Doesn't Play Well With Tricksters

9 - Out For The Count

Rachael ducked behind the nearest door and willed herself to be invisible as the very person she'd been working so hard to avoid rounded the corner with the rest of the team.

She didn't wait to see the look of annoyance on his face or the sympathetic look Stark turned his way. She was too busy convincing herself it was possible they didn't see her.

"I'm sure she-" Stark started.

"Don't." Loki interupted as they passed by on the way to the next mission, a mission she'd feigned a stomach virus to get out of. "Just don't."

She waited until they were well out of her line of sight before she peeked out from her hiding spot and headed back to her room.

Ten minutes later, she was pulling up the bodycam footage as it streamed live from the helicopter.

"What did you do to her this time?" Clint asked, a ring of annoyance in his voice.

Natasha jabbed him with one of her pointed boots.

"I offered to help her learn how to use her magic." Loki answered.

"Before or after you tried to kiss her again?" Stark asked without looking up from the hologram he was studying.

"Before." He answered.

"Wait, what do you mean again?" Rodgers asked, eyes wide.

"Don't worry. She made it very clear she wasn't interested in a repeat of the incident." Loki replied.

"And by that he means she slugged him." Stark elaborated. "Well, the first time she slugged him. What was it this time? She threatened to do it again?"

He sighed. "She asked me not to make her do it again."

Natasha smiled knowingly. "Which means she didn't want to hit you the second time."

"Obviously," He drawled dryly.

"Think about it," Natasha smiled more openly. "She wanted to hit you the first time. This time she didn't want to. What does that mean?"

"She doesn't want to hurt her hand?" Clint answered, being stubbornly obtuse.

"Or something's changed that makes her not want to hurt him." Stark answered.

"Traitors." Rachael grumbled, closing the laptop with a snap. She didn't want to hear them, the team she had grown to trust, encouraging him.

She set the laptop aside and threw herself down, facefirst, on her mattress. Why? What happened to make the team want to play match makers, and what made them think getting the two of them together was a good thing?

She rolled over onto her back and huffed out her annoyance. She realized just how childish it had been to avoid him, and the team but there was nothing she could do about it. They were half way to their battle by now and, even if she knew where that was, she didn't know how to teleport.

It wasn't that she wasn't intrigued by the magic she inherited from her reclusive adopted aunt. She'd read all the journals her family kept over the past four hundred years. Each started when the writer found out about his or her magic and ended with some magic related catastrophe that destroyed their family.

It was no wonder Aunt Nicolla died trying to get rid of it. The magic was a curse on their family.

Not to mention those journals scared the crap out of her.

They detailed the life of the writer that made it obvious a selfish, self centered streak ran rampant in that particular branch of their family tree. There was plenty of talk about how blessed they felt, how the magic was a rare gift, how privileged they felt to be able to influence the world around them, but precious little when it came to notes or planning to do things that didn't make their own lives better.

In the end, their selfish ways caught up to them. A miscalculated spell to draw riches brings theives and murderers in its wake. A plan for revenge turns against its planner, destroying the one thing she cared about more than herself. A wish for power and influence gets the wisher assassinated. Even the most restrained of them all, a man who used his magic to boost his family's luck from time to time without really doing anything overly magical, ran out of luck against an angry mob of people who thought they should have won this or that.

How could she possibly embrace that kind of a curse?

"Jarvis, tell me when they get back, will you?" She asked, pulling the laptop close again to do some research.

"Absolutely, Miss Rachael. Should I let them know you're feeling better?"

She grimaced, "No thanks, I'll take care of that awkward conversation myself. "

"Very well."

She busied herself looking up videos of magic wielders. At first, all she found was card tricks and slight of hand. She was all but ready to call it quits when she absently tapped on one last video.

In it, the performers took turns materializing random items out of thin air. A hairbrush, someone's left shoe, even a set of car keys.

Rachael jumped when Jarvis alerted her to the team's return. "Mr. Stark requests you meet the team in the common area living room. He says it is urgent."

Something in the way Jarvis phrased the last had the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, but she quickly set the laptop aside and rushed to the room in question. Soon after, Stark, and Thor entered, carrying a limp and lightly snoring Loki between them.

Rachael cocked her head and motioned toward his sleeping form.

"He was hit with some strange magic I've never seen before." Thor answered, helping to lay Loki on the nearest couch.

"Well, he looks comfortable." Rachael laughed as he turned his face away from the light.

"We've tried to wake him, but nothing works."

"Middle of an all out war zone and he's using a piece of rubble for a pillow." Clint shook his head, as if it were the most ridiculous thing he'd ever seen.

"Then I remembered a YouTube video I ran across last week," Stark activated the hologram projector on his left arm.