A Child at Prayer

The elevator doors whispered open, revealing the familiar, dark corridor beyond. Natasha's pale eyes fixed on the bright halo that marked its end, the brutal angelic light that led her further and further into the caverns of temptation. It was a dangerous place, filled with deceptive traps and lures meant to strangle her in the shadows. What she couldn't piece together was why exactly, in her effort to drag herself out of that place, she found herself venturing ever deeper over and over again.

She took a deep breath and raised her chin, held her head up high as she stepped out onto the concrete floor. The soles of her soft boots emitted barely audible, whispered clicks as they connected with the hard surface. The sound of her blood rapidly pumping in her ears drowned them out.

She walked for miles, eyes lingering on the floor as she carried herself to Loki's cell. The gentle swish of fabric told her that he was rising to his feet even before he softly called, "Agent Romanoff...I would not have expected you so early. Could it be that you miss me after all?"

Natasha's stomach churned. Her jaw clenched.

Footsteps echoed around the small cell. The faint sound grew louder, louder, until it ceased. "Natasha?" Loki murmured. Her eyes were still on the ground, but by the softness and the nearness of his voice she imagined that she could reach out and touch him, feel his lips beneath her fingertips, the familiar, tough texture of his leather armor beneath her hands.

Natasha looked up, and her vision immediately filled with the curious gaze of the god. He stood barely an inch away from the glass, hands clasped behind his back, his body bent slightly at the waist in order to examine her more closely. His shimmering green eyes explored the delicate, impassive curves of her face in a determined bid to extract some motive, some emotion from them, but she knew he would find nothing.

After a lifetime, he quietly inquired, "Would you like to come inside?"

The agent's head tilted to the left, a few bright locks spilling forward over her shoulder. "This isn't a social call," she said coolly. Loki straightened up, mistrust caressing his sculpted features. Natasha tried to ignore it as she added, "I need more information about the Infinity Stones."

"I believe we have an arrangement for this, do we not?" he was quick to point out. He wasn't wrong; for the past couple of weeks, each time Natasha made to leave after sneaking away to see him, he would throw her some new useful scrap to bring back to Fury. She never asked him why, after all this time, he chose to cooperate with her. In some sad way, she already knew the answer.

Somehow it made what she was here to do even more difficult.

Slowly, Natasha shook her head. "That's not how it works anymore."

The corners of Loki's mouth twitched. His eyes narrowed slightly. "I beg to differ," he replied, his low voice boiling.

Natasha's shoulders stiffened. She raised her chin up to the god a bit more squarely and coldly answered, "I'm sorry, Loki. Playtime's over."

"You're sorry." He spat the word out, flecks of spittle stinging the glass barrier. "You know not the meaning of the word. This is about the hawk. I can smell him on you. Always I can smell him," he growled. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

Natasha swallowed her heart and replied flatly, "This...thing...has gone on for too long. It was a mistake to—"

Loki's threatening growl consumed the rest of her words. One of his white hands shot through the suddenly nonexistent glass barrier and seized her roughly by the collar of her catsuit. Her hands closed around his wrist and her eyes flew wide before he lifted her clear of the ground and yanked her straight into his cell. She barely had time to draw breath before the newly reinstated glass stood unforgiving at her back and Loki's menacing snarl hovered mere millimeters away from her shocked features. His icy knuckles dug into her throat.

"Do not tell me that I am your mistake!" he ordered. "This is not regret! This is cowardice! I suppose he grew suspicious, did he not? Now you are threatened with the consequences of your actions so you seek to run from them—"

"Sound familiar?" Natasha growled over him. One of her hands still clutched his wrist. The other planted itself firmly against his chest. The toes of her boots scraped the metal floor.

Loki gave a rough, mirthless laugh but didn't abate. "Deflect to your heart's content, little spider, but you and I will always know the truth," he told her, his harsh voice clawing its way into her ears.

Natasha's features contorted into a powerful glare, but he seemed not to notice. The fingers gripping her suit loosened, the thick fabric sliding easily out of his grasp. His cool touch dipped below her collar and slid over her neck, electrifying each nerve it brushed. Slowly his hand disappeared into her hair, her red locks winding around his fingers until they contracted into a firm, but not entirely violent, fist.

The god pressed in closer to her. His chest connected with hers, and Natasha pulled in a quiet, shaky breath, her lips pressed into a hard line as she held Loki's unblinking, burning stare. His free hand slid along the side of her rib cage and settled in the curve of her waist, the force of his grip curling his fingertips against her body. One of his knees slipped between hers, and the sudden invasion forced her eyes to close and her slight frame to give a noticeable, uncontrollable shudder.

