A/N: Thank you xbecbebex and MarieBloom14 for your responses to the last chapter!

Speaking of reviews, have y'all been seeing that "Emerald Nuts" commercial on YouTube? Where the marketing department gets all excited and decides to make a review of "yes good" their new tagline? Now I crack up every time I see short reviews because I think of that commercial. Hehe!

Welcome to the next chapter! Which I am posting instead of doing the shit I'm supposed to be doing… considering that I graduate in 27 days, 22 hours, 47 minutes and 59 seconds… I'm weirdly not stressed right now, because my grades are good and in order to fail anything and not graduate I would actually have to screw up BIG TIME, basically I'd have to do it on purpose, so I'm just kind of skating on through… I figured out a basic plan for how to look for jobs, so that's cool. I'm calm. And yet, my body is breaking out in all kinds of extreme stress symptoms—acne, hives, canker sores, neck stiffness that surprised the heck out of my chiropractor this morning… I dunno what's wrong with me. I feel fine mentally, but my body seems to think I'm having the biggest freak out of my life. Weird.

Of course, my day isn't half as bad as poor, dear Loki's is right about now, now is it?

Rescue

"Why do you continue to resist, little godling?" a deep, deceptively soothing voice murmured in his ear. Loki's entire body was rigid, his teeth clenched, caging his tongue and holding in every peep of noise. But he couldn't stop the tears from flowing down his face. "There is no escape… no one is coming to save you… they rejected you, cast you out, abandoned you…" A huge gauntleted hand gripped his jaw, turning his head and forcing him to look in a dirty, cracked mirror. He surveyed his reflection with a sort of detached horror. His blue skin was patched calico with vibrant indigo burns, and he was spattered with nearly black blood.

"You're a monster," the voice mused almost tenderly. "A broken little monster—with no hope of rescue. Just… this." Loki bit down on his tongue as a glowing hot iron was pressed into his stomach. "Just endless pain and torment, for the rest of your days, unless you open up that nimble little mind of yours, and let. Me. In…"

Loki came back to reality in stilted waves, the sound of his memory fading into the sounds of the world around him like a radio leaving the range for one station and blending disjointedly into the next.

"We deed do ged oud ob the oben," the agent whose nose he'd broken announced, and he heard the other two shuffling around, one of them climbing out, most likely to get in the driver's seat. This was still pretty bad… he did not want to get as far as a secluded area, but he'd given up the element of surprise in a fit of temper, and now his body was thoroughly trounced, and moving quickly would be much more challenging.

He couched wetly, spitting out a mouthful of blood and feeling the tiniest spark of triumph that it still appeared bright red. So he wasn't too far gone yet; the illusion of human appearance still lingered around him.

Around him?

He'd never thought deeply about it—once he became aware of the spell and that he was maintaining it consciously, he'd just continued to maintain it. He didn't want to be a monster. But right about now, a little monstrosity was fitting.

And he had enough magic to maintain an illusion.

That meant he had enough magic to make an illusion—if he took it off.

Loki inhaled, steeling himself. He was hurt and exhausted, and he'd never done this before; he'd removed the illusion once or twice, but never taken it off, changed it around and moved it. He waited until the man with the broken nose had taken the seat with his back to the driver, and Jackson had taken his place standing over him. Through lidded eyes, he watched the gun strapped to the standing agent's thigh, waiting for the little shifts of posture that brought it closer to him.

Then with another deep breath, he acted.

He rolled to the middle of the van, like he was trying to get up again, then as the one with the broken nose stood, he forced the illusion away from himself with an almighty heave and flung it in front of the car, in the shape of what he thought might have been the man's dead sister—if not, it was a female SHIELD agent, he was sure of it.

As he predicted, the driver slammed on the brakes, throwing the other two off balance and slamming them forward. Loki snatched the gun out of Jackson's thigh holster, his free hand wrapped in a seatbelt-type strap laying across the floor, which he used to yank himself in the opposite direction from the falling agents—towards the back door.

