SUMMARY: After Wanda announces her engagement a familiar face returns into your life.
“(Y/n)!”
You heard the familiar chime of the doorbell and the familiar excited voice of your friend fill the relatively empty store. You whipped your head to her just in time to see her barrelling toward you and captured you in a bone crushing hug.
“Whoa there Wands,” You said as you returned the hug, “did something happen or are you just that happy to see me?”
Wanda quickly released you from her vice grip, “oh nothing much happened,” Wanda paused before holding up her left hand, “except this.” On her left hand on her ring finger sat a beautiful vintage ring.
“Oh my god!” You exclaim smiling as you grab her hand to get a closer look at the ring, it was simple in design but it really suited Wanda. ‘When did this happen?!”
“Last night,” Wanda reveals happily her smile never deterring, “Vis and I were watching reruns of the Dick Van Dyke Show, I told him how Mary’s ring was beautiful and next thing I know he asks ‘is it as beautiful as this ring’ next thing I know he’s down on one knee with the ring in his hand asking me to marry him.”
“I’m so happy for you and Vis.” You congrat Wanda as you and her continue to talk about her engagement for a few more minutes.
“Actually Vis and I were planning on going to the city tonight to celebrate, are you busy?” Wanda asks. You take a quick look at your calendar finding nothing but closing the store on the agenda for tonight.
“Nope,” You respond, “just have to close the store.”
“Close early and Vis and I will pick you up,” Wanda said, “We’re bringing Pietro, Steve, Bucky, and Monica with us.”
You hesitate for a bit, but you take one look into Wanda’s pleading eyes, the same eyes that have gotten you into more than your fair share of trouble since highschool, next thing you know you’re nodding your head in agreement.
Wanda lets out a small squeal before enveloping you once again in a small hug before saying goodbye and that Pietro will pick you up by seven.
As you continue about your day, stacking books and working the register you start to wonder when the last time you actually had a date was.
During the slow rush you decide to check your calendar again. You flip through each page until finally you land three months prior where you had plans to meet up with the local coffee barista at some bar you can’t remember the name of. What you do remember is that the date ended with you buying a half quart of ice cream and watching reruns of Gilmore Girls.
You check the clock and check the store to find it empty. You decide now would probably be a good time to close and to start getting ready for the night in the city with Wanda and the rest.
You turn the sign on the door to ‘closed’ and push all thoughts of dating to the back of your mind.
—
You had just slipped your shoes on when you heard Pietro knock on your door in the familiar pattern he’s done since high-school.
You answer the door to reveal Pietro. You always thought he had looked handsome in that mischievous way. But when he wears that white button up and slacks with his hair gelled back he is a special type of handsome.
“Well damn don’t we look fancy tonight?” You say as Pietro noticeably checks you out in the same appreciation. You did a small turn in your black dress that fell just mid thigh.
“And you don’t look too bad yourself Princeza,” Pietro said as he offered his arm in an overdramatic gentlemanly style. Which you responded in kind, laughing slightly as you made sure to lock the door behind you before finally heading out.
—
You were back in your parents backyard, sitting in that hammock with a book in your hands. Nancy Drew had wormed her way into eleven year old you’s heart, with all of her adventures and detective skills.
Just as you were about to reach the climax of the book you heard a familiar voice.
“Whatcha reading today?” You look away from the book and spot a familiar blue haired girl the same age. She was the neighbor that moved in about three years ago, Natasha, who quickly became your best friend.
“Nancy Drew,”
“Again?”
“There’s more than one Natty.” You responded, next thing you know the book is lifted from your hands and Natasha is hovering over you with the book in her hands.
“Naaat.” You whine as you try to reach for the book only to have her expertly move it away from you.
“C’mon,” Natasha says as she makes her way to the bushes separating your yard and hers, “adventure awaits.”
You struggle a little as you make your way out of your hammock and through the lush bushes to Natasha who slips through the crack in between.
“Nat,” you warn lightly.
“I promise I’ll give you the book back,” Natasha promises, “but first we go on an adventure! Grab your bike and meet me out front!”
“Where exactly is this adventure?”
“Just grab your bike, chatty cathy!”
You hear her footsteps rush over to her bike as you rush to yours.
By the time you let your parents know you’ll be riding your bike and get to the front of your house Natasha is already waiting for you.
