A/N: WOW! Okay! This chapter is SUPER late!

Actually, there are a lot of really good reasons for that, reasons that I just don't feel like getting into right now. -_-

Long story short, I am very, very, very sorry for how long this took. But it is a long chapter, and I don't want anyone worrying that I've lost inspiration for this 'book' entirely; because I haven't. Actually, the entire rough draft of this 'book' is already finished; I just have to edit each chapter before I post it; which is usually what takes so long. -_-

Anyway. Thank you all for your patience and please review! Your support means the world to me! And a special thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter: it was nice to know that I hadn't chased away all of my readers with my late updates. :P

Loki was again perusing my sketchbook, snorting loudly every so often at my horrible attempts at drawing. I was very pointedly ignoring him, despite the fact that I was propped up against him. We were on the couch together, with him sitting on it like a normal person while I lounged across the other two cushions, my head and shoulders leaning against his arm. Said arm had long ago gone numb, but even if he removed it from beneath me, the only other place he could put it would be around me; and he currently refused to do that. He would have simply told me to sit upright like a proper human being, but the instant he opened his mouth to voice this command, I'd answered without actually being questioned: "Nope!"

He had then sighed and returned to looking through my doodles, as well as the occasional notes that I had scribbled into the margins. My eyes were closed, and I was dozing, if not quite asleep. I wasn't tired enough to sleep, but I had let myself slip off into a world of daydreams, my mind occupied with many things. One of which being how nice this was; that Loki and I could relax so much around each other, and that we weren't overtly worried about if the Avengers saw us. Maybe we should have worried more, but at the moment, we both felt oddly apathetic about it.

We were like that for quite a while before someone knocked on the living room doorframe. Loki turned; I kept my eyes half-open, my gaze sliding lazily towards the newcomer, but when I found my limited range of vision was not enough to catch sight of him or her, I didn't bother to lift my head to look. Besides, Loki's eyes- and the man's voice, when he spoke- told me who it was.

"Hello, brother," Thor said, rather cheerily, nodding first to him, then to me. "Natalie," he greeted me in turn.

"Brother," Loki acknowledged.

"'Sup?" I asked.

The Thunderer gave us both a quick smile, white teeth flashing, before looking directly at his adoptive brother. "I would speak with you, brother; if you would accompany me outside of the Tower?"

I lifted an eyebrow, tilting my head back on Loki's arm so that I could see his face. I could see it on his features; he was actually considering it. I suppressed a grin; A year ago (well, it was almost closer to two years by now) he would have given his brother a 'very-amusing' glare and turned away. Or possibly tried to stab him.

But things had been different, lately. And, Fraye notwithstanding, this was definitely a change for the better.

As Loki thought it over, I turned to Thor and pouted. "You're taking away my furniture?"

Thor grinned again as Loki rolled his eyes. That comment made up his mind for him; carefully, he raised his arm, forcing me to sit upright (well, more like curl upright, my neck crunching and my entire body contorting). Once I was out of the way, he stood, dropping me back down onto the couch. "I would be happy to, if it means that I am out of the way of this creature." He motioned to me without facing me. I lay down flat on the couch.

"Oh, nice," I said snidely. Thor laughed and retrieved a pillow, tossing it in my direction. It landed on my stomach, and I picked it up and tucked it under my head.

"Thanks," I told Thor with a smile, before pointedly turning away from Loki, turning my nose up in a huff. I was ignored. The two brothers headed towards the door and I waved goodbye with an airy hand, not sitting up from the couch. "Have fun and whatnot!"

I waited until they were long gone and out of the Tower before separating my mind partially from Loki's. Putting up a few walls, ones that he wouldn't notice unless he specifically went looking. I sat up carefully. My eyes darkened, and I stood, heading towards the other room. I had something I had to do.

It took me a while, ducking in and out of a few rooms, but finally, I found the person that I was looking for. (I hadn't wanted to directly ask JARVIS where she was; mostly so that I could have some time to think before I found her). Natasha was sitting by herself in a room. The TV was on, playing some movie, but she didn't seem to really be paying attention to it. As I entered, she paused it, turning to look at me when I sat down.

I swallowed back the tension, trying to control the shaking in my hands. Blurting the words out before I had a chance to go back on them, I said, quite simply, "I need to ask you something."

She lifted a perfect eyebrow; her cue for me to continue. I took a deep breath, knowing that she wouldn't want me to dance around the question, knowing that she would want me to be blunt… but for the first time, I found that very difficult.

I bit my lip and tried to think of how to phrase this. "You… You don't have to answer if you don't want to. If you want me to just shut up and go away, just tell me, and I will." I held out my hands, half surrendering, half imploring. "And I'm sorry I have to ask, but I just… I don't know what else to do, I've been looking it up, but I figured… I mean, with what you said… you're probably the one who knows the most about this…"

"Just say it, Natalie," Natasha ordered in a chilled voice, her eyes wary. My stomach wrenched, and I had to wipe my sweaty palms off on my jeans.

"Okay… okay, okay." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. When I opened my eyes again, however, I was still nervous. "You don't have to answer," I said again, earning myself a sharp look, before going on, so quickly that the words meshed together. "I need to know what happened after you were tortured."

Natasha's eyebrows went up. There was surprise on the spy's face for the first time in a long while; after all, it was rare that I startled either of the assassins. I let out another breath, relieved that I had gotten the words out, before taking my time and carefully selecting my next ones.

"I've been searching up the psychology behind torture victims, but… it's just… it's not enough. And Loki won't tell me anything about what happened to him. I mean, I get… glimpses, here and there. Memories about what happened, about what it did to him, how he's changed since Fraye had him. But he won't… he won't talk to me about it. And I'm trying not to push it, I really am, but I just… I want to help him."

"Don't push it," Natasha said quickly, snapping on the words abruptly. "Whatever you do, do not press him to say anything. He's not the type to react well to that."

I blinked, somewhat startled by her vehemence, the intensity in her eyes. After a moment, however, I looked at her questioningly, silently prodding her to continue. She hesitated, seeming incapable of saying anything for a long time.

I reached out a hand, but pulled it back after a moment. The assassins weren't always comfortable with touch. I leaned forwards as well, trying to meet her gaze. "I'm sorry I have to ask. But… you said you knew the bond between torturer and tortured. And I… I need to understand that." When she finally looked up to meet my eyes, I added, "But if I have to figure it out somewhere else, I will."

She studied me for a while, seeming to consider. "Even if you do understand Fraye, you won't be able to stop her," she warned me. "Not like that. Not the way you're used to."

"I don't care about Fraye. I just want to help Loki."

For the second time that day, I surprised a spy. The firmness in my tone as I completely disregarded Fraye was unexpected to her. But I had already decided that there was no hope for Fraye, that all I could do for her was to kill her. Loki, on the other hand, still had a chance.

After a moment, Natasha nodded, very slowly. "So you want to know what it did to him. How you can fix it." It wasn't a question. I nodded anyway.

She considered. "I'm not certain how much of this I should tell you." She admitted after a second. "This is not something that you should have to understand."

"Should anyone?" I asked in response. A small, dry smile crossed her lips.

"I suppose not," She mused quietly. Again, she thought it over, then seemed to make a decision. Settling back in her seat, clearly preparing for a long conversation, she spoke.

"When something such as that happens to you… or when you do something like that to someone else… something… something inside of you shifts. Your life becomes nothing but before and after images." She held out her hands, using them to indicate what she was saying. "Who you were before the incident…" She raised one hand halfway. "Who you are now." She raised the other, as though balancing the two on an imaginary scale.

"When you undergo something like that, the worst part of it is that everything about you changes. When you do something like that to someone else… the worst part of it is that nothing about you changes. It is so easy to do, so mind-numbingly simple. You wonder if that's what you've been all along, because you're so much in shock that you don't recognize what has snapped inside of you. And something has." She gauged my face as she said this; and when she finished, she pointed out, "I'm scaring you."

"No, you're not," I said firmly. And in fact, she wasn't. I'm ashamed to admit that I was more fascinated than frightened. Natasha didn't open up. Ever. And this was something at her basest core, something deeply rooted and ingrained in her center.

The look she gave me clearly indicated that she did not believe me, but she seemed to trust that I could handle it, at least, and so she carried on. "On the other hand, if you are the one who is being tortured… then the entire world just seems… different. In both cases, you are never the same again, but if you are the victim… then you feel hollowed. A lot is ripped out of you: your dignity, your sense of security, and any faith that you ever had in humanity… gone. You don't feel safe. You don't feel whole. You jump at every sound and everything inside of you detaches itself. You feel almost…" she hesitated, then smirked in the wryest, most rueful way possible, "Alien."

I resisted the urge to snort. Natasha carried on as though it wasn't a joke; and, truthfully, it really wasn't.

"You're not of this Earth anymore. Because earth is home, and home is safe, and nothing is safe, not anymore. No one can be trusted. You protect yourself and don't care about anyone else, because you're the only one that you can protect, the only one that you canbe sure of." She paused. The halt in the flow of her words made me blink, mildly startled, and my eyebrows furrowed together.

"You're hands are shaking," She pointed out, gesturing to my trembling fingertips. I half-stood so that I could sit on those traitorously shaking hands.

"Please go on," I pleaded. "It's the first time… The first time that anyone would talk with me about this."

She gave me a dubious look, as though wondering if I truly could handle this. Finally, however, sighing deeply, she caved. "Now, this is not always the case, but… I, personally, lashed out. Loki clearly did the same, though not quite in the same way. You say he acquired his army after the torture; then it is likely that he recruited the Chitauri as more than a force for conquest. He was probably trying to protect himself.

"I, on the other hand… Well let's say I…Lost my way. I put a lot of red in my ledger; because…" She hesitated. The look in her eyes was very cautious, studying me intensely, trying to make absolutely certain that I wouldn't freak out. My freak out mode, however, had been switched completely off for the time being. "Because I needed to understand." She finished at last.

My mouth went dry. I could relate a little too well to that. But I had actually suspected as much, and, seeing as I didn't go loco, Natasha went on. "I also did it-tortured others- because I was good at it. I knew rather a lot on the subject, after all." A flash of an empty grin. I ignored it. It was a lie.

"So what stopped it?" I asked. "What kept you from… continuing like that? What…" I paused, then found the words. "What helped you? Made it so that you could talk about it again, so that… I dunno, that you trusted people again?"

Again, for some reason that I didn't recognize, I seemed to have surprised her. That had to be some kind of record; three times in one day. "The same thing that stopped Loki," she answered. "Someone had my fate in their hands; and they made a different call."

My stomach did a little flip-flop.

"Truth be told, Natalie, there's really nothing more that you need to do for Loki. If he trusts you-and it's apparent that he does- then you've already won the battle." She shrugged mildly. "If he has learned to limit his detachment and disassociation, if he has allowed you into his life enough to become your friend… then he is already healing. If he wasn't, then he would be incapable of doing so." Her eyes were hard as diamonds as she said these certain words, words that rang with solemnity and truth. But a light smile softened the blow that her steel gaze threw towards me. "Give him time. He may speak with you about the issue, and he may not. Either way, you have done all that you could."

I frowned. "That's just it, Natasha," I said quietly. "'All I can' just isn't enough."

As she gave me an inquiring look, I bit my lip. "You… You relate to him, in a way that I never can," I told her. "Because of what happened to you… to you both. Because you both have red in your ledger, because you've both had terrible things done to you and have done terrible things in return." Someone else might have been insulted. Natasha didn't even blink. "And I get that, that's how you two relate, it's different from me, because you're you. Because you're Natasha Romanoff. You're a lot like him- and not in a bad way-" I added swiftly, as her eyebrow arched, and I noticed her studying a few of my weak points- " I just mean… that you've both been through the same kinds of crap. Things that I haven't. I don't know what it's like. I mean… I… I'm just a therapist. And I don't even know if I'm that anymore.

"But you… you know who and what you are, you have… I dunno. Titles. You're an Avenger, part of a team, you're a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent… and me, I'm… I'm just the crazy chick with the bubble. I've been around the Tower for years now and I… I still don't know what I am to Loki, or to you, or the Avengers… I guess, in some ways…" I bit my lip, wondering whether or not I should risk saying this. "I guess I just don't know what side I'm on. I'm obviously not an Avenger. But I'm not one of Loki's cronies, either. I'm just… stuck, somewhere in the middle, some weird mire of blah that just defines my life." I chewed on my lip again, as Natasha remained silent. Trying to fill the void in the conversation, I continued blurting my words out. "I guess… what I'm saying is… I don't think that I can figure out how I, specifically, can help people… if I don't even know who I am." I looked up to her, and a traitorously pleading note slipped into my voice, the barest trace of desperation creeping into my throat. "Who am I, Natasha? What defines… me?"

She studied me for so long that I started to get fidgety. Her stare was intense enough to give me goose bumps, cold enough to give me shivers, and melancholic enough to tell me that she had an answer to this all-important question of mine. For a long moment, her lips remained sealed, and I could almost see the debate in her eyes. The truth was all I wanted. But lies would be easier to take.

Finally, however, she spoke. And the sincerity could not be doubted.

"You're the line."

Seeing that I was confused- and, I believe, rightfully so- she carried on. "You're the line that we all had to cross. The edge that we all skirted along at one point; until we could no longer afford to do so. The line that is so thick that there could be no mistaking when we crossed it, and there could be no turning back afterwards. You're the line that is directly between a hero… and an Avenger." She leaned forwards a little, now, and her hands wrapped themselves consolingly around mine, which, for some reason, had started to shake again.

"You haven't done the things we have, Natalie." Her voice had lowered to a whisper. "You haven't become what we have. You haven't… Avenged anyone."

My eyebrows lifted. "April…" I protested, and was surprised by how weak it was.

Natasha shook her head before I could make my sentiment any clearer. "True vengeance is an eye for an eye; and a life for a life. You didn't kill Loki. You didn't kill anyone. You just chose to save one more twisted and broken soul; and that's why you were a hero, not an Avenger. That's why you didn't become one that day, that's why you aren't one now. But since then, since the day that you decided to stay with Loki… you've become something else. You've made other choices. Harder ones. And now you're not a hero anymore. You're not a villain, but you're not an Avenger: you're just the line. The edge. You're the very embodiment of everything we ever were; and everything we can't be again."

She looked down. "Because… if you ever become an Avenger… you can't go back. No more heroes. You've become a line again; the line between good and evil. And you skirt the edge constantly." Her eyes were very sad. "And even if you don't cross the line for a very long time… even if you don't become an Avenger… you still can't go back. You're either going to remain as this line for the rest of your life… or you'll be one of us." She squeezed my hands again. "And I'm sorry to be the one to tell you that."

My throat felt incredibly dry, a sand-blasted desert on my tongue. My hands were shaking inside of Natasha's. All of this time that I had envied the Avengers, all of this time that I had looked up to them, all of this time that I had wanted to be one of them…

Was that what it really meant to be an Avenger? Was that what it meant to have true vengeance?

Was that what I wanted?

Natasha seemed to recognize that this latest revelation would take some time to think over. She stood, squeezing my shoulder carefully, and started to head out of the door, her movie still paused on the television screen. Before she could leave, however, I turned abruptly.

"Natasha?"

She looked back. "Yes?"

"Thank you," I told her, as genuinely as I could manage. "The others…" I paused. "No one else would have told me this."

She nodded briskly and left the room.

Thor was being oddly quiet, for Thor.

Loki walked beside him, trying to enjoy this unexpected silence, trying to revel in the serenity of the day… but Loki had learned to read his brother's moods centuries ago, and this particular type of silence did not bode well. There was something that Thor wished to say, some dark thought that occupied his mind, and Loki knew that he could-and would- voice it at any time. As such, he was finding it difficult to enjoy these few precious moments outside of the Tower.

He straightened his coat as he walked, resigning himself to waiting his brother out. He had always been very patient, after all.

The two immortals made it to an unspoken (but somehow understood) halfway point; and they were beginning to walk back towards the Tower by the time that Thor finally seemed ready to speak. Clearing his throat and staring straight ahead, he said, "I see that you and Natalie have become… friendlier."

Loki battled a sigh. He did not particularly wish to discuss this with his brother at this point. But then, he never would. It wasn't a topic he was altogether comfortable discussing with anyone. "I suppose we have," he answered tonelessly.

