Blue Moon| Book 1 | An Avengers fan fiction series| *under editing*

57- It Hurts

Enjoy, lovelies!!!!!!

Chapter Fifty-Seven

~Nobody's POV~

"I don't feel well," whispers Thea, her eyelids fluttering, her head falling back limply over Loki's hands. "I'm...sorry." 

"It's okay Thea," says Natasha, hurriedly wrapping a blanket around the girl's shoulders. "It's fine."

"We need to keep moving," says Steve. "We can't leave Thea behind either."

"I've got her." says Loki shortly, throwing the corner of the blanket over his shoulder and then standing up, he lifts Thea into his arms. When everyone stares at him, he snaps, "I thought we were in a hurry. Let's go."

"Alrighty then," says Tony, the first one to recover. "I'm going to scout ahead, but it looks like it's just a straight tunnel onwards. We should reach whatever we're supposed to be reaching in a bit."

As Tony shoots ahead, Natasha picks up Loki's scepter, which had clanged to the ground when he caught Thea. "Don't drop her." she says in a low voice, walking next to the Asgardian god, carefully watching every footstep. 

Loki pretends he doesn't hear this.

Half an hour later, Thea says quietly, "I can walk now. I'm fine."

"Good." says Loki, setting her back down on her feet. "You're too heavy to carry for too long, kitten."

"Loki..." Thea whines. "Not now." 

He rolls his eyes and re-takes the scepter from Natasha. That, had been, in fact, a lie. Thea had barely weighed anything to him, as light as a feather. 

Meanwhile, Tony radios them. "Guys, I'm coming up on something that, quite frankly, isn't going to be that fun to get through. Good news is, JARVIS thinks this is the last obstacle."

"What is it, Tony?" asks Steve. 

"It's like an underground river. There's these little stones that we can step on. The ceiling is too low for me to fly us over."

"What's the problem then?" demands Steve. 

"The river, well..." says Tony. "It's sort of made of acid." 

"What?!" 

"What I said. Some sort of poly-form-"

"Speak English!"

"Basically, if you land in it, you get sizzled to a crisp. I'm waiting for you guys, and we'll go from there." 

It takes about fifteen minutes for the twelve to make it to the shores of what Kyle calls the Acid-Pop river. The "stones" Tony described are more like flat slates of rock about six or seven inches wide and long. Tony, unable to be harmed by the acid with his suit on, gingerly places his iron-clad foot on one of the rocks. As Tony had reported, the ceiling has lowered intensely so that at parts, it appears to be only about six feet high. This means that the likes of Thor, Loki, Max, and Tony will have to duck down at some point.

"Let's take this in a line again," says Natasha. "The kids need to be in between two adults. And there's going to be no complaining," she adds when Thea and Jack protest.

Thea ends up in between Loki and Kyle, the two that probably would distract her the most, after Jack. "I don't think this is such a good idea."

"Go." says Kyle, who is behind her. "Giant snake chasing after us? Time to move along, little doggy."

"What the actual heck." Thea mutters as he pushes her forward, nearly running her into Loki, who has already began the treacherous journey on the rocks. He looks behind her and gives her a rather nasty look.