A/N this one takes place post-Loki season one and he is in a very-similar-but-slightly-different-so-the-fic-works timeline
After a string of mistakes and too many bouts of awful luck to count, one thing finally goes right.
Loki finds a TemPad.
He doesn't check what locations are on it. He doesn't care. Right now, his only priority is getting out of the TVA. He can't spend another minute in this place. It's nothing more than a mockery of the real TVA he'd been so close to taking down. And the Mobius and B-15 who don't even know who he is? Just piss-poor icing on an already spectacularly shitty cake.
So he hops right through to the first location he finds.
Loki steps through the Time Portal and closes it behind him. Looking around, there's not much to go by. He's surrounded by nothing but sand as far as he can see. This is what happened when he stole the Tesseract, too. What is it with him and deserts?
He looks down at his TemPad to find a new destination. In the blaring heat of the sun, it's almost hard to focus, and he has to shield the TemPad from the light to see the screen. He'll just find another location and —
Nope, that's the TVA.
Okay, next location. Ah, somewhere on Midgard in 2015. There are worse places to be. He opens up a Time Portal and steps through...
And he steps back out where right where he was just seconds ago.
"What the...?" Loki smacks the side of the TemPad. Is this thing broken or something?
He opens up a portal to Midgard again. Maybe it was just a one-time glitch. He walks through it, and, once again, he's right back where he started. So he must actually already be on Midgard. It must just be sending him back to the last non-TVA location he's been in. That's an easy fix. He'll just pick a different one.
He flips through to check out the other locations saved on here. TVA, Midgard, TVA, Midgard, TVA, Midgard --
Oh, this has to be a joke. Does this TemPad only have two destinations? That's ridiculous. And it's not even a useful destination. Nothing's happening. There's not a single person or a building or a sign of life at all nearby. This may be the single most useless piece of garbage he's ever had the misfortune of laying his hands on.
Loki cups his hands around his lips and looks up at the sky. "Heimdall?"
Absolute silence.
"Heimdall, open the Bifrost!" he yells. "I need to talk to my father!"
He waits. Still no Bifrost.
As a last-ditch effort to get home, he says helplessly, "I promise I won't try to kill anyone again?"
Nothing.
Loki sighs. So Asgard's a bust. For all he knows, Asgard doesn't even exist anymore. When was Ragnarok supposed to happen? It was sometime this decade, wasn't it? Maybe it's already happened. Maybe he has no home to return to.
Or maybe Heimdall just doesn't want to let him come. Maybe he's not welcome there anymore. After all the shit he's done, he should have expected that. Even if there is still an Asgard to return to, they wouldn't trust him. Asgardians are notoriously gullible, but it would take a fool to make that mistake one more time.
Loki opens the portal again and steps back through, like it will change anything. TVA. He steps through again. Midgard. He steps through again. TVA. He steps through again. Midgard. He steps through again. TVA.
He groans and smacks the TemPad with his hand again. This is ridiculous. He really would rather be anywhere but this stupid wannabe TVA, but a desert? That could go on for miles with no one around? Is that really his best option?
He starts fooling around with the TemPad for a few minutes. He hits random buttons. He makes random beeps and boops. Overall, it feels incredibly useless, but the alternative is to go back to that desert and just start walking, and he really doesn't want to do that.
But he finds it eventually. "Add destination." Oh, thank god. He can go anywhere he wants now. He could go back to 2012 to stop himself from taking over New York. He could go back even further and allow Thor's coronation to proceed as planned. He could to 2013 and take his life back while the him of this timeline sits alone in prison (and maybe he could even save his mother in the process).
Yes.
That's what he'll do.
Asgard, 2013. He doesn't know the exact time or date that anything in the future happens, but he's sure he'll make due whenever he ends up. He doesn't really know what's supposed to happen to him after New York — Mobius's video only showed so much — but he'll figure it out as he goes along.
He hits the "Add destination" button, and the TemPad beeps at him.
"This function has been disabled."
Loki grits his teeth, but hope isn't lost yet. Right under the message is a button reading, "Disable training mode." Why TemPads have a training mode, he does not know, but he can't bring himself to care as long as he knows he can exit it. He hits the button...
"Enter administrator login."
"Oh, come on!" Loki yells. This is ridiculous! He almost wants to run around and see if anyone here has administrator access (or a TemPad to spare), but with the chaos unfolding thanks to the Sacred Timeline falling apart, he has a feeling he wouldn't be taken to kindly.