Thor thought for another few moments. The poor thing should have learned by now to leave the thinking to Loki, but unfortunately, he still held onto the notion that he was still capable of free and intelligent thought. Loki looked away, smiling just lightly at his older brother's antics. He was an idiot, but, Loki hated to admit, he was one of the few tolerable- and perhaps even likable- idiots.

"You know that she is… important, to me," Thor still didn't look to his brother. "That she, too, is my family."

"Of course," Loki answered, lifting his eyebrow, curious as to where this might be coming from. And, more importantly, where it might be going.

Thor seemed oddly hesitant. But, after a moment, he managed to cautiously say, "And because she, too, is family… I only wish that she not be hurt."

Well, neither did Loki, though perhaps for different reasons. Gauging Thor's expression carefully, still uncertain of why he was saying these things, he replied cautiously, "I have done what I can to protect her; as she has done for me. But you know as well as I that our chances against Fraye are… slim, at best."

"I was not speaking of Fraye," Thor informed him in an oddly dark tone. Loki's eyebrows furrowed, puzzled, and he looked to Thor. The Thunderer's clear, rain-blue eyes were on him, studying him in return. He lowered his voice. "Do not believe me entirely blind, brother. I have seen the way that you look at her."

Loki felt something inside of him sink, his heart giving an odd stutter. He halted in his tracks; Thor continued on for a few steps before he realized that Loki was not beside him. When he did, he turned around to face the other man.

Slowly, articulating each word carefully, Loki inquired, "What, precisely, are you implying, Thor?"

"You know precisely what I am implying, Loki," Thor answered him sternly. "Lady Frost is a good person; and she has been very kind to you. I do not wish to see you treat her as simply another… plaything."

The term 'plaything' made Loki's lip curl slightly, his eyes turning colder. It was Fraye's term, not one of Loki's. Whatever the Trickster was, whatever Thor thought of him, he would at least hope that he thought Loki was better than her.

"My interest in Miss Frost is merely platonic," he said glacially, glaring at his adopted brother. "And, in case you have forgotten: she is mortal."

"As is Jane," Thor answered, unperturbed, still meeting Loki's gaze steadily. "I would know as well as anyone the… fascination that mortals can have."

Loki scoffed in a disgusted way, waving his hand, as though brushing the thought aside. "I do not bend before a pretty face and call it a fascination." He almost sneered… and then he hesitated for a beat, finding himself adding, "And while it may be true that Natalie Frost's personality holds a certain… odd charm, she is still… barely my friend. I'm simply not interested. Your worries are for naught."

Thor gave him a look, though his eyes were somewhat softer now. "You misunderstand me, brother. I would not worry if you and the Lady Frost had an interest in each other. I would only worry that history might repeat itself." While his eyes were softer now, his features were stony and serious. "In the past, you have… used such feelings. Manipulated others with them." As Loki glared, Thor added, a little more kindly and placating, "She is not another conquest, another victory. She is the best friend you have; and I know that you care for her."

"You believe Natalie Frost to be a victory?" Loki snorted loudly. It may have been true that Loki had used other's feelings for him in the past; but then, that was all love was: another method of manipulation. And he was the master of every type of manipulation. "She is my greatest defeat. She destroyed me, brother, you know that as well as anyone."

"Loki…" Thor said, a warning in the word. Loki fell silent, his lips mashing together, his eyes sparking violently. "I only say this because I care for you both. You know what it would mean if you hurt her. You know what it would do to you."

"Of course I do," Loki retorted. "So do you honestly believe that I am foolish enough to attempt something such as that, regardless of the consequences?" He scoffed again, a far more disgusted sound this time, and started walking again. He strode past his brother, his coat snapping in the wind made by his movements.

There was a long moment in which Loki kept walking by himself… after a while, however, Thor appeared next to him again, his long strides as silent as Loki's. Neither of them spoke for a while. And then Thor said, "I do not think you foolish. I only worry for you both."

Loki didn't reply for a moment, but he did sigh and bring his temper back in check. It took him a while to bring his voice back to normal, to smile sadly back at Thor again. "Of course, brother."

They were quiet again for a majority of the walk back to the Tower. Then, almost conspiratorially, Thor leaned a little closer to Loki and commented, "She is a very beautiful girl, is she not?" He nudged his brother with an elbow, teasingly.

Loki's smile appeared on his face without his permission. Looking away and trying to rein it back in, his eyes turned oddly wistful. It was true: though he would never admit it, he had truly missed his brother.

"Aye," he answered, barely paying attention to his own words, his thoughts far away. "She is that."

Clint and I were training.

While I had told Steve not to put the archer and Loki together in a training session (unless someone else was present) for some stupid reason, I'd also told him that it was all right if Clint and I were alone and fighting together. And now, as I got my butt royally whooped, I was beginning to regret that decision.

"All right, all right, time out already, sheesh," I slouched back against the wall, my shield rippling in and out of visibility as I slid down it. I didn't exactly have bumps and bruises- the bubble protected me from the worst of that- but it was still exhausting to try and dodge all of those explosive arrows. "You win, you win. Oog."

I ran my hands through my hair and tried to shake out my head, to clear the ringing out of my ears. Clint's eyes were stern. "Your enemy isn't going to stop, Natalie."

"Look, you've been trying to kill me for the past hour or so. If you can't do it, I don't think anyone can."

He scowled at that. "This isn't a game."

"It's also not a real fight," I shot back, trying not to get too angry with him and failing miserably.

He scowled at me, turned away. "Three minutes. Then you're back on your feet."

I groaned and slid down the wall I was leaning against, sitting down on the floor and curling up in a pathetic ball. "Ugh, this sucks!"

Someone laughed nearby: Steve. He entered the training room. "Just came to check up on you both," he informed me, tossing a water bottle my way. I snatched it gratefully, with tired arms, and lowered my shield so I could chug down about half of it on one go. As I did so, Steve kept talking. "Also, Natalie, I was wondering if you knew where Loki was."

"I would hope so," Clint snarled. "Seeing as she's supposed to be our eyes on him in the first place."

He was ignored. I wiped the water off of my lips and chin with the back of my hand. "Floor eight. Tony's forcing him through a movie marathon."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Been there," he muttered. I grinned. So far, Loki had avoided Tony's mandatory catch-up-on-the-Earth-classics-because-you're-either-an-alien-or-have-been-asleep-since-World-War-Two-movie-marathon only because I had already seen said Earth classics. But Stark had finally decided that he was bored enough for it not to matter, and he wanted Loki to see them with his own eyes. Steve gripped my shoulder as he stood, patting it a few times. "I guess I'll go rescue him. I have a few ideas I wanted to discuss with him."

"Hey, knock yourself out," I said, gesturing with one hand for him to continue. "I'm sure Loki will thank you."

Steve gave me a grin and cut out of the room. Clint was busy tightening arrowheads. "That's three minutes, Frost."

"Is not!" I protested, still exhausted, but at his dangerous look I groaned and pulled myself to my feet. "I stand corrected. This does not suck. You do."

He didn't take the insult well; he never did anymore. I stood and readied my force field once again, trying to plan out a course to get to Clint without getting struck by one of those annoyingly explosive arrows of his.

It was difficult. Almost impossible. As the archer started firing, I weaved in between flames and explosions, but Clint never missed his targets; and right now, that target was me. Still, I worked at it, running, fighting, using the smoke of each of his last explosions to shield my escape from the next one, in and out of flame and ash.

Finally, finally, I got close enough for hand-to-hand. The two of us locked in combat, so that I was now dodging fists and kicks instead of full-on arrows and explosions. I was impressed with how good I'd gotten; I'd never even been able to land a blow on Clint before. And he wasn't even trying back then. But now… now he was getting faster and faster, better and better, and I wasn't getting hit. I wasn't giving hits that often, either, but I was still managing to avoid it all deftly enough.

But then it happened. Then everything changed.

Because then I got him right in the ribcage, still shielded; and I swear that I thought I heard something crack.

Clint cried out in pain, stumbling back, clutching his ribs. His face contorted, and I took a step back in shock.

"Crap!" I shouted. "Clint, Clint are you okay? I'm so sorry! It was an accident, I didn't mean to… oh, man…" My shield dropped again. "I'm sorry!" I said, taking a few steps closer to him, my hands hovering in front of him, trying to assess the damage. "Are you all ri-"

Wham.

I didn't see his fist coming, not until it cut me off, not until it slammed right into the side of my face. The blow was hard enough to stun me, to make my entire head vibrate, the bones in my jaw quivering. My ears started to ring, and I fell back a few steps, barely keeping my balance. I had time to register his fist curling back again before it stuck once more, this time hard enough to make me lose my balance completely. I fell to the ground, onto my butt, a sharp pain immediately spiking up through my tailbone and up through my spine. I cried out, shielding my face with my hands this time.

Clint knocked them aside and gripped my collar harshly, his face suddenly very close to mine. I was petrified by the hatred in his eyes, the pure loathing and spite, so intense that I could see my own murder inside of them, could see my own blood spilling on the training room floor mats.

But, even more terrifying then that, even more terrifying than my murder in his eyes, was the shadows that were dancing inside of his irises; black shapes that weaved and writhed about inside of them.

This wasn't Clint anymore.

He pulled his hand back for another strike, and I prepared myself to try and block it… But then he hesitated. His fist gradually loosened and unclenched. As it opened, his hand drifted down to his side, and the shadows inside of his irises began to dissipate. Slowly, surely, he transformed, his temper dying. His grip on my collar, however, remained as tight as ever. Blood began to leak down from the corner of my lip, tears unbidden were stinging my eyes, and the entire left side of my face was throbbing.

He raised a finger, jabbing it in my face. There could be no doubting the raw, dangerous truth in his words as he said, "Next time, I don't hesitate."

He released my collar, dropping me back to the floor. I caught myself painfully on my elbows, and he stood upright again, stiffly, as though his muscles were still straining to attack me again.

"And the next time you want to kill me, Loki, don't send your pet to do it," he snarled. "Have the guts to face me yourself."

I stared at him numbly, my face aching and throbbing, as he stood and stalked out of the room. For a second, I was frozen, unable to move. It hurt. Everything hurt.

Slowly, however, I was able to sit upright again. I dragged myself over to the wall and propped myself up there, gingerly testing my face with my fingers. I didn't sob, but tears were leaking out of my eyes and pouring down my damaged face. They were unstoppable, a never ending flow. Four words rang in my ears as I recalled the shadows that I had seen in Clint's eyes:

Barton has been compromised.

There was no doubt. There was nothing we could do to stop or change it. He'd attacked one of his own now, and we couldn't afford to keep him on our side any longer. We had to tell Fury. We had to get him out of here before he hurt someone else. My chest ached at the thought of imprisoning Barton while we fought Fraye, at forcing him into a prison while his world crumbled around him. No one should have to die in a cage like that, no one.

But we had no more choice.

I pulled myself to my feet with a lot of effort, then headed off towards the bathroom. I checked the injury in the mirror: it wouldn't take long for the bruise to show up; I could already see its outline beginning to form. My lip was swelling, crimson dribbling down out of its corner and drizzling down my chin. My left eye would most certainly turn black, though there was some debate about the right. I swiped my tongue across my teeth; no chips, no cracks, nothing broken there. My head was still ringing. There were two small cuts: one just below my left eye, and one just above my left eyebrow. They weren't so bad. They just stung a little, while the rest of my face throbbed, a heartbeat just beneath my skin.

Barton has been compromised.

I sighed heavily, washed away the blood very carefully, and gently dabbed the would-be bruises with a wet cloth in an effort to fight the pain, and the fever heat that was beginning to spread across them. Then I headed out of the room and started searching the Tower.

Did JARVIS already know? I hoped not. Maybe he'd just see it as training. Maybe Clint's hissed words were quiet enough that he didn't quite catch all of them. In any case, I wanted to say this directly to Natasha, not Tony. I could only hope that JARVIS would extend our strange, illogical courtesy of not turning Barton over to Fury no matter what he said; and that he would believe that this counted under that heading. But I gave up on figuring out what the machine would do. His motivations were always crystal clear, and yet continually clouded.

I found Natasha in one of the kitchens, and realized only then that it was around lunchtime. She looked up to me and opened her mouth to greet me, but the words died as she caught sight of the cuts and almost-bruises on my face.

"What happened?" She asked me, immediately on the alert.

Barton has been compromised.

I opened my mouth. The words came up out of my throat, to my lips. They spilled into the air.

They were the wrong words.

"Stupid accident, during training." I laughed and rubbed the back of my neck, as though I couldn't believe my own idiocy. "Ran full tilt, smack into a wall." I slapped my palms against each other, sliding them slightly, to illustrate my point. Natasha relaxed, smiling a little.

"Business as usual, then?" She asked wryly. I laughed again and went to refrigerator.

"Perfectly usual," I answered, grabbing a yogurt and a spoon before ducking out of the doorframe, waving over my shoulder as I went. "See ya'!"

She waved goodbye and returned to her food, and to the book she had in front of her. I took the yogurt with me, up to my room, and set it down on the nightstand. I didn't have much of an appetite.

I don't know why I didn't tell Natasha, nor why I tried- and nearly succeeded in- hiding it for the rest of the day. I hid in my room for as long as I possibly could, sometimes managing to distract myself with a book, or my laptop, but occasionally just staring at my bruises and willing them to go away, to stop getting darker.

But of course, the Avengers decided that today was just the perfect day to hold a meeting; because that's just my luck. Loki was sent to retrieve me from the floor below; which, of course, he did not tell me until he opened the door to my room.

I had already planned out how to hide the bruises from him. It would be relatively simple; I could hide them fairly well with my hair, after all. I figured that, if I could avoid eye contact and keep up a few non-noticeable mental walls, then waited until it was too dark to see before I snuck into his room (I did that occasionally, getting distracted by books or my computer until late in the night), and if I was very careful, then maybe I could hide it from him for at least one day. I wasn't certain why I wanted to, why I hadn't told anyone that this was not another klutzy move brought on by my accident-prone self. I wasn't sure why I didn't want anyone to know. I just knew that I didn't.

But of course, no matter how good of a liar I was, Loki could always tell. He was actually smiling as he came inside (he and Steve had talked strategies to death, then moved on to old war stories; ones that actually interested him). Startled by his sudden appearance, I tried to enact my plan quickly, pulling my hair in front of my eyes. I hadn't known that he'd come. I hadn't been paying attention, hadn't known about the meeting tonight…

He entered the room and froze when he saw me; my hair was a mess from where I'd been pulling it in front of my face… but not even my hasty actions were enough to cover the little cut on my lip in time.

His eyebrows furrowed. Silently, he questioned me, asking what had happened without asking at all, reaching his mind out to try and skim through my memories.

Reflexively, I pulled up thick walls between myself and him, cutting him out completely, so that I was not only blocking off the memory, but also everything else as well. The abrupt separation between us made us both feel suddenly sick, a wave of nausea and vertigo sweeping across me, my head aching. Loki took a startled step backwards, pressing his palm to his forehead, trying to clear out the pain. He hadn't expected for me to react quite so violently; after all, for all he knew, the bruises could be explained away as a simple accident.

"Frost…?" He asked through his teeth. His eyes flicked open and darted to me sharply. It was a threat and an order; but it was also the closest he could get to concern right now.

I looked at him for a long time. There was an odd ripping sensation in my chest, a tear somewhere behind my ribcage. I didn't want to tell him. I didn't want him to know.

Barton has been compromised.

The words were whirling around my head in a tornado, so loud and fierce that it was a wonder that Loki did not hear them.

Why was I afraid of what Loki would do when he found out? Why would Loki do anything? Maybe he'd tell Natasha, and she'd send him to Fury and that would be the end of it. All of this would be over. Clint wouldn't be able to hurt us anymore. We'd be free of him at last.

But I didn't want him to go.

I stared into Loki's eyes for a long time, pleading with him silently. He stared back, angry and upset and just the slightest bit afraid. Because, whatever had happened, it had cut me deep; and if it cut me, then it would most certainly injure him in turn. My pain was his pain, after all…

He took a few steps towards me, pulling up a chair right across from where I was sitting. Once he had seated himself across from me, he gently pushed my hair back behind my ears, revealing the entirety of the scrapes and markings on my skin.

