InsaneJournal

“You’re new,” Clementine said as she pushed herself off the far end of the bar and made her way to Loki.

Loki turned, half glancing over his shoulder as she approached. Clementine’s teal bodice clung tight to her bosom, but Loki wasn’t looking anywhere but her eyes. She had eyes that a man could drown in. And clearly she knew it.

“Not much of a rind on you.” A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips.

“If that’s what you think then you’re not looking hard enough.” Loki grinned, politely tipping the brim of his hat. “My rind is so thick it’s practically bulletproof, sweetheart.”

Clementine placed her hand on his cheek as though to test that sentiment. “Seems pretty soft to me.”

Maeve the Madam, who stood off to the side, nodded to the mustached man behind the bar. The bartender plunked a bottle of whiskey on the counter in response. Clementine picked it up by the neck without giving either of her two colleagues a glance. It was fluid, but there was a subtle repetition to it. Like it was an act they’d all done before. Over and over and over again with hundreds, if not thousands, of strangers who walked through those double doors.

If Loki noticed any of this, he didn’t show it. Instead he kept his eyes trained on those thick black lashes. His hand, however, lingered near his waist, fingers itching to slip beneath his black coat for the gunbelt underneath.

“I’ll give you a discount,” Clementine tempted.

That’s when Loki’s attention broke. He glanced over at Natasha, jutting his chin in her direction. “What about my friend here?”

Clementine averted her doe-eyed gaze to Natasha. Her smile never wavered. “I think we can manage a couple’s discount.”

Loki chewed his lower lip and gave Natasha one of those mischievous grins of his. “What do you say, Tasha? Care to take a gander upstairs?”

---

Natasha had been toying with a Scottish beer for the better part of fifteen minutes, leaning against the bar and eyeing the patron of the Mariposa. Some of the card players were so absorbed in their game they barely lifted their head for anything other than a refill. The piano had a player, but when he was done, it would play on its own. There was something comforting about the music it played, but she couldn't quite place it.

The madam had a shrewd eye. Natasha could tell that she wasn't one to fuck with, but she might give some insight into the place if she could cozy up to her. She'd have to find her in with her which might take a few days.

"You know damn well what my answer is, Loki," Natasha replied, a bright smile on her face, but beneath that smile was a weariness. They were always going to play this game, weren't they? She enjoyed it most of the time, but after last week and the visions, she was growing… unhappy with it. Especially after her conversation with Yelena.

To the one, she said, "Thank you, but no. I'm sure you're great, but he and I — not a couple."

---

There was a flicker of disappointment in Loki’s eyes that he quickly covered with a playful laugh and a shrug. “Can’t blame a guy for asking. Ain’t that right, darling?”

Clementine feigned a blush. It was almost as fake as Loki’s attempt to hide his own embarrassment. But she was a little more practiced. At least in the art of being spurned. That was part and parcel in the brothel business. And she didn’t have the ego to bruise like Loki did.

“I certainly wouldn’t blame you,” she said. And her voice was sweet enough to tempt. Well, would have been sweet enough. If Natasha hadn’t been in the room.

“Perhaps another time.”

Clementine cast a sidelong glance at Natasha. “Discount still stands. If you change your mind. Single or double. Don’t much matter to me.”

Then she wandered off to a young man who just sat down at one of the poker tables.

Loki leaned back over the bar and threw back his dram of whiskey in a single gulp. The bartender refilled it without question. “I actually wasn’t sure what your answer was going to be. But you should definitely take her up on her offer before the end of the week.”

---

Natasha didn't say it out loud, but the life of a saloon girl was a rough one. Between abusive men, the abundance of alcohol, cocaine, and laudanum, the odds that she'd be able to live a long life were very slim. Natasha had no issues with the profession itself — after all, sometimes Widow's were required to seduce people for information — it was one of the few ways a woman could have some autonomy and make money to survive.

The downside was that Clementine was a clear favorite of not just the madam, but of several of the men in the room. There were any number of things that could happen or had happened to this woman.

"Really? You had no idea what my answer to hey Nat, let's have a threesome with this woman neither of us know when we can't even admit our feelings to one another! would be?"

---

“Seems like a good ice breaker to me.” Loki downed the next dram of whiskey without thinking. He kept forgetting that he wasn’t in his normal body this week. But the moment he set the glass back down on the counter he felt a warm wooziness travel into his head. It didn’t make him dizzy, per se, but it was an instant reminder that if he kept drinking at the speed he was he’d be mopping up the floor with his face.

He cleared his throat with a cough and leaned harder into the counter. The action was to better support himself, but to anyone who didn’t know him well—like Natasha—it would just look like he was trying to show off an air of casualness. Maybe even warm strangers by that glint of metal that shone off his jutting hip.

“But I apologize if I offended you.” Loki shrugged. “Too late now anyway.”

His gaze drifted to the steps where Clementine was leading the young man from the poker game upstairs.

The bartender lifted a bottle of whiskey and Loki placed his palm over the glass. “I’m taking a break, buddy.”

The bartender moved onto the next patron without any fuss.

