Chapter Eleven: Does This Dress Make My Butt Look…Naked?
It's a difficult burden to bear
When you're not quite there
We're nothing but walking spirits
We're only shadows
Screaming out but no one will hear us.
Graveyard, Lucy Shwartz
And I have died so many times, but I am still alive.
I Believe, Christina Perri.
Author's Notes: So apparently I lied about time frame. This chapter was like going to the dentist: something I had to do, even if I didn't particularly want to. *drops chapter on your alerts and runs away sheepishly*
Also, this was supposed to be much longer, but I got stumped on the next part of the chapter and said, "screw it, I'm publishing what I have", rather than making you guys wait even longer.
That chapter title…I should regret it. But I don't. And the cottage that Loki's staying in is from Chapter Five, if you recall.
Thanks: DrAnime203, Padaloki, Chelsea Di Marco Macbeth, OkieDokieLoki, and Sam0728, and new follows/favs. All of YOU are the reason I do this!
An especially large thank you to Padaloki, for beta'ing! She's awesome, so check her out.
Loki was sick.
Illness, like poison, washed through his veins and obliterated anything healthy. His stomach swam. His lungs drowned. His head pounded with a thousand needles. An ultramarine veil fell over his eyes sometimes, simultaneously blurring the world from view and muddying his mind.
The sickness felt like blue.
[A mass of blue energy hung over his shoulder and laughed when he fell, hauled him to his feet, dragged claws through his mind –]
The sickness felt like death.
[Death stared him in the eye and said, "you'll be mine soon" and chuckled –]
He had receded to that ramshackle cottage that he first stumbled upon before this poisonous journey had begun. The roof leaked and dripped, and the room smelled of dead leaves and must, but it was shelter and that was home enough for him.
His arm was his pillow as he lay on the dirty floor and trembled sporadically. The rain dribbled through the trees outside; he listened as it burgeoned into a full blown storm.
Thunder rocked the roof and tore a whimper from his throat.
Moments passed. He waited breathlessly, expecting Thor to break down the door. That was almost a pleasant thought: Thor would haul him away, make him answer for his crimes. Make him pay. He'd done terrible things, hadn't he? The memories were all fuzzy and distorted in his mind, but some were clear.
Especially that girl…
He shuddered, flinching when it sent fiery flash through his chest.
Second by second, time slithered by, and still no Thor. The tense muscles in Loki's back relaxed with a jerky spasm.
He sighed and tasted blood on his lips.
The rain tap – tapped on the window and asked to be let in.
To the off-kilter lullaby of drumming rain and hissing leaks, he fell into an uneasy sleep.
.oOo.
The girl slid down the wall. She looked at her chest with an almost comically perplexed expression and gasped.
Loki didn't laugh.
Instead, he shook.
There was a war, somewhere inside of him. He couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from, couldn't care.
Instead, he focused on the girl in front of him.
His hands. His hands shook as he stretched them towards her. He almost stopped. He wore her blood like crimson gloves. He pushed past the horror. Pressed on, determined to reach her.
[I am the monster that parents tell their children about –]
He had every intention of healing her. But his hands told him that it was too late; her skin was already growing cold against his.
["And don't you forget, little frost giant…"]
He looked into her face. She was looking back at him clearly. Perhaps this would be her last moment of lucidity, and she had to share it with him.
He had killed her, and she had to share that intimate last moment with him.
[Thanos leered, his hand wrapped effortlessly around Loki's throat,]
She was saying something, so soft and raspy that he couldn't be sure that she even knew what she was saying. But he did. He read it in her eyes, on her lips, in the hand that clutched his with surprising vitality.
It's okay.
It really wasn't.
It's okay, Loki.
I understand.
I forgive you.
["…you belong to me now, and you always will."]
Something inside of him splintered and he ran far, far away.
["There will be no crevasse, no barren moon where He cannot find you."]
.oOo.
He jerked awake, gasping for breath that wouldn't come without stabbing pain. His ribcage throbbed. He waited for his heartbeat – thrum-a-thrum-a-thrum-a – to return to normal – thump thump – thump thump – thump thump.
Gradually, he unfurled from the tight ball he'd slept in. Bones moaned and creaked arthritically like boughs cracking underfoot.
Standing was a monumental challenge, one he almost didn't complete. When finally his legs were straight beneath him, he shuffled laboriously for the door. It took several minutes of hesitant, wavering infant steps to make the journey, and the entire time he was sorely tempted to simply crawl. Treacherous feet carried him to a patch on the ground that had been serving as his fire-pit, but before he could start a fire, the world roared around his ears and spun before his eyes.
