So, this is the scene that started this entire story.

My sister was teasing me because she knew I liked Loki and Natasha and she was like, 'hey, there's this moment that happened to me in real life along with this scene in the Zorro books where yada yada happened, isn't that lovely' and I fell COMPLETELY in love with the idea and made an entire story and plot just to encompass it. So, thank you to Zorro and my sister for inspiring this entire story, and to my beautiful, beautiful readers…enjoy.

"So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do
So we think that you're good
And you can't believe it's not enough
All the walls you built up
Are just glass on the outside

So let 'em fall down
There's freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground
We're here now..."

-Tenth Avenue North, 'Healing Begins'

It took Natasha four times to realize it, but nighttime wasn't as repulsive as she thought.

It was once an inevitability for her, a mundane annoyance—nighttime was when she laid her head upon a pillow and filled it with nightmares, or when the slickest of murders occurred and she would have to walk barefoot along the old streets of Russia so that her heels would not clack on the cobblestone and give her away once the job was finished. She preferred daytime, when nothing was hidden from her.

But night warmed up to her when she saw him in the middle of the night for the fourth time, bathed in the bright moonlight on the outer deck. And she realized that nighttime wasn't so terrible after all.

She had stayed up sketching, or the closest she came to drawing, outside in the chilly night with only the moonlight and the residue glow of Stark Tower to uncover the darkness from her paper. The pen felt unfamiliar in her hand, and her strokes were hesitant and shaky, but she had already done so much. True, the forehead was wider than she figured was realistic, and one eye just might be larger than the other, but she was almost positive that this rendition of Loki on the piece of paper was the best work she ever made. Not that it meant much, since she was far from cocky when it came to artwork, but she could recognize him herself when she took a second glance, and that was better than nothing.

She heard the glass door slide open behind her and she glanced over her shoulder. Loki was outside the door, a throw blanket over his thin shoulders to shield him from the cold. She smiled and gestured him to come to her. He obliged, drawing the blanket tighter as the chill embittered and sitting opposite of her on the bench.

"What time is it?" said Natasha. "I completely lost track of time."

Loki glanced down at the watch that Steve had bestowed him. It read eleven thirty at night. She let out a chuckle.

"Man, I've been here for two hours," she said. "Looks like I don't make as much progress in two hours as I thought."

He tilted his head to take a look at Natasha's art pad. She quickly covered it and placed it on her opposite side.

"No way," said Natasha.

The moment she saw Loki's puppy dog act begin, she slapped a hand on top of his face and laughed.

"Stop!" said Natasha. "I have more pride than that."

She felt him grin under her hand. She pulled back, revealing his beam.

"How's your magic?" she said. "Has it calmed down yet?"

Loki tapped his chest with his metal hand, the steel echoing against the arc reactor. He gave a shrug.

"Give it a little more time," said Natasha. "Maybe then it'll smooth over and you won't need to use the glove anymore."

Loki flexed his fingers, raising it to the moonlight and admiring its sheen. She placed her fingertips against his and he smiled. Gently—hesitantly—he let his fingers slip between hers just barely before pulling back, making her grasp at air. She hid her hand on her lap immediately, running her thumb on the spaces between her fingers to ease their craving.

"Is it even comfortable?" said Natasha.

He shrugged and nodded. She almost asked if she could try it on before remember that doing so could easily kill him.

"You've been so busy, making those weapons," said Natasha. When Loki raised his eyebrow at her questioningly, she remembered that she wasn't supposed to know. "Ah—I mean, Stark mentioned it. You were ruining his lab rooms all the time and he was complaining about it."

Loki gave her a crooked smile and she knew immediately that he had known she spied on him all along. She scowled and gave a punch on his shoulder. He grinned and fell back, raising the throw blanket to hide his face. His shoulder felt painfully sharp.

"Thor told us about Thanos' plan," said Natasha. "You know, you could ask us for help. Tony made his living making his weapons. And the rest of us make our living defending. Whatever help you need against Thanos, we're here. And we will help."

