Saw the movie. Loved it. This story is the result.

A warning that I have read up on Norse mythology but I do intend to take artistic license with certain things, I'm sorry if that upsets anyone but I have a very specific plot in mind.

I do not own the Avengers or Thor.

Warnings: Mild violence.

That said, please enjoy and don't forget to review.

She would have been lying if she tried to claim that blood bothered her.

It was tremendously annoying at times, instances in which she was injured and the fluid would congeal and cling, slowing her movements. Or like now when ten lay at her feet and it was soaking up through her boot and the markedly fluid noise it made when she moved was a hindrance because she decidedly did not want to be caught here.

But she didn't fear it, not in the slightest, it ran through the veins of all living things and if she opened her senses enough she could read the truth of who her victim was when she spilt it. Perhaps a lady ought not to think of such things but all the things a lady was meant to think of had been stripped from her life and now she thought what a killer should think of instead. They had been right about one thing, she would not have been suited to a life of polite smiles, violence was in her nature.

This sudden sympathy however, was not. She asked herself again why she had come, she had managed to avoid him for nearly three centuries as of the next month, though she did not keep track. Yet the moment she had caught wind of what had happened to her once home world and then again on Earth she could not stop herself returning to see if the rumors were true.

She hadn't actively decided to come see him per say, after laying low in a dilapidated guest house in a slum well away from the palace for roughly two weeks her source had finally come through for her and confirmed what her instincts had already told her. The whispers circulating the realms were not false, and he had been captured and placed in a cell deep beneath the Grand House of Odin, left to meditate on his crimes for the rest of conceivable eternity.

This was how she found herself creeping along the pathways of the dark catacombs hidden in the sea cliffs, sliding one foot before the other, balancing easily on the balls of her feet, she moved near soundlessly. Perhaps she ought to be grateful for the training the warriors here had given her but as with most things she felt nothing in regard to them. Except perhaps anger for locking him away like some common thief after everything they had done to him.

Another rare pang of guilt came at that thought, where it not for her he would not have fallen so far out of favor. Where once she hadn't known which stars to thank for the twist of fate that brought them together now she cursed his too accepting nature and whatever else lay within him that had made a prince have any interest in a lost alien with no planet to call home.

Loki, dear, naive Loki, though not as guileless as he had once been if what he had done to the humans was any indication. Many of the Asgardians thought him wicked and conniving, an incorrigible liar and perhaps he was, but the boy she had known was not possessed of any malice, only humor and a fascination with the workings of the mind. "Tell me what you are thinking?", he would ask her and his curiosity was so genuine that any silence she had sworn to herself would break, she often revealed things she had yet to admit to herself. A substantial feat alone, considering how rarely she had spoken during her time in the eternal realm. She spoke even less at present, but now she had no confidant so she had no cause to.

Her fists clenched inside her dark gloves, her emotions, which she normally held at bay so well that many had accused her of not having any, were rising, but she couldn't stop it. She never could where he was concerned. Him and his damned hope, it was infectious and there had been a time when she couldn't help but believe, but now…

Now she knew hope was poison.

She drew a deep breath and forced her mind to go blank. That was all in the past now, she had come with a purpose. She may not have been particularly compassionate but leaving him to rot was one of the few things she could not tolerate having on her conscience, particularly not when it was this easy to do what her remaining shred of morality begged her to. It was simple really, his freedom and they would be even for the sacrifice he had once made on her behalf.

She would not speak to him either, after all that had passed between them mere words would be insufficient to convey whatever should have been expressed, it was a gap to wide to be bridged. He need not know she had come, need not even see her. He would only know that there was at least one who did not believe he should be sealed away in the dark.

The bourgeois people in the palace overhead and all of their loyal subjects thought him dangerous. Given their way they would entomb him below the earth and forget him and his imperfection and keep utopia before their eyes. What was one more life destroyed to them? One more broken man? One more ugly secret? Asgard was full of them. She had come to understand that the people of this world would sacrifice anything to preserve what they perceived to be a paradise, if only one must suffer for the good of all then it was merely a sad casualty.

Unfortunately for them she had stopped caring about what they wanted a long time ago. There was only the mission and then she would go to Midgard and try to find some way to occupy herself. She had heard there were always factions on that world who would pay handsomely for a mercenary and she could use the distraction.

It was odd how she had no true sense of where his cell might actually reside and yet her path was sure and clear to her as day despite the ceaseless twisting and turning of the tunnels. They had always been able to do that, she could find him blindfold and she had wondered if time and distance would erase that eerily innate sense. Or any of it for that matter the sadness, the pain, or the memories. Now she had her answer.

Nothing had changed

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