(A/N: Here's the final chapter of the prolouge! I hope you all enjoy! :D)
It wasn't the stench of rotten garbage that finally made Loki come to. Nor was it the rough concrete against his back, the rumbling of cars on the street outside of the alley that he found himself in, or the buzzing lightbulb on the wall that he was propped against.
If Loki had to guess, it was probably the hand gripping his shoulder and the knife pressed to his throat that had woken him up.
His first instinct was to curse loudly and colorfully, but he settled for raising his hands in a non-threatening gesture, keeping his chin against his chest so that all he could see were the black boots and pants that his attacker was wearing. Loki theorized that his spell had probably blown up again and ejected him from the tower. It was just his luck that some lowlife happen upon him while he was knocked out and decide to mug him.
'Oh gods,' he thought ruefully, 'Tony's never going to let me forget this.'
Then he raised his head to look at his assaulter and realized how truly and thoroughly he had fucked up.
Staring down at him was his own face, and yet it was completely alien. The eyes were too hard, almost brittle, and the cheeks were hollower. The hair was longer, reaching almost to the other man's shoulders, while he had decided to cut his short after several years of living at Avengers Tower. The other man was also in full Asgardian armor, identical to the kind that he would wear to battles, while Loki himself was still in the battered black jeans and a green tank top that he would always wear while experimenting.
The spell had obviously backfired horribly, sending Loki into an alternate dimension instead of allowing him to remotely view it. He could sense Seidr rolling off of his clone in waves and while the magic seemed crueler and sharper than his own, he could still sense an underlying curiosity and mischievousness that was all too familiar.
"What are you?" the other demanded, and even his voice was different from Loki's own. It was deeper and more gravely, like a roughly hewn obsidian blade.
"Well, I would think that would have been obvious," Loki replied, "if one were to go by the fact that I look exactly like you and I reek of interdimensional energy. I am you."
The other Loki regarded him with a contempt-filled sneer. "Yes, that's entirely possible, but you could just as easily be a Skrull, Chitauri, Dire Wraith, mutant, or any other manner of shapeshifter, although why any shapeshifter would chose to change my appearance in such a way is beyond me. What do you want here? This world is to be mine and I will not condone outsiders trampling on my claim."
Loki frowned. Without thinking, he reached for his magical stores. Every sorcerer's magic is a reflection of themselves and therefore entirely unique. Even a small spark would convince his attacker that he wasn't here to –
Where was his Seidr?
Loki stiffened in alarm and checked again. The well within him that was usually brimming with energy was now almost completely drained. By channeling the spell through an object that was meant to inhibit some of its effects and change its purpose, he must have increased the energy level needed to activate the spell, like trying to force a river through a drainage pipe. Therefore, the spell, which should have taken only about a tenth of his immense magical stores, had taken nearly all of them.
Loki let out a frustrated sigh. "I was experimenting with an interdimensional transport spell called the Mandala Effect. It seems that my modifications increased the activation energy of the spell, draining me dry. Believe me, I'm not here to trample on your," he paused, "claim."
The other Loki raised an eyebrow. "That was an incredibly powerful spell. I could sense its power from the other side of Midgard. But any-"
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"Wait," Fury interrupted. "If Loki could sense this spell from the other side of the planet, then why didn't you know about this sooner, Strange?" he asked, gesturing to the sorcerer in irritation.
Steven scowled at him before glancing to Loki. "When did you arrive here, again?"
"I arrive just under a week ago," the god replied, his head tilted in curiosity.
"Well, there's your answer," Steven said, gesturing towards the god. "I was off-world helping an intergalactic police force called the Nova Corps with a group of rampaging criminals/part-time heroes. Apparently they'd busted their talking raccoon out of prison again."
"I'm sorry, you helped who with the what now?" Fury demanded. Loki could clearly see the veins in his temples as they popped out in shock.
"Can we please get back to the current issue?" Loki asked curtly, schooling his voice and expression into those of irritation and resisting the urge to smirk at the director's shock.
Steven gave him a nod, his eyes twinkling in amusement, and Loki continued.
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"But any sorcerer could have sent you here. Why are you here?" He pressed the knife closer to Loki's skin, forcing the exhausted god to shrink closer to the wall. "Quickly! I know not if Thor and his band of misfits have the ability to track my magic. I do not have the time to wait."
