Home
These streets were so familiar, so unchanged. The car passed Alex's old school, which needed a lick of paint but otherwise hadn't altered. A tree had been cut down from in front of her cousin's house, and Mrs Bramley's house had a new front door. Some fields on the opposite side of the estate had been built upon, but once they turned in the direction of her parents' house, all was as it had been.
Like she'd never left, or only been gone a few months.
To a casual observer, the house she grew up seemed to have barely changed. It, too, needed fresh paint on the outside, and the old shed at the side of the driveway was still falling to pieces. The car on the drive was new, and the old net curtains were gone from the windows, replaced with slatted blinds. Even the ornaments on the windowsill overlooking the drive were new. Life had gone on without her. The lack of nets didn't stop her mother peering out between the slats at who'd pulled up on her drive.
The woman who came running out had aged more than she should have in the few years Alex had been gone. Lines etched her face and grey streaked her hair, and when she drew close Alex could see the wealth of worry she carried in her eyes.
She tried to apologise for all that worry when she held her mother tight, guilt knotting inside at the keening sound escaping her mouth.
"My baby, my baby—you're home."
She was swept inside, Romanoff's location a mystery, to the waiting arms of her father.
"They've been saying it was him," he whispered when he let her go, and they settled on the couch, her parents unwilling to lose real contact with her. "The man who destroyed New York, he was called Loki. The Loki you always talked about when you were little. Was he…were you..?"
"Yes," she admitted.
Her mother covered her mouth with a trembling hand. "I found the locket," she said. "The ones with snakes on it, and the man at the jeweller's said it was pure gold. We couldn't figure out where you'd got it from—"
"We found so many things in your room," her father said, "after you disappeared, strange things we couldn't explain. Your sisters all remembered when you were sure you had a friend called Loki."
Her mother's hand was in her hair, smoothing it down. Her own hair, once the same deep walnut shade, was now streaked with grey. "There were all kinds of rumours last year, stories that no one would confirm, about a hammer in the desert in America. We hired detectives and they could only embellish the rumours."
"You shouldn't have spent any money on that!"
Her father cut her off. "Shut up, you silly girl—of course we spent money looking for you!" His words were more affectionate than they were sharp. "We wanted you safe and home."
"But I told you I was going travelling…"
"And you expected us to just brush it away? We missed you, and when more than a month went by without hearing anything, we knew something was wrong.
"All those years," her mother whispered, "and I never even guessed." She took a sharp breath, trying to quell more tears. "Alex, sweetheart. What did he do?" But Alex knew even if Loki had hurt her, the way her mother was imagining he had, she wouldn't be able to cope with the knowledge of it. She needed comforting; she didn't need to know that Alex had been locked away in a cell for a year and a half. She didn't need to know about much of anything, not when it was going to upset her. She needed reassuring that the worst of her imaginings were far from true.
Alex gripped her hand. "Sshhh…it's okay. I left to be with him—I chose to—but ended up in America. He's never hurt me. I didn't even see him again until last week, and I was safe."
Apparently even that was bad enough, because she spent the next hour rocking her mother until the tears dried up. Then came the recriminations and her own tears; then finally, in the quiet stillness of midnight, a kind of understanding. She was home, she was healthy and that was enough to make her parents happy for now.
The days that followed were devoted to catching up with everyone she'd left behind. There were hugs and tears and kisses; she was passed from the arms of one relative to another, and more were always coming through the door, alerted by each other to her return. Her baby niece was walking and talking and going to school, and now she had another niece, as well as a nephew. She'd missed a wedding, she'd missed Mrs Bramley's funeral, she'd missed her sister gaining a PhD. She'd missed an overwhelming number of events, major and minor.
She moved between sisters, cousins and neighbours, with Romanoff a ghost at her heels, avoiding their curious questions about Loki and the battle of Manhattan.
"I really can't tell you," she said to her sister Lily, while her tiny niece Abby cooed in her lap. "Romanoff would have to kill me."
Lily shot a nervous glance in the agent's direction. She didn't even appear to be armed, but Alex doubted it would stop her. "That's not funny. You owe me something—I had to ask cousin Collette to take your place as bridesmaid and all she did was whine about the dress."
Her sister was joking, trying to guilt her into talking, but it didn't make her the guilt any less twisty in her stomach. Avoiding eye contact, she fussed with Abby. "I can't remember too much anyway. It's coming back slowly, but there are big holes. SHIELD rescued me when I lost my memory and I wasn't around for any of the scary parts."
