Avengers, Thor 1. Chapter 1

"You answer to Kate?"

Uncharacteristically intimidated, the New York librarian could only gesture to her name badge and nod up at the imposing patron looming across the desk.

"Ah, Kate Farrow," the man gave a slight bow, his black hair falling momentarily across his face.

Kate found her voice. "Are you after anything in particular, Sir?"

The patron cocked his head to one side, his unnerving green eyes suddenly sharp. "You address me as Sir?"

"Unless you'd like to introduce yourself?"

The man paused. He'd been warned under extremely unpleasant circumstances never to reveal his true identity. He smiled, somewhat bitterly. "You may call me Luca." He waved an arm towards the shelves. "And these are this great city's books?"

She shrugged.

He laughed. "And from these _books_ you humans seek to gain the wisdom of the ages?"

Kate's eyes narrowed, her intimidation turning a corner towards irritation. "Again, sir…"

"Please, call me Luca."

"Luca. Is there anything specific that you're after? Are you a member of the library?"

"Er, no."

"No, nothing specific, or no, not a member."

"Not a member. And… and as for what I seek," he paused, dropping his chin to his chest. "I seek interaction, conversation," he raised his eyes and she caught a timid smile, so out of place on one so tall and striking. "Companionship."

Kate folded her arms across her chest. "Sir…"

"Please. Luca."

"Sir, I'm sorry. I can help you become a member of the library but you'll have to look elsewhere for companionship."

"Well then," he boomed, "Let me become a member. What must I do?"

Kate groped under the desk, fishing for an application form and turning up a stubby pencil. "You'll need to fill this out and provide three acceptable forms of ID. There's a list on the back."

The man looked somewhat baffled. "Eye? Dee?"

She looked up at him from under her lowered brows. "List on the back."

He attempted what he hoped was a sweet sort of smile. "Ah, of course. On the back." He stood and looked at her.

She raised her eyebrows. "Yeah, so just bring that back after you've filled it all out."

"Ah," he nodded.

She pushed the pencil stub towards him. "Perhaps take it to that table over there?"

He looked in the direction she pointed, looked back at Kate and then nodded decisively, gathering up the form and pencil. "I shall return."

"Excellent." No sooner had the enormous figure folded himself into his chair, than Kate regretted not sending him up to the silent study space on the second floor. She could feel the heat of his green gaze on her. "Why is it that only the lunatics pick me for companionship?" she muttered.

At last her supervisor appeared and Kate made her excuses, disappearing down to the stacks for as long as she thought she could justify. By the time she returned, the man had gone, leaving a small tower of books in his stead. She glanced at the titles as she returned them to the nearest trolley. Curiously, it was a pile of her most favourite novels, plays and collections of poetry.

"You okay?" her friend Tash asked, appearing from a bank of shelves behind her. "Can I join the next round of musical statues?"

She shook her head as Tash took the pile from her. "Umm, I don't think you'll be needing to borrow this particular bunch of books. Haven't you pretty much got the signed first editions of all of these?"

"I wish," she laughed. "Someone else must just have excellent taste." She looked into Tash's face to find her wide-eyed, staring into the distance over her shoulder.

"Check out this incredibly dashing guy!" Tash whispered, trying not to move her lips.

Kate looked above her at the polished elevator doors and was not entirely surprised to see the reflection of her imposing stranger striding back into the library, his black leather coat and scarf perfectly defining his impressively large frame.

"Kate Farrow!" he boomed, still a good distance away. "I have returned with the identification you requested."

Tash turned her raised eyebrows on her friend.

"Just another nutjob," Kate whispered.

Tash sighed. "When will the attractive guys turn out to be single and looking for a librarian?"

"I think he _is_ single and looking for a librarian. In this instance that's what _makes_ him a nutjob," she replied making her way slowly back to the desk.

Luca towered over the desk, beaming as if he'd just dropped a freshly slain wild boar onto the brown laminate and intended to feed the clan with it throughout the winter.

Kate reached across the desk for the papers and found her fingers arrested and raised to the man's lips.

"I enjoyed perusing some of your literature earlier," he murmured, placing a soft kiss on her knuckles. "I especially warmed to your Shakespeare. He seems to make words truly come alive, does he not? '_My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee The more I have, for both are infinite._'

"You've never read any Shakespeare before?" Kate enquired politely, hoping not to perturb the enormous madman who still had hold of her hand.

A nervous glance flitted across his face. "Er, no. I undertook my education elsewhere."

"Is there anywhere in the world you can get away with not reading Shakespeare these days?"

"Not _in_ the world, no." Luca laughed without conviction. "But somehow I seem to have managed it."

Kate managed to extricate her fingers from the large man's grip and slide his papers across the desk towards her so that she could get on with processing them and hopefully move him along.

The first document was a birth certificate that identified him as Luca Avazcard, born in Chichester, Sussex, England. That explained the accent.

The second and third documents were his gas and electricity bills. Kate gasped. He lived in her building.

"Does everything appear to be in order?" Luca inquired airily.

She looked more closely at the apartment number. He was on the same floor. Could this be the mysterious resident with the internal balcony exactly opposite hers? Her balcony was her haven - where she did all her reading. How else would he have known how to assemble exactly that pile of books? She kept her head bowed, mentally scanning through her options. Run. Call the police. Scream. Call her brother. Set off the fire alarm. Run. Hide. Run.

Suddenly, the man's large hand appeared before her eyes, sliding his papers back towards him.

She looked up, as boldly as she could manage, conscious that she was trembling.

She was surprised to find Luca wearing a sheepish expression. "It appears that you have caught me out, Kate Farrow, but let me assure you, I am no danger to you. I mean you no harm."

Kate looked so violently sceptical that Luca took a step back and raised his palms as if in surrender.

"It is true. I confess, I have been observing you on your balcony for some months now."

Kate glared back at him. Owning up was unnerving but somehow less unnerving than a denial would have been.

"It was wrong of me to follow you today, forgive me."

"Why did you do it?" Kate demanded.

Luca seemed to slump. He looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice to almost a whisper. "I have been utterly alone for almost a year."

"What has that got to do with me?"

"Kate, you have no reason to trust me, I understand that. But I came to this city against my will, and my loathing for the place and the people burned all throughout my first winter months here. It was consuming me." He paused. Then he smiled gently. "And then came the spring, and you began to venture out onto your balcony. You tended your plants and read your books and drank your tea and seemed to take real pleasure in things - in life. It began to occur to me that perhaps I could learn from your example."

Kate's eyebrows could not gain any more altitude. "You want to learn how to enjoy life from me? You're perhaps crazier than I first thought."

Luca nodded. "You think me mad. Of course you do. So I fear no further loss when I tell you that it was only at first that I thought to become an apprentice of sorts to you." He paused, looking intently into her eyes. "Now I think of you as the most luminous creature I have ever beheld, and, believe me, I have seen some real luminosity in my time. Kate, simply observing you has taught me all I need to know about life on this planet, and you have converted me to it, against my very firmest objections."

Kate opened her mouth to speak, thought twice and closed it again.

"It's true, I am your neighbour. And as your neighbour, for I believe that word has been infused with a certain weight in this world, I would never allow any harm to come to you, let alone inflict it myself. I hope you can believe me."

Kate found herself oddly compelled, perhaps by his heartening recognition that he'd been inappropriate, perhaps by his contrition, perhaps the deep green of his eyes, the intensity of his gaze or the beauty of his compliment, to keep listening.

"And I have no claim on your good will, but I have an enormous favour to ask you. Will you at least hear me out?"

While her internal safety monitor angrily shook his head, Kate nodded hers.

"You will?" he beamed, his eyes wide with surprise. "I do not deserve your merciful kindness." He bowed obsequiously.

She couldn't help a small smile. "Well? How can I help?"

He cleared his throat. "My older brother, with whom it could not be said I have a _warm_ relationship, is coming to town. I am to dine with him and his lady love, and, for a variety of reasons, I don't imagine that it will be a particularly enjoyable experience."

Kate nodded.

"In truth, he's coming to check on me as might a jailer making his rounds. I am only just beginning to understand the extent to which I have disappointed my family and the longer I spend here, the more I realise the injustice of my behaviour, the depth of my transgression." Luca fixed his deep green eyes on her with a greater intensity. "Just seeing you each day has made me realise that there _is_ a lot to love on this earth."

It took Kate a while to find her voice. "Luca," she began.

"Yes?"

"Imagine you were the father of a twenty-five year old daughter."

"Me?" Luca seemed delighted by the notion. "A father?"

"Yes, of a twenty-five year old woman."

"Being twenty-five qualifies someone as more than a mere babe?" he laughed.

Kate glowered mildly at him. "I'm twenty-five."

Luca's shock was palpable.

"How old did you think I was?"

Even he could work out that it would be unwise to venture an answer.

"Come to think of it, how old are you?"

This was a question to which he simply could not provide an honest answer. He shrugged.

"Anyway, if you were my father, how would you feel about me agreeing to go out with you after you've just confessed to watching me on my balcony for months and then stalking me to work?"

Luca smiled wanly. "It's true. I have not behaved in a manner worthy of you. Your father would surely forbid you to see me." He suddenly broke into a cheeky grin that would have unnerved his brother for different reasons than those for which it unnerved Kate. "But isn't defying our fathers one of the secret pleasures of life?"

Kate couldn't help but grin back at him. Everything in her screamed _No!_ but she said, "Yes."

Luca chuckled at her solidarity.

"I mean, yes," she repeated. "I will go to dinner with you."

Luca's face glowed with delight. "Shall I come to your door?" he asked, barely containing his excitement. "I know where to find it," he laughed.

Kate hesitated. "Why don't you meet me here." There. At least she'd improvised a little nod in the direction of just-in-case-he's-a-serial-killer.

"Of course," Luca nodded. "At seven?"

"Luca?"

"Mmm?"

"Is this a dressy sort of a dinner?"

He looked confused.

"I mean, what should I wear?"

He hit her will the full wattage of his smile. "I adore you in your pyjamas each morning. I cannot imagine attire in which you would appear less than perfect."

"Here," she whispered, sliding something across the desk.

He took it, brushing her fingertips with his own in a way that she found a little too distracting. "What is this?"

"Your library card, Sir," she replied, smiling.

Luca slipped the card into the breast pocket of his white button-down shirt and held his hand over it. "I will treasure it," he whispered. "In me, this library has found a most devoted champion."

Kate giggled nervously.

"Tonight, then?"

"Tonight."


	2. Chapter 2

Kate was conscious that her mouth was awkwardly gaping but she wasn't quite sure what to do about it. Luca, though extremely easy on the eye himself, had just introduced her to his brother, Tom, and the man was a _god_.

His partner, Jane, took her arm and led her into the restaurant. "I know," she whispered. "He had exactly the same effect on me."

Kate giggled self consciously.

"So… You're with Lok.. um, Luca?"

"Kate is my beautiful neighbour," Luca interrupted, appearing beside them. "She kindly agreed to accompany me this evening, for moral support, in case I needed it."

"Moral support, Luca?" Jane echoed. "I hardly think that's necessary."

Luca laughed without mirth. "We'll see, my dear Jane. We'll see."

The four of them were seated, the two brothers opposite one another, each almost a full head taller than the woman next to him.

"Well, brother," Tom began, "How are you adjusting to the terms of your exile?"

"Don't mind them," Jane whispered across the table to Kate. "It's kind of like their family speaks its own weird language."

Kate laughed. "That's sweet."

