A/N: There's a lot of blood in this one. I didn't want to catch anybody too off guard with it.

Chapter Fifty-Four: Unravel

Loki stared daggers at the girl, but she paid him no mind and returned to flipping through the guide. He joined her on the firm couch, turning his nose up at every pink thing in the room. He relocated Sasha to the floor and she scampered to lay on his shirt again. Flowers, fake with a plastic scent, sat in an ornate vase filled with pointless water on a small table beside him. He leaned back out of habit and winced as the arrow connected with the wall and pushed into his flesh. He shot his torso forward, praying the searing pain would stop before Eve noticed his discomfort. Discomfort was putting it lightly, in fact, as the ache worsened into agony. He groaned involuntarily and dug his fingers into his thighs, trying to brace himself somehow.

Eve's head was angled down into the dusty book but her eyes had been on him since the moment he sat down. "Why did you go and do that?" She bullied.

"Now...is not...ah, the time," he managed to say between steady breaths.

She studied his wound. Fresh blood was pooling on top of the already dried streaks. Not too rapidly, but with enough speed to quicken her heartbeat. "You agitated it, you're bleeding, what-"

"Take it out," he instructed simply-as though he were asking her to rip off a band-aid for him.

"I'm not far in this chapter, but-"

"Take it out!" He demanded fiercely, his eyes aimed at the ground. Sasha was startled and hid underneath the table. "You can reach it, can't you?" He sat up and turned his back to her as much as he could. The pain in the muscles surrounding the wound spread like dye in water, reminding the rest of his body of the toils he'd been through that day.

"I can reach it just fine, but-"

"I would have done it myself already if I had the proper angle to do so. Take. It. Out."

"Loki-" she tried to command his attention, but it couldn't be done.

"If I have to ask again, I'm going to snap you in two," he growled, his teeth clenched. His eyes were shut now and he pretended she couldn't see just how much turmoil he was in. He felt powerless and drained. Most of all, he was angry. That was no secret.

"Listen!" She yelled, pounding her palm onto the book's pages for emphasis. "I'm not far in the chapter but that is the first thing it says not to do! It'll destroy the tissue on its way out and do more harm than good. Maybe I can-"

"Maybe you can listen to me! How about that? /Maybe/ you can accept the fact that I know better than you!"

"This coming from the man who wanted to leave the arrow in!" She huffed.

"Do you have a death wish?" He spat, looking back at her with gravely serious eyes.

"Do you?!" She challenged hastily. "The only other possibility is that the arrowhead breaks off and-"

"I doubt this arrow is quite that old fashioned. I heard your reasons and I don't care. The book isn't taking into account that I'm a sorcerer-and neither are you."

"Loki, you're weak-"

He twisted her way in a frenzy, glaring at her with disgust. "I am wounded," he corrected. "You are weak."

In one confident motion, Eve gripped the arrow's shaft in her fist and ripped it from his back. It resisted, like a stubborn weed's deep roots. After the ears of the arrowhead broke back through his skin, the rest was easy and plucked like a flower's petal. The site bled like she'd never seen before and her eyes glazed over. His scream invaded her static-filled ears, a horrible, rude awakening. She'd killed him. There was too much blood, too much red, too much, too much...

She whipped open the first aid kit after dropping the arrow at her side and gathered up all the gauze she could find, which wasn't much. She pressed it against his shoulder blade roughly and it became stained red through and through, seeping onto her fingers and dripping down her palms to her wrists. She heard him groan and inhaled excitedly at the sign of consciousness. She slipped her shirt over her head frantically and held the thin material to his body. Nervous tears clouded her vision and she blinked them away, she could cry later. Out of all her impulsive, angry outbursts, this was the most violent one to date. He had been delirious with pain and was shouting for her to take it out just because it hurt so bad. There was no way he'd actually meant to...

She felt his muscles relax and she panicked. She dropped the damp shirt into her lap and gripped his arms just below the shoulders, digging her nails into him with spiking guilt and regret. No, no, no... If he was dead, what exactly was she going to do? Go home? Inevitably be collected by SHIELD? Was she going to miss him?

