Five hours after her arrival, Lady Kyra was stitched up and bandaged, and the ladies of the Tower had assisted her in getting cleaned up and into clothing that wasn’t torn or drenched in blood. After a brief argument between her and the scientists, she was allowed to leave the medical floor and settle onto one of the couches on the Avengers common floor. She seemed at ease despite the circumstances that brought her to this world, but Doctor Banner had confided to the team that she was under the influence of morphine—a drug used commonly as a painkiller on Midgard, Stark added—and it was likely aiding in keeping her from panicking. The effects could also make her drowsy or slur her words, so they were not to tease her about that.
Loki had wanted to roll his eyes, as that last comment was clearly directed at him, but his sense of decorum kept him from doing so. Why in the nine realms would he laugh at the effects of a drug that was easing the pain from her injuries? He had taken a seat next to her, ignoring the uncertain looks the humans gave him. Thor, despite how often Loki mocked his intelligence, simply chose a seat across the room; the look they shared was far too knowing for Loki’s tastes.
While Lady Kyra was given sustenance (a soup the humans called “chicken noodle”, to avoid potentially upsetting her stomach with the morphine), the Avengers that Loki hadn’t seen during his last time on Midgard chatted with their teammates. He already knew why they were here, of course. Lady Kyra’s arrival, not to mention the manner it took place in, made them come to the tower in haste for a meeting to update them on the circumstances. She also agreed while she was still being treated to share what she knew about the Infinity Stones, and it was more efficient to share that knowledge with the entire group assembled.
His former foes had accepted his apologies—he internally cringed at the word—without much fanfare, and while they were far more accepting of him than he expected, it was clear they didn’t fully trust him. Their wordsmith, Christine, seemed to see through him, and thus far had been the most welcoming of everyone. He wasn’t disappointed; her skills lived up to Thor’s boasting, on par with his own. It had been a long time since he met a fellow wordsmith who could keep pace with him, and he looked forward to developing what might become a cherished friendship.
However, he was much more curious about the woman currently sitting next to him. From what he’d witnessed and heard, she was a woman of many talents; a scholar, a warrior, a mage, and possibly another wordsmith. Fiercely loyal and intelligent, yet a streak of devious manipulation when it suited her purposes. Kind and compassionate, yet ruthless and cold when protecting others or herself. No nonsense, yet also sassy. Such a complex woman, wrapped in a deceptively simple package.
They didn’t speak while she ate, but he wasn’t ignored. She mostly focused on her food, but she glanced his way every so often. Without fail, every time their eyes met, she would give a shy smile and turn her attention back to her soup, a faint blush coloring her cheeks.
She was…interested in him? Interested in him, but also shy. He recognized the body language well from his lifetime at court. The thought was a welcome one, but it was hard to believe that a strong woman like Lady Kyra would be demure when it came to potential romantic interactions. Then again, Miss Romanov had shared the traumatic deaths of her husband and children, so perhaps she was hesitant to become attached?
He made the mistake of glancing across the room at his brother. Thor, the meddlesome fool, was giving him That Look—the look that said he considered the two of them a good match, that encouraged Loki to pursue her. In return, Loki glared back, silently telling him to mind his own business. To his surprise, Thor gave a slight bow of his head, relenting to let Loki make his own decisions regarding the matter.
This had been an ongoing issue between the brothers for centuries. As princes, both were desired by the ladies of the court. Dalliances were fairly common and understood, although basic courtesy was still followed; those brief trysts were treated with the same respect as any courtship, even by another’s lovers. Thor had often tried to play matchmaker for Loki, much to his annoyance. They were all beautiful, of course, but Loki vastly preferred intellect to physical beauty, and too many of Thor’s choices were lacking in what Loki truly desired. Also, while Thor’s choices were all thrilled with the idea of dallying with a son of Odin, it was clear most of them considered Thor the true prize. His reputation as a wordsmith and mage went against Asgard’s values of a warrior, and so he was often considered the less desirable brother.
