False Gods
This had been a mistake; a colossal, Ragnarok level mistake.
“What now?”
Loki ignored the tiny voice’s question in favor of scanning the sprawling landscape. He had no idea where he was. The view itself didn’t look much different than Asgard, or even Midguard. Unlike the two, however, this planet’s sky had a perpetual pink hue, painting the grassy hills an almost bluish color.
A pebble knocked him on the side of his head.
“Ow!”
He whirled around to face the girl, who was still seated on the ground. Her cries had waned off minutes ago, replaced with an odd, sullen silence.
“What do we do now?” she asked again.
Loki rubbed his head with a scowl. “There is no we.” He turned back around, away from her.
Another stab of pain bloomed from his skull.
“Will you stop that!” He shouted, turning furious eyes back on her.
She picked up another pebble from the dirt. “Not until you tell me what we’re going to do.”
“I already told you, there’s no we.”
“Well, there has to be!” She stood now, letting the pebble fall to the dirt. “I wanted to stay there. In Asgard.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Loki. “You’re the one who dragged me here. You don’t get to leave me. Not now.”
Loki supposed she had a point. It would be a lie to say he didn’t feel pity for the girl, or at least a fraction of a sense of responsibility. But if Loki had learned anything in these past few hours of being whisked away through time and space, it was that responsibility, pity, sentiment, only ever got you killed in the end. Or, in some cases, taken.
“Saving you wasn’t exactly my choice,” Loki said, remembering Natasha’s pleading look, her valiant fight. He wondered, idly, if she was still alive. Though they seemed dangerous, Loki hesitated to call the TVA bloodthirsty. In fact, she was most likely sitting in the very room he did with Mobius, watching her doomed life play out on a flickering projector.
“Are we going to save her?”
The little girl’s soft voice tore him from his thoughts.
“Who?”
“Your friend.”
Loki grimaced at the distance. Then, he set off down the hill. “She’s not my friend.”
The girl scrambled after him. “She said she was.”
“No, she said she was a friend.” He threw over his shoulder. quickening his pace so she’d have to fight to keep up with him. She did. “Never said she was mine.”
“So you’re just going to leave her?”
“Yes.”
The girl fell away from his stride. Her pattering footsteps, that had padded the empty space between his, stopped.
“And you’re just going to leave me?” she called after him. He’d continued on without her, and now, her voice was a softer distance away.
Loki stopped, turned around, blinked, and then said, “yes.”
There was a heavy silence that hung between them; her with her pathetic toy sword, and Loki with his beeping, dying tempad.
He couldn’t fathom why the girl was so confused. Even at her age, Loki was intimately acquainted with the idea of being alone. Being left behind. A stray gust of wind ruffled the girl’s shoulder-length hair into her face, and Loki swore he saw shimmering in her eyes when she pushed the strands away.
He turned around and continued walking as soon as he felt the tug of pity in his chest.
She’ll only slow you down.
She’ll only make you weaker.
He would be better off without her, and she would be better off without him. It was better this way. Both of them adhering to that pesky self-fulfilling prophecy of loneliness and solitude.
He slowed.
It was him, though. Somehow. A little Loki with the ability to grow up different. Better. Maybe that was what Natasha saw, too: an opportunity to do right.
And look where she was now.
“Where are you going?”
He ignored the tiny weight that lifted off of his chest when he heard her voice again. She had run after him, and was jogging alongside his quickened steps.
He pointed straight ahead.
“Following that light.” He let himself slow down. Just a little. “There has to be a town of some sort on this planet.”
He peeked at her out of the corner of his eyes. She had a furrow in her brow as she squinted at the small, flickering lights in the distance.
“Well, then where am I supposed to go?”
Loki shrugged, feigning indifference. “Wherever you want.”
They walked in silence for a moment.
“I want to go home,” she said.
Had he ever loved his home this much? Had he been in her shoes, would he yearn for Asgard, too?
“Why?”
He hadn’t meant to ask her aloud. He’d meant it as a passing thought, but nevertheless, it tumbled from his lips.
The little Loki stared at him incredulously. “What do you mean why?”
Well, too late to back out now. “Why do you want to go home?”
When he was met with silence, he looked at her. “Odin stole you from his enemy just to flaunt you as his own. You’re not an Asgardian, and you are no daughter of Odin. You’d never get the throne.” Loki saw a muscle twitch in her jaw. “So why would you want to return?”
“I’d never get the throne anyway, you idiot. I’m a girl.”
Oh.