He studied them for a second before, very carefully, he took my face in both hands, his fingers deftly avoiding putting unnecessary pressure on any of the bruises. He tilted my head to the side, so that the discoloration caught the light, and then examined it cautiously. After a few long moments- once he'd finished assessing the damage- one hand dropped. The other slid down the right side of my jaw; he tucked two fingers beneath my chin and lifted it, forcing me to hold his gaze.

"What happened?" he demanded to know. His voice was stern, but his eyes were still kinder than his tone indicated. My eyes were burning, and I could see the tears in their lower lids. I blinked, and one of them started to roll down my cheek.

Swallowing back the gross, thick feeling in my throat, knowing that there was no way to hide what he had so obviously seen, I allowed the walls to dissipate, allowed our minds to mesh together again, our thoughts intermingling. Loki immediately rooted out the memory that had started all of this, and he scanned the memory in silence; but that silence grew darker and darker with each passing second. Shadows began to brew in his eyes, shadows that were almost as dark and real as the ones that had flickered through Clint's eyes. He released my chin, his hand slowly moving down to his side, trembling. I saw his every muscle turn rigid, his entire body freezing into cold, hard, unforgiving stone.

"Barton?" The word was slow and tight, deathly quiet, and said through a clenched jaw. I was dumbstruck by the pure bloodlust and hatred on his features, hatred that rivaled even that of what Clint felt for me. I nodded mutely, then forced myself to swallow and speak, to say something in my defense. (I assumed at the time that his hatred was directed towards me; everything that day seemed to have been.)

"It's not like… I mean, . I know you're worried that the Avengers will think you did something to him through me, but honestly, we don't have to say anything. If we don't tell them, then they won't think that… you know, that I did anything to provoke him or something. That he was just defending himself. We don't have to-"

I was cut off when Loki stood, a lurching and rough movement, his chair almost falling to the ground behind him. He whirled around and started stalking towards the door, his every movement filled with terrible, bleak purpose. His vision had been bathed in crimson, startling me further; if he was mad at me, then he shouldn't have been this angry, it was something easily controlled, we were good at these kinds of lies…

He wasn't even looking at me anymore. He was walking out of the room, heading towards the stairs, his footsteps entirely silent. Each stride exuded deadly grace, like an animal stalking its prey. His hands were in claws at his sides, and he was positively shaking in rage. There was a taste of blood in his mouth. I was stunned; Loki so rarely got this angry, this furious. His was a slow vengeance, moving at glacial speeds, deliberate and inevitable. He did not feel anger like this, not this fiery, explosive, irradiated ire. Sure, he lost his temper on occasion (like when he threw Stark out of a window) but still, this wasn't… this wasn't him.

I guessed even I didn't know him as well as I thought; because that's when it hit me. The reason he was really this furious, the reason he was walking away from me… and, most importantly:

Where he was going now.

I stood, too, shouting, "Loki, wait!" as I chased after him, feeling like an idiot and cursing my own stupidity. He ignored me quite effectively, still silently seething, always a few steps ahead of me as I repeatedly tried to call him back.

He was still ahead of me when he made it to the next floor, where the Avengers were waiting for us both to start our meeting. The door slammed open-Loki didn't bother caring when the wood almost seemed to crack- and struck the wall with enough force to leave a mark in the plaster. The Avengers, all sitting in an oddly relaxed formation (our meetings had been less formal as of late; we didn't even sit around the holo-table anymore, but rather in whatever living room Steve chose), all looked up to Loki in confusion.

All except Clint.

Clint stiffened, every muscle tensing as his eyes, dark and challenging, flicked to Loki, daring him to try something. Only Loki and I knew that he intended to take the archer up on that particular dare, and, catching up at last, I flung myself in the room, my hands inches away from catching him as he strode towards the archer, his green eyes gleaming with shimmering gold magic.

"No, Loki, don't!" I shouted, but he was deaf to my words, deaf to anything around him. By the time I'd spoken, his hand was already around Clint's throat, lifting him out of the chair and flinging him bodily to the ground.

He advanced on Barton as Tony cursed, half the room scrambling to its feet. The other half were up a heartbeat later. I was in front of the Trickster and pushing him back within seconds; and Steve and Thor, the closest, were helping half a moment later, holding Loki back from behind. Even though I was standing right in front of him, it didn't look like Loki was able to see me; he was blind, blind to me, blind to the Avengers, blind to anyone but Clint. I could see the black flames in his vision, could feel the deathly determination inside of him.

"If you ever lay a hand on her again, Barton, I swear to you, I will personally see that hand removed before I take your miserable life!" He shouted at the archer, a snake hissing and spewing venom. His struggle in Thor's and Steve's grasp was vicious and fierce; he did not care who he hurt, so long as Barton was on the list. He managed to slip out of the two Avengers' grasp, but I pushed him back, holding him with all of my measly human strength in a desperate effort to keep him from strangling Clint.

"Loki, Loki, it's okay, I'm fine, it's okay!" I was babbling, shouting, trying to wrestle him back under control. It wasn't working. And now Clint was reacting too, stepping towards Loki. Natasha intercepted and held him back before he could get any closer, while Tony joined Thor, Steve and I in our losing battle against the Norse god of Mischief.

Loki kept fighting, growling out curses in other languages; curses that, if you understood them, could make your ears bleed. Hawkeye just looked back at him with a malicious sneer curling on his face. "Oh, facing me like a man at last?" He demanded. "Tired of sending your stooge out to do your dirty work?"

"Just stop!" I protested breathlessly, still straining to push Loki back. "Loki, you are not helping things! Just let it go, it's not worth it, I'm not-"

Tony, too, was still holding onto Loki; but I could see his eyes scanning my bruises, taking in the situation. A sickened realization lit up his face. "He hit you?" he asked me in disbelief.

"Not the time, Stark!"

Loki was still snarling death threats at Barton. He was so pissed he couldn't even get his words out in one language; he was switching constantly, from English to Spanish to Asgardian and Jotun dialects. I think the only one in the room who understood every word was me. "Worthless, wretched coward! Striking your ally- your friend- while her defenses are down?! For what cause? To hurt me? To affect me? You gutless COWARD! I'd break your spine into pieces if I believed you had one to begin with!"

I think 'striking your ally', 'defenses were down' and 'spine into pieces' were all in English, because recognition was passing around the room. Bruce was trying to help Natasha restrain Clint, with Thor, Steve, Stark and I all battling back Loki. But shaded acknowledgment passed across Tony's face, and, abruptly, he released the Trickster.

"You know what? Knock yourself out."

"Sta-a-ark!" I complained, drawing it out through my teeth, straining against the Norse god of Chaos. Tony just folded his arms and put on the appearance of someone who doesn't really give a crap.

"Get all offended when I touch your pet, huh?" Clint asked, eyes shining maliciously. Again, it was clear to me that he had vanished entirely, that Clint wasn't here anymore. I'm sure that everyone in the room knew that by now, knew that it wasn't the Clint we knew. Even Stark, standing by and waiting for Loki to knock the crap out of the archer, probably knew this by now. He just didn't care enough. "Getting fond of your most recent tool, are you?"

"Loki, please!" I begged, as Loki's struggles became even more vicious, even more violent. "It's not worth it! It's not him!"

"She's right," I heard Steve's voice, a little lower than mine, closer to Loki. "You've made your point. We'll take care of this."

Loki's eyes were locked on Barton, and he was still seething, but he did hear the Soldier's words. They registered somewhere, dimly and faintly. And he knew that they were true, that they were right. This was an Avengers matter, and the Avengers would take care of it.

Still, it took every ounce of willpower inside of his body to stop fighting, to relax, to stop straining towards Clint's throat. Slowly, surely, he managed to straighten up again, to stop fighting, to stand tall. Barton lurched forwards one more time as the Trickster looked down at him with the utmost of loathing and spite; the kind of loathing and spite that was typically reserved for the random sticky substance that you find stuck to the bottom of your shoe. But despite how his face returned to its usual cold and aloof derision, despite how his demeanor appeared much calmer, his hands were still trembling as he clasped them behind his back; and his eyes did not leave the assassin.

After sneering at Loki one last time, Clint, too, relaxed a little; and when Natasha and Bruce warily released him, he shrugged them off. He gave me a look- one that I really did not like- and murmured, "So she's the weak link."

Loki went stiff again, and everyone flinched, some immediately reaching towards him again, to keep him in check… but he did not make a move. Clint's eyes flicked from me to the Avengers, then finally landed- and stayed on- Loki. "How's it feel, knowing that they'll stop you at every turn? That you can't stop it? That you're powerless?"

Loki's face darkened considerably further, and I stepped in front of him, hands on his chest, pushing him back again. "Come on, Loki, let it go," I said, as quietly and soothingly as I could manage. I took his hand; and though he didn't look to me, his fingers wrapped around mine. "Let's get out of here, come on…" I continued, gently navigating him towards the exit. The Avengers parted to let us pass, and Loki unwillingly allowed me to drag him along, his eyes still burning ferociously as they turned, at last, away from Barton.

Clint was still searching for the right button to push, even as Natasha whispered out orders in Russian; most likely telling him to be quiet. "You've shown your hand, Loki," he called. "I told you, didn't I? I won't hesitate next time. Next time…" he trailed off, shrugging in a way that implied many things, then laughed darkly. "Well, you know what'll happen next time. And there'll be nothing you can do about it."

I lost him again. Loki whirled, eyes aflame once more. Glowing gold energy began to shimmer at his fingertips, his spear materializing as he advanced towards Clint again. Blue energy flared from its tip, sending the Avengers scattering back and diving for cover as Loki stalked towards Barton. Clint didn't seem afraid; actually, he was smiling, his bow already in his hands, knocking an arrow. The tension between the two had been building for a very, very long time now, and it crackled in the air as Loki began his clash with the archer. An arrow streaked towards him; he caught the thing and tossed it aside, igniting it with a blast of blue from the spear. He and Clint suddenly locked in a death match as the small explosion rang through the air, making my eardrums shatter as I hid away with the other Avengers. My head ached and my ears rang; but once the air had cleared, we were all on our feet and trying to pull the two apart again despite the pain. It was a hopeless cause; we couldn't get a grip on either of them; they were fighting furiously, a dance of blows and parries. Stark- who was rubbing out his ears- still didn't seem to care if they were separated or not, and I could have sworn that he was silently rooting for Loki.

"Guys, stop it!" I shrieked as Thor shouted, "Brother, see sense!" We were both ignored. Natasha was barking out words in Russian, and Bruce was keeping to the sidelines of the fight, looking torn. Steve was reaching for his shield when the inevitable happened:

Loki won.

Clint was a brilliant fighter. He could knock Loki on his butt on occasion, but Loki was fueled by an anger so intense that he felt nothing, no pain or weakness or regret. And Clint was fueled by nothing but a false rage, a fake conviction, forced onto him by his enemy. And Loki always was a tough son of a bitch; so while the fight lasted for a little while… well, it didn't last long enough.

His foot shot out, going behind Clint, trying to trip him up. Clint managed to avoid it, but not quickly enough to get away from Loki's latest blow and keep his balance. Three quick jabs later, (all of which were most certainly hard enough to bruise mortal skin) and the archer was on the ground, flat on his back, with Loki's spear tip pressed directly against his throat. The Avengers went in to tackle him, to bring him to the ground-even Tony was stepping in now- but there was no way they'd get there in time, no way they'd stop him…

Loki raised the spear, very much intending to bring it down again; if not on his throat, then his wrist, to sever the offending appendage, as he had promised earlier. I didn't think. I didn't have time to think. I could only react.

"Loki, stop!" I screamed, my hand shooting out and curling into a claw, a talon. I felt something flow down out of my wrist, something cold and warm at the same time, something illuminated and glowy, something comfortable and powerful; but also something dark and sinister.

Loki froze abruptly, unmoving, becoming stone in the blink of an eye. The spear was still half-raised. His face was still frozen in hate. But his eyes were wide and filled with terror, and as he stood there… he choked. I could see him straining everything against the sudden immobility that had seized him, even if he wasn't moving in the slightest. He was… paralyzed.

The entire room seemed to be placed under the same enchantment as every last eye- including mine but not Loki's- fell to the glowing, shimmering, and all-too-visible Key on my wrist. The Key on Loki's wrist was glowing, too; the only visible part of the invisible chains that bound him. For a second, I stared, completely and entirely dumbstruck.

Thor recovered first. He was the closest to Loki, and he made it to his brother's side as I stared at my own wrist, my brain whirring, trying to figure out what the hell I just did. It took a long moment before it clicked.

"No," I breathed. I dropped my hand in a quick, jerky, abrupt movement and, in a second, equally rough movement, pulled it close to my body. The Keys on our wrists stopped glowing. I wrapped my hand around my wrist, holding it tightly, desperately trying to hide it again, to snuff its light and conceal it away from the world, stuff it back into the darkness where it belonged. "No, no, no, no, no…"

The enchantment had been lifted, but Loki still remained immobile. His spear hand fell down from where it was raised, drifted down to his side, but otherwise he didn't move. Thor was standing beside him, watching him carefully, close enough to react and hold his brother back if he tried anything again. Clint had rolled out of the way of Loki's spear and was now standing a few feet away, watching him intently, with pure hate in his eyes.

It wasn't his hate. And those weren't his eyes.

But I was barely paying attention to the Hawk. My gaze was locked on the back of Loki's head. His furious trembling had ceased. The spear vanished with a slow, subtle hand movement and a shimmer of gold light.

"Loki…" I whispered in a tight voice. "Loki, I'm so sorry… I… I didn't mean to… I just… I-I-I reacted, and it just… It just happened! I'm… I'm sorry… I'm so sorry!" I was practically begging. Begging for him to listen, begging for him to understand, begging for everything to be okay again, for this to have never happened. The Avengers were all watching us intently, every last one of them on edge, as though they expecting Loki to turn on me, so quickly after defending me. I didn't pay attention to them. I didn't care about them, even though I knew that it was their presence that made this all so much worse.

"Please, Loki, I didn't mean it. I didn't mean to… didn't mean…" Tears were pouring down my cheeks again. Ugh, this day was just so screwed up. Everything was so screwed up.

But then… that was Fraye's intent, wasn't it?

Not looking at me, moving very slowly, Loki turned. He started to walk towards the door, brushing past me without giving me a second glance. A sob hitched in my throat as walls divided us, split us apart, sending waves of pain through my head, churning my stomach and making me dizzy. I didn't protest them. I didn't have a right to protest them. The tears kept rolling down my cheeks-I had cried far too often for one day- and my hands were shaking, my palms sweating; especially the hand that still held the Key, wrapped around it like a shackle.

"Loki…" I tried to plead to him one more time, and he halted; the movement was so sudden and unexpected and jarring that I immediately stopped talking; and everyone in the room stopped breathing.

And then the Norse god of Mischief turned to me.

He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. His face said enough, because his face said nothing at all. His eyes told me everything, because they were silent. The air around him seemed to frost over, and I felt icy daggers pierce through me, skewer me in place, as immobile as I had made him. His green eyes had turned to solid jade, rock and stone; and, for just that second, he allowed me to feel what he did, allowed me into his head and showed me what I had done…

My knees buckled, and for a moment, I had to struggle to keep myself upright. Because he felt no anger, no hate, no pain. He felt nothing, nothing at all, nothing but pure, molten betrayal.

After I'd finally gotten him to trust me… after everything I had done…

My eyes filled with water again as he turned away and walked out in silence. I stayed frozen in place for the longest time, just staring after him. Dimly, I heard Tony order JARVIS to keep his eye on Loki, and I heard Natasha whispering once more to Clint in Russian. He seemed to listen to her this time, though what she said was lost to me. I heard this all as though we were underwater, blurred and indistinct. And I couldn't bring myself to care about it.

A hand gently fell onto my shoulder. I don't know whose. But that touch woke me, made me feel as though I had been struck, and suddenly… suddenly I was running. Running away, running up the stairs, down the hall, into my room, where I slammed the door behind me. I stayed there for a second, panting, trying to gather my suddenly hectic and crazy thoughts…

But there was no way to gather them. There was no sense to them. I'd screwed up. I'd done the one thing that I had sworn to myself- and to the other half of myself- that I would never do. There was nothing more to it. I'd betrayed Loki and now there was no going back, because if there was one thing he could never, ever forgive, it was a betrayal.

But what else could I have done?

