A/N: Ahh yeah! I'm back with more fun-tacular story! Uuggs and it took like forever to write, my fingers are like snails…snails! Well I hope this pleases and sparkles!

This here story is just brimm'n w/melodrama!

A big thanks to those who reviewed, your feedback and criticism is much appreciated.

The Haunted

Chapter 2

"If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes."

― Chuck Palahniuk, Damned

The grass blew gently in the summer breeze. The wind picking up to blow across an arch of shaded trees and dried leaves that scattered across the paved pathways of a park. One where young lovers walked hand in hand and small children played. Every single one of them, so full of life, every single one of them, so completely oblivious to his presence.

Dead.

That was what he felt like inside. The numb ache of it easing the hot sting of failure that had grown a shelf life deep inside him. For he had learned to embrace his pain, that knowledge the Chitauri had bestowed upon him helped him even now...now that he was the laughing stock of Midgard.

"Aww, what's the matter, twinkle toes?"Spat the condescending tone of the Iron man,"didn't know your tricks were for kids? Well play times over, young man. Now it's off to Daddy with you to sit in that corner and think about what you've done."

Where few had ever had the gall to laugh at him the Avengers now snickered at Stark's outlandish commentary. They even had the nerve to see him off dressed as civilians. As if they were about to take an afternoon stroll.

"Tony, please. Enough." The red-headed harpy ordered sharply eyeing their prisoner.

"What? What? What's he gunna do? Pout?"

"Enough." Thor bellowed from behind Loki causing them all to jump. Avoiding eye contact with the other God, Thor quickly paced in front of him towards the mortal who was unsteadily handling the Tesseract.

"Thank you Erik." Said the Thunder God, his look one of sadness at the Doctor's unsteady tremors from his time spent with Loki.

Clumsy oaf, Loki thought with constrained venom watching Dr. Selvig's fumbling ministrations to secure the lid.

He knew the cosmic cube's inner workings like the mortals never would; pure energy, pure power, pure inter-dimensional space. It beckoned to him even still. Like him, it wished to destroy its new captors, like him, it yearned to be set free.

Alas, its powers were now trapped within the bulky hands of a "brother" who could not look him in the eye and he knew exactly why that was. Odin's heir thought to lull him into that tender lie that he could possibly be reconciled. But there was no going back. And he loathed the Asgardian for thinking that as he prepared himself for the coming devastation; for what would happen next, for if he failed to rule Midgard then-

Thor held out the containment jar and Loki, full of trepidation, took hold of the other side of the jarred lid.

"To Asgard." Thor's mighty yell rang as the humans that had gathered round them disappeared into moving languid waves of blue light. Their voices drowned out by the inevitable static void the brothers would travel through. But the halls of Heimdall's observatory they did not grace. A pulsating light, a hole had popped out from the ether, and then more of its kind appeared to intercept the beams they traveled upon, restricting their movements.

They had come for him, for what he had promised them, the Tesseract. And there would be nothing and no-one to stop them, not even the mighty Odin, exhausted from using Dark Energy, could smite them now. And as if reading his thoughts the Cosmic Cube did glow and flicker with its own screams of recognition; for the Tesseract had been made very much aware of its own existence for quite some time now and ever watchful of all those who bound themselves to it.

A newly formed sentient being, its first thoughts were of fear, a fear for its life, the natural fear of death. And like a shaking child it cried out to Loki. It was pained by the knowing, the agony that awaited it at the hands of the Chitauri. Unstable in its fright, it gnawed away at the humans pathetic attempts to suppress it. The new found instability caused it to sway the frozen brothers arms to-and-fro. And with parts of their prison cell absolved by the blistering heat of the Tesseract the two struggled in their limited movements to retrieve it. But the Cube would not allow itself to be controlled any longer. And both Gods froze in their horror as she escaped them to become nothing more than a shimmering dot on the horizon.

They were not alone.

The space around the embryonic mold they had been trapped within was no longer sparse of matter but full of a Chitauri horde. The fleet of their starships hovering over them with menace as their alien hardware transmitted a stronger pulse towards their unseen cage; causing the brothers cells and tissues to twitch to their will, causing them to cry out in their agony.

"Loki! What have you done?" Thor moaned, his strangled cries muffled.

"What indeed…," came the victorious cry of The Other.

"Greetings Odinson I bid you welcome to our most humble abode." The Chitauri leader bowed in a mocking display for Thor that left the rest of its followers chuckling on the desolated asteroid field.

