#nellthenecromancer

[ninjakitty15]

Cold As Death (Loki)

Chapter One: Looks That Could Kill

By all accounts, today should've been like the countless other days before it. Just another day stuck in a glass cell with the occasional "scientist" trying to figure out how to harness something no regular schmuck or mortal could hope to grasp by poking, prodding, and bleeding me. But this was Hydra for you, try to change one idiots mind, and several more idiots tell you you're wrong. German, American, or other, there are evil idiots in every corner of every world, that's for damn sure. At this point I couldn't figure out why they still kept me here, locked away from everything when they couldn't what they wanted from me. They already tried torturing it out of me like pain would make me crumble, I just ended up wincing or laughing depending on what they did as there were times I actually wasn't sure I felt anything, not because they did it often enough or it was that bad, I was just sorta dead inside so some nerve endings didn't always work.

The only thing remotely unusual about today though was it wasn't as busy where they stashed me, hands locked in power dampening shackles and a metal muzzle to boot. At some point earlier they attempted to keep me sedated and unconscious but I woke myself back up once they left me alone thinking I was no longer a problem. Amateurs. As I sat in the middle of the cell, eyes closed but fully alert and coherent, I felt before I ever heard a presence that felt otherworldly to me. They were silent, seeming to observe with caution as I felt it get closer and start to circle the container then pause right where I knew the controls of the cage to be. There was a fifty fifty chance this presence would let me out, the other half being they come in and another round of human pinata would start but instead of candy it would just be blood and a lot of bad puns and jokes falling out of me, maybe drop a few s/m mentions. Serious folks tend to get real uncomfortable when you get sexual on them. If you can't laugh about sex, you don't have a sense of humor.  A button was pressed on the panel and a door formed in front of me where the glass was and I got a stronger feel of who or what was in front of me on the other side. They were definitely not your average Joe, probably not even human and flowing with a lifeforce not even mutants could possibly obtain. An immortal for sure. They took one step toward me and because this wasn't something I'd encountered since my containment, I instinctively tensed which made them pause again.

"You're awake?" A smooth almost british accented voice, noted softly yet curiously.

I opened my eyes then just to confirm that as the muzzle was holding back my usual smartass responses. They was actually one tall man clad in leather and gold metal, watching me carefully with piercing blue/green eyes. Maybe it was seeing the same ugly mugs every day for gods know how long I've been down here and finally seeing a new face, maybe it was the fact he was wearing my two favorite colors and pulled it off better than anyone else I've seen try that. But damn did he look good. It might also be the killer jawline and physique too. His eyes fixated on the muzzle for a moment and a hardened scowl formed for some reason, surprisingly not twisting the dashing look like it does most angry men. And then suddenly I could speak again but opted to gasp like a dying beached fish because damn did it feel good to not have airways being blocked anymore. Vaguely I wondered if my lips were chapped from the damned thing before smiling maniacally.

"Finally, oral freedom!" I cried overdramatically.  "I don't usually offer though unless its returned, all's fair in love and fun stuff."

The man cracked a small smile and ventured a step closer to me. "What are you? And why are you in here?"

"Could ask you the same thing, hun," i quipped. "And seeing as I was here first, you should answer first."

He chuckled and took a more confident step toward me though his lifeforce strengthened like a guard around him. Before he could answer himself though, a booming and somehow familiar voice called out. "Loki, have you found anything down there?!" Which caused the dude now named Loki to cringe at the interruption and sigh.

"No one here but us ghouls," I told him in answer.

"They have a prisoner down here, brother!" replied Loki though his eyes never left me.

"Prisoner's such a harsh word, I prefer forced resident or illegal obtained house guest," I informed him. "You answer his questions, but not mine. It's because I'm black, isn't it?" I was actually what one would describe in terms of skin color as not recently dead pale white.

"I thought he was answer enough, I'm sure you know of Thor, he likes to play the hero of this realm," Loki replied to me, an eyebrow arched.

"The Norse God of shitty weather? Y'all aren't busy with cooler realms?" I asked.

"This wasn't my choice," was his dry response, making me smile more.

