I don't own Loki or the Avengers, but I'm also not making money on this. Rated M, so don't say I didn't warn you!
Natasha plastered a coy smile on her face and braced herself for what she was about to do. Lars was not an unpleasant man to look at, and he had offered her a good price, but that didn't mean she was going to enjoy it. Not that he would know-that was why she was able to fetch such a good price-but she was beginning to tire of this life. At first, it had been exciting, more than a way to make ends meet, it was a subtle revenge on the women who had snubbed her out of the marketplace and into the back alleys. So they wouldn't buy her thread and yarn because she was prettier then they? Fine. Their husbands were more than happy to make up the difference.
Ever since she had come to this town, the last of her stolen funds expended on her escape from the horrors of her childhood, she had faced the ire of the hen coop-her nickname for the gossiping, middle-aged busybodies who subtly ran the town. She was young, beautiful, exotic, and the men had immediately noticed. The women had noticed the men noticing, and had immediately boycotted her small spinning stand.
Natasha found this especially frustrating since her original intent had been to make a little money and move on, hopefully to a large city where she could lose herself. But their vindictive behavior had trapped her with them, and she had little choice but to meet their expectations. The Spider, they called her when they thought she wasn't listening. The Spider spun her thread and wove her webs to entrance the men of the village. The first few men to approach her had been young daredevils, out to test their luck. They had been fun. But now that her reputation had spread among the men as well as the women, it was business as usual. It wasn't the nightmare she had come from, since she could pick and chose her patrons, but it wasn't the escape she had been looking for either.
Lars gave her a goofy smile and pulled off his shirt. His hair was left in a comical disarray, and she smiled at him. The husband of one of the head hens, he would be quite the feather in her cap, and if he gave her just a little extra tip, she just might be able to get out of this godforsaken town. She sauntered over to him, allowing the strap of her dress to drop casually off her shoulder. She splayed her hands over his furry chest, and bit her lip a little. She watched his eyes drop to her lips-so easy to make him look-and slowly, deliberately licked them.
Lars exhaled shakily, and bent forward the scarce inches to kiss her. Mentally, she braced herself.
Therefore, she jumped sharply when there was a loud rap at the door.
"Lars, open the door," came a man's booming voice. Great, the Patriarch had come for a late night visit. She glanced around the room, looking for a place to hide, when another voice came, chilling her to the bone.
"We know she's in there!" shouted one of the hen coop. If she listened carefully, Natasha could hear the sounds of several other people, horses, a few torches. It seemed the whole village had shown up for some late-night entertainment.
Natasha's heart began to race as she felt a fear she thought she had left long behind her. What would these superstitious backwater rubes do to her?
Lars hesitated a moment, but when the Patriarch banged on the door more insistently, he jumped to answer it. Outside stood what must be the whole town, complete with pitchforks. This did not bode well.
"You see?!" shrieked the woman from before, as another woman, Lars's wife, let up an awful wail. "The Spider has bewitched another of our pious men!"
Several young men rushed forward to grab her arms. None of them, she noticed, were previous customers. One was a cruel boy she had turned down because he reminded her too much of home. He looked more than happy to participate in whatever they had planned for her. She was dragged out of the house into the cold night. They didn't even give her a chance to stand and walk with dignity, but pulled her along to the village green. Once there, she was pulled up on the wooden platform that served for county fairs, traveling actors and executions alike.
"My good people," The Patriarch's voice boomed out above the shouts of the rabble below him. "What is to be done with this sinner in our midst?"
Many cries came up from the crowd. "The punishment for Adultery is Death by Stoning!" one woman called. "No! She is a witch! Burn her at the stake!" shrieked another.
Only one woman stood calmly at the front, smiling up at them like the cat in the cream. Natasha could see she had been beautiful once, and so she had never feared Natasha as the other women had. Why should she? She was wife to the most powerful man in town.
The Patriarch smiled grimly down at his wife. "What say you, Freyda?"
The crowd hushed, Freyda was known for her vindictive and ironic punishments, which her husband often took up. "Well," Freyda said slowly, as if the idea was still occurring to her. "If she is a witch, or a curse sent to us, then I say we should send her back from whence she came."