"Oh, but you did not think us defeated did you Asgardian scum?" The hooded figure continued, jovial in its goading, "We have not one location, we are mobile throughout this universe- and we are many."

"Brother whatever barbs I have dealt you in life do not turn away from us to them! Do not do this-ah!" Thor groaned.

"Ahh, ahh, brother, brother!" The Other mimicked turning its hooded head to examine Loki's pained expression, "After all you've done he still calls you that? Isn't that sweet? How pathetic." It snarled as its shadowy figure now made its way out of the crowd to point at Thor.

"Odinson, are you so blind not to see your failure in placing your trust in the silvery-tongued one? He longs to rule in your stead and will accomplish any feat to do so. Why, while you were distracted on Earth's battlefields did you ever care to think of how Asgard fared without you? That, maybe someone who has stabbed you in the back once before, could give council to enemies on ways past gated soil?"

Thor, in his aggrieved state, turned his head to Loki in disbelief.

"Tragic isn't it? How that ailing All-Father of yours is now as weak as a human after using up all his energies. How do you think your sire will feel when he awakens from his Odinsleep to find himself face to face with one of his greatest enemies, His castle in rubble; his treasure troves ransacked, and his precious son dead?"

"This is trickery...surely they lie? Loki-?" But the ashen look on his step-brother's face spoke volumes, "-traitor!" Thor screamed in anguish and disbelief, glaring at the one he called brother, "If what they speak is truth-have no doubt-I will bind you for your crimes against the All-Father-arghh- for all eternity!

Loki's shoulders shook from that ominous outburst, but it had to be done, he reminded himself.

Suddenly the friction that had taken root within Loki's cells was slowly relaxing as he fell unceremoniously to the ground where he lay surrounded and watched by many; the awful stench of them filling up his nostrils. Loki gathered his bearings to stand amongst the Chitauri horde in his chains; feeling diminutive and outnumbered, he stared them down only to find Thor missing. Not even a trace of the Thunder God remained, his last remaining connection to Asgard now gone.

Was he...? The God anxiously wondered. Was he truly...dead?

"Lonely already little prince?" The gravelly voice of the Other teased.

Opening up his mind from its mental barricades Loki responded sarcastically to the creature in kind, I would love to retort, but alas, my lips are sealed.

Where did they take him? He inquired of the Other as the crowds of Chitauri began to dissipate as quickly as they had arrived, leaving him and their leader alone.

"Ah, I'm glad you asked, Oath-Breaker, he is off to the dark dimensions where the demons will make much sport of him there in their arena. You, of course, are welcome to watch the spectacle." The Other was met with silence to which it laughed, "But is this not what you wanted rightful king of Asgard?"

It was a hollow victory.

"Do not fret for your, "brother," Lie-smith you'll soon be wishing to follow where he goes."

Loki froze at that.

"Ah, good, you are afraid, as you should be for your constant failings-"

And what of my successes? Loki's mind retorted quickly as it could muster, I have opened many doors for you as promised, as only an ever faithful ally could-

"And yet you let slip from us the key to the many doors with which you speak." The Other responded bitterly back.

And well you know your need of me now more than ever to retrieve the Cube. My bond with the Tesseract is still strong and the only hope you have of ever getting it back.

At this point even he knew he was grasping at straws but The Other ignored him as it continued, "We have no use for your childish games of betrayal anymore," it stated, sighing almost playfully, "and here he thought you had so much more potential."

Loki's throat went dry at the mention of Thanos.

"Do not think yourself so quick-witted that when you cast your thoughts across dimensions by way of Earth that it did not go unnoticed by our empire. Do not you think the Titan knows when he is being played? He, a being who survived the destruction of the previous universe, he who revealed to you the many lives you have lived, your cyclic deaths, your inner most purpose, the Ragnarok. And yet here you are trying to fight your fate; still holding fast to an old king who spurned you."

I have no allegiances to them, the God swore bitterly.

"We have spies, Mischief Maker. We know the Infinity Gauntlet is no longer in Odin's possession. We know the information you gave us does not lead to Odin's throne room. Did you truly think you could hide all this from our endless sight? You are nothing more than a vain, greedy, foolish little boy, still trying to please father…still trying to play hero."

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. The plan wasn't supposed to fail so wretchedly like this.

"No need to worry anymore sweet prince," The Other whispered tenderly as it leaned in towards the shell-shocked Trickster, "we will get that information from you yet. And we will have our Tesseract. You knew this penalty would come if you failed him. Crossing the Titan is to court his wrath, his mistress. The Lady Death and-," the Other gave pause to wave its robed arms at the miserable atmosphere enveloping around them, "she is here now, manifested onto our physical plane; the cosmic entity herself, come here to embrace you, to feast on your flesh and bones for your incompetence."

