It hurt to hear him talk so, to hear him put so much of what happened on himself and try to shrug it off like it was a done deal. Natasha shook her head against him but didn’t raise it to look at him. He seemed to find it easier to talk when he didn’t have to meet her eyes.

“You need to stop blaming yourself for everything,” she said. “He’s a god. No matter how fast you were he still would have been faster and stronger. There’s nothing you could have done.”

What if he had been faster? What if he had resisted? No matter how hard this whole situation was on him Natasha was selfishly glad Loki had taken him because the alternative just wasn’t something she even wanted to think about. Loki had brainwashed a few people that day, but the others he had simply killed without mercy.

Shifting again so she was barely on the bed at all, most of her body instead draping over his, she breathed deeply, inhaling the comforting scent she had memorized long ago. This time he said it, said again that he loved her, and it was amazing how such words would have scared her a while ago but that were welcome now. “We’ll work on them together. We’ll make some new dreams and memories to replace them with.”

Of course there were other methods, more invasive ones, but she was the last person to even suggest anything like that.