Masquerade

For the last week and a half you had been calling Avengers tower your new home. It wasn’t an unpleasant place, with all the high tech installments and big open windows it reminded you of a fancy hotel, the kind that only exists in movies and comic books, and it was slowly becoming more and more familiar to you. The room you had been given was lovely, if a little nondescript, with tall white windows and a bed bigger than any bed you’d ever slept in. The large majority of time spent in your room was time spent sleeping, the rest of your day was filled with your new occupation as a human experiment for Bruce Banner. 

You were as anxious as he was to find the root cause of these ‘outbursts’ (as Banner had phrased it) that you’d been experiencing, but ever since you’d been offered board at the tower they seemed to have stopped. No matter how much you were poked and prodded, and tested and monitored, nothing abnormal came back, and with every uneventful day that passed you were left with a deeper feeling of doubt than the day before. Maybe you were making it all up. Maybe you were crazy. You had even less answers than Bruce, but at least you got a free vacation in the meantime. 

In your short holiday away from your real life you had learnt a lot about these so called ‘Avengers’. As it turns out they weren't a boy band, but some sort of organisation of super-humans and aliens (not to forget Clint, who was just a regular guy) that stopped the world from turning to complete mayhem. Apparently Tony had offered up his tower to the Avengers following some sort of invasion, which they successfully stopped, and it was mainly used as a base of operation for the various secret missions. It all sounded a little far-fetched to you, but you could vaguely recollect this invasion, though you didn’t watch the news and, to be completely honest, rarely left your apartment. It was only then that you realised why Dr. Banner's name rang a bell when you first met him, recognising him as that big green guy that you saw in a newspaper once. He’d explained his whole origin story to you on your third day there, saying that his mutation was a product of being in the firing range of some sort of experimental bomb that he was working on, and ever since he was afforded that ability to transform into ‘The Hulk’, as they called him. He seemed a little sad as he recalled the story, but you thought it best not to probe any further. 

Today was day eleven in the Avengers tower, and you were woken bright and early by the alarm clock sitting on your bedside table. 

You slammed your hand down on it, shushing the increasingly annoying beeping that had been your wake up call for the last week-or-so. You pried open your eyes, the blocky red numbers blinking back at you. 06:00. You groaned; you were used to waking up whenever your body decided to, which was usually sometime around noon, and these early mornings were not agreeing with you. 

You forced yourself upright, stretching your arms above your head and taking a deep breath in, readying yourself for the day ahead. 

You got dressed and made the bed, heading towards the room that had been temporarily dedicated to you and Bruce's investigations. This had been your routine, and only now were you starting to get used to it. 

You knocked lightly on the door, pushing it open with your foot and revealing Bruce sat at the desk at the far end of the room. His head rested in his hands, the multiple computer screens in front of him blinked, showing various charts and graphs and articles. He didn't move. 

“Bruce?” You called over to him, jolting him with the sound of your voice as he rubbed his eyes.

“Ah, yes.” He said, swinging slowly round in his chair. “Hello.”

“You look tired.” You said, completely aware that you probably looked just as tired as he did. “Have you been here all night?” 

He hummed an affirmation, closing the laptop behind him and standing, cracking his back. “I thought a little more brain power would help.”

“And did it?” You leaned against the doorframe.

“Not really.” He sighed. “I haven’t gotten anywhere, and I’m starting to feel a little crazy.”

“Glad I’m not the only one.”

He chuckled, taking a step towards you. “What I don’t want to do is send you away without answers, mainly because I think you're owed an explanation, and partly because I want to know what's happening. It’s definitely not a stretch to say you were affected by the explosion, but whatever it is seems to have…” He paused, cracking his knuckles. “Disappeared?”

“I know, anticlimactic, right?” 

“Right. But I don’t want to give up if the effects are lasting, and just not presenting. The only thing I can think of is,”

“Is what?”

“I mean the previous two incidents took place in a natural environment; no monitoring, no tests, just you going about your day as normal, which I guess is what made them so questionable, so I suggest we try to recreate that and see what happens – I mean it's perfectly plausible that it’s the structure of all this that’s preventing it from popping up again, that’s usually how it is.”

“Yeah I guess that’s logical.”

“So I suggest that you just go about your day as you would in any other situation, and we see if anything happens?”

