Many Ways, 3/5. NC-17
Title: Many Ways
Series: #23 in Ready For The Siege
(#1 - Look Over Your Shoulder, #2 - Armed Up To The Teeth, #3 - Misery Inspires, #4 - Broken Underneath, #5 - Change Is Coming Soon, #6 - Lick Your Wounds, #7 - Bitter Sparks, #8 - Father's Will, #9 - To Feel Safe Again, #10 - Hit Your Prime, #11 - Open Your Eyes, #12 - Can't Be Ignored, #13 - Make You Ill, #14 - Aim Straight, #15 - Not The First Time, #16 - Friendly Fire, #17 - Relieved, #18 - Release, #19 - Never Noticed, #20 - How You Live And Breathe, #21 - Love, #22 - Do You Wanna Die?)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Loki/Natasha, Natasha/Bucky, Bucky/Loki, Natasha/Yelena, Clint/Darcy
Disclaimer: Not mine! Some comic backstory is incorporated into characterizations, but this is still primarily movieverse.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Avengers, AU to the rest of MCU. References events in prior stories, self harm, PTSD, violence.
Title and series title from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups.
Summary: Queen Hel can give gifts if she wants to. That doesn't mean that her gifts don't come with strings attached, or set off a whole other chain of events. She wouldn't have it any other way.
Prior chapters:
One - Dancing With Ghosts
Two - Helheim
Three - Return
It was chaos when Loki returned with Natasha in his arms.
"You don't understand!" Jane had cried, eyes wide and her hands hovering somewhere close to her mouth. "We had a dead body that we buried. There was a funeral! Open casket. Everybody came. I mean, SHIELD agents, us, the superheroes all around the world, people lining up in the city... You were dead."
Natasha had simply stared at her in incomprehension. Darcy and Clint were on the floor, and Clint looked gobsmacked. James sat hunched in a corner, hollows under his eyes and hair grown out longer than she would have expected. Steve and Sif were close to him, thank goodness, but both seemed haunted as well. Pepper looked ready to cry. Tony was steadily drinking his way through an obscenely expensive bottle of scotch. Bruce looked positively ill but not quite green around the gills in a way that would indicate the Hulk was imminent. Thor looked pensive, as he tended to every time Hel was mentioned. And Loki...
Loki looked beaten down. Old. Fragile.
"You buried a body," Natasha repeated, looking at Jane intently. "People came to my funeral?"
"Don't you get it?" Clint said, his voice a rasp. "People love you. Not just us, people all over."
Odd, how that was the thought that bothered her more than being dead. She had always assumed she would die while working a job. That idea had actually been comforting; her death would mean something, she would be useful, she would be helping someone.
Once everyone got over the shock, there was the inevitable barrage of questions to confirm her identity, regarding her death and what Helheim was like. She was shuffled off to the medical floor, where Dr. Georgia Calderon was informed of her sudden resurrection after two months' time. Tony confirmed that no one had disturbed her burial site in Brooklyn - James and Steve seemed almost sheepish at that piece of information, but she assumed it was because their families had been buried there, and she was family. Techs drew labs and took the samples that Dr. Calderon would then use to assess the biometric data that she had on file for each Avenger living in the Tower.
"Do a scan," Loki said suddenly, startling everyone. It had been crowded in the examination room, but Natasha hadn't complained. Now she looked at him, a question in her eyes. "It's something that Hel said. About making you whole."
Of course Tony had his own MRI and CT scanner in the building to use, and Dr. Calderon elected to get the MRI due to its thinner image slices for more precise scanning. Natasha laid very still inside the coil, remembering other times she had done something similar for the Red Room or for SHIELD. Her memories were all there, even the ones she didn't want to have, even the ones that would have been kinder to forget.
Dr. Calderon still had her kohl ringed eyes, and her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail this time. Her hair had grown since Natasha had last seen her. The embroidered lab coat with her name and SI logo was tossed onto a chair in her office hours later, the dedicated scanners all running whatever test that the doctor had wanted. Everyone seemed waiting on tenterhooks; even Pepper had cancelled all her meetings at SI that day to be there with her.
"All the biometric data matches. All the markers that were on file as belonging to you are there, including the ones that likely were left over from your traumatic childhood," Dr. Calderon began. She was leaning back in her chair behind the desk, stacks of notes and papers in front of her, her hands folded across her stomach and a serious expression on her face.
"Meaning I'm the same person."
"Exactly the same," Dr. Calderon agreed, "except for one thing."
She turned the screen around on her computer. Two MRI images were side by side, and she began to slowly scroll down. On the left was the scan made of Natasha three years prior. On the right was the scan three hours prior. The slices were cross sectional, starting with her skull and then moving down to her feet. It was at the pelvis that the differences between the two sets of images leapt out at everyone crowded into the office behind Natasha.
"What is it?" James asked anxiously.
"I can't see..." Jane began.
"What is this?" Thor asked.
"Talk to us in English, doc," Tony blurted.
Natasha curled in on herself a little, immediately understanding what she was seeing, her hands pressed tight against her flat belly. "Oh," she said in a very small voice. "Oh."
"You had been subjected to a lot of testing," Dr. Calderon said, voice infinitely gentle. Natasha closed her eyes and let her accented voice wash over her. "And the notes clearly stated that they had performed a vaginal hysterectomy when you were ten."
Nodding, she felt tears tracking down her face. It had never mattered before. She had never known loss about it, exactly. That had simply been one more thing taken away from her before she had understood what it was. And then there had been no point in mourning, no point in wishing for something that could never be.
You're not a mother, Loki had sneered at her once, when he had thought such things would hurt her. It hadn't, because she had already come to terms with it.
"Your body was recreated," Dr. Calderon said in those same gentle, quiet tones. Loki's hand came to rest on her shoulder, and suddenly she wondered what Hel had said to him, what kind of cruelty had she inflicted to make him seem to fragile and hesitant. "There's still a body in that grave in Brooklyn, so a new one was made for you. And apparently, it was done without regard to what your body had actually been like when you died."
