' and im thinkin' about your lips, but we're too damn sober for mistakes like this '

"ARE YOU SURE THAT YOU'RE OKAY?" Loki questioned for what must've been the fifth time within ten minutes, his hand ghosting up and down her arm in a comforting motion. It was sweet, and it felt like his words cast a protective bubble around her whenever he spoke them, a simple utterance of 'are you okay' that held the warmth of an embrace. But by the fifth time, it was getting tiring.

Turning to him, Wanda raised a hand to his cheek, catching him slightly off guard as he furrowed his brow. He recovered from it quickly, raising his own to press her hand closer before tilting his head to press a gentle kiss to her palm. He knew it soothed her, just the simple caress of her hand, which she had only associated with the destruction strung along with her powers. The hands that only ever reminded her of the burning red energy that threatened to tear her life apart. That did tear her life apart. But like the lightning to her thunder, he always managed to soften her jagged edges with a simple kiss to her palm, or rubbing circles on the back of her hand. It served as a reminder that not everyone was afraid of her, and that not everyone saw her as a ticking time bomb.

He wasn't afraid of her. And to Wanda, it meant the world.

"Loki."

"Darling."

"Calm down, I'm fine"

Releasing a breath, he rolled his eyes stubbornly, opening his mouth as if to complain again and probably continue to insist that she rests or lets him carry her the rest of the way. She silenced him with a soft kiss, her other hand coming up to hold the other side of his face whilst his arms instinctively wrapped around her waist almost protectively.

She pulled away with a smile so bright that it lit up her entire face, her face shining as her eyes crinkled with mirth and she dropped her hands. Returning her smile, he reached up one hand from where it was around her waist to cradle her cheek, his cool touch soothing against her cheek.

"I made you shut up."

"Oh, so you have ulterior motives behind your affection now, hm? I see how it is," he droned with faux offence, kissing his teeth. It drew out a soft giggle from the witch, scrunching her nose at his antics. He adored her little nose scrunch, he wasn't one for flashy shows of affection, but that simple expression from her could be enough to convince him to whisk her into his arms. It was adorable.

"Jesus, don't do the nose thing. You're gonna make me have to go beat the life out of a stone," he warned, his protective instinct flaring up almost instantly.

"No complaints from me," she hummed, inspecting the slash on her palm which she had almost forgotten about by now, "Hurts to use my powers because of that stupid mind stone- I think the adrenaline has worn off."

Concern flooding his features, he inspected the wound, bowing his head to place a chaste kiss to it. Her soft smile morphed into a muted hiss of surprise as she felt a sensation in her hand that could only be magic, but it wasn't hers. The feeling was a sharp shock at first, but dulled into a tingly numbness.

As soon as he rose his head, she looked down at her now fully healed hand before meeting his eyes, the gratitude swimming in her irises.

"Uhh, Miss Maximoff?"

Wanda flinched at the sudden noise, turning to the doorway of the common room on her and Loki's floor to find Peter stood in the door frame awkwardly, shifting his weight between his feet as he observed them. She shook off her surprise quickly, offering a welcoming smile.

"Mr Stark wants us all in the living room, something about a wizard wan-"

"Strange." Loki replied monotonously.

"Ohhh, that's who he meant- yeah apparently he wants to talk about the mission."

Biting her lip, Wanda simply nodded. Stephen having news was never really a good thing, and she was already so exhausted, her limbs tugging where she had overexert herself and her head spinning. Despite it, she didn't mention it to Loki, not wanting him to stress out about her more than he already was.

A spell of dizziness struck her as she stood up to go to the lift, and she attempted to cover up her dazed motion with a fake sneeze. It gained her a strange look from Peter paired with a soft, 'bless you,' and she opted to ignore whatever sceptical reaction was on Loki's face. She knew him to well, his silence meant that he knew something was up.

They took the lift down to the living room, most of the team already scattered around the room but it much more relaxed states than she had expected, leaned up against sofas with snacks in hand. Was this supposed to be a meeting or a sleepover?

Nonetheless, she felt some of the tension seep from her shoulders at the rather relaxed atmosphere. It wasn't as intense as she had expected, and God knows she had already had her fair share of intensity for an entire year after her encounter with-

"We tethered the mind stone," Strange stated firmly, his demeanour remaining the only serious one aside from Loki's, but to be fair, they were always serious. She had summed it up to the fact that being in the same room as each other almost immediately called upon their unspoken competition of egotistical and stupidly powerful magicians.

Stephen gave Wanda a pointed look, and she tried not to cower under the intensity of his gaze, "You tethered the mind stone. That's a good thing, it means we have a working plan to reverse this."

"Really, Doctor?" Loki drawled out sarcastically, letting out a humourless laugh that manifested itself into more of a scoff, "You called everyone together to point out the obvious. How commendable."

