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You were in the car, driving exactly the speed limit to get to the compound. Your head was completely void of any thoughts, but your mind kept on replaying the events of what had just transpired.
He was angry. Your boyfriend would come to your apartment, drunk after hanging out with his friends, but this time it was worse than normal. You had been wanting to leave him for a while now, but you were terrified.
You know that you could tell your friends, and they would get you out of the situation in a heartbeat, but what would they think of you then? You were weak, nothing but a mere healer who could heal anyone but herself. They already saw you as vulnerable on the field, you didn’t want them to see you that way in the other aspects of your life.
So, each night, you endured the abuse he put you through. But that night, he was livid. He came into your apartment screaming–what was it about? You couldn’t decipher what he was saying, the only goal you had in mind was not to provoke him any further. He dragged you into the kitchen, bruising your arm, yelling at you because there were dishes in the sink.
You tried to keep your tears at bay, tried to console him. “I’ll do it as soon as you go to sleep.” You said, but that wasn’t enough. He kept going on and on, grabbing another beer from the fridge.
It was the alcohol, you always told yourself. He wasn’t a bad person. Just remember that, remember the good. But then, there was less and less good each day. Oh, how you just wished you had the courage to leave. You were a coward.
You tried to get him to stop drinking, but this was the wrong thing to say. He hit you, and you fell to the ground crying. Pathetic. You couldn’t tell if those words were coming from him or your subconscious.
When he finished the bottle, you tried to get up, but he slammed it into you, the glass shattering and slicing into your skin. He had never done that before, and you were shocked. You could barely feel the stinging as he dragged you up, your feet digging into the glass as he slammed you against the wall.
As he hurled insults into your ears, you closed your eyes. When you opened them, all you saw was red. Pure, unbridled rage filtered into your veins from your heart, and you fumbled your free arm to find the heavy metal bookend from a bookshelf. He was distracted, focused on belittling you, so you brought the bookend up and slammed it with all your might into his skull.
He stumbled back, confused, and dropped you. He grew angrier, but so did you. All the months of abuse came back to you, and you didn’t stop yourself as you ran at him, hitting him in the head again with the blunt object.
This time, he fell to the ground and hit his head again, knocking him unconscious. Even in this state, you slammed the bookend a final time into his skull, his blood pouring onto you.
You sat there next to him on the ground for a moment, finally regaining a sense of thought. When you looked at what you had done, you panicked. You grabbed your phone and keys, and ran out of your apartment to your car.
Get to your place at the compound, clean up there, and re-evaluate your entire situation. That was your plan, and you repeated it like a mantra in your head.
It felt like no time had passed when you pulled into the compound lot, because everything had ceased to exist to you. Time wasn’t real, and neither was the pain from the glass that was still sticking out of your skin.
You went through the back entrance of the compound, and rode the elevator up. It was late, so you prayed that everyone was asleep in their rooms and you could make it to your place unnoticed. You had a suite there that you used on missions, or when things with your boyfriend got super bad, but you didn’t live there permanently.
When the elevator opened, you froze as music and laughter trickled in. Shit. You had forgotten that it was a Friday night, and Tony was just the one to host group hangouts. Silently, you tiptoed through the hall, holding your breath.
You knew how you would look to the others, hair a mess, bruised, and bleeding. You knew how they would react, and you couldn’t handle that right now. You needed a shower, yes, a shower–
“Hey, guys look who showed up!” Tony said, spotting you with your back turned to him. You froze. “Hey, is that blood?”
You were at the end of the hall where the hall opened out into the common rooms, but you didn’t turn around. “No.” You said, trying to force your voice to stay even, even if all the attention into the room was on you. “It’s ketchup.”
A hand grabbed you and turned you around, Thor. His face was concerned, but even with his attempt at being gentle, you scattered backwards, eyes wild. You faced the team now, and they took in your appearance.
Nobody moved, nobody said a word. And then all hell broke loose. There was shouting, anger, though it wasn’t towards you. Your ears didn’t process anything they were saying, and you dropped to the floor in distress. You closed your eyes, rocking back and forth, trying to calm yourself down. You heard the team calm down when they realized they were stressing you out, but you were way too far gone.
A gentle touch brushed your shoulders, and you almost flinched until you looked up and saw who it was. Loki. Oh, god, Loki. The one person you seriously didn’t want to know how seriously weak you were. You were utterly enthralled by him, and had a major crush on him, despite your whole boyfriend situation. He had given up his right to hold your heart the first time he laid a finger on you.
The touch brought you back to reality, as he knelt next to you on the ground. “Darling, who?” You knew what he was asking, and you let out a heart-wrenching sob.
You weren’t thinking anything about what you were doing, simply going off of what you knew you needed. You threw yourself into his arms, and he wrapped them tightly around you.
You cried, and cried, as he supported you and rubbed your back as you hiccuped through your sobs. “He didn’t–He didn’t do anything. I’m fine. He’s a good person, he just…” You lied, trying to explain in a panicked frenzy.
However, even your implication about who was responsible was enough for the team to know. They knew you had a boyfriend, though they didn’t like him that much. But they had no proof that he was the reason for your bruises, since you always claimed you were just so clumsy.
Until now. There was a look of solidarity between the members that you missed as you cried into Loki’s shirt, tears and snot getting on him. God, you were a mess, but you couldn’t bring yourself to care.
Loki didn’t care about that either, but he was plotting to murder your boyfriend in his mind. He didn’t even think that the team would stop him, either. Perhaps they would help.
