Loki
(ahem)
Marvel (Cinematic Universe) FicsSorted by Character

Loki's encounter with Laufey (after briefly getting left behind on Jotunheim) spins things in a whole new direction, affecting the very fate of Asgard.

Content Warnings

Terror and angst.

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Icy Diplomacy

Excerpt

“Your heir defied one of your most ancient laws to march upon Jotunheim, thirsting for blood. I watched him ignore the calming advice of others, and then, over a simple insult, give himself over to the lust of battle so completely that he was not even aware of his comrades fighting for their lives. This rampant bloodlust seems ill-suited to a leader of any kind, let alone the future Allfather.

“And yet,” Laufey says, his voice gone low and almost curious, “I also saw this one, who claims the name of Odinson.” He draws closer—closer than Odin is comfortable with—and reaches out his giant arm to run a finger down Loki’s cheek, as Loki lies unresponsive in his father’s protective arms. “I saw him counsel caution, try to talk down a warmonger, only to get mocked for it.”

During Thor's coronation ceremony, Odin reveals Loki's true nature, and tells Thor to prove his loyalty to Asgard… by doing the unthinkable.

Content Warnings

Odin tells Thor to kill his helpless brother, publicly. Thor considers every possible alternative, and all the ways they could go horribly wrong. (Note: Unlike the fics that inspired me, mine will have a fully positive ending.)

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Before the Norns

Excerpt

Even in his terror, Loki looks to his father for support, for reassurance, still trusting.

“You have been raised together,” Odin says, “played together, fought at each other’s side—for a thousand years and more, you have known Loki as your brother. Yet he is not the son of Frigga, nor the son of Odin.”

Thor cannot tear his eyes away from Loki. The horror on his brother’s face could only be matched by the horror on his own.

“At the close of the war, I found him,” Odin continues. “Newborn. A Jotun runt—but it is the smallest of the Jotnar who possess the greatest talent for seidhr. Knowing this risk, perhaps I should have killed him. Instead, I decided to give him a chance.

“I brought him here, to be raised as though Aesir, though he could never share more than the surface appearance of his betters. In strength and stamina, in zeal, in combat skills, even with his most passionate efforts he has come up short again and again. Raised alongside the crown prince, he was given the best possible chance to rise above his nature, and yet… this is, after all, the best that he can become.”

Tears are sliding down Loki’s cheeks, only to freeze before they can fall.

When Thor brings Loki home in chains, Loki's convinced that Odin has a dark fate planned for him. He's right—but it's not that simple.

Content Warnings

Briefly gruesome; bittersweet ending.

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Acceptable Loss

Excerpt

“You asked me once, when you had discovered your own heritage, why I did not tell you earlier. I hope, in this case, the answer is quite clear to you: I could not shoulder your burden, but I could at least ensure, for as long as the fates allowed me, that you were unaware of it, and so did not live in despair of your future any longer than you must.”

“It’s true, then,” Loki says icily. “All I ever was—a useful relic, stolen from Jotunheim until you had need of me.”

“You are far more than that, Loki,” Odin murmurs, looking stooped and old, his face layered with sorrow. If Loki hadn’t had years to come to grips with Odin’s propensity for deception, he might have bought the act, felt some twinge in his heart; instead, his scowl deepens.

“How long have you known?” he demands. “When you told me that we were to defend the peace—that we were both ‘born to be kings’—was I a sacrifice even then? When you turned me over to the huntmaster for training, filled my head with tales of heroes, of glorious death in battle? Did you make me look forward to the possibility of Valhalla when you knew I was only to go under the knife?”

*On hiatus—at a natural stopping point, so it's on the shelf, but I've been persuaded to add two more chapters to show the aftermath.

Loki has good reason to hate everyone around him—and so he plots the ruin of Asgard itself.

Content Warnings

Fantastic racism. Also, Loki's hate is the only thing that's gonna save them all.

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Festering

Excerpt

Thor looked around at the people of Asgard and saw friends and comrades, allies and defenders of the realm, and he was right; Loki looked at the same people and saw would-be assassins just waiting for the opportunity to strike him down—and he wasn’t wrong. As tonight had proven all too clearly.

You will pay for having dared to put yourself above true warriors of Asgard.

As if Loki were not, himself, true and a warrior and of Asgard. (As if he’d ever had any say in that last one.) As if he weren’t fighting harder than any warrior among them, for a kingdom that loathed and despised him, in a battle that saw no respite and no quarter given. Sacrificing everything he had: safety, freedom, peace, even his own mind had been surrendered to the cause.

