The carpet squished beneath his bare feet as he wove back toward his room and his thoughts sprang away from him like hares before a hunter. The moment one was nearly caught it bounded away again. Skuld's revelations bored into him, scorching their way ever deeper. He glanced at his wrists, as if expecting to see shackles—or puppet strings.
A misstep and he lurched forward unexpectedly. He caught himself on the exposed stone of the hall. He was the North Sea in a storm, one emotion battering into another, none staying long enough to identify. Was he terrified or angry? Whipped into whitecaps of fury or plunged into the frigidness of resignation? It felt like falling—and he couldn't think of that. He needed something to latch onto.
"I hope you enjoyed your little game the other day," said Barton as he rounded the corner up ahead.
Loki nearly smiled in relief. Oh, you'll do. He straightened himself casually, emotions snapping under control. "Well, there is so little amusement here—one must get inventive."
Barton scrutinized him with that hard, calculating look he had—the one more probing than should be possible for a mortal. Oh yes, Hawkeye was aptly named. The archer crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. The pose would have looked casual to anyone but Loki. He could see the tension running down what was visible of the archer's arms jutting from a sweat stained t-shirt. Though leaning against the wall, both feet were pressed into the floor, muscles tensed like a runner at the starting blocks.
"Your little amiable supervillain act might be lulling the others, but your sociopathic charm isn't going to make them forget." Here he idly played with the cuff of his sleeve, worrying the fabric between his grubby nails.
"Oh, I don't need them to forget—nor do I want them to," said Loki. A clattering echoed faintly from behind them, reminding them that up a flight of stairs and down a short hall, the others were starting on dinner. Loki allowed his eyes to trail meaningfully up the stairs before lazily settling back on Barton. "A hesitation, a slight moment of surprise is what I'm aiming for. We've already seen what a bit of a start can do to your aim."
Barton bristled. Honestly that was all Loki was looking for. He didn't really have any plans beyond making sure Book came out of this in one piece and no more changed than he already was. Beyond that—Loki didn't know, his future at once more set and yet uncertain since speaking with the Norn. How he hated foreknowledge. Terrorizing Barton shaved the edge from his unease. It wasn't that he disliked Clint—not like he did Stark—although his amusement at the man's ability to behave audaciously in strained situations was growing. No, Loki had actually rather enjoyed the blue-eyed version of Barton. He'd been attentive, full of initiative and invention, not to mention unswervingly loyal.
For his current—admittedly spiteful—reasons, the Barton before him that held a grudge was perfectly acceptable as well. It was ever so entertaining to see the anger building, pressing against the dams of the archer's control.
"Posture all you like—we both know it wasn't really you in control last time, and you're not in control now."
Loki's smile sharpened, the skin around his eyes tightening. He picked at his wrist as if fingering the invisible threads of control Skuld had strung through him. Barton couldn't know it, but after Loki's conversation with the Norn, that portion of his control was flimsy as paper. Of course Hawkeye hadn't missed his mark.
Natasha slid round the corner behind her partner, affecting surprise at finding them here, though Loki doubted she'd missed their voices. He fought the urge to smile even wider. How kind of the Widow to offer her presence at just that moment. What was it Skuld called me? Loki mused, Ah, yes. Reactionary.
He let his eyes slide over her and flick lazily to Barton. He could feel her tense—but she wasn't the one he was interested in. My apologies Agent Romanov—but this is going to hurt. A nearly soundless laugh, little more than a breath of air, escaped him. "I must say this is hardly the situation I had imagined the three of us encountering one another in so long ago. You remember, Agent Romanov." He paused for effect, but not long enough to be melodramatic. "Our little talk aboard the Helicarrier."
Clint may not have had his arrows on him at the moment, but it did seem that he had a rather sizeable knife stashed somewhere. The edge of the knife caught the light, the handle gripped backwards so that the blade lay along his forearm.
"Your next words better be chosen carefully," ground out Clint.
"Oh, it seems you did tell him about our chat. How unusual."
"There was security footage," said Romanov calmly. It was a calculated calm, however. She wasn't a fan of where this conversation was headed. "He'd have found out anyways."
"I should cut your tongue out for talking to her that way."
Loki raised his eyebrows—that was not where he had expected this conversation to go. "Not my best moment it was true. You'll have to forgive me Agent Romanov, I don't normally stoop to petty name calling. It was beneath me." He inclined his head. "Still, I am so very sorry I didn't get to keep my promise—what a scene that would be. According to Barton here, you have some very—twisted fears. A hazard of your profession I suppose."
