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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
- 8
- 9
- 10
The first time he sees it, he almost misses it.
He’s been watching Erik Selvig through the “eyes” of the Tesseract, whispering a suggestion here, asking a question there, leading the good doctor down a path of his choosing.
Eric’s intellect burns with the fire of a small sun, with the lesser lights of the other scientists orbiting him like miniscule planets and asteroids.
There are guards too of course, their dull glow hardly worth the notice.
Loki has come to largely ignore both the other scientists and the guards. They are of little consequence.
The flash of burning amethyst, just at the edge of his vision, far outside the usual spectrum, catches him unawares and his whole body jerks as if surprised by roaring thunder coming from a clear blue sky.
The presence is there and gone again in less than a blink of an eye and and he has to actively search for it until he finds it again.
He finds it, high on up, hidden in the deep shadows, outside of the area he’s been paying attention to so far.
As seen through the Tesseract, it’s a sparkling, highly polished jewel of purest violet, shot through with veins of dazzling silver and gleaming black and now that he’s knows it’s there, he can feel an intense sense of FOCUS coming from that singular presence, sweeping over Selvig’s lab and beyond.
He’s about to dismiss the presence as just another guard, if only a better trained, more dangerous one, when he can feel the mortal’s attention brush over HIM, hot and bright like a dying star, sparking violently as it touches him…..and for a few breaths, Loki, worlds away, perched on his branch in the old oak, holds himself absolutely still, heart pounding like a drum, not breathing, not blinking, because he’s afraid that he’s been discovered.
The mortal makes NO move to acknowledge him in any way and eventually, that sense of being a rabbit trying to hide itself from the notice of a hawk passes, and after what seems like a small eternity, Loki slowly, carefully dares to exhale.
Inwardly, he’s cursing and he finds he needs to hold on to the branch he’s lying on with both hands, because his limbs are left feeling as if they were made of dough.
If the mortals were to discover his spying and meddling now, they certainly would be bound to make things difficult for him, and that would be MOST inconvenient.
That presence is a genuine danger and Loki needs to find out more about it.
Is there truly a mortal who can sense Loki’s interference, or was it just a fluke?
And if the mortal indeed is able to notice Loki’s presence….just how much can he see and hear?
His limbs are still weak and tingling and he really shouldn’t recklessly expand his own energy when he’s unstable like this but he needs to know.
“Seeing” other worlds filtered through the Tesseracts’ perception is easier, but in order to get a better picture, he needs to see with his own eyes and so, heart still beating so hard it seems to sit in his mouth, he creates a shade and sends it out, all the way to Midgard.
He hones in on that amethyst presence and finds the mortal perched high up in Selvig’s lab, his sea-blue eyes skimming over the activity below, missing not even the tiniest detail.
Loki can’t help but be reminded once more of a bird of prey that soars over fields and forest on silent wings, its’ sharp eyes not missing so much as a mouse hiding in the grass, miles away, and he shudders.
The man’s posture is deceptively relaxed, strong legs dangling loosely from the platform on which he’s sitting, well-muscled arms resting comfortably on the bright yellow railing, the broad back and shoulders casually sloped forward. He’s wearing the kind of black-on-black outfit that Loki has come to associate with “military” and the icon of an eagle with spread wings, which Loki has seen all around this base of operation, is emblazoned on the short-armed vest.
The man’s hair is the colour of wet sand and it reminds Loki of the shores of the sea, where, as a child, he used to spend hours writing runes in the sand, the sun warm on his face and the water sparkling like a jewel, while Thor was out on one of the rocks jutting out into the water, fishing.
He could have gone fishing too…but the way the sand crumbled between his fingers, yielding to the pressure of his fingers…the way the waves erased the marks he had made, so he could re-write them over and over…..
….he didn’t even notice that Frigga had come to call him home until she was standing right next to him.
Loki has to supress the sudden urge to run his fingers through the mortals’ short and tidily groomed hair, the desire to dishevel it a bit almost irresistible. If he could touch the mortal….would he leave his mark there too?
His fingers itch and he briefly laces them behind his back to keep himself from doing something futile and foolish.
Nevertheless, once he’s thought about touching the enemy guard, he finds shocking, tantalizing pictures playing in his mind, of grabbing that sandy hair, of using it to pull the mortal’s head back and expose the line of the man’s throat….of running tongue and teeth along the man’s neck, nipping at the skin, making him moan.
Snorting derisively and shaking his head, but unable to take his eyes of the black-clad figure lounging before him, he kneels down beside the man to get a closer look, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet, elbows resting easily on his thighs now.
