Author's Note: so here's the next chapter. I hope you like it! Things pick up in the romance department! Excitement…

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Chapter Five
Down from the Tower

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Loki watched from his ensorcelled vantage point between as the Midgardian girl struggled to don her boots with a hand that shook. Her crippled hand spasmed periodically, and the one hand she had any use of trembled so badly it might as well have been crippled too. The pseudo-Asgardian's mouth twisted into a sneer. The girl was pathetic; a simple outing that was scheduled to last no more than a mere half hour reduced her to this? There was simply no reason for it. Bor's ghost, she would be escorted by an armed guard! She lived the life of a virtual prisoner—an outing should have sent her into raptures. Instead, the ignorant chit treated the whole thing like some terrible ordeal. She was even dressed all in black, as if for a funeral. It was ridiculous.

Curiosity over the girl's bizarre behavior had prompted him to scan her journal entries the previous night, looking for some clue as to why she avoided the outside world. He'd found nothing pertinent. Her ramblings were littered with references to things like "Sleeping Beauty" and "Red Riding Hood," match-girls and nightingales, whatever that meant, as well as "Fair Rosalinda." Though Loki had found explanations as to the identity of Sleeping Beauty and Red Riding Hood when he'd searched through what the mortals referred to as "the internet," he'd yet to come across an explanation of "Fair Rosalinda." There were human children's stories called "Princess Rosette" and "Rosanella," but nothing about a girl named Rosalinda. He despised ignorance, in himself as well as others. He wouldn't stand for this. If he couldn't discover the identity of this "Rosalinda," he would have to ferret it out of the girl somehow.

Which, as he intended to intercept her once she'd arrived at whatever inane destination her father decided suited his purpose, wouldn't be difficult in the least.

A straining, unmelodious voice suddenly issued from the small rectangular object the girl clutched in her good hand. The object was slim, a pearlescent blue not unlike the color given off by the tesseract. A white circle stood out in the center of the contraption, painted with tiny silver symbols. A black cord led from the rectangle to a pair of black-and-blue circular things that the girl fitted on and behind her ears. Due to his superior hearing, Loki could still hear what must've passed for music issuing from the things.

"Her heart beats slowly and afraid.
Phantom faces at her side,
And her anguish she cannot hide:
The beauty and the frailty of life.

"In desperation she strikes a match;
Her fingers burn with fire and ash—
Escape a hard, imperfect world.
Her eyes light up—the matchstick girl."

The voice could hardly carry a tune—it sounded like a Midgardian male; he doubted a Midgardian female could sound so discordant—but the words disturbed the Asgardian prince, though for the life of him, he couldn't have said why. And here was yet another reference to match-girls. He'd found the most well-known story of the human child forced by poverty to sell matchsticks in the cold, and how she'd frozen to death in the depths of winter by foolishly lighting the matches both for warmth and to see beautiful "visions" of comfort and happiness in their flames (instead of having the sense to take shelter in a Midgardian church or whatnot from the cold). Loki had yet to be able to find a connection between the girl known as Alex and such a story.

Ah, the girl's protector had arrived to collect her. The moment the fair-skinned human warrior arrived, Loki's quarry paled until she was whiter than milk after second skimmings. Her throat worked convulsively and her grip on the handle of the crude metal crutch spasmed. Moisture gathered in those dark blue eyes. The girl didn't even bother trying to blink away the most obvious sign of her panic and weakness.

Loki gritted his teeth and slid behind her, slick as oil, silent as a shadow. He breathed chill power into her ear, through her skull, down her spine. Whispered, "It must be time. As long as someone's near, it won't be so bad."

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Alex drew a deep breath and forced down the panic trying to climb into her throat. Chilly prickles whispered up and down her back, but she ignored them, huddling inside her black sweater. Glancing into Coulson's warm, encouraging eyes, she took another steadying breath and murmured, "It must be time." Coulson nodded. He was careful, she noticed, to keep his expression cheery and confident. Trying to keep her calm. Alex sighed. "As long as someone's nearby…I guess it won't be so bad."

Clutching her iPod in her good hand, the music pulsing through her ears in time with her heartbeat, she followed Coulson out of her room.

The trip to the low-key exit to the world aboveground was uneventful until Alex and Coulson reached the garage that led to the outside world. The van her father had provided had some bulky piece of machinery on the back. Alex balked when she realized the machine was a wheelchair-lift complete with an adult-sized wheelchair. Her hand spasmed around the handle of her crutch. Sick shame and hurt surged up like bile in her throat. She whipped her head around to glare at Coulson, who had the grace to look sheepish. The SHIELD "trolls" were careful to look anywhere but at the director's daughter.

"No," she snapped. Coulson sighed. "No. You double-crossing jerk, I won't go outside and let people stare at me while I'm stuck in a stupid wheelchair. I won't do it! Tell my dad I said, 'Forget it!' I'm going back to my room. Screw all of you."

She'd begun the laborious process of turning around when Coulson said softly from behind her, "If you don't do this, Alex, he's going to send you to Thornwood Home."

