12 Dreams and Spiders
The castle was in an uproar since Doom himself was expected that evening. Natasha yawned over the bread dough and fruit tarts in the kitchen, and 13 took a minute from their chores to ask her why. "Late date last night?"
"Maybe." Natasha didn't want to talk about what had occurred between her and Loki. As tired as she was the memory sill made her shiver inside with desire.
"Yeah, definitely a date. And a good one, too, judging by the marks on your neck…" 13 stopped as Loki entered the kitchen with a huge stack of fine dishes.
He put them carefully on the huge, wooden table and winked at them saucily. "Good day, ladies." This was said with a flourish as he edged closer to where Natasha kneaded a pillow of dough with rather lackluster strokes.
"Uh huh." 13 fisted her hips. "Damn, girl. You've got good taste, I'll give you that."
Loki peered at the bread dough. "I think this pile is ready for the oven. Do you mind if I steal her?" He pointed to Natasha, cupped 13's shoulder, and rubbed his thumb over the edge of the girl's neck.
"What? Are you serious? She has to divide it into loaves, let it rise again. Don't even start." 13 snorted.
"I'm staying to finish the bread." Natasha filtered calm determination into her voice, determined she wasn't about to be swept off by any Norse god while she had a job to do - even if they had spent all night in bed together. "13, pass me that crock of flour."
"In that case, I shall stay as well and help." Loki twitched up his sleeves to the elbows, stepped behind Natasha, and started to pummel the dough with firm, strong strokes. The action tipped his body against hers repetitively. One sidelong glance told her he knew exactly what he was doing.
"Do you know anything about the Spiders?" Natasha thought she might as well try and get some intel from 13 while they did the chores.
"Yeah, I know enough to keep my ass out of the Pit and away from the table of demon food." 13 cut out a full moon of pastry and plopped it over a pie filled with apples, nuts, butter, and brown sugar. With quick, practiced movements she crimped the crust together and pushed it aside. "I did hear something else about them," she admitted. "There was a worker here a while ago, a tall dude. Skinny. He told me if you can give a Spider its one true name, it will start a transformation… but the whole thing is bogus, if you ask me. How can they transform? And there are so many of the damned things. And who cares about names anyway?"
"What happens if you select the wrong name?" Natasha asked.
"It's the same thing as eating the feast, from what I hear." 13 picked up a knife, sliced off a snake of pastry, and allowed the morsel to slither into her mouth before wriggling her fingers at them in a fair copy of a spider.
Loki's hands, spanning Natasha's waist, had gone very still. She forced herself to finish her kneading, divide the bread into five equal parts, and put them into prepared, buttered pans for baking. "There, ready for the last rising," she said in a breezy voice. "Guess we better see about sweeping the floors in the main hall."
"Sweeping the floors," 13 jeered. "Is that what they call it now?"
Although they didn't speak, with tacit understanding Natasha and Loki headed downstairs to the Pit right away. That morning the Spiders were in a huddled mass in one corner. The dark pile twitched and moved, but it was impossible to see any distinguishing characteristics between them. At length Loki turned with a click of disgust and held out his hand to Natasha. "Come," he ordered. "Let us go out and sit by the lake – I need fresh air in my lungs! If I breathe in the stale dust of this castle any longer I shall lose my wits."
Natasha was tempted by the idea. She peered at the Spiders again, and Loki tugged her arm. "Come with me," he repeated. "I found a passage that leads right to the water – it must be how they fill the baths."
She allowed herself to be towed out of the Spiders' lair to the room where the long table lurked, covered with its endless, poisonous meal. Loki ignored the feast and headed to the baths where there was a tiny door set into the stones. He felt in one pocket and produced an iron key on a length of knotted string to dangle in front of her eyes. "Where did you get that?" Mirth gurgled in Natasha's voice.
He grinned. "Stole it. I may not have my magic, but I am still a trickster."
"And a thief." Natasha reached for the key, but he snatched it away.
"Oh no, this is mine. Allow me." Loki unlocked the little door to reveal a dark passage, wet underfoot and with water trickling in a side sluice. "You don't mind a little darkness, I hope? Once I could have created lights for us, but now we must rely…"
His voice died out as Natasha struck a match and lit the stump of a candle she pulled from her pocket. "…On something like this?"
Dark eyelashes fanned his cheeks, and Loki drew her near to bite her neck. "You are just as much of a trickster as I am," he whispered.
The lake was ringed with tumbled stones on a tree-lined shore. Hand in hand, Loki and Natasha picked their way out of the sluice-passage to the water's edge. As the trees tossed under a cloud-laden sky, she tilted up her face to feel the wind in her hair. "I like this," Natasha murmured.
"We can sit here." Loki found a flat rock and pulled her onto his lap to wind both arms around her and tucked her head under his chin. "There is your island – it seems very far away in the mist, does it not? Tell me, why do you want to go there so badly?"
It was pleasant to hear his voice, so low and lazy, reverberate in his chest. Natasha exhaled and stroked his hair idly. The late hours had made her sleepy, and reality seemed to shiver in front of her vision. "Perhaps I know of a hidden treasure." Her lips spread, anticipating his response.
"A treasure? I am certain you are right." Carefully he spread his fingers between her legs to stroke her thighs. "I would dearly love to find this treasure with you. We will swim there and climb onto the tree roots that have grown into the lake. Perhaps from the island even this forsaken castle will appear beautiful, and you will lean your head on my shoulder like now, and we will just breathe together."