Jane raised her eyebrows. "Sweet is one word for it."

"As I recall," Luca responded, "It was the making of you, brother. Perhaps I'll come home one day wielding some sort of enormous spanner and we'll see out our days in a dusty old workshop fixing bicycles."

Thor chuckled, "I like it." He turned to his partner, "Jane? Can you see the two of us tinkering away together in our dotage?"

Jane pursed her lips. "I'm just focusing my energy on surviving the terrifying reality of the two of you in the same room."

Luca laughed, "Oh Jane, you know you have nothing to fear from me." He slid his arm across the back of the booth behind Kate. "Besides, you can be assured that I, for one, am on my very best behaviour this evening."

"You too, right _Tom_?" Jane asked.

Tom covered Jane's hand with his enormous paw. "Of course." He turned his attention to the woman diagonally opposite him. "So, Kate. Tell us about yourself."

Luca turned his face towards her and settled back in his seat, grinning. "Yes, please do."

Kate scanned the three unnervingly beautiful faces all looking directly into hers. She cleared her throat. "Well, I'm a librarian at Hudson Park Library." They all nodded, waiting for more. She thought for a moment, then launched onwards. "My family runs a sustainable livestock farm in Iowa, so I grew up there, but I studied at Sarah Lawrence and just fell in love with life in the city, it is _so_ different to my childhood."

"Different to our childhood too, eh brother?" Luca laughed.

"No cities for you either?" Kate asked.

The two men looked at one another. "Not exactly a city."

"Where _did_ you two grow up? It was somewhere in England, right?" she inquired innocently.

The brothers simultaneously cocked their heads to one side, still looking straight at each other.

Luca turned once more toward her. "Ah, yes. The beautiful English countryside."

"Were your family on the land?"

"Our parents own a considerable amount of land, yes," Luca nodded.

"Did you run cattle? Sheep?"

"A bit of everything, wouldn't you say, Tom?" Luca looked back at his brother mischievously.

"Hmm, yes. A bit of everything," Tom agreed nodding.

Jane saw Kate looking from one man to the other, somewhat confused by their evasiveness. "So, you must be a great reader," she stepped in. "Favourite novel of all time?"

Kate shook her head, laughing. "That's like asking someone to name a favourite child. You're just not supposed to do it!"

"Alright then, top ten?"

"Ok, in no particular order, and for today only, here's my current top ten." Kate took a deep breath and started counting on her fingers. "Virginia Woolf's _The Waves_, Ernest Hemingway's _The Old Man and the Sea_, Maxine Hong Kingston's _The Woman Warrior_, Harper Lee's _To Kill a Mockingbird_, David Malouf's _The Great World_, Michael Ondaatje's _In the Skin of a Lion_, Marilynne Robinson's _Gilead_, Patrick White's _The Tree of Man_ aaaand, oh my goodness, this is hard. Ok, and Jeffery Eugenides _The Marriage Plot_, no, _Middlesex_," she paused. "No, wait, let's take out _The Woman Warrior_ and replace it with AS Byatt's _Possession_." She looked up at the ceiling, exasperated. "Far out, I didn't even get an Austen or a Hardy in there! Or an Atwood! See? I told you that was too hard."

Jane, Tom and Luca were laughing at her impassioned complaint, but not unkindly. She felt an odd affinity with her companions, vastly different though they seemed. "What about you, Jane? Do you have an all time favourite novel?"

Jane grinned. "I love graphic novels. My favourite at the moment is _V for Vendetta_."

Kate reacted with enthusiasm. "I'm reading this great graphic novel right now! It's called _Gods of Asgard_ by Erik Evensen – have you seen it?"

There was an odd silence around the table that Kate couldn't quite read. Eventually, Jane spoke. "Sounds interesting, I'll keep an eye out for it."

"What about you, Tom? Any favourite novels?"

Tom looked regretful. "Er, I'm not much of a scholar, Kate. I've tended to flee from the books my whole life."

"More of a soldier, aren't you brother?" Luca contributed. "A lover _and_ a fighter. He'd make an excellent literary hero, you know." He looked gleefully at Jane. "Make sure you let him read that _Gods of Asgard_ book when you're finished with it, won't you, Jane. We have to do all we can to improve dear Tom's education."

Tom bristled silently in his corner.

"And you, Luca?" Kate turned her face to him. "Are you a reader?"

"Well," Luca began, settling comfortably back into his seat, "I enjoyed what I read of yours in the library this morning."

Kate raised her eyebrows.

"I'll concur with your inclusion of _The Tree of Man_. That _was_ wonderful." He looked into the middle distance above Jane's head and began to quote from the novel verbatim, "_She had begun to read in the beginning as a protection from the frightening and unpleasant things. She continued because, apart from the story, literature brought with it a kind of gentility for which she craved._" He looked at her intently. "Is that you, Kate? Are you like Amy, craving gentility in this crude world?"

Kate found herself unsettled by the question and by the piercing green of Luca's eyes. She managed a laugh, "You think it's gentility that I'm lacking?"

Still with his face turned towards her, he maintained the intensity of his stare, and she became all the more conscious of his arm stretching along the booth behind her. "As far as I'm concerned," he paused, flicking his glance almost imperceptibly down to her lips and back again, "you lack nothing." As he finished his sentence, she felt his thumb gently stroking the bare skin of her shoulder under the capped sleeve of her navy blouse. She shivered.

Kate suddenly became aware of the couple across the table, both observing them closely. Her face flushed and she struggled to form a coherent contribution to the conversation what with Luca drawing mesmerising little circles on her shoulder blade. His touch was anything but unwelcome, but for a girl who struggled to make conversation with strangers at the best of times, it was proving quite the obstacle.

Jane and Tom exchanged glances.

"Lok… Luca," Tom intoned severely. "A word?"

Luca unwillingly tore his eyes from Kate and met his brother's cool gaze.

He nodded, then turned back to Kate with a _very_ compelling half-smile. "Will you excuse me, Kate Farrow?"

She looked around, wide-eyed, as Luca shifted his weight away from her, as if coming out of an enchantment. "Of course," she whispered.

Jane and Kate watched the two brothers walk, coatless, out into the wintery cold of the city street. Whether by design or not, Kate couldn't tell, but they settled into their conversation directly under the warm glow of the street light, in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. From their table at the back of the restaurant, the women had a perfect view of the unfolding argument.

"Man, life with these two is never boring," Jane sighed.

"It looks like they have a pretty fraught relationship."

"There's a bit of history there. Not all of it good." Jane looked serious. "Kate, how well do you know Luca?"

...

Outside in the bitter wind, Loki and Thor faced off in their bulging shirt sleeves.

"Brother, who is this innocent woman?" Thor demanded. "How could you catch her up in this?"

"In what, brother? What exactly have I 'caught her up' in?"

"You know very well what I mean. This is your jail sentence, Loki. Not a holiday."

"My self-righteous, hypocritical, pompous arse of a brother, ladies and gentlemen," said Loki, gesturing to an imaginary audience. "What have _I_ done that _you_ did not do? May I remind you that when you met your Jane Foster, you were also an exile, cast out of Asgard in disgrace by our father for the criminal act of inciting a war." Loki paused. "Dwell on that, Thor. Where is the great difference between your transgression and mine? Younger siblings are impressionable, brother, but let's not hold them to a higher standard than those whose example they follow."

"What are your intentions with this woman, Loki?" Thor demanded.

"What's it to you, brother? I never questioned your motives when you took up with Jane."

Thor's disbelief was palpable. "Now who's the hypocrite?" he asked very quietly.

Loki held up his palms, "Alright, I admit, I did give you bit of a hard time."

"A bit?"

Loki sighed. "I grant you, I gave you merry hell. So, what is this? Retribution?"

"You know I consider myself somewhat of a champion of this planet," Thor said.

"Mmm, that's worked out well for them so far, hasn't it? Loki murmured.

Thor rounded on him. "Do you seek to enrage me, brother? I am here to ensure that you are safe, and that others in your vicinity, these humans that I love and have sworn to protect, are safe from _you_! I warn you, I am in no humour to be trifled with! Now tell me, and tell me the truth, what are you doing with this woman?"

Loki was silent, eyes on the ground.

"Speak!" Thor raged. "Or so help me, I will take you back and throw you into the darkest cell in Asgard this very night."

"Do you believe me to be so utterly beyond redemption, brother?" Loki asked quietly.

Thor clapped his giant hand on Loki's arm and sought his brother's eyes. "It is the dearest desire of my heart, Loki of Asgard, that you might be restored to me as the dear friend you once were to me, my true brother." He paused. "Every day, Loki. Every day, I yearn for the opportunity to restore you to your rightful place, to have you beside me in the work I must do."

Loki boldly returned Thor's gaze. "Then take heart, brother. For I feel myself even now to be in the valley of remorse and your words give me hope of forgiveness."

Thor's eyes narrowed. "Is this a trick, Loki? I have fallen for your schemes before and I do not intend to be duped by you again."

Loki shook his head. "I love her, Thor," he whispered. "I have never before known this burning desire to see another person happy."

Thor let out a great laugh of relief. "You, my brother?" he grinned. "In love? Then there is more than hope for you!"


	3. Chapter 3

"Oh brother," laughed Loki apologetically, noticing the expression on his sibling's face. "Don't tell me I've sunk your battleship _again_."

Thor let out a low growl from behind his red plastic game board.

"Now don't go reaching for Mjölnir, it's very difficult to find reasonably priced coffee tables in this realm."

It was clear that the god of thunder was not to be easily placated.

"Best seven out of ten?" Loki offered.

"Another contest," Thor demanded.

Loki grinned. "Oh, I was _so_ hoping you'd say that, brother," he said, unraveling the cords from some microphones and plugging in a PlayStation 2 that looked like it had seen better days. "I have just the thing. How are you on 90's pop hits?"

Thor shrugged. "I have to admit, after Jane, discovering the radio was the next best thing about Earth."

"Then I challenge you to a duet!" Loki crowed. "And clearly there's only one song for us."

Thor chuckled. "_Two Princes_?"

"Exactly."

…

On the other side of the building, Kate was conscious of an odd, but quite loud, tuneless drone that seemed to be emanating from Luca's apartment. It had been a long day at work and her head hurt.

The day-to-day existence of a librarian was not exactly what the bookworm in her had always dreamed it would be. Mainly she spent her time clearing out the kids trying to find a private place to make out, glaring at the cellphone talkers and helping people navigate what seemed to her to be a bleedingly obvious system.

In her dreams, libraries were sacred places where everyone, patrons and librarians alike, lay back on fluffy clouds, immersed in novels. Perhaps very, very occasionally they might gather, by mutual agreement, to discuss said novels over ice cream.

But it wasn't merely a library-based disquiet thumping painfully at the base of her skull. She also had her tall, dark, handsome nutjob to worry about.

Thirty-three hours previously she was utterly ignorant of his very existence and now he was taking up valuable space usually reserved for fictional characters. It was certainly not lost on Kate that fictional characters far outperformed real people in almost every respect. But this is where Luca was dangerous. There was a quality about him that made him seem not quite of this world – the archaic patterns of speech, the tallness, the darkness, the handsomeness…

On top of all of that, there was no escaping the man! Everywhere she moved in her apartment, she could see his apartment, and right now… were they sparks she could see through Luca's window? She looked more closely. Yes! Sparks were flying.

Without stopping to think, or even to change out of her pyjamas, Kate found herself racing through the corridors to Luca's front door and hammering urgently upon it. There was an audible scuffle inside which both assured her that everything was probably ok and gave her just long enough to glance down in horror at her ensemble.

