Frigga had given her son the space that she thought he needed, but now a feeling came over her. Doubt. Perhaps she had made a mistake?
She paced as she recounted the past few days. He had been off lately, but recently was in a better mood. She would normally consider this a good thing, but then she remembered Jane and her admission that things have not been going well. This did not add up. Why would Loki be in a better disposition than the others if they were working together suffering the same troubles? Disappointment and fear crept into her heart.
She would speak to him tonight, this moment.
"Fulla. Gefjon," Frigga called.
"Yes, my queen," they returned.
Frigga opened her door as she commanded, "If you find my son first, bring him here."
They bowed and went in different directions: Fulla outside, Gefjon the first floor, and Frigga to Loki's room.
As his mother, Frigga had learned to detect his magic if it was close by. This was the primary reason for her long-standing immunity against Loki's trickery – at least the direct magical ones. If he involved other people to deceive her, then she was just as vulnerable as any other. When she closed her eyes, she could see his magic as a cool forest green. She could sense a trace of it coming from the spot he had used to teleport back today.
There! A spark. Frigga closed her eyes and focused on the spot. Walls and floors were no obstacles; they could not prevent her from seeing the bright flash. It was from his room. She walked determinedly and when she turned a corner, she saw her son had already left his room and was turning around another corner. She hurried her steps to make up the distance but when she approached the corner, she found it led in three different directions. She should have called out.
She wanted to believe that he hadn't noticed her, but there was still that doubt digging deeper and deeper. She chose to go straight down to the first floor. Unless he used his magic, she would have to find him the old-fashioned way.
Frigga couldn't remember how many rooms or glass cabinets she passed; she was becoming irritated. This is ridiculous! It felt like a game of hide-and-seek and she It. She was about to head back upstairs when she passed by Steve Rogers coming out of the library.
He slipped in the attached ribbon bookmark to keep his place in the book before nodding at her. "Ambassador Frigga, may I help you with something?"
"Have you seen my son Loki?"
"He's not here right now, but he does come in here from time to time to study maps."
"Thank you, I apologize for my rudeness, but I need to go and find Loki."
"I will join you… if you don't mind?" His offer was accompanied with a smile.
"Of course not. It won't interfere with your own studies?"
Rogers lifted the thick book for her to see. It was a nicely bound hard cover summarizing twentieth century world history. "Just trying to catch up, no rush."
He offered her his arm, which she looped with her own. They both strolled through the mansion chatting about the differences between Asgardian and human cuisine, but both alert for any sign of Loki. Rogers was the first to hear him.
"He's down in the basement with Jane Foster. Something about stargazing." They quietly entered the basement to find Jane and Loki setting up a telescope and a couple of lawn chairs. The roof already opened wide granting everyone access to a dark sky with few stars.
"I know it's a cloudy night but this is what I do when I want to relax." They heard Jane explain with a hint of embarrassment. "I'm surprised you want to watch with me."
"Tony is nowhere to be found and Bruce seems happy enough swimming laps."
Jane had an odd smile on her face. "You seem different. More relaxed I suppose – a lot more than when I last saw you."
"Your stargazing hobby is most effective then."
Frigga had heard enough to increase her suspicion. "Loki?"
Jane and Loki abruptly stopped their conversation to turn around. Both surprised to find they had company. Frigga dropped her arm and left Rogers behind to get a closer look at her son. She narrowed her eyes as her anger increased with each step.
"Imposter! Where is my son?" Frigga demanded sharply.
Jane immediately drew back towards Frigga while Rogers moved between the women and the look-alike.
"Away," was the neutral reply.
"Where is he? And who are you?" Rogers barked out.
"He is one of my son's doubles." Frigga stepped closer to the copy. "Now, where is he?"
"You know as well as I do." The faintly concerned expression on his face – her son's face - momentarily stunned Frigga. She felt the anger leach from her and in its place razor-sharp fear. "In trouble."
