Chapter Two: Memories and Friends
When she opened her eyes, it was snowing.
She wasn't dressed warmly enough for midwinter in Chicago, but the cold and biting wind felt refreshing, felt new. It smelled differently than Vanaheim, and even that was a delight, though the smell was decidedly worse.
The street was unassuming, a little run-down, a little gentrified, nothing out of the ordinary for its city. There were flower boxes on windowsills, waiting out the cold and frost to flourish again, come spring. Fire escapes had been repurposed as porches and balconies, stoops and corner stores as town halls and meeting rooms. She drew a little attention in her leggings and cloak; but one of the women on the stoop she needed rolled her eyes and muttered something to her neighbor about the state of modern fashion, and all was absolved.
The door she needed was on the top floor, and painted green. She tried not to think about it, and knocked, and waited for the sound of the extra locks being undone and for the door to be cracked and an eye to peek out.
"Well. You look terrible."
"You know I always appreciate your honesty. But just this once, I could have used a little lie."
The woman frowned, the eye narrowed. "How'd you find me?"
"What makes you think I could have ever lost you? You do make a fetching brunette, but I know your voice. I could hear you anywhere. If you worry whether I was followed; anyone to follow me would have to be very clever and very, very fast."
"Forgive me if I don't find that reassuring. We've made some new...friends, since you've been gone."
"And lost a few, as well."
"...Come in. I think I have some tea around here somewhere."
"I'll take something stronger, if you have it. Thank you."
The studio was both compact and bare, hardly suitable for habitation and even less so for company. But her host was well-supplied in vodka, and gracious enough to cover a few innocuous-looking items with overturned wine glasses.
There was a mirror on the wall. Sága looked, and saw that her friend had already been lying a little. Her face looked waxy and thin, her eyes sunken and fever-bright against the darkened skin beneath them. She had been eating since her return, but she'd been having trouble remembering how often it was necessary to do so, and it showed. Her hair was beginning to grow back in a thin, uneven layer of downy, white curls, longer in some spots than others. She looked horrid.
"I take it you haven't found him yet."
She ran a hand over her hair, trying to smooth down the bits that stood too tall, and sank into a fraying armchair. "No. I have not." A glass of vodka was pressed into her hand, and she drank deeply. "Sometimes, I get these...flashes. A glimpse of him, somewhere... Always the same place, but nowhere I recognize, nowhere I can find. It's like looking through two mirrors turned together. He's there, just beyond where I can see...but I turn my head, strain for a better view, and he's...gone."
Her companion listened carefully, quietly, staring into her drink. "When you see him," she began, her voice soft and cautious, "how does he look?"
She was quiet for some time, picking her words carefully—the disguise was good, the apartment believable; but she'd made such a show of covering those microphones, Sága couldn't help but suspect that there were others she had left listening. "...Angry," she finally said, as evenly as she could, but there was a twitch around the woman's eye that assured that her meaning had been understood. "I have never seen him calm since I returned."
Her friend swore under her breath, shook her head, and then stilled in the complete and perfect way that only she could. "But he's not in any pain?"
"No. Not that I have seen."
"Well. Small miracle, that."
She shuddered, and hid her face in her hands, and forced herself not to cry. The metal of her ring dug into her cheek—she took a deep breath and let it ground her. "I made him a promise, Tasha. I told him I would never again leave him. But I did, and now all this has happened."
"This isn't your fault. I made a promise, too: that I would take care of him while you were gone. You did what you had to do. He knew that. We all did."
Even so, Sága shook her head. "I was not to be gone so long. Now my friend is dead, my father is a fugitive, my lover is missing, and I have been evicted from a home that never loved me."
"And here you are."
It startled a laugh out of her. "...And here I am." She finished off her drink, and sat up in the chair. "I am sorry to drop in on you like this. But I need to find him. My father said he went through a wormhole, but there was not much else he could tell me. I thought you might know a little more."
