The Avenging of Natalie Laufeyson Chapter 10: Paper Crown, an avengers fanfic

I stared into the fire that was crackling in my fireplace, occasionally spitting sparks into the air, which floated upwards. I watched the flames weave in and out of themselves, dancing and laughing and playing and kissing each other, ignorant to the destruction they were causing, to the corpse of the blackwood tree that they were burning the last dregs of life out of. It was a dark musing that kept my eyes on those shimmering flames, and yet, I could not turn my head away from them.

Fiely had confessed everything: how she had never met Puck a day in her life before he arrived, quite suddenly, in her house. Before he offered her a proposal. Before he claimed to know the whereabouts of her son, who had been missing for years, and gave her the proof that he was still alive. How she had gone along with his plan until the day that we, the Shadowslayers, took notice of him, and how Puck had given her the location of her son the day he had been freed. How he had spent all those months in willing chains and eager servitude.

She did not ask for much for this confession; only begged mercy for her own part in this treason. Half of me felt disinclined to give it; the half that was still holding on to the hate. (It hadn't helped things when she had tried to give back the gold that we had used to buy Puck off of her hands; it had only reminded me how casual she had been, how it was so 'normal' to pay money for a person, for a person's life.) But the other half realized the truth; that, if there was any 'master' among Fiely and Puck, it certainly wasn't the giantess who had started to sob in front of me. I told her to keep the money (I couldn't have touched it anyway) and to go, warning her not to tell anyone of what had happened. That we wanted to investigate further, and discovering Puck's plans- and any cohorts that he may have- would be impossible if he was warned in advance. She had blubbered out her thanks, and I had stayed with her until she had recovered enough to look mostly respectable as she left the palace. I joked and laughed a little with her, tried to make her feel better. For some reason, in those moments, I felt very much like the therapist I'd always wanted to be; still healing people, even now. Even when I was breaking.

The flames sent up more sparks, orange-glow fireflies that died out as they drifted downwards again only to be revitalized as they rejoined the fire once again. I'd asked Steprin to send a scout to keep an eye on Fiely, just for a few days; and Sile had taken up the call, tailing her silently, giving me a smile as he went.

Jekyll nosed my hand, and I stroked his head absently. Hyde, on my lap, batted him reflexively with sheathed claws.

It didn't have to be true. There was still the possibility that Fiely was lying, or that there was something else that was in play here. A slim chance, but a chance.

I didn't know how I feltabout the whole thing. Angry? Quite possibly. Hulk-style mad, even. Worried? Probably. Suspicious? Definitely. Hurt? Hell yes. Betrayed? Like you wouldn't believe.

Numb?

I only wished.

But above that, above all of these simple emotions, these one-word feelings, there was something else, something stronger. A desire, deep-rooted and desperate, a hopelessly insatiable craving, for something… good. Something that was just… right. Something that had no lies and no deceit, something that would never betray me, something that was actually going right in my life when everything else seemed wrong, wrong, wrong.

Loki walked through the door.

When he had learned of Fiely's confession, watched it in my head, he'd almost blown off his duties for the rest of the day. Had almost confronted Puck immediately. He, too, was feeling the desperate betrayal, much more fiercely than we'd thought he would. Puck had wound his way into our lives, had gotten deep under our skin. My heart stuttered as Loki stalked across the room, eyes locked on me, paying attention to nothing else. I stood as he opened his arms and pulled me into them, wrapping them tightly around me and holding me against him. We stood there for a long moment, unmoving, and when Loki finally loosened his hold on me, I could only pull back about an inch. His serious gaze scanned me as he ran the backs of his fingers across my cheek and inquired, "Are you all right?"

"Are you?" I asked in return. The words came out in a croak.

Loki almost blew the question off; before he realized something very important. Something devastating. And through that devastation, the wreckage inside of both of us, he found himself smiling. Found himself laughing, just a little. "No," he admitted. It was a strangely weak, weary little noise. "No, I'm not."

And I smiled a bleeding smile in return, then rested my forehead against his chest.

We didn't speak again for the rest of that night. We only thought, over and over, of a single, powerful truth.

Loki and I were Avengers. We had survived powerful enemies: Loki had survived me, and I had survived him. Together, we had survived Fraye. We had both even, to a degree, survived the Avengers themselves. We survived so many things and, in the end, at least one of us was usually all right enough to pull us both through to the light at the end of the tunnel. And through the duties of the crown and the insanity of college, through family and normal life, we had somehow missed the one thing that we could not get through.

Through all of this, one half-breed had managed to destroy us both, at the same time. And we had no idea how.

Loki and I both took the next day off. He still attended to major issues, emergencies and all, but there hadn't been many of those- we hadn't had one of those circles in ages, either, which was good- and so, for now, the two of us remained together. We read books together, played chess, talked a bit about maybe going down to Earth and doing something there, or taking a walk into the Jotun city. But all of it was just that: talk. We didn't want to be seen at this moment; or to see anyone else, for that matter.

We talked about Puck a number of times before I finally closed the matter by calling the half-breed a few choice names and suggesting something certainly less-than-ladylike. Loki didn't bring the subject up again; mostly because neither of us could stand the taste of those words on my tongue when I was speaking about Puck. They didn't feel right. In fact, they felt awful. Like I was a horrible person or even suggesting such things about him.

So we stopped talking about him. Then we stopped talking altogether. I started to draw and Loki started some more King work. When I started to cry- without tears, as always- Loki didn't say anything. When it got worse, he sat down next to me and still didn't say anything. We took it slow that day, mostly for my sake, but also because we didn't know what else to do. It was hurting in the most unbearable, strangest way possible and we hated it. We didn't understand it and we hated it. But neither of us dared to confront Puck on it; because what if Fiely had been right? What if he really was a traitor? Right now, we had the hope that Puck had a reasonable explanation. We couldn't lose that hope. We couldn't.

But, the next day, we had no choice.

Getting ready the next morning was a grim affair. Loki and I were both entirely silent. I knew my duties, knew what I had to do, but I was far from looking forward to it.

Once I had finished getting dressed, brushing my teeth and combing back my hair, tying it behind my head, I gave Loki a swift, but somewhat unfeeling peck on the cheek, then left the room.

I kept my hands stuffed in my pockets as I searched out the palace for the half-breed apprentice. It wasn't hard to find him; he was precisely where I'd expected him to be, waiting in his room for one of us to retrieve him. We usually did, almost every morning, so that we could resume with his magic studies.

He opened the door when I knocked, smiling at me hugely, completely oblivious to the tumultuous thoughts in my mind. "Lady Frost!" he said brightly, with a swift half-bow and an enormous smile. A lump swelled up in my throat. He always called me that, so rarely called me 'Lady Shadowslayer', because he thought it caused me pain, to hear a reminder of my murderous act, a reminder of the woman I was forced to kill. It was just another one of those little things he did, one of those little things that made him my friend.

My heart gave an unfortunate little twist, and I swallowed hard against the lump that was still growing bigger in my throat. "Hey, Puck."

"The king is busy again, I take it," he said, cheerfully enough.

"Aye," I answered, though it was a lie. Loki did have a number of things to take care of, throne-wise, but he could have very easily had Puck tag along today, if he wished. But that wasn't the plan.

I turned away. "Get your bow," I ordered. "We're leaving the city."

His eyebrow went up, but he obeyed swiftly, and somewhat eagerly. It wasn't altogether uncommon for us to leave the city when he was practicing a bit of the trickier, more unstable magic; the kind that might cause damage if he lost control of it.

We walked in silence. Puck seemed to sense that something was wrong, but he let me keep this silence all the way out of the palace gates, all the way through the city itself and all of the way out of its walls. He let me stay in the solemn quiet all the way into the vast, empty expanse of snow beyond, the snow between our city and the next one, the barren wasteland of white. But he kept up his chipper demeanor, turning to me as I finally halted and grinning, like an excited puppy. It was such an innocent smile.

Fraye had an innocent smile, too.

"So what are we doing today?" he asked, with clear and obvious excitement. Every so often, he did become curious- or even eager- about his magical studies. He did enjoy learning as the king's apprentice. Or so I had thought. But he must have been a far more accomplished mage than he had let on, to make me trust him so completely. To make sure that I was trusting him even now.

I looked deep into his ruby eyes, trying to find the guile there, trying to find the lies. I couldn't see them. I couldn't see anything but a simple desire for knowledge, for friendship.

Maybe that was why I couldn't stop myself from blurting out the words, "Why did you lie to us?"

Loki flinched. I even flinched. But Puck just stared at me, startled and confused. "Excuse me?"

"I said, Why did you lie to us?" My voice was a little more desperate now, as I stepped towards him. "Why, Puck? What are you hiding from me?"

His eyes grew round. Partially in shock, yes, it was true. But there was a great deal of horror in his eyes as well, a look of pure guilt. He swallowed, hard, and said, "I don't know what you're talking about, m'lady-"

"Don't m'lady me!" I shrieked, throwing out a hand, cutting him off. "I know! I know everything! Fiely told me everything!"

I had meant to play it cool. To question him quietly, to interrogate him without any of my own emotion coming into play. But I wanted so desperately for there to be an explanation. Wanted so desperately for him to tell me that there was a reason, a good reason, that he had done all these things. That he hadn't really kidnapped that giantess' son and that he was really a good kid and, I dunno, maybe falling into our lives was just a happy accident…

I wanted to give him a chance to explain himself. So I blurted it out. I told him everything that Fiely had said, every last word that she had told me, I let it all pour out of me in an unending string of desperation. And as I spoke, his eyes grew wider and as I finished at last, the horror was absolute on his face. He was utterly shaking, his fingers trembling.

"This… This can't be…" He breathed. There was true terror in his voice. "This… This can't be, you weren't supposed to… you can't have… how can you have… you weren't supposed to find out!" he wailed.

My heart plunged to the tips of my toes.

"So it's true?" I rasped through numb lips.

"No!" He shouted. "No, Natalie, I wasn't… I mean, I was never going to…" His fingers started to shake faster. His entire body was quivering. "I never hurt anyone!" he shouted at last, still trying to find his words, find his own explanation. "And I would never mean to hurt you, Natalie, I wouldn't, but… you were never supposed to… we're all…" His eyes were welling up. I could see the tears shining inside of them, unshed but waiting, threatening to be. "We're all dead." He managed to whisper.