Loki was slammed back and slid across the tiled floor. Catching his breath, he tried to see through the cool fog and the white dust that had powdered over everything. He also felt a chilled wetness creeping up from the floor. He looked down and noticed that it wasn't water. Everywhere he touched the liquid, it sizzled. Alarmed, he noticed his limbs stiffening as crystals formed over his clothes and finally over him.
No!
...the monster parents tell their children about at night…
Loki felt himself change. His blood chilling, his heart slowing, his teeth sharpening…
Please… no…
He gasped as he felt his skin thickening. He didn't need to see it to know that it was becoming the tainted blue.
I don't want to be…
He shut his eyes in the vain hope that he could also shut out the changes. Even behind eyelids, he could feel his eyes prickling as they lost their green color to darken into crimson. His vision becoming more attuned in the dark.
…Rime thurs…
His mind was brought back to that fateful day in Odin's treasure room. He had nervously approached the Casket. He wanted to prove to himself that he wasn't one of them. Couldn't possibly be one. All his thousand years, he had been a proud son of the Allfather. An Aesir.
…frost giant…
He wasn't ready. He'd never be ready. He wanted to pretend a little longer that all of that had been a dream. A horrible dream. A nightmare… where he played the monster.
Stop it…
He couldn't breathe. Despair held him down like shackles.
Someone…
Who could he turn to? There was no one here.
…stop me…
He begged in silence.
…monster…
The cold no longer bothered him. It faded as his body made the final adjustments, the final adaptations.
…I don't want this…
He stopped shivering.
…You humans…
He listened as the door opened.
…forced me…
Scarlet eyes snapped open as words were exchanged above him.
I can be…
Animosity roared and filled him.
…your monster!
A.I.M. Agent Alexandre Copernicus made sure his gas mask, attached to a small oxygen tank, was secure. Leaving the sound-proofed room, he motioned his partner West forward as he crouched at a doorway. Clad in bulletproof vests and long sleeves, they were well protected from the chill penetrating the air. West tucked his automatic rifle to the side as he held his gloved hand over the door handle.
"Agents, the room is now drained," they heard from their earpiece.
Copernicus aimed his own rifle at the door and gave the go to open it.
Click. West pushed the door gently and retreated behind the wall. Fog billowed out and swirled around their feet. Copernicus with his head low, crept across and through the doorway. He gave the signal for West to come inside. They circled inside the room as other agents entered. Copernicus was careful to step around the pieces from the blown metal canisters. The huge cylinders had been hidden behind false walls before they were triggered to explode out into the room.
When the air cleared, his partner West started removing his mask.
Copernicus tapped him on the shoulder and shook his head. His partner turned to him and stopped loosening the straps on his mask. The air wasn't safe yet.
Searching the floor, he found a couple of feet. His eyes followed them and found the corpse of a woman, nicely preserved. This wasn't their target; he moved on.
He found another body, encased in ice. Drenching the room with liquid nitrogen was the back-up plan if the darts failed. It also meant that the air was saturated with nitrogen now, pushing the oxygen out or condensing it into liquid, and requiring the use of the masks.
"Ma'am. We found him," Copernicus reported.
"Good. Clean up quickly." The female voice sounded oddly mixed between pleased and disappointed. The mission objective was to capture the target, preferably alive.
Copernicus walked to the doorway and waved to the technicians outside to come in. In protective suits, they rolled in portable freezer units to collect the two bodies. As he moved out of the way to make room for them, he heard a soft crack. He turned around trying to locate the sound. The cracking was followed by a crunching and snapping. Dread filled him as something moved on the floor.
"Shit! Target is alive!" West screamed and jumped back.
Copernicus brought up his weapon and aimed it at the dark figure rising. All the agents followed shortly after.
Oh my god…
Fear spread over him like a hive of angry ants.
It was Odinson – snarling lowly. Chips of ice were still falling off his shoulders and hair as his eyes flicked to each person. Copernicus immediately noticed the color change: blue and red. What the hell?