Loki frowned. "Why would you care if the Avengers found you?"
The other Loki scowled. "I attacked their world with an intent to rule it and subvert their species. Why would I want them to find me?"
And now it all clicked. This man had endured far worse than he. He could hear bitterness in his voice, the same bitterness that had plagued Loki when he had attacked Jotunheim in his own universe, when he had fought under Thanos' thumb, but this man's was amplified, echoing back on itself over and over again through time and space. If he wasn't allied with the Avengers, then they had never discovered Thanos' control. They had never broken it.
Or this version of himself was just inherently tyrannical, but Loki decided to take a chance.
"Loki Odinson," the hand tightened on the knife, drawing a drop of blood, "you were born of Laufey, king of the frost giants, who abandoned you and left you to die. Odin found you and brought you in. Your brother is Thor, although you like to think that he is not. Your mother is Frigga, who taught you magic. When you were a few hundred years old, she even taught you how to fight, how to use your speed and slight build to our advantage. When you were one thousand forty six years old, you attempted to eradicate the Jotuns from the universe, believing that that would solve your problems."
Loki poured as much sincerity into his voice as he could and as he talked, more and more bitterness joined it. He wasn't just talking to another person. He was speaking to his past, which he could never get back and could never fix. He knew that he would live with that regret for the rest of his life.
"You believed that genocide would make Father respect you when he already did. You thought that Thor would finally see you as an equal, though he always had, and that the other Asgardians would finally see you as a prince. It's true, the nobles despised you, but if you had only bothered to remember the poor, the servants and fruit sellers, the farmers and stablemen, you would have remembered the smiles whenever you greeted them and the loyalty and respect that they had shown you. If you had only remembered to think, you would have remembered that you weren't alone. Just a year later, Thanos took control of you. You were tortured," he growled, throwing the words like knives. "Subverted." The other version of him just stared, his eyes just slightly wider than what could have been considered impassive. "And I'm guessing that none of them, not the Avengers, not even your own brother, could tell that you were doing anything less than what you wanted when you attacked Midgard." He glowered at his look-alike. "Now tell me, am I anything less than what I claim to be." Loki dug his fingernails into the concrete under him, waiting for the other man's verdict.
Suddenly the knife was gone from his neck and the Other-Loki had stood up, looking down at him in what seemed to be curiosity, his eyebrow quirked and his head tilted quizzically to the right. At his side, his hand gripped the knife so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.
"You do seem to be me," he admitted, nodding ever so slightly, "Although that does not mean that you are not here to overtake this world." He paused, eyeing Loki pensively. Other-Loki gave another more decisive nod and held out his hand. Loki cautiously took it, climbing unsteadily to his feet as he eyed the other man. "Allow me to take you somewhere safe to heal for your return trip."
The words "where I can keep an eye on you" were not said, but they were heard plain as day.
The hapless traveler nodded and with a wave of the other Loki's hand, they were gone.
Over the next few days, Loki stayed at Other-Loki's moss-roofed cabin in a clearing deep in an enormous pine and birch forest in the Femundsmarka Nasjonalpark. The park, which consisted of over two hundred square miles of forest, marshes, and lakes, was located in TrØndelag, Norway near the Swedish boarder. The forest was beautiful, with rolling hills that stretched off into forever and ambling rivers that were as clear as the sky above them. The fauna were plentiful and curious of the new god that was identical to the one that they had become so accustomed to. Loki would often sit outside on the veranda, soaking in the sun and watching as falcons flew through the circular patch of sky above him and caribou skirted the clearing, snorting a greeting to Other-Loki as he checked on the raised bed full of vegetables that sat tucked against the cabin wall.
The cabin itself was large for a hunter's lodge, with two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a large main sitting room. The sitting room took up the middle third of the cabin and was used as a work space for Other-Loki's experimentation. A circular table stood in the middle of the room with boxes of crystals and different vials of powders and herbs arranged on a leather briefcase in its center. Various instruments and tools were arranged around the perimeter and were always clean and polished to look brand new. On the floor around the table were several cauldrons that always had something bubbling away in them. In the corner next to the door stood a brass telescope for when nights were clear. Across from the entrance stood two leather armchairs in front of a roaring fireplace constructed from large polished stones that had been collected from a nearby river. From the beams that spanned the sloped ceiling hung a simple iron chandelier that had been fashioned to look like a wagon wheel.
