CW for violent gore and trauma
Stephen approached the roiling cloud without fear in his heart. After what Nightmare had just put him through, nothing going on inside that angry cloud could possibly compare. He wondered, though, what could possess Loki so completely with fear that it would keep him imprisoned for months. He didn't know what monsters hid under Asgardian children's beds, what ghost stories lurked in their legends, but Stephen was confident he could defeat them and bring Loki back into the physical realm.
He reached the hole that Nightmare had made in the cloud, swirling like a slow-moving tornado into depths of unseen darkness.
"Down the hatch," he muttered to himself, then floated up and into the hole, which swept him into a swirling, deafening wind and into pitch black.
All of a sudden, the wind and clouds disappeared. He hadn't remembered coming through any kind of solid barrier or falling through the sky. He simply existed, standing on asphalt. Looking around to get his bearings, he was dumbstruck by what he saw.
This wasn't Asgard, or any alien planet. Far from it. He recognized the buildings, though they were falling apart. Nightmare's cloud, Loki's hellish dream world, was a sunny day in New York City.
Stephen's garb had changed, too, from his sorcerer's outfit and Cloak to his old, white doctor's coat covering a set of light blue scrubs. The coat was embroidered with his name and the Metro-General logo. It even had a few of sheets of tissue paper still in the pockets. He always took a few when he could because the nurses hoarded the kleenex boxes to themselves.
A loud roar, like metal scraping metal, boomed from nearby, followed by a monumental crash of debris. A few blocks in front of him, a huge, wormlike Leviathan burst through a building, then turned and flew straight up into the sky. Dozens of Chitauri chariots followed close behind the armored behemoth, a few of them crashing into the buildings across the street, unable to take the sharp turn like the Leviathan had. They screeched and fell from their chariots into their own destruction. The aliens still zooming through the air began to obliterate everything in front of them with their particle rifles; people, cars, and buildings alike.
Stephen made a shield around his entire body, thankful that he could still do magic here, despite 'here' being more than a decade ago. There wasn't much time to wonder why Loki's nightmare was in the heat of the Battle of New York. If anything, he'd expect it to be afterward, replaying his humiliating defeat over and over. Stephen ran towards the action, trying to figure out how in the world he was going to find Loki in a sea of chaos, with hundreds of people fleeing in the streets.
He ran past flipped over cars and policemen trying to get a handle on the situation. A particle gun blast pinged against his shield and struck a policeman in the chest, vaporizing a hole in the cop before he even had a chance to scream.
Everything here was real, even if it was only some kind of dream. Since Nightmare could normally only imprison one soul at a time, he had to assume that the people and aliens were made of the demon's evil magic. The fighting around him could do damage to his soul, anyway, should the Chitauri get a hold of him. His soul was all he had left.
Injured people writhed in the street, wailing, bleeding out, crawling through debris and broken glass, though there was nowhere safe to go. His doctor instincts kicked in. Everything in him told him to help these poor people, at least drag them out of the way of the fighting, but he had to remind himself that they weren't real.
Stephen jumped as a woman banged against his shield with a bloody fist, crawling, covered in dust. She held her screaming toddler up by the arm. The poor child was half naked, covered in bruises and deep wounds.
"Save him! Save my baby!" she cried. "Doctor! Please!"
He very nearly let down his shield by instinct, but kept it up, realizing that anything but Loki in this hellish realm was a trap.
Without a word, he turned from the woman and made his way toward the fighting, and she let out a scream so hideous it sent a chill down his spine and made him stop in his tracks.
"Keep going," he told himself, willing himself to leave her behind. If Loki's nightmare was about the destruction he'd caused, and not his defeat, then it made sense that Loki would be found where the fighting was worst. Unfortunately, that would be at Stark Tower, which was still several blocks northeast of where he was.
The screams, the sirens, the crashing and unceasing noise, started to weasel into his brain, trying to shut it down, make him give up. Flashes of memories from that day blinded him; all the patients he'd lost, the blood covering the floor of the ER, the dead woman and her impaled fetus just a pile of gory pulp in his hand.
Stephen's shield flickered for a moment as he swallowed, keeping down bile. He'd lost track of where he was, wandering the streets like a lost soul. He tripped over someone's leg, then scrambled backwards when it became apparent that it wasn't attached to anything. On the ground, he shut his eyes, tried to breathe, gulping in dust and heat and pain. There was no quiet to be had here.
