The S.H.I.E.L.D. Codices: A Clear And Present Loki

"It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice." ~ Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

"I am selfish, private, and easily bored. Will this be a problem?" ~ Neil Gaiman, A Study in Emerald

1. and in the beginning were the words

He stood at the crux of time and space, his past veiled in the thin shadow he cast behind him. Countless doors surrounded him, each a mirror, each unlocked, each quivering with the whispering sounds that slithered out underneath them, calling to him, asking him to decide. He kept his bone-white hands clasped together in a pose of pure calm and contemplation, his glinting eyes narrowed as his considered his sizeable number of options.

I am, he thought, as every God ought at the outset of new creation. The words were the base of the purest of spells, making of him a fixed place, an anchor in a mutable jumble of possible universes. It stilled the swirl of confusion in his mind. He lifted his head and spoke them aloud to finish the seal.

"I AM."

"So you are," murmured the secret-keeper. Loki turned slightly, glanced at the yellow robed figure where it sat behind a simple desk of wood and metal – another type of observer might instantly recognize it as a popular choice from an IKEA catalog. A bony finger with a ragged nail tapped the matte blue cover of a laptop impatiently. "You insist upon yourself, little deity."

"I merely prepare."

"Well, do get a move on. I'm not Drew Carey, the price is never right, and you'll never be satisfied with what's behind door number three. We both know this, so let's not dawdle overmuch." The figure shifted in its seat, the laptop disappearing as if it never were. Now a slender silver fountain pen danced in its hands instead.

"I could use advice," Loki muttered. He shifted his gaze back to the countless doors – here, a monstrously ugly version of him, green and gold and haggard with hate. There, a slender young man not much unlike his own self-image sang showtunes in a bubbling bathroom. Loki caught a glimpse of another trio beckoning the pretty manchild's attention, and his heart – dead heart, he told himself, he loved nor needed nothing anymore - twanged to see some echo of Frigga among this alien concept of the All-Mother. He unconsciously hissed breath through his lips and looked away again to his possibilities. There, discordancy: a mirror-Loki turning vehicles to ice cream, then another shot a fish with an improbably large rocket launcher. Another held Thor in his pale palm, the great golden warrior now a frog, smiles creasing the lips of tricksters both here and there. In another mirror, incongruously, a chimera-like figure of many colors tormented a field of tiny pastel ponies. Loki pondered that one a while, seeing that piece of himself still in the prankster monster, and yet recognizing that this was yet a bit too weird for him. On and on, more mirrors, more visions that began to blur together. And here, one tinted with the deadened colors of legend, a Loki that capered in madness – and died – at the end of the world and the end of all worlds.

He suppressed the shudder. His last meal lay cold in his belly.

"Viral memetics. Consensus reality." He turned back to the secret-keeper and its hidden face. "No one of us can rewrite the world, Loki, not I, not any sole creature. It takes a thousand souls or more to make the barest shift. What you behold is destiny. Thousands and thousands of destinies. And they all end there." The bony figure pointed an ink-stained feather at the mirror doors. Now all showed the same broken, terrifying vision. "Ragnarok."

The shared vision dissipated, resumed their divergent histories. Rattled, he played his game face. "I rather like that one." He gestured to the smiling figure on a grand stage, the meaningless words 'COMIC-CON' emblazoned on a banner nearby. Thousands of voices clamored for him, and his own name came as a rousing chant from under the door. "He seems well-honored."

"They love a fiction, Loki. You do not exist there, save as a fantasy. The man you see is not you, though in those few moments he incarnated you to amuse a throng. Mere theatrics, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage. Quite a nice man, actually, or so I've observed." The secret-keeper's voice was low and heavy with irony. He bristled at the implication, but kept his expression neutral. "In that world, no action you could ever make would be your own. Your fate there is written, known, planned by committee – and you'll die at any moment their whim suits. The play's the thing, of course, and it serves the mighty dollar and its kingdom of residuals on the back end. No cut of the action figure profits, either."

"There is no other choice?" Despite his best effort, a faint whisper of desperation entered his words. "I must end either in madness and hate, or in non-existence?"

"Has that not been the clear outcome of your every willfully made choice to this day? You dare step between all things and presume your innocence to ME of all creatures, when your crimes are recited clear? When a million words of your misdeeds fill scrolls of legend, Wiki articles, and comic sketches? We know you well, prince of mischief and lord of lies. What you think you seek has been tried before, to predictable ends." The white noise voice rose in outrage and amusement. "You are not the hero of this story."

