Steve jumped, fingers twitching for a shield that wasn't there as he spun round. Loki had a knife out and was in mid throw before he briefly aborted and flipped the grip, at the sight of the black uniformed lady, her red hair tied in a slightly scruffy bun, crouching what was now before them. She looked at Loki scouring his face for several minutes before answering Steve's call of "What the hell!" which had been rather too loud not to alert anyone in the building.
"Huh," The Black Widow said after a moment, relaxing her posture slightly "Steve Rogers and Loki, never thought I'd see the day. May I?" she gestured to the floor, upon which she was already crouched.
"Uh, yeah, sure, what?" Steve mumbled as she un-perched herself and stuck her legs out properly collapsing on the floor keeping between Steve and Loki, and a fair distance between them too.
"So," Natasha's voice was deliberately light hearted and casual "What have you been up to since I last saw you? Any world domination planned?"
Steve was not sure he liked that she added the second question on. Not that he had any world domination plan, but it showed a certain flippancy, one that he wasn't really keen on showing. But he answered the question: "No, homelessness really, moping about, starving, lots of alley fights, that takes me back, bit of busking more recently, and a little less starving."
Natasha turned to Loki "I promised not to, it's too much work, and same really. Exiled to Misguard, powers stripped and true appearance revealed, starving, homelessness, lost lots of alley fights, and a bit of busking recently."
They both left out their 'Robin Hood' idea of a future lifestyle.
Natasha probably knew anyway.
"An ex-superhero and an ex-supervillain living on the streets of New York, and the two of you end up busking. This is either some trick of the universe, or a Broadway musical, I'm not sure which."
"Huh," Steve smiled slightly, which caused Loki to relax his grip on the knife, and lower it to his side. He could throw it in half a second anyway, but it looked for trusting. "So how've you guys been, in the last five years?"
"Good, good." Natasha added absent mindedly "James is kind of cute, you know."
"I know." Steve muttered, not really intending it to be heard. Natasha definitely heard, even if she didn't show it.
"Anyway, other than that, Tony is still being annoying; he broke up with Pepper actually, twice. Well, I say he broke up with Pepper. She broke up with him, they got back together and then they broke up by 'mutual decision'."
Steve nearly winced. Audible quote marks are rarely good.
"Clint's being a dick, nothing new there; he still falls over himself half the time and then swears at anyone else who saw. Admittedly he's worse than usual lately because we found out that Coulson's alive."
"Ah" Steve interrupted "I'd found that out on my own. Were the two of them close?"
"Coulson was Clint's SO for several years, so reasonably, yes." Natasha replied watching Loki's reaction out of the corner of her eye.
"Coulson?" Loki eventually asked, "The name rings a bell, but I can't put my finger on it."
"He's the guy that shot you with the big gun on your invasion trip." Steve explained, as casually as he dared. Sure Natasha was technically one of the 'good guys' but even when on the same team he'd never been quite sure she wouldn't shoot him in the back there and then if someone asked her to. Well, before his last mission anyway.
"Ah," Loki placed the figure "A formidable warrior, I'm glad he has the opportunity to have further battles, or whatever the customary phrase is."
That was as fake as Steve had ever heard Loki, and this was Natasha, who'd figured him out the first time around in about five minutes. They both knew Loki was bluffing, the only thing was, would they call him out on it?
Apparently not, as the moment passed.
"Thor?" Loki asked after a moment "How is my asshole older brother doing?"
"Absentina." Natasha said "He's either on Asgard or with Jane in London a large portion of the time, even though her intern is here. Darcy walked in on one of Jane's Skype chats to Tony and as soon as Clint could try and prevent it she had rooms here at the tower. Technically so does Jane actually. You'll have heard the rest of the Avengers news on the news I suppose."
"Not really." Loki snapped "When you've got no money except from what you can basically beg, one of you is blue, and both are homeless, you don't tend to spend money on newspapers or something to access the web."
Something passed over Natasha's face.
"We've only just got this place waterproof and we're having to move on due to the actual owners coming back." Steve explained more civilly.
"Oh I wouldn't worry about him for very long." Natasha smiled predatorily "But I know somewhere you can stay in the meantime." She flipped herself upright. "Come on, it's an ex-safe house, but it should be fine from Hammer and the like."
"Uh, Natasha?" Steve called after her as she left the room, he rushed after her to find her paused on the metal beam.
"Yeah,"
"Who else knows?"
Loki appeared behind Steve, handing him a small bag, which Steve slung over his back. They'd picked up a few things in the few weeks they'd been allies.
"That you two are holed up here, no-one else at my end yet, unless Stark's more observant than he's let on. About the ex-safe house, me, Clint, Bruce, and Stark, which is why it's an ex-safe house." She resumed walking down the metal bar, then summersaulted to the ground. "SHIELD doesn't know, if that's what you're worried about. The Avengers aren't particularly fond of SHIELD at the moment."
