Not sure what to put here so, pleh.

"I want permission to work with Dr Banner." I announced as Loki took a sip of wine, probably not the best time to demand something from him.

He spat it out across the floor with a loud cough, staring up at me with huge green eyes; his lips twitched with amusement but continued to stay in their thin line. He put down the goblet and looked at me, the wine dripping from the corner of his mouth, before he flicked it away, was a deep red.

"I'm afraid; I cannot allow that arrangement, my dear. Perhaps another missionary task would be better suited as an outlet for you." He picked up the fork and balanced it, perfectly, before he began to carve into the food; his eyes not leaving mine as he picked up a delicate piece of chicken and put it in his mouth.

"It's been two weeks since I got here and since then I haven't asked you for anything, this is my first favour." I said, trying to keep the fork in my hand as he smirked at my actions. The cast let the metal slip from my grasp, my fingers unable to grip and my thumb unable to move. "And I did ask nicely."

"You demanded it like a child demands toys. How is that in any way, nice?" He said, sighing, wiping his mouth with a napkin as he leaned back; watching me.

"From me to you? It was very nice." Loki laughed at that; a nod was given and he smiled at me, not smirked. Smiled; it was even sweet, well, as sweet as Loki could be. It still had that smell of superiority and power.

"What work would you perform with Dr Banner?" He asked, pushing away the plate and clicking his fingers. A girl rushed across, the damp cloth she'd cleaned the floor with was tucked into her apron, grabbed the plate and scuttled away again, her head bowed low.

"Research into-."

"I have enough people, both academic and otherwise performing research for me, to what do I need you?" He interrupted, his eyes sifting back at me from Larson. I glanced at the French man and saw the way he was raising an eyebrow.

"If you would let me finish…" Loki waved his hand for me to continue. "Bruce has a very particular DNA structure, due to his exposure to the GAMMA radiation. He believes that he may hold a secret to combatting cancer, that's an illness of deformed cells that grow on the body-."

"I know of it. So, what? You hope to find the cure for it?"

"The opposite, I hope to find the route of it and then develop a way to make it a liveable disease. Like asthma or hay fever."

Loki looked at me, smirk returned as he leaned a leg over the side of the throne. But his eyes betrayed his cynical stance, he was interested in what I was saying, not only that but he believed me. This either meant that I was a better actress than I thought or he was really gullible. Or the third option, a voice whispered in my head, that he trusts you.

But I pushed that thought away; Loki was a madman that had usurped his throne from a vengeful people, that's why he always kept the sceptre at his side and why he always had Larson near him. He could trust no one. Good men had that luxury and Loki was far from being a good man.

"And you think that you can accomplish this task by working with the freak of nature?"

"Anything's possible if you just try." I snapped, glaring down at my food.

I hated the way that he talked about Bruce; yes, he was a freak of nature but it wasn't as if it was his fault. Whereas Loki might as well go around with a hat that said 'I'M A FREAK'. Oh, no, wait; he did.

But Bruce couldn't control what happened to him, what he did saved people's lives and saved his and now his was trying to turn around all the mistakes he'd made by helping people. Or at least he was. And, yet, Loki still treated him like dirt, despite Banner's intelligence over his and despite the way that he knew that the Hulk was the only thing that could really stop him.

"I admire that." He whispered, shocking us both. My head snapped up and I looked at him with a frown. He tried to back track but everyone in the room had heard what uttered.

He admired me? What was that meant to mean? I thought that I was nothing less than a human that he kept at his side and now he was saying that he admired me. I thought that the only reason I was here for was to scare the Avengers and to play with, not to be admired nor loved. Not that Loki loved me… He was incapable of that.

"I mean to say, that is a quality I wished more people possessed the ability to look defiance in the eye and continue with your duty. I appreciate that in you." He let out a loud sigh, flicking his hand and clearing the room till only Larson remained. "Very well, you may conduct your research with Dr Banner. But I want updated progress on how it is going, mind you. And there is to be a guard in the room with you."

"Fine, but I get to pick the guard." Loki nodded and watched as I stood up, pushing the still full plate of food away from me as I turned to walk away.

"Wait!"

I halted and stood there, still facing the door, my foot in the air ready to take another step to the door but Loki's voice had called me out, stopping me as I moved away from the room, moved away from Loki. I stared at the door begging it to open and for someone more important to rush in; for someone to force me to leave so that I could leave this room. I didn't want to be in here for any longer than I had to and now that I was done; so was my obligation. I should have run through the door and said that I didn't hear him. I should have feigned something like sleep deprivation. But I was really curious, so I turned around and faced him. Larson sticking to the side of the room as he watched.

