Author's Note:
Warnings: PTSD.
Chapter Twelve:
For as long as Wanda has known him, Bruce has never been one for physical contact. He won't reject it if you try, but he seems to hunch in on himself and try to shy away from as many hands or shoulders as possible, like contact will sting him. It wasn't something she ever felt brave enough to ask about, and didn't.
So she's surprised when he opens the door, and the initial shock has worn off, Bruce breathes her name and immediately wraps her into a hug. Her chin bumps against his shoulder as she's pulled up to face him, and she feels something startled slip out of her throat. She doesn't know if it was an attempt at a word, and she doesn't really care.
Bruce is warm. His arms are wrapped tight around her shoulders, and the edge of his long, dark hair tickles her cheek.
Bruce's head shifts a little, then she feels her brother yanked into place beside her. His elbow smacks against her back and she grunts, but the discomfort is only momentary before Bruce pulls back and looks between the two of them.
Wanda opens her mouth, but any explanation feels dry and stiff on her tongue, so she doesn't try to speak.
"Oh my gosh," Bruce whispers. He looks at her, breathing out and in rapid succession, "We thought you were...we didn't...how are you here? How are both of you here?" His gaze flits to her brother again, then narrows slightly. "What did you do?"
"Why do you assume I did anything?" Pietro asks, indignant.
"Because there's no way that she should be standing here—"
"Bruce?" Tony's voice sounds behind the chemist, and Wanda feels herself stiffen a little further. She already feels wound up tight, and has no way to relax. She wasn't ready for this. She hasn't seen any of them for well over a few weeks, and most of them weren't even on good terms. Honestly, with the way that everything went down after Germany, Wanda only expected them to make a half-hearted attempt at her rescue.
...Even from Pietro.
There's movement behind Bruce, then Wanda sees Tony. The billionaire stops dead once he catches sight of them, as if they shot him. "Holy crap," Tony mouths, then moves towards them. As if sensing the action, Bruce slips out of the way so Tony can slide past him. He grabs onto her shoulder and holds it firmly.
"You're not dead." He says. He actually sounds relieved, and Wanda doesn't know how she feels about that. She thinks...she thinks it's good. Forgiveness, even minor acceptance—that felt like a dream a thousand miles away when they walked away from the pardoning ceremony. Even in the Barton household. Wanda didn't think that things would ever be the same. That Tony, and all others who fought with him, would care.
Wanda licks her lips. She parts them. Then she shakes her head, afraid that she won't be able to keep her voice steady. Tony looks to Pietro, then blows out a breath between his teeth. "Evidently, we need to talk. Come in, stop loitering."
Arm still gripped by the billionaire, Wanda is pulled into the room, and Pietro follows after her. Bruce shuts the large, wooden door behind them both. It does so with a soft click. Wanda looks up and around the room. Like most of Asgard, it's big, shiny, and speckled with gold. Decoration abounds; fancy, rich, and luxurious. There's large windows on the far wall that provide a majority of the light, but she can sense a faint hum of other magic. Witch lights, she's heard them called.
It's beautiful, but Wanda has never had an eye for interior design, and can't appreciate it to its full potential. To her, when the initial beauty wears off, the room looks too posh and strict. The type of room you're afraid to sit down in, just in case you ruffle a rug.
To Wanda's surprise, and dread, the room isn't occupied by only Bruce and Tony. She should have been expecting this. (Somewhere, she was, she thinks.) Thor told a servant to gather the Avengers and then send Wanda and Pietro to meet them, which means that the Avengers would be together. She'd just...maybe been hoping to do this in a more controlled, less populated environment.
Her team is scattered across the six couches set in a large room with a white rug between them all. Half on and off, they all turn to look at the noise of them approaching. Then Wanda sees them jerk up.
"Look who's not dead!" Tony declares.