All that he had and all that he was, he had abandoned for the moment, in service to a higher cause; there was no other way to win.

And tonight it could have all been for nothing, he thought savagely, the rage roiling up within him with nowhere to go. (Not yet, anyway. He’d be able to use it soon enough. Soon enough.)

When Thanos finally shows up to take a look at the Chitauri's latest prisoner, Loki has been broken down enough that it doesn't take much to shove him over the edge.

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Pain Is Inevitable

Excerpt

They like him, because his body insists on healing itself. Most of their captives die too quickly, but with him they can have fun.

“Do you wish the pain to stop, child?” the man asks, sinking down to a crouch before Loki.

There’s no right answer. There’s never a right answer, because he has no control here, no way of getting them to stay their hand, not even for a moment.

Loki learns to be careful with his demands.

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The Pressure of the Throne

Excerpt

“Well, my prince,” the Titan rumbled from atop him, shifting slightly and grinding in the agony of the broken rib all over again, “have you had enough of the throne?”

Thanos is nothing if not an obliging host.

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Hands Off

Content Warnings

This piece hits nearly twenty (20!) Whumptober prompts, focusing on psychological torture; it includes sensory deprivation and amputation... sorta

Excerpt

The expression that crosses the purple one’s face is mildly intrigued. “Bring him closer,” he commands.

As the insects drag him forward Loki musters what strength he can find. “Unhand me!” he demands, falling a bit short of the imperious outrage he’s managed on other worlds. “You dare lay your filthy mitts on a prince of Asgard?!”

“A prince, is he?” the purple one rumbles, words laced with amusement. “Well, his royal highness commands, and we must certainly obey. Gentlemen… our visitor has spoken.”

(Centuries spent at court has left Loki with a highly tuned sense of hidden meanings, and a frisson of fear shoots down his back.)

When Loki refuses to yield, Thanos demonstrates how easily he can be made to kneel.

Specific Torture

Burning metal bound to the back of his knees.

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Crawl

Excerpt

“Pain is a great and terrible teacher. Only through pain can you learn things you never realized about yourself… break through the limits you’ve imposed upon yourself, get to know your true capabilities. Given enough time, enough lessons, you will even learn to appreciate it more than you fear it. But long before that… you will thank me. There is no rescue, no respite even in death. You cannot outlast my patience. But you can embrace your suffering, embrace the lesson, and serve my will.”

“You know, I think I’ll pass,” Loki says, clinging to the vestiges of his old dry wit. He does not struggle while they bind his arms behind his back, cinch them tight; he’s barely got enough strength left to stand.

Thor can only watch as Loki bargains away the only thing he has left to offer.

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Breaking Point

Excerpt

“Well, then,” Thanos purrs, looking down at Loki’s bowed and unmoving form. “I suppose that’s something I could work with.”

Loki shudders, and his eyes close with a sense of finality.

Thor’s heart aches. He’s lost his brother twice now, and he’s about to lose him again, to something worse than death. Worse than anything they’ve ever faced. And he’s weak enough that he let this happen.

Thanos has managed to capture a number of Avengers, plus Loki. Tony's just looking for a way out.

I'm not planning a positive ending for this piece; it's here to showcase one possible reason that Loki ultimately gave in to Thanos: Thanos's realm exists outside time, and there is no way to leave until he allows it.

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A Torrent Carving Inexorably at a Stone

Excerpt

Steve tries to talk to the guards; Tony tries to threaten the guards. It gets them nowhere, except that Steve gets zapped by their shock-stick a couple times.

A few weeks ago, Tony might have found that amusing. Cathartic. Now he stares, dead-eyed, at Steve’s body, willing him to get up again.

It takes a while.

And Loki’s screams just won’t stop.

The Grandmaster's acting weirder than usual, and Loki's about to find out just how powerful the guy truly is.

This may be the only completely sex-free Sakaar fic I'll ever write.

Content Warnings

Gets pretty creepy. Memory tampering, non-consensual drug use, existential dread.

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Reforming

Excerpt

Again, he tries—to protest, to explain, to find some way out of the situation—but there’s no words coming out, just clumsy attempts at sound, and again the Grandmaster shushes him. Loki’s eyes fall closed on his own tears; has he ever been this helpless before? Even after the Beast attacked him, he was at least still able to talk.

“Your poor throat,” the Grandmaster murmurs. “You know, you’d think—after all I’ve done for you, all I’m about to do for you—you’d think you’d have learned to trust me. I’m gonna need your trust, Lolo. We’ve got a whole new, uh, a whole new world to set up.”