My own eyes widened a little. My hand immediately fell to my knife as my skin began to glow. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean, half-breed?" I snarled out his species as though it were a curse. Was I reduced to that? Had he reduced me into something that could hate someone else so mindlessly?

Puck's hands were shaking faster. Oddly fast, now, unnaturally so. His fingers were almost seeming to blur. "It's not a threat!" he pleaded, still panicked, running his hands through his hair and looking scared, so very, very scared… some instinctual part of me still begged me to go forwards and hold him, to comfort him, to banish the nightmares of the dark. I pushed it down and locked it away inside of me. It was a lie. It was a lie that Puck had instilled inside of my very heart and blood and bones.

"It's not a threat!" He repeated. "But you weren't… you weren't supposed to find out, not like this, you can't have found out like this! And if you did… if you did, then…" his hands were shaking even faster. "Then we're all dead, Natalie, don't you see, I messed it all up, it's over now! It's over for all of us!" His entire body was shaking now, in that unnatural way, vibrating, so that his features became blurred and indistinct. Little hints of light began to dance around his skin, and little skitters of darkness. To look at it, to see it… I felt something in my gut, some terrible animal instinct that told me to run. Don't fight, don't attempt to hide, just run. Run as far as you can and never look back because this… this was wrong. It was unnatural. It did not exist, not in my world or any other, not in the nature of the entire universe itself could it ever, ever exist. The hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end as the air became dry, filled with static. It was as though a storm was brewing, sweeping in, but the skies were unchanged. It was only the air around me that was toxic, tugging at my skin and making me feel nauseous. I had to look away from him before I threw up.

"Puck…" I said, and for some reason, I was scared. It wasn't like when I was back in the chair with Fraye; that was another kind of terror altogether. A lesser kind of terror. Fraye had never frightened me, not this badly, had never taught me fear of this kind. Fraye had only ever made me fear for my life, fear the pain that I would feel. This, looking at Puck… it made me fear for my existence. For the existence of all things. "What… what's happening to you?" I asked, my voice little less than a squeak.

Puck looked down at his hands. I looked up to him, briefly, then turned away as waves of nausea and vertigo swept over me. He was shaking faster now, so that it was not only his own features that were blurred, but the air around him as well. His voice sounded like a person speaking into a fan; metallic, robotic, yet shaky and indistinct.

"No," he pleaded. "No, please, not again… not now…"

And then he turned and ran.

I could not go after him. I had no desire to. I fell to one knee in the snow, barely holding myself upright, blinking spots out of my eyes as the world began to spin around in my vision. I peered up at the half-breed as he ran, as he kept running… but it was too much. I collapsed on all fours and heaved, throwing up into the snow. My stomach roiled and my head ached and there was no way to describe the pain inside of me; it wasn't a pinch or a stab, not burning or freezing, not blunt or sharp but just agonizing. And wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, on so many levels, a terrible thing in the very core of my being. I couldn't even scream. I could do nothing.

I could only stay, crouched there, as I heard the explosion.

When I say 'explosion', I don't mean the sound of crumbling buildings, or crackling flames. I don't mean the echoing boom that accompanied all such noises. In fact, I don't even mean that I heard the thing. I felt it. It was under my skin, forcing its way in my mouth and nose, a pressure in my ears and eyeballs, behind my temples, an implosion and explosion all at once, supernova and black hole, consuming each other. A sickening shockwave washed over me as I sat there, trembling and weak and suddenly very, very aware that there were powers in this universe, dangerous and disturbing powers, that were far greater than even I had ever known. But worse than that, I knew that there were powers even beyond this universe (for this was too sickeningly wrong to belong to ours) that were much, much worse.

I stayed there for a long time, helpless, frail, and weak. The non-explosion, non-implosion had sapped all of the strength from my body, left my bones brittle and my muscles too heavy for them to hold up. I collapsed, folding in on myself, a house of cards falling over and burying itself in the snow.

Time lost its meaning. I could have been lying there for seconds or decades, and I wouldn't have known the difference. But I laid there in the silence and the cold until my bones rebuilt, until the vibrating inside of me stopped, until my strength returned to me. I realized, only then, that my force field had flared; and it chilled me to recognize that, even with it, even with the thing that had once deemed me 'indestructible', I had still felt every second of that shockwave; and I hadn't even been involved in the central blast.

I tried not to tremble as I stumbled forwards, step by weary, faltering step. I staggered towards Puck, who had managed to get a fair distance away from me before he had… well, whatever he had done.

Time still meant nothing. It felt like hours before I reached the half-breed, though it must have been mere minutes. He was pulling himself upright, looking groggy and weak and sick, but no longer shaking, no longer trembling.

It was only as he pulled himself up into a sitting position that I realized what had happened to the land around him. My heart froze in my chest, and the world turned to stone around me.

Ringing around Puck, with him as its epicenter, was a perfect, flawless circle. And inside of that circle, everything- from the snow and the ice on top of the surface to the stone about a foot underneath- had vanished.

The Human/Jotun half-breed stared up at me with the terrified eyes of a child, sitting amidst his circle of devastation.

"Humans," The White Specter sighed, very quietly, as she stared at the stars, watching over her brother's shoulder as he separated one dream from the rest. She watched the terror in the half-breed's eyes as he looked at his trembling hands. As he claimed that everyone was dead. "I do not understand why you believe them to be such wonderful creatures. They are all either inherently evil or foolish; and I'm not certain which is the more devastating to their surroundings." She straightened, white light spilling around her, cloaking her, hiding her every feature and defining trait from sight. "After all, she hardly needed to lie to the boy."

The Gray Man smirked. "Oh, be fair, sister," he responded lightly. "She was not aware of what her lies could and could not do."

The White Specter said nothing. The Gray Man chuckled and leaned back on his hands.

"Besides. Everything is according to plan. So why would you worry?" his eyes gleamed. "She already defied our plans once before. Surely you do not wish for her to do so again."

For a moment, eyes shone from the center of the flowing, ethereal light that formed the White Specter, eyes that were brighter, full of more light, than the rest of her. They flashed and gleamed with a terrible, terrible hate. But then they vanished, disappearing in an instant and a blink, and her voice was quite cool as she responded, "She defied nothing. Unexpected does not mean unplanned."

And then, without another word, she turned and breezed away. The Gray Man chuckled to himself.

"But you know you didn't plan for her to do as she's done, dear sister," he taunted, and though she was far out of earshot, he knew that she had heard. But she would not respond. She would say not a word.

A darkness grew beside the Gray Man, a shadow, sliding into place. He beamed at it. "Ah, brother! Here to tell me that I am wrong? That I should not taunt my sister so?"

The shadow did not answer. Growing, shifting, changing, until it emerged in the form of a cloaked man, it slid closer to the Gray Man.

"It happens so very little, dear brother," the Gray Man added musingly. "I believe every few millennia or so, I am allowed to gloat."

The dark, tattered shadow of a figure whispered. Its voice was as soft as death, ending with a slight edge, like the sound of steel being sharpened, before trailing off into oblivion. "The girl was not unaccounted for."

The Gray Man threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, dear me, dear me oh my, we have become so very arrogant, have we not?"

The cloaked figure, the Black Whisper, did not answer him. The Gray Man laughed again. "Oh, I must admit, my family, you do disgust me so!" he cried jovially, wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his grey eyes. "You detest the surprise she gave you and claim it does not exist. But I know you, and your hypocrisy." He winked at his brother. "I have seen the hate inside of you, dear brother, dear sister. And I really must ask…" his eyes danced. "Where is the fun in your lives, if the universe can no longer surprise you?"

Sigil was of half a mind to dissect Puck. I was of half a mind to let him. If it weren't for the keening agony that went through me every time I even thought about Puck dying, I probably would've locked the kid in a room with the twins and seen what happened.

The discovery that Puck was the one behind the recent appearances of these 'circles' had forced my hand. No matter how badly I wanted to listen to some sort of explanation, these things were a threat; and thus, so was Puck himself. So Loki had thrown him in a prison cell- one of the most secure ones we had- and informed the mages of this recent development.

The rest of the public, however, was kept in the dark. We announced that we had found the source of the threat, and that we were doing 'everything in our power to contain it', but we did not say what, precisely its origin was. That part, we kept to ourselves.

Still, it was driving Sigil and Avalon mad. They had both quickly developed a strong loathing for the half-breed, completely mystified at how he could have possibly created such a powerful magic, how he could have possibly known something that they did not. There was a mage or two who suggested the theory that it was because of his human nature that he was capable of such magic; but that, of course, immediately called for a ban on all other half-breeds; and it was pointed out to these mages, in no uncertain terms, by their companions, that a certain royal bloodline could very well include the introduction of half-breeds at some point in the future.

Even knowing that this topic was being discussed, I somehow couldn't even find it in me to blush, to feel embarrassed. Let them talk.

Puck, on the other hand… well, his reaction to his own imprisonment was, perhaps, the most curious of them all.

For the first hour or so, the boy babbled incessantly. Through his frenetic pacing and crazed strikes against the magically-reinforced ice walls, through his nearly incomprehensible blather, the same few phrases kept popping up: 'Everything I've worked for', 'One mistake', 'all my fault', and, 'It's all over.'

During this time, he was jumpy and skittish, and I couldn't get a word out of him. No one could; they could only watch as he jumped at every sound, laughed when we inquired something, and gave a look so scarily detached that even I found myself backing away.

"Don't you get it?" He asked, after a third attempt at interrogation. "It doesn't matter anymore. I failed. And any second now… we're all gonna die."

He was left alone for a while following that. 'Any second now' turned into a few hours; and in that time, Puck seemed to regain his serenity (and also his sanity). After a while, the twitching stopped. The jittering movements ceased and his frightened, nervous pacing ground to a halt. It took a while, but eventually, he seemed to realize that the world hadn't ended. And so, instead of worrying, he fell into a curious silence, sitting in the middle of the floor like Loki used to do, keeping his eyes closed and his thoughts focused inwards, as though puzzling out why Ragnarok had not come following his supposedly world-shattering mistake.

But, by that point, I found that I couldn't speak to him. I couldn't even look at him. But still, even now… I was more disappointed than I was angry. More hurt than I was furious.

How had he tainted me this way?

