Thank you so much for the follow, didn't expect that so quickly.
Disclaimer: If I owned the Avengers, Marvel, or Fall Put Boy, I would own a Library, not a picture of one tacked on my bedroom wall.
AU based on Miss Missing You. What if Loki saved her from the red room. Listen to the song to understand.
Miss Missing You
She was running. Behind her, she could hear heavy foot steps and calls.
"Halt," they said, "halt." But she didn't, she couldn't. If she stopped, they would catch her, find her weapons, know who she was. She couldn't act like a scared little girl if they found the weapons, the evidence. Suddenly, there was a flash, a stream of light coming down from the clouds. Shouts of terror and panic came from the men, followed by sounds of gunfire. Then, deathly quiet fell on the alley, a chill filling the previous humid air. She stopped. Every instinct she had was yelling, screaming at her to run, to get away, but a small voice, somewhere buried deep in the back of her mind, told her to stay, to turn around, to look. And so, she did. On the floor, lay the bodies of the guards, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, necks clearly snapped, blood staining the gutter red. Bullet holes riddled the side of the alley. But that was not what has caught her attention, no. What caught her attention was the man standing in the middle of it all, milky skin reflecting the street lamps, though he hadn't broken a sweat, raven hair neatly slicked back, and piercing emerald eyes, fixed on her. The man wore an odd array of green cloth, black leather and gold armour, a long green cloak flowing from his shoulders, sweeping the ground. He started walking towards her, every fibre of her being told her to run, not even the little voice protesting, but she was rooted to the spot, her feet stuck fast. She couldn't move.
"What is a little midgardian girl doing running from men like that?" He asked, sneering at her, "well, aren't you going to bow down to a god?" He was standing over her now, looking down at her.
"I don't bow to anyone, least of all things that don't exist," the words came out before she could stop them, but she looked back up at him defiance on her face, anger in her eyes, not betraying what she felt inside. He cocked his eyebrow at her, one edge of his lips quirking upwards into an infuriating smirk.
"Spirited. Well, if I don't exist, then I didn't really save you. Goodbye." Then, with another flash of light, he was gone, leaving an astonished thirteen year old in his wake. She was stunned for a moment, before her instincts licked in, and she dashed off again, red curls trailing behind her.
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Over the next few years she thought often of the mystery man who saved her. Her trainers had wiped all her other memories of that mission, but they did not know about him, and they could not erase that which they did not know existed, and so his memory remained, their first meeting becoming a crack in the wall of lies that her trainers had her believing, the first fault in her blind dedication to her masters. His memory gave her reason to doubt the memories implanted in her head, doubt that she really was a ballerina. Him, and the bodies surrounding him. He gave her a way to see the truth, rather than ironically, she came to think. The most mysterious person she had ever met was the one who cleared away the confusion, cleared a path through the fog in her mind so that she could see the truth, or part of it any way. She almost wished he would come back and clear away more of the fog. It was as though she missed him, in her own, twisted way. But she missed him none the less. Though she wasn't entirely sure why.
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She was seventeen when she next saw him. The snow was falling thick and fast outside, but the elite of London couldn't care less, for tonight, they had a ball to attend. Natalia looked right at home there, her beautiful dress an emerald green, fitting her perfectly, fitted around her torso and bust, flaring out ever so slightly from her hips in a popular style, accentuating all of her curves, the soft material of the skirt flowing around her legs, not quite brushing the floor. Her make-up was discrete yet flawless, highlighting her full, plump lips, bringing out the slight green tones in her clear, blue eyes, her porcelain skin seeming to glow. Red curls framed her face, curled into an elegant chignon at the base of her neck.
She was wondering the room, a champagne flute balanced in her hand, blending in perfectly with the crowd. Her mark had yet to arrive, so she was just perusing the room until he did, making sure so drink enough to make it seem like she was just there like anyone else, but little enough that her senses were not impaired, when she felt someone come up behind her, warm breath tickling her neck, the cold barrel of a gun pressing against her side, chilling her skin as it is jabbed into her side. Her mark has arrived. The man behind her - she can feel its a man from the chest pressed lightly against her shoulder and the large hand spread across the small of her back - steers her towards a darkened corner at the back of the room, and a small staircase cast in shadows, nigh on invisible to the casual observer.
When they reach the top of the staircase, the man leans across her to open a small, carved wooden door, before pushing her through, and shutting it behind her. The room in front of her was a small study, the only light coming from a roaring fire, blazing in a plain fireplace off to her right. Once her eyes adjust to the darkness, she glances around the room, taking in the mahogany desk, the blackened coal scuttle, and, finally, the man sitting behind the desk: her mark.