She had no friends to contact. Those she'd made in school, she'd lost contact with when she went to university, and the people she'd met there had been mere acquaintances, pushed aside as her relationship with Loki deepened. Her sisters were the closest thing she had.
She did have a chance, in the evenings when her mother was loathe to let her leave the house, to rediscover herself as she'd been before she left. While her tastes had evolved from her teenage fashion sense, she did find a few items she still liked. Everything else was bagged up for charity shops. She had a CD collection and that all got burned onto an iPod so she could carry the music around with her, remembering how pop-punk bands and singer songwriters from five years ago had shaped her world, a tiny bit. She had new stuff to add to it, but there was nothing she would get rid of. There were favourite books and DVDs, and concert tickets, and jewellery (some family heirlooms, but mostly trinkets from high street shops). From her childhood bed she took a stuffed Smurf, something she'd once slept with every night. Something that predated Loki's involvement in her life.
She packaged it all up and her mother watched the process with wary eyes. She'd seen all her daughters move out before. This time around she was especially reluctant, for obvious reasons.
"I only just got you back! You don't have to go—you can stay right here. After everything you've been through…"
"I have to, mum. Things have changed, and it's not just 'cause of Loki." Speak of the devil, she found that bloody locket he'd got her when she was fourteen. She shoved it inside the duffel bag she was packing before her mother caught sight. "You've seen Romanoff. I'm caught in the middle of things bigger than all of us. I don't want to go, but for now I need to." Idun was waiting with a new apple, one that would make her mortal again, but they needed to be back in New York before she left. Fury had made it clear, via Romanoff, that until Loki was off the planet he wanted Alex where he could see her. She wasn't going to be left alone until she was free of Loki and every gift he'd given her.
On the last day, she found herself in the garden, the trees beyond the fence beckoning to her, her last chance to return to where it began.
Giving Romanoff the slip was easier than she expected, but then she suspected SHIELD probably had some way of tracking her down if she did escape their clutches. The path out to the woods didn't seem nearly so wild as it did when she was younger, the woods themselves barely more than a copse. That said, the garden was soon out of sight, the sounds of modern life being blanketed in peace, and it was easy to imagine herself a million miles from anywhere.
She followed the light from the shooting star all the way down the garden, through the gate and out into the woods. It was Lily who'd shown her how to unlock the back door, in case there was a fire, and Beth who walked her in the woods when she tired of the garden. Mummy would be annoyed if she knew Alex was doing this, but if she brought back proof of the angel then it'd be okay.
The path swelled into a small clearing, and she came to a halt at its edge. It was so different in daylight, so many years later, without the shroud of night twisting the shadows into demons. The path through the woods was harder to keep to without daylight, and as she got closer to the star's light she realised it was fire. That made her pause—fire scared her—but then she told herself to stop being a baby. She needed to be brave if she wanted to meet an angel.
Autumn had cast its first touch on the branches and a light carpet of fire-tipped leaves lay under them. Hard to believe this was the same place.
Abruptly the light from the star disappeared, and she was left in pure darkness. She stopped again, listening to the night around her. Was she too late? Then she saw the red eyes in front of her.
Red eyes like a wolf.
The eyes she remembered even when she could remember nothing else. Even with her perception so changed his voice still rang clearly in her head.
"You should have stayed in bed, little girl," said someone behind her, a man with the prettiest voice she'd ever heard. She turned to find him but then she saw the teeth beneath the red eyes. The monster—and she knew it was a monster—had inched forward, and it kept moving.
She didn't scream, though she wanted to. Instead, she braced like Beth had shown her, ready to punch the monster if it came any closer.
It leapt for her, and then she did whimper a little, but its huge, scaly body never landed. Instead, a black-clad figure collided with it, sending them both rolling off into the trees. Her angel had saved her. She couldn't see much the fight, so she shuffled closer, and gasped as she saw the angel dive out of the way of one of the monsters massive claws, before blasting the monster backwards with light. It roared, but the angel had already produced a spear from thin air and rammed it into the beast's belly. Alex winced and covered her face with her hands, peering through her fingers when the sound of thrashing stopped. The angel waved a hand and the monster disappeared, disintegrating into nothing. Then he turned and strode across to her.
"What are you doing here, girl?"
"I saw the shooting star. Are you an angel?" she asked, staring up at him with unabashed awe.
