A/N: Oh my gosh guys, this is it. The penultimate chapter, sorry it took so long (damn Olympics and their entrancing-ness) and that there is no more smut! But closure- closure is desirable right?
Loki awakens to pain.
"This is a new experience, not at all expected." Loki sneers, rubbing away another flood of searing heat that ripples through the flesh around his temples.
It's the Other, he is sure of it but he no longer fears this menace. There is little the beast can do to him that Loki can not endure or resist, not even incomparable agony can conquer him. He's whole now, complete, in control, and happy. He's accepted among the Midgardians, has even made friends and has come to terms with himself. He's an outsider but so are the SHIELD operatives, that is what brings them together, what allows them to excel and he can integrate happily, seamlessly into them. He belongs.
More than that, there's Natasha. She has imparted the greatest help and honor to him, her trust and even her affection. Thus now as he kneels in the pit, dark, dank, and fetid of the Other, Loki has no shame or fear. He is confident, he has reasons to fight, to persevere, hope to keep him from buckling and experience to predict the onslaught. Hence the sarcasm.
"What next? Will you make me long after my former misery as respite for the tortures you have in store?"
A bloodcurdling laugh rolls through the space, dark and poisonous. "Ah, Laufeyson—"
"Odinson." Loki rises to his feet and straightens his shoulders, standing as tall as he can.
"—Odinson, you are not the same self-loathing wretch I last encountered, are you? One might even guess you've found your spine?" The insidious chuckle echoes around Loki, making it difficult for him to locate his captor.
As he glances around, he catches a glimpse of something lighter than its surroundings. A person, it looks to be, huddled in a crumbled fetal position. Clint. Loki rushes over and kneels beside Barton, feeling for breath. Indeed the air rustles beneath the man's nose. He is living still.
"Oh, did I catch a friend of yours, one of those worthless cockroaches that scuttle, eating and copulating endlessly over your favorite rock? They are persistent, aren't they? I try to annihilate them, with you, in fact, and yet they all recover and begin slinking around again as before. These—these insects are what you imagine as friends? You are still miserably small." The Other finally emerges from the gloom, looming over Loki's shoulder and staring down at Barton with disgust. "I've not harmed it. The vermin is so drowned in alcohol, it could not retain consciousness long enough to hear my offer to him. Pitiful."
Loki grasps Clint's shoulder firmly and shakes. He needs to rouse him, he needs to explain before the Other infiltrates and poisons Clint's mind. "Agent Barton. Agent Barton, please awaken."
Clint stirs, groaning and muttering obscenities before wrenching open his eyes in alarm. "Loki, man, where—ack, what is that smell? Did I rolf or something?" Barton sits up quickly and glances around at his surroundings. "The fuck?!... Where is this? Wait—we were at a bar. How is there a cave of stinking despair this close to downtown? And, dude, you are gnarly." Clint stands slowly with Loki's assistance and nods behind him, presumably at the Other. "So… you must be the asshat king. Got a name?"
Again that bile-raising chuckle. "Not one that you can comprehend, you tiny insect."
"It's the Other." Loki speaks in full voice, confidently. "The former commander of the attacks against your realm. Now he must be desperate, surely, or he would not still keep us living, he needs us to restore his honor I would wager."
"Make your small assumptions little prawn, you are only barely above this speck on our food chain. You cannot begin to imagine the complexities of our plans, the motives behind our actions, but if it makes you feel important, grander on this scale, then speculate away."
Loki snorts in disgusted amusement, at his past self and the predictable defensiveness of the Other. "I see the courting period is over. No fawning, flattering or bribing now. That's below you?"
"You are no longer instrumental, so there is no reason to flatter you or assuage your detestable pride. Now, all we want is your being. I promised you pain, and pain you shall receive. You're just a plaything for me now, a thing to torture for my delight. Call this punishment for your failure and retribution for the resources I wasted on your useless carcass, your damnable vanity."
"For prizing aloofness and aplomb, you are alight with anger, so mortal an emotion." Loki recognizes in the Other the faults the Other once exacerbated in himself.
