"Well, what am I supposed to do about her?" Loki asked, looking over to his companion. He got no response as he continued pacing up and down the living room floor, a window into Midgard floating at one end. "I can't go to Midgard, so I just have to wait down here for her… I wish I could do something! I have to do something!"

Spinning on his heel, he turned around, continuing to pace. "Do you know how we met? In the libraries of that damn prison they kept me in. She showed up one day and took over. There was another chair, one next to mine, that she just showed up and stole. It was a nice chair, a nice empty spot, and then she took over. I got used to her being there and… I never realized how much she mattered until I almost lost her. She was dying, and that was when I realized how much I loved her. How much I do still love her. How much I'll love her no matter how much she hates me. Doesn't it sound awful when I say it that way?"

"Meow," Muffin answered, flicking his tail and stretching out on the sofa.

Loki simply nodded, dropping down next to the cat, which curled up next to him. The cat had taken to him almost immediately, Laurel always telling him that it was proof of how good he truly was, no matter how evil he seemed to the others. "Everything with her was just… different. I don't know how to describe it, but she's… What have I done?"

Loki sat on the floor of the hallway, Laurel slumped onto his shoulder. He was covered in blood, but he didn't care. She would bleed out if they didn't do something quickly. "Laurel, please, keep your eyes open. Look at me. Love, look at me."

With a deep, pained sigh, she looked up at him, trying to hold his gaze. He could tell that she was in terrible pain, gritting her teeth as she tried to keep her eyes open. Gently raising a hand to her forehead, he cast as much of a spell as he dared to, trying to relieve even a bit of the pain. He had to keep her in pain, he knew, so he could be sure that she was alive and that the healing magic he would soon perform was working. "How the hell did she hold herself together for this long?" Pepper was asking, crouching down next to the two of them. Loki paid no attention to Steve's answer, instead not breaking eye contact with Laurel until she was wrenched from his arms.

Pepper and Nat were the ones to take her first, cleaning her up a bit while Loki was charged with clearing off a table and gathering things to begin surgery. His stomach dropped as she was carried away, Loki hoping and praying that she would be brought back to him alive. Luckily, Nat and Pepper carried her back carefully, Laurel unconscious but still breathing.

Now it was up to Loki, carefully removing the layers of magic that Laurel had performed while reconstructing layers of tissue and organs on his own. He tuned everyone else out as he focused on her, on his work, on praying that he wouldn't mess up and that she would stay alive. "I can't lose you," he whispered, slowly pulling back another layer of magic. "Please, Laurel, I can't lose you. I love you."

"I can't begin to imagine what it was like for her, alone up there in Midgard, but that was the closest I could ever come to experiencing that loss myself," Loki told the cat, Muffin starting to purr as Loki scratched his ears. "Her life was in my hands, more then than ever. My mother had taught me a bit about healing magic, but nothing close to what I had to perform to save her. I truly thought she was going to die then… I don't know what I would have done if I had killed her. That was when I realized how much I cared about her, how much her loss would have destroyed me."

"Meow," Muffin offered.

"I know, I know. I have to wait. But everything is different with her. Everything is… quieter, more peaceful, even though she goes into battle so much. She quiets everything down, all of the horrible memories of the Asgardian dungeons, all of the dreams… It's so much harder sleeping without her next to me, you know? Why am I talking to a cat?" he sighed, getting up and starting to pace again.

Light streamed into the room, Loki not wanting to move. He was extremely comfortable, waking up in one of the well-rested moods that had grown so rare. He hadn't dreamt of Asgard for the first time in a while. Actually, he hadn't dreamt of anything, which was just fine by him. Laurel's head was on his chest, a cascade of red hair shielding her eyes from the sunlight as she slept. Loki smiled a bit, running his hand through her hair as he thought back to the night before. How he had finally given in, showing her what he looked like stripped of all magic, the Jotun form that he detested so much. How she hadn't recoiled, but instead reached out for him, telling him that he didn't scare her. And he believed it. The frantic kisses they had shared, the decadent slowness of their movements together, the ultimate release of all of the pent-up emotion that had been simmering between the two of them for ages now.

She was beautiful, even in sleep. Even when he knew she would still be tired from the night before, from the missions she had been on and the healing process that she had just had to go through. Dragging his fingertips down her shoulder, he smiled to himself, noticing the string of dark, round bruises trailing down her neck. He would normally have healed them for her immediately, but decided against it. He had marked his territory, a clear show of possession for the others to marvel at when they got up for breakfast.

"Loki," she yawned, stretching and balancing herself on her elbows to look at him. "Good morning." She leaned forward and gave him a kiss, "That was… a very good night, to say the least."

"Would you like a very good morning?" he asked, the corner of his mouth turning up slightly. In answer, Laurel leaned in and kissed him again, Loki flipping her onto her back. "I'll take that as a resounding yes."

