Author's Note: Hello hello hello :D New readers, welcome. Old readers, welcome back to another chapter! :D

To be honest, I want to get on with the boring details and move to the Loki - OC fluff stuff, but I also feel the need to give this story an actual plot, so... yeah... :P

This chapter was, frankly, rather annoying to write. I feel like the words didn't quite flow. It's late and maybe I've seen it far too many times, but it's making less and less sense so I thought I'd post it fast, before I ended up changing the entire story xD

To the reviewers:

TheIronBat: I'm as honoured that you're my first reviewer as I am about being your 100th :3 I hope you like this one!

Dragon of Ying and Yang: Thank you for your support, I hope this makes you happyy :D

Guest: Thank you :D

Many thanks to the ones who followed and favourited this, I hope I do justice to this story :) okay then, on with the show!

A/N EDIT-11/3/2014: before I go any further, I corrected some mistakes in this chapter, which kind of irked me when I came back and re-read it. Don't worry, it was only some grammar mistakes. I am a perfectionist so I just had to correct it. :P Chapter three will be up soon lovies! Stick around :)

Chapter 2

Louie POV

The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a whole lot of white light. I groaned. My body ached and I felt unbearably sleepy and weak. Blinking once or twice, I tried to get rid of the haze. A face swam in and out of focus.

"I'm dead aren't I?" I croaked. There was a chuckle.

"Not quite, dear. Though I have to admit, you may have come quite close."

I blinked again, trying to clear my vision. A plump, smiling nurse came into view. The tag on her blouse read Amanda Walters. She took my pulse and then fiddled with a button on the IV hooked into my arm. I looked around the pristine, white room. The only furniture other than the bed was a single chair. I rubbed my face tiredly. Okay, so I was in a hospital. What the hell happened to me?

Amanda Walters seemed to read the question in my gaze and gave me a gentle smile.

"Can you tell me your name?"

"Louise Montgomery."

"Can you remember what happened, love?"

I frowned then stopped because it hurt my head. The nurse pressed a glass of water into my hand. Taking a sip, I tried to remember.

"I… I was walking backwards; running away from the ship - thing - and I fell, I think, and blacked out." My voice trailed away and I looked down at myself. One leg was bound tightly in bandages, and there were cuts and bruises on my arms. Amanda nodded sympathetically.

"You must have, yes. You're lucky you didn't get a concussion. In fact, you just got away with a bad sprain and a few cuts. Oh yes, compared to the rest of them, you're very lucky." She smoothed out my bedspread. The gesture reminded me of my mom, who would do the exact same thing.

"What," I hesitated and licked my lips. "Can you tell me exactly what happened?"

Amanda's smile was fainter this time; the tight lines around her eyes quite visible. "It was another alien incident, dear." I raised my eyebrows.

"Aliens? Like the ones in New York last year?" The nurse nodded. I leaned back. Christ. The world was getting wackier by the day.

"You're American aren't you?" I nodded and answered her unspoken question.

"I was in Greenwich on… holiday. My flight home leaves next week. Or at least, it was next week before I blacked out."

"You were unconscious for a couple of days. The hospital sent out teams to rescue people. Your reports say that you were found approximately three hours after the ship disappeared and Thor left."

"Thor? Thor was here?"

"Oh yes, waving his hammer about and everything." Amanda collected up her tray of utensils and reports. "So, by what you're saying, your flight was supposed to leave on Sunday, yes?" I nod in affirmation.

"I suppose you'll be out of here in no time. Like I said before, you're one of the lucky ones." She gave me a pat on the cheek and picked up her things and left. Settling back into the pillows, I watched as the saline drip-dripped down the tube, each drop measured and perfectly spaced apart. I breathed gently to the rhythm, and in no time at all, I was asleep.

It was two weeks later that the trouble really started. I settled into the small, dingy apartment for which I had to pay way more than it was worth but what the hell, it was close to my waitressing job and almost in the centre of the city. I applied for a proper job to several places, but so far I hadn't received a single letter requesting an interview. It was really demotivating. I guess a degree in English didn't really get you far. I decided I was going to keep trying for another couple of months. Just a little longer in this rat-hole, and if I got nowhere, I would go back home and apply for a teaching job at the local high school. I would lead a proper life. Maybe meet someone. I snorted. How dull. But the way it was going, dull was where it was all heading.

