#ice dalek

[sneakattxck]

Having serious writers block with my other Loki/Oswin fic, so I'm starting another one in the meantime.

[sneakattxck]

This Is Where We Fell - A Loki/Oswin fanfic.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8513900/1/This-Is-Where-We-Fell

Two figures falling and falling through space, not knowing when or where they'll land, if they ever do. When the land on a desolate planet next to each other, major changes are made and an unlikely bond is made. Pre-Avengers, Post-Asylum of the Daleks. Human!Oswald she changes from Dalek Loki/Oswin. ((tagging Roski because a few of you ship this))

[dreamingstarkly]

Part One: Oswin and Loki share a rock

Part Two: A Dalek and a Frost Giant have something in common

Part Three: Low power, bad hair day, take your pick

Part Four: Why can’t I be beauty AND the beast?

Epilogue

~*~

They came without warning, without the slightest blip on Oswin’s screen. That, perhaps, is what scared her the most.

Loki had been explaining to her the finer points of element manipulation (magic, he called it, but Oswin wasn’t convinced) when there was a shift in the air. Loki was the one who caught it, since Oswin had no sensory organs to speak of. She was blind, having shut down the eyestalk to conserve power, and was confused when he stopped speaking halfway through a sentence.

“Loki?” she asked, flicking on the camera. As soon as she spotted his pale face in the starlight, however, it was too late.

Something tackled the dark-haired prince, and Oswin cried out his name in panic. Instinctively her weapons system responded, and a minute later the assailant was blown to mere particles. But it wasn’t alone. Loki’s hands grasped daggers as a hord of ugly-looking grey beasts surrounded them.

Oswin cursed the Dalek’s clunky and design as she tried to fight back.

“What is this?” a gravelly and sinister voice drew their attention to a cloaked figure standing on a plateau. “Not the trickster himself? The one cast down from the halls of the All-Father?”

“Who are you?” Loki demanded.

A twisted smile bared sharp teeth. “You will know soon enough, Asgardian.” The alien’s head inclined towards one of the warriors. “Take him. I think we have found what we are looking for.”

“No!” Oswin cried out, but she didn’t dare use any more laser power. So she settled by ramming her metal body against a grey-skinned alien, trying to separate Loki from his would-be captors. It was no use, as they simply dodged her attack and grabbed the demi-god.  

“Unhand me!” Loki spat, struggling against the alien horde. He managed to cut the throat of one before being clocked over the head with the blunt end of a spear.

“Loki!” Oswin screamed as she watched her companion fall limp and unconscious.

~*~

It must have been weeks. Weeks under the violent hand of the Other, breaking Loki down into the dust for pleasure. The nightmares were conjured to strip Loki of his sanity, but even then the Chitauri leader was impressed by his resilience. Loki could not say the same, for he had begun to embrace the creeping madness in his mind, a desperate attempt to escape the pain of the Other’s touch.

Finally, the one time the Other came for him it was not for the Chitauri’s mind games. Rather, it said that Loki was to be brought into the presence of its superior. Loki was not inclined to feel privileged, but he followed the Other without protest.

“Loki Odinson,” the figure above him greeted as Loki approached the dark throne.

“I no longer go by that name,” Loki stated, his mouth dry as he attempted to keep his aching spine straight and dignified as possible. “What do you want?”

“There is an item of great import that is in the possession of a foreign race. I believe you have dealt with them before—The humans. I wish for you to retrieve it.”

“Why does this concern me at all? What have I to gain?”

“I can give you magic,” Thanos drawled. “And an army, a chance to control a planet and then move to destroy the empire that abandoned and used you.”

“I have magic,” Loki said, but his interest was piqued. Vengeance and rage had blossomed in his breast in the months he was subjected to darkness and toil. It would be good to expend it on those deserving if he could not fight Thanos.

“Pathetic parlor tricks. I know secrets that even you, Liesmith, cannot imagine.” The being in the throne grinned. “Controlling the mind, the sublties of true illusion. Destruction. I can teach you to resurrect the dead.” Loki’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“That’s not possible,” he stated.

