Greetings from Kentucky! The theme song for this chapter is "One More Night" by Maroon 5. I think it fits nicely.


Chapter 52: The Morning After

Loki knew she was stalling. She also knew it was silly of her—after all, she wouldn't really have to deal with her counterpart's reaction, except perhaps in the form of an angry letter. But she cared for Natasha, and didn't want her to have to deal with it either.

"He's more likely to be pissed if you're late," Natasha reminded her. It was already 9 o'clock in the morning, and still Loki had not changed.

She sighed. "I know. I just..." she trailed off, flopping down on the couch.

"What?" Natasha sat down on the couch beside her, close enough to touch, but not provocatively so.

Loki swallowed. "I wish I could be there, somehow, to serve as a mediator between you two."

Natasha smiled. "That's sweet, but—" she didn't even bother to look surprised when Loki changed. One of these days she would find Loki's tell—if there even was one.

Loki sat very still for a moment. Natasha half expected him to shoot off some witty remark about his counterpart's lie, but instead he was silent. She waited for him to speak, for once unable to read what was going on in his mind.

At last he licked his lips contemplatively. "Well. That was... interesting."

Belatedly, Natasha realized that because this Loki was conscious of everything that happened while Femme Loki was present, he would have experienced everything they had done the night before. Physically.

"Good interesting or bad interesting? It's kind of an ambiguous word," Natasha asked.

He blinked. "Intentionally so," he agreed, "as I am yet unsure how to react."

She lifted an eyebrow. "Did you not enjoy it?"

He laughed, a breathless chuckle. "Oh, it was very enjoyable. But also very strange..."

Natasha smiled a little. "Strange can be good."

Loki looked at her more clearly, as if seeing her for the first time. "Why did you do it? Why seduce Her?"

"I didn't, really," she sighed. "She already wanted me. And I discovered that I wanted her too. Apparently everyone else thought we were already together, so I saw no reason not to do as we liked."

He scowled. "You could have asked me, first."

Now both of Natasha's eyebrows shot up. "I don't need your permission to do anything. It's Her body, too, you know, and you can't expect her to live like a monk because you're uncomfortable riding shotgun to her pleasure. And besides, you're the one who suggested it in the first place, so you have no room to complain."

Loki's eyes widened, surprised as always at Natasha's ability to cut to the heart of the matter with so few words. He sighed. "I misspoke. I wish you would have warned me first, so I could... mentally prepare myself. I didn't expect things to... progress so quickly." As he spoke, he realized how foolish he sounded.

But Natasha just laid a hand on his arm. "Ok. I'm sorry about that. I didn't know I was going to do it until yesterday, so there wasn't time to warn you. I should have waited."

"No," Loki closed his eyes, frustrated with how he was handling this. "You're right again." He opened his eyes and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers. "Waiting would have given her time to over-think it. As usual, you are far wiser than your years should allow."

Natasha frowned, and bit her lip a little, thinking. "Loki, how old do you think I am?"

Loki's expression mirrored hers, but then he grinned. "This is a trick question, right? I'm supposed to lie and list some inordinately small number, to flatter you. Are you so eager to have Her back?" he teased.

She smiled a little, but shook her head. "No, I want to know, honestly, how old you think I am."

He raised an eyebrow, doubting, but she just held his stare. He shrugged eloquently, and made a careful study of her face. She had no tell-tale fine lines, and the back edge of her jaw was still rounded. He wasn't terribly familiar with the aging rate of humans, but he knew enough for this to tell him she had not yet entered her third decade. Her shape was fully matured, though, with wide hips and full breasts. She had a thin waist and firm arms, but that was as likely a product of hard work and exercise as it was to be from youth. Mentally, she was certainly mature, but that could easily be born from a traumatic childhood.

After a long moment, he decided on a number. "Twenty-six," he guessed.

She smiled, amused. "A good guess. I'm flattered, but no. If I was twenty-six, the Berlin wall would have been torn down when I was four or five, about the age I began at the Red Room. Why would the Russian government spend so much money on a project to enforce a way of life that was already dying?"

Loki pursed his lips. "Twenty-nine?"

This time, Natasha laughed. "This will take a long time if you go in increments of three," she warned.

Now he frowned. So not thirty, then. "Thirty-five?" It was the highest number he thought reasonable, if she had taken very, very good care of herself. Which he somehow doubted.

