☪ Day 2 ⛿ Near an elementary school and then a random house in the neighborhood.
Loki is taking out his feelings on zombies. Natasha is looking for supplies. They run into one another on a playground.
And end up reconciling.
⚠
A whole lot of zombie gore, body horror, a couple who had a suicide pact. Seriously, this is a pretty zombieriffic log.
The elementary school playground wasn’t swarming with zombies, but it had a good number of them.
When Loki first arrived on the scene they’d been shuffling about in circles, bumping into the swingsets and merry-go-round. One of them was even chewing on the bottom of a plastic slide. From a distance they looked lost, even pathetic. In another world—on another day—Loki might have even pitied them. But Loki didn’t have pity for anyone this week. Nor did he have any patience. All he had was anger and grief. All he had was rage.
And there was only one way he could think of to release that rage.
He stuck the first one directly through the right eye with his flaming sword. The blade pierced through the skull and drove a hole through the brain. The zombie groaned. Loki twisted the sword, turning the brain into mush, then he ripped the blade out. The zombie stumbled a few feet before falling over.
By then the others were on the move.
He probably could have wiped them out much quicker. Much more effectively. But this wasn’t just about incapacitating the undead. This was about so much more. This was about everything that happened up until that point. This was about Julia. About Fandral. About Mobius. About the Lokians and the King of Space and the numerous versions of himself hel-bent on waging war against everyone and everything. This was about Natasha. About the Avengers who still saw him as an enemy. And about the ones who felt sorry for him. This was about Sylvie and the other two Lokis. This was about the missing weeks and the headaches and the memories he should have had but didn’t. It was about hurt. Pain. Loss. Love, in some respects. Although Loki wasn’t even sure now if those feelings had been real or if it had all just been another one of Derleth’s games. It was about Thor who wasn’t his Thor. And it was about himself. Mostly himself. The one person he despised above all others.
A legless zombie that crawled on the gravel, reached out for his ankle. Loki sliced the sword across its neck, decapitating it. That didn’t kill it, but the head continued to roll in the opposite direction, teeth chomping at the bit. Another wobbled towards him and he took his time with it. He exchanged the sword for his two blades, stabbing them into its chest—over and over and over again. And when there wasn’t much of a chest left to stab, he jabbed the blades into its ears. When he ripped them out the steel was covered in blood and brains.
Still it wasn’t enough. So he kept going.
Natasha hadn't been looking for Loki. She hadn't really been looking for anyone when she went out. She'd planned to do a simple recon of this particular area — near the school where maybe she could find anything they might need — and take care of any stragglers that might be in the area. Inside the building resembled something out of Chernobyl. The paint peeled back to reveal the primer underneath. Graffiti was painted with both spray paint and blood. Toys were strewn about haphazardly, and most of those were in a condition so poor that no child would want to play with them. Floorboards were torn up and papers and glass were strewn everywhere.
All the windows in the place were busted out, and it looked as if one of the rooms had been used as a safe room for a bit — the windows were boarded up well, including the small one in the interior door — but judging from the amount of dried blood, it had been overrun at some point. There were a few canned items in the corner. One can each of peas, carrots, corn, and green beans. Half a small bag of rice. It wasn't an oasis but it would give them something. Natasha tucked them all away into the bag she'd brought with her.
The other end of the building brought new challenges, namely trying to figure out where the groans, grunts, and sounds of fighting were coming from. It sounded like someone needed help, and she wasn't the type of person to turn around and leave them to it. She slunk outside, careful to close all doors quietly and make as little sound as she could. These were both things she excelled in.
On the playground, she saw Loki.
On another day, in another world, at another time, Natasha wouldn't have been worried. She knew that Loki could take care of himself. The question wasn't whether or not he could, it was whether he would. Disappearances hit people differently. Some people withdrew into themselves. Some focused on helping everyone else. Some pretended nothing happened. Some self-destructed. And some, like Loki, did all of these things all at the same time.
"Want some help?" she asked, loud enough for him to hear, and maybe drawing a few more zombies into their area if there were more close enough.
By that point, Loki wasn’t thinking. He was merely allowing his emotions to fuel his actions and his reactions. He might as well have not even been there. Mentally he was a wild animal with its leg caught in a trap. Fighting, snarling, snapping. The way he threw himself and his daggers at the zombies was proof enough that this was a man energized by pure fury. He didn’t care what he was doing. Who he was hurting. Or how little it was helping.