"As though I could exhibit such inane and—"
"Man, this guy sure likes the sound of his own voice." Clint grumbles behind Loki, successfully interrupting another diatribe of the Other before doubling over to dry heave. "It's fine—" Clint holds out a hand to stop Loki's assistance as he gags again. "I guess I did puke. I think I'm still sloshed."
"Filthy pest." The Other's disgust is practically tangible. "Hold your tongue and your bile, if you have the ability to control your own flesh."
"Dude, Other… Thing-man, if I could 'hold my bile' don't you think I would? This isn't exactly a pleasant exercise in regurgitating my stomach lining." Clint heaves again and Loki decides to clear up the situation, or at least get it back on some kind of track.
"For what is it exactly you have brought us here?"
"I've just told you, or have you become as dull as these creatures with extended communion?"
Loki shrugs off the intended insult, "and Agent Barton? He is of no consequence to you. Release him."
"This is true. It arrived with you by mistake, but a happy mistake for me… I didn't think you would be carrying one around with you. Is it a pet?"
Clint starts laughing hysterically and Loki begins to worry after the man's wellbeing. The cave they are in is not really Earth normal, perhaps he is suffering from a lack of oxygen. Loki needs to hurry to secure Clint's safety. "No, humans are worthy and commendable companions, not pets. Agent Barton, here, is an associate, a comrade at arms."
Clint saunters over, wiping his mouth, and punches Loki on the arm. "Oh, come on, tell Big Ugly the truth… we're friends. This giant wizard saved my life and he's taking care of my best friend, keeping her happy." He wags a brow at Loki, "that qualifies as a friend in my books." He hiccups weakly and leans against Loki. "Now, get me home, friend. I'm sick of this wacky ass trip."
"You, little mortal, may return to your cesspit of a planet, but your friend must stay with me. That's the price for the safety of your home. Odinson is mine or Earth shall perish." His words drip with sick delight.
Clint pauses, mouth agape and looks from Loki to the Other before he vanishes, clean gone.
"Hmmm, he did little to fight for your safety. Tsch, tsch." The Other tuts as he begins to pace around Loki. "You see your new friends care not for you. You are but another responsibility for them, an accident poised to wreak havoc, like their beast Banner, except you are not one of them as he is. You're not human or Asgardian even. You are a true outcast, you have no people, save for ruthless monsters who themselves abandoned you long ago, no planet, no realm to claim you. You are unwanted, unloved and now marooned and forgotten, easily cast aside for another world's safety. The most delicious part is we shall still obliterate them. You shall suffer and then I shall make you watch them perish, those you cherish but care for you not. I shall make you watch them choke for air, beg for relief, but not for you."
The Other's words sting, make Loki anxious, but not frightened, not despondent as the beast wishes. Loki knows Barton was caught off guard, was quiet for shock. He had just named Loki a friend, there is still a chance that he will try to save him, that the Midgardians still want him, that Natasha will fight for him and thus may save themselves. At least, so he hopes.
Natasha first realizes something is off when Clint materializes beside her in the jet. She has her pistol pointed flush with his throat immediately.
"Breasts, ass, or legs?" She snaps, a question to prove Clint's Clintness.
"Toes." He deadpans without flinching.
Natasha exhales in relief and Clint follows suit, turning no doubt to explain himself, but Natasha's quicker, aims at his thigh and fires. It's just a tranquilizer dart she keeps with her for Banner and she probably could have abstained from knocking Clint out but he did just magically appear beside her, who knows why, and she's a little jumpy.
As he collapses in on himself, falling into loud, rhythmic breathing she realizes that this was a very bad decision. Now she can't question him. He did just magically appear beside her, that's something you interrogate a person about. "Damn it, Natasha." She shoves her gun into its holster and uses that hand to pull out her phone. Hopefully Fury knows something.
"This is Agent Hill."
"Hill, it's Romanoff. I need to speak with Fury."
