Red Room

RR63 Inferno

To keep Ksenia from spiraling even deeper into her sorrows, Loki knew he needed to pull her out. "For the record, her name wasn't on it," he said. Ksenia's sobs turned into quiet sniffles until she looked up at him in confusion. "The cave, where we first met. It wasn't her cave."

When Ksenia saw a light return to Loki's eyes, she smiled and gave a shaky sigh, but she still didn't move from his arms. She didn't want to, she hadn't felt this safe in a long while, or so loved since she was last in Natasha's arms.

Loki picked up the geode that had since rolled to the center of the bed and held it in front of him with Ksenia eyeing it. "She hit me with a rock." A smile broke from his lips as he recalled the memory and couldn't help but start laughing. It quickly became contagious as Ksenia picture her mother, a top world assassin, defending her cave with...a rock. "Im serious!" he continued, "she threw it so hard that it carried me off of my feet and into the wall behind me. I couldn't be mad though, she was just so beautiful." A darkness started to return and the smile slipped from his lips as loss seeped back into his heart. When Ksenia saw that, she reached her hand up and wiped a single tear from falling from his eyes. It seemed to bring him out of his mind and he looked back down at her before hugging her tighter to him. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

Ksenia opened her mouth to tell him that she was fine, but his gaze told her that she didn't need to lie. "Honestly, I feel weak," she admitted as she regretfully pulled herself out of his arms. She settled back against the headboard and sighed. "I need to get out of this bed and help you guys find my mother. Now, I'm not sure if they are going to move her now that you've..."

"Ksenia," he interrupted disappointingly, "I saw it myself...she's gone."

She cocked her head sideways and looked at him like he had just sprouted two heads. "Gone? No, you don't understand..."

"Ksenia, I saw her...I felt her...she was gone." He pleaded with her to understand; the young girl had to be in denial.

"No, you're not getting it, Yuri wouldn't let that happen." She saw Loki about to protest again but she gave him a look, which seemed to amuse him for a moment before his face fell yet again and she continued.

"You are so much like her," he admitted. She didn't know but the look that she gave him was the exact same look that Natasha had always shot his way when he was being 'unreasonable'.

"I'm not unreasonable, you just won't listen to me," she said as she started to get annoyed. "Will you just hear me out for a second?" When Loki said nothing, she continued. "Soon after we ended up in The Red Room, Yuri and my mom had a falling out when she wouldn't admit that she knew who I was. To protect me, she fought against him and almost died. Just for a second, she saw in his eyes that he realized that he might have gone too far, that he needed her for his plans and he thought he had almost killed her. My thought is that he wanted us to think that Yelena killed her, so we would stop looking for her. Maybe she did...die, but I would bet my life that Yuri had a back up plan. I mean, it would basically be a suicide mission for us to find the base again just to bring back a body, right?"

Hope sprung into Loki's soul but he dared to cling to it. "I understand what you are saying, but Ksenia...I can't feel her anymore."

"Look, hear me out," she continued, "I think Bobbi is still feeling things from her. She is trying to hide it because she thinks that mom is really gone. I'm sure she's convincing herself that she still isn't up to par with whatever she went through the other day. She said she almost died and she isn't quite recovered from that. She's hiding it from Darcy too and I know that they are pretty close."

"Ksenia, I've always had some sort of feeling that she was out there, even if it was extremely faint and I couldn't trace it. Why would that change now?"