Copernicus licked his lips in trepidation. "Surrender or we will fir - " He was stopped from delivering his ultimatum when something blurred forward and landed a solid punch to his chest. He flew back out the door, the wind knocked out of him – twice: once with the hit and the second from the sloppy landing out in the hallway. He rolled over, coughed a few times, and tried to stand up as the floor heaved around.
While recovering his balance, he plastered himself against the wall as he listened to the screams and the bam-bam-bam of rapid gunfire. His heart racing, he looked around for his rifle and saw it back inside the room being kicked around. He cursed his luck. He pulled his side-arm, removed the safety, and watched for an opening.
His fellow agents worked well together, trained together, but they couldn't have prepared for this; Odinson was expertly dodging their guns and attacks. Copernicus watched their target grab the arm of an agent and thrust a dagger below where the underarm was exposed and armor-less. Copernicus couldn't help panicking a little as he saw another agent smacked around; the blows strong enough to snap the guy's bones. He completely forgot about the buzzing and talking from his earpiece. Too shocked to receive any orders.
Odinson used one of the downed agents as a shield to get closer to another one who was firing at him. Once within range, he threw the body at the agent, twisted the rifle away, and kicked him in the knee. Copernicus sweated and felt fear prickle at his heart as he saw the man's knee bend the other way. He couldn't believe it as he witnessed every single snatched gun shatter and crumble in Odinson's hands.
And then there was only West - his partner standing alone. There was a tense moment when no one moved.
"Where is he?" Odinson hissed out – words slow and crisp as a winter's night. He crept forward like a shadow over the fallen men. As West pulled out a combat knife, Odinson leapt and grappled West into an unbalanced position: bent over his back with only Odinson's hand providing the little balance. "I ask again, where is he?"
"I don't know – I don't know who you're talking about," West sputtered out.
Copernicus enraptured, watched as West's arm, held by Odinson, frosted over - the fabric becoming brittle and breaking, exposing skin. West gasped and let out a strangled yelp as his arm started to pale and turn a dusty blue from frostbite.
"Perhaps this is not painful enough to persuade you." With his other hand, Odinson lightly traced over West's collar, freezing it. Blue fingers tapped it, broke it, and wrapped around the warm neck underneath. "Now, unlike your numb arm – more accurately, dead arm – you will feel this. Every second you withhold the answer from me, is one breath I take from you. I will not ask again, where is Stark?"
"I don't –" West was cut short as he struggled to breathe through the growing ice.
Copernicus feeling like a coward watching his partner dying, remembered suddenly that he still held a gun in his shaking hands.
He fired twice.
Idiot. Fool. Obtuse. Rash. Every word he had ever used to describe Thor, Loki turned on himself. He felt ashamed and to cope with it, he got angrier. His hatred – at himself and others, he didn't know right now – warred with the anguish from being unexpectedly exposed as a monster. He almost slipped back into the animalistic rage again – that tempting red haze. No, not right now. Focus! He needed to focus, instead of being mired by emotions.
The man standing in front of him had looked so much like Tony – the mustache, beard and dark hair was visible even behind the mask. The image had steamrolled through his brain like one of Thor's tackles and everything had forcibly jammed into logical clarity again. He didn't like the cold, but he would use it right now. He didn't need hot fury, he needed cool and calculating.
He had called the earlier threat a bluff, but now he was more uncertain. These people had shown no inhibition in attacking him – of designing this elaborate ambush. How can he say that they had not done the same for Tony? He needed to find him.
How could he have been so stupid to fall for this? His only excuse was reckless single-mindedness at getting the answers and his unstable moods from his lack of sleep. But still, he was better than this! Stop! Focus! He looked to his opponent.
"Where is he?" Loki enunciated every word.
The man moved to attack. Loki intercepted, twisted the knife away from the man, and held him precariously still.
"I ask again, where is he?"
"I don't know – I don't know who you're talking about."
Wrong answer. Loki gripped the man's arm tighter and morbidly watched the arm freeze. He was almost distracted by the man's panic.
"Perhaps this is not painful enough to persuade you." Loki decided to threaten the man's life directly. Suffocation was an excellent choice. "Now, unlike your numb arm – more accurately, dead arm – you will feel this. Every second you withhold the answer from me, is one breath I take from you. I will not ask again, where is Stark?"
