Contest of Champions

50

"Hey."

My eyes flutter open and slowly, Veers' face registers in my mind. She's looking down at me, her fingers touching my cheek gently. Even with such a light touch, I can still feel the callouses on her fingers from all of her combat practice. It's rough, and it's that roughness that really awakens me.

"What happened?" I ask, sitting up and instantly regretting it. A wave of dizziness sweeps over me and I place my head down between my legs, waiting for it to pass.

"You saved me," Veers says. "Then I suppose you passed out. When I woke up, you were on the floor. I moved you onto the cot."

That's when I notice that I am, indeed, sitting on the cot, Veers sitting to the side of me. Slowly, I lift my head and my fingers feel at the wound on my temple, finding a thick bandage there, wrapping around my head.

"You bled a lot," Veers tells me as I glance over at her. She's pale, but looks much better than when I had left that morning. The wound in her shoulder is healing nicely, and looks like it will be completely gone in a few days. "But it's nothing serious. What happened?"

"Clint," I explain. "He shot me."

"Tell me what happened, Loki," Veers requests.

So I do, slowly working through the details myself. I tell her about Wong's portal, Okoye's death, Pietro letting me go, and my brief fight with Natasha and Clint. Veers laughs when I talk about stabbing the Black Widow in the leg with my dagger. "What I wouldn't give to see that," she says with a grin.

The door is propped open and I hear the rain, rhythmically falling on the ground outside the door. It's soothing, the rain, and I just enjoy watching it fall, the dotted grey sheet never feeling dreary to me. I like rain, always have. To me, it means a bit of noise to fill the silent halls of Asgard, a bit of rhythm in an otherwise empty day. It means a fire and hot cocoa and Frigga telling Thor and I stories while we watch the rain fall. Rain means Gamora and I in the open hallway with the large statues, feeling the wind blow the raindrops against us, the bits of coolness spraying our skin. I remember the feeling of contentedness from those moments of peace, of quiet, of time with my best friend.

I miss Gamora.

"Thank you," Veers says, breaking the silence that has fallen between us. When I look at her, startled out of my reverie, she continues, "Thank you for saving my life."

"Well, I didn't exactly want to fight another Carnage," I say with a slight smile, and she smiles back.

"Well, thank you anyway," she says again, and then she's leaning in to me. Her hand finds mine, squeezing it gently, and then her lips brush against mine.

Then it's a kiss, a real kiss, and I don't pull away. In fact, I kiss her back. I've never kissed a girl before, and the experience is new and exciting and also frightening. I'm not sure what to think of it. All I know is that when Veers is kissing me, I want to know if this is where I belong, if kissing her is right, if it changes anything, and when we break apart, I'm not sure I'm entirely clear on the answer. But she's smiling at me, confident and yet nervous, and I give her a smile back, remembering suddenly the audience that just watched my first kiss.

Gamora just saw me kiss Veers.

I'm not sure what to think about that. Gamora, watching Veers lean in and kiss me. Seeing me kiss Veers back. What does Gamora think of this? Is she watching the Contest live? I almost hope she's not, but then what happens? Does someone tell her? Does Nebula tell her that I kissed another girl? Would Nebula have tact about that subject, and spare her sister hearing about that?

But why would Nebula need to have tact? Gamora and I, we were never more than friends. At least, up until that moment, at the very end, when she hugged me, her touch like no one else's. Then I'm not sure what we were. All I know is that, in the end, something between us shattered and I don't know what it was or what we had become.