He got the latch open and barreled out as they scrambled to their feet, and took the second to slam the doors closed on them before pelting off to the left of the roadway. He'd been right; they were outside the city, driving along a gravel road bordered by farmland on one side and woodland on the other. Not wanting to be an easy target, he opted to run into the woods. His lungs were in agony, and his stomach felt like it was one huge, throbbing bruise, which extended over his sides, and a bit up his chest. His face was a mottled mess, he knew, and the arm he'd dragged himself with was dislocated at the shoulder.

And he was deep, Jotun blue, having exhausted his meagre magic for the time being with that trick.

They were hot on his heels in moments, and he zig-zagged through the trees, looking for somewhere he could hide with the gun, and shoot at them with some protection from them shooting back. He knew he didn't have it in him to run for long, but he couldn't settle on just hiding behind a tree—he needed to find better cover before he lost momentum or they caught up. He thanked the Norns that humans had such short legs, but he thought he also probably had a broken rib or two, and his injuries were badly hampering him.

Finally he found a place where two trees grew close together, their low-hanging branches creating a dark hollow. With his skin dark blue and the cool tones of dusk in the air, the shadows should camouflage him excellently; he ducked in, took a painful gulp of air, then clapped a hand over his mouth to hold in his pants as the agents caught up to him a moment later. He trained the gun on one of them, waiting for them to notice him, not wanting to give away his position just in case they missed him.

"Shit!" one of them hissed.

"Kowalski, go left!" Jackson ordered, running off to his right. "Pembroke, straight ahead. Holler if you catch sight of him. Big blue freak!"

It took everything in Loki not to pull the trigger as anger boiled deep in his belly again, but self-preservation won out, and he watched the agents split up and run off in three different directions. Once the sound of their footsteps faded, he dropped his hand, finally gasping for precious oxygen and trying not to sob as the movement aggravated his ribs. He glanced down at his hand, which was quickly lightening back to its facetious Caucasian tone.

Then, knowing he didn't have much time before they realized their mistake, and knowing that he stuck out in the gloom with his fair skin, he crept out from his shelter and headed back towards the road as quickly as he could. The last thing they'd expect would be for him to immediately return to the van, and if they'd been in a big enough hurry, they might not have taken the keys out of the ignition. At least he could retrieve his phone from where he'd seen it in the cup holder and call the authorities. But as soon as he reached the van, headlights blazed into view, and three cars had screeched to a halt around him. He hid the gun casually behind his leg, squinting into the harsh light.

Doors slammed open, and a familiar silhouette was running towards him.

"Oh my god," Darcy exclaimed. "What happened?" Loki's eyes adjusted and he discerned Coulson and Ward's shapes as well.

"SHIELD has some bad apples," he wheezed. "Wait, how did you find me?" How long had he been missing? He didn't think it was more than an hour…

"I find-my-lost-iPhone'd your phone after Agent C. called and asked if you made it back," she responded, eyes roving over him, taking in his injuries. She looked concerned; her face was unnaturally pale, and she'd even left the house without a hat. "Are you okay? What the hell happened to you?"

"We scuffled," he responded with a painful shrug. It was humiliating to admit that three puny humans had gotten the jump on him and been able to hurt him so severely.

"There he—oh, shi—" Jackson's cry of triumph turned into an exclamation of horror when he took in the people surrounding Loki.

"Agents Jackson, Kowalski and Pembroke," Coulson announced, "you are hereby under arrest for assault, battery and kidnapping." SHIELD agents moved forward to take the three men into custody as the exited the forest.

"And not even that clever of a kidnapping," Loki quipped, unable to help himself. Jackson lunged forward in anger, and then dropped shaking to the gravel-covered ground as Darcy instinctively Tased him. Although Loki resented the need to be rescued and avenged like some distressing damsel, he couldn't help but appreciate the justice of it.

