"How are you doing?" He asks, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
I smile back. "I'm pretty good, how are you?" My heart is still fluttering, beating quickly in my chest.
"I'm well, however I heard you had an interesting conversation with my mother."
I sigh and let go of his hand. "Must you eavesdrop on everything?" I make my way over to his bed and hop up onto it, sitting on it.
He shakes his head, sighing as well. It's not an exasperated sigh though, more like a happy sigh, like mine. He turns, facing me. He crosses his arms. "Well what would you have me do if you don't tell me anything?"
I narrow my eyes at him. "I tell you stuff." My heartbeat has slowed down to normal. He can see into my mind anyways, why does it matter if I tell him stuff?
He smirks, seemingly hearing my thoughts. "I enjoy talking to you."
I roll my eyes. "If you ever let me talk, that is."
He fake pouts. "That's a bit uncalled for, don't you think? We have a mind link."
I sigh, this time more seriously. "That's actually what your mother was talking to me about."
"The mind link?" He walks over and sits down next to me on the bed.
Feeling a bit strange about it all, I don't look at him as I explain to him what his mother told me: how through the mind link, we were gaining characteristics and abilities of each other. And how that was considered dangerous.
Afterwards, we sit in silence for a few moments. Then he speaks up, a humorous edge to his voice. "I don't see how having some extraordinary characteristics of a very handsome god is a bad thing."
I quickly turn and look at him. He's smirking down at me. Mentally cursing my shortness, I jump off the bed and meet his gaze, eye to eye. I can't help but smile back at him. "However, my king... if this were to continue, bad things would eventually happen."
He frowns. "I still don't understand what bad things could come of this. So far gaining some abilities and characteristics doesn't seem like a bad thing."
I stop smiling, becoming serious. "Maybe you have gained the characteristic of my optimism, because this can become a very bad thing." I take a deep breath, steadying myself to tell him my realization. "If we continue to gain characteristics of each other, then eventually, we will have gained so much that we will no longer be ourselves."
"What would we be then?" He asks.
I shake my head, not really knowing the answer. "We wouldn't be ourselves anymore, that's for sure." Maybe we'd be strange combinations of each other, not really sure where one of us ended and the other began. I'm nervous just thinking about it. I just want to be me and Loki to be Loki.
He looks down, deep in thought. Then he slowly smiles, looking up and meeting my gaze again. "I think you're correct on me gaining your optimism. Because I'm sure we can figure out how to fix this." He reaches out and grabs my hands, squeezing tightly with both of his.
I chuckle and squeeze his hands back. "If this is what my optimism looks like, it's kind of adorable."
Now he smirks. "Well I guess that describes you then." He lets go of my hands. "Now what else have I missed?"
I sigh and tell him everything that he missed.
At the end of it all, he is shaking his head, smiling and chuckling. "That son of mine."
"He's very rude!" I place my hands on my hips. "If he would have just dropped us off on the bridge to the bifrost or somewhere more stable than a floating rock, there wouldn't have been such a mess!"
He looks over at me with a pointed look. "How is this any different than getting yourself and Dessa stuck on a floating rock in the first place?"
"Okay, first of all, that wasn't the first place we went to." I sigh, exasperated. "First we went to some sort of forbidden art gallery..."
"Wait, what?" Loki cuts me off. "You went to the Forbidden Art Gallery?"
I feel myself shrink a little bit. "Um, maybe?" I quickly look around, looking at everything except him. "I mean, I didn't mean it... and I didn't even know it was forbidden until we got there!"
Loki curses under his breath, then gets up. "We need to go." He walks around me and goes out into the hallway.
I quickly follow, feeling very nervous. "What is it?" I ask.
"After you have been revived from a loss of energy, unless you yourself are a master of magic, your memory is checked to see if there are any gaps." Loki explains quickly, still speed walking. "It's usually a Healer with mental abilities. Nobody ever pries unless there's something of interest, and The Forbidden Art Gallery if definitely of interest."
"Wait... does that mean someone went through my memories?" I ask, feeling slightly sick. If someone found out about what was really going on...
"No. I explicitly told them that I would be the only one to check your memories." He sideways glanced at me. "You're fine, by the way."
"Gee I'm not sure whether to be comforted by the fact that you went through my mind again, or worried over the fact that you didn't see that we were in The Forbidden Art Gallery to begin with." I say sarcastically.
He shakes his head. "I didn't look through your mind. I just figured you would notice if you had missing gaps of memory."
I think back to the seemingly loss of memory I have on Midgard. "Yeah about that..."
He sighs. "Never mind. We'll figure that out later. We have a more pressing matter to deal with: Dessa."
"Dessa?" I repeat, confused, and then it clicks. Dessa. Dessa passed out from lack of energy. She went with me to The Forbidden Art Gallery. Her memories are going to be looked through. "Oh no."
"Oh no is an accurate description." He replies.
"How forbidden is it, anyways?" I ask, just as we round the corner that leads to the Healing Room.
Loki stops suddenly, so I stop too. Before I even have a chance to look away from him to see what's going on, I hear a familiar voice. One that is probably the worst possible to hear right now.
"Extremely forbidden." Odin says.
I slowly turn to face him. If I thought his presence was dark and foreboding before, it was nothing compared to what I see now. He glares down at me, one hand on his staff, the other holding Dessa's arm. Dessa looks terrified, as she should be. I'm feeling pretty terrified myself.
"My king." My voice comes out shaky, and I bow. When I straighten back up, Odin is still glaring darkly.
"Come to the throne room. Immediately." He marches past us, dropping Dessa in his wake. "All three of you."
After he's gone, I help Dessa up. She looks like she's been crying. I hug her. "Hey it's okay, it's going to be okay." I try to soothe both her and myself.
"No it isn't." She breathes out, her voice trembling. "He's going to banish us."
"No he won't." I tell her firmly. I let go of her and take a step back. "It's not that bad, right?" I look over at Loki, who is looking down at the ground.
"Loki?" I ask again. He looks up and meets my gaze. Instead of finding hope there, like I was hoping for, instead all I see is dismay.
He shakes his head once. "I will do everything that I can."
"Are you serious? Banishment!? It was an art gallery!" I exclaim.
"And you both are servants." Loki says hollowly. "You don't have even the slightest authority to be in there, let alone see a piece of artwork."
I can feel anger rising in me. "Yeah well you know what? I'm going to fight this. I will fight this no matter what." I meet Dessa's scared gaze. "For both of our sakes."