Chapter Text
If one were to look at the man hunkered down in his seat on the subway one would see a pair of crudely taped-together glasses and a too-small uniform that tweaked at his elbows, they wouldn’t see a god, not even the son of one. Rather they would see an office worker clutching a torn and degraded copy of ‘The Firm of Girdlestone’ and bowing over it as though he’d fear it’d be snatched. Loki had become nothing more than a forgettable face in a sea of strangers, crushed between a booze-smelling man leaning on his shoulder and an aggravated pregnant woman protectively holding her baby bump.
After his hasty escape from a dirty cell deep within a ship harboring the Mad Titan, a punishment after his failure to conquer earth and his eventual capture and disarmament of the tesseract , he found himself in the back alley of a corner store in New York, his fall softened only by a pile of trash sitting in a pile by the alley door. When he’d come to himself again he’d hardly felt his seidr and had panicked while smelling the filth he’d found himself in, after an embarrassing amount of time spent floundering about and scarcely breathing at all he had settled. There was some of his seidr still there, hiding as though it was waiting to lash out yet too frightened to be struck, coiled deep in him and practically dormant in its present state. It had taken him a few moments to deduce where he was, hearing the clacking of feet against the pavement and the blue sky above his head as he stared up at it in shock. He’d expected to find himself on a far-off planet with enough ways to keep himself alive to regain his strength before taking the next step. Yet here he was, in the lion's den without knowing where a single one was and injured in a way he’d never found himself before.
His injuries had bled all over the dirty alley, creating a puddle wherever he forced himself to sit as he pondered about his predicament, creasing his brow and hitching his breath with each spasm of his aching legs. His right eye was blurred, almost shut with a dark ring of purple and green around it and stinging rhythmically to his heartbeat, even his hair looked like a spectacle with missing chunks of strands where he’d been yanked from place to place without a care for his comfort. So he sat for what felt like ages, thinking and thinking some more as he listened for the sound of footsteps or voices from his unlucky position hunched on the floor.
After what must’ve been hours he hauled himself up and somehow found himself alive and struggling to walk down the alleyway until he could finally see past the brick walls, a street of many people strolling back and forth, some chatting with companions and others looking down at their phones as if they wouldn’t notice a single thing. With this, a plan grew in his mind as he wandered in the shadows toward places unknown until reaching the underside of a bridge and sitting with people in just as sorry state as him. He’d blend in with these mortals and look just like every other man wandering the streets during the day, maybe he could hide away from those he strived to avoid as a mortal on this planet.
So he let his body regenerate with what little seidr he could manage and began blending in with other mortals of comparable statuses, such as teens clutching backpacks and those older who grasped their stolen carts filled with trash bags of cans and all they possessed. Life went on, he accumulated the few things he could find thrown off the bridge, and fought for scraps of what people were willing to part with. As his body healed, he put his seidr towards more pressing matters, slowly transforming his appearance with each month he spent building up his meager belongings. First, he gave himself short brown curly hair, then his eyes became a lighter green that could rival the wildflowers that threatened to bloom through the cracks in the pavement, and lastly, his skin tanned over time to a golden bronze that made him unrecognizable. He found glasses in a trash bin not long after, using cheap tape to bind the thing together so they wouldn’t fall apart as he wore them. Even his clothing began to change, the leather he’d fallen into the world with being sold for fifteen dollars that went toward a corner store that sold cheap clothes and basic hygiene items that he would use until his first year and a half would pass.
At this mark, he was finally able to use his contacts within the homeless community to reach those that helped get jobs for them, some less legal than others, and Vincent Dalton was born with papers forged for much more money than Loki had used in years. Vincent was born on October 9th and thirty-three, he was made to be sheepish and soft-spoken, bending his back for others and on most occasions overlooked altogether for others who stood out. Loki was able to get a small job at a library connected to the homeless shelter and his life continued to grow, Vincent became more like him than Loki did. Yet, on some nights he gazed into the mirror at his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief to see himself looking back. When two years passed without fanfare, a job opening was introduced to him by a kind woman who knew his predicament and had seen him sleeping on the streets more times than one could count on fingers. File Clerks weren’t exactly thrilling people, as it seemed when Loki met an older gentleman who stated that he was a manager for the record office for the company he worked for, Stark Industries, go figure.
Loki’s first thought had been to tell him no down flat, but the benefits it would afford him kept his attention, telling of complimentary business attire and a Stark Industries subway card, vending cards, and a top-grade work computer that would connect him to the internet, not to mention the sizable wages. Well, a man has needs, and the idea of possessing his own money that hadn’t been plucked from sidewalks or found in thrown-away jeans didn’t seem like a dreadful concept. So he took the job, packing up his meager belongings into a torn bag that scarcely held together with frayed strands of thread sticking out the bottom.
Joining the company was surprisingly effortless, his office in the basement of Stark Industries and his job away from other employees other than brief emails that employed a different department to send their papers down to them. Though his new salary did also leave him with more money than he’d carried in almost five years, and over time he found himself asking a crew member of the records office about realtors. Finding a flat just a subway away, having a two-hour commute from the less glamorous areas of New York was a humbling experience, though he couldn’t complain. Loki had at first wrinkled his nose at the undersized flat, having a kitchenette and a tiny bathroom mere steps from one another, an old twin bed pushed into a corner under a window that only showed the brick wall of another building. However, it began to settle in him that he’d finally found safety and he had sat on his dusty bed trying not to sob for what felt like ages.
Vincent became just another employee in the sea of new members of the company, not given a second glance by upper management, and left to work in his basement office rather than pestered by team members which he scarcely would say he had. Even his manager seemed satisfied enough to leave him to his work, never even joining chain emails that concerned both Loki and his manager and leaving much of it to the decently reliable Vincent. Sure his work was mediocre at best, but it was always done following company policy and entered at every deadline without fail. Each morning he made it to the office without a single thing other than coffee in his stomach and left later than most until his stomach pulled him to the vending machines in the upper levels that held breakfast bars and stale cookies.
Two months wasn’t much in the eyes of upper management and his work was at best glanced at before he was dismissed, many didn’t even answer his emails until he had to call the secretary of a manager who would remind their boss about the records and would finally be sent down to his department with little to no filing done to the papers to help the records be filed. So he did find himself wondering how he’d become such a nobody until he remembered the faces of those who did know the somebody he was, and suddenly he’d rather have completely disappeared than be found again. Thankfully he’d never had to directly communicate with Pepper or Stark, his manager usually receiving their calls and answering their emails, even leaving the lower levels for hours to meet the two for meetings that seemed to leave him steaming with irritation every time he returned.
Life was as adequate as Loki could hope for, he made wages that fed him bitter coffee and sandwiches that hadn’t been found in the dumpsters or forgotten on a bench, he even slept in a bed rather than on the pavement under slim shelters. Yet, he watched his back at every turn, staying up late as he heard his neighbors shout and the slamming of doors, glancing at each corner of the lobby as though one of the mightiest earth defenders would pounce at him from a shadow at any moment.