"And if anyone can get you to talk...she certainly can."

The Other then left him, its cape rippling with mirth from its jest to become the last harrowing image the Trickster saw as it disappeared. Loki shivered. Now he truly was alone, surrounded by dark desolate wasteland with nothing but time and his thoughts to torment him.

The fact that he had been so close, that he could have done it, what was necessary for Asgard, for Odin … for himself. And he only ever had but himself to fall back on; to plan alongside his saviors the Chiaturi, to plot against his father's enemy The Titan, to dream of conquest and rule, of Earth and Asgard; of the Tesseract. Now only to be haunted, lost in the thoughts of what could have been; no longer burdened by glorious purpose Loki Laufeyson waited for the entity called Death. And the waiting was excruciating.

How typical for a woman to make me wait, he groaned watching the wretched skies darken. Dim clouds had festered on the horizon, like whirlwinds, foreboding in the way they loomed. Squinting his eyes he made to peer closer at its bizzarity only to realize there was a figure hidden there a hooded woman making her way towards him. Death drew near, come to collect him, his soul.

Now the apparition stood before him as he prepared himself to die by her hands. Spidery pale finger tips hovered over his gag and with whispered words she did pull it off; her pale hands now sticky with red. He screamed. The first noise to come out of him in a long time; Loki rocked in his pain. The contraption, now torn from his mouth, caused his blood to run freely from the sinews of his carved withering lips, choking him as it poured over his long neck to pool into small puddles on the ground.

The tentative entity remained by his side in her silent curiosity as she watched, waiting for him to speak, and finally he did.

"Death?" He hesitantly asked, his jaw's movements foreign to him, filling his mouth up with more blood, making him gag.

"Nay, I am not her." The woman stoically answered, "Lady Death is a bad joke."

Then who…? He wondered.

"I am Hela guardian of Helheim, protector of lost souls and you, Trickster, are in need of me."

Undoing the strings that held her tethered hood of midnight in place long ripples of black hair spilled forth, revealing the pale, handsome face of a masked woman.

"What madness is this?" The captive God sputtered.

"The madness that only you could ever deliver," was her curt reply, "you must by now realize the implications of unleashing the Cube out into our nine worlds. Many wounds have been opened; rifts in time and space that upset the nature of my Helheim and other realms like mine."

The shaken God stared at the Death Goddess blankly- wanting to ask the woman what she meant but with a cold wave of her hand she silenced him.

"The twilight you wish to stop but always inevitably create has drawn out unwanted characters. And to my great annoyance the Eternal Death has become big-headed and has resurrected her unsavory lover Thanos; has abused our pact by requesting him to alter the very cycles of life itself. There is an order… a natural order to things that if disrupted…" Spooked by what she spoke of Hela looked in all directions as if someone could hear.

"What do I care…" Loki muttered, more to himself than to her, now glaring up at her ghostly apparition, "You cannot change my fate, witch."

"You're right only you can..." Hela muttered as she lifted her robed arms to reach into the lifeless sky; waving her hands in circles as if to grasp onto something from the nothing. There in the corner of her clutches a bulk of space did warp; transcending into a scorching white light, a hole.

"There is only so much my magic can do to make attenuate the veil between dimensions, to remain invisible to her and to him. I have not much time here in this place, but I must say, out of all your incarnations from the different Ragnaroks I have witnessed... you seem the most likable." She grinned, the last part of her statement dripping with just as much mystery as sarcasm.

Loki, in his frustration, had no time to think on her backhanded compliment for the masked Goddess had, without warning, pointed a long skeletal finger and touched him. He felt... numb. She had forced him out of his physical body and into that of his metaphysical form, his astral projection and yet it wasn't at all similar.

"You daft woman, what have you done to me?" He shouted only to realize his shackles had disappeared along with his body. She had turned him into some kind of a manifestation of his living soul! So the rumors on Asgard were true...the Guardian of the Afterlife could claim the soul of an Asgardian in a single touch, a "touch of death."

"Shhhh, don't worry your soul will be safe from me. You wrote yourself out of my book of dead long ago... and through trickery I might add. I am simply keeping you out of their reach," She muttered as she persisted on with her whispered spells and illusions.

"Why …" He asked desperate for answers, "Why would you aid me?"

The young goddess ignored him as her eyes glowed in concentration, fixated on the vast hole turned shimmering vortex, the circling whirlpool now a glowing row of glyphs.

