Chapter Text
“Area secured. Pointbreak and me kicked some ass. How are you doing, Cap?”
This very moment Steve was thrusting his shield into some Hydra agent’s face who instantly went down and wasn’t very likely to get back up very soon. Panting Steve looked down the hall where Clint, taking out the last remaining agent. “Hall is secured. Clint and I are closing in on the restricted area.”
“Watch your back.”
Steve and Clint shared a glance, then a nod before they broke down the door which was supposed to lead them to some kind of laboratory. Where Hydra was probably performing all kinds of atrocities. It was smaller than Steve had expected and there were no more agents with guns left. That was a relief and not much of a surprise since the hall had been filled with them. Nobody was left to defend whatever was hidden here. The only two people left in this room were two shaking scientists in white lab coats with their hands raised over their heads.
“We surrender!”
They were unarmed, so Steve’s eyes travelled passed them and he knew that Clint had spotted the very same thing as he had. “Move away from the table!”
Steve kept his attention on the two scientists as Clint walked further into the room, examining what seemed to be an operation table. A naked figure was lying on top of it and the state of the room had Steve doubting that some kind of surgery had been going on. Nothing medical, rather some strange, horrifying experiment.
“Please, we were just doing our job.”
Narrowing his eyes Steve shook his head. “This is not a job.”
“We can give you…”
“Shut up.” Clint’s harsh voice interrupted him before addressing Steve. “Cap, come here. You have to see this.”
Something about his tone had a shiver running down Steve’s spine and he had a strong suspicion that he didn’t want to see whatever Clint had discovered. With a single glance Steve told the scientists that they better shouldn’t dare to move while he joined Clint next to the table.
An atrocious sight was revealed and it had Steve’s guts twisting. The man lying on this table had his chest cut open. Like they would do during an autopsy. Steve could see tissue, the puny remains of broken ribs which left the heart visibly unprotected. It was revolting and Steve felt the overwhelming urge to turn his head away. If it weren’t for the worst part. The eyes were wide open. One could still tell that they once had been green, now they were milky and lifeless. Staring into nothingness. All life had been ripped from this mangled body some time ago and yet Steve and Clint had immediately recognized that this had once been Thor’s brother.
“Good lord…” Steve muttered absently and he wanted to pull a sheet over the corpse. To give it some modesty and to spare them the sight. “What have they done to him?”
“Sliced him open like an animal.” Clint pressed the word through gritted teeth and his next statement had Steve’s blood run cold. “Thor cannot see this. He will rip the entire place apart.”
Hastily Steve nodded and spoke into his radio. “Tony? Tony, what is your position? Tony, where are you?”
The answer came only after a few seconds and Tony almost sounded cheerful. As usual. “Right around the corner. We’ll be with you in a second.”
“No. No, listen, Tony, that’s not…”
It was too late. When they heard Thor coming Clint quickly positioned himself between Loki’s corpse and the door and Steve continued to shout into the radio that everybody else should stay away. The look of horror on the scientists’ faces couldn’t be matched when they saw Thor appearing in the doorframe. In full armour and his hammer in hand he gave a terrifying picture.
“What is going on? We assumed you needed help.”
There was no clear thought in Steve’s head except for the knowledge that they had to do damage control. “No, everything’s fine in here, Thor. I’m sure Tony needs you back outside.”
“Just fine, big guy. Why don’t you help Stark?”
Both of them had spoken up at the same time which was an obvious mistake, Thor’s frown confirmed it all. By now he had taken notice of the trembling men in the corner of the room, staring at him with blatant fear. Definitely different from all the other agents he had encountered today. Despite Clint’s best efforts Thor simply could not miss that he was trying to hide something. He saw the table, he saw that there was a body lying on top of it. Steve believed that he would soon have to fight a serious sickness. In the meantime Thor tilted his head and pointed with the hammer at the forsaken table. “What is this?”
Steve made a step forward, trying to somehow lead Thor out of this room. “Nothing. Come on, there are still parts of this base that we need to…”
Thor gently but firmly shoved Steve to the side, his eyes fixed on the one thing that they didn’t want him to see. It was too late already. “Thor, let’s just…”
Rendered helpless Clint and Steve watched as Thor walked passed them, closing in on the table where his brother was lying, dead and cut open. Slain. Steve needed to say something, because nobody should find out about the death of loved one like this. Thor shouldn’t see his brother like this. “Please, you…”
Thor screamed. A scream filled with dread and unimaginable pain. There were no sobs or tears, just the awful sound of man having his own soul brutally torn from his body. Steve hopefully would never be able to tell how that felt like, but now he was able to recognize the sound of it.
