In Love With The Darkness

A/N: Sorry again for the late update. Life and University just got in the way, then I focussed on 'Lost Before The Dawn' for a bit, then the Khan bug bit after I saw STID, so…here's the belated update. Enjoy.

Her head was pounding. Her entire body ached. She didn't know if she was up or down, inside out or outside in. Her entire being was one morass of chaos and confusion, as memory and not-memory swirled and collided, in pained synchronicity with the throbbing of her head.

She supposed it should be ironic that he was her anchor in all this. Him, the personification of Chaos, the God of Mischief and Trickery, that it would be he that brought her back to the light. He was calling her name, softly, his mouth caressing the two syllables of her name like a prayer and a sinful touch all at once. Eira. Eira.

It was her name and yet it wasn't. Two names, so different and so similar, echoed in her head and she just wanted to curl up in a ball and shout at the world to leave her alone.

Gradually, she became aware again. Of more than pain, more than confusion and the agony of her soul as centuries of lost memories slowly reasserted themselves. She felt the cold marble of the floor beneath her back, the softness of the silk against her skin, and the heated strength of the arms cradling her to a chest as hard as rock. A hand smoothed itself across her cheek, as her eyes fluttered reluctantly open.

"Eira…" he breathed in relief, as she blinked, frowning slightly. For a moment, Loki's austerely handsome features had been overlaid by another, all ice-blue skin and heated scarlet eyes, before she had blinked and the image faded away to reveal her…husband. Her lover, her Loki.

Her killer.

The thought distracted her from the pain in her head, as his hands stroked her body soothingly, as she stared up at him. "Loki…" she whispered his name back to him, the word imbued with a million different images, sensations and thoughts, as she flinched away from them mentally. Not now.

There was really only one thing she could possibly do in these circumstances. She hit him. Hard.

Her blow to the side of his head sent him sprawling onto his hip beside her, as he stared at her incredulously. She just glared at him, panting, mindless of the bodies strewn around them in various states of unconsciousness. She'd even forgotten Peregrine.

She went to hit him again, if for nothing more than to get some kind of reaction out of him, instead of him staring at her in shock. She saw his face harden as he caught her wrist, pinning her to the floor beneath him. "What in the Heavens' name was that for?" he demanded furiously, as she struggled, glaring at him.

"You killed me! That's what!" she snapped, and he paled, even as his eyes blazed with fury.

"I never wanted to harm you-!" he replied heatedly, as she eyed him murderously. "You threw yourself in front of Gungnir, I couldn't stop it-"

"I wouldn't have needed to throw myself in front of anything if you hadn't aimed it at your own brother, Loki," she retorted pointedly, ignoring his growl at his foster brother's name.

For a moment, he looked as if he wanted to snap something venomous back, his rage almost too hot to control, but it slowly calmed even as she watched, into a torn longing, as he cupped her face and she forced herself not to soften. "How did-…You should not have died. What happened?" he asked brokenly, and she mentally cursed herself as she did soften into his caress, as her own pain rose up inside of her at the memory his question evoked.

"I was still weak from Laufey's attack," she replied in a small, trembling voice, her strength waning with each word. "And…I was with child."

Loki's breath was a hissed inhalation, full of pain, fury and disbelief, as she met his eye through her own brimming tears. She forced them back, as his hands shook on her body. All her rage drained away, and his with it, as they sat, staring at each other, torn anew by the loss they had only just discovered together, unable to make the first move. Then suddenly, she was in his arms and he in hers, and he was cradling her as she cried quietly, for the lost child she had carried within her, that had effectively killed Eira the first time around, her magic too preoccupied with defending her unborn child to heal her, even though she did not know it until it was too late.

Gradually, her trembling lessened, as she raised her head from Loki's chest and stared up at him, gently stroking his face, and the tears on his cheek. "I am so sorry, Eir," he breathed, but she hushed him with a finger to his lips.

"No," she whispered. "No, do not call me that. My name is Eira now, Eir died a long time ago."

"How much do you remember?" he asked softly, still cradling her in his arms and she felt no desire to move away.

"Almost everything, but it's…fragmented and somehow incomplete. It'll take a while for my mind to process everything it's forgotten and relearned in such a short space of time," she murmured, before meeting his gaze. "For what it is worth, Loki, I forgive you."

Loki pulled her back into his arms at that, and she just held him, ignoring the trembling man in her arms. She had forgiven him, now he needed to forgive himself; task she was not certain he was capable of accomplishing. Seven hundred years of self-loathing, of pain and rage and anguish, all of it culminating in centuries of murder and destruction, all in her memory.

She wasn't certain anyone could forgive themselves that.

So she just held him instead, focusing on the feel of him in her arms, still so novel and yet familiar at the same time. She pressed a kiss to his hair, before he straightened slightly, as the sound of footsteps echoed in the hall outside.

Loki pulled himself upright, helping her up, but even as tired as she was, she didn't miss the wince as he straightened, and she looked down to find a gaping hole in his tunic, the pale skin beneath marred by a large, bleeding gash, the skin around it raw and burned.

"Loki," she hissed, feeling the heat against her palm as she pressed her hand to it, earning another wince of pain from him. "How did this happen? In seven hundred years, none have been able to injure you-"

She caught his eye, and narrowed her own at the look in them, before glancing around at the fallen Resistance fighters at their feet, as the pieces slotted together in her mind. "You did it on purpose," she muttered. "You let them get close enough, then let them injure you so it would awaken my magic. You knew I couldn't stand by and watch you harmed."

"I have no idea what you mean, my love," he told her calmly, as she glared at him.

"Don't play the innocent with me," she snapped. "You haven't been innocent since you learned to walk."

