Infatuated with a God

Chapter Twenty-Four

I slept in the next morning and felt extremely well rested. The peace I felt when I woke up soon disappeared, however. The events of last night rushed back to me quickly and embarrassment settled in. I almost avoided going downstairs for breakfast, but my stomach growled demanded I went. When I stepped into the kitchen I noticed a few people loitering around the table and frowned slightly. I remained silent, grabbing my food, and sitting right on the edge of the booth. There was a blush in my cheeks from embarrassment and I felt like trying to make myself smaller. I noticed a small hand on my arm and looked up Natasha. Her once short red locks had grown out to her shoulders over time. I was surprised to her closeness to me, she often avoided physical contact with everyone. On the extremely rare occasion that someone forgot this, they quickly remembered as she either froze up if she could see you or tackled you if she didn't.

"Kaya, we are worried about you. Why did you never tell any of the doctors about your nightmares?" Her tone was kind, but I found myself imagining accusation within it. I knew that they viewed me as a burden already and I didn't need this to make it worse.

"They were never bad, normally they were just memories. Last night was the first time it had been anything more." She nodded at this and turned to look at Steve who then spoke.

"Kid... we know you wanted a break from magical training, but it needs to start up again. Until we can be sure this can happen we can't have you out on the field. I'm trying to make sure that this is kept from Fury, so it doesn't prevent our progress in getting you cleared. But missions can be unpredictable, you may be too much of a danger to not just yourself but the team." I nodded, biting my inner cheeks. "Right go to training, Loki will be waiting for you by now."

I froze slightly before making my way to the elevator. I hadn't expected Loki to ever pick my training back up. He made it pretty clear he didn't want to train me and only viewed it as a way our of his cage. I was thoroughly confused when he was indeed in the training room, waiting on the sparing mat. Without turning to face me he spoke.

"You're late." He sounded pissed.

"Not really considering you cancelled our sessions." I muttered in response, but grabbed my dagger from its usual spot, nevertheless. I suspected that he had spun a narrative last night about me cancelling our sessions but had been forced to participate in them again. After all, if he openly defied everyone else he would be locked up and not even Thor could stop it.

"You are to be here before or at 9am. If you are late you won't appreciate the consequences. Now go through the warmup I taught you." I rolled my eyes but remembered the moves easily. Halfway through I noticed that his power was stronger now. He went to complain that I had stopped when I cut in.

"Tony reduced the setting?" His jaw tightened.

"Yes. Only from 9am until dinner and only whilst I am in this room. It would have been nice to be informed of the different settings."

"What so you could have lied to me longer in order to get them reduced?" I spat back at him. I felt my anger unnaturally rise within me but didn't care. Any emotion in Loki's face faded as he commanded me to start over and I couldn't care enough to argue. Then we moved on to controlling the energy. He would try to piss me off as much as possible and then be disappointed and angry when my powers flared up. When lunch time came around I was thoroughly pissed off as he sauntered out of training room.

Life continued on for three more weeks before a change occurred. My mornings were spent with Loki trying to provoke my anger and me trying to hone in my powers despite wanting to channel everything I had into him. My thoughts must have become pretty loud when I slipped up enough to throw them at him as he always raised a shield in perfect timing. It got easier over time, but the anger I felt around him never disappeared. One day he convinced Tony to let the band be lowered slightly more in order to see how I coped with sparing. The snow had started to pitch on the ground on the morning I noticed the energy had increased within him. Following my warmups, he allowed his energy to flow around him, and it began to twist around mine in it's usual way.