The door swung open to reveal a laughing Luca. Peering past him she could see Tom with a face like a thundercloud.

"Kate! What a lovely surprise!" Luca beamed.

"Are you guys ok?" Kate blurted. "I saw sparks through your window! I thought maybe one of your appliances had exploded."

Luca attempted to compose himself. "That's not all that far from the truth." He dissolved into giggles.

"Tom? Are you alright?" she called into the apartment.

"Fine," he replied sullenly. She noticed a pile of smoking black plastic at his feet.

"Right," she said, running a hand through her hair and attempting to regain some semblance of dignity. "So I came out in my ducky pyjamas for nothing. Great."

"Those ones are my very favourite," Luca whispered. "Especially now that I know you refer to them as your ducky pyjamas."

"This is an odd way to start a relationship, you realise."

"I'll have to take your word for it. I'm no expert on relationships, as Tho… Tom will testify."

Kate's eyes narrowed. "Did you think I wouldn't notice that you keep going to call one another different names?"

"Ah," Luca replied hesitantly. "I think we sort of hoped you might not."

Kate shrugged. "I'll have to hear the story one day."

"And one day you shall, Kate Farrow." Luca gave a slight bow, "On my honour."

"When that day comes, I'd also like to know why you two talk like knights of the realm."

Luca raised his eyebrows.

"Not that I mind, of course. It's sort of dashing."

"Dashing?" Luca repeated, grinning. "I like that."


	4. Chapter 4

Back at work the following day, Kate passed the time dreaming up passive-aggressive schemes for getting the woman who'd been sprawled in a lounge chair in the quiet reading area for the last forty-five minutes to take her obnoxiously loud and banal cellphone call outside. She was just about to actually write _SHUT UP_ on the paper aeroplane she'd been folding when her attention was utterly arrested by the arrival of her tall, dark, handsome nutjob.

He approached the desk and inclined his head in a kind of bow. "Kate, how are you this Winter's day?"

It was all she could do to stop her eye from twitching maniacally as the woman gabbed on oblivious. "Get me out of here," she whispered urgently.

"Nothing would give me more pleasure," Luca grinned.

"I'll grab my coat."

The icy wind that greeted them at the door was just what Kate needed to clear her head. She stood still for a moment, breathing deeply, with the posture of a hungry child outside a hot bread shop.

"Better?" Luca enquired.

"Much better. Thanks for coming along at just the right time."

"I am delighted to have been of assistance," he inclined his head. "Now, have you eaten? Would you allow me to accompany you somewhere we can find some refreshment?"

It began to dawn on Kate that perhaps her defenses were a bit low from lack of food. The cellphone talkers were an everyday occurrence but usually they didn't affect her quite this badly. "What do you feel like?"

"Ale," Luca replied without hesitation. "Or perhaps mead?"

"Mmm, and stew. We need an Irish pub."

"Lead on, Kate."

Not very much later the two of them sat opposite one another between a roaring fire and a bank of large windows overlooking the windswept park. Within minutes, hearty lamb-shank soup, crusty bread and pints of Guinness were placed on the table before them.

"Well," sighed Luca. "I'll take this meal with you over an Asgardian banquet any day."

Kate laughed. "Asgard again. It's like I'm being stalked by gods these days. Asgard keeps popping up everywhere!"

Luca struggled not to choke on his stew. "How so?" he managed to enquire.

"Well, there was that graphic novel I read and then you must have watched the same documentary I watched last night, right?"

"_Doc_? _You_?"

"You know, the one on Norse mythology? Was it _Clash of the Gods_?

"Ahh," Luca nodded mechanically. "Yes. That one."

"And now you compare our lunch to an Asgardian banquet. It's just weird that it keeps coming up."

"Weird, yes," he kept nodding. "Yes. Very odd indeed. Mmm, weird."

He raised his eyes to find Kate looking at him a little suspiciously.

"Are you ok?"

"Never better!" Luca replied, a little too enthusiastically, raising his glass. "Let us drink to your health, most excellent Kate Farrow."

Still looking dubious, Kate dutifully raised her glass and clinked it against Luca's. He maintained eye contact as he drained his glass while she took a tiny sip.

"Another!" he boomed to the bartender who stood a significant enough distance away to cause Kate to colour with embarrassment. She focused her attention on buttering her bread to avoid having to look the bartender in the eye as he delivered Luca's drink.

He observed her behaviour as he drank deeply from his second black pint. "Kate, I've behaved badly."

She looked up at him from under lowered brows.

"Forgive me?" His tentative smile suited him extremely well.

Kate laughed. "Forgiven. On one condition."

"Oh, yes?"

"That you tell me everything there is to know about you."

"Ah."

"Most of what there is to know about you?"

Luca looked back at her uncertainly.

"Some of it?"

He bit his lip.

"One thing. Anything," she pleaded. "I can't keep going out with a total stranger."

Luca grinned. "So, it's not entirely outside of your plans to spend more time with me."

"Only if you tell me something true."

The smile faded from his face and he gazed back at her. "You, Kate Farrow, are the most beautiful creature I have ever beheld."

"Nope, sorry." She smiled sweetly but shook her head. "That's not going to cut it. Firstly, because you've already said almost exactly that and secondly, because last time you went with 'luminous' which is a definite step up from 'beautiful' in my book."

"Wasn't it your beloved C.S. Lewis who said 'We delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed.'"

Kate's eyes widened. Inwardly she cursed her apparent vulnerability to handsome men quoting precisely and relevantly from her favourite authors.

"See, Kate?" he leaned back in his chair and held out his open palms. "It is not only for you that I call you beautiful. It is the natural outworking of my sheer joy in being here with you."

"And _thirdly_," she gritted her teeth against all the melting that was going on inside, "that was about _me_. Luca, I don't want to be adored by a total stranger." She boldly met his eye. "I want to _know you_."

"And know me, you shall, in time," he assured her.

Before her heart and brain had the opportunity to fully thrash it out between them, Kate found herself on her feet.

"Until I learn something more about you than the disquieting fact that you're not even going by your real name," she took a deep breath, "I don't want to see you any more."

And with her heart curled up in the corner sobbing piteously and her brain screaming _You go, girl!_ she shrugged on her coat and strode out.

Luca sat still for a moment. Eventually, he reached across and pulled the remains of Kate's abandoned soup and bread towards him. _Odin's Balls_, he muttered under his breath before downing the remains of her beer.


	5. Chapter 5

Kate Farrow did _not_ have a stellar dating history. She was bookish, intelligent and assertive which meant she point-blank refused to suffer fools. That didn't stop her from agreeing to date a few of them, it just meant those dates always ended badly. So it wasn't all that out of character for her to have up and walked out on Luca.

That said, she felt much worse than usual. Yes, he was way cuter than her average date regret, and way more poetic, way better-read and, it had to be said, way more just-around-the-corner, but there was something _else_ that she could not for the life of her put her finger on.

_Crap!_ She caught herself once more staring wistfully out of her kitchen window, directly into what was most likely _his_ kitchen window.

Perhaps it was that, unlike her other date regrets, Luca was proving to actually be respectful of her wishes. All of the other guys inevitably turned up where they were most definitely unwelcome within a day or two of her declaring it over. A full fortnight had gone by and she had not seen even a shred of evidence of Luca's continuing existence.

And it wasn't as if he had treated her badly. If anything, he'd been lovely. Lovely and evasive. And she just couldn't let herself fall in love with someone who wouldn't tell her anything true. She just couldn't!

The ball was in his court. If he wanted to be with her, he'd come and find her with a freshly taped episode of _This Is Your Life_ and a few buckets-worth of sincere apology. She smiled. She liked the way he said, "Forgive me." No one spoke like that any more.

_Oh, crap!_ She was staring into his window again. She _had_ to find herself a new man to obsess over. Or perhaps an old favourite. She wandered across to her bookshelf and reached for _Persuasion_. Tried and true, Captain Frederick Wentworth could never disappoint.

…

A few days later, on a brightly lit but blustery New York winter day, Kate descended the library steps to find a wind-swept Jane in the deserted square outside, staring transfixed into a handheld device.

Kate's hair whipped ferociously about her head in the gale as she made her way over.

"Jane, hi," she called as she approached.

No response.

"Jane?"

The scientist looked up, momentarily disoriented. She gazed at Kate, clearly failing to recognise her.

"Kate. Kate Farrow," she prompted. "Luca's… um… neighbour."

"Kate! Oh my goodness! When did you last see Loki or Thor?"

Kate giggled. "Far out, Jane. You too?"

Jane looked serious. "Me too what?"

"With the Asgard references?"

"What are you talking about? The bifrost is about to open right here, I'm sure of it!"

Kate began to be a bit concerned. "Are you ok, Jane? Want me to get you some water or something?"

Jane suddenly looked sharply at Kate. "You still don't know who Luca is, do you?"

"What are _you_ talking about?"

Jane laughed. "I think you're about to find out."

An eerie glow emanated from the skies above, increasing and increasing in intensity until it grew to an unbearable glare akin to lightning. There was a rush of air, of pressure, and Kate instinctively crouched close to the ground, covering her head with her flimsy paperback copy of _Persuasion_.

Almost as quick as the change, the light seemed to settle to its usual twilight dimness. Kate peered out from under her book to see two gleaming pairs of black boots. She felt herself gently lifted to her feet. Her book was taken from her hands.

Before her stood Luca in a long, black sort of leather coat adorned with gold and green. It really brought out his eyes. "I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach," he said. "You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, two and a half weeks ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you."

"That's quite a speech, brother," Tom commented, clearly impressed. "I'm sorry, Jane, it would seem that Kate got the poet."

Kate tore her eyes away from Luca and had a good look at Tom. He was dressed in an odd sort of medieval-looking armour, a red cape hanging from his shoulders. It really seemed to suit him, out of place though he was in the middle of New York.

Tom was observing her keenly. "She doesn't seem moved, Loki. Maybe poetry isn't everything."

Kate looked back at Luca. "Hang on." She paused, looking again at their outfits. "Loki?"

"Well," Loki held up his palms. "It wasn't exactly original." He looked at Kate. "How do I hold up against Captain Wentworth?"

"I'm kind of stuck back at _Loki_," said Kate quietly.

Jane laughed. "Kate Farrow? Meet Thor and Loki of Asgard."

"Via Jotunheim," added Loki.

"Umm… gods?" Kate asked.

"At your service," replied Thor.

"Riiight." And she fainted.


	6. Chapter 6

In his year of exile, powerless and alone on Midgard, Loki had seen just enough evening television to lull him into a false sense of security when it came to love. His encounters with Kate were blowing all he thought he knew right out of the water. On TV, women were loveably changeable, unprincipled and vapid unless they were trying to sell you something. By comparison, Kate was disconcertingly consistent, disciplined and terrifyingly intelligent.

Loki had not slept since he'd left her apartment. Truth be told, that wasn't all that unusual or concerning for a 1048-year-old god, but he'd taken a liking to sleep since his exile and going without was not his favourite. Wracked with worry that her knowing his true identity would bring a final end to whatever he'd hope to have with her, he had savoured every moment of carrying her home and tucking her into bed. Though he had longed to stay a while and watch her sleep, he knew the last lucid words she'd addressed to him had been about not wanting to see him any more.