Loki put his annoyance with Thor out of his mind as Kyra finished her soup, thanking Christine as the wordsmith took her empty bowl to the kitchen. When she returned, the team along with Strange and his partner Wong had arranged themselves on various couches and chairs, and Lady Kyra looked around at them. For some reason, she kept glancing between Stark and Strange with badly-suppressed mirth.
“What?” Strange snapped. That only seemed to amuse her further as she shook her head.
“It’s stupid,” she sniggered.
“Let’s hear it,” Stark encouraged. Her amusement was infectious; most of the humans were now smiling.
“Okay, so…not going into spoilers, but,” she pointed at Stark, “the actor that played you also played Sherlock Holmes in a couple of Edwardian-era remake movies, and the actor that played you,” she pointed at Strange, “played Sherlock Holmes in a modern-day BBC series. And the writers knew that, knew how both your characters were smartasses, and when you guys finally met on screen, they ignored that! Not even one ‘no shit, Sherlock’ to make the fans laugh! We were fucking robbed.”
Strange didn’t seem to find this amusing, but apparently he was the only one among the humans—everyone else found it hilarious and joined Lady Kyra in her laughter. Thankfully, his brother seemed just as confused as he. Loki had no idea who this Sherlock Holmes person was, but judging from how the name seemed to be common knowledge among the humans, he assumed it was a famous Midgardian.
Once the laughter died down, however, she seemed to change; an air of gravity seemed to settle around her as she exhaled slowly.
“Okay. Let me start by saying that all my knowledge is based off the Avengers movies, and I’ve already noticed some differences between the movies and this world, so I can’t say my information is a hundred percent accurate,” Lady Kyra said slowly. The words were slightly slurred and spoken with effort, as though it took all her concentration.
“What kind of differences?” Christine asked gently.
“Well, for one, the Avengers never had a designated PR person,” Lady Kyra informed them, then continued before anyone (Stark) could jump in. “The team never lived in the tower together, their communication on a personal level was non-existent, and,” to Loki’s surprise, she looked directly at him, “the only time Loki was ever in the tower was during the invasion. No one ever bothered to question anything about that time.”
Loki tried to imagine that; it wasn’t difficult, considering it was only recently that Thor came to him regarding the Mind Stone. The idea of still being locked away for a crime he was forced to commit against his will, with no one willing to listen to his explanation, for quite possibly the rest of his life? He had to withhold a shiver of revulsion at the thought. A glance at Thor showed he was clearly horrified.
“Anyway, that’s what’s going on here on Earth. Out there?” She made a vague gesture to indicate space. “I can’t say for sure just yet, but I’m willing to bet it’s gone pretty much the same as the movies so far.”
“When were we in space?” Stark asked, clearly confused.
“You weren’t,” Lady Kyra replied. “There’s another group, the Guardians of the Galaxy. Pretty ragtag group, all former criminals, but also anti-Thanos and saved the planet Xandar from being destroyed by Ronan the Accuser last year when he got his hands on the Power Stone, so consider them allies.”
Wong spoke up in the silence that followed. “Perhaps we should begin with specific intel on each of the stones, and follow up with what you know of Thanos and his plan of attack.”
Lady Kyra nodded; Stark leaned forward, his eyes sharp as though he wished to commit every word to memory. “Right. Well, you know about the Mind Stone already,” Lady Kyra said, nodding to Vision, “and unless things have changed, the Tesseract is on Asgard, so I don’t think we really need to cover those.”
“We also know Strange is guarding the Time Stone,” Natasha informed the injured woman, making her blink.
“Right,” Lady Kyra muttered, then turned pensive as she looked at Thor. “Has the Convergence passed yet?”
Thor blinked, stunned. Loki spoke before he could. “It is due to occur approximately four months from now.”
Lady Kyra nodded. “The Reality Stone, otherwise known as the Aether, won’t show up until then.” A chill ran through Loki as she first looked at him, then Thor. “I hate to break it to you, but your grandfather, Bor? He didn’t kill Malekith, or destroy the Aether. Those stories were spread to keep the Asgardian population from panicking, and to feed into their sense of military superiority. Malekith and a ship or two’s worth of his most loyal soldiers survived and went into hiding. They’re still alive. Cryo, deep space, ships with cloaking technology so effective that even Heimdall can’t detect them.”