A sudden lump of panicked terror rose up in her throat. Thornwood Center, the hospice center where she'd spent nearly seven years in a coma before waking up and being moved to the hospital owned by Tony Stark. Thornwood Home, the psychiatric hospital attached to the hospice center, where she'd spent two months in as her father had prayed for her mental, emotional, and physical recovery from seven years of cursed sleep.

Thornwood Home, nightmare hall, gilded cage of sleep. She couldn't go back to Thornwood. Ever. Not ever.

Drawing a choked breath, Alex turned back to the man she loved like an uncle and lowered her eyes to the concrete under her shoes. Her shoulders slumped in defeat. She swallowed a sob. A wheelchair…

She'd been a dancer once, beautiful as a dream, graceful as gossamer thought, powerful as a white swan on water. Now she had to go out and be stared at and pitied, a crippled wreck in a metal chair that might as well have been a prison.

Such a beautiful girl, people had whispered about her in the first couple months after she'd woken from the coma; she'd allowed her father to take her outside then. Allowed him to call her Rory. Had tried to pretend that she was Sleeping Beauty, woken up by a chaste kiss instead of… And people had seen her, cast her pitying looks while she huddled under thick blankets and sweaters, looking half-starved, struggling against the sobs building in her chest with every second and minute bleeding away from her, and they'd whispered how beautiful and tragic she was, how it was such a shame that she was stuck in a wheelchair.

Her eyes were reproachful and defeated when she turned them on Coulson. He stepped back. They didn't look at each other as he helped her into the van. She didn't speak a word. She only turned up her music—"Turn Loose the Mermaids" by Nightwish—and stared out the window, trying to ignore the sick sense of terror growing in the pit of her stomach as they rolled past the guard station and out onto the New York City street.

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Loki tucked in the final wisps and twists of seiðr, perfecting the details of the illusion. It was a complex masking spell; to the human girl, he would retain his own handsome visage, the better to charm her, but he had morphed his dress in truth to modern Midgardian clothing—undergarments, white button-down business shirt of the highest quality, gray trousers, a gray suit-coat that fell some ways past his waist, a long emerald and ivory cashmere scarf, and standard dress shoes and socks. To everyone else, he would look like someone else, a nameless and faceless mortal of no consequence.

The Asgardian prince settled on a wooden bench in a brilliant, warm patch of sunlight on the edges of Stork Park; odd name for such a place, as Loki could detect no storks or large birds of that type. A towering willow behind him, leafing anew with the onset of spring and trailing vines flush with life, provided some shade upon the grass just to his left; the mortal maid would attempt to escape the sun, having seen it so rarely until now and being sensitive to the light. He'd seen her wince at the clouded brightness as the mortal vehicle had departed the SHIELD premises. A few brief flicks of power served to act as a repellant for anyone wishing a seat while also enticing the Midgardian girl to take the shadowy spot beside the bench. She was a skittish, timid little creature; if too many occupants crowded the space, she would shy away from it instinctively.

He would have preferred it had she been forced to sit beside him. His charms and cunning would've worked so much better if he'd been able to impose the warmth and nearness of his body—and his seiðr—on the girl. But her idiotic father had insisted she use the wheeled chair contrivance she seemed to shun so much. The unfathomable brat had been pathetically near tears upon discovering what the dark-skinned Midgardian had arranged.

Leaning back against the bench, he propped open a book and assumed an attitude of reading. The title was Iconic Fairy Tales and Analysis; a rather derivative instructive text Loki had purloined from a mortal book vendor to use as a conversation-started with the girl. He would make a show of studying the silly children's stories—and their more gruesome ancestors—and see if the human chit took the bait. Perhaps he would even discover the identity of "Fair Rosalinda" during the conversation. If he could entice the bratling to remain past the half-hour mark, who knew what interesting bits of information Loki could ferret out of her?

A sleek, black shape pulled into the parking lot just beyond the park gates. Loki watched, half-amused and half-derisive, as a pair of SHIELD agents stepped out of the van and scanned what they could see of Stork Park—no doubt in their attempts to protect the girl, their leader's oh-so-precious daughter. The pale warrior that most often took the role of the girl's protector emerged from the vehicle as well. Retrieving the wheeled chair, he brought it to the van door, then carefully helped the girl climb into it. The Midgardian wench looked as if she might shatter at the first breath of wind, so brittle did she seem. Without a glance at either of the two security men, the warrior wheeled the girl through the park gates and onto the grass. Loki tensed, holding his breath. Would his spells work? Of course they worked, but would they work well enough to entrap his quarry?

The girl known as Alex hunched beneath a heavy black sweater, a black shawl draped across her shoulders. The lumpy cloth made her look as if she had a dowager's hump. A thick blanket covered her legs. Wisps and straggles of curly dark hair fell across the girl's face. Incongruous blue eyes squinted against the gloomy sun. Heavy spring clouds masked most of the sky, yet the girl peered around her as if it were high noon on midsummer. She spoke to the warrior pushing her chair. The warrior spoke back, the girl said something else. Her guardian shook his head. The girl made a dismissive gesture with one hand, and the warrior's shoulders slumped, as defeated as his charge had appeared in the SHIELD garage.