Failing to understand your enemy or your own heart is a weakness and if he truly wants to bring the Tesseract home, he needs to solve this startling enigma.
What is it with this short-lived creature that makes him react so strongly?
What is the pull?
Where is the call?
The man is nothing but a mortal, his inferior in speed, strength, intellect, experience….anything that counts, really.
Imagining to pair himself with such a base creature is only little better than imagining himself rutting with a pig.
Somehow though, the smouldering heat spreading through body, all the way to his groin, doesn’t agree.
Who is this mortal, to affect him so?
An angular face and strong cheekbones, a straight nose that is ever so slightly snubbed at the end. The mouth is perfect, neither too full not too thin and the upper lip’s double arch is like a bow, strong, yet flexible.
It strikes him then that this is not the first time he has seen this guard, though it was only a short glimpse that he caught at that time.
It was back in the desert, just after Thor had been banished.
Just after Thor had been deemed unworthy of the throne, exactly as Loki knew him to be.
…
He’d watches Thor trying to lift the hammer, grunting with the effort like an overburdened beast and muscles straining like the rigging on a ship that foundered on a skerry, but Mjölnir, who until then had been at the Odinson’s beck and call like a well-trained dog, does not shift so much as the breadth of a hair.
The significance of this is not lost on Thor and not before long, he drops to his knees, eyes gone dead, defeat and bleak despair written into every line of his slumping form….and Loki, watching from the shadows, is not sure whether to laugh or to cry.…but at least, now the knowledge that he must continue to bar Thor from Asgard and its’ throne, for the sake of his people, no longer has his innards tied in quivering knots. The reason for Thor’s banishment still holds.
The guards chain Odin’s first-born like a farm beast, and lead him away, docile and broken.
It is good that mother can’t see her golden-haired boy now. She’d cry.
Fists clenched in the pockets of the mortal garb he picked for reasons he can’t remember, he pictures himself breaking those mortals’ necks for daring to touch a God like that and oh, how he wants to punch Thor in the gut for letting them treat him that way.
Bile sits in his throat like a creeper vine, seeding his tongue with bitter acrimony, and if the All Father were here, he’d spit it all in the old bastard’s face.
All this is Odin’s fault alone.
Odin should have known that Thor, brash and full of self-righteous pride, was not ready for the throne yet. If Odin had not made so ill-advised a choice as to plan the coronation of a man who would plunge Asgard into disaster for the sake of his pride, then NONE of this would have happened.
They’d be home.
Happy.
Content.
Living a lie.
Snarling, he turns to descend into the courtyard where Mjölnir resides, fused to the rock. If Thor is not worthy, then maybe Loki, to whom the burden of ruling has fallen, is?
There’s a noise overhead, of machinery moving, of cables straining and of metal joints grinding against each other, stopping him in his tracks.
He raises his eyes to the weeping skies, and there, up high, standing at the edge of a crow’s nest held by a crane, an archer is in position, bow lowered and undrawn, but an arrow still knocked, his eyes leisurely following Thor’s shadow as Odin’s son is being led through the compounds’ translucently illuminated corridors.
The archer’s body is taut, ready to spring into action in the blink of an eye, but in the glaring floodlights that shine above, Loki can tell that the man’s eyes hold the same emotion as those of Frigga always did, when she patched up the scrapes and cuts and other minor injuries her sons had incurred while they were up to no good at all.
There’d been that day Thor and he had snuck into the forge.
They had been too young to be permitted anything but wooden practice swords, but both of them had been burning to hold a true warriors blade.
The armoury was well guarded, so it was off limits, but Loki had noticed earlier that the forge did not seem to be guarded at all. The temptation had been too much for either of them. How were they to know that the Blacksmith had set Firesalamanders to guard his goods?
Of course Frigga had chided them sharply as she dabbed healing salves on their blistered skin…but her eyes had been soft, just like those of the Archer above.
Mother would like him.
Somehow, the unexpected sympathy emanating from the Archer makes the necessity of leaving Thor here amongst the mortals seem less cruel, less like an unavoidable betrayal.
Maybe the old man knew what he was doing after all, when he sent Thor here.
…
So….the Archer from the Desert was here too.
The Mortals might not be the Asgardian’s equal where it came to power and means of warfare…but the fact that the Archer had been in the desert, where the mortals had found Mjölnir, and that he was now here, with the Tesseract….it spoke of the kind of relentless diligence and astute assessment of facts that could be dangerous all in itself.
He’ll have to take that into consideration when he finally comes for the Tesseract.
When he makes his move, he can’t allow himself distractions or surprises and the Archer is shaping up to become both.
He needed to know more about this man, so he can figure out a way to circumvent his inevitable intervention.
