A/N: Small changes! A/N's are now being moved to the beginning of chapters. And also, I'm not sure how everyone feels about the song lyrics, but I promise that they often provide a bit of foreshadowing for the chapter, so please don't pass them by.

Love and hugs!

TWELVE

We were friends but now you're the enemy

Don't need this when there's a remedy

It's the end

Play your trick on someone new

I'm gonna run away

I'm never comin' back to you

Yeah yeah, I'm gonna run away

I'm never comin' back to you

- "(I'm Gonna) Run Away," Joan Jett and the Blackhearts

Alana balled up another ball of paper. It was her fault, she supposed, trying to draw when she was angry. The images never flowed right when she was wound up.

And she was angry. At herself, mostly.

How could she have kissed him? It was unfair to him. She kept telling him that she couldn't love him, and then she had completely contradicted herself, had given him false hope, most likely.

But she couldn't deny that the feel of his lips touching hers had almost made her forget everything she had ever promised herself, made her want to lose herself in his kisses, in his arms.

And that had scared her, how he could intoxicate her with the barest brush of lips. She had pulled away quickly, terrified and full of regret for what she had done.

And now she was hiding in her room. Drawing. Why, she wasn't sure, but she didn't want to face him, didn't want to see his eyes, didn't want to see that he loved her. Because she didn't need that. He was helping her get her memories back, and then he would leave. She didn't need that sort of conflict.

Yes, she had loved him once, and he had loved her. But now there was something different between them. He seemed darker than the Loki of her memories, haunted and dangerous. She could see it in his eyes when he thought she wasn't looking.

He wasn't telling her something.

Yes, her mind had been wiped. Okay. That… made sense. But if S.H.I.E.L.D. had wiped her mind because they had fallen in love, then where had he been for the past two years? Why hadn't he come looking for her before then?

And he had been imprisoned for what he had done in those past years. Imprisoned and had escaped.

So she was harboring a fugitive in her house.

What had he done? He said that he did it for love… oh, God.

It came crashing down on her, he had done something to get him imprisoned for life because of her. Murder? Genocide? The ideas kept popping up in her head, one after the other, more and more horrible, and she pressed her shaking fingers to her lips.

And then she remembered sitting in front of the TV when the alien attack was going on in New York, and a dark-haired man fighting Thor, claiming he would rule the earth.

No. No. It can't be. It can't have been him. No.

She grabbed her laptop, fingers fumbling over the keys in apprehension, typing shakily, New York alien invasion.

Of course, millions of hits came up, mostly news articles and conspiracy theories, but as she searched further, she came across a website with pictures taken in Germany, before the battle began. The headline blared, "CAPTAIN AMERICA AND IRON MAN FIGHT CRAZED MURDERER!"

A video was positioned halfway down the page.

She pressed play.

It started out as a just a video of a lovely night, the curator speaking and everyone dressed up beautifully. Then the image shook and refocused, and a tall man, with long dark hair and a dangerous look in his eyes, grabbed the curator and flipped him backwards onto a stone table. People began to scream and run out of the building, and the image was shaking now, but whoever was filming clearly wanted to get the whole spectacle.

The man pulled out some sort of device and shook it. It began to spin and whir, and he plunged it into the curator's eye. The screaming and jostling intensified, and the curator twitched on the table. The man looked up and smiled, a feral, crazed grin.

She pressed pause.

His face filled the screen, almost unrecognizable, but she knew the eyes, the curve of the mouth, his jawline.

It was Loki.

She stumbled away from the screen. No. No. I can't have – he wouldn't have – he couldn't have – please, no.

How many people had died in the battle? How many buildings reduced to rubble? And he had said that he did it for love.

Because of her, hundreds of people were dead.

The silence had gone on for too long, and he was worried.

He didn't think – no, he knew – that she wasn't the type to hide out for so long.

Staying in her room for the morning was one thing, but it was seven at night and she hadn't come out of her room once, not even to eat.

"Alana?" he called out, approaching her room. "Are you all right, love?" He winced at his inadvertent use of the word – not what she needs right now – but continued on, until he was right outside her door.

He could hear no noise from inside.

"Alana, I'm coming in." His hand turned the knob: the door was locked. He twisted it in vain. "Alana?"

No sound.

Increasingly frantic thoughts ran through his mind, one after the next – where was she?

Had it been that traumatizing for her to see herself as she used to be? Had she finally snapped? Had she been lying unconscious on the floor for hours now?

A flash of magic; the door unlocked itself and swung open, the slight creaking noise the only sound other than his breathing.

The room was dark. The window was open, the drawers of her dresser flung open, emptied of clothes.

She was gone.

His heart pounded, where would she have gone? Why had she gone? It couldn't have been because of her sleepwalking, her kiss, the lure of her memories were too strong for her to just leave him.

Her laptop was open, the screen dark, and he approached it, waking it up, the screen glowing blue, pressing against the darkness of the room.

On the screen, a video had been paused on an image of his face.

Replaying the video, he stood there, watching himself in Germany.

He slammed the laptop shut and swore loudly.

She had found out the truth, and now she was gone.

Where could she go?

She drove blindly, not sure where, only knowing that she had to get away from him, from the deaths she had caused, and the awful truth of what had transpired during those past two years.

A bag full of clothes in her trunk, a half-full tank of gas in her car, and she had no idea what to do.

Go to S.H.I.E.L.D.? But she had seen that massive exposé on them, she wasn't sure that they still existed anymore.

She pushed her headset into her ear and dialed their New York headquarters.

"The number you have reached is not in service. Please check your number and try again."

She tried Coulson's number, and got the same message.

Crap.

As her heartbeat slowed, she realized that perhaps she was being too rash. She had run away from her own house.

The other part of her mind reminded her that a mass murderer was at her house, and that it was perfectly reasonable to run away.

And then another portion chimed in, saying, You know he's not just going to sit there. He's coming to find you.

She pressed her foot harder on the gas pedal.

The road was slick with rain, but she didn't care. Maybe he'll leave me alone if I fall off a cliff.

If you die, you'll never get your memories back, a voice taunted her.

She swore and slammed on the brake, the car fishtailed and she swung her car back around, back in the direction of her house.

Loki's hands were busy, molding and weaving the magic together, tracking her down. He had her pinpointed to at the very most a half-mile radius, but he had no idea how to get there.

She didn't have another car. There were no neighbors nearby that had a car he could steal.

At least she hadn't taken off the necklace in her hurry to leave, A small boon, at least.

He furrowed his brow in confusion as the small white dot that was she turned and started to move back in the general direction of the house.

She was coming back.

He let out a sigh of relief. Now he just had to figure out what to say to her.