Clint swears, then scrambles off the back of the couch he was perched on to stumble down to ground level and approach them. He wraps his arms around her in a firm embrace and grips the back of her head for a moment, keeping her close. He smells faintly of lavender and gun oil, like usual, and she draws comfort from that.
Clint releases her, "How? Where were you? Are you okay?"
He brushes hair from her face, and Wanda feels warm and cold all at once at the affection. Her lips try for a smile as a deep, gnawing ache to cry settles in the back of her eyes. She doesn't know why. Maybe relief, perhaps at being overwhelmed.
Her brother's warm hand settles on her back, and she grounds herself with it.
"We're fine." Pietro says, then appends, "Sort of."
"What does that mean?" Steve asks. The others have gathered behind Clint, hovering, waiting, as if this is some sort of skeptical to be enjoyed. Or they're standing in a line to talk and make contact with her, like she's a celebrity they need to make sure is real. Steve eyes them up and down, then swears softly, "You both look like crap."
She's not at the right angle to view it, but she can almost see as her brother's lip twitches up and his eyes tighten. "Spasiba, Captain."
Then they just stand there, staring. Assessing.
Wanda drags her eyes down, and tries not to let her breath shudder out as she expels it between her teeth.
"Why don't you both sit down?" Sam suggests, and gestures towards the couches they've just vacated.
Wanda doesn't really get a choice. She's herded there by Pietro, and once she and her brother are seated side-by-side, the Avengers gather around them, seated or standing. They're tense.
Wanda takes that moment to look at them all, really look. Wanda's seen them after a mission that took an abrupt one-eighty, and the messy, bloody fallout of that. This resembles that. There's cuts and bruises, long shadows and messy hair. Their clothing is clean, and decidedly from Earth based on Tony's Led Zeppelin shirt, but it doesn't hide the stiff way they're holding themselves. Muscle soreness, from a fight?
What fight?
Wanda wonders again what they are doing here. Why they never came back home, when Asgard is only a little bruised, like it only fell and scraped it's knees rather than was beaten nearly to death. Thor wouldn't have contacted them for help unless he was certain that his people would need it, but...did they? They seemed to have fared just fine against Thanos.
There's not really any reason for them to be here. And yet…
Wanda doesn't let anyone catch her gaze. She's afraid to hold it, though she doesn't know why. They all linger in the silence, as if waiting for someone to call Action! and set them going. Waiting for their part in the script. Waiting for someone to break the silence first. Waiting.
Wanda expected one of the Avengers to do it. To stop their staring and ask. They don't. Pietro does. "How long have you been here?"
Her team seems taken back by the question.
Steve and Tony share a look. They're standing next to each other, which Wanda privately finds a little strange. She hasn't seen them willingly spend any time next to each other since before Germany, and to see them standing next to each other? It's weird. There's no buffer. No carefully arranged distance between them, no person placed discreetly between the two, like having a wall of human skin between them would actually stop them from doing anything.
They're just...standing there.
"Uh, about, what? A week, maybe?" Tony answers, "It probably would have been shorter if Heimdall hadn't fished us out of the sky." Wanda's head tilts a little at the phrasing. Fished? "We've been helping out with countermeasures to their attacker ever since. Have you ever heard of Thanos before?"
Wanda swallows thickly. In all the time she was his captive, she only saw him twice, and the name still makes her feel sick. Seeing what he was willing to do to her, and seeing what he did do to Loki...his name invokes a deep, quiet terror she'd never be able to explain to anyone. "Yes." The word sounds strained. It is, Wanda realizes distantly, the first thing she's said since before stepping into this room. "We've met."
Something like disappointment settles in Steve's face. His eyes hold a heavy weight for a long second, and Wanda feels dread sink into her stomach. Why? She wants to ask, what did I do? The Captain holds his face still, then lifts his head to meet her gaze. "I'm sorry, Wanda. We should have looked harder. We didn't...we'd heard that he was holding you. We were planning a rescue."
