A/N: So… this officially reached one hundred reviews as of last chapter. :D Which means that you are all officially the greatest people ever. Thank you so very, very much.

The morning following my big, alcohol-induced freak-out, I was awake for maybe ten seconds before I tore towards the bathroom and puked into the toilet.

Feeling like absolute crap, I crouched over the toilet bowl and groaned loudly. And that was where I remained for a very long time; how long, I'm not sure. But my head was pounding, and a searing agony lanced behind my eyes, a drill putting holes through my suddenly-fragile skull. My stomach twisted and roiled, and I felt shaky, cold, and frail.

Loki woke a short while after I did, but he was the first one able to pull himself together enough to seem semi-presentable to the rest of the world. As he headed out of his room, he hesitated in front of the bathroom where I was puking my guts out. Peering inside, he said, with much muted exasperation, "This is ridiculous, Frost."

"Oh, shaddup." I grumbled, clutching the porcelain with shaky hands, as though my very life depended on it. Loki crossed the room, over to where I crouched, and looked me over without saying a word; or doing anything to help or hinder me. Groaning quietly, I fell back against the wall that was right next to the toilet, feeling ill and gross. I pushed my hair back behind my ears for the bajillionth time, keeping it out of my eyes so that I could study him without interference. His face was pale, with a sheen of sweat glistening on his skin. Dark circles shadowed his green eyes, though whether it was from lack of sleep or the hangover that was now plaguing us both, I wasn't sure.

"You ok?" I asked. Loki gave me a pained half-smile; the very fact that I was asking about his health while currently dealing with my own issues was enough to prove to him that I was back to normal. "Fraye said that this wouldn't be a 'pleasant experience'." I tried to do finger quotes, by my arms felt weak and rubbery.

"It is not," He affirmed, pressing his fingertips to his forehead, trying to quell the headache that I could feel pounding behind both of our eyes. "But perhaps this is better than last night."

I scanned his memories half-heartedly, getting through perhaps half of them before I found myself crouched in front of the toilet bowl again, my stomach heaving violently, my insides thrashing about. I coughed and spat into the bowl before falling back again, draping a hand over my forehead, and cursing vehemently.

"I hate alcohol," I announced in a moan, leaning my head back and closing my eyes. The bright florescent lights made my eyes and head hurt all the worse, but I didn't think I had the strength to stand and turn them off. Loki saw me gauging the distance and, as he was still standing, he flicked the light switch down for me, plunging me into sweet semi-darkness.

I finished my scan of his memories as I sat there, trying to pull myself together. Yes, this definitely was better for him now than it had been yesterday. I might have been in pain, and he might have shared that, but at least my thoughts weren't… numb. Gone. Empty. There was no word to really describe it.

Still searching, I found a wall; something he didn't want me to see. Usually, I skipped past these things. He often had memories he did not want me to know about; at the very least, not immediately. We knew it was pointless to try and keep it hidden forever, but I typically tried to give him his privacy, as best I could. But this wall was different. It was weak, wavering, on the fragile precipice of shattering. This was something that he was torn on, something he wasn't sure if he wanted me to see or not.

I lifted an eyebrow as I looked to him; the movement made my head pound even worse. How was that freaking possible? How could this get any worse?

Loki looked away. The wall's trembling grew more pronounced. I heard a thought buzz through his mind; something about how it would be the only good thing of that conversation, if it stopped me from irritating him, from pestering him…

And it is not as though Thor will not tell her.

That one was crystal clear. The other eyebrow joined the first, and my head clashed out a symphonic orchestra of drumming pain. I shivered on the tile, getting woozy. But if Thor was involved in whatever memory Loki was trying to hide from me, then it was definitely something that I wanted to know about.

I didn't fight against the wall, but I did give it a gentle nudge. Neither of us really had the strength to fight each other today, but if it came to that, I'd have probably be at a sore disadvantage, given the gnarly hangover I was nursing.

Thankfully, though, that little push was enough. Loki, not looking at me, sighed deeply and allowed the wall to disintegrate. Curious, I peered in at the memory, losing myself inside it for the briefest of moments, only to return to my own sweat-slicked skin and burning insides, to my own empty bones that were barely keeping this shell of a person intact.

Now that, I thought to myself as I finished, is interesting.

Despite all the pain, a stupid little grin crossed my face. "Well how about that?" I asked with a weary laugh. "Took you two long enough."

Loki gave me his best, long-suffering look, exhausted by my enthusiasm; or what little I could muster. "This means nothing, Frost."

"It means everything and you know it, Laufeyson." I wasn't putting up with his crap. Not today. I was in too much pain to do that today.

Still, the way he winced… I pulled back a bit, dialed down on the triumph. He may have heard his brother say those things, and he may have wished them to be true with everything that he was (without realizing that this was what he wished), but right now, he could not believe Thor. Couldn't believe in Thor. And I understood that. I didn't like it, but I understood it.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall once more, letting the subject drop despite how desperate I was to examine every detail of that memory, to scan it over and over again until I had every answer I could possibly leech out of it. The two of us were quiet for a while.

After a moment, however, I spoke again, changing the subject. "Thanks."

He turned to me, his jade gaze even despite how his world was just as jagged around the edges as mine was. "For what?" He inquired.

"You know what. For yesterday. For snapping me out of it." I tilted my pounding, throbbing head to the side. "Though I hardly think it was necessary for you to slap me in the face."

"No…" Loki agreed slowly. "But it was entertaining."

I tried to smile at the half-hearted attempt at a joke. I think I succeeded, but my world was rocking back and forth too badly to be sure. My stomach twisted again, and the only reason I didn't toss my cookies once again was because there were no more metaphorical 'cookies' to toss. Again, we were quiet, and I closed my eyes, leaning my head against my shoulder, letting the world drift away as I came pretty near to sleep…

"Miss Frost?"

My eyes opened, then trained on Loki. "Yeah?"

At first he was not facing me. He was looking at the cabinet beside him-I only now noticed that he had sat down across from me- but he was not seeing it. He saw nothing, his gaze too distant, lost to faraway, nonexistent worlds… but then he pulled his sight out of his inner world and into the outer one, his eyes clicking on me.

"What happened yesterday…" he said carefully, saying it just right, being certain of every syllable before he spoke. It had the effect he was looking for; without even needing him to go on, I knew that he was not speaking only of the alcohol, not speaking only of the excessive drinking that had first caused him pain and was now making us both miserable. No, he was also speaking of the dark place that I had gone to, the black corners of my heart made real, speaking of my self-loathing and utter hatred for any and all things related to Natalie Frost.

"Yeah?" I repeated, a little slower and gentler this time.

His eyes hardened. "You are never to do that again."

This was nothing more or less than an absolute, direct order, spoken from a king to his subject. It was a command, the strictest of decrees. The kind of thing that was punishable by death if broken. Normally, that kind of thing would piss me off, and I'd tell him exactly where he could shove his 'orders'. Then, I'd figure out the fastest way to disobey before the day was over.

Today, however, I let out a little sigh- I couldn't sigh too deeply. Couldn't do anything- and tapped two fingers to my forehead in a mock-salute. "Yessir." I said, half joking. Half not.

It was an order I could agree with. It seemed that I had not been kicking my own butt hard enough to keep me from breaking down into hysterics; might as well let Loki do it for me instead, since he seemed so eager for the job.

The Trickster seemed braced for an argument; so when I agreed, he was left floundering. I smiled lightly and took advantage of the silence to ask a question that had been nagging at the back of my mind almost all morning, keeping time with the throbbing pain in my head.

"Just making sure, but…" I looked him in the eye. "You don't believe any of that stuff you told me last night, right? About how I'm stronger than anyone because I stayed with you, tried to forgive you?"

He met my red-rimmed gaze steadily. For a moment, he seemed to gauge the question, to consider it. Not considering his answer: just considering the very fact that I had asked it in the first place. After a few seconds, he replied in a level tone, "I did not tell you anything, Frost. Those words were your own."

"But you think it's total BS, right?"

"Of course."

I grinned and tilted my head back again, closing my eyes once more. "Just double checking." I allowed a teasing note to slip into my crackled voice as I added, "You seemed pretty sincere last night, though."

"When one is under the influence of alcohol-particularly one with your level of intolerance- things often appear different from what they are."

I kept smiling, even though the darkness behind my eyelids was beginning to swirl. "Whatever you need to tell yourself," I quipped. He scowled- I felt the features shift on his face, even if I couldn't see the gesture- and I changed the subject quickly, abruptly. "So. Clint slept outside of our rooms, huh?"

Loki hesitated. But he kept up with my change of topic well enough. We occasionally ran through a number of things in the morning like this, anyway; this wasn't so uncommon. "I believe he's making it a permanent situation."

I sighed deeply. "You know, it might not be his fault, but that archer is becoming a real pain in my backside."

Loki didn't respond; mostly because the words 'may not be his fault' had triggered an altogether different emotion inside of me. One that was not connected to Clint, but rather, to my father.

I found myself reliving the conversation in my mind, the one that had driven me to the brink of madness, driven me to that bar… None of that had been Cameron's fault. He was being manipulated again, I'd known that, and still I let myself react to it, still I abandoned all sense of reason and turned instead to my own anger. I swallowed, and Loki looked away.

"I should apologize."

Loki's gaze flicked back to me, and I sighed, still not opening my eyes. Even the half-darkness of the bathroom was too much light for my poor, aching brain to handle. "He may have been in control of his actions, but he wasn't in control of his anger. I should have known better than to let it get to me; I mean, really, me of all people… I should know what it's like, when your anger is uncontrollable, and you'll do or say anything…"

Even as these words came out of me, there was tar in my stomach, my chest. Black and gooey and gross, half the product of my hangover, and half the product of my own inability to say that I was sorry for the things that my father had said. But I'd said bad things too. I'd egged him on. I'd shouted and screamed.

I could apologize for that part, at least…

"What good will it do?" Loki asked, studying my features, my pale skin and tangled hair and shaking hands. "Cameron is still under Fraye's influence. No matter the things that you do to repair what has happened, he will not change. Not until her influence is gone from his life."

I frowned. "So… what?" I asked, eyes flicking open at last. "You think that I should just… wait to talk to him? Wait until after we defeat Fraye?"

He didn't respond, and I took his silence to be an affirmative. I looked to the tiled floor, running my eyes along the patterned lines and squares. "You know why I can't do that," I whispered. "We're not going to defeat Fraye. I don't want to die with my dad and I still fighting."

There was silence for a long time. This time, it was Loki who changed the subject; because there was no way to resolve it. But still, he stayed mostly on topic, at least.

"Perhaps we should send your parents to Asgard today." He advised. "I'm certain that Thor will not be adverse, if you suggested it." He looked to the side again. "He has been considering it already, after all."

I thought that over. It was true, Thor had been thinking about sending my parents to Asgard. Keeping them off-world was probably the best way to keep them safe. And it would get them out of our hair, too; at least for now.

I nodded slowly, swallowing thickly against the bitter taste in the back of my throat. "All right," I agreed. "All right, sure. I'll ask him. Good plan."

"Very well." He straightened a little, then stood up off of the ground. "Shall I inform the Avengers of your… current predicament?"

"Ugh," I grunted, not sure whether it was a positive or a negative. Loki took it as a 'yes' and cut out of the room, backing out with an ease and grace that I wouldn't have thought he could manage, with my head being the way it was. I crouched over the toilet bowl again and waited to vomit.

The day was actually pretty normal, after that. I felt too sick to dissect Thor and Loki's conversation from the night before, so I pretty much kept away from it for a majority of the time. Loki didn't fare much better, even if the headache didn't originate directly from him. Thor worried for him; Loki hadn't suffered through such terrible hangovers since they were both much younger. His tolerance for alcohol was higher than mine; he was used to the stuff. But, as Loki eventually pointed out in a bleak, arctic tone, I was not used to it. And his tolerance did not necessarily dampen my pain.

Tony, on the other hand, got a kick out of the idea that Loki had a hangover. For almost the entire day, he went out of his way to make as much noise as possible around the Norse god of Mischief; until I literally begged Steve to throw him out of the window for me. Steve, unfortunately, did not comply, though he admitted to being tempted. For some reason, Stark didn't seem to want to get it into his thick skull that I heard every single one of those loud noises, too; even if it wasn't so bad through my mental hearing.

Eventually, thankfully, I ended up passing out again. Steve took pity on me and let me sleep through my training regiment for the day, shifting the schedule around so that I'd make up for it later. Not that I would've been much use in training, anyway. So I was allowed to sleep as late as I possibly could; and when I woke up for a second time that day, it was about seven o'clock at night.

Oh, well. Not like my sleeping cycles weren't severely messed up, anyway. And at least now I felt a lot better.

Still. Loki was going to be awake for a few more hours, though not much more-I could feel a creeping weariness beginning to settle in at the back of his thoughts, making them fuzzy and indistinct- so I couldn't do what I wanted to do and start probing the heck out of that conversation he'd had with his brother the night before. So instead, I went to watch the last training session of the day; a mock-battle between Steve and Natasha.

As I entered the room, I saw Thor had come to watch as well. For a brief second, I debated stepping out of the room again, in order to spare Loki's feelings, but it was too late. The Thunderer had caught sight of me, and he waved me over with a smile.

I smiled blearily back and sat down beside him, watching Natasha perform a few kick-ass ninja movies on the Captain, who barely managed to avoid being thrown to the ground in a spectacular fashion. The Captain didn't have many weaknesses, but he had a few preferred moves; and preference meant predictability, which Natasha used to her advantage.