On the right side of the cabin was the kitchen. A floor-to-ceiling wall separated the rooms but a wide-open archway that stretched nearly from one wall to another allowed easy access to the room. A wide counter ran along the walls with racks of spices and bowls of fruit. Over the two shorter lengths of counter on the sides, cabinets were filled with plates and cups that were hardly ever used. Across from the entrance, two windows allowed plenty of light to stream into the space. Underneath them was a large sink, drying rack, and an old wood stove that Other-Loki preferred to light with Seidr instead of actual tinder. In the middle of the room stood a circular wooded table with two wooden chairs. Although the ceiling in this room was lower than in the sitting room, there was still plenty of headspace to hang bundles of herbs from the rafters to dry, which is exactly what Other-Loki did.
The remaining space on the left side of the cabin was divided into two rooms. One was Other-Loki's quarters, which Loki was absolutely forbidden from entering, and the other was Loki's. The room was very minimalistic, with only a queen-sized bed, a nightstand, and a window to occupy the space. The night that Loki had arrived, the room had been lined with bookcase after bookcase of leather-bound tomes, but Other-Loki had stored them all away in a pocket dimension to make room for his guest.
That first night, Loki had been so exhausted that he had barely been able to take in all of these details. Other-Loki had sat him down at the table in the kitchen and immediately began to bustle along the counters, boiling water and mixing different powders and herbs.
"So," he said, reaching up to pluck a handful of leaves from one of the drying bundles, "you said that you had been picking apart the Mandala Effect?"
"Yes." Loki sighed and leaned his forearms on the table. "I was attempting to run the spell through a corporeal anchor in order to limit the results and simply allow me to view other realities rather than visit them. My first three attempts melted, the fourth exploded, and the fifth sent me here."
Other-Loki turned sharply toward his clone. "You attempted to bastardize the spell five times?" He shook his head in amazement, the mortar and pestle in his hands momentarily forgotten. "The Mandala Effect is uncooperative and unstable even for the most competent wielders of magic. You're lucky that you didn't die the moment you attempted to change its intent."
Loki said nothing. Other-Loki shook his head and turned back towards the counter. Loki sat in silence and watched his hands as they poured the powders and crushed herbs into a small cheesecloth bag and tied it before setting it in a mug and pouring hot water over it. Other-Loki carried the steaming mug of tea over to the table and set it down in front of Loki.
"This will help you to regain your strength."
Loki wrapped his slender fingers around the mug and brought it gratefully to his lips, wincing slightly as he burned his tongue.
"Thank you," he said, nodding to the other, who had taken the seat across from him.
Other-Loki nodded curtly back, lounging in his rickety wooden chair as if it were a throne.
They sat for nearly a minute, neither of them saying anything to the other. Finally, Other-Loki shifted in his chair, drawing in an unsure breath. Loki looked up expectantly.
"Why are you wearing that?" Other-Loki asked, eyeing Loki's black jeans and green tank top.
Loki blinked, leaned his elbows on the table, opened his mouth to reply, closed it, and blinked again. That certainly wasn't what he had expected. He chuckled, tilting their head inquisitively.
"It's comfortable," he answered with a shrug.
Other-Loki seemed to accept that. His eyes traveled up to Loki's hair. "Why has your hair been shorn short?" he asked with a small frown. "Is short hair not a sign of servitude in your reality?"
Loki nodded. "It is." He shrugged again. "But it does not have to be. It certainly is not among the Midgardians. Besides, it is far easier to maintain at its present length."
"You know of Midgardian customs," Other-Loki observed. "So you have spent time among them?"
Loki hummed, leaning back in his seat. "And you have not." Loki didn't need to ask whether or not that was true. The seclusion was obvious enough. "Why?"
"You know why," Other-Loki growled, his right hand gripping the armrest so hard that it creaked.
Loki waved his hand impatiently. "Yes, you attacked them and attempted to subvert them. But why not learn about them? With your level of skill in enchantments, you could easily walk among them without a single second glance. I know that I used to do it all the time before the Avengers took me in."
Other-Loki stared at him in surprise.
"Yes, the Avengers," Loki reiterated with a smirk. "Tony was the one who figured it out. He had been looking over security footage from what they call the Battle of New York when he noticed by pure chance that my eyes had changed color after Dr. Banner's alter-ego took issue with me. They brought the information to Thor and after father was convinced, they let me go and cleared me of all charges in both Midgard and Asgard."