Puck stopped answering questions; mine or Loki's or anyone else's. Not that I was anywhere near enough to hear them if he did. I relayed any questions I might have to a person who could ask them for me in my stead. But if Puck recognized that they were mine, he still said nothing. Indeed, the queries seemed to be nothing more than a hindrance to the half-breed, who spent the rest of the- considerably long- day in absolute silence, still sitting in the middle of the floor, still thinking. The one time he did speak, I was told, it was nothing more than a mutter, spoken to himself rather than anyone else. (He was, in fact, ignoring everyone in the room.) And all he said was this: "So she was lying. How many more times is that going to happen?"

But as for what that meant, I had no idea.

Loki and I spoke about the situation at length that night, but we came to no new conclusions; and really, what conclusion could we come to? Puck was the one who had been creating those circles, in and outside of the palace. As far as we knew, no one had been hurt, and Puck didn't seem to have created them intentionally. He was in hold of a power that he could not control and we did not know what it was. Other than that, we were exhausted, and really, what else was there to talk about? What else could we say?

This pattern continued for three days. On the latter two, Loki sent me to the Tower, to spend time with the Avengers. Natasha kept me distracted by making me work on wedding plans. When that didn't work, she made me help her with hers. And that helped, a little.

But in the end, it couldn't be helped. In the end… I had to see him.

I had to talk to Puck.

Loki let me, if only because he wished for direct eyes on the half-breed as well. Getting everything second-hand from other people was driving us both a little crazy.

Guards accompanied me on either side as I walked down the long hall, past the prisons on either side. Some were occupied. Some were not. Some of the occupants watched me as I passed, and some seemed too beaten down to care about the new visitor.

It was a very different system from the prisons on Asgard. But one thing was the same; there were places where one prison could remain completely and entirely alone, should their captor wish it. Places where the cell was far separate from even the sight of the other prisons.

Places like the cell that Puck was in now.

Down long hallways, past empty and filled cells, tucked away in a far, dark corner, an enormous black door greeted me, cut into the ice and stone. I could feel the shimmering power of the magic that protected this place, even if I could not directly see it, but it gave me no comfort, no sense of security. Whatever Puck had done… whatever power he held… it would tear through these magical bindings like paper. There was nothing that could be done to contain him, nothing whatsoever.

I steeled myself, opening the door and walking inside. As I did, silver bars shot up from the ground, and down from the ceiling, shimmering magical binds that separated me from Puck, cut the room clean in half, so that, even inside of the cell with him, he could not touch me. I knew this was standard protocol when involving someone as powerful and important as myself or my soon-to-be husband, so I didn't mention it. I didn't even react.

I just looked at Puck, who was still seated, as I'd been told, on the floor.

His legs were folded and his hands were loose in his lap, his back completely, rigidly straight and his breathing slow and even. His eyes were closed, and his face was set into an expression of extreme patience. Seeing him like that, I was hit with a powerful sense of déjà vu; the resemblance to Loki in his old prison days was striking, regardless of his different features and height.

I blinked the image away and turned to the guards, who had followed me inside. "Leave us," I ordered.

They obeyed without question. I had wondered if they would become defensive, would protest that they did not wish to leave me alone with a supposedly dangerous criminal… but then, I was the Shadowslayer. If anyone would be safe here, it would obviously be me.

But I knew better. No one was safe around this boy. No one.

On hearing my voice, Puck's eyes flicked open. Vivid red and oh-so-curious, they bored into me with their blank, apathetic inquiry. "Greetings, Lady Frost."

His voice was cool and smooth, like velvet. My name in his voice made the similarities between himself and the Trickster more prevalent than ever. It sent me back in time, back to when I was just a Pizza Girl. Back to when I was whole.

But I wasn't that weak little child any more. And the moment passed quickly. I slouched against the wall. "So what's the story, kid?" I demanded.

He looked at me. For a very long time, he just… looked at me. I couldn't see him trying to calculate the variables, couldn't see him studying me. I couldn't see what was going on in his head, couldn't see past the fathomless depths of his eyes, the deep, indescribable emotion on his features. And I could hear nothing in his voice as he answered me, "A very long tale. One that is impossible to believe."

"Try me."

His lip twitched up at the corner, but otherwise his face remained as empty and unreadable as before. "Even for you, m'lady," he said, and suddenly he was Puck again, not Loki, not the prisoner who knew too much. He was the half-breed who had become my friend, and I was still the twisted, broken, Shadowslayer Child of Frost.

"After the shit I've seen?" I crossed my arm. "I'll believe anything, I guarantee it."

"Ah," he said, very quietly. "You'd believe it, perhaps, if you wanted to believe it. But it is not my place to explain or elaborate on my true nature to you, my lady Frost. I am a mere messenger and guide; I cannot explain the intricate mysteries of the universe to you."

I looked at him; and now, it was my turn to look apathetic. My turn to be unreadable. I took a few, careful, slow steps towards him, crossing the room, until I was directly next to the bars that separated me from him. Crouching down next to him, gripping the silver magic so tightly that my knuckles turned white, I pressed my face to the bars and looked him directly in the ruby eyes.

"I think you'll be surprised at what you can explain," I said, a bleak, frozen whisper of a sound. "If I deemed it necessary to… persuade you."

My hand slid down the bar it clung to, then drifted away, falling to the blade in my belt.

Puck did not seem threatened by the words, or my action. He did not seem frightened or hurt or angry or anything. The only emotion in his eyes now was pity.

"Oh, Natalie," he sighed. "The things you've seen and done… you don't know who you are anymore, do you?" His head tilted to the side. "You're just… drifting." He leaned closer, moved so that his face was but a few inches from mine. "You have all the time in the world to rediscover yourself, though, don't you? All the time in your life. But you have to ask yourself: after everything you've seen, everything you've been through and everything you've done… is one, mortal lifetime going to be enough? Enough to become yourself again? Enough to discover who you are?"

I swallowed. Hard. I shouldn't have let it get to me; he was just spouting off words. He was a prisoner, locked in a cell, and he would say anything. He could say anything.

"You don't know anything about me, Puck," I growled, in a low voice, knowing it was a lie. He knew a great deal about me, as it happened. Because I'd told him. "And you don't have the right to tell me-"

"You see, that's where you're wrong," he said, quite agreeable in his correction of my facts. "I know everything about you, Natalie. I know everything from the day you were born. I know what Loki did to your father and what he did to April, and how you always wished that you could be like her and then wished that you could die like her. How you still keep that pink bracelet in the little box under your bed to remind you of her, and how you would've named your kid after her, if you didn't think that it would destroy Loki. I know that, every so often, you lock yourself in your room, turn the music up as loud as it'll go, and just scream for the hell of it, that you did that even when you were younger, even when you didn't have anything to really scream about. I know what you were thinking for every second that Fraye had you, and I know that, when you first realized what she'd carved into your arm, you laughed. You laughed for a number of minutes before you started to cry. I know exactly what you were feeling when you first saw Loki, when he came back for you. And I know that you're not scared of dying. You're scared of leaving Loki behind."

Throughout this, I remained entirely dumbstruck. Many of these things he knew because I had told him, it was true. But the terrifying part, the part that chilled me to the bone, was that, with most of it, I hadn't. My stomach clenched. No one could read my mind. No one.Even Fraye had only been capable of it because Loki and I hadn't been in full agreement at all times; but now we were, now we were linked even at our core, and now… even now, somehow, Puck had gotten into my head, he'd cracked open my mind and he'd pulled out the dark and the painful thoughts and he was showing them off to me, waving them in front of my face.

A molten anger, the fiery kind that I hadn't felt in a while, the stuff that burned my gut and singed my hair and set my world aflame, started to blaze through me. I stood from my crouch, crying out, my force field bursting out from beneath my skin, and I drove it into the magical silver bars. It took a number of strikes- about four or five- but then they shattered, pieces of silver glass that chimed against the floor. I reached out, gripping Puck by the iron collar that had been clamped around his neck when he had been dragged here, and pulled him up an inch away from my face. Part of me still wanted to destroy my own traitorous hands for hurting the boy, but the other part of me refused to listen. It only held hate.

"Who the hell are you, half-breed?!" I screeched. "Who the helldo you think you are?"

He didn't seem frightened by my reaction. In fact, he seemed almost… amused. His small smile made me tempted to punch him in the mouth and ask the question again once he'd swallowed a few teeth, but I refrained.

"Only fate knows," He said, simply yet cryptically at the same time. "Only fate can ever know."

I looked at him, entirely incredulous. He hesitated, thinking over his own words, then rephrased, "Actually, I believe it would be more accurate to say… that only Fates know."

I stared at him. My eyes bugged. And then I dropped him, pushing him away from myself with the movement. What else could I do? Even filled with as much anger as I was, I couldn't make myself strike him. I couldn't.

"I can help you, Natalie," he said, very quietly. I didn't look at him. I had turned away, walked out of the broken bars and into my half of the cell that we now suddenly seemed to share. "I can save you. I can give you the one thing that you want the most."

"And what's that?" I snarled.

He smiled sadly. "The chance to stay beside him forever. To live forever." His head tilted to the side, his smile growing wider, but still more melancholic. "I'm offering you immortality, Natalie. If you're strong enough to take it."

I looked to him, warily. "And in return, I release you, correct?"

He chuckled, just lightly. "You and I both know that this prison wouldn't hold me for long if I was determined enough. I'm giving you this chance, because I need to give it to you. To set things right."

I scowled at him. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"

He turned away. "You tell me." Carefully, he sat himself down on the floor again, crossing his legs and placing his loose hands back in his lap, closing his eyes. "And, I believe," he added, quietly, "That Fates shall tell you."

I looked at him for a long time. Just… watched him. But his body posture had closed, and his back was turned to me. There would be nothing else that I could get from him today. This cryptic nonsense was all I had; and it was absolutely nothing. Nothing but a hollow promise.

Except…

I turned as well, knocking on the door and being let out by the Jotun sentries that had led me in earlier. They led me out again now, though I moved far ahead of them, my steps fueled with far too much purpose and drive to keep up the slow, leisurely pace that I had set before. I stalked down the halls and moved as quickly as I could, leaving the guards behind at their posts and going to my room, retrieving my cloak and boots so that I could leave the palace.

