Dark Star || Loki [1]

[44] The Last Day of Their Lives [Part Two]

28 MARCH, 2011

ASTRID

The vague sensation of being tugged forwards by the navel, and they were in a pitch-black room with no clear size. She couldn't even see the other three walls around her. All she felt was Loki's hand, and all she heard was his breath (which, granted, used to be silent until she'd developed a keener sense of him thanks to their constant company with one another).

No alarm. That's good, said Astrid tentatively, though sniffing the air for signs of a trap.

Use your magic, said Loki. You can't see a damned thing.

What if she's sleeping?

She could feel him turn to glare at her. Of course he could see her-his Asgardian vision was likely picking up every molecule of dust in the black air. Fine, said Astrid, but if I scare the shit out of her, it's your fault.

I'll accept my losses when they come.

She released his hand and concentrated on pulling her magic from her heart, her soul, to her hands, palms facing the presumed ceiling. The golden scar on her left arm glowed, light travelling down her arm until a baseball-sized supernova of golden light turned the blackness into something comprehensible: a prison cell, with one metal bed frame, a table with a lamp on it, and a sleeping girl, dressed in a ratty black prisoner's jumpsuit. Her hair was fine and blonde and tangled like a nest. Her nose pointed delicately at its end. She was so... young.

Something Astrid had never felt before caused the baseball-sized light in her palm to grow and heave like a struggling heartbeat until it was larger than a human head, and Loki had to wrap a hand around her wrist to bring her back. Her chest had become erratic with the agony of breathing, a painful sting punctuating her heart like white-hot needles.

Calm, darling, he said softly to her, even though his voice was only in her head. I can feel your anger-

Good. The gold seemed to turn blood-red. I hope you can. I hope everyone in this goddamn facility can feel it. I hope it kills all of them.

He moved in front of her, taking both her wrists in his hands and dousing her light to a small pinprick that illuminated only the curves of his face-and the green of his eyes. There is still a girl in that bed, Astrid, and you are responsible for her now. You will make sure that she never sees another minute in this cell, but that means you must leash your anger. He smirked, watching the light in her hands even out to its familiar pulsing glow. For now.

Astrid breathed so deeply her magic swelled along with her lungs. The air in here was musty and dry. The girl in the bed stirred, that sad metal bed groaning beneath her-not that she weighed more than ninety pounds, judging from the heaviness of that jumpsuit on her small frame.

Groaning from the presumed ache of shifting on the bed frame, the little blonde girl opened her eyes, found the two strangers staring down at her-and blinked, long and slowly.

"You're not Jackass," she said. Her voice was ragged and tired, well accustomed to waking up with people in her cell.

Astrid's red-tinted vision faded blearily. There were more important things than anger right now. Getting this poor girl out of here meant more than anything. "Who's Jackass?" asked Astrid conversationally, holding her light in her palms while she and Loki knelt down before the girl to free her pin-sized wrists and ankles from their cold metal cuffs. Waves of sympathy formed a typhoon in Astrid's soul, the light in her palms a small, zealous sun. She'd been here, too: a prisoner without hope. Locked for twenty-three years inside a body she no longer recognized. Loki snapped the cuffs with hardly any effort.