"I wouldn't go in there if I were you," said Bobby through a mouthful of apple.

Loki's hand paused over the handle of the door to Gwen's office, behind which he could hear the sounds of things being broken. "Don't tell me what to do," he said, and then, "why not?"

A particularly loud crash shook the floor, accompanied by furious screaming. Bobby raised an eyebrow at him.

"She came back from her meeting like that, been doing it ever since. It's been hours now, the only person she's talked to was James and the bastard didn't even tell me what was going on." She took another bite, reducing it to the core, which she then shoved into her mouth and all.

"Where is James?"

"Dunno, said he had an errand to run."

Loki looked back at the door. "I should calm her down," he mused aloud, and Bobby shrugged.

"Rather you than me," she said, spitting a pip into the bin and moving towards the exit.

"Thank you for your support, quim."

"You are very welcome, prick."

He smirked and opened the door, then ducked as a chair went flying at his head.

"GET OUT!"

"No," he said evenly, "what happened?"

The office was a wreck. The desk had been flipped over and its contents were scattered across the floor, papers mingled with pickpocketed trinkets and a smashed computer screen. The books had been pulled from their shelves and the pages torn out- she must be upset, then, to have done that. "None of your business," Gwen snarled, who herself looked a complete wreck.

"I'm not leaving until you tell me," he said, and with a frustrated shriek she went back to breaking things. "Mouse-"

"Don't! Don't call me that!"

"Why not?"

"Because-" her anger seemed to evaporate as she pressed her hand to her mouth to muffle a sob. "Oh, god," she whispered, her voice barely audible, "Algernon. The bastard killed Algernon." She screamed a nasty, guttural scream as tears began to pull her make-up down her face, and punched a frame on the wall, its glass shattering and tearing the skin on her knuckles.

Loki's first thought was merely, is that it? But he pushed it down and crossed the room to where Gwen was standing, staring at the blood now dripping from her hand. "Oh, sweetheart," he said, and she embraced him as she broke down completely.

"Why?" she sobbed into his shoulder. "Why do I lose everything I love? What the fuck is wrong with me, Loki?"

%

Once she had calmed down, he clumsily cleaned and bandaged her hand as she sat on her kitchen side, still sniffling occasionally. "There's nothing wrong with you," he said at last, and she snorted humourlessly.

"Really? Puny Midgardian like me is completely flawless?"

"Fine," Loki said, "in these specific circumstances, there is nothing wrong with you."

"There's the man I know and love." She caught his hand and pulled it into her lap, weaving her fingers through his. "You must think I'm so dumb."

"Of course not."

She looked up at him. "Look me in the eye, Lejemand, and tell me your first thought was not along the lines of 'what an overreaction'."

"I - fine. But if it makes you feel any better, my second thought was much more sympathetic."

"It doesn't, but at least your conscience is clear." She ran a thumb across the vein on the back of his palm. "It's just… that mouse was everything I had, for years of my life. And Martoni killed him just to, to, to prove a point." She practically spat out the last words.

"So what are you going to do?" he asked her.

There was a fire burning in her nearly-black eyes. "Make him pay. I said it would take something more for me to take him out, and here it is."

"Oh, so this is a revenge story, now? That seems healthy."

"Please, you trying to take over Earth was totally you attempting to get back at your brother."

"Don't be ridiculous." She kicked him gently. "In all seriousness, Gwen, you can use your rage. Let it consume you."

"Oh," she said, "I am. The son of a bitch is going to die screaming."

His lip twisted. "You can be a little scary at times."

"I try my best. Thanks for patching me up."

"It's what I'm here for. Rule Asgard, and clean your wounds whenever you inevitably get yourself into trouble. Would you like me to stay?" he asked, tucking her hair back behind her ears.

"Nah, I've got work to do. A lot of work to do. I need to figure out who else is willing to mutiny, his security plans, who I might need to bribe…"

"It's really rather attractive when you talk about killing someone."

