A/N: Hey guys! My dad found me researching pacemakers the other day, and he either thinks I've secretly swapped majors or I'm moonlighting somewhere... Or that I'm crazy. We'll go with crazy. Anyway, I had to rewrite part of this because on reading it back I realised I'd unintentionally quoted Pocahontas. *Awkward* So here is the next chapter, hopefully free of Disney references!
"But Director Fury's response was completely logical."
"If you keep talking like that, Spock, I'll sedate you!"
Natasha had been frustratedly pacing up and down at the foot of Loki's bed for the past half hour. The more the god tried to calm her down, the angrier she got.
"Dammit, Natasha, will you stop pacing! You're making me nauseous!"
Natasha froze and glared at Loki. His words stung... But maybe now wasn't the best time to be having their first domestic.
"I'm... I'm sorry," Loki said quietly, clearly thinking the same thing, his voice softer with remorse. "Will you please just sit down?"
With a sigh, Natasha pulled up a stool at his side, running a hand through her hair. "No, I'm sorry," she murmured. "I just don't understand how you can be so calm. Fury wanted you dead, Loki... Aren't you, I don't know, angry?"
Loki studied her for a long time before answering, slowly: "Yes... But not for my own sake. I'm only angry about what my death would do to Thor... and to you."
He smiled a little sadly at Natasha, obviously waiting to see if he would get away with this assertion of his importance to her... Natasha didn't say anything, because he was right.
"But please, Natasha," he continued. "Put things into perspective. Fury's plans don't matter anymore; you and Dr. Banner have proved him wrong thus far, and he's allowing my operation to go ahead." Loki reached out and took Natasha's hand, their fingers interlocked on the bed. "It's really not worth getting worked up over."
Natasha knew Loki was right yet again, and his touch seemed to be drawing the anger out of her like venom from a wound. She was about to reply when she was interrupted by a commotion out in the laboratory corridor. Tony appeared, carrying three large cardboard boxes precariously stacked one on top of the other, followed by Bruce wheeling a crate containing more boxes, and they were arguing about something.
"But I don't see the problem!" Tony said, entering the lab and setting the boxes down by a bench.
"Well you wouldn't!" Bruce retorted, parking the crate next to Tony.
"What are you two bickering about?" Natasha asked slyly; it seemed she and Loki weren't the only ones dealing with discord.
"Tony wants us to play 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on loop during the surgery tomorrow, which is just ridiculous," Bruce explained wearily.
"But all the cool surgeons have soundtracks to their procedures!" Tony shot back.
"Fine! Why don't we just play 'Staying Alive' instead? It'd be more appropriate!" Bruce replied.
"Now that is ridiculous!" Tony snapped.
Natasha glanced sideways at Loki; he was listening to the conversation with a look somewhere between curiosity and confusion. She knew Tony and Bruce could go on like this all night, so she decided to change the subject: "I can't believe Mount Sinai just let you borrow all this stuff!"
Tony grinned knowingly at Bruce. "Yeah, Bruce, I wonder why that is?"
Natasha was shocked when she realised Bruce had actually gone a little red. "Well Laura, I mean Dr. Gill is, er, an old flame of mine... So she's letting us use her equipment," he admitted.
"And if the surgery is a success she's letting Bruce take her out to dinner!" Tony added gleefully.
"I'll try not to die on you then, Doctor," Loki said with a wry smile, and Tony looked like he was about to burst with delight at the situation.
"It's not a date!" Bruce said sharply. "We'll just be meeting up to discuss the procedure... Now let's see what's in these boxes."
He tore open one of Tony's cardboard boxes like a lion ripping flesh off a zebra carcass. Tony, Natasha and Loki exchanged fearful looks; the joke had clearly run its course.
"See this is why I need an awesome soundtrack," Tony whined, pulling a pair of green surgical scrubs from the box. "Because I'm going to look like a twat!"
Natasha laughed. "Yeah, I can't believe you two are getting me into scrubs!" No one joined in her laughter. Bruce and Tony looked worriedly from Natasha to each other. "What?" she asked hotly.
