The car ride back to the house was silent, not even the radio was playing. The only sound was the sound of Loki's fingers thumping against the dashboard in a furious rhythm. He stared out of the passenger window. Not at anything in particular, but just so he couldn't see Angela.
There was a time where Loki was the one making fools out of everyone around him. He was known as the Trickster for a reason. Now it seemed that everyone around him was making him out to be the fool. First Odin, then Thor, and now Angela. He had been fooled by a Midgardian no less!
He said nothing to her as she drove the car. He could feel the worried glances she shot at him every once in a while, but still he said nothing.
'Why in the Allfather's name would she allow him to stay with her?' he wondered. Then the answer came to him in a flash. 'She means to turn me over to SHIELD.'
He had often marveled at her kindness. Loki wondered how in the Realms she could offer her home to a complete stranger - let alone one from another Realm - without any qualms. She gave him food, a warm bed, clothing, and entertainment without so much of a complaint. Yes, she teased him about it, but she never complained. She was wonderful company, as well. But like all things in his life, it was too good to be true.
A bitter taste filled his mouth. Of course she was kind. Of course she tried to befriend him. She was using him.
He should have known too. It was all in her file that he read on her laptop; An assassin and an undercover spy. Angela was a liar just as he was. Trained to manipulate and gain the upper hand in a situation. To gain intel, and bring it back to her employer.
This was all a ploy to get him to let his guard down.
'Just like I'm doing to her,' he realized. Wasn't this hypocritical of him? He was upset she lied, when he was lying himself?
He steeled himself against his thoughts. Yes, he was using Angela. But the difference was she got caught, and he wouldn't.
She pulled the car into the driveway, and he exited it before it fully stopped and slammed the door shut. He made his way inside the house and rounded on her the moment she shut the front door.
He didn't yell, but his voice was sharp and cold. Like a dagger. He spoke through clenched teeth. "What was your plan here? To gain my trust? Get me to lower my guard so you can take me back to your boss? Perhaps make yourself more powerful in the long run as I helped you with your powers? Then you toss me aside?!" he ranted quickly.
Her eyes widened, and she looked taken aback at his outburst. She placed her hands up defensively against his verbal attack. "Loki, that's not -"
But he wouldn't let her get a word in edgewise. "Well," he laughed bitterly, "you almost succeeded. I thought you a wonderful, kind soul. I trusted you," he sneered. He ripped his gaze away from the hurt look on her face, and he began to pace back and forth across the living room. Anger flowing through his veins.
Angela tried to speak once more, but was cut off again.
"So, when can I expect SHIELD to be here, hmm?" he asked bitterly, turning to face her again. A dark sneer set in his visage.
The hurt expression on her face slowly fell,as she prepared herself to answer him. He folded his arms behind his back, and braced himself for whatever was to come.
She stood unmoving, unblinking in the face of his anger now. "They're not coming, Loki. I'm not handing you over to them."
That… was not what he expected to hear. He expected that she would inform them and they would be here within the hour. Or the next couple of minutes.
No, she lied once before, she could do it again. It made no sense not to turn him in. Not after what he had done to Midgard against his battle with Thor. Surely she knew about that.
He needed to stay on his guard around her. His green eyes narrowed in suspicion, and he lifted a brow in question. "You're not?"
"I'm not handing you over," she repeated carefully. "If you would just listen to me -"
He scoffed loudly at the idea. He couldn't trust her. "To give you the chance to manipulate me?"
Anger slowly bled into her features, but she schooled them back into a neutral expression quickly. "I'm not trying to manipulate you."
"Like you weren't when you told me you only knew of me from your love of mythology?" he mocked with a laugh.
A look of resignation settled on her face. "Okay, so I misled you with that, I'll admit," she relented, "But I haven't lied about anything else."
His answer to that was a disbelieving stare.
"Oh don't act like I'm the only one in the wrong here!" she snapped.
Any retort he had died on his tongue. He had been caught.
"An accident? Really? You expect me to believe that? I know what you did to Earth! You leveled an entire town! And now I'm assigned clean up duty!" she ranted at him before taking a deep breath. "I swear to you, on my momma's life, I wasn't going to turn you over. Did the thought cross my mind once? Yes. But I decided against it. I just-"
"Just what?" he interrupted.