You were excited about the premise of being allowed to do something other than stare at a monitor and answer questions. “Sounds fab to me!” You said with a degree of enthusiasm that Banner had not seen before. “So I can just… go?”

“Ah, well, I’d still prefer to monitor you, just not as closely-”

“So I gotta stay here?”

“Yes, that would be the best bet.” He smiled, rubbing the nape of his neck. “Just in case, y’know.”

“Sounds like a good plan.” You nodded slowly. “Before all of that though, you should sleep.”

“What’s important now is that I keep an eye on your blood pressure and on your endocr-”

“You look like a crack whore.” You interrupted him sternly. “You need a nap.”

He chuckled to himself, accepting your offer and shutting down the computers.

“Anything happens-” He started, piling up the folders littered around the desk and holding them to his chest.

“If I accidentally burn anyone to death I’ll come grab you.”

“Good, wouldn’t want to miss that.”

And with that he disappeared, the make-shift lab left empty and dark. 

You clicked the door shut, hoping you wouldn’t have to return there anytime soon, and meandered back to your room, fully intent on going back to sleep and not waking up until the sun was close to setting. 

“No experiments today?” Tony called over to you as you passed one of the hallways.

You followed his voice, finding him in some sort of office, with a long, white table in the middle and no less than a dozen chairs littered around it. He was standing at the head of the table with sheets of paper laid around haphazardly. “Not just now; I’ve been relieved of my duties as a lab rat, for a while.”

“Brilliant, then you can fix my reactor.” You rolled your eyes.

You had been so consumed with your quest of ‘not blowing shit up’ that you had almost completely forgotten that you were technically still employed by Tony Stark to do a job that you hadn’t yet completed. “I will get right on that.”

“Good.” He looked back down to the paper in front of him, pausing for a moment before waving his hand to you. “While you’re here,” You walked over to him. “A fresh pair of eyes might be handy.” You were a little taken aback at the idea that Tony Stark would be asking you for a second opinion on whatever he was working on, but you weren’t one to pass up the opportunity. 

“What is it?”

He looked at you like you were stupid. “Blueprints?” He was right to judge you, they were quite obviously blueprints. “To one of HYDRAs outposts. We’ve got three on their way there now. It was a cargo hold before they took it, and there's some sort of secret passage somewhere but maybe it’s not on here. Either way I’d appreciate it if you could point it out to me.” 

“Who the fuck is hider?” 

“HYDRA.” He corrected you. “Nobody that is of any concern to you; Just need to find the passage.” He shifted the papers, still staring down at them. 

Despite your confusion, you decided to refrain from asking any more questions, instead bringing some of the papers in front of you and inspecting them. You ran your eyes along the lines as you studied the page, scanning for anything out of the ordinary. 

You held the paper up as you searched, absentmindedly running your finger across the edge of the page. The paper buckled, and as you flicked it back up you caught a glimpse of something in the middle. 

You held it over your head, between you and the LEDs that ran above, peering upwards and greatly confusing Tony, who was now looking at you through furrowed brows. 

“Huh.” You said, rotating the page.

“What?” 

“Look,” You held it over to Tony, who ducked a little, glaring up to where you were holding the paper. “There's writing on it.”

“That wasn’t there before.”

“No, no, It looks like it's carved in?”

“Carved? How can you carve paper?” It wasn’t really a question that he wanted answered.

“Okay, not carved then, but sections of this paper are thinner than others. Give me another one.”

Tony obliged, handing you another as you discarded the previous blueprint to the table. 

“Yeah, look.” There were words on this one as well. They weren’t in a language that you spoke but they looked like labels, one or two words that rang along most of the doorways and walls.

You and Tony sifted through them all, searching for this ‘secret passageway’. 

“Ah,” He piped up after some time, handing one side of the paper to you. “Here, look.”

There were the same flurry of characters printed around the page, along with a few faint lines that weren’t there before. They lead from, what you guessed from the size, was a storage closet, along one of the inner walls, through the outer walls, and all the way to an opening on the other side of the building.

“Bingo.” Tony said, making him slightly less cool in your mind, as he grabbed a pencil and outlined it faintly, laying it back down on the table. 

“Coolio.” You said, watching him scribble over the outline. 

He glanced up at you after a fair bit of lingering, and you almost expected him to thank you. “My reactor.”

“Ah, of course.” You bowed, for some reason, and left the room, with absolutely zero intention of fixing that reactor anytime within the next 24 hours. 