"You have barely eaten anything." Loki said, looking at the plate of food and back up at me, a strange look on his face.

"I can't… I can't use my hand and I don't really use my other one but it's fine… I'm not hungry."

I turned away and was half way to the door when my bastard stomach betrayed me, rumbling loud enough to wake up everyone in the Helicarrier. I glared down at it as I heard him let out a laugh of amusement.

"It seems that you are. Come back, sit." He said, softly, urging me back to the seat at the corner of the table. I looked at it for a while before moving back across to the seat.

He smiled at me, pulling the plate over to him and taking his fork in his hand; it sat there, perfectly, in his perfectly aligned fingers. He was mocking me. He was doing this deliberately to show me just how much I was in the cusp of his hand; to show how reliant I was on him and how much I owed him. Well, once my hand was healed I owed him a punch.

He held up the fork and put it in front of my mouth, a piece of chicken dangling off of the edge, a smirk gracing his face for the first time in seconds. I imagined him even saying patronisingly 'Open the spaceship door or E.T. will die.' Well, fuck E.T.; he should have been on Orange anyway.

After thirty seconds of chilling silence, in which Larson looked on amused, Loki waited patiently (ha) and I just stared at him with my most riveted expression, the God finally sighed and put the fork down; looking at the food as he spoke, slowly. "I am trying to help you, Victoria, please let me."

"Sorry, I didn't want to aid a man that was patronising me." I spat back, my hard and impassive expression unwavering, even as he drew his head up to glare at me.

"Must you be so stubborn?"

"Must you be so evil?"

Loki let out a shaky breath, his eyes going down again and his hands trying to calm himself. I could see the clocks going in his head; most of them telling him to kill me but the rest were counting from one to a hundred; keeping him from whacking from his presence and into Time's Square.

"I understand that you have some reservations about me-." He began, his voice fighting to keep calm and empowered at the same time.

"Do you?" I asked, sarcastically folding my hand and my pathetic lump together on the table, my head tilting to the side as he spoke.

"But, it is imperative that we pushed past them; you have a long life ahead of you and I have an even longer reign. But the majority of your lifetime will have been spent with me, so can you at least push past all the animosity and let me show you some compassion?"

"This isn't compassion." I whispered, blinking and pulling my hands away from each other as I leaned away from him. "This is… pet affection."

"You humans have an affinity towards your animals that astounds the rest of the galaxy; you treat them as kin better than you treat each other. Should I not do the same with the lower species of my kind?"

Make that two punches.

Loki sensed that that perhaps wasn't the best compliment of all time and quickly began talking again. "I mean to say that I am trying to… apologize for what I did to your hand, that was reckless and I didn't realise it would affect you as permanently as it does. I aim trying to make amends."

I glanced up, trying to read him but his eyes were now shuttered and closed off. If he were a book, he would be Twilight or War and Peace. This is what is infuriating about Loki, I could write him off with basic human emotions and styles that he portrayed with excellence, by the way. He was predictable in the fact that he was sadistic and cruel and…evil. No, beyond evil; there wasn't a word for the lengths that Loki's depravity and fury reached, it was astounded and confusing and crippling, the pain it caused me to watch him do all this was crippling. Because there were these times, like this, when there was a different man in front of me, who smiled with gentleness and a kindness that I had never seen before. He was different to the monster that haunted my dreams; he talked in this soft voice and looked at me with his big green eyes… that made it impossible for me to judge.

But then that man was gone and Larson walked back in the room and I was shoved out and I heard that laugh. And I wanted to find a door leading to the walkway of this ship and throw my body of the edge.

Loki picked moved his hand out but this time it went to my hand, the ice cold feeling managed to penetrate the thick cast. He helped guide my hand over to the fork and pick it up, helping me pick up the food and put it into my mouth.

He nodded at me as I swallowed the last of the food and got up from his stoop next to me; Larson shoved himself off of the wall and followed Loki as he left the room. I waited until I was sure that they were gone before running to the nearest bin.

I began shaking as I threw up, trying to get the feeling off of my body, trying to push him from me, trying to remember what it felt like to feel safe as someone touched me. Because for the entire time that Loki held onto me all I could think of was the blood on our hands. I felt like it was seeping from his white skin, from under the nails and hair follicles to pour onto me.

I leant against the cool wall and wiped my mouth, breathing heavily and rubbing my eyes. They had become worn and tired like I'd stayed up watching the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, the director's cut. They'd seen too much in the past two weeks. Hell, they'd seen too much in the past three months.