"It's called regrouping, I can't imagine you'd understand since working with people seems to be impossible for you."

"There's no one worthy enough for me to work with," he retorted swiftly, as if he wasn't stood in a room amongst the people he was working with.

Stephen raised a brow, smirking mockingly, "No, of course not. Who could be worthy of fighting aside a failed ex-villain sorcerer who was defeated by a group of glorified agents."

"You're standing in a glorified agents tower, thank you very much." Tony corrected, clearly having a nerve struck from Strange's statement which wasn't even aimed for him. Wanda muffled a smile behind her hand, the clear offense imbedded on his features.

"What, you want me to move the meeting to the sanctum instead?"

"..Nevermind," Stark surrendered, he was not in the mood to be upstaged by a sorcerer in his Hogwarts tower. "Just get to the point, Doc."

Rolling his eyes, Strange continued, clearly annoyed by the numerous interruptions, "We need to tether the reality stone next, we already know where it is, but the longer we take, the more chance there is that he'll get it first."

Scoffing, Loki stood up with a sudden fire, the annoyance striking him unbidden, "You called us here to state the obvious, thank you very much."

"Is it impossible for you to be patient for once in your life," Strange seethed, pointing a glare at Loki as he clenched his jaw, the God's lack of patience finally getting on his nerves.

"Oh my sincere apologies, continue to tell us more about what we experienced," he chuckled sarcastically, the apology drenched in cheap honey as he smirked knowingly that he was getting on the sorcerers nerves.

"It is blatantly obvious you don't know how to manage working in a team-" The man gritted through clenched teeth, standing up suddenly as the atmosphere in the room tensed, the team clearly anticipating some explosive fight. He halted mid sentence at the sound of a phone buzzing, his expression morphing into something more grim as he reached for the phone.

Loki, seemingly oblivious to the gravity of the phone call, laughed dryly, shaking his head in a menacing manner as he surveyed him, "The Sorcerer Supreme turning down from a fight because of a text? You bring shame to your title."

"Fuck off, Loki," Stephen murmured, but his heart wasn't in it, more distracted with fumbling to answer the message, the look on his face solemn as he scanned the words.

In reality, it wasn't just a random text. The phone he carried on him only took notifications from one specific number placed amidst Kamar Taj, who solely messaged for urgent matters. The sound of the notification sounded more like alarm bells than anything to him.

"The Sanctum Sanctorum has been invaded, the Time Stone is at risk."

The three sorcerers immediately set out to the Sanctum, being deemed the only ones who could defend it as Strange hastily opened a portal and Wanda had practically dragged Loki by the hand to come with them.

The portal flickered open and revealed a barren shell of what Kamar Taj used to be, the buildings ashen and burnt, and sickeningly with bodies of injured sorcerers littered around the area, others trying to hastily carry them to safety.

Strange had an unreadable expression on his face, his eyes steeled and barring any emotion as his veins pumping blood fuelled with purely anger and shear motivation.  He had always been like that, a relentlessly protective and ambitious man; it was evident by the way he immediately jumped into the action the second he had stepped through the portal. Hands raised with raging golden energy piercing through the sky and heading straight for the strange alien creatures.

After a moments haze at what had become of the place, Wanda sprung into action, her limbs aching in protest at the sudden motion so soon after she had overused her powers to tether a stone, the consequence of it still dragging her down. She wouldn't let that distract her though, she had been hardwired to be a fighter since the age of ten, and she wasn't going to give it up now when the universe was in dire need of someone to people to fight for it. Ignoring the spells of dizziness every-time she fired, Wanda continued to bombard hexes towards the creatures, sending them flying across the landscape. For now, she was perfectly fine with ignoring her bodies aching in complaint.

Loki, however, was not.

She noticed it, the way his eyes trailed over her body whenever an alien so much as nudged her, how his hand ghosted over her back to steady her when she was stunned by dizziness or the clearly concerned expression seeping through the creases on his face. He was always good at concealing his emotions, but Wanda was better at reading them.

"They're after the stone," Stephen yelled over the intense noise pollution lingering in the area, interrupting his sentence to tear apart a creature before glancing over his shoulder and sending a pointed look to the two, "Loki, find Wong, help him protect it."

With a hesitant glance to his girlfriend, Loki cursed under his breath and agreed to go. He hastily pressed a kiss to her hair before scurrying over to find Wong inside the Sanctum. He rushed through the halls in search for the room Stephen had told him contained the stone, but his attention was pulled by a loud groan resounding through the Sanctum.

Twisting on his heel, he sprinted towards the direction he had heard the sound from, the green energy licking at his fingertips as he armed himself for an attack. Instead, he found Wong suspended in the air, a sharp whisp of green tightly confining him to the ancient walls of the Sanctum, binding him there.

