Doesn't Play Well With Tricksters

10 - There Is A Way

In the video playing from Stark's projector, a scraggly looking group of youngsters, not one of them over 16, were taking turns drawing orbs of light from an old book and throwing them at each other.

One's hair started growing at an alarming rate until another cut it with a silver, ornate axe. The second turned into a snarling beast until his girlfriend ventured forward to kiss him on the cheek, which turned him back into himself, though his hair was noticeably longer. Finally, a third orb was pulled from the book and thrown at the final friend, who dropped instantly to the ground, sound asleep.

His friends grew frantic when they couldn't wake him. At the end of the video, a dark panel with white words filled the screen.

Don't play around with things you don't understand. Magic is not a toy. It is not a game. It can be dangerous. The boy in this video would not wake up. Even when his mother, a doctor, pumped him full of artificial adrenaline, he continued to sleep. Unable to find a way to wake him, they attached a feeding tube in an effort to save him. He died two weeks later, exactly three weeks after he and his friends toyed with forces they couldn't control.

Rachael raised a skeptical eyebroow. Surely he didn't think she would believe Loki had been hit with what some idiot on YouTube coined 'Storybook Magic'.

"And this is the footage from the battle." Stark pulled up a video of Loki being cornered by three dark clad figures. Sure enough, one of them held a book of fairy tales. Two of them distracted Loki while the third pulled a glowing orb from the book and hit him with it.

Loki fell to the ground, sound asleep amid the chaos.

"Holy shit," Rachael breathed, pushing the button on Stark's device to rewind the footage.

"Shortly after, they retreated and we found him. Like that." Clint motioned toward the peacefully sleeping Loki.

"What do we do?" Rachael asked.

"We were hoping you would have an idea or two."

"Shot of adrenaline?"

"No good."

"Cold water?"

"Nope. Already tried it."

"Air horn."

"No change."

"Jarvis?"

"Yes, Ms. Rachael?"

"Search for successful counter measures for Storybook Magic. Exclude fiction and anything that sounds like fiction."

"Three results found." Jarvis answered, a hologram version of the three webpages forming in front of her, thanks to the blue crystals she'd installed.

She flipped through one, rolling her eyes and tossing it away with a flick of her wrist then moving on to the other two. "Looks like we have to pinpoint which story the spell was pulled from. Then use the countermeasures from the story."

"Sounds pretty straight forward." Stark commented, pulling her discarded file in front of him.

Rachael flicked the file away again and pulled the battle footage up again. "And therein lies the problem. Jarvis, can you enhance the footage and get us a good look at that book?"

"I'm afraid not. There's just not enough footage to get a better look."

"Damn."

"What's the problem? Sleeping princess? Wake her with a kiss, right?" Stark offered, not helping.

"There's more than one sleeping spell in folklore. There's Sleeping Beauty, who woke up to a kiss. There's Snow White-"

"Who also woke up to a kiss."

"Or by dislodging a bit of poisoned apple. But there's also Rip Van Winkle, who woke on his own, twenty years older. And Mount Ida on Krete makes people fall asleep for over fifty years at a time. Again to wake up on their own." Rachael countered.

"There's no telling which version of which story he's been cursed with." Natasha chimed in. "We were told a version of Sleeping Beauty that would have scarred anyone else." She turned to Rachael. "The last line was 'It was not the kiss of the heart, but the kiss of death delivered upon her sleeping form.' Grimm brothers eat your heart out."

Rachael paled at the thought. "We need to know the story. And fast. I was told a story growing up that was similar to that kind of instant sleeping spell, but they got there too late. She died when the moon could not be seen in the sky. The New Moon."

"That's four days from now."

***

Rachael stood by the door, looking in on Loki and wishing there was a way to be sure. If she was wrong, if the story Natasha remembered was right, or if there was something she wasn't taking into account, she might as well be driving a knife straight through his heart.

She slowly made her way to his side, thanking the whim of fate that took the rest of the team out of the tower for the night. The last thing she needed right now was Stark's snarky comments. It was bad enough she'd finally narrowed down the story they were trying to counter, thanks to a small circular scar on his right index finger, the shape and size of a spindle from an old fashioned spinning wheel.

He was Sleeping Beauty alright. There was no arguing that much.

She knelt beside him and stared at him for a minute. He had always been thin, in an athletic kind of way, but his cheeks were sunken in and there were dark, angry circles under his eyes.

He was fighting the spell, trying to wake up, but the effort was obviously draining him. Add to that, he hadn't had anything to eat or drink in the two days since they brought him back and it was clear to see he was in danger of losing his life if something wasn't done soon.

"Desperate times and desperate measures." She whispered to herself, taking a deep steadying breath. "I hope this works."

She leaned forward and brushed her lips across his.

She sat back and watched in wonder as his eyes started to flutter open. "Holy shit." She gasped, slapping her hand over her mouth and rushing from the room before he could fully recover.