Self Portrait

Natasha's hands gripped the metal bar of the elevator so hard that the blood drained from her gloved knuckles. Who does he think he is? she thought bitterly, her eyes narrowed and her jaw clenched as she stared at her own distorted reflection. She was getting fed up with Clint, and the shit he had just pulled on her in front of the team had all but pushed her over the edge. There was no denying the fact that she had been distant from him for a long time now, lately more than ever, but she had her reasons for it, reasons she didn't think Clint needed to know.

Some of them, she didn't know.

At least when she was with Loki, trying to pry him apart piece by piece to get at what was underneath all that armor, she knew what she was doing. She had a goal, an objective. She could focus on him, and what he did made more and more sense to her. With Clint, it was exactly the opposite. She was on eggshells with him, constantly afraid that anything she said, anything she did was going to spark something. The worst part was that she wasn't afraid of fighting with him. She was afraid that he wouldn't want to fight. She was terrified of having the conversation she'd so narrowly avoided in Stark Tower, of having to own up to the fact that he loved her and wanted to be with her when she didn't, couldn't reciprocate those feelings, or at least pretend to anymore.

The simple truth was that she owed him a debt, and she'd given him four years of happy memories to repay it. After the last nine months...the last few weeks...what he said to her in the tower...she was beginning to wonder if maybe it was time to let him go.

She was beginning to wonder if maybe he was right, if maybe she wasn't human anymore.

The elevator doors slid open with a whisper, and Natasha stepped out into the familiar, dark corridor. She'd been thinking about this visit ever since she'd given Loki that book three days ago, and admittedly she was eager to know what he thought of it. It had been a strategic choice on her part, a very bold one, and after the way he had reacted to the gift she knew that it would either go very well or very poorly. Then again, as it was Loki they were talking about, it could easily be a little bit of both.

Drawing level with the glass front of his cell, she composed herself and ritualistically began, "Good eveni—"

A loud, solid thud reverberated through the corridor, cutting Natasha off in mid-sentence. Loki, rising to his feet across the cell, had whipped the paperback at her with such force that the glass folded over the cover and the first several pages.

"I take it you didn't like it?" she asked, her eyebrows lofting slightly as she regarded him.

"Like it," the god spat as he came closer, stopping just a few inches away from the glass, his hands balled into fists. "I suppose you thought I would identify with it. See myself within the loathsome Dorian Gray. Was that your plan, Agent? Pass me this piece of drivel in hopes that it might impose upon me the error of my ways and make me further inclined to help you?"

"A girl can dream," Natasha replied coolly.

Loki's lips curled upward into a cruel grin. "Oh, and you do dream, do you not? I saw far more of you in dear Dorian's portrait than I did myself," he said, his low voice carrying a lethal undercurrent.

Natasha steeled her nerves briefly before she asked, "How's that?"

A threatening chuckle escaped Loki; he had clearly been hoping she would ask that very same question. "So young, so beautiful...Skin the color of freshly fallen snow, hair as bright and wild as the kindled flames keeping you warm at night. What was it Barton told me you did before you became the Black Widow?" Loki mused, his bright emerald eyes burning into hers. "You were a dancer, were you not? A ballerina?"

Natasha's jaw clenched.

"Yes, that was it...You danced for the Bolshoi, and you were lovely...Your dear father watched every performance, pride spilling from his watery eyes as he watched his little girl...his little Natasha...turn on tiptoe to ringing applause."

Loki's eyes widened slightly, his gaze intensifying. Natasha fought the urge to shrink back from him. She didn't remember telling Clint the kind version of her childhood in so much detail.

"Now look at you," the god growled, his voice filling with disgust. "You've exchanged your slippers for daggers, your precious pirouettes for the ability to crush life with your bare hands. You think that I am the ugly one? Perhaps you should examine your own portrait, Natalia. You say you want to wipe out the red...Peel away the pretty painted woman and your canvas is dripping with it. It is inside you, Little Natalia, infecting you. The blood of your victims courses through your decrepit veins. It sustains you. It is what keeps you alive, even now as you make your pathetic attempts to redeem yourself. You really think they will matter? You think they will transform you back into the beautiful little dancer you once were?"