I moved up, travelling along the hallways till I found Bruce's room or cage. The door slid open for me and the man looked up from the computer as I walked in; a frown creasing his face as he stood up, putting down an electronic notepad and moving across to me.

"You don't look well…" He mumbled, his hand going to my forehead and wiping at the sweat there. I just shuddered against him and whispered.

"Loki was nice to me."

Bruce let out a sigh like laugh and put me down on the bed next to the mess of clothes and other items. He walked to the fridge at the side and yanked out a cold water bottle; putting it into my hand and helping me unscrew the lid.

"What happened?" He asked, moving away from me and heading back to his work as I glugged down the water like I'd "He helped me to eat and kept looking at me funny." I muttered, sighing heavily and looking at him. The middle aged man let out a splutter of laughter but said nothing; at least he had more restraint than Tony. His back was turned to me as I spoke. "But, on the plus said, I got him to agree to help me work with you."

"You're working with me? On what?" He asked.

"A cure for cancer," At that Bruce span around to face me with an eyebrow raised. "It was the only thing that I could think of that would make sense. It was this or a way to make lots of mini-Hulks."

"Mini-Hulks?" He asked, crossing the distance of the room and checking scans on the screen, flicking to look at them all. "What are we really going to be doing then? I mean, as intelligent as you are, you didn't study medicine in any way shape or form. Tony said you did talking to crazy people-."

"Psychology." I spat back at him, interrupting his tirade of punching holes in my spectacularly covert plan.

"- But you have no immediate knowledge of biology or chemistry or physics-."

"Hey, I sat through a very expensive High School education for a reason, Bruce, granted the reason wasn't this-." I shot back, intervening again.

"- So, you can dissect a frog! Big deal!" Bruce yelled, throwing his hands into the air and stepping towards me.

"And I can tell you what order the wavelengths go in." I said, proudly folding my arms across my chest and smirking.

"Go on, then."

I thought about it for a few seconds, trying to remember just what the cool saying was. "…fuck."

"You see? This plan is littered with mine fields that will blow up in our faces. We can't pull this off." He finished, desperation seeping into his tone as he fell in front of me.

"Honestly, Bruce, I'm more concerned with the more covert part of our plan."

Bruce looked up sharply, his finger moving up to point in my face and his body jumping away from me. He began gesticulating wildly as he spoke out loud about how insane I was.

"It was your idea, Tory, makes it your plan." He stomped away from me; he backed himself into a corner as I got up and moved closer to him.

"Don't do that, Bruce. I need you to do this with me; you're the plan."

Bruce let out a jittering sigh and twisted his head to look at me, his sausage finger pulling upwards and poking me backwards in the shoulder, shoving me until I was away from him.

"I will not be a part of this plan and you want to know why; because it's a shit plan!"

"It's the only one we have." I hissed at him, staring up into his face and shushing him as we cast worried looks around the place. Bruce leaned forward and clicked at a few keyboard buttons, disabling the camera the way Tony had when he first arrived. "So, unless you can think of a better one, we carry on with this plan."

"To do what? Somehow get Loki to take this band off of my neck, release the other guy and get him to agree to drop to the floor without wanting to destroy every part of this place like he'll want to. Then somehow find the Avengers and then assemble a force of mutants and humans and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to take on Loki and close the Tesseract, which by the way is being guarded by the most formidable force in history." He laughed in my face without mirth and then rolled his eyes, saying sarcastically. "Yeah because that'll work."

"It will if we just try. Please, Bruce, we have to try and dislodge Loki or he'll kill everything we know."

Bruce sighed and placed his hands on the table, the fight leaving him and the fear taking over. I watched as he worked out all the variables in his head, all the equations and all the problems that we would face. And coming out with the same conclusion that I had.

"You do realise that Loki will know you orchestrated this and he'll have you executed on live television with the entire world watching. There's no way that you could come out of this alive."

"Then I go down knowing that I saved the world and really, can you think of a better way to die?"

I smiled at him but Bruce just brought his head up slowly and stared at me with shocked and pained eyes; tears breaking the corners of his kind eyes. He was crying for what must have been the first time in years but it wasn't for my death, it was because I was willing to sacrifice everything to give him back his life and he'd never come across anyone, not since the accident, that was willing to do so much as spit in his direction.

"… How are you gonna get Loki to take off the necklace?"

"Pfft, got any sexy lingerie?"

"For me or you?"

"Don't be ridiculous, of course it's for you."

