A/N: I got a bit carried away with this chapter; it's super long. Hope you enjoy :)
...
You had no concept of how long you stayed in the holding cell for.
Vaguely aware that Loki was trying to talk to you through your mind, you concentrated on not listening to him. You'd befriended the giant rock man, his name was Korg and you were currently teaching him how to use a sword (the guards had taken yours when you'd been unconscious, but you'd simply summoned it back to your side). If you sat down for too long you would start thinking about Fandral and Volstagg again, and you weren't ready for that yet. Korg wasn't keen on sword fighting, apparently happy to rely on his fists. To be fair, they were made from rock.
Just as you were showing him how to disarm an opponent, Korg suddenly straightened up at the sight of something behind you and launched your sword over your head like a javelin. You span around in shock to see Loki ducking beneath your quivering sword which was wedged in the wall where his head had seconds previously been.
"Good aim." you praised.
"The ghost is back." Korg announced, moving to stand in a position which looked as though he was ready for a fight. You didn't stop him, lifting your chin a fraction of an inch as you watched Loki straighten up and yank your sword from the wall.
"I'm not a ghost." Loki said, punctuating the word ghost with the removal of your sword from the wall. He crossed the cell and held your sword out to you.
"Hey, you know this guy?" Korg asked you.
"Yes, he's an associate of mine." you replied, your eyes not leaving Loki's as you took your sword from him.
"Do you know Thor too?" Korg asked, lowering his gun.
"Yes, this is his brother. Although you'd never guess it." you said. Loki looked away, clenching his jaw. A second later he had your arm in his grasp and then you were in another room, his room. He had a room here. You ripped your arm from his grip, glaring at him, trying to ignore the pounding in your head.
"What are you doing?"
Loki gaped at you, at a loss for words. Finally he seemed to find them.
"What am I doing?! How about what are you doing? You turn up here after weeks, covered in blood and shutting your mind off, picking fights with the Grandmaster's guards..."
"Yeah, to find you having a fucking holiday!" you shouted at him.
Loki laughed in disbelief, and your anger increased tenfold.
"A holiday!? I had to work hard to gain the Grandmaster's favour-"
"How exactly did you gain that favour, may I ask?" you asked vehemently, cocking an eyebrow.
"I- Y/N, don't be ridiculous. It was nothing like that." Loki told you indignantly, understanding perfectly what you'd be insinuating even though he couldn't read your mind.
"Were you not worried about me?" you asked, internally loathing yourself as you heard the hurt in your voice. Loki heard it too, and the injured look in his eyes made you hate yourself even more.
"Of course I was, you know I was. But after- when you..." he took a deep breath.
"When you died, before." he finally managed. It looked as though it caused him physical pain to say the words aloud. He was of course referring to the time you had drowned and been brought back to life by Tony's quick thinking.
"I felt it. You know I've never felt anything like it before and I hope I never have to again; we've talked about it. I knew you were alive." he stated.
You couldn't stay angry at him. But you had to; if you weren't angry you'd let your guard down and then...
"And what was 'she's my associate' all about?" you asked, your wavering resolve clear in your voice. Loki's expression softened.
"What did you want me to say? Girlfriend?" he half smirked.
You glared.
"Okay, sorry." he said, moving towards you slowly. You felt like a dam which was about to burst; the headache which had been made even worse by your fall earlier had reached an almost unbearable pain.
"Now will you tell me who's blood this is? It's not yours."
It was less of a question and more of a demand. You closed your eyes as Loki took your hands in his. Opening your mouth to utter their names was a lot harder than you'd anticipated. After several seconds of clenching and unclenching your jaw you finally gave in and opened your mind.
You felt Loki's shock as clearly as you'd felt your own and the first sob escaped you. Loki didn't move for a few seconds as he took in everything that had happened to you since he'd fallen from the Bifrost, but then seemed to snap back to reality and pulled you towards him, holding you tightly as you cried. You thought your head might explode from the added pressure of crying on top of your headache.
Loki moved his hands from your back up to your head and tried to ease the pain, but you pulled away from him, shaking your head.
"No, let me feel it, I deserve it..." you sobbed.
"Y/N, don't be stupid. Come here."
You were so upset that you could see purple behind your eyes; your magic was glowing at your fingertips without you meaning to summon it. Loki pulled you firmly back towards him and cupped the back of your head in his hands; immediately the pain in your temples was reduced almost to nothing. He couldn't, however, take away the awful crushing feeling in your chest which was a terrible combination of guilt, fear, anger and several more raging emotions, none of which you could quite put your finger on.
