"SO, BASICALLY," TONY RECAPPED after the Cap, "basically what Capsicle here means to say is that we aren't really ordering you, a small-time hairdresser, into rooming with the evillest supervillain of the universe who is also immortal and slightly...
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04. Start anew some place
That night Naz had to run to Loki's room after the first screams. She was a light sleeper and had been dreaming of deep emeralds and vertigo-inducing heights but the minute she heard him cry out, she was up from the couch.
She found him asleep, screaming in some horrible nightmare from which he couldn't wake up. His cries were in a foreign language but the emotion was easy to understand. She shook his shoulders roughly, "Loki, wake up! It's just a nightmare."
But he wouldn't wake up. Caught in some dark recess of his mind, his wrists were bloody with his subconscious attempts to break free. He was shivering and whimpering and Naz did the only thing she could think of. She slapped him, hard.
That woke him up. Sitting quickly, pushing away the covers as if they were burning him, he didn't even take note of Naz until he had tried, with the difficulty of his handcuffs, to claw off some imaginary objects away from his body.
"It was a nightmare," she said softly. "Don't worry. I'm here. You're fine now."
He started at the sound of her voice but when his eyes adjusted to the dark, following the moonlight falling across the woman who sat, anxious, by his side, his heart seemed to unclench. He could breathe again.
They were silent for a very long time after that. He sat against the headrest, breathing loudly, his body racked with shivers.
Finally, he raised his hands to touch his cheek which was still burning from the force of Naz's palm, "Did you slap me?"
"You weren't waking up," she answered with a gulp. "I'm sorry but I didn't know what-"
"Thank you."
The apology spoken in a tired, grateful voice came out of the darkness and caught her unaware. She relaxed slightly, looking around the room for the chair only to find something unfamiliar in place. Her clothes were neatly folded and placed on the chair. Her books were stacked back into the bookshelf by the bed in alphabetic order? Her shoes were neatly aligned against a wall. It made the room seem alien, as if her presence had been flushed out. She liked the original disorder, it made sense to her in a weird sort of way. This room was all she had had in a long time. A room of her own. It had seemed a luxury after all the years she had grown up, in crowded rooms fighting for a space that could be called her own and now even that seemed encroached upon. She knew it was stupid to feel it but she did; a feeling of being cut out of the fabric of her own life.
She turned back to Loki who was eyeing her with a curious gaze again. She had noticed that look in his eyes often. In fact, that was how he usually looked at her. As if she was some very irritating specimen who wouldn't work according to some hypothesis he had framed in his mind. She transferred the clothes to the floor and dragged the chair to his bedside.
