Title: A Lane to the Land of the Dead chapter 6/14
Pairing/Characters: Teamfic. No Pairings. Loki, Thor, Avengers, Original Male Character. Brief non graphic mention of OMC/OMC
Tags: Gore, violence, strong language, angst, self harm, torture.
Note: There is no major character death in this fic.
Summary: 5th part of the Teamwork series, but this is written like a standalone fic, so if you haven't read the others you will still be able to understand it.
Loki has been an Avenger for two years, but as a new threat pushes him away from the team, they begin wonder just how much they can trust him.
~0~
Chapter 6
~0~
Loki was woken from a strange dream by an odd sound and as he opened his eyes an overpowering stench made him grimace.
He turned on the bedside lamp and looked around, but the room appeared to empty. The smell was still lingering in the air, and it reminded him oddly of the time they had held a barbeque on the roof, Tony had drunkenly insisted on being in control of it and burnt everything.
The sound came again, a gentle moan and raspy breaths. Loki ripped back the sheets and moved to the end of the bed, towards the source of the noise.
"Father," a voice came from the near darkness.
"William," Loki gasped as he saw his son on the floor, his skin burnt black, with deep cracks crossing its surface where it had split open. "W-what happened to you?"
"I'll be all right, just give me a moment," William replied, as Loki quickly moved down from the bed and pulled him into his arms.
In the half light Loki watched as the charred flesh healed itself quickly, and the missing fingers on his damaged right hand began grow back. He swallowed, forcing down the bile that had been crawling up his throat, and said, "Your healing skill is remarkable."
"My greatest gift," William replied, as the skin on his face began to grow and hair sprouted from his new scalp, "And my curse."
"Did someone do this to you?" Loki asked sternly. "Tell me and I will make them pay for what they have done."
"A man. I-I can't shapeshift so I used a glamour to make myself look like a woman to him, but I feel asleep and it failed," he replied, and then quietly added, "He was terribly angry when he saw me."
"I will gut him," Loki growled.
"He's already dead," William whispered. "Please don't be angry with me."
"I'm not angry with you in the slightest," Loki replied, pulling a blanket from the bed and wrapping it around his son's fully healed and naked body. William closed his eyes, curled himself around Loki, and he had to ask, "Why did you go with him? Did he force you?"
"No," William replied. "I just wanted someone to hold me. Someone to love me."
"You do not need to find those things in the arms of a stranger."
"Really?" William asked, opening his eyes. "This is the first time you've done anything other than pat me on the back."
"I'm sorry if I have offended you," Loki said as he brushed a tear away from Williams's cheek, "but you must understand that this is very strange for me, to discover I have a son, one I haven't even given birth to yet or watched grow. I found it difficult at first, to know how I should feel, but you-"
"You don't love me do you?" William asked.
Loki opened and closed his mouth, struggling to find the words that would convey exactly how he felt, but he didn't know how he felt. Did he love the boy like a parent should? No, but that didn't mean he didn't care, but he knew if he was honest William would likely devastated.
"I knew it. I knew you didn't love me," William said, as he pushed Loki's hand away and sat up.
"I do, it's just that-"
"I thought it would be better here," William rambled, as he climbed to his feet. "I thought it would make everything go away, but it hasn't."
"Where are you going?" Loki asked. "I forbid you to leave the tower again without me."
"Oh," William said sarcastically. "So now you want to be my father? Now you want to set rules and tell me what time to go to bed?"
"You could have been killed out there!"
"And that's the problem," William hissed as the air shimmered around him and he was suddenly clothed in a pair of simple black trousers and a T Shirt. "I can't die."
Loki looked up at him, briefly stunned at the second display of magical powers that his son had kept hidden, and then quietly replied, "You may think yourself immortal, but everything has an end."
"Not me, I'll be the only survivor of Ragnarok if this continues," William laughed, and Loki stared at him with a look of confusion on his face. "I die a mortal death, but I always come back. My healing power knows no limits, and believe me it has been tested."
"Tested? Who would dare to lay a hand on my child?" Loki growled, as he stood up.
William looked away for a moment, lost in thought, and whispered, "Thanos."
"What?" Loki gasped. He moved across the room and took William by the shoulders. "You tell me what he did to you. You tell me the truth, now!"
"He took me. He wanted you, but his portal into Asgard was closed before his army could bring you to him. He said that that if he tortured me you would know and willingly submit to him, but he was wrong."
"I will kill him," Loki said angrily.
"Kill him?" William asked with a snorting laugh, as he pushed Loki away roughly. "You didn't even bother to come for me, so don't tell me you will kill him!"
"I did not come?" Loki asked. "How long did he hold you for?"
"Three hundred years," William replied quietly.
"Thee hundred?" Loki gasped. "How… how is that possible?"