"Cheers. That's why I do it, actually. To turn you on. Because the whole world does, in fact, revolve around you."

"I always felt it did." He kissed her, tasting the last traces of salty tears on her lips. "Good luck."

"I don't need it."

"That's my girl."

%

One Week Later

"Claire, you got the word on his mistress?"

"Watertight, no symp."

"Great, so we don't have to worry about her." Loki watched from a shadowy corner as Gwen spun around in the centre of the room, the walls of which were covered from floor to ceiling in maps, lists, notes and skeins of red silk, linking it all together. "Allie, Svechota. Hit me."

"Uh, probably your main rival. Word is he's already made one mutiny attempt when Martoni first got the big seat, and it's only 'cuz of his silver tongue that he's still alive, the slimy git."

"Slimy git, noted. Posh boy!"

"Hm?"

"You're good at talking your way out of shit," she said, in what he thought was an unnecessarily accusatory tone, "any idea on how to shut this guy up?"

"Cut out his tongue?" he suggested, and she gave him a scathing look. "Fine. Confuse him to the point that he's lost for words."

"Thank you for your surprisingly constructive suggestion. Bobby!"

"Yo."

"Chaffeur intel, hit me. Ow! Not literally, asshat!"

"But it was too good an opportunity to pass up."

"Just tell me about his damn driver," Gwen sighed.

The woman was in her element- Loki couldn't pair the skinny little urchin he had first met to the person standing in front of him now. She moved with confidence and complete self-assertion, no longer needing to be out of sight- it was a Gwen that, before now, he felt that only he had known. He actually felt a little jealous that now he had to share her. She dismissed the Rats half an hour later and walked up to him when they were alone, slipping her hands beneath his shirt and smiling crookedly at him.

"I'm going to send his sorry arse to hell," she said in a sultry voice, and he laughed. "How do you feel about a harmless bit of tagging? Just being a gargoyle, no stalking or owt."

"I understood about half of that," he replied as her fingers crept further up his torso. "And, although I can easily think of things I'd rather we do with our time, I'd be delighted. To whom do we owe the pleasure?"

"One of Martoni's privates, not affiliated with the rest of the mob so much," she explained, shifting her hands round to his back and tracing the lines of his shoulderblades, "lives in a big fancy apartment up in Manhattan, got a communal area on the penthouse floor."

"I would imagine," he said slowly, his hands doing some wandering of their own, "one would need a key to get into the building in the first."

"You got a good imagination," she grinned, and removed one hand to get something from her back pocket, before pulling out a flimsy bit of plastic and waving it in the air with a very smug expression. "Key card. Skivved it off his girl, she won't be getting laid anytime soon."

"Such charming dialect," he murmured as she stepped away.

"You should change your face and shit, put on a swanky suit. I'm gonna get changed, meet me at the end of the road in twenty minutes."

"I can cast a glamour over you," he offered, but she shook her head.

"Too risky- what if we get separated?" She gave him a fleeting kiss before disappearing through a door that led to her room.

Madwoman, he thought appreciatively, and adjusted the form he wore in front of the Rats to one that felt a little more sophisticated, with a sharp black suit to match.

Fifteen minutes later, he was fiddling with his gold cufflinks when a pretty, long-haired brunette in a dress approached him.

"Afternoon, posh boy," she said brightly, and Loki recognised his lover beneath what he could have sworn was another woman's face.

"Impressive," he said, "you look normal."

"Contouring's a wonderful thing, innit? Are you aware your glamour looks like Paul Newman?"

"Who?"

"That one film I made you watch. The one with the eggs."

He glanced at his reflection in a window and a long-nosed, blue-eyed man with a lazy smile looked back at him. "You approve, then."

"Oh, yeah." She linked her arm through his, slipped on a pair of sunglasses and together they wandered through the New York streets in what appeared to be an aimless fashion. "So, what does Thor make of all the Avengers breaking up like a late nineties boyband?"

