NINE
Shining light in every soul I know
Guide me through the night
Bring me home
Soon, I'll be there soon
Soon, I'll tell you all that I've been through
Change, could it be I've changed, somehow
Shining light in every soul I know
Guide me through the night
Bring me home
Close your eyes and all your fear will go
Gravity and love pull me home to you
Soon
- "Soon," Kate Havnevik
"If we do this - "
"When we do this." Alana corrected. "You're not getting out of it, Loki."
He sat on the floor of the living room across from her. The early morning light shone through the windows and played across her face, illuminating her watchful eyes and determined expression.
Too determined. He sighed. "You need to know what's going to happen, how it's going to work."
"Go on," she said.
"I told you that you were assigned to guard me."
When she didn't interrupt, he pressed on. "That you had special powers." Here, she rolled her eyes. He reached out and turned her face towards his again. She trembled a bit when his fingers grazed her jaw and he quickly dropped his hand, mentally cursing. He wanted to caress her face, to touch her, to hold her like he once had, but he could not.
Oh, how the times had changed.
"You did. You were – how did you put it? Impossible."
She scoffed. "Loki, I'm normal." She spat the word like a curse. "I'm normal, I'm not anything special, I'm not important- and you, you're, you're a god. A prince. I don't – I can't - "
"Alana." His whisper cut her off. "Don't ever say that. Don't ever think that. You are so, so important. So special. You are the only one in a thousand years to steal my heart so fully. Don't you understand, Alana? You are the only light in my sky, you carry my heart with you wherever you go - "
"Stop."
She breathed deeply, closing her eyes. When she opened them, her gaze was remarkably steady. "Just… stop. Please. I need… time. To think about this. About the 'us' you say exists. And I can't… not now."
She met his eyes. "I need my memories first."
"All right," he said softly. He paused for a second, collecting his thoughts, the angry and the fearful and the worried ones, and hid them away. Concentrate or she will die.
"The mind is a complex thing, Alana." As he spoke, his fingers danced in the air and a map of her mind appeared, floating, composed of pure light. "Some say that it is only an organ, some a physical place." The image on the map zoomed across plains and valleys. Alana was transfixed, reaching out in an attempt to touch it. "The Aesir have always considered it more like a map." A huge stone wall, miles high, rose up on the image, black and foreboding.
"What's that?" Alana asked in a hushed tone.
"Your wall."
He waited for that to sink in, a small smile appearing on his face as her jaw dropped. "This is… this is my mind?"
"Mmm. The people who wiped your memories placed the wall there. 'Wiped' though, is not the right term. It is impossible to truly erase one's memories, but they can be blocked, concealed. Behind this wall are your memories."
The look of longing on her face was absolute. "My family?" she whispered. "Are they… are they behind the wall?"
Oh, Alana. I'm so sorry.
"The memories of them are," he answered cautiously.
"Please," she breathed, turning to him, "please, Loki. I need to know, how – help me. Please."
He bowed his head. "I will try, but Alana – I have to warn you. This has never been done before, never. It exists only in theory. I have my magic, but your telepathy is suppressed, and I'm not sure if - "
"Telepathy?"
He pursed his lips. Damn. "Yes, your telepathy. That was one of your powers. Your eyes - " and here he gazed into them – "would change color, change to the eyes of whoever you were telepathically reading."
She looked stunned, and when he tried to continue, she held up a finger. "One – one moment. I just need… to take it in."
She closed her eyes and when she opened them they were suspicious. "You said 'one of my powers'. Did I have more?"
"Telekinesis."
She breathed deeply, and then said, "Okay then. That's… that's…" She shook her head. "Never mind. You can… keep going."
He assessed her, then asked, "Are you sure?"
She nodded once.
"The theory I found requires another person with many of the same memories as the ones that were lost. But it was intended to be for Aesir only – Midgardians simply cannot connect with minds like Aesir can. Since you have your telepathy, I believe that it could be possible, but it will be difficult. And painful."
He lowered his eyes. "And I need you to trust me."
A heavy silence settled over the room, filling every corner with her hesitation. "I can't," she finally whispered. "I just can't, Loki."
His heart cracked and he said, "Alana, unless you trust me enough to let me into your mind, I cannot help you."
"And I can't trust you until I have my memories back."
Thoughts raced through his mind, how to make her trust him, what could he do? He wasn't sure but maybe… just maybe…
"Then give me a memory," he said, "not one of me, but… I don't know. Perhaps something from when you were small, a memory you can trust me with."
To his surprise, she nodded slowly, saying, "All right. But how do I…"
"Close your eyes," he whispered, pulling her hands up and placing her fingers on his temples. She did so hesitantly, slightly unsure, but nonetheless maintained the contact. "Now, think of the memory. Something small, simple… and try to send it through your fingers. I'm lowering my barriers, all right? Just push your way inside my mind."
He could feel her fingers trembling slightly against his temples as he took down his barriers, exposed and vulnerable like he had not been in years and years. And then he felt her, a faint warmth inside his head, but the light hurt a little and he inhaled sharply. Alana flinched and tried to take her fingers away, but he grabbed her hands and pressed them to his head again, he needed her. And a foreign memory flashed across his mind, at first just vague impressions, but then the image finally solidified and he was swept up in her past.
Cold. Snow. Happy. And then something hit him in the face and a young boy was laughing, his brown hair covered in snow, and he feels himself gathering snow into his hands and throwing it at the boy, who shrieks happily and runs at him, tackling him to the ground. "Alana!" a voice shouts. "Careful!" "He started it," he yells back, then yelps as the boy dumps snow down the back of his jacket.