Loki heaves a sigh and tucks the TemPad away. Oh, whatever. He'll just go back to Midgard and start walking. If nothing else, he knows that Midgard is not all sand, so at some point, he should find something else around.
He picks a good time to do so, because had he returned to Midgard just a moment earlier, he would have been hit by a very big, very stupid car. For the briefest moment, he's a little annoyed it got so close, but that changes as soon as he realizes that it means there must be someone or something nearby. Wherever this car is going, he should go, too. That's where he'll find people and that's where he'll orient himself.
Or so he thought, before another car rams into him from behind.
Loki stumbles forward, and though he tries to stay on his feet, he lands flat on his face within seconds. Fortunately, he manages to mostly stop the car (and he dented the hood horribly, too, which serves them right), so it doesn't end up running him over. At least, he thinks it's fortunate, but given that they're on the brink of multiversal war, maybe being crushed by a giant metal box on wheels would have been a blessing.
Loki groans and rolls onto his back, out of the car's way in case the driver decides to keep going. He's too tired to get up. He doesn't even see the point in it. It's not like he could save the multiverse himself, and Midgard isn't exactly crawling in experts on the topic. If he can't do any good, he might as well just do nothing.
The car door opens, but given that they're surrounded by nothing but sand, he can't hear if they get out. He doesn't care. Maybe they'll run he's dead and they'll leave him alone.
"Loki?"
Oh shit.
There's no way. There is absolutely no way that is who it thinks it is. Midgard is a huge planet. There are billions of people here. There is absolutely no way the TemPad just happened to bring him right in front of an Avenger.
Loki reluctantly lifts his head to look. Yep, there she is. Natasha Romanoff.
He awkwardly raises a hand in a half-wave. "Hi."
Natasha groans. "Oh, this is just great!" She takes off running (away from him, he notices; wherever he ranks in the "badness" scale, it's apparently below the car that almost hit him), barely sparing him another glance.
Loki sits up, propping himself up with his hands in the sand behind himself. He watches her run for a few seconds, but it doesn't take long to realize she's no match for that car.
"Are you trying to catch up to them or stop them?" Loki calls over to her.
"Both!" Natasha calls back, her focus never leaving the car.
Well, at least he can help with that, even if he's just about useless in every other sense. He reaches out a hand (not that it's necessary; it's more for showmanship than anything else. It's just a habit from his childhood that he hasn't put in the effort to break) and uses his telekinesis to pick the car up, just enough that its wheels no longer touch the ground. He floats it back towards them, and before he puts it down, he pops all four tires off so it can't drive off again.
Natasha freezes, her feet skidding in the sand as she comes to a stop. She looks back at Loki. "Did you do that?"
"Mm-hmm," he hums. "Have at 'em."
Natasha just looks at him for a moment, her brows furrowed, but when one of the car doors opens, her attention shifts. She runs over to the car, and Loki flops back down in the sand. Whatever she wants to do, she can take it from here.
He doesn't listen to what happens next. He doesn't really care. He's off in his own head, too busy moping to pay attention. And, in his defense, he has every right to mope. It's been a very rough few... days? Weeks? It can't be much more than a month, right? It's been a shitty few units-of-time and he needs a break.
It's the sound of a gunshot a few later that finally draws his attention. He lifts his head just in time to see Natasha fire off two more shots, killing all three people that were in the car. Huh. Well, that solves that problem, whatever "that problem" was.
Natasha puts a hand to her ear and says into her earpiece, "They told me everything." There's a pause while someone on the other end of her comm speaks. "Good. Just..." She glances back at Loki. "Give me a minute. There's something else I have to take care of first."
Natasha starts to walk towards him and he sits up, craning his neck to look at her. He feels like a child, sitting in the sand like this. The difference is that children don't tend to have enemies that may be seconds away from shooting them.
Natasha crosses her arms. "Alright, what's your play?"
"That is the question, isn't it?" Loki says. What's his play? What does he do next?
"What are you doing?" she demands.
"Exactly what I want to be doing," Loki says. "Absolutely nothing. I am in desperate need of a vacation." It's just been one thing after another for years, all the way back to Thor's coronation. He really needs a minute to decompress.
Clearly unimpressed with that answer, she asks, "Why are you here?"
