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Trickster's Gambit	By : Andartha Category: Marvel Verse Movies > Avengers, The Views: 2529 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers. They belong to Marvel. Like all the other fans, I only get to play with them a bit, in an entirley non-profit kind of way.

Chapter List
- 1-Burned
- 2-Stolen
- 3-Split
- 4-Bound
- 5-Hunted
- 6-Fallen & Cracked
- 7-calmed
- 8-Settled
- 9-Sparked
- 10-Sneaked
- 11-Pranked
- 2
- 3
- 4
It’s half-past three in the morning and sleep eluded him hours ago.
It’s the first anniversary of the day he was compromised.
His suit and tie are already sitting out on the clothes-rack, freshly pressed and somber like crows picking at the last bits of meat on a strung-up skeleton.
He remembers every single one of the SHIELD operatives falling to his arrows, one familiar face after another, their eyes wide with shock and recognition.
After it was all over, he went to the funerals. Each and every one of them.
Whatever Natasha might say, he’s not going to let himself forget.
Never.
Never again.
Within the next days, his calendar is stuffed full with one memorial service after another.
As it will be the year after, and the year after that.
He can’t bring them back to life, but he owes them at least this much.
Natascha's grown tired of trying to talk him out of this and she's promised to come by at six and pick him up.
Normally, when he can’t sleep, he’d go down to the range and practice.
But he won’t touch his bow.
Not today.
Instead, he brings up every high, every moment of elation, every scrap of pleasure he felt while he was Loki’s.
They shine like bright silver coins in his memory, a magical treasure that weighs heavily on his soul.
If he’s lucky, with time the grief and tears he sees on the faces of those left behind, the parents, the husbands and wives, the daughters and sons….
…..it’s his silent prayer, his whispered plea that with time they’ll help tarnish the pleasure, blunt the elation, corrode the unbridled joy, the feeling of being complete when he was at his master’s side.
The memory he’s reflecting on, for what seems just like one time too many, is one of the most intense, even if it’s far from being one of worst.
And suddenly it hits him and the key to his questions unfolds like a flower, baring the seed of an answer.
He’s reviewing their most recent new members, trying to make up his mind which of them to assign to his personal team for their next heist.
Holmbrecht, Dieter. Ran a neo-nazi cell in Germany. He’s been on the run ever since the Bundesverfassungsschutz tagged him as the perp in a bomb attack on a local mosque that killed 87 people, twenty of which were kids. Used to be in the army and has been deployed to Afghanistan as a bomb disposal expert. Worked as a licensed buildings blaster in the private sector once he returned. SHIELD had a really good lead on his whereabouts and his funds were running low. Add in the fact that the guy’s a germanic neo-pagan and he gladly jumped at the chance to work for a Norse God.
Ragusa, Marco. Worked as an killer for the Italian Cosa Nostra. His specialty are drive-by shootings. Had to make a run for it after he killed two shield-agents and a hostage in an extortion racket gone bad. The Family blames him for messing it up and the little asshole has no where else left to go but to here. Getting picked up by Loki’s team probably saved his life.
Boerhave, Lennard. Merc. Close combat expert. Good with knives. Worked as part of security for a big diamond mining company. Had to make a run for it after local authorities in Johannesburg took exception to his sideline job. Looks like the guy made quite a bit of money, hunting down albinos and dismembering them, so he could sell their body parts to local witch-doctors. Too bad his accounts in Switzerland have been frozen.
His spanking brand-new assistant, a guy they broke out of a high-security prison only yesterday and who looks like an unassuming accountant, wire-rimmed spectacles and all, but who ran a highly successful for-hire hacker and computer-fraud ring, hands him a cup of coffee. Black and so strong you could stand a spoon in it, just what he needs right now. It’s been over 30 hours since he last slept.
The man is one of the few that the trickster god “persuaded” to join them with the help of his blue-glowing spear, and the man is cautious to the point of paranoia, so he doesn’t need to test the steaming hot beverage for GHB or some other drug someone might have slipped in.
There are draw-backs to leading a bunch of criminals, most of them overly ambitious and greedy.
He keeps a very close eye on his new boss. He doesn't want any of the guys here getting the wrong ideas and maybe make a bid for leadership. Not that any of them are even remotely the equal of a Norse God. Still, dealing with such an impromptu uprising would cost them time, not something they can afford right now.