“No?” Thanos seemed amused. “Then I suppose the Dalek girl in our possession will never again know what it feels like to walk upon solid ground in her own skin.”

Loki’s blood ran cold for a moment. He was not told that the Other had taken Oswin. There had been no evidence as to her presence on this barren world. Where were they keeping her, what had they done…? He shook his head to clear it of such weak thoughts. Useless.

“If you agree to my terms, Odinson, I suppose you could test that theory,” Thanos said, catching the trickster’s fleeting panic. Loki gritted his teeth.

The allure of power, the ability to subjugate his brother’s precious Earth, was far more tempting than the frivolous idea that he might be able to give Oswin her body back. Loki reveled in the imagined look of devastation on Thor’s face as the human cities burned. But still…such an ability to create living flesh could prove to be useful.

“You will give me my army?” Loki asked.

“They will follow your every command.”

At least one of us, a tiny sentimental part of Loki thought on Oswin as he bowed before Thanos, could cease being a monster.

“Well, then”—Loki’s grin was predatorial—“I accept your most gracious offer.”

~*~

Fin.

[msgeniuspa]

The Beginning, I: In Which Oswin Meets Someone Who Can See Her

The Beginning, II: In Which Loki Is Faced With An Uncomfortable Truth

-----

Loki had expected things to be different after returning to Asgard.  One did not simply wage war with Midgard without repercussions.  But he was currently only confined to his room in theory.  There were no guards, no spells, nothing but Odin’s request that Loki remain here until further notice.  And for whatever reason, Loki complied.  He had been in this room for two days.  His meals were brought to him, and the walls were lined with heavily laden bookshelves.

So when a servant entered on the third day, Loki was not surprised.  “The All-Father has requested your presence, Prince Loki.  I am here to help you dress.”

Loki did not even look up from his reading.  “No.”  Prince Loki?  Hardly.  He was not going to waste his time arguing semantics with a servant.  He would address the matter when he saw Odin, and that would be on his own terms.

“Master, please, I-“

“Are you so bold because I am a prisoner?” Loki interrupted, turning a page.

“I-I’m sorry?”

“Your persistence has the tone of familiarity.  Am I no longer respected because of my fall from grace?  Is no one at least frightened of me due to my recent actions?”

There was silence for a moment, then the Aesir answered, a touch of hurt in his voice, “Whatever tone of familiarity I mistakenly used was cultivated from spending most of my life as your servant.”

That got Loki’s attention.  He looked the Aesir in the face, and, surely enough, he recognized him.  “Yes, of course,” Loki said softly.  “My apologies.”  He closed his book and stood, crossing to the window.  “I do not require your aid in dressing.  I will be along shortly.”

He heard the door close behind him, and immediately, he fist struck the wall.  Again and again until each blow left bloody marks.  The small reminders of how inherently foreign he was were beginning to wear his patience thin.  Thor would have recognized his servant.  Sif and the warriors would have, too.  Some of them were probably even on a first name basis.  And the Loki was aloof and prickly.  He was a fool to ever think this was his home, that he belonged here.

[dreamingstarkly]

Part One: Oswin and Loki share a rock

Part Two: A trash bin and a frost giant have something in common

Part Three: Low power, bad hair day, take your pick

Part Four: Why can’t I be beauty AND the beast?

Epilogue

~*~

The voice of his companion was tinny and irritating, but it was better than hearing nothing but the crumbling of asteroid. To be honest, Loki felt uncomfortable with the metal being that insisted it was human. At first he could brush it off as a simple illusion of free will implanted by a clever master, but as its nuances became more and more similar to common speech, as it told him of its history as a human woman—by the realms, it had a sense of humor—Loki became more uncertain about the nature of the thing.

He left to explore their resting place for something upwards of two hours, as useless as it was. He was still uncertain how he was still living. As an “organic humanoid” (Oswin’s term, not his) he should be dead without an atmospheric shell. But there was no whisper of magic to indicate an artificial casing, at least none that he recognized. Of course, Oswin already confirmed that suspicion before he left. He just wished to find out for himself along with fleeing the talkitive robotic alien.

