The reviews and alerts and favorites and asjkjalkja you guys are amazing. Also, I noticed that you all miss Nanook - I made sure to mention him in this chapter, and he'll be appearing in the next.
Also, I'll go ahead and apologize for the end of this chapter now. No scrolling ahead, you cheaters.
Disclaimer: Only the OC, the rest is Marvel's.
New York was as settled as New York could be, and the only people milling around at one in the morning kept to themselves. Wynn and Loki strolled down the sidewalk in the old market district, scanning the area discreetly. It was another dead night; there was no action occurring in the city, no screams for help, no panicked calls from Stark tower telling them to haul ass to any certain location.
So they were left like they were for a majority of patrols - with discussion. At first, patrols with Loki had been the most awkward experiences of her life. She had done most of the talking (which, if she was being honest, bordered on babbling) while he had responded with grunts and "hmm"s and one-word answers.
Amazing how things changed with a huge amount of persistence and pleading.
"Wait, so there's nothing like cheesecake on Asgard? Which means you've never had cheesecake?" Wynn cried, as if this was a blasphemous revelation.
"If there's nothing like it, how would I have had it before?" Loki asked, raising one black brow.
"You're sassy today. First thing tomorrow, we're making a cheesecake."
He made a noncommittal noise, which Wynn interpreted as agreement. Sighing, she adjusted her machete sling and looked up at the sky.
"It smells like snow. Nanook'll be happy," she commented, mostly to herself, but Loki held a palm up to the sky and said, "You're correct."
Wynn raised her eyebrows at him, and said incredulously, "You can tell? That's awesome! I was just taking a stab at it, but okay."
He shot a sardonic smile at her, more a bearing of teeth than anything, and in the dull light of the streetlamp it looked creepy. When she told him this, he snorted.
"And here I thought I couldn't scare you off," he said dryly. Wynn shoved her hands deeper in the pocket of her jeans and tried not to shiver.
"I didn't actually say I was going anywhere, did I?"
When she didn't get a response, she kept on, "Damn, it's cold out here. I think I'll make Thor walk Nanook tomorrow morning. I'm pretty sure he's going to kidnap the poor thing anyway."
"The beast is almost as idiotic as my brother. It's not surprising that they get on so well."
"That was just insulting, Loki. Nanook isn't stupid."
The laugh that erupted from Loki's mouth came out of nowhere, and for a second they both seemed startled. But Wynn found that she rather liked his laugh when it wasn't being used for a sarcastic effect. Despite the fact that he looked like he wanted to snatch the laugh out of the air and stuff it back into his mouth, it made her feel like he actually enjoyed her company.
"By the way," she continued, "Did you guys not have pets on Asgard? Thor seems like he would've been the kind of kid to beg for a dog if they existed there."
"We had horses; riding was a large part of our pastime. More myself than Thor's. But no, animals were not kept for company."
"Huh." Wynn tried to imagine Loki atop a horse, actually enjoying himself. She admitted that it was a little tough to picture.
"I'd be so lonely if I didn't have Nanook," she said. The statement was painfully true, and she felt silly for admitting it so openly. Loki glanced at her, but if he thought her confession childish, it didn't show on his face.
"Do you not have friends? No men courting you?" he asked bluntly, and Wynn could feel her cheeks color at the last question.
"Not really. I've been involved with the military since I got out of high school, and even when I wasn't on-duty…it was tough for me to meet people. After the incident with S.H.I.E.L.D., any hope I had at a normal social life went out of the window anyway." She paused, weighing her next question, before asking, "What about you?"
The silence she received was not unanticipated in the least bit. Whenever she wandered into the subject of his personal life, she could feel him clam up. It felt perverse to know all that she knew about his past, but none of how it had made him feel; she had never heard his side of the story. She watched Loki grind his teeth for a second, deliberating.
"I was a prince and Thor's brother; therefore Thor's friends were mine through…association. Had I not possessed that status, I would have been disrespected even more than I already was when my brother was not around."
Oh. Ouch. She tried to keep the wince off her face at his words, because the guy had basically just owned up to being tolerated because of Thor, but not liked for his person. His pride must have been weeping.
"That must have been tough," Wynn said softly, and when he gave her a withering look, she shrugged. "Okay, shitty. It must have been super shitty. But if it makes you feel any better, I used to live next to this girl named Sharon Mills, and she and all her friends used to make fun of me, and one time they put a worm in my sandwich. Sure, I puked on her, but I haven't been able to look at peanut butter since then."
"Puked?"
"I vomited. Right in her stupid face. Pretty sure some of it got in her eye."
"That's…delightful."
Wynn laughed, "Anyway, I understand. You did sorcery and studied, I used to put Barbie heads on sticks and pretend I was the leader of a cannibal tribe. We would have gotten along great as kids. Rejects band together, you know."
Under the dull yellow cast of the streetlight, she could see one side of Loki's mouth quirk.
"We have near to an hour left," he said, deftly changing the subject. "We'll cover more ground if we go separate ways."