Glancing out toward something Loki can’t see, the Grandmaster sighs again, wistfully this time. “I didn’t expect it so, uh, so soon,” he says. “Usually takes a few centuries to fall, uh, to fall apart like this. Don’t get me wrong, I live for variety, it’s just… I’m gonna miss this setup. It was going pretty good.” Looking back at Loki, he smiles almost painfully. “All things must come to an end, I suppose.

“All things but me.”

When Loki breaks free from SHIELD's lab, Clint retrieves him easily enough, but the guy's cryptic words stick around in his brain….

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Cuckoos

Excerpt

No matter. If Loki was spouting crazy talk, he wasn’t attacking, and Clint could put up with any amount of bullshit if it meant he’d be taking Loki in again, bound and helpless for another round of tests.

“They want me,” Loki said, his body dipping low, like he’d lost the strength to keep it upright. “Just like Odin. I’m just another stolen relic for everyone to make use of.”

“You expect sympathy from the guy you turned into a puppet?” Clint swapped his arrow for a second knockout arrow, and fired it, expecting Loki to snatch it out of the air like he had during the invasion; it wasn’t like he didn’t see it coming. But the arrow struck right under Loki’s ribs, and Loki curled in on himself, letting go of the tree and groaning as he sank to his knees in the snow.

I'm debating about writing a follow-up, but it's super low-priority. If anyone else cares to do so, feel free!

Loki's been handed over to SHIELD, which is to say, HYDRA -- and they're pulling him apart piece by piece until he serves their will.

Content Warnings

This fic is one long sequence detailing the different aspects of torture between Loki's time with Thanos and Loki's time with HYDRA. Pulls no punches; I think the title is pretty apt.

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Stripped Down to Nothing (again)

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The mortals’ methods for torture are nearly as effective as when he’d been stripped apart on Sanctuary; the key differences being that they are a little more careful not to kill him, and that he doesn’t try to scream for help, for family. The progressive revelation of just how little Asgard cared for his welfare has done what the torments themselves could not quite manage, and finally eradicated all his remaining illusions. In all the universe, not one single person cares about Loki. He has no family. He never did.

The torturous experiments bled together, memory with reality, until he could barely distinguish the two. The mortals care nothing for his suffering, except as a means to an end. Bending him to their will was almost a side project, at least at first; they were far more interested in finding ways to copy his powers, to heal their mortal bodies or prolong their miserable lives. But he clings to a dark satisfaction: When Odin had sealed his powers, he had—perhaps wittingly, perhaps not—denied their use to the mortals as well.

Clint gets captured by HYDRA because they want to study his wings.

Since a fic exchange made me consider the possibility of Clint Wingfic, I've been debating various possibilities (Clint was born with wings? SHIELD gave him wings? HYDRA experimented on him?); this was sort of an attempt to combine them. If I ever get around to finishing this one, it's possible I'll write more; I very much enjoy the idea of Hawkeye being able to fly, and it does mesh with certain elements of his misfit childhood.

Content Warnings

Medical torture, though Clint largely dissociates to escape it. Flashbacks are sparse on detail, but include a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic, physically abusive dad, and childhood bullying.

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Cygnet

Excerpt

They’re unwrapping the broken wing, stretching it out until it’s all he can do not to scream as hot tears run down his cheeks. It’s the reason for the ambush, the reason they sought him out, the one man in existence with nearly functional wings, and they’ve been trying to figure out the mechanics enough to duplicate them. Or improve them; the scientists argue about it, off and on, as Clint slips deeper under the waves of agony and his mind begins to float, eager to escape what his body can’t.

In the wake of Civil War, SHIELD's resources are running thin. So when Clint gets captured, Coulson reaches out to the only person who could perform a rescue operation solo.

And then they both get stuck together for a while. Plenty of time for interesting conversations and a chance to reflect on their similarities.

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Turtles in a Bottle

Excerpt

He’s lying on the ground, blinking into the dirt, trying to rediscover his lungs; hands are digging into his pockets, pulling off his equipment, his utility belt. When he starts to struggle, a quick jolt from the taser leaves him muzzy and docile as they secure his arms, knees, and ankles.

There’s no one Coulson could send to rescue him. He clenches his teeth anyway, activating the panic button built into his molar. At least Coulson will know that the mission went south, even if he can’t do a damn thing to make it any better.

“My, my,” a voice says as they manhandle him to his feet. “Barton, isn’t it? Such a talented marksman; how nice of you to donate yourself to the cause.”

His blood runs cold: They know about him.

They want him.