It was all Natasha could do not to gawk as she was led down what was called the rainbow bridge, the golden city looming far ahead, yet at the same time she didn't think any amount of distance would be enough to fully grasp the enormity of it all, the largest of the buildings stretching even higher than the Stark tower, she was certain. It was incredible, making her mouth go dry as she fell into stride beside Thor, grateful for his hand on her shoulder.

"What happened, Lady Natasha?" He asked, his expression serious as he watched her awestruck face sober up as it turned to him. "Heimdall was looking for Jane when he found you-no offense, of course. I know you to be a capable warrior who does not need the aid of others to keep herself safe," he said, words quick in order to keep from angering her. It made her lips quirk up.

"Just Natasha," Nat assured him. "And what did Heimdall see? He was the man that we just met, right?" She asked, trying to get all the names right. There were just so many; Tony hadn't been far off the mark when it came to comparing them to Shakespeare.

"You disappeared. He was watching as the lady Jane studied the convergence, thinking that SHIELD was likely interested in the goings on of the nine realms as well, when you disappeared. He was unable to find you, and when I came to discover what had happened you had reappeared. I am curious as to why and what had changed, what you found that would do such a thing." He paused. "And what the red material is that made you so weak."

Well, that made two of them, and while Jane might have swooned that he cared about her well-being so much, Natasha was simply worried that he was as clueless about it as she was. Perhaps he was simply unaware of magic related injuries, or serums or something. She hoped.

"And you think your healers can help?" She asked, glad for the decades of training that kept the worry from her voice, swallowing thickly as she looked up at him, searching his face for some sort of clue. He was always so open. Or rather, he had been. The time he spent away from Earth had changed him, it would seem, new lines of worry and of responsibility etching his brow. Sh wondered how many were put there from his idiot of a brother, and what had happened on earth when he'd had to confront him. She leaned over to squeeze his hand gently, and his eyes lit up a little with the touch.

"I have no certainties, I can only hope," he said, voice quiet but tone sincere as they continued to walk. The city streets were busy, and though Natasha earned quite a few second glances and whispers seemed to follow her no matter where she went, they did not seem to resent her for being mortal, or even come up to question what was going on. Their lives continued on without pause. It was curious, as when Thor and Loki had come her world had seemed to slow down for them, had taken note of their differences and catalogued it against them. Though in Loki's case it was understandable, Thor hardly deserved the blame he was getting in the media for what had happened, or the slander against him for having disappeared after the damage had been done, without sticking around to help with the clean up or to aid those who grieved the loss of those they loved.

'It wasn't his fault,' Natasha couldn't help but think as he led her through narrow streets and those that twisted, the pair making their way towards the very center of the city, the enormous building she'd gawked at before. 'It's not as though he asked for any of it. He struggles as much as we all do.'

These thoughts were forced from her mind as Thor brought her up to the castle, the splendor of the building itself taking her breath away, and she was sure that for once her face betrayed just how surprised she was. It was incredible, impossible to believe that this had been here for so long and yet no one else had seen it before she had, absolute light years away from Earth yet strong as any of the buildings she'd once called home, including Stark Tower.

"This is gorgeous," she breathed as Thor led her through enormous, arching hallways after hallway, towards what he called the healer's chambers where she would be examined, and though normally such tests on her body would put her on high alert due to the usual abnormalities that would bring up a lot of questions, but with Thor and his people she was sure they would be prepared for a certain level of difference in her genetic make up.

"Thank you. It was built long before I was born, around the time the universe itself began." Thor smiled fondly as he looked around the gilded halls, offering his hand as he led her further inside, not wishing her to get lost as she openly gawked at the world around them. She tried to pull herself back in as best she could.

"How old are you, Thor?" She asked quietly. "I mean. I hope that's not too rude-."

"It is not," he assured her with a small smile. "Loki and I are both around a thousand years old, though I am older than he by a couple of decades, which is why there's not much of a difference in our appearance."

