On the Run (An Avengers Fanfiction) ✔️Completed (under editing)

Broken Bones

Astrid's p.o.v.

After hours of stumbling around in the dark I regained enough strength to use my powers again; focusing as hard as I could on making myself glow. Norman watched me sceptically, before he would have freaked out, I would have too, but now we were simply both glad we could see in the endless dark. At this point in time we had been through too much to care. My strength had increased too and, against Norman's protests, I could support Loki by myself without too much difficulty. Our progress was still painfully slow though and I started to worry about the others. Were we even heading in the right direction?

"I am so tired. Can we stop for a few minutes?" Norman pleaded.

Agreeing with his suggestion I propped Loki up at the base of a nearby tree. He groaned in pain but didn't actually say anything. Norman slumped down and sat on the floor. I was extremely tired, but the others were completely exhausted. I thought for a few minutes, deliberating whether to try and press on or find a place to rest until it got light again.

"D'You think we could climb a tree?" I said finally, after a few minutes of silence.

"You mean to rest?" Norman asks.

"No just because I feel like it"

He looked confused,

"Yes to rest silly" I answered with a smile punching him lightly on the shoulder, trying to make our situation feel less desperate. Obviously it didn't work.

"I'm not sure. I can probably just about manage, but getting him up there too is going to be more difficult" Norman answered with a sigh.

"We could use the metal rope like a pulley but that will still be painful for Loki and ourselves; that rope has already almost shredded my hands"

"Are you okay, are they bleeding a lot?" Norman asked seeming to have randomly recovered from his state of near collapse a little.

I thought about this for a minute and tried to turn on my 'glow' again to assess the damage since I hadn't actually looked at my hands yet, but I was too tired and no matter how hard I tried nothing happened.

"I'm not sure. I can't see. I can just feel that they've been cut and are oozing a bit; I don't think it's serious" I lied, not wanting Norman to worry about me.

I stood up and strained my neck until it cracked loudly. Every joint and muscle in my body ached and I felt as though I'd endured ten rounds of boxing with Steve in a row and lost every one. My throat was so dry that when I licked my bottom lip, which I soon discovered was bleeding, my tongue felt like sand paper. As I knelt down next to Loki I wondered how much he hated me; I smiled privately at the idea.

"I'm sorry" I muttered, wiping some of the blood away from his face with my sleeve as gently as possible in the complete darkness.

I felt responsible, not so much because I had made the decision that he would probably survive the fall and that Norman wouldn't, but that I had caused this whole mess in the first place. I tried to be as careful as I could looping the rope underneath Loki's arms in order to pull him up in to the tree but I couldn't fasten the rope properly and could tell I was causing him a lot of pain. I stopped to re-think. Norman shuffled over to help, attempting to remove his leather tail coat or whatever it was meant to be. Luckily he wasn't in full armour, helmet and all, but he was still wearing the usual Asgardian attire. Unfortunately for us, this meant it was difficult to get his coat off without hurting him even more.

"Why couldn't he have just been that suit which he wore in Germany? We could even have used his ridiculously ostentatious scarf to bind his leg..." Norman muttered.

"Ostentaious?" I echoed bemused.

Then my thoughts drifted to Amy and Daken as wondered if they were dead because of me, remebering the explosion of the hangar and bailing out of the quinjet, expecting any number of things to kill me and my amazement when they didn't. Then I thought about the whole thing logically for the first time and realisation dawned upon me that it couldn't have been S.H.I.E.L.D. which shot us all down; the projectiles that I'd seen had come from somewhere below us. Someone or something else was trying to take us out from the forest floor... But why?

"What are you thinking about now?" Norman asked me.

"Nothing" I lied.

Then silence returned to our little group once again as Norman and I tugged at Loki's outer layer of Asgardian leather clothing until we managed to remove it. After the initial pain Loki seemed relieved.

"Funny to think that if we wound the clocks back a few years you were trying to rule the world... I'm constantly having to wonder wether we can trust you."

Loki half smiled at this comment.

"Uhm Norman?"

"Yeah"

"You know that you mentioned that he has an accelerated rate of healing?"

He nodded.

"Does that mean his bones will set in the broken position?"

again he nodded..

"So we should try to realign them?"

"I think so"

We both looked at Loki's worried face.

"Try not to enjoy yourself too much Norman; I know how much you hate him" I teased.

Unfortunately I hadn't realised that it would have to be me who did the unpleasant bit because only I could have any effect on him. I would never forget that hour of torture for him; the look on his face like a fatally injured and terriefied animal waiting for death. Still I had to carry on... to keep telling myself I was helping in the long term not putting him through so much pain for nothing.

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Author's note;

Hello readers :P

I'm sorry that I took such a long time to update but I hope you like this chapter! I got a lot of inspiration from seeing Thor the dark world recently and will try to update a little quicker.

Please remember to vote and also comment because I love to hear from you.

Until my next update,

Loves_Loki