"I don't understand," Steve said. His voice seemed so distant to Natasha's ears. "What are you dancing around, doctor? What is the rest of us missing?"
"Natasha has a uterus again. All of her prior biomarkers are intact and identical. All of her vital signs are perfectly normal. Lab work is well within the limits of normal. It's as if she had never died at all."
Loki's hand tightened on her shoulder, and Natasha looked up. The doctor looked at her, somehow understanding without being told that this was a shock. "I did die, doctor," she said, voice low and strained. "I died, I went to Helheim, I talked with the dead. And now I'm back, and I'm almost exactly the way I used to be, but with one little difference that can be very significant if I wanted it to be."
"Yes," Dr. Calderon agreed. "Unless you want to return your body to its prior state."
Did she? Was this a test for her? Or for Loki?
The crowd behind her meant she couldn't slip out or push past them and run. She simply nodded and thanked Dr. Calderon, then left the office when the others parted to let her pass, Loki trailing in her wake.
But upstairs, she couldn't contain the sticky morass of emotions that roiled inside of her chest, threatening to choke her. It was easy to move fast, for only Loki to keep up with her; James could, if he wanted to, but he likely was giving her space to think. She usually like that, but right now she only wanted to lash out. She wanted to hurt someone, something, anything, just get it out, get all of this unwanted newness out of her, make the clock turn back the months she had been dead.
"What did she say to you?" Natasha asked Loki, eyes flashing. "Tell me what Hel said to you, why you would know to ask for that MRI. Tell me what made you think this would happen to me when she brought me back."
"She has power over life and death," Loki temporized.
"Tell me," she demanded, a bit of her domme voice creeping in.
Loki flinched, and turned away. "You don't understand how devastated I was. How broken. How lost..." His voice wavered. "I am a monster. I am evil, tainted, impure..."
"Coward," Natasha hissed.
He straightened up, jaw tight at the insult. "You, who has always said I was not argr..."
"Tell me what I want to know," she commanded. Somewhere beyond the two of them in the sitting room, the rest of the Avengers were pretending not to listen. Natasha couldn't bring herself to care. The shock in Dr. Calderon's office was giving way to something like anger, but she couldn't even begin to identify the why of it yet. Did her therapist close out her file with her death? Or were the notes of her sessions still available to her? Did needing a therapist to sort this all out mean she was a neurotic mess?
"She said you played the role of Sigyn," Loki snarled, as if the words were being ripped out of his very soul. "She asked if you should bear Nali and Vali or Jormungandr and Fenrir. She already exists, after all, deathless death, born of magic and more death," Loki spat, wrenching himself away from her. He paced, agitated, a thin layer of frost forming over his skin. He didn't have a Jotnar form, she knew, something to do with what happened in the Void before he had shown up on Earth trying to take it over.
"Loki..."
"She asked if you should bear me monsters. Or lovely boys, the kind to make my heart break, like the ones she would take in the end. I saw it, Natasha. A different life, a different reality along the branches of Yggrasil-"
He shut his lips, but she had already reached his side and spun him around. Natasha searched his face, seeing the pain etched there. "What did you see?" she asked, voice dropping in volume, softer around the edges.
"We were married," he rasped. "Happy. Working for SHIELD together, with a child in the cradle. You loved me." Tears welled to the surface of his eyes, and he blinked them back furiously. "Torture in the days after your death. I never saw it, the child, but it cannot be an easy thing to see. It could not have been an easy birth."
"Are you that certain any child of yours would be cursed?" she asked, her own voice sounding a little hollow to her ears.
"How could it not? Perhaps your children should be James', sired in perfect love and affection. It would be fitting, wouldn't it?"
"Not all of the mythical children were monsters."
"I'm not human. For all that you've been changed and augmented, you are."
"Do you really think Hel would taunt you this way and not make it possible for you to be a father?" Natasha asked flatly.
If anything, that made him go very still, giving Natasha the impression of a caged animal ready to bolt at the first sign of an open door.
"How do you think I feel?" she continued, her voice more like a low hiss. "Do you think I asked for that? Do you think I wanted that?"
"Isn't that a good thing?" he asked, confused.
"I was trained to be an assassin. A killer. To have no ties because they would strangle me, they would make me weak. That would make it harder to kill without question, to follow orders they gave me. A walking incubator is the last thing they would want me to be."
Which might be the draw to the situation if she believed in giving the finger to ghosts. As it was, she was angry and confused and terrified of even the potential of children, because she had never thought it would be possible before. And even if she chose never to have biological children of her own, now she was thinking about children, about babies and their needs and how godawfully unprepared she would be as a mother. And Loki? He was woefully inadequate as a father. Even James was only marginally better prepared because of his younger sisters that he had helped care for before becoming a soldier.
Hel must have laughed her ass off in Helheim, but Natasha sure as hell wasn't getting the joke.
Loki reached across the space between them and tenderly brushed his fingers across her cheek, lips quivering with pain. "You are not a thing, Natasha. I have been mistaken about many things about you, but I never truly thought of you as an inanimate object."
"And that might be the only thing saving us in this conversation right now," she replied dryly.
His startled laughter soon had her laughing, too. It was either that or cry, and she refused to do that. She refused to be a victim of circumstances outside of her control. She would figure out what to do with this piece of information about herself, try to find a way to get past the feeling that her body was some alien creature that didn't belong to her.
When James entered the room soon after, a hesitant look on his face, she pulled him to her and buried her face in the crook of his neck. She breathed in the scent of him, felt the warmth of his skin against her cheek. His arms encircled her tightly, and she heard Loki slip out of the room without another word. James knew what it was like to have his body changed against his will and without regard to his wishes. And right now, she just needed silent support.
Later, she could figure out what she wanted to do.