Your only prerogative was bedtime. 

You reached your room, clambering straight back into bed and bundling yourself in the duvet like a cosy little spring roll, managing to fall almost immediately asleep. You were always good at falling asleep, you would even consider it a talent, just not one that you could put on a CV. 

Your slumber was deep and dreamless, and you would have happily slept through to the next morning. That was if you weren’t rudely awoken by the jarring sound of yelps and shouting that jolted you awake.

“What the...” You muttered to yourself as you sat up, hauling the duvet off of you and rubbing your eyes. You sat for a second and listened, wondering if this was the kind of disturbance that you could sleep through. After a few more seconds of listening you decided that it wasn’t, reluctantly swinging your legs over the edge of the bed and making your way to the centre of the noise. 

As you turned the corner into the lounge you were met with a complicated scene. To your left was Bruce, who, by the looks of him, had also been woken up by the racket. In front of you, propped up across the couch, was Loki, one hand grasping the arm of the sofa with the other held to his side. His clothing was darker than usual, the fabric around his hand was wet and black, and you quickly realised it was drenched in blood. Rogers was next to him, but quickly took off down the hallway, hopefully in search of some sort of medical attention. There was a woman also, who walked briskly after Steve, her cherry red hair bobbing along with her step. 

“Oh, uh,” Bruce said, shaking himself awake. “Loki, what happened?” He rushed over to him, which Loki didn’t seem too pleased with . Despite his obvious injury he still managed to keep up his overly-formal stature, shoulders squared and jaw clenched. 

“If that is a question that you need to ask then I am beginning to doubt your skills as a Doctor.” He said sharply, frowning as Bruce bowed to take a closer look at the wound, peeling away his hand. 

“Well you’re obviously wounded,” Bruce said, standing back up. “And I’m the only Doctor here, so take it or leave it, buddy.” He looked round to you, brushing his hair out of his face. “Here, come and keep pressure on it, I’m gonna grab a suture kit.”

“Oh! Uh, yeah, okay.” You shot out, dashing over to where Loki was still leaning upright against the couch. You put your hand to his side. It was hot and wet, and made you feel slightly faint. He flinched a little at your touch, shifting his weight. 

“Sorry.” 

“Your hand is hot.”

“I think that’s your blood.” You said, deliberately not looking at it. 

Banner walked over to the bar, dipping behind it for a second as he searched between the bottles. “Nothing here, I’ll be back in a sec.” 

He waltzed out, leaving you clasping Loki's side as he bled all over your hand. You whipped your head around anxiously, not liking the fact that you’d been left in charge of the casualty, mostly worried that if he died you’d be fired as Tony's personal handyman.

“Do not look so worried, human.” Loki spoke, with a tone indistinguishable to his regular voice. “Tis but a scratch.” 

“Right.” You brushed him off, not doing a great job at disguising your worry. It was a good job that you weren’t a doctor, you’d be terrible at it. “Don’t you wanna, like, sit down, or something?” 

“I do not. Banner will be back soon, let him patch me up. It’s the least he can do.” 

You stopped yourself from scoffing at the tone of entitlement that came from his mouth, on account that he might die and you didn’t want mockery to be his last memory. 

Although it wasn’t the ideal situation, you were given a moment to study Loki properly. His eyes were green, the same green of algae, and were shaded by a thick line of lashes that fluttered as he blinked back at you. His brows were arched and sharp, the same deep raven as his hair that shone almost blue in the light. You would have moved on to judge his clothes, but that would mean looking at the blood that was soaked into a large portion of them, and even the thought of that sent a pang of anxiety through you. 

“Must you stare at me?” He poised, though you knew it wasn’t a real question. 

“Yes.” You answered anyway, trying to cover up the awkwardness that you felt when you realised that you were, in-fact, staring, and in quite close proximity.

He scoffed, looking back at you. He looked as if he were about to say something, but was interrupted by the entrance of Bruce, who jogged in holding a metal box.

“Keep your hand there.” He commanded as he passed a thread through the eye of a curved needle, hastily tying a knot at the end and gripping and ripping open an alcohol pad with his teeth. 

He leant the box on the couch, leaning down next to you and readying the wipe. “Here, you can let go now.” You did just that, taking a step back and trying not to look down at your hand. 

You grabbed the box from the couch, commandeering a roll of gauze to wipe the blood off of your hand. 

