SHADOW OF DEATH

Chapter 2: Best Laid Plans

Twisted, skeletal fragments of fallen towers reached towards the sky like ravens' claws. The earth still smoldered with the simmering heat of the past firestorm. He could feel it seep through his leather boots, soaking into him with its burning violence. Rock and ruined metal lay in ram shackled heaps as far as his eyes could see. Gaping expanses of the city evaporated and left a barren expanse fringed with remnants of buildings that grew in height the farther from the blast sight they stood.

Loki was no stranger to witnessing the violence of war and certainly no stranger to inflicting violence onto others in the name of the greater good (or whatever Odin, for the time, deemed the greater good). Yet the warriors of Asgard preferred to fight face-to-face with their enemies, sword-to-sword in accordance with their espoused values of honor and bravery.

The transformation of this concrete forest into a concrete desert came from the sky, by warriors who would never have to look into the eyes of their victims as they died, never have to hear their screams and last gasps for life. Most of the casualties here would not be warriors. These were civilians without hope of reaching a safe refuge before they reached their untimely ends.

Among the rubble, he could just make out glimpses of life as it had been lived: a white porcelain teapot, cracked in half; the twisted metal shell of an automobile; the charred remains of a tree; a loose, melted shoe beneath a toppled pole.

He scoffed. Not even the Chitauri would have behaved in so barbaric a manner. True, the Chitauri fought without honor and without strategy. They existed as mindless killing machines with only the target of their mothership in their collective mind-but they, at least, would have spared the earth and the waters. Even now Loki could feel the ground around him gasping with invisible poison, a dark magic that sang of slow death.

Even he attributed the mortals with more sense than this.

Loki climbed over a heap of what must have once been an impressive structure and from his vantage point could see the blue, glittering mass of the ocean, fragmented with half sunk water vessels and collapsed structures. As he turned to face towards the shores, he could see signs of living creatures. In the distance, figures busied themselves like ants, journeying to and fro through the wreckage. They paused to upturn beams and crawl under rubble, bearing their treasures with them as they moved on.

Loki delighted in chaos, but not like this. He enjoyed upsetting the old and sowing certain kinds of disorder. This was the necessary byproduct of new life, of the changing of seasons and the pulling of the tides. This was the trail of mayhem created by a curious toddler exploring his newfound freedom of movement; the upending of hard, too settled soil to make space for the planting of seeds; the collapse of a decayed ancient tree to enrich the soil for the sapling left in its wake. Even the violence of a volcanic eruption ultimately led to fertilizing the soil and birthing new lands. There was a chaos inherent to change.

He especially enjoyed the chaos sown not out of lies but out of revelations of uncomfortable facts. While he appreciated the power of illusion and deception, he knew that one well-timed truth could sow more upheaval than a hundred such lies. In forcing men to confront their own hypocrisy and empty their hearts of their well-hidden secrets, he wielded the power of truth to upset long-established norms.

There was another kind of chaos that he could not delight in: destruction for destruction's sake. This kind, as he saw unfurled around him in the leveled corpse of a city around him, was the long-sought glorious purpose of Thanos.

The Mad Titan carried himself with an ancient magic, a deep inner power the likes of which Loki had never seen. Yet he used his power to bandage over a multitude of similarly ancient wounds. The fear of facing his old wounds again drove the Mad Titan to inflict grief upon the entire universe, as if that could somehow prevent him from facing the ghosts of his past. He was single-minded in his zeal, frighteningly convinced of the justice of his cause, and unselfishly devoted to giving everything he had to see it accomplished.

Thanos sought to prevent death by causing it.

Thanos' shadow felled billions and left imprints of formerly happy times, formerly complete families, formerly peaceful realms. He left utter chaos and destruction in his wake.

Most unsettling of all, Loki saw in Thanos a reflection of himself, of what he could become, of what he had already turned towards before he fell. Legions of Jotunheim had suffered under the justice of Loki's pain. He had delighted in their deaths and felt he was bringing rightness to the universe, fixing the great fault of their existence, correcting the balance… Loki now looked in horror on his own soul, the lies he wore more closely than his own skin.

Like a mighty stallion driven into submission by a small bit in its mouth, controlled by the whims of another, Loki's fate of late seemed dominated by external powers beyond his control. Fears once acquiesced to have a tendency not to diminish, but to grow into ever increasing heights of impossibility and ravenous blindness. Even as he lied to himself and spoke of his own rationality and justification for his actions, he knew he had allowed his fear, his insecurity, and his anger to drive him into a wild gallop through circumstances, heedless of his consequences.

Till one day he found himself chained to a barren asteroid and forced to kneel before the follies of the Mad Titan. When he fell from the Bifrost, Loki thought he had experienced true misery. Then he fell into the endless cycle of death and destruction that Thanos feasted upon and Loki recanted all he had complained of before. He wished in vain he could return to complaining about petty jealousies and sibling rivalries instead. Even if all of Asgard now despised him and spat in his face, he would embrace their revulsion a thousand times over Thanos' accolades.

