Natalia raged within the prison they'd contained her inside while Natasha gasped and gagged, emptying what little she had in her stomach onto the floor. Loki rubbed her back, though he never took his eyes off of the copy, not sure what to expect now that they'd caught it. The boy had said that the game wasn't yet complete, so what more was there to do in order to finish it? If chaos was its endgame, then what would be the final stroke?
Loki considered it while Natasha gasped and trembled beneath him, pushing herself up onto her knees from having been on all fours. Tony took careful, slow steps around the contained Natalia, taking in the almost entirely authentic copy, muttering under his breath about how it was actually possible. Loki didn't care for the logistics of it, and neither did Thor, who came to drop to Natasha's side and took her hands in his, pushing her hair out of her face.
"Do you need anything?" He asked quietly, as though afraid of the duplicate hearing. "Water, a blanket?"
"Water, yes please," she rasped, blinking up at him, recognition dawning on her face. "Thor. Thank you." She said with a nod, wiping the tears that had streamed down her face away with the back of her hand. Her breath was shallow and Loki's stomach pitched forward in nerves. She was going to be alright, wasn't she?
"Of course." He smiled. "I have not forgotten the help you gave me when facing down Amora and her sister. I am ever so grateful."
That snapped Loki's attention back to them. "When the hell was this?" He demanded. How was it that he hadn't heard of it until then? That Amora and Lorelei had come back at all was worrying-.
"About a week and a half before this," Natasha said, voice just as soft, before her eyes widened and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Loki felt his heart equally pound just as excitedly in his chest. She remembered! "How can-ow, fuck," she removed the hand from her mouth and massaged her temples lightly. "Shit, that hurts. But my memories are back. They're back?" She sounded uncertain, looking from Thor to Loki in surprise.
There wasn't much else to say to that before the doors which they'd been so keen on keeping shut flew open. Clint emerged with an arrow notched and pointed at Loki, Steve holding his shield in hand, ready to let it fly at the trickster. They really needed to work on their timing, Loki couldn't help but muse
"Get away from her you shit head," Clint snarled, pulling the arrow back ever-so slightly. It was Steve that put a hand on the bow, however, forcing him to lower it and pointing with his other hand to the cage where Natasha had been imprisoned before. The woman in the glass prison had eyes so dark they were black, and her teeth bared as she stared at them all, snarling and spitting like a caged animal rather than a human.
"You will release me. Now." She demanded of them, fingers tapping anxiously at her sides, looking from the pair that had stepped in Natasha and the others. "You will let me go or I swear I will rain down a thousand years of misery on the lot of you."
"You're not making such a good case for yourself red," Stark said as he stopped at the front of the cage. "Wanna tell us what you are?"
She rolled her eyes and let out a snuff of disbelief. "Why don't you ask your clever little trickster here yourself? Certainly he can recognize another of his own, now that he's seen me," Natalia's lips twisted into a smirk, and Loki felt his blood boil as the eyes of the Avengers turned immediately onto him. Right. Because it was all up to him to figure it all out, wasn't it?
"You're nothing like me," he said, standing up and leaving Natasha to Thor. Natasha, whose eyes followed his every move as he stepped closer to the double, who needed him to figure this stupid puzzle before the monster could enter her once more. Again he stared into the double's pitch black eyes, demanding of himself that he read what it was, what lurked just beneath the pale skin and red hair of the woman behind him. There was more to it than just a spirit, more to it than just chaos-yes, there was anger, so thick and murderous he thought it might close his throat. He'd felt that before, and given what Natasha had been through he supposed it was not a surprise that it'd latched onto her. But how had it even been unlocked? And by whom?
"No, but I am better than you ever could hope to be." She said, taking to pacing in front of him, a beast slinking from one side to the next, her hackles raised and eyes narrowed. "I have been around longer than you, boy. And I will always remain so."
"Looks to me like you're locked up pretty tightly. There's no getting out of that, or else you'd have done it. You have nothing to gain by being here." He goaded, prepared for her to leap out at any minute, to throttle him and take Natasha back. He'd die before he let that happen.
"You don't know all my tricks," the copy said.
No, but he was certain he was getting damn close. "So then come out and show me."
Her fist beat against the glass, and Loki was sure that it was going to break through, but the glass held. No one breathed. When nothing happened, and Natalia stepped away from the glass with a barely disguised snarl on her face, Loki relaxed. Good. Thank the Norns.
"Seems whatever favor you thought you had is gone," he murmured. "Now. If you cannot break out of here on your own then you are relying on the assistance of another. Who is your patron?"