I walked outside, into the cold and the dark of Jotunheim, stuffing Hyde- who was still fairly small, though getting larger and heavier by the day- into my sweater for warmth. She liked it there, so she did not protest. Then I kept walking, as quickly as I could, through the snow-coated world of Jotunheim, footsteps crunching as the world seemed to melt around me. Step by step, I made my way towards the Mage's Spire.

Once inside, I was escorted by a (somewhat nervous) giantess, who led me into the room where the Twins were working. They were buried deep into the few studies on half-breeds that had ever been conducted, and clearly coming up empty, for there were a few more chunks of wall missing than there were the last time that I had been there.

I sat in front of the table where they sat, greeted them both, unzipped my sweater a little so that my cat could pop her head out enough to breathe freely again, then said, "I need you to tell me absolutely everything that you know about the Fates."

Sigil and Avalon shared a long, weighted look. Sigil sighed, quietly. "A tale the half-breed told?" he guessed. At my curt nod, he sighed again. "It is an old legend, m'lady, told to children at night to help them sleep. Whatever he said to you, whatever he promised … it is not real. The Fates… the Faden… They are… fables. Nothing more."

I gave him a hard look in return. "Fraye was also a legend," I reminded him darkly, holding out my arm and pulling up my sleeve. "Tell me that she wasn't real."

Avalon swallowed, her lips pursing like she'd tasted something sour. Giving me a look of haughty disapproval, she said, "Lady Frost, the half-breed is clearly trying to manipulate you. Whatever he-"

"I am not a child, Avalon," I snarled at her. The words were so powerful that even they, arguably the most powerful mages of Jotunheim, recoiled from my words. "I know full well what Puck is doing. But I will hear the legend and I will know everything about what this boy believes he can offer me." I leaned forwards, eyes gleaming. "Now. Tell me everything."

In truth, I knew quite a great deal about the Faden; or, as they were occasionally known, the Fates. (This title, in fact, was the inspiration behind the Greek myth of the three Fates, who held the threads of life in their hands). They were also intermittently referred to as the 'Fades', or the 'Sentinels of Time', and were said to be the most powerful creatures in the cosmos.

I'd read legends before. I'd been researching a few of the Jotun ones in my spare time, just for fun. So of course I knew of them. But still, it helped to get the story direct from one (or, in this case, two) who had heard it many times in their lives, had heard it since they were children.

The story, (or rather, a paraphrased, simplified version of the story), goes something like this:

Three men were seeking immortality. The first was a young man, who was desperate to prove his worth as a warrior, to do fabulous deeds and marvelous acts of bravery. He believed that the best way to do this would be to become immortal, to live forever (and not just in the sense of immortality that we humans believed that Asgardians or Jotuns had. True immortality; where a person would live for their own definition of forever).

The second man was a warrior already; a legend all of his own, who had done many heroic acts and saved countless lives. He was a hero of his world and country, and believed immortality a just reward for his acts. Believed that he could continue to protect his people and live his life of heroism for the rest of time itself.

The third man was an old, somewhat frail king. Growing sickly, but much beloved by his people, they urged him to seek this chance at living forever, at seizing true immortality, and sent him on the journey to achieve it. On the request of his people, he left a trusted advisor in his stead, then set out in the hope that he could, perhaps, protect his world for a while longer. And, if he was not the best king for his people, then so be it.

The three men, seeing that each of the others were seeking immortality themselves, all set out together, hoping for safety in numbers. It was a long, treacherous journey to the world of the Faden, and a far more dangerous one across the world itself, who's terrain had been known to swallow men whole, infect them with vile plagues, or burn them into ash. It was a hostile place, inhabitable to any but the Fades.

The journey itself was nigh impossible; and the men only survived with the help of their guide, for it is said that only one who has seen the land of the Faden before and lived can ever lead others to this place; and only a man who has seen the Fades themselves.

At last, the three men, having fought many battles against both terrain and creature in their travels, now arrived at the court of the Faden. They were three in number: The Black (Whisper), the White (Specter), and the Gray (Man). The Black and the White, it was said, could see the absolutes of the universe; what would be, what had been, what must be for the rest of time. Only the Gray could see what lay in between, and only he avoided speaking in absolutes; if he spoke at all.

The White Specter stood forwards first, looking over the men in silence. Boldly, the warrior stepped forwards. He boasted of his deeds to the Fates, told them of all he had done and accomplished, and what more he could accomplish if the great prize of immortality were granted to him. Once he had finished making his case, the White Specter turned to her brothers, but did not consult with them. Rather, she turned back to the warrior and said, "You speak truly. Your deeds are already done. And from this day forth there will be no more marvelous deeds from you. Granting you immortality would suit time ill, for the good of your life has already been lived."

The warrior was struck dumb with his shock. The White Specter stepped forwards. "Granting you the rest of your life would also suit this universe ill."

And without another word, she destroyed the man with a burst of brilliant light.

The second man, the would-be warrior, was far more cautious. As the Black Whisper stepped forward to hear his case, he came forwards, with much humility, and claimed that he would do everything within his power to become a great hero; to save worlds and lives, to serve the universe that the Fates protected.

The Black Whisper regarded him for a long moment, but did not turn to his brother and sister. Instead, he told the man, "You are correct. You would save many lives. An entire world would owe its existence to you, if you were to leave this place, as an immortal or otherwise. But because this world lives, three others would die."

Shadows and darkness swallowed the man whole, and he, too, was destroyed.

At last, the Old King, who had seen much death in his life, and was far too immune to it to care if he saw it again, even in this manner, stepped forward. The Gray Man approached him, and listened to the man as he spoke his case. The King told him of his people, of how he wished to protect them, to keep them safe from danger and war and plague. If he was immortal, he claimed, he could serve them forever.

The Gray Man smiled at him.

"You are, indeed, a great king," he said. "And you would help many thousands of lives. You would serve your people well. And, if you were to perish now, then the King who would rule after you will lead them to ruin; and your world will fall into oblivion." He sighed, a sigh of a universe. "I wish I could allow you to live. I wish I could allow you to remain king: but with your world's end, more worlds are lead to survival and prosperity." He turned away. "I am sorry."

He was the only of the Faden to offer an apology, to offer condolences. His brother and sister stepped forward; and in a cascade of light and dark, the Old King was also destroyed. The guide who had lead them, the only survivor, bowed to each and turned away, to lead others at another day, and to tell the stories of those who journeyed here, until the end of his (increasingly mortal) life.

And the Gray Man turned away to watch the stars, and to watch the lives of heroes who would not suffer these same, grim Fates.

"Well," Tony said, after I finished telling the gathered Avengers this story. "They seem nice."

Thor missed Stark's sarcasm. In fairness, it was hidden well. "That is not the word I would use for them, Man of Iron," he said, forebodingly. Looking to me, he added, "You would be wise to never seek these… 'Faden' out, Lady Frost."

I kept my back to the wall, leaning against it and tapping my fingers on it as I kept my eyes on the ground. "I'm not planning on it anytime soon," I said, "But you have to admit, the idea itself…"

"That any creature could grant immortality…" Loki said, very quietly, his eyes on me. He ignored the other Avengers' eyes on him as he added, "One must wonder if this is the only prospect." His eyebrows furrowed. "And to have one who claims to have knowledge of such things fall directly into our lives…" He frowned, suspicion appearing on his face. "The mortal phrase 'too good to be true' springs to mind."

"Good?" Clint asked. "What part of that was good? Everybody died at the end! It's like one of those sucky stories that they make you read in eighth grade because it's a 'classic'!"

I snorted, having been through said eighth grade and read said classics. "C'mon, Clint," I said, putting a teasing edge to my voice. "You can't say immortality isn't a pretty compelling motivator. Worth a few risks, eh?" I winked.

Natasha, as usual, read between the lines. Leaning back in her seat and keeping cool, neutral eyes on me, she added, "And if you were sentenced to die, then you were not meant for this universe, anyway. Your life would've been a bane, a threat to the lives that you are trying to protect." Her eyes, which hardened into diamonds, did not leave me as she added, "It would merely be the removal of one more monster in the universe."

I looked away and didn't respond. I heard a few people swallowing and felt Loki take my hand.

"Well that's some bullshit right there," Tony said, flopping down into a seat. "I mean, who're these idiots to decide who's 'right' and who's 'wrong' for the universe?"

I lifted an eyebrow. "The Sentinels of Time," I replied. "It's said that they can see through time itself: all that was and is, all that could be and never shall. Rumor has it that they can change the very fabric of reality itself; and they would, if it suited them. If it saved enough lives on enough worlds." I shook my head. "The universe is nigh infinite. The nine realms are, in the end, only nine. There are thousands of thousands, millions of millions, billions of billions of worlds out there. Many of them inhabited." I shook my head. "I would not say that the existence of such beings is entirely impossible. And I won't say that we can rule out the idea that Puck is telling the truth."

Tony snorted. "Oh, really?" He asked. "All the kid's done is lie to you, Nat. You'd think you'd get the picture by now."

Loki's eyes went to Clint. "Barton?"

The Hawk's eyes had been on the ground, his stare oddly intense. As Loki said his name, he looked up, startled out of his reverie. Loki lifted an eyebrow, a gesture that somehow managed to say, if there is something on your mind, speak it.

The archer contemplated for a long moment. And then he sighed, very, very deeply. "All right. All right, I give. I can never rule out the idea that someone's lying to me; or that they're capable of pulling it off, no matter how good I get at telling the difference. But I met that kid. He's damn good with a bow and it's easy to tell that he could be dangerous if he wanted to. That much isn't in doubt." He sighed and shook his head. "But there is absolutely nothing in my gut that says he's a liar. Everything about him screams honesty; and the stuff that doesn't… well, let's just say that, if he was lying, I don't think he was doing it to hurt anyone." He shrugged. "Just a personal observation."

Loki and I exchanged looks. It was an observation that we ourselves had made a number of times as well. But we were far too cautious to listen to our own instincts in that matter; after all, Puck had already interfered with them once.