He was just doing.
He slashed another zombie across the back. Blood sprayed across his own chest and face. The creature continued to hobble, confused. Loki rammed his daggers into its kidneys. The movement would have killed a normal man, but the zombie barely even flinched. It just tried to pull itself out of the blades. But it was stuck.
Loki pressed one boot against the creature’s back. Then he shoved and ripped at the same time, tearing out bits of bone and dead muscle. The zombie turned around and growled at him. Loki roared back. Then he went for the brain.
He really wanted to go for the heart, but he knew they wouldn’t feel it.
Pity.
Maybe he’d go for his own.
The zombie slumped to the ground.
Then Natasha’s voice tugged him out of his feral trance. Loki blinked, turning his attention back towards the school. For a split second there was a lack of recognition in his eyes. Just emptiness. Like he’d somehow managed to suck the void into himself. Nothing but a blank, unrecognizable stare.
Then he shook away his ire and saw her.
“Tasha,” he whispered.
But that hesitation was enough for him to miss that rolling head, which had somehow made its way back to him and bit his ankle.
Natasha was instantly transported to Siberia as a young girl. When they were young, they let the girls live together, train together, play together. They grew together as a unit, and as a unit, they were dropped into Siberia with a dozen other girls, and enough rations for only one of them to make it back.
No one wanted to fight each other. Not initially.
But it didn't take long before the reality of the situation set in. After the first bloodbath, factions had formed. Natasha had always been a strong fighter with sharp skills. The Red Room had their eye on Natasha from infancy, and it seemed some of the other girls had noticed. There were always rivals though, and the factions clashed on the way toward the edge of the tundra. A few of the girls left on their own. They were found frozen in the snow.
In the end, it was Natasha's faction alone, and the girls began to turn on one another the less food there was. Natasha tried to keep them together, but hunger and fear were strong motivators. It took less than a week, as their numbers dwindled, trust frayed and split and eventually cracked.
By the time Natasha sunk her blade into Sofia's throat, she had reached a savage stage where she saw enemies everywhere. Even when the Red Room came down to retrieve her. She killed three guards and put another one in traction before they were able to subdue her.
Loki had given her all the ammunition she needed to know his state of mine in those few seconds.
She panicked when she realized the rolling head was at his ankle. Despite her footfalls calling others to them, she raced to the spot and used all of her strength to spear the hell out of the head, then ripped it open so that it was most certain dead dead. Then she ducked and spun around, using the spear to knock another one of its feet before she rose up and stabbed that one as well.
"Your ankle. Did it break the skin?"
It all happened so fast. One second Loki was standing there in a daze and the next Natasha was at his side spearing the hel out of the starving head by his foot. And once that head was a pile of mashed potato blood and bones, she moved onto the next one.
It was one of the most beautiful massacres he’d ever seen. And Loki had seen more than his share of massacres.
But their noise had attracted others. One came up from behind her a little faster than the previous undead, bony fingers reaching for her hair. Yet Loki stood still beside the bloody mess at his feet until—
The zombie fell behind Natasha, the top of its head severed straight through the skull, slicing the brain in half. Then the illusion of the Loki standing in front of Natasha disappeared, leaving the real one—who’d finally managed to conjure up a few of his old tricks over the last few days—behind her.
“The only thing it broke was a portion of my pride. On your left!” Loki ducked around another zombie coming from the right. He cut off its outstretched arms with the flaming sword. That set the creature off balance enough for him to go for the head. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Natasha, his earlier mindless gaze replaced with one of pure amusement. “It’s like Vegas all over again!”
He sliced at another, sending a spray of red across the merry-go-round. “Only messier!”
Her preferred way of dealing with this creatures — former people, she had to remind herself — was a gun, but having used that on day one, she realized it drew more to the location. So close quarters combat, it was. She'd rather lure them all to one spot and blow them to hell, but this world was completely dead. The odds of getting them all were slim, and frankly, they were only going to be there a week. Taking out more of these zombies seemed like a good way to lessen any strain on survivors. That was all they could hope for this week.
"See, I liked Vegas better. After a good fight, there was always a great buffet to stuff your face with after," she retorted. She was watching him though, as she continued to cut her own swath through the creatures, ducking and weaving through dwindling numbers as they hacked and slashed.
"And vodka." There was a wistful tone to her voice.