What does he know about the man?
He is a warrior, but not like the warriors of Asgard.
He is patient.
Quiet.
Observant.
Dangerous.
And yet he has seen him show compassion, even for those who might be his enemies.
An unusual combination, rare and beautiful like the birth of the star.
“You have heart.” Loki whispers softly, almost against his will.
The mortal sharply cocks his head and frowns, as if listening to some distant sound, and Loki freezes once more, his heart beating as fast as the wings of a dove, trying to escape a stooping hawk.
Yet again, Loki barely dares to breathe as the Archer looks around, searching.
When the mortal returns to his normal position, a tension remains in his shoulders that wasn’t there before and Loki feels goose-bumps running up and down his arms .
Is the Archer perceptive beyond what is to be expected from a mortal or is this just a freakish coincidence?
He is sorely tempted to say something else, to reach out and touch the mortal, just to see if the man truly CAN see or hear him.
It’s a stupid idea though and Loki is no child, unable to resist temptation.
He can ignore the trembling of his fingers as they ache to touch.
The mortal’s eyes flick over the bustling scientists below, briefly rest on Selvig, then sweep across the guards, checking their positions.
Then the Archer reaches up to his ear where a small, skin-coloured button is nestled at the corner where the ear-lobe borders the auditory canal, something that had hitherto escaped Loki’s notice, and the mortal presses down on the button and speaks.
“Meyers?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Thought I heard something coming from your corner of the lab. Can you confirm?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Keep an eye out. Do a sweep of your perimeter and report back. Do you copy?”
“Yes, Agent Barton.”
His mouth suddenly gone dry, Loki swallows and licks his lips.
Idun’s apples.
The man’s voice is smooth and sharp, like a sword sliding from a scabbard.
Just hearing it sends frissons down his spine, like the fingers of a lover caressing his nape would.
Also, it seems that….Agent Barton….HAS noticed him, if only peripherally.
To be, if only almost, found out by virtue of such close scrutiny, such rapt attention….
It should make him squirm.
It should make him angry and resentful.
…..Heimdall’s gaze was similarly observant and it always did.
And Dvalinn’s beard, when he finally figured out a way to hide himself from Heimdall’s penetrating stare, he felt so light inside, a floating feather dancing on the breeze would’ve seemed leaden and ungainly by comparison.
But with this mortal?
He thinks of that intense gaze focusing on him and his mind is sent scrambling, trying to come up with a thousand ways to make it happen.
He WANTS those sea-blue eyes on him…..wants the Archer to SEE him.
The reason for it is not hard to figure out.
…
Between his brother and himself, Thor, simply by virtue of being the elder, is always was the first where it counts.
Thor is the first to learn how to ride, the first to be picked when they play with others, the first to learn how to use a sword, the first allowed to sit in during audiences, the first announced at any official function, even if it is just a small banquet.
Thor is like the sun that rises above the horizon, the harbinger of day, and Loki finds himself eclipsed by his brothers’ light, people paying him as much heed as they would to the stars fading into the dawn.
The Allfather does not believe in special privileges or private tutors for his children and so Thor and he find themselves running around with the offspring of the courts’ nobility as they grow up.
Thor is always at the heart of a group, laughing and picking playmates while Loki tries to carve a place for himself on the edges.
More often than not, when they play, it is him who wins the game for his group, mostly by sneaking around the back where others charge towards their goal. He wins, but even his allied playfellows will fidget and shy away from him when he appears in places they had not expected him to be.
When a foreign dignitaries’ horse appears in the stables or when there’s a kitchen-maid crying, hidden behind the hen-coops, he will stop and investigate as the others roll their eyes at his weird ways and run off to their games.
When they squabble, they solve their differences with fists and kicks, but they soon learn that, even though he is the runt of the litter, an offhand remark of his will sting worse than a black eye and leave more lasting harm.
Not before long, when Thor is not around, other children mostly prefer to ignore him.
The sole exception are the times when the parents of one of the children are petitioning Odin for something or other. That will get him a grudging invitation to tag along from those parents’ offspring. After all, it is not wise to offend the royal family, and who knows what tales the undersized stripling might tell at home?
Most of the time, he will decline such invitations and find something else to do.
If he only matters to them because he is Thor’s brother and Odin’s son, then he does NOT wish for their company.
…..
A spell gone wrong, the results of which Loki had tried to hide in his room when he was a child?
Heimdall saw it, and told the Allfather.
The resulting lecture mortified Loki to the bone and he remembers the unruly get of some of the courtiers snickering at the back of the hall as Odin’s calm and clear voice tore his dignity to shreds.
….