"Don't!" He protested feebly, flinching away from her.

She blinked the new tears down her cheeks and found that before her, the wound was sealed. Not back to normal by any means, but no longer bleeding. She removed her nails from his skin. Blood was still everywhere, smudged on him from her clothing and tainting everything nearby. The couch was effectively ruined, as was everything she was wearing, but she wasn't thinking about any of that. "I'm so sorry," she sputtered.

"Why? You did as I asked-finally. I would have appreciated some form of warning, I was expecting to have to coerce you for at least another minute before you submit. I had to do a fairly rough patch up, anyway, I can heal it more efficiently after some..." He looked at her finally and saw the blood that was smeared on her hands and spotted her all over. Collar bone. Cheeks. "Rest," he finished his thought after a pause. "Did I fall back on you?" He wondered, trying to decipher how she'd gotten so much blood on her. When the arrowhead came out, the pain had been white hot and his brain had revolted. He'd nearly blacked out and had to concentrate on his healing spells with all his might. She, or the book, rather, had been right. On its exit the projectile had ripped him apart.

"No, you were bleeding so much, I-" she trailed off, he was looking at her very intently and it caught her off guard. "What?"

He looked down at the shirt cradled in her lap, leaking crimson onto her legs. "Did you think I underestimated myself?" He pried.

"What do you mean?" She begged, head spinning as she came down from the stressful incident.

"You were trying to stop the bleeding...is it because you thought I didn't understand my own limits? You thought you could jump in and soak up one garment's worth of blood and make all the difference? Save me? Did you think I would ask you to rip the arrow out if I thought it might kill me?"

Eve couldn't help but roll her eyes. She no longer felt like crying. "Let me get this straight. You're upset because I tried to help you?"

"I'm not upset. I'm astounded that you think what you do makes any difference! You honestly have no idea just how little you can do for me, do you? I'm an Asgardian trained in sorcery. You're a mortal with a temper."

"How about this?" She retorted. "Next time you're bleeding, I won't do a damn thing."

"Not unless I tell you to," he smirked.

"Not unless you beg me," she bit back.

"Excuse me?"

She retrieved the arrow from her side and stood before gesturing to him with it. "Oh, were we supposed to go on pretending you didn't totally beg me to take this out?"
He stood as well. "I said what I needed to say to manipulate you into-"

"Let's see here, do I think you would ever show weakness on purpose? Fat chance. So to fake it just to mess with my pathetic mortal brain? I don't think so. You were in peril. You were a damsel in distress and you begged to be saved."

He snatched the arrow from her clutch and held it at her throat. "Where is that sweet, scared girl I remember?" He pressured. "Let's see if we can get her back, shall we? She was quiet. She-"

"She's dead," Eve proclaimed.

"Dead?" He was laughing. "Would you like to be?"

"That girl who let everyone else come first? That girl who got dragged to the library to smother any outburst, drown any emotion in books and good manners? That girl who tried to please everyone and ended up with no one in her corner? She's dead," Eve insisted. "Time and time again you've spared me. But I'm your prize, aren't I? A trophy to remind you that you bested the Avengers, slipped through their fingers like the sly fox you are. Do you want me timid and scared always? I won't do it. Let's be equals in whatever misadventure we're embarking on."

"You and I will never be equals," he grimaced and tilted his head back.

She moved to close the gap between them, two bloody outcasts without a friend in the world, swatting the arrow to the ground as she went. She took her right hand and gripped his chin, transferring partially dried blood onto his face. "Only if you mean that I'm better than you," she tapped him lightly on the cheek, "Because I care if you bleed." He clasped onto her wrist and flung her hand away from him. He touched his fingertips to his cheek and swiped some of the blood away, examining it with distaste. "If you don't like having blood on you, I've got some pretty bad news," she jeered. She retrieved her shirt and plopped it into one of the three sinks. It spattered red fluid up onto the counter and slumped down over the drain. Then she took her skirt off and threw it in the next sink over. She hopped up on the counter and held her hands out under each faucet to trigger the motion sensors and run water over the soiled clothes. She pumped hand soap into each basin as well, knowing it would probably never work, but needing to try something. Once they were full of suds, she let them soak. Then she dipped her fingers in the water and started wiping splotches of the stuff off her forehead. She sat on her feet and looked in the mirror. She'd gotten it all over her hands and then it had spread like wildfire. She looked like a murderer.

