Spoilers/Warnings:

1) AU fic of the Avengers movie. Yeah, I embraced the cliché.
2) Elements of time-travel and future-knowledge use.
3) Rampant use of bad language. Children, if you don't want to learn how to curse like motherfucker, leave this place and come back when you're ready.
4) Heavy OC use, but I think you'll like her. Or at least, I hope you like her.
5) This is part 1 of the Time-Traveler Arc

And yeah, I'm open to suggestions, and sure, throw in some constructive criticism too. Why not?

~E

May 4, 2012

"Director!" It's the alarm laced in his voice that has everyone turning to the blue-suited man who runs right up to Fury, and Tony sees the look of apprehension on his young-looking face that matches his panicked tone. "Director, someone's in the detention room with the prisoner!"

"Who?" Fury demands more than asks, and the little S.H.I.E.L.D. minion practically thrusts the tablet he's holding into Fury's face.

"No facial recognition matches, sir," the baby-faced minion reports, "and I mean total blackout. Not even a sixty-percent match on a single traffic cam anywhere on the planet."

"Send down a welcoming committee," Fury instructs as he turns, handing the tablet to Thor. "Recognize her?"

Thor grimaces and shakes his head. "Her image is not familiar to me," he replies, pushing away the thin device.

"Any idea what she could want with your brother?" Fury asks, taking the tablet back and returning it to What'shisname.

"No," Thor snaps irritably.

Fury's saved from a smiting via demigod by his dark-haired she-minion. "Sir, I've connected your line to the detention room," she says, tossing up the video link on the table for them all to see.

The unexpected visitor is a youngish, oddly familiar-looking girl with short, curly brown hair, and the quality of the video was good enough that Tony can see she actually has no makeup on, which is impressive, considering how pretty she looks on camera. She's decked in a S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform too, which would have meant she was part of the crew, except that she apparently didn't have a record of any sort, which all S.H.I.E.L.D. employees did have one way or another.

Not that Tony was supposed to know about such details.

So that meant she'd snuck on board and stolen a uniform. Trespassing and theft this late in the evening? How cliché of her.

The girl's voice echoes around the room as she spoke to Loki. "…to free you," she says, which made the S.H.I.E.L.D. people plus Cap and Point Break tense up. She-Minion begins barking orders into her headset, though Tony largely ignores her redundant commands in favor of listening to the more interesting conversation. "How do I open the cage?"

Interesting indeed. Why would she want to free Loki? Motive? Purpose? Was she one of his mind-controlled minions?

But no, her eyes aren't the blue color that Fury's initial reports mentioned. They were a nice brown color that…yeah, they look pretty familiar, now that Tony thinks about it…

Damn. Where'd he seen those eyes before—? Oh no, did he sleep with her once? Damn it, please don't be one of the women he's slept with before. Wait, J.A.R.V.I.S. would know, wouldn't he?

"There." Loki raises his arm, pointing to the control panel at the end of the walkway, and the girl moves quickly to the mechanism. At the same time, Tony takes out his phone and begins texting his commands to J.A.R.V.I.S.

"Goddamn bullshit," Fury mutters, tapping on his comm. "Whoever you are, stop what you're doing at once," he snaps. "This is Director Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. . Who the hell are you and what the fuck do you think you're doing?"

That seems to surprise Loki, and while Tony logically shouldn't trust anything the so-called God of Mischief did, gut-instinct tells him that this isn't part of whatever plan Loki has in place. "You are not part of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Loki says, narrowing his eyes at her.

Tony blinks quickly as he registers Loki's distrustful tone and concludes that no, Loki really doesn't know her, so she couldn't be one of his people.

"Nope," the girl replies as she toys with the control panel.

Huh. So why was she here? And how did she know about Loki being here? She wasn't S.H.I.E.L.D., or else they'd have at least one record of her left in their system…

"She wouldn't know how to—" The guy who'd alerted them begins to say, just as on-screen, the impact sensors registering as DISENGAGED. "Never mind," he mutters, hurriedly typing into his tablet, though for what Tony didn't know. It's not like he could stop the girl from freeing their newest prisoner, especially since the control panel couldn't be remotely accessed from outside the room.

Tony'd checked.

"The fuck does she think she's doing?" Fury asks no one in particular.

"She's freeing Loki!" Thor declares, as if everyone couldn't see it with their own eyes. "I must go!" And with that, the blond brute disappears through the doors.

