A Future of our Own

Academy - Her

The world came too slowly, everything feeling groggy and her head feeling uncomfortable.

It was sad how familiar it felt, even if by this point it shouldn't have.

Morning sickness would have passed months ago and she'd never felt this bad in the mornings before, nor this uncomfortable and that was saying something considering how difficult the past seven months had been.

Pushing herself up, she noticed at first that she was surrounded by tall tables and stools and that at the front of the room there was a separate half-cube of a desk and behind that a screen.

It didn't take two seconds for it to click that she was in a classroom, one that she vaguely recognized.

Looking down at herself, inspecting her hands and uniform, she was less than surprised to see an old outfit she used to wear regularly while attending the Avengers Academy, a name she still thought was pretty hokey.

Although it was a drastic change, she managed to stop herself from panicking but still found herself rubbing a circle on her now flatter stomach.

As if needing to confirm what she already knew.

This wasn't her, but it was her, just not present her so there'd be no baby or bump to show it.

"It's okay," she said to herself, closing her eyes and taking in a deep breath, "the baby is fine, this is just another time shift."

Slowly, she opened her eyes again and waited for reality to set in fully as she took in her surroundings.

Her eyes glanced to her right-hand side and she noticed that there was another person, who hadn't so much as stirred as she moved.

After getting accustomed to pushing through feeling awful in the mornings it was easy for her to ignore the blinding headache and to crawl over to them, pushing aside a fallen stool that lay between them.

Coming to a kneel beside them, she felt an instant wave of comfort at the familiar green coat and smiled, letting out a laugh as she looked over his face and his old clothes.

"Oh Loki, it's been years since I've seen you like this."

The nostalgia hit her hard.

The times spent in this classroom, the times she had wound up arguing with Loki and his pompous attitude after they'd been forcibly paired up for a project.

It made her laugh to think that they had less than liked each other in the beginning, barely being cordial with one another until the teachers started forcing them to work together.

To begin with she hated what they were doing and thought they were out to get her and believed that Loki was sure to put her behind in her grades, but now she understood the cunning little scheme and was more than happy that they had.

Despite the memories, it was still strange to see him like that.

His hair was cropped shorter than what she was used to, it had more volume to it as these were the days when he'd let his hair do as it pleased rather than insist on brushing it back all the time and the old Midgardian clothes he wore to fit in better at the academy were better styled than she remembered.

Memories of their time at the school came rushing back and as she stared down at him, she felt the old giddy feelings of her schoolgirl self bubbling up.

Finally, with a low groan, Loki shifted and raised a hand to his head, obviously experiencing the same pounding head that she was.

"Morning, sleeping beauty."