One evening I returned home from work, tired and cranky; really, some customers could be so rude. Sighing I ran myself a bath. Fortunately the hot water was working that day, so a few minutes later I lowered myself into warm water with a sigh of contentment. Closing my eyes, I let the water work its magic on my sore limbs. Believe you me; waitressing is not a piece of cake. Some of the more ungainly jobs at the café were bestowed upon me, the new recruit. This involved lugging bags of flour and potatoes into the bakery, and the much heavier garbage bags out. It was better than most part time jobs though, but I don't think I'm very good at it. I tend to have a lot of bad luck; dropping bottles, slacking off, reading books on the job, mixing up orders. Robert, my manager, tells me my heart is not in the job. I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from snapping that the only reason I was so unfocused was because I stayed up till late writing articles, poems and the sort, to send off to publishers on an almost daily basis. Okay, so maybe what I said earlier wasn't quite true. I did have some dreams. To be a writer, now that would be pretty cool. Not that I had had any luck in that area either.

A good hour later, I was almost completely rejuvenated and decided to take my latest novel and read on the rooftop. It was only a five floor building so it was completely dwarfed by most others, but it was better than nothing. Settling on the ground, my back against the wall, I sipped my water, intending to bury myself in the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Before long though, my thoughts started drifting as usual back to the battle at Greenwich and what had happened to me there. There was still a gaping hole in my memory, something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

I had blacked out, about that I was quite sure, but something didn't feel quite right about the whole escapade. I don't remember hitting my head or receiving a blow to it in order to black out. The doctors at the hospital told me there was absolutely nothing wrong with my head; I didn't even have a bump or a bruise. If I didn't know better, I'd say I blacked out in midair.

I stretched my foot experimentally, rotating it. The sprain had healed surprisingly fast; by the time I stepped out of the airplane and back into the city of New York, it barely hurt at all. Tapping thoughtfully on my water bottle, I went back to Holmes. I had read this book once before when I was little and I vaguely remembered whodunit. Boo. I just managed to spoil a book for myself on my very own. Disappointed, I put the offending thing aside and continued tap tapping away, now humming the bars to "Valerie".

The water in my bottle made ripples as I tapped.

Well sometimes I go out, by myself, and I look across the water

I closed my eyes, practically seeing the words form in my head. My fingers tapped away. I loved this song. It was my mother's favourite. She and I would sing it all the time. I wouldn't say I'm an incredible singer, but Mom, she was the best. Together, we always sounded fantastic. My chest felt tight when I thought of how we wouldn't be able to do that anymore.

"Won't you come on home…"

The bottle felt strangely light in my hands and I cracked an eye open. My breath caught in my throat and the words died on my lips. The water in the bottle was floating; floating in big globules inside the clear plastic as if the bottle was a lava lamp. I blinked and immediately the water fell back, sloshing around. I let out a breath I didn't realize I had been holding and shuddered. My heartbeat was suddenly very loud in my ears.

Why- why had the law of gravity just been defied in a little plastic container? Was I dreaming? I pinched myself. Ow, okay no, not dreaming. Was I seeing things? My eyes widened. Oh, God, maybe I was. Maybe I did get hit on the head in Greenwich.

I looked at the water again. It lay innocently at the bottom of the bottle, gently swaying as I moved my hands. I glared at it suspiciously for a few moments before taking a deep breath and calming down a bit.

"It's nothing. You were probably seeing things, Louie," I told myself sternly. "A lot of weird crap has happened lately, you shouldn't be surprised one or two weird things would happen again." Honestly, after aliens and spaceships, a little hallucination should be quite normal.

But weird things didn't stop happening around me. Two days after the water bottle incident I was at Central Park when I ran into a bunch of school kids. A very haggard looking school teacher was accompanying them, reprimanding and chiding them gently as they all gathered around a large elm, the noise level steadily increasing as they pointed up at the branches, talking among themselves. Curiousity got the better of me and I moved over to see what the fuss was about. Then I spotted it, a smear of bright yellow and red, against the cool green leaves. A kite.

Why they were thinking of flying a kite on a day there was barely a breeze I could not fathom but as I watched them, I couldn't help but think that if a gust of wind blew through the branches just right, it might just fall out. I had barely finished forming the thought in my head when there was a sudden whooshing sound and with a burst of wind, the kite fluttered to the ground. Jaw dropping open, I hurried away amidst the cheers and whoops of joy of the kids. An uneasy feeling crept into me. What the hell was going on?

Then, a week after that, I was lugging a bag of compost up to the rooftop on Mrs. Walter's request. Mrs. Walters was a sweet old lady who lived in the apartment across the hall from mine, and only two things in her life mattered the most to her: mollycoddling anyone younger than the age of twenty-five by inviting them to tea on a weekly basis (read: yours truly) and her miniature rooftop garden. Because I was bribed with many chocolate chip cookies and a slice of apple tart, I was more than happy to help out by promising to carry it up and store it. Of course, that was before I saw the size of the bag.

