laevisilaufeyson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
laevisilaufeyson) wrote2012-12-27 04:23 pm
laevisilaufeyson) wrote2012-12-27 04:23 pm
Entry tags:
i thought you died alone a long long time ago
As aftermaths go, there have been worse ones. The fiasco in New York, for instance, had ended particularly poorly, much to the benefit of everyone involved, save perhaps the Chitauri. Certainly to the benefit of Loki Laufeyson, despite his ignoble defeat and the unfortunate circumstances of his return to Asgard. That had been a mess as well, its own particular brand of uncomfortable, and frankly not something Loki would ever care to repeat.
And so his quiet return to Earth: mischief, mayhem, general villainy not entirely cast aside, but for the moment he's content to keep things subtler and less ambitious. It was that precisely which left him in the perfect position to observe when things began to go wrong. When rumours began to surface.
An armoury robbed in the Vitsebsk Voblast. They said Victor von Doom had done it, sent dozens of his doppelgänger robots to clear the place out looking for... something. Something big.
A mysterious woman spotted in Hong Kong, brighter even than the night life with green, green eyes – and a trail of Triad bodies in her wake.
Something bigger and more ominous, waiting just beyond Kuiper Belt – they said. But then, they said many things.
Funny, then, how all of those things have lead to now, the ignominy of capture, a pounding headache, and a not entirely unwelcome companion.
How Loki got himself involved isn't very mysterious. He did as he always does: he stuck his nose where it doesn't belong. Earth might not be his, either in name or in reality, but his fondness for it is deep and old, and his fondness for the likes of Victor so much shallower. Rumours are meant to be investigated, and so investigate them he had begun to do, in his own way. Out of curiosity. Certainly not out of any inherent intention to interfere.
And yet. Yet. Sometimes inquiries are not taken quite so kindly, even by old friends.
Thus the current dilemma, though what his cellmate is doing here is somewhat more obscure. Still, intriguing. Loki's certainly going to find out more about it... once Tony Stark returns to the world of the conscious.
And so his quiet return to Earth: mischief, mayhem, general villainy not entirely cast aside, but for the moment he's content to keep things subtler and less ambitious. It was that precisely which left him in the perfect position to observe when things began to go wrong. When rumours began to surface.
An armoury robbed in the Vitsebsk Voblast. They said Victor von Doom had done it, sent dozens of his doppelgänger robots to clear the place out looking for... something. Something big.
A mysterious woman spotted in Hong Kong, brighter even than the night life with green, green eyes – and a trail of Triad bodies in her wake.
Something bigger and more ominous, waiting just beyond Kuiper Belt – they said. But then, they said many things.
Funny, then, how all of those things have lead to now, the ignominy of capture, a pounding headache, and a not entirely unwelcome companion.
How Loki got himself involved isn't very mysterious. He did as he always does: he stuck his nose where it doesn't belong. Earth might not be his, either in name or in reality, but his fondness for it is deep and old, and his fondness for the likes of Victor so much shallower. Rumours are meant to be investigated, and so investigate them he had begun to do, in his own way. Out of curiosity. Certainly not out of any inherent intention to interfere.
And yet. Yet. Sometimes inquiries are not taken quite so kindly, even by old friends.
Thus the current dilemma, though what his cellmate is doing here is somewhat more obscure. Still, intriguing. Loki's certainly going to find out more about it... once Tony Stark returns to the world of the conscious.
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It takes a few minutes to do the same to the second.
He’s been arrested a few times for bad behavior while intoxicated. At first, he assumes that that’s what this is. He’d had too much, he’d gotten a little too crazy, and someone had to intervene. But as he blinks away the fogginess of sleep, he realizes that this isn’t a prison cell. And all the rest comes rushing back.
The fight. The energy blast that knocked the suit’s systems offline. The chaotic tumble of fear and pain and frustration, until blessed darkness took it all away.
Tony sits up too fast, making his head spin, but he finds with his eyes what his other senses have already told him. The suit’s gone. It’s been taken away and he’s been left here alone. Alone and with—
“Loki?” His surprise is as evident in his voice as it is in his wide-eyed surprise. It’s only for a second, before the surprise fades and he sighs. “If I just woke up in time for an interrogation, I think I’m going to go back to sleep. No offense.”