Natasha, sitting beside Clint, was clearly thinking very intently as well, now that her secret fiancé had spoken. I twisted the ring about on my finger as we all considered the Hawk's words. "That being mentioned," she said quietly, after a long silence, "There is a great deal about Puck that does not make sense…"

She trailed off, her eyes flashing as she worked through details in her head. We all shut up and let her think; we'd found, over the years, that it was best to just let her do that, rather than to try interrupting her. Loki looked to Clint as I kept studying the Widow. "Even if the half-breed was telling the truth, or even if there was an explanation… we still cannot trust him. He is claiming to have all of the power of the Faden themselves, and-"

"Well, what if he is one of them?" Stark asked with a shrug. "Maybe he's here because he knows that you won't seek the Fades out. Maybe Nat becoming immortal would be the best thing for the universe, and he's here to give her that."

I shook my head, quickly. "I don't think so. The Faden don't seem the type to ask nicely. If they wanted to make me immortal that badly, they would've just done it, no questions asked."

"What if they did?" Bruce speculated. As a number of eyes turned to him, he added, "It's possible. How would you know?"

"You'd know," Thor, Loki and I said simultaneously, in tones that made it very clear just how obvious a transition between mortal and immortal would be. Thor had gone through that transition himself very long ago; he, above everyone, knew this fact first-hand.

"Can I speak with him?"

The room fell silent. I looked to Natasha, whose eyes were still on the floor and, as she registered the sudden hush in the room, she blinked, then turned those eyes to me. "Puck," she clarified. "I'd like to speak with him."

A strange little tightness gripped my chest. "Speak with him?" I asked. "Or…" my tone darkened, and I did finger quotes. "Speak with him?"

She smirked very lightly. "I just want to talk, Natalie."

I nodded- an indication of understanding rather than agreement- and asked, "Why?"

She half-shrugged, a simple, mild gesture. But otherwise, she did not respond.

Loki and I exchanged glances once again before Loki sighed. I looked back to the spy and said, "Well, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't hoped you would want to. If anyone can get something out of him…" I trailed off, gesturing to the spy, and using that gesture to complete my sentence for me. She nodded once, silently, and stood.

"Now, then?"

I stood, too. "Good a time as any."

The other Avengers looked at us, a bit unnerved by our sudden change of subject and manner, but Loki and Clint both remained seated and silent. Clint even took a sip of coffee.

Leaving the boys behind, the two of us left the room and headed straight for the portal to Jotunheim. I looked to Natasha, about to thank her for this… but for some reason, the look on her face made me refrain. Besides, what was there to say, really?

The two of us crossed into Jotunheim.

"Hello, Agent Romanoff."

The spider watched the half-breed. The half-breed watched the spider. And carefully, the spider created her silent web of lies and perched upon their edge, crouching down before the silver bars and looking their prisoner in the eye.

"Hello, Puck."

Softly, surely, and oh-so-carefully, the half-breed smirked. "I thought you might-"

"Who was your mentor?" Natasha interrupted him. Puck blinked, as though startled by the question. He tilted his head to the side and did not respond, keeping his mouth shut as he regarded the spy, as though seeing her in a new light.

Natasha asked no more questions. Puck gave no answers. And for a long time, the two merely watched each other again.

Then, quietly, he asked, "I'm sorry?"

She leaned forwards, her eyes like steel. "Who was your mentor?" She asked, speaking carefully, all but over pronouncing each word. Articulating perfectly, she added, "Who taught you archery?"

It was the last word that made him smile, that seemed to make all of the pieces click in his head. He chuckled, very quietly, and shook his head. "So that's it," he whispered. "That is how you discover me. By seeing the man who taught me." He laughed again, so very softly, his smile growing. "You've always been a very incredible agent, Natasha Romanoff."

Her eyes narrowed on the prisoner. Carefully, she stood again, out of her crouch, and took a step back. Folding her arms, she repeated, "Who was your mentor?"

He rolled his eyes. "Why ask questions that you already know the answer to?"

"Because it isn't possible," Natasha answered curtly. Puck laughed again, shaking his head back and forth one more time.

"Oh, anything is possible, Widow. And if you want to know how, then just ask yourself this." His eyes danced. "You see my mentor in me. But who else do you see in me?" He stood, moving towards the spy, close to the bars, wrapping his blue hands around them. "Whose actions do I emulate? Who am I most similar to, in your eyes?"

His eyes continued to shine and sparkle and dance, his smirk growing with every second that Natasha studied him. And then, suddenly, it seemed to click. She turned away, as though hiding her features, so that he wouldn't see her shock. But she wasn't hiding. She was thinking.

"And there it is," he said, quietly. "There you have it. You know who I am. Now all you have to do is ask. Ask the one thing that will confirm it for you. Go on. I'll answer."

She turned back to him. There could be no telling what was in her thoughts, not from her expression or her body language. Everything about her was emotionless and blank, an empty slate, but Puck knew. He knew that she had discovered him, had found him out.

She swallowed and, holding her chin a little higher, she demanded, "Whose orders do you work under?"

He almost grinned this time, a wicked smile, as he released the bars and clapped his hands together a few times. "Bravo, Agent Romanoff," he said quietly. "Bravo indeed." He took a step back. "I always knew it would be you. That you were the one who…" he shook his head. "Well, it doesn't matter." He took the bars again, pressing his face up in between them, red eyes glittering as they locked on the spy. "I follow the commands of Natalie Laufeyson."

Natasha swallowed. Hard. She clasped her hands behind her back to disguise the fact that they were trembling. Puck's lip twitched up as he added, "Before she became Natalie Frost."

Natasha's eyebrows furrowed. "She never-"

"Not to you," Puck answered, cutting her off and speaking in words of smooth velvet. "But she was always that to me."

Natasha pressed her fingers against her forehead, directly above her right eye, trying to quell the headache that had started to form. Her interrogator's manner had dropped now. She stood before the half-breed as a more genuine version of herself, and as she gave up on trying to determine what his words meant, she sighed and leaned against the wall behind her. She slid down it until she was sitting on the floor, her eyes forward, never leaving Puck.

The man kept smiling at her, kept chuckling quietly, as he, too, sat down, directly on the other side of the bars. "It's fascinating, Agent Romanoff, it truly is," he told her quietly. She ran her hands down her face as he went on, "All of these people I am surrounded by… they have all lived with magic for most of their lives. I am visited daily by the most powerful mages of Jotunheim, including the King himself." He said the word 'king' almost mockingly, with the barest trace of a snicker. The title clearly did not mean as much to him as it may have meant to others; but then, Natasha now knew why. Even if no one else did. Even if she was certain that no one else ever could. "Even Natalie herself is very well acquainted with magic; skilled enough in it to teach others." His head tilted an inch to the left. "But in the end, it was you. It was a human, a mortal, a person who knew nothing of magic…who realized the truth. And not one of the scientists- Banner or Stark or some of those they call 'geniuses'- but you. An agent, who recognized the person over the problem." He laughed, shaking his head one more time. "It's fascinating, if you think about it."

Natasha's cool, steely eyes remained, unblinking, on him. She folded her hands. "Natalie is human, if you have forgotten," she pointed out, very quietly.

The half-breed's smirk became wry and twisted, a crooked smile that touched not only his features, but his bitter eyes as well. "Natalie Frost has not been human in a very long time, Agent Romanoff," he said quietly. "You of all people should recognize that."

"And yet," she replied coolly, "Somehow, I still am?" Her eyes gleamed, a dangerous little sheen. The corner of Puck's lip went up again.

"Perhaps, perhaps not," the half-breed said, as though in either case, it couldn't possibly matter less. "But regardless of what you are or are not… you were never the prisoner of the dark. Not in the way that she was."

The spy did not respond. Seeming, at last, wearied, Puck leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes and sighing an ancient sigh. "Fraye placed a darkness inside of her… a darkness that even I could not have anticipated…" his eyes flicked open, looking back to Natasha once more. "You are aware of what she may do to herself, if this is allowed to continue?"

Natasha didn't answer.

"You know what she may end up doing?"

She closed her eyes and looked away. But in the same movement, she nodded. Of course she knew.

Puck sighed, so very deeply. "Then you know why I have to do this for her. Why I have to help her become this." His eyes became pleading. "I can help her, Natasha. I can make her immortal. For all of our sakes."

"She has enough power already," Natasha said, very quietly. "She doesn't need something more that she can… lash out with when she loses her mind."

"It isn't about power," Puck responded, leaning forwards just a little. "It's about… knowing. It's about knowing that she has all the time in the world to put it behind her. About knowing that she's never going to do that to the person she loves again. About knowing… that she did the right thing."

Natasha's eyebrows furrowed as she looked up once more. "The right thing?" She asked. Puck nodded fiercely.

"There can be no doubt of it," Puck promised. "Not after this. Not after what she will see. The Faden…" he paused, then looked away. "I know what they are capable of. What they can show her." He couldn't look to Natasha. His gaze stayed, instead, on the wall. His voice cracked occasionally, though infrequently. "Please let me save her. It's… it's what I've been taught to do… what I've been trained to do… what I've been told that I'm destined to do for my whole life." His eyes returned to her at last. "I… I can do this, Natasha. I swear that I can make her safe, make her whole again. I can save them both." The smirk, the smile, was gone. In its place was a quiet desperation. Natasha watched him with hard, unyielding eyes as she thought over his words, as she studied his pleading, undeniably sincere features.

At last, she sighed, very, very deeply. "You'd best be right, boy," she said dangerously. "Because if you are not-"

"There is a great deal at stake here for me, personally, as you can imagine," Puck cut in with a dangerous reminder. Natasha's lip twitched up.

"I suppose that's true," She admitted. And then she stood, turning to the door.

"So you will… what?" She asked, just before she left. "Give Natalie this immortality yourself?"

He shook his head. "I am only a guide," he said quietly. "A guide to the Faden. To the answers she needs." As Natasha hesitated and turned back to him, he added, "It would be a long journey. Far away from Earth or the other realms." His voice dropped an octave as he said, very significantly, "It will give her a long time away from those people whom she could hurt, on one of her… 'bad days'." He sat back again, back against the wall, but kept his unblinking eyes on the Black Widow. "And a very long time to think over her own abilities to heal."

Natasha regarded him coolly. And then she nodded. "Then, perhaps," She said quietly. "Such a journey is precisely what she needs."

And then she turned to leave again. Puck's voice drifted to her ears.

"You can't tell her, Natasha," he said quietly. "You can't tell her any of it. She isn't meant to know."

For a second, she hesitated in front of the door. Then, speaking over her shoulder, she replied in a voice as dark as night, "She won't."

