Picking Up The Pieces

75. A Team

   I sat on my bed in the room at the Compound, legs crossed as I hunched over the notepad I held in my hands. The last remnants of sunlight before night struggled to get through my blinds, my true source of light the lamp on my nightstand. The calendar on my wall had 'x's on each day that had passed, just ending before the Fifteenth of February. Just under two weeks until Hawkes was presumed to attack.

I had heard nothing about the man since the Dragons came to visit, and that lack of knowledge frightened me. There was nothing on his whereabouts, nothing new about his plan, and no confirmation on if the Twenty-Eighth would be the true start of our battle. My own writing on the paper was starting to blur to my eyes from how tired I was. With a groan, I ripped the paper off of the notepad, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it across the room without lifting my head. There was no sound of it hitting the ground, and I looked up from the pad.

"Am I dreaming..." I asked slowly, "or is this real?"

"Real," Loki told me, the crumpled paper clenched in his raised hand. He raised an eyebrow at me while I continued to stare at him. The man wore his traditional black and green clothes, his dark hair slicked back and just above his shoulders. "But you don't believe that, do you?"

"Considering my only contact with you has been dreams and premonitions, you can't blame me," I scoffed, and he bowed his head. "So why now? Why are you here after all this time?"

"I can't even get a welcoming hug?" he asked cheekily, and I stayed silent. "You're mad at me, aren't you?"

"Seeing you in front of me made me truly realize that," I admitted, and Loki's shoulders sagged slightly. "I know you've been watching me. Why else would I start suddenly dreaming of you when I began to have... I moved on! You've known me longer than I can remember, and it's been like a game of cat and mouse with you! As great as it is to see you, I'm busy and I don't need your help or whatever the reason it is you're here."

"Cat and mouse... oh, for Odin's sake, I know you're dying!" he raised his voice at me, and I flinched at the abrasiveness of his words. Loki realized his mistake quickly, giving a quick sigh while he calmed himself. "Keeping Thor out of Asgard is much harder than you would think, and it wasn't until-"

"Why are you keeping your brother away from you?"

"- it wasn't until that little energy blast of yours that I realized there were pressing things going on with you," he continued over my question. "Even now I can feel your life force, and it's weak. Those tests you took, they're wrong. Four years is if you're optimistic..."

I felt sick to my stomach, Loki's words fading as I processed what I had just been told. Carefully, I set the notepad down, trying to keep my eyes from brimming with tears. "You're... you're telling me," I asked him, "I have even less time than that? Less... less than four years?"