Fortunately- or perhaps not- Fate intervened a week after she discovered that they could not.

He appeared in her office at his usual time, but she wasn't there. "Gwen?" he called out, to no avail. It wasn't late, so he went downstairs to look for her first.

"Have you seen Mouse?" he asked James and the second-in-command, who were the only two in the kitchen.

"Thought she was in her office," the latter said. "Why?"

"She's not," he told them shortly, a molecule of worry appearing in his chest. It was an unfamiliar and unpleasant sensation which only seemed to occur nowadays because of the pink-haired girl.

"D'you want me to help you look for her, sir?"

"No," he said, and ran back upstairs and through to her bedroom. It wasn't until he saw Algernon untended on the bedside table that he truly began to panic.

"Where is she?" he asked the mouse, which continued to live its blissfully ignorant rodent life and completely ignored him.

He turned away from the animal and approached the door silently, seeing it was slightly ajar. "Gwen?" he said again, much softer this time, and although there was no response he could just hear weak, shallow breathing. He splayed a hand against the door, pushed it open, and stepped back again almost immediately.

The floor of the bathroom was covered in a dark pool of blood which appeared to be creeping up Gwen's bare legs in an attempt to claim her, staining the hem of the shirt she was wearing. The girl herself was unconscious, draped over the edge of the bath so her hands dangled limply inside it, with a bruise forming on her chin where she must have fallen and cracked it.

This time, it was Loki who thought he was going to be sick; every nerve in his body told him to flee from the scene, but it was the ghost of his mother's voice in his head telling him not to be such a coward that forced him to act in the opposite direction. He edged around the blood and scooped up her terrifyingly light body, feeling the still-warm blood seep through his sleeves as he kicked open the door and ran down the stairs to the basement kitchen.

Don't you dare leave me now, mouse, he thought, channelling the fear into rage. Rage was useful, he could achieve things with anger, but the fear only paralysed him.

A knee to the kitchen door and it swung open; James and the deputy, Bobby, jumped up out of their chairs. What am I supposed to tell them? How am I to make mortals understand a tragedy so colossal as this? He knew, of course, but it took every modicum of energy the anger gave him to force himself to enunciate the word.

"Help," he said simply.

%

Loki found himself in another bathroom, naked from the waist up and scrubbing desperately at the blood on his skin; her blood, the blood of a child that could kill easily its mother now, too. It had been so much of it. James had taken her away from him almost immediately, holding her far more gently than he ever could (the penalty of admitting she was equal to him was assuming she was equal to him- she wasn't, she was weak and he could, had broken her so easily) as Bobby went and found one of the Rats, who he vaguely recalled her saying to be some kind of Midgardian healer. He didn't know where they had taken her; nobody had thought to tell him. For once, Loki truly felt like the least important, least knowledgeable and least useful person in the room.

The blood was gone, his skin rubbed raw now. He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself - but he, a Frost Giant, would rather burn in Hel than put that red-soaked shirt back on. He pressed his back against the cool tiles on the wall and swore under his breath at himself. He had been selfish- the true reason he knew his kind had to stay away from Midgardians, the reason he had warned his brother away from Jane hours before his "death", was not because they were undeserved of them. It wasn't bigotry that made him disdainful of the species' weakness. No, it was the pain that their weaknesses created, for everyone involved. But he had been selfish, indulged himself, and almost killed her because of it. Maybe he actually had.

He couldn't stay in the room any longer- he wrenched the door open, then stopped dead as he saw something at his feet on the other side. It was a soft fabric jacket, neatly folded with the clean crisp lines only a valet could achieve.

"James," he murmured, picking it up and shrugging it on. Zipping it up to his neck he walked silently back up the corridor and ascended the stairs, headed towards her office. Sure enough, James was there, and leapt to his feet as he entered.

"Get out," Loki said quietly, and the boy hurried from the room. Seeing that he made an effect made him feel powerful, less useless- rage flared up again and he flung a heavy armchair left at her desk into the wall, where it shattered into dozens of wooden shards. He went to break something else, but then an old memory surfaced- one of Thor's countless tantrums from when they were younger, this one because he had not been crowned king, which had caused the prince to upend the entire banquet table. Remembering the disdain he had felt for his brother then, of his own perfect calmness, made Loki falter long enough to realise that destroying her office was not going to help matters.

