"Hey, what are you - "

"Hey!"

"Coming through!"

Darcy Lewis pushes her way through the hall, the bright lights overhead reflecting eerily off of her rectangular glasses.

"This area is heavily restricted, ma'am," snarls a guard at the end of the hallway. There are two others beside him, and they are all holding futuristic-looking weapons, the sci-fi big brothers of her taser. She'd love to get her hands on them.

For now, though, she simply holds up a card and says flintily, "I've been given temporary access."

Upon realizing her card is not, in fact, a fake, the guard peers at her incredulously. "How did you - "

"I know someone," she replies imperiously. "Let me in."

He shrugs and unlocks the door.

She steps in and closes it behind her.

She squints for a moment, adjusting to the comparative darkness. Steely grey walls curve overhead. Her eyes are for none of that, however. Her eyes are only for the prisoner.

His cell is bright, circular, made of thick reinforced glass, able to be ejected from the Helicarrier at the push of a button. He has been pacing, it seems, but he halts at her entrance. The medieval-looking garments he wears are not unlike Thor's, but he seems to favor the color green. He has high, narrow cheekbones, slicked-back, dark hair, and electric-blue eyes, burning dangerously cold. He arches one thin eyebrow as she stalks to stand before him, turns, clasps his hands behind his back. He smirks at her, as though she is a child of the merest intelligence. She wants to slap that look off of his attractive face.

"Lewis," he greets her silkily, and that gives her pause. She stares.

"How do you know my name?"

"Don't tell me you've forgotten the incident with the Destroyer," he says, the other eyebrow raising with faux surprise.

"Of course not," she growls. Of course she remembers - buildings bursting into flame around her, glass shattering and ricocheting across the pavement, the metallic space robot with its fucking death rays and Thor and his friends fighting and failing, and her screaming and clinging to Jane like a scared little girl. Which she isn't. At all.

That doesn't explain it, though. Unless the Destroyer had a hidden videocam somewhere on it, which she doubts highly.

She says so.

"It seems possessing magic is more useful than you give it credit for, Lewis," he replies, and then he takes a step forward, eyes narrowing. "Now. Care to tell me why you've come? Fury must know there is no chance I would divulge my secrets to the likes of you, little mortal."

She stands her ground, though she's a bit unnerved; they're separated, now, by only four feet and a glass barrier, and he towers over her by a good nine inches besides. She doesn't show it; looking him square in the eye, she places her hands on her hips, scowls, lifts her chin, and says firmly, "I've come to tell you off."

Loki seems unsure whether or not this is a joke. "...Have you now."

"Uh-huh," is Darcy's unwavering reply. "What, leveling a small town and almost killing your brother wasn't enough for you? How stupid can one guy be?! If there's anything the movies have taught me, it's that aliens invading Earth always fail!" She uses her hands animatedly as she speaks, waving them around, pointing them at him accusingly, and finally planting them back on her hips.

He bristles at her words. "That lumbering brute is not my brother."

"Yeah, yeah, you're adopted, yadda yadda. News flash: on 'Midgard' or whatever the hell you call it, adoption counts!" She makes air quotes at "Midgard", jade eyes flashing as she finishes her speech.

He stiffens, emotions flitting so quickly across his face that she cannot discern any of them. Finally, his gaze darkens and he growls, "I believe you will find it is unwise to bait me, Ms. Lewis. Nor will doing so cause me to reveal anything."

"One: I repeat, I'm not here for fucking information. Two: What do you think you're gonna do to me from inside that cage?" she demands.

"You believe this contraption can hold me?" He eyes her with idle curiosity and surprise. "How... interesting."

"Oop, you revealed something!" Darcy exclaims tauntingly.

Loki snorts. "I have revealed nothing. Fury knows the gamble he made bringing me here."

"Anyway," Darcy huffs, green eyes narrowing, "I'm pretty damn pissed at you right now. I don't know what you thought you were doing when you used your glowy control stick on Erik, but that dude's my friend and you better not have fucking harmed him."

"Come to bargain for him? A fruitless endeavor, little girl," Loki says, narrowing his own ice-blue eyes.

"No. What the hell do I have that you'd want? But he better not be hurt, because if he is, Thor's gonna kick your ass double hard," she asserts angrily.

"How much you think you know," he says mockingly. "The Earth will be mine, fair maiden - " these words are spat out like bile - "and none of your precious Avengers will be able to save it. Selvig is mine and I will do with him what I please. In fact, I believe I will harm him. Oh, yes." He gives a dancing smile, knifeblade thin, eyes cold with malice. "I'll kill him and make that friend of yours watch. And then - "

"Oh yeah!" Darcy bellows, advancing another step, waving her arms around like birds' wings. He blinks perplexedly, for once the thoughts clear on his face - Is she not intimidated? Has she no fear? How dare she interrupt me mid-speech - but already she launches into another tirade, before he can speak: "That's another reason to be angry with you! They relocated Jane because of you! SHIELD figured you'd try some dumb shit like that, so they whisked her off without a moment's notice, and I have no idea when she'll be back. You ruined my summer, you bastard!"