Of course, he reasoned, his mood darkening, if justice was really to be served, then he probably deserved everything they gave him and more. Of course, he'd been forced to do everything he did, and he barely even remembered it, but that didn't make their loved ones any less dead. And then… there was the fact that he knew his mind was unbreachable. Someone couldn't have just broken in and taken him out for a spin. He didn't know how—didn't know what tortures they'd had to subject him to—but he knew that at some point, he must've consented. So… was all that blood on his hands?

He truly didn't know.

And he didn't much like not knowing.

-0-

"Take it easy for a couple of days—no lifting or running," the little English Dr. Simmons instructed him calmly as the bandaged the last of his bleeding wounds.

"And remember, tell people you were mugged and got your wallet stolen," Ward added. "We created a 911 transcript for public records if anybody decides to check up on it.

"Understood," Loki responded tonelessly. The day had lengthened into a week at least, and it wasn't even ten o'clock at night yet. First the drama with Darcy and Jeff to which he'd been privy, then a long day of explaining to Coulson and his team how to build what Coulson's favorite engineer kept refereeing to as "space death rays." Then he'd been kidnapped, beaten, escaped, rescued, debriefed, and had Simmons patch him up. He desperately wanted to return to the apartment and pass out for twelve hours at least. Mercifully, Darcy seemed to have the same idea, because as soon as he struggled to her feet, she was at his side, ducking under his uninjured arm to support him.

"C'mon," she said, taking some of his weight. "Your car is still in the lot. Let's go."

However, at that moment thunder cracked so loudly outside that they could hear it even in the basement SHIELD base.

"Tell me you did not contact Thor," Loki hissed, glaring daggers at Coulson.

"I contacted Thor," Coulson responded flatly.

"Why?" he demanded tersely. Darcy leaned into him, helping him sit back down on Simmons's examination table.

"Your location is a matter of global security," Coulson explained. "We didn't know if you'd been kidnapped, bolted, run across more alien individuals, or something else entirely. I contacted Thor in case we needed help either rescuing you or apprehending you."

The lights flickered as the storm worsened overhead, then the thunder stopped, leaving only the white noise of pelting rain.

"Well, that was premature of you on all counts," he sighed moodily as loud, rushing footsteps approached and the door flew open, banging loudly against the wall.

"Brother!" Thor exclaimed, striding in and dropping Mjolnir and his sodden cape on a chair. "What has befallen you? Are you well?"

"Talk to Coulson—he's the one who called you," Loki grumbled.

"Hey," Darcy muttered. "Be nice—he really freaked out."

"He wouldn't have freaked out if no one had called him!" Loki muttered back, still glaring at Coulson out of the corner of his eyes. The agent stood calmly, Loki's foul mood rolling off him like rain off a windshield.

"What has happened?" Thor demanded, reaching him and holding up a huge hand as if to touch his younger brother's bruised and swollen face.

"Don't touch them, oaf!" he reprimanded, jerking back, and Thor looked ashamed of himself and dropped his hand. "There was a little scuffle," Loki sighed. "It's all been sorted, nothing further to discuss. These will have healed by the end of the week. You can go back to your lady friend now." He looked for Darcy to help extract him and get to the car, but she'd moved towards the door, following Simmons and Coulson as they all slipped out to give the two demigods some privacy.

'Traitor,' Loki thought venomously at her, narrowing his eyes.

"Brother," Thor started again, and if looks could kill, he would have been dead on the floor. He sighed. "Loki," he amended, sitting down on the examination table beside him. "I am worried for you."

"I'm not going to destroy your beloved earth," Loki snapped. "SHIELD was right in assuming that I cannot afford to make an enemy of the only planet willing to shelter me."

"I am worried for you," Thor repeated emphatically, stressing the last word and placing his hands—gently, Loki noticed—on the slighter man's shoulders. "Living among so many who might consider themselves your enemies, without your magic… I wish you had stayed nearer me and Jane."

"That would somewhat defeat the purpose of anonymity," Loki reminded him. "You're not exactly subtle." Thunder rumbled again, and he raised an eyebrow—a movement which hurt more than he expected, and he had to carefully suppress a resulting groan of pain. "Besides, I can handle myself."

