The Avenging of Loki Laufeyson

by YouLookLikeFOOD

"So… the shadows are coming to life, we're all gonna die, and the only way to save three separate worlds is for Loki and the Avengers to quit whining and work together for once. And of course, I'm the one who, somehow, has to make that work out. Yep, sounds like a Tuesday. When's my coffee break?" Sequel to 'The Avenging of Natalie Frost'. T for violence and language.

15. Shades of Darkness

A/N: Hey everybody! I know I'm late, there were reasons. But it's a long chapter so yay!

I sat in the seventh-floor living room of Stark Tower, watching 'The Dark Knight' for the bajillionth time (because, it seemed, even with my life being a superhero movie, I was still strangely addicted to the things). I was slouched in the loveseat, reciting the Joker's lines along with him, annoying the crap out of anyone unfortunate enough to be in the same room with me as I did so. For everyone's sake, it seemed to be a good thing that the only person who was currently in the room was Loki; and while he was mildly irked by the recital of my favorite quotes (AKA the entire movie), his irritation was mollified by the fact that he was doing something that was equally annoying to me. My sketchbook was in his hands, resting in his lap, and he was flipping through the pages casually. While there were not enough pages in the book to keep him occupied forever, he had a stack of my other, older ones beside him.

I tried not to get too upset about it; after all, Loki had seen every single one of those drawings through my head already; he'd even seen me draw some of them. But, seeing as he had a tendency to point out flaws- and an even worse tendency to zero in on the costume designs that I'd been toying with and verbally rip them to shreds- it was difficult to keep my annoyance in check.

However, to a degree, I was grateful for it; it kept my mind off of the one thing that was always prevalent in the back of my head these days: Bruce.

Just the thought of his name had a flash of images flickering behind my eyelids at a rapid, gunfire pace. Bruce, on the ground, half dead, that black crow circling above us like some herald of death. Bruce in the Healing Room. Bruce, unmoving, lying in the center of the bed, blood drizzling from a number of shallow cuts, pooling from the far larger gashes.

I rubbed my sore eyes and blinked a few times, trying to insert myself back into the storyline of the movie. Joker. Batman. Crazy guns and drama n'shit. Banner didn't exist in that world, I didn't exist, Loki didn't exist, and Fraye sure as hell did not exist, and that world was so much better for it.

I slouched further down in the loveseat; the couch faced the TV, and with the loveseat, made an 'L' around the living room. While this looked good and all, it was murder on my back and/or neck; if I wanted to see the TV, I was forced to sit on both cushions of the loveseat, with the armrest settled against my back. Loki was sitting on the couch, on the seat closest to me, ignoring the TV. I shifted about a few times, trying to get comfortable; but the instant I thought about something other than the movie that was playing, it all came back again. Bruce. Bruce half-dead on the ground. Bruce in the Healing Room. Bruce bleeding.

I ran my hand through my hair and took a deep breath, trying to slow my heart, which was speeding at the rate of a rodent's. Loki, by leaving the Healing Room earlier than he was supposed to (and by running away as I chased him after his little 'joke') had earned himself an extra day in the Healing Room, and of course I had stayed beside him, and beside Bruce. And, when Loki was released and told that he could return to the Tower, he did not. He stayed beside me as I waited beside Bruce. For a few days, we were allowed to do so; but then the Healers and the Avengers conspired together and staged an intervention. The Avengers were worried about me, continually hanging over these sickbeds as I was, and the Healers were worried for Loki. My continuing anxiety was not good for his recovery; and so, together, they had shipped us both back to Earth with no chance for appeal.

So now I was stuck here, at the Tower, with Loki and the three Avengers who'd been sent back with us to babysit: Steve, Tony, and Clint. For the most part, they left us alone, returning to their respective tasks, though occasionally one of them called one of us for training; life, it seemed, went on, in spite of one of our own being so close to death.

As I fought and struggled my way into the movie's universe, something padded into the room on four brown, light feet: Jekyll. His nose was to the ground, sniffing out the interesting things in the carpet, and his tail was swishing back and forth, stirring the air. He looked up and sniffed around the room, glancing between Loki and I. Loki flipped through the next page and scanned one of the pictures with clear distaste. I wondered vaguely why he bothered to keep looking at the things if he disliked them so much.

I curled my legs up onto one cushion of the loveseat and patted the other one absentmindedly, an indication to Jekyll that I wanted him on the couch next to me. He surveyed me for a moment, looking at me with half-intelligent eyes, his head tilting. I patted the couch again. His ears rose slightly. I gave up trying to call him; he knew what I wanted him to do. He just didn't want to do it.

The moment I stopped, he shifted, then turned and went over to Loki, resting his head on the Trickster's knee. Absently, not really paying attention, Loki stroked the dog's head, twisting his velvet ears between his fingers gently. Jekyll, as always, adored the attention; and the instant that Loki stopped to turn the page, Jekyll's nose followed and tried to nudge his hand. When that proved a failure, Jekyll shifted again, then jumped up onto the cushion next to Loki, turning about a few times and falling down onto the seat with a heavy sigh.

I stared at him. "You little traitor," I accused in a quiet mutter; Loki's lips twitched up at the corners and, after turning the next page, he rested his hand on Jekyll's back. I rolled my eyes and, blushing as I realized that Loki was looking at one of the many crappy portraits that I had done of him, looked back to the screen.

But Jekyll's dumb dog antics could only distract me from the dark truth for so long. It was my first day away from Asgard in a long time; I was used to having any and all information immediately and readily available. If something happened to Bruce, I should have known it the instant that it did; like I would have, if I hadn't been here, if the Avengers hadn't sent me back to Earth…

For a place that I was trying desperately hard to save, I don't think I'd ever been more sick of any planet in my life; let alone my own.

Loki's eyes traveled across the pencil lines, and suddenly, he sighed, setting the sketchbook aside. The Trickster tucked his hand beneath his chin, resting it on a loosely clenched fist, and, leaning his elbow on the armrest, he looked to me. "He will be fine, Frost."

I frowned, turning back to him, the movie forgotten in a matter of seconds. "You don't know that," I grumbled at him, my eyes immediately, reflexively darting to his injured side, though the wound was currently covered with both bandages and his shirt. "She got him pretty bad, Loki; he hasn't even woken up yet."

He shrugged mildly. "Bruce Banner is the strongest human being that I know, bar one." I lifted an eyebrow, wondering who that 'one' was. "He will survive."

"Survival isn't the problem." I replied, folding my arms and curling in a little closer on myself. My eyes turned back to the TV, though I wasn't paying attention to it anymore. "S'far as I know, Bruce has never been beaten before. Whatever sense of security the Hulk gives him… it won't exist anymore."

My stomach twisted. "Besides," I said in a quiet, low voice. "You know what she did to you, what she's capable of. And what she did … I dunno, I just think that it pushed you to the edge. That a lot of what happened with the Chitauri incident wouldn't have happened if she hadn't… you know, interfered."

One of his eyebrows arched perfectly. "Regardless of Fraye's interference; I am still what I am by nature. Nothing would have changed."

"Loki, you cut out someone's eye," I snapped. "You had fun with it. Maybe you thought that you were falling into the 'monstrous' mold, that you were fitting into your rightful place in the universe, but I really doubt that you would have been capable of something that… torturous before she showed you how it was done." I looked away. "And I don't want Bruce to… I just don't want anything to change about him."

"You think that she tortured him?" Loki asked, the other eyebrow going up.

"I think it's a possibility. And even if she didn't… she did something to him. And I just… I can't stand the idea that whatever she did would hurt him badly enough to change him."

Loki waved about an irritated hand, as though my words were some irritating insect that he could just shoo away. "Unlikely. Nigh impossible." He placed his hand back at his side. "As I stated: bar one, Bruce Banner is the strongest human that I know."

"Just because the Hulk could beat you up doesn't mean that Bruce-"

He cut me off. "I said nothing concerning the Hulk. And I stand beside what I said."

I blinked, then looked to him. His eyes were on the screen, as though he wasn't paying attention to me, when I knew that he was. I half-smiled wryly. So Banner had grown on him. I turned to the TV as well, reaching out a hand behind me that, purely automatically, he accepted.

"Thanks, Loki," I mumbled.

He didn't respond. For a long time, we watched the movie together, and even he got semi-involved after a while, allowing his mind to relax for the first time in probably forever.

And then the infamous line came up, and of course, I recited it along with the Joker: "You wanna know how I got these scars?"

Loki swallowed, looked down. His hand gently slipped out of mine as he stood; Jekyll watched him curiously, unhappy that his source of attention was suddenly leaving.

I looked to the Trickster. He gave me a quick, sad flash of a smile and a one-word explanation ("Training") before he ducked out of the door.

---

Loki was keeping me out of his head.

He was working quickly, faster than ever before, as he fell into the usual pattern drills that had become commonplace for him since he was a child. He wasn't certain why he hadn't asked for me to help him. Perhaps it was because he did not think that I could. Perhaps my worries and fears for Banner were already beginning to swamp and overwhelm him. Perhaps he did not need them added to his own.

After all, he was performing this particular sequence of training moves in complete and total darkness.

His breathing was more difficult than it should be, and he was certainly sweating more than he should. He felt cold. He would deny it profusely if it was ever pointed out to him, but he had never felt cold before the two of us had been connected together. But this… this was something altogether separate from that, a chilled sweat, an icy hand that gripped his spine and made him rigid…

He fought through it, tried to ignore the ringing in his ears that was beginning to make him dizzy, trying to ignore the pain in his side. As far as training was concerned, he was supposed to take it easy, but everything in him was screaming to fight, to fight and to win, because if he did not win he would die…

The world was a chaotic swirl of shadows around him. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see it; but that was the only time he could see, and all he ever saw was Fraye standing before him, laughing, blood on her hands, his blood everywhere…

He couldn't breathe. Pain stabbed like a blade through his heart, and he wanted to collapse, to breathe, but he kept fighting the darkness, fighting… nothing.

The light flicked on.

For a second, Loki was blinded. He stifled a gasp, remembering where-and who- he was, keeping his emotions in control, keeping his thoughts in check. He whirled on his heel to see who had turned the light on, to see who had banished the darkness.

Steve was standing in the doorway. His eyes were strangely solemn.

"You have something on your face," he said, walking towards Loki slowly, almost casually. The Trickster's eyebrows furrowed, and he lifted his hand to his cheek; his fingertips touched something damp, and when he pulled them away, they were wet. He wiped the tear off quickly, abruptly, and then directed a glare at the Soldier. Rogers did not appear to have seen, walking right past Loki and setting up one of the room's practice dummies, moving it out of the way.

"What is it that you want, Rogers?" Loki asked, acid burning in his words, eating out a hole in the air around him.

Steve didn't reply for a moment. Then, abruptly, he turned and threw a punch towards Loki's face.

Loki blocked easily, stepping aside, and Steve launched another strike towards him. The pattern continued for a moment, with Steve on the offensive and Loki playing startled defense. And then, just as suddenly as Steve's attack had begun, he stopped, taking a step back and rubbing the pain out of his knuckles. Loki watched him warily, also stepping back.

"Your defense needs work," Rogers told him firmly. "Your self-defense is excellent; but when it comes to defending others, you're pretty worthless."

Loki's head tilted an inch to the side, curious. Steve wasn't paying attention to him anymore, but rather, was moving aside another one of the practice dummies. He saw the Trickster's confusion out of the corner of his eye and shrugged. "Something I noticed the last time Fraye was here. There's a few exceptions, the biggest of which being Natalie; and, as far as I can tell, that's still self-defense." He turned to face Loki head-on again, eye to eye with the Norse god of Mischief. "You're on a team now. We watch each other's backs."

Loki -though he was still mildly startled by the sudden change in conversation, and Steve's unusually confrontational style of speech- found himself smiling wryly. "It seems to me," he said, in a quiet tone, "That you have all been rather too happy being blind to whatever dangers threaten my back."

Steve didn't back down. His eyes were hard and unblinking, unyielding, as he stared back at the other man. "Then maybe that has to change."

For perhaps the first time, Loki found himself genuinely surprised by the Soldier. His eyebrows went up, his eyes going slightly rounder. Steve said nothing more, but rather ordered Loki to put his guard up. The Trickster complied, and the two were suddenly fighting again.

And, just like that, Loki found a new ally.

---

"Let me get this straight," Fury said with slow, shaking, overly pronounced words. His patience was wearing incredibly thin. "Natalie Frost has become the ambassador to Jotunheim-the representative of three. Separate. Worlds. And you, in your infinite wisdom, fired her."

For one of the few times in recorded history, the entire Council was silent.

"And you still have not reached out to her?" Fury demanded. "You still haven't hired her back?" Another silence. "Tell me, what, exactly, are you waiting for? Are you just waiting for her to try and find a new employer? How well do you think that will work out?" More silence. "She's the power player of three worlds! We need her on our side!"

"She is temperamental and reckless," One of the Council members spoke at last. "She follows no code and does as she likes, regardless of orders."

"And a person like that would never be a threat outside of our organization, I'm certain." Fury's words were sarcastic, but his voice was so grim that a great deal of it was lost. "We need our eyes on her."

"Barton and Romanov are-"

"Not going to be enough," Fury cut him off again. "Right now, Natalie is on our side; but how long do you think that will last?"

Silence again. Had I been there at the time, I probably would have decked Fury for even implying that I'd betray my country, but I must say that I wished I was there anyway, just to see the Council's reactions (though I wouldn't have been able to see much, given the way their faces had been blacked out).

"What of the nano-machines in her bloodstream?" One of the Council members- a woman- spoke up.

"What of them?" Fury demanded.

"They are Classified S.H.I.E.L.D. technology. Outside of our jurisdiction, she has no rights to them. We could claim them again."

Fury looked at her, shocked, and angry. "We could," he answered in a deadly tone. "If we had the means of removing them without killing her."

"If we did, then it would not solve our current predicament." Another man responded in a tone that was equally deadly.

If Fury had been surprised before, it was nothing compared to now. He took a step back, blown away by the proposal. And then he took two steps forwards again, back towards the Council. "You're saying that we should kill her? Kill Natalie Frost?" His gaze burned with a dangerous fire. "And where, exactly, do you think that will get us?"

"She will be unable to work outside of this country. The threat will be contained."

"And what about Asgard? Jotunheim? You think that they'll accept that?"

"We have a legitimate legal claim to-"

"You think that they'll care how 'legitimate' it is? Frost is our only connection to these worlds; you get rid of her, and we have nothing."

"The internal affairs of Earth are not their concern. If Natalie was branded as a criminal, a thief, having stolen our technology, then we can place one of our own operatives in her stead. Someone with true ambassadorial authority on Earth."

Fury stared. The idiocy of some people. "And do you think that the Avengers will allow her to be labeled as such? Do you truly believe that Thor will allow her 'honor' to be questioned? Do you think that he will simply go along with this ingenious plan of yours? Do you think that Loki will?" Another thought occurred to him: "And what about Loki?What do you think you can do about him? You think that he won't jump ship the instant that Natalie's out of the picture?"

More silence. Fury snorted.

"And I thought New York was a bad decision," he muttered under his breath, then turned a glare towards the Council. "So, any other idiot ideas you wanna throw out?"

There was another longer, more rigid silence. Fury nodded once. "Good. Then I'm going to go, and I'm going to tell Natasha to do whatever it takes to get Natalie back into S.H.I.E.L.D. And that includes groveling. Fine by you?"

Another silence. "Wonderful." Fury barked out the word, disabled the connection, and turned around. Once every one of the screens had turned black, and he had his back to them, he stopped. And, just before he left the room, standing where no one could see him…

He smiled.

"Well played, Natalie Frost. Well played."

---

"Loki?"

He stirred.

"Loki, wake up. Please?"

His green eyes struggled to open. He had anticipated darkness, and was surprised by the yellow-gold light emanating from beside his bed. He sat up slowly, groggily, glancing towards the light source, and sucked in a startled breath.

For the briefest of seconds, his sleep-addled brain, which was still pulling his thoughts together, translated the sight in front of him as something very different from what it actually was. I was standing beside the bed, my hair messy, with a baby blue PJ top and pale pink PJ pants, holding my pillow and blanket in my arms. Knowing that he wouldn't particularly care for waking up in either pitch darkness or stark, blinding light, I had spread my glow across my skin- the golden light that he'd seen- and was now watching him with pleading eyes.

But, for a second, with that aura of energy surrounding me… Loki would have sworn that I was an Asgardian. That I was an immortal, likely as adept with magic as he was. I looked… different. Almost…

He blinked, and the illusion faded away, replaced by reality. He rubbed his eyes with one hand, trying to clear his vision. "What is it, Miss Frost?"