"Well, well well, what do we have here," his voice purred, as he eyed her like a pretor might eye his chosen pray, "the infamous Black Widow, come to pay a visit on dear old me." There was a slight rustle behind her, but before she could turn, she felt a needle slide into the side of her neck. Then, she heard another man enter the room.
"Very good Jones, I shall reward you justly." The voice sounded familiar, but before it could register properly, her mark, Jones, screamed in terror, before a deathly silence entered the room, the only sound was her breathing, and that of someone else. She turned around, a little unsteady in her feet as a black mist started to creep into her vision. She found her self looking into familiar emerald orbs, which matched her dress, set into milk-white skin, black hair slicked back. There was a flicker of recognition in those emerald orbs, her brain finally connecting dots in the moment before she slipped into unconsciousness. In was him, mystery man from the alley all those years ago. Then, her world went black.
When she woke up, the first thing that registered on her mind was that she had no idea where she was. She could feel a rope around wrists. She almost laughed at that: she could get out so easily it almost deserved her laugh. The next thought, was to acknowledge the presence in the room with her. She opened her eyes, and looked across the room. He was sitting there, the man from the alley. He turned, and looked her in the eye.
"Still getting in trouble for others I see," a note of disappointment evident in his voice, "i had hoped you would make chaos of your own volition after that incident, but you appear to not see clearly enough." He flicked his wrist at me, green sparks coming out of his hand. Suddenly, I felt a fog lift fro. My thoughts, and, suddenly, she could see everything. She was a murderer, an assassin, working for those who stole her mind. She had to get out, she had to take them out. She had to be free.
"I will provide you with the means to be your own chaos, not someone else's." His voice surprised her, startling her from her thoughts. "Yes, I know you want to escape, but I did not expect you to be so hesitant," he paused a moment, seemingly debating in his head, "you could come with me if you wish, live in luxury for the rest of your life, but you would miss all of the excitement of life here. A life with me would be too boring I think, so I will just leave you with provisions." With that, he walked over to her, a d pressed his lips to hers. His lips were surprisingly soft. This was far from her first kiss, but it was by far her best. Within a few moments it was over. He reached an arm around her, pulling her bindings undone, before stepping back, and disappearing in a flash of light, just as he had the first time. Once he was gone, she made a vow never go back to the red room again.
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Over the next year she worked hard, taking down the members of the red room one by one. When they were all dead and buried, she started taking freelance work, a killer for hire. Occasionally, she would allow herself to dream, to think of what could have been, and she would always think of him. She would allow herself to dream of what-ifs, of a place where they were ordinary people, who fell in love in an ordinary way, with ordinary problems, and they got an ordinary house, with a picket fence. She knew it would never happen, could never happen, that they weren't those people, and never would be. That didn't stop her from dreaming though. Didn't stop her from missing him. She didn't even know his name.
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Her dreaming came to an end, on a cold night. She would never know why she decided to get drunk, that night in Budapest, or exactly how she ended up in an alley, inebriated, an archer standing in front of her, an arrow pointed at her heart, not a foot away from her body. She wished, in that moment when she thought that she was going to die, that he was there, to save her as he had done before. Then, the archer reached forward, pulled her to her feet, and gave her a new life.
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Over the next eight years, she worked along side the archer who saved her, Agent Barton, as she later found out. Then he became Barton, then Clint. She still thought of her mystery man, but he was no longer the only person she thought of, the only one she trusted, the only one she would take a bullet for.
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When Phil told her that Clint had been compromised, she got there as quickly as she could. When she got to Germany, she recognised him instantly. The man from the alley was behind it. Her picket fence. She wished, then, that she could just forget him, stop feeling the way she did about him, Loki. She knew his name now now they were enemies instead of whatever they had been before. She used to think that she would take a bullet for him, but know he was the one pulling the trigger, shattering her heart into tiny pieces. When she faced him in the helicarrier, she realised that she was not the only one who was broken, not the only one whose hopes had been set ablaze. When she fought in the battle of New York, alongside Clint, she found herself thinking it was just like Budapest, and, for her, it was, being with Clint, but wishing Loki was there, fighting her corner. After he had gone to Asgard with Thor, she found she felt like there was something missing. Not him, so much as how she had missed him, after all, shed had missed him for more than half her life. She missed missing him.
Finite.