Title: With You
Paring: Loki X Reader
Warnings: talk of death, crying, caring!loki
Spoilers: talk of Cap2.
Author's note: Female reader and it's Loki-centric. I love Loki so much I had to write the sequel to the first part before the next (Next up is Sam Wilson X Reader)
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Loki found it hard to fall asleep that night. His eyes were wide with the image of you; how your (h/c) framed your face, eyes watching, wary like a bunny to a bird of prey. He didn't want to think of him as an eagle, or a vulture, but that's what Loki was, wasn't he? He was a death-bringer. Everywhere he walked, war broke out. He was born to die, and having lived, bore that curse to all around him.
So Loki was sleepless.
His mind raced all about, wondering of what he could have done, hadn't done, would do and who he could have saved. It was almost witching hour when his eyes had finally grew hooded, and almost drifting off, he jolted awake at a sound.
"Is that...crying?" he whispered to nobody but himself.
There was no mistaking the sound of a shattering soul, even if it was dulled by the walls of his room. A fine room, Loki thought; for anyone who hadn't been raised as a prince. But taking his quarrels aside, the green and gold prince slid from the sheets, and tiptoed to the door.
There it was. Louder.
His mind wondered if there were anyone else in the Avengers base, but Loki knew his brother had told him all the team had gone to the mission with him. So ______ was wailing?
Why?
She seemed quite content when she had brushed his hand earlier.
Why does your heart race for a mere touch? Loki berated himself.
Opening his door, Loki made his way to ______'s, and before he lost his nerve, rapped his knuckles upon hers.
The crying stilled.
"Go back to bed, Loki," he heard a teary voice hiccup. "I'm – fine."
"Are you so sure, little bunny?" he implored. "I'm entering, regardless of decency of your appearance."
At this, the giant god crossed the threshold, and switching the light on, choked back a gasp. The gracious, pretty _______ he had lulled himself near to the touch of sleep he had almost tasted before, this bold book reader, who had carelessly snatched his heart unknowingly, was dissolved in bouts of tears. Her face, a wary mask was exchanged for a blotchy pair of cheeks, lip curled, eyes welling with fresh tears.
"You're not fine." He stated.
______ wailed. "That's not how you t-talk to a girl who's been crying!"
Take a deep breath, Loki backtracked. It had been years since he'd been around a crying girl; Sif hadn't been much of a crier, Sigyn wasn't around long enough to show the full spectrum of emotion...his mother cried behind closed doors. But he wasn't a monster, despite what others thought; he was above running in confusion to a bunny rabbit of a human in such pain.
"I apologise." He nods, and gestures to her bed. "May I?"
She swallows. "Why are you doing this? It was just a bad dream." She takes a deep breath, and ridding her chest from the reverberating after-quake of tears, adds, "That's why I never really sleep much. I don't want to see them."
He's slow in sitting beside _____. He doesn't want the librarian to be frightened more than she is, or have the wrong idea of an all-powerful God approaching her at her weakest in the darkest piths of the night. "I have dreams too."
His voice was small. It was like finally admitting he had Mjolnir lain across his heart, and now the weight lifted. Slightly.
She sits up slightly. "But you don't cry your eyes out. You're – you're like Thor. You're unbreakable."
His lip twitches at that. "Nobody's unbreakable, ______, we're all in various shades of fragility. You know this; you've seen the good captain mourn his lover, Stark's parents...we're all decaying."
_____ nods. "You've lost someone too?" She asks. Her voice is small, almost as if, Loki smiles inside, she doesn't want him to hear it if it's too sensitive a subject to discuss.
"My mother. I did not come from her, but she raised me. Now, she has passed on to Valhalla, and walks in starlight." Loki can't help but feel a little sad, thinking of her; her long hair, her commanding voice that overrode Odin in discussion, her compassion. "I am the reason she is dead."
A small pressure rubbed circles in his palm. It took a moment before he realised it was ______, her hand tiny beside his strong palm. "It couldn't have been just you. You didn't, uh, shoot? Stab? Kill her?"
Loki shook his head. "No. I lead a killer her way. She died. It was my fault, _____."
______ is silent. "Maybe so, and yes, she is passed onto...Valhalla? But your fault in entirety? What if the killer killed someone else, like your father, or brother, or all of Asgard? Would that be your fault also?"
He nodded. "It is my cross to bear."
_______ sighed. "That's why I was crying. Sorry to wake you."
"I wasn't sleeping."
She huffs. "I came back early. To my family. We had a place in D. C., and I surprised everyone with my diploma, and we planned to go show my cousins – they lived across the city. In the centre, almost." Her voice is small, and Loki feels her form shiver at every word. "We took two cars...and then Steve's friend, the soldier, he crashed through my windscreen. I hit my father's car..."
At once, he gathers her into his arms. She is small, and cold, her breathing a pulse of its own pace which outruns and overruns his mind into a pattern of thought that makes him wonder if she is okay. If after the accident she had been okay. He had overheard she had been homeless; what more tragedy took root into her life?
"You do not need to speak if it pains you," he whispers to her.
Where has the Loki who brought down Asgard to their knees gone?
Where has the Loki who served Thanos disappeared to?
Where has the Loki –
It's the same Loki. He's still here. And he's comforting a mortal in the middle of the night from the trauma that forms dreams and pain in her mind. Her soul. He might have destroyed so much, he might have shaped a portion of the heavens, the galaxies, but he is in a room, holding a woman.
And he isn't destroying.
He's building.
"I haven't told anyone this outside of my shrink," she whispers. "It's – it's haunted me. I have to tell you, I can't just stop there."
Loki nods, signalling this peculiar creature he's curious to learn the inner workings of to continue her tale.
" – I rammed into Dad's car, and he hit a fuel truck, and the airbags – I managed to get out, and paramedics pulled me out and said I was lucky to be alive. But I don't feel lucky. I feel cheated. I should have stayed for my honours, and maybe travel around the city with my roommate like she wanted to, but no. I had to hit my Dad's car. And HYDRA crashed their helecarrier into the apartment complex." She takes a deep breath. "Your brother saved me from starving on the street. I owe him everything."
Loki can't speak for a moment. His mind is both still as the air in the room he breathes in, and as fast as the brother of the Scarlet Witch. He has felt such pain, and kept it so close and silent that he can understand what ______ feels; but why doesn't he say something? Comfort? The poor thing woke herself with night terrors of the day of her family's deaths, like a babe thinking dark things against a mother's bosom.
Because comfort doesn't bring these people back.
"It's been long enough for it not to hurt, but it does," she adds, quiet. "Does it always hurt?"
"Some days are better than others," Loki hums, "But I think the key is to remember these people. They're truly passed on if you forget their names, their quirks and sayings." He doesn't realise that his thumb is tracing a pattern over her arm, and that she is silently enjoying his touch after ignoring him for so long. "You should go back to sleep."
______ shakes her head. Her eye are wide with worry as she says, "I don't think I can. I'm alone. I can't be alone again. Yet, if you stay –,"
"I'll stay with you."
The words fled his mouth before his mind could argue against it. But no, Loki did not want to argue against the matter. He liked you; you and your books and your frown in concentration and dignity just like his own and he liked how no matter what came from your mouth, he could listen to it all day. Except for your tears.
Never your tears.
"Are you doing this so you can get some sleep without crying ol' ______ in the background?" she whispered to him.
Loki shook his head, rising to flick the light switch. "I want to stay because I want to be with you."
"No pity?" she wondered.
He sighed. "I like you, bunny."