Loki Laufeyson - Saviour {2}

Chapter Nineteen - Gift Shopping

The whole table fell completely silent, and I swear I could hear the trees outside the compound blowing in the breeze. I didn't dare look up from my food, my whole body tense as I shrunk inwards. I knew I should have just made up something random, now I looked like an idiot.

"You don't know what Christmas is?" Tony repeated from the head of the table and I shrunk in a little more. Pepper put a steady hand on my shoulder.

"There's no need to get upset at her about it." Pepper told him firmly.

"I wasn't -". Tony tried to say but Pepper cut across him.

"Of course she hasn't had a Christmas before." She continued. "She's been stuck in that cell for her whole life. Instead of making her feel back, how about you just explain what is it to her?"

Well that immediately started up a very loud discussion around the table, everyone was talking over the top of each other to try and explain what Christmas was. I didn't hear all of it, but it apparently, it was some sort of holiday, which Steve explained as a certain amount of time that was taken off work to have fun. During this time, according to Clint I think it was, it snowed, and everyone did activities in the snow, which included the ice skating, snowball fights and snowman building.

Eventually, when everyone began to quite down, my brain was overloaded with too much information, not helped by the fact that it was getting later and I was beginning to become tired. I tried to say that I was going to go to bed, but Wanda and Nat and Pepper dragged me upstairs into Nat's room, saying that we needed to go gift shopping while all the sales were on. Gifts were the thing I found the most confusing, why would so many people give me gifts on a certain day when I had done nothing to deserve them?

"I don't have any money though." I spoke up as Pepper got JARVIS to pull up a bunch of privacy projections, which didn't allow anyone to look at it except the operator.

"Sweetie." Pepper smiled softly. "Tony's a billionaire. He's got plenty of money. I'll ask him to set up an account for you."

"But I-" I tried to protest, but she gave me a gentle look and I knew that no matter how much I tried to refuse the money, she wouldn't listen to me. It just felt too weird accepting stuff I hadn't worked for.

Gift shopping was more difficult that I had expected. I wanted to make sure that I got the right gift for everyone, considering it was such a special occasion, and half an hour in, I had only found a gift for Tony, which was a very elaborate box of his chocolates, which didn't even feel that special.

At the start of our gift shopping, Wanda had put on music and played it through a speaker Nat had in her room. I was confused about why there would be songs about a holiday, which really only occurred on one day, but I didn't say anything and tried to listen to the words. Most of the time, I ended up tuning out, but then this one song came on and I couldn't help but listen to it.

"What song is this?" I asked, and all three of them looked up at me from their screens.

"It's called Mistletoe." Nat replied and I looked at her in confusion.

"What's mistletoe?" I asked curiously and immediately Wanda smirked, causing me to wish that I hadn't asked.

"It is a plant with tiny little white bulbs." She explained. "People tend to hang it up at Christmas on doorways or something because when you step under it with someone else, you are meant to kiss them."

My face must have looked purely confused because all three of them laughed. This holiday was just weird, who would kiss someone else just because they were under a plant? I didn't know who invented Christmas, but they definitely weren't thinking straight.

It was around one am by the time that Wanda said she was going to bed and I nodded, barely able to stay awake as I yawned. Thankfully, I had found gifts for Tony, Bruce and Steve, which I considered a pretty good effort considering how distracted the three of them got showing me things they wanted for themselves. I even found a couple of things as well.

I curled up in bed that night, my gun under my pillow as usual, but this time, I wasn't awake and waiting for sleep to drag me under. As soon as I finished my shower, I basically jumped into bed and sunk into a sleep that was still filled with dreams, but dreams about Christmas.