I forgot to put this in the first chapter, but originally this was supposed to just be a response to a prompt on an imagines site on Tumblr, but then it sort of veered away from it, so it no longer is what it was. :)

Also: I don't own Loki or any of the characters you recognize from Marvel franchise. I'm just writing for fun.

Author's note/warning: there are brief mentions of torture in this chapter (dealing with Loki's time with Thanos.)

Chapter Two

Loki being distracted by Thor's presence now, Arianna was able to sneak onto the balcony to try and get to the Tesseract. She needed to find out how to deactivate the thing, as it was what was allowing the Chitauri to come through from their world and into hers.

Down below the city was being destroyed by Loki's army. There were creatures on robot-looking things and there was also a demonic worm that seemed to be made of metal. What even was that?

She wasn't sure any of the Avengers could actually fight these things and win. She heard and saw the explosions taking place on the streets below and knew if she was going to save anything, that she had to do it now.

Thor and Loki were fighting on the balcony, but neither of them was paying attention to her. She was able to get past them fairly easily. Thor had slammed Loki against one of the windows. He wouldn't let Loki go without a fight. He actually seemed to be talking the other, crazier, Asgardian down – something Tony had tried and failed at doing.

Maybe Thor being his brother and all would mean something to Loki. Maybe Thor could make Loki see that all this destruction wouldn't end in his rule.

Arianna now stood a few feet from the Tesseract. She was so close, yet she couldn't touch it. There was a forcefield around the blue cube and unless she could get through that she couldn't get to the Tesseract to close whatever portal it had created to bring Loki's army to Earth.

Arianna placed her hand against the forcefield and was relieved when it didn't hurt her. This type of magic – or whatever one called it – wasn't defensive.

She closed her eyes and visualized a large blue dome surrounding the Tesseract and then she felt the familiar tingle in her fingertips that came from channeling her ability through her hands. If anyone were watching, they would see a bright golden glow coming from her hands. That was how her ability manifested.

She was now imagining a hole forming in the forcefield protecting the Tesseract. She didn't need a big opening, just something wide enough for her to squeeze through.

She'd almost made it when her wrist was grabbed.

"Now, tell me . . . How does a Midgardian such as yourself know how to do that?"

Images flashed through her mind – just another part of her ability. Her mind, her energy, was merging with the one who had grabbed her.

'You don't know pain . . . if you fail, you will wish for something as sweet as pain.'

She was seeing through someone else's eyes and what she saw was a barren wasteland. She had hurt herself somehow. Her back was killing her. There were chains and whips. Sometimes she was suspended in mid-air. Sometimes she was tied down. Sometimes she was chained to a rock, facedown. There were lashes and beatings and fire.

There was Thanos . . . someone named Thanos.

Pain ripped through her as lashes from a whip connected with her back. There were brief but welcome pieces of oblivion that she was sure were bouts of unconsciousness. Then came fire – everywhere. It seemed to race through her veins.

Had she died and gone to hell?

The vision ended when the physical contact ended, when her wrist was no longer being held.

She turned to the person who'd been touching her and saw Loki – a much different Loki than she'd seen earlier. He was looking at her with wide, almost vulnerable eyes. She'd been seeing Loki's memories, and what horrible memories they were.

"What happened to you?" she whispered, not really caring that she was talking to the man who had so terrified her.

She wished she hadn't spoken, though, when his eyes hardened again. She almost couldn't blame him. She had seen into his mind and had gone through what were probably his deepest and darkest memories.

This man had been tortured for only God knew how long. No wonder he was insane.

As Loki stared at the Midgardian girl, he wondered exactly what she was. Midgardians didn't know magic, not like this.

She had been able to pry into his mind. He could do that when he concentrated hard enough. The ones who had tortured him had been able to do that as well, but they hadn't seen so much as they had torn into his mind. They had torn and manipulated and replaced his jealousy and bitterness with all out resentment and rage.

This human girl had shaken his resolve for a moment, but he was himself again now and he couldn't allow her to get her hands on the Tesseract.

He looked back to where he had been fighting Thor just moments before. Loki had stabbed him, not to kill him but to get away from him. Thor was nowhere to be found now. He was probably on the streets, helping the other so-called heroes.

A surge of energy pulsed from the Tesseract, a signal meant to release more soldiers, more Chitauri.

The girl in front of him gasped and looked up. Loki glanced up as well and almost choked on his own breath. There were thousands of the Chitauri in the sky. Midgard had no chance of winning.

The girl looked at him then, anger in her eyes, and turned from him. She stepped through the hole she'd made in the forcefield and headed straight for the Tesseract.

