The Light that Shines Within

Home Again

The week passed uneventfully. Loki hardly hung out with Steve and I and when he did it was brief, mostly to tell me where he would be next and how long he planned on being there. The last night we spoke kept floating through my mind like a movie and I began to have feelings that perhaps maybe he was messing with me all along.  Was  I such a fool or what? 

"Hey Cass, you ready to go?" Steve asked as he knocked on my door in the hotel. 

I nodded. 

"Yeah, just let me zip up my suitcase and I'll be ready to bounce." I smiled at the blonde and zipped up my suitcase with a final feeling in my heart, my happiness waning.  Now that the week was over it would be back to the Tower and back to all the business of being the only masked Avenger left. This meant I would go back to working behind the scenes and watching the god of emos. Things would now fall back into the same old routine and my eternity would go back to blending the days.....at least I had a family at the Tower and was loved for who and what I was. But could you blame me for wanting a bit of excitement? 

"Let me take that for you.." Steve took my suitcase to the car and I checked us out. Loki seeming to have been ready all day and waiting in the vehicle. He made no eye contact with me, which now had become normal to my much annoyance and heartache. I started the engine and we took off for the airport, the ride becoming quiet and I watched the rearview mirror for any sign of him looking my way. He didn't and I found my mood dropping drastically. Steve noticed and yet I think didn't believe it was his place to, because he did nothing to cool my distant sadness. "Want to listen to music?" Steve asked halfway through the ride. I shook my head, looking straight ahead. "Cass, now I know there's something wrong with you. You always want to listen to music on car rides, or, rides at all. What's wrong?" He asked softly, trying to reach out to me and I shied away from him, moving more towards the window in my pain. 

Why did it matter to Rogers at all?

Why did I feel so ....dark, sometimes? 

Most importantly to me...

Why did anyone care, if I'm already too far gone to save?

My memory began to drift away to another time, another place so far away...to one incident when my past where I had felt such heartache, such...pain for others it was on the border of becoming unbearable to keep inside this tough shell of a vampire, of a strong woman I always put on around myself to keep others away. My surroundings became obsolete to me, I began to give in to my anger, my pain so intence it was a firey sea my brain was having a hard time to process and I just wanted to jump off the deep end, let loose for once and not care who was hurt in the process. The beast within just tearing for an excuse to be let out once more, like the past I had lived before my kidnapping by Hydra during the war. A monster with sharp teeth who ate first and asked questions later. Who didn't care about the consequences of her actions because at the end of the day all I had been hurting were strangers who didnt matter. Now.....

Now it was different.....

Loki, the Avengers? Rogers even?....

They had somehow made it past all my defenses I had set up over the years and wormed thier way into my heart of stone, to the vulnerable girl inside and appealed to her better humanity once again. I trusted, loved them in a way that I couldn't describe. They...they mattered.  ​​​​​And to be brutally honest with myself I was scared to lose them if I was one- hundred percent and lashed out...behind it was a frightened, terrified girl who wanted to keep hearing she herself mattered in return, using her anger as courage to fuel her fasade. Needing, craving someone to hug and hold me while I hurt but at the same time so angry with myself that I would even begin to feel this way....after all I had endured within my life.