"Just wanted to help," she sighed out. "I'm not sure what exactly happened, but I know how it feels -"
"You know? You KNOW?" he roared, "What would you know of me? Of what I have been through?! How I was betrayed and lied to?" he stalked over to her bookshelf and grabbed the picture of her and her family off of it. "You have this! A perfect bloody family. How would you, a Midgardian, know what I have been through?"
She went over and snatched the photo from him, "I didn't always have this!" she snapped. "You're not the only person in the universe to be lied to and betrayed, Loki. Like I said, I don't know what you went through. But I've seen the look in your eyes before. Staring straight back at me in the mirror. Not that long ago, I -"
She paused, trying to collect her thoughts. Her eyes unfocused as the memories of her past resurfaced from where she buried them.
"Is this not your birth mother? Is this not your blood family?" he questioned harshly, breaking her out of her daze.
"Yes," Angela admitted slowly, "but she didn't raise me. Hell, I didn't meet them until I was seventeen."
The adrenaline that filled her at the start of this whole thing was quickly slipping away, and she took a seat at the far side of the couch. Loki watched every step she took, but still unwilling to stand down. He wasn't going to trust her easily, and she understood that. Loki's trust didn't come easily, nothing with him came easily.
With a breath she begins to explain, "The way my mom tells me is that one day my dad - my real dad - took me to go shopping with him when I was around two years old. Neither of us came home that day. My dad was killed, and I was taken."
Loki stopped short, astounded at what she just revealed to him. His defensive posture drops.
Angela's gaze drifted from him to the floor, unable to keep eye contact. Her memories were vivid, she could remember every detail. She continues softly, "The man who took me - Marshall Corbain was his name - was a horrible, horrible man. He raised me to believe he was my father. I was so young I didn't question it. I was still just a baby.
"And let's just say he was abusive. I wouldn't even say he raised me, it was more like he trained me. He trained me to be a weapon, not a person. I never had a childhood. I only had training, and the expectation to be perfect at everything. I finally got away when I was fifteen," she swallowed the lump that grew in her throat, "SHIELD helped me get rid of him, in exchange for something. But at the last moment I got scared and ran. I gave them what they wanted and when they - Director Fury - offered me a chance, I ran. I thought it was a trap. That's all I ever knew. So for two years I was on my own. I had never been on my own before. I was always given orders. I was so scared, and lost."
By this time she had curled into herself, her knees pressed against her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Her voice wasn't very loud, but it somehow felt louder than when she had her voice raised earlier.
"At first I wanted nothing of the life I had before," she resumed her story when he says nothing. "But I found myself on the streets soon enough. I had to beg for food and scraps. It starts to fuck with you, you know? I went to homeless shelters, but they weren't very helpful. I refused to go to an orphanage, I was scared of them putting me with someone like Marshall. I tried to get a job, but without an address it was basically impossible. I couldn't stand not eating anymore, so I fell back into what I knew. And I hated myself. But I never wanted to be hungry and cold again, so I continued. And doing hits paid good money. And honestly, at the time, I truly believed that's all I would ever be good at.
"I made a name for myself. Soon enough SHIELD came back, but for me this time. And this time when Fury offered, I accepted. It was that, or prison for everything I had done. And I deserved prison, but I decided to go with them. And that was the best decision of my life. After a few months, they found my mom. Turns out she never gave up hope I was still alive and out there somewhere. SHIELD put me through college, and I got to turn things around."
Angela finally looked back up at him, unshed tears in her eyes. That stupid ache in his chest that had appeared the night of her nightmares returned. "All I wanted was to help you do the same, Loki. Or help you in any way I could. I was never going to turn you in or anything like that," she whispered.
The anger that he felt earlier had left him completely, and left behind in its wake was a deep feeling of shock. Shock, and remorse. She had been right, she did know what he had been through. Almost exactly what he had been through. And he treated her as if she was inferior, and unable to even comprehend the pain he had gone through.
He slowly made his way over, sitting next to her. Silence had filled the space between them as he contemplated what to say. What did one say to that?
He would have to apologize. Apologizing never came easy to him, usually he would rather die than to admit he was the one wrong, but she was owed at least that.
"I believe you," he began, "And I am terribly sorry, Angela. You may be Midgardian, but that does not exclude you from suffering as I have. It seems we're more similar than I previously believed."
She shifts slightly to look up at him. "If you don't mind me asking, what happened? I wasn't assigned to this until recently, I only know about your attack on Puente and your brother."
He flinched slightly. "He's not my brother."
"I don't understand. I was told that you two were brothers."
