This is new story that I am starting. I will be uploading it as I finish each individual chapter. A quick word about my writing style: I tend to create my story, the plot, new characters, etc, as I go. Therefore, I do not know where this story will end or what will happen later, although I have some vague ideas. This note is simply to apologize ahead of time for anything that may seem random or out of place. I will try my best to keep everything coherent, and if need be, I will upload new versions of earlier chapters in the case I decide to change something drastically. That aside…enjoy!
The name of the story itself is still in the works, hence, the title is TBD.
This story is meant as a sort of spin-off from my story, "Linked," but you do not have to read "Linked" first to understand this one.
Disclaimers: I have never read a Marvel comic in my life. I have watched only a few of the Marvel movies. Therefore, I apologize if I inadvertently go against canon in some way.
I own no characters.
Constructive criticism appreciated. Please, no offensive language!
Please review!
Darkness. He had known darkness before. The sensation of thick, swallowing, void encasing him was not a new feeling. He forced a slow, careful breath and found that the air rushing in through his nostrils was warm. Unnaturally warm. Stale. He swallowed back a rising sense of unease and carefully, cautiously, opened his eyes.
Darkness. Nothing had changed. There was still darkness—around him, before him, below him. The unease was growing thick in his chest, and he struggled for a moment to push it down. Then, he gave up. If his mind was telling his body to panic, perhaps there was a reason for such a mental command. Agent Clinton Barton had obeyed too many of those mental commands and been grateful that he did to decry this one now.
He tried to reach up a hand. He found that he couldn't. His hands would not move from behind him, and the sudden cold feeling of metal against his wrists told him why. So I am chained. His feet, too, seemed to be restricted. Hand and foot. He shrugged a shoulder and felt thick, smothering fabric hanging down around his neck. And I've got some sort of bag over my head. That explains the darkness.
The panic was subsiding with gathered knowledge. Clint allowed his body to slowly relax against the hard surface at his back. Stone, it felt like. Cold stone. He drew in a slow, warm breath through his set lips and found that it, too, was tinged with a chill.
He had been in such situations before. He had known darkness before. He had felt panic and unease and fear before. But somehow this was different. There was something that told him that this fear and this panic and this darkness were living manifestations of what he had only understood them to be before. Something snapped in his mind, something like a voice mingled with an image. The moment was only brief, but it was vivid, and it left Clint gasping. What was going on? Where was he? How did he get here? And why did the world he thought he knew suddenly seem to be a fading reality in his mind?
Darkness. He had known darkness before. The sensation of thick, swallowing, void encasing him was not a new feeling. It seemed that he could not remember a time when he had not been in darkness. There was a time, and that tiny, hopeful portion of his mind that was not tainted by bitterness and hatred insisted that it had been only recently when he had laughed in the sunlight and smiled in the wind. But Loki could not remember it. He only remembered darkness. It was easier that way.
Loki pulled his thin frame further up the cold stone pressed into his back and let a slow breath fall from his lips. The soft tap of the guards' boots along the corridor continued its eternal, rhythmic pacing. The thread that Loki held between his long fingers twirled absently, mindlessly. Darkness. It was all he could see before his eyes, before his mind. It did not matter that there were torches outside the cell lining the stone hall. It did not matter that his own cell flared warm and bright and almost welcoming—as welcoming as any cell would ever be. Loki still saw only darkness. In his mind, before his eyes. He did not try to see anything else, or that would decry the pain and the hate in his heart. And it kept those flashes of vision alive.
He had been seeing them for nearly a week now. They came at first in a dream. He had paid little attention to them then. Dreams were so much a part of him, they had always been so much a part of him, that he sometimes struggled to find the line between dream and reality. A weak, vague dream, flashing an imperceptible scene before his gaze one moment and then whisking it away the next. He had shoved it aside, ignored it.
But it came again. And again. And each time it became more vivid, more real. He saw a tall, endless wall of stone. He felt the cold, rushing air of a tunnel. He heard the clink of metal and the smothered tones of a sharp voice. And—he saw the man.
His back was to Loki the first few times he had appeared. As the dreams—the visions—grew more frequent and clearer, Loki saw that he was a younger man, bent over himself, slumped against the cold stone of the endless, towering wall. The vision always faded just as Loki might catch a glimpse of his face. But he did not have to see the man's face to know that he knew him. From somewhere. In another world. At another time. And he didn't just know him. There was such a connection of knowledge between the two that when the vision broke it left Loki breathless, sobbing.
