"Make sure you turn it on when you place it."

"I'm not dense, Jane."

"And… and don't forget to calibrate it."

"I know, Jane."

"Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?"

"Jane," Darcy Lewis closed the back door to the van that she had just finished packing up and turned to face her friend, "It's fine. Go take a nap or something. You really need it."

"I know," Jane admitted, "but this is really important."

"I know it's important, and I know how to do it. Just go sleep." Darcy walked around the car and hopped up into the driver's seat. Jane crossed her arms angrily as she started up the car.

"I'll be back in like two hours. You better be asleep when I get back." Darcy called back through the open window.

"Yeah, yeah. Just go," Jane said bitterly.

With that, Darcy pulled out of the garage/lab and out onto the main road of Puente Antiguo and headed out into the New Mexico desert.

The beginning of her journey consisted of a fairly major detour; just a few days before, the hot crazy homeless guy that Darcy had tasered turned out to be some kind of god and had a big fight that destroyed the main stretch of town. Half the town had been left homeless or unemployed, but that shifty government group that had stolen all of their equipment had compensated everybody affected. It was nice of them, but Darcy was still a little suspicious. That Coulson dude had been a little too underwhelmed when he found out Thor was who he was.

Speaking of Mr. Hot-Crazy-Homeless Guy, he was the reason she was heading out into the desert at ten o'clock at night with assorted science equipment. Jane had gotten a little frisky with him, or at least wished she had, and now their new mission was to find a way to reopen the Einstein-Rosen Bridge to his neck of the woods. It was crazytown, but that's life. As of three days ago, this was her job, paid for entirely by earlier mentioned shady government group SHIELD. Darcy had all but dropped out of college at this point; what good was a degree in political science when one already had a high-paying career as an astrophysicist/god-searcher?

Another thing fairly new in her life was the fact that one of her employers/friends had left town with SHIELD. Erik Selvig, the scientist who had been working with Jane Foster, had gone to New York to visit a friend of his, and then would have a full-time job with SHIELD once his security checked out. Apparently working for SHIELD as more than a consultant required like nine months of background checks and that sort of thing. A little obsessive, but they were a security organization after all.

Jane was lucky. Kind of. She had found herself a man who really liked her, maybe even loved her. Thor seemed like the faithful type. However, she'd only known him for like five days and then he had to go off to fight his brother or something like that. Putting family first. What a douche.

When Darcy reached the site, she couldn't help noticing the weather. Perfectly clear, just like it had been since Thor had left. Jane had been hoping for a storm ever since the clouds first cleared, but no dice.

Darcy slowed the van down and moved to turn off the radio, but as soon as her eyes glanced down, she felt and heard a loud thud. As her eyes jerked back to the road and her foot slammed on the break, she had just enough time to see something being thrown away from the car.

"Oh my god!" Darcy exclaimed, attempting to regain her bearings. As the dust around the van cleared, she grabbed her taser from her bag just in case and hopped out of the car.

The thing she had appeared to hit (there was nothing else around) was laying ten feet away from the car. Her stomach fell when she saw it was a person.

"Not again," she muttered as she ran over to the person, who appeared to be a man. I should probably retake my driver's test, as much as I've been hitting people recently. Although, the first time was totally Jane's fault.

"Hey buddy, are you alright? I totally didn't hit you… legally. Well, that's up to debate. We can talk later." Upon further inspection, she noticed he was kind of really still. "Dude, are you even alive?"

The guy, a very attractive man who had the tall, dark, and handsome thing going on, was definitely breathing. He was dressed kind of like how Thor had been when they first found him, except instead of red under the collar this guy had green.

Darcy bent down to get a closer look. She reached out to him hesitantly. When she made contact with his arms, he snapped awake and sprung away from her, causing her to fall backward on her ass. When she looked up at him, he was leaning up and staring at her with wide eyes, his arm up, almost as if he were ready to cover his face from something.

"Where am I, mortal? I command you to tell me where this is."

"Mortal? That's no way to attract the ladies, dude. Not that you'd really need to try. Just saying, you're pretty smokin'. But this is New Mexico. Are you like an illegal immigrant or something?" She would play dumb about Thor's people until she knew this guy was from there. The last thing she needed was this guy thinking she was nuts, talking about gods and warriors and the like.

"I am of Asgard," he said passively, standing up. He began walking around and looking up at the sky. Darcy stood as well and began following him around, looking up at whatever he was looking at. He was obviously from Asgard; he just got thrown ten feet from being hit by a car, and now he's walking around. He's either from Asgard or on some serious drugs.

"Asgard? Like Thor? Oh god, are you Thor? Did your weird brother dude morph you into like a super-hot Snape?"

"I am Thor's weird brother dude," the man spat. "And I do not understand why you keep referencing descriptions of temperature."

