Flightless (LokixReader)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

(Your Pov)

You felt the magic that laced the doorway, but you hoped it wasn't what you thought. You hoped that Loki wouldn't do such a thing. Your hand fumbled with the doorknob, slipping when it wouldn't turn. Your arms shook as you started to yank on it, trying anything you could to break it open.

"Loki, let me out." You barely glanced over your shoulder, still pressed against the door. The prince stood some ways behind you, his footsteps now stopped. He folded his hands behind his back, smiling with that god awful arrogant grin.

"No."

"Loki." You tried to keep the panic from your voice, using as much threat as you could communicate with that one word. It did nothing. "I am not discussing this with you. Now open the doors."

The mischief maker tilted his head in feigned thought. Pompous bastard. You knew that the others hated him for how he acted in such a way, but fortunately you had never been on the receiving end of his games. The one time he tried to read your mind he regretted it. But this spell consisted of a different weaving than the others that you had broken through. You tried to touch it with your magic but found that you couldn't even reach the spell.

What was he doing?

Loki moved back to his chair, still watching you. "No one is here, and no one can hear us."

You weren't going to tell him. You couldn't. It's all he wanted to know, but you couldn't. "Jarvis!"

"I just said..." Loki cut off his words, taking a deep sigh to rub the bridge of his nose. "I swear to you, I am not going to use it against you. I am not going to tell anyone." How you wished his words were true. "I just want to know why, Darling."

If you did tell him? That you were the thing he was meant to destroy? You were the only thing between him and his freedom? You had heard that Loki would take risks to get what he wanted, and this trapping proved that. "If I tell you why, that is as good as telling you the truth."

"So leave me the clues and let me figure it out on my own!" The way his bargain echoed in your ears scraped against an emotion buried by your mind. But you said nothing, and Loki took a shaky breath. "It scares me when you put yourself through hel, and for what?"

Was he still talking about the mission? You tried to separate the feelings from the secrets. "Loki, I am alive, and healing, and fine. But I'm not going to be if I tell you." By now you leaned your elbows against the top of a chair, the most commitment to this conversation you were willing to show. You still wanted to bolt from the doors before he decided to magic up something worse. The Avengers had given him back nearly all of his powers now. Anything could happen. Unless...

But you wouldn't.

He was only talking. You wouldn't, not if he was being peaceable.

His face fell at your words, twisting into an emotion that you couldn't name. "I'm not going to hurt you." When Stark said those words, you knew you could trust him. If you were dead or alive, he had nothing to gain nor lose. In fact, he could learn more from you when alive.

Loki could gain everything by your death. "You don't know that," with this conversation headed only into another argument, you turn back for the door. He seemed to at least somewhat understand your place here. You didn't know what he would do if he knew and you didn't want to have to make him choose. "Now will you please let..."

A strange sensation fell over your mind, all too similar to Loki's message during Fury's visit. The only difference? He wanted in. "Loki, stop." Your mind created barriers and blockades to his invasion, in better control now than the last time he was this stupid. "Get out!"

"I won't be kept in the dark, Y/N."

Shit.

Shit shit shit shit.

He wasn't supposed to cross the line. If he had kept this peaceable, you were willing to wait it out. Eventually someone would come to see what had happened and where you disappeared to.

Your mind gathered what magic it could, forcing Loki to the edge of your mind. You were made of magic. You could do this. Not just to stop him from reading your mind, "Odinson, get out of my head."

"How do you know how to..." With a final push he was out, but you weren't about to let him try that again. You couldn't. What would happen if he decided to try so on a day you were already magically unstable? He wouldn't stop just because one plan backfired.

Loki stared at you with fearful eyes when he realized you weren't done.

You grabbed a hold of his magic. "Y-Y/N, what are you..." You braided his wayward half-spells back into the main thread so that his magic was one steady flow. He realized what you were doing, "Wait, wait! Don't."

With one hand hooked on the end of his magic thread, you loop it back so his source tied itself in a knot, "I told you to let me go." You blocked his magic.

He looked at you with eyes suddenly sunken in fear. "Give it back." You said nothing, heading for the now spell-free door. "Y/N!" You didn't turn around.

*

(Loki's Pov)

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Loki reached for his spells, trying for someway to bring forth the warmth that had made his body its home. But there were no lights nor sparkles, no fires nor summonings. It was as if his reserves were sucked dry. He... He had no magic.

The prince thought for just a moment that perhaps she had made some mistake, trying to find a loophole. But when those efforts proved futile, he ran after her through the tower halls. He needed his magic. It... So much of the life he kept here depended on it. Thank the norns he had not yet reverted to his Jotun form, yet he didn't dismiss the concern either. His wards, his protections, his escapes and his worth on missions all depended upon his magic.

Let alone his dreams.

When Loki arrives on their floor, Y/N isn't there. When he stalks through the various common rooms, kitchens, and even Stark's laboratory, she isn't there. Loki searched every room for her, even stooping so low as to ask the ridiculous voice-in-the-walls Jarvis: to which he didn't reply.

He never wanted this to happen. During his questioning... Norns, he had just needed to know. She would kill herself if she didn't have support. Loki thought that he could be that for her, that she would want him to be there for her.

Goddamn it.

The prince never found her that day. He didn't find her the morning after, either, after a night spent awake in an effort to put off the inevitable. To Loki, it was simply a matter of time. Could he make due without magic long enough to find her and convince her to return it?