![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tigriswolfTitle: The stars will not get tired
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Anne Sexton
Warnings: takes place during the film
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 120
Point of view: third
Prompt: sky
The stars are different. They always are, of course – each realm varies. He has mapped them all, and walked them, and watched them while hunting parties formed cursing his name.
He is trickery and lies, he is a silver-tongued devil, and he runs now from something so much worse –
“Sir,” his little hawk-eyed warrior says. “Selvig hit a snag. He needs to talk to you.”
Thanos’ gift (weapon) is cool in his hands. Barton’s eyes are cloudy, and his heart beats steadily, strong and sure.
The stars are different. Loki looks at them once more before turning to reenter the compound.
(He misses Asgard’s sky. He will never admit how much it hurts to return and be unable to see it.)
Title: Let my eyes see the sun until they are dazzled with looking
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Gilgamesh
Warnings: post-film
Pairings: implied Steve/Bucky, maybe
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 230
Point of view: third
Prompt: fallen
Natasha is the one to bring him in. He’s still someone else, someone Steve has never met, and Fury orders Steve to stay away.
Steve ignores that order, of course, but the infirmary is empty.
Tony helps him drink a bar; Clint and Thor cycle through, and Bruce sits with him in silence while Tony snores.
But then Natasha is in the door, an actual smile on her face. It’s been three days since Fury forbade him from seeing –
“C’mon, Cap,” Natasha says. “I’ve got someone you should meet.”
His stomach is roiling. “Are you sure?” he asks, and doesn’t even know what he means.
He’s alive? He’s alright? He’s mine?
“Yes,” she says, sounding the gentlest he’s ever heard her.
Bruce, Clint, Thor, and Tony all hang back when Steve follows Natasha into the room.
Bucky’s asleep on the bed, looking the same as the day he fell. He’s got a metal arm, but his eyes open and he looks at Steve and he smiles, he smiles, and Steve can breathe the freest breath since he woke up in the future.
Bucky’s alive. Steve stumbles forward, grasping for his hand, and Bucky clutches back at him, still smiling.
“Hey, Stevie,” he murmurs, voice hoarse and soft. “We got some catchin’ up to do, I hear.”
“Yeah,” Steve whispers, voice thick with years worth of grief and relief. “Yeah, Buck, we do.”
Title: we held on to each other, like brother to brother
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Billy Joel
Warnings: post-film
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 260
Point of view: third
Prompt: far
Thor does not know what happened to his brother. Where things went so terribly wrong.
But not irrevocably wrong. Thor refuses to believe he and his brother will never be reconciled.
Mjölnir is growing heavier by the day, and Loki no longer responds to Thor’s presence, and Father does not listen to Thor’s counsel. Mother hasn’t shared Father’s bedchamber since Thor brought Loki home.
Nothing is as it should be. Nothing has been right since Loki’s last words before the muzzle - If your father knew where I was, he’d hissed, eyes bright and poisonous, then why didn’t he save me?
It’s all Thor can think about these days. Wherever he goes, he replays everything since Loki’s fall. And the days before it. And their years as children, as brothers and playmates, as allies and rivals.
If your father knew where I was, then why didn’t he save me?
Thor is not a wordsmith. He is not as clever as Loki; few are. But he has never believed himself to be a fool.
Why would Loki use the word save? Why was Loki so tired, so wearied, so easy to capture and keep?
Father’s chains have been sapping his magic since Thor brought him back.
Why didn’t he save me?
Thor watches Loki, tucked into the farthest corner of his cell, and thinks, You don’t need to be saved from allies.
He unlocks the cage and strides in, Mjölnir lightening with every step.
Something is terribly wrong, but Thor has never felt righter, as he finally chooses his brother.
Title: at least I’m flying free
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Wicked
Warnings: a smidge AUish for Natasha’s backstory
Pairings: possibly implied Black Widow/Hawkeye, Winter Soldier/Black Widow
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 405
Point of view: third
Prompt: rush
She owes him a debt. He doesn’t think of it like that, she knows. They’ve saved each others’ lives a dozen times over in the past five years.
Besides that, she saved herself when she left the Red Room and burnt it behind her. She and James are the only survivors, and he is the first person she can ever remember showing her kindness.
(She still doesn’t know how much of her memory was fabricated. But she wants this to be real, so she believes it is.)
Hawkeye was sent to kill her because she was too good and the Council believed it would be fruitless to try and turn her – who could ever trust the loyalty of the Black Widow? She’d betrayed her makers, after all, and abandoned her ‘sisters’ to their fates without a moment’s hesitation or a single look back.
