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 THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012

0527 HOURS

SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER

LOCATION UNKNOWN

NORA

My hands are green? It was a blink, and then I was sitting in a bed, again, trying to look at my arm and all I saw was soft green threads. "Arnora?!"

I didn't even remember he was there, and I must have looked startled because the next thing he says is "Shh, it is alright" as he gently wraps his fingers around my palm and lets his thumb trace my knuckles in a reassuring way. "You must slow down."

That confuses me for a second, until my ears make me register the fact that I'm breathing hard. Its like I just ran or something, I can feel my pulse pounding, and its all too much.

He sees that too, I can tell as he shifts closer and lets his other hand cradle the back of my head. "Shh, close your eyes." he instructs, intending I guess to walk me through this, and thats ok with me because I really feel like I'm going to cry again. I just want somebody else to take control for a second. "Focus on my voice, there is nothing for you to fear here, it was only a dream."

That he knows I was dreaming isn't a surprise. I feel asleep with my head in his lap like a child desperate for comfort and security. He most likely was awake the whole time, watching me. He probably saw me fidgeting in my sleep too right before I woke up with a start.

I think, after I stop having to worry about crossing over the edge into hyperventilating and an anxiety attack that I'm more surprised that Loki is wrong. I wasn't afraid of what I saw in that dream. I was upset by it, and I admit the content of it was distressing, but it was as if I couldn't truly feel afraid until I woke up. As horrible as that dream was I felt safe in it?!

"Shh" his voice echos again in my ear, this time closer just like he is. The hand that held mine abandons it and guides his arm to circle around my back instead, trailing unexpected warmth over my spine. "Focus on me Arnora, regain your calm first, we will get to those thoughts after, shh."

I take comfort in that unusal warmth of his flesh now, grateful for something else other than the cold. I think I am scared of the cold, though I never was before. There was something horrible connected to that cold, I know it. How I saw myself, those people, those children, that knife with my blood on it, how could it not be something horrible?

Loki called it a dream, but I know what those are. They are fragments of reality being processed by your subconscious mind as it tries to categorize your memories. If any of that was a memory I don't want it. I don't, I don't, "I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't want it, I don't."

THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012

0531 HOURS

SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER

LOCATION UNKNOWN

LOKI

I knew she would not be calmed so easily, I could feel it in her, the small tremor in her muscles growing steadier even as I spoke failing words to her. It is why when she started her frantic chant that I did not make a very strong attempt to restrain her, I knew it would only make the situation worse.

I tried to pull her closer when she first pressed her palms into my chest, but when that push bordered on a strike as she repeated it I made the choice to let her slip out of my grasp and watched her scramble to her feet off the bed.

They did not take her very far. Once she was off the bed she slowed to a stop with her back toward me and brought her arms up to her chest out of my view. I let that continue until I realized what she was about to do.

After she fell asleep from her drinking I carefully removed the gauze from her hands to tend the broken skin of her knuckles. One by one I painted her cuts with the dust of a stone coating my fingertips, then after each tiny injury was banished I retrieved the package. It seems so long ago that I brought it into this room, but the timing did not seem appropriate until now. A pair of emerald green silk gloves long enough to brush her elbows, and they looked as lovely on her skin as I knew they would.

But now if I let her it appears as if she intends to rip them apart to get them off her. It seems I startled her a little as I stepped up behind her, the flinch and the sharp way she turns to look at me all the while curling her arms to herself possessively leave little room for any other conclusion. "Shh" I sooth again before holding out my hand in pleading invitation. "You are only going to ruin them with this haste. Let me help you?"

There is a pause, and then her body seems to shrink in on itself as she makes her choice, and breathes out a broken sigh before closing her wet eyes and shaking her head sharply as she lifts her arms in offering. "Okay."

It is almost heart breaking, and it might be if I was not so pleased and sure on my guess about what upset her, she remembered something.

THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012

0534 HOURS

SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER

LOCATION UNKNOWN

NORA

I could feel that knife. No, it wasn't a knife. It was a burn, Nora. You know it was. They told you. We were meeting one of our contacts. It didn't happen in the cold. It was warm where we were. It was in Bangkok near the Khlong Toei district market. I wasn't being carried, I wasn't hurt. Mom and Dad were already in the car, a turquoise Volkswagen Polo. We were in civilization, not some frozen wasteland. It came from a high rise and went through the back window. I hit my head on the concrete foundation of a pillar, and was sprinkled with burning debris. I wasn't bleeding, THERE WAS NO KNIFE! It was a burn, and if I just look at it I can prove it to myself.

Thats why I was tugging at the hem of those gloves so hard. I just needed to look at that scar, if I could do that then everything would be fine again. Then he was behind me and for half a second I was sure he was going to stop me.

He wasn't going to though, he wanted to help me, so I didnt' ruin what had to be a gift from him. He probably thought I hated them or something. That made me feel horrible, but all all I could do was slump my shoulders and nod my consent before I gave him my hands. Let him do it, he owns me now so why dispute that possession at my hands.