"Three hundred," William nodded. "Three hundred years of pain, and torture and blood. Half my life I waited for you. I waited for so long and you never came." He turned, faced his father, and asked, "Why didn't you come for me?"
"I-I don't know. Perhaps we couldn't find you, or-"
"Or perhaps you didn't care?"
"No. You're my son. I would have never have left you there by choice. Something must have happened to prevent me."
"You think you are such a good and caring father," William said, shaking his head.
Loki paused, and then said, "I know I'm not a perfect father, but I love my children."
"So where are they?" William asked as he looked around. "You have children now, but I don't see them here with you."
Loki couldn't stop the twitch of his eye as he thought back to the day he had left each of his children, and remembered how heart broken he was when he walked away from them. He composed himself again, and said, "You know where they are, and why."
"Oh, yes, the mother of monsters keeps ejecting vile creatures from his poisonous womb!" William said loudly, waving his hands extravagantly in the air, and then he pointed at Loki. "YOU let them all be thrown away like the beasts they are!"
"None of you are monsters!" Loki cried. "Jörmungandr grew too large, Fenrir was-"
"Inconvenient? Just like it was too inconvenient for you to come for me?" William asked. Loki went to speak, but William stalked across the room, and said, "Do you know what it's like? To be tortured for 300 years and end up without a single scar, a single scratch to display the pain that you went through? To die again and again and again, and not a mark on your body?"
"I can't even begin to imagine it," Loki answered honestly. He had known his share of pain; he had suffered sewn lips and dripping acid, and still lived without a mark on his body, but 300 years of torture? He couldn't even begin to comprehend what that would be like. Loki knew Thanos, he knew what he was capable of, and he knew just how tight a grip he would keep on his precious prize, but here William was, and he asked, "Who rescued you?"
"You think me weak?" William scoffed. "You think I was incapable of escaping once my magical abilities fully matured and I was able to doing something other than heal? I decimated the Chitauri before I opened the portal and would have killed Thanos if he had been there."
"You opened the portal?" Loki asked. "If you opened the portal then you could go back to your own time. Take me with you and we could go back to when Thanos took you and prevent it happening."
"That would not work," William said. "My ability to travel in time is like walking the paths between the realms, but the doors only open to times when I do not already exist elsewhere."
"You could go home," Loki suggested. "I am sure I will be there waiting for you for y-"
"Home?" William laughed. "Why would I want to go there? To see the father who left me to be gutted every single day, to watch my own entrails be fed to ravenous creatures before I died, and then wake up whole to have the process repeated again and again?"
Loki thought for a moment. Something was wrong with this situation. The child hated him and thought he had been abandoned, and he asked, "If you think ill of me then why have you come here?"
"I want your help," William stated, and then continued desperately, "I have tried everything from fires, to explosions, to even the cold vacuums of space, but nothing works."
"What is it you are asking of me?" Loki asked suspiciously, knowing he would probably not like the answer he was about to receive.
"I want you to kill me."
"What?"
"I've tried in every way I can think and you and the Avengers are great warriors, so surely you and they can find a way to end my life?"
Loki stared at him open mouthed, and couldn't quite believe he had heard the boy correctly. He shook his head. "No. Absolutely not."
"Can't you see that I am in pain and I need your help to end it?" William begged. "I can't carry on when I feel like this an-"
Loki held his hand up. "I will not have this conversation."
"Please, fath-"
"NO!" Loki snapped as he turned and moved towards the door. "You will not ask me that question EVER again."
Loki walked out into the corridor, William ran after him, trotting along at his side, and as they entered the kitchen he begged, "Father, please."
"Do not ask me such things," Loki hissed. "I will NOT do it."
William stood for a moment, his fists balling with rage. "I knew you didn't love me. If you did you would help me."
"I do love you," Loki said, grasping William's T Shirt with his hands.
"No you don't," William cried. "I've done everything I can to try to make you love me and it's never enough! Even here, after all I've done, I am rejected at every turn!"
"You have been made welcome here. No one has rejected you," Loki said, as he cupped his hand to the side of his neck.
"I asked Stark if I could join you and the other Avengers on a mission, but he said no."
"There are procedures to follow," Loki told him. "Fury is in charge, and it is he who chooses who will decide if and when you are allowed to join us, not Stark."
"Will you tell him what I can do?"
"I will, when the time is right," Loki replied softly.
"Today. It must be today. You can tell him what I did to the criminals."
"The criminals?" Loki asked. "The ones on the news reports?"
"Yes, I've been going out at night and leaving a clone in my bed. I waited for them to do bad things and then I killed them just like you do, father," William said happily.
Loki was stunned. There had been so many deaths reported that he had lost count of the killer's current tally, and lately rumours of strange mutilations, of corpses with their bellies cut open and organs scattered about had begun to surface. They were terrible crimes, and Loki wondered what had driven his son commit them.
