Imaginary

"You seem incredulous," Loki said, all amusement again. That was probably the best way to describe it. What child had a leather-clad sorcerer as their imaginary friend?

"Well, it doesn't make sense. You can't be imaginary if you're real." It was as if everything she'd believed until a few hours ago had been flipped around: imaginary things can't be real, real things can't be imaginary.

"Oh, I was never a figment of your imagination, but it was what the adults in your life deluded themselves with. It's so easy to dismiss the stories of a child as nonsense."

She should be doing the same thing, right down to the fact that this man was a god, but instead she felt the truth in his words. She'd held all this to be true once. Given all she'd seen, all the missing pieces in her story, she'd have to accept it as the truth again. She opened her mouth to speak, but the sceptre's gleam from the corner of her eye made her think better of it.

"You were going to speak?" he prompted. She shook her head mutely. "You may as well go on. We have a little time to become reacquainted." He seemed genuine—she would just need to watch her tongue.

"Why did I even have stories to tell?" she asked.

He flashed a smile, a wolf's grin, and retrieved the sceptre, idly toying with it. "Why, indeed? You were always such a curious girl—and that is exactly what led you to me. You came hunting for a shooting star you'd seen, sneaking out of your parents' house in the middle of the night like the wicked little thing you were, except there was no star. There was instead a drake that had stolen its way onto the Bifrost and found its way to this realm. You know what the Bifrost is?"

She nodded—the rainbow bridge between the different worlds. She had a brief vision of it, a wide path of colour streams that shone like glass across the night. She'd walked that bridge once. "I remember the shooting star," she told Loki. "I thought it was a dream."

"That was no dream. You were lucky I arrived when I did. I'd chased the drake all the way here and slew it before it did you any harm."

"Was that benevolence, or were you going to kill it anyway?"

He chuckled. "It was as good as dead before it reached the Bifrost, but you did take some of the sport out of hunting it. Not that you seemed impressed by my heroics. You were a belligerent child, if more courageous than average. You refused to cower from the drake, and then you had the temerity not to bow to me either." There was a complete lack of annoyance in his voice at this assessment, and though he tried to school his features to sternness, Asta detected an amused fondness in how he spoke.

"I remember your voice," she said. "You told me I shouldn't have been there."

"Sound advice. Of course, you rarely took my advice."

"Then you did magic." They weren't imaginary at all, the visions of sparks in midair. The miniature fireworks had really happened.

"Simple tricks that impressed you far more than any fight. You thought I was an angel—you were too young to grasp any concept of good or bad and placed your trust in me far too easily." The fondness was evident now in the smile he wore, though it was tempered by a wicked delight.

"I must have pleased you somehow. If you were my imaginary friend, that means I saw you again."

The smile vanished, replaced by a flicker of uncertainty that was swallowed by a sneer. "You were a distraction from the banalities of court, an excuse to return to this realm and be away from those who would watch my every action. Enough questions—why bother revisiting a past if you are unable to remember it?"

Despite his sharp words, she felt like she was the one who'd inflicted a wound, the way he was pouting now. She wrapped her arms around her knees and stared at a patch of floor, away from the scary god in his scary armour with his scary sceptre, or the freaky soldiers with their weird eyes. If there were somewhere to hide from his intense stare she'd have found it, but she was pinned where she was, and his attention never wavered. She could feel him watching her even as she stared at her legs, wishing for sleep or a distraction.

The crackle of static over an intercom endless minutes later shocked her out of her stupor, but didn't relieve the tension in the cabin.

"Destination approaching, Sir. Landing procedures should commence."

She glanced up, and Loki had risen back to his feet. "You need to fasten yourself in," he instructed her, and she glanced around at the web of straps and buckles on the wall behind the seat. She fumbled until eventually one of the soldiers, busy fixing crates of cargo down, stepped over to assist her.

"Away," Loki growled at the soldier, and Asta relinquished the straps so she didn't accidentally touch Loki's hands while he briskly fastened her in place. He didn't look at her while he worked, and she held her breath until he'd finished, confused about how his scent affected her. It wasn't exactly pleasant—it spoke of war and danger and terror—but at the same time, it was familiar to her. It evoked comfort and happiness and yes, even danger, but danger with a thrill to it. It didn't match the man she'd met this afternoon.

He stepped away to take a seat of his own, issuing orders to the soldiers, who clustered around the rear doors. Asta gripped her seat as her stomach plummeted with the descent of the jet, an echo of things she'd experienced before. She gripped harder still at the jerk of the plane hitting the ground, only letting go when they taxied to a stop.

"You four, around her," Loki ordered. "She must not be harmed." Whatever her purpose here, he placed importance in her. He wasn't on Earth randomly; he had a plan, and she must play some part in it, with how much care he was taking to make sure she remained safe. His expression when she lay bleeding on the floor—those wide eyes—hinted at motivations she squirmed away from.

The soldiers he'd spoken to surrounded her seat, forming a wall she couldn't see through. She heard the drawing and cocking of weapons, a 1,2,3 count and the door being opened, while she held her breath and waited for gunfire.

"Coast's clear," someone announced.

Loki appeared to unbuckle her. "I need you to do what I want while we travel on to our destination. If you try to escape, or communicate with anyone outside our group, I'll kill someone to make you behave. Do you understand?" He asked her this as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. All her confusion about how he'd acted towards her, how her scant memories made her feel about him, dissipated in the face of his coldness. She nodded and waited for him to stride away before standing, to be swallowed again by the knot of soldiers.

The journey may as well have been shrouded in fog for her, she took so little of it in, and most of it was blocked by the men surrounding her. The jet had landed at a small airfield, then they'd all climbed into a waiting car with blacked out windows. They passed through tunnels and snarls of concrete highways, and beyond that she was sure they entered a city, tall buildings shadowing the streets they passed through. The journey ended, as it always had when they'd returned to SHIELD's base after an outing, into an underground garage.

"Sweep the building, neutralise anyone you find," Loki said to the soldiers, and they stomped off. "It'll be just the two of us from here," Loki told her as he led her, his hand around her elbow, to an elevator at the far side of the garage. It didn't seem to want to cooperate at first, but Loki held his hand over the access pad until the doors slid open. She hadn't seen anything—no sparks, no pretty light—but she knew he'd used magic to override the electronics. In they went, the doors sliding shut, Loki's hand keeping her trapped in the centre at his side.

The ride took minutes and his posture stayed perfectly upright, his free hand gripping the staff like a king's sceptre. She was reminded, with him in all his terrible, armoured glory, that he was, if not a god, then closer to one than she was comfortable with. Whatever she was in the middle of, despite the flashes of something akin to tenderness he'd shown to her, she couldn't rely on his mercy. He wasn't a benevolent god, and if his mercy was the only thing that would keep her safe in the cogs of his schemes, there was no safety to be had.