Loki bowed his head in thanks before leaning back, raising his eyes to the starry sky. There was something so perpetually majestic about him that made Natasha feel the need to pinch herself to make sure she wasn't dreaming. If Thor was a prince fit for legends and proud history, then Loki was a prince of fairy tales and fantasy, of dreams she thought would never come true.

"Do they have a lot of stars in Asgard?" said Natasha.

Loki nodded, his lips barely parted.

"Same constellations?" said Natasha. "You know, stars arranged in a pattern that reminded people of stories."

Loki squinted but shook his head. He tapped his chin thoughtfully, as if to say that these stars were not unfamiliar to him, but not like the ones from home.

"I don't know if the old Norse people had constellations," said Natasha. "I think they do. But most of the ones we know of are the old Greek ones. Like that one—Orion." She took Loki's wrist and gently traced the constellation out in the sky, connecting the dots. "He was a mythological warrior, and a hero. He fought Cancer, another constellation, except I don't see that one anywhere here. And this one—"

She traced Big Dipper out for him. "That's Ursa Major. Not a Greek constellation, but in a lot of different cultures, it's a bear, or a cleaver, or a plow. No one can settle on the same conclusion. There's another one—Andromeda—except I don't think you can see her here. She's a princess whose mother chained her to a rock for a sea monster to eat her, but Perseus comes and saves her, and they fall in love."

Natasha let go of his wrist and leaned back, folding her hands behind her head. "Honestly, I have no idea how the ancient people did it. I'd never be able to find shapes in the outline of stars when there are so many of them." She turned to him. "Do you see anything familiar in the sky?"

He nodded and placed his hand on her wrist. He hesitated, his fingers itching back as if afraid he wasn't allowed to touch her. She nodded reassuringly and he wrapped his fingers around her wrist again, lifting her hand to trace his stories out in the night sky. The stories were silent, and yet she could see what he wanted to tell her—here in the sky was an eagle, another a serpent, here a doe. She once saw the night sky as a speckled mystery—he sharpened the corners and brought to light the surrealism, the fantasy.

"Makes you wonder how they came to be, the stars," said Natasha. "That there are hundreds of billions of them out there, and yet from here they look like a masterpiece. The universe is so lucky I'm not the one designing things—I'd make everything look so ugly. I have no eye for art."

He turned his head to her, raising an eyebrow skeptically. She smiled wryly before taking the art pad from beside her and turning to the page of her sketch, placing it on his lap. Loki took it, raising it to his eyes to look upon it.

"I tried drawing you," said Natasha, watching his face hungrily for a reaction. "I mean, I suck at drawing, but I figured—if you drew me once, I want to repay the favor. Voila."

Loki ran his finger along the pen lines, following the curves of the smile Natasha drew on his face. His eyes drank in the sight of himself, as happy and care-free as he once drew her, unburdened and free. They gleamed, but they were also unreadable, and she felt her heart jolt.

"I mean, I really can't draw," said Natasha. "I was never an artist—a ballerina, once, but that's about it. But I wanted to—I mean, I wanted to give to you what you gave to me. That you would be happy, and if anything, that I would be there for you when it happens."

Loki lifted his eyes to her, his lips parted as if to mouth the words he wished her to know. She offered him a smile before shaking her head, a chuckle escaping her lips.

"Except, if I had any say in it, I'd rather see the real you happy," said Natasha. "Not just on paper, where I can imagine all I want, but it'll never be as good as the real thing. I want you to be beautifully, blissfully happy—because that's what you've done for me."

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and watching the distant outline of the city speckled with lights. The truth was stubborn, the truth was difficult—but telling them was the most striking feeling from inside that she had known.

"I don't know how to say this," said Natasha, "but you've changed me. In the ways I needed the most. You know so much about me. Things that I wished no one would know, but I told you. Things about me I wished were never a part of me, that I've been ashamed of, things I've feared. And you…you healed me."

She rubbed her hands together, the skin on her fingers tingling from the chill. She blew in them, letting her breath numb them. Her fingers rested against her lips in contemplation before she spoke again. Loki remained still beside her—she could barely hear him breathe.

