HeartBound {Avengers Fanfic}

Chapter 12: Deadly Charm

"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy."

–F. Scott Fitzgerald

Freyja couldn't sleep. Her head was too full with worries and memories, both recent and distant, for her to calm her mind enough to so much as rest. The responses of each of the Avengers had been less than satisfactory and she couldn't help wonder if she could have changed that in any way. But by doing what? She couldn't force them to see Loki differently. She supposed she could have, if she really wanted to, but such tactics were immoral. And the more she thought of their opinions, the more she felt her own uncertainty regarding his actions.

Perhaps the solution had to do with Loki himself. Could she have changed the path he had taken? She knew the answer was yes. Frigga, Thor, and many others had always told her she was the only person who could change Loki's mind on many matters. She was the only one who could sway his moods and talk him out of the more ridiculous of his schemes. She could have returned to Asgard, and helped him with the pain of the truth. But something worse would have happened in the end had she returned.

Asgard, and ultimately everyone she loved, would have been destroyed. She could never live with herself if that happened – she could barely cope with the fact that her own people were dead because of her mistakes. And then there was the fact that Loki had turned to the destruction of Earth and she had no idea of the matter. How Thanos had gotten to him even despite the measures she took to protect him.

She remembered when she had made him that promise. He had looked at her as though she had lost her mind, but hadn't told her she was incapable of such. Instead, he had promised he would protect her, as well. It wasn't possible, she had known, given what she had been told of her future all her life. Few people had a destiny in her Realm, but those that did were supposed to feel blessed to serve a higher purpose. It had felt more like a curse when she knew Loki wouldn't be able to do as he promised.

"Do you not trust me to keep my oath?" he had once asked, looking confused and hurt by her response. "I know I am not as strong as Thor...that I cannot lift a hammer or swing an axe, but that does not mean I cannot protect you."

She had looked into his emerald green eyes, unable to tell him why he couldn't possible protect her entirely. It would have broken his heart to know the truth.

"I know," she had said in reply.

And he had smiled.

She had never told him the real answer. She trusted him with her life, and it was the full truth, but some things were inevitable. It had never seemed too important to her given that they were only friends. Though it would have been painful, she could have easily gone to her fate with a simple goodbye. But the unexpected had happened: she began to see him differently.

She could not name what it was at the time, but something had been different. The flash of his teeth when he smiled, the shine of his deep green eyes when he laughed, the way he scrunched his nose when he was deep in thought, the way his fingers would subconsciously trace imaginary circles on a surface when he wasn't truly listening. Nothing had changed and, yet, nothing was the same, either. She hadn't realized it was herself that was different.

A week after that and she had found that he, too, saw her differently. He knew her every habit, her every strength and weakness. He relished when her strange electric blue eyes shone with happiness, craved her smile and laughter, smiled as she bit her lip when facing a problem. Worse, he had become oddly envious of the time she spent around the suitors her father had sent her way, even when he knew she felt nothing towards them. And she had not been aware of this until he had told her much later.