“What.” You heard, turning back to Banner who was scrubbing the wipe across the area of exposed skin behind Loki's ripped clothes, pausing for a second and scrubbing again. 

“What’s the matter?” You peered over.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing.” He said, though was still for some reason bemused. He stood, brushing his hands together and looking at Loki, tilting his head. “If this is your idea of a prank-

“A prank? I do not deal in such things as pranks.” Loki frowned. 

“What is it!” You interrupted, yelping slightly, hoping that at least one of them would allude to what was going on.

“There's no wound,” Bruce groaned. “Loki is fine, the blood is probably someone else's.” He took the box from you, dropping the needle back in and shutting the lid. 

“It is not.” Loki protested, peering down at his own body. 

“Yeah, no, he was bleeding all over my hand.” You backed him up.

“Well then you have been miraculously healed.” He said sarcastically, raising his eyebrows to you. 

You looked back at him confused, and watched his face change, his smile dropping as he took a breath in. “Oh my god.” His voice was flat. “You were.” 

“I was what?” You questioned.

“No, not you,” He glanced to Loki. “You.”

“Me?” Loki seemed to be just as confused as you were.

“You,” Bruce continued.” You were miraculously healed.”

“Well, what can I say,” Loki adjusted his collar. “I aim to amaze.”

“No you idiot,” He looked back at you. “You did this.”

“I did?” You were having more and more trouble following Bruce's train of thought. 

He said nothing, grabbing your hand and thrusting it up to your face. “You did.” He smiled smugly as he watched the realisation across your face. Looking to your palm you saw the circle pressed into the middle, the circle of scarring from the burn, that healed in less than three days when it should’ve taken weeks. 

“Huh.” Was all you could muster as you tilted your head, looking between your hand and Loki's side. 

Bruce took a deep breath in, turning around for a second and bowing his head. You peered over to him.

“Well then,” You said, wiping the remainder of the blood from around your nails with the gauze. “That’s pretty cool.”

Bruce chuckled to himself, his eyes wide as he turned back round. “Cool? I wouldn’t say it’s particularly cool. I have no idea why that’s happening. That's not cool.” He seemed stressed. 

“You seem stressed.” You pointed out, and then realised that you probably shouldn’t have. 

“Right, right, right…” His voice trailed off as he began to pace back and forth, clutching the small metal box between white knuckles.

Bruce’s manic pacing was interrupted by Rogers as he strutted back in, Thor following quickly behind. 

“Brother,” He announced, grabbing Loki by the shoulder. “You are injured?”

“Was.” He replied, taking a step back from Thors grasp. “But, as it seems, we have a healer in our midst.”

Thor looked down at Loki's wound, which was now a slate of clean skin surrounded by blood-soaked fabric, and then back to Bruce.

“Doctor Banner, thank you. As idiotic as my brother is, I am glad that he is not dead.” Loki scoffed.

Bruce shrugged. “Don’t look at me.” He nodded over to you, and you decided to stop staring at Steve in his extremely tight-fitting top. 

“Yeah, no, uh, you’re welcome, I guess.” 

Rogers took a step towards you. “You were here a few days ago.” You nodded. “Glad to see you’re feeling better.” 

You smiled, appreciating the only bit of normal human interaction that you’d experienced in a fortnight, though that illusion was quickly broken. 

“Well,” Loki piped up, clapping his hands together. “As I am no longer on the brink of death, nor do I know what is happening – or particularly care for it – I shall take my leave.” He almost made it out of the room before being blocked by Bruce, who had cornered him like a rabid dog. 

“Nope.” He said, holding out his hand. “You are coming with me. I need to examine you, examine the wound, see exactly what’s happened, I need-”

“I have no interest in being your lab rat.” Loki droned. 

“Dude,” You said, trying your best to diffuse the situation. “Don’t be a dick.”

He raised an eyebrow, as if he was a teacher that you’d just spoken back to. You raised a mocking eyebrow back.

“Just this once, Loki,” Thor said, crossing his arms. “Listen to somebody other than yourself.”

“Alright.” Loki accepted Thor’s proposal, though his gaze stayed on you. “So be it.”

It now seemed that you were stuck in some sort of staring contest with Loki, his eyes almost burrowing through your skull as he looked at you. You looked back, trying to recreate the same stern expression but, by the amused look that developed over his features, you could tell that you were failing. 