As if that weren’t unsettling enough, she continued. “Bor knew that destroying the Aether was beyond his capabilities, so his exact orders were ‘Bury it deep, somewhere no one will ever find it.’ That was pretty much all that was shown of the past, but I think it’s safe to say that he also swore any who knew about the Aether’s fate to secrecy.”
“Smart move,” Strange chimed in. “No bad guy would think to look for a weapon if all the stories agree it was destroyed ages ago.”
“Exactly,” Lady Kyra agreed. “Unfortunately, when the Convergence approaches, its hiding place will be disturbed, and its reappearance will awaken Malekith.” She hesitated for the briefest moment; Loki knew she was holding back information. “The way it played out in the movie, it was Thor’s fight, not a team battle. The short version is that the Dark Elves are tough customers, but they’re defeated in the end.”
She gave Loki and Thor significant looks. “Asgard ends up taking possession of the Aether. The Warriors Three and Sif are sent to hide the Aether with the Collector, Taneleer Tivan. The idea is sound—not keeping two Infinity Stones in close proximity, since the Tesseract is sitting in Asgard’s vaults—but the guy is a sleazeball and a coward. Not sure if he just wanted the Stones for his collection or had worse reasons for wanting to collect them. Either way, trusting him is a bad move. Hiding it again—somewhere isolated, deserted, preferably as deep as possible—would probably be the smartest thing to do. I mean, it worked for Bor.”
Loki shared a look with his brother; they both nodded. “We shall take your wisdom into account when the time comes, Lady Kyra,” Thor told her gravely.
“That leaves the Power and Soul Stones,” Stark noted. “What can you tell us about those? You mentioned something with the Power Stone has happened already?”
“Yeah,” Lady Kyra exhaled. “In 2014—last year for you guys—Thanos hired Ronan to retrieve the Power Stone from Morag in exchange for promising to destroy Xandar for him, and sent his daughter Gamora along. Well, a Ravager named Peter Quill beat them to it, and she tracked him to Xandar where he’d been looking for a buyer. No, he had no clue what he had,” she stated blandly, answering the unspoken question the Avengers clearly had. “It was encased in a metal orb, which was all he knew about it. Long story short, they caused a big scene fighting over the orb, a couple of others tried to capture Peter for the bounty on his head, and all four of them got arrested by the Nova Corps.”
“Gamora is losing her touch, then,” Loki muttered. While the others stared at him in confusion, Lady Kyra gave him a soft look with more knowledge than he felt comfortable with, then patted his knee gently for a moment.
“She’s not the woman you think she is,” Lady Kyra said softly to him. She withdrew her hand, then addressed the group. “Gamora planned to betray Thanos. She intended to sell the orb to the Collector, and use the money to buy a new life for herself as far away from Thanos as she could possibly get.”
“His own daughter betrayed him?” Wanda asked, her expression troubled.
“Not by blood,” Lady Kyra clarified. “Thanos has been working for years to ‘balance the universe’, as he calls it. Invades a planet, kills half the population, moves on. Sometimes, he comes across a child that impresses him in some way, and he takes that child as his own. That’s what happened with Gamora. He killed her parents, stole her from her home planet, turned her into the galaxy’s deadliest assassin…and she hates him for it. She followed him because it was a matter of survival, but when she saw a chance to truly escape, she went for it.”
Loki absorbed this information, hiding his sympathy for Gamora behind an indifferent mask. He had assumed her loyalty to Thanos was genuine, but he was honestly surprised to learn that wasn’t the case. If that was how Thanos treated his favorite daughter…
“Once Thanos learned of Gamora’s arrest and planned betrayal, he sent another daughter of his, Nebula, to serve Ronan and ensure he retrieved the stone. Instead, Ronan claimed the stone for himself because he was a power-hungry religious maniac that saw Xandarians as heretics. Even told Thanos he was coming for him after he destroyed Xandar.” Lady Kyra paused for a moment. “I don’t know much about Nebula’s past, but she’s made of more cybernetic components than organic ones because Thanos kept replacing parts of her each time she failed while she trained. When Ronan asked if she dared to oppose him, she said, ‘You see what he has turned me into. You kill him, I will help you destroy a thousand planets.’”