"Bad luck," Loki says. "Poor planning. Really, there were a number of factors that led me here."
Natasha raises an eyebrow. "Are you trying to tell me you just happened to show up on Earth in the middle of my mission by accident?"
"It really was an unfortunate coincidence," Loki says. "But yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."
She shakes her head to herself. "You gonna stand up?"
"Mm..." Loki thinks about that. He could, or... "I think I'm just going to lie here for a while."
Natasha rolls her eyes and holds out a hand. "Come on. On your feet."
Loki hesitates, but he supposes this is as good a reason as any to get up. Taking Natasha's hand, he forces himself to his feet. He brushes the sand off his clothes and runs a hand through his hair. Hopefully he doesn't look like as much of a mess as he feels.
"So," Natasha says, "how'd you manage this one? Last I heard, you were dead."
"Really," Loki says slowly. "Heard from whom?" He's not sure whether to believe it. On one hand, he's been known to fake his death on numerous occasions and the TVA did say he doesn't die until 2018. On the other hand, this is a different timeline. There's no telling what could have changed. Maybe he is dead here. That's a weird thought.
Natasha snorts. "How many Asgardians do you think I talk to? Thor said —"
"Thor?" Loki perks up immediately at the sound of his brother's name. He puts his hands on her shoulders eagerly. "He was here? You talked to him?"
"Um..." Natasha gently removes his hands, eyeing him uncomfortably. "Yeah, he's been hanging out for a while. Stark even got him to go to one of his stupid parties." She says that last part with a fond smile, and in any other situation, Loki would love to imagine Thor trying to fit in at a Midgardian party. But right now, his focus lies elsewhere.
"Is he still here?" Loki asks quickly.
"No, he's gone," Natasha says. "And he's not exactly an easy guy to get ahold of when he's not on Earth, if that's what you're about to ask."
"Dammit," Loki whispers to himself. "So Stark couldn't...?"
She shakes her head. "Thor's been back in Asgard for days. I haven't heard a peep from him since he left. I can tell Stark to keep an eye out for him, but only if you can convince me it's not a bad idea."
Loki raises an eyebrow. "Meaning...?"
"What do you need Thor for?"
Loki scoffs. "What do you mean, what do I need him for? He's my brother!" Why does she make it sound like a bad thing? Who's suspicious of a guy wanting to see his brother again?
"That didn't seem to mean much to you last time we saw you," Natasha remarks.
"Well, I'm not the same person I was back then," Loki says.
"It's been three years," she deadpans.
Instead of pointing out that it has been far less than three years to him, he says, "And what of it? Three years after Barton gave you your second chance, were you the same person you used to be?"
She narrows her eyes. "I have spent every day since then trying to make up for —"
"I know," Loki says quickly. "I know you have. But if there was a chance for you, couldn't there be a chance for me, too?"
Natasha scoffs. "You're looking for redemption?"
"I'm looking to fix my mistakes," Loki says. "I know I may never be able to redeem myself. I know I may never deserve it. But I have just made a colossal mistake —"
"Bigger than trying to take over the world?"
Had Loki been any less stressed, he might have rolled his eyes at that. "I know you ask that in jest but yes, actually, a mistake much worse than trying to take over Midgard. One with potential for a much higher mortality rate."
Natasha eyes him warily. "How much higher?"
"Oh, I don't know, how many beings do you suspect are in the universe?" Loki asks.
"What?"
"Take that number," Loki continues, "and multiply it by infinity; once for every timeline that's about to fall to ruin."
Natasha's eyes go wide. "Loki," she says slowly, "what did you do?"
Loki clicks his tongue. "That is a lot to unpack and not something I'd particularly like to discuss, but, given that the Bifrost won't open to me and I can't get ahold of Thor, I suppose you would be my next best bet."
"No," she says immediately.
"What?"
"No," she repeats. "I'm not helping you."
"But --"
"But nothing," Natasha says. "I don't trust you. I'm not helping you. End of story."
Loki sighs. "Please," he says quietly. "I have literally no one else to turn to. And because it is a world-ending problem, it's going to turn back on you anyway. Wouldn't it --"
"No, see, that's my problem," Natasha says. "I don't think it is a world-ending problem. Because if it was, I don't think you would be trying to fix it. You would be trying to use it to your advantage so you somehow come out on top."
