#awomod

It is fun to watch it from her view. Besides the few times he has snuck into his brother’s - no,  not his brother - and those fools that person calls friends’ minds, he’s never really seen what it is like to fight from someone else’s view. From his it is always tiring when he cannot be stealthy, useless when he cannot simply use magic. From hers it truly is like dancing. Sometimes. Working with, not against the way the enemy moves. Others it is just brutal. Every time it is relaxing. 

The person she is training is far clunkier and only grows more so as they age in this hazy past. But they are still very strong, easily landing solid hits that send her flying back multiple times on multiple occasions. Hits that makes his body wince as he relives her experience, lightly. She recovers quickly, but he’s never been hit like that, and he’s had Mjølnir slam directly into his gut at near full speed. 

But beyond the physical elation she gained from it, guilt surrounded each moment. It’s an overlay, a delayed emotion. Something after the fact made her add guilt to what used to be fun, something she seemed to genuinely enjoy. 

So he brushes it off at first, assuming she just felt bad about something involving a fellow citizen. The other person is purple after all. Much, much taller, but purple. Loki isn’t quite sure of Aresian biology given she is so short yet built while Selene is nearly his height and insanely slim. Seems to be like Asgardian, but he doesn’t know. He’s seen exactly two in his lifetime. 

Yet the memories keep coming. Never clear enough to truly see what is happening; only just enough information to know she trained this person for over 900 years. And that she regrets ever even teaching him to properly stand during a fight. 

Eventually the memories stop. 

Loki wakes only minutes after her. As soon as her eyes shoot open the walk through history stops for him, not even a stray thought in her mind is left for him to access. An entire shutout from her mind leaves him disorientated where he otherwise would be able to wake immediately as well. Rarely is he kicked out so harshly. Most of the time he is not dealing with people who have their entire minds completely walled off. 

Ashira stands, reaching up to stretch her back, then just flops as she folds over, slamming her head into her knees. She slept dreamlessly for once. Suspicious, but hey, she’ll take it. 

Her head looks to her left, out towards more trees and plants, eyeing the fox-like creature as it silently weaves between the plants. Her head then turns to the right, first focusing on the golden prairie being highlighted by the morning golden hour. Then Loki makes a hiccup-esque noise and she tilts her head just a little more to look at him. 

Loki is squirming a bit as his face twitches. It’s a bit odd to watch as she’s never seen him do that before. But hey, maybe leaning against the side of a metal ship to sleep did a number on his muscles. 

When he does wake up, she is still beside him, staring out at the sunrise. The morning gold, more yellow than the red of the evening gold, reflects on her skin in a way much different than the silver of the moon. Those little silver freckles he noticed now look black, the darker streaks in her hair look more matte than shiny. It’s as if new day has the opposite effect on her than a new night.  

“Near the capital,” she suddenly speaks, “was prairie land. The only place on the whole planet where a prairie was and it stretched for miles. I always loved it more than the forests or swamps or whatever else. Something about prairies was always so… calming.” 

“That sounds beautiful.”

“It was.” She looks down at her feet. “It was really beautiful.”

After a moment of just the morning animals speaking, she looks towards Loki. 

“You’ve told me so much but I’m still curious. Anything like this?”

“Asgard is mostly mountainous. Jotunheim is mostly mountainous, just covered in ice.” 

Ashira shakes her head in disbelief. “That’s boring.”

“It is.” 

Ashira turns back to where the sun is still slowly rising. 

Loki finally stands. Gently, of course. His body is still a bit off from suddenly being drop kicked out of her mind. 

The sun continues to rise as they stand in silence. This planet is quite beautiful, as is the sunrise, but Loki is watching the way Ashira seems to sway with every gust of wind as if she is paper thin and not a strong, heavy warrior. It is fascinating how she seems to lose herself to nature. 

“May I have this dance?” Loki blurts out. 

Ashira’s eyes widen nervously as she turns. “What?” 

“Dance with me.”

“I-I don’t know how.” She laughs. It’s not those high pitched flirting laughs he has been subject to his entire laugh. It’s loud and all over the place in pitch and genuine. More genuine than all the other laughs she’s laughed before in front of him.

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well.” She crosses her arms. “There’s no music.” 

“You don’t need music to dance.” Loki extends his left hand out. Ashira looks down at, still skeptical at the whole idea.  “If you really want, we can play some music. But you don’t need any music to dance.” 

She looks back up. “How is dancing relevant?” 

Loki huffs. “It doesn’t matter how it’s relevant. Just take my hand, dammit.” 

So she does. 

And she was somewhat right. 

She is a terrible dancer. For someone who so gracefully fights, she can’t seem to predict where is foot will be when it is going to the same place it was a moment ago. Even when just swaying and gently moving their feet, she either steps on him or trips over her own two. While it is clear that she may not quite get how to dance the way he does, still she smiles and giggles at her own missteps. 

At one point Loki is tempted to just tell her to stand on his feet so she will stop accidentally stepping on him, but he is reminded by another stomp that she is nearly twice his weight. An accidental stomp is less painful than constant weight upon his feet. 

After five minutes she finally figures it out. Her focus moves from the ground where she had been intently staring up to Loki’s face. Loki does not move his focus from where it was, looking down at her. As soon as their eyes meet a grin breaks onto her face.

“I think I figured it out,” she laughs. 

Loki nods slightly. “I think you did. It wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“Harder than a lot of things for me. But no, not so hard.”

She leans her head into his chest then and sighs. It’s been years since she has been able to have such a quiet, intimate moment with anyone. 

Loki has never had such a quiet, intimate moment with anyone before. At least not like this. Rarely are his offers taken up to dance at an actual ball. No one has ever taken him up on his offer to just sway in silence. 

“You’re heart is beating really fast,” she murmurs. 

“Is it?” He replies quietly, looking out towards the prairie. 

“Mhm. But I get it.”

“Oh?”

“I mean, you are in the presence of true fame. It’s nerve-racking to be around such a celebrity.” 

Loki laughs. “Is that right?”

“Mhm.” 

She looks back up at him and he looks down. With the sun now risen, her dark eyes transform into a color like that of trees’ bark in the forests back home. Deep in tone but soft in nature. The sun makes his eyes brighter as well, the turquoise-green becoming lakes of ice blue. 

They both stop moving. 

The rustling of the grass and chirping of birds fades to silence.

The warming heat from the sun feels like nothing against their skin.

Even the fox that comes brushing between Ashira’s legs is ignored. 

Their only focus is the other and their eyes as time seems to stop.

Loki has read enough books about love to know exactly where this is going. And it’s not that Ashira doesn’t know, but she’s never been in such a story book perfect moment before. It’s a weird feeling.

Ashira brings herself to push onto her toes while Loki tilts his head down. 

With eyes still open, lips barely an inch apart, they can already taste each other. But as they reach that awkward distance, the one where they hover for a moment while they decide whether or not to actually kiss, a ship enters the atmosphere. It nearly covers the sun as it does, looming menacingly over the pair. 

Ashira recognizes it immediately.

It’s the Sanctuary II. 

Her heart stops fluttering and opts to freeze entirely. 

“Shit, shit, shit!” She shoves Loki away from her, nearly throwing him into the side of the ship on accident. “Loki, get inside. We need to get moving.” 

Loki blinks in shock as he struggles to stand back up. “What?” 

“Loki we will die if we don’t move now!”

It’s too late. 

The bomb has already been launched. 

As her fingertips reach out to the open entrance the bomb perfectly hits the engine, exploding the ship and knocking her back. 

__

She isn’t entirely sure how long it takes for her to come back to. About ten minutes is what she estimates based on where the heat from the sun seems to be. 

She feels the weight of thousands of pounds of metal crushing her right leg after her mind finally somewhat recovers. Her eyes are barely open, focused more on the dark sky than anything else, but she knows most of her mangled ship must be atop her leg. The whole world spins as she tries to go through any other injuries she may have, so she stops trying to go through possible injuries and opts to just get her leg uncrushed. 

Ashira yanks her leg out from beneath the twisted metal. The screech of the totaled ship is nothing compared to the snapping noise reverberating from her now confirmed shattered right shin. Blood is spilling from the open wound where a sliver of gray bone is poking out. The pain, however, is not from the rip in her skin and muscle. Instead it’s from the burning bright purple heating up around the wound, pulling her skin apart even further, stretching it beyond its limit. 

Her eyes are still blurred for a second as she regains her bearings; ears are ringing as she attempts to hear again. With all of her strength available she turns her body towards the muffled voices talking behind her, a rippling, shooting through her entire body from her ribs outwards, a stroke of purple energy bubbling beneath her skin like an after-wake. 

A good fifty feet from her stands a group of people, she realizes. 

A group she’d know anywhere. 

“… real power.”

“Loki don’t listen to him!” It’s supposed to be a yell, yet comes out more like a whimper as her lungs work to expel the debris and smoke in them. 

There’s a lot more than she realized. 

“Oh look, the princess awakens from her sleep,” Ebony Maw teases. 

Loki glances just barely behind himself. From the outskirts of his vision he sees Ashira stumbling towards them. There is blood coming from her nose, dirt stuck in her hair, a cut visibly bleeding from her right side, and her right leg is mauled. The worst part of her look is something he has never seen in her before. He notices it, barely, on her face: the fear. Over these past several months he’s seen her sad and happy and brave and scared but he has never seen fear on her face. 

True fear. 

“We have gift for you, princess,” Thanos announces, pausing anyone else before they can speak. “Proxima, if you could.” 

The woman reaches into the black wood box by her feet. A bodiless head, being dangled by what is left of their brutally chopped off dark gray hair, proceeds to practically pour blood back into the box it came from. 

Selene. 

Ashira exhales shakily, trying not to cry out. 

“Gamora, Nebula… please,” Ashira begs. Her voice cracks loudly as she speaks.

There are precisely two people in his Children who may not yet have their humanity wiped. Gamora and Nebula, both taken as young children, both pitted against each other constantly, both cybernetically enhanced, and both not fans of their ‘Father’.

They will claim otherwise if asked. 

Their eyes betray then every time. 

“She was most helpful in finding you. Ship logs that didn’t quite line up that your parents asked me to personally look at to see if you were on the other end of it.”

Ashira turns back to him. “You didn’t have to kill her.”

“Didn’t I? I don’t reward failure.” Thanos lets a small smile pull his lips. “And if I didn’t, you know what they would have done to her.” 

“But you don’t.” Her voice cracks loudly as she speaks, too many tears stuck in her throat.

Loki pulls his attention away from Ashira. If he doesn’t he will crack, any desire on avenging what was done to him would crumble away. 

Thanos does so as well. He doesn’t care for Ashira in this moment. 

“You crave a crown, do you not?” Thanos confirms. 

Loki adjusts his posture. “I do.”

“You seek vengeance on those who have hurt you?” 

“Loki, don’t listen to him,” Ashira sobs, finally.

She knows these words he is using intimately. The glimmer of the Scepter in the hands of The Other only makes it worse. She knows how this works. 

But it’s possible to stop it before it starts if he just listens to her. 

“You desire power, possibly unlimited?” 

“I’m telling you don’t listen.” Ashira hobbles a step closer. “He lies, he kills, it’s all he does.” 

“Sh...” Ebony Maw wraps metal around Ashira’s mouth, muzzling her. 

She screeches against, knowing Loki will otherwise ignore her entirely. 

Loki tries to pretend the sounds of her struggle aren’t there, her voice being drowned out by whatever else is happening behind him.  

“I do,” he replies, voice finally wavering. 

“Then come with us. I have a position you’d like.” 

Ashira cannot let this happen. She stumbles forward as fast as she can as the group begins to move quickly away from her. Her body is burning up, her skin ripping apart, but she’s barely paying any attention to the pain. 

Her emotions are too high; any control she may have had is obsolete. 

So as she trips from her imbalanced walking, crashing violently into the ground, a burning bout of purple light flashes across the surface of the planet. The ground tremors beneath all of them, so much so that the younger of his two ‘Children’ nearly fall over. Plants that were once gorgeous and sturdy are kicked up into the sky and turned to nothing more than ash, cascading down on all of them.

Thanos, of course, planned for this. The same shield that was used in that stupid fighting pit to prevent the observers from being hurt is now surrounding everyone around the Titan.

He grins, evilly narrowing his eyes at her. Loki, on the other hand, as soon their eyes meet, quickly turns to the ground. He can’t look at her. Not her broken, quivering, crying form that is still pleading with him in silence. His eyes can’t handle the sight of desperation across her face as her lips open to call out to him, hands clutching her bleeding side. He simply cannot handle the emotional pain looking at her causes; witnessing the disbelief and betrayal she is clearly feeling as she kneels naked and scorched in the blast zone. 

It’s too late now anyway.

“I’ll be seeing you later, princess,” Thanos claims.

The blue beam of a Q-ship takes them all away. 

“No, no, no...” Ashira crawls towards the outside of the crater she created. “No...” 

_______

Next

_______

—

Loki hadn’t expected an ex-princess to land them somewhere so dirty and surprisingly cold. But Ashira just hops off the ship with a coat she grabbed from under her window seat bed, her hair in an entirely different braid than literally ten minutes before, and starts walking towards the city like it’s nothing. 

Like she hadn’t just landed them on a dark, dirty, cold, barren, waste dump of a planet. 

Ashira stops about forty feet out when she realizes Loki hasn’t followed, turning quickly on her toes. 

“You coming or not?” She shouts. 

Loki looks down at the disgusting frost and snow. If there is one thing Jotunheim had going for it, it wasn’t dirty. 

“A moment, please.” 

The runaway huffs. They only have so long til someone will have a track on her ship, and even less time once they get in the city because it’s likely someone will recognize her through their drunken haze. 

Loki braces himself. This woman was kind enough to take him on when she could have left him there as she knew nothing about it and even accused him of being after her. He can stay a few hours on an absolutely disgusting planet with her. He can do it. 

He steps off the ship and onto the too crunchy icy snow. The sound of the door shutting tightly behind him lets him know there is no turning back now, unless of course he wants to just sit outside while she goes to town. So he walks forward towards Ashira with a grimace on his face. 

“Don’t like the cold?” She teases. 

Loki ignores her; he continues his walk, shoving past her to continue to the city. Of course he isn’t fond of the cold after what happened literally four days ago. But for it to also be this… this insulting? He doesn’t want to talk about it. 

Ashira watches with a raised eyebrow. 

“Someone is grumpy.”

She seamlessly catches up with him despite him being taller with longer legs, sliding beside him with ease. He’s surprised at the ease in which she walks beside him since he is by no means slowly doing for her. No labored breath, no increased exertion, nothing from what he can tell. 

It’s a silent ten minute walk to the city. Ashira isn’t concerned with his possible questions and Loki hasn’t bothered to ask any yet. He is partially distracted by the snow: how harshly it falls, how heavily it hits the ground, how unnatural this particular type seems. In fact, the cold feels wrong as well to him. It could be entirely possible that it is due to the revelations of a few days ago, he admits, but something else about the air feels wrong. 

As soon as their boots hit the actual city streets, Loki is instantly brought back to the reality in front of them. 

“Where is this precisely?” Loki grimaces as a group of dirty, drunk creatures stumble passed them. 

“Contraxia!” Ashira bumps into him playfully. “Place to get drunk, get laid and steal from people by hustling the hell out of every game.”

“Hustling?”

“Like pretending to be really bad at something then at the last minute beating the shit out of them at whatever game. I’m amazing at it. Come on, I’ll show you.”

The ex-princess grabs the prince’s right hand in her left, dragging him quickly towards one of the many, many establishments with a flashy, bizarre sign advertising something just slightly nefarious with more than enough drunk people moving in and out. She pulls him sharply towards a staircase between two of the buildings. More than a little nefarious. 

