Ensoulment
by Valerie Vancollie
valeriev84 at hotmail dot com
Notes: Back to Tony and a bit longer this time!
Earth, 2018 A.D.
The sudden, sharp intake of breath from Point Break and the way the big guy's eyes widened told Tony the words clearly meant something to Thor.
"Loki," the thunder god whispered, voice thick with emotion.
"Loki?" Tony repeated warily.
"Those words, they are the last thing Loki said to me before..."
"Before what?" Romanov asked with surprising gentleness.
Or no, on second thought it wasn't so surprising, she was a master manipulator and devoted liar after all. What was she by now, an octuple agent? Decuple? Something like that.
"Before he tried to kill Thanos."
"Wait, Loki tried to kill Thanos?" Rhodey suddenly spoke up. "Wasn't he Thanos' first attempt at taking over Earth?"
"With my brother it can be hard to tell," Thor admitted, though he had a rueful smile on his lips.
"I think I may actually have a theory on that, but I'll need some more information from you first, Big Guy," Tony said.
"A theory?"
"About Loki and the invasion of New York. But as I said, I need some more info from you first before I share with the rest of the class."
It was about some inconsistencies and seeming powershifts throughout Loki's time on Earth. It had been hardly more than a thought exercise before, what with Thor absent and Loki first on Ásgarðr and then supposedly dead.
"Did Thanos kill your brother then?" the talking racoon questioned. "Is that why you said you thought he was dead earlier?"
"Aye... Thanos, he..." Thor began, fists clenching and eyes suspiciously wet for a moment. "He grabbed Loki by the throat and crushed it."
Oh, ouch! Talk about up close and personal.
"He said there would be no resurrection this time," Thor continued. "Still, I had hoped Loki would do it just one more time."
"Your brother does it often then?" Okoye demanded.
"He has managed a few, though I never knew if he actually died or merely tricked us all into believing so."
"Have there been bodies before or was it more sleight of hand?"
"On Svartálfaheimr there was a body; I was holding Loki even as he died."
Tony opened his mouth to say something but even he came up blank for a moment. What did you say to your friend about the potential death of his maniac and sociopathic brother?
Although if his theory was correct- and it was looking more and more like it might be- well, then that would just change everything, now wouldn't it?
"Are we really saying that Strange, one of the people killed by Thanos' snap, has been resurrected by someone Thanos killed while acquiring the Infinity Stones?" Nebula demanded, skeptic tone completely blundering over the awkward silence.
"If it was Loki I saw, then yes, I suppose we are," Strange said.
"How?"
"No idea, necromancy has never been a field I studied."
"Thor, you have any ideas, Buddy?" Tony asked.
"Nay, my knowledge of seiðr- magic is limited," Thor replied. "But I have never heard of such a thing before."
"Would you have?"
"If someone could bring back the dead in a way other than creating draugr? Aye."
"Draugr?"
"Zombies, Boss," Friday chimed in.
"Ah."
Of course zombies were real too, why not?
"Can we trust Loki?" Rogers asked. "Supposing it is him?"
"To wish to see Thanos' defeated? Aye, he killed Loki so my brother will wish his revenge. But beyond that I am uncertain."
"He did come back for us on Ásgarðr," Bruce spoke up. "He didn't have to do that, but he did. We'd be dead otherwise even if Ásgarðr would probably still exist."
"Wait, Loki destroyed Ásgarðr?" Romanov demanded sharply.
"At my command," Thor replied hotly.
"What?" Tony exclaimed. "Why?"
"It is a long tale, but apparently I have a sister whom Father had to imprison and she broke free upon his death and had taken over Ásgarðr," Thor explained. "She had banished Loki and me to Sakaar where I found Banner. When I managed to return to Ásgarðr I realized we would not win against Hela and her powers, so destroying Ásgarðr was the only means to save the remaining æsir from her. Therefore I asked Loki to take Surtur's crown and place it in the Eternal Flame so that Surtur would be reborn."
"And that destroyed Ásgarðr?" Rhodey asked.
"Aye."
"Thus fulfilling the Ragnarök prophecies about him, but not quite how people had expected," Tony mused.
Added to his other suspicions it was all starting to paint a rather interesting picture indeed. And a more hopeful one than any of them had any right to expect just now.
"You have that look, Tony," Bruce said.
"I know."
"What look?" the racoon (and Tony still couldn't quite believe that) demanded. "Is this another sarcasm thing?"
"No, it means he has an idea," Bruce replied.
"What idea?" Okoye asked.