Loki vowed that if he ever escaped from the hellhole he found himself in, he would no longer be bound by fear, imprisoned by past hurts, and living as a reflection of Thanos. Death would not be in his shadow if, he could at all avoid it.

Yet Thanos would not let him go and instead sought to twist and shape and bend him into a shape more useful to Thanos' self-endowed "glorious" purpose. It was not the first time Loki found himself being so formed and bent to fit the purposes of another. He had long since learned to master the art of conforming in appearance only. He buried his rebellion deep within himself, biding his time until he could quietly sabotage his potter's hands.

After Thanos tired of using the mind stone to pry his secrets from his brain (as if they were nothing but ripe apples, his for the taking), and after Thanos tired of shaping Loki into his image using the broad end of a stick, he shifted tactics and dangled a carrot instead. Thanos was no fool. Unending years of battle taught the Mad Titan that the fiercest of warriors were those who had been wounded by war. Fear and haunted pasts could be used to corrupt even the most noble of morals.

Thanos knew that after experiencing the intrusion of the mind stone, Loki would rather do anything than experience any further mental ravishing. After witnessing the decimation of beings on planet after planet, Loki would prefer to be the one to dispense such violence than to receive it. Season it all with a taste of revenge, some balm for a wounded pride, and the empty promises of autonomy and power for the being so long imbued with powerlessness, and Loki would be as malleable as a newborn kitten.

While Loki may act the wounded fool, the vengeful son, the greedy and envious brother, he, also, was no fool. He knew intimately the power of being underestimated. Under his mask, he could control his own projected illusion and fight the real battles from deep within, as he had always done. The moment he found himself free of the constant mental ravishing of the mind stone, he set about to plotting and scheming on his own, attempting to remaster some of his former patience, and watching from the shadows.

He must stop Thanos. But to stop Thanos, he must no longer be tethered to him. To gain freedom from Thanos, he must either escape (impossible) or be released. To be released, Thanos must be assured his loyalty and compliance.

An unfortunate byproduct of the mind stone and Thanos' magic was that Thanos could see him wherever or however far he traveled. His actions, his words would be laid bare before the Mad Titan, even if he could no longer drill beneath the surface into his innermost thoughts. But how he could simultaneously appear to be fighting for Thanos while in reality fighting against him was a tightrope Loki could much too easily fail at. The stakes were too high for failing. His illusion must be perfect.

He must not slip.

So without hesitation, Loki accepted the ploy of the conquest of Midgard in exchange for the retrieval of the Tesseract…a second infinity stone…with the power to move Thanos and his legions across the galaxies in the blink of an eye.

It must not happen.

Thanos now sought the means to accomplish his "glorious purpose" once and for all time. If, (no, knowing the might and determination of Thanos as he now did, Loki knew it was a "when" and not an "if") when Thanos succeeded in gathering all six Infinity Stones to himself, he would become unstoppable.

This must not happen.

As he researched thousands of years of the conflicted, divided, bloody history of the insignificant realm, Loki could see there were only three possible ways this scheme would end: either he would conquer Midgard, he would lose, or he would die. While his third option provided the easiest means of escape, he also, since infancy, had proven to be an interminable failure at accomplishing it. That left two other possible options.

He much preferred winning.

He could have easily conquered all of Midgard if he actually wanted to. It would have been as simple as stealing a coin from a blind beggar's dish. All he needed to do was spread a fervent dose of mistrust and fear, seasoned with a slight dash of pride and greed, on the largest of world powers. Then set them to fight each other. Their proxy wars against each other would bring all the smaller nations into alignment with the more powerful. Install a puppet leader over the final victor and he could rule all of Midgard without the mortals even learning the identity of who pulled the strings of their puppet.

And use enough oil, gold, technology, and propaganda, and he may even have been successful in his conquests without any major destruction of cities and infrastructure. The colonization of the mind is much cleaner and more powerful than that achieved through brute force. It would not have taken long-maybe a hundred years. But Loki did not have even so small a time frame as a hundred years. He didn't get to create the plan, he simply got to choose the details for a plan bestowed upon him by another.

He remained stuck in Thanos' shadow.

Loki knew that Thanos never planned for him to win. The Mad Titan merely dangled the elusive prospect before his nose to ensure his willing cooperation. Thanos' goal was to achieve the Tesseract as quickly as possible, while shielding his participation from the watchful eyes of the other realms. Loki provided the convenient smoke and mirrors for Thanos to hide behind.

So, Loki would lose.

A brilliant show of power could never unite the disparate nations of Midgard voluntarily under one ruler. Thanos wanted the mess, the noise, the distraction, and the fearmongering. The endgame was and would always be death.