“And the soothing sound of slot machines!” Although why Loki had taken such a fascination to the clinking tone of coins dropping into a tray was beyond him. Maybe because, like him, a slot machine demanded attention. With its bright lights, colorful screens, whimsical music, and the sweet but sinister promise of fortune. Something about that struck a chord with Loki. And he was glad that Butler Hall had reverted back to its original state because now he could fit his Dancing Cat Slot Machine back where it belonged.
And annoy the hel out of Eliot. Which, of course, was a bonus.
“I bet I could find vodka by the end of the week,” Loki said, weaving around Natasha to slash at another zombie. Their numbers may have been dwindling but they never seemed to end.
It didn’t take much to imagine how quickly someone would lose their energy in a place like this. Or their will to live. Even Loki felt a certain reluctance to keep going. But he did anyway because he was stubborn. And because there was no guarantee that next week would provide him with the same kind of cathartic outlet.
He kicked a zombie into the swing set and wrapped the chain from the broken swing around its neck, tugging sharply until the neck broke. Then he crushed its skull.
Loki stood up straight and made his way back towards Natasha. He could have helped, but she looked as though she had things well under control with that spear. And then something—a soft sound in the still air—caught his attention. Faint. Like the weak cry of an infant. Maybe he’d imagined it.
He’d been imagining a lot lately.
“Did you hear that?”
It had been a few days of this, and if there were almost no people left, how did the zombies survive? Did they just stay undead forever, even if without sustenance? Was there a shelf life? How did the cold affect them? Did they freeze in the winter? Those were questions that really would matter if they were going to stick around here, but for once, Natasha was not hoping for that.
"I didn't hear anything over your jovial love of slot machines."
Her super strength wasn't always there when she needed it, but she learned a long time ago not to count on anything but the things you had at the moment. Right now, she had a spear and the will to live. That was right there more than enough in most cases. A hard elbow to the chest sent a zombie into the remnants of a half-torn metal slide. There was a sickening sound of breaking sinew and bone as the body slammed onto the metal. It was stuck there, pinned halfway on the ground, still reaching out for Natasha. She stepped on its arm and sent the spear into its eye socket.
"What did it sound like?"
“Like a Dancing Cat,” Loki muttered to himself.
Another zombie came at him from the front and he threw one of his daggers, lodging it directly in the eye. It wobbled, choking on its own groans. Its entire chest cavity was already open from a previous injury, exposing its rotting organs. It was on its knees by the time Loki reached it. He grabbed the hilt of his dagger and shoved it in further, until half of his hand had penetrated the fleshy eye socket as well. Bones long since broken. Then he ripped out the dagger, stepped over the zombie, and kept moving towards a large plastic jungle gym. The kind of playground equipment made to resemble a small castle—with a shaking bridge linking together two towers, one with an enclosed twisting slide and the other with a climbing net.
He wiped his dagger off on his thigh and hooked it onto his hip. His magical pockets weren’t working, so all of his weapons were strapped to his sides and back with makeshift holsters.
The sound continued. A weak, tired mewling.
Loki glanced back at Natasha. “You don’t hear that? It sounds like a child.”
Loki climbed up the net to the first tower. Crossing the bridge would have made a lot of noise—especially with children bouncing on it—but Loki’s legs were long enough to stretch from one platform to the next. Then he had to duck under the child size overhang to crawl up into the top part of the slide.
“Oh, you’re coming home with me,” he said, picking up the shaking kitten and holding it gently in his arms. Then he slowly took the covered slide exit. Shh, don’t tell any of the other heroes, but that was actually quite fun. Except for the part where he almost bumped his head trying to climb out.
One moment, Loki was a feral killing machine, working out his aggressions on zombies in a way she hadn't seen before. Now he was cradling a kitten in his arms, having heard it from inside the play castle, and sliding down a children's slide. Natasha was honestly at a loss with Loki's more extreme emotions.
The look on his face now was nothing like that empty, vacant stare he had earlier. He wasn't anything like the joy of slaughtering zombies back to back. It was the face of someone who had found something to care about — a purpose — and if it took a cat to do that… Natasha was going to be grateful it wasn't something horrifying.
Even if it did mean another mouth to feed.
In the distance, she saw five more zombies heading in this direction. They were stalled by the four foot fence that was only partially upright surrounding the school, but it was time they got out of there. Maybe lead them on a wild goose chase until it was safe to go back to campus. Natasha did not want to bring a small horde of zombies to the campus.