***
Wanda walked into Avengers Tower, stepping through a smoky portal from halfway across the world, oblivious to the odd currents and tensions around her. She had been ignoring a great many things around her at the Sanctum Sanctorum, had been absorbing the quality and tenor of the magic in that place. She felt old, the weight of lifetimes crammed inside her fragile body. She had knitted the fabric of magic back together as best as she could, the different styles of magic she had been taught making for a really odd pattern. More had died before she finished; she had felt the loss of them like a thread snapping between her fingers, but had to push back the urge to scream or cry.
Curling up on a couch in the den, she ignored the whispers around her. She hadn't wanted to go back to the Village and get new missions from Marissa or Dr. Strange, and she hadn't wanted to sit in her suite alone. There were the different ways to weave portals together so she could talk to Pietro or any of the other lost children the Baron had changed, but that seemed to be like too much work for the moment. It was enough to feel like a cat, curled tightly and lying on her side on a couch, hair falling over her face, black fingerless gloves shredded and smoking slightly. Her leggings had holes in them, her jacket was dusty, the heels of her boots had been worn away as if she had run for miles.
"Um... Who are you again?" came a hesitant woman's voice.
Wanda flicked her wrist lazily, a roiling ball of magic forming in her palm and then shooting out to hit the wall past the woman's hunched form. "Guess."
"Lady, they don't tell me shit like that. I don't have clearance or something like that."
Pushing her hair out of the way, Wanda looked up into the concerned features of Darcy Lewis, whom she had heard about but somehow never actually met. Learning how to use the gift she had been given and then putting out magical fires all over the world had occupied too much of her time, after all.
"Wanda Maximoff. Scarlet Witch."
"Cool codename," Darcy replied sagely. "Okay to shake hands, or is the glowy energy thing meaning that it would zap me?"
Letting her hair fall back over her face, Wanda shook her head as best as she could while it was still pressed against the couch. "Ugh, I'm so tired. Whatever you want it to mean."
"Crazy stuff happened to you, too, I take it?"
"Magic. Magic happened, and lots of it."
"Oh! You too? There's all kinds of weird and creepy magic stuff going down right now. No wonder Natasha came back and is all weirded out."
Wanda shot upright on the couch, nearly colliding with Darcy's head. "She's alive?"
"Yeah. I caught the whole freak show in action. Did you do that? I thought they said it was someone named Hel."
"Queen Hel of Helheim," Wanda replied. She had heard far too much about Hel on Asgard and in some of Frigga's magical texts. That kind of ability was not one to take lightly, and Hel was often spoken of only in frightened whispers. "She is very much real, and very much capable of doing something like that if she pleases."
"So why would she please in a case like this? Not that we're not grateful for getting her back, but... I get the feeling there are strings attached."
"Of course there are. Magic always has rules, functions, consequences..."
She swayed, her rapid motion finally catching up to her. Sighing, she let her eyes fall shut for a moment before looking up at Darcy again. "Natasha is back for a reason."
"If there is, I haven't heard about it yet. Maybe she'll tell Clint, and he might tell me, he might not." Wanda could see that Darcy wasn't concerned about that fact. She looked askance at Darcy when she plopped onto the couch next to her. "But even so, why are you smoking like you were on fire or something?"
"I was on metaphysical fire. Does that count?"
Darcy grumbled something about wrangling cats that Wanda couldn't catch, then pulled her into a tight hug. "You and I are going to get cookies and milk, talk about clothes and stupid shit, then you are going to your room to change and get into comfy pajamas. I think Clint and Natasha have oodles of shit to talk about, so you are now my designated best friend while Jane and Thor go consummate their neverending passion for like, the tenth time today."
"You make zero sense."
"You and I need to get to know one another better. I suspect you are very scarily sane under all that magic, which means I will probably need you to explain everything about it to me at some point. Plus, your day was probably very awful, so you are in desperate need of something that isn't awful. Chocolate chip cookies and milk are not awful." Darcy leapt to her feet, pulling Wanda along with her. "Right? Right."
This was at least infinitely better than dealing with Marissa or Loki, so Wanda let Darcy drag her into the kitchen. Steve and Sif were there, milk and cookies out. "You heard me!"
"Sounded like a most excellent idea," Sif declared.
"These are the chewy kind," Steve offered, pushing one of the bakery boxes in front of him toward Darcy and Wanda. "Really good with milk."
Sniffing playfully, Darcy plunked down in a seat opposite them and pulled Wanda down beside her. "I'm glad to see someone's been paying attention to my very necessary life lessons." She grinned as she snatched up a cookie and then passed one to Wanda. "Go on, snack first. No heavy talk until you feel up to the challenge of it."
"You're very bossy," Wanda observed.
"Yes, I can be. Especially for superheroes with no sense in taking care of themselves but will go around saving the world." She pointedly looked at Steve and wagged her half cookie at him accusingly. "Yes, you included, Captain America. Don't think I don't watch the news. I saw that report about you stomping on some mugger yesterday. No armor, and the dude had a knife! You're not invincible!"
Sif snickered at his hangdog look and bumped shoulders with him playfully. "It was quite the valiant display of bravery, though."
"Oh, not you, too. Were you there? What am I talking about? Of course you were there with him, you're like attached at the hip or something. Hordes of fangirls on the internet all over the world swooned with disappointment once they realized that you two are dating." Darcy finished her cookie and leaned her elbows on the table. She smiled warmly at them, though. "You two are disgustingly cute together."
"I didn't know you two were together," Wanda murmured. It was a very good cookie, Darcy was right about that. She was very overwhelming right now, though, so it was simply easier to go along with whatever she was spouting at the moment.
The warrior beamed at Wanda. "Oh, yes. And on Midgard, there are interesting inventions and no pressures for formal alliances."
"Though I would go through all of that if it makes you happy," Steve replied in a reasonable tone of voice. Wanda had the sense that it was a conversation they had a few times already. "I'm sure Heimdall would love an excuse to party."