They came in the day as well as at night now. The darkness that was swarming over his trembling eyelids at this moment was meant to relieve the tension and forceful sundering that always accompanied the abrupt ending of a vision. This one had been longer, clearer. He had heard a voice, and he had known that voice. Yet before he could reply, it was gone.
The endless sound of the pacing guard paused, and Loki opened his eyes. Silence. Then, footsteps again. But it was not the guard this time. It was heavy, meaningful. Thor. Loki swallowed the last anguish on his visage and settled himself into the cold, mocking, careless façade of a villain.
He saw his brother's approach from the corner of one eye. He knew instinctively that Thor had not come down for a mere visit. The heaviness to his step was not simply because Thor possessed a larger-than-life presence. There was something warring at his mind, something weighing his immortal soul. Loki lifted his gaze sooner than he meant to.
Thor paused before the cell and a tight breath passed his lips. Loki let his own voice echo bitter and mocking against the stone and the empty space.
"Good day to you, brother? Or is it night? Forgive me if I speak the wrong greeting; it is somewhat difficult for me to discover time in this sterile place."
He expected a retort, even a glance, disgust, perhaps, a flash of anger. He received nothing. Thor stood, staring into the cell, staring into the space between Loki and the wall, silent, stiff. Loki watched his gaze with a swelling amount of anxiety rising in his breast.
He broke the silence when it became so deafening that he could no longer stand it.
"So? Whom are you here for? Mother? To soothe a breaking heart and weeping eyes? Odin? To cast a glance of caution over his restless prisoner? Yourself, perhaps? To act the part of caring, concerned brother, when really your inner triumph cannot let itself rest and your inner curiosity cannot be satisfied with mere reports? Which is it, Thor?"
He didn't expect an answer, really. He certainly didn't expect the one that Thor gave. He startled when he heard Thor's voice, cold, steeled, simultaneously filled with command and compassion.
"I stand here on request from no one of Asgard. The Avengers asked me to come."
The Avengers. The word took a moment to sink real and deep into Loki's mind. He shook himself free from memories of New York and that hateful gag and the proud, noble voice of Steve Rogers, the calloused one of Natasha Romanoff, the soft, weary one of Bruce Banner, Hawkeye's swift, bitter retorts, the careless, sarcastic quips of Tony Stark. He had known them less than a week. Yet they were forever embedded in his mind. And, apparently, he was forever embedded in theirs.
He chose his words carefully, forcing back apprehension behind a mask of sarcastic carelessness. Perhaps he had been around Tony Stark a little too much….
"How touching. You can let them know that I am doing quite well, although my perceptive cerebral capabilities are less than simulated. Perhaps they would like to visit?"
"They want your help."
Nothing that Loki had mentally built up could prepare him for this flat, stoic answer of his brother's. His mask slipped from mere surprise, he blinked, pushed himself to his feet, and walked across the cell to stand before Thor staring at him through the strange barricade of light and glass.
"They want my help." It was a statement, not a question.
"Yes."
"I could refuse."
"You could."
"And what will you do if I do?"
"Nothing."
A second moment of stunned silence followed this new, unexpected reply. It was so much easier when Thor was bitter and stubborn in his answers. It made for swift, relentless exchange of angry voices. It left nothing unexpected, nothing uncertain. Loki did not know how to reply to this Thor—this cautious, this cold, this—being standing before him asking for his compliance and offering no threat if he did not comply.
He did not reply for a long moment because he did not know how to. He stood there, his thoughts working behind his stale gaze. Thor waited, patiently. Finally, Loki drew a sharp breath.
"And what exactly would I be doing for these—Avengers?" He let the last word slip out with bitter venom dripping from it, but there was no denying the curiosity that lurked behind the question.
"I am not—exactly sure myself. They did not tell me everything. Something has happened on their realm that they inform me cannot be conquered by mere human hands and minds alone—"
A short, breathless laugh cut off the last of Thor's words.
"The world is strange, is it not?" Loki said softly, bitterly, closing the last few feet of distance him between himself and his adopted brother. "The ever-right heroes of a world I sought to destroy and you to protect shroud their secrets from its preserver and instead determine to reveal them to its sworn antagonist."
"Loki—"
"But never mind. You have aroused my curiosity beyond recovery now. I will go."
Thor seemed genuinely surprised at the seemingly sudden decision.
"You—will go—"
"Yes! Do not play deaf with me, Thor! Release me from here and let us go and seek audience with these Avengers!"
Thor blinked himself into understanding and action. He lifted a hand and let it rest briefly on the shimmering wall that caged Loki in quiet golden captivity. It faded under the royal touch and Loki stepped through and into the dimly lit passage. The soft tap of two pairs of boots against stone echoed down the hall as they started for the door.