Green sunrise | Loki fanfiction

Part 12: Not as perfect

I jump out of the bed and stagger because of my sleepiness. The flashing red alarm light blinds me and I shake my head. One look at the clock: 7:46 am. Can't the monsters at least choose a more appropriate time?
On the other side, I already feel nervous and excited again and the tiredness quickly goes away. I hesitate because I do not want to go into a fight in my nightgown, but then I realize Loki can fix that and I run out of my room.
The hallway is alive with movements: All the other Avengers either burst out of their rooms with the doors crashing into the walls or are already running to the control room. I start to run too, and out of nowhere Loki pops up at my side. He manages to be very fast and so elegant that he looks bored at the same time.
"Hey", I greet him, a little out of breath.
"Hi", he greets back. "Fighting in your nightgown today?"
"I was hoping you could fix that for me."
"Oh, the little Miss Flawless wants me to help her", he teases. "Maybe you should go in your nightgown just because you were audacious enough to ask me to undress you."
"I wasn't asking you to undress me!", I protest while watching his grin spread over his face. "I was asking you to magically put my armour on me."
"Were you really, though? You fell asleep in my bed two days ago."
My cheeks go scarlet red.
"That was an accident! Come on Loki, not now."
He laughs. Then he examines me, as if he is thinking if he should really let me go like this, then he snaps his fingers and my usual armour appears.
"Thank you", I sigh. I look down and see that the red letters 'AVENGER IN TRAINING' have disappeared.
"Hey, you removed the writing!", I say excitedly.
"Just because it's you." He winks and holds the control room door open for me.
I smile and enter. Did he flirt with me? Just because it's you. Or was that just a casual answer? But he did remove the writing what is a concious act in my favour. And he is constantly saying stuff that could be flirting. Nah ... let's see what happens next.
I jump out of my thoughts as Tony's voice reminds me that now is not the time for this.
"... are attacking in two spots again. Both are roughly at the same distance to the Tower, and pretty close together you can see." Tony touches the blue hologram and shows the spots. Jarvis has also added little animated monsters that run around threatening civilians.
"Quick now", Steve says and stiffens his shoulders. "Same teams as last time?"
"No, (y/n) and Thor should be in my team. We practised some magic together", Loki responds.
"Okay", Steve says. "So you, (y/n), Thor. I will go with Natasha and Clint, and because I want to have someone more ... punchy at my team, Bruce will come with me. So Tony, you go with the magicians."
"But -", says Tony.
"No", Steve interrupts. "We don't have the time. Look, Tony, this monster just tried to eat a civilian!" He points at the hologram. "Start the mission, everybody!"
And again we run out, me next to Loki. Somebody should have told me how much running comes with being a superhero.
"Anybody wants to travel via hammer?", Thor asks as we head to the stairs.
"No, can't say I want", Loki answers while Tony flies away.  "(Y/n), I think you should practise that in a non-fighting situation. Now you are coming with me."
Thor throws me a look that should say something like 'sorry' apparently, and I don't really know if I am disappointed or not. As I see him flying out the window at literally the speed of lightning, I decide that I am not.
"Hold tight", Loki says and pulls me close.
I have missed that we already are at the jump-window and I put my arms around his waist hastily. A comforting feeling if I am honest.
We jump and once again we are on the way down.
And again I feel like I missed a hundred meter step on the stairs, and despite the flirring feeling I try not to scream. It doesn't really work. Wind is blowing into my face, and through my hair flying around I see Loki's green magic forming the slide. We slow down, get deeper and deeper and finally set foot on the street.
I brush my hair out of my face, take a deep breath and let go of Loki. His arm remains around my waist, and as I look up to him, he lets go.
"Are you okay?", he asks, ignoring the distant fighting noises. "It took me a while to get used to it. The first time I did this by accident."
My eyes widen. "When were you falling that deep?"
Loki opens his mouth to answer, but the roar of a monster interrupts him. At the next crossroad, one of the bear-like monsters jumps out and flambés a car.
"We could do 'Get help'", I suggest innocently.
Loki throws me a deadly look. "I just indirectly said that I care about you, and now you stab me in the back like this?"
I grin.
"Okay, I will find a way to pay you back", he says with a twinkle in his eyes. "And don't forget I am the god of mis-"
The monster throws the car against a house and roars again.
He sighs. "Always interrupted in the rudest ways."
I giggle and we run towards the monster. As I conjure my magic ball, the adrenaline catches me and lets me focus on the fight. The monster spots us and growls, then it runs in our direction.
In the right moment, Loki gets agigely on my shoulders and jumps up. He flies through the air, lets his dagger appear out of nothing and pierces it into the neck of the monster. He looks like Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone in reverse. The monster dissolves into a steaming brown puddle and Loki lands gracefully in it.
I stare at him with an open mouth, then the hot puddle eats itself into his leather boots.
"No! Shit!", he curses. "That's fine Asgardian leather!"
"And your feet!", I shout. "Get out of there!"
He does not need to be called twice. He curses some more and jumps out of the puddle, kicks the boots from his feet and magically replaces them with slightly different ones.
We dash into the direction the monster was coming from and find the purple glowing portal in the middle of the next street. Thor stands already in front of it and beats new monsters with his hammer, they are already forming a lake at his feet. His shoes are sizzling, too. Tony fires laser beams from time to time and tries to close the portal.
"Thor!", Loki yells. "We are here!"
Thor throws a look over his shoulder. "Great!"
"Tony, we can now occupy the monsters. Close the portal!", Loki shouts over the clamour.