"But I'm not," Loki says. "I promise you, I am trying to do the right thing. For once in my life, I am genuinely trying to be a good person."
Natasha puts her hands on her hips. "And why would you do that?"
Loki gives a small shrug. "Because I have red on my ledger. I'd like to wipe it out."
Natasha narrows her eyes, and, for a few moments, neither of them speak. Loki's beginning to think he's made a mistake with that; that reminding her of that one real conversation they had did nothing but ruin his chances. He'd hoped she'd view it as a similarity between the two of them. Instead, it seems he may have just brought up some bad memories; a bigger reason not to trust him.
But then she asks, "What exactly do you need?"
Oh, how he wishes he knew what he needed. In fact, what he needs may be to find out what he needs. His answer, though, is just, "I don't suppose anyone at SHIELD specializes in time travel or alternate dimensions?"
"Not that I'm aware of." Natasha says, "SHIELD's not quite the big show it used to be, but we have some highly intelligent consultants. They could learn."
"Hmm," Loki hums thoughtfully. "The next best thing, I suppose." He just hopes they have the time to learn about the multiverse before it falls apart.
"Actually," Natasha says with a smirk, "I think you've met some of them. You remember Bruce Banner and Tony Stark, don't you?"
Loki's face falls. "You want to get the Avengers together."
"It doesn't matter what I want," Natasha says. "It matters what SHIELD wants. And if whatever you did is as bad as you say, I have a feeling Fury's gonna want his best men on it."
"I'm not working with the Avengers," Loki says immediately.
"Why not?" Natasha asks, almost teasingly. "You were willing to work with me."
"Well, because..." Loki shakes his head to himself. "Look, this is not a debate. I've said my piece. Either you help me my way, or —"
"Yeah," Natasha interrupts, "I kinda get the feeling you're not in any position to argue right now."
Loki grits his teeth.
Natasha puts a hand to her ear and says into her comm, "Alright, I'm ready. Send it in." She drops her hand and looks up at him. "SHIELD is sending in a copter to pick me up. Now, I'm not an idiot; I know I can't hold you here until it gets here if you don't want me to. But if you want to come back to SHIELD headquarters with me and talk to Fury yourself, the door's open."
"Will I have to work with the Avengers?" Loki asks.
"Is that a deal-breaker for you?"
"It might be."
"Okay, now let me ask you this," Natasha says. "Can you afford for it to be a deal breaker right now?"
Loki hesitates. She has a point. He's fucked up too badly to refuse what little help he can get. He just really, really wishes he could.
Loki plasters on a cheeky smile and holds out a hand. "Alright, Ms. Romanoff. Pleasure to work with you."
~~~~~
The first ten minutes or so of the helicopter ride pass in uncomfortable silence. Loki keeps glancing at Natasha and she keeps glancing at him, but whenever they make eye contact, they look away.
There's a part of Loki that almost wants to befriend her — or at least be friendly with her. If they're going to be working together, they should probably try to get along. He just doesn't know how to get along with her.
Eventually, just to break the silence because they've accidentally caught each other's gaze one too many times to sit here quietly, Loki says, "I like your hair." He does, actually; he's always been impressed by braids. And that one braid down the back of her head seems to him like a very respectable way to keep her hair out of her face when she's fighting. He could learn a thing or two from her about it.
Natasha raises an eyebrow, almost looking amused. "You want me to braid yours, too?"
"Could you?" Loki asks, taken aback by that.
Natasha snorts. "I was being sarcastic. I wasn't actually offering to braid your hair."
"No, I know," Loki says quickly. He can definitely see where the confusion came from, but he was not asking her to. "I mean, you could. If you wanted to. You can braid hair. Without magic."
Natasha stares at him. "Of course I can braid my own hair," she says. "What, you thought I went out of my way to get it professionally done before I went on my high-intensity mission that would just mess it up?"
"I don't know; I guess I didn't really think about it," Loki admits. "How long did it take you to do it?"
"Like... five minutes," Natasha says uncertainly.
"That's it?" Loki gapes at her. "You did that in five minutes."
"Yeah, give or take," Natasha says. She finally seems to decide this is more amusing than weird because she cracks a smile when she asks, "How long did you think it was gonna take?"
"Oh, I don't know, an hour?" Loki says.