"I know," Thor admitted miserably. "Nevertheless, I still desire to protect you, broth—" he sighed in frustration as the word kept escaping his mouth. Loki remained silent, having nothing to say that was important enough to bear the increased pain in his ribs.

"You were this way even in our youth," Thor rumbled quietly. "Always running off on your own, never letting me keep you safe. Why? I understand… I know you consider us enemies now," he added haltingly, "but… why then?" Loki exhaled slowly, staring determinedly at the hem of Thor's cape, which trailed off of the chair and onto the floor. Thor released him and turned to face forward again.

"Because," Loki responded evenly, "I did not want anyone to be able to say that I needed protecting. I was already looked down upon and despised for how I looked, how I acted, my magic… I refused—and still refuse—to give them one more thing for which to ridicule me." He expected Thor to defend his friends and their neighbors, but when he glanced to the side, he saw that Thor was hanging his head, hands intertwined limply in his lap.

The defeated aura was an unfamiliar look on him. Ordinarily, he would have either blustered about how Loki was overreacting, or, if he'd taken the smaller man's side, raged about how he was going to solve the problem by hitting people with Mjolnir until they agreed with him. But Thor was different now, Loki realized belatedly. He was… older? More perceptive? He wasn't sure how to define it—and wasn't totally certain he liked it.

He remembered that last terrible day on Asgard, when Thor returned just as he'd finally killed Laufey and was about to destroy Jotunheim—wipe from existence the monsters like him because it seemed somehow preferable to simply destroying himself for being one. He remembered how Thor had tried so uncharacteristically to reason with him, how he'd refused to fight back even when Loki had struck him over and over. It had thrown him, in the midst of his mad spiral of despair and violence, that the image he had of the big, unworthy brute somehow didn't fit the familiar face standing before him. He'd pushed and pushed, finally threatening Jane, just to force Thor back into being the way he remembered him.

Because if he were to acknowledge that Thor had changed, then he would have to look at himself next; would have to see the monster staring back at him in the mirror.

But… Thor had changed. He remembered vaguely Thor begging him several times to stop the madness of his invasion before it was too late—trying desperately to reason with him, genuinely not wanting to use violence, trying to save him even when he was—as far as they knew—the one everyone else needed protection from. It was unfortunate for the both of them that he could not have stopped if he'd wanted to, at that point.

He breathed out a quiet laugh.

"Ironic, is it not?" he murmured. "My plan to supplant you because you were unfit for the throne made you fit for the throne. I suppose you'll actually make a decent king now."

"Oh, Brother," Thor moaned, turning to face him again, "I would relinquish the throne and all of my titles in a heartbeat to have you back!" Loki froze at the sudden, bald-faced admission. Thor was an open, honest person, incapable of any real deception, so he had no doubt that the bigger man spoke the truth. And upon closer inspection, Thor's blue eyes were watering heavily, tears threatening to spill over onto his miserable face.

For once in his life, Loki was speechless.

A/N: Some brother bonding for y'all! And Loki being awesome and rescuing himself! I can appreciate seeing him written as someone who needs rescuing, even though often he has trouble asking for it or accepting it, but I think (given the backstory I've used for this fic, and the fact that I'm trying to stay as close to canon as possible) it makes more sense for him to be significantly more capable than how he's often portrayed.

But! His wall is cracking… and all that hell is starting to leak into his brain… (Small Supernatural reference because this chapter also doesn't have Easter Eggs—still on the serious side.)

**Please review!**

Chapter 10: Her

"You're being too nice," Darcy quipped. "Be a dick once or twice—everyone does it. It's not like SHIELD's going to arrest you for unloading an unwanted girlfriend."

"Last time I dropped the façade and 'was a dick,'" he returned dryly, "I almost committed genocide—and practically killed Thor. I believe you were there for that one."

"Moderation!" Darcy exclaimed, flinging a pillow at him, which he caught. "Jeez, come on, a little discernment here. You won't magically turn into a world-destroying douche bag just because you need some personal space. There's a difference."