"Come on, we need to get out of here."
Loki was the definition of unmaintained mania. His emotions were uncontrollable. And since Mobius’s disappearance notification he’d been considerably more erratic in his responses. He volleyed from extreme physicality (Julia, Strange, Pike, and the zombies could already attest to that) to despondent isolation. And everything he did only gave him temporary relief. Nothing seemed to have a lasting effect.
Not even killing the zombies.
Although the bloody massacre of those undead monsters did fill a little void inside of him. That villain void. That perpetual need to prove himself. To show that he was Loki, son of Odin, prince of Asgard—just as worthy as someone able to wield a worthless hammer. He was strong, too. Powerful. Cunning. He wasn’t nothing.
Even if that’s exactly what he felt like.
He wished he could have used magic to tuck the kitten safely into his pocket, but his sorcery was on the fritz. So, he held the shivering kitten close to his chest.
Loki, God of Roller Coaster Emotions.
His expression contested his staunch, upright facade of confidence. He looked like he was five seconds away from some kind of mental breakdown.
“There are some houses a few blocks over. They didn’t look as ransacked as some other neighborhoods. Maybe we can hide out in one of them until those creatures move on,” Loki said, nodding to the south. “Might be some supplies too.”
Natasha didn't need to be told twice. She wiped the blade of her spear on the relatively clean pant leg of a downed zombie before heading off in that direction. She purposefully led them the long way so that there was a chance the zombies would get distracted by something else or just flat out lose interest. Thirty minutes later, they were climbing into the second story window of one of the boarded up houses.
The house wasn't exactly empty. There were long rotten corpses in the living room. By the looks of it, murder-suicide. No signs of struggle from the murder victim. Natasha assumed it was a pact they'd made together when they had given up.
The pantry, on the other hand, was fairly well stocked. Most of it was expired, of course, but that didn't mean squat in a world like this. She loaded up most of what she could into her bag when she found a few tins of cat food. It wasn't like anyone else was going to eat this so she passed one over to Loki to feed to the new kitten.
"Looks like you finally found the cat you wanted."
Loki followed wordlessly behind Natasha until they got into the house. He stepped around the corpses in the same way a parent deftly maneuvered a floor of children’s toys, barely acknowledging them.
While Natasha went through the kitchen, Loki grabbed a large pillowcase from one of the bedrooms and filled it with other items that could be useful. Flashlight. Batteries. Matches. A few dvds for Natasha to add to her collection. He made his way back into the kitchen around the time she discovered the cat food.
“I can’t keep it,” he said, tone decidedly somber.
Loki set the confused kitten on the floor. Then he snapped open the tin, pulling off the lid. He used a fork from a nearby drawer to mash up the foul smelling fish mix into softer pieces and placed it on the floor. The kitten was suspicious at first, but then began to gobble it up.
“It’s a baby. If I take it to Derleth it’ll never grow up.” Of course, he knew the counter argument, but he didn’t want to think about it. Probably very few baby animals grew up in this world anyway. “And I can’t take care of anything. I ruin everyone and everything I invest in.”
He stepped around the kitten to open more cupboards, searching for useful items to add to the pillowcase.
"I'm not so sure that that's what happens to animals. Thori never came back after the whole situation with Michael." Natasha had been entirely frustrated that week. She'd had enough with condescending men in her life, a condescending demon just made things far worse. "And anything we bring from outside doesn't reset when we do. Just us and the campus do so he may grow up."
She had an idea, but she wasn't sure if this would get Loki too attached to the cat to give it up. But to be honest, she thought he could use something to care of. Something that depended on him, would be there at the resets (most weeks), and give him affection when he was hiding somewhere.
"You don't ruin everything or everyone you invest in. Derleth just has a way of making you feel that way forever. People coming and going — I've had to deal with three different Yelenas, getting them up to speed only for them to disappear. And I'll keep doing it every time she shows up because she's my sister." She stopped searching cabinets briefly and leaned against a counter. "You could keep it until we found a better world for it to stay in. Something a little less murdery for a tiny kitten, you know. The void won't work, but the week after, who knows. Maybe we'll end up in Planet Vegas again."
Loki stopped rummaging through drawers long enough to look down at the kitten, furiously trying to eat as quickly as possible. He’d give it another minute and then take the can away so the poor thing didn’t make itself sick.