And then she pushed open the doors and walked out.

"Well?"

Natasha carefully closed the door behind her. Her eyes were serious, and her face was very pale, paler than I had ever seen it. However, as she walked up to me, as I straightened and walked up to her in return, her face was even, her movements certain. She radiated confidence and conviction as she told me, "He was telling the truth."

Confusion began to prickle at my mind. Well that was all well and good, but telling the truth about what?

When she didn't elaborate, walking down the hall away from me, I followed her. "And? What did he say?"

"Enough," she answered. "He's dangerous, maybe, but not to you, and not to Loki." She looked at me, her gaze sliding sideways so that she could watch me from the corner of her vision. Her eyes roamed up and down my entirety, looking me over once, swiftly. And then she was looking forward again. "He called himself a 'guide'. He says he can take you to the Faden."

"And you believe him," I double-checked.

"I do."

"Why?"

She didn't answer. In fact, she fell completely silent. It started to worry me, a suspicion at the edge of my consciousness, and a niggling fear made me wonder if, perhaps, the same uncontrollable emotions that tied me to Puck had been placed into Natasha's mind as well; if he had somehow managed to manipulate her emotions as he had done to mine and Loki's. But that cell could neutralize most magic…

I brushed the thought aside. Even if he had… I didn't see the signs of it on her face, didn't see the desperate need to protect Puck that I had, didn't see any of the similarities between her worry and mine. Her face was hard-edged and her eyes were sharp, stabbing.

We were almost back to the portal when she stopped. She turned to me, facing me entirely, her face set in determination. "Do you trust me, Natalie?"

I blinked. "Of course I-"

"No, Natalie, no," She shook her head, making her brilliant red curls gently brush against her cheekbones. Stepping forwards, she took my shoulders and forced my eyes to hers. "Do you trust me? With your life, with your friends' lives, with Loki's life?"

The question didn't terrify me as much as it probably should have. If anyone else had asked me that, or if someone had asked me before I'd met the Avengers, I probably would've been very, very frightened. My life was one thing. My friends' lives were another. And Loki's life…

But, hearing that question from her, hearing it now, after all these years of always having to know who I would trust and who I wouldn't, who I would be forced to trust with what and why… I didn't even have to blink before I answered. "Always."

This seemed to convince her. She didn't react, but I knew that she believed me, because she said, "Then trust me now. Puck is on your side. If he says he's here to help, he is. If he says he will take you to the Faden, he will." Her hands gripped my shoulders just a little tighter. "I think he's playing a dangerous game, but if it works… if it works…"

And then her fingers loosened their grip. Her hands fell, completely slack, to her sides. She took a deep breath through her nose, letting it out in a sigh from her mouth, closing her eyes for a moment. And then they opened again, and she said, "Trust him, Natalie. That's all that I can tell you."

I looked at her, gauging her for a long while. When, at last, her eyes seemed to show the faintest glimmer of desperation, I nodded once. "Then that's all I needed to hear," I replied, firmly.

If she was relieved, she did not show it. Instead, she nodded curtly. Stepping into the portal, she said, "I'll tell Loki to come back, shall I?"

"Yeah," I answered, but it was too late. She was gone.

"So either Natasha is compromised," I said, "Or we can trust Puck." I pulled the band out of my hair and ran my fingers through it, letting it fall in silky waves around my head. After many months of shampoo and conditioner, it was finally getting over its harsh treatment for those four months. I can't say it wasn't a relief. It was like I was finally getting a little healthier, piece by piece. "And I have to say, I'm inclined to believe the latter."

"As am I," Loki replied thoughtfully, sitting on the large chair in the corner of the room. I fell back onto the bed and looked up at the ceiling.

"That doesn't explain how he did that circle thing," I noted. "Or why we trusted him so easily."

"Or a great number of other things," Loki admitted. "But, apparently, it does open up certain… opportunities."

I realized that his eyes were on me. That he was staring at me so intently that, even without him in my head, I felt his stare burning into me. I sat upright, knowing precisely what he was thinking.

"If the Faden are real," I voiced the words for him, "Then we may have a way out. A way to make me immortal."

He didn't respond. But his eyes didn't leave, either. I thought, perhaps, that his gaze might be wistful, thoughtful… but the intensity of them actually unnerved me. Immortality, at least for me, was something that he wanted; and wanted desperately. The look in his eyes was almost… hungry.

I stood, feeling my own eyes soften as I crossed the room, walking over to him and seating myself on the armrest of his chair. Leaning against him- a little uncomfortably, but it wasn't as though I currently cared- I said, "Loki?"

He didn't respond. I put my hand on his chest, curling up next to him, tucking my head against his shoulder and neck. Looking forwards, away from him, I said, "If I wasn't mortal, would you still want to marry me?"

The question startled him out of his reverie. Looking to me (and seeing only the top of my head, due to my current position), he inquired, "Why would you ask me that, Frost?"

I curled up, a little tighter. It made it hard to keep my balance on the armrest, but I managed it. "Why wouldn't I?" I asked in turn. My stomach twisted a little. "You mostly asked just to make a statement. We're moving up the wedding because you don't want to waste any of the time that we have." My hand, reflexively, gripped the green cloak that was wrapped around his shoulders. "But what if we had more? What if we had all the time in the world? What if I wasn't just going to be around for a few years, what if I'd be by your side for a real version of forever?" I looked up at him. "What then? Would that be… what you wanted?" I looked away again. "You can handle being married to a human for a little while- sixty or seventy years- but what happens when I'm old and boring and everyone… everyone's been laughing at you and disapproving of you and… and then if I die, maybe you'd get over me after a few hundred years, maybe it wouldn't be so bad anymore, and maybe you could find someone else… but that wouldn't happen if I became immortal, if the Fades were real. You'd lose out on that." He hadn't said a word, and my hands began to shake. "Would you be okay with that? Not… not even having a chance?"

At last, after a long moment of complete silence, I looked up to Loki. The look on his face was momentarily unfathomable. He was staring at me, outright staring, and as I turned to him, he carefully moved me upright, pushed me off of him. I sat up, letting him go, and he stood. He moved forwards a few steps before halting.

"I can't…" he stuttered. "I mean… I couldn't…" he turned to the right and started pacing, back and forth, in front of me, muttering under his breath. He shot a look in my direction, and though it was clear that he had only meant to steal a brief glance, his eyes remained locked on me, and he stopped moving. "By all the nine realms and beyond, Natalie Frost," he said, with great and heavy exasperation. "You are the single densest human being that I have ever met."

My face understood before my brain did, because I started to blush, bright pink spreading across my cheeks. I looked away. "I just…"

"What, Frost?" he asked, cutting me off. "You what? You thought it was, perhaps, a viable option? That I ever even… that I even considered it, even on a subconscious level?" he moved closer to me, dropping to a half-kneel, half-crouch in front of me, trying to hold my gaze as I kept looking away. "Do you honestly believe that of me?" he demanded, a little too harshly. It was only then that I realized that I'd hurt him. That this question had… injured him. Wounded his pride.

"I don't know what to believe!" I replied, allowing a little of my desperation to leak into my voice. It quivered a touch as I reached out… then pulled my hands back again, clasping them together, tightly, in front of me. "I really don't know, Loki, because… because I'm happy with you and… and I don't know, I just can't see how you can be happy with me!" I shook my head. "Because my life doesn't work like that! I can't be… can't be happy, neither of us can, you know that!"

"What I know, Frost," he said, taking my chin in his hands, forcing my face to his and looking at me sternly. "Is that you would not wish to love a man who only lived for a few months before withering away and dying before your eyes. So you must know that I did not either." He looked away. "But life often gives us things that we do not wish. And I fell in love with you." His eyes were suddenly very frightening as he turned back and vowed, "And I would do anything to keep from seeing that. To keep you with me for a lifetime." His grip on my chin tightened. "Is that quite understood?"

I nodded, still somewhat sullen and morose. Seeing this, his features softened, and he leaned forwards, leaned in close. His cheek brushed against mine as, in a much gentler voice, he asked, "Do you wish for me to ask you to marry me again?"

I rolled my eyes, and, in spite of myself, I felt my grim mood lightening a little. "You never asked in the first place," I muttered with a false pout.

"Hmm…" he seemed to think that over. It was true: Loki had never so much as said the words, when asking me to marry him. He'd just sort of given me a look and let me into his head. "A fair point." He retreated, leaning back again, standing up from his crouch. "Is that why you continue doubting me, Frost?" he asked. His voice had one-third of an air of solemnity, and two-thirds of an aura of mockery as he asked, "Am I not 'romantic' enough for you?"

My eyes went up to the ceiling again. "Oh, no, it's every girl's dream for their boyfriend to propose before their first date, solely for political reasons."

"Hmm," he said again. He didn't respond for a long moment, but returned to his seat instead. I leaned further away on the armrest so that he could sit down again and curled up next to him once he was seated. After a long moment of silence, I smiled and admitted, "You're plenty romantic, Loki. For you, anyway. And… well, 'you' is what I want." I shrugged. It was a difficult feat in my position.

He kissed the top of my head. But still, he said nothing. His hand found mine, two of his fingers wrapping around the ring on mine, toying with it carefully.

"There is no one else," he said. I blinked, but didn't turn to look at him. "There could be no one else, Natalie Frost. Don't think so little of me as to believe that I… that I can even think of forgetting you." His arm tightened around me. "Mortal or immortal, Frost. I want you there." He twisted the ring another time, turning it round and round on my finger. "And I live and die with you."

I let the words sink in for a long few moments. And then I said, "Huh."

Turning around to face him, propping myself up a little so that I could do so, I said, "Okay. Now that was romantic."

He smirked.

Today was one of the bad days.

I knew it from the moment I woke up, knew precisely what sort of day I would have. Not just because of the nightmare, though that was bad enough: watching a thousand crows descend across the Earth, led by Tiff, (who, I had long ago learned, had taken the codename 'Shadow Crow' after Fraye's attack). She let them roam freely across Earth and Asgard and Jotunheim, and I watched, entirely helpless, bound in chains, as they swarmed. As they drew blood and screams from all those around them. I'll spare you the gory details, but let's just say that they were in the Tower by the time I finally woke up, screaming my head off.