The key to the kitchens that Volstagg had bribed him into nicking, since the young warrior was crazy about smoked Hafgufa fin….and that rare delicacy was reserved for the grown-ups?
Volstagg had managed but a bite or two when the guards had came, who should not have ventured into the kitchens at this time at all.
The only thing that warned them in time was the fact that he had insisted on keeping watch and they had to managed to make a run for it….a run which had ended up right in front of the disapproving stare of the Bifröst’s guardian.
Another lecture that hadn’t been pretty.
…
The first girl to smile at him and tell him he was handsome was Sjöfn. She’d started lingering at the edge of whatever he was doing days beforehand, picking flowers in the gardens near the spot where he was reading….sitting on the windowsill and braiding her hair in the strategy-room where he and Thor were recreating battles long past with maps and markers….joining the group he was with when they headed out to the woods to spend a leisurely afternoon swimming in one of the mountain-lakes.
Sjöfn smiled at him and told him he was handsome and pulled him into a shaded little grove, where it was quiet and where it was dark and where she kissed him until they were both gasping for breath and tight with need and longing.
She’d tried to entice him to her bed that night, but he didn’t want to be like Thor, who tumbled one wench today and another the next.
He wanted to do this RIGHT and he wanted more than just a quick romp in the sheets.
He wanted Sjöfn to keep smiling at him in ways that warmed him all the way down to his toes.
He wanted to keep spending hours with Sjöfn in the gardens, lying in the sweet-smelling grass, his head cradled in her lap, while she gently stroked his brow and called him the most wonderful man in Asgard, thoughtful and wise and finer-looking than anybody else, again and again and again, and in return he’d make her laugh with delight by telling her that for her sake, he’d try to steal treasures from the hoard of Fafnir himself.
At night, they’d go for a picnic at the edge of the sea and she’d snuggle up to him by the fire he had lit and Sjöfn intertwined her fingers with his as he quietly sang to her, his voice blending with the dulcet murmuring of the waves on the shore.
He wanted it to last forever. But then, one morning, he’d decided to surprise Sjöfn in her bed, and he’d pilfered some still-warm bread rolls and a jar of honey from the kitchens and climbed up to her balcony. He slipped over the edge of the balustrade and landed silently on the tiles when he heard whispers through the drawn curtains. A male voice, teasing. And Sjöfn.
“You haven’t de-flowered our little book-wyrm yet, you saucy wench. I believe you are losing your touch. If you have not succeeded by next week, you will lose the bet. ”
“It’s not me, it’s him, I swear.”
Loki didn’t need to see Sjöfn’s face to know that she had her lips pursed in a pretty little pout. He’d heard that tone often enough.
“I despair of him, I truly do. He is so BORING, so TEDIOUS….so TIMID. Not like the elder prince at ALL.”
Sjöfn sighed, as if pining for her one true love.
“Thor. Now there’s a true MAN. Not a darkling whiny git, but verily one of the golden warriors of Asgard.”
Loki had stood frozen in place for what felt like hours, listening to Sjöfn and her lover deride and mock him. His paralysis had not broken until the words finally tapered off in favour of the sounds of passionate fornication, and then he’d slipped away, silently.
It was Thor who found him in his most secret hiding place, up in the loft above the stables, and his brother had held him as sobs wracked him like earth-quakes. And when he ran out of tears, all numb and dead inside, Thor had hauled him to his feet and had taken him to town to the best ale-house and they’d both gotten drunk until both of them had trouble standing…and then, Thor had dragged him to a discreet little house in the weaver’s guild district, where women of questionable virtue plied their trade and in the morning, Loki awoke with a queasy stomach, a raging headache and a stranger to the pleasures of the bedroom no longer.
From then on, Loki had taken a leaf from Thor’s book, tumbling into the sheets with whomever he pleased, be it a comely wench or a good-looking lad, all easy met and easy parted…but no matter how shyly she smiled at him or how honeyed the words she spoke to him hereafter, he never, never picked Sjöfn for his trysts.
…
For all his life, people have seen Loki as a lot of things.
The second prince.
The odd one out.
An unruly youngster.
A useful ally.
A game-piece to be used.
But Agent Barton?
He has eyes like a hawk’s and they are unclouded by prejudice or ambition.
When the time comes to tear down the veil that yet conceals Loki from the man’s gaze, then the Archer will SEE him.
And if Loki is lucky, the Archer will like what he sees.
Will like it a hundred-fold more than being an inconsequential drone for a faceless organization….an organization that is nothing but a tool in the hands of vainglorious war-mongers.
And then?
Then Loki will be leaving Midgard with more than just the Tesseract.
- 8
- 9
- 10
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Trickster's Gambit