"I give the directions, Laufeyson!", Tony yells back, firing a laser beam at a monster.
Loki growls. "Just do -"
"I am already doing it, stop telling me to!" Tony flies back to the portal and starts to damage it.
I take a deep breath in annoyance of these two and throw a magic ball at a monster hopping through the portal. It misses and disappeares in the portal, creating a crashing noise like I hit something inside.
I nervously make a new one as the monsters start coming closer now that Tony is busy with the portal. Two jump through it while Thor fights with the first one.
Loki and I exchange looks and get into fighter position. I throw my ball at the right monster and it gets thrown over, my magic is still not strong enough to make it dissolve. As it jumps on its feed, I create a magic net and pin it to the ground.
"Excellent!", calls Loki who slides under the left monster and stabs it from below.
I smile and watch how Loki's magic flows through the holes in the net and twists around the monster like a rope. When he is close enough, I let my net disappear and Loki stabs this monster too.
A loud bang sounds over the street and as I throw my head around, I see that Tony has closed the portal. My happiness in regard to that quickly shrinks as I see that four additional monsters have made it through before it closed. They slowly walk towards us, muscles visibly moving under their skin.
I gulp and prepare more magic.
"Now is the time for our experiment!", Loki yells.
Thor nods and I throw a ball into the air. Thor hits it with a lightning blast and a giant firework explodes. The blast resounds at the house walls.
All four monsters look up and in this moment we attack. Tony fires laser beams at the far right one, Thor swings his hammer at the centrical right one, Loki runs to the one at the far left and I conjure a magic ball for the one in the centrical left.
The ball flies through the air and hits its target. The monster falls over and I eagerly create a net. What the monster sees and I didn't realize is that Loki is very close to it. The monsters friend becomes a hot puddle and that seems to make my monster angry. It spits out fire like a flame thrower, and Loki, who has just turned his back on it, gets hit.
"No!", I shout over Loki's scream.
I rush to him without paying much attention, without listening to Tony and Thor. The now only remaining monster jumps up and as I am almost at Loki's side, its bear-like claws hit me.
All the air leaves my lungs and I fly a few meters before I hit the asphalt. My armour takes most of the damage but I still feel the rough surface of the street scratching through the leather, I seem to slide for an eternity before I come to a halt. Different shouting voices reach my ears, some yell orders and others call my name. I don't know whos voice is whos and I close my eyes, breathing and trying to get over the pain rushing through my body. Someone lifts up my head a little and touches my shoulders. I open my eyes.
"(Y/n)!" Loki looks down on me. "(Y/n), are you alright?"
I cough and try to prop myself up on my elbows. He helps me and I succeed, noticing that my armour is sliced open at my side. But there is no wound, just the plain black shirt I am wearing underneath it. I take a deep breath again and internally thank whoever invented asgardian leather.
"I ...", I start, seeing Thor and Tony coming to me after beating up the final monster, "I think I am fine, thanks." I try to stand up and groan, leaning back on my elbows. "But everything hurts."
Loki allows himself a small, relieved smile. "That's -"
"Loki!", Tony shouts angrily and stomps in our direction. "You should have looked out for her during the fight! That was your task!"
Loki breaks eye contact with me to look up at him. "I did. It's not my fault this happened!", he snaps back.
"Oh, not your fault? Whos job was it to train her? To protect her? To keep an eye on her?"
"Tony ...", Thor enters softly, but he doesn't get a chance to speak.
"She knew of the risk!", Loki shouts. He makes sure that I can sit on my own and stands up. I notice that he is limping a little and a blue burn is at the back of his legs, black leather dangling down. Same with some parts of his back.
"Loki, let me heal you", I say quietly.
"She knew of the risk? That is all you have to say?", Tony screams. "She could have died!"
"I never wanted that to happen, I did my best to ... to make sure she is safe!" Loki comes to a stand in front of Tony, standing a bit too close. "I never wanted her to get hurt! You know that, come on, you can't be that stupid. You just don't want me as an Avenger and can't accept me as part of the group!"
Tony's face becomes red with anger. "I want to accept you, it is just that you aren't as reliable as Steve, or as adaptable as Natasha, or as perfect as Thor!"
All colour drains from Loki's face. He looks like Tony punched him in the face, like he is ready to scream him down or just give up completely. "You ... say that ... to me?", he whispers in a rough, dangerous, dark tone. "To me?!" And suddenly he screams like I have never heard before. "TO ME OF ALL PEOPLE, AFTER YOU KNOW ABOUT MY CHILDHOOD, MY PAIN, MY ... MY EVERYTHING? You are still standing here, looking at me, looking like ... like ..." Loki can't continue, his voice breaks and he just stares in Tony's eyes. "Not as perfect as Thor?" Then he emits one last scream, a roar like a wounded animal, and his green magic punches the ground under Tony's feet. Tony backflips into a house wall several meters above the ground, and Loki turns around and runs, still with that limp, til the next corner and out of the view.
I stare at the spot where he disappeared, my mouth open in shock.
"Come here", Thor says calmly and lifts me up.
"No, I ..." I try to stand on my own to go after Loki.
"Come here", Thor says again, this time with a little insistance in his voice. "We go home to the Tower. Bruce will heal you there."
"But ..." My glance goes from the street corner to Tony who slowly tries to get out of the crater in the house wall the magic pressed him into.
"Tony can free himself for the moment", Thor says bitterly. "And good luck finding Loki when he doesn't want to be found. Back to the Tower, you can wait for him there."