"James!"
"Sir?"
"Where's Gwen?"
"Don't know, sir, I thought she was with… oh, you've gone."
Her office clearly hadn't been entered for a while and the door to her bedroom was locked; Loki cunningly unlocked it by kicking it open, snapping the bolt in two. He knew her well enough to guess where she would hide things, and tore away the false bottom of her wardrobe to find a mess of printed sheets and pages of notes with her messy handwriting on them.
"Mouse, mouse, mouse," he murmured as he rifled through them, "what have you done?"
A receipt for plane tickets to England, the addresses of various establishments in Warwick, including where to hire a car. A list of everything she knew about Lucy. Loki cursed and leapt back onto his feet, and yelled for James.
The valet appeared along with one of the other Rats.
"She's gone to find her daughter," he told them, "she reached England about three hours ago, by the looks of it."
"She'll get arrested," the red-haired woman said, "they won't care about family, they'll just say it's kidnap. Which it is. We need to stop her before she disappears completely."
"I can do that," said Loki, "can you-"
"We'll be fine here," said the woman confidently, "nobody'll even notice she's gone."
Loki nodded briefly to each of them, pulled the crystal out of his pocket and hit the ground of the Asgard cave running. It would take him hours to follow her without leaving Midgard, he couldn't do it with the crystals because he didn't have a clue where she was, which meant there was only one option left to him.
Drat.
After dropping the shell of the used purple crystal, Loki hastily conjured a glamour of a palace guard as he tore through the city, but as soon as he reached the deserted rainbow bridge he dropped it, pouring all of his energy and concentration into sprinting towards the Bifrost.
"Heimdall!" he yelled, staggering to a halt.
In other circumstances, he might have been surprised that the gatekeeper didn't even bat an eyelid at the supposedly-dead prince appearing in front of him. Now he was just grateful. "You want to find the girl?"
Loki nodded, trying to get his breath back.
"Be careful you aren't seen," Heimdall said simply, turning away from him and plunging his sword deeper into its mount. Loki felt himself being dragged into the white, surging light of the Bifrost, experienced the once familiar sensation of his breath being torn out of him as he hurtled through the Universe-
In a blaze of light in every colour, Loki's feet hit rain-dampened tarmac and a car's horn blared as it swerved to avoid him on the otherwise-deserted road. Before it overtook him, he pulled out one of his throwing knives and flung it at the tyre; the car skidded to a halt. Gwen leaped out of it and stormed towards him as the heavens rained down upon them.
"What the hell are you doing here?!" she roared at him, her rapidly soaking hair plastered across her face.
"Stopping you from being thrown into gaol!"
"I can't let you do that," she said, and he saw the light of a streetlamp glint off of the switchblade in her hand.
"Have you gone insane?"
"I don't want to kill you, Loki, just stop you coming after us." There was a glint in her eyes he recognised from looking in the mirror, a diamond flash that was the sign of a desperate being. "You have to let me go, don't be selfish."
"You think I'm doing this because I'm selfish?" he yelled back, "I'm stopping you because this is insanity!"
"She's my CHILD!"
"That girl is nothing to you but your victim!" he roared, and instantly regretted it.
The diamond glitter in Gwen's eyes turned to fire. She gritted her teeth and lunged towards him with the fast, desperate movements of someone who had learned to fight on the streets, and Loki pulled his smallest knife out of its guard. It was imbued with a venom that would weaken a frost giant, and would undoubtedly knock out the tiny Midgardian. He ducked and wrenched her outstretched arm behind her and she twisted under him to avoid getting it broken, and her foot connected with his knee; he buckled on one leg and dragged her down onto the floor with him.
"Think about this, Gwen!"
"I have!" she screamed at him, tears mixing with the rain. "This is all I've thought about, Loki! I'm sorry, but-"
"So am I," he said, and they both looked down at the tiny sliver of a blade embedded in her thigh.
Loki caught her as she collapsed sideways, lifted her up and carried her back to the now-useless car. It wasn't until he dumped her prone form in the back seat that he noticed the little girl curled up in the front, staring at him through the headrest.
"Who are you?" she asked, dark eyes massive with curiosity and fear.
"I'm going to take you home," said Loki, "or at least to the nearest town." He hesitated- he had just knocked out his lover, and now he had to deal with a child. What did one even do with children? All he had ever done was hand them off onto someone else upon the first opportunity, but that did not seem to be an option here. "Your name's Lucy, yes?"
"Yeah."
"Lucy, I'm going to come round and open your door. Please don't scream."
"I want to stay here," she said quietly, "it's cold and wet outside, and my mummy says not to talk to strangers." It was uncanny, how similar that stare was to Gwen's.
"You either come with me or you stay here on your own, catch hypothermia and probably die," he told her, and the girl's bottom lip stuck out.
"Did you kill the lady?"
"No," said Loki, "surprisingly not. She's just asleep." Damn the woman for softening me.
"She said she was my mummy," Lucy told him, "but I haven't seen her before."
"She's not, she just… had you confused with someone else."
"Will we get into trouble?"
"Not if I have anything to do with it." He took Gwen's coat off of her and folded it beneath her head as a pillow before going round and opening Lucy's door. "Out."
"But it's raining."