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With that he resumes examining his own fingernails disinterestedly, scraping dirt and dried blood out from underneath them with utter dispassion. That Stark has progressed directly from asleep to annoying isn't remotely surprising, but that doesn't mean he has to encourage it. Perhaps another time that would be amusing. Now it's pointless at best and a waste of time they may not have at worst.
“I believe the appropriate question under the circumstances, if my investigations into your species' remarkably inane brands of entertainment inform me correctly, is: 'What are you in for?' Under the circumstances I hope you'll forgive me if I skip straight ahead to the part where I offer to help you escape.” Loki raises his eyebrows and sucks at the inside of his cheek.
“Or I would offer, but I would hate to interrupt your beauty sleep, so perhaps I should simply go on my own.” Never minding the fact that he needs Stark for his plan to work... at least momentarily. After he's out of the cell, well, he can get on on his own... probably.
Still, it'd be a bit of a shame. Anthony Stark is one of the most consistently entertaining things about Earth this century.
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Blinking again, trying to shake the headache, he rubs the heel of his hand against his forehead. When that doesn't do anything to dislodge it, he rakes his fingers back through his hair, absently feeling for cuts, lumps, or bumps that would explain the pain. "Judging from the way I feel, I'm guessing I'd need about three years of sleep to get back up to beautiful standards."
It's a lost cause. He's just going to have to deal with the headache. No stranger to captivity and the injuries associated with being held against his will, he's experienced worse and whining about it isn't going to get them anyway. Either of them, since apparently Loki is in the same boat.
He looks at him for a moment, assessing his posture and his face for any sign of... Of what? He isn't sure. Injury, certainly. Maliciousness, probably. Not lies. Loki lies all the time, and Tony knows better than to think that he can successfully suss out fact from fiction.
"All right. I'll bite. If you're making a break for it, I want in." Tony knows that it isn't altruism that makes Loki make the offer. Obviously there's something he wants him to do. "Tell me what I need to do, bearing in mind that right now, I'm limited in my abilities until I get my hands on my suit again."
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And it's not the boundaries of their cage. Not the physical ones, anyway. "It would be wonderfully ambitious of our captors to put me in a cage if I don't wish to be there, a fact with which I think you agree, and with which those responsible for keeping me here certainly agree, given that they've taken the precaution of installing dampeners on this facility."
He spreads his hands and shrugs. "No magic. Not a bit. Not without an energy source."
A pointed look would be telling, and besides, he's fairly certain Tony can follow. He's not likely to forget that he's carrying an energy source around with him at all times.
"If only I had access to one," he sighs melodramatically, flopping morosely back against the wall.
"Keeping either of us here would be folly enough, but keeping us both is beyond laughable. I intend to prove as much. You help me out, I'll help you out. Find a way to shut off the dampeners and I'll tear this place down around them – which, mind, I could do anyway, but this is faster." Loki pauses.
"Of course, it does involve trusting me." Which is madness, perhaps, perhaps. If Tony really does think he lies as often as all that. If he fails to recognize that the best lies are slant, mere omission, the twisting of truth rather than the complete reinvention thereof. That to be a successful and truly accomplished liar he needs to tell the truth – especially the hard and unbelievable truth – far more often than he lies.
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"You want the arc reactor," he says flatly, unimpressed and unsurprised.
Looking from Loki to the walls of their prison, he scans the area with his eyes, searching for the dampener in question and the tools he would need to disable it. Nothing is readily apparent, but he isn't a sorcerer. He doesn't know what the device looks like, and there are plenty of places to hide it.
"If it's a machine, and I'm assuming that it is, since it's meant to disrupt magic, an electromagnetic pulse would take it out." Having overloaded an arc reactor once before, Tony knows that he could create one. A better one than what took out the building in California, actually, since that had been running on an inferior design and powered by palladium. "I can make you one."
And if it doesn't end up killing him, it might be enough to see them free of this place.
Turning back to Loki, Tony studies him in silence for a moment, weighing his options. Rolling the bones. "If I do it, are you willing to use your magic to restart my heart if I go into cardiac arrest? Because that's a distinct possibility. Unfortunately."
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"Naturally. I believe we both agree that the world would be a much poorer place without you," he says drily. "A more important question would be this: do you trust me to do it? I've already tried to kill you once."
He inclines his head and goes still, thoughtful, keenly observant. "If you tell me how it works I might be able to do better than that."
Which could be a play, of course. That could be the point of all of this. Loki could be bluffing, buying secrets. It would be entirely like him, perhaps.
