He should have expected this to happen sooner or later: the Greatest Trickster of the Nine Realms had managed to fool even the Greatest Trickster of the Nine Realms. The irony of the situation, however, made it no less unsettling. He didn't like being tricked by anyone. Nobody could fool Loki, not even Loki himself. He had to get to the bottom of this. He would find out what game he was playing, what he was up to, what he was after.
He had better think quickly; it was hard to discern the passing of time in the Dark World, and Odin had to be back on Asgard by morning, before he could be missed. The prince slid agilely down to the bottom of the hill and gazed at the desolate, empty world around him. This was where it had happened. This was where he had done it. He could still see the grenade flying towards her, feel himself rushing forward and pushing her out of the way. But why? It had happened so quickly, there had been no time to think about it before he'd done it. The action had been swift and instinctive; he had moved without planning to, without even realizing what he'd done until after the fact. What instinct had driven him to do it? What had been going on in his mind at the time?
"What are you up to?" the trickster asked himself. "What are you hiding?" His stare intensified, and the air lit up with strands of gold that quickly solidified into colorful shapes – the images from his memory now projected before his eyes. He walked around in a circle, observing the scene from all angles as it replayed over and over again. It offered no clues.
"Why did you do it?" He turned with a smile to face the apparent source of the sound. "What were you playing at?" the woman demanded. Most people might think it was pointless to converse with your own illusions, as anything they said could only come from your own thoughts, but playing his thoughts back to himself this way helped him think. Jane Foster stepped closer to him, and he let the scene playing beside them dissolve. She glared at him and asked, "Why did you save me?"
He laughed derisively before answering. "Isn't it obvious? I had to protect the pawn I needed to make my next move. I saw how my dear brother felt about you. I knew that if you survived, he could never let you go. He would give up his birthright without a second thought just to be with you, leaving the throne mine for the taking. By saving you for Thor, I saved the throne for myself – my greatest plan yet. And it worked flawlessly."
"Oh, please." Loki turned around to see Sif shaking her head incredulously at him. "You really believe you were thinking that far ahead?"
He smirked at the image. "It's what I do best."
"Under fire?" asked a new projection as it strolled around him, pointing his hammer at him. "In the middle of a chaotic battle, fighting for our lives, where you couldn't even predict what was going to happen in the next five minutes, let alone in the days and weeks ahead?"
Loki shrugged and said nonchalantly, "Well, maybe I couldn't be entirely sure it would work at the time, but I knew there was a chance."
"You risked your life for a chance?" asked his brother's likeness.
"I survived, didn't I?"
"Barely," Thor reminded him.
He shrugged again. "Well, what did I have to lose?"
"You didn't care whether you died or not, yet you were still plotting how you could take the throne?" came the sarcastic voice of Fandral.
Loki turned sharply towards the image and said, "I wasn't trying to kill myself."
"Could have fooled me," said Jane Foster.
Sif walked towards her and said, "I wouldn't blame him."
"Nor I," added Thor, joining them. "After all the destruction he caused on Jotunheim and Midgard and Asgard, all the innocent lives he took, all the lives he ruined, all the people he betrayed... I couldn't live with it."
"No, you couldn't," Loki agreed. "Fortunately, I'm not so weak. None of that matters."
"You told the intruder where to go to disable the palace defenses," the low voice of Hogun said slowly and evenly. "You let them in. You helped them kill Frigga. Does that matter?"
"How can you live with yourself?" Sif hissed at him. "You should have let that Dark Elf stab you."
"But I didn't," he replied flatly. "Obviously, I had no intention of dying back there, or I wouldn't have done all I could to save myself. I didn't want that grenade to kill me." He laughed again. "Why would I need to bother? Too many people had already offered to do the job for me."
"You think we were joking?" an image of Volstagg asked.
"Not at all," Loki assured it, and he pointed at the human. "That's why I had to do everything I could to protect her. I knew you all would kill me if I didn't."