"Get away from me," Natalia spat, though this time the words weren't in English. Had it not been for the Allspeak Loki wouldn't have understood them, but Stark was quickly working on translating it for the others, tapping away on his phone and holding the device up to the glass as Natalia spat insult after insult, most of which made no sense, a combination of languages that sounded as though two voices were trying to work through the same mouth. Even Natalia looked confused after a moment, clenching her jaw to force herself to shut up.
Stark removed the translator from the wall and made a motion with his head that they were all to leave. With Loki's attention on the doppelganger in front of him he hadn't realized that Clint had led Natasha out of the room, hopefully taking her to go lay down and recover her strength, to get that water that she'd needed, while Steve, Stark, and Loki made to follow soon after. Thor volunteered to stay behind and keep an eye on the prisoner. As the strongest of all of them Loki supposed that made the most sense. Besides, he was too intrigued to see what it was Stark had found out.
"Nat, do you know how to speak Norwegian?" Tony asked, the lot of them settling around Natasha's bedside. Banner had joined them, having flown in to keep an eye on Natasha's vitals before the two had made the split, and was keeping Natasha hydrated and checking out just what the split and the spirit's rampage within her body had done to her.
She shook her head. "No. One of the few languages I don't know."
"I didn't think so. That copy-Natalia, is that what she's calling herself?"
Loki nodded. Stark rolled his eyes.
"Whatever. She was speaking a loose version of it-ancient stuff, as well as Japanese. Why the two got combined I can't say, but Nat you know the latter. Is it possible that she held onto that language after the duplication process?"
"Doubtful," Loki mused, biting on his bottom lip. His fingers were threaded with Natasha's from where he sat beside her. He didn't know what it was she remembered, but it had been enough for her to take his hand in hers and hold him tight. "A slight, temporary memory transfer I can understand-but she shouldn't have retained enough of Natasha's knowledge and instinct to do something like that."
"So, now level with me here. This Amora-I remember her. She and her sister came down hell bent on enslaving all of mankind, and they spoke a language similar to this specific iteration of Norwegian. I had Jarvis record it just in case we needed it. Never know." He said, and replayed a portion of it from his Stark phone.
"You and all of you will freeze in the depths of Hel itself," a deep voice said on the phone said, sending shivers down Loki's spine. Had he not just heard the same thing come from Natalia's mouth, albeit jumbled and making little to no sense when mixed with the other language?
"So you're saying Amora's behind this? Again?" Steve asked, his eyes narrowing, hand clasping his shield tighter. "Why?"
"Why not?" Natasha asked, her voice still cracking, as though she hadn't used it in ages. He wondered what damage vomiting the copy up had done to her vocal chords, and pressed his free hand to the soft skin of her throat. The skin heated up beneath his touch and the corners of Natasha's eyes widened as she looked to him. "Better?" He asked when he pulled away.
She nodded, voice smooth when she spoke again. "Yes. Thanks. But why wouldn't Amora have something to do with this? Or Lorelei? They struck me as jealous individuals. If I was helping Thor wouldn't that all but paint a target on my back?"
"And you were the only one who could outright ignore their calling," Steve reminded her,
Natasha nodded. "So this, whatever it is. I couldn't resist this, not when it's disguised as amnesia to make sure that I couldn't tell anyone who'd done it."
"Makes sense, but now how do we get rid of the copy?" Clint asked, looking from Natasha to Loki, whose face had gone blank as he thought it over. It said that it was older than even he was, yet it wasn't strong enough to free itself. Why was that? Just what did it need to make itself strong enough, a host? What would happen if they were to alter the form it was in currently, to weaken it?
"It's going to be something Eastern. Likely Japanese, if that's the language it's speaking," Bruce supplied from his place at Natasha's side, having been content with the results shown on the machines as he'd just taken a seat and relaxed, at least as much as he could.
"So, a Japanese spirit of chaos that would be best friends with Loki if he was batshit insane." Stark suggested with a shrug. "Right? Jarvis?"
"Perhaps a nogitsune is what you are thinking of, sir?"
Stark pulled up the article, reading aloud what it was that Jarvis had found, and the more he read the more it fit. The black eyes and bared teeth, the jerky, never still movement, as though it was paranoid and jumpy. Coupled with Natasha's flaming red hair it certainly fit the fox description, and if the article was to be believed, they had roamed the earth long before Loki had even been born.
"Does your article say how to destroy one?"
"I'm afraid not."
Clint cursed from his place beside Steve, stepping away from where they'd gathered while Natasha slumped slightly. "Do we find Amora, then?" She asked, looking to Loki. "Get her to do something about it?"
"I'll deal with Amora-I might have an idea." He said, clenching his back teeth as once more he felt the eyes of the others on him. He could only hope it would work.