I chewed my lip so hard that I almost drew blood. It was the second night that we had been at Stark Tower and, as I'd predicted, the bad dreams had returned. "I can't sleep," I answered after a moment. "Nightmares."

"Hmm," he grunted out his understanding against his hand, still rubbing his eyes.

"Can I…" My voice was quiet. Small. "Can I sleep in here?" I paused, then tacked on quickly, almost silently, "With you?" Ugh, I felt like such a little kid.

Loki stopped rubbing his eyes but did not lower his hand; merely gave me an irritated glare over his fingers. We'd both agreed that we'd go into our separate rooms once we came back to the Tower. And even though I'd been able to tough it out and deal with the crazy nightmares and fears the first night… well, tonight was a different story. Tonight I was going insane. And there was no way that I could sit alone in the dark for even a second longer.

He sighed and allowed his hand to fall back onto the bed. "Banner?" he inquired. I nodded, wincing. That was usually what my nightmares were centered around these days, anyway.

"Please?" I emphasized, knowing full well how unlikely it was that he'd agree. I hugged my pillow tighter to my chest, not too keen on thinking about what the rest of the night would be like if he didn't. He might have tolerated it in the Healing Room, but the Healers wouldn't have told anyone, and they thought that it was for the best. There had been no risk to it, no possibility that the Avengers would discover us together and take everything the wrong way. Now… well, now was a different story.

Loki studied me for a very, very long time. Finally, sighing deeply, he gestured with one casual, too-tired-to-argue-right-now hand towards the unoccupied side of the bed. I grinned.

"Really?"

"Good night, Frost," was his only answer; he lowered himself back onto the bed and moved as far as physically possible from 'my' side. I hurried around the bed and set up on the side he'd indicated. When I lied down, I made sure to move as far as possible away from him as I could, just like he did. After I was situated, I snuffed the glow.

"Thank you," I whispered into the darkness.

"Mmm," Loki grunted out the uninterested, irritable response, his breathing slowing, becoming more even. I closed my eyes and willed myself to sleep. With Loki beside me, it was a thousand times easier; a few minutes, and I was out like a light.

When I woke up the next morning, my arm was draped over Loki, who had turned his face to me in his sleep. Unlike usual, I wasn't sprawled in any crazy angles, but rather sleeping on the bed like a normal human being. I was curled up next to him, and he was still fast asleep, his breathing steady and even beside me.

I opened my eyes and almost jumped back. Well. I hadn't expected that.

I pulled my arm off from around Loki, being very gentle, so that he wouldn't wake up and freak out about it. I scooted backwards on the bed a bit, but I didn't get up, not yet. I was studying Loki's face; and the thing that had surprised me.

After all, it was rare that I saw his Jotun form.

I guess I saw it recently, I corrected myself as I studied the blue face that looked (or rather, didn't look, as he was still asleep) back at me. And it was true, I had. He'd been in Frost Giant form when we were discussing the treaty with Jotunheim; he'd been forced to, in order to convince them of his bloodline. But this… this was different. This was unintentional (obviously) and, beyond that… I never really got the chance to study it like I wanted to. I didn't know why that was important; I had it pretty much memorized, anyway. Every line, every pattern, every color and hue… it was all so important to him. It was so prevalent in his life, and while he hated it with a powerful intensity, I clearly did not. I observed it, made note of it, remembered everything about it, gathering all the data to make a conclusive argument, a cohesive debate.

Besides, he looked beyond cool.

I smiled a little to myself. How could anyone hate this? I mean, sure, there were a few Frost Giants that I'd seen that hadn't looked so great; big deal, who cared about looks anyway? And Loki was so clearly not one of those, 'short' though he may have been. And even if the Jotuns wouldn't respect him for his appearances (and his height) I had thought from day one that he looked… magnificent. Seriously, if you're going to have a complex about your appearance, make sure you don't look like a friggin' (alien) supermodel, mmkay?

My smile stretched. His hair was out of place; that was rare. It was usually so perfect, every strand put into its proper order, neat and categorized, but now… now it was an entirely different story. I had to bite down on my lip in order to swallow my laugh; I had forgotten how long his hair looked when it wasn't perfectly slicked back behind his head.

Girl, I teased inwardly, still smiling, knowing that he could not hear me. Still, it was a good look on him (not that he'd ever change his usual style, he liked the way his Asgardian form appeared, thank you very much).

I propped my head up on my elbow. In his sleep, he looked… calm. Peaceful. Serene. All of the hate on his face had been wiped away, all of his past pain, all of his anger, everything that had ever hurt him or twisted him up inside, all gone. Poof. No nightmares. No bad guys. No monsters, no men. Just Loki.

I wished he could always be just Loki.

My heart gave its usual sympathetic stutter, as it always did whenever my thoughts traveled down this path. I was about to turn away when Loki stirred, waking slowly. His eyes opened- bright, brilliant, bedazzling red- and found mine.

He sucked in a harsh breath as he saw-through my eyes- what he looked like. He sat up and turned abruptly, throwing his legs over the side of the bed, his feet onto the floor, keeping his features away from my sight. Swiftly, he began to transform, his skin lightening, turning paler, until it had shifted completely, until he was once more back to 'normal'.

There was a long silence following this sudden, shattering movement. For a second, neither of us moved; I remained frozen in place, and Loki was staring at the ground, hearing his heart in his ears. He was… mortified. Crippling humiliation made his movements slow and brittle as he glanced down to the side, almost backwards towards me but not quite, so that I could see a small portion of his now-pale face.

"How rude of me," he said in a quiet, accented voice, sounding every bit like the wry, sarcastic gentleman. "You came in here to escape the nightmares; not to wake beside one."

I swallowed. Those words had me immediately straightening, sitting upright, reaching towards him. My mouth opened to say something, to tell him he was wrong, that I wasn't frightened of him in the slightest, that he looked magnificent, that he looked beautiful, that there was absolutely nothing wrong with this other side of him…

But no words came out. They stuck themselves on the sides of my throat and refused to budge. I kept trying for a moment, but when it became apparent that it was futile, I sealed my lips together again, mashing them in a hard line. My hand fell into my lap.

Again, there was silence. Then, abruptly, I pushed the covers

off of myself, turned around to my side of the bed, and slid down until my feet touched the floor, landing with muffled thuds against the carpet.

"Idiot!" I hissed out the word, gathering my blanket and pillow together and striding out of the door, my exit becoming sufficiently less dramatic as I tripped on the trailing blanket… twice.

Loki said nothing as I slammed the door behind me.

---

"S.H.I.E.L.D. wants you back."

I choked on my cereal as Natasha lowered herself into the seat in front of me. I hadn't even heard her come in. Heck, I hadn't even known that she was back on-planet. I coughed until my throat was clear as she watched blankly. "Run that by me again?" I asked with watery eyes, coughing a few more times to assist my breathing.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. wants me to hire you again; by any means necessary." She looked a little too triumphant. I had a sneaking suspicion that Loki was almost as bad an influence on her as he was on me. Then again, Natasha had always been a spy; and she always had followed her own codes, orders notwithstanding.

My throat now clear, I took a thoughtful bite of cereal, chewed, and swallowed before I responded. "And what's in it for me?"

Natasha gave me a look that very distinctly said 'good girl'. But then her face went neutral again. "They'll pay for your college education again, once you resume classes. You'll be reinstated to your old position, with your old pay."

I lifted an eyebrow. "What use to me is money? We're all dead, anyway."

"Well, you'll live in relative luxury until the imminent end of the world," Natasha answered with a careless shrug. "And, you have to admit, the end of the world happens quite frequently around us."

Truer words. I bit my lip. "So I'll spend my last days before Ragnarok writing reports for S.H.I.E.L.D. How… appealing."

She almost grinned, but a question pressed in the back of her eyes. "Ragnarok?" She asked, bemused.

I blinked. Had I said that? "The apocalypse," I explained.

"I know what it is. You've just been using a few more Asgardian terms lately." She shrugged again.

"Well, we all knew that would happen," I pointed out. I wasn't overly threatened by the way this conversation was going, but it did set me a little on edge.

She seemed to read that in my eyes. "Merely an observation," she assured me, before reorienting the conversation again. "And you have to do some kind of work to prove that you're on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s side. Your reports are the lesser of two evils."

I swallowed more cereal. "Well, I dunno," I said cheekily, stirring the milk in the bowl absently with my spoon. "I think I can do a lot better than S.H.I.E.L.D."

Natasha gave me a swift grin. "They're willing to name you as a human ambassador between our world, Asgard and Jotunheim."

I blinked. Twice. "Really?" I asked. "They're that desperate, huh?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

I laughed. "Tempting. But no. The day I become an ambassador is the day that everything falls to pieces." I shook my head. "Besides, if I let that become my job description, then I'd have to actually check back with these guys before I did stupid things; and then where would we be?" I shook my head again. "It's best if I stay as my own party. Well, if Loki and I do, anyway. I do less damage there, and I have a little more wiggle room to be reckless."

I thought for a long time, considering the options, weighing the variables. Finally, I set my spoon back into my bowl; it clinked quietly against the porcelain. "Tell you what; I'll take the job. Rename me as the Avengers' shrink, I'll BS up a few reports and send them on their merry way. On…" I counted quietly, "One, two, three, four… five conditions."

"Name them," Natasha said, seeming oddly cheerful. It wasn't something that the untrained eye would notice, but I'd been around her and the other Avengers for a long time now. I was getting better at reading her- and everyone else's- moods.

"First: the nanos. I want them signed over to me." Natasha lifted an eyebrow. "What, you think that I don't know what they can legally do to me? No way in hell. I want to be the sole owner of my abilities, and if they don't like it, then tough."

Natasha nodded slowly, folding her arms and leaning back almost casually in her chair. "Condition two?"

"If I'm late with my reports, or don't give them enough information, I don't want any crap. I'm dealing with the end of the world and a buncha political stuff. I don't want to deal with them, too."

"No lectures," she smirked. "Understood. And?"

"I want a raise."

She lifted an eyebrow. "I thought you had no use for money." She said, her eyes dancing. "That it won't matter to you at the end of the world."

"Well, as you pointed out," I tilted my head to the side once, quickly, smirking. "The end of the world happens quite frequently around us."

She half-nodded, a small incline of her head in my direction, the silent spy's approval. "That sounds reasonable. What else?"

"I want a jet."

"Never in a million years. Next?"

I grinned. That one hadn't been serious, anyway. "I want you to tell me the best way to sneak out of this Tower without the other Avengers finding out. And then I want you to shut up about it and don't say anything to the others until I get back later." I gave her a look. "I've got a bit of a mission of my own to take care of."

That got her attention. Her eyebrows furrowed, and she leaned forwards again, now more interested in the proceedings. Her hands folded on the table in front of her. "I'm listening."

I, too, leaned forwards, a little closer to her, bringing my voice down. "A few weeks ago, before Fraye's… attack. Before Loki's injury?" I considered, then added, "Before I went to Jotunheim the first time, when Jane first got sick." I could see her establishing the timeline in her head. She nodded a few times, slowly. "Fraye made an appearance. She was spouting off her usual crap; stuff about love and fear and how she was going to destroy it all, and blah blah blah. But…" I paused, chewing my lip. "She mentioned something about April's mother."

Natasha's eyebrow went up, and I looked away. "Mrs. Blackthorn hasn't called me in a while," I said, quietly. "Not even to rant. I'm getting worried. I didn't have a chance to follow up on it before, what with Loki almost dying and then Bruce… well, with what happened to Bruce. But now that I'm back on Earth, I want to check it out." I shrugged, a helpless little gesture. "And no one's going to let me out of the Tower."

Natasha frowned. "For good reasons," she reminded me. As I continued to look at her hopefully, she added, "I don't think it's the wisest choice, Natalie."

I blinked, then changed tactics. "Hey, if you don't do it, that's fine. I just won't take the job." I kicked back in my seat, crossing my feet at the ankles and folding my arms as I looked her in the eye. "And you're supposed to convince me to take it, right?"

She almost glared. Almost.

"Orders are orders," I tacked on brightly, smiling a wide and innocent smile.

She took me in for a long moment, considering all of the variables of the offer I'd given. When she'd finished, she sighed slowly. "No way I can talk you out of it?"

"Not on your life."

"Fine." And just like that, her motives switched. Natasha Romanoff was on my side now. I supposed that was just the way it was with spies. "I'll do recon, see what floors the others are on, and take care of the cameras for you." She glanced up to the ceiling as she stood. "But if JARVIS already heard, then there's not much I can do."

"Don't worry about that," I responded easily; her eyes narrowed on me with a trace of… well, it was close to suspicion, but it wasn't quite there. It was more of an 'I-obviously-need-to-keep-a-closer-eye-on-you'. After all, I'd clearly been planning this for quite a while. I was again the picture of innocence as I asked, "Just… keep everyone off the scent while I'm gone?"

She nodded. "Will Loki be going with you?" Her tone indicated that it didn't truly matter to her if he did or not, which surprised me. Apparently, she recognized what I'd been saying all along: that there was really no logical reason for Loki to want to escape, no reason that he would hurt anyone, even if he left the Tower.

"He shouldn't be," I answered. She nodded again and left the room.

I waited until she gave me the all-clear, then headed towards the garage using the path that she specified. The Frost-Cycle was waiting for me when I got there. But, as suspected, it wasn't the only thing waiting for me.

Tony tossed a set of keys my way. I caught them with ease and headed towards the car that they went to (the one that Tony had 'taught' me how to drive, in case of emergencies; I'd already had my license when I met him, but he improved upon my skills, and showed me the workings of all of these more expensive models). The two of us didn't say anything until we were both seated inside.

"How'd you know I wouldn't keep you from leaving?" Tony asked as I put the key into the ignition.

"Because she was your friend, too," I answered, turning the key. The engine did not roar into life so much as purr; and after a moment, it settled down into a soft and steady hum.

There was a brief silence as I checked my mirrors and began to back up. I had almost pulled out of the garage when Tony asked, "And how you know that I'd be here?"

I waited until I was on the road before I answered, settling back into my seat, keeping both of my hands on the wheel and both of my eyes staring blankly onwards. "JARVIS. I asked him how you kept tabs on everything; he says he notifies you when certain important events happen, or when certain keywords are said." I made a left turn. "One of those words is 'April'."

Another long silence. We were almost to our destination when Tony tried to speak again; I stopped him from doing so by placing a hand on his arm.

"I know," I whispered without turning to him. "I miss her, too."

He didn't say anything more after that. Another minute or so passed in silence before I pulled up next to a house on the corner of a street. A house that I had not been to in a very, very long time. I swallowed as I turned off the car.

It wasn't really that far of a journey-we could've walked if we really wanted to- and as I got out of the car, I almost wished that we had. At least I could've had more time to think, to prepare myself for what I would see beyond that door. I would've had time to get ready. But I knew I'd never be ready, that I'd be walking forever, that I'd never have the strength to walk up to that door. That I'd never have the strength to be anything but numb; like I was now. Stark stayed beside me as we walked forwards, and the two of us exchanged a glance before I knocked, twice, on the wooden door.

"It's open!" Called a voice; an oddly empty voice. It was most certainly Mrs. Blackthorn's, but it sounded strange, distorted. I put it down to the door between us, and the grief that had always been heavy on her mind since April's supposed 'suicide.' Her mother knew what had really happened, but she had been keeping up the lie like the rest of us, for reasons unknown to me. I wasn't sure I wanted to know why she was doing it; and a large part of me feared that it had to do with S.H.I.E.L.D.'s interference on the matter; and possibly a number of threats.

I opened the door and walked inside, Tony trailing behind me. April's house opened up to a small, wide, and empty room, with open archways to either side. One, I knew from experience, led to the hallway with April's room and the bathroom. The other lead to her mother's room, and the third hallway led to their living room and kitchen. I could see movement in the third and started walking towards it, a pit beginning to form in my stomach as I caught sight of Mrs. Blackthorn's hair; as black as her daughter's. I could only see the top of her head above the chair that she was sitting in, the chair with the tacky pattern and the one that was turned away from us. The rest of the room had the same arrangement, all of the furniture facing the TV. Away from the door. Away from us.

I swallowed painfully as I walked forwards, and stopped dead in my tracks as Mrs. Blackthorn said, in a quiet voice, "Hello, Natalie."

My heart did something funny, a weird lurch that had my stomach tagging along for the ride. Tony and I looked to each other, both of us wondering the same thing: how did she know it was me?

Before I could ask, the question was answered. "She said you'd come here now."