"He is the official guardian," Sif sighed. "He so rarely leaves his post."
Wanda remembered Heimdall, the gravitas and sense of magic all around him. "But there are ways to lock down the ways in and out of a realm," she told them. "Securing its borders is just a variation of spá work. Those of us gifted at it would be able to do the spells."
"Really?" Sif asked in surprise.
"Sure. Queen Frigga and I met with Heimdall in the Observatory a few times before she let me come here with you. Something about dimensional magic, though I didn't understand it at the time," Wanda admitted.
"No more talking about work problems," Darcy declared, shoving another cookie at her. "You will stress yourself out if you keep thinking about it, and that is going to absolutely kill the ability to concentrate anyway." She picked up her own cookie. "If you keep up the thinking thing instead of relaxing, we'll have to get Dove chocolate and ponder the sayings they have on the wrappers. As well as lament the laughably inadequate serving size listed on the side of the bags they come in."
"That's five pieces," Steve pointed out in a reasonable tone.
"Yes, exactly," Darcy replied, munching on her cookie.
Pepper strolled into the kitchen with a mug in hand, still looking tense. She came up short and looked over the box of cookies that they had on the table. "Cookie party?"
"Her idea," Steve said, pointing at Darcy.
"Better than scotch," Pepper sighed, heading for the coffee pot. "I'm going to call in Rhodey to help deal with Tony. Between the meetings at SI and the upcoming events we're sponsoring... I can't deal with this right now." Her voice quavered and she looked away. "It's good news, I know it is, but..."
Darcy hopped off the table, cookie in hand to give to Pepper. "But it's magic. And there's a magical vampire out there that already killed her once. And when very powerful beings that might as well be gods are involved, and very afraid of what the hell is going on, it's more than enough of a reason to freak out," she said reasonably. "Have a cookie."
"That's not going to help," Pepper said.
"Do not mock the power of the chocolate chip cookie," she said sternly. "Yeah, you're like the ultimate uber boss, but right now, you are in need of endorphins to deal with a dead friend suddenly not being dead that might be dead again very soon if no one can figure out how to keep the magic vampire lady from eating her in a decidedly unsexy way. Right?"
Pepper sighed. "That about sums it up, yes. How did my life get so surreal?"
"You worked for Tony Stark," Darcy promptly replied.
Nibbling at the cookie, Pepper refilled her coffee mug. "You're good at superhero wrangling."
"Yep. Mostly because deep down you know what needs to be done and can't sit down long enough to take care of yourself. And it's always easier to do it if someone else tells you to."
She laughed a little, nodding. "There's so much work to do..."
"You're CEO of a massive company. I'm sure you have like, a dozen underlings or something."
"Not a dozen," Pepper protested.
"Call Rhodey," Steve offered, patting the seat next to him. "Have cookies and milk with us."
"Tony will self destruct without me."
"Jarvis, buddy!" Darcy called out.
"Yes, Miss Lewis?" came the AI's disembodied voice.
"You can sense blood alcohol levels, right?"
"I can extrapolate this through sensory data available in the lab."
"Excellent. Let us know when Tony's is twice the legal limit."
"It's already been hovering above that level," Jarvis promptly informed them.
"Hm..." Darcy munched on a cookie, apparently thinking. Wanda was just about to sneak away from the kitchen and the feeling that she was unnecessary when Darcy lit on her and nearly beamed. "Dimensions. That means portals, if I understood Jane and Bruce and their sciencing stuff correctly." Wanda reluctantly nodded, wondering what she was getting herself into. "Okay. Can you open a portal to Tony's lab? We're moving the cookie party to him. He can't wallow in misery and booze all day. That's just not healthy."
"That perhaps is the point," Sif said quietly.
"Well, fuck that. I'm the HR lady. I'm pretty sure I'm out of a job if he dies, right?" Darcy replied in a flippant tone. Wanda was sure Darcy wasn't as heartless as that sounded.
"That's not-" Pepper began.
"It's probably cruel and unusual punishment to pour the booze down the drain," Darcy continued, staring at Pepper. "So I'll need you to find it all and lock it up somewhere. Don't care where, as long as Tony doesn't have access. Jarvis, I'll need your help in keeping it on lockdown."
"Certainly, Miss Lewis."
"We've got two boxes of chocolate chip goodness. That's not enough to soak up all the booze in his system. Jarvis, order at least ten more. Between Tony and the rest of us up here, we're all going to need a lot of cookies. Oh, and at least three gallons of milk."
"Certainly, Miss Lewis."
Wanda startled when she realized that Darcy was staring at her expectantly. "Oh! Portal. But I'm not sure where it has to be..."
"You have a sense of who Tony Stark is?"
"Well, yes, but-"
"Anywhere nearby that won't send us into some kind of machinery or pointy tools," Darcy said brightly. She stuffed the rest of her cookie in her mouth and grabbed the boxes. "The rest of you guys grab the milk and mugs."
"Not exactly what I expected coming back here," Wanda admitted, opening a portal to Tony's lab, using Pepper's connection to him to find his exact location. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Steve and Sif gathering up milk and mugs as Darcy requested, and Pepper clutching her coffee mug as if her life depended on it.
"Admit it, this is better than putting out metaphysical fires," Darcy replied.
Wanda thought about it, then smiled. Pietro would love this kind of community, the family feel to it, the way they all banded together and supported each other in a time of crisis. This was what they had missed growing up and being in the Baron's labs. This was what she had wanted when she first agreed to learn magic and get involved in Earth's magical community.
"Yeah, it is."
"Excellent," Darcy said, all smiles. It seemed as though she could force them all into a happier state of mind by sheer force of will. "Let's go rescue Tony from himself, shall we?"
