You know what this is.

Gwen shoved the thought, the evil, life-ruining little thought, to the back of her mind for the rest of the day. She had meetings with clients and conferences with the city's crime bosses, then she returned to the burrow to do the week's filing, which was all on paper. Gwen had been on the streets when the digital revolution happened, and her inexperience with it, combined with the Ultron palaver, meant she trusted technology so little it took months for James even to convince her to get a phone (her laptop was barely used and its memory constantly wiped).

When she was done- which was well into the night- she went downstairs and found James in the kitchen along with a couple other Rats, who were microwaving things that should not be microwaved.

"I buy you lot a telly and you do this of an evening instead," she sighed, as whatever was in the machine exploded.

"Hey, miss."

"Have you seen Bobby?" she asked, walking to the cupboard and pulling out a box of cereal.

"In her room, miss."

"Mmmfks."

"Pardon?"

She swallowed the Cheerios with some difficulty. "Thanks."

Bobby's room was at the end of the corridor; still stuffing her face with cereal, Gwen approached it and slammed her palm a few times on the door instead of entering, having learned from experiences she would much rather forget. The Rats all had "do not disturb" signs, now. It was for the best.

"WHAT?"

"I NEED TO TALK TO YOU!"

"TALK TO JAMES!" Bobby screamed back.

"IT INVOLVES MY REPRODUCTIVE ORGANS!"

She heard her groan, then a minute later she opened the door. "Have you hit the menopause?" she asked grumpily.

"I'm the same age as you, arsehole."

"Hmph." She came out into the corridor, and they both sat down on the slightly dusty floorboards. "Well, what is it?"

"I…" Now that she had to, it seemed impossible to say. She couldn't get her mouth to wrap around the words; she looked down and saw her hands were trembling a little in a rare show of nervousness. Pull yourself together, she told herself.

"Are you pregnant?"

"Why would you say that? Of course I'm not! Whatever gave you… I don't know," she admitted, and buried her face in her hands. "Oh, bloody hell."

Bobby's expression softened a little. "Why don't you know?"

"I… I keep throwing up and crying a lot," she said, "and it feels… it feels like last time." She wouldn't admit it aloud, but deep in her bones she knew it was true. It had been the same with Lucy. "But I haven't checked."

"Didn't know there was a last time," said Bobby speculatively.

"Yeah, well, it didn't end brilliantly." She lifted her shirt to show the other woman her C-section scar, and Bobby winced.

"Shit," she breathed.

"That's what I said."

"Is it... his?"

"Couldn't be anyone else's," she mumbled. "What do I do, Bob?"

"Tell him," she ordered her, "next chance you get. D'you want to keep it?"

She thought of how much Lucy meant to her- and then remembered the trouble that had arisen because of the daughter she already had. She thought of how she was busy enough as it was, of how Loki had precisely zero interest in children, of how the child would be half-human, half-Jotunn and how it would be brought up with criminal parents who were effectively dead to the world. "No," she said in a small voice, and Bobby's tattooed arm wrapped around her.

"Hey. Just tell him you wanna stop it and you can both get on with your lives. And use protection next time."

She laughed weakly. "Sorry for dragging you into this."

"Just don't do it again, deal?"

%

She dropped the test in the bin, washed her hands and stared at her midriff in the mirror. It looked flat and normal, save for the scars, not a single sign of the time bomb that was hiding beneath it, a bomb she urgently needed to defuse before it went off and ruined everything. "You've existed less than two months and already you're fucking it all up," she said to her stomach, "at least you're honouring a fine tradition from both sides of the family."

"Gwen!" she heard Loki call from a couple of rooms away, and dropped her shirt.

"Coming," she yelled back, "I need to talk to you, anyway." She hurried out of the bathroom, through her bedroom into the office, and took her seat as she found herself unable to look him in the eye. "Hey," she said, shuffling some papers.

"Well?"

"You might want to sit down," Gwen told Loki as she paced up and down behind the desk. "Please."

"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" he asked, lounging back in his chair like the spoiled prince he was.

She gripped the back of her chair and chewed her lip, the coolness of her piercing a reassuring familiarity. "In advance," she said, "I'm not exactly over the moon about it either."

"Mouse, sweetheart," he said, not bothering to look at her either as he retrieved the knives she had nicked off him from her pen pot. "I'm not a lover of suspense." He stuck the knives in the recesses of his leather tunic and put his feet up on the desk, leaning onto its back two legs. "At least, not when I'm the one creating it."

She looked down at her hands, which were twisting around each other in her lap. "Sorry."

Loki sighed heavily. "In that case," he said, "I really must return to where I am needed." He stood up and started to walk away, and Gwen realized that she had to speak now or she would never be able to do it.

"I'm pregnant!" she blurted out. Loki froze, one hand resting on the door but not yet pushing it open. "I didn't – I only just realised. I'm about seven weeks along, I think. I didn't even realise I still could, not after Lucy… Loki. Say something. Please."

Silence.

"Okay, well…" she stood up, clenching her fists and pressing them down onto the table. "I'm not keeping it. I mean… shit, what the hell would happen if I did? But I'm not. I have to get it out of me, I have to."

"You can't," Loki said, still with his back to her.

"What?"

"I said, you cannot kill whatever it is growing inside you. Would that you could, but… it has Jotunn blood. There is nothing in neither Asgard nor Jotunheim that could do it, so I doubt that human healers could."

"No," said Gwen, "I have to, you're… you're lying…"

Loki spun around and stormed towards her. "Look at me!" he yelled. "I am an abomination, Gwen! I cannot have a child! Half human, half-Jotunn; you think I want to bring something like that into this world?! It will be a monster!"

"You think you're the only one that's scared of what's gonna happen? I'm the one with the damn thing stuck in my gut, Loki! Lucy almost killed me already, and now I have this, this mutt inside of me and I can't do it again! I can't! It is the child of this alien, this god, and it is stronger than me!"

"We don't know that," he said, no longer shouting.

"Yeah, we do. You know we do."

Loki turned away, running a hand over his face. Once again he said nothing, and Gwen wished that she had found out the way to shut him up in better circumstances.

"It's a girl," she said, for the sake of having something to say, "I know it is. I knew with Lucy and I know now. Maybe we can call it Frigga."

"Don't," he said, "not now. Don't do that."

"I'm being bloody practical, Loki! Since it's obviously gonna have to live, it'll need a name! Jesus. I haven't even got a social security number. The mongrel child of two killers. What have we done?"

Loki shook his head, jaw clenched.

She walked away from the desk and towards her tiny window, struggling with the catch and yanking it upwards. The cold, dry city air flooded in, carrying the noises of civilisation with it like an unwanted guest. "This has got to be fate," she murmured, "right? Fucking… divine retribution, or some shit like that. I mean, it's not like we haven't done anything to deserve it." She felt nauseous, and dizzy, and she was pretty sure it was nothing to do with morning sickness. "Loki, I'm so sorry."

He walked so softly she didn't notice him moving until he was stood next to her, leaning on the wall by the window. "Do not be ridiculous," he said shortly. "This is as much my fault as it is yours. That is how it works, you know."

Gwen laughed weakly. "What're we gonna do?"

The answer he gave her… Gwen had faced, and would continue to face, many great and terrible things in her life. But nothing would ever scare her like his reply had done.

"I don't know," he said. "Oh, little mouse. I really do not know."

A/N because happy endings are not a thing that I do with great regularity.