Odin with a look warned Thor and Loki not to follow him as he went to discuss the incident in the vault with his head of security, General Tyr. Thor looked very miffed at being excluded, but instead of going down to the training yards to hit things, he headed back into the keep. Mildly concerned by the aberrant behavior, Loki followed him. It was his fault Thor was in this mood after all. The least he could do was keep an eye on his older brother and keep him from hurting himself or anyone else as his temper waxed into a storm and then blew itself out. Thor headed for the great hall, which was empty when they entered. All the decorations hung limp and dripping as the frost on them melted. Loki leaned against the wall by the door and simply watched as Thor headed deeper into the hall. Finally, Thor's anger and frustration got the better of him, and he knocked over a table that had been laden for the planned feast. He then smashed whatever plates had survived the fall. Loki sighed inwardly. Thor's mess would take the palace staff ages to clean up, but at least he was taking out his ire on something inanimate.
The door opened again, and Sif and the Warriors Three entered. They must have been waiting near the vault to catch up to the princes so quickly. Volstagg's eyes widened in horror as he saw what Thor had done to the mountains of food that had been awaiting them. Sif laughed. "Redecorating, are we?" she called to Thor. Loki smirked. Thor did pause in his tantrum, thankfully.
"What is this?" Volstagg whimpered. He walked further into the room and stopped in front of a smashed seven-layer cake. Loki thought he may even be crying.
"I told you they'd cancel it," Hogun said to Fandral.
"We thought that was just you being your normal cheery self," Fandral replied, walking forward to lay a sympathetic hand on Volstagg's shoulder.
"All this food, so innocent, cast to the ground. It breaks the heart!" Volstagg wailed. Casually, Loki pushed off the wall and walked towards Thor. He handed Volstagg an intact dinner roll as he passed him.
"It's unwise to be in my company right now, brother," Thor told him grumpily.
"Who said I was wise?" Loki asked sarcastically. His intelligence quotient may be double that of any of his companions, but that meant little in a society where brawn mattered far more than brains and where difference was met with suspicion. His ideas were always seen as different, not intelligent or wise.
"This was to be my day of triumph," Thor complained.
Asgard was not a meritocracy, so Loki did not see much triumph in the inevitable cycle of monarchy, but he kept that to himself. "It will come. In time," he told his brother soothingly. Thor sighed and nodded. Loki's mood lowered at his own idle words. Thor's time would come again, eventually, once Odin cooled down enough to remember it was impossible to hold on to power forever when his own eventual demise was unavoidable. Eventually, Thor would be Asgard's king. This was not too much of a problem for Loki personally, who Thor rather liked and absolutely loved to protect, whether Loki needed protection or not. It was a terrible problem for Asgard, and Loki had enough loyalty to his planet to want to keep it from veering towards disaster. Plus, he lived here. How did one completely disrupt the passage of the crown from father to eldest son to eldest son in a society so bound by tradition, though?
An answer came to him. His mind was always quick to offer solutions of some kind, though the practicality was sometimes questionable. This idea he did not like much. It was risky... but today was also his best and possibly only chance to do something about the problem of Asgard's crown prince. Odin was angry right now. When Odin was angry, he became just as easy to manipulate as Thor, if handled correctly. Loki hesitated just another moment before lowering his voice and tooling it to the exact tone that made Thor respond to and trust him like no other, so long as he said words Thor actually wanted to hear.
"If it's any consolation, I think you're right. About the frost giants, about Laufey, everything. If a few of them could penetrate the defenses of Asgard once, who's to say they won't try again. Next time with an army?"
"Yes, exactly!" Thor exalted, smiling at Loki gratefully for his understanding.
"But there's nothing we can do without defying Father," Loki said. Loki watched his brother, and as soon as he saw Thor's eyes gleam with nascent conspiracy, he held up a hand in feigned concern. "No, stop there! I know that look."
"It's the only way to ensure the safety of our borders," Thor said firmly.
"It's madness," Loki goaded him. Thor loved it when Loki said that. It made him feel more daring.
"Madness?" Volstagg called. "What's madness?"
"Nothing," Loki said merrily. "Thor was making a jest!"
"The safety of our Realm is no jest," Thor said sanctimoniously. "We're going to Jotunheim." Perfect. Heimdall would stop them, and if he did not, Loki had other ways of ensuring they never actually got there. Odin would be furious.
Thor talked everyone into the venture easily. Loki offered token resistance only. It was only as Loki followed Thor back out of the palace and towards the Observatory that he realized he was digging himself into a pit with his own cleverness. If he successfully maneuvered Odin into casting Thor out of the line of succession, it would naturally fall to him. While he might be intellectually capable of the task, ruling Asgard for the rest of his life sounded like a living nightmare, and/or a way into an early grave given how few of the ruling caste both liked and trusted him. He would have to start thinking of an alternative now for if and when Odin turned to him to secure his own legacy.
