Eagle (A Loki love story)

Chapter 106

The following week was one of the most interesting weeks of my life. Pretending to be the grieving widow around the Warriors 4 and trying to ignore the fact that Loki was alive when I was alone. My progress socially was slow, I was awkward around the Warriors Four because they had so much more in common with each other than they did with me. I trained with them every day, but I didn't get any better at sparring. I was lasting a bit longer, but I still hadn't won a single match and my repeated failures were giving me a bit of a sour mood.

Loki was true to his word, he never trapped me alone with him again, nor did he approach my in public as Odin. However, once a day, at some point of another, I would find something waiting for me outside my door. Normally, it was some pretty thing accompanied by a note, once it was just a bouquet of exoticly colored roses. Nothing changed, I read and burned the notes and somehow got the pretty gift out of my hands but the fourth day, there was nothing there at all. For a moment, I thought he'd given up, that is, until that night. I was woken up suddenly for no apparent reason. I closed my eyes again and tried to fall back asleep when there was a noise to my right. It was a tap on the floor, so I sat up and found a couple dozen little stones on the floor. Another one came flying in, through the open balcony doors. It wasn't odd that they were open, I liked the light wind circulation while I slept but if the stone throwing continued, I wouldn't be able to sleep at all so I got up and moved to shut them and I spotted who was throwing them. Loki. Perched on the same tree branch I had planned to jump to with a handful of stones. When he saw me, he smirked and waved.

"What do you want?"

"I don't have you trapped. Can we talk now?" He took something from the inside of his shirt and threw it. It was a paper airplane. Well, a poorly made one. It teetered and did a loop before barely landing on my balcony. Another note. I unfolded it and read it, keeping my expression carefully schooled knowing full well that Loki was watching my every reaction.

"No." There was nothing different about it than any of the other ones so when I finished it, I backed into my room, shut the doors, and destroyed it.

Nothing changed the next day, I met the Warriors 4 for breakfast and then we went to the stables to get horses. We were going on a day-long hunting trip and would come back tonight. Our task was to gather game for some feast tomorrow night. My ride just happened to be Loki's old horse, a large black stallion with gentle brown eyes. Even his saddle had been saved. We rode probably twenty miles away from the city before Hogun slowed us from our canter.

The rest of the day was spent tracking a herd of deer, separating the fawn-less females one by one and letting all but three go. Them we took back to the palace to be our meal. The final piece was a gorgeous young stag. Although, it almost didn't turn out that way. I got to take the first shot at the buck but since I was using an old bow and was just as out of practice with that as I was with sparring, the bow broke, startling my stallion enough to allow the stag a window to escape, but Volstagg covered for me, taking him down before he could get back to the herd.

That display of skill was yet another reminder of how far I had fallen. How I had once kicked Fandral's ass but had yet to do so since. They didn't know about what had happened to me in Sokovia and if I had anything to say about it, they never would. But they obviously knew I was hiding something. An offhanded comment Hogun had made about 'a change in my aura' had really struck a cord and my reaction is what alerted them to the fact that something bad had happened. Sif and Fandral had tried to weasel it out of me a couple times but Hogun and Volstagg had been very respectful of my privacy and even defended me on one occasion when Fandral got a little too pushy.

Despite the fact that the four of them really made an effort to include me in their day to day activities, I always felt slightly distanced from them. It certainly wasn't their fault, it was mine for not being truthful with them.