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It begins with Loki’s initial processing at the TVA.
Before Loki is questioned and accused, he is forced into a seat before a middle-aged receptionist with cat-eye glasses and deep frown lines. She’s typing busily on what looks like an ancient piece of Midgardian technology, and is decidedly ignoring Loki.
He sits in silence for a handful of seconds, before clearing his throat. The receptionist looks up at him from across her desk, and then returns to her typing. Loki scoffs, and crosses his arms, noticing that the ugly burlap of his jumpsuit has begun to chafe against his skin. He scans the desk in front of him, and sees a scattering of paperwork with a frankly terrible photo of him on top. He scowls.
“Name?”
Loki glances up from the desk. Looking around the room, he sees that they’re alone, save for a few guards positioned at the entrances and exits. He furrows his brow in confusion; the receptionist must be speaking to him.
“Um,” he begins, leaning forward in mock sincerity. “Loki, son of Laufey. God of Mischief,” he sizes her up for a moment, and adds, “madam.”
The receptionist continues typing. “Date of birth?”
“You know,” Loki says, “it’s rude to ask a lady her age.”
The receptionist gives him a hard look. “Date of birth, please.”
Loki holds her gaze. “I’m a God, madam.”
he sighs. “That doesn’t help me.”
He smirks. “Fine. I’m a Sagittarius.”
“November?”
“December.”
He can see the receptionist roll her eyes. “Fine.”
Loki continues to study the receptionist’s desk. Even though the contents of her workspace seem commonplace, even trivial, to Loki - nothing of note beyond writing utensils and papers - he feels a pang as he realizes how displaced he truly is. He’d narrowly escaped imprisonment, only to find himself in unintentional exile. He has nothing with him, not even the clothes on his back.
The receptionist coughs. “Place of birth?”
Loki winces inwardly. “Jotunheim,” he says, resisting the urge to grit his teeth. The painful pang of displacement intensifies.
“Race?”
Loki frowns. “Do they not teach you celestial history here?”
She looks at him blankly.
“I'm a Jötunn. A Frost Giant,” he says. She types it in.
Loki squints to see the sections being filled out on the page. He almost startles, though, when she looks up abruptly, lifting her glasses to peer at Loki. Without the magnification of her glasses, the receptionist’s eyes are small in the midst of a spectacularly round face. Loki feels almost naked, exposed, as her eyes dart over his face.
She places her frames back onto her nose. “Black hair,” she says, and turns back to her machine. As she’s typing, she adds, “and blue eyes.”
Loki defensively touches the ends of his hair. He supposes he should be used to this, after an early lifetime of constant scrutiny and judgment. This place couldn’t say or think anything about Loki that the members of the Asgardian court, or better yet, his supposed royal father, hadn’t said already.
Unpleasant memories threaten to surface, and Loki internally shoves them down. He defiantly flicks his hair out of his face, the sound of his jumpsuit rustling loud, in the overwhelming quiet of the room.
“Sex?”
Loki actually starts this time. "Excuse me?"
The receptionist looks at him in exasperation. “Your sex?”
He feels disoriented. “Well, I don’t suppose that’s any of your business, is it?”
“Your majesty,” she says blandly, “I don’t suppose you think any of this is my business, but I have to ask. Protocol.”
Loki stares at her for a moment, then slides his gaze down to her desk. “Surely you don’t need to ask, madam.”
The receptionist shrugs. “I’ve done intake for a couple dozen of youse, with half as many different genders and sexes. Can’t make assumptions when dealing with a Loki.”
“Ah, well,” Loki begins, but trails off, his voice breaking slightly. He pauses, wondering what she means by a Loki, but instead adds it to his growing list of questions about this place.
He clears his throat. “Well, at any rate, I’m not quite sure how to answer your question. I’m a shape shifter; I’ve taken many forms for many reasons, you see,” he pauses to sit up straighter, assuming a petulant tone. “So, if anything, to ask such a question is indicative of a radically narrow-minded, mortal me—”
“I’ll just put ‘fluid,’” the receptionist says, turning away from Loki.
Loki shuts his mouth. And then opens it. “Fluid?”
“Yes’m. Easy catch-all,” she says with a nod. Loki stares as she pulls a paper from her machine, apparently reading it over for errors.
Loki sits in silence, again, but now with something to occupy his thoughts. Fluid, the receptionist said, without a second thought. He mulls this term over in his mind, turning it over and over like an object to be studied. Fluid, like water - like magic. Loki thinks of the illusory magic that flows and ripples through the matter knitting together his body.
When they were younger, Loki had changed his shape at dinner to mimic a serving girl and later, Thor had remarked that Loki reminded him of a snake shedding its skin whenever he did that. Loki found this comparison more apt than he’d been willing to admit to his brother; with his magic, Loki felt the rigidity of his normal form dissipate, giving way to someone freer.
He cringes inwardly at the irony; his ‘normal’ form was not even his own, but rather one that Odin had forced onto him before Loki could talk. Like so many of his decisions, Odin’s reasoning was chalked up to a keeping up of appearances, and to shame.
Loki regards his hands where they rest in his lap, the fluorescents overhead casting a sickly blue hue over everything. In this light, the skin stretching across his joints seems almost lavender. He thinks of the deep blue which hides just under the surface, marred by the occlusive glamor put there by Frigga, so many years ago. How many times had he looked down at his hands, and not seen them for what they were? Years of identity, withheld from him without his knowledge. That was one of the reasons he sought to rule over Midgard; humans needed someone who wouldn’t lie to them. He knew what it was like to be lied to and still have power taken away; Loki would take their power, yes, but over anything else, he would give them explicit truth and honesty.
Loki wonders if he should mention the deep-seated spell disguising his skin. He could just dispel it, show rather than tell. But perhaps it’s unwise to use his powers yet, not before he can scope out more of this place and its inner-workings. But, Loki notes, an uncomfortable feeling sits just atop his skin, where his magic usually dwells. Normally Loki’s magic feels like a constant, cool mist, but ever since he’d been forced into this building, his skin has prickled and crawled, like static electricity.
“Alright,” the receptionist says, bringing Loki back to the present. “That’s all I need. You’ll be heading down now to your initial appearance with the Honorable Justice Renslayer.”
Loki looks at her puzzledly. “Who?”
“Have a good day now,” she says. without looking up.
Before Loki can respond, the world opens up beneath him, and he falls through the floor.