A hopeless fury rushed through me, and I yelled into the room; a wordless sound of rage. Lurching forwards, I started to pull things down from the cabinets, to throw them everywhere, to rip apart everything I had in this room and throw it all to the ground, shouting and cursing and crying. I shoved my small bookcase to the floor and pulled my mattress off of the bedsprings, tipping over the bed frame, ripping apart anything that I could get my hands on, throwing books against the wall and flinging pencils and their cases onto the ground. I kicked my pillows across the floor and repeatedly slammed my fists against the walls, bruising my fingers and bloodying my knuckles.

It's not right it's not fair it's not right it's Fraye's fault, she did this she did this to Clint she did this to me she did this to us she did this to Loki but no I did that to Loki it's my own fault but it's not right I'm not right I'm the bad guy it's my own fault mine.

I slammed my hands into the wall one final time before, a sob in my throat, I slid down it and fell to the ground, on my knees. The rage blew itself out in a blaze of glory, and as I knelt down in front of the wall, it was suddenly replaced by exhaustion, by pain.

So I buried my face in my hands and sobbed.

Clint sat, waiting, in the room that the other Avengers had put him in.

They'd locked him in here. Locked him in this room 'for his own protection'. But he knew the truth. He knew that it was for everyone else's protection.

He wanted to laugh; so the Avengers would protect themselves from him, but not from the man who had tried to take over the entire planet?

He also knew that the other Avengers- besides Steve, who was standing guard outside of Clint's door - were now discussing his fate. Not what Loki had done. Not what had been done to stop Loki. They were talking over Clint's fate.

The world really had gone to pieces.

He tilted his chair back on two legs and kicked his feet up on the table, wishing someone had been thoughtful enough to leave him a book. His fingers toyed with the object in his belt briefly before he pulled it out to study it.

He typed a code into the small metal machine. He had a feeling that he would need it ready and on-hand by the time Natasha finally came through those doors (because who else would they send but Natasha?)

He only had to wait for a little while; an insultingly short amount of time, actually. Was it really so easy for them to decide to lock him away? Was it truly so simple and effortless to cast him aside, to toss him to the wolves?

Of course it must be. Because they weren't them anymore. They weren't the Avengers that he knew. That wasn't the Natalie that he knew. Loki had them all twisted around his finger. He'd done it. He'd finally done it. After all this time, after all of his attempts, he'd defeated the Avengers at last.

Natasha came into the room, as he'd known she would, with the solemn and blank expression that he'd known that she would have, her eyes set in the way that he knew they would be. She did not sit, and he did not stand.

She did not bother to patronize him by telling him what the decision was, or what would happen because of it. What had to happen because of it. She just looked him in the eye, half-sighed quietly, and said, "It's time to go."

Clint laughed dryly. He looked down to the device in his hand, primed and prepared with the code he'd punched in. One push of one button. One push of one button and this would all be over. But not until then. "And if I say no?" He inquired, not looking up to her.

Natasha pulled something out of her belt-an exact duplicate of the object in his own hands- and set it on the table. Clint could see that the code had already been punched in. Her finger hovered over the button. "You know what this is," she answered in a solemn, grimly determined tone, switching languages as easily as breathing, speaking in Russian, so as to deter any prying ears.

Clint smirked, pushing his own device forwards. His other hand went back to scratch the back of his neck, his fingernail gently running over the metal bead attached to his skin. "And you know what this is," he said, gesturing to the twin detonators on the table. One push of one button for both of them, and then it would be over. Neither of them could reach their own detonators, could stop the other from pressing the button in time.

Natasha didn't even blink (because of course she had known what it was and that he would have it). Her finger hovered over the button, as did his. "Stalemate, then," she said stoically. He felt her voice dance in the air, the words stalking him.

"Stalemate," he murmured in agreement.

"So how does this play out?" She asked, her eyes flat. They were discussing matters of life and death; but not in whispered tones and hushed secrecy, nor in quiet dread and terrible fear. They spoke of death as it should be spoken of: as a fact. Because there was life and death and a spy knows both, and speaks to both as if they are old friends. "Do you come with me? Or does it end like this?"

Clint gave her the smallest of smiles. "It started like this," he answered her. "Do you think that it's possible for it to end any other way?" He smiled, chuckled dryly, and shook his head. "As if I would ever die without you, Nat. As if I'd let you die without me."

The two were quiet for a long moment. There was no doubt in either mind that if Clint made the decision, then the buttons would be pressed. This would all be over. The Avengers would be down two teammates, not one, but it was always that way. Natasha and Clint may not have been bound by magic or telepathy, but their connection was just as desperate and irrevocable, their lives forever and always intertwined. In the life of a spy, that is not an advantage; partners die all the time, friends disappear, and your life or your partner's can always be classified as 'collateral damage'. Death is present and constant.

But just because it wasn't convenient… that did not mean that it wasn't there nonetheless.

Natasha and Clint continued to lock gazes for a very long time. Silence hovered in the room. A decision had to be made, and it rested squarely on the shoulders of the Hawk.

And then, at last, that Hawk smiled. He deleted the code from the device and slid it towards the Black Widow, raising his hands partway into the air.

"Not sure if I wanna die over something-or someone- as stupid as that royal pain in my neck," he said, giving her a cocky- but still incredibly dangerous- smirk. "So g'on, Nat. Do what you gotta do."

She studied him for a second, then blinked and turned. A moment later, he followed.

A few seconds after that, so did Fraye.

Of course, no one could see her; she was very adept at cloaking herself when she had no wish for prying eyes. Sometimes it was true invisibility; sometimes those eyes simply skated off of her and did not notice, but either way, it suited her purposes. She watched the two spies as they headed towards the exit of the building and beamed.

"Perfect!" She squeaked in a child's voice, then collapsed onto the ground in a fit of giggles. She let herself roll around for a little while, clutching her sides; but when her chuckle fit stopped, she lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling. Her smile was wide and mad as ever.

After a moment, she jumped back to her feet and started to skip into the next room, where the Avengers were discussing events of the past afternoon in hushed, morbid tones. She ignored them, heading up the stairs and into the room where I was curled up in a miserable ball on the mattress, my stuff still strewn about haphazardly.

"Hmm." She gnawed on the inside of her cheek. "Well that's no good." Her eyes darted back and forth as she scanned my thoughts, her presence still unknown to me (a great testament to her telepathy, given how any other telepath would have been noticed immediately).

"Oh, Natalie, what did you go and do that for?" She demanded, crossing her arms and tapping her foot. She sighed deeply and walked out of my room, navigating the Tower expertly until she found my other half.

Loki was sitting in the highest floor that he was allowed in, looking out of the window. His thoughts were occupied on the glass, on his reflection in the window pane. He desperately hated his reflection. He never knew who was truly staring back at him: Loki Odinson? Loki Laufeyson?

Natalie Frost?

Fraye sat down next to him, still unseen. "Oh, that's not what I wanted at all," she whined as she scanned through his memories, his emotions. Her lower lip jutted out, cheeks poofing out as she pouted. "It was all so perfect! Why'd you two have to go and ruin it?"

When she received no answer, she glared, then headed back to where the Avengers were meeting. Biting her lip, her expression shifted into one of extreme concentration. She looked over each of the Avengers in turn, focusing on them one at a time.

"Thor," She decided at last, walking over to the Thunderer. She went behind the chair where he sat and leaned in beside his ear. "Do me a favor, big guy? Talk some sense into your little brother for me. I need him and Natalie getting along, and they're being stubborn again."

Thor's eyes clouded. Fraye's whisper in his ear was nothing more than a telepathic suggestion, not an order, but it was still something that he would wish to do, thus lending it some weight. She spoke quickly, stopping him before he could stand and walk to Loki. "Give him a day or two to get out of his hissy fit, first. Then talk to him." She smiled as he settled back into his chair. "Thanks, sweetie."

Thor settled back down into his chair, telling tales about Keepers and Keys, and what it meant to be either. The Avengers listened in silence as Fraye grinned, stepped into the shadows, and faded away.

The day after the Avengers discovered the Key's true power and properties, I begged Thor to let me take the Tesseract up to Asgard, so that I could ask Odin to have the thing removed.

"He gave me the power, and I abused it!" I argued. "Just like I knew I would, just like I said I would!"

Thor, however, had refused. "He will not remove it, Natalie. What you did was not abuse of your power; you used the Key to save the life of a friend."

I had moaned and cried and threw a tantrum unlike any that I had thrown since I was three years old, but Thor had remained adamant. So I sulked in my room while Loki sulked in his, both of us trying to catch up on the sleep we had missed the night before (since I had not snuck into his room).

Clint was in a special cell in one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s headquarters (as it turned out, we all had one specifically designed for each of us, something that I didn't really feel comfortable knowing), and his imprisonment was weighing on me. Natasha had brought me in to the Council as evidence of Clint's inability to continue on his assignment, displaying my bruised face for all to see. These past few days had been very grim at the Tower, what with his loss and with Loki and I being… well, being like we were.

Steve comforted me on occasion, promised me that I had done the right thing, sat and listened to music or watched movies with me to pass the time. Seeing as I could no longer do such things with Loki, Steve was a welcome substitution; but he could never replace the Trickster (nor, I'm sure, would he want to).

It had only been a few days since Loki's hatred had returned for me, and already I missed him. I missed the way we used to be, the way that we'd become in these past few months since his release from prison. This… the way we were now… it was like the stupid shit from the old days, back when we'd first met, back when I was the stupid Pizza Girl and he was the Would-Be King. Back when we wanted each other dead. Or back when he wanted me dead, at least.

Had we really become enemies again? Was that really all that it took? Was the edge that he stood on really so fragile that it would crumble beneath us so easily? Had I not built it on stronger foundations, had I not toiled and labored tirelessly on that which kept us from being this again?

Apparently not. Because here we were again.

I was busy distracting myself with the internet (the one thing that kept me from repeatedly banging my head into the nearest brick wall) when it happened: when Thor finally acted on the silent suggestion that Fraye had implanted into his mind.

Loki was busy brooding, staring out of the window yet again, and Thor hovered in front of the door hesitantly, trying to determine his words before he entered. He knew that Loki was a master of words, knew that his brother had an uncanny knack for sharpening your own words before throwing them back at you, barbed and dripping poison. He had to speak very carefully if he wished to get his point across.

After a moment, however, he stepped inside of the room. "May I speak with you, brother?"

Loki- who of course knew full well that his brother had been standing just outside of the past few minutes- continued to stare out of the window, out at the city that he had once tried to burn. He could see it now, could see it boiling in flames, could see the fire consuming everything. No, no, he despised fire. Fire was rash and reckless, bold and fearless, consuming friend and foe alike. Fire burned out the heart of everything and left naught but ash behind. He wished for ice to take this city, for it to preserve what beauty this land had and to bury all that was foul. He wished for glaciers to choke this world, to swallow it whole, to lock away its citizens in its uncaring, unfeeling heart.

"If you must," he answered Thor tonelessly, with no shadows and no light in his words.

Thor sat down beside Loki, the couch shifting under the Thunderer's weight. Loki's eyes flicked to him, scanning him. How had he allowed himself to think that he had missed his brother? No matter its truth or falsehood, it was unforgivable to even consider; and when Thor did hurt him again, intentionally or not, then Loki would have no one to blame but himself, for letting him back into his life…

Spite began to well under his tongue like venom. Yes, that was the truth of the matter: he had no one to blame for this entire catastrophe but himself. He had allowed himself to get too close. He had allowed himself to become corrupted. Fire had eaten away at ice and made it melt, made him feel again, and if he felt anything, then he felt pain a thousand times worse. And he hated it. He was so sick of pain, so sick of his icy shield dropping away, so sick of losing himself to the ache. He longed to return to his former, eternal numbness, in which he could laugh at misery and agony (so long as it was someone else's), in which his world did not hurt.

Well, he had learned his lesson. He would not do this again. He would not subject himself to betrayal any longer; for there could be no betrayal without trust.

Thor was quiet and contemplative for so long that Loki felt the need to prod him, if only to get this conversation- or rather, this lecture- out of the way. He knew why his brother was here, knew that he had come with the intent to talk sense into Loki; and, well, that was pointless. Loki was seeing sense. He was seeing it clearly for perhaps the first time in months.

Because this had been inevitable from the beginning. He had just forgotten that.

"You said you wished to speak," He reminded the Thunderer. "So speak."

Thor turned to Loki, his blue eyes unreadable, unfathomable. He was used to being blunt, so he did not dance around the words; even knowing that Loki could turn them against him. "Brother, see reason," he implored. "Natalie did as she did because you gave her no other option."

Loki scoffed quietly. "She did it to protect a man who had hurt her."

"And if she was not that way, then where do you believe you would be at this moment?"

Loki scowled and looked away, staring out of the window again. But, for a moment, he had no response; and Thor took advantage of his silence.

"You, of everyone, should know better than to think that she would ever hurt you," The eldest brother carried on.
If there was another way, she would have taken it."

Loki's silence grew gloomier, darker, more brooding. "That's precisely the point, brother," he said in a low voice. "With us as we are… I should mean more to her than that. I should mean enough to her that this would be unthinkable, even in such a situation."

For a moment, Thor stared at his brother; who refused to look back at him. And then his hands clenched. "So it is not enough for you that she has abandoned her own life for you…" The Norse god of Thunder admonished, "But now she must give up everyone else's as well?"

Loki blinked, startled. He turned to his brother, who looked back at him with a strong air of… disappointment. For some reason, it curdled Loki's blood to see that look on Thor's face; a look he had seen only too often. But it had been so long… he had forgotten what it looked like. He had forgotten what it did to him.

"If you truly believe that, brother," Thor continued, "Then you were always to be disappointed. She will not choose you over us, or us over you. She would isolate herself away from us all long before that happened."

Loki laughed bitterly. He knew that what he was about to say would ruin everything. That it would destroy many of the things that he-that both of us- had worked to achieve. At that moment, however, he wanted nothing more than to get this pain out of his chest, to get this hate out of himself. He wanted to hurt Thor. He wanted to hurt me. And so the words slipped out in an almost reckless fashion, because if my recklessness had damaged him, why should his not damage me? "If that were truly the case, brother, then why has she already chosen me? My scars were not the only secret that she kept from you." He smiled with all of the kindness of a wolf, his teeth gleaming. "Did you not know? Did you not recognize that she was working for me from the beginning? That she knew Fraye for what she was long before you discovered this fact? That she and I conspired together to ensure my release from prison?"

Thor's eyes widened. A twinge of pain shocked through them, and he swallowed. But he kept his features stiff and unyielding. Loki leaned in closer to his brother, words hissing through his teeth. "She has been mine since the beginning. And regardless of this latest lapse, she will always be mine."

Thor was stoically quiet for a very long moment, and Loki turned away, his jade eyes glittering with dark triumph. He assumed that Thor's silence meant his victory.

He assumed incorrectly.

"That may be true," Thor said, his eyes on the ground, gaze heavy with silent acceptance. "But even so… you still came to her defense. You tried to protect her, as she has protected you." He looked up to Loki. "So is she yours, brother? Or are you hers?"

Loki's eyes whipped back to Thor, and he swallowed painfully. He quelled the shock swiftly, and his face curled into absolute revulsion. He stood abruptly, scoffing in disgust, clasping his hands together behind his back as he began to pace. "I belong to no one. It may surprise you to know, brother, that I have a degree of honor." His eyes turned to stone. "That is why I defended her. And no other reason."

"Then has it ever occurred to you that she conspired for your release for the same reason?" Thor asked, sounding unbearably smug.

Loki shot him the most molten of glares, then grumbled, "Tuh!" and turned his gaze to the ground and glowered at the carpet. He stalked back and forth across the room, again and again. The two were silent again; Thor's was a thoughtful, contemplative quiet, while Loki's was dangerous and bleak.

Abruptly, Loki halted in his furious pacing. His eyes closed, and he took a deep breath, sighing with a strange heaviness. When his eyes opened again, his expression was far softer; even a little weaker. "I…" He swallowed. "I defended her, Thor. I fought on her behalf." He turned to the Thunderer, and for a brief second his eyes plead with his sibling. "Do you know…?" He trailed off, not wishing to say the words that circled his mind: Do you know how long it has been since I have done something such as that for someone else? Since such a thing was necessary?