"Shit, they were here," Loki breathed as he let his own green energy battle it, slithering behind the man and smoothly sliding him out of the Time Stone's grasp. The Time Stone was distinctively different to Loki's power, it was more intense, focused, it had a sophisticated danger to it which challenged Loki's chaotic and uncontainable energy. The difference was alike to the one he saw between himself and the Stone's protector himself.

Wong regained his breath swiftly, his hands on his knees as he heaved for air before casting Loki a desperate look, gasping out weakly, "Than-Thanos sent his children," he struggled out over a cough, "The Stone is fleeing, this was not meant to happen."

"Yeah no shit," Loki gritted out, attempting to dodge the Time Stone's wild spirals.

This stone was much different to the encounter they had with the Reality Stone previously, the latter having been obtained by Thanos himself and therefore was more reckless, chaotic with its attacks. Rather than making use of its naturally given power of reality bending, it cast deathly and harsh attacks towards them. The Time Stone, on the other hand, was harnessing its full ability, twisting time to its will to escape from Loki.

The tables he had harshly tugged from the ground continuously flung to the wall and back, stuck in an endless time loop as Loki struggled to battle against the shackles the stone had on the room, rewinding time by only a few seconds each time. Whilst it wasn't enough to have a major effect, it was certainly enough to make him vulnerable to the attacks.

The God of Mischief had never been one to give up, relentlessly whirling ropes of green energy to attempt to harness some of the power, but it slithered and recoiled from his energy like a snake, morphing into a breeze of air as it slipped from his grasp.

Cursing, he quickly remembered that the whole aim of this was to tether all the stones, and that could only be accomplished by a certain person. The certain person whom he hadn't wanted to be here fighting the entire time given the fact that she looked moments away from passing out, and whom was battling pounding headaches with each strike of magic she emitted.

Shaking his head, he firmly shut his eyes, rebelling against his natural instinct to not let his guard down in the presence of the infinity stone, in order to cast a mental message to Wanda telepathically, 'Sanctum, you need to tether the stone.'

Within a minute, Wanda was bursting through the doors of the Sanctum and making straight for the room where the stone was viciously attacking against Loki and Wong, the latter having regained just enough strength to fend it off. She leapt into action, rushing to Wong's side as she channelled her energy to her fingertips and swirled it against the energy, coercing it into a corner of the room.

Much to her dismay, the Time Stone managed to slither past her grip by turning the time back by a few milliseconds, forcing her to stumble off-guard as it slipped away from her. She had been masking the pain pretty well thus far in her opinion, but she couldn't help the way her face crumpled in agony as a slash of energy burst forth from her palms, a burning sensation riddling through the wound on her hand which she was sure had been reopened.

Gritting her teeth, she forced her way through it, pulling her arms together and summoning a hex of scarlet between her hands before harshly pulling them apart, the energy expanding and encasing the Time Stone's energy in her grasp. Digging her heel into the ground, she huffed out a breath and channelled all her power into tethering the stone, her eyes clenching shut as she let the energy flow through her body naturally.

Alarmingly, her vision blurred with large black splodges as she felt herself lose balance. Shaking her head awake, she dug her teeth into her bottom lip, ignoring the metallic taste of blood flooding her mouth as she forced all of her energy into her hands and the power flowing from them.  It was almost as if she had tunnel-vision, her mind centering across one thought and one only, tether the stone. It repeated like a mantra in her head, the only thing remaining to force her awake. With the energy licking at her feet, a final scarlet burst of energy splashed behind her eyelids, satisfyingly fizzing away.

She did it.

She tethered the Time Stone. Two down, three to go.

Instinctively, she turned her head in search of Loki, the gleeful look on her face only present for a fleeting moment, before her brief happiness was tainted with the crushing dizziness as she held herself up by leaning against the wall. She was more concerned with her gaze bouncing across the room in search of Loki, her stomach swooping with a sudden spell of sickness which wasn't caused by her clear overuse of powers.

She found him knelt on the ground, clutching his head as he groaned, manoeuvring to lean against the wall. Stumbling over, she fell to her knees besides him, his name slipping from her lips, or at least she thought it did. She was still too stunned to tell, but the concern moving to the forefront of her mind was Loki. He was unresponsive, it was as if he couldn't hear her.

"Loki," she breathed helplessly, she was sure she said it this time, "Please."

A/N:

ive been gone for almost a year i am honestly SO SORRY but the motivation just went away and life got in the way yk (thats such a cliche sorry). im not gonna lie and say ill be more active, but ill defo get another chapter out much faster than this one took. thank you for your patience with me if youre still reading this lmao

i lovee you all, hope you enjoy this not-proof-read chapter <3