Disclaimer: I don't own the Avengers, or any of the characters used in this fic. They all belong to Marvel and their respective creators. I only own any original characters that I choose to include, as well as any original plot ideas.

Chapter 2: That Which Changes Nothing

Natasha was furious when she came home a second time, found the door stuck yet again. She made a face, threw her shoulder hard against it, and stumbled inside, kicking the thing shut with a heavy breath. The customer service at the grocery store was quite lacking in both brains and manners, as the girl at the counter had given her quite the run-around with an attitude, to boot. And for nothing more than trying to return a couple boxes of granola bars, which she had been overcharged for, and that nasty bran cereal shit. The assassin had accidentally picked it up for him when she'd gone out after he'd left that morning, somehow forgetting that, once again, she and Clint weren't speaking anymore. Or seeing one another.

She sighed loudly, tossing the change on the counter top of the bar as she walked into the living room, threw herself on the couch, and turned on the television. The screen blared with light and sound, and Natasha leaned to the side, let herself lie down and shut her eyes.

Nothing she told herself was satisfying. She shouldn't have opened the door for him, shouldn't have played his stupid games, no matter how funny it was when they turned around on him. And she certainly should have kicked him out when he'd started doing that to her. The whole thing left a sickening taste in her mouth and a hole in the pit of her stomach. Clint was right to be mad at her, but it still wasn't entirely her fault.

Her eyes opened and Natasha sat up, turned to look at the screen as she heard the sound of dishes clattering together. The news was on the television, and her head turned towards the counter top, saw that some of the coins had fallen off and onto the carpet, and that plates and bowls were steadily appearing in small stacks. If there was a burglar in the house, he was doing a shitty job of being stealthy. Heart beating heavily in her chest, Natasha stood up, crept quietly across the floor, took one of the plates in her hands and, as soon as she saw a head, brought it down hard and caused the thing to shatter.

Natasha had expected to hear a panicked scream, to see the intruder dart towards the door so that she could chase his stupid ass. Instead, he started swearing.

"Shit!"

A hand flew to her mouth, eyes wide as a smile began to spread, and Natasha hurried around the corner and into the kitchen, laughing as he writhed on the floor, head held in his hands. If anything, she should have kicked him for good measure. It was, after all, his fault that all this had happened.

If she wasn't pissed at him for fucking things up for her, maybe she would have apologized for hitting him. Maybe. Natasha sighed, still smiling as she crouched on the floor, picking up the larger pieces of the plate and opening one of the lower cupboards to throw them in the trash. Loki, on the other hand, kept complaining about being hit, and sat up to glare at her. The assassin didn't pay him any mind. She kind of hoped the assault would leave a welt.

"Before you ask me what that was for," she said, standing and hurrying to get the dustpan from the broom closet, "perhaps I should ask you why the hell you're in my house. Again."

He said nothing, just kept staring at her through his fingers as Natasha swept up the mess and dumped it in the trash can. It took her less than five minutes to return the kitchen to its normal state, and her eyes turned to the dishwasher that now had a wet footprint on the door. He must have kicked it, she thought.

Natasha hopped up onto the counter, stared down at him as she yanked a bottle of vodka from the cupboard, because she needed something stronger than wine, and noted that he hadn't stopped glaring at her. Even so, the assassin carried on about her business, decided that maybe she could be nice enough to offer him a bit, considering she'd just smashed a plate over his head, and poured the liquor into a couple of glasses.

Still, he said nothing. But at least his eyes moved a bit. From Natasha to the glass and back again.

"Well?" she said, and threw her drink down. "Are you just going to sit there?"

Natasha didn't know what in the hell was going on when Loki groaned, lay down on the floor and kept his mouth shut. In fact, the whole thing was a little unnerving. She leaned over, half expected him to jump up and grab her by the throat, flip her over and onto the living room carpet with some threat and another ill-conceived plot to enslave the planet. But he didn't, and when Natasha scooted across the counter top to stare at him, her jaw dropped.

"What in the hell did you do?!"

The god looked exhausted, as though he'd sat fully clothed in a sauna for three weeks, let the heat break him down. The assassin supposed that that was as good a guess as any, all things considered, and had a sneaking suspicion that, though she had asked, Loki wasn't going to tell her a fucking thing. She grimaced, dropped to the floor and muttered to herself about how goddamn stupid men were, that he looked as though he'd walked into a bloody bar fight and had his ass thrown out the door by someone like Bruce. Natasha snickered to herself, remembering how pathetic he'd looked once the Hulk had knocked him down a few pegs. And Tony had been more than happy to clock him right between the eyes when he'd had the nerve to take the billionaire upon his offer for liquor.