“I don’t know if Planet Vegas is any better,” he said, although he knew that wasn’t true. There had been a few locations in their travels that weren’t horrible. Few and far between, but they existed.
Loki looked over at Natasha. “You don’t have to patronize me. It’s not Derleth. Derleth just magnetizes the problem, it doesn’t create it. I’ve been ruining things for years. You know that. You’ve seen it first hand. It’s not Derleth. It’s me.”
Loki shrugged. He tried to play it off like it didn’t matter, but he lacked a lot of his illusions this week. He was tired. He was angry. He was hurt. He was covered in zombie blood. He was unwell. But he had been that way for a very long time. Even before the recent disappearance notification.
He crouched down and gently ran his fingers over the kitten’s back. “Maybe one of the kids could care for him. I’m not good at looking after things.”
But he wanted to. He thought he’d been trying. Perhaps his attention was merely in the wrong place. Perhaps he was just no good with people.
“You love your sister. That’s different. And you never give up. You hold off your feelings for everyone else and wait to grieve until the rest are taken care of. You’re selfless. I’m not. The amount of control it takes to not level the entire campus…” Loki sighed. “It’s a good thing magic is on the fritz this week.”
Natasha set the bag on the counter and sighed quietly. Loki was in far worse shape than she thought he was, and she could have sworn he'd seemed happier with Mobius around. She had been dealing with her own feelings, shutting everyone out like she had during those five years. There were very few who understood how incredibly lonely and duty-driven Natasha had been. They had failed to keep the universe safe, and there had been no way to bring them back. At least not until Scott showed up. She'd lost half of her Avenger family and her entire fake Ohio family. She had literally been living in the hopes that something would give and all of the horror could be undone.
She didn't think of herself as selfless, because they had failed. Everything she did from that moment was selfish, the need to keep doing the job. To keep everyone together. Because if she didn't, what was it all for?
"Loki, I would never patronize you, but Derleth exacerbates the best and worst in all of us. I've seen you selflessly defend people here that I never would have expected in our world. Whatever flaws and strengths you have — those are yours, but Derleth never lets them settle. There's no time to breathe between traumatic events, and that messes with the mind."
She crouched next to him and reached out to give the kitten a scritch behind the ear. Natasha looked down at it with its voracious appetite. She nodded her head toward it. "I know you can do this, and this cat needs you."
Loki wasn’t oblivious. He may not have been functioning at his best mentally or emotionally, but he was still Loki. He could still see what Natasha was doing. He was an expert in manipulation, after all. He knew all about twisting things in order to trick someone’s mind. Usually he was quite good at it. But in the last few months he’d let his guard down. He’d allowed too many people to get too close. To see too much of the man behind the facade. The boy beneath the bravado. The Frost Giant beyond the face of a god.
Natasha was trying to sway his feelings. He knew that. And while it made him want to laugh, he didn’t. Because deep down Loki appreciated it. Just as he appreciated her joining him on the playground. Just as he appreciated her talking to him again.
Talking to him like he hadn’t ruined everything. Which was how Loki felt. How he always felt. About her. About Mobius. About everyone, really.
“It’s never brought out the worst in you,” he whispered once she was crouched down beside him.
Loki pushed the bowl aside to give the kitten a break from its starving instinct. The little ball of fluff had finally lost some of its earlier fear and was embracing the affectionate attention. Perhaps the first he’d ever received.
Loki leaned towards Natasha until their shoulders met. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. Or if you felt like I’d abandoned our friendship. I’ll never do it again.”
Natasha's attempt at swaying his feelings wasn't because she thought less of him. It wasn't manipulation in the cruel sense of the word. She wanted him to know that she truly believed in him. Growth wasn't a constant upward curve on a graph. Sometimes there were setbacks, sometimes there were completely downfalls. Growth had a lot of growing pains that went with it. Things began to hurt more because you cared, and that made it that much more difficult to want to keep going sometimes.
"Yeah, it has. There have been times I thought about straight up murdering someone who was being an idiot so they couldn't compromise the group." She never said it, never mentioned it, and it was all in her head, but sometimes that was all she needed. "I don't think like that back home, because death's death there. You're gone."
She leaned into his shoulder. She huffed a mirthless laugh. "I thought you didn't need me anymore — which, you know, should be okay. People outgrow others all the time." Steve, for example, was always from a point where he wanted to retire and let go of responsibility. Natasha couldn't let herself do that. "And it's not like I didn't help by retreating into myself. I have a bad habit of doing that."