Natasha felt her shoulders begin to shake. Her own eyes were burning, lined with tears just begging to spill over her cheeks, and her fingertips were digging into her arms.

Loki relished the sight and pressed on loudly, relentlessly, "You will never be anything but the creature you have become. This game you play with S.H.I.E.L.D, with Barton and the rest of the Avengers...you may fool them, but I see you for what you are. I see what you have done, the atrocities that have twisted your soul. Trust me, Natalia, the only redemption you will find is among the dead left in your wake."

The world's deadliest assassin trembled like a leaf in the wind beneath the heated, angry gaze of the god, and although she hated herself for allowing it, a couple fat tears slid over the rims of her eyes and over her colorless cheeks. Her lips were pressed together in a hard line and her hands balled into fists beneath her arms. Every muscle in her neck and shoulders tensed, and her feet practically screamed at her to turn and run away. Nobody, nobody was able to see through her the way that Loki did, and yet...

Natasha didn't allow herself to run away, nor did she break Loki's gaze. A few moments passed in tense silence, and then, her voice soft but somehow steady, she said, "An astute analysis...for someone who doesn't identify with Dorian."

Loki's eyebrows slammed into one another as he stared at her in unveiled shock and anger. "What?" he demanded, uncomprehending.

Natasha pulled in a breath to steady herself a little further before she took a few steps forward, closing even more of the distance between the two of them. Now all that separated them was about six inches and a thick pane of reinforced glass. "Cut the crap, Loki," she started, her voice still soft and firm. "You're not as hard to read as you think you are. I'm not the only one in this room who's done terrible things, and I'm not the only one with regrets. The difference between you and me is that I'm willing to admit I have them."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Loki growled at her, although yet again she felt as though the words lacked conviction.

"The hell I don't," she replied quickly, her tone never changing. "What was it you did when Daddy told you that you were adopted? When you found out that underneath all your fancy armo—"

"HOLD YOUR TONGUE!" Loki shouted, his voice at once a command and a plea as he slammed his open palm against the glass wall with such force that cracks spidered out from his hand.

"Under that armor you are a monster!" Natasha answered him, her voice just as loud, the words ripping forward from her slender throat. She slapped her hand against the glass as well, right against Loki's, the cracks scratching her skin. "A fallen prince, an unloved child whining that big brother gets all the attention! Thor told us all your secrets after the battle, Laufeyson! You want to be his equal—you could never stand beside Thor! He stands tall while you slither on your belly like the snake you are, biting his ankles to bring him down alongside you. You think that ruling a world will put you above him? Take it! Take Earth, Asgard, Jotunheim—take them all! There is no crown large enough to cover up what you are!"

Natasha 's chest pressed against the glass, her threatening snarl barely an inch away from the clear surface. Delicate cracks continued to creep outward from between she and Loki's palms, so forcefully were they both pressing against the pane. Her heavy breath created a fog, momentarily obscuring the lower portion of her face.

Loki's expression was thunderous. At any moment she expected him to slam his fist into the glass and break it entirely, to step through the shattered wall and kill her with his bare hands. Still she stared him down, didn't so much as blink, didn't twitch a single tense muscle. Several moments passed in this way, and then before her very eyes he began to crumble. The flame behind his burning emerald eyes began to die, and his lips, pulled back over his own snarl, began to tremble. He fought to hold Natasha's gaze for several more long seconds, his fingertips pressing hard enough into the glass to create their own individual indents, until she watched as he let out a harsh growl and shoved himself away. He turned his back on her, his shoulders hunched, hands balled into fists at his sides.

Only then did Natasha relent, dropping her own hand to her side and taking a step away from the glass. She gave him his moment of silence, using it to collect herself once again and to take a few deep breaths before she addressed him. "I see you, too, Loki. You're just as ugly as I am. Never forget that," she said, her low voice soft and firm once more. She glared into his back for a moment longer before she turned, her quiet footsteps little more than a whisper in the silent corridor.