“No!” Another scream, so loud and forceful that Steve involuntarily winced as he watched Thor reaching out with one trembling hand. Then he suddenly pulled back, before actually touching Loki and instead turned around. Steve saw it coming and yet he failed to react quickly enough. With his face disfigured by rage and overwhelming grief Thor stared at the Hydra scientists. Of course he noticed the gloves and the literal blood on their hands. No threats, no accusations. Thor raised his hand and threw his hammer. It tore off most of the head of the scientist who was standing to the right. The other one whimpered in panic. “Don’t! He’s not…”
The hammer flew back into Thor’s hand and was instantly thrown again. Three seconds later the two Hydra members were lying dead on the floor, in a bloody mess of bludgeoned and broken limbs. Thor had killed them without hesitating for a second while Clint and Steve had just been standing there. Motionless, unable to react to Thor drowning in grief. They kept watching as Thor bent over the dead body, his fingers grazing over the black hair. “Loki… Please…”
Steve bit his lip, out of a sudden ashamed that he hadn’t felt anything confronted with Loki’s corpse and now he could hear the raw desperation in Thor’s voice.
“I am so sorry.” His fingers gently brushed over Loki’s pale face and slid his lifeless eyes shut. With obvious care Thor picked him up, cradled his dead brother against his chest and walked out of this laboratory where they had probably planned to cut him into pieces.
***
“How is he doing?”
Natasha’s expression said more than her actual answer. “Falling apart completely. He’s been sitting in the very same spot the entire day, staring into space. It took Steve over an hour to talk him into letting go of the body. It’s still hard to believe that they were able to do this to Loki.”
Taking off his glasses Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to cast away the images. It was way easier to concentrate on work when you didn’t have to think about somebody’s body being cut open, so some crazed out maniacs could study your insides. “I know. Tony sent me a picture. At least he was dead before they cut him up.”
“It’s more worrying that Hydra was capable of capturing and killing Loki while we have never been able to even get our hands on him. I don’t want to imagine how they did that.”
Except that they were trying to find out exactly that. And what they had been looking for during the autopsy. Bruce desperately hoped that they would be done quickly, so he could get out of this lab. How was he supposed to do anything when one of them was going through such a nightmare? Loki had always been their enemy, a danger to every living, breathing person on this planet. But to Thor he would always be his little brother. Who had been murdered by Hydra. None of them had ever seen Thor in this state. Struck down by this immense loss, barely able to stand on his own feet.
Clearing his throat and hopefully his own thoughts Bruce continued to go through the data on the computer which was a deep, bottomless, black hole. A sheer endless number of DNA testing which didn’t make any sense. Bruce lost track of time and was unable to tell how long he had been sitting here until Natasha, who had gone off scanning the rest of the base, gave him a call. “Yes?”
“Bruce, you need to come and see this.”
One floor upstairs in another hidden, secret laboratory Natasha had found a white casket. Inside of it was a body with a perfectly intact ribcage and Loki’s face. Looking back up Bruce stared at Natasha who was white as a sheet. “We need to find out what they have been doing.”
***
“What do you mean when you say that the man you found isn’t my brother? Nor is the body that I buried?” Thor was talking calmly, but there was this dangerous edge in his voice. He sounded like a man who had been forced to go several steps to far.
Tony reminded himself to break this story down into the simplest words he could come up with. It was mind-blowing enough that idiots like Hydra had been able to succeed at something as revolutionary as this. By now he was knee-deep into the data and it got more twisted with every line that he read. Even Tony knew that one had to be careful what to tell somebody who was completely grief-struck. Also Tony had no idea if Thor would comprehend the matter.
“Listen, Thor… your brother is most probably completely fine wherever he is. The body you found is a clone.” There, the whole dilemma in a nutshell and Thor shook his head, staring at Tony with his bloodshot eyes. “I’ve held him in my arms. It was my brother. I could feel that it wasn’t an illusion.”
“Not that kind of clone. No magic involved. Only science. Look, I’ll explain.” Tony pulled up a chair and sat down while Steve remained standing behind them, watching over the conversation with eagle eyes. He probably would have liked to do this himself, but Steve knew about cloning exactly as much as Thor.
