InsaneJournal

Natasha's legs hung over the side of the stage. Being insanely tall had its perks, but she was grateful to be back to normal. Maybe it was shorter than average, but she knew how to move at this height. Not so much at seven foot tall. The buildings were back to their normal sizes too, which meant that foot was accessible again.

She looked at her phone again.

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He wasn't supposed to bring the alcohol so Natasha couldn't figure out what the hell was taking him so long. They were supposed to meet up at midnight. That gave them an hour and twenty three minutes to get drunk and learn a few Asgardian drinking songs. Literally, all he had to do was show up.

This tradition was still new. Loki hadn't been late before, and he hadn't ditched one of them either. Natasha would like to say it was unlike him, but she was still getting to know him — the real him. It was there, buried under layers of history and ego and old wounds, but she wasn't a quitter. She'd get there.

When her phone told her it was one in the morning, she exhaled a sigh. Okay, something had come up. Something that kept him from messaging her that he couldn't come. Things happened in Derleth, and she wasn't one to take things personally (until they were personal).

She hopped off the stage, leaving the theater. Outside its doors, she looked around to see if there were any signs of Loki. When there were none, she headed into the Green to cut through it on her way to Butler Hall. It was a lot larger than it used to be, and if she didn't make it all the way across… Well, it didn't matter tonight. She'd end up in her bed in 23 minutes anyway.

There was disappointment in her gut. She'd been excited for this evening, she realized. Loki was one of the few people she didn't have to hide certain things about herself. Yelena's arrival helped, of course, but there were certain moments in Natasha's life that she wanted to spare her little sister from.

Natasha was lost in these thoughts while she walked through the grass. The trees opened up into a clearing, one that Natasha knew well but there was something very off about it. Now there was tall grass and wildflowers growing in a very specific area, and in the center of it, there was something beneath it.

She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight. Something dark colored. Blue. She crept closer to the scene, reaching into her pocket for a few Widow Stings in case this was something sinister. The closer she got, the more she realized it was a body. Long, lean and naked, beneath the flowers and grass.

It seemed like something out of a fairytale, if it weren't for the hole in the chest. There was no blood though. No spatter. Did someone arrive only to die immediately?

The light finally landed on the face of the person. Natasha felt her jaw go slack. It was Loki, or she thought it was. He was blue though, and his eyes were completely red. There were some markings or creases in his skin. Was this another version of him?

The first person she thought to contact was Thor, but Thor wasn't here.It didn't make sense to her, so maybe another Asgardian would be able to help. Fandral might have some idea of what this was, so Natasha did what she needed to. She compartmentalized her feelings on this matter, that this could be why Loki didn't show, and sent off a message to Fandral. Her message was short: Something happened to Loki. Need help. She sent her location as well.

Then she dropped to her knees at his shoulder to figure out what had happened. How he had died. Who could have done this? And why did it look like he'd been here long enough for flowers and grass to grow over him.

---

Fandral had been half asleep and dreading what was set to happen within the next hour when his phone sounded with a message. That’s strange. He opened a bleary eye to look at the glowing screen on the stand next to his bed, and for a moment considered ignoring it, but something in the back of his mind told him to reconsider that.

So he did.

The message he saw caused a panic of sorts to overcome him and though he’d been half-asleep only seconds before, he was wide awake now and rushing to get out of his room and to the location she’d sent him.

Wearing nothing but a pair of Derleth branded sweat pants, with his blanket draped over a shoulder (who knew what he was bound to find?), he ran barefoot out of Butler Hall and in the direction of where he needed to be. He’d only spoken to Natasha briefly over the network, but the fact that she reached out to him directly regarding the situation caused a feeling of dread to come over him.

That feeling only solidified itself as he slowed upon entering the clearing, seeing her kneeling and hovering over something in the overgrown grass. Except she didn’t seem panicked and that… did not sit well with him.

He approached quietly and when he saw the shadowy figure of Loki lying on the ground, his heart lodged itself in his throat with worry. He wasn’t moving. Fandral’s eyes moved from the body to Natasha’s face, which was hard to see in the dimness of the Green, before he quietly approached and lowered himself to the ground, kneeling beside Loki’s corpse.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice hushed and almost sounding defeated as he tried to push down the grief he was feeling in that moment.