There's a deep, deep relief that releases into her system at the words. (They cared enough to search.) It's been eleven days since she walked away. But it feels like two seconds and an eternity. Wanda's lips pull into a strained, thin smile. She's not sure what to say, but settles with a quiet "thank you."
Clint scoffs, hands fidgeting across his lap. "Too little, too late. We didn't do crap. So save your thanks for who deserves it."
"Which raises the question. How are you here?" Natasha asks. Her gaze is pinning.
Wanda parts her lips. Then she glances at her brother. He's already staring at her, waiting for her to start spouting answers. Wanda doesn't even know where to begin. Where to end. How to go about explaining that they found Thor's dead little brother. About the Tesseract. About it all. It's too much, and she feels crushed beneath the urge to start talking and never stop, or keep all her secrets close to her chest where she can control them.
"I don't…" she tries.
"Wanda," Bruce's voice is gentle, as if he just noticed something for the first time, "where's Vision?"
Wanda feels something shift. In the world, in her, it doesn't matter. The world crumples, in and out, and she's forced to breathe in air made of ashes. Her eyes are dry. Her throat is tight, but her eyes are dry. It almost feels like betrayal that she doesn't want to cry at the thought of him. She doesn't even know what happened to his body.
"Dead." Her tone is flat. "He has been for weeks. Thanos took the Mind Stone."
Crushed his skull to get it. And I watched.
"Oh." Sam frowns. "I'm sorry. I know he meant a lot to you."
Wanda pulls her gaze away. You have no idea. She closes her eyes, shakes her head once, like hiding behind her eyelids is going to help anything. Vision's death wasn't even three months ago, and it feels like she's lived six years since then. His loss hurts, but dully. Not all-consuming anymore.
Pietro's hand settles on her arm. I'm here.
I don't know if I want to be. She parts her lips, opens her eyes, forces herself present. There are more pressing things than her moping. So she starts talking. The words feel like she's pulling every syllable out from behind her teeth, but they come out. She doesn't detail it as much as she did for Pietro. She drops anything that isn't relevant, and offers it like she's giving a mission report.
Emotionless. Opinion-free.
The Avengers are quiet as she talks. They don't ask many questions, for which she's silently grateful. When her words start to come out slower then stop, they sit and soak it in.
"Okay, run that by me one more time." Tony requests, leaning forward so he can balance his elbows on his knees. He looks even more confused than he did when Wanda started her explanation. Somewhere between Vision's death and her and Loki's escape, he, Steve and Natasha sat down. "You and 3.14 over here...sort of kidnapped Thor's amnesic brother after said amnesic brother kidnapped you?"
Wanda presses her lips together for a moment, thinking. That's not exactly the way she'd have put it—not the way she did put it—but it's not wrong. She shrugs lightly. She's not going to repeat the story, if that's what he wants. Half of it doesn't even make sense to her.
Pietro leans back on the couch, rubbing a hand through his messy silver hair. "Pretty much, yeah."
Tony shakes his head, rubs his face, then shakes his head again. "This is insane. I mean, what are the chances of you two actually finding each other?"
"Apparently higher than zero." Natasha remarks. "Because, well," she gestures vaguely in their direction.
Bruce's frown deepens at that.
Lucky us. Wanda snorts softly, leaning back. She rubs a hand across her pant leg subconsciously, sweeping her gaze across the large room for something to do with her eyes. The pressure in her chest of unease hasn't really lessened. She doesn't know what would honestly help. She doesn't know if anything will.
Why can't she just...calm down? She feels like she's been on this adrenaline-filled high since Vision took that spear to the chest in the Barton's barn. She dreads the crash, if it's ever going to happen.
"I can't believe Thor's brother isn't dead," Clint drums his fingers across his knee, "that's...I mean, didn't he fall into a freakin' black hole?"
He did? Wanda hasn't heard that story. For what little she does know of Loki, mostly told from Thor, she didn't hear how he died. Just that he was deceased.
