Imitations Carved Deep: Chapter 13
Being on vacation has really helped me get my brain back in order. The wonders of sleep, I'm telling you.
Please enjoy!
Again, dialogue heavy...and short. Sorry! Seem to be on a roll with those.
Disclaimer: I don't own them...so sad.
Warnings: Severe angst. Stupid/Bad Thor (temporarily). Torture (in the past). Implied rape (in past). Don't read if any of these trigger.
True Love's Kiss?
"Loki, what do you know?" Kira looked to Thor, not bothering to correct him. The fear on her face shook the Golden Prince.
"I didn't know. I thought…I thought it wasn't real…just part of my nightmares." Thor and Kira locked eyes, and Thor couldn't deny that his brother looked scared, truly scared.
"Does anyone want to share with the class," Fury growled. Kira's eyes flicked over to the Director and then landed on Clint, who was still glaring.
"Your mind was touched by one of the Infinity Stones. They are extremely powerful…and exceedingly dangerous in the wrong hands." Tony snorted.
"Well, I think we can say, this one was in the wrong hands." No one verbally responded to Stark, in the hopes that it would discourage him, but Thor did growl at the inventor.
"Loki, that is not possible. The Allfather-" Kira flipped the switch from scared to pissed in half a second.
"The Allfather is not as powerful or observant as you think, Thor! Stop acting like such a child." Kira did not miss the ever so small flicker of hurt in Thor's eyes when the words left her mouth. She knew that he had changed a lot due to his banishment to Midgard (though he has evidently backslid in the violence department) and wanted to be seen as a mature adult rather than the brattish child he was before. However, none of that changed the fact that Thor was dead set on believing the worst of Kira without stopping to think that he might be wrong…or that the Allfather might be wrong.
"Kira, who had the stone? SHIELD has your- or whoever it was's- scepter in lockdown, and Thor took the Tesseract back to Asgard." Kira did not look to the soldier but met Thor's eyes.
"You better hope the Allfather did not keep the Tesseract on Asgard, or that would be where Thanos would strike next." Thor visibly tensed at the name Kira uttered, and his eyes widened.
"Thanos? Truly?" Thor spoke in such an terrified, breathy voice (as if someone was squeezing his rib cage as he talked) that the Avengers were immediately on edge. Kira ignored the sudden tension and gave a sharp nod.
"I only saw him once, when he came to personally try to…persuade me help him. It seemed he did not trust that he would be able to keep his first choice under control and wished me to take his place. At least, that's what I grasped from underneath Thanos's words." Clint made a discontented noise and shook his head.
"That doesn't make sense. You refused to do it, so he makes the other person look exactly like you to get the mission done?" Kira was surprised when Natasha was the one who replied.
"Unless it wasn't Thanos's idea for the person to show up like that. Kira thinks Thanos might not have trusted this other person. Thanos probably felt that he didn't have complete control over them but could over Kira." Everyone seriously considered this, before Tony suddenly threw his hand up in the air. Kira's brows pinched together in confusion at the gesture, while Pepper just sighed.
"Yes, Tony? You have a question?" Tony smiled sweetly at Pepper and then addressed the rest of the room.
"I've been waiting for someone to ask, but seriously, why did Loki turn into Kira?! Kira said she was stuck like this." Kira narrowed her eyes at the inventor.
"I also said I was forced to change, if you remember." She didn't elaborate though they all waited for it. Finally Clint leaned forward, dramatically lifting his eyebrows.
"Well? You gonna explain why you were forced to change into a girl? I gotta admit: I'm not seeing the point."
"I think I'd like to know that as well," Fury drawled. Kira curled in on herself as well as she could and looked down at the blanket, mouth a hard line. Steve was about to tell her she didn't have to answer when Kira spoke.