Nightmare really wasn't done with him. Terrible thoughts were one thing, but this visceral hell was almost too much for him to bear. When he'd come to the ER that day, he could shut it off, focus just on his patients and nothing else, tuning out the screams in the hospital hallways, the rumbling crashes off in the distance. That was his 'zen' as a surgeon. That's what he had to do now.
He coughed and spat out the dust, lifting himself shakily to his feet. Loki was Dr. Strange's patient, and nothing would stop him from saving that one life in the sea of horror and destruction around him.
With new resolve, Stephen gathered his bearings and found a street corner he recognized, even though the street signs had been torn down and pointed in random directions.
"34th and Park," he said to himself, then looked to his left, where the Empire State Building loomed, just as some Chitauri weapon crashed into it, taking out a large chunk of it.
"Okay, so that means Stark Tower is … "
He didn't have to wonder long. He'd been much closer than he thought. The gleaming building lay directly ahead of him on Park avenue. Bright blue energy from the space stone shot straight up from the top of the tower and into the sky, tearing open the fabric of space and letting the Chitauri stream through like a swarm of gnats.
Strange strengthened his shield and ran straight down the street, dodging a car as it flipped over from a blast of energy that came from nowhere. He caught a glimpse of the person in the front seat smashing his head on the roof of the car, no doubt crushing his spine on impact.
He hated to even think it, but the people that died quickly during the Battle were the lucky ones.
Further down the street, the Chitauri and their zooming chariots rushed straight out of the sky, their riders jumping off of them and attacking any and every living thing on the ground. An enormous Chitauri burst out of a coffee shop window, dragging its human victims behind it, then threw them down in the street and shot them in the head without remorse. Another one tried to grab on to Stephen's full-body shield, biting at it like a rabid animal. Stephen disintegrated the thing into mush with a quick spell. Searching through the courtyard that looked down Park avenue, he looked in every nook and cranny he could think of, not finding a living soul, just bodies and carnage. It might not have even been the right place to find Loki, though most of the fighting had been done there, but he had no other clues at all. It was like finding a hay-shaped needle in a multitude of haystacks.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the slightest flash of red flicker up into the sky, and breathed a sigh of relief for his luck. He was in the right place.
It seemed to have come from a pile of rubble that tumbled out of the building next door. It had crushed a car in front of it and several people lay dead in the debris. A few bodies dripped blood as they lay on the roof of the car. There, huddled on the ground, each hand tied to the car's door handles with Nightmare's red lightning, his arms open wide and defenseless, sat Loki's astral form.
"Loki!"
Stephen approached him without a second thought, letting his magical shield fall away for a moment, then paused when Loki looked up at him with the most pathetic gaze he'd ever seen in his life. Loki's astral form looked much healthier than his physical body, but it had taken a beating from something, nonetheless. His noble green and gold outfit was torn to shreds, his helmet nowhere to be found. Dark circles ringed his eyes, like he hadn't slept in a week. Blood dripped thickly from his dark hair, which made Stephen rush over to investigate for a head wound, though he knew it would make no difference in Nightmare's realm. Instead, though, the blood was coming from the bodies lying on top of the car, slowly dripping down from their arms onto his head, then into his eyes, down his cheek, into his open mouth, like a dripping faucet that wouldn't turn off.
Loki shook like a frightened dog, his dry, cracked lips open and trembling even as blood dripped on them.
"Who … who are you?" he whispered like a frightened child. His words were nothing more than faltering breath. Lokis' formerly deep, resonant voice that had commanded the world to kneel didn't even sound like it belonged to him anymore.
"I'm here to help you," Stephen replied gently as he took a look at the restraints holding Loki's hands to the car. The lightning shocked Stephen with pain, as he expected, and he thought of a dozen spells in his head that might have a chance at cutting him free.
"Why?"
Stephen stopped and blinked at him.
"What do you mean, 'why'? You're in pain. I want to help."
Loki's tired eyes wandered to the words on Stephen's coat.
"You're a doctor?" he asked.
"Yes. My name is Dr. Stephen Strange."
"You should be helping them," he said, looking out to the bodies lying in the street. "They need you."
"Loki, I'm here for you," said Stephen. "This is your nightmare, and I'm going to get you out of it, so don't worry."
"How did I get here?" Loki glanced around him like a confused old man who'd wandered into the street. "There was a cloud, and then this, forever and ever."
