Author's Note: A short one, and you'll probably understand why. Powerful, though, I think. Please be kind. :)
Chapter Twenty-Five: In Dreams
Song: Bridge Over Troubled Water (pick your artist, I'm going with Simon & Garfunkel)
The Chitauri were coming. There was no stopping them.
New York was burning before his eyes. The Empire State Building exploded in a mass of metal and smoke. Trees in Central Park erupted in flames, the wind fanning the fire, spreading it faster than the firefighters could control. Cars crashed along Fifth Avenue, yellow cabs smashing into busses into concrete slabs and buildings. Screams of fear, of pain, of anger floated upward toward his perch on Stark Tower.
Loki heard them all, but was powerless to stop them, no matter how badly he wanted to. He called out, begged The Other to call off the invasion, to send the warriors back from whence they came. He promised the Tesseract to them regardless, offered up all the power he had been given and more, if the slaughter could end. He had not expected this madness, nor had he craved it. He only wanted a throne from which to rule, his birthright, to belong to a place, to have someone worship him the way they worshipped his father and his brother.
It was useless. The Other and his forces continued their onslaught, bringing with them the Leviathans, knocking over skyscrapers and crashing down upon homes, businesses, innocents, all of them innocents, and yet, Loki heard only one voice among them. A familiar voice, high pitched and wailing. Pained. Terrorized.
"Please, stop! Stop! Oh, God, stop!"
He threw himself off the tower, aboard one of the coasting gold gliders; he was desperate to track Her down, to stop what he knew was in progress.
"Stop! No!"
He heard the voice becoming louder as he got closer, dodging beams of light and death rays shooting green and blue from the ongoing battle. He rocketed past Tony Stark's Iron Man, who was trying to distract one of the giant snakes, while the Black Widow and the Soldier battled the Chitauri on the ground. Closer and closer he came to the screaming, Her voice echoing in his ears, louder still.
Finally, as if on autopilot, the glider crashed through the plate glass window in the lobby of a large apartment complex, hurtling him to the floor. He sprang to his feet, clutching the scepter to his chest, trying to get his bearings. Her shrieking was feverish now, desperate and pleading.
From somewhere above, his brother's voice boomed: "Loki! What have you done?"
And then, the voice, pleading with Her attacker: "You don't have to do this! You can stop now! I won't tell, I promise!"
A new voice rang out through the din, deeper and more menacing: "Shut the fuck up, bitch, or I will slit your fucking throat."
He had to find Her.
Loki ran through the hallways, but the smoke was thick and billowing around him, making it almost impossible to see. He tried to use his magic to clear it, but to no avail. There was too much of it, too evil for even his powers to overcome. His armor felt heavier than it ever did, dragging him down as he tried to move faster.
He called Her name, but only Her protests against the threats of Her captor continued.
"Where are you? Please, just tell me where you are! I will come for you!"
He was growing desperate now, frantically darting through open doors, throwing his weight against those that were locked to break them open, stumbling in the thick, murky smoke, trying to see any sign of movement beyond it in each room. Through one door, up this set of stairs, out a door, down that hallway. He repeated this process several times, sweeping each floor, but still unable to find Her. He grew more frustrated, more filled with rage with each failed mission.
Suddenly, a great scream of pain erupted, piercing his ears straight into his soul. The sound was animalistic, not of this world. The second voice was roaring and angry, telling Her to shut up, cursing, commanding, demanding, angrier and angrier each passing minute. Loki could almost feel that anger as if it were his own, and it made him even more determined to hunt down and utterly destroy its source.
Finally, Loki reached the top floor of the building, where the fire was raging the hottest. And at the very end of the long hallway, he saw one last door, white, with a colorful tapestry hanging from it. He launched himself at it, scepter in hand, prepared to destroy whatever malevolent being was attacking Her. The door opened easily, and to his surprise, there was no sign of the fire raging on the other side of it. There was no smoke. The room was bare, except for two people thrashing against one another, before he threw Her to the floor like a rag doll. She landed on her back with a sickening thud.
On the floor She lay, mocha-colored hair matted and tangled with blood that ran from several thick gashes along her forehead. She had a split lip and scratched knuckles and arms from the fight She had put up. She was still crying out, struggling to get away from him, to no avail. His body was lanky but lean and strong. He pushed Her legs farther apart, cramming himself into Her roughly, nearly breaking Her in two. She sobbed, tears streaming down Her face, cutting clear streaks through the blood on Her skin, but he did not care. She was less than human to him. The raw power it gave him to take from Her what he wanted without regard to the future events his actions would set in motion surged through his body like the flames surged outside the small room. He cared for nothing but himself.
