The Tear of Celeste

Chapter 25: Calm before the Storm

You knew you were dreaming, it was not a full-on lucid dream, you had no control, but you knew you were not awake.

It had started badly, a nightmare. You were in pain, a burning sensation going through your whole body, it was agonizing and you had no power to move, could not scream or cry, and it was hell. You could barely see the silhouettes around you through the flames, being blinded by the white light of the flames.

But you didn't stay there long, something strong grabbed you and pulled you away from the flames, pulling you with it into the cold water of a lazy river.

You floated in the water, letting its cold fingers stroke your body softly, erasing any evidence of the fire and pain that had been there before. Its gentle fingers stroked your arms, caressing your cheek, running through your hair, and cooling you down.

You liked the cold, you had always been warm, even before the fire you always had a temperature slightly higher than others. Bruce had commented on that, it was not enough to be a fever, just a slightly higher base temperature.

It was not uncomfortable, but laying in the cold water was still bringing you relief, like a deep breath of fresh air after being in a stale room for too long.

You were truly at peace in the water, just letting your body flow with the energy around you, letting it guide you where you needed to go.

Where did you need to go again?

The water suddenly started swirling around you, making you spin round, and round, and round, and-

You wake up from the nausea, quickly rolling onto your side and holding one hand on your stomach, the other over your mouth. You only barely avoid throwing up. Taking a deep breath and swallowing you remove your hand and snarl.

Once again, you don't know where you are.

"I am really fucking tired of waking up in new places," you growl, glaring at the space around you, trying to recognize it.

"Make sure the soldier doesn't hear you talking like that." Loki's voice sounded close by, sounded amused at your swearing.

You lay back down, turning your head slowly in the direction of his voice to look for him.

He is sitting on a chair, one of the books you had giving him open on his lap. He is looking at you with a grin. "How did you sleep dear?"

You sigh and lay your head back against the cold pillow. "Really good," you mumbled. "I can't remember ever sleeping so well before," you said, wanting to go back to sleep, but feeling like something was missing. Whatever let you have a nice sleep was no longer there.

Loki cleared his throat, a slight blush on his cheeks that you didn't understand. He puts a bookmark on the page he is on before closing the book. "How are you feeling?" He asked, concerned.

You think about that, looking up at the ceiling as you think of the honest answer. "... Bad," you admitted, sighing and rubbing your forehead. "I have a really bad headache, and I feel like I'm on a boat..... Am I?"

Loki laughs at that, he seems to understand your confusion and stands up. "No no, you are still in the Tower, don't worry." He walked over and gave your shoulder a quick pat. "I didn't kidnap you," he said in a teasing tone, giving you a mischievous grin.

"Ha ha," you mumble, blushing slightly at him touching you, his hand feels nice and cold against your skin. You barely remember changing into this skirt and revealing shirt, everything was a bit of a blur.

"The others are on their way back," Loki tells you, leaning against the bed. "Maybe they have a better chance of figuring out why you suddenly collapsed than I had."

You blink slowly and realize where you are. This is the med bay.

You sit up slowly, still a bit dizzy as you look around. "... What happened?"

"You passed out," Loki said, putting a hand on your back to support you. "Almost falling down the stairs I might add." He looked at you worried. "Been running a pretty high fever too, that at least seems to be under control at the moment." He put a hand on your forehead.

He was so nice and cold, you leaned into his touch. "... I do remember getting to the stairs." But nothing after that.

Loki nodded slowly, making you lay back down. "They should be here soon, Doctor Banner will know what to do," he said with a reassuring smile.

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You were sick, no question about it.

Bruce thought it to be a very nasty flu getting worse by the stress you had been under, their medicine didn't seem to have as strong an effect on your body as they were supposed to, so to fight the fever that was starting up again and the stress he gave you something a bit stronger.

What no one had thought about was how you would react to the medication.

༺☆༻

// Hello! This chapter is a bit shorter because it's being published with the next chapter on the same day! The next chapter is a bit silly and mostly full of memes, if that is not your style you can skip it and lose nothing //