"Romanoff? I thought you were off duty, has something happened?"
"Yeah, you could say so. Barton just materialized beside me at thirty-five thousand feet, I'd say that qualifies as damn near something happening." She can hear shuffling as Hill moves through what sounds to be a crowd of mumbling people.
"I'll track down Fury, but it may take some time. It seems Dr. Foster made a break on the bridge work and we have quite a few unexpected guests this morning."
"Guests? Asgardians!?" Natasha sits forward excitedly. Thor or any of his pals could make short work of any mission.
"No, more like an entire lab full of astrophysicists, ah. Here he is." More muffled speech as Hill hands the phone over to Fury fills the line before he actually answers.
"Listen, Natasha, whatever Barton chooses to do on his off duty time is his own business—"
"Even teleporting?" Fury's in a joking mood so Natasha might as well play ball.
"What?" The frivolity of their exchange drops quickly.
"Yeah, so I'm guessing you can't tell me how and why he just appeared next to me midflight."
"Uh, no. No, I cannot. Hill. Hill, check the log for the last twenty-four hours. Romanoff, we're going to look into it on our end but why don't you ask him so we can move this along."
"I tranqued him."
"Of course you did." Fury's signature dry humor. "Well, Hill will be in touch, I have an assload of geniuses to deal with." The line goes dead and Natasha sighs. It seems she will have to wait to understand the mystery of the teleporting.
About ten minutes later her phone shrilly springs to life. "Romanoff."
"Okay," Hill's voice sounds uneasy on the other end of the line, "this is a bit strange. So, last log on the housing unit was your exit. No one has been in or out of the building since yesterday evening, i.e. neither Clint nor Loki returned last night. I called Stark and Pepper answered, apparently she collected Tony sometime before midnight and left Barton and Loki at the club. The owner of said club reported seeing them leave on camera at one-forty this morning. After that, they both fall off the map. Even Stark's jet, which Pepper left for the boys to take home, was left at the club until the pilot was recalled earlier."
Natasha sighs heavily and glances over at Barton. "Thanks, Hill, but that is just not what I was hoping to hear."
"Barton still unconscious?"
"Yep. I guess we'll have to wait until he wakes to find out what in the hell is going on." Natasha stares through the clouds, at nothing in particular, but hoping to find some kind of answer.
"Right, well, Fury wants him brought in. Where are you now?"
"Over the Atlantic. I'll be there in a few hours." It's Natasha's turn to end the call abruptly, she has a plan.
After setting the jet on autopilot, she un-straps and makes her way to the cargo hold looking for a specific crate. A tiny shot of adrenalin should knock Barton out of his snooze.
"Balls." Clint groans as consciousness plucks him and stirs his body. Natasha watches his face and limbs twitch awake. "What the hell did you shoot me for, Natasha?" He is upset. He never calls her Natasha in private unless he's unhappy with her.
"You just materialized beside me, I—I was wary."
"But I answered the identity question."
"Clint, you materialized. You could've been some evil magic minion." Natasha dismantles the hypodermic gun and stashes it while Clint regains his bearings.
"Speaking of, where am I?" He looks around the jet then peers out the front window. "Atlantis?"
"Over the Atlantic, hence my surprise at your appearance."
"Oh shit!" Clint springs up and spins around, eyes wide. "Where's Loki?!"
"I don't know. I was just going to ask—"
"Damn. We have to go back. That giant alien thing has him."
"Back? Back where? What alien thing?" Natasha stares hard at Clint, waiting for him to make sense.
"To the stinking ass pit, in the dark where the Other—the Other, that's what Loki called him—he had us captured."
"The other is the name of Loki's nasty conscience." Natasha shakes her head at Clint's mistake.
"No, Tash, I mean big, scaly, seven plus fingered monster thing, all gross and threatening with the creepy ass voice and all." Clint collapses back into his chair and rubs his head violently.
"What? Something has Loki captive?" She sits down behind the steering unit and switches off the autopilot.
