A/N: Sorry for the long wait. Life has been... wow... but we're back.

Something moving across his chest startled Loki out of his slumber at about 3AM, but it only took his mind a second to catch up to reality. He looked down at the mess of blonde hair. Beth was turning over to face him. He loosened his hold to give her room until she settled down.

But after a few seconds, her head popped up. He watched her tired blue eyes try to recognize his face in the dark.

"Oh... it's the Mad Hatter," she mumbled, nuzzled his chest with a calm sigh and returned to her dreams.

Loki's expression shifted from confusion, to indignation, to amusement. Of all the characters. He thought the Cheshire Cat was more like him, but knew that one was reserved for Beth's deceased pet kitten.

He spent the next 20 minutes or so contemplating the slippery slope he was on, and if he can regain his grip at this point. He could never, ever stop himself from falling once he started. Trying to fight it just did more damage on the way down.

He mocked Thor for loving a human, for he was doomed to outlive her by a very, very long time. Now Loki was in the same predicament. The worst part was that even the best lasting scenario was a tragedy: if he could ever stop mourning Beth, then she would be dead and forgotten.

If Thor were still my brother, we could have leaned on each other. How different would things have been had I not sent the Destroyer here? I should have just let Sif and the Idiots Three bring him home and let Father sort it out when he woke...

Loki's thoughts were interrupted by a tiny giggle. Beth, still asleep, rolled onto her back.

"Can't fix it," came a feather-light whisper. "...suppose to be like that."

Loki fell back asleep pondering the eerie relevance of those words.

4 Hours Later...

They were both jolted awake by a notification jingle from Beth's phone, simultaneously sitting up into upright positions in an almost cartoonish fashion. They each looked around the room, then at the other, sharing a similar smile. Two people who learned to sleep so lightly that the slightest sound or movement can yank them out of deep sleep into high alert. Amazing they were able to sleep through most of the night sharing a bed.

Beth's eyes inched downward, then widened. "Whoa." This was her first time seeing Loki's naked torso in the light.

"What?"

"I'm not even a guy, and I envy your body. How do you keep yourself so buff?" Yet elegant at the same time, as a man?

He looked down at himself, and couldn't see anything special. "I'm actually considered quite frail for an Asgardian warrior."

"Frail? You're not a hulking muscle-blob, but no one on Earth would think you're frail." She has never seen a man so well toned in real life before. "How big is Thor?"

He thought about it for a second. "Just big enough to hide behind him if our limbs were lined up precisely."

"Hmmmm..." She stretched and let herself fall back onto the pillow. "That's cute. It's like he only needed to grow big enough to protect you."

Loki looked away. It thoroughly annoyed him that she found any part of his relationship with Thor 'cute'. He quickly changed the subject. "How did you sleep?"

"Better than usual." And woke up to a great view, she thought, eyes tracing the muscles of his back.

"'The Mad Hatter', am I?" He turned to her, smirking.

"... Pfft! Hahaha!" She covered her face with one hand, shaking her head. "I thought that was part of a dream! I didn't think I actually called you that to your face!"

He frowned. "Had I known you would be embarrassed about it, I would have never mentioned it."

"My dream was weird. You set out on a mission to fix everyone's clocks ...whether they were actually broken or not," she finishes in a light fit of laughter.

He looked away again, his heart accelerating just a notch.

"You were charmingly mad," Beth continued, "wore that crazy helmet, and the only way to make you settle down was to get you back to bed."

"Interesting," he answers curtly.

She yawned. "Come lay back down. Or do you have a cult meeting to facilitate today?"

"They're a coven, not a cult."

Sure, she thinks sarcastically, letting him have the last word this time.

"I'll be back in a few minutes," he said, getting out of bed. "I just need to... make myself more comfortable."

Beth knew he meant 'go to the bathroom', since he said it once before they sat down to watch a movie, in the same coy manner. Predictably, instead of using hers, he left to go use the other one.

Soon, Beth remembers what woke them up and looks over to her phone. "Alright, who or what is notifying me about what, and why?" she says, getting up to go check.

Moments later...

Loki hears a loud BANG come from somewhere down the hallway as he's rinsing his hands, like something heavy fell over. Followed by a high-pitched scream, and something shattering. He runs to Beth's room, thinking someone was attacking her.