"If you wanted to get rid of me, you could've just asked," Wynn huffed, but before Loki could try and get defensive, she dimpled one cheek at him and broke away for the opposite street. "Kidding! Meet you back here. Don't blow anything up."
Not like he'd have a chance – Fury probably had a tracking device buried in Loki's knee or something. As they walked away from each other, his footsteps fading behind her, the city street suddenly seemed lonelier, and slightly eerie.
It was like a scene out of some low-budget horror movie – dumb girl walking home from work, hears heavy breathing behind her, breaks into sprint and simultaneously breaks both her ankle and her bra. Except this girl would send a blade through the creep's eye socket.
The thought comforted her, and Wynn huddled farther down into her pea coat. Sighing, she admired the wisps of her breath hanging in the air. It would be a long hour, now that she was alone. She continued down the street, trying to be overly aware of everything around her despite the odd feeling of emptiness that Loki had left at her side.
1:45. Fifteen more minutes, and she could head back to the curb where Loki had left her, go back to Stark tower, and sleep. Beautiful sleep. It lured her to walk a bit faster.
Maybe it was her focus on the idea of sleep, or how she'd tell Loki about the drunken homeless guy she had run into, but her reaction was delayed when she heard the garbage can clatter to the ground.
Normally, her reflex would have been killer fast, but she actually stiffened before turning, knees already folding into a crouch. Her hands had lifted automatically, ready to pull her machete from its sheath. Wynn's eyes followed the rolling garbage can across the street, spilling its greasy contents as it went.
She took a mental inventory – dilapidated apartment buildings, not many tenants, two cars parked on the side of the street. Metal garbage cans lined down the sidewalk, a few free bags loitering at doorsteps. The neighborhood was quiet, not upheld well, perfect for a raccoon or big rat. A big, big rat that could push a whole garbage can over.
Right.
Her knees relaxed a little, but her hand never lowered. Wynn waited though maybe three minutes of silence before she let it rest back at her side, and her heart began to beat a little bit slower. False alarm.
And then the figure stepped into the light of the street lamp, a little less than thirty feet away.
From where Wynn stood, she couldn't identify exact features, but the form was most definitely female, and tall. Wynn wanted to call out, take a step forward, but for some reason her body propelled her backwards, away from the person. It took her by surprise – she never retreated, but something in her instinct drove her back. The figure took a corresponding step forward, out of the light.
The woman was only a shadow then, and too dark to gauge any movement. Wynn snapped her hand up to grab the hilt of her machete. Suddenly, the small blue Toyota that had been resting by the light exploded into the air and came careening toward her in a shower of sparks and screeching metal. All of the muscles bunched in Wynn's body as she dove to the side, out of the street and onto the sidewalk.
The car flipped past her, already a bunch of twisted steel, and came to rest in a mass of smoke. Wynn, having fallen to her side, scrambled up and immediately sidestepped back into the street to maximize her room. It only took a second before something else was flying at her – another trash can, aimed at her head. She tucked at the waist and felt the air compress over her as the object hurdled past.
'Identify the enemy, you idiot!' She screamed at herself, and made her eyes flit to all mass components of her surroundings. There, the woman – closing in, twenty feet away. Wynn could see now that she was extremely tall, slender, wearing a tunic made of metal and boots as high as mid-thigh. In her hand, she grasped the top of a trash can, and the first thought that flickered through Wynn's mind was a loud explicative.
Her body seemed to know what was coming next, but was just a second too slow – she ducked, but not before the woman hurled the top like a Frisbee. It careened into Wynn's head, and the reaction was immediate. She went down hard, vision exploding into white; she could feel the thin skin of her temple and cheekbone split open.
The pavement was the only thing she could grasp as the sky spun over her head, wide brown eyes unable to focus. Her training was engrained – she instantly began scrabbling away, attempting to both create distance and get herself to her feet. But each time she tried to heave herself up, she faltered and fell back down.
Just as her line of sight began to realign and she had gotten herself halfway up, a solid boot uppercut into her ribs and sent her belly-down on the cold pavement. She tried to gasp, to re-inflate her lungs, but the pain in her left knee left her breathless. The woman was bearing all of her weight down into the back of Wynn's knee, crunching it, so that if Wynn tried to get up and run she'd have to rip her own leg off.
"I'm somewhat impressed," a voice rasped, the sound both guttural and purely feminine. The accent was one she couldn't indentify, even through ears that felt like they were clogged with cotton.
"Most mortals would have been dead already. I will remedy that. You will serve as a warning to those pretending to be heroes."
What she felt next made her mind go blank with pure terror. All thought ceased as she the weight of her pistol lifted from her hip.
Wynn had been scared before, near death, but these panics were sudden and abrupt. In the explosion, the tests Fury had sent her through, being shot at or snuck up on – there was no time to think. But now, lying on her stomach in an empty New York street, feeling her own blood seep around her head in a halo, she could feel nothing but the thrum of her pulse.
It was an execution.