Well… we were dead.

I swallowed again, taking a step forwards, trying to make my way towards her. She was still talking. "She… She's never been wrong before, you know? And she's… she's so powerful, Natalie. She's so… she can do it. She can do anything, you can just see it, she can do it, Natalie."

She was saying my name over and over again, babbling. "Don't you see, Natalie? I have to do this. For her. You understand that, right, Natalie? You understand what the consequences are?"

I walked over to her, slowly navigating my way past her chair before I turned myself to face her. On catching sight of the woman, my breath hitched.

No. By the realm, no.

Mrs. Blackthorn was a relatively young woman; but it seemed to me that she had aged a thousand years since I'd last seen her. There were wrinkles on her face that had never been there before, and dark bags under her eyes. Her black hair had that grimy, unwashed look to it, her eyes were bloodshot, and there was a large bottle of whiskey beside her that had been half drained. A small glass rested beside it with just a hint of the liquid still inside of it. But none of that mattered, it was just background to the object in her hands, the gun that she was staring at so blankly.

"She said she could do it, Natalie," Mrs. Blackthorn's voice was quiet and girlish. No matter how old her face now was, her words were that of a child. She had regressed, her path aided along by alcohol.

Carefully, I began to reach out to the other woman. "Mrs. Blackthorn, I need you to put that down," I ordered in a slow, meticulous and hopefully soothing voice. I didn't know what she planned to do with the thing, but given how much alcohol she'd clearly consumed- as I could tell by the bloodshot eyes, and the slurring in her words- it was probably a really great idea to get it the hell away from her.

For someone as wasted as she clearly was, she had incredible reflexes; the second I reached for the gun, it was trained on me, her eyes determined but her hand shaking. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" She sneered. "Kill her one more time, go on." I held my hands up in surrender, already considering battle strategies. Tony, without his armor, was the current weak link; I could probably protect him once I got my force field out; I did so, quickly, wrapping it around myself and the currently-not-so-Iron-Man. I didn't even notice at the time how easy it was to do so; the training had been paying off.

Mrs. Blackthorn buried her face in her free hand, running her fingers down her features exhaustedly. "She said she could do it," She had returned to pleading again. "You want that too, don't you Natalie? You want April back?" She squeezed her eyes shut, and tears rolled down her face. "I just… I just want my little girl back. And she can do it. It's so obvious that she can do it."

I blinked, trying to piece everything together. 'She' was obviously Fraye. 'She' had promised to give April back to her. Given how fervently Mrs. Blackthorn believed that she could do it, a display of freaky magic shadow powers had probably been shown to convince her. But why the gun? Why the 'consequences'? I had a nasty idea, and I hoped I was wrong…

But it was just so very like Fraye.

My heart sank to my stomach as Mrs. Blackthorn's next rambling confirmed my suspicions. "But she said that she can't do it without help, that it's so hard to raise the dead, that… that she needed compensation. A life for a life. Life for a life. You get that, right? And you murdered her. It's your fault, she said. You have to die so that April can live again. Because if you'd just died that day, she wouldn't have. And none of this would have ever happened."

I swallowed hard as the gun trained itself on my heart. "It's just… putting things right. Fixing the past. You said that you want April back, that you tried to save her, that you would have died to save her, well, prove it! Just… Just hold still." More tears rolled down her face. Her hand began to shake.

The look on her face made something in me snap, and suddenly, I was talking. More than that, I was shouting. "Of course I would have died for her!" I snapped out. "But magic doesn't work like that! You can't raise the dead; it isn't possible! There is nothing that can bring people back from the dead, nothing!" I took a step towards her, frustration burning in my stomach and making my hands clench into fists. "Don't you think that I would have… that I thought about that?"

"SHUT UP!" She screamed, standing suddenly, lurching to her feet and swaying a little. "JUST SHUT UP! You don't know anything, she's stronger than whatever you know, stronger than th-that thing that you fought, that Loki, the one who killed her… she's stronger than him, she's stronger than you, she can do this, and you… you just have to die already! Like you should have all that time ago!"

For all of her talk, she still hadn't pulled the trigger; and, even in my rage, I had to think that there was some peaceful way out of this. My heart was racing and my blood boiling as I directed my anger where it belonged, thinking of slow, painful deaths for Fraye. Even if Mrs. Blackthorn did shoot me, it wouldn't touch me; the force field would protect me. And Fraye knew that: she just wanted to screw with our heads. She probably thought it would be entertaining.

No… not entertaining.

She thought it would relieve the silence, if she heard people scream.

There was a pause after Mrs. Blackthorn's words as she sobbed into her free hand, the gun still trained directly on me. I was staring down its barrel and shaking like a leaf. I wanted to talk, to say something mean or spiteful, perhaps, or something kind and encouraging. But no more words were coming.

But then the words came out; and not from me. From Tony.

"It's sick."

Mrs. Blackthorn turned to him. In her confusion and determination to shoot me in the face, she seemed to have completely missed the Iron Man.

And Tony didn't appear to be done yet. His voice was oddly calm, smooth, as he kept talking. He even laughed a little, without humor. "It's actually sick," he announced, just as clearly as he would talk to a camera, the famous little sarcastic Stark smile back on his face. But his iron eyes told the truth; and I saw the metal inside of them, the copper wiring, the machine inside the man. "You're taking this choice into your hands like it's actually your choice to make. Like your daughter didn't already make it." His head tilted to the side. "Do you… Do you even recognize what April did? Did you even realize that she died to save the world? TosaveNatalie? To save the very person that you are now trying to kill?" He laughed again, that same mirthless, cynical chuckle that told me-told anyone who was listening- that he didn't really find it all that funny. "It's just sick. I only knew her for a few months, and even I could tell you that she wouldn't want this. And you… you're supposed to be her mother. And somehow you still think that this- that killing her best friend- is somehow okay?" His voice had started to rise. Not much, not really. But it was rising. "Did you even know her at all?"

Throughout Tony's metallically humorous tirade, Mrs. Blackthorn had done nothing but stare. But at this, at last, April's mother reacted, furiously stiffening. "Of course I did!" She snarled in response. "She was my daughter! My life! My everything!"

My eyes had long ago gone to the ground. But hearing this protest, I had to swallow back a sarcastic laugh of my own. Instead, I only trembled, keeping my gaze on the carpet, and whispered, "Liar."

The room went still. For a long few moments, no one even dared to move; least of all me. And then Blackthorn whirled on me. "What did you say?" She half-shrieked, half-spewed out the words, her voice high-pitched and almost frightened. My eyes went up to her.

"Liar," I repeated in a quiet tone, then shook my head. "You never knew her. Of course you never knew her." My hands started to clench as my eyes found their way back to the floor again. But I wasn't seeing the carpet. I was seeing all those years before now. Before April died. Before all of this. "How could you have known her? You were too busy pining after her father, waiting for him to come back, when you knew he never would. All you'd do after you came home was drink yourself stupid and collapse on the couch. You never talked to her. You barely looked at her."

"H-How… I… she was my daughter!"

"Then why didn't you act like it?" The hate broke me, and there was no distance in my tone, not anymore. There was only a snarl of fury. Months upon months of pent-up anger at this woman, who had been screaming at me about how I'd gotten her daughter killed, and months upon months of taking it silently, even knowing everything like I did… All of those months, all of the things that I'd wanted to say but didn't, they all came spilling out. "If you knew her, then tell me: what did she want to do with her life? Who was her biggest crush? How many losers did she date and break up with, how many times were you there when that happened? How many ribbons did she win at science fairs?"

"I… She… she wanted to be a teacher! To teach science!"

Already, before she could even finish, I was shaking my head. "Yeah, that's what she told you. That's what she told everyone who wasn't close to her." It took a step towards her. "She wanted to be an inventor. Those blueprints, they weren't just a hobby, they were her dream." Another step. I was shaking. "And she won a ribbon at every. Science. Fair. That she ever went to! Not always first place, she wasn't that good, but at every one! And she lived in terror that she wouldn't get the next one! And she won those so that you'd be proud of her but you never were!"

Tony was staring at me. Mrs. Blackthorn's eyes were wide. The gun was jittery in her hand.

"How… You… I knew her better than you!" She screeched at last. "You weren't her family, and you're the one who got her killed!"

"Family?" The word ripped out of me. This anger wasn't just about the year following April's death; this was the culmination of every secret I'd ever kept, every word that I'd kept quiet since the day I'd met April Blackthorn. "Family is there for you! Family celebrates your accomplishments and helps you when you need it! Family is someone you talk to when life gets bad and you don't see a way out! I was more her family than you ever were!"

"You-You-You couldn't even be there for her when she died! How… how can you say that you were there when she was alive?"

I barked out a laugh. It was a vicious laugh. It was painful, filled with blades. "Who do you think she talked to when she couldn't talk to you? Who do you think forged your signature on all of her permission slips? Who do you think slipped extra presents to her on her birthday, with your name on it? You think they just dropped out of the sky?" I took another step forwards. "Who do you think celebrated with her every time she won at the science fair? Who do you think went out for ice cream with her afterwards? It wasn't you!

"And why do you think that we swore to never touch alcohol a day in our lives? Because she refused to become like you! Because you never paid attention to her a day in her life, because the only time you ever talked to her was to criticize the color of her eyes, because she had your eyes and not her father's, and if she just had her father's then she'd have looked so much like him, well, guess what, she didn't! And she didn't have to, because she wasn't him, and she wasn't you, and she was perfect! She was perfect just the way she was, and her family should have been able to tell her that! And I did! I was her family! She was my sister! And I would do anything to get her back, anything at all, but… but this? This won't help anything! It's just your sick way of getting revenge, and it won't even work anyway, you know I can't die, you know it won't kill me, so just stop!"

I glared as Mrs. Blackthorn looked to me, seemingly unable to think of anything to say in her defense. Then, my eyes fell to the floor. "That's why I've put up with this for so long, you know," I told her in what was almost a whisper, and almost a rasp. "Because I know that you're not mad at me for taking her away. You just needed someone to blame." I looked back to her. "You're just mad at yourself. Because you didn't spend what little time you had with her… as her mother."

Following my barrage of words was a silence unparalleled. Tony was frozen beside me- a rarity, for him- and watching the situation with careful eyes. I was shaking, but, for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to cry. I was in pain, and there were sobs building in my chest, but there was no stinging in my eyes, no tears threatening to spill. Mrs. Blackthorn's gaze was locked on me, shocked and angry and hurt. There was so much hurt on her face, so much anguish. It was then that I realized that this fact, which I had recognized so long ago, had not been something that she consciously realized until this point. She hadn't even known why she was blaming me, she just knew that it felt right, that it seemed… right.

And now… Now the illusion had been shattered. She was a little kid, hiding from the nighttime monsters under the covers, and now I had torn them off. I had forced her to see her hate for what it really was, and to whom it was really directed… Slowly, the gun began to lower. Her grip slackened as her gun hand went to her side.

I took a careful step towards her, my only goal to get the weapon away from her. I expected it to be easy, expected to be able to step forwards and gently slip the gun out from her fingers, throw it away and whisper gentle, consoling words, promises that everything would be okay. But as I opened my mouth to speak those promises, as I stepped forwards to take the weapon, she looked up at me and smiled sadly. That smile locked me in place, made me stiffen, turn to stone.

"You're right," she breathed. And then she laughed; a little, frenetic, choked laugh that worried me. "I had her. She was my daughter, and I had her, and I couldn't…" Another sad, sick laugh. Her grip on the gun tightened again. I swallowed and readied my shield again, adjusting it so that it was once again positioned around Tony, an invisible wall shielding him from harm.

"Maybe I can fix that," Mrs. Blackthorn said quietly, her eyes scarily distant and detached. "A life for a life, remember?"

And then she raised the gun, placed it against her temple, and pulled the trigger.

Time didn't slow; it all but froze. I saw her finger shift on the trigger, saw the barrel press into her hair. I moved as quickly as I could, but I was affected by the time shift a thousand times more than anything else in the room; and no matter how fast I propelled my feet forwards, there was nothing that I could do. Still, I flung myself towards her, trying to stop her, knowing that it was useless, knowing that nothing could be done, even with my shield…

Thankfully, something else stepped in.

In normal time, the small object that flew past Mrs. Blackthorn and knocked the gun-and her aim- aside would have been nothing but a green blur, perhaps accented by a tint of silver. As it was, I could see it with perfect, crystal clarity: a small throwing knife with an energy-green tip, an emerald aura of magic. It struck the gun with enough force that, when she did pull the trigger, the bullet's path was disrupted; it skimmed the top of her head and immediately drew blood, which trickled down in her black hair and down the back of her neck in dark red lines.

The loud crack of gunfire, followed by what must have been a sharp pain in her head, seemed to scare Mrs. Blackthorn; she cried out like a person waking from a nightmare, screaming and collapsing to her knees. By the time she seemed to recognize that her first attempt had failed, I had wrenched the gun out of her grasp and flung it halfway across the room. I don't think that she would have tried again, anyway; two second later, and she was curled up on the ground and screaming, sobbing, tears pouring down her face and blood pouring down from the gash on her head.

My arms were wrapped around her in a heartbeat- partly to comfort her, partly to restrain her, to keep her from doing anything stupid- and I looked to Tony. He was staring, trying to comprehend what in the name of all that was what had just happened. I had a suspicion; and a quick sweep through my own head confirmed it.

My eyes darted to the window, where Loki stood, still half-angled from where he had thrown the blade, his eyes locked on me and Mrs. Blackthorn. Stark followed my gaze and swallowed thickly; he nodded at Loki, who nodded back and ducked to the side of the house where he would not be seen. He would get crap for this later, probably. But later didn't matter right now.

Call the cops, I mouthed at Tony, who nodded and pulled his phone out of his pocket. It was unnecessary; like all gunshots, this one had been deafeningly loud and would have attracted a lot of attention. But it was still best to report what had happened.

In my arms, Mrs. Blackthorn sobbed. "I h-have to do something right by her," she was mumbling. "Please… L-Let me s-s-save her…."

"Don't you dare," I whispered back as she started to rock back and forth. "Don't you dare. That's not what she would want. You know that. You know that."

"She's dead!" Mrs. Blackthorn shrieked. "She doesn't want anything anymore!" She pushed me aside, slapping me away. I released her and backed off quickly, but her aggression died seconds later. She moaned and curled up tighter on the ground, wrapping her arms around herself, trying to hold the broken pieces of herself in place. I retrieved the gun and kept my eye on her until Tony re-entered the room, then instructed him to watch her as I ducked out. I was doing more harm than good right now.

Loki was waiting for me outside of the house, leaning with exaggerated casualness against the side of the wall. When I exited, he straightened, looking to me.

"Nice save," I said, my voice quivering and weak. I cleared my throat and tried to speak with a stronger tone. "She here?"

His eyes flicked to the street; I followed the path that they indicated, all the way across the asphalt and to the other side. Sitting on a black-and-silver tricycle was a little girl with long, black hair. Her shadow stretched all the way into the street, long and tall and thin, stabbing into the black asphalt road. She was watching us with wide black eyes, and when she saw that we were both looking at her, she waved to us with an innocent smile on her face.

I waved back, then cupped my hands over my mouth, calling, "That all you got, sweetheart?"

"Nuh-uh!" She called back, shaking her head back and forth so that her hair bounced around her little head. She bit her lip, ducking back a bit, like a shy child. "Didn' Iecera tell you? I'm good at makin' deals!"

She held up her small index finger, pointing it high in the air, with the enthusiasm that only a child will have. "One left, lil' giant! One for you!"

She put her feet up on the pedals and rode away, her shadow always remaining stretched out behind her. Loki and I watched her go.

Even after she turned a corner, disappearing from our sight, we continued watching. We didn't stop until Tony opened the front door and leaned out of it. "You two better go," he told us quickly. "The police'll be here soon. We can't let them know that you-" he pointed a finger at me, "Hang out with an Avenger. And you," he looked to Loki, giving him a hard stare for a long moment that Loki met easily, and with exaggerated innocence. At last, Stark waved a hand about irritably. "I don't even want to know how you got out of the Tower." He turned to me. "Drive him back and stay put. I'll take care of everything."

"You sure?" I asked, pulling the keys out of my pocket.

"Just go," he emphasized, then ducked back into the house. I obeyed, walking to the car; Loki did the same, sitting in the front seat beside me. I took the long route- the one that would make it less likely for me to run into any cops on the way- and we sat there in silence. As I drove, my mind was racing, thinking over what I'd just seen.

We were about a block away when Loki ordered, "Pull over."

"We're almost there," I said, clutching the wheel tightly.