---

"I don't know." Her voice sounded tiny, and though she was trying to keep the wavering from her voice, it was there. Natasha had gone into recon mode. She was delicately inspecting the wound in his chest, the creepy, bloodless wound.

There was a vampire on campus, but this didn't seem like their work. No, this wound was made with something incredibly sharp. Whoever did this missed the heart. Just barely, but enough that she could see it whole and intact. Her own lurched in her throat as she reached her hand out to feel the wound. His skin was cold, and Natasha felt her shoulders slump and her eyes begin to burn.

"I found him like this, but —" she looked at Fandral, concerned and unsure. "This grass makes it look like he's been here for days, if not weeks. There's no blood. Anywhere. I was trying to find clues to figure out who could have done this. But — is he — do Asgardians turn blue like this when they…."

Natasha thought back to their last reset, on top of Cinderella's castle. He'd tried to explain how he'd felt about dying at Thanos's hand, and she didn't need to imagine the fear of waking to that feeling over and over again. She'd lived her own version.

She placed her palm against his temple. Logically, she knew that he was likely to come back in less than twenty minutes, but the damage a second death could do to someone who had already experienced it… And Loki was already struggling so much with it.

And there was the bit where he was naked. Was that because they'd taken his clothes to dispose of evidence? Or was that due to something else? To Natasha's trained eye, it would seem that there was a bit of a rendezvous that went wrong. "This knife wound… there's something strange about it."

---

The waver in her voice wasn’t lost on Fandral, but he didn’t comment on it -- that wasn’t something either of them needed right now, but it did mean a lot to him that she cared enough to actually be emotional over the situation.

He frowned a little at her question and then looked back down at Loki, the light from her phone shining on him. His blue skin, his red eyes, the etchings on his face. No. This wasn’t how Asgardians looked when they perished, but he did know who. Fandral gave a small shake of his head and sat back on his haunches before pulling the blanket he’d brought with him over to gently cover the lower half of the body. To at least give him a little decency.

“No, we do not,” he finally replied in a hushed tone. “Those of Jotunheim, however…” He’d slayed Frost Giants before; he knew how they looked and now he knew what he could only assume was one of Loki’s deepest secrets. Something only ever revealed in death. A lump formed in his throat and he swallowed it down with difficulty, his eyes burning a little with the threat of tears. “I knew he was brought into Odin and Frigga’s care as a child -- adopted, as it were, but I did not know he was…”

He sniffled and let the words fade off, not bothering to finish the sentence.

Instead he looked to the wound on Loki’s chest and eyed it quietly, frowning. “If I did not know any better, I would say he was attacked with one of his own daggers. Or something very similar.”

---

Natasha looked down at Loki's face. Fandral had covered him with a blanket; she felt it was only right to close his eyes. She was struck by the overwhelming realization that this was the first time she'd ever touched his face — punching didn't count — and it had to be like this. She plucked the top of a flower that was blocking his nose out of the way.

"It's definitely some sort of blade. There was no hesitation here through the ribs. It's too clean, like whatever it was was insanely sharp. Sharper than a normal blade." Maybe this was more detail than Fandral wanted, but Natasha felt the need to say this outloud. She was determined to find out what happened to him and avenge him.

She turned her phone around with each way she turned to take in more evidence, shining the light on the wound, his hands and fingernails, everything she needed to try to figure out what the hell had gone on. "The lack of blood and spatter — I think this was magical. They used magic to cover up their tracks, make this scene look like some kind of weird, morbid fairytale with the overgrown flowers."

Natasha clenched her jaw. "How could someone do this to him? Wasn't once enough? He didn't deserve this. A pain in some people's sides, yeah, and he pushed them, but… This? He didn't deserve this."

---

Fandral was quietly grateful to her for taking a moment to close the eyes of Loki’s body, so that he wouldn’t continue to just stare up into the black darkness of the Void that was above them with emptiness. If he’d had coins on him, he would have used those to cover his eyes, but what was the sense? There was no sending him to his rest -- not here. No big funeral pyres or anything like that; not that he’d received one of those himself. Fandral didn’t even know what had happened to his own body on Asgard, though in the end it didn’t matter.