Clint didn't seem to intend to use the knife or threaten Loki with it, merely to keep it on his person. "Wouldn't have mattered. Nat would have finished me. Fight to the death like that—I wouldn't be the one coming out alive." Barton smirked. "Didn't bank on that, did you?"
Unease flickered in Natasha's eyes—and Loki knew he wasn't meant to see it. Not that it mattered. He already knew things about Romanov that Barton had yet to comprehend. But he was about to.
"Come on, Clint. Dinner's ready," she laid her hand on his arm. "No need to antagonize the prisoner."
Barton gave Loki one last triumphant look before turning to follow Romanov, one eye always on Loki as if he thought he might be jumped from behind. Loki's words drifted after him—insidious in their softness. "I think you underestimate just how much of a liability you've become for her."
Barton stopped—clearly against Natasha's will. "Ha, that's a good one. That's the beauty of Natasha, she's rock solid—always does what's necessary. She'd have got over…it" His words hitched as he looked at Natasha. Even Loki could barely see it, but Clint saw her waver. "Oh." The truth of it was written all over his face.
"Maybe I'll get to keep my promise after all."
The knife whipped by his face. That was why Barton worked best at a distance. Too close and his control snapped. As Loki dodged backwards he idly wondered what it would take to make Black Widow lose her temper—perhaps it wasn't even possible. He did enjoy a challenge, though.
Clint bounded off the stone walls, flinging himself at Loki. The two collided. As Loki dropped backward, he rolled onto his shoulders, flipping Clint over his head. The narrow hallway didn't leave either of them much room to maneuver. Hardly the place for a brawl—especially at Loki's height.
"You're not going to get the chance to touch her," growled Clint as he lunged again. Loki barely managed to fully deflect the knife as he smashed his forearm into Clint's knife arm even as he slid around to the side. It was nice to see his oath allowed him to defend himself—how far would it let him go, he wondered?
"I thought we'd established that I wouldn't be touching her at all." He leaned in close behind Barton, his voice low. "That would be all you." The cold pressure of a gun barrel at the base of his skull didn't really surprise him—but he couldn't say it was pleasant. An icy clamoring swarmed toward the surface, hissing that in his current state, he'd be dead if the hammer fell. He promptly shoved the voice back down with all the other things he'd rather not think about.
"Enough." That was all Natasha needed to say as Clint paused in preparation of his next attack. She was talking to him as much as to Loki.
"Think your finger could slip just this once?" he asked hopefully as he looked past Loki at his partner.
Blinking slowly, Natasha's expression was one of bland annoyance. It seemed to say that Clint was a fool if he thought she would possibly give in to such an inane request.
The hammer eased back into place with a soft click as she secreted the gun back somewhere on her person. "It's time for dinner," she repeated, as if she hadn't just witnessed a knife fight. In that regard she and Sif would get on famously.
For a moment it looked like Barton would actually try to defy her, but an unspoken conversation between the two seemed to make up his mind for him. He shrugged and tucked his knife away. "I hope it's meatballs and tatter tots."
"Allow me to introduce you to the concept of a green vegetable," said Widow as she headed back up the stairs as if nothing had happened.
Barton also didn't acknowledge him as he slid by. He only paused at the end of the corridor to look back over his shoulder. "You're not half so dangerous when we know who and what you are."
It was said quietly, but something in it gnawed at Loki. Was that revelation or resolve he glimpsed in the archer?
A sigh of frustration echoed through Loki's thoughts. Why do you insist on paying such a price for momentary thrills? Bartering gold for petty pleasures that slip through your fingers like mist?
"You well know the answer," he said with a grim, humorless smile. "I do what I want."
Skuld sighed again. Then on your head be it.
The sounds of dinner had broken apart as the Avengers headed in groups to different parts of the house. From the clank of dishes and back and forth of voices it sounded like Book, Rogers, and Barton were in the kitchen on dish duty. Now that Book was well enough to be up and around, he spent his time ingratiating himself with the various members. He was still somewhat standoffish with Thor, though, in large part for Loki's sake. It was a childish thing to do, but it still amused Loki. In a way he wouldn't admit, it also touched him that after spending time with Asgard's favorite son, Book still chose him. He wasn't sure anyone had ever done that if given the choice between him and Thor. Even mot…even Frigga hadn't done that. Though to be fair, she considered them both her sons and treated them as such. He and Thor were equal in her eyes.