"Yeah, but I don't know where. He vanished along with Loki and I ended up here."
"Shit. We need to get to base. This is a major security threat." Natasha elevates out of cruising altitude to pick up their speed.
"No, that's the cinch. It said Loki was a bargaining chip. Either It got to keep him or It destroyed the Earth."
"And you believed It?" Natasha shoots an incredulous glance over at Clint.
"Well, I didn't really have time to or to make my response. It vanished too quickly."
"Doesn't matter. Fury will want to hear about this."
"And, this is my favorite part." Loki sags under another tidal wave of scorching pain as the Other continues circling him. The sharp texture of the ground is by now perfectly preserved in the skin of his knees and palms, but Loki cannot stir his body to move. The pain is too excruciating.
"This, you simple maggots just couldn't resist the allure of a foreign weapon. The mortals poured all their time and energy into decoding the mystery of that gem and it's not even a true threat. It's a counterfeit, a replica of a much more valuable stone from the Infinity Gauntlet." Loki sighs and feels his head and shoulders sag further. That was why it had seemed familiar, a renowned and dangerous weapon the court of Asgard had oft mentioned.
"Ha, see, you know it but your mind was too muddled by that place to realize it or that it's forged. I don't even need the real stone of power to control that beast, I am beyond that and I need no weapon now to finish reaping the punishment from you. I can wreak havoc and sow despair without tools, without even being in your repulsive presence. I can torture you until you snap without even touching you." The Other forces Loki to his feet then floats the last words over his face, the putrid breath of him lingering and making Loki sick to his stomach.
"All the tools required I already forged in your own mind." The Other's gravelly yet slimy voice fades out and the hair-raising chuckle of Loki's own voice echoes out around him. He feels ill and unsteady, his mind is reeling and his body seems to be floating. Smells fade and change as the laughter continues to resound. Loki feels as though he is hallucinating, simultaneously stationary, his knees again aching from the hard ground, and yet his body weightless and tumbling through nothing. The changes in light all around him do nothing to help. Then, suddenly everything is fixed, the smell acrid but less stale, the light still dim but more wholesome and less surreal, the ground is firm beneath and more dirt than rock. The laughter continues, now growing louder and most assuredly his own, or at least in his own voice.
"Oh, calm your quivering wits. We are returned to your favorite ghetto of humanity." Loki cringes as the other, a foe just recently conquered, speaks again, strong and resurrected.
"You thought me destroyed, fool." He scoffs. "We are forever, eternal. As long as you exist, so do I. You will never be rid of me and better still, our master has released me." Loki lets his face fall to the dirt and pulls his hands above his ears, trying to block the voice. It works just barely since the voice emanates from without his mind.
"What? You wish not to listen to us? We have only the truth to tell you. This world wants us not, it would be better for us to bow once again to our master and destroy it, but if you prefer otherwise, let's hear their plan for us, the pitiful team of misfits you regard as fellows. Let us listen in on their counsels."
Loki finds himself again projected into a familiar briefing room at the SHIELD base, surrounded by the ghostly faces of his friends. Barton is speaking as the remainder of the team sits impassively.
"The Other has offered us the safety of our planet in exchange for Loki."
Fury interrupts, "the safety of our planet? What exactly does that constitute?"
The conversation falls away as the other's taunting recommences, leaving Loki with just the various faces of anger and fright of his fellows. "See that? These new friends of yours don't really want us. They say nothing in defense of us, just, selfish as usual, squabble over the intricacies of semantics, what they can glean from their 'planet's safety.' Now, don't you think this world would be better placed under our rule?"
Loki groans and presses his palms back to his ears, convinced that this all is a hallucination, another of the Other's tricks. "This is our last chance. We can subjugate this realm and earn our birthright as ruler at last!"
Loki shakes his head vehemently, keeping his eyes tight closed and envisioning the pleasantries of his last night. Natasha, her voice, her smile. The laughter of Stark and Barton. The camaraderie.
