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Missing: Hahah, yeah, I'm having fun with the title references :P Also had to laugh at your summary of the argument XD
Tier: Here you go!
LoneGarurumon: Aw, no worries, I'm happy about every comment still :D So glad you liked the fight! They're ever so hard to write, even harder with magical characters like Loki, Sonic's physical attacks are...easier to get into a good flow :P And happy Loki's character development is received so well! Thanks for the detailed lovely review as always, hope you enjoy the penultimate chapter...!
Chapter 17: The Empty Child
Lightyears away (and entirely unaware why he had the sudden urge to sneeze) Loki stepped forward.
"Reveal your true form, wizard. Or face my wrath again and know that this time, my hand will not be stayed," he threatened, hoping that this would be enough. Starting a fight with the Doctor over this would not strengthen their position.
To his slight surprise, nothing of the sort seemed to be necessary.
"Okay, okay!" the wizard still looked genuinely frightened, raising his hands to protect himself from the wavering tip of the scepter – and then indeed started to change, his whole form shrinking, reforming into…
"Oh. Huh," the Doctor said.
"What?!" the little, blue-skinned, pony-tailed girl in the far-too-large wizard robes snapped.
"Truly? A child?" Loki asked, disbelieving (but also far too cautious to relinquish his grasp on the staff even in the slightest). He narrowed his eyes at the little redhead - there were no Jotun-like ridges on her skin, her entire shape suggesting a human or Aesir if not for her colour. "What race are you?"
"Well, the level of their physics homework was an indication for their age," the Doctor said, now curiously having donned a pair of glasses and dropping into a squat to look at the girl, squinting. "And you're…Kree, aren't you?"
"Y-yes," the girl nodded, her gaze flitting from Loki to the Doctor, expression now definitely shifting toward the nervous. If she was an actress, she was a good one.
Still, Loki thought if the Doctor had one fault, it was that he was entirely too trusting. Really, how the man had survived until now screamed in the face of Darwinism (as Midgardians would call it). So he stepped forward, standing tall behind the crouching Time Lord, the implication to anyone who would attempt to harm him obvious, and levelled a cool stare at the girl.
"No. You may look like a Kree, but that race has no magical abilities of their own. Even with the power in this staff, a being unable to cast any magic would not have been able to wield it." Loki lowered the scepter again, pointing it over the Doctor's shoulder at her face. "I told you what would happen if you lie."
"No! Please!" the little girl wailed, at once throwing her hands up and curling up as small as she could, "I am Kree! I really am Kree! I am, I am…!" there was a sob in there, and then the words broke off entirely.
Loki had to admit he wasn't quite sure what to do here (somehow, the adventures Thor had dragged them into had never ended up in having to confront crying children, for the Norns' sake) and he also thought it quite unfair as he Doctor then gently pushed the staff to the side, also glancing up at him with a 'Loki, really' -look in the process.
"Hey," the Doctor said, moving closer to the child again. Loki once again had this absurd (but depressingly more familiar) impulse to step in between them, protect the far more fragile Time Lord…yet by now he was also pretty sure that trying to keep the Doctor from approaching any potentially dangerous, maybe hostile creature in distress was an utterly doomed attempt from the start.
(Loki also tried hard not to think about what it said about their own first meeting.)
So instead, he sighed, maintaining vigilance as the Doctor tried to tilt his head to make eye contact with the girl, widening his eyes a little to appear less threatening, his voice softer than before as he spoke again.
"Hey. Maybe we got off to a bad start. How about you tell us your name?"
That at least got them a teary-eyed look again, the girl raising her head from its position between her knees.
"Ver," she said, swallowing. "My name is…Ver-Tego. And I'm really, really Kree, I swear-!" she repeated, a hint of panic creeping back into her last words before the Doctor cut her off.
