had long since left him. The anger only lasted a moment. There was no point in wasting his emotions on the long gone.
When the guard came to fetch the body, Loki had knocked him unconscious, pocketed his shrunken body with what magic he could muster, assumed his form for his own and gone to see the Allfather, inwardly marveling at the ludicrous position of having to deliver his own apparent demise.
The lack of emotion shown upon the ancient visage would have once enraged him, but as he looked at Odin from behind the eyes of the face he'd borrowed, the only emotion he could find was frigid acceptance.
Briefly, he'd considered revealing himself, and attacking while the shock of the revelation kept the old king unmoving. He could kill him, assumed his appearance for himself, and rule while wearing his once-father's face, the people being none the wiser so long as he disposed of the corpse and kept up the ruse.
He could be king again.
But then a soft call had reverberated around the room, light as a sunbeam across the earth. "Odin, my love, what is it?"
Loki had long since come to accept, if not embrace, the understanding that he had no heart. Monsters do not have the capacity for such things.
But the sweet song of that voice was the only exception since his incarceration that continued to remind him otherwise.
There she was, a little paler, a bit thinner, and with a handmaiden standing behind her in case she fell, but Frigga Allmother still looked as welcoming and lovely as ever to him. In that brief moment, he watched as Odin turned to her, and spoke of their once-son's death.
Her expression crumpled like a flower wilting in unbearable heat, warm eyes sparkling with tears sharp and glittering as crystal. Odin approached her, reaching out to put a hand to one of her slender shoulders, and in that split second he suddenly seemed much less like an indifferent king, and much more like an old, old man, one who held the entire weight of his years all at once, and could barely hold it back from crushing him.
A sickening sense of shame surged through him, brief yet brutal, as the vague sense that he was intruding upon something private, sacred. He suddenly felt like a child again, witnessing his once-parents comfort one another in that regal semblance of polite emotional restraint demanded of royalty.
It was there and then gone, like a flicker of sound across static. Bitter, thudding pain, familiar and dull as a heartbeat, welled up like poisoned ichor from his still healing wounds, and he felt suddenly as if it was hard to breathe. Shuddering in his borrowed skin, Loki managed to come back to himself enough to force out a request for dismissal. The vague wave he received was enough to send him out of the room as fast as dignity allowed, and then he was running, running, running...
He managed to teleport the guard whom he'd impersonated, leaving the unconscious form in the darkened hallways of a wing several floors down, just barely maintaining enough composure to wipe the man's memories clean of the events of earlier.
Loki, taking flight as fast as he dared, hurried to get to his old passageways out of the palace, unwilling to let himself, even in this borrowed skin, be seen by the other residents of the royal halls. He did not want to face the eyes which his mind, clouded by sentiments he'd previously thought buried, insisted would hold that same sickening sense of pity.
Indifference, coldness, hatred, disgust, all guises upon faces which he had known as well as his words. Such bitter sentiments he could abide. having stroked such feelings into blazing witchfire for centuries by only being himself.
Pity? Affection, in spite of all his actions? Kindness, even, for the cuckoo-child, the rotted apple, the madman?
Loki had gone so long without such dainties that it was difficult to imagine he would be given any. The sentimental drivel of brotherhood and reason and times long gone bleated by Thor did not count, could not count, not when he had borne the brunt of a lifetime of degradation, of humiliation, of dislike both pitifully masked and disgustingly exposed, of living in the shadow of the golden light of Thor, of Asgard.
"Come home!" What home? Where did he belong?
Did he ever belong?
A shadow has no place in the warm light of day.
A spell has no place amongst the broadswords, the axes, the swords, the bows and arrows, the hammers and javelins and slingshots.
A tongue of silver has no place among those of brass, of bronze, of gold that glowed too brightly, too gaudily, to let the pale one shine.
A moon will wax and wane, eternally feeble in comparison to the glittering inferno of the bright, shining sun.
Loki had no place in Asgard. He never quite fit in, like a puzzle piece from another set, and now, in death, he was cast adrift.
So, then, what was his path now? A dead man is bereft of purpose, save to rot away quietly, unseen, in the dirt. To the rest of the universe, he was considered, once again, dead.
Loki did not intend to fulfill that purpose. A god, even a fallen one, even a half-mad, outcast, misfit one, desired better.
Where, then, should he go?
The Nine Realms would offer him no quarter, not after all his actions had led to destruction, terror, and fear.
But...Midgard, despite his recent actions of attempted conquest, might prove nonetheless a refuge. They had shown little to no defense against his magic.
