So I’ve mentioned this a few times recently, mostly in the context of somewhat odd, and slightly surreal stuff. Also in the context of dissociation, because I spent most of the month writing this not entirely certain the rest of the world was real.

But this was written in November 2012, so after the Avengers, and before any of the movies that come after it, so the canon for it ends with the Avengers.

Characters: Loki (MCU), The Morrígan (Irish Mythology), Anat (Canaanite Mythology), Phil Coulson, Nick Fury, Tony Stark, Mot (Canaanite Mythology), Thanos (MCU), Steve Rogers, Clint Barton, Hel (Norse Mythology), Fenrir (Norse Mythology), El (Canaanite Mythology), Natasha Romanov; (Background: Bruce Banner, Thor (MCU))

Word Count: 18,565

Fanmix: Lies, Misdirection, and Terrible Truth (link is for a zip file with the songs)

Story list under the cut.

Stories:

Sanctuary is Washed in Ice, Blood, and Truth

Those who know him would think he’d seek the company of others of like mind to himself. Tricksters, liars, those who have their own agenda. They have not met his allies, found when he slipped between realms and walked the ways he found there.

Lie, Conceit, Deceit

“Beauty is a lie.” Anat’s eyes dance with amusement. “A conceit, a deceit. As much as any lie you’ve ever told, my trickster friend.”

A Storm of Crows

“And who are you, that commands the loyalty of the chosers of the slain?”

“I am the Morrigan, young one. I am the choser of the slain. The battle-queen, whose subjects are phantoms.”

The Comfort of a Harsh Beginning

Life holds its own magic, even the simplest of things, and he wonders that anyone might think he would forget that lesson, taught so early.

Only Crows and Reflected Sunlight

Loki is quiet for a long moment, before looking between them a moment. “He will not like that I have any sort of peace, anymore than he listened to me before.”

“Fathers do not listen to children they cannot admit have grown beyond what they wanted them to be.” Anat shrugs, her gaze fixed on the fire.

Those Who Work in the Shadows of Glory

“You shouldn’t have been able to get in here.” That’s a voice he’s not expecting, and Loki turns slowly on his heel to meet the gaze of the man that he’d injured badly on their last meeting. Coulson is alone, dressed as he had been before, looking as if nothing had happened.

Someone Not My Enemy, But Nor Yet My Friend

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t let Barton put an arrow through your ass right now.”

What Those We Watch, But Do Not Speak With

“They believed all too much of it.” Loki sighs once more, leaning against the counter. “Which of them have you been watching?”

To Stare Into the Chaos

The first sign that he was going to have the mother of all headaches was when Coulson mentioned Loki had been at the keep-the-press-happy gala with the Avengers, in company of two women that Coulson wouldn’t identify.

Answers That Are Not Yet Known

“Is there a reason our friendly neighborhood psychotic Norse God is hanging out with a Middle Eastern goddess of beauty and war?” It’s a rhetorical question thrown out because Tony is bored in a meeting, and it makes Fury glare at him, Thor look thoughtful, and the rest of the Avengers mostly to look pained.

Whispers That Dance On the Storm

All of this, he allows. All of this, he wants. Let them grow stronger, let them adapt and change and prepare. He will have a small army to meet Thanos’, will bring the one who thought he could control Loki to his knees and scatter him to the wind. Even if that army does not fight for him, but for their world. Even if they wish him as dead as does Thanos.

The Winnower of Death

She will not acknowledge the possibility of defeat, or she has already lost. And Anat does not lose to anyone.

At the Edge of the Abyss

You are not dead yet. I won’t allow it.

He’s trying to pretend he didn’t hear those words, right as he’d thought he was about to fall out of the sky. He knew the voice, he just didn’t think she could talk to him right now, since she didn’t have a com, and he hadn’t heard anyone else over the chaos of battle.

Phantom In a World of Phantoms

He isn’t a hero, to go into battle the way the Avengers do, and he’s never – quite – wanted to be. His place, his domain, is as much the shadows as anything else. It’s watching and making sure that the right resources are brought to bear on a problem, that the right information makes it into the right hands. Fury thinks of himself as the man who pulls all the strings, and Coulson is content with that.