I snickered. "Spoken like a true sibling. So you came down here, an alien immortal, because your big brother told you so. My heart bleeds for you really."

He glared at my unabashed sarcasm and crossed his arms over his chest. "Now answer mine before he comes in and makes a great mess of this place."

"More than the people that came with this building already have? That's gotta take talent. But I'll bite. They hunted me down gods know how long ago and attempted to extract something from me that makes me awesome, didn't work obviously or they'd make a mess not even your brother could trump and we wouldn't be here talking. Too valuable to be killed, though they couldn't if they tried, too stubborn to be experimented on. Where'd they go anyway? Are you guys the reason I didn't get my daily prodding?"

"My brothers...friends dealt with the ones they could find, if they're anything like their namesake, I'm sure there's more in hiding waiting for reinforcements or something like that."

Another man leaped down out of nowhere that definitely wasn't Thor as he didn't have long golden locks or a beard, his head and half his face were actually covered by a mask and instead of a hammer was a shield in one arm.

"Thor failed to mention it was a woman," the new dude noted.

"And my gender matters because...?" I wasn't actually offended by this, just messing with him to get a reaction which worked as he genuinely looked bashful, making me cackle. "For all the armor you people wear, it's still surprisingly easy to get under your skin. Maybe I've just been here so long, they're just fashion statements now, if everyone's wearing leather armor count me in!"

"Sorry to disappoint, but it's just us," Loki told me.

"She tell you why they're holding her?" the new man asked him.

"They're trying to steal her powers though I'm not sure what they are yet."

"Only the best kind of course," I told them. "It's all the rage these days, all the Hydra agents gotta have it."

"Well they can find it somewhere else as you're free from them but you can tell us all about the what and why, if you don't mind," the new man said.

"You say that so politely but I'm getting the sense you weren't asking. I'll comply if you give me a hand here, mine are a bit tied up at the moment." I raised my shackled hands as high as able since they were chained to the metal floor beneath me.

The new man was quick to break the chains connecting me to the floor before Loki waved a hand like Jedi Knight and the shackled sprang open, dropping to the floor with a loud clang. I flexed my hands and shook them a bit to get feeling back with them being cramped and slowly got to my feet, staggering a bit as my leg bones cracked from the sudden use and weight. I sighed in sweet relief and relaxed with a slight grin. "Alrighty then!" With my hands free, so was my powers just a bit more and I could collect and stretch it out, testing the waters. That seemed to be enough for Loki to notice being a power person as well and both eyebrows shot up as he probably felt what I was doing. I winked at him before turning to the other guy. "Onward and upward!"

With the new guy leading me out of the building and Loki being my tail, I was on my way to freedom for good before being nearly blinded by that god awful ball of fire in the sky, everyone else calls the sun. I recoiled and refrained from hissing like an angry vampire, stumbling back into Loki in the process who steadied me and smirked at my reaction to daylight. The new guy looked back hearing me cursing at it and raised an eyebrow in question but didn't actually ask anything.

"What? I'm not a morning person," I responded before straightening up but subtly elbowing Loki in the stomach, causing a soft grunt from behind while accidentally hitting my funny bone which wasn't that funny at all as my entire arm went numb and tingly at the same time. "Stupid toned god with your stupid abs of granite."

The new guy stopped walking and pressed a hand against his ear. "We're out, all the agents we could flush out are dealt with. A ride would be nice." Ah he was talking on a com of some kind it seems. How high tech yet old school. Within a few moments, an even more hightech fighter plane of some kind hovered low enough for him to climb in first then offer his hand to pull me up as I was unfortunately not remotely as tall or long legged as either man near me. I looked around the plane curiously to see another man and a redhaired woman at the front as pilots, the woman looking back and landing her eyes on me as well.

"Are you the prisoner Thor spoke of?" she asked.

"I'm the illegally obtained house guest, yes." Loki snickered behind me and I reminded myself not to elbow him again as my arm still hadn't gotten proper feeling back.

The woman smiled as well and nodded. "Buckle up then, we're heading back to base, could get bumpy. All good back there, Steve?" she called after the first new guy who was now Steve.