"Are you feeling better?" Thor asked me after a moment. I nodded.

"Yeah. Passed out on the couch for a few hours; really helped things out."

He nodded slowly. "And my brother? He is… well?"

There was a hesitation in his words that immediately clued me in to what he really wanted to ask. I played along for a moment, though. "Yep. He's a bit tired, though."

Thor nodded again, his eyes returning to the Captain and Natasha, making note of her swift kick, his immediate retaliation, their synchronized, graceful battle. I could see Thor's fingers flexing, clenching and unclenching on his seat, which he sat on the edge of, his eyes clearly showing his inner debate. I found myself smiling almost patronizingly; Loki was right about one thing. When it came to lying and deception, Thor was- to put it nicely- a complete amateur. To put it not-so-nicely, he was an utter buffoon.

But he was not the type of man who needed to resort to lying and trickery as often as Loki and I were prone to. He understood the necessity of lying in order to protect someone else, and it was for this reason that he hesitated, that he was trying to act as though nothing was wrong, as though nothing had occurred between himself and Loki the night before. But he wasn't very good at it, the poor thing.

"Did he…?" Thor cleared his throat and tried again. "Is there anything else that he… that I should know?" He pieced the sentences together with choppy unreliability, his words failing him. I grinned softly and decided to take pity on him.

"You mean: did he say anything to me about last night?" I said, scooting a little closer to him, keeping my words friendly. Gratitude made the worry melt from his eyes and off of his shoulders, a sigh allowing the weight on his chest to escape.

"He told you," Thor said; not exactly a question, but more of a fact that he wanted to run by me for confirmation.

I nodded. "Every last word." I nudged him with my elbow. "You did good, big guy."

He gave me a weak smile and looked back to where Natasha was now evading a blow from the Captain's shield. "When he left," Thor informed me, "I thought, perhaps, that he was… angry with me."

"Oh, he was pissed." I confirmed flippantly. Thor looked at me, and I half-grinned. "But, you know. He'll get over it." I placed my hand on Thor's wrist, catching his gaze and holding it there firmly, so that there could be no denial of my next words, no doubt that this was what I believed. "And he'll be a lot better for it. You did the right thing, Thor. Don't ever think you didn't."

He smiled. It was an oddly rueful gesture. "I know that it was right. I know that it was what needed to be said." He sighed deeply and shook his head, his blonde hair somehow remaining perfectly in place. "I only wish that it felt as such. That he did not hate me so much for loving him."

"Yeah, well, he's a stubborn bitch." I rolled my eyes. "With the emotional self-indulgence of a teenage girl. Trust me, I would know."

Thor barked out a guilty laugh. "Were you anyone else, Natalie Frost," He told me, "I would be insulted for my brother's pride."

I laughed, too. Because the things I said, however true, didn't usually hold any kind of hostile weight. It was just how I normally behaved. "Were I anyone else, you'd have to be."

He grinned softly, and, after a moment of quiet chuckles, we fell into a comfortable silence. I watched the two Avengers below without really seeing them. They had stopped sparring by now, and Natasha was showing Steve one of the moves that she'd pulled on him, showing him how to avoid it, to keep it from happening to him again.

"He pretends he has it under control," I spoke up after a moment; Thor glanced to me, indicating that he was listening, and did not say a word. "He pretends that he's… distanced. That nothing hurts him, that he has no weakness, that he does not… feel things. And he's pretended this for so long that he's starting to believe it himself." I sighed heavily, curling in on myself; it felt oddly natural, when Thor put his arm over my shoulders, and I propped myself up against him. But then, in so many ways, he was my brother, too.

"He's got a heart of ice, Thor," I said, and even I was surprised by how weary the words sounded. "It won't break or crack. It just freezes. Becomes harder and harder, impenetrable, untouchable. And then he pretends that makes him strong, pretends that it doesn't hurt to have ice shards driving themselves in your innards all the time. His emotions are so tightly under control, boiling under the ice, and he thinks that if he lets them go, he'll lose himself to the pain that he's tried so hard to bury."

I could feel Thor's eyes on me as I stared off into space. Loki was just one of a million problems on my mind right now, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't one of the biggest. My priorities were kinda skewed, but that didn't matter so much to me.

"The problem with ice, Thor?" I said, looking up to him. His blue gaze was positively electric as he looked back down at me, as he studied me. "It preserves everything. Locks you in one state, and traps you there. He's not destroying the pain, or getting rid of it. He's just making sure that it'll stay with him forever."

I sighed deeply, a gesture that Thor repeated a moment later. The two of us were quiet again, watching Steve trying (and failing) to do the move that Natasha had shown him. But then I shook my head out, laughing quietly.

"Ah, whatever," I said amicably. "I should know better than to think too much; nothing good ever comes outta me getting philosophical. Or poetic, for that matter." I gave him a quick grin, which he returned as an automatic reflex. "He'll get better eventually. We just have to give him time."

Thor nodded slowly. Neither of us said what we were both thinking:

Time wasn't exactly on our side anymore.

We didn't get to move my parents to Asgard that day; but Thor promised that they'd be able to go first thing tomorrow morning.

This left me with a lot of time to try and find hiding places within the Tower. Areas where they-hopefully- wouldn't come and find me.

The trick to these hiding places was to hide in plain sight. My father didn't exactly want to talk to me; so as long as it was immediately obvious, even before they entered the room, where I was, then they could back away and act as though they never saw me. And I could do the same.

Eventually, I ended up taking shelter in my usual refuge: the roof. I'd pulled up a chair and a few books and was wasting time by ignoring the rest of the world. The closest I'd gotten to giving an apology all day was when I entered the room, looked my dad in the eye, and said, "I overreacted. I'm sorry."

But I cut out of the room again before he could reply; mostly because the vein in his forehead had already started throbbing, and he was already opening his mouth to shout.

My mother had tried to apologize for my father's behavior; and to berate me for mine. I listened to neither lecture; my father was not himself, and I was pushed to my brink. We had our problems, and as much as I loved my mother, this really wasn't her fight.

I felt awful that she had to get involved, though. It was murder, being torn between two people that you loved while they were fighting. I knew that from experience.

But, after all of that, I retreated to the roof and, so far, it seemed to be working out for me.

I should've known it was too good to last. That my sanctuary would become my enclosure.

I noticed him a little while before he decided to talk to me. I'd been getting surprisingly good at noticing when other people were there, even when they didn't want me to. And the fact that I had noticed a spy when he didn't want me to said a lot. Then again, he wasn't trying his hardest, I'm sure; he was used to me being blind, ignorant little human Frost. All skills I had apparently came from the man pulling my strings.

I swallowed hard as Clint pulled up a chair and sat down next to me. He didn't say a word for a moment, and I reached down and took a swig from the water bottle that I'd placed beside me. I screwed the cap back on and set it down again before speaking. My voice was quiet, but sure. "I miss you, Clint."

He glanced over to me, sighed deeply, and seemed to deflate a little as he turned away again. "Yeah. I miss you too, Natalie."

I couldn't bring myself to smile, no matter how ironic and rueful it might have been. "You think we'll ever be friends again?" I asked, because what was the point in mincing words? I was talking to a spy. He was used to being blunt. He probably even preferred it.

"We were ever friends to begin with?" He didn't waste words, either, didn't bother to hide them behind prettier, softer ones. "For all I know, you were his from the beginning. Everything you've ever said… those could all be his words."

Would it have hurt less if it wasn't true? Or would it have hurt worse? "I know."

There was no point in denying it. Clint was right. That could all be true. Even if it wasn't, it could be.

There was a pause in the conversation. I took another sip of water. Clint slung his bow off of his shoulder and set it on the ground beside him.

"I saw Fraye yesterday."

I looked to him. Should I have been shocked? I dunno, I was mildly startled. I'd thought that the others would freak out and report every little thing that Fraye did if she ever visited them one-on-one. But then again, if she was popping by me to try and freak me out, why wouldn't she do the same to the others?

So I didn't miss a beat. My tone still flat and even, I asked, "What did she say?"

Maybe this would be seen as confirmation. If Fraye was just another puppet in Loki's game, then of course I wouldn't be surprised that she had visited Clint. I would have already known about it, would have already heard the order direct from Loki. But if this is what Clint was thinking, it's not what he said.

"The usual," Clint answered, picking up a stone from the ground and running his fingers over it. It was a bumpy, grainy-looking thing; a leftover hunk of concrete from who-knew-where. "Begged me to help her. Said that I was the only one who wanted to. That she was scared."

I turned away from him, nodding slowly; though that was a very different 'usual' from mine. A breath of a sigh slipped out of my nose, making a strand of hair that I hadn't even realized was out of place move up and into my vision. I tucked it aside, pushed it behind my ear.

"I believe her, Natalie." He tossed the rock a few inches in the air, straight up to the sky.

"I know you do, Clint." The rock fell back into his palm.

"Do you know why?"

"Of course I do."

Because of course I did. I had known for a very long time now. Because Loki couldn't keep secrets from me; even secrets that were not his to begin with.

"He made me do things I would never have done. He made me tell him things I thought I could never tell." Clint tossed the rock again. Again, it fell right back down into his palm, as though they were magnetically attracted. "He made me tell him everything. Even…" He stopped talking, and his throw went off just a little; the rock spun at a weird, wobbly angle for just a heartbeat, then landed on his hand again. It hadn't gone very far into the air this time.

I blinked, my face still expressionless. I didn't look to him, but rather sighed deeply and looked at the ground, with its light dusting of gravel. "Even everything about Natasha," I concluded for him. "Everything that she had done. Everything about how you felt about her." I wanted to roll my eyes. As if that wasn't obvious. As if the only people blind to their relationship weren't Clint and Natasha themselves.

But still. A person has a right to hide that away. They might be stupid to do it, but they shouldn't be forced to talk about it. I'd gotten mad at Loki for this, too, but, to him, it had mostly been a test of loyalty more than anything else. And, anyway, among spies… love was for children.

Clint didn't seem altogether upset that I knew. Maybe because he'd already known. Maybe because he'd already made his peace with it. He tossed the rock again; he wasn't even looking at it, was doing all of this with an unconscious ease. "If he can do that to me, Natalie… then why couldn't he do it to you?"

Because it was more complicated than that. Because our link did weird things to our brains. Because I was helping him willingly, anyway. Because none of this would have made sense to you, Clint, because he didn't need to brainwash me, because he wasn't trying to take over the world, because if he was really, truly working with Fraye, then he wouldn't even need me or the Avengers. Earth would be his already. But these were things that I could not say to Clint, things that he would not believe. And so I said nothing at all, because if I could not tell the truth, then why would I lie?

He seemed to be waiting for a response. When I gave none, he sighed again and threw the rock all the way across the roof, sent it skittering to the edge, where it stopped without falling. It balanced on the brink, not quite tipping over, not quite intending to.

There was another lengthy pause. There was no longer any stone to distract us, so we simply stared into space, lost in thought.

Finally, I swallowed and asked, "So what did you do?"

He turned to look at me, his eyes on me, and meeting mine when I turned to face him. "When you saw Fraye. What did you do?"

His eyes flicked away; not out of shame or embarrassment, but just because he was thinking. And then he stood, picking his bow off the ground, throwing it over his shoulder once again. "I shot her," he answered easily, lifting his quiver. "It didn't take, obviously. She got away." For the first time, my face showed emotion: one of my eyebrows pulled up, skeptic and surprised. Clint shrugged. "The Avengers are still my team. They might be dead wrong about you, and one day they'll realize that, but they made a choice. And we're all on the same side."

"Doesn't sound like the Barton I know," I pointed out. "Going along with something because everyone else believes it."

He snorted, putting his quiver on his shoulder next to his bow. He leaned down so that he was at eye level with me again, half-crouching. "Well, apparently, you don't know me as well as you like to think, Loki."

And with that, he turned on his heel and walked away.

I didn't try to stop him, nor to correct him. I merely sighed deeply, and tried to go back to my book. When it became apparent that this was an impossible task, I tried instead to at least pretend to read; but that soon proved just as unattainable a goal. My hands felt heavy under the weight of the book, and so they fell limply into my lap, my eyes hollow as I stared at nothing.

A few minutes later, a shadow draped across me; not a living one, nor one intent on my demise. The shadow of a friend, who walked beside me and sat down in what was formerly Clint's chair.

Loki did not speak as he lowered himself into the seat. He didn't offer condolences or expect me to talk about it, or really, anything at all. He didn't say that Barton was a fool, for what he believed, didn't tell me that everything would be all right. He didn't put a hand on my shoulder, or try to hold my hand or comfort me at all. That wasn't Loki's style.

Instead, he just sat there. And together, we watched the sun bleed red into the building-lined, jagged horizon, before slipping down and succumbing to the darkness.

A number of uninteresting days later, and Tony groaned theatrically, entering the room with me beside him. He rolled his head around his neck; there was a small white towel wrapped around his neck, resting on his shoulders. As per usual with a majority of Tony's entrances, this one got a few eyes to look his way; some furtive glances, some longer stares, and a raised eyebrow or two.

He gripped the back of a chair with both hands and leaned his weight on it. "Damn, Frost," he said, a little breathlessly. His grey T-shirt was covered in sweat from his neck down to the little blue circle on his chest. "I knew my tech was good," he panted. "But I didn't think it was that good."

Loki's lip twitched upwards as he looked back to his book. The others still looked confused for a moment; until I rolled my eyes and shot back, "Oh, get a grip, Tone. Your tech had nothing to do with it. You're just mad that a girl managed to knock you flat on your as-" I stopped myself as I realized that Steve was in the room and corrected swiftly, "Backside."

