loki laufeyson (toberuled) wrote in doors, @ 2014-03-23 00:55:00 |
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Entry tags: | captain america, loki |
[loki and steve]
[Backdated to before the meeting of the Avengers. This started life as a doc, hence the long start in past tense.]
[The god in the clear box waited, patiently, and he watched.
The four Einherjar had chosen to arrange themselves for their own comfort inside the room. They took shifts, trading off to sleep and to work their way through their provisions. There were never less than two at attention at a time. They did not respond to Loki’s teasing, cajoling, or lip-curling distaste, so he lost interest in them. They were not incorruptible, but they were boring. At best he might get one to attack the cage, but that would not be enough to free him. He could use them, yes, and he would. They had been chosen for the lack of effect his words had on them, and their devotion to the crown, and he would manipulate their scrap of loyalty toward him to its limit. He had already decided on his escape plan, but there would be some time yet before the pieces fell into place.
The golden cuff, tight against his skin and seamless in appearance, was the only hint of glitter or shine on him these days. The rough green tunic and dark trousers he wore normally lay beneath layers of gleaming gold metal and worked leather. Not here, not now.
If one didn’t know what to look for, the cuff might have seemed a simply ornament, or the mark of a prisoner. But it served the same purpose that the handcuffs he had worn (such a long time ago now) had served.It suppressed his magic with a sapping, dampening sensation. If it exhausted him, though, if it drained him, it didn’t show in his posture, or in the way he sat on what passed for a bed in his clear cell, his back braced against the wall.
The Einherjar watched the elevator as much as they watched Loki. They were here to protect him perhaps even moreso than to prevent his escape. Loki had enemies much further afield than the disgruntled and suspicious citizens of Asgard, who had already passed judgement on his involvement in the activities of the Marauders. To them, an ill in the nine worlds, chaos and war after peace, could only be caused by one person.
Loki, for his part, was more interested to see if whoever or whatever was behind the attacks intended to pay him a visit. If anyone came down that elevator to take him away, he did not think it would be a furtive Asgardian mob. The Marauders were clearly working for someone and toward something. Their randomness and brashness were too calculated in their sporadic insanity. Someone was working toward something, and they might just be stupid enough to think Loki would work with them if they freed him from his prison. Or, even more laughable, that they might control him.
But he could think himself into the crystalline floor of this place and it would do him no more good than it would to spin in circles in his cell. If no one came for him, to kill him or in some ill-advised rescue, he would simply rescue himself. And if they did come, which they might, he would react in the moment as the situation called for. He knew the probabilities, and he had his contingency plans. There was naught else to do but wait.
He was used to amusing himself with his magic or his studies, both denied to him in this place.
So he lay, quiet, thoughtful, until something broke his reverie. Without warning, he pushed up onto his hands, his ear cocked as if listening. Without his magic his complexion was wan, and the hollows of his eyes were dark. He held onto his current form, eyes clear and green, skin pale pink. Unlike the first time around, he had not gone blue for a lack of magic to hide himself with. The shift was as much psychological as based in magic, he knew that now. There were advantages to a frost giant physiology, including a shapeshifting that clung to flesh when nothing else could.]
Am I being watched?
[One of the Einherjar turned their head to look at him, then turned back to the door. He looked up, his eyes searching from the place he would be watching from, if he had metal eyes with which to see.]