"I don't – " Loki's patience collapsed. He watched as the ice took root –
Bam. Bam.
Two shots. Both of them landed.
Loki swung the man he was holding and threw him at the one who had fired. He didn't feel the pain yet, but knew it was coming.
"I forgot about you." Loki stepped out of the room, wrestled the gun away, and pinned the man down with a knee on his back.
"That was courageously stupid of you to do, but I can reward your effort - " With one hand Loki laid flat the gloved hand that had pulled the trigger. With his other hand, Loki cooled the water vapor in the air into a spike and thrust it into the splayed hand. " – by not killing you."
Loki's ears detected the sound of running feet. As he rose to his feet, he detached the radio from the man he had just impaled. He needed to find Tony and get out. His options were limited. His energy was almost depleted, he worried.
He walked out of the hallway into an intersection and decided to go into the lower levels. From his memory, this was the likeliest to hold someone prisoner.
His feet stumbled and he grabbed the handrail as sharp pain tingled across his back like claws. The bullets! He held in the sudden scream and hissed instead.
His jacket offered little protection from the projectiles and his Jotunn form carried some natural resistance to physical blows, but they couldn't deflect those pieces of flying metal. He needed to be in top form to coalesce the molecules in the air into a shield for him. A shield he could not conjure now.
He couldn't heal himself either; he needed to see the wounds. At least the injuries weren't deep, just painful. He didn't have enough energy to heal anyway, just enough to teleport two people: Tony and himself. No illusions and no summoning. His only tools now were his daggers and the innate abilities from his Jotunn birth. Though physically weaker than his Aesir form, his improved night vision and his control of frost would serve him well. He never thought he'd be thankful for this disgusting form.
He gingerly straightened his back and gasped when his muscles protested violently. He took a slow deep breath, closed his eyes, and recalled the training from his youth. When wounded in battle, persevere.
He could ignore this pain.
He will ignore the pain.
Loki placed one foot down and fought through the throbbing ache. With each step he grew more confident and felt less and less of the pain.
His foot kicked something. He looked down and picked up the radio he had dropped and forgotten. He placed it inside his coat and clasped the earpiece around his left ear. He pressed it on.
"- find him. Based on his last known location, search in Sectors 4, 5, and 6. Keep Stark occupied."
So it wasn't a bluff, Loki realized. He should have stayed away from A.I.M. So many red flags he had ignored and he had turned a blind eye as he was drawn in like a moth to a flame. How pathetic, no wonder he wasn't worthy.
He looked up at the painted numbers on the walls. Sector 6 was displayed brightly in red. He needed to move away quickly. At least this was a section he hadn't fully restored yet. The lights and cameras weren't available in some areas and he fully intended to use this fact.
He was reminded of Thor again when he realized how foolish all this was. He was going into the belly of the beast willingly, wounded, and with little advantage. Loki could almost laugh at the absurdity – if he wasn't living it right now.
Natasha pulled out her gun from the holster, released the safety, and aimed the barrel perfectly in one smooth motion.
"Who are you?" She kept the gun pointing in the same direction as she came down the steps to the basement. Next to her, Clint snapped his recurve bow open.
"Agent Romanova, you should know – "
"You're not Loki. Next lie please," she interrupted.
Steve moved in front of the gun, obstructing her shot. Natasha looked around and found the metal panels and plating. She redirected her gun; her shot now wouldn't be direct, but it would ricochet and hit the target just as well.
"You're not helping. If I didn't know, I'd say you're Loki. You got the annoying part down," Steve vehemently whispered out loud. When the imposter smirked, Steve rolled his eyes. "You even got the same smirk."
"No he doesn't. I can tell," Natasha disagreed. "Is this an illusion or an actual copy?"
"Physical copy," the double supplied.
Natasha holstered her gun when Frigga verified that it was true.
