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

Part Twenty-Five: Runaway

The winds still and the light of the Bifrost fades, and Natasha would fall save for the strong hand beneath her elbow. She catches a glimpse of long brown hair before she must close her eyes, her stomach churning from the journey. She feels blood seep from the wound on her chest, from the shot from Winter beneath her left collarbone.

He never succumbed to sentiment.

But he had. He had. Why else would he have shot for a wound and not a kill?

Natasha feels a hand on her chest, she feels pressure on her wound, and then the woman beside her says, "Heimdall, what has happened?"

"The man with the gun fired upon her before the Bifrost descended."

Drawing in a slow breath, Natasha opens her eyes. The golden chamber in which she stands dazzles her, as does the sight of the bridge of rainbow light beyond the room and the distant vista of elegant spires, the view of a kingdom from legend. She remembers Loki in the Doge's Palace claiming that the splendor there was nothing more than a shadow of Asgard. He had been right.

Turning to the woman beside her, she says, "Are you—?"

"I am Frigga," she says. Like Loki, like Odin, like Heimdall and Thor, Natasha sees the passage of time in her eyes. How old must she be? How old is Loki? Natasha never considered his age before or his life beyond the past few years, but if he was right, if a leaf could fall on Asgard and millennia would pass, how many lifetimes had he lived before his path crossed hers?

"Many," Frigga says, "but none more meaningful than now."

Natasha stares at her, unnerved. A beat passes in which Frigga holds her gaze and then she looks at the wound in Natasha's chest. "I can aid you," she says. "I feel the metal inside you and can remove it, if you allow me."

Natasha nods. Frigga lifts her hand, and Natasha sees her blood on the pale palm. Green energy envelops the slim fingers, and Natasha grimaces as the bullet moves within her. She looks down; the shot rises from her chest; it hovers above her and then Frigga waves her hand, vanishing the metal. Peering at Natasha once more, she says, "I can do no more. I know little about Midgardian physiology."

Natasha shakes her head. "It's okay. Can you… Can you help me wrap my scarf around the wound? To stem the blood."

Frigga nods. She helps Natasha ease her left arm out of her jacket and then Frigga unwinds the scarf and begins to wrap the fabric under Natasha's arm and over her shoulder. As she works, Natasha sees Heimdall step into view, a sword in his hands. He regards her as before, his gaze steady, still penetrating far beneath the surface, and she wonders how much he has seen of the past few weeks.

Frigga answers her unspoken question. "Only as much as necessary to ensure us of your safety."

Gritting her teeth, Natasha steps away from Frigga and Heimdall. Their omnipotence unsettles her; their distance angers her. "I would stay out of my head," she says to Frigga as she secures the end of her scarf beneath the layers. "You wouldn't like much of what you see."

Frigga stares at her, but Natasha does not look away. She will not relent before them, so remote in their paradise, content to watch Loki as he suffers, but not fight for him. A moment passes and then Frigga says, "There is nothing within you that frightens me. Only strength that I admire and compassion that I value. But I will respect your wish."

Natasha nods. She slides her left arm into her jacket, stilling at the shock of pain from her chest. Breathing in slowly, she zips her jacket and then cradles her left arm to her chest. "Do you know where he is?" she asks, looking at Heimdall.

"No. He conceals himself from me."

Natasha licks her lips and breathes in again. Loki had called her arrogant for claiming to know him. Perhaps she was, but then so was he if he believed that she wouldn't find him. Glancing again at Heimdall, she says, "Do you remember where you picked up Thor and the team? When they were searching for Loki the last time?"

Heimdall nods.

"Take me there."

"You suffered there," he says. His eyes fall upon the cast still on her hand. "And you risk death without knowing if Loki awaits you at your destination."

"Yes," she says. "Your point?"

Heimdall and Frigga exchange a glance. Briefly, Natasha wonders what they communicate to each other, but then she dismisses the curiosity. They are not her concern. She sees Frigga nod. Heimdall strides past her. He lifts his sword, pauses, and then looks at her. "Prepare yourself," he says.

