If you haven't watched Thor 2, The Dark World you'll need to wait to read Lithium - there are some serious spoilers.
That said, this is set post-TDW in a Blackfrost AU. I'm sticking as close as possible to canon for the personalities (I hope) but I always appreciate a nudge if I veer too far from the path. And as always, any reviews receive my thanks and lots of Loki lovebites in return.
1. Inside
"Lithium is highly reactive and flammable."
The needle was inserted into the delicate flesh of Natasha's inner arm. Deep within dreams of falling to earth inside the hellicarrier, she woke from a heavy, blacked-out slumber as soon as she felt the sharp prick . A blue-gloved hand applied cotton, depressed the plunger, and removed the needle.
She blinked, felt a salty crust at the corners of her eyes. How long had she slept? At that moment she had no idea; nor had she any memory of what happened to her or why she sat on a narrow bed in a tiny room receiving an injection.
It was vital to gather as much information as possible before she allowed herself to react. Natasha watched the nurse put the hypodermic on a tray, flip her long, gleaming ponytail over one shoulder, and walk to the door.
"I stepped in gum on 42nd Street," Natasha said.
A look of surprise flitted across the nurse's face. She was pretty, with honeyed skin and large, dark eyes. "Really? Okay."
The correct response was "Make certain you scrape it off your shoe next time." Therefore the nurse wasn't a SHIELD ally, just someone who thought Natasha was a bit out of her mind to blurt such a thing for no reason. "Yeah," the agent said. She pretended to sink into lethargy.
"Stay still for a few minutes," the woman advised. "If you get up too soon you could become light-headed." With a flip of her long ponytail she closed the door.
Natasha waited until the click of nursing clogs died away in the distance. Silent as a shadow, she sat and eyed the injection site on her arm. Everything seemed normal – no swelling, no infection; the Red Room biomechanics in her body would quickly neutralize the drugs in her system.
She shivered and realized she was wearing a typical hospital gown open at the back. With a mental shrug - Time to go to work, Romanov - she hopped off the narrow bed and prowled the room. There was a table by the bed with several books on it and a small cup of water; she took a small sip and decided it was safe to drink.
An open doorway led to a small bathroom, edged with dirt and a stink so ripe it nearly brought tears to her eyes. Natasha had been in enough squalid places to ignore the smell for the moment; she decided she would find something to use as a cleanser before she entered the room again.
Returning to where the nurse had administered the injection, she took stock of the chamber. On the wall opposite the bed there was a small chest with one drawer. Inside she found several pairs of underwear, a pair of cotton drawstring pants, and an extra hospital gown. Cursing again in Russian – she had hoped to find a t-shirt or at least a bra – she knew she would have to bear the indignity of walking around with an institutional garment tied at the neck and baring her back.
Although she didn't have much hope, Natasha tried the door used by the nurse. To her surprise it opened easily. Maybe they thought she would fall sleep right away after the injection? In any case, she wasn't about to wait around and find out.
There was nothing in the room she could use as a weapon unless she was able to dismantle the table or the chest. Either would require some time and the sacrifice of several fingernails. Natasha decided to leave it until later; for the moment her own body would have to serve as her weapon. That would be no problem. The real question was how and when to use it, depending on whether the element of surprise was important or not. As usual she would have to rely on her instinct and wits to discover her next move.
The hall was deserted. Overhead, neon lights blinked and buzzed fitfully with the earmark of institutional architecture. There was a smell of pine cleanser failing to mask the smell of bodily fluids and despair; Natasha gave herself the task of finding a bottle later to make the disgusting bathroom usable.
Doors lined the passage. In one an old man lay in a bed moaning to himself about someone called Irene. In another a huddled shape rocked in one corner, head clutched in trembling hands. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.
Shit. No more denial – Natasha was inside a mental institution.
A man in a set of industrial scrubs with a generous thatch of chestnut curls pushing a mop in a scratched, yellow bucket of grey water rounded the corner. He stopped when he saw her. "New? First injection? Dayroom's down there. You can go and hang out if you want." He jerked one muscular arm behind him.
Natasha nodded. The hall widened into a large, circular room filled with scratched folding chairs, a sofa with duct-tape covering one cushion, low tables, and one old-fashioned console TV running silent cartoons in jagged, greenish colors. A kid stood in front of the screen voicing the dialogue – apparently he knew every line of Adventure Time.
One female patient sat in one of the sofas with her knees huddled to her chest. An inmate lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. Others paced by the barred windows or argued with unseen assailants in fierce voices. In the corner, a young man sat upright in one of the folding chairs, turned to face away from the room. His black hair spilled over his shoulders; he didn't move a muscle as two of the arguers stopped debating themselves and started to scream at each other with voices as harsh as the squawk of magpies.
