Weakness | Loki [Book One]

Chapter Sixteen

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not again, I thought. I've done so much to avoid sleep in the past few weeks.

It was a different nightmare, that's for sure. I was still in my room at Avengers Tower. I didn't see any Hydra agents anywhere. The only other person in the room was Loki, who was fast asleep with my head on his chest and his arm wrapped around my shoulder. 

"Are you alright?" Loki asked, waking up when I tensed.

"This is a nightmare, isn't it?"

"This is real." He wrapped his arms tighter around me. "You fell asleep while we were looking for Kathy's brother. I figured I'd let you sleep."

"But I didn't have a nightmare. That never happens."

"I guess it just did."

"This might be a nightmare, though."

"It feels more like a dream to me." 

I didn't move. I don't know if it was the cause or simply correlation, but I didn't have nightmares when I was this close to Loki, and I didn't want to give that up just yet. 

"You know, I care about you," Loki said. 

"Why?"

"Because you saw through my pain but you can't get past your own, and I want to protect you from that."

"I thought you only cared about yourself."

"I did." 

Neither of us wanted to move. Here, there was peace which the rest of the world lacked. 

"Delta," Loki said sometime later, "we really must go do something."

I hid my eyes from the light that was streaming in through the windows. "No."

He tilted my chin upward. "Yes." He stood up and I did the same. It was still early enough on a Saturday that most of the others wouldn't be awake, but late enough that the sunrise had come and gone long ago. 

"Let's go to that cafe by the bookstore we went to a while back," I suggested. 

"Alright." We took the elevator down to the first floor. Usually, Kathy would set up down here, but I guessed she'd slept in. We walked to the cafe since it wasn't far. The coffee shop we usually went to hadn't recovered from the Hydra attack.

We sat down a table towards a wall after ordering drinks.

"Is that Kathy?" Loki asked. 

I turned around. "Yep. It's either her or a spot on doppelgänger." I walked over to her table. "Hey, Kathy."

"Oh, hey! Guess what?"

"What?"

"I found Leo! Well, I ran into him while I was out."

Leopold Fitz was looking more nervous than anything. From how happy Kathy was, I don't think that she knew what had happened. 

Kathy's phone rang. "I've gotta take this," she said. She walked out of the cafe as Loki came over. 

"I'm Fitz," he said. 

"Delta."

"Does she know?" Loki asked. 

"Not yet."

"I don't want this to come across as hostile or anything," I said, sitting down, "but why are you here?"

"Hydra knows about her now. I need you to make sure she stays safe."

"How did she get on Hydra's radar?"