"You're shaking." He said firmly. "And you just missed a stop sign." He, of course, knew the rules of driving; he knew everything I knew, after all. His hand fell on my arm, the icy coldness of his fingers making me jump. His words were strong and full of resolve, words that would not be debated. "Pull over."

It wasn't until I felt his steady hand that I realized how badly mine were shaking. I did as he asked, pulling up next to the curb. For the longest time, I couldn't pry my hands off of the steering wheel; my fingers were like iron. You couldn't have gotten them off with a crowbar.

Loki waited until, one by one, I managed to relax the muscles in my hands. I stretched my fingers out for a second, then turned the car off and folded them awkwardly in my lap. I didn't look at the Trickster. My gaze was as locked on the window as my hands had been on the wheel.

When one of us finally spoke, it was me, and my voice cracked. "Thank you," I said, before clearing my throat. "For following me. For… For stopping her."

"I never leave you, Miss Frost," was his only reply. "That much has always been true."

"Yeah, but… you saved her life. You wouldn't have done that before."

"I was not dependant on your mental health 'before'."

I smiled weakly at that, and turned to him. His face was as cold and composed as ever. There was nothing to indicate in his eyes that there was any other reason for his quick intercession on Mrs. Blackthorn's behalf; his happiness was, after all, dependant on mine. I closed my eyes and rested my head on the steering wheel, being careful not to lean on it so hard that the horn blared. Pain throbbed behind my temples, and though I wanted to cry, I somehow couldn't find it in me to do so. "She has to die."

Loki, somewhat surprised by this assertion, and by the way I said the words- with just enough flat resolve and wearied determination that he knew how serious I was- looked to me. His eyes roamed over my entirety once before he looked away again, promising, "She will."

"No, I mean it, Loki. For everyone's sake. We have to kill Fraye Burns."

He was quiet; I turned to him, not lifting my head. He swallowed, and I could see the action in his throat. It looked painful. I had always been so against this, had always hoped for an alternative, had always left this one promise unbroken. I had sworn to myself that, if there was another way out, I wouldn't kill Fraye Burns. But that was the problem: there wasn't a way out. And now I was going to have to murder a sentient being. In my life, that shouldn't have seemed like a big deal. Every one of the others had killed someone; it was almost a rite of passage for becoming a superhero. You had to have blood on your hands. It wasn't a big deal.

But it was to me. I may have danced around the idea before, may have been angry enough to do it before, but when I was in control, when my fury didn't cloud my judgment, I had always thought that I wouldn't kill her. And, well, now I had no choice. Fraye had to die, and if I had to, I'd kill her myself. Because there wasn't another option. It was kill or be killed, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

This can't be allowed to happen again.

Loki watched me for a long time. Then, slowly, he turned his head away again, so that he was once more looking out of the car's front window. A small, bitter chuckle slipped from his mouth and touched the air.

"You know… there are days, Miss Frost, when I forget what you did to me." He gave me a sideways glance, his eyes sliding over to me. I did not have to ask him what he was referring to; our connection more than ensured that I knew: his thoughts were centered around the time after April's death, in which I, with all of my bubbly might, had beat the living daylights out of Loki Laufeyson, a powerful Jotun, a Frost Giant and a Master of Magic.

"It may not stop Fraye… it will not stop Fraye. But, when you are determined…" He looked away once again. "You are truly a force to be reckoned with."

And then all of the sly humor died out of his eyes. The hope was sucked away from his features, draining out of him and pooling at his feet. "Let us hope it is enough."

A lie. For there was no hope.

I swallowed tightly. We sat in silence once more, until my hands stopped shaking. But then a nagging thought stirred in my brain, something that I didn't want to think, didn't want to even contemplate. But the question would not die until it had been spoken and so, steeling myself, I asked, "Loki?"

"Hmm?"

"Is it… is it possible?" He looked to me, and I to him. "Fraye is… extraordinarily powerful. One of the most powerful creatures I've ever seen or heard of; if not the most powerful." I swallowed. "Do you think… do you think that she's that powerful? That she could… bring someone back from the dead?"

The look on Loki's face suggested that he had expected this question; but he still did not wish to answer. He thought it over for a long moment, his eyes on me, before sighing deeply. "No," he answered with undeniable certainty. "Magic can do a great many things, Natalie Frost. It can heal certain injuries and repair damage that has been done. It can wound and maim, and in many cases, it can kill. But nothing can bring the dead back to life." He sighed deeply. "Even when magic is concerned, death is easy… but life… life is impossible."

I swallowed painfully. It was what I'd thought he'd say. I knew everything he did about magic, but it was often hard to keep everything straight in my head; it was, after all, an immortal subject, and I was still just a mortal. But, I had to be certain. And now I was.

He thought in silence for another long moment, then seemed to decide something. Carefully, he added, "However, there are… imprints. Echoes of life and consciousness that can be accessed." At my questioning look, he explained, "When you live… when you die… traces of yourself are left behind. April is no longer here; but her sweater is, her blueprints, the things she wore and created and did… the memories of her are still here. And these 'echoes' are much the same. Like a footprint in the sand; the shoe that made it is long gone, but the footprint, the echo she made in the universe, remains."

I frowned, thinking about that. "Like… a ghost?"

He shook his head. "No, not at all. The term 'ghost' implies a soul that has been… trapped. This echo is more of an… imprint, an idea of consciousness that is left behind. It is likely that it would not even remember dying; the echo of that moment was but a few seconds long, not nearly enough for a memory."

I frowned. "Wait…" I cut in, not really having a protest yet but needing him to slow down. Something about that was… off, to me. Loki was obligingly silent until I figured out what it was. "Wouldn't… wouldn't a death be like… a horrible thing? Wouldn't it be so violent and… well, wrong that the… the imprint would remember it above anything else?"

Given what had just happened a few minutes ago, Loki tried to dial back the patronizing look on his face, the tone in his voice. He was highly unsuccessful. "No," he answered. "That is a human sentiment: to believe that death has such a drastic effect on the universe itself. This imprint would not be a human, with a human memory; it would be an echo of a human, with the universe's memory of it." He shook his head. "The entirety of the universe would not care if one person died. Perhaps a mass slaughter would create a memory, but even then… it would be faint. Death is but one more part of life; and a very brief part of it, in the grand scheme of things."

I thought that over. Loki, too, seemed to be contemplating his own words; and after a moment, he corrected himself with, "Perhaps it would be an easier analogy to say that it is not the universe's memory… but rather the memory of time." He looked to me. I looked back. My head was starting to hurt, but I was still following. For now. "Time is vast and nigh infinite; it does not care what happens during its course. If one man lives and dies, time could, perhaps, remember his life; but his death would have been less than a blink of an eye. How could it remember something that passed by so quickly it could not even be seen?"

I didn't say anything. I understood that, I supposed. And, after a moment, I sighed quietly. "Time kinda sounds like an ass."

He didn't smile. But he did respond, "Has that not always been the case?"

I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry; and it seemed Loki wasn't, either. We both settled for staring blankly out the window again.

Finally, after a few moments of silence, Loki cleared his throat. "To bring the dead back to life is…impossible." He informed me, in a gentle and quiet voice. "But magic can allow that…echo to be seen and heard." His eyes grew distant again. "However, when it does… the tide comes in, and the footprint begins to wash away." He looked to me, his eyes focusing again, and he seemed to recognize that he was speaking to a human and thus had to use small words. "Does any of this make sense to you?"

I thought it did, and I nodded very, very slowly. "Yeah."

For a second, he looked as though he doubted that. But he went on, anyway. "It is nigh impossible to allow this echo to be seen for even a brief period of time. Only the most powerful of magic can accomplish it; and in a place specifically designed for such a purpose." He shook his head. "No, it is not possible for Fraye to bring her back. The dead are dead. And they remain that way."

I swallowed tightly and nodded again, turning away, taking that in. I leaned my head back against the headrest and thought it over for a long, long time.

Finally, acceptance settling in, I turned to him. "So… no zombies, then?"

At last, he cracked the tiniest of smiles. "No zombies," he confirmed.

---

With the possible exception of Clint, no one gave Loki and I too much of a hard time for sneaking out of the Tower. And Natasha even pulled Clint off of us after a while.

"Barton, back off," She warned. "Blackthorn almost killed herself. You should be glad that Loki was there to stop it."

"She wouldn't have tried to kill herself if Natalie hadn't gone to see her in the first place," Clint mumbled. My hands clenched, and I repeated an old mantra in my head, keeping my eyes on my book: It's not him, it's not him, it's not him.

"If she hadn't gone, then Fraye's play for Blackthorn would still be in place." That was, surprisingly, Loki. And that was surprising only because Loki so rarely defended himself against Clint; or really, against anyone. He usually didn't see the point in arguing with people who would believe the worst of him in any case. Making those kind of pointless arguments was my job.

"This chain of events has been set up by her from the beginning and was, in fact, inevitable." Loki set his book down and folded his hands, looking at Barton evenly. "And if Natalie had not gone there, then Blackthorn would have come here. I believe the situation was handled rather well, all things considered."

"Or you're just testing the boundaries, seeing what we'll let you get away with."

Loki didn't even bother giving a response. By now, we were all tired of Clint and his crap. Part of me was tempted to just call S.H.I.E.L.D. and tell them that he was compromised already; if he got locked up, at least it would get him out of our hair for a while.

When no one protested Clint's latest argument, he glared at us all and walked out of the room. "I'm gonna go shoot something," he muttered as he went, slinging his bow off of his shoulder and heading towards the elevator.

"Have fun," I couldn't resist calling, not looking up. Clint said something that I'm certain wasn't fit for civil conversation, and Thor entered the room. I shifted, turning to him; I hadn't known he was back on planet.

"How's Bruce?" I asked the instant I caught sight of him, not bothering to make any attempt at pleasantries. If Thor was here, then that meant that Steve-whose shift was next- had gone up to Asgard. The Thunderer sat across from us and ran his hands down his face.

"Not well," he responded gravely. "The Healers have…"

He was silenced when Natasha shot him a look. It took me a moment to realize why he'd suddenly shut up, but when I did, my eyes narrowed on the spy. "Uncool, Widow."

When the room fell quiet, and no one continued on Thor's narrative, I groaned. "Come on, you guys! You've gotta let me know something at least!"

"'The wait is half the torture,'" Loki reminded his brother quietly, not looking up at him. Thor's eyes tightened as he recognized the old saying, which had not been spoken in English; but rather, an old Asgardian dialect.

"Thank you!" I exclaimed at him, gesturing wildly towards the Trickster. "See, he understands!"

Loki turned the page with a bored expression.

Natasha looked at Loki in confusion; it was rare that someone got away with speaking secrets in a foreign language around her. Mostly because she spoke every language known to man. Thor sighed deeply.

"It is… unpleasant," he warned me. He and Natasha shared another look, in which his eyes seemed to indicate that we were right, and he knew it. She shrugged with one shoulder and looked away again, suddenly seeming uninterested in the proceedings.

"Thor, the mother of my best friend just tried to shoot me, and then herself, in front of my eyes." I folded my arms. "I think I can handle it."

Thor considered that, hesitant. Then, finally, he opened his mouth to speak; but he didn't seem able to form the words. As his blue eyes flicked down, Natasha- who hadn't even been looking at us- sighed and took up the duty for herself.

"There were a number of minor injuries," she informed me. "And three very deep slash marks on his back. They say that he'll have a few small scars, but nothing serious. And there is no sign of torture."

I was about to breathe a sigh of relief when Thor spoke up again, talking as though the words hurt him to say aloud. "Actually… there was."

Natasha looked to him. Apparently, this was news to her, too. My stomach clenched, and all my relief went bye-bye as Thor spoke again. "There was… a symbol."

He looked to Natasha. The hardness in his blue eyes- something that I rarely saw- provoked her into honesty; and I saw that this wasn't news to her at all. She sighed quietly and finished for him. "It was inscribed into the top of his spine," She told me, once she met my eyes again. I held no animosity to her for trying to lie to me; she was a spy. That was what they did.

Thor nodded once, approvingly, before concluding, "It was not of Asgard; nor any known realm."

I sat there for a moment, waiting for them to continue. They didn't, so, wordlessly, I leaned over the armrest of the couch I was sitting on, set my book on the floor, and picked up the sketchbook and pencil beside it. Flipping to an empty page, I tore it out and handed it and the pencil to Thor. He understood, drawing it out with exaggerated care that still yielded naught more than a clumsy sketch; but it was enough.

When he handed the page and pencil back, I took both and set the pencil down before scanning the page. I could feel my eyes clouding, a storm brewing somewhere inside of me, and I stood, crumpling the paper into a ball. Throwing it over my shoulder, I muttered, "Bitch."

The word was dead and toneless. The paper fell onto the seat that I had just occupied and rolled down the cushion, towards Loki. He hadn't looked up from his book during the entire conversation, but now his boredom seemed even more empty and apathetic than ever. I walked towards the door. "I think I'm gonna go help Clint shoot things."

No one tried to stop me as I left. Loki felt the others' questioning gazes on him and sighed.

"'Inside'." He answered their unspoken queries. "It means 'inside'. As in, what lies inside, what is inside of you at all times." He still didn't look up. His tone was wintry as he added, "I'm certain you know what she was referring to."

There was a long pause before Natasha asked, "What language?"

It was the question Loki had not wished to answer. "None." He blinked, trying to focus his eyes on the words at the bottom of the book. "Banner and Natalie created it. In order to keep Stark from prying."

The silence grew thicker. More choking.

Loki turned the page.

I stalked down the stairs, not wanting to take the elevator, desperate to burn off a bit of my anger. By the time I made it to the training room, I was having a hard time breathing, and my heart was pounding, but the anger remained. It empowered and drained me, made me feel weak and sick and yet capable of demolishing houses with my bare hands. It was an old feeling by now. It was something I was used to.

I was used to this.

What had happened to my life?

When I entered the training room, Clint released an arrow; it flew across the room and struck the target dummy right in the eye. A bunch of other arrows littered the dummy's body. He caught sight of me from the corner of his eye and turned, his face stuck in a perma-glare.

He opened his mouth to say something-probably something cutting and nasty- and I lifted my hand, stopping him. "Enough," I snapped. "I am going through some serious shit right now, Barton, and I don't need you adding to that. I'm here for one reason, and one reason only." My eyes zeroed in on his as I took a few steps towards him, until I was only an inch away. I brought myself to my full height, glaring. I was within a hair's breath of a super spy, one of the most deadly assassins known to mankind, and I was practically challenging him. The old me wouldn't have done this. The old me would have skirted back and laughed nervously.

What had happened to me?

"I'm here, Clint, because I miss my friend. I miss the man who taught me how to shoot a gun, who gave me a lethal weapon for my twentieth birthday. I miss the man who taught me how to defend myself. And right now… right now I need that man." My words were so sincere that they bled, bright crimson droplets oozing down to the carpet. "I need you, Clint. Not one more enemy. I have enough of those. So, just for today, can we put all of this crap aside and just fight together?"

Clint seemed actually surprised by my sudden change in mood. He didn't respond, staring at me with eyes that were almost wide, but not quite.

But maybe my Clint was in there. Maybe my friend wasn't entirely gone. Because, after a long moment, he pulled a gun out of his belt and handed it over to me.

"Get your gear. Shooting range in two minutes."

I nodded once, and he turned around and left.

---

Half an hour later, I yanked the clunky earphones down off of my face and let them rest on my neck. Pulling off the thick goggles, I rubbed my ears, then my ears, trying to clear away the lingering sound of gunshots. Clint leaned against a nearby table, cleaning off his gun with care, watching me.

"Better," he said. "Not great."

"Better than my knife-throwing," I replied, setting the gun down on the table with more than the required caution. My fingers were vibrating, still anticipating the recoil of the weapon that I was no longer even holding. The smell of gunpowder was thick in the air as I picked up the sniper rifle that he'd placed on the table. "I'll never get good enough for this," I admitted, with a trace of longing.

For the first time in a long time, a smile twitched on Clint's lip. I caught sight of it and, though I inwardly celebrated, I put on a false scowl. "Just 'cause you've been a sniper since you were five years old doesn't mean that everyone else has your mad skills, okay?"

He chuckled softly. The laugh was loud enough to touch the air, but not enough to touch his eyes. I pulled the headphones off of my neck and set them down on the table, then leaned back against it and massaged some feeling back into my hands. Clint, standing right beside me, was quiet, and the two of us waited for the ringing to die out of our ears.

"You're right, you know."

I looked up at him, surprised that he'd spoken in the first place; and somewhat curious about what he'd actually said. "I'm sorry?"