Hawkeye was sent to kill her, and he had a clear shot. He’d been shadowing her for almost a full day before she noticed. He could have killed her. He chose not to, a decision she still doesn’t fully understand, and he thinks the debt between them was cleared when she went back for him the first time he became a liability. (Concussion grenade too close to his vantage spot. She could have left him there. She didn’t.)
Five years and dozens of missions later, she tells the God of Lies, “Love is for children. I owe him a debt.”
Loki’s eyes see right through her; she doesn’t allow herself the arrogance of thinking she’s learned anything he didn’t want her to know.
When she has the chance to grab Clint, to knock Loki out of his head – she doesn’t fight to kill him. Not yet. Not until there’s no other way.
The debt she owes isn’t her life. That belongs to James, anyway. (And if she survives whatever Loki has planned, she’ll bring James home – she remembers those glimmers she saw, and she chooses to believe they’re real.)
The debt she owes Hawkeye is her freedom. And maybe saving him from Loki’s control will erase the red. Maybe it won’t.
She doesn’t love Clint. Or James. Not even herself. Love is illusory and a trap. Love is for children; she was a never a child. Not that she remembers.
But she’ll save Clint from Loki, and if she’s gentle after he’s down, well. She owes him.
And they’re still not even yet.
Title: where my dreams slice me into pieces
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Anne Sexton
Warnings: post-film
Pairings: Loki/Clint
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 490
Point of view: third
There are shadows in the back of Clint’s eyes. He sees them when he looks in the mirror.
No one else does.
.
Cognitive recalibration. Nice theory, if a bit simple – and wrong.
Clint’s done the reading. Asgard is a realm of warriors, and Loki grew up there, raised as one of them. He’d be prepared for hits to the head.
If there wasn’t so much chaos, it would have occurred to someone else, too.
But Loki is caged, bound and gagged, waiting for the tesseract to be released into Thor’s custody.
Clint watches him from a safe distance and knows Loki isn’t broken. He isn’t even beaten.
Shadows lurk in the back of Clint’s eyes and, beneath the gag, his ex-god is smiling.
.
In the months following the fought-off invasion, Loki haunts almost every dream or nightmare Clint has. Loki’s voice, Loki’s hands, Loki his lord and master – the only thing Clint has ever worshipped.
He fights on a team, lies to everyone that’s he’s fine, and looks forward to the few hours of sleep he gets a week.
He doesn’t ask Thor what Loki’s punishment is.
(In a prison on another world, a caged prince smiles and the last lock is undone.)
.
It’s no surprise when he’s looking in the mirror to see if the shadows have grown and Loki stands behind him.
Loki trails a finger along his shoulders, down his spine, murmurs, “Are you not pleased at my return?”
Clint bows his head, arguing with himself – SHIELD’s agent wants to sound the alarm and go down swinging. Loki’s right hand wants to hit his knees and bare his throat.
“Yes, sir,” Clint replies just as quietly.
Loki smiles and presses a kiss to the back of his neck. “Your eyes are beautiful, Clint,” he says softly. “A wondrous shade of blue. It’d be a shame to obscure them again.”
Clint can only nod, watching their reflections. Loki places his hands on Clint’s hips and orders gently, “Stay with my brother’s team of heroes. Keep on as you have.”
Clint’s eyes aren’t clouded. He’s been cleared. He’s trusted.
Cognitive recalibration is a crock of shit, and even Natasha is fooled.
Loki turns Clint around, kisses him hard, and vanishes.
.
Thor, looking grave, announces at the team dinner that Loki escaped but no one knows where he’s gone. Even the All-Seeing gatekeeper can’t get a lock on him.
Clint’s eyes are the same blue they’ve been all his life and he reacts the most vocally, demanding to know how the greatest minds on Asgard failed so fucking hard.
A tiny, dying part of him is disappointed that Natasha falls for it. That same part used the style she’d taught him to lose on the helicarrier.
By the time he goes to bed, faking rage, that part is gone for good.
.
Of course Loki is in his dreams.
The shadows have swallowed Clint’s eyes, and they’ve never been so blue.
Title: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Shelley
Fandom: Avengers movieverse/Norse mythology
Warnings: post-apocalyptic, movie spoilers; AUish – all I know about Thanos I learned from wikipedia
Pairings: gennish
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 405
Point of view: third
Prompt: In the movie Tony says "And, Loki, he's a full-tilt diva... he wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a... monument built to the sky with his name plastered..." and I was immediately reminded of the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I would like something involving Loki based on this part of the poem:
"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Perhaps involving the ruins of Jotenheim?