But Book chose him. Loki ignored the venom that threatened to douse the warm thought—the only reason Book chose him was because he'd lied to and manipulated the boy for months on end.
He shook himself. There was no profit in such thoughts. They only served to distract from the problem of Skuld's revelation. Now that he knew his patroness, it answered a great deal while at the same time shoving him further into the abyss of the unknown. Her interest in him also conjured up the burning shadows of his future.
Fingers dug through denim and into the flesh around his knees as he closed his eyes against the rising memories. That only made it worse. Against the blackness of his eyelids he saw the sun and the moon swallowed in massive jaws, the shattered wreck of Asgard reared against a sky void of life, no sound but the wailing of Yggdrasil as its trunk splintered. Existence tumbled into howling nothingness. But he remained, ringed by the monsters of Ragnarok and drenched in the blood of existence.
A strange tingling sensation jerked him back, momentarily sending his senses off balance as he didn't recognize where he was sitting. For a moment his eyes darted around the back stairwell, taking in the smooth stone floors beneath him and the warm, honey glow of the wooden stairs. A thin skein of frost coated his hands. He let out a clenched breath and the prickle of magic receded.
Annoyance curled his lip as he gave his hands a deft shake. Frost scattered in hoary flakes. How fit my monstrous side would show itself when thinking of monstrous deeds.
A somewhat deliberately loud set of footsteps coming down the stairs behind him gave him enough warning so that he didn't startle when he felt a presence behind him. Without turning, he knew who it was.
Natasha stepped around him and stopped two stairs beneath him. She turned and set a plate of limp, soggy leaves and fried brown lumps next to him. "The groundskeeper's wife brought them—said they're collard greens and hushpuppies. It's a Southern thing." She gave a bland smile. "I think she was just trying to get a look at who was actually staying here."
Loki raised his eyebrows at her presence as much as the contents of the plate. Someone would voluntarily eat this? It rather looked like the ill first attempts of an unattended child. He took the plate and sniffed it. The scent of vinegar burned the inside of his nose. He raised his eyes from the plate to Romanov—after his little display earlier he hadn't expected her to wish to seek him out.
"Want to explain what all that was about?" she asked conversationally.
He eased the tension from his posture, appearing relaxed and mildly interested in the prospect of talking with the spy. His tone was friendly enough. "Are you sure you wish to repeat our previous encounter? I don't remember it going rather well."
"I retrieved the intel I needed—I'd consider that going well."
A breath of laughter broke into an infuriatingly knowing smile. "You learned of an inconsequential side amusement that still served its purpose in a rather spectacular way. While I…" The amusement left him as he stood and paced past her to the window on the landing below them, able to see Natasha in the reflection while he pretended to stare through the glass. "I struck to the core of you. The scar of it is still there—if you're looking for it. And now the archer sees your weakness too."
Romanov's expression never faltered, perhaps becoming a touch more dry. "You'll never admit that I tricked the trickster, will you."
"Not if the fires of Muspelheim were frozen over." He let the masks drop and allowed a true, wry smile to show through—one he knew would reflect in the glass back to the spy. "As you say on Earth, there were points scored…on both sides."
"Trying to distract me from my original question won't work," said Natasha smoothly. She sat down on the stairs, one foot propped up while she stretched the other out in front of her. Loki had noticed she had a tendency to do this, to sit while pursuing her interrogations. A calculated move to make her seem more at ease and less of a threat. Not that the effort it would take to go from sitting to a fighting position would cost her much time, if she actually had to rise first at all.
She allowed Loki to loom over her, seemingly in command of the situation, the one with the power where she was not. It was a useless ploy on him, but Loki still appreciated the skill she presented in manipulation.
"My thoughts are my own," he said quietly, "what right have you to them?"
"It's that creature you're involved with. What did Book call her, a Norn?" she asked.
"I doubt she'd like being referred to as a 'creature'," said Loki with a raised eyebrow.
The Black Widow shrugged carelessly. "I've never been overly concerned with pleasantries."
At this Loki did smile, "Because you're Russian."
"Was Russian." She looked at him, clearly waiting for him to continue.