Together you both rode your bikes until finally settling on a clearing near the local park. There was this big oak tree and in front of it a huge rock as well covered in green moss.
For a while both you and Natasha played by either climbing on the rock and proclaiming yourselves rulers of the land, climbing the tree, playing pretend in the most kid way possible.
However you would catch glimpses sometimes, you didn’t know what, but it made you worry for her. Like how sad she looked, or scared.
Finally, after being worn out by playing you both lay on the grass beneath you and watch as the fireflies began to dance around the big oak looking like thousands of moving stars.
You were enjoying the bit of peace and silence when you felt her hand hold yours. You look over and see the blue haired girl still staring at the millions of fireflies with a smile on her lips.
“Thank you for being my best friend.” She said gently as you looked away from her and continued watching the fireflies dance, until the sun finally set and it was time to go home.
She never did give that book back.
—
“Princeza, we’re here.” You hear the familiar accented voice say. You slowly open your groggy eyes to see the glittering lights of the city.
“How long was I out?”
“An hour.”
“So the whole car ride,” You say, you could see Pietro nod from the driver’s side, “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
“I was asleep the whole car ride, you were probably bored.”
“No, I wasn’t bored,” Pietro said, “I know you haven’t been sleeping much because of the store.”
Here it comes.
“You need to start working less Princeza,” Pietro continued concerned, “you spend all your waking hours at the store, tending to your books, and life is going to pass you by.”
“Pietro-”
“I don’t mean to be harsh or rude,” Pietro quickly added, “it’s just I see you all the time at the store and nowhere else lately. I get that the store is demanding, but just try to make some time for yourself. Promise me?”
You look at him and can’t refuse.
“I promise.”
You can start relaxing tonight.
—
You came to quickly realize that clubbing really wasn’t your thing.
A pile of random sweaty bodies ground on each other on the dance floor to music that hurt your eardrums.
It wasn’t that you were judging anyone for liking this atmosphere, it just wasn’t your cup of tea, you preferred to stay on the sidelines and watch your friends dance.
And the full bar proved that you weren’t the only one.
You had looked away for a second to order a beer when you spotted someone familiar.
It was dark save for the flickering lights that illuminated her every once in a while. You couldn’t place where you knew her but you knew that you knew her. It was in the way she walked with a certain grace and her eyes were sharp enough to cut through you and you imagined her tongue was the same way.
She must have noticed you staring because the next thing you know she’s staring right at you. Your eyes lock and that’s when it hits you.
You didn’t recognize her without her blue hair.
Natasha.
You panic and turn back to the bar to order that beer you were going to order about five minutes ago. You mentally beat yourself up, if you didn’t look like a creep before you definitely did now.
You were so busy mentally assaulting yourself that you didn’t notice the redhead sauntering her way to you and sit on the empty barstool next to you.
“Well if it isn’t Nancy Drew.”
You turn your head and see Natasha there beside you. Her hair was shoulder length and no longer blue. Now her hair was it’s natural elegant red color, her blue eyes sharper than you remember as well as her cheekbones. You noticed hints of tattoos peeking out from the collar and sleeve of her leather coat.
“You never did return that book.”
You both couldn’t help the laugh that erupted. Even though it’s been years somehow it almost feels like no time has passed.
Almost.
“So what’ve you been up to?” Natasha asked, “still into books?”
“Uh yeah,” You confirm, “I actually own a bookshop back home.”
You see Natasha smile from ear to ear before taking a sip of what was your beer now it seems to be adopted by Natasha.
“That’s so you,” Natasha said before taking another sip from the beer bottle.
“Well what about you?” You ask, “what have you been up to?”
You could see the hesitancy in Natasha’s face, just as she was about to answer, however you see a light brown haired male come up beside her.
“Hey Nat, I hate to interrupt but we got a Budapest situation over here.” Natasha swerved her attention to where he pointed at the blonde who was obviously drunk off her ass putting a six foot tall man into a choke hold. Which you had to admire and be impressed at.
“I guess that’s my cue Nancy Drew,” Natasha said as she took one last sip from the beer bottle before abandoning it. As she was making her way through the crowd but before she got too far you saw her turn around.
“What was the name of your bookstore again, Nancy Drew?!” She yelled over the crowd.
“Oh-um- Summertime Stories!” You call out, you catch a glimpse of something in her eyes before it disappears.