As he riffles through the paperwork and sips his coffee, he watches the Asgardian talking with one of the scientists while examining the shiny technological toy the man has come up with. Something to do with blocking all video and voice transmission in a certain area without creating a visible hole in the communication network.
Loki is trying to convey some technical concept to the guy, whose eyes are alight with the nerdy kind of exitement that seems rampant with all scientist when they come across a novel concept that has the potential to revolutionize their specialty.
Someone once mentioned Asgardian technology being so advanced that it was indistinguishable from magic. Bringing Loki together with scientists, some of them with criminal records longer than his arm and with less conscience than a cockroach, is like giving the remote-control to a rocket launch pad to a mal-adjusted five year old.
The Trickster's hands move animatedly as he talks, rising and falling, pointing, circling....as elegant and sinous in their movement as a ballet dancer.
Add in the dark hair, if not the smooth alabaster skin, and Loki reminds him of the people around the meditarranean, all smiles and hand-waving when they're enjoying a conversation.
He catches himself thinking that Loki would not look out of place sitting in a quaint little café at some port in a little village along the Cote d'Azur, on a balmy summer evening; discussing Renoir's painting style, the societal impact of the Dreyfuß affair and french-american diplomatic relationships, all at the same time, over a dark-red glass of the finest Merlot.
He catches himself thinking how badly he want to go for his gun and shoot the bastard. He is packing some explosive rounds that carry enough power to blow holes into the hull of an armoured tank. If he manages to hit the eye, the ensuing explosion should be bad enough to take even an Asgardian.
But no matter how much he wills his hand to move, to reach for his gun, it doesn't even tremble.
When Loki first subverted him, he was screaming inside, clawing and beating at the inner walls of his mind with a ferocity of a trapped bear and his self-control was still good enough so he didn't shoot to kill when he aimed for Fury or Maria.
Now, he can't even hold on to the thought that he wants to, needs to kill the Trickster. The thought is slipping out of his hands, as wispy and slippery as a bit of smoke and the last bit of himself that's still HIM, that's still Agent Barton, Hawkeye of SHIELD is dissipating yet a bit more with it.
All of the SHIELD agents that he came across within the last 10 hours are dead.
Loki glances up at him and their eyes lock across the room. A terse little smile is playing around the trickster's lips, sharp like a shard of freshly broken glass. He KNOWS. He can feel Loki sitting at the back of his mind, holding his leash, watching him struggle as he holds on to the ledge, hands scrabbling for a better handhold, trying not to fall into the yawning abyss of oblivion that Loki opened up beneath him. When he falls, he will be Loki's for good, no going back. By the rate that he’s been deteriorating, he has three days left at most. The earth will fall to Loki and the Chitauri in less than two.
The knowledge that soon, all that will be left is the thrall…..it should terrify him….but the part of him that BELONGS to Loki, heart, skin and bone, wants it as badly as a little boy lost in the woods longs for his parents voices, longs to be hugged and held and to be told that everything will be alright.
With a nod, Loki dismisses the scientist who scuttles off with a gleeful smile pasted on his lips, eager to fulfill whatever task he's been set. As eager to please the god as the thrall that Clint Barton has become.
"How are we doing Agent Barton?"
"Good sir. Our cell in Bukarest has managed to obtain the prototype of the cold fusion reactor that Selvig wanted. The cells in Singapore and Mexico are giving SHIELD the run-around. We've recruited a further 60 highly trained soldiers within the last 4 hours and we should be up to full strenght within the next three hours."
With the slowly spreading smirk on Loki's face comes a rush of pleasure that is headier than cocaine, more exhilarating than picking of a target that he's been pursuing for months, hotter than the kiss of the most experienced whore in Bangkok.
His breath hitches and a fine shiver runs down his spine.
Loki notices and the smirk deepens.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               „I take it you can afford a bit of downtime then?"
"If we are to stay on schedule about four hours, sir." And that's good, because both the thrall and the Agent in his mind agree that he needs some goddamn fucking sleep if he's to stay fully functional.
"Perfect. Because there's something I need to get done, but so far, in the greater scheme of things, it's been rather low priority. Call it an indulgence of mine if you will."