“Just when I thought I couldn’t hate the bastard more,” Barton muttered, making Lady Kyra smirk.
“Unfortunately, as far as I know, Gamora and Nebula are the only two of Thanos’s children that ever defect. The rest of them are his lieutenants, known as the Black Order, and they’re as loyal as they come. Like, no questions, drank the Kool Aid levels of devotion to Thanos and his mission.”
“Good information to have, but we’re getting off topic,” Romanov chimed in.
“Sorry,” Lady Kyra apologized, ignoring the humans’ assurances. “Anyway, long story short, the Guardians are made up of Peter Quill, Gamora, Groot, Rocket, and Drax. They ended up helping save Xandar when Ronan attacked, got the stone away from him, took him out. Unless they’ve moved it, which I doubt, the Power Stone is currently locked away on Xandar under the protection of the Nova Corps.”
“And the Soul Stone?” Romanov asked. For some reason, Lady Kyra flinched. That didn’t bode well.
“I won’t tell you where it is,” she said quietly. “Even if I did, you wouldn’t be able to retrieve it.”
Something about her tone kept the humans from arguing with her. Strange gave her a calculating look. “Why couldn’t we retrieve it?”
Lady Kyra shook her head slowly. The conversation was clearly exhausting her, but she insisted on pushing through. “I’ll admit, I don’t know squat about what the Soul Stone actually does. But it’s different from the other stones in that it can’t simply be taken from its sanctuary. It requires a sacrifice…that which you love most, so that you never forget its cost. A soul for a soul. And that person is gone, forever. Even with the power of all the stones combined, you can never bring them back.”
Most of the Avengers looked horrified at the thought, including Thor. Romanov, however, had a carefully blank face that Loki was sure masked her feelings, much as he was currently doing. Lady Kyra was right; the Avengers were too caring and honorable to make such a sacrifice. It was just as well that the location wasn’t revealed.
Stark cleared his throat. “You said you know what Thanos has planned?”
Lady Kyra nodded; the group relaxed minutely at the change in subject. “Once Thanos knows the location of all the stones, he’ll go after them in one fell swoop. It’s once he learns that Gamora found the location of the Soul Stone that he makes his move, cuz that’s the last one he needs the location for. Earth will be last, but by that time, he’ll have four of the six. He…he succeeds. You guys eventually figure out how to reverse the snap, but that won’t bring back everyone he killed on his path to get the stones in the first place, or—”
Lady Kyra suddenly broke off, her expression as hard and fierce as any warrior Loki had seen. Even in her injured and drugged state, her powers inaccessible, the mage could sense how truly dangerous the woman sitting beside him was. “It’s not happening. Not while I’m still breathing.”
The humans shifted uncomfortably; they seemed to sense it as well. “When?”
Lady Kyra met Stark’s eyes at his question. “March 29th, 2018.”
Three years. It would take three years for Thanos to learn the location of the final stones. Something about the way Lady Kyra had cut herself off told Loki there were certain people, possibly members of the Avengers, that wouldn’t survive. Perhaps that was why she felt so strongly about it. Of course, it could also be the abstract idea of the death toll making her so vehement. Possibly both.
The Avengers asked a few more questions before Doctor Banner announced that Lady Kyra needed to rest. While the team readily agreed—she had been a wealth of information, assuming it applied to their universe—it was clear they still craved any additional details that hadn’t already been covered. However, they seemed to understand, so they let the matter rest for the moment as the conversations segmented, the Avengers breaking off into groups to chat.
Loki, however, stayed where he was. Lady Kyra had closed her eyes, allowing herself to relax into the couch. For a moment, he thought she had succumbed to exhaustion.
“Fuck, I’ve missed morphine,” she said quietly, then turned her head to Loki and opened her eyes. They were clouded from the drug, and her small smile was clearly influenced by it as well. “First time I’ve been affected by it in years, ya know?”
“Is that so?” Loki asked quietly, a smile tugging at his lips.