"And then…" Loki's face slowly morphed from pathetic, silent pleading to anger, his eyes shining as his lips curled back from his teeth. "And then for her to… to render me so helpless… to steal my will, and… and parade her ability to do so in front of the Avengers, my most bitter of foes…?" Loki's eyes closed as his head turned in the other direction, repulsed; but, at the same time, he appeared to almost be flinching away from the subject. Every time he remembered the event, every time he recalled the feeling of the enchantment he had been placed under, new disdain would emerge for the situation. It had not hurt him, had not injured him in any conventional way; but the numbness that had taken him over had been as bad, if not worse, than any physical pain. For just a brief second, no matter how he struggled or strained, no matter how desperately he fought against his invisible chains… he could not move. His strength had been sapped away, his control over his body evaporating, his will draining beneath his feet…

And to know that it was Natalie's doing… His thoughts raged. Natalie. Who I believed would never hurt me. Who I thought I trusted. Who I had the audacity to refer to as my friend…

Feeling sick, he started to pace again. Thor was watching him with those sad eyes, that expression he always had: like a puppy that had been kicked by someone it thought it cared about. Loki had always worked so hard as a child to keep Thor from being sad; he had always hidden his own pain, his hate, and his own, more selfish and monstrous instincts, so that Thor would not see it, so that Loki would not have to see that look on his face. So that he wouldn't have to see those eyes…

But he had finally grew tired of hiding, tired of catering to Thor. He had finally learned not to care. Only to sink back into this endless mire again.

"All this time…" Thor said, very quietly, disappointment returning to his face, to his sad, kicked-animal eyes. "And you still consider me your foe, brother?"

The words pierced him worse than he had expected. Loki looked to Thor, forcing his features into an unreadable expression. Part of him-the part that had resurfaced, the part that was tired of being hurt- wanted to scream at him. Wanted to shout that of course he did, why wouldn't he, they weren't brothers, after all. He was a Jotun and Thor was an Asgardian; they were monsters and men and no matter how much time had been shared between the two, no matter what words had passed between them, that was their fate. They were fated to hate and fight and eventually destroy each other, and there was nothing that could be done about it.

But another part of him seized control. He stepped towards his brother, sighing deeply. "Thor…" He said slowly, gentle and almost kind… but any kindness from his lips was bound to be a lie, and so before he could say that he could never consider Thor his enemy, he fell silent again. Thor continued to look up at him.

"And the others…" Thor continued to protest, slowly and quietly. "They are not your friends? Or even… your allies?" He looked to Loki, appealing to his sense of reason as he added, "I do not believe that one may laugh with their foes, or discuss old battles and strategies with them." He looked down, his hands clasped in front of him, the weight of worlds on his shoulders. "And I truly believed that… perhaps… you and I…"

Loki's eyes closed again. "Don't."

"Perhaps it was a foolish thought," Thor breathed. Loki flinched. Why did this hurt so badly?

Damn you, Natalie Frost! He inwardly moaned. (Because it was her fault, this was all her doing, if she hadn't started this, if she hadn't put these events into motion…)

Damn you and everything that you have ever done!

Loki turned away from his brother. He looked up, taking a deep breath, trying to clear his muddled thoughts. "What else can we be?" He murmured. His words were so quiet that it would have been nigh impossible for Thor to hear. "I do not forgive."

Impossible or not, Thor seemed to have understood Loki's words perfectly. And, though Loki had not heard him stand, had not heard him walk up behind him, suddenly he was there, placing a reassuringly heavy hand on the Trickster's shoulder.

"And why not?" Thor asked quietly. "Because you are a Giant?"

Why not? The answer was insultingly obvious, and Loki found his temper rising to the surface again; his moment of quiet passed, and anger crept back into his tone. "Because I never have," he tried to snarl, wishing to whirl on his brother… but that hand on his shoulder stopped him. He did not wish to escape it (even though that was all that he wanted) and he did not wish to hurt his brother (even though he was even now imagining Thor's blood pooling on the floor). "I remember everything, I forget nothing, I forgive nothing!" He snapped, his voice rising. "I never have, brother! Yes, because I am a Giant, because that is what I am and what I have always been, from the very beginning! That is my blood and my nature, and there is no altering it!"

His hands tightened into fists, his newfound anger growing with every word. "I remember every offense against me, every grievance, and I do not forgive them. I scheme, brother, that is all I am, a schemer, a man who plots against those who have wronged and slighted him, that is my nature, and I will not-can not- forgive her!" At last, he threw Thor's hand off, whirling on him, his eyes filled with blood. "Just as I have not and can never forgive you!"

Thor did not take a step back, as Loki had expected him to, and he did not look hurt. He merely stared his brother down. "And does Natalie not believe that she is a monster?" He demanded in turn. "Does she not believe the same of herself? And does she not forgive?"

Loki gave him a dangerous glare. How to explain to him? How to teach a child of the light the depths and layers of the darkness? How to explain the differences between fire and ice, the most powerful forces of destruction? How to make him understand a concept that he could never truly grasp?

How to explain evil to one who has only ever known good?

He tried, knowing it was pointless. "Natalie may believe herself to be a monster, but she and I are nothing alike!" He started; but Thor cut him off.

"You are everything alike!" He shouted, taking a step forwards and placing his hands on Loki's shoulders. He forced the Trickster's eyes to meet his, forced him to stare back at him. "You have both been hurt and you both believe that you are monsters! You both lie, and you both believe that you are incapable of trust, well if that is true, then do you not both need each other? For realms' sake, brother, she is the only person alive who can never lie to you! Are you not afraid of those who can? Does the liar not detest another's lies? Does the Trickster not despise another's tricks?" Thor shook his brother's shoulders; it was hardly a violent movement, but Loki still felt… rattled. As though his bones were quivering, his teeth chattering together. But it was deeper than that, more at his core and center. He threw his brother off and stalked to the side of the room, turning his back on Thor.

"And if I did?" He snarled. "Do you not understand yet, brother, do you not see?" he whirled back to the blonde, buff, beautiful, absolutely perfect golden child, the man who had made his life miserable, who had everything handed to him whilst Loki had to conspire from the shadows to get that which he wanted… "Even if I did need her, even if I did forgive her, she will only ever betray me again!"

"She would never-"

"IT IS INEVITABLE!" Loki cut him off in a shout, yelling, trying to scream some sense into this 'perfect' idiot's thick, impenetrable skull. "She is mortal is she not? By her very nature, by her very species and her very blood, she will betray me!"

"You believe that, simply because she is human, she is untrustworthy?" Thor asked incredulously, his voice also rising. "After all this-"

"I did not say human!" Loki shouted again, cutting his brother off for a second time. "I said mortal!"

"Regardless!" Thor yelled in return, not seeming to recognize the distinction. "Her species does not make her untrustworthy, just as yours does not make you incapable of forgiveness! Cast aside your petty assumptions of the world around you and see things as they truly are! Natalie Frost will never hurt you! She will never betray you!"

"SHE'LL DIE, WON'T SHE?!"

The world went silent.

Loki's fingernails bit into his palm as he stared at his brother with a half-mad gaze, sweat trickling down his temples, a war in his eyes. Thor stared back at him, visibly stunned. Loki's fists trembled, and, sighing disgustedly under his breath, he turned away. The Thunderer kept staring, so wide-eyed and innocent. Damn him for his innocence. Damn him for his naiveté. Damn him for seeing the world in a golden, glittering haze.

Damn him for having the innocence that Loki so craved.

He did not see the world as Loki did. He did not see these years ahead. He saw only what was present and good; he did not see the future and the fear. He could trust and care for and even love a mortal. Loki could not even take the smallest of those steps, did not dare to trust, for no matter what that mortal did in life… they would perform the ultimate betrayal with their death.

Loki swallowed, studying the carpeting beneath his feet (Stark had always had the most horrific tastes in design). "Regardless of her life… one day, she will die. And I… I will be torn in two. Half of my mind… half of my memories… half of my entire life… gone. I will become a shell. An empty husk." He laughed very quietly, a lost sound, a caustic sound. "As mad and mindless as Fraye herself."

He sighed again, the sigh of a person who had seen the universe, has seen all the darkness the galaxies have to offer and has turned his back on it forever. "I allowed myself to forget that, brother," he said in a quiet voice, taking a step back, and another, and another, until he reached the wall. His spine pressed against the plaster and slowly he slid down it, until he was seated on the floor and staring off into a nonexistent distance. "I let myself forget. I pretended that I could live with her, that somehow everything would work. Perhaps we would die together, when Fraye killed us both. Perhaps I would find some… other means to achieve my own demise after she had passed. But for all of my intentional ignorance… I will live a mortal lifespan alongside her and then… then she will take my life." He looked up to Thor and smiled with terrible, detached and agonized bliss.

"She has orchestrated the most ultimate of betrayals," Loki informed his brother. "So there is no point in trusting her; in ever trusting her." He ran one hand down his face with yet another heavy sigh. "For just… for just one second… I pretended like it did not matter, I let myself… I let myself get close, but this… this is just a taste, brother, a hint of what is to come. And I…" He had not looked to Thor for a long time, but now his eyes were even further away, on the ground and vacant. "I will not do this again. Not… not one more time."

Thor watched his brother with great empathy, as though he understood, and if he did not understand then he was trying to, trying to understand with that heart of his. That heart that was so much larger than his head, that heart which made every last one of his decisions. Damn him for his love. Damn him for everything that Loki wanted…

Thor lowered himself to the ground in front of his Jotun sibling, leaning closer, his eyes sympathetic. The Asgardian and the Frost Giant met gazes, one filled with ancient grief and the other ancient compassion. Loki draped his arms over his knees, his eyes searching Thor's, trying to find answers there. Thor held his stare, and when he spoke, his words were kind.

"You have always had the most twisted sense of logic, brother." Thor shook his head slowly, smiling gently. "Do you truly believe that? Do you truly think that, because she will die, because you will die… you should not also live?"

Loki's eyes grew round. And suddenly he was a child again. A child who wanted nothing more than to fly into his older brother's arms, who did not understand the world around him and was scared of it, a child who was only beginning to learn of the darkness and was desperate for the light. And Thor was always the light, the light he clung to… until the day that he realized that light would cast a shadow, and the more he trailed after Thor, the more caught up inside of it he would be…

But for now, there was no envy or hate. There was only a child's desperation. He watched his brother with -dare he say it- hope in his eyes. The barest hint of a smile crossed Thor's face as the brothers' gazes met.

"You need her," Thor continued. "As she needs you. Do not throw that aside so lightly." Standing from his seat, he pleaded, "Try to remember why you trusted her, Loki? Simply try?"

There was a long silence, filling up the room with its presence. And then, slowly, (because he could never refuse Thor, never) Loki nodded. Thor's smile widened, and he nodded back once, then turned away and left the room purposefully, leaving Loki to his thoughts. Loki found that he was grateful for that; for suddenly, there were far too many thoughts in need of sorting in his mind.

The Trickster began staring blankly at the wall, trying to figure out what, exactly, just happened; and why his heart suddenly felt heavier than it should have.

And, in the corner of the room, sitting cross-legged between the two walls and stirring up the darkness with a casual finger, Fraye Burns smiled.

"Oh, very good," she purred. "Absolutely wonderful."

A crow's caw by her ear (a sound unheard by any, even Loki, sitting only a few feet away) signaled her to the approach of one of her 'pets'. She looked up at the animal and smiled, reaching out a pale hand, where it perched on her bone-colored fingers. She stroked it with one fingernail, its feathers puffing out beneath her touch, and when she finished, it began to preen its wings. "Everything is falling back into place," She told it, resting her chin on her free hand, watching Loki carefully. After a long moment of silent self-pity, he had now crossed his legs and placed his hands on his knees, focusing intently, his mind working to solve his most recent dilemma. "I chose Thor well, do you not think?"

The crow cawed again, then tilted its head to the side. A second, more questioning caw came from its mouth.

"Hmm?" She asked, turning to it. "The parents?" Her eyebrows furrowed, almost confusedly. But Fraye was never confused. She scratched the animal under the chin, fingernail occasionally brushing against its black beak. It nipped gently at her fingers and she grinned. "Well of course you like them. They feed you." The crow spread out a few feathers, its shoulders going up and down, almost in a human-esque shrug. "You do realize that if Loki does not accept, they will die?" She warned the animal, her voice suddenly stern. "And quite possibly they will die regardless, dependant on his decisions."

The crow cawed a final time-this time an indignant sound- and Fraye chuckled. "Just being certain," she assured the creature, then kissed it atop its small black head, standing and spreading her hand out so that the crow took flight again. It was just another animal, but it was still nothing like any other animal alive. As she watched, the creature vanished into the shadows, to travel inside them, back to the house of Cameron and Anna Rose Frost, where it still resided.

Fraye smiled at Loki. "A few more days," she mused. "Just to be certain."

And then she, too, dissolved into shadow.

Tony and I were playing chess.

Well, okay, it's probably more accurate to say that Tony was soundly beating me at chess for the twenty-ninth time in a row. He was going for thirty before he would let me quit, and I was in a sour mood because of it; but also, of course, because of what had happened between me and Loki.

In return for letting him stroke his ego by destroying me at chess (a game which, using Loki's help, I had cheated at repeatedly, thus making myself look a lot better than I really was) Tony had been letting me 'talk' (read: whine) about my current predicament. I had taken advantage of that fact and had been rambling nonstop for at least half an hour.

"I just don't know what I'm going to do," I grumbled, halfheartedly moving a bishop into check on his king. The bishop was thwarted by the next move. "I mean, seriously, Tone; he's so pissed." I buried my head in my arms. "And quite honestly, I don't blame him. I really screwed things up."

It wasn't the first time I'd voiced the sentiment, and every time I did, Tony's face grew more irritated. Finally, as I moped silently and he checkmated me in two more moves, he slammed the final piece down, and leaned across the table to look at me. "Enough, Frost. Enough with this mindless… self-flagellation. Loki was going to bring a spear down on a man's throat. And not just any man: but a man who, before it all hit the fan, was also your friend (for reasons unclear to me, but that's beside the point). Get the picture? Spear. Throat. Magical Glowy Wristband of Doom. I think you made the obvious choice, given the circumstances."

I tucked my hand under my chin, resting my head on it. "Or his wrist," I (dis)agreed in a mumble. When Tony looked at me perplexedly, I added in a disgruntled undertone, "Loki wasn't entirely sure if he was gonna kill Clint; if he was gonna bring the spear down on his throat, or his wrist. So he might've just cut off his hand or somthin'."

Tony's eyes ogled for a second, but then he waved his hands about a few times. "Okay, okay, whatever. Given Bird-Brain's line of work, and his obsession with archery, losing a hand would pretty much equate to the same thing, don't you think?"

I grunted something that might or might not have been an affirmative. I was back to wearing tank tops without having to worry about wearing gloves as well (what was the point anymore? Everyone knew) so the Key was in plain sight as I brooded. "There had to have been another way."

"If you can't think of it now, then there's no way you could have thought of it in the split-second you had to make a decision." When I opened my mouth to protest, he held up his hands. "Enough, Natalie. I don't wanna hear another word from you about Loki and what you did wrong." He gestured to the bruises that still ringed my face in a wide variety of sickly Technicolor. "Loki was right about Clint needing to be taken down a peg. But you were absolutely right about stopping him before he went too far. So stop complaining about it, because quite honestly, you're starting to sound like-" he shut up abruptly. I lifted my eyebrows.

"Like what?"

He mashed his lips together, then said it outright. Something you could always count on with Tony: he always spoke his mind. Some times, he did so a little bit way too much, but still, it was a good trait. "Like he's abusing you, Nat." I blinked, startled, and he started mimicking my voice horribly, doing finger quotes. "'It's not his fault, it's mine', 'I should have done this better' 'I should've figured it out'… and that is such bull. You're not perfect. Closest image to perfection you'll ever get is me-" he seemed to sense how ready I was to hit him if he made one more quip, so he quickly corrected himself with, "But seriously, Natalie, coming from a guy who would've blown up Jotunheim just to prove that he was his father's son… he doesn't really have a lot of room to judge you. Or to emotionally torment you."

I smiled weakly, taking note of quite a few things in that conversation: namely the points that he was making, of course, but somewhere in the back of my head I registered that it was not Loki's attack on Earth that Stark referenced, but his attack on Jotunheim. But then again, Loki had definitely had a push in the Earthly direction after his fall from the Bifrost, and a reason to gather an army (a reason named Fraye Burns).

