A stewardess comes up to your table. She holds up a bottle,  “Champagne?”

 “Ah, yes! Thank you very much.” Loki looks at you expectantly.

You shake your head, “I don’t drink.”

 “Oh, I'll take theirs,” he shrugs, “Thank you.”

 The stewardess leaves with a polite smile. Loki clinks the two drinks. “Cheers. To the end of the world.

You shake your head. It’s a late night out in space and you had no choice but to join him on this little mission of his to run away from the TVA. 

“A pity the old woman chose to die, don’t you think?”

You blink out of thought. “The old woman? Well, she loved her husband.”

 “She hated him.”

“Maybe love is hate.”

He pauses, sets his drink down and summons an inky feather with his magic. “Gotta remember that. What was that? Love is hate?

You roll your eyes. He smirks. He likes that he’s gotten under your skin. Satisfied, he erases the feather with a flick of his hand and takes another swig. “So, on the subject of love. Is there a lucky beau waiting for you at the end of this crusade?”

You fold your arms. It’s awfully cold on this train all of a sudden. “I don’t…do that. I think it’s a sign of weakness. It hurts too much, and all I ever want to do is strike back. But that only breaks more than fixes anything.”

 “And with charm like that, who could resist you?”

“They’re the problem, not me.”

 “I'm sure they are.”

You reach over and grab the glass that was meant to be yours and gulp half of it down. “What about you, prince of asgard? I’m sure you’ve had your fair share of princesses at your feet. Or princes.”

He scrunches his face,  “A bit of both. I suspect the same as you. But nothing ever…”

“Permanent.”

“No,” he idly traces the rim of his glass.  “Love is a dagger,” he summons one and turns it over, “It's a weapon to be yielding far away or up close, you can see yourself in it, it’s beautiful, until it makes you bleed, but only after you reach for it.”

 “Hm,” you say, grabbing for it but it disappears in swirls of green, “It isn’t even real. It’s an imaginary dagger.”

He cringes, “It doesn’t make sense does it?”

You shake your head, “Nope.”

 “Damn!” He leans back and watches the stars pass in the window.

You watch him for a moment. There’s an itch in the back of your throat, something anxiously waiting to be said, but never courageous enough. In this moment between conversations, it crawls back into your mind and settles to be unsaid and to be facing the barrel of the gun of truth that is his green eyes, but to be forever thought: It makes perfect sense.

