Loki Laufeyson - Saviour {2}

Chapter Sixty Six - What If We Go?

It was hard to get out of bed the next morning, it felt like all of the emotions from last night had caught up to me. When I reluctantly left Loki's room to have a shower in mine, my face looked like a puffy red mess in my mirror. The cold water from my shower did help to bring it down a little, but I still felt completely drained. Loki tried to suggest that I just rest up for the day, but I knew I needed to burn up some of this restless energy that was still churning from the nightmare, so when he helped with washing up after breakfast, I quickly slipped away.

Bucky was more than happy to spar with me, his eyes holding some hint of worry at the start, but it quickly morphed into a teasing banter when we fell back into the rhythm of our training. It was easy with him, we both had our demons but we never brought them up to each other and in some twisted way, it made us feel more normal around each other.

"Beating yourself up in training is not the answer Em." Loki sighed, finger running over a thin slice in my cheek for the fifth time.

He had immediately appeared in the training room no more than two minutes after I had gotten there, but when he saw me talking with Bucky, he had no choice but to sit down against the wall and watch. I felt his eyes on me the whole time, but I knew he wouldn't tell me to stop and he instead settled for healing me immediately after Bucky accidentally hurt me with his quick movements.

"It helps me feel less restless." I replied, giving him a look, basically feeling the concern radiating off him. "It's okay. I'm fine."

"There are a lot safer ways to burn off energy." He sighed, but reluctantly let me go back to Bucky.

I kept myself within the compound for the whole day, not even daring to look out the windows out of fear of bringing up the nightmare again. Loki hovered around me the whole day, literally watching me constantly. Concern continued to radiate off him, but I tried to ignore it as best as I could, knowing that if I paid attention to it for the slightest moment, it could overwhelm me too much, and that was the last thing that I needed.

It was after lunch that I finally managed to work up the courage to go stand by the window, knowing that I was just being stupid and I couldn't stop one nightmare from letting me look out of windows ever again. I took a deep breath as I looked out across the swaying grass, wrapping my arms around myself in comfort as I swallowed back the lump in my throat. The sun was shining, reflecting off the grass and the leaves of the trees as they moved with the wind. Several birds stood in the branches of the trees, no doubt singing songs that were muted by the thick glass of the windows.

"It's much better outside, I can promise you that." A voice spoke up from behind me and I slowly turned around to see Loki standing there.

He gave me a soft smile, still holding the hint of worry in his green eyes, but I could see he was trying to hide it. He walked up to me and gently wrapped his arms around my shoulder, gently pulling me in close to him while his eyes darted over my face.

"The sunlight looks beautiful on you." He murmured, gently sweeping back some of my hair that had fallen over my eyes and I looked down at myself to see the sunlight warming my skin.

"Thank you." I smiled softly. "You don't look too bad yourself." I tried to distract myself a little, my head tilting back as I looked up at him.

"Come on." He chuckled, hand slipping from my shoulder. "You should come outside rather than staying behind a window. It's better out there."

He pushed open the door and held his hand out to me, the soft smile making the lines of worry disappear from his face. A warm breeze drifted in from outside and I breathed it in deeply, putting my hand into his and gently letting him guide me outside. There was a tiny voice nagging in my head, telling me to go back inside, but I tried to push it as far back as I could, knowing that last night was only a dream and couldn't actually come true.