"Yeah," Steve muttered knowing full well both other parties could hear him "but you don't like SHIELD to the extent Tony never liked SHIELD, which is nothing to the extent that I don't like SHIELD."
"Want to bet." Natasha muttered at a volume which Steve probably wasn't meant to hear.
"Do you trust her?" Loki stopped Steve just as he was about to follow her down the beam. Steve paused for a moment.
"Have you got your knives?" Steve asked him after a moment. Loki nodded "Good, we can probably handle an ambush unless it's the Avengers. And I doubt that they're that subtle."
Natasha smiled slightly, in anyone else the equivalent of a full bodied laugh. Steve guessed the idea of the Hulk being able to carry out a stealth attack was quite amusing. Either that or the sight of him walking down the steel beam was. Steve reached near the end, and, as an act of defiance, summersaulted off in the same manner as Natasha had a few minutes before. Loki followed suit, although less defiant, and more compliant to the trend. Steve wondered if this had been how things were is Asgard.
"You don't have much stuff," Natasha observed skimming her eyes over the warehouse, and the small bag on Steve's back. Not that she, probably, hadn't already cased the place several times already. Steve was tired of people pretending that they hadn't done something, or that they didn't mind something when they did. He could be careful, he could be sneaky, but for god's sake he was a soldier or some guy from Brooklynn. He was not built for this.
"Yes well, we've only not had a chance to steal much stuff." Steve cut through the bullshit.
"Steve Rogers, where did your morals go?" Natasha was surprised, but not, at the same time.
"They're on loan to me." Loki snarked.
There was a slight muscle movement in Natasha's forehead, which would probably have been a smile on anyone else. "As long as they stay loaned while I'm here. The house is furnished basically, well it was last time I saw it, Tony's used since then, so it could have an exploded cooker or have received full Stark treatment."
So Tony hadn't changed then, Steve thought to himself. He was clearly still loud, brilliant, and prone to blowing everything (including himself) up. That was nice to know, he wondered about asking after the bots, but that seemed a bit much. Steve didn't want to offend Loki by asking too much into his old life. Any 'kindness' on Natasha's part would be temporary. The arrangement with Loki was also temporary. But the former was like a chocolate bar: sweet but ultimately empty and gone in ten minutes. The later was more like a roommate from the orphanage: an absolute pain, but with distinct benefits, and probably lasts about a year.
Natasha noted Loki's reactions to the term 'Stark Treatment' with interest, mainly his lack of reaction or indeed any confusion. "So, are you two friends now?" she began in her 'fake gossip' voice.
Steve didn't know quite how to answer.
Loki didn't quite either.
"I guess, sort of, Steve's the closest I've had to one I think. Certainly since Lorelai, and we parted paths about six hundred years ago."
"Hmmm" Natasha commented, or rather didn't.
"Six hundred years ago, so you'd have been three hundred, so three hundred divided by five thousand is 3/50, multiply that by a hundred, so you were roughly six?!"
"Perhaps slightly older, maybe seven or eight. As I said before, age is not directly transferable."
"Hmmm" Natasha was being even more coherent than Steve remembered her today. They'd left the warehouse behind by a few blocks by now, and were getting the usual looks of bafflement over Loki's form. It wasn't his fault he was blue. Well, it kind of was, but, details.
Natasha turned a few more corners, before heading down into a subway station.
"Er, Natasha," Steve called causing her to turn around with a 'what' look on her face. "Cameras, we're trying to stay," Steve thought for thirty seconds and rephrased that sentence "we're trying to lie low."
"You shouldn't go robbing department stores then." She retorted, which cleared up any suspicions Steve had on that front. He didn't move, and nor did Loki.
"Fine, this is going to take ages without taking the train though. It's not like SHIELD hasn't already got you on surveillance footage, you're welcome by the way. And it usually takes them ages to shift through the footage."
"Blue." Loki pointed out, "Also, a little taller than your average human. Although, somewhat shorter than your average frost giant."
"Fair enough," Natasha considered, she could wipe already damaged records from the databanks, but she couldn't wipe it from peoples memory. "You two better keep up."
"I think there's a fair chance we're faster than you." Loki pointed out "Given, Supersoldier and very experienced foot hunter."
"On your left." Steve muttered under his breath, giving a small, weak, sad, smile. He missed Sam, no idea where he'd gotten to.
Natasha raised an eyebrow, but set off at a fast pace across the city, across the park to quite a different district. The apartment block that she approached was not going to win any awards for being the nicest thing in New York City, but it wasn't going to be knocked down any time soon either. Steve guessed that it was a rather dilapidated building from just before the stock market crash, but it was difficult to tell from the outside.
Natasha keyed in a very long code for the door (252 259 433 690) and opened it revealing an equally dilapidated floor with mats covering whatever the original flooring was, probably concrete.
They passed the solid, plain, boring, walls and Natasha approached a door, opening the hatch to put a key in. "I have spares. And I'll enter you in the system."
With that she opened the door and led them down a narrow flight of stairs into the apartment below.