"We only threatened to kill you if you betrayed Thor," Sif pointed out. "I wouldn't have minded if you'd failed to save her."
"Unfortunately, my brother would have felt otherwise," he said with an amused smirk.
"Since when do you care about me?" Thor asked. "Are you saying you saved her for my sake?"
"Going soft, are we?" laughed Fandral.
"That's absurd," Loki said icily.
"Maybe he is," said Volstagg, turning to Thor. "Maybe your mother's death made him regret what he'd put you through, and he wanted to atone for it somehow."
"I don't do regret," Loki said next, but the casual tone of his voice was starting to sound forced.
"Come now, everyone," laughed Fandral. "Loki hates Thor more than anyone in the Nine Realms. If he could have gotten away with it, he would have let the woman he loves die without a second thought."
"I treated her better than Odin did." The trickster was grinning again. "He certainly wouldn't have been too pleased to hear she survived."
"So you saved her just to spite Odin?" Hogun suggested laconically.
"The thought certainly has its appeal," Loki answered.
"You would risk your life just to spite someone," Volstagg concluded.
"Didn't work out that way, though," said the human.
"No – it worked out so much better," said the new king of Asgard. "I have the throne, you and Thor have each other... everyone wins."
"And you're content with that?" Thor asked sternly. "With seeing the brother you loathe, whom you've always been so jealous of, getting everything I want?"
"He's just biding his time," said his precious Jane. "He can come back and deal with us whenever he wants."
"Now why would I do that? I'm not like Odin. I may hate Thor, but I don't have anything against you." Loki walked towards her and looked her up and down before resting his gaze on her face. This was the woman his brother desired and his father hated... "I really did like you, you know..."
"So that's why you saved me," she stated in a tone that implied no question or doubt. "Not for Thor's sake but for mine."
Loki instantly backed away from her, his smug smile gone. "Don't be ridiculous."
"She is beautiful," Fandral observed.
"And a master of humans' magic," added Hogun.
Loki ignored them all and sneered at the woman in question. "She's a pitiful mortal who will be dead in less than a century. What could my pathetic brother possibly see in her?"
"Odin would be relieved to know one of his sons agrees with him..." Sif mused aloud.
"As if I could have anything in common with that old fool!" Loki walked back towards Jane Foster once he stopped laughing. "Odin would have let you die."
"But you didn't..." she said, glaring accusingly at him.
His own glare morphed into a hungry grin. "Where would the fun be in that? Oh, I'll come back for you, all right... why should my brother get to have all the fun? I'd have been a fool to have let those Dark Elves destroy you before I had my turn." The two of them turned to face Thor. "I have your throne, I have your kingdom... I promise, before long, I'll have your woman."
"You always need to have everything I have," his brother's likeness said in annoyance.
"I soon will."
"So you saved her for a chance to spite me in the future?"
"Would anyone put it past me?"
"So you did save her because you liked her!" Fandral exclaimed.
"You could put it that way," Loki conceded.
"If Thor wants to make himself miserable by loving her, why interfere?" Sif asked with a shrug.
"Exactly! If I'm going to take advantage of that, I need her alive!" His audience was silent. "I didn't save her. It's all part of my plans. She's far more useful to me alive than dead. How else could I have been sure Thor would trust me completely?" He heard himself ranting, but he couldn't make any sense out of it. "It worked! Thor believed I was completely on his side, he never suspected I faked my death, he gave up the throne to be with her, and, when the time is right, I'll be able to make him suffer more than he ever imagined possible in his worst nightmares! Me, going soft... hah! I've never been stronger! This was my finest trick yet!"
It was only now that he realized his illusions had begun flickering and fading away one by one until only Thor was left. That one, too, finally dissolved, leaving him alone. He'd lost his concentration. No matter – he'd gotten his answers. There could only be one logical explanation why he had saved that woman, and he'd found it. He was finished here.
He couldn't tell whether the next sound he heard came from a projected illusion or from within his memory:
"Always so perceptive about everyone except yourself."