30 Days - Mad

 “Hey,” Tony says, and Loki thinks one, but then Tony makes it imperfect (in-prime), keeps going, “are you okay?”

 

Five Loki thinks. Five is also prime, so perhaps he needs have more faith in Tony.

 

“Yes,” Loki lies, because he does not know if he’s okay. His fingers trip over Tony’s chest, count the wrinkles of his shirt, hands shaking.

 

Bruce might push at that; Bruce would certainly not believe it (and why should he, Bruce who recognizes demons all too well, who is a demon, and it grates, the thought, there, that Bruce knows something is wrong.

 

“What happened last night?” Tony asks, and his voice isn’t careful, it’s insistent, demanding, grounding.

 

“A bad dream,” he says, and that is truth, of a sort, because it was that.

 

(need to count, one-two-three, one-two-three, three three three, blood and bone, blood and bone, he killed her, she’s dying, his fault his fault his fault–)

 

“Hey,” Tony says and Loki closes his eyes–

 

pity that didn’t last longer, pity indeed, but there’s more to do, oh yes yes yes, four left, who next?

 

–and opens them again, aching build-up pressure in the back of his head.

 

“Let’s go out,” Loki says instead of I’m going mad.

30 Days - Thousand

 “Why are we doing this?” she complains. “We’ll never win.”

 

“You don’t know that! Besides, it’s fun.”

 

Stacy sighs, chewing her pen and staring at the candy jar at the front of the room full of brightly coloured skittles.

 

“Doesn’t seem like much fun,” she mutters.

 

“I heard that,” Chelsea says, elbowing her in the side. “You’re always such a sour puss. Come on, write your guess down and I’ll take them up front!”

 

“Fine,” Stacy says, and eyes the candy jar a bit more. She has no idea how many skittles are in the jar, doesn’t really care–she doesn’t like skittles (well, not that much) and the only prize is winning the jar.

 

What I should do, she thinks, is figure out how much volume a single skittle takes and then total it that way.

 

What Stacy does do is write 1000 on her slip of paper and hand it to Chelsea. She doesn’t really want the skittles anyway, and no reason to make her (only) friend look at her weird.

 

(Not that Chelsea would, but better to be safe than sorry.)

 

If she wins, she’ll give them to Chelsea.

 

Chelsea makes a face at Stacy’s non-guess, but takes it anyway.

 

“Be right back,” Chelsea declares, cheerful as ever, and Stacy wonders if she could ever be strong enough to beat in the faces of the kids that are giving her odd looks as she walks up front, the mutters and scoffs that she hangs out with that one kid.

30 Days - Outside

 It is raining.

 

It has been raining for nearly a week now, and Sigyn watches it and she wonders a little.

 

Mostly, she mourns, and for that she is grateful for the rain even if it means that someone she feels little sympathy for mourns as well.

 

Indeed, much of Asgard mourns; he may not have always been well-liked, may have sometimes had a jest gone too far, but he was Asgard’s odd prince.

 

She mourns privately, for all the public space where it alright to. She knows what rare privilege it was to be allowed into his confidences; he was not a lover, at least not physically, and yet his loss aches as much as that, perhaps more.

 

(It is safe to admit, alone, that he was one of her rare friends as much as she was one of his.)

 

They say Prince Thor has been changed, drawn in and reflective as few have ever seen him. The rain at least lends some credence to that, though Sigyn is not sure how much she believes it.

 

She hopes so; the cost was certainly high enough.

 

(Too high, she thinks, sitting on a balcony where she’d passed more than one evening in her beloved’s company, sweet wine on their lips and sweeter laughter in the air.)