Don't be a child, he thought, and sat on the floor in a corner. Hours passed, hours he spent biting down on his thumb and glaring at the wall opposite him, until finally Bobby emerged from the door beyond. A door he had been too scared to go beyond.

"Well?" he asked her without looking up.

"She lost it."

Loki closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and struggled to keep his emotions internal. "Mouse?"

"She'll be okay," she told him reluctantly, "but she's pretty shaken up. Give her a couple hours rest before you barge in, and try not to be a dick for once, yeah?"

"You're hardly a kindly soul yourself," he retorted, but she ignored him as she left the room. Loki realised he could not face going in there with the nurse still inside, so assumed a glamour of the fiery-haired woman who had just left before walking in.

Gwen was curled up on one side of the bed with Algernon in an identical position on the pillow next to her, both their eyes closed.

"Did you tell him?" the nurse asked whom she thought to be Bobby, and he nodded.

"The bastard left," he said in her voice, "get some rest, you look shattered."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah." She left the two of them alone, but Loki didn't drop the glamour just yet; he didn't want her to see him on the off chance she was awake, since he had run away from her after all.

One eye snapped open and stared at him through strands of pink. "Good morning, Vietnam," Gwen mumbled. "I know it's you, Loki."

He reverted back to his usual form, and Gwen dragged herself into a sitting position with a grimace. "I won't cry if you don't," she said. Her lips were blue.

"Deal."

Her mouth twitched. "You can come near me, you know. It's not contagious."

Her words removed the invisible barrier between them and he sat beside her, her narrow arm pressed against his much stronger one. She was clammy, like she had been out in the snow all day, but at least she was clean now. "Nice hoodie."

"I didn't choose it."

"Guessed that." She closed her eyes again, and he thought she might have fallen asleep had she not said, "I'm masking my pain with humour."

"That makes two of us." He linked his fingers with hers in an effort to bring some warmth into them, picking at a scab on her knuckle with his thumbnail. "Frigga would have been a good name."

"Told you so," she mumbled. "You okay?"

He looked away from her. "I'm fine," he lied, and did not for one second think that would fool her.

"Sure you are," she said, and kissed his shoulder. "Can you stay a while, please? Just until I fall asleep."

"You really think I'm so despicable as to leave you?" he asked, dropping her hand so he could slip his own around her narrow waist.

"I dunno," she whispered, "we're both pretty despicable people." She slumped against him and little by little began to relax, with her legs hooking around his and her eyes half-closed. As minutes past her breathing slowed but become no less shaky, with irregular pauses here and there, which led to him realising she was trying to match the rise and fall of his own chest.

"Mouse," he said in a low voice, "sleep."

"Can't," she mumbled, "feel too shit."

He didn't have the heart to quip back, instead pushing her hair back from her sweaty forehead and stroking her cheek gently until her eyes completely closed and her breathing found its own steady tempo. When he was sure she was too far into sleep to hear him, Loki began to sing the lullaby Frigga had for him and Thor when they were barely able to walk, hoping it would comfort himself as much as it would her.

"When your stars are fading, child,

I'll light the sky with candles,

I'll steal fire from the old king's hearth

To bring you light of day."

It reminded Loki of cold nights and heavy blankets, of the cold stone floors of the palace being left behind for the rugs and the warmth of the king's private rooms. Back then his nightmares had been the nonsensical things of a child's monster-under-the-bed fears. Now, he was the nightmare.

"When your walls are breaking, child,

I'll shelter you in my arms,

I'll snatch cloth from the old queen's stead

To keep you warm and gay."

His mother had always been there on the nights he woke up scared of the bad dreams, with a soft embrace and a softer voice that would make the tears dry almost immediately. She had known, even then, that he was Jotunn. And she had not told him - not because, like Odin, she thought he was more useful to her ignorant, but because she loved him.

"When your hands are shaking, child,

I'll hold your troubles for you,

I'll take swords from the prince's side

To fight the dark away."