Natasha shrugged, but stood and stepped into what must be a sort of kitchen. "Maybe a little. Don't get your hopes up, though. We've been looking, too." She opened a drawer and pulled out a phone, switching out SIM cards and memory, then typing furiously.
She came back with the bottle, tossed the phone to Sága and refilled her glass. "I've given you access to everything we have on him. He left on a quinjet, cloaked, over Sokovia. Last known heading, speed and elevation are all there. There were some...anomalies in the sky that night; Stark said something about gravitational displacement, equilibrium, that sort of thing. But we don't know how long he kept flying after he cut the comms. He could've gone anywhere. You saying you've seen him at all is the closest I've come to good news in six months."
Sága nodded, scrolling through the images and charts she'd pulled up, fingers hovering over an image of Bruce Banner—an older photograph, from before she had met him. His hair was longer and darker, his face a little more round, but his eyes were the same. "Thank you, Natasha. I mean it. I know I was...gruff with you, when we first met. It was unwarranted, and I am sorry. You have been a good friend."
The woman's resulting laugh was uncharacteristically harsh. She downed her second glass of vodka, and poured herself a third. "Don't be so quick to praise me. There's still something I haven't told you, and I don't want to, but I'm gonna."
Sága set her glass down, carefully, on the chair's well-worn armrest. "Is it the reason you refuse to look me in the eye?"
For the first time since she had shown up at her door, Natasha met her gaze—but only for a moment, before quickly turning away. She drained her glass, again, but did not refill it. "Before he left, I, uhh...kissed him."
"...Oh."
"I didn't mean to," she blurted, then winced. "I mean, I did, but...Y'know, I... We needed him angry, so I kissed him and shoved him off a cliff, and, well, it worked. But then he changed, and he did what we needed him to, and then he got in the jet and just...flew off!" She took a sharp breath, and fell back against the stiff wooden chair. "I'm...sorry. I'm the reason he ran away."
Sága couldn't think of anything to say. The shitty apartment was quiet, but for the chugging of the refrigerator and the dripping of the faucet and her own halting breaths. She stared down at her hands, at the ring on her finger, at the scar on her wrist, at the name written there. She had clawed her way out of a desolate alternate universe for that name.
She tugged her sleeves down.
"I'm not... It isn't..." She took a deep breath, and had a little more vodka. "I was gone a long time, Natasha. And I... He gave me this ring, but I... We never married. I don't remember why, now. It didn't seem so pressing. I thought we had plenty of time."
She shook her head, stood, and started pacing in the little room. "What I mean to say is... Well. I won't force him to do anything. I love him, so I will find him and bring him home. Whatever happens once he has been returned is up to him. I only need him safe."
Natasha caught her eye again, and this time held it. They stared at each other for a long moment, sizing one another up. "Just like that? You're not angry, not...jealous?"
"Anger's more his thing, not mine." The woman looked understandably suspicious, but Sága didn't know what else to say. She tossed back the rest of her drink, and shrugged. Her fingers itched for her father's pipe, but it was down in the bottom of her bag somewhere. "My mother was human, Tasha. When I was young, I couldn't understand why papa did not marry her, did not live with us on Midgard, did not give up his life for ours. I knew he loved her. I know he still does. But it is different, from this side of things. My father never warned me against taking up with mortals. Perhaps he knew it would only make me determined to do so to spite him. Still, I wish he had said something. I wish anything could have prepared me to feel like this."
"...Like what?"
"Like... Like who am I to expect a mortal man to always love me?" She shook her head. "I am too old and too young for him. He deserves a chance at a normal life, or as close to it as possible. I will not be able to grow old with him."
"But you love him."
Sága sighed, and sank back into the armchair. "I do. But that does not mean I get to be selfish." She shoved her sleeves up—Natasha gasped at the sight—and ran her fingers along the pearly white lines of New York's skyline in her skin. It was wrong, already; new buildings had sprung up like wildflowers, others had been cut down like trees. But it was embedded in her skin, as it had once been, perhaps for the rest of her life. In a hundred, a thousand years, all of it would be destroyed and rebuilt anew.