But Loki wasn't next to me, wasn't there to tell me that everything was all right. He was in my head, trying to do so, but it was still somehow… different. I sighed and fell back on the bed; I'd been waking up a bit late recently.

I calmed myself down by giving my dog a hug, and then my cat, too, for good measure.

Then the rest of my day began.

My travels around Jotunheim had done nothing but remind me about Puck- that was the place that we went to, that was the idiot who had called him a few disgusting names, that was the broadaxe that I had threatened the idiot with- and, in the end, I had decided that I needed to get off-planet for a while. Loki had allowed it, if only because he thought it might be better for me, and I headed straight to the Tower.

Of course, in the Tower, I was bombarded with questions- How did Puck create those circles? Was he talking yet? Were Loki and I even considering agreeing with him, letting him show us to the Faden? Were Loki and I aware of how stupid that would be?- over and over again. Each time from someone new. All of the Avengers asked, all but Natasha and Clint. It seemed that, whatever the truth was, the archer had been informed; that, or he, like Loki and I, simply trusted Natasha's word too much to ask if she could tell us anything more, tell us the full truth. If she could, she would. Simple as that.

I decided that I had to get out of the Tower, too. That I needed to go think. I tried calling my parents, seeing if I could go see them… but my mother told me bunch of old revolutionaries had gotten together for a few drinks at the house, and it was probably best if I didn't come over. I could only imagine why; anyone who fought in the revolution would likely have an opinion of Loki that was lower than dirt. I didn't want to deal with that today.

Still, I couldn't stick around the Tower, so I headed to the one place that I thought would be free of this second life: college. That was why I'd signed up in the first place, right? And sure, I might be failing all of my classes, but I'd still paid for them, and I was sure that there were a few that they'd allow me in…

It wasn't until I was already in the car and driving over there that I remembered: my college life wasn't free from trauma, either. Tiff was still there- and had my dream taught me nothing about how much I could trust her?- and Benny, and Jade and Vicky and all my other friends who would all be asking about what had happened to me and where I had been and… and…

Ugh.

As I changed lanes, turning around and heading in the direction of a café instead, it started. Fraye's voice in my brain.

Well, well, well, she purred. All dressed up and nowhere to go.

I pulled the car into a parking lot and banged my head back against the headrest a few times. It happened like this, sometimes; where Fraye stopped sounding like Fraye, where it was her voice but maybe not her words. Where, instead of constantly reminding me of how much I was like her and how much blood I'd seen and how much death she could cause if she wanted to take control again, she began just saying whatever random, bitchy thing came to her head. Or my head. Whatever.

I knocked my head to the steering wheel a few times, avoiding the horn, and repeating a mantra in my head with each knock on my skull: shut up, shut up, shut up.

She giggled. I kept my head on the wheel and waited her out, waited until she was silent again. My bad day was getting worse, but thankfully, Loki hadn't noticed yet, so I kept driving. I knew I shouldn't, knew I should go back, but I also knew that if I spent another minute trapped on Jotunheim, I'd explode. Everything reminded me of Puck there, everything that didn't remind me of Loki, and all of the things that reminded me of Loki just made me lonely, since he wasn't right next to me at the moment.

I heaved a sigh and started driving again.

I did so, aimlessly, for about an hour, before I pulled into a mall center and did some pointless shopping. I'd needed new makeup, anyway; I'd been using it pretty often since I'd been going to all of these parties n'shit.

It calmed me down a little. I liked shopping, on occasion, though now I realized how much of a security nightmare it could be. There were cameras all over the place, watching what I did, and I was of half a mind to steal something at random, just to piss of some security guard somewhere. I didn't, of course, but I wanted to.

Loading my shopping bags into the car, I was reminded of the last time I went to the mall. I shoved the memory forcefully from my mind. The last time was with Tiff. Tiff was an agent. Tiff had lied to me. I had forgiven her, I'd gotten over it.

No you didn't, Fraye giggled out the words. She lied to you. Puck lied to you. And you thought that you were so good at being able to tell when someone was a liar…

I slammed the trunk closed. SHUT UP!

I drove around for another, aimless half hour.

Finally, I pulled up at a café. It wasn't the Café, the one that I used to frequent with April, the one where I had met Nick Fury for the first time. I figured that I couldn't spend any time in the Café; not after its history. So I was looking for another one. Besides, I needed a caffeine fix.

The Café was called Bean Speak, probably for some reason personal to the manager that was likely full of depth and meaning. I, personally, thought it was a stupid name, but hey, the coffee smelled great. I was willing to give it a chance.

It had a nice atmosphere to it, too. Kinda homey. The checkerboard tiles on the floor could use some rethinking, though. I stepped in, ordered the largest coffee they had, and started looking around for a place to sit.

It was then that I spotted him, in the corner of the room. His wire-frame, round Harry Potter glasses were perched on the edge of his nose, which was buried in a book. His entire short-but-skinny frame was folded up on the poofy, comfy-looking chair, and it was clear that he was utterly absorbed in the text he held. Gold-brown freckles peppered his skin, which was a little darker than mine, and as I watched, he pushed his glasses up his nose, closer to his deep brown eyes. His tousled hair was also brown, though it was a lighter color, and, with the sunlight streaming in from the window, it could almost be called blonde. He had a single silver-black stud in his right ear and a ring on his left hand. A wedding ring, to be exact.

Adrian.

"Adrian?" I asked, then realized how stupid that was. I shouldn't be talking to people right now, I really shouldn't… but, too late, he was looking up at me. He smiled hugely, a geeky grin crossing his bookish face.

"Natalie, hey!" he called, waving. Giving in, I crossed the room, over to where he was set up. Surprisingly, there wasn't a stack of books next to him; only the one in his hands, and the coffee next to him. He was one of our 'group', but I hadn't seen him that much since Loki's reign. He'd taken a semester off of college in order to recover, which was perfectly understandable.

"'Sup short stuff?" I asked, because I knew he got annoyed by 'short' comments. Truth be told, he was only a few inches shorter than me, but he was still the smallest of our group. I plopped down into a seat that I dragged in front of him.

"Oh, not much," he said flippantly.

"Yeah? How's Kaylee?"

Kaylee was his wife of three years; despite being smallest of our group, Adrian was still the oldest. And he'd married young, as I was planning to. "She's great," he answered, beaming. "And what about you? Why aren't you in class right now? Between classes or something?"

I rolled my eyes. "Nah, I dropped out for like the fifth time." I shook my head. "My job, man, it's a real pain in my ass."

"You ever try online courses?" he asked, seeming genuinely concerned.

I'd thought about that, but really, that would defeat the purpose. I went to college just to see other people; not because I wanted to get a good education. So I just shrugged. "Not yet. Thinking about it, though."

Such a talented liar, Fraye's voice cooed. Yet so bad at figuring out who is lying in return.

I ignored this. My worse day was now becoming intolerable. I was actually just sort of waiting for it to end.

Adrian and I exchanged small chit chat for a while before I asked, "So what are you doing here, anyway? Waiting for Kaylee or something?"

"Oh. No," he shook his head. "Didn't the others say anything? The gang's getting together today, group hangout." He grinned, swiftly.

"Oh, really?" I asked, pretending to be excited. "Who's coming?"

"Um…" he checked his phone quickly, counting texts. Then, reading from his list, he said, "Vicky, Jade, Ben… and I think he's bringing his girlfriend."

My heart skipped. "O-Oh?" I asked.

"Yeah, they're coming here right after class. They should be here in a bit if you wanna stay-"

But I'd already gotten up. Tiff and I hadn't talked much since… well, since everything. And today… well, maybe today wasn't the day to have any kind of heart-to-heart, but I knew for a fact that it wasn't the day to fake being friendly again.

"Nah, it's okay," I said, plastering on a smile. "Actually, I think I should be goi-"

Too late. As I turned to the door, it opened. Across the café, I saw them come inside; Tiff and Benjamin, the pair of them laughing about some joke that one of them had just told…

Or putting on a show, Fraye purred. Playing pretend that everything's okay… Just like you are… just like you always are…

Just shut up. Shut the hell up.

I swallowed, hard, as Tiff caught sight of me. Her eyes met mine.

A thousand communications flashed between us within that second. A thousand different thoughts running through our minds, running in between each other. We knew everything that those people in here did not, we knew all of those things that we had to hide from everyone else, we knew all of our own secrets and why we could not let them be spilled to these people…

And so she smiled and waved to me, pointing me out to her boyfriend. He smiled, too, a little more genuine, but also a little warier. He also waved.

He walked up to me while Tiff got coffee. "Hey, Natalie," he said with a weak grin. "What's up?"

I shrugged. "Ah, nothing new. Sorry, though, I can't stay. I've got some stuff to deal with back at home, so…" I shrugged again. "You know."

He nodded. "Sure, sure."

"You're never around anymore, Natalia," Tiff said, popping up next to us. I glanced at the line; she never would've stayed in a line that long without saying hi to everyone first, I knew that much from that time before I'd found out what she was. So why would she change now? She was still undercover, after all.

At least, around them.

SHUT. UP.

"Yeah, well, places to go, people to see," I shrugged, with a trace of self-deprecation.

"But, mostly your boyfriend," Adrian said with a knowing wink in my direction. Instead of scowling at him, however, I adopted a lofty attitude and replied, "But of course. He's much better company than any of you losers."

As one, Tiff and Ben clutched their hearts. "Oh, ow!" Ben cried, as Tiff said, "Shot! I've been shot!" and tumbled to the ground, gleaning a lot of attention from the other, startled customers. Adrian just laughed, and I forced myself to join in. Tiff's antics would've always made me laugh before.

I guessed I was undercover, too.

Ben helped a giggling Tiff back to her feet. For a second, their eyes met… and then, quickly, but not quickly enough to be noticed by Adrian, he pulled his hand away. Tiff looked away from her boyfriend, her cover story, and tried to avoid both his eyes and mine. So their relationship was still rocky. And why wouldn't it be? In the end, she'd just been using him from the beginning.

"Right, then," I said, clearing my throat awkwardly. "I'll see you all later."

And then I started towards the door. I made it three steps before I realized I'd forgotten my coffee; feeling harried, but knowing that they'd notice if I left it behind (something I would never do), I ran back and grabbed it before hurrying out the door.