And then there had been this, the lullaby, which would have inevitably woken Thor up too, and they would both sit at the hem of their mother's robes and listen with glossy eyes as she sung to them, chasing away the shadows and the nightmares, and back then it had all been so simple, and he had been Aesir, and barely even known Midgard existed, and he could have been king with his own face and his own voice instead of living the life of a man he hated.

"When your love is fading, child,

I will love for you instead,

I'll steal th'princess's heart for you

To send sweet words your way."

And if that had happened, he would never have ended up here, in this small Earth bedroom, singing the same lullaby to someone else he hated to love unconditionally. He would not have broken her like this.

And when the frost is coming, child,

I'll put my body 'fore yours

I'll fight the Jotunn curse for you

My darling, please just stay.

"My darling, please just stay."

Life would be so much easier if he could just succumb to the blue-skinned monster inside of him; as it was, he was having to pretend to be a good person on Asgard, and his conscience was forcing him to be so with the one person he thought he could be despicable around too. He played idly with Gwen's hair as he watched Algernon run around at the foot of the bed.

"If I did not love you," he said to the slumbering woman, "we would both be so much the better. I hope that you are aware of that."

%

Over the next few days it became apparent that something had shifted in both their relationship and himself; he felt older, and more intrinsically linked to Gwen. He could never turn his back on the girl, as much as it pained him. She had become his one, involuntary weakness.

"Really?" she said to him with a raised eyebrow when he happened to voice his thoughts aloud, "your one weakness? That apart from me, you're perfect?"

"Well," he said, "yes." He had expected a laugh, but all he got was a half-hearted smile.

That was a change in Gwen he didn't like. At first he had just thought the experience matured her somewhat, after a couple of weeks he noticed she was much quieter than usual, and often brushed him off with the excuse of work. He worried about her almost as much as he was annoyed at being rebuffed, by a Midgardian no less, so (in a very bad mood) he dragged her out to the first museum he could find in New York.

"I don't get it," she said, "why are you being nice to me?"

"You know why," Loki said, looking at the paintings hung on the wall instead of her. Asgardian infants can paint better than this.

"It's not – it's not going to fix everything. You know that, right? And you being nice is out of character."

"Me?" he asked, turning to face her. "I'm being out of character? You're the one who –" he caught himself mid-sentence, and had a rare twinge of guilt. "I did not…"

"Think?" Gwen asked coolly, folding her arms. "Yeah. I gathered that." She sighed, and dropped down onto a bench. "I used to kip in places like this, y'know. Back when I was a little runaway."

He took a seat next to her. "That must have been enjoyable."

"When you're so jacked up on drugs you don't really care that much, but… it was simpler, I guess. I liked that I could just start again, whenever I wanted. Anonymity's so easy, here. Change your name, change your hair, move district and you're a whole new person."

"Who was Marylou going to be?" he asked. "She was the first name you gave me. Before Gwen."

"Someone who was gonna try and fix you. Gwen figured that would probably be harder than if I was gonna do it to the average human," she said. "Gwen liked you, anyway. Marylou didn't."

"I was not particularly affable with Marylou, either."

That made Gwen laugh. It wasn't her usual snide snigger, but it was something. "I want to run away again," she said, "not… permanently. Just for a night or two. But I can't do that anymore, people'll recognize me. And don't even think about suggesting Asgard, posh boy. I've had enough of that place."

She had lost a lot of weight, recently, and the narrowness of her face made her look more like the little street rat that had tried to pickpocket him than she had done in over a year. She seemed weary, and old, and he needed to do something that would jolt her back into life. Already, he could feel an idea forming. "What about neutral territory?" he asked. "Hypothetically, of course. Assuming my shade of the Allfather could manage to keep an eye on my kingdom for an evening."

"Well," she said, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. "Hypothetically, it sounds great. I'm sure I could get Bobby to hypothetically babysit for me. Where is this place, then? Hypothetically?" She said the word like a commoner, pronouncing "th" like "f" and dropping the second T altogether. "Hyperfe-iklee." He shouldn't have liked it as much as he did.

"The hole to which all dregs of the universe fall," he told her, "it would involve some interstellar travel, I'm afraid."

"Oh," said Gwen, "goodee. Tell me about it."

"The galaxy's biggest black market, complete with its own museum." He saw her eyes light up. "I sent one of the Relics to be kept there."

"What's it called?"

"Knowhere."