"FINE! Be on this measly planet you adore when I destroy it," Loki's ears perk up, recognizing a rare 'I' in the other's speech, "and know that there is nothing you can do to save the place, you, the helpless, shattered carcass of your once great self that you are."
The other's voice crackles with indignation, betraying more and more of the Other behind the words. "I will leave you to this world and its miserable truths. Those will be enough to punish you before this realm ends. Just know this, you love this world for naught. You mean nothing to it, are just a burden on your friends, just one more sleeper cell to watch, one more ticking time bomb to defuse."
The sounds of the SHIELD conference room return and Loki's head lifts. "Seeing as this is a matter of global security we must take the option that benefits the planet, Loki is just the price of our safety." Fury's words crash into Loki's ears and he sinks lower to the ground, practically collapsing onto his face.
"Did I not tell you? You are no more than a game piece they are glad to pawn off for their own gain." He hasn't left, he'll never leave, he will haunt Loki forever, eternally…
Natasha is not happy. This meeting is not proceeding in a way that suits her. Despite a mostly unanimous appeal to put their team to field to retrieve Loki, Fury is stubbornly denying their clearance.
"I'm sorry, Agents, but we don't know who or what this guy is or what he wants or even what he is capable of. The Asgardians will be alerted to this development but we can't do anything. Our hands are tied. Seeing as this is a matter of global safety we must take the option that benefits the planet and hope that Loki doesn't end up paying the price for our asses." Fury shrugs unhappily. "I gotta admit, we need the guy but we can't afford the worldwide cost a government affiliated team such as yourselves might elicit."
"Nat." She raises her head to Clint's urgent whisper. "Listen, this guy saved my life, it would be assfaced and bad for my conscience to let him rot in that pit. We should go." Clint looks serious, he did steadfastly believe in the warrior code.
"Fine, yeah, but Fury—"
"What about me?" The rest of the room has grown dead quiet as Clint and Natasha whisper.
"Director, just let the two of us investigate, at least. The guy deserves that much." Clint fidgets despondently with his pocket knife.
"I agree, Agent Barton. By all means, you and Romanoff can do whatever you wish while off duty, just as private citizens." Fury lifts a suggestive eyebrow. "And do not let me catch you 'borrowing' equipment." He spins around and strides quickly from the room.
"You guys I am totally gung ho and supportive of you finding Double Mint but you have no clue of his whereabouts." Tony leans across the table and gazes at Natasha and Clint from over his sunglasses.
"And that's why I gave him the tiepin." Natasha smiles at herself. Always good to be a little neurotic. "Please," she turns to Clint, "please tell me he was still clothed when you last saw him."
"You're right, Fury." Natasha's eyes look blank and cold. "He just isn't worth the trouble."
"Psh, the bastard can rot in that hole for all I care. I still don't like the limey ass, save my life or not." Clint's face contorts with disgust as he crosses his arms. Both he and Natasha rise quickly once the meeting adjourns and leave right after Fury without further argument. The vision dissolves and the cave reappears in front of Loki, unintentionally drawing him back into himself.
"This is yet another work of magic, surely Clint and Natasha think more of me than that. They may not risk their world to save me but they would not dismiss me with such disdain." Loki curls in on himself, trying to stay inside his own real memories, safe and happy.
But the wheedling voice of his own personal evil slips between his fingers and into his mind. "You know that no matter what she's said or done, she doesn't really want you, she's only acting under orders."
"Fuck orders." Natasha aggressively clicks out of the airport bookings web page. "This is absurd, expensive and slow. We're taking a jet, I don't care what Fury did or did not allow, it's faster than commercial air and according to the global tracking we're going pretty near to a fall out zone, so we'll need some safety equipment."
Clint drops a duffle bag beside her. "A fall out zone, Tash?"
"Yep, in the smack dab middle of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, actually." She sifts through her own bag looking for her swipe card.
"Jeez, can Loki survive that radiation? I mean, I know he's not human, but…"
"Yeah, I don't know, all the more reason for the two of us to hurry." She grabs her pack and hustles to the tech room with Clint on her heels.
