Chapter 29
Allison laughed and shook her head, making her long reddish-brown hair swing back and forth. "No, I'm visiting Austin. He said you were Queen of Asgard, and he knew how to get a hold of you."
"Oh. It's a Friday in October," I said slowly, wondering if I got the days wrong. "How do you have time off school?"
"We had a three day weekend," she said.
"Huh."
"But what have you been up to?" She asked. I saw a bench not far and pointed to it. We went and sat on it, Loki standing next to me, staring my friends down.
"Oh, you know, getting married to a God, ruling Asgard while my pain-in-the-ass here faked his death again, fighting alongside the Avengers, getting shot, normal teenage stuff," I shrugged.
"You got shot?" Allison and Austin shouted in unison.
"That was very cute," Loki muttered.
I nodded. "Yeah, in the thigh. I haven't been out of bed in two weeks."
"You are not supposed to be out of bed now," Loki growled.
"You sound like an old couple," Austin said. Loki made a noise in the back of his throat.
"Oh, I forgot to introduce you!" I exclaimed to distract Loki. "How rude of me, I'm sorry. Loki, these are my friends, Austin and Allison, so it would be much appreciated if you didn't kill them. Austin, Allison, Loki," I said.
"Nice to meet you, Your Majesty," Austin mumbled, and Allison nodded. Loki didn't say anything.
We talked for a while longer, then I borrowed Austin's phone to call my mom. She said my dad and her were staying at Avengers Tower for a while, so I decided to take Loki to meet them.
I hugged the two of them goodbye, promising to go to Michigan to visit Allison and see all of my other friends, and then Loki and I walked down the street to Avengers Tower.
By the time we got there, I was doubled over onto my cane, panting and gasping for breath. Loki had offered to carry me, but I told him I'd be fine. We rode the elevator up to the top floor, where we found Tony, Steve, my parents, and my brother. They all stopped to look at the elevator when it opened, and there was an uncomfortable silence as all eyes fell on Loki.
I dragged myself to the couch and fell onto it, Loki sitting next to me. It took me a minute before I caught my breath enough to talk.
"Mom... Dad... this is my husband, Loki," I panted.
"Ashley, what happened to you?" My mom exclaimed.
"She was shot," Loki said simply.
"Yes, thank you, they told me that," my mom snapped at Loki, who glared at her. "Why haven't we heard from you in so long?"
"She has been recovering," Loki said.
"Let her tell me!" My mom shouted at Loki. Loki jumped up at started to move at my mom.
"Honey, please don't kill my mother," I sighed, smacking him in the leg with my cane. He reluctantly sat back down.
"She yelled at the King of Asgard," he snapped.
"She is your mother-in-law now, I hate to tell you."
Mom came over to my left side, making sure to stay out of Loki's reach. She grabbed my left hand and looked at the ring on my finger. "This is gorgeous," she said, looking at Loki over her glasses.
"Thank you," Loki said, forcing a smile.
"Oh, Christmas is going to be lovely," Tony said, clapping my dad on the back. He and Steve left the room laughing.
Loki gave me a confused look, but I just shook my head.
"What sort of procedures did they do on your leg?" My mom asked, and I looked at Loki.
"Help," I said.
Loki went into a bunch of details on what the healers did, none of which made sense to anybody, and there was an awkward pause when he was done.
"Uh huh," my mom looked at Loki. "Well, that made absolutely no sense." She looked at me and said, "I'm not impressed."
"Y-You're not... Mom! He's a God, he's King of Asgard, and he found me a wedding ring- which, by the way, Asgard doesn't have- with my birthstone on it!"
"And from what I heard, he faked his death and left you depressed and in charge of a realm by yourself."
"We're working through that," I mumbled. "But he's sweet and I love him. So you don't have to be impressed. You don't have to see him ever again if you don't want to. I do, so I think it only matters if I'm impressed or not. And I am."
"And how do you know he's not going to "kill" himself again?" My dad asked.
"Because if I do, I know she will really kill me," Loki muttered.
After another half hour, I had my head resting on Loki's shoulder and was having trouble keeping my eyes open. Loki politely told my parents that we were leaving, and my mom yelled at him for being rude, and then he helped me up, and I awkwardly hugged my family while trying not to fall over. Then Loki and I went home, and I fell asleep before I could even change out of my dress.
Loki woke me up early the next morning, and I realized that I didn't put the medicine on my leg before I fell asleep. The two of us sat in the bathroom while I dripped the awful liquid onto my wound, which was healing surprisingly fast, and Loki looked at me very seriously.
"What?" I asked after two minutes of him just staring at me.
"What is 'Christmas'?"
After I got done laughing so hard I nearly fell off the countertop, I explained it to him. He still didn't get it, but he didn't ask anything more.
During the next few weeks, I started to walk around the palace to start building my muscles back up. Every day I walked a little bit farther, eventually getting to the point where I would go out into the garden. Not too long after, I was able to stop walking with the cane, but Loki still insisted on keeping it by my side of the bed in case I needed it.
It wasn't until the first week of November that he let me start going back to the throne room and seeing people, but the public literally threw a party when he did. They threw a huge, beautiful party, and I thought Loki was going to explode.
On November Third I went back to New York to celebrate Austin's birthday with him, and the two of us went to Michigan to visit our old school. I thought it was funny that Austin skipped school to go to his old school. We traveled via Bifrost, which made Austin's day, and we walked through the doors of Hydale at lunchtime. To be specific, the lunchtime that all of our friends had.
No sooner did we get our visitor passes did the news circulate the school that I was alive and dressed like a Victorian princess. We went into the lunchroom and sat down at our friends' table, and they were literally screaming the entire time they were so happy to see us. After they had to go back to class, we went and saw our old teachers. My Spanish teacher was very excited to see I still remembered the language, and when we passed my Gym teacher, she looked like she was going to faint.
After the final bell rang, Austin and I waited by the front doors for Allison. When she finally came, I asked the question I'd been waiting to ask all day.
"You want to go to Asgard?"