"Ver," the Doctor repeated, nodding. "Good name. So, Ver, I think you probably understand that you're in quite a predicament," he said (and also ignored Loki's disbelieving huff at that wording). "But you can help your position a lot if you tell us what you did and why. What did you do to this planet, Ver?" he asked, voice and face becoming a lot more serious at that last question, and the child looked at him with wide, frightened eyes.
"I, I, I didn't mean to do anything!" she scrambled, but then swallowed. "Only, I've been reading this alien book series and it wouldn't get finished…"
"By the Nine," Loki said, "You cannot be serious."
"Oh, travelling with me you'd better get used to that," the Doctor murmured, wryly (and Loki was quite glad that he was able to keep the flip of his stomach at this casual admission from showing on his face). "An alien book series, hm?" he asked, once again glancing at the decorations of the throne room, shields and banners showing wolves, stags, lions and dragons, all surrounding an iron throne of swords. "I think I can guess which one." He cocked his head. "Didn't they turn that into a finished TV series, though?"
"Yes, and they got it all wrong and the ending was awful!" Ver snapped, angry for a second, but then was already hugging her knees again, biting her lower lip. "I just…I wanted to get it all right, to…to see how it ends…"
"This does still not explain what you actually did or where you got this from," Loki said, nodding his head toward the scepter in his hands. "Kree or not, this staff is far too old and too powerful to belong into the hands of a child."
"It's…I got that from a space freighter," Ver swallowed again. "A space freighter crashed one night where I lived and I was the first one there and found that in the wreckage. I don't know where it came from." She hugged her knees again, shrinking away from Loki's narrowed gaze. "But it…talked to me. It said, if I really wanted to know so badly how the story would end, I could…just make it happen myself."
The Doctor's eyes snapped toward Loki, and Loki could guess what the Doctor was thinking. He hadn't held the sceptre for long, but…tentatively, Loki reached out with his magic, tried to assess the source of the staff's magic in its blue crystal. He blinked.
"Yes," he said, slowly, staring at the staff. "There is something approaching a mind in the scepter, except…," he began, eyes narrowing. There had been the barest hint of a power rush, but also…a heady sensation, a whispering, that with this staff, any realm could be his and most of all, a suggestion that this was all really his own idea…
Loki let his gaze flit back toward the Doctor, feeling consciously pulled back from the other voice in his head. The Time Lord raised his eye brows.
"So," he then said, turning back to the girl. "You did…what, exactly?"
"I went to the space port and used the staff to make someone take me to the nearest planet that nobody really cares for," Ver said, quietly. "Everyone has to obey you when you touch the staff to their heart, you know? I mean, usually, it really works," she swallowed, glancing from the Doctor to Loki, obviously still quite confused why the Time Lord hadn't turned into her thrall, but then continued on, "And then I made the climate different and tried to get the time period right and to make everybody forget that they were supposed to be modern. And then did the zombies and the other stuff."
"The other stuff," said the Doctor carefully.
"Well, the southern hemisphere of the planet should almost have fully-grown dragons now," the girl said, plaintively. "I was so close!"
"What you did, Ver, was kill thousands, if not millions of people," the Doctor said, tone now colder than before, and the girl's green eyes widened in shock. "There are dead children outside, girls just like you. Younger than you. Was that what you wanted to be so close to?"
"Wh-what? N-No!" she stammered. "I mean…I've only been here for two weeks, and I mean it's only a story, how…how would I – I didn't mean to-!" she started to hyperventilate, staring at the Doctor in horror, tears welling up again and the Time Lord looked up at Loki, alarmed.
"Loki? Could you put her out again? Preferably asleep, not frozen?" the Doctor warned and Loki had to suppress a huff.
"Gladly," he then still said, stepping forward and touching the forehead of the flinching girl, feeling relief as she immediately slumped over. He turned back toward the Doctor who was now rubbing his face, looking a bit tired.
"How would you know about the Kree?" Loki asked, curious. "They're not too far from Asgard's jurisdiction, but I only read up on them when mindlessly browsing once. Their world is a backwater ditch of a planet, nothing especially important."