Part of him was deeply curious about what had happened, but the other part of him just couldn’t muster up the energy to care. Shifting, he sat more flatly in the tall grass and used his fingers to delicately trace outlines along the patterns that were now visible on Loki’s arm and hand. He was ice cold to the touch and it made gooseflesh appear on his own arm.

“No, he didn’t deserve this.” Of that he could agree. Fandral sniffed quietly and felt the corners of his eyes start to burn with the threat of tears. “One death ought to be enough for any of us. Besides, a dagger to the chest is a cruel and slow death if you do not pierce the heart.” He gestured weakly with his free hand toward his own chest, though he was not sure that Natasha would be able to see the scars he was referring to. “I do not know who would do this to him. I know he has enemies, but is he truly hated enough for this?”

---

"Not among the Avengers. A few of us were on the other side, and they gave us a chance to be — " Heroes wasn't the right word, but that's what people called them anyway. Natasha would never call herself that. Ever. That was why she'd reached out a hand in friendship to Loki. She knew what it was like to want something different for yourself, to get the chance to make up for the things she'd done. It wasn't something that you got to wake up and be all better with.

The damn reset was looming. There seemed to be no sense in doing anymore recon. There was no time to avenge him. He'd be back, and she suspected he'd be mentally worse for it. Someone had taken advantage of his trust; he was likely not going to let that happen again for a very long time.

Natasha reached down and took one of his hands between hers. His hand was like ice, so she rubbed her palms as if it might warm him. Might bring him back to life. While she couldn't see the scars Fandral pointed to, she understood his meaning. He was in the same club she and Loki were in. "Of all of the Avengers, I'm the one with the — I used to be a spy and assassin. A murderer." She was still one, as Yelena had pointed out, but she was trying not to be.

"We were supposed to meet in the theater tonight. He was going to teach me Asgardian drinking songs."

---

He wished that there was time to build a fire, to sit and have a proper vigil, to talk and get to know her better. She was Loki’s friend, after all. Though who was he going to trust after all of this? That worried him. Loki’s moments of vulnerability and work toward allowing himself those moments dashed entirely due to the selfish acts of someone who took advantage of it in the worst possible way.

Fandral let out a small, almost bitter laugh, but that was simply due to the grief he was feeling.

“We have all done things we should not have in our previous lives. Our pasts do not define us, though I know Loki fears otherwise. That he’s done too much irreparable damage to be looked at in any other light.” He frowned and brought his hand up to affectionately brush back his black hair with his palm, looking at him, the tears he’d felt brimming finally spilling over quietly.

“I cannot teach you a song in such a short amount of time before we are forced back into our beds, but I would be glad to sing something of our home, if you like?”

---

Natasha said nothing when it came to irreparable damage. Nothing could change the things that she'd done, the same as Loki couldn't change what he had done. There were a variety of paths to take once you'd done those deeds, but Natasha had accepted it and tried to be a better person. A better friend. The stalwart always said exactly the things that Fandral did. That wasn't a knock against him, but it was easier for her to say those words than to feel them. She knew how Loki felt.

She glanced up at Fandral. "Maybe not a drinking song. Something a little more fitting for the situation?"

---

“Aye,” he replied, his voice quivering with emotion as he thought of what to sing, the words coming to him easily though it took him a few moments to be able to bring himself to start.

In a quiet, lush tenor voice, Fandral sang what was quite obviously a song of mourning. Though the words were in Asgardian, the feeling of the song remained -- sometimes you didn’t need to know what was being said to know what the intention of something was. His voice was kept hushed and he closed his eyes, recalling the last time he’d sung this song for a fallen friend and remembering how some of them had gathered in the tavern after Frigga’s funeral, of which Loki was not allowed to attend. No, he’d been in the dungeons then, held prisoner for what he’d done on Midgard.

Not even allowed to grieve the loss of his mother with the rest of their realm.

The song wouldn’t be finished though, as much as Fandral would have liked. No. Nearing the end of the final verse, the clock struck 1:32AM on the campus of Derleth and without even getting to say goodnight to Natasha, they were forced from their makeshift memorial and back into their beds with memories of death at the forefront of their minds.