"Something like that, yeah," Bruce confirms. "Thor was never specific."
He's heard it, too, then. Wanda wonders what those three years before she met them was like. The Avengers were a close-knit chosen family. The trust they held in each other privately amazed her. It went further than putting their lives in each other's hands. Their connection felt like something from a book or movie. Fictional.
But Wanda found herself slowly falling into that. And then Germany happened, and her view on them shifted. She never told Steve, but she can't believe that he kept Tony's parents' assassination from him when she learned about it. (What else became need-to-know to him?)
But the point is—Thor talked with them, and she hardly knows the Asgardian. What would a connection with him be like?
"Then how the heck is he still alive?" Sam asks, looking incredulous. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't black holes supposed to literally tear you apart?"
"Tidal force, yeah," Tony supplies, grimacing. "Nasty stuff. Fleshy human doesn't do so well in that."
Bozhe moi. How…?
Natasha leans forward. "It wasn't a black hole. It was a wormhole. He probably just dropped from one point to another in rapid succession. Even if having no protection would have killed us, need I remind you that Asgardian's aren't human?"
Still. Wanda's seen Thor bleed. Loki's scars. They may not be human, but that doesn't mean they can't be hurt.
Loki fell through a wormhole? How...there are questions Wanda thinks she should have asked before now. But asking Loki how he fell into Thanos' grasp just didn't seem...important, maybe? At least, not when they figured out who he is. They knew where he came from. How he got from point A to B just didn't seem relevant at the time.
"Speculation about his survival aside," Steve interjects, before they can really get going. "At least we know the location of the Tesseract now. That gives us two of six that Thanos doesn't have."
Wanda stops rubbing her rings across her knee. She may not be a math prodigy, but, "No. Just one."
Tony releases a breath, expression flitting with emotion for a second. Fear, resignation. "That is where you'd be wrong, moya podruga. We, uh...I guess we have a story of our own to tell." Discomfort fills the edges of their faces. Unease, maybe even fear.
Wanda feels her brows draw together. Pietro's head tilts slightly beside her, like a bird cocking their head.
What happened?
As if trying to break the tension, Tony clasps his hands together. The noise startles a jerk out of Bruce. "I guess we should probably start at the beginning, right?"
Without missing a beat, her brother promptly adds, "I mean, you could tell it backwards, but I don't know if we'd comprehend that much."
That pulls a soft snort from Steve, and Tony rolls his eyes up to the ceiling as if silently asking Lord, give me strength. It's for show, and Wanda thinks they all know that. The billionaire turns to the Captain, seated on the couch next to him, "I vote we leave him behind more often. I've enjoyed these weeks without him running his mouth."
"Because you're so much better?" Natasha asks, brow lifting.
"Warm fuzzies, Nat." Tony says dryly.
"Children, the lot of you," Sam mutters.
The humor feels flat and forced. Like dialog that's been spoken too many times. It's rough, and scraping, but no one comments. No one fights it. They move forward like they actually want to discuss further.
"Like you said, we got the message from Thor after Wanda disappeared." Bruce starts, hands clenching. Flexing. Agitation, frustration. In, out. "As you know, it wasn't very comprehensible, but we knew enough to know it was urgent."
"I think the phrasing was 'end of everything,'" Sam offers. "Which wasn't ominous. I think it was reasonable to assume we should show up on his doorstep and demand some answers."
"Yeah." Tony frowns. "I space-proofed one of the Quinjets when Heimdall wouldn't return our calls. We kind of sat out there for a bit before he found us and beamed us there."
"Asgard was under attack," Steve explains. "Not hand-to-hand combat and guns. It was…" his eyes darken for a moment. He looks like he struggles for proper phrasing before settling on, "Bloody. We found Thor dead in the middle of it with his parents. Everything was bloody. Bodies everywhere. The city was on fire, and the palace collapsed. It looked like it was razed to the ground."