"Just breathe together…" Natasha's eyes closed, and she slid into darkness.
After an unknown time of nothing, she saw a green glow and headed towards it, dressed in what she recognized as her own black widow gear. The glow grew brighter, signaling the end of a tunnel lined with tubes and wires. Natasha kept going until she stood before a glass cage. It hit her that she was inside a huge jet, the engines roaring in her ears.
Loki paced inside the cage – a different Loki, with longer hair and a wild expression in his eyes. He seemed more desperate than she had ever seen him, as though he skirted a line between life and chaos. When he saw her watching him a smile crossed his face, but it wasn't a welcome, or even an expression of desire. His mouth moved, and as he spoke he threatened her with violence and worse…
A violent shudder, and she woke suddenly, deposited onto her feet. Loki stood upright and thrust her away from him, his face paler than usual. Natasha staggered before she got her footing. "What just happened?"
"Dream. A cage. Threats." His eyes were filled with horror, and his hands shook just as hers did.
Natasha stumbled backwards on the stones lining the lake's edge. "I had the same dream," she whispered.
"In that dream – I hated you bitterly. And it was the same with you, even though your face was devoid of emotion…I could tell. We hated each other."
She nodded, acknowledging it. "We were enemies."
"I don't want to be your enemy," Loki exploded.
"But how could we after all we've gone through together here?" Natasha put one hand on his chest, and he trembled under her touch. "I know you're a thief and a 'trickster', to use your own word, but there's something else underneath all that. I can see it. And I'll never forget you rescued me and Hundred from Kronsteig, Loki."
Loki stared at her, never blinking. "Time is a funny thing. I would never have thought Thor could lose his love for me, and yet when I stole Sigyn's reputation from her…"
"I told you we'll do something about that poor girl, if you'll just stop being an ass for two seconds."
"We? Yes, you are like me, are you not?" He frowned, all traces of his usual laughter and lust utterly gone. "You know, when I was finished with Sigyn I knew I didn't want her any longer. What makes that any different from what you've done to Lucia? How about that poor girl?"
Natasha snatched her hand from his chest, and a hiss of breath curled from her mouth. "What?"
Loki curved his arm around her waist as tenderly as though they actually had been lovers in every sense of the word. "She fell in love with you, the flesh and metal creature. You have mischief – and you are ruthless. In these things you and I are just alike, Natasha. Better to separate now before I fall even deeper into a cage of my own making."
Without another word he released her and strode away, the rocks crunching under his footsteps. Natasha pressed her lips together firmly so they wouldn't tremble and followed him into the dark passage. She now saw pipes were set into the walls to conduct water to the castle, and for a moment she recalled the green cage, Loki's fury, and the humming of massive engines in the plane where they confronted each other.
That, it seemed, was their future.
The change in the way he spoke to her after their heated night together was so shocking she was stunned, before the old habits kicked in – the training, the old ways. Already her mind whirled with new plans, conforming to the change of situation.
He stopped and, with ironic etiquette, waited to help her over the threshold into the feast room where the dishes still steamed on the long table, redolent with poison and temptation. "Maybe you are right - maybe we should separate," she purred. "After all, if that dream we shared was real, one day we will betray each other."
"Exactly. So why fall any further?" Loki removed his touch. "Why face all the heartache again? I should never have come here to Midgard after you."
"I didn't think you came after me at all. I thought it was to help your brother find his girlfriend – the one called Sif."
"No. It was you – always you. But no longer."
"Good." Natasha nodded curtly. "Get the fuck away from me, then," she added in a carefree voice. "We're done here."
"I had no idea we were going to be enemies, Natasha." Loki's voice became silky, passionate. "I know we did not lie together, but I wouldn't even have allowed the heated caresses we did exchange…"
"I get it. We shared a dream, and now we're going to believe it so implicitly we'll stop any possibility of friendship." Natasha walked to the Pit where the Spiders lurked and pressed her nose against the glass – that way, she wouldn't have to see the intense green eyes, the dark hair curling slightly at the ends. The black, shiny heap surged together, creating power for the castle. As she swallowed back the last of her emotions, one of the Spiders broke away from the group and began to climb up the wall.
"I have done terrible things, Natasha, but I think I'm capable of worse." Loki's voice tickled her ear, even though she tried to crowd it out. "Truth be told, I'm most afraid of myself. What if I carry out some of the threats I shouted at you in the dream?"
That made her grit her teeth, turn to face him. So close he was, almost as close as they had been in her bed. "You told me we were alike – I betrayed Lucia after all, and I'll probably do it again. What if I'm the one who destroys you?"
Loki compressed his lips. "Maybe that's why I need to get away from you now. Self-protection, you know."
"Self-protection, right. So you're a coward as well as a backstabber."
Loki left her abruptly, his footsteps echoing in the dark space. Once they died away Natasha allowed herself the luxury of brushing away a tear. Her dismay was forgotten as she looked at the dark creatures within the space. Perhaps sadness sharpened her vision. They weren't all alike: one Spider detached from the group to climb the wall. It reached the top of the room, where it settled itself and looked down on the others.
She pursed her lips and blew out a long breath. Everything was falling apart, but she thought she had found Clint.