I’m pretty sure that some people have pointed it out before, but I’ve never actually seen those posts:
“After. After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend. As a balm. And I would cooperate.”
First I’d like to note that Loki doesn’t seem to assume that Thor would go “you can’t torture Loki he’s my brother”. He legit thinks that Thor would let SHIELD torture him.
But more than that… he seems to be projecting. He was referring to the time he spent in captivity, when he was tortured. Cooperate in the sense that “yes I will retrieve the tesseract”.
Re: Loki thinking that Thor would let SHIELD torture him: this reminds me of a post that’s gone around about someone asking Tom about why Loki tries to kill Thor in Thor 1 (apologies l, I can’t remember who originally posted it), and him responding that it was his opinion that Loki thought that Thor would kill him once Thor found out that Loki was a Frost Giant. That fear is made a little more explicit here, and it’s just so, so sad. Especially given that we see Fury talk to Thor about torturing Loki, and Thor reacts with disbelief that they’d even consider it. (there’s an essay here probably about Loki’s expectations about Thor being violent towards him and the fact that Thor rarely meets those expectations but…eh I’ll just explore in fanfiction, I can’t write essays)
Anyway, the way the Nat scene is filmed totallymakes it seem like Loki is projecting. Note his reflection in the glass:
And then we get:
“You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers. You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are part of you. And they will never go away.”
It seems clear to me from the cinematography directly preceding these lines that we are absolutely meant to see Loki talking about himselfhere, whether or not he’s aware of it. So much of this scene is about Loki, what he thinks of himself, what’s been done to him, what he’s gone through. Maybe all of it, when you take into account that Nat’s putting on an act the whole time.
t I have this headcanon that part of the reason that Loki agreed to Thanos to invade New York (not that Loki had that much of a choice since he was being tortured) was because he knew that if any of the other Black Order members - or, heck, even Gamora/Nebula, the casualty rate would have been wayhigher. That’s where the “You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something to make up for the horrors” comes from. There’s a lot of talk about Loki deliberately taking measures to notwin the battle of New York. The way he’s projecting here - maybe he’s trying to convince himself that this is inevitable. He has to carry out the invasion. This way he can lessen the casualties. But at the same time, he’s regretting it. He knows the blood is on his hands (he proceeds to taunt Natasha about the blood in her ledger - also projecting).
“But they are part of you. And they will never go away.” Regarding this statement, I’ve been thinking about the article where Marvel confirms that Loki was being influenced by the scepter. Under normal circumstances, he never would have invaded Earth. (There are fics where Loki falls into the Void only to emerge on Earth instead of Thanos’ hands - and it’s not like Loki’s first thought upon arriving to Earth was to conquer it.) But because of the scepter’s influence, it magnifies Loki’s emotions like rage and vengeance. We never actually know how long Loki was exposed to the scepter. How long did Thanos have it? Was Loki exposed to its influence for a long time even before he initiated the invasion?
Maybe, on some level, Loki knows that the scepter was influencing him somehow. Bringing out his worst emotions. All these people he killed during the invasion - that was on his hands. He was responsible. Everyone else is also holding him responsible too. Didn’t matter that he did this under duress. @magicmastered did a piece on why Loki didn’t tell others he was tortured (typical me forgot the link so…) and one of the reasons cited was that in a warrior culture like Asgard, Loki was the one who would be seen as weak because he wasn’t strong enough to resist the torture. He gave in - his fault. It doesn’t matter that there were external circumstances - being tortured, mind stone’s influence etc. Loki believes that the person who invaded NYC is Loki - it’s who he is, he is a despicable criminal.
“You put a bullet in someone. You’re not you anymore. You’ll never be you again. But then you wake up the next morning and you’re still you. And you realise that was you all along. You just didn’t know.” - HBO Chernobyl
Re: Loki’s assumption that Thor would let SHIELD torture him/Thor and Fury’s conversation, this is how I remember that going (well, paraphrased):
Fury: You think you can make Loki tell us where the Tesseract is?
Thor: He craves vengeance, upon me. There is no pain that would prise this need from him.
Fury: A lot of guys think that, till the pain [stops/starts/i forgot].
Thor: What are you asking me to do?
Fury: I’m asking you what you’re prepared to do.
(Side note: Holy crap, Fury.)
