Back to square one
"I know, but you must make Sigyn understand that. She's always had these great feelings for you, " responded Thor.
Loki was becoming severely annoyed. "Sigyn is a victim of her own fantasies. I have told her before but she refuses to see reason. I do not have time for her as I have found my wonderful Daniella. I refuse to talk anymore on the subject."
He pushed his way past Thor and went off in search of Dani. Starting with the library, he was intent on speaking with her. Although they had only been together a brief time, his heart was bursting at the seams to tell her that he loves her.
He had to walk around to search for her as he quickly found out his powers were currently not working due to his head injury which upset him because he was desperate to find his Dani. Looking everywhere he could think of, he finally managed to find her in her room. When attempting to enter, he found it was locked which was unusual. Entering the password on the keypad (used in case of emergency), the usual code declined. He was absolutely sure he had the right room. Maybe Stark had the system upgraded and changed the locks while they were out? No matter, he had to see his lady.
He softly knocked on the door. “Daniella? Are you there?” Listening carefully, he could hear her soft cries but no movement to open the door. “My dearest Daniella, what is wrong?”
He could hear her cries grow louder but still no attempts from her side to open the door. He knocked louder. “Who has upset you? I will ensure a lengthy and painful punishment for hurting you.”
Dani continued to cry. Loki’s presence outside her door only upset her further. She finally retreated into her bathroom, closing and locking that door as well and curling up in the bath tub, trying to get as far away from him as possible.
Once Loki could hear a door closing inside of her rooms, he was both distraught and confused. What was going on? Determined to get to the bottom of this, he happened upon Natasha on his way back to his room. Explaining the brief situation, she was at a loss as well. “She seemed fine earlier. I don’t know what happened, but give her some time. I’ll check on her later today, ok?”
He was completely unsatisfied with her response but had no other choice and left to sulk in his room in the meantime. There was nothing he could find to distract himself, especially as his magic was suffering an unusual outage.
After an hour or so, he was fed up and headed back to the medical facility. His magic should be working by now due to his accelerated healing. Bruce could not find anything superficial, but Loki agreed to some more intensive tests which took 2 or 3 hours. He was almost as determined to find the source of his magic shortage as he was to find out why Dani was so upset.
“I’ve run all the tests I can and will let you know what I come back with. If anything changes between now and then, keep me updated? I’ll have Jarvis help and continue to investigate and should have the results tomorrow morning.”
Loki nodded in acceptance of Bruce’s answer as he was afraid if he opened his mouth, he might incur the wrath of the Hulk.
Wanting to know how Dani was doing, he headed back to her room but was intercepted by Nat.
“I don’t know what you did, but she’s so upset that she’s barely even talking to me.”
Confused, Loki retorted “what in the nine realms have I done to upset her? I haven’t seen her since we departed for the mission.” Skimming his mind, he tried to think if he forgot to do something, missed her birthday, or other activities.
“Look, you did something. All she would say when I asked her what was wrong was ‘Loki’. It took me an hour to coax her out of the bathtub. I’m on my way to check with Bruce to see if he can give her a mild sedative to help her calm down.” Rather than waiting for a response, she brushed past him, hitting his intentionally on her way by.
He was mystified as to what he could possibly have done but resolved to rectify the issue no matter what it took and went back to his rooms to ponder in the meantime.
The following day, Banner had no answers for Loki yet as to why his magic still wasn’t working. The tests proved to be inconclusive. “You might want to try reaching out to Strange. Maybe it’s a magic issue. I can call him if you’d like?.”
Glaring at him, Loki was not amused at Banner’s suggestion, but it was all he had. “That would be…..amenable.” It turned out Strange was dealing with an issue at the Sanctum and would not be available until the following week. With no other alternative, he went out to the nearest acceptable floral shop and purchased flowers for his Dani which he left by her door with a card saying ‘I am so sorry I’ve upset you. May we talk?’
He received his answer the next day when he spotted the vase shattered in the trash bin along with the destroyed flowers but refused to give up. He continued to leave flowers by her door every morning as he had been doing, and they all ended up in the garbage.
It was days before Dani would allow anyone to convince her to leave her quarters. As much as she had started opening up to everyone, she shut right back down to square one. The only person she would somewhat talk to was Nat who strong-armed Tony into giving Dani a few days off.