Remembrance of Things Past
The sequel to "The Animal Inside" and "The Dog Days are Over"

Part Ten: The Ant and the Boot

The shocks course in waves from the restraints binding her wrists and ankles to the chair. Each shock jerks her, causes her nerves to sizzle and spin. Natasha grits her teeth and bears it as much as she can. "Ride the lightning," she mutters.

The robot beyond the window tilts its head at her.

After the shocks come the sounds. Screeching, piercing, relentless sounds.

With her hands restrained, all Natasha can do is listen. She tries to stay calm. She breathes in as deeply as she can and exhales slowly, but after ten minutes, twenty, half an hour, the sounds jut into her brain and grate inside her, scraping her nerves raw.

Her head aches from the chloroform. Each breath draws a sting from her cracked rib.

Natasha closes her eyes and tries to remember the look of Venice through the fog in moonlight.

In the cage, Loki waits.

Two hours since his internment. About halfway through the time, he had heard the Carrier's turbines fire, felt the boat rock as it achieved flight. Yet still he is in the cage, and still no one has come to question him or release him.

So Loki paces and waits. He paces and remembers.

She had come to him here, and he had taunted her, seeing what she had wanted him to see, the mawkish doll pleading for a man. Never had he expected what would follow, what he would learn of her, what she would see of him.

Never had he expected to care.

The door opens, and the Captain strides in. Loki stops pacing and moves to the center of the cage. The Captain stands at attention before the glass, and Loki says, "I expected it to be Barton. I'm sure he would relish the chance at interrogation, particularly the more… forceful methods."

The Captain shakes his head. "I thought a more neutral party would be best. Clint and Tony have too much history with Natasha, and you have too much history with Thor and Bruce, so here I am."

And here you are.

And here I am.

Loki pushes away the memory of Natasha and India and focuses his attention on the Captain. He cannot remember ever seeing the Captain outside of his ghastly uniform. Strangely, he looks both older and younger than Loki had anticipated.

As he stares at the Captain, Loki waits for the questions, for the tedium of the interrogation, time slipping away, but the Captain stays silent and watches him instead. Smirking, Loki says, "Is this a new method of interrogation? One without questions? I daresay you'll learn very little that way."

The Captain shakes his head. Then he says, "I read your postcards."

Loki narrows his eyes.

Holding up a conciliatory hand, the Captain continues, "Natasha had to turn them in. Fury almost put her in the brig for letting you go in the first place. People thought she was crazy. If she hadn't handed over the postcards, you'd probably be dead by now."

"So I should thank you and S.H.I.E.L.D. for your interest in my missives?"

Ignoring the edge in Loki's voice, the Captain folds his arms across his chest and continues to stare. "I also talked with Thor," he says. "On our way to Latveria."

"I'm sure that was a pleasant conversation. Thor is the most eloquent of speakers."

The Captain stays silent. He moves to the rail, leans against it, and continues to regard Loki, his brows drawn together. Loki rolls his eyes and turns away. Why had he ever come to them for aid? They dithered away, locking him in here for hours, while Natasha—

"I wasn't always like this, you know," the Captain says, interrupting his train of thought.

"No? How unfortunate."

"I probably came up to your elbow. And I probably weighed about as much as that fancy helmet that you sometimes wear."

Loki closes his eyes and sighs. "I would actually prefer the interrogation about Doom, if you don't mind."

"You see, Loki," the Captain says, unfazed by his irritation, "I had a friend back then. His name was James, but everybody called him Bucky. And compared to me he was like a god."

Loki opens his eyes. He turns his head and glares over his shoulder at the Captain.

"And I," the Captain says, shaking his head at the memories, a small smile beginning to form on his face, "I would have given anything to be like him. To have people look at me like they did him. To respect me like they did him. I even signed up to be a Stark science experiment in order to be more like him."

The smile starts to fade, and Loki turns away. He has no desire to hear any more, no desire to explore the heretofore-unknown sympathies between the Captain and himself, but regrettably the Captain does not stop. He presses on.

"And the funny thing is," he says, "the science experiment worked. People respected me like they had Bucky. Girls, well, you know, they did too. And then Bucky was the one that people ignored." The Captain pauses; he shifts against the rail. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. "But then he died. He was trying to help me, and he died. And I would give anything right now for him to be alive. He was the closest thing to a family that I had. I would give up all of this, the power, the suit, everything for Bucky to be alive again. I'd go back to being the small guy that no one sees in a heartbeat. Because the power, all of it, none of it matters if you're alone, if no one knows who you really are. And no one knows you like family."

Silence follows the Captain's speech. Loki turns back around. He meets the Captain's gaze and tries to ignore the familiar look on his face, the yearning for what has been lost.

"You surprise me, Captain," Loki says, moving closer to the glass. "You're not nearly as dull as your name would imply."

The Captain eyes him through the glass. "And you're not nearly as heartless as your previous actions would imply." He almost smiles now, and Loki understands why he, out of all of them, is their leader.

"So," the Captain says, pushing off of the rail, "what can you tell me about Doom?"

In the midst of the pandemonium, the heat begins.

The temperature rises until sweat soaks Natasha's clothes and stings her eyes. She feels her heart start to beat faster as her body struggles to keep cool. Her muscles cramp from her time in the chair, from the shocks, relentless, from the sounds, and she feels the edges of delirium nipping at her mind. The last food that she ate was in Venice before the soirée; the last drink that she had was the bourbon in Switzerland.

All she can think about now is water. Water and ice. Water and cold.

Loki with his blue skin, Loki with his blue eyes.

What lengths would a man such as he go to in order to rescue a woman such as you?