"No, not until I've spoken with Thor," Tony responded before looking back to Strange. "Did Loki say anything else?"
"Only to hang on before he gathered his magic and then all I knew was pain before waking up on the Benatar," Strange informed them.
"Hang on? That's quite the Earth colloquialism, isn't it?" Romanov asked, looking at their alien companions.
And how had they suddenly come to have so many of them? Last Tony had known there was just Thor and he'd been off-world. Now they had Thor, Nebula... Rocket.
"I have only heard Peter use it before," their new bandit stated.
"Loki has always been very good at integrating himself on other worlds whenever we visited them," Thor explained.
"Like Sakaar," Bruce said.
"Aye."
"It was different for you two then?" Rhodey asked.
Bruce laughed once though Tony could tell there was no humor to it. "Thor and I ended up in the gladiator ring as contestants while Loki managed to ingratiate himself with the ruler of the planet and watched from the Grandmaster's box."
"Well he has always had style," Tony commented.
"Really, is that what you chose to focus on?" Rogers demanded.
"What? The abilities of the only one who has so far managed to score a victory of some kind against Thanos?" Tony shot back, glancing at the captain. "Yes, of course it is for I know that Strange, Spiderman, Nebula, Bandit's team and I sure as hell don't have anything to show for our efforts and neither do any of you from what I've heard so far."
A tense silence.
Well, it wasn't like Tony had expected an apology, not from Mr. Self-Righteous.
"What information do we have on Thanos and what he did?" Okoye asked. "If this Loki has found a way to reverse the effects then maybe we can too."
Huh, an interesting thought.
"No, even what Loki did should not be possible, not given Thanos has all of the Infinity Stones," Nebula stated.
"How about we start with what exactly the Infinity Stones are and go from there?" Rogers suggested.
Tony frowned as he considered Okoye's question, tuning out Strange's repeat explanation of the Stones. What did they know of Thanos? Based on what Barney had said on Titan he had convinced himself of the righteousness and need of what he had done. To the point where he had sacrificed someone he had at least thought that he'd loved. The reactions of the others would indicate this Gamora (and really who named their kid after an STD?) may not feel the same way, but that hardly mattered. There were plenty of abusing assholes out there who claimed to love the families they beat or coerced on a daily basis.
While not necessarily a means of being able to undo things, it did actually tell Tony a lot about just how Thanos had likely acquired all of the Stones, especially after what he had witnessed first hand on Titan. And speaking of which, that reminded him of something he had to ask Strange.
"So you're saying that even back when he had just two of them he was already more powerful than anyone else?" Rhodey was asking.
"Aye, no one else has ever had two of them simultaneously before," Thor confirmed.
"What?" Tony blurted out. "No, that's not true."
"Stark-" Romanov began.
"Loki had two of them during the invasion," Tony kept right on going. "The Mind Stone in the scepter and the Space Stone in the Tesseract."
"He has a point," Bruce said after a moment of silence.
"Aye," Thor agreed. "Though my brother was not using the power of either at the time, nor had he removed the Space Stone from within the Tesseract."
"And that makes a difference?" Rogers asked.
Thor nodded. "Simply holding an object of great power, though taxing, is far removed from actually utilizing it."
"Could this account for how your brother is able to do what he's done now?" Rhodey inquired.
"I do not know."
"Leaving that aside for the moment," Tony said. "What changed your mind, Strange? About giving Thanos the Time Stone? On the way to Titan you said you'd not surrender it even if Pe- our lives were at stake and then you did just that. What endgame did you see in that one future?"
"A chance to win," Strange replied before he had to explain to the others what he had done.
"So how did this chance play itself out?" Tony demanded impatiently. "How do we win given Thanos has already killed half the universe?"
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
"Exactly what I said," Strange retorted. "Do you think I'd hold back now of all times? I looked at the outcomes of all kinds of options. I didn't have the time to look at the details of all of them."
"You had the Time Stone!" Bandit protested.
"I looked at over fourteen million possible futures!"
"Fourteen million," Romanov repeated in shock. "And in how many of those did we win?"
"One," Strange declared.
Those odds... it was a good thing Tony laughed in the face of impossible odds and had spent a lifetime doing so or otherwise they'd be enough to crush him. The way Rhodey cursed and Bruce paled told him he wasn't the only one calculating them.
"Well, at least we know it's possible," he stated, throwing Rhodey one of his cocky smiles, making his friend roll his eyes, but he could already see a little less tension there.
"Do you know anything else of how this one future unfolded?" Rogers asked.