She made a gesture with her hand to indicate he should keep going.

He blinked. "You cannot be forty," he said, incredulous.

"I'm not forty," she agreed. "I haven't been forty for some time."

Loki suddenly caught on. There was something which made Natasha look much younger than she actually was. He thought of Steve Rogers, who by all appearances was a young man in his prime, but who had confided to Her that he was actually over ninety, and as a result was often as at odds with popular culture as She was.

"Fifty? Sixty? ...Seventy?" he continued to guess, wondering how long he should continue.

She sensed his frustration and relented. "I was born in 1934. Next April I will turn seventy-nine."

He sat silent a moment. What to say to such a revelation? "If it makes you feel any better, I'm still cradle-robbing by Asgardian standards."

She chuckled. "Steve said you were something like twelve hundred years old," she remembered.

Loki had a thoughtful look. "Rogers knows, then?"

She nodded. "I met him when I was a child. In 1941. He remembers."

"Who else?"

"Fury, Hill and Clint, of course, and Tony, who snooped in everyone's SHIELD files."

Loki was surprised that Clint knew. It was not something he had revealed to him. He knew that Clint had been resisting his possession, and now wondered what other facts he had managed to withhold about Natasha.

"How? I thought Captain America was the only super soldier? Assuming, of course, that it's not some other form of longevity," he sounded confused.

"It's similar, and yes, he's the only one that was wholly perfect. What I got was the watered-down version. A scientist named Vanko had worked with Howard Stark, Tony's father, at the time that Steve was... transformed. When he was deported back to Russia, he stole some of Stark's notes and materials, and from them tried to develop his own super serum. His experiments were not as... successful, but the Russian government was more than happy to provide him with an endless string of test subjects to perfect the formula. By the time I volunteered, he had it mostly worked out."

"Mostly?" Loki hazarded.

"Yes. It wasn't as good as Stark's. It didn't, for instance, change me physically or enhance my strength to the same degree. It did make me faster, physically and mentally, increase my endurance and my rate of healing, and basically stopped me from aging. But the process took days, not minutes, and it was... excruciating. At least half of the subjects still didn't survive. The ones that did were usually from various training programs, like me, who were already well acquainted with pain." she shuddered almost imperceptibly. Loki wondered if she was even aware of it.

"So there are others like you?" Loki asked.

"Not many. I killed most of them, some for Russia, some for SHIELD. A couple for personal reasons." Her face darkened with the memories.

"Then... you are not immortal?" his voice was quiet.

"No," she smiled grimly. "I can die, although it takes a lot."

Loki frowned. "So what you're telling me is that you could potentially live forever, if you stayed out of harm's way, but you choose to live a very dangerous life?" His tone clearly conveyed his disapproval.

She scowled back at him. "How is that any different from life in Asgard?" she argued.

A year ago, he would have given her a lecture on the idiocy of Asgardian culture, how he had actively avoided battle for these exact reasons. But now, after he had instigated an inter-galactic war, it would be empty hypocrisy. He stood, pacing. He wasn't sure why he was so disturbed by the idea of Natasha throwing away her potential immortality, but it rankled severely.

"I need time," he said suddenly, before he even thought it. "To think about all this," he covered, and then froze a moment before he realized it wasn't really a lie.

"That's fair," Natasha agreed.

And without another word, Loki strode quickly out of their cabin, letting the door slam shut behind him.

Natasha sighed, feeling as if she had been holding her breath for an hour. She had successfully diverted the conversation away from last night's indiscretions, but at what cost? She had promised to tell him about these things, but was now really the best time? When is it ever a good time to discuss such things? she mused darkly. Better to get it over with and deal with the consequences, she supposed.


A/N: Don't worry! He'll figure it out. He's just got to be a stubborn ass about it.

The information on Natasha's past is a hodge-podge of canon info from the comics and head-canon. I'm not as familiar with the Avengers comics as I am with Thor, so I had to do a little research for this. I picked her age by guessing she met Captain America (which is canonical, btw) when she was 7. I prefer versions where Natasha is semi-immortal, because that kind of Russian agent just doesn't make a lot of sense contemporarily, unless she's working for the mafia instead of the government, but the back story is pretty clear on that topic.

Anyway, I'll be back on Wednesday with chapter 53: Like a God.