Not – again – his legs gave out,
and he became darkness.
.oOo.
Water –
Fire –
Snow –
Blood –
This time, consciousness slammed into her face like a fist. The remnants of her dream [nightmare] scuttled away temporarily to the back of her mind. Why was it lately that she couldn't wake up gradually, peacefully, normally? No, there was always something wrong; some nightmare, some ailment, some discomfort or something otherwise wrong. Would it always be like this?
Probably.
This time, the problem was all of the above. Her mind pulsed with the echoes of that nightmare, her body ached like a crotchety old tooth, she was clad in a papery hospital gown and covered with one of those ridiculously uncomfortable hospital blankets, and on top of it all, she could sense that she was in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. Most likely a hospital, considering how many times the word "hospital" cropped up.
"Ugh!" Anna hissed, voice rough with sleep and thirst. She vigorously [perhaps too vigorously] massaged her temples and tried to sit up. The latter wouldn't be so difficult if her entire body wasn't as stiff as a board. She only managed to slump forward halfheartedly. "I am getting so sick of waking up."
"Well, good morning, Sleeping Beauty," a familiar voice drawled nearby, making her jump. "How nice of you to join the land of the living."
Anna peeled one eye open tentatively, cringing as the mild light flooded her poor sensitive corneas. "Hey, Clint," she sighed. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that."
Clint was lounging in a chair with his feet propped up on the edge of her bed. He smirked, mildly amused, and focused on her one open eye. "I've been here the whole time, stupid. I thought you were supposed to have super senses?"
Pointedly ignoring his jab, she yawned and pushed her blankets down to her hips as she sat upright. "Yeah, maybe when I'm not coming back from the Great Beyond. Clear your throat next time. And get your nasty boots off my bed," groused Anna as she kicked his ankles.
With a ludicrously sassy eye-roll, he acquiesced. Clint folded the magazine in his lap, drumming his fingers along his thigh and pursing his lips. He glanced furtively at her and away again. Clint sighed. The air was quickly becoming quite pregnant – seven months along was her best guess.
For an assassin, he didn't really have much of a poker face, did he?
Eight months along. Nine. That bun was burning. It had better pop out soon.
Three, two, one –
Clint cracked. "So how'd you do that?" he asked feverishly, tilting his head to the side and looking for all the world like a tiny child waiting for story-time. "The dying-but-not-dying thing, I mean."
Zero. Bingo. There it was. Anna swallowed against the sour taste in her mouth, wishing not for the first time to have a glass of water. "That reminds me." She became very absorbed in picking at a loose string in her blanket. "What did I miss?"
"Well, you were out for a few days – hey." He squinted at her accusingly and leaned forward. "You're evading the question."
"I'm – not." She turned her gaze to the ceiling, feigning a struggle for words. That sour taste festered in her mouth still. "It's just – I don't know how to answer."
Sometimes truth seemed stranger than fiction. Even if she could find the gumption to tell the truth, he wouldn't believe her.
[Coward.]
Maybe.
"Hm." Clint grunted noncommittally, still giving her that suspicious glare. "Interesting." Without breaking eye contact, he licked his fingers and turned the page of his magazine. Only then did he turn away, focusing on the magazine and propping his feet up again as if nothing had happened.
"Hey." She shoved his foot weakly. "Feet down."
Flip. "Make me."
Anna huffed and started pulling medical equipment off [and, in one novel case, out] of her body and clambered out of the bed, gritting her teeth the whole way.
Alarmed, Clint stood up. "Hey, I don't think you should do that," he said over the chorus of alarmed beeps and shrieks emitting from the various machines and dohickies around her bed. "Annie. Bruce is going to flip his lid."
She waved her hand dismissively. "I'm good. Been through worse." She padded to the door.
"I really don't think you should go out there." Now, just the hint of a smile curled at his mouth. "And, nice ass."
Anna blinked once. Twice.
It was drafty down there.
Back there.
Hospital gown.
It tied in the back.
He could see her butt.
Clint was certainly not the first person to see her butt, and definitely not the first guy, and absolutely not the last, but he was her teammate. Some things were just meant to be personal. Like butts.
Blushing madly, she pinched the back of her paper gown shut and shuffled out of the room.
Clint laughed the entire time.
Coming up next: let's see, what is coming up next? Well, Thor becomes the king of story time, Bruce has an overprotective streak, Steve has his first in seventy years, Natasha makes a friend, Clint gets an earful, Peter gets an eyeful, and Tony...well, Tony is just Tony. So it looks like fluff is on the agenda.