And Loki smiles and what remains of Agent Barton feels his heart drop to the pit of his stomach because that smile promises that someone will get hurt.
"Tell me Agent....assuming that by a fortunate coincidence, a hated enemy soldier had fallen into your hand. However you have little time and you can’t afford him to be damaged too much, because you need him well and in fighting shape for your purposes. But you do wish to hurt him. Badly. To bring him low. How could you achieve that?”
The answer to that one is easy. Warfare has many ugly faces and he has seen all of them.
His voice is flat and emotionless as he spells it out.
"Rape."
Lokis' smile spreads into a wide, wide smirk, like blood spreading in water. He taps his lips with hands pressed straight together, as if for prayer, and the gleam in his eyes brightens to one of raptorial anticipation.
"Agent Barton?"
"Yes, sir?"
"I need a suite in a high class hotel. As close as possible to here. And I need it NOW."
It takes just a few taps on his tablet pc and a short call to fulfill the order. The thrall makes sure that there's no way any of it can be connected either to Loki or Agent Barton.
Inside of him, Agent Barton is suddenly more awake and aware than he has been for hours and cursing up a blue streak.
Had he really been worried about somebody slipping him some GHB in his coffee just a few moments ago? Well fuck, obviously he needs to re-calibrate his thinking where it comes to threat-assessment, since Loki's blue-glowing scepter clearly is more effective than any old-fashioned human date-rape drug.
It's happend once before. He'd been a newly trained agent, old enough to kill but not old enough to drink and his orders had been to infiltrate a human trafficking ring on the Balkans. Things had gone well, until his cover had been blown through as stupid, stupid coincidence. The only reason he was still alive was because the local leader of the ring had decided that he wanted to see him humiliated and broken before killing him. It had taken SHIELD four days to realize what was going on and come break him out.
He'd survived and he'd learned to deal with the after-effects. It had been either that or give up being an agent...and he was not give up his service for SHIELD for anything. And neither was he going to grant his tormentors the post-humous victory of leaving him broken.
The nightmares had stopped the day he had managed to ferret out the last member of the trafficking ring and killed him, like he had killed all the others. It had taken him nine months, and not nine days as his original orders had specified.
These days, the only thing that still burned him about the whole affair was that the mastermind behind the ring hand gone underground when SHIELD had barged in, trying to save him. In the months it had taken him to locate and then take down everybody involved with the ring, including the boss, the human trafficking had continued. To this day, no one knew all of the victims or where they had disappeared to.
Calmly quoting the address of the hotel and the room number to the Norse God, he’s inwardly seething with a black rage and his guts are tied up in knots.
He’s hanging on to himself by a thread. Will he still be able to, while the jade-eyed psycho subjects him to a re-run of an experience that almost broke him the last time round? Goddamn fuckin’ shit.
He helplessly watches himself shrug into a coat and trail after Loki like an obedient puppy. Loki looks back at him, that bloody smirk still pasted to his lips, and reaches out for him, touching his shoulder.
They’ve done this before and so he keeps straight on walking beside his master as the scenery around him fades and shifts and all of a sudden, they’re no longer walking through the dusty corridors of their makeshift headquarters, but through the luxurious, tasteful entrance hall of the Bristol Hotel in Odessa.
Loki’s clothes have changed to an elegant, dark umber suit with a crisp white lawn shirt and an emerald silk tie…something that’s akin in quality to the stuff Stark will wear. Stark pulls that look off with the air of a hedonistic rake straight out of the Renaissance. On the Trickster God, it screams dangerously spoiled, delinquent brat.
Within seconds, they have picked up their key at the reception and are headed for the elevators. As the door dings shut behind him, Loki turns to face him. He reaches up with one hand and runs his fingers through his thralls short blond hair. Agent Barton’s hands begin to tremble and Loki laughs, delighted like child at the circus that has seen a monkey perform an unexpectedly clever trick.
“My my….look who’s come out of hiding. Welcome home, Agent Barton.”
The grip on Hawkeye’s hair tightens at the back of his nape and Loki yanks him around so he ends up facing the elevators’ mirror, Loki pressed tight to his back, watching him over his shoulder.
The blue glow in his eyes is the thrall’s.
The shining hatred beneath it is all his own.
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Trickster's Gambit