"And why do you offer to free me from this trap?" Loki asks as the clamps around the cage were disabled as well.

The girl raises an eyebrow and shoots him a smirk—one that again tugs at Tony's memory banks. "Why don't we skip the part where we pretend that you can't teleport yourself out of that cage anyway?" she suggests, making most of S.H.I.E.L.D.—including Fury—cuss in some shape and form. Tony tries his best not to be amused at their panic, but fails as a smirk spread across his face. He himself had long ago realized that inside that cage, Loki was probably the safest bastard in the entire boat. Guess even highly-trained government drones were susceptible to stupid.

Or wishful thinking, anyway.

The door to the cage opens, and Fury's commands for his guards to hurry to their location are interspersed with 'fuck,' 'fucking,' and 'motherfucker'—all of which, despite the tense situation, were actually making Captain America's eyebrows rise in disapproval. Pfft! What a prude.

"Very well then," Loki says, disappearing from the middle of the cage and appearing right in front of the girl, grabbing her arms and pulling her close. The brunette was obviously not expecting this, because she gasps and stiffens in Loki's hold. "Who are you, and why have you released me?"

The girl suddenly does an impressive arm twist and drags Loki into a kiss.

Okay. Ew. "She let him out for that?" Tony expresses with a frown, watching as Loki pushed the girl off him. "I expected something more impressively awful—" And then, on the crystal clear screen, they watch as Loki crumples to his knees and howls, his skin turning blue as a purple gas was expelled from his throat. "Okay, sinister enough," Tony admits.

"Oh motherfucker," the girl snaps as she jerks back, obviously not expecting that reaction either.

"You dare!" A deep voice booms ominously from the speakers. "Mortal scum! I will snuff the breath from your body with my bare hands!"

"Who the hell was that?" Fury demands rhetorically. At least, Tony thinks he's being rhetorical, 'cause it's clear by everyone's horrified and surprised expressions that no one had expected this turn of events, and therefore, no one knew what the hell was going on.

On screen, Loki drops on all fours, panting as the cloud thingy writhes above him and the girl. And then he looks up and extends a blue hand, magic glowing at his fingertips.

"NO!" the big voice roars as the smoke began to swirl, getting sucked into whatever Loki was doing. The girl moves back further, and that seems to catch the cloud's attention because it goes right for her.

Seriously? The voice was coming from that big cloud? Oh, no. Were they dealing with amorphous aliens now? Shit, that couldn't be a Chitauri, could it? Because if it was, then Earth was fucked.

The sight of the gassy blob going down the girl's throat seems to snap Fury out of his trance. "Hill, keep me updated," he says, turning to the door. "I'm going down there."

"Sir—"

"You think that's smart, Director?" the captain asks. "We—"

"I think I'm going get my damn answers," Fury barks testily, stomping past the doors.

July 4, 2035

She's left unnoticed because of the rubble pinning her to the ground, and despite the hot, searing pain tearing through her chest, Anna forces herself to breathe lightly and play dead. She opts to keep her eyes open to watch the huge fucker who'd crashed her party and rudely killed and-or maimed everyone else in sight as he stomped through the felled elite of Manhattan and refused to spare the lives of her dying guests or give them a quick death.

"Why bother?" The purple-skinned asshole goes for a rhetorical on one of the dying blonde socialites, and the words don't sound any better even with the deep voice. "In the end, you will still die." Purple Motherfucker then makes his way out towards the balcony, following after the other creatures—a mix of humanoid and non-humanoid alien ass-clowns—intent on spreading destruction and carnage further out into the greater New York area. And when he's gone, Anna lets out the pained, angry cuss been boiling in her throat.

Because he's right. All around her, the people who came to celebrate the fourth of July, the company's hundred-and-first anniversary and welcome her back into the world of the rich and famous are either dead or dying, and she's part of the latter group. There's a slim rebar sticking blatantly out of her chest, and she hears—feels—her spine grinding up and down against the unyielding ridges as she breathes. And every movement she makes floods her nerves with mind-shattering, eye-watering agony that makes her gasp involuntarily for air and pray for the strength to push the pain back. And with every breath she takes, her spine moves, the white pain blinds her senses, and the cycle repeats itself over and again.