In a sense he is lying, in fact, but only by omission at the moment. Barton had told him much. Loki knows about the shrapnel. He knows he could pluck every last tiny piece from Tony's chest easy as breathing, pull free the roots of his motivations, cut him lose from the chains that have shaped him into what he is now. He could do that, but why would he when watching the downward spiral unfold is so much more interesting?
On the other hand how charming, how wonderfully wicked it would be to take them for his own, to show them off, to say: here. I have your life in my hands. I saved you, but I waited. Waited 'til they'd already put that thing in your chest. Waited, and now it means nothing at all.
Yes, that could be thrilling. Tailspin always is.
"I assume you intend to manufacture the blast with what you have, and if you'll need me I also assume that it will deplete that clever device of yours - yes or no? And if yes, is it reversible?" Because he could, perhaps, reverse it. Pour power back into the thing as long as it hasn't changed in some irrevocable way, undergone some chemical transformation rendering it beyond even his powers to salvage.
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“Technically? Or what it’s for?” It’s a rhetorical question, asked simply to fill the silence as he does a quick pro and con debate in the privacy of his mind. On the one hand, telling Loki why it’s there in his chest isn’t really going to put him in any more danger than he already is with the guy. On the other, he doesn’t usually like to talk about it with anyone.
“I was injured a few years ago. Took a load of shrapnel to the chest.” If it’s the difference between rotting in a cell again or getting out of there, Tony’s picking escape, whatever the cost. “There are still pieces in my heart. This thing,” he taps a finger against it, as though there’s any question as to what he’s talking about. “keeps them from penetrating it further and killing me. It’s a source of self-sustaining energy. It powers an electromagnet.”
It isn’t the fact that he’s just told Loki about it that makes his skin itch with anxiety, but the fact that he’s talking about it at all. He’s still not over Afghanistan, and even if it makes him Iron Man, even if it keeps him alive, he still doesn’t like that there’s a miniature reactor embedded in his chest.
“I can mess around with it. Make it generate a blast that should knock out the electrical equipment all around us. Thing is, I don’t know if it will deplete it or not. Maybe, maybe not. That’s the gamble.” He lifts his eyebrows. “What do you think?”
Sorry I'm so fucking lame lately, and take all the time you need with this <3
“Mmm. Yes. Barton told me much.” His gaze is considering, cool. Hiding something. He's not bothering to disguise it. “Not all, but enough.”
One long, pale forefinger taps at his lower lip. “I think, if it works, I will be able to do more than keep you alive. That at minimum, yes, but perhaps we can do better, you and I. If we are mad enough to risk it.”
But of course they are. Loki would never have bothered to propose this much if he didn't trust in that much. “Yes, I can manage it, but what I can do we both know well enough. That isn't what interests me. You do, though. How curiously quick you are to trust me. To accept my offer, and at great personal risk to yourself. That you're prone to self-destructive behaviour has been obvious from the inception of our acquaintance, but this is something else entirely.”
He smiles thinly. We are amused.
“If only we had more time. You would make a very interesting study.” He says 'study' as though he means 'toy', a puckish tilt to his head as he speaks. “I expect your superiors would prefer that. I expect they would wish you to wait for rescue rather than making a deal with the devil. I can't say they're wrong. You must know your stories; we are notoriously capricious, we gods, and I am a god and a monster both. An ill-favoured choice you make.”
fff, no you're not lame. also sorry for the late, I didn't think it would take this long
Instead, Tony simply looks at him with a raised eyebrow and a twisted smile.
"Seriously? You're going to question that I take risks? Please." He rolls his eyes. "If I had a dollar for every time I did something stupid or put my life in danger, I'd have more money than I do already. Which, maybe you don't know this, being from Planet X, but it's a lot. More than the gross national product of most countries. And I would have like, twice that."
So he does a lot of stupid, dangerous things. What doesn't kill him makes him stronger, right? The Iron Man suit seems testament to that old cliche.
"See, what you're not getting here is that I don't have superiors. I have people who'd really like to control, but really can't. I do what I want. I always have, always will. And what I want right now is to not die in a cell like a meek, powerless prisoner. What I'd like is to not be tortured by some psychotic whatever the hell that's got us in here. If it means I die in the process of getting out," he shrugs, his peace with that not feigned. "So be it. A wise man once said that it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees. I agree with him."
