Loki had refrained from moving any of the pieces remaining on the board in deference to whatever imaginary partner Reid had been playing against, but now he shifts from his drawn-up chair to the chair opposite, the better to play. It's appropriate that he's been given the dark pieces, he thinks with a grim little smile, but it's automatic, the bitter wave rising and ebbing again. He's accustomed to it now, that side of him that always whispers about unfairness and revenge.

The little smile returns when Reid says he'd attempted to solve the puzzle of his friend's departure from the game by playing through every possible game. "When I was much younger, I might have tried that." When he'd been much younger, he'd been the observant, intelligent Loki who never stopped thinking and didn't understand why others didn't look at the world as a great puzzle to be solved in increments. He'd still been fairly young when that Loki had gone silent, driven into hiding.

"The mystery lies in which variation you will discover. The variation is the point."