Natasha's laugh is so sudden and unexpected even to her she almost chokes on the air. "An hour?" she repeats as though it's the funniest thing she's ever heard. "It's just a French braid, Loki. I could do it in my sleep." She shakes her head and mumbles to herself, "'An hour.' God, that's so..."
Loki is beginning to think this attempt to start some sort of non-hostile relationship is not working. She seems to be enjoying this, at least, but it's at his expense so it's hard to consider it a win.
"Okay, but now I'm actually interested," Natasha says, but she's fighting back another laugh so it seems the extent of her interest is for her own entertainment. "Do they have braids in Asgard? 'Cause you mentioned using magic. Do Asgardians just use magic to do their hair?"
"Some of them do," Loki says. "My mother did." Not that she couldn't braid hair herself — she'd do it every once in a while, usually to others' hair but occasionally her own when she had the time — but he'd always assumed it was a skill that took centuries to perfect. He'd obviously known some humans could do it, but he hasn't suspected someone as busy as Natasha Romanoff could find the time to learn.
Natasha snorts. "Oh, your mommy has magic hair?"
"That is not at all what I said," Loki says indignantly.
"Really? Because that's what I heard," Natasha says mockingly.
Loki's not sure whether the noise he makes is a sigh or a groan, but given that he's both disappointed and frustrated, it could very well be both. "Forget it. Trying to talk to you was a mistake."
"Oh, come on," she says patronizingly. "I think this is going really well."
"I don't consider being laughed at 'going well,'" Loki spits.
"I'm not laughing at you," Natasha says. "I'm laughing with you!"
"No, you're not, because I'm not laughing!" Loki snaps. He leans against the side of the helicopter and crosses his arms.
He'd almost hoped, for a very brief moment, that they could learn to get along; that enough time has passed that they could look past their differences and unite under their shared goal. He's beginning to realize that was nothing more than a fantasy.
"Oh, come on," Natasha says, but if she's actually upset, it's only because she wants to laugh at him further and she makes no attempt at hiding that. "But we were having so much fun!"
"You were having fun."
"Well, yeah," she says. "Last time I saw you, you were playing Overlord and destroyed half of Manhattan in the process, and now you're standing there talking about your mommy. Can you honestly tell me you don't see the humor in this?"
Loki just rolls his eyes. He's glad she said it, though. He's glad that he knows now how much of an impression his broken, desperate self made on the Avengers in 2012. He's glad he knows now that they'll find any attempt to change that laughable. He won't make the same mistake again. He'll keep it all strictly business with the rest of the Avengers (assuming he does have to face them again, which, unfortunately, seems very likely), and maybe he won't have to put up with this from them, too.
"And I love your fascination with my hair," she adds. "I wish I'd known how much you liked braids. I would've just done my hair that day in New York. I could've saved so many lives if I knew I could distract you with hair talk."
Loki has pretty thick skin. It would take a lot more than an ex-assassin taunting him about his death count to hurt him. But he can't deny that he's frustrated. He really is trying to do the right thing, and it hasn't exactly been the most rewarding 20 minutes since he started this path to unachievable redemption.
Still, he doesn't react. He doesn't give her the satisfaction. That's what she's doing it for, after all. He'd know; he's done the exact same thing to Thor (but they're brothers; he's allowed to tease his brother, just like Thor always loved to tease him back). She wants to piss him off, and he's not going to let her.
"Are you giving me the silent treatment now?" Natasha asks, and that actually seems to make her laugh more.
"No, I'm not," Loki says, even though he absolutely was until he realized she found that funny. "I just see no point in a conversation that I'm obviously going to lose."
"Wow," she says. "You're losing a conversation. That really does take a special kind of loser."
Loki gestures to her in a see what I mean? way. She could not have done a better job proving his point if she tried.
"Really?" Natasha asks. "That's it?"
"Mm." Loki shrugs.
She shakes her head to herself. "God, you're literally a child."
Loki doesn't dignify that with a response.
Natasha just looks at him for a long while, almost like she's expecting him to speak. He meets her gaze, but he pointedly keeps his mouth shut. It seems to take a couple of minutes for it to really sink in that he's actually not going to start another conversation after that last one went so horribly, and the smile on her face slowly slips away.
Eventually, it's Natasha that breaks the silence, and she sounds more sincere this time (or as sincere as a general statement of fact can be). "You weren't completely wrong. Not everyone can braid their hair. Some people actually really suck at it. I've just had a lot of practice."