He had a mind to abandon the thing in the metal body and find respite from its constant chatter as far away as possible, but after the first half hour of walking among black rock alone, he realized that he didn’t like the solitude. Not now. Not after—

“Ah, didn’t find anything, did you?” Oswin’s eyestalk twitched upward almost haughtily. “I told you that the blip was an anomaly. I would think that I could have figured it out long before you.”

“How is it that you sustain yourself without a body and without external magic?” he asked, sneering. The electronic voice never failed to annoy him. “You are not living. Well, not really.”

The jibe was enough for Oswin to fall into silence. Feeling selfishly satisfied, Loki preoccupied himself with running through his various conjurations. No point in letting his skills grow rusty; there was always a possibility of hijacking a ship that approached close enough.

Loki could only stand it for an hour.

“I apologize for my insensitive words,” he murmured, making a sharp cutting motion to extinguish the green flame that cast no heat.

“Doesn’t make them any less true,” it answered after a beat. If Loki believed Oswin was actually human, he could have sworn he heard a note of grief.

Loki stared up at the expanse of black, diamond-laced sky above them.

“I know how it feels to be something other than how others see you,” he confessed quietly. “To be something other than how you see yourself.”

“Oh, so you’re actually AI with an emphasis on the I stuffed into a garbage bin, too?” Loki’s mouth twitched as his suppressed a smile.  

“No. My own father kept secret for millennia that I am not actually…his. I am actually from a race of beings that my adoptive people consider monsters.” The words themselves were hateful and nauseating on his tongue.

“Oh.” Oswin was silent for a moment, considering his words. “That’s a downer. Is that why you ended up here?”

Loki smiled this time, but it was bitter. “Not quite.”

It was ironic, really. He was cast into the abyss just as he tried to cast his blood into oblivion.

“For what it’s worth, this shell? It’s a Dalek,” Oswin told him. “They are a species that hates and is set on extermination of all things not Dalek. And I was turned into one because they wished to use my genius, only I became too dangerous for even the Dalek Empire to handle. So they locked me up with the rest of their insane.”

Loki stared at his acquaintance. The words and articulation of this creature was not the mindless insistence of destruction. He should know.

“I was like this for a year, stuck in a silly world of music and burnt food because I couldn’t handle the truth. And now I’m here, trying to figure out what to do now that everything I see is actually a construction of my own hyperactive imagination.”

To his surprise, and Oswin’s, he burst out in laughter.

“Oh, you find that funny do you?” Oswin’s voice was disgruntled. “Thanks for the moral support.”

“No, no. It’s just…” He shook his head, chuckling. “Two monsters, trying to be what they are not. Stuck on an asteroid at the end of the universe for the rest of eternity.”

“I guess that is quite poetic.” A short hissing that was something like a laugh came out of the Dalek that thought itself a human. “What a pair we are.”

To his surprise, Loki was comfortable with sympathizing with a talking metal box.

~*~

*graphics are not mine

[msgeniuspa]

The Beginning, I: In Which Oswin Meets Someone Who Can See Her

-----

The man – impossibly tall, covered in golden armor and wielding a massive sword – nearly filled the entire picture from her camera, but she still caught glimpses of the scene behind him.  The roadway stretching into the distance was bright and colorful.  It seemed to be made of some kind of piezoelectric crystal, the way it sparked and flashed.  Green cliffs and a towering city of gold rose up on the horizon, huge statues and what looked like a pyramid dominating the skyline.  Pink tinted clouds dotted what appeared to be an evening sky, and behind them floated what appeared to be two very close moons, or even planets.

She panned her camera up to look the man blocking her way in the face, and his gold eyes twinkled in amusement in his dark face, the tiniest of smiles pulling at his lips.  “You are very far from home, little one,” he rumbled.

Despite his stature and armament, she knew within her that this man would be a friend.  “It’d seem so,” she responded, cross-referencing the image feed with her databases and coming up empty.  “Name’s Oswin, Oswin Oswald, pleased to meet you.  Er, bit at a loss here.  Where am I?”

“I am Heimdall,” he answered, “and this is Asgard.”

-----

So, I started an IceDalek fic.  Mostly gonna be winging this.