The staircase is entirely dark, steep and slippery and she walks much faster than he. Without her grip he honestly would have fallen at this point (not that he will ever admit that). At a sharp right, he trips. Ashira tugs him upright as she continues to ascend quickly and he barely lands on his feet in order to keep with her pace. 

His eyes notice a light not too far off once he is balanced. Why anyone would put the light so impossible high and leave the rest of the journey dark and dangerous is beyond him. 

And about a minute later they reach that light. A well-lit, golden door stands before them, complete with a perfectly hand written sign, placed just below Loki’s eye-height reading: “Master Zwell’s Gamehouse”. It is guarded by a single guard, faceless due to the mask, who as far as Loki knows, doesn’t even spare them a glance. 

The ex-princess slowly pushes open the door. The inside is all white marble and golden accents and very, very well polished. People and creatures sit at various tables playing games he has never seen in suit styles he has never seen. Given the circumstances of the planet Loki expected another shady place with a randomly nice door. 

“Come on,” Ashira says, tugging on his hand lightly. 

She now leads him towards a side room to the right of them both where she releases his hand to shed her jacket. Clearly he wasn’t paying attention early because the oil-muddied clothes she was wearing before they got off are gone and are replaced with some of the most beautiful gold and white and silver dress armor he has ever seen. 

In its essence it is a fortified white bodysuit with gold threaded designs throughout, extra silver detailing along the abdomen and where a slight v is cut out by the neck paired with sleek white boots with silver straps. The belt around the hips makes it clear that a sword and several daggers (and maybe a gun or two) could be sat there, but instead Ashira has left them empty, save a few pouches she has strung into them. Loki also notices a few places along the legs, barely noticeable to anyone with a keen eye, where blades likely sit. The outfit feels incomplete to him, so it is likely there is a cape meant to be with it. 

“When did you change?” He asks. 

Ashira looks up at him, sliding her jacket onto one of the many hangers. “I was gone for nearly forty minutes before we landed. I had time to change and redo my hair. Take off your jacket, unless it’s part of your,” she pauses, gesturing to him, “ensemble.”

He looks down at himself only to realize he did indeed conjure himself up a fur coat earlier that he does not need to be wearing. Loki quickly sheds it and hangs it besides hers. 

“Now c’mon, I have money to schmooze.” 

Back out the way they came in and past four guards is the desk where Ashira stops. She digs into one of the pouches attached to her belt, leaving Loki free to look about again. He always need to take in as much information as possible. 

The first thing he notices is the number of wandering eyes now directed towards them. No, not them, her, as she keeps her back turned to the entire room. While Loki isn’t entirely opposed to checking someone out, he knows very well that his mother would yell at him for hours if he were so rude as to do so in such a way. 

Ashira flips open her credit pass at the woman in charge of exchanges. This particular one is new, young, and uncomfortable in her white dress. 

“Deal in for 30,000. Is there a spot open for Poker?”

The bored, blue haired, green eyed, pink skinned woman taps her machine against the pass. “Table 6 has a spot open.” Her eyes flit over Ashira’s shoulder to Loki. “Is he playing?”

“No.”

“Alright.” 

Ashira slides the chips off the desk after placing her pass back in the belt pocket. She knows where all the tables in this particular establishment are since none of the Ravagers ever frequent it and a lot of the gangs don’t either because they are always too dirty and underdressed. And the best part of it? Foreign leaders and diplomats come without their spouses knowledge to get laid with one of those weird love bots and gamble. They spill secrets everywhere. 

Loki now notes the sheer number of men and who he presumes are men playing with women or robotic women sitting on their laps or hanging off their arms as they walk through the grand room. Guards litter the perimeter of the room, faceless and armed. And yet here Ashira is, a short and universally wanted woman in a skin tight suit, waltzing into the room like it’s nothing. 

To her, practically everything seems like it’s nothing. At least from the outside. 

Table 6 conveniently has one spot but two chairs available. Ashira sits down with ease, placing her chips towards the edge of the table and waits a moment for to be able to be dealt in. Loki follows her pattern, sitting in the chair that is to the left but also slightly behind her, still taking in all the norms and customs. 

The ex-princess turns over her shoulder, looking Loki up and down a moment before stopping at his eyes. “As you’ve noticed, it’s mostly men with female escorts and whores around here. I’m not asking you act as my whore but at least pretend to be my friend in here, like we are legitimately traveling together so people don’t think I’ve stolen you and try to arrest me,” she whispers. “They don’t care what the other men do. They do care what women do who aren’t their whores.” 

Loki glances past her at a few of the men at the table they are at. Clearly dignitaries of some form, hiding habits from people back home. Powerful. 

“Alright,” he whispers back. 

“Sweetheart, you playing?” A man sneers. 

Loki catches the look of pure disgust and frustration on Ashira’s face before it melts into one of the most amazing smoldering smiles he has ever seen. 

“Figure I’d try my luck tonight.”

The prince tries not to change his facial expression at the sound of her voice saying that. It’s smooth, elegant, seductive and 100% unlike anything she has said within the past three days. He knows it is unnatural but she makes it sound like that’s just how here voice is. 

Add that to the list: 6) A master of deceit. 

For the next half hour or so, Loki watches in silence. Card games are rarely ever played on Asgard and the ones that are do not function like the one laid out before him. So he watches carefully as people slide their bets to the center or remove them just as quickly; the way people watch other’s eyes and hands and even other’s escorts for tells of lying or tells of a good hand; he notes the way Ashira lets herself lose a few times, pouting gently at the men at the table before winning a round with large wagers sitting in the center, despite the game being luck and lying. 

Loki leans over Ashira’s shoulder, lips resting gently near her ear. “At this game it is just lying basically, no?”

She tilts her head in towards him, facade still on her face. “Basically, wanna give it a try?”

“Sure.” 

“I’ll tap out and get us some drinks, you play this round.” She tilts her head back to the group, her face still as gently seductive as before. “I’m going to let my friend give it a try, you think he’s as lucky as I am?”

—

Slightly tipsy, several different types of games, and many credits later, Ashira and Loki are back on the actual streets of Contraxia. They are quieter now - most people gone to bed or crawled into a shop now that morning nears. Not that anyone can really tell when morning is on this planet. 

But it’s near silent. The snow always helps absorb sound but less people is a plus. 

“I believe this is the most fun I’ve had in quite some time.” 

“I’m glad. And you helped me win twice the amount I normally do so I am going to get not only more food and other stuff but a few extra stabilizing units for the power source so hopefully I don’t have to replace it every few days.” She turns the corner and away from the ship. “Will you be staying here or you wanna come back on the run with me?”

“Well…” Loki pulls his hands behind his back and inhales. “I don’t think this planet particularly suits me and you are good company.”

“Good company?” Loki laughs at her wriggling eyebrows. “I’m glad.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Let us shop and then we shall go, my liege.”

Taglist:

So instead they walk in silence, side by side, through the thick forests with no discernible path.

Ashira does not talk, nor does she seem to even really notice his presence beside her. Her eyes are glazed over, no more alive than a doll’s, as they stare off into the distance. Legs heavy, every step seems to be mindless.  

It goes on like this for hours. 

Mindless walking through a darkening forest turns worrying, however, as the barely visible sun begins to reach far past midday. 

Loki steps quickly to walk ahead of Ashira and stops. “Are we going to be back to the ship soon?”

With no pause, eyes still miles ahead, she replies. “Yeah.”

The prince remains in his spot a moment after she passes, watching her thoughtless walking as she proceeds. 

Something terrible happened many years ago. 

That’s all he can figure out. 

—

Upon returning, Ashira heads straight to shower with no words. It’s like she has transformed from a borderline psychotic vagabond to an apathetic zombie over night. 

As he goes upstairs as well, he becomes torn between sitting on his bed and just going back down stairs. The bed takes up basically the entire space, save the few feet to the window seat and the odd little carve out where the stairs are. Ashira clearly navigates around it regularly but he is never there when she does so. She is also never this… odd. 

He opts to just stay instead, lying comfortably down in the springy mattress. Soft sobs can be heard through the thick, metal door, distorting as they try to escape. 

The noises land somewhere between pathetic and heart-wrenching once the distortion is removed. Sniffling whimpers and whole body sobs reach his hears the entire time she is in there.

When the door opens, he doesn’t move. His head does not turn to look at her. Instead he listens to how she squeezes between the wall and the bed, hands sliding against the wall for support in order to get high enough to avoid the bed entirely. 

Once it sounds like she has sat down on her window seat, Loki looks to her again. The dark blue towel is still around her neck when her hands move to begin to braid her hair. Loki watches as she begins to section her hair.

Unlike back home where the braids were done so delicately and carefully, slowly to ensure each hair was perfect, her hands move quickly between the sections and loose strands, braiding from her hairline down faster than he has ever seen. His mother taught him and his brother to braid as braids are custom in anyone’s hair, but nothing as long and curly and impossible looking as hers. 

“May I braid your hair?” Loki asks. 

Ashira stops, brows furrowed as she turns to him. “Sorry, what did you ask?”

“I asked if I could braid you hair?”

“I-” she twiddles her fingers threaded through her hair around. “No. Sorry. I really don’t like people touching my hair. It’s a thing.”

“I get it.” 

She turns back away from to look back out the window, hands working quickly to finish the braid. 

Her fingers finish the last twist and a hair tie that appeared from absolutely nowhere latches around the end. She swears she knows no magic, but that looked pretty magic to Loki, of all people. 

Arms wrap around her bent knees, she turns her eyes to the stars again. 

It’s one thing to love looking at the night sky. Yet her gaze always seems to be a type of yearning he can’t quite seem to describe. A gaze that can be best interpreted as a face made of hope, guilt, forlorn, and a bit of skepticism.

Lonely. 

She looks lonely. 

A different kind of lonely than the kind he has felt and feels, but lonely all the same. For a long time, as he isn’t quite sure, she’s been physically lonely - separated from people who love and care for her. Emotionally lonely too. Never quite sure who to trust, constantly restless. 

Being even slightly lonely is tiring. At least 20 years of it? It’s impressive she hasn’t entirely collapsed. 

After a few more moments of silence, Loki speaks up with the only suggestion he has. 

“Why don’t you come lay down next to me?”

Ashira looks at him, confused. “Next to you?” 

“You’re not doing well and being at the very least beside another person can help. At least from what I remember. I did smash my head into the ground.”  

I could use a hug too. 

“Uh…” she sighs, shaking her head in almost disbelief. “Sure.” 

Loki scoots to the far right of the bed when looking on the window to leave plenty of room for her. Ashira tentatively lies down on the side near the stairs, body immeasurably stiff. It’s as if she has been embalmed or something. Her body is so tense Loki feels tense beside her, as if he has been embalmed as well. 

“Goodnight,” Loki says softly. 

Ashira moves to lie on her side, looking away from Loki. “Yeah,” she practically grumbles, “night.” 

—

In the morning, as per usual, Ashira wakes before him. 

Some time in the night the pair went from simply lying beside each other, facing opposite directions, to facing each other, legs tucked between and on top of each other, her head on his chest. 

Eyes not even open, the warmth of someone beside her combined with the closeness of their bodies leads her brain to years ago. It’s as if the past 23 years have vanished from her entirely and she is back in bed with Eros. 

On instinct she snuggles closer to the clothed chest. Uncommon for an Aresian, not uncommon for Eros, who claimed she kept every room too cold for his liking. 

She did keep it a little cold, she admits. 

As her head pushes further into him, she notices something is wrong. 

The left arm lazily strung out is leaner than Eros’. Far leaner, far longer.

Now that she thinks about it, the legs tangled with hers are too long for his, the chest a little too sculpted. 

Her eyes fly open as she pushes back in fear. 

A thump breaks the silence as she falls between the bed and the wall, body tucked in an uncomfortable V. 

She’s not back home in her shared bed, sharing a rare late morning with Eros. 

She’s in a ten models old ship with mismatched parts, lying in a bed that was never hers with someone she found a little less than seven months ago. 

Despite reality crashing over her, the logic of the situation filing in, she feels so dirty. Something about lying with Loki in such a way sends spasms of panic through her muscles. Betrayal, something engrained in her to mean death, is what she feels like she has done. In some way, despite it being over two decades, she has somehow betrayed Eros. 

Straight up betraying him alone is worse than the prospect of death. 

Regardless of her newfound feelings, it still just feels so wrong to her. 

To get away, she twists herself to crawl away from the bed and out of the uncomfortable folded position, towards her window seat, throwing it open. Hands wildly search through tiny cubes of clothing (if only Loki could see how she managed to fit absolutely all those clothes in a tiny space… the wonders of nanotech), she’s looking for one jacket in particular. Blue, like all regulation clothing, but a special blue jacket. 

As her hands finally grab it, it expands fully to its correct size. 

An engineer’s jacket. Softer than most other jackets but still as tough, it’s the staple piece for the engineers. 23 years on and still smells like him. 

She closes her seat slowly and descends the stairs to go sit alone. 

—

Waking up a good two hours later, Loki is significantly less confused than she was when he awakens. 

She is gone, which he expected. Always waking up hours before him somehow. 

He descends the stairs groggily. He actually slept well last night. His mother’s - no, not his mother’s - advice is never wrong. 

It worked regardless of who told him. 

Once reaching the bottom level, Loki’s sleepy brain picks up sniffling noises that are not terribly far. He first glances around the kitchen and other minimal space to see no sign of her. So he looks to the only other place where she could possibly be.

Loki finds her sobbing in the pilot’s seat, clutching a jacket he has never seen before tight to her chest. There is a name stitched on it, but it’s worn and definitely in a language he doesn’t know. While back on Asgard he would hide in the shadows and watch in silence to have information for later. 

It feels wrong this time. It’s not interesting or cannot be used at a later date. 

It’s just sad. 

So he sits at the little table, opting to stare off into nothing for a while.

—

It had been at least two hours before she comes to talk to him. She walks in wearing the jacket she was previously crying in to and doesn’t even look him in the eye.

“We need to keep moving. This wasn’t the smartest planet for me to land on.” 

She turns quickly around, heading immediately back to the pilot’s seat. 

—

Now set up in the middle of a forest on a presumably empty planet, Loki grabs one of his many books to read. 

He hasn’t read as much as he would like. Something about Ashira is just so intriguing that the stories in the pages no longer compare to real life. No matter what the plot, the setting, anything is, fantasizing about a different life isn’t in his interests any longer. 

Imagining going to places far outside the nine realms is one thing. To visit them, to explore them and experience them is so much more exciting than any illusion he could conjure. 

Pretending to be on some adventure in the unknown is one thing. Actually living it, traveling around with someone you just met who saved your life, the cliche of nearly every book ever, is something he could never describe in words and most authors have never been on such journey.

To read about loving someone but not realizing it until either the most inconvenient time or during some unrealistic confessional always seemed to fake. Norns, how could you just not realize it? Then it happened to him: not realizing, the quiet nighttime confessional and now the period of tension where, when he reads, he just rolls his eyes at the stupidity of the characters for being unsure when the signs are all there. Come on, how could two people in love he so oblivious?

Yet he still opens the book, one on some fantasy store written by a Midgardian of all people. Though different from most fantasy books he has read, it is no different in concept. Another story, written a different way. 

Still can’t compare to how it feels to live one. 

For an hour, the only noises are Ashira fixing some wiring within the control panel (which is mostly a soft buzz and hum with an occasional swear in her native tongue) and the night fauna of Essos? Asus? He can’t quite remember the name of the planet but it doesn’t matter in the grander scheme.  

Loki pays no mind as Ashira returns to the kitchen area to put all of her tools back. He’s not as engrossed as he normally is, or as he’d like to be, but he is still more focused on his book than her loudly shoving a metal toolbox against the metal ground. 

A handful of minutes later, Ashira steps onto the stairs. But she stops. 

Guilt has been eating away at her over the past few days. While the truth isn’t something she is fond of handing out, if he is going to stay like he says he deserves to know. 