He whirled on the secret-keeper. "Then I want a new story!"

A noise filled the timeless space, a rattle he eventually recognized as a hollow, clacking laugh. He wondered, briefly, what sort of creature was veiled within the saffron yellow robe, and then wisdom bade him consider that some secrets are kept for a reason. If he was beyond reality – all realities – then what sat there now with charcoal on its fingers, painting transient histories on blank red stone, was not for him to comprehend.

"Oh, but I do like you. New stories are always built on the bones of old, of course. Memetics, confluence, tropes, a skeleton built of campfire tales and lies whispered between children. History is made from jumbled memories and a little superglue of faith."

Loki wondered if the secret-keeper was mad.

"You fought your way here, twice your kingdom lost, having slipped through your grasp after mistakes you made. Your allies leave you to die every time, and your family's backs turned to you again and again as you betray them in search of something to fill your heart. A heart you leave empty. These were your choices, and your results are your own. I will give you almost nothing until the day you acknowledge this, and that day, funny prince, will be Ragnarok still."

"No hope in truth, then."

"Not from me to thee."

"Then tell me of lies, the topic I know best." He flashed the thing in the robe a brittle, hateful smile. He was growing weary of its strange rhetoric.

The secret-keeper pushed away from the tall stone stele and rose to its full height. Loose saffron puddled around its hidden feet and their strange sucking noises. The rattle-clack came again. "I'll do you one better. I'll share with you a riddle. I'll even speak the answer, should you fail to solve it."

"Tell me."

"What is a lie?"

He was taken aback. A simple enough question. "A story. A falsehood, a thing that is not true. A tool of manipulation, a weapon to hurt. A child knows these things."

"And the man used that knowledge to his own ends. These are the answers to a question. I gave you a riddle."

"Your idea of a riddle is...unique."

The dry clack. "The answer, funny prince, is simple: A lie is a truth that hasn't happened yet."

Loki stayed still, considering the import the secret-keeper put into the words. Some implied meaning crept close to him, staying just out of reach of his clutches. He curved his lips into a distracted, scholarly sort of sneer, filing this away for study.

"Now lie to me, lord of lies. Tell me what you think you want."

"I want out. I want better than this. I want a future that doesn't end with me as a mindless, mad destroyer. Mark me the villain if you like, it doesn't matter. But I want Asgard – not as rubble, a husk. I want my kingdom." His voice rose at the end, nearly a roar.

"Oh, you." The robes heaved in a sigh. "Fine. Take that door." It gestured to a shimmering portal. In it, he spied a familiar human face and he grimaced. Nobility left his angry form and he looked back at the keeper with his head cocked like a puzzled mutt.

"Seriously? That seems poor judgment."

"Through that door is potential. Your best bet, funny prince, not that it'll likely matter in the end, is to go entirely off the rails. What came before changes with every telling and matters little, except in a metafictional kind of way. That there was a prince once who went mad with the knowledge of his blood and his destiny, this is a piece that must be kept. The rest, eh, not so important. We know your kingdom is lost, the why and the how can be written by others later."

He spread his hands, shaking his head at the creature. "I don't understand."

The secret-keeper crossed its arms, clearly impatient with him. "It means you take a chance on a story told for the sheer joyful fuck of it, with no certain outcome. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I haveonly done this once before."

He gaped openly, forgetting for a dangerous second that he stood in its realm and existed solely at its whim. "You are mad."

"We're all mad here. Take a chance. Tell us a tale, Lie-Smith."

He stared at the darkness veiled in the yellow hood for a long time. Take a chance – it was, perhaps, his only chance. At least in this telling. His mind began to whirl again.

"Tick-tock, said Spock, my soul is yet in hock. Time to fly, princes die, and I've got about six episodes of Game of Thrones backed up on the DVR. Book 'em, Danno."

"Once upon a time," he said, backing away from the insane creature towards the door of last chance. "There were only the words in the place between time and space. The words were I AM, and when the god spoke them, somewhere, a man died and a child was born. Bushes burned and mirrors shattered."

"Go on. One last step and you're through."

"And the god said again I AM, and those words of power are an affirmation – the god is he who he is, and this is both the lie and the truth. And the secret-keeper looked on him with benevolent amusement, and lo, the young god's story begins anew with those most secret, most sacred of words."

For a single shattered second, he glimpsed the outline of a face in the cowl, but its shapes and angles meant nothing to his mind. Something squirmed there, a mad fever's dream of a smile, and he turned and plunged through the portal as he spoke the words of beginning.

"Once upon a time!"