Strange frowned as his eyes took on a glazed look. "I glanced at so many, but there were a few flashes about this one that stood out. There was an image of a tree, but rendered in a bluish-white almost like lightning, but not."
"The Yggdrasill," Thor stated immediately. "The World Tree is described in many different ways, but Loki has often referred to it as thus, as if made up of sun and starlight combined."
"The effects of what Thanos did extended beyond the Nine Realms, though, right?" Tony inquired.
"Aye, Titan is not within the Nine."
"What?" Tony demanded when he caught Romanov's frown. "I always do my homework."
It was something she should be well aware of from her time as his PA, let alone how he became an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics overnight during Loki's invasion.
"Then I also saw the Infinity Stones, but the Soul Stone was in the center with the others arrayed around it in the form of a pentagram," Strange continued.
"The devil's symbol?" Rogers questioned in surprise.
"No, that's an inverted pentagram," Strange frowned. "A pentagram is actually an ancient protection symbol, dating back to pre-Christian times."
"Describe this pentagram," Thor demanded.
Rather than comply, Strange moved his hands and a pentagram appeared in the air before him.
"It is a commonly used protection symbol," Thor agreed. "I have seen it often in books or spells Loki and others have cast."
Great. It was with a sickening realization that Tony knew he'd have to seriously research magic. If anyone had told him this even a few weeks ago he would have laughed his head off, but if being an expert in the so called mystic arts was what it took to bring Pepper and Peter back, then that was exactly what he'd do. Science and logic be damned.
Besides, if Strange had done it after being a neurosurgeon, then how hard could it truly be?
"Have you ever seen the Infinity Stones arranged like that before?" Okoye asked.
"No," Strange denied looking at Thor and Nebula who both shook their heads in the negative.
"Well it gives us something to look into," Rogers said. "Anything else?"
"It was confusing, but I believe there was a scene, a battle somewhere in a frozen wasteland," Strange replied, brow furrowed. "There were some people who looked human but were dressed more like Thor fighting larger... blue giants? With red eyes, I think. Does that mean anything?"
"Aye, they sound like frost giants," Thor said. "Though we have not had war with them in over a thousand years, unless I was among those fighting?"
"No."
"A past event?" Romanov questioned. "What is the relevance of that?"
"I do not know."
"What caused the war, Thor?" Rhodey asked.
"Laufey- the king of Jötunheimr- had invaded Miðgarðr," Thor explained. "Father sent an army to prevent it and the war ended with several battles on Jötunheimr itself which is a frozen wasteland."
"Earth?" Tony asked, startled. "Why would this Laufey invade Earth?"
Thor shrugged. "We were always told the frost giants were naught but stupid beasts intent on war and blood."
Rhodey glared at Point Blank and Tony already knew what his friend was thinking as it was something they had discussed before. Racism and stereotyping. It was something he'd been hopelessly blind to due to his privileged upbringing. Though they had discussed it a little before while at MIT, it had all really come exploding out of Rhodey the evening of their graduation after his best friend had drunk far too much. Ever since he had done his best to be more aware of it to try to be a better friend to his first true one. It was why Stark Industries had strict non-discrimination policies of all kinds as he'd let Rhodey, Pep and several others loose on HR to ensure nothing like that prevented the best from working for him.
"You said were," Rhodey prompted.
"Aye, I have since learned better," Thor seemed to hesitate. "I have said Loki is adopted."
Tony nodded. "Mythology says he is jötunn and the son of Laufey, though it does say Laufey is his mother."
"Mother? No, Laufey is king, so he is Loki's father."
"If he is the son of your enemy, then how did your parents come to adopt him?" Romanov asked. "Was it some form of fostering?"
"Nay, Father found him abandoned, likely due to his size as to the frost giants Loki is a runt."
Nausea welled in Tony. Someone would abandon their child because of their size? Yes, he had not long thought of becoming a father himself, but even he would never consider casting aside a child, particularly not for something so fickle.
The... racism? specism? Thor spoke of added yet another element to his theory and it fit into the ever growing puzzle that was Loki as if custom made, explaining so much. True, it took tantrum throwing and attention seeking to a whole new level- even for him- but they were talking about the diva of all divas here and a being whom humans in the past had deemed a god due to his power and magical abilities. So, really, blowing this out of all proportion simply fit the pattern.
"Jesus," Rhodey breathed, getting a dark look from Captain Faithful.
"It sounds like Loki is what ties all of these visions together," Nebula stated.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Romanov interjected. "A lot of people live in the Yggdrasill, so that's a tenuous connection even if it was shown as he often described it."