He'd watched some terrible vampire movie where the creepy pale guy kept doing that. His mopey girlfriend seemed to like it but she fitted into the aforementioned changeable/unprincipled/vapid category. He vastly preferred the other show where any vampire that so much as looked at the girl got a stake through the heart. Given that he was more likely to be regarded as fitting into the vampire/psychopath/monster category himself, he could only hope that Kate would come back on her own and let him explain himself.

But his head was full of more than Kate. Thor had insisted Loki accompany him home, a troubled concept for Loki, and seek to make amends with their father. Against all the adopted son's expectations, Frigga and Odin had forgiven him, welcoming him once more into their family and their kingdom. And then, almost the very minute the pardon had been granted, Thor and Loki had begged their freedom from their resumed responsibilities out of loyalty to their earthly loves. Neither parent had been particularly impressed.

"Am I to lose both my sons? Is Asgard to lose both her princes to the wiles of these Midgard wenches?" Odin raged, breaking a few of the things handiest to the throne.

"Calm yourself, Odin," Frigga soothed, setting the destruction to rights with a wave of her hand. "What is the lifespan of a ordinary mortal woman compared to that of our sons?" She shrugged. "Let them go. They will live and love and mourn and return before Asgard has had time to miss them."

"Father," Thor entreated. "You have lost each of us before and, behold, we have returned. But hold us here against our will, against our very hearts, and you may never see us again."

"I have come to expect this sort of thing from you, Thor," Odin spat. "You wield a mighty hammer but it would seem that you have a weak heart." He turned to his other son. "But Loki? You've always been so disturbingly bent on holding power. You too walk away from your birthright to comfort yourself with fleeting beauty?"

Loki bowed his head. "You have forgiven me, Father, which is more than I deserve. I wish I could obey your command and remain. But you and I both know that wielding power has proved too dangerous for me. My heart is weak too, but I prefer Thor's weakness to my previous expressions." He looked up at the man who had adopted him as a baby. "If it is as Mother says, and the human life-time we spend away from Asgard is barely enough to allow us to be missed, then I like my chances of being trusted with power after that life-time much more than I like them now."

Odin looked to be deep in thought. "You might just be speaking wisdom, Loki, though with all my heart I wish you would give _yours_ to even the dullest Asgardian maiden," he gestured out of the palace windows, "At least she might come close to being worthy of you."

"Father," Loki shook his head. "It would seem that you and I take vastly different approaches to judging an individual's worth. I still doubt if _I_ am worthy of my Kate, but in my mind, she is unparalleled. If she does not choose me, I will have no grounds on which to accuse her. I may yet have to return and settle for whomever you would choose for me."

"Very well," Odin nodded. "Though you are both fools, we relinquish you of your responsibilities here in Asgard, for the terms of a natural human life."

The princes looked at one another, relieved.

"Thor, you know your girl will have you, so when you have buried her and mourned, return."

Thor bowed his agreement, but his face was marked with the preemptive grief of the nature of his future homecoming.

"Loki," Odin turned to his darker, leaner son. "Should you win this woman, should she accept you, the same applies to you."

Loki bowed.

"But should she reject you," Odin continued. "Your mother and I, at your suggestion, flippant though you may have been, will have a bride selected for you on your return."

Loki gulped. It seemed a lot more was riding on his wooing of Kate than he initially imagined.

…

Kate woke slowly. _Saturday_, she breathed and rubbed her warm feet together in the depths of her flannelette sheets. An odd sensation round her ankles roused her from her weekend sloth. They weren't the cuffs of her ducky pyjamas. _How on earth did I fall asleep in my clothes?_ she wondered.

Sitting up, she found her boots and coat neatly arranged where she would never have left them and her copy of _Persuasion_ on the pillow next to her.

_Luca! _The events of the previous evening came flooding back. _Oh, god… Loki…_

She scanned the floor around her bed for mouldering cereal bowls or unbecoming piles of underwear.

Was he still in her apartment? She got up and padded through her home in stockinged feet. Empty.

She wandered back to her bedroom and flopped back into bed. It was still a Saturday after all. She reached for _Persuasion_ to avoid having to think. No point wasting good reading time.

As she opened the cover, out fell a bright green blossom, the like of which she had never seen anywhere. An unusual but lovely perfume emanating from the crushed petals filled the entire room.

The bright green stain of the flower had seeped through the first few end pages under the cover so her novel was drenched in the magnificent scent. In the same bright green, as if a quill had been dipped into a well of ink made from the bloom, she noticed a message scrawled across one of the blank pages.

_My dearest Kate, _

_At last I can tell you everything, if you'll let me._

_Yours,_

_Loki _

Kate mentally scanned the list of facts she'd gleaned from various sources about the Norse god, Loki. Not many of them also appeared on the list of attributes of her ideal life partner, or anyone's for that matter. And wasn't it Loki who had caused all that havoc and bloodshed in New York the previous year? The city was still rebuilding. She recalled that he himself had spoken with remorse of some transgression. If he was guilty, that was no minor transgression. This was beyond the drinking problems and neck tattoos of her realm of bad guys.

But she had long held a theory, supported, not by any scientific study, but by the strength of an enormous personal hunch, that a person willing to be reformed could be utterly reformed by literature. Loki was not only the most willing and able sponge of literature that she'd ever encountered, he was also the only candidate for reform she'd ever known amongst her wholesome farm-raised childhood companions and the uniformly conservative fellow-students she befriended through Library Studies at college.

Had she been the sort of girl inclined to take one of those internet quizzes, she never would have anticipated that she'd turn out to be the girl most likely to try to change a bad boy, but here she was, getting ready to dive headfirst.

She was resolved. She would let Loki speak, but in return, he would have to agree to undertake an intensive program of literary therapy devised and supervised by her.

She pulled on her boots, and after only a few minutes lost in a low level swoon, imagining Loki effortlessly carrying her, unconscious, to her bed, gently laying her down and carefully removing them, perhaps placing a stolen kiss on her forehead, she sighed, gathered a few key volumes from her bookshelves and walked out of her apartment.


	7. Chapter 7

Before Kate's knuckles even made contact with Loki's front door, the wood shimmered and seemed to dissolve away. She peered into the dark space ahead of her. The walls, once a grey-green stucco, now had the appearance of the stone walls of a cave and from within, Kate could see the reflection of firelight flickering against the rock.

"Loki?" she called, stepping hesitantly into the mouth of the cave. "Umm… Aladdin?" She made her way tentatively around the bend, running one hand along the smooth wall to guide her way.

Round the corner, the tunnel opened into a wide cavern and in its centre burned a merry blaze. Loki crouched across the fire from her, his sharp features illuminated by the flickering flames. He seemed lost in thought.

Kate hovered at the periphery waiting for him to notice her or strike up a mesmerising tune on some sort of pipe.

Without looking up, Loki suddenly patted the spot on the ground next to him. "Come sit by me? There are things I must explain."

Kate nodded, her eyebrows raised. "How about we start with what happened to your apartment?"

Loki looked around as if seeing the room for the first time. "Oh." He motioned with his hand. The stone walls melted away revealing an opulently decorated room, with the fire now roaring in an ornate fireplace that looked as though it would be more at home in a sixteenth-century French palace than their seen-better-days fifties apartment block.

"Wo."

"I am restored, Kate," Loki began as she took the seat he offered next to him on what was now a plush gold and green couch. "My powers – a little shape-shifting and hocus pocus – have been returned to me."

"So it would seem." She glanced around the luxurious chamber. "Impressive."

"But my nature, or at least what my nature had been until I met you, I have renounced."

"God of mischief?"

He shot her a cheeky half-smile. "Oh, mischief I still have a little time for." His expression grew serious. "But I renounce the envy, the ego, the violence, the war mongering, the self-pity." He dropped his gaze. "And that is all thanks to you, Kate."

"Right." Kate didn't quite know how to respond. She fell back on her usual technique for dispersing tension. "How about the capes? I like capes. Especially that one from the other night."

"You did?" He laughed. "Alright, the cape can stay, provided, of course, that the occasion is cape-appropriate."

She pursed her lips and looked towards the ceiling, trying to justify walking arm-in-arm with a caped Norse god down her most-frequented aisles of the supermarket.

"I don't think I can imagine any scenario in which the cape would be a _definite_ no-no."

Loki looked back down at his hands. "Kate, I'm not sure if you're really grasping the seriousness of my situation."

She reached over and intertwined her fingers with his.

He looked up suddenly at the unexpected contact.

"Tell me from the beginning."

But before he could begin speaking, a booming knock resounded through the chamber. The god of thunder strode gorgeously into the room.

"Ah, Loki," Thor laughed, looking around. "I see the return of your powers has allowed you once more to live in the style to which you've become accustomed."

"Excuse me," Loki bowed to Kate. He broke into a grin, getting to his feet. "So, how did you fare, Thor?"

"I feel like a child in my delight, Loki!" the blonde god boomed.

"A successful day then?"

"I offered myself to her and she has accepted me," the giant man crowed, gathering his brother into an embrace. "Jane Foster will be my wife!"

"My heartiest congratulations," Loki replied, clapping him firmly on the back. "Not that I anticipated any other outcome."

Thor pulled back to look into his sibling's face. "Loki, I have learnt that when a man marries on Midgard, he is attended by his closest friend, just as it is at home." He smiled. "Will you take your place beside me, brother, as I am joined to the woman I love?"

"Do I get to tell tales of your exploits and conquests?"

His brother rolled his eyes.

"Of course I will," replied Loki, throwing his arms once more around Thor. "I'm sorry that you even had to ask."

Thor chuckled, as he broke away. "And now I will leave you alone with your Kate." He bowed in her direction. "But, my brother, we will celebrate anon! We shall drink deeply and make our ancestors proud!"

Loki nodded, grinning. "We shall indeed."

"Farewell, then." And with a nod to Kate, the god was gone.

After a moment's pause, watching his brother leave, Loki turned back to Kate, beaming. "Glad tidings, indeed."

"It looks like you and Thor are friends again," Kate observed.

Loki nodded. "He has always been dear to me, even while I most fiercely hated him. And he has forgiven me for all I've done – for all the ways that I betrayed him, our family and our people." He paused. "For the first time since we were children, I find myself free to rejoice in the love and favour of my older brother without fear for myself and my own interests." Loki flopped back into his seat next to Kate, grinning. "It is a wonderful and undeserved freedom."

"It's nice to watch," Kate laughed.

"Now, the story. From the beginning, you said?"

"If you feel you can."

He leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "I feel I must."

…

Kate let out a low whistle.

"Can you stand me, Kate?" Loki whispered. "Now that you know that mine is the name behind all that death and destruction in this very city, will you ever be able to bring yourself to look me in the eye?"

Kate raised her gaze and fixed it steadily on Loki's green orbs.

He breathed out. She saw his shoulders drop as the tension went out of them.

"You've told me you have renounced all of that."

"And I have," he traced a light circle on the back of her hand. "Living here has taught me how wrong I was to think myself above humanity." He smiled. "And loving you has, for the first time, shifted my gaze from myself."

Kate caught herself staring at Loki's lips. This was not promising to be a good start to his prerequisite literary therapy. She snapped herself out of it and squared her shoulders. "I'm going now," she announced, somewhat abruptly, extricating her fingers from Loki's. "But I'm leaving these with you." She gestured to the small pile of books on the table in front of them. William Golding's _Lord of the Flies_, Harper Lee's _To Kill a Mockingbird_, _A Christmas Carol_ by Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare's _Richard III _and _The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe_ by C.S. Lewis.

She stood, then momentarily leaned down to touch her lips to his forehead.

