Hidden Troubles

Chapter 46

AN: my brain spontaneously combusted when I saw 7K. You guys...I adore you all ❤️

I also feel like I should just start mailing automatic apologies to you all for this chapter being late. It seems I'm not fully recovered in strength, and so I keep falling asleep. A lot. I slept for a full day and a half, woke up, slept again and I've only really been conscious enough to write for the past three-ish days. I am really really sorry about this—I hate disappointing you guys and I apologise if I have done so.

My writing won't be the best while I try and recover, but I hope it's acceptable enough ❤️

KEEP IN MIND: Eros is romantic love. Philia is affectionate/ friendly love.

It didn't take long for Natasha to find Loki— curled up in the corner of the library with a book held loosely in his grasp.

Even exhausted, he looks beautiful, she thought, especially under the yellow midday sunlight beaming in through the window, light reflecting off his raven hair like a halo.  He looked warm and golden, breaths near silent apart from the lilts of soft squeaks when he inhaled.

She wondered how Loki saw himself as nothing but a monster— as nothing but the ice cold heritage in his veins, and the actions of a past self riddled with desperation and pain. Because to her, he was simply Loki. Loki, with eyes that sparkled with subdued wit, lest you present him with a book or challenge. Loki, who could defy and persuade all but a like-eyed cat. Loki, who loved so much he hurt himself in place of others, who refused to show love to conceal such weakness.

Her Loki, in a way. Because she had claimed him a thousand and one times. Their ledgers were stained and soiled red. They had lied and killed, in the service of liars and killers and sadists because it was, in their individual moments, all they knew to do. They had been taught not to love, at least to hide it well, for love hurt so terribly when broken it was better not to love at all.

But then did she not love him?

Love is a fantasy, the sum of varying parts. Affection, devotion, lust, convenience, infatuation; all human traits that when brought together often lead to weakness.

She knew the lecture the Mistress gave her by heart. Love, in no matter what form, was dangerous. Eros could claim and tear your heart, grin devilishly as the fibres of muscle dripped with bloody heartbreak. Philia ran deeper; it would attack more than the heart. It would make the stomach twist and churn and burn with caustic acid, shape ribs into spiteful daggers, crush them to shining shards of bony glass before reducing them to fine powder. Love left you open to betrayal, and your own destruction. And for the sake of self preservation, for the sake of the cause she was being sculpted to serve, such weakness was unacceptable.

It was why they had so mercilessly removed the prime threat from her for any other future love.

But perhaps that fear was unwarranted. Or perhaps that fear should be discarded. Because love gave strength, and it was strength she would require to put Loki through what she must.

***

The web trails of sleep had banished the moment she pushed the bowl of fruit towards him.

"No." Loki rose to leave on annoyingly stiff legs, because he would not—could not—

"Loki. Please sit down."