"Why don't you ask me what I think of it?" he asked, mock-offended.

"Because you don't care."

"Ah, right. Excellent point. Well, he grieves for his friends, of course, but Asgard has her own troubles."

"And how are you dealing with them, oh king my king?"

"Magnificently," he replied with a sly smile. "It's a notable coincidence that the internal fissure of your false idols should be reflected in the Midgardian underworld's political structure, too."

"Only a city's worth of underworld," she countered, "please don't compare me to the Avengers. They're a symbol of the power of private companies in the world and I don't like it."

"You are very odd, sweetheart."

"I know. You can call me mouse again, by the way. I'm over the initial stages of grief."

"Thank Yggdrasil for that," he muttered, and flinched as somebody brushed past them. "Gwen, a mortal just touched me."

"Oh, diddums," she sighed, pulling a twenty dollar bill out of her purse and handing it to a homeless person as they walked past them. "I can't imagine how terrible that must be for you. D'you need a shower, now?"

"I need to burn my skin off," he retorted, "and, as a frost giant, that is saying something."

"Hey, remember when we first met and I nicked your wallet? How dirty did you feel after that?"

"I was too busy being utterly bemused," he said, "and, as you continued to do it over time, infuriated… then infatuated…"

"Ooh, tell me more."

"I think you already have the gist of it."

They continued like this, their strange mix of bickering and flirting holding the conversation, until they approached one of the uglier steel-and-glass towers. Gwen swiped the key card at a small box mounted next to the door, thus causing it to open. Since the building was too tall for stairs to be conceivable for her tiny legs, he was reluctantly dragged into a mirror-panelled lift with terrible music playing faintly from an invisible source. At least the view was pleasant.

"Y'know," Gwen said, "people always make out in lifts like this. They do it in movies all the time."

He looked at her.

Five minutes later the doors slid open again and Loki rebuttoned his waistcoat as they stepped out onto the top floor of the building, which featured massive windows displaying what would have been a stunning view if it hadn't been Midgard. There were a few low-slung white sofas in the centre of the floor with a couple of other people milling around on them, and that was where they were to sit for the next three hours as Gwen watched and waited for things she refused to divulge to her partner.

"I'm bored," Loki said after ten minutes.

"Poor poppet," Gwen replied as she turned a page of a magazine, and this conversation was repeated in similar forms at regular intervals. A couple of times her hand would drift to her jacket pocket, as though to check something was still there, but it always dropped back into her lap before it reached it. After a couple of hours of completely pointless sitting Loki was about ready to murder someone when an apartment door opened and Gwen's eyes widened.

"Don't," he warned her, as a young couple emerged, but it was too late- she had hurried over to introduce herself to them and, more importantly, the baby imprisoned in the contraption the mother was pushing along. He glared at the back of her head and glared at the father who tried to wave at him and glared at the ugly child in the wheeled prison for ten whole minutes until Gwen released the couple and came to sit back down next to him.

"Enjoy yourself?" he asked moodily, and she rolled her eyes.

"It was a cute baby, okay?"

"No. What about the reason we came here in the first place?"

"Well," said Gwen smugly, cracking her knuckles, "that lovely couple is the sister, brother-in-law and niece of the private hire we're tagging. A family which I'm pretty sure nobody else in the state knows about, which means-"

"We can use them as blackmail," he finished for her, talking under his breath so they wouldn't be heard.

"I can use them as blackmail," she corrected him, "I sneaked some photos with a secret camera one of the Rats got for me. But yeah, that's about it."

"Did you know they would come?" he asked.

"I had my suspicions. Not many gang boys live in places as legit as this, so he must've had a reason for choosing the apartment. I was ready to bet that reason was the fool someone he knew well into thinking he was a good guy." She stood up. "We can go, now."

"I've been waiting for you to say that."