In the window, the robot watches, distant and aloof.

In the chair, Natasha sits, her body on fire.

Another hour after the Captain leaves, he returns and leads Loki from the Cage in restraints.

The Carrier looks new, fully repaired after his previous visit when he had orchestrated the unleashing of the beast. Loki contemplates the distance between the man thriving in that chaos and the man now walking the empty halls. He understands still the thrill of that chaos, but he knows where that road leads, and he has no interest in the Void at the end.

Perhaps this is what Natasha had meant by circumstance. The past remained fixed, you were who you were, the deadly little girl who had killed as a child, the monster that had haunted the halls of Asgard, yet one was able to mold the future into a vision of life that suited the desires of the present. One was able to choose.

The Captain leads him onto the deck. Screens have been erected between the conference table at which Fury and the rest sit and the workstations controlling the ship beyond. Whether they are to block the nameless agents from Loki or Loki from the nameless agents he does not know.

The Captain points to a chair beside Thor. Loki hesitates, eyeing his brother, but then he sits, the chains of his restraints clinking against his chair. The Captain takes the empty seat on his left. The beast and Stark sit next to the Captain, followed by Barton, directly across from Loki, and then Hill and Fury. The tabletop before them displays a satellite image of a set of buildings in Latveria.

Fury stands. "Given what we know," he begins, "our best guess as to where Doom has taken Agent Romanov is this military compound some ways south of the Latverian capital. Now, we're located above this area now, but the thing about these psychotic dictators is that they don't allow much for census taking or for official blueprints. So we don't know much about any of these buildings or which one would be most likely to have Natasha."

He turns to the Captain now, who stands and says, "On top of what we don't know, there's what we do know. Doom has two anti-aircraft guns stationed at the north and south ends of the compound, two watchtowers at the East and West ends, and all of these little blue dots, which Tony has informed me are sentient fighting robots designed to kill upon command." The Captain pauses at that and shakes his head. "Knowing all this," he continues, "we could try stealth, which would take time, or a frontal assault, which could deteriorate quickly—"

"Or you could send me in," Loki says.

All eyes fall upon him, including Fury's. "And what exactly would that accomplish?" Fury asks, turning toward him.

"Covert surveillance. I can go down to the compound and search undetected for Natasha."

"By undetected," Stark says, leaning across the table toward Loki, "does that mean invisible? Because, if so—"

"Not invisible," Loki says, stopping whatever inanity Stark desires to spew. "Just unseen."

"There's a difference?"

Loki sighs and turns to Thor. "Care to explain to the more simple-minded members of your team?"

Thor gives him a look of warning, but Loki merely shrugs. Repressing his own sigh, Thor turns back to the rest of the table and says, "Loki's magic allows him to shield himself from the observation of others. It is not that he is invisible. Instead, those around him see only an illusion of absence. The illusion lifts if he allows it. He could converse with Agent Romanov with this Doom in the room alongside them, and Doom would not know."

Stark purses his lips at Loki, waits a moment, and then says, "So, invisible."

The beast closes his eyes and rubs a hand across his brow.

Loki turns now to Fury. "I need only twenty minutes," he says. "Twenty minutes and I will return with Natasha or I will bring you her location and you can descend upon that compound with all of the wrath that your name implies."

Fury rolls his eye at that and looks at Barton. "Your thoughts, Agent?"

Loki knows that, throughout the conversation, since the moment that the Captain had escorted him into the room, Barton had watched him. Now, he meets Barton's gaze. Of all the Avengers at the table, save, perhaps, for the Captain, Barton intrigues Loki the most. He was the man who had looked at Natasha and saw something worth saving. What within her had attracted him then? What within her did he love now? Did he appreciate her cunning, the jagged edges belied by the soft hair and ocean eyes, or did Barton only love that softness, the rare moments when she smiled?

Loki remembers the tension in Natasha as she had told Barton of their plan to attend Doom's soirée, her knuckles whitening at whatever Barton had spoken to her over the phone. While the love that Barton carries for Natasha Loki can easily see, he has been unable to discern how Natasha feels for Barton in return. She had denied love during their first meeting, during her deception at the cage, subscribing her desire for Barton's freedom only to a debt, but she had bristled when Loki had mentioned him in Switzerland.

You run from Barton.

Don't talk about Clint.

Now Barton regards Loki through impassive eyes. Loki returns the stare and waits.

Without looking away, Barton says to Fury, "He can do what he says. Give him his window."

Loki raises a brow, and now Barton turns away, keeping his gaze fixed on Fury as Fury exhales slowly and then stands. Reaching into his pocket, Fury extracts the key to Loki's restraints as well as a small device for communication.

Moving towards him, Fury says, "You have your minutes. If you run, you can consider our previous conflict re-engaged." He unlocks the restraints and hands Loki the communication device. Loki rubs his wrists and peers down at the satellite image. Fixing his point of entry in his mind, he starts to move away from the table, but Fury grabs his shoulder. Leaning in, his voice low, his mouth close to Loki's ear, he says, "And if Agent Romanov happens to die because you fuck up in some way, well, then, you can try to run, but we'll find you, no matter whose brother you are."

Loki smirks. "And I'll welcome you," he says, "no matter how many beasts you bring with you."

Releasing him, Fury returns to his spot at the table, and Loki moves to the open area of the deck. He closes his eyes, pictures his point of entry, and then the familiar green energy takes him down to Earth.

After the heat comes the robot, who, one by one, breaks the fingers of her left hand.

It is then that Natasha screams.

AN: Thank you to everyone who has left feedback so far. I'm so happy that people are enjoying the story. All of the lovely comments help to feed the story beast. :)