Chapter Twenty

Even though lunch was simple, it helped to lift Arianna's spirits even more. It definitely gave her an energy boost.

The last twenty-four hours or so had been so hectic, even before the attack. Afterwards, once Arianna had thought Tony had been killed, her emotions had continued in a downward spiral until they couldn't fall any farther.

Now that she knew that he'd been well enough to get a message to Pepper Arianna allowed herself to feel at least a little bit of hope – even though she still wanted to see him with her own eyes before letting herself believe everything would be okay.

During lunch, Arianna and Loki talked about what they should do now – or what they could do now.

For the first time in a long time, Arianna was without security detail, so that made her more vulnerable than she usually was. It would make it hard to leave the hotel. It didn't help that they had no mode of transportation aside from what Pepper could provide them.

"I could get Pepper to let Fury know about where the Mandarin guy is, I guess," she said. "But Killian is the actual problem."

Before they had come to Malibu, Tony had been planning on going to Tennessee. Arianna was sure he would still follow that trail, which would eventually lead him to Miami, Florida, which would lead to the Mandarin. Considering he was responsible for Happy being in the hospital, Arianna didn't envy the guy when Tony did find him.

"I could go back to the hospital. Someone needs to check on Happy again anyway."

"He is Head of Security, so he could help there as well, when he wakes."

"When?"

"If we're going to the hospital and he hadn't woken up, you do plan on healing him further," Loki said. "You won't be able to help yourself."

Arianna let out a short laugh. "Probably not."

"Definitely not." More serious now, "Be careful. You used an extraordinary amount of energy yesterday."

"I'll be okay. I feel fine."

"Perhaps. However, you still need to be careful. Don't ignore when your body is telling you you're doing too much. You must learn your limits."

Arianna knew he was being serious and sincere when he held her gaze with his own.

"I should have told you this before we started delving deeper in to what you can do, but we really don't know how your abilities will affect you. You are mortal; you aren't meant to have magic at all."

Loki was worried, Arianna realized. And it was true that she had to give up a little bit of her strength when she used her abilities. She had almost collapsed outside of the mansion the night before, but she had literally stopped the ceiling from falling in on them.

"I'll be more careful," she said.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Once Arianna made it clear that she wanted to go see Happy at the hospital – since that had been the original plan anyway – Pepper set it up for them to go together. Pepper wanted to check in on him as well.

"What about Maya?" Arianna asked.

"Well, if she isn't here when we get back, we'll know that we can't trust her." Pepper said.

"Makes sense, I guess."

When they reached the hospital and went in Arianna was surprised to see the lobby and hallways decorated with strands of lights and plastic trees.

She huffed out a short laugh. "I can't believe I forgot that Christmas is coming."

Though to be fair, since moving out of her parents house at eighteen – due to relocating for her job at SHIELD – she hadn't really celebrated Christmas, or any other holiday really.

"It has been quite hectic," Pepper said.

"True."

"What is Christmas?" Loki asked.

If they hadn't been so intent on making it to Happy's room, Arianna probably would have stopped in her tracks, the question was so unexpected.

It shouldn't have been, though, because of course Loki wouldn't know what Christmas was. He wasn't from Earth.

"Depends on who you ask, but basically it's a day where people come together and have dinner, exchange gifts, things like that."

"Ah." They continued towards Happy's room. "Why?"

"That's another depends-on-who-you-ask question." Thye reached the room. "I'll explain it later."

As they entered the room, Arianna noticed that Happy was pretty much in the same condition he'd been in when she'd left the day before. He still had all the bandages covering his wounds – the ones on his arms and the one on his head. There were probably some on his legs as well, but Arianna hadn't gotten that far the day before.

She wondered if Happy had woken up at all since she'd left. She'd have to check with a doctor to find out.

"Do you need anything?" Pepper asked her. "Tony said you wore yourself out yesterday."

Loki gave her a look that said, 'I told you so,' and Arianna shook her head while smiling sheepishly.

"No, I'm okay. Loki has already warned me about not overexerting myself today."

"And he's right. Happy couldn't even breathe on his own before you saw him yesterday. You've done a lot for him already."

Arianna nodded, knowing Pepper was right.

"I'd just feel better if he would wake up."

It wasn't only for health reasons that she wanted Happy to wake up, though that was the main reason. But Happy could also let them know what exactly had happened if he was awake. He could let them know who had caused the explosion he had gotten hurt in.

"I guess we should close the door before I start," Arianna said. "The doctors still don't know how he healed enough to breathe on his own yesterday."

Pepper did as Arianna asked and Arianna took a seat by the bed. She knew that Pepper had never seen her heal anyone and Loki had never seen her heal anything major aside from her own injury – he hadn't been able to see her healing him.

"My hands may glow a bit," she warned. "It's normal, so don't freak out."

"What color does your abilities manifest as?" Loki asked.

"Gold-ish. Yours?"

"Green."

"Of course it does," she said, answering fondly.

Surprisingly, Happy hadn't broken anything in the explosion, so she didn't have to focus her energy on mending any bones.

She had focused on his lungs the day before; this time she focused on whatever part of his brain that was keeping him from waking up. There was slight bruising, which was easy enough to heal even if it did take about an hour to do it and left her with a slight headache afterwards.

She wasn't as tired as she had been the day before, though, so that was a plus.

There wasn't much else she could do for Happy at the moment, so they all decided to leave.