Loki was almost tempted to let her try her hand at stopping all of this because he was fairly certain she didn't know how. It might even destroy her if she touched it, what with all the energy emanating from him. However, she was clearly gifted in what Midgardians considered magic, so she might just figure it out, might survive touching it.

Maybe he should just shove her off the balcony. It would solve this whole problem. Or he could just put her under his control. Where was his staff? He could definitely use someone like her on his side.

Arianna finally reached the Tesseract, got her hands on it. The only reason she'd reached it was because Loki was trying to figure out what exactly to do with her.

Loki had been right when he'd asked about her magic because in a way what she could do was magic. She could manipulate energy to a certain extent. All things were made of energy, and manipulating that was what made it possible for her to heal people.

Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. At first Arianna thought she was causing it, that the Tesseract was responding to her trying to shut it down, but then she remembered she had Thor on her side.

She looked up and saw several of the Chitauri fall from their place in the sky, dead. Thor had that part covered, at least.

Loki grabbed her again, and again she was pulled into his memories, his thoughts.

Loki was worried. If he failed to take over Midgard for Thanos, there would be more pain in store for him. No . . . If Thanos didn't get the Tesseract, Loki didn't even want to know what would happen.

"Let go!" Arianna screamed at Loki.

He didn't listen. He actually yanked her away from the Tesseract and pulled her out of the forcefield, which caused a slight shock to go through her.

"Let me go!"

"Really?" he asked and held her slightly over the edge of the balcony as if he were going to drop her.

"No! No, no, no!"

She grabbed onto his leather-clad arms and silently promised herself that if she went over, he would too. The fall might not kill him, but it would slow him down a bit.

She was able to see all the destruction below and she could feel from Loki that he hadn't wanted 'this' exactly. He'd needed the Chitauri more as back up in case the humans rebelled. He hadn't wanted what was to be his world destroyed.

"Help stop this, Loki," she said, knowing those four words could very well be enough for him to actually let her topple over the edge.

Instead, it made him jerk her forward.

"How dare you use my name! You need to remember your place. I am a god, you pathetic girl."

He shoved her away from him but not over the edge of the balcony. Her knees hit the cement and she caught herself, scratching the palm of her hands as she landed.

The relief of not being thrown off the balcony was short-lived, however, because the problem still remained: she was stuck there with a raving lunatic.

What she didn't know was that Natasha and Bruce had been fighting their way to Stark Tower. Natasha got there first, but Bruce was close behind and he had his game face on; he was the Hulk now, which could have been a whole other problem, but Bruce seemed to have control of the green beast that sometimes came forward. He at least seemed to know who the bad guy was.

Natasha helped Arianna off her knees and the Hulk shoved Loki through one of the windows of the penthouse. At least Loki wasn't near her anymore.

"The Tesseract," Natasha exclaimed. "Can you shut it down?"

"I think so. Keep Loki away from me."

"I think Bruce has the covered."

It was easy getting to the Tesseract since a hole was already in the forcefield. Her hand trembled as she touched the cube and instincts took over.

Energy meshed with energy and, as Arianna had thought before, it was good for her. The things she could do with that much energy, all the people she could help . . .

But no . . . she wasn't there to take in the Tesseract's energy. She was there to stop it. She just needed to find the off switch.

She focused all her energy on the complexity that was the cube's raw power, but there seemed to be no hole for her mind the slip into, none that was for stopping the portal in the sky.

She did find out that there was a key, though, and she needed it right away.

"Tash, look for Loki's staff. That's the key to cutting this thing off."

She broke her connection with the cube and stepped out of the forcefield. Someone grabbed her wrist and, looking down, she saw the science guy who had helped set up the Tesseract in the first place. She was pretty sure his name was Dr. Selvig. He had a small cut on his head, and he didn't seem to want to hurt her, so she lifted her free hand and lightly touched his head with her fingertips. The cut closed up before her eyes.

"The staff can change you. Be careful."

She nodded once and he let go.

Natasha ended up being the one to actually shut down the Tesseract. She'd found out that a nuke had been released to take out the enemy – SHIELD's decision – and that Tony had basically flown himself into the portal to make sure the bomb didn't go off in the streets of Manhattan. Arianna refused to close the portal without Tony coming back out first, so when Steve had called for them to close it Natasha had been the one to do it.

Thankfully, Tony actually made it back out. Everyone was now in what had been Tony Stark's penthouse. Now it was just a mess of a room, the whole place having been torn apart.

Bruce had long since changed back to his normal form. Clint had his bow and arrow fixed on Loki, though Arianna had no clue what an arrow would do to Loki. Would it even penetrate his skin? Thor was there with his hammer. Steve was there glaring. Tony was hurt but still standing. Natasha had Loki's staff held tightly in her hands.