It's not about trust. It's about action. And the belief that Loki's no more willing to be someone's prisoner than he is. Holding out a hand to him, Tony gives him a questioning look. "You in or out?"
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“That you take risks? Hardly. I should have to be remarkably unobservant to have missed that after our first meeting.” His tone is dry, almost prim. “That you take risks which involve trusting me, after how that ended... that is interesting.”
Tony can write it off all he likes, but it is awfully telling, as are his attempts to shrug it off, and Loki likes that. He likes it like cats like the twitching of a mouse's whiskers. He'll probably continue to like it even when the mouse bites back, as this one inevitably will. That's all part of the game – in the end, Tony still is the mouse, and Loki is still the cat.
“And amusing. Your choice of phrasing all the more so, as I would have had you on your knees.” His smile is wicked, utterly predatory and wholly amused. The potential for double entendre he lets stand, because that amuses him too.
“I may still give it a go. That would be a delicious irony, would it not? You should be more careful. Offer me more opportunities like that and I may just take them.” But all he takes for now is Tony's hand, firm grip, icy fingers to match his icy grin.
“A deal, then.” He leans forward, extends his other hand to rest it palm-first over the arc reactor. Oh, it lives, it is bright; he could suck it dry, overflow with the energy contained within; the conflagration would be glorious–
“Þakka fyrir,” he says, and pulls at the threads of energy there, just there. Thank you. Cool, dry lips press briefly against Tony's cheek.
“Vit sjáumsk.” Until I see you again.
And though he does fade, his hand vanishing from Tony's with a tug, the air clearing onto nothing, emptiness, he does mean that. He does, not that the long silence would tell, not until it ends with the thud of something fleshy against something hard, the sound of a brief scuffle... and then the beep of a keycard.
Familiar, perhaps unfortunately, is the hand that shoves the door to the cell aside, awfully cheery the face that peers around the corner. “Come. Let us not kill you if we need not. Perhaps I can find you a terminal. May I say all the same that your devotion is touching?”
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There are half a dozen things he could say to Loki’s innuendo-laden comment, all lascivious and all likely to get him killed if Loki’s mood shifts. But that’s no deterrent to keep his mouth shut, and he opens it to deliver something woefully inappropriate when he takes his hand. In that instant, Tony drops the levity and sobers in preparation for whatever crazy stunt they’re about to pull.
It’s not the chill of Loki’s skin, but the press of his hand against the reactor, that causes Tony’s breath to catch in his throat, and he watches him with warily curious eyes. His mouth goes dry as he does… whatever it is he’s doing, and Tony prepares instinctively for the agonizing shred of his heart. It doesn’t come, though he’s somewhat startled to see Loki fade away.
Which is about when he starts wondering if he’s just been duped. His heart’s still beating, though, and there’s no pain in his chest. The light of the reactor hasn’t died. And while Loki isn’t there anymore, Tony isn’t dead. That’s a start, a positive start, and he’s willing to wait to see if he returns before he starts cursing himself for a fool. Patience pays off when the door opens and Tony tosses Loki the kind of pleased to see him smile that he probably doesn’t often get from people who know who and what he is.
“We get out of this alive,” he says cheerfully, slipping out of the doorway and passing entirely too close to Loki in the process. “I’ll show you some more touching.” Pausing beside him, Tony slants a glance up at him and winks. “Might have to start on my knees though. Do it right.”
Giving him a pat on the shoulder, he keeps walking, moderately confident that Loki will help him figure out where the hell they’re going.
whoops this is dumb brain where go
He doesn't sneer the word, doesn't spit it out; the emphasis is only slight but that's all that's needed. Disgust this isn't. A highlighting of differences it most certainly is. Moth to flame? Maybe, and Loki is beginning to suspect as much, but here the flame can choose to burn or to spare. Has agency. Is alien, entirely literally.
Is also teasing. The devil likes to play his own advocate.
“Most mortals wouldn't be so bold – I know; not most mortals. Still a mortal, though, as I would be happy to demonstrate for you should you ever come to doubt it.” Loki's tone is light, but nobody ever said one needed to be grim when delivering memento mori.
That sentiment regardless, he is the first to poke his head around the corner. Clear, but it probably won't be for long, not when that guard fails to check in.