"We should stop and get you a new phone on the way back to the hotel," Pepper said.

"I don't have access to any of my money right now because my cards were lost in the mansion."

"It's Tony's treat. It's his fault the mansion was attacked in the first place."

It was true that they wouldn't have been attacked if Tony hadn't called out the Mandarin on national television, but Arianna still wasn't too happy with having to rely on Tony's money for a new phone. Since she'd stopped working for SHIELD and because she'd been asked to take care of Loki, she hadn't been bringing in any money. She'd had enough saved up that she wasn't worried about anything right now – especially since she was living with Tony now and didn't have to pay rent for anything, but she had been pretty self-reliant since the age of eighteen. It was hard falling back into becoming dependent on someone else.

Tony never made a big deal about it, so she guessed she could accept a new phone. That was something she actually needed.

Arianna ended up getting Loki a phone as well when she got her own. He didn't really need one at the moment, but hopefully in the future their lives would be secure enough that she could get a job and then they would need a way to keep in touch with each other. It would be kind of hard for Loki to find work – he didn't have all the necessary paperwork such as a birth certificate and a social security number – but he might like to travel one day after the dust settled for everything that was going on. They couldn't be together all the time.

Once they got back to the hotel they were staying at, Pepper told them to come back to her room around 7:00 that night and they would all eat dinner together – she would have room service brought up for them.

Arianna and Loki went back to their room and she proceeded to help Loki figure out his new phone. She wanted to make sure he at least knew how to text and call. They could save the apps for later.

"I can't believe you don't have something like this on Asgard," she said. "How do you communicate with people when they're not there?"

"If it's within the realm we send a letter. Magic can help it get there more quickly."

"And if it's not within the realm?"

"If the matter was urgent enough, we would use the Bifrost to go wherever we needed to go. There are other, less convenient ways to travel, now that the Bifrost is broken. Or I'm assuming it's still broken."

"Oh. What's it like? Traveling to different realms?"

"It's not much like anything to me, I've done it so often. It's as if you're enveloped in a rainbow. There's a slight pressure, but it's over almost as soon as it starts."

"Hm. Maybe it's the human in me, but I can't even imagine hopping from world to world like that."

"It's . . . definitely the human in you."

Once Loki seemed comfortable enough with his phone, Arianna called her bank to let them know she would need a new debit card because she'd lost her other one. She was told there would be a hold on her account until she received her card and verified she'd received it. She was glad she was with Pepper since she wouldn't be able to even access her own funds for a while – not until she went back to the Tower in New York, at least.

The second thing she did was make a call to Nick Fury to fill him in on everything Maya Hansen had told them. She dropped the woman's name and Killian's name. Fury seemed aware of the fact that Killian was part of a think-tank, but he hadn't been aware of Maya or the Mandarin connection.

"Yeah, according to her, they are based in Miami. Apparently, they've been using some serum she created that was supposed to have healing properties on humans, but it actually turns them into bombs if their system isn't compatible with it. That's why no one has been able to find any bomb casings. The casings were human. When they exploded . . . the bodies pretty much vaporized."

"Human bombs. That's a new one for me."

"Yeah . . . I don't know if I trust her story, though. I believe her about the bombs, but I don't know how innocent she actually is in this."

"Thanks for the information. Be safe, Miss Grace."

She hung up and tossed her new phone on the bed. It was 6:00 now; she had an hour left before dinner.

"I'm gonna take a quick shower," she said. "Then we can go to Pepper's room for dinner."

Loki and Arianna arrived at Pepper's room, and Loki immediately knew something was wrong because the door was completely open. A silver rolling cart was outside in the hallway. It had a few covered plates on it – their dinner, probably. There was a fancy dinner knife beside one of the plates, so he quickly grabbed it.

He held an arm out to keep Arianna from going forward, and was grateful when she didn't push forward.

Loki maneuvered the dagger into a familiar defensive position, just as a precaution mostly. He didn't think anyone was actually in the room as there was no noise coming from inside.

He was partly right. There was no one alive in the room. The one who had brought the meal cart was there, dead on the floor. His neck had been snapped. Neither Maya nor Pepper were there.

"Loki?" Arianna called from outside the room. "Everything okay?"

"Definitely not. But you may come in."

So she did, and he heard her gasp when she took in the body on the floor.

"What happened here?"

"Either Maya is even more dangerous than we thought, or someone took them."

"I . . . don't see Maya being able to snap someone's neck."

"Agreed. Then they were taken."

"We need to talk to the people at the front desk. I'm sure they have security feed somewhere. If I get in touch with Fury again, he can get us clearance to see it."

"Alright." Loki grabbed her wrist to get her attention. "Are you okay?"

"I'm – I don't know yet. Let's wait to see what happens."

She didn't seem as shell-shocked as when she'd found out Tony might be dead. But then, she was closer to Tony than she had been to Pepper.

Loki watched as she pulled her phone out and called Fury for the second time that day. From the one-sided bit of conversation he got from Arianna, it came down to Fury saying he could get them clearance to see security footage, but he was going to look into it as well. She refused his offer of security detail when Fury said he could send a few agents over for protection. Given that a faction of SHIELD agents was out to harm Arianna, Loki didn't blame her.

They agreed that once they were able to see the security feed, Arianna and Loki would head back to the hospital to stay with Happy. At least they would be around other people there.