Natasha breathes in. She sees the bridge of rainbow light begin to pulse, and she closes her eyes. She cannot think about the outcome if she is wrong, if Doom is at the base but Loki is not, or if she is too late or somehow too early, and she shot, with only one gun and her phone, pursued by Winter and the Academy and Doom, thousands of miles from S.H.I.E.L.D. and the other Avengers. Instead, as the winds rise around Natasha, she can only think about how Loki will be there and how he will listen to her and how she will be able to somehow, somehow convince him to stay.

For this, Natasha will hope.

She lands in the middle of a compound, surrounded by the remains of exploded robots. Fire burns the building to her right. Through a hole in the wall, she sees the charred frame of a small airplane. Behind her stands an immense structure with a cracked steel door and crumbling concrete walls; smoke leaks from the cracks, curling into the cloudy air. To her left lays shattered bits of wood and stone blown back toward the forest beyond, a battered corpse of a building still sending smoldering in places. Natasha does not know how much of this damage Loki wrought himself and how much lingers from the assault from the Avengers during her rescue. She eyes the building before her as a wave of nausea washes over her. The only door hangs by one hinge; it sways in the light breeze. In the hall past the door, she sees a robot crawl past, legless.

Bracing her left arm against her stomach, Natasha takes a step toward the building and then the windows in the top floor explode out into the center of the compound.

Natasha drops as shards of glass rain down around her. She hears another blast of energy and looks up to see a robot shoot from the top floor. One half lands in the smoldering wreckage to her left; the other half disappears into the outlying woods. Pushing herself to her feet, Natasha runs for the open door. She clambers inside as another robot crashes onto the building with the burning plane.

Inside the building, she stops. Smoke from the fire raging in the hall before her curls against the flickering fluorescent lights. Natasha sees debris blocking the path to her right. The only option lay then in the hall to her left. Sliding her gun from her holster, she eases down the hall. She tastes bile in her throat from the Bifrost; her sweater clings where the blood has soaked through.

At the end of the hall, Natasha climbs over the broken door into the stairwell. She hears nothing as she ascends save for her own ragged breathing. She reaches the next floor but passes it by, unconcerned at what lies beyond, her focus only on the top. There, instead of a door, she finds a jagged arch leading to a short hall filled with smoke and ash. In the swirl of the smoke, Natasha sees part of a large room and blue sky through fragments of windows.

She stands a moment, looking through the ash, looking at the room and at the far glimpse of sky. She breathes in and adjusts her grip on her gun, and then she starts down the hall to the room beyond.

On the smooth expanse of his life in Asgard, Loki had always felt the scratch, the spot that mars, the place where the pieces of himself should come together and fit, but instead they grated, they set his teeth on edge, and he lived in Paradise as a man tormented by a shadow from the corner of his eye, glimpsed only but never seen.

When he discovered the shadow to be himself, Loki Laufeyson, the scratch healed, but the pieces shattered, and he seized the jagged edges of his life and laid siege to the world. He knew then a pale imitation of peace, his broken self soldered together with the purpose of destruction.

And then she came.

There are not many people who can sneak up on me.

But you figured I'd come.

She came and she stood before him, so slight a thing, and Loki knew the flaws within her, he knew the seams to press to shatter her again, but she did not shatter. She did not break.

So, Banner, that's your play.

And he had to know. He sought her for knowledge, for the secret that allowed her to affix her past into a cohesive whole, the bonds strong enough to withstand his attempt to break her with São Paulo, with Drakov and his daughter, with the hospital fire and Barton, and she spoke of change, of making a choice.

Someone gave me a chance. And I made a choice.

We choose who we are. What we become.

She spoke of freedom from fate, and Loki believed her, succumbing to the bright lure as all who suffer under subjugation succumb. How could he not, how could he not fall before her, so slight a thing but so strong, standing before him and daring him to be more than a monster, as she herself dared to be more than her past dictated her to be?

Can you? Can you change how you feel about me?

Yes, she had said.

Loki closes his eyes. A lie only.

This is not a game.

The most wondrous lie.

I love you. And I know you love me.

The most glorious dream.

Sometimes… sometimes I think this is still a dream. You came to me in July, and you changed my life. So… quickly. So completely.

How could this be real?