Also, she can't feel her legs, but that's really just a secondary concern, because even though there's a large possibility that her kneecaps have been ground into tiny pieces, she can't feel it and so she doesn't care to be sure, especially since the damned rebar was adamant in keeping her full attention.

And god (-fucking-dammit-fuck-shit-fuck!) but it hurts. It burns. Fire races through her and she couldn't cool down. Her nerves scream for relief and she opens her mouth in a breathless, silent cry for—

"Ohmygod." Her eyes roll back and a moan escapes her as a breeze-like sensation flutters over her skin and takes away some of the heat and pain.

Most of the heat and pain.

…all of the heat and pain?

Okay, what the fucking what?

Eyes snapping open, she doesn't realize she'd automatically jerked up until she's jerking back, flinching away from the pain that was sure to come.

But it doesn't come, and it takes her a moment to register that she's no longer sandwiched between floor, broken wood platform and misplaced ceiling, nor was she still kebab'd by a long spike of ribbed metal.

...what the actual fuck was going on?

She pats herself down quickly, but there is no pain in her chest when she pokes at it, and when she stands, her knees brace, lock and hold her up with no problems or creaky complaints. She massages her scalp as well, looking for the lump she'd surely gained when the ceiling said hello to her head, but there's no sign of blood or a broken skull on her, nor does it feel like she has a concussion. So again, what—?

She blinks at her brace-covered hands, following the crisscrossing bands down her arms and to her body.

"What the fuck…?" she asks aloud, feeling the familiar fabric with her clean, bloodless hands and somehow, she's more shocked at the old Amazonian costume then her injuries' miraculous disappearance.

There's only one place she's ever worn this getup to—

"…Thor, please!" her mother's voice drifted up the stairs. "Please!"

—and unless that cooling, pain-removing sensation means that she'd just died, then this couldn't be Asgard—the Realm Eternal, and home to her immortal surrogate uncle and adoptive father and his family, which unfortunately includes the most asshole king she's ever met.

"Father, please! I gave her my word, and young Anna has nowhere else to go—"

"No!" The old king looked stressed at Thor's audacity to question his command. "The girl is a mortal, Thor—she cannot remain in our realm forever!"

"Then let her take a bite from Idun's apples at harvest time!" Thor pleaded. "We have granted immortality to men before!"

"You will take her back—" Odin rumbled, and the warning in his voice resonated through her, forever etched into her memories, "—or I shall see to it myself."

"The Lady Anna." Heart in throat, she whirls around, the leather skirt fanning around her as she moved to see who else was there in the almost-dark room with her. "We meet again."

…it's a naked man leaning back into a wall.

No, wait, that was wrong. Well, not the naked part anyway.

He wasn't leaning back at all. Metal encases his hands and pins him back into the jagged rocks, and his feet are similarly bound. His pelvis arches forward, almost obscenely thanks to his lack of pants, but she forgives him for it because even in this angle, she can see that he's only stretched out that way thanks to a piece of sharp rock that could tear into his back if he lets himself slouch even just a little bit.

She doesn't blame him for the pinched and displeased expression on his face—she'd had a rebar in her not a minute ago after all, and it had not been a pleasant experience.

But even if his skin was blue now—and not the unhealthy pale-white she'd first seen him as—and even if it has been six years since she'd last set foot on Asgard, Anna would never forget this place and the god it housed.

"Leave me," he roared, blue eyes swiftly turning red.

She dropped the torch and screamed, running back quickly through the tunnel she'd come from.

"Loki." His name is exhaled past her lips as she realizes what her clothes and his presence meant: she was on Asgard. Which means—

Thor. Her eyes glance to the left, where the torch she'd dropped years ago still lay alive and flickering and hallelujah for eternal fire!, and she's already stepping toward the passage she knew was there when she discovers that no, there is no opening there at all. Quickly coming up to it, she pats her hands against the cool cave walls frantically, looking for an opening or—

"There's no way out." Her gaze cuts right up to the bound god, and it occurs to her that the fucker has probably hidden it using the magic she knows he had. After all, she doesn't need three guesses to know who brought her here and how he'd done it.

Huffing, she picks up the torch and makes her way back to him. "Let me out, Loki."

Loki's lips thin visibly, his red eyes narrowing at her. "Don't be hasty in your suspicions, mortal. It was you who caused the tunnels to be filled in, not I."

