Loki and I stayed up late reading Harry Potter, and, so far, he loved it. We got through half of the first book before I started drifting off. Loki noticed my eyes starting to close and bookmarked our place for later. I protected slightly when he picked me up to carry me to bed, but my protest died at the stern look on his face.

The coddling didn't stop once we were in our room, either. Loki set me on our bed and picked out my favorite sleep shirt, a long, oversized t-shirt. He then undressed me and redressed me in my shirt before stripping down to just a pair of sweatpants himself.

I laid awake for a few minutes, tracing patterns onto Loki's chest and listening to him breath. His arms were wrapped around me and, in that moment, I felt completely stress-free.

When I opened my eyes next I wasn't in my room like I'd expected. I was back in the dark void. Everything was pitch black from the absence of light. I sighed heavily and started walking to find the stones. I walked for maybe thirty minutes before I saw anything. It wasn't the stones I found, though. It was a door.

I furrowed my brows and walked toward it. It wasn't connected to anything, just a single, standing, plain looking door. I walked around to the other side of it to see if I was missing something. Nope, still just a regular door. Stupidly, I walked up to it and knocked. I should have expected no answer, so I didn't know why I was still a bit disappointed. I placed my hand on the door handle and turned it, pushing the door open as I did.

The room was dark, but I could still make out that it was my and Loki's room. I cautiously walking into the door, shut it behind me, and locked it. I preferred to have a closed door at my back than an endless, dark void.

I tried to turn the lights on, but they wouldn't work. None of the lamps in the room worked, either.

"FRIDAY?" I called out, breaking the chilling silence of the room. There was no response form the A.I. and the room settled into another silence that made me extremely uneasy. The sound of the fireplace coming to life made me jump. The fire burned fast and bright, engulfing the wood in its flames. I quickly made my way over to it and tried to get the flames to die down, but they only grew. Some of its embers jumped to the pile of wood, kept to feed the fire, a few feet away, starting an even bigger fire.

My eyes widened and I quickly got to my feet and ran to the door. There was a fire extinguisher kept under the sink in the kitchen, but when I tried to get the door to open, it wouldn't. I tried to teleport, but knew that it wouldn't work. I never could teleport in these dreams.

The fire continued to spread as I tried to force the door to open with no luck. The air started to get heavy with smoke and it burned my throat and lungs with every breath. It got to the point where I couldn't breath without almost coughing a lung up. The smoke and heat hurt my eyes and burned skin, and I knew I had to get out of here.

Continuing to try the bedroom door would only result in my death, so I turned and forced my eyes open, blinking the tears from my eyes as the smoke stung them. The fire moved fast, almost unnaturally so. Almost everything was covered in the hot flames of the fire. Everything, but a small path to the bathroom. Figuring that that was my only option, I ran for the door. Even though the ground I ran on wasn't completely consumed in flames, it was still hot and burned my feet.

I opened the door to the bathroom and ran in, shutting the door behind me to try and slow the fire. I gasped in the clean air still trapped in the bathroom before coughing so hard my chest spasmed. Once I was able to take a full breath without choking, I turned and realized that the light in the bathroom worked. I only knew that because it was already on. I wouldn't have thought to check after trying all the lights in the bedroom. I also realized that something wasn't right in here. Everything was slightly too bright giving me a very strange feeling.

Water covered the floor, the source being the tub faucet. Water overflowed from the tub onto the floor, but that wasn't what gave me pause. The floor was covered in blood and glass. I took a few steps over to the tub and tried to turn the faucet off, but the water valves were already in the 'off' position, yet water still poured out. At least it was giving me more time to figure out what to do about the fire.

I then turned to see where the source of the glass and blood was. The only thing I could think of being the mirror, but it wasn't broken. It was, however, covered in steam from how hot the bath water was running. I'm not sure what compelled me to walk over to the mirror and wipe away the steam, but, when I did, I jumped back, my hand covering my mouth to muffle my scream. In the mirror was me... but not me...

The me in the mirror stood perfectly still. Her eyes and hair were completely black. The same black covering halfway up her forearms. I looked away from the mirror and down at my own hands to see that they were completely normal. When I looked back up, a sickeningly sadistic smile spread across her face. She looked pale and exhausted, and it scared me. Everything about her scared me, but I still walked closer to her. I stopped when I was directly in front of the bathroom counter. I don't know why, but I had the sudden urge to reach up and touch the mirror. 'Mirror me' copied what I did and when our fingers met in the middle, the glass cracked with a deafening sound.

I woke up with a small gasp and opened my eyes. I was back in my bed, next to a sleeping Loki. The room was fine, no fire or smoke. I took a few breaths to calm my heart rate from the nightmare I had and slowly sat up. I was careful not to wake Loki, he needed his sleep.

Once out of bed, I teleported to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water. My skin was warm with a light layer of perspiration covering it. I was honestly surprised that Loki didn't wake up from my nightmare.

I sighed and opened the fridge, taking out the ice cold bottle of water. I then put it on the back of my neck for a few seconds to cool myself down faster. After a while, I finally removed the bottle from my neck and cracked the seal. The small snapping sound it produced made me relive the sound of the mirror cracking. A shiver went through my body as I thought about the dream.

I spaced out, in thought, for a few seconds as I slowly raised the water to my lips. Why would I have a dream like that? It made no sense. Could it be something left over from HYDRA?

The cold water slipped past my lips and I swallowed a large gulp. As soon as the water hit my throat, I choked. I covered my mouth to keep from spitting the water out all over the floor and turned to spit it in the sink. Violent coughs shook my body and I grabbed a napkin to cough into, not wanting to spread germs if I was sick.

I held the napkin to my mouth and coughed up the remaining water before taking a few deep breaths. The napkin was damp as I pulled it away from my mouth. I turned to throw it away, but froze when I saw what I coughed up. The napkin was covered in a black mucus...

...the same kind of mucus the victim of smoke inhalation would cough up...