That actually piques Loki's interest. "I didn't think trained assassins, spies, or Avengers would have the time to practice something like that. It seems so... not deadly.".
Natasha gives a halfhearted chuckle. "Yeah, no, there's not a lot of time to learn new recreational skills. But I'd practically mastered it as a kid, so..."
"I thought you'd been an assassin since you were a kid," Loki says, confused. Isn't that what Barton told him? Admittedly, he hasn't given much thought to the Avengers lately, what with being so busy trying to bring down the TVA, but he's pretty sure he remembers Barton saying something like that.
"Kind of," Natasha says, "but no one handed me a sniper at seven years old and told me to go kill people, if that's what you're thinking."
Loki's getting the feeling she's trying not to laugh at him again, but he's interested enough in the conversation that he can't find it in him enough to care. "Then what did they have the kids do?"
"Lie," she says. "And hope they didn't get caught because the best case scenario if they did was a bullet to the head."
"Oh." Loki frowns. He'd almost thought that didn't sound so bad for a moment. After all, lying? Come on, he loves lying. But the constant threat of death sounds a little less enticing. He shifts the conversation back to where it started; a lighter topic, he'd like to think. "So you had time to do things like teach yourself to braid your hair. That sounds nice." He smiles awkwardly. That's such a weird thing to say, but he's not sure what he could've said that would have been better.
"God, not my hair," Natasha says. "I barely had any hair. But yeah, sometimes I'd braid my sis—" She cuts herself off very suddenly, and Loki can practically see the walls coming up. "You know what? Never mind. My life is none of your business."
Loki cocks his head to the side. "You have a sister." It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's what she was about to say. He just can't help but wonder why Barton never mentioned that. He was under the influence of the Mind Stone. If he knew something about any of the Avengers that could have helped Loki tear them down, he would have mentioned it. Why didn't this make the cut?
But, to his surprise, Natasha says, "No. I don't." Her answer is clipped and her tone is cold, but that just makes him even more interested.
"But you did," Loki says slowly.
"No."
Loki furrows his brows. She definitely was about to say "sister," so he's not quite sure why she's denying it. "Was she older? Younger?"
Natasha narrows her eyes. "None of your business."
"Okay, okay." Loki puts his hands up as a show of good faith. "I was just curious. I didn't realize we had that in common."
Natasha snorts. "We don't 'have that in common.' Having a sibling isn't a personality trait."
"Maybe not," Loki says, "but I can say with the utmost confidence that growing up with Thor as a brother shaped my personality. I assume the same could be said of you with your sister."
Natasha just looks at him for a minute with her steely gaze, and Loki begins to think this may not have been the best topic of conversation. He doesn't know what her relationship with her sister was like. Maybe it would have been better to drop the conversation when she asked him to.
But finally, Natasha just says, "Younger. She was younger."
Was.
Loki tries not to dwell on that. In the most lighthearted way he can, he says, "So you're the older sibling. Must've been nice. I always wanted to be the older sibling."
"And I wished I was the younger one," Natasha remarks. "The grass is always greener, huh?"
"Mm," Loki hums. There's a brief pause, and then he asks, rather tentatively, "Do you still keep in touch?"
Natasha shakes her head. "I haven't seen her since we were kids."
"But she's still alive," Loki says, and he kicks himself for it as soon as the words leave his lips. He's surprised that she's still alive and curious why they feel out of touch, but that doesn't mean he should ask.
But Natasha doesn't seem to mind too much. "I don't know. She might be."
Loki frowns. "You don't know?" That's... horrible. He can't imagine not knowing whether Thor was alive or not. Even when he was banished, Loki was keeping an eye on him. He was one of the first things Loki asked Natasha about (once he got over the multiverse for a second). The idea of not knowing is just... he'd rather not think about it.
Natasha seemed sad, too. This whole conversation seemed to be bringing her down. But she makes the conscious effort to push that aside and says a dismissive, "I haven't seen her in a long time. And she's not even really my sister."
Instead of acknowledging that she doesn't seem to be enjoying the vulnerability of this conversation and is subtly trying to change the subject, Loki just asks, "Adopted?"
"You could say that," Natasha says.
Loki smiles. "Then we have something else in common."
Natasha just looks at him, amused. "You're really grasping at straws to pretend we're at all alike."
"Perhaps," Loki says with a shrug. With a small smile, he asks, "Would you like to find her?"