After, all he has is time. Asgard is burnt, Midgard barren, and Thanos turns his gaze to the remaining realms. All but Jötunheimr, and Helheimr - but Thanos will go there, eventually, kneel before the Lady of the Dead and offer the ash of eight realms as his sacrifice in her name.
Whether or not Hel will take his hand, Loki does not know. He does not care anymore.
He has eternity, the only one left of everybody he’s ever known, and it is his fault. He has all the magic of nine realms, all the rage and jealousy and anguish – and none of it matters.
There is no throne. But he has never wanted a throne.
In thanks, ally, I grant you your life. Thanos’ hand had burned where it touched Loki’s face. His breath stank of desiccation and decay. Loki stared fearlessly into his eyes and Thanos grinned, the bones of a thousand worlds caught in his teeth.
This was always coming, no matter what Loki did. This is Ragnarök, but not in a way even the All-Father or Heimdallr could have foreseen.
Loki does not ask forgiveness. Instead, he goes to the place where, perhaps, all this could be said to have begun. The Bifrost is destroyed, but Loki never needed it. He takes a step and is on Jötunheimr, standing in the ruins of Laufey’s palace, ice and snow and nothing.
Is this where it began? Where he made deals and arranged for jötnar to sneak into the All-Father’s home, where Thor started a war because Loki talked him into it, where Loki discovered his true nature – is this the place that led to Thanos?
Jötunheimr is Thanos’ gift to Loki, in all its grandeur. Loki laughs, staring out over the ice. He laughs until his stomach hurts, until tears freeze on his face, until he wears the shape of his birth again.
He laughs while Thanos burns Ālfheimr, scorches Vanaheimr, razes Svartálfaheimr, chars Niflheimr. Múspellsheimr, of course, he turns into a solid block of ice and shatters into stardust.
Hel’s realm is left untouched. All the souls there scream, all the souls from all the realms, and Loki listens, eyes closed, face to the coldest of winds.
Thanos kneels before Hel, and she takes his hand, and it is Ragnarök.
Loki touches the ice, all that remains of Jötunheimr, and does not ask forgiveness. There is no one left to ask.
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Anne Sexton
Warnings: takes place during the film
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 120
Point of view: third
Prompt: sky
The stars are different. They always are, of course – each realm varies. He has mapped them all, and walked them, and watched them while hunting parties formed cursing his name.
He is trickery and lies, he is a silver-tongued devil, and he runs now from something so much worse –
“Sir,” his little hawk-eyed warrior says. “Selvig hit a snag. He needs to talk to you.”
Thanos’ gift (weapon) is cool in his hands. Barton’s eyes are cloudy, and his heart beats steadily, strong and sure.
The stars are different. Loki looks at them once more before turning to reenter the compound.
(He misses Asgard’s sky. He will never admit how much it hurts to return and be unable to see it.)
Title: Let my eyes see the sun until they are dazzled with looking
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Gilgamesh
Warnings: post-film
Pairings: implied Steve/Bucky, maybe
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 230
Point of view: third
Prompt: fallen
Natasha is the one to bring him in. He’s still someone else, someone Steve has never met, and Fury orders Steve to stay away.
Steve ignores that order, of course, but the infirmary is empty.
Tony helps him drink a bar; Clint and Thor cycle through, and Bruce sits with him in silence while Tony snores.
But then Natasha is in the door, an actual smile on her face. It’s been three days since Fury forbade him from seeing –
“C’mon, Cap,” Natasha says. “I’ve got someone you should meet.”
His stomach is roiling. “Are you sure?” he asks, and doesn’t even know what he means.
He’s alive? He’s alright? He’s mine?
“Yes,” she says, sounding the gentlest he’s ever heard her.
Bruce, Clint, Thor, and Tony all hang back when Steve follows Natasha into the room.
Bucky’s asleep on the bed, looking the same as the day he fell. He’s got a metal arm, but his eyes open and he looks at Steve and he smiles, he smiles, and Steve can breathe the freest breath since he woke up in the future.
Bucky’s alive. Steve stumbles forward, grasping for his hand, and Bucky clutches back at him, still smiling.
“Hey, Stevie,” he murmurs, voice hoarse and soft. “We got some catchin’ up to do, I hear.”
“Yeah,” Steve whispers, voice thick with years worth of grief and relief. “Yeah, Buck, we do.”
Title: we held on to each other, like brother to brother
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Billy Joel
Warnings: post-film
Pairings: none
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 260
Point of view: third
Prompt: far
Thor does not know what happened to his brother. Where things went so terribly wrong.