Stephen turned Loki's head to face him. "You're being held hostage by a demon named Nightmare. He's giving you this bad dream so he can use your energy to get into your universe."
Stephen readied a spell that he hoped would snap Loki's bonds, but it backfired, sending bits of magic flying back at him. Loki didn't react, numb to the noise and the screaming.
"Forever and ever," he repeated. "I thought I didn't deserve it, at first. I was angry. But then … then I saw. I saw everything I did, over and over."
Stephen stopped trying to sever Loki's tether and listened to him as he whispered, seemingly to no one.
"If I'd known … if I was down here with them, feeling this pain … I would have let Thanos kill me. I should have let him-"
"No," Stephen interrupted. "If this hadn't happened, the Avengers never would have been formed. They would have had no chance against Thanos then, trust me."
More screaming came close behind him, and Stephen turned to see a Chitauri pick up a man by the head and smash him into the edge of a fountain. Stephen sucked in a breath and winced even though he knew it wasn't a real person spraying blood all over the concrete. The carnage was simply unbelievable.
Loki, watching the gore unfold, trembled almost as much as his body on earth surely was at that moment. Tears began to fall from his sunken eyes, mixing with the darkening blood from the dead body above him, falling down his cheeks.
"It's not real, Loki."
"Dripping … gushing red. It'll never go away. By the gods, doctor, how do I wipe out this much red?"
Stephen forgot about his bonds for a moment, trying to turn Loki's head again, trying to get him to focus on him and not the blood, but Loki's eye kept going back to the horror in front of him. A pang of pity overwhelmed Stephen. Loki had been staring at this for months on end.
He sat on his knees in front of Loki, like a teacher in front of his student. He took the tissues out of his coat pocket and gently wiped the blood off Loki's face, his lips, out of his eyes. The tears continued unabated, Loki's gaze far, far away. Dr. Strange made another tiny, curved shield, then flipped it upside down like a bowl and floated it over Loki's head to catch the blood. It dripped into the bowl, slow, almost peaceful, like a trickling fountain in a garden of terrors.
Dr. Strange looked for the right words to say in his heart, tuning out every scream and rattle and crash trying to break his soul into pieces.
"Loki," he began, "You don't deserve this pain."
"I caused it-"
"I know, but you can be different. You're not a sociopath. You know this is wrong. I'm not just a doctor. I'm a sorcerer, too. And I've seen things you wouldn't believe."
Loki blinked tears out of his eyes and finally met Stephen's gaze.
Stephen gave him the smallest smile and shook his head. "Joy and pain, love and death, they're all the same. There is no evil."
"That makes no sense," he croaked, the tiniest bit of vigor springing back to his voice. "You'd let rapists and murderers and … these things … off the hook? Are you mad?"
"That's not what I mean," he replied. "People who do bad things should be punished, so they don't hurt others. There must be conflict in the multiverse, as well as peace, but that push and pull isn't good and evil like we know it. The tiger stalks its prey, and the prey runs, fights, hides. When you're looking at that conflict from the outside, with no stake in it, are you supposed to cheer for the prey to escape, or for the tiger to eat? The multiverse is impartial. It doesn't deal in good and evil. We do. If it's in a murderer's nature to murder, then it's in a good, brave person's nature to stop them. But that was Tony Stark's job. Captain America's job. My job is different right now."
He took a deep breath, then quoted from the Tao Te Ching:
"'There is no greater misfortune than underestimating your enemy. Underestimating your enemy means thinking that he is evil. Thus you destroy your treasures and become an enemy yourself.' We're all made of the same stuff. You, me, the Chitauri, Asgardians, Thanos, Dormammu. We are made of carbon and water and flesh and magic, recycled since the beginning of time. We are each other."
Loki still looked lost and afraid, but his eyes never left Stephen's face.
"Loki, some of the most terrifying things I've ever seen are things that I've done. I could have been you. You could have been me. We're all just slightly different configurations of molecules. And some of us … some of us were born with a little more darkness than light.
"We all deserve forgiveness, and none of us do. I forgive you. Your friends forgive you. Sylvie misses you more than anything."
He perked up, his eyes full of life for a fleeting moment.
"Sylvie?"
"Yes. She's been taking care of your body this whole time. Mobius risked his life to look for me all over the multiverse so I could save you. But … I can't."
His face fell again into despair.
"It doesn't matter how much I forgive you, how much everyone else forgives you. The only way out of your bonds is if you can forgive yourself."