He needs to know; to know why she cries over a jacket and avoids certain words, why she nearly exploded the ship and her skin sizzled nearly beyond repair. 

It’s the least she can do. 

So she turns on the step and goes back to the first level entirely. 

“I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” Ashira meekly announces, hands hidden in her sweater and rubbing against her leggings. 

Loki raises his left brow, eyes not moving from his book. “We’ve established that as occasional theme with each other.” 

“No.” She steps closer to him, hands now rubbing together through her sweater in nervousness. “This isn’t a lie, it’s something I should have told you.” 

Loki finally looks up from his book. “What is i-” 

“I was supposed to be married.” 

Record scratch, freeze frame. The classic 90s and early 00s Midgardian film technique is precisely what his brain does in this moment.

“That’s the incident that started it all. My wedding.”

His face falls. “Your… your wedding? I thought you said they didn’t have weddings on Ares.” 

“I said they weren’t common. Contracts are binding on Ares, promises just as strong. One mistake and you are allowed to be killed for breaking a vow. Proof must be submitted, there are trials you have to go through...” her ramble trails off. “... they are so sacred.” 

The final words come out softly, sadly too. 

Loki leans forward, setting the book down on the table in front of him. “So... your wedding is when it happened?” 

“There, in front of everyone. You found out you were a Frost Giant when one of them touched you?” Ashira pauses, pulling her arms up, tucking her hands into her armpits to almost hug herself. “Well I found out I could incinerate things during my wedding when I killed the one person I loved more than anything."

“So how did anyone else live?” 

“They didn’t. It started with him. But then they tried to take me away and I killed more...” she trails off, eyes moving to look past Loki, mind wandering away. “It was just him at first though. I loved him more than anything and I killed him. I held his hands, I kissed him, and he died because I was too...” she hiccups due to suppressing tears. “...happy.” 

Loki has no idea what to say. How do you respond to such sad and desperate words? To such an unfortunate event? Finding out what your horrible burdened is while fighting a monstrous race that is the same as you actually are is one thing. To kill a loved one entirely on accident, in an act of elation is another. 

“I was too happy… Imagine the person you love dying because you were too happy.” She angrily scoffs, tears reddening her face. “Not because of some freak accident in an overly emotional moment, or because you were so happy someone wanted to take that away, but your happiness is truly what killed them.” 

Loki finally speaks. “I couldn’t even imagine what they must of been like.” 

A bitter chuckle suddenly fills the air. Ashira is grinding her teeth and crying. 

“I wish that was the worst of it, but it wasn’t.” 

“So what was?”

“In killing those officers trying to drag me away, even E - even my promised himself, I committed treason. To kill another Aresian without warrant isn’t just a crime, it’s the highest crime and I killed him and others in sight of every ranking officer, commander, general and their family. So not only was I having a mental breakdown, completely destroyed and confused, but I was locked in a cell until they decided what they were going to do with me. Alone. In the dark. They use sensory deprivation like no other species. You can’t even hear your own breath or heartbeat, there is no light whatsoever. Do you know what that does to a person? I couldn’t even hear myself cry.”

Loki leans back to try and process all he has heard. The anger, the sadness, the sheer agony in her voice overwhelms all the words she just confessed.

None of this is something he could even imagine previously. 

It’s how he thought he felt after everything came to light months ago. Listening to her anguish, the quivering fear in her voice clicks something in his brain as he realizes that while he was justified, the sound of his cries and anguish were infantile compared to this. 

“I knew I was going to die or stay down there until I did. I didn’t care. Someone had just turned to ashes in my hands. My parents didn’t want me to die and so an agreements was reached amongst the council. I was to be moved to Hala. They were going to do experiments on me there to see how I could do what I did but I could never return home. I didn’t know that part until later.” 

She pick at a loose string in her sweater before picking up again. 

“I was willing to go. I thought I was sick, infected.” Ashira scoffs at her own idiocy. “I didn’t know what experiments meant, I thought it just meant figuring out what was wrong with me. Not… not all that.” 

Her eyes look back to Loki. They are a bloody red - so much so the black is practically hidden amongst the stained whites. 

“Within just over a year I had gone from about to be married, to on death row, to thinking I was being healed from some unknown illness to being abused to being turned into a weapon to being sold to running away and having absolutely nothing. I feel sorry for you, Loki, I really do. I’m sorry they lied to you, I’m sorry your brother and father were assholes but until you’ve been starved in darkness after killing the love of your life followed by being beat to near death and shown off like an animal and sold like any other weapon, you can not come to know the pain I’ve felt.” 

There are no words. At least none he can think of that wouldn’t accidentally hurt her. 

Ashira opts on leaving the ship during his shocked silence, stepping out with trepidation in her steps, the sweater singeing at the edges. 

Loki wants to follow, he wants to reach out to her to stop her. He chooses not to since it’s clear she wants some space.

—

Loki finds her in the morning. 

She’s sat against the side of her ship, gaze mindlessly on the ground just beyond her outstretched legs. Her sweater is burned from the wrists to halfway up her bicep, dust of the sweater and a clear burn pattern of some form on her skin giving it away. Everything else seems to be untouched. 

By the slouch of her shoulders, it’s clear she hasn’t slept. 

“I do not presume to know what you went through.” Ashira shifts around to indicate she is hearing him, but still remains looking mindlessly away. “But I need to know: why did you pick me up and let me stay on? You could have left me there.”

“They were shooting at me.” Her head lolls back to stare at the sky. “If you had stayed on the ground you’d be dead.” 

Loki sighs. That’s not what he meant, not entirely. “So why keep me on?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“I think you do.” 

“Maybe I do.” Ashira tosses her head lazily to the side to look at him. “Maybe because I was lonely, maybe I just felt sorry. I don’t know, Loki. But you are here now with me and I’m in the middle of a depressive episode so I would like to be left alone.” 

“I’m not going to leave you alone.” Loki sits down beside her. “You shouldn’t be alone.” 

Ashira turns away from him. “I’ll kill you.” 

“I don’t think you will.” 

“Maybe I won’t.” 

—

A good five hours pass by of them just sitting in silence, leaned against the side of the ship. Ashira’s eyes switch rapidly between emotional and emotionless while as Loki’s just remain as they always look: calm, mischievous, and focused.

Loki doesn’t mind silence. He loves it. He doesn’t not like the silence he is currently experiencing. Especially when it is nearing night on a planet that has only had sun for about six hours.

“Tell me about him,” Loki demands gently.

“Why do you always want to know things about me?” 

“Well you know a great deal about me, it is only fair.” 

Ashira huffs. Quickly the facade of annoyance fades and only one of contentment is left. 

“His name was Eros.” Loki definitely remembers hearing that one from Greek mythology, God of Love or something like that. “His family was a pretty standard Aresian family, middle ranks though, so a bit higher in the chain. He focused on engineering which is how I came to meet him. Most of the time, the, uh, lower the rank the less interaction with the royal family and other highly ranked indivduals, but he was so damn good at what he did that Selene and I visited him often.” 

Ashira turns her head away again. Loki still stares at her. 

“I still remember the first time I saw him. It wasn’t love at first sight, not even close. But his hair was just such a brilliant white with a thin silver stripe along the left side. It’s unusual to have white hair. Black happens sometimes, but white? Insanely rare. Add on that he was on the shorter end, which was much appreciated by also short stature.” She hums. “His eyes were this bizarre silver-blue. So much of him was just different.”  

Loki shoves the pang of jealous eating at his heart aside. “If it wasn’t love at first sight then what was it?”

“More like a friends to lovers. It was slow, but we fell in love over our passion for creation and technology. Together we changed the flight systems, all of the ships, more than half the weapons and armory. We did a lot, together. We were going to change more than that, we were going to change the entire planet, fix rules that were arbitrary and stupid, restructure the government, adjust it so ranks weren’t so binding.” 

“So you were always on the verge of catastrophe?”

“Always. He was much more sound that me, less guns blazing. Which was expected, I mean, he was pathetic at fighting, easily the clumsiest at person I’ve ever met, both of which are the exact opposite of what Aresians are trained to be. He used so much logic that it sometimes made me frustrated because sometimes logic isn’t the answer. We balanced each other out well.”

Internally, Loki laments. “He sounds amazing.”

Ashira shakes her head with a smile “He was an idiot. Insanely intelligent but a complete idiot...” Ashira allows a bitter chuckle to pass her lips. “The thing is, it’s been over twenty years. I don’t miss him the way I used to, I don’t feel as sad as I used to when I think about him. I know it’s not the time that’s worn it out, twenty years is nothing. I’ve been alive over four times as long as you have.” Her hands violently rub her face, as if to wake herself up. “But after everything, after running and hiding and all of it, the love I felt just feels so small.” Ashira pauses, brain searching for the right explanation. “I loved him so, so much but if I had gone to him now, not after all of this specifically but after experiencing much more, much more mental and physical strain, I think I would have loved him differently, appreciated him in ways I could never before.” 

“I think I know what you mean.” Loki prays he does not regret his words. “I left Asgard only a few times before I fell. Went to Earth many times, Vanaheim all the time. But after flying through the galaxies with you, I understand Asgard differently. I see it on an entirely different plane of existence than I did before.” 

“Yeah…” Ashira smiles. “Sorta like that.”

“Who knows? Maybe one day you’ll find another who you can appreciate and love in a way you never could before.” 

Ashira glances over to Loki. She isn’t sure if its the reflection of the stars in his eyes, the way they dance with each sparkle, or if maybe it’s the shine of his hair in the moonlight, but something makes him look just so beautiful, so fantastical. 

I won’t one day, she admits to herself. Because one day has already come. 

She decides to lean against his shoulder, turning her own head to the sky again. Loki now looks down at her face. Every time he does he notices something new about her: this time it’s the silver freckles dusted very lightly across her face and the skin that’s exposed. It likely reacts more to the moonlight than sun and he is rarely close enough to see her face in the moonlight to possibly notice. 

He hopes to discover every minuscule detail of her one day. 

But he’ll settle for this, for now. 

----

Next

_______

“So where are we?” Loki asks. 

While he almost always wears the same thing with only mild moderation, she is yet again in another outfit. But this one is a bit of a shock: she’s wearing a dress. With her normal boots on, but a dress nonetheless. Made of a pale blue, shimmering, flowing fabric, and gold stripes periodically dusting the the fibers, it fits perfectly. The curls of her hair flows over her shoulders and down her back to cover where there is a v in the dress. The silver of the locks braided contrast the gold metal work that is covering her shoulders, also found in the large gold metal work belt cinching her waist. Little baubles hang off each side of her waist; they even jangle a little as the wind blows past them. The neckline matches the back, plunging between her chest and easily exposing more cleavage than anything else he has ever seen her in. 

Something slightly peeking out from the top of the low neckline, discoloration of her skin. A pure white patch just barely hidden…

Her hair also seems different. Braids, like always, but this time there are a few pins in it, all with smalls gems in them of the same shade of blue. 

“Dorne. Come on.”

He’s never heard of it before. Then again, there is a lot he hasn’t heard of before that Ashira has guided him to. Asgardian education really let him down. 

Loki shoves his hands in his pockets. “Should I change? You look much nicer than I thought I’d ever see you.”

Ashira scowls. “I can look nice, asshole. I just don’t normally wear dresses.”

“Sorry…” Loki trails off. His intent wasn’t to insult, but rather compliment. “I just meant, it looks nice on you…”

A glint of dark blue catches his eye. Around her neck is a simple pendant necklace. The blue in the center, which rests perfectly in the center of her sternum, seems anything but ordinary. There is a glow that yanks his mind towards it. It’s beautiful… alluring… mesmerizing…

“Loki, hey, Loki!” Ashira snaps her fingers in front of him. 

He snaps his eyes up. “Yes?”

“Brain is up here.” She points towards her head. “That’s definitely my best feature so if you want to stare at anything let it be that.” 

Loki laughs at that, forcing his eyes back to her grinning face. “But if your face is your worst….?” 

“Still look there.” She chuckles, pulling at his left arm. “Come on, Loki. I’m not going to sit here the whole time when we are in one of the nicest places in the universe.”

When they exit the ship Loki hops back in. They are not in an open field or a secluded forest. Instead the first thing he sees as he walks out is several pathways followed by several other landed ships followed by the realization that they are landed in an area very clearly in an area designated for the government of this… Dorne.

Banners and flags are set up all around the area with a red sun proud in the center of the dusty orange fabric, a single golden spear running straight through it. Even from the glance of the landing area he got, he can tell there is one painted beneath them. 

Ashira is already thirty steps ahead of him, however. 

Unsure of whether she is being foolishly stupid or not, he opts catches up with her. Better to be with her and help her get out than leave her alone and end up both detained or killed.

“So why are we just walking around so casually?” Loki asks once beside her. 

“Major enemy of Ares. They don’t want Ares to get me back and Ares has no access to this planet so they can’t tell if I am here or not.” Ashira slows her steps as they approach the arched entrance of the Water Gardens. “Plus I fixed a lot of their tech so Ares can’t touch them for the most part. I come here only occasionally though. It’s pretty.” 

Loki continues to walk forward and even passes  her when they finally reach the entrance of the Water Gardens. “I’ll agree with you on that.”

A quiet snort is released as she watches Loki look around in awe. 

Every color Loki could ever imagine (and then some) in every plant; shimmers and glimmers like he never thought possible on a plant of all things; birds that appear to be hummingbirds but vibrant pinks and blues and purples instead of a more toned down blue or brown or shimmering green (though that does make sense, evolutionarily); and row upon row of infinity pools filled with the most fantastic water features, plants and fish.  

And he thought Asgard has the most amazing gardens. 

“Enjoying yourself?” Ashira teases. 

Loki happily scoffs. “This is amazing... I’ve never seen any place prettier.” 

“It only gets more beautiful.” 

It remains a silent walk. Loki is far too distracted by everything to make conversation. Ashira opts to just silently move beside him and continually playfully tapping some of the more active plants, hands gliding through every little pond and basin of water. 

Then, about ten minutes into the walk, a set of 9 guards marching come around the corner. Clad from head to toe in something eerily similar to what she wore when they landed on, but with more loose and colorful fabrics. The guards are large as well, larger than him in every respect. 

Loki expects Ashira to either tense up or even try to find an alternate route. Instead of tensing, she simply pauses her steps and smiles. 

She even stands a little straighter. Not in challenge though… respect. 

“Ashira, the King awaits,” the singular unmasked guard at the head of the group announces. 

Ashira nods. “Thank you.” 

Her steps pull her forward, then immediately back again. At least half have weapons pointed at Loki that she hadn’t originally noticed. Those that don’t are gripping the hilt of their swords anxiously. 

The guard peers past Ashira. “Who is your friend?” 

Ashira glances over to Loki. There is a soft smile on her face, no malice or suspicion for once. “He can be trusted. He was outcasted from Asgard.” 

“Asgard?” The guard looks him over. Loki feels exposed. Sure he was singled out on Asgard for various reasons but never treated like a hostile threat being brought on trial. “Then he is welcome as well.” All the guards immediately return to a neutral position resulting in Loki letting go of the breathe trapped in his lungs. “Come.” 

All guards turn a perfect 180 in sync to begin their walk towards the palace. 

Loki leans down to whisper to Ashira. “So... what is happening?” 

“The King meets with me once a year to thank me.” It’s at a normal tone instead of the whisper he desired. 

“Oh.” 

Ashira chuckles. “That’s why I am dressed like this.” Her hands gesture down her body. “For respect of their traditions.” 

Loki hums. Respecting traditions doesn’t really seem her style. “And the necklace? A gift from him?” 

“No!” She rushes to reply. Loki immediately whips his head to more closely examine her. No one replies that quickly about a necklace. “It was.” She swallows hard. Loki notices. “It was a gift from someone else. A...” she exhales slowly. “... a friend.” 