Loki clenches his jaw.

Because it is, he had said.

But it isn't. The ability to change, the promise of peace, the possibility of love, all a mirage, all a lovely, deadly chimera dangled before him by fate so that he would learn once more the truth he had tried to deny.

You are hunter, and I am a monster. That is all.

So he searches now for knowledge of the Tesseract, for the clarity, for the purpose of self, no matter how tenuous, seen in the Cube. He searches for his way out.

And he does not think about Natasha.

He does not think about Natasha.

But he does.

"Travelling?" she asks.

Loki stills, his hands hovering over the computer through which he searches, the only item whole in the room around them. Something skitters across the floor, perhaps debris kicked out of her way as she enters the room, the remains of an office for Doom. "You left so soon," she says, her voice calm, "you forgot to pack. So I came to help."

Loki opens his eyes. He can't not. She stands before him, her face pale, like bone beneath blood. Her left arm dangles by her side, and she holds a gun in her right hand. He sees shadows in her eyes, but also strength, and he does not, he does not, he does not love her, but he does.

"How—?" he asks before he can stop himself.

She arches a brow. "If I can convince Odin to return your powers to you, you think I can't convince Heimdall to open the Bifrost for me?"

"But—"

"But you were concealing yourself from him. I know. I didn't need a location. I just needed the means to get here."

Loki grits his teeth at her arrogance, at her surety in her knowledge of him, and he tries, he tries not to admire her cunning, her ability to bend others to her will simply by talking to them.

But he fails.

"Do you want to see what I brought?" she asks. Natasha looks at him, but she does not wait for him to respond. She bends over and lays her gun on the floor. Then she stands and unzips her jacket, and it is then that Loki sees her scarf and the blood and the hole high in her chest.

"What happened?" he asks.

She glances at him. "Do you care?"

No.

Yes.

In the silence, Natasha looks down at the blood and shrugs. "I got shot," she says. "It happens." She looks at him again. "But don't worry. I'm nothing, remember? How can this hurt if I'm not real?"

You believed in Natasha Romanov, and I believed in Loki Odinson, but they are nothing.

She holds his gaze, daring him to return to his earlier claims, but he stays silent. What more can he say?

"Do you want to see what I brought?" she asks again. Her eyes still on Loki, she reaches inside her jacket and removes the feather from Munin, the top end mangled by the bullet, the barbs dripping blood. "I thought you might want a memento," she says, staring down at the feather. "That's what it's for, isn't it? For you to remember?"

Loki looks away. Always, always they remember, the two of them so defined by their pasts. So much remembrance the past few weeks, in Venice, in Switzerland, in New York and Omsk, but for what?

I love you. And I know you love me.

Nothing more than light from a star, a pale, insubstantial flicker in the heavens.

"I don't want to remember," he says.

"Neither did I, but I did for you."

Loki looks at her again, and he feels anger stir within his chest. "You did it for Odin," he says. "He asked you to find me in Italy."

Natasha shakes her head. "I did it for you. You asked me to the night you thought you would die. Or have you forgotten how we first met?" Loki frowns at that and she says, "I know the monster and the hunter met before in the cage, but Loki and Natasha, not until then."

Now Loki raises a brow. "Semantics."

Natasha takes a step closer to him. Anger brightens her face, bringing a shock of color to her cheeks. He wonders how long ago she had been shot, how she can stand before him now, still reeling from that and the Bifrost. "Semantics," she says. "Circumstance. Reason. It's easier for you to deny them all, isn't it? It's simpler. You're a monster. I'm a hunter. That's all."

"Easy?" he asks, stepping back from the computer. "Nothing about this has been easy."

"So you're giving up. You're running again."

Loki shrugs and looks away. The room around them still smolders from his destruction, the chairs overturned, the windows smashed. "Why not?" he asks. The head of a robot twitches by his feet. "There's nothing for me here."

"There's everything for you here," she counters. "You're just too afraid to take it."

He glares at her now. "I'm not afraid."

"Then prove it. Stop running."

Loki stares at her, and she raises a brow at him, so secure in herself, so arrogant. His blood boils and he strides around the desk toward her. "Why?" he asks. "So you can lie to me again?"