Immediate understanding passed through the room, earning us a few good-natured chuckles and even a smile from Soldier Boy. Tony and I had just finished our training session for the day; and I'm pretty sure it's clear who the winner was.

Stark slugged me in the arm as I rubbed my own white towel across my face. I felt sweaty, tired and gross, but alive. I didn't know why, but our training matches tended to do that to me. As the Asgardians would say: 'The battle sang in my blood'. I felt good whenever I was fighting.

Stark pointed an accusatory finger at Loki, who didn't even look up; merely turned his page with a disinterested flourish. "I still say you helped her in there."

"Of course not." A flat tone, accompanied by another flick of the page. Loki didn't tend to actually 'read' when there were others speaking to-or around- him; instead scanning lines at random, before going back to them later. It helped him to keep an eye on everything when people thought that his attention was otherwise occupied.

Despite everything, and despite how Clint was now glowering at Stark's still-accusing finger, a majority of the room took the exchange between the two quite well. I guess that's the thing about Tony; he might not be as friendly as I am, but you don't question it when he suddenly decides to act like he is. Mostly because, if you spend enough time around him, you get used to those kind of weird mood swings. And yes, he was definitely being friendly, and it was most definitely weird.

"That reminds me," Steve piped up, moving out of the room. He came back a moment later with a piece of paper in hand. "The new training schedules. I was going to post it on the fridge, but…" He handed it over to Stark, who was the only one who had been reaching out his hand. Natasha now looked up with mild interest, as did Thor; Banner wasn't in the room. In fact, it was rare that we got this many Avengers in one place at any given time; perhaps that was why Steve wanted to show the new schedule now.

Stark placed the paper on the coffee table in the center of the room, and the others gathered loosely around it, most out of pure boredom. Tony hunched over it for a moment, then grinned wickedly.

"Looks like I'll be able to get you back for it this Tuesday, Blitzen," he called to Loki, who had not stood, but was turning the pages back in an attempt to find his original spot. I'd already decided to look at the schedule, anyway; what was the point in him doing so as well?

"Looking forward to it," Loki returned with a droning ease. A little smile found itself on my face as Natasha moved away from the paper, and I stepped up. As my eyes ran over the times, weekdays, and names, the smile disappeared. I bit my lip, fighting a grimace.

"Um, Stevey?" I spoke up. "A word?"

He seemed to be expecting as much; his eyes were on me, and he was already standing at a bit of a distance away from the others. As the Avengers exchanged trash talk and spoke of who was going to thrash whom, Steve and I moved to the side of the room, where I lowered my voice to a whisper. I admit, it came out in more of a hiss than I intended for it to.

"Thor and Loki?" I demanded. "You really think it's wise to put those two in a sparring match together? Alone?"

Steve met my gaze-and my mild irritation- with a steady look. His feet planted themselves in the rug. He wasn't going to budge on this one. "I know why you're worried, Natalie. Let's face it, I'm worried too. But the fact of the matter stands that Loki's going to have to fight side by side with Thor one way or another. They have to be certain that they'll have each other's backs. Training is the only way I can think of to make sure of that."

My frown deepened, a worried line creasing my forehead as I stopped biting my lip and started actually chewing it. "I get that," I said after a moment. Loki, though he was most definitely listening in, had not commented on our little conversation. He was, in fact, keeping himself as emotionally removed from it as possible.

"I totally get that," I re-emphasized. "But there's a difference between depending on each other in a life-or-death situation on the field, and a sparring match in a safe, secluded environment. And there's a huge difference between fighting together, and fighting each other."

"You and Tony were just fighting each other. Obviously, you had him at a point where you could deliver a death strike. He fights with you like this because he trusts you not to do that. He trusts you with his life." Steve's words were calm, collected, and filled with a pesky little thing that the world has dubbed 'logic'. I freaking hate logic.

"The Tin Can had his shot ages ago," I said, waving an irritated hand, as though his words were a fly that I could simply shoo away. "And we've always been on the same side. There's a difference, and you know it."

"I also know that the world is under threat of a shadow-controlling sadist with an insane streak." Steve's eyes held mine firmly, a piercing gaze. "Thor has to know that Loki will be able to stop himself from seriously hurting him if the opportunity presents itself."

I made my gaze just as rock-steady and unyielding as his. "That's the thing, Steve," I said firmly. My eyes flicked to Loki-still sitting and reading- and back. "What if he can't?"

I think Loki flinched. He hid it very well; it was such a subtle thing that I wasn't even certain that I caught it. And I caught almost every single one of his gestures. But his eyes still walked along the path of text inside of his book, and when Tony burst into laughter after Natasha's latest mocking threat, he gave them his usual foolish-mortals glare, suggesting that he didn't care about the rest of his surroundings-or my conversation with Steve- in the slightest. But I knew he did. Even if he wasn't sure that he cared about what happened to Thor, I knew, beyond a doubt, that he did.

"Then the team falls apart," the Captain didn't hesitate with this answer. "And we all die."

I winced; I didn't hide it as well as Loki had. I turned away, my eyes on the ground. Absently, I wiped some of the remaining sweat off of the back of my neck, and the two of us fell silent for a second, contemplating that future.

Then Steve sighed. In a softer tone, his voice lowering, he said, "Look. I wouldn't do this if I wasn't certain that it was worth the risk. And, as of late… that risk has gone down considerably."

I looked to him, eyebrows furrowing in confusion. Steve gave me a look. "Don't tell me you haven't seen it, Natalie. I won't believe you." His eyes traveled to where Thor was laughing boisterously, boasting of a battle he'd fought in ages long past. It was a story that I'd heard many times, and Loki had heard even more frequently.

"They've been doing better, haven't they?" Steve said, watching me out of the corner of his eye as I found myself enraptured by the scene before me. The Avengers were all so close together, undeterred by the usual bubbles of personal space. Most of them were laughing, and every one of them was at least smiling. Even Clint, who had been staring daggers at everyone for the past few minutes, had joined in the jumbled, tangled knot of friends. His hand was resting lightly on Natasha's shoulder. Her hand was gently pushing Tony back, a gesture against an outrageous lie he'd obviously just told. Tony's face was a little red, and Thor was pulling him into a hug that was more like a headlock, laughing aloud.

"Loki hasn't been glaring so often when Thor is nearby," Steve was going on, "They move more easily around each other. Loki doesn't leave the room when he finds himself alone with his brother. I swear they even had a civil conversation the other day."

The picture before my eyes was so perfect, I thought I might cry. Such a flawless snapshot of the life of friends, companions, amigos, so beautiful and blissful that it seemed to actually radiate light. A real Kodak moment, where you literally wished that you had a camera to document it forever, to tuck it away behind a glass-and-mahogany frame…

And there, just along the edges of that frame, the green, black and gold figure of Loki, pretending to ignore them and pretending to be ignored. Alone, distanced away from the others.

So close that he could touch them. So far away that they might as well have been worlds apart.

I blinked as Steve kept talking. He, too, was worlds apart from what I was thinking. "I think he can do this," he concluded. "And if he can't… then you'd better tell me now." His eyes went hard again, little shards of ice. As though Steve knew anything about that kind of ice. As though his soft, gentle, incredible heart could ever know anything that dark, could ever be frozen over.

"Because we can't have anyone on our team that we don't trust."

An evil sentence tried to force its way out of my throat as I turned away from that picturesque scene. 'Clint's still here, isn't he?'

Fortunately, I managed to swallow that. Not so fortunately, something else took its place.

"Then why am I still here?"

Even as I allowed the words to be said, I regretted them. Steve looked genuinely shocked as he looked to me, his eyes getting a little wider, his jaw going slack. His immediate reaction was to lean forwards, to carefully rest his hand on my arm, to console me; because neither of us had realized just how much ouch was packed into that sentence before it was said out loud.

But suddenly, no amount of regret could stop me from going on. "Don't tell me you haven't seen it," I said, and my words were surprisingly cold. I also seemed to have switched accents with Loki; I reigned that part in before I went on, "Face it, Steve. We all work together, we trust each other as much as we can… but things haven't been the same between the Avengers and I since Loki came to Earth. And I'm as much to blame for that as everyone else; because, truth be told, I don't trust any of you as much as I should, either." I sighed quietly, shaking my head out, as though trying to dislodge the painful thought that was sticking in my brain like a thorn. "I'm always looking behind my back. Waiting for one of you to turn around and decide that you believe Fraye's story more than you believe mine."

Before Steve could say 'that won't happen', I sighed again and turned to face him completely, gently navigating him by his shoulders so that he did the same. I left my hands on his arms as I gave him an intense look. "You know that only one person has really talked to me about any of their problems since this whole mess started?" And that one person was a spy who was only saying that to get information out of me. I didn't mention that, though. "Even with all of this fear and anger going around… do you know that they haven't said a word? Do you realize that everyone's just… abandoned the idea that I'm their shrink? Whatever else I am- monster, puppet, hero, villain, friend or foe- I'm still your therapist. And S.H.I.E.L.D., no matter how severe this lockdown is, still expects reports from me. Reports that are getting harder and harder to bullshi- I mean… fake my way through." I released his arms and turned back to the other Avengers, tugging on my fingerless gloves, pulling them higher up my wrist, ensuring that the Key remained hidden.

"As your therapist who's being boycotted, that's a nuisance that I can live with," I said slowly. "As your friend who's being avoided… that's a heartbreak that I can't."

The two of us fell silent for a moment. Thor, Natasha, Clint and Tony seemed to have found a slightly more serious topic to discuss, for their tones were no longer quite so rambunctious. Loki contemplated saying something to me, but decided against it and tried to immerse himself in his book instead. In moments, he was able to forget about the world around him, becoming blind to its faults and failings.

Right now, I really wished that I could escape like that.

"When people are at their strongest, they are weak. When people are at their weakest, they are strong."

I looked back to Steve again, turning my head without really turning the rest of my body. It was almost a quote, the type of words spoken by an old wartime soldier that you would meet in a bar. You would have a few drinks with him, and he would recollect the old days with you, and you would not listen until you had enough drinks to see those explosions before your own eyes. You wouldn't hear a word he said, until you were intoxicated enough feel the flames on your back, hear the shouting of those who were charging towards their own deaths, feel the bravery of your fellow man in between the beats behind your ribcage.

"We're all scared, Natalie," he went on. "I mean, I can't be certain about everyone else, but I've been having nightmares that would terrify the hell out of anybody, and I don't care who they are. Fraye… there's a darkness inside of her that no one is used to seeing; on this world, or any others." He paused for just a second. "Right now, we're all weak."

And then his words clicked, the pieces slotting into place on a jigsaw, the clockwork cogs finding their partners and beginning their dance, turning around and around, the seconds ticking away in time to their movements. "And when people are at their weakest, they are strong," I filled in, speaking in what was almost a whisper, almost a rasp. "Because the greatest of weakness is the hardest to show. And so they hide it. They hide it because to show it would be cowardly, and they are beyond brave."

I turned my gaze to him; my head turning on my neck though the rest of my body did not follow, turning to the side so that I could study his profile, until he turned to look back. "But you see, Steve," I said without emotion, and now no longer censoring my words. "That's bullshit." I looked back to the Avengers again. "When people act 'strong' by hiding what they really feel, that isn't brave. A brave man admits what he feels. Because if you hide it, that's when you make it a weakness. Because if it was so important that you had to keep it secret, so important that you had to hide it away, then why shouldn't it be important enough to use against you?" I laughed then, bitterly, and was surprised by it. "And if that's the Avengers' excuse- if they think that they're being 'strong'- then they're full of it."

Steve didn't say anything for a moment. He didn't seem offended by the words, as I thought he might be. He actually seemed to be seriously considering them. And, after a moment, he had a response.

"You wanna know what else the Avengers are?" He asked me. I looked to him out of the corner of my eye and lifted an eyebrow. "Human," he finished. "Just like me, just like you."

You're not human, Steve, I thought. And neither is Thor.

But I didn't bother to voice it. It seemed irrelevant to his point.

"Think about it," he said, and his words were surprisingly light, easy. There was no anger, despite how I'd just called his teammates idiots and, (horror of horrors) cussed in front of him. There was even a little smile on his face. "Everything you just said; you know that. You know it for a fact, you completely believe it." I think he was tempted to wink as he asked, "So have you told everyone here every one of your weaknesses?"

I blinked. Blinked again. And then my cheeks went pink. "That's not-" fair, half of my weaknesses aren't my own, and the other half are… complicated.

But Steve cut me off before I could finish that sentence. "We're all human, Natalie, or close enough. And that means that we're not perfect. So we might be prone to a little emotional idiocy once in a while."

Did he just out-shrink me?

This time, he actually did wink. "I'm sure you can forgive that. That's what friends are for, right? To be there for you when you do stupid things?"

He just freaking out-shrinked me!

First Natasha, now Steve. My therapist pride had been taking a major beating the past few weeks.

"And no matter how stupid, or stubborn-" he shot a meaningful glance to Clint as he said that, "We might get… we're still your friends, Natalie." His hand found my shoulder and squeezed reassuringly. "And we'll be there for you; just like we know you're there for us."

Y'know, this entire freaking conversation started because I didn't want Loki and Thor training alone together. Nice diversion, 'Stevey'.

Another quick shoulder-squeeze, and then he started towards the other Avengers. Walking backwards for a moment, he said, "Us stupid humans gotta stick together, right?"

