03. So, I did some shopping

Loki's unblinking eyes watched Naz with disappointment. Mortals...so persuadable, so useless, so finite. He was wasting his time here. He got up in a fluid movement just as she raised a foot to walk to her death, across the window sill nine floors above the pavement.

And suddenly, he was there on Stark Tower, facing Thor, trying to fight his brother, looking at the destruction of the place he had been promised. His Earth. His subjects. Destroyed, running wild, screaming; everything seemed a waste, a fool's errand. He had been a fool, so persuadable, so gullible, so cowardly.

He mumbled, "It's too late. It's too late to stop it."

He was shaking and his stomach lurched when he realized where he really was. He forced his body to move as he watched Naz walk off. "No!"

He wanted to grab her back but the stupid handcuffs were not much help either but he managed to get a hold of her t-shirt and caught her, just barely.

Naz broke out of her trance the second she felt something pull her back. She gasped as she found herself mid-air hanging by the material of her t-shirt. What was happening? Her heart went out of control as she dared to peek below. Bad idea, very bad idea. The distance of nine-floors and the solid pavement at the end was enough to make her vision go blank. She screamed for help, cursing Loki, cursing Steve, cursing Thor, cursing fucking Tony for doing this to her.

Save worlds. Fat lot of good she would do if she was dead.

"S-stop wriggling," Loki muttered with clenched teeth, from somewhere above. "I've got you."

Her eyes were firmly shut and she was praying when he dragged her back inside with a final pull.

They fell onto the floor, Naz colliding with Loki's tall figure but she was the first to get up.

"YOU IDIOT!"

He faltered at the sight of her drained complexion and angry expression, "I-I-"

She punched his chest, pushing him back, "I NEARLY DIED! How could you? How could you do that? Do your magic-bonds even work? I have had enough of-" She stopped when she heard him cry out.

He was shivering, backing away from her. His back collided with the wall as he slid down, screaming in a language she didn't understand. She didn't need to understand the words to realize he was in pain.

She knelt beside him, "Oh my God, what's happening? Are you okay? Loki! Look at me!"

His unseeing gaze was disoriented, his breath shallow as he lost the fight to his mind. He moaned something, something about Thor, and all of a sudden, he was gasping for air, pulling at his handcuffs, pulling at his neck, wild, ashen.

"No, no, no," Naz shouted. "Don't you die on me." She shook him, "Breathe, Loki, please you got to breathe. Ya Allah, what do I do?"

Her eyes fell on the bracelet she was wearing and she knew what she had to do. Her fingers were millimetres away from pressing the panic button when his hands shot out, cold fingers closing tightly around her wrists.

"Please, don't," he gasped, pleading.

She stifled a gasp of her own as she saw his appearance change. His fingers first lost colour, paling to an ice-blue which spread across his body. His lips were purple as he began to breathe short but definite breaths and this time, there was no mistaking it...when he raised his head, his eyes were pure deep scarlet.

His body calmed as he blinked at her, still seeming disoriented. His hold on her wrists loosened but he stiffened when he saw his hands. He took a sharp breath as he realized his Jotun form had surfaced. Anger boiled inside him as he tried to shift back, bury his monstrous reality back where it came from. He hated it, hated himself and everything that marked him as different from all he had ever wanted to be, all he ever could have been. He wasn't a king, no, he was just a stolen relic, kept behind gold bars to do Odin's bidding. To never be good enough, to never be whole, perfect, Odin's son.

Naz's cry of pain broke him out of it and when he opened his eyes, he realized how tightly he had been gripping her hands. He had no recollection of reaching out for them, no realization of still holding on to them until she had tried to pull away. He immediately let go, recoiling back.

To his dismay he saw the print of his fingers across her wrist in deep red marks. He stared as his own hands in shock. The Jotun blue subsided before his eyes and he wondered how his form decided when to be which. This hadn't happened ever before, this loss of control over his inner self. The shiverings, the suffocating flashbacks, the pain and now this; how much would he be punished?

His eyes followed Naz as she rubbed her wrists, not taking her eyes off him, as if he was fragile, breakable, weak. He knew what she was thinking. She thought him to be a monster. Which he was. Except now she knew he was also weak, prone to whatever this was that was overtaking all his senses.

His gaze hardened, returning her gaze and then something happened that he wouldn't forget until a millennia later.

Naz tilted her head to one side, a frown lining her forehead and raised her right hand, reaching to his face. Her face softened as she put a hand on his forehead and her voice was quiet when she spoke up, "You're burning with fever. Uhm, I have some Paracetamol since you aren't ready to call for backup?"

He slapped her hand away, "Leave me alone."

She pulled back as fast as lightning, turning away to hide the hurt that spread across her face at his words. He got up swaying slightly but forced himself to walk to his room without so much as a glance in her direction.

---

When he had come inside and lied down on the bed, he had heard the front door open and close. He relaxed, realizing that the pesky mortal was gone. She had had enough and she had decided to call...Rogers, he supposed. Refusing Stark wouldn't be easy and she seemed to have a soft spot for later's irritating self.

