A/N: Okay, so this was originally part of my Lokane drabble collection, The Science of Lies. The original request came from i-am-fire-nuts on tumblr, but positive feedback prompted me to expand the plotline into this little four chapter story. I did not ever intend to write a High School AU for Lokane, or at all (I have nothing against them, they're just not something I was ever previously interested in writing), but you know, life is full of surprises, right?

Each chapter will be posted as I edit them. I can't give a definitive time frame, other than that it will probably be no longer than a week before the whole thing is posted.

I hope you all enjoy!

She walks out of homeroom and opens her locker. That they're so close together is convenient for her, but not for him. Out the corner of his eye, Loki sees her exchange one stack of books for another. Where is that girl's bookbag, he wonders. She's so small, even without those books weighing her down, but like a true warrior, she carries them, back straight without a hint of struggle.

Loki has known Jane Foster for many years now. They first met in grade one, when he pushed her into the mud on picture day because she wouldn't stop talking about her new dress. Most of their encounters after that, from stealing her cookies at snack time, to sneaking a live frog into her backpack on the last day before summer break, had been much the same. Loki never stopped and asked himself why Jane Foster was his favorite target. He used to think it just another way to get Thor's goat, but Thor had stopped crushing on the studious girl around the time Sif moved in on the block. He never gave Jane Foster a second glance again, so Loki could only call it a force of habit. It helped that he would never get more than a week of detention for his jokes. As the smartest kid in school and the son of a wealthy businessman, it would be unwise on the school board's part to let him go.

Today is their first day of High School. In another four years, he would be off to the university of his choosing, after which he'd enter his father's company to assist in Thor's grooming as the future CEO, all the while putting things in place for his own eventual takeover. The world is an open book for him to explore at his leisure. He doesn't need this meager half-decade to know it's all at his fingertips. Jane Foster, for all the intelligence and drive she possesses, will never have a fraction of the opportunities he will, simply by virtue of being born to a middle class family, left an orphan, and raised by relatives who can barely feed themselves, much less her.

That fact used to make up the bulk of his taunts, until Jane Foster learned to dry her tears and take them in stride. He'll have to come up with something else.

Loki had been thinking about that off and on all summer, in between avoiding Thor's room while he and Sif ate each other's faces off, and having evening tea with his mother over the fireplace.

This is the first time Loki has seen Jane Foster since the frog incident. All thoughts of how he will push her down this year are gone, and for the life of him, he can't understand it.

It can't be because of how different she looks. She's prettier that she was for sure, on the cusp of womanhood and showing it in all the right places. Her hair is more tame than it's ever been. A few inches less and a little mousse has done wonders for her. She may have some makeup on as well, or that could be her natural shine, and he's just never noticed it before.

Other than that, she hasn't changed much. She has the same frumpy plaid and faded jeans. Her new backpack, which he can now see shoved into the corner of her locker, is a carbon copy of her old one. It's like she just shops at the same store every year and comes back with the same old things, like she has no concept of variety or change.

She closes her locker on the sack and on the pile of books she's left behind- many of which he'd wager aren't school related at all.

She turns around and stops dead in her tracks at the sight of him. Loki closes his fist around the strap of his bag.

She looks taller now. Taller than him even!

No, wait, she isn't. She hasn't grown an inch.

It's just that look she's given him, Loki is stunned to realize. It makes him feel five inches tall.

"What do you want?"

She slices at him like a snake, her venom burning through his sharp tongue and rendering him incapable of a comeback.

"I… nothing," he says in the end.

Jane Foster shakes her head and moves past him. She never looks back, no matter how hard Loki starts after her. Her hair swishes and waves over her shoulders, hypnotizing him.

He smells something in the air.

Is it lavender?

Did it come from her?

Loki can't say. He knows nothing except that he's going to be thinking about this all day, and probably every day until graduation; this result of a terrible mistake ten years in the making, that he can't undo even if he wanted to.