After an undetermined number of minutes the tears stopped, and your breathing started to return to normal.
Don't shut yourself off again.
He was afraid you were going to close your mind again.
I won't.
There it was again, guilt.
"You have no reason for guilt. I do." Loki murmured, still holding you tight. You didn't argue, your silence speaking volumes.
"I'm sorry." he sighed.
"I love you." you told him, your voice muffled from your face being pushed against his chest, thanking the universe that he was okay, if nothing else.
I love you too.
You allowed yourself a few seconds of bliss, not thinking of anything apart from the sound of Loki's heartbeat loud in your ears.
Tell me what's happened since you arrived here.
Nothing interesting. I had to make friends with the Grandmaster to ensure my safety; Thor arrived earlier today after being picked up by a scrapper and entered into the tournament...
Did you know about Bruce?
No. If I had...
Something was off with him.
"Why didn't you try to leave?" you asked, pulling back to look him in the eye.
Loki faltered under your gaze, knowing full well that you could see right through him. He liked it here. He wanted to stay, with you. Even after what he had just seen in your mind.
"Loki, Asgard is going to be destroyed. Everyone will die, we are their only hope of survival..."
"Asgard doesn't stand a chance. You saw what Hela was capable of, and if what you say is true and the Einherjar has fallen... what chance do we have? We don't even have a way off of this planet." Loki argued. You couldn't believe what you were hearing.
"You can't be serious." you said, stepping backwards. Loki's arms fell to his side.
"There must be a small part of you that wants to stay here." he said, almost desperately.
You searched your heart, deep down, and there was not one part of you that wanted to stay on this god forsaken planet; even if Asgard wasn't in mortal danger you wouldn't want to stay here. Even if Loki hadn't been able to read your mind, he would have seen your thoughts clearly reflected in your expression.
"Do you know where Thor is?" you asked him, your expression set in resolve. You felt ten times better after releasing all your pent-up emotions; now you were ready to do something about all that had happened.
"No, Y/N, please don't. You said you wouldn't." Loki said to you. You had promised not to close your mind, nothing more. He heard you think this and sighed in resignation, closing his eyes. Something changed in him.
"I'm scared of losing you again." he told you straight, his voice slightly constricted. You softened slightly.
"Lokes, you don't need to worry about me anymore. I've trained, I can look after myself."
The worry in his eyes didn't alter.
You moved back towards him and took both of his hands in yours.
"I know you know that we can't just stay here. We can't." you implored. He looked at you sadly.
"I want a normal life for us. Not living with a group of crazy Midgardians or pretending to rule a kingdom... we can have that here. No one knows us. It could be perfect. There can be no life on Asgard for us now, not after what happened. Everyone knows."
You hadn't thought about that. If you didn't have a place on Asgard, where would you go? The thought made you feel vaguely ill. Loki gripped your hands as he realised you were wavering.
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, Asgard is in danger." you said determinedly.
Loki sighed, fondness and despair fighting for a claim over his expression. Fondness won.
"You must be tired."
Now that he mentioned it, you were really quite tired.
"We don't have time, Asgard..."
"Y/N, Thor will be out cold until tomorrow afternoon at least, I went to see him after the fight. We don't have a way out of here still, and Bruce is... well, you saw him. I assume you won't want to leave him here; if we leave now we'll have to smuggle a comatose Thor and a giant green monster out of here with no way to escape or any way to get past the guards without arousing massive amounts of suspicion." Loki said.
You couldn't argue with that.
"We need to find a way to get off of this planet." you stressed.
"Tomorrow." Loki told you sternly.
Fine.
Thank you.
Loki pulled a small metal object from his pocket it pressed a button on it. The metal disk in your neck flashed and then released your skin. You sighed in relief, reaching up to remove it.
"Were you waiting to see if I'd agree to sleep before you took that off of me?" you asked suspiciously.
"Would I?"
"Probably."
Once showered and in bed you allowed yourself to relax for the first time since Thor had crashed Loki's play all those hours ago. You were asleep within seconds.
...
The next morning on Sakaar dawned far too quickly. Your first instinct when you opened your eyes was to close them again and go back to sleep. You didn't want to think about anything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. If you tried hard enough you could almost imagine that you were waking up next to Loki in the grand master bedroom he'd claimed for himself in the palace on Asgard, like you had been this time yesterday morning.