Wait.
But Asgard...maybe it's a little charred, but not…like that. And Thor, last she saw, wasn't dead. Unless Asgardian's have a reboot, there's no way that the city should look like it does. That Thor should be walking. The Avengers should have been dealing with mass graves.
"I don't understand," Wanda says quietly. "It's not…"
Natasha sighs, releasing her lower lip, "How much do you two know about the Reality Stone?"
Wanda's stomach twists. It's not a drop of horror, more resigned apprehension. She thinks back on what she can remember of Loki talking on it. "It's...missing? No one has seen it since the Soul Stone made an appearance. What did Loki say?" She looks at her brother, "A thousand years ago? More?"
Pietro shrugs unhelpfully.
"Why?"
Tony huffs, "Yeah. So. Asgard is filled with some pretty ancient magic, right? And one of those is, apparently, knowing how to use Infinity Stones. Anyone asks, Thor's mom is freakin' scary."
Steve makes a noise that sounds dangerously like a soft amen in agreement.
It takes her a second, but Pietro is faster. His jaw sags a little and he leans forward, hands dropping onto his legs. Long bangs fall across his eyes. "Wait. Are you...Thor's mother used the Reality Stone to make it seem like Asgard was faring worse than they were? She created a reality where they lost?"
The Avengers are quiet.
Bozhe moi. Wanda breathes a cuss, stunned. "You won't fight an enemy you think crippled."
Pietro sits back. "Holy crap."
Clint hums, "Yeah. One way to put that."
Wanda rubs her rings across her knee, finding familiar comfort in the metal digging at the base of her knuckles. "Why do you...what is it? All of you seem as though you've seen ghosts."
Natasha closes her eyes. "Believe us when we say you don't want to know what an Asgardian battlefield looks like. There are wounds that aren't possible on us. We can't tear each others' ribcages apart with our minds."
Wanda feels sick. The Avengers have seen violence. Blood and gore isn't something that bothers them anymore. And this? This is what rattles them.
"Thor's said you can't create a reality based on nothing." Bruce says quietly. "Frigga had seen something like that before."
"Yeah." Steve tries for a smirk, but it's strained. "You ever wonder why most of Australia isn't habitable?"
Oh.
Oh.
"That...was them?" Pietro says slowly.
She and her brother share a look.
"Something about a great battle between Frost Giants a thousand years ago. Yeah." Bruce confirms. "But, we, um." He struggles, grappling for words. Wanda sympathizes. He keeps talking, as if stopping in this moment is going to make all of them sick. "The, uh. No one knows that Asgard has the Reality Stone, which meant that Thanos wasn't going to be looking for it here for a bit. They let Thanos take the Tesseract, and believe they'd wiped out Asgard in the process. In reality...not so much. Just a couple of bad bruises."
How afraid of failing this fight were they, that they would resort to such tactics? Asgard has fought battles before—obviously—and they retreat from this one. Swallow their pride and accept defeat. Were they so afraid of annihilation?
Wanda realizes then, how very, very little she knows about the Infinity Stones. And how truly frightening it is that Asgard would rather stand down than face them. What have we gotten ourselves wrapped inside of?
"Do they still have the Stone?" Wanda asks.
"Yeah," Steve answers. "Locked in their vault. Frigga's been...sick. I guess using it to cover an entire planet rather than just a room takes a lot of power."
Yeah. That...that would make sense.
The whole thing...
"We've been here ever since, helping them clean up, planning out our next move, etcetera, looking for a way into his ship for an unneeded rescue mission," Tony finishes. "Not much else to the story, unless you want a detailed recounting of long, mostly pointless meetings."
Pietro grimaces.
Stop making this funny. Wanda wants to demand. It's not funny. We all know that. But she doesn't. She keeps quiet, jaw jutted.