"What? Oh, yeah. Hot and smoking are complements. It means you're attractive and physically desirable. I don't know why I'm saying this to you or calling you hot, though. Over-sharing I guess. I tend do that. Rambling as well. Also: you're Thor's brother, Loki, right?"

"I thought I was," Loki muttered bitterly.

"So you sent that thing that destroyed the town?" she asked blankly, ignoring his comment.

Loki's expression almost looked pained. "Yes." He paused. "It was… necessary."

"Hmm. I bet it was. It was severely not cool, but I guess you had your reasons. None of my business."

Loki cocked an eyebrow. "I destroyed part of your realm, threatening your life, and you say it is 'none of your business?'"

"You were just having a little domestic issue with your brother. It's understandable. If Thor were my brother, I'd probably have some fights with him too. Dude's nice, but he seems a little thick."

"You would not be wrong," Loki actually smiled. "Are you not frightened?"

"Should I be?" she asked.

"I am not of your realm."

"Neither was Thor. Neither were those four weirdos who were here earlier. You're nothing new," Loki looked somewhat amused with her at this point, and that did not get past her. "So," Darcy walked over to the back of the van. "Will you help me with this?"

"Excuse me?"

"I said, will you help me with this? It's heavy and I was going to have to move it by myself and now I don't have to."

Darcy watched as Loki walked unsurely over to her and peered inside the vehicle. The instrument was about three feet in height and was about as heavy as Darcy herself was. Pushing past her, Loki easily picked it up and turned to face her.

"Does its specific placement matter?"

"Anywhere's fine."

Loki took a few steps back and lightly put the equipment down.

"What is its purpose?" he asked, looking curious.

"Well, it's to read something," she announced proudly as she got to work calibrating it.

"To read something." Loki repeated dryly. "Anything specific, or just whatever passes by?"

"Well, I'm not too in to the specifics of the science portion of the job. That's what Jane and Erik do. Well, what Jane does and Erik did. He left. But Jane's still around. Sorry, over-sharing again."

"Jane?" he asked suddenly, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, Jane. She's much better at the physics and whatnot. I only took the job because someone told me that it was a Jack Foster that led this and that he's really hot but then it turned out to be Jane and she's a foxy lady but I don't swing that way. Nothing wrong at all with those who do, but that's just not me—"

Loki had stopped listening early on into her ramblings, and she could see that. She drifted off and eventually just looked at him, biting her lip. He was contemplating something, something that was obviously difficult for him.

"So, can I give you a ride into town? Do you have any kind of plan for what you're going to do here?"

"What is your name?" Loki asked suddenly, looking at her as if he just saw her.

"Darcy," she said somewhat proudly.

"Darcy? That is an odd name."

"Says Loki," she scoffed, crossing her arms. "There's no way 'Darcy' is weirder than 'Loki.'"

"Touché," Loki said, smiling again. His smile was kind of creepy in a beautiful way, if that made any sense. His Cheshire cat grin didn't make it to his eyes, though; Darcy noted that he had a lost puppy look going on, somewhat breaking her heart. Something bad had just happened to him. Well, he's the bad guy. That's good. Wait— he's the bad guy. I'm in the middle of nowhere with a guy who pretty much just tried to kill me and the entire town. This isn't frightening me as it probably should be.

"Well, I think I'm gonna get going," she said, backing away from him toward the driver's side of the van.

"Is your generous offer still up?" he asked, smiling politely now.

Darcy bit her lip. "Yeah, sure. What the hell."

"No, Loki."

That's all it had taken his father to say to let Loki know he had failed.

His brother had yelled something after that, but it was not of consequence to him. All of Loki's efforts and attempts to prove himself a worthy son to the Allfather had been shot down with just two simple words.

The immense suffocation of the moment had overwhelmed him to say the least. Loki was always so talented with words. Silvertongue, they called him. His father had silenced with two words.

It had not been death that Loki had been looking for when he let go of the staff his brother was holding; it had been freedom. Whatever form it took, Loki would embrace it with open arms. Anything to not face the shame he felt when he looked at his father, the guilt that would destroy him if he were to see his mother, or the jealousy that still burned when he looked into Thor's eyes, even as they hung from the bridge.

Loki had fallen for what seemed like eternity until he could bear it no longer. Though his powers and abilities were great, it would be difficult transporting himself somewhere without any resources and while he was moving so quickly through space. It would leave him weak and unable to use magic, but that wasn't important to him. He didn't care if he ended up in a volcano in Muspelheim or in front of an enraged crowd of the dark elves of Svartalfheim; he just needed to stop falling. He told himself to transport somewhere, anywhere in the Nine Realms. At the last second, though, he had thought of Thor and his banishment, and now Loki found himself at the exact location Thor had found himself when he fell after being banished: a fairly pleasant location in Midgard, the mortal realm.

Loki hadn't even had enough time to take in his surroundings before a large metal machine struck him with great force and sent him flying back, skidding across the ground on his back.