And then he turned around and joined the other Avengers, who caught him up on their conversation quickly. I blinked, staring blankly after him. My second family, I love them so.

After a moment, I found myself shuffling numbly over to the one person that I could safely say that I had shown all of my weaknesses to. I almost fell down on the couch next to him, pulling him out of his book, and he looked at me as, groaning quietly, I turned my head to him and rested my forehead against his arm, burying my face there.

You know what? I told him, switching to my mental voice as he looked at me, giving me his typical Loki-look. The one with the bemused eyebrow rising and the strange half-smirk on his face. You're right, I said. You're absolutely right. Humans are freaking nuts.

And you know, as the Avengers talked and smiled together as the greatest of friends, with Loki and I sitting by ourselves to the side, sitting right by the frame of their picture-perfect moment… Loki actually laughed.

Just because we wanted Thor and Loki to train alone together, didn't mean that anyone actually trusted them to do so.

On the day in question, almost every one of the Avengers was there to watch. Or, in Steve's case, to 'supervise'. The brothers were used to having people watching them train, used to putting on a show; that was the way it was in Asgard, after all. So they didn't have much of a problem with it.

I, on the other hand, was wound tighter than a snare drum. Loki and Thor and deadly weapons all in the same room was not a good mix, allies or no. I sat on the edge of my seat, steadily gnawing on my fingernails, working my way from pinky to thumb of first the right hand, then the left. I'd already gotten to the middle finger of the right hand by the time they actually started training.

My foot tapped out a very frantic beat as the two clashed on the battlefield. Though Loki and I did not merge our minds together in combat unless we were actually fighting together (whether by ourselves or with another Avenger involved), I did keep watch over his every single thought as he moved. I could give everyone maybe a nanosecond of extra time to react if this went south. Loki allowed me to do this; he was a little worried it would go south, too.

That was the problem with fighting. As fun as it was, you could get into it if you let yourself go too much. And if you got really into it… you could hurt someone. Particularly if that someone was the brother that you'd always secretly hated… or at the very least, envied.

Hellooo, index fingernail. Meet teeth.

To keep myself a little distracted, I used what available brain space that was not intently focused on the battle to survey my surroundings instead. More accurately, to pinpoint the location of the Avengers. There were a few observation platforms, some higher than others. Of course, the Hawk was perched at the highest one, watching in a crouch, bow in hand, quiver ready. Steve was beside him, tolerating this behavior for reasons unknown to me. Tony wasn't there, and neither was Bruce, but Natasha was sitting on my platform, the lowest one down, looking mildly bored. But I knew that she was still coiled tighter than I was, ready to spring should things go wrong.

As it turned out, we didn't need to worry. The brothers soon got into the flow as they always did, and the sparring match passed without a hitch. I let out a massive sigh of relief and looked to the one fingernail that I had not chewed ragged or bloody. I sighed quietly; I used to have manicure-perfect nails. Then I met the Avengers.

Story of my life.

The two started perfecting moves; routine drills. Easy stuff. The danger was gone, he'd passed the test, and Thor was safe for one more day.

None of us moved. Least of all me.

We watched the mind-numbing routine of Loki and Thor performing the same move over and over and over again, their bodies adapting to it, so that it became reflex, as natural as breathing. But still no one left, or even shifted in their seats. I was probably sweating worse than either Loki or Thor; even though they were the ones who were actually moving. Goodbye thumbnail that I had worked so hard to preserve.

It took another hour and one more quick sparring match, but finally, finally, it ended. A collective, silent sigh was released from those watching in the stands, though Clint almost looked disappointed. As we all came down from our respective platforms- with Clint rappelling down from the ceiling like a badass- Thor and Loki put their weapons away. Mjolnir went back in Thor's belt, and Loki's spear- which was still carrying the hated nickname 'Glow Stick of Destiny'- was waved away with the graceful carelessness that seemed typical of magic.

Natasha was out of the room in a matter of moments, leaving Steve, Clint and I with the two brothers. As usual, Thor was grinning like an idiot as he started to cross the room and make his way towards us. Unlike usual, Loki fell in step with him after only a second. It seemed an unconscious thing, which only made me feel all the more smug.

Clint and Steve gathered a little closer to the door, still watching as they waited for the adopted siblings to exit the room, while I slouched by the wall, trying to calm my still-jittery nerves. Now that the danger had passed, I was starting to manage it.

There seemed to be something in Loki's face that, perhaps, the rest of us didn't see, but Thor certainly did, for he laughed and clapped a large hand on Loki's back. "Just like old times, eh brother?"

Loki winced and rolled his shoulder, rubbing the area where Thor had struck. He gave Thor an itty bitty glare in response to the almost-injury, but turned away after a moment and considered what he had said.

Old times…

"No…" he said slowly, still thinking. Thor looked to him, hurt stabbing through those crystal-clear, rain-blue eyes of his. But before he could voice this hurt, or truly feel the full brunt of his brother's rejection, Loki's foot shot out in front of Thor, tripping him up.

Steve gasped behind me. I heard Clint whipping an arrow out of his quiver, clearly having anticipated this. Because of course Loki would strike after the battle, of course he would trick everyone. That was what he did.

Thor tumbled to the ground and Loki danced lithely to the side, still towering above his brother, still in the perfect position to strike. Thor turned onto his back as quickly as he could, so that he could attempt to fend Loki off. Not that he could, even with the advantage of being able to see Loki, of having his hands raised to defend himself. Loki had moved quickly and unexpectedly, reducing him into this helpless state in seconds. And he could finish this off even faster, with the simple wave of the hand, the flash of a golden spear, and it would all be over…

The moment where he had his brother at the mercy of his deathblow. Of course it would be after Thor had learned to trust him again…

Still slouching against the wall, I hid a little smile. No matter how tightly I'd been wound just moments ago, no matter the fear that had pulsed through me, I was now perfectly relaxed. Unlike the three Avengers who were in the room with me.

As Thor looked to his brother, as actual fear flashed across his features… Loki smirked down at him.

And then he bent over at the waist, one arm behind his back, extending a hand. "Now," he said in a clear voice. "It is 'just like old times'."

My grin stopped trying to hide and got a lot bigger. Thor's grin, however, surpassed even mine. White teeth gleamed in the artificial lighting, and he laughed aloud. "Aye!" He agreed with his usual Thor-ish flare, accepting the hand offered to him. Loki helped his adopted brother to his feet, and Thor laughed again. The younger sibling smiled, too, though it was that arrogant, sociopathic grin that occasionally crept into my nightmares.

"You can put the arrow away now, Clint," I said, not looking at the archer, as I walked forwards to join the two. I was giving Loki my best, biggest, and brightest haha-I-was-right-and-you-were-not grin.

Loki tried not to roll his eyes. His voice whispered in my head: Oh, be silent.

Never.

"Great job out there, you guys," I said, pride swelling my chest. I looked to Loki. "I knew you could do it," I added, elbowing him as I fell into step between them. It was odd; I was in between them both, but it wasn't like I was blocking them from each other. If anything, when I was around, they seemed… closer. Like I was the crazy glue that kept them together. Natalie Frost: weird glue girl.

Well, it wasn't my weirdest title.

"Is that why you have no fingernails left?" Loki inquired with his usual airiness, still looking down at me. It didn't help that he was a heckuva lot taller than me. "Yes, it seems perfectly logical that they fell off out of your sheer confidence."

"Bite me."

Thor was still grinning, and our little exchange only seemed to-impossibly- lighten his mood even further. He chuckled quietly. He understood, perhaps better than anyone, my weird way of showing affection, and Loki's weird way of reacting to it, if not actually showing it in return.

I gave Steve and Clint a smug look as the three of us exited the room together, and then Thor broke away to do whatever it was he had intended to do. After the Thunderer, Steve, and Clint all went to their respective tasks, Loki allowed himself to relax a little, walking to an empty living room and sitting down to examine his leg, where Thor had once smacked him harder than he'd let on. He prodded it carefully and winced; that was most certainly going to bruise.

I sat down next to him. It was kind of funny. In the old days, he only allowed himself to relax, to examine wounds, to show slight injury when he was alone. Now, even with me in the room, he still counted it as being 'alone'. He didn't even say anything when I went behind him, moved his hair aside and pulled his collar down a bit to examine a would-be bruise on the back of his neck.

"Nothing broken," I pronounced cheerily. You know that feeling you get, when everything seems to be going right, and you start to kinda float? That's how I felt right then. I plopped down on the couch next to him as he gave me a long-suffering-but-still-somewhat-bemused stare.

"But training's not over yet," I reminded him, giving him a pointed stare in return. The two of us had planned to spend an hour or so on our own 'training' today; working on both our mental link and his still-prevalent fear of the dark. The long-suffering side of his own stare intensified.

"Do you truly think that is wise?" He inquired, allowing a little bit more of his exhaustion than was strictly necessary to creep into his voice. "Considering… events of late?"

I frowned. Of course, I knew what he was referring to.

We hadn't really noticed it, at first. It was such an innocent, unintentional thing; and because we always knew what the other meant when they spoke, no matter what they actually said out loud, we could have been doing this for years without realizing it. Kind of like how we didn't know that Loki spoke Spanish; someone else had to point it out to us before we could be made consciously aware of it.

For a while, the Avengers had been giving us odd looks at random times; after I'd speak, or after Loki would speak. It usually happened during training, when we were describing moves or battle tactics. And, eventually, Tony corrected us.

At the time, I'd been talking about how Loki would circle around behind a target while Stark 'distracted' it from the front. JARVIS had been ever-so-helpful in giving us a holographic enemy to fight. I'd been deep into my own planning when Stark had said, "Wait a minute. Do you mean that Loki would circle around and take it out from behind?"

My eyebrows had furrowed. "That's what I said."

"No. It's not. You said you would do it."

I'd looked to him in confusion, and, using finger quotes, he said in a high-pitched, terrible impression of my voice, "'I'll circle around the back and take the thing out from behind'. Those were your exact words."

This switching of pronouns wasn't exactly new to us; Loki and I had frequently interchanged our names without really noticing it, or referred to an action that one had done as though we were the ones who had done it. Particularly where memories were concerned; if I was reliving one of Loki's past moments, I would sometimes talk as though it was my memory. Because, in a way, it was. We shared pasts, we shared histories, we shared lives.

But, despite how this wasn't completely new, we hadn't realized how common it was until we started spending time together, in the same place, while the Avengers were present. Because they noticed. They noticed it every time. And every time, they would point it out to us. Even Thor, with whom I talked about Loki all the time, started to mention it; and he added that we'd both done it quite frequently before Loki came to Earth, too. He just hadn't pointed it out; he'd understood what we meant, so he hadn't seen the point in mentioning it to us. (This, to me, was further proof that Thor really was the most accepting of our link; and the person who understood it the best. This, and the fact that he never harbored me any ill will for the things that I said under Loki's influence; nor for any of the quirks that I shared with Loki. Though I think it was easier for him to do so; seeing as, despite Loki's past, he harbored his brother no ill will to begin with.)

But the reason that Loki was bringing up this little pronoun-switching quirk of ours right now was immediately obvious to me: because it tended to get a whole lot worse as our link grew stronger. And, since we had been working on the link, since we had been merging our minds together more frequently, it had been getting stronger. Exponentially so.

And the closer our minds got together, the more our thoughts intertwined… the harder it was for us to separate every little thing we did. These strange, awkward side effects of our link were only ever getting worse. And while Thor never seemed to mind, and though I couldn't really care less… it annoyed Loki. And it freaked the Avengers out big time.

"We can't let that stop us," I told the Trickster. "I don't like it, either, but…" I trailed off as he looked away, his jade eyes turning to the window and staring out of it, out to the dismal skies outside. It was another grey day. Weather I loved. Weather he hated.

He sighed very quietly, resting his elbow on the armrest and his chin on the back of his hand. I bit my lip, fighting against the sudden surge of tiredness that had taken him over. It wasn't just physical exhaustion; in fact, that was only a very, very small part of it. It was a mental, emotional weariness, one that made it immediately plain that any attempt to work on either his fears or our link would be pointless. He'd already been dealing with his emotions quite enough today.

And suddenly, I could see that. Loki wasn't used to this; he wasn't used to working with his brother, wasn't used to suppressing his jealousy, he wasn't used to having his pride damaged almost constantly, and he certainly wasn't used to allowing me to pick around inside of his brain. He'd been a little more open in the past days, and, in all honesty, that amount of effort was taking more out of him than I'd realized. Even if, slowly, it was making him happier (something that he still wasn't seeing).

"Okay," I held up my hands in surrender. "Ok, no more training today." I dropped my hands back down. "But I don't think we should just sit here twiddling our thumbs." I thought for a moment, then smiled a little, knowing exactly how my next suggestion would go over. "How 'bout the library?"

As usual, the word perked Loki up immediately; even if there was no actual reaction on his face. Particularly because, when I said it, I wasn't talking about the dinky little mortal thing that Tony kept on the tenth floor.

It had taken a while for me to decide to ask Thor about Loki and I returning to Asgard in order to research Fraye's legends; that was, after all, how Loki learned about her in the first place. We wanted to make certain that there was nothing he missed.

Thor had been all for it; but he had refused to let me ask Odin about bringing Loki back into Asgard whilst he still remained 'free'.

"My father appointed you as his Keeper," Thor had reminded me. "Any decision of where my brother is and is not allowed to be- on Earth or Asgard- has been left entirely in your hands."