Bruce burst out laughing, the tears left forgotten on the corner of his eye, he doubled over, using the table as support, as he shook with laughter, unable to contain the feeling that had bubbled up inside of him. His head shook as he turned it around to face me.

"Not enough Gin Joints in all the World."

"Well, that's a shame."

We were still laughing as the door slid open and our enigmatic leader walked in, eyeing us with underlying anger and hate. Bruce couldn't stop laughing even as he let out a cough and since neither of us was facing the man we didn't realise that it was Loki; had we, we certainly would never have turned around.

Bruce turned first and tensed, pushing himself back to lean on the table as he faced Loki, his arms folding across his chest. "What do you want?"

"Rude, Banner, after I have just let you assume some semblance of your previous life. Victoria has, no doubt, told you of the advancement of your plans?"

"Yes, she has." Bruce replied, shortly.

"Well, then, I expect that you'll except my conditions." Loki said, his hand clutching his wrist behind his back and his chin jutting out proudly. If Loki were an animal right now, he'd be a peacock flinging out his feathers to attract attention and scare off the other alpha male.

"She didn't mention any conditions…" He said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

"You cannot expect me to let a former Avenger and man of tremendous power spend unwatched time with the Queen of Midguard." Loki turned to look at me with his green glinting eye. "It's not that I don't trust you, my dear, but… yes it is that I do not trust you. Either of you.

"So, you will be watched by a formidable guard whenever you are here-."

"You said that I could choose the guard. I don't want Larson being in here and causing more aggravation than good." I spat. Loki considered this for a few seconds before nodding, his eyes lingering on Bruce but seeing only the Hulk.

"Then the camera shall be on, always." He looked across both of us but said nothing. "Also, I wish to see updated modules on this program, from both of you."

"You can't expect it to work immediately, can you?" Bruce asked, indignantly. "Neither of us are experts in this field, it will take months to come up with even a crumb of something worthwhile."

"Well, I hope that your D.N.A. structure will advance that. You have a stepping stone to cross whereas others will have a milestone."

"How poetic." Bruce spat, moving around the table and flicking on the camera again. As he moved back to his work, Loki walked across to me, watching him over my head.

He was so close to me that I could feel his breath on the side of my neck and the coldness of his body. His hand moved out from behind his back and took mine with long fingers, holding it tightly. I felt my wrist hiss as he pulled it back, putting half of my body behind his and wrapping and arm around my torso.

"If we have nothing else to discuss," Loki turned to look at me, "I will walk you back to your room."

I didn't have time to agree or disagree because Loki had wheeled us around and led me to the door, leaving a shocked Bruce in our wake. Loki's strides were normally long and quick but, now, they had slowed and lessened in their pace; he took his time to walk me back. His hand unmoving from my torso and he never left a gap between us that was more than a centimetre.

We reached my door and he clicked the pad and the door slid open, letting him enter and deposit me in there. I expected him to leave me immediately, he didn't need to keep the façade up when we were alone, but he stayed; watching me from the corner of the room as he pushed back his tail feathers and sat in a chair.

I frowned at him and opened my mouth to order him to leave but he was right; it was late, and as I opened my mouth all that escaped it was a large yawn. I just sighed and walked into the bathroom, brushing out my hair and cleaning my teeth. The dress fell off of me as I grabbed a set of pyjamas, yanking them on over my head and lump. When I walked back in, Loki had moved the things off of my bed and scattered them on the desk, pulling up the duvet.

"You're not thinking of getting in there with me, are you?" I asked, sarcastically, watching as he blushed and shook his head. Yeah, Loki was the great God blushed at something a human said… this was great.

"No, I am here to make sure that you have a peaceful sleep."

"What makes you think that I need you to make sure that I do have a peaceful sleep?" I snapped, taking the duvet from his hand and putting it back in place at the top corner.

"Because you have nightmares every night," I opened my mouth quickly but he held up his hand to stop me. "Don't try and deny it, I know that you do. I hear you screaming, I am just down the hall; I see the dark shadows underneath your eyes." He whispered, his hand moving out and stroking just underneath my eye. His hand going to hold my head as the other moved to stroke my temple. "But don't worry, you won't have any tonight."

He muttered something under his breath and I felt a dull burning on the side of my head, light lit up his eyes for a second before it vanished; the burning gone, replaced by a drowsy feeling that took me over.

I only had a few seconds to blink up at him before I fell into his arms, my head landing on his shoulder and my hands dropping to my side. I fell asleep on his chest, breathing in a deliriously good smell as I did so.

Naww, how cute?

Anyways, I hope you like it. I did. Tis cool. Lots of love.