Thor’s reaction seems less “what in the crap?!?!?” and more “it’s not going to work, there’s no point”. I don’t believe Thor would’ve tortured Loki. He’s just not in total disbelief at Fury’s suggestion.
Loki’s expectations of Thor’s violence do make a sort of sense, when you consider that at this point he genuinely believes that Thor threw him off the Bifrost, and Thor didn’t really help matters when his first move upon seeing Loki was to grab him by the neck and drag him out of a plane. And then, right before Tony knocked him out-of-frame, Thor threatened Loki with Mjolnir.
It’s also, I think, an effect of Loki’s depression. He thinks Thor doesn’t care about him, and would take Thor’s rough introduction, the fact that the first thing Thor talked about was the Tesseract, and Thor’s threat as further proof.
And yes, I love that part of the Loki and Nat scene for that reason exactly. He’s projecting so much there. That section you quoted is a direct parallel to his time with Thanos (while also being true of Nat).
YES. Loki blames himself for NY. In his mind, if he was just strong enough, he could’ve held off and not broken. If anything it makes it worse than if he’d just woken up one day and decided to invade Earth and kill a bunch of people. He’d be a murderer but not weak. This way, as he sees it, he’s both.
I’m still making up my mind on what was going on with the invasion. I agree that if any of Thanos’ other people led that invasion there would’ve been a far higher death toll…but I’m also not convinced that they would’ve done the conquering Earth thing in the first place. Thanos’ big thing was getting the Tesseract. Controlling Earth (directly or indirectly) probably wouldn’t have been much of a concern for him.
And I’m just not sure Loki’d care enough at that point, what with the scepter’s influence. Note that up until Thor forced him to really see the destruction, Loki looked like this:
Not exactly “I wish I didn’t have to do this.”
Not consciously, anyway. I can buy that on some level he didn’t want there to be as much of a slaughter as there would’ve been, but I doubt it was part of his conscious decision-making process.
If Loki was sabotaging the invasion consciously, I can see how keeping down the death toll could’ve been a factor…just maybe not one he was himself aware of.
But “you pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors” is definitely coming from somewhere….
…Maybe Thanos was initially planning on doing his usual genocide routine on Earth, because why not and he’s there anyway, but eventually went with having Loki rule it instead. That genocide would have had a death toll in the billions, as opposed to Loki’s and the Chitauri’s total of 155 that we know of (assuming that Nat wasn’t exaggerating and that we put all deaths from the PEGASUS base’s collapse are on Loki).
In that case you might be right…..
It turns out I had more to add.
Loki’s self-blame may be even worse because of his particular role with regards to retrieving the Tesseract.
If Thanos knew about the Tesseract’s location before he acquired Loki, why didn’t he come to Earth earlier? Was there something stopping him? If that’s the case, Loki would’ve been a way around that (since he was able to go to Earth pretty easily). Ergo, if it wasn’t for Loki, Thanos wouldn’t have been able to come for the Tesseract for whatever reason.
If Thanos didn’t know where the Tesseract was before he got Loki…then Loki is most likely how they found out, considering how much the Other thinks of Loki’s knowledge of it. Therefore, if it wasn’t for Loki, Thanos wouldn’t have known to send anyone to Earth.
Either way, that’s even more things that Loki could blame himself for.
So many thoughts, only think I can brain properly right now is:
It is entirely possible that Loki was the one who knew where the Tesseract was, and that Thanos found out from Loki through whatever method – reading his mind? tortured it out of him? Loki offering up that info to his captors as his “cooperation” (to stop the torture)?
Odin was the one who hid the Tesseract on Earth, right? It’s possible that he shared this information with his sons, or if he didn’t, perhaps Loki found out on his own because he is totally the type to sneak around to find out secrets Odin kept.
Bruce and Natasha are members of a band called “Parkside” along with their friend Tony and Natasha’s sister, Yelena. Natasha is the leas singer and plays the guitar too, Bruce plays the drums, Tony plays the bass and Yelena plays the keyboard piano.
Their songs are playing all over the radio and they’re getting more popular every day.
When doing an interview, they’re asked about their dating lives. All of them say they’re single but Tony and Yelena start joking about Bruce and Natasha being more than friends. Bruce and Natasha deny it, but the rumors start taking off anyway.
Not long after the joke was said and the world started to believe it, they realize the rumors might be true and they, in fact, are more than friends, even if they don’t want to admit it.