Right. And she thought people would have a hard time adjusting to how old SHE really was, that was nothing in comparison to those two, who were likely as many years apart as she had under her belt. She schooled her face not to show too much surprise, just vague disbelief and interest, and he seemed to relax from it, as though he'd expected her to freak out. Just how many others had, she wondered? Maybe that explained why Tony looked on the man with wide eyes each time he entered the room before eventually pulling himself back. Nat had always just thought it was because of Thor's rather impressive physique and hadn't blamed him in the slightest. Heck, if she was honest there were still days she wanted to poke him just to see if it was really that well defined. And maybe to run her hands over the muscle-rippled torso and well defined pecs was high up on her "Want to do" list. She was only human, no matter how much the serum had played with her genetics, and if he didn't apologize for how damn attractive he was then she wasn't going to apologize for looking and enjoying the view.

Her tour through the halls of Asgard finally ended with another large room, this one seeming to be on the eastern side of the castle, with enormous panes of windows at least three times Natasha's height stretching from floor to ceiling and still not touching either. There was a gaggle of women surrounding one occupied bed while a myriad of others stood empty and sterile to watch Natasha and Thor as they proceeded down the length of the room towards whom Nat could only assume were the medics of the world. At the sound of their footsteps they broke away from the one patient, bowing with one hand crossing their chest to meet the opposite shoulder, though one healer continued to work on the man's wounds.

"I am sorry ladies, but my friend requires your best advice; she is quite ill." Thor said.

Had it been anyone else they likely wouldn't have taken the job, Natasha thought, watching as each of them gave her the quick up and down, not ascertaining any physical wounds but surely taking in her foreign clothing and the two visible weapons at her side, even if they didn't know what guns were, as well as the knives still on her person should she run out of ammo. Either way she was led into the rooms on the western side of the enormous room, these ones darkened and much smaller, more intimate, and Natasha was bid to remove her weapons and lay them to the side before crawling up on the raised table in front of her. She was loathe to do either, the quickest of flashes of laying on a table in a dim-lit room in Russia as the men who surrounded her played God with her body, but she caught Thor's strained look, the genuine concern in his face, and was determined not to add to that.

Stripped of her protection, she climbed, feeling far more naked than she had in some time, and watched as the space in front of her was filled with golden threads of light, mimicking her body in every way as it hovered just above her on the healer's levels. She watched them work with curious eyes but kept her silence, always an observer. As she tapped her fingers at her side she saw her golden duplicate do the same, and the corners of her lips quirked into a smile.

"Real interesting technology you've got here," She said, flicking her eyes up towards Thor, who smiled at her words, his entire expression softening. "Tony would have a hay day."

"You are remarkably calm about foreign technology," one of the woman at Natasha's side murmured, and when Nat turned her gaze to look back at her, she caught the briefest hint of a smile. So they had been as apprehensive as she had been about letting a human onto Asgardian technology. Interesting.

"I've seen and done far too much to keep asking questions," she murmured.

The woman gave the smallest, approving tip of her head, and Nat took that to heart as a good sign. As Clint would say: One for Nat, zero for Asgardian perceptions of humans.

She tried not to think about the way he'd shout at her for going off planet without telling him what was going on. Whoops.

As the woman beside her worked, Natasha's eyes shifted to watch the healer with Thor, watched as his brow furrowed while she murmured to him, and wasn't sure what to make of it. Were they unaware of what was wrong with her? The soulforge, as the woman was calling it, didn't seem to be helping any, and it only made her heart leap into her throat. Shit. What the hell was it that she touched?

"Have you taken too many blows to the head that you no longer can comprehend the simplest of orders?" A rough voice called out from the side of the room, and the golden threads of light above Natasha disappeared as she sat up slowly, eyes flirting with her gun. She didn't need it, not yet. This man-based on his armor, the way he held himself, and the whole one-eye thing-had to be the king. Odin. Which meant she kept her mouth shut. She wasn't supposed to be there anyway by the sounds of the pair of them bickering, Odin claiming that the doctors on Earth would be able to help her with whatever this sickness, or something, was. She doubted it.