She pulled away abruptly, breathing heavily, eyes cautious. He gave her a hint of a smile. "Oliver?" he asked. She nodded. "A snow day…" he said, still feeling the cold on his back. "One more," he whispered. "Please?"
"But it hurt you," she responded, looking unsure. "I don't want…"
"Alana," he breathed, "nothing, nothing hurt me more than having to leave you."
A look of slight annoyance flashes across her face. "Loki - " she began, but then he pulled her hands to his temples again, feeling her enter his mind for the second time.
He's walking behind her now, through a crowded hallway full of people, seeing her hair sway down her back, a backpack on one shoulder and then he is running behind her as she bursts out of the school doors into the rain, bumping into a light-haired boy who grabs her in his arms and spins her around. She laughs, a clear, bell-like sound and he smiles. He tucks that strand (my strand, Loki thinks hatefully, get away from her, you bastard) behind her ear and kisses her gently, her hands coming up to hold his face and -
Loki pulled away from her abruptly, standing up, towering over her, fury in his eyes. "Who was he?" he growled.
She looked up at him incredulously. "What?"
"Who. Was. He."
A hint of a smile began to play across her face. She rested her chin on her hand and asked, "Are you… jealous?"
"Tell me. Now."
She grinned and said, "You are."
And then he couldn't take it anymore and leapt at her, ignoring her shriek of sudden surprise and fear, pinning her to the ground in a steel cage of arms, his face inches from hers. "Who was he?"
"Loki," she said, gasping, "Loki, I was fifteen. What the hell?"
She suddenly became hyperaware of the touch of his hands on her wrists, of the feel of his body on hers, of those intensely jealous green eyes staring into hers.
She turned her head to the side, breaking the spell. "Let me up. Now."
His hands retreated, his body disappeared from hers and she felt a strange sense of loss, but shook it off and scrambled to her feet. "What the hell was that?"
His back was to her now and his hands were clenched, but when he spoke, his voice was quiet. "Forgive me."
She reached out and touched him on the shoulder, but he quickly moved away from her hand. "It's just when… seeing you like that, happy. That is why I wanted to leave. So you could have that again. Be that again. Find someone… who would not hurt you."
"Loki…" she whispered, but he cut her off, brushing off the moment. "Now. Do you trust me enough to enter your mind?"
She steeled herself, setting her jaw. "Do it," she said simply. And then his hands were on her temples and he pressed his forehead to hers briefly, for a millisecond, and then entered her mind.
It hurt, not the sharp pain of the flashbacks, but a dull ache that spread throughout her mind, screaming, Invader! Intruder!
She felt completely exposed, vulnerable, panicked, and without trying to, her barriers began to come down, but he spoke to her inside her mind, a whisper, a thought. Relax, Alana. It'll hurt less, I promise. And slowly she accepted the strange pressure in her head and let him show her a memory.
She's lying next to – herself? – and the other-her is speaking. "When I was sixteen, my parents were killed." No. No. No. It can't be. "It was my fault." No. No. No. "I'm a telepath. And telekinetic. When I was sixteen, it just… started happening. It was like a section of my brain had been unlocked. I could read minds, move things… I thought I was going crazy."
"Most of my friends left. I never told them, but they didn't understand, they were… scared, I guess. Of me. And then, one day, there were these boys. They weren't very smart, but they had realized that something was different about me. They cornered me one day after school, and tried to find out. I refused to tell them anything, but I got so mad that the walls just came down. On them."
The memory continues and she is frozen as it sweeps her away. It can't be. Oliver, sweet Oliver, shot because of her? Her parents murdered in the hallway of their home? And Loki's reassurance, his story, they do not heal her like they used to. How can they have erased that? she thinks. How?
The memory ends and his mind withdraws from hers and as she came back to reality, she found herself clutching at his chest and sobbing, deep, wrenching sobs that hurt all over, my fault, my fault my faultmyfaultmyfault and he stroked her hair as she cried into his armor, not Oliver, please no and she wished that she were dead too.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered and held her tight.
She locked herself in her room that night.
Loki could hear her crying through the door and pressed his head to the wall. The nightmares would start again, he knew, for her. His nightmares had never left him, after she had gone.
He knew that he would only cause her more pain in the future, torturous pain, and he wished that he could feel it instead of her, could shoulder the burden instead of her, but he could not.
And he remembered that boy that had kissed her when she was fifteen and shame filled him for the way he had reacted. That was who she should be with, that nameless boy, she could have had a normal life, a family, children. Instead she had him, a tortured demon with no future, causing her pain at every opportunity, a lost soul with no hope if she was not there.
He entered his old room, seeing few changes, but for a thin layer of dust coating everything. He looked down at his armor, his familiar leather and gold, supple, comforting, but it reminded him of too much, of New York and of Thor, and he doesn't think he wanted to be that person anymore. He only wanted to live for her, and without her, he will not live.
He refused to. Not again.
Alana pressed her face into her pillow. The tears had stopped now, replaced by numbness.
I was – am – a telepath. And telekinetic. And because of this, I was captured and my family was killed.
And Loki's past… so full of rejection. Fear. Anger. Hatred. He loved her, she knew, but he scared her a little too.
She punched the pillow, wiping angrily at her eyes. She would not fall in love with him. Not again. She would get her memories back and he would leave. For good.
But then she thought of his arms holding her tight as she cried, how he gave her hope on the roof so long ago, of those lost memories of the kisses they had shared… how she had loved him, promised to pull him back from the dark.
She rolled over, hoping sleep would come quickly and deliver her from her confused, tangled thoughts.
Damn you, Loki. Why does everything have to be so complicated?
A/N: You guys are all awesome. Thanks for all the support. :3
I couldn't have gotten this far without you.