“I suppose that wouldn't bother you; you were already willing to die for me,” he adds, slipping around the corner. There's bound to be a guardroom or something of the sort around here somewhere. He just has to follow his senses, utterly annoying without the sixth. He feels shut in, blinded, at a disadvantage. It's... well, it's exciting, if he's honest, but it's also incredibly irritating.
“Which is sweet, I do admit, but is it enough? Frankly, I'm not convinced.” He's speaking softly now, almost to himself as they make their way down the halls. If someone's coming, he won't be able to sense it. Won't be able to anticipate, can't navigate as easily as he could otherwise. It sets his teeth on edge.
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“So, what? Fraternizing with a human’s slumming it to a space alien?” Norsemen may have believed Asgardians to be gods, but even with all of their magic and seeming immortality, Tony would never truly consider them such. That would create a theological dilemma that he refused to deal with. “Star Trek and Captain Kirk have led me astray. So much for close encounters.”
At least he keeps his voice down as he melodramatically laments Loki’s possession of standards. Keeps his voice down and follows along without needing to be asked. He has no weapon, no means of defending them beyond his hands if they should be attacked, but for all the chatter, he’s focused, attentive, on guard for anything that might pose a threat to them both.
“Oh well.” He adds a theatrical sigh for effect. “Don’t worry. I’ll rescue you anyway.” Or as is more likely, Loki will end up rescuing them.
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"Before you ask, yes, I was around in the 1960s. And the 1860s. I was around in the year 60. No doubt you follow." He peers around a corner. Clear. Disturbingly clear. He doesn't like it.
"Though in case you don't: slumming it, to use your charming phrase, no. Boring, yes, after the first few hundred. Besides, your species deified me; that does demand a certain amount of distance. Gods make bedfellows of mortals, not the other way 'round." He slips forward, skin crawling. Excitement and anticipation both. Fear, not exactly. The prospect of pain and an untimely death is not the most frightening thing in the universe.
"You made us. The Æsir think the opposite, but the Æsir are wrong, in this as in much else." The words are as much for his own benefit as for Tony's. The mark of liars and lonely men is the direction of their speech, and at times Loki's says more than even he means it to – times like this, when distracted.
"It is far too quiet," he says, lines of his body tense. "I mislike it."
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What doesn't surprise him is to hear that he got bored. Tony understands boredom, deals with it every day, and he thinks that if he'd been hanging around on Earth for the last two thousand years, he would probably have killed himself because of it centuries ago. Still, he toys with the idea of making a show of his ego bruising at the suggestion that he would be boring, before he lets it go without comment. Not even his ego is large enough to combat millennia.
"Of course they got it wrong, if they believed that tripe about actually being gods," Tony mutters under his breath, attention focusing once more on the innocuously empty space before them. "There aren't any gods. You only have to look at the universe to realize that."
He touches Loki's arm, hoping to stop him before he goes further. "Hold up. You got enough juice to go invisible?"
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Too complicated. Too much to hold in one's head. He could explain it, if they had more time.
“Perhaps I could accomplish something similar, if only there were a ready source of energy on hand.” His tone is dry even in this low murmur. A walking fusion reactor is more than sufficient for that particular purpose. More than sufficient for larger, far more destructive purposes too, should it come to that.
Loki looks down at Tony, down to the point of contact. It is curious. Most would not presume, even under the circumstances. It is not displeasing that Tony has. Loki appreciates efficiency more than he appreciates kowtowing, though the latter doesn't hurt either.
“What did you have in mind?” And how can he improve it? That is, of course, the point of collaborative effort. Neither of them are much for blind obedience, but cooperation does not require that, merely the right balance of ego and equanimity.
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“We’re not alone. This is too easy. There’s something out there, probably multiple somethings, and we’re going to walk right into if we’re not careful.” That too is pointing out the obvious, just as Loki has in referencing the arc reactor, but Tony’s going somewhere with this.
“So let’s do it. Give them what they want. What they’re expecting. It’ll be easier to take them off guard that way. I’ll go. Walk out like I’ve got no clue it isn’t as easy as wandering out of here like this. Draw their attention away from you. And that invisible equivalent thing you can do, once I flush them, they’ll be like sitting ducks.”
Loki seems to know all of his pop culture references. Tony trusts that he’ll understand that saying too.
“What do you say? You can use the reactor’s energy to do it if you need to.”
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Well, there's nothing entirely new to be gleaned from it but Loki finds himself caught slightly off-guard all the same. People don't, as a rule, continue to take chances on trusting him. Not when they could take chances with him.