"You don't think that Loki's a bit emotionally abusive?" I asked, dripping sarcasm. Because of course he was. He was an emotional vampire; always trying to figure it out, always trying to have it for himself, but thinking anyone else weak for having the same thing. Twisted SOB.

"Oh, I know he is," Stark said firmly. "I just didn't think that you were weak enough to fall into something like that."

I felt my face begin to burn. A fire sparked in my gut. That was kinda jerk-faced to anyone in an abusive relationship. "It's not about 'weakness', Tony. Stuff like that never is. It's about manipulation. A guy manipulates someone into-" He was giving me a little smirk. I realized then that I was still partly describing Loki and scowled. "Oh, shut up. He's not that bad."

"He's bad enough. And if you let yourself fall into it, if you let yourself forget your morals for the sake of making him feel better… what's to stop you from becoming just as bad as he is? Better yet, what's to stop him from becoming worse?" He lifted his eyebrows. Stupid Stark with his stupid Stark Smarts. He was actually right. I pouted a little.

"You Did The Right Thing," he said, and I could hear each and every capitol letter. "And if I hear you say that you didn't one more time, I'm gonna put that suit on and tango with you myself, understood?"

I fought a smile. I had a lot of thinking to do before I could completely process this, but I could already see that he was right. Of course he was right. He was Stark, and he was a jerk, but he was right. I sighed deeply. "Well maybe I just-"

I was cut off by the sound of the doorbell. Tony and I looked to each other curiously.

"JARVIS?" he asked, lifting his face towards the camera in the room. "Who is it?"

A hologram flashed before us of the man standing at the doorstep. He looked absurdly nervous, wringing his hands and shifting his weight from foot to foot, staring up at the enormous Tower (which was tall enough to be certain to intimidate anyone and everyone).

"Unknown," JARVIS answered. "Searching for data now, sir."

Stark frowned and called to the entire Tower, his voice going over the intercom. "Anyone know the loser on my doorstep, or can I just have JARVIS shoot him down?"

Everyone ignored his false threat as a chorus of 'unknown's and 'not me's came from around the Tower.

"He doesn't look like a hostile," Steve pointed out.

"Neither did Fraye," Natasha retorted.

I had been staring at the screen in mute, numb shock when Tony tunred to me. "Nat, what about yo-"

"UNCLE KEVIN!" I shrieked, pushing my chair back. Without another word of explanation to Stark, I started running for the elevator. I could still hear the Avengers conversing via intercom as I made my way down to the ground floor.

"Uncle?" Stark asked, startled. "She doesn't have an uncle! I mean, I would know, I looked her up!"

"Her file doesn't say anything about him," Natasha agreed. I ignored them all, hopping from one foot to the next as I waited impatiently for the first floor button to light up. When it finally did, and the doors finally opened, I ran down the hall and wrenched the front door open, startling the man on the porch.

"Uncle Kevin!" I repeated my earlier shriek and flung myself at him, throwing my arms around him. Looking just every-so-slightly bewildered, Kevin laughed and returned the hug.

"Knick-Knack!" He cried boisterously, squeezing all the air out of my lungs. He tried, unsuccessfully, to pick me up and twirl me around in a circle, then set me down, looking breathless. "Sheesh, kid, you're grown up! When did that happen?"

I grinned wildly. "Well honestly, Kev, it's only been what? Six years?"

He shrugged mildly, said, "Give or take," and I laughed, slugging him in the arm.

"What the hell are you even doing here man?" I asked. "I thought you were backpacking in Europe or some crap. And how'd you even know to come to the Tower, anyway?"

His dark, ocean-blue eyes tightened. "Um…" the celebratory mood was sucked out of the air almost instantaneously. He looked down. "Anita's… recent attempt."

My eyes tightened, too, and I also looked down. "Oh," I breathed. "Right. Almost forgot."

We fell quiet. "Guess suicide kinda runs in the family, huh?" He asked after a moment, in a dark and pained voice. I looked up at him and started twisting my hands. "Hey, listen, I'm so sorry that I couldn't make it to the funeral, but I…"

I shook my head, placing a hand on his arm to shut him up. "Don't worry about it, Kevin. You did your best, everyone knew that."

"More than my worthless brother ever did, anyway," he muttered dangerously. I nodded in bleak agreement.

"Okay, questions." A voice announced from behind me: Tony's voice. I didn't even turn to him. "Tony Stark," He introduced himself, not extending his hand. "Who the hell are you?"

Kevin blinked, looking startled and a little bit nervous. I stepped aside to introduce the two properly, painting on a quick and plastic grin. "Oh, right, sorry. Uncle Kevin, this is Tony Stark. Stark, Uncle Kevin." The two shook hands, and Stark didn't have the decency to wait until he was out of Kevin's sight before he wiped his hand on his pants. I gave him a scowl.

"You don't have an uncle," Stark said sternly, ignoring both my irritation and my 'uncle', as though neither of them existed.

"No," I agreed with a forced chirpiness. "But April did," The words were so cheerful that they were coming out as though they made my teeth hurt. "And, by extension, and by the right of the best friend, that makes him my uncle, too." As Stark lifted his eyebrows and Steve-who had joined us- looked a little confused, I clarified, "He was her father's brother. When her dad left, Kevin stayed. He visited us whenever he could; but he's a big traveler." I gave Kevin a quick smile, which he returned.

"I had another family emergency when April…" he trailed off. No one broke the silence, and he swallowed, carrying on, "Well, let's just say there was a trial." He looked to me. "That's part of the reason I wanted to see you, Knick-Knack. I never really got the chance to tell you, and I didn't want to say it over the phone, but: he was convicted. Gonna be in prison for the rest of his life." His eyes narrowed. "Couldn't have happened sooner, if you ask me."

"He's your brother, Kev," I reminded him gently.

"He still deserved it," he retorted, entirely unapologetic. I bit my lip and didn't argue. I knew it was pointless. The brothers had been at each other's throats ever since April's father had left her mother. A little while after April's supposed 'suicide' (two days), Jonathon Blackthorn had gotten drop-dead drunk. You'd think it would be because his daughter had killed herself, but he hadn't even known that at the time. He'd gotten his drunk because it was his custom to get drunk as frequently as possible.

But then he'd tried to drive. And one more mother had lost their child.

Maybe he did deserve it. But given the man I currently shared a mental link with, I had given up on judging people.

"Anyway," Kevin went on. "When I heard Anita had… you know, attempted, I came as soon as I could."

"Anita?" the clueless Captain asked, looking to me with a blank expression.

"Mrs. Blackthorn," I explained quietly. "April's mother."

The Soldier's eyes turned grave. So did Stark's.

"She said you were there," Kevin said to me, gently. "She, ah… she wanted me to give you something." He looked back to his car, parked on the side of the road. "It's in the car, wait here?"

I nodded, and he went back to the vehicle to retrieve the mystery object. He came back with a bundle of cloth folded into a messy, sloppy square, and he shoved it into my hands as though glad to be rid of it. A familiar fuzzy material met my fingertips.

"She told me where to find it… and that she wanted you to have it," Kevin said with a mild shrug. "I dunno how lucid she was at the time. She kinda fades in an out, so… you know, if she freaks out on you later…"

"I understand," I cut him off, blinking away the stinging in my eyes as I pulled April's sweater closer to my body, hugging it to myself.

Kevin laughed quietly, a humorless noise that he probably just forced out in order to ease the tension. "You've no idea what it took for me to try and get that thing to you, Knick-Knack. I went to your parents, first, and they said you'd moved out a long time ago. Went to your house…" he shook his head. "Little shrimp's got her own house now… and you weren't there, so your parents said to try here, that this is kinda your favorite hang out…"

I flushed. Nice, mom. She did understand that Fury could have me killed for something like this, right? Or the Council could, anyway. And given my current relationship with said Council, it probably wasn't a good idea to tick them off right now.

"…Since your whole 'internship' here a while back," Kevin finished with a grin. Ah. Right. I blinked; so my mom wasn't so clueless with lies. Good for her. Maybe.

"I checked your school, first, though," my 'Uncle' admitted. "Met up with some of your old friends." And here, he smiled. "Benjamin's grown up a bit, hasn't he?"

I rolled my eyes. Kevin barely knew Benny.

"He said you had a boyfriend, too," he added, shaking his head in amazement. "You're growing up too fast, kiddo. Shrink back down."

"Boyfriend?" Steve and Stark both latched onto the word. After shooting glares at each other, Steve looked to me accusingly while Stark gave me an oily, Natalie-you-sly-thing-you look. I felt a blush spread across my face.

"Oh, for realm's sake," I grumbled under my breath, looking away from them. Sarcasm spiked my words as I snapped, "Thank you, thank you so much for that, Kevin. It was a secret."

"Whoops," Kevin said unapologetically. My face burned as I tried frantically to think a way out of this one. There really wasn't one; so I decided that retreat was currently my best option.

"You know what? We're not going to get any peace now, so…" I gestured to the sweater in my hands. "I'll be right back, once I take care of this. Don't say another word to these two, because believe me, you will regret it. They have no mercy."

"I take great offence to that," Stark said, sniffing haughtily.

"So do I, actually," Steve looked befuddled. He didn't usually agree with Stark; not even in jest.

"Then why don't you and I go get some coffee?" I carried on as though they hadn't spoken, looking directly at Kevin. "We could use the time to catch up."

He smiled. "Sounds great!" He agreed with a nod. He waved to Stark and Steve. "Nice to meet you, Mister Stark. And…" He hesitated on Steve.

"Steve Rogers," the Captain introduced himself.

"Kevin Blackthorn," Kevin introduced himself in turn. The two shook, then Kevin waved once more over his shoulder and headed to the car. "See you in a minute, Knick-Knack."

"See ya!" I called back, then started off towards my room. Stark grabbed my arm before I could get past the first two steps.

"First: Boyfriend." He ordered. "Second: Knick-Knack."

"First: not a chance in hell." I replied with a plastic smile. I really didn't want my friends to know that I had lied to my other friends. Besides, my love life- and whether or not it actually existed- was none of his business. "And Knick-Knack is an old family nickname." One of my oldest, as it happened. When I was a baby, Kevin had made a comment about how small I was; small enough to put me on the mantelpiece like a knick-knack. My father called me 'Knick-Nat' and it stuck. After he'd left, well, obviously, we dropped the 'Nat.' Not that I needed to explain any of this to Stark. "Now, if you'll excuse me," I said briskly, turning away and walking with snappy steps down the hall, "I have a family to reunite with."

I took the sweater up to my room and came back down a few moments later, heading to Kevin's car. He gave me a smile as I sat down in the passenger's seat.

The two of us made idle chitchat about stupid things- what I'd been doing, what he'd been doing, how in the hell I'd managed to bang up my face so badly (I gave him a lame excuse about being stupid enough to walk into light poles, and after I'd laughed at my own idiocy often and loudly enough, he bought it)- until we were inside of the café, coffees in hand (we'd also laughed about the size of my order; as Kevin said that he hadn't thought it possible for my caffeine addiction to get worse). We sat down at a table for two and I grinned at him, taking a sip of my too-tall drink.

"So how's Anita doing, anyway?" I asked, trying to keep up with the light tone of the afternoon. It was strange to refer to Mrs. Blackthorn by her real name, and stranger still to be discussing her so calmly. "She was… pretty bad, last time I saw her."

He sighed and warmed his hands with his mug. "She's… pretty bad. Every time they take her off of suicide watch, she just tries to kill herself again." He winced at the word 'kill'. I watched that little flinch of his in fascination; was death really such a taboo in this world, the world outside of the Avengers? Were people really that afraid of death and dying and murder and killing that they could not even speak the words aloud? Was I really that frightened, once? "They've pretty much got her on lockdown because of it." His eyes went distant… and after a while he shook his head out, making his long-ish black hair bounce a bit. "I just hope she'll be okay."

"You and me both," I said with a deep sigh. I sat back. "She got hit pretty hard when April…" I trailed off. "You know." I wasn't afraid of the words themselves, but I didn't want to say that she 'killed herself'. It wasn't true. And I hated that it was her legacy.

"Yeah. I know." Uncle Kevin sighed deeply, pushing his mug aside. I watched steam waft up from the brown liquid as he draped his arm on the table and leaned a little closer to me. Biting his lip like maybe he didn't believe the official story, either, he said, "When I heard… I mean, suicide? You never would have… I mean, that's not something you'd think of her, that you'd expect from her. I mean, she was always such a happy kid…"

I swallowed thickly. Of all the lies I had ever told, the lie of April's death was perhaps the worst. But it had to be told and re-told. It was necessary. Hate it though I might, it was oh-so-necessary. And so I spun a tale I hoped to never have to spin again. (And yet, so much of it was true.) "She had a messed up life, Uncle Kev. After her dad left… her mom wasn't exactly the most stable of people, y'know? She didn't have any family to fall back on. I'm not surprised."

"She had you, right?"

"Yeah, but I wasn't enough." I didn't realize that I was saying the words- or how true and painful and painfully true that they were- until they were out of my mouth. I felt myself hiding a wince as I said them. I hadn't been enough to save her.

But I pushed the feelings aside. This was old stuff. I couldn't go digging up the past. I couldn't afford to, not anymore.

"Yeah, but you were something," Kevin said, flashing a brief smile in my direction. His tone was slightly kinder as he added, "I'm sure you did everything you could."

"Everything."

We were quiet for a long moment. I found myself needing to break the silence, so I chuckled softly and said in my driest tone, "Well this is a cheery family reunion." Kevin's smile returned.

"Well, on the bright side, I'll be staying here until Anita gets better." He sat back, taking a sip of coffee. "So maybe we'll see each other more often."

"If my job allows it," I answered, rolling my eyes, grateful to be back on a subject that I could handle. I could fake exasperation at my 'job' a lot better than I could fake being okay about the loss of April.

"Mm," Kevin had his mug pressed to his lips, but when I mentioned my job he held up a finger, latching onto the subject, and swallowed quickly, setting the cup down. "That's right," he said, "Benjamin mentioned that. Something about tracking down ETs?"

I snorted. "Benny likes to overdramatize things," I answered tactfully. At his raised eyebrow, I added, "I work with the government. A lot of hush-hush, classified stuff. Makes people curious." I gave him a quick flash of a grin.

"It's made me curious, now," Kevin admitted.

"Meh, need to know. Sorry, Uncle Kev."

He smiled in return, and the two of us fell into a comfortable silence. It had been years since I'd seen the man, but he was always a very easy-going person. It was easy to relax around him; it always had been.

After a moment, he spoke up again. "Can I ask you a question, Knick-Knack?"

I looked up from the coffee that I had been staring into for the past half minute. "Shoot."

"What changed?" He looked up at me. "I mean, what finally pushed Anita over the edge?" He sat forwards. "I've been talking with her on the phone for a few months now… and I mean, nothing she said… there was nothing to suggest…" he sighed again (for the hundredth time) then ran a hand down the side of his face. "Or, I dunno, maybe there was, and I just didn't recognize it, but…"

I cut him off before he could start blaming himself too badly. "You couldn't have known. For Pete's sake, Kev, you were a hundred miles away. There was nothing you could have done."

He mulled that over for a moment. "I've known her for a long time, Natalie. I should know her better than this. I mean, you'd think, after…" he trailed off, and I noticed a trace of color rise to his cheeks. For a second, I was confused by his hesitation… but then everything clicked into place. I felt my eyes widen at the same time as my face split into a grin.

"Oh… Oh, oh, no. No, no, no, no." I burst out laughing. "Oh, I'm so blind!"

He looked to me, puzzled, and I laughed again. "Of course: you're all the way in Europe, but suddenly Anita needs help and hey! You drop everything fly over. You think you should have seen this coming because you know her better than a lot of people: and why is that?" I pointed a triumphant finger towards him, jabbing it towards his face in a very confident manner. "Because Mrs. Anita Blackthorn is your ex."

Kevin's eyes went round. "What? No!"

"Don't lie to me, Kevie. You're no good at it."

"She's not my ex!"

"Su-u-u-re…" I dragged the word out, still grinning. I leaned closer to him. "Let me guess: she dated you, and ended up falling for your brother instead, right?"

Kevin went beet red. He glared at the ground. I chuckled and took another gulp of coffee.

"April ever know?"

