Remembrance of Things Past
A Sequel to "The Animal Inside" and "The Dog Days are Over"
Part Four: A Shadow and a Splendor
The sun shines on Venice the next morning. Natasha stands in a corner of St. Mark's Square and waits for Loki. The previous night, after his farewell, she had made her way to the American Consulate; neither the gear nor the clothes she had found waiting for her were hers, understandable given the short time between her request and their arrival, but the guns were the same model as her own and the clothes were her size and style so she didn't mind. There was also a cashmere scarf similar to her mother's in the mix, and she knows Clint must have added this, his version of an apology.
Natasha wears the scarf now with her boots and jeans, her guns and jacket. She cares for Clint, as much as she can; he is her friend, her brother, her partner, and her savior. The prospect of him seeking a relationship with her terrifies her though; he is too important to risk on something so tenuous as romantic love.
Loki enters the Square and sees her when she sees him. He wears another suit, navy this time with a grey shirt and a long patterned scarf around his neck; he again grasps his makila in his hands. As he ambles toward her, she moves to meet him. In the middle, he tips his head down toward her in greeting and says, "Pleasant dreams, I hope?"
She flashes a tight grin. "They were fine," she lies. "You?"
He smirks and lies as well. "The most pleasant sort," he says and then he points with the makila toward the Doge's Palace. "Given both of our royal lineages," he says, "I thought the Palace would serve as an appropriate background for our continued explorations of self."
"It was never proven that I was descended from the royal family," she says.
He raises a brow. "If there is something that I know, Natasha, it is royalty, being the son of kings. You are royalty." He holds her gaze for a moment and then starts toward the entrance to the Palace.
Drawing in a deep breath, Natasha follows.
The opulence of the Doge's Palace surprises her. Gilt carvings and paintings cover every surface of the vast rooms; the wealth and power in the grandeur of the architecture, in the strength of the gleaming wood and the immensity of the size, nearly overwhelm her.
In one of the rooms, she forgets which they are so numerous, Natasha finds Loki regarding the carved and painted ceiling. The reflected light shines golden on the room and on him. She wonders how he ever successfully lied or deceived, his eyes convey so much. His gaze now is elegiac, a smooth sky covering a seething sea of rage and regret.
"Is this like Asgard?" she asks.
He is silent and then his eyes cut toward her and away. "It is but a shadow," he says and he turns to leave the room.
Further on in the maze, the splendor of the Palace gives way to the armory and to room after room of weapons. Glass cases house innumerable swords and knives, followed by spears and staves. She sees shields and armor amongst bows and arrows that she knows Clint would covet if he were here, and then guns. In geometric displays, ancient pistols line the walls, enclosed by rows of rifles and gleaming bayonets. In one corner, she finds a precursor to a machine gun, eight rifle barrels arranged in a circle around a wooden shaft that narrows to a complicated firing mechanism.
In the reflection in the glass, she sees Loki approach, and she says, "They had rooms like this. At the Academy. That's where I grew up after my mother died. They… acquired me from the orphanage when I was four." She looks again at the pistols on display. "They first taught me how to shoot when I was six."
She remembers the first time, the gun almost too heavy to lift. The recoil had knocked her off her feet, and she missed the paper target. The Madam in charge of the young girls had picked her back up, set the gun back in her hands, and instructed her to try again. She stood beside Natasha and waited, and Natasha remembers fear choking her at the look on the Madam's face.
She didn't miss the second time.
She meets his eyes reflected in the glass. "I was twelve the first time I killed a man," she says. She remembers his face, a young boy, not much older than she. He appears in her dreams nearly as often as the Hulk. She hesitates and then says, "It wasn't self-defense."
"All actions are self-defense," he counters. "In their own way."
"No," she says, and she feels the shadow of her past descend upon her. "Some of them… Some of them were games."
Bile rises in her throat at the memories. In the past, Clint had said that the fault is not hers, that those at the Red Room had brainwashed her from her early youth and that they are responsible for the actions of her past. But she knows the truth, and when she looks at Loki in the glass, she sees that he does as well, his own past stained with blood.
The interrogation rooms and prison cells follow the armory. Natasha finds no trace of the earlier magnificence of the Palace; she only sees cold concrete walls and steel bars. A chill passes over her here in the dank stone dungeons.
"Were you ever incarcerated?" he asks. He stares into one of the cells, makila gripped tightly in his hands.
She feels another shiver pass over her, but not from the cold. "Not traditionally," she says.
He turns to her and waits.
Natasha moves away, deeper into the cell. She never wanted to talk about this, to think about this again. Does Odin know the cost of his request? Does he care? She looks at Loki. His eyes show only curiosity; she refuses to acknowledge any concern.
Looking away, she says, "About six months after Agent Barton helped me, S.H.I.E.L.D. sent me on my first mission with him. To Estonia. They thought… they thought that I could help since it was so close to Russia. But two days into the mission, I was taken by agents from the Red Room. Retribution for my defection. They had me a week before Clint helped me escape."
She still has scars from that time, smooth lines on the soles of her feet, a scattering of circles on her back.
"What about you?" she asks. "What is prison like on Asgard?"
He shrugs and regards the cell before them. "Confining," he says. She remembers the shackles binding his hands and the steel guard encasing his mouth and chin, all that he wore for his return to Asgard.
"However," he continues, "it is preferable to the Void."
"The Void?"
"The place where I fell." His eyes go distant. She sees the passage and weight of time in his eyes. "I could no longer remain on Asgard. Not after—" He stops, remembering. "Not after what happened," he continues. "But I could find no asylum in Jotunheim either. There was no where, so I fell and the Void embraced me." He pauses and then says, "I believe Midgardian mythology refers to the region as Hell."
Hell is a Void; Hell is a Red Room. Hell is a place with no exit.
"It was there I encountered Thanos," he says.
"Thanos?"
"Warlord of the Chitauri. He offered me release from my desolation, for a price of course."
She regards him for a moment and then says, "The Tesseract."
Loki nods. He surveys the cell once more, his eyes dark. She knows of desperate choices and the consequences that one must endure as a result. "What will happen now?" she asks. "Now that Thanos knows you've failed?"
A shadow crosses Loki's face. "Something far worse than Hell," he murmurs, sending another shiver down her spine.
A few halls later, they are on the Bridge of Sighs, the final passage for the Venetian condemned. Through gaps in the limestone walls, Natasha sees sunlight gleaming on the water in the canal. She breathes in the fresh air and places a hand on the cool stone, trying to steady herself, to gather the parts of her life that she scattered throughout the Palace, that she laid bare for Loki to see.
She remembers his words on the Carrier, before she learned the truth of his plan. Your ledger is dripping, it's gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?
He referred to Clint then, but she thinks of Loki now. She glances over at him, but he faces away from her, staring out the other side of the Bridge, lost in his own thoughts of his life, his past.
So it is she who first sees the man at the end of the Bridge. He wears a fitted black suit; scars mar his handsome, arrogant face.
Natasha eases a hand behind her back to rest on the butt of one gun.
The man is Victor von Doom.