“I wouldn’t be worth my mettle in the bedroom this week anyway.” Loki flicked a finger at his bicep. “All of my muscles feel atrophied. It’s a miracle I’m standing.”

---

Natasha couldn't help but roll her eyes. Sexual prowess aside, it seemed that Loki was making up for his lack of godliness with terrible pick-up lines and deflection. And bad icebreakers. This week was not going to be the week that Natasha made a move.

That left her free to look around at the patrons. This establishment was fairly cut and dry, with the occasional person coming in to tell some scary story about Hector Escaton and his band of outlaws. The Madam seemed to know him, and didn't think he was much of a threat. At least not to her. There had to be a story there.

"I doubt she'd even notice, and even if she did, she wouldn't say anything. You don't get repeat customers that way."

It shouldn't bother her — that it was clear Loki had a hard-on for Clementine — but she did. Maybe it was the idiotic talk of last week or the memory of them in the far flung Derleth future. This talk made everything feel cheapened.

A world like this was going to make it difficult to keep track of people, especially if they decided to leave the Sweetwater and Derleth areas. The horizon was long, and without powers, horses were going to be the way to get anywhere.

---

“I wasn’t talking about impressing her,” Loki said. He turned around and pushed his back into the edge of the counter so he could get a better view of the other patrons in the saloon without peering into the mirror above the bar.

One of the men at the poker table stood up and accused the fellow across from him of cheating. Within seconds the entire table was on their feet arguing. The piano player stopped playing. The room went quiet. The first man’s hand went for his pistol, but before he could draw it the Madam was on him. She ran her fingers over his arm, smiled that perfect but slightly distrusting smile, and whispered in his ear. Then the man sat down. Crisis averted. For now anyway.

The Madam nodded to the pianist.

The music restarted.

And then, as if unintentionally reading Natasha’s mind, Loki changed the subject. “I want to ride out of town tomorrow. Saloons and general stores are quaint and all, but I need more space.”

Space he hadn’t been able to find the last few weeks. Not since Mobius left. Not since he realized he’d been sharing half his brain with a Variant.

“You can join me if you want. But I won’t take it personally if you don’t. I know how you like to look out for everyone.” Loki quirked a smile. “And they’re going to need a lot of looking out for here.”

---

Until that point, Natasha had been scanning the saloon for various people. This one had a gambling problem. This one was distrustful. This one was a former criminal hiding under another name. Even the madam was hiding something, with her British accent in the wild west. It was an interesting group of people all thrown together.

She turned her head, slowly and deliberately to look up at him. No more of this if you want. She was tired of everything being her decision.

"I can do whatever I want. Do you want me to join you?"

---

“If I didn’t want you then I wouldn’t invite you.” Loki was annoyed by the question. It was beneath Natasha’s intelligence. She should have known. How many ways did he have to say it? How many different offers did he have to make? And who would he be if he didn’t let her make her own decisions?

The villain. That’s who.

Another one of the Madam’s dutiful working girls glided past them. She slowed her gait long enough to give them both a centered glance and a double wink. Meaningful. Knowing. It was a wordless invitation. One that Loki was tempted to accept.

Until the first gunshot went off.

The piano player was the first to fall over. Slumped face down on the keys which then continued to play on their own well after he’d perished. The saloon delved into a veritable bloodbath as the three black hat gunslingers who stepped through the swinging doors began shooting in every direction. If they had any demands, they didn’t say it. And even if they had, they wouldn’t have been heard over the screams of the Mariposa’s guests.

“Finally something interesting,” Loki said. He grabbed the whiskey bottle from the bartender and took a swig. Then he drew his revolver from his holster and aimed it toward one of the shooters.

He pulled the trigger.

One down.

---

Killing these guys wasn't Natasha's first instinct — it wasn't her last one either though. They'd come in and without a word began shooting, as if they knew what to expect. They weren't taken hostages, and they weren't rooting through anyone's pockets. They were doing this for the sake of doing it.

She hurried toward the table of gamblers, using her Red Room given skills to work on the invaders. It was quick, the way she took down the one closest to the previous paranoid player. Her leg swept both of his, landing him flat on his back. She didn't have her superstrength, but she'd gone thirty some odd years without it. She knew the angles to propel herself against the next one to take him off guard.

It was a good distraction from moments before. She was tired of thinking about all the unspoken things both of them refused to say. So beating up some people trying to kill bystanders in a saloon was a good way to let off some steam. The one on the floor started to get back up, retrieved a knife and tried to stab the paranoid player. Natasha's hand shot out in an instant, and the sharp blade went through her palm. She barely felt it before she grabbed the man's head and slammed it down against the table, finally knocking him unconscious.

"Great way to start the week," she grumbled, pulling the knife from her hand.

---

Loki still wasn’t accustomed to thinking of himself in a human body. He easily—and quickly—forgot that he wasn’t impervious to harm. Not that he was impervious to all harm in his Jotunn form, but he wasn’t easy to take down. This week, however, was another story entirely. As he was about to find out.

