James Buchanan Barnes isn't a killer. He isn't merciless, or cunning, or evil.
But something in him is.
*****
A wrapper crinkles, fabric shifts, and a small, open hand jerks in front of my face. The smell of powdery chocolate and oats meets my nos...
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A line of short, caught together dark hair tumbles over my nose. Hands stuck in iron, I do nothing but let it tickle over my skin. My back aches, standing ramrod straight against the steel of the chair beneath me. It's been over an hour, at least, and I've barely moved a muscle besides clenching and unclenching my fists and jaw.
Loki's back is pressed against one of the iron tables in the far end of the room. The bottom hilt of his scepter twists into the cold, cement floor at his feet.
"The Avengers are a frugal thing." He drawls. "They're all so inwardly discordant, individual, special. Each one paws at the meal of another."
I try not to let myself hear the truth in his words.
I fail.
He brings a hand up through the bulk of his midnight hair. "It isn't surprising how little it takes for them to crack."
"They're breakable." I say through hard lips. "So is everything else."
Loki snaps the sides of his cheeks in a quick tut and smiles again. "Not everything, so it would seem."
I don't hide the question that glosses over my features. Loki's answering tilt of his neck sends my skin crawling. It isn't like the Asgardian to withhold an advantage. He'd tattle about it to the nearest person the second he got the chance. Yet now...
Ice spikes along my spine. Loki's foot taps on the cold concrete floor beneath his heels. What is he waiting for?
I pull an ankle against the steel band across it for what seems like the thousandth time, but of course, it doesn't budge. My eyes harden as I turn them back up to Loki. "Why do you need to do this again? Why here? Why not in the countless other worlds I'm sure you know exist?"
The blue glow of the gem in his scepter brightens. "Because this world took from me what was so nearly mine." The crystal of his gaze turns to a midnight frost. "And a king never fails at what he was born to do."
"And what's that?" I ask.
Loki's teeth shine. "Conquer."
*****
It's so terribly cold here.
My breath nearly fogs in front of my nose as I jog over another few abandoned parking spaces in the garage. The previous yellow of the drawn lines has worn down to a faint blonde, and the cement beneath it has crumbled to gravel.
I haven't seen any other guards since the one out in the street. For someone so hellbent on plotting revenge and ruling, Loki sure isn't keeping up the best defences. I almost scoff aloud as I ease past a set of heavy, broken, metal doors.
Something tells me everything the Asgardian does is on purpose.
I stop and dip low at the sight of a faint, blue glow about twenty or so spaces away. Its haunting colour creeps past the side of an outcropping, and the light seems to move as if waving a hand.
Loki's scepter.
I rub a palm against the thigh of my jeans and ease out a quiet breath. Maybe going alone wasn't my best idea, but it was very much a heat-of-the-moment thing.
I chew on a full bottom lip.
This heat-of-the-moment thing is going to get me killed.
I edge forward a few steps until I'm about ten faint parking spaces away from the turn towards the light. A small tapping sounds from somewhere in front of me, and I recognize it as the sound of a thick-soled shoe. Voices follow soon after, but I'm still not close enough to discern anything in particular.
A section of the hair in my ponytail slides over my shoulder and tickles against the side of my throat. I whisk it away hastily with a hand and crawl forward another three steps. My heart races against my ribcage and beats wildly against the skin of my chest.
I take another four steps closer.
*****
Something isn't right.
My chest tightens and the skin of my forearms pinches. Perspiration beads in the small of my back against the metal chair, and my eyes taper beneath the onslaught of the chilling blue glow of Loki's scepter.
Something isn't right.
Loki's a talker, that's one thing I know for sure. But this?
He's stalling.
"I've always taken an interest in the deception of the mind." Loki's voice is like a bare-handed scrape against bark. Full of splinters and promised pain. "How wondrous it is to see the shock, the horror, the... the question in people's eyes as you unveil the trick."
The tap of his foot turns absentmindedly insistent.
"The human mind, I've found, is characteristically effortless to deceive."
"And yours isn't?"
A slither of a tongue against straight teeth. "A magician isn't fooled by his own tricks."
A faint scrape of fabric over cement sounds from nearby, and my eyes instantly dart to where the wall turns a corner. Loki's eyes barely twitch from their root on my features, and the stretch of his grin seems to deepen.
Something isn't right.
"Oh isn't this just thrilling?" The metal padding atop his shoulders clinks as his body twists forward dramatically.
I don't bother mouthing a reply, and my eyes drag back to the corner of the wall. To the crooked shadow that falls from its collapsing edge. In its middle I glimpse a blur of a smaller shadow - a small, round, top of something moving in the darkness.
Snow storms against the confines of my mind.
"The mind simply relishes in the taste of anticipation, in the vibrancy of not knowing what comes next." His boots knock lightly on the floor as he takes a creeping step in my direction. Another. Two more. His eyes lock on mine through the clear plastic. "Not knowing who might come your way."
The edge of the wall's shadow drifts again. That small, circular part of it bobs over the sharpness of its edge and I feel myself tug against the metal of my restraints to see past the cement.
Finally Loki's neck swivels to the outcropping. His teeth shimmer in the azure sheen of his scepter, and the paleness of his skin takes on an eerily cobalt glow. Despite myself, I edge my body away from the sight - however much the hold of my confines allows.
His voice is like frostbite as he says, "Darling, we haven't got all day."
My throat drops.
Where have I heard him say that before?
Darling, I am a god.
No...
No, no, no, no, no-
My stomach twists at the sight of bay hair, stern sea eyes, and a capable gait.
My wrists pull at the sight of the scowling woman that strolls out from behind the wall.
