Why it hurts

A/N I own nothing, everything belongs to awesome Marvel!

Raven gasps when she sees her freidn on the floor, curled up defensively, hands over her ears. Lena is muttering something, and Raven hears her voice get louder and more panicked.

Charles reaches inside her mind, looking for something calm to bring the front. Her barriers are down, and he gets inside her mind easily to begin searching. Her fear hits him like a wave; she is terrified, alone. He finds no calm thing, because every part of her brain is focused on the fear, the pain and the voice Charles can hear echoing.

'Sleep!' He tells her, and she does. Her small form goes limp, and the people in the room stare at her.

Charles goes to pick her up, but Alex stops him, pointing out unhelpfully that Charles probably isn't strong enough.

When they get downstairs to where Moira and Aiysha are, they lay Lena down and then retreat to the other side of the room. They're confused; as to why such a strong person could break down like that.

Charles and Raven stay by her. Charles removes the block in her mind, and he smiles slightly when he sees she's been trying to wake herself from the sleep. But the minute he does, the fear comes rushing back, and she sits up, eyes wide, repeating the same words.

"Please. Please don't hurt me." Lena says, and looks around her. Her eyes close for a second, and then she opens them again.

Raven hugs her.

"It's okay Lena. You are here, with us, and we won't hurt you."

"No, of course you won't. Thank you. I'm sorry for flipping out like that."

"Don't be sorry." Says Charles. "Could you tell me why it happened?"

"Oh, it's nothing." Replies Lena quickly.

She moves to get up, but the minute her legs support the weight she falls on the floor in a heap. Raven helps her back up onto the dining room table/ medical bench and Lena sighs.

"Would you guys mind if I told you to go away for a while?"

"No, no, of course!" They all says in unison, then they troop out.

When they reach the living room, they begin to fret about their friend.

Charles has some thoughts of his own. On the train from Seattle, Lena told him she was kidnapped by Thor's brother Loki. He wonders if this has something to do with it.

Charles contacted his vague friend Tony Stark a few days after Lena came back to the CIA base with him. This was to ask him about Loki, but Stark only told him a few things when Clint Barton, who was training with Stark that day, realised Stark was talking about Lena, and practically wrestled the phone off him.

From Stark, Charles learnt that she trusted him, and went to Asgard of her own free will. He wouldn't tell him why she went with Loki, and pretended he didn't know. He told him in Earth time, she was there for two weeks. That was all he could say before the Hawk's hearing picked up, grabbed the phone and began to lecture Charles on keeping Lena safe. Clint also asked him to try and persuade Lena to at least contact him, if not meet with him. Charles didn't need to use his mutation to tell Clint missed his friend desperately.

'Hey. I didn't realised you contacted Stark. Doing a bit of stalking are we?' Lenas voice in his head makes him jump. 'I need to explain a few things I think. No, just to you.' She says as he opens his mouth to tell the others.

Charles has to stop himself running down the corridor, and he has to admit to himself it isn't just curiosity that is making him want to find her.

His heart beats a hundred miles an hour when he sees her there, smiling slightly.

Her smiles fades when she thinks of what she's going to tell him. She only ever told Clint this, and he knew most of the story already.

"Don't say anything." She raises a hand to stop him from speaking. "I need to talk quickly before I stop myself from saying anything. When I was with the Avengers, when I was around 22, I met Thor's brother Loki. I can't tell you why I decided to go to Asgard with him, because I don't know this myself. He was nice, I suppose. But then something happened to change that. He used to smile, and talk to me. Gradually he spent more and more time alone, until eventually he sent guards to put me in the dungeons. When he first came to see me, he told me it was to tease the other Avengers. I had left their ranks to go with Loki, and now he had me prisoner. What happened in that white walled cell, with the single white stool in the middle, I can't tell you. I'm not to sure on it myself, I just know it's the reason I shrink at the sight of white paint, and the reason I wake myself every morning, screaming for the pain to stop."

Charles feels his stomach drop a thousand feet. Clint asked him to keep her safe, and instead he lead her into a room identically to one she was held prisoner in. Guilt surges over him.

Lena slaps him, hard, across the face. "No!" She tells him. "I won't have anyone feeling guilty for what happened to me. There is one man guilty of this and no other! I won't have every close friend I ever have worried about me, convinced that what Loki did to me was their fault! So shut up!"

She feels tears form in her eyes, and she jumps out of bed. Lena feels slightly relieved when her legs hold her weight, and she sprints off down the corridor. She stole the map of the house from Charles' head and knows exactly where the long hallway of rooms is.

The first door on the left has the name Raven carved into it, the second Charles. Lena pushes open the third door on the right, and curls up on the bed, energy gone.

She doesn't really know why she told Charles all of that, although she didn't tell him everything. It's true she doesn't know what Loki did to her, but she knows perfectly why she went with him to Asgard. She was in love with him, and him with her. Before everything went wrong, Loki was a good man, and she loved him.

That's why she's so scared. Charles is perfect, but she can't shake the feeling something will happen.

And, on top of that, Aiysha's vision haunts her. She's scared of dying, and scared for what will happen to Charles.

She loves Charles, as much she desperately tries to deny it. And he keeps his feelings behind the barrier she helped him place in his mind, that would alert him if she tried to take it down.

She's a mess.