The man's face rose up, staring Loki directly in the eye as he defiled the beautiful creature below him who was, by now, whimpering in pain and sadness, resigned to Her fate and slowly dying before his eyes.
What Loki saw made him wish to be burned alive in the battle raging outside.
In the man's face, Loki saw his own reflected back at him.
The next thing he knew, someone was shaking him by the shoulders.
"Luke! Come on, Luke, wake up!" Grace was speaking in a loud whisper, trying not to wake Amy at the same time as she tried to wake him from his nightmare.
He flew upwards, sitting straight up all at once. His eyes began to focus, recognizing his surroundings. Grace was sitting on the edge of his bed, whole and perfect, neither blood nor bruise maligning her skin, eyes narrowed on him with concern. Once she saw his eyes open, her hands loosened from his shoulders and ran down his arms lightly, resting on the tops of his hands, which gripped the bedcovers tightly as a boa constrictor around a mouse.
"I… nightmare…" That was all he could say, still caught between reality and the dream. His throat was dry, his chest heaving.
Amy was not yet old enough to have nightmares, but Grace had had more than a few of her own and she tried to recall what her mother did for her at those times. She reached out her hand and wiped the sweat from his brow gently. He was always so cold to the touch, even now, despite sleeping under copious amounts of down bedding.
"It was a dream," she said, her voice low and rolling. "Just a dream. Do you want to talk about it?"
"No!" He snapped. Then, more gently: "I simply wish to try to forget it and go back to sleep."
Grace nodded, considering his response. She understood his inclination to ignore it and hope it went away, but she felt something more should be done. The dream had clearly upset him, and it would probably be difficult for him to fall back to sleep. If Grace knew him at all, she predicted he would stay up mulling over its meaning without something to distract him away from it. The next thing she said took some amount of courage on her part, but Luke had given her so much comfort in the past few months that it was time she returned the favor.
"Can I stay?"
His voice caught in his throat and he emitted only a small squeak in response. He was not sure he heard her correctly, and did not want to risk upsetting her as he had the other day. But Grace smiled kindly.
"I'll take that as a yes. It's just for tonight," she reminded, as she might her child asking to spend the night in her bed after a nightmare. "And it's just platonic."
"Understood," Loki replied, shifting to his right to make room for her before laying down on his back. She crawled over him carefully, her cotton pajama pants grazing his bare stomach. She untied her robe and tossed it over the bottom of the bed, and settled down next to him, but they did not touch. Neither of them was certain how far was too far or how much was too much. Grace fell back to sleep first and quickly, curled on her side facing him. However, she was right in her unspoken estimation: Loki was happy for the distraction from his own mind. He listened to her shallow breaths, melodic and peaceful, a welcome change from the screams of his nightmares. He counted them as they came, one by one, as if to ensure that she was still alive, until he was lulled him into a restful, deep sleep.
As she fell asleep first, so too did Grace awaken. The room was completely dark because of the blackout curtains draping the windows, the clock on the nightstand next to her reading 4:26 a.m. But she knew precisely where she was. She remembered coming to him late the night before, awakened by his screams, comforting him as best she could, and then lying down next to him to keep his mind from wandering back to the place from whence she had dragged it. She did not, however, remember falling asleep as she awoke, with the sensation of his arms wrapped around her, his chest pressed against her back, warm breath heating the back of her neck, long, thick eyelashes tickling the top of her spine.
She closed her eyes and imagined the way he looked right that second. He always looked so unbelievably innocent in sleep, much younger than his thirty-ish years. His hardened expression became pliable and lost to the world. The lines in his forehead relaxed and his lips parted slightly, looking even more kissable than they usually did. The dark hair would fall in his face carelessly, frizzing at the crown a bit. He seemed to be very deep in sleep, and she was glad for it, after what had seemed like a terrible nightmare. She wondered if he was dreaming right now. She wondered if he ever dreamed of her.
The last thought Grace had before she fell back to sleep in those early morning hours was this: even though she did not remember falling asleep with Luke curled against her, she could not say with certainty that she was unhappy about waking up that way.