Wanda rubs her rings across her leg. She feels slightly sick. Thanos has three Stones. They have two. Which means the only unaccounted for Stone is Soul. If they get it first, they'll have half. If Thanos does, then he'll have one over them. And even if Frigga managed to pull the wool over Thanos' eyes for the moment, how long is that going to last? How long do they have before he realizes he was duped?
And what will he do, when he does learn?
Asgard chose to hide rather than face him.
000o000
A little over six hours later, Wanda raps on the door softly.
It takes a moment before it's opened. Loki stands on the other side, looking slightly irritated until his gaze rests on her, then it softens marginally. It takes her a second to recognize him. He's changed clothing, switched into something with far more leather and green. His hair is brushed. Parted and covering the scar on his forehead, but clean. He looks...different. Not bad, just.
It's strange how different a person can look when circumstances change.
She can't see the man that stayed in the dark with her. Not really. It makes her cold. Wanda looks in the mirror and it's all she can see, but he's just...he can just make it go away. Remove the visual evidence by changing clothing. This feeling—it's jealousy. Ridiculous, but sincere.
"What?" Loki's voice isn't hard, but it's tight.
Wanda blinks herself back into the present. She fumbles with her mouth for a few moments. "Um. Sorry. You just. Look different."
Loki looks down at his clothing and then up at her again and sighs softly. "I know."
He doesn't say anything else about it. Wanda wonders if he wants to. She should ask, but a part of her doesn't want to know.
Loki moves out of the doorway, inviting her inside wordlessly. Wanda nods in thanks, slipping inside the room, gyrating once as she walks to drink it all in. There's a lot of books. Papers strewn up on the walls, sometimes the writing directly placed onto the stone. It looks like some sort of weird merge of a lounge, office, and bedroom. There's an offshoot into a lavish bathroom, and another room that she can see shelves of vials on.
Controlled chaos is what she'd have to settle on to describe it.
"I was told you'd be here…" Wanda offers as an explanation, still looking, "this is your...room?"
"Apparently," Loki sighs. He's a prince, Wanda remembers, looking across everything. He's royalty, and has been for longer than I've been alive. Loki runs a hand through his hair, agitated, "They've kept it clean since I...disappeared."
Like they expected he'd come back...or they wouldn't let him go. Wanda doesn't know which one she's rooting for, which one would be better or worse. She only nods, then finally settles her gaze on him. He's already watching her.
Wanda licks her lips, feeling tired. She's not sure she wants to talk with him, but she doesn't not want to talk with him either. It's a strange sensation. Running away from the Avengers and her brother to him, in and effort to clear her thoughts, may not have been her best idea. She flexes her fingers. "How did...how did everything go? With your family?"
Loki's lips pinch. "It…" he looks at a loss for words. A brief shadow falls over his eyes. "Nevermind that. What about you? And your Avengers?"
Wanda sighs.
Loki huffs. "That well?"
"No. Yes?" Wanda shakes her head. "I'm glad to see them. I am. I missed them, but they're concern is overwhelming and it's just...hard. We haven't been on the best of terms lately, and to have them acting like nothing happened, it's…"
"Hard?" Loki repeats. She doesn't have a different word.
"Yeah." Wanda frowns a little. "Yeah. What about you?"
Loki sighs, as if realizing she's going to keep prodding. "They took me to see their head healer." Wanda struggles to pull up a name and can't. "About my memories."
Wanda's stomach twists slightly at the heavy shroud in his tone. It didn't go well, she's guessing. "Oh?"
Loki's mouth twists. He lifts his eyes up to meet her, and his gaze feels almost suffocating. "Thanos doesn't have the healing capabilities of Asgard. He doesn't use magic, just machines. According to the healer, I cracked my head open when I landed after I fell."
Wanda grimaces. "Thanos had nothing to do with…"
"No." Loki shakes his head, hand reaching up to brush at the scar. Oh, Wanda thinks weakly. That's what that's from. It seems suddenly more horrendous. "No. Nothing. Imagine that. The lack of memory is what destroyed me, and he had nothing to do with it."
