Chapter Text
Tommy Shepherd lived his life at supersonic speed, but the last few months had taught him something painful and undeniable:
You can run from a lot of things.
You can’t outrun yourself.
California blurred beneath him day after day — forests, freeways, deserts, coastlines — until every landscape felt the same. Too bright. Too loud. Too full of reminders of who he used to be and who he never wanted to be again.
He wasn’t a Young Avenger anymore.
He wasn’t his twin brother Billy Kaplan’s other half anymore.
He wasn’t May Parker’s fiancé anymore.
He wasn’t Billy’s boyfriend Loki’s complicated almost-something anymore.
He was just Speed now.
A kid in a worn studio apartment on the west side of Los Angeles who slept on a mattress on the floor because buying real furniture felt like pretending he had a life worth decorating.
During the day, he roamed California looking for whatever heroism he could throw himself into. He dragged civilians from burning buildings before firefighters reached the block. He stopped a freeway pile-up by pulling three cars sideways in the space of a heartbeat. He disarmed two robbers in downtown Oakland so fast they thought they had teleported to jail.
He never stayed for cheers. He never waited for thanks.
He popped the smoke bomb of a smile, waved vaguely, and ran.
He saved people because saving himself seemed impossible.
At night, he wandered the west side streets alone, passing couples holding hands, college kids laughing outside ramen shops, young families pushing strollers under the warm glow of string lights. Life was happening everywhere.
Just not to him.
Every time he let himself imagine stopping — sitting at a café, meeting someone, pretending he deserved happiness — he saw May’s face, or Billy’s, or Loki’s last expression before he dissolved, and the guilt hit him like a punch to the lungs.
So he didn’t stop.
He ran until the world blurred.
One evening, after outracing a wildfire near Shasta Lake, Tommy collapsed by the water’s edge, chest heaving, ash still clinging to his hair. He dunked his hands into the lake, watched the ripples break and reform.
“Pathetic,” he muttered to his reflection. “Real heroic.”
The trees rustled, though there was no wind.
The air thickened.
Then—
“Thomas.”
His heart slammed against his ribs.
That voice was impossible. It was smoke and mockery and velvet. A familiar curl of mischief threaded with a ghost of affection.
Tommy sat up slowly.
“…Loki?”
A shimmer of green flickered beside him, coalescing into a shape — faint, translucent, but undeniably him. Lean, sharp-eyed, smirking in that way that always meant trouble or heartbreak or both.
“Miss me?” the spirit of Loki asked lightly.
Tommy swallowed. Hard.
“You’re… I mean, you’re dead, so—”
“Yes, yes, we can argue semantics later.” Loki waved a ghostly hand. “Hela has my soul in her dreary little kingdom, and boredom is a fate worse than death.”
Tommy blinked. “You’re saying you’re calling me from beyond the grave while kidnapped by the Norse god of death because… you’re bored?”
A smirk. “Because you’re my tether, Thomas. That trinket around your neck?”
Tommy’s hand flew to the rune he still wore on a thin chain.
“Think of it as… the universe’s worst Wi-Fi hotspot.”
Despite everything — the grief, the guilt, the ache — Tommy laughed. A short, pained sound.
Loki softened. “Hela is keeping me. Studying me. She finds my… choices… curious. Apparently sacrificing oneself for mortals is unusual for a god.”
“She took you because of me,” Tommy said. The words cracked on the way out.
“She took me because that is what she does.” Loki’s tone sharpened, but not at him. “You did not condemn me. I chose my fate.”
Tommy looked away, jaw tight. “Still my fault.”
A pause. A sigh like shifting starlight.
“Thomas… I need your help.”
Tommy’s breath caught.
Loki’s expression flickered — bravado at war with something vulnerable. “I am not meant to remain in Hela’s dominion. I am not a warrior fallen in glorious battle. I am… inconvenient inventory. She has no intention of releasing me.”
Tommy met his eyes, something in his chest twisting painfully.
“Tell me what to do.”
Loki’s smile was faint — almost gentle.
“I knew you’d say that.”
He reached out, and though his fingers passed through Tommy’s wrist like smoke, the gesture still landed with the weight of a plea.
“Find me,” Loki said, voice low. “Free my soul. And perhaps… we can both rest.”
Then his form dissolved into mist, the lake’s surface rippling with fading green light.
Tommy was left alone in the dark, ash still on his skin, the rune heavy around his neck.
He closed his eyes.
“Billy would know what to do,” he whispered.
But he couldn’t ask Billy.
Not after what he’d done.
So he stood, and the air buzzed with the promise of impossible danger.
“Okay, Loki,” Tommy murmured to the empty woods.
“You want help? You’ll get it.”
He vanished in a streak of white lightning.
On the lake’s surface, the ripples slowly calmed.
But the world around Tommy Shepherd was about to get much, much louder.