"No," he snapped. "And I wanted to keep it that way. She was… I dunno, she had a pretty conflicted family life as it was."

I nodded my acknowledgement to that. "Granted," I said, though there was still a smile on my face. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before; but then, I had been much younger the last time I'd seen Uncle Kevin. "Still, you were always more like a father to her than her real one was." I mused… but as I heard the words out loud and they began to sink in, I blanched. "You weren't… you know… her real-?"

"No!" He cut me off quickly. "No, no, definitely not! Nothing like that!"

"Okay, okay…" I sighed in relief quickly. "Good… I guess. I dunno, she probably would've preferred it if you were."

He glanced around furtively, as though double-checking to make sure that no one was listening in (not that anyone here would have really cared). "Yeah, well, her and me both, Knick-Knack. You know my worthless little brother better than a lot of people did; and that's saying something." He shook his head sadly. "Given the life he lived… April probably wasn't the only kid he left behind, y'know?"

I nodded slowly, feeling the sad weight of that. I hadn't known Jonathon that well at all; he'd left April when we were both kids. But I'd known him well enough to know that he wasn't the greatest of fathers, even when he was around. Still…

I shook the thoughts off. Kevin's eyes had gone distant. I smiled gently. "You still care about Anita, though, don't you?"

His eyes slid to me, and he gave me a smile. "I know that look," he warned. "Don't go poking your nose where it don't belong, little troublemaker. Anita and I are long over: and for good reasons."

I smirked disbelievingly. "So you just flew a few hundred miles just 'cause the weather's nicer here, huh?" I gestured to the snow-splattered streets to prove my point. "Or maybe you missed the taste of air pollution?"

He scowled. "Natalie…" he said slowly.

I raised my hands in surrender before he could say another word. "Say no more, my dear Uncle, my troublemaking days are long over." I leaned on my elbow, chin in my hand, grinning. "I learned my lesson." I gave him a quick wink. "How d'ya think I got a job in the government in the first place?"

He barked out a laugh. "Knowing you, it wasn't good."

Knowing me, I delivered a pizza to the wrong guy. But I didn't explain about that, or about anything that followed. I just kept grinning at him, and the two of us fell into small talk again.

We said our goodbyes a few hours later. Kevin drove me back to the Tower and dropped me off there, despite the fact that it was almost eight o'clock by the time we finally stopped talking. I waved goodbye to him as I went back inside of the skyscraper.

The second I was inside, a hand grabbed my wrist and started to drag me along. Having expected this, I allowed Tony to pull me forwards into the next room without complaint. I put on my most bored smirk as he yanked me inside, and I saw the other Avengers, all gathered together in the same room.

He pulled me to the side of the room and sat me down on the couch, looking very irritated. Standing above me, he folded his arms over his chest. "Boyfriend. Now. Explain."

I glanced around, to see who else had turned up because of this interrogation; and who was here simply because Stark had forced them to be. Steve was already sitting at the other end of the room, looking concerned, and Thor and Natasha arrived as I waited. Thor looked genuinely curious and Natasha looked bored. Bruce was sitting in the back of the room, and he glanced around, and I knew that he didn't wonder as much about what was going on as he wondered why Tony had decided to hold this questioning session in the room where he was trying to work.

I continued to smirk at them. So Loki had said nothing to them about my supposed 'boyfriend' (and I was fairly certain that Tony, at least, had asked, despite the Trickster's foul mood). I sat back in my chair and folded my hands. In spite of everything that had been going on between me and Loki, my talk with Stark had sunk in over the past few hours, and I was feeling better, more cheerful. So I actually enjoyed messing with Stark's head as I asked, "S'matter, Tony? Upset that I got something past your incessant privacy screening?"

"Yes," he grumbled under his breath. As I gave him a knowing smile, he waved his hands about. "But regardless! Why didn't you tell us you had a boyfriend, Nat?"

I shrugged. "Didn't really think it necessary," I answered easily. "We broke up a while back, so it's not really a big deal."

"Not a big- Natalie!" Tony whined (and I do mean whined, like the tone of voice you'd hear at a seven-year-old's birthday party). "If you broke up with someone, we have to know! We have to know when you're going to get moody and depressed and girly on us!"

"If you were upset, we could have helped you," Steve interceded kindly.

"Yeah! Or protected ourselves!" Tony all but burst. "You get dangerous when you're upset!"

I snorted. Banner sighed deeply and turned away from his computer screen, seeming to recognize that he would get nothing done while we were here. "Actually, Natalie," he said, taking his glasses off and cleaning them before he attached them to his shirt. "They have a point. You can't let yourself get too emotional, remember? With your force field… you've seen before that depression makes you lose control."

I bit my lip. Well, that was a point. "Noted," I said. "But we weren't even dating for that long… and-"

Natasha had watching me intently; but now, abruptly, she spoke. "You're lying."

I looked up at her and lifted both eyebrows. I might've been impressed if I wasn't so startled. "What?"

"You're lying," she repeated. Slowly, she lowered herself into a seat, seeming intrigued by the conversation at last. "You never had a boyfriend to begin with, did you?"

My eyes grew wide as I gulped. Inwardly, I cursed: why did Natasha have to be so good at reading people? I looked around at the others, gauging each of their faces in turn, then made a snap decision.

"Oh, fine," I waved it off with a quick hand, forcing myself to look relaxed, like none of this was a big deal. "Fun's over, thanks for that, Natasha. Okay, there's the truth: I don't have a boyfriend." I smiled dazzlingly at them all. It earned me a few looks, most of them confused, though Thor looked mildly startled by the idea that the words that had poured from my mouth, which sounded like such easy truths, were equally easy lies. "I never have. I just told Benny that to keep him from asking me out again."

There was silence for a beat. Then Tony snorted. "Cold much, Nat? If you don't like the guy, tell him that. Don't make up an imaginary boyfriend."

I scowled at him. "For your information, Tone, I did like 'the guy', thank you very much."

"Then what was the problem?" He asked spreading his hands out. "Us? The fact that you work with superheroes? That Fraye's gonna doom the planet? Well, heck, Natalie, if you can't find love at the end of the world, you might as well hang it up-"

"It's not that," I snapped quickly, just to get him to shut up. "It's…" I blushed. All eyes were on me. I hadn't even thought for a second that the conversation would end up taking this direction; but if I had, I would've hoped with everything that I was that it wouldn't. My face started to burn, and I avoided their eyes.

"Then what is it?" Steve asked, still kindly.

I sighed deeply, wringing my hands in my lap. "C'mon, guys. You really think that he'll ever shut up long enough for me to go on a date?" I knocked my knuckles on my forehead to illustrate my point. A few people blinked.

"If it's something that makes you happy, why wouldn't he?" Tony asked, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion. "I mean, isn't that what he has to do? Let you be happy?"

Natasha, whose face had gone into blank concentration for a moment, seemed to recognize what I was saying; and more importantly, what I was not saying. She turned and said coolly, "It's not that much of an issue, Stark." She walked out of the room as though she was bored and had better things to do. But somehow I knew that she would be hovering nearby, out of sight.

"She's right," Banner agreed, also turning away, looking back to his work. Whether he recognized the full truth or not, he said nothing.

"No, come on, Pizza Girl, it's obviously big enough that you're hiding something from me." Tony leaned forwards. "What's the deal?"

I frowned at him. "Let it go, Stark," I grumbled, feeling my face get a bit hotter.

"Natalie…?" Steve prodded gently. I turned away, but… three pairs of eyes were on me now, and one of them belonged to Loki's brother. All questioning. All clearly intent on not letting this go.

I guess it was Steve's gentleness that broke me. Signing deeply, I finally whirled on Stark. "I can't have a boyfriend, Tony. Not now, not ever. Okay? Because… because Loki feels what I feel, remember?" I turned away. "So if I fell in love with someone…" I trailed off, letting the implication sink in.

Silence.

Dead silence.

And then Stark burst into laughter.

"You're telling me-" Stark choked, wheezing out the words in between fits of laughter. "You telling me that he'd have to fall in love with someone that you did?" He clutched his ribs. "That's-That's the f-f-funniest thing that I've ever heard!" He laughed harder.

My eyes turned dark. "Glad you find it amusing," I muttered under my breath. Steve, at the very least, was trying not to laugh.

"And the same goes vice versa?" he asked, perhaps in an attempt to make the mood more solemn and serious. I gritted my teeth.

"Same thing either way, not that there are that many dating prospects in prison," I answered, looking away, glowering at the wall. Stark still wasn't even trying to contain his delight at this newest reason to pick on the Trickster.

"Oh, this is too perfect," he cackled, and already I could see the gears of his brilliant mind working, trying to think of quips that fit with this latest revelation. I gave him a death glare, standing up with a rough, abrupt movement. I could feel anger rising up from the base of my spine, spreading out in a familiar heat across my bones.

"Go ahead, Tony, laugh away!" I said, throwing my hands out. "I'll just be alone for the rest of my life, but hey, that's okay, because at least Tony Stark got a good laugh out of it!"

The rest of the room fell silent. Stark's eyes widened at the fire in my eyes, at the glow that started to spread across my skin. His laughter died to chuckles, then faded into nothing, sapped away by the solemnity that had abruptly taken over the rest of the room. I glowered at the ground, my hands tightening in fists.

"It's not funny."

I looked up at Stark, then shouted again: "It's not funny! It's awkward, sure, it's embarrassing, true, but you know what else it is, Stark, it's just sad! It's tragic and horrible for both of us! Because you know what happens, Stark, you know what will become of us, even if Fraye dies and we all live on? We'll live alone. I'm never gonna have a boyfriend, I'm never gonna have a husband, I'm never gonna have kids or a family! I'm just gonna grow old by myself, okay? The only kind of family I'll ever have, besides my parents, is him! A war criminal from another world who would hate my guts if only he had the option to; and who currently hates my guts anyway!"

Every eye was on me; even Natasha had reappeared in the doorway to watch. There was pity on some faces, shock on others. I took a deep breath, trying to compose myself again, and waited for the glow to die down again before I spoke.

"I mean… you have Pepper, and… and heck, most everyone in here has someone. Or at least you did." I looked down. "I don't. And I can't. I never can. I mean, not unless…" I trailed off- because, well, there was one way that Loki and I could find someone we loved- then snorted, blowing it off. "Well, that's never going to happen. And, you know, I always did want a family. Always. But…" I took another deep breath, closing my eyes, forcing myself to stay calm.

"But when I made this decision… I knew what I was getting myself into… and I accepted it." I turned my eyes to Tony. "I don't like it… But I've accepted it. And, sometimes, that means a little white lie here and there to my friends, because obviously I can't tell them the truth." There was a lot of double meaning in my words, and I doubt that went over anyone's heads. (Just in case, though, I made sure that it didn't by skewering Stark with my eyes.) "So yeah, Benny thinks I have a boyfriend, and I would have been just fine with you thinking that. 'Cause you know what? Ignorance… Ignorance is friggin' bliss."

I turned around and stalked towards the doorway. Natasha stepped out of my way; and it was only as I began to head up to my room that I realized that, for the first time in days, Loki was watching my movements. That he was observing everything through my eyes.

As soon as I noticed him, he appeared in front of me. It wasn't him, just a projection (I could tell by the blue eyes) but he was still… watching.

He stood there for a moment, and I stopped walking. Neither of us had spoken to each other in days, and all of the side effects of our separation that were affecting me, I could see in his face: eyes dulled by the headache, dark circles beneath them from the lack of sleep, hands trembling slightly. I hadn't even known that my hands were doing the same until that second.

He studied me for a moment, then, heaving a quiet sigh, he turned away and walked down the hall. After he'd gone a few steps, I blinked, and he vanished from sight again. The black walls around our thoughts remained.

I went to my room and buried my face in my pillow.

Loki sat in the room he had taken over for the past few days, still staring out of the window. A few minutes after my conversation with the Avengers, Thor appeared in the doorway.

"And even after that…" he said slowly, looking up at his brother. "You still can not trust her?"

Loki didn't answer. He merely watched the grey, snow-stricken world, and waited for his brother to leave.

Stark hadn't apologized for being a jerk, but I hadn't expected him to. We were still cool, of course, still friends, and I held no animosity towards him about any of it. He hadn't known. And, really, like I'd said: I had accepted this. I had known what I was getting into when I made my decision, and I made it anyway. Life went on.

I sighed and settled back into the couch, Steve's arm draped over my shoulder comfortably. As frustrating as this whole fighting-with-Loki thing was, at least I got to spend a bit more time with the Avengers again, instead of just him. It seemed that I was always torn between them, that it was impossible to reconcile my life with Loki and my life with the Avengers. Like two halves of myself that would never be complete.

Steve was figuring out the new training schedules, since everything had been messed up since Clint's removal from the Tower. Except for Natasha, none of the Avengers had visited him yet. I think they all knew that it wasn't Clint's doing; and that the thing they would be visiting wouldn't be Clint. Besides, Natasha always looked somehow… hollow after she went to see him, and I don't think any of the rest of us could have faced that, could have dealt with what she did. Even if they didn't particularly like Barton… they were all still teammates, and they all still mattered to each other.

As Steve worked, I watched a Star Wars movie for the thousandth time, completely bored. Still it held my attention; until Steve gently nudged me in the arm. I looked up to him, and he pointed to the door. I followed the direction that he indicated with my eyes and saw Loki, standing in the doorframe.

Watching me.

For a moment, the Norse god of Mischief stayed like that. I looked back at him, a crazy tumult of emotions rioting inside of me; I was happy to see him, scared of what he might say, defiant of his anger with me, frustrated by his animosity…

The two of us held gazes. Then Loki inclined his head slightly to the side, a gesture for me to follow him as, in the same movement, he turned and walked out of view from the door, into the hall. I glanced back to Steve, who urged me forwards with a silent shrug and a look that seemed to say 'what do you have to lose?'

There was truth in that. I picked myself up off the couch and headed after Loki, wondering to myself when I had ever found it necessary to ask Steve for permission to do something. He was the Avengers' (unofficial) leader, true, but he wasn't mine.

Still, right now… I wasn't exactly sure of myself. I tucked the thoughts aside; I hadn't looked to Steve as a leader. I'd looked to him as a friend. After all, I couldn't look to him as a leader if I wasn't an Avenger, now could I?

I made my way into the hall where Loki waited. As I exited the doorway, he turned, gesturing silently-without gesturing at all- for me to follow. I did so noiselessly, trailing after him until he turned left, into one of Stark's many, many reading rooms, a place with bookshelves along each wall and comfortable chairs and nooks that were just perfect for curling up with a book. Loki gestured with one long, thin, pale hand for me to sit in one such chair-and-nook, and I did so. He sat in the couch that rested just across it.

For a while, we just sat there. Whatever he had planned to say did not seem to want to be said. I said nothing either- not knowing what to say- and we each looked at our hands or at the floor, the wall or our shoes, or really anywhere but at each other.

Finally, I looked up at him. Might as well start somewhere. "I'm not going to apologize again," I announced.

His eyes flicked upwards. They smoldered icily, and he straightened just slightly, looking… intrigued.

"I did what I had to do," I said firmly. "It wasn't Clint's fault that he… you know. Did what he did." I rubbed my face. The Hawk had gotten me pretty badly, and it had only been a few days, so while the black eye had mostly faded, a few of the other bruises still remained. Loki's eyes darted down again, away from the injury. "And while I appreciate you… you know, sticking up for me… you took it too far and you had to be stopped." I ran my fingertips along the Key on my wrist; a trail of glittering gold followed its path. On Loki's wrist, his Key glittered in the same path. "And I couldn't think of another way to do that in time. So, as much as I'm sorry this had to happen… I'm not sorry I did it. If I hadn't, Clint would be dead. Or handless. One or the other."

There was another silence following these firm, almost defiant words. Loki was watching his hands again, which were folded between his knees.

"You're right," he said at last, in a quiet voice. He sighed, sitting up. Giving up. "You're right." He repeated, sounding resigned. "Your actions adhered to your moral codes; and if I ever thought to break you of them, I would have been a fool." He ran both hands down his face before shaking his head. "And regardless, the damage has been done."

I blinked. Blinked again. "Well, crap." I said, staring at him. I reached for my pocket and started rooting around for my phone. "Hold on, can you say that again? I wanna record that, I'm going to need proof later that it actually happened." I tapped a few buttons on the phone, setting up the camera and pointing it directly at that pretty Asgardian face. "I think I'll save it as my ringtone and everything."