"You're right. I've been brainwashed. I'm just a puppet." His voice was oddly casual, until he added, "Again."

I could sense, rather than hear, the sincerity and pain behind that word. He was still leaning against the table, looking flippant… but this was the second time that Clint Barton's brain had been screwed with, and he was sick of it. He was sick of not being himself. I could understand that. In fact, that was half the reason why I hadn't decked the archer a number of times by now.

"Oh?" I lifted my eyebrows. "And how do you know that?"

He didn't answer for a long moment, so I ventured a tentative guess. "Was it Loki's scars? The fact that you didn't recognize that he was tortured? Is that what finally convinced you?" Just because I had the willpower to keep from punching him, didn't mean that I had the resolve to keep the bite out of my words. I reined it in quickly, trying to keep things civil.

But he didn't seem to have noticed my hostility; he just shook his head. "No. It was Natasha."

My eyebrows furrowed. He held out a hand, palm up, to me. An invitation. Frowning, I placed mine inside of it, and he closed his fingers around mine, lifting my hand up and placing it on the back of his neck. His hand covered mine completely, and he navigated my fingertips until I felt something beneath his hair; something small, beadlike, and clearly made of metal. My eyebrows went up.

Clint laughed bitterly. "It's your fault these things exist, you know. You and that damn nanotechnology." He released my hand, and I pulled it back, looking at him questioningly, my mind racing to put the pieces together. "S.H.I.E.L.D. started developing their own versions of it once they realized that Stark had succeeded in creating a working nanomachine." He laughed again, and it was dry and crackled, like a sand-shattered desert landscape. He kicked his foot against the ground thoughtfully, leaning back on the table again.

"The idea that they'd blow up inside of a person's system… it was just a fluke. But that fluke gave S.H.I.E.L.D. other ideas; ways to take down enemies from the inside." His eyes were unexpectedly sharp and dark, obsidian blades, as they landed on mine. "Or ways to ensure that their own agents didn't talk."

I felt abruptly sick. My arms half-folded over each other and half-wrapped themselves around my body. "So S.H.I.E.L.D. injects its agents with them just in case they go rogue."

"No. S.H.I.E.L.D. hasn't made them widespread yet. Right now, I'm one of the few who actually has them."

I frowned. "How?"

"I told you. Natasha."

My eyes widened. He laughed cynically at my shock. "No one else could ever get close enough," he informed me, turning to the table and lifting up an arrow. He started to twist its head, checking the device attached, making certain that everything was in place and secure. "I'm sure she has the detonator with her at all times."

I swallowed painfully. It was a lot to digest. I'd known that Natasha was keeping her eye on Clint, making sure that he wouldn't do anything stupid, but this… this was another story entirely. I started twisting my hands. "Did you… I dunno, confront her on it?"

"Of course," he answered easily. "She thinks I'm brainwashed. Given how that's happened before… I trust her instincts more than I trust my own head."

Well, that was sufficiently twisted. I struggled with a sigh. Yep. This was my life, and these were my people. Clint picked up his bow, knocked his arrow, and aimed at the target all the way across the range.

"What did she say?" I asked. Clint froze. He lowered the bow, and the arrow.

"Nothing," he answered.

I arched a skeptic eyebrow. "Nothing?" I asked. "You told her that you knew she'd planted explosives in your bloodstream and she said… nothing?" Well, that did sound a bit like Natasha. But still, it was kind of cold blooded. And she wasn't that bad; at least, not around Clint.

Barton looked at me for a moment, his head tilting to the side. "I didn't tell her anything, Natalie. I didn't have to." At my confused look, he gave me another dry chuckle. "I think you misunderstand how spies 'confront' each other." He told me, setting aside his bow again and pulling something out from his belt; a small, sliver of a black box, with a number pad for punching in a code. I studied it for a long moment, willing it to make sense, then looked back to him, entirely lost.

"And that would be…?" I prodded, half irritated, half frightened of the answer.

"Her detonator," he replied. "The one that triggers the nanos that I put in her bloodstream." He tapped the little bauble on the back of his neck for effect. My eyes bugged.

"You're kidding, right? Please, tell me you're kidding."

"Do I ever?" he tucked the device back into his belt.

"Does she know?" I demanded, shell-shocked.

"Of course she knows. She's Natasha."

My eyes stayed wide and my jaw slack. I resisted the suddenly very severe impulse to throw my head into the nearest brick wall. "And did she… I mean, did she say anything? Do anything?"

"Spies," was his only answer. I ran my hand through my hair. This was too much. These two… they were just… incredible.

"That's the most twisted thing I've ever heard in my life."

He shrugged. I shook my head slowly. "It's just… so wrong."

"That's us, Natalie. That's who we have to be."

Again, his tone was casual. Again, he seemed so careless. But again, the sincerity that we had both long ago lost touch with in our life of lies now seemed to flood from his words. I looked up to him, studied him, as he turned back to the bow and knocked his arrow again.

"You know… you two are so freaking sick… that you're downright adorable."

He gave me a quick flash of a grin- the first and last one I would see in a long time- before I left the room.

---

"Precisely what are you doing, Miss Frost?"

"Shut up, don't move," I ordered, shifting aside a great deal of Loki's black hair away from the back of his neck. He squirmed unhappily away from me, but I kept a firm hand on his shoulder so that he couldn't get away. "It's for your own good," I added.

He scowled and sifted through the memory that I had brought to the front of my mind as explanation. Clint's little talk with me about the nanomachines that were now in both his and Natasha's blood had me worried; and I had decided to systematically and subtly check everyone's necks, just in case. But, seeing as 'subtle' was pretty pointless as far as Loki was concerned, I decided to deviate from that plan for now.

The Trickster finished his scan of my memory and swallowed, settling back a little more willingly, submitting to the search. Once I was certain that his neck was free of any life-threatening metal baubles, I announced, "Clear."

He waited for me to sit down in front of the couch where he sat before brushing my hair aside and checking my neck, which was red from where I had been scratching at it for the past few minutes, convinced that I would find a small metal ball beneath my fingernail at any second. After a moment, he pronounced me free of metal and I turned around, scooting backwards a few feet so that I could see him properly

"So that was disturbing," I stated cheerily. We were alone in the room, just me and him, without any of the other Avengers to pry in case our conversation took any unexpected turns. Hopefully not.

He gave me a look that hinted at agreement, but he seemed to find it beneath him to actually agree aloud. For a few minutes, we were quiet, taking in the most recent developments. A lot had happened in the past few hours; with April's mother and Bruce's injuries and now Clint's sudden confession of… well, putting a kill switch on his partner. And having his partner put a kill switch on him.

It was only as I sat back to think all of this over that I realized; in all of the craziness, I had missed one of my most important duties of the day. I sat bolt upright quickly, my eyes darting to where Loki's wound was, hidden beneath his shirt. Absently, looking as though he really couldn't care less, Loki followed my gaze to his side; and a quiet sigh slipped out of his lips.

I stood. He knew what I wanted, and I knew that he knew, so I didn't bother to voice it out loud. Instead, I just said, "Take it off." Gesturing with one hand to the shirt, my eyes stayed on his side, as though I'd suddenly develop x-ray vision and see what damage my negligence had caused the already-pretty-nasty-wound.

The look that Loki was already giving me turned sharper, and he did not comply. In fact, he leaned back in his seat and watched me with dangerous eyes, as though wondering if he should maybe remind me of the natural order of things: the simple things, like the difference between 'King' and 'Subject'. I lifted both eyebrows and gave him a look in return, putting my hand on my hip and slouching to the side. "Hey, as your Keeper, it is my duty to make sure that those injuries of yours are healing like they should. You know that." He didn't respond. He just kept glaring. I added, "Come on, might as well get all of the embarrassing stuff out of the way, right? Get this all done at once and I won't have to do it later."

His eyes narrowed. For a moment, I legitimately worried that he might do something stupid like attack me; but he'd been doing a lot better with that sort of thing lately. After a moment, he allowed his anger to dissipate. Eventually, he stood, turning away from me and heading towards the bathroom. I understood-the fresh bandages and everything else were in there anyway- and the two of us headed there together. I propped myself against the sink as he pulled off his jacket.

I could already see the scars on his arms- now beginning to heal- before he gripped his shirt at the hem and pulled it over his head, bringing the other scars into view. They were healing quite nicely, actually, but more than that, I noticed that he wasn't even bothering to keep them hidden beneath an illusion anymore. I supposed there wasn't really a point; everyone knew by now, after all.

I peeled off the old bandages and took a look at the injury beneath. Though I had a horrific phobia of needles and cringed any time someone talked about getting their blood drawn, I was surprisingly okay with seeing it right in front of my eyes, even in an injury like this one (which, thankfully, hadn't suffered any extra damage in the few hours that I'd forgotten about it). I pushed aside any feelings of disgust or nausea and focused on searching for the indicators that the Healers had taught me; blackening at the edges, or really any other color that looked like it didn't belong among the red blood and pale flesh, and any odd differences between what it had looked like before and what it looked like now. Also, fever; I pressed my fingertips along the edges of the ragged wound, testing to see if his skin was any hotter than normal. It wasn't, as far as I could tell, but he was a Frost Giant, and when he wasn't in contact with anything else, he was as cold as ice anyway.

I frowned. "Wait here?"

He nodded, and I ducked out of the room and headed towards the kitchen. I filled a bowl with ice and shoved my fingers inside, biting my lip as they started turning numb, the blood in my fingertips no longer circulating.

"Okay, ow," I grumbled, flicking water droplets off of my hand as I headed back. Loki watched from inside my head, mildly amused by these little struggles, and waited for me to return with great- and somewhat exaggerated- patience. I patted my fingers dry with a towel, trying not to heat them up again, and pressed them against his skin. It felt approximately the same temperature. Maybe a little warmer; as a test, I placed my still-icy fingers on his arm-undamaged as it was, it was the perfect control- and felt no difference. I smiled a little and tossed the fresh bandages his way.

"You're good," I pronounced as he unrolled the gauze. Gesturing to it, I asked, "Need any help with that?"

"Naturally not," he replied stiffly.

I shrugged, letting him take offense. It just made it funnier when he totally botched the whole thing up. It was very hard to keep the grin off of my face as I stepped forwards to help him reapply the bandages, but the molten magma that poured out of his stare and onto my back was daring me to show the expression; a dare that I did not accept for the sake of my health. Carefully, I took the gauze from his hands and undid the bandages. He continued to glare for a while, so I stayed silent.

It was only when he'd looked away that I decided it was safe to speak again. "Weird question for you?" I asked as I readjusted a pad of gauze.

"If you must."

"Oh, I must," I said, still oddly cheerful. Despite the weirdness of the spies wrangling my brain, going to the shooting range did seem to have done wonders for my mood. And Stark had informed me earlier that Mrs. Blackthorn had been put under observation, so a few of my worries for her had gone down.

"Your skin always feels like ice to me, right?" This was no big secret, and so, warily and wearily, Loki nodded. "And to everyone else, right?" I prodded. More warily and less wearily, he nodded again. "So what about vice versa?" I put my hand on his arm again, the hand that I had not dipped in ice cubes. "Does this feel… like, abnormally warm or something?"

He shrugged. "Everyone's does."

I took my hand off again. "Thought so." I frowned. "You never thought that was… you know, odd, as a kid?"

"Do children ever question the world around them?"

"Suppose not." I answered, easily enough. I finished with the gauze and stepped back to survey my handiwork. "All better," I told him with a grin. He ignored me and pulled on his shirt. I bit my lip and started thinking again, which made Loki a little nervous. Very few good things happened to him when I started thinking.

"So you can't get cold, but you can get hot. Interesting." I waited for him to slide his jacket over his arms before I started with more of my pesky questions. It had been a while since I'd gotten curious, but every so often, I just liked to know answers to the stupid things. Loki usually tolerated it for a while, then snapped at me to shut up when I got too bothersome. "When I hold your hand, it warms up after a while. Does mine cool down or something?"

"Something like that," he answered smoothly, without even thinking… and then winced as we both realized that it was a lie. My eyebrows shot up. He was walking past me, and I took my next few steps in long, fast strides in order to catch up and keep up, walking right beside him.

"Oh?" I asked, smirking just a little. "And what's your next lie?"

He sighed deeply, rolling his eyes, and didn't respond. Usually, I would stop prodding him after a while, once I'd determined that he truly didn't want to talk about it; after all, I'd find out eventually, anyway. But this time, I couldn't help but think of all those times when I'd had something embarrassing to hide, and he wouldn't let me.

Let's just say that revenge was very prevalent in my thoughts at the moment.

"Come now, Loki," I said again, moving a step closer. "Tell everything to Dr. Frost: keeping secrets isn't healthy, you know."

He gave me his best scowl. I grinned up at him, and was surprised to see that his face was… well, it wasn't red, but his cheeks were a bit pinker than normal.

I laughed. Loudly. "Are you blushing?"

"Of course not!" He snarled.

Lie.

"You so are!" I laughed again. He gave me a death glare to end all death glares, and I skipped up in front of him, blocking his way out; out of the room, out of the conversation. He looked ready to just throw me aside, but I planted my feet and tried to look him in the eye. Unfortunately, his gaze darted away from me every time my eyes got close.

"What's so bad that you can't tell me, huh?" I asked, still light and mocking, but now with a little bit more care and sincerity. His teeth clenched. He finally met my eyes, so that he could stare ice daggers at me… but after a while, they softened and he sighed, giving up.

"It is not about 'good' or 'bad'. You are different. As you have always been different."

My eyebrows furrowed at the harshness in his tone. "How so?"

He sighed again, this time through his nose, and mashed his lips into a hard line, clearly unwilling to speak. Finally, however, he unclenched his jaw and forced the words out.

"It is as though… everyone else has always been… warm to the touch. And because everyone isthat way… I no longer notice. But you, as enigmatic as you are…" he reached out and took my hand, which was limp at my side, and held it up to my eye level. He held one of my fingers between two of his, holding it at a distance and looking at it as though it were… diseased. "You are different. And this?" He gestured to my hand. "This is all but… an open flame." He released my hand, letting it drop, his eyes abruptly sharper than before. I looked to him, surprised.

"It almost…" he didn't seem to want to say it. But when he did, he gave me the hardest of glares, as though challenging me, daring me to say something on the matter. "Hurts. It all but burns, whenever you hold my hand." With the combined force of his glare and the danger in his words, I found myself… unnerved, if not frightened. There was a silence, and I swallowed.

"But," Loki went on after a moment, looking away, "As we are the same person…" He shrugged, and suddenly his expression was mild again, suddenly everything changed and he was back to his cold, callous, hollow self. "I accept it as you. Much in the same way you accept my temperature as me." He turned away and started walking forwards again. "Does that answer your question?" There was a bite in the otherwise cool words.

I considered this for a long time, trying to determine how best to react; while at the same time, my shrink side was probing deeper into every word, finding hidden meanings that may or may not have existed. Finally, I decided to conceal a smile and walked past him, away to my room, a destination separate from his. He watched me leave, somewhat perplexed by my silent reaction, but I didn't bother explaining.

Because it wasn't anything he'd said about my unique, feverish temperature that had me smiling. It wasn't even the fact that he accepted that we were the same person, and let me hold his hand and hug him regardless of this quirk.

It was the fact that he knew that I accepted him, in spite of his temperature. And, perhaps, somewhere very far down, despite how he'd acted this morning, when I had seen his Frost Giant form while he'd been sleeping… perhaps despite that, he knew, somewhere, that I accepted him for what he was as well.

It was the most minor of victories, if you could even call it that. But it was still a victory, anyway.

I headed up to my room and put a few walls between Loki's thoughts and mine. I had a lot of thinking to do.

---

April sighed deeply, draping her arm over her knee. "I dunno, Natalie. I just miss her, is all."

"Yeah, I get that," I admitted, leaning back on my hands. It was a warm day, the sun high in the sky and baking the skin on my face and my bare shoulders. The concrete beneath my palms scalded my skin, made it red, but I ignored this, closing my eyes and tilting my head back, soaking up the brightly blazing sun.

"It's just… I don't know, she didn't deserve this, you know?" April turned to me, ignoring the babble of students that were streaming towards the busses as we waited for my mom to pick us both up. "He treats her like shit and walks out with some red-head, and she still wishes that he'd come back." She sighed again, resting her chin on her arms, which were folded on her knees. "And I get it, it's miserable, but it's miserable on both of us and she just… she doesn't seem to understand that he was my dad. Not just her husband." She pressed her lips against the scars on her forearm, muttering into them, "And I want him to come back, too. No matter what he did."