"Your Anna was in the caves." Odin was obviously unhappy at that. "You know Loki isn't to be visited by anyone else—"

"The little lady was just playing, Father." Thor sank his large fingers through her curls, resting his hand at the nape of her neck comfortingly. "She knew not that he was there. Anna meant no harm or disrespect."

"It is no longer of any consequence." The king turned and began walking away. "I have taken care of the matter."

…oh damn. So that's what the old coot had meant. Shit.

"Then how do I get out?" Because she knows that she'd get nowhere without magical help, and despite her reservations, Loki is her best shot at getting out of the caves and requesting help from either Asgard's asshole king or its crowned prince. And on second thought, she should just probably go straight to the one who would help her, Asgardian law and culture be damned. "I need to talk to Thor."

Loki sighs. "You cannot speak with him as you are not on Asgard."

"Aren't I?" She puts challenge in her voice, but if his goal was to plant doubt in her mind, then he was successful. "You should be on Asgard, so—"

"And I am," he interrupts her imperiously, "just as you are still on Midgard. In your current situation, however—" he rakes his gaze over her critically, which was just wrong because he's the one chained naked to a spiky rock, "—your mind and body are rupturing. This is how I am able to…meet," he chooses to say, "with you."

She understands what he's insinuating at once. She's dead—or maybe still dying, which is basically the same thing—and he connected with her mind or essence or whatever. And since she's already in the presence of the god…

"Wow," is all she can say, her thoughts racing over the powers she was told Loki had in lieu of thinking about her nearing end. "So are you like, the god of death too or something? Come to fetch me and bring me…" she waves the torch absently, "wherever?"

It's a fifty-fifty chance that Loki would either laugh or scoff at her idea. He settles for a snort, and it's more insulting than either scenario she imagined. "I've no rule over the dead. But in a way, you are correct." I knew it, she thinks. "I come to bring you elsewhere. However, I don't offer death."

Her eyes narrow in suspicion, because there is no way Loki would put an offer like that—or any offer, really—on the table without wanting something in return. And that something probably danced along the lines of either her soul or her first-born child. Not that she even has the latter option right now. Or yet, anyway. "And what exactly do you offer, Loki—god of mischief and deceit?"

Instead of being insulted, Loki seems happy with what she'd called him. "No one," he tells her, "has ever described be so accurately before, my lady. I'm pleased."

Something inside her shifts at the title. "I'm not your lady." And yeah, she's angry enough that she doesn't care she's getting testy with the god who tried to rule her planet before she was even conceived. "Now what—"

"That's not what I've heard." The desire to smack him for the twinkle twinkling ridiculously away in his eye seizes her. "My brother placed claim on you as his ward, did he not?"

"Father." Uncle Thor kneeled before looking up to the king. Not knowing what else to do, Anna kneeled too, but felt awkward about looking up and kept her head down instead. "I bid you to give blessing to my plea. Allow Anna Stark to take refuge on Asgard as a lady of the court."

"A lady?" There was something in Odin's voice that had her looking up anyway. "On what grounds does Anna Stark claim her ladyship?"

Thor pressed his lips together before speaking. "I claim it for her," he clarified, "as my ward and daughter."

She grits her teeth at the reminder. "That was a long time ago."

"Oh, it's been a long time since, has it?" Loki smiles mildly. "And here I thought it has only been but half a decade. My, how the days pass so quickly. Forgive me, Lady Thorsdóttir—I've no true concept of time in this…hovel."

Anger blazes through her veins at his deliberate provocation. "Looks more like a cave than a hovel," she hisses. "Hovels have furniture."

"Indeed?" The bastard has the nerve to look thrilled at her reaction. "I wonder how you can state such a comparison. I'll defer to your expertise, of course," he adds, a smug, knowing smile on his face.

She finally snaps, reaching the end of her limit. "The fuck do you want?" Because she's had it up to here with these alien assholes and she's angry enough to gladly kill every single one of them, starting with this blue fucker. "You didn't just call me from my death bed to be all coy and confusing, did you? 'cause if you did, magic god or not, I will punch your blue bitch-face and break your fucking blue nose."

Loki frowns then. "You're quite vulgar for a lady of the court," he says, sounding a bit confused. "And you really should be thanking me. No mortal has ever had an opportunity like this at all. I should smite you for such insolence."