That was a statement that didn't go down well with either of us, but it was nonetheless true. So we'd been heading to the library almost every day (I still felt guilty about not asking Odin, but Frigga saw us there once and smiled, so I was pretty sure it was no big deal).

But he was always a little better in the library; for a number of reasons. First, the change in scenery; he'd been stuck in the Tower-and before that, his cell- for far too long. Second, it was a slight return to normalcy; Asgardian texts were far different from human ones. And third… the man like, lived off of books. It was incredible.

Loki looked to me for a moment, acting as though he actually needed to consider his response. After a moment, however, he nodded once. I gave him a bright smile.

"Cool," I said, standing. I glanced down at myself to double check-yep, PJs- and said, "So… we'll leave in an hour?"

It wouldn't really take me that long to get dressed, but Loki had just been training for the past few hours, and we both figured he could use a break. He nodded again, and I gave a quick, two-fingered mock-salute before skipping out of the room.

It didn't take me long to get ready, throwing on a t-shirt, sweater, and jeans. I also pulled on a pair of fingerless gloves, despite how the sweater would cover the Key for me. I didn't want to have to take off the sweater and then leave it uncovered. Especially not in Asgard; after all, unlike the Avengers, most Asgardians would know exactly what it was and what it meant.

Maybe I should have left it uncovered. Maybe it might reduce the number of stink eyes that we got whenever Loki and I went to Asgard. But I could handle people not liking me. And Loki couldn't handle one more blow to his already tattered pride.

I went to the living room and watched a mindless TV show for the next hour: two half-hour long sitcoms that reduced my brain to ooze for a little while. It gave my aching head a break from all the stress and worry that it had been through that morning. Loki came for me at the appointed time, not as patiently as usual, with Thor by his side.

I smiled a little to myself. Loki would only rarely talk to Thor, and it was even rarer that he voluntarily went into the same room as his brother. Usually, if he needed something from Thor, I was the one sent to retrieve him. I'd never complained about it, I liked the guy, but it was good to see Loki's hatred diminishing in these little ways. He was never going to change everything about himself all at once. It was the little things that were slowly eating away at the ice around his heart, the tiny little fractures that would one day, hopefully, bring the whole glacier crumbling down in a cascade of sparkling shards.

Thor held out the Tesseract device without a word. As usual, he'd be returning to the Tower after he dropped us off, and would come back for us in a few hours or so. You'd think that Loki would be annoyed at having to depend on Thor's word that he would be returned to the battle (particularly seeing as Thor was an Avenger, and many of his teammates would probably abandon him somewhere else on their first opportunity, now that they had practically everything they wanted from him). But Loki knew- probably better than anyone- exactly what Thor's word meant to him, and how far he'd go to keep it.

In fact, if anyone got freaked by the idea of relying on Thor to come back for us, it was me. Not that I didn't trust Thunder Boy. I just didn't like the idea of waiting and waiting forever if something happened to him. Waiting, I knew from experience, was the worst kind of hell.

Loki and I took our end of the Tesseract device, our hands brushing against each other as we held on. Yeesh, his hand was so cold all of the time…

Thor twisted his side of the device, and the world disappeared into a flash of blue.

I swear, Loki was never more alive than when he was inside of that library.

The transformation wasn't always immediate, but it would always happen within the hour. The weight of what he was would be lifted off of his shoulders, so that it was no longer a struggle for him to stand tall. His movements, impossibly, became easier, more fluid. It was as though the smell of parchment and ink in the air was like some kind of wonder drug; for just a few short, sweet hours, Loki could forget. He could forget that he was a monster. He could forget his brother, his father. He could forget the blood on his hands (which he did care about, no matter what that stubborn little Smurf said).

He easily fell into his research, losing himself into the separate books and pages. He seemed to naturally know where everything was, where to find exactly what he was looking for, and when he didn't know, well, that made it all the more fun. Every book and every word was an intellectual challenge, and on that, Loki thrived.

But perhaps the most curious transition was the complete drop of hostilities. His cold bitterness, his harsh demeanor… it all disappeared into nothingness, banished from his mind without any conscious effort. He was too distracted by his research, thinking too hard and too fiercely to keep up his outward appearances. He barely paid attention to the world around him. And so I became just another helping hand in his endless searching, another set of eyes, another pair of hands to carry the endless stacks of thick tomes over to the table where we worked. There was no longer the disgust that a mortal was sitting beside him, no longer the constant irritation at who-and what- I was, and what I had done. He started calling me 'Natalie', instead of 'Miss Frost'. He stopped calling me 'mortal'; or, when he did, there was no longer any disrespect behind the word. It was just another title in a long list of titles and it didn't matter anymore, because he was too focused for anything outside of what was happening inside of his mind to matter.

He even said 'please' once, to my amazement, and it wasn't in that irritating, arrogant way that suggested that you didn't have a choice one way or another. It was… incredible.

And it didn't take long for him to fall back into that pattern today. I quickly let myself get lost into the research, too; I always loved Greek mythology as a kid, and reading legends and fables from other planets (namely Jotunheim) was a lot like the same thing. Trying to isolate Fraye inside of each and every one of these legends, and sort out the truth from the fiction, however, was another thing entirely.

It was always hard to tell what was fact and what was fictionalized. These legends were so old, passed down so many times that things could easily have been lost. And sometimes, you couldn't even be certain that they were talking about Fraye. There were a large number of shadow creatures inside of these legends, and not all of them were the so-named 'Shadow Child'. Then there was the translation issue; there were so many poor translations from the Jotun text to the Asgardian one that it was often difficult to read. I found it a lot easier to stick with the Jotun ones; but, unfortunately, there weren't as many direct Jotun texts. Why would there be? This was Asgard, not Jotunheim.

And then there was the issue of many of the stories being changed to indicate a moral and whatnot; most of the time, that was the Asgardians' fault. Twisting old Jotun legends so that they indicated clearly right from wrong, then told to children as a way of teaching them. The Jotuns didn't do that; change a tale just so that a child could learn certain morals. Children could learn in other ways; because these were more than legends, as Loki and I knew far too well. These were history. These were fact. And if Fraye let someone go because they had a 'pure heart' or whatnot, then why would you fear her? These were not tales to teach children to be good; they were histories told so that they would not be repeated, so that when you saw the Shadow Child, you knew to run, to run as fast as you could and never, never look back.

That was why the direct Jotun text was so much more reliable. I scanned a page, my eyes flicking along the words as easily as I would have read English or Spanish. I'd learnt the stuff from Loki, but if we had separated after I'd learnt what he knew, then learned on our own… well, I'm fairly certain that I would have been better at reading it than he was by now. I actually worked at becoming better, while he just knew it from when he was educated as a younger child.

"Loki?" I spoke up, then bit my lip. He looked up from his book, eyebrow rising, his mind struggling to re-orient itself to the real world.

His thoughts synced up with mine, and as he realized my question, he frowned. "Unlikely," he replied before I asked, turning his gaze back to the page. He was currently immersed in a third translation of the same tale; a story about a monster with black fur and teeth. We believed it was about the Shadow Hounds, but couldn't be certain, as Fraye herself never seemed to make an appearance in any of the versions that we'd read.

"But it is possible," I insisted. Fear was making my spine quake. Pain was stabbing through my heart. If I was right- and I was fairly certain I was- then it was no wonder that Fraye became what she was. How could she not?

I looked down to the story and read aloud- translating as I went, and partially paraphrasing- to prove my point. "'Are you alone?' the Traveler asked. 'I'm always alone', replied the Child. 'Defenseless, in this winter?' the Traveler noted her dead eyes and blah blah blah…" There was a long, lengthy description of how empty her eyes were; something that neither of us really needed to be reminded of, and I found the line that I was looking for. "'You should return home'… blah blah blah…" Another lengthy description of her sick smile, and then, "The Child replied, 'I have none'."

Loki looked away. "It… It is a fairy tale. A legend." He saw my doubt and tried to put more belief into his own words, "And even if those were her exact words, the entire tale involves her deception of the Traveler. Every one of those words could be a lie."

I was already shaking my head, pulling another book on top of the first and turning through pages quickly, until I found what I was looking for. "Here." I said at last, pointing to a line. This one was translated into Asgardian text, but the legend had been the same two times over. And her words had been the same in both versions. "'You will see your home perish, as I have seen mine.'"

"That does not…" Loki's voice faltered as I snatched another book- this one from the pile on his side of the ornate table- and flipped through the pages again, a little more fiercely. It wasn't that I was angry. It's that I was trying to hide how badly I was shaking.

That poor girl…

"'I'm always alone'," I quoted again, from a different translation, then flipped through pages again. "'They died, and I felt them burn.'" Another quote, another flip of the pages. "'A child, alone, lost in the dark'."

"She did say that she had a telepathic connection like ours with someone who died," Loki reminded me, a little more forceful this time. "Of course she is 'alone'. Either of us would be."

Another quote from me. Another thing that she had said. But this time, it wasn't quoted from any book or text. It was from memory.

Loki's memory.

"It's impossible to rule over a dead planet. Believe me. I've tried."

He fell silent.

For a long moment, the air rang with my words- Fraye's words- and the implication they held. Because why would she try to rule over a planet that was dead, a planet that she had destroyed? Why would she even remain with any world that she had killed?

Unless she hadn't killed it. Unless it was something else that had destroyed it.

Unless that world was her own.

Loki swallowed. His mouth had gone oddly dry. He had once tried to kill his home world, his true home world, and it had meant nothing to him… but imagining Asgard, wiped from the skies… the shining cities, gone. The golden palace, gone. The places where he had played and hid and laughed as a child, gone. Everyone he had ever known-Thor, Odin, Frigga, Sif, the Warriors Three, everyone- gone. Friends and family from an older age, from a simpler time… The halls, this library, this beautiful place, everything burnt to ash and dust.

What kind of hollow place would the universe be, with that large of a hole ripped out of it? What would he be, with that large of a hole ripped out of him?

I swallowed, too. I had known for a while now what Fraye's intention for my world was, had known what she had been planning to do… but suddenly, it hit home for me. Because before, I had always assumed that I would die with it (and I probably still would). But what would it be like, to live after your planet had perished?

No more home. No more Stark Tower, no more Anna Rose and Cameron Frost, no more Tony or Steve or Banner or Natasha or Clint. No more Benny or Adrian or Jade. No more April; even her grave would be wiped away. No more skyscrapers, no more of the view from the roof of the Tower. No more human music or artwork, no more human culture, no more human languages, no more… anything.

What would a life like that be?

How many lives were lived on Fraye's world? How many bodies were buried in its soil? How many people lived and loved and died there? How many songs were wiped from existence, how many languages, how much music and laughter was erased from the universe forever?

"And which one was she connected to…?" Loki wondered aloud, very quietly. "Of all those on her world, who would she share such a powerful telepathic bond with…?"

"Her lover, perhaps?" I theorized. "She is a telepath. If the rest of her race was like her, then perhaps it was a normal thing, a custom, even…" But then I trailed off as a new thought, and entirely separate intellectual leap, occurred to me. Loki's eyes widened just slightly, and I suddenly felt sick.

"You don't think…?" I breathed. Tears immediately started prickling at my eyes. Because it was too horrible. It was a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone. A fate that even the monster inside of me recoiled from, a hideous, grim, terrible fate that no one, not even Fraye, deserved…

"Of course not," Loki's response was immediate, even if he did not believe it himself. "Trauma like that… nothing could survive." But he wasn't meeting my eyes, and we both knew that he was no where near certain of these words. Because the monster inside of me was tame compared to the one inside of Loki; and even it cringed away from this terrible, blood-soaked thought.

After a moment, knowing that neither of us believed him, Loki stood and started towards an entirely different section of the library. I stayed sitting numbly in my chair as he returned with a tome that we were both very familiar with, a text that was taller than it was thick, with pages that were well-worn by many hands, but never more worn than they were by Loki's.

He had most every one of these pages memorized by now. It was such a selective text; dedicated solely and entirely to a single magical subject. A subject he excelled in: telepathy.

He found the page he wanted with the expert skill of one who has done so many times before, and his eyes scanned the words quickly. The sick feeling in my stomach intensified with every single word that he read and, after a moment, he snapped the book shut. His eyes were glassy; not really for Fraye's sake, but neither of us could help but imagine what it would be like, if we were the ones to undergo such an experience.

And suddenly he was by my side, and I had clutched his hand so tightly that I'm certain that every single one of his fingers would bruise, because we had to be certain, in that moment, that we were both there, that we were both alive, even though we had the other's thoughts in our minds, we had to touch them, we had to be certain that nothing was wrong, that neither of us would disappear. I was shaking from head to toe as Loki lowered himself into the seat next to me, watching me carefully.

"It can't be true," I protested weakly. "It can't be."

But of course it could, because Loki had just made certain, because he had confirmed it with those few moments of reading. He would have looked away, but neither of us could look away from each other at that point. At every second we had to make sure- are you still there? Are you still alive? Am I still alive?- and so we stayed as we were, with his hand limp in my crushing grasp, and his eyes studying my face.

"With telepathy as powerful as hers, it is possible, at least." Loki said at last, very quietly.

"But two immortals can't link together!" I protested. "It's not physically possible! Their magical capabilities battle against each other, that's why you couldn't… I mean, that's why you and I…" I broke off as Loki sighed quietly.

"If she was born into that kind of mental collective… then the others' abilities would have shaped themselves around her. Or, her entire race had precisely the same magical capability. In either case… it is possible."

"But her entire planet?" I breathed, looking at him with wide eyes. "Linked with an entire planet? And then to have them all… them all…" I choked, and finally the tears spilled, tiny little teardrops that tickled down my cheeks.