Then he wheeled her over to Loki's bench.

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Alex closed her eyes against the cruel glare of the sun. Her headphones blocked out the twittering of birds and the dull roar of too many people close by. She swallowed back the panic razoring in her throat. Too many people, and the entire space was too big and open, and she had to be out here for thirty minutes. Were people looking at her? Were they looking? She bit her lip until she tasted the hot salted copper of blood.

"You're going to be okay, Alex," Coulson murmured as he pushed her wheelchair over to the bench she'd spotted. It was a nice little spot, with a bit of shade to give her some blessed relief from the sickening, glaring sun. The only downside was the man with his nose buried in a book seated on the bench…but he seemed completely absorbed in whatever he was reading, so he probably wouldn't bother her. They could ignore each other and she could drown out the world with her music until it was time to escape back to the Reverse-Tower. Coulson's voice barely penetrated the fog of her iPod as Avril Lavigne's "Innocent" blasted her eardrums. The song didn't apply to the situation, really—she would change several things about her life if she could—but it had such a soothing melody that Alex found comfort in it. And Avril Lavigne had the advantage of being loud.

Coulson set her in place under the shadow of the willow tree, switched on the brake for her wheelchair, and took up his guarding stance the requested thirty feet away. She hadn't wanted Coulson nearby; his betrayal still burned in her chest, that he would let her dad force her into this…monstrosity. Her fingers spasmed around the arms of the wheelchair; the metal was icy and unforgiving. Alex squeezed her eyes shut and focused on the new song that sang through her ear-phones and in her head, so she could ignore the weight of so many people's regard.

"In the meadow,
Under the willow—
A bed of grass,
A soft green pillow…"

The words were from a book, but the melody was an original arrangement by a girl on Youtube, Jule Marie. The song was "Rue's Lullaby" from The Hunger Games, and Alex loved the soothing voice and languid, melancholy piano accompaniment that came with it. She often listened to it when she couldn't sleep. Her thumb brushed the volume control on her iPod, turning up the song a bit more. She wondered absently if she was traipsing down the path to early deafness with the volume, but couldn't find it in herself to truly care.

Suddenly a rich, low baritone assaulted her ears, jerking her attention from the little bubble of solitude she'd erected around herself. Her eyes flew wide and she turned to see the man seated on the bench, the man who had been reading, singing along with the words of the song on her iPod.

"Lay down your head,
And close your sleepy eyes,
And when again they open,
The sun will rise…"

For a minute Alexandra was merely stunned by the man beside her. She hadn't given him more than a brief glance, and his nose had been buried intently in his book, so she hadn't truly taken note of what he looked like. She did now.

He was pale, but not sickly—fair-skinned as a Viking, but with hair as dark as ebony. Snow White as Prince Charming. His features were fine and even, the nose straight, the forehead broad and adorned by slender dark brows, the lips sculpted and curved slightly into a ghost of a smile. He was tall, slender, but she gathered the impression of well-toned muscle and strength. His clothes looked expensive. But it was his eyes that drew her. Eyes as green as sunlight through emeralds, framed by fringes of dark lashes, and they were watching her.

Alex's mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a moment. Then her good hand stole up to the wires around her neck and she slowly tugged the ear-phones off. She hit the stop-button on the iPod. The music shut off abruptly.

"Hello," the man said softly, his ghost of a smile fledging into a true one. His speaking voice was just as rich as his singing voice, like dark chocolate. Alex detected the faintest accent, but she couldn't place it.

She cleared her throat and whispered, "Hello."

"I couldn't help overhearing your music," he said. "'Rue's Lullaby' has a particular appeal. That's Jule Marie's arrangement, is it not?"

Alex wondered suddenly if Coulson was getting ready to run over here and beat this stranger off with a stick, like the overbearing older brother/uncle he often resembled. She hoped not; people might stare. Then she realized the man's comment required a response. "Uh…yeah. Yeah, it is."

The man nodded. His green eyes kindled with something warm. "You have taste in music," he murmured. For some reason Alex couldn't fathom, heat flooded her face. The man held out his left hand. "My name is Frost; Lukas Frost. And you are?"

When she offered him her good hand, his long fingers curled around it, and velvet-calloused fingertips brushed her skin as they shook hands. Alex swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry. His hand was warm, dispelling some of the chill from the nippy spring air. She finally managed to murmur, "Alex…Alexandra."

"It is my pleasure to meet you, Alexandra."

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Author's Note: So they've MET! Reviews? What do you think will happy next?

Copyright information: the song Alex is listening to in the first scene is "Matchstick Girl" by The Crüxshadows, which is on their new album, Dark Against My Halo. I've been a fan of theirs for…gosh, ten years now. =) The other song is "Rue's Lullaby" from The Hunger Games, as arranged by Jule Marie Music (it can be found on Youtube; it's beautiful. I prefer it to Sting's version). "Turn Loose the Mermaids" is from Nightwish's album, Imaginaerium.