The thought of being alone for a few hours before he was shipped off to some other safehouse gave him time to think, to make sense of what was happening. His mind, however, had other plans. It decided to dwell on the less painful subjects. Where would they take him next? He couldn't help but wonder.

Barton had a safehouse, he remembered from the time he had controlled the one they called Hawkeye. That would probably be his next stop. Barton might turn out to be a better companion than what he had here. He wanted someone to vent out their anger at him, to stop walking on tiptoes around him, to hurt him irrevocably.

A small, definitely damaged part of his mind, wondered if he would get to see Naz before he was taken away. A last death threat at her would be a fitting finish to his time here. His smile dropped as he remembered the marks of frostbite on her wrists. Somebody would make sure he paid for that and he was thankful for it.

He could have killed her today. He closed his eyes as he finally reached the space he had been trying to avoid: himself. The attacks, the panic, it wasn't new for him. After he had fallen off the Bifrost, something had broken irreparably in him, something that even his immortality and magic couldn't heal. After Frigga's death, the attacks had increased but when he was put in prison again, he had been at peace. An empty life behind bars in his palace; maybe that was his destiny. The destiny of a captured monster.

Shortlived peace and destiny indeed. Thanos had re-entered his life and with him returned the pain, the fear and the nightmares. It was a task to hold himself together after Thor had rescued him. Every second of the day, he was vulnerable of falling apart, pieces held together by sheer will power. He set his jaw with determination. He wouldn't allow Thor or anyone else the satisfaction of seeing him fall apart.

Loki had his dignity if nothing else.

He sat up when he heard the front door open and for a second his heart rate spiked as he wondered whether someone from Thanos had finally caught up with him. He stopped picking at his handcuffs, cursing them for the millionth time that day, and walking towards the bedroom door, peeped out.

It was Naz. He relaxed and kept down the knife he had sneaked into his robes earlier that morning. He could have gone back to pretending to be asleep but if there was one thing this pesky mortal was, it was interesting. Not, he corrected himself, in a very charming manner or anything. She just made him curious, as an ant makes someone curious.

"I can see you peeping, you know," came the sudden remark as she was stocking bottles on the kitchen counters.

And she seemed to find a way to get under his skin all the time. Why couldn't she leave him alone? Everyone else was happy to. He was happy to be left alone. After all, what better did he deserve anyway? He stepped outside, head held high, a look of pure despise and indifference ready if she turned around.

Naz Naqvi. He took account of her dark brown, nearly raven hair tied in some sort of bad attempt at a ponytail, her short stature and bad sense of dressing. A part of him relented at the sight of her worn-out black t-shirt (which he had noticed had a figure of a bat mid-flight in front, thought he couldn't understand why) and pajama bottoms; she had, after all, woken up not so long ago, nearly plummeted to her death and then seen him. His reality. And of course, the fit.

Yes, he decided, he hated her...downright loathing and hatred was all he could spare for her. What was she doing anyway? Why hadn't she run? Or reported him? Why wasn't he being taken away to some other safehouse?

"So, I did some shopping," she turned around with a happy smile. True, there were lines around her eyes but they were unflinching as they greeted him with a kind of tenacious hope and fortitude.

Loki frowned. Bright, warm eyes; deep, understanding smile. How was she keeping up this façade? This was why she interested him. He could see through everyone, all their acts and tricks. When Thor said he believed in him, he could hear the doubt and distrust. When Odin said Loki was his son, he could practically smell the lie and the effort behind it. When Rogers looked at his battered self after Thanos had dealt with him, he could easily read the disapproving sympathy clouding his eyes. And yet, this woman was a problem.

"Since you had some weird dislike to the sandwich mix, I brought some peanut butter, choco syrup and orange marmalade. I picked up a packet of muesli because I like it and maybe you will too? And you probably stick to a healthy diet up in Asgard but I took the liberty of buying a couple of packs of chips and popcorn."

Where was the lie? How did she hide it so well? He had heard of her first conversation with Thor, when she had refused to shelter him. What had she said? The words surfaced easily to his memory as he sat back on the couch. "Loki is pure evil, he's a maniac". That he could believe. He could also believe the first look she had thrown at him when he had walked in, a look filled with fear and distrust, mingled with pity at his wounded state. Except now, he couldn't sense any of it. This warmth and friendliness that she was projecting for no reason, what did it mean?

"Okay, you're creeping me out by staring so intensely," she finally said, a faint blush spreading across her cheeks.

He snorted, "As if I would stare at you. I would rather prefer to be blinded."

"Glad to see you're feeling better," she replied drily. "Would His Highness care to tell me whether he will eat anything? Or do I have to guess and waste another plate? By the way, you're paying for any more damages you do. Are we clear?"

He ignored the light-hearted jibe and walked to the kitchen counters, examining the food with his nose in the air, "All this goes on bread?" He pointed towards the spreads.