There was a murmur of confusion in the crowd, but Freyda merely smiled at the horror in Natasha's eyes. How did she know?
"I say..." she drawled on, loving every moment of the drama, "That we give her to the mad god."
This time, the response was silence. The king of this small country may have declared his subjects Christian many years ago, but here they still followed the old ways. That the Patriarch had a wife was proof enough of this. He stood, stroking his beard, as he considered her proposal.
"In the old days," he said ponderously, "the traditional sacrifice was a young virgin," he glanced at her suggestive dress for emphasis.
"Things have changed," Freyda argued. "Why should our fine young girls go to him, when he sends us only bad luck and blizzards? I say let the devil feed on his own." There were cheers of agreement from the crowd.
What in the wide world were they talking about? Natasha wondered in her panic. Virgin sacrifices? The mad god? What kind of deformed monster were they sending her to?
The Patriarch continued to stroke his beard ponderously. It was his job to teach the king's religion to these yokels, but he was first and foremost a politician. "Let it be done," he said simply, and the crowd erupted into cheers.
She was pulled off the platform and hoisted onto the shoulders of the crowd. They marched out of the village, the torchlight gleaming in their eyes, making them look inhuman. Would none of them stand up for her? Surely Jahn, who had called on her several times and often brought her small gifts as well as tipping her heavily, would say something in her defense? But she caught sight of him, sheepishly trailing after the crowd. He had liked her because he was too shy to speak with women. Natasha had sought to break the ice, but she had not made a hero of him.
Unbidden the thought of Clint came to mind. She had run into the roving archer more than once. Were he there, he would have come to her rescue, again. But Clint had never been able to understand what she was running from. He had looked beyond her past, and thought she could have a normal life with him. A house, a farm maybe, with a pack of dogs and almost as many babies. But he had never understood that normal was never an option for her, that she didn't want to be someone's wife, she wanted something more for herself, even if she didn't deserve it.
But Clint was not here, she had run away from him as she ran from everything else. Whatever horror these mean little people had in store for her, she would have to face it alone. She swore to herself that she wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing her fear, or hearing her scream.
A few miles out of town, they came to the mouth of a large cave. Natasha remembered now that it was believed to be haunted, and that young men dared each other to climb down it's bottomless shaft. As far as she knew, none of them had even tried.
The crowd halted at the entrance of the cave, and Natasha could smell the fear in them. The old ways were not so very old after all, and she wondered how many of them had heard stories of some great-great aunt, lost to the barbaric ways of the past. She was dropped to the ground, and the Patriarch loomed up in front of her.
"My child," he said, not unkindly. "If you confess your sins and repent now, you will be spared your punishment. The Lord is forgiving."
Natasha looked up at the Patriarch. In his eyes, all she saw was lust. He sought to keep her for himself. She would not go back to that. She spat in his face.
"So be it," he hissed, and gestured towards the cave.
Some of the braver young men rushed forward, the cruel boy among them. The dragged her inside, and in the torchlight she glimpsed frightening paintings of wolves and snakes along the walls. A stone's throw within, they came to the edge of the pit. One of the boys leaned over, holding a torch out to see if he could glimpse the bottom. Natasha looked too, she could see nothing.
The cruel boy picked up a pebble, grinning at her. He tossed it over the edge, and they waited, holding their breath. She could hear it bounce against the walls a couple times, then nothing.
Behind them, the crowd began to chant something, quietly at first, and then rising in ferocity. The word ran into itself so that Natasha could not understand it, but it sounded harsh, all Ls and Ks, ending in a high I. She tried to swallow, her throat dry. She would not scream, she would not scream, she would not-
The cruel boy shoved her in, and for the first moment she was too shocked to respond. Then, as she continued to fall, on and on, the scream was torn from her throat unbidden. She screamed until her throat was raw, and on she fell, the chanting of the crowd following her down into the abyss.
Just when her terror reached a point where thinking stopped, she was suddenly engulfed in cold, and quiet, and the blackness swallowed her whole.
A/N: I am writing this story for fun. I've never written horror before, and mostly it's an outlet for my other story, Anima Complex, taking too long to get to the good parts. There probably won't be a regular update schedule for this story, it will just get updated when it gets written. It will probably also be much shorter than Anima Complex. Hope you enjoy it!