The pretty nurse burst in through a set of double doors from the opposite corner of the room, several attendants in tow. They managed to subdue the heated debate, administer injections, and lead the inmates away before they could start hitting each other.
"This was your last chance," the nurse said as one man was assisted out of the room. "Double injections tonight." She followed him and the attendants to the double doors, stopped to pat the young man with long dark hair on his shoulder and whisper something in his ear before she left. Natasha heard the clank as a heavy bolt was snapped into place. No easy access to that hallway. The fact was filed away for later when she really began to plan out her next series of moves.
The kid still voiced the lines from the cartoon. No one acknowledged her as she edged forward. She wanted to stay anonymous as she assessed the other inmates, to see if there was any helpful source within the patients.
Natasha found an old Time magazine with Fidel Castro on the cover and brought it to the duct-taped sofa. The woman already seated there, her arms clutched around bare knees, looked up when the agent sat next to her.
The copy of Time nearly dropped from Natasha's hands. She took a deep breath, fought to remain calm. The woman on the sofa was Maria Hill, but her calm air of capability was gone. Natasha had never seen her without her clipboard, a ready answer for any question, a look of complete dedication to SHIELD in her face.
Now her hair was chopped short on one side in a ragged fringe, and she stared at Natasha as thought they had never seen each other before. Her eyes and nose were reddened as though she had spent some time crying, and her lower jaw trembled.
"Maria?" Natasha whispered.
No movement. A long line of drool fell from the woman's mouth to dribble on her hospital gown.
Fuck. Natasha's mind raced, although she preserved her blank look in case the nurse or the attendant returned. Something was terribly wrong inside the asylum – but it perhaps wasn't an asylum at all. She suspected the place was actually some kind of holding pen, maybe a horror shop of torture and experimentation.
Who had taken her former boss inside? Was that why the Black Widow had been sent in – to try and rescue Maria Hill from whatever had gone down?
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Not only would she have to get herself out, now she was responsible for Maria as well.
There had to be a contact somewhere. Natasha thought later she would try to use a different line on one of the attendants, perhaps the curly-haired one pushing the mop. If she tried again with the gum on the shoe and 42nd Street, it would raise suspicion. "Stay here," she whispered with a hand on Hill's arm, but the woman shook it off before hiding her face in her knees once more.
Natasha counted to one hundred before she put down the magazine and returned to the hall. There was no sign of the muscular attendant with the mop and the dirty bucket; she checked inside the rooms and found no one other than the same inmates as before.
One bedside table in an empty chamber held a bar of soap; Natasha quickly stole it and stashed it in her underwear. One goal accomplished, at any rate; during dinner or after light's out she would find a way to scrub the foul toilet and sink until her space was habitable.
She heard a low murmur of conversation followed by a burst of female laughter; the exchange seemed to indicate workers instead of inmates and came from the day room. Hoping cameras weren't watching her zig-zag progress throughout the place (later she would have to find the one in her room and take it down) she sidled back to dayroom and the couches, the kid in front of the TV, and Maria.
The nurse with the ponytail had returned to stand beside the man with dark hair. Although he wore a hospital gown and was definitely an inmate she seemed to enjoy his conversation – she laughed as he said something in a low voice and bent close to respond, smiling into his face.
It was the third time the pretty nurse and the patient with the black hair had spoken together. If he was rational enough to chat with the nurse – the most visible authority figure thus far - it meant he was someone Natasha had to get to know, win to her side. She picked up the copy of Time, pretended to leaf through it, and waited until the nurse left again through the double doors.
Natasha worked her way over to the corner where the man sat. She stopped in front of the TV and watched a few minutes of Adventure Time before trailing on to the windows to look outside; the place seemed to be situated in the middle of a huge forest. That was a surprise – usually institutions were at the edge of suburbia or the dreary outskirts of large cities.
Only then did she allow herself to approach the man in the chair. He still sat upright; his shoulders presented the aspect of someone who was entirely at his ease.
Natasha pretended to examine the wall before she looked at his profile. When she did she nearly screamed. She had to dig her nails in her palms to stop herself from running to the double doors to pound on them and demand rescue.
It was him. The last time they had seen each other he was muzzled and chained, about to return to another realm in disgrace. Before that there had been several inches of glass between them – the single incident when they actually spoke together.
Loki turned and saw her near the wall; a flicker of surprise crossed his face before he smiled. Deep dimples appeared in his cheeks; he seemed to greet her presence as a delightful surprise.
No emotions. Natasha had learned decades ago to repress any feeling, and those fierce lessons in the Red Room helped her keep a mask in place when she was on a case. Despite her training the fact exploded in her brain. She was locked inside a strange asylum with the fiercest villain she had ever gone up against, and she felt fear trickle through her chest like ice cracking a windshield with severe frost.
"Hello, Agent Romanov," Loki said. "How interesting to find you here."