Names That Are Stories

She stands motionless, her crows dancing restlessly in the still air, all watching each other. Trickster, Shaper, Thunder, Widow, Hawk, Protector, Rage, Winnower and Queen. The condemned circled and waiting for sentence. All waiting in the stillness for something.

Three Arrows, Three Shots

When they’d first landed in the quinjet, Clint had thought the quiver of arrows on his back should be enough. After all, they only had to deal with Loki and two of his freaky friends – pretty, but seriously freaky, especially the one who’s still wet-dream material, despite the armor and the spear that he swears is taller than Steve. He had a couple extra quivers, just in case. He hadn’t forgotten Manhattan, and the Chitauri.

And For This Was I Trained a Prince

“Bind him over.” He looks away from Thanos, over to the heroes who are looking confused, except for Thor. He ignores his brother, and meets Barton’s eyes. A fitting symmetry. “Bind him over to Agent Barton, and let his life be forfeit to what justice he sees fit.”

In Understanding, Find the Words That Make the Myth

The battle is over, they’ve won. Loki’s escaped again, vanishing with his friends, leaving them with a different alien war criminal, a freaked-out Clint, and a wreck of a battlefield to clean up. At least it’s not Manhattan, and he doesn’t have to repair his tower again.

What the Price of Truth

A shift in the air announces the guests he’s been expecting for a while now, and he waves a hand at the empty spaces without turning to look at them. “I give you my word I will not harm you, Agent Barton. Nor Agent Coulson.”

A Variable Left Unanswered

“I mean, why team up with him? He’s not exactly the poster-boy for sanity, and the guy’s tried to take over the world once.”

“Did he?” Anat’s expression doesn’t change, but her voice has the sort of gentle patience Tony associates with someone talking to a small child, or someone who’s really not getting it. At least, when the person talking is someone a lot more patient than he is.

Those I Would Call Your Friends

“Do you wish to ask some questions of me, Agent Barton?”

“Why not just ask for help?” It’s probably a question he’s not going to get an honest answer to, but it’s the one he’s most curious about the answer to. “You’ve got friends; hell, I bet even Thor would have helped you if you asked.”

The Woman and the Crow Are the Same

Then again, he’s expecting a bird to talk to him, so maybe the whole thing is a bit crazy and getting to him. Not maybe. It is crazy, and really, he’s going to have a headache when this is over that requires something more than asprin and a few good explosions.

The Answer to Which the Question Is Not Yet Known

Chuckling again, Anat stands, going over to Tony to rest a hand against his cheek. “Yet, he is all of those things to me, at one point or another, and I have done such. As you are supplicant now, seeking answers that you do not yet have the questions to ask for. Perhaps when you do, I shall allow the offer and the acceptance.”

Dreaming Another’s Memories

Not his memories, though, so he can’t let himself believe they are memories. Or he lets himself start to believe Loki has a greater hold on him than just whatever brain-washing happened with the Tesseract.

Feel Not the Sting of Unwelcome

Here, she would be safe. Here, she would not worry for the distrust and the disdain of the Aesir court. Here, she would be loved, and called daughter, and above all, kept safe. Yet he cannot bring himself to step away, his fingers still stroking back hair as black as his own from a jotunn-blue face.

Knowledge Is Strength Cloaked In Shadows

He has merely reported that Loki had taken the chance to provide his own version of events, and that Barton wasn’t comfortable with the mission, but did not cause any trouble. Does not tell them that Barton is dreaming, that he doubts anyone else could have navigated the maze without a map, that Loki’s daughter had spoken of a shift.

Secrets of Family

“The tales mortals have told of my brothers?” He can see her shrug her shoulders out of the corner of his eye. “Sleipnir, Jörmungandr, Fenrir, Nari and Vali? Something of it, yes.”

Each Memory a Thread of Tapestry

“It’s the same dream, over and over again.”

Would That My Enemy Were As I

How to explain to one who is still more his enemy than anything else – and who he would not wish to have as more than an adversary, as the rest of those who live here ought to be – that he had found himself wanting to keep even one who could not best him in a fair fight, much less his favored sort of uneven battle, around?

So All Passed Into Myth, and the Gods Walk Among Us

For the world knows the gods are real, no better or worse than the rest of humanity, save they live beyond the span of mortal years. Their names are whispered in secret prayers, shouted to the skies, thought in silence between the moments.