“Yep.” She sighed. “It’s the healing factor that does it. Drugs don’t work except in absurdly high doses. Alcohol, too. I haven’t even gotten a buzz from drinking since I ascended…chugging several bottles of whiskey just to get a head change isn’t exactly appealing.”
“Midgardian alcohol is pitiful,” Loki agreed, then gave her a smirk. “Thor and I brought a barrel of Asgardian mead this afternoon, if you would be interested.”
Her smile grew brighter. “I’ve wanted to try it for years. It might actually affect me.” A sudden frown crossed her face. “Can’t drink it till my powers come back, though.”
Loki nodded in understanding. Barton claimed she was currently a baseline human; the mead would probably be a horrible idea in her condition. “Perhaps, once your power returns, you would consider having a drink with me?”
The question brought a return of the shy smile, the faint blush, and lowering her head in a timid manner. He waited patiently; persistence was one of his trademarks, but forcing a woman into a situation she was uncomfortable with was never in his nature. After a few heartbeats, she looked at him again; the smile was still there, but there was something in her eyes that seemed to weigh on her.
“I’d like that,” she whispered.
Loki had no intention of trying to bed Lady Kyra, at least not in the near future. Yes, she certainly seemed his type, but she was also injured, drugged, and clearly had something on her mind that made her wary of the idea. Whether it was a lack of interest in an affair in general, or in Loki personally (judging by their interactions, it was the former), or something else entirely, he wasn’t certain. Inquiring about it in front of the others was an exceedingly stupid move, so he kept silent.
But he was determined to find out.
Between the ambush, fighting for her life and getting her ass kicked in the process, then finding herself in a world where the Avengers weren’t just real, but she’d landed in their living room, and the morphine on top of everything else? Kyra wasn’t nearly as alert as she probably should be. Most of the people she knew wouldn’t deal with the weirdness nearly as well—Dean would probably fangirl over Captain America, while Sam would have a nerdgasm over meeting the Science Bros—but even they hadn’t dealt with a fraction of the things she’d experienced since her powers first came into play when she was 21, or since she’d ascended when she was 27.
If anyone had told her in the last few years that she’d end up sitting in the Avengers’ living room, talking to them about the hunter’s life while doped up on morphine and being subtly flirted with by Loki? She would’ve considered it, shrugged, and made some snarky comment like it was a normal thing.
“You know, you’re amazingly chill about all this,” Hawkeye told her, interrupting her high.
Goddamn it, she wanted to laugh, but the stitches on her ribs weren’t worth it. “What, getting zapped into another universe that’s apparently based on movies I’m a fan of? Sounds like a Tuesday to me.”
The archer cackled, then reached a hand to shake. “Introductions seem silly, but call me Clint.”
“Kyra Singer,” she smiled, accepting the handshake.
“Yeah, I know,” he answered, sitting on her left; Loki still hadn’t moved from his seat on her right. Clint shrugged, looking a little sheepish. “Like I said, TV show. Supernatural. It mostly follows the Winchesters, but you pop up a lot, too.”
“Ah.” It was hazy, but she remembered Clint saying that before. Even with the fact she’d been nearly killed in their damn living room, she’d been amazed that no one had asked hard questions about what that douchebag Kushiel said about her. She was almost afraid to ask, but she needed to know. “What’s the timeline? Like, when does it start, and what’s the most recent?”
Thank goodness, Clint seemed to understand what she meant. “The pilot episode covers Dean picking up Sam from Stanford when John goes missing.” He hesitated just a fraction. “Season five finale was the big showdown with Michael.”
That made her nod. No wonder he hesitated. “That was nine years ago.”
Clint seemed to relax just a fraction; apparently, he’d been worried that just mentioning Michael would trigger her somehow. “So what are things like now?”
“It’s…well, it sucks,” she admitted. Hell, it wasn’t like they were gonna run and tell anyone she knew about all this. Might as well be honest.
“Are things so terrible in your world?” Loki asked quietly. He’d been listening intently to the conversation without bothering to hide that fact.