"He exploited it." Wanda offers. She snaps her teeth together a second later.
Loki huffs, bitter. "Yes. That he did."
He doesn't have anything to say, and neither does she. After a minute or so, he silently gestures to the well-worn couch in the room, and Wanda follows him to it. They sit next to each other, but far enough apart that Wanda can turn to face him without their knees knocking together. Wanda twirls the end of her side braid around her pointer finger, anxious.
Keep talking. The silence is going to consume you.
"What did the healer have to say? About your head? Can they do anything?"
Loki hesitates. His expression shudders. The next word out of his mouth is a lie. She doesn't know how she knows, she just does. "No."
Wanda's hands still. She doesn't know if she should call him out on it. Loki shakes his head, runs his hands through his hair, then holds his head in them. "You didn't care, when we were in the Sanctuary, about where I came from. Why?"
What? "What? Why?"
"Just...answer the question. Please."
"I wasn't...it...those cells play with your mind. The darkness…" she bites on her lip. It swallows, consumes, then spits something back up that's hardly recognizable. How much longer would she have lasted and been able to walk away with sanity somewhat intact? "You provided light, and at that point I could have cared less about who you were."
"But after? You could have left me to die from the wounds. You helped me."
Wanda stares at him. He makes it seem like something significant. But it's not—at least, not to her. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Because I'm…" Loki looks at his left hand, staring at his palm, then the back of his hand. He turns the hand over twice.
"You're what?" Wanda pushes.
His expression closes off. He exhales sharply through his teeth. His hair falls in front of his eyes. "She healed the damage. The healer. She couldn't remove the scar, clearly, but it's..." He makes a noise in the back of his throat. It sounds pained. "But you're not...you don't care. Not about what I did. And you helped me, despite my sins."
She's at a loss. "Loki…?"
Loki's fist clenches. "I remember now. Not all of it, but most."
She draws back like he struck her. Bozhe moi.
Loki looks like he might laugh. Or cry. He does a little of both when he says, "And they...they. Norns. It didn't fix anything. If anything, it's worse. Because now I know what he took, and I wish I couldn't. Because now I know I deserved everything."
Wanda feels sick. "What? How could you begin to believe—"
"I know what I am."
"Loki. I know you, you didn't—"
"Do you?" Loki looks at her. His head tilted, expression dangerous. His voice is angry, but his eyes aren't. "Honestly? Do you? I'm not your friend. I tortured you for weeks, and you wrap it all up in a facade of shared suffering."
"That is what you think?" Wanda asks, suddenly still, and her voice carefully blank.
"It's the truth."
Wanda's head tilts slightly. She feels cold. A part of her wants to fight. To trade barbs and make him ache, simply because retaliation has been her fall-to since she was young. But she's tired, and anger will only further her exhaustion. "Closing me off because you're afraid I'm sincere is going to serve you nothing."
Loki flinches, making a choked noise.
Wanda gets to her feet, "Remember something for me? Fear is my element. I've been reading them since I was enhanced. And you—you're soaking in it."
Loki looks at her. There's regret there. Fear of rejection. Wanda closes her eyes, thinking, spinning. His head must be a mess. To snap back into yourself, to have to sort through who you thought you were and learning it...it's little wonder he's reacting so calmly.
It's been hours. What did he do earlier?
"Wanda..."
She releases a long, shallow breath. "I'm not leaving, because we are friends. We've been in this together since you scraped your name out on that floor."
She expects him to fight her. To protest. Instead he only flicks his gaze down and murmurs, "I know."
Author's Note:
Spasiba: Thank you
Moya podruga: My friend (female)
Bozhe Moi: Expression similar to "oh my gosh!" "Oh goodness", etc.
Next chapter: Late September if we're lucky. October(?) otherwise.
I just joined Tumblr! Come bother me while I decide what to put here blog/GalaxyThreads. ;)