I swallowed hard, blinking a few times. "Yeah. I get that, too."

She gave me a sad smile.

"Yeah, I guess you would," She said, then sat back and shrugged. "Ah, I'm sorry. I just wish… I wish she had the guts to deal with it, you know? Instead of whining all the time. I mean, we deal with it, we don't take it out on each other or nothing."

"She's your mom," I started, and she rolled her eyes immediately, cutting me off by making 'blah blah blah' hand gestures.

"And I should respect her and love her and all that sugar-sweet crap. I know, I know."

I smiled at her. "Actually, I was going to say that she's your mom, so it would be considered morally wrong for you to slap her; even if you're just trying to smack a bit of sense into her."

She grinned. "What about your mom? How's she holding up?"

"She's good," I rubbed my arm, where the scars were beginning to appear again, reopening as wounds. I sighed heavily, wearily, and tried to wipe away a bit of the blood. I winced as they cut a bit deeper than usual.

"And the Avengers?"

"Eh, they're coping." The blood was starting to pour down my fingertips, copious red streams. I swore and bundled my arm up in my shirt. April noticed, saying nothing for a moment so that she could keep her eye on me while I tried to get things under control again. As I worked, I caught sight of her arm and gestured to it with a quick tilt of my head. "Hey, I forget. What do yours say again?"

She held her forearm out, displaying the word on the inside. "Same as everyone else's," She answered easily, as I read the name inscribed there: Fraye.

"Thought so," I swore again. "Man, this is bad."

"Need some help?"

"Nah, I got it. Loki'll take care of it for me when I get back home."

"'Kay." She looked away, her green eyes empty as she scanned the horizon. As we waited for my mother's car, knowing that it wouldn't come, the world started to disintegrate into ash all around us. The school drifted away into flakes of cinder and burnt memory, the sun dying, the sky burning out, until it was just me and April in a sea of gray, waiting. The bleeding slowed but did not stop; I looked to my arm, where the blood was still drizzling from the letters written there, making me dizzy.

They were the same letters as everyone else's: F-R-A-Y-E. But… the longer I looked at them, the more my eyes seemed to hurt, the more the word seemed to shift, to change… I rubbed my eyes with my free, non-bleeding hand, and looked to the dying horizon with April.

"I wish it wasn't him," She said in a quiet voice.

Air rushed into my lungs as I was plunged into darkness, into the real world, bolting awake with a gasp, cold sweat pouring down my spine. I flared my glow immediately, checking my arm, running my fingers down the smooth, unblemished surface of my skin, my heart racing as I found nothing. The darkness pressed in on all sides of my little glowing space, though the moonlight streamed in through the blinds, cold and silver.

I shuddered, taking a few deep, painful breaths, and ran my hands down my face. This was getting beyond ridiculous. I pulled my legs up close to my body… and realized only a few seconds later that I was not alone.

I looked to the figure that was standing by my door. He was immobile, frozen in place with his hand on the doorknob, looking at the ground. He was a shadow and a silhouette, barely showing up in the meager light of my glow, but I knew immediately who it was.

"Loki?" I asked groggily. "What… What are you doing here?" I glanced to the clock and protested, "It's the middle of the night!"

I admit to sounding a little bit cranky at that point. But the nightmares were getting to us; all of us. Even the Avengers had been looking more tired than usual. And they didn't even have any way to fight it, not like Loki and I did.

Not that our defenses had been of much use lately. After my one lapse-almost two weeks ago now- Loki and I had completely avoided sleeping next to each other; which meant a lot of sleepless nights and some very tired days. But I'd been persistent, and, at the very least, I had Jekyll. He was pretty good about letting me hug the air out of him when the darkness had me petrified.

Loki opened his mouth to speak… then seemed to decide against it, letting out an exasperated, irritable sigh. His hand tightened around the doorknob, and he twisted it, almost opening the door… but another thought seemed to make him freeze up again.

I swallowed, peering at his features, trying to distinguish them in the gloom. It took me a long moment to recognize the look on his face; the look that I'm sure had been on my face a number of times over these past few days. It was a mixture of childhood terror and silent desperation; and it was a feeling that I'd become well acquainted with.

However on his face, it was marred by hatred; hatred of this weakness, hatred of the fact that he was succumbing to this desperation and fear, hatred of his own inability to fight off the nightmares alone.

I sighed deeply. At that second, he seemed to notice that I'd recognized what was wrong; he gave me a poisonous, hostile glare. His eyes silently dared me to say anything, dared me to smile in the way he knew I would, daring me to accept this without question. Daring me to just smile my little knowing smile that he despised so much.

He couldn't stand to see that smile right now, not after this, not after all of those nightmares, not after being forced to come here, of all places. So I kept the smile away.

Instead, I sighed again, quietly. "You too, huh?" I asked, with a measure of quiet-but-dignified-defeat.

He didn't bother to nod. His eyes darted away from me again, and this time they stayed away. He swallowed, and I could see the action in his throat.

These nightmares will be the death of us, I found myself thinking as I gestured to the other side of the bed; a go-ahead sort of motion. His eyes hardened, and his spine stiffened, his pride damaged now that someone had been kind to him, now that I had offered him help.

I wanted to scoff at his damaged pride. As though I pitied only him. I pitied us both, thank you very much.

"I do not need you," he hissed out the words, but I rolled my eyes and didn't hear them. "I have no use for you." He gripped the doorknob and turned it, wrenching the door open. The action was almost violent.

"Then why did you come here in the first place?" I demanded, my tone abruptly burning. He again froze in place, my words stopping him, keeping him still.

"A momentary lapse in judgment," he answered glacially, looking over his shoulder so that he could glare icicles in my direction.

I held my ground. "Stop being such a coward." He turned away with a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, and I crossed my arms. "We're both having nightmares. We're both scared. And if we can help each other… then why the hell shouldn't we?"

He didn't reply for a long time. He didn't even move. So in response, I scowled and turned away, lying down again, pulling the covers up to my chin. "Fine. Then I'm going back to sleep." Not bothering to look at him, I spat out, "You decide if you can deal with the nightmares by yourself."

Curling into a ball, I tried to somehow block the unexpected pain that had shocked through my heart following my own words. Why was I upset about this? Why did I feel…

What did I feel?

I closed my eyes, squeezing them as tightly shut as I possibly could, pulling my pillow over my ears and burying my face in the mattress. He was just so… frustrating. With everything that was going on in our lives, he had to be so uptight and cold about everything… he couldn't even relax during the end of the world for realms' sake…

Well, you're not totally exempt from that yourself, a quiet voice in the back of my mind reminded me, a voice that wasn't Loki. My stomach started hurting at the thought of the people that I'd been more callous to in the days of late: my father at the top of the list. But there was a reason for that. My father hated my guts. It's hard to talk to someone like that.

I closed my mind off to Loki, not bothering to care if he left or stayed. A bitter feeling was churning in my gut, but I did my best to ignore both it and the lingering traces of my own dreams as I forced my eyes to stay closed, attempting to find sleep again.

I was alerted to Loki's decision when a ruffled, annoyed Jekyll jumped off of my bed and started whimpering. A few seconds later, the bed shifted; I could feel someone's weight lowering onto the other side, on the farthest edge from where I was.

I realized only then that I hadn't snuffed the glow; Slowly, I allowed it to dim, stopping only when Loki's fingertips brushed my shoulder with the barest hint of pressure.

I heard him say something, something that was muffled against the pillow that I had jammed against my ears. I lifted it off my ear and half-turned to the Trickster as he repeated himself, a quiet whisper of a word. "Don't."

He turned away from me. "Just… don't."

I swallowed, then allowed the glow to simmer a few shades brighter, turning away from him again. I realized suddenly how labored his breathing was, what a struggle it was for him to take even the most shallow of breaths. This was really hitting him hard.

I turned over once again, so that I was facing him- his back was turned to me now- and placed my hand on his shoulder. He didn't flinch away, as we both expected him to, though he momentarily cringed. But, after a second, he seemed to realize that there was no point in freaking out about it, and he allowed himself to relax.

I kept my hand on his shoulder for a long time, monitoring the movement of his breathing beneath my hand. Over time, it began to even out, slowing down and becoming steadier, easier. I closed my eyes and let my breathing do the same, my hand sliding off of his shoulder and curling up next to my body.

My thoughts spun their way into sleep, questions and answers tumbling about in dreams.

When I woke up the next morning, there were two distinct things that I noticed. The first: I had again curled up next to Loki, my arm draped over him. Oog. Cuddling. Ew.

The second, and perhaps more important, was what had woken me up. It wasn't the sun, or time, or Loki or an alarm.

It was Thor.

As you can imagine, it was a very serious oh-shit moment, considering my position.

"Miss Frost?" The Thunderer's voice came through the door, and I sat upright in a flash, not waking Loki as a matter of reflex rather than caution. I didn't have to try to avoid waking him. I just… didn't.

But, after Thor called my name a second time, that became moot; for his voice woke his brother, who sat up beside me and rubbed his eyes for a second. It took him all of three seconds to remember where he was and completely freeze up. His eyes darted to me and all but widened in fear.

I, on the other hand, stopped feeling so afraid and started feeling a little defensive. Loki and I hadn't done anything wrong. I mean, admittedly, this looked bad, but we still hadn't done anything.

Still, I thought ruefully, glancing to the Trickster on the other side of my bed. Try explaining that to the Avengers.

So I went with the best option I had: lying, and lying big. Clearing my throat, I called, "I'm awake, I'm awake!" I shook my head, letting myself fall into the full act, even if the Thunderer couldn't actually see me. "Sheesh. No need to yell."

The knocking-and the yelling- stopped. I thought I heard a smile in his voice as he said, "Very well, then." There was a pause. "You should get ready," he told me. "And wake Loki."

We both stiffened for a moment, afraid that Thor had guessed where, precisely, his brother was at the moment. But I relaxed as I remembered; I was often used as Loki's alarm clock; I was one of the few people who could actually wake him up, could actually get him to listen to me; even if those instances were few and far between. I tried not to sigh too deeply, afraid my relief would give me away even through the door. "Um… yeah," I said, in my usual, just-woke-up, distracted kind of way. "Sure thing." I jumped out of the bed, making sure to make my footsteps loud enough for him to hear. I frowned as I looked at the clock; it was a little… early for him to be waking me up. "What's the rush, though? I don't have training until tomorrow, you know."

There was another pause. And then he spoke. His words wiped away all of the worry of being caught, wiped away my relief that I might not be, wiped away everything. My life became condensed into that moment in time, and the world came to a jarring, but wonderful, halt.

"It's Banner," Thor said. "He's awake."

---

As always, despite his injuries and two-week coma, Bruce was in a fairly calm, good-natured mood. His wounds had mended quite nicely, even faster than Loki's had; Banner's were not quite so extensive, but considering the fact that he was a mortal… well, there was a reason that he'd been asleep for longer than the Trickster.

But he was better now, and that was all that mattered. I kept my hand permanently on his arm as he discussed everything that had happened with the Avengers; though I tuned him out once I'd gotten the more important details.

There was a great deal of the Hulk's battle with Fraye that he did not remember; and a great deal of what happened subsequently as well. As far as he could tell, she tired the Hulk out until he was forced to calm down and shift into Bruce again, then pretty much just sliced him up six ways from Sunday. It turned out that the marks on his back- the three long gashes- were from a Hound, and not directly from the Shadow-Bitch herself. The symbol, however… well, he shot a look in my direction until, unable to meet his gaze, I informed him that I'd translated it for the other Avengers (even though I really had Loki do it… same thing, in the end). He shrugged in response and continued with his narration on what had happened.

After a few hours of this, and a long session of Q&A, everyone began to trickle out of the healing room, one by one, until it was just me and-surprisingly- Tony. Usually Stark didn't have the patience for this kind of thing; but, I'd noticed, he'd been oddly edgy since Bruce's capture and subsequent return. Then again, it was rare that either of them could find someone on the same intellectual level as them; and even rarer that they could consider such people their 'friends'. I guess Stark was worried, in his own way.

Eventually, however, Bruce asked the Iron Man in a quiet but firm voice, "Stark, do you think you could give us a minute?" He gestured to me with the twitch of his head. Loki had hovered beside me for the first few hours, but he had eventually gone to the library; so, once Stark left, the two of us would be alone.

Tony lifted his eyebrows, then shrugged. "Sure thing," he answered, then stood and walked out. I hadn't said a word since Bruce had woken up, though my hand was still on his arm. I felt that, if I let go for even a second, I'd be wrenched away again, thrown back to Earth. Or worse: this would all be a lie. As though keeping my hand on him would keep any of that from being true, would keep Bruce from being torn away from me again, thrown back to her again.

When Bruce spoke, he gave no introductions. In fact, he hadn't even said hello to me since we first clapped eyes on each other. I don't think either of us had said a word. I'd just sat down next to him, held his arm, and that was it.

"Why'd she bring me back?" he asked, breaking the silence between us at last. I looked at him and blinked.

"The truth, please," he added.

I don't know what it was; maybe something in his eyes. Maybe something in his voice, with his words still so soft-spoken and gentle. But I knew in that moment that he was very well aware of something that Loki and I knew, but the others never had: precisely how out-matched and out-classed we really were.

So of course, this was his question: why Fraye brought him back. Why she allowed one of our strongest fighters to live. Why any of us were still alive at all. I sighed heavily. "Bruce…" I hedged.

"Why, Natalie?" he prodded, not having it, not letting me squirm my way out of it. "She had me by the throat. She could've taken me out and she didn't." I didn't respond. "The Healers said that she dropped me off near you. That she was talking to you. If anyone knows, it's you."

I swallowed tightly. But I couldn't lie to him anymore. Not to someone whose eyes had been opened by Fraye's deeds. I looked down and clenched my free hand in a fist in my lap. "Because she wants to lose," I said quietly.

His face remained passive. I looked to him, smiling sadly, weakly. "She wants to lose. She wants to die, Bruce, and who better to fulfill that wish… than us?"

He seemed to notice that I didn't say 'the Avengers'. Considering the fact that I wasn't one of them, 'us' meant something very different than the casual observer to our conversation would guess. 'Us' simply meant the people in this room. The monsters.

The ones who knew what the symbol carved on the top of his back meant… who had known from the beginning…who knew what it was to have something 'inside'…

For a while, all was quiet as Bruce digested this new information. Then, pushing it from my mind, I said, "It doesn't matter, anyway." He looked to me, and I went on, "We'll beat her one way or another."

But my words were toneless. Empty. They were shallow promises, as much a shell as these appearances that Bruce and I wore, appearances of calm, semblances of serenity.

Banner carefully removed his arm from beneath my hand, taking it in his instead. Holding my hand, he looked me in the eye. He didn't bother trying to make those promises any more real. We both knew how small of a chance we stood. Even though he knew of our newfound treaty with Asgard and Jotunheim, that much was still very obvious to him; that there was still nothing we could do to defeat the coming darkness.

There was a long beat of silence. Then Bruce asked, "Are you okay?"

My eyebrows shot up. "Me?" I asked, genuinely startled. "Are you kidding me? You're the one who just woke up from a coma for realm's sake!" Seeing as I hadn't answered his question, Bruce just gave me a steady glance until I rolled my eyes and added, "I'm fine, I'm fine. Yeesh."

He smiled lightly, that dry, sarcastic little Bruce-y smile that I had missed in the past few weeks. "And how's the team been holding up?" he inquired. I sensed his need to change the subject and, after a moment, considered a response.

Truth be told, I was a little surprised that he hadn't asked the Avengers directly, but then again, it was best to have an outside observer in this case. And of course he would be worried about the team; not just their welfare, but also how they were working together, if they would be able to face the threat that he had just learned a great deal more about.

"They're all right," I answered slowly. He waited patiently for me to piece together a more accurate report. "S'far as I can tell, other than the nightmares… we're all about the same as we were when you… left. Loki's injuries have gotten a lot better, so training's back on schedule for everyone. Steve's got us working to the bone." I bit my lip. "I think…" I looked to him, unsure of how to say this, unsure of whether or not I should say this. He'd wanted to change the subject, after all, and this was putting us right back where we started. "Well…"

Bruce, seeing the look in my eyes, took the task from me, whispering very quietly as my voice trailed off into nothing. "You think so too, huh?" My eyes found his and I kept gnawing on the inside of my lip.

"That Fraye's getting tired of the setup?" Banner went on. "That something big is going to happen soon?"

