Author's Notes

Song Lyrics from ONE OK ROCK - When I Was King
/watch?v=egS3MP2Q_sU&list=PLb-h0TgZRJZpYbnvq7gW1FBvsBMdCI_mZ&index=5

Additional Song: Selena Gomez - Camouflage
/watch?v=2NSLx5-9uW0&list=PLb-h0TgZRJZpYbnvq7gW1FBvsBMdCI_mZ&index=7

Whole Playlist:
/playlist?list=PLb-h0TgZRJZooJ-TPIjxWEFoYEnXi2vcl

Soon after they were on their way back to… somewhere. Luciana didn't know where the small plane was taking them, but she was sure that it had to be their homebase or something like that.
Having watched the pathetic display of powers between the three men come to an end, Natasha had ushered them to board the aircraft. After that, they had gone to collect Loki on top of some mountain. He had just been sitting there, as if he was waiting for them. Luciana had found it strange, after all it had been the chance to make his escape. Yet he hadn't attempted anything. The brunette got the foreboding feeling that he was planning something and not knowing what it was filled her with unease. However, right now she wasn't in the position to voice her suspicion as she had decided to disguise herself earlier.

"Say, Nat. You don't suppose there is, perchance, some kind of spare uniform of some sort on this plane, do you?"
"What?"
"Well, uhm… I don't think it would help the current situation if they all got to know of my presence right now. This plane is rather small, so I doubt it would withstand…"
"On the right side under the seats."

Now she was sitting where Natasha had before, on the co-pilot's seat, stubbornly staring up front as she tried to keep herself from engaging in the conversation that had arisen in the back.
"So, what's the plan now?" the tall blonde man in a strangely colored and very tight suit asked, to which the other man that had been engaged in a fight with Thor earlier responded with a scoff. "The plan? Well, we're gonna bring reindeer games here back to the ship. And then he'll be eyepatch's problem."
"My brother needs to be put in confinement, otherwise he might try something."
For a second they all turned to look at Loki who was putting on an innocent smile.
"Don't worry. Director Fury will know how to handle your brother."
"For your own good, I hope you're right, my striped friend."

The man in the weird red metal suit turned his head towards the front. "On another note… Were there always two soldiers flying this plane?"
Luciana took in a quiet breath at his words. But luckily Natasha was quick to jump in.
"Wow, Stark. You really pay attention to people other than yourself. Yes, there were. Obviously."
"Hey, I always pay close attention to everyone around me!" he retorted, sounding offended. However it seemed none of his companions were willing to believe his words.
"Yeah, sure you are."
"Captain, please. You can ask Pepper! She will vouch for me!"
"I'm sure she will. Why don't I ask salt too while I'm at it."
The man called Stark blinked at the blonde's sad attempt at humor. "That's a very bad joke… No. Agent Romanoff, no, don't you dare laugh at this."

Luciana smiled to herself at their banter, feeling slightly relieved that she seemed to be safe for the time being. Or at least she thought so.
"Oh, by the way, you guys haven't seen someone else dressed like me perchance? You see, I came here with a companion, but it seems we got seperated on our way here." the God of Thunder asked with hopeful eyes. However, he was soon disappointed.
"Nope."
"No, sorry."
"Can't say I have. I would remember another guy in a Dungeons & Dragons outfit."
Albeit the humans didn't seem to be able to offer any help to him, his question had picked the interest of their prisoner, who had only been watching them so far, staying uncharacteristically quiet until now. A sly smirk on his lips, he tilted his head before addressing the fellow Asgardian in an amused tone. "Who did you bring along brother? Is it Sif? Oh, I'm sure she would love to strangle me for all the times I-"
"SHUT UP. " They all shouted in unison, effectively silencing a clearly offended Loki.

Something to live for make it our nights
(Shut down the sirens in our heads)

Luciana's eyes widened in awe as she caught sight of SHIELD's massive flying ship for the first time. She hadn't expected to see such advanced technology on Midgard and clearly the two brothers hadn't either. While Thor laughed heartily as he voiced his impression, Loki tried to hide it behind a snide remark. As soon as they had set foot on the ground, a legion of SHIELD soldiers dragged the now captive God of Mischief away. As she later found herself on the huge navigating bridge of the aircraft, Luciana watched on a monitor as he was put in some kind of metal-glass cage by a black man with an eyepatch. From the previous conversations she figured that he had to be Director Fury, the man in charge. They all watched the conversation between the two and Luciana couldn't help but sigh at what she heard. This is just crazy, she thought to herself. She had been sure that Loki had realized his wrongs on the Bifrost that day. Oh, how wrong she had been. It seemed like he had become even worse than before. What on earth had happened to him in the time after his fall? Luciana needed to know.