"What trickery-?" He gasped through chapped bloodless lips as she made to seize his bewildered new form.

"Think of it as self-preservation father." Was her riddling answer, and yet her reasoning did not register within him. For in his mind he was not her father and he exclaimed just as much.

"I have seen my life and the lives of all of my predecessors revealed to me by the Titan and you play no part in them witch!" He cruelly spat.

"I know…it matters not if the Mad Titan showed you my birth," Hela sighed, "you should know by now that Thanos is just as deceptive as you are. Do you truly think he would reveal any happiness your past lives once had to offer? Do you truly believe he would reveal anything other than his own motives?"

So he could have been a father to her in that previous life of his? During one of the many Ragnaroks? Perhaps...Legends bards had often sung spoke of the realm of souls being eternal in its makeup; not exactly known for keeping in line with the movement of time or mortality like in the other realms. What she said was plausible but trust her he did not nor would.

"I have seen the end." Loki vehemently spat ignoring her claim.

Hela tensed in anger, "No you have only seen a "end" the paths that your other incarnations have followed but not the end."

"What difference does it make? I am still the inevitable end of all on Asgard! How can I possibly change that woman?" The God cried. "TELL ME!"

"Survive." Was her cold reply.

Loki had no time to ponder her bitter message for she had shoved him kicking and screaming into that radiant punctured fissure. The previous world's fragments sliding, splintering apart to be put back together again, completely changed. Before him lay a world, a pool of collected souls; a stream of what was once reality and he was drowning in it... yet, strangely enough it didn't feel like anything.

Sudden dawning, like the shock of one of Thor's thunderbolts struck him as he realized just where he was. For it appeared as though the Goddess had dropped him into Gjöll, the river ever flowing down the World Tree and into her Helheim and the golden bridge Gjallarbrú. A legendary bridge guarded by a nasty Giantess with the same qualities as the Bifro-

Loki's eyes lit up. He had a way back to Asgard.

Submerged within unconscious souls waiting to be reincarnated the Trickster God swam against their current, looking for a way out, his exit. And even though he had no clue where to begin his search he knew he was making some progress when he heard Hela's voice whistle past him.

"You cannot leave here," the Goddess boomed causing bubbles to ripple round him and the other spirits to scatter out of his way.

Watch me! He thought while swimming past the strangely garbed Midgardian souls of pasts and present.

His so called daughter had been right... only he could alter his fate and he definitely wasn't about to be nothing more than an echo of memories past.

Treading through souls for what seemed like an eternity Loki raised his head and swam up high enough to make out an end to the river's watery world, a surface. There above him was a glyph similar to the one the Goddess had used herself, a portal; its image, golden and flickering, its image much like a golden bridge.

The Goddess's harsh voice resounded again against his ears, this time with new found apprehension as she tried to reason with him, "Where you go I may not follow...I will not be able to protect you."

So be it, was his mind's curt reply as he began to swim faster, fighting against the current of hands, of shades brought to life by Hela's anger, all trying to push him back down. Bubbles swarmed over his head to make waves above him as he pushed his way out, up to the top. He had now reached the surface world. But something wasn't right. He'd been flipped upside down and he was falling head first into what could only be the material atmosphere of Midgard.

Loki cursed. It'd been an illusion; a watery mirage, there'd been no bridge, only foreign runes that lay far below him, off into the distance.

Not knowing how to interpret his new out-of-body experience or willing to take any chances with it, Loki, the shape-shifter that he was, took the shape of the only creature he could think of..

A raven.

And with his new wing span expanded, he flew clumsily, gracelessly down to Earth.

Down towards the beckoning runes he'd seen in the shape of the golden bridge back to Asgard.

A/N: Ohhhh, my, my what a twist! Aren't family reunions awesome? Hela certainly did her Daddy a solid... Comic-verse Thanos's love affair with the Lady Death always spells disaster in the Marvel universe especially for those characters directly involved. I remember one story arc revolved around Hela, Mephisto, and Hades and the other death gods joining forces to stop Lady Death and her scheming ways.

When I was writing Loki leaving the river of souls I kept picturing Charlie leaving heaven from All Dogs Go To Heaven :s ~~you can never come back Charlie, never come back~~

*The Tessereact becoming a sentinent being was mentioned briefly by Eric in the Avengers and is also a key element in a lot of Marvel comic arcs as it will be in this story.

**A lot of these scenes were inspired by the animated Marvel comic-movie Thor and Loki: Blood Brother. Especially when it comes to Ragnarok, Hela, and Loki's many incarnations.