"Do you know what that emptiness is? Do you know what it is to burn and burn and burn, the heart and center of a white inferno, breathing in the charred scent of your home and everything you love… and never die?"

These were the things that Fraye had said to me, the things that I had mostly ignored, had mostly forgotten… but now… The pieces were clicking together, the facts falling in line, and my stomach was twisting violently. Because I couldn't even begin to think about losing Loki, and he was just one person, he was just one voice inside of my head, just one mind…

And if she was linked with an entire world, then she would have had billions…

"I think I'm gonna throw up," I moaned quietly, curling in on myself, my eyes finally breaking away from Loki's face but my hand still holding his in a death grip.

"It is possible that we are wrong," he said in a gentle tone, and I let him say it, but we both knew that it wasn't true. Because this made sense.

"Because I always burn, Natalie. And so I will burn everything."

My eyes squeezed shut, closed tightly against the world, as though that could block this awful truth, could keep it away from me, could stop it from tormenting me, from tormenting Fraye… it was no wonder that she was the way she was. I don't think anyone could become something different from that.

Because if you learned to love the pain… if you fell in love with death… then it couldn't hurt you anymore.

Loki's chair was closer to me than I'd thought; but that was perfect, because suddenly, I was reaching forwards, and my arms were wrapped around him. We sat at an awkward sideways angle, but I didn't care that my arms were bent in a weird way, I just wanted to make sure he was there, he was alive, I wanted to press my head against his chest and hear the heartbeat that shadowed mine, because it was my second heartbeat, and I couldn't live without it, couldn't survive without my other half, without my second heart…

"Don't you ever die on me," I growled; the words were surprisingly like an order. "D'you hear me?" I demanded, holding him tighter. Surprisingly, he hadn't stiffened, and was not overly freaked out by the strange mortal barnacle that had suddenly attached itself to him. In fact, he was just… still. Not a cold kind of stillness, not like stone, but a numb, empty stillness. His eyes were hollow, and he was staring at something far away, something far above my head, which rested against his chest. He was staring at nothing, feeling nothing. What could he feel?

"Don't you ever die on me," I repeated dangerously. If he was human, I might have broken his spine by now. Or, you know, at least given him a bruise. "If we die, we die together, understood?" I tried unsuccessfully to shake my head. "I'm not living without you. I'm not becoming that. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not."

And, as stupid and cheesy as it sounds, I thought, though I did not say it out loud, and tried very hard to keep him from hearing it. I can't live without you.

"I'm not…" I repeated this denial, this phrase, over and over again, hearing my second heartbeat in my ears, keeping in perfect time with the one that shadowed mine. Loki still stared blankly at nothing. I think, if someone else had been there, if we were not completely alone at the time, he might have reacted. He might have pushed me off of him. But, right now, it didn't matter. No one could see us. We could act like we should; act like our link always wanted us to do.

And, after a very long, very slow moment, still with the unconscious movement of one who isn't really all there at the moment, Loki's hand rose up to my upper back, in between my shoulder blades, and his arm carefully wrapped itself around me. It was such an empty gesture, because he was empty… and yet, somehow, it made me feel… better.

"You would never become that," I heard him whisper very quietly. But there was a firm undertone to it; a certainty previously unparalleled. And suddenly I realized that his vision was blurring, and I pulled back quickly, but gently, and his hand slid back to accommodate that movement, so that it was on my arm instead. I looked at him, my eyes round, and he smiled down at me. It was the most vacant, most watery smile I had ever seen on his face, and for some reason, it almost scared me.

"But I would," he said. Again, it was quiet. But again, it was beyond certain. "And if we do not die together, if Fraye does not kill us both… then I am going to outlive you." His fingers carefully tucked themselves under my chin, lifting it up so that I was forced to face him, and he tried to smile, and he tried to make it arrogant, to act like he was actually happy to say this. He tried to act like he used to, to act like my actions of the past year had not taken their toll, and he was still the man who had stood before a crowd of mortals and commanded that they kneel before him… as though he was still the man who had tried to destroy Jotunheim…. As though he was still the exact same man who had killed April before my very eyes… Because that man would smile at these next few words, but this one, this one in front of me, he would not, because he could not, because my pain would not allow it, and my pain was his…

But still he tried. He tried to smile. To act arrogant. To act as though he was pleased when he said, "And when I do, I am going to become just like her. And what will stop me from destroying everything, Natalie, from taking your world once and for all? What will stop me, when you are gone? Your memory?" he laughed; the sound was so grating and wrong that I actually, physically recoiled from it. "You will no longer exist. And you see, it does not matter what separates men from monsters; because you would not become that, and you are just like me. There are no 'men', Natalie Frost. There are only monsters; and monsters who are even greater than those."

"You wouldn't," I blurted, and suddenly I was nineteen years old again. I was nineteen and clueless, the pizza girl who was blind to the superhero world around her… I was the girl who only now discovered that there was true evil in the world, and true pain. The girl who had only just learned about Loki Laufeyson, the man who was threatening my world, the man who would destroy my home and everything that I loved if I did not stop him. And that is how nineteen-year-old Natalie would respond, because she wouldn't believe that after all this time, and after all we'd done, that Loki could still even think about destroying Midgard, about becoming a monster, about just waiting until after I died…

"But you know that I would," he said, and his eyes were sparking with an age-old danger that hadn't been on his face in so long, that I hadn't seen in his eyes since the days of long ago… "And all that you have done, all that you have ever done, is made things worse for your planet… for if I lost you, if my wits snapped in the way you know they will, then what is to stop me from becoming just like her?"

Just like her. Because right now, Loki wasn't anywhere near as bad as she was. He might kill you. He might have even cut out a dude's eye. But he wouldn't hold you prisoner for months at a time, wouldn't torture you for months, wouldn't carve his name into your skin,wouldn't kill off your friends and family just to see the pain on your face…

And nineteen-year-old Natalie might not have had an answer to that question. She might have cowered away in fear. She might have worried and fretted, or blustered and threatened to hide the terror. But twenty-one-year-old Natalie had seen some shit in her lifetime, and you'd better believe that she had an answer.

I gripped his wrist suddenly, pulling his hand closer to myself and yanking his sleeve upright. It was the wrist with the Key, but that didn't matter to me. That wasn't what I was showing him. "Take it off," I growled dangerously, gesturing to the inside of his forearm. He knew that I was talking about the illusion on his skin, but he did not obey; merely looked down at me with a cold expression, because we were both pretending that we were still the same people we were in the old days, pretending that he was still the same old asshole and I was still the same blind, immature pizza girl.

"Fine," I snarled, and my pain, my hurt for Fraye, it all solidified into anger, and I was sneering at him. Because how dare he do this to me now, how dare he let himself slip back into what he thought he wanted to be, when we both knew that this wasn't true, we both knew that there was no point in the throne, no point in the crown, because it wasn't like he ever really wanted it in the first place… "You know what I'm talking about, anyway." I turned his arm around, held it in front of his face, as though the illusion had been removed regardless of his refusal to do so.

"You want to know what will stop you, Loki, well take a look!" I snapped. "Because no matter how hard you try to pretend that you're a monster, you know what it is to have this done to you! You already know what it is to be in pain, and you're a hell of a lot more empathetic than you know! Take a look at your scars, Loki! Could you ever do that to anyone?"

And you know what? He flinched. He actually flinched. But I was relentless, because now I was pissed. With that one question, he had negated a year's worth of talking, of pleading, of asking him hard questions and trying to be his friend, had negated everything that I had ever done for him, had told me that I really was beating my head against a brick wall all along, had told me that he could never change… and it was bullshit.

I found my hand gripping his collar tightly, my fingers shaking. Was I hurt? I don't know, I think I was more angry than anything else. I was done putting up with this crap, done with his crazy mood swings, done with him feeling like he was doomed to repeat this endless cycle of hate, like he was doomed to be a monster no matter where he turned, because it was in his blood, and one day he would be alone and he must become this, must become just like her… well, Fraye had more link than one. She had a reason. He didn't, and he wouldn't, no matter what happened to me.

"And if that's how you feel, you son of a bitch, then why don't you just kill me now?" I gripped his collar tighter and twisted it in my grasp, pulling him just a little closer to me, my face in his. His eyes went wide, wondering where that had come from, wondering if I could possibly be serious…

"We're alone! You've got a weapon, you've got all your magic, I won't freaking stop you, go ahead! You go right ahead and kill me you bastard, because I'm done with this!" I was still holding onto his collar in a tight fist, like I wished it was his neck. "I'm done with you and your crap! If I'm the only thing that's stopping you from being the 'bad guy', from running away from this planet and going off to who-knows-where and hoping that Fraye doesn't find you, then go ahead! If I am the only thing standing in the way of you and everything you ever wanted, then go ahead and end this!" I released his collar, pushing him back, and his eyes grew even wider. A strange, unearthly innocence lingered in the back of his startled gaze.

"Go on!" I shouted. "Because it's only ever going to get worse! You and I are only ever going to get closer, so what the hell, go ahead and finish this! I'm not breaking out the shield, I'm defenseless, so do it! Kill me and run away, just like the coward you think you are!"

He swallowed; I could see the action in his pale throat. He actually stuttered on the word, "I-I-I…"

He couldn't get the sentence out, but I could hear it in his head: a rationalization, a reason. I don't have a way to leave the planet. The Bifrost is gone. The Tesseract is guarded.

"That's bullshit!" I screeched at him. If the library were not so huge and so empty, I would have worried that someone would hear me. "There are ways in and out of the nine realms that even Heimdal is blind to! Ways that you know like the back of your hand!" He'd gotten the Frost Giants in without Heimdal noticing, after all… it was a fact that I'd been smudging for a long time now, but it was something that Loki and I both knew. Something that Thor and Odin knew as well, but had thought irrelevant, as the Key on our wrists would stop him from leaving the planet, so long as I was alive and so long as I could think to stop him.

"So go on, you coward! Kill me now, spare yourself a worse pain later, take your chances out there in the universe, running from her! GO ON!" I pushed my chair back, standing up and opening my arms out wide, a bigger target, more easily dealt with. "If that's all you are, then do it!"

Loki stood as well, an almost unconscious thing. His eyes were wide, questioning, pleading… not even I could identify all of the emotional tumult inside of them, inside of him. His heart was speeding up and doing strange things to mine, which was bleeding all over the place, bleeding for this fool, just as it had always done. Because he was such an idiot that I couldn't do anything but help him, but fix him, but he was so bloody stubborn that he refused to be fixed… And every so often you had to emotionally slap him in the face to get him to wake up and realize what, exactly, he was doing to himself…

Just as he had done the other day, when I had been drunk…

"That's monstrous enough for you, isn't it?" I snarled at him, striking my fist against my heart. "Go on. Kill me. Finish this once and for all. You've got blood on your hands already, does it even matter if any more gets on there?"

His mouth was dry. I was shaking. Fear or fury or what, I don't know, but something was making me tremble from head to toe as I kept my eyes dead on his, as I kept my feet planted, as I stood my ground. "Even if it's mine?"

Behind the word 'mine' was a thousand others. Because I wasn't just 'me' anymore. I was part of him. And that meant that my blood was his, and he would be killing a part of himself, he would be ripping me out of his head with his own two hands, and any pain that followed would be his doing, because all he ever did was cause himself pain, because he loved it, he loved it almost as much as Fraye did…

Because if you fall in love with pain and death, it can no longer hurt you. And this was a lesson he'd learned so long ago…

"Stop," he suddenly blurted. "Stop this. This… This is madness."

"Madness?" I hissed through my teeth. "No, madness is trying to give you a second chance that you think you don't deserve! Madness is trying to save you from yourself time and time again, when you won't hear it! Madness is me trying to prove all the time that you are not the monster that you are so convinced you are!"

"Natalie…" He seemed almost… speechless. His eyes were still wide, still questioning, still pleading. Even if he could have spoken, I would have been deaf to his words. I was picking up a real head of steam.

"If you're really that sick of second chances… then go ahead. Make it official." I took another step back, standing taller, arms spreading wider. Opening myself to the attack. Preparing for it. "Claim yourself, son of Laufey. Declare who you are and on what side you stand!"

"Natalie!" His voice was suddenly a thousand times sharper, louder, harder. I didn't flinch away from it, or from the hands that fell on my shoulders, though I half expected them to slide upwards and wrap themselves around my neck. He shook me just slightly, his face even paler than it usually was. "Shut up!"

And then… then…

Then his arms were around me. And he was shaking just as badly as I was, whispering in my ear. "Just be silent, you… you imbecile."

I stiffened, frozen into place by this sudden and uncharacteristic display of… affection? … The hell?

Do you not understand, you fool? His voice was in my mind suddenly as he pulled me closer. My cheek pressed against his chest. Do you not understand that, as much as I may hate what has been done… I can no longer survive without you, either?

I was stunned into immobility; but my arms seemed to have a will of their own, because they wrapped themselves around his waist without my permission, and they stayed there. And suddenly we were holding onto each other again, making sure that we were still here, still alive… because we would be empty without this second part of our minds, we would be so alone without the other's heartbeat always shadowing our own… because we might not become Fraye, but we would certainly be monsters without each other, because we were monsters before we had each other, and that pain would invite that side of us forwards, would cause it to take control, and we would be lost in what we thought we were…

But for now… for now we were not monsters, because we held each other back. Because we were together.