Natasha felt Loki's nose brush hers, felt his cool breath crash over her skin. Her hands slid down his chest and her fingers curled around the straps of his armor. Briefly she couldn't help but recall the first time he'd had her up against the glass like this in nearly the very same position; she knew what she'd done then, what she should do now, but instead she found herself whispering, "What truth?"

A low chuckle twisted in Loki's throat. His hand slipped a little lower over the curve of her hip and he pressed still closer to her, pinning her firmly to the glass. She felt his lips touch hers so lightly that it made her breath catch and her eyelids flutter. "Deep down," he said softly, his leg grinding delicately against the core of her body, "no matter how vehemently you deny it, you want this."

Natasha's heart threw itself against her breastbone and her lips parted slightly, a weak protest poised in her throat. It fought for release even as Loki pulled her into a heated kiss, one that quickly muddied her senses and sent violent chills up her spine. His tongue swept the cavern of her mouth as his fingers tightened in her hair, and suddenly that desperate protest shattered into a low, helpless whimper.

She gave in to him like she always did, and he crashed over her as powerfully and hungrily as the sea. His lips never ceased devouring hers, not for a moment, as his hand slipped once again out of her hair and down her neck. Icy fingers traveled over her chest and found the zipper of her suit, at once pulling it down and exploring the warm, pale flesh underneath. His light, cool touch, so tentative that those fingers might never have ever taken this route along her body, was kerosene to the waiting spark smoldering just below her skin.

Her belts came undone of their own accord, allowing Loki to continue his slow, careful process of splitting apart the suit. As soon as the zipper reached its end, his fingertips slipped below the edge of the fabric and began to travel gingerly over her lower body. It was only when his snowy touch met the heated, sensitive flesh between her legs that he pulled his lips away from hers, dragging them across her cheek as she pulled in a low, unsteady breath.

The leather straps beneath Natasha's hands fell away. Her palms met Loki's bare stomach and quickly slid up to his neck, her fingers curling in his dusky hair as his traced delicate, tantalizing circles around her aching clit. Her tremulous whimpers broke over his ear, one after the other, and his breath began to grow heavy between the firm kisses and gentle bites he laid beneath her jaw.

She felt the now quite familiar sensation of her suit melting away from her shoulders, parting over her arms like thin, fine silk as his index and middle fingers ceased their controlled rotations and traveled toward the center of her body. Slowly he slipped one and then the other inside her, causing her muscles to twitch and her head to lean back against the glass, her lower lip sneaking between her teeth in a shallow effort to restrain the low moan that shook from her lungs. Every press and slight twist of those fingers brightened the flush in her cheeks and drove her purpose further and further from her thoughts; as his unoccupied hand began to travel over the side of her body, she forgot her reason for visiting him entirely.

Loki's fingertips traced the curve of Natasha's breast, his light touch nearly drawing goosebumps over her snowy skin. His lips began to whisper a soft trail of kisses along the line of her jaw, and all at once she needed to drop her hands down to his shoulders for something a bit more firm to hold onto; her knees were growing weak. The scent of mint and clear, December mornings wound around her; his deep breathing drowned out the sound of the fluorescent lights; she could still taste him on her tongue, and every muscle in her body quivered and called out at his touch.

"Natasha," he murmured against her lips. Her watercolor eyes sprang open at the sound of his voice, so heavy and strained, weighted down by desire and some other desperate quality mirrored in the emerald fire of his intent gaze. "Natasha," he repeated slowly, "tell me what you want."

It never occurred to Natasha that, in this one moment, she was the one in control. Like a moth to a flame, Loki lured her into his glittering, burning eyes until she felt consumed by them. Thoughtlessly, she answered him, "I want—"

Loki's hand left Natasha's chest and clamped firmly over her mouth, pinning her head against the glass and muffling her last few words against his skin. She promptly gave an angry whine and shoved at his shoulders, but he tightened his fingers over her cheeks and threw a look so cold at her out of the corners of his eyes that she immediately fell silent and ceased her struggles.

Only a few moments passed, the agent's heart thundering in her chest, before the faint sound of hard footsteps reached her ears. Panic forced her round eyes wide as she attempted to turn her head, to look through the glass at who was approaching, but Loki held her in place. A black cloud seemed to pass over his face, drained of what little color it possessed, before he shifted to the side slightly and let his forehead rest against the glass beside her.