Loki shook his head, his gaze widening out into the distance like before.
"I can't. It's too late. I've done too much."
"It's never too late, as long as you're alive," Stephen replied. "You've done more than this. Much more. You are cared about. You are loved. You can leave here, if you want. The only thing stopping you is yourself."
Everything else seemed to fade away until there was only the two of them, their souls bared to each other, reaching out for a shred of understanding.
Loki breathed heavily and rocked back and forth, groaning gently, like a madman. Stephen was starting to fear there would be no escape for either of them, when suddenly, he stopped.
"Sylvie," he whispered again, eyes closed reverently, as if in prayer. "She's here with me now, isn't she?"
Stephen held back tears. "She's always been there. She never left."
Loki leaned his head forward, his breathing slow and steady, no longer trembling. A long moment passed them by. The bowl of blood filled above Loki's head, like a dark halo. For the first time since Stephen had been there, a look of peace washed across Loki's face, then, miraculously, the red lightning began to sputter and fade, like a river evaporating into nothing. Stephen caught Loki as he slumped forward with a grunt, his wrists bearing the marks of pain where he'd been tied.
Loki let out a few, shuddering, "Thank you"'s as he leaned into Stephen's shoulder. He patted Loki on the back wordlessly, feeling like the world had been lifted from both of their shoulders. The realm around them filled with peace and quiet.
"It's all right," he said, gently lifting Loki to his feet. "Let's get you home."
Loki gave him a concerned glance. "You're coming too, doctor?"
Stephen could only shrug back. "That's up to fate right now. I'll be okay, even if I don't-"
He stopped abruptly. The world around them was too quiet, it wasn't just his sense of concentration tuning out the fighting. Every Chitauri had stopped rampaging and stared at both of them with their beady, emotionless eyes, sizing them up in complete, eerie silence.
Loki noticed too, letting go of Stephen's support and standing on his own. The Chitauri simply watched as the both of them walked away from the crushed car. A particularly enormous Chitauri with a broad, animal-like face sniffed the air as they passed. Stephen felt a pit growing in his stomach, and he was sure Loki felt it too. Nightmare was on to them. He wasn't going to let them go that easily.
A desperate, but brilliant idea popped into his head, and he hoped it would work for at least one of them.
"Loki," he whispered as the Chitauri gathered closer, a low growling echoing through the air, "there is one surefire way to wake up from a nightmare, but I'm going to need you to hold on to me very tightly."
"Uh, okay," he said, awkwardly wrapping his arms around Stephen's shoulders. In a fluid movement, Dr. Strange made another shield around them both, then took a flying leap into the air, sending them straight into the sky like Iron Man's rocket boosted suit. Both Loki and the Chitauri below them screamed, the aliens pointing up at them flying away. The huge Chitauri jumped up and down and roared like an enraged gorilla.
Loki wrapped his legs around Stephen's torso and held on for dear life as he flew them to the very top of Stark Tower, where Professor Selvig's machine sent the Space Stone's energy beaming into the sky, like a lighthouse beacon.
They landed quite ungracefully, Loki falling to his knees and shakily bringing himself back up. Stephen scoped out the scene, but to his surprise, Loki went straight for the stone.
"I see your plan, doctor. Brilliant!" he exclaimed with a smile as he gestured to the machine.
"Um, Loki-"
"We shut off Selvig's device ourselves!" Loki interrupted him. "That way, I can be the hero and all my guilt will be-"
"Nope."
Loki's expression fell. "Why not?" he asked, almost childishly, like a kid who'd just been told he couldn't go to the zoo.
"You're overthinking it," Stephen replied, peering over the edge of the building. "Anything you do to try and change this realm won't work. It already happened. You have to end it, not change it."
Stephen grabbed Loki's shoulder and brought him to the edge of the building, overlooking a monstrous drop to the pavement.
Loki gasped and shied away from the edge.
"I thought you were trying to save me, not kill me!" he said, giving Stephen a look of pure betrayal.
"This is a dream," said Stephen. "A fall always works to wake up from a dream."
"But-but I-"
Stephen grabbed the back of Loki's shirt to make sure he wouldn't chicken out and run to safety.
