So it goes with saying that only things I own with any connection to MARVEL I bought on Ebay or Etsy. MARVEL COMICS & MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE are their own creatures and I have nothing to do with either of them aside from the fact I enjoy reading or watching them, and am grateful for the ability to play in their world. I claim nothing, and I receive nothing for this, expect the pleasure of putting something out into the world.
You can also find this story on ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN under the same title and pen name along with a place to post suggestions.
Don't forget to check out the Photobucket album listed on my profile page too.
DAY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2ND 2012
2048 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
NORA ELAINE
Its a door, its just a door Nora, its just a damn...Its just a metal surface with several layers of different colored chipping green paint and a closed metal shutter padlocked over the obviously placed window. Its just intimidating, and in infuriating, its just the last thing between me and really seeing my friends.
Its just me being scared.
I... I basically ran to this door after he told me they weren't dead. My friends were alive! I didn't screw up, I didn't get them killed.
I was so sure, when Loki 'teleported' out of that room that I had set him on a warpath with a knife in his hand and blood on his mind. I snapped, I lost it, I gave up, I was ready for it to all go away and this inconsiderate fake Scottish asshole came in and ruined everything with the words of a field medic.
He said my friends weren't just alive, but they were being treated like humans again, they were with a doctor! I started sobbing again, I couldn't help it. Joy and agony, relief and guilt, I just couldn't hold it. It was less a roller-coast and more a hurricane in my head. But it didn't matter because I kept them after all.
Now a new dress and some gauze bandages later and I can't find the strength to put my hand on the door handle, because they are on the other side, and I don't know if I'm ready to see them!
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2ND 2012
2049 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
"DUNCAN BLACKWOOD" A.K.A ALEXANDER PIERCE JR.
I watched her slow down about a step before she stopped completely and it was enough of a warning to keep me from walking into the back of her. It didn't surprise me that she might be nervous, whether Barton was her 'brother' or not he still dulled his blades on her bones. You don't overcome feelings like that just by saying he didn't mean to do it.
It was the way her body almost rocked back a step that really proved that, if I wasn't already sure by the tremor in her hands. She is chickening out, so I take a little pity on her.
Resting my hand on her shoulder for just a millisecond I give her a tiny squeeze as those pretty mint chocolate eyes shoot to mine while I skirt around in front of her. Its silent but the communication is there. Its okay, I am going to keep you safe. Don''t worry, just trust me and take a breath. And like a good girl I watch her do just that. She closes her eyes and her shoulders lift as her chest expands, then she lets it out and her hands are steadier, just in time for me to knock on the door. "Sairrr Ah got 'er."
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2ND 2012
2050 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
LOKI
She wears my fashions beautifully. It was a pleasant nostalgia to see her wear my color again in the previous dress, but I must say I like this one more. The overlapping folds of its V neck line terminating into the double banded belt of her empire waist is a nod to the slanted strips in my own attire. I can almost entertain, and that this fashion choice might signify a transformation in her heart. The mortal chose well even if he hid it under a lab coat.
"Leave us." I order, prompting her to draw a nervous breathe at my clipped tone, before the sight of my soft smile reassures her I'm not upset, but am simply being a stern leader. The next thing my words draw from her is confusion however when I say "both of you."
The physician had been hidden from her view by the partition of the heavy white plastic in the far end of the room, but following my order he sets down what had been occupying his hands and parts those curtains. It is enough to give her a glimpse inside, and one I know she takes because of the hitched whimper that leaves her throat right before her knees knees start to shake.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2ND 2012
2051 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
NORA ELAINE
I felt his hands catching me, those leather sleeves and metal clad arms wrapping around my waist as his strength and his height more then anything secures my feet back under me, and I let him because I was wrong. I thought, maybe I was almost ready to see them again. I was wrong. I wasn't ready to see them like that!
I hate doctors. I hate hospitals, and medicine so much. I hate it because its what I woke up to. I had no idea where I was, or who I was, but I had needles in my arms and tubes in my throat and I tried to take them out, and 'they' came in. Hands in white coats with more needles and more tubes and petty tiny words that they thought would make it all better! I broke one of their arms before they won.
I hate everything about 'modern medicine' so much, and now I can see my family dressed in all of it. Tubes and needles and unconsciousness, and I just can't stand it!
"Take them off, I gotta take them off them!" I should have known he wouldn't let me. I barely rolled my foot forward before his arms abandoned their slack and I feel his chest even more acutely against my back.
"Shh, no..." He starts, with the tone of reason in his intent, except my ears aren't willing to hear it. "No, Loki, you're hurting them!"