"Ready when you are," he answered, sitting at the tail end of the machine.

The plane rose up and shot forward at an illegally unsafe speed above the city. Loki had settled across from me, eyes ever studying me but unlike the agents that actually did and more, they weren't malicious or power hungry, just cautious and curious. I decided to test his resolve then and locked my eyes on his in an unwavering staring contest. "First one to blink loses."

"Is that why they muzzled you? Because if you're not under their skin, you're cracking jokes?" he asked.

"If you don't have a sense of humor you don't have much to live for and that's how they win. Also no, it's not how I talked, but who I talked to or when it wasn't them."

"To contain your powers, like they did your hands then. And they didn't get anything from you?"

"What I have can't be drained or pulled out or copied, it's not specifically found in something like DNA or an organ or something physical even. Those guys claim to be scientists but real scientists accept facts as they are when proof is found and I'm living proof they're all frauds with no results. I bet they don't even have a Ph.D."

"They're Hydra, they're funded by power and money, not degrees and universities," Steve spoke up.

"So you're telling me they just pulled a few crazy people with crazyass theories on things from a hat and told them they're scientists now? I should've gone to college there, I wanna have money and be told I have a job with more money. All I got from mine a piece of paper saying I know some things and then years of disappointment from being unemployed. I probably look good in a lab coat too."

"A stark difference from your current attire of all black and hooded," Loki pointed out.

I snorted. "All they let me wear after ruining the one I was caught in from their experimentation, they thought the attire should fit the power, how unimaginative is that? Let's just advertise exactly what I can do to everyone around me, that'll throw them off for sure."

"And what can you do?" he challenged.

"Uh-uh, spoilers sweety. A preview of which will cost you extra."

"But we just gave you a free ride," chipped the male pilot.

"Hey, you're not part of this conversation, and I don't even know where we're going, this could be a free ride to something worse. Like Shield or the dentist."

"Bad experience? Ate too much candy as a kid, didn't you?" the pilot guessed.

"If you think there's such thing as too much candy, then your childhood sucked and I pity your past."

"Tony's gonna love this one," mused the female pilot. "What's your name?"

"I've been out of custody for like 15 minutes and finally someone asks! It's Noelle, Nell for short. And you pilots are...?"

"About to land for starters," the man said. "I'm Clint, she's Nat, and we're at base so everyone out of my plane."

"That's Tony's plane actually," quipped Loki as the plane landed and everyone unbuckled. "Come along, meet the rest of my brother's friends."

[ninjakitty15]

Chapter 6: The Plot Thickens (Loki X OFC Pairing)

"Loki, have you seen Nell, she's not in her room," a voice on the outside of Loki's room called in, waking me up from my much needed sleep curled up next to him.

"Tell him I'm not here," I whispered.

"You know he could just have that automated voice system Friday tell him you're here," Loki mused next to, already wide awake and apparently reading something while he waited for me to wake.

I groaned and buried myself deeper under the covers. "No Nell esta aqui!"

"As far as I'm aware, no one here is Hispanic, especially not Loki, nice try though," Tony responded.

"Chingate," I cursed and begrudingly pulled myself up into a sitting position. "Whaddaya want?"

"Breakfast is ready, I'm told you favor pancakes which lucky for you are the main dish so hurry up before Thor and Clint eat them all."

"Pancakes you say?" I perked up, "Why didn't you start with that?" I didn't even care that I couldn't find my own shirt as I grabbed one of Loki's long green ones that sufficiently covered what I didn't feel like flashing to the team. Loki himself grabbing a tunic and leisure pants before leading me out of his room to where the smell of much needed food teased my senses. I could feel at least one pair of eyes on me and what I was wearing and all I did in turn was arch an eyebrow in challenge.

"Getting a bit cozy with Loki, I see," mused Nat, offering me bacon as I snatched a stack of pancakes.

I shrugged and drenched everything in maple syrup. "I've only known him less than a week and if anything were to happen to him, I'd kill everyone in this building and then myself."

Tony choked on his screwdriver drink while Nat just laughed at my declaration. "Is that even possible? I mean I looked at your dna samples and you weren't wrong, it matches a dead body's sample exactly, nothing to suggest it came from someone that can still walk and think and live. You can't kill something already dead."

