Disclaimer: Yep, don't own. I'm starting to get seriously worried here. Who's actually going to think that I own this stuff? Right. Not you. :)
A/N: This is set post-Avengers, and eventually the Avengers will come into it. I ship Loki/Sigyn (a goddess in Norse Mythology who was Loki's wife...not the Marvel version) and there's a little of that too. I also took some liberties with the magic Loki can do. If you have problems with it, please let me know! It's also kinda inspired by a youtube video for Loki to the song by One Republic, All the Right Moves.
A/N 2: I may or may not continue this, so tell me what you think!
All the Right Moves
"Loki?"
The magic presses at his fingertips, longing to escape.
Thor bounds down the steps, Mjolnir in hand.
Green eyes flash.
"Loki?"
He smiles.
The door's locked. Thor casts a frustrated glare around the empty hallway of the vault, and grimaces.
Crash.
The door is now open.
"Loki?"
His brother looks up from closing a tiny chest on his table, smirking. "Come to beg my forgiveness, have you Odinson?"
"Our –"
"– your –"
"– father, he has –"
"– just condemned me to torment and death." Loki sighs delicately and shakes his head at Odin's foolishness. "Am I wrong?"
Thor drops his head, growling something unintelligible under his breath.
They've locked the room.
More's the pity.
"Brother, we must leave quickly."
"And how are we supposed to leave?" He steps closer, eyes glinting with power, almost insanity. "The Bifrost is broken."
"Energy," Thor mutters.
"The Casket," says Loki.
It feels good to be there again, among his books and clothes and scattered notes – dust or no dust.
It also feels good to know that this time, he will not fail.
"The Casket?"
Painfully slowly, nonchalantly, Loki shrugs. "Well, it is the only source of dark energy within a three-world radius that Heimdall doesn't look at ten times a day, but if you insist…"
Thor's uneasy, he can tell. "You don't deserve to die."
Eyes wide, he shakes his head. "Oh, but there's more to it than that." Loki steps closer, the picture of diplomatic innocence. "The Chitauri," he breathes. "Looking for me…coming to Asgard…"
Odin's son is horrified. Loki saves his smile for later, when Thor won't notice.
He slides a pained must-believe-me expression over his face and gazes into Thor's eyes – don't break eye contact. "I don't want Sigyn to die."
He holds out his hands, feeling the scrolls and papers be pulled towards them in the warm night air, scanning through them for her writing – smooth, elegant, Vanr. She'll have left something for him – she always does.
A…mirror?
It's like all of Loki's lies: almost true, believable, smooth. And like all of Loki's lies, Thor swallows it without a single thought.
No surprises there.
And he hasn't even asked where they would be going.
"The Casket is protected," he continues, gliding through the lie with ease. "Protected by runes," he turns to face Thor, "from Vanaheim."
Of course when Thor hears Vanaheim he thinks of Sigyn. "We could speak to her," he says.
Loki fights the urge to roll his eyes. Right, and since Thor went and broke the stupid Bifrost, they were supposed to get to Vanaheim how, exactly? Yes. As far as Thor knew, there was no way. Or perhaps should have known.
"There are…decided difficulties in that plan of action."
He can see him grow impatient – Thor is meant for acting, not thinking. That works to Loki's advantage in that he forgets things Loki does not, but he is also not willing to listen – especially when Loki's plans make sense.
It is her writing, the curling words formed by her small hands, the runes around the edge more scrawled than written.
So this is the gift he never received, the gift he never saw when he moved into the king's chambers to rule over Asgard, when he left his old room and the memories it contained for as long as he could stay away.
She must hate him.
"However, 'brother', I am a Frost Giant." He doesn't let the hurt show through. "I can break through the runes of the Casket."
"Are you certain, brother?"
"Yes. Why else would Jotuns come to the weapons vaults?" Loki smiles at the effortless lie. "Because they believed they could steal it."
"With Mjolnir –"
A flick of his fingers, and footsteps sound down the hall. He widens his eyes in terror, and Thor takes the hint.
He approaches the Casket nervously: of course, Thor's world doesn't include magic, only weapons. Loki laughs, and he turns, caught off-guard. "Brother –"
It's then that the Loki behind him casually shoots a bolt of liquid energy at his head.
Thor drops to the ground before the pedestal.
"I," Loki says, "am not your brother."
It feels so good, so unbelievably good, to have his magic back. The days of living in the small stone rooms of the vaults are over, and he's back just where he wants to be – on the run from every world's inhabitants and playing them all, infuriating Odin and bearing uncontrollable power that feeds him like an addiction.
Yes, exactly where he wants to be.
It'll take Heimdall about ten minutes to get to Odin.
He makes it to the room in five with the Casket, taps the mirror muttering "Sigyn" and reaches only an image of an empty Vanr bedroom, curtains waving in the wind beyond a bottle of what looks like skin cream minus the tiny runes scratched around the rim. Three more minutes. Shrinks it to the size of a large coin, tucks it in a pocket. Two more minutes. Hands turning blue around the Casket, the rune-protectors freezing, cracking, the power leaking out. One more minute. The power gathering around his skin like an aura, flowing into his cold fingers, waking him up to the world and everything in it.
The bells ring.
Loki disappears.