"On the count of three. One … two … "
Before he could thrust Loki from the top of the building, a dozen Chitauri chariots came roaring straight towards them out of nowhere, knocking them back to the base of the machine, despite Dr. Strange's shield. The aliens jumped down and fell on top of them, snarling and screeching like crazed zombies. Loki huddled in a fetal position while Stephen blasted as many of them as he could. They simply kept dogpiling, an endless stream of them supplied by Nightmare's dark energy. He couldn't keep them off forever.
"Loki," he shouted, but Loki was no longer at his side, instead reaching for the Tesseract behind them.
"I told you, that won't work!" he yelled. Loki either didn't hear or didn't care, as he reached through Dr. Strange's shield and grabbed onto the Tesseract, yanking it out of its place. With a mischievous grin, he tossed the cube in one hand, like a softball.
"Make an opening, Doctor," he said.
"What? They'll all swarm in here!"
"I've got this, just do it and get behind me," snapped Loki. Begrudgingly, Stephen let down his glowing shield and let the army of enraged Chitauri barrel towards them, then ran behind Loki as he'd asked. Loki gripped the Tesseract with both hands and let out a primal scream as beams of energy scattered from it, sending the Chitauri flying into parts unknown opened up by the space stone.
Despite even the power of the infinity stone, the Chitauri continued unabated, like an endless swarm of flies.
Stephen took Loki by the elbow, making him drop the Tesseract. He ran with him in tow, another dozen Chitauri chariots closing in from above, and jumped with him from the top of Stark Tower.
Sheer stomach-churning panic took hold, both of them flailing for their lives, the world a blur of light and noise that came faster and faster, until-
Stephen gasped awake, back in Loki's room. His first sensation was a stinging pain in the center of his chest, and he looked down to see Christine's adrenaline pen shoved straight into his sternum. The pumping of his heart quickly, painfully brought feeling back into his extremities, little pinpricks poking at his legs and arms.
"Christine?" he called out, realizing she wasn't there next to him on the floor.
Her legs appeared from the other side of the bed, kicking over the half full cup of poison tea, and she knelt down and removed the pen like the expert doctor she was.
"Stephen," she said, putting both hands on either side of his head, more pleading than grateful, it seemed. Her hair fell into his face, as if those tendrils were reaching for him, too.
"What is it?" he asked. "Did Loki make it?"
"That's not important right now."
He sat up, despite his numb arms and legs, and knew instantly that something was wrong. The room was dark. It shouldn't have been that dark, since he'd died in the morning, unless it had taken hours and hours, which wouldn't have been possible. Then, he heard the screams of terror from outside.
With Christine's help, he wobbled over to the window, where Sylvie and Mobius stood on the balcony, helplessly looking into the sky. The screams of Tvanians gathered outside echoed up to them, all of their eyes turned upwards, the ground bathed in a red glow as dark as blood.
Nightmare's crack had blotted out the sun, a horrible, low thrumming shaking the leaves of the trees, rumbling in his chest. Golden streaks zipped across the crimson sky where Strange's protection spell held the demon's realm at bay. Apparently, even though Loki's tether was gone, it didn't mean Nightmare's opening would shut on its own. His spell wouldn't hold much longer. There was no time to worry about Loki. They were all about to suffer his fate.
Stephen stumbled out of the room, down the stairs, and outside, where panicked Tvanians ran to him for protection.
"Doctor, we need the tempad, now!" shouted Hasan, but Stephen put up a hand to silence him.
"Everyone stand back!" he shouted. Despite their terror, they obeyed, huddling against the houses like frightened mice.
With all the strength he had in his already taxed body, Stephen gathered magical energy, spheres and circles and complex symbols forming around him in a complicated dance. It was much more than he'd been able to do after the pentobarbital, but he still felt weakness creeping into his mind, threatening to make him pass out before he could finish the spell. The thrumming grew louder, pulsing like a monstrous heartbeat against the restraints of the protection spell above them-vvmmm, vvmmm, vvmmm.
Stephen put the finishing touch on the banishing spell and with a mighty yell, pushed it upwards like a comet in reverse. It flared brightly in the sky, casting shadows on the houses as it rose, then broke through the spell in the sky and burst like a heat-seeking firework. Pieces of energy broke away from the center of the spell and rose further into the heart of Nightmare's opening until they disappeared from sight.
For a few awful, nail-biting seconds, Dr. Strange and the Tvanians waited. Every life rested on him, every breath held in silence. He backed away from the street and stood with the other Tvanians, staring into the sky, knowing his fate would now be theirs, no matter what happened, hoping they knew he'd done all he could.