There's a second, where struggling actually seems like an option. A second where deception seems like a possibility. A second before he turns me in his hands and presses on my heart with more words. "I have done this, for you my dear. Why does it not please you?"
"Because its not what I want!" He did this for me? He thought THIS was what I wanted? How could he. I wanted my friends, healthy and strong, even if they were still chained. I didn't want those chains to be needles and IV's though! "Its not! I..."
"...Wanted save them from the hands of death." he finishes for me. "And they are Arnora, I have kept my promise." I thought hands was the heavy word in that sentence, crashing in on me with a foreign sensation mixed with my own emotions at the mention of death, but the word promise is what really hits me with hope.
Promise, a promise. I steel myself again. It takes me squeezing the tears out of my eyes, it takes my clenching my teeth to trap the breath in my lungs, it takes me shaking my head before I let it out to sooth the burn in my chest, it takes a steady breath transforming into a shakey sob as I look over my shoulder at them again, struck by that horrible image all over.
He made an assumption, it was wrong, but it was so right at the same time. I didn't actually pay for this with one of his promises, I was too upset for that kind of logic at the time and the word never left me. But I would pay it in a heartbeat and I will now. I'd start reciting it like a song, except I'm not ready for words again just yet, so I I nod heavily and let him pull me back into a hug.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2ND 2012
2055 HOURS
SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER
LOCATION UNKNOWN
LOKI
Memory is a fine ally, but an ally you cannot separate from its traitorous partner, sentimentality. The words I spoke to her brought forth both.
I held her like this once, yet it wasn't like this at all. We weren't standing, we were on the floor in each others arms and it was her hands that wouldn't let go of me. She shook with fear and pain, and overwhelming relief. Both of us were relieved. Her neck was just as raw and bloody as my hands, and bared the bruises of that coil crushing my knuckles into her flesh as I tried to pull it off.
I let something into Asgard, and it attacked what was mine to prove its power!
My own schemes almost got her killed because I involved her in them. I thought I lost her with that, and then this lovely creature lied to Odin, taking the chance to condemn her own enemies while she choose to defend me, and she came back to my halls that night!
'It' did make me loose her though in the end. It took something it had no right to, it took what she valued most in life, and when she came to me to help her get it back I made a horrible mistake. I made that thing pay for my loss of her, dearly.
I never thought I'd earn her forgiveness for that, and then I thought I'd never have the chance. Heimdall can see everything he casts his gaze toward, and many go to him to look where they cannot. Her father did that, but Heimdall could not not find her, he only saw mourning and ruin.
He believed she was dead, and he blamed me for that and sought vengeance. We continued to believe that for six hundred years. I continued to believe that all chance was gone. Those thoughts make me hold her tighter, half to prove she is still here and half to prevent her from leaving me again.
"I love you Arnora, I will give whatever you ask, just stay with me." I can hear her breathe out as my arms press in but she doesn't protest the strength of my grip. She simply looks down at her hand resting on my chest, and lets her eyes follow it as it trails upwards to mine as her thumb teases the line of my jaw.
"I... I've never been in love Loki." The admission stings for a fraction, with the implication it might mean she includes now in that 'never'. That thought though is only a half thought because I can see in her expression and eyes that there is more to be said. "I c-couldn't be, not with... "
She cannot finish it, but as her eyes fall back to her hand and is I feel her trembles I accept that she doesn't need to. I know what her silences speaks for her. How could she ever allow herself to ever really love anyone, when she feared such a large part of it?
I don't want to show her the pity that makes me feel for her, but I don't know what else to offer her. I had those connections, even if they ended up as only deceptive sweetness, I still had them. But to have to actively deny yourself that for the sake of your sanity and health is fate being cruel beyond measure.
It makes her all the more beautiful to me as she tilts her chin to accept the touch of my hand and smiles at me despite the tear that rolls down the slope of my fingers.
"I've only..." she finds the need to take a short breath to keep her words from shaking before she drives on. "...ever been able to have friends. I won't pretend this doesn't scare me a little." She adds quickly, and continues even quicker despite the sharp frown that forms on my face. "The idea that everything I know, I was told, might all be a lie..."
I can feel her shivering softly, which has nothing to do with my cool touch. I can see her eyes fidget as they fail to focus on my collar before all of her stills as she closes her eyes with gentle force. "But you have me now, and I'd like you to show me what its like, please."
"Which one my dear?" I ask after a pause when it becomes clear she isn't going to elaborate. Her answer couldn't have possibly made me happier, and before I let my logic convince my desire better of it I press to her cheek, risking as close as I dare to her lips. She replies,
"Both. The truth and love."
NOTES FOR THE READERS:
DUNCAN'S ACCENT TRANSLATIONS:
Sairrr Ah got 'er. = Sir I got her.