Gwen jumped up, so spitting mad that the instincts of the racing creatures made them bolt for their owners. "You knew!" she yelled. "You knew he would try to collect me, didn't you, you snobby bastard!"

"Is now really the time?" Loki asked her, as the bar's security, a couple of trolls so powerful they didn't need weapons, advanced slowly. They did not seem to be the most intellectual of individuals, and Loki doubted even his silver tongue would be able to reason with them about the damage his companion had just done to their ceiling. "Tivan's guards will be on your scent."

"I bet you thought, oh, let's send her into mortal peril! THAT'LL GET HER SPIRITS UP, HUH?!"

Loki downed the last of his drink, grabbed Gwen's shirt and pulled her down from the table. He did not much like Tivan, and liked the creatures he hired to protect his collection even less. They made creatures of nightmare look like fairy tales, and once they got your smell they could hunt you to the ends of Knowhere. "I… may have had my suspicions," he admitted, dragging her out of the bar and pushing the trolls aside with ease. That was the thing with grunts of their kind - if one mved fast enough, one could get away with anything before they even realised something was wrong. He had had much practise of those kinds of situations with Thor as a child. "But, to my credit, you do now seem much more like your old self."

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

"See?" he said distractedly, and made the mistake of looking over his shoulder. "Perfectly in character. Oh, Hel. He's found a mob."

"What?" Gwen asked, stumbling. He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder. "Oi!"

"You can pay anyone to do anything in Knowhere," Loki explained, breaking into a run as the motley crowd that had gathered at the mouth of the museum started to follow them like a storm cloud tethered to a dog, only with more weapons. He would have cast an illusion, created a shade of himself and Gwen to lead them on a false trail, but it was an easily recognisable skill and he treasured his anonymity. "And people will take any excuse to engage in a little violence. If I put you down, will you try not to get us both killed?" he added, vaulting a food stall and kicking out at a vat of boiling soup so that it spilled out behind him, giving them another couple of seconds' lead.

"I ain't making any promises," she said, and Loki dropped her. "What about them things that were already in there? They were…"

"People don't like Tivan," Loki explained, taking Gwen's hand and hauling her along. "And his pets are yet more unpopular. Last time he released them, there was an outcry. Knowhere is the only place in the quadrant where they can be kept without breaking any laws. Jump."

They leapt across a spinal tap, the thud of Loki's feet landing sending ripples across the yellow pool. "How do you know this?!"

"I have spies," he said simply, "shit."

"What now?"

"This street ends up back where we started," he said, "and it would be in poor taste for a king to commit murder in No Man's Land…" he spun around, looking for an option. "Aha!"

Gwen followed his gaze, and her eyes widened. Around the corner, the excitable sounds of the mob were getting closer. "Oh, no," she said, "no way."

"Would you rather stay and fight?"

"Anything other than that!"

"Stop being so melodramatic."

"Me?! Melodramatic?! You're the one who declared war on a planet 'cause you - AARGH!"

Loki shoved Gwen into the spinal fluid pool and dived in after her, the viscous liquid unpleasantly warm as it seeped through his clothes. He could just make out the black smudge that was Gwen kicking about and wrapped her arms around her, clamping a hand over her mouth in case she tried to scream and give them away.

Keep still, he thought at her, come on, little mouse… Gwen stopped struggling, and if it had not produced bubbles Loki would have sighed in relief.

Listening underwater was less picking up sounds and more making sense of the vibrations, but Loki had good ears. He held his breath as the world shook from the stampeding feet of the mob crossing over their heads.

"Where'd they go?" someone said in Xandarian.

"There's a side alley, they must've used that!"

Ah, Loki thought, yes. I had forgotten about that option. Still, if they had gone that way they would still be running. He listened as the mob forged ever onwards, and relaxed his hold on Gwen. Doesn't she realise that she can move again now?

And then he remembered that humans can barely hold their breath a minute. How long had they been down here?

Real, genuine panic now spreading through him like fire instead of the icy rush of excitement, Loki took Gwen's waist and propelled her upwards until he heard the surface of the spinal fluid splash about as her body broke it. He kicked upwards, surfacing with a gasp, and dragged her soaked and unresponsive body out of the pool onto the dirty ground that surrounded it.

"Come on, mouse," he murmured, wiping the goo from her face. "This is not how someone like you should die, damn it! I won't let you!"

It was far too ridiculous an end, and far too much his fault to boot. Gwen would die on her own terms, on her own planet, either in a fiery explosion or with the successor to her empire at her side. Not here, not covered in this foul liquid and from hiding instead of standing her ground, not because of him –

Gwen convulsed as her body retched on automatic, and her eyes snapped open as she lunged forward and vomited a stream of yellow into the pool. She retched again until nothing came out, coughed deeply, and fell back on her haunches with a grimace.

Loki stood statue-still, waiting for her to launch another rant against him. This time, he felt as though he deserved it.

Gwen tilted her head to look at him, her brown-black eyes reflecting the galaxies above their heads. The corner of her narrow lip twitched and, without any other warning, she began to laugh. Proper, rib-cracking, hysterical laughter, so infectious that it took Loki a moment to realise that he was laughing too. He was the king of the Nine Realms, and he was sat on the floor of a space pirate's haven, covered in yellow slime and almost crying with mirth along with a scrawny Midgardian sneak thief.

"Okay," Gwen said, once she had got her breath back, "let's never do that again."

A/N okay but I am so ridiculously excited for Ragnarok because Taika Waititi is directing it and I love him and it looks set to be a proper comedy-style movie and THE HYPE IS REAL