"He really grows on you, doesn't he?" the man, whose name she had learned was Dr. Bruce Banner, exclaimed with a wry laugh.
"Let me talk to him."
All eyes in the room suddenly snapped to her as Luciana took a step forward, away from the wall she had been leaning against.
"Now, who are you again?" the dark-haired man asked, only to be enlightened by Thor, who screamed her name the moment his eyes fell on her figure. "Lucy!"
"Lucy!?"
"She's the companion that came with me!"
"Wasn't she the co-pilot on our plane earlier?" the man who was called Steve Rogers wondered.
"See! I knew there weren't two soldiers!"
Natasha, Steve and Dr. Banner all sighed.

"God, Lucy, I'm so glad to see you! I didn't realize you were here the whole time! But what's with that outfit?"
"What? Oh, yeah. One sec."
The young woman snapped her fingers once and with the sound she was engulfed in a soft golden glow. And soon the borrowed soldier's uniform was replaced by her deep red Asgardian dress-up.
"Wow. How did she do that?" Dr. Banner exclaimed in wonder. He seemed to be very intrigued as he stepped a bit closer.
"Oh, every Asgardian can do that. It's nothing special."
"Nothing special…"
"Oh, and we don't actually have to snap our fingers." the God of Thunder continued his explanation "Lucy just likes to do this. You know, for dramatic effect."
Tony rolled his eyes. "Oh, great. Another drama queen. It's not like we already got one in our princess glass cage."

"Now what the hell!? Another one!?"

Director Fury's voice echoed behind the group, immediately drawing everyone's attention. He had returned from his short interrogation and had clearly not expected a third stranger in weird clothing on his ship. Thor and Lucy took this as their queue to finally explain their reason for coming to Earth to the group of humans.

"Ok, just to clarify whether I got this right. You two were sent here by Odin to retrieve the lost princess in our cage along with the Tesseract."
"Yes."
"Yep."
He paused before pointing at Luciana. "And the missy here now wants to talk to Loki because she thinks he might tell her something about where he's hiding the artifact."
"I'm not a missy. But yes, that's the gist of it."
"Yeah, no. Not happening." the Director scoffed, crossing his arms.
"What!?"
"You really think I would let goth party's-
"Girlfriend."
"Thank you, Mr. Stark, but I can talk for myself."
"I'm not his girlfriend!" she protested.
The man raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, what are you then?"
"I'm their childhood friend."
It was Natasha who spoke up now. "You grew up along those two?"
"Yeah."
"My condolences."
"It must have been hard."
"I'm sorry you had such a harsh childhood." Steve and Dr. Banner chimned in, drawing a slightly offended huff from Thor.

The Director sighed, clearly irritated by the whole situation.
"Look, Missy-"
"Lucy."
"Fine, Lucy. Do you know what your friend did in Germany before we caught him?"
Fury fiddled a few moments with the buttons of the machine he stood in front of and soon the monitor displayed a video footage of what had transpired in Stuttgart a few mere hours ago. Luciana watched it intently, not able to hide her shock and discomfort with what was being shown to her. By the time the video had ended a serious and somewhat sad expression was displayed on her face. She took a deep breath and tried to lighten the clearly dampened mood with the weak attempt of a joke. "W-well, at least you can't fault him for his choice of clothing. That was a nice suit."
For a moment only silence followed. Until Tony decided to open his mouth.

"Are we sure she's not his girlfriend? She just saw a man's eyeball getting gushed out and all this chick's commenting on is how hot reindeer game's suit-"
"Shut it, Tin Man!" the brunette hissed.
Tony tried to retort something. But although he was clearly moving his mouth no words seemed to come out. In fact, not only words, he couldn't seem to make any sound at all. The other's stared at the muted man in momentary shock. It was Natasha who spoke up first in awe. "Did- Did you just silence him?"
Luciana only shrugged as if to say "No big deal." Clearly intrigued, Dr. Banner walked over to the muted man who was getting more and more frustrated by the second. "Fascinating! What did you do to him?"
Suddenly Thor's hearty laugh filled the room. "Oh, those are her powers. You know, Lucy can freely manipulate sound. That's why she's earned herself the honorable title of Lady Echo on Asgard. You should see her imitations of-"
"Thooooor~" the brunette sang in an icy voice.
"And that's my cue to shut up."
"Nick, can we keep her?"
A furious but still silent Tony crossed his arms repeatedly in an X to make clear how repelled he was by Natasha's idea.