"They got bored of my other screams," she said quietly. Bruce saw the way Kira's hands shook, but stopped himself from putting a hand on her shoulder. He didn't think she'd be open to the contact. Surprisingly, Kira continued. "It also seemed my reputation as the 'Mother of Monsters' proceeded me. They…they wished me to bear them fierce creatures for battle." Kira and a few of the Avengers looked like they were going to be sick. Clint and Natasha kept quiet, and even Tony held back from commenting.
"But," Pepper put a hand on Tony's shoulder as he tensed when Thor spoke. "You cannot procreate anymore, Loki. Father made certain of that." If Steve turned anymore green, he'd match Bruce, who was starting to count backwards in his head from ten. Kira, with a lone tear trailing down her cheek and a shaky voice, whipped her head to glare at Thor.
"Well obviously they weren't aware of that fact," she hissed. "If anything, they had their fun trying. Thanos…after I continually refused him, he told me that if I wouldn't fight for him, I would bear him someone who would." They could barely hear Kira's last few words as they trailed off, lost to her dark memories. Little did she know, but the female assassin in the room sympathized on a baser level with her.
"Is that…is that when you escaped," Bruce questioned once he had gotten his breathing under control. Kira pulled out of her emotional stupor and nodded. Her unbound hand came up and wiped a lone tear off of her cheek, and she cleared her throat.
"It was sheer dumb luck more than anything. It must have been the equivalent of night on that Norn-forsaken rock, because they only had one guard on shift. I…I was desperate and lured him into the cell with promise of…well, you know." Tony had to dig his fingernails into his palms to stop himself from lifting a hand to cover his mouth. His stomach churned as his own memories of captivity were brought to the surface. There had never been anything sexual, but…he would have done anything to get out of that cave if the Iron Man suit hadn't worked.
"Coinciding with their brutality, Chitauri aren't the brightest monsters out there, and this one was particularly dumb. He unbound my hand, for goodness sakes! I knocked him out, stole his weapon then creeped along in the shadows until I found an empty ship. None of them noticed until I had started the engine that I was escaping." The Avengers (and others) could fill in the rest for themselves.
"Soooo….how do we break the spell? Is it true love's kiss? Steve, pucker up." The Captain blushed a vibrant red and glared just like Tony knew he would, and Kira rolled her eyes.
"That is highly unlikely, Mr. Stark. I would need to know who cast it to know what spell they used." Bruce's eyes flashed with curiosity.
"You would be able to tell that kind of stuff just from knowing who the caster was?" Kira nodded, her lip twitching up for a second at the genuine interest the scientist was showing.
"Of course. The magic wielding community is not very large, and each caster tends to stick with certain spells. If I knew who it was, I could pinpoint which spell they used and how to reverse it." Thor nodded sharply as if completely agreeing and understanding what Kira was saying.
"It is someone who wishes you harm," Thor stated proudly. Kira rolled her eyes for the umpteenth time. It was starting to give her a headache.
"Oh really? That narrows it down." The sarcasm dripped from her voice, and she was surprised that Thor actually seemed to pick up on it. The golden prince scowled at her.
"Loki, surely you can tell us who would seek this kind of revenge on you. You just said that the magic community is not very large." Kira scowled right back at her brother.
"Well, it shouldn't surprise you that I am about as well liked in that community as I was in Asgard. I am the God of Mischief and I was a Prince of Asgard! Plenty of people wish me harm!"
"I will put you both in time out, if you don't knock it off," Fury shouted. The Director of SHIELD glared the two Asgardians into submission and sighed heavily. He looked at his watch.
"Now, I have an important meeting to go to with people that I do not like. No one leaves this Tower until I say so. You better have answers for me when I get back to you." With that last threat, Fury left the room, black coat whipping behind him dramatically.
"We might need to change his name to Snape." Pepper rubbed the headache from her temples and shook her head. The two Asgardians looked duly chastened; Fury gave each of them chilling images of the Allfather scolding them as children. Clint finally broke the awkward silence.