Natasha trusted that he had some sort of illusion in place to conceal them both; each time she checked the security footage after she left him, the tapes reflected the same thing: the two of them interacting on opposite sides of the glass. Sometimes they merely seemed to stand and talk, sometimes he made the two of them sit on the floor. Once he projected them playing chess, Natasha moving his pieces for him at his direction. They had never been interrupted like this before, however; to her knowledge, only a handful of people had access to this floor at all. She had no idea what he was doing to fool whoever was coming down there, and frankly, she couldn't tell whether she was more unnerved by that or by the implications of an unexpected visit from a stranger.

She watched over Loki's shoulder as a fully dressed illusion of himself rose to its feet across the cell and began to approach. The footsteps came to a halt behind her bare back, and the only thing that kept her from turning to look at the visitor was her fear of somehow breaking Loki's concentration. Instead she watched on, eyes still flooded with mute panic, as the illusion opened its mouth and began, "My, but this is unexpected—"

"Save it," interrupted the harsh voice of the visitor.

The illusion pulled up short.

Natasha's eyes slipped closed and she trembled beneath Loki's hands.

"You've taken advantage of our hospitality for long enough. Time to start talking," Clint said firmly.

The illusion released a low chuckle. "I have been very cooperative," it pointed out smoothly. "And I hardly believe that this," it gestured around the cell, "qualifies as hospitality."

A moment passed, and then Clint retorted, "Two sentences every few days doesn't count as cooperative in my book. You're gonna have to do a hell of a lot better than that."

"Or you'll do what, exactly?" the illusion pushed.

"Find out."

The illusion delivered a patronizing smirk. "If it is information you desire, you would have done better to bring your partner. Perhaps you would care to fetch her for me?"

Natasha's heart contracted in her chest. She could practically hear Clint's hands balling into fists before he replied, "No, I wouldn't."

"Then I fear we have nothing more to discuss," the illusion said coolly. "Do bring her my regards...should you see her before I do."

"We're not done here," Clint commanded, anger running beneath his words. "You're gonna tell me everything you know, and I mean everything, and then you're gonna tell me what you did to Agent Romanoff."

A restrained, gleeful grin split the face of the illusion. "I have done nothing," it said lightly, it's shoulders bobbing in an innocent shrug.

"You did something."

"Nothing she did not wish me to do," the false Loki purred, the corners of its mouth curling upward into that familiar, chaotic smile.

Natasha was positive that Loki could feel her heart beating against his own chest. Even from inside the cell she could tell Clint was flaring up as he demanded, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"You might ask her directly. Surely she would not lie to you. Of myself, I cannot say the same."

"You'll tell me the truth. What did you do?"

"Is not the better question, what did she wish of me?"

"She didn't wish anything from you."

The illusion let out a long, low hum, the sound trailing away in a dark chuckle as it advanced closer to the glass. "Are you quite sure, Agent Barton?" it asked softly.

"Yes, I am," Clint answered. Natasha's eyes slipped closed and she bit back a whimper. If she hadn't missed the slight tremor in his voice, Loki surely wouldn't.

"You do see better from a distance," the illusion taunted. Clint didn't respond, so it continued, "It is truly remarkable, how deeply your loyalty to our little spider runs. I wonder what she has done to deserve it."

"Funny you should mention loyalty when you don't know the first thing about it," the archer retorted. It was a clumsy effort to turn the tables on the god, and nobody bought it.

The illusion stepped closer to the glass, it's voice, Loki's voice, low and hungry. "On the contrary, I understand a great deal about loyalty. I should, as I have betrayed it and been betrayed often enough," it pointed out. "For instance, I understand that love often breeds loyalty of the most dangerous kind. You do love Agent Romanoff, do you not?"

Clint was silent for a long moment before he quietly said, "You wouldn't know the first thing about that either."

"Wrong again, Hawk," the illusion purred. "Tell me...would you remain so loyal, so in love...if she betrayed you?"

Natasha swallowed hard as she strained to look to either side of her beneath Loki's heavy hand. Her screams rebounded around her skull, held inside by the press of his palm to her lips. She didn't dare move, hit him, or attempt to speak for fear of breaking his illusion, but the panic that same illusion sent surging through her was so great that she may not have been capable of doing any of those things if she tried.

Several seconds slipped by, and then Clint pushed out, "I don't know what you're talking about."

The illusion released a cruel laugh that rebounded around the walls of the cell. "Oh, but I think you do," it goaded. "I doubt that even one such as you, so loyal, so...in love...could remain so blind."

"What did you do to her?!" Clint shouted suddenly. The glass vibrated lightly at Natasha's back, and she understood that his fist had connected with it.

Her eyes flickered over to the illusion. She expected it to laugh, to get angry in return, to do anything but allow its smile to simmer down into the kind of slight, predatory grin that a wolf might adopt as it tears into the hot, bleeding carcass of its prey. Slowly, delicately, as though it relished nothing more than the words dripping from its lips, it said, "Things you have but dreamt of doing."