The man with the eyepatch let out yet another sigh, before crossing his arms. "Fine. You can talk to him." It seemed her display had left an impression on him, leading him to change his mind.
"Thank you!"
"But- If anything goes wrong you better be ready to face the consequences. And they won't be pleasant, you got me?"
Luciana nodded.
"Also, I have a question for you."
"Sure, ask whatever you wish."
"You clearly trained the L'oreal model here quite well." he began, pointing at Thor. "What happened with the goth princess? Training gone wrong?"
A bit surprised by the question, Luciana chuckled before she gave her answer with a wry smile. "Well, Director. Training a golden retriever is easy. But have you ever tried and succeeded in training a cat the same way?"
"Heh. I suppose you have a point."

When am I, when am I gonna move on?

While she had already seen the huge cage on the screens on the bridge, seeing it from up close was an entirely different thing. Although it was certainly awe inspiring, Luciana also got the feeling like she had just entered a zoo that was presenting its rarest animal.

Standing at the top of the small metal stairs, Director Fury addressed her.
"Well, here you are. I'll leave you two to it, but remember we're watching, so don't try anything weird."
Not even waiting for her confirmation he turned to leave, but stopped in his tracks after a few steps. "Ah, yeah, to get back just use that elevator down there."
Luciana glanced in the direction the man had pointed to and when she looked back he was gone. Feeling a knot form in her stomach, she gulped. Although it had been her wish, now that she was here she dreaded what lay in front of her. It took all her willpower to take the steps down the stairs towards the cage and not just dart straight to the elevator to run back to the bridge where everyone else was.

Loki had his back to her as he stared through the glass outside, seemingly at nothing. While she could see his reflection in it, Luciana couldn't make out his facial expression. Otherwise, she would have seen how his eyes widened ever so slightly as he caught sight of her reflected image. However, he didn't move an inch and Luciana wasn't sure whether he had noticed her presence at all. She was now standing right in front of the glass, her throat dry. Her voice sounded strained and more emotional than she liked as the words escaped her lips.

"You're really alive…"

A few seconds passed before the man in the cage finally turned around to look at her. Luciana didn't know what she had expected him to look like, but it certainly hadn't been the malicious and derisive smile he had on his lips now.
"Lucy…" as he spoke her name he took a few steps towards her, a mocking laugh escaping him. "My dear Lucy… I didn't expect them to send you of all people. Did you come here with my brother? Odin must have really overexerted his powers sending two people to Midgard like that."

She didn't say anything. She just stared at him, a multitude of emotions running through her. Sadness, relief, anger…
"My what's with that look? Don't tell me you really thought I was dead? Oh, it pains me that you have that little faith in m-"
"Of course I did!" Luciana screamed, causing Loki to involuntarily flinch in surprise. "Of course I did…" she went on, in a much quieter tone than her outburst a second ago. "After all, you promised me… You promised me you would return! So, when Thor and the Allfather returned, alone, telling me you had fallen I… Of course, I believed you were dead!"

Uncharacteristically for him, the God of Mischief stayed silent, seemingly at a loss for words. Or maybe he just chose not to say anything. Luciana didn't know. However she couldn't keep quiet. She was too overwhelmed by her emotions.
"I thought you were gone… But instead- In reality you just broke your promise!"
That drew a wry laugh from him. "My promise? Don't tell me you really chose to believe my words on the bridge. You saw me lie time and time again. Have I not tricked you countless times when we were children?"
"Yes. You did. But those were all fun and games. Just little plays of mischief. But when things came down you always stayed true to your words. At least with me. You never once broke a promise you had made to me. So, tell me, how was I to expect you to betray your words this way now?"
After a moment of silence he laughed again, albeit it had a somewhat sad ring to it this time. "My Lucy, I hadn't thought you to be that naive. Did my brother's stupidity rub off on you?"

