dahlia? (a loki fanfic)

chapter nineteen.

Loki stayed awake while Dahlia slept, holding her hand the entire time, feeling her head resting onto his shoulder and her warm breath hitting him everytime she took a breath in or breath out.

Loki held two of his fingers over her pulse while drawing small shapes on Dahlia's still bloodstained hands with his other hand, waiting for her to wake up.

He stayed like this for literal hours, fully awake. He had a lot of things to think about and a lot to take in. He remembered what Dahlia had said, right before Hela had shown up after Odin's death.

He needed to ask her about that. How she said she remembered how she lost her memories. He'd heard Heimdall ask her for forgiveness, or at least when Heimdall had asked someone for forgiveness, Dahl had denied it to him.

Loki was used to losing people close to him at this point. Honestly, Heimdall dying hurt him less than watching Dahlia covered in her own blood. Loki was never planning on killing Heimdall or anything of the sort, but he never cared for him. Especially not the way Thor did.

Frigga's death was definitely the one that had hurt Loki the most. Dahlia's disappearance had hurt, but it was so long ago now, he could barely feel that pain anymore, now that she had returned, it was practically blocked out of his memory, unnecessary for him to carry with him.

Odin's death hurt, but it was barely half as painful as Frigga's, especially considering he couldn't even attend his own mother's funeral, and especially considering their last conversation was him yelling at her that she wasn't his mother. Frigga knew that, of course, Loki didn't mean that, but that didn't prevent the memory from haunting the young god every single time he remembered his mother.

Dahlia woke up after almost 7 hours, moving her head a little and looking up at Loki. Her breathing had gotten almost back normal while she was asleep, which was reassuring to Loki.

"Hi-" Loki greeted softly, moving the loose grip on her hand to actually hold her hand instead of holding her pulse. He stopped drawing the shapes too.

"Hey," Dahlia mumbled, her voice sounded dry and raspy, her eyes moved fairly quickly from Loki to look down at her stomach, but the blanket Loki had pulled over her was covering it.

"Do you feel any better at all?" Loki asked quietly, looking at her with concern present in his voice. Dahlia could feel it beaming out of him again, that small amount of sleep had given her helped her get enough energy for the empathic powers to automatically start working again. She hadn't actually missed them that much, the best part about them, at least in her recent life, had honestly just been Loki's aura, and after spending everyday with him while he was impersonating Odin....she was so used to the aura that she probably didn't even need her powers to feel it.

Dahlia nodded subtly, and looked over at the hand Loki was holding, grimacing slightly at all the blood on it. Loki noticed her expression, and looked over at their hands aswell.

"I'll go look for a cloth-" Loki said, letting go of Dahlia's hand and carefully standing up to not bump into Dahlia on the way.

Dahlia didn't say anything, she just sat there, staring at her bloodstained hands in silence.

Loki left the room, and walked around the sanctum until he found a bathroom. He took a small towel and wet it in the sink, before walking back into the room Dahlia was still in. She'd sat up on her own when he came back, and he just sort of looked at her with the same concerned eyes as earlier.

"I don't think you should be sitti-"
"It's okay." Dahl persisted, and Loki paused before sighing in defeat, walking over to the bed and sitting next to her before quietly helping her wipe the blood off her face, then helped her wipe the blood off her stained hands too. He didn't stop until her hands looked like there had never been blood on them, and Dahlia just sort of let him do it for her, too tired and still in pain to do it herself.

"Thank you," Dahlia mumbled out, still seemingly tired even after sleeping. Loki wasn't tired at all, adrenaline and stress was keeping him fully awake.

"I'm...gonna find you a glass of water," Loki said as he got back up, just as carefully as earlier, bringing the bloody cloth with him. However, he never got to come back with said glass of water.

By the time Loki had found and filled a glass, Thanos had succeeded at his plan, successfully snapping his fingers with all the infinity stones. Loki and Dahlia, who were unlucky enough to both be picked by the unbiased algorithm of the universe, both disintegrated, both alone. They barely had time to even realize what was going on, before they were wiped out of existence, turned to...dust.