Natasha leapt into the action, doing her best to shield herself from the fray. Loki didn’t. He didn’t have those instincts. He merely pushed himself away from the bar and began making his way towards the third gunslinger while Natasha dealt with the one on the floor.

Loki raised his revolver. He tried to aim it at the man’s head, but for some unknown reason his hand lowered. By the time he pulled the trigger it barely grazed the man in the arm. Loki blinked. What in the—

The first gunshot ripped through his left shoulder, sending him stumbling backwards. He glanced at the wound. He was bleeding. It was warm and wet, quickly staining through his dark shirt. Loki was in shock. “He shot me.”

Another crack filled the air and a second bullet pierced his belly. Loki tried to pull the trigger of his own pistol, but it was like his hand was stuck. He collapsed to his knees just as Natasha ripped the knife out of her palm.

“He shot me.”

“Oh, dear,” Maeve the Madam said from a crouched position beside the bar. “You don’t look like you’re having a good day, cowboy. Bet you wish you’d taken Clementine up on her offer.”

Loki coughed, blood trickling from his mouth.

---

He shot me.

There were words you didn't want to hear from certain people. There were a few people who were invulnerable to bullets. As far as she knew, Thor and Loki (and the other Loki and Sylvie) were impervious to bullets. Something about the denseness of their tissue. Loki must have forgotten that he wasn't a god this week. He was a regular human being. No bells, no whistles.

Natasha elbowed the man who shot Loki in the face, knocking him to the floor. She kicked his gun away, and then turned her attention to what she really cared about: Loki.

He was bleeding badly. Would she be able to get him to the clinic in time? Without her superpowers, she wasn't sure she'd be able to drag him there on her own. Maybe she could get a few people to help her. She dropped to her knees and pressed her hand over the wound in his stomach.

"Hey! HEY!" She used her other hand to grab his face, turning it toward her. "Keep those eyes open. Keep looking at me. I'm going to get you out of here."

She looked around the saloon, then barked at the madam: "Get a doctor!"

"He's out! There was an outbreak of smallpox in the next town over. It's a day's ride!"

"Fuck!"

Her phone. She could get the doctor to come here.

---

Loki groaned when Natasha pressed down on his stomach, another cough spitting up a mouthful of blood in the process. His shoulder hurt, but that pain was nothing compared to that in his stomach. It spread throughout his lower limbs like wildfire. She pushed harder and he winced.

It felt like—

No. Not like that.

This felt more like Derleth. Like Julia. Like the Leo Blade being shoved into his torso. Except this time he didn’t die directly. This time he got to experience the actual suffering. But that’s not where his thoughts were. His thoughts were still stuck on the shock of—

“I’ve been shot.” Loki’s brows knit together. He craned his neck to look, but all he could see was the red spilling out against Natasha’s palm. Then she was grabbing his face and for a moment she had his attention.

He tried to smile, but it was more of a grimace. “I guess you’ll have to find someone else to take that ride with.”

Loki clenched his eyes and did his best to hold back a moan. Within a few minutes he couldn’t feel that white hot burn in his legs anymore. He couldn’t feel much of anything really. His skin went pale, clammy with a cold sweat.

“And here I thought this was going to be our week.” Loki gave a halfhearted chuckle. “This one felt like it was made for us.”

---

Natasha's eyes began to water. Her heart thumped in her chest loudly, almost overriding his words. She began to panic, reaching down to press both hands to his abdomen, but she knew it was too late. After being around so much death, there were some things you knew. There was too much blood. There was no way someone could survive this much blood loss.

"Loki…." hot tears ran down her face. If she'd taken him (and Clementine) up on their stupid offer, even if she backed out last minute, they'd be upstairs and away from this. He wouldn't have been in harm's way at all. "Don't go."

Natasha leaned down and pressed her lips to his. The coppery taste of blood was a stark reminder of what was happening, and that there was nothing she could do to fix it. "I'll see you next week. I'll come and find you."

---

“Don’t … do that.” Loki’s voice was breathy. He couldn’t even be certain that what he was saying was spoken out loud or if it was merely in his head. Maybe all of this was in his head. Like the Matrix. Like the words he thought he said, but didn’t.

I’m not worth crying over.

I’ll be back in a few days.

Look after Mischief.

What’s one more death after so many others?

“I . . .” Loki lost the words in his own mind. In the murky muddle of his feelings.

Then there was a flicker of fear in his eyes when she begged him not to go. Fear that he could be wrong. Fear that he might not wake up in Derleth next week. Fear that he might not wake up at all.

But Michael told him he’d be there forever. And even though Michael was a good-for-nothing lying demon, Loki believed him. Maybe because Loki was a liar too. And maybe because he was capable of seeing real truth when it was in front of him.

Like the truth he saw in Natasha’s tears. An answer to an unspoken question they’d been dancing around for a while now.

Everything went dark before her final words. Something fizzled on the inside as she bent down towards his face. His heart slowed to a standstill. He thought he could hear the melody of the player piano or a familiar voice in the distance calling out to him, but none of that was real. That was just a glitch. A remnant. He was already gone. And whatever he heard was the last fragment of a deeper memory. Something leftover from another time.

Maybe another life.