But not irrevocably wrong. Thor refuses to believe he and his brother will never be reconciled.
Mjölnir is growing heavier by the day, and Loki no longer responds to Thor’s presence, and Father does not listen to Thor’s counsel. Mother hasn’t shared Father’s bedchamber since Thor brought Loki home.
Nothing is as it should be. Nothing has been right since Loki’s last words before the muzzle - If your father knew where I was, he’d hissed, eyes bright and poisonous, then why didn’t he save me?
It’s all Thor can think about these days. Wherever he goes, he replays everything since Loki’s fall. And the days before it. And their years as children, as brothers and playmates, as allies and rivals.
If your father knew where I was, then why didn’t he save me?
Thor is not a wordsmith. He is not as clever as Loki; few are. But he has never believed himself to be a fool.
Why would Loki use the word save? Why was Loki so tired, so wearied, so easy to capture and keep?
Father’s chains have been sapping his magic since Thor brought him back.
Why didn’t he save me?
Thor watches Loki, tucked into the farthest corner of his cell, and thinks, You don’t need to be saved from allies.
He unlocks the cage and strides in, Mjölnir lightening with every step.
Something is terribly wrong, but Thor has never felt righter, as he finally chooses his brother.
Title: at least I’m flying free
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Wicked
Warnings: a smidge AUish for Natasha’s backstory
Pairings: possibly implied Black Widow/Hawkeye, Winter Soldier/Black Widow
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 405
Point of view: third
Prompt: rush
She owes him a debt. He doesn’t think of it like that, she knows. They’ve saved each others’ lives a dozen times over in the past five years.
Besides that, she saved herself when she left the Red Room and burnt it behind her. She and James are the only survivors, and he is the first person she can ever remember showing her kindness.
(She still doesn’t know how much of her memory was fabricated. But she wants this to be real, so she believes it is.)
Hawkeye was sent to kill her because she was too good and the Council believed it would be fruitless to try and turn her – who could ever trust the loyalty of the Black Widow? She’d betrayed her makers, after all, and abandoned her ‘sisters’ to their fates without a moment’s hesitation or a single look back.
Hawkeye was sent to kill her, and he had a clear shot. He’d been shadowing her for almost a full day before she noticed. He could have killed her. He chose not to, a decision she still doesn’t fully understand, and he thinks the debt between them was cleared when she went back for him the first time he became a liability. (Concussion grenade too close to his vantage spot. She could have left him there. She didn’t.)
Five years and dozens of missions later, she tells the God of Lies, “Love is for children. I owe him a debt.”
Loki’s eyes see right through her; she doesn’t allow herself the arrogance of thinking she’s learned anything he didn’t want her to know.
When she has the chance to grab Clint, to knock Loki out of his head – she doesn’t fight to kill him. Not yet. Not until there’s no other way.
The debt she owes isn’t her life. That belongs to James, anyway. (And if she survives whatever Loki has planned, she’ll bring James home – she remembers those glimmers she saw, and she chooses to believe they’re real.)
The debt she owes Hawkeye is her freedom. And maybe saving him from Loki’s control will erase the red. Maybe it won’t.
She doesn’t love Clint. Or James. Not even herself. Love is illusory and a trap. Love is for children; she was a never a child. Not that she remembers.
But she’ll save Clint from Loki, and if she’s gentle after he’s down, well. She owes him.
And they’re still not even yet.
Title: where my dreams slice me into pieces
Fandom: Avengers movieverse
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Anne Sexton
Warnings: post-film
Pairings: Loki/Clint
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 490
Point of view: third
There are shadows in the back of Clint’s eyes. He sees them when he looks in the mirror.
No one else does.
.
Cognitive recalibration. Nice theory, if a bit simple – and wrong.
Clint’s done the reading. Asgard is a realm of warriors, and Loki grew up there, raised as one of them. He’d be prepared for hits to the head.
If there wasn’t so much chaos, it would have occurred to someone else, too.
But Loki is caged, bound and gagged, waiting for the tesseract to be released into Thor’s custody.
Clint watches him from a safe distance and knows Loki isn’t broken. He isn’t even beaten.
Shadows lurk in the back of Clint’s eyes and, beneath the gag, his ex-god is smiling.
.
In the months following the fought-off invasion, Loki haunts almost every dream or nightmare Clint has. Loki’s voice, Loki’s hands, Loki his lord and master – the only thing Clint has ever worshipped.
He fights on a team, lies to everyone that’s he’s fine, and looks forward to the few hours of sleep he gets a week.