It was as big as two sacks of cement and by god it was heavy. By the time I had made it to the second floor landing I was sweating profusely and swearing colourfully enough to make any sailor wince. By the time I arrived onto the third floor, I was ready to give up for the day and come back tomorrow. My arms ached, and I was losing my grip. So naturally, halfway up the next flight of stairs, I dropped the blasted thing and watched in a fascinated sort of horror as it went spilling out onto the carpet with a soft rustle. Oops.

I flipped out completely of course, thankful that neither Mrs. Walters nor the landlord had seen what I had done to their respective precious property. The soil would take ages to clean up, and oh God, if it stained – Then, before my eyes, the soil was hovering a good inch above the carpet. My mind went blank with shock. Not again. The soil started spinning like a tornado had caught it up and zoomed up the staircase. I took the stairs two at a time, chasing it down. The compost tornado made its way to Mrs. Walters' front door where it promptly exploded, showering the entire landing with soil. I groaned.

Forget uneasiness, now I was simply fucking terrified. I was positive now, about what exactly it was causing all these strange incidents. It was me. I was doing this, and whatever the hell it was, it was happening more and more often and I had no idea how to control it.

Fury POV

Nick Fury was having a good day. He hadn't been woken up at some godforsaken hour due to some sort of emergency or the other and so far nothing had exploded, accidentally or otherwise. The Helicarrier was fixed, the Dark Elves incident in Greenwich finally closed with nothing further to report and the Avengers Initiative was going quite well. He prided himself in the results of that last one. No-one expected the superhero bunch to be able to actually get along, but once again, they had amazed everyone, be it anyone from S.H.I.E.L.D or the rest of the world. They were a surprisingly good team.

Speaking of said team, Fury decided it was time to check in on them. He usually did it once a month or so in a – ahem – unofficial manner. Looking through his information reports and tabs he discovered they were all in Stark tower. Oh, how convenient. Discreetly he tapped into the building's surveillance system, surveying all for around ten seconds – any longer and Tony's AI would be alerted of his presence.

He noted that Barton and Romanoff were lounging on opposite ends of a sofa, the former flipping through TV channels while the latter flipped through a magazine. His lip curled at their poor attempt of hiding their almost violent game of footsie. Stark was at the bar, sipping a martini - really Tony, at nine in the morning? – an arm slung around Pepper Potts, CEO of Stark Industries. Banner was down in the labs, scribbling furiously in one of the ten books open in front of him. Rogers was, predictably, in the gym. Fury snorted. Three days since he had returned from wherever the hell he had been on that motorcycle of his and he was already back in the gym. Why were all his agents not like this man?

Thor was, of course in Asgard, with Jane Foster. He had said he had matters to attend to there. Fury let him go without being too precise about the debriefing of the Greenwich battle; losing his mother and brother had taken quite the toll on the usually cheerful God. (Fury couldn't exactly say he was sorry for his loss though. Loki was much less trouble dead). Thor was expected to return tomorrow, and so far, all seemed well with this superhero boy-band. Oh yes, Fury was definitely having a good day.

He should've known it wouldn't last.

His communicator chirped and he pressed a button.

"Agent Hill," he said, leaning back in his seat and sipping his coffee. "I'm glad you called, I'd like you to get me the files on Romanoff and Barton as soon as –"

"Sir," Hill interrupted, sounding worried. "We have a bit of a situation." Fury frowned and waited for her to elaborate.

"We were updating the list of wanted criminals, Sir, and as usual we were running a final check before moving records over to the 'Deceased' section. And then –," Hill broke off for a second and Fury heard her murmur to someone in the background. "Matthew! You're one hundred percent sure it's not a system malfunction? One hundred percent sure?" - And then - "Dammit!"

Fury drummed his fingers on the table top impatiently. "Talk to me, Agent. What's going on?"

"Sir, we have a 72 percent match on the facial recognition system, of –," she broke off again and another background voice rose, panicky and loud.

"I thought he was dead! The Director told us –"

"Maria!" barked Fury "a 72 percent match of whom?"

"Of – of Loki, Sir." Suddenly, his coffee seemed too bitter for him to swallow.

A/N: So that happened. :P

K, let me know what you think okayyy ;3

Readers, do keep in mind it's a slightly AU story. Plotlines from Captain America, the Iron Man Sequels, etc, etc, may or may not apply according to my liking :p Also, I should mention, I do NOT live in America and so my geography is absolute crap. If I got anything wrong, do let me know.

OH. Darn I forgot the Disclaimer. I OWN NOTHING YOU RECOGNISE. NOTHING. HABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

KTHANKSBYEEEEEE!

25/07/2015: BIG GRAMMAR EDIT