She was right about one thing. He was an idiot. A true, dirt eating idiot.
“My father wasn’t perfect, but he raised me as his own. And my mother…” she trailed off, swallowing hard. “My mother was nothing but kind to me. Even when father wasn’t. And Thor...” Her lips twitched, absently forming into a smile. And Loki, for whatever reason, felt the impulse to do the same. He fought it, of course. But he still felt it. “He’s my brother. Even though our blood’s not the same, it never mattered. It never changed a thing.”
The shimmer sprung up in her eyes again, and she roughly swiped her sleeve across her cheeks.
“Thor and my mother were the only people who ever loved me unconditionally.” She looked at him, taking measured steps toward him. “They’re gone, and all you care about is a silly throne?” Loki retreated with every furious step she advanced on him. “When your Odin, Frigga, and Thor died, was that all you cared about? Racing to claim your spot as king?”
Loki flinched.
No.
Well, at least, he didn’t know, did he? He couldn’t know what he would’ve done had his family perished. Because they hadn’t. A version of them had perished, and a version of him had to mourn them. But not him. Not yet.
Loki pressed his lips into a thin line, dipping his head.
The girl’s lips parted, and she sucked in a small, almost imperceptible gasp.
“They didn’t die, did they?” she whispered, mostly to herself. “They’re alive.”
He didn’t offer a reply. She didn’t need one.
“And you resent them for it. For everything.”
“It’s different,” he hissed.
She shook her head. “No. No, you want it to be different. But it’s not.”
“You have no idea-“
“You said it yourself, right?” she laughed, a humorless, empty sound. “You’re me. I’m you. The only difference between the two of us is that you’re a fool. A fool with a family.”
Family. It had been a century too long since he’d last considered himself to be part of one. It made that throbbing in his chest beat a bit too hard.
“And I’ve got no one. Nothing.” A rogue tear trailed down her cheeks. When she glanced at him, she scoffed. “Not even myself.”
An expression that looked a lot like disgust flashed in her eyes before she stormed away, taking off into the pinkish distance. Behind him, the distant lights screamed a promise of hope. Of civilization and escape. It was then, as he turned around to leave, when he felt that odd tug again, that tether, unconsciously pulling him in one direction over the other.
In hers.
“Wait.”
He saw her stop.
“Just, wait,” he called, making his way over to her. He approached slowly, like he would a angered dog with its teeth bared and ready to pounce.
“You can come with me,” he said, his hands twitching at his sides. Uncomfortable. “If you want.”
The girl made a show of considering it, knowing full well what she’d chose in the end. Her brow curled and her teeth worked away at her bottom lip. Then, she placed her hands on her hips and nodded.
“Fine. On one condition.”
Loki scoffed. “One condition? I’m allowing you to join me, not begging you.”
The little girl crossed her arms indignantly. “We save her.”
Natasha
How was this girl so different from him? He saw their similarities in the little things, like her stubbornness, speech, and borderline identical sense of dress. But everything, everything, that Loki had defined himself as was just…absent. At first, he’d chalked it up to her age, and him merely forgetting what it was like to truly love and trust.
But this, this was different on a different level. Because Loki would never bargain to save a life, especially one he’d just met.
“Why?”
The question of the day.
“Because I’m pretty sure the only reason you saved me is because she told you to,” she said. “And that she must mean something to you, because you don’t seem like the type of person who does what people tell them to.”
Loki would’ve been impressed by the accuracy of her sentiment if he wasn’t so hell-bent on appearing otherwise. Not that Natasha meant anything to him. The depth of their relationship was as shallow as a pond.
“Don’t make me regret saving your life,” he grumbled.
“I won’t,” she said innocently.
“Good”
“Good.”
They walked on for a few minutes in silence before Loki spoke again.
“I have one condition, too.”
The girl sighed. “If you’re going to un-condition my condition with another condition, I don’t think you understand how conditions work.”
Loki would be lying if he said he hadn’t considered it. He feigned offense.
“I wasn’t going to do that.”
The girl looked him up and down before she shrugged. “Fine,” she said. Ahead, the lights grew brighter and larger, until it was finally obvious that civilization lay ahead. “What’s your condition?”
Loki let an amused smile tip up the edge of his mouth.
“I’m not calling you Loki.”
***
Natasha swung her legs between the gaps of the jungle gym. A red car rumbled past the playground with a disjointed song warbling from its radio, and though Natasha’s English skills were much improved, she had no idea what a “yellow submarine” meant; and why she allegedly ‘lived’ in one.