I was stopped by Vicky, who was entering the café just as I was leaving it. She tried to say a bubbly hello, but I cut her off with, "Leaving, have to, sorry, bye!"

And then I was running. Running towards my car.

Running away, Natalie? Fraye purred in my ear. I thought you were better than that. I thought you faced your fears.

I clamped my fists on either side of my head, knocking my knuckles against my temples and trying to drive her out, without giving a second thought as to how it would look to the outside observer. I stumbled towards the car, swaying a little with each step, barely managing to look both ways and see where I was going. Her voice was still in my head, and it was getting louder. It was choking out my own thoughts, choking out Loki's thoughts. I had to get back home. I had to get back home and lie down in my room and wait for it all to go away, wait for everything to be better again.

Everything had to be better again…

Oh, really, Natalie, Fraye huffed, sounding indignant. I thought you knew better than that. You know things will never be the same, not anymore. This isn't going to get better. It's just going to get worse. And worse and worse and worse until I finally get my way.

Your way?! I shrieked, knowing full well that I was arguing with a voice in my head. Well, I'd done it before. Get your way?! What do you want Fraye, what do you want that I haven't already given you?! That you haven't already taken from me?!

Standing by the car door now, I started fumbling with the keys. My fingers didn't seem to want to cooperate; after a long few moments, the keys slipped from my grasp and fell, with a loud metallic sound, against the asphalt. But I couldn't hear it. My head was filled with Fraye's laughter.

That's quite simple, Nat'lee, she said, now in her child's voice. The one she used when she first conned us into believing that she was on our side. That she was innocent.

The one she used whenever she wanted to pull something particularly sadistic, while I was in that chair…

I want you to look up.

Look up?

Part of me rebelled. It screamed and fought and thrashed and told Fraye to go crawl back into the hole I'd buried her in. But it was so reflexive, so easy- look up- just such a simple thing to do, do it and be done, and she'll be gone – look up- and I found that I did it. I looked up.

I looked up and saw Death.

She giggled girlishly, this pale, bone-thin girl with paper-white skin and jewel-black eyes that were, apparently, deader than she was. Empty, hollow features stared back at me with a smile curling on thin lips, her black hair flowing in the wind behind her and leaking shadows, which poured out into the street. A cloak swirled and sashayed about her skinny little frame, throwing up dust in the street, as she stood, perfectly still, before me.

"Hello, Natalie," she said, and now I could hear her voice. I could hear it out loud, it wasn't just in my head, it was out here, it was real, it was real and I… I was…

I was terrified.

My breathing was coming in gasps, when it came at all. My heart threatened to pound its way out of my chest as my ears started ringing, as I became deaf to any and all sound except for that voice. As I even became deaf to Loki's cries, as he shouted in my head and told me that it wasn't real, of course it wasn't real, how could it be real…?

I was trembling, certain that I was shaking as quickly as Puck had been, before he'd exploded, before… before everything. I was hyperventilating, and my fingers and toes started to tingle as my blood buzzed, too quickly, through my veins. But all I could say, through this fear, was a denial.

"No."

Fraye tilted her head to the side and smiled sarcastically. "Really, Natalie?"

"No," I said again, trying to sound firm. My voice was shaky and squeaky and in no way intimidating.

"This is what you're going with?" Fraye asked, and her sarcasm turned to glee. She took a step forwards, clapping her hands together as I stumbled back a step.

"N-No!" I shouted, but it came out weak, pained. I threw out a hand, trying to stop her from coming any closer, trying to flare my force field… but the fear overwhelmed me. The terror was too great; there was no anger inside of me, no fury to fuel my abilities on. Only the terror. Only the pain, as every last one of my scars- even the ones that had long ago healed- suddenly reopened, as I suddenly felt them all, lashing across my body once again.

"You think that you can deny this?" She asked, holding out her hands. "That it won't be real if you just say it isn't?"

"NO!" I screamed, closing my eyes, screwing them shut and clamping my hands over my ears. "No, this isn't real, it's not happening, not happening, you're-you're NOT REAL!" The words came out, skipping and halting, pouring out of me, until at last I could only scream. Scream this denial.

"Of course I'm real, Nat'lee," She cooed. "After all, you haven't seen me before, have you? Since I 'died'?"

I shook my head. I think I was crying, but I felt no tears. Maybe I was just shaking. "That's right," I moaned. "That's right, you're dead, I saw you die! I saw your grave, I watched you being buried, I saw it happen… I made it happen! I KILLED YOU!"

I couldn't look at her… but I couldn't look away from her. I fought to put my eyes back on her, trembling in fear and horror, but as I looked up… she was gone. I was almost relieved, almost happy, almost ecstatic…

Until her voice appeared in my ear again… and I felt her hands, her hands the temperature of shadows and darkness- neither hot nor cold- as she whispered, her words veiled in a cloak of night, "Didn't I tell you? I can never die."

And then the lash sliced across my back. I wasn't screaming anymore. No more arguments, no more insistence that this wasn't real… I was just running. I was fleeing for my life and I was hearing her laughing still ringing in my ears as I ran, as I ran and ran and ran, and I didn't look where I was going and ran, and I didn't look anywhere and ran, and I became blind and ran…

I stopped hearing anything but her laughter. I stopped seeing anything but darkness. I stopped feeling anything but the pain of the scars, still branded in my skin, even now, even after they had been erased. And, above all, I stopped knowing. I stopped knowing anything, anything about Loki or how much he loved me, anything about the Avengers who would surely come to save me, anything about my human friends who may have once cared for me… all I knew, in that moment, was that it had been a dream. A wonderful, wonderful dream, in which Loki had come to save me and I was going to live my wonderful life with him… but it was time to wake up now… it was time to get back to my real life now, it was time to remember what he did to me…

Fraye's laugh burned into my mind as I knew this, as I knew that Loki had thrown me here, that Loki had been responsible for this, that Loki was the traitorous bastard who had flung me directly into Fraye's arms, into her grasp, her embrace, and it was his fault, his fault, his fault that I was feeling all of this pain… and I started tasting blood, started feeling it on my hands and started wishing that it was his… oh, if only it could be his, if only I could destroy him, piece by piece, as he had done to me…

"NATALIE!"

The voice that brought me out of the darkness. It wasn't Loki's. It wasn't one of the Avenger's. It wasn't, as I once thought it might be, Puck's. It wasn't Tiff's.

It was Benjamin's.

"Oh, shit, oh, oh, crap, some… so- SOMEONE CALL AN AMBULANCE!" Benny screamed, shouting into the sounds of… of something. Something familiar. Something I'd lived with for years, something that used to lull me into sleep at night… Oncoming traffic. The sound of cars, passing back and forth beside me.

"She just…" Another voice. "She just ran right in front of me, I don't… I didn't mean to… I…" Fear in this voice, shaky and weak. Had Fraye found him? Had Fraye tortured this man, too?

I gasped into life, opening my eyes and looking around wildly. "Where is she?" I demanded, looking around. There was a horrendous, terrible pain shooting down the entire right half of my body, a screaming, slicing, stabbing, fiery ache, oh, realms, what was that? What had she done to me? "Where-?!" I gripped Ben's collar, trying to stabilize myself. My eyes scanning a crowd that was watching, looking at me in horror. Looking at the commotion around me, some of them turning away, sickened by the sight of blood.

Blood…

Where had the blood come from?

Where was Fraye? I couldn't see her in the crowd. I couldn't… I couldn't think.

It was only the sight of my own blood, pooling around me, only Benny's voice telling me that, "Everything's gonna be okay, Natalie, you're gonna be all right, just hold on," that made it all so clear to me. Fraye was dead. She was still dead, she was still buried, it was all over… I was okay, I was really okay, I had just been running from a ghost…

But why all of this blood…?

That was when I saw the car. Splattered with droplets of red, its front bumper was dented. But the damage there was nothing compared to the mess of red and agony that my body had become.

I knew my leg was broken. A few ribs, too. The leg I couldn't feel, not anymore, but I could see it; the sight of it made me surprisingly ill. The ribs I could just feel. There were things moving about inside of me that just shouldn't be. Benny kept telling me- his words mixed with curses- that everything was okay, that it was all right, that I was going to be fine, that they had called an ambulance, that everything would be okay now. He was wrong, of course. But I let him be wrong.

I stopped trying to prop myself up. I stopped trying to look around. I stopped trying to listen to the chaos and cacophony around me. I just let my eyes close as I started to feel sick, as the pain sharpened and increased, growing worse and worse until I could feel nothing at all. I kept my eyes closed and listened to Loki's voice in my head, saying just about the same things that Benny was, things that I still did not believe. But he was also saying that he was coming for me, that if I just held on, everything would be all right. That he would be here for me in just a minute. And that, I believed.

Would I have a minute, though? The world was slipping into darkness. Succumbing to sleep would mean an escape from this pain; whether it was a temporary or permanent one, I couldn't tell. I wasn't sure what the damage was. So I let myself sleep anyway.

And, for the first time since my torture, for the first time since I had killed Fraye… a tear found its way into my eye.

I felt it there. I felt it burn. And I felt it squeeze out of the corner of my closed eyelids and fall down my cheek, splashing onto the asphalt. Loki…?

He shut up. And then he was talking again. I'm here, Natalie. I'm here, I'm not leaving you.

Loki… I said. My breath hitched. The pain was back again. Numbness, then pain. Numbness, then pain. The story of my life. All of the bad parts condensed. But there was one good part. One great part.

One perfect part.

Loki, I said again. I love you.

He stopped, freezing in his tracks. His own eyes burned. No, Natalie, don't… don't start with-

Loki, I said firmly, though I was beginning to slip away. I love you.

Water filled his lower eyelids. He tried to blink it away and shook his head out fiercely, striding forwards again, stalking towards the portal, towards the Tower. You're not going to die. I won't let you die, do you hear me, Frost?!

Okay, I promised. Okay. But Loki… Loki, I love you.

Stop, he pleaded. Pleaded and raged. Please, Natalie… stop.

I love you.

The tears started. They flowed. And they wouldn't stop. Not on either of our faces. I love you, too, he said at last. Natalie… I love you so very much… I'm coming for you, Natalie, I won't let it end, not like this… not like this…

And I faded into blackness with these last words ringing in my head: I won't let her take you from me again.

A/N: Thank you guys again, so much, for your reviews! They help me so much!