“I never outgrow anyone. It’s always the other way around. Everyone outgrows me.”
Thor was a perfect example of that. Oh, the temper tantrum Loki had thrown when his brother fell in love with that human woman. He tried to make it about her not being worthy of him, but it had always been about Loki feeling left behind. About always being the last man standing in a game no one else wanted to play. Always alone.
He imagined it would have only been a matter of time before the same thing happened with Mobius. Loki wasn’t even his Loki. Not really. He was just a close facsimile. He was ‘good enough for now,’ but probably not for the long run.
But that may have been Loki’s fault as well. He’d been trying so hard to learn and ‘grow’ so quickly—to become a different kind of Loki—that he didn’t even know if his efforts carried any weight. Or if he was making any progress. Perhaps he was still doing the same old thing just in a different way.
As for Natasha, well, he’d been upset about how things had stifled between them. But he didn’t blame her. The age old adage still held true in his mind.
It’s always Loki’s fault.
“It’s the best and the worst thing about this place. The resets. We’re given all the time and opportunity in the world to do things better. To be different. And yet, we just continue doing the same things we’ve always done. Follow the same paths we always follow. And we forget how important it is to live a fleeting life.” And having ‘died’ on multiple occasions, Loki felt he had a particularly keen insight into death.
The kitten leaned into his hand. It was attempting to purr but hadn’t quite figured out how.
“I always need people, Natasha. I put on a good act sometimes, but I’m…” Loki looked away from her. Then he shook that thought away. “You didn’t do anything wrong by retreating into yourself. And you didn’t do anything wrong by thinking those things. It’s hard to deal with literally everything all the time. And you deal with everyone’s everything.”
Everyone, Natasha included, was getting used to the idea that death didn't mean anything here. When Yelena was cursed with death, she tried to get her to understand that the pain of it, the sense of impending doom or betrayal — that stuck with you. Coming back didn't erase any of the feelings that came with being brutalized by a Taskmaster version of yourself. It didn't erase that long fall off the side of a cliff. It made doing the same shit over and over again have no real repercussions.
"I know that week after you died wasn't the greatest for you emotionally, but you spent it in my room. We watched movies and just sat in silence." Of course, they had to because of the aliens with the intense hearing and lusty desire to murder anything that made noise. "That week could have been worse."
Natasha reached her arm around his shoulder. Maybe talking about the week someone had killed him wasn't the best idea, but she suspected he understood what she meant. They were close then, and it made a lot of things easier to deal with. Even everyone else's everything. "It's the same shit I dealt with back home, and it's carried over here. I don't mind dealing with everyone else's stuff, but it would be nice if someone wanted to help me with mine from time to time."
She still thought he should bring the kitten back.
"Executive decision. Bring the kitten back with us. Get it fed and hydrated in the Void. Then we'll decide what to do with it after that. I don't want to leave it here. There's nothing for it here."
“I loved that week,” Loki said, voice tinged with multiple layers of regret. “Well, I didn’t love it. But I liked not having to be part of everything else for a few days. I enjoyed the silence.”
He didn’t like the stupidity that the silence instilled in others. And his lips pursed into a taut frown at the thought of Fandral recklessly rushing out of the building and being torn apart by those alien creatures. But Loki had enjoyed the privacy. And the sensation of having something he could share with someone else. Someone who wouldn’t tell everyone his secrets or make him feel like he was somehow a failure for falling for Julia’s trick.
Not that he blamed Julia. It was all a very confusing situation.
It was still confusing.
Just like being near Natasha was confusing.
Loki leaned into her one-armed embrace. They both smelled like rotten blood. Normally it would make his stomach churn. Normally he’d crack a joke. But he barely noticed it anymore. And jokes seemed to be just as fleeting as friendships these days.
“Next time I’ll braid your hair and you can tell me all about the people on campus who you want to murder. We can make a list. See if we have any overlapping victims. Clearly those will be the ones we start with.” Loki smiled down at the kitten. He told himself he wouldn’t get attached but he already was. Had been since the moment he saw the little thing on the plastic jungle gym. “Okay, boss. But no naming it until we decide what we’re going to do at the end of the week.”