Arianna didn't like the staff. More precisely, she didn't like the blue stone at the end of it. The stone made her feel weird, made her feel anxious. It made her feel like everything she was afraid of was hovering in the shadows to get her.

"Can we get rid of that thing? It's freaking me out."

"Second that," Clint said.

"We'll put it away until SHIELD gets here," Tony said.

"And what about the Tesseract?" Steve asked.

"I will take it to Asgard when Loki and I return," Thor said.

Loki couldn't speak or do much of anything, really, because Thor had put handcuffs on him and had put some form of muzzle on him.

"Before we get moving, may I heal you guys?"

"Tony's the worst. I think his ribs are bruised," Natasha said.

Tony was still in his suit, so that had to come off, but then she was able to heal him just fine. Well . . . after he got over the fact that she had to touch him to heal him, he was fine. She did feel some residual fear coming off of him, but considering what he'd been through she considered that to be normal.

The rest of them had bruises also, but Tony's had been the worst. Steve healed fast, as did Bruce, and Natasha and Clint hadn't taken any severe blows. Thor seemed to be completely fine.

She would save her energy for the civilians that would need healing. She knew there would be many.

"How is it you know magic?" Thor asked, unknowingly mirroring Loki's earlier question.

"I don't know exactly how it happened," Arianna admitted. "I just woke up one day years ago and was able to do it."

She looked at Loki and then back at Thor. "Is that muzzle thing really necessary?"

"It's what all Asgardian prisoners wear until they get to Odin."

"Yes, well, we're not in Asgard right now. Unless it's physically harmful for him to have the freedom to speak, could you please take it off? I understand the restraints, but the muzzle is a bit much. He's not an animal."

Everyone looked at Arianna as if she were crazy for standing up for Loki, but they didn't know what she knew. Having seen only seconds of what he'd been through, she knew being restrained was probably driving him crazy even if he wasn't showing it.

Loki lowered his eyes when she looked at him again. Thor didn't move from his spot. She guessed that meant he wasn't going to free Loki's mouth.

"Fine," she said. "I'll do it myself."

"Aries," Natasha said. "What're you doing?"

Arianna ignored her friend and began walking toward Loki, who was standing ram-rod straight and looking at her warily. It struck her then that because she knew 'magic' Loki might be more afraid of her than any of the others in the room – except for maybe Bruce and Thor.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said as she brought her hand to the metal contraption covering his mouth.

A click sounded through the air as she sent enough energy into the muzzle to unlock it, and she gently pulled it from his face. Bruises were already forming where the thing had lined his mouth. Arianna would have healed him, but she was scared to actually touch him. She didn't want to be pulled into his thoughts again.

A bright light filled the room then and it took a few seconds for Arianna to be able to see clearly again. Out on the balcony was a woman with long golden hair. She was wearing a floor-length light green gown.

"Mother," Thor said, stepping forward.

Loki tensed beside Arianna and she realized that this was Loki's mother too.

"Thor. Loki. My sons."

Arianna wondered if this woman was here to help or harm. If she was Thor and Loki's mother, then she was obviously Asgardian as well, which meant she was strong and resilient even if she did seem soft-spoken and friendly.

"Thor, I'm here to take you home. Loki is to stay here."

The woman looked at Loki now, sympathy all over her face.

"You are to face the same punishment Thor did not so many months ago. You are to remain here, mortal, without any powers. You can come back home once you learn your lesson."

Loki had to stay on Earth? Powerless and human? He would age and die if he didn't 'learn his lesson?'

"If I may," Arianna said, stepping forward. "Have you considered he may have had a reason for doing what he did?"

"Yes, of course," the woman said. "Be that as it may . . . his deeds cannot go unpunished."

"Agreed. I just thought it bore mentioning."

The woman shared a kind smile with Arianna.

"What is your name?"

"Arianna."

"Arianna." The smile was still on her face. "Beautiful name. Can I assume that since you were so quick to defend my son that no harm will come to him under your care?"

"What?" both Arianna and Natasha said.

"This man who stands before me . . . he is a darkened version of my son. You, however, have the ability to heal people . . ."

"Oh. Physically, yes."

It occurred to her that this woman must have been keeping watch over her or something because she hadn't been there to see Arianna heal anyone.

"There are some things I cannot heal."

Arianna didn't want to say what those things were, what she'd seen in Loki's memories. There weren't words to describe it even if she'd wanted to. It wasn't her secret to share, anyway. She wouldn't bring it up unless she had to.

"Loki is undeniably clever. I think he'll be himself in no time." This time she sent Loki a smile. "Now, I suggest everyone vacate the room if you want your vision intact."

Needless to say, the Avengers – minus Thor – got through the rubble blocking the exit in record time.