"Yes," she says simply, but the answer is far from simple. "And so you can lie to me." Natasha moves closer as she points to the laptop on the desk. "Do you think I never figured it out, how you stole from Doom? Odin tried to strip you of your power, but he couldn't, could he? Not all of it. You're from Jotunheim. You're not from Asgard. But you told me you were powerless in India. You lied to me then. Didn't you?"

Loki hesitates.

"Didn't you?"

He had prepared the lie long ago— Computers, ridiculously easy to learn— but he does not lie now, the truth mattering little in the ruins. "Yes," he says. "But you were coming to kill me."

"If I had been coming to kill you, you'd be dead," she says. A beat passes in which they glare at each other; then Natasha shakes her head. She stares at the feather in her hand, her brows drawn together, her voice soft as she remembers. "I wasn't even supposed to be there. Fury told me not to go, but I did anyway. I had to know." She looks at him again, and she smiles, and he loves her for that smile and he hates her for that smile. "But you knew that. You were waiting for me there. Just like you're waiting now." Natasha pauses, watching him carefully. Loki wills himself to hold her stare, to stay impassive beneath her scrutiny. "If you weren't," she says, "you would have left the first moment you heard me. But you stayed. Why?"

Loki looks away.

"Why?" she asks again, and she takes another step closer. He could touch her if he desired, and he does, but he doesn't. He could teleport away if he wanted to, and he should, but he stays.

Why does he stay?

He knows why.

I love you. And I know you love me.

"Aren't you tired?" she asks. Loki sees the exhaustion on her face; he feels the same within him. "Aren't you tired of running? We could go to Paris and just sit, just sit in a café and drink wine and we don't have to think about Doom or S.H.I.E.L.D. or spying. We could just… we could just be. We could just be Loki and Natasha."

Loki closes his eyes at the image. The perfection of the scene makes him ache, but he sees the scratch in the glass, he sees the spot that mars, the fact that she lied to him because of Barton, that she chose Barton over him, and that she always will.

"A wondrous lie," he says, and he hates how his voice shakes, he hates how her breath stills as his shot hits the mark.

You are a lie, Natalia Romanova.

You know only lies and deceit.

Loki opens his eyes. Natasha stares at the feather. He sees the tremor in her hand, and he wants to stay, he wants to succumb to the lie again, but he lacks the conviction to believe, of this Coulson had been right.

"So what happens now?" she asks, meeting his gaze once more.

Loki stares at her and then he calls for his spear.

Natasha looks at the spear and then at him, and he cannot breathe, he cannot breathe, as she lets the feather fall from her hand. A second passes, only a second, but as on Asgard, the second here a millennia, and then she leans over and lifts her gun from the floor.

Do you see what I am?

I am death. All I know is the kill.

She stood before him then, daring him to kill her, daring him to change, as she stands before him now, and he could not kill her then as he cannot now. Not now. Not yet. So Loki turns, he moves back to the computer, and it is then Natasha fires.

The bullets shatter the laptop. Loki hears the sizzle of electronics as Natasha destroys the computer, as she destroys his way out. He turns and finds her staring at him, her eyes blazing. "You think I'm going to let you go just because you're angry with me?" she asks. "I thought you knew me better than that."

Loki glances from Natasha to the laptop, smoking now in the ruins, and he hates her for this, but he loves her. His hand tightening on his spear, he says, "You don't want me to stay here, Agent Romanov."

Natasha arches a brow. "Why not? Because you're going to kill Clint to make me suffer?" Loki stays silent, and she smirks. "You won't," she says. "Not yet. Because if you do, I won't give you what Tony and S.H.I.E.L.D. know about the Tesseract."

At this, Loki stills, and her smirk becomes a smile, the smile of the hunter. Loki watches her, wary for the trap to spring, for the game to begin, and after a moment, she says, "You weren't subtle when you stole the spear. Fury and Tony will have everything related to the Tesseract on lockdown, especially if I don't make contact soon." Natasha looks at the computer and then at Loki again. "Even with your powers, stealing this information won't be as easy as stealing from Doom. Not for you."