Coming to a stop at the window into Midgard, Loki crossed his arms, watching as Laurel and Steve sat up in the living room, talking late into the night. She had a drink perched in her hand, one of the mixed drinks that she would occasionally indulge in. She was laughing at something he had said, laughing more than Loki had seen her laugh in a while, even before they had lost their child. Clearly, she was happy, at least in the moment. And she wasn't happy in Valhalla. She couldn't have been happy in Valhalla. It would have felt like being trapped, just like he felt. At least she was able to leave and come back when she wanted. "We're stuck down here," Loki announced to the cat, which hadn't moved from the sofa. "I wish we could leave. As soon as she comes home, I want to get out of here. We can go back to the Avengers Facility, or we can go to the Sanctum, but I don't want to be here if I do not have to be."

On one hand, Valhalla was safe. But on the other, it felt like he was trapped there, trapped in another world of the Asgardians, one he didn't fit into either. At least in Midgard he could lie low at the Sanctum, disguise himself as a normal Midgardian and not draw too much attention. All he could do here was read, adventuring around the palace and around Valhalla trying to keep himself occupied while the person he truly cared about wasn't there to explore with him.

It was a place to stay, but it wasn't home. Nothing was home. Jotunheim had never been a home, never a place that he was wanted. Asgard wasn't home either. He was just kept there to serve a purpose, to be held onto until he was needed to negotiate peace with Jotunheim. In the Avengers Facility, he had been a prisoner, not able to leave or do much of what he wanted. Nothing ever felt right, nothing ever felt like home. But then there was Laurel.

Being with her didn't feel like "home", at least not like it was described in romance novels. It didn't change the world. No, being with her just felt like he was finally wanted, like he could just be, no matter what. He wasn't expected to be a prince, or a piece in a negotiation, or regarded as a dangerous prisoner. He was just Loki, the Loki that fit perfectly in her arms, the Loki that could make her smile and the Loki that she hated to leave when she was headed for a mission. Being with her didn't feel like home. It just felt like where he was supposed to be, a small space in a massive universe that he was finally sure that he belonged in.

It had been one of the worst nightmares he'd had in a while. Laurel had woken up to find him thrashing in a pile of blankets, trying to summon some sort of spell to defend against an enemy that she couldn't see. It was on occasions like this that she would cast a protective bubble around him, just in case he managed to cast a dangerous spell that would have hurt her, hurt himself, or set something on fire in the room. She would gently reach out and wake him up, dissolving the bubble as soon as he woke up so he wouldn't notice it and feel even worse about it. She could tell that he hated waking up like that, hated being tortured by his own mind, hated having to admit that it was another nightmare.

"Loki. Loki, wake up. Come on, wake up." She shook his shoulder, Loki jolting awake as if he was ready to fight. He relaxed when he saw that it was her, Laurel pushing the hair out of his eyes and kissing him gently. "It's alright. It's alright, come here." Winding her arms around him, she could feel that he was shaking, trying to control it, but failing spectacularly. "It's alright. I know you hate those dreams. I know you hate waking up like this. Hell, I know you hate going to sleep for fear of dreams like that."

"I'm sorry," he croaked, holding her tightly as he tried to regain his grip on what was real and what wasn't. "I'm sorry I do this to you every few nights. I'm sorry if it scares you."

Laurel kissed him again, saying, "It's alright. I know you can't control it. Here." She raised her hand, tossing a ball of light into the air before spreading it into an aurora that lit up a corder of their room. The soft, glowing lights danced across the ceiling, forming a pattern that he had taught her long before. "Aren't they pretty? When you're not here and I can't sleep, I'll cast the same spell. They remind me of candles, but they can't burn the place down if I fall asleep."

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"You're probably the only person here who isn't afraid of me," he blurted out, saying things in the dark that he never would have said in the light. "You're the only person in a long time who hasn't judged me as evil before we even met. You're not scared of me, of me being a Jotun, of -"

"Loki, I love you," she reminded him, looking to see that he was staring at the aurora dancing above them. "I love you, and that means getting to know and getting used to everything about you. I don't mind if you're blue, because you're still you. I don't mind if you feel like shifting into different forms because it's still you, even if you look different. It's just like dying your hair and putting on a different set of clothes. The outside might change, but it's still you. I'm not scared of your dreams, because they're not real. They might seem real in the moment, but they can't hurt you, and I know you won't hurt me trying to stop them. I won't let you do that. I'm not scared of you because you're still you. You're the Loki that I first came to love, no matter what you look like, or how many horrible dreams are plaguing you. There's always light in the morning, and all of those dreams come to an end."

For a moment, he was quiet, but ultimately, he pulled her close, whispering, "Thank you. Thank you for not running away. You… you make everything better," he confessed. "Like coming home, except I've never had a real home. More like having a place to belong."