Loki chose his targets carefully-enough violence to communicate the severity of the threat and convincing Thanos of his genuineness and compliance, but not in locations which would cause any long-lasting repercussions. He would try to encourage the mortals to band together to defeat him. Maybe then they could have a chance against Thanos. He could try to gain Asgard's ire, so perhaps they would send aid to the neglected realm and provide safe-keeping for the dangerous relics so foolishly wielded by the unwitting mortals.

Germany, with its unhealed wounds from a recently lost war, of course would never succumb to the spouted threats of another would-be conqueror. They would fight fiercely, create noise, and not comply.

New York City, while a mighty city, a center of commerce and power, was not a head of state. If he chose a less important city, Thanos would have doubts (and so would Midgardians) of his capacity, but if he chose a more important government center, the chaos created could have further ramifications. If, by some miracle, New York City fell to him, it would prove of more symbolic than practical use and the rest of the world would remain unconquered-including the arguably more strategic cities of Asia.

And the Americans-with their obsession with freedom, their memorial to liberty, their self-proclaimed goal of independence-an attack on them with threats against their dearest held value would be a spectacle indeed, with enough irony to even slightly warm Loki's heart to the odious plan. He needed them to feel slighted and declare battle against him. He needed them to shout and rage in their indignation. He did not need them to declare battle against their own people. They were supposed to fight his army, not aid in their own destruction.

Yes, he understood the power of fear in the formation of death. But how easily these mortals feared! Had they so little faith in their own capacity to hold back their attackers? Had they so little hope in their "mightiest of heroes"?

He could see remnants of charred Chitauri warriors intertwined with those of mortals, sharing in a common death in which neither side came out the victor but all must call it a loss. He now stood at the scene of battle with the entirety of his earth-bound army lost, his portal generator destroyed, and even those who created his portal vanquished. What had become of the Tesseract and his scepter? Could Infinity Stones be destroyed?

Loki kept a tight hold on his cloak of invisibility and made his way towards the last location he had seen the Stones. He began to sweep the region with his magic, searching for the tell-tale hum of power that would call to him even beneath this mass grave.

He stopped in front of a still-standing brick wall. There, he could see the ghostly shadow of a woman and child, hands entwined. No living body cast those shadows, though the heaps of remains at their base spoke of their fate. These were indeed shadows of death, long outliving the last moments of those lost souls before they reached Valhalla.

At this thought, his heart sank. Had any of these "mightiest of heroes" survived such a blast? Yes, they were strong, but strong enough to withstand this? Or had they, also, become shadows, forever enshrined in the rubble of a ruined city, memorials to mortal fragility in the face of adversity?

He froze midstep before he could climb down another ruined street.

What fate had befallen Thor?

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

A/N: I researched the impact of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for descriptions on impact. These attacks killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people. In Hiroshima, nearly 5 square miles of city was destroyed along with 70% of the city and 30% of the population. Current nuclear technology (i.e. the hydrogen bomb) is estimated to be 100 to 1000 times more effective than the bombs dropped during WWII.

To compare, Manhattan alone is about 22 square miles with a population over a million and a half. I'll let you do the math on that one.

You can look up nuclear shadows (the shadows of the woman and child in the story) to see real life nuclear shadows images captured in Japan.

To prepare you for where this story is going, with the premise that the atomic bomb was detonated over New York, this means the following Marvel characters are/will be no longer in existence:

All of the original Avengers band (more on the logic behind this later) and by removing them now, we will no longer gain Vision, Falcon, the Scarlett Witch, or Quicksilver (no Tony Stark, no Ultron…no Sokovia, no twins, etc.)

Spiderman (Brooklyn), Dr. Strange and the Ancient One (also in New York during the invasion)

This means that Age of Ultron, Winter Soldier, Civil War, Iron Man 3, Dr. Strange, and Spiderman movies can't happen.

I've had some reviewers note that it's possible Dr. Strange or Peter Parker survived by being on vacation or something. I'll let your creative minds figure out their life paths from this point on, but for the purposes of this story, their existence (or lack thereof) will not be important. The Ancient One, however, may have prepared for what she knew was coming. ;)

That's enough explanation for now.

Update: February 3, 2021: Review from jerseydanielgibson on this chapter: "There is a website that lets you 'theoretically' drop a bomb onto a city to see what the outcome would be. The WGL-60 MIRV that was used in the first movie is a 150 Mt multi-fusion bomb that would take out midtown with the blast, and kill about 1.1 million people on the offset from the explosion, the thermal blast, building collapses, and the shockwave (both forward and back). Another half a million would die the next week due to injuries (physical and thermal) as well as radiation poisoning. While Harlem and lower manhattan wouldn't suffer total collapse, they would be without windows, power, utilities, and food from logistics from the aftermath. While devastating weapons, nuclear weapons still act like bombs, ad people have survived such things before (there is actually a man who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, probably the unluckiest bastard on the entire planet)."