"Why would you do such a thing?" he asked.
"I thought it would make you happy," William said with a note of confusion in his voice.
"No, no, no," Loki repeated, grasping the sides of his hair in frustration. "You can't just kill people!"
"You did," William said, seemingly stunned that he was not being congratulated. "You tried to kill an entire race."
"I was ill when I did that."
"Then perhaps I am ill too," William said quietly. "Perhaps I should be given a merciful death before I can hurt anyone else."
"Child," Loki said, raising his hands to William's face. "You must put these thoughts out of your mind because I will not do what you ask."
William angrily pushed Loki's hands away. "I will not stop asking. I will ask until you are so tired of hearing my voice you will put me out of my misery."
Loki turned away and said, "Ask as often as you wish for I will not grant your request."
William pulled a long carving knife from the block that was stood on the kitchen worktop, he admired it for a second, taking in the gleaming surface, and razor sharp tip, and said, "Perhaps I will make you."
Loki felt a fist strike his back, and was about to turn to give his son a stern lecture about striking his elders, when he looked down and saw the tip of a knife poking out of his chest. He couldn't help the small laugh that escaped him, half shocked, half thinking about the irony of the fact that now he knew just how Coulson felt, and then cried out as the knife twisted inside his body.
"I will attack," William hissed into his ear, "and I will keep attacking until you find a way to give me what I want and end my life."
"No," Loki said, coughing at the taste of blood in the back of his throat. "I will never do it."
"I will give you no choice," William whispered, and then teleported away.
Loki felt the pressure on the knife release and he fell against the fridge, letting himself slide down it until he landed in an ungainly heap on the floor.
"Sir," JARVIS said. "I see that you are injured. Do you require medical assistance."
"No," Loki replied. "I just need to remove the knife and I will heal."
"Very well, sir."
Loki brought his right hand round and found he could only touch the handle of the knife with his fingertips, but could not get enough grip on it to pull it out. He tried to lift his left arm, but the pain was intense.
"Sir?" JARVIS asked. "Should I wake your brother and inform him that you need assistance?"
"No, there is no need," Loki said, as he reached round again to try to reach the handle.
"I feel I should warn you that scans indicate that the knife has punctured the left ventricle of your heart, sir."
"Do be quiet," Loki said as he placed his fingertip against the pointed end of the knife and pushed it back into his body. "I am quite capable of healing such an injury. I am in no danger."
Blood suddenly gushed from the wound, pouring down Loki's chest in waves.
"Oh," Loki said, and he passed out against the fridge.
~0~
The first thing that Loki noticed when he began to slowly wake was that he appeared to be bouncing through the air in time to a heavy clumping sound. The second thing he noticed was the random babbling going on somewhere to the left of his head.
"Don't you die, Loki," Tony said as he ran alongside Thor. "Don't you dare die!"
"What?" Loki asked, cracking one eye open, and looking round in confusion.
"You have been attacked, brother," Thor said, as he jogged down the corridor carrying Loki carefully in his arms
"You've been stabbed, Loki," Bruce said calmly, from Thor's right side. "We're taking you down to surgery."
"Surgery?" Loki asked, and then everything snapped back into place. "Stop! Stop running, Thor!"
They came to a halt in front of the elevator doors and Loki began to squirm. He opened his eyes, and fixed Thor with a furious glare. "If you know what is good for you, you will put me down, NOW."
Thor sheepishly lowered Loki to his feet.
"Noooo," Bruce said, taking hold of Loki's arm. "You need to stay still."
"Unhand me at once," Loki said loudly. He looked from Thor, to Tony to Bruce and with a sigh of frustration he asked, "Well? Is one of you going to remove this knife from my back, or am I to stand here and suffer as none of you have the stomach for it?"
"You aren't healing," Tony said. "I don't know if the knife is magic or whoever did this did something to you, but you have to let the surgeons remove it."
Loki rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm not healing, the knife is still in me, so would one of you kindly remove it so I can stop bleeding everywhere? I'm rather fond of these pyjamas."
"Oohhhh," Bruce said, suddenly understanding the situation. He moved behind Loki and took hold of the knife. "You ready?"
Loki took a breath and nodded, then let out a yelp of pain as Bruce quickly pulled the knife out.
"Are you well now, brother?" Thor asked.
"I am well enough," Loki replied, knowing what was coming next.
"Who was it?" Tony asked. "Steve and the others are searching the building right now."
Loki's mouth went taut. "You do not want to know."
"Someone came into my tower and somehow circumvented every single security system I have. Even JARVIS said he doesn't have a clue who did it because he didn't see anyone, just a knife magically appear in your back, so yeah, you better believe I damn well wanna know who did it."
Loki sighed. This was going to be hard to explain.
Thanks to everyone who has read or left reviews. I am very sorry if I haven't replied to all of them, but work has been mad the last couple of day!