"I've struggled with myself for so long," said Natasha. "I hated myself for nearly my whole life. I could never understand why anyone was friends with me—why Clint took care of me all this time, why Fury always checked to make sure I was safe after each mission, why the Avengers didn't shun me for my past. I never understood why. I thought I was despicable, I thought I was rotten to the core. And I had my reasons why."

She closed her eyes, breathing in deep the cool starlight. "But there were so many times I thought I could forget. People—when they wanted to care for me, they helped me forget who I was. When I was with them, I comforted myself by pretending that my past was nothing, that my past didn't matter, that I could detach myself from it and forget. I pretended that in a sense, I was not myself. But at the end of the day, when I was on my own, I would remember that I could never truly be apart from what I've done. I could never be apart with myself, and I would never be at peace."

Even in the cold night, she felt so, so warm.

"But you—" she said with a laugh. "You came along, and when I least expected it, you've changed me for the better. For good. I was finally honest with you and myself. I let you see the part of me that I hated, and you didn't try to erase me, you didn't try to make me forget—you knew it, you accepted it, you remembered it, and yet you held me so close and for the first time in my life I didn't hate myself. You of all people didn't accept me despite my past; you accepted me with it."

Is this love, Agent Romanoff?

Natasha long knew the answer.

"And I…I learned that I could do the same about myself," she said. "I didn't have to fear it, try to hide it…but I could accept myself here and now and learn, and grow, and…and…there was peace. I found peace, and that—I don't know if you know how much it means to me. But you've healed me, more than I could ever ask for."

Natasha rested her forehead against her fingers, letting the weight of the truth slip from her. She felt not naked, not stripped, but set free and clean in the deep night.

But then she felt her breath catch in her throat, her heart skip a beat, her blood course with adrenaline in her veins when she heard what she could not bring herself to believe.

She heard him. She heard Loki, sitting beside her, alive, near her. She heard him, the breaths he took, the gasps—she heard him crying.

She could hear him crying.

She raised her head to him and her heart soared until it broke. Because there Loki was, sitting beside her, clutching his arms, his lithe form trembling as sobs escaped his once silenced lips. Tears of joy, of happiness, of love and bottled pain trailed down his cheeks like falling stars. He gasped audibly, trying to breathe steadily, and he no longer hid. He cried—because for the first time, he realized he did not bring only pain, he did not only hurt or harm—that he could be enough for someone and that someone was her, Natasha. That he could bring some good into someone's life.

Loki wept, and she could hear him.

"Natasha," Loki whispered, his voice small and delicate but the most wonderful thing she ever heard. "Natasha, Natasha…"

She reached out and wrapped her arms around him, cradling his head on her shoulder and letting his tears flow onto her shoulder. Her heart burst and she wanted to soar, to cry, to scream for joy, to float endlessly, because he was speaking to her, speaking for her. She wanted to hold him forever and hear him cry her name, because the very moment he broke was when he healed.

"Cry, Loki," she whispered. Because anyone would whisper sweet words of comfort and try to soothe him to silence, with hushed shh shh, it's okay to stem his tears, but she never wanted to stop hearing him. She never wanted to stop listening. "Cry. It's okay, you can do it. Oh, Loki…"

He held her tight, weeping into the crook of her neck, his entire form shaking as emotion after emotion poured out of him, sweeping the broken pieces of his heart into one place until it began to piece itself together again. She pulled him close, the corners of her own eyes stinging, and for the first time she prayed—not out of fear, or desperation, or pain that plagued her at night, but of joy—relief—thanks.

She kissed his cheeks, kissed away the tears that fell. Kissed the corner of his eyes, where the emotions spilled, kissed the top of his head when he hid his face. And she knew in that moment that no matter when or what, regardless of the where or how, she loved him. She loved him, she loved him…she loved him.

"Cry, Loki. Cry," she choked out, tears falling from her own eyes. Healing hurt, and yet she felt so serene. "I'm here. I'll always be here. Thank you, Loki. I'm so, so happy for you. Thank you."

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Instead, she wept with him.