"Well," the Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, having risen again and scrolling through the laptop now. "Actually, their civilization was about to become a giant, Kree-supremacist, militaristic empire at some point. Subjugating other races like no tomorrow. Even abducting other species, performing experiments on them to turn them into super soldiers. And cannon fodder," he added grimly.
"…really?" Loki frowned. None of that had been in Asgard's history books. "What happened?" he asked before he could stop himself – and then only shot the Doctor a very wry look as the Time Lord immediately lit up and shot him a bright grin.
"Questions! You're finally asking them!"
"Yes, yes, we have made it quite clear that I am your companion," Loki waved him off, keeping the annoyed expression on his face with effort. "So tell me already what happened to the Kree almost-empire before you tear something."
"Oh, at some point they tried to abduct humans from Earth and I found out about them," the Doctor replied brightly, then returned scrolling through the laptop, irritatingly still too fast for Loki to keep up. "Hmmh," the Time Lord said, squinting. "I think I have an idea what may be going on here."
"Really. And is it anything that will get us closer to unfreezing your ship?" Loki asked absent-mindedly, for his part more interested in the staff. There was something familiar about it, something that rang a bell...
"In time," the Doctor said, looking up from the laptop. " But right now, do you know any spells to turn someone back into their true form? Because I have a theory about our supposedly Kree wizard..."
xxx
"Is it...supposed to do that?" the Doctor asked, looking a bit queasy.
"Yes," Loki grated back, watching the working he'd woven sink into the still sleeping child and her body starting to melt and bubble in response, different kinds of magic fighting each other and transforming her shape into their battlefield. He raised an eyebrow. "If your race are shapeshifters as well surely this cannot be that upsetting to you?"
"When Time Lords change shape, we mainly...just glow. And shoot light. Occasionally," the Doctor said, grimacing. "It's all a lot more civilized."
"Really," Loki couldn't help but shoot the Doctor a grin. "Welcome to wild side of magic, then," he said, and pushed just a little bit more power into his spell to reveal their adversary's true shape after all. And then he blinked.
The girl…now no longer looked Kree, or really humanoid at all. She was still child-sized, but now a…red-skinned, entirely hairless and blob-shaped creature, the lower half of her face adorned with tentacles like a Great Old One, her limbs three-fingered at the end and stumpy, as if one parent had been an elephant and the other a nuclear accident. Loki could feel his eyes widen as he took a step back.
"That's a…dire wraith."
"Oh yeah," the Doctor replied with an exhale, looking at the still sleeping alien with a consternated expression. "Evolutionary off-shoot of the Skrull, and able to use magic. Explains how she could wield the scepter."
"And the shape-shifting ability," Loki added, frowning. "But she insisted she was Kree. Do you believe she knows?"
"Why don't we ask her," the Doctor replied, lips thin. "Let's wake her up again."
Xxx
The first thing Ver did, upon waking, was starting to scream.
"Ver," the Doctor tried to calm her, but the alien only screamed louder, her voice now a scratchy howling coming out of her dire wraith throat. She tried to scramble backwards from them, fragments of 'NO!" and 'DON'T LOOK AT ME!" barely understandable through her screaming, and her form started to flash wildly, turning into a human girl, turning into the wizard again, briefly becoming a mishmash of everything that nearly let the Doctor's stomach flip before it finally settled on her Kree form again, now hopelessly tangled in the half-torn robes still too large for her frame.
"I'm Kree! I'm Kree! Please don't kill me!" she screamed, once again holding up her hands as if that could shield her.
"Hey," the Doctor tried again. "Neither of us are Kree. We don't care what you are. We just need you to talk to us."
"...about what?" Ver asked, still looking at them fearfully. "I'm sorry, I really am, I swear-"
"I believe you are," the Doctor said, "but I need to know more. Why is it so important to you that we know you're Kree?"