"Medically speaking, you are correct, but they say there's more than one way to skin a rabbit."

"I thought it was a cat," Clint piped up.

"No one's skinning cats as long as I'm still moving."

"So how does one end something already dead?" Tony spoke up.

"For most things you simply destroy it, just remember, what is dead can never die."

"Settle down there, Yara," teased Clint.

"Go on and make me, Euron," I retorted.

"Why am I Euron?"

"Theon wouldn't treat me that way."

"How many of you necromancers are there?" interrupted Tony.

"Not as much as there were before I was caught," I replied glumly. "We're becoming  the next Siberian tigers, if we reach white rhino status we're fucked."

"Is it just the ability to cheat death and create your own army that would make you a good hunting target?"

I shrugged and finished my breakfast. "They certainly have a certain appeal, could be any number of reasons why we're sought after."

"You said nothing would come of them taking stuff from you, I'm just thinking, if I couldn't steal what makes you a necromancer to use myself, my next plan of action would be to somehow make you do it for me since the power stays in you and only you."

I arched an eyebrow, not a bad point there. I looked over at Loki who was probably thinking the same thing.

"Your friend said they were found as husks, shells empty of everything. Do you think they did that on purpose or maybe were forced into it?" he asked me quietly.

"That makes more sense than the theory I came up with before where they burnt themselves out to make them inaccessible even in death. They could've just gutted themselves with their blades to do that."

"Hydra are many things," noted Nat. "And mess many things up, but they know how to make a person bend to their will."

"I know about Steve's super soldier boyfriend, Bucky and how he was brainwashed by them. I don't know if that would work on us, if it's how I think they do it, it wouldn't work on me."

"How do you think they do it?"

"Rewrite your past in your mind so the memories that come up are edited to fit them as the good guys and their enemies as the bad guys."

"And that won't work because..."

"A lot of my past has already been erased from me, it was part of a deal to gain more power, I had to sacrifice something of myself to get it. I don't remember any of my family, they in turn don't know I even exist, they can't be used against me if we don't know each other. Imagine the bad guys finding my mom and threatening to kill her and we just look at each other like we literally just met, kinda kills the mood...pun intended."

"So brainwashing is more or less out of the equation then. Would there be another way to control a necromancer?"

"It would depend on the necromancer I guess. One thing I can tell you though is that no matter what you do to us to make us bend, the dead don't have to listen or respond. You also need to have a lot of power to make the dead do your bidding if they don't want to. For instance, if you were in a Jewish community and asked if anyone wants to fuck up some Neo Nazis, you'd have an army larger than China. But if you were in say Texas and asked who wants to march for the Pride Parade and fight for equal rights, you'd have barely enough corpses to make a difference and youd need more power, more effort to raise more when they've already voted no."

"You're saying they aren't just mindless corpses doing what they're told then," Nat spoke up.

"The living are far better puppets than the dead, its all about physics here, a body alive, in motion can keep going in motion in any direction, a body in rest prefers to stay in rest." That's when something clicked in my head again. "That's why they were burnt out dead, they were forced to do what Hydra wants but none of the dead wanted to follow..."

"Hydra as I understand them, don't usually take no for an answer and probably just made the necromancers suffer more till they were all used up. Did they do anything like that to you?" Loki asked.

"They seemed to think pain was the best way to break me, no one else thought to ask nicely in the five fucking years they had me."

"They had you for five years but you mentioned to Strange that there were missing ones before you were even caught. To me that sounds like they gave up on using up necromancers that didn't give them the results they wanted and focused on you and how to get you to do their will since you didn't burn out like the others."

That for some reason gave me chills. "Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Oh and once again I've become the sloppy second. What else is new? There's still the issue of a turncoat among them too. I told one person I would be flying back from England, I didn't even tell her which airline or what time it landed so in the extremely unlikely event she was the rat that sold me out, she still wouldn't have known where to find me. Someone had to have kept tabs on me or my aliases and sold me out and I want to know who."