But it was just her, sitting on the floor, clutching her head and weeping softly. From his immediate assessment of the surroundings, Loki figured she threw her chair onto the computer desk, shattered the mirror on her vanity table, and threw her phone across the room where it now lied next to his foot.

In the few seconds it took him to get down the hall? So that answers the question of how she can take out a group of armed men by herself.

"What happened?" That was all he knew what to say. She seemed happy less than five minutes ago, and he saw no evidence of anything that would make her this upset.

His voice startled her from the feeling of her inward collapse. She had completely forgotten he was on his way back. That he was there at all. Where she was. How much time has even gone by since she saw that horrid image?

Loki would understand, a little voice rang in her mind. She pointed a shaky hand at the device next to his foot. "Pass me my phone."

He looked down. "Why?" But as he asked, he picked it up and brought it to her. He watched her unlock the screen and press it a couple of times before shakily holding it back up to him.

He took the phone back and turned it around until the image on the screen made sense. He expected to see something horrible or gruesome. News that Jacob Kane died, or some natural disaster killed half a million overnight...

Not two young, healthy women smiling outside of a restaurant in broad daylight, standing side-by-side in a half embrace.

"Who are these people?"

"That's Kate. With Mary. She posted that on Instagram just a few minutes ago." Her voice was raspy and hollow.

His eyes locked on the one with the short brown hair. "I assume Kate is the one to my left."

She nodded silently.

Interesting, Loki thought. Beth mentioned how they didn't look much alike, but the non-resemblance was striking. He couldn't help but think that Beth was by far the prettiest of the two, but there was a certain bravery in her posture that told him Kate wouldn't give a damn what anyone thought in that regard.

His upper lip twitched. It was deeply disturbing to see other people who were different be happy with who they were. Where does she get the nerve... and why don't I have it?

"I'm going to kill her." Beth growls, in stark contrast to the way her slender body was now curled up in an upright fetal position.

"For taking a picture?"

"For leaving me behind again."

Loki placed the phone on the floor facedown as he knelt beside her. "You already knew she was out there living without you. You already decided what to do about it. This isn't new information, so why let it change your course?"

"But I've seen it now. It isn't just a thought. It's right in my face! She's with Mary right now!"

And you spent a whole night with me, guiltlessly, Loki thinks, but keeps it to himself. He knew calling her a hypocrite would do more damage than good right now.

Beth straightened her legs and slammed her head back against the wall, looking up at the ceiling like she wished it would fall down on her. "I'm really never getting out of that house, am I? I'm trapped there."

"'There'? How can you be trapped somewhere else, Beth?"

She shook her head. "You know freedom is so much more than just the other side of the cell door. If you were keeping me against my will, no one would know or care. She..." Beth paused to laugh. "She almost literally just... handed my life to a complete stranger, remember? The person I was born with decided that I'm not worthy of living. Don't you see? All the worst things about being in that basement are still with me. Kate had so many chances to rewrite her part of the story, and she refused every single time!"

Loki felt a surge of anger. Maybe he would feel differently if Beth ever hurt someone he cared about, but as they stand now, Loki can't imagine how anyone can find this woman disposable. She was nothing short of a miracle to him. The only other person who fell into the deepest pits of hate by loving beyond the limits of their own sanity.

"Beth, listen: Kate cannot decide if you are 'worthy' of life. There is no scale to measure such a thing on. And there may be infinite versions of your genetic material, but only one of them is you. No one can take your place in that. If Kate was willing to trade her only twin sister for an image of her, then she's a fool."

Beth studied his face closely when he was finished. That didn't sound like something Loki would say, but he didn't seem to be lying. He wasn't wearing that cold mask of false empathy that therapists sometimes wore. In fact, he seemed a little angry. At her or for her, she couldn't tell. Beth has never seen anyone get angry on her behalf before.

Loki didn't know what she was searching for on his face, but he looked away, lest she find it. His eyes then landed on a broken vase, and he shook his head with deep pity. "Look at this mess. Kate doesn't even need to enter your space in order to disturb it. She has you doing it for her. She did nothing to help you build this new life, yet she is just as effortlessly helping you destroy it."

Her eyes followed the path of his, but she felt nothing about the scene of her destruction. In fact, she felt numb to everything, mind burned out from emotional overuse. "I let her ruin the best morning I've had in... seems like forever."

"The morning isn't over yet, and neither is your life." He stood up, offering her a hand. "I'll help you clean up."

She glanced at his hand, then down at her phone. "Let me delete my Instagram account first."