Guardian

Chapter 27

1958.

A scream ripped from Livy's throat, unable to be suppressed despite her attempts to do so. It felt as though flames were consuming her body, a burning sensation ripping through as the serum entered her bloodstream. HYDRA was obsessed with her powers and, while they wanted to understand them, they also wanted to amplify them.

Livy gasped wildly, trying to get air into her lungs as she could hear her heart rate spike, pounding inside her head. Her entire body began to convulse and the HYDRA scientists frantically scrambled around the room, trying to stop her from crashing. Wilfred Malick watched on from the other side of glass, his hands tightening around the frame in which the glass sat, ready to terminate the scientists involved should they kill her.

Power began to swirl uncontrollably around her fingertips as her wings emerged, knocking over both people and equipment in their way. Her body rose into the air, as though possessed, and she suddenly stopped convulsing, her eyes glossed over and unmoving.

Malick shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet and ordered, "send in a team to contain her, but do not hurt her anymore. We are lucky if she survived this."

Suddenly the room exploded in a burst of white light, shattering the glass window and causing Malick to raise his arm to protect his face. As the dust settled, all that can be seen was a winged creature hovering above a room full of slaughtered scientists. An angel of death.

-

(Loki's POV):
When I awoke Olivia was still sleeping peacefully next to me, a beauteous sight to behold. Her pale skin was dotted with red marks where I had marred her the night before- or rather this morning, I supposed. Seeing her outside my door at one in the morning had scared me at first, my immediate reaction was to assume that she was in danger. It seemed unlikely that she would have stopped by, especially at such an hour, if there had been any other reason. And she was in danger, in a way. She was clearly very afraid of anyone finding out about her powers and Heimdall would easily be able to turn his eye upon her without her knowledge while she was expressing them.

But that would not be the case here. While she was with me, she would be safe from his gaze. Though I doubted she would ever use her powers in my presence, not when she had made it so clear that she did not want anyone, including myself, knowing about them. Still, I could offer her protection and I hoped that would be enough to keep her by my side. I had easily won over her heart, but I knew that her mind still fought against our relationship, no matter how much she cared for me.

I wanted to at least spend the rest of the day with her, even if that meant she would return to ignoring me tomorrow. Perhaps if I were to show her how much I cared, I would be able to assure her that being with me would be worth the risk. Besides, if those idiots in Stark Tower were ever going to come after her and try to expose who she was, I would do everything in my power to protect her, even if that meant returning to my cursed cell.

But I knew that Olivia would try to leave the moment she awoke. Her brain would take over and I had little chance to win back over her heart as I had the night before. Still, I knew that she would not want to leave unless she could think of a plausible reason to do so. It was Sunday so I knew she could not use work as a viable excuse unless she actually did get called in for an emergency, so the only other responsibility she had were her animals.

So I called upon my midgardian disguise and left a note should Liv wake, before walking briskly through the streets of New York. I knew the path well, it was one that I had traveled many times before, hoping to speak to Olivia and garner a change of heart. I had known that she would not want to see me, she had made that quite clear when she told me that we would never work out. But now I had a second chance and I was not going to let her slip through my fingers.