Loki, Unraveled|| NovaVerse 2

14|| His day

Word Count: 3,534

Loki stared at the ceiling.

Last night had to be one of the worst nights of sleep he had ever had in his entire life. Besides Nova being very loud in her sleep, the floor was not a comfortable place to sleep either. He thought that if Nova refused to sleep in the same bed, then maybe she could move onto the floor instead. He then shook that thought out of his head: looking at her sleeping semi-peacefully was enough to convince him not to. Perhaps he could offer her something in return for being able to sleep on the bed. All he knew was that he was never sleeping on the floor again.

He got up and quietly made his way to the nightstand and picked up the black leatherbound notebook. As he flipped through the pages, he caught glimpses of his notes on Nova. What agitated her, what made her insecure, what haunted her, what could be used against her, and things he could do to her based off of that to get information out of her if the rest of his tactics failed.

A last resort.

But then the notes turned into reminders of what made her laugh (even though she would always try to hide it), what entertained her, what calms her in situations where she isn't. And at that point in the book, a little sketch would accompany every note. He gently lifted a pencil, but it made a tiny tapping sound, and Nova stirred. After a moment of remaining as still as a statue, he began to do a little sketch of her sleeping and wrote the following note: Midgardian vampires are light sleepers." Despite Nova being very easy to disturb whilst sleeping, Loki could not deny that she certainly disrupted his sleep. She moved every few minutes and kicked at the blankets and then got so tangled in them that Loki wondered that if he did convince her to let him sleep in the bed, that he would rise with bruises the next morning. It was something he would rather not find out, but he certainly didn't want to continue sleeping on the floor.

What a predicament he was in. Sleep uncomfortably on the floor or be kicked in the ribs every night?

After he finished the sketch and the note, he flipped through the next few pages. They were filled of invasion strategies. At the top of one page, the title in big, bold, cursive letters read: MIDGARDIAN EXCECUTION IDEAS. It wasn't something he wanted to follow through with. His Associate had told him in a prior meeting that he wanted to take exactly half of all lifeforms on Midgard if Loki wanted to rule it, but Loki would have to be the one to capture all of them and present them to him. Only when Loki had killed half of them would the Associate be pleased and finally allow Loki to take the throne. His ideas looked something like:

1. Make his army do all the work.

2. Use the mind staff to bring half of everyone to him and use one of the Chitari ships the Associate had gifted him to slaughter them.

3. All of the above.

4. None of the above.

He had never been quite fond of the idea of murdering all those people, but his family and the throne of Midgard were at stake if he didn't. On the other hand...could he stand the hurt and hate that Nova would feel? Could he truly stand to look her in the eye and tell her that everything she had ever loved had been taken away by him? Neither were options he was fond of at all.

Nova stirred in bed the moment Loki placed down the notebook and pencil, somehow hearing the quiet thump of it meeting the nightstand.

Loki stared at her sleeping figure once more before he double checked that no sun would enter through an uncovered section of the windows, fixed the blankets on her so she was no longer tangled in them, and left the room.

"Listen, either you can let us go or I can tell Frigga why Nova is here in the first place." Natasha sat on a chair with her arms folded, legs crossed. She hadn't slept the whole night, unwilling to risk not hearing if Nova had a plea for help, or if one of the guards discovered she wasn't actually in the dungeons, but in this large, fancy bedroom, and decided to attack her while she slept. She knew better than that.