Loki leaves it at that. 

The palace is entirely open from what he can tell, built of a red clay with no real doors or windows, just open arches on every level. In fact, Loki hadn’t even noticed they were entering a building until the sun grew dim as they turned right down a hall. 

At the end of said hall sits a man who appears to be at least half way through his life, as Loki does not know how these people age. 

And the chair… has wheels?

Loki recalls reading about some form of chair with wheels that helps those who cannot walk, but Asgard never even had them as far as he is aware. It’s a bizarre sight to see and even more bizarre to see a monarch in one.

“Ashira!” The King shouts, extending his arms out to her. She leans into them, awkwardly balanced on her toes as they embrace. It’s not very long but the man is definitely happy with it. “And who is this?” He gestures behind Ashira.

Ashira simply places her right hand on his left forearm as reassurance that Loki is not an enemy. She pauses though, taking a moment to look back at Loki. 

His face is entirely neutral and mostly focused on her (not on the king like he was trained). The pair shares a brief smile before Ashira turns her head slowly towards the king again. 

“A friend.” 

Doran raises his right brow skeptically. Ashira has never brought anyone with her on her trips back to Dorne. Not even Selene. “A… friend. Alright. Well, everyone is here today.”

Ashira yanks her head back in shock. “Your brother is here?” 

“He is.” Doran nods. “As are all his children.” 

“Is there a special occasion?” 

“I wish. He is never here when those occur. Let’s go before he decides to leave again.” 

A guard aids in wheeling the king around. While they wait Ashira realizes her left hand is still rested on Loki’s forearm. The prince seems not to even mind her instinctively protective touch that has turned into a comically long lingering hold. 

Embarrassed, Ashira tugs her hand away hastily before slowing her movements once a few inches away to reduce the visibility of her movement. Loki notices regardless. 

As the group starts to walk, Loki leans towards Ashira, again. 

“So who is all here?” 

“The king, his daughter and two sons, the king’s younger brother and his eight daughters are all here today, as well as the prince’s lover.” 

Loki furrows his brows. A lover invited to a formal gathering? “His lover?”

“Yeah, she is the mother of four of his children.” 

Oh. “So they are not legitimate?”

“Every child is legitimate, but they aren’t in line for the throne. Any of them, technically. Four have the same mother, but the other four all have different mothers.” 

“What?” 

Ashira looks up at him confused. “What?” 

Loki hums. “That would never be allowed on Asgard. Unmarried is one thing but five mothers for eight children?” 

“Marriage is immensely rare on Ares.” So are unplanned kids. Or, kids at all. “So it happens. Think of Dorne like an in-between.”

And then they enter the room. 

Well, it’s more like a courtyard, Loki figures, seeing as each side as covered pathways but the inner part is entirely roofless, giving way for the bright, searing sun to light the semi-bricked yard. A large wooden table is set in the center, with trees and bushes surrounding it and a water fountain proudly on the other side from them. 

The people - hel the people - are dressed everywhere from close to what Ashira is donning to sandy toned clothing that is barely covering anything. Then there is the sheer chaos of the situation. Even the older of the people seem to be running around and play fighting, one girl using a whip to pull who appears to be her older sister back to her. 

This is a royal gathering? It feels informal. He would be chastised for not sitting properly, forget wrestling his brother to the ground. 

“Come on,” Ashira whispers at Loki’s stoic and shocked form. 

There are three seats towards the end of the table near the side they are on where there are no indicators of being pre-occupied. Well, four, if you count the empty spot where a Queen would presumably sit, as well as two on one side and one on the other. 

Loki goes opposite Ashira as she chooses to sit where there are two spaces. He almost followed to sit beside her. His upbringing kicked in and overruled him, reminding him that he ought to sit opposite her. 

So he reluctantly sits across, sliding into the chair at the very end of the right side from the King’s view. Ashira offers an almost sympathetic smile.

Barely a minute after Loki and Ashira sit down, the rest begin to follow. The once empty seat beside Ashira is soon filled by a woman who makes a show of staring another guest down before tossing her spear to stick perfectly in the center of the planter behind said guest. 

“Still don’t see why you should get to go first,” the other guest, another woman in similar clothes practically whines. 

“Because I am both older and better.” She raises her brow before sitting very uncordially down. 

Someone slides in besides Loki, as he expected, so he does not pay much attention. His mind is more focused on trying to generally identify most of the people as everyone begins to seat themselves not wanting to insult anyone. He has learned that it does not matter whether or not you’ve been introduced or told the title of someone, it’s better not to disrespect them. 

“Nym, no weapons at the table, you know that,” an older woman a few spots down and across from who Loki has identified as the younger brother of the king, whispers angrily. 

The way the girl reluctantly slides the whip beneath the table to her feet reminds him much the many, many times his brother had to be reminded Mjolnir was not allowed at the table and opted to just slide the weapon out of sight. 

Loki cannot help but zone out. He’s been through too many events like this in his lifetime. The king will make an announcement thanking everyone, the food will be brought out, people will eat. Conversation will commence. 

And that’s exactly what happens. The only factor throwing Loki off is Ashira. She is just sitting there across from them in clothes that just don’t seem to fit her quite right. She doesn’t seem like a roam around in a flow dress type. Yet she is conversing as if this is niche, this is where she really flourishes. From what he knows these sorts of meals were not common on Ares. Somehow she makes it look like she’s been through it for centuries like he has.

As he continues to eat mindlessly (the food is amazingly flavored but immensely repetitive, though he can't really blame them for being in a desert planet), his eyes can’t help but switching between the necklace and the plastic like spot on her chest, even if his mind is elsewhere. Something about both just seem unnatural in ways he can’t quite describe and now that he is sat directly across from her he has the opportunity to just look. 

The pendant seems to be alive. The blue pulses not randomly, but controlled and consistently, like a heart beat almost. But it also seems to react to Ashira as she laughs and talks as if it is trying to respond as well. The shades even swirl around like it is thinking a couple of times. 

The spot is less and more odd. It is not like her other scars that seem to have naturally stitched back together with the surrounding skin; it also doesn’t look like something just pasted on either. Add the strangeness that the patch appears to be most of her left chest, meaning her heart was somehow impacted as well. 

At least that is what he assumes. 

“What do you think, Loki?” 

He is shaken out of his mindless staring. “Pardon me?”

“I was wondering what you think of the trade disputes due to the new found mine of gravitonium?” it’s the king’s brother.

Loki shifts slightly. “I don’t think I have enough knowledge to be qualified to answer that.” 

Oberon nods satisfied. “A reasonable answer. I wish that’s how the rest of the Westeros system would respond instead of interrupting our intervention. That reminds me…”

He looks back to Ashira for assurance he responded correctly to her to see her smiling over at Loki widely, hiding her face partially behind the glass of wine in her hand. A smile pulls at his lips as well. 

The King watches the entire table carefully, including his guest and her friend. He notes the lingering smiles between the two causing himself to get slightly distracted when his brother asks him a question. 

One of the others, Loki assumes the lover of the king’s younger brother, soon says something that pulls Ashira’s attention to way. But her head pulls away slowly, her lips answering before actually looking back to the others. 

“You are very lucky,” the woman to the left of him whispers. 

Nam? Nym? Something like that.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ashira. She is an amazing warrior and very pretty. Anyone would be lucky to have her.”

“Oh, we’re not —”

The girl cuts him off.

“That’s a shame. I know the older of the two princes has been interested in her since they first met. She isn’t interested but you never know.” 

Loki’s brows furrow and he looks down the table again. The prince on his side on the table is indeed staring at Ashira. It isn’t a subtle stare either. It’s a doe-eyed, intense, ceaseless stare that Ashira is either blissfully ignorant of or insanely amazing at ignoring. 

“Don’t worry, it would never work out.” 

The girl’s words draw him out of the staring he begun at the prince. The difference? Loki’s utensils now were slightly altered in shape; the handles of them now bent back to follow the curve of his hand. He opts to set them down and pick up his glass. Just needs to relax. 

“Pardon me?” Loki asks. 

“It would never work. We only live for a hundred years at most, she’s almost 5,000 years.” 

Loki chokes on his drink at that. She’s as old as his entire lifespan? He really hadn’t thought how old she must be if she is in the Greek Myths. She looks maybe a tad bit older than him, by maybe a few years in terms of relative age. So if he is a fifth through his life, there is a chance she is as well. 

Live for 25,000 years? Hel, that’s a long time. 

Too long, even. 

“You okay Loki?” Ashira asks. Her attention has returned to him at the sound of his coughing. Outwardly she appears generally concerned like any friend would; internally she is genuinely concerned.

He looks down at the red wine refusing to drip off his leather then to her. “Yeah, just drank it wrong.” 

“Well, be careful. It’d be a shame for you to die because of some wine of all things.” 

-

The rest of the meal continues similarly - Loki unsure of when he should and shouldn’t talk, Ashira being unusually social and talkative, several of the daughters of the prince (and the prince himself) suggesting things that seem obscene to be discussed at such a supposedly formal setting. Sure, Asgardians talked often about battles and such, but never anything like the poison the girl beside him figured out how to imbue her whip with.

That was currently sat at their feet. 

Something he appreciated, but a few others did not. 

When it does finally end, some of the people go off in various directions, others remaining in the court-yard to go back to fighting each other. 

His attention is removed from the clamor around him when Ashira says his name. 

“Loki, we’re going to leave soon. If you want to fight them, do it now.” 

“I-I what?” Loki narrows his eyes. “I was observing them.”

She shrugs as she stands. Loki stands as well. “All I’m saying is if you want to rumble before we leave, might as well.”

The king is wheeled down towards their end while Loki walks around the end of the table to meet Ashira. 

“I’m assuming you will want some wine again?” Doran asks Ashira.

“I can’t say no. Best alcohol in the entire universe.” 

“Well, I’m not sure about that.” The King waves his right hand and two guards move quickly out of the room. “We wish you good fortune and that you will visit again.” 

“I will. Don’t worry.” Once again she bends down awkwardly, carefully tipping to hug the ruler. Loki nearly grimaces at her disastrous posture as she does so. “I’ll always come back to visit.”

“Very good. Goodbye until next time.”

“Until next time.”

Ashira then turns to walk back to her ship, skirt billowing out around her. Loki is quick to follow. While this place isn’t threatening (confusing, rather), he doesn’t wish to linger without Ashira. The prince was taught better than to intrude. 

Unfortunately, he doesn’t get more than a few paces before his name is called once again.

“And Loki?” 

Loki pauses, watching as Ashira continues on as if she didn’t even hear his name being called. Hesitant to completely lose sight of her, Loki opts to look over his shoulder at the older king.

“Yes, your grace?” 

“Stay a moment.”

Loki sighs and turns. His royal upbringing is fighting the past few months of adventures. On the one hand, he knows he needs to remain courteous in front of a member of the royal family of this planet (more importantly, the king) and stay as long as the king wants; on the other Ashira’s impatience and specific type of chaos has seeped into him and he has become wary of anyone who is not himself or her.

“What is it that you need?” Loki speaks up.

“Just some advice from an old, dying man.” Loki nods. Seems as though every old, dying man he has met in his life has advice to offer. “Don’t hurt her. She’s been through a lot... she’s hurting a lot, still. We don’t invite her just to thank her, we invite her to make sure she is doing okay. We took her in for a time after she escaped, a time when she was too shaken up to make sense of anything. This is the first time she has seemed happy. Don’t ruin that.” 

Loki takes a moment so he can process what was just told him. It’s a lot packed into only a few words. 

First, the old, dying man is advising him not to hurt Ashira because she seems happy. Between the king’s insinuation and the girl’s implication, what Loki had begun to consider since the quiet conversation the other night seems more real… or maybe realistic? Two people don’t just say things like that unless the feelings are two-sided. 

He also just admitted that it isn’t a yearly thank you, rather a yearly check-up on her. Loki’s been a witness to some of her worst moments of relived panic but for it to be of enough concern that an entire other race checks on her regularly? 

That is a little stunning, to say the least. 

“I have no plans to,” Loki decides to respond. 

“Good. Cause if you do, she has more people behind her than she makes it seem. She could change the universe if she wanted.” 

Loki smiles at that. “Trust me, I know.” 

-

Loki finds Ashira spinning around like a child in the pilot’s seat, outfit changed to plain black leggings and a matching tank top. His eyes inadvertently go immediately to the scars along her neck and arms that she is no longer covering. The day she explained them was the same day she gave him something that healed him when his magic wouldn’t. So he stares almost blankly as he realizes she has scars when she shouldn’t. 

“So what did the King want to talk to you about?” She does not stop spinning as she asks.

“Just offering me some advice.” Loki sits in the co-pilot seat.

Ashira nods slowly as she final stops her spinning. Her brain is still off somewhere else as she continues to speak. “So despite being stocked up on alcohol, we are kinda low on everything else. We’ll stop at J’henga tomorrow.” 

“Alright.”

Silence blankets the ship for a few minutes, save the sounds of switches being flipped and the engine whispering to life. Ashira has nothing more to say for now; Loki is not sure what to say to her. Yet right before she can finally take them off the ground he speaks again.

“Were you ever going to tell me you live for 25,000 years?” 

She pauses. Shit. “Why would it matter?” 

Loki shrugs. “Would have been nice to know.”

“Why?” She scoffs and her head turns to face him. “One day you are going to go home…” she shakes her head. “…and if not, realize that I’m not a good person to be around. You’ve seen me and what I do. I bring chaos and even death everywhere I go. One day you will leave me and it will be long before my age actually comes into question.” 

Her words end with a sad, nearly in tears tone. She didn’t intend for those words to tumble from her lips. As the anniversary of the day grows near, despite her attempts to ignore it, her mind and body automatically begin to act on their own, forcing her into more unstable and erratic moods.

“Well, I am the God of Mischief,” Loki replies as he works to make sense of what she just said, “sometimes known as of Chaos. I’m not worried.” 

“You should be.” She shakes her head and turns away. “You should be.” 

With that she pulls them off the ground, leaving Loki to sit quietly in their ascent. 

—

The following morning Ashira awakens before him, as always. She pushes herself to a sitting position with ease, her left hand mindlessly reaches to where the pendant of the necklace ought to be. Her hand, however, just touches the strands of hair that decided to stick to her chest as she slept. 

The necklace is gone. 

Her heart practically skyrockets past the walls of the ship. 

She knows she didn’t take it off last night when they both finally made it to bed; it was definitely still secure around her, the metal clasp going absolutely nowhere. It had to be, she remembers seeing the reflection of its glow as she fell asleep. 

In her panic Ashira nearly falls off of the window seat. 

Thankfully she stops herself before she can full tumble off. 

First, her eyes search where she was sleeping while her hands fervently shake out her hair and shirt. 

No necklace. 

Then a quick search of the floor around her is done. 

No necklace. 

There is no way it could have gone far. 

Right as she turns to go downstairs to see if it could have possibly fallen off down there, she catches sight of the blue. 

It is hovering along the wall, a little note beside it. 

‘Didn’t want it to get tangled with your hair, I hope you don’t mind.’

Ashira snatches it away from the hook. The blue swirls around inside as she grabs it into her hands once again as if to greet her like an excited dog. Similarly relieved, she quickly puts it back on. 

The weight is exactly what her anxious self needs. Her fingers on both hands nervously curl and uncurl around it several times. 

“Are you alright?” 

Loki has barely woken up at the sound of her scrambling.

“Y-Yeah,” Ashira mutters back, turning to face him. “J’Henga is uh, not far out. Maybe 45 minutes? We can land now if you’d like.”

“I mean, we’re up.”

Ashira nods. “Yeah, already up. I’ll be downstairs.”

-

And her timing is still scarily accurate. 45 minutes after she descends to the cockpit they land and another fifteen later she is standing at the entrance of the ship in white leggings and a loose tan blouse, Loki coming to stand beside her a moment after in a looser, less leather version of his normal clothing. Another desert planet.