He makes it intimate, because it is intimate. When you spend so long living behind a wall of cloth and avoidance, letting someone take anything off you is an enormous step, heavy with trust and personal connection. He seems to know that, and the way he does it makes it that much more.

Pantomiming a caress up my wrist he doesn't actually touch me until his fingers curl around my palm and he gently urges me to turn it over, changing the position of them from held up in surrender to simply held. The hand that did the turning then trails back down, his knuckles and the back of his finger sliding down to my elbow while the other hand claims my fingers as he pulls the sheer fabric slowly upward inch by inch until it drifts over the highest tip of my fingers and sways in his hand.

"Loki, please." Part of me appreciates that he is exercising such care and patience in this, but another part of me just wants this to be done. Hearing the notes in those words he nods his understanding before he presses a kiss to the silk over the other palm and then removes that one as well and crushes my denial to death under the truth.

Its wrong, it doesn't look like a burn at all. It doesn't look like they grafted skin over it, the shape is wrong. The shape is exactly the same is the edges that knife made. "Its wrong, oh god Loki its not right!"

THURSDAY, MAY 3RD 2012

0538 HOURS

SUBTERRANEAN BUNKER

LOCATION UNKNOWN

LOKI

Hearing my name spoken in her distress I tried to pull her back so I could offer the comfort I assumed she needed and would welcome. I was wrong on one count and might be on the other as well. She pushed my hand away, the suddenness of it almost stinging the skin is it connects, and her steps pull her away from me.

"No!" she does not yell, but she does not need to. Even without the volume her voice conveys the level of her raging emotions just fine. "No, don't you touch me." It is half a plea and half a command as I watch her hand clutch so hard at the point just below her wrist that her shaking fingertips turn white.

"I don't want it." She sounds almost angry, as if that sentence is meant to be an accusation. "I don't want it." But the next one just sounds frightened. "I don't want to remember, I don't."

"Arnora" Her eyes meet mine at that name, the look in her pretty features are so lost, confused and needy that it stings as I continue. "You remembered something, it is okay to be scared, such revelations are going to be intense, but that is no reason to stop trying."

"I dont want it." she repeats, but this time there is something darker and stronger in her eyes. "I don't want what you want, this is what you want. I was happy."

"You were lied to, my dear." I try to reason, and that proves to be a mistake. The darker note in her eyes solidifies into angry offense. "I. Was. Happy. Loki!" She huffs, shaking her head as she catches her breath and steels her jaw. "I had a job, and a 'family' and friends, I knew who I was, and my life was what I wanted it to be!"

I want to say something to that, but she does not give me a pause to do so. "And then you come in here, with 'your' answers, and your 'purpose' and 'plans' for me, just assuming I should and would accept them. My best friend tried to kill me because of what you did to him!"

"Arnora, you..." I try to caution her, feeling the current of my own emotions start to rise but then she makes a request that succeeds only because the shock of it.

"Shut up!Shut up, this is your fault!" She says, now making a clear accusation as she lets her eyes land on her thigh, looking through the dress and handprint scars to the reason they were created beneath all of it. "You took my friends, my family away from me, you took my home Loki, so you could have me."

"Well I'm here." She stands taller, her hand sweeping over the expanse of her. "I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere." She finishes with a bit of a chuckle. "But what gives you the right to want my sanity too?"

I close my eyes and shake my head at the question. "No Arnora." I let my expression and my outstretched palm plead with her. "I am not trying to take that. They have been lying to you my love, I am simply trying to show you the truth of what you are."

"I'm a human being!" She counters with an angry hiss, the language of her body bordering on aggressive. "I'm Nora Elaine, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D! I was born in MAINE!" She finishes with a shout before making herself stop and steady her breath.

"Arnora, please, I do not want to fight with you." I try again, but she does not even acknowledge that sentence. She just continues with her tirade. "You come into my life, like you belong in it, and tell me I'm not human! I'm not like everyone else on this planet! What right do you have to do that? Do you have any idea what that feels like?!"

"I do." I say matter of factly with a notable lack of passion in my voice." And so I fill the role of Odin at last. Those words do not please her, they only seem to offend her.

She scoffs a little in disbelief. "Really Loki, you do?" It is a rhetorical question and we both know that. "Because I've seen pictures and heard the stories, I can't see anything that makes you different that any other Asgardian or you brother..."

"DO NOT TALK TO TALK TO ME ABOUT THOR!" I had not meant to snap at her. I had been doing my best not to, but that comparison cut too deeply and my temper breached the surface of my control. The sight of her eyes widening in fright and her arms coming up to shield her chest again as she retreats a few more steps back from the ground she gained in her ire.

It makes the distasteful decision for me. "I am different than them, and I do know how it feels to learn this truth." I watch the fear drain from her eyes only to be replaced by stunned confusion as her eyes track the rising line between illusion and my natural hue. "I was deceived once too."