First things first, though. He had to keep Thor from accidentally getting them all killed. He and Thor were both wearing ceremonial armor for the aborted coronation. This being Asgard, even ceremonial armor was perfectly serviceable. The other four were unarmed, however, so the group made a detour to pick up armor and weapons for them, as well as gloves and warm cloaks to keep them all from frostbite on the Ice Planet. It was winter on Jotunheim, after all. Loki split off while they waited to talk to the nearest guard, keeping his demeanor casual so as not to alert Thor and the others.
"A mission, your highness?" the guard asked as he approached, looking rather excited at the prospect. Tales of Thor's missions were popular entertainment, always.
Loki smiled. "Of a kind. Say little, ask no questions, and act normally. This mission of my brother's is against our father's wishes. On your loyalty to the Allfather, go to him and inform him. Do not tarry. Odin will want to intercept us before we reach the Bifrost."
"Er, nice day for it," the man said awkwardly, with a large, false smile plastered on his face. He was sweating. Trust Loki's luck to pick someone with no stomach for surprises. "Well, er, I have duties to go to..."
Loki nodded serenely. "You are dismissed, and you will hear great tales of our prince's glory later tonight I am sure."
The guard saluted and fled. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice. Certainly no one questioned him when they resumed their journey to the Observatory.
"We must first find a way to get past Heimdall," Thor mused.
"That will be no easy task. It's said the Gatekeeper can see a single dew drop fall from a blade of grass a thousand worlds away," Volstagg said. That was silly. Loki wondered if he was still hungry.
"And he can hear a cricket passing gas in Niffelheim," Fandral snickered. Loki refrained from sighing and felt fervently glad they would not actually be invading Jotunheim today. If this was their level of seriousness, both Volstagg and Fandral would surely die.
"Jest not! He hears all!" Volstagg said. At least this time the words were clearly a joke.
"Please. Getting past him should be simple enough now, since he seems to be letting Frost Giants sneak by under his nose," Fandral said. Loki gave credit where credit was due; it was a fair taunt. Heimdall would have been almost as furious as Thor to learn the vault was breached. Of course, getting past Heimdall was not actually the aim, since Loki was sure Thor, Sif, and the Warriors three had less than no idea of how to operate the Bifrost. If asked their plans, they would probably say Loki would figure it out for them. But no, as far as Loki was concerned, at least today, the only way to get past Heimdall was with Heimdall's permission... oh Norns. Norns, he was getting to be just as dimwitted as everyone else. He could not count on Heimdall to stop them after all, not if Heimdall was also curious enough about the intrusion to disregard both orders and good judgment... Loki consoled himself that he had at least sent word to the Allfather. If worse came to worst, he would stall as long as possible.
Oblivious to Loki's grim mood, the banter continued with Volstagg's cry to the sky: "Forgive him! He means no offense!" Sif, Fandral, and Thor all laughed.
Past the massive gate to the city, the band stepped onto the great causeway that led to the Observatory of the Bifrost. The way was broad and flat and coated with bismuth crystal. The land around it faded away into black Void. The technology of the Bifrost did not spring from the mind of an Asgardian. Loki was not even sure that it originated with the Vana, who controlled the planetoid before the Aesir conquest. It could well be far older. There was nothing else like it in all of Asgard, nor by all accounts all of Vanaheim. This Void was true. It was not the same as the emptiness of outer space, which still contained rare atomic particles and large amounts of electromagnetic radiation. This Void did not. As far as Loki had ever been able to determine, this Void was a perfect inversion of space-time. It was not a black hole. It had no mass. It had no gravity. Things cast into it did not fall but merely floated on and on until they vanished. Somehow, this inversion of space was at once connected to every point in the real universe. Sometimes, Loki speculated the Void was a natural phenomenon with the Bifrost built overtop, and that the planetoid may have even been uninhabited until the original discovery of the Void.
It hardly mattered, though. Loki had never met another Asgardian who even questioned it. The significance of the Bifrost was not its ingenious use of concentrated electromagnetic energy to briefly and miraculously bridge two distant points in space. No, the significance to any of the Aesir one might care to ask, besides Loki, was that said bridge allowed Asgard to send its military anywhere it chose.
The band drew near the Observatory, and Loki was grateful to see Heimdall very much blocking their way. He was tall, dark, implacable, and otherworldly. The only exciting thing Asgard had ever done with its Bifrost was figure out how to use it, by plugging a living mind into the mechanisms. The Watcher did not sleep. The Watcher did see everything, or rather could see anything. His near-vision and hearing were no better than an ordinary Asgardian's once he sent them to their destination though. His ability was akin to that of telepathic sending, but magnified by many orders to something much more powerful and, as far as Loki knew, unique. Even someone like Loki who did possess quite a telepathic talent of his own could not come close to Heimdall's ability; Loki might send his thoughts worlds away for a short time only, but he tired quickly with the act.