So he'd seen it, too. I shouldn't have been surprised; he was an incredibly observant person, when he wished to be. And, in days of late, he had been closer to Fraye than any of us. I nodded. "I think her next move, whatever it is, is going to be… I don't know, something awful. Maybe even her endgame. And I don't like where that's heading." I looked down to my hands and started picking at my nails. There was something else I wanted to say, something that I hadn't told any of other Avengers, for fear of how they would take it…

But if anyone could keep this secret and not blow it out of proportion, it was Bruce. So, finally, I caved. "A while back, she said something about… about how she was good at making deals. She said that she had 'one left'. One for Loki."

Bruce considered that, his eyes not leaving my face but growing darker, more clouded. I started talking quickly, even before he could.

"As far as group mentality's concerned, he's still the weakest link. The Avengers are learning to trust him a lot more, and I'm grateful for that, but… they could still turn on him. And he knows it. There's a lot of bad blood, and she's very, very good at playing that in her favor." I sighed deeply and rested my chin in my hand, my elbow resting on my knee. "Something's about to go down, I can just… feel it. Something bigger than anything else."

There was a long silence. This was the unspoken tension that had filled the group for the past two weeks, the silent, subconscious agreement. We all knew something bad was going to happen; we could sense it, the calm before the storm, and we knew that we had to stop it. Even Bruce, who had been awake for all of twelve hours, could sense it. But only Loki and I- and now Bruce- knew what it would be centered around. Knew, for a fact, that it was even coming at all.

After a few moments, I couldn't stand Bruce's intense stare any longer. Waving my hands about, I said, "You know what? It doesn't matter right now. You've got to get better. That's all that matters, okay?"

Clearly unconvinced, Bruce kept that intense stare up for another long moment. I didn't meet his eyes. After a moment, however, he tapped my hand, and, when I looked to him, he nodded once. It was a slow gesture, but I knew that he was going to drop the subject; at least, for now. I hid a sigh of relief and nodded back.

We stayed in silence for a while; then, quietly, I said my goodbyes and left the room, my mind buzzing again.

---

"It's been a while, sweetheart."

I'd been heading down the hallway and towards the library when I heard the female voice behind me. My every muscle froze, my nerves crackling. The word 'sweetheart' had me immediately on edge, the hair on the back of my neck standing up. It was something that Fraye would say; and my heart kicked it into high gear, ready for an attack.

I whirled, falling immediately into a defensive stance, my feet planting themselves evenly, balancing in the way that I'd been taught during my training. My hands went loose, but ready to react with a fist or palm heel, as the situation called for. It wouldn't look like I was defensive, but I was ready for anything.

Except my mother.

I blinked. Blinked again. And then I stared at my mom as though she'd just dropped out of the sky in tights (Or, perhaps more accurately, considering my life, as though she hadn't.) As I realized who she was, shame started to burn my neck, ears, and cheeks.

How much did it say about me, that I could not recognize my own mother's voice anymore?

I shifted out of my defensive stance, returning to 'normal'. "Mom!" I said, plastering a smile on my face despite the bitter embarrassment that was making me want to crawl in a hole. Her face was innocent, completely naïve to the fact that I had almost punched her through a wall. I stepped up and gave her a swift hug. "It has been a while."

She broke off, giving me a sad smile. "I know that you're upset with your father-and I don't blame you," she added quickly, as I got ready to protest. But then she gave me a stern look and smacked me upside the back of the head lightly. "But that doesn't give you an excuse to ignore me."

I grinned, rubbing the place where she'd slapped, falling into step beside her, the two of us walking together. "Sorry about that. There've been a lot of problems."

"When aren't there?" She asked, rolling her eyes, but there was a good-natured, forgiving smile on her face. I looked down, also smiling, though mine was sheepish.

"If it's any consolation, this is the first time I've been on Asgard in a while," I told her. "The Avengers have had me on lockdown since Bruce got sick. They didn't want me worrying too much."

"But you were here before," she reminded me. "Discussing treaties with Jotunheim." I gave her a look and raised an eyebrow, silently questioning how she knew that. She shot me a look in return. "What?" She asked. "My daughter becomes an ambassador, and you think I'm not going to be informed of it? I know everything, no thanks to you."

I rolled my eyes and looked down sheepishly again. "Sorry," I apologized once more. "I keep forgetting about the… ah… human element in my life."

She laughed. "Cheeky thing," she mock-scolded. "You are human yourself, in case you have forgotten."

I laughed, too. "'Course I am," I lied. I put my arm around her shoulder, friendly, consoling. "And I could never forget that." I lied again.

She smiled at me, and the two of us kept walking, towards some unknown destination. We fell silent for a long time, neither of us saying a word. It was so strange to me, that I had my mother right next to me, after weeks of not speaking to each other (after all, there was no phone signal on Asgard, no wifi for emails, no nothing), and yet… I couldn't think of anything to say to her. We had nothing in common anymore, except maybe our experiences on Asgard; and I was fairly certain that she'd be sick of that by now.

Still, I decided to prod that. "So whaddo you think of my third home?" I asked, gesturing to the golden halls around me and smiling dryly. My 'second' home, of course, was the Tower, making this golden, foreign planet my third.

"It's very beautiful," she said sincerely. "It's… different. Alien." There was something in that word-'alien'- that said so much about the true foreignness of this place. The differences, in both species and in culture, that you just didn't expect, could never anticipate. And to see that… I remembered that feeling. That curiosity. That realization that this truly was an alien world with alien beings that had alien mindsets. The last time I'd had that had been more than a year ago, when I'd first met Loki. But now… now that mindset was as familiar to me as humanity. As familiar as my own.

"Truth be told, I've never seen anything like it," She said, with an almost whimsical sigh. "And as much as I miss Midga..." She stopped herself in the middle of the word and gave me an almost embarrassed smile before correcting herself. It seemed that Asgard had rubbed off on her. "As much as I miss Earth… It's still such a shame to leave."

My head whipped to her. "Leave?" I demanded. "Who told you that you have to leave?" Before she could reply, I rolled my eyes. "You don't have to listen to them, mom, you can stay forever as far as I'm concerned; and I can talk to Odin if anyone's bugging you about-"

She shook her head, cutting me off. "It's not that, Natalie." My eyebrows furrowed as I looked to her, puzzled. "We want to leave," she explained. As I lifted my eyebrows, she sighed. "Honestly, I thought someone had told you by now. We've been planning this for a while now."

I stopped walking so that I could turn to face her. "Planning what…?" I asked cautiously. "To leave Asgard?"

She nodded. "There's really no point in us staying here any longer, Natalie. Fraye has proven that she's willing to attack you and the Avengers wherever you are: Earth, Asgard, it doesn't matter. If she wants us… it wouldn't matter what planet we're on. We won't be safe from her until this is over." She danced around the words, but I could see it in her eyes; she knew what it would take for this to be 'over'. She knew what we would have to do. She knew that, at some point, I was going to have to paint my hands with blood.

I bit my lip. There was truth in what she was saying, but still… I didn't like it. "You'd be safer here, mom. Asgardian soldiers aren't as… breakable as human ones. They can protect you better here-"

She was already shaking her head. "You aren't the only one who wants to die with their planet, Natalie."

The words chilled me to the bone, froze me at my core. I shivered under my mother's intent gaze, then looked away. So she knew the odds. It always surprised me, how she handled things. She was usually so easily frightened. I thought that she'd just ignore everything, that she'd be happy to be naïve… I should have known her better than that, I guessed. She was smarter than I gave her credit for. She listened better than I thought. She may not have voiced it immediately… but she knew things that I tried to keep her blind to, things that even my lies could not cover.

I closed my eyes and sighed. "You shouldn't have to," I murmured. "You shouldn't have to make that kind of decision."

"Neither should you," she pointed out. "But would you rather have to make that kind of decision… or be clueless to everything again?"

I swallowed tightly. That wasn't even a question, and we both knew it. I tried not to sigh too deeply. "You'll be careful?" I asked, anxiety bleeding into my tone. "You'll call the Tower if anything seems off, or the second anything goes wrong?"

She smiled at me. "Of course, Natalie." She laughed quietly at the still-anxious look on my face. "Don't worry about us. Fraye's been pretty quiet, as far as we're concerned. We'll be fine."

"Don't lie, mom," I told her, wrapping my arm around her waist in a sideways hug, resting my head on her shoulder. "You're not good at it."

I think she might have smiled. I navigated myself so that the sideways hug became a proper one, my arms wrapping around her shoulders. I was afraid to let go. I was letting go of everything. Nothing was constant. Everything was changing and falling apart.

Finally, however, the sound of someone clearing their throat made us break apart. Cameron stood at the far end of the hall, his eyes thin slits as they narrowed on me. My arms slipped away from my mother as she gave Cameron a glare. She opened her mouth to say something, but I rested a hand on her shoulder and shook my head when she looked to me. It was not worth it for her to fight with him about me; it wasn't his fault. And it was not worth it to tell her that, either. At the very least, she should be able to believe this lie: that her husband was still the man she loved.

She gave me an apologetic smile, which I returned with a forgiving one, as she went back to Cameron's side. He wrapped his arm around her in a nigh-possessive way, turning away from me, giving me a menacing glower over his shoulder.

As he walked away, I heard a bird's caw; a black crow- too deeply tar black to be one of Odin's- fluttered down from the rafters above our heads and perched on my father's shoulder. Cameron didn't seem surprised by it; in fact, there was a familiarity to them that made me certain that this wasn't the first time this had happened.

The crow's glittering, onyx eyes landed on me as it called out again, that rasping sound that only crows are capable of. It was Fraye's crow. The one that had called me towards her, now settling itself on my father as though they were old friends.

I only then realized that there was still some of Banner's blood on its claws.

---

Crows were a very prevalent feature in my nightmares for the next few weeks, what few that I had. Loki and I had pretty much given up on the idea of sleeping alone, which got rid of a lot of the nightmares. But that didn't stop the ones that came from our heads originally, as opposed to Fraye's influence (though, I'd noticed, even those nightmares that were ours to begin with were less frequent when we were next to each other).

Still, this discovery was one of the best things to happen to us, despite the increase in secrecy. For the first time in months, we were both able to sleep through the night. Longer, even. It was worth keeping a few more secrets from the Avengers, as far as I was concerned.

Though keeping it secret was difficult, as you never know what's happening with the world around you when you're asleep. But we took precautions: Loki, of course, blocked off JARVIS' access, and I always pretended to go to my room for at least an hour before I snuck into Loki's. It was always Loki's room; just in case we were discovered. It would be easier on his pride (and possibly his spine) if the Avengers knew that I was the one who had entered his room; that I was the one who hadn't wanted to sleep with the nightmares. That I was the one who was too weak and scared to sleep alone.

We didn't fight about the issue again; mostly because we didn't discuss it. We didn't say anything about it. It was just another one of those strange, quirky facts about our mentally linked lives; like how one of us couldn't get drunk without the other, or how we couldn't fall in love with anyone. Well, we also had to sleep next to each other. It was a fact. We dealt with it.

Bruce got better slowly; slower than Loki did. Even though his injuries weren't so extensive, he was still human, and he healed more slowly than an Asgardian. There would be a small scar or two, but the inscription on the top of his back hadn't been deep enough for that, thankfully. He finally came back to the Tower after a while, which was a weight off of everyone's shoulders. It was good to have him back; he always was the peacemaker in the group, keeping a cool, level head in even the most heated situations. Not even I realized how much we relied on that in everyday matters until he was gone.

My parents returned to Earth, as promised, and that blasted crow followed. I said nothing about it, and Loki followed my lead; despite everything, I was fairly certain that it was just another animal. And, even if the creature was an extra set of eyes for Fraye, it wasn't as though she needed them. She was a telepath. She knew everything.

Still, I didn't like the thing, and I made cat hisses at it every time it was nearby, just to see if I could get it to fly away. Not that I saw it very often. Not that I saw my parents very often.

Then again, the rules of everyone-stays-in-the-Tower-at-all-times-or-everyt hing-dies had been surprisingly lax for a while now. I was actually allowed outside from time to time; and even the Avengers took temporary breaks out into the real world. I think, by now, everyone sensed that the endgame was close; and so we knew that, if possible, Fraye would wait until we were all together before she threw her final strike.

So I was able to get out and about for a while, though occasionally I had to drag Loki along; mostly because he was going insane as well, and because, well… the Avengers knew the reasoning behind Loki's alliance with them, knew that he wanted Fraye dead just as much as they did, knew that he would go to any lengths to achieve that goal. They knew this, because they knew that he'd been tortured, they had seen the scars (a majority of which had all but faded by now, as well as the injury he'd obtained). Sure, they still didn't like letting him out of the Tower, and Clint about had a fit every time, but as long as I tagged along- and, sometimes, if one of the others did as well- then they didn't freak out too badly. And it wasn't like we went very far; usually we just walked.

Still, even that much trust… it was amazing. And it got better. As training commenced, I started to watch it with Bruce, even when it wasn't my turn for the actual training. And I was completely amazed by the Avengers' reactions around Loki; as well as his reactions around them. It was just the small stuff, really, but that small stuff was bigger than anything else ever could be. Loki hadn't always thought it noteworthy, and so I had never gotten the entire picture… but these days, it was becoming more frequent.

It wasn't just the way they interacted when fighting-though that was pretty impressive, with the way they could predict each other's moves and knew what the other was thinking during certain strikes. It was what happened afterwards. Stark's continuing sarcasm came back to his lips; sarcasm that wasn't always directed at Loki. Jokes that the Trickster could laugh at; and ones that he occasionally did laugh at. Thor clapped him on the back and grinned and laughed as though he had his brother back, as though the past years had never happened, as though they were naught but a bad dream, now fading away into a distant memory. Steve would toss him a water bottle and discuss strategies with him; something that he and Loki actually had in common. (It got to the point where it was hard to get the two to shut up, actually.) Natasha would actually ask for help with certain moves, or help him with his, and occasionally called him in to help one of the others who just wasn't getting it.

And, over time (to my eternal delight), that attitude started to spread outside of the training room. I was no longer the only one who talked to Loki, though some conversations were still strained, if not downright hostile. Still, they were a hell of a lot better than they had been. And people would actually smile around him, instead of just glare; and he would, occasionally, on good days, smile in return.

Best of all of this, Thor and his brother were getting along better than they had since Loki's… well, his journey to the dark side. It always made me grin like an idiot to see the two talking together, even if it wasn't like the old days, even if it could never be like the old days again. But the two were actually spending time together outside of training; they usually ate breakfast together (with hearty complaints about Midgardian food from Thor and more subtle, barbed ones from Loki) and Thor often regaled everyone with his tales of battles from other worlds, prodding Loki into filling in certain blanks, while the two nitpicked at each other's strategic styles (or lack thereof). It amused me to no end to see the two bickering like proper siblings again, and it even seemed to do the Avengers some good.

But there was a dark side to all of the happiness that had unexpectedly swirled into my life; and that dark side was named Clint Barton. Because the more the Avengers got along with Loki, the more Clint hated him. And, worse than that… the more he hated everyone else, too. As the days went by, his snide remarks became more frequent, his bad attitude permeating the entire Tower, thick and choking. He never let an opportunity to glare at Loki slide, and took every chance he could to snarl out accusations or sarcastic remarks. It got worse and worse as the days went on; and it wasn't just Loki. A lot of things he said to me… well, they got ugly. Really ugly. And he snapped at every one of the Avengers, even Natasha, if they ever said anything that was even vaguely in disagreement with him. After a while, most everyone pretty much just stopped talking to him; only Natasha ever bothered anymore.

But that didn't stop him from talking to us. And his tirades were fierce and frequent. All codes of conduct had disappeared; Clint had no problems with hitting below the belt, with saying whatever cutting thing came to his mind. Nothing was safe. My father. Loki. April. These were the things he accused me with, the things that he threw into my face, and I'm ashamed to admit that it got to me. No matter how many times I tried to push the thoughts out of my brain… they stayed. The doubts he sowed into my mind started to take root, and the dangerous blades of words that he snarled at me only buried them further into my head.

Even Loki, who was usually so coolheaded and uncaring about Barton's opinions, started to get a little irritated whenever Clint voiced them. Where he would usually say nothing, and pretend that he hadn't heard the irksome mortal, now, occasionally, he would snap out a response. I was surprised that he would let himself speak up against one of the Avengers; and I was even more surprised when the Avengers didn't contradict him. Indeed, sometimes they even backed him up, much to Barton's displeasure.

"You're taking his side?" He would shout. "After everything he's done?"

"It's not a matter of 'sides'," Steve once answered in a smooth, level tone. "And you'd do well to remember it."

These conversations continued in this manner, a dark tension building, brewing under the surface of our lives. From that point on, Barton was silently watched; just in case.