***
***
To Chapter Four - Regaining Reason
Series: #23 in Ready For The Siege
(#1 - Look Over Your Shoulder, #2 - Armed Up To The Teeth, #3 - Misery Inspires, #4 - Broken Underneath, #5 - Change Is Coming Soon, #6 - Lick Your Wounds, #7 - Bitter Sparks, #8 - Father's Will, #9 - To Feel Safe Again, #10 - Hit Your Prime, #11 - Open Your Eyes, #12 - Can't Be Ignored, #13 - Make You Ill, #14 - Aim Straight, #15 - Not The First Time, #16 - Friendly Fire, #17 - Relieved, #18 - Release, #19 - Never Noticed, #20 - How You Live And Breathe, #21 - Love, #22 - Do You Wanna Die?)
Author: Eustacia Vye
Author's e-mail: eustacia_vye28@hotmail.com
Rating: NC17
Pairing: Loki/Natasha, Natasha/Bucky, Bucky/Loki, Natasha/Yelena, Clint/Darcy
Disclaimer: Not mine! Some comic backstory is incorporated into characterizations, but this is still primarily movieverse.
Spoilers/Warnings: Post-Avengers, AU to the rest of MCU. References events in prior stories, self harm, PTSD, violence.
Title and series title from "The Royal We" by Silversun Pickups.
Summary: Queen Hel can give gifts if she wants to. That doesn't mean that her gifts don't come with strings attached, or set off a whole other chain of events. She wouldn't have it any other way.
Prior chapters:
One - Dancing With Ghosts
Two - Helheim
Three - Return
It was chaos when Loki returned with Natasha in his arms.
"You don't understand!" Jane had cried, eyes wide and her hands hovering somewhere close to her mouth. "We had a dead body that we buried. There was a funeral! Open casket. Everybody came. I mean, SHIELD agents, us, the superheroes all around the world, people lining up in the city... You were dead."
Natasha had simply stared at her in incomprehension. Darcy and Clint were on the floor, and Clint looked gobsmacked. James sat hunched in a corner, hollows under his eyes and hair grown out longer than she would have expected. Steve and Sif were close to him, thank goodness, but both seemed haunted as well. Pepper looked ready to cry. Tony was steadily drinking his way through an obscenely expensive bottle of scotch. Bruce looked positively ill but not quite green around the gills in a way that would indicate the Hulk was imminent. Thor looked pensive, as he tended to every time Hel was mentioned. And Loki...
Loki looked beaten down. Old. Fragile.
"You buried a body," Natasha repeated, looking at Jane intently. "People came to my funeral?"
"Don't you get it?" Clint said, his voice a rasp. "People love you. Not just us, people all over."
Odd, how that was the thought that bothered her more than being dead. She had always assumed she would die while working a job. That idea had actually been comforting; her death would mean something, she would be useful, she would be helping someone.
Once everyone got over the shock, there was the inevitable barrage of questions to confirm her identity, regarding her death and what Helheim was like. She was shuffled off to the medical floor, where Dr. Georgia Calderon was informed of her sudden resurrection after two months' time. Tony confirmed that no one had disturbed her burial site in Brooklyn - James and Steve seemed almost sheepish at that piece of information, but she assumed it was because their families had been buried there, and she was family. Techs drew labs and took the samples that Dr. Calderon would then use to assess the biometric data that she had on file for each Avenger living in the Tower.
"Do a scan," Loki said suddenly, startling everyone. It had been crowded in the examination room, but Natasha hadn't complained. Now she looked at him, a question in her eyes. "It's something that Hel said. About making you whole."
Of course Tony had his own MRI and CT scanner in the building to use, and Dr. Calderon elected to get the MRI due to its thinner image slices for more precise scanning. Natasha laid very still inside the coil, remembering other times she had done something similar for the Red Room or for SHIELD. Her memories were all there, even the ones she didn't want to have, even the ones that would have been kinder to forget.
Dr. Calderon still had her kohl ringed eyes, and her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail this time. Her hair had grown since Natasha had last seen her. The embroidered lab coat with her name and SI logo was tossed onto a chair in her office hours later, the dedicated scanners all running whatever test that the doctor had wanted. Everyone seemed waiting on tenterhooks; even Pepper had cancelled all her meetings at SI that day to be there with her.
"All the biometric data matches. All the markers that were on file as belonging to you are there, including the ones that likely were left over from your traumatic childhood," Dr. Calderon began. She was leaning back in her chair behind the desk, stacks of notes and papers in front of her, her hands folded across her stomach and a serious expression on her face.
"Meaning I'm the same person."
"Exactly the same," Dr. Calderon agreed, "except for one thing."
She turned the screen around on her computer. Two MRI images were side by side, and she began to slowly scroll down. On the left was the scan made of Natasha three years prior. On the right was the scan three hours prior. The slices were cross sectional, starting with her skull and then moving down to her feet. It was at the pelvis that the differences between the two sets of images leapt out at everyone crowded into the office behind Natasha.
"What is it?" James asked anxiously.
"I can't see..." Jane began.
"What is this?" Thor asked.
"Talk to us in English, doc," Tony blurted.
Natasha curled in on herself a little, immediately understanding what she was seeing, her hands pressed tight against her flat belly. "Oh," she said in a very small voice. "Oh."
"You had been subjected to a lot of testing," Dr. Calderon said, voice infinitely gentle. Natasha closed her eyes and let her accented voice wash over her. "And the notes clearly stated that they had performed a vaginal hysterectomy when you were ten."
Nodding, she felt tears tracking down her face. It had never mattered before. She had never known loss about it, exactly. That had simply been one more thing taken away from her before she had understood what it was. And then there had been no point in mourning, no point in wishing for something that could never be.
You're not a mother, Loki had sneered at her once, when he had thought such things would hurt her. It hadn't, because she had already come to terms with it.