"We don't think it's a good idea for you to be assisting tomorrow," Bruce said carefully. "We were going to discuss it with you in, er, private. But you're..." He glanced at Loki.
"... A little too involved," Tony finished. "It wouldn't be a smart move. Pepper will be assisting."
Natasha leapt off her stool. "Are you fucking kidding me?" she growled, her heart throwing itself against her ribcage.
"I'm sorry, Natasha," Bruce said sombrely. "I just don't think it would be very professional if..."
Natasha lost it at the word 'professional'. She stormed out of the lab without a backward glance, despite the cries of "Natasha!" from all three men – though the note of pain she discerned in Loki's voice slowed her pace a little. Professional? So she was just another idiot who fell for a patient and this was her punishment. As she marched towards the elevator she realised her reaction had been mostly due to fear; a fear of losing control, of being forced into a spectator seat, watching Loki's life hang in the balance without being able to do a thing about it.
She repeatedly stabbed at the elevator button, and when the doors slid open she found Pepper staring at her. Natasha froze; she was now trapped between Pepper and the lab, trying to decide which was the lesser of two evils. Making her decision, Natasha stepped into the elevator.
"Where you heading?" Pepper asked cautiously, looking into the corridor as the doors closed, trying to determine the problem.
"I... I don't know," Natasha admitted, pinching the top of her nose with an angry sigh.
"They told you about my assisting?" Pepper ventured warily.
"Yes," Natasha replied. Looking over at her, she saw that Pepper looked terrified at the prospect of being in a confined space with a master assassin whom she had just royally pissed off... And her fear made Natasha ease off. She knew this wasn't Pepper's fault, and she said so.
"You look like you could use a stiff drink," Pepper commented. "You wanna join me upstairs?" 'Upstairs' was everyone's name for Tony and Pepper's penthouse suite.
Rapidly travelling past the point of caring, Natasha nodded, and the two women fell silent as the elevator soared upwards towards its final destination.
-o0o-
"Are you sure Tony won't mind us drinking his Scotch?" Natasha asked when Pepper handed her a glass of what she suspected was very expensive, dark gold whiskey.
"Well, he still owes me for that 'twelve percent' comment he made a few months ago, so I say this is another method of payback," Pepper replied, coming to join Natasha at the bar.
Natasha took a gulp of whiskey; it was like swallowing fire and she tried desperately not to cough. Pepper sipped hers, waiting for Natasha to begin. "I just can't catch a break!" Natasha said finally, after another gulp from her glass.
"I know the feeling," Pepper said slowly. "But I think Bruce and Tony's discovery this week is a pretty big break." She looked at Natasha with a rueful smile, like a big sister scolding a younger sibling for blowing things out of proportion.
"OK, yes, I know," Natasha sighed. "God, I'm like a fourteen-year-old girl with these mood swings. I should be sitting in the corner eating Nutella out of the jar with a spoon!"
Pepper laughed. "Again, I know the feeling... And, well, I understand your situation more than you might think." She lowered her voice. "Tony's arc reactor scares the hell out of me... If something happened to him, I don't know what I'd do. I know what it's like to care about someone but feel you can't protect them, or save them." She drained her glass. "When Tony and I first started dating I took some cardiac physiology classes on the sly, just to feel a little less helpless, in case something happened. Tony eventually found out about the classes, and I'm sure that's why he put me forward to assist."
Natasha's stomach jolted; they had returned to Loki, and she felt the sickly sloshing of the whiskey inside her. She hadn't established a poker face in time and Pepper caught her expression.
"You know all I'll really be doing is handing things to Tony and Bruce and monitoring Loki's IVs, but I promise you I'll take good care of him, Natasha, in any way I can."
"Thank you," Natasha whispered, the warmth of the whiskey in her stomach transmuting into genuine warmth for Pepper.
"So, another round?" Pepper asked, sensing Natasha didn't want to linger over the moment.
Natasha grinned. "You read my mind."