Sighing hurt too damn much, even with the morphine. “The world’s still spinning along like it normally does, all the usual crap, so that’s not really the issue,” Kyra said softly. She felt the attention of the room on her without bothering to look around, and resigned herself to everyone listening in.
“No, it’s…it’s my life, personally. I’ve been dealing with the monsters and my abilities and shit since Tulsa, when I was fucking 21. I stopped trying to count how many hunters—assholes that would call me in to help with a fucking case because of my abilities—ended up treating me like one of the monsters we were hunting. Killed a few over the years in self-defense. I hated doing it, but they didn’t leave me a choice, ya know? I wasn’t even human to them, even though I was human at the time.”
You could hear a pin drop in the room as she continued. “After Gabriel awakened my Grace, and the fight with Michael…everything changed again. The order to kill nephilim was revoked, but suddenly, I had all these angels to deal with, too. And I’m really not sure which was more unsettling—the obvious hatred some of them still held for me, or the others who treated me like I was the goddamn Second Coming because I’d brought Michael to justice.
“Then there were the boys.” Slow exhale. “Sam and Dean…at some point during the road to the apocalypse, they’d stopped calling me a friend and started calling me family. But the last several years, especially since Uncle Bobby died?” She shook her head. “It’s like dealing with those asshole hunters all over again. They only call me when they need help—usually when they’ve royally fucked up—and all I get in return is demands for more, and a bunch of guilt-tripping, accusatory bullshit if I don’t show up fast enough.” She swallowed hard, willing the moisture out of her eyes. “Basically, I’m back to being the useful freak and the whole implied ‘the moment you’re not helpful anymore, you become a thing to be hunted’ shitshow.”
Dead silence as she closed her eyes, resting her head back against the couch as she tried to bury her feelings again. Fucking Christ, she hadn’t been able to say any of this out loud before, and it made her want to break down and cry. Several people shuffled quietly across the room towards her, but she ignored it as she rubbed her eyes with her functioning hand.
Her eyes flew open when several hands touched her; shoulders, knees, arms, even on her head. It took an enormous effort not to break down when she realized what was going on. Several of the Avengers—all the originals (Bruce was there, he hadn’t Hulked out), plus Sam, Wanda, Pietro, and their PR Christine—were reaching out to her, offering comfort, offering contact. Clint and Natasha seemed to share a look, like they knew how much that simple gesture would mean to her.
“Dammit, if you guys make me cry, I’m kicking all of your asses,” she grumbled, making a few of them chuckle. The hands slowly pulled away—mixed feelings about that—but a new hand reached out, gently taking hers as she lowered it back to her lap. Surprise broke through as she looked at Loki.
“If they are foolish enough to treat a lady as gifted as yourself with such cruelty, then they are undeserving of your loyalty and friendship,” Loki told her quietly. Slowly, his green eyes refusing to leave hers, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it tenderly, making Kyra’s heart beat faster. Thank goodness she wasn’t hooked up to a heart monitor; that would be mortifying.
Holy crap, Loki had kissed her hand! She wasn’t sure if she was blushing, but goddamn it, it was Loki! She’d been crushing on him ever since the first Thor movie, and now he was sitting next to her and looking at her with those eyes and kissing her hand! What the ever-loving hell was she supposed to do?!?!
Apparently, her natural, knee-jerk reaction to mutual interest hadn’t changed; she bit her bottom lip slightly, giving a small smile as she felt her cheeks heat up. Since he still held her hand, she gave it a gentle squeeze. “Thank you, Loki,” she whispered back. “Those are the kindest words anyone has spoken to me in a very long time.”
A flicker of something crossed his face, but he disguised it too quickly for Kyra to identify it. Before either of them could speak, a slapping sound and a yelp came from her left, and they turned to see Clint rubbing the back of his head, glaring at Natasha.
“What was that for?!” Clint protested.
“You know exactly what,” Natasha told him calmly, giving him a look. If Kyra had to guess, it was telling him to keep his damn mouth shut.
“Sam and Dean sound like they need a damn mudhole stomped in their asses,” Christine chimed in, a clear Southern drawl slipping in that was completely different from anything Kyra had heard yet. She couldn’t help it; she grinned at the PR woman and broke down into giggles.