Other-Loki looked stunned. "They let you go because your eyes changed color?" he asked in amazement. "They did not consider the possibility that it might be a trick?"
"Oh they did," Loki assured him with a small huffed laugh. "They interrogated many people and spent weeks debating before they brought the possibility to Thor. It took another month of investigating before father was completely sure. I would have been released far sooner if his advisors had not needed so much convincing."
Other-Loki frowned in confusion. He sat up in his chair, his shoulders slightly hunched. "But... Are they not aware of..."
"Ragnarok?" Loki eyed his counterpart wearily as Other-Loki nodded. "They know," he assured him. "It took nearly a year of convincing from Thor before I finally told them. It's hard to tell your closest and only friends that you are destined to bring about the end of the entire universe." He chuckled fondly. "But do you want to know what they said to me?"
Other-Loki slowly nodded.
"So what?" Loki let out a laugh. "Is that not amazing? They meet Armageddon itself and said, 'Yes, you're fated to destroy us, but you do not have to.'"
Other-Loki shook his head. "I don't understand." He frowned. "The Norns themselves foretold that I-"
"Yes, they were well aware of that fact," Loki conceded with a nod. "And you probably will in infinite other universes, but in this one, you have a choice." Other-Loki looked like he was about to object, so Loki continued. "You were fated to die in those ruins, were you not? And look where you are now." He swept his hand around the clean, spacious cabin. "Fate has only as much power as we are willing to give it."
Other-Loki stared off into space for a long time, his fingers relaxing from the armrest as he leaned back in his rickety chair. His emerald eyes seemed to stare far off into the distance.
After several minutes of silence, in which Loki finished his tea, Other-Loki abruptly stood, clearing away the dishes.
"It will be a couple of days before you have regained your strength," he said as he returned several bottles of powder to their cabinet. "Once you are well rested, I will tell you how you might be able to return home."
Loki frowned. "Might?"
Other-Loki paused in the act of washing out a mug. "Yes," he said as he set it on the drying rack next to the sink. "Of the few people who I know to have used that spell, very few have returned. Of the ones who did, almost all of them described universes completely different from those that they had been aiming for." He wiped his hands off on a towel before turning to lean against the counter and face Loki. "Every single one of them dropped into unfamiliar surroundings, completed some sort of task or quest, and were immediately transported home less than a day after they left, even if they had actually been gone for months. The Mandala Effect is an ancient magic. No one knows who or what invented it, but the spell is too intricate and vast for even you and me to understand it. It quite literally has a complete mind of its own and if it decides that your efforts would be better served somewhere else, then it will not hesitate to drop you in whichever universe it pleases. And if you have any intentions that it deems harmful..." He shrugged. "Well, I already told you about the missing ones, did I not?"
Other-Loki bid Loki goodnight, leaving him in the empty kitchen to contemplate his mortality.
Several days and many cups of tea later, Other-Loki approached his alternate self.
"How are you faring?" he asked as he approached Loki and the large female caribou that he had been feeding carrots to.
Loki smiled as he rubbed the female's nose. "My energy levels have risen considerably in the past few days. I expect that I will have regained the strength to attempt the spell by tomorrow afternoon."
Other-Loki nodded in satisfaction as he reached out to brush his hand down the beast's flank. "Good. Come." He turned back towards the cabin, beckoning for Loki to follow him. "We have many preparations to make before you attempt the return trip."
The rest of that day was spent memorizing the spell's incantation and the visualizations that would go with it. Certain spells can be achieved with a single word or gesture, but other require undivided attention and intense concentration in order to bring them to fruition. Unfortunately, the Mandala Effect was such a spell.
By the time they were finished, the sun had been gone for hours. Loki blinked blearily out at the blanket of stars that had draped itself over the wilderness. Very suddenly, Loki craved his bed in the tower, his room, his friends. Worry creased his forehead. While fate did only have as much power as you were willing to give her, that didn't mean that she was easy to overcome. She would give you what you wanted eventually, if you worked hard enough for her liking, but you would have to endure many things before she deigned to grant your desires. Loki knew that he would have a long road ahead of him.