Thor sighed and looked pained for a moment. "Loki has always been fascinated by the Yggdrasill, studying it extensively and seeking out all of its hidden pathways."
"Hidden pathways?" Bandit questioned. "Those are real?"
"Aye."
Tony wanted to ask but he was afraid his mind would break. Freaking magic destroying all of his perfectly logical scientific explanations of physics and the universe. There were times he wished he could go back to before he had ever heard of aliens and magic despite all he had created and invented since.
For Pep he'd definitely give it all up in a heartbeat.
"I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not exactly comfortable with leaving it all up to Loki," Rogers stated. "Especially seeing as he's technically dead just now."
"If there is one thing my brother is good at, it's self preservation," Thor said. "As long as it revolves around that and defeating Thanos, we can know he is on our side."
"And after?" Romanov asked.
Thor winced, but Tony had caught the hesitance that preceded the action. Interesting. It was more than Loki would have elicited the last time Tony had seen Thor, so clearly something had changed. But if Loki had come back for his brother and their people, then he could start to understand it.
"He did fight with us on Ásgarðr and made what could have been a sacrifice play at the end," Bruce stated.
"But it clearly wasn't," Romanov argued. "And he might have known that all along."
"I will do what I need to in order to save my king and princess if it is at all possible," Okoye declared firmly. "If that means trusting this Loki as far as defeating Thanos, then so be it."
"Ah, we may need to be careful of those types of emotions and plays around Thanos," Tony interrupted. "He sneers at them and is quite happy to use them against us. It's how he thinks he gained the Time Stone."
"And the Soul Stone," Nebula added.
Thor winced. "And the Space Stone."
"Oh?" Rogers asked looking at both of them. "We already know how he got the Time and Mind Stones, what about the others?"
"Gamora knew the location of the Soul Stone and Thanos tortured me until she agreed to take him there," Nebula growled, fists clenched and looking like she wanted to tear something apart.
Tony could well understand the feeling and he'd gladly help her do so if he could.
"And the Space Stone?" Rogers prompted. "That was the Tesseract, right?"
"Aye," Thor confirmed. "Loki must have taken it from the vault when he went to burn Surtur's crown."
"Big surprise," Romanov muttered.
Thor sent her a dark look. "It is not what you think. Loki only handed it over when Thanos was torturing me."
Oh, yes, Tony was becoming more and more certain of his Loki theory even without speaking with Thor about some of it. If he were in other company he might already feel comfortable speaking of it, but he wouldn't, not with both Rogers and Romanov present.
"Ah, uh, do we know how he got the others?" Rogers asked.
"He already had the Power Stone when he attacked us, having decimated Xandar to get it," Thor said. "And the Reality Stone was in the possession of Taneleer Tivan in Knowhere. He would not have given it up lightly as he likes to collect powerful and unique things."
"Peter, Gamora, Drax and Mantis were going to try and stop Thanos from obtaining it," Rocket stated.
"So he uses our compassion and emotions for each other against us," Tony stated. "On Titan he claimed to want to do this to prevent the destruction of other planets like his was destroyed due to overpopulation."
"Overpopulation?" Rhodey exclaimed. "This is all supposedly for our own good?"
Tony shrugged. "I'm only saying what he claimed. Apparently he suggested the same when Titan was at a crisis point and he was ignored. He took things ending badly as proof that he was right."
"And that it would always end badly elsewhere?" Bruce shook his head. "What a warped way of thinking."
"You will not change his mind on it," Nebula spoke up. "For as long as I have known him, this is what he has done. Go planet to planet, wiping out half of all life before moving on to the next, always seeking information and knowledge on the Infinity Stones so he could do it all at once."
"That..." Okoye began before she shook her head. "I do not know what to say."
"I don't think there are words for it," Tony responded.
Okay, about Loki's death. I've seen a lot of people saying Thanos choked him but that doesn't really make any sense if you truly think about it. Thor survived extended periods in outer space, as did Loki after his fall into the closing Bifröst wormhole, so clearly they can go without air for far longer than Thanos had Loki in his grip. My guess this is yet another typical Avengers inconsistency (of which there are many!), but I have chosen to play it as a crushed neck here to make it work more realistically.
Old Norse:
seiðr - witchcraft, sorcery / a type of sorcery practiced in Norse society during the Late Scandinavian Iron Age - i.e. magic
draugr - an undead creature from Norse mythology, also called aptrganga or aptrgangr, literally "again-walker" - i.e. zombie