"Can't you just try every spell that it might be until it works?" The archer sounded weary. Then again, the day had gone from relatively calm and nice to a nightmare that dredged up hundreds of painful memories. He just wanted this to all be over; they all did.
"If I try the wrong one, I could very likely die." Clint snorted and shook his head. Kira could clearly see the 'Not sure that's a bad thing' floating around in the archer's thoughts.
"Wait a minute, Guys. How is this supposed to work? Kira doesn't have magic, remember?" Thor's face said he still didn't believe that, but none of them really cared what Thor thought of Kira at the moment.
"That will not be a problem. The reversal of spells requires a sacrifice, which is more ritual than magic. Magic is always a part of me; it is woven through my very core. I just cannot access it now. I am cut off from it. However, that will be enough to do what needs to be done. It was intended by the Norns that it would be harder to reverse a spell than to cast one, so as to force those gifted with magic to use it responsibly. If magic wielders carelessly threw about their power they would very quickly see the error of their ways, should they want to fix what they'd done. Though, not that it cares much to those who wanted to cause damage in the first place."
"A failsafe," Tony muttered to himself, his brain already running through hundreds of scenarios. "Okay, so what kind of sacrifice are we talking here?" It was Kira's turn to pinch the bridge of her nose and try to breathe away her growing headache.
"I. Don't. Know. I need to know who cast the spell. Then I can go from there." Clint threw up his arms.
"Well, how are we supposed to figure that out?! We thou-think it was you!" Tony's eyebrows went up at the archer's slip of the tongue, but before he could comment, Pepper elbowed him and shook her head. Tony held his hands up in surrender and kept his mouth shut.
"We can still show her." Steve's words brought many eyebrows together in confusion.
"Cap-" Steve waved his hands about.
"Jarvis. Tony, you've got video of the person we fought. Jarvis can at least show them to Kira, and we can try going from there. It's all we've got." Tony threw his hands up.
"Whatever. Let's give it a shot. Jarvis."
"Pulling up the videos now, Sir." Kira sighed and leaned back into the one pillow on the bed. Exhaustion was burned onto her very bones, and all she wanted was to sleep. However, the was about the last thing she should have been doing at that moment. Bruce laid a hand on her shoulder, and Kira jolted to attention.
She had closed her eyes for a moment and was halfway to sleeping in the ten seconds it took for Jarvis to get everything set up.
"K, Jarv. Roll 'em." The AI did as bid and security footage began to play. Steve looked like he wanted to ask/scold Tony for having SHIELD recordings, but he held himself back. The Avengers had already seen all of the footage numerous times and instead focussed on Kira.
Said woman's eyes were wide as they took in what was on the screen. It was entirely surreal watching herself fly through the air and attack the Midgardians. The crazed look on her…his…whoever it was's face was unnerving. Kira allowed her eyes to flick over Thor. She could understand now, how he had been led to believe that this person hollering about insects and boots was her. The likeness was uncanny.
"This is….disturbing." Tony snorted at Kira's comment and nodded.
"Yeah, well…" he let himself trail off, as the footage continued to roll. There was a collective wincing in the room when Coulson was taken out. Kira's free hand went up to cover her mouth in a silent gasp. The line of the archer's shoulders was as rigid as stone. Kira clearly saw another reason why the archer would have such hatred for her, if he thought she was truly the person to do all of these things.
Despite watching closely, Kira was not seeing any indication that the person before her was not…herself. Honestly, it was starting to distress her, even make herself think she was mad. Maybe…maybe that really was her. Maybe she had somehow managed-
"Wait!" Jarvis stopped the video, understanding her outcry, but the others all jumped.
"Kira, what is it?" Kira ignored the Captain's questions and asked Jarvis to rewind the video of 'Loki' and Thor fighting on Stark's balcony and zoom in. The color drained from Kira's face as the video played again. She was up and bolting from the room before anyone could stop her.
Lots of questions, lots of panicking, lots of...cliffhangers? You love me, you know you do. ;)
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