"Your body was recreated," Dr. Calderon said in those same gentle, quiet tones. Loki's hand came to rest on her shoulder, and suddenly she wondered what Hel had said to him, what kind of cruelty had she inflicted to make him seem to fragile and hesitant. "There's still a body in that grave in Brooklyn, so a new one was made for you. And apparently, it was done without regard to what your body had actually been like when you died."
"I don't understand," Steve said. His voice seemed so distant to Natasha's ears. "What are you dancing around, doctor? What is the rest of us missing?"
"Natasha has a uterus again. All of her prior biomarkers are intact and identical. All of her vital signs are perfectly normal. Lab work is well within the limits of normal. It's as if she had never died at all."
Loki's hand tightened on her shoulder, and Natasha looked up. The doctor looked at her, somehow understanding without being told that this was a shock. "I did die, doctor," she said, voice low and strained. "I died, I went to Helheim, I talked with the dead. And now I'm back, and I'm almost exactly the way I used to be, but with one little difference that can be very significant if I wanted it to be."
"Yes," Dr. Calderon agreed. "Unless you want to return your body to its prior state."
Did she? Was this a test for her? Or for Loki?
The crowd behind her meant she couldn't slip out or push past them and run. She simply nodded and thanked Dr. Calderon, then left the office when the others parted to let her pass, Loki trailing in her wake.
But upstairs, she couldn't contain the sticky morass of emotions that roiled inside of her chest, threatening to choke her. It was easy to move fast, for only Loki to keep up with her; James could, if he wanted to, but he likely was giving her space to think. She usually like that, but right now she only wanted to lash out. She wanted to hurt someone, something, anything, just get it out, get all of this unwanted newness out of her, make the clock turn back the months she had been dead.
"What did she say to you?" Natasha asked Loki, eyes flashing. "Tell me what Hel said to you, why you would know to ask for that MRI. Tell me what made you think this would happen to me when she brought me back."
"She has power over life and death," Loki temporized.
"Tell me," she demanded, a bit of her domme voice creeping in.
Loki flinched, and turned away. "You don't understand how devastated I was. How broken. How lost..." His voice wavered. "I am a monster. I am evil, tainted, impure..."
"Coward," Natasha hissed.
He straightened up, jaw tight at the insult. "You, who has always said I was not argr..."
"Tell me what I want to know," she commanded. Somewhere beyond the two of them in the sitting room, the rest of the Avengers were pretending not to listen. Natasha couldn't bring herself to care. The shock in Dr. Calderon's office was giving way to something like anger, but she couldn't even begin to identify the why of it yet. Did her therapist close out her file with her death? Or were the notes of her sessions still available to her? Did needing a therapist to sort this all out mean she was a neurotic mess?
"She said you played the role of Sigyn," Loki snarled, as if the words were being ripped out of his very soul. "She asked if you should bear Nali and Vali or Jormungandr and Fenrir. She already exists, after all, deathless death, born of magic and more death," Loki spat, wrenching himself away from her. He paced, agitated, a thin layer of frost forming over his skin. He didn't have a Jotnar form, she knew, something to do with what happened in the Void before he had shown up on Earth trying to take it over.
"Loki..."
"She asked if you should bear me monsters. Or lovely boys, the kind to make my heart break, like the ones she would take in the end. I saw it, Natasha. A different life, a different reality along the branches of Yggrasil-"
He shut his lips, but she had already reached his side and spun him around. Natasha searched his face, seeing the pain etched there. "What did you see?" she asked, voice dropping in volume, softer around the edges.
"We were married," he rasped. "Happy. Working for SHIELD together, with a child in the cradle. You loved me." Tears welled to the surface of his eyes, and he blinked them back furiously. "Torture in the days after your death. I never saw it, the child, but it cannot be an easy thing to see. It could not have been an easy birth."
"Are you that certain any child of yours would be cursed?" she asked, her own voice sounding a little hollow to her ears.
"How could it not? Perhaps your children should be James', sired in perfect love and affection. It would be fitting, wouldn't it?"
"Not all of the mythical children were monsters."
"I'm not human. For all that you've been changed and augmented, you are."
"Do you really think Hel would taunt you this way and not make it possible for you to be a father?" Natasha asked flatly.
If anything, that made him go very still, giving Natasha the impression of a caged animal ready to bolt at the first sign of an open door.
"How do you think I feel?" she continued, her voice more like a low hiss. "Do you think I asked for that? Do you think I wanted that?"
"Isn't that a good thing?" he asked, confused.
"I was trained to be an assassin. A killer. To have no ties because they would strangle me, they would make me weak. That would make it harder to kill without question, to follow orders they gave me. A walking incubator is the last thing they would want me to be."
Which might be the draw to the situation if she believed in giving the finger to ghosts. As it was, she was angry and confused and terrified of even the potential of children, because she had never thought it would be possible before. And even if she chose never to have biological children of her own, now she was thinking about children, about babies and their needs and how godawfully unprepared she would be as a mother. And Loki? He was woefully inadequate as a father. Even James was only marginally better prepared because of his younger sisters that he had helped care for before becoming a soldier.
Hel must have laughed her ass off in Helheim, but Natasha sure as hell wasn't getting the joke.
Loki reached across the space between them and tenderly brushed his fingers across her cheek, lips quivering with pain. "You are not a thing, Natasha. I have been mistaken about many things about you, but I never truly thought of you as an inanimate object."
"And that might be the only thing saving us in this conversation right now," she replied dryly.
His startled laughter soon had her laughing, too. It was either that or cry, and she refused to do that. She refused to be a victim of circumstances outside of her control. She would figure out what to do with this piece of information about herself, try to find a way to get past the feeling that her body was some alien creature that didn't belong to her.
When James entered the room soon after, a hesitant look on his face, she pulled him to her and buried her face in the crook of his neck. She breathed in the scent of him, felt the warmth of his skin against her cheek. His arms encircled her tightly, and she heard Loki slip out of the room without another word. James knew what it was like to have his body changed against his will and without regard to his wishes. And right now, she just needed silent support.
