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Entry tags:

(no subject)

Who: Loki
Broadcast: Everyone
Action: Paisley
When: Right now!

[Action]

[Guess who just shows up to breakfast one... afternoon? Loki emerges from his office, looking for all the world like a man who has just woken up from an extended nap, barely open eyes, trying to stretch his back and shoulders, the whole nine. He wanders into the kitchen, fumbles around until he makes himself something hot and dark enough that he can pretend it's coffee, and stares suspiciously into the cup before drinking.

Ugh, his mouth tastes like someone glued one of Thor's feet to it. Ugh. What possessed him to sleep like this...

(Guess who has no idea he's been missing for weeks~)]

[A bit later: Broadcast]

[Awake now, and... well, he looks amused. Which is to say as if he's planning on flaying someone alive.]

Why yes, I have returned. Hide all of the party favors, lock up your sons and daughters, cancel the pedestrian fireworks displays.

A funny thing, missing time. You'd never know it was gone until someone tells you. Has anyone else fallen victim to such thievery?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I guess you'll just have ta find out, won't ya." She had so much more she wanted to tell him; so much of personal import had happened while he was away, but Rogue could tell how disquieted he was, even if he hadn't come to find her immediately - which was another thing she'd have to address when he was feeling less fragile.

So she just started to pull back. "D'ya need anythin'? Your bank account's frozen with the rest of ours, but I've been pullin' in more than enough ta get by. If ya have just been sleeping this whole month, even you've gotta be hungry, right? Or maybe some tea?"

"Anticipation and dread, dearest." He kissed the top of her head.

He hadn't even gotten so far as to check his own bank account; actually getting over to her had been more of a priority to his muzzy mind. "Remus made some coffee for me." Remus is starting to endear himself as a student a great deal, actually. He paused to consider--was he hungry. "I don't feel particularly hungry," he said after a moment. "I think... tea would be lovely. And I should like to know what you have done whilst I have been... absent."

"Alright," she said quietly, beginning to pull back. "Come on in an' sit down. I can get some tea pretty easily, though I can't vouch for the quality."

Since, you know, she's not a tea drinker.

He let her go with some reluctance, then headed over to sit. "I'll be the judge of that for you, then." He was rather surprised she had any tea at all, since she didn't care for it generally. He settled into the chair and waited, listening.

Even in this middling-to-cheap hotel, Rogue still had access to the station's advanced technology. She parted slowly from him and, glancing back once, and then typing her request into the unit there and then inserting a mug into the machine.

"Green, right?" That was what he liked, wasn't it? "Or - ginseng?"

"Green, if you please," he said, watching her meditatively. He'd asked what she'd been up to, and didn't really have any other news of his own. Not remembering anything of the last nearly month didn't make for a great many good conversational topics.

Yes, he had asked. She had no idea where to even begin, or what he would be able to take hearing about right now. She knew how this sort of thing - forgetting - would be really difficult for him.

She pushed the button for green tea and couldn't help but turn around to make sure he was still there after. She gave him a faint, almost uncertain smile. "Did Remus tell ya how long it'd been?"

He nodded. "He did. And checked me over as best he could with the magic he knows. He did a good job. I'm pleased with his progress."

And Loki had let him do that, importantly. Asked him to.

"He must have a good teacher," she said, smile growing a little. The timer for the tea went off, and Rogue turned back to it, taking it out and bringing it over to him. She moved to give it to him and sit down beside him.

He chuckled. "The best around, I hear. But I am pleased that he seems to have practiced diligently in my absence." Remus was no replacement for Billy, but he also wasn't trying to be. He had his own style, his own goals, and Loki had begun to truly enjoy teaching him as well.

"He must've been glad ta see you again," Rogue said, still trying to feel out how Loki was right now. The chuckling was a good sign - a normal laugh, a normal joke, but it was still hard to tell when he was able to change moods so quickly.

"He was surprised and concerned," Loki said. In a way, he supposed that translated out to something close to that. In that moment, there hadn't been a lot of room for happy to see you. They'd both been rather caught up in the strangeness of it all.

"...well," she gave him a small smile. "I'm happy ta see you. I missed you. I was worried. I'm real glad you're okay."

The simple, true things that should so easily be left to be taken for granted should be spoken, she'd learned. She regretted it if she didn't.