Here's the story for this ambience since it was too long for spotify

~~~the story~~~

After a long day of work, you’re excited to be back inside your New York apartment and relax. You close the door behind you and your body tenses at the sight of your old friend Yelena Belova, standing in your kitchen uninvited.

“Hi!” she says, lifting a pot, “I made macaroni if you want some.”

“What are you doing?” you take off your coat, hanging it on a kitchen stool. You move around cautiously, even though she didn’t appear to be armed. 

“Well, I was starving and you took forever so I wanted to make food.”

Your heart squeezes. She hasn’t changed at all. But she can’t be here. She just can’t. It’s too much.

When you don’t move or say anything, she sets the pot down with a frown. “Are you really not hungry? That fight was sooo long,” she points at the food,  “It’s really tasty. Really tasty.”

She begins rummaging through your drawers. 

“Yelena, you can’t be here–”

“No…,” she says, turning, “You have one fork? That’s so weird.”

“I’ve got one fork, because I’m one person and I can’t be with–” “This is not cutlery. This is not cutlery.” 

You sigh out of frustration. She’s just not listening. She doesn’t want to. “I can’t do this, Yelena.” It’s too much seeing you after so long. You mean too much to me.

“That’s a lie also. Come on, take a fork. Eat. eat please, my daddy says it’s good for you.”

“Can Yelena Belova please stop for a second and listen to me?” She blinks and waves her hand over the pot to move the scent. “She made some really good smelling macaroni.”

You take a deep breath. Very well. She wants to sit and eat. You obey. A few moments pass of you two eating out of the pot until you set your fork down and she asks,  “Are you done? I go? I can put hot sauce on it?”

“Please.”

“Ugh, I love hot sauce. Yes!”

“Yelena, what are you doing here?”

“Well, it’s my first time in New York. Mhm, but it’s a business trip so time is limited. But I do want to see some things. I want to see the Empire State building, the new and improved Statue of Liberty, the Rockefeller Center…”

Your voice gets quieter, “Did you find him? Hawkeye? Did you kill him? Because you remember when I asked you not to. Because he’s a good man, that is the truth.”

“The truth is it doesn’t matter. We are defined by what we do, not by nice words.”

“And yes, he’s done bad things, but he regrets things. He’s a broken man, but he is just a man. Whatever you think of him–it’s one side to a story.”

“What is your story?”

“He saved my family–my world.”

“Did you ever wish for kids?” She’s changing the subject, “I want a dog.”

“Yelena, do you have anywhere to sleep tonight?”

She sighs and puts her chin down on the table. “I don’t know. I don’t really have anywhere to go back to, so I guess anywhere.”

“You can stay here,” you reach over and grab her hand to give it a squeeze and smile. 

She squints at you. “You’re going to give me some big hero speech. I can feel it.”

“I don’t have to. I think you’ve already said it to yourself a million times. You’ve just got to listen to it.”“That sounds like a shit load of work.”

You snicker and clean up, setting up a place for her on the couch. You spend the rest of the night cuddling on the cough, even though it breaks your heart to be so close to her after she rejected you so long ago. It hurts, but it doesn’t matter, because you would do anything for her.

It’s a quiet night out in New Asgard. Anyone who’s got a family is with them, and those without find their own in the pub. You can hear the echoes of their sad songs in the distance. You and Valkyrie sit at the edge of the dock. You’ve brought snacks and drinks for an impromptu picnic. Or perhaps…your last supper. Tomorrow, everything will change. Tomorrow, it comes to all your training. But what if there’s something training never taught you? 

The distraught must be revealing on your face because Val tilts her head at you and says, “You alright?”

“Yeah,” you shake it off, “Just…thinking about our…adventure, if you will, tomorrow. You know, fighting a dead god who steals children.”

 “A zombie kidnapper? Awesome. When do we leave?”

You pushed her shoulder gently, “I’m being serious. We’re going to sail across space to kill a god. We’ve got to be out of our minds.”

 She shrugs and picks out some finger food, “We haven’t got a ship.”

“No, but that’s easy to acquire now that Thor is here. It just means that we’re going to die faster.”

 She cringes but smiles when she says, “You’re a viking now. It means you pretty much have to die in battle.”

“I don’t care,” You eat a grape and take a swig, “I’m fine dying. I just wish there was someone waiting for me to come home. I’d rather die by the hands of a thousand sexy Thors than die with no one to fight for.”

 “Hm,” she nods in acute thought, “Fascinating and hot.”

“What about you? You ever had any special someone?”

 “Ha! I’ve had a many special someones…But I don’t know,” she scrunches her nose, “I don’t know if I want that again.”

“Was it…Brunnhilde? Is it because you feel like that after that incident, you can’t form any attachments because you feel insecure and scared that you’ll only hurt the people that you love?”

She looks down at you and raises her brow, a piece of cheese into her mouth. “Yeah,” she sticks an olive in her mouth, “something like that.”

You maintain eye contact, “Same.” You think you’ve gone too far but she doesn’t look away. In fact–and maybe it was too dark–you think for a split second you catch her gaze drop slightly.

Something hitches in your throat, “It’s bad luck, isn’t it. It follows us like a disease. Will we ever not infect everyone we touch hands with?”

Your fingers twitch. Her hand is only three inches away from yours. Two inches. One inch.

Valkyrie lifts her hand and scratches her arm. Her eyes dropped, “It’s unlikely, sadly.”

“So it seems,” you take a deep breath, leaning over to look at the water, your hair shielding your face, “If not love, we are destined for war.”

Suddenly, cold fingers are at your face, pushing the hair behind your ear. You freeze and look at each other. 

She smiles, “What are you talking about? War’s awesome.”

Rain falls in a pitter-patter on your window. Your friends Steve and Tony seems to be going through something and the avengers don’t feel the same as it used to, so it’s just you and Wanda for tonight. Scared of what would happen to you two if the avengers broke up, you cuddle with Wanda for the night in her room. She lets you stay because the two of you need to look out for one another. You sit on the bed beside her as she strokes your hair.

 “I’m a monster,” you whisper.

 She looks down at you, then out the window. “I used to think of myself one way, but…after this,” she flexes her fingers and red energy surges to her command, “I am something else. I’m still me, I think, but…that’s not what everyone else sees.”

 You shake your head, “I don’t think I’ve been the same since they died. I think..ever since they left, there’s been a big hole in my heart, one full of darkness, and it just grows. I think it’s consuming me. I miss them. I miss home.”

 You check to see her and Wanda has been looking thoughtfully at you the whole time. She doesn’t say a word as she grabs something off her side desk and hands you her phone. Magic warbles. And with a few tricks and manipulations, she changes the black screen into a video of her in her room. It’s a memory, you realize.

 “It’s the first home Vision and I ever shared. Pietro was dead, and I was in a new country. I was all alone.”

 You watch in silence as the memory plays. It’s her and Vision speaking in low voices while a sitcom plays. It’s saddening, but you see yourself as she speaks. You see now why Wanda is showing you this memory. 

“...what is grief if not love persevering?” Vision says at one point.

You stare at the cyborg and you forget that he’s wise, even though he’s doesn’t really experienced life like human’s do. You can understand why Wanda likes him so much. He’s stable, secure, and reliable. But that’s who they were to you before they died. But maybe Wanda is your new rock. And that’s okay. To have a different rock. In life, you believe you will meet many people in different stages of your life. They will all be shoulders to lean upon. And one day, you’ll be a shoulder for someone else as well. But for tonight, you have Wanda. And this moment is all you need. 

Wanda turns on the tv on low volume and you watch sitcoms for the rest of the night.