"This woman is just like every other bitch you've encountered, interested in other men but willing to tolerate you to advance their plots. Don't you see? She was just enduring you. She is actually terrified of you." An image of Natasha, pinned against the wall, eyes wide with fear and pupils contracted to the tiniest specks, flashes before Loki.
"Even when she was under direct orders to interact with you she found it difficult." The day after his assault on Natasha replays before him. The uncomfortable silence. The awkward twitching and inching away from him.
"More than that, she finds you repulsive." Once again, flashes of memories haunt Loki afresh. That first night she saw Loki's duality, the sheer shock contorting her face.
"Because, you know, she prefers Clint. She's with him, alone with him right now. They're off traveling."
"Clint, for the love of god, this is a serious matter. Get your shit together, we need to move and fast." Natasha snatches the Phase 2 weapon they just stumbled across out of Clint's hands and, grabbing the hazmat suits, stomps out of the storage room.
"Screw that, Tash, if Big Ugly is still around, I'm going to want this baby." Clint picks up the giant gun again and jogs towards the jet. Natasha's already at the log when Clint joins her. "What are you going to log it as? I mean there's no way in hell Fury isn't going to find out about this, might as well make it good."
Natasha grins, small and impish, as she types. "Oh, it's good. An altitude based test flight to Mozambique. That's gratuitously ridiculous enough, right? Maybe he'll find enough humor in it to not chew us out royally." She swipes her card and finalizes the log. "Okay, let's get moving."
"The tropics." Loki curls up tighter so his knees clench close to his chest and chin. "It seems the two of them are travelling to the fair weather portion of this land as a holiday."
"You lie." Loki cannot help himself, he cannot hold his tongue, he again succumbs and speaks to his hallucination.
"No, sadly for you, no, I do not. Mozambique it's called. It makes sense, all the time she spent with you and she never relaxed in leisure with you much less travel. That's because there was never real affection for you in her. What she did feel was an illusion, a product of my work. So now, she's reverted to Clint. Who, speaking of, never rid himself of his loathing for you."
Loki nods in impatience, these points have already been made. The other is just wallowing in it now. "He still hates you and only acted as though he didn't under orders. The Director Fury wanted you on their team, a living weapon which needed to be appeased. Everything, everything is an act around you."
Loki can feel his defenses crumbling, his ability to stave off the falsities, the manipulations of truth.
"None of it is real."
"Damn, this is a shit hole." Clint cringes as he kicks through yet another dilapidated apartment complex. "And as fricking safe as these suits are meant to be, I can still smell piss…"
"Seriously, stop griping, Clint. If you hadn't been so shit faced last night, this might not have happened." She climbs over a large mass of crumbling plaster and waves for Clint to follow her to the left. "The tracker reading is this way."
"Yeah, well, I doubt it. This is the third 'the reading is over here' we've had. Plus, it was all teleporting and brain fuckery with this bastard."
Natasha begins pacing over a three meter square area. "He's around her somewhere… or his tie pin is." She sucks on her lower lip in concern but brushes it off to bitch some more at Clint. "I told him not to let you get too fucked up. You were just taking advantage of him." Her voice sounds harsher than she intended but she's growing antsy with the tracking.
On Loki's end, however, they ring out with the trill of laughter.
"And this, here she is vaunting over your humiliation, laughing at your demise."
The blood pounds in his ears and his eyes sting. Loki can feel his world toppling, can hear the strings of his mind snapping. No longer does he assure himself that it is all a lie, that the Other is simply pulling his tricks and torturing him, Instead, he believes it, he begins to accept it all, every slinking, slithering, poisonous word.
He can almost feel the cage shackling the other ripping apart, creaking and shaking, when the banging starts.
A bright light soon floods his dank prison and two silhouettes shade into view. "There you are you slippery bastard, we we're wondering where you've been."
And just like that, Clint's easy banter frees Loki from his touchstone. They came for him. They are here to save him. They are his friends. He truly has found somewhere to belong.