He gave me a sideways glare before leaning back in his seat, his elbow on the armrest and his index finger resting below his lower lip as he studied me. "I'm afraid I can no longer afford to retain any kind of animosity towards you, try as I might." His eyes went to the side, away from me, to some point in the distance above my left shoulder. "I suppose, in that way…" he laughed once, a small, tinny chuckle, entirely without mirth. "You have broken me, Miss Frost."

I lifted my eyebrow. "Or maybe you're slowly being fixed." As his eyes moved slowly back to me, I shrugged and added, "Sometimes you've got to re-break things to set them right again."

"An intriguing philosophy," he mused, his eyes smiling even though his face was not. Those green pools were almost alive again, almost dancing. "But perhaps we must always disagree on such things."

I smiled weakly. "Perhaps we must," I agreed quietly.

The two of us again fell silent. And then I stood, walked over to his couch, and plopped myself down on the cushion beside him. Staring at him attentively, with no intention of allowing him to back out of the question, I asked, "So we're cool?" He looked to me, and I quirked an eyebrow, extending a hand. "We're… Friends again?"

He looked as though he would've liked nothing more than to roll those jade eyes of his, but he refrained. Just this once. "Your abysmally inaccurate terms aside… I believe we are."

He didn't shake my hand for a moment; not until I motioned with it very pointedly. After a moment, his cold fingers wrapped around mine, and he shook once. Satisfied, I smiled and sat back, folding my legs up on the cushion so that I could watch him properly. As I did so, I felt a few of the walls relaxing; and though our minds did not flood together, they began to brush against each other, our thoughts greeting each other like old friends. The pressure behind my eyes and the sides of my head began to ease. Loki stifled a sigh of relief, but I let my sigh slip out without even trying to hold it back. It felt good to have him back. To have us back.

We said nothing for a little while, just studied each other's faces. And then he reached forwards, taking my face in one of his hands, fingertips brushing across the small bruises that remained. He lifted his other hand, flicked his fingers, drawing forth muted green-gold sparks, which he carefully pressed against the healing injuries. The lingering pain eased wherever they touched. I closed my eyes and settled my chin into his hand, letting the injuries become numb. He was a terrible Healer, but he could handle the little things.

"In truth…" he said slowly, breaking our momentary quiet. I could feel his hesitation for the first time in days, and did not need to open my eyes to see it on his face. I could already see the expression so clearly in my head. "It has been a very long while since I was so… furious, at the deeds of another." At this, I did open my eyes; he met my gaze with raised eyebrows, then continued to brush magic across the bruises. They did not fade, not yet, but merely became more and more numb with each stroke of green-gold. "If I am entirely honest… I had almost forgotten how to control that kind of rage. That… desperate bloodlust."

I lifted my eyebrows. "Bloodlust?" I asked, somewhat startled. "Just 'cause Clint hit me?"

He shrugged very mildly, releasing my chin. "You are a part of myself. I detest seeing you…" he searched for the right word, then finally finished with, "Damaged." His face wrinkled in distaste. "It is an image that has no right existing in this universe."

For some reason, I couldn't help but smile at that. But still… chuckling lightly, I nudged him as I turned away, sitting properly on the couch so that we were now side to side as opposed to face to face. "Aw, come on. You know it wasn't him."

"Regardless; I would have had his head if you had not stopped me." He sniffed disdainfully. "And despite your methods, perhaps I should be grateful that you did." As I looked back to him and my eyes sparked smugly, a self-satisfied comment springing to my tongue, he pressed a single finger against my lips, shutting me up. He added- with a dangerous glare and a warning in his tone- "Perhaps."

When he removed his finger, I considered sticking my tongue out at him, but decided against it as, his eyes still sparking, he stared at the wall. His face was darker than I was used to, harsher, angrier. Almost like we had gone back to the old days again. He might have 'forgiven' me. But he wasn't the same, not yet. "I highly doubt the Avengers would have let me stay if I had; and then I would be back inside of that… cell." He hissed out the last word, biting it out as though it were a poison that coated his teeth.

"Good thing that didn't happen, then," said a new voice, startling us both. We both looked in tandem to the doorway, where Steve was standing, still half in the hall. "Because we need you two to get moving and start training again. You've got a session together in five minutes." He gestured with his head towards the staircase that would lead us to the basement. "Suit up and get down there."

The two of us glanced towards each other, then back to Steve. "Go on," he prodded. "We don't have all day."

I gave him a quick grin, then turned to Loki. The Trickster's bemused smile had now turned to Steve instead, but he rose from his seat. Rogers walked away without another word as Loki turned to me. He extended an arm. "Shall we, then?"

I grinned and took it. "S'long as you don't mind me kicking your green butt too badly."

He gave me a toothy smile. It was still slightly forced. "We shall see."

The two of us headed down the hall. Loki's armor gleamed into existence as we walked, my arm eventually slipping out of his as I turned and started walking backwards so that I could face him, trusting his eyes to let me know when I was about to run into something. I looked him up and down and sighed wistfully, taking in the golden armor, the gnarly spear, the crazy helmet. "You know, I really need to get myself a suit," I mused distantly, like it actually mattered. "I mean, I'm not an Avenger, but you aren't either, and I'm still a superhero. I should get a suit, too."

He lifted an eyebrow at me. This was a long-running and highly pointless predicament of mine. Half of the drawings that Loki had flicked through were suit designs, drawn out of the long-abandoned dream that one day one of them might come to fruition. They say that the 'clothes make the man'; well, I wanted to look like the rest of the heroes. Maybe then I wouldn't feel like such a pathetic college student all the time.

At his look, I laughed, a bit embarrassed. "Well, not everyone can pull off your look, Blitzen." I said, standing on my tiptoes and reaching up, pulling his helmet off of his head. He allowed it, but not without giving me that why-must-you-be-so-strange-Frost look of his. To the casual bystander, watching this conversation, it might have seemed strange for me to be acting so flippant right after we'd just made up from one of our biggest fights of the year… but I was doing it for a reason. My flippancy towards everything, my careless attitude… well, that was what made this 'friendship' possible in the first place. Because I rolled with the punches, went with the flow, took things as they came and accepted them at face value. When working with a liar and a trickster, that is not something they are used to; and that's what made it valuable. So while I knew that he was still a bit angry, knew that he was still more guarded than he used to be, I was doing everything in my power to let down my guard completely, to relax. Or, at least, to appear as though I was relaxed.

I stuck his helmet on my head and almost buckled under its weight. "Woah!" I yanked it off, rolling my head on my shoulders to try and work out the kinks that had suddenly appeared in my neck. "Okay, ow," I said, looking up at him, then to the golden metal in my hands. "Yeesh, this thing is heavy! How do you fight in this?"

He shrugged very mildly, taking it out of my hands with an ease that, I only now realized, was actually pretty incredible. That thing had to weigh like forty pounds or something. "Years of practice," he replied. His lip twitched up at the corner, the barest hint of his old humor leaking back into his voice as he handed it back and said, "You should keep it. It suits you."

"It does not!" I replied, pushing it back towards him, looking at the horned monstrosity with great distaste. "Saying that this suits someone is the equivalent of calling them psychotic."

"How odd," He said, shooting me a look, accepting the helmet only after I shoved it into his chest. "You have frequently noted that it suits me."

"My point is made." At his mild glare, I gestured wildly to the helmet. "I mean, come on, look at that thing! I get it, on Asgard, it's not that bad, but here…" I shook my head slowly. "I still can't understand how you got a bunch of people to kneel while wearing that. I would've busted a gut laughing."

He rolled his eyes and bit his tongue to keep from reminding me that he had just killed someone before said crowd of people; in a rather merciless way, too. It had never made sense to me why they had run instead of fight, why they had knelt instead of attacked him. It was a conversation that he did not wish to start again.

The two of us made our way into the training room. I started a few stretches, extending my arms and trying to touch my toes while he watched me impassively. Taking a deep breath, I looked to him. He nodded, falling into an easy defensive position as he readied himself for the sparring match to come.

But I made no move to attack. Instead, I started chewing on my lip, studying him, thinking something over…

Finally, I made a decision. "Hey, Loki?"

He looked to me. "Be honest?" I asked. His eyebrows furrowed. "The real reason you decided to forgive me…?" I looked down shuffling my feet. Worry prickled at his eyes, in the back of his mind.

And then I gave him my slyest smile. "It was just to get rid of the headaches, wasn't it?"

Loki immediately relaxed. For a moment, he seemed torn between rolling his eyes and smiling; he compromised by lifting an eyebrow and replying, "There was hardly any other reason."

Like I didn't know that was a lie. Still, I played along, grinning at him. "It was like your head was gonna implode, right?" I asked, almost giggling in relief. We'd both gone through it. Being so separate from each other, for so long… it was almost like being on a death bed. Like I'd keel over and collapse at any second.

"And the silence," he agreed with a melancholic wistfulness, considering his own words only after he'd said them. I could see the gears of his mind working as he added, almost somberly, "Like all other sounds had been… washed out."

I knew exactly what he meant; but, until that moment, I hadn't thought- really thought- about it. I looked up to him, feeling my throat tighten. I stared into his green eyes and found the words slipping out without my permission, a breath of a sentence. "Like I'd never hear music again."

For a second- for just one second- his green eyes were so intense, so sincere, as he watched me, that I actually wasn't embarrassed that I'd said that out loud. But then the heat flushed into my cheeks, and I turned away. My stomach turned, my eyes prickling.

Before the humiliation could take me over, before I could have second thoughts over what I was about to do, I took a few rapid, staccato steps towards him, then wrapped my arms around his waist. He stiffened in my grasp, but I only held him tighter. Silently, I promised myself that I'd never let go again; no matter what.

I didn't know, not then.

I didn't know how soon it would be, before I might have to break that promise.

"I missed you," I mumbled. "I really missed you."

He looked down at me, his face… blank, as I released him. Completely unreadable. I blinked away the mistiness in my vision and, in an effort to lighten the mood again, reached up and flicked his helmet with one fingernail. "Cow horns and all."

For a moment, his face remained blank. And then, gently, he smiled. His hand fell on my head. For a moment, he just kept it there, staring into my eyes as though I was an amusing little puzzle that he just couldn't stop trying to figure out.

Then he ruffled my hair, knowing I hated it, and allowed the tension in the room to drift away. "Come along, Frost." He said lightly, taking a step back. "We have work to do."

I nodded, pushing away the last of the tears, the last of the pain, and pulled my emotions together, working to trigger my force field. As always, it was more difficult without Loki's help; but I was getting better at it.

And moments later, as though nothing had happened at all, we were sparring.

Watching our deadly dance from one of the platforms, Steve and Tony stood beside each other. Steve was standing like any soldier would, his spine militaristically straight as he watched over the edge. Tony, on the other hand, was leaning against the wall, his back slouched and his eyes empty as he observed the mock-battle below. Steve took a step back, closer to Tony, out of sight of myself and Loki.

"Never thought I'd be happy to see those two getting along," Tony remarked, part thoughtful, part irritated, part bemused.

"Never thought that I'd fight alongside Loki," Steve added quietly; to which Tony could do nothing but nod. Steve sighed, shaking his head. "And I've seen kids-teenagers- in wars before, but…" his blue eyes slid back, briefly, to the battle, before he closed them again. "Not quite like Natalie. And not in wars like this."

"She's not a teenager anymore." Stark said bluntly. "She's twenty-one. Almost twenty-two, probably. I don't know, I've forgotten."

"Close enough," Steve said, seeming strangely tired. He sat down in one of the chairs, observing Loki and I as his spear clashed against my shield, sending up a shower of sparks. I feigned a yawn as the spear tip began to slide along its edge; and only reacted when it abruptly caught against the gap, the weakness. I managed to twist away before it caught something a little more vulnerable, then beckoned to him with one hand, Matrix-style.

Tony smiled softly. His eyes were distant. "You know, I think you're wrong about that." He leaned his elbows on his thighs and placed his forehead in his hands, looking at the floor. "I don't think she was ever a kid." He seemed strangely exhausted, for Stark. Exhausted in a way that Steve had never seen him before, in a way that he'd never been allowed to see him before. But, strangely, he knew exactly how Stark was feeling.

"We're gonna lose her, aren't we?"

Steve glanced out of the corner of his eye towards the Iron Man, who turned to face him, still hunched over. Tony rolled his tired-looking eyes at the Captain's puzzled expression. "Come on, Lady Liberty, don't pull that ignorant act with me. You see it too." He looked back to where Loki and I were clashing again. "She's not going to give him up. If we beat Fraye and haul his green-and-gold butt back to jail… She's not going to allow it." he sighed and sat up; but only so that he could slouch back in his chair instead. "Loki can go off-planet without the Tesseract. All he has to do is make a portal, and the two of them quietly slip away forever."

Steve looked to him, a little annoyed. "You really think so badly of her? You really believe that she'd betray us?"

"Look at her, Captain!" Stark replied in an exasperated, strained stage-whisper; as though it should be obvious, even to the non-geniuses in the room. He spoke like that a lot. "She wouldn't see it as betraying us. She'd see it as saving him." Tony rolled his eyes. "And the worst part of it is, I'm having less and less of a problem with that."

"He is a murderer." Steve said flatly, his eyes on Stark, who only rolled his eyes again. Steve kept trying. "He made people kneel in front of him. Natalie is a little intolerant of dictators."

"Exactly. So do you really think he'll ever be able to do something like that again?" Stark asked, his eyes like flint. "She won't let him. And, as unforgiving of dictators and murderers as she may be, she's also big on second chances. If she can give him a better life, away from all of this… she will."

Steve looked away, a little unnerved. "She wouldn't… She wouldn't abandon her friends. She's lost too many as it is."

Tony considered this for a long moment. Then, "I think that's why he won't let her."

Steve turned to him, eyebrows furrowing. Tony shrugged carelessly, returning to his mellow nonchalance abruptly and disconcertingly. "I think if she offered, he'd refuse. He wouldn't let her run away from this, from us, not anymore. He wouldn't be physically capable of asking her to."

"What makes you say that?"

"Look at him, Cap!" Stark again mildly annoyed by the lower IQ of the other person in the room. "A few days ago, he wanted to rip her throat out. Suddenly, they're BFFs again." He shook his head. "He can't do anything to hurt her. He literally can't."

Steve frowned. "But you still think we're going to lose her."

Stark's eyes sparked, and he looked away. "Look at her," He insisted in a suddenly quiet voice. "You think she'll ever leave his side?"

The two fell silent.

They had their differences, it was true, but they were both teammates. They had been through a lot together, seen a lot together, and grown strange friendships with the other Avengers together. They knew more about each other, and had more in common with each other, then they had ever thought they would. So Steve knew that he was speaking for both of them when he said, "And yet… it's good to see them together."

Stark looked away, back to the ground. "Only because it kills them both to be apart."

Steve knew that he was lying. But he said nothing.

A/N: BY ALL THE REALMS YOU GUYS IF YOU HAD ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT TOO FOR ME TO FINISH THIS…!

Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. Just… blah. I don't even want to talk about it.

Anyway. Another apology for how long this took, everyone. It should not happen again. Actually, depending on inspiration/circumstances/reviews, I am hoping to get the next chapter up by the usual schedule; as in, I am hoping to get it finished and posted by next week. And STUFF WILL HAPPEN.

Also, considering all of the stuff that happened in both Thor 2 and The Winter Soldier (EPIC MOVIES. EPIC. Especially Thor 2. Because BEST ENDING EVER. Even if the rest of the movie has made it REALLY HARD to write scenes for Frigga. T_T) I thought I should probably re-state that none of the things that happened in these movies, or any ensuing ones, will affect this fic. Like I said, it's completely AU now, because I had no idea what they were going to do with the movies back when first started writing this, and thus, I just did whatever the heck I wanted. (Loki's prison is completely different, Frigga isn't dead, and all the rest of that yadda yadda. Also, I made Odin waaayyy nicer than I should have. Yowch. He was so awful. D:)

*coughcoughGETTOTHEPOINTcough*

I also wanted to give everyone who reviewed another big thank you for not completely giving up on me. You are all completely awesome.

All that said, (long author's note is long) I hoped everyone enjoyed this chapter, and please review!