HeartBound {Avengers Fanfic}

Chapter 7: Saccharine Bitterness

"I know of no more disagreeable situation than to be left feeling generally angry without anybody in particular to be angry at."

-Frank Moore Colby

Loki stiffened as he recognized the feeling of another presence in his empty prison cell. He felt frozen, thinking that it was The Other coming to punish him for his failure, to take him away to Thanos. But then he recognized the presence as the one person he had ever let inside his head. The one person he never thought he would see again.

"Freyja?" he whispered into the seemingly empty air.

The air before him shimmered as she appeared, her projection wearing a simple midnight blue silk dress. He took a few minutes to take in her appearance. She looked different from when she had left, and it was more than her age. She had faint worry lines etched into her forehead, her strange electric blue eyes no longer shone with the same brightness, and her face was distinctly thinner. She looked weary and haunted as if she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. But he could feel her emotions as they flowed out to him, as they did since she had Awakened him.

Her emotions hit him like a tidal wave. They overlapped and crashed into each other, conflicting and tumultuous as an ocean storm, to make a mess of sensations that threatened to overwhelm his mind. He fought to push them to the edges of his consciousness where they wouldn't bother him. Her turmoil was surprising, as she had always been so level-headed before, and left him dazed and disorientated.

"Freyja? I thought-" he stopped, remembering the story of Vanir who had broken vows. "You're a spirit? What promise could you have possibly broken to deserve this fate?"

She shook her head, her crimson hair dancing like flames, "I'm not a spirit, Loki."

"But -" he broke off, eyes widening as he realized what she was saying. "You're alive."

He stood up, part of him wanting to hold her as he had done so long ago. And yet another was holding him back. A little nagging voice at the back of his mind brought forward several questions, important questions, that needed to be answered.

"How - Why did you not - Why did you lead me to believe you dead?"

He stared deep into her eyes as sadness and pain and something else, perhaps longing, burned in their azure depths. What reasons could possibly justify leaving him in such a manner? He silently begged her for answers, wanting, and yet not, to hear her answers.

"I - I wanted to come back," she assured him. "Honestly, I did. I wanted it more than anything. I just needed time."

"You needed two millennia?!" he hissed, his voice rising with his temper. "You couldn't have told me? I thought you had died in the battle of Vanaheim!"

She winced at his tone, "I would have come back, but something held me. I couldn't-"

"What could have possibly kept you from returning?" he demanded, pain and anger mingled in his words, making them sharp. "Is my affection so trivial in your eyes?"

"How can you even ask such a thing? I stayed away to protect the Nine Realms, to protect Asgard, to protect you."

"Oh, do tell," he snapped, pacing like a caged animal. "I cannot wait to hear what explanation you have for this!"

"You know I was charged with protecting the Tesseract-"

"A duty you gave up shortly after you renounced your family ties," he scoffed. "After your family's status landed you in the hands of a sadistic beast for weeks."