your past doesn’t define you
Ikol blinks, expecting to wake up from whatever dream this is but she just keeps seeing Hela’s face. “what?” she asks dumbly.
“I can help you but you need to help me too”
“how?” Hela’s smile grows but then it suddenly falls as she turns around to look at the door. “how are you going to help me?” Ikol asks harshly but he gets no answer, because in the blink of an eye she’s gone.
And Tony is the one replacing her. “what do you want?” Ikol asks tiredly as she lags back down.
“I’m sorry, again” she hears Tony snicker as he explains himself “I tried to stop him, but how can I possibly stop a 600 pound god?”
Ikol sighs, remembering that Thor isn’t human “I know”
“do you hate me?” Tony asks, his voice falling “even after everything I’ve done to help you?”
Ikol takes a deep breath and peeks over the blankets at him. He’s scratching at his wrist nervously “no” she admits, if she hates him then she has no one, in fact she may like him a little more than anticipated “i’m just tired, still hungover” thus why she is going to push him away.
“oh” Tony’s eyes widen “oh yeah sorry um-“ he starts backing out of the room “I’ll let you sleep”
Tony hears a knock on his door and quickly allows them to come in, the door sliding open is followed by Ikol’s calm voice asking “what did you come and bother me for the other day?”. It was actually four days, four days of Ikol sleeping
Tony smiles, closing the screen and turning to face her. “ok, so you’ve remembered things in your dreams and while doing stuff right?”
She nods.
“so I want to do some tests, writing, cooking, fighting, etcetera”
She blinks at him as she settles in, hopping up onto a workbench “why?”
“well your cognitive memory is a little fuzzy but usually your muscle memory sticks”
“so you want to test my muscle memory?“
Tony asks “when’s your birthday?”
“December seventeenth” Ikol ssys without trying and her eyebrows furrow as she purses her lips, confused on how she just remembered that out of nowhere.
Tony is delighted though, a huge smile on his face as he demands “okay come here” and brings her to his desk where he sets down a piece of paper and a pen.
Ikol stares down at it, asking “what am I supposed to do with this?”
“write, just write anything”
Ikol picks up the pen in her fist and frowns at how uncomfortable it is. Tony lets out a soft laugh “okay let’s see” he takes the pen, readjusting Ikol’s fingers before placing the pen in them. The entire time Ikol is staring at Tony and the latter can feel it, so he doesn’t look up until the pen is being held properly. “feel better?”
Ikol nods, still staring at him a little bit too intensely “yeah”
Tony clears his throat, facing the desk now as he says “this isn’t a staring contest”
“I know” Ikol sounds so damn happy as she presses the pen to the paper and starts writing out runes, to her surprise. “I just like how you can’t look at me for too long”
Tony rolls his eyes, focusing on the writing when Ikol suddenly stops, messing up the last rune a bit.
ᛚᛟᚲᛁ
“what’s-“ before Tony can even ask Ikol blurts “Loki” and Tony frowns. “I wrote Loki” she wasn’t trying to, she was trying to spell her name, not Loki.
“it’s okay” Tony reassures quickly “it’s just your muscle memory, that’s the whole point of this remember?” he keeps trying to make Ikol feel better “your muscle memory remembering that doesn’t make you Loki”
But it just proves that she is Loki. Deep down she isn’t Ikol, she’s the selfish and evil person that she’s heard nothing about. She’s just a fraud.
“Ikol?”
She shakes her head, snapping out if her thoughts “what else did you want to test?”
Tony says “fighting” happily and Ikol’s face drops, “now, I’ve already got someone for you to fight, we’re all gonna be there as backup incase it gets too rough”
“I’m human remember?”
“don’t worry, he’s human too”
Ikol gapes at Clint, happily stretching and preparing himself. Ikol looks at the other avengers and asks “are you kidding me?” and she’s dead serious “what’s he gonna do? use a slingshot on me?”
Clint replies by throwing a knife so close to her head that it knicks her ear, she doesn’t feel the pain but she can feel the cool air on the wound, the warm blood trickling down her ear lobe.
Ikol slowly looks at Clint who smirks proudly.
“here we go” Sam says excitedly as Ikol scoffs with an “okay”.
Her gaze hardens as Clint takes a couple steps closer “take this first hit Eagle Eye”
Clint throws a punch and she easily catches it, twisting his arm and then pushing up, making him wince in pain and collapse to one knee. She lets go, hands covering her mouth as she says “I am so sorry I didn’t mean t-“
She shuts up because Clint kicks her legs out from under her, he doesn’t hesitate to straddle her stomach and connect his fist with her face over and over and over again.
“okay Clint stop!” Sam demands, seeing blood erupting from the contact.
Bucky and Tony move to pull him off but suddenly, Ikol gets her leg around his neck and she uses that to push him down to the ground, sitting up in the process. She blurts “asshole” as she touches her crooked and bleeding nose.
Clint wheezes for air from under her calf so she lifts her leg before kicking him in the face so hard that his nose is also crooked and bleeding.
She sighs, tired of this shit so she moves to get up but when she’s on one knee the whole room goes still. She swallows and looks up to find herself staring down the barrel of a gun.