"But it will be for you?" he asks, and she nods. He feels another flash of anger at her arrogance, but he knows she is right. Fury, Barton, the Captain, they trust her. They all trust her, as Loki had trusted her. He wonders how they would respond to a theft like this. What consequences would she suffer for such an action? Loki eyes her now and says, "Why would you give me this?"

The hunter flickers, and Loki sees Natasha again, her eyes elegiac. "Every game has a prize for the winner," she says. "This is yours. If you win."

A moment passes and then Loki shakes his head. "You are a creature to behold," he murmurs. "Your world again in the balance, and you still bargain for one man."

"What can I say?" Natasha asks. She glances down at the feather, and Loki feels the glance as a knife to the chest. "I guess I'm just sentimental that way."

Love is for children. I owe him a debt.

I love you. And I know you love me.

Loki swallows. The spear feels cold in his hand and hard. "And if you win?" he asks, his voice quiet, but he already knows her response.

"You stay," she says. "You give back the spear and you stay on Earth. I'll convince Fury to go back to the original agreement, and you'll be free to travel wherever you wish." Natasha pauses. She draws in a breath. Then she looks at him and says, "And I won't follow you."

Loki looks away. From the corners of his eyes, he sees Natasha shift; he sees her lean to the left before straightening again. Even from here, he can smell the blood from her wound, her scarf black with it. His hand convulses around the spear, and he wonders if this is the work of Winter.

He seemed… different somehow than the others.

Glancing at her again, he asks, "And the game?"

Natasha is quiet a moment as she contemplates his question. Then he sees the ghost of a smile on her face. "Surprise me."

I do happen to be quite skilled with illusions, though. All you have to do is tell me where.

Anywhere?

Anywhere I've been.

She had looked at him then and said, Surprise me, and Loki had, showing her the stars beyond the precipice in Asgard, the stars into which he had fallen so long ago. He stares at the spear in his hand, the consequence of his fall, the fall itself the consequence of his discovery of the truth. He remembers the feel of the Casket in his hands, the power within pushing away the deception laid by Odin in the temple on Jotunheim, in the blood of war.

Surprise me, she had said.

So he will.

Looking back at her, he says, "You convinced Odin to return to me my powers. You convinced Heimdall to open the Bifrost for you. Now you have to do it again. Convince Heimdall to open the Bifrost for you, travel to Asgard, and then convince Odin to return to me the Casket of Ancient Winters."

Natasha stares at him. "What is that?"

"A possession that belongs to me. Odin stole it from Jotunheim as he stole everything else."

Natasha watches him. Loki knows that she searches for the catch, for the motivation behind this challenge, but he keeps his face blank, denying her as she denied him in Omsk. After a moment, she says, "How long do I have?"

"How long do you need?"

She glances at the gun in her hand. Her eyes close briefly, then she says, "Four days. Three if you take me back to my apartment so that I don't have to fight my way out of Latveria."

"Then you have three days."

Natasha nods once and engages the safety on her gun, sliding it beneath the waistband of her jeans. Loki vanishes the spear, and they stare at each other, the distance between them the length of a desk, the span of a lie. Loki forces himself to take a step forward, to move closer to her. She watches as he approaches. He stops before her. A beat passes and then Natasha leans in. She raises herself on her toes, and Loki feels the tentative touch of her hand on his, he feels her mouth rest close to his ear, and she says, her voice a low whisper that makes him shiver, "Someday, Loki, you will trust me again."

Someday, Natasha, you will trust me.

She eases back, and she is so close that he can see the ring of gold within the green of her eyes. Loki leans in, he can't not, and he smells the pomegranate in her hair and he feels the warmth of her skin as his hand closes around hers. He pictures her apartment in his mind, and then the air crackles around them, he feels the energy flare within, and he has just enough time to hear the sounds of Manhattan amid his memory of Shostakovich before he releases her and teleports away.

AN: Unfortunately work has become hectic, so writing time has been reduced significantly. I have to reduce postings as well; they will now be once a week, every Wednesday. So please check back in next Wednesday for the next chapter.

AN2: As always, feedback is much, much appreciated. Thank you so much to everyone who has left a comment!