"...Everything is different now," she murmured. "Everything changes. We cannot stop it. The best we can do is remember how it was, and ensure the change is for the better."
Natasha watched her carefully, silently, for several long moments. Then she dropped her eyes, and softly asked, "What was it like here, a hundred years ago?"
Sága looked up, surprised, and then smiled. "I didn't spend much time on Midgard after my mother died; not until I met all of you. But I was here, in Chicago even, for the Exposition."
"The..? Wait, you were here for the World's Fair?"
"It was magnificent. All a response to the one in Paris, where the Tower was unveiled, of course, but even so... There was nothing so grand back then. That white city, gleaming in all that artificial light! Oh, Thor was beside himself to see what you humans had done with electricity. And the wheel! Such a marvel, all for the sake of pleasure. No other race is so deeply motivated by joy, I assure you."
"I gotta admit, I'm having trouble picturing you in a big, Victorian dress," Natasha laughed, and so did Sága.
"I think I managed to find some trousers there; women were starting to ride bicycles, you know, especially at the Fair. I am very glad that you all have given up on corsets, though. They weren't quite so bad as people think, but you're certainly better off without them."
"Is that so?"
Sága grinned, and held out her hand. "May I show you?"
The woman hesitated, but only for a moment. "Alright."
She stood, and stepped over to where her friend was perched so delicately upon a few milk crates, and pressed her fingertips to her temple.
Her memory was a little fuzzy on the details, but she could remember clearly the way it had felt.
The Bifrost had dropped them in the middle of a field in Illinois, and Sága had taken them the rest of the way—Thor, Loki, the Lady Sif and the Warriors Three, and she had all passed through the gate together, their sudden arrival gone unnoticed in the press of the crowd. She showed Natasha their first time around Ferris's Wheel; and Loki rowing her along the lagoon; and drinking orange cider on the wooded island after dark, with fairy lights gleaming all around.
Sága took a breath, and released them both from the memory. Natasha caught her hand before she could pull away, and gripped it tight. She did not open her eyes, but spoke. "Why would you show me this, after what I've done?"
Sága leaned forward, and kissed her forehead softly. "Because you are my friend. Because I want you to know I do not blame you for what happened, and neither should you blame yourself."
Tasha squeezed her eyes closed, and sighed. "What's your plan? How are you going to find him?"
"I intend to ask around. I thought, perhaps, that Stark might know something, but from what I've seen since I returned...I suppose we'll see. You've saved me a visit to what's left of Shield, though I may yet check in with Captain Rogers. And Thor is out there somewhere, and does not know I have returned. After that, well..."
She took a step back and held up her hand, letting her magic flow, washing over her skin and trickling down along the lines beneath her sleeve. If she flexed her fingers just so, she could feel the coarse ground of the Other Lands, the rushing winds, the surging power of the road she stood on. "I have learned...something new about my power. I have discovered where I am when I am in-between. I have seen the roads that connect all things. The æther took much from me, but it gave me something in return. I will follow those roads; as many as it takes until I find him."
Natasha nodded, slowly. "And when you aren't on those 'roads'? Where're you gonna sleep? What are you planning to eat? Because, honestly, you look like you haven't done either in way too long."
Sága lifted her chin proudly, determinedly not looking toward the mirror. "Finding shelter has never been a problem for me before."
"Right, right, cool your jets, I just meant... Y'know, if you need a place to crash... It isn't much, but you're welcome here."
"...Oh." She sank back into the armchair. "Thank you. That is very kind."
Natasha shrugged and stood, taking their glasses to the leaky sink. "Don't mention it. That's what friends are for."
She remembered Asgard in flames. She remembered watching Lady Frigga fall. She remembered the white, blinding rage that near consumed her. She remembered the fight; the dark elf's annoyance at her magic; the way he twisted his wrist and she'd dropped to the floor and been unable to move. She remembered the Kursed grabbing her. She remembered falling.