“Right then, you two,” Your staring contest was interrupted when Bruce grabbed Loki by the arm, dragging him over to you and grabbing you too. “Come with me.”

You were led right back to the lab that you were already well acquainted with, cursing silently as the last hope of escape slipped from your grasp. 

You were afforded a small break as Bruce poured all of his attention into examining Loki, much to his dismay. You sat on a stool a few feet away, watching the doctor mutter to himself as he poked and prodded his new subject, and ate a granola bar that you found behind a stack of papers on Bruce's desk. 

“Hm, It’s definitely healed…” Bruce muttered half to himself, half to you. He grabbed a cotton swab from a drawer to his left, wetting it with some sort of solution before jabbing Loki in the side and returning it to a plastic bag. Loki continued to scowl, as he’d been doing for the past ten minutes.

“Hrmph, -ats wurd.” You mumbled through the crumbs of granola as they cascaded down your shirt. You put the rest of the bar on the side, dusting the crumbs off of your lap and repeating yourself. “That’s weird.” 

Loki turned his scowl to you, watching the granola fall to the floor and grumbling. “Must I sit here and endure this?”

“Call it a ‘thank you’.” You replied, raising your eyebrows.

“And what is it that I am thanking you for?”

You chuckled. “For using my new-found magical fairy powers to heal you?”

“Right.”

Bruce wheeled his chair over to you, grabbing your hand and bowing his head to look at it, shifting his glasses to the tip of his nose.

“Right!” He proclaimed, wheeling swiftly over to his desk and tapping frantically at the keys, the screen flashing between, at least, a dozen different programmes. 

You waited for him to continue his apparent revelation, and hopefully clue you in to what he had found, but he just kept typing. You scooted over to him, leaning over so your face was almost in front of the screen. “‘Right’ what?”

He jumped a little as he realised you were there, spinning back over to the swab he’d bagged earlier and gliding over to what looked like a really high-tech microwave. He swiped the swab over a dish, chucking in into the device and wheeling back over to you, clasping his hands together and taking a breath. “Well, nothing for sure, but I have an idea.”

His idea, as it turned out, was that following your ‘incident’ with the reactor you had somehow absorbed some of its power, and that’s what was causing all the weird things that had been happening (you didn't want to mention that you already knew that, lest you break his flow). He rambled on, using a lot of long, medical-sounding words that you didn’t fully understand, but you got the general gist. 

“Sooooo, what,” You said, after he had stopped rattling off various medical terms. “Because I blew up the reactor now I can set stuff on fire, and heal people and shit?”

“No.” He paused. “Well yes, but no.”

“How Informative.”

“Well, It’s just, those aren't direct consequences of the explosion, but yes, as it happens, you can.”

“Cool cool cool, what?” You tilted your head, having a hard time following his train of thought. 

“Look, here.” He snatched something out of a drawer in his desk, handing it to you. 

He placed it so it balanced between your thumb and forefinger, and as you looked at the tiny metal tube you realised it was a fuse. “Wha-” You began to speak, but your protest was cut short by Bruce jabbing you in the arm with something sharp. 

“Yeouch! Dude, what!” you said, glaring at Bruce, who met your anger with a small smile of excitement. 

He nodded down to the fuse, the glass tube now coated in a thin layer of grey. You peered closer, realising the wire was snapped in the middle, the frayed edges twisting in a dying orange glow.

After a small while of considering the object in your hand you looked back up to Bruce, who, you guessed by his facial expression, seemingly expected you to understand his point from this stunt. 

“So.” You said, eyebrows quirked. “What, my magical power is that I can blow a five amp fuse when someone stabs me?”

“It’s not magic, it makes complete sense, actually. I think that the structural instability that led to the reactor blowing also led to a sort of…” He considered his words for a second. “Overreaction.” 

“No duh.”

“You see, when a reactor is doing it’s thing, making lots of power, it’s usually a product of nuclear fission, which splits these little balls called ‘atoms’ into different components which cause more of the atoms to split and so on and so forth, and it makes gamma radiation, and I think that that is what’s been causing these strange things to happen; I think that some of that power- that reaction got inside you and that reaction’s still happening and you’ve essentially been turned into a tiny, human version of the reactor. It’s actually not dissimilar to what caused my, uh, mutation.”

You took a beat, sighing. “My guy, did you just mansplain nuclear fission to me?”