"Be-because anyone who isn't Kree is sc-sc-scum," Ver stammered, eyes filling with tears again. "My uncle says so and he hates when I do magic or look different-"
"Sounds like the Kree supremacist part of their society is still in full swing," Loki murmured. The Doctor threw him a side-glance, grimacing.
"Yeaah, turns out fixing that part of a society is always harder than just stopping them from taking over a galaxy. Speaking of which, hey, Ver," he said, turning to the girl again. "Do you know where that space freighter with the staff was supposed to go?"
"N-no." She shook her head. "I'm sorry, I just t-took it and ran."
"From that space freighter that crashed at your feet where you were conveniently the only one there," Loki said, for the first time contributing to the conversation and Ver's head snapped toward him, eyes wide and anxious.
"But it really was like that, I swear," she said, words tumbling from her mouth, "I was having to spend the night outside again and I was so hungry so I was looking for something to eat in the dumpsters and there it crashed, right at the edge of my uncle's property and then I went and looked-"
"And when you found that thing your first thought was to recreate an unfinished Earth novel series? One I think you shouldn't even have been reading at your age?" the Doctor added the last question as a muttered aside, choosing to table some of the more alarming details from Ver's account for now, though they were rapidly fitting together into a rather dismal picture.
"I...I'd found them in the school library, when I was hiding in there from the others," Ver said, swallowing. "And in there everyone was always so impressed with magic, so I thought...I thought..."
("Norns," Loki muttered in the background here, but the Doctor ignored it).
"If I...made a planet just like in the books, then I could see how it ended and be somewhere where they don't beat you if you do magic and nobody would miss me anyway or threaten to k-k-k-kill me if the neighbours find out what I am and in the books you can even make people come back to life again so I thought that maybe m-m-mom - that I could make mom -"
Her voice broke here as Ver started into another crying fit and the Doctor (who could feel a head- and heartache coming on) mostly muttered something like "She really couldn't have found Harry Potter instead, could she?" while thankfully Loki stepped forward again to send her to sleep a second time.
xxx
"So this entire ordeal," Loki said, giving the Doctor a look a few moments later, "comes down to the escapist fantasy of a ten-year-old?"
"'Almost eleven',don't forget," the Doctor corrected with weary humour, before sighing. "But you'd be surprised how many times far-reaching consequences and suffering spread so wide can be traced back to just a single, incredibly unhappy child," the Time Lord said, and it sounded tired.
"From what I can gather from looking at the files from their planet - thankfully the satellite wi-fi in this castle is still working," he gestured at the laptop, "It sounds like she's telling the truth, at least. The brother of the man who is listed as her 'father' had apparently fallen in love with a dire wraith woman, stranded and living disguised as a Kree on their world. He married her, but when her identity was discovered, both of them were executed. Ver is probably their daughter, only they had registered her as the child of her uncle so she wouldn't be executed as well in case they got discovered. Which is exactly what happened."
"And she knew," Loki said, taking care to let his face remain expressionless. "She said she was living with her uncle."
"An uncle who, from what she's been saying, does not really deserve that title," the Doctor added, grimly. "Letting your niece scavenge in a dumpster?"
"Having to care for a child that could mean your family executed as well if your neighbours discover you're keeping what they would call a monster. It is not exactly surprising he would not be the best of caregivers," Loki pointed out, a wry voice in his head adding, at least no one would have dared to rebel against *you* in that case, father, would they.
"Really? And yet it always surprises me when people can't simply be better," the Doctor said, before straightening, running a hand through his hair. "Right. But even if that explains why Ver might have done this, it still does not quite explain how - and I don't mean the exact magical how," he cut Loki off before the Asgardian could answer.
"I mean - even if dire wraiths mature slightly faster than humans, and we consider what she's been through, something like this," he gestured, a wave of his hand encompassing the ice palace and the snowed-in world beyond, "should be beyond even the most precocious 'almost-eleven'-year-old." His gaze travelled back to the staff in Loki's hands. "Which brings us back to..."