She snorts with just as much derision as he did earlier, because she's just realized what Loki was doing. "Should," she agrees, calming down as she thought about why he was trying to piss her off, "but you won't." Tucking her right arm under her breasts and holding the lit-end of the torch away from her body, she props her left elbow on her knuckles and rests the pads of her fingers on her chin, considering him. "You need me for something," she states, "something only I can do for some reason, because otherwise, you'd have magicked someone else here. You're also conserving magic or else you wouldn't be blue, so whatever it is you want, it involves using magic on me. You're riling me up because you think I'll agree to it if I'm angry enough, so this is probably about the cock-suckers who crashed my party with their supreme overlord."

Loki gapes at her for a moment before laughing delightedly. "Indeed," Loki jerks his head slightly in acknowledgement, a content smile playing on his lips. "You're more perceptive than I expected." She's not sure if she's insulted or pleased at his admission. "But I digress," he adds. "Hear me, mortal. Thanos—"

Her mouth drops open exaggeratedly. "Did you just seriously say that?"

"Listen now," he snaps, dropping the casual act. "Thanos has invaded your pitiful realm to call forth Thor. He plans to use Thor's descent into Midgard to take the Tesseract."

"Okay, there is seriously something wrong with that statement." She relishes the sudden anger that makes his nostrils flare as he inhales sharply. Payback was a bitch indeed. "The Tesseract is here on Asgard, he can't just get take it like candy from a—"

Loki hisses. "Which is why he wishes to lure Thor to Earth! With him away, no one but Odin can stand against him, and the Allfather grows weaker by the day. He would not last against the Mad Titan."

Anna frowns, considering this new information. Thor hadn't mentioned Odin the last time they met, and she'd been glad for it then. But if Loki was right... "Wait," she blinks, "what does he need the Tesseract for?" she asks.

"That is a long story—"

"Then give me the cliff notes version," she interrupts snappily. "You're all half-truths and sly words, Loki. If you think I've forgotten that I'm dying, then you're an idiot—" and here, Loki raises his eyebrows, as if he had thought she'd forgotten, "—and magic fuckery or not, I can't have too much time left. You want my help?" she asks rhetorically. "Fine. But if there's one thing I've been taught to do, it's not to go into dangerous situations blind and half-cocked. You either tell me everything, or just let me die in peace." She shrugs. "Your choice, Grouchy Smurf."

"You wish to die?" he asks, and it's clear that both the nickname and its meaning go right over his head, because he's an Asgardian psychopath who spent something like a day trying to subjugate modern Earth. Too bad, that was actually a good shot, and when else could she have use the term? God, what a waste of witticism.

Focus, Anna, she reminds herself, and she squints at him unhappily at the obvious topic change. "Death is inevitable for me," she chooses to say. "I can't choose when or how I die—that's out of my hands. And you're not offering me an out, you're offering an extension. Not even the great Loki Odinson can give me immortality."

Loki flinches. "I'm not Odin's son," he says hotly, and he visibly has to calm himself down. "And indeed, you are dying, but if my 'magical fuckery,'" he quotes sardonically, "is powerful enough to heal you completely," and here, her heart leaps to her throat in surprise, "then it's powerful enough to suspend time. We're in an in-between, and while I can't keep hold on this spell for too long, I can hold it long enough to…explain things—" he wrinkles his nose at the idea, "—to you. And yes, I cannot and do not offer you immortality. I am," he adds, "however, offering you a second chance."

She immediately shifts her attention to that, arms crossing under her breasts as she feels that they've finally gotten to the heart of the subject. "So you want to heal me so I can kill Thanos."

A shout of laughter escapes him. "Oh no," he refutes, chuckling at her. "No. Even if my brother himself had trained you extensively, you'd have no hope of winning against him. Thanos has had centuries to perfect his trade. You wouldn't last ten seconds against him."

"Ouch," she says dryly, but thinks that he's probably right. Even after the training she'd been through in the past few years, her best show and tell talent was escape and evade, not combat fighting. "Okay, fine. If I'm not killing him, then what am I doing?"

Loki smiles, devious and satisfied. "You're going to change everything."

Notes:

Thorsdóttir: This is an Icelandic practice, where the father (or mother, if the father is not known or places no claim on the child) passes their name down to their offspring as a surname. So when Loki tags Anna with the surname Thorsdóttir, he's calling her "Thor's daughter." See Wikipedia or Google it.