An older woman sat in the front seat of the car. She adjusted the scarf over her head as she parked, sending a smile and a wave towards a little boy on the swing set right next to Natasha. The boy beamed, waving back. A ghost of a smile crept up on her lips.
Then Natasha stiffened. She heard him before she saw him. Natasha would know the sound of boots like that anywhere: heavy, steel-toed, military. Definitely military. No civilian could afford a pair as pristine and well-crafted as those. She would know. They followed her all the time in the red room.
The man appeared on the opposite end of the street, a little over a block away. His suit, which fit too snug to not be tailored by a professional, stuck out like a sore thumb in this weather warn, poverty stricken block of cement buildings slowly chipping away.
It was the target. It had to be.
Natasha scooted from the top of the jungle gym, dropping into the wood chips on steady feet. She rounded the playground until she was on the sidewalk, directly in the path of the target. He was far away still, probably about three hundred paces. It would look weird if she just stood there, right? So she disguised her waiting with a game of klassiki. No, hopscotch. The Americans called it hopscotch.
After a few moments, the little boy detached himself from the swing next to her. He ran, right in front of Natasha, and took off toward the man. The little boy screeched “papa!” before leaping into the man’s arms.
Natasha nearly tripped.
She stopped her klassiki, and hurriedly offered the shattered window a frantic glance, hoping to see Miss Olga shake her head, tell her to stand down. That this man was just another father picking up his son, and not the man she was supposed to kill.
But there was no one there. All that remained was Natasha. Natasha and her loaded gun.
With a furious huff, she opened her eyes. And she stalked toward him.
The man and his son were closer now. Perhaps twenty paces. When she goes through with it, when she rushes past him at close range and shoots, it will look like just another robbery gone wrong. Maybe she’ll even take his wallet for good measure, and tell the kid to run away. Or maybe she’ll shoot him too.
Her heart clenched in her chest. She had to do this. She had to.
Her fingers curled around the grip. In between strides, she tugged the pistol from the waistline of her pants and let her hand fall to her side.
Fifteen paces.
Her boots smacked against the pavement in time with the target’s.
I don’t want to kill him.
Breathe.
Ten paces.
I don’t want to kill anyone.
Breathe.
Five paces.
But I really don’t want to die.
She raised the gun. Her finger found the trigger. Her whole body tensed, ready to fire.
Natasha swung her legs in between the gaps of the jungle gym.
Natasha blinked, shaking her head.
A red car rumbled past the playground with a disjointed song warbling from its radio, and though…
Why was she seeing this again?
And though Natasha’s English skills were much improved, she had no idea what…
She slammed her eyes shut, counted to three, and opened them again.
What a “yellow submarine” meant; and why she…
It’s not real.
It can’t be
And why she allegedly ‘lived’ in one…
Not again.
“Wow,” a voice said. A voice that didn’t fit. “How old were you?”
Natasha squinted through the strolling patrons surrounding the playground. Her feet landed in the woodchips, and Natasha straightened, scanning the familiar scene. In her distraction, she just barely dodged the little boy as he darted in front of her again, yelling “Papa!”
Her eyes passed over the people who made sense; the ones she remembered from that day, intently searching for one specific memory, knowing she wouldn’t spot him. She searched and searched until her gaze landed upon something – someone – off.
“Well?” the stranger chided. It was a woman. A woman she’d most definitely never seen before. Her hair was chopped to just below her chin, with brown roots overtaking the blonde that bleached the rest. She had a pretty face matched with pretty eyes, and a black tactical suit lined with green that didn’t quite fit Natasha’s memory of her first ever mission.
“Eleven.” Natasha observed the woman warily. “I think.”
The stranger raised her eyebrows.
“It was my first ever mission for them,” Natasha continued. “Even though it wasn’t much of a mission. And it didn’t exactly go as planned.” Just thinking about it made her throat threaten to swell. She fought to choke the next sentence out. “What is this?”
The stranger shrugged, brushing her finger along the hood of a parked car. Behind her the scene continued to play out. The target, whose face was so painfully familiar, approached them with his son in his arms.
“It’s a memory,” the stranger explained. “One they decided to imprison you in, which means it’s probably a painful one.”
Ah. Of course. What had Agent Mobius said about suffering? About her being destined for it?
The woman cleared her throat. “You were very young.”
Natasha thought that was obvious.
“Too young to be so eager to kill.”
Natasha thought that was ridiculous.