"The staff," Loki said. "Yes. By now I am quite certain it is not merely a boost to one's power."
"No. You said it had a…mind inside?" The Doctor questioned, looking at the thing, one of his hands going for his breast pocket as if reaching for his screwdriver on reflex.
"…well, an approximation of one," Loki said. "As I said, it is ancient, and very powerful. There are strategic capabilities inside it, even creativity. It seems able to take on some of the characteristics of the one it comes into contact with and then…amplify their desires. Their recklessness to reach them. As the girl said, it will give you the ability to control the mind of anyone whose heart you touch, but…" Loki let his eyes trail once more over the scepter, listened to its whispers trying to sneak into his own thoughts, undetected. "I do not think she was quite aware that a part of it will also try to control you."
"I don't think I like the sound of that," the Doctor said, eyes narrowing at the blue crystal. Then his gaze abruptly flicked up to meet Loki's again. "That is, wait, you mean it's also trying to control you right now?"
"Well, trying is fortunately the right word," Loki let his voice sound wry, covering a bit of the sheer awe he still felt at the power of the staff. "It is attempting to get past my mental defences, mix my mind with its own, until I would barely be able to tell which thought was originally mine or not." He took a breath. "Fortunately, it is far from the first magical object with a mind of its own that I came into contact with – as a child, I once spent a week trapped in a cursed mirror after the blasted thing talked to me enough – so I do know how to recognize and defend against such things. But it is by far the most powerful I have seen."
"Really, so that does that mean – wait, hold on, you were once trapped in a mirror?"
Loki barely suppressed a smirk. "Hm, I think I can see why you enjoy having companions. The questions are entertaining."
"What is it trying to tell you?" the Doctor asked and Loki's half-smirk faded.
"...perhaps not so entertaining after all," he conceded. The half-formed images, inchoate whispers at the corners of his mind, talking of conquest, of the glory of slaughterig and subjugating a world just to finally impress everyone, leading an army to have an entire planet kneel to him was not something he wanted to share with the Doctor.
Perhaps earlier you might have been able to tempt me, relic. But I am different now, he thought, and to his surprise, a part of him felt like he believed it.
"Can I touch it?" the Doctor asked, reaching out with an expression of curiosity as soon as he said it and it took a lot of Loki's self-control not to slap the Time Lord's hand away out of reflex.
"Oh for the-could you NOT endanger yourself for a minute?" Loki snapped, holding the scepter back out of reach from the frowning Doctor. "This is magic. My resort."
"Oy, I once battled an artificial intelligence mind-controlling an entire planet, I think I can deal with a megalomaniac glowstick," the Doctor retorted, looking mildly offended, but at least made no further attempts to touch the staff. Instead he sighed, frowning at Loki. "So you're saying..."
"I believe that for all that girl did, it might" - Loki pulled a face -"not have been entirely her fault. I think...if you are that desperate and," Loki paused only briefly, "that young and that alone, more experienced magic users than her might have fallen under its influence."
"Hmm," the Doctor once again said, giving Loki a look but not adding anything. They both had felt its power when they had been trapped in Loki's mind, each knowing that if they hadn't had each other as an anchor, calling them back into the present when the magic of the scepter was luring them somewhere else...
"And I think I know what it is," Loki said, and the Doctor's gaze snapped back into focus.
"Really?" he asked. "Screwdriver couldn't make head or tail of it, so I thought we'd have to wait until we could put it under the TARDIS scanners..." he gave the sceptre another sharp look, then gazed back at Loki. "But you have an idea?"
"Just something I read about, long ago," Loki said. He looked back at the Doctor.
"...have you ever heard of the Infinity Stones?"
To be concluded...
Well, HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY and I hope you're having a great start to the week as well :) Whoniverse story structure colliding with Marvel canon *hard* here, so I hope you're still enjoying the ride and would love to hear what you thought of the chapter, comments are love, comments are life :D