At least they weren't going on two weeks without showering. The reset always set her to the point on Vormir. Maybe that wasn't freshly clean, but it was better than two weeks of hunting, foraging, and sleeping in strange and often dirty places. The first thing she was going to do — assuming Derleth allowed it — was take a long, hot bath next week.
"No naming it." She didn't think that was going to last long. Even just calling it Kitty was going to be naming it in some way, but she'd stay silent on that. That smile on his face was a welcomed sight. "And thankfully, we'll have better food for it next week. Better water, and we can clean it up too. Maybe have Orlin or Baymax look it over to make sure it doesn't have an infection or anything."
It was always nice having a project, no matter how simple said project seemed to be. Maybe it would help Loki the same way they helped her. "Which reminds me… what's it like having a sort of look-alike around?"
“No names.” But Loki had already settled on one. He wasn’t entirely conscious of the fact that he had. But there was a name lingering at the back of his mind. One he’d been wanting to use for a very long time.
But Natasha was right. Having one of the professionals at the clinic look the kitten over was a good idea. But it brought a horrifying thought to Loki’s mind. What if it was already infected with whatever plagued this world? What if it just hadn’t expressed any of those initial symptoms.
He instinctively began to roll some of the kitten’s fur back to look at the pink skin underneath. Searching for any scratches, scabs, or bite marks. But he didn’t see anything.
“What?” Loki raised a brow at the question. He’d almost forgotten about his look-a-like. There were already multiple Lokis. Someone with his face—well, sort of his face—wasn’t all that peculiar. He shrugged. “It kind of makes me want to cut my hair short and tattoo my face.”
He winked. “I don’t know. He’s fine. I don’t notice much anymore. Maybe because he’s so … plucky and awkward. Annoyingly optimistic. Definitely not like me at all. But he seems like a good guy. Even more confused about himself than I am. Honestly, I’m a bit surprised he’s lasted this long.”
But Orlin had helped Loki when he’d asked him to check his brain for any signs of something wrong. And Orlin had done so without hesitation or judgment. And he hadn’t told anyone about their conversation or about Loki’s personal worries. Loki respected that.
“I think I’d rather not have too many more people popping up with my face though. I’m kind of attached to the idea of being the one-and-only.”
"He is vastly different from you." Their facial features were just about the only thing they really shared. Orlin seemed insecure in everything except medicine. His medical skills were highly useful, but she didn't know much about him beside that. She'd have to change that. "Easily excitable though."
Natasha knew what Loki was doing, looking at the cat. It wasn't difficult to tell in a world where one bite could turn you into the undead. It didn't even have to be a fatal wound. That was the scariest part for Natasha, and she was grateful that her costume was stronger than most clothing. She watched him quietly for the moment.
Maybe it was the stress of the week, or the unraveling of her own mental state these last weeks, but Natasha turned her body slightly so that her one armed hug could become more of a real hug. She'd felt a little lost without her friend, and now she felt like he was back in her life. "I'll try not to run away again."
Loki hadn’t tried hard to get involved in Orlin’s life. Part of him thought that would be strange since they essentially looked like brothers. (Twin brothers who’d taken completely different life paths.) Part of that was because he’d recognized Orlin’s closeness to Elsa who Loki had also liked as a kind of kindred frost spirit. But mostly he just thought they were too vastly opposite. Besides, Loki rarely had any need for medical attention. and he knew he wouldn’t be a good influence for someone like the excitable doctor.
But when Natasha turned and embraced him with both arms, any thoughts Loki had about the doctor (or anyone else for that matter) disappeared. Because of their height difference he had to lower himself to his knees in order to make the hug more comfortable. More natural. The kitten saw this as an opportunity to crawl up onto his thighs, in search of a soft place to rest. Loki may not have accepted ownership of the little kitten yet, but the kitten had already made up its mind.
This person helped him. This person was safe.
Loki wrapped his arms around Natasha as well, burying his face in the side of her neck where her hair hung loose. When was the last time they’d been this close?
New York, 1980s, his thoughts answered without hesitation. It brought up a strange sensation of guilt, anxiety, and bliss. This was what he’d lost. What they’d both lost. And why?
Because they were both stupid and afraid.
“Natasha, I…” But the words trailed off into silence. Loki thought of Mobius. Thought of how they didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. Thought of how much was left unsaid. How much was unresolved. Loki tugged her closer, holding her tight. “Good. Because I’m getting too old to be chasing after the few friends I have.”