“Very well,” he agrees mildly. “But we must be swift.”
With that, he reaches out again, brushes against that impossible brightness. It could swallow him up, all that power, and here it rests, in this tiny thing. Even that is nothing as to the Tesseract. If they knew, all these funny, human little things, they might better understand why he went a bit madder with it.
Again, he gambles. Again, he takes no more than he needs, hold it tightly... and lets the rest go. Glamours, masks.
“Go. I will follow.”
And Tony will know him by the unnatural chill in the air. Will know by the way he sucks what energy he can from it with the ice of his own being. Jǫtnar were made for magic, even more surely than the Æsir were. It flows in them. It will in him, as long as he can stave off the effects of the dampeners.
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And just like before, when he’d vanished from the cell, Loki’s gone and Tony finds himself feeling uncomfortably alone. It makes his skin itch, like there’s a bullseye painted on his back and a number of sights trained on it, waiting for the perfect moment to take the shot. At least until he speaks. At least until Tony feels the chill in the air that he’s beginning to attribute to Loki being Loki.
“Okay. Show time.”
Skin prickling, hair rising on the nape of his neck at the insanity of what he’s going to do, Tony saunters forward, like they’re on a holiday somewhere warm and relaxing. Like he’s only walking into certain relaxation, not death.
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They're hideous. He is a monster.
That is precisely what they need. Form out of functionality. Like this, right now, he is beautiful. Not to look on, perhaps, but in his power, in his efficiency.
In the way he stalks this silly little man from shadows of his own creation. Could snap him straight in two. Considers it, for a moment. His fingers twitch.
Perhaps at first, when he'd first learned, he would have admonished himself to not be like them. The jǫtnar. As though he knew, as though he'd any idea, as though that hadn't been stolen from him as thoroughly as he'd been stolen from an ignoble and perhaps fitting death out on the ice. A gift for old enemies. To assuage Fenrir's hunger pangs, maybe; do they tell such stories on Jǫtunheimr?
The truth is, the only anchor which binds Loki to anything at all is this body. Form is all he has. Form defines him. The rules of Jǫtunheimr do not apply; the rules of Asgard all the less so. Loki is Loki. Only by his own whim is his hand stayed, and only by his whim might it be moved again.
Still the temperature drops. Still Loki's mood heats.
Moods are fickle, flitting, shadowy things; oh stranger, here and gone, a chance meeting on a street corner but the lights always change. The sound of shoes scuffing lightly on flooring 'round the bend ahead is a relief, in that light. Idle thoughts may be put on hold. That stray pedestrian, thoughts of murder, demolished by a hit and run and nobody particularly cares, least of all Loki himself. There are other ways to get ones hands dirty.
Not, of course, that this is how it goes. He is not the sort of madman to plunge his dagger into the belly of a man, twist until the blood flows hot over his clenched fist, steams against his coldness; he will not immerse himself in it, life not life, abrupt endings; death is order, death is not chaos, murder is acceptable but panic is better.
He doubts he'll get the latter. Trained men. That is a heavy boot. Still Stark keeps walking; it would be a disservice to them both to render him incapable of it.
The rest? Chattel.
The shouts as they round the corner, Stark and his shadow, his phantom, are music. A room, tables drawn to the sides for cover, open floor, three there, another there, four there on the opposite side. And the dance, so: Stark a forced step back, a pull, some invisible force, some boogeyman. An exchange of places. There is little and less here from which to form even the barest blade of ice; without his armour and his magic Loki is vulnerable, but no matter. Far less than the human. Far less than they expect, these men in their bulletproof vests, with their guns.
The glamour will fall. Stealth is no longer a necessity, and so Loki runs, lets it dissolve around him until he is seen, strange creature, and he's already on top of one by then. One will become more. It will not slow him to slide the man's gun across the floor to Stark – he thinks, but the bullet which catches him in the shoulder says otherwise. No doubt there will be more shallow, oozing wounds like this, not inconsequential even if hardly deadly, but the sharpness of the pain still makes him gasp. Grounds him. Draws him in.
What is pain, what is the strike of a bullet, but a consequence of the transferal of energy? Loki can play at that too: a game of forces breaks the man's nose and several of his teeth. Chemistry and physics crafted the knife strapped to his leg. Inertia tears it away as he falls, but it's Loki and no other who flings it across the room to lodge hilt-deep in another man's temple.