Later, she could figure out what she wanted to do.
***
Wanda walked into Avengers Tower, stepping through a smoky portal from halfway across the world, oblivious to the odd currents and tensions around her. She had been ignoring a great many things around her at the Sanctum Sanctorum, had been absorbing the quality and tenor of the magic in that place. She felt old, the weight of lifetimes crammed inside her fragile body. She had knitted the fabric of magic back together as best as she could, the different styles of magic she had been taught making for a really odd pattern. More had died before she finished; she had felt the loss of them like a thread snapping between her fingers, but had to push back the urge to scream or cry.
Curling up on a couch in the den, she ignored the whispers around her. She hadn't wanted to go back to the Village and get new missions from Marissa or Dr. Strange, and she hadn't wanted to sit in her suite alone. There were the different ways to weave portals together so she could talk to Pietro or any of the other lost children the Baron had changed, but that seemed to be like too much work for the moment. It was enough to feel like a cat, curled tightly and lying on her side on a couch, hair falling over her face, black fingerless gloves shredded and smoking slightly. Her leggings had holes in them, her jacket was dusty, the heels of her boots had been worn away as if she had run for miles.
"Um... Who are you again?" came a hesitant woman's voice.
Wanda flicked her wrist lazily, a roiling ball of magic forming in her palm and then shooting out to hit the wall past the woman's hunched form. "Guess."
"Lady, they don't tell me shit like that. I don't have clearance or something like that."
Pushing her hair out of the way, Wanda looked up into the concerned features of Darcy Lewis, whom she had heard about but somehow never actually met. Learning how to use the gift she had been given and then putting out magical fires all over the world had occupied too much of her time, after all.
"Wanda Maximoff. Scarlet Witch."
"Cool codename," Darcy replied sagely. "Okay to shake hands, or is the glowy energy thing meaning that it would zap me?"
Letting her hair fall back over her face, Wanda shook her head as best as she could while it was still pressed against the couch. "Ugh, I'm so tired. Whatever you want it to mean."
"Crazy stuff happened to you, too, I take it?"
"Magic. Magic happened, and lots of it."
"Oh! You too? There's all kinds of weird and creepy magic stuff going down right now. No wonder Natasha came back and is all weirded out."
Wanda shot upright on the couch, nearly colliding with Darcy's head. "She's alive?"
"Yeah. I caught the whole freak show in action. Did you do that? I thought they said it was someone named Hel."
"Queen Hel of Helheim," Wanda replied. She had heard far too much about Hel on Asgard and in some of Frigga's magical texts. That kind of ability was not one to take lightly, and Hel was often spoken of only in frightened whispers. "She is very much real, and very much capable of doing something like that if she pleases."
"So why would she please in a case like this? Not that we're not grateful for getting her back, but... I get the feeling there are strings attached."
"Of course there are. Magic always has rules, functions, consequences..."
She swayed, her rapid motion finally catching up to her. Sighing, she let her eyes fall shut for a moment before looking up at Darcy again. "Natasha is back for a reason."
"If there is, I haven't heard about it yet. Maybe she'll tell Clint, and he might tell me, he might not." Wanda could see that Darcy wasn't concerned about that fact. She looked askance at Darcy when she plopped onto the couch next to her. "But even so, why are you smoking like you were on fire or something?"
"I was on metaphysical fire. Does that count?"
Darcy grumbled something about wrangling cats that Wanda couldn't catch, then pulled her into a tight hug. "You and I are going to get cookies and milk, talk about clothes and stupid shit, then you are going to your room to change and get into comfy pajamas. I think Clint and Natasha have oodles of shit to talk about, so you are now my designated best friend while Jane and Thor go consummate their neverending passion for like, the tenth time today."
"You make zero sense."
"You and I need to get to know one another better. I suspect you are very scarily sane under all that magic, which means I will probably need you to explain everything about it to me at some point. Plus, your day was probably very awful, so you are in desperate need of something that isn't awful. Chocolate chip cookies and milk are not awful." Darcy leapt to her feet, pulling Wanda along with her. "Right? Right."
This was at least infinitely better than dealing with Marissa or Loki, so Wanda let Darcy drag her into the kitchen. Steve and Sif were there, milk and cookies out. "You heard me!"
"Sounded like a most excellent idea," Sif declared.
"These are the chewy kind," Steve offered, pushing one of the bakery boxes in front of him toward Darcy and Wanda. "Really good with milk."
Sniffing playfully, Darcy plunked down in a seat opposite them and pulled Wanda down beside her. "I'm glad to see someone's been paying attention to my very necessary life lessons." She grinned as she snatched up a cookie and then passed one to Wanda. "Go on, snack first. No heavy talk until you feel up to the challenge of it."
"You're very bossy," Wanda observed.
"Yes, I can be. Especially for superheroes with no sense in taking care of themselves but will go around saving the world." She pointedly looked at Steve and wagged her half cookie at him accusingly. "Yes, you included, Captain America. Don't think I don't watch the news. I saw that report about you stomping on some mugger yesterday. No armor, and the dude had a knife! You're not invincible!"
Sif snickered at his hangdog look and bumped shoulders with him playfully. "It was quite the valiant display of bravery, though."
"Oh, not you, too. Were you there? What am I talking about? Of course you were there with him, you're like attached at the hip or something. Hordes of fangirls on the internet all over the world swooned with disappointment once they realized that you two are dating." Darcy finished her cookie and leaned her elbows on the table. She smiled warmly at them, though. "You two are disgustingly cute together."
"I didn't know you two were together," Wanda murmured. It was a very good cookie, Darcy was right about that. She was very overwhelming right now, though, so it was simply easier to go along with whatever she was spouting at the moment.
The warrior beamed at Wanda. "Oh, yes. And on Midgard, there are interesting inventions and no pressures for formal alliances."