"Could it have been another necromancer? Someone that wants you out of the group or jealous of your power?" offered Loki beside me.

"Outing another death mage isn't unheard of but its usually downhill for the rat bastard that does it. The dead are always watching, if they see something unfavorable like a backstabbing they'll be less likely to follow the one with the knife which means more effort is needed to get an army going. You need to have a lot of strength and power to force your will upon things that would rather stay still than help you. Imagine trying to wake up a hungover teenager for school who's clearly not over their rebellious streak and has no friends to look forward to there. Then amplify that by like a 100. Necromancy is a natural form of magic and to wield any kind of magic there must be a flow to it, natural magic requires you go with the flow rather than force it the way you want it to work."

"So whoever did it to you, they are either pretty strong or pretty worn out and probably not in the habit of wielding their magic unless necessary."

"Could be either or, I might be among the most powerful but that doesn't mean everyone else is at level one here, hell they could even be my level in the time ive been locked away, lots can happen in five years."

"How does one get to your level exactly?"

"There's certain tests you need to pass with flying colors, a sacrifice to prove you're all or nothing for it, the bigger and more meaningful the sacrifice the more power you're likely to get."

"Who or what determines all this? You make it sound like you don't just get it yourself."

"I didn't and I can't answer that question either, it disturbs the natural order. If you don't know then you aren't meant to know unless something decides otherwise."

Everyone including Loki was quiet for a moment, absorbing what I had told them before Tony spoke up. "What kinda tests?"

"A situation or scenario happens that determines if you can handle yourself and your surroundings, you don't know its a test until probably much later if at all but it happens regardless. You can't prepare for it either, either accept or fail."

"Are people just randomly chosen or is there some sort of telltale sign?" asked Nat suddenly more interested.

"You ever see things, hear things as a kid, things you were certain of being there but no one believed you when you told them?"

She was silent for a moment, probably attempting to recall that far back before shaking her head. "Not that I can recall."

"Then probably not for you, it starts with being an open mind and a clean slate as a kid and not letting anything or anyone put doubt in you. That's the problem though init, a child sees a sad wailing women at the foot of her bed and usually they go running to their parents in fear, parents come in, say theres nothing there because most of the time adults can't see them regardless and eventually the child starts to listen to their parents over the clearly upset woman that just wants to be listened to herself. Tony probably isn't compatible, those with too much knowledge leave little room for the possible but improbable, scientists usually are."

"What about your lover beside you?" asked Tony. "A god itself is possible but improbable and he wields magic as well."

I turned to Loki curiously. "What did you see when we were fighting Hydra the other day?"

"What you mortals would call zombies? What else would I see?"

I studied him for a moment, curious if he was bluffing or not as he was still very much a God of Lies. "You might be a wildcard on this. You sure that's all you saw?" He nodded stiffly. "Tell me if that changes at any point."

"What else would he have seen?" asked Nat.

I beckoned her to come closer and leaned into her ear. "The dead comes in more than one form, spirits are always nearby, everyone has a few at least. Victims, loved ones, depends on the person."

"What was he supposed to see then?"

"They told me to take his hand when he put himself between me and Strange and they collected the spirit of an agent that almost shot me down on the battlefield."

"They can do that?" she asked louder and pulling away from me.

"If poltergeists can wreak havoc in someone's home, a bunch of vengeful spirits can get even with the one that outed them first."

"Why wouldn't they do that beforehand though?"

"They didn't have me."

"You give them their vengeance," Tony started.

"I give them what would bring them peace, they linger as their bodies rot for a reason. The sad wailing woman isn't whining for attention like some teenage drama queen, she's hurt and needs closure. The ghosts linger because there's unfinished business and I'm their business woman for the job, except unlike the psychics and mediums of today's age, I do it for free and not for entertainment purposes."

"So if someone got wind you can commune with the dead and wanted to know something about their deceased what would you do?"

"Tell em to bugger off unless in that moment their deceased makes an entrance, I'll relay a message only that person would've known about and then tell em to bugger off and let the dead rest. They'll get the same kind of response as a misogynistic man telling me to smile, I'm not here for your entertainment so you can kiss the southbound end of a northbound horse."