Ice Maiden (A Loki Fanfic)

Safe Haven

Asgard, be it new or old, was not a place, it was a people. Well that's what Thor said at any rate.

As she looked out over the little wooden houses and down to the harbour, she felt peacefully at home, here amongst them. They had welcomed her at the behest of the two princes and now looked after her as one of their own when the brothers were off chasing more danger. Their wooden cottage was hardly the fortress Asgard had once been, gilded and gleaming with more rooms than even Loki and Thor knew of. This was small and cosy and intimate, a safe haven for them away from the world. She stood barefoot on the warm wooden boards in the sunshine, the sea below a deep azure the cliffs red sandstone, birds wheeling and screaming as the dove for fish amongst the rocks below. It soothed her soul and rested her body. Sipping her tea, she sighed and sat on the wooden bench at the railing, looking out to sea as she had now for weeks. Waiting and thinking.

It all played out in her mind, making her smile and cry and proud and ashamed in turn. When would he come back? Would he come back at all. She hardly dared think about the implications of that last thought.

She was still fairly weak physically, despite it being more than 2 months after Jarvis had crashed through the roof in Prague and carried her back to the Campus. Her mind, when it wasn't resembling a lighthouse blinking on and off, was as sharp as ever and she was desperate to return to her duties in the cypher team.

The scary but ultimately temporary setback just after she woke, turned out to be her system overloading as she tried to deal with too much at one time. There was something lurking in her brain that she couldn't shake off and they couldn't get to. The Hydra cortex link had been removed as soon as she had been evacuated to the base, but every time she got stressed or angry or scared, she completely shut down. It had somehow rewired part of her brain, probably to prevent anyone finding out how it worked. They knew now it was an auto response and since she couldn't control it, she couldn't be on her own. She was vulnerable. If Hydra got her back, they would be able to develop it, based on her reactions, perhaps use it to protect their own agents in the face of interrogation or torture or worse, to shut down enemy agents at the most inopportune moments.

The only way to cope was live an unremarkable life in a quiet little backwater. Something she was never going to accept. She was a fully fledged Agent now, whether His Highness liked it or not. She HAD to get a handle on this.

Loki had insisted she stay here, to rest, to recover and most importantly to hide away from the possibility of being tracked by any remaining Hydra agents. She was one of their most wanted now. Thor had even agreed, making it virtually a fait acompli.

Initially to be fair, she hadn't argued. She was tired, of feeling sick, of fighting it - and him. After their first confessions about their feelings to each other, in the face of the unrelenting stress her condition placed on a normal relationship, the rose tinted glasses had fallen off. Mainly at her hand she was ashamed to admit.

Loki wanted her to play happy families, she thought, live in New Asgard and be a Princess while he saved the world. She wanted nothing more than to fight at his side. She still loved him, he still drove her wild, but she hated the cotton wool blanket he wrapped around her. As a result, they bickered and sniped, each feeling the other in the wrong. It all came to a head after about six weeks. Tony called a meeting, for once at the Tower, about a new mission. After the briefing, they stood in his quarters, looking out over the city. The tension was almost unbearable. They looked out over New York for this first time in a very long time. From this angle it always brought back memories and each was lost in their own personal hellish recollection of 2012.

As she looked out over the skyline, she winced inwardly remembering that fateful day. Loki had changed in so many ways, had become an Avenger, had become her lover. Now he had become her adversary. She was bored to death with relaxing, resting and recuperating. She said as much to Loki.