Loki moved to stand in front of the sink she wasn't using. He, too, looked much like a murderer-the key difference being that he was one. He twisted as much as he could comfortably, stopping when the pain creeped up, and saw that his back really did look like he'd dipped himself in red dye. He longed for a shower. "Maybe you should get a book on travel," Loki suggested, "Because you've got to have some idea by morning or I'm leaving you."

"And where would you go?" She asked, mostly rhetorically. "I'll figure something out." She sounded confident. In fact, she felt much more confident than she had in a while-but not about this. She had no ideas. No inklings, possibilities or maybe's. A travel book was actually a solid suggestion, but she refused to give him that satisfaction now. Plus, she yearned to be clean. A destination would cone to her, she was sure. "So, you went to get Jane, and..." Eve prompted as it came into her mind. She had very few details about what had actually gone down.

"And brought her back," Loki finished her thought, giving literally no new information.

"Thanks for that riveting tale," she droned. "You have to give me a little more than that."

He met her eyes. "You'll get nothing and you'll like it."

"Come on. What happened while you were there? How did you get her out? Obviously you had a run in with Barton."

"Obviously," he mirrored. "I don't feel like recapping every detail for you."

"Did Jane say something about touching Steve? Or, you, right? Because you were Steve, right?"

"You're being a pest."

"She seemed pretty upset about it, how far did you let her get before you stopped her?" Eve found herself more curious about this than any other insight he could give her.

"Who says I stopped her?" He bluffed with a twisted smile.

She didn't have enough specifics to find this quite as funny as he did. She remained quiet, hoping he'd give some indication he wasn't being serious. As was in his nature, he did no such thing. She fought back the envious impulses in her mind to call his bluff. Given just how badly she wanted it not to be true, she managed a laugh. "I don't believe you," she stated simply, as though it made no difference to her either way.

He observed her for a short moment. "Aww," he cooed with a grin.

"What?" She snapped, pausing her cleaning ritual to glare at him.

"You think I can't tell when you're lying."

"I'm not lying," she was only stretching the truth. Bending it, rather. The truth would have been to say I don't want to believe you.

"You are very good at it, I'll give you that. Not anywhere near as skilled as I am."

"I knew you were lying," she boasted.

"Who says I was?"

"Fine. You're so desperate that you let your brother's girlfriend fondle you. I'll tell you one thing, though, I'm not surprised you had to disguise yourself as someone else to get her to," she felt very bitter about everything-whether he was messing with her or not.

"Why do you say that?" He demanded, his face softening a bit in curiosity.

"Nobody likes you," she insulted him curtly and went back to her clothes, filling the sinks to the top to replace water that had drained.

"Funny you should say that," he traced his finger along the counter top as he walked to her. "Refresh my memory," he breathed as the water stopped running, "was I in disguise when we first met?"

She rolled her eyes, aware of where he was going. "No."

"That's so strange," he put his index finger on his chin and his eyes were stern as though thinking very hard, "I didn't seem to have very much trouble persuading you."

Eve's cheeks were suddenly hot and pink. "Doesn't mean I like you," she argued hastily with her forearms dunked into the middle sink, lazily scrubbing at would-be stains.

"Oh, just admit it," he paused until she looked at him, "You couldn't resist me."

"Maybe," she dripped sarcasm and removed her sopping arms to touch his chest, "You couldn't resist me." She flicked water onto his cheeks with both hands. He didn't react. "You were very persistent. God knows why, considering I kneed you and punched you and you made it very obvious you consider me a lower life form."

