content warnings: graphic descriptions of violence, strong language, cancer, illness
The tower was quieter than usual.
It had been weeks since the confrontation in the lounge, weeks since the flames, the words, the wounds. In that time you had retreated to your room like a ghost retreating from the world, leaving behind only charred carpet and questions that no one dared to ask.
Now, he stood outside your door, fingers hovering in mid air, poised to knock but hesitating, uncertain. He'd passed through this hall more times than he cared to admit the past few weeks, always intending to knock, but never quite finding the nerve to. Tonight, though, was different. He'd been sitting in his room, a book resting open in his lap, the same page staring up at him for nearly half an hour, but he hadn't processed a single word.
As his eyes scanned the same paragraph for the seventh time, he sighed, running a hand through his hair. No matter how many times he tried to distract himself, his thoughts kept drifting back to you. The way your voice had cracked, the enchanting flames that danced up your arms, the look in your eyes that hadn't come from anger alone, but grief, deep and suffocating.
And the way you'd defended him, of all people, like your life had depended on it.
He'd eventually snapped the book shut and stood, pacing his room as his thoughts raced. Damn it all, He thought.
Minutes later he was standing outside your door, poised to knock but hesitating. "This is absurd," He muttered, but he couldn't escape the nagging tightness of not knowing. He needed to see you, needed to know why. Why did you defend him like that? Why did he care?
It's late, He tried to reason with himself. You're probably sleeping. This should wait.
But for some unknown reason, he couldn't bring himself to walk away. "Damn it all," He repeated as he finally knocked, harder than he meant to.
"Go away." Your voice was muffled, but clear enough to be understood. Too bad Loki was never good at taking orders.
He took a breath and, against all better judgement, pushed the door open, stepping into your room. You were curled up under a blanket in bed, facing away from the door, a half full mug of cold tea and plate of barely-touched food sitting on your bedside table. The room was dimly lit by amber sconces on the walls, and heavy velvet curtains coloured a deep, forest green were pulled closed, blocking out the view of the city from the window.
Loki let his eyes wander the room as the door shut behind him with a soft click. The air had the faint scent of citrus and sandalwood, a tall bookshelf standing like a sentry beside your desk, crammed with worn paperbacks, poetry collections, and old hardcover tomes. A record player sat on a side table, a stack of vinyls on the lower shelf - Bowie, Talking Heads, The Smiths, among others. Above it, a framed antique map of the stars hung slightly askew, the edges curling and yellowed from age.
Your desk was cluttered but curated - fountain pens in a tarnished cup, candles burned halfway down, and a raven figurine perched next to a peeling leather-bound journal with a cracked spine. Dried flowers - lavender, marigolds, hibiscus - hung from twine above your headboard.
It was the kind of room that told stories, like it had secrets in its walls. It hit him suddenly how intimate this all was. Not in the obvious, physical way, but in a deeper, rawer sense. It was late, everyone else in the tower was likely asleep, but here he was, in your chambers. Just the two of you.
"What part of 'go away' did you not understand?" You mumbled, not bothering to look up.
"I'm known for many things, but my ability to follow orders is not among them," Loki replied, feigning nonchalance.
You sat up with a start, as if your ears had deceived you. Your eyes met his and widened slightly. "Loki," You breathed.
The way you looked at him tugged at something inside of him. He wasn't sure what the feeling was, exactly - it wasn't concern, nor pity; not the shared comfort of outcastedness the two of you had shared in the library. It was something deeper, something.. Unexpected.
He awkwardly crossed his arms, standing in the middle of the room like he wasn't sure whether to sit or flee. "I'm.. I'm not good at this," He started. "Talking. Feelings. All of that." He cleared his throat. "But I wanted - needed, to ask... why?"
You gestured to the foot of your bed, and Loki sat, rigid and awkward. "Why, what?" You asked.
"Why did you defend me?" He blurted before he lost the nerve. "To Thor. So fiercely."
You were surprised. "What?"
"You didn't have to," He continued. "You could have agreed with him, or even said nothing. It likely would have been easier, but you didn't. Why?"
"Why wouldn't I?" You asked.
Loki paused, his expression raw and unguarded. "Because, I've done terrible things. Unforgivable things. I've lied, stolen, manipulated, killed innocents. Left trails of destruction across entire realms. I've betrayed those who trusted me, those who loved me. Thor is right to be wary. But yet you still fought for me, spoke kindly of me. Why?"
You stared at him, something unreadable clouding your expression. Your lips parted, but no words came, not right away. You looked stricken, guilt so powerful it closed your throat welling up inside of you. Loki noticed your internal battle and his posture straightened, like he'd stumbled across something not meant to be seen.
You took a breath, then another, the silence stretching between you, thick and heavy. Then, finally, you spoke.
"I defended you, because I know what it's like to be seen as a monster." You sounded choked, your voice small and tight. "Not because someone assumes it, or because of what you look like or who your family is, but because you are. Because you did something monstrous... And can't take it back."
Loki stilled beside you. You fought to continue around the rising tightness in your chest, threatening to take your breath away. "I've never told anyone this," You admitted softly, staring down at your hands like they were a stranger's. "Not Tony. Not Thor. Not Steve, or Nat, or Bruce. Nobody. But, if anyone would understand... I suppose it would be you."
