Guardian

Chapter 42

(Liv's POV):
After a slightly rough start, Loki actually seemed to have driving under control. I no longer felt as though I needed to hang on to the vehicle in fear for my life, so that was a plus. We barely spoke as he worked on adjusting to the car's controls, but he finally turned to me as we were leaving Sokovia.

"So have you ever had anything happen to you like what you experienced back in the base?"

I shook my head, "I mean, things have triggered memories yes, but this was different. But maybe it was just because I was in a HYDRA facility so I was already on edge."

"Can you put down your mind barriers for me?" Loki asked, glancing over at me before flickering his attention back to the road.

Closing my eyes to focus my magic, I tried to lower my defenses, which I found to be one of the most difficult things Loki tried to teach me. I had spent hundreds of years with these mental shields in place without even realizing what I was doing so lowering them, even for someone I trusted, required a lot of focus.

I could feel Loki prodding around my mind and almost kicked him out on instinct, but tried to focus on my breathing instead, hoping that Loki would be able to find out what had happened to me. If this was an event that could happen again, I needed to be able to be prepared for it and, best case scenario, find a way to prevent it from happening.

Loki finally slipped out of my mind with a confused expression on his face, which wasn't at all comforting to me. I let my shields go back up and turned to him, "did you find anything?"

"Yes, I am just unsure what to make of it," he spoke slowly, clearly contemplating the best way to answer. "There was traces of another in your mind, though I have no idea how they managed to bypass your defenses, not when I had failed to do so on numerous occasions when first we met. The presence was quite powerful and had traces of the mind stone."

"What are you saying? That the mind stone may have played a role in what I experienced? Was it because I was holding the scepter?"

"I do not believe it was the mind stone, no. But we were not certain what HYDRA would use the stone for and now I believe we may have an answer. Based on the signature of the presence in your mind and the screams that we heard before you experienced those visions, I think it would be safe to assume that they are using the stone for human experimentation. They must have been working on it while we were in the base, something went wrong, and you were the one affected by that woman's power."

There was a pang in my heart as I realized what that poor woman must be going through, their experiments were hell for me and they weren't using any infinity stones on me. I opened my mouth to ask Loki if we would be able to launch an attack on the base and save whomever it was getting experimented on, but closed it before asking as I knew what his answer would be. We were trying to remain off the radar and attacking a HYDRA facility would have the exact opposite effect.

Loki drove for hours, seeming to know where he was going as he never once asked me to help with directions. I was rather surprised by that fact, wondering if he had placed magical markers everywhere across earth to help him navigate.

But he soon came to a stop outside of a forest and left the car, prompting me to do the same. As my feet hit the soft dirt-covered ground I asked Loki, "love, where is this place?"

"We're in Switzerland, I believe that is what the Midgardians have named it, anyway."

"But why?" I inquired, following his as he started to make his way into the dense forest in front of us.

"Because just as their are passages to other realms hidden on this planet, there are also passages to other parts of this planet. There is one in here that will lead us directly into New York City and thus save you the energy of flying across the ocean and back," Loki explained, taking my hand in his.