Loki scowled and pulled off his own Midgardian-style leather jacket, leaving him only with his hooded one, which might as well have not existed for the amount of good it was doing against the onslaught. It dwarfed the little girl and she pulled the collar up over her head as Loki checked the car- sure enough, Algernon was curled up and asleep in a cupholder.
"Come on," he told Lucy, and started to walk down the road. After a few yards, he realised he was not being followed, and turned around to see the child stood adamantly by the car.
"I'm tired," she said adamantly, and with her jaw jutted out she looked yet more like the woman asleep in the vehicle. "And my legs are much littler than yours."
"And your point is?" Loki said.
"Carry me."
"No."
"Please?"
"No."
"I won't move unless you carry me."
Loki scowled. I hate children, he thought, and picked Lucy up. She scrambled onto his shoulders and finally, the odd pair set off towards the light of a town on the horizon. After about ten minutes Lucy fell asleep, so he lifted her down from his shoulders and held her in his arms as he walked so she wouldn't fall. He preferred her like this. She was much less annoying.
"In my experience," he told her, "adopted children are a lot more trouble than they're worth. You and I both seem to cause a lot of problems, Lucy."
%
It took about an hour to reach the nearest town, and Loki conjured up a glamour as he entered the centre of it. Through the window of a nearby store a screen was showing the Midgardian news, and he slowed down to hear what the presenter was saying.
"Police have widened the search internationally since it was revealed that Lucy's birth mother moved to the USA after leaving home. Authorities have released information which tells us that her mother was not granted permission to see her daughter and that nobody has heard from her in almost a decade.
"Meanwhile, the CCTV footage of Lucy with the pink-haired woman remains the police's only lead, but if it is her biological mother then this innocent girl stands a much greater chance of being found."
On the screen there was a grainy image of two figures- one shorter than the other and one with strands of peach coloured hair poking out from beneath her hood- along with a picture of Lucy, and what Loki guessed was a teenage Gwen. She was almost unrecognisable; her face was much fuller and her hair fell about her face in dark curtains, hiding most of it from view. It wasn't his Gwen, the one who had to fight for every moment of survival; this was a girl who still had her innocence.
There was a large building with "POLICE" over the lintel across the street. Loki strode into it, deposited the still-slumbering child in his arms on the reception desk, pulled his jacket off of her and turned to the bemused-looking woman at the desk.
"This is Lucy Ward," he told her, and walked away.
%
Loki had excellent night vision, and as he approached the car he saw that the back seat was empty. Of course it is. Because I dared to presume that this evening could not possibly get any worse.
She couldn't have got far, and besides, Gwen was too clever to run when the whole world was hunting for her, so she must be nearby… there was a wide-trunked oak tree overhanging the road, the only place in the area that would make a decent hiding-spot aside from the car, which she would have guessed he would look around first. Loki considered what to do next, and reverted back into his Asgardian garments.
Well-made leather boots splashed into black puddles as the god of mischief walked into the middle of the road. "Gwen!" he called out, and turned his back on the tree.
She sprinted out from behind the tree and lunged towards him, going to wrap her arm around his neck and hold her blade to his throat. But as soon as her hand made contact he – or rather, the shade of him - disappeared in a shimmer of green light and Gwen faltered, thrown for just a moment.
A moment was all Loki needed- he himself ran out from behind the car and grabbed her from behind, and lifted her feet off of the floor as she screamed and struggled.
"HEIMDALL!" he roared into the stormy night, "If you would be so kind!"
"What are you doing?!" she bawled at him, and shrieked as they were enveloped in rainbow light.
The journey to Asgard seemed to take both forever and no time at all, and Gwen used the impact of landing to wrench herself out of his grasp. She took just two seconds to take in her gleaming golden surroundings, then turned back to him with an expression of sheer fury on her face.
"WHY DID YOU STOP ME?!" she shouted, her cheeks painted black with the mascara that had run down them. "I WAS SO CLOSE, YOU BASTARD!"
"It was never going to work!" he yelled back at her. "She was better off without you-"
"SHE WASN'T! She's the only family I've got, Loki, I can't-"
"She is not your family! Lucy Ward's family are the people that took her in and raised her, not you."
"THEN I'VE GOT NOTHING!" she howled, fresh tears carving pathways down her face.
"You have me! Family is what you make for yourself, Gwen, not shared blood. If it was, I would be in Jotun instead of stopping you ruining your life." He started towards her, but a heavy hand across his chest prevented him from leaving.
"You just took her only daughter from her," Heimdall said quietly. Loki opened his mouth to argue, but the other Asgardian cut him off. "I am not saying you were mistaken for doing so, but… let her grieve."
Behind him, Gwen had fallen to her knees on the floor, and was sobbing into her hands.
"I lost her," she wailed, "I lost her all over again."
Loki, famed for his silver tongue, tried to find something to say. But all that came out was, "I'm sorry."
It wasn't even his fault. He must have loved her, he realised then, to go from trying to destroy entire realms without guilt, to apologising for something that was not even his fault. With a sigh he knelt down beside her and pulled the woman onto his lap, cradling her as she broke down.
"I have you, little mouse. Be calm," he murmured, "I have you."
A/N so when this fic was only meant to be 20k words long, this was the climax. And then... I got really carried away, and the current amount I have prewritten is closer to 80k. But yes - plot things are happening! DRAMA! The characters doing something other than flirting and bickering! Yay!