Heimdall moved his massive sword on-guard before them. His stern face was almost fully obscured by his helmet, which of course meant they could not see his expression. From his stance, Loki was hopeful.
He muttered to Thor, "Keep your weapons sheathed and your mouths closed. This is going to take subtlety and sincerity, not brute strength. Leave it to me."
Loki turned to Heimdall, but before he could say another word, Heimdall said, "You're not dressed warmly enough."
Loki's heart sank. "I'm sorry?" he asked innocently, biding for time.
"The freezing cold of Jotunheim. It will kill you all in time, even Thor." The Watcher grinned wide enough Loki could see his teeth glinting through the narrow gap in his helmet. "You think you can deceive me? I who watch all? I who can sense a butterfly flapping its wings from a thousand words away? I who can hear the cry of a child halfway across the galaxy? I who can smell the very winds of Midgard and Nifelheim at will?"
Ah, so Volstagg had been quoting something. "You must be mistaken," Loki intervened. "We are not-"
"Enough," Thor interrupted, stepping forward. Thor met Heimdall's glinting eyes. "Heimdall, may we pass?" Loki wanted to slap him.
Heimdall stared at Thor for a long time, then lowered his sword. "For ages have I guarded Asgard and kept it safe from those who would do it harm. In all that time, never has an enemy slipped by my watch - until this day. I wish to know how that happened." Oh, for Norn's sake! If Heimdall was telling truth, Loki 'slipped past him' all the time with the same disillusionment trick, not that Loki was an enemy, obviously. This was just the first time Heimdall was aware of his limitations at his job.
"Then tell no one where we've gone until we've returned," Thor ordered him, and started walking. Loki groaned inwardly. He doubted the Watcher would obey if the Allfather came for them as intended, but they damned well weren't supposed to actually go to Jotunheim! He was going to be as insane as everyone else by the time this was over. He knew it.
Volstagg nudged him playfully as Loki still stood speechless at how terribly his off-the-cuff plan was going wrong. If he had thought about this yesterday, he surely would have seen all the holes and not followed through with it. "What's the matter? Silvertongue turned to lead?" he asked.
"Get me off this bridge before it cracks under your girth," Loki muttered irately. Volstagg and Fandral both laughed, linked arms with his, and dragged him forwards onto the platform as Heimdall turned to the Bifrost controls.
"Be warned," Heimdall said as he started up the mechanisms. "I will honor my sworn oath to protect this Realm as its Gatekeeper. If your return threatens the safety of Asgard, the Bifrost will remain closed to you. You'll be left to die in the cold wastes of Jotunheim."
"I have no plans to die today," Thor said arrogantly. Did anyone? Loki thought.
"None do," Heimdall said, echoing Loki's opinion. Heimdall inserted his sword into the control panel and twisted it. The turret of the Observatory turned. Heimdall shoved his sword deeper into the mechanism; the sword was a key, actually. A beam of multicolored light ignited and shot away across the Void, towards Jotunheim. There was the fabled rainbow bridge. "All is ready. You may pass," Heimdall said.
"Couldn't you just leave the bridge open for us?" Volstagg asked.
Heimdall sounded quite condescending when he answered, "To keep this bridge open would unleash the full power of the Bifrost and destroy Jotunheim with you upon it." Loki thanked the Norns that tidbit was not widely known, or doubtless some honorable, rage-fueled idiot would have long since used it to utterly annihilate one of Asgard's enemies.
"Ah. Never mind, then."
Thor led the way, of course. "Come on, don't be bashful!" The four of them followed. As soon as they stepped onto the bridge, the very atoms in their bodies elongated as they shot across the Void in a glorious vortex of light, towards Jotunheim. With just two steps, they were on another planet.
Author's note: in which Loki experiences the difference between a clever plan and a perfect plan. This particular Loki is very good at manipulating his family, particularly Thor. He struggles with other Asgardians though, because he is not as close to them and so can't predict them as readily. He completely fails to anticipate Heimdall for the very reason that he just finds it really difficult to identify with Asgardians, even after all this time.
There is a wonderful series of books called the Second Sons Trilogy, wherein the main character Dirk Provin develops an exceptional skill for political manipulation. At one point later in the series, he woefully muses that the failures in his plans all tend to happen because of his difficulty in predicting the behavior of one very problematic antagonist. Both Dirk and his nemesis are point-of-view characters, and the contrast is amazing and highly entertaining.
Anyways, this is not actually a beat-for-beat retelling of the movie. We will see more and more divergence as the story goes on, mostly because this Loki continues to act (fairly) rationally. The other good news is that I've managed to draft the bulk of the whole story, so you can expect regular updates, probably weekly. Enjoy, and leave a review!