“I wasn’t eager,” Natasha bit out. “I had no choice.”
Behind them, the memory of Natasha raised the gun. She squeezed her eyes shut. And then the scene started anew.
“Haven’t you been paying attention, Natasha?” The woman took a step closer, and the look in her eyes was a bit crazed. “We’ve never had a choice,” she hissed. “None of us.”
Natasha looked between the stranger’s blue eyes. It was enough to anchor her to the present, to remember where exactly she was imprisoned. And why.
Natasha swallowed. “You mean the sacred timeline.”
The stranger nodded. “It’s a lie,” the woman said, eyeing a passerby with interest. “A lie to keep everyone in their fucked up version of ‘order’.”
“Their?” Natasha asked. “Who?”
“The Timekeepers. The ones who decided we didn’t belong in the universe,” the stranger spat. “The ones who decided that we deserved to suffer because we made a choice. A choice we weren’t meant to make.”
“I thought the TVA made that decision.”
“The Timekeepers make the decision. The TVA just executes it.”
“And the TVA?” Natasha glanced behind the stranger and watched the little memory of herself track the target. “What about them?”
“Tyrannical false Gods,” the woman said simply, following the path of one of Natasha’s pre-programmed passerby’s. “Obsessed with control.”
“And you?”
The woman froze. Her back was to Natasha, but she watched as the stranger craned her neck to look at her.
“Who are you?” Natasha repeated.
The stranger puffed a lock of blonde hair from her mouth, and then she asked, “what happened next?”
It was so light, so casual, Natasha barely noticed the sudden shift in conversation until the words left her own mouth. “I didn’t go through with it.”
The stranger scoffed. “Your conscience get to you?”
A metal arm grabbing her wrist and forcing it down. Metallic fingers prying Natasha’s grip from the gun. A cool, comforting hand, dragging her away.
“Something like that.”
The stranger spun around to face Natasha. She ripped a scarf from a little girl’s head and wrapped it around her own. She dipped her head for Natasha to continue.
For some odd reason, she did.
“I was ready to do it,” Natasha breathed. She tracked the memory of herself with her eyes, watching as the little girl removed her gun from her pants. “To kill for them. That little boy-“ Natasha breathed. “I was picturing him dead.”
The girl raised the gun. Then the cycle started again.
The stranger unraveled the scarf from her head, bunching it in her hands. “You were a child.”
“So was he,” Natasha said. “It’s no excuse.”
“If you didn’t kill anyone that day,” the stranger asked, “why does it haunt you?”
Natasha’s eyes started filling with that haunted hue; the gut punch of regret.
“I didn’t stop myself,” Natasha breathed. “I didn’t even try.”
And that was the worst part. It was her choice; she’d barely tried to fight it. Sometimes, Natasha wished that she had been brainwashed, just so she could tell herself that it wasn’t her fault.
“We all do things we shouldn’t. Especially when we’re children,” the stranger said. “That doesn’t mean you have to spend your whole life sulking over it.”
“I’m not sulking,” Natasha bit out.
“Then get over yourself.”
There was a knowing look in her eyes; a sort of understanding that felt a little misplaced.
“Are you with the TVA?”
The stranger barked out a laugh. “Do I look like the oppressive time police to you?”
Natasha ran a speculative eye over her appearance – the green accents to her skin-tight leather suit, a thick, flowing cape.
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Well, I’m not.”
“Then who the hell are you?” Natasha also wanted to ask how the hell she got into her alleged memory prison, but figured that question would most likely go unanswered.
The stranger flipped a dagger into her palm. “I have a feeling you’ll find out soon enough.”
What the hell did that even mean?
“And once you’re ready to break out of your little memory prison,” the woman flashed a smile, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
The woman turned to leave.
“Wait!” Natasha called. “How am I supposed to get out of here?”
“How should I know?” The stranger replied. “It’s your memory.”
She took a few steps back and fished one of those phone-like devices from her pocket. A tempad. The strange tablet made a few noises, and the stranger spared one last glance at Natasha.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you come to me at all?” Natasha asked. The stranger hadn’t offered to help her escape, nor did she tell Natasha anything particularly helpful. It seemed more like the stranger had come here to settle mere curiosity, and to drop some not-so subtle hints.
“Let’s just say we have a common enemy,” the stranger replied. “And a common ally.”
Natasha had too many enemies to count, even for a dead girl.
“And if you see him before I do,” the woman pressed down on the tempad, “tell the old mischief man I said hello.”
And then the portal opened, and she was gone.