“You ready?” He asks.

Loki watches as Ashira nervously grip the necklace. 

Ashira turns to him and smiles. “Of course. Always am.”

The trek to the trading post - Ashira made a point of ensuring Loki knew it was not a city or village of any kind - is unusually quick. It is not a one mile or more hike to get close to civilization. Instead, it appears there are tons of ships around them and everyone seems to generally be moving towards the same trading post - some with wagons and actual boats worth of goods, others with nothing. The walk itself is also not long, a half mile at most. 

Loki isn’t sure what he expected when he finally gets a clear view of the area. It really is just a bunch of make-shift stands and people randomly scattered once they pass the entrance point. More species than he has ever seen before are selling and trading in one spot to their left, to their right a singular woman with ten animals he has never seen before. The closest thing Loki can compare them to is some form of mangled horse. 

“We really just need food, to be honest,” Ashira finally relays to Loki. “Once we are out of this system with the track I’m on we won’t be getting great food any time soon after, so we need to get a lot, actually.”

“Any suggestions then?”

“Not really. Trust your gut, but most of the stuff here is good. To be honest,” Ashira careful side steps a bucket of who knows what, “the food that doesn’t follow any regulations tends to be the best I’ve learned. So don’t be afraid of the gross stuff, your highness.”

“I - I am offended you would think I would be afraid of ‘gross’ stuff,” Loki huffs.

“You are a pretty rules and regulations guy from what I can tell so… yeah. Anyway, c’mon.” 

Of course, she’s right. Loki nearly slaps a bag of out of Ashira’s hands as it is passed to her because he swear he saw something moving inside of it that shouldn’t have been. He claimed he is just concerned for her health. She has to remind him that it will be just fine and that she has been here before whereas he has not. 

He reluctantly yielded. 

-

Three hours into their market wandering and multiple instances of Ashira casually handing Loki yet another bag and him pretending not to notice that she still is carrying nothing, Ashira notices them nearly done. 

“So we’ve got almost everything,” Ashira hums, handing yet another bag to Loki. 

“So what’s left, miss ‘I cannot carry my own bags’.”

Ashira tries to stop the absolutely ridiculous grin pulling on her lips at Loki’s remark. “Hey, every king needs to learn to be humbled every so often.” She glances up to him. “Sugar, is what we need. Like candy. Specifically something that is like 100% sugar is preferable.”

“Do you have a sweet tooth I never noticed?” 

“Hm, maybe. It’s also good to chase some of the drinks I got from Dorne with candy or mix them. Trust me, it makes the experience much, much better.” 

“You would know. A true connoisseur of drinks, I’ve learned.” 

With the next step her gut feels like it’s been punched. 

It’s the day again. 

To be honest, Ashira tries not to keep track. 

But she feels it in her gut. The dread, the complete and utter dread fills her system as they walk through market. Her heart is palpitating so painfully; her vision blurring dramatically. Things are spinning in circles, the crowd rolling almost comedically around as she struggles to stay balanced. 

Loki immediately notices the change. The runaway has a very distinct pattern of walking through bustling crowds and any change is immediately obvious to him. 

So he calls out to her as she stumbles out of arms reach. 

Only one grabs Ashira’s attention, however. A person. Someone a bit shorter than Loki pushing through the crowd a few feet in front of her with white hair to his shoulder and a perfectly clean dark silver streak against his left side. 

At least it looks that way to her spinning head. 

Ashira rushes forward. The crowd is thick but means nothing to her panic mixed with her natural strength. She isn’t paying attention to the narrowed eyes, growls, and Loki’s increasingly concerned shouts to her. 

Once she reaches the man, her hands wrap around his wrist. His head whips to look at the sudden intrusion. 

“Eros?” Ashira asks hopefully. 

Who she grabbed onto, however, is a disgruntled mixed Elf, part light, part lunar with narrowed, angry plain hazel eyes and hair that is actually more of a very light blond with brown streak through it. The man yanks his arm away from Ashira violently. She involuntarily stumbles forward.

Then someone else comes to stand in front of her. Fingers curl around her upper arms and squeezes. She’s too disoriented to even flinch or pull away. Her eyes just stare directly forward for a moment or two. So the person squeezes her arms again. Her brows slowly pull inward; she’s confused as to what is happening. The person squeezes again. 

She finally looks up, mind completely dissociating from her surroundings. The face seems familiar, she thinks. 

“Are you alright?” Loki wonders. 

Ashira furrows her brows. “Loki?” It’s a statement laced with confusion. 

“Uh, yeah, it’s me.” Loki puts on a smile to assure her it will be okay. “Let’s get you back to your ship, you don’t look well.”

“Alright...” Ashira looks back to his chest. “Sure.” 

-

Loki practically drags her back to the ship. She is stumbling and struggling to even see as her body falls into a numb panic. 

When he finally practically hurls her onto the ship, she instantly dashes up the stairs. 

It’s not a smooth run, it’s messy. Loki is staring agape as she falls on her face twice in her scurry. 

She’s tearing open her pathetic little chest of clothes in her little window seat. Buried beneath all her clothes, deep within her makeshift bed, are two physical pictures she has kept. The first is her and Selene, centuries ago, laughing on top of their ship after their first successful stealth mission. 

But the second? 

Her and Eros in front of the new engine they built so ships can be converted mid-flight instead of needing fighter ships attached and risk the main ship getting damaged. Her lips are pressed against his cheek as he grins sappily, the engine acting as a seat. He’s flushed in both excitement and embarrassment: she had just kisses him (albeit only on the cheek) in front of hundreds of people. He was never particularly public. 

She hasn’t touched it in ten years. 

But to see it doesn’t help. That’s why she stopped looking at - instead of helping her cope it only made her sadder and more angry at herself. 

This time she doesn’t burn. There is a numbness inside of her that directs the pain inwards, her organs ripping and shredding instead of her surroundings. It somehow hurts less this way as well. She isn’t sure why. 

To her, it’s unclear how long she has been sobbing on the floor, clutching the photo to her chest. It’s been about fifteen minutes. 

Loki, having chalked up the incident on her just needing to eat combined with the heat, decided to make her something legitimately edible. Well, as edible as he can make something, especially given the limitations of the ship.

Satisfied, Loki calls out to her. “Hey, Ash, I made you food.” 

Ash. 

Ash. 

Only one person ever called her that. 

And she falls into harder sobs. 

“Ashira?” He calls out. 

He listens for a response only to hear her crying. It’s a painful, wet, deeply quiet sob. 

With a sigh, he walks up stairs. 

Ashira rushes to put the photo away; the seat closes right as Loki gets up the stairs. 

“Seriously, what’s going on with you?” Loki demands. 

“I’m fine.” It’s through a damaged throat still damp with tears.

Loki crosses his arms. “You are literally sobbing while collapsed on the ground."

Ashira hiccups. The hiccup shutters her entire body but she shakes it off, looking up at Loki with a crooked smile. “Like I said, perfectly fine.” 

Loki rolls his eyes. “Whatever you say.” 

—

When night falls, Loki is no less worried. 

She opted to leave as soon as dusk hit (without giving him a reason) and he didn’t push for one. Something is wrong and she is too stubborn to explain. 

Due to the overwhelming amount of energy she spent crying (and her body attempting to heal itself), Ashira falls into a calm slumber quickly. 

Loki is not so lucky. 

He lies awake worried. 

What the hell happened today and what the hell happened to mess her up this much?

He spends a few hours mulling it over but knows he will get no answers by just making assumptions in the dead of night. 

Eventually he, too, begins to drift off. 

—

“Are you excited, ‘Shira?” Selene asks, finishing off the braid she’s spent the past hour on. 

Ashira snorts. “Of course. I mean, I’m getting married.”

“And it is going to be a wonderful spectacle.” 

“I would hope so.”

Loki, in his half-asleep state, barely registers the sound of Ashira suddenly gasping like she is choking.

Kneeling in the water bed of the waterfall, Ashira chuckles as splashes continuously hit her and Eros in the face. He keeps flinching his silver eyes closed to stop the water from hitting them but he keeps reopening them to look at her. Her grin causes Eros chuckles back, his fingers gripping hers a little harder. 

“Now, to make the bond official, you both shall share a kiss to seal your fates together.”

Ashira pushes forward to press her lips against his. She’s crying into it. So is he. It’s a messy kiss, filled with wet tears on their wet faces, a happy giggle leaving both of their lips. 

As her lips pull away from him, it’s no longer Eros in front of her, smiling back. 

It’s Loki. 

“Wh-what?” She gasps. 

“What’s wrong, Ash? Did I get something caught in my hair again?” 

“Y-you’re not…”

“You’ve got something, on your…”

But then he begins to vanish. First his hands crumble in hers, nothing more than ashes. It quickly spreads up his arms; bit by bit he slowly fades into nothing more than shattered particles, body falling into the water and washing away. 

His face is last, still smiling as it does, like nothing is wrong.

A sob passes her lips in both real life and her dream. 

Loki practically jumps out of bed. 

She turns her head back to look at Selene, tears already blurring her eyes with sorrow and panic. Selene looks just as shocked as Ashira feels. Her face is darkened by sadness combined with fear - fear of repercussions, not fear of her best friend. 

“What did you do?” Eros’ father shrieks. “What did you do to my son?”

Ashira, terrified and breathing sporadically looks back to the group of people watching. All eyes are either wide with terror or narrowed with anger. 

“I-I… I don’t know,” she sputters out. 

Some of the higher officials run up behind Ashira and grab her arms and throw cuffs around them. She’s immobilized as the paralysis injection begins to push through her veins. But it increases the panic in her system, the complete opposite its intention, whatever flowing through her veins fighting off the substance, the poison, attempting to hurt her. She’s too panicked to notice the burning glow on her body, too terrified to feel the heat radiating off of her. 

The blanket around her body is practically strangling her. 

Loki begins to shake her quickly with his left hand and his right is tugging the blanket from around her. It’s choking her. 

“Ashira, Ashira you need to wake up.” 

“No! No please, I don’t know what happened, please let me go!” Ashira screeches as multiple officials begin dragging her away. “No!”

Before she is dragged more than a foot, the ones holding her slowly begin to disintegrate too. 

There is a burn of purple erupting along Ashira’s skin. She’s heating up and yelling out nonsense. Not only is the purple whatever tearing at her, but she is physically burning up, a sweat beginning to cover her skin. 

“Ashira, come on you gotta wake up.” His hand goes to touch her head to see just how hot she is.

He pulls his hand away with a hiss. He remembers that one visit he, his brother and the other four fools his brother calls friends took to Muspelheim and how Volstagg so graciously tripped him so he fell face first into a pile of very, very hot rocks. The whole ship begins rumbling and tearing apart slowly at the seams. The metal begins to glow a heated red around the edges. 

She’s going to blow the ship. 

In the middle of flying.

“Hey, Ash, wake up!” 

It’s only a sense of distraught in him. His heart is skipping beats as he keeps shaking her by touching the extra fabric of her shirt. Her skin is far to warm for her to even be living at this point. 

“What the hel is going on?” Loki whispers desperately. 

Loki looks around again to see the ceiling ready to fall on them both. So he does what he can to calm and cool her. It’s dangerous, it’s risky and also the only solution he can think of. He hopes he won’t regret what he is about to do. 

His skin begins to shift blue. 

It’s chaos. People are screaming, shouting, scrambling. Except Selene, who is running towards the girl she was raised with. Selene just wants to pull her friend away before any more drastic action is taken, like being killed on the spot.

Where he touches her he begins to literally sizzle. Despite it hurting like hel and then some, Loki continues to try and cool her down at least marginally. 

It seems to a work just a hair; enough that Ashira doesn’t feel like she ought to be a molten puddle on the ground, at least.

Before Selene can dive to Ashira, though, Ashira is blasted nearly unconscious. Her friend turns to see the Queen standing there, Scepter in her hand with at least three mindless Chitauri behind her. 

As a taller, terrifyingly imposing person, even one side glance can instill fear. This murderous glare could cause immediate death. 

“Have something you need to tell me?”

Selene gulps nervously. 

Ashira hears this as she rolls over to look at her mother. Her hands reach out towards her mother, begging for her to help. 

She barely spars at glance at her only child as Ashira loses consciousness. 

But now she is re-heating up. 

“Ashira!” Loki shouts. 

The ship stops rattling. 

She gasps for air as she sits up suddenly. Her eyes are wide and startled, whole body heaving with each inhale and exhale. She isn’t even looking towards him, just straight ahead. Her heart will not slow at all; there is purple radiating off of her palms and chest still. There is an odd cold touch on her left arm. It feels nice compared to the obscenely warm sweat covering her. 

“Ashira?” Loki shifts back to his ivory color and touches her left arm again. It hurts from the scotching heat yet he refuses to let go. He decides to just change his hands and slowly rubs them up and down her forearm. “Normally you say something right after I wake you. Is everything alright?” 

She’s grinding her teeth to calm her breath and mind. She doesn’t really know so she doesn’t really want to answer. 

On one end, everything is fine. He is there in front of her. And alive.

On the other, this is the first time someone else has appeared in her nightmares. 

“This is...” she pauses to slow her breath. It works only to slow her breath a smidge; it is better than nothing. So she turns slowly to look at Loki directly. His eyes are wide with sheer worry and he is desperately attempting to help her relax with his soft touch against her arm. “This is real, right?” 

Loki’s brows softly gather together. He’s confused and concerned by her question. It even causes him to drop his hands. She isn’t paying enough attention to the physical sensations around her to notice. 

“Why are you asking?” 

Ashira wildly shakes her head, hoping her brain will reset. “I’m just being an idiot. I’m sorry.” 

Her hands yearn to reach out and touch to confirm he is still there but she is too afraid that if she does they will move right through, or worse, he will vanish entirely. 

Or even worse: he will crumble. 

“You don’t ask dumb questions for no reason. What’s going on?” 

Not even Selene, the girl she was raised with, the girl who has been her best friend for longer than Loki has been alive, has been the victim in her dreams. 

She is terrified to admit what is the reason. 

I’m scared, she wants to admit. I’m terrified. You were in my dream, I killed you in my dream and I’ve never had a dream like that. I think... I think I might love you. 

And that might be more petrifying, horrifying, terrifying than anything else. 

Because loving you means killing you. 

“IOx-10. Let’s land tomorrow, maybe do some hiking or something?” 

Loki smiles. “Whatever you need.”

“Thank you.” 

There is no joke. No ‘my liege’, no ‘your highness’. 

Simply a thank you.

___

Next

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Taglist 

—

When they land there is no explanation of where they are or what’s going on. Ashira just pushes past him aggressively as she leaves her ship in yet another different outfit, this one complete with some form of dark, royal blue rain jacket. 

Loki doesn’t follow.

From what he can tell they’ve landed on a mostly abandoned planet with a rainforest covering the entire surface. It’s misty, the sun struggling to reach past the trees and struggling even more to reach past the mist. 

Everything has been building up over the past week; all the information being passed on to her is overwhelming. She needs space to walk it off, take a breather. Room to let it go. 

Maybe finally process it too while she’s at it. 

-

She comes back nine hours later, when the sun has set and the only light left is the dim glow in the main area of the ship and whatever little bit the moon can reach past the thick of the trees. Loki has spent most of the time actually reading ‘Betwixt the Binary’ and agrees, it is quite interesting. Ashira, on the other hand, has spent most of her time letting all her frustration out. Mud is all over her clothes and skin, her jacket now tied around her waist yet her face is no less twisted than when she stormed off. 

As she passes Loki catches sight of her hands: the knuckles on both completely bloodied and ruined. They’re raw. It’s a painful sight to even look at - Loki himself winces slightly as he does.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Let me wrap those up for you.” 