He gazed up at her from his seat on the lounge. "You prescribe me a course of literature, my Lady Physician?"

She grinned. "Take two with tea, morning and evening."

"And you'll be back to check my progress on the morrow?"

"If you like."

"With tea you say?"

"Doctor's orders."


	8. Chapter 8

Loki's education continued.

Victor Hugo's _Les Misérables_, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's_ The Little Prince_, Peter Carey's _True History of the Kelly Gang_. Joseph Heller's _Catch 22_, Baroness Orczy's _The Scarlet Pimpernel_, Ernest Hemingway's _The Old Man and the Sea_. J.R.R. Tolkein's _The Lord of the Rings_, Charlotte Bronte's _Jane Eyre_, J.K. Rowling's _Harry Potter_.

One morning when Kate came by with a new stack of books, she found Loki's door dissolving before her knock to reveal an English country moor – a myriad of coloured blooms stretching what seemed like miles into the distance.

"Loki?"

She spotted him, clad in a deep green woven doublet, black leather leggings and boots, lying on his back on a lush patch of grass under a gnarly oak tree, clutching _The Secret Garden_ to his chest. She made her way through the waist-high heather of his imagined moor, and as she drew nearer, she saw the sparkling tears streaming down his sun-dappled face.

She sat cross-legged in the grass next to him. "Loki?" He reached out a hand for her and she took it in her own. He continued to weep quietly.

Kate hid a little smile. It wasn't that she was unsympathetic, but she _did_ love being right. And she could see herself being persuaded to love a man, well… a god, who allowed literature to bring him to such a level of emotional devastation.

"It would seem you're not obeying your doctor's orders to the letter," Kate observed wryly.

With a wave of his hand, a blanket appeared, laden with an al fresco high tea.

"You're not the White Witch, right Loki?"

"Do you see Turkish Delight on that blanket?"

She surveyed the scene, almost certain she'd find it. "Not at first glance."

"Then you're safe."

"Perhaps. I bet she had more than Turkish Delight up her sleeve."

He sat up and poured the tea, his face still stained with the tracks of his tears.

"You enjoyed _The Secret Garden_?"

He held out a dainty bone chine cup and saucer, looking grim. "It slayed me, as I suspect you might have anticipated, Miss Mary Lennox."

She spluttered into her tea. "I hope I wasn't ever that obnoxious as a child."

"Her formative years notwithstanding."

"Besides, you're the one who's created the garden."

He looked around, sipping from his own cup. "Not bad, is it?"

"Certainly not for a New York apartment."

Loki carefully placed his cup and saucer in a knot in the exposed tree root next to him. "Now, Kate, you're not going to make me go to this wedding alone, are you?"

"Am I invited?"

"I believe Jane went and bestowed the dubious title of "Loki's Plus One" upon you without even taking the time to gain your assent. Your name appears to be transcribed in the seating arrangements next to mine so I think we can assume the invitation has been issued."

She smiled. "Loki's Plus One, hey? There'd be worse titles out there, I suppose."

"Certainly," he agreed, smiling back at her. "It's a step up from Wicked Witch of the West."

"But doesn't quite attain to the lofty heights of The Lady of Lórien."

"Well, not much does, does it?" He looked down. "Short of Queen of Asgard."

Kate cleared her throat. "So, Loki's Plus One will have to do."

"Right. Yes."

"Are you going to be wearing your cape? I have no idea how to dress if you're wearing your cape."

He grinned.

"And don't bother suggesting my ducky pyjamas this time."

"Thor is getting married in Midgardian attire. Something Jane has chosen for him. She's chosen something for me too, apparently."

"Oh?" Kate felt on more of an even footing. "And you've seen the table settings – is it going to be a big wedding?"

"Not big, no. But not a crowd of which I'm overly fond." He tugged at the neck of his doublet. "Perhaps I should say, not a crowd that is overly fond of me."

Kate whistled. "The Avengers?"

He nodded.

"Don't they want to kill you?"

"Most of them."

"This could be an interesting evening."

"I'd wager it will be."

"Should I go for a gown then? Or just full body armour?"

Loki laughed. "One thing I can guarantee, Kate Farrow. No harm will come to you." He took her hand, kissing it gently. "Anyone who tries will have to come through me."

"Umm, as far as I'm aware, none of them have an issue with me. Maybe _you_ can use _me_ as a human shield?"

Loki bristled. The joke didn't seem to sit quite right with his complex sense of honour.

"Alright, alright, just kidding. Talk me through your admirers then."

"Well, there's Thor."

"And he's a teddy bear."

Loki looked at her askance.

"Of sorts. Either way, he's the groom and you're the best man, so we can probably rule him out as a major threat to your well-being."

"Then there's Captain America. I believe he goes by Steve when he's not trussed up in spangly lycra."

"You don't sound like a big fan."

Loki looked to the heavens. "The man calls himself Captain America – honestly."

"Okay, who else?"

"Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov. A pair of star-crossed lovers if ever I've seen one. You might have heard them referred to as Hawkeye and Black Widow."

"They're together?"

"Well, they have some kind of complex accounting situation between them, but I think there's more to it than that. Neither of them would list me among their closest friends, for various reasons."

"And how do you get along with Tony Stark?"

"I think he's my favourite of this motely crew."

"Really?"

"Well, truthfully, I think there's more than a bit of me, ahem, the old me, in him. It'd probably be The Avengers vs. Ironman if it weren't for that lovely Pepper Potts."

Kate nodded her agreement with Loki's assessment. "What about Dr Banner?"

Loki cringed at the thought. "Well, I suppose he's probably alright most of the time."

"Did you survive a close encounter with The Hulk?"

"Only just."

"Ouch."

"Indeed."

"Right, anyone else?"

"Dr Erik Selvig and a few of his associates."

"Has he got anything against you?"

Loki looked sheepish. "It would not be entirely unreasonable for him to accuse me of taking control of his brain for a short period."

"Ah. So, we're going to get dressed up and go to a party where a very small minority of the guests will be happy to let you leave alive."

"Essentially, yes."

"Nothing about dating you is straight forward."

Loki eyed her sharply. "Dating?"

Kate looked flustered. "Umm…"

"I have been led to believe that "dating" is the Midgard equivalent of what I know as courting…"

"…I'm not sure that it translates quite that specif…"

"…and your use of that term surprises me, Kate Farrow, but not at all unpleasantly, because up until now…"

"…yes, perhaps it was a bit unwise of me…"

"…you have been quite cautious about allowing me to assume anything about the state of our relationship…"

"…that's because I'm still just working out…"

"…. but courting bears distinct connotations in the direction of…"

"…exactly how I feel about…"

"…a commitment that I began to doubt I would ever be able to convince you to consider…"

"Oh, for goodness' sakes," Kate interrupted. "Can we just be dating then?"

Loki nodded, grinning.

"Not courting, though. Dating. I don't know what courting means."

"Well, I don't know what dating means, but either way," he chuckled, "I'm claiming this one as a victory for the god of mischief!"

Kate stared at him for a moment. "As mischief goes… you know, in the scheme of things…"

The triumph faded from his face. Loki nodded. "Mmm, I agree. That was fairly mild."


	9. Chapter 9

Kate clutched her champagne and sidled more completely behind the expansive pot plant. It wasn't that she didn't love her green, 50s boat-neck gown and bronze heels. It wasn't that she was feeling particularly shy. She hid because Thor and Loki, in not-matching-but-complimentary light grey suits, had just taken their places, side-by-side on the dais at the front of the room, and the assembled Avengers had reacted.

In a heartbeat, Natasha Romanov plucked a gun out of her plunging neckline and aimed it at Loki's head while Clint Barton instantaneously shook out his bow and trained an arrow on the god's pale jugular. Pieces of Tony Stark's suit were zooming into the venue from every angle, Steve Rogers was flexing his muscles menacingly, Erik Selvig was on the ground in the foetal position and Bruce Banner was gripping the back of a chair, breathing deeply. Pepper Potts sighed and calmly checked her nails.

Thor looked around, surprised. "My friends! What is this madness?

Loki looked flatly at his sibling. "Brother, don't tell me you didn't warn your chums that I'd be here."

A sheepish smile crept across Thor's face. "Sit down, my excellent friends," he motioned to the gathered crowd. "I vouch for Loki. He will do you no harm."

Loki gazed coolly back at his accusers, then slowly raised his palms in a gesture of surrender.

The Avengers exchanged sceptical glances and failed to lower their weapons.

"Reindeer Games isn't causing me any lost sleep," Tony's voice grated metalically through his mask. "I think it's more, you know, the _Earth_, that we're worried about."

"What makes you think he can be trusted here, Thor?" Rogers demanded. "Does S.H.I.E.L.D. know Loki is on the loose?"

"They will soon," muttered Natasha, her hand flying to her ear-piece.

"No!" Thor roared, in that godlike way of his. "He is my brother and he has sought the forgiveness of Asgard. He is restored to his place in the Allfather's family and he will stand beside me as Jane and I are married."

The Avengers stared back at him, unmoving.

"You will stand down!" Thor thundered.

"Shouldn't he be made to pay?" Clint asked quietly, a dangerous edge to his voice. "Shouldn't he be locked in a cell for the rest of his life?"

Thor scoffed. "What kind of cell do you imagine can hold a god?"

"I think we had a pretty good one going for a while there," Natasha countered, her weapon still trained on the pale man's skull. "We could rig it up again."

Thor fought his rage. "My friends," he appealed, gesturing to the back of the room. "Behind those doors stands the woman I am about to marry. My brother here, deeply wrong though he has been, has faced the judgement of Odin and been granted a second chance. He loves Kate Farrow and hopes to win her heart and I vouch for him as a truly altered man."

"Kate Farrow?" quereied Dr Banner. "Who's that?"

Thor and Loki looked around the room from their vantage point on the raised dais.

"Kate?" Loki called.

The heat rushed to her cheeks. "Um… Hi?" she whispered, stepping awkwardly out from behind the plant and feeling every eye on her.

"I mean no disrespect, but you're human, ma'am?" Rogers asked.

Kate nodded nervously.

"And you know who this clown is?" Barton demanded, less respectfully.

She nodded again.

"Explain yourself," the Black Widow ordered, turning her body towards Kate but maintaining her aim at Loki.

Kate shuffled anxiously, glancing over at Loki who looked back sympathetically.

"Gentlemen," he turned and nodded inclusively towards Romanov. "Kate is innocent. She came here because I asked her to. Your quarrel is with me."

"You're damn right it is," Stark menaced and Kate felt the physcial relief of the attention in the room shifting away from her. She sidled back towards the plant but felt a slim arm slip through hers.

It was Pepper Potts. "Stay here with me," she whispered. "They'll quit their huffing and puffing in a moment." Pepper knew from experience what it was like to date an unpopular guy. "And great dress!"

Kate smiled at her gratefully. "Thank you!" she whispered then turned her attention back to the action.

Loki was mid-speech. "… and Ms Romanov, forgive my insolence towards you. Mr Barton, it was wrong of me to seek to control you. Forgive me." He turned to Dr Banner. "Forgive me for exploiting your vulnerabilities… though, actually, I feel that you reked your vengeance upon me quite thoroughly."

Suddenly, the doors at the back of the room flew open. A livid Jane, stunning in her beaded silver gown, fixed a cold eye on each congregation member in turn.

Loki opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it and almost scurried up the aisle to join Thor on the dais.

Jane smiled sweetly then once more pulled the doors closed.

The processional began to play.

