california 02 // loki's romanoff prelude

eight // natasha's prelude

They drove in silence for a few minutes, before she spoke first.

'Nice clothes.'

He felt colour rush into his cheeks.

'Thank you.' He didn't know what else to say, so he looked out of the window.

She kept talking. 'Thanks back there. I owe you one. And so does that guy - I would've had to break his arm or something if you didn't intervene.' She smiled again him, tight-lipped and smirking, and his face got redder. 'You didn't actually give him one hundred, right?'

'No.' He thought about explaining magic to a Midgardian, and shuddered. 'They were fake.'

She laughed. 'Trickster, aren't you?'

He wondered if he should laugh, too, but then decided against it, looking out of the window.

It was relaxing driving through the empty dark. It was like running, but without the pain. And if there was no pain, couldn't they keep running forever?
Asgard didn't have this. Asgard should have this. If he could describe being alive to a dead man, he would say it was rushing through the night under the bright road lights in a red motorised cart.

He was thinking about this when he realised she'd asked him something. 'What did you say?'

She kept her eyes on the road. Her fingers were pale and slender, gripping the black driving wheel, and drew his eyes to them. 'I asked what your name was.'

Oh. 'It's Loki Odinson.'

He waited her to say something cutting, to ask him why his name sounded so different from the Midgardian names she would be used to. She didn't. She said, 'You look nervous, Loki Odinson.'

He was. Sitting in a cart was the best thing he had ever done, but it was unlike a drone. You could feel every bump, every turn. She drove recklessly, too, her eyes on the road but her mind goodness knows where.

'I've never been in one of these machines before,' he told her.

She laughed at him, but he didn't understand why. Maybe some of it showed on his face, because then she said, 'My God, you're drunk.'

'No, I'm not. Why would you say that?'

'Oh, come on, Loki Odinson. I'm pretty sure London has cars.'

He hesitated, surprised that her mortal tongue could say his name so easily, and surprised by her words. 'What's a car?'

She rolled her eyes. 'It's not funny.'

'I'm not trying to be - never mind.' He gave up, because she was laughing at him too much. He should have been cross, but for some reason he couldn't be, not like the way he hated people in Asgard for laughing at him. He asked, 'What's your name?'

At this, her face went stony cold.

She said, 'Natasha.'

He waited. Then, 'Do you not have a last name?'

He watched her grind her teeth, and clench her fists on the wheel. He started to wish he hadn't asked.

'Just call me Natasha,' she said, finally.

'Alright.' He thought. 'Natasha.'

It sounded cool and clean on his tongue, like a gust of freezing wind. He looked at her to see how she would react. She was smiling again, but less broadly than before.

They drove in silence for a while. He looked out of the window. The same flat fields. How big was Midgard? Did it go on forever?

'Loki,' she said, suddenly.