“Do we get to hear the joke?” Tony asked. Kyra shook her head, pulling herself together again, and let her own accent slip.
“Aw, honey, I’m just glad I ain’t the only Southern girl in the room,” she said, giving a wink to Christine. “South Arkansas, born and raised.”
Christine smiled back. “Carroll County, Tennessee.”
“I worked a case a few years back in Madison County,” Kyra nodded. “Had to do some research in Carroll. Nice place, nice folks. Reminded me of my hometown.”
The look in Christine’s eyes was focused yet playful. “Us Southern girls have to stick together,” she declared, giving Kyra’s shoulder one last squeeze before she drifted off again.
It was quiet for a moment; the others had moved on to their own conversations, leaving Kyra to her own devices again. Loki still hadn’t moved from his seat next to her, but he was giving her space to rest and relax, and she was damn grateful for that. The morphine was starting to kick her ass again (did Bruce sneak her a fresh dose while she wasn’t paying attention?), and it was so nice to feel so floaty and have the edges taken off the pain. Her eyes fluttered closed as she relaxed; a hand slipped into hers again, making her smile to herself.
She wasn’t quite asleep and not quite awake, so her sense of time was off. It could’ve been minutes or hours that she’d sat there, holding hands with Loki, when she felt a familiar surge of energy inside her. Her eyes snapped open, glowing gold with her Grace, as everything her senses had been deprived of came back full force.
Strength surged through her limbs again. All the life, the souls in the city, the sounds of the universe, the Earth’s rotation on its axis and its travel around the sun, the vast nothing where she was accustomed to Heaven and Hell being located, the lack of voices from the Host over angel radio—it all came to her at once, making her gasp.
Pain came to her like a punch in the gut in the next moment, and she yanked her hand out of Loki’s as she pulled her arm into her body and clenched her fist. “Fuck,” she hissed out. In the next instant, she felt the breaks in her arm and all the bruises and scratches heal—but even her healing factor wasn’t enough to mend the blade wounds, or erase the pain of her injured Grace. She let out a small chuckle as the glow faded from her eyes, still breathing hard.
“So much for the morphine,” she huffed. A few strained laughs greeted her words; she looked around at the group again. It took a moment to bring her eyesight back to human levels again, and all of them were looking at her, clearly on edge.
“I take it your powers are back?” Clint asked casually. Too casually. Of course…he was the one familiar with her, so he knew how crucial that moment was, and all the ways it could’ve gone wrong.
“Yeah. It was disorienting as fuck for a moment, but I’m okay now,” Kyra admitted as she started pulling the splint off her left arm. Before Bruce could protest, she looked at him and gave him a calming smile. “The blade wounds will take longer, but the breaks are all healed. You can examine them if it makes you feel better.”
Bruce agreed, and ended up marveling at the lack of discoloration on her arm when he unwrapped it. The stitches were still on her ribs, leg, and upper arm, but those were the only remaining hints she’d ever been injured. After issuing her a pair of crutches (the stupid hole in her thigh was gonna make walking hell for a while), the Science Bros moved from examining her to examining scans of her left arm, but Kyra tuned them out as she turned to Loki and smiled, hoping like hell that she wasn’t about to stick her foot in it.
“I believe you had offered me a drink,” she reminded him quietly.
The smile he gave her made her heart flutter. “I believe you are correct,” he agreed.
“Tell you what,” Kyra said. “I need to stand up and stretch, move around a little. If you help me over to the bar, I’ll probably be more comfortable on one of the stools there.” And it was on the other side of the room from everyone else, which gave them at least a semblance of privacy. It was clear the others didn’t trust Loki yet, but she knew better. They were staying within sight of the others, so they could suck it up.
His smile stayed on his face as he smoothly stood and offered his hand to her. After a quick mental check to make sure her supernatural sense of touch was turned off, she accepted his hand and let him pull her gently to her feet. Once she had gained her balance, he reached to her other side and grabbed her crutches, then handed them to her. Side by side, with Loki being attentive to her injuries, they headed for the bar and the Asgardian mead the younger prince had promised.