Ashira does not turn to him. She simply stretches her fingers, the open wounds pressing together, before curling them back into a fist. 

“I’m fine,” she replies as a few drops of magenta blood from her right hand falls to the floor. 

She dashes up the stairs before he can get another word in. 

-

Another hour later, Loki decides Ashira is either asleep or cooled down enough for him to join her up there and ascends the stairs. 

He finds her facing out the window, curled up as she always is. The trace amount of moonlight bounces off her wet (braided, of course) hair and is the only source of light in the entire room. It’s unclear if she is asleep or not but her breath is even and slow: inhale three, exhale three. From what he can tell, she is asleep. 

In all reality she is awake. So she listens and watches in the window’s reflection as he changes his clothes from day wear to sleeping clothes - the gold glow a stark contrast to the black of the night.

When Loki finally settles in to sleep for the night, Ashira stays awake. She’s struggling to fall asleep for once, but she isn’t going to complain. While many nights he lays awake listening to her, tonight she is lying away listening to him. 

It takes a while for him to fall into actual sleep. Ashira doesn’t mind; she’s been trained in the art of patience and waiting. Loki tosses and turns like any other being would in sleep. One way is too uncomfortable, the other too comfortable. 

Ashira takes to counting the stars, seeing which constellations she can and cannot recognize from her very limited view. That used to be one of the few things she used to do for fun: count the stars one by one, compete with Selene as to who was closest to the correct answer once they pulled out their sky analyzer. Their stupid, incorrect names for the constellations and once again tried to see who was closest to the correct answer. 

To be honest, both of them were almost always wrong. But it killed time and provided entertainment when they were forced to sit for hours and do practically nothing. 

She isn’t entirely sure how long it is until Loki starts mumbling in his sleep. She became distracted by coming up with increasingly ridiculous nicknames for the various arrangements of stars that keep shifting with the movement of the leaves of the trees. 

“... Jotunheim ... another relic.” 

Ashira’s attention moves from the stars to the man behind her. 

Jotunheim? She’s never been but has read about it in her history books. In the Conquest battle against Asgard, they surrender the planet as it was taking too many resources to defend and instead decimated the population of Hoth instead. Less resources spent, similar climate for training. 

Is... is he a Jotnar? A frost giant?

“… what more?”

There is only one way to find out: force him to touch something so cold his body will be forced to turn blue. She’s sure she has something laying around or several things she can mix together in order to make that happen. She remembers how to force all sorts of beings to show their true form, and frost giants are no different. 

—

The next morning she leaves again just like the day before. Today it’s brighter, but like the day before Loki does not follow. 

Ashira returns after seven hours instead of nine. She sneaks into the ship, climbing in through the roof to get into the closet without entering through the actual entrance. 

It’s more than a tight fit but nothing she hasn’t done before. Back when she was first building her ship the door malfunctioned more than once and often in the most inopportune times. The first time, she broke a window. After that she built a series of panels that come off without tools if pulled correctly that can get her into the ship… but they do jam far too often. 

Still, it allows her get in without Loki noticing.

A splash of this, a dash of that and hopefully no spilling of those and a perfect tiny trap is easily made. She has far too many chemicals that could spontaneously combust for it to be safe at this point; she is very, very thankful at this point.

This little concoction she has created is more than cold enough to turn any frost-based being back to ice. 

Ashira slips out of the closet. Loki is sitting on the co-pilots seat, book in hand, not paying any attention to what is happening behind him. She sneaks behind him, slowly pouring the liquid along the wall of the stairs where she knows he is bound to touch at least once. She pours the rest on the other wall so if he happens not to touch the stairs, he will touch the other wall. 

She creeps backwards once the ice has frozen completely. Her hands place the vial quietly into the sink. 

In order to get him to come toward the kitchen so he might interact with the ice, she switches the door to become plasma so she can walk backwards out of it quietly. She switches it back so it can slide open like a normal door, alerting Loki to her presence. 

She even ‘trips’ a bit as she steps inside. 

Loki stands with his eyes still inside his book. He’s barely paying attention - body swaying as he moves towards the entrance of the ship. 

“Are you actually going to talk to me or are you still acting like a brat?” He more mumbles than asks as he walks. 

His right hand the bumps into the right wall, mouth releasing a hiss as he feels the ice touching his skin.

Ashira watches the prince carefully as his skin shifts from the fleshy ivory tone to a rich blue. There was no guarantee the trap would work, but she is glad it did. 

Loki pauses. He tilts both hands to see his skin now completely blue

It’s a fascinating sight to behold. Deep, ruby eyes and skin a shade so blue it nearly is the same color as her planet’s famous blue. And the markings on his skin… despite his face being mostly downturned, she can still see the engravings on his forehead and hands. It’s said that each Jotun has different markings, just like each snowflake has a different pattern. 

Loki looks up quickly; his eyes widen to see the ex-princess standing with a gentle smirk on her face, biting her top lip to prevent a full on smile. A growl passes his lips. 

“Is this what you wanted? To see me like this, to find another thing to use against me. To see my monstrous form?” He snarls. 

Her right brow raises slowly. “You aren’t a monster. I’ve met monsters and boy are you way off the mark.”

“You don’t know what I am.”

“Listen here, pal,” she practically sneers, walking closer to him. “I see a blue-skinned boy who was raised with entitlement issues. I don’t see a monster.”

“And what would you know of monsters?” He shouts, shifting back into his Aesir form. 

“I’ve met them, real monsters. I’ve fought them, I’ve lived with them. You aren’t them.” 

“And how would you know that to be true when you barely know me?”

“I don’t, but prove me wrong then. But you’d also be proving all those people on your home planet right as well and that’s no fun. Being exactly what they want you to be? Boring.” Ashira shrugs. “Absolutely boring.” 

Loki grabs her left upper arm in an attempt to push her back. She sways not even an inch despite him using all the force he can possibly muster. Internally he growls at that; even his brother would at least flinch at his strength. 

“What would you know about being an abomination, an outcast?” It’s a hiss, intended to scare her into listening. 

“Because I was one!” Ashira shouts, shoving him away. Loki stumbles backwards, body crashing into the table. “Because I was a genetically perfected being gone wrong. I know what it’s like to get stared down as you walk, people scurrying away. I was a princess, I was supposed to rule! But it all went away because of some anomaly! I had no choice but to do everything separately! Train separately! Eat separately! Live separately! Be…” she stops suddenly, her whole body softening. “Be an abomination.” 

Her voice is broken, cracking along the words. The closest he has seen her like this is when her nightmares woke her in the night. But even then she didn’t seem broken… just sad.

“I didn’t know. I… I’m sorry.”

“You couldn’t have known.” Ashira looks up to prevent herself from crying. “There was no way for you to know.” 

“But then why trick me like that?”

She scoffs and looks back to him. The whites of her eyes are already a dark red, a painful burning he understands as well. 

“Would you have answered if I had asked?”

Loki furrows his brows. “Well, no.”

“Then how else was I to find out?” 

“Well why bother knowing in the first place?”

“Because for once in my life maybe I wanted to know I wasn’t the only one that was horrifically different.” She shrugs, eyes now blinking to try and stop the tears. “Maybe I just wanted to know I wasn’t alone.” 

Loki remains silent, words nowhere to be found. He just stares at his companion. 

“It’s fine.” 

Ashira turns away from the kitchen and begins to dash up the stairs.

—

After her little confession, Loki wasn’t sure what to feel. It’s an odd combination of guilt and sympathy swirling into something unidentifiable. Something inside is nagging him, telling him he should have known better; another part is just telling him to just go talk to her, that the was justified in what he did and said. 

The nightmare she had the one night, he had begun to chalk it up to some torturous moment in her past, not tied to the power she has. People with that sort of power are desired, held in high esteem often. But she was outcast for it, treated differently. Forced to be separate from people she once loved. Became an abomination.

He was right. It will take years to understand her. If she was treated as an outcast then why is she is being so desired back home? How is it possible someone as powerful as she was tortured and forced to submit?

Was she, too, lied to? Or was everyone simply caught off guard?

It takes time for Loki to even move from his spot against the table. And some time after that to walk up stairs to talk to Ashira. She may not want to talk but he does. 

He is quiet as he does so, not wanting to wake her in the event she is sleeping; not wanting to startle her in the event she is zoned out entirely. 

She isn’t either. She has impressively curled herself up, back against the side opposite the stairs in her little window nook, legs tucked tightly against her. Her eyes are trained to the stars again, head cranked back uncomfortably to see them past the tree-line. The slow motions of her fingers as they drape their way across the window is what lets Loki know she is still aware of her surroundings. 

He sits on the edge of his bed quietly. 

“Tell me about it,” he proposes. 

Ashira shifts her head awkwardly to face him. In the dim light it is near impossible to make out any of her features, but one thing is clear: her face is muddied by sadness. 

“About what?” She replies, a fake innocence lacing each word. 

If it weren’t a tactic he used all the time, Loki may not have noticed it. He may have thought her genuinely confused.

“About being an abomination.” 

She quickly whips her head back to look out the window. “I’m not going to.” 

“I’ll to you about mine.”

“I thought we discussed. Eye for an eye…”

“You don’t need to tell me. I’ll simply tell you mine.” 

It’s a thick two minutes of silence. Even the forest seems to silence entirely as Loki waits for her response. He is nearly convinced she didn’t even hear him given she is rarely one to not respond. 

“Tell me.”

So he begins his story, recalling his idiotic plan to stop his brother from becoming king (as he was not ready to be) and how it led to a revelation he had no desire knowing. How it connected into his childhood; how is father always favored his brother (and though parents always choose favorites, it was more than obvious); how he spiraled out of control far too quickly. 

And Ashira just listens. She continues to face the window, eyes watching the glimmer of the stars through the trees. 

Their stories are drastically different. He is abomination by the standards of his home but no one knew save his parents. She is by the standards of her home, but everyone knew. Everyone gossiped about it and thought something was wrong with her which is why she ended up Hala being tested on and abused and tortured. 

“I’m sorry they lied to you,” she whispers as he finishes. 

“I understand why, but I just wish they hadn’t lied. I’m not sure if it would have made my life easier, to be honest.” 

“You’ll never know.” 

“I guess I won’t.” 

Loki waits for her to reply but she remains quiet, curled into her blanket. It seems as if she is finally going to rest for the night. 

Loki lies down on his bed, changing his clothes as he does so. For once there is a sense of true calm filling the cabin of the ship and Loki uses the aura to easily fall asleep. 

—

“No!” Ashira whimpers in her sleep. 

Loki awakens to her quiet yell. He was barely asleep, as usual, anyway. 

“Please, no...” 

“Dammit,” Loki whispers, tossing the blankets off himself to get up towards Ashira. 

She is shaking, muttering different pleas under her breath as she relives yet another nightmare. 

Loki is cautious as he approaches her. He’s never tried to wake someone from a nightmare before, nor does he know what to do once they are awake. All he knows his he needs to stop her from suffering. 

“Ashira.” He gently touches her shoulder. “Hey, Ashira you need to wake up.” 

She stirs slightly at his words and touch. Yet she is still living the nightmare, fighting the guards who are attempting to subdue her. So she whips quickly to face Loki, eyes still glossed over in fearful sleep. Before he can understand what’s happening, her left hand is gripped around his throat, crushing it easily despite being so small. It is her strength that forces his breath out, stops him from being able to inhale yet again. 

“Ashira... it’s me,” he chokes out. 

“Holy fuck!” She releases her grip. “I’m so sorry - I just... fuck.” 

Loki coughs a little. “It’s alright. I just figured I should wake you up from whatever was happening.” 

“Thank you... shit I’m so sorry though.” 

“May I know what was terrifying you so much?” 

Ashira closes her eyes. “I was just trying to escape. Kreepers were attacking me, the little device to subdue me wasn’t nearby... then when it was they turned on the electric shock... dragged me to the room they used to discipline their Inhumans...” 

Loki interrupts her hurried explanation as it continues to spill out of her mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” he mutters. 

“It’s alright. I hate that I’m still not over it. God, I just..” 

Loki rests his hand on her shoulder. “Hey, after something like that, it doesn’t sound like you should be over it yet.” 

Ashira huffs gently and rubs her eyes. It’s quiet another moment except the noises of the night creatures - a combination of unusual noises Loki is most definitely not accustomed to.

“Why do you never have nightmares about falling into a void?” Ashira asks softly, interrupting the peace. 

“I don’t know.” Loki smiles gently. “I really don’t know.” 

“You should go back to sleep. I might go take a walk for a little. Sorry for waking you.” 

“I wasn’t really asleep anyway. If you are going on a walk, may I join you?” 

Ashira smiles. “Of course you may. Anything to please you, your majesty.” 

Loki chuckles. 

The silver-haired woman pushes herself slowly out of bed, stretching her legs and back as she does so, her bones cracking loudly with each movement. Her blanket follows her as she stands. It sticks to her like a cloak, catching tightly to her shoulders even as she stretches her arms above her. Loki is convinced all of her stuff is somehow wired together. 

“Ready?” She asks. 

“Whenever you are,” Loki replies, ensuring boots appear onto his feet. 

The walk is silent for the first ten or so minutes. Ashira is still shaking slightly and at every loud snap or rustle she nearly jumps out of her own skin. But in the dim light her hair is practically glowing along with the silver stitching of the blanket she is holding around herself. 

Loki never realized just how silver her hair is until now. It practically lights their entire surroundings and he is thankful they aren’t trying to escape anyone; her hair is a literal beacon of light at the moment. 

“Asgard doesn’t have this kind of forest,” Loki states, breaking their silence. “I must say I might prefer it to the standard wooden forest.” 

“My home does. It’s not natural, thought,” Ashira replies, her fingers fiddling with her blanket. “It’s a training location that is regulated to act like a rainforest.” 

Loki looks down to Ashira. “Interesting. How do they regulate it?” 

“It’s like a giant electric dome so they weather and everything is confined to that space. That’s the best way to describe it. It’s pretty common back home but not many other planet haves them.”

Loki hums and tilts his head up slightly. He contemplates it a moment, thinking of the space they are in but… not. 

“That’s a great idea, actually. Our training grounds were mostly gravel or a large, empty field. Not very practical when everywhere you actually fight is nothing like that.” 

Ashira scoffs. “That sounds horribly boring as well.”

“Yes, it is. But there are gorgeous mountains and the loveliest lake at the edge of the planet closest to the palace.”

“Edge of the planet?”

“Asgard is… odd.” Loki glances down at Ashira. “It’s flat with two sides. Water runs off one side and freezes on the bottom, eventually recycles up.”

“That’s hurting my brain,” Ashira laughs, “it’s much too late to even think about that madness. Regardless, tell me more about Asgard. Anything. Dealer’s choice.” 

Loki pauses a moment to think. “Well there isn’t much I haven’t told you that might interest you. I guess that we don’t have seasons? So it isn’t like Earth where there is spring, winter, summer, fall. It’s always a permanent spring, summer climate. Now something of where you are from, please.” 

Ashira smiles. There isn’t much she wants to say but plenty to. 

“I am from a planet named Ares. Also like Asgard the rule is monarchal… I personally had no siblings, related or not.” 

“Ares… like the God of War?”

“That’s where the humans got that god inspiration from. All the Greek and then Roman gods, actually…” Ashira trails off, her voice twisting uncomfortably at the end. “Save a couple,” she practically rushes to explain.

“So Selene, your friend…”

The ex-princess nods. “Yup.” 

“Then which one are you?”

“Translations are messy, I’ll let you figure that one out on your own."

“Tell me more about that planet, the people?”

“Ares is not like Asgard. You may no longer like it there but it sounds beautiful, fantastically almost. Ares is… militaristic. Everyone is required to train to be a soldier. And that is on top of normal schooling as well. People still have fun but not in the relaxed way you describe. And as princess I knew even less of what that freedom felt like. I wasn’t just being raised to rule, I was being raised to run an army of millions, to make strategic decisions that affect things in sectors I have only read about, to be both a kind diplomat and a ruthless warrior. Everything was chosen for me: the classes I took, which things I ate, when I woke up and who I saw.” 