But still, I reflected as I wrapped my arms around myself, as I battled back the sobs, even if he was watched, nothing could be done to stop his barbed words from digging deep.

I closed my eyes tightly, shutting out the darkness around me, pulling my blanket up to my chin. It was the middle of the night, and once again, I had snuck into Loki's room and was now curled up on my side of the bed. He was asleep, but, try as I might, I could not escape my waking nightmares so easily. My mind was restless, my throat tight, as I thought over the things that Clint had said: things about how my 'allegiance' to Loki was a betrayal to April, how I was treading on her memory, and how it was so obvious that my father was right about me all along… Loki had almost retorted that it was not my father's real thoughts guiding him to believe this, that it had been Loki's doing in the first place, and that now it was, once again, someone else's manipulation… but he had decided against it after a moment, despite how vocal he'd been recently. Still, he'd given the Hawk a dark, brooding look. A war was stirring at the meeting point between his and Barton's gazes, and I worried about what would happen should that war be allowed to come to fruition.

I squeezed tears out of my eyes, felt them trail down the side of my face and into my pillow, where I promptly buried my face. Ugh, I was so tired of crying myself to sleep at night. I was so tired of this roller coaster of emotions. I should have been happy: Bruce was back, Loki and the Avengers were getting along, and Fraye had left us alone for a few weeks now…

But there was an ache in my chest that wouldn't go away, no matter how hard I tried to ignore Clint's words.

"Not this again."

I started at the sound of Loki's voice. He sighed deeply and sat upright, rubbing his head with one hand, his fingers interlacing with a few strands of his black hair as he pushed it back from his forehead. He glanced to the clock on my nightstand, to the bright green numbers that glowed in the dark and informed him that it was one twenty-three in the morning. He leaned against the bed frame behind him, turning to me as he did so. "This is the third time this week, Miss Frost."

I swallowed thickly, wiping my eyes quickly. "Sorry," I whispered swiftly, sniffing a few times, trying to pull myself together. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"You do so every night," he said, but his words were surprisingly gentle, free of their usual icy malice, or hidden acidic sting. He lowered his voice as he reminded me for the thousandth time, "You know that those words are not his."

I sighed deeply and sat up as well, giving up on the notion of sleep, for now. Not wishing to be completely in the dark, I closed my eyes and focused my emotions as best I could, until my skin began to shimmer softly. It was just enough illumination to throw our faces into relief without blinding us.

"Just because they aren't Clint's words, doesn't mean they aren't true," I responded quietly.

"Of course they're not. They are what you wish to believe of yourself. They are your darker side, whispering in your ear, given voice by Fraye, by Barton. They are the lies told to make you doubt your decisions." I blinked, looking to him in surprise. He shrugged mildly. "I may not conform to your moral code, but I do understand it. And I know that, by your standards, you made the correct decisions. Now have the courage to stand by them." He turned away. "In the meantime, I would like to return to sleeping through the night."

I stared at him as he slid back down on the bed and tucked his hand under his pillow, resting his head on it and closing his eyes. His back was turned to me, no longer facing me, no longer bothering to. I blinked. Blinked again. And then I smiled a watery smile and moved a little closer to him, wrapping my arm around him and squeezing once, quickly.

He was a complete jerk and I usually wanted to beat him repeatedly in the face with a baseball bat; but every so often, he knew just what to say. "Thanks, Loki," I whispered into his ear. He grunted out something that could have been a response or could have been a get-back-on-your-side-of-the-bed-Frost. Either way, I rolled over onto my side of the bed and stared into the darkness, still mildly illuminated by my glow. Sure, I wasn't completely better, and yeah, Clint's words still stung. But Loki hadn't been lying; he'd truly meant what he'd said. Maybe it didn't mean a lot, coming from him, but… it meant enough.

I closed my eyes and tried to drift off to sleep.

When I woke up again, it was to Loki shaking me quickly, with panic in his eyes. I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, and he shushed me, his eyes flicking to the door. A moment later, someone pounded on that same door, loudly, quickly, a fierce staccato of noise.

"Loki! Get up!"

Barton's voice. I tensed, throwing off the covers and jumping out of bed quickly, silently. I heard Barton start to punch in the numbers on Loki's coded lock; the numbers that everyone in the Tower knew, for the sake of security. Okay, that was something we'd overlooked.

Scrambling for a plan-or an escape route- I hid beneath the bed. Cowering there in silence, I felt abnormally guilty about having to hide like this. At the same time, I was mortally terrified of what Clint would do if he was the one who found us out. He still slept in front of our rooms every so often, forcing us to sleep alone; we figured it was better to face the nightmares for one night than to face Clint, who could make our entire lives miserable. Or, you know, even more miserable than he was already trying to make us.

Once Loki was certain that I was as hidden as I'd ever be, he headed towards the door. Giving me one last glance to make certain that nothing could be seen from that angle, he opened the door, keeping Clint from needing to do so. He didn't even say anything. He just glared.

Barton glared, too. "Took you long enough."

Loki's eyes narrowed. "Given the circumstances, I hardly think that it is necessary to wake at any particular time." Well, he had a point there. I swallowed tightly and curled up in a tight ball, trying to keep my heart rate under control.

"What's he doing here?" I saw, from Loki's eyes, that Clint was gesturing to Jekyll. The mutt had reacted to the flurry of panic in the room by jumping off of his place at the foot of the bed, and he was now wagging his tail, prancing around the room as though he owned the place. "Doesn't he usually stay with Natalie?"

I felt my throat tighten- dumb dog was going to get me in a world of hurt- as Loki shrugged with rather impressive nonchalance. "He does as he pleases," he answered in a bored, dull tone. Jekyll seemed to notice that he was being discussed, for he started sniffing at Clint's feet, tail still wagging as he sat down in front of the archer and made an attempt to lick his hand. Clint pulled his hand away before Jekyll's tongue could swipe across his palm. Loki began to scratch the animal behind the ears, and Jekyll calmed down a little bit, tail dusting the ground as he sat down beside the Trickster.

"Is there anything else you wanted, Barton?" Loki asked, lightly sarcastic, keeping his true irritation out of his words. He managed to keep his eyes away from underneath the bed, where my heart was still racing, and I was having a hard time breathing shallowly.

There was silence as Barton considered, giving Loki a dark look all the while. Finally, he shook his head. "Get ready. You have training today."

"This afternoon," Loki muttered, but the word 'training' reminded me: Natasha and I had training this morning. And since Clint was here, that would mean that he would try and wake me up… and if he went to my room and I wasn't there…

Loki swallowed tightly. And you didn't think to mention this before? He demanded of me, his mind racing, trying to figure out a way to keep Clint from waking me that would not raise suspicion.

I didn't remember until like three seconds ago! I snapped back as I, too, tried to think of a plan. Loki could say that he would wake me, but who knew how well that would be taken. An idea struck, and he stepped forwards to the door, so that he could look at Clint where he now stood in the hallway.

"And do not bother waking Natalie. She's getting dressed."

Ha, clever. Clint, however, just gave Loki a dirty look and rapped his knuckles on my door, a few feet away from the Trickster's.

"Natalie?" He called inside. "You awake?"

I cursed under my breath and tried to think of how I could throw my voice to the next room. That was not something I was exactly skilled in, but still, I had to try…

Before I could open my mouth, however, something happened that seemed to surprise all three of us.

My voice shouted from behind my door, "That's what Loki said, isn't it?"

Clint blinked as my eyes widened. Loki, somehow, managed to keep a straight face; even though I knew from his thoughts that this was not by his doing. When Barton looked back to Laufeyson, the latter raised an eyebrow, vindication sparking in his green eyes.

"Right," Clint answered tonelessly. "See you downstairs, then."

"You do that," 'I' replied. Loki watched Clint leave, waiting for him to exit down the hallway and get into the elevator. For a long, tense moment following Barton's departure, Loki and I stayed where we were, frozen, waiting, listening. Making sure we'd really gotten away with it, that we were really safe for now.

After a moment, a voice shattered us out of our motionlessness; a cool, accented voice. JARVIS' voice. "I believe it is 'safe' for you to come out now, Miss Natalie."

I swallowed hard as Loki blanched. JARVIS. He'd forgotten to shield us from JARVIS. How could he have forgotten? That was a child's error, a stupid mistake. How could he have made it?

Tentatively, guiltily, my face red and my ears burning, I crawled out from my hiding place under the bed. I brushed myself off quickly, looking down. "Um… thanks, JARVIS."

We were all silent for a long moment. Our secret had been revealed by perhaps the worst person (save Clint); and he wasn't even a person at all. I swallowed again, my throat tight. "Are you… um… are you gonna tell Tony?"

There was a long pause. Loki had gone completely stiff and rigid, waiting for the AI's answer. After a moment, however, JARVIS spoke; but only to say, "Agent Romanoff is on her way to retrieve you, Miss Frost."

Loki and I exchanged a look, and then I ran to my room, shutting the door tightly behind me as I quickly changed out of my PJs, trying very hard not to think about what had just happened. But, too late, my mind was already swirling, trying to figure out JARVIS' motivations, to figure out why he had done what he had done, how he had done what he'd done. A recording of my voice, obviously, edited to say what was necessary. I'd been around the Tower so often that it wouldn't be difficult for him to find the footage to do so.

But why? I guessed maybe he'd had to get Tony out of a few tight spots in the Iron Man's old party days, but this…? For crying out loud, Loki was the 'enemy'. JARVIS, of all people, would know that. Loki had taken over the Tower once, after all; JARVIS would have seen that, would have been there. And if I was sleeping next to him, then I could easily be seen as the 'enemy' as well…

My head started hurting. I finished getting dressed and went out to meet Natasha, and the two of us went downstairs for training.

I got through it, and half of the day, without discussing things with JARVIS. Loki, too, did not speak to the machine, deciding again to let me handle it for now. I was one of the 'good guys'; or at least, the better of the two of us. JARVIS would probably more willingly talk to me.

I shook my head out as I thought about that. I was probing him like he was just another human. It often startled me to remember that he wasn't.

By the time training was over, and other things had been taken care of, I was free to talk to him; and I wasted no time. Not wanting to leave the Avengers' sight, I decided against speaking out loud, and instead retrieved my laptop and set up a connection to Stark Tower. JARVIS usually intercepted Tony's emails and everything, but those in the know were aware that JARVIS had his own account; so that people who knew how Tony was could just use the AI to take care of things. It was this account that I contacted, this program that I activated, a chat window between myself and the machine.

-JARVIS? I typed, fingers shaking. As a precaution, I had opened up an old school assignment on another tab, so that I could minimize the conversation and return to that if one of the Avengers peered at the screen. And, if they questioned why I was working on an old assignment, I'd say it was for edits, to keep my skills sharp.

The lies were all planned out. No more room for error.

-Hello, Miss Natalie. JARVIS didn't need time to consider responses, nor to type them out; they appeared almost the second after I had sent my own message.

-Can we talk?

-If you find it necessary.

Well, I think I found it pretty damn necessary.

-Why did you do it? Why'd you cover for me?

-You are a tenant of the Tower. It is my responsibility to make your life more comfortable, and to protect you.

I stared at the lines of text, sufficiently impressed. Of course, it made sense. That was JARVIS' function. His purpose. Why he was here. I bit my lip and typed out one of the biggest questions that I had.

-Even if it helps Loki out? Helps the enemy?

-Currently, Mr. Laufeyson is also a tenant of the Tower.

My eyes widened. I sat back, bewildered. I thought that over for a very long time before, sitting forwards and gnawing on the inside of my lip, I typed out:

-I thought you viewed him as a

I hesitated for a second, trying to think of the right word. After a moment, I had it: prisoner.

There was still no pause. After I finished typing and hit the 'enter' key, JARVIS answered my question as quickly and easily as all of the others.

-Over time, it has been made clear to me that such labels have become irrelevant. Loki has been allowed to wander the Tower unsupervised. He has also been allowed to leave the Tower as he pleases. As such, he appears to be nothing more than another occupant.

-Even if he tried to take over the planet?

-The Tower has often housed residents with very colorful pasts.

I fought to keep from snorting. Well that much was true.

-He's not always allowed out 'unsupervised', I pointed out. Usually, I have to go with him, at least.

-Using the information given to him by Thor and other Asgardians, Mr. Stark has programmed me with a degree of knowledge of Asgardian magic. From what I've been able to gather about your connection with Loki, that is still classified as 'unsupervised'.

Again, I stared. JARVIS had been programmed with knowledge of my link; and he had accepted it for what it was. He may have been very human-like, but he did not have all of their suspicions, their inhibitions. He could calculate the possibility that someone was lying to him, and could keep himself from trusting certain people… but if something like this was given to him as a fact, then it was fact, and there was nothing else to say about it. He did not have the suspicions about our connection that everyone else did.

-JARVIS, I honestly think that you are the single smartest person in this place.

-Thank you, Miss Natalie.

I grinned. But then my smile wavered. There was still one very big issue to be addressed.

-About what happened with me and Loki.

-Yes, Miss Natalie?

-Are you going to tell Tony?

For the first time, JARVIS hesitated between responses. It was the barest of pauses; but the very fact that it was long enough for me to register was saying something. A computer takes in responses like that as lines of code, instantaneously in their mainframe. They don't need to read or type, and the time it takes for them to choose the best response is usually too brief for a human to determine. But, for once, it was a few seconds before JARVIS' reply came back onto the screen.

-Mister Stark has not required for me to tell him what sleeping arrangements are between his guests.

I let out a sigh of relief and allowed my wild grin to return.

-Thanks, JARVIS.

-You're welcome, Miss Natalie.

I smiled and was about ready to exit out of the account window when another line of text popped up:

-May I ask you a question?

I lifted an eyebrow.

-Shoot.

-How often does Mr. Laufeyson cut off my access to his conversations?

I gulped. It was great that JARVIS was smart and all, but sometimes, that computer was just a little bit too clever for his own good. I didn't bother typing a response, but rather threw back a question of my own.

-Reasoning?

I knew for a fact that there were no blank gaps in JARVIS' memory; whenever Loki cut off his access, he gave a more innocent representation of whatever was happening at the time. An illusion that only JARVIS could see, a fake scenario to cover what was really happening. But he'd figured it out somehow.

-I am not perfectly versed with human behaviors, but I have studied them extensively. When you went to his room last night, I got a very distinct impression that it was something that you had done multiple times. When he did not question you, I believed this impression was reaffirmed. I have also suspected for quite some time that there may be certain things that he was capable of hiding from me; and from my database on magic, it appeared that it would be very possible for him to do so.

-You're smart.

-How often?

I sighed deeply.

-What do you want me to say?

-The truth, Miss Natalie, if you would be so kind.

I smiled weakly at that. Maybe JARVIS deserved the truth. And if I didn't tell him, then his suspicions would amp up; and then he would have to discuss it with Tony. I chewed on my fingernails as I thought of a way to respond. I typed, read through, and edited the thing about four or five times before I sent it on its way.

-Whatever Loki and I are right now, I am still his therapist. Just like I'm still the Avengers' therapist. And sometimes he has to talk out certain things with me, things that he does not wish for the Avengers to know. Other times, when I'm not around, he has to deal with certain issues by himself. He finds it very difficult to do so when he thinks that he has an audience.

There was only a second's pause.

-I understand.

I smiled. Until the next line of text popped up.

-Does it also have to do with the fact that you and he consorted together to release him from prison in the first place?

I hissed out a swear, to the surprise of the two Avengers in the room with me (Steve and Stark). I took a moment to act as though my old psych assignment was giving me trouble, until they looked away again. Then, warily, I typed out:

-Reasoning…?

-It is only logical. You have tried to draw allies from wherever you can find them. And, given both your connection, and your knowledge of Loki's torture prior to the Avenger's discovery of the fact, it makes sense that you would be absolutely certain of his motives. Also, if your world is under attack, you would wish to have all assets available to you; and, as another part of yourself, Mr. Laufeyson is your greatest asset.

-I hate how smart you are, computer.

-Am I correct?

-You are. Are you going to rat me out?

-I see no reason to.

-Any other bombs you wanna drop?

-I believe that is all.

I sighed deeply and pinched the bridge of my nose, pressing my fingers into the corners of my eyes and trying to relieve the pressure that was starting to build in my head. Who in their right mind would have suspected that JARVIS, of all people, knew all of this? That the one person whose eyes were the most easily fooled, was also the least blind?

Fingers flying across the keys, I typed up a quick goodbye to JARVIS and closed the account before shutting my laptop's lid. I stood and set the computer on the nearby table before leaving the room. I had some thinking to do.