“Luckily Hydra is quite thorough with their notes, so we have a pretty clear picture of what happened. Over a year ago before the fall of SHIELD, during one of our fights with Loki Natasha managed to wound him with a knife. SHIELD confiscated it. Well, Hydra did. They got his DNA like this and disgusting assholes that they are they wanted to use it to find a way to recreate his powers. To use them for themselves and to weaponize them.”
Tony trailed off, swallowing softly when he saw and heard the small, blue sparks sizzling around Thor’s balled fist. “This is a vile atrocity that you speak of.”
“But it also means that your brother is alive.” Steve stated gently and Tony wondered just how far they had to go in pretending that this was a good thing. Yes, he was all for people not getting murdered by Hydra, but Loki still out and about was immensely dangerous. Then again, he was Thor’s little brother and until now Thor had believed that he had been brutally murdered and sliced open by their enemies. None of them had ever seen him in such a state of distress and now they were able to relieve him of that.
The sparks disappeared and Thor looked so hopeful that Tony thought his old, worn-out heart might break any second. “Are you sure? I’ve held him…”
Tony nodded. “Absolutely. Hydra had trouble working the whole thing out, it’s all over their notes that they wished for more DNA. Your brother is still out and about. Probably perfectly fine.”
“Then who… my brother used to… My brother creates illusions of himself all the time. You cannot touch them, they’ll vanish. What did they do?”
“They made a copy of him. Not with magic, but from his blood. It’s actually an incredible achievement and highly immoral. They… for the lack of a better word… they grew a second Loki in a glass. Not a cute little baby… assumed that your brother was a cute kid. Never mind. They had a few cells and made an adult, fully grown Loki clone out of it. To… get what they want from it.” The second Tony had added that last part he wished he had kept his mouth shut, he could feel Steve’s eyes drilling into his back with a reproachful glare and Tony deserved that.
Hope and relief were pushed into the background as Thor’s face darkened again. “What did they do to him?”
For once Tony didn’t know what to say straight away. “Thor, they didn’t do anything to your brother, okay? Loki most definitely doesn’t even have an idea what is…”
“The… the man who looked like my brother. The one I mourned and buried. What did Hydra do to him? When they created him he must have been alive.”
Unsure Tony looked over his shoulder and Steve appeared to be just as unsettled as him, but he eventually nodded. “It’s only fair. The rest of us know too and… considering…”
“Alright.” Tony sighed. Since they were about to drop an even bigger bomb on Thor, it seemed pointless to spar him the details. “The one Cap and Clint found… They killed him straight away. I guess they thought they would find what they’re looking for by cutting him open.”
There was a visible change in Thor’s posture, his back straightened and Tony was afraid that the sparks would make a reappearance or worse. After Thor had discovered his supposed brother’s corpse the worst thunderstorm of the last 30 years had gone down on New York. Nobody wanted to witness that a second time. “You said the one the Captain and Barton found. Does this mean there is more than one… copy of my brother?”
This was definitely going to be the ugliest part. Tony nodded and came straight to the point. “They made eight of them. The first were killed and… discarded of before we took over the base. The one we found was number seven.”
Thor caught his eyes in an intense stare. “And what about the eighth one?”
Once more Tony looked back at Steve and it was obvious that both of them had no idea how this would play out. “He is here.”
Half an hour later all the Avengers were gathered around a bed in the hospital ward of the compound. Clone number 8 was lying in it, still in his eternal Snow-White sleep which soon wouldn’t be that eternal anymore. Nobody dared to say anything, not until Thor had spoken up, but until now the Asgardian had merely been staring at the clone. Tony actually flinched when he finally spoke up. “They were going to kill him too.”
“They’ve killed all the others. There is no reason to assume they would have done anything different with him.” Natasha stated and it was Clint who asked the obvious question. “What are we going to do with him? We have no idea what he is going to be like when he wakes up.”
“What?”
And it was Tony’s turn again. “To avoid any confusion, I’ll try to keep it simple. When we got there, they had already… activated him. Now it’s down to a couple of hours. It’s not ideal, I get it. We have no idea what’s going to happen, but the most important thing is to remember that this is not Loki. Technically he is not even a real person. He was made from a blood sample and he is the eighth version. We don’t even know if they gave him the ability to talk or think. All we know now is that they gave him a pulse.”