…

After the ceremony, Loki found his way to Kate. "Further proof of your claim that nothing about dating me is straight forward?"

Kate nodded towards her leafy shelter. "I've found this pretty great plant if you need somewhere to hide."

Loki grinned. "I begin to understand why Thor decided to do away with the carousing and telling of tales."

Kate nodeed. "Mmm, tough crowd."

"What happens now at a Midgard wedding?" he enquired.

Kate shrugged. "A meal? Cake? Sometimes dancing?"

"And if there is to be dancing, Kate Farrow," Loki bowed. "Might I have the pleasure of accompanying you onto the floor?"

Kate looked at him quizically, trying to imagine the long-legged god busting some moves.

"I see your uncertainty, Kate," he countered. "But I was considered quite the eligible dance partner in Asgard."

"It is true," rumbled a deep voice over her shoulder. "Many a time I was passed over by a pretty maiden in favour of Loki."

"Ah, but you have secured your very own pretty maiden now, brother," Loki grinned, lifting a laughing Jane's fingers briefly to his lips. "And she wasn't to know that she settled for the lesser dance partner."

"Loki!" she swatted him playfully on the arm, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Dear sister," he laughed. "Would you have looked elsewhere if I had?"

Jane turned to gaze into her besotted husband's broad face. She didn't need to reply.

…

At the end of the evening, when it had been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the younger brother was a far superior dancer and when the happy couple had disappeared into the night, Loki and Kate found themselves held politely at gunpoint.

"You're coming with us," Agent Romanov announced, with Clint Barton like steel at her shoulder.

Loki turned to Kate. "This could be unpleasant, but please don't be frightened."

She wondered precisely what unpleasantness The Avengers had in store for them as Loki wound his arm tightly around her waist.

"Don't be frightened," he whispered again. "I've got a firm hold of you." And just as she had watched Loki's cave walls shimmer and shift into the walls of his plushly decorated palace, the wedding venue, and their would-be captors began to shimmer and fade.

Kate screamed.


	10. Chapter 10

Kate came to in the semi-dark of early dawn. She was lying on her bed, still in her some-what restrictive green gown. Loki stood over her smiling, her bronze heels dangling from the long fingers of his right hand.

"How are you feeling, Kate?" he inquired gently.

She sat up and swung her legs off the side of the bed. She felt the warm weight of Loki's grey suit jacket draped over her shoulders. "In my defense, I never used to black-out until I started hanging out with gods."

Loki chuckled. "We can sometimes have that effect on people."

"So S.H.I.E.L.D. is after you?" She looked at him searchingly, shrugging off the jacket. "I don't even know what that means, but it sounds bad."

Loki held out his open palms in the universal gesture of "whatever."

"What are you going to do?"

His eyes twinkled. "Have you much of a background in deception, Kate?"

She looked back at him wide-eyed. "Not really."

"The god of mischief in love with the saintliest of mortals," he muttered to himself.

"I could give it a try?" she offered.

He narrowed his eyes. "Repeat after me. 'I woke, alone in my room. The wedding was the last time I saw him.'"

"I woke, alone in my room. The wedding was the last time I saw him," she parroted.

"Wonderful. I like the American accent. Good touch of authenticity," he nodded, smirking.

She inclined her head in acknowledgement.

"But in truth, Kate," he said, sitting next to her on the bed and taking her hand, "This _will_ have to be the last time you'll see me in this form."

Kate looked at him quizzically.

"I want to stay in this world, exactly where I am. To me, you are the most important creature in all the nine realms and my heart's desire is to remain as near to you as I have been since the moment I came to that realisation."

Kate smiled shyly. She mentally noted that she was deeply touched rather than deeply terrified by his assertions. She was making definite progress.

"But I don't want to turn your world upside down. I know that you're not ready for me to ask you to leave your home and your work to be with me."

She pondered. Maybe the phrase "ready as I'll ever be" rang true.

Loki continued. "I'm simply going to alter my appearance so that S.H.I.E.L.D. will be thrown off my scent."

"Alter your appearance?" Kate repeated uncertainly. "To what?"

"Are you ready?" Loki asked, standing and turning to face her.

Kate looked up at him sharply. "Loki, wait. Am I ready for what?"

He closed his eyes, dropping his arms to his sides and pushing his shoulders back.

Kate watched in awe as an almost imperceptible golden haze clouded him from view. The haze intensified and then dispersed as quickly as it appeared. Before her stood a different man. The pointed black leather shoes remained the same, as did the slim-fitting silver-grey suit pants and the crisp white dress shirt with its hard-working buttons. But Loki's pale skin and long black hair were gone, replaced by a ruddy, golden complexion and closely-cropped tousled blonde hair. She had always found him attractive but now he was the very model of human flourishing. And he was breathtaking.

Kate caught herself letting out a little sigh and Loki's eyes flickered open. She was relieved to see the same striking green orbs gazing back at her. On one level, the change was so slight, he was unmistakably himself. And yet, as she stared at him, he was also somehow completely unrecognisable.

Before she could stop herself, Kate reached out her hand to touch and see if this new golden Loki had corporeal reality. Her fingers brushed against the thin cotton of his shirt and felt the impressively firm resistance of his muscled torso beneath.

Loki placed his enormous hand over hers, holding it against his warm body as he dropped to his knees so that they saw one another eye-to-eye.

Kate's lips parted. He was so close, so warm, so familiar and so new.

His gaze flicked from her eyes, lingered on her lips and wandered tantalisingly back up again. "Kate?" he whispered.

"Mmm?"

"Might I be granted permission...," his eyes found his way back to her mouth, "...To place one kiss on your perfect lips?"

She nodded, smiling.

He moved towards her slowly – agonisingly slowly. His forehead pressed against hers and his hands found their way to her cheeks.

She could feel his warm breath on her face. Her eyelids flickered shut as she felt him draw closer.

"YOU ARE SURROUNDED!" boomed an enormous voice, punctuated by the crash of her apartment door being kicked in.

Kate's eyes flew open. Her bedroom was crowded with black-clad gunmen, their weapons trained on her.

Loki was gone.


	11. Chapter 11

Kate decided she vastly preferred it when Loki disappeared _with_ her than without her. Agents Romanov and Barton had emerged from the sea of black-clad gunmen and escorted her out of her apartment and down to a sleek black vehicle with predictably tinted windows. She was just so grateful that she had her wits about her enough to grab Loki's suit jacket from the bed before they marched her out. It was a freezing night to be dressed in only a restrictive sleeveless gown and bronze stilettos and, crammed between the two silent agents in the back seat of the car, there was something oddly comforting about the faint minty scent emanating from the soft woollen collar, redolent of a compellingly attractive, morally reformed and physically transformed Norse god of mischief.

The car glided silently to a halt and she cursed herself for not thinking to pay better attention to the dark streets she'd been driven down. She was ushered out of the car and into a blindingly lit terminal, then marched across almost its entire length before being tersely offered a chair by Agent Barton. She wrapped herself tightly in Loki's jacket, wishing for the hundredth time that evening that he'd taken her with him. They would be having words about it next time she saw him. Provided, of course, that there would be a next time…

A panel of unfriendly looking military-types were taking their seats opposite her. Behind them stood Steve Rogers, Dr Bruce Banner and Tony Stark. Behind her, to her left and right, she was flanked by Natasha Romanov and Clint Barton.

_Nice of them to let Thor enjoy his honeymoon_, she mused to herself. _Not that they could have _made_ him do anything he didn't want to_. She shoved her clenched fists into the coat's capacious pockets and pushed them towards her lap so that the collar came up around her chin, partially obscuring their stern faces from her sight.

Her knuckles brushed against something in the corner of the right-hand pocket. She closed her fingers around it. The object felt like metal, the hardness and texture of an unmarked coin, but square in shape with rounded corners, about the thickness of her cell phone. She turned it surreptitiously between her fingers. In the freezing cold terminal, this little thing seemed to be emanating a subtle warmth. It was all she could do not to pull her hand out of the pocket and examine it more closely. She rubbed her thumb over the square surface and held back a gasp. Was she going crazy? Or did it grow decisively warmer at her touch?

What had Loki planted on her? Was it a weapon? A bug of some kind? Or just some Asgardian coin he'd absent-mindedly slipped into his pocket?

The apparent head of the panel, a tall man in a long black leather coat, his striking eye-patch failing to cover a huge scar that dominated his face, shuffled some papers and finished consulting quietly with the woman to his left. He looked directly at Kate.

"Ms Farrow," he intoned. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Colonel Nick Fury." He waited a moment, as if expecting the weight of his introduction to have a visible effect. It didn't. "At a recent function attended by a number of government, shall we say, _contractors_," he went on, "It was heard that a known and extremely dangerous criminal, a er… _man_, for want of a better term, whose crimes are so heinous and so global in nature that the mind frankly boggles, had fixated on you in what can only be described as some sort of demented romantic delusion. Do you have any idea what I'm talking about?"

The eyes of all the panel-members bored into her. She let her eyes travel over the rows and rows of military decoration and hard-boiled professionalism on display.

She gripped the metal square in her palm and opened her mouth to speak. The disc grew hot in her hand. The golden haze she'd seen once before seemed to subtly shimmer over the panel. She closed her mouth again.

"Are you alright, Ms Farrow?"

She shook her head. Something weird was going on. She watched the panel-members furiously scribbling notes onto their clipboards. Glancing over her shoulder she caught Agent Barton openly staring over her head at his shapely colleague. _Man, would those two just make-out already?_

The Black Widow suddenly cleared her throat. "Colonel Fury?"

"Yes, Agent Romanov?"

Something in the spy's voice made Kate turn to look over her other shoulder. Natasha Romanov was distinctly flushed. She sounded a little hoarse all of a sudden. "Might Agent Barton and I be excused, Sir?"

Nick Fury looked annoyed. "Any explanation, Romanov?"

"We have some urgent, umm… security matters to attend to," Hawkeye chimed in, sounding a bit throaty himself.

"In the West Quadrant," Natasha added hurriedly, already backing away.

"That's right," Clint nodded energetically, following after her. "We might be gone for a while."

Kate saw the look the two of them exchanged as they broke into a sprint towards the door. It didn't look very security related.

She turned back to find Nick Fury pacing the length of the panel, gathering up his colleagues clipboards. "Sudoku? Naughts and Crosses? Battleships!?" he raged. "At a time like this!?".

The assembled Admirals and Rear-Admirals looked sheepishly down into their laps.

"Can someone tell me what the hell is going on here?" he demanded.

Kate wondered the same thing. Her eyes drifted up to Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. _They're being uncharacteristically well-behaved_, she thought to herself. _Especially Stark_.

At that precise moment, Tony Stark threw a completely unprovoked punch at Steve Roger's aquiline nose. Cap's reflexes weren't quite enough to block the blow but they were well-and-truly up to socking him a solid rebuttal right in the jaw. Stark, suitless, was thrown a good few metres through the air, crunching awkwardly into the polished concrete floor.

Banner threw himself between the boxers. "Are you out of your mind?" he yelled at the prone Tony Stark. "Don't let him get to you, Cap," he warned. "We've seen how this played out before. If he baits you, there's a good chance he'll bait the big fella."

Kate was watching the action around her open-mouthed. What had started as a terrifyingly cold, clinical and professional interrogation had turned into a circus. A crash sounded from the far side of the pavilion. The partition wall of one of the perimeter offices fell to the ground. On top of it sprawled Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov caught breathless in an extremely amorous embrace.