Silence rang throughout the cell and the corridor beyond. Natasha strained her ears in an effort to hear something, anything, on the other side of the glass. Her heart continued to hammer in her chest and her eyes watered slightly, whether from fury, relief, or the urge to blink she couldn't tell. The whole world seemed condensed down to that tiny corner of S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters; to her, nothing else existed.

Hard footsteps echoed through the corridor, fading by degrees as Clint walked back to the elevator. After a few more long moments, Natasha assumed after he'd stepped through the doors, the illusion dissipated and Loki let out a long exhale. The hand holding her face began to relax.

She drew back her arms and shoved him as hard as she could given the awkward angle, hard enough, at least, to drive him back a step. His other hand finally slipped from between her legs, confusion touching every part of his expression as he stared back at her.

"What?" he asked after a long moment, utterly dumbfounded.

Natasha pulled her suit up over her hips and began shoving her arms into it. "Fuck you," she growled without deigning to look up at him.

"I believe you were about to," Loki returned hesitantly.

Raw anger ripped through Natasha like a white hot brand as her eyes snapped onto the god's, bright and livid enough to put an edge of caution into his stare. Her mouth hung open for a few seconds, working around for something to say to him, but she simply couldn't find the words. Instead she shook her head and tore her eyes away from him, her hands shaking so badly that she could hardly grasp her zipper.

She felt Loki's eyes linger on her as he watched her, evidently trying to puzzle her out. At length, he said quietly, "That was a favor, you know."

"That was not a favor," Natasha snarled as she finally managed to drag the reluctant zipper up her body. "You have no idea what you just did, and you don't care."

"What I've done," Loki replied through gritted teeth, his own temper rising, "is free you from the shackles of a man with whom you want nothing to do."

Natasha's hands closed tightly around one of her belts, the leather strap biting into her skin as she drew herself back up to her full height. Her hands still shook as she wrapped it around herself in an attempt to dress as quickly as possible. A noticeable tremor ran beneath her voice as she told the arrogant creature before her, "You mean the man who saved my life, who gave me a second chance when I ran out of them—"

"That is no reason to stay when he could never give you what you want, what you—"

"You think this is what I want?" Natasha finally erupted. The belt clasped around her waist and she was on Loki in a second, her defiant snarl pushed right up into his defensive glare. "You think you could ever give me anything I want? You get—"

"I could give you the world," Loki growled over her, but she didn't relent.

"—get jealous and you think that gives you the right to—"

"To tell the truth?"

His words stopped Natasha in her tracks. Her mouth still hung open, her retorts trapped in her throat. Her hands, poised to shove him again, hovered in the air between them. The fury in her eyes flickered and wavered uncertainly.

"Does not your hawk deserve to know what his beloved does whilst his back is turned?" Loki pushed, venom pulsing through his low voice. "Has not this charade gone on long enough, as you told me when you arrived? I have but done as you wished, Natasha. I have ended it. I have corrected your mistake."

Natasha shrank back from the god, her soft features pinched in unconcealed hurt and confusion. She turned her back on him and reached for her other belt, adorned with her weapons and harnesses, suddenly repossessed by the urge to leave as quickly as she could. She had to fix this mess, somehow. She wrapped the belt around her waist and clicked it in place. Her hands moved toward the buckles hanging freely around her thighs when the sound of Loki's voice, low and closer than she thought it would be, froze her once again.

"Natasha?" he asked, almost gently.

The agent clenched her jaw and forced her fingers to continue wrapping the leather straps around her leg. "Save it, Loki. I don't need to hear any more of your childish arguments," she forced out, each word a short, spiteful dart.

Loki was silent for several moments, long enough that she was able to finish buckling on her left holster and nearly complete the right as well. Just when she was beginning to think she might be able to get out of there without another word from him, he murmured, "You make me feel like a child."

That simple sentence, spoken so softly, pierced Natasha sharply enough to draw blood. Her fingers quivered as she finished buckling her holster in place, and it took a tremendous amount of effort to avoid fumbling with her wrist cartridges as she slipped them on. She paused when she was fully outfitted, slow seconds ticking by outside the cell. Her heart contracted. Blood rushed through her veins. Her lungs inhaled, exhaled.

Something deep down began to give way.

A high chirp echoed around the cell, startling Natasha badly enough that she jumped. She swallowed hard as her fingers scrabbled at her belt to get at her phone, and when she looked at the screen she nearly rolled her eyes. Tony had sent her a text.

She opened the message and silently read, "Someone's been naughty."