Natasha seems taken aback by that. "What?"
"Would you like to find her?" Loki asks again. "I'd do my best to help if you do."
"Really," she says skeptically.
"Really," he says.
"And even if I did want to find her, how would you help me?" she asks. "You don't even know who she is."
"Maybe not," Loki says, "but you do. I don't know how we'd find her, but, in case you forgot, I am a sorcerer. I find magic makes most things easier."
"Like braiding hair," Natasha says teasingly.
Loki smacks the back of his head against the wall, exasperated. She's never going to let that go, is she?
More seriously this time, Natasha asks, "Why would you help me find her? Are you hoping we'll find out she's dead? Or that she doesn't want to see me? I don't get it."
"I'm hoping you'll find out she missed you," Loki says with a small smile. "Maybe you can be friends again."
Natasha scoffs. "Seriously?"
"Well, yes," Loki says cautiously. Why wouldn't he be serious? She seems so sure he's not.
"Why?" It's more a demand than a question.
"Because I don't think you can find another relationship like that of two siblings," Loki says. "And if there's a chance you could have yours back, I'd like to help you take it."
Natasha just looks at him wordlessly, and he can't tell how she feels about that. He has to assume she doesn't trust him, that she doesn't believe he's genuinely offering to help her with no secret selfish reasons, but he also knows that he's done a lot to deserve that attitude from her and not a lot to fix it.
"All I ask in return," Loki says, and he purposely makes it sound just a little ominous (but he can't tell if she actually does find it ominous because she's great at masking her emotions when she wants to), "is that if we do find her and she does want to spend more time with you, you braid her hair once because I really don't think you can do that in five minutes."
Natasha laughs, and for once, it actually feels like she's laughing with him, not at him. It's enough to make Loki smile, too. He may have burned this bridge a long time ago, but maybe they can salvage just a little piece of it; a single tightrope across a ravine of his poor choices.
"You know," Natasha says, "if you really want me to prove that it's not that hard, I could braid your hair. There's more than enough time for me to prove my point and then take it out again before we get to HQ."
"Hiding the evidence, I see?" Loki says, amused.
Natasha shrugs, a playful smile on her lips.
"You know, I would like to see this," Loki says. He spreads his arms, a slightly sarcastic invitation. "Please, show me your superspeed."
Natasha gestures to the floor. "Sit. Facing the wall."
Loki does as he's told. He's actually fairly uncomfortable flying through the sky with his face just a foot or two from the wall, knowing damn well there's a trained assassin behind him who honestly has every right to want him dead, but he'll suck it up because he really does want to know how long it takes for Natasha to braid a head of hair.
Natasha kneels down behind him and runs her finger through his hair, untangling the knots. Once, twice, thrice...
"Okay, when was the last time you brushed your hair?" Natasha asks.
"If you had seen the week I've had," Loki deadpans, "you would be amazed my hair only looks this bad." He has no idea if it's been about a week (it may have been more; it may have been less), but it gets the point across.
"What did you do, get stuck in a hurricane?" she asks sarcastically, still trying to comb through his hair with her fingers.
"Actually, the hurricane wasn't too bad," Loki says. "Of the three apocalypses I visited, that one was probably the most tame."
Natasha snorts. "And what were the other two apocalypses?"
"The eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the collision of a moon and a planet," Loki says matter-of-factly.
Natasha stops fixing his hair instantly, too caught off guard to continue. "That's a joke, right?"
"I wish it was," Loki says with a frown. There were a lot of fun moments mixed in, but Roxxcart and Lamentis? Not necessarily his favorite places. "Although Pompeii was fun. I did enjoy that one."
"Okay..." Natasha says, clearly not believing a word he just said but opting not to question it anyway. She runs her fingers through his hair one more time, then says, "Start the clock. I'm gonna start braiding."
Needless to say, Loki does not have a clock, but he does have a general sense of time which is good enough for him. He clasps his hands in his lap and waits, feeling the pull of her fingers in his hair as she twists it around and adds new pieces. It feels as complicated of a process as it looks.
He'd be lying if he said he wasn't enjoying this. No one's ever braided his hair before. It's a surprisingly calming experience. And Natasha seems so sure of herself, her fingers moving quickly to make the little rope-like twists.