"Allfather it is unlike anything else I have seen-."

"She belongs with her people, Thor. Avenger or not, she has healers called doctors, and that is where you must take her. Guards."

Natasha shied away from the two men approaching her. "Don't touch me," she said, trying to pull away. She didn't want to hurt them. The one on her left growled and reached out anyway, and the same blast of red smoke pushed him back and onto the floor, the other guard following suit. Thor swore under his breath as he moved closer, Natasha's head tipping back until it hit the table again. Memories of when she was little, of men coming at her with vodka to numb her head and surgical tools and fire and pain and-.

"Shhh, Natasha, you are well. You are safe," Thor promised, stroking the side of her face as he cupped it. She only realized then, as she started coughing, that she'd been screaming.

"I'm sorry," she scratched, blinking furiously as her whole body went tense. She saw the fire, felt it burning her, saw it burning away at her body and at Russia, before she blinked again and she caught herself in Thor's bright gaze. "So sorry." She felt the sleeve of her right arm being rolled back as coarse fingers rubbed at her wrist, and tipped her eyes to the side to see Odin frowning down at it, as though trying to decipher a puzzle.

"What's wrong with me?" She asked hoarsely, trying to catch his attention, watching as he pursed his lips tightly before pulling away.

"Both of you come with me," he insisted, waiting as Thor helped Natasha up to her feet and through the door, one hand gently wrapped around her torso.

"What is inside of her, father?" Thor asked, his voice sounding rougher than normal, his pace quicker than what Nat could comfortably keep up with so she ended up half running to catch up with the pair of them, looking from one to the other to try and figure out what was going on, what they weren't telling her. Why was Thor so afraid?

"Do you recall the story of the Dark Elves, Thor?" Odin called back to them, leading them through the infirmary, through the hallways, and into another, seemingly endless room, the ceiling stretching far past what Natasha could see, thick roots and tree trunks circling through the room, thrumming like veins. At the barely visible tops of the shorter trees shimmering with spheres of multi-colored lights. The trunks seemed to go further than Natasha's eyes could see, and when she looked down at the tiled floor beneath her she saw that they stretched down through a hole in the ground, and once more disappeared from her sight.

"Yes, I do," he said. "They attempted to take the realms back to the way they were before the light came in. Right?" Thor asked, sounding more like a student trying to answer a question correctly than a prince soon to be king. Interesting how he changed around his father. "The Dark Elves come to steal the light."

"Correct," Odin said, stepping into a smaller antechamber, this one filled with books in languages even Nat, with all her linguistic skills, couldn't begin to decipher. The Allfather frowned as he looked in the shelves, confused. "Where in the nine realms did that bloody book go?"

"Here, father," Thor offered, finding it on the side table that he and Natasha had stopped in front of, her head still spinning. She might've fallen down, to her displeasure and embarrassment, if not for Thor holding tight to her. She was thankful for it, and in her slight lull she leaned over to press her cheek to his hand, the heat of his skin warming her and chasing at the chill settling into her bones. He shifted his fingers so that they rubbed her cheek gently and she was thankful for the comfort it brought. Meanwhile, Odin flipped pages to show them what he was talking about, a man with a white mask extending his arms as a red liquid left his hands and turned the sun above him dark. She frowned.

"The Aether?" She asked, fixating on the term he threw out.

"Yes. The very same now flows through your veins. It will consume you, body and soul, as it protects its host. It is beginning already," he said with a frown as he tipped her chin upwards, searching her eyes with his one. "I can see it already. You see your past, the horrors of it and what to do to avenge it, do you not?" He asked.

Natasha nodded. What was the point in lying? "Can you get it out of me?" She asked, voice quiet. She didn't dare hope.

"No."

A/N: Thanks so much for reading, and thanks for being patient with me as school starts back up and I start a new job! You are all amazing.