Loki laughed. "I am glad. And I suppose we are both glad that Remus wasn't happy to see me the way you were." He was teasing, of course. "But... I am glad to have been missed. And it is good to see you, love."

It feels a little strange she almost said. She might still say it. But first there was one thing between them that was never strange, and one thing between them which she hadn't yet indulged in since his return.

Rogue simply leaned forward to claim his lips with hers, a kiss she meant to be brief and punctuating, but at the touch of his lips turned into something a little more desperate, a little more driven by concern. She'd been so worried about him.

Loki was more than happy to lose himself in that kiss, his hands coming up to comb lightly through her hair, caress her cheeks. He hadn't yet been the one who waited, who was left behind; he didn't know what it was like in that sense. (And time was also such a relative thing; he could lose a month and not even notice, caught up by something.) But the comfort of Rogue was in assuaging some of the complete paranoia he'd begun to feel at the revelation of his missing time.

Rogue kissed him maybe a little longer than comfort required, a still-gloved hand going up to place cautious fingertips on his cheek. When she needed to pull back to do that silly mortal breathing thing, she did with a gasp, moving to lean her forehead against his. "I looked for you," she breathed a confession against his lips, her voice burdened with the pain and the stress, the frustration and the agony of loss, no matter how she would have tried to keep it from him, it was there in the weight of her vowels, the sharper edges of her consonants. "I tried everythin'."

She shuddered, a subconscious reaction to remembering the coldness of space, the way that 'coldness' didn't even begin to describe the feeling of the void.

"It didn't work. All I could do was wait." I'm sorry. She shut her eyes against the feeling of heat. I came for you and I couldn't get to you and-- "I'm sorry."

"I wish you had found me," he said quietly. I am sorry. He's not good at sorry. He's never been good at worry. "I... do not think there is anything you could have done. For you would have, if you had been able."

But it felt good, to know she had tried.

"I tried everything," she repeated, even stupid things that he'd probably frown at her about if he knew. I wish you had found me.

She wished she had too.

"I'm sorry," it was worth saying again. He'd told her, once, about how he had fallen. No one had come for him. He'd gone through years of hell and torture and madness on his own, and no one had looked for him. She had. She always had. And each time, it hadn't been enough.

Some hero she was.

"You tried," he said quietly. He could hold on to that knowledge. No one had ever really tried to look for him before. "You tried." Even if she hadn't succeeded, she had tried. She'd done her best. He could believe she had done that.

His fingers found the hem of her shirt, curling into the fabric.

It wasn't enough.

'Ultimate power', Mystique had called her, and even with all the feeble controlled she possessed, the powers she could beckon forth with a little concentration, she hadn't been able to breach the Marsiva. She couldn't even ram a ship into it. Nothing had worked.

She couldn't apologize again. Apologies were worthless. And it meant something that he, that Loki, was willing to forgive, or overlook her failure to find him each time. She didn't want to downplay that, for his sake. So she said nothing, her hand dropping to his shoulder and curling into the fabric.

She'd hold onto him if she could.

Loki slid his arms around her and leaned into a much fuller embrace. There wasn't anything else he could say to the apology, to the unspoken words that hovered around them. But he could reassure himself that she had tried. No one else had tried for him, and that was what had to be more important. Whether she had failed or not, she had tried, and he had no doubt she had tried to the point of breaking herself.

After simply holding onto him for a long moment, Rogue realized that this was a rather uncomfortable way to embrace and she knew at least five better ones and he'd taught them all to her. So with very little ceremony, she shifted to slide up and sit sideways on his lap and curled against his chest. The hand which had been on his shoulder dropped down to his chest, caught at the material there as she held him.

She'd tell him, she thought, because it might help him to know. And because she'd feel better if she knew that he knew. She didn't want to keep secrets. She didn't want to make him a stranger. "I'm pretty sure ya were on the Marsiva. That's where the pendent pointed. I tried ta get on board..." she decided to leave off the details at the last minute. "It didn't work."

Loki was more than happy to help settle her into his lap, to wrap one arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist. He rested his head lightly against hers, chin just touching her shoulder.

He nodded slightly. It was good to know, that he hadn't been taken so far as that. "It seems they do not wish us to return after we have left that ship," he remarked. "Interesting, that."

"Heard about all kinds of weird things folks were seein' when we were on board the last time," she said, glad to divert attention away from her actions. "Get the feelin' they're not as on top of it as they'd like us ta believe."

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