Hell for the Sacrificed

Loki didn’t like falling.

Especially for long periods of time like this. It gave the mind too much time to think about exactly where you’re falling. And why. 

Perhaps Loki shouldn’t have selected the most pristine of metal doors to escape through in that hidden TVA hallway, but perhaps the TVA should’ve locked the doors that opened up to bottomless pits. Then maybe he would be sitting in a nice, warm cell and not falling down down down down into an unknown darkness.

He wondered many things as he fell. 

Such as where in his life, exactly, it had all gone wrong.

Loki knew, of course, the catalyst of his growing pains. Being stolen away from your birthright only to be given another, lesser birthright, does not fare well for a young, lost frost giant. Perhaps it was the inherent competition he felt towards his brother, or the inevitable realization that his whole life had been a lie. 

He wondered which of his laundry list of catastrophic heartbreaks caused his recklessness, his need for subjects lesser than him just so he can control something, something in this disordered universe of universes. 

And then he’d figure there was no need to wonder, as there was nothing to wonder about. The truth was that Loki was what most would call a monster, and monsters don’t revel in their past. He was Loki Odinson, or Laufeyson, choose your poison, god of mischief and lesser men, destined to rule not because he was born to, but because he was burdened to. He was made to. 

Monsters can’t refuse what they were made to do. 

Ugh. Introspection. See, this was why he hated falling.

But if there was anything he hated more than falling, it was landing. 

Loki remembered that once his body slammed into the dirt below, with a sonic boom and a rush of wind that he assumed was his own personal downward draft. 

“Sacred timeline,” Loki muttered, planting his palms against the dirt to push himself to kneel. Every bone in his body ached. He gathered saliva in his mouth and spit, clearing his tongue of the mud he had accidentally ingested. “Ridiculous.”

Loki observed the dirt below his knees. He tilted his head in curiosity, dragging his finger across the ground. Gathering a clump of mud, he crushed the mysterious ‘earth’ between this thumb and pointer finger. When he looked closer, he noticed the soil was blue.

Then he looked up, and grimaced at a purple sky.

“Hello?” he called. His own echo was the only reply. The landscape surrounding him was bare; grey stones coated in blue light. There was a sun, too, but it was dipping low, and Loki wondered how long a sunset lasted on a planet like this. He’d seen hundreds – some with eternal days, and others with split-second years. 

He preferred eternity.

Loki looked around for a moment before scoffing. “Is this another one of your games, Agent Mobious?” Again, no reply. But Loki knew all too well not to stop there. “You should know that I am actually quite fond of games.”

A booming sound came rushing from behind him, and Loki spun around with his hands clenched, ready to strike. His eyes flicked from boulder to boulder, scanning the empty landscape.

“However,” he narrowed his eyes at the seemingly empty plane, “this one is growing less amusing by the second.” Loki took a few steps forward, the gravelly soil crunching beneath his shoe. The sound was louder than it should’ve been, which Loki chalked up to the planet being, altogether, too damn quiet.

So he continued walking, because moving was always better than not, and Loki always had an affinity for curiosity. He remembered the day Thor returned from his first visit to midguard and told Loki about a phrase he’d learned from the humans there; one that reminded the god of thunder of his dear old brother. It was about a cat, and how the cat had been murdered by some tangible embodiment of curiosity. Loki never really understood if he was supposed to represent the cat or the curiosity. Or some misunderstood mixture of the two. 

As he walked, Loki finally began to notice the strange stabbing sensation that had been eating away at his chest. It was in his throat too, squeezing it tighter than it should be. He’d been feeling a dull version of it ever since he’d seen the image of his mother’s body. Still. Lifeless. Dead.

He kicked at the dirt, a sob ripping through his chest and out of his mouth. Then he kicked the ground again, just because he was alone enough to do it. She’s not dead. None of it was real. It was all a lie.

Well…perhaps not all of it. At least, he hoped, as he remembered the way Thor had looked at him for that split second. Really looked at him, or at least that version of him, as if Thor admired him. They had fought together, apparently, and sat in peace with their father. 

If you were here, I’d might even give you a hug--

No. Don’t hope. Monsters don’t hope for things. 

In the distance, a silhouette he’d mistaken for another thin stone structure began to shift. Loki narrowed his eyes. 

The shadow shifted, curling up atop a small boulder. Loki had half a mind to silence his footsteps and prepare to attack, but decided against it. If this truly was another being, they were probably the only two living things on this entire wasteland of a planet. 

The fog made it hard to make out exactly what the figure was. When he was only a few paces away, the shape of it finally came into focus, and Loki found himself staring at a woman. A familiar one at that.

Natasha Romanoff sat with her gaze fixed off into the distance. Her arms were tucked around her knees, embracing them, as her chin rested against her knee. Her hair was loose, flowing down the sides of her face and shifting ever so slightly with the wind. 

It took a moment for the initial shock to wear off before Loki cleared his throat. She didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch. He hesitated before looking off into the direction she was so intent on focusing on. It was the sunset, dipping just over the vast shallow sea that lay before them.

“How long does it last?” he asked. He admired the sun’s reflection on the water - if it was even water, and not some other liquid substance that was identical. He’d encountered a few. “The sunset,” he clarified.

“It’s hard to count the hours here but…” she seemed to trail off before regaining focus. “I think a few days. Maybe a week.”

Loki nodded. He turned to face the woman. There was a space just big enough for another person to sit on the boulder next to her that Loki eyed for a moment before looking away. For now, he was satisfied with standing just a few paces away, wondering how a woman from Earth found herself in this godforsaken wasteland.

“I’ve always loved purple,” she said, her words so low they were practically a whisper. “When I was a girl, Father Pytor used to tell me that red was the color of the devil. So he’d pull at my hair until chunks would fall out.” Then, she absently reached out to her fiery locks, the bottom of which were stained blonde, and coiled one of the curls around her finger. “I used to lie awake at night and wish my hair was purple instead.”