The once silent terminal was in a ruckus. Kate's thoughts flew to the disc in her pocket. _Loki_. She grasped the thing once more in her palm. The subtle golden haze seemed to appear and disappear again and she squinted to try and be sure of what she was seeing.

Silence fell with a clatter.

On the far side of the room, Barton and Romanov, leapt to their feet, hurriedly rearranged their somewhat dishevelled clothing and sprinted back towards where Kate was seated.

The panel members snapped back to obedient attention and Fury resumed his seat as if nothing had happened. Stark, Rogers and Banner returned to their attentive nonchalance behind the panel, with Tony's bloodied hanky against his nose the only evidence of the scuffle that proceeded it.

"Well, thank you for your time, Ms Farrow," Colonel Fury was suddenly saying. "We appreciate the time you've taken to answer our questions." He turned to the Avengers behind him. "I think we can all agree that this has just been a big misunderstanding."

They nodded in agreement.

"Agent Romanov? Agent Barton?"

The two agents, having resumed their places flanking Kate's chair, nodded their assent.

Kate blinked.

"We'll call for a car to take you home," Barton announced, no hint of the fluster he must have been feeling.

"Phew!" laughed Fury candidly. "Am I relieved to be rid of that Loki!"

The other Avengers chuckled along with him.

Kate hid a small smile behind the collar of Loki's jacket. _The god of mischief…_

.

* * *

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_Anyone out there still reading? I might hold the next chapter ransom – would super-appreciate some more review love! That's where so much of the fun of this silly hobby lies!_


	12. Chapter 12

Back at the library, Kate's colleague and friend, Tash, was sitting in the break room with the "Positions Vacant" section of the newspaper spread across the table in front of her. It had been the most shocking week of her career to date. Kate had gotten herself caught up in some drama or other so she'd been absent for the first half of the week and now that she was back, all she could do was gaze listlessly at the front doors, wander aimlessly around the shelves and very occasionally, collapse uselessly into one of the staff lounges, weeping.

Tash was left to bear the brunt of the obnoxious talkers, the ubiquitous snorers and, her least favourite library pest, the amorous embracers. Having turfed out nine-and-a-half kissing teenage couples just that morning, the single late-thirty-something was looking for a change of scene. She loved the books, she was just beginning to passionately hate the humans who came to find refuge amongst them.

She looked up at the clock just in time to see the last minute of her lunch hour tick itself into oblivion. She sighed, gathered up her mug and her newspaper and slouched back to the circulation desk where Kate sat slumped in her chair, mindlessly flicking rubber bands at the intermittently flickering fluorescent lights.

Tash rolled her eyes. "Are you going to tell me what's going on, Kate?"

Kate shook her head.

"Because you should probably know that I want to kill you and half the people in the library this morning."

"Me too," Kate agreed, yawning.

"I'm even fantasising about how I'd go about it."

"Gas?" offered Kate. "Or maybe you could poison the water in the overhead sprinklers and set off the fire alarm."

"That's a little bit disturbing," Tash replied.

"I've gotten to know this secret team of commandoes recently. They'd probably do a pretty thorough job of it."

"Come on, Kate," Tash urged. "You _have _to tell me what's been going on."

Kate laughed humourlessly. "You would _never_ believe me, even if I could."

"Well, you're the literary genius," Tash replied. "Make something up so I get the gist."

Kate narrowed her eyes. "Like an allegory?"

"Go on."

"Like something totally unbelievable and ridiculous, something outlandish and silly, that would sort of parallel what I've been experiencing in my real life?"

"Exactly."

Kate grinned. "Ok, what do you know about Norse gods?"

"What!?"

"This was your idea, Tash. I'm making up the world's most ludicrous allegory! Play along!"

Tash held up her palms defensively. "Ok, ok," she looked up at the ceiling. "Umm, Asgard? Odin? Thor? Loki?"

"Ok, that'll do. Imagine that the Norse god, Loki, walked into this library one day and confessed to having been in love with me for the previous year despite the fact that I'd never even laid eyes on him."

"Riiight," nodded Tash amused.

"And imagine that I had met his brother Thor and even attended Thor's wedding to another American girl."

"Uh huh," Tash laughed. "'Cause our Earth girls would always trump those immortal chicks that hang around in Asgard."

Kate shrugged. "Maybe feminism hasn't taken off in Asgard. Maybe they're all repressed?" She shook her head and continued, "And, anyway, imagine that Loki had caused a bit of trouble a while ago and was being hunted by this global spy organisation."

"Well, he is the god of chaos."

"Mischief," Kate corrected.

Tash nodded. "Right, mischief."

"But he had to get away from them so that he could be with me."

"Because he's head-over-heels in love with you."

"That's right," Kate nodded.

"And in this allegory," Tash enquired, "Are you in love with him back?"

Kate paused, three fingers pressed to her lips. A minute ticked by.

"Kate?"

"Yes?"

"I said, in this ridiculous allegory that is meant to somehow give me insight into what is really going on in your life – this Norse god that's in love with you – do you love him back?" Tash repeated.

Kate nodded, "Yes."

"Excuse me," said a resonant male voice behind them.

The two women spun around to find an extremely tall, slim but well-built blonde man who looked to be in his early thirties. Tash wondered how long he'd been standing there.

"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius."

"By Dave Eggers?" Tash asked. "You'll find it up in Adult Fiction," she paused for a beat to ensure her stating the bleeding obvious didn't fall on deaf ears, "Under E."

The man seemed to be looking right through her. "That was just my assessment."

Tash raised one eyebrow and turned back to hit Kate with her well-worn why-are-all-the-cute-ones-crazy look.

Kate was smiling back at the nutjob. "Want me to show you where to find it?"

"Please," the man nodded.

Tash shook her head as Kate stepped out from behind the desk to lead him into the forest of shelves. _One minute she wants to kill everyone, next minute she's bending over backwards for a mental case._ She turned back to the piles of new books she was cataloguing.

Half-an-hour or so later, Tash was interrupted by a waspish old woman in a tightly buttoned brown coat.

"Excuse me, Miss?"

"Yes?" Tash replied, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice.

"You might need to go and supervise on Level Two. Things seem to be getting a little bit out of hand up there."

"Out of hand? In what way?"

The woman pursed her lips disapprovingly and walked out of the library.

Tash braced herself for the worst. Beat-boxers in the Quiet Study Area? Graffiti in the Children's Section? Pole dancers in Reference? Kids shooting up in Young Adult Fiction? She grabbed her water bottle - the nearest thing to a weapon she had on hand.

She tentatively made her way to the second floor, looking and listening out for the source of the disturbance. Approaching the Reading Lounge she spotted her target. A man was sprawled across the length of one of the vinyl lounges, obscured by a woman straddling his lap. The man's large hands were visible, his fingers entwined in her long dark hair, and she could see his long legs, splayed out beneath the pair of them.

Tash couldn't help but side with the waspish complainant. Though the pair thus far remained fully dressed, which awkwardly wasn't always the case in circumstances like these, things were _clearly_ on their way to getting out of hand. Sneakily circumnavigating the Reading Lounge, ducking in and out of shelves, Tash circled away from the couple and around, approaching them from behind the blonde man's head.

The woman's arms were wound tightly around him, the fingers of one hand sliding into the curls at the nape of his neck where his crisp white collar met his golden flesh. So oblivious were they to anything else around them that Tash managed to sidle right up to them, unscrew the cap of her wide-necked water bottle and hold it high over their heads without them registering a thing.

The instant the first sheet of water splashed over them, they pulled apart gasping at the shock of the cold.

"I HAVE HAD ENOUGH!" Tash screeched, continuing to pour water over the pair, who scrambled to disentangle themselves from one another and clamber to their feet. "HONESTLY! GET A ROOM!"

Every eye on the second floor, and many hurriedly travelling up from the first and down from the third for a look, was on the couple and their incensed assailant.

Tash's vision, still clouded by her fiery rage, began to gradually clear. Before her, dripping, stood the tall ruddy blonde nutcase from just earlier. Laughing next to him stood a sopping wet Kate.

Tash's mouth fell open. "_You_!"

"Tash!" Kate cried. "You're right! You definitely need another career!"

"Well," sniffed Tash defensively, "I would've thought a fellow librarian would never have let herself stoop so low as to _make out in a Reading Lounge_!" Her eyes flashed. "And on top of that," her voice grew more hysterical, "I have never seen anyone look _less_ like the Norse god of mischief in my entire life!"

"Excellent," chuckled Kate's companion.

Kate looked up at him, slipping her hand into his. "Tash advises us to get out of the library and get a room." She flashed him a devilish grin, "Perhaps we should take her advice."

Her companion's eyebrows shot towards his hairline. "Perhaps we should get a room?" he repeated.

Tash rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Well, if you're going to carry on like that, you certainly can't stay here!"

"There you have it," Kate nodded decisively. "We _are_ going to be carrying on like that for the foreseeable future…"

"We are?" he asked gently, stroking her long hair back from her face.

"And it would seem that we are no longer welcome in the library."

"Ahem," Tash menaced.

"Let's get out of here," Kate whispered against his throat. "Take me anywhere!"

"Anywhere?"

"As long as I'm with you."

Loki beamed, his eyes sparkling in a way that hinted at tears of joy. He pulled Kate close, kissing her hard. She threw her arms once more around his neck.

Tash filled a paper cup from the water cooler next to her and threw it over them.

The man laughed and effortlessly scooped Kate into his arms. He strode over to the elevator whose chrome doors conveniently slid open with a muted ding. The last the gathered crowd saw of them before they were obscured by the gleaming doors was the sight of a smiling Kate nestling her head into the crook of his neck.

It was a good thing that Tash and her onlookers weren't back on the ground floor in time to watch them get out.

He may have _looked_ nothing like the Norse god of mischief but there was the muted ding, the doors retracted and the elevator was utterly empty.

.

* * *

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_THE END! Thanks everyone for reading and reviewing! That was fun! Let me know if you have more room in your life for this iteration of Loki. And I know, I know, the title of this could really have been "In which she turns Loki back into Tom Hiddleston." I was even toying with the idea of having Loki discover a talent for acting and hit the big time just because I love those "What if Tom Hiddleston is Loki raising an army?" memes. Anyway, if you like the stuff I write, nothing motivates me to write more than you guys telling me you like it! A__nd now that I know that a bit of holding chapters for ransom pays off, for a teensy bit more reviewing love, I might be persuaded to throw in an epilogue that details the fate of the mysterious mischief-making talisman from last chapter..._

_Now, to review the reviews, just coz I can and if you hadn't been writing, I might not have been either:_

_Most faithful reviewer: Bornrider2 - top effort! I think you reviewed every chapter! Thanks, ole reliable! You made it all fun!_

_2nd place to TheBoyWhoWalksInTheLight - dude, appreciated._

_My most humbling review would have to be the one that came by private message and said, succinctly, "Sucks." Thanks, man. I can only presume that you won't have read far enough to find this. If so, that would be sad. You need to find a better way to spend your time than reading stories that suck. But hey, my first flame - is that what it's called? I've learnt and grown as a person from the experience ;)_

_Favourite comments ever: _

_"Lokate for the WIN!" - whoever you are, I was SO chuffed :) I kept saying it aloud to myself and chuckling delightedly!_

_literaturelife7 - do you realise that you quoted me talking about the power of a quoter of literature? also very very chuffed :) you do NOT suck at reviews. rambling is aLWAYS appreciated :)_

_KatieBug1017 - thanks for appreciating this against your will and for liking the low-level swoon. Reviewers who quote back lines that they liked are my all time favourite..._

_anifreakazoid - thanks for persisting despite my being baffling!_

_iColor With Crayons - it's been an honour - all of it!_

_Very excited to hear this evoked some squeeing - possibly even embarrassing public squeeing!? cool..._

_AND thanks to kijefa - whose undying love for Tom Hiddleston prompted me to write the first chapter, which wasn't supposed to go anywhere, and then it (and him it has to be said) momentarily took over my life... Check out her unfolding story: "A feast of caps and gowns" for some undiluted Tom Hiddleston love if you're into that kind of thing._

_alright dudes, over-and-out. unless you talk me into this epilogue..._


	13. Chapter 13

Epilogue

The one remaining sore point between the god and his lover was her careless misplacing of the powerful talisman for mischief that Loki had bestowed upon Kate as a tool for her protection and a token of his love. Though she had unwittingly wielded it so effectively during her brief incarceration at the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, she had little understanding of the value of the object until she saw his reaction to its loss.