He could cloak himself, shield his would-be abode from the Gatekeeper's gaze with spells. He could find a niche for himself upon that strange, small world, use his magic and his words to pass himself off as one of the many humans who wandered those lands, and none would have to be the wiser. He could not be judged, punished, discarded, if he was considered dead.
None but his once-family (or was it still family, after all this time?) would possibly mourn him. Asgard would undoubtedly celebrate the eternal disappearance of that shadowed dark blight of a sorcerer within their gilded halls.
Reaching the edges of Asgard's citadel, Loki took a small moment of time to stand upon the wall ringing the city in golden fire, turning around for a second to gaze one last time upon the home-that-never-was, the glittering cage of light and ten million bittersweet memories of a stolen life. Tears burned traitorously in green eyes, and he wiped them away before they could fall.
Turning back to face the mountains, he reached inside himself, straining for a few tendrils of flickering magic, and felt it wash over him, cool and cleansing, as he regained the form he'd worn for nearly all his existence.
The change lasted only a moment, and then the form standing upon the wall vanished, flickering out of sight like a candle snuffed out by the wind.
Loki snapped out of his musings, letting the illusion he'd cast on them both earlier fall away. He looked up at the tall, cozy, slightly off-kilter building of old red brick and cement, drinking in the sight of the rose bushes and old, flower-filled garden that surrounded the front lawn, the grass deep green and wet with dew, strewn with wildflowers and clumps of greyish mushrooms. The weeping willow trees surrounding the grounds swayed and bobbed in the breeze fluttering through chilly air, the soft shushing noises of the branches seeming to welcome him. The brick chimney of the building's common room was puffing out smoke, and the stained-glass windows of the apartments glowed from within with cheerful golden light.
It was early evening, and the tiny, winking golden light of fireflies fluttered about his knees as he continued on his way.
Slowly, silently savoring the feeling of being able to approach the small piece of this world that he could relax in, the god passed through the whitewashed kissing-gate entryway, pale fingers gently trailing along the deep green ivy clinging lovingly to the wood. Walking up the old path to the building entrance, Loki took a moment to drink in the sight of the large, heavy wooden doors, the reddish-brown wood and shining brass door knockers, before he pulled out a pair of old, knobbly black keys from his pocket.
Each resident had two keys, one to get into the building, and one for their chosen apartment within it. His pet often liked to play with them, causing Loki no end of trouble in ensuring that the keys were not ferreted out of his pockets and batted around like a toy.
Such is life, when you're owned by a cat.
The saying itself was rather odd; he'd never once wanted to owned by anyone, though he'd never quite belonged, either. But he'd found that, at least here on Midgard, that when one lived with a cat, the cat influenced many decisions, leaving the question of ownership in the feline's favor.
Loki had never thought being "owned" by your own pet could be considered a form of penance, but perhaps this was the Norns' way of fiddling with his string of fate after the failed attempt to rule the world he now lived in.
Down several narrow hallways, up a winding, rickety wooden staircase with a floral rug, a turn left, and then finally both god and cat reached their destination: a tall wooden door of dark wood that took up the entire width of the narrow hallway. Loki's senses tingled as he felt the air, saturated with the magic of his home's protective wards, waver and warp around him.
The door was unlocked, and then shut behind them within moments, and Loki let out a deep sigh of satisfaction as he took in the welcoming sight of the shelves full of old books, the armchair with the thick quilt, the soft rug on the floor. The apartment whirled to life as he stepped across the threshold, his new book flying over to the table by his chair, the kettle put on and puffing away merrily as loose-leaf tea poured down into the infuser, incense sticks lighting up and emitting soft whorls of musky, earthy smoke into the air as soft light from self-lighting jars of crackling green flame illuminated the tiny cluster of rooms.
His new home may be rather small, even by Midgard's standards, but it is home nonetheless, because it is here that he can feel safe, and calm, and even somewhat content.
Curling up in his armchair and summoning a bone china teacup to rest beside him, Loki reclined in contentment, his pet immediately settling down to take his rightful place on the god's lap, stretching out with claws kneading the fabric of the quilt in lazy circles. Alabaster fingers stroked the soft, triangular ears as a soft wave of the hand gave leave for milk to pour down from the porcelain creamer into the steaming, golden ambrosia in the fluted cup.
Taking a slow sip, Loki hummed quietly as he relished the solace of his surroundings and company. The cat purred in response, nuzzling the lukewarm flesh of the god's midsection.
It's good to be home.