"Though I would go through all of that if it makes you happy," Steve replied in a reasonable tone of voice. Wanda had the sense that it was a conversation they had a few times already. "I'm sure Heimdall would love an excuse to party."
"He is the official guardian," Sif sighed. "He so rarely leaves his post."
Wanda remembered Heimdall, the gravitas and sense of magic all around him. "But there are ways to lock down the ways in and out of a realm," she told them. "Securing its borders is just a variation of spá work. Those of us gifted at it would be able to do the spells."
"Really?" Sif asked in surprise.
"Sure. Queen Frigga and I met with Heimdall in the Observatory a few times before she let me come here with you. Something about dimensional magic, though I didn't understand it at the time," Wanda admitted.
"No more talking about work problems," Darcy declared, shoving another cookie at her. "You will stress yourself out if you keep thinking about it, and that is going to absolutely kill the ability to concentrate anyway." She picked up her own cookie. "If you keep up the thinking thing instead of relaxing, we'll have to get Dove chocolate and ponder the sayings they have on the wrappers. As well as lament the laughably inadequate serving size listed on the side of the bags they come in."
"That's five pieces," Steve pointed out in a reasonable tone.
"Yes, exactly," Darcy replied, munching on her cookie.
Pepper strolled into the kitchen with a mug in hand, still looking tense. She came up short and looked over the box of cookies that they had on the table. "Cookie party?"
"Her idea," Steve said, pointing at Darcy.
"Better than scotch," Pepper sighed, heading for the coffee pot. "I'm going to call in Rhodey to help deal with Tony. Between the meetings at SI and the upcoming events we're sponsoring... I can't deal with this right now." Her voice quavered and she looked away. "It's good news, I know it is, but..."
Darcy hopped off the table, cookie in hand to give to Pepper. "But it's magic. And there's a magical vampire out there that already killed her once. And when very powerful beings that might as well be gods are involved, and very afraid of what the hell is going on, it's more than enough of a reason to freak out," she said reasonably. "Have a cookie."
"That's not going to help," Pepper said.
"Do not mock the power of the chocolate chip cookie," she said sternly. "Yeah, you're like the ultimate uber boss, but right now, you are in need of endorphins to deal with a dead friend suddenly not being dead that might be dead again very soon if no one can figure out how to keep the magic vampire lady from eating her in a decidedly unsexy way. Right?"
Pepper sighed. "That about sums it up, yes. How did my life get so surreal?"
"You worked for Tony Stark," Darcy promptly replied.
Nibbling at the cookie, Pepper refilled her coffee mug. "You're good at superhero wrangling."
"Yep. Mostly because deep down you know what needs to be done and can't sit down long enough to take care of yourself. And it's always easier to do it if someone else tells you to."
She laughed a little, nodding. "There's so much work to do..."
"You're CEO of a massive company. I'm sure you have like, a dozen underlings or something."
"Not a dozen," Pepper protested.
"Call Rhodey," Steve offered, patting the seat next to him. "Have cookies and milk with us."
"Tony will self destruct without me."
"Jarvis, buddy!" Darcy called out.
"Yes, Miss Lewis?" came the AI's disembodied voice.
"You can sense blood alcohol levels, right?"
"I can extrapolate this through sensory data available in the lab."
"Excellent. Let us know when Tony's is twice the legal limit."
"It's already been hovering above that level," Jarvis promptly informed them.
"Hm..." Darcy munched on a cookie, apparently thinking. Wanda was just about to sneak away from the kitchen and the feeling that she was unnecessary when Darcy lit on her and nearly beamed. "Dimensions. That means portals, if I understood Jane and Bruce and their sciencing stuff correctly." Wanda reluctantly nodded, wondering what she was getting herself into. "Okay. Can you open a portal to Tony's lab? We're moving the cookie party to him. He can't wallow in misery and booze all day. That's just not healthy."
"That perhaps is the point," Sif said quietly.
"Well, fuck that. I'm the HR lady. I'm pretty sure I'm out of a job if he dies, right?" Darcy replied in a flippant tone. Wanda was sure Darcy wasn't as heartless as that sounded.
"That's not-" Pepper began.
"It's probably cruel and unusual punishment to pour the booze down the drain," Darcy continued, staring at Pepper. "So I'll need you to find it all and lock it up somewhere. Don't care where, as long as Tony doesn't have access. Jarvis, I'll need your help in keeping it on lockdown."
"Certainly, Miss Lewis."
"We've got two boxes of chocolate chip goodness. That's not enough to soak up all the booze in his system. Jarvis, order at least ten more. Between Tony and the rest of us up here, we're all going to need a lot of cookies. Oh, and at least three gallons of milk."
"Certainly, Miss Lewis."
Wanda startled when she realized that Darcy was staring at her expectantly. "Oh! Portal. But I'm not sure where it has to be..."
"You have a sense of who Tony Stark is?"
"Well, yes, but-"
"Anywhere nearby that won't send us into some kind of machinery or pointy tools," Darcy said brightly. She stuffed the rest of her cookie in her mouth and grabbed the boxes. "The rest of you guys grab the milk and mugs."
"Not exactly what I expected coming back here," Wanda admitted, opening a portal to Tony's lab, using Pepper's connection to him to find his exact location. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Steve and Sif gathering up milk and mugs as Darcy requested, and Pepper clutching her coffee mug as if her life depended on it.
"Admit it, this is better than putting out metaphysical fires," Darcy replied.
Wanda thought about it, then smiled. Pietro would love this kind of community, the family feel to it, the way they all banded together and supported each other in a time of crisis. This was what they had missed growing up and being in the Baron's labs. This was what she had wanted when she first agreed to learn magic and get involved in Earth's magical community.
"Yeah, it is."
"Excellent," Darcy said, all smiles. It seemed as though she could force them all into a happier state of mind by sheer force of will. "Let's go rescue Tony from himself, shall we?"
***
***
To Chapter Four - Regaining Reason