Telling her what had happened before his fall had never been a part of his plan. But after everything she had shared, she might be the only one to understand him.
With a heavy sigh he began to speak, "We were raised together by Odin and Frigga. Both of us were led to believe that we were blood kin. And that we both were born to be king. But growing up, I lived in Thor's shadow. Odin always preferred him to me. All of Asgard preferred him. He was the perfect warrior, the perfect golden prince. I used my seidr instead of brute strength. And so they called me the Dark Prince.
"I knew Odin would choose Thor as king. But Thor wouldn't have made a good king. He was arrogant, impulsive, reckless; more apt to destroy everything in his path in the name of glory rather than solve the problem. I had just wanted to show Odin what a mistake it would be to make Thor king. I didn't want the throne. I just wanted to show that Thor wasn't as perfect as everyone made him seem. That I too was worthy of the throne, that I was Thor's equal. So, I set up a plan to interfere on Thor's coronation day."
"What did you do?" Angela asked, her eyes alight with curiosity.
"There are ways going to and from Asgard. They are long forgotten, but I learned of them during my research one day. I led one of Asgard's greatest enemies, The Frost Giants, to one of the passages. I knew they would take the bait; Asgard and Jotunheim despised one another. The war that waged between us has been spoken of often. A cautionary tale, one told to children to tell them how terrifying Frost Giants are. We are told how monstrous they are, and how brave Asgard was for defeating them and protecting Midgard. I knew the Frost Giants wouldn't be able to do much against Asgard, they only breached Odin's Vault. But it was enough for Thor to do exactly what I knew he would. He wanted to go attack the Frost Giants.
"I ordered a guard to inform Odin of Thor's plan to attack Jotunheim. I didn't want anyone to be harmed. Our small group of five was no real threat to the entire Jotunheim army. So, having Odin come would save us. In the end... it didn't matter. When we arrived, one Frost Giant touched Volstagg's arm, giving him frostbite instantaneously. However, when one grabbed me, I wasn't harmed at all. My arm began to turn blue, the same shade as the Frost Giant I was fighting."
Angela gasped sympathetically at the revelation. He paused, emotions welling up within him. He closed his eyes, only to open them when he felt her lay her hand on his shoulder. He gazed over at her, she had shifted closer to him, offering him comfort.
He continued, "Odin came and saved us all, just as I planned. But what I did not plan for was when we returned to Asgard, he banished Thor. How was I to know he would banish him? Thor had hardly ever suffered any punishment when we were growing up. Not as I had. Odin punished me for every singular thing I did wrong, but never Thor. And for Odin to banish him? I never imagined Odin would go to such an extreme. Nor did I plan on finding out that I was not Odinson. I was Laufey's son, abandoned during the war; left to die. Odin took me in, and raised me so I could claim Jotunheim's throne, not Asgard's. It was no wonder I was never considered, no wonder I was treated the way I was. He could never have a Frost Giant on the throne. A monster could never be King of Asgard.
"Odin fell into the Odinsleep during our confrontation, which left me the only one to be king. I tried everything in my power to prove I was worthy. I killed Laufey, I could have ended the war with Jotunheim. But in the end it wasn't enough for Odin. In the end, he still preferred Thor. The Bifrost broke, and Thor and I almost fell. Odin awoke and tried to catch us. But I was unable to hang on… and I fell." he finished softly, quietly.
He could remember clearly Odin's words as he was dangling on the precipice of the Bifrost. 'No, Loki.' He was never enough, even then.
It was silent for a moment once again. They each took in what was just told. It was Angela who broke the silence this time. "You didn't fall though, did you?"
Loki lifted his head from his gaze on the floor to look over at her; startled that she quickly saw through his words. "What?"
The tears in her eyes had returned. They did not fall, but they were building up at the corners. "You didn't fall, you let go."
"And what makes you say that?" His voice was hard, defensive.
Now the tears did fall, "Because that's how Fury found me. On the roof of a skyscraper, ready to let go of it all. I know exactly what you mean."
Oh. His face dropped. "Yes, I let go. And I didn't plan on surviving the fall, but here I am."
If he would have said that earlier, it would have been spoken in a bitter tone. But now? Now he was enjoying his time with Angela. For the first time in a long time, he felt connected with someone other than his family.
She may be the only person in the Realms that he had by his side.
Angela squeezed his shoulder and gave him a soft smile that made his heart flutter in his chest.
"For what it's worth Loki. I'm glad you're here."
"As am I, darling."