And then I was quivering like a leaf. What in the hell was I thinking? He couldn't do that. He wouldn't do that. He'd never do that. He can't. Like I can't.

My hands linked together behind his back and we did not move.

I thought I would have longer. I'm not sure that Loki meant for me to hear these thoughts, these ones that were now swirling about inside of his head like insanity, but whether it was his intent or not, I still heard them. I thought it would take longer for me to need you as a part of my mind. I thought it would take longer before my happiness became dependant on yours. Oh, damn you, Natalie Frost, why did you have to be right? Why could you not have been wrong, just this once… Why are mortals' minds so similar to immortals? Why are they so close, so alike, when we are so different? Why are they so near… equal?

Why couldn't you have been wrong about your rightful place in the universe?

His head swam on this tangent for quite some time, and I let it flow off into background noise. It was funny, how in this kinda awkward, odd emotional moment… he was sounding just a little bit more like me. He'd certainly never said 'shut up' before; it was too much of a mortal phrase. And everything else, too… It was like he was letting go; letting my influence corrupt him for just a moment, as it had been trying to do for so long, and he was speaking in the way the link insisted he speak, because who around here would care if he sounded different? Who around here would think less of him if he began to adopt mortal speech patterns, or even took it further and spoke in Spanish? I could hardly think less of him for something that was similarly happening to me…

There was a noise from outside of the door, just a short distance away from us; the sound of the Tesseract, of someone being transported to this location. Loki and I split apart quickly, tearing out of our hug almost guiltily. My face went red as I tried to adopt a normal act; though, in all truth, 'normal' was pretty much exactly what I had been doing before. But it was not the 'accepted' normal, and so I quickly readjusted my thinking.

Loki, too, straightened swiftly; and not even the smell of books in the air, or the thought of being in this library right here and now, could keep the coldness from returning to his features.

He's early, I noted, exchanging a glance with Loki. Our eyes touched for maybe half a second before we both looked away, my face burning hotter than ever. Why was this so embarrassing? It shouldn't be. I'd hugged him once before. I'd been drop-dead drunk, but still… and I'd hugged him just moments ago, too, before this… and that hadn't been embarrassing. Why was this?

Loki seemed just as mystified as I was, and he cleared his throat, trying to banish the thoughts from his mind. "Shall we?" he suggested, trying to sound civil and controlled… but his voice was very slightly strained. He cleared his throat again.

I retrieved my bag from where the stacks of books were. I felt guilty leaving them messy like that, but I knew that it was a normal thing on Asgard. Most of the time, when we came back, they'd still be there. A project this important was not to be messed with.

I nodded at Loki, and the two of us headed towards the exit. Thor didn't usually come inside of the library to retrieve us, preferring to wait outside for a few minutes, just in case we were deep into a subject and didn't want to be disturbed. So this wasn't unusual.

But he was never early. Not this early, at least; it had only been two hours since he'd dropped us off here. A worried feeling gnawed at my gut; and it was only intensified when we opened the door and saw him standing there. Because it wasn't Thor who was holding the Tesseract.

It was Steve.

"Cap?" I asked, confused. Loki immediately stiffened, on high alert. The look on the Soldier's face quickly had me doing the same. "What is it?" I asked, a little too softly. "What's wrong?"

Steve swallowed. The action looked almost painful. "It… It's Thor," he said after a moment. He held out his hand- the one holding the Tesseract device- to us. "We need you back home, Natalie. Now."

Steve hadn't been wrong when he said that it was 'Thor'. But then, he hadn't been altogether clear on what- or, more specifically, who- the problem was.

There are few things worse than walking into a hospital room without knowing exactly who is inside it. I couldn't be sure that it was not Thor; but most indications suggested that it wasn't. He wouldn't have been in a hospital in the first place; we would have treated him at the Tower, in the Helicarrier, or -more likely- on Asgard.

I knew it wasn't Loki; he was right next to me, his hand in mine as I crushed the life out of his fingers for the billionth time that day. But I was at a loss as to who else it could be until I actually stepped into the room.

Thor was sitting next to the bed, his large hand wrapped around a much smaller, thinner, more feminine one. He turned around to face us as Loki and I entered the room (the visitor limit had reached its maximum with us, and so Steve and Banner, who had joined us, had both been forced to remain in the waiting room). Thor might have been trying to give us a weak smile, but the corners of his lip did little more than twitch upwards, and he turned back to the bed after only a moment. Brown hair was splayed out on a pillow, and white gauze had been taped up around the occupant's cheek and the side of her neck.

Oh, no… I found myself thinking. Oh, please no… not her… not Jane…

For it was indeed Jane Foster lying on the bed. She was out cold, completely dead to the world. A heart monitor registered a steady, even beating, a constant reminder that she was still here, still living, a mechanical sound representing a very alive heartbeat. But her face showed no signs of life, and her skin was very pale.

I had met Jane a few times before (she was in a relationship with Loki's brother. My brother. It was inevitable) but not very frequently. I liked her well enough; she was clever, with a bright attitude, a scientist's mind. Relatively speaking, we got along pretty well. But Thor… Thor loved her. We all knew it; I was sure even Jane had been made aware of it by this point. Thor loved her so much, and Fraye had done what Fraye does best, and she had taken that love away from him…

The hand that was not currently holding Loki's curled into a fist. If I hadn't chewed up my nails so badly earlier in the day, I'm sure that they would have drawn blood.

I hate you, Fraye Burns. I tasted metal. You wanna die, bitch? Well I'm happy to oblige.

Loki ignored this and walked forwards, his hand gently tugging itself out of mine as he did so. I let it go without resisting, let it slip through my grasp, let my arm fall limply back down to my side. Then I let that hand curl into a fist, too. There had been so much pain in Thor's eyes… you'd think that someone like Fraye would be sick of pain, that she'd be sick of death, but no, she had learned to love it… and maybe it was understandable.

But it was still unforgivable.

Loki, on the other hand, seemed to be ignoring any kind of emotion that Fraye's latest act was stirring in his chest. He was examining Jane carefully, removing the gauze with light, gentle fingers so that he could look at the wounds. He frowned; he was no Healer, but he had seen his fair share of Shadow Wounds (perhaps more than his fair share) and he swiftly identified that this was, indeed, what had happened to her.

"Where are the rest?" he inquired of Thor, gesturing to the gauze on her neck. Because we all knew that there were more.

Thor didn't seem capable of speech. He merely buried his face in his hands, which were still holding Jane's between them, and shook his head back and forth silently.

Useless, brainless… Loki tried to be irritable, but it wasn't really working out. These terms were more sadly affectionate than anything else. He turned to me. Frost?

I was still staring at the tiled ground, hair trailing in front of my eyes. I was wondering what color Fraye's blood was. Was it red, like mine, like a human's or an Asgardians? Was it blue, like Loki's? Or was it another color, separate to her? I thought it might be black. Black blood would fit her quite nicely.

I wondered what it would look like when I smeared it all over the Tower floor…

Frost, Loki insisted, and I blinked, looking up at him. That was new. I was usually the one pulling him out of homicidal rages. A little assistance? He asked with a brush of sarcasm.

I swallowed and nodded, stepping forwards. Thor was still holding onto Jane's hand like a lifeline; I'd never seen the big guy so… crippled before. I pushed the thought back before it could take over my entire mind again. No good would come from me going psycho at the moment.

I gestured for Loki to step back as I pulled Jane's blanket back. She didn't stir. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

There were bandages on her ankles, and one on her calf. A lot more littered her arm, but the more worrisome one was the one that, we only now realized, just started at her neck. It traveled down from there all the way across her collarbone, curling around above her other shoulder, disappearing behind her back. Loki and I exchanged a look. Who knew what damage was on her back.

There's nothing you can do, my mental tone was oddly flat as I said this. Loki nodded in silent agreement.

"This is beyond my capabilities, brother," he told Thor in a quiet whisper. "And it is far beyond mortal science. She needs a Healer."

Thor didn't even move. The poor guy was so far out of it that he was in space. I knew how he felt. But something was keeping me rooted to the spot; a slowly building, deep, echoing crackle of flame that was resounding off of my insides. A shifting of magma at my core.

Someone was going to die soon, and I was going to make damn sure that it wasn't Jane.

Suddenly, Jane's breathing changed. It grew abruptly raspy, harsh, a strange rattling noise in the back of her throat… she started thrashing about, practically seizing… Loki's eyes went huge as the beeping grew more intense, as the sound of doctors and nurses rushing to the rescue started behind the closed door. Loki's head ducked down to Jane, his ear next to her lips, as he listened closely to her breathing, narrowly avoiding her flailing limbs.

"Not this…" I thought I heard him say. And then his head whipped to his brother. The door flew open. "How long has this been happening?" Loki demanded of Thor as the doctors rushed in, started bustling us out. Even Thor was forced out of the room- he didn't even fight it. Now I was getting worried about him, because he must have fought this before, must have fought to stay beside her so many times that he had eventually realized how pointless it was, and that he would only make things worse- and, once we had been shoved outside with the door closed behind us, Loki took his shoulders. "How long, brother?"

Thor looked to him numbly. My heart screamed. No, no, those weren't his eyes, his eyes were alive and bright, full of cheer and joy and laughter… what are these eyes? Who do they belong to? Who could possibly have eyes so dead as these, if they did not belong to Fraye herself, she with the most hollow of hollow gazes…?

"Since she came here," Thor managed to speak at last. His words were slow. Pained. "She… she can not breathe, Loki. She… She can not… breathe…" Those dead eyes became glassy. Don't. Don't cry. You are the Thunderer, the Prince of Asgard, and you will not cry, dammit, because if you do… if you do…

Loki took a step back, releasing Thor's shoulders. A sigh slipped out of his chest as he looked down and away, his eyes closing. A heavy weight settled over his shoulders, and mine.

"Get her to a Healer," Loki ordered. "Now."

Thor looked up to him. Maybe the urgency in Loki's tone bled through to him, because he spoke again. "Why?"

He sounded like such a child. Fraye had reduced this strong, brave man into a little kid in mere seconds. The childlike side of Thor Odinson had been revealed; along with the darker side of his childishness. Loki looked away in pained disgust. "Just do it!" He snarled, but his voice cracked. He looked down, his eyes screwing up tightly. "I… I…"

He stopped. Because Thor had always protected Loki from those who would cause him physical harm. But Loki would always protect Thor from those who would take advantage of him for his power, who would take advantage of his slow wit and blustering arrogance. And now here again… he had failed. He had failed to protect Thor from the harsher truths of life, and why did that hurt…?

Not meeting Thor's dead eyes, he whispered, "I'm sorry, brother," and turned away.

He started off down the hall. I would have stayed with Thor, but something told me that wherever Loki was headed was likely more attuned to my plans, so I followed him instead.

What's happening to her? I asked, my mental voice flat and slightly demanding. I wanted an answer. I would get an answer.

Loki didn't reply for a long time. A very long time. The two of us navigated through the hallways with the expert ease of those who were used to such places, though we were not. Loki wouldn't look at me. I wouldn't look at Loki.

What's happening to her? I repeated, the two of us moving in tandem to avoid a few nurses in scrubs, talking about something that was making them smile and laugh.

It… Loki closed his eyes, counting on mine to help him navigate his way through the halls. He did not wish to speak of it; which immediately clued me in to the fact that, whatever this was, it was something that had happened to him as well.

I'm going to rip her limb from limb one way or another, I told him, elbowing my way past two men who looked very similar in facial structure. Brothers, in all likelihood. You might as well give me a proper reason.

It wasn't something that Loki wished to remember, nor to relive, but I was not going to let it go. He sighed through his nose and opened his eyes again, moving with a sudden stiffness.

There is a great deal of darkness inside of a human body, he said with frostbitten words. Which means that there are a great number of shadows inside of a person at all times. In this instance… Fraye is manipulating the darkness inside of her lungs.

My eyes became flint. That's what I figured, I growled. My fists were clenched so tight that my wrists began to ache, but you couldn't have pried my fingers open with a crowbar. Cutting her up from the inside?

Not cutting, I suspect, Loki answered, with the wearied knowledge of one who truly knew about such things. Not yet. But blocking her airways. Stopping her from breathing. Poisoning them, perhaps.

Can the Healers stop it?

For a while. Whether it stops permanently… that is entirely under Fraye's control.

And if we kill Fraye?

He gave me an even look. You know that is impossible.

But what if we do?

Then it stops. But it can not be done. Not by us.

I'm not talking about just us.

He stopped in his tracks, halting very suddenly. But I halted at the same time, knowing that he would do so in advance. I lifted an eyebrow, daring him to challenge me, to question me, to stop me. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed and, after a long moment, began walking again.

Do you truly believe that they will help? He inquired carefully.

We can ask, I answered, falling into step beside him.

They will not stand against her.

I don't expect them to. But something killed off her planet. Something managed to wipe out an entire race of these things. I wanna know what that something was. And they just might be able to tell us.

He nodded slowly. Without thinking about it, with no prior planning or conscious decision, the two of us had arrived at the elevator. I pressed the button as Loki clasped his hands behind his back.

You know that the Avengers will not approve. And it's even more unlikely that my father will allow it.

Look at me, Loki. Do I really look like the kind of person who actually gives a shit right now?

Tony and Steve were in the waiting room, Thor was with Jane, and the others were at the Tower. It would be a while before anyone noticed that we were missing; hopefully, with all of the commotion of getting Jane out of the hospital and into Asgard, we would be able to slip back into the Tower or wherever and pretend like we were never gone.

If we are caught, Loki said slowly, there could be… consequences.