But he understood what you needed right now, and he picked you up in his arms. The team didn’t protest as he brought you into his room, setting you on his bed. You hadn’t even registered that this was your first time in his room, he always would come to yours.
He gently waved his hand, and the glass shards were unsheathed from your skin, but blood was still coming out from the wounds. Luckily, the wounds were shallow enough to where even his simple healing magic would work, and so he closed the cuts quickly. While he could have used magic to clean you up, he figured that doing it manually would help ground you.
So, he grabbed a warm wet washcloth and started wiping the blood from your body. He did it with such gentleness and care that you started crying again. He didn’t judge you, using his other hand to rub circles along your back.
This caused him to notice a pool of blood on the fabric of your shirt, and he panicked. You saw what he was looking at, and remembered what you had done. You shook your head. “It’s-not mine. God, Loki, I hurt him.” A violent sob escaped you. “I hurt him, even when he was already unconscious I hit him again, I’m–”
“Shhhh.” He said, letting you rest your head against his shoulder. “You did what was necessary. Don’t worry about it, my love. All will be well.”
The way he said the words made you believe him, and you let him change your clothes with magic into more comfortable ones. He climbed into the bed beside you, and opened his arms.
You immediately rolled into them, face against his chest, tears finally clearing up as you let him ground you in a hug. He whispered sweet nothings into your ears, and gently ran his hands through your hair.
With a sense of calm that you hadn’t felt all day, you finally allowed yourself to relax into Loki’s body and slowly fall asleep.
The next morning, you woke up with a start. The events of the previous day slowly came back to you, and you once again began to cry. God, now everyone would know how weak you really were.
But, before you could spiral too far, Loki came back into the room with a tray of breakfast foods and your favorite morning drink. You looked up at him with tearful eyes, and he set the food down and came over to you, wrapping his arms around you.
“It’s alright, sweet thing. You’re safe.” He said, but you were more worried about how everyone would look at you now. As if reading your thoughts, he spoke up again. “You are so strong and brave, did you know that?”
You shook your head in disagreement, but he wasn’t having any of it. “Yes, you are. Now, how about you eat some breakfast, whatever you can stomach this morning.”
As much as you wanted to argue, you slightly nodded your head. You were hungry, having not eaten in a while. He helped feed you strawberries, and in any other moment, this would have made you a blushing mess. Even then, you couldn’t help a small blush at the action and attention you were receiving.
But he didn’t mind, not as you finished the food and he magicked the dishes away. He held you close once again, and you were grateful.
However, you still had so many questions floating through your mind, and you were dying to ask them. Loki could sense your distress, and answered some of them without you having to even open your mouth. “The others sent a crew out to your apartment to assess the situation. None of us were trusted enough to go ourselves, we would’ve killed the man on the spot. I still am contemplating it, to be honest. But no, you didn’t kill him, though you gave him quite the concussion.”
He laid out the details with a lightness in the way you needed to prevent you from losing yourself in what had happened. You sighed in relief. You hadn’t killed him. You hadn’t killed him, even in your blind rage.
“What’s going to happen now?” You asked, uncertain. You didn’t know what would happen.
He caressed your shoulders, gently massaging them to bring you comfort. “Well, whatever you think will be best. We will listen to you and help you do whatever you want. I would propose that you move into the tower full-time and we can help you heal. Stark may be annoying, but he does have a world-renowned group of lawyers who will put your ex behind bars for the rest of his life.” He didn’t say this yet, not wanting to upset you, but if you so wished, he would hypothetically make it so that one of the prisoners had a vendetta against your ex and shanked him to death.
You couldn’t believe the fact that there were still tears running down your cheeks, upset that you were still crying. “I’m the healer, I should be the one doing the healing.”
Loki frowned. “Oh, darling, everyone needs help to heal. Even the strongest and most talented healers like you. On Asgard, our healers take long sabbaticals to regain their strength, both physically and mentally.”
You reveled in the way his eyes glowed when he talked about Asgard, and you lost yourself in his eyes. Loki was everything you wanted, and with you being finally free from your boyfriend, you realized just how much you were in love with him.
“Loki, is it bad that throughout my entire relationship with someone else, I’ve always loved another?” You said, before you could think too much about it.
He stiffened. “I would say that your pathetic excuse of an ex wasn’t worthy of your anything, and certainly not your loyalty.”
You looked at him, your eyes so vulnerable and filled with love. “Loki, I-”
He shook his head. “You are in no such a state to make any sort of declarations, darling, you’re simply confused because you are in a very vulnerable and emotional state-”
“I love you.” You said anyway, cutting him off. His eyes widened, his breath hitched, and you stayed looking into his eyes the entire time. “Please tell me you feel the same.”
Loki stayed quiet for a moment, and you listened to his breathing. While your brain wanted you to panic that you had just declared your undying love for him and there was no way he felt the same, your heart beat steadily and you remained calm.
He ever so slowly, and gently, lowered his lips onto yours for the most beautiful kiss of your life. “I love you too.”
In his eyes you tried to see if he was lying, but you couldn’t. “Promise me? That you aren’t just saying that to comfort me?”
He tucked a loose strand of hair behind your ear. “My love, when I saw you covered in bruises and cuts last night, I have never felt more rage. If it wasn’t for you needing me to comfort you and ground you, I would’ve tortured the man who hurt you until he never sees the sun again. I have never loved someone as deeply and as emotionally as I do you. You are my one and only love, and I shall never leave your side unless you wish it.”
You started to cry, but this time it wasn’t from pain. He pulled you closer, letting you cuddle into his arms. “I love you, Loki.”
“And I love you, my little sunshine.”