His smirk has not returned. His eyebrows furrow, eyes narrowed as though by searching her with ever-increasing scrutiny he can unlock the reasoning behind her strange behavior. "I - what?"

"Yeah. Mm-hmm. We were gonna spend the summer together. Now she probably won't even be back by then. Jerk."

"You are angry because I... disrupted your summer plans?" The look on his face says he is not sure he got this right, that maybe this is some mortal slang or tradition he doesn't quite understand.

(In another room, where agents are watching the two from ten different angles, there is much laughter and snorting, because this is the longest anyone has kept him confused since he's arrived on the Helicarrier.)

"Yeah," she confirms a third time, arms crossed over her chest. "Not to mention you killed a bunch of people, and destroyed a whole facility, and - oh, there was all that crap in Germany. You are totally wasting your sexiness, you know. It's a damn shame."

"My..." He is staring at her, and if he squints any further his eyes will be screwed shut. He draws back, then, wipes the confusion from his face, and regards her with an irritated scowl. "You are trying to confuse me."

"Not at all," she insists. "You are hot, man, and you are wasting that potential. I'd be totally into you if you weren't, oh, you know, a delusional homicidal maniac!"

"You find me... attractive. And you are telling me this while yelling obscenities at me?" His eyes are getting a wide, disbelieving look to them. Like maybe this mortal is one tree short of a forest.

She shrugs sulkily, clutching her arms tighter to her chest. "Well I'm not gonna lie about that. But anyway, I also came because I'm really curious. I read the - "

"I've already told you, mortal, you will get no information from me," he tells her, but the words have no bite to them this time, no poison, because his mind, it seems, is still trying to process her and her impossible attitude, her inexplicable words.

"I mean," she continues smoothly, "how much of the myths are true. Haven't got a chance to ask Thor yet, he's 'busy'. Did they really happen? For example, the thing with the wall and Sleipnir, and all that crap you supposedly got the dwarves to make, and Mjolnir getting stolen, and - "

He stiffens. His eyes are certainly wide now. Wide and a little wild. "How do you know about that?" he demands harshly, taking another step forward. He can take one more and then he'll be right up against the glass. "Did Thor - "

"I've already told you," she retorts impatiently, "the myths."

"What myths?!"

"Norse mythology! You know, the Vikings? They have plenty of stories from when the Aesir were on Earth. Survived all the way to the modern age. Those myths are full of weird, fucked-up shit, so I thought I'd ask you if they really happened."

"Does Thor know of them?" he asks. He seems to be on the verge of pacing.

She doesn't know why this has upset him so. "I don't think so."

They watch each other warily, and for the first time since Darcy's arrival, there is a moment of silence.

"Obviously some of them are true," she ventures, surveying him, "I guess it's not surprising you'd react like that, considering you basically always lose."

"Oh, do I," he growls. His eyes are narrowing dangerously.

She is not fazed, but then she hasn't been, not the entire conversation. "Well, yeah. If they're true, I'm just surprised you didn't flip your lid earlier."

And they're watching each other again, because he doesn't know what she knows, and she doesn't know what's real and is therefore likely to cause him to blow a gasket if she brings it up.

"And why is that?" he asks, a bit roughly.

"Well," she begins, and for the first time she sounds cautious, "no offense but in the myths the rest of Asgard basically treats you like shit."

It's a long time before he answers, but he seems to be practically crushing his hands in each other's grasp, and his entire body is tense. "...Do they now."

"Yeah, though you're kind of a prick so you kind of deserve it but damn that stuff is harsh - and y'know, asking rhetorical questions over and over is a really lazy way of not giving anything away!" she flashes back hotly.

"That is true," he admits, sounding not a hair calmer, "but then I was unaware until now that my history is on public display to the citizens of Midgard."

"Not all of it," she says helpfully. "And you won't tell me anything, so I don't know how much of it is true."

"Seek your answers elsewhere, mortal," he hisses.

"Will you answer one question?" she asks, sounding hopeful, "because I'm interesting?"

"No. Leave me," he snaps.

"Last time I checked, you're a prisoner. This isn't your private suite," Darcy responds flatly. "But I can't make you answer me, so - "

" - you most certainly cannot, Lewis - "

" - so I guess I'll try to annoy Thor instead."

The eye each other for one long moment more.

"I think you should give up before you get your ass handed to you," she says casually, "and not waste your good looks on evil. But that's just me. Adios."

And with that she flounces to the door, Loki's ice-blue gaze burning holes in her shoulders all the way.

"Goodbye, Lewis," he mutters as the door closes behind her.

That was decidedly... different, if nothing else.

He has a lot to think about.

I was originally going to add more detail to this, but it never happened, so I finally decided to post it. What did you think? It was meant to be a oneshot, but now I'm thinking of continuing it with more Darcy and Loki conversations...