CHAPTER ONE
"Request status update from Coulson. Over."
The walkie-talkie crackled noisily.
Fury scowled. "Agent Coulson, this is Fury requesting an update on the status of the crash site. Please respond. Over."
A man's voice broke through on the other end, dampened by static. "I read you, Director Fury. This is Coulson. Over."
"Have you identified the unidentified falling object? Over."
"Affirmative. UFO appears to be human. Tall white male, between twenty and thirty years of age, with a small build and black hair. The subject is wearing armor and a helmet which both appear to be made of the same material as those of the man known as Thor. Subject was tentatively identified by Dr. Selvig as Loki. Over."
"Roger that. What is the condition of the subject known as Loki? Over."
"Currently unconscious, sir. The medical staff recommend immediate air transport to a detainment center with medical facilities. Shall I give the order for them to do so? Over."
Fury growled under his breath. "Negative. If Selvig's identification of the subject is correct, then you have a very dangerous man on your hands. Bring him in to headquarters. I'll put the building on lockdown and have a maximum security cell available. Over."
The walkie-talkie hissed for a moment before Coulson answered. "Fury, if we don't get this guy medical attention in the next hour, there might not be much left to interrogate." He didn't bother saying 'over.' His omission did not go un-noticed by Fury.
"Agent Coulson," Fury said clearly, "Doctor Selvig and his colleagues reported seeing Thor hit by a large vehicle at fifty miles an hour, and get back up again moments later. Whatever his injury is, by the time you get back to headquarters he'll be healed and dangerous. Over."
"He's not injured, sir. Over."
Fury's eye widened. "Not injured? You said he was unconscious. Over."
"He is, sir. Completely unresponsive to external stimuli. But he's not injured. The subject is suffering from severe frostbite. His body temperature's critically low and he's turning blue. Over."
Fury rubbed his hands across his face wearily.
"We're awaiting your orders. Over."
Fury sighed. "Call in an airlift. Take him to the nearest SHIELD base with medical facilities and inform me when you arrive. Over."
"Roger that, sir. Over and out."
Fury grimaced. "Why do I have the feeling I'm going to regret this?" he muttered darkly.
Something was humming.
Loki screwed his face up; perhaps he hoped that by closing his eyes hard enough, the noise would stop or get quieter. More likely, he couldn't think of anything else to do over the dull ache that made his entire body seem to be made of jelly. Either way, the noise was infernal and it had no business disturbing his rest. He decided that he was going to make his protest heard to whoever was making the humming noise. However, the moment his lips started moving, he realized that he could barely move his mouth much less his tongue and throat to produce anything remotely resembling normal speech.
"Mmmugh…Uhhhmmmnnn." He started slightly. He didn't know that voice—that strangled, muffled moan of protest that got lost somewhere between a whimper and a growl. The voice was pathetic. The voice was his. He was pathetic.
An inferno brushed across his forehead like a feather.
"He's regaining some consciousness." A faraway woman, her voice warped and distended by echoes as though her mouth was a great marble hall too vast for sound to traverse properly. "Should I give him more sedative?"
"It won't make any difference." A man with a voice that struck an odd chord in his memory. "I watched Thor drink enough—"
Loki lost the sound of the man's voice. He hissed as a dagger of pain twisted in his chest.
The man didn't seem to notice. Loki was vaguely aware of the man's voice continuing on, the words drifting in and out of his awareness. "—an elephant—not even staggering on the way out—drugs won't do any—need a whole pharmacy to—"
He stopped listening. The man's commentary wasn't worth the effort it took to hear. Far simpler to just drown out the man's voice, and the continual humming noise with it.
The inferno pried his eyelids apart. He flinched as a bright light tattooed itself upon his eyes; a blue blur danced across his vision as he was allowed to shut his eyes.
The woman was speaking again. Loki perked his ears up. Unlike the man, the information she provided might prove worth the effort of listening.
"—dilated." The woman paused. "This doesn't make any sense." A disc of metal pressed on his chest. He realized that some of his armor had been removed. "This man shouldn't be alive. Not at the temperatures we were reading."
"How are his vitals?"
"They're not normal, but they're stable. And apart from the temperature they're pretty consistent with what we got off of Thor."
Loki's hearing was suddenly drowned in a flood of sound like a wave crashing upon a beach. I know that name. Thor.
Odin. All at once his memory came back, every ridge, every agonizing detail of his memory sharpened to a dagger's point.
"You're my brother, and my friend. Sometimes I may be envious, but never doubt that I love you."
"You're my son... I wanted only to protect you from the truth..."
"What? Because I-I-I am the monster that parents tell their children about at night?"
"You could never have a Frost Giant sitting on the throne of Asgard!"
"You're a good son. And you mustn't lose hope."
"I never wanted the throne! I only ever wanted to be your equal!"
"No, Loki."
His body trembled but he felt detached, as though his consciousness were floating overhead, pulling the frail strings of a puppet. He heard himself scream. But he couldn't feel a thing.
"Mayday! Mayday! Please respond!"
Fury crossed the room in three steps, snapping up the phone.