Natasha pulls the last of his hair into the braid, and she starts working on the end — the part he'd assumed was the easy part, but that can't be true because that means she already did the hard part, and it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes since she started. There's no way...
"Okay, I will admit," Loki says as she's finishing that last little bit, "that was much quicker than I'd expected."
"See? I told you," she says. "Not that hard." She pinches the end to keep it from falling apart. "I don't suppose you have an elastic?"
Loki holds up a hand as he conjures a rubber band into it.
She takes it and wraps it around the end of the braid, then pats him on the back once. "There you go. It's a braid."
Loki runs a hand down the back of his head, feeling the bumps of the braid. "Would you look at that? It is a braid." Or, at least, what he thinks a braid feels like.
"Want to see it?" Natasha asks.
"Unfortunately, I cannot see the back of my own head," Loki says.
"No, but this can."
Loki just sits there for a minute or two, confused. Is he supposed to turn around? He'd like to think she'd tell him if he was supposed to. He feels weird, just staring at the wall. He's almost thinking he should do it whether she tells him to or not.
But finally, Natasha does tell him to turn around, so he turns around just in time to see her sit down in front of him. She holds out her cellphone, and, after a moment's hesitation, Loki takes it. It's weird to hold — like a very thin TemPad — but he does it anyway, holding it just above his lap to look at the screen. It's a picture of his hair, and, as promised, it's in a surprisingly neat braid. It's still frizzy in some parts and frizzy in others, but it actually looks good.
"I'm impressed," Loki says.
"Hey," Natasha says, "never underestimate how much I love proving people wrong."
Loki cracks a smile. She likes proving people wrong and he loves to be right. That could amount to a very interesting dynamic if they're stuck together as long as he expects (because the odds of the multiverse being a quick fix are very slim).
Loki accidentally touches the screen in the wrong way, and he ends up on the camera. He frowns. What did he just do? God, these devices are so weird.
Natasha wordlessly reaches over and taps a little icon on the screen, and suddenly, the camera has flipped around and turned into a mirror. He looks up at her with an eyebrow raised, and she gives him an amused smile and gestures for him to have at it. He holds the phone up in front of his face, and he's actually surprised by the sight. His hair is slicked back more often than not, but there's something about having it actually braided back that makes it look better. The little wispy strands on the sides are kind of weird, but he feels it adds to the look.
"I like it," Loki says. He hands her the phone back. "I almost wish I could leave it in." But she braided it with the precursor that it get unbraided immediately after, so, needless to say, he's not keeping it in.
"Yeah, no," Natasha says. "If Stark saw us walking in with matching hairstyles, I'd never hear the end of it."
"I can only imagine," Loki says. Tony Stark can certainly be a pain in the ass. He'd rather not fuel the fire if there's a chance they'll be stuck together for a while.
He pulls his hair over his shoulder so he can reach the elastic easily, and though he does pull it off, he hesitates before unbraiding it. He slowly lets go of the ends and the braid begins to fall apart, but not completely. The top half is still neat, and the bottom is just a much looser variation of the formerly beautiful braid.
He rakes his fingers through his hair, starting near the bottom but working his way up until his braid has all but fallen apart. And it's gone. He smooths his hair back, trying to fix it up a bit because he's sure that he needs it. (He really should have kept the phone just long enough that he could make sure his hair still looked okay).
Biting back a laugh, Natasha says, "You look so sad now."
Loki shrugs sheepishly. "I liked the braid."
"Really?" she says, amused.
He shrugs again.
"Want me to braid it again?" she offers. "I'll do something different this time." Teasingly, she adds, "As long as my hair doesn't look like yours, Stark will save all his sarcastic remarks for you."
The corners of Loki's lips turn up into a smile. He wasn't expecting that. He'd assumed she was only doing this because she wanted to prove her point. She's already done that, so that's not it — not anymore, at least. He's not naïve enough to think she wants to braid his hair because she likes him. She doesn't. Not yet. But that leads him to think that maybe the reason she likes braiding his hair is that it reminds her of braiding her sister's hair. And for some inexplicable reason, whether it be that he likes to see her smile or he knows the feeling of missing the innocence of childhood with a sibling all too well, he likes that explanation more.
So Loki just says, "I'm sure Stark will have his fair share of sarcastic remarks for me regardless. I don't see how a braid could hurt."
Natasha grins, her eyes lighting up with childish excitement. "Okay, then turn around."