Loki grimaces, his face twisting up at the sound of the control put on her life. “That sounds horrible.” 

“It isn’t horrible. It’s just… sad.” Ashira pulls her blanket closer to her. “Once you finally see what is out there, having your life chosen for you becomes… I don’t even know how to describe it."

“So everyone had to be apart of the military?”

“Trained to be, at least. Once you hit 25 people broke off into specialties: engineering, medical technician or operators, etc. I got the luck of the draw: all of them.” 

“That’s why you are so good at all this stuff.” 

“I’ve had hundreds of years to perfect it. Always preferred the mechanical, engineering stuff though.” Her eyes flick up towards him. “How old are you?”

“I’m 1,046 years old.”

“Hm.” Ashira sways a bit as she slows her steps. “Can we agree to stop trying to find out each other’s secrets?”

“As long as you…” Loki sighs quietly. “As long as you  are honest with me.” 

“I think I can arrange that, my liege.” 

It is then they arrive back at her ship. Loki hadn’t realized she was guiding them in large circle around the forest, slowly winding both of them back to bed.

“I’m more than ready to go back to sleep,” Ashira yawns. 

“I happen to agree.” 

“So glad to have the agreement of your highness.”

_______

Next

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Taglist:

Loki was already increasingly suspicious about her false intentions for their Naboo stop along with finding the book he cannot read but most definitely mentions Asgard and the Nine Realms. But this… watching her turn practically indestructible objects into nothing, her skin shattering as she does so is something else entirely. 

He moves towards the table. A power of his is molecular rearrangement meaning if there is any molecular integrity left, he can turn these items back into their original form or into another entirely. But as the familiar green glow covers the dust, nothing happens. The items remain practically invisible, destroyed and unable to be reformed. Loki touches the thin layer of dust where the box of parts once was. It vanishes as soon as he touches it, simply disappearing entirely.

She shattered the molecular integrity of these objects; they have been shattered beyond their most basic aspects. They have, in all practicality, vanished.

Her power may very well be why she is so desired. And while he has no intention on turning her in, he does want to know everything she’s been hiding from him. 

Those scattered notes of hers might be a good place to start. 

If he could read them.

—

Two weeks later they finally land again on a planet in an entirely different quadrant. Two weeks of avoiding each other, uncomfortable silences and awkward interactions when they finally run into each other.

“Welcome to Coruscant. We’ll be here for at least a week,” Ashira pulls her sweater down over her hands, nervously playing with the edges. “I need to deal with some stuff. And if you want to stay here you are more than welcome.” 

Ashira is leaning in the doorway, staring defeatedly outside. In the gritty morning light, her hair nearly fades into the sky. It’s braided back in yet another way he has never seen: two tight braids from each side but leaving the rest of her silver hair its natural curl, the braids never touching but somehow holding the hair from her face. A loose, white sweater reaches just above her knees, the deep blue of everything else that seems royal covering her legs with shoes to match.

“I’m going to stay with you, for now.” His voice is soft. “May I know what things you need to deal with?” 

Ashira fiddles with the end of one of her braids. “I’d prefer not to tell you. You don’t want me to put you in more danger you let me do this by myself.” She sighs. “The main city is about two miles from here, not a long walk for us. You can do whatever you what when we’re down there.” 

Loki walks to stand beside her, leaning on the right side of doorway. “Anything worth it there?”

“Give me two hours when we get to the city. I’ll tell you where to meet.” 

-

It’s an awkward walk. For once Ashira seems almost entirely vulnerable but also completely guarded, hugging her own arms close to herself for most of the walk. Her fingers twitch whenever they lay by her side, tugging nervously at the edges of the fabric. Her entire aura seems off to Loki. She’s been twitchy before but not visibly nervous like this before. 

At the city’s edge she stops. 

“There is a fountain four blocks straight forward and another six to the right. Meet me there in an hour and a half.” 

“Alright.” 

The seediest bar in the city is a cesspool for the worst of the universe. It’s mostly just people running from charges, child traffickers who aren’t esteemed politicians. But it is the only safe place for Ashira to meet with the only person not trying to drag her back home. So she slides casually beside the fellow citizen of Ares, her ex lieutenant commander Selene. 

Selene glances over to Ashira. Ashira’s face looks much like it did after their Lycra endeavor, where they got what they needed but got back with a lot less soldiers and a few too many scars.

And just a few inches of hair chopped off Ashira’s head when they got back.

“Rough day?” Selene asks, pushing her second drink to her left.

“You think?” Ashira picks up the glass. Though she knows better than to hold it to the shitty lighting she does it anyway. The glass, as expected, is a discolored cloudy gray, strays of brown along the sides. 

“You need to stop checking out the glasses every time we meet here. It’s unbecoming.”

The ex-princess sets down the glass, eyes narrowing at her friend. “I live in my ship that was designed for duo missions that’s hundreds of years old. I do updates with non-compatible technology and spend most of my time going to cesspools like this. Looking at a glass is in no way unbecoming. Everything else I do, possibly.” 

Loki slides into the seat at the bar three seats down in a disguise. Seeing Ashira beside someone also with silver (albeit nearly dark gray) hair at least six inches longer than Ashira’s but braided exactly the same and purple skin (hers only a shade or two lighter) is a surprise. She’s running from her home, why would she saddle up beside someone who could be trying to drag her back? 

“You are horrendously overdramatic.” 

The bartender steps in front of him. The woman is imposing, taller than nine feet and hell of a lot more terrifying than half the people in here. 

“Whatever’s not poisonous.” 

“Hm.” 

“I’m really not in compared to you, Selene. Telling people you can control the moon and darkness, get over yourself.” The ex-princess sighs loudly as the bartender slams a drink that definitely looks poisonous in its green hue in front of Loki. “But seriously, tell me what’s going on, Selene? Why is everything getting worse?” 

The prince leans forward to hear the response. 

“He’s done with the army,” Selene replies, turning towards Ashira and lowering her voice. “He wants the stones.” 

The stones?

“Shit.” She knows Loki followed her into the bar. This is bad and she promised to prevent him from getting danger. “We need to speak in Aresian. I may have picked up a stray.” 

Loki leans back as she switches languages. It isn’t Kree since the device hasn’t picked anything up and sounds similar to the mumbles she lets out when something is going wrong.

Selene gasps, her mouth widening in awe. “You did what now?” 

“Hey,” Ashira shrugs and sips a bit of the offendingly strong drink, “he fell face first in front of me out of the sky. Was I just supposed to leave him?”

“Wait, let me get this straight. Some guy just falls out of the sky and you just go like, ‘hey, hop in my shitty ship so I can patch you up’?” Selene pauses, tossing all her loose hair behind her shoulders, sending a sultry glance towards Ashira. “Or was it more dragging his unconscious body into your lair?”

Ashira shakes her head. “I’m stopping you there.” A soft sigh passes her lips. “No, he fell. He was alright actually, then a bunch of gangs tried to catch me so I was like, buddy, you gotta come with me. And he’s stayed so far.”

“So he’s the one you were caught running with on Naboo?” Selene chuckles quietly. “I thought you just grabbed a really cute hostage, not a live-in.” 

Ashira smacks Selene’s left arm. “Now seriously, what the hell is going on? The stones?” 

Ashira pushes the sleeves of her sweater up slightly. The room is warming as the crowd grows and she cannot keep them rolled down. A paled purple scar is obvious on her right wrist, one he has not seen before but is clearly old and healing over. It’s no more than a two inches long but wide, indicating it went deep and without proper medical attention. The edges are a jagged, mangled. It wasn't clean but was definitely rushed. How has he never noticed that before?

“He has grown restless. And finally realized what he can do if he has all of them.”

The ex-princess sits up straighter. She looks to the shelves of drinks to keep her mind occupied. “So they doubled the bounty so people have more incentive to bring me back.”

“You are the only one who knows where the Power Stone is and the only one besides him and very few others who can hold them without their containers.” Selene shrugs. “Plus for those who refuse to obey…”

“I know, the whole decimating thing.” 

Loki watches Ashira lean forward onto her hands, covering her face entirely. Whatever the conversation is about, it doesn’t look good. Her hair falls completely to the side as she turns on her hands to look at her friend.

From his spot he can just barely make out the end of a second scar along the lower part of her right neck, the edge wrapping around where a necklace would sit. Instead of metal to present something beautiful it is simple pale scarring, jagged just like the one on her wrist. 

The prince closes his eyes a second. She dug stuff out of her skin or someone cut it out for her. Either way it doesn’t look good. 

“Selene.” Ashira places her hands flat on the bar and pushes herself back up. “This is a disaster. I should have ended this when I still could.” 

Loki perks up at the sound of a name. Selene. Aresian… Selene… Aresian... the words seem to be tied together in a way he already knows.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. We can still fix this. We’ve got this. We used to be the baddest bitches out there.”

Her lips pull into a soft and small smile. “I’m not dragging you down with me, Selene. Plus the stray I picked up is good at magic, maybe I could use him.” 

“So you’ll use him and not me?”

“I can’t lose you, Selene. You are one of my only friends. Maybe even my only one left.” A low hum passes her lips. “I actually need to be going soon, promised my new friend I’d show him one of my favorite places to eat here.” 

“May I join? I just want to personally assess how good he is, you know?” 

Ashira shakes her head slightly. “You are ridiculous. And no, I’m sorry. I nearly got him killed like eight times already. Pretty sure he even followed me in here and used his magic to conceal himself.”

“That’s why you switched. You never cared before, I was wondering.”

“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll figure out something with the Power Stone. Stay safe and just don’t get caught.”

“You owe me like a hundred times. This place sucks.”

Selene stands reluctantly. Now Loki can actually see her in full. She’s taller than Ashira by nearly half a foot and thinner as well, wearing basically just a dark blue catsuit. Her walk is the same as Ashira’s, Loki notices: combining grace with the clunkiness of a warrior. Whatever boots she has keep her completely silent as moves about through the crowd of pestilence. But she pauses, turning on her toes and placing her right arm onto Ashira’s right shoulder. From where Loki is he cannot hear if anything is said as she leans into hug Ashira from behind. 

The other woman releases her friend and finally pushes past the crowd of people. Loki watches as she leaves and notices the nearly flat tactical belt along her hip. But it is stuffed in small places. Though he cannot tell there are at least eighteen different weapons in there that are collapsed somehow.

Ashira looks to her left down the bar. She knows Loki is somewhere in this bar, his curious self already sniffing in her things and now following her around when she asks to be left alone. Her eyes catch the sight of a () who is paying attention to Selene as she walks out. Not a sip of his drink is gone and from the tiny bit of space in his sleeve gleams the corner of the translator you gave Loki. 

Her hands curl around the edge of the bar. Of course. 

She repeats the move of her friend and pushes back to stand up. Loki is far too distracted trying to get more information about Selene that he doesn’t notice Ashira hovering near him until her fingers are gripping the left shoulder of the guy to his right.

“Pardon me,” she interrupts, “but I need to talk to this guy beside. Do you mind moving?” 

The man turns his head. Loki’s self preservation instincts told him as soon as he entered not to bother this man, beside him was the closest seat to her. Barely humanoid, bulking like a Kronan but not nearly as tall with a scowling, scared face but Ashira’s stupidity never ceases to amaze him.

Whatever creature this man is stands up, the chair toppling in the process. Loki conjures a knife within the sleeve of his right hand in the event this goes very, very wrong like it seems to be. In his hand flashes a small dagger he has seen around her ship, not one of home. 

He’s too far to conjure his own things. 

Kronan-man hybrid, or whatever he is that Loki can’t identify, softens immediately as soon as he sees Ashira. His fists uncurl, shoulders roll back down his back, whole body un-tenses. 

“No problem,” he smiles nervously, patting her left arm, “go ahead.” 

“Thanks, doll.” 

Loki is amazed at how the man proceeds to walk out of the bar at your command. And that he lets you call him doll.

With her right foot Ashira tilts the chair back up right, staring directly into the face of the illusion Loki has put on. As she slides to sit, Loki shifts in his own seat. Her stare is unnerving. She does not move a muscle in her face, not blink or wince as she sits.

“Drop it,” Ashira states, “you aren’t as sneaky as you think.”

“I’m sorry but I don’t know what you're talking about, darling.”

“You haven’t touched your drink and on top of that the translator I built you is tucked under your wrist so… drop it. Also if you really were just another patron, you’d know not to talk to me like that.”

Loki glances around a moment to check the surroundings for a moment. The look of a typical Kree fades away in a roll of gold to expose the prince.

He furrows his brows and narrows his eyes. “The drink and barely the corner of the translator gave it away?”

“And I knew you followed me.” Ashira sits in the chair beside him and slides his drink to herself. “Didn’t know which one you’d be but I knew you’d be close.”

Loki laughs. “So you switched languages.”

“You made it clear you didn’t like that I put you in danger. With this… the less you know the better.” 

“You mean not ratting out your friend?”

Ashira leans onto her elbows, placing her right cheek into her fists and looking at him. For the first time she looks completely normal. Her face is blessed with smile, eyes showing more brown than black for the first time since he has met her. 

“I don’t want to drag her down. She… she doesn’t deserve to be caught up in all of this.”

He mocks her position, smirking instead of smiling. “But she meets you in this joke of a place?”

“It’s the only place that’s safe enough to meet.” Ashira takes a moment to look around the place. “All these people probably have at least fifty warrants and six different bounties on their head.”

“So then why don’t you just stay here?”

“You’ve seen it, right?” She leans her arms straight forward, face also looking back out to the shelves. Her chin rests heavily along the counter. “But don’t worry, there’s nicer places in the city than this seedy shit. Not much nicer, but nicer.” 

“You promised me food. I intend to hold you to that promise.” 

“Then let’s go, your majesty.”

—

Loki is, admittedly to himself, is more suspicious than he was before. There are connections being made in his head but he doesn’t have enough information to know if he is being paranoid or realistic. 

Those damn notes. The best solution to figuring out this mess. 

—

For most of the week it works similarly. Ashira wanders somewhere for a few hours and Loki follows behind, trying each time to be sneakier with it and each time she knows he is there and either switches languages or chooses to speak in a code he cannot decipher. Then they go walk around the town together. 

People in the seedy parts are too scared to mess with her and when she isn’t dressed to impress she blends in surprisingly well. And though she doesn’t have any dresses as far as he can tell, she has far too many outfits for someone with that little of space.

— 

It’s on their last day Loki chooses not to follow Ashira in the morning. He told her he would meet her at the fountain, sending her off before him before he shoved every piece of paper he could find with her writing into a bag. Someone in this city is bound to be table to translate. 

There is less than twenty minutes until he is meant to meet you again when he is running out of stores and places that might translate, at all. Then the translator beeps. Someone is speaking in Kree nearby so it has begun translating but there is only one voice at most and it’s a whisper. 

So he pulls it out of his pocket to see what it says. 

‘Finally going to know what that whore wrote about me. Tells me it’s all in code… once I have proof, it’s over for her. Hey man, I told you this guy was the best. Code, language whatever. Who cares if she speaks some freaky language, she wronged you.’ 

He slips it back into his pocket and instead follows the sounds of the voice. This feels awfully fortuitous. 

He’ll take anything at this point. 

So when he reaches a door after twisting and turning down an alleyway, walking uncomfortably past the two younger men, he doesn’t even bother reading the sign, just pushes inside. 

The man at the desk nearly jumps out of his skin at the suddenness of the intruder. All along the wall are various computers and rolls of paper with languages Loki has never seen before all lit by a shitty ceiling light fading yellow.