She remembered nothing, for a time.
And then she'd found herself on Midgard again, the other eight realms drifting slowly into place above her; the æther rushing, surging all around. The dark elf stood above her, his mouth moving though she could not hear his voice above the screaming in her head.
Thor was here. She looked, but Loki wasn't in his cell, so where—oh.
Oh...
She lifted herself up onto her forearms and retched into the grass, but no one took any notice of her.
She fell into her own sick, exhausted and overwhelmed. Where was her magic? What had the elf done to it?
A tendril of the æther hooked around her wrist and nearly tore her arm off; but she pulled back, dragging the reddish sludge into her body, letting it pour into her veins. It was too much, the magic like red-hot lava coursing through her marrow. She tried to scream, but couldn't know if any sound came out. Still, it was enough for one wild, desperate jump.
She peered through the haze, too far from Asgard, searching desperately until she found him, the man she loved.
He smiled softly, only barely acknowledging a joke Stark had told. He was in the tower, in her tower, surrounded by glass, nestled in their favorite loveseat with a mug of tea in his hands. He looked tired, and worried, but resolved. She had left him when her father called, warning of a threat to Asgard. For all she knew, she'd only been gone for two days.
She opened her mouth, determined to use this wrong, stolen magic to take her to him.
She was too slow. With a flash of lightning and a crash of thunder, Thor drove a stake into the dark elf's heart. The æther came rushing back—out of the sky, out of the nine realms, and into her. The screaming in her head became her own. The silence that followed belonged to something else.
The æther still raced, within and around her; she forced her eyes open through the pain, but did not know where she was, did not recognize any feature of the landscape and this, truly, was worse than the searing pain. A hand gripped her shoulder—Sága screamed...
...And woke.
Natasha stood before her, cradling one hand in the other.
"Shit," Sága hissed, lurching out of the armchair. "Did I hurt you? Let me see—"
"No, no, it's fine," she assured, flexing her fingers and holding out her hand for the both of them to see. "Just startled me, that's all. You okay?"
Sága shivered, but nodded. "I...yes. Thank you."
"That was some dream, huh?"
She ran a hand over her short curls with a sigh. "...Yes, it was. Was I...screaming?"
"Whimpering, more like," she answered, and Sága frowned. But Natasha went on, "You were glowing, too. That's what woke me. And sort of...levitating, I guess, a couple feet above the chair."
"I was...what?"
"You know, floating. What, can't you do that?"
"Not to my knowledge." She looked down at her feet and tried to imagine what it would feel like to fly, tried to channel her magic into it, but...nothing. "No, I don't believe I can."
"Oh." Natasha frowned, and looked at her feet as well. "That's...probably fine, right?"
"Sure. Yes. Probably."
"Okay. Good. Well, I'm going back to bed, then." She snuggled deeper into her fuzzy, pink bathrobe—the one Sága'd had to swear she would never tell anyone about—and returned to her bed in the back corner of her room, but there she hesitated. "Listen, if you're having those kinds of dreams... You might wanna check in on Stark sooner, rather than later. You guys might be able to help each other out."
She eased herself back down into the armchair, scooping up the cloak she'd been using as a blanket off the floor. "Finding Bruce is my top priority," Sága snapped, more harshly than necessary. "My shit will sort itself out."
"Sure it will," she snapped right back, and climbed into bed. "One way or another. 'Night."
"...Good night."
She waited until the sound of even breathing assured her that Natasha had fallen asleep, before ducking into what served as the bathroom, pulling the curtain closed and removing her tunic.
She'd had a brief flash of uncertainty, a moment of terror that the scars in her arms were flooded with the dark red of blood, of æther. But she turned herself this way and that before the mirror, and saw nothing unusual, nothing new, nothing dangerous.
With a shudder, she put her shirt back on, and went out, and folded herself back into the chair. She would not sleep again tonight, she knew. But she would at least wait until morning, to make her apologies to her friend, and to follow her advice.