"We got a call from Fury about Loki being AWOL and now you're here –" Clint jabbed a finger in the clone's direction. " – that means Loki planned all this. I knew we shouldn't have trusted such a traitor."
The sound of feet slapping on the ground was heard. They all turned around to face Bruce who had stumbled down the steps and barely caught himself from falling. His hair dripping, one towel draped over his head, and another around his wet shorts, there was no doubt Bruce had sprinted from the pool area. Several months ago, Natasha would have been on edge with Bruce's dramatic entrance, but she'd learned that he had a childish streak – which came out as a mixed bag of well this and darkly goading her into attacking him.
"Don't jump to conclusions," Bruce defended. He didn't see Frigga's relieved countenance. "Here's an idea: Ask."
"Where is Loki? And don't pull that crap about you being Loki either," Natasha brusquely asked.
"I cannot tell you."
Natasha wasn't impressed. She's heard that line countless times before. "Can't?"
"Yes, and do not bother psycho-analyzing me Agent Romanova. I am not a whole person with an intact set of emotions you can exploit. Understand that I have orders, which I will obey until I am destroyed."
"What are your orders?"
The double smiled. "Now you're asking the right questions. Stay away from Frigga. Do not use any abilities – this corresponds to the first order. Interact with members of the house in normal activities. Do no expose his whereabouts. Keep you from interfering."
Natasha whipped out her gun again. She didn't like the last one. "I think I've heard enough. I don't need to know what lengths you will go to keep us from interfering."
"Do not worry yourself. I have other orders which take priority over the last one; I may trick you but I may not physically harm you. Does this satisfy you?"
"What's so important about staying away from the Ambassador and your limitation on your abilities?"
The double glanced at the woman in question and replied honestly, "She is the only one here who can detect my magic. It was unfortunate that she was actively searching for me this night – I amend that, this is quite fortunate at least for your Loki. I recommend you find him quickly. He is injured and weakened, but I do not know why he has not returned to safety yet."
"You can tell his physical state?" Natasha asked.
"We are connected in such a way, yes. I even know where he is and that he is conscious."
"Guys, where's Tony?" Bruce interrupted.
Jane looked up at the ceiling. "JARVIS, have you been following the conversation?"
"Yes, Ms. Foster. I have been trying to contact him for the past fifteen minutes."
"Try … um his assistant," Jane suggested.
On the first ring, the irritated face of Pepper Potts appeared in a screen in the air. "Hello? JARVIS this better be important."
"Hello?" Jane waved at Pepper. "I'm Jane Foster."
"Oh, Dr. Foster, what can I do for you?"
"How'd you know -?"
"I know you're researching with Tony, now what can I do for you?"
"We're trying to find him."
"Look no more, he's here," was the grumpy reply.
"May we speak with him?"
The camera angle shook as the phone was passed to Tony.
"What's up guys? You have a pow-wow without me? I'm hurt." Tony's eyes found Bruce. "Bruce, I knew you were crazy, you even needed a dunk in the pool."
Bruce looked embarrassed at the small puddle he was making. "Tony, we got a problem. We need to find Loki, he's somewhere out there – "
"And injured," Frigga added.
Tony's attitude immediately changed. Natasha was impressed. She hadn't seen a serious Tony in a while.
Tony pointed to Loki's double. "I'm guessing that guy over there's a clone. Oh thanks for the image by the way, helped a lot." The look-alike nodded and smiled. "I'm also right about how you can't tell us where he is, but at least he's not that screwed considering you're still here."
"What do you mean?" Natasha asked.
"Loki #2 here can't exist in this universe if Loki #1 is knocked out."
"Can't you locate him, Ambassador?" Jane asked.
Frigga shook her head. "Only when he's using his abilities, but he's too far. I will not be able to sense him even if he does use them."
Jane sighed. "How do we find him then?"
Tony had the most victorious grin on his face. "Funny you should ask."
AN: Review please. And thank you to the ones who do leave me comments. I'm glad I'm doing a good job in your eyes.
Oh and updates may be a little slow. Got an academic conference coming up and I'll be presenting some of my research! :D Wish me luck.