Black and blue

Asta didn't open her eyes again until solid ground was beneath her and the rear door clanged shut behind them. The man released her waist and she staggered away, though there wasn't really anywhere for her to go. This seemed to be a small cargo area, with a row of seats against one wall and a handful of black-clad soldiers braced against the other. When the jet jerked, she decided taking one of the seats was her safest bet.

"Have you heard from Selvig?" the man asked one of the soldiers, seeming to ignore Asta and apparently impervious to the motion of the jet.

The soldier's eyes were the brightest shade of blue Asta could remember seeing. "He's en route, ready to deploy."

Glancing to her right, she caught sight of the ship they were leaving behind as the jet banked. It shimmered in the air, almost as if it wasn't really there, and seemed to stretch on for miles, long and flat. She couldn't figure out how it managed to stay in the air; it certainly didn't match any plane she'd ever seen. "What is that?" she asked no one in particular.

The soldier closest to her glanced her way. "SHIELD's helicarrier." With a start, she noticed his eyes were the exact same shade as his comrade's, and a quick survey of the other soldiers proved they all had that same eerie blue glow.

The man in black gave her a sharp look. "All this time you've been in their captivity, and you don't know who they are?"

The longer he looked at her, the more familiar he seemed, the stronger the taste of apples on her tongue grew. "They didn't answer many questions."

"And yet, you feel allegiance for that agent. You'd give your life for his."

"He's been kind to me."

With a few strides he was in front of her, hands either side of her face against the wall, so close the dark rims under eyes became vivid against his pallid skin. "Don't you ever do that again, do you understand?" She nodded automatically, all her earlier fear flooding back. She was aware of his scent, leather and metal and unclean male, and it just increased her urge to get away from him, but she had nowhere to escape to. His proximity, the uncanny stares of the soldiers, the sceptre resting on the floor with her blood still smeared across the blade—it all had her skin crawling, the urge to scream and run away stronger in just a few minutes than it had been in nearly eighteen months with SHIELD.

Her terror seemed to appease the man. He rose to his full height and took a stand against the wall opposite her.

"Kindness is a weakness, and any apparent benevolence displayed to you by SHIELD was to manipulate you. They're a tool of this government, hidden from the public and with the freedom to do anything they wish. They aren't in the business of kindness."

Asta resisted the urge to fold in on herself, away from his bold stare and harsh words. She shifted, pulling her knees up to her chest, and felt something digging into her hip.

"You screamed when you first saw me," he continued, distracting her from whatever was tucked into the waistband of her pants. "Did you recognise me?" She weighed up how to explain to him that she did, and she didn't. He interpreted the pause how he wanted. "Did they tell you all about the monster they'd caught? Is that why you were so afraid?" On the service his question was veiled in amusement, but she didn't think the humour ran very deep. If anything, she caught a bitter bite to his tone.

"They didn't tell me anything," she said. "I didn't recognise you, exactly, but I do a little. I don't have many memories but I think you're in some of them." The words spilled out, the desperation for answers overriding any fear she felt.

All the humour leached from his expression. "You shouldn't be able to remember me at all."

Finally, a little confirmation that she had known him before she lost her memories. "Did you have something to do with why I can't remember anything?"

Confusion furrowed his brow. "You can't remember anything?" She shook her head. The terrifying mask of anger came back. "Your family, your childhood, all lost too? I was clearly too deeply entangled…not that it would matter to him."

"I…I don't understand."

"No, I suppose you wouldn't." Such bitterness again. He was a mercurial creature, and that just left Asta even more on edge, waiting to see which way the wind would blow next.

He turned from her to begin a discussion with the pilot, and she shifted again, so she no longer had the corner of something cutting into her skin. She wanted to see what it was, since it wasn't something she'd put there herself—she hadn't even realised these pants had pockets—but doing so would only alert him or the soldiers, and she doubted that was a good idea.

"Not long now," he said, and the amusement returned. "I've waited for this day for a very long time, you know." She didn't reply, staring down at her hands. "I noticed on the ship that the agent called you Asta. Is that what they know you as?"

"Is that not my name?"

"You don't know even that?"

She shrugged. "It's all I could remember."

Something like triumph hovered at the edges of his smile. "It's not your birth name, Alexandra, but it's a name commonly bestowed on you."

Alexandra. It meant nothing to her, not when she'd spent so long living with another name, but to have that small piece of her identity at last was so sweet. In light of it, her attachment to Asta didn't make sense. "A nickname?"

"If you like. Or a title."

That made her want to stop asking questions. Titles implies power. Having a title meant the chances of her being a simple girl with a brain injury caught up in circumstances beyond her control went from slim to none.

He noticed her reticence. "No more questions? We're just getting to know each other again."

The words 'I don't know you at all' almost spilled out, but given his mood shifts it was unlikely to be a wise idea. "I don't know who you are."

"I am Loki," he said, spreading his palms as if it should explain everything. And in a way, it did. Loki, brother of Thor in Norse mythology. God of lies and mischief. Gods and myths and monsters didn't exist, but this man had been invading her dreams even after everything she knew about herself was stripped away. He might not be a god. Or he might be. Was this what Coulson had been trying to tell her all along?

"But how do I know you? Where do I fit into all of this?"

"Ah. Now there's a story. Once upon a time, I was your imaginary friend."