The second she grabbed his sleeve, Natasha felt her bones freeze beneath her skin. Her eyes went wide, and it all came back again. In the space of less than four years, he'd caused all kinds of hell and misery. This bastard had fucked New York over twice now, and, for all she knew, he'd come back to do it again, make it worse this time.

And that reminded her, the flickering images of Tony dropping out of the sky, Clint falling to the ground and rolling through shards of glass, that she hated him. She'd been waiting for the god to come back so she could hang him.

Natasha made a face, snarled, shoved her hands against his chest though he still hadn't moved. This was his doing, all of it. People in the city were still afraid of the Avengers, hated them, all because he'd developed a hellish complex and decided to wage his war against Thor here in Manhattan. And again, three years prior, with the Frost Giants. He'd killed thousands with those monsters. Natasha remembered staring over Tony's shoulder in shock as the news feed had blared through his phone. She had watched a man's blood drip over the camera lens on the channel seven news, listening to him scream as the Jotunn had torn him quickly apart. And he'd laughed all the while, as though the whole thing were part of some ridiculous show on Comedy Central, as though it were something that the rest of them were to find cute and pleasurable. He'd nearly murdered Jane, her friend, his brother's love. And, though he'd come to back down at the end of it all, destroy the beasts that they knew he hated, that had spawned him, the rest of that hell couldn't be washed away.

There was just too much blood on his hands.

"This is your fault," she hissed, and hoped that he'd struggle. That way, when she hit him, it wouldn't look petty. "You're the reason he went away!"

He was drenched from the rain, Natasha realized, feeling the water steadily soak through her own clothes, as though he'd dropped into the fountain at the local university for a swim.

That jerked a reaction out of him, though it was only with the gentle widening of his eyes, the flint lighting that satisfied flame behind them.

The god shrugged, as though she weighed nothing. "It is?" he said, and the confidence in his voice was startling. "As you mortals are so fond of saying, it takes two to tango, Agent Romanoff." She wanted to slap that damned smile right off his face. "You could have said no, you could have done a hundred other things to drown that appetite. So–"

Natasha frowned, wished she hadn't picked up the pieces of the plate, because she'd like nothing more than to stab him now.

"No! If you didn't keep coming back, he'd still be here!"

"I suppose you're expecting an apology. Again."

The thought hadn't even occurred to her. Natasha sat back, stared as though he really meant it, as though the pompous God of Mischief would suddenly put her at ease with little more than a few words. But he didn't, just looked at her as though she were a naughty little girl who had been caught with her hand in her mother's cookie jar before dinner.

"What purpose does it serve," he said, "to apologize? Suppose you kill a man, as I am sure you've done many times before, discover later that he is not the one you were meant to destroy. Perhaps he has a wife, a child, a boy who will grow up never knowing the love of his father." Natasha wondered if this was some subtle way for Loki to allude to his own daddy issues. "Let's say you find the woman, this grieving widow, and apologize. What does that do? You people like to think that it changes something, that the world goes back to the way it was before because you say you're sorry. What would it change for you? Yes, you can fall quickly asleep at night, rest your weary head and not have your conscience eating away at you in the dark. But what of her? Say she finds it in herself to forgive you. Still, what solace is there in knowing you're sorry, that her husband, the father of her child, is never coming home?"

Natasha's eyes widened as she fell back onto the floor. She could see them all, staring up at her with pleading faces. Recovering children, kids no older than Natasha herself had been when her training had started, that of her slip into masterful deceptions, watching her through the window of a hospital that she, in her haste to destroy her target, had set on fire. And they burned, all the while etching her face into their minds as they died.

What if she had gone in after them, had managed to save but one of them? That little boy or girl, once held in her arms, would never forget her face, never be able to push away the nightmares of their friends being burned alive. And it wouldn't have mattered worth a damn if Natasha had told them that she was sorry. There would still be dozens of little graves once the bodies were identified.

"It is my fault," he told her, and Natasha found that she sat against the far wall, Loki on his knees before her as he held fast to her chin. "But why should I apologize? To rest my conscience, to make you feel better? There is no point. It won't bring Barton back."

Natasha scowled, twisted away and hit him, hard, in the jaw. It didn't do anything to make her feel better, and the assassin hated it.

She expected him to hit back, do something stupid and predictable like threatening her or taking her hostage the way he had with Jane. But as her eyes darted up, the woman saw that Loki had that same look on his usually smug face. The very same he'd sported when the Avengers had returned to Stark Tower to collect him.

It didn't matter what he had said. The bastard almost looked like he was sorry.

"What the hell do you want?" she muttered, eyes cast to the floor.

"I can't imagine you'd be willing to listen to me now."

"What do you want?" Natasha repeated. "You didn't come here to socialize. Now, what is it?"

Was that apprehension she saw in his eyes? He looked uncomfortable, and the words that rolled off his tongue made her heart sink.

"They're coming..."