He considered her shrewdly for a moment. "You know what it is to be used for another's purpose, to be molded and bent and forced into the role they wished of you." It wasn't a question. They both knew that through Clint he knew almost everything about her. Loki guessed at the gaps Clint had never pushed too hard to fill.
"That is what this Norn has done to you?"
"Has done, will do, is doing. She is ancient, woven into the very tapestry of the universe and time. She is a goddess and we are all so many ants beneath her." He paused. "And she has turned her eyes on me for a purpose I know nothing of." He glanced seriously at Natasha. "Be glad your bones will be dust long before her plans come to fruition."
"You always say the nicest things to me," she said with a hint of a smile, her voice a touch husky with good humor.
He resisted the urge to close the gap between them, instead turning his back on her and clasping his hands behind him. "You would not laugh if you had seen what I have seen. To know the future is a terrible burden."
Natasha got to her feet and tugged at the wrinkles in her shirt. "That's the beauty, though, the future is always made of our choices. If we don't like it, we just have to choose another one. It's never too late to take another path."
"As easy as turning aside," Loki sneered derisively.
Natasha gathered up the untouched plate and turned to head back up the stairs. "Oh, I never said it would be easy. It might just kill you. But then you'd at least be dead on the path you chose."
"And which of your earth philosophers said such a ridiculous thing."
She looked over her shoulder. "Clint did, as he stood there ready to put an arrow through my skull."
A/N: We're studying Ecclesiastes right now and that is the book where the author keeps talking about life being "vanity of vanities." In Hebrew the word usually translated as "vanity" is hebel, which literally means "mist." So the author is basically saying that life is fleeting and as substantial as a mist. Which oddly ties into Skuld's opinion of what Loki is doing, chasing after "mists" as if they mattered.
Speaking of Skuld, it's such a strange thing to make me happy, but I love her speech patterns. It's ornate and rather theatrical in a way that most characters can't get away with (I don't, know, maybe she can't either). But it allows me to have lines like "on your head be it." And actually have them kinda work. That also is one reason why I feel like the writers (and actors as well) for any of the Asgardians are underappreciated in what they accomplished. They kept that kind of faux-Shakespearian diction that Thor has in the comics, but make it work without sounding like bad Shakespeare-in-the-park—it sounds like real people having real conversations, and yet they certainly don't sound like modern day speakers. That is really hard to do and if you look at Thor in other mediums (I'm thinking the various cartoon iterations and even the comics), the dialogue is often just so fake and overblown it sounds ridiculous.
Also, hopefully this chapter clarified that this story won't be getting to Ragnarok (unless I did some serious time skips). This story has its own contained arc, but lays the foundation for a journey that would end in Ragnarok.
Next Week: No hints for next week I'm afraid. I'm still wrestling with how to deal with two shorter chapters. Not sure if they should be combined, left as is, or if there is some way I could satisfactorily expand them.
Silver Frost: While I am loath to lower your vaunted opinion of my updating skills….the reason I can update so consistently is because the story is already done. Mostly. I know myself and I know that I can't post something until it is pretty much finished because otherwise I might lose interest, get overwhelmed with life, or hit some serious writer's block. I'm also a bit of a perfectionist, and I'm always afraid that if I post something before it is finished I'll want to go back and change something that's already been uploaded and then I'm up a creek without a paddle. For this story in particular I had months where I got almost nowhere because I couldn't figure out how to fix certain plot problems or weave sections together.
As to other fandoms…well if you mean other things that I'm into, it's a bit of a list: LOTR, Merlin, LOZ, A:TLAB, Star Wars, Star Trek (mostly Voyager), Sherlock (BBC and original), Doctor Who, HTTYD, FIM, Kingdom Hearts, Redwall, Queen's Thief, Harry Potter, Stargate SG 1 & Atlantis, Fullmetal Alchemist (2003 is favorite, but Brotherhood is good too—I know, sacrilege)….I'll stop now.
RedHood001: Not at all. I did intentionally put in references to the Norns throughout the story so that as a concept they wouldn't come out of nowhere, but still, it was very astute of you to take the rather vague breadcrumbs I left and make the leap!
Guest: Thank you! Skuld does offer the opportunity to get into some interesting areas philosophically. That and it's fun to contrast the right that Skuld has to influence the lives of others with the bastardization of control that Loki had with the mindstone. They have the right and the vision to write the "story" of the universe—Loki does not.