IT'S FOREVERACHARMEDONE'S FAULT. Yes, it is. The comment was: I'm sorta curious to see, since it's been established that Loki having known and loved Taryn stopped so much pain and potential bloodshed, what Avengers!Loki would have been like if he was only just meeting her as he sought to take over the world…

HOW COULD I RESIST THAT?

Time for Loki to meet Taryn. Oh yeah, this is not going to be her usual Tuesday afternoon class…

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Taryn Roswell breathed deeply, centering herself in the privacy of her office as the pounding footsteps of the students entering the lecture hall echoed through the door. God, she hated this! If she could just have a university post without the public speaking, that would be perfect.

Unfortunately, Comparative Mythology wasn't exactly an up-and-coming field of study that required pure researchers, and while her books sold well for their type, she would never make enough from royalties to live on that alone. Hence her daily struggle with stage fright in an attempt to educate students who were only looking for an easy A. Her class wasn't easy–anything but–and yet she still had scads of idiots sign up because they wanted a class they could sleep in.

It would almost be worth this agony if she were actually addressing people who were interested.

Drying her damp palms on the skirt of her neat navy suit, she straightened to her full height–helped by a pair of higher-than-were-comfortable heels–and entered the lecture hall.

"Settle down, let's get started," she said briskly as she flipped on the overhead projector and connected it to her laptop. "We're continuing our study of Norse gods and goddesses today." She waited a moment to allow for the opening of notebooks and laptops, then clicked to start the slideshow.

An engraved image of a muscular, beardless man bound atop irregular stones appeared on the screen. A beautiful woman with long flowing hair and dressed in a short, sleeveless gown crouched awkwardly on the stones above him, holding out a shallow bowl beneath a snake on a stunted tree. Its fangs fully extended, it dripped venom into the bowl. In the background, a bearded man pounded a spike into stone, securing the chains. The prisoner's desperation and hopelessness were clear on his face and in every line of his tense body.

"Loki and Sigyn," Taryn said, making herself look away from the evocative image and face her class once more. For just a moment she stared over their heads, then she returned her gaze to her notes. "This is Loki's punishment for the death of Baldur, which we discussed last time. His faithful wife Sigyn chose to share in his punishment so that she might mitigate some of his suffering. Who can tell me who the man in the background is?"

"Thor, of course. He always did love to see me punished."

Taryn looked up sharply at the elegant, deep voice from the back of the hall–there were few enough students who answered her questions, and none of them sounded like that. A tall, dark-haired man in some kind of strange armor stood at the back of the room, flanked on either side by men she could only think of as thugs–too many muscles and too much black.

"You're not one of my students," Taryn said, fighting down a sense of panic. It was ridiculous to feel frightened–the campus was safe, and this man looked more like someone out of the drama department than a terrorist–but she was frightened all the same. His friends were a bit alarming, it was true, but they were just standing there, empty hands in plain sight.

The man with the beautiful voice walked forward. "Indeed not," he agreed. She noticed the staff in his hand for the first time–curved, golden, with some kind of glowing blue light at the end. Another shiver chased down her spine. That thing looked dangerous. "I did not come so far to listen to ancient tales."

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to wait until my class is finished," she replied firmly. Whatever this guy wanted, she was in charge here, and the safety of her students was her responsibility. "You can contact the office to make an appointment."

He continued unperturbed. "A king does not make appointments, Taryn Roswell."

And she finally met his eyes.

Insane, was the first word that screamed across her mind. Those green eyes swirled with madness. Madness and rage, and power. She couldn't say what kind–couldn't even be sure how she knew of it–but the power was there, it was absolutely inhuman, and it was terrifying. His outfit, black leather and green cloth and golden plates of armor, no longer looked overly dramatic at all.

"Who are you?" she whispered, knuckles white on the lectern.

His smile was all edges, a blade made of straight white teeth. "Have you not heard the phrase, speak of the devil and he shall appear?" he murmured. She shied away from his meaning-it was impossible. "But your drawing is inaccurate, my dear. The rocks were much sharper and the snakes far more numerous. Odin would never be so merciful."

Involuntarily her gaze fell on the image on her computer again before she shook herself. "Don't be ridiculous. Loki is a myth, the tale merely allegory." She said it to convince herself more than him.

His face tightened as if she'd struck him. "Your ignorance offends me–you, who are meant to know better, to understand," he snarled, and suddenly thrust out a hand that flashed with blue light.

The screen behind her exploded amid her students' screams. She screamed too, both from fear at the destruction and horror at what had flashed across the screen beforehand, a scene from the most terrifying of nightmares–

–the man before her bound with chains of gory flesh, stretched screaming across spiked stones that pierced through his body, and the multitude of snakes writhing over him, biting and tearing with serrated fangs dripping with acidic venom, eating away at his flesh, and the woman holding the bowl, using it to try and scoop the serpents off him, sloshing fire and agony over him with every movement, shrieking and weeping at her helplessness and his pain, and surrounding it all, galleries of laughing revelers–

She fought not to be sick. It was almost a relief when her computer combusted in a blaze of that same blue light. "No, it's not possible," she said, trying for a brisk dismissal that only came out weak, as if her disbelief was directed at her own words instead of the impossibility of his.

"What you deem possible or impossible are no concern of mine," he replied, calm once more, that mad green gaze holding hers again-and of course he was mad, how could he not be after that? "Now will you dismiss your students, or shall I?"

The velvet smoothness of that voice didn't change but Taryn heard the threat in the silken words nonetheless. She had no desire to see that blue light of his used on flesh instead of technology. "Class–class is dismissed," she managed. "Go, get out, now!"

One young man, braver than the rest who had immediately stampeded for the exits, hesitated. "Professor–"

The two thugs shifted and one of them somehow pulled a bow from nowhere. "Go now, Todd," Taryn repeated, finally finding her stern voice beneath the fear. Her class, her students, her responsibility to protect–if anyone was going to be hurt by this madman and his henchmen, it would be her. "It's fine. I'll be fine. Just go." She had to believe that–besides, at least one of her students was surely smart enough to call the cops before tweeting all about it, right?

When the doors closed again behind the departing students, Taryn forced herself to meet the man's–no, Loki's, it could be no one else but the God of Mischief and Lies–eyes again. "What do you want?" she asked, and she was proud that her voice only trembled slightly. "If you are who you say you are, I don't know what I could possibly offer you."

"Ah, but there is something you can offer me." He closed the last bit of distance between them and raised his hand. She flinched, but he only cupped her cheek. "Sigyn was a mistake. She never understood," Loki murmured, almost tenderly, if only she ignored the insanity in his eyes. "But you, my lady, you will understand me. I have seen it."

He leaned closer and it took every ounce of willpower she had not to pull away in terror. "I will rule this world, and you will be my queen," he whispered, and brushed the softest of kisses across her lips.

And as if his lips carried a venom all their own, Taryn spiraled down into blackness.

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The image Taryn was using is the iconic Loki In Chains. Stupid fanfiction won't let me put in a link, and I can't even put in spaces enought to make it quit flocking it up, so just google "Loki in chains" to see it, all right? It's very evocative.