I Will Follow You Into The Dark~ On Hold

Chapter 17

Lilja paced the room that she had originally woken up in. Thor still hadn't returned from Asgard, and Freyja was too busy trying to force Thanos' control out of the witch, Wanda. Lilja's aunt was struggling because she didn't have the ability to read minds, she couldn't latch onto the moment Thanos gained control over the mortal. Lilja wanted to help but no one wanted her near Wanda, it was as if they were afraid that she would hurt the other woman. It broke her heart that her own godson could think so lowly of her; same went for Steve. The others may not know Lilja well, but Tony grew up with her around, taking care of him whenever his parents were too busy, which was every day. Steve, on the other hand, knew her from her days as a SSR agent. Sure, she was nothing to remember unlike her aunt and Peggy, but surely the soldier would have remembered her hatred for causing anyone pain.

She sat in her room feeling a loneliness that she had suffered since leaving Asgard seep into her bones. Loki was helping Fury and Tony on who should be taken to Asgard as the representative of Midgard for the alliance between the two realms. No one was there to see Lilja's pain and rejection. Sighing, she left her room in search of anything to do or eat. Instead, she found Pietro, Steve and Peter sitting down at the table while Clint huffed at the stove, with the smell of pancakes cooking wafting through the hallway.

"Wasn't Lilja the one who freed Mr Loki from Thanos' control?" Peter asked the group. They all hummed, Pietro stood up speeding around the room, collecting plates for them all. "Well then, shouldn't you let her help with freeing Wanda?"

Steve shook his head, "No we don't want them to fight, and until Wanda is free that is what will happen. We don't know what measures she will take to get what she wants."

Pietro sighed, "My sister isn't evil." He glared at the man who had been a leader to them all. Steve groaned and hung his head, "I wasn't talking about Wanda, I was talking about Lilja. There is no knowing whether she is evil or not."

Lilja gasped, her eyes wide with shock as she leant against the wall listening as the others fought. Pietro was growling at Steve, his face pinched in anger. "How can you say she is evil? She saved my life, she freed Loki from Thanos; you knew her back in the forties."

Steve looked away, his blonde hair falling into his eyes. "Not really. I knew Peggy and Freya. Lilja was merely a friend of theirs, I saw nothing that could prove her worth in the least." He took a breath and thanked Clint for the food, looking back down the hall. Lilja froze and made sure she was still invisible and waited for what else the patriotic soldier had to say. "She knew everything, even before we did. I feared she was a mole, an agent of Hydra."

Lilja cried, her tears burning her cheeks as if they were acid. "She was missing from Asgard for two centuries, what did she do to go missing?" Lilja couldn't hear anymore, her heart felt like it was breaking. The last words of Steve she heard was him muttering, "She probably wasn't worth anything there, so came here. We cannot trust her, none of us can."

She ran back to her room, locking it with magic as she curled into a ball in the corner, hidden from any unwanted eyes. Steve was right, she wasn't worth anything, not in Asgard and no longer in Midgard. She should have died when she fell off the bridge, she should have been left for dead when she did land on Midgard. She wished that her aunt left her there to bleed out, but no, instead Freyja saved her. Years she had spent being glad that she had survived, now she realised that they had been a lie, that it wasn't a miracle that she lived, but merely a disguise of what she had to expect in Hel. There was no reason for her to be alive, maybe that was why Loki had pushed her away, had found her so disgusting that he turned to another. Yes, his memories showed that it was at the orders of the Allfather, but Lilja knew that there was no way Loki could have truly wanted her. She had been at the time was nothing but a Tjener. A worthless one at that.