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"We prepared the next day as well. At about noon, we feasted together in farewell before he teleported us to your Statue of Liberty." Loki continued, talking just as much with his hands as he was with his words. "That statue is one of many epicenters of energy that connect closely related realities. Every reality has thousands that can be found in places of great emotional importance. The Avengers tower is one, as well as other monuments such as the memorial for your 9/11 terror attack. The combined energy of your opinions and feelings creates an anchor that can be used to slide into neighboring dimensions. Of course, even with that as my guide, it still took me several hours to start the spell."
He went on to explain the scene on the torch and the disappearance of Earth's Might Heroes.
"It was not too long after that that I awoke here." He gestured around the room. "Steven has been very hospitable," he said, nodding to the doctor, who smiled and nodded back.
Fury sighed heavily, leaning forward in his chair to prop his elbows on his knees and pinch the bridge of his nose in exasperation.
"So what you mean to tell me is you fucked around with some ancient spell with a vigilante complex, got your ass blasted into the next town over, met your not-so-mini-me, tried to ET phone home, and got my Avengers beamed up instead?"
Loki took a second to think about that.
"I'm not entirely sure what you just said, but yes, that's basically what happened," he confirmed with a nod.
"Do you know how we can get them back?" Steven asked, steepling his fingers.
Loki shrugged, leaning back as he reopened his book. "We wait."
Before Fury even had time to think of questioning that statement, several loud thuds came from just outside the door, followed by several voices alternatively cursing and laughing in delight. The Sanctum's magic gave an odd little twist and jump before leaning towards the hallway, more curious of the appearance of the visitors on the other side than angry at their intrusion.
"Right on schedule," Loki said with a grin. He relaxed fully against the headboard of his bed for the first time all day, relief flooding through his bloodstream. There had always been the nagging doubt that the Mandala Effect would decide to not return them.
Fury shot from his chair and threw open the door to find the Avengers in the process of extricating themselves from the tangle of limbs that they had been dumped in on the floor. Tony was still in his Iron Man armor and had luckily landed at the bottom of the pile. But something was off. His armor was... bronze?
Fury blinked. Almost all of the Avengers were oddly dressed. Thor's outfit was even more Vikingish that it usually was, complete with a sheepskin vest, leather jerkin, and baggy green pants that were cinched at the waist with a leather thong (not the sexy kind, the cord). As Fury watched, he quickly pulled Steve to his feet, thundering something about dragon riding. The captain was dressing in floor-length dark blue robes and Fury could help but notice the lack of his shield. He could only hope that Steve hadn't misplaced it. Clint was dressed similarly to Thor, but without the sheepskin vest. Instead, he had a green and grey cloak slung over his shoulders with a flap at the base of his neck pushed back to expose the arrows in his quiver. As soon as he had scrambled to his feet, he pulled Nat into a tight hug. She usually wasn't one for displays of affection, but she gave him a brief, bone-crushing hug and buried her face into his shoulder. The red head wasn't in her usual sweatpants, sneakers, and hoodie. Instead, she was wearing jeans, muddied boots, an ACDC t-shirt, and a red flannel. When Tony finally whirred and clanked to his feet and noticed the shirt, he retracted his faceplate and gave her an appreciative smirk and thumbs up, then proceeded to double over in laughter when he saw the priest-like robes that Steve was dressed in. Bruce was the only one who was dressed even remotely like his normal self with a tan sweater and well-worn jeans. He simple stared at the chaos around him with a bemused smile from his seat against the wall. Fury could hear Loki and Dr. Strange walk up behind him and the three of them simply stared at the odd group.
Steve shot one last glare at Tony before turning to smile and nod respectfully at the three men. "We're back." His smile suddenly spread into a giddy grin. "You guys will never believe where we've been."
(A/N: DONE!!!! Well, with the prologue, at least. :) Here's where everyone will be going: Clint will be going to Ranger's Apprentice, Tony will be going to Percy Jackson, Nat is heading to Supernatural, Thor's going to How to Train Your Dragon, Bruce will have the wonderfully horrifying experience of being deduced by BBC's Sherlock, and Steve is going to Harry Potter. >:D I'll be putting out Clint's story first, so you guys will be able to read that soon. You don't have to read all of these stories in order to understand what's going on with the other characters, so you can pick and choose which ones sound interesting to you. Unfortunately, I will be putting these stories out in the order that the characters disappeared in chapter 1, so die-hard potter heads and sherlockians will have to wait a while for their fix. I hope you all enjoy!)