Hidden Troubles

Chapter 49

A/N: Two chapters in one day?! Call me Jesus because I've just performed a miracle! I was going to post this tomorrow but I'm attending a birthday so you guys get it early!!

21K? You guys boggle my mind. Seriously. ❤️❤️❤️

Also we have like two chapters left?? As in the one after this and then the epilogue. I still remember the absolute terror that came with posting the first chapter...this is truly crazy.

"How's Loki doing?" Natasha returned a smile as Bruce promptly pulled up an ensemble of projections. The remote monitoring of Loki's health had been installed into JARVIS only a month ago, but allowed for any spates of dizziness or weight drops to be noticed immediately. They'd almost lost him twice. Natasha wasn't going to lose him again.

"Doing well, from what I can see." Graphs and documents and images layered atop one another before Natasha's eyes as she went to view them fully. "If anything, he seems healthier. He doesn't get so dizzy now. He's eating less than I'd like him to, but more than before. And he looks happy. Happier than before."

She could see that; slender, nimble fingers hovered over projections of Loki from several months ago. So broken and fragile, with an emaciated appearance that could rival the cadaverous characters of the Corpse Bride. Dulled eyes shadowed by heavy bruises, and an unsteadiness and helplessness in his figure, as though a gust of wind would have him crumble to ashes.

And then there was Loki now. The sickly pallor had been replaced by smooth, white skin with a tinge of red in the emerging heat. The clothes, though they still hung off him in a way Natasha didn't like, looked less like oversized items from a high school lost property basket. But it was the eyes, that had stars captured in them, and a gentle smile playing about the mouth, and the way Loki stood taller and prouder and looked happier that had her stomach bubbling warmly.

She didn't want him to ever be without all that. He looked... free. Happy.

"He'll be ok, you know" Bruce said, dragging forward a document marking all of Loki's medical improvements. "Now that he knows he's got us."

"The prank war really did something. I bet Tony came up with that idea?"The ebullient competiton may have been just a fortnight ago, but it had a sparked a newer and stronger between Loki and the Avengers. He was a tactical genius. A mind so well built for strategy Natasha had found herself wondering how anyone could've hated Loki.

You hated him when he was a broken man.

And look at him now.

There was fragility still, in the way his smile was sometimes strained and his mouth would open and then close suddenly, deciding against saying something. But a strength could be turned to weakness, and a weakness to strength. And the strengths she had now only made her love, admire, respect him more. And they had time, to make him more than he already was.

"He'll be ok with you with him. He's been ok with you with him, and he'll only get better."

But what if she couldn't stay by his side? SHIELD missions had followed a steady increase in danger since the announcement of the Avengers. More enemies, more tech, more perils, more risks. More and more agents were being maimed or killed; it was only her unique training that had kept her alive these past few missions. She'd come close a few times.

Death had never been so...daunting, before all this. True, staying alive was much more preferable. But now it was almost a necessity. Here, she had something like a family, and a home, and a place for her. Before all this, she'd only had a mangly one bedroom flat and Clint. Now, she simply had...more. And she liked it. She would do a lot to keep it.