Loki smirked at that, as their servants burst through the doors, too little, too late. "Took them long enough!" Eira muttered under her breath, as Loki's weight sank against her a little too much. He was losing too much blood, even for him. "You!" she gestured to one of the servants imperiously, beckoning him forward. "Resistance fighters broke in and attacked us. Deal with these men; bury the dead and treat the wounded, but keep them contained. The King has been wounded, I need fresh water and cloths, now!"

"So forceful, my love," Loki chuckled weakly in her ear. "No magic?"

"My magic is still too weak to take a healing now," she replied curtly. "It'll have to be the old-fashioned way until I am recovered. Now come on!"

Before she could urge him on any further, he collapsed fully this time, and she looked down at his unconscious body in exasperation. "You always have to be difficult," she muttered to herself. "So dramatic," she breathed, before turning to two of the burliest servants. "Help me with him!"

Fighting back her own weariness, she directed the men to take Loki to her bedchamber, only to find Anna's unconscious body crumpled beside her bed. She knelt at her side, feeling for a pulse. To her relief, the handmaiden's pulse was strong and regular.

"Take her to her room, she is to rest until I summon her," she ordered one of the two menservants as they carefully laid Loki on her bed, before she stood and swept to Loki's side.

"Yes, my Queen," they intoned, before Anna was swept by one of them and carried out. A kitchen girl hurried in with the cloths and water she'd ordered, before curtseying and hurrying out when Eira dismissed her.

She took Loki's robes off with difficulty, slinging them over her stool, before she set to cleaning the wound on his torso. It was no longer bleeding, but it still looked painful as she washed away the blood. It would need magical help if it was to heal correctly.

Leaving the bloodied cloth in the bowl of water at her side, she used the rest to bandage the wound, before setting the detritus from her work aside and she just sat, beside her…husband. He was her husband, in fact and in spirit, as she stroked away the long hair caught across his face. He looked so pale, so vulnerable as he lay beneath her hands, and she felt herself shiver.

He would be unconscious for a while. She rose, and fighting down the shaking of her limbs, she undressed, casting the bloodstained gown aside and running a wet cloth over her body, before brushing her hair out and slipping on a simple green robe embroidered with gold. She took a seat beside Loki once more, as she leaned over him, stroking his forehead.

Despite her physical exhaustion, she could feel her power, her innate strength returning, and she shuddered again at the thrill of magic in her veins, no longer untamed and wilful, but her own, responding to her will as it always had. Taking a deep breath, since she was now all but lying down and resting, she reached down and placed her hand against his wound.

Calling forth her magic felt as easy as slipping a familiar, well-worn garment over her head. It poured forth, despite her exhaustion, and into Loki, seeking out his wound, knitting together severed muscles, restoring blood flow and sealing ruptured skin, before commanding the rejuvenation of the ruined skin around the gash, now a pink line of his skin which would eventually fade. When she pulled back, she gasped, drenched with sweat but not as drained as the last time, as Loki stirred beneath her hand.

"Eira?" he breathed questioningly, as she smiled tiredly.

"Here, my love. I've healed your wound," she murmured, as he shifted to look up at her with concern. "Although next time you try to manipulate me, darling, I will make you heal normally next time, and draw out the discomfort for weeks!"

"I am repentant," he replied firmly, and she snorted.

"Liar," she countered lightly, as he chuckled, and pulled her further down the bed and into his arms. She felt his smug satisfaction and rolled her eyes.

"You let me into your bed," he told her intently, as she sighed and looked up at him.

"I think this little game of ours has become irrelevant. I needed somewhere to place you while I did my work," she replied archly. "Don't go getting a swollen head."

He chuckled. "You've certainly returned with a vengeance, my love," he bent his head to hers, kissing her deeply, as she moaned and shifted beneath him, as he reached into her robe and clasped her leg, hauling it up and around his hip and inserting his thigh between them, the hard muscle riding hard against the juncture of her thighs. She gasped against his lips as pleasure washed through her, but she was too tired. The healing had only increased her exhaustion.

Loki sensed her tiredness, drew back and simply held her, as she lay quietly in his arms. Content with their closeness, neither spoke until Eira broke the silence.

"I am sorry, my love. I failed you," she breathed, prompting him to stare at her, puzzled. "Perhaps if I had been stronger, if I had fought harder, none of this would have happened."

"Eira," he sighed, half-warning, half-saddened by her thoughts. Eira continued determinedly. He needed to hear this.

"You let your past, the way you perceived your heritage, to dictate who you became," she whispered. "Instead of deciding for yourself what you should be, you became merely what others said you were. I should not have let you, I should have fought harder to keep you from the darkness-"

"Hush, now. Rest my love," he cut her off firmly, as she stared at him, his gaze more open and troubled than she suspected he preferred, as his hand stroked her loose hair. "It has been a trying day for us both."

"This is not the end, Loki," she told him sternly. As he looked at her questioningly, she simply nestled closer to him and closed her eyes. "Do not think that because I have regained my memories that I shall meekly fall in with your plans, my love. Too much has changed me, and I have experienced a life of suffering as much as a life of joy. This planet, these people, are mine to protect and I will find a way to break your control over them. I will give them back their freedom."

"Then the game is set, my love," he whispered back, making her smirk before exhaustion took over, and she was barely aware of him drawing the covers of them both, cocooning her in silk warmed by his body and the strength of his arms around her. His last words followed her into her dreams, as just for one night, she savoured the peace of being whole, of being herself again, at last.

"My Queen…"

A/N: To those wanting a lemon, it will be in the next chapter. I just didn't have the energy to write one into this chapter, despite my original plan to do so.

To be continued...