When Darkness Falls - LOKI - Book One (Editing)

28. Apologies

     All Athelia could think about was closing her eyes and drifting off to a peaceful sleep. It only had only been midday, but her body was still wrecked and her mind in overdrive as she searched as deep she could for information.

    She started to remember bits and pieces, but she wasn't sure what parts that she remembered were real. Every time she closed her eyes she saw only flashes of her past, but things should couldn't recall at all.  What she was certain of though, was that if she had seen the black horned demoness one more time she was certain she was going to go mad.

    It was the most prominent dream that had looked in her for the last few days. There was no face but only a darkened silhouette of a leather clad woman with horns that stretched like the branches of a dead Ova tree.

     She was certain she had never seen anybody like this before and though she tried to press on, to see her face, she always woke as the dreams faded from  the emerald fire to pools of blood and an infant screaming. She had no idea what it meant and she would have laid in bed for hours trying to decipher meaning if it hadn't been for a soft knock that rapped against her door.

       She didn't move from her bed as she called for the visitor to enter. She was hoping it had been Freya who had avoided meeting with her since the incident or even Frigga, who was supposed to help her get to the dungeons as she was still too weak to teleport herself there and thanks to Odin, she couldn't escape her guards. Though, she smiled on the left so store slowly close the door behind him and walk slowly towards the bed.

     She hadn't seen him since before the incident and though the look on his face demanded questions, he didn't speak as he stood above her.

    "I guess I owe you an explanation."

    Thor chuckled, his head hanging low as he tried to find a way to respond that wouldn't upset her. He wanted to yell at her. Tell her that she had been reckless and foolish, but he couldn't. Not when he was just so relieved that she was well and still here.

     "Only if you want to give me one," he said, his hands folding behind him.

     "You would have stopped me."

     Thor sighed heavily as if Delia set up in the bed. She pulled the thin silk sheet up to her chest, covering the rather sheer fabric of her night dress and nodded towards the bottom of the bed. He hesitated, but as he watched a small smile spread across her face, he sat, careful not to sit on her toes.

    "I understand why you did what you did Athelia," he said, not taking his eyes off of his twiddling thumbs. "But yes. I would have done whatever it took to keep you safe."

     "You would have let her die?"

     He shook his head. "I would have found another way. You should have come to me Athelia. I could have helped. Nobody should ever have to bare that alone."

     "Don't say things you don't mean Thor. She is still sick with the aether and if there is another way, I will do it, regardless of what happens to me."

     He nodded. "I know and I will be beside you, helping anyway I can."

     She smiled. "You are a good man Thor and you are far too kind to me."

     He smile, pulling his gaze away from his hands and meeting her blue eyes. His words stuck to his tongue as he fumbled. "I wanted to apologize. If I hadn't taken you there it wo-"

     She reached forward and placed her hands on his. She never really understood a comforting touch, but as his lips stop moving and he placed his hand on hers, she felt the coldness drift away from her.

    "You do not have to apologize to me, Thor. I will forever be grateful for what you have done. It's far more than anything I could have ever imagined or deserved."

   Thor truly didn't know how to respond to her words. To be quite honest he hadnt sure she was capable of that range of kindness, but it made his choice all that much easier to make.

    "I'd like to take you somewhere. If you're up for it, that is."

      Athelia chuckled, pulling her hands into her lap. "The last time you took me somewhere I ended up on Midgard facing off with your Revenger friends."

     "I thought you weren't going to hold that against me," he matched her laughter. "And it's the Avengers, an elite team of sup-"

     "I'm joking Thor," she laughed. "I'd love to. Getting out of this room for a little while would probably do me some good."

      He nodded, nearly embarrassed that he didn't quite catch her sarcasm. He stared down at hands for a moment, trying to figure the overwhelming feeling that waved over him. He hadn't expected her to accept his invitation, but now that she had, he felt almost nervous and for some reason it worried him, almost as much as his fallen smile worried her.

     Neither of them had ever expected to get passed the hostile barrier of there first encounter. She wasn't kind and he wasn't gentle, but she had the ferocity in her eyes that made him feel as if he would go to the ends of the world for her and he stood with a strength that convinced her that he would give it to her

    At first he had played it off as nothing more than her illusions and magic. Much like Loki, she had a way with people despite her inability to treat them as equals. But unlike his brother, he admired this in her. It made her strong and it made her fierce. He knew what he to do.  Not just for his father's sake or for the crown, but for himself.

     So as they walked through the gardens towards the hidden pathway that bent through the mountains, he couldn't help but take her arm in his, completely blind to the hesitation in her acceptance of his gesture.

      Athelia's pace fell slow. She claimed her body had yet to fully recover from what the darkness had done to her, but really she was hoping he would tire of her stopping for air as they walked up the peak and let go. It wasn't that she didn't want to hold him, she wanted to. She wanted to like it. She want to cling him like any doing bride would do, but his kind words and soft smiles didn't change the fact the it felt wrong.

    Never in her life had she ever felt guilt. Athelia had leveled cities, slaughtered armies and destroyed complete civilizations and she has never batted a lash. She didn't understand it. How out of all the horrible things she had done in her life, clinging to another woman's love stirred something in her she never thought possible.

     "Are you okay?"

     Athelia nodded, knowing she was far from okay. Nothing was okay and she wasn't sure it ever would be, but she couldn't tell him this. She couldn't tell him that his touch made her skin crawl or that his words of feigned kindness made her ill. She couldn't say anything because despite the fact that even though she was walking with the prince she was going to marry, all she could think about was the mad prince in the cell.