Loki returns his attention to the man inside. He’s short, maybe even as short as Ashira and appears human. His glasses are round and too large for his unusually slender face; his hands are stained with ink and calloused at their tips. Though he does more than just translate, it is his main profession. At this point he is more intrigued than anything as to why someone so dressed up would enter an exchange store. 

His eyes fall immediately to the large stack of papers Loki drops in front of him.

“How much for a translation?” Loki inquires. He’s practically stoic as he speaks, eyes trained carefully on the man.

“This is Aresian, rarest language out there. Not even everyone from there speaks it.” He picks up a page and holds it up to the light. “Steal this from the royal family or something?”

“Or something. Can it be translated?”

“Of course it can. But all these documents… it’s gonna take some time even with them running through the computer. Give me six, seven hours. It ain’t gonna be cheap either.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

Loki places the credit pass Ashira gave him onto the counter. The man picks it up tentatively, holding it up to the light as well. He then places it onto the reader beside his main computer and begins to type away.

“Holy shit, where’d you get this many credits? Did you steal from the royal family as well or something?” 

“Or something.” The man hands Loki the pass back. “I’ll be back.”

While he admits he has dealt with very illegal things before and people who don’t sit, something really doesn’t sit right with this one.

Loki moves swiftly to the exit. He promised to meet Ashira near the fountain ten minutes ago and given her uncanny ability to always know things he needs to make his way there before she happens upon him in the store. 

He exits and sees no Ashira in sight. That is, of course, until he rounds the corner and runs immediately into her. 

“What’s so interesting about an exchange store?”

“Thought they may have something to remind me of home, they didn’t.” 

Ashira shrugs. She knows he lying - exchange stores aren’t for mementos. People go there to get the illegal deeds done, illegal items traded and words sent out they can’t themselves. 

“Well sorry about that. Come, there’s this place I think you’ll enjoy.” 

—

Loki expected Ashira to keep a grip on him all day after nearly catching him trying to read through everything she owns. Instead she tells him, after taking him to a suspiciously nice restaurant, to meet back at the ship around sunset or a bit later so they can leave then. 

Of course that leaves him more suspicious of what she might be hiding as well. 

But if it provides him time to go get the translations without needing to sneak around too much, he doesn’t mind.

“Here you go. I don’t know who you stole those from but don’t let them know you have them. I’m wiping my computer clean after that should anything happen.”

Loki takes the documents and tucks them into his bag. He’s curious by the other man’s words. What could possibly happen? Ashira said this part of the town is never even touched.

“What do you mean?” Loki inquires as he re-buckles the bag.

“It ranges from stupid formulas for better fuel economy to shit no one should be uttering outside their guarded gates. If they catch you with these, and more importantly the translations…” the man opens his arms in defeat, “Well it was nice knowing you.”

“Execution?” A logical punishment. 

The man laughs. “Boy, you’ll wish for something as sweet as execution.”

--

Next

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Taglist: 

Ashira steps forward as the gate opens to the fighting pit. Not only is this purely humiliating, but purely horrifying from what she has heard between the whispers of the guards. A princess does not stand in a fighting pit meant for dirty experiments. And a princess is not a spectacle to be sold. 

“To the center, dear,” the Emperor says. 

Ashira looks up to the ceiling and bites her lips, her feet stepping slowly forward bare in the dirt. Stripped of her armor, her normal clothes, her shoes, she’s being guided like the Kree’s experiments to play, again. The only indication she ever mattered to anyone beyond being a toy is the tattoo along her spine, the permanent reminder of her royal status and military achievements. 

She turns once she hits her mark to the watching box. She’s seen it many times filled with Kree scientists and the Emperor himself, scurrying around with clipboards and video cameras and other equipment. But this time sits a special breed of spectators: her parents, the tyrannical Titan and a few of his Children. 

It’s been a year or so since she last saw her parents. The last time was to simply tell her that she was not coming home. 

To tell someone who was simply on an allied planet for testing to determine what happened that they are not coming home is terrifying. And to tell a princess she is not coming home? 

That’s not something anyone just does. 

Then the forced blood drawings and tissue samples began. 

And forced training with powers she didn’t even know existed. 

And forced killings of Inhumans in their stupid fighting pit. 

“Dad...” Ashira begs. He barely spares her a true look, dark blue eyes glaring as he tilts his head up. “Mother…” 

“Shall we begin?” Her mother asks, entire head turning towards the Kree emperor, her deep, near black brown eyes not even looking at her daughter. 

“Mom...” 

“Of course,” the Emperor smiles. “Bring in the first Champion.” 

“Please!” 

The gate opposite her, on the right side of the stupid pit. 

A shaking, terrified male human steps out, looking just as, if not worse than Ashira. Dirtied, tired, and in ripped black clothing. A guard shoves them past the gate as if closes swiftly behind them. 

Her eyes flit back up to her parents. “Please don’t make me...” 

“This particular Inhuman subject has the power of geo-kinesis. In the room we have left some of the strongest substances in the entire universe!” One of the scientists announces. 

Ashira looks back at the male in front of her, a human no more than twenty. A bit gangly with dark tawny skin and muddy black hair. Tired, mildly malnourished. 

“What’s your name?” She asks softly. 

“Ca-Caleb,” he replies. Irish.

“I’m Ashira. I don’t want to hurt you and I hopefully won’t. But please use your powers the best you can against me.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t want to hurt you either. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“You won’t, I promise.” 

The boy nods nervously. His eyes look around the room at the various rock formations. Some of them he can easily identify: lead, silver, titanium, diamonds, even vibranium he knows. There is one in a container he isn’t familiar with, it’s aqueous and silver in tone. 

He slowly lifts his hands, the block of lead following suit. Ashira watches carefully. Geo-kinetics tend to make daggers and she’s learned that if she doesn’t pay attention fully, one will get past her and sometimes dig its way into her skin. She doesn’t mind but those in charge of her… they mind. A lot. 

Caleb makes quick but shaky work of the lead; within seconds hundreds of daggers are made and pointed at Ashira. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“It’s alright, I’ll be alright,” she assures. 

The boy turns his head away while pushing his hands forward to avoid the possible carnage. Ashira cannot imagine what they have made him do, the number of fellow humans that have died for him to get here. 

But she does her part in this spectacle, ducking slightly and throwing her right arm out and around, a force-field like purple shield encasing her with ease. Each and every dagger disintegrates as it nears her, the lead falling into unsalvageable pieces on the ground. 

Once the last one is gone, she unfolds herself and stands upright again. She knows it’s going to be a display of everything they taught her: shielding, that weird ray thing, possibly some energy pulses. 

It goes on like that a few more times, the young boy nervously creating sharp weapons out of various metals and Ashira quickly destroying them into nothing, making them too broken to even be touched by him ever again. 

“Enough! This is not what I came here for!” The Titan finally speaks. 

“Of course,” the Emperor replies. 

Ashira and the boy share a look. She knows something is about to go wrong, very, very wrong. As does he, but he knows less about the situation than she does. He was kidnapped from Earth, thrown into this without context. Context she does. 

“Now.” 

The bar implanted in her neck releases an unimaginable jolt of pain - unlike anything she has felt before. Like millions of zinner ticks all firing through her body at once. 

She screeches, her body involuntarily crumpling forward. The pain continuously pulsates throughout her entire body and with each new beat she cries out a little more, her hands scratching endlessly at her neck. Her attention is drawn away from what she is actually doing to the arena, focused entirely on the suffering. 

The group watches in awe as the pain forces her power to be drawn out. With each new sting comes a new violent wave of purple light emitting from her, decimating the unprotected plants, metals, and people over and over and over again. The inside is shaking, a violent quake upsetting the ground of the entire facility as her body shutters. 

The Emperor waves his right hand gently and the scientist stops the violent torture. 

Ashira drops to her hands and knees as her muscles finally relax. It takes her a moment, but as her eyes reopen, all she sees is complete destruction in front of her. All the metals left over falling in dusted pieces down from the ceiling, her own clothes gone from her body, the faux flora in shreds. She looks for her opponent to apologize only to see the dark, scorched outline of a fallen boy. 

“No... no... no, no, no!” Ashira whimpers out, crawling towards his shadow. “No…” 

“Let’s go talk terms.” 

-

Ashira wakes with a gasp. It’s spinning, everything. The ceiling, the seat, the ground, the stars, even her own body is spinning. And words are howling around her. Scrambled in the air around her, crushing her skull with their sound and taking up any bit of air she could possibly have to reverberate. “Let’s go talk terms” is chanted over and over in overlapping waves, quieter and louder, spinning like everything else, slithering its way around her neck and constricting her throat. 

Her throat. There is a burning sensation on her throat, the implant still burning inside of her. She needs to get it out. Her nails claw at her lower right neck, scratching and pulling at nothing but it’s there. The bar is there. She knows it is there and it needs to get out of her body. She needs a mirror to find it. 

With what little strength she has, she pushes herself out of her bed, body tumbling onto the ground. In front of her appears a vague vision of a burnt outline of a fallen boy. It’s spinning. 

Heat. It’s too hot suddenly as she gasps for another breath. The little bulbs of sweat seem to pop up out of nowhere from her skin, sticking insistently to her face and hands as she clamors her way towards the stairs, towards a more open room. They are heavy; every drop another pound to her body. Too heavy. 

Downstairs. More room and cooler downstairs. 

A painful inhale passes her lips as she pulls all her strength together to reach the stairs. 

It’s more of a tumble than anything, but her crawl down the stairs is more difficult than her hike up Mount Yuniva for training (and she legitimately almost died making that hike). Her hands reach the metal floor. It’s not any cooler. And it’s spinning. Everything is still spinning. 

She jolts backwards into a seated position. She can’t feel her heart, it’s gone. Her whole body is numb save the burning sensation on her neck, she can’t breath and her heart is gone and goddamnit everything is spinning. 

Now her stomach is spinning too. 

“Let’s go talk terms” is no longer just suffocating her air, strangling her throat, it’s slithering its way down her throat. It doesn’t belong there. 

It’s swirling and sneaking its tendrils to stir inside of her. 

And it doesn’t belong there. 

Ashira stumbles to her feet, body swaying under the weight of her sweat and the lightheadedness from the lack of air. It’s barely a walk as she wobbles towards the bathroom, her body forcing the words back up. The door is knocked open, swinging back into her legs as she falls over the toilet. She isn’t thinking about it, but she is glad to have pulled all her hair back into a singular braid. 

There is more than she thought there would be heave up. It’s more than words; it’s everything she ate within the past ten hours and then some. And it won’t stop. The words keep shoving their way back down and her body keeps pushing them back up. So even though she is seeing stars, her eyes are burning and the wounds she made on her neck are oozing more the more she pushes, she keeps pushing. 

But pushing soon turns into sobbing, the bubbling in her throat a similar experience. So she stops trying to banish the nightmare and allows the sadness overwhelm her instead, her hand struggling to flush the toilet. 

She can’t bear the smell of the words. 

She turns to sit with her back to the toilet, throwing her left arm over her eyes. Twenty year some odd years later and she is still having nightmares over that one moment. Pathetic. 

The spot on her neck where the bar once was is bleeding, she can feel it. It’s trickling down onto her shoulder, slipping into her tank top and settling along the crevices of her underclothes and even her elbow. That spot hurts; the spot she spent an entire night carefully carving at to take out, that bled for hours as she focused on just getting away before taking care of her wound. It’s not the only scar that still stands out as she also had to rid of other imbedded machines that could track her, but it’s the only one that still hurts. 

An ugly reminder towards the bottom of the right side of her neck. 

Loki sits on the stairs, watching Ashira sob in the near darkness. He woke up when she started thrashing in her sleep, but he didn’t know what to do. So he stayed still in the new bed they got for him, listening to her mumbled pleas and eventually her screams. And when she got up, gasping and crying and stumbling around he still didn’t know what to do. How do you help someone like that? Someone so terrified of something they shake in their sleep? Someone so scared they stumbled around like a drunkard and cry out like a a hurt child?

Her sobs only get louder and Loki only feels more helpless. 

He barely even knows this girl, he remembers, so why should he even help her, feel sorry for her? Because she’s saved his life; she willingly took him in despite the possibility that he could be trying to kill her or bring her in; she rearranged part of her ship for him; she’s shown more kindness and hospitality in four days than he usually gets in four years. 

The next twenty minutes are uncomfortable for Loki. Between the undulating sound of her sobs and the metal stairs being too small for a proper seat, he’s stuck. He doesn’t know how to comfort somebody; he really doesn’t. 

Ashira pushes herself up eventually. She knows she isn’t done crying but goddamnit she has a guest and she isn’t going to spend all night crying in front of him. It’s rude and most importantly: embarrassing. She should be over it by now. 

It’s a slow walk to the stairs. Should she grab a towel or something to clean up the mess she made on her neck? Yes. Is she going to? No. She’ll deal with it in the morning. 

Loki simply watches as she makes her way towards him, careful not to look like he is staring like she is some animal or spectacle but also careful to make sure she understands he isn’t ignoring her. He wants to do something, to help her, but he doesn’t know what. 

She pauses part way up the stairs and Loki thinks she is going to explain. Maybe offer a few words of advice even. But she places her right hand on his shoulder, her head barely tilting due to the pain she’s put herself through. 

“Don’t ask,” she whispers, her voice crackly and hoarse from the tears. 

And then she starts walking again, her hand lingering on his shoulder. 

Loki looks to his right shoulder where her hand just was as she finishes her ascent. He searches it for answers. Maybe she left a clue or something in the form of a handprint or even a  dropped note. He just wants to know. 

Does he understand the type of stress that one must go through to wake in such a fright? No. But he does understand betrayal. And her helpless cries for her parents is a sound all too familiar and fresh to him. 

He waits a few more moments until he is sure she is at least re-situated in her bed before returning to his.

His eyes trace over her resting body. She curled up as usual, body placed on her right side, left arm pulled around and tucked beneath herself, like she is giving herself a hug. A few times he has caught her cuddling a gun but tonight she is weaponless. She sleeps facing the stars with a thin sheet covering her that is usually thrown off by morning. And no matter what she is always stiff. He swears that if anything were to happen she could just jump out of bed and be ready instantly; it’s like she doesn’t really sleep. Her sleeping position appears restful but her actual sleeping is not. 

Loki crawls back into his own bed, an actual one with two pillows and a real blanket. Not a window seat that’s really just a chest with a pillow on top. But an actual bed 

-

For nearly an hour the only noise is the soft hum of the engine. Loki hasn’t fallen back asleep; Ashira hasn’t fallen back asleep. Both are simply still in the dark, silent, acting as if nothing has happened. 

Loki can’t handle it. She may be used to being alone, not having to share her situations with others, but now he is involved. Now he knows something about her she likely never shares with anyone and he cannot just pretend that nothing happened. 

“I’m sorry.” 

Ashira shifts in her spot to face the interruption. It hurts to remove pressure from her scratches, but she has the compulsion to turn to Loki. “Sorry? For what?” 

Loki searches the ceiling for a response. “For whatever happened. I don’t know what you went through but whatever it was, no one deserves to go through something like that.” 

“Thanks.” 

It’s laced with a hundred different emotions. The overtone, the heaviest, the loudest is confusion. Loki can’t tell if it’s confusion over him saying anything or confusion over him showing sympathy, but it is confusion all the same. 

The rustling of her thin sheet is loud as she turns back to the stars. Loki knows he will likely never understand her. There is too much to her for him to dissect. A normal person he can figure out in a few hours, the whole of them in a week. 

But he knows it will be years to understand her. 

She constantly contradicts herself. Sometimes it is on purpose, putting on an act like on Contraxia. Sometimes he is sure she doesn’t realize it, like how she always looks perfectly put together, not a single hair is ever left out of place but then she leaves her weapons and extra wires everywhere, never bothers to wipe up spilled oil on accident, remembering to do so leaving her mind entirely. 

---