“Well, y’know, it’s a difficult concept to-”

“I have four Ph.Ds.” You cocked an eyebrow.

“And I have seven, but let’s not get bogged down with the intellect olympics here.”

You conceded. “Right, okay, so I’m a reactor?”

“Essentially, yeah.”

“God, don’t tell Tony; he’ll lock me up somewhere and use me to power his desk lamp.”

Bruce chuckled, leaning back and crossing his legs. “I mean it makes sense. It’s all energy; the fire, the healing.”

“The healing?”

“Yeah, I mean it takes energy, and with the added energy it sped things up. Your hand healed the same way it would’ve normally, just faster, and so did Loki.”

It was only now that you remembered that Loki was in the room. You looked over to Loki, who was now leaning nonchalantly against the wall, observing the two of you. Your gaze fell to his side once again, watching the pale sliver of skin on his side that sat behind the rip in his clothes. 

“So,” He piped up, introducing himself back into the conversation as he slowly stepped towards you and Bruce. “You are saying that this one has the power both to kill, and to heal?”

Bruce looked up at him. “Yeah, pretty much!” He chirped, though you couldn’t say that you shared his same level of excitement. 

“Woah, woah, I’m not gonna kill anyone, dude!” You held your hands up.

“You say that now-” Loki started to lean over to you.

“No!” 

He continued. “But power has its way of controlling you.”

“And how would you know.” You frowned, Loki shrugging. “Oh yeah, the whole ‘god’ thing.”

“As these…” He glanced down at Bruce, scoffing silently. “People well know, power is not something that one can let go of.” 

“Yeah, well,” Bruce rubbed his forehead. “You kinda gave us no choice, and for the record it was Thor that wanted you here, dude, not us.”

You were slightly confused. “Wuh?”

“It is not of my own free will that I’m here,” He explained reluctantly. “My brother thought it an apt punishment for my attempted ‘invasion’, as they call it.”

“Oh!” You yipped, realising that you did recognise him from somewhere. “That was you! The guy who tried to, like, take over New York a while back!”

He winced at your undescriptive recollection of events. “Yes. That would be me.”

You shook your head. “Not cool, dude. So not cool.”

“Anyway,” Bruce interrupted, calling you back to your previous conversation. “About you.”

“Me? Oh yeah, yes, me.” You turned back to him, and Loki silently took his leave, seeming slightly irritated that the conversation was no longer focused solely on him.

You and Bruce talked until the windows went dark and you back ached from hunching over in the unsupportive stall that Tony had provided. Once you reminded him that you too were an engineer, he talked more fluently about the implications of what had happened, and you both shared your thoughts. It was his opinion that you might be able to control the energy, and that, over time, it might become somewhat of an asset to you. He hinted about further collaboration between the two of you, and while you admired his professional curiosity, you had absolutely no intention of letting him lock you up and study you for an indefinite amount of time. It did interest you, though, the premise of being able to control the power that had been given to you. If you were going to be burdened with it then you might as well take advantage, and you didn’t mind the idea of having the ability to manipulate energy; not only would it be an enormous help in your career, it would be useful in other aspects in your life. You’d never have to charge your phone, or light a match. You found yourself thinking about what Loki said – power is not something one can let go of. You felt a little lucky. Although you were stuck in a difficult, and certainly unusual, situation, you couldn’t have been surrounded by a better group of people. Bruce, who had the ability to morph into some sort of super-human. Thor, the norse god. Tony, who had made himself a robot super suit. They were a bunch of weirdos, but they were maybe the only bunch of weirdos who might be able to relate to your situation.

You also felt lucky that Bruce had found an answer that satisfied him enough to relieve you of your duties as a lab rat, but before he bid you goodnight he made a suggestion that made you think you’d be spending a little more time than anticipated in the tower. ‘If it is something that you can control, who knows, maybe the Avengers would be interested to know’.

 It wasn’t something that you had considered, mainly because of the impossibility of the notion, but it was an idea that rolled around in your head as you tried to sleep. You weren’t sure exactly what emotions you were feeling; joy, maybe? Anxious, a little, and something that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. You ran through the events of the day as you drifted to sleep, thinking back to how you felt when Loki was dragged in, covered in blood. He was something else that you weren’t quite sure of; he seemed indignant in nearly every conversation you had with him, and like he had someplace better to be, a world apart from his brother. Thor you liked, but your opinion on Loki was still pending.