Suddenly, the vibration stopped mid hum and a mind numbing shriek exploded from the air. The village cried out and shrank in fear, but Stephen stood his ground and smirked. That sound was nothing to be afraid of. It meant Nightmare had met his match.
Nightmare's horrid screech took a few more seconds to fall away into a raspy groan, like the Wicked Witch of the West melting into a puddle. Then, slowly, surely, the red light from the crack started to fade, growing lighter and pinker, then dissipating in the sunlight.
The crack was gone. The world was truly, finally safe.
No one seemed to know how to react, looking at Stephen in a mixture of fear and wonder. He gave them a wordless nod. That was all they needed. Relief washed across their faces, then a few grew into the half-crazed laughter of victory. From then it was like an unstoppable wave of joy. They hugged each other, cried with happiness, cheered Stephen, hugging him and gathering around him like a hero. As much as he'd done for his own universe, he'd never felt so admired.
"Three cheers for the wizard!" cried John, waving around a bit of cloth like a patriotic flag. Everyone followed suit, throwing any bit of foliage they could find into the air like confetti as they shouted his name.
Stephen couldn't help but smile, though it all felt a bit mad. It certainly was nicer than being asked for a selfie every other day.
His eye wandered back up to the balcony, and he caught sight of Sylvie's anxious face through the dead leaf confetti fluttering around him.
"Loki," he said to himself. He left the village to celebrate with themselves and went back into the house.
Sylvie had come around to the edge of Loki's bed, Christine and Mobius at her flank as she knelt down.
Stephen's breath caught in his throat for a second. For the first time since he and Christine had arrived, Loki's eyes were closed. His mouth was only slightly agape, his trembling had stopped completely. Stephen went instinctively into doctor mode, checking for breathing and a pulse.
"Doctor … ?" asked Sylvie, her green eyes filled with uncertainty.
"He's asleep, Sylvie," he replied with a relieved smile. Both Loki's heartbeat and breathing seemed completely normal. "He's actually, truly asleep this time, not living a waking nightmare. He earned it, trust me."
Mobius left from the side of the bed and rushed to the balcony, completely forgetting himself and shouting out to the excited Tvanians below.
"Everyone, Loki is okay!"
A cheer rang up from the crowd, even louder than what they'd given for Stephen. Sylvie and Christine both threw Mobius angry looks and shushed him like he was about to wake a sleeping baby.
Mobius, realizing his gaffe, turned around and did the same to the villagers.
"No, wait! Quiet! He's sleeping!" he attempted to whisper as loudly as he could. He waved them away, and they obeyed, confused, but still buzzing with excitement.
Stephen chortled. He couldn't blame everyone for acting a little crazy and childish. The unease that had hung in the air for so many days was finally broken, and everyone deserved a little bit of unbridled joy.
Sylvie, seemingly forgetting that anyone else was in the room, climbed into bed next to her sleeping husband, laying one hand on his chest as it moved steadily up and down.
"When will he wake up?" she asked, and Stephen's smile faded a little.
"I don't know," he said. "His body and soul have been in such horrible shape for so long, it's hard to tell. He needs as much rest as he can get." Stephen put a hand on her shoulder and she turned her head to look at him. "I don't want you to be disappointed if he doesn't wake up fast enough or heal quickly enough. This is going to take time, but … well, I guess Doctor Palmer and I have all the time in the world, now."
He gave a sad glance to Christine, who looked down at the floor to hide her face. Mobius put a hand behind his head and sighed deeply. Regret hung in the air, undercutting the joy of their victory, though the rest of Tvania was completely unaware that the doctors could never go home, now. The village had taken their revelry out to the edges of the neighborhood, but they could still hear them singing and celebrating in the distance.
Stephen tried to push those thoughts to the back of his mind. There would be time to grieve, but at that moment everyone was totally exhausted, especially him. He'd died twice in one day and all he wanted to do was sleep.
"Let's leave the lovebirds to themselves," he muttered to Christine and Mobius, gently herding them to the stairs. Before he left and closed the door, he took one last look at Sylvie, her eyes already closed. All the anger and fear that had cut lines into her face had seemed to disappear in an instant as she nuzzled sweetly into Loki's skinny neck. Loki, deep in slumber, ever so gently rested his chin on the top of her head. They were like two tired puppies, with only each other for warmth and comfort.
"Sweet dreams, your majesties," he whispered, then shut the door as quietly as he could.