There could be consequences if Fraye wipes us all out, too.

He hesitated. Perhaps… I should be the one to…

Nope. I cut him off. Even if they don't know your true nature, then you're still an 'Asgardian' to them. That makes you the enemy. Ergo, you're not going. I took a deep breath as the elevator doors dinged open, allowing us out. It has to be me. They have no relations with Midgard, good or bad. Not anymore, anyway.

He was quiet for a moment as we made our way towards the exit. I was so wrapped up in my own determination that I didn't notice the way he was looking at me until we were outside again. What? I demanded irritably.

He half-smiled wryly. It is nothing. He said quietly. But…

What? I repeated.

You remind me of my brother.

I blinked. It wasn't the first time he'd said that to me. I was like Thor in a lot of ways; even if I did have more in common with Loki than I did him (and more than was probably healthy). But it was the first time that these words were not directed as an insult.

You are both fools, He said, turning away from me. But you are bravefools. He looked forwards again. It seems that you can not have one trait without the other.

Maybe if there weren't shadows in my blood, as dark and deadly as the ones now tormenting Jane, I might have smiled. As it was, I just kept walking onwards. I didn't even say anything in response.

We actually made it outside of the hospital before we were caught; but not by the Avengers.

By Fraye.

She was sitting on a nearby stone bench, her legs crossed, her arms spread out on the back of said bench, a little smile on her lips. She was back in that black dress again, with that blood-red lipstick and high heels that would break a lesser woman's ankle. Her black hair was once again pouring down in ringlets. It was a look very unfitting to her; it seemed every hollow bone and sharp joint had been highlighted by that black dress. But then, that was probably the point.

I saw her the instant I walked out of the hospital, of course. I just didn't care. I stalked past her with angry strides; I'd suspected that she might come to gloat, and here she was, gloating smile at the ready. And here I was, not caring in the slightest. It didn't matter what had made her into what she was. She was still a threat. And that threat had to be neutralized, one way or another.

"You're not even going to say hello?" Fraye asked, her lower lip jutting out as she pouted. Her voice was cutesy and filled with sugar, sweet and cooing.

Loki had gone cold, but he followed my lead and ignored her. Of course, Fraye didn't accept that. She loved her audience. She loved the reaction. She loved to pick people apart just like I did; my core opposite, the Shrink of Death.

Her head tilted to the side as we passed her; a moment later, white-hot fire lanced through Loki's back in a very familiar, age-old pattern. He cried out as the shadows that still lurked inside of the scars on his back (the ones that remained where her name had been inscribed) began to twist and thrash about, poisoning his blood… I tasted metal as I whirled on her, my hair lashing across my face, whipping into my eye and making it sting. I barely noticed.

"Enough!" I snarled. "I'm done with you! I'm not waiting around here to listen to you monologue about your recent victory! You've played your hand, you've moved the chess piece, and now the game falls to me! I get it!" My foot slammed down into the concrete as, in spite of all of Loki's fears, I found myself less than half an inch away from her face. And, for the first time, I realized that she was shorter than me.

"This is me," I growled at her. "Making my move." My eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. "Try and stop me."

Her head tilted to the side, and she smiled, her blood-red lips curling up just around the edges, her perfectly white teeth gleaming in the sunlight. "Now why would I do that?" She bubbled.

Not taking her eyes off of me, she began to circle me with slow, predatory steps. I didn't stand still and let her observe me this time, though. I kept my eyes on her, too, turning around and around, each of my steps compensating for hers, her languid, relaxed movements that were still somehow… dangerous. The hair on the back of my neck and arms was standing upright; my natural instincts were all screaming at me. The desperate need to survive wanted to propel my footsteps away. To stand against her, this creature which stood far above the human race on the universal food chain, was to go against my very nature, to go against my very blood.

"You have a very interesting way of thinking, Natalie Frost," she told me in a leisurely purr. "And not just because of your next move- though I'm curious as to how that will work out." A little girlish giggle trickled out of her painted lips. She took a step behind me, and I turned with it. Step by step, move by move, doing our little fighting dance without landing a single blow… electricity seemed to crackle in the air around me, to spark at the meeting point between our stares, and the heat that was pumping through me… it was not fire. It was hotter than fire, more alive, and it was burning straight through my charred skin… but it was also transforming me at my core, magma shifting and resettling beneath the surface.

"It was an interesting deal you made," she said, the wind picking up, blowing her black hair across her pale face, her dress around her legs. The wind was blowing across me, too, getting my hair in my eyes, tugging on the pull strings of my hoodie, but I ignored it, because I could not feel it, because it didn't even affect me enough to fan these flames inside of me…

"An interesting choice, that you gave him," she added, her eyes flicking to Loki and back again. We were both currently ignoring the Trickster, acting as though he was not there, as though he was not hearing every word.

"You would have allowed him to kill you," she purred, and immediately I knew what she was talking about. Our conversation in the library. What I'd told him to do. "You would have let him kill you and run away, just like that…" She chuckled, shaking her head back and forth. "Oh, Natalie, you know him so well, but you don't know him well enough!"

And suddenly she was right next to me again, her hands on my shoulders, her lips next to my ears, holding me in a half-hug, embracing me like an old friend, a sight undoubtedly not uncommon in front of a hospital… my hair hid her lips and thus her words from any unwanted attention, intended only for me and Loki…

"For you to die, just so that he could run away… it's all so pointless, isn't it? And all so permanent." She giggled again. "He would never accept such an offer, if he did not have some way to… retract it." Her voice lowered, like she was telling me a great secret. I was just thinking about the fastest way to remove her hands from the ends of her wrists. "Because that's why he's my favorite, don't you see? Because he loves it. He loves the mental anguish, loves to have his own past decisions torment him. He's so close to hearing it, Natalie, just like you are so close… He'll hear it one day, I swear it. He'll hear the Song of Oblivion. My Melody of Ruin."

I finally pushed her back, unable to take her touch on my shoulders anymore. I couldn't actually harm her, but she stumbled back as though wounded, and pouted again. Her lower lip trembled. "Aw, don't be like that, Nat'lee. You know it's true."

I pointed a finger at her, jabbing it in her face. "I'm done with you, Fraye. Do you hear me? I'm done." I turned away. "You keep your little psycho bullshit to yourself. You're not scaring me anymore." I tried to stalk up to Loki, throwing the words over my shoulder with unnecessary venom, "I won't be afraid of you anymore!"

She laughed; and despite how I'd said just seconds ago that I was done, despite how I believed that I was finished with listening to her, despite absolutely everything, the sound made me freeze. Because it wasn't one of her girly giggles. There was no charm oozing from the sound, no sugar fluff and cotton candy to make it sickly sweet, no syrup pouring into my ears. This was different. It was sarcastic. Cruel, yes, beyond cruel, it was a rough and grating sound, the sound of one pushed to the brink and no longer just staring back at the abyss…

This was the sound that the abyss itself made.

This was the sound of one who has been torn apart.

This was a single note from the Song of Oblivion.

"Afraid!" She choked on her laughter. "Oh, Natalie dear, you're terrified!" It wasn't the childish, candy-coated tone anymore. This was… eternal. It echoed in time and in the scream of the stars… this was the laugh of an ageless child who danced with death…

"You're scared out of your wits! Don't you get it yet? Don't you get any of it?" She laughed again. I didn't turn around to her. My eyes were on Loki, who was watching me in return. The two of us were waiting. Waiting for one of us to decide how we should react. Because we weren't sure. Because this wasn't Fraye. And yet, it was more Fraye than Fraye herself had ever been.

"Of course you're afraid, and that's the point, my dear Natalie, because you were wrong!" She laughed again, that bitter, salted laugh that rubbed itself into wounds that I hadn't even realized existed before that moment. "You've said it before, haven't you, that the opposite of love isn't hatred? You said it was indifference. But you're wrong, Natalie. You're so wrong."

Where the hell was this coming from? I wasn't sure I cared that much. I was done with Fraye. Even if she changed everything, even if she tried to trip me up… I was done being her puppet.

"The opposite of love is fear. And I am fear. And so I'm going to take the ones you love apart, piece by fragile piece.

It's starting right now, don't you see?" She laughed again. "It started long ago; with Barton, and Romanoff. They were the easiest; poor little blind creatures, so lost without each other that they don't even realize they're in love. But now each is afraid of what the other will do, what the other will say, and so they're staying away from each other."

My joints froze, my muscles stiffening, locking my bones in place. As if I need any more reason to kill you right now.

"And then your parents, always fighting about you, about what you are and what you've done… mommy is ever so loyal to her daughter… And daddy is ever so frightened…"

My hands were in fists again. I was biting my tongue so hard that there was blood in my mouth, and it was starting to spill out of my lips. I couldn't feel the pain.

"And not even the dead are saved from fear, Natalie Frost," she was closer to cooing now, though she was not quite there yet. "I'm sure April would turn in her grave, if she could see what I've done to her mother."

My vision was tunneling. Everything that was not going black was turning a bright crimson, coated in red mist. Walk away. Walk away, Natalie. You can't fight her here. You can't stop her now. Fight later. Fight when you can fight. Walk away. Walk away.

And what did she do to Mrs. Blackthorn?

"And now Thor is losing his precious little mortal… And all of these things, all of these pieces that I'm chipping away, they're all pieces of you, Natalie. They're all pieces of my little plaything, because it always comes back to Loki in the end. Because he's so close, and he needs to hear it, I need you to hear it, my little giant. Because you're so very afraid…"

I tried to move my feet even an inch away. Half an inch. A quarter of an inch. I had to move away, but I was rigid, I was stone, I was a statue, and I started to hear it in my head, a haunting tune that made me see, smell, taste, hear and feel blood… all around me, there was blood…

"And you thought you might 'learn to love him again'," She sneered, and the words were still directed at Loki. "You thought you might love your brother, but look at him! Does it not hurt you worse, now, my little giant, to see him so weak? To see him broken? He is held hostage by his love of that mortal, and you are falling into that same pattern! Held hostage by the fact that you care for him! So tell me, do you truly want to be him? Or do you want to be better than him?"

"YOU!"

The word was so abrupt and unexpected that it almost shocked me out of my anger. My eyes whipped up to Loki, who was staring at the ground. He was shaking. I hadn't even realized that he was shaking, and far worse than I was. He hands, too, were clenched, and his nails were longer than my own chewed-ragged ones, and so they were drawing blood… and though that blood was red as it trailed down his pale fingers, there were blue splashes on the floor, dark blue droplets seeping into the stone. I looked at him as his teeth clenched, as his bones ached with the pure strain of holding his muscles back, of keeping himself so perfectly rooted in one place.

"You." He repeated, the words hissing from between his teeth, serpentine and filled with snake venom. "Are not allowed to speak of my brother."

I stared at him. "Loki…" I found myself breathing, stunned. But why was I surprised? I'd known this all along. He was angry, and of course he was angry for Thor, because Thor was Thor. He was the big brute who had been tied to Loki since they were children, the imbecile that Loki had been forced to protect from himself, time and time again, until it became as natural as breathing. He was the dumb golden retriever that had tagged along at his heels since the beginning, the idiot who would always laugh at his pranks and tricks, and was frequently the subject of them. The brother he got into trouble all the time. But he always got him out of it.

And, dammit, if anyone was going to torment, torture, and eventually kill Thor, it was going to be Loki. That was his right. As his brother.

Through the anger, through the pain, through the blood… I found myself smiling at that. Those two had the weirdest, sickest, most adorable sibling relationship in the history of ever.

Fraye's lips still remained curled in a defiant smile, despite Loki's words. The Trickster turned away, his coat snapping in the quick gust of wind that the movement made. "Frost." He ordered.

I obeyed, giving Fraye a final, foul glare before falling in line beside him, the two of us walking away. Even now, even with all of his anger… he still found it nigh impossible to turn his back on her. He was still so terrified of her…

Fraye's words were slow and quiet. But they somehow made their way over to us, anyway. "Do you think that you will ever stop fearing me, Loki?" She asked quietly. "I am Fear." There was a moment of silence, in which neither of us spoke as we continued walking away from her, his hand still bleeding, though the rolling droplets had slowed down considerably.

"The opposite of fear is love and vice versa; that is why your mortal is spared from it, for now." She giggled. The girly, hebephrenic stuff was back. "Because she is already in love. That much was obvious from the start. But you… you will never be saved from Fear!"

"Do you know what she is talking about?" Loki asked with a trace of exasperation.

"No freaking clue," I answered bluntly, with clear hostility. And I may or may not have actually said 'freaking'.

We did not turn back to see if Fraye had vanished. We did not see if this was any kind of victory, nor did we allow ourselves to view it as a defeat. We just kept walking away from her, from her words, from her poisonous effects, from the shadows themselves.

And you know… I had done this before. I had walked away from an enemy far more powerful than me, had turned my back on someone making threats… but now I was doing it again, together with that enemy… and, not for the first time, I realized just exactly how pointless those threatening words were, when they were said to someone who truly didn't care.

I linked my arm in Loki's automatically. "Come on," I said slowly. "We've got work to do."

And we did.

Because there was a lot that we had to do, before we could go to Jotunheim.

A/N: Okay! So I'm going on vacation sometime soon, for two weeks. This means that I may or may not be able to update until at least a few days after I come back. So the next update will probably be extraordinarily, supremely late. :/ Unless I can update before I leave or figure out a way to update once I'm there. Just a head's up!

A big thank you once again to all of my readers, all of my followers, all of my favoriters, and all of my reviewers! You are all so awesome!