The edge of Loki’s mouth twitched in what he would almost call a smile.

 “Been thinking about him a lot lately,” she breathed dreamily. “I’m not really sure why.”

Loki took a step forward, and looked down at his feet as if they were independent from him. He didn’t mean to approach; he didn’t truly understand why he’d felt the need. He hadn’t had much experience with sympathy, and he sure as hell couldn’t wrap his mind around why he felt the need to comfort his enemy. But that doubt didn’t stop his feet from moving, or his mouth from opening and saying, 

“It’s normal, I believe, for humans to learn that in the end,” Loki cleared his throat, “there really is no such thing as insignificance.”

Natasha scoffed, her mouth forming a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I know a few people who would disagree.”

Loki shrugged. “As do I.”

Natasha looked at him then, for the first time since he’d struck up this…strange conversation. And finally, she asked the question Loki probably should’ve been wondering as well, instead of entertaining her sorry sorrow. 

“Why are you here?”

Loki blinked. 

“I don’t know,” was all he could think to say. Then her eyes fluttered and flicked back to the sunset.

“Thor said you died protecting him,” she said. “And your people.”

He inhaled a shaky breath, tainted with a sting in his eyes that was rare, and nodded. “Apparently so.”

Natasha made a low sound in her throat, tracing her finger along a gash on her knee that probably should’ve been bleeding.

“Is that why we’re both here, you and I?” She tilted her head up to look him in the eye. “Because we were sacrifices?”

A sacrifice. It was the last thing he ever thought he would become.

“I didn’t choose to be.” It was true. He didn’t. He supposed a version of him might’ve. A version of him that loved something enough to die for it. 

But that wasn’t him. Especially not now, this version of him that, until ten minutes ago, thought he had hundreds, perhaps even thousands more years to live, to grow, to rule.

Natasha’s gaze flickered from one of his eyes to the other. “I did,” she said, in no uncertain terms. She said it like a woman who had something to live for, and something strong enough to die for. He knew the ones she called friends, his brother included, mourned her like the hero she was. He wondered if his brother mourned him. Thor was the only one left alive who would care.

Loki couldn’t fathom why he suddenly felt envy.

“And now you’re alone,” he murmured. Perhaps it was the bitterness, always there. Always stirring. Or maybe he thought this would finally place them on even ground: her the hero, him the monster, but both merely sacrifices in the end.

“So are you,” she replied without hesitation. The jab made the back of his neck flare with anger.

But I’m alive, and you’re dead, is what he would’ve said, if he still had that burning desire to be cruel. To be the victor. If this is hell for the sacrificed, I don’t belong here anyway. But you do. And here you’ll stay.

He chose not to say it, and Loki told himself it wasn’t to spare her pain. Monsters didn’t do that.

“I don’t remember you being so talkative,” Loki bit out between gritted teeth.

“I’m not,” she said simply before tucking the hair away from her face. She set her jaw and narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t remember you being noble.”

“I’m not,” he was quick to reply, but not quick enough to hide the way his voice shook as he spoke. Natasha was smart. He knew that. So he expected the next question that came.

“Then why did you die for your people?”

Loki took a moment to ponder the exact circumstances of how his life seemingly played out to get him to that point. To standing up and fighting against the most feared creature in the galaxy. To his brother watching as his neck was snapped by the Titan’s fist. To Thor crying, pleading over his dead body.

And then there was a single drawer in an office manned by a puny man named Casey, with tiny colored stones that rattled about as it opened and closed. Scattered. Meaningless.

“I didn’t die for anything.” Loki stared blankly across the shallow sea. “It…it doesn’t matter.”

Beside him, he heard Natasha rise to her feet. Loki didn’t have to look back to feel her approaching; to sense her presence just a pace or two away as she settled next to him, staring at the setting sun.

“It’s normal, I believe, for immortals to learn that in the end,” Loki heard something close to amusement in her tone, “there is only insignificance, and nothing else.”

And then he did it. Loki scoffed. And then his lips tilted up into a smile, and he allowed himself to laugh. She did too, which was a shock to him. Her laugh was reckless. Free. And for a moment, he forgot he was staring at a dead girl.

It made his smile fall immediately. She was here to rest; in peace, he assumed, as that was traditionally what followed. Loki cleared his throat and grimaced. The TVA were probably close to him now, bracing to pop into this peaceful moment they shared without thought of the significance of this fragile, spontaneous alliance.

Loki took a hesitant step back, pressing his lips into a thin line before turning around.

“You can stay,” Natasha rushed to say before his back was fully turned. She was too much like him. Too accustomed to convincing people that they were better off without others. Better off alone. He could tell it pained Natasha to admit that his company wasn’t entirely bothersome. “If you want.”

For the third time, Loki’s lips tilted into a smile. He released a relieved breath, forcing his burdens from his shoulder for the time being to honor her wish. 

Why? a voice inside him asked. There was no reply, and Loki didn’t care enough to wait for one.

“How much longer in this setting sun, Agent Romanoff?” He turned around, lowering onto the boulder and leaving plenty of room for her to join him.

The woman didn’t smile, but he saw a life in her eyes that wasn’t there before.

“A few hours, maybe less.”

Loki nodded, then fixed his gaze on the distance. Natasha exhaled, hesitating for a moment before sitting down next to him on the boulder. Their shoulders brushed as she settled.

“Perfect,” Loki said. He traced the clouds, and suddenly realized how much he, too, enjoyed the color purple. There was a tint of deep red, too, that poked out just above the horizon line. It contrasted well with the blue of the earth and the pink of the sky.

But the red? The red was all her.