-o0o-
Natasha could tell by the way the agents were fidgeting with the safeties on their guns that they had all drawn the short straw, and none of them wanted to be there. Agent Hill had brought along another four agents and Fury's right-hand woman was sitting across from her now, gathered as they were in Bruce's lounge. Trying to avoid Agent Hill's gaze, Natasha's thoughts flitted to Clint... She quickly pushed such thoughts away. Clint had dropped off S.H.I.E.L.D.'s radar a few days ago and no one knew where he was, but she knew that shouldn't be the focus of her attention.
The lounge doors slid open and Thor appeared, hastily wiping his eyes. He looked to Natasha and nodded; she was up. Passing the god on her way to the doors, she gently squeezed his arm.
"We'll join you in five minutes, Natasha," Bruce said quietly, as she headed into the lab.
The lab had been transformed that afternoon, quite spectacularly, into a make-shift operating theatre. Natasha squinted slightly against the harsher, whiter light. Loki's hospital bed had been lowered and was now completely horizontal. The god lay there waiting for her, his head resting on one thin pillow. As part of a compromise for not assisting, Bruce and Tony were letting Natasha administer Loki's anaesthetic, so the two would get his last few moments together before he went under. She found the syringe waiting for her in a metal tray at Loki's bedside, and it only made her feel sick.
"How are you feeling?" Loki murmured, as she took a seat next to him.
"I've been better," Natasha replied, managing a smile. "How about you?"
Loki didn't answer and there was a nervousness dancing in his green eyes. Natasha reached up and began to stroke his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead. "Hey, you've got nothing to worry about. It'll be over in a heartbeat."
"Just... Just promise me you'll be the first thing I see when I wake up," Loki whispered.
"I promise," Natasha said, softly but firmly. Her eyes flickered to the syringe. "Are you ready?"
Loki nodded. He chose to look away when she took his hand and gently turned his arm towards her. With two fingers she tapped for a vein, and found one almost immediately. "OK, you'll just feel a little scratch." Swiftly and smoothly, she plunged the needle into Loki's arm, delivering the dose of Propofol. Then, withdrawing the needle and disposing of the syringe, she pressed a cotton pad against the spot where the needle had broken the skin.
"If I don't wake up," Loki said quietly. "You will take care of Thor for me, won't you?"
"Shhh..." Natasha's hand returned to Loki's hair. "Don't talk like that."
"But I mean it," Loki said, the words coming out heavy and laboured. "And if I don't make it... Natasha... please... don't throw your life away..." The god's eyelids were fluttering as he tried vainly to fight against the pull of the drug. "Life's... too precious for one... as beautiful and brilliant... as you to... give up..."
With tears prickling her eyes and words failing her, Natasha leaned down and kissed Loki's lips, urgently and passionately. She felt Loki trying desperately to mould his lips against hers, but he was only seconds away from losing consciousness.
As she pulled away, Loki fixed her with his green, watery eyes. "Natasha..." Each syllable was slurred. "I... I..." But then his eyes rolled back into his head and his lids closed, his lips still slightly agape with his last words to her, the unfinished sentence hanging in the air between them. A cry got caught in Natasha's throat and she kissed Loki's lips again, then his nose, then his forehead.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been sitting there, and she never heard the lounge doors open, but suddenly strong hands were helping her rise from her stool and guiding her towards the lab doors. She peered up to see it was Thor who was half-carrying her away. A row of chairs had been placed in the laboratory corridor. Natasha sat down next to Thor, and they were joined by Steve and an agent. Bruce and Tony were finishing scrubbing up at a sink at the back of the lab. Pepper, already prepared, was sitting at the top of Loki's bed, fixing an oxygen mask to his face. Natasha noticed she seemed to be murmuring to Loki as she did – talking him through what she was doing. Natasha was glad Pepper was in there with him.
Agent Hill and the remaining three agents each retreated to a corner of the lab to observe the proceedings. Fully scrubbed up, Tony and Bruce moved to opposite sides of Loki's bed. Pepper handed Bruce a silver scalpel that flashed white under the surgical light, and then, without a word, Bruce made the first incision in Loki's left shoulder, just below his collar bone.