Loki heard this thought and exhaled gently with a wistful smile: a small laugh.
We can teleport, why not time travel?
You sat up and stretched.
"Time travel is a tad more complicated." Loki replied to your thought, trying to pull you back down into bed. You batted his hand away playfully and got up, making your way towards the bathroom.
"Have you ever tried it?"
Had you known the date of the next time you would get to share a bed with Loki, you wouldn't have thought twice about lying back down with him.
Half an hour later you were sat by the window together brainstorming ways to help Thor escape his cell, and how you might get Hulk to cooperate. So far you'd had no ideas.
Loki opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment the doors to the room swung open and two guards walked in. You stood up and made to grab your sword, but Loki stopped you.
"It's okay."
"The Grandmaster requests your presence, immediately." one of the guards said.
"As he wishes." Loki replied, and turned back to you.
"Immediately." the other guard repeated.
Loki clenched his jaw and looked at you piercingly.
Promise me you won't do anything stupid.
He stood up and began walking towards the guards.
I promise I won't do anything unnecessarily stupid.
The despair Loki felt towards you almost made you laugh. You couldn't make him a promise that you weren't going to keep. Finding Thor was the first step to getting out of this awful place, and you'd wasted enough time already.
I'll find you.
You waited until Loki and the guards were gone and then looked both ways down the corridor before setting off. In a complete stroke of luck you glanced out of the window to your left, and your breath caught in your throat as you caught sight of something which definitely wasn't junk in what looked like a junkyard.
The Quinjet.
That was how Bruce had got here, and it could be your potential escape route! Surely this was a sign that you were meant to escape and save Asgard. It was a long way down, but you were in far too much of a hurry to take the stairs. Closing your eyes in concentration, you took a deep breath and then teleported down to the Quinjet. You staggered slightly as you appeared on the ground, reaching out to the side of the Quinjet for support. Teleportation was difficult, and despite your practice over the last year you still weren't entirely comfortable with teleporting thirty floors down.
Suddenly you froze. You couldn't hear anything from inside the Quinjet, but you could sense someone's presence on the other side of the wall you were leaning against.
"Hello?" you called.
There was a thud as Thor dropped whatever weapon he had been holding to the floor and he appeared around the side of the jet. Unable to believe your luck, you stared at each other for a moment and then you were enveloped in a tight bear hug. You almost didn't recognize him with short hair.
"You're alive! I was so worried-"
Thor was interrupted by a huge roar, and suddenly he was dragging you inside the Quinjet.
"What's going on?" you asked, craning to look over your shoulder.
"Banner, he-"
CRASH.
You and Thor jumped as Hulk entered the Quinjet, peeling back the metal which was in his way with ease.
"Friend stay!" he bellowed, smashing the roof of the Quinjet out of the way of his head.
"No, no, no!" Thor shouted, turning desperately to the Quinjet's console.
Hulk continued to smash up the interior of the jet, shouting "Stay!" over and over as he did so.
"Stop! Stop breaking everything!" Thor yelled.
"Don't go!"
You might as well have been invisible for all the attention Hulk was paying you.
"Bruce, stop!" you shouted, stepping into his line of vision.
"No Bruce! Only Hulk-" Hulk yelled, faltering when he saw you.
"Bruce, it's me!" you said desperately, stepping towards him.
Suddenly Thor triggered a message on the flight console, and Nat's voice filled the cockpit. You were hit with a pang of homesickness for Midgard, and the tower.
"Nice work big guy. We don't know where Ultron's headed, but we know you're going very high, very fast."
Hulk had now stopped short; his whole demeanour had changed. You stepped out of the way towards Thor so that Hulk could see the recorded message of Nat.
"I need you to turn this bird around, okay? We can't track you in stealth mode..."
Hulk had walked towards the console screen and was now right up against it.
"So I need you to help me out. Okay? I need you to..."
"NO! No Banner!" Hulk roared, his body convulsing as he dropped to his knees. You stepped forward to try and help but Thor held you back. Hulk roared again and grabbed at his face, shaking his head, trying to fight it back. He was transforming back into Bruce.
After several more seconds of roaring and thrashing about; thus destroying the Quinjet further (Thor groaned in annoyance) ... there was calm.
Bruce was back.