He doesn’t ask Thor what Loki’s punishment is.
(In a prison on another world, a caged prince smiles and the last lock is undone.)
.
It’s no surprise when he’s looking in the mirror to see if the shadows have grown and Loki stands behind him.
Loki trails a finger along his shoulders, down his spine, murmurs, “Are you not pleased at my return?”
Clint bows his head, arguing with himself – SHIELD’s agent wants to sound the alarm and go down swinging. Loki’s right hand wants to hit his knees and bare his throat.
“Yes, sir,” Clint replies just as quietly.
Loki smiles and presses a kiss to the back of his neck. “Your eyes are beautiful, Clint,” he says softly. “A wondrous shade of blue. It’d be a shame to obscure them again.”
Clint can only nod, watching their reflections. Loki places his hands on Clint’s hips and orders gently, “Stay with my brother’s team of heroes. Keep on as you have.”
Clint’s eyes aren’t clouded. He’s been cleared. He’s trusted.
Cognitive recalibration is a crock of shit, and even Natasha is fooled.
Loki turns Clint around, kisses him hard, and vanishes.
.
Thor, looking grave, announces at the team dinner that Loki escaped but no one knows where he’s gone. Even the All-Seeing gatekeeper can’t get a lock on him.
Clint’s eyes are the same blue they’ve been all his life and he reacts the most vocally, demanding to know how the greatest minds on Asgard failed so fucking hard.
A tiny, dying part of him is disappointed that Natasha falls for it. That same part used the style she’d taught him to lose on the helicarrier.
By the time he goes to bed, faking rage, that part is gone for good.
.
Of course Loki is in his dreams.
The shadows have swallowed Clint’s eyes, and they’ve never been so blue.
Title: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair
Disclaimer: not my characters; title from Shelley
Fandom: Avengers movieverse/Norse mythology
Warnings: post-apocalyptic, movie spoilers; AUish – all I know about Thanos I learned from wikipedia
Pairings: gennish
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 405
Point of view: third
Prompt: In the movie Tony says "And, Loki, he's a full-tilt diva... he wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a... monument built to the sky with his name plastered..." and I was immediately reminded of the poem Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
I would like something involving Loki based on this part of the poem:
"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Perhaps involving the ruins of Jotenheim?
After, all he has is time. Asgard is burnt, Midgard barren, and Thanos turns his gaze to the remaining realms. All but Jötunheimr, and Helheimr - but Thanos will go there, eventually, kneel before the Lady of the Dead and offer the ash of eight realms as his sacrifice in her name.
Whether or not Hel will take his hand, Loki does not know. He does not care anymore.
He has eternity, the only one left of everybody he’s ever known, and it is his fault. He has all the magic of nine realms, all the rage and jealousy and anguish – and none of it matters.
There is no throne. But he has never wanted a throne.
In thanks, ally, I grant you your life. Thanos’ hand had burned where it touched Loki’s face. His breath stank of desiccation and decay. Loki stared fearlessly into his eyes and Thanos grinned, the bones of a thousand worlds caught in his teeth.
This was always coming, no matter what Loki did. This is Ragnarök, but not in a way even the All-Father or Heimdallr could have foreseen.
Loki does not ask forgiveness. Instead, he goes to the place where, perhaps, all this could be said to have begun. The Bifrost is destroyed, but Loki never needed it. He takes a step and is on Jötunheimr, standing in the ruins of Laufey’s palace, ice and snow and nothing.
Is this where it began? Where he made deals and arranged for jötnar to sneak into the All-Father’s home, where Thor started a war because Loki talked him into it, where Loki discovered his true nature – is this the place that led to Thanos?
Jötunheimr is Thanos’ gift to Loki, in all its grandeur. Loki laughs, staring out over the ice. He laughs until his stomach hurts, until tears freeze on his face, until he wears the shape of his birth again.
He laughs while Thanos burns Ālfheimr, scorches Vanaheimr, razes Svartálfaheimr, chars Niflheimr. Múspellsheimr, of course, he turns into a solid block of ice and shatters into stardust.
Hel’s realm is left untouched. All the souls there scream, all the souls from all the realms, and Loki listens, eyes closed, face to the coldest of winds.
Thanos kneels before Hel, and she takes his hand, and it is Ragnarök.
Loki touches the ice, all that remains of Jötunheimr, and does not ask forgiveness. There is no one left to ask.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-29 05:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-06-29 01:26 pm (UTC)Oh, wow, thank you! I saw the prompt and pounced. I love that poem.