"This is Fury. What is your emergency?"
"It's the plane, sir. Something's gone wrong…we're having numerous equipment failures. We've had three power surges in the last three minutes. Request permission to land immediately."
"Negative," Fury said firmly. "ETA is less than two minutes away. Momentum alone could practically keep you aloft for that long. Maintain course."
He heard warning sirens going off on the other end of the line. "We've got sparks flying all over the place in here and we're losing altitude. Pilots recommend immediate landing." A pause as Coulson hissed in pain. "And based on the second-degree burn to the leg I just suffered, I'm inclined to agree with them."
Fury grimaced. "Alright," he muttered. "Abort mission. What is your current location? I'll send another plane after you."
There was a long pause before Coulson replied. "We've lost our GPS system."
Fury groaned and closed his eye. "Do you see any landmarks that could help identify your approximate location?"
"Hang on. I'll find a window."
"Sir! The landing gear is gone."
Fury's eye shot open and widened in alarm. "What's that I'm hearing about landing gear? Coulson?" He heard the sound of Coulson setting the phone down on a table. "Damn it." He gritted his teeth and pressed his ear to the phone to try to hear what was happening on the plane.
"It can't be broken." Coulson's voice. "How could the landing gear fail? It's mechanical. All of our other failures have been the result of electric malfunctions."
"The landing gear is in perfect condition, sir. But we can't lower it. Perfect condition or not, it's useless unless we can lower the gear."
"Damn it."
"Coulson?" Fury barked.
He heard the other phone being picked up. "The landing gear's failed, sir. We're going to have to crash land as safely as we can."
Loki growled at the inferno that tried to push him back onto the gurney as he struggled to stand. He would not be tied down anymore. He would not be restrained, he would not be weak. He would stand up on his own and show everyone what he was capable of.
"Sir, you need to lie down right now! This plane is going to crash, if you don't let us secure you onto this gurney right now, you are going to die."
Loki opened his eyes. The inferno was not a fire, but a woman—the woman who had been speaking earlier, he assumed. Her hands may as well have been flames, the way they burned his icy skin. He shot out of the bed with a snarl and lunged at the woman, closing his hands around her neck. She let out a little squeak of terror. He could almost make out his own reflection in the woman's huge, shiny eyes as they stared back at him, frozen with fear.
"And what makes you think I want to live?" he asked in a low whisper.
The woman sobbed wordlessly, shaking her head at Loki mutely as though hoping he would read her mind and understand her pleas. He obliged.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God, don't hurt me…somebody help me…I don't want to die like this…not choked to death…not strangled by a madman…"
Loki smirked. He retreated from her mind. "Madman, am I?" he murmured.
The woman's eyes widened. He didn't have to read her mind to know what she was thinking now, doubtless wondering how he could have known what she was thinking, interspersed with her "oh God" mantra of terror. Pathetic. He almost considered killing her for a moment. But he remembered himself quickly: no need for un-necessary bloodshed. Death was messy; it was hard to explain away.
A blur in the woman's memory, on the other hand...in light of the accident, nobody would question her amnesia for a second. Head injury. Post-traumatic shock. The mortal doctors could probably fill a book with diagnoses that could feasibly explain her lapse of memory.
Loki pressed his fingers to the woman's temple. Her eyes glazed over. "You will forget me," he commanded her. "You will forget my face. You will forget what has just transpired, and everything that will transpire until I go away."
"Yes," she replied sleepily.
"Good girl." He raised an eyebrow at her. "Now why don't you go see what you can do about some head trauma?"
The woman nodded and shuffled out of the chamber into the next section of the plane, her eyes still foggy and glazed. Mortal fool.
The moment she left, he felt strangely hollow. He knew that the plane was crashing. In a strange way, he almost wished the crash would kill him. He had nothing to live for. He had lost everything, long before he let go of the staff and went plummeting through lost crevasses of the Bifrost that no one was meant to explore. But he had lived through that fall to Midgard somehow, and he knew that he would live through this. It would take more than a plane crash to kill a son of Odin.
No…not Odin. He was not Odin's son. He did not belong in Asgard. And he never would. Nor would he find a home in Jotunheim—he may have been born of Laufey, but he felt no love for the beast, no remorse for killing him. He felt more guilt when he went hunting in the forests of Asgard.
He was adrift. Welcome nowhere, hated everywhere. Fatherless. Born of hate and fear and secrets. The world had no place for him.
His heart pounded with rage. He could feel his skin begin to thaw, regaining its usual white tone. He almost sensed his nerves sizzling with the heat of his fury, the ice turning to steam before it had a chance to melt. He glowered out the window down at the earth beneath the plane.
If I can't find a place in their realm, then I'll make a place in this one.
And then his senses were enveloped in the scream of twisting metal and breaking glass.
AN: Read and review.
Also, I've had a lot of questions about this story, so I'll try to answer them all here. No, this story is not related to the Thrice Blood trilogy; it is a completely separate fic. No, this is not a LokixDarcy fic. Yes, this is an evil!Loki fic. Yes, I will finish writing "Kismet."