It was like watching a black and white silent film. With a wall of glass between them, Natasha saw the inhabitants of the lab as flat and removed as they continued to work noiselessly in their colourless world. None of it seemed real and Natasha was only aware of a slight humming in her ears as she retreated further inside herself, like watching something on the horizon from the mouth of a cave.
The minutes trickled by and Natasha stayed perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe. They were approaching the end of the procedure now. Thor was becoming restless at her side. The pacemaker generator – no bigger than a fifty-cent piece – had been successfully slotted through the shoulder incision into the constructed pocket of flesh in Loki's chest. The pacemaker's two leads had been transvenously fed into the atrium and ventricle of his heart. Natasha knew all this, but she couldn't remember it happening; the past couple of hours had dissolved into a grainy, grey blur.
Tony gave Bruce a thumbs up as the pacemaker generator was fully activated, and there seemed to be a collective sigh of relief from the room... But then a monitor started screeching. Loki's heart had stopped.
"NO!" Natasha leapt up and slammed her hand against the glass. The shrill, deadly note brought the world of sound and colour crashing back down on her and now everything was all too real. "LOKI!" She darted towards the lab doors, but strong arms wrapped around her waist and wrestled her back.
"No, Natasha!" came Thor's gruff voice, which broke on the third syllable of her name as he fought against his own agony.
But Natasha continued to struggle in Thor's powerful grip, hands reaching towards the glass as she stared helplessly through it to the world beyond.
"Wait!" Tony commanded, when Bruce moved to begin CPR.
"What?" Bruce barked.
"I said wait for it!" Tony replied, looking desperately from Loki to the monitor where a flat green line raced across the screen.
Then something terrifying happened. Natasha blinked repeatedly, but there was no doubt about it... Loki's skin was turning blue.
"Jesus Christ!" Bruce took a step back in horror.
In an instant all the agents had their guns pointed as Loki. Intricate patterns of raised skin were spreading from the god's shoulders, to his neck, covering his face.
"His Jotun form," Natasha heard Thor gasp, and the shock made him loosen his grip on her.
The monitor kept screaming and Natasha's heart was beating so fast it hurt. She could hardly see what was happening through the tears that clouded her vision.
"Tony! We have to do something!" Bruce shouted.
"I said WAIT!" Tony yelled back.
And suddenly the screaming stopped. Loki's heart miraculously started beating again, and his skin's blue colouring faded away as quickly as it had come, returning him to his usual pale, fleshy complexion.
"There!" Tony cried in triumph.
"We've got a rhythm," Pepper sighed.
With a cry, Natasha twisted around in Thor's arms and buried her face in his chest. Her heart felt like it was about to burst right out of her chest and she couldn't catch her breath.
"Hey, it's alright," Thor whispered, keeping his arms wrapped tightly around her, resting his chin on her hair. "We got him back. He's still with us."
Natasha kept her eyes tightly shut, slowly trying to untense her muscles. Over Thor's soothing she heard Bruce and Tony snapping at each other.
"Fucking hell, Tony!"
"What?"
"You knew his heart would stop and restart like that?"
"I figured it was a possibility."
"You could have shared that with us! Christ!"
"Hey, no harm done. The pacemaker's working fine now. The surgery was a success!"
"That... That's not the point!"
"OK, OK. You can put me in detention later. But right now we need to close him up."
"Are we going to ignore the fact that he just turned blue?" That was Agent Hill's voice.
"Well, I'm no specialist in Loki's, er, genetics... But the amount of rewiring we've done, it was always a possibility. Did I forget to mention that?"
"Forget to mention it? Tony, I almost turned green!"
Opening her eyes and turning slowly back towards the lab, Natasha drowned out Bruce and Tony's arguing with static and looked to Pepper. Pepper caught her eye and silently mouthed "We're OK". She then began murmuring something to the sleeping Loki.
Natasha focused her gaze on Loki's face. Filtering out the background noise, her ears sought out the soft, steady beeping of his heart monitor, so there was only Loki and his beating heart left in the world. Natasha slowly exhaled; this was more than enough.