Every so often, Loki would experience a mild aura and he would know that somewhere in the world, another wielded the power he had intended for his beloved. Who he had intended to supervise. Closely.

Many a night after these auras, he lay awake while Kate slept in his arms, listening to the sound of her breathing and waiting the haunted wait of a man who anticipated the worst. Fire storms, world wars, volcanoes, stock market crashes, ice ages, the cancellation of _Sherlock_, banana shortages, plagues of locusts, another insipid Disney princess, the end of civilisation as we know it – all things were possible while that talisman was unaccounted for. And yet so far, despite regular auras – no disasters. Loki was baffled.

In truth, the fault lay, not with Kate, but with the declining standards of the fashion industry. Though not exactly a bespoke suit, the outfit Jane had chosen for Loki to wear as Thor's best man was a high-end off-the-rack purchase and, on top of fitting him like a glove, it was the first ensemble in which his sister-in-law had seen him that somehow rendered him less terrifying. And yet, shoddy workmanship and the dying art of attention to detail, bemoaned by many a fashionista, led to Loki's downfall – there was a hole in the corner of the pocket.

After her "interrogation", Kate had been led by Agent Barton to the car awaiting her outside the S.H.I.E.L.D. facility. While she innocently clambered into the car, still wrapped in Loki's coat, the talisman tipped towards the danger-corner, its weight applying the necessary pressure to open the hole further, and slipped into a storm water drain beneath.

The following days had seen record storms up and down the East Coast. The Avengers, when assembled over a pint, joked that perhaps Thor had not travelled as far a field on his honeymoon as he'd led them to believe.

Carried along by torrents of rain water, the talisman made its way into the tangled drain network under New York until, in a freak wave of storm water, it was somehow pushed out of a grate and flowed into a gutter in the heart of the city. There it was picked up by a curious child – an Australian tourist – waiting for a bus to the Empire State Building with his jetlagged parents who only had the energy and imagination to tour the most obvious destinations the city had to offer.

Having been regularly chastised for picking up unidentifiable but fascinating dropped and discarded objects in all sorts of locations, the enterprising young man shoved the object into the side of his boot and immediately forgot about it, distracted by the flashing lights of the enormous Times Square television screens. The talisman didn't see the light of day again until it fell out of said boot in the sandpit of the preschool in the child's home town, high in the mountains that loomed above the sprawling metropolis of Sydney.

There it lay, buried in the sand, driven over by toy trucks and embedded in the foundations of sandcastles until a little girl, absent-mindedly lifting handfuls of sand into the air just to watch the grains trickle through her fingers, spotted a dull glint under the rainbow Dora socks she'd recently cast off in order to wiggle her toes in the sand. She picked it up just as the teachers called the children in from play and, scrambling to her feet, pocketed it in her pink unicorn hoodie so she had her hands free to attend to the annoyance of socks and shoes.

Later that night, the girl's exhausted father was sorting the washing when out of the unicorn fell Loki's talisman. He picked it out of the washing machine, started the load, and shuffled back into the kitchen, turning the object in his fingers. Suddenly and inexplicably, the wife he had left almost asleep over the next day's sandwiches, was dressed in a slinky negligee, holding out a glass of red wine and giving him a distinctly come-hither look as she led the way towards the bedroom. After such an unexpected and magnificent turn of events, he paid very careful attention to where he placed the object, intending to come back and investigate further the next day.

Discussing his find with his wife the following evening, the man suggested they keep the talisman in a safe place and use it only in emergencies. As a result, the auras that sent Loki into such an anxious state, correlated with the family's trip down the confectionery aisle in the supermarket where it would seem to the family's three disappointed children that somehow all of the lollies and chocolate were completely out of stock. Or while Loki had a little conniption over his evening pot of tea, the sudden and unpredicted torrential rain in Sydney and surrounds closed all the sporting grounds on a Saturday morning so that families could sleep in instead of attending kids' soccer games. Sometimes a missed bus or train would inexplicably reappear only moments later, cruising into the stop to ensure that no one was late for school or work. And only in extreme emergencies, the parents would wield the stone against their children to render them too exhausted to do anything other than sleep when the sibling rivalry had gotten a little out of hand. Toys that required batteries or made annoying sounds would vanish into thin air, trick-or-treat stashes would suddenly be devoid of red food colouring and sometimes the take-away delivery guy would leave the food without thinking to ask for payment. Such was the devious reign of mischief causing Loki his sleepless nights.

When the cold fear of another aura gripped him, he held Kate closer to him, uncharacteristically wishing and hoping that no harm, no death, no chaos or disorder flowed from the talisman he forged in his own palm. On the other side of the globe, two mischievous parents of three slipped undetected into the front of the queue for ice cream at the school fair.

.

* * *

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_Thanks dudes. Now it's really done. Though I'm SO tempted to keep going!_

_Must… return… to… normal… life…_


	14. Chapter 14

**Epilogue Part II**

_Oh, normal life…_

_This just kept me entertained for a little while after that delightful ALS stunt. It has nothing to do with Loki but there is a mention of a library and it's not the kind of thing I'd ever publish on its own because how embarrassing. Oh, readers of Loki in the Library, I just thought you might enjoy it tucked away at the back of this funny little story. Let me know if you did!_

_I know that an exchange like this could never take place in such a public forum without the poor girl getting trolled to death by the fangirls. I should also say that I haven't been particularly fanatical with counting my characters. Disappointingly, this website doesn't let me format this the way I'd like to so you just have to imagine this in a Twitter feed, ok? I know you can do it!_

_This is borne out of an odd kind of sympathy I harbour for famous people who probably need no sympathy at all! Once upon a time they were normal people who could meet another human being without the baggage of celebrity. For TH's sake, I'm fixing him up with a girl who knew him before he was famous…_

_._

* * *

**_._**

**_True Love in 140 Characters or Less_**

**_._**

twhiddleston

Hello atNathanFillion. In reply. #IceBucketChallenge for #ALS. All yours Benedict &amp; atTheRealLukeEvans. whosayamazinglinkofwettshirtness

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Inviting your own well-deserved objectification like the Adonis you are #classic

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom I think that was the most intriguing/enjoyable insult/compliment I've received in a long while.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston You said almost exactly that the last time I called you an Adonis. Prof Q's office circa 2002.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Esther? I thought of you the minute I read that tweet!

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston The very same.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Oh, the essay-writing hours I whiled away gazing at you across the library.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston And to think, you could have probably done alright at university if only you'd applied yourself.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom I don't think you're taking me seriously. Being called Adonis by the object of my affection (even in the office of The Smelliest of Profs) is one of my fondest memories of higher education!

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston You're such an optimist, T. If I remember correctly, I called you a _preening _Adonis!

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Well, as you and I are keenly aware, these myths are endlessly open for interpretation.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston That preening implication was, of course, blatant in this morning's tweet.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom As in the past, I chose to glean only the demi sex god implications.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Typical.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Oh, you. You in that labyrinthine library!

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston What? I don't remember you featuring in any of my library shenanigans.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Precisely.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Is there a particular incident I should recall?

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom One night I moved desks four times, each an attempt to be closer to you. I was playing a chess-like strategy that ultimately landed me the best possible seat from which to observe you agreeing to go out with that wally, Phillip.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Really!? I had no idea. I'll be dining out on that anecdote for the next decade!

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom How is dear old Phillip?

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston We haven't spoken since the end of that disaster date.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom No single piece of information has thrilled me more!

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston I suspect you exaggerate.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Ok, most thrilling this month. My life is very odd these days so that still counts as highly thrilling.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Your life does seem very odd indeed. Congratulations, by the way, on all of it.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Thank you, darling. What weird and wonderful things are you doing with yourself these days?

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Good Sir, I think you've cornered the market on weird and wonderful! I simply teach classics.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Carrying the torch! So proud!

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Even to the colonies! USyd, Australia. Dream job, has to be said.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom And, now that I know Phil was an abject failure, does my Lady Penelope still eschew suitors and await the return of her Odysseus?

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston The iconic Penelope does have some broader appeal than the surface and somewhat obvious romantic, does she not?

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Perhaps, but none of that will help me ascertain whether or not you're single. I'm interested because, well, you, and I happen to touch down in Syd two weeks from today. Drink?

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Oh, let's go out dancing for old time's sake. I can hide behind you if I run into any students.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Yes to dancing! A barbaric yawp! And I'm sure if we ran into any students of yours they'd be too busy trying to find desks to stand on.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Oh, don't. I'm still too sad about it.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Me too. Working out my grief by paying tribute every chance I get.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Right. Drinks and dancing on your arrival. And perhaps a guest lecture during your stay?

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Really? Love to! Think I can still recite _The Odyssey_.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Oh, I know you can, T. My diehard Ancient Greek students will be passing out in the aisles along with the fangirls.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Sorry to sound like a broken record but Odysseus, My Lady? Suitors?

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston No Odysseus to speak of. What suitors there are, mostly duds.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom YES! I am suddenly anticipating my Sydney trip much more keenly than before. It will be heavenly to see you again.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Judging by that international wet t-shirt competition you just won I'm going to suggest that you bear in mind that the years might have been kinder to you than to me.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom You will have the same eyes and the same smile, possibly even the same Maid Marionesque chocolate brown curls. But it is certain that the biting wit for which I first fell so hard is very much intact.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Eyes, such as they are, now permanently obscured by the specs I used to only need for reading.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom De rigueur in your profession no doubt? And I loved you in those specs – always found them compellingly sexy.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Maid Marionesque chocolate brown curls (you're very kind - _Prince of Thieves_ was a dream of mine) flecked with silver - perhaps the compulsory dust and cobwebs of the Classics Dept.?

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom_ Prince of Thieves_! You have_ always_ been Marion in my eyes. Putting Bryan Adams on right now. Besides, no one even knows if I'm greying. Haven't been my natural colour since about the time I last saw you.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Wit, which I think you remember more fondly than it ever deserved, significantly dulled by academia. I mostly get by on dad jokes these days.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom Two weeks, E. Let me be the judge of the eyes and the smile and the hair and the wit. I often think of you. Oh, the grief of parting having stayed silent and unrequited.

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Dearest Adonis, looking forward to it.

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twhiddleston

atpenelopeattheloom P.S.: You think I won the wet t-shirt competition?

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penelopeattheloom

attwhiddleston Hands down.

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_Go on, leave a review if you like this sort of thing. Twas lots of fun to write and it only took me an hour! I could fit a few more of these into normal life if I thought people might like to read them!_


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Avengers, Thor, Humor, Romance