Luciana couldn't believe what she was hearing. Here she was, spilling her heart out to him, and all she got was his mockery. Fine then. If that's how it was gonna be then…
The brunette gulped and took a deep breath, blinking a few times to stop the tears that had begun to form in her eyes from running. "What are you doing here Loki? What is all this I'm gonna rule over all humans crap?"
"Aaaaah, there it is. I was wondering when you would start with this." he laughed.
"With what?"
"Questioning me, obviously. That's the reason they send you here after all. You're here to find out my reasons, my goals - possibly how I intend to achieve them. And of course you are to obtain the location of the Tesseract from me. Can't forget that now, can we?"
The brunette blinked. "That's-"
"Lucy, Lucy, that's quite the hidden agenda you have there. Maybe you're not that naive after all. Ooooh, maybe you also thought about applying to my conscience? My humanity? Yeah, that won't work." As if he had just realized that he had said something incredibly funny, Loki roared with mocking laughter. Luciana only watched in silent terror, wondering where the man she had once called her friend had disappeared to. Maybe he had gotten replaced by who or whatever was now residing inside his body. Of course she knew that that was just her own wishful thinking.
"Why not?"

For a while her question received no reaction and for a second the brunette wondered whether he had even heard her speak up over the sound of his own laugh. But suddenly he stopped, so abruptly that one had to wonder whether the last thirty seconds had even happened.
"Why not… Why not, you ask!?" he mumbled at first, but it quickly turned into an angry growl. And a second later Luciana felt her whole body wince in shock as Loki spun around and bashed his fist against the glass in between them.

"BECAUSE I WAS BORN FOR THIS!"

He spit in her face in a tone so vile, it made every muscle in her body freeze up. The sheer terror she felt involuntarily lead to her powers activating and suddenly every sound around her was gone. She could see that Loki was still talking, or probably more like hissing at her, however, she could only take guesses about the words leaving his mouth. But she imagined it was a similar speech like the one he had held in Stuttgart. By the time he was finished, his lips had turned into a cruel smile, seemingly happy with the frightened state his opposite was in.
That's when she saw it. The cloud in his eyes that normally shined in a clear crystal blue. A haze.
And she finally understood. That's what Odin's words to her had meant.
And with that realization the sounds returned to Luciana.

"Why so quiet all of a sudden Lucy? Cat got your tongue? Or are you scared~?"
"Wha-!?" she exclaimed at his taunt.
"Don't worry, I don't intend on hurting you. At least if you don't get in my way. After all, your presence always kept me entertained in the past. In fact-" The smug grin on his face became even wider. "Why don't I make you my queen after I'm done? Every king needs one after all. Say Lucy, how would you like it to rule over those pesky humans?"

That was it. Luciana had enough. Haze or not. The last few minutes had sent her on a rollercoaster of emotions and by the end of it what was left in her was a burning anger. Loki was fortunate that the thick wall of glass stood in between the two of them or else he would have found himself getting slapped across the face right about now. Instead he was only met with Luciana's pair of emerald green eyes that burned with rage as she stared straight at him, piercing him. Albeit she wanted to throw all kinds of insults at him, she managed to gulp them all down and only spat out one sentence with gritted teeth. But it contained all the venom she could muster.

"You're the worst."

Not waiting for his response, Luciana turned on her heels and headed straight for the elevator. As she slammed her hand on the button she could hear him calling after her. "I take it, you'll think about it."
With a ding the elevator announced its arrival and a moment later the doors opened, inviting her to step inside. In the small cabin the brunette pressed the upwards button, however, before the elevator closed its doors, she turned around and gave one last sad look towards the man in the glass cage. "I cried for you, you know?"
With that she was gone.

Back on the bridge she was met with the pitying looks of her new companions, or rather of Thor and Agent Coulson. Tony, Dr. Banner and Steve had seemingly wandered off somewhere. And Director Fury and Natasha just gave her a blank stare. Thor attempted to say something but at the notion of the brunette's hand he refrained from doing so.

Luciana slapped her own cheeks two times and took a deep breath. "Well, that didn't go as I intended it to. However, I got a plan. Nat, how good are your acting skills?"
Soon they all gathered around her as Luciana explained the details of her idea. None of them paid any attention to the camera footage of the metal prison any longer. Or else they would have seen Loki momentarily stumble while he held his head as if he was in pain.

Something to live for make it our nights
(Shut down the sirens in our heads)