"Yeah."

"Can't you cook anything?" he sneered. "How do you survive on bread all year round? No wonder you're grossly unhealthy with hardly any muscle."

She reddened deeply, "I am sorry but at the orphanage I grew up, cooking wasn't something we could just learn." She stalked off and watching her clearly angry with him, he couldn't help but feel a twinge of something...

He followed her, "You grew up in an orphanage?"

"Yeah," came the short reply as she opened a well-used laptop on the pretext of ignoring him.

There wasn't much room so he had to sit beside her when he asked, "What happened to your parents?"

"I don't know," she shrugged while he watched the lights from the screen flicker across her dark brown eyes.

He fidgeted uncomfortably, wanting to ask more.

She sighed and closed the laptop, "Nani, my grandmother, found me on my eighteenth birthday. She had been looking for me ever since my parents died in a car crash. I was overjoyed to know I had some family, someone who had been looking for me all those years other families had rejected to adopt me." She laughed without humour, "I was dying for some affection. She told me about my parents, their deaths, how sorry she was to have not found me sooner. She brought me here from India."

"What happened to her?" Loki asked, wishing he hadn't asked a second later when he saw her eyes cloud with pain but he was curious. How could she remain so calm about her past? Why couldn't he? Maybe the answer lay that she was human and he was a monster.

"She died during the Chitauri attack. She was working on a building that got affected."

He pulled back, heaving a deep breath, knowing what was to come. Accusations, hatred and memories of Thanos. He wished he could just rip away those memories from his head, forget his crimes, start over somewhere. He wished he wasn't so weak that the mere thought of another loss of control would make his hands shudder visibly.

And then Naz did yet another thing that shocked him. She placed a hand on his shoulder, "Did Thanos make you do all of it?"

He blinked, the shock erasing the otherwise oncoming suffocating attack on his mind, "What do you mean?"

She pulled back her hand and a part of him immediately missed the momentary warmth of touch. She looked embarrassed, "I don't know...when I touched you this morning-when I touched your hand, something happened. I think a bit of your magic leaked out and I saw you..."

"My magic can't leak out," he said. "These handcuffs lock away whatever little magic could have and besides, I would know."

"Well, you did try to compel me to jump off the window. How do you explain that if it wasn't magic?" Her tone made him realize he wasn't forgiven and neither would he be any time soon for his attempt at her life. Then it must be pity, pity at his loss of control, at his cries and whimpers that made her stick around. Because if that wasn't the case, then Naz was an enigma, a puzzle he couldn't solve.

"I didn't use magic," he explained. "You are just easy to persuade. It's a talent I've had forever. Nothing magical about it."

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion.

"Really," he stressed. "No magic, I promise." Looking away from her eyes, he added, "I wasn't really going to let you fall, anyway."

"You weren't?" she turned around to face him, her voice forcing him to look back at her and he saw her clear disbelief.

"I-I-something happened to me and I got distracted. I didn't mean for you to actually jump. You were irritating me and I just wanted to scare you but then..." he ran a hand through his hair. "What did you see of me in this vision of yours?"

The change of subject didn't go unnoticed by Naz but she decided to let it go. She recounted, instead, what she had seen in the vision that had conjured up in her mind when their hands had met.

Loki looked frightful when she finished. He was angry and confused, maybe even a touch of fearful. How could she know all this about him? Was all this an illusion? Was he still trapped by Thanos in some sort of living nightmare? When and where would the penny drop?

"It's true, right?" Naz asked, taking in the storm that had transformed his otherwise imperceptible face. "All of it is true." Sympathy, he could read it in her body language now. "Why didn't you tell Thor...or anyone?"

He took a long time to answer, "It was me. I did the damage. I destroyed your city and murdered the people. I couldn't fight him so you see, I am the one to blame for what happened. There was nothing ever to explain to Thor or anyone." He said it simply, as if it didn't mean anything to him, as if he was talking about someone else, someone he didn't know.

"Did Thanos persuade you? Does he have this talent you used on me?" she asked desperately but she already knew the answers. She had seen in her vision how Loki had been rendered helpless, mind and body submitted to Thanos' control even as Loki found himself trapped within a recess of his own mind.

He gave her a quizzical look, "Does it make any difference?"

The mask was back and she knew it was useless to ask him anything more. He had closed off and there was nothing more she could do but stare at his form as he picked up the newspaper, pretending to read about things he had never heard of.

---

Dedicated to the very talented deviantsmiler for that absolutely mindblowing banner she made, up there. Thank you!

---

100+ reads for this baby, woop woop. Next chapter up soon. Until then, spread Deadlock everywhere, tell your friends, family, dog, cat and everyone else. Vote, comment and share xD

p.s. for all those who asked (you know who you are), here's that frostiron manip lol (in my defense, RDJ told me about it) 

I swear if wp reports me for this, imma have a loki bitch fit.