"And what does that say about you?" He clutched her upper arms, annoyed at the implication that he'd been swayed by her. If anything, their corruption was mutual. Mutual and fun.

"I don't care," she tried to shrug his vice grip off unsuccessfully, "but I think you do." His about face from playful to angry didn't startle her, she'd been expecting it. Waiting for it, encouraging it, even, since she'd begun to unravel upstairs. "Fucking some mortal who has no respect for you, or even an appropriate reference level to understand how much she should respect you? Yeah-I think you care about that a little more than I do."

"I took you because I could," he hissed.

"There were plenty of things you could have done," she went on fighting his hold on her, rebelling into his hands with zeal, "including-which you never failed to remind me-getting rid of me. You could have let Jane feel you up, just to annoy your brother, but you didn't, did you? I wonder why that is."

"You have no right to speak of my intentions," he let go of her at last. She didn't back away, however, she lunged at him and shoved him.

"Lay down some ground rules, then! Tell me every little thing I can and can't do!" She moved to push him again-this time he stepped away so the palms of her hands only grazed him. "Oh wait! That wouldn't be fun for you, would it?" She planted her hands on his abdomen and forced him into the wall with all her might, pushing from her legs. He held fast for a second, but eventually all her weight caused him to falter and his hips collided with the pink wallpaper. She kept her hands where they were, she was breathing pretty heavy. He looked on with some frustration but mostly wondered if she'd gone insane. Her eyes had a crazy gleam to them, passionate and unruly like a storm in full bloom.

She couldn't actually hurt him, so he played along. "I'm glad you understand what's important to me. I do so value a good time."

Eve's heart was gearing up to beat out of her chest. She felt like a wild animal, high on cause and effect. Then she became aware of his muscles under her fingers. He was solid in a way she'd never seen. Even when they'd been intimate, she never took the time to notice it. Her touch softened.

"Are you done assaulting me or are you just trying to lure me into a false sense of security so you can strike again?"

"I thought I couldn't keep anything from you," she cooed.

Loki felt a familiar pull in his gut. An urge. If he succumbed to it did that mean she won? "Go find a travel guide," he insisted before pushing her away.

She stared at his face and posture, studying his stance. She decided that maybe that was enough back and forth for now. "There are a couple couches in different sections. Find one to sleep on that doesn't hurt your back," she suggested. Then she was out the door.

He leaned against the wall and let his muscles relax. He ached. Sasha was awake and trotting around. She stopped and watched him expectantly with her tail wagging. He knelt down to pet her and upon thinking about why the dog was even there in the first place, how he'd provided her as a gesture, a promise, Eve's word's came into his head. I'm your prize, aren't I? Even though she was unstable and berating him just to get a reaction, her words held merit. Would he want her to sit quietly, frightened and hesitant for the remainder of their ambiguous relationship? He recalled the flare in his chest when she'd challenged him. While irritating and ill conceived, he enjoyed the spark she provided. It occurred to him now that his fascination with her was very dangerous indeed.

A/N:

I realize you guys have had to wait almost a month for this update! I experienced my first serious case of lack of motivation. Not necessarily writer's block, but it happens. In the time I didn't really feel like typing up or editing what I'd written, I filled an entire legal pad (this is not an exaggeration) with plans for the upcoming chapters so I can stay motivated and not make you wait this long again! I appreciate your patience. Also, I appreciate any of you who were not feeling so forgiving about it as well. I know it's just because you wanted to read more, and that makes me very happy. This story has gotten so long that I have to go back and reread parts at times just to make sure I'm being consistent. Feel free (seriously) to let me know of anything you're not following or anything that strikes you as odd. It's different from writing a book in its entirety and then going back and editing.. I don't want to be going back and changing things that have been up since May or something :P But in regards to my lack of motivation, I'm going to do my best to stave it off. As always, your reviews and encouragement help so much!

Oh and I did try (and fail) to fix that link on my profile. I'm hopeless. No big deal..