He laughed. "Far from it, child."
"Then how did you do that?"
"Magic." She considered this for a moment. He was wearing weird clothes, all in black, and she knew she shouldn't talk to strange men. But he had just saved her from a monster, and she could run home if she needed to.
"Can I see more?"
And he had shown her more, so much more—at first, simple tricks to delight her, then worlds she thought only existed in storybooks.
The trees blurred into a dappled canopy and she reached up to brush the tears from her cheeks. How could the man who'd so casually saved her life when she meant nothing to him, the same man who'd taken such delight in the adventures they shared, be the one who saw her entire race as something to crush beneath his heel? Who could kill without blinking and got aroused at the terror he inspired in others? Loki had always taken pleasure in mischief but nothing so craven.
She could no longer push away examining how she felt about him, and how she thought he felt about her. There was no other day to wait for—they were returning tomorrow and she would have to see him soon enough. But how did she decipher what he felt when he was the best liar in the universe? She couldn't trust him.
On one hand, he'd come to find her, put himself at risk to take her from the helicarrier when she really hadn't had a part to play in his plan to take over Earth—unless he'd been foiled before they got to the bit where she was needed. He'd told her he was just there to rescue her—a prince in shining armour—and he'd been protective of her the whole time. He'd even been tender, perhaps terrified, when she was hurt: the first time at his hands, the second time to stop the Tesseract. She hadn't even been conscious for the second event but all the witnesses, Romanoff included, seemed convinced. He'd been so bitter that she thought he was a monster, but he'd still risked his own life to save hers. She'd heard his refusal to be separated for her, and it was all too clear after the escape attempt before Idun's arrival that he could have left anytime he wanted. Thor and Idun were convinced at his feelings for her, and was there anyone in the universe who knew Loki better than Thor?
Then again, he'd known she was awake when he spoke to Thor, so his every word there had been designed to convince her as much as his brother. It always came down to the same thing: he lied, and he lied, and he lied.
He was arrogant, and he threw tantrums like the worlds most dangerous toddler, and he'd never once told her he loved her. But when she looked at all the pieces, there was no other reason for him to be this fixated on her. He thought her beautiful, had given her the nickname long before she knew what it meant, but she knew there were women on Asgard she could never compete with. She and Loki had a bond, built on friendship, something he'd never found elsewhere. He wouldn't admit anything to her, not now, because he'd already suffered one defeat, and to have to reveal himself like that, even to her, would be another humiliation. He couldn't afford to be vulnerable. It didn't matter. His every action revealed the way he felt.
The knowledge, bone deep, that he really did love her was the scariest thing she'd ever experienced.
It was easy to admit to herself, in the soft twilight, that she still loved Loki—the Loki she knew before she lost the first test. He had never been an easy man to deal with but despite his flaws, despite the way he believed the universe to revolve around him, he'd always made up for it. He built his walls so high it took her years to convince him to open the gate, but for those scant moments when he did let her in she'd found something worth holding onto.
A tiny part of her wanted to make bargains with the universe, that she would do anything to bring that Loki back. The rest of her was ready to tear that part out and bury it here, among the dying leaves, because a bargain like that would only come back to haunt her. She'd gambled enough in her life for him. There might not be a way of bringing him back anyway; better to believe him dead, mourn him and move on with her life.
The danger in that lay in how willing Loki was to let her move on. Given chance, he would chase her, if only for the thrill of the hunt, to steal back what he believed belonged to him. Other people could—would—get hurt. He had her painted into a corner. But she wouldn't be bullied by him, not anymore. Her choices were her own, and for every threat he made to manipulate her, she would make it known that he pushed her further away. Either he climbed his way out of the pit he'd fallen into or she would find some place in the universe to be free of him.
She stayed until the sun dipped level with the treetops, lighting up the clearing so it appeared the fallen leaves were aflame. She had to cross that barrier to return home, like walking through purifying fire, the tears burnt from her face.
A/N: Since this is probably going to be the last chapter before Christmas...Merry Christmas/happy holidays etc etc (unless you're reading this story months down the line, in which case ignore this bit, or you don't do Christmas). I do intend to keep posting on my usual three/four day schedule, but I'm at home at my parents' house for the next few days, on my old laptop, which is a PITA. I hope to get some writing done so fingers crossed I don't get sucked into watching All The Television.
(I did bring my Thor and Avengers DVDs home to inflict them on my family, though).
See you post food/telly marathon!