You swallowed past the hard lump in your throat. "When I escaped the HYDRA facility... It was chaos. I didn't come back to the tower right away, I couldn't. I was half-starved, half mad, basically feral with abilities I couldn't control, and filled with rage. So much rage. I didn't know who I was anymore, I was nothing but fire and blood and pain and couldn't think straight. I wandered the Vienna wilds for days, no food, barely any water, covered in blood - some mine, most not. I was like a rabid fucking dog."
You laughed, but it was bitter and hollow. "When I finally stumbled across that village, I looked like something out of a nightmare. I was something out of a nightmare."
Loki said nothing, just sat, silent and still next to you. His stomach turned, and a sinking feeling crept into his chest like ice water through cracked stone. He had a hunch of where this was going, but he desperately hoped to be wrong. Subconsciously, impossibly, he'd come to think of you as something good - someone kind in a way he'd stopped believing existed in this realm. To imagine that weight - that guilt - bearing down on you... He didn't want to think about that.
"They were afraid. I still remember their screams, they sounded like music. Can you imagine that?" Your voice took on a distant quality, the kind that only came with long buried trauma. "When they saw me, this filthy, stumbling thing, skin grey and brambles tangled in my hair... They screamed, the children ran, and someone threw something at me. I don't even remember what, but it was all I needed to snap."
major tw!! this will be graphic, gory and disturbing. feel free to skip ahead. if you continue reading, you do so at your own risk.
You sucked a breath in through your teeth. "A man came at me with a pitchfork - as if that would do anything. I liquefied him. The flesh sloughed off his bones before he even hit the ground. Another tried to pull me back with rope; I burned him, watched his flesh blacken and listen to him beg me to stop while his eyes boiled in his skull." Your hands clenched, knuckles white as ivory. "I ripped a mother in half with a shockwave, and she still refused to let go of her baby. I watched her intestines spill into the dirt while the baby screamed. I roasted a man inside of his own iron chimney because he tried to hide, you could hear his fists pounding the walls before his lungs gave out."
You swallowed thickly as your voice dropped to a monotone, each word more horrifying than the last, but you wouldn't stop, wouldn't spare a single detail. If Loki thought he was a monster, he needed to hear what you had done. This was your penance.
"There was a little girl, maybe six years old. Dark hair, big brown eyes. She didn't scream, didn't even cry - just looked at me, not like I was a monster, but like she could still see a person under all of the filth and fire. I didn't burn her, or blast her - I just hit her. I caved her head in with a piece of debris because I couldn't stand the way she looked at me like I could be saved."
tw over! if you didn't read, y/n brutally massacred a village.
Tears burned your eyes as you stared at your hands, but you didn't let them fall. "When it was over, the village was nothing but a smoking crater. I made sure nothing was left, not even bones. Like erasing them could erase me."
"So you ask why I defended you? Because you're not the only 'monster' in the room."
When you finally forced yourself to meet his eyes, you braced yourself for the worst, expecting to see disgust, horror, etched across his features. Fear, maybe, or revulsion.
What you found was far more devastating.
His eyes held grief, raw and aching, like he was watching a mirror image of himself bleed out before him and he was powerless to stop it. His expression was unbearably soft, painfully open and vulnerable in a way you'd never seen, like your words had carved straight through him. He looked at you the way someone would look at something precious that had been shattered - not repulsed by the cracks, but mourning the violence of how they got there.
"You thought I would hate you," He said softly, not as a question, but as a sad truth. "I know that look in your eyes, Y/N. I've worn it myself." You blinked at him, your breath caught between a sob and silence. "I know what it is to be consumed by rage, to become the thing people whisper about long after the screams have faded. To do something unforgivable and still wake the next day, forced to live with it. But Y/N," He said, awkwardly laying his hand on yours, "I don't look at you and see a monster. I see someone who survived against all odds. Someone HYDRA tried to twist and break, but who fought and escaped. And yes, you lost control. Gods, you lost everything, but that doesn't make you evil."
You stared at him like the ground was ripped out from under you. You swallowed hard, your eyes burning. Your hands twitched in your lap, and Loki gave them a squeeze.
Your body gave out like it couldn't bear the weight anymore and you hunched forward, hiding your face behind shaking hands as sobs you kept locked behind your ribs for far too long rocked your body. Then, surprising both of you, you felt arms wrap around you.
Tentative at first, awkward and uncertain, like they didn't know what they were doing. But they wrapped around you just the same, steady and warm and solid, drawing you into him without another word. You collapsed into his chest, his shirt bunching in your fists as your cries grew louder, your tears soaking through the linen, but still he held you.
Loki, who had always kept everyone at arm's length, who had once recoiled from touch like it burned, cradled the back of your head in one hand while the other curled protectively around your waist. Then, he rested his cheek against the top of your head, the material of your scarf tickling his nose as you fell apart in his arms.
author's note: sorry for the graphic lore drop! it just felt right to me for her to have a similar monstrous background, something to connect with loki on a deeper level <3
